In Between the Stars

by A. A. Ripley

  The floor under their feet trembled. Inan heard three distinct explosions as the lift engines fired up beneath the cabin. Sluggishly, like a terribly wounded beast, the lift rose and started to gain momentum. Inan looked out, trying to see the landscape suddenly drop down. It was as if the planetoid was falling away from them, suspended in the air like a bauble on a string. The mesa turned into an island surrounded from all directions by the purple sea of the jungle. Suddenly, the view became obscured by a woolly veil of low hanging clouds, but not for long. The view cleared again, but now both the mesa and the jungle had swirls of white and pink shapes imposed upon them, chasing each other over the purple and red background. Inan looked at the fantastically-shaped clouds and almost forgot that this beautiful place had been a trap just a few moments ago.

  She decided to make herself comfortable for the remainder of the journey. Inan sat down in the passenger area, but she grew bored with just sitting in one place. She was just about to look around to see if the side compartments held anything useful, when a strange sensation grew inside her stomach. It was as if her insides did a small somersault. She stopped, wondering if there was something going on.

  There was a jolt, and a moan of overstressed metal. Another jolt and a sickening sound of something breaking.

  Instantly, Inan made a dash towards the controls, just in time to see Hijinks bent over the console that had broken out in warnings and alarms.

  ‘Is it the seal?’ called Alan, appearing next to Inan.

  Hijinks said nothing, just pointed to the chart displayed at the console. A large, red, blinking ring surrounded the area around one of the thrusters, indicating imminent failure.

  ‘How long to the docking station?’ asked Inan. ‘Can we make it?’

  ‘No,’ said Hijinks, tapping the flashing schematics. ‘Can fail any minute now.’

  ‘Then what?’ asked Inan, thinking that she wouldn’t like the answer.

  ‘A great fall,’ said Hijinks. ‘No brakes, just thrusters. Two thrusters can’t save us.’

  Inan felt lightheaded at the thought of the abyss below them. But Hijinks wasn’t finished just yet. She looked at the console.

  ‘Still low in stratosphere,’ she said. ‘OK to go out.’

  ‘Go out? Is it even possible?’ said Inan, eyeing the extremely pale sky outside the slit-window.

  ‘Possible, yes,’ said Hijinks, pulling open a storage compartment incorporated in a wall. She pulled out a few boxes, checking the contents of each one thoroughly.

  ‘But that’s extremely dangerous!’ cried Inan.

  ‘Extremely so,’ agreed Hijinks without interrupting her search. ‘Help me look.’

  ‘What are we looking for?’ asked Alan, pulling out a sealed chest from the compartment over his head.

  ‘Rebreathers,’ said Hijinks, ‘protective clothes. For two.’

  ‘For two?’ asked Inan.

  ‘Two-person job,’ affirmed Hijinks.

  There was a moment of silence, like the one when a deep breath has to be taken to speak again.

  ‘I’ll go!’ said Inan and Alan simultaneously.

  ‘Can’t go, Inan,’ said Hijinks. ‘Too cold.’

  ‘He can’t go either,’ said Inan. ‘He is afraid of heights!’

  Inan rummaged through the equipment chest. She pulled out some environmental suits, not space suits, just simple overalls with rebreather couplings, not even equipped with a heating system. No one had deemed it necessary to equip the lift with proper emergency repair gear.

  ‘Inan,’ said Hijinks, ‘you must stay.’

  ‘But I don’t want to stay, not when you will be out there!’ she cried.

  ‘We’ll be right back,’ said Alan. ‘We will get that done and be right back.’

  ‘I… I’ll be a little garri-shuffler,’ he added, seeing that he failed to convince her.

  A shudder went through the cabin, as if the lift had caught a sudden chill.

  ‘Running out of time,’ said Hijinks, putting on the gear. The clunky breathing apparatus covered all of her face, like a tentacle monster trying to strangle her.

  ‘We need to shut it down, go out, fix it and restart it before we gain too much speed going down,’ agreed Alan. Alan and Hijinks stuffed themselves inside the emergency access airlock, and soon Inan heard the hiss of equalising pressure inside. Then the hatch resealed and Inan was now alone in the limping lift.

  Inan sat down on the floor next to the console. Here she was, stuck inside like a scale-less invalid when Hijinks and Alan were outside scaling the side of the lift towards the bottom. She could almost see them now, clinging to the carapace of the lift, like specks of dust on the back of an avian. She shuddered at the thought of the wind and chill that dwelled over the clouds with a thin cloak of the remaining atmosphere between them and the darkness of space. She thought of the thrusters, spewing hot chemical fire, and their nozzles of searing hot metal. She stared at the still-displayed schematics, wondering how long it would take to fix the fault and if they had a chance to do it at all.

  A strange sensation came over Inan. At first she couldn’t tell what it was. It began as an unnerving sensation deep within her bones, then it moved into the base of her tail and finally, to her utter surprise, it became audible. It was a vibration; she could hear that clearly now, a sound so low it was like the prolonged, faint rumble of distant thunder. She looked around, trying to figure out where the sound came from, but she failed. It was as if it came from all directions. Something fell to the ground. Inan turned around to see that a box which had previously been resting on a seat was now under it. She realised then that the noise she heard and felt was the sound of whole cabin vibrating under enormous stress. Hijinks and Alan must have succeeded in disabling the compromised thruster and now the lift hobbled, fighting the overpowering force of gravity with the remaining units.

  With each passing second the vibration became stronger, creeping up Inan’s spine and growling in her ears, making her skin crawl with dreadful expectation.

  Suddenly, the worn speaker of the console started barking a pre-recorded message. It was garbled beyond recognition, shards of words clashing with the overpowering noise of overworked metal. Inan strained her hearing trying to understand what the console tried to communicate. Then, right before her eyes, a crack appeared in the tortured outer wall. She understood then – the message was a structural integrity alarm! Like a creature hypnotised by the appearance of a predator, Inan watched with terror as the crack crept up. First a whistle, then a shriek of air escaping outside stabbed at her ears.

  With the alarm still going, the bottom of the console slid open, revealing familiar-looking, thin cylinders. Inan grabbed one before she had even realised what they were or where she had seen them before. The console was spitting instructions as a sore throat spits coughs. Inan tried to listen, but a sudden jolt threw her off balance and she dropped the cylinder. It flew sideways, struck the floor and rolled off, spraying some bright chemical compound from the punctured side. The liquid arced in the air, falling down coagulated and hard. The cylinder rolled away and stopped under the wall. The still-spouting liquid covered the wall with an uneven, yellow substance. Inan finally recognised the same stuff that Hijinks had used to seal the malfunctioning hatch. She grabbed the next cylinder and went for a prowl, hunting the cracks as they appeared and covering them with the sealant. She worked fast, but as soon as she filled one hole, another appeared, threatening to suck out the air. Inan threw away the empty bottle and suddenly realised she was now panting heavily. At first, she thought she was just winded from running after the holes and cracks. But it was not just the exertion; it was the air getting thinner by the second. Inan dropped the empty sealant bottle and went to put the rebreather on.

  She had taken a few steps towards the equipment storage when she caught something out of the corner of her eye. On the opposite side of
the storage, a crack appeared. No, not a crack, a hole! Part of the electron-welded seam tore off and split in half, the crack travelling up and down from the hole. She already could see the metal folding under stress. She cracked open the next bottle. A thin spray spouted from the pressurised valve. Too thin, too slow! The hole was spreading faster and faster. In desperation, Inan hit the bottle against the wall. The valve broke. A flood of the compound rushed out, splattering everything in its path. The walls, ceiling, floor; all was covered with the thickening goo.

  To Inan’s relief, the hole was finally plugged. She took a deep breath, but it felt as though she inhaled nothing; her body was aching for a mouthful of oxygen, as if she had stayed underwater way past her time. Too much air had escaped through holes and cracks. She was panting now, hopelessly trying to even her breathing.

  Suddenly it got darker. Inan rubbed her eyes, but the darkness persisted. Then she realised – it was not darkness, the lights hadn’t suddenly gone dim. It was her oxygen-starved brain that played tricks on her.

  She stumbled in the darkness that was engulfing her, trying to get to the equipment storage. She extended her hands and walked a few paces, like a submerged soul on the bottom of an ocean where no light or heat signature remains. She awoke to a taste of plastic and smell of chemically reprocessed air. The rebreather tubes were obstructing her vision, like an unknown parasite that made its home in her mouth and over her face. Inan looked down her nose, not really comprehending that she was saved. She could breathe effortlessly now, the rebreather supplying her with precious oxygen.

  Inan strained her hearing, listening to the thruster engines and trying to feel the deadly vibrations that had heralded the structural disintegration. But she could not hear or feel any and the thrusters seemed to be working with a rhythmical pulse, strained but healthy.

  She looked around. The cabin was a mess. There was filler compound everywhere. One wall was completely covered with the sealant – the one where the first cylinder had rolled over. Other walls looked as though pockmarked with bright mould, a shaggy mess of congealed filler. She grimaced, finding the same compound embedded deep under her talons.

  Hijinks was sitting nearby, her small, furry face still shielded by the tubes of her mask.

  ‘Don’t get up yet,’ she said, her voice muffled.

  Alan was standing under the wall Inan had fought to keep from disintegrating. The hole was plugged up with a ball of congealed sealant, a wispy shape like a huge dead sea creature splayed against the wall.

  ‘I don’t know what happened,’ he said, examining the patched-up wall. ‘And I feel I shouldn’t ask.’

  ‘How much longer?’ asked Inan. ‘Are we going to make it?’

  Before Hijinks could respond, a series of thumping noises rang out across the cabin.

  ‘What is that sound?’ said Inan, startled. She was sure it was another emergency, another breakdown needing fixing. But the console shone steadily green, not flickering red. Hijinks looked at it inquisitively.

  ‘Ride’s over,’ she said.

  The sound of engaging docking clamps seemed to her more beautiful than the ululating chirpings of a thousand song-beetles, greeting in unison the arrival of a golden sunrise. They had finally reached the orbital station.

  *

  The orbital station was small and narrow, empty of equipment apart from the life-support systems. It was clearly prefabricated, like the buildings on the surface of the planetoid. These stations could be easily transported with the use of a modular freighter. That fact gave Inan hope that they would find one of these freighters docked into the only port on the station. Sure enough, there was one, suspended in space and tethered to the station via a collapsible tunnel. The ship itself looked like a fish that was already eaten. The “head” housed the control room and quarters, while the “tail” was a battery of engines, with engineering right next to them. The head and tail were connected by a corridor, which gave access to the modules below. Inan counted ten powerful clamps that arched underneath like bones from a spine. The ship was more than capable of carrying all the equipment the expedition had taken with them. And now it would carry them away.

  The dock status displays seemed to confirm that the ship had life-support in order, so they did not hesitate to move aboard. Inan wondered if they could really fly a spaceship of unknown make, but it was adapted to a multi-species crew. All the labels were in tradespeak and all functions clearly labelled. The ship had no name, just a designation, a few numbers strung together.

  It was silent when they boarded; only emergency lights shone in the long corridor and in the front compartments. Yet it awoke to the touch of Hijinks: the displays flickered, the control lights bloomed in the consoles, the air cyclers went from idle humming to steady buzz. Yet all was not right. Hijinks came back from engineering with bad news. The engines were worn, past the due check-up, maintenance and refit. Hijinks calibrated the outputs, shook her head and mumbled ki-jirai swearwords, but the engines were still just barely working at half their capacity.

  ‘Can you fix that?’ asked Inan, who had learned to depend on Hijinks’ skills with machines.

  ‘Yes,’ said Hijinks. ‘In dry dock, with crew of ten, in a month.’

  They needed to decide on a course. Alan fished a list of nearby planets which had a spaceport. It was a short list.

  ‘Can we go back to Amalonde, then?’

  ‘We could, if we had six months of supplies, enough patience and time.’

  Time. Inan hadn’t thought of time until now. Hadn’t wanted to think of time until now. But it was obvious to her that there was no time to spare, not even a second. The time they had spent down on the planetoid, the time they climbed inside the sky lift, the time they were spending talking now – all this time Ure used to bring the disc and the location of the Actuality Regulator to Cochrane.

  ‘Where can we go?’ asked Hijinks.

  ‘Confidence,’ said Alan, consulting the list.

  ‘What kind of planet is that?’ asked Inan.

  ‘Agricultural,’ he answered, ‘the closest one with a spaceport.’

  ‘No dry dock,’ said Hijinks, reading the description over Alan’s shoulder.

  ‘But we can resupply and decide what to do next,’ said Inan. She was hoping against hope that somehow they would figure out what to do when they got there.

  ‘Confidence it is, then,’ said Alan.

  *

  Inan studied the star-charts and navigation with Alan’s help. She created swirling patterns of the trajectories over the solar system, harnessing the gravity pull to guide a made-up starship towards and away from the planets. She plotted courses between the stars, calculating the FTL and sub-light flight times, dispensing the resources to imaginary crews, all while their crippled vessel crawled towards Confidence. All the simulated flights and routes could not change the pace at which they travelled.

  It had taken them as long to travel from Amalonde to the red dwarf system as from there to Confidence, despite Confidence being much closer. They arrived in orbit of the colony just as the food and water verged on depletion.

  They landed in the middle of the day, when the bright, white star of the system hung exactly overhead.

  The landing site was small and mostly empty. Only one other vessel was bathing its squat shape in the sharp sunlight.

  ‘Yi-yik-ke!’ called Hijinks, and Inan realised with surprise that she was right. She would recognise the ugly, squat shape of their spaceship anywhere. The hatch was open, the engines long cooled off. They approached with caution, but there was nobody on board, no sign of Ure. There was nothing else here to do, but to look around for a ride to the nearest city.

  Inan thought that Confidence was the most oddly-named planet in the galaxy. The landscape did not inspire confidence at all. All around the spaceport the dull landscape of partly-balding scrubland stretched in almost eve
ry direction. Over squat, dull-coloured bushes with wire-thin limbs floated clouds of bored insects. Their low, two-tone buzz dusted the air. The air itself smelled musty and felt like powdery grime on Inan’s tongue. Towards the west, there was a small settlement visible not a long way off, its sandy-coloured buildings neatly blending with the environment.

  Presently a cloud of dust moved towards them from that direction. Squinting her eyes, Inan could just make out the shape of a passenger vehicle. It stopped near them and the doors slid open, revealing a gaunt human behind the controls. He tossed the trio a disinterested look and motioned for them to take seats in the back.

  The driver didn’t speak tradespeak, or pretended not to, as he responded to all Inan’s questions with grunts. After a short ride they arrived in the centre of the settlement.

  Now Inan could see how small the settlement really was. There was only one strip of road, moving west, with no facilities for any advanced vehicle to move about, except those on wheels or with gravity-repulsor modules. Next to the edge of the road a pack of buildings stood together, like animals that had come to drink from a drying river. There was no exchange market building or spaceport authority where they could get information on supplies or repairs. And there was no sign of Ure, either.

  A few humans moved about, but there were more clouds of insects than humans. Inan felt out of place. The three of them stood out like a shellfish-encrusted rock from water. The inhabitants watched them with curiosity. How often do these planets have any visitors? Inan wondered. Finally, Hijinks spotted a long, low building that stood a bit off to the side. The front was bleached with white light from the local star and bore tradespeak letters, etched sloppily by laser.

  “Visitor Centre”, it said.

  A dusty-looking human female was operating the serving station, ordering about three robots. The machines danced about her, their many arms carrying various objects: a stack of info-sets, a cup with beverage, a set of grain samples and other things Inan couldn’t recognise. She spotted them and a professional smile blossomed on her face.