Blighted Star

by Tom Parkinson

  Inside the skyak was taking shape. She had vatted a few pounds of an organic compound which was basically a form of cellulose resin. Unfortunately she had not got the mixture exactly right, and it had a tendency to harden too quickly, so she had to work quickly, scooping it out and using a roller to spread it evenly over the surface of the mould. As it cured it changed colour from pale yellow to orangey red, and because some areas were thicker than others, the colour effect was different in different parts of the craft, making it mottled like the skin on of fabulous lizard or exotic fish. When she stood back, remembering just in time not to scratch her itching scalp with her sticky hand, she had to acknowledge that the effect might have been unintentional, but it was damn fine! She would make another one, with slightly different pigmentation for Grad’s approaching birthday, and she would transmit the accidental discovery about the resin to her brother with the next data burst.

  <><><>

  In the blackness at the bottom of the lake, a patch of mud began to move. As the cadaver of Gunnar Olafson sat up, the silt streamed away from its face to reveal the ravages of the organism. The flesh had almost entirely gone and now even the bone was beginning to crumble away. With no jawbone, and with the neck vertebrae exposed through the wasted muscles of the throat, the head hung backward and a little to one side. As the corpse shuffled slowly out of the shallows, the strong starlight showed up the destruction wrought on the rest of the body. The entity had devoured almost all of its host, saving only those muscles and ligaments needed for movement to the next prey. Gunnar’s clothes too had suffered in the accelerated rotting process, and now hung in tatters from a frame that was little more than an ambulatory skeleton. The abdomen was entirely gone, and the ribcage utterly exposed, dripping with lake water. Feet, like bony claws, scraped across the ground. The corpse lurched across the grass to where, a short distance away, the warm glow from a lantern cast shadows on the canvas of a wagon-cover.

  <><><>

  Athena stood back and straightened up. Now that the end of the task was in sight she allowed the weariness she had kept at bay for so long to wash over her. Craning her neck to relieve the sore muscles she looked up at the stars which cast as much light into the dark sky as the moon still shed on the abandoned Earth. They were shining clearly now as the last dregs of the sunset drained away to the west. Above her, the whirl of the Skagorack Nebula dominated the eastern half of the sky, the centre stars fading as their light struggled to escape the pull of the black hole at the centre. A soft noise in the grass brought her back to the present moment as Jackson joined her. He too looked up to see what had caught her interest, then he looked into her face with the same sadness she had been sensing all evening. She smiled.

  “Alright Lieutenant. I think we’re ready. Get everyone to retire to a safe distance just in case I’ve wired this up wrongly. About three hundred metres should do I think.”

  As Jackson nodded and went back to where the small troop were resting, Athena reflected once again on where her knowledge had come from. She and Jim had spent a great deal of time together over the course of the voyage, they had hit it off right from the beginning, and they had had thousands of conversations on nearly as many topics. But none of the hours they had spent together had covered the kind of advanced engineering she had employed to put together the rig that stood before her now. She wondered whether what she had experienced was some kind of telepathy. When Jim got back she and he would have to discuss the matter thoroughly. She reached out her hand to activate the machine, and again the gentle noise of footfalls in the grass made her pause. Jackson returned to her side.

  “They’ve gone back Ma’am.”

  “You should go back too Jackson. I have to be here to monitor the start-up but there’s no point in both of us taking a risk.”

  Jackson paused, torn between his wish to stay and his need to follow the procedure which stated unambiguously that executive officers were not to be exposed to danger without overriding reasons.

  “I’d rather stay.” he said in the end, a little apologetically.

  Athena reached out again and the control panel glowed. The whole contraption gave a very slight shudder and began to hum softly. She knew that far beneath their feet the borer was now focussing energy forces which would melt and reshape the rock until a smooth sided shaft, two metres wide, sank down through the crust into the slow moving magma far below. When that stage was complete the machine would cap off the mine by creating a large magma chamber from which the metals they sought could be drawn. The colony would be back in business.

  Athena turned and caught Jackson’s eye. “That should do, or at least, if the readings are true we should be O.K. Shall we sit a while?” Sitting down on the grass, they leaned their backs against the warming metal sides of the mining machine. Athena felt her eyelids weighed down by an impossible weight. She let them shut and in a moment her head drooped to one side and came to rest on Jackson’s shoulder. He looked down in some surprise and adjusted his arm so that she would be more comfortable. His men had orders to keep back for half an hour, and then to come up if there had been no plasma breach. He would let her sleep until he heard them coming. God knew she had earned it.

  <><><>

  Grad turned over once more on the camping mattress the probe had brought. Beside him in the energy tent Jim snored softly but it wasn’t that which was keeping the pilot awake. Neither was it the ridiculous earliness of the hour, the sun having only just set. It was the turmoil he felt in his heart and in his mind over the two women he was in love with. He felt divided. cut in half down the middle. One half of him yearned for Lana, the other for Christel. The divide was so exactly even that even from moment to moment he didn’t know what he should do. And it wasn’t as if he wanted both, he wanted to be with one woman, it was just that the one woman might be Christel or it might be Lana. He was being stupid. Christel had made it pretty clear that what they had was not a relationship, was just a thing, but did that mean that if she changed her mind on that score would he go running to her? Grad didn’t think so, and the thought of losing Lana, of not being with her, was physically painful. He should really tell Christel that they couldn’t be together anymore. But then the thought of having taken away from him the source of the best pleasure he had ever had. .. The woman was a sorceress, he had always had a healthy sexual appetite, and it wasn’t as if the sex with Lana wasn’t good, but Christel was in another league entirely, she was the best he had ever had by a long, long way. He couldn’t contemplate having to give that up. Anyway, he suspected that all Christel would have to do was smile and he would be in pieces again. He was like an addict. He was rock hard now just thinking of her. He felt like groaning, it was like being seventeen again. He turned over again, as quietly as he could so as not to disturb the engineer. To his surprise a tear formed and rolled down his cheek.

  <><><>

  Jim could hear the disturbance in Grad’s breathing. He did not know him well enough to guess whether Grad was awake or in the grip of some disturbing dream, but he worried that the pilot seemed restless.

  Once, long before, he had lain listening to the breathing of another and had wondered if they were awake. Beside him in the dark had floated the still form of his wife on their gravity field bed. He felt, as he always felt when he remembered those nights, a feeling of separation like deep homesickness, a longing for a time and a place when he had been truly happy.

  <><><>

  Johan sat up bolt upright. The animals were screaming in agony and terror. The noise slashed the night like a butcher’s knife and left Johan paralysed with fear. A dog was barking hysterically, the sound crashing in waves against the canvas of the wagon cover. Katinka clutched his arm and the sudden touch almost made his heart stop. The dog’s voice gurgled out into silence as if its throat had been sliced through. In the following moment of calm Johan could hear the sound of disappearing hooves as the animals broke free of the flimsy rope fencing and escaped into the night.

  L
ike most men, Johan had at times imagined some threat to his family and how he would respond to it. Scenes of sadistic madmen holding them hostage had been played out in his mind before being dismissed with a rueful smile. In all these scenes he had played the part of a hero, vanquishing the foe and saving the day in a most un – Amish fashion. This was not like that. Johan tried to move but just could not. Again the night broke into frantic sound as more screams, this time, human ones, came from the tent Daniel had pitched nearby. Still he could not move. Now Katinka and Petre were cowering behind him. Keeping as far away from the loose flaps at either end of the wagon cover, the little family huddled.

  There was a lull of a few moments then soft shuffling noises began to come from outside, Katinka once again clutched at Johan’s arm. Shaking with fear he at last found the strength to react, but only to say a silent prayer, lips moving over chattering teeth. The noises were outside the wagon now, and came from all sides, his imagination pictured gigantic black cats, prowling through the grass, and his mind quailed.

  The flap moved slightly and Katinka screamed. A human arm came through, groping from one side then to another. It was Hannah’s. It still had the sleeve of her nightgown on, but this could not disguise the ravages that had occurred to the flesh; vile blisters oozed pus, and the skin was rent by gaping cracks from which blackened blood smeared the surfaces she touched. It was as if some searing heat had blasted her flesh. In horror they watched as Hannah heaved herself through the flaps, followed by another monstrous form in the nightclothes of Daniel. Neither one of them had eyes any more, but still the wrecked faces quested the interior of the wagon and settled fixedly on the three terrified people inside.

  Petre shrieked in fear and pain and Johan whirled round. One of the dogs had battened on to the child’s arm with its teeth. It had undergone a transformation like that of the humans. Most of its fur had been shed, and its entire stomach had fallen away, leaving a snakelike spine running down to a scabrous tail. An empty ribcage hung from the string of vertebrae. Petre was squealing now, in ever higher pitch as a rash of white blisters tore up his arm and burst across his face. He turned one more despairing look on his father’s face as his eyes became milky, bulged and then burst. With a spasm he died in his mother’s arms.

  Now Katinka was jerking and twitching. She lifted her dying arms before her face and fell back into him, coughing up a black substance which stank like ooze from a death - pit. She curled impossibly tightly and then fell still. Johan felt a touch to his bare neck and instantly fire exploded along the length of his spine. He began, but did not finish, a prayer for mercy.

  <><><>

  Christel lay on her stomach and idly kicked her feet in the air. She was bored. It was only ten o’clock and she had nothing, absolutely nothing to do. Usually at this time she would be watching the 3D, and she could, if she wanted to, put it on now. Her favourite show would be on. But she couldn’t be bothered; there didn’t seem any point without someone to watch it with, even if they weren’t really interested. Still two days ‘til Grad got back, then she wouldn’t be bored, she had a feeling that he wouldn’t be either…In the meantime… She ran over in her mind what had happened in the shuttle.

  They had risen into the sky, leaving the settlement basking in the afternoon sunshine below and had turned to head towards Cassini. She had been bored then, and boredom had for Christel, always brought with it the temptation to do something reckless to break its grip. She had looked across at the blonde giant at the controls to her right and had decided, then and there, that she would give free rein to an urge she had been harbouring.

  “What does this button do?” she had asked, knowing full well, touching her lip with her finger and brushing it across the red, moist, surface. Grad had looked at her through his lowered lashes.

  “It’s the auto…” he had begun, but had lost the thread of his sentence. His Adam’s apple had moved on his tanned throat.

  “So if I press this.” she had said, doing so, “The shuttle will fly itself…” Grad had just nodded. “…and if I pull this lever…” she ran her hand up the stubby shaft of a throttle control and gently tugged the knob at the end towards her, “The shuttle will fly itself really slowly…”

  Chapter 8

  Lana held her breath, counted to seven, her lucky number, and then tapped the activation point on the control pad. The A/G’s started to hum and the canoe lifted into the air. Had the back lifted fractionally more quickly than the front had? Was that a faint smell of hot circuit? She forced herself to calm down. So far, so good. She tapped the pad again and the canoe lowered itself gently onto the floor of the workshop. Lana reached in and hefted out all the bags of dirt she had put in to the cockpit to simulate her own weight.

  She sat in and tapped the activation point again. The canoe rose with her in it, then hovered. It felt horribly unstable. When she leaned forward, the front dipped and the back rose, and the canoe wandered forward a little until the front unit compensated and the craft slowed. Leaning back had the reverse effect. Leaning to the side caused the motors to groan with effort as they strove to re-establish the horizontal attitude they were programmed to maintain. Lana reached forward and took hold of the joystick she had put in. It had a trigger near the top, and when she was ready she tapped the trigger with her index finger. At the back of the canoe a cooling fan mounted on a pivot whirred into life and the canoe shot forward towards the open doors. Lana burst out into the daylight, startling a group of settlers, and wobbled out across the field. Tugging a little on the stick, and feeding a little more power into the Anti-Gravity disks, she pointed the nose towards the sky and soared slowly away. She levelled out at a five hundred metres and flew straight for a while, regaining her composure, and building up momentum. Up here the air was surprisingly crisp, despite the warmth of the afternoon, and she realised how pampered she had been, in a climate controlled cockpit all this time. Away to the south, puffs of cloud a little above her level showed the presence of rising columns of air, triggered by hot spots on the ground. Far away to the north, a thunderstorm flickered just on the horizon. She had only spent a few days out of the air but during that time had felt the airman’s frustration at being grounded. Now, the magic of what she was doing was negating the fear she felt whenever the skyak gave an unexpected lurch. She only wished that there were birds or other flight capable creatures here on this empty world with which she could share this wide sky. She could picture eagles turning in the gyre of the heated air, or flocks of pterosaurs from Jodrell flapping slowly at great altitude. Sad to think that on all this world she was the only living thing enjoying this perfect sky.

  The skyak was moving really beautifully now. The trick was to keep sufficient speed on so that the rushing air itself held the sides straight and prevented any tail slewing. She touched the stick to the left. The canoe obediently turned and she slowly began to enjoy the flight. It was all coming back to her. She tried a dive and the wind streamed through her hair as the speed built up until her eyes began to swim with tears. The ground close, she pulled back and the sky was before her once more.

  When she finally came to the hover two hundred metres over Cassini, she no longer felt unstable in the tiny craft. Her old skills had come back to her and with them had come back her old love for the sport. Why, she wondered, had she ever given it up? She bled off power from the A/Gs and the canoe sank towards the field below. Only now did she notice the crowd that had gathered to watch her performance, and she felt overcome with shyness as she guided the aircraft into the workshop amidst their applause.

  <><><>

  Athena had watched some of Lana’s flight from the new quarry site where the initial shaft sinking had nearly been completed. She patted the mining machine affectionately. Really, she felt more than just the joy of ownership; it was almost akin to parenthood, this sense of pride in her creation. “Good boy.” she said under her breath, feeling a little foolish. “Good boy.”

  The counter on the control panel was
measuring the thickness of rock left to cut though, yet as the digits unwound towards zero, it was hard not to see the display as a countdown to when the colony could get restarted. The constant enquiries from the settlements had been an unwelcome distraction from the job she had been trying to do, but at least she had had positive news of progress being made to give them. Even so, to the more persistent enquirers she had felt on several occasions like yelling “It’ll be all the quicker if you stop hassling me!”

  In the end, Jackson had come to the rescue. He had been present when the irritating Frenchman from Heart Lake had made his morning call. She had pulled a face as she fielded the questions, and though Jackson’s lugubrious mouth hadn’t cracked a smile, he had re-routed all further calls from her comms to his for the time being. Athena had been anxious at first that he might be too brusque in his brush-offs, but she had seen him take many calls since then and he had put on a façade that was positively breezy.

  The countdown was into treble figures now; it would not be long before the next phase could begin. A moment’s calculation brought a smile to her face; the first sheets should be being extruded by sunset, and it was feasible that she might have the new shuttle ready by the afternoon of tomorrow. If the two engineers were prepared to work on it through the night, as she was sure they would be. They obviously worshipped her now, and indeed, they had never asked her a question about which she hadn’t known the answer. Really, when she saw Jim again he would have some explaining to do; she was sure he’d hypnotised her and taught her all this engineering as an experiment on the way to Saunder’s World. It was just like him…