The Furnace

by Timothy S. Johnston

  “Here we go,” I muttered.

  Shaheen turned on a portable light and placed it on the deck. She looked at me. “Ready?”

  I swallowed. “No, but let’s get our helmets on anyway.”

  We swung the helmets off our backs and fixed them to the O-ring collars. We flicked the helmet floodlights on, and Shaheen moved to the console.

  “Who wants to launch first?” she asked.

  Before she could answer, a new voice echoed loudly through the chamber: “I think I will.”

  I spun to the hatch, and my mouth opened in shock. It was Malichauk.

  * * *

  “What the hell?” Shaheen gasped. “We watched you die.”

  I stared at the doctor for a long, hard beat and thought furiously. “He made it back to the station before his air vented,” I mumbled. “The question is, how?”

  He tapped a finger to his helmet. “Never go out unprepared, Tanner. I had a PPU.”

  Damn. A personal propulsion unit.

  Malichauk continued, “I floated out of sight and then used it to get back to the clinic. Repaired my suit with sealant.” Sure enough, the hole had been patched with a covering of the highly adhesive spray. “I snuck back into the station while you were collecting all the bodies and dragging them to God knows where. Simple. I had also injected myself with a couple of vials of priority nanos before I went outside. You hurt me, but the nanos made quick work of the injury.” His face twisted into something of a grin. “I feel as good as new! I’ve been hanging around, waiting to see how you were going to get away from here. This seems as good a plan as any.” He sneered. “I enjoyed listening to the two of you in your cabin, by the way. Very entertaining.”

  “You asshole,” I snapped. I stepped toward him. I was going to have to go through this all again.

  The ventilation fans ceased with a rattle and the deck dropped out from under us. Zero-g again.

  Shaheen bent her legs and pushed off the bulkhead. Malichauk had been watching me, possibly thinking that I was the greatest threat. He hadn’t anticipated that Shaheen would make the first move.

  He whipped around and pulled a galley knife from behind his back.

  “Shaheen!” I cried. “Look out!”

  But she couldn’t stop herself. She was already on her way.

  Malichauk slashed as she approached; he cut a neat gash in her left forearm, which she had raised in self-defense.

  She cried out. Malichauk pushed her away from him and sent them spinning in opposite directions.

  I looked around, frantic. What the hell could I do? I would have to engage him in hand-to-hand combat, and he had the weapon.

  A chain floated up from the deck nearby. I stared at it for a moment, and then a thought occurred to me. It would be grisly, but it would work.

  Pressed against a bulkhead, I took careful aim at the man. I gave a savage push and literally flew toward him. He didn’t turn in time. I tackled him from behind. My arms snaked around his neck and my legs around his torso. I squeezed with every ounce of strength that remained in me. He whipped the knife up and down, attempting to slash my arms, but I managed to grab his hand and keep the blade at bay.

  With my other hand, I grabbed his helmet and snapped the unseal lever to the side. With a whoosh, it popped off and exposed his sweaty black hair matted to his scalp.

  “Damn you!” he cried.

  Shaheen still floated on the other side of the room, tiny blood bubbles around her as she clutched at the slash in her arm.

  “Shaheen!” I yelled. “The mass driver!”

  She looked at me, confused, until I pulled the chain from my belt. Then her eyes widened.

  I spun the chain around Malichauk’s neck over and over, eight times in total. He gargled in rage and agony and continued to slash at me in vain, but I was behind him and there was no way he could dislodge my hold.

  We rotated slowly in midair, and I realized I would have to judge this perfectly. I counted in my head as we spun: One, two, three, now! One, two, three, now!

  One, two, three—

  Now!

  I released my legs from his torso and pushed him away from me. I rocketed backward, while he was propelled forward. I watched in satisfaction as he soared toward the driver.

  “Now Shaheen!” I bellowed.

  She pressed the red launch button and lights set into the bulkhead began to flash. The alarm sounded and the familiar thrum of power reverberated through the module as the mass driver’s dedicated generator powered up for launch.

  Countdown.

  Malichauk struggled to remove the chain from his neck. Suddenly his head whipped around, gripped in the immense magnetic field of the barrel.

  “What the fuck did you do?” he gasped.

  “Hey Malichauk,” I said. “You need a helmet to go outside. Didn’t you know that? I thought you believed in being prepared!”

  His expression turned to one of horror. He twisted madly as the magnets tugged the chain and he began to move slowly down the barrel. “Don’t do it!” he cried.

  “It’s done,” I said, calm.

  The massive bulkhead hatch closed and sealed him off from us. I could hear the pumps whine as they drained the barrel of air.

  He would be suffocating right about now.

  The lights dimmed and the mass driver launched.

  The chain shot down the driver and eventually reached a velocity greater than three kilometers per second. The force on Malichauk’s neck was so great that it probably yanked his head clean off.

  It hurtled into space and fried in the intense radiation.

  Along with a hundred billion nanos of his creation.

  * * *

  I pushed off a bulkhead toward Shaheen and inspected her arm. She had already sealed the hole, but she was probably still bleeding inside the suit. “Are you okay?” I asked.

  She winced. “I’ll live. That was a nasty stunt you just pulled. When did you think of it?”

  “When I saw the chain beside me.” I shrugged. “Seemed poetic, in a way.”

  She checked her wrist readout. “Temperature’s rising. It’ll spike quickly.”

  I gestured to her arm. “Are you still bleeding? We can go to the clinic before—”

  “I’ll be okay. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

  * * *

  I positioned the first set of canisters in the barrel and attached the cluster of three spare oxygen bottles to Shaheen’s waist. While I did that she was wrapping some nylon strapping together to fashion a harness. When she finished one, she immediately began another. “Put the harness on,” I said. “You can go first. I’ll be right behind you.”

  She pulled herself into the barrel gingerly. I made sure the steel canisters were in front of her. They would pull her and the spare bottles along the barrel and out to space.

  The acceleration would be tremendous; we would be lucky to survive.

  I grabbed her hand and she turned her helmet to look at me. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again. Her eyes seemed sad.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  A long pause. Then, “I just wanted to say thanks for everything. I’m...I’m happy I found you. Despite how terrible this past week has been, I’m grateful you came into my life.”

  I swallowed past a lump in my throat. “I feel the same.”

  She offered the whisper of a smile and turned from me. “I’ll see you out there.”

  “I can’t wait,” I said. I pulled myself over to the console and stared at her as she floated within the barrel. “Ready?”

  “Just do it.” Her voice was tight. “I want it over with, fast.”

  It’ll be fast, all right, I thought.

  I pressed the button.

 
The countdown began and the magnets pulled Shaheen past the closing bulkhead. The module had an aiming mechanism—though it could only swivel through a thirty-degree arc—and I picked the best angle for launch toward Mercury. It was a guess.

  “Good luck,” I muttered. I felt empty inside. If we died doing this, it would be a tragic end to my life. To have gained someone so incredible, only to lose her after such a short amount of time...

  The bulkhead sealed and the driver launched her into space.

  * * *

  I had to do this quickly if I was to stay relatively close to her. I placed the next set of canisters in the barrel and moved back to the console to hit the button again.

  The countdown began.

  I entered the barrel and put the harness on. I made sure the tether to the spare oxygen bottles was secured to my belt.

  The magnets moved the canisters into the next chamber—and me along with them. My fingers were sweaty inside my gloves.

  My chest felt like it was going to explode.

  The bulkhead hatch closed behind me. The pumps quickly removed the air from the barrel. My throat was dry and I tried to swallow.

  I was terrified.

  The canisters surged suddenly ahead of me. The magnets flashed by as I rocketed down the barrel and shot toward open space. They were like teeth in a monster’s maw, all pointed toward me, pulling me with incredible force...

  My vision dimmed; blood had most likely pooled in my legs due to the acceleration. I wouldn’t remain conscious much longer.

  And then in a flash I was out! Black space surrounded me. I looked over my shoulder and saw the four modules—all that remained of SOLEX One—silhouetted against the sun. It shrank incredibly fast and disappeared from sight within seconds.

  An instant later, I succumbed to the stress of launch and everything faded to black. But not before a final thought—would I wake from this?

  And just as important, would I ever see Shaheen again?

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  And that’s my story.

  So far.

  I switched off the recorder and closed my eyes.

  I hadn’t heard from Shaheen since the launch. I figured there was a two-minute lag between us, meaning she could be up to 360 kilometers ahead of me. Assuming, that is, that the driver had launched us along the same trajectory. With SOLEX orbiting the sun at such a high velocity, there was probably a fraction of a degree separating our paths, which meant that she could be anywhere within a thousand-kilometer radius of me. Furthermore, the distance would be increasing as each second passed.

  Whatever the case, I hoped she had figured out how to use the gas canisters as a shield and had extended the range of her comm. As an engineer, she had probably done far better at it than me.

  My one saving grace was that the suit had withstood the heat. The makeshift shield had extended my life greatly—protecting me from both the heat and radiation—and I had to congratulate myself on the idea.

  I snorted. Sure, it had done a great job. I had lived long enough to tell my story, but that was about it. Soon it would no longer matter.

  * * *

  Only thirty minutes of oxygen remained.

  I knew what would happen when the last bottle ran dry. It was something that they lectured about in training; we’d even had people who had suffered the same fate—but been rescued at the last minute—come to talk about the experience.

  The air in the suit would grow thick with carbon dioxide. It would seem stuffy. It would get more difficult to take in each breath. My sight would grow dim as the seconds passed. A headache would begin and grow suddenly to a migraine. I would become weak, unable to even twitch a finger.

  Then my eyes would shut and the darkness would overwhelm me.

  Thirty minutes.

  No—twenty-eight now.

  The radiation patch was crimson red. My insides were frying.

  “Shaheen, where are you?” I muttered.

  My automatic broadcast was still transmitting; it would hopefully alert any ship in the general vicinity as to my condition and whereabouts.

  Actually, I thought with a jolt, that wasn’t quite true. I had changed the comm to a unidirectional signal. Now, unless I happened to aim it directly at a ship, there was no way they would hear.

  I wondered absently if it had been a smart thing to do after all.

  I had saved my story in the wrist control unit in case someone should one day discover my body out in space. I would fall into orbit around the sun, just a few hundred thousand kilometers from where SOLEX had been. I realized with a sting of regret that my plan would never have worked. In order to get anywhere close to Mercury, we would have needed a speed in excess of a thousand kilometers per second, and that was simply impossible with only a mass driver’s single pulse as propulsion. And not only that—the acceleration would have killed us.

  Twenty-three minutes.

  I thought idly about the official CCF report on all this. If they recovered my body and the recording, they would no doubt regard Captain Manfred Fredericks as a hero. He had died trying to defeat the infection; his superiors would ignore his casual oversight of the regulations.

  They would list Shaheen, Belinda, Grossman, Anna, Balch and the three scientists as casualties in a battle to save the Confederacy, and Brick, Bram, Katrina and Rickets as the victims of a deadly weapon.

  I would most likely receive a posthumous medal—but one whose true nature they could never reveal to the rest of humanity.

  And Malichauk? His accolades, awards and notoriety in the medical community would be stricken from the records and any mention of him in academic journals eliminated. He would cease to exist as far as anyone was concerned.

  Just like his brother.

  Eleven minutes.

  Already it had grown difficult to take each breath. Was it my imagination? Had the indicator on the last bottle been faulty? Then again, the estimate was based on a steady rate of tranquil breathing, and I was probably taking in oxygen faster than normal. I wasn’t exactly calm, after all.

  A few more breaths and I realized the air in my suit was foul.

  Fuck.

  It had been a good run, I had to admit. I had seen a large portion of the solar system and had come into contact with some interesting people. Most had been criminals, but still. It had been an adventure.

  Shaheen was a pleasant surprise at least. Who would have thought that I could stumble across someone like her during my final mission? The irony didn’t escape my notice. I had lived my life alone. I had thought that I was happy. When my parents died, I’d felt abandoned, and I had embraced my isolation and devoted my life to it. Had it been the wrong thing to do? Should I instead have sought out companionship and friends to surround myself with? Had I done so, surely the death of Michael Flemming wouldn’t have hurt so much.

  I shrugged aside my regrets.

  It was too late.

  Nothing mattered anymore.

  I closed my eyes.

  * * *

  A bright light in my face stabbed into my dark dreams. I lay on a cold, hard surface, naked and shivering. My head pounded miserably, but I noted with some satisfaction that the feeling was fading with every breath I took. I was too weak to turn to the side; the only things in my field of vision were the metal ceiling and the light directly above me.

  I tried to say, “What’s going on?” but instead managed only to gargle a few incoherent sounds.

  “Easy now,” I heard a woman say. “Just stay calm. You were on death’s door, that’s for sure. We got you just in time.” She leaned over me as she spoke, a brunette with brown eyes and soft features. I realized I was on a procedures table, which seemed appropriate after the past week.

  The thrum of gravtrav told me I was on a ship.


  I bolted upright and grimaced at the pain. I ached all over; it wasn’t just my shoulder anymore. Even my insides seemed to throb in agony, especially my torso and chest. There was little doubt what it was: radiation damage. I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out. I swallowed and tried again. “Shaheen’s still out there!” I managed to rasp. “I mean, Lieutenant Ramachandra. She should be on the same vector—”

  “Easy mate,” another voice said. A man walked out from behind me with his arms folded and a stern look on his face. He was bald with a goatee and an athletic build. I got the impression he was younger than he looked, and he wasn’t wearing a CCF uniform. “We got her,” he said. “She was broadcasting a blanket distress that gave both your coordinates. Once we dragged her aboard, finding you was simple.”

  I blinked. “How did she know my coordinates?” It was getting easier to speak, but my throat was sore as hell.

  He shook his head. “She rigged something up using her vacsuit’s comm. She’s a smart one, she is. Her comm detected yours and calculated your coordinates and trajectory.”

  Figured. “She’s an engineer,” I grunted.

  “I’ve never seen anything like it. Jury-rigging a simple communit like that.” He studied me for a moment. “Though you managed to do some nifty things with yours too.”

  The woman took my pulse and checked my vitals on a reader. “What the hell were you two doing out here in the middle of nowhere?” Her tone was clipped. “Where’s your ship?”

  “It’s a long, long story.” I realized suddenly that the chip in my communit had everything on it. I tried to peer over the side of the table for the vacsuit, but didn’t have much luck.

  “Looking for this?” the man asked. He held the datachip in his hand.

  I eyed him, wary.

  “What’s on it?” he continued.

  I hesitated. I considered lying to him, but he would probably see through it. Besides, our presence in space without a ship was reason enough to suspect something odd had transpired. He didn’t look stupid. “It’s the reason we were out there,” I said finally. “The story.”