“So far, so good,” Kramm said.
Gently he laid the rod back onto Bjorn’s chest, knotting his fist and half fist into the shirt again, starting to drag. Too slow, he thought, too slow. But he knew that if he turned and ran they would all be after him.
Bjorn was no longer leaving the same swath of blood, just a little spatter and dribble here and there. Kramm watched his chest and for a moment thought he had stopped breathing. But no, there it was, a brief lifting of his chest, a brief flaring of his nostrils; his breathing was shallow but still there.
“How fast can you pull him?” asked Frances.
“Not much faster than this,” he said.
“That’s too bad,” she said. There were three approaching now, skulking about just beyond reach, waiting to try to pick either himself or Frances off.
“Three is a bad number,” he said.
“You’re telling me,” she said. “Any preference for which two I should kill and which one to leave for you?”
“Kill the one that will make the others lose heart,” he said.
“Easier said than done,” she said. “You’re still five meters from the ramp.”
He risked a glance back over his shoulder. There it was, so close.
“Are you going to be all right pulling him up the ramp?” she asked.
“I’ll have to be,” he said.
One of them, he noticed, seemed to be always a little in front, the others always falling into step with it. It was hardly noticeable, but it was there.
“There,” he said. “The one to the left. That’s the first to shoot.”
She fired, caught it squarely in the neck, nearly tearing the head free of the body. The two Aliens beside it scattered, but quickly began to circle back.
“Nice shot,” he said. He was at the ramp now, starting to pull Bjorn up it. She was there right above him, walking up it backward.
“Do you know how to raise this thing?” he said.
“I think so,” she said.
“It’s just a matter of tapping the right button,” he said. “Can you do it?”
“Yes,” she said.
“All right,” he said. “Hand me the gun and go do it.”
She gave the gun to him. He took it in his injured hand, holding fast to the iron rod with the other. There they were, coming closer again, slowly creeping toward him.
And then the ramp started to move, slowly lifting upward. He lurched, almost lost his balance. Below, the creatures gave a strange rattling cry, one of them leaping onto the end of the ramp and clambering toward him. He knocked it off with the rod, poking it away with the rod’s tip when it tried to climb back up again. It hissed angrily, then dropped off.
And then the ramp grew too steep. He tumbled backward over Bjorn and then watched Bjorn roll down on top of him in turn. He had his hands full trying to keep both of them from being crushed between the ramp and the ship’s edge.
And then the ramp closed and sealed itself off. He lay there in a heap, unable to believe he was still alive.
* * *
He must have passed out for a moment. There was Frances, looking down at them. “You’re okay,” she said.
He nodded. “I think so,” he said.
“Is Bjorn okay?” she asked.
“I think so,” he said again. “He was unconscious through the whole thing.” He reached into his pocket, handed her a rations bar. “This is for you,” he said.
She took it with suddenly shaking fingers. “I can’t believe how hungry I am,” she said, and started into it. She could barely eat half of it.
He waited, watching her. “Help me up,” he said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
They went to the forward compartment, turned the engines on.
“Keep it under manual control,” he said. “Don’t let the navigator kick in.”
“It’s a C-40, not cut out for space flight,” she said. “Strictly no frills. It’s manual all the way with these babies.”
She reached out, tapped the screen, waited, tapped it again. Frowned. “Bad news,” she finally said.
“What?”
“Somebody left the back door open,” she said.
The emergency lock. He had opened it to get in the ship but then had gone out via the ramp. A bad mistake, he thought, maybe a fatal one. “I’ll be back,” he said, the metal rod in his hands, the gun with its single bullet tucked snugly into his belt.
He went down the short corridor, across the grated floor. The emergency hatch was open, airlock too. He carefully shut the first, then the second.
He was on his way back up the corridor to the bridge when he stepped into something. Something sticky.
Not again, he thought, already on the balls of his feet, in fighting stance. “Frances,” he shouted. “There’s one aboard!”
She did not answer. Instead, he heard a crash from the bridge and rushed forward, heart in his throat. Frances was grappling with the creature, the pair of them rolling about on the floor, its tail thrashing like a snake. The Alien was starting to gain the advantage. Kramm tried to get a shot in, but they were moving too quickly. He thrust the pistol back into his belt—or tried to: he watched dismayed as it clattered to the floor instead.
Looming over them he watched and waited while Frances fought desperately. It had her for a moment but somehow she wriggled out through its legs. It pulled her back, raking the side of her face raw with its claws, opening three deep cuts. It bent down closer to her and she struck it hard in the fore of its face. It reared up momentarily, and in an instant Kramm was behind it, had the rod around its throat like a garrote.
It heaved up and back, smashing him against the bulkhead. This, he realized, holding on as tight as he could, was a very bad idea. Frances scrambled up and began to back away.
“Get the gun,” yelled Kramm, trying to hold on. “Shoot it!” He tried to cut off the creature’s air, but this didn’t seem to have any effect. Suddenly he realized that no, there was no point in trying to cut off its air: they didn’t need to breathe.
And then they were careening down the hall, Kramm’s head pressed against the creature’s back, Kramm trying to keep the rod in place. He was partly riding it and partly being dragged, jouncing along the floor. Behind him, Frances was shouting something but he had no idea what it was.
They reached the end of the hall, the closed airlock. The creature tried to claw him off its back, then turned quickly, barreling back in the other direction. About halfway down, he struck a pipe with his shoulder and felt his arm go numb, the rod starting to slip from his fingers.
He fell off, but managed to keep hold of the rod. The Alien kept moving away and he saw it digging at the paneling near the end of the corridor, trying and failing to work its way through it. Then it turned back and toward him, and leaped.
He had no time to sit up, nor to do much of anything but bring the rod up to try to protect himself from the initial impact.
It was the sweetest piece of luck, the kind of thing likely to make you believe your life was charmed. The creature was in midair, coming down fast toward him, the rod on its way up but hardly high enough for him to get a swing in. But it was there and rising just at the moment the Alien was falling toward him, and the two connected like in a dream. Even then, anything could have gone wrong. The rod could have slipped through the floor grating and simply clattered away. It could have glanced or slid off the creature itself. Instead, however, with a sickening crunch it broke through the exoskeleton of the creature’s chest and burst out its back.
It slid down the pole toward him. He rolled quickly to one side, pressing himself against the bulkhead, watching this thing slide further down the pole. It turned its head toward him, reached out idly with one clawed hand, softly pawed the side of his face, and then died.
He sprayed it and the deck with the acid neutralizer he fumbled out of his pocket, praying all the while that whatever blood had leaked down through the grate wouldn’t sizzle through some vital machinery or the b
ulkhead, and then picked himself up. A moment later Frances rushed out of the bridge and toward him, the gun held in both hands. She stopped when she saw him, slowly lowered the gun.
“You’re still alive,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “I killed it.”
“I found the gun,” she said, holding it out.
“Thanks a lot,” he said, and took it from her.
She looked long and hard at him, searching his eyes with her own.
“I’m not even sure you’re the man you were when I first met you,” she said.
“I’m not,” he said, looking calmly back.
“What are you, then?” she asked.
“I’m who I used to be,” he said. “I’m a survivor. I even survived myself.”
She nodded. “I don’t know which of you I like better,” she said.
“I hope this one,” he said. “He’s the only one left.”
10
They quickly searched the ship, finding no more sign of Aliens. Bjorn was still breathing, very shallowly now. They shot him full of morphine and dragged him forward, managed to struggle him up and into a chair. They padded him in with blankets, webbing him in.
“Do you think he’ll make it?” Frances asked.
“I don’t know,” said Kramm. “If anyone can, he can.”
The creatures were clinging to the outside of the ship now, spidering back and forth over the viewscreen. It made Frances shiver. “Any chances of them getting in here?” she asked.
“They’ll get in eventually,” he said. “We should leave.”
She started the engines again and the Aliens scattered momentarily. She checked the pressure, went through the warm-up, waited for the whine to start. She entered something on the touchscreen, looked up and out through the viewscreen, cursed. She reentered it, cursed again.
“What is it?” he asked.
“It’s the damned roof,” she said. “They’ve blocked us from opening it.”
“Can we bypass them?” he asked.
“Not from here,” she said. “Maybe from out there.”
“Out there?” he said, looking at the Aliens already beginning to clamber back onto the craft.
“Maybe,” she said. “There may be a manual override. I’m not even sure of that.”
“You want me to go out there and see if there’s a manual override, with one charge left in my gun?” he asked, his voice rising.
“Would you mind?” she said.
“Would I mind?” he said. “Yes, I would mind. There’s got to be a better way.”
“All right,” she said. “No need to get excited. I’ll try hailing the moon, see if we can talk them into letting us out. Maybe they’ll be willing to strike a truce.”
She tried for a few minutes to get a response, without any result. A banging started from the outside of the ship.
“That doesn’t sound good,” she said.
“They want in,” said Kramm.
“Well that’s that,” she said. “They won’t answer.”
“I’m not going back out there,” he said.
“What are we supposed to do then?” she asked.
Behind them, Bjorn began to snore lightly.
They sat, staring out the viewscreen, Kramm with his arms crossed, slowly shaking his head.
“I have an idea,” said Frances finally.
“All right,” said Kramm. “Anything.”
“Hold on tight,” she said.
“Wait a minute,” he said, suddenly suspicious. “What’s your idea?”
“We bust out,” she said. “We break through.” The ship was already starting to nose its way upward, tilting slowly into launch position. She pushed forward a pressure toggle and the engine roared.
“Isn’t this dangerous?” he shouted over the noise.
“Very,” she shouted back.
“How dangerous?” he shouted.
“We might not make it through the plexene, instead crashing back down to die. We might hit one of the struts of the dome and then crash and die. We might make it through the roof but injure the craft and then slowly spiral down and crash and die.”
“Hell,” he yelled. “I’d rather take my chances with the Aliens.”
“Too late,” she said, and kicked the thrust in hard.
* * *
His first impression was that they were on fire, flames and smoke leaping up all around them. But then he realized that no, it was simply the backdraft of the old engines off the baffles. The whole craft was shaking and they shot up and struck the plexene hard, right dead center of the bay door, with a lurch. For a brief but all too long moment he thought there was no way they’d make it through, and then the plexene shattered and they shot out, the craft going into a slow upward roll that Frances quickly corrected.
“You see?” she said, smiling brightly. “No problem.”
“You’ve got to stop doing that,” he said.
“Doing what?” she said innocently, and then laughed, a long low chuckle that made him very nervous. “Oh, Kramm,” she said. “You’ve just waded your way through a hive of Aliens and you’re afraid of a little reckless driving? You kill me.”
“You almost killed us both,” he said. “I mean it.”
“It’s going to get worse before it gets better,” she said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, genuinely frightened now.
“We’re on our way to a moon station manned by people who wouldn’t pick up the phone when we called. What makes you think they’re going to let us in?”
“What do we do, then?”
“We do a hop,” said Frances, “but one that crashes open the gates. Break out the deep-space suits,” she said.
11
It was a half hour’s journey. The moon was little more than a hunk of rock a few hundred miles across. She did a quick pass over the top of the station, to get a feel for it, for the moon’s gravity. In the meantime, Kramm forced Bjorn’s body into a deep-space suit. Bjorn didn’t wake up, didn’t move, and Kramm wondered if he was comatose. He zipped into a suit himself, then held the controls while Frances changed.
They tested their pickups, made sure that they could hear each other. Frances banked the ship and took it through a long slow curve over the moon’s surface, bringing it slowly back.
“It’s tricky,” she said.
Kramm didn’t answer.
“Gravity’s quite low,” she said. “We need to hit it hard and with the thrust engaged or we’ll bounce off like a rubber ball. But hit it too hard and we’re dead. She pointed at the rendered image of the outpost on the subscreen. “Let’s try for that section there.”
“Are you sure you can do this?” he asked.
“No,” she said. “But that hasn’t stopped me before.”
They webbed in, Kramm trying to stay relaxed, knowing he’d be less likely to break a bone if he was loose. Frances tipped the craft’s nose down and started in.
Immediately a warning light came on, then a few moments later sirens started.
“Here we go,” crackled Frances’s voice in his ear.
The craft began to shake. Her hand, he saw, was there on the thruster, pressing it forward, her thumb toying with the booster button. The landscape, gray and powdery and empty, suddenly gave way ahead of them to something glittering, and there it was, the moon station, heaving itself up out of nowhere, growing quickly larger.
He closed his eyes, trying not to think about what was going to happen.
When the blow came, he was thrown about in his chair, the webbing holding him for a moment and then tearing. The nose of the craft crumpled up to obscure the viewscreen and he flew forward, striking the screen hard. The front of his faceplate suddenly bloomed out in a network of hairline cracks and for a moment he thought it was going to break, but it held. He ricocheted off and back into Bjorn’s body, which had also torn free. They rocked back and forth a bit before coming to rest, bruised, on the floor, then were sucked to one side
of the ship and out of a breach in the hull, along with the ship’s atmosphere.
“You’re all right, Kramm?” he heard Frances say within his helmet. He lay there in the dust, piled against Bjorn, the escaping atmosphere whipping like wind against his suit.
“Kramm?” Frances said. “Kramm?”
“I’m alive,” he said, and then pulled himself up. He shot into the air, the gravity very slight. It took him a long moment to get used to it.
“Where are you?” Frances asked.
“Outside,” he said.
“How did you get outside?” she asked.
“Through the hole,” he said. “My webbing broke. Bjorn’s too.”
A moment later, she appeared at the hole, waved.
“Look on the bright side,” she said. “We’re still alive. Plus in gravity like this, it’ll be easy to carry Bjorn.”
And indeed it was. He tucked the large man under an arm like a suitcase and carried him without difficulty. The extra weight even helped to stabilize him. Even so, he had to move carefully, almost on tiptoe.
“What happened to your helmet?” asked Frances.
“I knocked into something,” said Kramm. “It nearly broke.”
“I’m glad it didn’t,” she said.
They clambered over the ship’s nose and crawled into the station airlock that their craft had struck, the outer lock knocked all the way through the inner lock. It was tough to get enough traction to push through the rubble and into the station, but they eventually managed.
The wall was intact except for the opening the ship had torn. An airlock at either end stood open, a warning light flashing. A man was dead in the middle of the hallway, looking oddly emaciated and hollowed.
“Which way?” Kramm asked.
“Either direction,” Frances said. “You choose.”
He started left, then doubled back and chose the right. They fit themselves carefully into the airlock, watched the door close behind them.
“They could trap us in here,” said Kramm.
“Yes,” agreed Frances. “But they won’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because they’re scientists,” she said. “They’re curious about us,” she said. “We’re specimens.”
The Complete Aliens Omnibus Page 43