Beyond Ever Blue Skies

by Clive S. Johnson

  “You are at the edge of the only wireless link I have access to. So, once you leave here, we will not be able to communicate again, not until you have completed a task I have set you. I have now been able to put a file in your perscom’s ‘To-Do’ folder. It will explain my need of you.”

  “Let me check I’ve—”

  “No, no time. Go, whilst you still have a chance.”

  “A chance?”

  “Of living long enough to reach Caelum, of surviving so you can repair my links with Rim—and so I can save your species. Now go—before it proves too late.”

  13 Percentages Remembered

  Morgan had to grip the seat with his knees and hold on to Stephanie when, after his brief explanation, she snapped the twist-grip down, sending them plummeting back towards Caelum. The feeling that his stomach was now in his mouth closed his eyes, and the thought of running out of air muddled his mind. It seemed to chase itself around in his head, getting nowhere.

  Stephanie’s “How long have we got, then?” finally tripped it up, and it sat, blinking blindly up at her question. He risked opening his eyes, but it had again become dark, except for the dim light from the chair’s display panel.

  “Er…well, I… He didn’t say. Less than we’ve taken getting up here, though.”

  “Who didn’t say? Who were you talking to?”

  “Ken, Steph. It was… It was Ken.”

  She angled round to stare at him, her hair silhouetted against the screen’s glow. “Ken? You spoke with…with Ken?” to which he could only nod. “Yeah,” she shrieked. “Ken lives! Wait till Connie-Jay hears this…” and she carried on enthusing until Morgan sensed they’d slowed.

  “Keep us going down, Steph; full speed.”

  “Eh? Oh, right. Sorry,” and Morgan’s stomach again went light, but when he looked down, it was impossible to see in the darkness how far they’d come.

  “My ‘To-Do’ list,” he reminded himself, in way of distraction, but for some reason he couldn’t quite pin down exactly what Ken had said about it. Morgan shook his head to clear it but nearly fell from the seat, grabbing at Stephanie.

  “You all right, Morgan?”

  “I just feel a bit disoriented,” then he recalled something she herself had said, that first evening they’d spent together in the bar: “Fifteen to nineteen percent and ‘Healthy individuals are unable to work strenuously and their coordination may be affected’.”

  He raised his hand so it could be seen in the glow from the display panel and tapped each finger with the index of the other—missing at every third or fourth attempt. “Shit,” he whispered to himself, but Stephanie must have heard.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Just keep us going down, as fast as you can, Steph—my coordination’s going.”

  “Your… Oh, shit. From now on, no talking, you hear? Conserve our oxygen.”

  “Okay,” and as he tried to relax, Stephanie’s more worrying words flitted through his mind: “Ten to twelve percent and peoples’ lips would be turning blue.” Too dark to check and too worrying to think about, he forced himself instead to remember just what it had been that Ken had said about his “To-Do” list.

  A flick and a blink of his eye, and it appeared before his vision. And sure enough, there it was, at the very top: “KEN – Urgent Tasks”, and with it a whole raft of attachments.

  The entry contained a long list of instructions, each linking to one or more of the attached files. He tried to skim through, to get a feel for what they involved, but was finding it too hard to think. Eventually, though, he began to feel just too tired to persevere.

  “I mustn’t fall asleep,” he told himself, then Stephanie jerked, her weight shifting to one side. He held her in his arms, arms that now suffered pins and needles, and kept her upright.

  “We’ve got to breath deeper, Steph,” and he shook her until she groaned—then they gained weight as her hand flopped to his knee.

  When he reached around her and grasped the twist-grip, snapping it down again, his hand felt as though it belonged to someone else, large and unwieldly. His mouth, though, now rested against Stephanie’s ear, and he shouted at her to stay awake.

  “Shit, Morgan,” she grumbled, groggily. “No need to deafen me,” at which she drew in a long and deep breath.

  A sliver of yellow light now slashed across the cells of the “Honeycomb” below, drawing Morgan to stare down. “Where’ve we got to? Steph? Tell me how far down we’ve come. Come on, Steph, speak to me.”

  “I… I don’t…”

  Morgan reckoned they weren’t that far from where the wall curved to become a roof, the sharp turn into the descent to Caelum not much further on.

  “Nearly there, Steph,” he tried to enthuse, but his voice sounded weak. “What’s that down there, Steph? Come on, tell me. What is it?”

  “Er, the…the bee’s honey…”

  “Rundkern’s sky, Steph, that’s what it is, and,” but he had to pant now to keep his mind from fizzing, to keep his ears from filling with static. “And… And we’re not far off. Soon, Steph. Soon be there, eh?”

  Now light enough to see the roof flashing by overhead, its passing blur held him mesmerised, a thought prodding some unintelligible warning at the back of his cotton-wool-filled mind. Something about a sharp bend, it seemed, that and their speed.

  As the yellow haze of his world appeared to dim, he was slammed hard into the back of the chair, Stephanie’s weight now on top of him. What little breath he’d had rasped from his lungs, his stomach fighting to leap from his throat as the roof rapidly receded before them.

  Then the cavernous void slowly reappeared, its almost organic form seeming to rise before him, the yellow pool of light appearing to set the “Honeycomb” ablaze. But panic steeled him into taking a deep breath when he realised Stephanie no longer obscured his view.

  He snapped his head to one side and looked down. There she was, crumpled against the base of the sphere, Caelum fast approaching beneath her.

  The one thought, “Speed”, slithered through his mind, his cramped hand seeming to peel itself away from the twist-grip of its own accord as the surface below loomed nearer. An almighty weight doubled him over, his forehead cracking hard against something.

  Floating ethereally through his rapidly darkening mind, Stephanie’s words came back to him: “Around eight percent and unconsciousness begins”. Then an almighty crash coursed through what little he could feel of his body.

  Trailing through its aftershock, the memory of Stephanie’s widening sky-blue eyes brought back what she’d then said: “At six to eight—‘Death within eight minutes’”. But those portentous words soon slipped without so much as a ripple beneath the oily-black surface of what had now become his dark and silent mind.

  14 A World of his Own

  A dull yellow glow bleached in to Morgan’s vision, a loud hissing noise rising in his ears. His forehead throbbed and his mouth felt dry. A groan filled the air, but he couldn’t decide if it was his.

  Then his lungs convulsed and he urgently sucked in air, time and time again, until his head seemed about to explode and his expanding chest threw him back against the chair. He panted as he sweated, as he stared at Rundkern’s honeycombed sky stretching away into the distance from close below.

  Arms came about his neck, weak arms, their hands flopping to his shoulder and chest. The cold astringent smell of the sweat of fear filled his nose and he turned to find Stephanie’s wide eyes close to his own.

  They stared at each other until she closed her eyes and lowered her forehead to his.

  “Ow!” he yelped, jerking his head back. He brought his hand up and felt a lump.

  “You… You’ve banged your head,” Stephanie rasped, now staring at his forehead. Morgan found his vision wavering. He closed his eyes, feeling Stephanie’s lips gently kiss his brow.

  “What… What happened?” he croaked.

  “You’re a genius, Morgan, do you know that? A bloody genius; I
don’t know how you do it.”

  He opened one eye, drew his forehead away from her lips and peered at her now smiling face. “Genius?” Then he opened the other eye.

  “You got us back safe…and docked again.”

  “Docked?”

  She looked down at the base of the sphere. Morgan followed her gaze.

  The glass hatch now rested to one side of the hole, air gently hissing in around the still raised platform.

  He looked up and blinked into the distance. “I don’t…” but then he noticed a crack across the chair’s small display and leaned forward, Stephanie’s arms still draped about his shoulders. Close inspection showed it to be two cracks, branching out from the centre of the “OPEN” legend which now glowed yellow. He reached up and felt the bump on his forehead again.

  “Do you feel strong enough,” Stephanie said, “to make a move? I don’t know about you, but I could do with a drink. And we need to get the good news to Connie-Jay.”

  “Er,” and Morgan stirred himself, still feeling lightheaded. “I… I think so.”

  He clambered down from the chair and stood, unsteadily, beside Stephanie. “You don’t look as dazed as I feel,” he said to her.

  “I woke up with my head beside the platform, so I think I got the fresh air before you.” She drew him close and put her arms around him. “Come on, stand on the platform,” and she shuffled them both onto it. “Right, you can get us down now.”

  Morgan dropped his gaze to the platform beneath their feet. “Ah,” he breathed, then sucked his lips tightly together.

  “Morgan?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I don’t like it when you say ‘Ah’ that way. You can get us down…can’t you?”

  When all he did was lift his heavy eyes to hers, she breathed out, long and hard. “You did work out how to get us down before we came up here, didn’t… Oh no!” She exhaled sharply through her teeth and rolled her eyes. “Why didn’t it strike me there and then, when you said it? You said—and quote me if I’m wrong, Mr Genius—but you said ‘I’m pretty sure the operator isn’t meant to go along’.”

  “I… I never thought, Steph.”

  “You never…” She turned her back on him, clearly seething.

  He floundered at first, but then fresh oxygen must finally have got through to his brain. “We’ll just have to get someone down here…to work the desk for us; simple.”

  “Like who?” she hissed. “Who can we afford to let know what we’ve been up to?” and she slumped down against the slope of the glass. “We’re sure to get ourselves into trouble, especially if you have to get a lecy-eng to do it. I’m pretty sure we’re not meant to be—”

  “Your Uncle Edsel, Steph. You must have his—”

  “Oh no, no, not him, Morgan. There must be somebody else; anybody else but him.”

  “Well, the only other person who’s in on what we’re doing is your frightening Connie-Jay.”

  “But I don’t have her contact details.”

  “Your uncle will. Get them from him.”

  “I’d have to tell him what’s happened; he wouldn’t help otherwise.” But then she bit at the corner of her lip, avoiding his eyes. “Oh well,” she said at last, “I suppose it may as well be just him then…if he has to know either way.”

  Stephanie agreed to call him, then promised to connect Morgan in, so he could explain to her uncle what would be needed of him. Morgan nodded. But when she asked “Bridget? Please call my Uncle Edsel,” she soon looked confused.

  “Bridget?” Morgan said to himself and smiled.

  “Er, this is weird, Morgan. She says she can’t get a connection. There’s no ‘Link’, apparently. But I don’t understand. What does she mean ‘Link’?”

  He wasn’t sure, but it sounded like what Ken had mentioned, something about being at “The edge of the only wireless link” he had access to.

  “I think,” Morgan said, “it’s because we’re outside Rundkern, that there aren’t any communication links out here. Not for our perscoms, anyway.” He soon confirmed with Perry that his own wouldn’t connect, either.

  “Shit, Morgan. What are we going to do? What have you got us into? How’re we going to get out?”

  Unclipping his perscom from his belt, Morgan carefully slipped it into the narrow gap between the platform and the edge of the hole, where the air still hissed in. He lowered it until it straddled their current world and that of Rundkern’s.

  “Perry?” he asked.

  “Yes, Morgan?”

  “Call Steph, please.”

  “Calling… I’m afraid Steph is unavailable.”

  Morgan thanked Perry, retrieved his perscom and beamed at Stephanie.

  “Okay, it works. So, slide yours in and get hold of your uncle. Tell him to… Oh, no. Damn!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “The outer door; it’s locked. He won’t be able to get in.”

  “This, Morgan, is getting to be beyond a joke. In fact, it’s becoming a bloody travesty,” and she crossed her arms severely across her chest and scowled at him.

  “Hang on a minute,” he said, remembering how Connie-Jay had got into Erebus. “I wonder. Yes, it must be worth a try,” and he explained to Stephanie.

  Once she’d slid her own perscom down through the gap and contacted her uncle, then told him enough to get his agreement to help, it wasn’t long before they were reclining against the sphere, waiting. If Connie-Jay’s fingerprint, Morgan reasoned to himself, worked on Caelum’s door as it had on Erebus’s, then she and Edsel shouldn’t be that long in rescuing him and the now sullen Stephanie.

  As they waited, the yellow light coming in through the hole long hidden from sight beyond the slope of the roof slowly angled away to a thin sliver before winking out. They sat for quite a while in silence, the only light now the chair’s faint display. They sat uncomfortably until Stephanie grunted and guardedly asked, “So what did Ken have to say about the air quality?”

  “I didn’t have chance to raise it,” Morgan told her. “He was too insistent we got back down straightaway. And to be honest, I’d forgotten all about it.”

  Stephanie only grunted.

  After another long silence, she sighed and shuffled round to press herself up against him. “I’m sorry, Morgan. I know you’re trying your best, and I know you didn’t want to be involved, but you do seem to be in a world of your own sometimes.”

  Tentatively, he slipped an arm about her shoulders.

  She snuggled in a little closer before quietly saying, “You do know how to—”

  “Yes; I do,” but then he softened his tone. “I’m sure it’s just the reverse of what I did to get us up here, and I’ve got it all noted down.”

  “Good,” but she didn’t sound convinced.

  Morgan must have nodded off, or was dozing at the very least, for Stephanie complained when he sharply nudged her as he jolted at a noise. It came again, both hearing it this time. He leaned away from Stephanie and peered down through the gap around the platform but could see nothing. Then the tapping came again.

  “It must be them, Steph,” and they disentangled their limbs and each crouched over the gap. Three knocks came again from below. “It has to be them; you told him three, didn’t you?”

  Stephanie said she had.

  “Slip your perscom down again and call your uncle.”

  “Hello, Uncle,” she said when she got through. “Are you in the room below us yet?” She listened, then told Morgan they were. He let out a long breath and relaxed a little as he too slipped his perscom into the gap.

  “Okay, Steph, patch me in.” The call came a moment later and he blinked to accept it. Edsel’s voice abruptly boomed in his ear, mid-way through bemoaning something.

  “Hi, Edsel; it’s Morgan.” A pause followed.

  “This better be good,” Edsel finally growled.

  “It’s better than good, far better, but…well, at the moment we’re stuck up here, so that ‘Better’ will do no
ne of us any good unless you can get us out.”

  When Edsel didn’t say anything, Stephanie asked if Connie-Jay was with him.

  “How the fuck d’ya reckon I got in ‘ere if she weren’t? ‘Course she’s ‘ere.”

  “Right,” Morgan reticently proposed after taking a deep breath, then directed Stephanie’s uncle to the control desk, and to the start of what Morgan needed him to do to rescue them both.

  15 Whatever Morgan Needs

  When at last Morgan and Stephanie were lowered to the room below and the glass column rose about them, the startled look on Edsel and Connie-Jay’s faces hardly impinged. Morgan’s relief was so great that he felt his legs go weak, so he almost tripped over when Stephanie stumbled them into the room.

  “Where the bleeding ‘eck have you two been?” Edsel marvelled as he pushed past and angled his gaze up into the raised column.

  “Ken’s alive, Connie-Jay. Alive!” Stephanie blurted out, slipping from Morgan’s grasp and staggering towards where the old woman still stood, on the far side of the desk. “Morgan’s… Morgan’s spoken to him!”

  Disbelief clearly ranged across Connie-Jay’s face, before evident joy displaced it. She seemed to unfreeze, then rushed round the desk and caught Stephanie before her legs gave way.

  “I think you’d best sit down, my girl,” and she lowered Stephanie to the floor. “Then you can tell me all about it.” She turned to Morgan, now leaning against an anonymous piece of equipment as he too wondered if he should sit on the floor before he fell to it. “You’ve spoken with Ken?” she seemed at odds with herself to say. “You’ve…you’ve met him?”

  “Spoken, yes,” Morgan said. “Only briefly, mind.”

  Connie-Jay seemed unable to take her eyes from him, her mouth slightly open, her head swinging slowly but slightly from side to side. “He lives?” she hardly whispered.

  Morgan noticed Stephanie was about to speak, so got in first. He told Connie-Jay that Ken had given him instructions for re-establishing the link with her and the Colonuses of the other sections.