by David Garnet
Norton hadn’t touched his own water yet, and Grawl grabbed the cup, thrusting his right index finger inside, swirling it around. Then he raised the gloved finger. It was dry.
Grawl nodded slowly, then looked up.
Norton also looked up, imagining all the water above the lifeboat.
Lifeboat! The word was a joke. A boat which had sunk to the bottom of an alien ocean.
Grawl walked toward the end of the capsule, the end where the hatch was.
“No!” yelled Norton.
Grawl reached for the controls.
Norton reached for Grawl.
“Don’t!”
Grawl grabbed hold of Norton.
Then the hatch burst open.
And in flooded the water.
Water! The one thing Norton dreaded most in the world. In the universe. He hated water. He feared water. It was so… so wet. He’d always imagined this would be the worst way to die. Mouth and throat filling with liquid. Choking. Unable to breathe. Unable to resist. No air. Lungs saturated. Struggling, struggling, struggling. Drowning slowly. Slowly drowning.
Slowly dying.
“Ahhhhhhh!!!!”
Grawl’s hand went over Norton’s mouth, cutting off his scream of terror.
The capsule filled with water, totally engulfing them. Norton waited to die.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“Time to come out,” said the voice.
They knew where she was hiding.
Kiru felt her heart sink, and in the heavier gravity of the Xyzian spaceship it dropped even faster.
The aliens had been so entranced at the sight of her throwing up, so interested in what her half-digested food told them about her diet, that Kiru had seized the chance and fled through the bizarre contours of their spacecraft.
When she escaped, every step had seemed to be in slow motion. The aliens’ legs had been faster than hers, but they were shorter, which was how she outdistanced them. But they knew the layout of their vessel, which she didn’t, and they almost caught her, until she finally found a hiding place.
She moved several times, always looking for a safer lair, sliding through gaps which were too narrow for the spherical aliens, and hiding away in the deepest, darkest recesses.
It was warm within the ship, but some of the pipes which criss-crossed the wall panels were ice cold, which meant that water condensed on the surface and dripped into pools beneath. Without these, the heat and the water, she could not have survived.
As time slowly went by, the Xyzians tried to lure her out with promises of food. At first, this was easy to resist; but as her hunger grew, the bait seemed far more tempting. She tried convincing herself that whatever they offered would be inedible; but as more time passed by, her empty stomach began to win the argument over her almost equally empty brain.
She lay hidden, keeping still in case they could trace her movements. Her mind had become nearly as immobile as her body. There was nothing else to do but think, but her thoughts led her nowhere. She switched her brain to standby and spent most of her time sleeping. It was never a deep sleep, because she was always on edge, listening for the fat aliens. Even when she lay awake she was dreaming, hallucinating. It was better than calculating how long it would take to starve to death.
Now she listened, wondering if she’d imagined the voice.
“Come out, Kiru.”
They knew where she was. They also knew who she was.
Although she’d tried to work out the geometry of the ship, she had lost all sense of direction during her escape. The voice was like a whisper, but it seemed to come from a distance, echoing through the depths of the vessel.
Then she thought of something: How did they know her real name?
“If you don’t come out,” said the voice, “I’ll go without you.”
She recognised the voice, but realised this could all be a trick. Cautiously, she slid her head out through the narrow oval opening where she lay.
The chamber was shaped like a cone which lying on its side, and Kiru was near the end, which tapered to nothing. The area was dimly lit, but the light was pure and undistorted, which she hoped meant the Xyzians were nowhere near. She peered all around, looked to either end, but saw no one.
“Ah,” said the voice, “there you are.”
She looked up.
Eliot Ness was standing upside-down, high above her.
“Come on,” he said.
Kiru slid out of the tube, and it was as if she had been hibernating in there. Like an animal sleeping away the winter, her body had used up its reserves of fat and she was back to her normal weight. That was the only thing that was remotely normal, she realised, as she looked away from her grey body and up to the inverted figure of Eliot Ness.
“You’re upside-down,” she shouted.
“Don’t shout,” said Eliot Ness. “I can hear you.”
“Can you?” said Kiru, in a lower voice, almost certain he wouldn’t hear her. “You’re so far away.”
“We don’t have time to discuss acoustics,” said Eliot Ness, who must have heard her perfectly. “And I won’t be so far away when you join me.”
“You’re upside-down.”
“You already said that. But you’re upside-down. I’m downside-up.”
“What?”
“Neither do we have time to discuss topography. We’ve got to go.” Eliot Ness beckoned to her. “Follow me.”
“I can’t get up there.”
“You can, Kiru. You walk. Remember how? One foot in front of the other.”
He was wearing a symsuit, which must have been how he could hang upside-down. She was wearing nothing.
She looked up at him again. It was impossible.
“Do it!” Eliot Ness ordered.
Although Kiru had lost weight, her legs still felt heavy in the Xyzian gravity. She took one step forward, then another, and began climbing the curve of the cone.
After the first few, short, hesitant steps, she slid her soles across the surface, one by one, not wanting to raise her feet from the ground. She leaned forward for balance, but found herself being dragged in that direction—dragged upward. Instinctively, she put out her hands. Then she fell, fell upward, onto her hands and knees.
“If you can’t walk,” said Eliot Ness, “crawl!”
She crawled, sliding her hands and knees and toes along the curved wall, crawled upward, up and up, then upside-down, to where Eliot Ness stood waiting.
“You can stand up now,” he told her.
Kiru looked up at him, then looked even higher up, which was also further down, to where she had been.
Eliot Ness reached down his hand to her; she took it, and he helped her up. His fingers were bare, without his symgloves. He’d also removed the hood of his symsuit. By not being completely covered, his metabolism was functioning at its normal human rate.
This was the first time they had ever touched, Kiru realised. Even within the narrow confines of the escape capsule, they had never so much as brushed against each other.
He was also grey. His symsuit, his black face, his white hair, his eyes. All had become shades of grey.
“Thanks,” she said.
“As I said, it’s time to go.” He released his hand from hers, turned and walked away. In the heavier gravity, it was as if he was wading through water.
“Where are the Xyzians?” she asked, as she followed.
“The what?”
“The Xyzians. The aliens. The ones who answered the rescue signal. The ones whose ship this is.”
“Xyzians? That’s a generic slate translation for an unknown alien name. Zyxian, that’s another. So is Yxzian.”
“Say that again.”
“Yxzian.”
“That’s what I thought you said.”
They made their way along the top of the cone, or perhaps it was the bottom of the cone, to the end where the diameter was at its maximum. The wall facing them was convex, and at the intersection was an elliptical apertu
re, just high enough for an Xyzian, or whatever they were really called, to pass through. Eliot Ness and Kiru had to bend down to go underneath.
Ahead of them spiralled a narrow tunnel. Staying low, they walked along, around, up, over, upside-down, along, down, around, then did the same again, again, again.
“Where are they, the aliens?” asked Kiru.
“Trying to get their ship out of orbit,” said Eliot Ness.
“It’s in orbit?”
“Yes.”
“Around a planet?”
“Yes.”
“Is it, by any chance, the planet you wanted to reach?”
“Yes.”
The tunnel twisted downward, turning into a vertical shaft. They walked down over the edge, and it became horizontal. After more slow walking, heads still bowed, the tunnel ballooned into a series of parallel tubes. Without hesitation, Eliot Ness entered one of these, Kiru followed, and they soon reached a flight of semicircular steps. This time, when they walked down, they really did go down.
At the bottom of the steps the tube funnelled wide to become an ovoid chamber, and below them lay their escape pod.
Either Kiru and Eliot Ness were upside-down or the lifeboat was. Eliot Ness walked down the steep curve of the wall and reached the capsule. Kiru followed. No longer needing to go on her hands and knees, she walked vertically down the wall.
This was the first time she had ever seen the lifeboat from the exterior. It was grey, of course, and because of its shape almost seemed an integral part of the Xyzian ship: The pod was oval, with a domed nose, curved fins and a rounded tail. When she had been inside, it was very small; now that she was outside, it seemed no bigger.
Eliot Ness gestured for her to climb on board.
“Is it safe?” Kiru asked, inspecting the hull for holes.
“We’re not going far,” said Eliot Ness.
Kiru went in through the hatch. Instead of joining her, Eliot Ness walked to the furthest side of the hull, knelt down, and studied the array of tubes and pipes, wheels and dials. After a minute, he began operating the controls.
He stood up, looked at what he’d done for a few seconds, then hurried as fast as he could to the lifeboat, clambering inside and closing the hatch behind him. Everything became dark for a moment until the internal lighting system kicked in.
The greyness was gone, the complete spectrum of colours had returned, and Kiru no longer had a shadow which was brighter than herself. It felt wonderful to be back in the tiny, cramped lifeboat.
Eliot Ness reached the far end of the capsule and began signalling at the screen.
“Thanks for waiting,” Kiru said.
“I didn’t,” he said. “The ship wasn’t in synchronous position.” He was silent for half a minute, then added, “Until now.”
Kiru felt a surge of movement as the lifeboat took off, dropping out of the alien ship and heading down to the planet below.
The positions of the alien ship and the planet it orbited were irrelevant. Eliot Ness had found her and led her back to the escape pod.
“Thanks,” said Kiru. “Anyway.”
Liberated at last from the alien gravity, she stretched, and it was almost as if her torso and limbs were growing longer, and she could feel her whole body becoming straighter.
Her priority was food. She was starving, and she opened one of the rations compartments, searching through for something which didn’t need hydrating or flasheating. But there was nothing, and it would take ages before she could eat.
“You want something?” she asked, during the first few of the ninety long seconds she had to wait until her meal was ready.
“I’ll wait till I get there,” said Eliot Ness.
Kiru thought about what he’d just said—“… till I get there…”
“Where,” she asked, “are we going?” She tried not to emphasise the word “we.”
Eliot Ness gestured toward the planet that filled the screen. “Caphmiaultrelvossmuaf,” he said.
Kiru had heard the name once before.
“You changed the lifeboat course to here,” she said.
“As a precaution. This should have been the nearest inhabited world.”
“And while the Xyzians were chasing me, you navigated their ship here?”
“Yes.”
After Eliot Ness had told her she would masquerade as Princess Janesmith, there was a gap in Kiru’s memory. She couldn’t remember anything about the escape pod being found and the aliens taking it on board their own ship.
“You made me forget who I was,” she said.
“I was helping you with your role,” said Eliot Ness. “As soon as they realised you weren’t worth a ransom, you could have been dead. I didn’t want you dead, Kiru, and I didn’t want the aliens dead.”
“You mean you could have killed them?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you?”
“What for?”
“Because of what they did to me!”
“They didn’t even touch you.”
“Only because I was too fast for them.”
“Good. It’s all worked out perfectly.”
“Perfectly?”
“Yes,” said Eliot Ness. “We’re alive. The aliens are alive. We’ve almost reached our destination. After a minor detour, they’ll eventually reach their destination.”
Kiru slid the table from the bulkhead, collected her food and put it down, then pulled out a seat and sat herself down. Eliot Ness had said that their rations might have been basic, but they should be treated like a banquet. Instead of stuffing their mouths whenever they felt hungry, they had always dined together at regular intervals. Until now.
Eliot Ness said he wasn’t going to eat, but he slid out another seat and sat opposite Kiru.
But she no longer felt hungry. She pushed her food away and folded her arms.
“Is something wrong?” asked Eliot Ness.
“No, nothing. I absolutely loved being chased by a pair of slimeball aliens who wanted to use me as a sex toy in their obscene games.”
“You said it, Kiru. Games—they were only games.”
“Food games? Sex games?”
“The most important things in any society. Food is essential for the survival of the body, sex is essential for the production of the next generation of bodies. It seems that the Xyzians, or Zxyians or Yxzians, evolved underground, where they were safe from hostile predators. Their primal courtship ritual involved food, which was very scarce on their world. Females fought their rivals over scavenged food, then left it as a gift for the males. When the male emerged from his lair, the female would pounce—and the male could only eat as a reward for sex. They evolved into the dominant species on their world, but their atavistic instincts are deeply rooted in their ancestral psyche and cannot be suppressed.”
“And when that happens?” said Kiru. “They forget everything else?”
“Exactly.”
“Such as checking the course of their ship.”
“Exactly.”
Kiru had been pursued throughout the alien ship; she’d been forced to hide; she’d thought she would starve to death—either that, or provide a meal for the Xyzians. All because Eliot Ness needed her as a decoy. She’d been used again, just as she had throughout her life.
Eliot Ness was looking at Kiru, but she didn’t want to look at him or her food. She turned her head toward the screen and the planet that was displayed there. It was red, or half of it was. The rest of it was dark—the half of the world where it was night.
“This is where I was heading when I left Hideaway,” said Eliot Ness. “Or where I thought the ship was heading.”
He’d never spoken about this before. Perhaps he realised Kiru was upset, and that was why he felt he had to explain. She said nothing, not wanting to distract him. For a while, he also said nothing.
“But it was all a trick,” Eliot Ness continued. “It was a death ship. With me as the victim. I didn’t know I’d be the only pers
on on board. Not that it happened like that, as you know. There was you, there was Grawl, there was—”
“Grawl!” said Kiru, and instinctively she glanced anxiously around. “I knew it! I knew it was a convict ship.”
“It wasn’t. It was my ship.”
“Why was Grawl on board?”
“I guess he wanted to leave Hideaway. He was smart, heard about my ship, managed to get on board. Because he wasn’t one of the pirates, he—”
“He was a pirate!” Kiru interrupted again.
“No. He was on Arazon, but he wasn’t a space pirate. He was on their base when the Algolans attacked, so he was rounded up with the survivors and sent to Clink. He deserved to be there, of course, but for other reasons. Like I said, he was smart, smart enough to pretend he was a pirate. He hated them, but he knew his best chance of escaping from Arazon was to stick with them. And it worked. He escaped and took you with him when the pirates raided Hideaway.”
“You know all this,” said Kiru, “because you were one of the pirates?” That must have been why Eliot Ness had seemed so familiar when she first saw him; she already knew him on Arazon. “You took part in the raid, and that’s why you had to escape from Hideaway?”
“I was there to do a bank robbery,” said Eliot Ness. “A databank robbery. The pirate attack was a cover, a diversionary tactic. It all worked out perfectly. Until my ship was sabotaged.” He paused. “I thought it must have been me they wanted to kill, but perhaps the ship was destroyed to kill Grawl.”
Killing Grawl was a good enough reason to destroy a whole galaxy, thought Kiru.
Grawl had rescued her from Arazon only because he wanted something from her later. And what he wanted was everything, all of her.
Eliot Ness could have abandoned Kiru on the alien ship. It was only because of him that she had escaped. What price was he going to demand from her later?
“Or,” continued Eliot Ness, “could it have been you? Who would have wanted you dead, Kiru?”
The whole universe, she thought.
“No,” added Eliot Ness, shaking his head. “You were only there because of John Wayne.”
“Who?”
“You’ve forgotten him already?”
“Forgotten who?”