Producing tiny white clouds with every syllable, Rebecca whispered, “What exactly remains in our cornucopia?”
While keeping his eyes on the two women, Mike slipped his pocketsize out of his suit’s thigh pocket, opened it and turned it on. To conserve its battery during the last few days, when not in use, he’d kept it turned off. “Pocketsize?”
It did not respond.
“Pocketsize?”
It did not respond.
He glanced down. Its screen was not lit, and it did not display the picture of Kim and him French-kissing while holding water-balloons over each other’s heads. It displayed nothing.
“Damn!”
Kim turned toward him. “What’s wrong?”
“My pocketsize is dead!” He closed it and shoved it back into his thigh pocket. “I was going to try to estimate our location with respect to Mars, but the stupid thing’s dead.”
Kim frowned slightly, then turned back to Rebecca. “We’ve got clam chowder and onion soup.”
“I’ll have the chowder.”
Without shifting her gaze from Rebecca, Kim announced loudly, “She wants the chowder.”
Rebecca closed her eyes and smiled. “Isn’t it funny how, having survived enough heat to melt structural steel, you two fools will die by freezing?”
Calmly, Kim accepted the envelope from Mike; but showed more enthusiasm when she tore it open and squirted half of its frigid content all over Rebecca’s face. Rebecca spat what little made it into her mouth up into Kim’s eyes and hair. Kim took a swing at Rebecca’s nose with her right hand—which might have done more damage if that hand hadn’t been holding the food envelope.
Mike tried to scramble into the rear and put a stop to all this but forgot he was still strapped in. Trying too hard and too fast to unfasten his seat restraints, he fumbled repeatedly. Why does she provoke her like that? Does she want to get beaten to death?
Rebecca spat long strings of saliva across Kim’s face. “You’re both going to die!”
Kim tossed the food envelope away and punched Rebecca solidly in the nose.
Rebecca swayed like a zero-g tube-hammock that someone had just crawled out of. She smiled and blew bubbles of blood from her left nostril. “Slowly freeze to death!”
To prevent herself from drifting away in reaction to her punches, Kim used her left hand to grab a handful of the loose cloth of Rebecca’s vacuum suit, and continued to use her right hand to punch Rebecca in the mouth and then the eye.
“Won’t be long now!” Rebecca’s huge smile was oddly cartoon-like. Every tooth was outlined in red; blood had flowed into the gaps. “Your lives are almost over!”
Kim turned her back to Rebecca and began searching the pod’s rear. Mike knew what she wanted: something hard, or sharp, or both; something that could kill.
After scraping an inch of frost from a wall-mounted tool box, she forced the box open—despite the resistance of its cold-stiffened hinges—and started digging through its tools.
Finally free of his seat restraints, Mike clamored over the top of his seat and, lacking a better plan, jumped onto Kim’s back. He grabbed both of her arms at the elbows with the goal of keeping her from fighting long enough for her to calm down and think rationally again.
But wrestling in a vacuum suit is nothing like wrestling in street clothes. She twisted loose almost immediately. Placing himself between her and Rebecca, he tried blocking her from her target. He assumed the pose of a sumo wrestler, though he felt more like a sand crab drifting slowly sideways in zero-g. “Kim! You can’t kill her. It’s not right.”
Glaring at him, Kim said, “Look around, stupid! She’s already killed us!”
He tried to sound forceful. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
Kim spoke coldly. “Don’t worry; you won’t,” then switched to a childishly mocking tone. “You love me! Remember?” And then she laughed; a laugh almost as evil as Rebecc—
Drang! Drang! Drang! A noise, hard and metallic, rang through the hull.
Though drifting, Mike froze in position and stared wild-eyed at Kim. She stared wild-eyed right back at him.
Somebody’s outside! he thought, and immediately looked where he usually looked to see outside: the front window. But it was covered with frost—even where he and Kim had scraped away the frost for a drink had frosted over anew. He looked at the little round window on the rear hatch, but it too was covered with frost.
Who could be outside? Who else aboard Corvus could have survived solar passage? His mind searched for someone. Nikita? Could it be Nikita? I never actually saw her dead. No, no, Kim saw her dead. Frank? Impossible. He couldn’t have survived. Maybe it’s not a person at all. Maybe we just bumped into someth—
Drang! Drang! Drang!
Somebody’s out there! It’s a person. It’s gotta be.
The sound seemed to come from the hatch, so he grabbed Rebecca and yanked himself across her toward it. She yelled, but he ignored this and began scraping the frost from the little round window with the tips of his gloved fingers.
The frost was moist now rather than dry and crumbly: they had all been breathing the stale cabin air for some minutes and a good bit of freshly exhaled moisture had condensed and soaked into the frost that covered everything.
Long slushy lines of frost peeled from the little window and curled into the palm of Mike’s glove. Its consistency was such that he could have packed it easily into a nice, if somewhat icy, snowball.
Mike jerked his head back in fear. Through the four narrow lines he’d cleared, he thought he spotted a face. At least it looked like it might be a face. He wasn’t sure.
Throwing away a handful of slush, he hit Kim solidly in the chest with his elbow. She was trying get close to the little window too.
Scraping a few more times removed most of the slush. Mike switched to rubbing in circles to clear the last frosty clumps and to wipe away the foggy condensate of his own breath which, in his excitement, he kept blowing onto the glass.
It was a face all right, but it wasn’t anyone Mike recognized. A middle-aged man with light brown hair, who— Impossible! Am I hallucinating? The man wore no helmet and no vacuum suit. His lips moved, but Mike could not hear the words.
Mike mumbled, “What’s he saying?” and jerked sideways when Kim yelled joyously just inches from his ear.
“He’s telling us to open the hatch!” She tried to push Mike out of the way and grab the hatch handle.
“Whoa!” Mike used both arms to shove her over Rebecca and against the back of the co-pilot seat. “Nobody’s opening this hatch until we’re all wearing suits! And I mean all! If you even touch this hatch again, I’ll break both your arms.”
Kim pulled herself up straight and scowled at him.
Mike scowled right back at her. “If you don’t believe it, just come on over here and try me.”
Her facial expression eased a bit, but Mike’s didn’t. He said, “Put on your helmet and throw me mine.”
She reached into the front and pulled out the two helmets, tossed him his and began putting on hers. He watched her; holding his at the ready for use as a blunt weapon if she charged him.
Just before she finished putting hers on—and wouldn’t be able to hear him—he added quickly, “As soon as you get it fastened, climb into the front and sit in the co-pilot seat.”
When she had it fastened she looked at him but didn’t move.
He pointed toward the seat and mouthed the words, “Do it!”
She obeyed, but reluctantly.
Watching her every second, Mike put his helmet on too. He then grabbed Rebecca’s from the wall by her feet where it had drifted. Before slipping it over her head, however, he took a moment to bang it against his to knock out some slush that he must have tossed into it from the hatch. He double-checked his and Rebecca’s fasteners and signaled Kim to double-check hers.
Turning his back to Kim just long enough to scrape the frost from a small red and yellow striped access panel nex
t to the hatch, he opened it and turned the red-handled valve inside.
The resulting hiss was weak and lasted only a few seconds. Must not be vacuum outside. Guess we didn’t need suits after all.
He didn’t regret the excess caution. A good space worker would rather be too cautious ten thousand times than not cautions enough so much as once. Not cautious enough usually meant death.
Tripping the releases, he pulled the hatch door in and swung it aside, then began pulling himself out through the hatch. But before his belly ring cleared the opening two bare hands seized his shoulders and tried to guide him. Instinctively, he grabbed a sooty handhold on the pod’s exterior and swung himself out.
He was face-to-face with a man wearing a sky-blue short-sleeved shirt with matching pants. Several confusing seconds passed before he realized the man was wearing the flight uniform of Hyperbolic Shipping. Must be aboard one of the company’s ships. Probably inside a maintenance hangar.
Fully out of the pod, but squinting and blinking, Mike floated and waited for his eyes to adjust. The room seemed ridiculously bright; brighter than Mike remembered any hangar ever having been. He counted six blue-white lights too painful to look directly into. The kind used by TV crews?
Partly hidden in their glare, he spotted three professional quality video cameras mounted on tripods whose feet had all been secured to the floor with long strips of silvery duct tape.
Either we’ve got reporters in here or the company’s figuring to sell this footage to the networks itself to recoup part of their loss on Corvus. It wouldn’t be the first time Hyperbolic Shipping had turned a little profit by covering its own news events, disastrous or otherwise.
A second man—shadowy in the glare—moved from one camera to another as though checking their images. Doesn’t move like a reporter or a camera operator, must be part of the ship’s crew: a company man.
Looking at his surroundings more carefully, Mike discovered that he and the pod and these two men were all inside a perfect replica of Corvus’s hangar number two as it appeared before the ordeal began.
A feeling of sluggishness overtook him, as though his brain no longer ran at full speed. Where are we? he wondered. What is this place?
The first man ignored Mike’s confused expression and reached past him to help Kim through the hatch. After she was out, this man knocked lightly on hers and Mike’s helmets as though they were doors, and moved his lips in an exaggerated fashion as though hoping they might read them.
Kim responded by unfastening her helmet.
Stupidly, Mike blinked several times in slow motion. Must want us to take our helmets off. He smiled like a happy drunk. Well, of course, Einstein. There’s breathing air here. He yawned wide and deep. Why do I feel so sleepy?
Fumbling his helmet off, Mike took a breath of fresh warm air and immediately began to feel more alert and clear-headed. As he wiped his greasy unwashed forehead, he realized why. Looking down at the lifesupport indicators on his suit’s left forearm confirmed it. His breathing oxygen’s pressure had dropped to zero. He was out.
“Welcome to Aquila,” said the first man, “one of Corvus’s sister ships. We really didn’t expect anyone to survive but we had to come look just in case.”
Mike didn’t hear that last sentence. He was busy staring at a large black object about thirty feet away.
Secured to the hangar floor by two bright yellow nylon straps stretched tightly up and over its top, the object was a pod. Or at least it must have been a pod at one time. Burned worse than Corvus—if such a thing was possible—it resembled the charred toothless skull of some grotesquely deformed alien. The hull’s aluminum shell and insulation had been burned off, leaving behind only those shapes formed of higher melting point metals: steel, stainless and titanium. All the plastic and glass components were absent; the front window was missing, probably melted; and every square inch was covered with a thick velvety black fuzz. Mike couldn’t see the pilot’s seat from this angle, but the co-pilot seat was now nothing but a metal frame with metal springs.
Frank?
Mike wanted to move closer and check the pilot’s seat for a velvety black skeleton. He wanted to, but was afraid there might be one. It was easy to imagine a black skeleton wearing the ring joints of a vacuum suit at its neck, wrists and waist. Most of a vacuum suit would be burned away; even the helmet was mostly plastic.
But upon reflection, he realized that at the temperatures involved the cartilage that held bones to other bones would burn apart; and the bones themselves would splinter and crack into non-cohesive fragments. This was Frank’s pod, clearly, but there would be no skeleton.
Something strong and hand-like grabbed Mike’s arms below the shoulders. Feeling this to be rude, he tried to shake himself free but the grip was much too firm. The gripper spun him around, bringing him face-to-face with a medsys.
“Relax, Mister McCormack,” the huge machine said with its deeply resonant voice. Its torso, for want of a better word, began to hum and click—scanning him with high frequency sound waves, and radio waves of frequencies even higher. “I will try to make this as painless as possible.” It removed his right glove, and Mike felt a pin prick on the back of his wrist. The machine was drawing blood and the inside of his elbow—the usual removal site—was unavailable at the moment. “If you please; say, Ah.”
Mike knew what was coming. He complied, but reluctantly.
A thin black snake-like tube slithered into his mouth, sucked out saliva samples, then slithered down his throat and into his stomach for samples of digestive juices. The skill with which it avoided touching the walls of his throat in the back of his mouth—which would have triggered the gag reflex—might have been more impressive had it not been universal of all medsys.
Glancing to his right—while being careful not to turn his head too far with the snake down his throat—Mike saw that an identical medsys had grabbed Kim and was giving her an identical emergency check-up.
A new voice spoke. “Please, don’t try to talk.” Directing his eyes toward this voice, Mike saw an elderly gentleman with dark gray hair and a thick, though neatly trimmed, dark gray beard. “There will be plenty of time to talk after the medsys has determined the state of your health.”
Mike was struck by the man’s appearance. Though floating in zero-g, he seemed rooted and immovable; his eyes, deep-set and alert, suggested intelligence; while his bearing indicated confident professionalism. Most striking of all, however: he was so handsome he looked positively out of place in a hangar deck.
This guy ought to be on TV. Mike glanced at the cameras. I guess he will be. Could he have been picked for this job to make the company look good? Mike would have smiled if he hadn’t had a snake down his throat. Maybe.
“I am Captain William Ortega,” said the man. “I would like to welcome you both aboard my ship, and to extend on behalf of Hyperbolic Shipping and myself our congratulations to you on your amazing survival against overwhelming odds.”
Thanks.
“Mister McCormack and Ms. Kirkland, I feel I should warn you that you are now extremely famous.”
Huh?
“The message Captain Palmer sent to the SpaceGuard Cutter Mandela was intercepted by four independent parties and, within minutes, sold to four different news services. During the last three weeks, the names, faces and life-stories of all those who were aboard Corvus have been shown and re-shown on hundreds of televised news and discussion programs. Everyone in the solar system has speculated on whether or not any of you could possibly survive, and if so, by what means. Talk shows and call-in shows have covered your predicament from every possible angle. Magazines and newspapers have also done countless stories. By now, every reporter wants to interview you, every movie producer wants to buy your story, and every publisher wants you to write it into a book.”
Captain Ortega paused as though giving Mike or Kim the opportunity to speak but, of course, that was still impossible. “The only reason there is no crowd here to g
reet you is that, as captain, I’ve ordered all passengers to stay in their rooms until our emergency docking with your pod is completed and the health of all survivors can be verified as stable.” The captain smiled and winked. “But, of course, I don’t mind holding them an hour or so longer if you’d like a chance to shower and change clothes before you face the curious.”
The man who had helped Mike and Kim out of the pod now stuck his light brown-haired head out through the pod’s open hatch. “Captain, there’s a woman tied-up in here!”
“What?”
The man’s voice became shrill. “She’s wearing a full vacuum suit and is stretched across the cabin like a clothesline!”
The previously poised captain seemed at a loss. His mouth moved but nothing came out.
“Captain? Should I untie her?”
Struggling within the medsys’s iron grip, Mike grunted repeatedly as he tried to bite through the black snake in his mouth to clear his vocal tract enough to yell, “No!”
Kim, too, squirmed violently.
Noticing their reactions, the captain regained his composure. “No, Mister Marcus. Do not untie her. At least not yet.”
“Aye, aye.”
The captain looked at Mike with a slight frown. “Medsys, how is Mister McCormack?”
“He is somewhat dehydrated. I am giving him a glucose solution intravenously, and feeding nutrient rich fluids directly into his stomach. When I finish I will provide him with a list of dietary guidelines to follow for the next forty-eight hours.”
“And how is Ms. Kirkland?” The captain did not direct this question to the other medsys since both were controlled by the same artificially intelligent mind located inside a small closet-like room in the medical office, several decks above.
“The damage to her parietal bone needs attention but is not urgent. Its three main bone fragments are not properly aligned and so have begun knitting incorrectly. Most of the bruising of the underlying brain tissue has already healed and there doesn’t appear to be any permanent damage—which is somewhat surprising, due to the scope of the wound. She is not dehydrated, nor malnourished, so I’m releasing her for the moment and scheduling reconstructive bone surgery for the day after tomorrow.”
Bones Burnt Black: Serial Killer in Space Page 25