The dead body belonged to the old man. The alien. Matt did not remember his name. His legs were broken and bent at obscene angles. Matt looked away quickly, catching a glimpse of something that might be bone. Matt was glad that he couldn’t see the dead alien’s face. He discovered Quinn’s body as his avoided the horror. Quinn lay folded on his stomach over one of the seats at the front of the ship. His arms seemed contorted in impossible angles, but Matt moved quickly towards his new friend. As he reached him, Quinn breathed quietly. A multi-coloured cloud slowly moved outwards from the unmoving, blue lips before dissipating into the chilled interior of the ship. But Quinn didn’t move at all. His eyes were tightly closed, his head facing downwards. Silverman touched Quinn’s face lightly. He wondered if Quinn had just sighed his last breath.
“Jim,” Matt whispered, “Jim, it’s me.”
Somewhere at the front of the ship there was a quiet electronic hum. It came from the large, glowing screen in the middle of the It was almost inaudible, but in the complete silence Matt heard in quite clearly. He held his breath yet again, listening. Quinn made a very soft moaning sound as the mysterious ship’s humming increased in pitch to a whine and then went out of Matt’s hearing range altogether. Quinn made another sound. He still hadn’t moved at all. Not even the tiniest of the muscles of his face. Silverman closed his eyes tightly shut as an image of his dying father passed through his consciousness. He clenched his teeth and squeezed his eyes hard shut as I doing so would force the image out of his mind. It didn’t. He saw Richard Silverman’s sightless, rolling eyes. The quivering, frantic hand that kept trying to pull a non-existent sheet over his face. The sad, pained expression. The face battered and bruised.
“Dad,” Silverman whispered.
Quinn’s mouth twitched. Silverman gave the tiniest fragment of a smile. Then he saw Quinn’s eyes moving beneath the thin, wrinkly lids. Just like his fathers had – hours before he had died. Was Quinn dying? After the destruction of the Spirit of the Future. After saving Matt’s life. After the crash on the strange alien world. Was this how Quinn was going to die? He hadn’t moved Quinn’s body at all or even looked at him closely. But he did so now, noting the painful looking position he was in. He’d been too afraid to move Quinn at all, but not because he feared causing further injury. He had been scared to take hold of what he thought might be a dead body. But now he carefully pulled Quinn from the seat and eased him slowly to the cluttered floor of the ship. He couldn’t help but notice a cylinder shaped container rolling across the floor. Could it somehow be a water bottle? He made a mental note to check it out and placed his palm on Quinn’s cheek. He didn’t really know why. It just felt like the right thing to do.
“Quinn,” He whispered, “Quinn, wake up. Jim, open your eyes. It’s freezing here. We have to…” his mind raced, “We have to do something.”
“What... about … robot girl.”
Silverman almost laughed. He had to put his hand on his mouth to keep the sound from bursting forth and turning the whole scene into an insane asylum. The relief he felt was enormous. Greater, even, than seeing Quinn for the first time. Quinn’s eyes were still closed tightly shut, but the corners of his mouth seemed to have turned upwards slightly. And he was breathing more quickly. Silverman tapped Quinn’s cheek lightly. The mouth was definitely smiling. Matt smiled too, reflexively.
“I don’t know. It’s lying back there. I mean she’s lying back there. How are you feeling?”
“Cold,” Quinn grunted eventually, “Pretty cold and sore. Thanks for laying me on the floor. What happened to the robot girl? Did we crash?”
Silverman shook his head. “She… it… it’s back over there. Yes, we must have crashed. How are you… feeling? Are you hurt?”
Quinn opened his eyes slightly. He was smiling, but he was clearly suffering pain. His expression became momentarily confused and he moved his eyes to the left, looking right into Matt’s.
“I hope not,” He said, “My, it’s some kind of cold in here now. It wasn’t this bloody cold on that mountain, I can tell you,” His teeth chattered uncontrollably for a moment and he closed his mouth. He said the next few words through his clenched teeth.
“Speak to the girl.”
Silverman opened his mouth to speak but he didn’t say anything. Confused, he put his arms out in a gesture of helplessness.
“C...c……” Quinn’s teeth rattled together alarmingly loud, “Cah… Cass!”
Silverman nodded. He turned back towards the fallen robot. It hadn’t moved at all. He took a pace towards the machine, but then remembered the water bottle. He snatched it up. Quinn moved slightly, rolling onto his left side almost. His face made a quizzical mask for Silverman as they locked eyes once more.
“Water,” Silverman’s own teeth started to tremble, “I hope, at least.”
Quinn nodded. He opened his mouth as if to begin a long explanation. But all the sounds he made were strange noises and moans. Confused – and a little embarrassed – he closed his mouth again. Silverman nodded glumly and grasped the bottle. As soon as he picked it up he realised that it at least contained a liquid of some sort. And it had not frozen solid, even if the lid was covered in ice. He struggled with the lid and bashed it against the floor to get rid of some of the ice. Then he tried unscrewing it and, to his surprise, it started to turn easily enough. It took four turns to remove the lid. The first thing he did was smell the contents, but that revealed nothing. He looked at Quinn. Quinn had managed to get fully onto his left side. His right hand flapped against his hip. He was trying to warn Matt, like his eyes were telling the young man not to taste the liquid. But Matt brought the bottle to his lips and sipped it anyway.
“Is it water?”
Matt sipped again, half nodding to Quinn.
“Think so,” He replied, taking a larger drink, “Tastes a bit… wrong…”
“Give it here,” Quinn was now reaching out with his freed arm, which gave Silverman great relief to see, “I’ll tell you right away. And if it isn’t then at least we’ll both be bloody poisoned.”
The robot moved. There was a sound. Something grinding. Something whirring. Something stirring. Silverman glanced across wide eyed, handing over the bottle without looking at Quinn. Quinn almost dropped the plastic bulb as it fell into his cold fingers. He brought it to his mouth swiftly and took a single, long drink.
“Water,” Quinn said, exhaling with loud satisfaction, “Bloody cold and stale and just a little bit tart, but its water. Splendid.”
“Yep,” Silverman smiled, “Splendid. Now, what about this robot?”
“You… we… need to get it to heat this place up. Or open the doors so we can get out, or something,” Quinn was on his knees now, “There must be some kind of heating here. It’s a spacecraft, after all. Without heating, the crew will all freeze to death very quickly.”
Cass Linn’s main power had come back on again. She used her first moments of consciousness to direct her automatic repair unit to begin work on her brain system’s reserve power store, hoping that this would prevent further periods of nonexistence. Three minutes had passed. The main power system was failing, the damage too severe. Soon it would fail completely. Only her father knew how to repair it. She was having problems with the part of her memory system that held information about Jann Linn. The data stored there was corrupted, mostly. There were images, again corrupt, of his sleeping face. Somehow, there was an association with her father and death. She understood what death was. Jann Linn had explained it to her, long before she had begun to have her own thoughts. She replayed his words in her mind. It took only a fraction of a second to do so.
“When a living thing ceases to be,” He had told her, “The transitioning of a living entity to an inert form.”
She remembered considering this statement for long seconds. Eight seconds, to be exact. Enough time to cross examine her entire memory banks eighty five times. She still did not understand. She had discussed it many times with her father, but
even now she did not truly know the answer to the question that the subject had sparked inside her. It was the same question she now asked the person who was coming towards her with his hands pushed out ahead of him.
“Am I alive?”
Matt stopped to look at the machine. Again, the voice sounded counterfeit. It did not seem to belong to the awkward machine.
“I don’t know.”
“My father used to say that too,” The voice hummed quietly.
“Your father?” Silverman thought of the dead man he had touched.
“Cass Linn,” It was Quinn, almost collapsing onto Matt’s right shoulder, “Can you open the doors and get us out of here? It’s freezing. It’s too cold for us to stay alive like this.”
The robot stayed still.
“If I open the door you will die. There is no air in space.”
“We’re in space? How?” Matt asked.
“The ship was about to crash into the mountainside,” Cass explained, “To prevent its destruction I asked Oss to use the bullet drive.”
Quinn was shaking now. Matt felt that the old man was going to fall over. He leaned against Quinn, steadying him.
“The bullet drive?” Quinn stammered. “What is that?”
“It doesn’t matter!” Silverman shouted, “Robot, it’s too cold in here for us. We’re going to freeze to death.”
“I need to talk to Oss Linn,” The robot buzzed, “Can you help me towards the control bank?”
There was only one set of controls that obviously presented itself as the control bank. The dead alien had been slumped there when they’d boarded the ship. Somehow, Jim Quinn had managed to find himself entangled in one of the two seats after the ship had used its bullet drive. Silverman helped the robot move towards the controls. Quinn tried to help, but his efforts added more weight to Silverman’s back. Matt did not complain, realising that Quinn might collapse if he had no support. The robot was heavy, but together they managed to make it to the front of the ship. Cass did not seem to notice the body of the old man on the floor, even though they almost tripped over his body. Finally, they reached the brightening and now flickering blue screen at the front of the ship. Silverman realised that his sunglasses had changed from night vision to normal mode. The interior of the ship was illuminated with a faint glow.
“That’s promising,” Quinn grinned and winced both at the same time, “Little bit of light. Pretty good stuff.”
“I guess so. Did you finish the water?”
“Of course not. But its damned cold.”
“Everything’s damned cold,” Silverman took the water, “Your fingers are black!”
Quinn looked at his right hand. He was mildly surprised to see that the tips of his fingers had turned a dark shade of grey.
“That can’t be good,” He said.
“No,” Quinn agreed, “And it smarts a bit too. Kind of stings, if you get my meaning. Painful – and annoying.”
The robot had positioned itself on the far side of the control centre. It disappeared from sight and there was a loud clanging sound. Matt rushed round the console to see the robot lying on its side. He started forward to help, but the single eye in the robot’s head whirred into position to look at him.
“I am alright,” Cass Linn buzzed, “I need to connect to my sister. The port is too low for me to reach. My legs are too damaged for me to bend down.”
Matt stared at the ugly glass and metal face. The little camera lens seemed to have a new, green light somewhere deep inside. The eye surveyed him for a long five seconds, then turned to look at the small, six pronged socket at the back of the console.
“I need you to help me,” Cass spoke, “The connection is in my damaged arm. I am unable to move it and I can’t reach with my operational arm.”
Silverman hesitated. He didn’t really know why. Something about the robot girl frightened him. Its clunky exterior, perhaps, or the strangeness of its voice. A small part of him still did not believe that this really was a machine. The voice, although obviously electronic, sounded more like a person than a machine. He moved forward to help the robot, remembering what Quinn had said. Could this really be a thinking machine? He reached out to hold the swaying robot. Cass Linn’s eye stared at him coldly. He held onto her metal shoulders and stopped her swaying. It was not possible for him to realise that she had been about to topple over. Cass Linn had realised. It had taken all of her self-control not to scream in fear. Her power system would fail completely if she fell once more. That would mean… death. She thought briefly about death as the soft hands guided her towards the socket. Her eye followed Matt Silverman as his hands moved down her limp, cold metal arm towards her slim fingered hand. He paused there, holding her fingers in his own hands. She felt him squeeze her fingers. He was staring at her.
“Uhh… where’s the socket?”
The fingers of her hand twitched. A sudden surge of power as microscopic circuits fused closed. Not enough strength to lift an arm, but enough to point. Barely. Cass Linn curled the index finger of her hand to point towards the palm and the octagon shaped hole there. It was no bigger than Silverman’s thumbnail, but he raised her hand to his face and started to pry at the connector with his fingernails. Cass Linn’s left hand had once belonged to a piece of scientific equipment in the old Relathon science centre. She had never known this. After the war it had been hollowed out, ripped apart and changed. But Jann Linn had managed to save a few artefacts of his work there. Her left hand was something he had always been proud of. The fingers touching her hand felt soft, like her father’s had done. But it had been a long time since she had allowed her father to touch her hand. The connector fashioned into her palm came free. She had no sensors on that part of her hand. Watching Matt pull the cord from her lifeless appendage filled her with many feelings. Some of the feelings were brand new to her.
He knelt down, almost dragging the robot to its demise as she struggled to keep her balance. Cass Linn’s legs almost buckled, but she managed to crouch behind the console. Her right hand locked onto the control panel, loudly cracking the plastic covering there and making Matt Silverman almost jump out of his skin. Quinn, watching, laughed quietly. But he coughed too. Matt - anxiously, shakenly - guided Cass Linn’s power connector into the only socket he could see. It slid in easily.
“I am now in control of the ship,” Cass Linn said.
It took Cass Linn five seconds to reset the ship’ s main drive. She could not bring Oss Linn back to life. Each of her nine attempts failed. Cass decided she would investigate and repair Oss Linn later. As the ship’s drive powered up the emergency lighting died, replaced moments later by the full strength of the ship’s lighting panels. The environment systems started to work immediately, bringing life back to the ship. Heat and fresh air began to circulate from vents moulded into the forward and aft parts of the ship. Quinn felt the warm air first and gave a long, loud sigh of relief.
“Oh my goodness, that’s just the thing.”
Silverman frowned. He turned to Quinn to ask what he was talking about, but then he felt the heat too.
“Splendid,” Silverman said. He started towards Quinn, but he stopped and looked at the robot’s eye, “Well done.”
Cass Linn did not answer. She thought for a long time about something to say, but she did not know the words to use. She stared at her helper for a long time – even after he turned his gaze from her own. He walked towards the other stranger. The older man. She wanted to follow after him, but did not. But she needed to stay connected to the ship. She needed to repair Oss Linn. She needed to find out what had happened to her father. The lifeless bundle of dark cloth, white hair and grey skin seemed to have something to do with Jann Linn. And there were eyes there very much like her father’s eyes. But these eyes stared coldly at nothing. She watched the bundle for a long time. After about ten seconds she suddenly realised that this was her father. His body was lying, impossibly contorted, about ten metres from where she crouched.
&n
bsp; “My father is dead.”
Quinn was getting to his feet. The warm air circulating in the ship had brought strength to his old legs. He heard the robot speak and staggered to the control console. Silverman moved with him, carrying some of Quinn’s weight on his shoulder. The robot girl was motionless, but her eye was aimed towards the dead body on the floor of the ship.
“Yes,” Quinn said, “I’m sorry.”
Cass Linn wanted to move towards her father, but she could not disconnect from the ship’s command console. Although Oss Linn was deactivated, the data streams normally received by the ship computer were still working. Cass was trying to decipher them. It had been a long, long time since she had interfaced with the ship like this. The data stream was much more intense than she remembered. But after a few more seconds she managed to gain control of the external sensors. The view screen at the front of the ship flickered to life. A blue haze suddenly filled with deep darkness and a few bright stars. Matt and Quinn both noticed this new change. They stared at the screen. Silverman, sipping the water, helped Quinn move closer. The view changed several times in the three seconds it took them to reach the console. Cass was switching through the sensors. She settled the view screen on the forward display. Jann had always preferred it this way.
“Where are we?” Quinn whispered.
As they moved closer to the screen both men could see smaller, more distant stars. Silverman did not recognise anything. Quinn too was perplexed. Then, suddenly, he pointed to the top left corner of the screen.
“This is Sirius,” He said, “The constellation Canis Major,” He gestured, “But we’re looking at it from the side. From…” he stopped to think, “From Orion’s belt! That’s where we are. We’re somewhere in the middle of Orion’s belt. But there are no wormholes that lead to Orion’s belt. None that we know of. Looks like our alien friends have found one.”
Beyond the Starport Adventure (Bullet Book 1) Page 36