McAvery pulled the lifeboat’s hatch closed and sat down to run through an abbreviated series of system checks. The walls were close, and Jackson had to fight down an unexpected sense of claustrophobia.
“Everybody ready?” the captain called, glancing over his shoulder at his small crew.
Jackson and Anatov nodded.
“Hang on. This may be bumpy. Opening the Dressler’s air lock.” He keyed in the unlocking sequence and watched the door expectantly.
It didn’t open.
“That’s strange.” He keyed it in again.
“The systems across the ship are failing, Captain.” Anatov’s voice sounded small to Hammond. “The same thing happened to me, initially, when I tried to enter the hold fifteen minutes ago.”
The door to the Dressler’s air lock remained stubbornly closed.
Jackson decided. “Captain, open the hatch.” He reached behind the seat, took out his suit helmet, and pulled it over his head.
The doc put her hand on his arm. “What are you going to do?”
He didn’t hesitate. “Blow the lock.” He locked the helmet in place. “I’ll tether myself to the lifeboat so I’ll be pulled along with you if things move too quickly.”
McAvery locked eyes with him. “Jackson, I don’t think this is a good idea.”
“I’m sorry, Captain, but do you have a better one? If we don’t do something to get ourselves out of here, we’ll all die.”
“That’s not necessarily true. Jackson, this is a suicide mission.”
“We both know that doesn’t matter.” He stared the captain down. McAvery was the first to turn away.
“Jackson, be careful,” the doc said to him, squeezing his arm as the lifeboat’s inner air lock doors opened.
Without turning back, he gave her a thumbs-up.
The lifeboat’s hatch shut behind him. He attached the tether to the eyelet he’d installed at the back of the small craft and took up his cutter. Giving McAvery the thumbs-up, he advanced toward the inner air lock door in the Dressler’s hold.
Now or never. He brought the cutter up and, starting from the center of the door, began to make an incision.
The flesh of the Dressler fell away like a rotted carcass. He was glad he couldn’t smell it. It must have set up an awful stench inside the hold.
He finished clearing away the edges of the inner door and stepped up to the outer one.
The Dressler’s skin was stronger here, hardened to the vacuum of the void outside, and the infection had not done as much damage yet to this part of the ship’s structure.
He took a deep breath, braced himself against one of the metal struts, and began to cut.
It took several minutes to get through the skin. He could feel McAvery’s stare boring into his back. They had scant time to get free before the rendezvous with the asteroid.
When it went, it was going to go quickly.
The cutter punched through, and the atmosphere inside the hold was sucked out through the tiny opening, rapidly forcing it wider. He pulled himself away with all his strength and held on to the metal rung as bits of debris flew past him out into space.
A wrench flew by, followed by a small worktable and a pair of shoes. The airflow increased, and soon the hole was as wide as he was tall.
Larger tools and pieces of decking flew past, stretching the opening still farther.
At last the air from the hold was exhausted, and the opening was wide enough to fit the lifeboat.
Once they got home, he’d probably be sent to prison for his supposed role in this whole mess. He couldn’t bear to have his kids see him that way.
There was still a way out, one that would help bring about a greater good.
There was probably only enough air for two, anyhow. Jackson had figured that out for himself.
McAvery had tried to hide the fact. Maybe he even planned to sacrifice himself for his crew once they reached Ariadne.
This was the better course. They didn’t send martyrs to prison.
He turned to stare at McAvery through the lifeboat’s view screen. “I’ve been thinking, Captain,” he said over the comm. “Maybe some of the works of God actually come from the hands of men.”
The captain knew what was about to happen. Jackson could see it in his eyes.
McAvery shook his head wildly. “Jackson, don’t!”
He’d lived a good life. He was going to a beautiful place.
Suicide was a sin, but this was a sacrifice for the greater good. Glory would understand. Glory would be so proud.
And he’d saved Lex.
“Do me one favor. Name something after me.”
He pulled off the helmet.
Chapter Ten: Flight
COLIN CARRIED Hammond’s body into the lifeboat’s air lock, closing the hatch and cycling the air back in before taking off his helmet. He secured Hammond’s body as best he could into the third seat. He put Hammond’s helmet back on, set to opaque to better protect the body and to hide the engineer’s ugly end from view.
He would not leave a man behind.
The bastard had known. Somehow Hammond had figured out that they only had enough oxygen for two of them on the little craft, and he’d taken himself out of the equation.
Anatov had taken her own helmet back off and was sobbing silently, her face turned away from Hammond. It was the most emotion Colin had ever seen her show.
He sat back down in the pilot’s seat, strapped in, and fired up the jets of the lifeboat. He stared out the window one last time at the ruined hold of the Dressler. How had it come to this?
The place was almost unrecognizable. She had been his ship for two years, and now she was a ruined hulk of decaying matter.
Colin released the magnetic anchor, and the lifeboat floated up from the deck.
He glanced at his watch. It was time.
He nudged the little craft slowly out of the hold and took them into the void.
ANA WAS in shock. She’d never considered Jackson Hammond a hero. Truth be told, she’d never given him much thought at all, but something had transpired between the two men back there, and Hammond had just given his life for them.
For her, for McAvery, and for the seed.
She was sure of it.
It wasn’t supposed to happen this way. It had all been a tragic mistake.
She pushed down her emotions, wiping the tears from her eyes. If her father’s example had taught her anything, it was to be strong and rational in moments of crisis.
She was pressed back into her seat as the lifeboat accelerated and the Dressler fell behind them. She stared after it as though it carried all her hopes and dreams off with it into the darkness.
“What did Hammond mean when he said, ‘We both know that doesn’t matter’?” she asked at last.
The captain was silent, apparently focused on piloting the craft slowly closer to the approaching bulk of the asteroid.
“He knew we wouldn’t make it, didn’t he?” Ana glanced over at Hammond’s still form. “Not all three of us, anyhow?”
The captain’s shoulders slumped. “Yes. I think so.” After a while, he continued. “There’s only enough air for two of us to last until help arrives. I don’t know how he figured that out.”
“He’s an engineer, Colin. For God’s sake….” She remembered Hammond’s body was strapped in next to her. “Was an engineer,” she whispered.
The Dressler spun off into the distance, slowly dwindling to nothing more than a pinprick of lights.
COLIN MANEUVERED the lifeboat closer to the vast, tumbling bulk of 43 Ariadne in short bursts of its attitude jets. The asteroid hung over them like the judgment of heaven, a vast leviathan out of the depths of space.
There was no time to consider Hammond’s death, not right now. He had a responsibility to the doctor—and to Trip—to get them both down safely.
He used the jets judiciously, nudging them ever so slowly toward the asteroid’s ablated surface, playing the lights over the dark rock, lookin
g for a place to land the small craft.
As they closed in on Ariadne, Colin could make out some of the surface features: pitted craters that might be the results of impacts tens of millions of years before; vast, deep cracks as black as the pits of hell; and sometimes, flat, smooth areas where the surface of the rock had been sheared off.
The seed trailed behind them, tethered to the lifeboat by the same cable that had pulled it behind the Dressler.
As they slowed, closing on the asteroid surface, the seed began to catch up with the little craft. Although it wasn’t huge by any means, it had enough mass to throw a wrench in his plans.
Colin had anticipated this. As the seed swung slowly past them, pulling the cable past in a wide, following arc, he nudged the ship around gently, reversing it 180 degrees, and just as the seed reached its maximum extension, he began to apply the jets.
The lifeboat jerked backward, shaking the tiny ship, but slowly the jets fought back, and the mass began to slow, acting as a drag to pull them closer to Ariadne’s velocity.
They were drifting closer and closer to the asteroid now, and McAvery had picked out a flat spot to aim for. It followed a sharp ridge as Ariadne rotated below them, so he was going to have to come down quickly.
He pulled as close as he dared for one last rotation, lining himself up for the landing. This is gonna be close.
Behind him, he could almost hear the silence as Anatov watched, breathless. The lights of the ship washed over the asteroid surface that now looked close enough to reach out and touch. The doctor clasped his shoulder, either in reassurance or in fear. He couldn’t tell which.
Here it came, the sharp ridge that was his marker. He fired three of the jets as the ridge passed over (or under) the ship—which, it was hard to tell. The ground fell up toward them steadily.
The whole ship shuddered.
“What the hell?”
They were jerked like a giant yo-yo off course.
Colin fought to steady the little ship as the asteroid receded again. He fired the jets and stabilized their course, bringing the ship back alongside Ariadne.
“We lost the seed.” Ana pointed.
Holy shit. The cable holding the seed floated out loosely behind them as the asteroid slowly drifted away. It had pulled the eyelet clean from the back of the ship. They were lucky it hadn’t ripped the lifeboat apart.
There was no time to figure out what had happened.
Only time to act.
“Hold on.”
He was dangerously low on fuel. There was just enough to nudge them back toward the asteroid. Maybe. He had to wing it.
He pushed them down, conserving the fuel as much as possible. The asteroid spun around one full revolution, and he pushed in again, bringing the two bodies closer.
Sweat trickled down his neck. No mistakes.
As they pulled closer, he spotted the seed.
It hadn’t spun off into space. It was lodged in a crevice along the ridge.
“Buckled in? This is gonna be rough.”
“Locked down.”
They cleared the ridge by the smallest of margins.
He used the last of his fuel to push them down sharply toward a landing, and once again the sheer rock face of the asteroid fell upward toward the ship. McAvery gripped the chair’s armrest with one hand, his other over the anchor handle.
The little ship and the asteroid met with a horrible grinding roar, and once again the whole lifeboat shuddered. Colin was thrown hard against his restraining straps, and the anchor handle flew out of his hand.
The lifeboat skidded across the surface toward the edge of the small plain.
Colin reached out desperately for the anchor handle again. His fingers slipped around it, and he slammed it down, engaging the lifeboat’s magnetic anchor.
The ship locked down to the iron in the rock below them, slowing to a halt just meters short of the end of the unofficial landing strip he’d chosen.
He started to breathe again. “We’re down.” Colin turned back to the doc. “You okay?”
She nodded. “I’m all right. Nice landing.”
Jackson’s cold body remained motionless in the other seat.
Ana put a hand on his shoulder. “Colin… I have something to tell you.”
Chapter Eleven: Confession
ANA TOLD him everything.
She had brought one of her father’s leather-bound diaries onboard, an object with great personal meaning, one of the few mementos she’d kept after the attack that had killed him.
It was the one he had used when he’d studied the strange fungus that could wreak havoc on the precursors to the Mission-class ships. There’d been no need for strict lab protocols back then. The ships had been just a pipe dream, and the science they were based on was in its infancy.
It had probably started with just a few spores in the Dressler’s tightly contained atmosphere, released from the paper pages when she had read the journal one lonely night and sucked into the Dressler’s circulatory system.
“I figured it out when I found that entry in father’s journal.” She shivered. “I knew in an instant. So I tried to pin the blame on Hammond. After all, I figured he didn’t have a big career to protect. He’d be able to find another job easily enough somewhere else. Especially if I argued for leniency.” She closed her eyes. “God, I wish we had a good bottle of scotch on board.”
Colin rummaged through his bag and pulled out his flask. “It’s not scotch, but under the circumstances….” He handed it to her.
“Bless you.” She took it, twisted off the cap, and took a swig. It was strong, but nothing could be strong enough to make her feel better.
“How did you pull it off?” he asked, his eyes fixed on hers.
She looked away. She couldn’t take such directness. “It was simple enough. When you brought me the cross, I switched it with a fabricated version when I had my back turned.”
He nodded. “That’s why you crushed it so quickly. You didn’t want me to look at it too closely.”
She nodded miserably. Now Hammond was dead, and the guilt that consumed her was close to unbearable. She dared to look the captain in the face again.
It was a blank slate, all emotion wiped from his visage.
She couldn’t read him, and that frightened her.
“Thank you for your honesty,” he said at last, stiffly, and looked at Hammond’s body. “He was a good man. He didn’t deserve this.”
She nodded, unable to reply. I did this. I pushed him to this.
“We can’t keep his body in here. Besides, I don’t want his family to see him like this.”
She glanced at the opaque visor that covered Hammond’s face. One part of her, trained for years in medical school, could look at him dispassionately and see the burst blood vessels, eyes, and bloated skin.
Seeing him through the eyes of a friend, though… that was different. She shuddered. He had been a friend, of sorts. I won’t cry again. Not now. “We should take him outside where he’ll have a view of the stars.”
McAvery nodded. Now he was the one who wouldn’t look her in the eye.
“Let’s have a look at the seed while we’re out there,” he suggested.
“The seed’s here?” A little bit of hope sprung up in her heart.
He nodded. “It’s lodged in a crevice not far from here.”
Jackson had given his last breath to help preserve the seed and the mind inside of it. “I think he would have wanted that.”
THEY CARRIED the body across the plain under the pinpoint light of the stars, their magnetic soles latching onto the iron ore of the asteroid with each careful step. They made for the ridge, where Colin had seen the seed lodged inside a crevice.
Colin planned to lay Hammond to rest there, next to the thing he had died to help protect. He would ultimately become a part of it, or at least his body would. Colin was not sure he believed in the concept of a soul, of God, but Hammond had.
As they trudged acros
s the barren alien landscape, he tried to sort out his feelings about the doctor’s actions. She’d done a terrible thing—accusing someone else of her own mistake in a misguided attempt to protect her career.
He wanted to yell at her, shake her to make her see the enormity of what she had done, but this was not the time or the place.
If her demeanor was any indication, she was already beating herself up pretty badly.
In any case, Jackson had made his own choice, one that had saved two lives and the seed itself.
There would be enough time to sort things out later, if they survived the next seventy-two hours.
They reached the edge of the plain and carefully began to climb up the ridge. He’d scouted out a pathway from the lifeboat to the spot where the seed lay, and figured it would take another twenty minutes to get up there from here. They were a little tight on oxygen, but with Hammond out of the picture, he thought they would have enough.
The man deserved this. More than this.
Colin’s official story would be that the whole thing had been an accident—a suit malfunction that had killed the engineer instantly. He’d say that Hammond’s body had been lost in space when the tether snapped—a likely enough story and one that would spare Hammond’s wife the pain of seeing what had become of him.
Colin would assure her that Hammond had been killed instantly and painlessly. That much, at least, was true.
The stars shone above them more intensely than anything one could see from Earth, and every couple of minutes the sun rotated into view, splashing sunshine across the pitted black surface, illuminating slight variations in the color of the rocks. Stress fractures branched and met in crazy patterns, and something white like snow filled some of the hollows—maybe frozen nitrogen or oxygen.
Anatov was silent behind him, struggling with Hammond’s mass but clearly not wanting to talk.
They manhandled the body up the crevasse, eventually coming out onto the ridge top. From here he could see where the seed was lodged, maybe twenty meters to his left.
They carried the body along the ridge to the spot he’d chosen, about five meters away from the seed.
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