Melchior's Fire tk-2

by Jack L. Chalker

  “Yeah? If that’s so, how come these people didn’t all get outside?”

  “They had sun suits and walking shoes on, not ones like this,” he reminded her. “The only ones with these were doing what they could close up. I suspect they were moving to get out but time ran out on them. Let’s not make the same mistake!”

  An Li broke in. “Whatever it is is now just a greenhouse and a half behind you. You’re still at least two, three away from any point where you might be picked up. Any of those isolation doors have a manual trigger? Just a thought.”

  Nagel cursed, wondering why he hadn’t thought of it. The power-down had opened all the doors except ones that would be exempted in the control room or were subject to a manual override, just as the airlock doors on each compartment of the spaceship made said parts little independent biospheres for a while.

  Sark’s voice came over their intercom now. “Red handle, always to the right of each interconnect, facing the location map,” he told them. “We just tried one and it works, but you may have to shoot out the cover. Side angle, low power works fine.”

  Nagel waited until Queson was through the tube to the next unit, then followed. Immediately he looked for the map, then the opposite wall on the right. The thing was pretty clear; he just hadn’t noticed it before. He took his pistol and shot, and there was a tremendous flare and sparks flew everywhere. The emergency switch turned almost molten, but the door didn’t drop.

  “Damn it! I was on high!” he realized. “Come on! I apologize, but we’re gonna have to run the length of this thing and through to the next one!”

  Randi Queson tried, but her lungs felt like they were about to burst and her back was an increasingly concentrated single mass of severe pain. “I don’t think I can make it, Jerry! You go! You can always find another frustrated old professor someplace!”

  Jerry stopped, turned, and sighed. “I ain’t got time for this, Doc,” he said, then he yanked on her arm and began pulling her along. It was sheer agony, but screaming and cursing at him seemed to give her some extra energy.

  The places were huge enough as it was; now, like this, it seemed as if the corridor was actually growing longer as they moved towards the far end.

  “Guys, if that energy surge was Jerry’s gun then they’re about to come through the tube into where you are,” An Li warned them. “We’re picking up the rest of the team now. If you can’t make the next greenhouse and close that door behind you in the next five minutes, then get outside and try and climb up on the roof. There are ladders at both ends of the buildings and in the center, both sides. Wind’s really bad, but the suits should be able to take it. Once you’re up there, keep moving until we can pluck you off. Understand?”

  “We’re gonna make it through!” Jerry almost yelled to her. “C’mon, Doc! There’s the connector! Get on through!”

  Somehow, Queson made it, although she felt as if she were going to faint once she reached the other side of the connecting tube. This time Jerry dialed down his charge, angled, and shot the protective cover cleanly off. He then pulled the lever, praying that, somehow, it would work.

  It did, and fast. The door shot out with amazing speed and they could hear the building shake as it went chunk! sealing off the other side.

  “Well I’ll be damned!” he breathed. “The thing was spring loaded!”

  Randi Queson was breathing so hard the noise almost blocked off the intercom, and she was partially slumped, but she slowly seemed to be getting her wind back.

  He knew that they weren’t anywhere near safe yet, but he felt he had to give her a minute or two to catch her breath.

  Something went bang! really hard against the metal blast and protective door they’d just triggered.

  He jumped. “I thought you said five minutes!”

  “That was five minutes ago,” An Li pointed out. “Jerry, you’ve got to keep moving. Get to the far end as quick as you can, then exit and go up the next greenhouse ladder. Understand?”

  “But there are doors right there!” Queson protested, pointing. Then, suddenly, she realized just how close things were.

  Even a human being wearing very little or nothing at all could stand it long enough to get out one set of doors, pry open another set, and get back inside, and whatever this creature or creatures were, they appeared to be made of much the same stuff as humans, even if put together differently.

  Both doors were closed, though, and would require something like Jerry’s crowbar assembly to open manually. That thing they’d seen wrapped around the core was more like a giant slug or worm of some kind, though. Not the most likely creature to figure out crowbars, and unlikely to have really great physical strength in any one part of it. Even if it, or something like it, could get outside from the other greenhouse, one with the same door problem, how long could they stand it out there before the sandblasting and cold got them?

  There were still noises coming from the other side of the fire door.

  “If I didn’t know better I’d swear that somebody who knew what they were doing was laying out tools to try and open that door,” Jerry muttered.

  She nodded. “Too much we don’t know yet. I’m better. Let’s get going!”

  She really did feel a little better, more clear-headed, less in pain right at that moment. Adrenaline and shock, most likely, but she’d take them while they were there and gladly accept the consequences when they wore off. It would mean she was still around to suffer.

  They got most of the way to the next interconnect when they heard a major metallic racket at the other end and the sound of something big beginning to move.

  “Oh, my god! Those damned things can think!” she shouted, and started running with an energy reserve she would never figure out the source of. Jerry was right behind, and they got into the next greenhouse and he once again triggered the door.

  “Now let’s go outside,” he told her. “I think the odds will be a lot more even there.”

  An Li couldn’t believe her instruments. “Jesus! Whatever those are, they peeled back the door! How come they couldn’t do that when they ravaged the colony?”

  “Maybe it learns,” Randi Queson responded. “Maybe it’s been digesting not only their material selves but also whatever information or skills they might have had. I don’t know. That’s why we call alien lifeforms alien. I only know I want out of here!”

  Jerry was at the door. “Ready?” he asked her. “Keep the gun handy and kick yours to high. If they’re that bright they might well have figured out this move!”

  He pulled on the bar and the door half opened, letting in the fury of shrieking wind and blowing sand and pebbles. He drew his pistol again and stepped out, then she followed.

  They weren’t outside yet, or at least they weren’t in the four- or five-meter range of visibility the blowing crud allowed them.

  “Here’s the ladder!” Nagel called, pointing.

  “You go up first and I’ll watch your back,” she told him. “Then you watch while I come up slower.” She sensed his hesitation. “Go ahead! I have no intention of being a martyr, and I intend to be around to razz you for years about the time you turned into Sir Galahad.”

  “Just for that, I am going up,” he told her. “Don’t watch me, though. Watch those doors!”

  She waited, gun in hand, until she heard him call, “On the roof! Easy climb up, but watch it once you’re here. There’s a pitch and the small rails here are pretty damned short.”

  She could hear noises inside even through the storm and the helmet insulation, and she needed no further urging to get the hell up on top.

  It would have been easy in a lesser wind and without the bulk of the e-suit, but it really wasn’t that hard, it just took longer than she thought. Everything’s longer than I think now, it seems, she reflected, but she soon had his hand to help her the rest of the way up.

  “Slow and steady down the catwalk,” he told her. “Can’t see much or hear much, but what’s inside has to come out h
ere to get us, and I don’t think they like that idea very much.”

  She sighed, but decided to walk sideways so she could see both out and back while keeping her balance. Speed wasn’t the overriding factor here now, just keeping from falling off while making forward progress.

  “If I could be absolutely sure that they couldn’t get to me, I’d sure love to see what was chasing us, though,” she told him. “This place is getting creepier and creepier and we still don’t know a damned thing!”

  “I know it’s dangerous, it’s smart, and it’s not alone, somehow,” Nagel said. “That’s more than enough for me. Li, what’s the plan?”

  “It’s tricky, but on manual Cross thinks she can hover the shuttle off the back end of the unit you’re on and hold it steady long enough for you to at least get a handhold if not aboard. If you can only get a hold, hang on, she’ll fly you back a ways from all this, then you can get in from the ground. Best we can do. Clear?”

  “Clear,” Nagel responded. “Keep the weapons armed on that thing, too! Our company’s not that far away and it’s suddenly grown a whole set of smarts.”

  “Cross, you got that?” An Li called.

  “Got it,” the pilot responded.

  Gail “Lucky” Cross was a very good pilot in an era when human beings didn’t have to be any such thing. She enjoyed it, practiced it, played with it, and that ability had paid off more than once. How could you figure out just how to tell a robotic pilot what they were proposing to do here? Or trust it to do it right?

  Cross was actually a robotic engineer, the chief of salvage operations for the Stanley, and the one who would do the instructions and supervise the salvage operation once it was crunched and the method determined. She had hair so short she sometimes seemed bald, was twenty kilos overweight and had a voice that was almost dead even between a very low soprano and a foghorn, and swore like a sailor. She was a Character with a capital “C” and she loved it.

  Still, this would be as close and exacting a job of piloting as she’d ever done, and nothing for which she or anyone could have practiced. With the wind and minimal clearances it would be a job nobody else would consider doing, too.

  Which was, of course, why she was clearly having the time of her life.

  “Move on back, you mothers!” she shouted, taking over com control. “Ease back! I’m totally manual here and it’s bucking like two dogs in heat!”

  “Moving back towards you,” Nagel told her. “Sounds like our friends are right below us inside the greenhouse, so we’ve got to do this on one pass.”

  “You got it. I won’t be there when you arrive, but you tell me when you pass the last ladder and hold up there. I’ll have two hooks out and it’s gotta be fast and dirty!”

  There were noises below, as if something was pacing them and pushing things out of the way to make sure they kept up. They couldn’t be part of the slug or whatever it was; too small and too independent, Randi reasoned as they made their way back along the roof catwalk. And they had some use of tools. Whatever had consumed the others here couldn’t have imagined tools; otherwise they would have had no problems penetrating the full body suits of those others. A third player? Something else as well? Something that survived, perhaps, or was working with the slug? It made no sense, but this job had gone sour from the start and all she wanted now was out of it. Later, in safety, she’d worry about the questions and look for answers. The crew wasn’t about to abandon this mother lode of salvage unless they were forced to; they would address the questions when circumstances allowed. Most jobs had to be financed with mortgages on the ship and ground-based prior salvage in the yards left back home. Come home empty, and you lost both.

  “We’ve passed the last ladder,” Nagel reported. “Now, come and get us!”

  “Stay close, arms up!” Cross ordered. “We may not get two passes! If anything, this damned wind is kicking up more! Just listen to my count! I have you on my scope. Five… Four… Three… Two… One… Now!”

  Out of the swirling dust cloud came a dark but familiar shape, an egglike oval with a ring around its center and an aircraftlike tail rising seamlessly out of its back. It was going to and fro so much it almost disoriented the two stranded on the roof; even with the help of the entire system, Lucky Cross was having a really rough time, now even rougher as she came in low enough to the greenhouses that a severe downdraft might well bring the shuttle crashing into one of the roofs.

  She stopped about three meters over the edge of the rooftop, two cables dangling from one side. The cables, with large mechanical hooks, whipped about like snakes in the wind, and threatened to either not come close enough for them to grab or, worse, to suddenly whip into them and knock one or both off the roof.

  “Grab the nearest one!” Nagel shouted to Queson, although both were on intercom and shouting wasn’t physically necessary. “Go ahead! I have a better shot at either! I need you to go first! Now!”

  “Gang, I think that’d be a neat idea,” Cross said to them. “I’m battling this son of a bitch with everything I got, and on top of that it seems like something’s outside and slowly climbing up that ladder!”

  That did it. As one of the cables whipped around, Randi Queson grabbed it and suddenly found herself flying in air, in a big and not fully controlled circle, holding on dearly with both gloves.

  “Jerry! Hurry up!” she screamed. “I can’t get the hook on, and I’m not sure how much longer I can hold on!”

  “Coming as soon as I can get a line, Doc!” Nagel responded. “I don’t want to take you out when I leap! Here we go! There you go! C’mon, c’mon… Holy shit!” Nagel turned and jumped at that, got the cable, and tried to just hang on. “Lift off! Lift! Go! Go!” he shouted.

  They felt themselves suddenly yanked backward, and Randi almost lost her grip, but managed somehow to twist some of the cable around her arms and hold on. Cross quickly moved out from the greenhouses and towards the rocky desert beyond before slowing to a near stop and lowering down.

  “Get off on the ground, both of you!” the pilot ordered. “Then I’ll put down on the surface just long enough to allow you both to get in the hatch. You hear me?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Nagel managed. “You far enough from those buildings?”

  “I’m already five kilometers out. That should be more than enough.”

  “Yeah, well, you didn’t see what I saw. Okay! Let’s do it!”

  The shuttle dipped to only a few meters above the ground and first Randi and then Jerry dropped onto the surface, fell, rolled, and managed to get back up. The shuttle seemed to rise and vanish for a moment in the rapidly building storm, but managed to come back around and put down about forty meters from them. With their last strength, both rushed for the shuttle, and Jerry Nagel beat his partner into the open hatch by only a few seconds. They tumbled on top of one another as the hatch closed and sealed.

  Cross didn’t wait for anything more than confirmation they were inside and then lifted straight up, then out at a steep angle, trying to get above the storm.

  “Back on automatic now. You two okay?”

  “Yeah, I think so,” Queson responded.

  “Well, get out of those suits and into the inner chamber as soon as you can. ’Scuse me, but I have you on deep disinfection just in case. The suits, too.”

  Jerry was already deactivating his suit and there was the hiss of air as the helmet seal was broken. He lifted it off, put it down, and then began to climb out of the rest. Randi felt drained, sick, every combination of misery, but she managed to start the same process. He helped her with the last of it, seeing her distress.

  She couldn’t help but notice, though, that there was something different about him. The cockiness was gone, the cool confidence, the boyish sense of adventure. He looked scared.

  “What did you see back there, Jerry?” she asked him, stretching to try and get her back in place and swiveling her neck to try and ease the pain and strain.

  “I—I’m not sure,” he
told her. “Maybe when we look at the video we can see if it was my imagination or what. If it wasn’t… I don’t even want to think of what we’ll do next. C’mon, let’s go into the decontamination chamber. I need to lie down badly.”

  “You aren’t the only one,” she sighed.

  * * *

  She really didn’t want to get out of the chamber, which had her lying, naked, on a specially contoured bedlike couch while all sorts of radiation and diagnostic streams and such were played all over her to determine any alien or unusual organisms not present before and, if found, to try and deal with them. It meant lying there, only turning on one side, then the other, then on her stomach and then on her back, but mostly just lying there in a nice, warm, safe cocoon.

  She didn’t bring up what Jerry might have seen again, or anything else. She was just too damned tired to care now that she felt safe.

  A soft bell sounded, and Cross’s voice said over the internal intercom, “Okay, you two. You’re as clean as you usually are, for whatever that’s worth. Come on in and join the crowd.”

  She groaned. “Do I have to?”

  “Yeah, you have to. We’re waiting for Li and the Captain to decide what the hell to do next. We’ve set back down on the Salvage One central complex, but we’ll have to see how long or if we stay here. In the meantime, you’re free to go to your quarters, take a shower if you want, get a change of clothes, then join us in the conference room.”

  “I just want to take some painkiller and sleep for a week,” she groaned.

  “Yeah, well, you might get a nap, but we got some real work ahead of us now. There’s too much money lying out there to just leave it, but you ain’t gonna believe what we got to do to get it now. Nice, easy pickings! Hah!”

  Now she really was curious, but still not curious enough to override the thought that whatever they had seen or discovered would be just as valid after twelve hours of sleep as it would be now.