by Rob Grant
'Oh, what's the fucking difference?' Pain isn't having a positive effect on the Padre's patience. 'We have no fucking engines. We can't steer the fucking ship. The only fucking thing we can fucking do is bundle everyone we fucking can into the fucking STiP and make a fucking break for it.'
Peck crosses herself so many times and so quickly, she looks like a tic-tac man at a racecourse.
Gwent pops out his brace and sucks on it noisily, ruminating. 'Soooo... the STiP will carry, what? Ten people? A dozen? Out of the entire ship?'
Lewis shakes his head. 'Ten, maximum, the length of the voyage we're talking about. In a perfect world, no more than eight.'
'Eight peoples? Eight? Won't the rest of the crew miss us at the planet-crashing party? Won't they think us somehow... rude?'
'You people are unbelievable.' Lewis is addressing them all now. 'You think this is the easy option? You think it's going to be some kind of pleasure trip on that STiP? You think we'll just cruise along, sipping beachcomber cocktails and laughing with gay abandon as we glide gently down to the planet Paradise? It will be a journey through Hell, people. We'll be crammed in a crappy, tiny vessel for months on end, surviving on minimum rations, and drinking our own piss. And if we make it, if we don't get punctured by asteroids, or meteors or any of the deadly space debris we'll be travelling through, and if the fuel holds out, which it probably won't, and if, by some incredible fluke we don't burn up on entering the atmosphere and manage, somehow, to find some small piece of clear ground to land on, so we don't explode in a ball of flames on impact -- if all this miraculous unlikeliness comes to pass, we'll find ourselves with no supplies, on an unforgiving, hostile world which may not even have sufficient edible vegetation on the entire planet to support a dieting squirrel with bulimia. And let's not even think about the billions of completely unknown viral strains just queuing up to inflict unknown diseases on our fresh, ripe bodies. Blood vomiting, brain-swelling diseases we've never even dared to dream about. Diseases that will almost certainly wipe us out within a matter of days in a startling variety of hideous and unbearable ways. And that's without mentioning the atmospheric conditions. For all we know, it rains fireballs down there. For all we know, the morning mist is made of hydrochloric acid, and the evening breeze is cyanide gas.'
Lewis finally runs out of breath.
For a while, there is only the sound of the kart's wheels, trundling along the corridor.
It is Apton Styx who finally breaks the silence. 'So you think, then, I should pack my extra-padded jacket?'
'Wait.' Eddie is beginning to get the germ of an idea. 'No supplies, you said? Did you say: "No supplies"? Why no supplies?'
'The module's only designed for short little jaunts from ship to surface. I'm using... we'll have to use the cargo space for fuel storage. Even then...'
'That's what I was thinking. And what kind of fuel are you talking about?'
'Nuclear, of course. It's the only--'
'So that ship is fuelled up, now? In the launch bay, primed with nuclear fuel?'
'So what? Are you saying it's dangerous? Don't you think I--'
'No. No. I'm saying it's good. I'm saying it could be very good indeed. I'm saying, Father Lewis, you might just have saved the entire ship.'
39
The Pilgrim Parents are gathered around the meeting table in Planning Committee Room One.
Eddie is clasping some charts between his claws, trying not to rip them to shreds while he makes his last-minute checks with Trinity Peck.
Lewis, still plagued by his humiliating intestinal problem, emits a long, rumbling fart, and moans with pain and embarrassment. 'Can we please get on with this, Dr Morton? Before I fart myself to Kingdom Come?'
'All right.' Eddie nods to Peck, who waves her hand over the table top, evoking the 3-D planetary display. 'But this is a very delicate manoeuvre we're considering. Here. There's no room for mistakes. None at all.'
'We're all tremendously impressed, Doctor. Now, get on with it before I pebble dash the room with my gizzards.'
'This is the Willflower...' Eddie points out the tiny ship on the display. 'Can you magnify, say, a hundredfold?'
Peck makes a small movement with her hand, and the ship swells in size, so that only the Willflower, part of the gas giant, and the planet designated as 'Thrrrppp' are on view.
'Okayanoviskovitch...' Gwent cranes over the display. 'I'm going to make a wild, outlandish guess that this little puppy would be the gigantic, deadly planet nobody bothered to mention to me.'
'That's the gas giant, yes.'
'Well, I can understand why we didn't spot it before. It was probably hiding behind, say, an asteroid or something. It's pretty amazing we managed to notice it at all.'
Lewis blows off again. 'Can we please...?'
'Hold on one momentesko.' Gwent raises his hand. 'I have to name it.'
Either from pain or from exasperation, Lewis grimaces. 'Name it?'
'We find a new planet, Captain gets to name it.'
'Well, that should help tremendously, eh? At least when it squashes us flatter than rodent roadkill, we'll know what to call it. We won't have to race around screaming "Arg! Crushed to death by the planet What's Its Name?!"'
'Excisely. Therefore, I name this planet... Jockstrap. Yes!' Gwent holds up his hands like a goal-scoring hero, and mimics an adoring crowd roar with his throat. 'Once again the great Captain Gwent exceeds expectations in the superlative nomenclature category.'
Eddie's wincing now. He's beginning to wonder if trying to save this crew is, in any way, a good idea. 'Thank you, Captain. Now, if I can boringly drag everyone back to the tedious subject of avoiding total destruction? We all know we have zero engine capacity, but we do still have twenty per cent of the manoeuvring thrusters on line.'
On cue, the thrusters on the display ship start to burn. The ship's progress towards the gas giant is slowed down, albeit minimally, and it starts to make a small, almost infinitesimally small, turn towards Thrrrppp.
Eddie ignores the disappointed coughing and foot shuffling. 'It doesn't give us much. It wouldn't delay our encounter with the gas giant by more than a day, at best. But it does get us into the right position for this
And, again on cue, a huge explosion rips a massive hole in the side of the Willflower's hull. The ship, almost half destroyed, lurches violently away from the gas giant, on course for the planet Thrrrppp.
Gwent yells: 'Wowzer!'
Oslo yells: 'What the frot was that?'
Eddie looks up from the display. 'That was a controlled detonation of the STiP.'
'Wait a minute.' Lewis narrows his eyes. 'What are you suggesting? Are you suggesting we blow up the escape craft?'
Eddie was expecting some resistance from the Church. 'Technically, Father, it's not an escape craft.'
'You know what I mean. You want to blow up the Ship to Planet module? In an utter and irretrievable sort of way?'
Eddie watches the display for a second, waiting for the bit where the remaining manoeuvring jets nudge the wounded Willflower into a safe orbit around Thrrrppp, then looks up and nods. 'Yes. That's exactly what I'm suggesting.'
'Leaving us, in the event of failure, with precisely how many esc ... STiPs? Somewhere around the zero mark, yes?'
'That's true. We lose our last lifeline. But if it works, we save the entire crew.'
'Pardon me? If it works? There's an "if " in this plan?'
'It will work. In eight out of ten scenarios, it works.'
'Eight out of ten? What happens in the other two scenarios?"
Eddie tries to will everyone's attention to the display, where everything's gone right, and the ship is happily nestled in its orbit. 'If we fire slightly too soon, we miss orbital vectors by a fraction of a metre and...'
'And...?'
'And spin helplessly off into space.'
'Well, that's quite tempting, eh? I mean, spinning helplessly off into space must be lots of fun in its own way. And scenario ten?'
This is t
he bit Eddie's been dreading. 'We have no way of accurately assessing how badly the shipquakes have affected the infrastructure. As far as we can tell, it won't happen, but there's a slight chance the blast might... blow the ship apart.'
'Blow the ship apart?' Lewis smiles. 'The blast might blow the ship apart? Well, well, well. That's almost as enticing as the prospect of spinning helplessly off into space. All things considered, I'm not sure which I prefer.'
Oslo doesn't raise her eyes from the display. 'I say we go for it.'
'You do?' Lewis rests his good arm on his bad and cups his chin. 'And has it occurred to you that, even in one of the "good" scenarios, we'll be orbiting a planet in a ship that's half blown away, with no means of travelling down to the surface?'
'We'll worry about that when we get there.'
'Well, that's fair enough. Let's put it to the table, shall we? Anyone else vote with Morton and Oslo's pro-death party?'
Apton Styx raises his hand. 'I do.'
'Really, Apton. May I ask why?'
'Sir, Father, sir. I think it's a good plan. I like it.'
'You like it? You like facing the option of hurtling out of control through the unknown to an eventual and inevitable fatal collision?'
Styx rolls his eyes towards the ceiling. 'Yeah.'
'What do you like about it, particularly?'
'I don't know. I just like it.'
'OK.' Lewis's face struggles to overcome a very sharp twinge of pain. 'You've all clearly thought it through exhaustively and arrived at the only sane conclusion. Trinity? We've heard the votes of the Stupid jury. What say you?'
Peck looks down at her feet. 'Actually, I think it's a fine plan that gives us our best shot, and it seems... well, it seems like it would be the Christian thing to do...'
'But? There is a "but", I hope, Trinity?'
'... But I feel theologically obliged to side with the Church's viewpoint.'
'So you're supporting me?'
Peck nods and says 'Yes,' but very quietly.
'Well. Not quite the sweet voice of sanity I was hoping for, but a vote for the good guys, none the less. Captain Gwent? You have an opportunity to tie the vote, and end this madness. Our futures are in your hands.'
'See, the thing is, priestly dudeovitch, I don't understand where all this democracy honk came from in the first place. There is no vote. I make the decisions around here, do I not? And having weighed up the data with my chillingly incisive, liquid oxygen cool logic, I say...'
Gwent turns around, tosses something in the air, catches it and turns back.
'... Heads -- we do it.'
40
YOUR NEXT EdEE
Eddie is in the Navigation Room, trying to co-ordinate the elaborate operation. There's plenty to occupy his time in the lead-up to the execution of what is rapidly, and embarrassingly, becoming known as 'The Morton Manoeuvre'. The upper port quadrant of the ship has to be evacuated, for a start. The explosion has to be timed to a nanosecond. The thrusters have to be positioned with microscopic precision, and their firing synchronized perfectly. One small error, and the attempt will fail spectacularly. And for the rest of the ship's presumably fairly short life, 'The Morton Manoeuvre' will become synonymous with almighty cock-ups. The Charge of the Light Brigade? What a Morton Manoeuvre that was. The Hindenburg? They should have called that the Mortonburg.
Still, even with all this pressure, somehow he manages to find spare mental moments when that chilling scrawled promise pops, unwelcomed, into his head.
YOUR NEXT EdEE
He sees it, in stark relief, ripped insanely into the metal of the chamber wall.
It has to mean him. It has to mean Eddie.
YOUR NEXT EdEE
Somehow, the illiteracy of the threat makes it seem all the more frightening. It's one thing to be threatened by someone who knows how to apostrophize and punctuate correctly. It's something else entirely to be threatened by a madman who can't even spell 'Eddie'. But who can it possibly be? No one on board knows his real name. No one ever knew it.
YOUR NEXT EdEE
It can't mean him. It can't mean Eddie. Perhaps in his mad, slashing frenzy, the crazy psycho missed out a letter. L maybe. 'Your next Edele'. That sounds reasonable.
Poor Edele. Boy, Eddie wouldn't like to be Edele, whoever she is.
And this is the loop his mind constantly gets trapped in.
'Excuse me? Am I talking to myself here?'
Eddie snaps out of his reverie and looks at Peck, who is holding out some papers for him. 'Sorry. Sorry, I was... sorry.'
'I hate to interrupt your silent communion with the Dark One, but I need to know if these are the correct figures for the starboard lateral thruster array.'
'Right. I'll just...' Eddie leans over and scans the data. 'Yes, yes. These seem fine.'
'Do they seem fine, or are they perfect?'
'They're correct. They're perfect.'
'Only we're executing the Morton Manoeuvre in less than ten minutes, and I wouldn't want it to go wrong because some data seemed fine and actually wasn't.'
'The figures are perfect, Trinity.' And because he's a man, this phrase triggers him to start wondering what Peck's figure is like, under those deliberately unflattering robes. And even though there are a zillion more pressing things that might concern him -- blowing up the ship, for instance, or the prospect of spinning helplessly off into space, not to mention being hacked to small pieces by a demented serial killer -- he starts to imagine her undressing, blindfolded. Very responsible. And Eddie hasn't even got a penis to blame. 'The figures are perfect.'
'Dr Morton, sir, we have a problem.' Apton Styx is standing by the coms panel, one hand covering the microphone on his headset.
'A problem? This is not a sensationally good time for a problem, Mr Styx.'
'There's been another murder.'
YOUR NEXT EdEE
Eddie tries to stay calm. 'Another murder? Where? Who?'
EdEE
'Two murders, actually. Methuselah and Nebuchadnezzar Styx. Close to the STiP bay. They were carrying out a final sweep of the upper port quadrant.'
There is a palpable release of tension in the control centre. The victims are only drones. Eddie is not so hardened. 'Were they... is it the same as the other...'
Apton nods. 'Hacked to pieces. Body parts everywhere. The investigating officers want to carry out forensic searches. They want to know if you can delay the manoeuvre.'
'I... Sorry, Apton. There's only a very small window of opportunity if we're going to stand a chance of making this work.'
Styx nods. 'That's what I thought. I'll pull the team out.'
'I'm truly sorry. I wish it wasn't so.'
'I understand.'
'If we're lucky, the bastard will still be trapped up there when the blast goes off.'
"That would be nice. There is one more thing, sir. He left another hieroglyphic. Shall I punch it up?'
'Please, yes.'
A security camera image appears on Eddie's monitor.
Another message, carved in the same way, with the same fury into the wall.
DIE EDdy
Eddie's vision seems to balloon when he reads it. Now there can be no mistake: Eddie is on this psychopath's hit list. And something else that should have occurred to him before: the killer can write. Not well. But he can write.
Which shaves Eddie's suspect list to zero.
Unless, of course, he's gone insane. Unless he's somehow committing these murders himself, in some sort of pathological trance.
Or...
He looks over at Oslo, who is peering at the scrawl.
Quietly, Eddie asks her: 'Would you like to tell me who it is, Bernadette?'
Oslo's features all try to get away from her nose at once. She recovers swiftly, but the damage has been done. 'How would I know?' She glances round and looks back at him.
'There's another revival suit, isn't there? Someone else survived the resuscitation procedure.'
Oslo doe
sn't say anything, but her silence is confirmation enough.
'Who?'
Oslo glances round again. Everybody's busy with the preparations. 'This isn't the time.'
'Listen to me. There's a madman out there with the strength and the disposition of an army of barbarians, and I'm number one on his Most Hated list.'
'You?!'
'Those hieroglyphics you're puzzling over, they say...' Eddie catches himself. '... They're a death threat. And I'm the one he's threatening. If I'm interpreting his mental state correctly, he doesn't seem the type who'll hold back on slashing me to pieces until the time is more convenient for everybody. He's likely to burst in here at any moment and start pruning body parts at random. Now, who is he?'
Oslo sighs in surrender. 'We told you. We resuscitated a lot of people before we got to you.'
'You said you'd tried. Unsuccessfully, you said.'
'They were unsuccessful. Every one we revived... they all went insane. Most of them just tried to tear themselves apart. Some of them had... their brains just couldn't take it. They died. The others... We had to... we had to remove them from the suit. We didn't know how to do that and keep them... they died, too.'
'But one of them didn't die. One of them got away.'
'He was insane. But not like the others. Really insane. Insane insane. Violent. Murderous. He attacked us. Thank God he only had partial mobility. Otherwise...'
'So he got free?'
'We had to run. I mean, he was berserk. Screaming, slashing. We ran, all right. We came back with some seriously well-armed drones, I mean, high-power laser drills, rocket launchers, you name it. But he'd gone. We tried searching for him. We looked for days, but he'd vanished. We assumed... we thought he'd died, like the rest of them. We didn't try it again. Not for a long time. But then we were getting desperate. We started to use better control methods...'
'The sedatives. The virtual paradise. And the drone for security?'
Oslo nods. 'And it worked.'
'So the violent one. What was his name?'
'His name? I don't know his name. You think I was planning to add him to my Christmas-card list?'
'You have to remember.'
But Oslo just shakes her head and turns away. And Eddie never gets time to ask her again, because right at this moment the Captain walks into the control centre, and the final countdown begins.