Chindi

Chapter 15

HUTCH WANDERED THROUGH the storage section with Tor, making mental notes. The meat would go here, perishables there, snacks in the upper cabinets. Bill’s voice sounded on the allcom: “Hutch, Captain Eichner is on his way.”

They joined the others outside the cargo bay and waited while Bill launched the lander to make room for the incoming shuttle.

The Wendy Jay, floating in the distance, was gray, angular, utilitarian, not much for looks. Pods stuck out fore and aft. It was normally a survey vessel, loaded with sensing gear.

Hutch turned off the artificial gravity. Nick made a face, signaling that he didn’t like zero gee, that his organs had begun to move around.

“It’ll go away in a second,” she told him.

“Hutch, it never goes away in a second.”

Bill picked up the approaching shuttle and put it on-screen.

Hello, Kurt.

As if he were reading her thoughts, it blinked its lights.

“I’ve got the goodies,” he said. “You really only have four passengers?”

“Yes. Why do you ask?”

“They sent enough stuff to take you to Eta Carina.”

He needed only a few minutes to cross the two kilometers or so between the two ships, easing into the bay and settling against the cradle. Clamps locked the shuttle in place, the door closed, and gravity came back. When air pressure was restored, he opened up, looked around the launch chamber, and climbed down.

Hutch did the introductions. Kurt, it turned out, had ferried Tor to Outpost. “I was sorry to hear that Herman was one of the casualties,” he added.

“You knew Herman?” asked Tor.

He released the cargo hatch and opened up. “I met him at an Academy function. He seemed reasonable for a—” He hesitated, suddenly realizing where he was headed. For a contact nut. For a fanatic. “—For a man who’d already put away several drinks,” he finished. Hutch thought it a good recovery.

They began unloading. It was easy work, especially in the light gravity. When they’d finished, they collected the satellite core and the supports for the dishes and loaded them. They were too long for the compartment, but as long as he left the hatch open it would be okay. The other pieces would go back to the Wendy on the second trip. Hutch thanked everybody at that point and said she and Kurt would take care of the rest. She was talking about moving the bodies.

“I’ll help,” said Tor.

George looked grateful to get away from that part of the job. “Okay, good,” he said. “I have some work to do in mission control.” It sounded pompous, and he knew it, so he flashed a weak smile and cleared out.

Hutch led the way to the freezers. She opened up, and Kurt looked at the bodies and shook his head, but he didn’t say anything.

They were wrapped in plastic envelopes. It was a long walk back, so Hutch killed the gravity again. Tor carried one and Kurt took the other. Hutch trailed behind. She’d already filled in the other captain on the details of the attack, and she could see that he wondered how she could let such a thing happen. But he didn’t ask that question so she made no effort to answer it, other than to say, on a private channel, that she’d seen it coming.

They stowed them in the shuttle cargo compartment, where they’d left room.

Kurt climbed into the vehicle, and Hutch jumped in on the passenger’s side. “We’ll be back in a bit,” she told Tor.

“You have anybody over there to help?” Tor asked.

“We can manage,” said Kurt.

Tor was holding the door and gazing at Hutch. “Why don’t I come along and lend a hand?”

“If you like.”

“Sure.” He looked at Kurt. “You are coming back, right?”

“There’s another load.”

Hutch climbed down. “In that case, I’ll stay put. Sounds like work for guys anyhow.” She removed her e-suit and handed the harness to Tor. But she saw a flicker of disappointment and added a broad smile. “I’ll see you in an hour or so.”

TOR WOULD HAVE liked to have her along, but it was okay. He had broken through, and he wondered happily if any other man had ever traveled so far, hundreds of light-years, for a woman.

Kurt flipped a few switches, the area sealed itself off, and air pressure in the launch chamber began to drop. “Been a rough ride, Tor?” he asked.

“Yes. You could say that.” He pushed back in his chair. The restraints settled over him. “I guess you know the details?”

“I know enough.”

“Angels,” Tor said. “You should have seen the females. You wouldn’t have believed it.”

“Beautiful?”

“Yes. Until you got to the teeth and claws.”

The turntable on which they were docked rotated 180 degrees to face the launch door. Kurt spoke briefly to Hutch, but Tor didn’t catch it. More lights blinked on inside the vehicle. The engines ignited.

“We were surprised,” Tor said. He felt a compulsion to talk about it, and he wondered if he’d spend the rest of his life doing that. Collaring people at parties, spilling it out to casual strangers. “How could we possibly have known?”

Kurt nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“Hutch warned us.”

The push came, and they glided out the door. Kurt turned in a long arc and Tor gazed back at the Memphis. His home in the void. Then he looked for the other ship and saw its lights. But he couldn’t tell how far it was.

“About two kilometers,” Kurt said. Tor glanced back at the pieces of the stealth, sticking out of the cargo compartment. It might have been a dead dragonfly.

THE WENDY WAS immense after the snug conditions on the Memphis. It could accommodate three times as many passengers. It had substantially more storage space, and Tor knew it was also equipped with areas that were designed to be converted into specialized labs. They left the e-suits and air tanks on their seats and descended from the shuttle. The sheer size of the launch bay bore down on him. “Why didn’t they use a smaller ship?” he asked.

“This was the only one not already assigned somewhere,” Kurt said. “And it was handy.”

Another dozen containers, marked City of Memphis, had been assembled on either side of the dock. Tor waited while Kurt opened the shuttle’s cargo hold. “Refrigeration’s in back,” he said.

He zeroized the gravity, as Hutch had, and they lifted out the bodies and carried them down a long central corridor to the after section. The passageway was dark save where they walked. The lights, which emanated directly from the bulkhead, moved with them.

“In here,” said Kurt, opening doors and working his way past shadowy pieces of equipment. “Lab stuff,” he added. “Biological over there, atmospheric here. Astrophysics next door.” He stopped in front of a set of dark gray containers, punched a button on one, and watched a side panel slide back. Cold air wafted out. “Here we go.”

They placed the bodies inside, and, without a word, he closed the door, inhaled, and turned away. “Let’s get the rest of your supplies,” he said.

Steak, turkey, fruits and vegetables, and some desserts, were stored in adjoining freezers. (There was no real meat, of course. Actual meat and the hides of living animals had gone out of fashion half a century before. Hamburgers, pork chops, chicken, everything was artificially processed. The prospect of eating the flesh of, say, a cow, would have sickened most of Hutch’s passengers.) They loaded them onto a cart, returned to the shuttle, and put them in the hold. Then Kurt led the way to a nearby storage area and opened several cabinets, which were full of complete dinners, as well as rolls, cereal, flour, assorted condiments, and a range of other foods. “They must expect you to be gone a long time,” he said.

When they had everything in the lander, Kurt restored the gravity and excused himself. “I have one more thing to get,” he said. “I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

KURT HAD SPENT the two hours of his approach to the Memphis on a special project. Wendy’s automated kitchen, like those on all Academy ships, provided a hands-on feature for anyone who wanted to get away from the standard prepared fare and put together something special.

He had been making a German meat loaf dinner for Hutch and her passengers. He’d baked a mixture of ground pork and ground beef, had added diced onion and applesauce and bread crumbs and catsup and salt and black pepper. Bill had kept an eye on it while he made his run over to the Memphis. Now he left Tor and hurried up to the kitchen, which was located opposite the common room.

“Everything is fine, Kurt,” Bill told him. “Your timing appears to be perfect.”

It had been a long run to this godforsaken place. Kurt hated eagle flights, flights with no souls on board other than the pilot. He wasn’t much of a reader and didn’t enjoy watching sims alone. When it happened, he just rattled around, trying to make conversation with the AI. He was not looking forward to another ten days locked up alone.

Hutch was the daughter he’d have liked to have. But Margot had not wanted children, and he’d spent too much time away from her, so she’d refused to renew. In the end it was just as well. But if he’d been granted a child, he would have opted for another Priscilla.

The meat loaf was finished. He put it onto a serving dish, added his own potato salad and red cabbage, and covered the dish. He next picked up the Black Forest cake, inspected it, informed Bill it looked good, and laid it carefully in a cake dish.

He placed everything in a box he’d brought for the occasion and started out. “Good night, Bill,” he said.

Bill did not reply.

He stepped into the passageway and the ship shuddered. It wasn’t a bang, or an explosion, but rather it felt as if a wall of water had washed over them. While he listened, the lights failed. They came back on, blinked a couple of times, and went out again. The emergency lights came on, pale and gloomy. A Klaxon began to blat.

What the hell is going on? “Bill? What’s happening?”

Still nothing.

The hatchway behind him, the one through which he’d just passed, blinked its warning lamp. Then the hatch slid smoothly down from the overhead and closed, sealing him off from the bridge. Elsewhere, throughout the ship, he heard dull metallic thunks as more hatches shut.

AFTER KURT LEFT, Tor got down out of the shuttle and went looking for a washroom. There was one in the shuttle, of course, but it was a trifle cramped, and he’d seen one back in one of the storage bays.

He found it without difficulty, used it, and began strolling casually among the cabinets and lockers while he waited for Kurt to return. He opened one storage bin, and was startled to find a stone insect face looking back at him. It was bulbous, oversize, with stalked green eyes and both antennas broken off. It looked like a mantis. There was a tag, identifying it from a ruined temple on Quraqua.

He listened for footsteps, heard none, and opened another bin. It held several pieces, a couple of jars, a small statue, a couple of chunks of wall with engraved ideographs. All were labeled with place and date of discovery.

He’d wandered back into a corner and was looking at a drinking cup, running his fingertips across its enamel surface, when something threw him off-balance. Had the ship changed course? Begun to brake? He wasn’t sure, but the sensation passed quickly.

Hutch always warned them in advance when she was planning any kind of maneuver, and he was sure Kurt would have followed the same procedure. He thought about contacting the captain but decided against it. He wouldn’t want a story going back to Hutch about how a course adjustment had provoked a panicky call from her passenger. Ha-ha.

He was looking around, wishing Kurt would come back, when the lights dipped. The sounds of the life-support system, the persistent humming of fans somewhere in the bulkheads, went down, too, and finally stopped. A bank of dull yellow lamps switched on. The fans tried to start again, and finally caught. It didn’t take an expert to figure out something wasn’t right. He decided the best thing for him was to go back and wait in the shuttle.

A Klaxon went off overhead somewhere, startling him and leaving him trembling. He closed the bin door. The electronic gabble in the bulkheads had changed, gotten quieter. The chamber had gotten quieter. The fans quit again. For good. And suddenly he realized he wasn’t standing on the deck. He’d begun to float. The artificial gravity was off!

More lights blinked at him. Red. And he heard a slushing sound, metal moving across an oiled surface. It took a moment to realize what it was, and the certainty sickened him. A hatch was closing! The only one he knew about sealed him off from the passageway. And the shuttle.

He grabbed hold of a cabinet, tried to get his feet on the deck. Finally, he gave up and propelled himself by pushing off on a bench. He wasn’t good at zero gee and crashed into a bulkhead and bounced off. But he got to the hatch and saw that it was indeed shut.

But there was always a manual panel. He hadn’t looked during the flight, hadn’t paid any attention, but he’d seen them in the sims. The power goes out, and you open a small door and push down a handle. He didn’t have much light, and was forced to search with his fingertips. In the rear of the chamber, the Klaxon continued to whoop and yowl.

The panel was there. He fumbled at it, pressed on it, first the top, which did nothing, and then the bottom. It popped open.

And there was the handle.

He yanked it down. It went almost halfway and stopped. Another red lamp, at the base of the handle, commenced to blink. He didn’t care about that, but the handle wouldn’t go any farther, and the hatch didn’t move.

You’re supposed to open, you son of a bitch.

The Klaxon died at last.

The problem was that without gravity he couldn’t put any weight behind the effort. He pushed down, and all that happened was he floated up.

He let go and hit his commlink. “Kurt,” he said, “I’ve got a problem down here. Where are you?”

KURT HAD NEGLECTED to close the box. The cover floated off the food tray and the meal that he’d prepared so carefully began to drift away from the plate. The meat loaf came off in a piece and began to fragment. The potato salad formed a single mound in the middle of the corridor, about belt high.

Something moved above him.

He looked up and saw that the overhead was becoming dark. The backup lights were growing dimmer.

He remembered a sim he’d seen years before, Devil in the Dust, in which a character looks up to see a white ceiling growing damp, becoming red. And blood begins to leak out of it.

As he watched, a stain spread across his own overhead, and the metal began to peel away. Small flakes of it drifted down and mixed with the red cabbage and the meat loaf.

“Bill!” he said. “Will you answer up?”

But the AI was gone, disabled, dead, whatever. There was nothing in the overhead that could leak through. So what the goddam is happening?

Whatever it was, he had to get out. He pushed himself along the passageway to the midship airlock. Somewhere, somehow, the ship had been breached. That would take a meteor. But surely he’d have felt a collision. He’d never been in one, during all these years had never banged into a rock, but he assumed it couldn’t happen without your knowing it.

He opened the manual panel on the hatch and pulled the release.

He got a red lamp. That meant air pressure loss on the other side. Maybe vacuum. My God. He was about to call Tor, find out if he was okay, warn him to stay in the shuttle, close the doors and sit tight, but the moment he opened the circuit, he saw that the overhead had begun to bend inward, curving down like a canvas flap full of water. Impossible. Hulls don’t behave that way. They simply don’t. He opened the channel, got Tor’s name out, knew exactly what he had to tell him, Launch the shuttle, go to manual and launch the shuttle, get clear, but going to manual required a few steps, simple enough but he wasn’t going to have time to explain them. “Tor,” he said again. Something was coming through the overhead and his flesh crawled, he half expected to see a pair of devil-eyes looking in at him. A blast of cold hit like a sheet of iron. His lungs exploded and the passageway, the airlock, the commlink, Tor, and the meat loaf, all blinked off.

“HUTCH! SOMETHING’S GONE wrong over here. We need help.” Tor tried to sound calm. Professional. Keep a level voice the way they do in the sims. Tell her what he thought, that this is probably what happened to the Condor, it’s probably going to explode, and it would be helpful if you could pop by and pick us up. “Kurt just tried to call me, I heard his voice on the link but now he doesn’t answer.”

He was trying to keep calm, and the only way he could do that was to refuse to think about his situation, forget that he couldn’t get the door open, that the lights were dim and were probably going to get dimmer, that the captain seemed to have gotten lost. Tor was scared, frightened that he might not be able to get out of the room, that something might have happened to Kurt, that maybe something was about to happen to him. He thought maybe something was loose in the ship, something that was smashing things, that had smashed the power circuits and maybe had smashed the captain. And he was also scared because he knew that Hutch would see his fear.

“Tor.” Her voice broke through the red cloud forming around him. Thank God. “Tor, I hear you. Can you tell me any more?”

What the hell more could he say? “No. I’m locked in here, and they’re losing power. Maybe they’ve lost power. Everything’s on emergency, I think.”

“Okay. Hold on. I’m going to try to raise Kurt. Find out what’s happening. As soon as I do, I’ll let you know, then we’ll be on our way.”

Sweet, wonderful woman, he thought. Please hurry it up.

HUTCH HAD BEEN loading the newly arrived food into the autochef when Tor’s panicky call came. She brought up a picture of the Wendy while he talked, zeroing in on the forward section of the ship, upper decks. The metal seemed to be rippling in the glow of Wendy’s running lights, as if a heat wave were rolling over it. Then, one by one, the lights went out, starting near the prow and moving back until the ship was dark save for the after section.

When Tor signed off, she tried to raise Kurt. That produced no result, and she went to Bill.

“I’ve been trying to communicate with Wendy’s AI, Hutch,” he said. “But he’s not responding either.”

“Can you tell me anything about what’s happening?”

“Something’s eating through their hull.”

“For God’s sake, Bill, what is?”

“Don’t know. I have no visuals. But there’s no question the hull is losing integrity.”

“Where?”

“Amidships. Off A Deck, and the problem appears to extend forward to the bridge.”

“Can you connect with Wendy’s systems at all? We need to know what’s going on over there.”

“Negative. The interface is inoperative. Whatever is happening, the ship has sustained major damage.”

“Okay.” She was headed back to cargo. “Is the lander on board yet?”

“Docked and ready to go.”

George broke on-line, out of breath, running while he talked. “Hutch, I just got a call from Tor. What the hell’s going on?”

“Don’t know yet. Some sort of breakdown over there.”

Bill’s image blinked on. He was standing beside the lander, and he looked worried. “Hutch,” he said, “I think we should withdraw from the area.” Well, she couldn’t very well do that when they had two people on the Wendy. “I still can’t get a picture of what’s doing it, but whatever it is, it’s chomping away. Here’s what I can see.”

The wallscreen lit up. The space just over the main airlock was distorted, disturbed. The Memphis’s running lights played across it. It was another stealth. No question about it. But apparently this one was of a kick-ass variety.

“Tor,” she said, “where are you now?”

“In one of the storage lockers. Hutch, is the ship going to explode?”

“No.”

“Then this isn’t what happened to the Condor?”

“It’s similar. But the situation’s different. It looks as if you’ve been attacked by something. It’s eating through the hull, but it’s up near the bridge, not back by the engines.”

“Which means—”

“Punch a hole in the containment system in the engine compartment and it would give way. That’s what happened to the Condor.”

“Okay.”

“But you don’t have to worry. It’s well away from the engines.”

“Good. I’m glad to hear it.”

“Now: You say you’re locked in. Do you know how to operate the manual release mechanism?”

“Yes. Open the panel, push down. Right? It won’t work.”

“Some of them pull up. Or pull out. Or—”

“Whatever. This thing won’t move. In any direction. Do you know what happened to Kurt?”

“No. Tor, are you near the hatch now?”

“I’m in front of it.”

“Are there lights on the panel?”

“Red ones.”

Hutch smothered an urge to swear. The others were standing around watching her. Expecting her to solve the problem.

“Okay. There’s vacuum on the other side. Is your e-suit activated?”

“I’m not wearing it.”

“Damn it, Tor, where is it?” But she already knew the answer.

“It’s in the shuttle.”

Hutch was staring at the Wendy. The hull looked like a gray garment strung out on a windy day. A white spray erupted out of it. Flakes formed, and silver-white crystals floated away.

“What do you want me to do, Hutch?”

You’re dissolving, dummy. You went off without your suit and you’re sealed in a chamber that I can’t get into without killing you. And the whole place is melting around your ears.

The silent witnesses around her waited for her answer.

THE EMERGENCY LIGHTS died. Tor was in absolute darkness. And absolute silence. He held his hand up to one of the air ducts and detected no flow. Not much of an emergency system.

Hutch’s voice came back. “Tor. In the rear of the storeroom, where you are, there’s a hatch. It leads into a gravity tube.” Her voice sounded preternaturally loud.

“Okay. What’s a gravity tube?”

“When it’s turned on, it maintains zero gee. We don’t care about that now.”

“Okay.”

“I want you to see whether the hatch is open.”

“All right. But it’s pitch-dark in here. I can’t see anything.”

“Wait a minute.” While she went off circuit he struggled to keep his feet pointed down. Then she was back. “Okay. Can you find the hatch out into the corridor again? The one you couldn’t get open earlier?”

He was still floating in front of it. “Yes,” he said. “I can find it.”

“Go to it. Tell me when you get there.”

He reached down, felt for it, found it. “I’ve got it,” he said.

“Good. I’m looking at a schematic for the Wendy. Off to your left, about five steps along the bulkhead, there are two equipment lockers.”

Tor’s heartbeat surged. “There are e-suits in them,” he said.

“Sorry. No. But there should be a couple of utility lamps.”

The walls began to close in. He struggled to keep his frustration from showing. Keep his voice calm. He edged through the dark, trailing his fingers along the bulkhead, along shelves up high and bins near the deck. Pulling himself along. Barking his shins every ten seconds. The bins were all closed. Then he got to the lockers. He fumbled with the doors, opened them, and began feeling across the pieces of equipment secured inside. “You know where?” he asked.

“It doesn’t say, Tor. It just gives us an inventory.”

His fingers touched rods and cylinders and metal boxes and myriad different devices. He gave up in the first locker and went to the second.

“How are you making out?”

“I need a light,” he said.

Hutch ignored the joke. “I don’t want to rush you, but we do have a time problem.”

Yes. I wouldn’t know about that on my own, of course, with the fans not running and no air coming in. He felt across the gear. Lamps came in all sorts of different shapes. He was about to ask what kind of lamps when he picked one up. A wristlamp. “Got it,” he said, switching it on.

“Good show, Tor. Now go to the back of the storeroom and turn right. About six meters from the lefthand bulkhead, there should be a hatch. Do you see it?”

Tor strapped the lamp to his wrist and pushed himself forward. A little too fast maybe. He had to grab hold of a cabinet to stop, and he twisted his arm and banged his knee against a frame. “There it is,” he said.

“Good. Can you open it?”

He found the panel, remembered to open it from the bottom, and pulled out the handle. He hesitated and then—

Pushed it down.

The red lamps blinked on. They glowed like small hellish eyes. There was a vacuum there, too. And that meant nobody was going to get to him without killing him.

“Nothing,” he told her.

“Red lights?”

“Yes.” Despairing. “Any other ideas?”