Short fiction complete, p.293
Short Fiction Complete, page 293
“I’ll stay here with you, then,” Marguerite said.
“No,” I said. “You’re coming with us.”
She had to turn her entire body toward me for me to see the flat refusal in her eyes. The same rigidly adamant expression I had seen so often on her mother’s face; the same stubborn set of the jaw.
“Captain,” I called out, “give the order.”
“He’s right, ma petite,” Duchamp said, in a voice softer and lower than I had ever heard from her. “You’ve got—”
The message light began blinking again and Duchamp stopped in mid-sentence. “Answer incoming call.”
Fuchs’ bleakly somber face filled the comm screen. “I’ll be maneuvering beneath your ship in four minutes. I won’t be able to hold station for more than a minute or so. You’ll have to be prepared to jump.”
“Not below us!” Duchamp cried, startled. “We’re breaking up. Debris could damage you.”
Fuchs glowered. “Do your suits have maneuvering propulsion units?”
“No.”
“Then if you can’t fly, the only way to get from Hesperos to Lucifer is to drop.” His wide slash of a mouth twitched briefly in what might have been the ghost of a smile. “Like Lucifer himself, you’ll have to fall.”
Jump from Hesperos onto Lucifer? The idea turned my innards to water. How could we do that? How close could Fuchs bring his ship to ours? I should have added maneuvering units to the spacesuits, I never thought of it back on Earth. We weren’t planning any EVA work except for the transfer from Truax, and we had the cable trolley for that. Rodriguez should’ve known that we’d need maneuvering jets in an emergency. Somebody should’ve thought that far ahead.
“Three minutes, ten seconds,” Fuchs said. “Be prepared to jump.”
The comm screen went blank.
“Come on,” Rodriguez said, nudging my shoulder to point me up the passageway.
Marguerite still hesitated.
“Go with them,” Duchamp commanded. “I’ll hold this bucket on course for another two minutes and then come along.”
“You won’t do anything foolish?” Marguerite asked, in a tiny voice.
Duchamp gave her a disgusted look. “The idea that the captain goes down with his ship was a piece of male machismo. I’m not afflicted with the curse of testosterone, believe me.”
Before either of them could say anything more, I put my gloved hand on Marguerite’s backpack and shoved her—gently—along the passageway.
I never found out if shutting the inner airlock hatch slowed down the bugs’ destruction or not. As it turned out, it didn’t matter, one way or the other.
The rest of the crew, Dr. Waller and the three technicians, were up in the nose section, already inside the descent module. As far as they knew we were still planning to use the’sphere in its escape pod mode and rocket up into orbit, to be picked up by Truax.
As we hurried up the passageway toward the hatch that opened onto the airlock area, Rodriguez again ordered us to seal our helmets. “Air pressure’s okay on the other side of the hatch,” he said, “but there’s probably a lot of Venusian air mixed in with our own. You wouldn’t enjoy breathing sulfuric acid fumes.”
I checked my helmet seal six times in the few steps it took us to reach the closed hatch.
Meanwhile, Rodriguez used his suit radio to tell Waller and the techs to get out of the pod and into the airlock section. They asked why, of course.
“We’re going to transfer to Fuchs’ ship, Lucifer,” he said.
“How?” I heard Riza Kolodny’s adenoidal voice in my helmet earphones.
“You’ll see,” Rodriguez said, like a father who doesn’t have the time to explain.
We got the hatch open and looked into the airlock section. It seemed safe enough. I couldn’t see holes in the structure. But the metal seemed to be groaning again, and I could hear thin, high-pitched whistling noises, like air blowing through a lot of pinholes.
Rodriguez stepped through the hatch first, then Marguerite. I followed. The ship lurched again and I put out my hand to rest it on the sturdy metal frame of the airlock hatch, to steady myself.
Just then the hatch on the opposite end of the section swung back. Four spacesuited figures huddled there, anonymous in their bulky suits and reflective bubble helmets.
Duchamp’s voice crackled in my earphones, “Fuchs is about a hundred meters below us and moving up closer. Connect your tethers to each other and start down to his ship.”
Rodriguez said, “Right,” then pointed at me. “You first, Mr. Humphries.”
I had to swallow several times before I could answer him, “Alright. Then Marguerite.”
“Yessir,” Rodriguez said.
There was no need to cycle the airlock. I just slid its inner hatch open and stepped inside, then punched the button that opened the outer hatch. Nothing happened. For a moment I just stood there like a fool, hearing the wind whistling around me, feeling trapped.
“Use the manual override!” Rodriguez said impatiently.
“Right,” I answered, trying to recover some shred of dignity.
I tugged at the wheel and the outer hatch slowly, stubbornly inched open. Rodriguez handed me the first few tethers, clipped together end to end. He and Marguerite were hurriedly snapping the others onto one another.
“Attach the free end to a ladder rung,” he told me.
“Right,” I said again. It was the only word I could think of.
I leaned out the open airlock hatch to attach the tether and what I saw made me giddy with fright.
We were scudding along high above an endless layer of sickly yellowish clouds, billowing and undulating like a thing alive. And then the huge curving bulk of Lucifer slid in below us, so near that I thought we would crash together in a collision that would kill us all.
“Lucifer is on-station,” I heard Duchamp’s voice in my earphones.
Fuchs’ ship seemed enormous, much bigger than ours. It was drawing nearer, slowly but noticeably closing the gap between us. Gasping for breath, I clicked the end of the tether onto the nearest ladder rung. Then I realized that Rodriguez was right behind me, feeding tether line out the hatch, past my booted feet. I watched the tether snake down toward the top of Lucifer’s bulbous shell, dropping like an impossibly thin line of string down, down, down and still not reaching the walkway that ran the length of the ship’s gas envelope.
I suddenly realized that I hadn’t taken any of my enzyme supply with me. Even if we made it to Lucifer I’d be without the medicine I needed to live.
Then Hesperos dipped drunkenly and the gondola groaned again like a man dying in agony. I happened to glance along the outer surface and saw that the metal was streaked with ugly dark smudges that ran from the nose to the airlock hatch and even beyond. I could see the thin metal skin cracking along those dark streaks.
Marguerite and Rodriguez were behind me, the four other spacesuited figures—Waller and the technicians—stood huddled on the other side of the airlock hatch. They were all waiting impatiently for me to start the descent toward Lucifer and safety. I stood frozen at the lip of the open hatch. Clambering down that dangling tether certainly did not look at all safe to me.
The groaning rose in pitch until it was like a screeching of fingernails on a chalkboard. I pulled my head back inside the airlock chamber, panting as if I’d run a thousand meters.
“She’s breaking up!” Rodriguez yelled, so loud that I could hear him through my helmet as well as in my earphones.
Before my eyes, the front section of the gondola tore away with a horrifying grinding, ripping sound, carrying Waller and the technicians with it. They screamed, terrified high-pitched wails that shrieked in my earphones. The front end broke entirely free and flashed past my horrified eyes, tumbling end over end, spilling the spacesuited figures out into the open, empty air.
“Save meee!” one of them screamed, a shriek so strained and piercing I couldn’t tell which of them uttered it.
I saw a body thump down onto Lucifer, below us; it missed the catwalk and slid off into oblivion, howling madly all the time.
I could hardly stand up, my knees were so watery. Rodriguez, pressed in behind me in the airlock, whispered, “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”
The screams went on and on, like red-hot icepicks jammed into my ears. Even after they stopped, my head rang with their memory.
“They’re dead,” Rodriguez said, his voice hollow.
“All of them,” said Marguerite, quavering, fighting back tears.
“And so will we be,” Duchamp’s voice crackled, “if we don’t get down those tethers right now.”
The ship was bucking violently now, heaving up and down in a wild pitching motion. The wind tore at us from the gaping emptiness where the nose of the gondola had been. A ridiculous thought popped into my mind: we didn’t need the airlock now, we could jump out of the ship through the jagged open end of the gondola.
I could hear Rodriguez panting hard in my earphones. At least, I assumed it was Rodriguez. Marguerite was there, too, and I thought Duchamp had to be on her way down to us by now.
“Go on!” Rodriguez yelled, as if the suit radios weren’t working. “Down the tether.”
If I had thought about it for half a millisecond I would have been so terrified I’d have frozen up, paralyzed with fear. But there wasn’t any time for that. I grabbed the tether with both gloved hands.
“The servomotors will hold you,” Rodriguez said. “Loop your boots in the line to take some of the load off your arms, like circus acrobats.”
I made a clumsy try at it, but only managed to tangle the tether around one ankle. The servomotors on the backs of the gloves clamped my fingers on the line, sure enough. All I had to worry about was making a mistake and letting go of the blasted line with both hands at the same time.
Down I went, hand overhand.
It was hard work, clambering down that swaying, slithering line of connected tethers. Drenched in cold sweat, my heart hammering in my ears, I tried to clamp my boots around the line to take some of the strain off my arms but that was a clumsy failure. I inched down the line, my powered gloves clamping and unclamping slowly, like an arthritic old man’s hands.
Lucifer seemed to be a thousand kilometers below me. I could see the end of the connected tethers dangling a good ten meters or more above the catwalk that ran the length of the ship’s gas envelope. It looked like a hundred meters, to me. A thousand. When I got to the end of the line I’d have to jump for it.
If I made it to the end of the line.
And all the while I crawled down the length of tethers I kept hearing the terrified, agonized screams of the crewmen who fell to their deaths. My mind kept replaying that long, wailing, “Save meee!” over and over again. What would I scream if I missed the ship and plunged down into the fiery depths of inescapable death?
“Send the others down.” It was Fuchs’ heavy, harsh voice in my earphones. “Don’t wait. Get started now.”
“No,” Marguerite said. I could sense her struggling, hear her breathing hard. “Wait . . .”
But Rodriguez said firmly, “No time for waiting. Now!”
I looked up and saw another figure start down the tethers. In the spacesuit it was impossible to see who it was, but I figured it had to be Marguerite.
She was coming down the line a lot faster than I, her boots gripping the tether expertly. Had she told me she’d done mountain climbing? I couldn’t remember. Foolish thought at that particular moment.
I tried to go faster and damned near killed myself. Let go of the line with one hand, then missed my next grab for it while my other hand was opening. There’s a delay built into the servomotors that control the gloves’ exoskeletons; you move your fingers and the motors resist a little, then kick in. My glove’s fingers were opening, loosening my grip on the tether, when I desperately wanted them to tighten again.
There I was, one hand flailing free and the other letting go of my grip on the tether. If I hadn’t been so scared I would’ve thrown up.
I lunged for the line with my free hand, caught it, and closed my fingers as fast and hard as I could. I thought I heard the servomotors whining furiously although that must have been my imagination, since I’d never heard them before through the suit and helmet.
I hung there by one hand, all my weight on that arm and shoulder, for what seemed like an hour or two. Then I clasped the tether with my other hand, took the deepest breath I’d ever made in my life, and started down the tether again.
“Where’s my mother?” I heard Marguerite’s fear-filled voice in my earphones.
“She’s on her way,” Rodriguez answered.
But when I looked up I saw only their two figures clambering down the tether. Hesperos was a wreck, jouncing and shuddering above us, falling apart. The gas envelope was cracked like an overcooked egg. The gondola was half gone, its front end tom away, new cracks zigzagging along its length even as I watched. The bugs from the clouds must have made a home for themselves in the ship’s metal structure.
Well, I thought grimly, they’ll all roast to death when she loses her last bit of buoyancy and plunges into the broiling heat below.
Then I caught a vision of Hesperos crashing into Lucifer, and wondered how long Fuchs would keep his ship hovering below us.
“Hurry it up!” he called, as if he could read my thoughts.
Marguerite was sobbing openly; I could hear her over the suit radio. Rodriguez had gone silent except for his hard panting as he worked his way down the tether. They were both getting close to me.
And Duchamp was still in the ship. On the bridge, I realized, working to hold the shattered Hesperos in place long enough for us to make it to safety. But what about her safety?
“Captain Duchamp,” I called, surprised that my voice worked at all. “Leave the bridge and come down the safety tether. That’s an order.”
No response.
“Mother!” Marguerite sobbed. “Mama!”
She wasn’t coming. I knew it with the certainty of religious revelation. Duchamp was staying on the bridge, fighting to hold the battered wreck of Hesperos in place long enough for us to make it to safety. Giving her life to save us. To save her daughter, really. I doubt that she cared a rat’s hiccup for the rest of us. Maybe she had some feelings for Rodriguez. Certainly not for me.
And then I was at the end of the tether line. I dangled there, swaying giddily, my boots swinging in empty air. The broad expanse of Lucifer’s gas envelope still seemed an awfully long way off. A long drop.
All my weight, including the weight of my spacesuit and backpack, was hanging from my hands. I could feel the bones of my upper arms being pulled slowly, agonizingly, out of my shoulder sockets, like a man on the rack. I couldn’t hang on for long.
Then I saw three spacesuited figures climbing slowly up the curving flank of the massive shell. They looked like toys, like tiny dolls, and I realized just how much bigger Lucifer was than Hesperos. Enormously bigger.
Which meant that it was also much farther away than I had first guessed. It wasn’t ten meters below me; it must have been more like a hundred meters. I couldn’t survive a jump that long. No one could.
I looked up. Through my bubble helmet I saw Marguerite and Rodriguez coming down the line toward me, almost on top of me.
“What now?” I asked Rodriguez. “It’s too far to jump.”
Before he could answer, Fuchs’ voice grated in my earphones. “I’m bringing Lucifer up close enough for you to reach. I can’t keep her in position for long, so when I say jump, you either jump or be damned. Understand me?”
“Understood,” Rodriguez said.
“Okay.”
The broad back of Lucifer rose toward us, slowly moving closer. The three spacesuited figures were on the catwalk now, laying out long coils of tethers between them.
We were getting tantalizingly close, but each time I thought we were within a safe jumping distance Hesperos bobbed up or sideways and we were jericed away from Lucifer. My arms were blazing with pain. I could hear Rodriguez mumbling in Spanish, perhaps a prayer. More likely some choice curses.
I looked up again and saw that Hesperos was barely holding together. The gondola was cracked in a hundred places, the gas shell above it was missing pieces like an uncompleted jigsaw puzzle.
The only thing in our favor was that the air was thick enough down at this level to be relatively calm. Relatively. Hesperos was still jouncing and fluttering like a leaf in a strong breeze.
Marguerite’s sobbing seemed to have stopped. I supposed that she finally understood her mother was not coming and there was nothing she could do about it. There would be plenty of time to mourn after we had saved our own necks, I thought. When your own life is on the line, as ours were, you worry about your own skin and save your sentiment for everyone else for later.
“Now!” Fuchs’ command shattered my pointless musings.
I was still dangling a tremendous distance from Lucifer’s catwalk, my shoulders and arms screaming in agony from the strain.
“Now, dammit!” he roared. “Jump!”
I let go. For a dizzying instant it felt as if I hung in mid-air, not moving at all. By the time I realized I was Ming I thudded down onto the curving hull of Lucifer’s envelope with a bang that knocked the breath out of my lungs.
I had missed the catwalk and the men waiting to help me by several meters. I felt myself sliding along the curve of the shell, my arms and legs scrabbling to find a grip, a handhold, anything to stop me from sliding off into the oblivion below. Nothing. The shell’s skin was smooth as polished marble.
In my earphones I heard a sort of howling noise, a strangled wail that yowled in my ears like some primitive animal’s shriek. It went on and on without letup. I couldn’t hear anything else, nothing except that agonized howl.
If Lucifer had been as small as Hesperos I would have slid off the shell and plunged into the thick hot clouds kilometers beneath me. I sometimes wonder if I would have been roasted to death as I fell deeper into the blistering hot atmosphere or crushed like an eggshell by the tremendous pressure.
