Watson, Ian - Novel 06 (9 page)

 
          
A
free-fall laundry
room: someone
curses, but mostly there are only quiet urgent whispers. These planet suits are
much easier and faster to put on than the bulky multilayered space- suits—of
which there are only four anyway. They’ll tolerate vacuum and cold if need be.

 
          
Time
slows. We’re divers swimming underwater with a single lungful of air. As I
dress Peter, and he me, he smiles wryly.

 
          
“Does
this remind you of something, love?”

 
          
“Hell,
yes. Will we ever—?” Best left unsaid. I tousle his cropped red curls briefly
before I plant his helmet in place and seal it.

 
          
We
hear Kamasarin’s voice over the suit radios: “The TV pickup inside the airlock
is still transmitting. Insectoids inside have jettisoned their lines. They’re
puffing big balloons from their spinnerets—packing out the airlock with them. I
think they’re building some sort of natural airlock of their own. Another
insectoid is pulling its way through. And another. The first four are starting
in on the inner door. I’ve cut about a dozen lines. Try now, Trimble.”

 
          
“Ignition
in ten seconds,
mark
.”

 
          
We
brace ourselves.

 
          
“No
use.”

 
          
“Slight
drop in corridor pressure . . . Pressure’s steady again. That
is
an airlock they built. Continue
suiting up, though. They may use gas or spray something. Inner hatch is one
quarter through. Anders team, status?”

 
          
“Nearly
ready ... Yes, okay.”

 
          
Ritchie
and Natalya already have the weapons locker open. L-27 laser rifles: squat grey
salamis with short stock and pistol
grip-

 
          
Now
they’re both gone, flying, with their rifles—three spare suits opening out
behind them into hollow boneless bodies.

 
          
“Denby
team?”

           
“Nearly at the hanger.”

 
          
“Wu
team?”

 
          
“In
place.”

 
          
“Anders?”

 
          
“A
glow on the bulkhead. Small hole now, burning brightly. Cutting continues
slowly, clockwise.”

 
          
“Never
mind the direction. Fire as soon as you see them. Hold them. I think we’ve cut
about half of the tethers.”

 
          
“They’re
refastening one,” comes Kendrick’s voice. “Look, at
ten o’clock
.”

 
          
We
four of Denby team cycle through the airlock into the vacuum of the hanger,
where our twin shuttlecraft hang cradled side by side, snouts facing the outer
doors.

 
          
“Denby,
open the airlocks of both shuttles. Cover the hanger entrance from inside the
airlocks—”

 
          
“That
door’s about to give,” calls Heinz. “Ready to fire.” Peter and I pull ourselves
into the shelter of
Alpha's
airlock.
Ren6 and Zoe have disappeared round the far side of
Beta.
They’ll be out of sight of the hanger entrance there. Surely
Kamasarin realizes? Ah, but he wants people in the shuttles, or almost in them,
in case we have to . . . No, unthinkable. He doesn’t dare say so over the open
channel. Not yet.

 
          
“Blue,
go to cover the transverse corridor from the hanger end. Use your hanger
airlock as your cover.” I’m right. Ritchie is our pilot,
out.
Kamasarin has ordered four people to these shuttles who are
psychs—we might still perhaps contact God’s World on its own terms. Or does he
simply want us out of the way?

 
          
“
Achtung\
Door’s out. Fire! Fire!”

 
          
A
woman screams ...

 
          
“They
rushed Matsumura,” pants Heinz. “They sailed through the laser fire right on to
her. One of them is cut in half, but it’s still functioning. The silver thread
from their arses . . . they’re wrapping her. Don’t fire
at
her! Hit the doorway.”

 
          
Sachiko
shrieks.

 
          
“Shut
up!” Who’s that? Salman? Suddenly the screaming stops. Too suddenly.

 
          
“On
to me!” cries Heinz. “Wrapping—I can’t . . . The sting! Sti—” His voice stops.

 
          
“This
is Wu. They overcame Anders and Baqli. Insect things are between us and them.
Don’t shoot there, Li! You might hit people—”

 
          
“Bulkhead
D will close in ten seconds. Get out, Wu team!”

 
          
“Here
they come. Die, die! ”

 
          
A
woman cries out. Is it Li? Her cry dies out.

 
          
What
is going on? Inside the hanger is a horrid frozen peace. The chaos of this
blind battle deafens and freezes us. If we keep quite still and don’t even move
a finger somehow it might disappear. It’s only an acoustic nightmare with no
visual elements, not a breath of motion to it. We hold our weapons poised like
magic wands to ward off the invisible danger. Oh God, and there swims up the
image of Jacobik’s face, huge, swollen and blue, his eyes popping with pleasure
and horror ...
Why!
A death’s head!
Image of death. Kamasarin’s voice saves me. It’s closer to my ears than my own
breathing.

 
          
“Be
silent, everyone! Denby team, board both shuttles. Blue, get in there with
them. Make ready to fly. Keep the shuttle airlocks open for”—he sobs, or does
he just catch his breath?—“for escaping personnel. You three go now—” He must
mean Kendrick, Gus and Natalya. And at this moment the airlock rotates a suited
figure—BLUE—into our hanger. I almost open fire. For a moment his faceplate
wears the fading afterimage of Jacobik’s death-face. I never could be alone
with that in this small shuttle, even with Peter by my side. Ritchie flies
towards us. Peter cycles the three of us through.

 
          
“We
can still pull loose,” squeaks Gus.

 
          
“Go—go!
I shall overload the reactor. If these creatures get hold of the pyramid and
can use it—! Get out. I stay.”

 
          
“But
you can’t overload the reactor.”

 
          
“Oh
yes he can.” Kendrick, now. “I already started the sequence. It had to be this
way.”

 
          
“They
never told us.”

 
          
“Would
you have
liked
to know, Gus? Get
out!”

 
          
“Control
rods are being withdrawn in sequence. Critical build-up commencing. Hear this,
hear this: any personnel still on board in fifteen minutes will be caught in
nuclear fire. Go— reach that moon. God help you all. Sealing the control deck
in ten seconds. Out too, Neil.” Why does he stay? Captain sinking with his
ship? No: the destruct sequence can still be stopped from there—he has to
defend it.

 
          
Ritchie
harnesses himself into the pilot’s seat. Quite small is the interior of our
shuttle. More than half the space is bulked out by stores, watertank, air
cylinders, chem-toilet, mini-autochef, survey instruments stowed away. When the
four seats open out, wing-spread, into sleeping couches, no free space is left
at all. Ritchie slaps switches with gloved hands.

 
          
A
squeal. Of a stuck pig? Gus?

 
          
A
burst of Russian: Natalya . . . calling out what?

 
          
“Shuttle
Beta
, come in please,” says Ritchie
coolly.

 
          
“This
is Rene. I’m at the controls. What do we
dol
We aren’t pilots. Do I wait for Gus or Neil?”

 
          
“Insectoids
are heading for the reactor bay,” shouts Kendrick, somewhere. “Three, four of
them. They must detect—”

 
          
Kamasarin
swears again in that strange tongue. Mongol? Yakut? “If they realize, Neil! If
those things understand. If they sacrifice themselves, as they seem able to do.
They might have time to abort it. Pray they can never use the pyramid. Surely
nothing so automatic has the spirit to make it work! Yet their guidance mind, if
there is one—”

 
          
“I’ll
delay ’em. I’m going there. It’ll cost them a few minutes—”

 
          
“Yes,
Neil. Do it.”

 
          
“Negative,
Rene,” answers Ritchie. “There’s no time left. I slave you out. Now listen:
press the battery master switch. It’s red, lower left. It’s labelled. Done it?
Now switch on your autopilot: the top left, orange knob. Turn it right through
on
to
remote—”

 
          
I
can feel, rather than hear, our
Alpha
coming alive.

 
          
“Ritchie,
someone’s coming!”

 
          
A
single small figure tumbles through the hanger airlock. Immediately it sails
out towards
Beta
, the nearer craft.
Bad choice:
Beta's
airlock is round
the other side.

 
          
“Wu.
The insect things are close behind. I’m the only one.” She flaps her arms in
flight, realizing her error. Recovering herself without a word, she pitches off
the silica tiles of the airframe, rolling up off the deck to disappear behind
the shuttle.

           
“Are both shuttles ready to go?”
demands Kamasarin. “I’m waiting to open the hanger doors. They are outside the
control deck door.”

 
          
“No!
Wu?”

 
          
“Yes.
I’m in your airlock,
Beta”
The hanger airlock begins to turn
... (They’re not cutting through. They’re using its controls!)

 
          
“Both
shuttles are go, sir.”

 
          
...
as the great curve of the double doors splits open in front of us and recesses
rapidly into the hull. Cut by the lip of the deck, the bright ball of the gas
giant bulges up. Over the left upper quadrant of opening space there cuts a
silver thread: one of those tethers. It’s in
Beta
⁹
s path. Perhaps. An insectoid hauls itself round the
opening—just as Ritchie slaps the release lever. Both of our delta-winged,
high-tailed ships leap forward simultaneously—as the creature launches itself
across the opening, trailing silver.

 
          
Fleetingly:
it collides and spins away as
Beta
hits it.

 
          
Fleetingly:
the carbon edge of
Beta
⁹
s
tail-fin hits the thread. The thread stretches, fails to snap.
Beta
lurches to one side, the starboard
wing rising high, the port wing dipping at the deck.

 
          
And
she flies free—downward into the night, angling away from us, deflected. A red
tell-tale flashes in front of Ritchie. An alarm buzzes.

 
          
“Beta!
You okay?”

 
          
“Think
so. Yes. We took a knock. We aren’t hurt. I don’t know about damage. What do we
doT
⁹

 
          
Ritchie’s
right eye twitches behind his faceplate. He raises a gloved hand as though to
swat a fly buzzing in his helmet.