Melchior's Fire

IV: NEITHER COMMAND NOR CONTROL

Randi Queson was never more frightened in her life than at this moment. At the same point when they’d all switched frequencies without telling her how to do it back at the base, she was getting the distinct impression of being surrounded by what was surely an alien intelligence of tremendous malicious potential.

She frantically tried to figure out the frequency shift. It would be easy to just scan for the active ones if this were a conventional switch, but this was a security switch to an encrypted and secure channel that wouldn’t even show up on any monitors even as gibberish. That required more knowledge of this master control board than she had, simply because she’d never had to do it before and nobody had thought to teach it to her.

She was always “out there” in these operations; Cross or occasionally Sark or Achmed would handle this.

She tried opening all the common frequencies, thinking that surely An Li above would have them scanned, but instead of the silence she expected she got ear-splitting screeches that forced her to cut the audio. For a second she was confused as to what the sounds were, and then it hit her: the standard frequencies were being jammed! Damn! This thing, whatever it was, was one quick learner. Must be nice to eat your education instead of having to work at it.

She looked back up at the area scan visual and saw that all three small dots were now stopped at the bottom of the base, a bit spread out, as if assessing the situation and figuring out how the heck to get in. She knew that the security seals were locked down, but she couldn’t underestimate this new intelligence.

Even as she frantically looked for loopholes in the defense perimeter and decided to check out a couple of hand weapons from the locker outside she also felt a sense of regret that what was possibly the first human contact with an alien mind was in this sort of situation. She would love to have a conversation with it, learn something about it, see if some kind of equilibrium could be reached, but she also knew, deep down, that it would have no percentage in doing that. If it got to her it would simply absorb her and all that she was would become a part of it. If it couldn’t reach her, then there was really no percentage in it talking at all, except, perhaps, to deceive.

It was smart enough to do everything else, she thought. Why not some good old human trickery?

She looked at the board and saw that Achmed and the smelter were almost halfway back, shadowed by the shuttle. Whatever this alien was going to do, it would have to do it in the next fifteen or twenty minutes or it would be too late. The smelter would dock from the top, affording Achmed access through the top hatch that otherwise was sealed, since there was no other use for it, and the shuttle would settle in its cradle and lock down, activating the forward lock. Theoretically, she was sealed in and totally protected.

Theoretically.

She went to the locker in the ward room and pulled a long-burst disintegration rifle and a wide-mode sidearm. Theoretically, either one would be sufficient to vaporize any of these things.

She retreated back into the command and control center and shut the door.

Every door on the base unit was a total seal, so that even the unexpected, fires and floods and who knew what else, could be isolated. The C and C was particularly well protected, since it could control the entire unit if the shuttle wasn’t mated. It even had its own bathroom, food unit, and water supply. The only point now open to the outside, via its own separate channels, was the air supply, and she quickly switched it to self-contained and heard the rebreather apparatus come on. It could recirculate things for weeks if need be, and she only needed a quarter of an hour.

Now she had to wait, rifle in her lap, to see if the rest of the team could get back before the alien or aliens figured out a good move.

In the meantime, the control center suddenly started feeling like a cold, silent, and lonely tomb, an office in the City of the Dead.

Curse you, you bastards! You didn’t all have to go on that junket and leave me here all alone!

The tracking board indicated that the smelter was well on the way, covered by the shuttle, but there was no longer any sign of the three non-company spacesuited figures. That meant that they were somewhere close, probably at the base camp, trying to figure out a way in. They wouldn’t find the cracks or vents that they’d used to ooze into the colony, not here. Anything like that would have meant that the base couldn’t have withstood space and the descent. The air vents would be the only way in, and those were up top and pretty well exposed for the shuttle’s guns to take out. Cross would know to just blow away anything up there, unless, of course, the damned things were already up and inside before Cross was close enough to act.

The board showed that the shuttle had detached from shadowing the smelter and was now circling the base unit.

Good for you, Lucky. So where’s the critters?

The radio suddenly came to life. “Doc? What the hell happened to you?” An Li’s voice came to her. “Why aren’t you over on the security channel?”

She had never felt so relieved in her life. “Li! You bitch! Nobody ever showed me how to switch it!”

There was a sigh on the other end, then, “Well, screw it now. Are you locked down?”

“Yes, yes! I’m just waiting for company!”

“Stay there. No sign of our friends yet, and I’m getting signs of your big, big worm just about surrounding the plateau. Wait until they’re inside and you get an all-clear from them on the internal intercom. The aliens won’t be able to tap that. In the meantime, I’m gonna keep the others on the secure channel so nobody’s hand is tipped. Just stand by. I don’t want to broadcast anything useful.”

It sounded sensible, even reassuring. Why the hell did she have this paranoid feeling in her belly, then?

Maybe it was the absence of a sign of those three colorful suits. That and the extreme intelligence the aliens had shown up to now.

“Li, tell me how to dial up the security channel from here. I want to coordinate with them.”

“That’s kind of moot right now. Just sit tight.”

“Li, tell me the way to dial in! Now!”

“I said—”

“You’re not An Li, are you? That’s an excellent imitation.”

“Don’t go nutty on me now! We’re almost home!” the voice said, sounding exactly right.

“I want you to do it before either of the units docks with this base. If you don’t, then I will know it’s fake. Then I will have to use the panic button and create a near instant vacuum in the rest of the base, which, if it doesn’t finish you off, will at least seal the entry ports so that the others will be protected. You understand me? I’m not going to be absorbed.”

“You’re crazy, Doc! You know who this is!”

“If you can’t tell me the procedure, then, yes, I know exactly who this is.”

There was dead silence, and she could understand why. The creature had never absorbed one of the crew. As smart as it was, by hook or crook, it had never been in this control room before and thus had very little idea what it actually looked like, much less of the commands needed to switch to an unknown proprietary digital frequency.

It wouldn’t even know that there wasn’t any such thing as a panic button creating such a vacuum.

“So long as the truth is out,” she said slowly, sitting down in one of the command chairs, her stomach almost in convulsions, “would you like to talk?”

For another moment there was silence, and then An Li’s voice asked, “To what purpose?”

“You’re highly intelligent. Probably a lot smarter than any of us. Did your kind evolve here or just become stranded here until those unfortunates landed and built their colony and somehow woke you up? Were you this smart before or only after you killed them all and stole their knowledge?”

“Dialogue is irrelevant. No one is dead. All have become part of us. The many have merely become one. You will know this when you are a part of us, and we will know you, and you will become immortal with us.”

She started to protest, but then realized that, from the thing’s point of view, it probably was right. From its vantage point, it simply incorporated their minds and mass into its own, and this was the proper way of things. To her, the colonists were dead. To it, the colonists were all right there.

The base gave a shudder, then came a series of vibrations that shook the entire control room.

She thought for a moment that the alien was doing something, then she turned and looked at the scanning screen, amazed at her own composure at this point.

The smelter! Achmed was sliding the thing back into its grooves on the base unit and then locking it down. Next he’d be opening the hatch from up top. If they’d managed to ooze in through the air vents, then he’d get a sudden and dramatic welcoming committee!

She didn’t know much about the settings, but the small cameras showing the entire perimeter of the base, so useless in trying to find the suits, now showed the shuttle. It hadn’t docked as yet; Cross seemed wary, and was checking over the entire structure from stem to stern.

Suddenly a heavy bolt of energy shot out from the shuttle to a blind spot between two ground-level cameras and something jerked and then dropped into view on the ground itself under the base, writhing and smoking. A second expertly placed bolt caught the blue environmental suit full. It shimmered, glowed white, and for just a moment there was the sense of a human or humanoid body shape in the midst, then it winked out, leaving only white powder that was quickly picked up and dissipated by the wind.

Damn! Lucky had caught onto that one, but where were the other two? Their colors should really stand out if they were hovering in the blind spots, so obviously they weren’t. They also had clearly turned off and adjusted every element to be as invisible to sensors as possible. So where were they? Even if the creatures had gotten inside somehow, it was very unlikely that they could have brought their suits in with them without access to the controls in this room, and that she was going to deny them.

An alarm sounded behind her, and she turned, startled, to see the diagram on the main screen showing a complete dock and lockdown of the smelter unit and the opening of the topmost hatch. That meant Achmed was coming inside. If the things weren’t already here then he was safe, but if they’d somehow gotten in he wouldn’t last long at all.

Outside, Cross was laying down a weak fire field around the entire base unit and under it as well. That was what was causing the slight vibration she felt now, and it puzzled her. As it reached a stronger level, though, two suits popped out from under the base in one of those spots a scanning camera would leave blind for a few minutes, and she realized that they’d somehow dug a shallow pit in that time and covered themselves with the fine dust. Cross saw them, too, and came around near ground level and sprayed them with a series of bolts just strong enough to blow the suits but not strong enough to threaten the ground on which the base stood nor the base itself.

“Still there? How do you like it now?” she asked the thing.

There was no reply, but she wished she had better control of the cameras and a better understanding of the master board now. She needed a closeup on those two suits, or at least a second look, for she’d sworn that one of them, at least, had its helmet blown clear off and that there was nothing in it.

Cross angled a burn on the side and Queson realized that one of the things, now in its flowing, plastic state, was crawling up the side of the base. From being open to exposure of the hostile elements, the thing suddenly found it very hot as Lucky Cross fried it with a heat ray, the safest powerful weapon she could use directly against the side of the base. An outer skin designed for atmospheric entry would not find even a full-power heat ray much of a jolt, but anything open and exposed on the skin would find it a different story.

Still, was that the one from the empty suit or from the other one?

Damn! she swore to herself in frustration at the lack of communications. These things could split. Who said one had to be the size of a person? There could be one sitting right there on the shuttle dock airlock or even inside via the air vents and if they zap a third creature out there they won’t know it. They’ll feel safe to come in. Hell, if it was already inside it would already be Achmed, and would know everything about internal operations anyway.

Damn it! How was she going to know if it was safe?

“I’m gonna turn back to the old channel now,” Cross’s voice came out of nowhere. “They ain’t got no fuckin’ radios any more, not that would it useful. You okay in there, girl?”

“Sort of,” Randi responded. “Trouble is, that thing did a nice imitation of An Li that almost had me fooled, so I don’t know who or what I’m talking to now.”

“Good point. Look, check this first. Is there any way, did you give it any way, to get inside other than through the air ducts?”

“No. Haven’t touched a thing, I’m sealed in here.”

“Okay, if you check you’ll see that any breach of the air filtration would cause a major alarm. Did that alarm go off? It shoulda been loud, and even if it somehow got silenced, it should have lit up on the board in there.”

She hadn’t thought of that. “No, no alarms. But you should know that,” she added suspiciously. Cross had duplicate controls in the cabin of the shuttle.

“True, but you never can trust nothin’ anymore, can you? Look, I haven’t docked yet, so if this is me on the squawker then it’s the real me, right?”

“Yeah, okay.”

“Put your palm on the plate and then instruct Emergency Gamma Two. The computer will do the rest.”

She looked over, put her hand on the flat identification plate, and said, “Emergency Gamma Two.”

“Switching to alternate emergency frequency, encryption level maximum,” the computer responded.

“There. Still hear me?” Cross asked her.

“Yes.”

“Welcome to the club. Sorry we had to leave you in the dark, but we just couldn’t risk giving anything away and we wanted the fuckers to surface.”

“You shouldn’t have left me like this!” she almost shouted, feeling on the edge of breaking. And it wasn’t over yet.

“Can’t do much about the desertion. Didn’t figure on this going so far,” Cross told her. “Who’d have thought the sons of bitches would be putting on and using fully charged e-suits? And that big bastard, it’s tryin’ to figure out how to undermine our safe plateau, there, and we may have just accidentally given it the general idea. If it doesn’t take us easy, then them colonists had to have some pretty powerful machinery to carve out that base from the cliff in the first place, let alone move and construct that base. If we can melt this cliffside, then it can surely figure a way to cut through the solid rock holdin’ the base up. Just like us, though, it’ll take a lot of time to get that stuff powered up and over to where it can do much good. That means keepin’ us here as long as possible. Hang on.”

Queson could see the main board suddenly come alive. Cross was running some kind of diagnostic, including one on the smelter.

“Sweet Jesus! That goop’s ’bout coverin’ the damned thing! Son of a bitch!” Cross swore. “Lemme fry what I can!”

Nothing at all that seemed out of the ordinary was showing on the internal cameras, but on the schematic on the main screen there were hundreds of low-level fuzzy blotches. As Cross opened up on them, the cameras showed thin layers of the living alien protoplasm or whatever it was peeling off like dead skin and dropping, smoking, to the ground below. Some of it was trying to get away, to flee the wide beam, but if there was any more of the stuff on the thing then it was out of direct reach of the heat beam.

“Shoulda thought of that earlier. Jerry came up with it just now,” Cross told her. “Damned thing would have enough residual heat that it would provide a rough and uncomfortable but potentially life-preserving ride. Spread itself so thin and with such consistency that you couldn’t even tell it was there on visual!”

“Does that mean that Achmed—?”

“That’s the big question, ain’t it? Depends on whether he kept everything totally buttoned up and nothin’ came loose. The thing isn’t pressurized and uses basic air exchange unless it’s outfitted for an alien mix, but it’s tight because of the insulation.”

“And all that means?”

“It means it beats the hell out of us.”

Yeah, thanks. Back to square one. “There’s no quiz you can give it now that it can’t pass if it did get him,” she pointed out. “We could have him go back out, but he could leave just a small part of himself behind if he’s now part of it and it wouldn’t do any good.”

“Seeing him would tell us what else we have to deal with,” Jerry Nagel put in, taking one of the comm links. “They don’t seem to have the ability to assume the color and texture of real people, at least not yet.” He thought for a moment. “Listen, do you have an e-suit in there?”

“No. Not that I know of. You know where we have ours.”

“Yeah, yeah, but hope springs eternal. I thought you might have put one on before you built your little fortress. That’s bad. We can’t get to you without coming inside, and we can’t do anything drastic in there without making it maybe impossible for you to ever get out. Hmmm… This is going to take some thinking.”

“Try not leaving me alone next time!” she shot back, anger almost edging out fear.

“Sorry, doll. Had to be there to see if the problem was getting solved. Next time you and Sark can cuddle.”

“Fuck you, Nagel. Just get me out of here!”

“Just tell the computer to show you the forward view, under, shuttle and watch. Lucky’s just told Achmed to come back up into the bubble on the other secure frequency, the one we were using.”

“Shuttle, forward, under, on main screen,” she instructed, and the schematic changed to the view forward of the shuttle craft, which was nearly stationary and hovering just above the smelter blister.

Achmed did not appear to be there.

She could hear Cross in the background talking to Achmed and insisting on a security check, and Achmed’s familiar grumbling, accent and all, and protest that he was in the shit can, but Cross wasn’t in the mood to be patient for long. She gave him two minutes to get his ass back up in the control chair inside the blister.

“Jerry, what if he doesn’t do it?” Randi asked, worried. “Right now some kind of thinking goo might be running around looking for a way into this place. If it finds a way, I’m toast.”

“Or worm, anyway,” he responded, trying to keep the tone light although she could hear his concern. “Hang on. We’re not gonna let them get you.”

There was a pause, and then somebody else on the shuttle, probably Sark, said something. Queson looked at the screen and saw a figure emerging partway into the hatch leading up into the blister atop the smelter and waving. It looked like Achmed, but it was only a face, shoulders, and one arm, and then it was gone back in just as quickly.

“Achmed! Get your fat ass back in there now!” she heard Cross roar through Jerry’s headset. At the same time, the appearance was replayed on the monitor and the image of Achmed increasingly blown up.

“Jerry! The face!” she almost shouted.

“I see it. Looks like a death mask.”

Which, in a way, it was. Clearly trying to improvise on the fly with whatever was at hand, the thing that had consumed Achmed, probably inside the smelter as it either hovered or traveled back, had tried putting some kind of powder or light brown grease on the face to make it look human. It probably knew that the ruse was unlikely to work, but there hadn’t been much time and it was better than nothing.

“Okay, so it’s got Achmed and it’s inside,” Nagel sighed. “Close everything up tight, Doc, including going entirely on internal air. Sit tight. I don’t know any other way of handling this.”

“What are you going to do? My god, Jerry! I don’t dare ever to crack that door and you don’t, either! You’re going to have to leave the base, and me, here and get the hell out! You saw the way it hid as a thin coat on the smelter! I’d be paranoid to even pick up anything in the place!”

“Sit tight, sit tight and just relax,” Nagel responded soothingly. “This thing may be a smart and supernasty organism, but at the bottom, the least common denominator, it’s just an infestation problem, and those we’ve got policies for. It’s not going to tolerate extremes because no matter how fluid it is, it’s carbon-based and organic just like us. It doesn’t like wind and it doesn’t like extreme cold and somehow, I suspect, it breathes in something. Even cockroaches, who can withstand what would be lethal radiation for other creatures, breathe and have their limits. Critters come with crew and pressurized container cargo. They don’t ride on the outside of spaceships. At least, from what we’ve seen, this one won’t. I admit I wish you had a suit in there with you, but you ought to be able to manage if you’re totally sealed, totally on recirculating air, and just sit tight and let us do the driving.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Infestation handling 101,” he responded. “Standard by-the-book procedure. You forget, and it can’t do anything about, the fact that we have the master controls for just about everything right here. Stand by and strap in. We’re sealing out suits here, and then we’re going to dock and take control. I’m just more than a little fed up with this alien bastard.”

The shuttle pivoted, then slowly glided over the top of the base unit until it reached the depression that was its dock and integration spot with the base unit. Just as it came in to land, Cross gave a wide heat burst that covered the entire dock area. Stuff started curling up and burning under it, and more began to ooze away from the landing area.

Damn! That thing had covered half the base exterior!

Not exactly, but it had managed to hide in that part that was out of the wind, showing that it could withstand at least the daytime temperature. Now, though, it backed away, shocked by the unanticipated fire and also knowing that it only had to wait. When the shuttle docked, it would be right there on top of it, looking for a way in.

It wouldn’t find it. Cross had activated the spacefaring mode; that thing was sealed very tight indeed.

As soon as the docking occurred, Queson saw all the lights and controls in her lower room flash and then things began to move of their own accord. Displays that were incomprehensible showed up on the screens, and the schematic was back on the main one, doing a full diagnostic.

“Doc? You strapped in that chair?” Nagel asked.

“Yeah, Jerry. Good as I can.”

“Then sit back and assume launch position. We’re going to go to orbit. Sit tight and trust me on this one.”

The whole base shuddered, then came to a kind of life of its own. She could feel soft vibration, and a few storage areas and loose items began to jiggle and rattle.

“Lucky? You got control?

“Yeah! There were a few spots it was workin’ on, but the son of a bitch can’t get around the failsafes. Going up, count of ten… nine… eight… seven… six… five… four… three… two… one… Now!”

One of the smaller screens showed the view from the underside of the base. Now as the vibration rose to maximum and a few things in the control room started bouncing around, the base unit lifted up from the plateau and rose steadily if with agonizing slowness into the air.

Cross rotated the combined craft and much of the exterior coating of the creature was suddenly full into the wind. It peeled off and dropped to the ground with amazing speed.

Now the whole plateau was visible, and both Queson in the main unit and the trio in the shuttle gasped as they saw how much of the region around the hard, flat rock had been undermined with what looked like water-filled tubes or punctures. That thing had been preparing to engulf the whole damned base if need be! That would mean… Just how huge was the main body of that thing?

Now it was all a speck, and then even the plateau, the base, and all fine detail merged into the usual high-altitude view and then was completely obscured by the clouds.

The sky turned increasingly dark, and within another couple of minutes they were a hundred or more kilometers above the deceptively peaceful-looking world below.

It was unlikely that any of the goop, exposed to the vacuum and extreme cold of space, could have survived anywhere on the exposed surface of the unit, and there was nowhere it could hide from those extremes. Inside, though, was a different story. Inside, what had been formed from the ingestion of Achmed was as warm and comfortable as she was in the sealed control room. She wondered, though, how it liked being weightless. Such a fluid creature would find it most unpleasant, she suspected, unless it was pretty well concentrated in one anchored spot.

Cross put them in a parking orbit well away from the Stanley, perhaps only halfway to the main ship, and turned to that problem next.

“Okay, Doc, relax and don’t get nervous about what you hear or feel,” Nagel told her. “We’re gonna find out just how well insulated the backup control room really is from the rest of the ship.”

“You mean there’s some doubt?”

He tried to laugh off the comment but knew he needed some amplification. “Not between it and the rest of the base, no, any more than there’s any doubt that we’re well insulated here. If not, we’d be dead here in one fashion and you’d be dead in the other.”

“How can you be sure I’m not? That this is really me?” she asked him, irritated by his tone.

He paused a moment, then said, “Because there’s no privacy once we’re docked. Period. We can see you, even do an analysis of your composition, just as we can with what remains of poor Achmed. It’s just that what we’re gonna do may test the mechanical integrity of these systems and, well…”

She finally understood what he was trying not to say. “The blister should have been totally insulated from the outside, too,” she managed. “It shouldn’t have been able to get in to get him.”

He sighed. “Um, yeah. Somebody’s been skimping on the maintenance bill.”

“Well, what about the maintenance here?”

“Don’t worry so much about that. If it could have gotten in it would have by now. Just hang tight.”

Alarms started going off all over the board. “What are you doing?” she almost shrieked at him.

“Just hold on! Busy right now! Just stop up your ears if it’s too noisy!”

The computer’s voice now came from the control panel itself. “Passwords approved. Decompressing main quarters unit.”

Now she understood. Lucky had commanded the immediate decompression of the whole base unit except for those with their own separate systems. It was the emergency decontamination he’d talked about, the one that was supposed to even kill the roaches and the rats.

“Ooooeeee!” Cross exclaimed, looking at a view Randi couldn’t share. “Lookit how the goddam things explode! Sounds like fireworks!”

“Sounds like bacon frying, but I’ll take it,” Nagel responded. “Pressure down to ten percent… five… that’s the last. We’ve got a vacuum inside. It’ll ice down pretty quickly. How long you want to keep this going?”

“The hell with the icing! Half the shit that means anything to me is ruined anyway!” Cross responded. “I want every little bit of that thing dead, dead, dead!”

Nagel thought of Randi. “How you doin’, Doc? Still warm?”

“So far, yes,” she told him.

“Good. The only place any of that goop is likely to find any chance of survival is against the inner wall of your unit. That’s why I wish you had a suit. As it is, we’re gonna have to risk bringing you one. Shouldn’t be a problem if I’m fully suited up— remember, it couldn’t get those last folks in the colony, or at least by the time it got to them it didn’t bother, and whatever’s left, if anything, in the base has got to be small bits, not something that can break or harm an e-suit. The problem’s not with me or Sark bringin’ you the suit, it’s you.”

“Huh? What?”

“Think of it, doll. We’re gonna have’ta use the emergency supplies to repressurize the interior or we’re gonna kill you when you open the door. Any environment safe enough to risk you in is an environment safe enough for any bits of that thing that are left to survive in as well. That’s not to say that there’s any of it left—I don’t think Achmed knew enough about the engineering behind the base quarters to do anything, and this thing’s not space savvy, but a risk’s a risk. You understand that?”

She let out a deep breath. “Yeah. So either I get safely into a suit and out of here or I get absorbed or liquefied or whatever and you burn me.”

“That’s about the size of it. I’ll be coming through with a torch. Sark and I will cover each other’s back. There’s no airlock to use into the base command center, so there’s no easy way to do this. You ready?”

“No, but if we don’t do this I’m never going to get out of here.”

“Not to mention the captain won’t allow us to dock with the Stanley. Okay, we’ll start repressurization in, oh, ten minutes, just to give Lucky’s paranoia a chance to get going. Then we’re coming down through the airlock from here. It’s still gonna be pretty damned cold, but it’ll only be for a few seconds if we’re lucky, and it won’t be absolute zero, anyway. You stand by and wait for instructions, but when I want you to act, you have to act, and fast. Still, we’re gonna take your pressure down during this period so breathe easy but don’t move around a lot. If anything of this thing’s left, the cold and low pressure might just make it slow and sick.”

“I’m ready,” she told him, but she wondered if she really was. Maybe it hadn’t been so smart to actually speak to that thing. Was this really Jerry? Was everything true or not? They were up there; she could see them, but she couldn’t see inside the very place where she was. Could this thing somehow anticipate and survive what had been done if it was as she’d heard? Even if Jerry and Sark came down, might they be taken on the way? How fast did it take to absorb a human and sort and classify and make use of his memories? There had been an awful lot of people in that colony, and they hadn’t had a prayer.

But she couldn’t stay here forever, either. The captain and An Li would rather they all died than not recover this huge and complex unit, but they were not about to let it dock with the Stanley nor anybody else to board, either, unless they were sure it was safe. To be sure, she’d have to be out of there.

She had to risk it. She knew that. And if some of that thing got to her, then Jerry or Sark would just have to take her out completely as quickly as possible.

“Stand by,” Jerry Nagel told her. “We’re repressurizing to a three-kilometer height, which is what we have you down to. Breathing all right?”

“It’s a little hard, but it’s tough to say if it’s the pressure or my nerves.”

“Good girl. We’re almost to you. Okay, we’re repressurizing the airlock to shuttle norm. All seals on the suits check out. Opening the hatch.”

There was a sudden terrible sound like a great wind, then a thump.

“Jerry? What was that?”

“Relax. We opened the hatch and Sark let a blast loose in there to take care of any surprises, even though there shouldn’t have been any. We’re okay now, let’s see if we did anything.”

He opened the airlock hatch full now and stepped inside. She could hear him and Sark breathing.

“Looks good. No sign of goop. A little ash where we burned the area before docking, nothing serious. Okay, closing lock, depressurizing to three klicks. Lights on full inside. Jeez! I feel like I’m breaking into my own house here! Ooookay… Guns charged, opening inner lock on green now.”

There was the sound of heavier double breathing, then Sark said, “Inner hatch closed and sealed, pressure back to normal inside. Nothing’s getting outta here through there unless it’s with us. Jeez! What a mess! Home Sweet Fridge!”

“Nothing useful in the lounge,” Jerry noted. “Want to burn it?”

“Maybe. If anything’s alive it’s gonna be against that bulkhead, though, or along the ceiling seams. I’ll settle for that.”

There was the same whooshing sound, longer this time, and then it cut off as Nagel yelled “Hold it! Hold it! We don’t want to start a fire! The cure would be worse than the disease at this temperature!”

“Doc, you still with us?” Sark called.

“Yes, I’m here. Let me get up and get to the— ungh! Suddenly I can’t move! I—oh, shit! Forget it.”

“What’s the matter, Randi?” Jerry Nagel called, uncharacteristically using her first name.

“I’m embarrassed. I had myself strapped in, right? Forgot to remove all the straps. Felt like somebody was pinning me down!”

“Just relax. Go up to the door panel. If you press the control on the right of the identipad you’ll be able to see through the door somewhat and that should give you a look at us. Don’t mind the look of the place, though. It’s a real mess.”

I never knew you could do that with this door, she thought to herself, but she tried it and discovered that he was right. So long as you kept your palm on the plate for more than ten seconds, a kind of see-through window opened in the door. Clever, and useful for the kinds of emergencies this room was really designed for.

She gasped when she saw the outer room, even though she’d been warned about it and even though the view “through” the door was less than ideal. The room had been a common meeting place, a place to relax, to plan, to just joke around. Kind of a living room for this communal base unit, really. Now it was all discolored, much of the furniture and wall decorations were oddly misshapen, and half the lights were either out or cocked at odd angles. Debris was all over the floor from the rapid decompression, and some very solid things had shattered from the cold.

She saw the two figures in the room, completely suited up. One was holding a heat rifle at the ready, the other had a similar weapon on its belt but was now fumbling with a standard e-suit.

“Got this one from the shuttle spares, so it should be okay,” Jerry told her. “Now comes the hard part. I’m coming right up to the door now, and I’ll turn on my internal light so you can see I’m not made of gelatin.” He came straight to the door, the light went on, and she was very relieved to see the old familiar face. Just to emphasize who was what, Jerry Nagel winked and stuck his tongue out at her.

“Satisfied?” he asked her.

“Yeah, okay, if it’s not you we’re all lost anyway. Now what?”

“This gets tricky. To unlock and unseal the door you’re going to have to do it manually and with the full palm authorization. The thing is, while we’ve got equalized pressure in here now with you, it’s still about forty below, and I’m not about to turn the heat on. The only way we can do this is for you to open the door, then get back and away from it as quickly as you can. It’ll still give you a real cold blast. I’ll toss in the suit and close the door again from this side. Turn on the suit’s internal heater from the outside and wait until you have something that won’t freeze at the touch, then get suited up fast, full seals—set it for ‘vacuum’ even though we’ve got air here—and make sure all the systems work. We’ll cover your exit here. Lucky’s gonna take this back down to a vacuum as soon as we’re all set, and that should do it. Then we go back up and ride the shuttle section in to Mother. Got that?”

“Yeah, I think so. Palm on, got a green, now I’m punching in the security code.”

There was a hiss as the very tight vacuum seal on the door let loose and pressure equalized.

“Okay,” she said, “Turning the latch now, then getting back!”

She turned the big security latch and could feel the cold creeping in even before the door opened. There was a frigid blast, and then the suit was tossed in and the door reclosed. She felt suddenly like she was trapped in a refrigerator, although the safety systems in the command and control center popped on blowing warm air back in.

She pulled the latch back down, worried that she might stick to it in the cold and relieved when she didn’t, even though her hand felt slightly frostbitten from just that little touch. Now she examined the suit, reached in, powered it up and turned on the internal heating. It wouldn’t be warm until she sealed it up with her inside, but it wouldn’t freeze her toes off, either.

For a moment she got the paranoia back. What if some of that stuff had gotten into the suit? When she got in and sealed it… But, no, she couldn’t think that way. If she did, she’d never get out of here.

Put it on, put it on, seal it up, check all systems… God it’s cold! Verify power and working heat, then verify she was at vacuum setting. She heard the seals go tight, knew she was now in a smaller biosphere but as isolated from the outside as anything in the C and C. It was starting to heat up, and the internal readings said she should be comfortable, but she just kept feeling the cold.

There was no longer a secure seal on the door, so she went over, unlatched it, and opened it. Jerry turned his helmet light back on and smiled, and she did the same so he could see that nothing had crept in at the last minute. They both turned and looked at Sark.

“You, too, Sark. Lights on,” Nagel told him. “This is nightmare city right now.”

Sark grumbled but turned on his internal light. Unless the thing had learned more nasty tricks, it was Sark, looking nervous and pissed.

“Okay, Lucky, decompress the unit, and, for good measure, we’ll do the C and C room now, too,” Nagel called to the pilot. “Just in case.”

“Got it, lover boy,” Cross responded. “Come on home to Big Sister and we’ll see if Mama will take in the prodigals…”