The Man-Kzin Wars 07

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

Bruno opened the outer airlock door of Dolittle.

"Carol," he whispered over the suit commlink.

"I'm here, lover." Her voice buzzed in his headset.

"I'm leaving the airlock now. You getting video?”

"Affirmative.”

Bruno clumsily lifted himself out of the airlock and locked down his magnetic boots on the dark hull of Dolittle. The riot of distant stars all around him shone down indifferently. This was deep space, with no friendly sun for light-years.

Over to one side, as large as the full Moon seen from faraway Earth, shone the glittering lights of the alien vessel.

Their own ship was a dark blur. He tongued his video amplifiers, repressed a gasp. The aliens thronged the hull of Dolittle, too many to count.

"Are you getting this?" he breathed.

"Yes," buzzed Carol's short reply.

The aliens stood perhaps a meter and a half in height. They looked like cat-o'-nine-tails bullwhips, overly thick handle down and whips flailing about like snakes. Each whip end unraveled in a fractal series of smaller tendrils, final fingerlets clearly adept at manipulation. The aliens wore ornate harnesses, studded with bulging pockets and metallic-looking triangular shapes. On a hunch, he tongued his helmet visuals to infrared IR and saw that the metal triangles were nearly seventy degrees warmer than the whip-aliens themselves.

Heat exchangers, like the spidery constructions on the moon-ship. This was confirmed when one of the aliens landed on the hull of Dolittle twenty meters from Bruno, arms down, and the triangular shapes on its harness blazed under IR to shed the heat.

Under infrared, the aliens were much more than black ropy shapes. Delicate traceries of relative warmth pulsed beneath their cold skin, like some sort of circulatory system. Portions of their alien anatomies were clearly intended to remain much colder than others.

Bruno watched one of the aliens remove a complicated shape from a pocket and touch it to an open section of Dolittle's hull. The shape smoothly changed shape and extended a questing projection, like a living thing. It thrust into what Bruno realized was part of Dolittle's main sensory net. That alien's heat exchangers glowed. Other aliens continued to enlarge the open section under study, methodically taking the hull apart with strange tools. Other aliens ran snaky arms and odd objects over the disassembled parts.

"Carol," he whispered. "You still with me?" "Right." "Looks like they are studying our electronics. That must be what is shutting things down." "You think they mean to shut us down?" came Carol's voice, peppered with static, but still soft in his ears. "Doubtful. If they wanted to kill us, they would have quite a while ago. I just think they're curious." "So why aren't they paying attention to you?" Bruno didn't say anything in reply. Several more of the aliens came over the curving hull of Dolittle, moving quickly in a series of somersaults. They crowded around the alien who had tapped into the shipboard sensory net. Fascinated despite himself, Bruno watched IR patterns shift and change across their alien skin. Waving tendrils danced fluidly. Bursts of static hissed and crackled in his ears. Communications?

"Bruno!" Carol's voice was suddenly grim. "I'm here," he said, trying to sound calm. "Life support just failed. I'm getting into my suit now." Bruno swore, his voice loud in his own helmet. He had to try and stop the aliens before they – even by mistake – managed to kill both of them.

He unslung the electron-beam rifle from his shoulder, lifted it carefully, and checked its charge. The telltales glowed green: a full charge. Bruno flicked the safety off. "I don't know if you can hear me, and if you can, you probably don't understand me," he told the cluster of many-armed shapes who were busily peeling still more of Dolittle's hull away. "But you have to stop what you are doing." Bruno aimed just above the nearest alien shape. There was a crack of static in his headset as he stroked the trigger, and sent an invisible bolt of high-energy electrons over the tops of its waving tentacles.

The reaction was immediate. Alien shapes turned, tentacles weaving madly, and quickly began advancing on him. Bruno started backing toward the airlock. "Tacky?" Carol was back on line, hissing with interference. "I'm getting a lot of static, and have lost video. You reading me?”

"I have a problem, Carol. I shot over their… well, what I think are their heads, and they seem annoyed with me now.”

"Get back inside." "Aye-aye, Captain, my very thought." Bruno turned and swore again. Three of the weaving shapes crouched in front of the airlock. "I'm surrounded.”

"Shoot one." "I don't suppose surrender is an option." "It looks like they dismantle first, and ask questions later." Bruno took a deep breath, and aimed at one of the arms of an alien creature standing between him and the airlock. He didn't give himself time to think, and simply fired the electron-beam rifle.

Instantly, the entire alien blazed in infrared. It leaped up and away from Dolittle, vanishing into the starscape, apparently unhurt. "Bruno," Carol's voice hissed urgently. "You all right?" He started to reply, then noticed one of the aliens to his right aiming a black pointed object at him. A pale purplish bolt of light filled his vision, engulfing him. His suit went instantly dead, and his head seemed to explode. As the worst of the pain flash faded he realized that the electromagnetic soles of his boots had lost their grip on the hull of Dolittle. Miraculously his arm brushed against a handhold and he clutched convulsively. The airlock was just a few meters – Bruno was damned if he would let Carol die alone. Suddenly something held one his legs stationary. Then the other. Bruno pulled harder with his arms.

When he lifted one hand to switch his grip to a new handhold, something very strong looped around his wrist and held it fast. He wished that he could see, but the starlight was too dim without electronic enhancement.

How long had it been since his suit had failed? It was getting stuffy. Bruno felt something thin but very strong pry his fingers loose from his last handhold one by one, methodical and patient. He felt himself being lifted free from Dolittle, suspended and held by dozens of whiplike alien arms.

He wished that he could have said good-bye to Carol.

Bruno waited for the aliens to pull his suit neatly apart as they had started to do to Dolittle. He started yawning uncontrollably in the darkness. CO2 overload… Just as he passed out, he felt tiny fingers of singing fire burn their way through the interface socket in his neck into his dying brain. No strength, not even to scream his despair.