Racers of the Night: Science Fiction Stories by Brad R. Torgersen (30 page)

So I turned the music up loud.

And for a couple of hours Majack and I actually forgot about the captain and our bad dreams as we immersed ourselves in making ready to leave Titan. Many, many checklists to plow through. Here and there, adjustments to pieces of equipment. There was the comfort of familiarity—of practiced routine. Whatever the pyramid might be, the
Gossamer
was a human thing, made by human hands. Tangible and reassuring. I caught myself patting the bulkheads of the ship the way a man pats the side of a horse before he’s about to ride it.

My mood didn’t falter until it was time to load the alien samples. I reluctantly switched the music off. Figuring there was no way around an unpleasant chore, other than to just plow through it, I put on a coldsuit and went to work. I went out the auxiliary lock and up the main ramp, then in through the exterior door to the main lock.

All of the samples had frozen overnight. I carefully loaded them in bunches, into a small backpack. Then I took them up to the ascent module, using the exterior ladder. At the top, I placed them in cushioned bundles into their designated external cargo pod, per the captain’s instructions. The hunks of alien tissue looked particularly alien in the mustard-filtered light of Titan’s day. It occurred to me then that I’d not even thought to ask Bednar any further about her findings—I’d been so thoroughly gobsmacked by her hubris the evening before.

When I used my coldsuit’s tie-in to the descent module’s computer network—to access both Bednar’s brief to Mission Control and to check on the airlock camera footage from yesterday—I was confronted by an encryption challenge hanging in my FOV.

Bednar. She’d never locked me out of any prior communication with our bosses on Earth. Keeping secrets from the XO during a flight was a hanging offense.

I once again contemplated murder.

I went back to the airlock and began lugging the blood container up. It was heavy, and I was so angry and distracted I almost dropped it. I called for Majack’s help, so she suited up and came outside. Together we carefully carried the container up the side of the descent module, and over to the open cargo pod on the ascent module; where the alien samples were arranged neatly.

“Chief,” Majack said as we stowed the container, “wasn’t there more?”

“What do you mean?” I asked. The liquid in the container had become a solid block—black as tar.

“There’s not as much in here as there was when we brought it back from the pyramid.”

“Captain Bednar used up some of if during her examination yesterday.”

“I know, but did she use
that
much? I’d swear there’s at least a liter gone from what we took originally.”

I stared at the container: transparent walls revealing the sludgy brick of alien blood inside. We’d never taken an exact measurement of volume. Captain Bednar had been too eager to get the blood under her microscope. She’d ruined part of the extraction during the electrical test. Or so she’d told me in the medical bay.

I suddenly thought of the bandage on her arm.

“Chief?” Majack said, seeing my face blanch.

“Stay here,” I said. “I have to go check on something really fast.”

I double-handed my way down the exterior ladder from the ascent stage to the descent stage, and then again from the descent stage to the ground. I ran under the belly of the lander, over to the maintenance hatch for the descent stage’s waste tanks. Everything we threw out went into them: urine, feces, uneaten food, and trash. To include the used HAZMAT suit the captain had worn the day before.

I opened an access panel and tapped in the released code on the keypad. Then I stood back as the descent stage took a dump.

Literally.

The mess steamed furiously in Titan’s cryogenic atmosphere. I pawed through it until I found the HAZMAT suit. Pulling the suit free, I ran back out to the descent stage’s main ramp and spread the suit out on the ground. With my lamps dialed up to extra-bright, I examined the suit sleeve where Bednar had said she’d been burned. The soiled material had a gaping hole in it, like acid had eaten through the suit.

I stood up and slowly turned around.

Majack was perched way up on the descent stage, her helmet lamps aimed down at me. She saw me looking up at her, and waved once. I waved too. Then I wondered if we’d have the ascent module prepped in time to take off before Captain Bednar and Specialist Kendelsen returned.

• • •

Too late. The rover pulled up beside me, appearing almost from nothing.

“Problem with the sewage, Chief?”

Kendelsen’s voice, from where he sat at the wheel. He sounded okay, though I couldn’t see his face very well.

I pointed a soiled finger directly at Bednar, sitting beside Kendelsen.

“Why did you lie to me?” I said.

“Bed pardon?” the captain’s voice said coyly.

“Your electrified alien blood sample. It didn’t just burn you. It dissolved its way straight through the arm of the HAZMAT suit. Why did you lie about being exposed? Who knows what kind of infection has resulted. And you covered it up! It’s possible we’ve
all
been exposed, through you. We might never be able to go back to Earth now.”

“What?!” Majack said sharply.

“Calm down, Chief,” Bednar said, stepping out of the rover. “I didn’t want to needlessly upset anybody last night. There was no xenobiological contagion in the alien blood. Not even a single virus, nor microbe. The nanomachines see to that. Best inoculation method ever invented. I think the nanomachines do a whole lot more too. Do you know how old the alien is, Chief?”

“No, because you
locked me out of your brief.
”

“Sorry about that. I should have guessed you’d be curious. Look, there’s a method to my madness. Really, there is. Let’s all go inside and I can explain it to you, okay? It’s probably better if you know my real angle at this point, because I need your help to finish my mission. I need
everyone’s
help.”

I looked at Kendelsen.

“It’s cool, Chief, I started asking her some of the same questions. She filled me in while we closed up shop inside the pyramid. She’s right. It will all make sense.”

I didn’t move. Though I could hear Majack huffing and puffing in my ears as she made her way down the ladder to the ground.

“Care to give me the short version?” I demanded.

“Not here, no,” Bednar said. “Come on. Inside.”

Majack rushed up to stand next to me.

I looked at Majack, then I looked at the descent module. It had been our only way down, and the attached ascent module was our only way up. There was literally nowhere else for any of us to go. Titan was a lifeless desert. Once our coldsuits’ batteries ran out, we’d die of hypothermia or suffocation. Whichever came first. I remembered my intent to contact the crew still aboard the return module—to enlist them as allies.

No better time than the present. I crossed my arms, being careful to rest an index finger on the button on my forearm control board that toggled communications. A couple of taps and I got the little tone in my ears telling me I’d linked suit-to-ship, via the descent module’s tie-in with the
Gossamer’s
return module. Then I tapped once more for closed circuit.

“This is Chief Fulton to Pilot Jibbley and Engineer Gaines, do you copy this?”

Nothing.

“Chief Fulton to
Gossamer
return module, over.”

A little blinking red light in my FOV told me that while my wireless connection was solid the voice data packets were being lost at 100%.

I toggled back to group communication.

“Okay, captain. You’d better talk fast, and this had better be good.”

I reluctantly followed Captain Bednar up the ramp.

“Majack in first, then Kendelsen, than me, then you last,” the captain said. “You’re filthy, Chief. Run the airlock’s wash and sterilization cycle twice, please? So that you don’t track shit into the living and workspace.”

I grunted, but didn’t argue.

One by one we each cycled through the airlock.

When it was my turn, I did as I’d been told. I stepped into the outer compartment and waited while the exterior door shut and a little blue light began to blink on the control board for the middle hatch. Looking through the windows of the middle and interior doors I could see Bednar and Kendelsen staring at me, with Majack standing a little ways off, her eyes glued to the back of Bednar’s head. The three of them still had their coldsuits on, but their helmets were off.

The cycle began. Shower heads on the ceiling and walls burst with high-pressure jets of detergent-laced water—cranked up to boiling temperatures. I slowly did a 720 while the jets blasted me so hard it felt like tens of small fists rapidly pummeling the exterior of the coldsuit. Then came the equally-violent and equally-hot rinse, followed by a pressure drop down to pure vacuum.

The water on the suit boiled and sizzled until it had evaporated completely. I reached over and tapped the inside control that would begin the process all over again. When that was finished, the middle door opened and I walked through, letting it close behind me. Tapping the interior door control, I waited for the interior compartment to pressurize off the atmosphere on the other side. The light would change from red, to orange, to yellow, and then to green when it was safe to proceed through.

Only this time the light stayed red. I checked my suit’s own pressure gauge and it showed vacuum.

“Somebody want to check the system on your side?” I said.

Majack’s helmet may have been off, but she caught my drift as I pantomimed the nature of the problem. When she stepped up to the interior door to begin pressing controls, Kendelsen suddenly seized Majack’s arms and pinned them behind her. Majack’s mouth opened in a noiseless scream.

I rushed to the interior door and began beating on the window with my fists. It was meteor-resistant laminate glass. Not even a machine gun could have gotten through. But I pounded anyway.

Then I dropped my arms and backed away, horrified by what I saw happening on the other side. Kendelsen’s face was slack. Emotionless. He held Majack tightly as she squirmed and bucked in his grasp, trying to get away. Majack’s mouth was wide as she kept screaming, tears of rage and fear flowing down her face.

Bednar faced Majack. The captain’s face was also slack and emotionless.

Bednar leaned in, as if to kiss Majack. The captain’s mouth opened wide. Inhumanly wide. Her jaw should have broken. A writhing, thick, hose-like tongue shot out of Bednar’s mouth. It plunged into Majack’s mouth before she could close it, and Majack’s eyes suddenly went wide as saucers.

Majack began to convulse.

Bednar’s expression was like that of a sleepwalker: empty and without conscious recognition. Her disgusting, hideous tongue appeared to move almost of its own accord.

Majack’s convulsions lasted a bit longer, her eyes darting from Bednar’s face, to mine through the window in the door, and then back to Bednar. Then they rolled up in Majack’s head and Kendelsen released her.

Majack stood motionless, the tongue’s length undulating obscenely as it probed more deeply into Majack’s body.

I’d have barfed if my helmet was off. As it was, I’d backed up against the middle door of the airlock and was slapping furiously at the control.

Whatever Bednar was now, she clearly wasn’t human. And neither was Kendelsen, I suspected. Nor probably Majack. Not anymore. Nor would I be for much longer if I didn’t find a way to claw through the middle and exterior airlock doors, and get the hell out of the descent module before they could restrain me.

The control to the middle door seemed dead.

Kendelsen pressed the communications button.

“It’s better if you don’t fight it, Chief. Believe me, I know. Very painful. But the captain is right. Once you understand, once you let her
explain
it to you, then it all makes perfect sense. A new day is coming, Chief. You can be part of it. Let us help you be part of …
us.
”

I’m pretty sure I told him to fuck himself six ways from Thursday, but was too panicked at that point to really keep track of what was flying through my mind versus what was flying out of my mouth.

With the airlock doors clearly overridden from inside, I was trapped like a rat.

What to do?

Bednar’s tongue slithered out of Majack’s mouth, which closed slowly. Majack continued to just stand there like a mannequin while Bednar and Kendelsen turned to look at me through the window of the interior door.

Blotches of grey seemed to swim across the whites of their eyes. Similar blotches had begun to swim across Majack’s. Then her eyes unrolled and she slowly turned to look at me. A thick trail of bloody spittle marred her chin. She walked haltingly forward two steps. Her face was slack and she stared at me unblinkingly.

She spoke. Her voice, yet not her at all:

“You will understand.”

Instantly I recalled my nightmare. The bulbous albino eyes of the alien as it crawled forward, its tongue raised and then horribly striking!

The light on the interior door control turned orange.

They were coming for me. All three of them.

I was a strong man. Kept up my military regimen. But there was no way I’d been able to fend off three grown adults. And once they had my helmet off …

I turned and began to viciously kick at the control for the middle door to the airlock.

“Stop,” Bednar’s voice said in my suit’s helmet.

I kept kicking. Sparks flew as the panel came apart.

The middle door lifted halfway, and I dove under it, rolling, before it closed again. When I got to the exterior door I found its control also frozen. Instead of kicking, I reached over to the handle with black and yellow caution striping painted across it. Pulling once, I blinked as explosive bolts along the rim of the hatch fired, sending smoke and flame briefly through the outer compartment.

Not even looking, I charged down the ramp.

The rover. The rover was all I had. I leapt into the driver’s seat and engaged the accelerator without bothering with the checklist. The frame of the rover complained via vibration through the seat of my coldsuit, but it began rolling as I wheeled it about and considered my options.