Thirteen - Fast Out, Fast In
He stared disconsolately at thefew strands of tobacco in his pouch, the bedraggled papers, andwished he had searched the pockets of the Topican crewman beforesending them to a unique cremation.
A light flashed on a console. Heexamined it closer. It was a distress signal.
‘Oh,’ said Byron.
Hurriedly, the engineer returnedto Sally...
‘Go away,’ she told him.
He shook her.‘Listen...I've a plan.’ Her eyes opened, shot and bleary, butaware.
‘I don't wantto hear -get me a drink.’
‘There's no water, onlyice-cream.’
‘How?’
‘No power,justrefrigeration.’?
Sal managed tofocus her eyes in the torchlight. ‘What are?you talking about, Byron?’?‘
‘The - forgetit.’
*
Lumping Jack Morgan took off forthe weekend in his guppy. It was raining in Sarpendon.
It wasfeckless, he couldn't afford the fuel, but Frozen Hound wanted totalk...and visit some relatives on Triton...who went a bundle forpot-plants and cheeses.
He knew a shortcut, also.
And what they lacked in money theymore than made up for in hospitality: of a variety Morgan hadn't comeacross before, of knowledge and virtuosity.
The dog, a she, grew in proportionto his newfound adroitness, shedding her rimy fur.
*
The engineer finally got Sal intothe suit, her reluctance verbal as well as physical. His plan wassimple. Whether or not it would work was open to question.
‘Stay close,’ he instructed.‘Move when I move, okay?’
The co-pilotscowled, features partly obscured behind the dirty visor. Shewondered where Luke was, her sister. Tensed and untensed her depletedmuscles in preparation...
Byron extinguished the torch. Adeep rumble oscillated through the hull. They were somewhere belowthe main tank and she felt like Atlas with the world on hershoulders. The noise echoed, died, rose again. The canned air shebreathed tasted of garlic and tomatoes. Friendly moved and sheresponded.
He carried a switch taped to histhumb and tuned to the array of instruments on the cabin table. Theconfidence he showed in its primitiveness was juvenile, almostludicrous, yet Sally appreciated the thinking behind its one-offdesign. He planned to depressurize the engine, give those nowarriving, drawn by their comrades signal, an uncomfortable surprise.She just hoped they were few, and careless.
The two of them meandered,followed a grimy walkway, outstretched hands palming the unseenwalls. Sal found if she closed her eyes she could imagine the passagea street, houses lining its pleasant bustle, automobiles, women withprams, lamp-posts, kids on bikes leaping over concrete curbs, drainsclanking under rubber. Byron was her guide-dog, for she was blind, anold lady whose joints swivelled like ratchets, corroded by time.
She hadn'trealized he'd stopped and bumped into him. Opening her eyes Saldiscovered varicoloured lights, dancing motes in the blackness.
Byron touched his helmet to hers.‘They're cutting their way in,’ he said.
The lights grewin vividness. They lodged behind a duct, its vaguely glinting outlinereminiscent of a moonscape, some childhood image just now leakingfrom Sally's tired brain. Memories flooded back, filled thelong-vacated niches of her once innocent mind. She saw Kate flying ahelium balloon, their parents' warm faces - for the last time, theshort trip across the Mare to end, for Emily and Lloyd, in disaster.She'd laid flowers on their grave, the Sea of Tranquillity a suitableresting place. Her sister had refused to go, refused to believe,refused...
Always looking for a way out, thatwas Kate. A stealer of birthday cards, party dresses and makeup.
The light fashioned into a square,its own after-impression, blue and purple and green, fading to bloodand cobalt, a mass of warped sapphires.
Had he pressed the switch? Shecouldn't make out his face, see his hands.
She held her breath; nothing washappening. Sally poked him with her foot, enjoying the sensation.
Byron shiftedhis weight, leaning more heavily against her, forcing her full ofpain, squashing, crushing. Then it was as if her mind surfaced, andthe world, the limited world, the world of pulsing agony, wasdismantled, vomiting chaos.
Heads sailed past, and torsos,limbs, metal appendages and giant, curled fingers, each severalmetres long, black as the space around them, visible to Sal via theirpreternatural luminescence. Planets, moons affixed themselves, grewlike warts, glowing solely for her benefit, reinvented hues...presentin her estranged psyche...cute and pretty, a reality quenched byeerie daylight.
Suns, stars.
‘What?’
‘I asked how you were feeling,’said Byron, hovering over Sal, smoking.
‘Can I go outside?’
He laughed. ‘There is nooutside.’
‘That can't be!’ She feltcheated. The blue clouds about the engineer concealed his proximity.
‘I'm sorry,’ he intoned. ‘ButI can get you that drink now.’
‘I'm not thirsty.’ Sal wascrying.
Byron looked puzzled. ‘I had tocarry you, I was worried.’
Sally thought about this a while,then said, ‘It matched my eyes.’
His puzzlement magnified.
‘The dress,’ she said. ‘Katetore it...’
‘Yeah?’
‘Don't make fun of me!’
‘I'm not trying - Do you knowwhere we are?’
She pouted. ‘I saw the sun.’
‘No, no sun, not in here.’ Hedrew on the cigarette. ‘Maybe the lasers. I think one exploded.’
She recalled the street vision,the scenes of domestic life from an earlier century. It had fallenapart, invaded her, and fled. ‘It all happened so fast,’ sheventured.
He offered her a cup of water. Shedrank.
‘Right,’ Byron agreed. ‘AfterI blew the hatches...’
But she wasn't listening. He'dripped the interior out of the Topican craft, she knew, nearly killedthem both, made sure of their latest visitors. And Abdul.
Fast...out and in, and they wereflying...where? She dreamed a multitude of answers.
The engineer provided others. ‘Ifyou're ever in the market for a second-hand ship, make sure it isn'tTopican,’ he said eagerly, sucking burnt digits.
‘Doesn't their planet have adenser than average atmosphere?’ Sal was beginning to comprehend,stuff he took for granted, the surety, for example, that the smallervessel would spew its guts so dramatically.
‘Correct. The ground-pressure onTopica's about a fifth again that of Upfront or Earth.’
‘Which contributed to thesuction.’ She was nodding.
‘Aha...’ His expression wasuneasy, like he didn't wish to complicate things, explain more fully.
‘And they employ field-locks?’
‘Hm.’ He sounded pleased withhimself. ‘They have their virtues over conventional systems,but...’
The shrug was comical. Shegiggled.
‘It's fortunate for us theydisdain engineers,’ Byron went on. ‘I mean: look at this!’
She glanced around, picked shapes(heads and fingers) from the dim illumination, its source a quartetof yawning panels, frothing wires, metal and optic.
‘Everything's automatic,’ hesaid jeeringly, contemptible of what he saw as a lack of humantranscendence, the art of man in contrast to the rigidity of machine.‘The air's what was left in our tanks plus whatever I couldscavenge, and there's water from a condenser.’
Sally was further appreciative ofhis forward planning. But how much was chance? she wondered. Raisingher legs the co-pilot became conscious for the first time of thelessened gee...
‘Where?’
‘Fury,’ he repeated. ‘It'sa...orbital station.’
‘Belonging to whom?’
‘Us, hopefully.’
‘You mean Upfront?’
‘Yes.’
‘Won't they open fire, Byron? Ordidn't it occur to you?’
‘Of course; but there's anescape-capsule.’
‘Built for two...’
‘Eh?’
‘It's a song,’ she said.Couldn't he stop talking? If he was scared, and he ought to be, whydidn't he bite his nails like ordinary people?
Her own were stumps. Brittle.
‘It's that or suffocate,’ heargued. ‘We're limping as it is - they'll see that.’
Sal's neck hurt. Whatever, shethought, as long as she didn't have to clamber back inside thebuckled suit...
Fast...in andout, andthey were flying...where? She dreamed a multitude of answers.
The engineer provided others.‘I've changed my mind, about the Topican spacecraft...’ He fadedaway.
Sally jerked, claustrophobic,sweating, drowning, dazed and giddy in freefall. The world had ceasedto mean anything; they, Byron Friendly and herself, were travellingbackward toward a halo of orange-green.
The seals on her helmet popped,releasing her.
‘How do you feel, Sal?’ Byronasked. The halo sprang from his torch, reflected off a low ceiling.
‘I.. .’ she began.
‘You fainted,’ he informedher. ‘I had to carry you. I was worried.’
‘Didn't we?’ It was blurred.‘The decompression...’
‘Stalled,’ he said.
Sal rubbed his brow, a spaceenlarged, no longer bordered by hair.
Friendly grunted.
Sally mumbled, and he leanedforward to hear. ‘I thought we'd got out...I was frightened, andyou were...’
He pressed his hand over her drylips. The expression on his face was one of pity, albeit a pityhardened by circumstance, its weight of sorrow thus diminished.
‘You keep slipping away,’Friendly admonished. ‘Try and stay awake; at least till I come upwith something.’
She was glad his confidence wasauthentic. She hadn't dreamed that; or her many aches.
But she was losing.
‘Fight,’ he instructed. ‘Don'tgive in.’
‘It's crazy! What's happening?’Her throat was constricted, moistureless, the fallacy of drinkinginsufficient. She felt close to hysteria.
‘They'recutting through one of the lower portside locks,’ he said. ‘Imoved us out of the immediate vicinity. It was getting a littlewarm.’ He rolled a scrawny cigarette, using the last of histobacco. ‘They've rigged some kind of bypass, so I can't blow thehatches. Anyway, it was only one chance in ten.’ The grin he woreappeared freakish.
‘Better than nothing,’ Salrasped. ‘What next?’
‘Wait and see.’
‘Bastard...’
Byron licked the paper and frownedat its crumpled tube, the ragged ends. ‘Maybe I'll quit, like you,’he goaded. ‘Eh, Droover, what do you say to that?’
‘Okay,’ she answered. ‘Okay,just keep your noxious emissions to yourself, Byron.’
He laughedself-mockingly at her double meaning and searched his ribbed,encapsulated person for matches. Not finding any made him mad.
And then the enginedepressurized...
Sally was back where she'dstarted, only this time it hurt more.
Byron leakedblood. He was spread out on the floor beside her, stripped andgleaming. There were shiny pins sticking from his chest, upper-armsand thighs. They seemed to be holding him together; but she doubtedthat was their intended purpose, more likely a coincidence. He lookedfunny. Her own body was pale, shadowy. It discoloured the white wallswith its tawdry echoes. The floor was soft and comfortable. Above,the ceiling was domed, opaque.
Despite thepain Sal felt better than she had for days - if they were days. Likedistance within the engine, everything was compressed: days asmetres, unguessable.
Butshe wasn't thirsty anymore. She was alive.