Bones Burnt Black: Serial Killer in Space (4 page)

Without bending at the waist, which would have altered
the jet’s aim, she reached down into the large pocket on the front of her left
thigh and once again pulled out the emergency patch-kit. She removed from it an
oversized hypodermic with a built-in pistol grip. The hypodermic was clear
plastic, seven inches long, and filled with a thick white fluid. Its nose was
not a sharp metallic needle designed for stabbing; it was a long tapering
plastic tube, rather like the business end of a common caulking gun, only
smaller and pointier.

She waited; then checked her suit’s clock again.
Not
yet. Thirty more seconds will make a full three minutes.

Placing the pistol grip in her right hand, she removed
the cap from the tip of the tapering tube and rested an index finger against
the trigger. She watched the clock for the final seconds and at just the right
moment poked the tapering tube deep into the hole in her suit’s belly and squeezed
the trigger hard. The jet of air disappeared and a growing mass of white
bubbles erupted from the hole. She withdrew the hypodermic. The white mass
swelled into a hemisphere the size of half a football and abruptly congealed—a
chemical transformation made visible as the white surface changed from
glistening-wet to non-reflectively dull.

She wiped the excess fluid from the tip of the
hypodermic, capped it and placed it back into the patch-kit, then placed the
patch-kit back into her thigh pocket. Swinging her arms in large circles, she
rotated her body until she faced her goal: the extra star in the belt of Orion.

It was still there—unchanged. She surprised herself by
being disappointed at this. Apparently she had hoped it would already be
brighter, though a single moment’s thought would have told her not to expect
it.

Nothing to do now but wait and see if it gets
bigger.
She tried to relax the muscles throughout her body. She shook her
hands and feet slightly to search out any tension.
I hope I accelerated long
enough to overcome whatever my velocity was away from it; if I was even
traveling away, instead of toward it. And I hope I didn’t accelerate so long
that I used too much of the oxygen in my tanks. I’d hate to run out and
suffocate before I got there.
She opened and closed her hands a few times;
they seemed the most tense.
I can also worry about my aim being off. Is
Ophiuchi really opposite of Orion?

Something tickled her eyelashes. She blinked a few
times, even shook her head but it didn’t solve the problem, so she stuck out
her lower lip and blew upward. A few straggling blonde hairs shifted up off her
lower forehead and became enmeshed with higher straggling hairs which were not
being nearly so annoying.

And even if I did everything right, I’m still not
out of the woods. Just before I get there, I’ll have to do the whole
acceleration-by-air-leak maneuver over again to slow down enough so I can grab
a handhold on that ship without ripping my arms off…
Straining to see
detail, she squinted at the extra star.
…assuming it
is
a ship.

_____

“What do we do now?” asked the woman.

Mike responded by pulling his little red pocketsize out
of his left shirt pocket and flipping it open in one move. This doubled the
computer’s surface area and reduced its thickness by half. Its hinge mechanism
locked in position the moment the unit was fully open and lying flat in his
hand. By deeply ingrained habit, he avoided touching the display surface—his
fingertips were against one edge, his thumb against the other.

The unit’s display surface was smooth and contiguous
and somehow covered the hinge. The surface was uniformly black, and had no
buttons, keys, knobs, writing or markings on it of any sort. Its area was equal
to the front cover of an antique paperback book, though the pocketsize was much
thinner—no more than 50 pages.

Mike was about to tell it to call the captain when the
image he had instructed it two weeks ago to always display when first opened,
appeared on its surface: a photo of Kim and himself French-kissing at a party
while holding water-balloons over each other’s heads.

Again, he worried:
Where’s Kim? And why hasn’t she
called me?
He felt a wave of fear spread through his body like a dark mist.
Something’s wrong. Really wrong.
He tried to ignore the fear, pretend it
didn’t exist, but it refused to go away. “Get me the captain.”

A new image appeared on the surface: a wide angle view
of the inside of the ship’s bridge. The captain’s gray command chair was empty,
its seat belt dangled straight up and a body lay on the domed ceiling directly
above it. Mike recognized the body partly because of the white hair and
muscular arms but mostly because of the protruding stomach.

Before Mike had met Larry Palmer—back in Mike’s early
days as a welder in the spaceship yards of Von Braun, back when Larry had been
his apprentice teacher—Mike had sworn it was impossible to keep a beer belly in
zero-g for more than a few months. It was Larry Palmer who had proven that
theory wrong.

“Larry, are you all right?”

The captain spoke softly and in short bursts. “No, I’m
hurt pretty bad.” His breathing was shallow and rapid. “But that’s the least of
our problems. Mike, the ship’s been sabotaged; engine two’s primary fuel filter
was blown with C-4. It’s spraying liquid hydrogen sideways out into the vacuum.
That’s what’s making the ship tumble. We’ve already lost most of the fuel and
the leak isn’t going to stop until we’ve lost it all. With the ship tumbling
this fast the g-force is so strong no one can get to the engines to work on them.”
He hesitated, then said, “Mike, I hate to be the one to break it to you.”

“Hey, It’s not your fault. I’m sure you did every—”

“That’s not what I meant. It’s Kim.”

The dark mist grew thicker and more oppressive. “Is she
hurt?”

“I’m sorry. There was nothing I could do.”

“What happened?”

“She was working near the filter when it blew. The
explosion didn’t get her, but I saw her fall and snap her tether at two gees.
She must have hit something as she fell; she didn’t answer when I called her.
I’ve sent Frank after her, but if he can fly a pod out of the hanger while the
ship’s tumbling like this he’s a better pilot than I am. And even if he can get
the thing out he’ll never get it back in. Not as long as the hanger’s a
high-speed moving target.”

For a number of seconds Mike said nothing. The mist had
solidified in his throat and seemed to be trying to choke the life out of him.
He winced as though in pain. When his expression cleared he spoke with an odd
certainty. “Kim’s dead.” He said it as though he knew it to be true and had
actually accepted the fact. He hadn’t. He was in denial.

“What?”

“Kim’s dead,” Mike repeated. “She hasn’t got a chance;
not if her life hinges on the heroism of Frank Walters. The man’s an idiot and
a coward! I guarantee he’s sitting in a pod right now too scared to leave the
hangar and too scared to come back and show his face. Call him; you’ll see.”

“First let me talk to Ms Bernadette.”

Deciding this must mean the woman, Mike handed the
pocketsize to her and stepped around next to her so he could continue looking
at the image on its surface.

His viewing angle was now ideal for admiring the softly
curving skin of her perfect breasts, especially the far breast which could be
seen almost in its entirety when she breathed just right. Mike didn’t
notice—even when her shoulder brushed his and then brushed it again—not because
he was wonderfully noble or chivalrous, and not because he accidentally glanced
for a split-second and then looked away pretending he hadn’t seen anything. It
was simply that his concern for his old friend was such that this woman had
momentarily ceased to exist.

“Yes, Captain?” she said.

“Ship, I want to see her face.”

In the pocketsize’s display Mike saw an image of the
woman beside him appear on the curved surface of the bridge dome near the
captain’s head. Her neck and most of one cheek were covered by a small pool of
red fluid that matched a large red stain in the captain’s white hair.

The captain seemed to try to lift his head. If so, he
failed. Instead it just rolled a little toward the image. “I’m sorry to break
this to you, Ma’am,” the captain said, “but I am afraid we are going to be very
late.”

“Yes, I understand,” she said, her voice remaining
steady and calm. Mike found this surprising. He had expected her to fall apart
by now. “Captain,” she said, “you sound as though you are in pain.”

“I am.”

“Is there anything we can do to help you?”

“Not a thing.”

Mike grabbed the pocketsize from her hand and started
walking slowly toward the door to the vertical hallway. Walking slowly was
necessary since he was staring intently at the image on his computer and the
ceiling in front of him was an obstacle course of tripping hazards. “Larry,
don’t try to move. We’re coming to get you.”

“Wait, Mike,” the captain said. “Ship, what’s the
g-force in here?”

“Four point one gees: inverted.”

“Mike, I weigh four times my weight on Earth. If you
were in here, all your blood would run down into your legs. Your brain would
get so little oxygen you’d blackout just trying to stand still.”

Mike stopped a few feet from the door. “But—”

“And even if you could stand without blacking out,
you’d be helpless. What do you weigh on Earth? Two hundred pounds? In here
you’d weigh eight hundred! And don’t even think about trying to pick me up:
your arms aren’t strong enough, and if they were you’d break both of your legs
trying.”

“Larry, we’ve got to do something! We can’t just leave
you in there.”

“Stay where you are and try to relax. I’ve sent a
message to Von Braun. We should get a response in a few minutes. Once I get
their opinion I’ll have a better idea of what to do.”

“Do you think they’ll come up with a way to get the
ship to stop tumbling?”

“Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know.”

“OK, Larry. I’ll stay here for a while, but I’ll be
thinking about ways to get you out of there.”

“Good. I’ve called the other passengers and told them
to join you on deck ten. They should be arriving soon. I’ll call you again
after I talk to Frank. Captain: out and clear.”

The image of the bridge disappeared.

“Pocketsize,” Mike said, “I want you to download all
the technical information and diagrams available concerning this ship.”

The little computer answered, “As you wish.” It said
this using a silky feminine voice which Mike had long ago selected from the
forty-seven preprogrammed voices in its standard software; a voice which might
be described as a cross between Marilyn Monroe and Marlene Dietrich; a voice
that Kim had twice told him she hated.

He glanced around the cargo deck to see what kind of
equipment was available for use in rescuing the captain.

“I’m sorry,” his pocketsize said. “There is too much
technical information. All of it will not fit in my memory.”

Mike turned to his companion. “What’s your name again?”

“Tina Bernadette,” she said with a shy smile as she
stepped closer to him; close enough that he became uncomfortable.

He leaned back slightly.

She slipped the travel case strap from her shoulder and
dropped the case to one side without bothering to look where it landed. As the
pea-green strap slid off her shoulder it dragged her frilly blouse’s shoulder
strap off as well. With her blouse draped precariously, supported only by one
shoulder strap, her openly suggestive outfit was now all the more provocative.
She made no move to correct this and took another half-step closer to Mike.

He tucked his chin, but held his ground.

She bowed her head and placed her left hand behind her
back in a gesture of childlike shyness. With her right hand she tugged gently
on the little white ribbon that held the front of her blouse together. Softly,
she said, “I’m sorry I yelled at you back there.” The musical tones of her
delicately sculptured southern accent rang as clean and clear as gently thumped
Steuben crystal.

Instinctively, Mike’s eyes followed the movement of her
hand as it tugged on the ribbon tied in a tiny bow between her breasts. A bow
which, in Mike’s judgment, did not look particularly secure. It occurred to him
that if she kept tugging she might easily tug just a little too hard: hard
enough to make it come undone.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, still watching her
hand.
One little tug, that’s all it would take.
He found it easy to
imagine the outcome: a sudden unraveling of the ribbon; an equally sudden
widening of the blouse’s already open front; a momentary exposure of breasts;
just a second or two, perhaps; whatever length of time it takes to yelp in
surprise and cover oneself with a pair of hands or crossed forearms; maybe just
a second; but even a second would be enough.
And if they’re anything like
the rest of her, they must be incredible. One good tug, that’s all it would…
He glanced back up to her eyes.

She was smiling at him; her head tilted to one side.

He blushed at the realization that she’d been watching
him watch her. She’d purposely drawn his attention to her breasts, and
purposely gotten him to fantasize about her accidentally pulling her blouse
open.

She batted her eyelashes at him, playfully.

Mike closed his eyes as if in pain.
Kim’s not dead a
full hour and already I’m ogling strange women. Am I insane?
He stepped
away and tried to change the subject back to the problem at hand. “Do you have
a computer on you?”

“Yes,” she said, still smiling. “My glasses.”

He looked at them more closely. “You’re kidding; you
have a headup? How’d you get one all the way out at Titan? I know Huygens
Colony has good equipment but headups have only been on sale on Earth since
January!”