Far Space (18 page)

The only physical indication to Bealeman that anything had happened was a quick shudder which ran through the hull and up his legs. Turning back to the hatch, he aimed his rifle into the now-open doorway. Bealeman swung his light back and forth.

Together, the three Marines gazed down.

“No decompression,” Bealeman noted.

“Maybe the whole ship lost its atmosphere after the Schriever shot it up,” Murst said.

“That would explain why nobody has tried to move this thing since it got out here,” Bealeman said. “The crew must all be dead.”

“That’s a shame,” Murst said. He snapped several high-intensity light sticks, activating the chemicals inside, and sent them spinning down the hatch with a flick of his wrist.

Bealeman watched as the sticks bounced off the rounded walls. One lost its momentum and floated more or less at what appeared to be some sort of junction directly below them. Two others spun off in different directions of a corridor. Something occurred to Bealeman then.

The Major noticed the same thing.

“There’s no inner airlock,” Taylor noted, carefully leaning further over the hole to examine the oddly textured walls.

“Less to blow up,” Murst said.

“True, Gunny, true. It also means this was not a lock, air or otherwise. Guess the name really depends on what these things breathe,” Taylor said. “I bet this spaceship can land on a planets surface and just pop its door open.”

“Or this is a cargo hatch,” Murst said. “Maybe we’ll find another lock elsewhere on board this fine ship.”

“One way to find out,” Taylor said. “Bealeman, you have point. Gunny, watch our backs.” The Major leaned far enough back to catch sight of the drop ship. “Keep the skies clear, Captain.”

“Got’cha, sir,” Valiant responded over the Ops net. “I’ll keep your seats warm.”

“As always,” Murst said, double-checking that his rifle’s ammunition cartridge was seated properly.

Bealeman took a deep breath and stepped out over the hole without hesitating. The FACs may have gotten in first, but who knew what was in this thing anyway? He scissor kicked and used his momentum to carry him inward with a little help from the thrusters on his suit pack. He slowed when he reached the juncture just inside the hatch. The green glow stick was lazily spinning in front of him.

Bealeman scanned left and right, keeping his rifle ready to fire at the first sign of danger.

“Clear!” Bealeman called over the common net. He could see that nothing posed him or his team an immediate risk. Still, Bealeman noticed an uneasiness building inside him. Pushing the feeling aside, Bealeman chose the corridor leading to the aft end of the ship. The Marines were tasked to enter and locate what amounted for an engine or propulsion device. From the outside, the ship appeared to contain all the drive components within the hull structure. Bealeman had wondered if there would be an engine room right out of some sci-fi show with a control station built around a pulsing power core.

Such a find would be cool, Bealeman thought. What he was seeing was indeed cool, but also different. It was too odd. Five meters down the curving
corridor, Bealeman realized what had bothered him earlier. It was simply the sense of wrongness of the whole place. He said, “This place is just…so…” he almost said alien. Then again, what else did he expect?

“Weird,” Taylor finished Bealeman’s sentence.

“That’ll work, sir,” Bealeman said.

The hallways were cramped ovals. The textures on the wall were too rough, something humans would never decorate with. Or, was it more than just decoration? Bealeman put out his hand and tentatively touched the surface of the wall. He knew where he had seen something like this before. He shined his light ahead to where the corridor turned sharply. There were bulges at odd intervals, placed at different heights along the walls, each with varied texture.

Bealeman had seen something very similar to all this while diving on the reefs around Hawaii. “It’s coral,” the Marine muttered. He turned, bumping his armor against the wall. “You see this stuff?”

Taylor shined his light around the walls. “Yeah, I see it.” The Major reached out for the walls. “Make sure your cameras are getting all this.” He motioned forward. “Let’s see what’s around curve number one.”

“I bet this thing was filled with water,” Bealeman noted

“You think all the green guys got sucked out when they got drilled back at Earth?” Murst called over the net.

Bealeman did not answer as he made his away around the curve in the tunnel and found himself in what he swore was the inside of a conch shell. The walls of the low-ceiled, circular room gleamed with a dull pearl sheen. He used his free hand to pull his body along the rough floor, which seemed to Bealeman to be a growth of coral with dozens of types differentiated by texture, shape, size, and color.

A pillar, bulging with the same types of outgrowth, rose from the pile of coral-like floor to the pearl-finished ceiling. Bealeman slowly made his way around the pillar, making sure to pan his helmet cam, taking in everything he could. He was about to push off for the entry to another corridor when something caught the corner of his eye. Bealeman turned his rifle with its light and twisted to get a better look.

It took a moment for Bealeman’s brain to digest what he was seeing. “Cripes, Gunny, you have got to see this.”

Anderson was the first to notice the two meter tall containers lining the back wall of the curving chamber. “What the…”

Ian turned to face the Tech Sergeant. He found Anderson leaning close to one of the bulging cylinders. Ian felt like an idiot following the real special forces guys around so he welcomed any distraction. He moved over to get a closer look at whatever had caught Anderson’s attention.

Ian’s helmet lights joined Anderson’s. He watched as Anderson reached out and brushed brittle crystals off the curved surface of the container.

“Filled with some sort of liquid,” Anderson noted, tapping the clear material. He used his hand to wipe off more crystals. After a moment, Anderson stopped and leaned back. “Something’s in there.”

Ian leaned closer, half expecting Anderson to yell, ‘boo’. He was too interested in what might be inside the cylinder to care. There was something darker than the frozen liquid suspended just out of sight, hidden by the murkiness and glare on the container. “Could be one of the crew.”

“Or a pet,” Anderson said.

Cordella glided over. “What’s all the excitement?”

“Looks like the LT has a new pet, Chief,” Anderson said.

Cordella leaned in close. “Maybe it was dinner.”

A voice crackled over the Ops net. “Can you return the sample for study?”

Ian, lost in concentration while wandering through the tight, otherworldly ship, had forgotten those back aboard Cheyenne were hanging on their every word.

“Imuro, get off the net,” Rucker said. “This is an initial recon, you’ll have plenty of time to cut up whoever we find in here.”

Rucker floated in the center of the chamber, using what looked like a clam encrusted stalactite for balance. He shined his light at the six other containers lining the wall. “Are the others empty?”

Ian and Anderson checked the rest of the cylinders.

“It’s just the one,” Anderson reported.

“Okay,” Rucker said. “Let’s make our way aft. Check every compartment.”

Ian looked at the dark figure suspended in the dark water. “Is it alive?”

Rucker turned back to face Ian and the thing in the tank. “Don’t know. I’m leaning toward the liquid atmosphere theory though. If that is one of the crew, it managed to get inside that thing after the ship was hit.” He gestured around at the low ceiling of the chamber and the coral-like lumps that might have been equipment and might have been decoration. “This set-up starts to make sense if you imaging swimming through here and looking at things like a fish.”

Ian took one more look at the frozen cylinder. “I’m not so sure I want to be around when they thaw the thing out,” he muttered.

“Well, that explains a lot,” Murst said. He poked the frozen carcass. It was attached solidly to the floor and part of the wall. “Like a marble statue.”

“Explains what?” Bealeman asked.

“This,” Murst said, “like we’re inside some sort of man-sized clam shell.”

“I think it’s pretty, Gunny,” Bealeman said, looking around again.

Murst just grunted. He bent to examine the alien closer. “Definitely seems like some sort of underwater creature. You getting this, Cheyenne?”

“Yes,” Dr. Imuro came back over the net. “The detail is astounding.”

“You know, it doesn’t figure,” Murst said with a short laugh as he straightened up. “Humans finally make their way out into the wonders of the galaxy only to get attacked by a bunch of squids.”

“It’s more like a cuttlefish,” Bealeman noted as he ran his gloved hand over the alien’s curving hide. He traced the tentacles to the articulated hands on the end of two of the larger arms. “Must be about as big as me, when it’s stretched out.” He looked back at the head, two dark eyes with upside-down v iris’ stared back at him, frozen and unblinking.

“It ain’t stretching out,” Murst noted. He ran his hand over a patch of the wall. “Definitely looks like this place was meant to be filled with water or something. Look, all the controls are touch sensitive or sealed up good. No keys, no switches no plug outlets.” He tapped a few knobs which seemed to be switches. “Everything seems to be turned off.”

“I bet it still works,” Taylor said. “I’d bet a month of Lt Langdon’s pay.” “Why’s that, sir?” Bealeman asked.

“This ship made its way out here under its own power,” Taylor said. “Everything might have gone off-line after it jumped from Earth to Saturn Space, but it had to have been working at least well enough to perform that trick.”

“Over here sir,” Murst called out. “There’re more chambers this way.”

Bealeman took one more look at the pathetic alien frozen in a solid lump in the unforgiving vacuum of deep space. He wanted to say something over the body, but did not know the words. Instead, he gently laid his left hand on the creatures head before following the two other Marines to the next room of mysteries.

After an hour of careful searching, the entry team had explored every centimeter of the alien ship. At least all the crew sections.

Ian frowned at the hologram of the ship floating above his wrist display. The red outline of the ship hull was now filled in with passages on two levels filling nearly a third of the ship’s inner space. He marveled at the twisting corridors, circular rooms and niches that filled the crew space of the alien ship. “So what’s in the other two thirds of the ship?” Ian asked no one in particular.

Anderson glanced at Ian’s display. “Probably fuel, engines, whatever these things use for life support. If there was another access point to more of the ship, I think we’d have found it by now.”

Ian looked around the rough textured wall and natural forms of the control or interface equipment. He doubted the Tech Sergeant’s assertion. They didn’t know jack about this ship.

“Okay, looks like crew section of the ship is secure,” Major Taylor stated. “Captain Rucker, please take your men and put mark one eyeballs on the outer hull…all of it.”

“Yes sir,” Rucker answered, saluted as best he could with the limitations of the combat armor.

Ian turned to follow the three FACs. He was as good at using his eyes as the rest of them.

Rucker turned to Ian when the four of them reached the hull outside the hatch the Marines had forcefully opened to access the ship. “Langdon, stay put and show the civilians around. Maybe they can make some sense of what the heck any of this stuff does.” “Sir,” Ian said, saluting automatically. He managed to bang the side of this head with an armored glove. He watched the FACs disappear over the hull, heading for the aft end of the ship and, presumably, the engines.

Ian did not have to wait long before one of Cheyenne’s small shuttle craft approached his position. Really just a pressure cylinder within a support structure, attitude control system, and small engine, the shuttle was meant for short trips between ships or for ship to station travel. You would not want to try and land it on the moon and trying to take it to the Earth’s surface would simply result in a nice fireball for those on the ground to watch. But, it worked just fine transporting a few of the civilian scientists from Cheyenne to the alien ship.

The hatch opened, revealing Nick O’Brian in his blue NASA soft suit. The NASA pilot moved outside, hooking his feet into straps set into a small mesh step below the shuttles hatch. He reached back inside and helped a suited figure out the door.

Over the local net, Ian heard O’Brian give a few instructions. “Remember, Dr. Imuro, just push off and step over to the hatch. The Marine there will help you inside.”

Ian held his tongue. He had to admit the Space Corps armor was very similar to the Marine space combat armor. Ian watched as Imuro turned to look at Saturn, hanging nearby.

“Wonderful,” Imuro breathed.

“Time for sightseeing later,” O’Brian said. He pointed Imuro at the hatch.

Imuro took a small step and left the shuttle platform. It was not enough of a push to get him to the alien ship.