Her Smoke Rose Up Forever (S.F. MASTERWORKS) (37 page)

He was halfway into it, staggered against the wall, when he saw the cuts. He grunted—or perhaps shouted, the air was now too thin to carry sound—and fell to his knees clasping the helmet. But he couldn’t or didn’t put it on—his dying eyes were still sharp enough to catch the neatly sliced air hoses. The helmet couldn’t help him, it was now connected to nothing.

His mouth opening and closing, perhaps yelling curses, he toppled to the floor, taking great strangled gulps of nearvacuum. Finally he rolled again beneath the table. His last gesture was to grab the bolted-down table leg with one strong pink hand, to fight the pull that would carry him out the port. He held there through the last spasm CP decided was death. She couldn’t see him fully, she wanted neither to touch him nor to peer, but he was totally moveless. Man cannot live without air. Not even a Meich, she told herself.

In her savage heart she was a shade disappointed that he had not put on the useless helmet. Further, she would have been better pleased never to have to see that face.

The gale was subsiding, the pull from the port was almost gone. CP waited impatiently until the VACUUM light flashed on the console; it was time to get to work. Don should go first.

Outside the port was a rushing, flickering grayness—the star fields flashing by as
Calgary
rolled. Only ahead and astern was there relatively stable vision. Ahead lay steadier stars, she knew—she dared not, of course, lean out to look—while behind lay the great dim starlit disk of Uranus, flame-edged on one limb. They were orbiting in outward-facing attitude, to maximize the chance of observing any events on the planet. By chance—she hadn’t had endurance enough to plan—Calgary was just coming into that arc of her orbit where the sun and the world of men were almost directly in line beyond the planet.

Good. She hooked a safety web across the open port, and walked, cautious of any remaining air pockets, into the chamber where Don lay.

She had prepared jato units to send the corpses as fast as possible down out of orbit and falling into Uranus. There would of course be no science-fiction nonsense about macabre objects orbiting
Calgary
; certainly not after she was on her way out and away forever—how she longed to start!—but more practically, she wanted no accidental discovery of the corpses. It would be, of course, a million-to-one freak. But freaks happen. CP knew that. In
Calgary
’s attitude, the temptation to set the jets directly at Uranus was strong, but she must arrange them to decelerate instead; most efficient.

She was figuring out the settings as she bent over Don. The hypo she had prepared in case Meich went for her was still clenched, almost hidden, in one glove. She must put it down somewhere safe.

As she reached toward a locker her body was touched from behind.

Terror.
What
—

An arm clamped hard around her neck.

As it passed her faceplate she had a glimpse of muscles and unmistakably pink, hairless skin.

A dead man had come after her. Meich had come back from death to kill her—was killing her now.

It would indeed have been Meich’s impulse and delight to maul and kill her with his bare hands. But he was impeded. One hand was pressing the cut end of an air-tank hose to his mouth. And it is not easy in vacuum to batter a body in a pressure suit, nor to choke a neck enclosed in a hard helmet base. So he was contenting himself with yanking out her air hoses first, intending to get at her when she weakened, and keep her alive long enough to fully feel his wrath.

His first great jerk almost sent her reeling, but he had a leg hard about hers, holding her close.

Cold Pig, aghast to the bones, didn’t keep her head. Adrenaline rush almost stopped her heart.

All was gone from her save only reflexes. The hand holding the hypo came round in one drive of horror-heightened power and precision—the needle he hadn’t seen was there went straight in, against all likelihood not bending, not breaking, not striking plastic or bone, right through the suit he had pulled up, through liner, skin, and visceral sheath, while CP’s clumsy gloved fingers found the triggers and her terrified muscles exerted impossible strength. The discharge shot directly into liver and stomach and ran out lodged in the lining of his renal vein. The strike was so clean Meich may never have felt it. He didn’t know he was now truly a dead man. Or would be in seconds.

And seconds counted.

He had torn her air tubes loose, she was without air save only for the tiny amount lodged in her helmet and suit. And he was clamped to her, arm and leg. She began to choke, partly from sheer panic, as she twisted in his dying grasp, not understanding at first what was happening. The force of her turning blow had carried her partway round; she contorted frantically, and finally saw the air tank he was holding and the hose end he breathed from.

It took precious instants for her to understand that she must open her faceplate and get that air hose to her mouth.

Somehow, in spite of his mad battering and wrenching, she opened up. Dying girl fought with dead man for the hose end. She could not possibly pry loose his fingers, though she broke one. But the lethal drug was telling on him—she finally butted his head aside with her helmeted one, and managed to gulp air hissing from the hose he held.

In one last spasm of hate he tried to fling the air tank away from them both. But the tank struck her body. She held on.

And then it was over, really over at last. Meich lay slumped grotesquely at her feet, against Don’s bunk.

It took infinite time for her to stop shaking. She vomited twice, fouling herself, but since the hose end was free she didn’t aspirate it. She watched, watched, for any motion or, breath from the twice-dead man. Only the fear that the wildly escaping air—so precious—would give out, finally got her moving rationally.

It was almost more than her fingers could do to reconnect her hoses, fit a spare for the damaged one, wipe out and close her faceplate. She would have to live and work for a time in her own vomit, which she found appropriate.

And there was much work to do, in vacuum, before she could reseal
Calgary
. It was now getting very cold.

She had a message to send, and she wanted to dump everything of the men’s before repressurizing, to use the waste flush later as little as possible. The bodies she would send out first, right now.

This time there was no question of Don preceding; she laid shuddering hands on Meich’s legs and dragged him to the port and the jato rig. She managed to stop herself from leaning out to make sure he had jetted clean away, not caught on some part of
Calgary
to clamber back at her. But she did permit herself to go to the stern port and watch his jet dwindle among the whirling stars.

Then Don. Then everything she could lay hands on or dump from lockers, even to letters, private caches, the pinups on walls, even the duty roster. All, all went out, and did orbit
Calgary
, but only for a time.

Finally she unlatched and wrestled shut the cold main port.

Then without waiting to repressurize, she was free to yield to heart’s desire. She didn’t even bother to sit down, she simply ran through the basic emergency ignition sequence—Calgary was already in perfect attitude—and slammed the main thrust over and on.

Softly, with slowly growing, inexorable power,
Calgary
departed orbit and headed at maximum acceleration away from Uranus, away from Sol behind it, away from humanity, outward toward empty space and the unreachable stars.

Now the message.

She activated the high-gain transmitter, and plugged her suit mike in. And then Cold Pig undertook the first and last literary-dramatic exercise of her life. She was, after all, as noted, human.

First she keyed in the call signals for
Calgary
’s four other scouts, plus a general alarm. Next, gasping realistically, “—All scouts, do not try to return to
Calgary;
repeat, do not . . . try return to
Calgary
. . . there’s nothing . . . there. . . . Head for . . . the . . .
Churchill—-Wait
, maybe
Calhoun
closer . . . repeat,
Calgary . . .
is not on station . . . do not try to return. . . . Wounded, will try to return log . . . so much blood. . . . Cause: Captain Robert Meich dead, self-inflicted . . . gunshot . . . Lieutenant . . . Donald Lamb also dead by gunshot . . . inflicted by Captain Meich. . . . Both bodies lost in space. . . . Captain Meich shot Don and . . . unsealed . . . main port. . . . He took Don’s body, and . . . shot himself in the abdomen before . . . going out. . . . Cause: Captain Meich said we were docked at invisible spy station, when Don tried to stop him . . . open port he said.” Here her words were coming in a soft fainting rush, but clearly, oh, clear: “He said Don might be an alien and shot him, he was carrying gun three days . . . sleeping with it. . . . Cold, blood . . . he made me strip and tied me to galley post but Don threw me . . . helmet and air tank but I-have . . . shot wounds in body . . . since yesterday . . . fear
Calgary
lost, Captain Meich fired escape course, broke computer . . . cold . . . trans . . . mission . . . ends . . . will try. . . .” And then very weakly, “Don’t repeat don’t return. . . .”

After a few more deathly sounds, she unplugged, leaving the transmitter on. It was voice-activated, it wouldn’t waste power, but she must be careful about any sounds she made, especially when the air came back.

Then she went carefully around the ship, sealing off everything but necessary living space, to conserve air, and turned the main air valves to pressurize.

Finally she snapped out the log cassette in a realistically fumbling manner, carefully tearing the tape head off before where she knew her argument with Meich began. It would look as if she had simply torn, it clumsily loose. To add verisimilitude—they would test oh, yes—she reopened one of the cuts Meich’s blows had left on her face and dabbed her fresh blood on cassette and canister. The canister went into a wall slot, which would, when activated, encase it in its own small jato device with homing signal to Base. She fired it off.

The data from
Calgary
’s exploratory mission would arrive, some day or year, near Base, beeping for pickup. That much, she thought, she owed the world of men. That much and no more.

The air pressure was rising slowly. No leaks so far, but it was not yet safe to unsuit. She checked the scanners once, to make sure Uranus and Sol were dwindling straight astern, and set the burn to turn off in an hour. If the fuel lasted that long.

Then she simply sat down in the copilot’s chair, leaned back in her filthy helmet in the comfortless suit, and let herself lose consciousness. When she awoke she would be far enough away to turn the transmitter off.

She was headed for the Empire. Whose name, she knew quite rationally, was Death.

When she came to, the main torch was off. Had it run out of fuel? No, turned off, she saw, checking the console; there was still some energy left. Her eyes, nose, and lips were crusted, almost closed. Air pressure was back to cabin-normal.

Gratefully she opened her faceplate, unlatched and lifted off the heavy helmet assembly that had saved her life from Meich. Don’t think of all that, she told herself. Never again. Never ever again to suffer anything of man. Think of the fact that you’re dehydrated and ravenous and dirty.

Gulping juice and water alternately, she checked position. She must have been unconscious a long, long time, they had passed Neptune’s orbit; still accelerating, slightly. She should have saved the main burn till she was freer of Sol’s gravity; she was glad she hadn’t.

She got herself unsuited and minimally washed. There was a big cleanup to do. But first she’d better make herself count up her supplies, which was to say, her life.

She had long ago made the rough calculation that it was somewhere in the range of a hundred to a hundred fifty Earth-days.

Food—no problem. The dehydrated supplies were ample to take six men and herself another year.

Water was more serious. But the reclamation unit was new and worked well, all tanks were full. She would be drinking H2O that had passed through all their kidneys and bladders the rest of her life, she thought. But in the humans of her Earth such thoughts no longer could evoke revulsion. She had drunk unrecycled water only a few times in her whole life; it had been desalinated water from a far sea. The importation of water-ice asteroids to Earth had been one of Base’s routine jobs.

Calgary
even had a small potential supply of fresh water, if she could reach it without too much loss of air. They had encountered a clean ice-rock and lashed it to the substructure of the hull.

She was gazing about, checking around the main console, at which she had never been allowed to sit before, deferring calculation of oxygen, when an odd glint above caught her eye. She stood up in the seat to peer at the thing embedded in the ceiling. A camouflaged lens.

She had stumbled onto one of the secret spy-eyes and spy-ears placed in all ships. She put a screwdriver between its rim and her ear, and caught a faint whirring. Somewhere in the walls a tape deck reeled. It had of course recorded the true events on
Calgary
, and the fisheye lens was set so that her present course-and-position readings would be recorded.

It was not, she was sure from former tales and trials at Base, transmitting now. People had confided that the eyes and ears sent off their main data in supercompressed blips, at rather long, random intervals. The detailed reading would wait until
Calgary
was back in human hands.

For that, they would have to catch her first. She smiled grimly through cracked lips.

But had it already sent off a data blip while she was unconscious? Or in the time before, for that matter? No way to tell. If so, her story would be only an addition to the catalog of her crimes. If not, good.

How to deactivate it, without tearing out the walls, or causing it to transmit in terminal alarm? Others must have tried it before her. She would have to think hard, and discard her first impulses.