Hull Zero Three (11 page)

“Who’s been here longest?” I ask.
“Tsinoy and me,” the spidery woman says. “We met Big Yellow and the girl in front of the water tank and showed them this place.”
“None of you have books?”
“None of us has a book,” the spidery woman says.
“I had a book,” the girl says. “You lost it.”
“Right.” I don’t want to get into that again. “But I found one of my own,” I say, and take it out, opening to the page with the sketch. They crowd around— all but the Tracker, who seems aware that even folded, its spines might jab us.
“Three hulls, like you remember. To know what it all means, we need to see more, I guess.”
“That’s right,” the girl agrees. “He needs to be poked.” Why she focuses on me, I don’t know.
“You are what you see,” Big Yellow says.
“That’s deep. You’re our philosopher,” the spidery woman says.
Big Yellow stretches out massive arms. “Philosophers don’t look like me.”
“Join the club,” says Tsinoy.
“You drew this?” the spidery woman asks me, pointing to the sketch.
“No. Another me did—I think.”
“How many of you are there?” she asks.
“I’ve seen hundreds of bodies like mine… collected and frozen in lockers, aft.”
“Awful,” Big Yellow says. “Thankfully, I seem to be unique.”
An awkward pause.
“I’m exhausted,” I say. “Is there a place I can sleep? Is there any food?”
“Very little,” the spidery woman says.
“Less and less,” Big Yellow says. “On my way here, I saw a lot of folks who looked as if they’d starved to death.”
I take another drink. “There is a room aft,” I say, “outboard of the water tank… A boy and a woman live there. They were comfortable. The boy had plenty of food and water. He seemed to be able to tell the hull what to do.”
They all look at me with somber eyes, as if they don’t believe me. Then I see that they’re simply paying silent respect to a man who’s escaped certain death.
“There was another girl,” I say defensively. “She left first.” I pause and swallow. “She wasn’t you,” I say to this girl.
Big Yellow looks aside.
“We’ve heard about such places,” the spidery woman says. “After a few spin-ups, if you like it and stay, you start to think you’ve been there for years. You forget who you are… and then the room seals shut and never opens again. Traps you. In some other part of the hull, another room opens up… same thing, different people.”
Silence.
“They let me go,” I say.
“It’s just a story,” the spidery woman says. “We’ve got enough food for a few days, but we don’t have that much time. We need to find a way forward—a way out.”
“Where?” I ask.
“I don’t remember,” she says, crestfallen. “Not yet.”
Big Yellow moves in. “Right. If we don’t rest, we’ll start acting crazy. Let’s clean up, eat a crumb or two, sleep in shifts. We’ll stand watch one by one for a couple of hours, until next spin-down. Best to travel while there’s as little weight as possible—right?” He looks at the spidery woman with what passes for stubbornness.
She faces him down, then shrugs again, wide shoulders elegant, and curls up. “Who’s first on watch?”
“I’ll go,” Big Yellow says. “I sleep with my eyes open. Then the girl. She’s the most sensitive to noise.”
We scrub each other with a scrap of damp cloth. After, we feel better in a number of ways—and more connected. In the gentle tug of spin-up, the spilled bath-water slowly falls to the floor and forms viscous pools. We wipe it up and squeeze the cloth into an empty bottle. That takes a while—the water behaves like syrup. We can’t afford to waste anything.
The Tracker, of course, does not join this group, but watches with what I assume is a hint of sadness in its armor-lidded, ruby-pink eyes.
After a brief meal—a couple of chunks of loaf divided among us—we seek separate places in the chamber. I settle into the grippy couch. The Tracker finds a corner and wedges itself in, a peculiar process of grabbing hold of the walls and ceiling with three limbs and
shoving
until it’s compressed to almost half its former bulk.
The spidery woman chooses to lie unencumbered on the floor, a loose curl of limbs. She closes her eyes and relaxes. The girl stays close to her, happy with any substitute for a mother. Her legs are crossed, elbows out, hands together, as if praying—praying to the hull, perhaps, or Ship Control. She glances at me. Her eyes grow heavy, and she curls up, too.
I spend a few minutes penciling an update in the little book. My handwriting—hand-printing—is uniform throughout. It’s all me. I don’t write it all down. I concentrate on a few vivid scenes. Eventually, I’ll gather enough pieces of paper to make enough books to tell the whole story. Then I’ll…
I don’t know what I’ll do.
I write. When I get to a certain point—my rescue from the red-dot horror—I look up.
“Who has a laser?” I ask.
Big Yellow is near the hatch, standing his watch. “Nobody,” he says, and manages a look of surprise. His facial expressions are subtle but real, once you get used to them. “We thought
you
had one, but you don’t, do you?”
“No.”
The spidery woman rouses. “Great. We have an unknown protector.”
“Or somebody was trying to kill you and missed,” the Tracker suggests, poking its head from the corner.
STARSHIP

Spin-down rouses us too soon. We barely feel the difference—a nudge. “I think I remember more now,” the spidery woman says with a yawn. “Sleep can do that,” Big Yellow says. “That’s why I don’t sleep much.” She scowls at him. “All the hulls start out the same. If my memory is

accurate—and that’s a big if—there’s access to a control center in the bow, across the staging area. We should be able to get through that side hatch.” She points to an otherwise anonymous impression on the far wall, almost hidden by the ceiling. “It’ll have to do,” Big Yellow says.

The Tracker comes out of its corner. It extends a paw-claw, a formidable appendage, and the little girl gives it her hand, dainty flesh almost lost in that multiply capable span of digits, gripping ridges, and horny extrusions. Her trust seems absolute.

The spidery woman’s memory is accurate, so far—there is forward access. We pass through into a corridor, railed and cabled, designed for people. At her touch, another hatch opens on the forward end, and we clamber and float out into the acrid air of the staging area.

The smell of burning and destruction is fierce, accompanied by a toofamiliar, fine mist of stinging droplets. “More stink,” the little girl says, wrinkling her nose.

We form a chain and launch across the staging area, with the Tracker as our leading grapple. Crossing takes us several long, painful minutes, past tangles of broken supports and burned equipment, through a heartbreaking ring of useless landing craft. The masses all around shift and groan, wobbling after spindown. Pieces are drifting loose.

The far wall, closer to the bow, is less than fifty meters wide. There can’t be much more forward left to go. My memories stop at the staging area. It makes sense that there could be an observation chamber, a blister, maybe even a command center, but what are the chances it’s going to be damaged as well?

It’s incredible that one of me reached this far and yet went back—why? Because he was alone, didn’t know where else to go?
Teamwork.Therehasto beagroupthatcombinesaltherightknowledge—I’mjustnotsufficien.But
whoputsustogether?
Whodecideswhogetsmadeandwhattheyknow?

A loose chunk of support frame revolves slowly between our party and the hatch, blocking the view, but Big Yellow joins the Tracker, leaving us for the moment to grip an I-beam bonded to a relatively stable bulkhead.

Together, the pair stops the frame’s motion, pushes it aside, where it collides with a tangled seedship cage and sticks.
“Hatch up here,” the Tracker announces. “Big one.”
The opening is clear.
The Tracker plants a sticky claw-foot against a smooth surface, takes hold of Big Yellow’s leg, swings him out, and uses him to retrieve the rest of us. Rather neatly, we separate as we’re arcing toward the wide hatch, drift through, and grab whatever we can inside.
This could be where equipment is stored or stowed—a space about ten meters deep and five meters square. Or it could be some sort of elevator. My mind draws a blank—this area isn’t part of my job responsibility.
Whereloadjockeyshangout.
“Load jockeys,” I murmur.
“What’s that mean?” Big Yellow asks.
“Stevedores. Cargo managers. Crew chiefs. I’m not sure—it’s fragmented.”
The whole journey has taken us about a third of a spin-up. “Not too bad here,” the spidery woman says. “No mist—except what’s coming through the hatch.”
She feels her way around the hatch perimeter, then attempts to push, tug, and finally shout at it. Nothing closes the hatch. She backs away. Big Yellow tosses her a gray bag to wipe herself off.
But our presence has triggered another response. The forward bulkhead rotates, splits, and seems to melt into the outer wall. A ring of large fluorescent panels switches on. The chamber fills with shadowless light. Now we see a series of copper-green arches—and beyond, another bulkhead, curved, shiny black, and covered with myriads of glim lights.
As we pass through the arches, that curved bulkhead also splits into three sections, which rotate and then seem to melt aside. For a moment, my eye is confused. I think I’m looking at more glim lights but they’re different. Sharper, brighter against an even deeper darkness—very many and very tiny, like an infinite spray of luminous dust.
We’re in a big blister, the hull’s forward observation dome. Beyond the bow, the darkness is thick with a billowing canopy of minute, cold brilliances.
Stars. Even seeing them for the second time, they startle and surprise me.
Solost.

The spidery woman reaches with long fingers and kicks out, as if she’d fly through them if she could. Big Yellow makes a grab for her, but she neatly draws in her arms and legs and he misses. She floats right by us all.

She’s the first to make it into the bow. “This is hull control,” she says. “It feels like I’ve been here already….”
“What are those?” the girl asks, pointing at the glowing dust.
“They’re why we’re here,” I say, and it’s all I can say, because my heart is in my throat. This is the view to where we’re going.
Somewhere out there, maybe, is home.
To our left stream long, grasping wisps of ionized pale blue and pink. And directly ahead, a vague grayish bull’s-eye sends back a ghostly cage of barely visible bands. Not part of the stars—part of Ship. I didn’t notice the thin bands at first, because the stars are visible right through them.
We follow as caution permits—quickly for the girl, while Big Yellow and I trail behind her, taking it all in. The Tracker is last, protecting our rear.
The bow chamber forms a blunt cone, with a transparent blister or dome covering the very tip, about ten meters wide and four meters deep. A hexagonal web of cables and slings allows for purchase, movement, and tie-down.
For a long moment—too long, my caution tells me—we stare out through the dome.
Tsinoy points to the colored streamers and wisps. The Tracker’s eyes have turned violet in the dark. What it says doesn’t register at first, I’m so lost in the spectacle. “Nebulae don’t look that bright, unless you’re very near a recent nova—or worse yet, a supernova.”
I pull back reluctantly. There are control stations already in place, mounted on narrow pylons around the perimeter of the dome. The spidery woman is gliding from station to station, hands swiftly lighting up curved displays and panels.
Even having seen this place, I can conjure no memory of it. Likely it will be dismantled, subsumed by the triad, before the end of our journey, when the three hulls join. But Ship’s timing seems skewed everywhere. Why is the staging area completed? And why are some of the landing ships already constructed, only to be smashed? Useless. Wasted. Like all those bodies in the freezers.
The spidery woman seems very much at home here, rapidly becoming more and more aware of her function. That fits—she’s built for low weight or zero g. She’s probably part of the group that crews the Ship during the last few decades of journey, guiding it into orbit, preparing the way for the colonists. Does that mean she dies before I’m made?
Assemblycrew isnotlandingcrew.Wewerenevermeanttobeonebig happyfamily
I’m almost getting used to this irregular effervescence of memory. I wonder if she’s the same or similar to the “tall female” in my book.
“This is where we’ll do our work,” she says. “My people put us in orbit and bring the hulls together. That’s
go
to be the reason I’m here.” She looks back at Big Yellow and the girl—then at me, fiercely demanding confirmation. “Makes sense,” I say.
“Damned right. I know
what
I am, if not
who
I am.”
The little girl has wrapped herself around a control pylon, watching as the bigger folks try to make sense of the arrangements.
Big Yellow grabs my shoulder as we hand-over-hand. “Where’s Tsinoy?” he asks. The Tracker seems to have vanished after saying something about nebulae.
The spidery woman, eyes flashing, is absorbed by the panels, making her second circuit with fluid ease from one rank to the next.
We’re not much use here—for the time being, anyway. “Let’s go back and look for it,” I suggest.
We pull our way aft, then transit the illuminated entry. We are slowed by mist drifting through the hatch from the staging area. We keep back but move around to peer out. No sign of the Tracker—of Tsinoy.
“Why would it leave?” Big Yellow asks. “It’s pretty loyal to the gray lady.”
I see movement near where we first entered the staging area, a shifting patch of paleness—unfamiliar in silhouette, but then, the Tracker excels at never looking the same twice.
“Is that it?” I point. The mist pushes me back into fresher currents of air. I can hardly see.
Big Yellow stretches his upper torso into the acrid gloom. “Yeah,” he says finally, withdrawing. “This damned fog stings.”
I pull another empty gray bag from the cinch of my pants and hand it to him. He wipes and dabs. “It’s coming this way.”
“You’re sure it’s the Tracker and not—”
But then it’s upon us, pushing us aside in its haste. Its touch—even its near approach—makes me groan deep in my throat. Big Yellow grabs a long, knotted arm to slow it.
“Stuff coming up the pipe,” it announces. “Bad stuff.”
“Human?” Big Yellow asks.
“Shit no. Like me, only mean.”
“How soon?” Big Yellow asks.
“A snap. Get them out of the dome. It’s bad up there, anyway. Bright nebulae, all wrong. Pull them back here. We missed a door—in shadow. Might be a way out.”
“Show me,” I say. Without hesitation, it grabs me—hard enough to hurt. We launch into the darkness. I’m helpless to do anything about it. Everything’s a whirl.
Then, with astonishing deftness, Tsinoy grabs a surface and slows, bringing us both to a smooth halt, and positions me before a round depression rimmed in slowly pulsing red.
A hatch opens.
Still shaking, I break loose from its paw-claws but drift out of reach of anything that would allow me to make a move one way or another. I start flailing, cursing in a frantic whisper, and then the spidery woman is beside me. She tugs me to the side, where I seize a cable.
“You shouldn’t
do
that,” she softly admonishes the Tracker, as if speaking to a child. The Tracker grunts and rattles ivory spines. “What’s this?” she asks.
Big Yellow swings himself through the hatch. “More dead folks,” he says from inside, his voice muffled. “Pretty far gone.” He tosses out three corpses, dry as husks. I don’t check to see if I’m one of them. I pull up to the hatch, then in, somersaulting slowly until my hand grabs a net.
We’re in a craft moored just aft of the control chamber. The small cabin is shaped like the inside of an egg, narrow tip near the hatch. It’s equipped with fine netting that reacts to our presence. Two more husks hang at the back, curled in each other’s arms. Big Yellow dislodges the pair, not bothering to disentangle them—just shoves them past me, past the spidery woman, through the hatch. Out and away.
The air is dry, with a touch of the scent of death. Still much better than the drifting fog outside. Big Yellow suggests we shouldn’t leave the hatch open for long.
The netting wants to serve—protect—guide. It pulls away from a pale blue hemisphere, then reveals a clear port about a meter in diameter. Again, we see the stars—and fifty or more kilometers away, the bow of another hull.
“It’s a transfer egg,” the spidery woman says. “Tsinoy, you’re a marvel. I missed this completely.”
“No time,” Tsinoy says. “Stuff coming.”
“But I need to
remember
how to use it,” she says.
The girl peeks in. “I hear a fight back there,” she says. “At least three more. They’re all going to die.”
Big Yellow shoves out of the netting. The girl leans aside with quirked lips as he flies through the hatch. The Tracker, however, is stuck—the netting doesn’t seem to know how to let loose of those ivory spines. Tsinoy squirms and rips and finally tears its way out, then follows. The girl gives it a wide berth.
“We could run the hull from that forward position,” the spidery woman says. She gives me a defiant look, well aware of her contradictions from a few hours before.
The girl looks on in concern as I exit. She wants me to stay—out of danger. The mist hits me full in the face as I follow Big Yellow’s swatch of color through the staging area. He’s fairly flying through the wreckage, the framework that holds the ruined ships, toward our former residence, and points aft.
Spin-up begins right now, of course, just to add to our joy.
A BRAWL