The Black Seas of Infinity (5 page)

Seconds stretched out into an eternity as I
slowly approached him. When I was only a few feet away, he looked
up. I had no idea who he was, but his eyes seemed to glimmer with
faint recognition. On instinct, I squeezed the trigger. A slight
pop, a small hole to the right of his temple, and he froze, slowly
collapsing, his face permanently fixed in a look of confusion. The
blood trickled down his forehead and pooled beneath, staining the
top of his white smock and expanding in a syrupy pool on the tile
floor. I could smell the fresh blood. It hung thick in the air,
accusing me with its stench.

The pounding in my head grew more intense.
What had I done? There was no other way, I kept telling myself, my
mantra… I have to think in black and white terms. I have to keep
going. I am truly fucked now if I don’t succeed. This is it. I
obtain the suit or I go to the electric chair. A wave of cold
washed over me. What if I was wrong? What if the suit didn’t work
the way I thought it would? I had just killed a man! And it would
all be for nothing.

A few feet directly in front of me was a
door. As if in a walking hallucination, I stepped around the
crumpled form and approached the door, skirting the slowly
expanding pool with revulsion. The brightness of the room was
overwhelming. My temples convulsed like some poorly running old
motor, ready to seize at any moment. I have to put this out of my
mind. It’s a cliché: you never know what killing a man is like
until you do it. But it’s true. You plan for the extremes, you work
it all out in your head, but none of that is real life. It’s just
you and a corpse that a minute ago was a living, breathing human. I
reached forward, grabbed the lever, and opened the door.

A long metal corridor stretched out before
me. This was the point at which the warehouse dramatically changed.
It was like in one of those old adventure stories, where some kid
finds the entrance to another world in his closet. Segmented metal
gratings coalesced into a walkway. The walls sloped as the passage
morphed into a surreal tunnel. The rungs were large protruding
pipes, riveted together at the seams. Elongated fluorescent tubes
snaked overhead. The path extended only a few feet before hitting
another door, the hatch resembling something out of a submarine,
with its large metal wheel topping a corrugated bulkhead. This
again required keys, a keyhole in the center freezing the wheel in
position. Will my key still work? I approached the portal, the
metal grating reverberating noisily under my feet, the hollow metal
echoing in a slowly dying wail down the corridor. I was sure
soldiers would appear any minute now. If I am gunned down, at least
that will be the end. But if I am captured?

The metal door was closed. I had explosives,
but my nerves were shot. I didn’t need anything causing further
commotion or increasing my paranoia.

I pulled out the key, my hand trembling as I
extended it toward the latch. It caught the edge of the keyhole and
slid in. I spun the wheel, wrenched open the door, and entered.
Luck—or something—is on my side.

A few stairs, abutted by a long metal grating
extending off to either side, greeted me. Directly in front was a
guardrail, offering a view of the huge storeroom below. Stepping up
to the guardrail, I peered down. I had seen it many times, but it
was still a sight to behold. Interred below, lit up like a
Christmas tree, was the alien craft. Even the surface, composed of
some dark compound never found on Earth, shimmered in the light. It
was a giant wing, fat in the center and tapering off as it dropped
down to the sides. I wondered if the vessel was merely a
hallucination. A blink of the eyes and it would be gone. I had
worked on this for years, yet the strange ship had never become
mundane.

Even this late at night, there were men
working on it. The hangar was cluttered with small buildings and
ramps. I didn’t dare stay too long. Eavesdropping wasn’t my goal,
and being spotted threatened to totally undo my mission. I spotted
another submarine-style bulkhead door, so I cranked the wheel,
spinning it until it ground to a stop, then gently pulled it open.
A gasp of air, and a thick, musty odor greeted me.

I eased forward, a distant hum faintly
audible, piercing the gloom of the passageway. More than once I
froze, whipping my neck around and trying to hone in on some
imagined noise. The tunnel spiraled below the hangar, splitting
into three interchangeable passageways. I followed the path I
thought I remembered, slowing down before every fork as my mind
scrolled through old memories. Time slowed to a tense crawl. I
didn’t want to run and risk my noisy footfalls giving away my
presence. The tunnel rounded one final curve and another bulkhead
door abruptly concluded the walkway. I hoped this was the right
one. It was a maze down here, and everything looked way too
similar. I clasped the wheel, spun it to the left, and pulled. The
door cracked open. Stepping over the stubby sidewall, I dropped
onto the smooth concrete floor. The walls were damp blocks of
stone. A long, thin fluorescent light slithered overhead, its glow
blinding. My vision was swimming with the sudden lighting change,
but the blur in the distance looked like my goal. A nondescript
doorway on the left, the suit entombed inside, with the hazy form
of a guard posted just beyond. Things must have changed since my
days here because that watchman was a new addition. But I had gone
too far to back out now. Killing the scientist had changed my point
of view. Or rather, it stiffened my resolve. In a sense, letting
this soldier live would mean the scientist had died for nothing. He
could have had a brilliant future. He might have been the one that
found the cure for cancer. What greater claim on life did this
soldier have? Not that any of this was helping—rationalizing made
nothing easier. If I was doomed, it was too late to turn back.

He was young…probably too young to even know
what he was securing. I raised my .45 to eye level and walked
slowly, pointing the gun at the soldier’s head. He was leaning
against the wall, a bit hunched over, possibly daydreaming. He
didn’t notice me until I got within twenty feet of him. His eyes
widened, and just as he started to raise his M16, I squeezed the
trigger. A red dot appeared just above his right eye, and brain
matter sprayed out behind him, a slick sheen fanning across the
wall, flowing over the doorframe and marring the door beyond. He
collapsed into the wall with an unnatural thump, sliding to the
ground with a look of shock on his face. The now familiar smell of
freshly rent flesh wafted up to greet me.

I had had no choice, but excuses didn’t make
it any better. The gore on the wall added a surreal touch, like
this was some horror movie, playing out in a mesmerizing panorama
right before my eyes. Everything was intense. The smell of
gunpowder, the gristle of brain and blood on the wall, the coldly
fixed corpse, the red-blooded warmth of life slowly dissipating
into the belly of some forlorn underground bunker. I had to stop
this. Had to focus on the mission ahead of me. Black and white. No
choice. Kill or be killed.

Mounted on the wall behind his corpse was a
small box requiring my security key. I slipped it in, the small
bulb blinked green, and the door cracked open. I pushed, extending
my left arm, and there it was in all its glory, the suit I had
studied for so many years. It was floating in a large glass tank,
its black mass limp and lifeless. This must have been some
preservation measure, and they immersed it in fluid thinking it
might decay. Primitives. They don’t have any idea what they’re
dealing with.

The room was small, a closet. Most of the
space was taken up by the tank, a large cylinder with a rubber hose
sprouting from the metal cap on top and disappearing into a port
behind. A small screen with a keypad was mounted on the wall beside
the tank. It probably had something to do with the receptacle, but
that didn’t really matter. After they buried the suit here, I
didn’t follow up on it. I was sure this was all bureaucratic
bullshit aimed at preserving something they had no clue about. I
needed something to break the glass with. I glanced down at the
lifeless guard, the finger his right hand rigidly caressing the M16
trigger. I scooped up the gun, flipped it around, and smashed the
glass with the butt. There was a loud noise, and the gun bounced
out of my hands, the momentum throwing me backwards.

Fuck, I wasn’t prepared for this. I dropped
the M16, pulled my .45 out of its holster, and fired at the
cylinder. The bullet punched a hole through the tank, bounced off
the suit, exited, and lodged itself in the wall to my right. That
was way too close, and it left me feeling thick-headed. Fluid
poured out of the two new holes, but the glass held. My mind was
racing, trying to come up with a solution. I walked over to the
wall- mounted console and tapped at the keyboard. It lit up, and in
green letters asked me for a password. Goddamnit! I glanced around,
but nothing popped into my mind. I crawled behind the cylinder.
With my back against the wall and using my feet as a lever, I
strained against the glass. Nothing. Maybe if I crawled up higher?
I shuffled up the wall, feet clumsily skipping up the glass, and
tried again. This time it moved slightly. I climbed higher and
tried again, gritting my teeth, narrowing my eyes, and pressing
with all my strength.

The cylinder slowly tipped. Falling forward,
it crashed onto the ground with a loud thump, the sudden loss of
perch dropping me to the floor in a gruff collapse of flailing
limbs. I scrambled to get my footing, but to no avail. I landed in
a partial squat that succeeded only in softening the blow to my
ass. Letting loose with a string of expletives, I instantly
regretted the clamor and cut them off in mid curse. I tried to keep
my voice down, while wincing in pain, rocking, and gritting my
teeth as I bit my lip. Crawling to my feet, I limped over to the
sideways cylinder. The fall had ripped the rubber hose from the
top, and fluid was gurgling out, covering the floor with a
yellowish-green slime. A chemical stench not unlike that of gear
oil mixed with alcohol filled the air. I examined the cap. Dual
slits on either side of the hose opening looked large enough for my
hands. Stepping into the mire, I crouched down in front of the torn
hose portal and delved my hands into the grips. Fluid gurgling out
of the hole smacked me in the chest, drenching me, my head swimming
in the strong vapors. My fingers hit something. There was a slight
hissing sound, and the circular top popped forward. The fluid
wasn’t far behind, and what remained of it surged out in a torrent,
bludgeoning me in the chest.

I fought back a wave of nausea, tossing the
black metal top aside like a discus. It glided a short distance
before clumsily crashing into the floor. Now for the tricky
part—extracting the suit from the cylinder. The fall had propelled
it forward, the head barely touching the entry hole. I reached my
hands inside, trying to dig into the armpits. Heavy as lead.
Shuffling closer, I flanked the rim and dove my arms into the
cylinder. Spreading the arms a little, the confines of the tube
preventing me from further motion, I tugged with all the strength I
could muster. The top of the cylinder cut into my throat, beads of
sweat broke out on my face. The thing lurched forward with a
scraping noise, throwing me backwards into the pool. Sitting back
up, my drenched shirt clinging to my back in a cold, rumpled mess,
I hooked the armpits again, braced my boots against the top of the
cylinder, and pulled. This time the rest of the suit tore out
further, again launching me backwards into the oily mire. The form
was as heavy as I remembered, probably a good three-hundred pounds.
I took a couple of deep breaths and hauled out the rest.

Now for the nightmare of hauling it to the
ship. Slowly I rose to my feet and stumbled backwards, dragging it
down the hall, my feet slipping in the greasy muck. Panting and
sweating like a racehorse, I inched it along, leaving a trail of
ooze all the way to the elevator. Reaching the door, I let go of
the suit, its mass colliding loudly with the floor. I pressed the
button and nervously waited. Through my heavy exhalations, I kept
imagining I could hear sounds, but whenever I held my breath I was
met only with dead silence. The doors opened after what seemed an
eternity, and I dragged the suit inside, hitting the button for two
floors up. Fortunately, the elevator car opened on the far side of
the hangar, under the shade of an overhead walkway, so I would stay
relatively hidden. As the doors slowly closed, I looked back at the
mess I was leaving behind. The limp cadaver of a soldier, his
sloppy demise splayed in crusty blood across the bare concrete
wall. A broken tank choking off the hall, the intestinal slime
trailing up to the elevator doors. A compression hiss, a lurch, and
I was moving upwards.