Venus Rising

By

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2013, 1989 by Flora Speer

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For my father,

Ralph Phillip de Groodt

Who worked on the early space program,

Who believed in space travel.

Narisa thought she was awake, but she could
not open her eyes. Slowly she became aware that she was lying on a
lumpy couch. Her head ached, and her eyelids seemed to be glued
together. She could feel the hot sun on her face.

She knew where she was; she was at home in
the garden of her parents’ house, and in a moment or two her mother
would come to scold her for lying in the sun so long, and tease her
about tanning her skin into fine Denebian leather. Narisa could
sense her approaching, and waited with laughter in her heart for
the gentle, loving words she expected to hear.

Her mother’s shadow passed between Narisa and
the sun, moved away, then came back again, but she did not speak to
her daughter. With great effort, Narisa lifted heavy eyelids,
searching for her mother’s beloved face.

“This isn’t Belta!” The dream gone, she
reared upward suddenly, only to be pulled firmly down again.
Without thinking, she released the safety harness so she could sit.
That automatic motion brought her to complete wakefulness, to the
memory of where she really was - in the Empty Sector, where it was
said dreams could be so real they led humans to madness. This, the
computer on the rescue pod had told her, was the only planet within
many parsecs that had a breathable, although thin, atmosphere.
She’d had no choice about where to land, for the pod had almost run
out of air. A thin atmosphere was better than none at all, she had
reasoned, but it made landing difficult.

There hadn’t been enough air friction to slow
the pod properly, so it had crashed and bounced several times
before the entry door had broken open and the little ship suddenly
stopped moving. An instant later Narisa had lost consciousness.

She was lying in the open pod, face upward
toward a brilliant orange sun, and the shadow that had passed over
her was not her long-dead mother, but a large bird. It soared
through a deep blue sky, turned gracefully and flew back above the
pod. Narisa squinted against the bright light, trying to follow the
bird’s path.

The creature was blue, almost the same shade
as the sky, so it was difficult to make out the details of its
body. The blinding sun didn’t help, either. Narisa’s eyes began to
water. She braced herself on one hand in an effort to shift her
position so the sun wouldn’t glare in her eyes as badly, and she
could get a better look at the bird.

It wasn’t a lumpy couch she had been lying
on, it was a man. In her confusion she had forgotten about
Commander Tarik. He lay perfectly still, his eyes closed, his pale,
sharp-featured face serene. Was he dead? Was that huge bird a
scavenger, come to make a dinner of Tarik, and possibly of Narisa,
too? Frantically, she felt for a heartbeat, a pulse, a sign he was
breathing.

It was there, she discovered when she flung
herself down on him and pressed her ear to his chest. His heart was
beating slowly and steadily; and he was taking shallow, steady
breaths. She resisted the impulse to stay there, stretched out on
top of him with her head on his chest, and weep from relief and
fear. She was surprised at herself, and a little ashamed. Narisa
never wept; tears were a sign of weakness.

She had not wept when her parents and sister
had been killed by Cetans ten years ago. Nor had she cried when
Cetan pirates had attacked the
Reliance
and their first
blast at the space ship had killed everyone on board except herself
and First Officer Tarik.

They had been together in the Navigator’s
Area, which had extra shielding. As usual, Tarik had been trying to
find some excuse to criticize her work. He was standing when the
blast came. Surprised, without any time to catch the guard rail and
hang on, he was thrown around the Area and apparently injured.
Narisa had been strapped into her navigator’s seat and so had
suffered only a few bruises.

She did not like Tarik, but she knew what her
duty was. Somehow she had rescued him from the wrecked, drifting
ship, had dragged his unconscious body through the corridors and
wedged him into the only rescue pod left functioning. She had
ejected the pod from the
Reliance
shortly before its
automatic self-destruction system had exploded the ship into
atoms.

Then she had brought them here, to an
uncharted planet in the Empty Sector, where Service personnel
definitely should not be, but where the Cetans would probably not
follow them. The Cetans would assume a small pod that had gone into
the Empty Sector would never get out of it.

Now she was solely responsible for the safety
of the unconscious Tarik, and for herself. She scrambled to her
feet, disregarding her shaking knees. After all, two people had
spent long hours cramped into a one-person pod, breathing from a
limited air supply. No wonder she felt weak and a bit dizzy. The
feeling would pass. She could tell the gravity on this planet was a
little less than she was accustomed to. That should help her to
recover. She took a deep breath. The air was hot and very dry.

She looked around, turning slowly to scan the
entire horizon. There wasn’t much to obstruct her view. The pod had
landed in flat, desert-like terrain marked by occasional formations
of gray rock. Some were spectacularly high. A few straggly
gray-green plants grew on some nearby rocks. The surface of the
land as far as she could see was covered with tan and gray pebbles
and gravel.

“Not very hospitable,” she said softly,
glancing upward. The bird had disappeared, leaving the sky empty.
Not even a cloud marred the perfect bowl of blue so dark it was
almost purple at the zenith.

“That’s because of the thin atmosphere,” she
said into the silence. There were no artificial structures at all,
no signs of life save that one departed bird and the few plants.
There was just the burning sun and desolate isolation.

“Is there intelligent life here?” Narisa
continued to speak her thoughts aloud to counter the silent
emptiness. “Will we be able to contact the Capital? Will we ever
get off this planet?”

Not in the pod, certainly. It was made for
escape from a ship in space and had the capacity to dock with
another ship or to land on a planet’s surface, but it could not
take off again. If she and Tarik were to leave, they would have to
find another ship.

A moan brought her back to the pod, where
Tarik still lay entangled in the safety harness. Kneeling on the
stony ground, she removed it. As she did so, he caught her right
hand and held it to his lips. His eyes were still closed.

“Suria,” he whispered, his mouth warm against
her fingers. “Suria, my sweet.”

“Commander Tarik!” Narisa’s spine stiffened.
How dare he not know her from Suria? Suria was his lover, who had
been navigator of the
Reliance
before Narisa was assigned to
that post. Unreasoning anger filled her. “Let me
go—
sir!’`

Her hand was free. Narisa stood, watching him
and nursing her resentment. Then she began to realize Tarik was
having the same trouble getting his eyes open that she had had.
Perhaps he, too, was deep in some beautiful dream. She regarded him
a little more sympathetically. After a while his lids rose, and he
stared up at her with eyes as purple-blue and impenetrable as the
mysterious sky above them. It took a moment or two more for
recognition to fill those eyes and his usual coolly assessing
expression to return.

“Help me to stand,” he ordered.

“I think you should lie still until you have
adjusted to this atmosphere.”

“Lieutenant.” It was a command, no doubt
about that, and his right hand was raised in an imperious gesture.
Narisa braced her feet, put out her right hand to his and pulled.
Once upright, he stepped out of the pod. Still holding his right
hand and supporting that arm, Narisa put her left arm across his
shoulders to help him steady himself.

“Where have you brought us?” he demanded.
Before she could answer, he collapsed onto his knees, nearly
dragging her down with him.

“I told you to lie still,” she cried,
watching him gasp for breath. His face was tight with pain, but he
crawled back to the pod and sat leaning against its side.

“I believe,” he said, measuring his words and
his breath carefully, “that I have a broken rib. Possibly several.
Where are the medical supplies?”

“They should be inside. I’ll check.” Leaning
over the entrance, Narisa reached in to search the various
compartments. “This is all I can find. There are no medical
supplies.” She held up three packages.

“Why,” Tarik demanded, “were the two of us in
one pod?”

“It was the only one that was usable.”

“Where was the rest of the crew?”

“Everyone else was dead.” She made her voice
flat and clipped so he wouldn’t know how deeply that had affected
her.

He stared at her, his eyes wide, and she
wondered what he was thinking, if he felt the horror of those last
moments on the
Reliance
the way she did. Of course he
didn’t. He had been unconscious.

“What’s in there?” He indicated the packages
Narisa was holding.

“A small tool kit, compressed food and
water,” she told him, reading the labels. “Enough for one person
for five days.” ,

“Or two people for two and a half days.”

“Not in the desert. We need more water.”

“The last thing I remember,” Tarik said,
gently massaging his sore ribs, “I was in the Navigator’s Area. How
did I get to the pod?”

Narisa told him, adding, “When the
Reliance
exploded, all the instruments in the pod
malfunctioned. By the time I got control again, we were in the
Empty Sector. I don’t understand how that happened.” As soon as the
last sentence was out, she wished she hadn’t said it. He would use
it against her. She knew he would.

“We were still close to the
Reliance
when she blew?”

When Narisa nodded, he looked thoughtful. Her
tension eased a little. He might come to the same conclusion she
had, that the horrendous explosion had something to do with where
they were. She hoped he would also decide that it didn’t matter how
they had reached this planet; the important thing was how they were
going to leave it.

“The Empty Sector,” he said softly.

“We shouldn’t be here, Commander Tarik.”

“We shouldn’t be alive, but we are. It’s not
your fault, lieutenant. Assuming, of course, that the instruments
really did malfunction and you didn’t go off course through
inexperience or incompetence.”

“How do you suppose. . .” Narisa responded
heatedly, then stopped. Trying hard to keep her temper under
control, she began again, speaking more calmly. “How could I
possibly have navigated so far away from where we should have been?
It would take an amazing degree of incompetence and a very long
time to achieve that.”

“Just so. Have you any idea how long I was
unconscious?”

Indignation at his suggestion that she had
failed to navigate the pod properly, anger against the Cetans and
sorrow for dead shipmates, concern for their own predicament - all
the emotions she had been so rigidly repressing now burst in a wave
of furious rage aimed at her immediate superior. Insubordination or
not, she could hold it in no longer.

“You arrogant, cold-blooded, hard-hearted-.
You have resented me since the day I came aboard. I am an expert,
accredited, fully licensed navigator. The Service never would have
assigned me to the
Reliance
if I weren’t. I’m just as good a
navigator as your beloved Suria. I’m sure you would rather she were
here with you now. I’m sorry she’s not. I wish I were back on
Belta, or at the Capital, or in the next galaxy. Anywhere but here
with you.” Narisa tossed the packages she was holding into his lap
and started walking away from him.

“Lieutenant.” Years of training made her stop
at his peremptory tone, but she kept her back toward him. When he
spoke again, his voice was softer. “I haven’t thanked you for
saving my life.”