Arrival (50 page)

But it
was
already too late. Blood and tissue spewed from the now gaping wound in the goat’s throat. The creature stumbled once as it wheezed and gurgled, trying to draw oxygen into its lungs. But its throat had been too severely damaged, and all it could draw was liters of bubbling blood that was pouring from both of its severed neck veins.

Jack hung on tight, still drawing the knife upward until he reached the creature’s mandible. The goat stumbled a second time, then a third before its front legs gave out completely.

Jack leapt from the creature’s back as it fell to the ground, landing less than a meter away from where the animal collapsed. Jack stood there for a moment, his right arm covered in the animal’s blood up past his elbow. The great mountain goat was looking at him as it tried to breathe, blood pouring from its neck, staining the snow an eerie, dark red.

Jack stepped up to finish the job, grabbing a horn once more to lift the creature’s head up and drive the tip of his blade into the creature’s open mouth, deep enough to sever its brain stem.

He dropped the goat’s head back onto the red snow and stepped back. There was no movement, no gasps for breath. No sound at all except for the sound of Jack’s own heavy breathing. Steam rose from the animal’s bloody wounds. The once majestic creature was dead.

Something surged up inside of Jack. Something he did not recognize. Both his arms shot out to his sides, his head falling back as a bloodcurdling victory cry erupted from his lungs. It was almost embarrassing to him. He had never made such a noise, but it felt good… Incredibly good.

At this moment, Jack felt more alive than he had ever felt before.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Frank sat at the engineering station on the flight deck, wrapped in a blanket. The weather had become considerably worse over the last week, and the outside temperatures had dropped considerably. Frank had been forced to take the antimatter reactor down to bare minimum output in order to reduce maintenance requirements and prolong its service-life. If the Daedalus chose against rescue, there was no telling how long they would be stranded on this world. And with the ship in conservation mode, there was little power available for heating its interior.

His hands shook violently as his right hand hovered over the power button on the Doppler-comm system he had labored for so long to complete. If this idea didn’t work, he would have no way to get a message out to the Daedalus to warn them of the virus that was threatening to take the lives of himself and his shipmates.

It had taken him nearly three hours to compose the message that his Doppler-comm would be sending in short, burst transmissions. It would be unintelligible to normal communications equipment. But they would recognize the Doppler signature of the carrier wave, and would quickly train their own Doppler systems on the source of the signal and figure out his urgent message.

These days, he was barely able to concentrate on a single thought for more than a few seconds. He couldn’t sleep, and he sure couldn’t eat. Every fluid that came out of him was tinged with blood. His vision was blurry and his hands constantly shook, and even when he
could
focus on something, half the time he couldn’t tell what it was. It was like his mind didn’t understand what it was seeing, even though it
looked
familiar to him. If this thing didn’t work, he wouldn’t live long enough to try again.

Finally, Frank got up enough nerve to push the button. The power light illuminated immediately, followed by several indicator lights on the control face.
Okay so far.
He concentrated as hard as he could on each step. He adjusted the gain on the Doppler system, selected a pulse rate, and set the system to transmit ten pulses at the top of each hour. That would save on energy, but still ensure that anyone receiving the message would have plenty of opportunity to figure it out before the message stopped transmitting.

Frank pushed the button to activate the Doppler pulse, causing it to fire its first pulse up toward the sky. The red indicator on the Doppler display changed from zero to one. Frank watched as the number changed from one to two, five seconds later. Then three, four, five. He watched it cycle through all ten pulses, before switching back into standby mode, its timer counting down from fifty-nine minutes and ten seconds until it would again transmit ten, evenly spaced pulses.

A great sense of relief swept over him. His Doppler-comm was working. Now he could put himself into stasis. If he didn’t die in stasis, and if the Daedalus made it here and found them, and if they could find a cure for TCS, they might still have a chance to survive.

It was a lot of ifs.

* * *

Despite the increasingly foul weather, Jack was forced to leave his little valley. Snow had been falling non-stop for nearly a week, and his valley was covered with waist-deep snowdrifts, making navigation impossible. And to make matters worse, he doubted there was any game left to hunt nearby.

It had taken him most of the morning to make his way across his snow-covered valley and up the side of the ridge. There was not as much snow falling along the ridgeline, but there was plenty of wind. Jack was happy that he had worn all of his furs. They were bulky and cumbersome, making it difficult to move with any speed, but they kept him warm. Coupled with the hat he had fashioned out of the head of that mountain goat, Jack was sure that he resembled some sort of bizarre alien creature. Especially with all the blue-gray hair flowing from his head and face. The thought was comical to him, and he wished he had a mirror to look at himself. He could use a good laugh about now.

Jack made his way slowly along the ridge, forced to lean to his right into the oncoming wind to the point that he was practically walking sideways. Visibility was so poor that he could scarcely see more than ten meters ahead of him. At least he was going downhill. He only hoped that a lower elevation would eventually equate to better weather.

His side ached. His stomach was past being empty; he hadn’t eaten in nearly a week. It was becoming more and more difficult to keep going. And his hope was quickly fading.

Jack knew he had to find some sort of shelter from the storm where he could rest. A cave, a small group of rocks, a clump of trees, anything. If he could only find some edible plants, he might last a bit longer.

Through the blinding white haze of the snowstorm, Jack saw a couple of waist-high rocks. Falling to his knees when he reached them, he quickly dug down into the snow until he hit the ground, pushing the snow up around the top of the rocks to increase their overall height and provide better protection from the wind. Sitting on the newly exposed dirt, Jack leaned back against the boulders, huddling up as best he could to stay out of the freezing wind while he rested.

Thoughts were racing through his starved mind. He tried desperately to remember his survival training back on the Daedalus. His primary concern was of course, finding something to eat. Animals, plants, fish, bugs...
Bugs!

Jack began digging into the dirt around the base of the rocks. But there was nothing there. He began digging to his left, even turning the smaller rocks over to look underneath. That’s when he found them. A small colony of insects. Reddish-purple in color, each about twelve centimeters long. They looked like rather plump worms, but with half a dozen or so feet under their rubbery bodies. There had to be at least a few hundred of them, wiggling around there, wondering why their precious rock had suddenly disappeared and left them exposed to the blistering cold of the Cetian winter.

Jack thought he might vomit at even the thought of eating something so repulsive.
Vomit what?
By now, his stomach had probably shriveled down to the size of a peanut.

Another pain shot through his side.
Well, how bad could they be?
he thought.
Protein is protein, right?
Jack reached down with his left hand, scooping up a handful of the repulsive little bugs. Drawing it up to his face, he stared at them, all reddish-purple and crawling over each other.
Protein shouldn’t wiggle and squirm,
he thought as he closed his eyes, held his breath, and tossed the handful of rubbery little worms into his mouth. He tried to swallow them whole, all at once, positive that if he had to taste them, they wouldn’t stay down. But a few of them remained in his mouth, undoubtedly not wanting to be condemned to death just yet.

His face grimaced as his tongue swept the last few worms from his mouth. He nearly gagged as he forced them down his esophagus to join their friends. “Yuck!” he exclaimed as he scooped up a handful of snow and swallowed it to try washing the disgusting taste out of his mouth.
How the hell did I get into this situation?
he thought, as he tried to ignore the imaginary feeling of the worms wiggling around in his stomach. He shoved another couple of handfuls of snow into his mouth, hoping he might be able to fill up on snow instead. But that would not last for long, and he knew it.

Having no choice, Jack reached down and scooped up another handful of worms, tossing them into his mouth and swallowing quickly, in an attempt not to taste them. A few more handfuls of snow to wash down the second handful of worms, and he reached for a third. Taking a peek at the so-called food in his hand, he noticed the ones from the bottom were fatter than the ones on top. He didn’t know if that was good or bad. He also didn’t know if he would be able to get another handful of them down.

And what the hell is that beeping sound?

The third handful of worms was already on its way down to his stomach by the time the source of the beeping dawned on him.
Damn it!
he thought.
I must’ve left the data pad on.
The battery must be getting low.
He cursed himself for leaving it on, as he dug under his furs to get it out of his right breast pocket to turn it off. There wasn’t much solar energy available to recharge the damned thing in this blizzard. And he didn’t care to sit here eating worms while he waited for it to recharge.

He pulled the data pad out from under his furs and activated the display, expecting to see the ‘Low Battery’ indicator on the bottom of the screen. But the battery display showed a three-quarter charge. He had left it on, but the battery wasn’t low.

Perhaps it was disbelief that kept him from figuring out the reason the scanner was beeping. But there it was, spelled out in plain English for him on the tiny screen.
A signal!
Jack stood abruptly, forgetting about the ferocious winds, nearly falling over as a result. He stared at the screen. It wasn’t a comm-signal. And it wasn’t a signal from the LRV’s transponder, either. But it was on the same frequency that the transponders used. Jack double-checked the frequency range of the signal. It was the one, but there was no ID code in the signal.

It could be from the Daedalus in orbit.
Jack dismissed the thought as he ran through the snow and wind. The direction of the signal was at nearly the exact same altitude as he was. If it was from the Daedalus, it would be coming from above. Besides, he may have lost track of time, but it still had to be months before the Daedalus would even reach the Tau Ceti system, let alone getting through weeks of braking burns.

It’s gotta be from the LRV!
Jack couldn’t believe it. He had given up all hope of ever finding them. And now, there was a signal, straight ahead of him, and not more than a few kilometers away. Jack only wished that the signal would’ve come before he had eaten the worms.

Suddenly, Jack’s energy was renewed, his mind sharp, his senses alive. But still, as he ran through the snow, trying not to stumble as the wind blasted him repeatedly, something was bothering him.
If it was coming from the LRV, why at this altitude? Surely, they wouldn’t land on the ridge? That would be crazy, not to mention nearly impossible. Besides, there were valleys on either side of the ridge in which to land.

Ahead of him, through the haze, Jack could see something shiny, something metallic. It was small, barely sticking out of a large snowdrift.

Jack slowed as he approached the metal object, dropping to his knees in the snow right in front of it. He carefully brushed away the snow until he could see what it was.
A transceiver!
It was obviously jerry-rigged, sitting on top of a small tripod connected to a solar cell and a battery. It was meant to be some type of signal repeater. Jack had never seen anything like it before. But he had to admit; it was a pretty clever little arrangement. The design had Frank’s name all over it. And that brought a broad smile across Jack’s face.

Frank’s alive!

Suddenly, the repeater switched on, startling Jack and knocking him over backwards into the snow. Jack looked at his watch. It had been one hour since he had first received the signal on his data pad. It must be set to repeat at the top of each hour, he realized.

Jack quickly looked at his data pad, spinning around in all directions. If this thing was a repeater, then it had to be repeating a signal sent from somewhere else, like the LRV. It only took a moment to find the direction. But there it was, coming from the ocean side of the ridge. It was obviously much weaker than the signal he was getting from the repeater behind him, but it was there. South by southwest, about twenty kilometers away and just over a kilometer below him.

There’s gotta be a valley down there
, Jack realized. He couldn’t see it through all the snow blowing around him. But it had to be coming from the LRV, probably sitting a few hundred meters below.

Jack shoved his data pad into his pocket, then reached over and shut off the power on the repeater. He didn’t need two signals confusing him. Somewhere down there was the tertiary landing site that he had been trying to get to for the last few months. Down there somewhere was the LRV and his friends. Down there, somewhere, was home.

* * *

Mission Log; Day 175; Chief Engineer reporting;

This is final entry. Doppler-comm is up and I think working. Have checked crew. Condition appears same. They should survive in stasis until help arrives. I am trying to get my body pH right to go into RMS to survive. Dictation is difficult to make this entry. My mind not focusing well. If I do not survive stasis, to my wife, who never wanted me to go, I must apologize. Maybe you were right. Know that I love you, my last thoughts of you. My children. Take care of your mother, grow up to be good people. Whole new world is yours. Yours to decide. Treat it well. Respect it. Take nothing for granted. I love you all.

Frank rose from his seat at the data terminal with great difficulty and made his way across the med-lab to the far counter, where the RMS serum sat. Suddenly, he became weak and dizzy, forced to sit on the edge of the examination table. He looked at the large IV bags hanging on the pole at the head of the table, trying to determine if they were still providing his body with the chemicals it needed in order to achieve something close to normal body chemistry. The tube running from the IV bags to his arm was long enough to reach to the sides of the small lab. He tried to focus on the tubing, checking for any kinks that might impede the flow, but couldn’t focus his eyes on the tiny plastic tube.
If I can just rest a bit,
he thought.
Then I should be well enough to go into stasis.

* * *

Twenty kilometers hadn’t seemed very far away at first. But Jack hadn’t counted on the steep slopes leading down from the ridgeline to the valley floor below. What read as twenty kilometers turned out to be more like forty. He had only made it about halfway down the mountain before he was forced to find shelter for the night.

The next morning at first light, Jack set out again. He would reach the bottom within a few hours. And he knew that he could make it across the valley to the LRV with the remaining daylight. He could make good time across open ground, even with the wind and snow.

He was still hungry, his side aching as his stomach growled. But he couldn’t stop now, not even to eat. Not when he was so close to home.

* * *