In Space No One Can Hear You Scream (29 page)

They hadn’t let me take a gun on the mission through the gate, so I didn’t have mine, but Oberst’s gun was on the floor. I moved as fast as I could in the low gravity and grabbed it up. Then I turned around. Several times. But I was apparently alone in the office. I didn’t even see the shadow.

I thought about calling for help. Then I wondered which would be worse, being examined, maybe dissected, to see if I was really human—Oberst wouldn’t be the only one to get that idea—or put on trial for Oberst’s murder. There was enough of Oberst left to be identified, and I was the only one with him in his office when it happened. Whatever had happened.

On second thought, I probably wouldn’t get a trial. One of the crown princes of the Oberst family was dead and I was the only fall guy around. I’d probably just disappear, unless I disappeared on my own.

Then I thought I saw the shadow again. Or Shadow—I wasn’t thinking of it as capitalized yet, but I soon would. I turned quickly and aimed the gun, but there was nothing there.

Something had come through the gate with me. It was dangerous. Maybe it would attack me next, but if I went back to Earth—if they
let
me go back to Earth—it might attack someone else. Angie . . .

I left the office, saw there was nobody in sight, and went to get my pressure suit. On the way, Dr. Haber, one of the scientists, saw me and said, “Lieutenant Kelly, is it true you remember nothing of the time you were on the other side of the gate? We need to talk—”

“Right, Doctor. But I need to get something to eat first,” I brushed him off.

“Hmmm, I don’t know if you should eat anything until we’ve made an examina—”

“Later, please. I also need to use the latrine.”

“Maybe we should have samples—”

I managed to get away from him without either stunning or cold-cocking him. Once I was back in my pressure suit, I headed for the launch pads, and opened the hatch to the ship I had piloted there from Earth. There shouldn’t be anybody aboard, and there wasn’t. Nobody would have any reason to steal a ship.

Except me.

I strapped in and again thought about heading for Earth. If I had left the thing behind—then I saw the Shadow again out of the corner of my eye, in the control room.

Eventually, I would quit turning my head, trying to see it clearly. There was never anything there. And there was nothing causing a shadow this time, either. But it was on the ship with me. Suppose I went back to Earth with the thing on board, and once it got there it reproduced? Maybe it could divide like an amoeba. Lots of little shadow-things swarming across the Earth.

I couldn’t go back to Earth yet—maybe not ever.

I took off and ignored the anxious voices coming from the audio. Once I was far enough away, I’d set a course. My plans were vague, but I had to go somewhere to get supplies. The ship’s atomic generator could run the reactionless drive and the hyperwarp engines for years, but I wasn’t that well-supplied. I didn’t guess then that I would keep needing supplies for a very long time.

Besides, I had to get rid of the Fleet ship. I knew about some independent and not particularly ethical colonies where I could turn it into currency, enough to get a smaller and less conspicuous ship and plenty of supplies. When I needed more currency, I could make some hauling small cargoes. But no passengers. Never any passengers.

Maybe I could get rid of my Shadow somehow. Or maybe it would get rid of me. But I was going to keep it away from Earth. And Angie. Oh, Angie . . .

Selling the Fleet ship turned out to be harder than I had expected. I wasn’t going to land on the planet, and they wouldn’t let me near the space station, but I couldn’t blame them since I was piloting a fully-armed Fleet ship, nuke torpedoes and all. I asked the two in the ship that rendezvoused with me to stay in their ship. “Sure,” one of them said from the vision screen, “we’ll stay here and you’ll come over and join us.”

Somehow the old joke, “Why, are you coming apart?” didn’t seem very funny. We argued for a while, but I finally went across the connecting tube. The two had guns trained on me, of course.

“So, you’ve deserted the Fleet and you want to sell that ship. Selling stolen goods, eh?” said the fat one. “You think we’re pirates, maybe?”

I’d heard they didn’t like to be called pirates. “No,” I said, “just businessmen, trying to make a profit. Like I’m trying to make a deal.”

The tall, bald one said, “Oh, I think you think we’re pirates. You also think pirates are stupid, to believe a story like yours. I think right after we buy the ship, more Fleet ships’ll show up, accuse us of stealing Terran government property and illegal weapons, and use that as an excuse for taking over the colony. Nobody’ll care. After all, we’re just pirates.”

I was wondering if they were going to shoot me. I was a little surprised to find that I didn’t much care. But only a little. I think they saw that and it made them nervous.

“Okay, Fleet boy,” fat said, “let’s take you to the station and find out what you’re really up to.” Then he noticed that the bald one wasn’t there anymore. Most of him wasn’t there.

“What the hell—” was what he said before I slugged him. Maybe I did care if he shot me. But not much.

Back in my stolen ship, I headed for another rogue colony and wondered how big the Shadow was. I had gone from one ship to another through a connecting tube barely big enough for me to stand up in. Maybe it hadn’t needed the tube.

Much the same thing happened at my next stop. Maybe the dialogue was a little different. I had hoped I might have left the Shadow behind in the other ship, but hadn’t hoped very hard.

I eventually found a buyer, then bought a smaller ship, stocked it with supplies, and headed outsystem, not caring where. Before that, the woman I bought the ship from asked me if I wanted a new name on the hull. I was about to say, “No,” but I thought of something. “Name it
Dutchman
,” I said. As in
Flying Dutchman
, I thought. I was going to keep flying for a long time, I thought. But I didn’t suspect then how long that would be. And how many other people would disappear at other stops.

After a while, I started feeling sorry for the occasional, ah,
businessmen
who stopped me and tried to take over
Dutchman
. There were a lot of them. Maybe they kept the Shadow entertained, if briefly.

There was darkness, and it lasted forever, then it began to fade as I noticed that someone had a major headache. Then I realized it was me. I was in a chair, and almost expected to see that black gate coming toward me, then remembered that was a long time ago, in a different chair. I wasn’t strapped in as before, but I couldn’t move. I was in a flexible but firm cocoon of some kind of foamy-looking material, and I wasn’t wearing any clothes under it. I was looking at another man in a similar cocoon, then I woke up a little more and decided the other man was me. I looked like hell.

I wasn’t looking in a mirror, though. I could see a couple of men with guns watching me through the semi-transparent reflection. I was on the other side of a transparent barrier.

One of them spoke into a wrist buzzer, and the pair quickly had company. I recognized four of them. My pals from the Tucker Station. The survivors from the station.

They stood there pointing guns in my general direction, then a screen I hadn’t noticed until just then lit up, and an old man looked at me. If he was happy to see me, he hid it well. Then his eyes got even harder, and I thought it must be Colonel Oberst’s father from the family resemblance. Another part of my aching brain woke up and I remembered that was over fifty years ago, and the Colonel’s father was elderly even then, judging from newsflash pics of him which I’d seen.

“Pat Oberst?” I was thinking, then realized I’d said it out loud. The Colonel had always referred to his brother as Pat, and I had repeated his example, without thinking. I was coming out of the stunner-induced fog, but not fast enough.

There was a pause, indicating that he was a couple of light seconds away, then, “My father and mother called me Pat,” the man on the screen said, “and they’re dead. My brother also called me Pat, but you murdered him somehow. To everyone still living, I’m Mr. Patrick Oberst, or just Mr. Oberst. But you’re an exception, Mr. Kelly. How many languages do you speak?”

It was a crazy question, but my brain was still trying to come out of the fog, so I answered in detail, “One fluently, two others good enough for conversation, and a little of several more.” Then I thought maybe I should be careful about answering questions.

“You probably know several words for death, then. And several for pain. I’ll answer to all of them. And you’ll have a choice of languages to scream in, Mr. Kelly.” He took another look at me and seemed to find yet another reason to dislike me. “Votara, are you sure this is the right man. He looks like his photograph—too much like his photograph. He looks decades younger than he should be.”

Maybe it was because of the Shadow, but I didn’t seem to be aging much as the years passed. Maybe I wasn’t aging at all, but there was no way I would go to a medtech to find out. I didn’t seem to ever get sick, either. Maybe I’d live forever, just me and my pet monster, oh joy! Or maybe I was the pet.

“Positive, sir,” said one of the women. “Fingerprints, retinas, DNA, brainechoes all match. If he isn’t the right James Kelly, he’s a perfect clone.”

“You become more interesting, Mr. Kelly. I owe you for murdering my brother, but I was going to offer you an easier death than I would otherwise demand if you turned over the alien weapon you brought back through the gate and used to kill him. But if you also have a way of suspending or significantly slowing the aging process, and will share the secret, I might let you depart the world of the living with hardly any screaming at all. An hour or two at most.”

“I wish I could hand them both over to you, but you wouldn’t like the side effects.” Then I woke up enough to realize what the slight time lag meant. “Where
are
you?” I yelled.

After a pause of two or three seconds, he said, “No need to shout, Mr. Kelly. Save your lungs for what you’ll need them for very soon. Why do you want to know where I am? I’m certainly out of your reach.”

I looked more closely at the screen. He was sitting behind a huge polished desk. “You’re in an office,” I said. “Where is it?”

“A lot of people would give a lot to know that, Mr. Kelly. Just as I want to know where that alien weapon you’ve been using is hidden.”

“Are you on
Earth
?”

He was not amused. “I suppose it’s safe to tell you that I’m on Earth. Now it’s your turn to answer questions . . .”

I was on the edge of panic. “This ship is in orbit around the Earth, isn’t it? You’ve got to move it! Get it far from Earth immediately!”

The pause before he answered gave the thugs watching me time to look uneasy and grip their weapons more tightly. This time most of the weapons were lethal. I wondered if they could shoot through the transparent barrier.

Oberst spoke again, “Mr. Kelly, why do you want to get away from Earth? I doubt that even your unknown weapon can make the whole planet explode.”

Forget about being on the edge of panic. I was neck-deep in it and trying to stay afloat. If they landed the ship, the Shadow would be loose on Earth. Maybe that was what it had been waiting for.

Then I realized that one of the thugs had left my sight while I was yelling, and was now returning with someone else. A woman. And then I saw her face—

She had a strip of tape over her mouth, but even so she looked like Angie. But it couldn’t be Angie, because she looked like Angie had looked fifty years ago. For a wild second I wondered if the Shadow had somehow kept Angie from aging too. I didn’t know what the thing was capable of doing . . .

Then my memory did a rewind and playback. I realized that Oberst had said, “Please bring in Ms. Maxwell now, Votara.”

I was back in realtime, whatever “real” meant anymore, and Oberst said, “May I introduce Ms. Callie Maxwell? Ms. Maxwell, this is James Kelly, and he is reacting much the way I expected upon noticing your close resemblance to his former fiancée. And, no, Mr. Kelly, I’m not planning on torturing her in hopes that the resemblance would make you disclose your secrets. Instead, I’m betting that if you somehow have the weapon concealed on your person, her resemblance to Angela Graham Hanson will keep you from using it on her. And perhaps the fact that she isn’t here voluntarily will also make you hesitate.”

Hanson! So she had married someone else. After that sank in, I wondered why Callie Maxwell was here . . .

“I’m guessing that you’re wondering why she’s here,” he said.

Check.

“And possibly you’re wondering if your former fiancée is in danger from me.”

Double check.

“It happens that she is beyond my, or anyone’s reach. She died fourteen years ago in a flyer collision. I had people watching her for long before that in case you tried to make contact with her, so they were on the spot quickly to get her out of the wreckage and to a hospital, but she was dead on arrival. I did not cause the accident. She was no use to me dead. Neither is Ms. Maxwell, so I hope you’re not going to wreak carnage in the ship.”

I was beginning to think that I was going to die since I couldn’t give Oberst the secret of a weapon I didn’t have. Or an anti-aging secret. If I died, what would happen to the Shadow. Would it find a new—host, pet, anchor, whatever I was to it? And maybe switch to someone else on the ship. Someone who would go back to Earth. Maybe what I had feared for five decades would happen. I had stayed away from planets because maybe if the Shadow was on a planet it would start a brood of little Shadows. And we were close to Earth . . .

I noticed that Maxwell no longer had handcuffs on, but she still had the tape over her mouth. She was working a little keypad, which must have been on a direct line to Oberst because he suddenly said, “Ms. Maxwell, are you making all this up? An invisible—well. There are plenty of other—ah, you can easily be replaced, and not pleasantly at all. If you thought being abducted was upsetting, understand that much worse can happen.”