The Fringe Worlds (3 page)

As the sense of resignation once again descended on Kaylor, he simply stated, “Then we’ll have to disarm it.”

There was a moment’s silence on the comm-line before Jym came back on. “I’m seeing if there are any instructions for disarming a thing like that. Give me a moment.”

“A moment’s all we have.”

In less than thirty seconds, Jym came back on the line. “I’ve got something. The controls appear to be a simple degradation program. It says if we can reverse the contacts, the process should be reversed, adding time instead of subtracting it.”

That sounded simple enough. Maybe there was hope! Kaylor inserted himself further into the opening until he was only inches from the control panel. Then pulling a small tool kit from a utility pocket on his environment suit, he took out a motorized screw extractor and set to work taking off the outer panel. The work went quickly and soon he was looking into the guts of the control unit. There were wires and connectors and several circuit boards. “Which one is the timer”

“It says to follow the leads from the display panel.”

“Got it. It’s right here in front.”

Taking at gripping tool from the kit, Kaylor reached into the unit, past the maze of wires and to the circuit board beyond. Positioning the gripper, he was just about to lock down on the board when he felt a painful clamping on both of his ankles — and he was suddenly yanked out of the opening!

He flew across the room, landing hard on top of the command console, shocked and dazed, his ribs burning. As he regained his senses, Kaylor found he was face-to-face with one of the primes from the hiberpods, naked accept for a sheet wrapped around his lower torso. And this one definitely was not dead. Instead, the creature was glaring at him, clinching his fists and baring his teeth in a sign of challenge.

Then it charged!

Raising his arm in defense, Kaylor did so just in time to block the strike from the creature. Instantly, Kaylor let out a scream, as he heard and felt his arm break from the incredible impact. Intense pain coursed through his arm like fire before the suit could inject a pain killer, bringing with it at least a bearable degree of relief.

But the creature wasn’t done. He grabbed Kaylor by his suit and threw him off the console, sending him once again flying across the room. This creature was incredibly strong.

Landing hard on the floor with another spasm of pain, this time in his right shoulder, Kaylor rolled to his right and managed to pull his weapon as he did so. He pointed it at his attacker, who hesitated, staring at the weapon. Then when no shot came, the creature pounced again.

Just in time, the targeting computer locked on and Kaylor depressed the trigger. A ball of blue lightening flashed out of the barrel, striking the creature directly in the chest.

He was thrown back against the control console, screaming in pain — but he didn’t go down! Instead the insane creature swiped at his chest, at the already-blistering skin and burned hair. He was stunned, but only momentarily.

Kaylor was shocked that the creature was still alive, but his shock soon turned to terror as the creature pushed off from the console and leapt in the air toward—

Just then, Kaylor’s stomach seemed to rise up in his mouth and he nearly vomited, as the gravity wells for the ship dissolved, leaving Kaylor - and his attacker — weightless and disoriented.

The charging creature was caught unprepared. The lack of gravity caused him to remain airborne — and he flew directly over Kaylor; even as he passed, the beast still tried to reach down and grab him! But he missed by a hair, and with his head turned back toward Kaylor, the creature slammed into the opposite wall with a dull thud, striking a sharp protrusion on the bulkhead. Instantly, the wild beast went limp, and small droplets of blood began to fill the air around the drifting body.

Kaylor lay on the deck, bruised and battered, totally in shock. In the zero gravity, he began to drift upward slightly, until the magnets in his boots activated and he found himself in a standing position.

Then he became aware of the screaming in his helmet. It was Jym.

“I’m.I’m all right,” he said unsurely.

“The BOMB, Kaylor! Hurry!”

The bomb THE BOMB!

Regaining his senses, Kaylor ignored the pain in his broken arm and dove for the computer core opening. The timer was down to 94-93-92. Looking around, Kaylor found the gripper tool floating near the top of the opening. Grabbing it with his good right hand, he positioned it quickly onto the circuit board and pulled.

Nothing happened! It would not come out!

“Try again!” Jym screamed.

With only one good arm, Kaylor did his best to reposition the gripper more to the center of the board and pulled. This time it popped out. Then twisting the board around, Kaylor tried three times in rapid succession to get the board back into the slot. Then on the fourth try, success!

Instantly, the counter - which was now down to16 — began to click upwards. 17-18-19.

Kaylor was in too much pain to celebrate. His ribs burned, his broken arm was screaming pain and his right shoulder was throbbing. He let himself relax in the ease of weightlessness, trying to calm his rapidly beating heart.

“Are we going to live” asked Jym’s equally exhausted voice.

“For a little while longer, I’m afraid.”

After a few moments it was time to get back to work. Extracting himself from the recess opening, Kaylor found the still-unconscious creature drifting near the ceiling to his right. The blood bubbles hadn’t grown any more numerous, so the wound must have sealed itself, and from the slow, rhythmic movements of the creature’s chest, Kaylor could tell he was still alive.

Making a decision he hoped he wouldn’t live to regret, Kaylor pulled a connecting cord from his suit and fastened one end of it to a corner latch on the computer core. Then reaching up, he grasped a bare foot of the creature, and began to move towards the exit, trailing the core and the creature behind him like a couple of bizarre, floating balloons.

“Set the grapples, Jym,” he commanded. “I’m on my way back.”

Within the hour, they were back in the well, half a million kilometers away from the location of the attack, with the large derelict ship in tow. Kaylor found Jym in the aft cargo hold, cinching down the last of five cargo straps around the still-unconscious creature, now firmly secured to one of the work benches in the room. Jym wasn’t taking any chances; he’d seen what this thing could do.

Kaylor wore a blue cast encasing his broken left arm and had placed a torso brace around his bruised ribs for support and comfort. The pain medication was helping, but still his arm throbbed. In any event, he didn’t question Jym’s caution.

Finally Jym asked the question: “What are we going to do with him”

Kaylor had thought about this. “He may come in handy,” he began. “This creature obviously was cargo aboard the ship. He could be a witness to what happened, verifying that pirates attacked the ship and not us.”

“Then why did he attack you”

Kaylor let out a snort. “Well, only my ass was sticking out of the opening in the equipment bank. He probably thought I was one of the pirates.”

“Then we’ll have to convince him that we’re not.”

“That shouldn’t be a problem, if he doesn’t go berserk when he wakes up. I don’t know how intelligent this thing is, but he acted like a wild animal when he attacked me.”

“You should consider yourself lucky that you’re not dead. Take a look at this.” Jym led him over to a computer screen set in the wall above a small work desk. Punching a few keys, he pulled up an image that Kaylor recognized as a transparency scan.

“Before I bandaged the head wound, I took a scan of the skull to see how deep the puncture was. Look at this.” Jym pointed at the image, to a section indicating the thickness of the skull. “The bone structure is extremely dense and thick. The wound is shallow, but the trauma caused a slight swelling in the brain, right here. It will go down, and there shouldn’t be any permanent damage.”

“So Lucky for him.”

Jym glared at him, annoyed. Then he switched images. “Since the skull structure was so thick, I also did a full body scan, and here, look at the bones in the arm.” On the screen was a cross section of what appeared to be an almost solid structure.

“That’s a bone It looks like some sort of metal rod.”

“No, it’s bone alright.” Jym answered. “But just look how thick it is, easily twice as thick as yours, or mine. No wonder your arm snapped like a twig when this thing hit you. And look at the muscle density. I’d hate to go up against this thing - ever — even with full body armor on.”

Kaylor studied the scan closer. He knew something about anatomy, since operating as an independent mule-driver on the fringe of civilization often meant having to fend for yourself for medical aid. He also knew from these scans that only the most primitive creatures had skeletal structures like this, an animal closer to the lower side of the evolutionary scale. Yes, Kaylor had been incredibly lucky. And he had brought this thing aboard his ship.

“Put a monitor on him. We need to be very careful when he wakes up.”

Jym and Kaylor were in the common area of the ship; Kaylor reclined on a couch, his injured arm resting on his chest, and in the other hand he held a `stick, with its burning end quickly filling the room with a pungent cloud of dense, white smoke.

Jym was seated at the central table, gnawing on a piece of green Filiean bark, which was the main staple of his people. He enjoyed its sweetness and texture, savoring each strand he peeled from the bark as if it were a sexual experience. Even his eyes were glassy, but that may have had more to do with the smokestick in the room than anything else.

It had been about three hours since the meeting in the cargo hold, and Kaylor had taken a shuttle pod over to the big ship and brought back a nav computer unit, a set of calibration tools and a few other smaller treasures he could easily stow in the pod. And now they were discussing their game plan for the salvage.

Between ripping bites of the bark, Jym was complaining. “I’m just saying. Reg 4 will hang us if we’re caught.”

Kaylor took another long drag off the `stick and then blew the smoke into the air with flourish. “I know what Reg 4 says. If anyone asks, we’ll just say the pirates must have taken the equipment before we got there. I just want to make sure we’ll get something for all our effort.”

Reg 4 was the law governing interstellar salvage procedures. What they were referring to was the restriction that stated no items could be removed from a derelict until the salvage was registered and the proper chain of ownership investigated. Otherwise, it was simply piracy. By removing the computer core, along with the other items Kaylor had stored in the pod, they were technically just as guilty as the actual pirates themselves.

“I’ve checked the charts,” Kaylor was saying. “We’ll pass within a million kilometers of an asteroid belt once we get in the Nimorian system. I’ll send the pod down to one of the bigger ones. They’ll never find anything aboard.”

Jym knew Kaylor would be careful; he just liked to complain. All they had to do is keep the creature in the cargo hold from seeing any of the booty and they would be home free.

Almost on queue, Jym glanced over at the screen on the wall above Kaylor where the monitor in the cargo hold was displayed, and noticed the creature begin to stir on the workbench. He was waking up.

The first thing he noticed was the smell. It was some sickly cross between rotting garbage and bad breath, and it almost made him gag. But as a dull consciousness returned, Adam fought with all his instincts to remember his survival training. First, he tried to remain still, learning all he could about his surroundings from the smell and sounds around him.

Yes, the smell was strange — like nothing he’d ever encountered before — but the sounds he heard were non-threatening, just the soft whirl of a ventilation system and nothing else.

Then carefully, Adam opened his eyes, just a little, just enough to get a quick sense of where he was. He was in a large room, crates stacked against the far wall, and three rows of light fixtures set into the ceiling. He was laying flat on some sort of hard surface, facing upwards. There didn’t seem to be anyone else in the room with him.

Next, his training told him to assess his physical condition. He knew his head was injured, not only from the dull throbbing of his left temple, but the fact that he could now recall flying through the air and striking a hard metal wall with more force than he could imagine. Then he became aware of the burning sensation in his chest, and remembered a blue bolt of lightning flaring out at him—

The fucker shot me!

Trying to piece together the fragments of his dream/memory, Adam was at a loss to explain the sensation of flying he experienced as he jumped at the thing in the blue tunic - and just kept going! He remembered all sense of balance leaving him and — it was all too confusing!

Anger swelled up inside him. Adam had no idea what was real or imagined, as the memories exploded in his head, filled with images of the Afghan mountains, then of a burning white light, and then of a soft bed with warm liquid flowing down his arm.

He awoke to find himself in a canister of some kind, and he pushed open the clear plastic dome and sat up. He was in a large, curving room with dozens of long canisters just like the one he was in, each with a clear, dome-shaped cover. From where he sat, Adam could see into maybe five or six of the canisters. Each held another person, four men and two women, all naked, all asleep with needles and tubes in their arms.

He looked down at his arm. The needles had come out, and a warm, clear liquid was flowing from the tubes. He climbed out of the canister, his bare feet finding a cold metal floor. He stumbled, but caught himself against the side of the canister. His legs were weak, but he managed to regain his balance quickly.

And then came the most bizarre part of his dream/memory. To his left, he heard a high, screeching sound and when he turned to investigate, he found himself staring down at an image he recognized from just about every science fiction movie he’d ever seen. It was about four feet tall, with a long gray head and large black eyes as big as pears. The thing was dressed in a one-piece gray jumpsuit - and it was yelling at him!