Writers of the Future, Volume 29 (11 page)

We surveyed the planet from orbit. There were oceans, lakes, rivers, green plains, lush valleys—everything some damn fool pioneer colonist could want. We landed in a savanna bordering a forest to get maximum ecological coverage. The landing was uneventful. The vegetation, while unlike Terran standard, was green and didn't get up and walk around. The animals on the savanna looked large and dumb. They showed no interest in the ship.

We suited up and went through the standard decontamination in the airlock to protect the native environment. The airlock opened; nothing approached. We crept away from the ship. Outside the area affected by our ship's engines, we deployed sensors and sampled the environment. The readings came back “Very active.” The biota of this planet was probably deadly to humans. That left two choices for the planners: give up on this planet, or, if there was absolutely no possibility of intelligent life, sterilize it. We needed to get a closer look at the animals.

I walked toward the trees with Lester covering my tail. A half-dozen creatures moved in the closest tree. Their bodies were ovoid, about a meter long. A pair of legs stuck out from the bottom of the ovoid body with claws that held onto the tree branch. One of the ovoids shuddered and a pair of wings deployed. The creature seemed to inflate them. Then it sprang from the branch into the air. A puff of gas emerged from the end of the creature and ignited. It jetted into the sky.

ILLUSTRATION BY JOSHUA MEEHAN

I laughed so hard I nearly fell over. That was why I didn't see when another flyer hit me at a full power dive. I slammed into the ground. My helmet visor hit a sharp rock. The visor is supposed to be unbreakable, but it cracked.

The creature grabbed the helmet in its claws. It had one hell of a grip. I could see the crack expanding. Then Lester did exactly what I'd told him to do—he shot it. The compressed gas inside the creature exploded. My faceplate shattered.

A recording inside my helmet was repeating: “Level 1 breach.” I couldn't speak.

Lester hovered over me, singed but intact. “Talk to me, Aidan.” He picked shards of the faceplate out of my cheek. I couldn't see from my real eye, but the artificial one registered movement rushing toward us. I pulled my gun and fired. The explosion knocked Lester to the ground. He rolled onto his back and scanned the sky. “I've got to get you back to the ship. Can you watch for bird things?”

“Yeah.” It hurt to talk. Lester grabbed the back of my suit and dragged me across the grassland. The jarring hurt like hell. “Stop! Help me up.”

He pulled me to my feet. The kid was strong. I put an arm around his shoulder. “Let's go.”

When I saw the next bird thing, I shifted my gun to stun. It crumpled and fell from the sky. Lester reset his gun.

I could taste the blood flowing down my face. The trip back to the ship seemed to take an hour. Lester finally got me into the airlock. As the hatch was closing, several flyers dived for us. One made it into the hatch. Lester stunned it as the airlock closed.

I reached for the spare suit locker. “I'll get a helmet on and we'll decontaminate.”

Lester stopped me. “We can't decon. The gas inside that creature will blow up.” The outside viewer showed an increasing number of the flyers clawing at the skin of the ship.

Lester reached for the button to open the inner airlock hatch. I grabbed his arm. “Open that hatch and the whole ship's contaminated.”

Lester freed his arm. “I'll stay in my suit till we get to Prime. It'll get nasty, but I'll be fine. I can hook up to the ship to replenish air and water and purge waste. We've got to get into space before those things damage the ship.” He hit the button and dragged me inside the cabin.

The ship's klaxon was sounding and the computer droned “Level 1 breach.” I told the computer to shut up.

Lester put me in my bunk and hit the emergency recall button. We took off. Before we jumped into hyperspace, Lester opened the outer hatch of the airlock and dumped the creature into vacuum.

Lester got me out of my suit and started working on me as best he could while wearing a full-isolation suit. He stopped the bleeding and cleaned the wound. Once he got the pain blockers in place, I started feeling human again.

I saw a streak of dirt on the side of his suit and a spot that looked damaged. I had him turn so I could get a closeup look with the artificial eye. “When that flyer exploded, you must have hit something hard. Your suit's connection port is smashed.”

“How bad?”

“I can't fix it. We need to do a full decon of the ship so you can get that suit off.”

“You're not thinking straight, Aidan. This ship's too small for an isolation chamber and a full decon requires a radiation bath. We'd have to shut the ship's systems down and be outside the skin of the ship. That means coming out of hyperspace, figuring out where we are, finding a safe place to land, getting there, shutting down, running the decon and getting the ship going again. That'll take longer than going straight to Prime.”

“Then you need to conserve resources. Lie down and try to sleep.”

Lester stood over me. I could see him with the artificial eye. “Who's going to take care of you?”

“The auto-doc will look after me. I'm fine for a while. You don't have to hover. Lie down.”

Lester went to his bunk. I moved the diagnostic sensors over my face. The real eye was gone, but the optic nerve was intact. I could get another replacement. The auto-doc said I had alien bacteria in my body. It was adjusting the flow of drugs to try and control the spread, so far, unsuccessfully. No major organs were being attacked, so I might survive, but I'd be spending time in the domes on Prime.

The drugs made me sleepy. When I awoke, Lester was fidgeting. “How you doing, Lester?”

“I'm bored, uncomfortable, wondering how I'm going to handle six more days of this.”

I checked the sensors. “The alien germs are tenacious. I'm not dying, but I haven't gotten rid of them. Open that suit, and you're going to spend the rest of your life in a dome on Prime.”

“I'd rather be dead.”

“It's not that bad.”

Lester turned so I could see his face through the visor. “Ever lived on a mining planet?”

“No.”

“Most of them don't have breathable atmospheres. You live in domes. I spent the first eighteen years of my life in domes. I'd only seen pictures of open sky. Once I got out, I promised myself I'd never live that way again. Bury me in this suit if that's what it takes to keep me out of the domes.”

“It won't come to that. Try to relax. That uses fewer resources.”

Lester turned his face to the ceiling. “I'll try.”

By the fourth day, Lester's suit was starting to malfunction. They were never designed to recycle waste continuously for that long. By the fifth day the medical sensors detected bedsores. By the sixth day the air in the suit was going bad. He refused to open the suit.

My infection was under control but not gone. I sat at the controls on the last day of the flight watching the clock and monitoring Lester's fading life signs. Several times I stood over him with my fingers on the latches of his helmet. The thought of being confined to an isolation dome with a 100-kilo weightlifter who had a vendetta was the only thing that kept me from releasing the helmet.

When we broke out of hyperspace, I signaled Prime for an emergency pickup. They sent a fast med ship with a rescue and biohazard crew. The med techs pulled Lester out, dumped him in an isolation chamber, did a rapid decon and ripped his suit open.

They stuck me in an isolation chamber and moved me to a dome. Nothing could rid me of the alien bugs, but they seemed to be under control. After a couple of months, I was safe enough to be moved to the dome with Miyuki. It was a bittersweet reunion.

I
t took over a week before I heard about Lester. He needed skin grafts and his kidneys had taken a beating, but anoxia did the worst damage. The doctors weren't sure his brain would fully recover.

Slowly, he did recover. He was transferred to Base for rehab, but it was obvious he'd never go on another mission.

He called me a few months later. His face looked older. He'd lost weight. When he spoke the words came slowly, with occasional pauses, but it was still Lester.

“Aidan, thought I'd check in with you before I left. I see you're with Miyuki. I can contact you later, if you want.”

Miyuki smiled. “It's all right; we're only playing gin rummy.”

I moved to get a better view of him. “She's beating me, as usual. How are you?”

Lester shrugged. “The body's fine. The brain's slow. It's improving. I'll never be quite the same.”

“Too bad they haven't figured out an artificial replacement for the dud parts of a brain.” Lester nodded. “Was it worth it?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. Every time I feel the sun on my skin, I know I did the right thing. I've got regrets, but I managed to make it out alive and outside of a dome.” He paused. “Sorry.”

I shook my head. “It's okay. I'm a realist. I play the hand I'm dealt. Besides, I'm more or less in one piece, and I've got Miyuki.” I held her close and she kissed me. “In my own crazy way, I'm lucky.”

Lester nodded. “Seems the deity is still looking out for you. I wish you two every happiness where you are, but I'd rather be here even with the fog.”

“Where are you?” I asked.

“I'm on the liner getting ready to head out.”

“Back to home and parents?”

“My folks wanted me to, but I have to be near a rehab facility for a few years. There isn't one anywhere near their home. I guess you can tell that's fine with me.”

“I figured as much. So where to?”

“Marina's got some accumulated vacation time. Planned to go to a resort on Proxima. Seems they have a good rehab clinic. I'm going to let the Scouts pick up my part of the tab.”

“Does she know your condition?” Miyuki asked.

“We've had some time together; talked about it. She wants to give it a try.”

“Then best of luck,” Miyuki said.

I wanted to hug the boy. “I'm happy for you. Maybe it'll be a good place to settle down.”

Lester smiled. “Who knows?”

I sat back. “I got word they're going to sterilize that planet.”

Lester shook his head. “Too bad. A few billion more people and no flying gasbags. The universe is a lesser place.” Lester stared at us a moment. “I saw a big dumb kid getting off the ship today.”

I chuckled. “Remind you of anyone?”

“He was like a mirror. It would have killed me to break in that dumb kid knowing what he was up against. How could you do that so many times?”

I sighed. “After a while you don't think about it. If I'd worried about whether I was leading you or Miyuki or the other three to your deaths, I'd have gone crazy, and that wouldn't have helped any of us.”

Lester nodded. “The stupid kid saluted me. I wanted to grab him, take him to the bar, get him drunk, and convince him to get back on the ship.”

“Why didn't you?”

He grinned. “And miss my flight? No way.” An announcement sounded in the background. The ship was preparing to depart. “Take care of each other.”

I hugged Miyuki. “We will. You two do the same.”

The screen went blank. I stared at it, unmoving.

Miyuki poked me in the ribs. “Hey, you don't have time for sentimentality—you're down two hundred points.”

And she was right.

Twelve Seconds

written by

Tina Gower

illustrated by

LUIS MENACHO

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tina Gower was born and raised in Siskiyou County, California, where cows outnumber people. In the early mornings before school, Tina fed her dairy cow and fantasized about the characters in books. Some nights she would help her mother irrigate and stare into the starry sky imagining life on other planets—while her mother patiently reminded her to point the flashlight back to the task at hand.

Tina married her high school sweetheart and settled in Chico, California. They immediately noticed the absence of the Milky Way in the glow of city lights and vowed to visit their rural roots often so their children could experience the majesty of an unfettered starlit sky.

Tina graduated with an MA in school psychology and counseling, studied in London (where you also can't see the Milky Way), trained guide dogs for the blind and published nonfiction articles and stories under the name Tina Smith. She worked for several schools in the area before staying at home to write and raise her own children.

Tina and her husband pack up the kids and head north to their hometown as often as they can. Late at night you'll find them sitting on the bumper of a rusted blue Chevy, staring at the stars and dreaming about the future.

Tina blogs at
smashedpicketfences.com
.

ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR

Luis Menacho was born in 1988 in La Paz, Bolivia and moved to New York when he was five. He started drawing at ten when his mom gave him a drawing of Spider-Man to copy. Soon after, he had a collection of drawings that consisted of cartoon characters and family members. It's difficult to say exactly when his love for science fiction and fantasy began, but as he started painting, all he knew was that he wanted to paint anything fantasy related.

Luis graduated from the School of Visual Arts with a bachelor's degree in illustration. He had the privilege of studying under great illustrators who helped guide and encourage him to paint what he was interested in. Luis is honored to be part of the Illustrators of the Future. He hopes to one day become a full-time illustrator and to travel the world taking pictures for his future paintings.

Luis's website is
luismenacho.com
.