Inseminoid (7 page)

Gail flexed her hand, trying to get her fingers as nimble as possible. Then she reached for the elusive blue wires. Somehow she gripped one of them between her gloved thumb and forefinger. But she was shaking so severely that as she pulled on it she snapped the wire in two.

The crew viewed that on the monitor and they each understood what it meant—that they were going to watch a friend and colleague die a slow and painful death. They were all so helpless. No one said a word.

Then Holly remembered. “What about Kate? She’s our only hope. Did you get through to her?”

Barbra shook her head. “I tried but she didn’t respond. Either her personal communicator isn’t working or she’s turned it off. Whatever the reason, she can’t have any idea what’s going on.”

“Then it’s the end for Gail,” Holly said softly.

“No! I won’t let her give up that way. Maybe her laser could cut through the door!” Gary argued.

“It won’t,” Holly said. “The airlock doors are made to withstand low yield laser beams.”

“But it’s worth a try,” Karl agreed. “At this point anything is.”

Gary took over the microphone. “Gail, you’ve still got a chance. You must try to cut through the door with the laser.”

“The laser?” she repeated, only half-aware.

“Yes, hurry!”

In slow motion, Gail removed her laser gun from its holster on her belt. She aimed it at the door, six inches above her trapped foot and let the beam go. It hit the door but didn’t even penetrate it.

Frostbite had begun to set in. Even the visor shield of her helmet had become coated with particles of ice. Gail glanced at the camera above her, then back to the door. Ricky was staring at her through the small window in the door. Her eyes begged him for mercy. But Ricky wouldn’t respond. He seemed to find sadistic pleasure in her torment.

She knew he couldn’t hear her words but she mouthed them anyway. “Please don’t let me die.”

Ricky smiled and watched.

It was all so far beyond Gail’s ability to comprehend. At last she forced her head upward towards the camera. “There’s no other way,” she explained to her fellow crew members in a failing, quivering voice.

Then, gripping the laser gun with both hands, she aimed it at her ankle and squeezed the trigger. The suit burned away, then the flesh and finally the bone. Grey smoke rose from the operation. Then bright red blood poured from her leg and froze before hitting the ground. The gruesome tactic had worked. The foot dropped away and the outer door slammed shut. But Gail was dead. She’d frozen to death just after the laser hit the bone.

Those watching on the monitor were horrified. Barbra grasped her stomach and couldn’t look any longer. She was very nearly sick. Mitch held her tightly against him, as much to find comfort for himself as to provide it for her. Sharon had nearly bitten through her lip and Sandy began to cry.

Holly hadn’t yet recovered from the ordeal with Gail when she remembered Kate still working alone in the tomb. “We’ve got to get to her before Ricky does,” she said urgently. “He’s probably heading there now!”

Holly spun around and looked over her crew. She ordered Mark and Gary to suit up and find Kate. If Ricky was going to die in the atmosphere there was no reason to take any more along with him. “Take your lasers,” she said. “You may have to use ’em.”

Mark knew she was right. But—God! How it had all fallen apart. He was revolted by the thought of turning on a crew mate though he realised he didn’t have a choice any more. Ricky had changed so greatly that he wasn’t the same person. Something had gone very wrong with his mind. Mark and Gary left the control room for the Space Preparation Chamber. Within a quarter-hour they’d be at Kate’s side. They both wondered if that might not be too late.

Kate was bored stiff. She’d taken her last roll of pictures and waited idly on a boulder in the tomb for Gail to return with more film.

“I can’t imagine what’s taking her so long,” she muttered to herself. Gail had been gone a good hour. Kate checked her own oxygen supply as a matter of course. Her position wasn’t critical. There was still another forty-five minutes’ supply remaining.

To pass the time, Kate surveyed the cavern for any camera angle she might have missed. She stood up and stretched her muscles. Her back was to the entrance and although she couldn’t hear a thing because of her helmet, she had the feeling she was being observed.

She figured it was probably just Gail finally returning. But it wasn’t Gail, it was Ricky.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. She hadn’t at first realised he wasn’t wearing a suit. Then it dawned on her and she became riveted to the ground. She knew something was very wrong. There was no way he could adjust to the atmosphere and the cold without his protective gear.

They stood across from each other and stared. Kate still found it hard to believe. She reached for her lantern and shone its light on to him. She was in trouble and she knew it. His cold blank expression, his torn clothing and his open sores were all the explanation she needed.

Ricky opened his mouth to speak. “Where’s Dean. Have you seen Dean?”

“Holy shit!” Kate said to herself. “He’s lost his mind!” A truer statement had never been spoken. For indeed Ricky no longer had a mind or brain as described in medical textbooks. He moved forward but not towards Kate. He was pulled to the spot where Dean had been buried by the explosion. Suddenly he fell to his knees and tore his clothes off. He fell face first to the ground and began covering himself with the rocks and gravel that had covered Dean. He writhed around like a naked snake in the grass.

Kate had never seen anything like it in her life and she hoped she never would again. It was a horrifying sight—a grown man somehow turned into a driven animal.

Then Ricky stopped. His body was blackened by dirt and dust. His attention turned to Kate. Her fear was growing and she now expected him to turn on her. The wait wasn’t long. Ricky lifted a boulder the size of a football above his head and came at her. Kate moved back as far as she could until she was pressed against the wall of the tomb. She could see he was about to bring the heavy rock down on her and she reached to her belt for her grappling pistol. It was loaded and primed. One shot would imbed its hook deep in him. “Don’t make me use it. Stay away from me.”

Ricky kept moving closer to her.

“Stay away, I’m warning you.”

But he wasn’t listening. The boulder was about to come down on Kate. She had no choice. She fired. The hook blasted into his forehead and came out the back of his skull. At point-blank range the force had been tremendous. The rock fell behind him. Blood gushed from the wound washing the grime from his body. But inexplicably, Ricky remained standing. He seemed only stunned. “Where’s Dean?” he repeated.

Then he dropped to one knee. His power was being drained. With all of his fading strength he pulled at the hook. His arm muscles flexed and the hook came out the way it had entered, except it took a solid chunk of his skull with it. The flow of blood increased from the cavity and Ricky dropped into the pool of muck surrounding him.

Kate couldn’t move. She watched as all the life went out of Ricky. And she was still standing in a state of shock when Gary and Mark stormed in with lasers raised. They stopped short at Ricky’s fallen body. Mark side-stepped it and held Kate tightly. “You okay?” he asked through his communicator.

Kate shook her head slowly. “No. I’m not okay.” She couldn’t take her eyes off Ricky and she was shaking badly. “What got into him? I had no other choice.”

“We know,” Gary tried to comfort her. “He went berserk, there’s no other explanation for it.”

There was a question she had to ask. “How was he able to exist without his suit?”

“We just don’t know,” Mark admitted. He glanced at Gary and then averted his eyes from Kate’s.

She could tell there was more. “What else?”

Gary stepped over to her and took her gloved hand in his. “Gail is dead.”

“Dead?” She couldn’t believe it. “But how?”

Gary’s eyes shifted to the heap on the ground. That was all the explanation necessary.

Ricky and Gail’s bodies were returned to the complex. Holly officiated at a ceremony for which she had no taste. It was held in the laboratory. Both bodies were enveloped in plastic death-bags brought along for emergencies, but starched white sheets with Nova’s insignia spared the crew the ordeal of having to see their friends as they were. Holly kept her composure and said the appropriate words. When the short service was finished the bodies were to be returned to the freezer where they would rest until they could be shipped to the space station.

After the others had gone, Karl turned to Holly. “I’d like permission to perform an autopsy on Ricky.”

“What do you expect to find?”

“I think we’d all like to know what made him act that way. I also would like to find out what caused the deterioration of his skin and his hair.”

Holly considered the request. “If you think it might do some good, go ahead.”

Karl removed the ceremonial covering, carefully folding it. He laid out his equipment on a table next to the slab on which Ricky’s body lay, and scrubbed up at the sink. He pulled on his paper-thin gloves and began to unzip the death-bag.

“Help me with this will you, please?” he asked Sandy.

She couldn’t look and averted her eyes as they lifted the body out of the sack. Sure, she had dissected cadavers in medical school but none of them were anything like this.

“Hard for you?” Karl managed a weak smile.

“I can’t handle seeing a friend like this. I’m sorry.”

Karl came round to the other end of the table. He put his arm around Sandy and moved her away from the corpse. “This has been a rough day for all of us. A real rough day. Do yourself a favor and get out of here. I work better alone anyway.”

“No, I’ll get over it. I just feel a little queasy in the gut.”

“I think it’s better for you to miss this,” he said firmly.

Sandy was relieved. “Are you sure you don’t need me?”

“I’m positive. When I’m finished with Ricky, I’ll call you and we can get started on the creature. Okay?”

“Okay.”

Once Sandy was gone, Karl set about his gruesome task. He cut into Ricky’s skull with his laser scalpel. He separated the bone with his hands and what he found was totally beyond his understanding. There was no substance of any type remaining. Except for the bone and an orange-colored fluid it was empty. There was only a liquid similar—very similar—to that which remained when the crystals melted.

Karl felt he had to share the information with Holly and called her immediately. “Can you come down here right away?”

“What is it?”

“I’d rather not talk about it over the communicator. Please come quickly.”

Karl made a slide of the liquid from Ricky’s skull and placed it under the microscope. As he’d suspected, its composition was very similar to that of the dissolved crystals.

“Can you let me in on it now?” Holly asked. She was bounding through the laboratory portal.

“Take a look at both of these slides.”

She did. “I’m no expert but they look identical to me.”

Then Karl told her where each had come from.

“There’s more, isn’t there?”

Karl motioned her over to the examining table. He gripped the broken shell of Ricky’s skull in his hands and pulled it apart.

“What have you done with his brain?” she asked.

“He had no brain.”

CHAPTER
FOUR

G
ary didn’t usually mind doing night-watch.
Usually,
it meant the occasional glance at the monitor screens and a casual stroll up and down the corridors every few hours. He didn’t mind the assignment—not normally. But this night was different. Everyone was jumpy—real nervous after everything that had occurred. And Holly telling him to be particularly careful not to doze off hadn’t done anything for his nerves. She knew a few hours of shut-eye didn’t hurt anybody. After all, if she expected him to do a full day’s work the next day, he’d have to get some rest, wouldn’t he?

He sat in the control room, his feet propped up on the console with a cheap novel resting in his lap. Even lurid sex and outrageous violence paled in comparison to the real-life adventure that day. They sure didn’t teach him about any of this in the Academy. Oh no! Not those tight-assed professors. They had no idea what it was like any more. Most of them had retired so long ago they wouldn’t recognise the inside of a module.

“Oh well,” Gary shrugged. “I suppose if they were any good they’d be doing, not teaching.”

Gary was a doer. He left home when he was fourteen years old. He packed one bag and stowed away on a craft programmed for a three-year journey. He hid in the supply chamber and didn’t come out until the ship had passed the point of no-return.

The commander had no choice but to keep Gary aboard. But he worked hard and he learned. He paid his way with sweat and toil. The crew took to him and officially designated him cabin boy.

The commander was a kindly man but he was strict. He laid out a regimented routine for Gary which included his chores, academic study and practical training. During his time on the craft—the
Columbia
—he did four different apprenticeships and mastered them all.

When the craft returned, Gary was seventeen and he became the youngest person ever to be accepted by the Academy. It wasn’t an easy four years. He often found himself in heated arguments with his instructors. He’d gone through so much already that he couldn’t put up with their ivory-tower esoteric theories that had absolutely no relevance to contemporary space travel.

Gary yawned and glanced at the digital time-piece set into the console. It was time for making the rounds. He finished his mug of coffee and reached for his clip-board. “Got to get moving,” he mumbled. He stuffed the keys into his pocket and strapped his laser around his waist. That was another of Holly’s new rules. “An armed watch! I wonder why they made an hysterical woman like that commander anyway!”

Holly was nearly asleep. It had taken a while for her to relax. She’d considered downing a couple of pills but she didn’t want to be out of control should she be called upon during the night. She wanted to be ready to exert her full mental and physical powers if need be.