Fatal Boarding (5 page)

"I'm saying you'll never make those same
mistakes again. There's nothing like cutting it close to make the
soul remember, is there."

A first glimmer of gratitude slipped from
the windows in his eyes. He tried to hide it with words. "How will
I ever make this right?"

"Well, for me personally there is one thing
you can do right this moment."

"Name it."

"Go into the bathroom and get two of those
aggravating little plastic cups and half-fill them with cold
water."

He didn't understand, but he did it anyway.
When he returned, he quickly spied the bottle in my hand and almost
withdrew at the thought of breaking still another rule. He held the
cups out for me to fill. With a questioning look for approval he
sat down and faced me. We sipped and stared at each other.

"Now tell me how you managed to get out of
sick bay without them seeing you."

"Oh yeah, that's another thing. Talk about
insult on injury. You know what they said? They said I
hyperventilated. That's it... That's all. No injuries at all. Saw
spots for about three hours. They did every optical brain scan in
the book. Found nothing. That fucking Bell Standard suit got the
shit beat out it and still held. They said the auto-tint on the
helmet visor cut in fast enough to filter most of the harmful shit.
They said it was the equivalent of looking at a solar eclipse on a
hazy day, not long enough to do permanent damage. It fried the suit
good, but they insist nothing's wrong with me. Hyperventilated? An
EVA specialist? I don't think so." He nervously took a drink and
hoped I would agree.

"So they just released you?"

"I go back twice a day for follow-ups.
Suspended from duty until further notice. Debriefing after the good
night's sleep I'm not going to get. Screw the pills."

He paused and gazed into his drink. He
swirled it in his right hand and then suddenly downed it in a
single slug. He hesitated and then held out the empty cup for me to
refill, which I gladly did. He got up and disappeared for a moment
into the rest room and came back stirring his mix with one finger.
He sat back down and quietly took another drink, a sip this
time.

"I know I could have taken out the whole
team, but you know, that's not what bothers me the most. It's the
suit tear. They let me see one camera view of the whole bastard
affair. Said that was enough for now. It was enough, I'll tell you
that much. God, Adrian, you were like a cat pouncing on a helpless
bird. It was so fast they had to slow it down to keep track of what
you were doing. Imagine if you hadn't contained it?"

"I try not to."

"We've both rehearsed suit failures in the
simulators. It's got to be the worst. Did you know I started out as
a rock-jock like you? You're father's a flyer too, isn't he?"

"TransOceanic, forty years seniority."

"Forty years? How old is he?"

"He's ninety-one come December. Has no plan
of retiring, nor are they asking him to."

"God, that's great. How come you didn't
follow in his footsteps?"

"Can't stand being ground-bound."

"Ground-bound? Are you kidding? If he's
flying TransOceanic that's carrying passengers sub-orbital. How the
hell do you get ground-bound out of that?"

"Hey, when below the umbra, what goes up
must come down."

Frank smirked and then found himself
surprised by it. He sipped his drink and immediately became morose
again. "I was at Edwards for quite a while. We were on this project
testing a new low altitude pulse-jet engine. The thing was a bear
to fly, almost no wing to it at all, little stubby things. Big
expandable tail to keep it straight and honest. So one day this
buddy of mine, Jix was his call sign, he's bringin' the thing back
in and looses part of the heat shield. Some of the fiber lines
under the belly get melted real good. All of a sudden he's got
intermittent control surfaces. He brings it by the airfield at five
thousand and it looks like he's doin' stunts, but it's all he can
do to keep it from doing the lawn dart trick. So everybody agrees
he's got to nurse it back around and do a controlled ejection over
the field. So he dares it down to three thousand and gets as slow
as he can go and comes right over us. The canopy comes off just
fine, and the seat rockets out just beautiful. The five of us are
standin' there waitin' for the chute to pop, and it's not
happenin'.”

“Ole Jix, he's right on the money, directly
over the runway. All the way down we've got direct eye contact with
him. He knows there isn't gonna be a chute, and we know it too, but
there's not one god-damn thing any of us can do about it. Just ride
it down with him." Frank paused and took more than a sip. "You know
what the worst part was, Adrian? Not the impact. The ride down.
Knowin' what was gonna happen and not bein' able to do anything
about it. It's the same way a bad suit makes you feel. I never want
to be a part of anybody cashin' in that way, ever."

It was time to change the subject. "Tell me
this, Frank, what were you thinking when you were about to open
that box? It just doesn't seem like something anybody would
do."

"Hey, I'll buy into that theory real fast.
The whole things a blur. I'd swear it wasn't me. The whole thing's
noisy confusion in my head. I still don't have a handle on it.
Check my record, Adrian. I haven't got that many hours, but I've
worked my share of challenges. I just don't get it."

"But you do remember doing it, don't
you?"

"Well...Yeah...I guess. It’s such a hard
thing to sort out. I mean, it would be cowardly to say you couldn't
remember doing it, right? I mean I saw the video. Evil villain,
me."

Six drinks later, Frank had battered himself
down into that little black hole that is the only one available to
someone under such guilted circumstances, that nasty little place
where you continue to punish yourself while promising to make up
for the mistake in every way possible. It can only happen to the
good ones, the ones who give a damn. I have been there more than
once, and so have most of the best people I know. It must be a
current-life requirement that individuals who wish desperately not
to screw up, must do so from time to time to remind them of that
fact. Things like bourbon have been provided so that we may sleep
under such duress.

Frank would sleep tonight, but there would
be bad dreams. Frank's mean little story had measured pretty high
on the Tarn scale, but I could have taken him on one-on-one,
story-for-story and put him away cleanly. I could have told him
about the other time I had learned about suit tears in real space.
It was the low orbit time. A late separating nose faring had
damaged a satellite’s solar collector panel arm. The damn fool
engineer I was working with was supposed to know that you didn't do
a manual release on a broken panel mechanism like that. The bend
had coiled the release spring up so tight it was ready to go off
like a bomb. Only half of the solar array was left in tact--a
jagged glass edge shaped like a samurai sword. I hadn't been
looking when he hit the release handle. The blade edge jerked over
sideways and wiped up under his armpit and cut a seven inch swath
through the shoulder of his spacesuit that no one could repair.

Yes Frank, I could have told you what it is
like to be halfway to the airlock and know you're not going to make
it. How it is to feel your own suit sagging under your partner's
leak so bad that you know if you don't unplug the octopus from his
back pack right then, you will die with him just as if the tear was
your own. So at the last possible moment you uncouple and right
then you both know he's about to die in your arms, and even that's
not the worst of it. When the pressure's gone the little bodily
explosions start and you can feel them through the baggy suit, but
you can't let go, you can't turn your friend loose to space. So you
carry the eruptions with you, and when you do reach the airlock
door you pick up the fringe of artificial gravity just outside it.
What's left of your friend begins to get heavy, and by the time
you’re in the airlock, you have a weighty, sloppy garment that's
more a bag than a suit. The little bits of freezing, escaped body
tissues drift down into the airlock and stick to the floor as the
outer door slowly closes. You stand around the crumpled bag with
the helpless med-team members, wondering what the right procedure
is to handle a soggy spacesuit full of death, though you can't do a
thing anyway until the damn airlock pressurizes. So you wait in
total vacuum, inside and out. Yes, Frank, we all have our crosses
to bear, but I think mine are worse than yours. Maybe we all think
that.

I had kept my own service to two drinks. I
downed the rest of the one in my hand. The shower had somehow
become mandatory. At least one good thing had come out of it all. I
had suddenly discovered that I liked Frank Parker. His vagueness
about being able to remember the accident made me wonder, but there
was not enough to go on. I stripped off my coveralls and escaped to
the mercy of a hot shower.

Chapter 5

There is something unsettling about a shower
that recycles the water from the drain. It's pure enough to drink,
but you have this subconscious suspicion that you are washing the
same dirt and grime off over and over. I wrapped myself in a short,
brown towel that barely came around my waist, dimmed the lights
low, and collapsed at last into the bed. I pulled a thin,
tan-colored blanket from the hidden compartment in the wall and
settled back. The bourbon was working well. The cabin walls and
ceiling began to loose their definition in the fading room light. I
closed my eyes and hoped I would not dream. I thanked the
unheralded goddess of sleep for providing a temporary escape from
reality.

The door chime went ‘tong’.

I pinched at the bridge of my nose and
resisted the urge to scream. "What?"

The doors popped open, and there stood Nira
Prnca. Her inky black hair was still damp and hung in strands about
her face and shoulders. She had on a loose fitting pair of light
blue coveralls with a slight pink trim and no name tag, the kind
used by the female nursing staff. They were long sleeved, undone at
the cuffs, and unzipped to the chest. She was barefoot. There was a
half-smile locked into her delicate pink mouth. Her pearly dark
eyes had an intimidating look of utter resolve in them. She
strolled into my cabin without saying a word, leaned back against
the desk, and casually looked around.

"Nira, what the hell are you doing out of
sickbay?"

She looked me over with an intensity that
made me want to pull the blanket up higher.

"I'm a big girl now, Adrian. I wasn't being
cared for in the nursery, you know."

"But they said it was a good four inch
laceration. They said you'd lost a respectable amount of blood,
that you'd be kept off duty for at least four or five days."

She came to the side of the bed and stared
down at me, her glistening black locks dangling down around her
gentle face. The male radar in me became aware she was wearing
nothing under the coveralls.

Male perception of the amount of clothes
being worn by any given woman beneath the colorful outer layers is
a finely-tuned sensory skill that borders on clairvoyance. It is a
talent most likely developed the day after the first Neanderthal
lady decided to adorn herself with the ferns and flowers from the
rain forest surrounding her cave. There must be some kind of
special radiant frequencies given off by the more sensuous female
body parts. These subtle, irresistible signals have a certain
debilitating effect on the male mind, to the point he can no longer
pay adequate attention to whatever he happens to be doing at the
time of exposure. So disarming is this phenomena, that some have
been known to pilot their speeding vehicles into immovable objects.
The male can on occasion completely lose the ability to think
rationally. This anesthetizing influence is intensified by the
female by varying and adjusting the sawy, bounce, and pose of her
body. Too deliberate an effort has been known to paralyze the male
completely.

I snapped myself out of it. "What are you
doing here?"

"I feel just fine, Adrian dear."

"Loss of blood can cause feelings of
euphoria, you know. It can make you do things you might not
otherwise."

"The doctor topped me off, honey. I'm just
fine. Besides, you've used that once already."

"Look, Nira, this sort of thing happens all
the time. You have a serious near-miss and someone is there to help
you out of it. There's depression and elation afterward. You get to
thinking you owe that person something you really don't. It wears
off after awhile, but you can do something really stupid before it
does, something you regret afterward. There's no bill, Nira. You
don't owe me anything. I was just doing my job. We're not an
item."

I thought that would be enough insulation,
enough removal. She was one of the most dynamic, successful
individuals I had ever met. The mere suggestion of rejection was
likely to infuriate her. Insincere morality can be one of the best
possible concealments for insecurity. To feign disinterest would
certainly send this beautiful creature storming out, and when she
finally regained her composure she would realize what an impulsive
mistake she had almost made.

She kicked out an inviting curve of hip and
sat on the edge of the bed facing me. She leaned forward and braced
herself with one hand on either side of my head, staring down at
me, a string of damp hair brushing my face.

"Well Ah jest was a-hopin' to show all ma
gratitude to ma hero Mista Buck Rogers. Lil' 'ole country gals like
me kin git so taken we jest don't know what we are doin'!" She
leaned forward and kissed me lightly on the lips. She backed off
enough to look me squarely in the eye and I suddenly knew I was
lost.