Infernal Sky (11 page)

Jill wasn't through with me. “How hard can it be to hang on to our boards and just let the waves take us in?”

She had me there. It wasn't as if we needed to show perfect form and win prizes. We simply had to make it to the beach. The equipment and provisions were in watertight compartments. They'd float better than we would. Each of us would be responsible for specific items, and they'd be attached to us. All in all, getting to shore should be a relatively simple matter.

Only trouble was that none of us had counted on the appearance of a brand-new monster.

Actually, there had been intimations of this new critter on the last day Fly and I had spent on the beach at Oahu. When the admiral noticed the lone cloud drifting in, there was no reason to doubt that we were looking at a cloud. Later, when Fly and I noticed the black triangle cutting through the water, we naturally assumed it was a shark. We didn't pay any attention to the sky. If we had, we would have noticed that the cloud had disappeared. We might have wondered about that.

When the sub surfaced as close to shore as Ellison was willing to go, the Big Four gathered for our last adventure. It was a strange feeling that Jill was not
going all the way. Hidalgo would replace her when we reached the spacecraft.

I didn't want Jill to accompany us on a journey that might be a suicide mission. On the other hand, I didn't like the idea of leaving her behind in California doom. Hidalgo had assured Big Daddy Fly and me that the plan for Jill's return to Hawaii was foolproof. Ken would never have said that, though the plan was his. Guarantees like that are offered by fools.

The plan, however, hadn't taken into account the fluffy white cloud descending toward the water as we paddled around on our fiberglass boards. We were outfitted in our wet suits, floundering around in the calm area, waiting for some wave action. Fly was first to notice the cloud coming right down to the surface and then sort of seeping into the water. Not vanishing. Not evaporating. “Seeping” was the only way to describe the cloud as its color changed to a vague green and it sort of flowed into the water.

“What the hell was that?” asked Fly.

“It's right in front of us,” observed Hidalgo.

“That's unnatural,” shouted the sub's captain from the conning tower. He was too decent a man to submerge again until he knew we were all right.

“Maybe it's weird weather,” suggested Jill quite reasonably.

I could believe that. So much radiation and crap had been bombarding Mother Earth that she might have some surprises of her own. But after fighting the alien denizens of hell, I was suspicious of anything unusual. When I saw a shark fin appear right where the cloud had joined with the ocean, I became a lot more suspicious.

By then Hidalgo and Albert had caught the first
wave. They were on their bellies, on their boards, paddling with their hands. I'd told everyone to go all the way in to shore without standing up. The boards would keep even a natural landlubber afloat.

The rest of us caught the next gentle swell that would take us toward the beach. That was when I saw three fins circling the spot where the cloud had gone into the water.

Naturally, I thought they were sharks. That was adequate cause to worry. The fin of a surfboard and its white underbelly looks like a fish. The paddling hands and kicking feet attract attention, too. It wasn't as if our team was made up of people who could surf their way out of danger; and the waves weren't providing anything to write about.

“Shark!” I shouted. The others started repeating the call. We would have continued thinking the fins belonged to separate creatures if they didn't start rising out of the water. What appeared to be long black ropes writhed up out of the sea. Hidalgo and Albert paddled furiously to change direction, but the current continued drawing them toward the thing.

As the huge creature continued to rise, I expected to make out more details. But it seemed to bring a fog with it. The mantle surrounding the thing was the same white as the cloud.

Within the mist, I could see fragments of recognizable objects. A slight breeze was blowing in toward the shore, but the fog didn't dissipate. The stuff hung on like sticky cotton; but gaps did open up where I could see more.

A claw. An eye. A large glistening red opening in a larger dark surface that seemed to open and close. Could this be a mouth? None of us needed to know
that answer all that badly. The entity constantly shifted. I got a headache from trying to focus on it. One moment the black surface seemed to have a metallic sheen. The next moment the surface rippled as only a living thing could do. All through my attempt to see what we were fighting, the mist remained a problem, changing in density but never going away.

Most of our weapons were secured in the waterproof packages, but Fly had put a gun in a plastic bag and zipped it inside his suit. He got it out with admirable speed and started firing at the whatsit. He'd picked out a nice little customized Ruger pistol for this part of the mission. He could be like a kid in the candy store when let loose in a decent armory; and Hawaii currently had a lot more in its arsenal than ornate war clubs.

He felt better after he'd fired off a few rounds. I felt better, too. Near as I could tell, the horrible inexplicable thing from the sky felt absolutely nothing. Fly demonstrated his skill, again, for what it was worth. Although he was behind Albert and Hidalgo, his bullets came nowhere near hitting them. Every shot went right into the center of the roiling mass—and probably out the other side if the monster had the power to discorporate, which I was ready to believe. Fly got off all his shots while lying on his belly and hanging on to his board. He really is very good at what he does.

Suddenly someone got off a shot that made a difference. A sound of thunder from behind, a whistling-screaming over our heads, and an explosion that knocked all of us off our boards.

Ellison had the largest gun and he wasn't afraid to
use it. The shell struck the creature at dead center. I wasn't sure this monster could be killed, but the submarine captain's quick thinking made the new menace go away.

Jill literally whooped for joy. She waved back at the submarine, but I doubt they saw her. I barely saw her. We were surrounded by mist from the explosion. So much water turned into steam that I wondered if the shell had set off something combustible in the monster. Maybe we were receiving residue from the sticky cloud-fog stuff. One thing was certain: we wouldn't be doing any scientific analysis out here.

Hidalgo performed his duty: “Everyone sing out! Let me hear you.”

“Sanders!” I shouted back at him.

“Taggart!”

“Gallatin!”

“I'm here,” Jill finished the roster.

“Name!” Hidalgo insisted, and then took a moment to cough up some water.

“I'm Jill. Sheesh.”

“Last name!” Hidalgo insisted.

“Lovelace,” she finally relented.

Meanwhile, the sun was climbing in the morning sky. I was getting hot inside my wet suit. The sub was now far enough behind us that it counted as history. Before us was the future, where the breaking surf became white spray to cover the white droppings of seagulls. I'd never been so happy to see those scavenger birds. Some things on the home planet were still normal.

“W
hat do you mean you hate zero-g?” Arlene asked with genuine surprise.

“Just do,” I said.

“You never told me that.”

“You never asked.”

Arlene was not an easy person to surprise. I wasn't sure why the subject had never come up. I wasn't deliberately holding out on her. Jill laughed—the little eavesdropper.

“You never cease to amaze me, Fly Taggart,” Arlene continued. “Here we've traveled half the solar system together.”

“Now, that's an exaggeration,” I pointed out, unwilling to let her get away with—

“Hyperbole,” she explained, showing that she'd been an English major once upon a time.

“Yeah, right,” I said. “We've only done the hop from Earth to Mars and back again.”

“Some hop,” Albert replied good-naturedly.

“Please, Albert.” Arlene put her foot down. “This is a private conversation.”

“Private?” Jill echoed. “Inside here?”

“Here” was the cockpit of a DCX-2004. It had been christened the
Bova.
From the outside, it looked like a nose cone that someone had stretched and then added fins along the bottom. But when you got closer and saw it outlined against the night sky, you realized it was a big mother of a ship. Even so, it was cramped for four of us in a space designed only for the pilot and copilot. Hidalgo was outside the craft, taking the first watch. He'd warn us if a certain large hell-prince woke up. He would also let us know if anyone showed up who could fly this baby.

Plan A had worked fine so far. We were all alive. We were in the right place. So what if the others—people we'd never seen—were late? So what that they were supposed to be here ahead of us? Plan A still beat the hell out of plan B.

We figured it was only right to let Jill see the inside of her first spaceship. She hadn't stopped hinting she wanted to come along. We weren't going to lie to her about having calculated the weight of our crew to the last ounce. The ship's mass factor could accommodate Jill. There was even room if we didn't mind being very crowded instead of only really crowded. (Elbow room was already out of the question.)

Of course, all this would be academic if we didn't get our navy crew. None of us could fly this tub. Whether the crew showed up or not didn't change one fact: Jill wasn't invited on the trip. It was as simple as that.

One advantage to showing her the interior of the ship was that she could see for herself that there was absolutely nowhere for a stowaway to hide. At times like this I was grateful the bad guys hadn't figured out how to manufacture itty-bitty demons. The pumpkins were as small as they got. So if a guy was in close
quarters he didn't have to worry about Tinker Bell with mini-rockets. Life was good.

The
Bova
was a lot bigger than the submarine. That didn't mean we had any space to waste inside. Looked to me as if the primary function of the ship was to transport tanks and fuel. Human beings would be allowed to tag along if they didn't get in the way.

Anyway, Albert had a ready answer to Jill's challenge about the lack of privacy: “When the CO is away,” he told her, “the men can shoot the shit.” I never thought I'd hear Albert talk like that, but then I realized what a decent thing he'd done.

This could be the last time any of us saw Jill. Albert was treating her like one of the men. She knew how religious he was. For him to use that kind of language in front of her meant something special. Jill smiled at Albert. He returned the smile. They'd connected.

“Look, Arlene,” I said, attempting to wrap up our pointless conversation. “When they advertise the honeymoon suites in free fall, I'm not the target audience. I wouldn't try to make love in one of those for free. On Phobos, whenever I went outside the artificial gravity area, I had a tougher time from that than anything the imps did to me. If the ones I encountered in zero-g had known about my weakness, it would have been another weapon on their side. Hey, I don't like bleeding to death, either. That doesn't stop me from fighting the bastards.”

“No, Fly, it doesn't,” said Arlene, touching my arm. I noticed Albert noticing. He wasn't very obvious about it. I don't think it was any kind of jealousy when Arlene was physical with another person. Albert's affection for her was so great that he couldn't help being protective.

“I never mentioned the weightless thing before,” I
went on, more bugged than I'd realized, “because I didn't want to give you cause for concern.”

She switched from the tone of voice she used for kidding around to the steady, serious tone she used with a comrade. “I never would have known if you hadn't told me,” she said. “You're a true warrior, Fly. Your hang-ups are none of my business unless you decide to make them my business.”

We sat there in close quarters, sizing each other up as we had so many times before. She was quite a gal, Arlene Sanders.

“What's it like?” Jill asked.

“What?” I threw back, a little dense all of a sudden.

“Being weightless,” Jill piped in. She thought we were still on that subject. Can't blame her for not realizing we'd moved on to grown-up stuff.

Arlene returned to teacher mode. “Well, it's like at the amusement parks when you ride a roller coaster and you go over the top, and you feel the dip in the pit of your stomach.”

“Like on the parachute ride,” Jill spoke from obvious experience. “Or when you fall. That's why it's called—what did Fly call it?”

“Free fall,” I repeated.

“I don't mind that for a little bit,” Jill admitted. “But how can you stand it for—”

“Weeks and weeks?” Arlene finished helpfully.

Jill bit her bottom lip, something she did only when she was thinking hard. Right now you could see the thought right on her face: Do I really want to go into space?

“You become used to it,” Arlene told her.

“Yeah,” said Jill, not really looking at us. Like most brilliant people, she thought out loud some of the time. She was staring at the bulkhead, probably
imagining herself conquering the spaceways. “I can get used to anything.”

Then she looked at each of us in turn. First Arlene, then Albert, then me. Finally the reality sank in. We were going to separate, probably forever.

“You can't leave me,” she whispered, but all of us heard her.

“We don't have any choice,” Albert replied almost as softly.

“But you told me people always have a choice,” Jill wailed at the man she'd known longer than any other adult. “You're always talking about free will and stuff.”