Space Stations Part 3

"Your man Sjuende said he and Attende had a lot of work to do," Bob cut him off. "Did it involve cleaning off rust?"

Forste eyed him guardedly. "Yes."

"Are they using our bottles of cleaner?" Bob asked. "And if so, are they wearing breathing masks?"

Forste's expression was starting to cloud over again. "Why?"

"Because the cleaner is toxic, that's why," Bob said. "After a couple of hours, especially in an enclosed s.p.a.ce like that-"

Forste snarled a curse, his gun jabbing into Bob's ribs. "Come on. Bring the kit."

They found Attende sprawled on the floor in Number Four, his arms and legs twitching as he babbled something incomprehensible. "d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n, d.a.m.n," Forste snarled, kneeling down beside him. A spray bottle and rag were still clutched in the man's hands; gingerly, Forste pushed both of them as far away as he could. "Why the h.e.l.l isn't this stuff labeled as dangerous?"

"The main drum is," Bob said, kneeling on his other side and opening the first-aid kit. "We have to buy it in bulk-it's cheaper that way-and put it into our own bottles. Didn't you see the masks in the storage locker?"

"The bottles weren't labeled," Forste bit out. "Why would they expect to need them? What's he babbling about?"

"Probably nothing," Bob said, finding a wide-spectrum detoxifier hypo in the kit and injecting it into the twitching man's arm. "On its way to suffocating you, the stuff is also a pretty potent hallucinogen. Who knows what he's seeing?"

"Can you save him?"

Bob laid the biosensor strip across the side of the man's neck and watched as the numbers came up. "He'll be fine," he a.s.sured Forste. "We got to him in time, and this stuff's great for cleaning all sorts of toxins out the system.

Though around here we mostly use it after too much time with the whiskey bottle."

Forste grunted. "So what now? He just sleeps it off?"

"Basically," Bob said. "A couple of hours and he'll be fine. Give me a hand and we'll get him back to sickbay."

The corridor, Sjuende decided, had picked up a definite tilt in the past three minutes. Of course, in that same time it had picked up a nice selection of plant life, too. Laid out across the gray metal in front of him were several rows of pink flowers interspersed with green vines sporting giant tomatoes.He blinked and squinted. Pink and red; the clas.h.i.+ng colors hurt his eyes.

What was going on, anyway?

And then, in the distance, he heard the sound of footsteps approaching the intersection behind him.

He had his gun out in an instant, the whole thing falling suddenly into place. It was the missing ranger, of course. He'd laid out the plants to slow him down, and now he was trying to sneak up on him from behind.

Well, it wouldn't work. Sjuende pressed his back against the corridor, afraid to jump over the tomato plants in case they tried to grab him, and turned to face the sound. They'd be sorry-he was way too smart for them.

Too cool, too. Not to mention too s.h.i.+ny.

The footsteps were nearly to the intersection now. Sjuende leveled his gun at the spot where his attacker would appear. Peripherally, he noticed that his gun was growing gra.s.s, and wondered vaguely whether that was within its normal design specs.

And then the figure turned the corner, and Sjuende gasped his admiration.

Not only had the ranger come up with this brilliant scheme of planting flowers across the corridor, but he'd even been smart enough to discard his uniform and put on Fjerde's clothes. And Fjerde's face.

Smiling genially at the cleverness of it all, he fired.

The boom of the gun echoed back and forth across the corridor, sounding rather vinegary. Dimly through the noise, he heard what sounded like a shout from behind him.

He turned. Annen was standing there, hip-deep in tomatoes; waving his gun and screaming something.

Only they weren't tomatoes anymore, Sjuende realized with a start.

Instead, they'd turned into a ravenous hedge of cactus.

There was only one thing to do, and Sjuende did it without a second's hesitation. Lowering the gun toward the attacking plants, he fired. It was a perfect shot. The cactus erupted in a burst of red sap; and suddenly, to his relief, the whole patch vanished.

So did Annen. Sjuende frowned, then realized the other was merely lying on his back on the deck, gripping his thigh as a parade of cherry tomatoes rolled out and collected themselves into a little pile beside him.

But the important part was that the renegade ranger Giff had been dealt with. Smiling, Sjuende lifted his thumb to report the good news to Forste.

He was just wondering why his thumb had turned into an elephant's trunk when the whole corridor went dark.

"And so we're down to three," Forste said softly, his gun pressing hard into the back of Bob's head as the ranger knelt beside the second of thegunshot victims. "Just three able-bodied men to speak out for the oppressed peoples of the Solar System."

"It's not quite that bad," Bob said carefully as he finished wrapping the leg. It was amazingly hard to breathe with a gun pressed that hard into the base of his skull. "I mean, aside from these two, everyone else should be up and about by tomorrow."

"Of course," Forste said. "You sound so reasonable. You always sound so terribly reasonable. And yet, one by one, we keep falling." .

"But it's not me doing any of this," Bob protested. "I've been locked up the whole day."

"Of course it's not you," Forste said. "It's your friend Wimbley. Where is he?"

"But-"

"Shut up," Forste cut him off. "Call him out. Call him out now, or I'll-"

He broke off. From somewhere in the distance came the sound of a horrible crunching and clattering, accompanied by a panic-stricken bellow.

"What was that?" Forste demanded, shoving the gun even harder into the back of Bob's head. "What was that?"

Bob winced. "I'm afraid... offhand, I'd say it was the two men you had searching the construction area. I warned you before that the deck there was unstable for-"

"d.a.m.n you," Forste snarled. Reaching down with his free hand, he grabbed a fistful of Bob's s.h.i.+rt and hauled him to his feet. "That's it, Ranger Bob," he bit out, spinning Bob around and jamming the muzzle of the gun up under his chin. "You're dead. You hear me? You're dead."

There was a flicker of movement at the edge of Bob's vision. He glanced over Forste's shoulder, feeling his eyes widen- Forste was fast, all right. He reacted instantly, spinning around and stepping partway around Bob's side, clearly intending to use the ranger as a s.h.i.+eld. His gun s.h.i.+fted toward the a.s.sumed threat behind him, his other hand still gripping Bob's s.h.i.+rt.

But it was too late for even instant reflexes. Even as Forste tried to bring the gun to bear, Agent Drexler plucked it expertly from his grip and drove his other fist hard into the terrorist's stomach.

With a strangled cough, Forste folded over the fist and collapsed to the deck. "You all right?" Drexler asked, pulling Bob out of the other's reach.

Bob got his lungs working again. "I'm fine," he a.s.sured the agent, looking back at the intersection where Drexler had appeared. The other rangers were there, too, crowding cautiously around the corner with broomsticks and other makes.h.i.+ft weapons in hand."Any idea where the other two are?" Drexler asked as he cuffed Forste's hands and hauled him to his feet.

"Somewhere at the bottom of the Deck Six renovation area," Bob told him. "They probably won't be giving you much trouble."

"I don't... understand," Forste managed through his painful-sounding breathing. "How did you... manage it?"

Bob shrugged. "I told you. I never lifted a finger."

"Then how...?"

"But I may have mentioned that the station and its equipment had a few problems," Bob added, looking again at the approaching rangers.

At the rangers, and at the pale but determined figure of Agent c.u.mmings as he limped along, leaning his weight on Hix's arm.

Forste followed his gaze, and his jaw dropped. "That's right," Bob said with a nod. "One of the problems is a medpack countdown display that isn't worth a d.a.m.n."

The terrorists had been locked up, Drexler and c.u.mmings had made their report, and the rangers had gradually drifted back to duties or meals or bed.

And once again, Ranger Bob sat at his desk with his recorder in hand.

"Eighteenth April, 2230," he said. "Evening report." He took a deep breath. "Well," he began. "s.p.a.ce Fort Jefferson won its first battle today..."

REDUNDANCY.

by Alan Dean Foster

Alan Dean Foster was born in New York City and raised in Los Angeles. He has a bachelor's degree in Political Science and a Master of Fine Arts in Cinema from UCLA.

He has traveled extensively around the world, from Australia to Papua New Guinea. He has also written fiction in just about every genre, and is known for his excellent movie novelizations. Currently, he lives in Prescott, Arizona, with his wife, a.s.sorted dogs, cats, fish, javelina and other animals, where he is working on several new novels and media projects.

AMY was only ten, and she didn't want to die.

Not that she really understood death. Her only experience with it had come when they'd buried Gramma Marie. Now the funeral was a wisp of a dream that hung like cobweb in the corners of her memory, something she didn't think of at all unless it b.u.mped into her consciousness accidentally.

Then it was no more than vaguely uncomfortable without being really hurtful.

She didn't recall a whole lot about the ceremony itself. Black-clad grown-ups speaking more softly than she had ever heard them talk, hermother crying quietly into the fancy lace hankerchief she never wore anywhere, strange people bending low to tell her how very, very sorry they were: everything more like a movie than real life.

Mostly she remembered the skin of Gramma Marie's face, so fine and smooth as she lay on her back in the big s.h.i.+ny box. The fleshy sheen mirrored the silken bright blue of the coffin's upholstery. It was a waste of pretty fabric, she remembered thinking. Better to have made skirts and party dresses out of it than to bury it deep, deep in the ground. She liked that idea.

She thought Gramma Marie would have liked it, too, but she couldn't ask her about it now because Gramma Marie was dead, and people couldn't talk to you anymore once they were dead. Not ever again. That was the thing she disliked most about death; not being able to talk to your friends anymore.

Thinking about it made her s.h.i.+ver slightly. She knew she was in big trouble, and she didn't want to end up looking like Gramma Marie.

The potato vines and the carrots and the lettuce had not yet begun to die, though the leaves on the fruit trees were already starting to droop. Some had been killed by the explosion, torn to bits or ripped up and hurled violently against once another. One of the big pear trees had been blown to splinters.

Smashed pears lay scattered across the floor like escapees from a Vermeer still life. Amy knew that the others would start dying soon, now that the hydroponic fluid that nourished their growth had stopped circulating and the special lights used to simulate the sun had gone out. The heaters were off, too, though some residual heat still emanated from their internal ceramic elements. The temperature was falling steadily, soaked up by the thirsty atmosphere of the rapidly cooling station module.

What really frightened her, though, wasn't the darkness or the gathering cold. It was the persistent, angry hiss that came from the base of the wall at the far end of the module. She couldn't see the leak, but she could hear it.

She tried putting some empty sacks over the hiss and then piling furniture on them. It muted the noise, but didn't stop it. So she backed as far away from it as she could, all the way back across the module, as if retreating from a dangerous snake. There were four safety doors in the big module, designed to divide it into airtight quarters in the event of a leak. Not one of them had closed. She didn't know why, but she guessed that the explosion had broken something inside them, too.

She wondered if she would know it when the air finally ran out. She would have asked Mr. Reuschel about it, but he was already dead. He didn't look at all like Gramma Marie had. His mouth hung open and instead of lying neat and straight on his back he was all bent and twisted on the floor where the explosion had thrown him. She didn't know for certain he was dead, but she was pretty sure. He didn't reply to any of her questions and hedidn't move at all, not even when she touched his eye. When she put her palm up to his mouth the way she'd been taught to in school, she couldn't feel anything moving against her skin.

He'd been the gardener on duty when everything had exploded. Daddy called him a hydroponics engineer, but Amy just thought of him as the gardener. Ms. Anwalt was the other gardener. Like everyone else on the station, she probably knew about the explosion by now and would want to check on the garden, but she couldn't. No one could because the access door didn't work anymore. The explosion had broken it just like it had broken Mr.

Reuschel.

The door led to the lock, which led to the service corridor, which connected the hydroponics module to the rest of the station. Amy knew it was still connected because her feet weren't floating off the floor. If the module had broken away from the rest of the station, then it wouldn't be swinging around the central core, and if it wasn't rotating around the central core, then she would be floating in zero-gee right now.

She wondered if Jimmy Sanchez was worried about her. She hoped so.

Jimmy was twelve, the only other kid on the station. His parents were photovoltechs who spent their days drifting like b.u.t.terflies around the huge solar panels which powered and heated the facility. Jimmy was pretty nice, for a boy. She liked him more than he liked her, but maybe, just maybe, he was thinking about her.

She knew Mum and Dad must be worrying about her, but she tried not to think about that because it made her sad. She thought of all the bad things she'd done as a little girl and wished now she hadn't done them.

It was getting cold and she knew she should keep moving. She walked over to the rectangular port behind the tomato vines. Since all the overheads had gone out, the only light in the module came from the ports. Pressing her nose to the transparency enabled her to see the big blue sphere of the Earth outside, rotating slowly around the port. Doing geography helped keep her mind off the chill. She located Britain, and Spain, and the boot of Italy.

There was no cloud cover over the Alps and she saw the snow on the mountain-tops clearly. But the oceans were easiest to identify. They made her think of beaches, and the stinky-sweet smell of salt water, and the warm summer sun.

She was able to see her breath by the light of the Earth. Mr. Reuschel still hadn't moved. He didn't protest as she struggled to get his jacket off. He was a grown-up and heavy and hard to move and it made her stomach feel queasy to try, but she kept pus.h.i.+ng and shoving. His jacket was bulky-warm and covered her down to her knees.

Water dripped from a broken pipe, a comforting tinkling in the darkness.She drank and then did her best to wash the dirt off her face, the dirt from where she'd landed. She understood enough to be thankful for it. If the compost pile hadn't been there to catch her and break her fall, she might be as twisted up as Mr. Reuschel.

After a moment's thought she decided to sit down by the door. All of its internal LEDs had gone out, so she knew it still wasn't working. The big manual lever was bent and twisted and wouldn't move even when she put all her weight on it.

It was very dark next to the door and away from the ports, but somehow she felt better sitting there. Pouring through the ports, Earthlight made shadowy silhouettes of the trees and bushes. The cabin in Residential Module Six with her stuffed animals and seash.e.l.ls and snug second-tier bunk seemed very far away. It would've been easier if Jimmy, or anybody, had been there with her. But they weren't. There was only poor Mr.

Reuschel, and he was worse than no company at all. She was alone.

Except she wasn't.

There was another presence in the module. It wasn't dead, but it wasn't really alive either. Awareness is a matter of technical definitions and predetermined perceptive capability. Consciousness is something entirely more abstract.

The Molimon was aware of her presence but could not talk to her, could not provide rea.s.surance or comfort. It was aware of the damage which had occurred, of Mr. Reuschel, of the falling temperature and absence of light. It had detected the leak at the far end of the module and continued to monitor the rate at which air was being lost. It was aware of everything around it.

That was the job it had been a.s.signed to do. That was the job it did well.

Until now. It knew that the environment in which it operated had undergone an abrupt and drastic change. There was damage and destruction everywhere. Nothing was functioning within a.s.signed parameters and try as it might, the Molimon could not restore anything to normal.

That was because it had suffered considerable damage itself. A pair of memories were gone and an IOP processor had been popped by the force of the explosion. Two molly drives had stopped spinning. Efficiently, effectively, the Molimon distributed the responsibilities of the damaged sectors among the components of itself that continued to function. It was wounded, but far from dead.

Internal communications continued to operate, allowing the Molimon to send details of the damage it and the module had suffered to Command Central. So far there had been no response. No doubt Central was concentrating on a.s.sessing the damage to those components and parts of the station that were unable to report on themselves. Knowing that theMolimon could take care of itself, Central would take its time responding.

Having reported the damage and requested instructions on how to begin repairs, the Molimon sat and waited for a reply. It could not wait long. If no instructions were forthcoming, it would have to shut itself down while battery power remained, thereby preserving its programming and functions until full external power was restored. This caused it no concern. Anxiety was not part of its programming. It had no concept of unconsciousness.

Shutdown was merely another state of existence. There was nothing to be concerned about, since all systems within the module were fully redundant.

It was aware of the damage to the hydroponics module only in purely quant.i.tative terms: the absence of light, of heat, of equipment functioning efficiently and according to plan. Supervising the hydroponics environment was but one component of its mission, and it could not bring anything back on line until power was restored. Knowing this, it completed its observations, allotted them a sector on one of its still functioning mollys, and made a complete record of the situation. Programming now called for it to commence an orderly shutdown while sufficient reserve power remained for it to do so.