14 Surv1v0rs

4

He would have liked Kepler to look more like Venus. Before man got to her, that is: Exotic volcanos: farra, arachnoids, novae, coronae—that sensuous orange skyline, those puce-gray clouds of sulfuric dioxide and acid. Of course, they would have all burned alive, but it would have been interesting to see. Instead, the barren, sandy landscape greeted them—her nondescript features blasted by storms like a jealous maniac slashing away the face of a goddess. And rocks, timeless, and molded by wind cluttered the ground.
They drove for an hour. From the vista of the truck's dusty windows, the crash site appeared, first a snaking ruin glimpsed only through the rocky clefts and bulbous highlands, then a sprawling tumultuous nightmare. With her insides disgorged across the terrain, she looked like a crushed insect driven into the landscape. She had not suffered a direct impact, rather, they imagined, she had come down like a comet slanting down from the sky, contrails of smoke, and trails of hull and wing fragments spiraling off her and spinning through the caustic gale to glide into the mountains and scatter across the terrain as smoking debris. When she struck the ground, she had cut a deep trench through the terrain before nosing into her final resting place—a grave of ash and fire. Countless panels had defoliated from her exterior along the journey, dotting the landscape—and an explosion had ripped out most of her interior and blackened the crash site.
They came along the trench, passing various parts that had been jettisoned along the way, their panels glittering in the sunlight. Finally, they approached the Andromeda herself, her cylindrical frame collapsed from the impact, and her white paint scorched with black whiskers swept from the source where the fire had erupted from her.
Wearing their thermal suits and helmets, the three of them climbed out of the truck, and stood surveying the disaster.
Jack moved forward ungainly, feeling his boots depress on aluminum debris and broken glass.
"Whaddya think?" Reeves voice crooned over the mic, as he climbed through a hollowed-out fuselage.
"Looks pretty dead," said Jack.
"No survivors in this," said Audrey.
Reeves carefully picked his way through the fuselage, and then stepped out into a pile of debris. "Antiparticle reactor still intact; we're not standing in a crater." He stood gazing at the deserted landscape, then released the oxygen connector hose and took off his helmet.
"What are you doing?" said Audrey.
Reeves took in a deep breath and felt his lungs strain for oxygen. "It's a helluva sight to see with naked eyes," he said.
Jack did the same; each breath came up short, but he felt a sense of relief to be able to see everything through his eyes and hear without the sounds coming through muffled. He crunched on something—a report as loud as a shotgun reached his ears. Looking down, he saw he had stepped on a blackened skull. "Damn." His stomach twisted. He didn't want to imagine who he'd just stepped on.
Reeves covered his face with a gloved hand, and then looked at Audrey, who was removing her helmet. "Well, where is it?"
Audrey stowed her helmet under her arm and touched her glove over a microcomputer on her wrist, and a green, holographic, directional image materialized. She spun it with her finger and said, "Northeast—it's that way."
"Jack," said Reeves, as he headed in that direction, "try to think of this place as a cemetery. Careful where you set your foot."
"So, what happened, exactly?" Audrey asked, as they picked their way through the wreckage."
"Wade happened," Reeves said caustically.
"I remember that," said Audrey. "He was kept in quarantine in the medical bay. We weren't allowed to see him—Bob's orders."
"Yes," said Reeves. "But then he began to show symptoms of, well, you know ... strangeness. His adrenaline levels spiked; he broke out, attacked Bob. I was gonna try to subdue him, but Bob ordered me to stay back and used a sedative on him. It wasn't enough, but it slowed him down. Jeremiah came to help, but Bob said he didn't want anyone to come in contact with him ... said he was contagious. He eventually got Wade into the airlock and kept him there. He didn't want anyone to know about Wade's condition."
"How come?" Audrey asked.
"He didn't want there to be a panic, he said. He debated it for a long time—whether he should ... you know. He thought maybe there was a cure for whatever was taking him over. But in the end .... "
"Space," said Jack. "Now I remember. I remember coming upon him and seeing him ... Bob. His face was as white as death. Then he looked sick."
"Of course," said Audrey. "He'd just murdered one of his crew."
"It wasn't murder," said Reeves. "If you'd seen Wade's eyes ... there was nothing human left in them."
"I only heard about it from Jeremiah," said Audrey. "He said he saw Wade's face ... it wasn't a human face anymore. He said he left fingernails on the walls as he came out of the quarantine, and made strange nasal sounds ... and that something was coming out of his mouth.
"Then I went to him ... Bob ... I asked if it was true."
"What did he say?" Jack asked.
"He didn't want to talk about it. He said he did what he had to do. Then he told me to leave ... that he had to make a report. But once I left, he shut the door and locked it."
"He knew," said Jack. "He knew we were contaminated then. He was probably thinking what he had to do to stop it from spreading."
"Now I know what he was doing," said Audrey. "He went to the mining bay and gained access to a demolition kit. Then he went and locked himself on the bridge."
And in a flash, Jack remembered something else. He had just seen Bob raise the safety cap on the airlock control panel and hit the button, and Wade, screaming, was flushed out into space. He saw Bob, his face white with horror, and then looked down and saw the trail of blood. He tried to leave, but Bob acted quickly and struck the button on the wall panel that operated the doors. It closed on him. Jack turned and pounded the door. "What the hell are you doing?"
Bob looked at him with his pale face, his cold distant eyes. "You go nowhere, Jack," he said. "You're under quarantine now. This whole frickin ship is under quarantine." Then he left.
"Let me out!" he had screamed.
"What's wrong?" Reeves asked, looking at him.
"Nothing," said Jack. He put his helmet back on and fastened the oxygen hoses into place. His heart was beating fast. Adrenaline kicked in. His mouth was turning dry. "I just—I need air."
Reeves turned to confront him with his body. "You remembered something?"
He was aware Reeves was watching him closely, trying to see through the visor into his eyes.
"I remembered seeing Bob kill Wade ... that's all."
"Traumatic to see, I understand," said Reeves.
He could hear his own breath quickening inside his helmet; the visor began to fog. Omigod! he thought. But it can't be. Surely it can't!
Then he heard Audrey give a muffled gasp.
"What is it?" said Reeves.
"Reeves—Jack—look! Footprints!" cried Audrey, pointing to the ground. "Reeves, those are footprints!"
Jack stumbled through portions of what remained of the avionics bay, his boots getting tangled in nests of wires, and braced himself on the bulkhead frame before he came upon what Audrey was pointing at. Indeed, footprints could be seen briefly in the dirt on the floor.
"Has to be recent," said Reeves. "After the storm passed." He was already following them. The tracks led into the scorched clutter and wreckage where they lost sight of them. They waded through the sea of rubble: burnt seats, doorframes, crates, beams and tangles of wires and partially melted computers. After a while, Reeves stopped searching. "Try the transponder."
Audrey switched on navigational computer; the hologram of the directional poles revolved, and a small red blimp appeared.
"Just as I thought," said Reeves.
"What?" Jack asked.
"Whoever it is, they have the flight recorder."
The blimp guided them out of the wreck and directed them toward a series of plateaus and rock structures effaced by the torturous storms. Debris was strewn everywhere by the explosion, and the wind threw rattling panels up against the rocks, fitted them into tight crannies. The sandy ground betrayed no signs of footprints, yet Reeves could guess where a survivor—whether from the crash, or from another time—might have holed up: a small, inconspicuous cave burrowed in the side of the rock structures.
Reeves put his helmet back on and switched on its lights. "It's in here," he said, ducking into the cave's entrance, and his voice, crackling over the mic, chamber-echoed.
Once they stepped into the cave, they could make out the footprints again. The survivor had been busy gathering water, food and medicines. Piles of bloody gauze, blood synthesis packets and tubes of Hemo-gel littered the cave floor.
Jack and Audrey switched on their helmet lights and spread out into the cave.
"Hello?" Reeves called. "Anyone here?"
"Who do you think it is?" Audrey asked.
"Could be anyone," said Jack.
"Someone left behind ten years ago maybe," said Reeves, inspecting the cave floor.
"It's a survivor from the crash," asked Audrey.
"Doubt anyone could have survived that," said Jack.
"Look," she said, indicating the bloody gauze, "whoever it was, he was injured. Come on, people have survived crashes before."
"She's right," said Reeves. "If it was a scavenger left behind, they would have taken the supplies elsewhere. Whoever survived this crash sought shelter immediately in this cave."
"Where are they, then?" Jack asked.
"Found it," said Audrey. She was kneeling near a small portable generator, a hydrogen canister, medicine bottles, and several devices that had been scavenged by the survivor. She stood up holding the flight recorder—a silver cylindrical device.
Reeves took the flight recorder from her. "All right. Let's find the survivor."
"He could be anywhere," said Jack. "Let's wait here in case he returns."
"We don't have enough oxygen to wait that long," warned Audrey.
"We'll wait as long as we can," said Reeves. "Assuming he doesn't have a large supply of O2, he might be suffering from hypoxia by now."
"Okay, we'll wait," said Audrey.
Reeves sat down and looked over the flight recorder. "While we wait ... " he said, and held the interface tool on his glove up to the device. The two synched. An auditory hologram materialized above his wrist. "This is Captain Reeves speaking," he said to it.