Traveler in the Dark

31

"Alice, wait," called Spixworth, hurrying up the ramp after Oxwell's climbing form. "I'm coming with you." She paused and turned, waiting for him to catch up. He reached her and she started climbing again. He was winded from running to close the distance between them. "Look," he rasped, "you can't do this."

"Don't try to talk me out of this. I'm doing what's best for us."

"Maybe, sure," agreed Spixworth, "I don't mean the Wolfinger. I mean Rebecca. You're friends. You can't leave it like that, especially if she's really stubborn enough to stay. You should go back, talk to her."

"Why? There's nothing left to say. I've known her a long time. Long before training. She's not going to change her mind and I can't change mine."

"I know, but you could tell her you understand that she's doing what she thinks is right, even if you don't agree. If you don't, what's it going to be like when we come back? She'll know that you betrayed—"

"Don't you get it, Nick? We aren't coming back. Not ever. If she stays, she dies here," shouted Alice. The light was strengthening as the grew closer to the surface, but the ground became soft, the edges of the ramp crumbling gradually under the vibrations their feet made.

"Whoa, Alice, hang on. I know you have hesitations about settling here, but it's not up to either of us."

"It is. We're the only people that have a say, the people that are here right now. If we keep it secret, if we just tell them it's a wasteland, that it isn't habitable, the Keseburg will move on."

"Move on to where, Alice? Where is it you want us to go? Because unless you want us to turn around and head back to Earth, I'm not sure where you think we're going to go. What did you think was going to happen when you signed up for this mission?"

"I thought we'd be headed to a barren rock or a planet with some pre-archean life, something we couldn't screw up. A blank slate. I didn't expect someplace with a rich ecology and advanced societies that have already existed and gone extinct. We don't belong here. It will kill us and everything here. If we stay in space, the worst that happens is a few thousand members of a dying species succumb to the natural order."

"Flaming core, Alice, I never expected this from you. The natural order? Do you even hear yourself? What happened to 'adapt and survive'?"

"Don't quote the same tired old Keseburg manual to me. If the Earthlings cared so much about adapting and surviving then why didn't they write a section on what to do once we found a place, hmm? Earth didn't care. We were the garbage, Nick. The outcasts. They had to offload their excess waste so they sent us on a little trip. We were never supposed to find a place. And we were never supposed to go back. We were meant to die on the ship, centuries ago."

"If that was true, do you really want to give Earth the satisfaction?"

"I don't want to destroy another planet to prove them wrong."

"I'm sorry. I can't agree to this. And I'm not going to help you persuade the others. I'm going to tell them to wait for Rebecca."

Alice shook her head. "Then I'm sorry too, Nick. I really am." She lunged toward him and hit his chest with her shoulder. He exhaled in a painful, surprised whoosh and felt his feet sliding down the disintegrating side of the ramp. His arms pinwheeled as he tried to right himself.

"Help!" he cried, reaching for Alice, for anything. His fingers met only air. The dirt below his feet slumped and broke off and he was falling. Alice was a shadow and then a bright star as the midday sky reflected off her helmet, and then the dark swallowed him, still falling into the nest. His back slammed against the side of the ramp but he didn't have time to feel it, tumbling off again into the center of the spiral. Alice heard the jarring pop and raining jingle of smashing glass as his helmet shattered beneath her. Rebecca was too far from the ramp to hear Spixworth's fall, and his corpse lay among the rusted digging machines, his legs floating in the frigid waters that flooded the deepest chambers.

Alice turned and trudged out to the top of the nest. Her fingers shook and it took several seconds to flip on the feed. She told herself she'd had no choice. Not about Nicholas and not about Rebecca. They were sacrifices for the greater good. As long as Issk'ath stayed off the Wolfinger, Alice had a chance to save the others. All she had to do was convince them.

"Captain Al Jahi, come in," she said, and didn't have to fake the anxiety in her voice.

"I'm here, Oxwell, what's wrong?"

"Issk'ath has temporarily shut down. It's inactive, but I'm not certain how long. We should take this opportunity and go."

"Shut down?"

"Yes. Emery convinced it to consult with— well, with whatever it's carrying around inside it, and it shut down. Stopped responding. Now is our chance to escape. I'm on my way back to the Wolfinger. You should call the others back as well. We can go before it stops processing or whatever it's doing."

"Martham, Blick, Titov, do you copy?"

"We heard," said Martham, "we're on our way. It'll mean leaving the rest of the mobile lab, but we've packed the relevant samples already. We'll reach the Wolfinger in ten minutes."

Alice blew out a sigh of relief. "I'll be there in five," she said.