Inseminoid (6 page)

Karl had just left Mitch’s study when he met Sharon. He liked her. She was often brusque and straightforward, but there was no bullshit about her. You always knew where you stood. He respected that quality.

“The expedition started out boring,” Karl was just making conversation, “but it’s got pretty exciting in the last day or so.”

The crewmates turned a corner and continued in the direction of the Space Preparation Chamber. Inside it, Ricky was pulling his suit on and he held a helmet in his hand. As soon as he saw Karl and Sharon approaching he froze like a frightened animal.

“Ricky?” Karl called out.

Ricky pulled on his helmet and went for the airlock.

“No! Wait!” Karl said.

“What’s the matter with him?” Sharon wondered.

Karl raced after Ricky and caught up with him at the inner door to the airlock. “Hey! Where ’ya going?”

Ricky tried to push past Karl. There was only a blank stare on his face. “Dean . . . Gotta find Dean.”

Karl took him by the arms and tried to hold him back. “Dean’s not out there.”

“Dean!” Ricky shouted.

Without warning he lunged at Karl and the doctor was taken totally by surprise. “Ricky, what in hell’s got into you?!”

But Ricky didn’t answer with words. His actions told the story well enough. He banged his elbow into Karl’s ribs, sending him flying. He brought his balled-up fist down to Karl’s face. But the doctor saw it coming and jerked his head out of the way at the last possible second. Ricky’s hand smashed into the wall with full force. There were cracking sounds that Karl knew were those of bones breaking but even that didn’t stop the crazed man.

Sharon leaped on to Ricky and grabbed at the oxygen pack on the back of his suit. He shook her off easily but he was disorientated for a brief moment. Then he remembered where he was and started for the airlock door. Only Karl was between him and freedom. Ricky moved steadily toward him and grabbed him. He reached back, poised to try again to finish Karl off, just as Sandy came around the corner from the opposite direction. She didn’t understand what was happening but she knew she had to do something fast. This was just the kind of crisis books couldn’t teach you how to handle.

She dived between Ricky’s legs and using a manoeuvre she called “testicles deviant” she brought her hand up in a karate chop to his crotch.

Ricky screamed like a wounded animal and Sandy figured she’d scored a direct hit. When she saw blood seep through his suit she realised just how accurate she had been.

That distraction, engineered by Sandy, gave Karl the chance he needed to reach the emergency alarm to warn the others. He broke an alarm panel sending the high-pitched wailing sound blaring through the complex.

Ricky had started after Karl but the alarm brought him to a complete stop. He covered his ears with his hands. It was too much for him to bear. He spun around and careened through the corridor, leaving Sandy, Sharon and Karl behind.

Ricky ran faster and faster but everywhere he went there was the alarm. He couldn’t get away from it. Gary had stepped out of his cabin to check out what was happening. He was looking the other way and didn’t see Ricky coming. The two men collided and both ended up in a pile on the floor.

“What’s going on?” Gary tried to shout over the din.

But Ricky wasn’t aware of anything but the noise, that excruciating noise. He got up and tried to climb a stairwell but he was clumsy in his spacesuit and fell backwards. He rose from the ground and pulled himself up by the railing. Just then Mark appeared. “Ricky? What the hell . . .”

Ricky never let him finish his sentence. He knocked him out of the way with a blinding two-fisted punch to the gut. Mark went flying into a row of cabinets while Ricky headed off down the corridor in the opposite direction.

By the time Mark opened his eyes and regained his wind, Ricky was nowhere to be seen. He’d disappeared into the maze of corridors.

At that moment the other crew members rushed toward Mark. He wiped the blood from his mouth. “The last I saw him he was heading down there,” he motioned with his hand.

“We’d better find him before he hurts somebody badly or hurts himself,” Karl said.

They moved cautiously, opening all doors as they went. There was a noise and each one froze. But it was Barbra. She was coming toward them.

“Have you seen Ricky?” Karl asked her.

She said she hadn’t.

Then there was noise coming from behind them and Ricky was running away from them. He was moving into a part of the complex that had been closed off for the last hundred and fifty years.

“Where does this lead to?” Sharon asked.

“No way to know,” Mark said. “But I’m going in after him.”

“Watch out,” Gary warned him. “It’s dangerous in there.”

Mark opened the door and moved ahead very slowly. It was dark and he knew Ricky might be waiting for him in any number of places. He negotiated his way through the layers of dust and crumbling plaster and around objects discarded by that earlier expedition.

The next step he took was almost his last. His foot went right through the floor. He grabbed on to a railing for support and narrowly averted disaster. Mark pulled his leg out of the hole. “That was a close one,” he muttered to himself.

But the relief faded quickly with the sound of footsteps below him. He looked down a rickety stairwell and was just able to make out the glow from the light on Ricky’s helmet. Mark knew he had to follow, no matter how dangerous it might be. He was sub-commander and he really should have been the commander. He had something to prove—if not to others, then to himself.

He climbed slowly down the steel ladder and finally reached the bottom. To his consternation he discovered that he was faced with three separate corridors. The deeper he went the less likely he would ever find his way out again.

As soon as the alarm was sounded Holly watched the action on the internal monitors, but Ricky had gone off the screen when he entered the closed-off area. She took out the original blueprints of the complex and studied the layout of that section. There was one way, she figured, of cutting Ricky off. She had to try it.

Ricky glanced behind him, not knowing where to go or why, yet driven blindly forward. He ran wildly and somehow found himself in the centre of a disused shaft. A single rail ran the length of the shaft and he began following it, stumbling over it as he went.

That was what Holly had been counting on. She wanted to keep him trapped in that shaft until he could be controlled. She made her way to its far end and found an open car. She was surprised that the power pack still had juice left in it after all those years. “They don’t make ’em like they used to,” she said to herself and put the car in motion. In the darkened distance she was just able to make out a hazy form and a speck of light. She slowed the vehicle and called out, “Don’t be scared, Ricky. Nothing’s going to happen to you. Just stay where you are and I’ll help you. Don’t try anything foolish.”

Then he wasn’t there any more. She’d lost sight of him. “Damn it!” she cursed. Either he’d slipped into another corridor leading from the shaft or he was hiding in wait in the shadows. “Come on, Ricky, let me see you.”

She brought the speed down as low as she could to still keep moving. When the car turned a corner Ricky made his presence all too well known to the commander. He leaped into the car. Holly fought back as hard as she could. She lashed out at Ricky, catching his face with her nails and drawing blood.

Somehow during their struggle for control, the speed lever was inadvertently pushed forward into high gear. The car quickly picked up speed, moving along its rail much too fast.

Holly held on tightly with one hand while she tried to beat Ricky back with the other. He wanted to topple her over and out of the car, but she held her position. At the best of times, Holly would never have been a match for Ricky but now his crazed strength was completely overpowering her. Ricky applied more and more pressure to her neck.

Holly began to choke. Her intake of air was being cut off and she realised she had only one choice. She had to give up the struggle and allow herself to fall backwards to the ground. It was a risk, but less of one than staying with Ricky and futilely trying to fight it out. Holly leaned back and dropped to the ground. She rolled to an abrupt stop against a wall of the shaft, fortunately uninjured.

Just as soon as he was rid of her, Ricky slammed on the vehicle’s brakes and threw the car into reverse. He picked up speed and smashed his way into the mouth of yet another corridor. The others were sprinting along the track and were gaining on him but he made it through just ahead of them. Ricky opened the outer door and dashed on to the planet’s surface.

The red light above the inner door flashed on. “Oh fuck!” Holly cursed.

“He’s left the outer door open,” Mark said.

But Karl wasn’t concerned. “Best thing that could have happened. He can’t stay out there for long.”

Gail was halfway to the tomb when the thought hit, “Shit! I’ve forgotten Kate’s film.” She turned around and headed back to the complex.

Gail approached the airlock unaware of all that’d been going on inside. When she got there, she was surprised to see the outer door wide open. She was sure it had shut behind her. She shrugged and figured it was just a malfunction. She made a mental note to mention it to Holly later. Gail had one foot in the airlock when Ricky pushed by her, knocking her to the ground. Stunned, she looked up to see that Ricky was stripping off his suit and hurling his helmet into the atmosphere.

“Hey, what are you doing?” she yelled. “You’ll die out there!”

But, amazingly, the change in atmosphere, the lack of oxygen and the freezing temperature didn’t affect Ricky. He took a deep breath and steadied himself. He was free!

Ricky stopped dead. Then he turned around slowly to face Gail. He had a calm, almost serene expression on his face. It was a look that chilled Gail to the bone. She was still half in and half out of the airlock. Before she could move inside, Ricky activated the control and the door shut on her right leg. She twisted her body to avoid being trapped but wasn’t quick enough in her bulky space gear. She couldn’t move her foot.

Holly and the rest of the crew had retreated to the control room. There, they saw on the monitor what was happening.

“It looks like she’s stuck,” Mark said. He checked the control panel and added, “We’re getting a constant open reading from the airlock.”

Holly opened her communicator. “Can you hear me, Gail?”

“I’ve really got myself into a fix now, haven’t I?” she replied. “My foot’s caught and I can’t move.”

“Don’t worry. We’ll get you out.”

Mark cut the switch to the communicator so Gail couldn’t hear what he had to say. “There’s no way we can help her. The inner door can’t be opened as long as the outer door is. There’s no way we can over-ride the failsafe. She’s got to do it herself.”

“You’re right,” Holly conceded. “I’ve got to level with Gail.”

She turned the communicator on again. “Gail, it appears as if there’s nothing we can do after all. You’ll have to free yourself but you can do it if you don’t lose your cool.”

Gail managed to stand up. She tried to free her leg but the more she pulled the tighter the door jammed on her. “It’s hurting me,” she cried. “I can’t get it loose.”

Like a drowning swimmer, the more Gail struggled the more desperate her position became. She fought but it was no use. Then suddenly her free leg buckled and she crashed to the floor. She landed on her hip and cried out in pain—but that was the least of her problems because two wires in her electrical backpack were torn loose in the fall.

“Oh my God!” she screamed when she realised what had happened.

Gail looked up at the camera above her and pleaded, “You’ve got to help me. My thermo unit’s gone! I’m going to freeze. Please, Holly! Somebody! Help me before it’s too late!” Through the pain and the fear, tears of hysteria streamed from her eyes.

Holly took the communicator microphone and steadied herself. Then as calmly as she was able she said, “We can’t get to you, Gail. We have no way of opening the inner door to the airlock until the outer door is shut. So, it’s up to you to help yourself. Do you understand?”

“Yes. Tell me what to do, but hurry. The temperature’s already dropping. It’s getting cold.”

Holly quickly cupped her hand over the head of the microphone and whispered to Barbra, “Try to reach Kate on her personal communicator. If she can get to the airlock she just might be able to open the door from the outside.”

Then Holly turned to Gary, the mission’s technical coordinator. “If she’s going to make it, you’ll have to tell her how to reconnect the thermo unit.”

Gary nodded his head. His palms were moist and a line of perspiration had formed on his forehead. “Gail, can you hear me?”

“Yes.” Her voice was quivering.

“All right, kid, this is what you’ll have to do if you want to make it out of there alive. We’re not playing games now. This is serious business.” His voice was steady and assertive.

“Go ahead. I’m ready.”

“Now, to bypass the thermostat, you’ve got to connect the blue leads. Got that? The blue leads.”

“I’ll try,” Gail promised. She reached for the wires and pinched her fingers together. But she couldn’t hold on to them. Her gloves were just too thick to handle anything as small as a wire. Still, Gail wasn’t going to give up and she tried again and yet again. Time was running out, though, and she had to face the fact that she’d never be able to make the connection. “I can’t do it!” she cried. She was becoming colder. So much colder.

“No! I won’t accept that!” Gary shouted. “You’ve got to keep trying until you do it. We’re not going to let you give up so goddam easy!”

“But I’m going to die.”

Sandy grabbed the microphone from Gary’s hand. “Gail, I don’t want to lose you. You’re my friend. We’ve suffered together, laughed and cried all through basic training. You’re my sister and I don’t want to lose you. So please try again. If not for yourself then do it for me.”

Gail was shaking from the cold. She could hardly keep her body still yet she forced herself to acknowledge Sandy’s plea. She would give it one last shot.