The plasm, p.1
The Plasm, page 1
The Plasm
William Meikle
Dark Regions Press, LLC
Portland, OR
2014
This is a work of fiction. All characters, events or organizations in it are
products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
The Plasm © 2014 by William Meikle. All rights reserved.
Cover image © 2014 by M. Wayne Miller
Dark Regions Press, LLC
6635 N. Baltimore Ave., Ste. 241
Portland, OR 97203
United States of America
http://DarkRegions.com
Published by Chris Morey
Edited by R.J. Cavender
First digital edition.
For Gerry Anderson, who made me wish I was a spaceman.
1
Space
It started in darkness, two days out from Bradbury Flats and cruising. Mars showed as a red dot in the viewport, getting closer all the time. It’s the oldest cliché in the book—on a dark Halloween night a newly married couple are traveling in a thunderstorm when their car breaks down on a lonely road, and the only sign of life is a Gothic mansion complete with a wrinkled, debauched retainer intent on mischief. It was nearly Halloween, but they weren’t married, it wasn’t a thunderstorm and they weren’t in a car.
It had been a smooth run, just two months this time, a relatively short hop compared to some of their other trips. Now they headed for base with a full cargo of colored stones that could be polished and cut for the stay-at-home market. The stones would have a several-hundred-percent mark-up applied and would be sold under names like “The Whirling Glass from the Red Deserts” and “The Singing Rocks of the Purple Mountains.” The buyers would never know that the pieces of rock were mined on a dirty gray asteroid amongst many other dirty gray rocks. Nor would they care that billions of dollars worth of technology were being used to satisfy the taste for adventure of a world full of couch potatoes who could afford to pay handsomely for the dubious pleasure.
Steve Falmoth couldn’t complain. He piloted one of the fastest machines ever built, he got to spend most of his time offworld far away from the day-to-day fight for survival, and the dark majesty of the stars in his viewing port kept him endlessly occupied.
It’s not the most exciting job around—but who needs excitement?
He’d had more than enough of that back Earthside, back before. That’s always how he thought of the time he spent on his own, pre-Sam. Bad times of theft and gang fights, weed-addled confusion and people—far too many people. That had all changed in a bar in the space dock in L3.
Sam had walked into his life, appearing at his side at the bar one night when he was feeling particularly sorry for himself. One word was all it took.
She’d said “Hi.”
Instantly smitten, Steve changed his life completely. Less than two weeks later he was flying a cargo rig in the asteroid belt as Sam’s wingman.
It hadn’t all been roses and chocolates since that day five years ago, but he knew just how lucky he was. Every time they went back to L3 another of the old gang was gone; either dead in a bar, lost in the world of dream-weed, or just fallen off the grid never to be heard of again. Eventually they’d be completely forgotten, almost as if they’d never existed at all. At least out here among the darkness Steve knew how insignificant he was and had come to terms with his place in the cosmos, however small that place might be.
And I have Sam.
That was a constant marvel to him. The mere fact that she would even talk to him astonished him that first night, and continued to astonish every day since. They had almost diametrically opposite character traits: she, brash, bold and confident he more subdued and withdrawn, but somehow they meshed; their whole more than the sum of their parts.
There was no better flight team in the system. That was no idle boast; it was something they proved every time they took a job that nobody else wanted or that no one thought could be handled without too much exposure to risk. This current trip was a cakewalk in comparison to some others they’d recently undertaken, but it was proving to be a welcome change of pace and an opportunity to soak up some quiet time.
Like every other morning, Steve had spent a couple of minutes in the shower counting these simple blessings. It was his way of starting the day, a reaffirmation of his place in the scheme of things. For a short space of time he believed all was well, but the day went downhill fast after that.
He had just stepped out of the sonic shower when it started. There was no warning—just a complete systems failure, plunging him into darkness. He stood still, waiting for the backup to kick in. After twenty seconds he realized it wasn’t going to.
“Sam?” he called out.
There was no reply.
He spent a bad couple of seconds groping in the blackness looking for his clothes before the emergency lights finally came on. They were dim, hardly more effective than candlelight, but at least he could see enough to dress quickly and make his way up to the flight deck.
Sam was already there, hunched over a console. Her blonde hair looked orange under the winking emergency lights. When she turned, Steve saw her excitement—eyes wide, nostrils flaring. They were dead in space and she didn’t look too unhappy with the situation.
Steve knew why without having to ask. Sam sucked up life in an endless stream of experiences and was always on the lookout for something new. Here they were, stranded without power, a long way from help and floating along in the blackness … and she was happy. At that point Steve could have cheerfully strangled her.
“What’s the problem?” he started to say, but then he looked out of the viewport and didn’t really have to ask.
A ship hung in space ahead of them, blocking out half the view. It was big, it was black, and it was mean. In shape it looked like a monstrous sperm whale carrying a giant egg under its belly, hanging pregnant in the dark where there should only be empty space.
Steve had a chill feeling in the pit of his stomach, and his brain told him to flee as far and as fast as possible. He should have listened to it, but instead he forced himself to concentrate on Sam. He silently counted to ten before asking the obvious question.
“What happened?”
“Primary coil burnout,” she said, and Steve knew they were in deep trouble as she continued. “I didn’t have time to warn you. I was sitting here minding my own business when we got a proximity alert message. I just had time to get to the console, then everything went, all at once.”
“Do we have any power at all?” Steve said.
“We’ve got the emergency lighting. But we can forget about going anywhere soon. We’ve got maneuvering thrusters, but the main drive has gone.”
Steve lapsed into silence. He was thinking of how they could get out of this before they either froze or suffocated. He thought that Sam was thinking along the same lines, but her next statement told him otherwise.
“I think she’s the Vordlak,” she whispered. The lump of ice that had settled in Steve’s stomach got just that little bit colder.
*
From the New York Times, May 2nd 2121
ALL HOPE LOST
The Vordlak has been officially declared lost with all hands, six months after she disappeared on her maiden voyage. Deep-space scans have found no sign of the vessel, and there has been no contact with the Vordlak herself, nor have there been any sightings since she left Mars back in late October of last year.
So what started as a voyage of hope, a showcase for the pinnacle of modern technology, has ended in abject failure. This will prove a major setback in the quest for an affordable deep-space transport vehicle. The first live run for the newest NASA drive technology has ended in disaster, and the agency may take many years to recover from this setback.
*
“Come on, Sam. Get a grip. This is serious. We might be in for a slow cold death, and all you can talk about is eighty-year-old ghost stories? We need to be thinking about how we can get this crate working.”
She didn’t even look at him; couldn’t take her eyes off the huge ship outside.
“Sam,” Steve said, taking her arm. “I said …”
She turned and looked him in the eye. “Would you stop worrying and just look?” she said. Her face was only six inches from his. “Take a good look at it and tell me if I’m wrong.”
Sailors have the Marie Celeste; airmen have flight 109 … spacefarers had the Vordlak. She’d been built in the early 22nd century as a cargo cruiser to run on the asteroid-belt shuttle route, and at the time she was the biggest man-made thing in space. A huge song and dance was made; dignitaries from all over attended the launch, and the holovids proclaimed the start of a new era of space flight. She left Martian orbit with nothing but praise cheering her on.
During her first voyage she disappeared without a trace—all twelve crew and a lot of expensive technology—gone as if they had never existed. No communications were ever received. The Vordlak didn’t show up on any of the deep-space scanners, and no sign was ever seen of any debris. Until now.
Steve didn’t need to look. Like every other boy with space in his heart, he knew the story intimately. He’d seen the holovid of the launch many times over the years; he knew exactly what the Vordlak looked like. He'd harbored hopes that she was still out there somewhere in the dark spaces, just cruising.
I only wish it hadn’t been us that found her.
“Okay,” he said. “I agree with you. She’s definitely the Vordlak. But that doesn’t help us any out here. We’re going to be breathing stale air in a while, and it’s going to get mighty cold in here. We should …”
He trailed off. She still wasn’t listening. She went back to staring out of the port. Her eyes were wide in wonder.
We’re in trouble.
“Think of the fame waiting for us if we got back to base with her,” Sam said. Her gaze never left the Vordlak, and as she spoke it was almost a whisper, talking to herself more than to Steve. “Think of the fuss it would cause. Every journo in the system will be falling over to give us money. We’ll go down in history. Everlasting fame, a life of luxury, all that happy shit.”
“I don’t need any of that,” Steve said. “I’m happy out here, just me and you.”
But Sam hadn’t heard. She was gone with the idea, and he knew then that they were going to try to board the Vordlak. Serious alarm bells were now ringing in his skull.
“Sam,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady and low. “It’s taken her eighty years to get this far. How long do you think it will take us to get her back?”
It didn’t faze her—not one bit. “I’m sure I’ll think of something,” she said.
That’s what worries me.
She took the controls and fired up the thrusters. The Vordlak started to loom ever bigger in the port view. Steve considered arguing, but he’d learned a long time ago that once Sam had made up her mind you either went with the flow or got out of her way, for she never went backward.
“Okay,” he said. “You win. But this is just a quick once-over. We need to focus on survival.”
She didn’t reply, but she did stick her tongue out at him and smile; he took it as a small victory as she concentrated on getting them into docking position. Steve watched as the black hull got closer. It looked new—sleek and polished and somehow cold.
Cold as hell.
Once again his flight reflex kicked in, but he had no time to put it into action. Sam brought them right up beside the larger ship, lining up with one of several docking ports visible along the left flank. The hard metallic clash of their joining echoed around their small ship. And now that they were right up close he could see that there was light glowing in some of the Vordlak’s ports.
She’s still got power? How is that possible?
He was still wondering when he heard the hiss of the airlock behind him and a swish as the doors opened—and closed. When he turned, Sam had already gone through. It took him a second or so to spot that she had done so without suiting up first.
Of all the damned irresponsible …
He screamed after her, banging hard on the door. She turned and wiggled her fingers at him in a little wave.
“Get back here,” Steve shouted, and was dismayed to hear fear in his voice.
Her reply came back immediately across the comms.
“Don’t worry, lover. I’m okay. Life support is still running, and you’ll be able to come through in a few minutes. Meanwhile I’m off to explore—I couldn’t let you go first, now could I?”
She broke the connection. Steve cursed and screamed as she turned and moved out of view through the Vordlak’s airlock. He pounded at the door in rage and frustration until his hands hurt. But it was on a strict time control, cycling through its sequence. It wouldn’t be hurried. He had plenty of time to reflect once more on the differences between them—differences that were bound to lead them into trouble one day.
And here it is.
Finally the door opened. He started to enter the airlock then caution kicked in again. He went back, picked up a heavy torque wrench and, comforted slightly by the weight of it in his hand, went slowly through to the other ship, expecting at any second to fall under attack.
The air tasted stale and even slightly warmer than that back in their ship. The lights were on both in the airlock and the passageways beyond, casting a pale-blue, almost luminescent glow. Steve put his hand up to one. It felt cold to the touch, and hummed slightly against his fingertips as if the ship itself was alive and responding to his presence. He left the airlock and walked into the main ship.
A corridor stretched away into a distant blue gloom. There was no sign of Sam as he followed a faint trail in the dust on the floor.
“Sam!” he shouted, then wished he hadn’t. His voice was swallowed, somehow dampened, as if the ship wanted to stay quiet. There was no echo. The lights buzzed, flickered once, then steadied.
“Sam,” he whispered. “What have you got us into this time?”
As he walked farther along the corridor, he felt that the ship was not nearly as dead as it had looked. Small, subtle, vibrations throbbed along the gangway underfoot, as if an engine ran somewhere. The hackles rose slowly at the back of his neck as he had another thought.
Or something heavy is moving about down there.
He walked faster. The corridor stretched in a long unbroken curve with no doors on either side. He guessed he was in one on the main outer ring-access areas and was proved right a minute later. He knew they had docked near the cargo bay, so he wasn’t surprised when the corridor opened into a vast empty space with only a fine layer of dust coating the floor.
What did surprise him was just how empty the area was. According to the story, the Vordlak had been headed for the asteroid belt to map and collect a newly discovered ore—some sort of uranium substitute. If they had got that far, there was no sign of it. The hold was empty save for a few rocky pebbles. There was no sign of any robots or waldoes, which was puzzling in itself, as a cargo ship such as this should have had a full complement of help in the hold to free the crew up for other duties.
More mysteries.
He didn’t feel like hanging around to investigate—Sam was somewhere up ahead, and his sixth sense told him to hurry. He picked up her trail in the dust again several minutes later as he approached the far side of the hold. The marks stopped at an elevator. He pushed the button to call the cabin down. Silence fell as he waited; not even a buzz from the lights to disturb it. Normally he welcomed this depth of quiet, and even sometimes actively sought it out. But not here—not in this empty hold, and not on a ghost ship carrying so much myth and baggage.
He whistled tunelessly to himself to keep down the screams that built in his throat. With each breath he had to take he imagined some dry dead thing on the ground behind him starting to move. He saw it in his mind’s eye; its thin withered arms pulling it across the floor toward him, the grin widening as twin pinpricks of fire flared in the empty skull and it crept closer, ever closer.
When the elevator arrived and a soft, over-friendly voice welcomed him aboard, he was inside before the door fully opened. He didn’t start to relax until the door swished closed, enveloping him in a small, warm cubicle that hummed musically as it rose. The sudden feeling of safety was so profound that he considered stopping the elevator there and then and staying put until his life returned to normalcy.
Then he thought of Sam wandering alone through all these empty rooms and corridors. He thought about dead things again.
The short trip came to a smooth halt, the elevator wished him a good day, and the door opened to an area that was obviously the main bridge and control area. Sam was there, bent over a console. He spent a minute or so chewing her out, using the choicest words in his vocabulary. She didn’t respond, not even when he used the words he’d learned in the bars and docks when he was younger. She let him rant until he gave up. Her eyes still sparkled but there was something else there—something he hadn’t seen in those blue eyes before. It took him a little while to realize what it was—it looked like fear.
He finally calmed enough to be able to talk to, rather than at, her.
“Have you found anything?”
She nodded and motioned toward the console.
“We’ve definitely found the Vordlak,” she said, and her voice dropped, as quiet as he had ever heard it. “But I think we might have come across something else.”
He tried to press her, but she didn’t answer, just pulled him toward the console.
“I was looking for something, anything, that might tell us what happened here. This is the only item on the log.”
