For several years, Tor only flew with Nilsen barring the occasional overlap with Skaarsgard. Tor knew him as a calming influence who meted out discipline in appropriate measures. From the time of boarding to the time for signing off the predictable choreography of the voyage with Nilsen in the engine allowed Tor to adapt to the endless turnover of Chief Officers the Saudi’s kept throwing his way. But nothing like Murmansk-13 had ever befallen Tor, the professionalism he prided himself upon was shattering under duress. Nilsen was struggling to read him and Tor knew it. Like a loved up couple breaking under their first serious argument, Tor began to see past the veneer. Nilsen wasn’t his friend, he was his Chief Engineer and Tor was his Captain.
“Tor, the crew are going to need to be addressed. They’re going to know what is going on.”
“I know.” The time for friends was fading. Now the crew needed a commander. He’d already tried that part in the station and gotten Peralta killed and Tala dispossessed. Tor didn’t know how to command and he wondered how long it would be before Nilsen felt the need to assume leadership. “I just need to sleep.”
Bonelessly, Tor heaved himself up, letting the heavy remnants of the EVA suit slough off to his ankles. The innards reeked of warm rubber, stale perspiration and urine. Stepping from the mag boots, dressed in only his stained boxers, Tor shuffled from the room. He could feel Nilsen’s eyes on his gooseflesh covered back. “Goodnight, Jan.”
Tor struggled to recognize the man staring back at him from the mirror. In the dim warmth of his cabin his skin looked gray and slack. Waxy flesh had become infirm around his jaw, his eyes, wide and blank, receded into reddened sockets. His shoulder length blonde hair lay straggly and limp behind his ears or pasted to his forehead. Loose strands following the deepened lines of his face. Through heavy eyelids, Tor watched his chin dip toward his chest. He staggered back allowing himself to tumble over the rim of the footboard.
The tousled sheets still smelled faintly of Dr. Smith. Tor drew them around him and in their yielding softness found succour. He could hold his eyes open no longer.
Mihailov was still in his arm now, silent. As they emerged from the darkness of the docking ring, Tor let the heat of the deep crimson light flow over him. The red was deeper than he remembered and somehow seemed fluid, shimmering.
Tor clipped the motorized pulley to the lifeline. A creeping sense of déjà vu overcame him. He could still see their dead faces, pushing against the airlock door. Tor shook his head and activated the small handheld pulley.
The little motor struggled against the steel, the drive wheels slipping against the low friction wire. Tor pulled with his free hand, careful not to catch his gauntlets against the handheld pulley. The drive wheels spooled up in protest. He wanted to be away from Murmansk-13, away from the smell and sound of rot. “Hang on Mihailov.”
Incrementally, Tor and the pulley drew them closer to the silhouette of the Riyadh. The Supergiant flared, forming a great corona beyond his vessel. How long had they been on the wire? In the gentle solar winds the wire flexed creating little ripples. Tor closed his eyes, he could see the beach in Salvador and feel the warmth of the sun. Then it was gone and all he could see was the darkness of his eyelids
A sense of wrongness overcame Tor, Mihailov was suddenly heavy despite the absence of gravity. Urgently, Tor turned the Bulgarian over in his arms. The visor on Mihailov’s suit was fogged with condensation, Tor tried to peer through the haze as the pulley slipped behind him, its tiny motor threatening to burn out. He saw nothing.
Then Mihailov flexed, Tor almost dropped him. A ragged gasp filtered through the helmet mic in a wash of harsh static. The condensate slowly cleared as the suit tried to regulate its internal atmosphere.
The face staring back at Tor was no longer Mihailov.
Olaf Gjerde, his son, lay quiet and still. Somehow he appeared younger than when Tor left him and Lucia at the airport. Lucia had been checking her watch a lot, Olaf played on his Gameboy. Tor’s leaving for three years had been an inconvenience in their day. That half empty page where one chapter ends and the next waits to begin.
Manhood had been touching that Olaf, the first gossamer wisps of facial hair reminded Tor that everything would be different when he returned. This Olaf however was the Olaf he had returned to from his last voyage, still a boy. His face was still round with puppy fat. An awkward mop of brown hair that refused to be styled ringed his soft features. His light olive skin had grown pale and sickly. Arteries and veins ran prominently under translucent flesh.
The boy gave another rattling breath. Sleeping features flexed as if in nightmare.
“Olaf?” Tor’s voice was a static laced sob, his mind reeled.
Olaf’s eyes opened, milky and glazed. His mouth worked, struggling to form words. Tor’s visor was open against the hard vacuum of space, yet he breathed.
Papai, me ajude Papai, me ajude. Tor was sure that was what Olaf said, but he heard nothing, not even breathing. Tears crystallized against his cheeks as he pawed at his sons visor. Olaf struggled as if unable to breathe. Tor could feel his fingernails being peeled back as they grated against the insides of the gauntlets. Feel the moist flesh parting.
Finally the visor opened. A sleepy smile seemed to cross Olaf’s blue lips. His eyes unseeing. Tor pulled Olaf to his chest and held him. His son didn’t move in his arms. Frantic and confused Tor held Olaf back and looked at him. Olaf’s head cocked curiously to the left cataracted eyes glared out through the darkness of the helmet.
“Olaf?” Tor asked quietly. Olaf thrust forward, his jaw distending to an impossible angle revealing jagged and smashed teeth that raked across Tor’s cheeks. They found purchase in his nose.
Tor screamed as his sons teeth incised the flesh of his face and began pulling the cartilage from his skull.
Tor was still screaming when he woke, a weak stream of piss dribbling from his penis, soaking his crotch and the mattress beneath him. Acidic bile stripped the back of his throat as he rolled from the mattress, landing face first into the shag carpet beside his bed. He sobbed into the soft fabric, great heavy tears as he banged his head gently against the cushioned deck. Eventually the tears stopped, then Tor laid there in silence, surrounded by the silence of his ship and a profound implacable sense of loss.
Chapter 11
Tala was convinced she could hear the lactic acid leeching from her muscles, fizzling and bubbling as she slumped to the deck. The stairwell climb had taken at least an hour, maybe more. Katja remained an inert millstone since her dreamlike, unsettling words breached her dry lips. Jamal was mute and resigned, his stocky frame lessened. Inexorably he’d hauled Katja up eleven floors in silence, uncomplaining, but Tala knew her outburst had stolen his resolve. Jamal’s earlier actions were driven by hope, now Tala wasn’t sure what drove him.
Still, in her anger she’d been honest. The fall would only have been greater if she’d promised salvation and reneged at the last. Tala doubted she would be leaving Murmansk-13 again, let alone aiding Jamal’s coterie of survivors. She squeezed her eyes closed at the thought.
Jamal was stood beside a keypad controlled door, recessed into the curving corridor. The screen on the pad was smashed, black liquid crystal pooled around the cracks like fractured ink blots. At his feet the dust congealed into a morass of grey sludge, bonded by odorous, putrid fluids. The patina of grey granules throughout the corridor had been thoroughly disturbed, wafted into drifts against the bulkheads. The electric door was streaked with coagulated finger prints, palm prints and brown-black spatter. “Time to time, the packs congregate here,” Jamal said, looking down at Tala. “They’ve not made it in yet,” he added with a forlorn grin.