Then I stop. My heart stops.
There’s a dart on my forearm.
Jesus.
Joe sees it, too. He doesn’t pull it out, doesn’t touch it, neither do I, because I’m not going crazy, it’s only just pierced the skintight, might not have touched my skin, it was a ricochet, maybe, and hasn’t yet pumped its poison.
Or it has, and adrenaline is just holding back the symptoms. Medics say that can happen.
My fingers reach down. Can’t just leave it there.
Joe grabs my hand, then pushes his head in close to mine and looks through our faceplates straight into my eyes. “Don’t,” he says.
The smaller gate begins to grind open. We squeeze through the opening as it grows. The survivors are packed tight inside the lock by the time the aero is guided back over the shoulders of the Drifter. Everyone jostles, trying to get to the far side while the outer door closes. Joe makes a fence with his arms around me so nothing and nobody can jam the dart home.
My ears and throat feel pressure return.
The inner door opens and we spill out. Joe holds my clean arm, still gripping my hand, and we slowly spin like we’re waltzing, because I’m trying to reach for the dart, and he’s stopping me from doing that.
Pressure reaches Drifter max.
The other Skyrines see I’m darted. They stand clear of us, pushing at the inner door, which cracks open, slides slowly into the wall, and Skyrines exit, move through, but Joe still holds my hand, and I stop us spinning.
Hold out my darted arm.
“I’m not going to touch it,” Joe says. “You know why.”
“Up and down,” I say, hardly able to draw breath. That’s what the darts can do. Push up a second needle through the fletches and stick a would-be rescuer.
I’m on the couch with Alice.
I’m in the inner lock with Joe, my arm hurts, my muscles burn like fury.
I want to cry, on the couch.
I am crying, in the lock, in my helm. Sobbing like a baby.
We’re through.
We’re in the garage.
One of the Skyrines hands Joe a small needle-nose pliers. Good name. Part of someone’s drop kit, maybe the gift of a relative before his transvac, use this, son, to pull out those sonofabitching things. Joe holds my arm steady, the tips of the pliers hover, he’s shaking, I’m shaking, dear God don’t push it down.
Jesus don’t even touch it.
Then, he’s got it. He lifts. He doesn’t start shaking until the needle is out. He doesn’t fling it aside. He doesn’t drop it. Training kicks in after the near panic. Another Skyrine holds open a small silver bag. Joe deposits the dart into the bag and pats my shoulder. “We can’t go back that way, not on foot,” he says matter-of-factly.
The rocky harbor is littered with active darts.
ALICE LISTENS AND says nothing.
“I stink,” I say.
“Please go on. Tell me what you can, what you feel like telling.”
Christ, I really want Joe to walk through the apartment door. Jesus and God and Mary and Buddha and St. Emil Kapaun, I want that. If Joe doesn’t come home, maybe I never will.
SKY BASIC
To go from an infant race of ground huggers to a force capable of fighting on other worlds, humans were handed a decent selection of Guru gifts, including of course spent matter technology, but also a thorough understanding of our own biology, chemistry, and psychology.
I suppose the Gurus knew us better than we knew ourselves. I’ve never met one—never met anyone who has—but I imagine them as wizened, wise, tall, and graceful, but tough sons of bitches to have survived their own long voyage across the awesome distances between the stars.
They knew our limits, political, biological, psychological. And so they helped us formulate Cosmoline, that greenish gel in which we are all packed and preserved like fruits in a can, not awake, not asleep, but not cold—not frozen—just quiet and contented while the space frames carry us to where we’re going.
Some of us call it Warm Sleep. Old-timers will remember that Cosmoline was a patented petroleum-based product that helped keep rifles and guns and equipment from rusting. Not at all the same; a clever marketing wizard simply transferred the name and it stuck.
The chemistry behind our version of Cosmoline helped foster a thousand medical advances, of course. So it was one of those Guru swords that were already plowshares. In space, nobody had to rust or corrupt—not if they were wrapped in Cosmoline.
I’ve already described some of the side effects, but there are others, much worse. About one time in a hundred thousand, Cosmoline induces a complicated cascade of negative reactions. I’ve only seen it once. A space frame delivered a platoon of healthy Skyrines to orbit around the Red—along with one tube filled with corrupt Jell-O. Did the occupant die on impact? During the journey? Nobody explained, nobody asked questions. War is hell. We are all grateful not to remember the months we spend in the long rise to Mars.
Of far more concern to the usual breed of ecological worrywarts is spent matter tech. The Gurus knew how to suck all the life, if not quite all the energy, out of elements heavier than carbon and calcium. By reaching down to their inner electron shells and messing with a few quantum constants, atoms can be induced to give up a startling amount of nonnuclear energy. No neutrons, no deadly radiation, just remarkable amounts of pure power—but the resulting dead, spent mass is incredibly toxic. It’s still matter, still behaves something like what it used to be, but that behavior is deceptive. Deadly. It’s gone zombie. Spent matter waste has to be disposed of thoroughly and completely—in secure orbit. It should not be stockpiled on Earth or stored on Mars, and it should just not be shot willy-nilly into space.
Some have said that at the end of its energy draw, spent matter is toxic in terms of physics as well as chemistry. Dropped into the sun, into any star, spent matter might start a nasty chain reaction—literally slowing and then killing the sun’s pulsing fusion heart. I don’t know about that. But I do know that war is messy, and there are canisters of spent matter all over Mars, and probably in orbit as well, so the long-term consequences of Guru tech are still unknown. We should all hope the worrywarts are wrong and nothing will happen to the sun. But for the last couple of hundred years, some of those worrywarts have been spot-on.
Still, Gurus seemed delighted to help us recover from our own ignorance and greed… providing free visions of a boundless and bright future.
Until they told us about the Ants and recruited us to help fight their war. And their war became our war.
BACKING UP NOW
I thought I’d leap over to the good stuff, the easy stuff, all technical and shit, but that’s not how it’s going to be.
I just have to tough it out.
I cannot escape the burn from what happened in that embracing arm of sand-blasted lava, that little harbor of shelter outside the Drifter’s western gate, filled with Joe’s buddies. That may be the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen—Skyrines trying to pull each other out of cover to avoid the rippling curtains of plunging, swooping, seeking germ needles.
Fear is a drug you need to survive. Without fear, you die quicker; that’s part of basic, that’s what the old guys instill in us when we’re fledglings waiting and eager to fly; fear is your friend, but only in controlled doses, never in such flooding waves that you panic. Panic kills you quicker than bullets. Panic turns you into doomed animals.