Slow Train to Arcturus Read online

  Cautiously, Kretz began climbing along them, and then swung down to the remains of a small metal structure. It had been burned and pieces of blackened wire dangled inside, showing that, at some stage, electronic equipment had been ripped from it. Distantly, Kretz could hear voices again. He crawled into the hanging little chamber, and curled up against the back wall, willing himself to be small, if not invisible. Neither was something he could really achieve, but there was nothing else he could do. He was just too tired to run any farther, right now.

  Flickering light from the torches of his pursuit began to cut the darkness. They were using brands of burning vegetation, as if they had no other form of light. Kretz lay very still, hardly daring to breathe. He could hear the shouting clearly. Transcomp began translating, but Kretz hastily flicked the audio off, before the sounds could betray him. All he could do was lie there and listen to the beating of both his hearts and the clatter of the pursuing aliens clambering along the beams.

  At length the sounds faded. They'd moved on. Obviously they expected him to keep running. Well, he would have done so, had he not been just too tired. He tongued a suit food-fluid nipple into place and drank. As energy slowly seeped back into his body from the glucose, Kretz began-for the first time since the alien owners of this space habitat had attacked them without reason or provocation-to actually think, not just to flee their brutality. Had the Miran said or done something wrong? Why had the aliens suddenly attacked them? It made no sense!

  Hiding in the wreckage of an equipment console Kretz had to admit: they'd expected almost anything but the flamethrower ambush. And then the remaining crew from the ship had fallen into some kind of explosive trap when they'd tried to come to their rescue.

  Kretz waited until the sound and light had gone. Then he hauled himself out of his refuge, and tried to decide where to go. The Miranese expedition had, as yet, established very little about the internal geography of the space habitats. Externally, of course, the string of habitats had been studied in some detail while they closed with them. He knew as much about that as any fascinated scientist could. Well, Zawn had been wrong. They should have explored the outer equatorial ridge first and studied the still-active motors giving the structure spin. But the alien airlocks had been too tempting, too simple and too logical to operate. And, after all, this had been why they'd come.

  Now lost, hunted and frightened, Kretz knew a little more about the inner structure. It appeared to consist of an endless "gut" of passages, not just in layers, but spiraling around the ovoid habitat, winding inside each other again, making tier on tier of surface area for the plant-life of the habitat. It was almost like a ball of hollow string.

  It was good biology. It was hell for a fugitive. It was impossible for Kretz to judge accurately, but it seemed to him that the pursuit had forced him away from the entry lock and into the labyrinth of passages. He'd broken the antenna on his suit some time back, so there was no way he could communicate to see if anyone else had escaped.

  It could have been worse, he knew. Abret was right. The air of the alien's habitat was cooler and lower in oxygen than his own. But he could breathe it. The suit-punctures hadn't led to explosive decompression. However, that would at least have been mercifully quick. This wasn't. He might have contemplated suicide, had one thing not been painfully obvious: It was his duty to the people of Miran to warn them.

  The aliens had lied about being friendly. There could be only one reason for the attack. The astronomers had detected some high-speed objects being launched as the alien artifact came close to each sun. Now it was clear. They weren't exploring probes, or ships of peaceful colonists looking for new worlds. This was a habitat full of conquerors. He had to survive to get back to the ship, to tell the people of Miran that a murderous plague was coming, infalling into their system. There hadn't been a war on Miran for millennia. They would need to prepare. Or it would be flamethrower time for all of them. He had to get back to that pole. To the airlock, and somehow, to the ship. He had some oxygen in his tank, and, given enough time, the fabric of his suit would knit. But he could not afford to ditch the heavy tank and rebreather system if he was ever to leave the airlock of this hell-hole, and he needed time. The alien hunters were determined not give him any.

  3

  Extract from the Transcript of the Sysgov. Space Development Agency Administration meeting 325:2120.

  Director Palin: "One of the problems with handing over man's greatest enterprise to a bunch of fanatics and lunatics is that most of them are fanatics and lunatics, not really the sort of people we should use for such a grand enterprise."

  Chief Director Morpet. "That's all very well, but the only people willing and ready to go are nutters by definition. Maybe we just have to shift that definition, or acknowledge that man's future among the stars lies in the hands of oddballs."

  Extract from televid conference of Nest-Mothers.

  "Most of the crew are severely mentally aberrant, but that simply can't be helped. Mass is an issue and quarters will have to be cramped. Still, we need to be aware that madness in one area spills into others."

  – Senior Nest-mother Daleen

  Abret almost wished that he'd offered to go into the alien habitat again, rather than cope with being in the lifecraft with Derfel. The aliens had scared him, but so did Derfel. The male loved crowds and small spaces. He kept standing too close to Abret. Derfel was the spacecraft's problem-child. The others had formed friendships and cliques. Everyone felt sorry for Derfel, but not sorry enough to sleep with him. Well, it wasn't going to happen in this lifecraft either.

  "It's not fair. They get to discover the exciting stuff and they send us off on the boring missions," grumbled Derfel. "I want to go inside."

  "Well, you can't," said Abret, wishing that they'd sent someone else with him. Guul. Or Kastr. Or Kretz. Of course getting a crew at all for this expedition had been fraught with difficulty. All of them had to be able to cope with claustrophobia to a greater extent than 99% of Miran. And they'd needed multiple skills, because there hadn't-even with crowding-been enough space. Abret had come simply because of the journey-phase. Most of the others had been drugged comatose, their metabolisms slowed to a crawl for the entire time. He'd been awake and working for repeated periods along the way. His field of expertise was deep space, and of course he'd trained as a pilot so that he could work on his specialty. He'd taken a course in life-support maintenance too, learning how to maintain the growth-vats protein, and carbohydrate reformatters, just to earn a place on the trip. The ship-silent except for the sound of life-support mechanisms-had not been too crowded. Now, with everyone awake, it had been uncomfortably full. Well, at least he would not be going into the alien habitat. Merely examining the laser-transmitter. It couldn't possibly send data back to where this ship had originated from. Ten light-years was about the ceiling for practical laser messaging.

  They touched down on the polar plate of the alien habitat. It was an excellent landing, if he had to say so himself. They suited up and set out across the surface to the laser pod. It wasn't operative right then. As far as they'd been able to assess, it only fired once every rotation, aiming back at a specific place. They'd be close by when it next pulsed. Then with the equipment photographed and, hopefully, the purpose understood, they could go back.

  Abret was no engineer in the way that Kretz was. He had little interest in taking alien machinery apart. He took the readings and left the incomprehensible sealed device alone. "It has pretty low power. Unless there is something less than two light-years back it isn't going to get there," he said to Derfel. "It must be a relic. Well, that was waste of a trip."

  Derfel's eyes were wild. "It's not going to be," he said.

  Abret realized that Derfel was holding a laser pistol.

  "I'm going to be famous too," said Derfel. "All the females will want to mate with me. I am going to discover things. I get left out of everything. I'm not going to be left out this time."

  Abret looked at
the laser. It was true that Derfel had been left out of the second expedition to the aliens, and now this one. He was. .. not someone who you wanted on a first contact.

  "Put it away, Derfel," he said, trying to keep calm. "Everyone who went on this expedition will be famous." And most of them don't care, he thought, but did not say.

  "No!" said Derfel furiously. "We are going in. Going to see a different habitat. I will be the first!"

  "You're crazy, Derfel."

  "Don't say that," snarled the claustrophile. "Everyone else is getting famous. I'll be more famous. The aliens are friendly. These ones are trying to signal to us. Now move."

  So, reluctantly, Abret did, secure at least in the knowledge that Derfel's craziness was being transmitted back to the spacecraft. Perhaps Zawn or someone could talk some sense into him.

  They walked to the airlock, and Abret made yet another attempt to talk Derfel around to some common sense. "There is no record of your great arrival, Derfel."

  "I have a recorder running."

  Well, that wasn't surprising, communications was one of Derfel's specialties. He'd gotten onto this expedition, despite his mental instability, because he had so many of them.

  The second airlock opened. The place was similar in structure to the alien habitat he had visited before. There were some major differences though. The last lot of alien vegetation had looked scraggly. This area looked manicured. The aliens they had met there had been hiding in the vegetation. These were working methodically. So methodically that they didn't notice the two Miran for a moment or two.

  And when they did, they knelt and bowed.

  All Abret could do was hope that this meant the same thing to them as it did to Miran. "Can we go back now, Derfel?" he said, trying to keep calm. "You've met them and seen them. You're famous now."

  For a moment he thought that he had won.

  But then the aliens crowded closer. Not threatening. Fawning.

  Looking at the expression on Derfel's face, Abret knew that he was in even deeper trouble.

  And then the radio-call came. "This is Guul for Abret and Derfel. Return to the ship immediately! We need you to join us in a rescue attempt for Leader Zawn and his party. They've come under attack."

  The aliens surrounding them suddenly looked very threatening.

  4

  Extract from the Transcript of the Slowtrain funding debate of Lower House, Sysgov.

  "… What the representative from Ceres is missing is that the costs of this expedition are being offset in several ways. While it is hard to quantify, precisely, what sort of saving in Safety, Security and Monitoring we're talking about, I have been told that we're going to save approximately eighty-four percent of our humint bill alone. Besides we get rid of a lot of misfits. Frankly, there is no place for them in the system."

  –

  Speaker of the ruling party,

  System Secretary Pablo Paris

  Creeping along the greenery-hung passages in what he hoped was the right direction, Kretz had every sense alert. He knew that he was badly equipped for this. Besides the fact that he'd never stalked up on anything in his life, there was his suit. The clothing of the aliens and their striped facial pigmentation made them hard to see in the junglelike corridors. Kretz's suit was designed to be seen. Seen clearly, so that there were no chances of an accident. One wanted bright-garishly bright-colors and contrasts, so that the user could be spotted from a safe distance. Right now the lights were dim, barely a glow, obviously some part of the plant-life environmental requirements. That would have helped Kretz, except that part of the suit was luminous. He'd draped branches over himself and tried to tie them in place, but they kept falling off. Other than the equipment belt, the suit had been designed to be as snag-proof as possible. That made sense. You didn't want hook up on something when you were operating in a dangerous environment. It also meant that camouflage, even dirt, would not stick to the suit.

  That made hiding out very difficult, and trying to creep back toward the airlock even more so. The internal structure made the habitat just so much bigger than it appeared from the outside, and the airlock was certain to be guarded.

  Tired and frightened, Kretz could see no other option but to try to get there anyway. He'd been trying to think of an alternative, but right now could see none. So he crept onward.

  Into ambush.

  He hadn't even spotted anything wrong. The rope noose had been cunningly hidden, and had snatched him off his feet, upside down, a full body-length into the air, so fast that he barely had time to scream.

  The aliens came running out of hiding, showing teeth, weapons at the ready.

  Reacting with the strength born of pure terror Kretz took the monomolecular sampling knife and slashed at the cord. The slash was in too much haste, and Kretz's sampling knife went flying, and, to Kretz's shock, buried itself in the shoulder of one of the advancing aliens. The alien screamed, just as the cord around Kretz's ankles snapped.

  Kretz fell, and would have landed on his head if he had not hit an alien on the way. They went down together. Kretz squirmed and struggled to get away from the strange grasping hands. He struggled to his feet, kicked free of the grip on his foot and tried to run, again. He tripped over the remains of the noose around his ankles.

  It saved his life. The projectile weapon that one of the alien crew fired was not just one of the little tubes they'd used before. It was a massive tube and spat fire and smoke with a roaring boom that almost deafened Kretz. It shredded a wall of greenery before the projectile exploded farther down the passage. Kretz didn't know how he'd gotten up and started running again. He just found that he had.

  There was one alien with a raised hand-weapon ahead of him. The alien was yelling something, his striped face savage, his red mouth open and his odd square teeth exposed. Kretz was beyond thought. He just kept running.

  The hammer-blow on his shoulder nearly stopped him. It did spin him. He staggered against the wall. Somehow he kept on running through the pain. Another shot hit him from behind. He nearly fell again, but his nervous system was on full overload by now, hormones released to cushion him from the shock, letting him run on, blood warm and wet on his shoulder and buttocks.

  He ran until he fell.

  Then he got up onto hands and knees and crawled.

  Eventually he stopped, because there was nowhere to crawl to. There was just a hole. The volume of explosives used here must have been enormous… because the hole was huge. It appeared to go all the way to the skin of the habitat. It was wide enough to park the ship's lifecraft in.

  He was lying there, panting, desperate, and with the pain beginning to overwhelm him at last, when something hard pressed into his back.

  The alien said something in the guttural language they used. Kretz-logic no longer functioning but struggling against despair-turned Transcomp on.

  Transcomp coped quite well. "Turn over, [untranslated]. Turn over or I'll blow your spine in half."

  Slowly Kretz turned. "Not that way!" snapped his alien captor. "You'll fall over the edge. Ah [untranslated] just stay still." The alien stared down at him teeth exposed in aggression. "The [untranslated] wants you alive to beat some answers out of you. Kill the rest of you, [untranslated]."

  Kretz was not a particularly brave male. But he knew that he had very little choice.

  He rolled.

  The alien tried to catch him as he went over the edge. And, perforce, fell with him.

  Screaming together.

  It was a long way down.

  There was a moment of glancing impact. Pain.

  And then… nothing.

  When he woke up, Kretz had no idea how long he'd been lying there. The alien he'd fallen with would have no idea either. By the stillness and the odd angle of his head, Kretz guessed that he was dead. The alien had been less lucky about where he had landed. He was lying on a metal girder, and not half-buried in a mass of stinking, rotting, soft vegetation. Kretz tried to move.

  The
agony that came from his arm told him that he'd been a fraction less lucky than he had thought. Cautiously, using the other hand, he sat up. His toes still moved. So did his legs. Now if he could only get to his feet and back to the spacecraft and see Selna. ..

  Then it hit him. Selna was dead. Kretz had seen him fall, had seen the alien mob kicking him and spitting on him. The physician wouldn't ever treat anyone again. The Miran spacecraft, the refuge, might just as well be on another planet. All he could do now was try to survive. Or maybe he should just die and prevent the aliens from making him tell them how to get into the Miran spacecraft.

  Kretz struggled to his feet. He staggered through the debris, across the gap created by the explosion and into the darkness beyond.

  Whatever had happened here had cut water and power to this section of the alien corridor labyrinth. After a short distance it was absolutely black. He had to turn his headlight on. It was plain from the bones and the skeletal remains of plants that this piece of the alien habitat had been dead for many years. The dust too was undisturbed. No one, neither alien nor their little robots, had been here for many years. Swaying, half delirious with pain and the loss of blood, Kretz made his way forward. There was a stair ahead, possibly the reason that this hole had been blown in first place. Kretz began climbing the stair, with painful slowness.

  How many times he fell and how many steps he climbed Kretz could never be sure. Eventually he arrived at a point where there was no more up. Just a curving landing, a thick horizontal pole, layered in microtubules, and very little gravity from the spin.