BACK    ABOUT    REVIEWS   

Page 46.

“If there is any hope of finding another one of those silvery boats to take us back to Earth, I think it’s going to be in the city.”

“You may be right,” Maryan said, though her eyes were clouded with doubts. “I’m scared of that dark, gloomy place with those dead people floating around in it.”

“So am I. But I’m more scared of spending the rest of my life wandering around in here eating bugs and looking over my shoulder every five minutes for Nizin.”

“Yes, I’m definitely ready to go home,” she said, taking him by the hand. Together, they wandered close to the breach in the wall, which by now had thoroughly sealed itself. They ran their hands curiously over the surface of the self-created plug. The plug was about the size of a large show window. The last of the huge spider crabs were just then scuttling away, receding into dots far up. The combination of smashed metal and glass plus spider saliva-glue plus the flying blankets had created a seal that was now hardening into a glassy mass. The flying blankets grew naturally nearby like a grayish-pink groundcover. The blankets were about an inch thick and stiffly fluffy, like very light felt. The resulting smooth finish and seemed to level out any lumps and uneven spots where materials had been welded together by the force of the wind and the adhesive power of the spider glue. The result was a resin finish impervious to scratching by fingernails or rocks.

One corner of the old plate window was still there. It was a scratched, milky triangle shape of ancient glass. Its thick greenish core had somehow survived the eons, although the surface had taken on a metallic sheen. The surface was bumpy and bubbly from all the vegetation that had attached itself and then died and fallen off, giving way to more generations of the same. In one or two spots the glass had thinned. Cracks ran through those spots, and Alex felt it was a miracle it hadn’t shattered under the wind onslaught a short while ago. Like much in the orbital cylinder, it raised more questions that he had no time to puzzle over. Through a thin spot, they could see the dim frozen landscape beyond. There was some sort of atmosphere in there, though he was sure it wasn’t breathable. Somehow, they must attempt to get to the station in hope of finding an undamaged silver boat.

Maryan pointed to a shadowy corner of the big store. “Looks like a protective suit of some kind.” As he squinted and moved his head about, he made out the words Fire Department Emergency. “Fire departments in outer space would care about hull breaches and fires. Wonder if we could grab one of those suits?”

She nodded. “Probably fall apart in our hands if we touch one, but worth a try.”

Alex and Maryan made a kind of emergency breathing apparatus from what they now firmly called ‘flying blankets.’ They hiked half a mile inland to a high grassy tableland, where they spotted the grayish material growing amid the grass. “It’s some kind of moss,” Maryan observed.

Alex pulled up a towel-sized swath of the stuff. There was a root ball in a corner, with veins running up into the felt and foot-long stringy roots dangling full of soil. The root stuff proved easy to separate from the felt-like material. Alex and Maryan learned to pull the felt off without damaging the roots. They had soon harvested a good pile of the felt, which they carried in two bundles back to the breach in the wall.

The material seemed sticky and, when they applied any pressure to it, it seemed to ooze a sap-like syrup.

“This feels as if it has glue in it,” he said.

“You’re right.” She smelled it. “Sort of a cross between turpentine and vanilla.”

He wrinkled his nose. The smell was faint and delicate, but definite. “Probably make you see stars if you smell it long enough.”

“And you want to breathe this stuff?” She regarded him with alarm.

“You have any better ideas?” He didn’t tell her he was having a scary vision of ending up forever drifting among the mummified corpses in the station.

They came back to the breach and threw their bundles down. She leaned nose-first against the wall. “Can’t smell a thing. Maybe the spider goo neutralizes it.” She looked up. “Want to help me catch a spider?”

He grinned. “Are you that brave?”

She cocked her fists on her hips. “Anything to bring my man back alive from the city of the dead.”

“Funny, I was going to send you.”

“Sorry. No chickens allowed.”

He sighed. “I should have known.” Truth was, he wouldn’t have permitted her to go, though it was a tossup. If something happened to him and he didn’t come back, she’d be stuck here alone. The other side of the coin was that he couldn’t imagine letting her get stuck in some horrifying situation, maybe meeting a lingering and painful end, which would be bad enough for her; but then he’d be stuck here wondering about her, maybe driven mad and forced to go looking for her. As though reading his mind and understanding that train of painful thoughts, she said: “We never figured on lasting long, Alex. You know that. When we go, it’s over for our kind.”

He shook his head. “If one of us goes, we’re both gone.” He couldn’t bring himself to say the next sentence: “I couldn’t bear to go on without you.” The tearful look in her eyes told him she was thinking the same. He regarded the opaque sky, the unreadable clouds, the secretive forests opposite. He remembered the sudden raging wind and the flying blankets, and shook his head. “Somehow, sweet thing, I don’t think we have a choice. We have to go forward.”

She yanked at a pile of flying blankets. “Let’s get this over with. I’ve got the creeps.”

“Me too.” He pitched in, and together they rigged a primitive breathing device. The pieces of blanket overlapped slightly and could be pressed together; their sticky sap made them stay glued. “I think,” he said as they feverishly worked pressing edges together to form a three-dimensional shape, “the spider glue hardens it like epoxy into that glassy condition.”

“Might be overkill for us,” she said.

“I hope that’s right. If this thing comes apart out there, I’ll be sucking nitrogen or CO2 or who knows what kind of crappy air until I go balls up.”

“Don’t even say it, Alex.”

“I’ll be back,” he promised. He took her in his arms, feeling her soft curviness against his body. He’d never longed for her more than just now. He felt gooseflesh along the backs of her arms. He felt himself tremble in her tight embrace. He was more scared than she, but he was afraid to let her know it for fear she’d go herself.

The trip into the department store was bad enough. It was a gray place of ghosts and dead air. Alex got to the emergency cabinet, dragging his ungainly air bag. Through a window, he saw a space suit staring back at him. It was surrounded by small oxygen bottles arranged bandolier-fashion along the wall inside the cabinet. He broke the glass and reached for the gray suit with its dark faceplate. As he had expected, the material crumbled to dust in his hands. The metal parts stayed intact. In a fit of impatience, he pulled the entire composite cabinet out of the wall and dragged it toward the breach. A great cloud of dust followed him. He pulled the cabinet into the breathable atmosphere of the cylinder. Blankets rose up in a slight wind and floated ever faster, closer, and slammed against the wall to seal the hole he’d made.

He and Maryan cobbled together a breathing apparatus using the metal parts of the fire emergency spacesuit. All he really wanted was the head cover, which they replaced with sticky blanket material. The stickiness hardened in minutes, and he had an eerie-looking globe with a faceplate to cover his head. Any gaskets were long gone in the breathing cylinders and connectors, but most of it was metal and with a little help from the blanket material they had Alex breathing ancient air—a bit stale, but it kept him alive.

Now he was ready to enter the city.