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Page 47.

It wasn’t the atmosphere in the dead city that scared Alex.

It was the gloom.

The air was a mix of ghastly-smelling and tasting oxygen and inert gases left over from eons. Perhaps the machinery of the city still limply functioned, producing a weak positive pressure, recycling unused air; or perhaps, yes, this made sense: stealing air from the vast green jungle cylinder and recycling it under solar power. In any case, the pressure was sufficient to prevent Alex’s primitive breathing apparatus from exploding.

Alex walked about the ancient department store testing his breathing apparatus.

“Take your time!” he heard Maryan’s concerned voice say from a new opening they’d forced in the plate glass window. He saw her frightened pale face hovering beyond the marred glass. She couldn’t see him, but he could see her face and her hands looking as though she were swimming underwater in some coolly lit aquarium. “I’m good,” he called back. “Go take a rest and I’ll be back soon.”

“Be careful!” she called in a tiny, scared voice.

“I’ll run like the dickens at the first sign of danger.”

Each of the small breathing cylinders was good for about 15 minutes, and he had enough for several hours. He carried them in a bag slung over one shoulder.

He went back to say goodbye to her once more, just in case. He pushed through the cover she’d made and was glad to be on the other side again. The air was richer, moister, kinder to the skin and lungs and eyes. She wiped his face with damp leaves while he sat against the wall gasping. Dirty sweat ran down his face, and his skin felt gritty. His eyes felt irritated. “Are you sure you want to do this?” she asked.

“What choice do we have? Just think how cool it will be if I come flying back in one of those silver boats.”

Her eyes lit up and she cradled his head in her hands. She bent to kiss his forehead. “My hero. Oh wow, I’d ride with you, everywhere.”

“I’ll take you to the beach,” he said. “Our beach. We’ll catch a nice fat pheasant and bake it in hay, with some tubers around it and those juicy mushrooms, and maybe some nice sharp radishes...”

“Stop!” she said laughing. “My mouth is watering.”

He rose. “Okay, time to get it over with.” He turned and eyed the hole in the wall through which he must again step with his breathing apparatus.

All their laughter faded immediately, and she appeared to be fighting back tears when he stepped into the stale darkness lugging his ungainly life support system.

He made slow and careful progress through the ancient shopping arcade.

Sunlight filtered through the dirty atmosphere in the abandoned city and shone on dusty surfaces. The air was filled with frozen dust motes, and, like in a scene underwater, the glowing motes began twirling around him.

In one eerie moment, he turned a corner around a square, metal pylon and confronted a nude flesh-colored mannequin. It was a female figure with daintily poised hands, frozen seemingly in the act of taking a step toward him. He caught a glimpse of faintly red fingernails, one blank white plaster eye socket, one dull blue eye, and rouged lips turned black with age. He jumped backward, startled, and threw himself against the pylon. In that moment, the air of his passage disturbed the figure and it crumbled into dust.

Alex hugged his crudely sealed mouthpiece closer to prevent dust from getting in it. He stepped over the thick metal platform on which the mannequin had stood and pressed forward.

Gravity in the store was the same as in the cylinder. He was maybe two stories higher than the forest floor in the cylinder, but the artificial gravity created by the cylinder’s spin was nearly the same. An object resting on a surface generally tended to stay there. An object not resting on a surface was not appreciably attracted by any gravitational mass, since there was hardly any, so most objects would continue to hang in the air, or to drift once set loose.

Alex came to the smashed doorway where the boat had entered. He stepped noisily over shattered glass and other debris and came out on a mezzanine facing a great plaza below and the transit center opposite. He had little time to admire the stunning view in the sepia light pouring through glassy surfaces high up. He barely glanced at the shadowy lifeless streets snaking below, with a few vehicles still parked haphazardly as if they’d been abandoned suddenly. He took it all in with one glance, remembering that some of the last humans must have died here of old age—and the abandoned vehicles had probably been left there by programs. Most likely none of the vehicles would ever start again, given that their batteries had rotted away and their wiring had corroded.

Grasping the handrail with both hands, Alex pushed off gently with his feet. He found himself balancing with his wrists while floating in air horizontal to the deck. Grasping his sack of air bottles, he maneuvered himself into position, closed his eyes to mouth a prayer to whatever gods lived here, and pushed off.

He sailed through the air above the plaza for several minutes. It was both terrifying and relaxing—terrifying, because with every yard he floated farther away from his source of life in the cylinder; relaxing because he was helpless, and all he could do was breathe with concise precision while watching the debris pass. A waxy looking mummy turned her face toward him, and it struck him as odd that she had been an attractive young woman. Perhaps—his skin crawled—she had belonged to some later group of people who had blundered up here and lost their lives. What stories these dead people could tell!

He turned in mid-air and landed feet first against the railing before the transit center or entry point. Hands on the rail, he vaulted down so that his feet were in contact with the floor again and, with a gentle jerk, he was caught up in the false gravitational motion of the space station.

Changing air bottles periodically and discarding the empties, he entered the domed inner hall of the transit center, which resembled an ancient train or bus station. There were ticket counters to the left, vendor shops to the right in which food and other goods had crumbled into dust. There was a broad, circular, rubbery floor ahead, and beyond that the narrow toll gates leading to the various docking ramps. Overhead, shreds of electrical wiring and broken boards still hung where once arrival and departure information had been displayed along with, probably, advertising, announcements, and news.

Alex knew he had only about ten minutes before he must return. If necessary, he could make the trip again, since it had gone so smoothly, but he didn’t want to. The best-case scenario now would be to ride out of here in a silver, bullet-shaped hot rod, pick Maryan up, and zip back down to Earth.

As he looked around, his heart sank. Dust was piled everywhere in heaps, particularly in corners and under counters. He went to the edge of the loading docks and looked out. No need to venture farther. Two smashed boats lay on their sides against each other after some ancient collision. They weren’t even silver anymore but had a blackened look as though fire had done them in, followed by millennia of tarnish.

Another boat, with its front half missing, hung down over the edge of its dock by several thick, graying cables.

Beyond the docks, in the core of the station, glowered a vast, black pit of nothingness. No starlight, no sunshine, no light of any kind emanated from that black hole in the bowels of the city where perhaps once there had been repair shops. In what dim light there was, Alex gradually figured out that some space object had penetrated long ago, blasting through the station’s skin like a bomb and gutting numerous levels of the center of the city itself. Bits of white and gray debris hung suspended in a whirling cloud over that coal-black abyss.

Alex saw no usable silver boat anywhere to get him and Maryan back to Earth. He would be out of air soon, and must return to the green cylinder. There was a lozenge of metal, a kiosk, and Alex approached it on his way back. The kiosk sparked with a tiny light, maybe a short circuit. A figure appeared on its dimly shimmering surface. “Greetings.”

Alex patted his limp air sack as he slowed. “Greetings, fool.”

The man in the business suit waved. “My name is Vector. I am the automated transit coordinator. How can I help you?”

Alex stepped up to confront the image, which flickered and was so faint as to be almost invisible against its grayish background. “I want a boat here right now to take two people back to Earth.”

“Wonderful,” Vector bubbled happily. He raised an electronic clipboard. “Let me check on the availability of the next transit cruiser.”

“Be quick about it.”

“Thank you for waiting patiently.” Vector frowned. “Gosh, I’m sorry. There is not another boat available today.” He looked up from the clipboard and regarded Alex with sympathy. “However, in the meantime, can we offer you coffee and donuts at the vendomat behind you?”

“Oh screw yourself,” Alex said bitterly. “That means there will never be another boat available. Can you connect to the central database of the station?”

“I’m sorry, to do that you’ll have to contact a human who will guide you.”

“There are no humans left alive.”

“Humans may be temporarily unavailable due to snack breaks or other convenience time-outs. In the meantime, there are free coff-oooo...” As he spoke, his voice lowered into a dying drawl and the power died in the kiosk. Alex pounded the side of the kiosk in frustration, but Vector did not return.

Alex retraced his steps and floated across the void. As he did so, he noticed his air was suddenly getting short and stale. He found himself gasping, and by the time he was running across the floor in the shopping hall, with debris scattering around his feet, he began to feel light-headed.

He was pop-eyed and anoxic by the time Maryan helped him through the hole. “The air in the rest of the cylinders was going bad,” he said gasping. He lay inhaling the sweet rich air in the cylinder and shook his head while she gave him water to drink from a large waxy leaf.

“There are no more boats. I think those scaly bumwads down on Earth called the last ones down to play stupid Siirk games with. What a waste.”

“So we’re stuck here for good?” she whispered. She brushed his hair from his forehead and kissed him on the head. “I’m just glad you are back with me. I couldn’t bear to lose you.”

“Nor could I,” he said feeling grateful as he hugged her close. The dream of returning to Earth’s precious ocean of clean air and riches of food would have to wait for some other day. For now, they were citizens of L5 and glad to be alive.