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= NEBULA EXPRESS =

a DarkSF novel

by John Argo

Page 16.

Chapter Eight

We're going to make our way forward to the CP," Ridge said. What else could he do?

"Where exactly is that?" Tomson asked.

"I know it's toward the bow in front," Ridge said. Seeing the skeptical looks around him, he added: "I am not going to lie to you. I do not know where the Command Post is, where Captain Venable is, where the Bridge is. All I know is we can't stay here because those creatures out on the walls are just waiting to have us for lunch. Look down." There was a collective gasp as his five surviving team mates stepped to the railing and looked down. Way below, they saw a wriggling gray blur. Nobody needed to tell them it as all one could see of the mudmen devouring Mahaffey's remains in the faint twilight below.

"I'm with you," Tomson said. Several others made affirmative sounds and nodded. Ridge noted that he, Tomson, and Yu still had guns. Ridge told them: "I seem to remember that when we headed to the work area, we were going backwards. That is, we were moving toward the stern. That means we need to go that way." He pointed past WorkPod01 into the darkness. He stepped to the railing and looked down along the ledge below. "Looks to me like this platform will travel some distance."

Lantz said: "Anything but stay here. Let's go." Suddenly, Ridge thought, it was three women and three men. The three women (Brenna, Lantz, Jerez) stood in a line and echoed Lantz's sentiment. Ridge, Yu, and Tomson nodded their own agreement. All six heaved a collective sigh and shrugged. Ridge spoke quietly for all: "Let's get going." He moved the well-greased levers of the platform. Ridge felt a slight lurch, and those bicycle noises again of chains dragging through grease-packed sprockets, and the platform began to move. The platform moved laterally along the wall. In minutes WorkPod01 looked bare as the platform moved away from the island of light, and the group were enveloped again in that mix of dim but brassy hard light and equally dim, soft chocolaty shadow inked hard-black around the edges.

At one point, they passed through a particularly grayish-dark, charcoal pool of night. Arrayed on a high wall ledge were about six mudmen sitting in a silent array. They stared directly and enigmatically at the humans from about 50 feet away with dim red eyes. The humans on the platform shuddered and drew closely together. Ridge felt bodies against his. He felt the trembling of his team mates, and he felt his own body trembling against theirs. He felt his teeth chattering, and felt his hands grow cold as he looked at the silently staring, immutable kachina-like mudmen masks with their rounded mouths. They blew noises like a faint wind, a soft susurrus, a tootling that echoed from other spots. The island of red eyes and round mouths passed, but Ridge knew he had not seen the last of the mudmen.

The platform moved slowly through the darkness, an island of light. The monorail on which the platform moved curved gradually along the inner surface of the ship. The surface was curved, suggesting a long zeppelin-like cylinder. The surface was pitted and uneven, and glowed with dim lighting from inside the ship itself. The platform bathed in a patch of hard industrial light as it moved. The moving light rippled over fire-glazed pores, glassy waves, coal-like flows of glittering carbon debris. Here and there like rats on a dockyard, mudmen skittered from one vantage point to another. Always they stared hungrily at the human cargo passing so temptingly by them. Their whispering and moaning and fluting got on everyone's nerves. Jerez sat down on the grating and held her hands over her ears. Tears streamed from her eyes as she sobbed, and mucus spiderwebbed between her open mouth, her chin, her elbows, and her knees. Ridge worried that Jerez might be the next to lose her mind and go over the side. Lantz knelt beside her and stroked Jerez's hair. Brenna squatted on the other side and murmured encouragement. Jerez kept shaking her head and protesting. Her sobs grew louder, and the men exchanged looks of growing frustration. Ridge felt the fear in his bones, and the other two men had that glazed, hunted look in their eyes. Tomson told Yu: "Don't even think about it." Yu's hands hesitated near the butt of his gun. "Save your charge," Tomson told him.

Ridge told Lantz: "Keep trying to reach the CP on your com. We'll take turns trying. We have to keep trying to reach Captain Venable."

"What if he's dead too?" Yu said.

Ridge shrugged. "I can't answer impossible questions. You've heard of living from day to day? We're living from minute to minute here, pal. Bear with us and try not to make it any harder."

Jerez yelled through her tears, without opening her eyes: "He's right. We are all doomed. Mahaffey knew the score. You saw what they did to Mughali."

"Easy," Brenna said. She looked up at Ridge. "We need to find help."

Ridge nodded. "That's what we're trying to do. Everyone, keep an eye out for signs of civilization."

Tomson stepped close. "We've got to be asking some hard questions here, Ridge. I'm all for being civilized and calm. I'm all for singing hymns and keeping a stiff upper lip in the face of adversity. It would help though if we knew what the adversity is."

Ridge felt like slapping him. He wanted to ask why people were asking him these questions. Why me? Then he remembered that he'd accepted the leadership position and now he must perform. This was what he got paid for. Or was it?

"Ridge?" Tomson said, leaning close with a quizzical look. "You okay?

Ridge swallowed hard and couldn't answer. He was paralyzed with fear of the unknown, terrified at what he might learn if his memory really did open up. His brain felt cloudy, and maybe that was good. Maybe it was bad, but it was a kind of balm to ease the echo of questions Mahaffey had left hanging in the air.

Tomson shook him gently. "Man, snap out of it. You look the way I feel." The others were looking at him too, Ridge saw, even Jerez with the spittle hanging dumbly from her chin and her eyes open in animal fascination so that she could momentarily forget her own dreadful thoughts. Ridge could not remember precisely the moment he'd signed the papers or the moment he'd sworn in for Federal Earth Service. Like so much of what he recalled, it was a welter of minute details wrapped around fuzzy generalities. He felt suffocated, as if the air were strangling him. Was there a virus or a chemical in the air that made them forget? "I don't know," Ridge said softly. "I don't know. All I do know is that we need to keep on. We must not lose hope. We must not let fear and terror win."

Tomson laughed. "Those are the moons of Mars. Phobos and Deimos. Fear and Terror. You think the moons of Mars are screwing with us?" He laughed harshly, then stopped. "Sorry, folks. Poor joke. I'm trying to bring a little levity into the proceedings. Ridge is right. We need to sing those hymns and canoe gracefully through that dark jungle. These are the times that try men's and women's souls." He did a little jig.

"You're losing your mind," Yu said. His face looked stark and sweaty.

Brenna laughed gently. She rose, keeping one hand on Jerez's head to offer comfort. "Tomson is the sanest person among us. He's trying to keep our minds off our troubles. Aren't you?" She looked at Tomson.

Tomson grinned widely, and Ridge loved him for it. Tomson said: "That's the idea, lady. I want us all to get back home in one piece. How far are we from Triton? Another day? Another week? A year?"

Ridge said: "We'll find out soon. We'll find the CP and do visual checks if nothing else. Look at the bright side. The ship has power. We were talking with the Bridge just a few hours ago. There has to be hope."

"That's right," Tomson said, "we have to keep going."

Silently, the platform continued its slow sweep along the inside of the ship. As the turn became sharper, it was evident they were coming to the bow section, where the ship's cross-section was smaller and the hull more sharply turned toward an eventual point. As Ridge remembered it, the ship was huge, with rounded points at bow and stern. The ship rotated to create artificial gravity on its inner surfaces. On ships like this that plied the solar system for years at a time, one typically found weightless facilities-cargo storage, certain types of factories like those creating high-precision crystals, and even sporting events-concentrated along the mid-axis. Normal living quarters and work areas were along the inner surface of the central hull, where the diameter was slightly larger, and the pseudograv somewhat stronger. As the platform approached the bow section, they saw more lighting ahead, which meant the mudmen were probably scarcer. The bow section contained a smaller rotating cylinder some 400 feet long and 200 feet in diameter, with about as much floor space as a good-size ten story office building on Earth for comparison. A wall separated the bow from midsection. The wall was covered with lights, viewing bubbles, external elevators, dangling hoses, a thousand features that seemed brownish and ominous, in this half-light, to Ridge's eyes. He saw no mudmen in the area, but that didn't mean they weren't around-or had crewmembers in the bow managed to exclude them?

"Is it me," Ridge said, "or are the lights really turning on as we get close?"

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