From Out of the Dark Read online

  Tyranol

  The Day Tripper’s captain looked up, annoyed at planetary scientist, Karl 'Baron' Baronsky. His expletive threatened to disrupt her breakfast.

  Baron stood motionless at the retractable sink, staring into the sugar bowl.

  “What is it?” Cheral asked absently.

  Cheraline Edrich, DT’s medical officer was standing next to him holding her cup under the gushing hot water spigot.

  “See for yourself,” he said and shoved the sugar bowl under her nose.

  “Bloody hell,” Cheral squeaked and dropped the cup. The stream of near boiling water hit the corner curve of the stainless polymer sink exploding upwards and outwards. Cheral jumped back, an involuntary movement in anticipation of searing pain and crashed into the Day Tripper’s captain on her way to the floor.

  Captain Tyranol Smith’s morning coffee sloshed over her hand. “What the fuck?” The expletive just slipped out as happened all too frequently these days. Flicking coffee from her hand, she tried to stand and avoid further scalding from the spill heading her way across the tabletop and in the process lifted the table with her knees.

  “Hey, watch it the table will …”

  Guy Monmart’s warning came too late. The table sensed the movement and began to pack up against him. Curses multiplied as three more steaming cups jumped to their deaths. Cutlery and crockery clattered in a cacophony to the floor. In the confined space, it sounded worse than it was. Nothing broke, nothing could; it was all unbreakable polymers.

  The table pinning DT’s engineer Guy Monmart and systems officer, Adelia Redway to their seats dumped what remained of the setting, a jug of reconstituted milk, some pale butter substitute and a couple of rubbery eggs into their laps.

  “Get this bloody table off me,” screamed Adelia trying to heave it back into place against the whining servos.

  Tyranol had had enough. “For fuck’s sake Baron, you’re the closest. Hit the damn button.”

  Baron reluctantly looked up from his contemplation of the sugar bowl and absently pushed a button next to the hot-water spigot marked 'TABLE'.

  Adelia immediately jumped into the aisle and emptied her lap on the floor. “Look what you’ve done to my suit,” she accused Baron.

  With what she though admirable restraint, Captain Tyranol Smith took control. “Right, you and Cheral caused this, you clean it up. And I mean now Baron.”

  “Me,” Cheral protested from the floor.

  Tyranol watched as Baron, still lost in his own world, (very fitting for her planetary scientist) ignored the belligerent stares of Guy and Adelia and carefully placed the sugar bowl on the restored table.

  “How?” he said shaking his head. “It isn’t possible.”

  Tyranol leant over to have a look. She stared up at her planetary scientist. “Sugar,” she said. It was all she saw in the bowl.

  “Sugar,” Guy repeated and before Tyranol could restrain him, he reached out, up ended the bowl and slammed it down on the table. The bowl bounced away.

  Little black things scurried away in all directions from the small mountain of raw sugar.

  “How pathetic,” Guy sneered. He made a sweeping gesture to encompass the shambles made of the Day Tripper’s cramped galley, “all this because Baron found ants in the sugar bowl.”

  Not for the first time, the Day Tripper’s captain wondered how she ended up babysitting such a varied assortment of down but not out space jocks. They called her ‘tyrant’ behind her back and it was not a term of endearment. Except for Guy, he called her Terry when they were alone and for that she could forgive his occasional outburst of temper.

  As she made her way to the command module, however, she worried that Baron might be onto something. How in these distant reaches of space did they get ants into their sugar bowl? They had been on this supply drop run for nearly two years without making planet fall. So why had they suddenly appeared now? More worrying, as Baron had muttered, was how?

  Guy

  Guy Monmart, still fuming over the milk jug slapping him in the groin and hoping it hadn’t damaged anything important, slowly stroked Adelia's nipple with his tongue. Both were crammed into her life-pod. Of the Day Tripper’s crew, Guy was the only one who liked Colonial Admin’s money saving ploy to make their lifeboats double up as crew billets. The pods dual-purpose meant every bedroom had a full range of facilities, including food, wine and music.

  Despite his constantly active tongue and adroit hands, Adelia remained unresponsive. He hoped he wasn’t losing his touch. There was very little else to do out on the GRim.

  “I don't get it Guy. Why was Cheral so upset about a few little sugar ants?”

  Guy ignored her and let his tongue drift down the firm white curve towards her navel. Adelia slapped him away.

  “Will you stop that? I'm not in the mood.”

  Guy's face reddened, as he rolled away in anger rather than embarrassment. More correctly, he rotated in place; there wasn’t enough room to roll. He enjoyed sex and hated having his personal pursuit of happiness interrupted.

  “I'm sorry.” Adelia continued. “I just want to know why the fuss. It's not as if ants are a going to eat all that much.”

  “That's it,” Guy grunted. “If you’re going to prattle on about bloody ants all night, I'm off.”

  With the deft movements of someone used to confined spaces, he wriggled into his shorts, pulled on his T-shirt and reached over his head to touch the [open] icon on Adelia’s screen.

  Nothing happened.

  “Damn it Della, its locked. What's your release code?”

  “How much do ants breathe I wonder?” asked Adelia.

  Guy tapped her on the head with a forefinger, “anyone home?” He knew immediately he gone too far, Adelia's pale blue eyes iced him.

  “You are a right bastard,” she said, her breasts sliding gracefully across his chest as she rotated in place to get at her pod’s screen. Propping herself up on a forearm she tapped her PIN onto the displayed number pad.

  Again, nothing happened.

  Guy groaned. “Some systems officer, you can't even remember your own damn code.” Why did I say that, he wondered? It could jeopardise his access to the best body in the crew. He needed anger management and he knew it. We should have brought a councillor and left our useless bloody planetary scientist behind. He grinned at that thought, almost useless he corrected. Luckily, Adelia seemed to have missed this outburst.

  “If the code was wrong it would say so, this looks dead.” She said tapping the display in several places outside the number pad. Then she licked her finger, wiped it on her bare arm and re-tapped the code.

  “Try resetting the system.”

  Adelia almost snarled at him. “Give me a break.”

  “I'd be delighted.” Guy squeaked, catching a note of hysteria in his voice, “as soon as you let me out of this bloody coffin.”

  “Don't shout in my ear. I can’t think. It’s not wrong I tell you, the system is down, unresponsive, dead.”

  Guy saw a frown crease Adelia's brow. “We’ll have to get Cheral to open it from the other …”

  “No way, not Cheral, get T …” He was going to suggest Terry but that wouldn’t be politic either.

  Adelia looked sideways at him and he looked away. That’s torn it he thought. Shit. This was going to be one of those days when his carefully compartmentalised life imploded. When he glanced up, the pale blue eyes paled further.

  “You bastard, I’m not enough for you.”

  Guy couldn’t keep the grin off his face.

  Adelia’s eyes narrowed then widened. “You’re banging the Tyrant as well?”

  His widening grin vanished when she punched him in the face with a right cross that twisted her around and dropped her off her forearm prop. The top of her short, blond head banged into her pod’s console. There was a sharp click followed by loud hiss and the dull thump of something seating home.

  Their grap
pling stopped immediately. Blood streamed unheeded from Guy’s nose and dripped off his lip onto Adelia’s breast as she scrambled to reposition so she could reach the console. There was a muffled explosion. The lighting in the pod went to the dull orange of impending ejection. A maddeningly pleasant electronic voice warned. “Please stow any loose objects and cleat your sleeping bag to the pod wall. This module will eject in thirty seconds.”

  Adelia's fingers flew frantically over her screen, “Come on, Come on, answer me damn you.”

  Guy stared at her with a face full of apprehensive hope.

  “Thank you for your cooperation,” continued the voice. “Your safety is our primary concern.”

  The pod trembled. Adelia was still screaming “Override! Override!” and thumping the touch-screen when the pod ejected and they were suddenly and silently weightless.”

  Guy’s only thought as they drifted away from Day Tripper was how great weightless sex with Adelia would be.

  Cheral

  Karl Baronsky was on his elbows and knees in the passage outside Adelia's pod with a magnifying glass shortly after it had ejected. Cheraline Edrich, crouched beside him, sensed he was angry and supposed it was because no one but her had taken his ant problem seriously.

  “Were looking for the ants, right,” Cheral whispered at the same time eavesdropping on the adjacent command module and the Tyrant's conversation with the ejected pod. Poor Adelia, she thought. She didn’t give second thought for that two timing bastard with her.

  “Adelia, Guy, this is Captain Smith. What can I say people? We are all so terribly sorry.”

  Thankfully, the automatic gain control limited the jumble of shouted recriminations. Despite the fact that the torrent was mostly incoherent, their Captain seemed to get the message. “I understand,” she kept saying.

  “There not ants, they’re spiders” said Baron startling her.

  “What? But they flew.” Cheral said. “I was just getting up when they dropped off the edge of the table and took flight straight into the aircon duct.” She glanced over her shoulder, then up and down, left and right. Flying spiders, she thought with a shudder, that’s all I need. Suddenly she held her arms out for a closer inspection and just in case, patted herself down, hard. She yelped when something dug into her thigh. She patted it again before reaching in and pulling out a spoon. Only a spoon, she thought with relief. It must have dropped into her pocket during the breakfast fiasco yesterday.

  “They only fly as a last resort,” Baron continued. “Mostly they’re using our cables as roadways.”

  Cheral looked startled and forgot to whisper. “You don't think …?”

  “Why do you think I’m looking here?” he snapped and pointed to the pod door. The oval window in the hatch labelled ADELIA now looked out into the near empty space beyond the GRim.

  “Quiet you two,” snapped the Captain.

  “What?” the speaker squawked, the shrill voice distorted, the gain control pushed beyond overload.

  “Not you Guy. I was talking to Cheral and Baron.”

  Baron lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. “We’ve been out on the GRim for eighteen months. We’ve made two drops, no pickups,” he paused and scratched his brown stubble, “except for these little beasties. I have to find the nest.” Disconcertingly, his deep, blue eyes flicked from Cheral's mouth to her eyes and back again. She couldn't really tell if he was away with the fairies, trying it on with her or like her, trying to follow Tyranol’s monologue.

  “Normally the pod would have enough air, water and food for a month but with two of you, it's less than half and there's the additional heat to consider and waste recycling. You’re lucky the pods are gender neutral. Despite being designed for one, it will have equipment suitable for both of you.”

  “There,” yelled Baron in her ear.

  Cheral following where he pointed, saw a small black spider, wings folded back, crawling along a cable in the open duct. She banged it hard with the spoon.

  “One less problem,” she said with satisfaction.

  Baron put his forehead on the floor and sobbed.

  “Will you two shut up? No, I didn’t mean you Della. Dr Eldrich, leave Baron to his ants and get up here.”

  “Gladly,” Cheral said, pissed at Baron’s reaction. Trying to help him get rid of the ants/spiders was too hard.

  She climbed the spiral to join Tyranol in the command module. Out the small window (it wasn’t really a window but a screen made to look like one) she could see the ejected lifeboat was already a tiny spec of reflected light no bigger than an ant against the black backdrop. There were very few stars in that direction and each of them was a galaxy. The Day Tripper was between systems on the galactic rim, known colloquially as the GRim. On bitter reflection, Cheral considered it an appropriate term for Guy and Adelia’s situation as they headed out into the nothingness between this galaxy and the distant next.

  As she sat at her console, something about the spider she had hit with the spoon troubled her but the insistence of multiple winking tell-tales overrode it. Instinctively she glanced at her own pod’s status, then quickly up at Tyranol whose worried grey eyebrows jiggled while she calmly talked to Guy and Della.

  “We have sent a mayday. Search and Rescue have launched a recovery mission but I have to tell you.” She stopped abruptly, cupped her hand over her throat mike and whispered to Cheral. “Arm Adelia’s pod, give them the option.” She then continued, as if she had just paused for breath. “But I’m very much afraid it won’t catch you before …”

  The captain’s voice cut out as Cheral donned headphones to isolate her from the hubbub and allow her to concentrate. They’re as good as dead, she thought. Recovery would never catch them.

  She had several serious problems needing attention. Day Tripper’s Oxygen levels were way down. It was half what they should have at this point and usage was inexplicably high. If she didn't find the problem and fix it, they would run out of air sooner than Guy and Adelia. No wonder the Tyrant had sent out a mayday. It’s for us, not them.

  With deft fingers, tapping and sliding, she armed the drifting pod’s self-destruct and returned her attention to her own survival. Somehow, something had connected their air supply to an attitude jet, which was leisurely squirting air into space. Something and somehow, she thought, two unknowns and she didn’t have a clue where to start. Cheral was about to do the only thing she could and shut down the attitude jet, (which shouldn’t even be on) when the icon under her finger disappeared. The screen went to an error message: UNRECOGNISED TOUCH - AUTHORISATION REQUIRED. I didn’t touch it, Cheral thought, as she ripped off the headphones.

  “Captain, I’ve just been locked out. Get Della…” Cheral stopped mid-sentence. Adelia was gone, out there in the deep black beyond the GRim. She managed a pleading look at her captain.

  The tyrant tapped her own console and got the same message. She looked at Cheral with something akin to resignation in her eyes. “Here, you have some psych training, you talk to these two. They may as well bonk themselves to death. I'll have to go out and physically plug the jet. If Search & Rescue call, don’t mention the ants. I don’t intend dying out here.”

  Cheral sat reluctantly in the captain’s chair. She had no wish to speak to Monmart. If it was not for Adelia, she would happily press the pod’s destruct button.

  “Hi Della, it's me. You’re very faint …”

  Tyranol

  On her way to the airlock, Tyranol picked up Baron. She wondered why they gave her such a useless first officer, not that he wasn’t good at his job but on this trip but a Planetary Scientist for fuck’s sake. He collated and/or collected any new information on any new specimens from the GRim outstation worlds. His work began and ended whenever they made planet fall but there was nothing but drops scheduled this trip.

  “But I haven't found the nest yet,” Baron protested.

  “Fuck the nest, we’re running out of air.” Until this infestation, Baron
had been supernumerary. Now he was in his element and naturally, he resented her taking him away from it.

  “But they’re the reason for all …”

  “No Baron. The reason we’re losing air is we’re jetting it into space and the electrics are shot, I’ll need your help to go out, so I can plug it.”

  “What? Our air isn’t connected to the jets - is it?”

  “It is now,” she said.

  “It’s the ants I tell you, only they’re not really ants, they’re spiders. The electrics are the only part of the ship that isn’t polymer, the insulation is and the spiders love it.”

  Tyranol suspected he was right. His ‘spiders’ had to be alien in origin, picked up enroute and responsible for the Day Tripper’s current shambles.

  “I believe you but dead you will never be able to submit a paper on them. You can go back and route them out as soon you passed me out the airlock.”

  She could see the tussle on his face as he tested the balance of probabilities. Whatever she might think of the disparate members of her crew, they weren’t stupid. She tried to tip it with authoritative friendliness. “Now, if you don’t mind, Karl.”

  The defiant expression building on his face expired with her use of his name rather than his nickname. “I need you to crank the outer airlock shut just in case and wait to let me back in. I’ll be twenty minutes tops and then you can go look for your aliens.

  While they suited up, she instructed him to stay close to the airlock and look for her again in twenty minutes.

  Baron nodded as he secured her helmet. “Yes boss.”

  They stepped into the airlock and Tyranol waited while Baron closed the inner hatch. They cranked open the outer hatch together, any hiss of the precious air escaping went unheard. Why Colonial Admin hadn’t put a mechanical locking wheel on the outside the outer hatch wasn’t as obvious as making the lifeboats double as sleeping quarters; the money it would save wouldn’t amount to much. The official reason was to prevent pirates gaining access, pirates for fuck’s sake. In thirty years on the GRim Tyranol had never encountered, nor heard on anyone else encountering pirates. She reached through the opened outer hatch to grab the hull ladder and thanks to the gravitational effects of the Day Tripper’s constant one gee deceleration, began to climb with some ease. Old and unfit, she sweated buckets as she climbed up past the galley and command modules toward an expanding cone of frozen air droplets, ten minutes hard slog.

  As she sprayed hull sealant into the small attitude jet, she could hear Cheral chatting to Adelia, the replies barely audible. The pod’s speed into the void was negligible just all in the wrong direction, out from the GRim into the nothing and speeding away from the Day Tripper at right angles. The pod would soon be out of sight. Tyranol resisted the urge to wave goodbye.

  Satisfied the jet was well and truly clogged she began to head back when she noticed forward thruster three was driving slowly back and forth across its small variable arc.

  “God’s teeth people, this isn’t funny anymore,” she cursed and went to check.

  Baron

  “Holy shit,” yelled Karl a moment later as he watched from the airlock. Tyranol was standing in front of thruster three trying to stop it jiggling when it fired. The Tyrant was gone, fried to a crisp, a little black thing, attached to the hull ladder.

  “What now?” Cheral asked.

  Karl couldn't answer. He was retching in his suit, his mike clogged with vomit. The suit’s air filtration system was labouring to process the particulate matter. Most of his lunch was sliding down inside his helmet on its way to his boots. He was steaming by the time he got the outer hatch closed, the inner one open and was able to unsuit.

  “What the hell did you think you were doing firing the thrusters?” he screamed at Cheral as soon as he reached the command module.

  Cheral cringed away, her expression a mixture of disgust and hurt.

  “I didn’t fire them, their sub-system did.”

  “Don’t give me that,” he trailed off. Cheral was right, there was no way she would have fired the thrusters. She didn’t have a vicious bone in her body. That left the spiders. He began to see battle lines being drawn, their insulation eating, which shorted the electrics, weren’t random; it was strategic.

  “I tried to stop it,” Cheral said, almost in tears.

  She’s afraid of being alone I’ll bet, Karl thought, and reached out to comfort her.

  “God you stink,” she said, pulling away.

  It didn't register with Karl. He was suddenly interested in what she had said earlier. Could it be, he wondered. Surely not, it was all solid state. “How do you know the sub-system did it?”

  “It told me it was going to,” was the nasal reply as Cheral blew her nose into a piece of rag. “It wouldn't let me in, I couldn’t override. So what do we do now, Captain?”

  Baron’s head snapped up looking around for the captain. It took him a second or two to realise Cheral was talking to him.

  “Er right. Well first I need to get cleaned up.”

  While he changed and washed, by hand because the flash shower was also defunct, he reviewed all he had learned, mostly inferred from what the alien insects had achieved. They weren’t eating the insulation at all; they were stripping it back to get access, tapping into our systems and causing havoc. For us at least, they were space borne if not space born. Bloody fascinating, a paper on these alien spider/ants would make him famous, if he survived them.

  Cheral

  Cheral had wanted to race down and hug Baron the moment he returned. With the captain gone, he was the only one left. His tirade forestalled that first impulse. The second self-destructed when she noticed half-digested food in his stubble and the smell. Guy he wasn’t, though he was probably more reliable. She still found it hard to believe Guy Adelia and Tyranol were gone but the pieces were starting to fit. She had decided the spiders were a fault. Whatever they were doing, it was interfering with their systems.

  Her tears had slowed by the time Baron returned clean in fresh threads but unfortunately still perfumed in his own bile.

  “How are those two - out there,” asked Baron.

  “Long gone,” Cheral said.

  “Did they …?”

  Cheral shuddered and wiped a resurgent tear from the corner of her eye. “Dunno. I was busy with three. They were gone next time I looked. I hope they do. Tyranol’s end would have been instant.”

  Now that he was here, she nodded towards the life support panel, knowing Baron wouldn’t fully understand it but anyone could see their air supply was nearing reserve when it should be half-full. “How far behind us is the rescue mission?”

  “Right on schedule, but …”

  “There are only two of us now,” Baron interrupted. “Provided nothing else goes wrong and we conserve our air we can still make it.”

  Cheral eyed him sceptically, trying not to let her fear show.

  “But what,” he added. “You said ‘but’ but I butted in - sorry.”

  “Our systems are still degrading and both techos are out there. How are you going make sure nothing else goes wrong?”

  “I'm going to kill the little buggers before they do any more damage and conserve air at the same time.”

  The troubling itch at the back of her mind surfaced when he said ‘little’. The insect she had hit with the spoon had clearly been a winged spider. Those in the sugar bowl had been so small, she hadn’t seen the wings, let alone count the legs. They had still looked like ants when she saw them take flight.

  Cheral shuddered again. “They aren’t little anymore, what can they be eating to grow like that?” she asked as the rest of what he had said registered – kill them and save air at the same time.

  “How?”

  “I thought no one would ever ask. They’re not eating the insulation as I first thought. They probably can't eat anything of ours.” He paused as if to collect his thoughts. When he looked back at her, hi
s voice was excited, too excited for Cheral’s liking. This time, he was off with the fairies, mentally writing his paper on the spiders’ attempts to destroy them.

  “They’re actually eating each other. They were playing cannibals in the airlock while I waited for the Tyrant. I’m guessing the last one standing will somehow give rise to the next generation of the ant form, or perhaps just little eggs. Who knows what form they take out in space, or how long they have been drifting. They obviously don’t need to breathe.”

  Cheral nervously scanned the monitors, checking for signs of the rescue ship, trying to visualise the flying spider she had spooned at double or treble the size and gave a gasp when something like her imagined beastie flitted across one of the screens. Perhaps not, perhaps it was merely a manifesting of her innermost fear; trapped alone with a giant flying spider. I have to get somewhere safe, she thought as Baron ploughed on.

  “I figure they saw the ship as just a place to nest and regenerate. They probably see us as an infestation. They needed to fumigate their nest first, get rid of any potential threat to their progeny. Bloody smart thinking I say. We discounted them as mere insects and yet they got into and manipulated our systems.

  Cheral thought his theory just whacky enough to be true, but she didn’t say anything. The sheen of sweat on his forehead and the glazed expression in his eyes frightened her. She wondered if one of the spiders had bitten him.

  “We have to be smarter,” he said. “Trying to find the nest was a waste of time, there won’t be one until there’s only one left.” As he spoke, he began vacuuming the inside of his helmet with the battery-powered dust-buster from the kitchen. “I’m going to space the lot ’em. We need to suit up, re-compress all our air, open the ports and send them back to where they came from.”

  Cheral began edging away. He was looking less and less reliable now. She had her own survival plan. It didn’t involve tyring to outsmart intelligent alien spiders. Just stay out of their way, don’t pose any sort of threat.

  “Well go on, get suited.”

  “Right,” she said, “I just have to go to the dunny first.” Cheral scurried off down the spiral in the central column towards the amenities section. Once out of sight she kept going. She would wait out the time to rescue in her own private life-capsule.

  A blast of cool air hit her when she opened her pod sending a chill up her spine, what if the spiders had already scuttled her pod. She hesitated before pulling the pod into the room for a quick inspection. Except for the cold, everything seemed to be as she had left it this morning. She swung up onto the bed and touched the console to check the thermostat. It was set on twenty degrees Celsius her preferred sleeping temperature. In all the excitement, she had forgotten to reset it. She touched pad icons [two], [four] and [set temperature] then pressed [closed]. Her berth slid smoothly back into the pod.

  When her teeth began chattering Cheral re-checked the thermostat it had gone down to twelve degrees. Damn, one of her taps hadn’t registered properly. The temperature was heading down to either two degrees or four. “Damn all computers,” she muttered and aiming for a quick response, carefully touched each icon: [three], [zero] and [set temperature]. There was a cheering beep after each registration. She was safe from Baron and his war with the spiders. She sat and waited, not bothering to reply when Baron asked if she was suited up yet, hoping he would go away and get on with it, without her.

  The temperature went down a degree, the drop more chilling than the previous fall of eight degrees. Bloody spiders, she moaned. Can't they see I’m not a threat? With resignation, she went to tap the [open] icon when Baron’s face appeared in the small hatch porthole.

  Baron

  When Karl heard Cheral’s ‘Damn all computers’, on the suit com, he asked if she was suited yet, and told her he was on his way to the airlock.

  Cheral did not reply so as he headed down, Karl checked the dunnies, both empty. To hell with her, he thought, have to space the beasties first. Only as an afterthought, as he passed through the sleeping bay, did he look in on Cheral’s pod.

  Startled Cheral looked up then instantly back at the pod systems panel. “I just came back to my pod for an extra jacket.”

  “Well hurry up. Whatever the spiders are doing is causing more and more failures.”

  Through the hatch window, Karl saw the temperature readout inside her pod change to two degrees Celsius. He checked readout on the outside, also two degrees and Cheral wasn’t suited.

  “Aren’t you cold?’

  Silly question, he thought as she tapped [open]. The pod started to move but then ground to a shuddering halt and stuck. He saw a wave of panic strike Cheral and felt himself respond in sympathy. “Mother of god no,” she wailed in his headset. “I don’t want end up like Della trapped in my bloody pod. It’s freezing.”

  “Hang on,” said Karl. He broke the polymer sheet covering the override button and thumped it to switch the locking mechanism to manual. He expected to hear a thump but nothing happened. He shrugged at the hapless Cheral, now so cold, or fearful, she was vibrating like a pneumatic drill. He tried the wheel manually. It spun without engaging as the temperature inside fell to zero.

  It can't go much further, thought Karl, as Cheral wrapped up in every available piece of clothing and crawled into her thermal sleeping bag. She’ll be right, he thought, hoping it was true. Surely, her trapped body heat would sustain her until he could work out a way to open her pod. He had to go. Finish the job he started then write it up. He waved and turned away.

  “Don’t leave me,” Cheral said in a staccato chattering of teeth.

  “I’ll be back as soon I do for the spiders.”

  Amazing he thought how ‘spiders’ had stuck, not ants or aliens, which they truly are. The last one he’d seen on the bathroom monitor had looked like a squid.

  As Karl set about having the air sucked from the Day Tripper and compressed back into the tanks, he was grateful that the rarely used compressor wasn’t computer controlled and thankful the spiders were smart. He supposed the only reason they had left it alone was that it was stored and not connected. He was eighty per cent done when the motor started to grind. He shut it off. The gauge showed his efforts had only improved their air reserve from thirty-one per cent to thirty-two per cent capacity. He consoled himself that those last couple of air days might just save his life.

  Satisfied he opened the inner airlock door, stepped inside and hooked a long tether from his belt to the rail just in case. Then he rigged a shorter one from the hatch wheel to a handhold on the wall and used the tether’s ratchet to make it taught. It only had to hold against the reduced atmospheric pressure. Finished he turned the wheel to open and sat on the floor to wait.

  Karl theorised that as the only other active entity in the ship, he was now the spider’s only potential threat. Vindication of his theory wasn’t long coming. The spider appeared, carefully climbing down the central spiral. It was now much more squid-like, a bulbous black body- head section and multiple tapering legs. Karl waited until the last leg disengaged and it stood on the floor antenna quivering before he hit the tethers release.

  The outer swung open and Karl had to duck as anything not tied down flew past his head: a foam pillow, several packets of potato crisps - various flavours, some issues from Guy’s comic collection - pages flapping and tearing. He lunged out to rescue the toaster sliding along the floor but his tether held him out of reach. The toaster hit the lip of airlock and tumbled over. The cord whipped up and the plug smacked him in the chin.

  The spider, now as big as beach ball, appeared. Hairless legs flapped in all directions looking for purchase. Two managed to grip either side of the airlock’s outer hatch and hold. The strength of the turbulence was dying quickly and Karl could see the flailing legs retracting toward its body. Soon another limb gained purchase on the airlock’s jamb.

  Karl gripped the rail, unhooked his tether, took two stumbling steps toward the spid
er and jumped. He landed feet first deforming the black body, popping it soundlessly out the airlock. Using muscle power alone the sinuous legs swept around trying to lock on to his feet. He pulled his legs up and the distance between them steadied to a few inches. Then his tether pulled him up short and the spider disappeared into the blackness.

  As he pulled his way back along the tether into the airlock, Karl fervently hoped his thesis would prove correct and that the beastie he just kicked out was the last one standing. He had no way of knowing.

  Back in the ship, he felt light as if walking on air or perhaps swimming in it. Bit by bit, he manually sealed off all the unused modules then headed up to command, to re-pressurise and warm the rest up flooding the Day Tripper’s command and pod bay module with air. In the monitor, he noticed Cheral had stopped moving and her face looked pale. The pod’s temperature readout stood at minus forty degrees.

  Battling his way back down into the pod bay, Karl again threaded one of the thick power cable spares, the only item with any metal in it, through the lock on Cheral’s pod. He hooked a hand winch to the central pole of the spiral staircase and began to crank open Cheral’s pod. The lock’s handle snapped.

  “Bloody polymer shit.”

  Karl cursed the stupidity of plastic space ships. They said it was to save weight but it was really to save money, in space weight was money. Every part of the ship except for the power cables and circuit boards was 3D printed polymer. Only when he stopped cursing did he notice a chill breeze around his feet. Cheral’s pod door had opened a fraction. A cold mist was flowing out and dropping to the floor, warm air behind it. He looped the cable around the berth stuffing it into the gap and cranked the berth fully open.

  When he reached out to touch Cheral’s face, he burned his finger. Cheral’s cheek was ice cold, frozen solid. How did that happen he wondered? Then he noticed her hip stick out the side of her sleeping bag. He lifted it at that point with the end of the cable; found it neatly sliced open from head to toe. The last spider’s parting gesture.

  Karl spent a couple of hours, pulling up plates and opening panels, jamming bits of polymer between raw conductors and resetting breakers. Bits of the Day Tripper came back to life. Pointless thought Karl as he returned to the command module; he was still alone and now very dispirited. The captain’s screen began playing a pornographic video.

  Karl watched fascinated. There was something familiar about the bum. The pair rocked, knocked the camera and the view changed. Like ghosts from the past, Monmart and Adele smiled out at him from the screen. You bastard, he thought. It confirmed what he already suspected; Guy was bi. Then he noticed the timer in the corner click over, the feed was live. That’s not possible, he thought. They couldn’t possibly be in range. He looked around at the locator. The blip representing the Day Tripper was off the line representing the GRim by several AU, heading outward.

  “Shit a brick.”

  Karl checked the monitors, located the pod then checked the clock. Twenty-seven hours since the pod ejected and he’d caught them.

  “Thruster three,” he shouted with sudden insight and the bodies on the monitor scrambled to part. The bloody spider really was going to have the last laugh.

  Adelia

  After a quick glance at Baron, Adelia turned to her screen and found power beamed from the Day Tripper again available. She started playing the pad like a concert pianist.

  “Baron, you came for me,” Guy said, emotion cracking his voice.

  In a small box on the screen, Karl exploded. “In a pig’s eye, piss off and die whore.”

  This took Guy aback for a second but only a second. “Sorry, I really thought I was going to die or I would never …” he shrugged. “You know how it is.”

  With a withering look full of contempt at Guy, Adelia tried to rescue the situation with an appeal to Baron. “Karl,” she said using his name, knowing his preference. Now was not the time to upset him. “Are you able to fetch us,” she asked sweetly.

  Baron grimaced, an internal fight playing out on his face. “I don’t know if I can on my own.”

  Adelia exchanged a desperate glance with Guy.

  “What the hell happened to Cheral and the captain?” Guy asked.

  “It’s a long story and sort of funny in a way. Tyranol fried and Cheral froze. I did manage to get rid of the spiders.”

  How is that funny Adelia thought? He’s insane.

  “That’s just typical, Karl. I’m out here dying and you’re playing with your spiders. What spiders, don’t you mean ants? Don’t answer that just come and get us.”

  “How?”

  “Fire a bloody grapple as you pass,” said Guy, turning to Adelia for conformation.

  She ignored him, her fingers tapping and sliding across her screen. “No need, on his present course he’ll hit us. Brilliant navigating Karl, I couldn’t have done better myself.” She was being sarcastic but Baron glowed. “I can tweak our position to match.” She glanced up at the camera. “My pod started working again as soon as you came in range.”

  “You’ll reach us in twelve hours,” Guy added after scanning Adelia’s screen. “In the meantime get some sleep Karl, you look knackered.”

  She saw Baron start to leave and called out. “Come back a couple of hours before you catch us please Karl, We’ll need your help.”

  She heard him say, “Alright” but in a tone so depressed, she wondered if he would bother when the crunch came.

  “Karl, are you still listening. If you can get us back on board, we can rejig a thruster to turn DT around and meet the rescue ship.”

  There was no response. She turned to Guy trying to come to terms with his revealed promiscuity. “You idiot, your dick is going to the death of us.”

  “You weren’t complaining and hour ago,” he said and she felt his hand slip between her legs.

  Her forehead hit his nose. He snapped back at her in unthinking rage, head to head. The last thing she felt was a blinding flash of pain behind her eyes as her head smashed into her screen.

  Baron

  Remarkably, Adelia’s pod camera still transmitted and Karl was able to watch his slowly approaching doom. Guy and Adelia would crash into him and nothing he could do would prevent it. Without one or other of the techos, he was done for and they couldn’t help themselves. Adelia had smashed the pods communications and control pad. Guy obviously knew the camera was working and had tried miming instructions to Karl but without any response from him, Guy soon gave up.

  Karl watched avidly as Guy cradled the broken Adelia, gently stoking her brow right to the end. The screen went blank when the pod bounced off the Day Tripper’s hull and spun away into the black. He felt the blow emotionally.

  They were gone.

  They were all gone, even the alien hitchhiker’s and he was alone without any chance of rescue. His solitary journey into the emptiness between galaxies would last months, possible a year if he was careful. One of the items his repairs had fixed was the water recycling system. Air and water would now outlast his food supplies. He was going starve to death. He pondered his meaty legs.

  The view back oppressed him as much as the view forward. He couldn’t see the rescue ship against the glare of stars. Not that it mattered they would not be coming after him, not now he was too far off the GRim. So was the spider. He wondered if it was still alive. Its desperation when he kicked it out suggested not. Adelia and Guy were part of the fragments floating around the Day Trippers after the collision.

  As he sped away from the GRim into the sparse intergalactic black, he thought deeply about the alien spider ants. Despite nobody would ever read it, Karl 'Baron' Baronsky began to write the paper that might have made him famous.

  The Dead Kind

  L. E. Badillo