Fear the Abyss: 22 Terrifying Tales of Cosmic Horror (15 page)

When the berries were gone, Argol leaned forward again, resting his elbows on his knees as he searched her face. "There is something going on with you, Shy. I can see it plain as space. Don't you trust me?"

She sighed soundlessly, giving herself a moment while she checked the command console. Nejem and Rocha were done unloading and stowing the empty containers the Astraios had brought, and now loaded the full containers of helium-3 into their cargo hold. "I trust you. You more than anyone."

"Then talk to me." He reached out, brushing his fingertips along the cold metal of her prosthetic arm.

In a rare nervous gesture, she tucked loose strands of hair behind her ear, her fingers trembling. "I think—" she faltered, then made herself start over, "I think I may be having some kind of breakdown."

"Tell me," he said. There was only the concern of a good friend in his deep voice.

"I don't sleep well, anymore. Not for months," she confessed. On the computer screen set into the console, the display showed small blips of light, each one a tracking marker on a full tank of helium-3. From the corner of her eye, she could see them moving one by one out of the Galene's storage area and onto the docked freighter. "I dream. Nightmares, I guess. Not like anything I've experienced before."

"You've had nightmares," Argol reminded her. For years after the fire she had awakened regularly from dreams of being trapped and burning. Dreams in which she watched her little sister cry and cough and finally succumb to the thick smoke, and then begin to blacken and burn in the intense heat that had consumed her, crib and all.

"Yes, but that was different. They were twisted memories of what I actually witnessed." She found herself smoothing the same lock of hair behind her ear over and over again, and forced her hand down to her lap. "These are things that can't be real."

He reached over and turned her so that she faced him, and took her hands in his own; one fragile and bone thin, the other smooth metal. "I'm here for you, Shy. You don't have to hide anything from me, and I want to help you if I can. Maybe talking about it will take the fear out of it."

She thought of the dream she'd been having when his comm-call awakened her. The fear had been icy and immediate, the danger so real… "I don't think it will."

"Will talking about it make it any worse?"

She shrugged, and tightened her grip on his hands just a bit. "I don't know."

"Tell me," he repeated, his blue gaze never leaving her face.

She looked back at him, absentmindedly memorizing his features, her eyes distant. "All right," she finally said.

*****

"Okay, that's it." Nejem said, bringing the relay ship's larger 'bot-jack to a halt where it would be locked down for flight. "All the helium-3 is aboard. The only thing left on the manifest is five small crates which will be stowed up front behind the cockpit."

"I'll get them," Rocha said, driving the smaller 'bot-jack back onto the space station. The crates filled with Neptunian diamonds were stacked near the ladder leading up to the command ring. "Damn," he said a few minutes later when he'd stacked and strapped the crates into place.

"Problem?" Nejem asked, joining him at the front of the main cabin.

"No," he replied with a wide grin, "I was just noticing that they aren't sealed. I'd like to take a look at an 'iceberg' diamond with my own eyes."

Nejem
tsk
ed softly, and shook her head. "Naughty boy. This shipment comes up light, and you're first on the list of suspects."

He held his hands up, palm out, as he shook his head. "No, ma'am. Just curious, not a thief." He leaned against the nearest crate and cocked his head to one side, golden brown eyes sparkling. "You really have no desire to see what they look like?"

She shrugged, glancing down at her hand-held to be sure the numbers on the manifest matched. "They're just minerals, Dennis. I doubt they look like what you'd find in a celebrity's engagement ring, if that's what you're thinking."

"The cases aren't locked," he offered slyly, patting the top of the crate he leaned on. "We could pop one open and have a peek, with no one the wiser."

"There's a security marker," Nejem reminded him in a cool tone. "How do you explain if someone checks the computer log?"

"It must not have been properly latched, and jiggled loose while being loaded onto the Astraios," he said, as though answering to an official enquiry.

Nejem raised one eyebrow. "Someone would take the fall for that, further down the line. You want to be responsible for that?"

Rocha sighed. "You are way too serious, Inanna. Curiosity is part of the human condition. And as long as there's nothing missing, no one would get in trouble. Damn, woman—loosen up a bit!"

She chewed on the edge of her bottom lip for a moment, glancing at the simple crate. She did wonder what they looked like. Were they the same as raw diamonds on Earth? Formed on an uninhabitable planet four and a half billion kilometers from home, could they be anything but alien? Before she could change her mind, she unclipped the latch and lifted the lid.

Rows of sparkling diamonds glittered like faceted ice in the utilitarian light. Nejem did not hesitate, she reached to touch one.

*****

"In my dream I'm floating," Shy began, still holding both of James' hands in her own. She had had lovers in her life, not many but a few. James Argol was one of only two men she had ever developed an emotional attachment to, and the only man she cared to continue any kind of relationship with. "I'm here, on the Galene. Sometimes in my quarters, sometimes on the command ring, or down in cargo. But I'm always floating freely, as though the gravity control has completely failed. There are never any alarms or warning lights, it's as though everything is perfectly normal. Except that it's not."

Argol nodded, but said nothing. He didn't want to stop her flow of words. She was the most self-contained and private person he'd ever known. She hid a loving but lonely heart within a shell of ruthless self-sufficiency.

"I'm floating, and I notice a huge window looking out into space. Neptune is always in the view; sometimes Triton is visible, or Proteus. It doesn't matter where I am in the station, I'll look up and see this huge window looking out over the planet. And as soon as I see it, struck by the wonder of a window I know isn't there, I am drawn to it. Physically, I mean. Wherever I am, I float toward that window, as though being pulled by the gravity of Neptune itself."

When she paused, eyes closed as though to see the dream in her mind's eye, Argol let his eyes move over her face. The right side of her face was beautiful. Olive-toned skin, a perfectly arched brow and excellent bone structure were the flawless setting for her clear green eye. Dark hair grew to her shoulder, thick and soft to the touch. But only on the right. The left side of her face was a warped mask, like a cruel child's prank that had stuck. Scar tissue, an odd whitish-pink, ridged and rippled as though molded by an untalented artist started above the temple and crawled down her face and the side of her head. It continued down her neck, disappearing beneath her collar. James knew that it covered most of the left side of her body to just above her knee. The contrast between her natural beauty and the ugly remains of the fire's wrath were startling. He felt pain for her, for the pain she had endured. But he had seen her intelligence and kind heart beneath the mask, and rarely noticed the disfigurement anymore. He had no patience for anyone who dwelled on it.

"Soon, it becomes clear that I will collide with the window," Shy continued, unaware of his scrutiny, "Except that I don't. When I reach it, I stretch my hands out to touch the glass. But there is no glass. My hands pass through the frame into open space. Then there is pain."

"Pain?" he asked, surprised.

She nodded, opening her eyes to meet his gaze. "Excruciating agony, worse even than the memory of the fire. My right hand freezes and splits within moments. My left hand is unharmed, although the cold moves up into my shoulder and chest. I can't stop myself, I continue out the window, the cold filling and destroying me. There is no one here to help me, no one to pull me back."

He lifted her flesh and blood hand, pressed his lips to the back gently, a silent affirmation of his presence. "Is that when you wake up?"

She dropped her eyes. "Sometimes. That's when I realize that I'm not alone."

"So then what happens?"

The comm chirped, and Shy pulled her hands free to answer. "This is Keir."

"Pilot, please inform the Commander that the cargo has been transferred and stowed." Rocha's voice was monotonal over the speaker, with none of the personality that made him so popular back on Calliope.

"Acknowledged," Argol said. "Any problems?"

"No sir."

The Commander frowned; his co-pilot was rarely so business-like. "The shift is almost over. We'll stay on the Galene tonight, and head back to Calliope after we've all slept."

"Yes sir." The comm light went out, and Argol rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

Shy looked at him questioningly.

He shrugged. "He sounded a little off. Maybe he and Nejem had an argument. It wouldn't be the first time." Pushing the strange conversation out of his mind, Argol said, "How long until you're off shift?"

She smiled, "Just let me check my systems again. Then we'll have dinner."

"Sounds good," he agreed, and relaxed in his seat while she finished up.

*****

The Galene orbited Neptune above and beyond the thin broken rings. Her trajectory had been carefully calculated to avoid collision with any of the planet's thirteen moons, taking into consideration that Triton along with two smaller satellites orbited in retrograde. At any given time, even while docked with a relay freighter, at least three of her unmanned transports were in the upper atmosphere of Neptune collecting helium-3. One of the two specially designed robot drones was always en route to or from the planet's surface in the ongoing collection of diamonds.

While Shy and James ate dinner and enjoyed each other's company, one of the heavy drones returned to the station. A notification came over the comm to Shy, but it was a routine flight and she was not required to intervene.

"So, when the diamonds are brought on board by the drone," Argol asked as he pushed his dinner plate aside, "What do you do? Do you actually handle the diamonds yourself?"

Shy took her plate and his to the automated dish-dog, and let her kitchen system begin the clean-up. "I have, but it's not really necessary. The small cargo 'bots can sort and stow the stones in the crates for transport. I occasionally check up on them, for my own peace of mind."

"What do they look like?" he asked.

She came back and sat at his left, putting her right hand on his leg. "Like quartz crystals, I suppose. Some are quite large. And they are very dense." She leaned against him, glad when he put his arm around her and held her close. "From the calculations I've seen, they may finally make nuclear fusion a viable energy source."

He sighed as she moved her hand, and asked, "Are we really going to discuss scientific possibilities? Because if we are, you're going to have to go back to the seat across the table."

"I think I'd rather stay here," she replied, and reached up with her metal hand to pull his head down to hers.

*****

Argol dreamed. He lay in Shy's narrow bed, blankets tangled around his legs. He held her close beside him, his palm against her ribs. She was cool lying against him, her flesh as cold as the metal of her prosthetic limb. The cold seemed to leach from her, through the contact of their bare skin, prickling into him as though microscopic needles pierced him wherever they touched. As the cold grew more intense, and more painful, he realized that it wasn't Shy in bed beside him. Instead, a dense cluster of Neptunian diamonds lay against his bare skin.

He started awake and found himself alone, still tangled in her blankets. He sat up, wondering where she had gone. There was a strange heavy thrumming, more felt than heard. There was also a high pitched whine, almost inaudible, that put his teeth on edge. He fought with the blankets for a moment, tossing them onto the floor as he got to his feet.

The room was empty, and it was cold enough to force a shiver. He groped for his clothes, pulling them on in the darkness. When he opened the door onto the command ring, the cold air pebbled his skin, and the hairs on the back of his neck levitated. The computer screens showed his ship, the Astraios, preparing for flight. The heavy thrumming was the relay ship's engines. "What the hell are they doing," he breathed, and hurried down the spiral ladder to the cargo hold. Rocha crouched near the open airlock, his back to the Commander. As Argol strode toward his ship, Nejem and Shy both appeared from inside. As one, almost as though choreographed, all three turned toward him, and he stopped. The metal floor was icy beneath his bare feet, and he shivered again.

"Go on," Shy said softly, her words obviously intended for Argol's crew. Rocha picked up the open crate he'd been looking in, and Nejem helped him carry it onto the Astraios.

"Shy, what is going on," he asked, trying to soften the edge to his voice.

"You should still be sleeping," she said, coming within two meters of him.