Grateful to be finished, he reached over the last limb.
Pain exploded in his hand, so intense his stomach closed like a fist.
Needle bug! Frantically he beat his hand against the limb, then grabbed at the bug with his other hand. It clung fast, a small green lump hurting him worse than anything had ever hurt him before. He was slipping over the edge of consciousness.
Suze grabbed his fingers, directing the flame of a small torch directly on the bug. It swelled, popped like a com kernel, blackened, and burned. Then more hands tugged him through the net. Someone hit Orem with a sedative gun, and he went to sleep.
“Wakey wakey time,” he heard a sing-song voice. He opened his eyes, felt the room move around him, then closed them again.
Hell. The room really was moving. In a strong wind, the “canvas condo” became very lively. He opened his eyes to see Mara Garcia’s face. She served as combination commander, researcher, and med tech. Dark eyes, black hair, mouth drawn tight as if something smelled bad.
“Sorry to push you, but we re in a storm, and need all hands on deck. You’re our only engineer.”
“My hand’s not much good.”
“Hey, we saved you. You thank the lab techs for this new stuff. It made a miracle. You’ll be good as new in ten minutes. And stop looking for Suze. I sent her off to work.”
“God. I thought I was dying.”
“Only lucky you picked on a baby bug. Needle didn’t penetrate that well and your suit took most of the poison. Bigger bug might be a problem.”
“This wasn’t a problem? What’s in that needle, anyway?”
“Not totally analyzed, but a biological solvent, we think. The bug hangs on till the meat dissolves, then sucks up the goop with the same needle, sort of like some spiders. Clever if you haven’t invented teeth. Of course, it didn’t figure on something as big as you. That needle would be very effective against something small.”
“It’s effective. Take my word for it.”
“Oh, you just got a touch. The bug was an immature male—if there is any other kind of male.” She paused at the time-honored joke, then continued. “Actually, all our specimens are male. I wonder where the females are. Or is this planet even weirder than I thought?”
“It’s weird enough.”
“Yeah. Well, Suze has played poor suffering martyr for an hour.” Mara paged Suze on the comm. “Keep it short. You’ve both got work, and I can’t handle the mushy stuff—I just had lunch.” Orem stood up, nearly fell, thanked the doc for her uncharming bedside manner, then walked down the fabric hallway with as much dignity as any walker can when the hallway is swaying like a drunk on a unicycle.
“Orem!”
“Hi, Suze. I’m still alive.”
The “waiting room” contained two inflatable chairs, a coffee dispenser, and a vid screen. The walls puffed as if they were panting.
“Oh, give me a hug and stop being an idiot.”
He did that. Hugging a bio-isolation suit had all the sexual charge of hugging a laundry bag, but it was comforting. For a few moments they talked of nothing. Orem wished they could go back to the bunk, seal themselves in, and get out of the miserable suits. He wanted to feel her next to him, if only to convince himself she was real and he was still alive. He wanted to get to know her better, find out how it had been for her growing up in Europe. He’d been raised under a round blue Utah sky, with white-capped mountains looming over sage brush and sandstone stretching so far the eye got tired of looking and quit.
Orem’s emergency station was the comm room in the dome. Double doors at each end held in the air pressure. The transparent dome gave a 360 degree view of the surrounding area. Too good a view. The sky looked green, the trees outside threshed and swayed, and the whole room rolled like a ship on the high seas. On the right side, a row of vivid screens showed information coming in from other stations and from the mother ship orbiting overhead, “upstairs” in spacer jargon. The left side held a couple of canvas benches and a big screen vid with a chip library. Only braggarts called it the “lounge.”
Two people, Jason and Elaina, sat at computer screens. Both turned when Orem entered. “Been sleeping one off, Orem?”
“You know these new bunkmates.”
Orem bowed and went to work.
Asair, an Indonesian woman who served as chief engineer upstairs, came up on screen.
“Heard you had a tough experience, Orem.”
“A bit. Learned not to put my hand in places I haven’t looked. I’m OK now.”
“Good. How’s the cradle holding?”
Orem checked the readouts on his strain gauges. “No pain yet.”
“Yeah. But from up here, we see gusts to 300 klicks peaking in less than an hour. You want an air rescue, speak now. We’ve got some major AMWIWs, and we’re down to only two working shuttles, at least for a week.”
AMWIWs meant “A Miracle When It Works,” some sarcastic engineer’s name for high-tech wonders which didn’t. Technical glitches were the curse of space exploration. Only two shuttles working was rotten luck, especially with four other habitats in different ecological areas of the planet.
“Check the big honchos for a decision, but I don’t think the cradle will have a problem. I set enough cable to tie up half the forest.”
“Max good. I’ll ask the boss.”
Orem returned to his work, checking and rechecking the strain gauges for signs of weakness. On a platform below the cradle, a small reactor powered the station and oxygen extractor. Amaterasu’s atmosphere had low oxygen, high carbon dioxide. Native plants thrived, but a human would slowly suffocate.
Everything tested A-OK. Soon word came: the cradle rides this one. Orem was happy. Two shuttles could take the cradle, but not the reactor. Hooking everything up again would be a major pain.
Orem saw the hurricane coming, a wave rolling over the trees, darkening the sky with flying broken limbs and leaves. The sun vanished. Wet leaves plastered the transparent panels, blocking the view. Orem’s chair bucked under him, thrusting his face into the console while the seat belt jerked at his waist, then instantly reversing and smacking his bottom back into the chair.
The screaming of the wind drove needles into his ears; the computer’s voice recognition went berserk. Orem gripped his desk with his left hand to push the mouse with his right. The desk jerked out of his grip and the mouse went flying. Damn! He caught the mouse, twirling the ball with his thumb to command the motors controlling the strain on each cable. In the wind, he couldn’t even hear the motors, but bit by bit they pulled the cradle nose down, making the wind push it into the trees rather than pulling it up. He turned, astonished to see one of his companions bouncing like hot bacon on the floor and the other—must be Elaina—riding her chair like a cowboy rides a bronco. She shouted something, but he couldn’t hear.
Wind 340 and rising. Weather forecasters on Amaterasu had lots to learn. The fabric walls popped with a machine gun rattle. Could anything stand this buffeting? How could those damned trees stand it? But his cables held. Relax and ride. It’s something to tell the guys from the other habitats when they got back together.
Needle bugs. Bugs as big as rats banging on the windows, bugs riding on glassy wings. No flapping, so they were gliders rather than fliers, hopping from tree to tree, ripping along in the wind at airplane speeds.
Orem remembered all the local bugs were males. The flyers must be females, riding the storm like a California zillionaire on an autowing. Storms brought in the girls. Christ. Millions of square klicks on this damned planet and they had to choose a needle bug love-in.
A wind blast tried to roll the cradle up like a blanket. Two strain gauges red-lined. The motors ran red-hot, so he turned them off and locked the cables in place.