“Big-ass slugs,” Bergen replied in a leaden bass, shaking his head and smiling with disbelief.
He and Walsh exchanged disconcerted expressions. Walsh giggled for a moment, but it sounded low-pitched and distorted. He stifled himself and looked disturbed. “Ok. Let’s go back.”
“Commander Walsh, this is Providence. Come in. Over.” Both men jumped as Ajaya’s voice blared over the radio.
Walsh drew himself up. “This is Walsh. Varma, report. Over.”
“Jane is unconscious again. I cannot wake her. Over.”
“What happened? Over.”
“She started drifting and I realized she was unconscious. Her vitals are normal. Your voice sounds unusual, Commander. Are you all right? Over.”
Walsh was squeezing his eyes closed, concentrating on listening. Why was it so hard to think? Bergen felt like he was falling asleep on his feet, numb and disconnected. They needed to get out of there.
He grabbed Walsh’s arm and headed for the door. Walsh started, as though waking up, but then followed obediently. Bergen lost track of any thought except getting back to the door and through it.
There was a loud, piercing sound and both men stopped in their tracks. It took Bergen almost a minute to recognize the sound. It was Walsh’s oxygen monitor. As soon as he made the connection, his own started alarming as well. The numbers were fluctuating wildly up and down the scale. No wonder he was feeling so lightheaded.
He slid the pack from his shoulder and then the compressed-air gear. He fumbled with the valve, but his fingers weren’t working properly. They felt like blocks of wood and weren’t cooperating with his brain.
Bergen looked over at Walsh, expecting to see him doing the same thing. He wasn’t. He was watching the slugs. Bergen could see why. They were moving around a lot faster now. The alarm must be disturbing them.
Walsh seemed to be mesmerized by them. He was walking slowly toward a large one, his hand outstretched. Dammit—he was walking in the opposite direction of the door. Bergen shook his head vigorously to clear it and bounded after Walsh, pulling him back. “Don’t be a goddamn Redshirt, Walsh!” Walsh didn’t reply.
Their oxygen monitors were still alarming, which helped Bergen to remember what he was doing. He went back to fumbling with the compressed air. His hand closed over the valve, finally, and he pulled the mask toward his face. Then, the lights went out.
Walsh stumbled back into him and they both went down in the dark. It wasn’t a soft landing; they both went flailing and cursing. Bergen dropped both his pack and the canister. He scrabbled around for it.
Walsh was grasping at him, alternating between speaking incoherently and laughing maniacally. Bergen fought down panic and froze in place for a moment, concentrating. His thoughts were disjointed…the deep voice. There was something…yesterday….
Why couldn’t he think?
“Commander? Walsh? Bergen? Report. Over.” Ajaya’s voice again and still the monitors beeped.
Walsh’s grasping movements slowed and he went limp, a dead weight, collapsed against Bergen’s side. He was asphyxiating or something. Bergen knew he was next unless he could find that canister. He shoved Walsh’s inert body to the floor and redoubled his efforts, blindly feeling all around them, searching for the canister, the pack, anything.
Walsh. Walsh has a canister too.
Bergen scrambled, adrenaline pumping, to turn Walsh over. Dammit! Walsh must have taken the harness off at some point; it wasn’t on his back.
Bergen slumped. He and Walsh were going to die there, in the dark, on an alien spaceship—surrounded by ginormous, freaky, alien space-slugs.
He closed his eyes, giving in to the sleepiness. It was hard to sleep, though, with all the beeping. Someone should really turn that off.
His dozing was interrupted by the sound of Jane’s voice and he roused himself half-heartedly to hear her. Her voice sounded urgent. “Walsh, Bergen—this is Jane. Can you hear me?”
“Jane?” Oh. She’s on the radio. He grabbed at it, his fingers thick and unresponsive. The little red light came on. He could talk now. “Jane? S’Berg.”
“Dr. Bergen? Are you…ok?”
He struggled to keep his eyes open. “Lost it. Both of ’em. S’dark, Jane.”
“What—what’s happened? What did you lose?”
“Dunno. Air, I think. So sleepy, Jane.”
Beeping. Lots of beeping.
“Alan, listen to me. Stay awake. You—it—I think it’s a gas. The room you’re in is flooded with some kind of gas. You need to get out of that room!”
Well, he’d thought of that already. “Can’t. Can’t see a damn thing. Can’t see the slugs.” His voice sounded slurred. Was he drunk? How had that happened?
“Ok. Right. That’s the problem, isn’t it?”
“Yup.”
Jane went quiet then.
The alarm still beeped, shrill in his ear. He started to nod off again.
“Alan? There are very tall storage tanks with access ladders nearby, right? Climb one of them. There’ll be less of the gas, if you can get higher. I’m coming to help you, but you have to do some work too.”
What was that beeping sound?
“Jane? What’s going on?” Compton’s voice. Now they were talking.
Bergen tuned them out and clung to what she’d just said. A gas. Huh. He pulled himself upright and stooped down to grab Walsh’s arm. He stuck out his other arm, searching for one of the tanks, and took a step, clumsily dragging Walsh along.
There were going to be slugs on it. Icky, squishy slugs.
He staggered, dragging Walsh behind him. Something rattled, skittered across the floor nearby. What was that? It seemed important. He concentrated on the angle the sound had made and dropped to his hands and knees and felt around. Finally, his fingers brushed against something hard and cold and then closed around it.
Air. Oh, holy fuck, it was the air.
It seemed to take forever to get his fingers to close over the mask and bring it to his face, while he braced the tank against his chest and turned the valve with his other hand. He concentrated on inhaling deeply. After just a few moments, a comprehensible picture began to form.
Xenon gas. He’d detected unusual amounts of it in the air the day before. The storage tanks must contain xenon and apparently there was a leak. It was an odorless, tasteless gas. Who knew what the concentration was in there? They were lucky they hadn’t suffocated.
The deep voice, the bizarre behavior, the disconnected thoughts. The effects of xenon were similar to nitrous oxide—laughing gas. He had to share the air with Walsh and he had to get them out of there. But the room was enormous and he had no way of knowing where another door would be.
Bergen took off the mask and pressed it to Walsh’s face, slipping the band around Walsh’s head. He put his hand on Walsh’s chest. It seemed like it was rising and falling.
Bergen held his breath as long as he could, then breathed shallowly as he systematically searched again for the other canister, or either pack. He was already starting to feel woozy when he located one of the packs. He groped around inside until his hand closed over the shaft of a flashlight. He turned it on and passed the light over Walsh, who was coming around.
“Take deep breaths, Walsh!” he yelled. Then he started chuckling. What was so funny, again? Oh, yeah. The oxygen monitors were still going off, which helped him remember.
Walsh sat up.
“It’s xenon gas!” Bergen shouted and then giggled helplessly as he waved the light around, looking for the other canister. He couldn’t see it.