She didn’t have any business leading others. She’d lost people in the Amazon. No one had ever faulted her for that, except for herself. The circumstances had been horrible. But she always felt that if she’d been a little better prepared, a little more vigilant, a little more proactive, she should have been able to save them.
And now it was happening again. Tom was clearly sick, possibly irreparably. Walsh, and maybe Ajaya, too.
Ei’Brai felt there was hope and she clung to that like a lifeboat adrift on a stormy sea. He believed she could solve it. That seemed frankly absurd. She wasn’t a scientist. How could she hope to understand an alien disease that struck so suddenly, dragging down the faculties needed to stop it? Like Alan, she didn’t feel affected, but knew that might be self-deception. She’d let her guard down with him, let herself get caught up in a self-indulgent moment. When so much was resting on her shoulders, so much was at stake, that in itself might be a sign that something was already going wrong.
She led the way down the hall, the lights in the floor lighting up in front of her, a demonstration of support from Ei’Brai. She didn’t have to look back to know that the lights coming on that way were pissing Walsh off.
Ei’Brai, on top of everything else, was feeding her the atmospheric mood of the rest of the group. She caught flashes of images, thoughts, emotional states—all on a level verging on subconscious. She was aware of perceiving it, even when she wasn’t giving it her full attention. She wanted to tell Ei’Brai to stop, to quit pushing her, that she couldn’t take any more of it, but that wouldn’t be true. It was unnerving how fast she was adapting to it.
The others filed into the deck transport behind her. Jane didn’t like the way they were all looking and feeling so uncertain about her. Walsh seemed more pacified since things were going the way he wanted, but still grim and angry.
Gibbs gently urged Compton to keep up, caught Compton’s arm when he tottered. Compton was shuffling along, completely withdrawn. He seemed to have aged at least 20 years since the last time Jane had seen him. Once a lively junior/senior pair of colleagues, a gulf of age seemed to have opened up between them. Gibbs fell naturally into the role of youth, caring for revered elder.
Jane pressed the symbol for the deck where the Providence was docked. A beat later, the door lifted midway, paused, then shut again. Everyone watched her expectantly. She frowned, reaching for the control, but before she could make contact, the door slid up, this time completely opening.
A large grey mass, slightly larger than a football, hit the floor with a sickening, wet thud and wobbled to a stop. Thin, webby tendrils stretched from the object to the top of the open doorway. A fetid odor, redolent of rotting garbage, hit them like a wave. The hallway was dark.
“What the hell?” Bergen grimaced, pulled a flashlight out of his pack, and shone it on the mass at their feet.
Walsh’s face was red with choler. “Holloway—what are you playing at? Is this the right deck?”
“Of course it is,” she replied, trying to hide her own bewilderment.
Ei’Brai surged in her head, a disorienting, buzzing flood, and she reached out a hand to steady herself against it. He was filling her head to overflowing with urgent warnings.
Ajaya was pulling on latex gloves. She took a pen out of her pocket and scraped it over the top of the door, effectively lifting off the gooey strings connecting the object with the door, and stepped out to inspect the object itself.
“It’s not safe here anymore,” Jane murmured out loud to the others.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Walsh eyed her suspiciously.
“We need to go. Come back inside, Ajaya.” Jane took a step forward, reaching for the door control.
Walsh blocked her. He towered over her, manner threatening. “Stay put, Varma. Nobody’s going anywhere until we have some answers. What is that thing?”
Jane stood her ground, resisting the urge to back away from him.
She could sense Alan’s protective ire rising one second and Walsh’s seething anger the next. It was coloring her own state of mind, making her feel like lashing out, losing control.
She forced herself to stay calm. “I don’t know what it’s called. It’s the next stage in the life cycle of the slugs. Whatever is going to hatch out of there—we don’t want any part of it. We need to go.”
“More delay tactics,” Walsh growled.
“It’s a pupa,” Ajaya murmured and they all turned to look at her. She was using the pen to move the mass from side to side. The tip of the pen disintegrated under the gentle pressure she exerted at the point, leaving blue plastic blobs dotting the thing.
Then the mass moved, swelling under the surface on one side. Ajaya gasped and scrambled back.
“That’s enough. Let’s go,” Walsh barked. The others stared at him, unmoving.
“Wait. Hold on. I’m not saying we don’t go back to the capsule. I’m saying we protect ourselves better first. I can take us to—”
Walsh bellowed over her, silencing her, “I said, enough! Move out.”
Gibbs looked back and forth between Jane and Walsh and then put an arm around Compton, urging him forward around the mass at their feet. Gibbs’ eyes darted around nervously, his weapon still clutched in his hand.
Jane reached out to touch Walsh’s arm. “No! This is too dangerous. You have to listen to me.”
“Like hell I do.” Walsh leveled his gun at her chest and swung wide, ready for an attack from Alan.
Alan’s fists were clenched. His nostrils flared. He was on the verge of doing something reckless. Ei’Brai was silent in her head—he was as appalled and unnerved as she was.
Chagrin left her feeling cold. Hadn’t she just been contemplating using the same tactic against Walsh, if necessary? How could she possibly change the balance of power now?
Jane slowly raised a placating hand. “Ok, ok, Commander. You’re in control. Let’s go, Alan.”
She moved cautiously toward Alan and turned him bodily, forcing him through the doorway, just as Gibbs had done with Compton.
Walsh ordered, “You two take point.”
Jane glanced over her shoulder. Ajaya and Gibbs looked uncomfortable, but weren’t saying anything. Alan shone his flashlight down the hall in the direction of the capsule and started moving. Jane stayed at his side. She didn’t have a flashlight or her pack. They must have been left behind.
There was some murmuring behind them, then Ajaya quietly handed Jane an air canister/harness and an oxygen monitor. Jane slipped the harness over her shoulders and glanced at the monitor as she fixed it to her flight suit. The levels were normal.
Inside her head, Ei’Brai was perturbed, exasperated. Jane struggled to keep her own thoughts moored. He informed her he was working diligently on getting lights back on for her. He said there was damage to certain neural-electric pathways, the conduits that carried his commands all over the ship. He reassured her that air quality sensors and controls were fully operational, but regretted to tell her he was barely keeping gravity under control. There was a 57% chance of losing gravity in the immediate future. She considered sharing this information, but Walsh’s current mood was not receptive to input from her, so she stayed silent.
As they walked, there were more pupa in various sizes clinging to the walls and ceiling, sometimes singly, sometimes in clusters, oozing thick, stringy slime. After seeing what that slime had done to Ajaya’s pen, Jane stayed alert to avoid walking into any of it.
Ei’Brai was desperately searching the ship’s data banks for scraps of information about this species. Apparently, it was virtually unheard of for it to ever reach this life stage. In fact, it was prohibited by law to allow it to happen. There were many, many safety protocols in place to prevent such an occurrence. Unfortunately there’d been no one on board to carry out those protocols for decades.