There was no firmary standing by to fax his dead body away and fix it in forty-eight hours or less, no blue worms waiting for Daeman now—whatever happened next was forever.
I am not afraid.
Daeman saw the animal ears, the slavering muzzle, the scaly shoulders, and he thought again how physical and fleshy Caliban was. He remembered from the grotto the obscene pink of the animal-thing’s bare scrotum and penis.
As Caliban pulled his teeth free to lunge again—even while Daeman knew that he couldn’t block the lunge toward his jugular a third time—the man reached down with his free left hand, found yielding globes, and squeezed as hard as he’d ever squeezed anything in his life.
Instead of lunging, the monster jerked its head far back, roared so loudly into the thin air that the noise echoed in the almost airless space, and then the beast struggled to break away. Daeman ducked low, shifted both hands lower—his right arm bled, but the fingers on that hand still worked—and squeezed again, hanging on and being dragged behind as Caliban writhed and kicked to break free. Daeman imagined pulping tomatoes with his powerful hands, his human hands, he imagined squeezing the juice out of oranges, of bursting pulp, and he hung on—the world had receded to the will to hang on and squeeze—and Caliban roared again, swung his long arm, and struck Daeman hard enough to send him flying.
For several seconds, Daeman was not conscious enough to defend himself or even to know where he was. But the creature did not use those seconds—he was too busy flailing and howling and holding himself, his scaly knees flying high as Caliban tried to crouch and hunch in midair. Just as Daeman’s vision began to clear, he saw the monster flail his way back to the terrace, grab the railing, and fling himself the fifteen feet between him and Daeman. The long arms and claws were already halfway to him.
Daeman groped blindly amidst the chairs and tables around him, found his iron pipe where it had bounced, lifted it to his shoulder with both hands, and savagely swung the metal into the side of Caliban’s head. The sound was most satisfying. Caliban’s head snapped aside and his flailing arms and tumbling torso crashed into Daeman, but the man flung the beast to one side—feeling his own right arm going numb now—and he dropped the pipe, leaped for the terrace railing, and then kicked up toward the semipermeable exit thirty feet above.
Too slow.
More used to the low-gravity, powered by hate now beyond human measurement, Caliban used hands, feet, legs, and momentum to rebound off the terrace wall, catch the railing with his toes, crouch, spring, and beat Daeman through the air to the marked panel above them.
Seeing that he wouldn’t win the race to the glass, Daeman grabbed a girder protruding fifteen feet from below the marked panel and arrested his movement. Caliban landed on the ledge, arms out, blocking the approach to the white square. Daeman saw that there was no way that he could get around or past those wide arms, those raking claws. He suddenly felt the pain from his torn and punctured arm hitting his mind and torso like an electric shock, then felt the growing numbness there as warning of the weakness and shock that must soon follow.
Caliban threw his head back, roared again, showed his teeth, and chanted—“What I hate, He consecrates—what I ate, He celebrates! No mate for thee—more meat for me!” Caliban was ready to spring after Daeman as soon as the human turned to flee.
Seeing the raw scars on Caliban’s chest, Daeman found himself smiling grimly. Savi hurt him with her shot. She didn’t die without a fight.
Neither will I.
Instead of turning to flee, Daeman pulled himself horizontal on the girder, squatted, gathered his remaining energy in his legs, put his head down, and launched himself straight at Caliban’s chest.
It took Daeman two or three seconds to cross the space between them, but for an instant the monster seemed too surprised to react. Food was not supposed to act in this impertinent manner—prey was not supposed to charge. Then the creature realized that his dinner was coming to him—wearing the thermskin he desired—and Caliban showed all of his teeth in a smile that became a snarl. The beast threw his arms and legs around the incoming human in a grip that Daeman knew the monster would not release until the man was dead and half-eaten.
They went through the membrane together, Daeman feeling the sensation of tearing through a curtain of sticky gauze, Caliban bellowing into thin air one second and into cold silence the next. Together, they tumbled into outer space, Daeman hugging Caliban as fiercely as the monster was clutching Daeman, the human’s left hand pressed up against the monster’s underjaw, trying to keep those teeth away for the eight or ten seconds he thought he needed.
The thermskin suit reacted immediately to vacuum—tightening fiercely into Daeman’s flesh, constricting until it acted as a pressure suit, sealing off even molecular gaps that would bleed air or blood or heat into space. The osmosis mask inflated the clear visor and switched the movement and purification of the man’s recycled breath to 100 percent. Cooling tubules in the thermskin let Daeman’s natural sweat flow quickly through channels, cooling his sunward side even as body heat was transferred to the part of his body in minus-two-hundred-degree shadow. All this happened in a fraction of a second and Daeman did not even notice. He was too busy thrusting Caliban’s jaw and muzzle upward, keeping those teeth away from his throat and shoulder.
Caliban was too strong. He shook his head, freed it from Daeman’s weakening pressure, and then threw open his mouth to bellow before ripping the man’s throat out.
Air rushed out of Caliban’s chest and mouth like water from a punctured gourd. Saliva froze even as it spewed into space. Caliban clapped his long-fingered hands over his ears, but not in time—blood globules spewed into space as the creature’s eardrums exploded. The blobs of blood began to boil in vacuum and, barely more than a second later, the blood in Caliban’s veins began to boil as well.
Caliban’s eyes started to swell and more blood spurted from his tear ducts. His muzzle moved up and down as his mouth worked like a fish’s, wheezing silently in vacuum, gasping for air, but no air came. The surface of Caliban’s bulging eyes began to freeze over and cloud white.
Daeman had wrenched himself free, tumbled across the outside terrace—almost floated helplessly off into space, but caught the metal-mesh railing—then hauled himself hand over hand to where the familiar sonie was tethered to the metal surface. He didn’t want to run. He didn’t want to turn his back on Caliban. He wanted to stay and kill the thrashing monster with his gloved hands.
But one of those hands wasn’t working now—his torn right arm now hung useless as he kicked the final ten feet to the low vehicle. Harman. Hannah.
A human would be dead by now, unprotected in space—knowing so little about anything, Daeman instinctively knew that—but Caliban was not human. Spewing blood and frozen air like some horrible comet boiling away its own surface as it approached the sun, Caliban tumbled, flailed, found purchase on the gridded metal of the terrace, and kicked his way back through the semipermeable wall, back into air and relative warmth.
Daeman was too busy to watch. Pulling himself down prone into the driver’s cushions, he turned his gaze to the metal shelf where the virtual control panel should be. It was off.
How do I activate it? What do I do if I can? How did Savi start it up?
Daeman’s mind was blank. His vision narrowed as black dots danced in his field of view. He was hyperventilating and close to passing out as he worked frantically to recall the image of Savi flying the sonie, activating the controls. He couldn’t remember.