"It means someone's going to have to go out there," Tara said, "and see what it is. Iridium…hmm. According to Tess, it's a natural metal, found mostly in asteroids. But Tess says it shouldn't be ninety-seven percent—that's much too high. I don't know what this could be."
"I'll suit up," I said. Under siege—we were under siege. The bastards just wouldn't leave us alone. When was it going to end? And how?
"No, Wester. I'll go. You…stay here. Just stay here."
"I'm all right."
"I know you are."
"All right, I'm not all right. But I'm going out there anyway—no arguments! Help me suit up."
"Wester, please—let me go."
"I'll go. We can't afford to lose you, Tara. I can't pilot this damned ship. I'll be all right! Quit worrying!"
###
Outside in the vac, I chewed on mags. I was ice cold, but I felt just fine. I walked the skin of the Omni ship like an intruding insect. The ship was a massive, triangular wedge of blackened cenite with a long nose boom.
I had come out an airlock topsides, but I was well back of the front viewport—I was alone. Cold stars burnt overhead, a magnificent panorama of alien constellations, strange nebulae of silver dust and a faint glowing road in the sky.
Atom's Road, I thought. It was the nucleus of our own galaxy, seen from the wrong side. And all we had to do was follow the stars to the other edge.
"Play me the stars, Sweety." The music of the stars, crawling over my skin. Sweety knew—she knew me better than anyone. I snapped the safeties off my E. The right leg of the A-suit was dead, but it was all right—I could still walk.
"Turn off that music, Wester. Can you hear me?" Tara, right in my ears.
"I hear you fine, Tara. You see everything?"
"The monitor's clear, Wester. The first one is right up ahead—be careful!"
I had a great view of the dead world we were orbiting. This was surely the last stop, the last world, on the very edge of our galaxy. After this there was nothing. After this, you would die from the distance. It was a massive, cold, dark rock pitted with the scars of the dust of the cosmos. Last stop, I thought. Omega Spiral, Null Six Sector, a dead world with no name. Last stop, for the Legion. I looked into the pocked face of that nameless rock and saw our God, the Legion's harsh God, looking right back at me.
I turned my face away. The first protrusion was right up ahead. I approached it carefully, my E on laser. Tara could see it clearly in the tacmod; she could see everything I could.
"What is it?" she asked.
"I don't know. Let me get closer."
Whatever it was, it put a chill to my flesh. It was a dark metallic lump, delta-shaped, a little over a mike long, with a thin extension at one end—like a tail. A black star howled in my ears.
"You getting that, Tara?"
"I see it."
"You ever see anything like this, Sweety?"
"I cannot identify this creature, Thinker. However, I now detect a living core—it is alive."
Alive. The stars burnt silently overhead. I had it centered in my sights.
"It's made of metal, Sweety. How can it be alive?"
"I detect extremely powerful molecular acids, Thinker. It appears that the cenite hull is under attack."
"Under attack? You mean this thing eats cenite?"
"Wester!" Tara interrupted, urgently. "The New Worlds!"
"What about the New Worlds?"
"That's one of the things they reported—flocks of weird metallic parasites cruising deep space, suddenly attacking the ship, eating the hull. Our tacmods don't know about it because nobody else ever reported it. The information from the New Worlds had been getting so bizarre, it was hard to judge what was real and what was not, so it was never added to the database. But I remember it now, I read every one of those dispatches. Iridium! What did they call them—vac leeches, that's it. The damned things are so dense they can survive in the vac. They can sleep for millions of years, then awaken to vector in on an approaching source of metal. And they feed off the metal, producing everything they need from the chemical reactions."
"Vac leeches," I said quietly. Wonderful.
"Get them off, Wester! We've got to kill them all, or they'll eat right through the hull. This is their new home—they're not leaving. Kill them, Wester!"
"Sure you wouldn't rather try and communicate with them?"
"Use the laser, Wester. Drill holes in the damn' things, then cut them off the hull. Make sure they're dead, then toss them into the vac. It they're alive, they'll come back!"
"How about keeping one for a souvenir? Something that can live in the vac might be of great interest to the Legion."
"I don't care about that, Wester. Just kill the damn' things, and get rid of them."
"You've changed, Tara."
"So have you! Get to work!"
"Yes sir!" I drilled the first creature from side to side with the laser. It took awhile to burn all the way through. A spray of evil gas burst out the other side, but the creature did not move. It remained stuck to the skin of the ship. The tail snapped off and drifted away.
"These things are not too smart," I reported.
"Do you think it's dead?" Tara asked.
"It's made out of metal—how do I know? I can't find a pulse."
"Separate it from the hull."
"Whatever you say." I grabbed ahold of it and pulled. Nothing—it did not budge.
"It's fused to the hull," I said.
"Use the laser!"
I cut it off with the laser and lifted it up in one hand. The hull was scarred and pitted. The underside of the creature was pretty awful, covered with puckered little round holes that looked like suckers or probes. Nothing moved. I tossed the thing off into the vac.
"Leech One gone," I said. "Let me know if it comes back, and we'll try something else."
"Get back here, Wester!" Tara sounded frightened.
"What? I've got four more of these things to go."
"Get back here now! Quickly!"
I hustled. What else, Deadman? What the hell else?
Chapter 17
Silver Bullet
I stepped out of the airlock back into the ship, my A-suit suddenly running with moisture. Tara was right there, E in one hand. Willard huddled in a corner and Gildron crouched in a doorway, E at his shoulder, covering the corridor. A psybloc grenade was popping and spitting out there.
"What's the sit?" I asked, snapping off my helmet.
"There's something in the ship, Wester," Tara said. She was pale and tense.
"What is it?"
"We don't know! Movement, midships."
"Sweety—report! What have you got?" I joined Gildron by the door to the corridor with some difficulty, dragging my dead leg, pausing in the doorway with my E at my shoulder.
The psybloc grenade was still burning.
"No life, no movement, situation normal," Sweety replied calmly.
"There's nothing there, Tara."
"I know! But there was something there. Movement! A great deal of movement—Tess reported it!"
I took a deep breath. "I see," I said.
"It was mid-ships, Wester. Movement! Let's go—we've got to investigate!"
"Terrific," I said. "I suggest we resolve this before those vac leeches eat through the hull. Help me out of this A-suit—I can't move in this grav."
###
In the heart of the ship, everything changed. The corridors were still round but they were dark and cold and wet, built of coiled cenite, a road for the dead, the overhead bristling with awful, nameless devices. I had been in corridors like this before, in the Mound on Uldo and in the O's starbase on Andrion 3. I had felt then that we were in the entrails of some gigantic beast. Now, creeping down that obscene road, I felt the same. It was dark. There was just enough light to find our way around. I pulled the pin on a psybloc grenade and clutched it in my left hand. All I had to do was release my grip and the grenade would fall, and activate.