She hung from her seat, her body straining forward against the belt. An oxygen cylinder flew through the hatch. The glass shattered and the sound of the impact was sucked away with the burst of cold, hard glass knives that turned and dwindled before her eyes. Everything in the cabin that wasn't tied down leaped up and hurtled through the mouth of jagged teeth that had once been a viewport.
Blood pulsed in her face as she hung above a bottomless black hole. Large objects turned lazily in the sunlight. One of them was the engine module of Ringmaster, out there in front of her where it had no right to be. She could see the broken stump of the connecting stem. Her ship was coming apart.
"Oh, shit," she said, then had a vivid recollection of a tape she had once beard from the flight recorder of an airliner. That had been the last word the pilot had uttered, seconds before impact, when he knew he was going to die. She knew it, too, and the thought filled her with a vast disgust.
She watched in dull horror as the thing that had the engines wrapped more tentacles around it. it reminded her of a Portuguese man o' way with a fish snared in its poisonous grip. A fuel tank ruptured---soundlessly, with a strange beauty. Her world was coming apart with no noise to mark its passing. A cloud of compressed gas quickly dispersed. The thing did not seem to mind.
Other tentacles had other parts of the ship. The high-gain antenna almost seemed to be swimming away, but it moved too slowly as it tumbled down the well below her.
"Alive," she whispered. "It's alive."
"What did you say?" Bill was trying to hold himself secure with both hands m the instrument panel. He was strapped solidly to his chair, but the bolts which held it to the floor had broken.
The ship shuddered again, and Cirocco's chair came free. The
edge of the panel caught her across the thighs and she cried out as she struggled to free herself.
"Rocky, things are falling apart in here." She wasn't sure whose voice it was, but the fear reached her. She pushed, and managed to open her seat belt with one hand while holding her- self away from the panel with the other. She slipped out to the side and saw her chair bounce across the shattered array of dials, stick briefly in the frame of the broken port, and launch into space.
She thought her legs were broken, but found she could move them. The pain lessened as she drew on reserves of strength to help Bill out of his chair. Too late, she saw that his eyes were closed, his forehead and the inside of his helmet smeared with blood. As his body slithered loosely over the control panel she saw the dent his helmet had made in it. She fought for a grip on his thigh, then his calf, his booted foot, and he was falling, falling in the middle of a glittering shower of glass.
She came to her senses crouched in the leg well under the control panel. She shook her head, unable to recall what had put her there. But the force of deceleration was not so great now. Themis had succeeded in bringing Ringmaster---or what was left of it-up to its own rotational speed.
No one was talking. A hurricane of breathing came through the speaker in her helmet, but no words. There was nothing to say; the screams and curses had exhausted themselves. She got to her feet, grabbed the edge of the hatchway above her, and pulled herself through into chaos.
No lights worked, but sunlight spilled harshly across broken equipment from a large rip in the wall. Cirocco moved through the debris and a suited figure got out of her way. Her head throbbed. One of her eyes was swollen shut.
There was a lot of damage. It would take a while to get it cleaned up so they could get under weigh.
"I'll want a complete damage report from all departments," she said, to no one in particular. "This ship was never meant for that kind of treatment."
Only three people were standing. one figure knelt in the corner, holding the hand of another who was buried in wreckage.
"I can't move my legs. 1 can't move them."
"Who said that?" Cirocco shouted, trying to make the dizziness go away by shaking her head, succeeding only in making it worse.
"Calvin, attend to the injuries while 1 see what can be done for the ship."
"Yes, Captain."
No one moved, and Cirocco wondered why. They were all watching her. Why were they doing that?
"I'll be in my cabin if you need me. I'm not ... feeling so good".
One of the suits took a step toward her. She moved, trying to avoid the figure, and her foot went through the deck. Pain shot through her leg.
"It's coming in, over there. See? It's after us now."
"Where?".
"I don't see anything. Oh, God. I see it."
'Who said that? I want silence on this channel!"
"Look out! It's behind you!"
"Who said that?" She broke out in a sweat. Something was creeping up behind her, she could feel it, and it was one of those things that only come out into your bedroom after you switch off the light. Not a rat, but something worse that had no face but only a patch of slime and cold, dead, clammy hands. She groped in the red darkness and saw a writhing snake dart through a patch of sunlight in front of her.
It was so quiet. Why didn't they make any noise?
Her hand closed around something hard. She lifted it and began to chop, up and down, over and over as the thing flashed into view.
It wouldn't die. Something wrapped around her waist and started to pull. The suited figures jumped and ran around in the small space, but the tentacles shot out strings which stuck like hot tar. The room was laced with them and something had Cirocco by the legs and was tying to pull her apart like a wishbone. There was a pain like she had never felt before, but she continued to chop at the tentacle until awareness slipped from her.
CHAPTER FOUR
There was no light.
Even that bit of negative knowledge was something to cling to. The realization that the swaddling darkness was the result of the absence of something called light had cost her more than she would have believed possible, back when time had consisted of consecutive moments, Ue beads on a string. Now the beads scattered through her fingers. They rearranged themselves in a mockery of causality.
Anything needs a context. For darkness to mean anything there must he the memory of light. That memory was fading.
It had happened before, and would happen again. Sometimes there was a name to identify the disembodied consciousness. More often, there was only awareness.
She was in the belly of the beast.
(What beast?)
She couldn't remember. It would come back to her. Things usually did, if she waited long enough. And waiting was easy. Millenia were worth no more than milliseconds here. Time's stratfied edifice was a ruin.
Her name was Cirocco.
(What's a Cirocco?)
"Shur-rock-o. It's a hot wind from the desert, or an old model Volkswagen. Mom never told me which she had in mind." That had been her standard answer. She recalled saying it, could almost feel intangible lips shape the meaningless words.
"Call me Captain Jones." (Captain of what?)
Of the DSV Ringmaster, DSV for Deep Space Vessel, on its way to Satum with seven aboard. One of them was Gaby Plauget....
(Who is …)
... and ... and another was ... Bill ...
(What was that name again?)
It was on the tip of her tongue. A tongue was a soft, fleshy thing ... it could be found in the mouth, which was ...
She had it a moment ago, but what was a moment?
Something about light. Whatever that was.
There was no light. Hadn't she been here before? Yes, surely, but never mind, hold onto it, don't let the thought go. There was no light, and there was nothing else, either, but what was something else?
No smell. No taste. No sense of touch. No kinesthetic awareness of a body. Not even a sense of paralysis.
Cirocco! Her name was Cirocco.
Ringmaster. Saturn. Themis. Bill.
It returned all at once, as if she was living it again in a split second. She thought she would go mad from the flood of impressions, and with that thought came another, later memory. This had happened before. She had remembered, only to see it all slip away. She had been insane, many times.
She knew her grip was tenuous, but it was all she had. She knew where she was, and she knew the nature of her problem.