To Do or Die (A Jump Universe Novel) Read online

  “How about up. I’d like to find the control center. I’m kind of curious as to what it looks like.”

  “Me too,” said Lek.

  “Then the control center it is.”

  Still, Mary told off two of her miners to hang in the general area of the ramp. They still had radio contact with the Second Chance, but the static was getting worse the farther they went.

  Bruno made another discovery, or guess. One side of the ramp had a different-color floor and some sort of writing on the wall. “I bet that section has less gravity so people can walk up it easier.”

  Ray shrugged, as much as his suit let him. One guess was as good as any. His guess was that they were for directing traffic. Folks going up were to stay on one side, those going down the other.

  Of course, his explanation limped a bit. Why was there signage on only one side?

  He was glad he kept his mouth shut. Let the young jabber on like magpies; it hurt them less when they fell.

  The next deck was much like the one below it although there seemed to be shops and other places of business spreading out from the spindle. At least that was what Bruno and Kat named them.

  Ray let them guess and headed for the next ramp.

  There things got interesting.

  The spindle reached out to cover half the deck. There was still plenty of room for the promenading customer to look out the windows or head for the next ramp up. But to the inward side was a lot of blank wall.

  No art. No signs. Just blank wall.

  Interesting.

  Mary sent Du with several of her miners to the right. She and Ray, with Lek and the kids, went left around the spindle.

  For the first time since they’d entered the station, the science-fiction pair were quiet.

  They were halfway around when they found doors. Discreet doors with small signs that, no doubt, said, FOR AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. KEEP OUT! THIS MEANS YOU! WHAT PART OF KEEP OUT DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND!

  The kids provided the commentary. Apparently, they had vivid imaginations and a lot of experience with not keeping out of what they had been told to keep out of.

  Ray smiled and asked Lek to figure out a way in.

  That took more time than he expected. Du and his team of explorers were just coming up on them when Lek said, “Well, bless my soul. It’s that easy.”

  “How easy?” Mary asked.

  “Well, likely it wouldn’t be this easy if the station were still under power, but if I just slip a thin blade of metal where the lock is, I can push the thing back in its socket, and bingo! The door opens.”

  It didn’t.

  “Okay, let’s see if there are more locks,” the old miner said.

  There were. The three species that built the space jumps used three locks to secure important doors.

  Lek applied three thin blades of metal, and those three locks were defeated.

  The doors opened wide. Mary assigned a miner to see that they didn’t close. He wedged them open, and they all moved into a dark space that began to light up as its overhead reflected back to them the light of their own lamps.

  Clearly, this was a vestibule. Three doors led out, one to the right and left, and one deeper in.

  Ray didn’t even have to tell the rest of them; they headed for the inner door. It resisted them for a few minutes until one of the kids asked if it might not open inward but maybe sideways.

  Lek pried it open with a simple crowbar, then strong backs went to work pushing the doors back into the wall.

  “Just like in the movies,” Kat said.

  Inside was one big circular room. Above was the usual glow stuff that took up their light and gave it back a hundredfold.

  Along the walls were blank spaces that took in the light and gave back nothing.

  “Monitors. Computer displays,” Kat guessed before Ray could even open his mouth. There were “things” beneath the so-called monitors, but whether they were readouts or their type of keyboards was anyone’s guess and, for once, the kids weren’t guessing.

  It was what stood in the middle of the room that drew them in.

  It was an even-sided obelisk. At first glance, it looked like the stone from Santa Maria. But only at first glance.

  This one was as different from the stone one as a plastic mock-up is from a real rocket ship.

  One glance at it, and Ray was filled with a thousand questions as to why a mere stone had been made to do what it did when something like this was so much more. So much . . .

  Looking at it, Ray didn’t know what “more” he was trying to describe. What he did know was what the stone had been carved to look like. That the stone had done anything left Ray with so many questions that he couldn’t begin to order them.

  “What is that thing?” Kat asked.

  “The main control of the station,” Ray said without the slightest doubt in his mind.

  “How does it work?” Mary asked.

  “I haven’t the foggiest idea,” Ray said.

  “Is it working?” Mary asked.

  “Matt,” Ray called on net. “What do things look like from your end?”

  “We moved the Second Chance in close to the station,” came through clear as a bell. “The ship was building up an electrical charge. As soon as we got within ten klicks of the station, it drained away, and we’re doing fine.”

  “Is the station showing any activity?” Ray asked.

  “Nothing that it hadn’t previously. Which wasn’t a lot.”

  “Fine. Let us know if anything changes.”

  “You’ll be the second to know, right after me,” was the skipper’s reply.

  “It feels like soap,” Kat said.

  While Ray was talking, the two kids, clearly showing a deep and sincere lack of good sense, had been messing with the obelisk.

  “Feel it. Your gloves just slips off it like it was a bar of soap,” the young scientist said.

  “Be glad it didn’t eat your hand,” Du, ever the pessimist, growled.

  “Don’t be silly,” Kat said.

  “Does it reflect light?” Ray asked.

  “Hard to tell,” Lek said. “Too much light in here.”

  “Everyone, douse your lights,” Ray ordered.

  “How come?” one of the miners demanded.

  “What’s the matter, you afraid of the dark?”

  “No, but being in the dark in a weird place like this don’t strike me as the best idea ever.”

  “Please douse your lights,” Ray said, having a hard time believing that he was asking these Marines, even these former Marines, to please do something.

  “You heard the colonel. Lights out,” Mary growled. “If any of you get eaten by monsters in the dark, I’ll apologize and put you on light duty for the rest of the month.”

  “It’s the twenty-eighth already,” someone shot back, but the lights went out.

  It took a long minute for the room to darken, but when it did, it was darker than any place Ray had ever been.

  “I guess this is what dark really is,” Kat said.

  “It gives me the willies,” someone said.

  “Colonel, what do you want to do?” Mary asked.

  Ray leaned close to the obelisk. He’d coasted around it before the lights went out. This particular side seemed to call to him. If anyone asked, he’d never be able to say just what he meant by that. Still, as the dark got darker, he’d waited at this particular side.

  Leaning against it, he felt nothing he hadn’t felt walking around it. There was some kind of weird, minimal greeting for him, but nothing more.

  He leaned as close to it as the laws of physics allowed, two items not being able to occupy the same space, and switched on the three lights of his suit.

  The obelisk reflected nothing back. It took the light in and kept it.

  None of Ray’s light made it up to the overhead. Those . . . whatevers . . . stayed dark.

  “That’s interesting,” Mary said.

  “Very interesting,” Lek e
choed. “Colonel, would you mind if I shined a laser into this thing? All my instruments haven’t been able to give me any kind of analysis of it. My eyes tell me it’s sitting right here in front of me. My best stuff for field testing minerals don’t tell me a thing. It’s as if the damn thing isn’t there.”

  “Go ahead, Lek. It seems to like the light. Let’s see what it thinks of a small laser. It is a small, low-power laser, isn’t it?”

  “I couldn’t lug around anything else. All I’m looking for is a reflection. Something that tells me what it’s made of. I’m going to beam it at one of the edges. With luck, some of the light will get through to the other side, and we can tell something from what it lets out.

  Ray waited for half a minute while nothing happened.

  “Lek, turn on the laser.”

  “Colonel, it’s been on since you told me to turn it on.”

  “I don’t see any light.”

  “Neither do I, sir. It’s taking in the laser and not giving anything back.”

  “Folks,” came Captain Mattim’s voice from the Second Chance, “we’re seeing changes in the station. We’re getting readouts from the station where before, we weren’t getting anything.”

  Ray beamed his lights up at the overhead. The blackest black went to gray, then almost decent illumination.

  It was just enough for him to see the door roll closed behind them.

  FOURTEEN

  “THAT’S INTERESTING,” WAS Kat’s only reaction.

  Mary ordered Lek back to reopen the door. He went as fast as he could drift.

  “I think we’re getting some gravity,” he said as he hit the wall next to the doors.

  Bruno held out his rifle and let go of it. It didn’t stay suspended in space but began a slow, lazy descent to the floor.

  Bruno grabbed his gun and spun around, looking for what monster had made it fall. He, of course, saw nothing but his fellow humans.

  Kat held up her box of sensors. “Maybe a hundredth of a gee. No air, though. It’s still vacuum.”

  “That would depend on where they kept their air and how much of the life support system is still working,” Mary said with the calm that Ray expected in a good leader.

  “Lek, how’s that door coming?” she next asked.

  “Not so good, ma’am. What I used to get in here isn’t working to get us out. This door is sincerely locked.”

  “Matt, what are you getting?” Ray called on net.

  “Folks, things are happening on that station. Not a lot, but my people tell me that some thing or things are powering up. One makes noises like a big defensive laser, but we don’t see anything like a laser anywhere on the station. It’s kind of like the lack of readouts on that Vanishing Box on Santa Maria.”

  “That got you worried, Matt?”

  “This whole thing has me worried. Could you folks hotfoot it back here?”

  “No can do, Matt. It seems we’re now locked in, and the door won’t open for us anymore.”

  “Damn. Ray, I’m going to have to back the Second Chance off a few thousand klicks. Maybe more.”

  “I understand. Could you leave the shuttle for us?”

  “Sorry, Ray, but the crew already docked back with us. I’m not sure if I ordered them back that they’d go.”

  “Not everyone loves me like Rita,” Ray said, remembering how one pilot had held on the deck against orders so his crippled body could be lugged aboard.

  “When we get out of here, we’ll signal for you to come in and pick us up.”

  “We’ll be waiting for your call,” Abeeb answered.

  Mary leaned close to touch helmets with Ray. “Which begs the question, how do we get out of here?”

  “Or how do we get this station to go back to sleep?” he added.

  “Was it asleep?”

  “That’s the impression I got.”

  “You’re feeling things about this place?”

  “Sort of.”

  “You want to lean against this thing and see if it will talk to you?”

  “That’s what we do next.”

  Mary stepped away, then had two of her miners rig a line around the obelisk and attach it to Ray so he was held in close to it. He pressed his hands firmly against the surface of what he had come to think of as the command mechanism.

  Nothing.

  He rearranged the gloves on his hands to bring more of his palms and fingers to the place of contact.

  More nothing.

  Now he kept his hands there, but pushed his helmet against the obelisk.

  Again, nothing.

  “Mary, could you help me? I need to get my forehead up against the faceplate of this helmet.”

  “They aren’t designed for that. I think they’re designed to prevent that.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I’m finding. Could you and Lek hold it in place and pull back on my collar? Do whatever you think will help me get my head up against the surface.”

  They worked at it for a minutes before Ray was satisfied.

  “You think maybe we ought to blow the doors? We got some C-14. We could do it,” Du suggested while they struggled with the helmet.

  “And if it doesn’t blow out the door, where’s the pressure going to go?” Mary asked back.

  “I don’t know. You miners blow a lot of things.”

  “Not in an enclosed space, we don’t. You want smashed miner, you might try that.”

  “How strong are these walls?” the street-smart kid demanded.

  “You take two of my miners over there and try to drill a hole in one of them,” Mary said, then leaned her helmet against Ray’s. “I hope this works, ’cause I don’t know how long I can keep these folks from trying damn-fool stunts like that one.”

  “I hear you,” Ray said. “I think I’ve got it the way I want it,” he said on net.

  He leaned hard against the obelisk, hands and forehead separate from it only by the thin film of his gloves and the few millimeters of faceplate.

  Hello. Everything is fine. Sleep now. Go back to sleep.

  He might as well have been talking to himself.

  He leaned back.

  “Anything?” Mary asked, helmet to helmet.

  “Not a damn thing.”

  “Any more ideas, Colonel?”

  “Yeah, but you and Rita ain’t going to like it.”

  “What ain’t I gonna like?”

  “Help me take the gloves and helmet off.”

  “Bad idea,” Mary said.

  “You got one better?”

  “No,” she admitted.

  “You and Lek help me get the gloves and helmet off. I make contact and as soon as I sing it a lullaby and put it back to sleep, you lock me back in my suit.”

  “The idea stinks, sir.”

  “It’s the only idea any of us have.”

  “Du, how you doing drilling that hole?” Mary asked on net.

  “Not. We ain’t even marred the surface.”

  “So we’re not likely to blow our way out of here. Okay, listen up. The colonel thinks if he goes naked with this thing, he can maybe talk it out of what it’s doing and put it back to sleep.”

  “Don’t space kill a guy?” Du asked.

  “It does, Du, but it takes time,” Mary said. “Not a lot of time, but a few minutes. Okay, listen up, folks. Here’s what we’re going to do. Du, you got fast hands. You work on his right glove. Kat, you’re small. Do you think you could handle his left glove?”

  “I’ll try,” had more tremble in it than Ray liked hearing when his life depended on it, but Mary was right. It was going to get awfully crowded around him, and a small set of hands might be just what he needed.

  Without a word, several of Mary’s miners began rigging more cables around the obelisk and attaching Du, Kat, and Mary firmly in place around Ray.

  “Ray, have you ever considered anything as crazy as this before in your life?” Mary asked.

  “Can’t remember ever.”

  “Well, the old-tim
ers in the mines like to tell every nugget about what they did back in the day. No doubt, none of them ever did the naked-to-space thing, but it makes for a scary tale.

  “When you’re naked to vacuum, you let everything out of your system. Your lungs, your gut, your whatever. You try to hold any of that inside, and you’re likely to pop your guts like a balloon. Even after we put you back together, you’ll be bleeding out internally, so Colonel, if you got any problem with farting or maybe pissing your pants or pooping in them, get that silly shit out of your head. If it wants out, you let it. And yes, you’ll be having a hell of a time getting air back into you when you’re done with this stupid idea, but we’ll worry about that later. Assuming there’s enough of us left later to worry about you.”

  “Thank you for your loving advice,” Ray said, wondering just how bad this was going to get.

  “And if you think I’m making this worse than it has to be, Colonel,” said Mary, as if reading his mind, “it’s going to be a whole lot worse than I’m telling you. Just pray that once all the pain starts, you can remember why you are doing this. Okay?”

  “Okay,” Ray said. “This will hurt more than I’ve ever hurt in my life, and I’ve got to remember through the agony that I’m here to talk nice things to this rock, or whatever it is.”

  “That’s the way it is. You still want to go through with this?”

  “Anybody come up with a better idea while you were scaring the shit out of me?”

  That brought a big silence.

  “Now, before we start, you get as much oxygen as you can in your blood.”

  Ray took deep breaths, all the time wondering what that would do to his bloodstream and trying not to think about the bends, not that he knew a lot about them.

  A minute later, he said, “Okay, folks. On three, start taking the gloves off. Helmet, too, Mary.”

  “One, two, you still want to do this?” Mary asked. He didn’t say anything.

  “Three.”

  Immediately, he began feeling his life-giving air leak from his hands and neck.

  Don’t hold anything in, he remembered to tell himself. Let it all out.