Peter David - After Earth

Outside the geothermal zone, the forest was going into a deep, rapid freeze. Every tree in the vicinity was developing a thick skin of ice.

Kitai began to cough. “Sir,” he said, seemingly hoping for a response from his father, “I made it. I’m here.”

Ignoring his own condition, he checked his son’s vital signs. They scrolled in front of him. “Make sure you have everything,” he instructed Kitai. “Take your next inhaler. Your oxygen extraction is bottoming.”

Dutifully, Kitai opened the med-kit. His father had gotten him this far. The last thing he was going to do was diverge from Cypher’s instructions.

We’re doing all right , Kitai thought. Spacing out the oxygen. Had a little setback before, but I’ll be calmer next time, smarter . Then he saw something bad—very bad. Of the five oxygen vials left to him, two were broken. Quickly, he closed the case, hiding its contents from Cypher’s view.

I don’t have enough breathing fluid , he thought. What am I going to do? How am I going to reach the tail section and the beacon if I don’t have enough to breathe?

“Use the next dose of breathing fluid,” Cypher said.

Kitai strained not to cough. “I’m good, Dad. I don’t need it right now.”

Cypher watched his son, knowing that he was lying but refusing to berate him for it. “Okay,” he said.

Finally Kitai coughed a deep cough, his chest making a hollow wheezing sound. He was starving for oxygen, no question about it. Still Cypher said nothing. He just watched and waited even though his son’s struggles gradually were getting worse. Kitai’s coughs became more brutal, driving home the sad but inescapable fact that human beings no longer could breathe the air of their homeworld.

To make things worse, the cockpit’s medical computer displayed a graphic: ARTERIAL SHUNT 70% EFFECTIVE. Cypher was still getting blood, getting oxygen, but not as much as he had gotten before. Why?

Then he saw it on the holographic readout: His self-administered shunt was slipping on the ragged end, where the fit hadn’t been perfect. Blood was escaping from it, running down to the floor. The medical computer advised him to commence transfusion. It told him he needed four units of O-positive.

But all he cared about, all he could hear, was Kitai’s deep, racking coughs. All he could see was the pain on Kitai’s face as he fought for air. It was a tough lesson, but one Kitai had to learn: Listen to your father .

Kitai dragged in breath after breath, each more difficult than the last. Finally, he couldn’t stand it anymore. If he went without breathing for another minute, he would pass out. And that might be a disaster from which he couldn’t come back. Finally, reluctantly, he administered the second vial of breathing fluid.

Instantly, he could feel the oxygen spread throughout his body, meeting his needs. His breathing slowed. His strength came back to him.

“Second dose of breathing fluid complete,” he said. “Over.”

“Count off remaining so you can keep track,” his father said. “Over.”

Kitai hated the idea of lying to his father. However, he had no choice. He couldn’t take a chance on Cypher pulling the plug on the mission, especially when it was their only hope.

His face flushed with shame, Kitai replied, “Four vials remain, sir.”

Just then, a pack of wolves slinked past him, seeking a warm spot against the frigid cold. A couple of deer lay down to go to sleep. Bison crowded in, side by side with jade-eyed tigers. Everyone had sought the same refuge. Even insects , Kitai thought. During the day, they might be bitter enemies, but at night, when their world froze over, they enjoyed a kind of truce.

Otherwise, none of them would survive.

Kitai saw a bunch of monkeys with bioluminescent eyes staring at him. He couldn’t help staring back. Suddenly the sky opened up and unleashed a mighty downpour. Kitai ducked back into the musty hollow of a huge rotting tree, but it didn’t keep him very dry.

Right in front of him, a bee struggled to free itself from a spiderweb. The more it moved, the more it sent a signal to the spider that had made the web. Suddenly, a spider bigger than Kitai’s fist showed up and rushed down to claim the bee. But the bee wasn’t defenseless. As the spider approached, it tried to sting its captor. Kitai watched the struggle, caught up in it. Lightning flashed as the bee tried to free itself, but to no avail. The spider just hung there, waiting. Finally, the bee got too tired to buzz its wings. But instead of moving in for the kill, the spider backed up. It looked confused.

Kitai supposed the spider couldn’t find the bee unless it moved and sent a vibration through the strands of the web. The spider began testing each thread for its tension until it came upon the thread on which the bee was trapped. Suddenly, the spider made another charge. The bee flailed wildly, trying to escape from the thread that was holding it down. Meanwhile, the spider came in low, its venomous fangs visible.

Abruptly the bee went still again, ceasing to fight, and again the spider seemed to become confused. It backed up, testing the tension on the web threads until it located the bee again. By this time, the bee seemed exhausted. It barely struggled, tracking the spider circling across its web. Then the spider came in for the kill.

Suddenly the bee snapped to life and flew up despite the thread stuck to its leg. Attaining a position over the spider, it sank its stinger into the spider’s soft exposed back. The spider twitched. Then the bee stung it again and again. The spider, poisoned with the bee’s venom, moved slowly to the middle of its web. The bee took advantage of the respite to try to fly away. But the spider’s thread held it in place. Finally the bee died, hanging from the thread.

Kitai watched it hang there. After what it had done, it seemed to deserve a better fate.

A question came to mind, something Kitai had meant to ask for a long time. “Dad…?” he said. “Dad—”

He imagined his father awakening from a state of semiconsciousness, dealing with his injuries as best he could. For a moment, there was no response.

Then Kitai heard: “I’m here. SitRep?”

“How did you beat it?” he asked his father. “How did you first ghost? Tell me how you did it.”

Cypher pictured his son, alone in an unfamiliar and hostile world. Afraid of what he could see—and especially of what he couldn’t. Now more than ever he needed to hear this.

“I was at the original Nova Sea of Serenity,” Cypher began matter-of-factly. “The settlements. I went out for a run. Alone. Something we are never supposed to do. An Ursa de-camos not more than a few meters away. I go for my cutlass, and it shoots its pincer right through my shoulder.

“Next thing I know, we’re falling over the cliff. Falling thirty meters straight down into the river.

“We settle on the bottom. It’s on top of me, but it’s not moving. I realized it’s trying to drown me. I start thinking, I am going to die. I’m going to die . I cannot believe this is how I’m going to die.

“I can see my blood bubbling up, mixing with the sunlight shining through the water, and I think, Wow, that’s really pretty .”

Kitai was amazed that his father could come to that conclusion at such a time. Hell, it amazed him that his father thought anything was pretty. It was a side of him Kitai hadn’t seen before, or if he had seen it, it was so long ago that he didn’t remember.

“Everything slows down, and I think to myself, I wonder if an Ursa can hold its breath longer than a human? And, I think of Faia. She was pregnant with you, and close, too. Half a moon’s cycle away, maybe twenty-three days. She was so beautiful.