George Martin - Tuf Voyaging

“It’s about time,” Celise Waan said when Tuf entered.

“I told you Tuf hadn’t abandoned us,” Jefri Lion said.

Haviland Tuf let the pressure suits fall to the deck, where they lay like a puddle of green and gold. “Mushroom is outside,” Tuf said in a flat, passionless voice.

“Well, yes,” Celise Waan said. She grabbed a suit and began squeezing into the green metallic fabric. It bound her tightly about the middle; the members of the Ecological Engineering Corps had seemingly been less fleshy than she. “Couldn’t you have gotten me a larger size?” she complained. “Are you sure these suits still work?”

“The construction seems sound,” Tuf said. “It will be necessary to infuse the airpacs with whatever living bacteria remain from the ship’s cultures. How did Mushroom come to be outside?”

Jefri Lion cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Uh, yes,” he said. “Celise was afraid you weren’t coming back, Tuf. You were gone so long. She thought you’d left us here.”

“A base and foundless suspicion,” said Tuf.

“Uh, yes,” said Lion. He looked away, reached for his own suit.

Celise Waan pulled on a golden boot, sealed it. “It’s your fault,” she said to Tuf. “If you hadn’t been gone so long, I wouldn’t have gotten restless.”

“Indeed,” said Tuf. “What, might I venture to ask, has your restlessness to do with Mushroom?”

“Well, I thought you weren’t coming back, and we had to get out of here,” the anthropologist said. She sealed up her second boot. “But you made me nervous, you know, with all your talk of plagues. So I cycled the cat through the airlock. I tried to get that damned black-and-white one, but it kept running away and hissing at me. The gray one just let me pick it up. I dumped it out and we’ve been watching it through the screens. I figured we could see whether or not it got sick. If it didn’t show any symptoms, well, then probably it would be safe for us to risk coming out.”

“I grasp the principle,” said Haviland Tuf.

Havoc came bounding in the room, playing with something. She saw Tuf and headed toward him, walking with a pronounced kittenish swagger.

“Jefri Lion,” said Tuf, “if you would, please apprehend Havoc, take her back to the living quarters, and confine her there.”

“Uh, certainly,” Lion said. He caught up Havoc as she went by him. “Why?”

“I would prefer henceforth to keep Havoc secure and separated from Celise Waan,” Tuf said.

Celise Waan, helmet cradled under her arm, made a noise of derision. “Oh, stuff and nonsense. The gray one is fine.”

“Permit me to mention a concept with which you are perhaps unfamiliar,” said Haviland Tuf. “It is referred to as an incubation period.”

“ I’m going to kill that bitch ,” Kaj Nevis threatened as he and Anittas made their way down a dark hallway. “ Damn her. You can’t get a decent mercenary anymore. ” The battlesuit’s huge head turned to search for the cybertech, the faceplate glowing. “ Hurry up. ”

“I cannot match your strides,” Anittas said as he hurried up. His sides ached from the effort of keeping up with Nevis’s pace; his cyberhalf was strong as metal and quick as electronic circuitry, but his biohalf was poor tired wounded flesh, and blood still oozed from the cuts Nevis had opened around his midsection. He was feeling dizzy and hot, as well. “It’s not far now,” he said. “Down this corridor and to the left, third door. It is a substantial substation. I felt it when I was plugged in. I will be able to meld with the main system.” And rest, he thought. He was incredibly weary, and his biohalf ached and throbbed.

“I WANT THE DAMN LIGHTS ON,” Nevis commanded. “AND THEN I WANT YOU TO FIND HER FOR ME. DO YOU UNDERSTAND?”

Anittas nodded, and pushed himself harder. Two small hot pinpoints of red burned on his cheeks, unseen by his silver-metal eyes, and for an instant his vision blurred and wavered, and he heard a loud buzzing in his ears. He stopped.

“WHAT’S WRONG NOW?” Nevis demanded.

“I am experiencing some loss of function,” Anittas said. “I must reach the computer room and run a check on my systems.” He started forward again, and staggered. Then his balance deserted him totally, and he fell.

Rica Dawnstar was positive that she had lost them. Kaj Nevis was pretty formidable in his giant metal monkey suit, no doubt of that, but he was anything but silent. Rica had eyes like one of Tuf’s cats, another advantage in her profession. Where she could see, she ran; in the corridors that were totally black, she felt her way along, as quickly and quietly as she could. Down here the Ark was a maze of rooms and hallways. She threaded her way through the labyrinth, turning and twisting and turning once again, doubling back on herself, and listening carefully as Nevis’s clanging tread grew steadily fainter and finally faded altogether.

Only then, when she knew she was safe, did Rica Dawnstar begin to explore the warren in which she found herself. There were light plates set in the walls. Some responded to the touch of her hand, others did not. She lit her way wherever she could. The first section she passed through was residential—small sleeping rooms off narrow corridors, each with a bed, desk, computer console, and telescreen. Some rooms were empty and sterile; in others she found beds unmade and clothing strewn across the floor. Everything was neat and clean. Either the residents had just moved out the night before, or the Ark had kept this whole portion of the ship sealed and inviolate and in repair, until their approach had somehow activated it.

The next section had not been so fortunate. Here the rooms were full of dust and debris, and in one she found an ancient skeleton, a woman, still asleep in a bed that had collapsed into shapeless decay centuries before. What a difference a little air can make, Rica thought.

The corridors led into other corridors, wider ones. She peered into storage rooms, into chambers full of equipment and others packed with empty cages, into spotless white laboratories in endless succession that lined the sides of a corridor as wide as the boulevards of Shandicity. That led her, eventually, to a junction with an even grander corridor. She hesitated, unsure for a moment, and drew her needler. This way to the control room, she thought to herself—or to something important, at any rate. She stepped out onto the main way, spotted something in the corner; dim shapes, hunched down into little niches in the wall. Cautiously, Rica moved toward them.

When she got close, she laughed and bolstered her weapon. The dark shapes were a row of scooters of some kind—small three-wheeled vehicles, each with two seats and big soft balloon tires. They were set into charging-slots in the walls.

Rica pulled one out, swung herself lithely into the driver’s seat, flicked on the power. The gauges registered a full charge. It even had a headlight, which cut through the dark and the shadows ahead quite nicely, thank you. Grinning, she rolled off down the broad corridor. She wasn’t going very fast, but what the hell, at least she was getting there.

Jefri Lion led them to an armory. It was there that Haviland Tuf killed Mushroom.

Lion was flashing a hand torch over the room in swift, excited arcs, exclaiming at the stockpile of laser rifles, projectile weapons, screechguns, and light-grenades. Celise Waan was complaining that she had no familiarity with weapons, and didn’t think she could kill anybody anyway. She was a scientist and not a soldier, after all, and she thought all this was barbaric.

Haviland Tuf held Mushroom cradled in his arms. The big tomcat had purred loudly when Tuf had re-emerged from the Cornucopia and scooped him up, but no longer. Now he was making a pitiful sound, half mewing, half choking. When Tuf tried to stroke him, the long, soft gray fur came out in clumps. Mushroom screeched. Something was growing inside his mouth, Tuf saw; a web of fine black hairs crept from a black fungoid mass. Mushroom howled again, more loudly, and struggled to get free, wielding his claws uselessly against the metal of Tuf’s suit. His big yellow eyes were covered with film.