Zach Hughes - Deep Freeze

Suddenly the image of a star cluster with sterile orbiting planets flashed into his mind and he looked over his shoulder quickly as he felt a flush of disease. Killing a blink generator down to cold stop was not nearly as difficult as cooling the molten core of a world, but the images were similar.

He saw that the crewmen were almost at the hatch. Pat was directly behind them. He shrugged his shoulders under the load of the thermal shield and took one step.

One of the crewmen cried out in surprise as the hatch was filled with whiteness that resolved itself into humanoid shape.

"Captain?" said the other crewman as the white figure moved.

"Watch it," Pat Barkley yelled, trying to bring the muzzle of his saffer to bear on the thing in the hatch.

"Fire," Josh ordered, lifting his own rifle only to find the body of one of the crewmen between him and the hatch.

The explosion was contained within the hull of the Fran Webster. A

shock wave rushed past the white figure in the hatch without displacing it.

It leapt forward and pushed the floating specimen bin out of the way. The four men had been tossed about by the explosion. Quickly the extension opened the visors of the thermal shells and with its fist smashed the helmets of the E.V.A.s.

Josh Webster was conscious when he looked up into the icy face, saw a pair of glowing eyes, saw dexterous fingers moving toward the visor of his shell.

"Kirsty," he whispered, as he nudged open the communicator with his chin.

"Yes, Captain."

"Kirsty—" He could not form the words he was bellowing in his mind.

He was thinking, "Shoot, shoot, shoot. Blast him, Kirsty. Max force."

He said, "Kirsty, we're coming up."

"That's an affirmative," Kirsty said. "We have the launch on viewer."

The cold ended Josh's agony of self-blame.

"Bridge, Weapons."

"Go, Weapons."

"Kirsty, I'm getting ghost images on short-range detection."

"Show me," Kirsty said.

A viewer came to life. Against a black background a glowing image moved.

"Mass about two hundred pounds," Weapons said. "Size roughly three by six feet. And the sonofabitch is invisible, it seems."

"What shows it?"

"Infrared only."

"Shoot it," Kirsty said.

"Shoot it?"

"Now," Kirsty ordered.

A lance of fire went out from the bow of the ship. There was a distant flare.

"Scratch one ghost," Weapons said.

"There are others?"

"Only seven."

"Shoot them, too," Kirsty ordered.

"Aye, aye," said Weapons.

This time it was not so easy. The ghost images had begun a frantic dance of movement that flitted them from side to side in all directions, but one vector of their movement kept them coming toward the ship.

"Kirsty," Weapons said, "three down. The others are closing. I suggest we up shields."

"Can't. The launch is just ten minutes away from the lock," Kirsty said.

"That's going to be cutting it close. There's another wave of those things coming up out of atmosphere. I hate to be the one to tell you this, Lieutenant, but my guess is that we're under attack."

"The captain will be aboard in nine-minutes-five seconds. As soon as we have the launch inboard, we'll blink the hell out of here," Kirsty said.

"Erin Kenner," said Josh Webster's voice, "prepare to accept launch entry."

"Lock is open, Captain," Kirsty said.

Kirsty looked at Sheba and winked. "Don't you think I'm pretty cool under stress?"

"Magnificently so," Sheba said, with one of her blazing smiles.

"Inside I'm a quivering mass," Kirsty said. "Hurry, Captain, hurry."

The minutes were eternal until the ship vibrated ever so slightly with the landing of the launch in its cradle. Kirsty closed the outer hatch and lock, fed air into the cradle chamber. "Hold onto your stomach," she said, as she pushed in a blink that took the Erin Kenner six light-years away from DF-2.

"That's funny," Kirsty said.

"I'm not sure I want to know," Sheba said.

"The beacon we just planted is dead," Kirsty said.

"Kirsty," said Weapons in a high, excited voice, "we've got contact. Size and mass consistent with the ship we blasted back on DF-2."

"Hostile action?"

"Not at the moment."

"Get it in your sights and hold it there," Kirsty said. "If it so much as burps, blast it." She buzzed Engineering. "We're going to have to pick up that blink beacon and see what went wrong with it. Stand by to take it aboard."

There was only silence.

"Engineering?"

Silence.

Behind her the door to the corridor that led past the engineering cubicles to the launch cradle was flung open. She whirled. Her first impression was of overwhelming blackness from which glowed two glaring eyes, then she saw a head, an articulated neck, long, hinged arms extending toward her from a powerful armored torso. She screamed as icy, hard fingers dug into her shoulder, penetrating flesh, shattering bone.

The other hand seized her under the chin and pulled. Her neck snapped and tendons tore. As she fell to the deck Sheba tried to run, but a second black, armored extension leapt with startling swiftness to block her way.

Sheba knew with chilling certainty that Josh was dead. On the deck Kirsty Girard was also dead, although her legs were jerking in ragged rhythm. The two things, machines, black demons, stood motionless, their glaring eyes unblinking.

She couldn't believe how calm she was. "Listen," she said, "whoever you are, whatever you are, listen. We did not come here to harm you or to disturb you in any way. We came looking for my mother and father and my sister and brother."

The extension that had killed Kirsty lifted one arm.

"You're going to kill me, too, aren't you?" Sheba asked.

There was only silence. The extension took one step forward, its metal foot brushing aside one of Kirsty's limp arms.

"It's all senseless," Sheba said. "We meant you no harm. The other members of my family meant you no harm."

Now both of the extensions moved slowly toward her.

"Just tell me why," she said, still eerily calm. "Why do you kill us when we came with no ill will?"

Suddenly she laughed. At first it was a thoroughly feminine, throaty sound, a sound that had and would for many years to come excite the libidos of men who watched her on holofilm. She laughed because she knew why she was calm. She was merely playing another scene. More than once she had faced fictional death in some holofilm drama, and this was nothing more than a continuation of her make-believe life.

But as the extensions moved closer, the laugh became brittle and shrill and then faded.

"Why?" she asked, as one black, hinged arm reached out to her. "Just tell me why."

The voice spoke in English, but it was flat and uninflected. "Let them sleep," the voice said, "for when they awaken, the universe will tremble."

She screamed just once. One of the extensions seized her arm, its sharp, metal fingers penetrating. Her pain was brief, however, for the other armored extension seized her head in both hands and simply ripped it away from her neck.

"This is Weapons. What the hell is going on?" One of the extensions left the bridge to seek out the voice. The other studied the controls for a few moments, pushed buttons, set the ship's computer to spewing out data regarding the drive and the ship's operations. Black, sharp fingers punched in calculations. The outside lock opened. Within minutes the ship extension floated into the lock with the Erin Kenner's blink beacon clamped to its side. To make room it smashed into the ship's launch. In the control room the black extension punched instructions into the computer. The Erin Kenner blinked.

And, as had been calculated, she came out of nonspace in the heart of the nearest star. The insignificant mass of ship, extensions, and flesh both dead and alive became a part of the reaction in the nuclear furnace.