David Brin: Sundiver

There was a flash, then a tooth jarring, numbing smash as his shoulder hit the side of Culla’s head. He clutched and got a tight grip on the front of the alien’s gown as his inertia carried both of them over into a crashing tumble onto the deck.

Human and alien fought for breath amidst fits of coughing as they rolled into a tangle of slashing, grabbing arms and legs. Somehow Jacob got around behind his opponent and held on tightly to the slender neck as Culla thrashed, trying to turn his head to snap with his cleavers or bum with his laser eyes.

The powerful, tentacular hands clutched back, snatching for a purchase. Jacob dodged his head aside and struggled to get Culla around, so he could get his legs into a scissors lock. After rolling almost halfway across the deck, he succeeded, and was rewarded by a lancing pain in his right thigh.

“More,” he coughed. “Shoot, Culla. Use it up!”

Twice more bolts struck his exposed legs, sending small tsunamis of agony up to his brain. The pain he shunted aside and he held on, praying that Culla would send some more.

But Culla stopped wasting his shots and began to roll about faster, buffeting Jacob every time the human struck the deck. They were both coughing, Culla sounding like half a dozen ball bearings shaken in a bottle, every time he wheezed in the thick, billowing smoke.

There was no way to choke the devil! When he wasn’t holding on for dear life, Jacob tried to turn his grip around Culla’s throat into a strangle hold. But there didn’t seem to be any vulnerable points! It was unfair. Jacob wanted to curse the bad luck but he couldn’t spare the breath. His lungs could barely hold enough to make a small cough, each time the Pring rolled over on top.

Streams of tears blurred his vision and his eyes hurt. He suddenly realized that his goggles were gone! Either Culla had burned them off again in that first instant as he launched himself from the dome, or they’d been torn off during the fight.

Where the hell is LaRoque!

His arms shuddered with the strain and there was a rubbed-out pain in his abdomen and groin from the constant pounding of the cavort across the deck. Culla’s coughing was sounding more pathetic and strained, and his own-took on an ominous gurgle. He could feel the first stages of heat prostration and a dreadful fear that the ordeal would never end, even as their struggle brought his back up against one of the smoldering flesh-foam brands.

It smothered in a broiling release of heat as he screamed. The pain was too sudden and from too unexpected a quarter to be shunted aside. His tight grip around Culla’s throat slacked for an instant of agony and the alien tore at his hands. The grip parted and Culla rolled away even as Jacob grabbed after him.

He missed. Culla scrambled farther away, then turned quickly to face him. Jacob closed his eyes and covered his face with his encased left hand, expecting a laser bolt.

He tried to stand, but something was wrong with his lungs. They wouldn’t work properly. His breath was shallow and he could feel the balance waver as he slowly rose to his knees. His back felt like charred hamburger meat.

Not far away, two meters at most, there was a loud clack! Then another. Then another, closer.

Jacob’s arm fell. He no longer had the strength to hold it up. There was no use in keeping his eyes closed, anyway. He opened them to see Culla, kneeling a meter away. Only the red eyes and gleaming white teeth showed through the thick stomach.

“Cu… Culla…” he gasped Wheezing, the words sounded like tiny, failing gears. “Give up now, this is your last chance. I’m… warning you…”

Tania would have liked that, he thought. It was almost as good a parting shot as hers had been. He hoped Helene had heard it.

Parting shot? Hell, why not give Culla one! Even if he cuts my throat or drills a hole into my brain through my eyelids, I’ll still have time to give him a present!

He pulled the flesh-foam sprayer out of his belt and started to raise it. He’d give Culla such a spraying! Even if it meant he’d die at that instant by laser instead of by decapitation.

Excruciating pain burst like steel needle through his left eye. It felt like a lightning bolt crashing all the way to the back of his head and out the other side. At that same instant he pressed the release and held it in the direction Culla’s head had been.

Helene lifted her eyes briefly as the ship rose past the toroid herd on the left.

The greens and blues were faded, eaten by the distance. Still the beasts shone like tiny incandescent rings, specks of life ordered in their miniscule convoy, dwarfed by the immensity of the chromosphere.

The herdsmen were already too far away to be seen.

The herd passed behind the dark bulk of the filament, out of sight.

Helene smiled. If only we still had our maser link, she thought. They could have seen how hard we tried. They would have known that the Solarians didn’t kill us, as some will think. They tried to help us. We talked to them!

She bent to answer two alarms at once.

Dr. Marline wandered aimlessly behind her and the copilot. The parapsychologist was rational, but not very coherent. She had only just returned from the opposite end of topside. She walked unevenly and muttered softly under her breath.

Martine had enough sense to stay out of their hair, thank Ifni ! But she refused to strap herself in. Helene hesitated to ask her to go around to flip-side. In her present condition the good doctor wouldn’t be much help.

There was a stench in the air. Helene’s flip-side monitors showed only a thick billowing cloud of smoke. There had been shouting and sounds of a terrible fracas just minutes ago. Twice the intercoms had carried the sound of someone screaming. Just moments ago came a shriek that could have waked the dead. Then silence.

The only emotion she allowed herself was a detached sense of pride. The fact that the fight had lasted so long was a tribute to them, especially to Jacob. Culla’s weapons should have finished them off quickly.

Of course it wasn’t likely. they’d succeeded. She’d have heard something by now. She clamped a lid on her feelings and told herself she was shivering because of the cold.

It had dropped to five Celsius. The less efficient her reactions got, as she tired, the more she weighted the cold side of the Refrigerator-Laser’s increasingly erratic swing. The hot side would be disaster.

She answered a shift in the E.M. field that threatened to leave a window in the XUV band. It subsided nicely under her delicate control and continued to hold.

The Refer Laser groaned as it sucked heat in from the chromosphere then back out and downward as x-rays. They climbed with agonizing slowness.

Then an alarm clanged. It wasn’t a drift-warning, it was the cry of a ship dying.

The stink was terrible! Worse, it was freezing. Someone nearby was shivering and coughing at the same time. Dimly, Jacob became aware that it was himself.

He came erect in a fit of hacking that set his body trembling. For long moments after he got it under control he just sat, wondering numbly how he was alive.

The smoke had begun to clear slightly near the deck. Shreds and tendrils drifted past him toward the whining air compressors.

The fact that he could see at all was amazing. He brought his right hand up to touch his left eye. It was open, blind. But it was whole! He closed the lid and touched it over and over with his three fingers. The eye was still there, and the brain behind it…saved by the thick smoke and the depletion of Culla’s energy supply.

Culla! Jacob swung his head about to scan for the alien. He felt a wave of nausea come on and rode it out as he peered around himself.