Greg Bear - Hull Zero Three

The spiky arm pulls back—I can see it swinging outside in wide, nasty arcs. More blood flicks against the bubble. I smell blood in the air—human blood—nasty, sweet. I still the whimpers that rise from inside my chest. If I let them out, they’ll turn into screams, and the red jointed arm will come back for me—I just know that whatever is at the other end of the arm loves for living things to scream .

Then I hear a whimper. It’s not the girl, not Knob-Crest—not Picker. Picker was the one hooting and honking earlier, and it might be his blood I see on my bubble.

There’s a fight going on. The brownish red arm swings back with someone dark gripped in the spikes and slams him into the bubble, making the cluster vibrate and wobble.

I slip from behind the couch, grab the strap again, and drop-angle away from the center. The entrance to the bubble is near my head. I look down—the weight puts it below me, facing outboard—and consider just reaching out and pulling myself through, dropping away, hoping the spiky arm will be too busy to grab me, hoping there’s not another of them, a whole nest of them….

Before I can make another move, shadows completely cover and obscure the light from outside. With a crunch, something dark is wedged into the hole—doubled up, feet toward me, arm toward me, hand curled into a fist—so close it almost touches my nose.

I shove myself sideways, feet bracing against the couch, and for a terrible moment, I’m face-to-face with Blue-Black, Pushingar, jammed in like a cork. He looks right at me, but in his agony he can’t see me or doesn’t care. His eyes shiver, then close. His mouth hangs open.

The arm drops back. The shadows outside pull or fall away. The weight is acting on all of us, pulling us counterclockwise and outboard. I’m stuck in the bubble. For the moment, this seems a good place to be—with Pushingar blocking the entrance. I look inboard and to my left—the smaller hole into the other bubbles is clear, just wide enough for someone my size or the girl, too small, I hope, for the creature with the spiky arm.

Spin-up gets more aggressive.

The body starts to tug free. The arm swings loose, and suddenly the whole corpse falls out. Through the spatters and smears, I see Pushingar drop away. His belly has been ripped open. Entrails precede him.

He lands with a ringing thump on the bridge.

I’m far from fear. Death doesn’t matter—it’s been certain from the beginning. I’m just a pair of eyes on the end of a stalk of neck with a brain and some hands and legs attached.

Before the acceleration reaches maximum, I crawl up toward the hole, cross through into another bubble—the one formerly occupied by the girl, now empty and no blood—and find another gray bag. Hers. Quickly, I empty the bag into my own—water bottle half filled, a mostly eaten chunk of loaf. Then back to my bubble and out through the exit formerly plugged by Blue-Black, where I hang for a moment by my hands, bag trailing by my hips, and let go.

I fall. It’s the only thing I can do. My fall takes on an angle—a curve. The Ship reaches maximum spin before I land, and I realize I’ve miscalculated. I almost miss the bridge and land heavily on my legs, then topple over and lie there, sick, dizzy, and in pain.

Looking up at the cluster of domiciles. Around to the broken body of Pushingar, hanging over the rail a few meters away.

No sign of the others.

I get to my feet and take a quick look at the dirty snowball rolling once more beneath the Ship, seemingly around the Ship. Above the far limb of the snowball, I can see another part of the Ship—a part I couldn’t see in my dream. What I can see, what is not hidden behind the crusty surface, looks like part of a long spindle, thick in the middle, drawing to a point forward. The sleeping vision was correct. There are other parts of Ship. Maybe those parts are better off, better organized than this one. Maybe I can escape and cross over.

But that thought is of no use now.

I walk the last hundred meters to the end of the bridge, across the blister. I pause and look back “up,” inboard at the cluster of bubbles, translucent structures turned into homes by others before us—or traps baited with food and water.

Traps laid by something that waits until you sleep.

Despite the shock and the fall, rest and sustenance have made me stronger. My brain is working through a long list of clues and puzzles and problems—until it comes up with something obvious. Something unpleasant but necessary.

I stop, turn around, and walk back along the bridge to where Pushingar hangs lifeless and broken. He doesn’t need his clothing. My lips form conciliatory words as I lug him off the rail and lay him out as straight as I can and strip him.

Soft, meaningless words of apology. I wonder if he knew the name the girl had given him. There’s remarkably little blood staining the fabric, given he was practically disemboweled . That’s a word I don’t like—not at all.

The clothes hang on me, but I tuck up the pant legs, roll up the sleeves, and then resume my walk.

Soon the cold will come.

Time once more to chase heat.

I’ve got some water—two bottles, each half full—and enough food to last maybe a day or two. Though without clocks, time is a shapeless thing. Each spin-up lasts for perhaps four or five hours—no way of being certain. Already I’m hungry. It seems I’ll never stop being hungry.

I’m back in a corridor, but this one is wide and rectangular in cross section. There’s a walkway and a rail on the right side, and to the left, on the other side of a double rail with rungs that can also serve as a ladder, two curved channels extend from the blister to wherever the corridor ends. Giant balls could roll in these channels. Maybe they are tracks for some sort of train or conveyance. I wonder at the size and obvious design and the equally obvious lack of occupants, passengers—colonists.

How many colonists could this ship—perhaps one of three—support, if it were functioning properly? The awful thought occurs to me that perhaps it is functioning properly. Perhaps we’ve all done something wrong and have been transported to this painfully difficult environment as punishment. It could be a prison for useless people, misbegotten servants, filled with things that lay traps and kill.

But things that don’t always eat what they kill—the decayed corpse in the blister.

Only now do I wonder what became of that corpse while we slept. Did something come back and finally finish it off—consume what was left, after waiting a decent interval for it to “ripen”?

I see spots of blood and other tissues and fluids on the floor and on the walls. I stop and examine smears, handprints, and find the tips of a few broken spikes, sharp and orange. Another struggle. Maybe Picker and Satmonk injured whatever it was that killed Pushingar. Why would anything want to carry them this far? Where would it be taking them?

Someplace to eat them in private. Chasing heat, just like you.

The illumination in the corridor dims. Cold is coming. Ahead, I see something large, dark, and broken-looking sprawled across the walkway, draped over the railing. It’s another dead cleaner, like the one in the trash chamber. As I get close, I see that the body has been cut or pulled into several large pieces. The shell has been split. Dark fluid everywhere, leaving an oily sheen.

I see no other bodies, unless they’re stuck underneath the cleaner. I bend over and lift up a flat, limp “paw,” and there’s no sign of human remains. I squeeze past the broken shell and lifeless limbs, the somehow pitiful heads—three of them, as before—with their shiny, blind eyes.