Michael Crichton - Sphere

Hot spray poured over him, and he inhaled steam. Standing in the shower, Norman looked down at his body and thought, I look like a survivor of an airplane crash. One of those people I used to see and marvel that they were still alive.

The lumps on his head throbbed. His chest was scraped raw in a great swath down to his abdomen. His left thigh was purple-red; his right hand was swollen and painful.

But, then, everything was painful. He groaned, turning his face up to the water.

“Hey,” Harry called. “How about it in there?”

“Okay.”

Norman stepped out, and Harry climbed in. Scrapes and bruises covered his thin body. Norman looked over at Ted, who lay on his back in one of the bunks. Ted had dislocated both shoulders, and it had taken Beth half an hour to get them back in, even after she’d shot him up with morphine.

“How is it now?” Norman said to him.

“Okay.”

Ted had a numb, dull expression. His ebullience was gone. He had sustained a greater injury than the dislocated shoulders, Norman thought. In many ways a naive child, Ted must have been profoundly shocked to discover that this alien intelligence was hostile.

“Hurt much?” Norman said.

“It’s okay.”

Norman sat slowly on his bunk, feeling pain streak up his spine. Fifty-three years old, he thought. I should be playing golf. Then he thought, I should be just about anywhere in the world, except here. He winced, and gingerly slipped a shoe over his injured right foot. For some reason, he remembered Levy’s bare toes, the skin color dead, the foot striking his faceplate.

“Did they find Barnes?” Ted asked.

“I haven’t heard,” Norman said. “I don’t think so.”

He finished dressing, and went down to D Cyl, stepping over the puddles of water in the corridor. Inside D itself, the furniture was soaked; the consoles were wet, and the walls were covered with irregular blobs of white urethane foam where Fletcher had spray-sealed the cracks.

Fletcher stood in the middle of the room, the spray can in hand. “Not as pretty as it was,” she said.

“Will it hold?”

“Sure, but I guarantee you: we can’t survive another one of those attacks.”

“What about the electronics. They working?”

“I haven’t checked, but it should be okay. It’s all waterproofed.”

Norman nodded. “Any sign of Captain Barnes?” He looked at the bloody handprint on the wall.

“No, sir. No sign of the Captain at all.” Fletcher followed his eyes to the wall. “I’ll clean the place up in a minute, sir.”

“Where’s Tina?” Norman asked.

“Resting. In E Cyl.”

Norman nodded. “E Cyl any drier than this?”

“Yes,” Fletcher said. “It’s a funny thing. There was nobody in E Cyl during the attack, and it stayed completely dry.”

“Any word from Jerry?”

“No contact, sir, no.”

Norman flicked on one of the computer consoles.

“Jerry, are you there?”

The screen remained blank.

“Jerry?”

He waited a moment, then turned the console off.

Tina said, “look at it now.” She sat up, and drew the blanket back to expose her left leg.

The injury was much worse than when they had heard her screaming and had run through the habitat and pulled her up through the A Cyl hatch. Now, running diagonally down her leg was a series of saucer-shaped welts, the center of each puffed and purple. “It’s swollen a lot in the last hour,” Tina said.

Norman examined the injuries. Fine tooth-marks ringed swollen areas. “Do you remember what it felt like?” he said. “It felt awful,” Tina said. “It felt sticky , you know, like sticky glue or something. And then each one of these round places burned. Very strong.”

“And what could you see? Of the creature itself.” “Just-it was a long flat spatula-thing. It looked like a giant leaf; it came out and wrapped around me.”

“Any color?”

“Sort of brownish. I couldn’t really see.”

He paused a moment. “And Captain Barnes?”

“During the course of the action, I was separated from Captain Barnes, sir. I don’t know what happened to Captain Barnes, sir.” Tina spoke formally, her face a mask. He thought, Let’s not go into this now. If you ran away, it’s all right with me.

“Has Beth seen this injury, Tina?”

“Yes, sir, she was here a few minutes ago.”

“Okay. Just rest now.”

“Sir?”

“Yes, Tina?”

“Who will be making the report, sir?”

“I don’t know. Let’s not worry about reports now. Let’s just concentrate on getting through this.”

“Yes, sir.”

As he approached Beth’s lab, he heard Tina’s recorded voice say, “Do you think they’ll ever get the sphere open?”

Beth said, “Maybe. I don’t know.” “It scares me.”

And then Tina’s voice came again:

“Do you think they’ll ever get the sphere open?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“It scares me.”

In the lab, Beth was hunched over the console, watching the tape.

“Still at it, huh?” Norman said.

“Yeah.”

On the tape, Beth was finishing her cake, saying, “I don’t think there’s a reason to be scared.”

“It’s the unknown,” Tina said.

“Sure,” Beth said onscreen, “but an unknown thing is not likely to be dangerous or frightening. It’s most likely to be just inexplicable.”

“Famous last words,” Beth said, watching herself.

“It sounded good at the time,” Norman said. “To keep her calmed down.”

Onscreen, Beth said to Tina, “You afraid of snakes?”

“Snakes don’t bother me,” Tina said.

“Well, I can’t stand snakes,” Beth said.

Beth stopped the tape, turned to Norman. “Seems like a long time ago, doesn’t it.”

“I was just thinking that,” Norman said.

“Does this mean we’re living life to the fullest?”

“I think it means we’re in mortal peril,” Norman said. “Why are you so interested in this tape?”

“Because I have nothing better to do, and if I don’t keep busy I’m going to start screaming and make one of those traditional feminine scenes. You’ve already seen me do it once, Norman.”

“Have I? I don’t remember any scene.”

“Thank you,” she said.

Norman noticed a blanket on a couch in the corner of her lab. And Beth had unclipped one of the workbench lamps and mounted it on the wall above the blankets. “You sleeping here now?”

“Yeah, I like it here. Up at the top of the cylinder-I feel like the queen of the underworld.” She smiled. “Sort of like a tree house when you were a kid. Did you ever have a tree house when you were a kid?”

“No,” Norman said, “I never did.”

“Neither did I,” Beth said. “But it’s what I imagine it would be, if I had.”

“Looks very cozy, Beth.”

“You think I’m cracking up?”

“No. I just said it looks cozy.”

“You can tell me if you think I’m cracking up.”

“I think you’re fine, Beth. What about Tina? You’ve seen her injury?”

“Yes.” Beth frowned. “And I’ve seen these.” She gestured to some white eggs in a glass container on the lab bench.

“More eggs?”

“They were clinging to Tina’s suit when she came back in. Her injury is consistent with these eggs. Also the smell: you remember the smell when we pulled her back in?”

Norman remembered very well. Tina had smelled strongly of ammonia. It was almost as if she’d been doused in smelling salts.

Beth said, “As far as I know, there’s only one animal that smells of ammonia that way. Architeuthis sanctipauli .”

“Which is?”