Groaning, Kyle crawled away from the heat and flames. After a few painful yards, he was grabbed under an arm by Ted Blake, who half dragged, half carried him from the hell that had erupted. Blake left him propped against a hangar wall, goggling at the raging inferno. He had by sheer good luck rolled behind the wrecked van, and been sheltered from the worst of the fireball.
What did this all mean? After his leap from the speeding van and the explosion, he couldn't think straight. Of one thing he was certain: Wheaton was dead. How many Krulirim had the man taken with him?
Darlene appeared from somewhere. "Kyle!? Are you all right?"
He failed miserably in an attempt to smile, but vomited noisily without effort. "I've been better." Still, his mind was clearing. The airlock he had with such difficulty opened was engulfed with flames, entirely impassable. And apart from the flames, the ship looked funny. It was at an odd angle; a landing support must have been snapped by the blast.
The fire and explosion had surely incinerated the generator and his sorry collection of appliances. Swelk always recovered quickly after a electric motor was switched off. If any Krulirim survived, maybe on the opposite side of the ship, they would be recovered by now.
What would they be doing?
For time without measure, the deck fell from beneath Grelben. The walls spun around him, receding into infinite space. He somehow floated and fell simultaneously, limbs spasming. When the sensation faded, he pulled himself onto his command seat. Bridge displays showed F'thk robots littering the concrete, mostly torn to pieces. On other screens, a human ground vehicle racing toward the deployed ramp. The inner airlock door had been opened during his incapacity. His ship was exposed! Before he could engage the remote-hatch override, the onslaught of vertigo resumed. He toppled from the seat, limbs entangled.
The explosion that rocked the Consensus penetrated even the chaos into which he had once more been plunged. The mysterious disorientation stopped, but his still-quaking limbs refused at first to function. A searing wind burst onto the bridge, tossing the duty crew like leaves. The bridge displays went blank; his dazed mind needed a moment to deduce that the hull cameras had protectively retracted. It was an automatic mechanism, normally triggered by the heat of an atmospheric entry. Hull sensors reported a soaring temperature. As bodily control returned, he slapped the audio reset on the alarm panel; its many flashing lights told him everything that he needed. Fire suppressant sprayed from nozzles in the ceiling.
"Brelf, you're on damage control," he snapped at the first live crewman he saw. His attention remained fixed on his ship's defense. "Rualf, report. Rualf." There was no response. The alarm panel revealed a raging fire in the cargo hold where the troupe worked. It seemed impossible that anyone there had survived.
Communications with the robots ran from the incinerated controls in the hold to the ship's radio center to antennae in the hull. The high-gain antenna dishes, like the exterior cameras, were retracted and useless. One antenna, however, was molded into the hull itself. That configuration made the antenna necessarily omnidirectional, dispersing energy with profligacy in all directions, but his immediate needs were short range. With that antenna he broadcast to the robots. He couldn't control them with bridge equipment, but he needed to see through their sensors.
Only three robots responded, and their images came from close to the tarmac. Just one view showed the ship—and that picture made him knot his digits in rage and fear. Amid billowing black smoke, flames licked hungrily at the Consensus. The ship had tipped, its stern flattened where it had struck the ground.
More and more lights glowed on the alarm panel. "Captain," called Brelf. "Fire is spreading throughout the ship. Most controls are damaged, unresponsive. The drive . . ."
The crewman did not need to complete his thought. Without the interstellar drive, nothing else mattered. They were marooned, at the mercy of the freaks whose extinction he and Rualf had conspired to cause. Without access to the high-gain antennas, Grelben could not even control the satellite weapons. They were without hope, he thought.
But not without options . . .
Images of the Consensus in the grip of flames looked down at Swelk from three walls. Her view of the command-trailer instrumentation was suddenly unimpeded. Darlene had been the first out the door; others, to whom no one had bothered introducing Swelk, soon followed. She cringed the first time after the explosion that the door opened, but the horrifying dizziness did not strike. The fire must have destroyed Kyle's weapon.
The soldiers who remained had eyes only for their equipment . . . while her vision, as always, went in a full circle. No one was watching her. She had either been forgotten in the excitement, or the humans had excessive trust in their locked door. She tapped out the key code that unlatched the trailer door. A hinge squealed as she pushed against the door. As she jumped out, one of the uniformed men in the trailer lunged at her. He crashed to the trailer's floor, half of his torso hanging outside—but caught her by her belt. She tore loose, but the pocket in which she kept her computer ripped. The computer fell to the pavement just outside the hangar. There was no time to stop for it. She screamed as she ran, "I must help. I must help." Those giving chase gave no signs of having understood her.
An eye aimed antimotionward, toward the hangar, saw Kyle. He was bloody, agitated, and screaming. The evidently unbroken computer translated, "Don't shoot." Not waiting to see if that advice would be taken, she fled toward the Consensus. She ran no faster than the men in pursuit—an unlame Krul would have left them far behind—but with her three-limbed ability to veer instantly in any direction, she was much more agile. She could also see them coming, from whatever bearing, and her shortness made her hard to grab. She dodged and bobbed, unable to outpace them, but—however precariously—at liberty. Bright red trucks raced toward the Consensus, sirens blaring. From the hangar came the shouted words, anguished even in translation, "I'm sorry, Swelk. I'm sorry."
Reaching the ship, she found she was more tolerant of heat than the humans. She stood near the blaze, panting in exhaustion, for the moment beyond the soldiers' reach.
Through the flame-filled airlock came the panicked bellowing of the swampbeasts.
Swelk had run here impulsively, unable to stand idly by when the only Krulirim within light-years were imperiled. No, be realistic . . . the survivors would all die if they did not get out.
Another terrified howl rang out. Despite the roar of the fire she knew it was Stinky. His renewed call was joined by his mate. As flames billowed from the open airlock, Swelk realized, Something inside is fanning those flames. She galloped around the hull, sticking close to the ship where the soldiers could not follow. A second airlock was wide open; she could feel the draft of air being sucked into this hold by the raging fire. This hold's ramp was unextended, but the landing foot's collapse brought the entry within reach. She clambered aboard.
She found herself inside the zoo hold. Her Girillian friends screamed in fear, hurling themselves again and again against their cages. Fire suppressant streamed from nozzles overhead. She ran between the pens, unlatching doors. The heat seared her lungs. "Get outside!" she screamed at a Krul she found fallen but stirring beside a cage. Soot-covered, he was unrecognizable. Whether the disorienting weapon or the explosion—or perhaps both—had downed him she could not tell. "Out the hold airlock."
Ignoring her own advice, Swelk limped deeper into the ship. Two crewman stumbled by her, bleeding, dazed, purposeless. "To the zoo hold," she called as she pushed on. Flickering emergency lights guided her to the bridge, through corridors ever thicker with smoke.
She arrived, finally, gasping for breath, at the command center. Still bodies littered the room. Only one Krul worked purposefully: Captain Grelben. He toiled feverishly at a console, so rapt in his duties that he did not at first see her enter. He ignored the alarm panel that glowed from top to bottom in the purple blinkings of worst-case disaster. "Captain. Come away."
"Swelk." His voice was cold. "I trust we have you to thank for our difficulties." A coughing fit interrupted him. "It does not matter. Your freaks are doomed."
Predestined in his mind to fail, because of Krulchukor prejudice? Or condemned by his plans, by some twisted revenge the captain still strove to inflict? "Captain. There is still time to get off the ship. We can live here. The humans are good people." The smoke was choking her. "Will you let them find their own way?"
Grelben reared up on twos, sweeping the third limb through a broad arc. It somehow encompassed the death and destruction on the bridge and throughout the ship. A hacking convulsion deep in his torso made him wobble, his upraised limb tremble, ruining the grand gesture. "This is their way. Death is their way. So run away, mutant, but it will do you no good.
"Before I am done, you and your disgusting freaks will experience death on a scale beyond your wildest imaginings."
Kyle pressed a bloody cloth to his head. Darlene sat beside him, her back, like his, braced against the hangar wall. Fire trucks were spraying foam on and around the ship. They had had some success containing the blaze, but the flames leaping from the Consensus itself were growing. Blake's men ringed the ship from a distance.
"Not bad for an amateur." Blake, who looked as spent as Kyle felt, was on his feet and in complete charge. Several of the Delta Force stood nearby. Whether the compliment referred to Kyle's efforts or Andrew Wheaton's suicide attack was unclear. "You'll be pleased to know the weapons satellites are inactive."
"That is good news." Kyle's tone belied his words. Swelk had gone into the burning ship. Could she possibly survive?
"So are we safe now?" asked the colonel. "Is it over?"
"I don't know. Even if the aliens are dead, there are systems on board we know nothing about." Kyle tried to think past his pain and worry. The Krulirim had an interstellar drive, artificial gravity, bioconverters—incredible technologies he did not begin to understand. How could he possibly say whether the fiery destruction of such equipment would release uncontrolled forces? That was just one of many reasons why the plan had necessarily been capture of the ship. Quit it, he told himself sternly. Don't waste time on useless speculation. What can you usefully contribute? "They have a fusion reactor. You can think of it as a controlled thermonuclear bomb. The biggest danger may be the reactor blowing."
"How big a problem are we talking?" Blake was amazingly matter of fact.
"We have no way of knowing. If they're good engineers, though, there will be safety shutdowns." Kyle's head throbbed as secondary explosions wracked the starship. "Be happy for one difficulty we don't have. Swelk knew that their reactor fused helium-three. If they'd used hydrogen isotopes, like our experimental fusion reactors, we'd have faced an enormous explosion. Think Hindenberg, but much bigger—even without a nuclear event."
A commando had appeared at Blake's side. "Sir, you should see this. It was found on the tarmac near the command trailer."
This was Swelk's pocket computer. No sooner had Kyle recognized it than it spoke. "Captain. Come away."
"Swelk," answered a second voice. "I trust we have you to thank for our difficulties. It does not matter. Your freaks are doomed."
"I remember," whispered Darlene. "Swelk had hidden a pocket computer on the bridge. That's how she determined what the plotters were up to."
"Right." Kyle tried to recall everything he'd learned or surmised about Krulchukor computing. What he called Swelk's computer was more—it was also a communications device. All such computers on the Consensus were wirelessly networked. The Krulchukor magnetic sense was indifferent to radio frequencies, just as human eyes were indifferent to ultraviolet light. And with inner and outer airlocks doors open, the ship's wireless network must now extend onto the airfield. They were near enough for the device hidden on the bridge to network with the unit Swelk had dropped—a unit still set to translate to English.
"Before I am done, you and your disgusting freaks will experience death on a scale beyond your wildest imaginings."
"Congratulations, by the way,"
Swelk felt the captain's scrutiny. She was covered with burns, oozing fluids from countless scrapes and burns. "For what?"
"For a successful escape. For surviving this long." Grelben seemed indifferent to the state of the alarm panel, where lights were increasingly switching from crisis purple to an even more ominous Off. Panels and consoles around the bridge sprayed sparks. He coughed, choked by smoke, fire suppressant, and unknowable fumes. "For the cleverness of your bilat friends."
"System integrity at risk. Redundant equipment failures. Safety shutdown of reactor in three-cubed seconds." The ceiling speakers crackled and hissed.
"I could override the shutdown. It would turn this side of the continent into a large hole."
"No! Do not do that. You must not do that!"
"Why not?" Grelben whistled in amusement at her. "This ship was everything to me. Look at it now."
"The humans should not suffer for what I have done. I brought us here." Her thoughts raced, even as she felt her body succumbing to the heat and toxic gases and injuries. "If you want someone to blame, it should be me." She had been so proud of herself for spotting Earth's broadcasts. She had done everything in her power to convince him to bring the Consensus here. That Grelben had agreed for his own dishonorable reasons did not mitigate her responsibility. The depth of her presumption stunned her. How arrogant it had been to undertake a personal exploration of Earth rather than report her findings to the authorities on Krulchuk. Pride blinds the eyes, her old nurse liked to say. Swelk's pride had caused all this.
"Safety shutdown of reactor in two three-squared seconds."
"I blame you. You do not need to doubt that." A rumble deep in the ship made his words hard to hear. "What say you? Would you like to go out with a bang?"
"Captain, please let the reactor shut down safely." Her hearts pounded in fear, in guilt, in dismay. The mass murder Grelben envisioned was, like Rualf's stage-managed war, almost too large to grasp. One way or another, she knew she was dying, and another extinction also clutched at her. "Let the crew escape. I lived here—all it takes is standard bioconverters. They can live here, too. You can live here."
"Safety shutdown of reactor in three-squared seconds."
"A captain without his ship? I do not think so." He clenched all the digits of an extremity in violent negation. "Nor will, I think, sane Krulirim follow your example."
She had to keep him talking. A few more seconds, and the shutdown would be complete. Amid so many crashed systems, the reactor could not possibly be reactivated, to become once more a threat. "Let that . . ." A wave of smoke erupted onto the bridge, gagging her. She hacked and coughed, unable to speak. Would she fail, in the end, simply from an inability to get out the words? With a violent rasp, she spit out the pitiful remainder of her argument. " . . . be their decision."
"Safety shutdown of reactor in three seconds . . . two . . . one."
"Get out of here," coughed Grelben.
"Reactor shut down. Plasma has been vented."
Swelk groped through smoke-obscured corridors as fire crackled within the walls. Had her feeble words in the end swayed the captain? Whatever the reason for his forbearance, she was grateful. But she could not forget his taunt: Nor will, I think, sane Krulirim follow your example.
Could she not avoid the guilt of the whole crew's death? Revenge of the Subconscious flashed into her mind. Was she not the monster? She lived apart from her people—of necessity, she always told herself, but was that entirely true? Did she relish her uniqueness? There was no denying that her personal actions had brought a shipload of her kind here. Brought them to a world of bilats, who—however justifiably—were now slaughtering the Krulirim. She had to convince the ship's survivors to escape with her.
Swelk turned from her path toward the zoo hold to save her people.
Grelben tripped and fell over a body in the almost impenetrable smoke, the impact knocking the wind from him. Inhaling reflexively, his lungs filled with noxious fumes. He retched repeatedly crawling through the murk for an emergency respirator.
Limbs weak and shaking, he regained a secure position on his command seat. He removed the breather from his mouth. "Status comm." His rasping voice was no longer understandable. "Status . . . comm," he repeated with exaggerated enunciation. The hologram that formed was too attenuated by smoke to be read. "Flat . . . screen . . . mode." He leaned toward the display, bending a sensor stalk until it almost touched the flat surface. Comm remained, in theory, operational. He could send a message with any antenna he did not mind losing in seconds to the flames gripping the hull. "Command . . . file . . . 'Clean . . . Slate.' "
Sucking oxygen again from the respirator, he recalled with amusement Swelk scuttling to what she considered safety. The mutant believed she had dissuaded him. Well, in a way, she had. She had convinced him that the quick death of a fusion explosion, for her and those who had abetted her, was too kind. So there had been no need to keep the reactor hot while he finished his other business. "File . . . open." A deep breath from the respirator. "Send . . . file."
"Help me up." Kyle's unaided attempts at verticality were feeble. "Hurry."
Blake grabbed his outstretched arm and tugged. "You should be seeing a doctor. From our minimal acquaintance, though, I sense you're not big on taking advice."
Kyle ignored him. "Dar, help me out to the ship."
"Sergeant," bellowed Blake. He waved to a woman in a Humvee. "Drive my friends."
Darlene helped him into the low-slung truck, and seconds later, out again. They joined the soldiers who surrounded the wreckage, and the fire crews who had contained the blaze. They made no attempt to douse the ship itself. Kyle could not find fault with their decision not to endanger whatever firefighting mechanisms were built into the vessel. "This is too reminiscent of the night I met Swelk. Her death in the flames of the very ship she had successfully escaped . . . it's so awful. I can't help but picture Rualf laughing mockingly."
"Convincing the captain to let the reactor shut down . . . she saved our lives, the lives of untold millions. She really is a hero."
"I know."
He could no more stand still here, baking in the intense heat of the fire, than he'd been able to sit and watch from across the concrete apron. He started limping around the ship; Darlene followed in silence. There was a second open airlock. Through heat shimmers and smoke he saw motion within. Survivors? Were they afraid to come out? "Hand me Swelk's computer. Come out. You will not be harmed." The computer emitted the vowelless noise with which it always spoke to Swelk—at a low volume that could not possibly be heard inside the ship. "Computer, maximum sound level." It babbled back, no louder than before. "Computer, as loud as possible." Repeated paraphrasings had no effect.
What else could he try? Yelling. Perhaps it would translate louder if he spoke louder—and so it did. "Come out! You will not be harmed!" The Krulchukor equivalent, a vowelless eruption, burst forth. Moments later, two metal containers were flung from the open airlock.
"Don't shoot!" hissed Kyle to the startled commandos. The devices were clones of Swelk's bioconverters. The translation of these words, hopefully, was too soft to be heard inside. "Come out!" he screamed again.
Rualf struggled to remain upright, dazed by the latest explosion to rock the Consensus. Smaller blasts sounded throughout the ship. Smoke thickened even as he marveled, stupefied, at the disaster. The hatch into the heart of the ship flapped between half- and full-open, its motorized mechanism thudding in abrupt reversals, unable to respond to fire both inside and out. With a spectacular tearing sound, the machinery stopped.
A gale whistled through the hold, sucked through the gaping airlock and stoking the spreading blaze like a bellows. The open airlock . . . that was his only hope of escape. He had a vague recollection of someone telling him so. Had one of the crew, or of his troupe, already come through here? No—whoever it was had gone into the ship. Some foolish hero type. He stumbled, limbs still quivering from what must have been a human weapon, toward the lock.
An impossibly loud feminine voice shouted from outside. "Come out. You will not be harmed." Had humans learned to speak like Krulirim? How could that be? Somehow, the thundering voice was familiar.
Swelk!
The Krul who had gone past him, gone deeper into the ship . . . it was she. She was the reason the humans knew to stage a scene he could not resist filming. To bait a trap. The impossibly loud command, doubtless synthesized by Swelk's computer, nearly paralyzed him with fear. What would the humans do to him if he fell into their power?
A wave of coughing came over him. He was dead if he stayed here. But if he were the only survivor . . . the humans would not know he was the one responsible for directing their photogenic self-destruction. He waded through smoke to the interior hatch with its broken motorized controls. The hatch that had inconveniently frozen half open. There was an access panel beside the controls; he flipped it open to get at the manual crank. Wheezing, he worked until the heat-warped door was fully shut—then he jammed the mechanism. The wind whistling inward from the lock, due to fire-fed suction into the ship, died abruptly as the hatch slammed shut.
Time for his escape. He groped toward the beckoning airlock, low to the deck where the air was slightly fresher. Fodder, animal shit, the Girillian ferns they had started synthesizing for the animals to shit on . . . stuff was piled everywhere, and more and more of it was burning.
He was forgetting something. Escape to what? He could not survive without Krulchukor food. These beasts ate synthesized food, surely. Behind a cage he spotted what must be bioconverters. Gripping with one limb the handles of two heavy synthesizers, he dragged them, awkwardly, to the airlock. He flung them outside, and went for more.
"Come out!"
Something monstrous emerged from the smoke, as though summoned by the imperious demand. A bilateral head on a thick neck towered over him, like a ghost of the F'thk. Rualf had just recognized it for a Girillian creature when it knocked him over. Massive hooves pressed him into the metal deck. Agony washed through him—but to lose consciousness now was to die. As he tried to lever himself upright, a Girillian carnivore ran over him. It was smaller than the first animal, but its feet were studded with talons. Rualf collapsed, screaming, to the floor. Thick smoke filled his lungs.
As Rualf lay quivering, limbs splayed, bleeding and coughing, battered and bruised, apparition after apparition burst from the smoke and flames. The biggest were deep within the hold, as if herding the rest. He sprawled, helpless, as creature after creature stomped and slashed him, each encounter inflicting new anguish.
The last thing Rualf ever saw was the huge flat foot of a swampbeast descending upon the center of his torso, directly over his sensor stalks.
The commandos flinched as a six-legged creature leapt from the open airlock. Only that moment of surprised nonrecognition saved the animal. "Hold your fire!" yelled Kyle. As Swelk's simulated voice reverberated from starship and hangars, he searched for and found on the computer what he hoped was its microphone. He covered the aperture with his thumb. "Hold your fire!" Muffled, the repetition went untranslated. He'd seen such a creature before—in a hologram projected by this very computer. "It's a zoo animal. There may be more."
Animal after animal appeared out of the smoke and flames. They retreated in confusion from burning ship and human building, lost and confused, huddling together. If the Girillian menagerie included predator and prey—and Kyle was almost certain from Swelk's tales that it did—the xenobeasts were too overwhelmed to care. He'd never quite believed the stories of terrestrial predators and prey fleeing peacefully side by side from forest fires—now all skepticism vanished. "Call the National Zoo. We need gamekeepers, pronto."
"Swampbeasts. They're beautiful." Darlene's voice was quietly awestruck. She pointed, quite unnecessarily, at two magnificent, web-footed animals that stood about eight feet tall. They were the last to emerge from the airlock now impenetrably thick with smoke.
She gently took Swelk's computer from Kyle's hand. Walking slowly toward the knot of shivering animals, she crooned, "Smelly. Stinky. Smelly. Stinky." The computer repeated something after her, softly. The swampbeasts pushed forward. Bowing their heads, they approached cautiously, eyes wide and staring. They brushed their enormous heads against Darlene's outstretched hand, then settled to their knees beside her.
Swelk's computer did not translate "humph," but that was okay. They understood what it meant.
Swelk coughed and spat, splattering a smoke-blackened clot of blood against the bulkhead. The clot sizzled. Despite the fire-suppressant sprays, fire was everywhere. Her skin was blistered. Her extremities had been so repeatedly scorched that she no longer felt them.
The initial fireball had burst through the open hold where Rualf and his troupe had been working, killing everyone. She had no idea why the hatch to the ship's interior, never unlocked when she was aboard, was now wide open. The ship's corridors had channeled the fire and blast, catching most of the crew at their posts. The draft from the second airlock had deflected the fireball from parts of the ship, sparing the bridge from the worst of it.
And saving her Girillian friends.
She had explored the Consensus from end to end, and there were no survivors. She omitted Grelben from her tally. He would surely refuse to leave the ship. Captain's prerogative. Captain's curse. Captain's penance, too, she considered, still unable to wish upon him, or anyone, death in this manner.
She had been lost repeatedly in the smoke, been saved more than once by providential discoveries of emergency respirators. Their capacity was limited, and she'd left a trail of empties behind her on her trek. She finally found her way to the hatch that led to the zoo hold and safety.
The entrance was shut and inoperative.
Frantically, she tore open the access panel to get at the manual override. The crank stuck after a quarter turn. Crying in frustration, she tugged and tugged. It would not budge.
The corridor grew ever hotter. Gagging, Swelk limped to the cargo hold where the fire had begun. The flames there remained impenetrable to vision, let alone passage. She could not get off the ship. She turned inward, stumbled to the bridge, feeling herself roasting.
"I did not expect to see you again." The captain was slumped across his command seat, his limbs and sensor stalks limp. A command console behind him flashed insistently.
Swelk could not see the console—the flashing was an alarm of some kind, she assumed—but its light pulsed luridly through the thick, billowing smoke. "No Krul should die alone."
Grelben winced at her words. "You are a better Krul than I give you credit for." When she did not comment, he added, "You are a better Krul than many of us.
"Let me show you something. Look closely; the outside sensors burn off in seconds when I expose them." A gagging fit interrupted whatever explanation he was trying to make. He gestured at a flat display. "Section . . . three . . . two . . . two . . . camera . . . on."
Swelk peered through swirling smoke into the little display, flat like a human television. A sense of warmth, totally unrelated to the fires ravaging the starship, suffused her. The Girillian animals, her friends, were wandering on the airfield. There was no mistaking the two who were settled calmly beside Darlene: Smelly and Stinky. As the swampbeasts extended their long necks to be touched, the image dissolved into a blizzard of static.
"Sorry, Swelk. That's my last outside sensor."
They sat—together—in companionable silence until consciousness faded from them.
Except for smoke and hungry flames, all that moved on the bridge of the Consensus was the text still blinking on the command console.
Clean Slate acknowledged.