CHAPTER 37
Mankind differs from the
animals only by a little, and most people throw that away.
- K'ung Fu-tse
(Confucius)
Sarwin stared down the barrel of the ugly
human's pistol. Then he took a quick
glance at the navigation computer; less than three minutes to go before the
leap threshold. This was not a good
time for this to happen. Not a good
time at all.
"In case you're thinking of
trying something funny," said the human, "let me tell you that I know
about your brainwave control of this ship.
If even the slightest thing starts to happen that I don't tell you to
do, I'll assume you're trying some trick and blow your head clean off without
any warning, got that?"
Sarwin regarded the strange creature
curiously. "I understand," he
answered.
"Good," answered the
human, "Now if I timed my little surprise just right, we should be almost
at the chronoleap threshold."
"Almost," answered Sarwin,
calmly. He didn't want to agitate the
creature, least it shot him accidentally.
"You didn't make it too easy on
me," complained the human, "turning off the audio countdown like you
did. I haven't had to count
Mississippi's since I was a kid. Shit,
the way you lizards count is hard enough, your number system being based on six
and all."
Sarwin realized that the audio
countdown, before he had shut it down, would not have gone through the
translator. The human understood his
language! But how? Then Sarwin noticed the man's face. Three deep, parallel scars, only half
covered by repulsive fur, marred the side of its already ugly visage. Sarwin glanced at his own three-clawed hand
and made the connection.
"You are the one who killed my
wife," he told the human.
"Give this boy a cigar,"
said the human, apparently to no one.
Sarwin was still new at judging human expressions, but somehow this one
did not seem fully rational to him.
"She ripped my face off, so I
killed her and I put her in a tube, like a pickled pig," he continued,
"That's only fair, right?"
Sarwin just stared at the beast.
"Don't act condescending with
me!" snarled the human, apparently angry at not getting a answer,
"You killed your entire people!
Tell me Sarwin, how does it feel to have wiped out your whole race? I'll bet that's a guilt trip and a
half!"
"You have no idea,"
replied the saurian.
"And I'd like to keep it that
way," snapped the human, "you aren't going to kill my people to get
your leather-skinned clan back. Not on
my watch."
"We were here first,"
calmly argued Sarwin, trying to stall so he could think of a way out of this
mess, "Your people would not even exist if it was not for me."
"Well, I'll take that into
account when we get back to Earth," mocked the human, "I'll see if I
can dig up a medal for you."
The human moved over to the
navigation console and looked at the display.
"Perfect," it said,
"We'll be at the threshold in less than a minute." With the little finger of his hand, he tapped
a button, which put the ship's navigation system on manual control.
"Don't touch that!"
shouted Sarwin, but he didn't move as the human retrained the gun on him,
"If you move the ship during the chronoleap, the field might
collapse. We could all be killed."
"I know," replied the
human, calmly, "That's what happened to you the first time. Your wife told me. And don't worry, we won't all be killed... just all your friends
out there... I'm going to move this
ship far enough away at the last moment so that we aren't sucked in. Then you and I can fly back to earth and you
can tell me all the things your wife couldn't; like how to build more of these
ships."
"I can't let you do that,"
replied Sarwin.
"Ha! Your wife was the same way," laughed the creature,
"Stubborn. Unwilling to share your
technology with us lowly humans. I got
her to talk. I'll get you to spill your
guts too."
A chime from the panel caught both
their attentions. Out the view port,
the shimmering veil of the chronofield was starting to reach out from the
asteroid toward them.
"Ah, this must be the
threshold," said the human, "Your wife's description didn't do it
justice. She should have just said no
to drugs. Well, time for us to leave."
The human reached down with his hand
to touch the navigation panel, which would move the ship. As soon as the gun was off him, Sarwin
blurred into motion. He rammed himself
violently into the human's midsection, driving the creature backward, slamming
it hard against the bulkhead.
"Son of a bitch!" shouted
the human. Its gun went off, the sound
deafening in the small cabin, but it didn't hit Sarwin. The two fell to the deck, rolling over each
other, wrestling for the gun. It went
off again a few times, plugging holes in the control panels and bulkheads. Sarwin's sharp claws tore at the creature's
delicate flesh, but the human was bigger and stronger than the lithe saurian
and it eventually won back control of the pistol. It kicked Sarwin hard, knocking the wind out of him, then stood
up over the saurian, panting and pointing the gun at him again.
"Fuck you, lizard man!" it
screamed, "try that again and you're joining your bitch in Sodgrass, or
whatever the fuck you call your hell!"
The human moved again toward the
navigation panel. Its hand reached for
the controls again. Sarwin realized he
had to do something and now. He wrapped
his arms tightly around the base of his command chair and held on tight.
"Human," he called to the
hairy beast.
"What?!" snapped back the
creature, tersely, again training the gun on the saurian.
"Did my wife show you this
before you killed her?"
Sarwin sent a brain wave pulse to
the door of the ship and it snapped open at the invisible command. Instantly, the air in the tiny cabin rushed out,
in a fruitless attempt to fill the endless vacuum outside. Sarwin held tight to the chair as the air
roared past him. He felt the wind rush
from his lungs a second time, even faster than when the human had kicked it out
of him.
He saw the hairy beast fly toward
the door, trying to shoot Sarwin, but missed.
It seemed to be shouting, but its words were dragged outside with the
escaping air. With its only hand
occupied by the gun, it was unable to grab anything to anchor itself and it
quickly flew out the open door into the black void beyond.
As soon as he saw it go, Sarwin sent
another command and the door slammed shut again. Automatically, the cabin re-pressurized with new air.
Painfully, Sarwin forced himself off
the floor and over to the navigation panel.
He felt numbed by the icy chill that the fleeting vacuum had brought
upon his ship. He looked out the view
port at the strange and horrific sight; the shimmer of the chronofield almost
completing itself and the human spiraling outside in the void, futilely
fighting to draw breath from nothingness.
Its skin began to blotch darkly red as the capillaries beneath burst
themselves in the vacuum. Sarwin could
see its ugly face twisting in agony and its eyeballs being pushed grotesquely
out of its skull from the sudden pressure behind them. After a few seconds, the creature stopped
squirming. The hideous corpse spun
away, becoming a tiny frozen satellite of the asteroid below.
Sarwin checked the control
panel. He could see that the computer
had automatically compensated for what had just occurred, so that the saucer
had not been pushed out of position by the unplanned thrust of the atmosphere
escaping from the door. For a moment,
Sarwin felt relieved. It seem that
everything was going to be okay, after all.
But then he noticed the flashing
blue light on the reactor monitor panel.
It indicated that the core had been damaged and that it was
automatically dumping its fuel into space to prevent itself from exploding. For a dumbfounded second, Sarwin wondered
what had caused the damage, but a quick glance at the two bullet holes in the
reactor core bulkhead gave him the obvious answer.
He commanded the computer to stop
the fuel dump, but the machine ignored his order, indicating that to stop now would
cause the core to breach. It would stop
only when it determined the core to be stable, even if that meant vacating all
of its fuel. Sarwin watched helplessly
while the fuel gauge dropped quickly toward zero. He pounded his fist vainly on the panel, swearing at the
machine. Finally, with only a tiny
fraction of the original fuel quantity remaining, the computer stopped venting
and the core was stabilized. Sarwin
moaned in misery when he saw what little fuel remained. It didn't look like there was enough left to
jump back in time a measly twenty-six years, let alone twenty-six million!
Sarwin suddenly realized that, in
his distraction with the reactor, he had not even heard the frantic shouts of
inquiry from his cohorts that were coming in through the speakers. He opened the link with ship number two.
"What in Shradia's name is
going on?!" shouted Kleesic, as his panicking face appeared on the
monitor, "My panel shows your core is off-line! Are you crazy?! We're in
the threshold!"
"I know, I know!" shouted
back Sarwin, "No time to explain!
My reactor's been damaged. I
can't make the jump with you. I'm
pulling out of the leap. If I don't, my
ship will be like a ball and chain on the rest of you. We'll all die. Without me, you might have a chance to make it!"
With shaking hands, Sarwin tapped commands into the navigation panel. Through the view port, he could see the asteroid and his colleague's ships start to recede as he pulled away from them.
"Damn it, Sarwin! We're balanced for seven ships, not
six!"
"I know! You have to recalibrate!"
"There's no time!" Kleesic
frantically shouted. In the monitor,
Sarwin could see his friend working madly at his console, trying to recalibrate
the jump. Out the view port, he could
see the fully formed chronofield reaching out to the six ships like the
translucent tentacles of an amorphous sea creature.
"Kleesic!" shouted Sarwin,
"You're out of time! Do it
noooow!!!!"
With a great flash, the chronofield
contacted all six ships. They all lit up
so brilliantly that it was hard for Sarwin to see. In a normal jump, they would have all disappeared together, but
now they winked out, one by one, as the misaligned field dragged them
separately into the past, completely out of kilter. After the last ship had vanished, Sarwin noticed a smaller flash,
as the drifting body of the despicable human was sucked into the vortex of the
slipstream behind the chronoships.
In an instant, it was over. Only the dark, round shape of the asteroid
remained, its pockmarked bulk filling the view port. His friends were gone and he had no idea what had happened to
them. Had they made it? Perhaps they were dead. Perhaps they were alive, but hopelessly lost
somewhere in time.
Sarwin knew only one thing for sure;
that he was now, without any doubt, the sole living member of his race in this
entire universe.
He was completely and utterly alone.