Sphere (Page 67)

"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."

Chapter 15

"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?"