crundy (Sci-fi) Part 1 of 2 (620 hits)
Category: NoneLabels: sci-fi
Rating: 0.95 on 29 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by Jack McCallum (View user info) at 2008-07-02 18:58:20 EDT
[This story is set in the future of Bone Dry (http://www.ubersite.com/m/77890) & Rock (http://www.ubersite.com/m/92781) & takes place a short time after Rock.]
Rombley tapped Eckvart on the shoulder. Eckvart was about to lock down his helmet and paused.
"You know what they say about Fenrir?"
Eckvart shrugged. The padded and plated shoulders of his EVA suit exaggerated the motion.
"Fenrir is a dog," Rombley said. "This huge dog. Like, celestial huge. He's from Norse mythology."
Eckvart locked down his helmet and turned on his air. His face was illuminated by the green and red displays at his chin.
"So Fenir is supposed to grow huge. Huge, spaceman." Rombley lost his balance slipping a foot into his suit leggings. Eckvart reached out and steadied him. "Thanks. Anyhow, this dog is supposed to break free of his bonds and eat Odin. Odin, spaceman. He's like, the head God among the Norse Gods. Are you getting me? Loki and Ymir and Valhalla and Asgard? All that?"
"Two minutes."
Rombley glanced at the speaker in the airlock ceiling. "I better get moving." He touched a few buttons on the front of his suit and booted up the power and diagnostics in his backpack. He knew that if they weren't doing this in zero g he'd be lying on his back. The packs were heavy.
"So anyhow, Fenrir is supposed to break free and eat Odin, and that's the end of everything. Ragnarok."
Eckvart stared at the airlock doors.
Rombley locked down his helmet and spoke into the com. "Come on, spaceman, don't you think that's crazy?"
"One minute."
"An ambulance ship coming back from the moon crashes into China and releases, well, whatever the hell it released, and the Chinese nuke parts of their own country, and nobody in the west will talk about what happened but the rumors are red hot, and now this, now along comes one of Saturn's moons, knocked out of the gas giant's orbit by who knows what, slinging toward the sun like a stone with the Earth in its path and you don't think it's crazy that the moon is named Fenrir? Come on!"
Eckvart's visor darkened automatically as a shaft of light came through the small viewing port in the airlock door, sunlight bouncing off of the pale surface of Fenrir.
"This rock will not hit the Earth," Eckvart said.
Rombley let out a laugh. "It speaks!"
Eckvart said nothing.
"I know, I know," Rombley said, "the rock got diverted—"
"Setting down."
"Thanks for the ride, spaceman," Rombley said.
He was speaking to the man behind the voice in the ceiling. Pollock was the pilot and about as much fun as Eckvart. Rombley didn't care. He understood that their job was to be serious, sharp, and attentive. Pollock and Eckvart were here to get Rombley onto the rock. Rombley was a geologist. He'd never been into space, never had the urge. But he had spent most of his adult life studying rocks from across the solar system. And now he was going to play on one of Saturn's moons, traveling there and back on a three-tub, a science ship with a separate laboratory, sleeping space and drive. Pollock was in the cab up front. Eckvart and Rombley were in the lab airlock. Tub ships were modular, and the components could be strung together like boxcars in a train.
Rombley and Eckvart activated their bootmags and grabbed handholds set into the airlock walls. They felt a shake, a gentle bounce, and then they were down.
The airlock began to depressurize. "But what made the rock change course," Rombley said in an ominous tone, "And what unspeakable horrors will our intrepid explorers discover?"
The airlock door released its locks and seals and swung open.
"Dum-dum-dummm," Rombley said, picking up his toolkit.
He heard a noise, a soft rush of air.
Eckvart was letting out an exasperated sigh.
[The empty hull of the dead ship had scraped along the polished sides of the resort craft. Vacationeers could feel the vibrations in their feet. There was an explosion. Ralph Scurley had been relaxing in front of the wide windows of the Jahoobie's Starscape Lounge sipping a margarita heavy on the tequila when he heard the first screams. Earlier he and a few others had watched as the resort craft had approached the dead ship and the hostess had told them what a wonderful opportunity it was to see old space wreckage adrift out here. That was before someone had cut off her intercom and the gray-haired guy sitting beside Ralph and sucking back Bud Lights had said, "That thing isn't from here, and it isn't dead. Look, it's starting to move alongside, toward the main hatch." Now sirens were going off and a soft red light was flashing in the corners of the spacious lounge. By the time Ralph made his way to the information kiosk all hell had broken loose. A man ran by holding a hand to his face, blood pouring out of one eye socket. Ralph trotted down a corridor to a security station and saw people lying on the carpeted floor, all of them bleeding from head wounds. They looked like they had been shot.]
Over a year earlier a massive unseen object had passed beyond the solar system, disrupting the orbits of smaller satellites orbiting Neptune, Uranus and Saturn. The Uranian moons Ophelia and Cordelia collided and disintegrated. Perhaps one day those remains would form a new moon. There were seventeen small moons now moving through the system, some falling in toward the sun, some drifting away into the depths of space.
Fenrir had a diameter of about 4 kilometers. As moons go, it wasn't very impressive, but if it had continued on its course for Earth and struck a populated area it would have caused widespread devastation. The wayward moon was about half of the estimated size of the asteroid thought to have struck the Earth sixty-five million years ago, causing the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction event.
Fenrir had been hidden by the sun during most of its fall toward the center of the solar system. The public was never informed of the potential threat until the threat was reassessed and regarded as insignificant. As the small moon came closer to Earth telescopic photography and images captured by passing ships showed something on the surface of Fenrir, something partly buried in the moon. The leading theory was that a massive chunk of ice hit the moon, a piece of ice orbiting the Sun in the lonely reaches. Whatever had disrupted orbits across the system could have thrown the chunk of ice in toward the Sun and on a most fortunate collision course with Fenrir.
None of the images of Fenrir and the object on the lunar surface were very clear. The Seuss had been sent out to determine exactly what struck the moon. Rombley, Eckvart and Pollock were sent to find out what had very likely saved billions of human lives.
Rombley and Ecvart stepped out of the Seuss and used the jets of their packs to move across the surface of the moon. Fenrir's gravity was minimal.
They could see two meters of an ice wedge jutting up from the flat surface of Fenrir. The rest of the ice was imbedded in the moon.
"Does that ice look odd?" Eckvart asked.
Rombley laughed. "Hey, out here, anything is poss... wait, it does look strange."
As they came closer Eckvart said, "Fuel. That wedge of ice was created by a fuel leak."
They walked around the ice wedge. On the other side they could see part of the hull of a ship. The metal nose had been buried on impact.
"Wow," Rombley said. "Somebody done fucked up, boss."
"And in doing so, saved the world."
Rombley gave Eckvart a questioning look, his face ghostly white in the reflected sunlight. "You think this is what diverted Fenrir from a collision with the Earth?"
"Anything is possible," Eckvart said. "This is an EEP, an Emergency Evacuation Pod. This one is made by Wilkies. They put the fuel tank in front. Crazy design. See this blackening of the hull here... and here? There was an explosion, or the EEP was struck by something before this crash-landing. He must have had a fuel leak. If the explosion took out his instruments he was flying with his eyes, and a fuel leak would create a hazy cloud, blinding him."
"The hatch is open," Rombley said. "There's no one inside."
Rombley and Eckvart turned in slow circles. "There," Eckvart said.
They used their pack jets to move across the surface of Fenrir. There was a dip and an overhang a few meters long, big enough to shelter a body in an evac suit.
"What happened to his head?" Rombley saw a body in a suit, wedged under that rough ledge.
Eckvart took a step and his jets hissed. When his boots touched down he bent and picked up a chrome and glass ball. "Here. Gaskets are intact."
"Gaskets?"
Eckvart joined Rombley. He pointed to the black flexcarbon seal in the collarpiece of the EEP suit, and then gave the head a spin in one hand. There was a similar seal on the underside of the helmet, this one conforming to the shape of a human neck.
Rombley expelled hot air through his teeth, a hiss of disgust and dismay.
"Don't vomit in your suit, spaceman," Eckvart said.
Rombley returned to the ruined EEP and leaned against the hull. "What is the deal with those gaskets?" There was silence in his suit radio and then Eckvart spoke.
"Ever since the Third Cloning Ban of Forty-nine the transplant industry has really had to buckle down and get serious about seeking resources. They convinced the Extraterrestrial Safety Administration to mandate gaskets as a safety precaution. Most space suits now have flexcarbon gaskets at every joint. If there is a suit breech in a glove or legging, for example, the gasket seals the suit. You can live without an arm or a leg."
Rombley's gloved hand went to the wide collar of his suit. "Can't live without a head."
"True," Eckvart said, returning to the EEP and still carrying the head. "But in cases where a blow-out kills the wearer suit gaskets still seal any breaches. What we have here and under that ledge are transplantable organs, depending on their condition. Lungs. Eyes. Whatever survived."
"You're a talkative guy now," Rombley said, taking a deep breath.
"Mmm," Eckvart said, sounding amused. "I just don't like small talk. Something like this though, it's worth talking about."
Rombley was looking into the cockpit of the EEP. He reached in and grabbed a plasma cutter floating there. "I use one of these to collect rock samples."
Eckvart turned the head in his hands and examined the collar of the helmet. "Plasma cutters are standard issue in survival kits," he said. "Good for cutting open a frozen hatch. It looks like this fellow used the plasma cutter on himself. There are small burn marks on this collar."
Rombley stared at Eckvart for a moment. "Used the cutter on... tried to cut off his own..."
"Look for the vehicle Identification Number," Eckvart said. "It should be inside."
Rombley leaned into the cockpit. "There's a little metal plate on the dashboard here. There's a name and some sort of registration number."
"What letters does the serial number start with?"
"HS," Rombley said.
"Hotel ship," Eckvart said. He looked down at the helmet in his hands. "This person was a vacationeer. A tourist. What was the name of the ship?"
"The Jahoobie." Rombley turned on a pinlight on the sleeve of his suit and examined the cockpit. "Hey, he burned something into the side of the cockpit here. It looks like a single word."
"What is it?"
Rombley cocked his head left and then right in an attempt to read letters etched into metal. "It's hard to make out. Crundy?"
[Ralph didn't remember a whole lot about the safety review at the beginning of the cruise, but he did know where the lifeboats were. He went down two flights of stairs and ran down a white corridor. No fancy ballroom colors here. There were airlock doors with numbers on them and the letters EEP. Ralph touched a metal plate and raised one of the doors. Colorful diagrams on the walls of the room showed him how to put on the space suit. Not far away was the EEP. He was about to slip on the helmet when he saw movement in the open doorway. There was a thing standing there. It was shaped something like a man and wearing tatters of metallic cloth. It appeared to be covered in silvery hair or bristles and walked with an alien swaying motion. It appeared to have an extra set of hands at the end of each arm. The thing's head was different. Very dark, almost scaly. It had large eyes over a face with a protruding nose or mouth shaped like... "Like a gun," Ralph said. He heard a sound, a phut!of compressed air, and something struck him in the head above his left eye. The thing with the face shaped like a gun turned and walked away. He touched his head and saw blood on his glove. Ralph locked the helmet down onto the suit and eased into the cockpit of the slender emergency evacuation pod. He was glad he was on a luxury cruise. He knew that some EEPs were little more than sealed plastic bags with a radio inside. There were large white plastic buttons on the dashboard. OPEN. CLOSE. LAUNCH. AUTOPILOT. STEER. DISTRESS BEACON. Ralph struck the CLOSE button. The button glowed green and the hatch was lowered over his head. He clicked the straps of a safety belt in place. The airlock door behind him began to close and he heard the roar of a machine pistol back there. Sealed in his helmet and the EEP he could not see behind him. He hit the LAUNCH button and it turned green under his glove. A bay door opened ahead of him and rockets ignited behind him. He reached up, his glove striking the helmet of the suit. He wished he could touch his head again. It felt like something was moving on or under the skin above his eye. The EEP was ejected from the Jahoobie and Ralph was thrust out into space, the pain in his head growing so bad he screamed. There was a flash of reflected light in the clear hatch. Something big had exploded behind him. He grunted as something glowing-hot struck the EEP, and then vapor was spewing from the front of the craft. He hit the AUTOPILOT button with a fist and saw it glow red. The pain in his head suddenly bloomed into something indescribable.]
"Crundy?" Eckvart asked. "What does crundy mean?"
"You got me," Rombley replied.
The helmet holding the severed head jerked in Eckvart's hands and when he looked down he saw a tear appear in the flexcarbon neck gasket.
tbc...
I'm out of here for the weekend. Hope everyone has a safe and happy Fourth.
User Reviews
Submitted by morello (user info) at 2008-07-06 12:40:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
THIS IS GREAT!
Submitted by Caulaincourt (user info) at 2008-07-04 19:23:23 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
wifeless jackmccallum groupie below
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2008-07-04 12:17:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2008-07-04 02:00:43 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
like you tolerate different opinions bubba you infuriatingly idiotic peasant.
=================
Tut tut, my good man. You are beginning to sound supercilious, as though you think you are above the peasantry.
Jamie, how is your wife doing with her medical issues?
Submitted by haikumikoo (user info) at 2008-07-04 11:47:18 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
Purely bubba inspired.
Submitted by morello (user info) at 2008-07-04 09:16:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Oh, Jack McCallum Author. I do love your writing so.
Folks... He has a publishd book.
Read it! NOW!
Submitted by Stagger_Lee (user info) at 2008-07-04 02:03:45 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
This ain't half bad.
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2008-07-04 02:00:43 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
like you tolerate different opinions bubba you infuriatingly idiotic peasant.
Submitted by Caulaincourt (user info) at 2008-07-04 01:42:08 EDT (#)
Ranking: -2
-2 for you outsider
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2008-07-03 21:05:35 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
My English professors would have disagreed with yours. I made my own decision, and I disagree with you. We have different opinions, so let it rest right there.
Submitted by Doodles (user info) at 2008-07-03 20:56:26 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Fine, allmost all reivews i've read ofr the book in addition to any english professor i've had.
and their professors too.
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2008-07-03 20:52:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Giving a poorly thought out opinion does not make one a critic, nor does reading idiotic websites and regurgitating their drivel. "Most" literary critics?
Submitted by Doodles (user info) at 2008-07-03 20:28:17 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2008-07-03 17:59:46 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Doodles (user info) at 2008-07-02 19:57:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Worth reading I'd say, you idn't explain the gaskets well enough and the jumping back and forth bugged me.
==================
Doodles, once you've been reading for more than three years it will all come together. Many of the greatest authors in the world have used that same technique. See "Grapes Of Wrath" by Steinbeck.
The gasket explanation was more than adequate.
---
Grapes of wrath was god awful.
Even most literary critics agree that the dreadful book was saved by the exceptional movie.
Steinbeck was a commie, and a poor one at that.
Great thinker my ass.
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2008-07-03 18:27:47 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Fuck off, Apollo.
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2008-07-03 18:17:48 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
bubba, some of the cum dripped off your chin onto your sammich.
eat it up, there's a good boy.
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2008-07-03 17:59:46 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by Doodles (user info) at 2008-07-02 19:57:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Worth reading I'd say, you idn't explain the gaskets well enough and the jumping back and forth bugged me.
==================
Doodles, once you've been reading for more than three years it will all come together. Many of the greatest authors in the world have used that same technique. See "Grapes Of Wrath" by Steinbeck.
The gasket explanation was more than adequate.
Submitted by Method (user info) at 2008-07-03 16:22:01 EDT (#)
Ranking: 1
No Comment
Submitted by shadow (user info) at 2008-07-03 11:56:06 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I'd go back to geology if I could land on a big hunk of space rock. The biggest space rock I was ever given for study fit on a microscope slide. The bigger chunks had to go back to NASA :(
Not a bad start but, as you know, could use a clean and polish, and a little expansion on the gasket explanation; I had to read that through twice before I could tell what you were driving at. The aliens sound a little cliche, but I'd like to see what you're doing with them.
Submitted by Berty (user info) at 2008-07-03 05:11:10 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
It's compelling and good, as per usual, but traditionally sci-fi is a vehicle for some manner of philosophical or pshycological or sociological theory. I'm not really seeing much of that here in your "aliens what lay eggs in people's heads" approach and your traditional "them darn reds'll kill anyone for anything" theme.
Proper good yarn though.
Submitted by EmissionImpossible (user info) at 2008-07-03 03:21:51 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Keep on going Mr Jack
Submitted by Doodles (user info) at 2008-07-02 21:08:52 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Oh bubba your insults sting like a thousand little knives cutting into my heart.
Submitted by Bubba2341 (user info) at 2008-07-02 21:06:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Fuck you, Doodles, you follower.
Submitted by PayMeLater (user info) at 2008-07-02 21:03:39 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Yeah this was boring dude.
Submitted by DonkeyOnTheEdge (user info) at 2008-07-02 20:25:42 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
I wish I could give this a 1.5 I lost interest halfway through and pushed through to the end. Kind of like a dump, I was relieved when I was done and not that unhappy.
Submitted by Doodles (user info) at 2008-07-02 19:57:58 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Worth reading I'd say, you idn't explain the gaskets well enough and the jumping back and forth bugged me.
Submitted by The_Drake (user info) at 2008-07-02 19:57:54 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Not blind
Submitted by Doodles (user info) at 2008-07-02 19:46:12 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
Well my +2 was based on apollo's.
I'm a follower.
I guess I have to read it and formulate an opinion, now.
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2008-07-02 19:38:22 EDT (#)
Ranking: 0
just kidding
i like sci fi, i like that series by the other chap.
if people who i respect +2 this i'll read it.
not the usual blind +2 from bubba etc.
Submitted by Doodles (user info) at 2008-07-02 19:36:33 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2008-07-02 19:32:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
i didn't actually read that.
Submitted by apollo88 (user info) at 2008-07-02 19:32:34 EDT (#)
Ranking: 2
i actually read that.