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  There was no reply.

  “Gary?” I repeated, my head spinning over to Cambridge, whose dark eyebrows were now knitting together at me.

  “Gary!” I said for a third time.

  “I think,” Babs said, “we’ve lost communications.”

  She was right: the viewscreen image from Karen’s camera was getting fuzzy. From the station’s camera view, though, I could see that they still looked okay out there.

  However, that view wasn’t good enough for me. “Well, that’s it: they’re getting help. Cambridge?” I finally said, raising an eyebrow at him.

  *

  By the time Cambridge and I and someone else from the station got the wet-vac, then stepped outside and walked down the station’s main exit ramp, the mistiness in the air had increased and the air had gotten darker too. It would be night soon, and the nights on Genteran were quite dark and really eerie, which gloomy atmosphere would probably fit the task at hand….

  As the three of us moved closer to my crew, I pushed the communicator-button on my suit and stated quite emphatically that I had brought help. Gary had been standing on the ground, looking up at the Demeter, but, at my words, his head spun right to me, his mouth dropping open behind his helmet’s glass.

  “Don’t,” I said in a sharp voice as I stopped near him. “I’m the captain, no matter if you’re in charge of this particular action. I won’t interfere with your work, but don’t test me.”

  I thought Gary would frown or maybe pout now, but he surprised me by laughing softly.

  I flashed him a little smile, then said, “Here’s the wet-vac,” as the semi-automated machine slid closer to us over the blackish ground.

  “I’m Cambridge. I’m the Operations Director of this station,” Cambridge said to my crew. He had linked up with our communicators when he put on his blue spacesuit inside GS, and now his blue-gloved hands shook Gary’s red-gloved hands, and then Karen’s.

  Watching Cambridge now, I felt surprised at his title; up until this moment, he had acted like he was just some flunky left in charge of the station. But I should have seen that wasn’t true: he knew how to do too many things inside the place, just like he knew how to set up the wet-vac.

  Cambridge’s assistant, Perry, now moved the vacuum to beside the platform, but Cambridge actually started the thing and then instructed Perry how to vacuum not only the platform’s top, but the “air” near the platform.

  “It doesn’t need a surface to operate,” Cambridge explained. “The wand can be fixed vertically. The air seems pretty static under the ship, but the dehumidifier inside the vac won’t be able to keep it that dry here when we’re outdoors.”

  “Every little change helps,” Gary said, and now he went back up onto the platform. “So far, so good,” he added, as, this time, he was able to get a good foothold on the drier-now surface.

  He stretched his arms over his head, and he and Chris began working with Steve to slide that first inner-hull area aside.

  The rest of us remained mostly silent now, our heads raised as we watched every motion Gary and Chris made; when they finally reached the second inner hull, Gary told Chris to leave the platform.

  Gary’s back was facing me, and he lowered his arms a bit sharply now, his shoulders finally shifting into a too-stiff stance.

  “What is it, Gary?” I asked, my heartbeats picking up momentum.

  “This is the last cover,” Gary replied. “Inside there’s the core’s structural shaft and the core at the top. We don’t know what we’ll see.”

  “I think we should all get back,” I said fast.

  Gary’s head shifted over his shoulder, toward me more. “We can’t all do that. I’ve got to check the shaft and release the horizontal locks inside the frame before we drop the core.”

  “What?!??”

  “I won’t have to go that far in,” Gary said fast.

  “I wish you didn’t have to go in at all!” I snapped, but my voice sounded more desperate than anything else, and my chest was heaving in my suit. A few heads turned my way, the faces attached looking surprised at my worried tone—and that made me realize I’d clearly dropped my professional exterior. My feelings were getting in the way of my position, which was unlike me….

  “Do what you need to do,” I said to Gary now, and he slowly nodded, then turned his helmeted head back up toward the hull.

  Then he quickly jumped off the platform. “Actually, let’s all move back like the captain said. We’ll wait a minute after Steve unlocks; then if nothing…appears, I’ll get back to work.”

  We all moved away from the cut-out, and I was suddenly feeling really guilty: this whole situation was my fault; if it weren’t for my worrying about preserving at least some of my ship, we could have just left the fucking ship here, handing it over to whatever was now living in it. If something happened to Gary or any of the others, I’d never forgive myself. Their lives couldn’t be replaced; my ship could.

  Before Gary could tell Steve to open the inner hull, I laid a hand on one of Gary’s arms. “I can’t let you do this—how stupid I’ve been! It’s not safe for anyone. The ship isn’t that important. My wanting to preserve it is forcing all of us to possibly trade our lives for it.”

  Gary curled an incredulous-looking mouth at me. But before he could speak, Karen said, “Captain….”

  But then she never finished what she was going to say because Gary finally spoke: “Lydia, what makes you think the rest of us don’t care about the ship too? We live here for a good deal of our lives! Do you want to take a vote? I’m pretty sure that if you do, at least everyone under it right now wants to do what we’re doing.”

  “He’s right, Lydia,” Karen said, nodding her head. And then there were a few grunts of assent from my other crewmembers.

  “It seems so dangerous though,” I said, feeling my heart warming toward my crew, which only made me feel more worried for them. I felt damned here, no matter what….

  “Being out in space is so dangerous too, every moment, every day. Danger comes with this life,” someone said—Sam.

  My head turned to him, and I saw his slow nod at me, and his faster smile.

  “All right,” I said then, through a red face. “Carry on.” I took another step away from the cut-out in the ship, and so did the others.

  Then Gary said to Steve, “We’re ready—release the last locks and see if it will slide aside from your end only. My arms are too tired to be too careful with doing it manually, and, yeah, I’m more spooked now….”

  “Got it,” Steve said. Then: “You should try being in here all by yourself!”

  “Sorry about that—I should have left two of you inside.”

  “I could have asked for that, Gary, but you’re needed out there more than in here…. The locks are all open, the hull shaft-door is loose and sliding….”

  “Um, actually—no, it isn’t,” Gary said.

  “Shit!” Steve replied, and my heart began galloping faster than ever now.

  There was a loud communal groan from the others, and a long sigh from Gary. “Well,” he said, “the shaft hasn’t been opened in years from this end, and this is what happens when that happens. I’ll have to do it manually too.” He walked closer to where the cut-out was and jumped up the platform’s steps, and then three other people moved over to the platform too, including Cambridge.

  “I’ll help,” Cambridge said.

  “Me too,” several others said, in unison.

  “I’ll keep the vac working on the platform,” Perry added.

  “And I’ll be there with my camera,” Karen said.

  “And I’ll be there with—with me!” I finally replied, and everyone laughed.

  Now several sets of arms and palms worked at the dark inner-hull door, applying pressure to it, trying to shimmy it loose—it finally began detaching; then Gary told the others to leave the platform. “I’m going to work the rest loose with Steve—Steve, I think you can use the shield-variance function turned d
own low to jolt the door—just wait till I step away and give you the go-ahead or you’ll jolt me!”

  Gary came down to the ground and said fast, “Steve, turn on the shield now, the lowest setting.”

  Steve did what Gary instructed, but it wasn’t enough.

  Gary sighed loudly. “Give it another jolt now, one setting higher.”

  Steve gave it two jolts at that higher setting and the door finally began sliding open on its own—sliding quite loudly, actually, which seemed strange.

  “There’s probably some corrosion on one of the long ends,” Gary said, moving back up onto the platform. “I’m surprised the sensors didn’t pick it up, but it must have been between the locks at the seam, and the sensors couldn’t interpret it correctly. I’m going up now.” His head inside his helmet twisted to glance down at the rest of us, especially at me; then we all moved closer to the platform.

  Gary pressed a button on the other arm of his suit and then another button on a panel beside the opening in the hull. He had to stretch quite far over to reach that panel because the platform wasn’t right beneath that area.

  “Gary, we can move the platform,” I said.

  “No need—I’m already done. Now for the fun part.” A silver ladder on a track descended from the opening, and Gary grabbed the rungs and lifted himself onto the ladder, his helmet tilting back as he looked up into the shaft.

  “Can you see anything unusual?” I asked.

  I thought I saw his head try to shake, but then he must have realized I couldn’t see much motion because the back of his helmet was to me and the head area of a protective suit could be quite stiff. “No, nothing unusual,” Gary said now. “The core looks perfect from under here. Come see for yourselves—Karen?”

  She moved closer with her camera, tilting the lens up at the shaft, and I walked to right beside her and lifted my head, my eyes finally directly connecting with the giant hole in my ship’s hull.

  Though the shaft inside was lit, it was still a shadowy corridor, and viewing it from this perspective was a particularly weird experience, as if I were looking inside my ship’s intestines, inside a dark smelly place I really didn’t want to view. There were metal beams and other structural workings on the sides of the shaft, away from the opening, and then at the very top, part of a matte-black plane was visible—a movable support-plane beneath the core. As far as my captain’s eyes could tell, neither that support nor anything else inside the shaft looked out of place….

  Gary had turned to gaze down at me, and now our eyes directly met. He seemed to be hesitating, waiting for something, probably for me to give him the go-ahead.

  “Guess there’s no choice then. Go,” I finally said.

  He nodded slowly and began climbing the ladder; he stopped several feet into the ship and pulled something from the small pack attached to his suit, and I realized then that he’d come prepared: he held a pulse gun in his hand now.

  He climbed off the ladder and onto that level he was at; then he disappeared from view for a long moment, while the rest of us alternated between looking up the shaft for him and looking at each other’s worried eyes.

  Then, just when I was about to check if Gary was still alive, he reappeared and said, “I’ve released the inner frame locks. I’m seeing nothing everywhere and the shaft down here looks perfect. I’m brave, but I’m really not that brave. I’m not checking the levels all the way up to see if the shaft’s been weakened anywhere by age recently, and so dropping the core will do too much damage. I’m sorry, Lydia….”

  “Get back down here now,” I said, and in such a hard voice, a few helmeted heads turned my way. So then I added, “It’s not worth risking yourself even more.”

  Gary began climbing down, and when his booted feet finally loudly hit the platform, he told Chris to help him slide the platform away. Cambridge pushed the wet-vac back toward the station, and then we all began rushing in that same direction—and then Gary gave Steve the go-ahead to open the magnetic locks around the core, release the plane support, and drop all the shields around there.

  And now a new worry flashed across my mind: just like the inner hull wouldn’t slide, maybe the core wouldn’t disconnect! Then what?

  …But my worrying had been for nothing, because one moment we were all standing waiting for the core to drop, the next there was a rushing noise and a mechanical roaaaar—and then the core was slamming into the ground, and we were all jumping even farther away, and my heart was crashing into my rib cage so crazily and I was gulping for air so fast, it felt like I was on the verge of a massive coronary event.

  “It’s down!” Gary shouted to Steve now. “Raise the external shields.”

  I stared over at the wreckage of one of the hearts of my ship, at the silver, red, and black long rectangular container of the core. Part of it had been unevenly crushed by the impact with the ground, and, no matter Gary’s earlier assurances about the low radioactivity of the core, there were still at least some dangers. And, going on the stiff way everyone out here was suddenly standing, they were also remembering the dangers.

  Chris now pulled off the measuring device attached to his red suit; then he held the device toward the damaged core. “Elevated levels of radioactivity, but nothing too bad. Bizarre—the core’s been breached, but I’m detecting zero lone ambin and zero bound ambin on several exposed lining nodules.” His green eyes fell on my eyes and then on Gary’s. “Did it dissipate that fast?”

  Gary’s head turned as he stared around the misty area beneath the ship. “It’s likely in this weather. Any free ambin molecules probably immediately combined with whatever hydrogen is in the mist.”

  “But what if something else is responsible?” I said, thinking of what Babs had said about the core sensors detecting mobile ambin inside.

  And as if I had a crystal-ball for the core, there was a sudden, extremely loud banging sound, like stone hitting stone—or stone hitting core. And then there was another roaaaar, only this one sounded like the kind that came from animals, not ships.

  All of our heads instantly shot right toward the core, and that was when we all saw it; the core was vibrating irregularly, as if a giant, furious fist was inside there pounding on it, trying to get out.

  Perry from the station began running toward the station as the rest of us fumbled backwards in the same direction. Gary pulled out his gun again, but I had a sinking feeling that the gun wouldn’t do shit, and I wasn’t sure that was the best response anyway, as long as the thing didn’t try to hurt us, if it got out….

  How stupid that “if” was: the thing was pounding so hard, it was making enough noise to wake the solar system. I scrambled to lower my headpiece’s audio intake from the exterior, and I noticed the others fumbling with their suit-controls, probably trying to do the same lowering.

  But, soon, the noise from the core was so loud, it was beyond the capability of the suits to block. I now felt the ground vibrating beneath my booted feet as the thing continued pounding. Part of the core suddenly shot up; then there was a sharp tearing sound, and more silver and red parts exploded upward.

  Then there was a brief, ominous silence.

  And then there, right at the core, a dark-blue miasma began emerging, the edge of a plasma; the plasma mass slowly slipped out of the tear, pulling three shocking neon-blue holes along with it. The blue holes rose higher, both independently inside the giant miasma and with the giant miasma as the plasma grew upward, which finally revealed that it actually wasn’t all plasma: there were solid parts, brown and red stone-looking solids floating inside of and covering some areas of the plasma—long arms, or maybe tentacles, were slipping and sliding into the misty air now, their edges glowing a neon-blue, too.

  The three blue holes, which seemed to be eyes—the neon eyes were now facing our way. But if they registered what we humans were, the eyes didn’t seem to care, because a moment later, they shifted far to the left, toward where the long edge of the Demeter was, toward where the rest of Genter
an was.

  The thing kept rising and then began roaring again, the sound so loud it swept through my body and made my knees shake. We all rushed back toward the station again, but the thing still seemed unaware of us.

  It roared even louder and pounded on what was left of the core, and then it finally fully slipped from inside and climbed over the wreckage, its tentacles striking the ground and sending earth into the air all along its path as it moved away.

  Its angry appendages kept flailing at its surroundings, but I and the others ran closer to it now, so we could observe its journey from under the ship.

  When the being reached beneath the sky and then the moonlight from above, it let out another load roaring and pounding session, till a hole seemed to open in the Genteran earth; the tentacles began deliberately moving into the hole—and the rest of the being quickly disappeared inside.

  The roar finally died, and then there was nothing left but the mess the manic being had made of the earth and my ship.

  *

  “Holy shit—what a fucking disaster!” I said a moment later through shaking lips.

  A few of the others laughed loudly. Then Karen lowered her camera and asked, “Is that it—is it gone?”

  “Who knows? At least it’s gone from my ship. It seems it didn’t like it inside. And I’m ever so glad it didn’t find the visit comfortable.” I was trying to make light of the situation, but my knees were shaking as I stared at the mess all over the ground, at the trail of mess; it went off into the distance, right up to where the hole the bizarre being had made had seemingly closed up. But the rest of the surface—I would be responsible for that. The fines….

  I sighed loudly. And then Gary said, “Unfortunately, now comes the repair and clean-up….”

  “What will this mean for Genteran?” Cambridge suddenly asked now.

  Gary turned toward him. “We don’t know. Babs, did the communications come back up? Have you been listening and watching?”

  “Oh yes—fascinating!” Babs said in a very excited voice.