Stepping Stones (30 page)

“I’ll get them back on,” I lied, knowing I couldn’t.

“There’s only one pod.  Don’t waste it on me.  I’m not going to make it.”

“You’re wrong, Julie.  You’re going to make it.  And so am I.”

I got the needle into a vein where her skin wasn’t too
badly
burned and started the cryo-drip, then stayed with her while the clear fluid slowly emptied into her.  We talked—me doi
ng most of the talking,
trying to maintain contact.  Then we just sat, not talking at all.

When she was ready, I sealed the pod and initiated the stasis cycle.  I watched as her eyes closed and her body relaxed and a film of frost formed on her skin. 
Then I left her. 
I knew what I
had
to do.

I tried not to rush, but
I didn’t have much time.  Even working as quickly as possible, it took me several hours to move the
Magellan. 
I’m not a pilot
and without computer assistance it was mostly trial and error, but I eventually got the ship positioned exactly where I wanted.

The smaller of the alien vessels was larger than I’d
first
thought, turning out to be over two hundred meters in
length
.
On closer inspection
I saw how deeply
its hull
had been slashed.  Through the open gashes I could make out some of
the
interior—a hellish
block of gray-green crystal
.  T
hough I searched, nowhere could I see
a means of entering.

I used mooring lines to lash the alien vessel to the
opening
of the
Magellan’s
drive cylinder.  It was slow work, but I got that done, too.

They say revenge is sweet, but I felt only bitterness
and revulsion
as I entered the computer bay and sat before the Omni.  I knew it wasn’t Carla anymore;
it was something else, something alien. 
I could almost feel the hate radiating from whatever
she had
become.  “I know you can hear me,” I said.  By then
, with our life support systems inoperable,
the ship’s internal temperatu
re had dropped to near freezing
and the air was getting stale.  “I know you’re in there, and I want you to know what I’m going to do.”

And then I told it.

Minutes
later I
fired up the
Magellan’s
main
iner
tial thruster, blasting the propulsive ions directly into the alien ship I’d lashed to our drive cylinder.

Before long, t
he alien vessel reestablished contact with the Omni.  I could see
the signal in the analyzer. 
I watched with satisfaction as it flickered and wavered and weakened
as the alien ship began to glow a dull red in our thruster’s exhaust
.  I hoped whatever was in that ancient ship was capable of sensing pain, of anticipating death.  It even tried to communicate with me through the Omni at the end
, calling me a carbon-based entity
.
I didn’t bother to respond.

The ion engine ran for nearly a
n
hour before the
thruster
cylinder overheated and shut down.  I rechecked our position.  With the
Magellan’s
thrust being diverted by the alien vessel,
we had only moved a few kilometers.  B
ut by then every circuit aboard the alien craft had been roasted, every memory bank incinerated, every electronic synapse destroyed.

Then
I addressed the Omni
one final time
.  “You’re next.”

I planned to turn it off, realizing that to do so would cause irreparable damage—not only to the computer, but to the
Magellan
itself.  Nonetheless, I had
to destroy
every
kernel of consciousness the alien had
planted
aboard
our ship
, whatever the cost.  Grimly, I pried off the Omni’s main panels and located the power cables.  One by one, I severed them.

Does murder apply to terminating an artificial
intelligence
? 
I’m not certain, but a
fter
what
had happened, I’d come to believe that in
all
ways that truly mattered, Carla was alive.  She, and the presence
we had
discovered aboard the alien ship.  So in a sense
,
what I did
was
murde
r—premeditated and deliberate.

But
when
the time came to do it, it was
easy
. . . and
I would
do it again.

*        *        *

I turned off the heater in my EV suit a while back.  They say free
zing is supposed to be an easy way to go.  I guess I’ll find out.  And w
ith
any
luck
,
maybe it won’t be permanent.  They revive people from cryo-suspension all the time, right?

At least
there’s
a chance.

An icy numbness is creeping through
my limbs
, and a crust of ice
has formed
on the interior of my
viewplate
.  If
I peer through the bottom
, I can just make out the
Magellan
floating
at the end of my tether, her scorched captive close behind.

I acquired a slight rota
tion when I exited the airlock. 
I didn’t bother to correct it.  Within minutes the second alien
vessel
will rise
again
on my left, laden with her long-dead crew.  I’m closing my eyes now.  I don’t want that
ship
to be the last thing I see.

The next time it comes around, I’ll be gone.

*        *        *

SUBSPACE TRANSMISSION ST978.6.84

TO:
  COM CEN DIST 3, EARTH

FROM:
 
FEDERATION
RESEARCH VESSEL INTREPID, HORSEHEAD NEBULA D17.233.15

TEXT:
 
FEDERATION EXPLORATION SHIP
MAGELLAN FOUND IN DERELICT CONDITION.  CREW MEMBERS STR
INGER AND CRUZ DEAD IN AIRLOCK.  CREW MEMBER
REAGAN ALIVE IN CRY
O-SUSPENSION.  WILL INTERROGATE REAGAN
UPON
CRYO-
REVIVAL.

CREW MEMBER
MCGUIRE’S BODY RECOVERED FROM SPACE.  CONCLUDE MCGUIRE
WAS RESPONSI
BLE FOR DEATHS OF STRINGER AND CRUZ, INJURY TO REAGAN, AND SABOTAGE OF OMNI
4000
COMPUTER.  WILL NOT ATTE
MPT TO RESUSITATE MCGUIRE
AS NO PSYCHIATR
I
C FACILITIES
AVAILABLE
.

OMNI 4000
DAMAGE EXTENSIV
E
, BUT HAV
EES#&* COMPLET
ED
FULL
DOWN
LAOD OF ALL SALVAGEABLE ZSSS%# FILES.

TWO A
L
I
EN CRAFT FO
UN
D AS RE
PORTED.  EXPLORATIO
N TO COMMENCE
WQNNM
UPON CORR
EC
T
ION MKOPPP OF INTREPID AIRLICK ZWW#$Z MALFUNCTOINS.

    END TRAMSN
ISSIOG.

Blue Skies

R
ob
pulled
off the
dirt
road and wheeled
his
truck up
a long gravel driveway, stopping in front of an
old farmhouse.  “Your turn, Matt,” he said
, glancing over at me
.

“I did the last one,” I protested, belatedly noticing his grin.  As usual, Rob was jerking my chain.  He knew I hated to do the asking.

Well, hate isn’t exactly the right word.  It made me . . . uncomfortable
.
  For some reason whenever I asked a farmer’s permission to hunt his fields, I felt
like
I was intruding.  The fact is
,
most farmers rarely refused us; usually they even told us where they’d last seen birds and whether the area had been recently hunted.

Rob cut the engine, set the brake, and swung out of the cab.  “Guess it’s up to me,
then,
” he chuckled.

Sipping tepid coffee, I watched from the warmth of the truck as Rob crunched across the frozen driveway, mounted the porch steps, and knocked on the door.  The farmhouse, a shabby, single-storied structure flanked by
several
ramshackle outbuildings—a barn, corral, and equipment shed—had a sad, lonely look to it.  Like so many of the farms we visited, the newest thing about
this one
was a satellite dish sprouting like an inverted mushroom
from under a roof eave
.

The pickup lurched slightly as our dogs shifted in the back.  Turning, I saw Max and Sammy staring over the tailgate at an ancient farm mongrel
who had
ambled out from behind the barn.  Sa
mmy rumbled deep in her throat. 
Max let loose a halfhearted bark.

“Quiet,
” I
said
, rapping on the glass so they knew I meant it.
  Both dogs lowered their ears and
gav
e me their best “Who, me?” looks
,
then
went back to conserving energy.

Not for the first time, I noticed how alike they seemed.  Both were on the smallish side for Labrador retrievers, with broad black heads and intelligent golden eyes.  Sammy was my dog; Max was
a
male pup from her
one and only
litter.  Four seasons
ago
I had
given eight-week-old Max to Rob,
and then
later
had helped
with
Max’s
training.  Max had turned out to be one of the finest bird dogs in the valley.  Almost as good as Sammy.

Rob knocked on the farmhouse door again.  Moments later a thin woman with a baby tucked in the crook of her arm opened the door and stepped
out
onto the porch.  Rob started talking, gesturing toward the acreage behind the house.  I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but before long the woman was pointing into the fields too, her free arm sweeping an arc from the cut cornfields to a wide drainage ditch at the west end of the property.  I smiled, deciding Rob should
always
do the asking.  People simply liked him; that’s all there was to it.  From the looks of things on the porch, I suspected by the time he was done
talking we would
probably be invited
to stay for
dinner.

By then
the wind had picked up
a bit
, sending leaves skittering around the yard and raising billows of dust behind the barn.  Hoping the weather didn’t worsen as the day progressed, I glanced at my watch. 
Ten AM
.

It had been calm when
we had
headed south earlier that morning, the sun barely cresting the mountains guarding the eastern flank of the Wood River Valley. 
We had
stopped in Hailey for coffee and a couple of deep-fried apple fritters, then settled down for the drive.  Over the seasons Rob and I had spent countless hours traveling to and from hunting spots,
usually spending more
time driving than hunting.  Occasionally we rode in silence, but mostly we talked.  Although
you would
think that after all those years
we would
have run out of things to say, we never did.  They were enjoyable hours, time well spent.

Rob returned from the house, his eyes
lit
with excitement.  “Good news, amigo.  They just cut the corn, and nobody’s hunted it since then.  We’ve got those pheasants all to ourselves.”

Pheasants are my favorite game bird—smart, challenging, and
good eating
.  Getting the old butterflies-in-the-stomach feeling that for me invariably precedes a pheasant hunt, I gazed across the fields behind the house.  Rob was right.  The
corn’s having just been cut
was a tremendous advantage.  As long as corn is still standing on a big acreage like that, the birds usually stay
well
hidden, deep in the middle.  The only way to flush them is to walk through (if the farmer will let you), with other hunters waiting at the far end.  Beaters and blockers.  If you’re a beater, it gets dicey when the birds start getting up.  You can’t see who’s shooting on the
other side of the cornstalks.  A
ll you can hope is that whoever it is
, he
waits till he sees blue sky before pulling the trigger.

Anyhow
, now that the corn was cut, the birds had been forced to move to new cover in the irrigation ditches, fence lines, and brush bordering the field—areas two guys with good dogs could hunt effectively.  Enter Rob and Matt.

“How do you want to do this?” asked Rob.

I finished my coffee and
thought a moment
.  “Normally I’d say we should hunt into the wind,” I answered.  “But something tells me there are birds in that ditch at the west end.  Let’s try that first.”

Rob nodded.  “Right.  We can work the fences later.”

We took a dirt access road to the northwest corner, parking a hundred yards from the main drainage ditch.  By then the dogs knew the hunt was on.  When I walked to the back of the truck for my gun and orange hunting vest, their eyes never left my face.  I let the tension build a few m
oments.  Then I grinned.  “
Let’s go!”

I didn’t have to tel
l them twice.  T
ails wagging, they leaped the tailgate and hit the ground, wrestling with each other like pups—one
on top, then the other.  T
hinking
that
they looked more like twins than mother and son, I let them go at it awhile, venting some steam before the hunt.

“Ready, Matt?”

“Yep
,” I answered, shrugging on my vest and stuffing a handful of twelve-gauge shotgun shells into my pocket.  “Soon as you get that rowdy dog of yours under control, we can do it.”

Rob laughed.  “It’s that frisky bitch of yours causing all the trouble,” he countered.  “Let’s
go
find some birds, Max.”

At that, both dogs stopped playing.  They knew it was time.

Rob cracked his over-and-under and shoved in two twenty-gauge shells.  I headed toward the nearest drainage ditch, feeding ammo into my Browning automatic as I went.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Rob
asked
.

“Oh.  Right.”  I returned and closed my hand, meshed my knuckles with Rob’s extended fist, then withdrew slightly and punched, fist to fist.  It was a stupid ritual, but
we had
been doing it for years. 
Customary fist-bump
completed
, we set out.  Soon we reached the weed-filled ditch,
with
our dogs out front.  Rob took one side; I took the other.  Not expecting much to happen for a while, I wasn’t paying attention.  It cost me.

One of the first things you learn about hunting upland birds is to
always
be ready.  Game birds, especially pheasants, can hide in the most measly cover imaginable, flushing when you least expect
it
.  It’s precisely this unpredictable element that makes pheasant hunting so much f
un.  Just when you think you have everything
figured out, something unexpected happens. 
I had
learned that lesson the hard way many times, so naturally when Sammy flushed a big rooster
to
my side
of the ditch
, I wasn’t ready.  I’d barely flipped off the safety and shouldered my gun when the bird disappeared behind a stand of Russian olive trees.

“Why didn’t you shoot?” Rob called from the other side.

“Wasn’t ready,” I replied sheepishly.

“Damn,” Rob muttered, giving me a disgusted look.  I think Sammy gave me a similar look as well.

Not off to a good start, I thought.  Nonetheless, we still had the whole farm to hunt, and now we knew for
certain
that there were birds
around
.  We headed down the drainage ditch once more.  It was a good-sized wash, dry now in the fall, narrow in spots and wide in others.  Clumps of willows guarded its banks, with plenty of cover in between.  Although at times I couldn’t see Rob, I could hear him crashing through the undergrowth on the other side, and we managed to stay abreast.  Sammy was down in the gully hunting in close, just as I’d taught her.  It was a pleasure to watch her work.

We tramped along for a quarter hour without seeing any more birds.  The air was crisp, but the sun had begun to warm things a bit, slanting through the willows and cattails choking the gully and melting the frost on the exposed ground in between.

“Get ready, Matt,” Rob warned as we approached a bend in the canal.  “Max is on scent.”

“Sammy is
birdy, too,” I called back, my pulse quickening.  Sammy was definitely hot, her tail rotating in tight circles as her nose dragged her on an erratic path through the cover.

Walking quickly,
I
proceeded down the ditch.  Before long I realized the bird was probably running.  It wasn’t going to hold.  We needed to push it hard or it would just keep
running and not flush
.  I picked up my pace, stumbling after Sammy, trying to keep up.  The end of the ditch was quickly approaching.  Suddenly a thicket ahead exploded with a rush of wings. 
I had
been poking my safety ever since Sammy had gone on scent, so this time I was ready.

Two birds came out on my side.  I swung through the lead bird.  A hen pheasant.  I switched to the second.  Another hen.  Lowering my gun without shooting, I watched them sail off into the sage.  An instant later I heard Rob fire once.

“Get one?” I called.

“Yeah.  Must’ve led that sucker by ten feet.  God, I’m good!  Nothing came out on your side?”

“Hens.”

“Well, the day is
young,” Rob called back, his tone saying I’d had my chance earlier and blown it.

In the excitement
I had
lost track of Sammy.  When I didn’t see her, I figured
she had
gone over to make Rob’s retrieve.  “Sammy over there?”

“Nope.”

At that point I realized she still had to be in the ditch, and if so, there
was probably
a reason.  Taking off at a fast jog, I’d covered half the distance to the bend in the canal when another rooster got up forty yards out, Sammy snapping at his tail feathers.

The bird turned downwind, his large size making his speed deceptive.  I missed with my first shot, as usual not
giving it
enough lead.  Knowing
I would
only get one more try, I doubled my lead
on the bird
, forced myself to keep the gun swinging, and pulled the trigger.  This time I was right on target.

Flushed and out of breath, Rob joined me, smiling as he noticed Max racing out to beat Sammy to my rooster.  The dogs wouldn’t fight over
a bird
once it had been picked up, but until then both considered it fair game.  Nonetheless, Max was faster, and I wanted Sammy to get the bird.  I hit one long blast on my whistle.  Both dogs stopped dead in their tracks, turned as one, and sat—eyeing me expectantly.

“Sam!” I yelled, releasing her.  With that, Sammy took off at a full run and made the retrieve.  Max stayed put.  I swear Sammy flaunted that pheasant as she pranced past Max on the return trip.

“Poor Maxie,” said Rob as Sammy sat beside me and delivered the bird to hand.

“Poor Max, my eye.  He already got to retrieve
your
bird.”

Rob blew one long, then two short blasts on his whistle, signaling Max to come in.  “
I know
, but he wants to get them
all.
”