Fatal Boarding Read online

  Chapter 12

 

 

  The 23:00 meeting in the Bridge conference room lasted slightly more than two hours. To my relief, the decision about a second EVA was put off. The corridors leading to my stateroom seemed lonely and too quiet, but when the doors slid open there was someone waiting.

  Nira turned to face me in the seat by my desk as I entered. Her shiny black hair was tied back near the crown of her head. Diamond earrings twisted and sparkled in the bright room light. She had on a sheer, body fitting evening gown that hung open at the neck. Carefully tailored sleeves ended just below the wrist and hid the long, white bandage. The hem was ankle length, and as she sat cross-legged I could just make out the tip of one pointed, silver slipper. In her left hand, she held a v-shaped glass of red wine. There was a second, full glass on the metal end table by the couch. As I walked past her to sit, my emotions tripped and stumbled through the full spectrum of choices, eventually grinding down to an awkward stop in the middle of nowhere.

  It has always amazed me how making love to someone so alters your perception of them. It affects the way the two of you communicate. An invisible barrier has been broken. Suddenly there are innumerable little things that can no longer be hidden. Or perhaps there is a loss in the ability to deceive. There is an involuntary kind of subliminal confession beneath the words and movements not there in the virgin friendship. You have seen me. I can no longer hide who I really am. Only the truly deceitful can. We wear the best possible disguises for friends, enemies, and strangers alike. But the act of love making disarms us. We have allowed either an ally or an enemy agent into camp. We have taken a chance.

  I lifted the glass that had been left for me and studied the pale red color. "I could get called out on a moment's notice, Nira."

  "It's non-alcoholic, Adrian. Don't go getting all stiff on me. I'm not here to jump you."

  I sipped and found her selection delightful. "You should understand. Under different circumstances, that would be a most desirable thing."

  "My grapevine is failing me. Just what is going on around here? How can we be having trouble with main engines and thrusters at the same time?"

  "Computer problems. Something's affecting most of the systems on board ship. They haven't been able to get a handle on it. That's what the 23:00 meeting was about."

  "Since I'm not back on duty, I wasn't allowed at the meeting."

  "I, on the other hand, was forced to go. There was standing room only."

  "The bastards took the research on the alien data away from my group and gave it to Life Sciences. Did you know that?"

  "I really can't help you there, Nira. I'm a Security officer, remember? That research crap is your line of work, not mine."

  "Wow! A stone wall, even from you! What the hell is going on up there?"

  "When do they allow you back on duty?"

  "Tomorrow. Second shift, if everything under the bandage looks okay. I'll get an eight-inch band-aid and be allowed on limited duty. By the way, the Doctor says I’m promiscuous. What do you think?"

  "So tomorrow, I'll be trying to pry answers out of you instead?"

  "And we will stonewall each other?"

  "I lost the last contest. I'm the underdog."

  "You're a difficult man to understand, Adrian. I'm usually an expert at figuring people out, but you're different. I had you pegged for a loner, one of those types who goes around with the shields always up. But, when I got inside last night, there was a different man in there. It caught me off guard. You've screwed up my system. I'll probably need more data."

  "Well, good!"

  "Don't worry about it, though. Last night was special. I don't normally take the lead. From now on it will be up to you to make the move. And please don't assume I'm an automatic win. Women have their moods."

  "No kidding?"

  She laughed and drew a circle with one finger around the rim of her glass. "I was married for a little more than three years to a United World diplomat. He spent most of his time flying back and forth while I spent mine flying up and down. We saw each other so little we kind of forgot we were married. If there was a statute of limitations on married people who never see each other, ours would have run out. Finally, one day we realized we weren't really married at all, so we divorced in the most amiable agreement ever made. It's odd, we have the same relationship now we always had. It's the story of my life. I keep waiting for life to become what you see in cinemas and literature. It's just not happening."

  "They've fooled us. There is no such thing as normal. It's mythology. In fact, one of my favorite rock stars from long ago once said life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans."

  "So why haven't you ever been married, Adrian?"

  "That seems to be the question of the day."

  "Another of which you're not going to answer, I take it?"

  "Marriage is kind of a big promise for people who spend their days in space. We speed out from the Earth going backwards in time, and then try to catch up with it on the way back in."

  "I may start calling you Stonewall."

  She finished her wine, plunked the empty glass down by the computer, and slinked over to the door. "I'll find you out, Adrian. Before I'm done, I will." She winked and disappeared through the automatic doors, leaving me to wonder.

  Never tell them the truth. Why spend all that time fabricating the false male image of invincibility only to turn around and admit you are an insecure, frightened child when it comes to love? I've experienced my share of pain and fear. I have spun down out of control in a bent and twisted aircraft, not knowing if a recovery would ever come, wondering if I would feel that short burst of impact with the ground before I felt the pressure of the eight positive Gs it would take to pull out. I have been thrown from horses who have tried to stomp me after they did, and trained in the martial arts by masters who I could not be sure wouldn't kill me by accident. In all of these things there's been a reward within the fear, and euphoria from the survival. But in games of the heart, there is a coldness waiting which sometimes can leave you with nothing. When you crash and burn, you live with the death, forever. Of all the pain I have ever endured, there is nothing to compare to that of the wasted heart.

  So, you test the water over and over before you take the leap. I had been willing to take it only once. That was forever ago. She had all the right flavors, knew all the right buttons to push. Had me walking in her twisted line and liking it. I couldn't wait to sign on for the full cruise. Her name was Crystal. She had curly, dark brown, flavorful hair she kept at shoulder length. Naturally tan, perfectly toned skin, five foot five, deep, dark maroon eyes. And, she had a way of making you feel like an emperor when she was with you, especially in public. Had an ooo-eee little voice that somehow put all the erogenous regions on full alert.

  She and her folks held a pending lease on the Hawkins Space Station. It was a worthless piece of paper unless the Nobel scientist who operated a research lab in that space suddenly up and died or became incapacitated. He was only fifty-three years old and the prospect he would continue his research well past the age of one hundred seemed inevitable. Then one day the good doctor got caught doing illegal genetic research on perfectly healthy humans without their knowledge. The Doctor protested the charges in the worst possible way. He claimed he would prolong life indefinitely if allowed to continue. But, when it was discovered his research had been partially funded by organizations of black marketeers, the boom fell quickly.

  So in a matter of one week, Crystal's obscure space station lease agreement went from worthless to priceless, and in her eyes I did just the opposite.

  Sometimes dreams can turn out to be premonitions. I once had a dream I was back on the ranch where I grew up, building an antique airplane in the family garage. It was the propeller driven type with stretched canvas over wooden ribs. The bird was complete except I hadn't finished covering it with canvas. Half of the ribs on the
wings and body were still visible.

  Suddenly, Crystal emerged from the sun. She was very interested in what I was doing. Though the bird was not ready to fly, I wanted to impress her. I repeatedly insisted that it was. I tried to take her for a ride. At 80 feet the nose pitched over and we slammed into the ground headfirst.

  Crystal was killed. I found myself recovering in the home of some strangers who really didn't care. I had a scar running down my chest from my throat to my navel as thick as rope. I woke up that night in a cold sweat, Crystal awake beside me, asking me what was wrong.

  Three months later, Crystal was history. My lease had run out as fast as hers had become activated. She took up with another pilot, someone I didn't know. The last time I spoke to her I made the stupid mistake of asking what he had I did not. She said he owned his own four-seat surface-to-orbit shuttle, for one thing.

  It had been a long day aboard the Electra. I stretched out on the flattened sofa, pounded the soft white pillow for effect, and laid back into an uneasy slumber.

  I dreamed new dreams, fragments shaped from engine failures, ghost ships, and intelligent men locked in primitive combat. Slowly the carnival of neural confusion faded down into a vast, empty, loneliness. I was floating alone in a Bell Standard in high orbit above the Earth. No spacecraft or satellites were anywhere in sight. Traveling with me, caught in my body's own gravity field, were dozens of frozen, dark blood-red-purple chunks and bits of a dead and fractured heart. I looked down at the torso of my spacesuit and saw right through it into my chest where a new, cherry-red heart the size of a plum had grown in place of the old one. But it was too fragile a replacement for a major organ, unable to endure any level of emotional stress. I looked down at the Big Blue and let myself float along in her gravity stream, not struggling, not searching, and not feeling.