The last few asteroids had
fallen apart under the drills. The last asteroid
had literally shaken to pieces under Anechka’s feet. Didn’t
matter; she always stayed in her rig until they were out
of the belt, ready to jump away from debris.
Anechka pressed
the steering collar of the Uvlechenie toward the floor while leaning back in the seat. The Uvlechenie settled
onto the asteroid, (650) 2003 RKN, just the way she liked
it, slowing the rotation and leaving the valuable dust mostly
unshaken.
It was the
only gentle thing she knew how to do.
Misha said, “Lots
of iron.”
“What else?”
“Carbon.”
Anechka cursed.
Carbon meant they were required to check for organic material,
for “life.” Sludge on the bottom of a coffee cup, more like
it.
“Would I lie
to you?” Misha said.
“We’ll space
it.”
“Now, how ethical
is that?”
Anechka lowered
the drill and ran it a dozen feet to anchor the ship. Hypothetically,
this would destabilize the asteroid, sending loose chunks
of rock in unpredictable directions. Practically speaking,
however, it anchored the ship.
She chewed
her unlit cigar. To light it would break another law, the
law of killing yourself by using up your oxygen. Cause, effect. “Take
a core.”
“Aye, aye,
Cap’n.”
She didn’t
answer. She looked over the landscape of the asteroid, such
as it was, and listened to the sound of stone being ground.
Solid.
Then the drill
spun loose underneath them, and the asteroid shook them off.
Anechka cursed again, pressing down on the collar with her
palms until the ship had settled again.
The asteroid
was moving in ways that it shouldn’t, bucking and jerking
under them.
Something hit
her on the back of the head. She gripped the collar. “What’s
going on?”
“Sorry.” Misha
moved behind her, caught whatever had come loose. “It’s solid
rock down to fifty feet. After that—govno, Ane. Something’s moving down there.”
“Pull up the
drill.”
She heard the
drill lock close, then leaned back and popped the steering
collar, making the ship hop backward.
The asteroid
was spewing fluid, a full spray that slowed and stopped as
she watched. She took a look over her shoulder at Misha.
He was half-strapped into the drill rig, clutching the cover
of the emergency button.
“It came off
again,” he said.
“Get strapped
in, you fool.”
On the screen,
the fluid dissipated. The asteroid was still jerking under
them, and she shifted with it.
“We should
go,” Misha said.
Rock bounced
off the hull, making the peculiar sound of half an echo.
Anechka kept her feet planted. The surface of the asteroid
was breaking up in flakes, like paint.
“Come on, Ane.”
Anechka jumped
backward, the elastic straps of the pilot rig keeping her
from bouncing around the ship. Below them, the outside of
the asteroid was thrust away.
“What is that?” Misha
said.
“I’ll be damned
if I know.”
“Hah. You don’t
believe in damnation; that’s cheating.”
A rock plate
over a hundred feet across flew at them, and Anechka kicked
off from the side of the ship. The jets fired, and the Uvlechenie slid out of the way.
Something heavy
slammed into her. She turned her head to see Misha completely
out of his rig, leaking blood from the back of his head all
over her suit. The screens overhead showed she was about
to hit another asteroid, so big the screens couldn’t hold
it all. In retrospect, she wished they’d tried that one instead.
But Misha had
had a feeling about this one.
Anechka jumped,
then ran backward over the surface of the large asteroid.
She pressed her palms down on the collar for stability as
the jets danced under her. When she was on the far side,
she kicked off again, and the plate from RKN shattered against
the larger asteroid, spraying shards around, but not into,
the ship.
A quick check
for more rock, and she drifted backward. With the larger
asteroid partially in the way, she couldn’t be sure of what
she was seeing, but it looked like a…some kind of animal.
It looked like a cord cover. It wound through the rock, nosing
along its side where the drill had bitten it.
There was a
dot flashing in the corner of her eye. She winked and turned
off the recording, then scrolled through the video options
with twitches of her jaw until she had the recordings erased.
It wasn’t legal, but it was done.
A worm. That’s
what it looked like. A headless, sparkling worm.
She spun the
ship and ran in the rig until she was winded, increased her
oxygen, and kept running, accelerating halfway to Mars, wasting
months of fuel.
Misha was no
sooner in the med bay on Eureka than Veronika, delicate,
beautiful Veronika, was there to see him.
For a second,
Anechka saw Veronika running toward her, and her heart ground
in her chest like a rock crusher. Then Veronika exclaimed, “Oh
Misha!” and Anechka’s stomach flopped.
“You didn’t
have to come,” Misha rasped. “It won’t change anything.”
Anechka stood
up. “Excuse me.”
“You don’t
have to go, it’s not like I’m going to say anything private,” Veronika
said.
“Sit,” Misha
whispered.
Anechka sat.
Veronika cried
over Misha for a few minutes, then dried her eyes and said, “What
happened?”
Anechka said, “Uh.
We uh. A bad asteroid. Pocket of gas.”
“Is that what
it was?” Misha whispered.
Anechka nodded.
“With me half
out of my rig. I’m such an idiot.”
She nodded
again. “I jumped away from the explosion, and you flew into
me like a rag doll. Knocked the wind out of me.”
Veronika had
a face like an angel, a half-hesitant smile, and more charm
than Anechka would possess in a thousand years of trying,
that is, if she ever tried to be charming. She looked like
she was made to be wrapped in soft things. Anechka simultaneously
couldn’t stand to look at her and couldn’t help doing so.
It had been worse when Veronika and Misha had been together,
of course.
“Ane, I have
something interesting for you,” Veronika said. “I can finally
talk about it. My team made a breakthrough. A cure for nicotine!”
Anechka said, “Eh,
yes?”
“So you’ll
be able to quit smoking cigars.”
Anechka said, “That
reminds me. I would like to use the lounge.”
“We don’t have
the money,” Misha whispered.
Anechka snorted.
“Oh, don’t
go yet, Ane.” Veronika grabbed Anechka’s hand; it would have
been the work of a second to twist away from her. “I have
more to tell you. It was an interesting project. An addiction
to nicotine is not like an addiction to anything else. That
is, not like an addiction to any other drug we know. For
example, if you were to take morphine, your withdrawal symptoms
would be much different—you would not be able to delay
the onset of withdrawal, for example. But with nicotine,
you can wait.”
“Not that long,” Anechka
said. “So hurry up.”
“You can wait
as long as you need to, with nicotine,” Veronika repeated. “Don’t
you see?”
Anechka shrugged.
“It isn’t a
true addiction!” Veronika beamed at them.
“I don’t understand,” Anechka
said, who was thinking that if she wasn’t addicted to nicotine,
her body was certainly good at hiding that fact from her
brain.
“To remove
an addiction to nicotine involves the emotions. I was thinking about it one day. What does smoking
feel like? Well, of course I didn’t know, so I set up a survey
to find similarities between smoking and other types of emotional
reactions. It was just a hunch. But I was right! It turns
out that nicotine addiction feels almost exactly like falling
in love!”
“Falling in
love,” Misha croaked.
“Falling in
love.” Veronika put her hands on her hips. “So, actually,
you should never try to quit smoking while you’re falling
in love, especially if you take our new drug, which we’re
calling Anerosma. Like it? Take this stuff, and poof! it’s
over. You could fall in love or start smoking all over again,
but why risk it?”
Anechka couldn’t
help looking at Misha. He’d been trying to get rid of Veronika
for months.
“But, you know,
it didn’t seem to affect any of the test subjects who were
already deeply, truly in love.” Veronika sighed, put her
hands up to her face, and smiled. “So I brought you some.”
“Me?” Anechka
said.
“For your smoking.
Unless you’re falling in love with someone, of course.” Veronika
batted her doelike eyes.
“What if I
don’t want to quit smoking?”
“But it’s so
bad for you!”
“So is almost
getting killed for getting out of your drilling rig during
evasive maneuvers, and I don’t see you mixing up drugs for
Misha.”
“Pleeeease,
Ane?”
Anechka snorted. “All
right. One condition.”
“What’s that?”
“You have to
take some, too.”
Veronika put
her hands in her lap. Her face was relaxed, but her hands
were clenched so tightly she must have clawed herself. “But
why? I don’t smoke.”
“Scared?” Anechka
asked.
“Of what?”
“That you might
not be truly in love with someone, that you might only be
infatuated. With pretty boy here, for instance.”
Veronika went
beet red.
“He doesn’t
love you,” Anechka said. “He told you to leave him alone.
You can’t even leave him alone when he needs his rest to
heal. That isn’t love.”
Veronika bounced
to her feet and left the room.
“We haven’t
seen the last of her,” Misha croaked. “God, you’re tactful.”
“Stop calling
me God.”
“You know what
you’re crazy about? God, and the lack thereof.”
“So?”
“So what if
this stuff takes away your ability to hate God?”
“I don’t hate
God. How can you hate something that doesn’t exist?”
“Hate is an
inoculation against infatuation. Against the first stages
of love. What if this stuff affects hate as well as love?”
“Then we have
quite the revolution on our hands, regardless of what it
does to my lack of faith. A world without hate is not this
world.”
“Quite.” Misha
closed his eyes.
After a few
minutes, she left for the smoking lounge and paid for her
air. As she smoked, staring “out” the viewscreen toward the
surface of Mars, she caught herself thinking about the worm.
If she didn’t keep her mouth shut, they’d have quite the
revolution on their hands regardless.
Veronika stopped
her in the corridor between the guest quarters and the
medbay. “I’ll do it.”
“Do what?”
“Take the Anerosma.”
“The what?”
“The anti-smoking
drug.”
“I was joking.
Leave me alone.”
“I wasn’t.” Veronika
pulled out two small vials, about 5 cc each, from a side
pocket. Her hand was shaking. “I talked to Misha, and we
decided it was for the best.”
Anechka laughed
in her face. “You haven’t got the nerve. You wouldn’t know
true love if it was standing in front of your face.” She
grabbed one of the vials, idly noticing that her own hand
was shaking. “What do I do, just drink it?”
“Yes, but—”
Anechka unscrewed
the red cap and tossed back the fluid. It didn’t taste like
much of anything. It tingled on her tongue but faded quickly.
Her pulse went up, and she took a step toward Veronika. She
felt blood pumping through her groin. “I—”
Veronika sobbed
once, like a hiccup, and fled.
And then it
was gone.
Anechka woke
up with the steering collar askew in front of her, strapped
into the pilot rig of the Uvlechenie.
“Anchor us,
Misha,” she said automatically.
There was no
answer. She looked over her shoulder; he wasn’t in the drill
rig.
“Misha?” She
unstrapped herself and pushed herself toward the cargo hold.
It wasn’t pressurized. She put her hands up to the scratched
view panel and cupped her eyes to see into the darkness.
By the glow of the LEDs, it was empty. She was alone.
What was she
doing here?
Where, in fact,
was she?
She pushed
back to the pilot rig and strapped herself back in. With
her head settled, she accessed the computer. The Uvlechenie was close to the former (650) 2003 RKN, on the (227)
1996 RDR—the larger asteroid she’d used to block the
explosion of the RKN. She grabbed the steering collar and
used it adjust the ship more firmly on the surface of the
asteroid, a tickle of jets across the surface.
The asteroid
quivered. She held her balance, waited until the shaking
had settled, and did it again. Again the quivering, peaking
at 3.3 on the Richter scale.
What was it?
Anechka blushed.
She felt hot, wrong suddenly. She tried to focus her attention
but couldn’t. She was embarrassed. Because she was so curious.
Well, what
of it?
She stroked
the surface again, sweeping her palms flat across, then doubling
back for a quick jab.
The shaking
was harder this time, 4.1.
So. She’d found
the first non-Terran life form in the solar system, and it
was ticklish. What was wrong with
her? She laughed at herself for the first time she could
remember.
She turned
off and erased the recording. Then she checked her fuel.
With patience, she should be fine for months. Her food stores,
with only herself for company, should last at least that
long.
She turned
off all communications and settled in to wait.
She took to
tapping out simple patterns, which the worm would copy. She
came up with patterns and had it guess the next item in the
sequence, caressing it with her jets if it guessed correctly.
She was not thinking about things.
Gradually,
however, the effect of the Anerosma wore off, and she found
herself getting bored. She ignored the worm’s repeated attempts
to communicate and dwelled on how much she hated Veronika
and Misha—both of them. She felt herself getting more
irritable by the hour.
She turned
on the communications. There were thousands of messages for
her to sort through; she deleted most of them, especially
the ones from her bank saying she was broke and from Misha
demanding the return of his ship. She didn’t answer any of
them. In the end, she flew back to Eureka a month earlier
than she had to. She tried to keep the journey low-cost,
but found herself leaning into the rig, pushing her speed
higher. It was out there. It was behind her. It was going
to get her. It was going to follow her around like a dog.
It had gone into her brain and hypnotized her. She had to
get so far away that it couldn’t call her back. Ever. She
had to get revenge.
Anechka docked Misha’s ship,
expecting to be arrested. When she disembarked, a dockworker
bumped into her, and she scowled at him.
“Where were
you?” a voice asked from behind her.
She turned,
raising her fists. “Back off.”
It was Misha.
She took a few steps away from him.
“Where were
you? You owe me at least that much. It’s my ship.”
Anechka’s eyes
filled with tears. She felt mad. She lowered her fists and
ran down the corridor. She knew it wouldn’t do any good.
She was on a space station. Where could she go?
She’d be fine
in a few days. The more the drug wore off, the better off
she’d be. It was making her irrational.
She was
opening the door to Misha’s room, seeing them together.
It didn’t bother her, seeing Veronika. It was Misha that
bothered her, the mindless, eager look on his face. His
weakness.
And then the
worm had taken over her mind. What? For company? Because
it could?
She had to
destroy it. Before it could control anyone else.
She stopped
running when she reached the smoking lounge. The smell was
familiar, but didn’t set her to craving a cigar. She palmed
the door lock, and it let her in, more out of habit than
out of any reflection of her credit score. The door shut
behind her.
She looked
around. The smoke was actually quite pretty, both as it swirled
from the patrons’ cigars and as it gathered in a haze that
caressed the ceiling.
She didn’t
see anyone she could use until Dow waved at her from the
other side of the room. Dow was a trader who had been hitting
on her for years. A nice enough woman, but unappealing. Had
the credits she needed, though.
“Anechka!” Dow
said. “How are you? You disappeared for a few months. Everyone’s
been wondering what happened to you.”
“I need a job,
Dow. Know of anything?”
Dow’s eyebrows
went up. She gestured with her cigarette. “Misha?”
“I can’t take
the thing with Veronika anymore.”
“You should
give up on that trollop,” Dow said. “She’d never do good
by you.”
“I don’t know
what I ever saw in her.”
“You could
always work for me.”
“I’d like that.”
“What about
Misha?”
“Who cares?”
Dow nodded.
Her rings sparkled on her fingers. “I know how that is.”
Anechka wasn’t
sure what they were talking about anymore.
“Want a cigarette?
You must be broke. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you without
your cigars. Even when you couldn’t smoke them.”
Anechka said, “I’m
trying to quit.”
“Are you feeling
all right?”
“No.” And then,
embarrassingly, she burst into tears again. She grabbed a
napkin from Dow’s table and wiped her eyes, wadded up the
napkin, and threw it in the recycle bin.
Dow cleared
her throat. “Behind you.”
Anechka scowled.
It was Veronika.
“Did you come
running back to all your old addictions when the drug wore
off? Why couldn’t you leave Misha alone?” Veronika, her sweet,
unforgettable angel’s face still beautiful, threw herself
at Anechka, clawing at her face.
Anechka turned
to the side, but not fast enough, and a concealed blade slid
down her cheek. Somebody gasped.
Anechka, finally
in her element, grabbed Veronika’s wrist and made her drop
the razor, then knocked her on her ass. “You crazy bitch.”
“Stay away
from Misha!”
“He’s the one
who found me! He wanted to know why I stole his ship! Or
isn’t that reasonable enough for you?”
“Stay away
from him!”
“What? Afraid
I’ll steal him? Why don’t you watch him instead of me? It’s
not like he’s the faithful type.”
“I love him!”
“You liar.
I took your drug. You didn’t. You still won’t. You’re a craven
little dog, master, master, pay attention to me! Master,
master, master!”
Anechka kicked
Veronika hard in the short ribs, one kick for every time
she said the word master. “And
to think I wanted you.” She leaned over, grabbed Veronika
by her long, silky brown hair, and said, “Thank you for killing
my infatuation with you. Thank you.” She
let go of Veronika’s hair, and her head hit the floor with
a thump.
Veronika curled
up in a ball and started crying.
Anechka looked
back at Dow, but Dow was gone. So much for that.
Once again,
Anechka expected arrest, and once again, nothing happened.
She had her face stitched up, and that was that.
She waited
near Veronika’s quarters. Rumors were starting to get out
about the Anerosma, both from their fight in the smoking
lounge and from her test subjects, NDAs be damned.
Space. It was
the biggest small town in the universe.
Veronika came
down the corridor with a box of papers. Anechka stepped out
from her neighbor’s doorway and said, “Veronika.”
Veronika tossed
the box of papers at Anechka and ran down the hallway.
“You started
it,” Anechka called. After a few minutes, she picked up the
papers and put them back in the box. Papers. Who printed
on papers anymore?
Veronika returned
a minute later. “You give those back!”
Anechka dropped
the box on the floor in front of her. “I want some Anerosma.”
“What?”
“I want some—”
“I heard you;
I just don’t understand.” Veronika babbled for a few minutes
about everything she didn’t understand.
Anechka interrupted
her. “I’m going back into space. One of the things it does
is keep you from noticing how bored and crazy you’re getting.
I’m leaving. Get it?”
“Oh.”
Veronika unlocked
her door with her thumbprint, carried the crate inside, and
returned with a rack of vials, five by five, with only three
missing. “Sure, take it. I have to get rid of it.”
“Get rid of
it?”
“It doesn’t
work.”
Anechka said, “Of
course it works.”
“It doesn’t work,
savvy? The company decided it would cost too much to fight
the Ministry.”
“Oh. Yeah.
Okay.”
Veronika handed
her the rack of vials, then covered them with a napkin. “Try
to be discreet. You’re really leaving?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s a relief.” Veronika
closed her eyes and leaned forward. “Goodbye kiss.”
Anechka drew
back, shocked.
“I guess not.
Bye!” Veronika slapped the door latch and waved as the door
closed between them.
Anechka tried
the lock on the Uvlechenie. It still opened for her palmprint, which puzzled
her. She stowed the Anerosma in a storage compartment on
the pressurized side and booted up the system.
The Uvlechenie was
fully fueled, fully stocked, ready to go. All she had to
do was figure out whether Misha had told the station not
to release on her orders. She knew a couple of people in
Control; too bad she didn’t have any cash for persuasion.
Oh, well. She’d sleep with them if she had to. She’d been
keeping herself off the market for just such an occasion;
according to gossip, bedding Anechka rated almost as high
as getting your hands on a virgin.
My body
is a credit score, she thought.
She shut down
and locked the door behind her.
Misha was running
down the hallway toward her, shoving technicians and their
ever-present carts out of the way. She wanted to smile, but
she was too sick at heart to allow herself the luxury.
“What do you
think you’re doing?” he snarled.
“I was going
to steal your ship,” she said.
“Why?”
She shook her
head. “I’m not talking to you about this in the corridor.”
Misha palmed
open the door of the Uvlechenie and pushed her inside. He closed the door as she untangled
herself from her rig. “Talk.”
Anechka booted
the system.
“What are you
doing?”
She checked
the comms; Eureka had automatically connected them with a
half-dozen distress and other monitoring channels. If she
had a month, she could figure out how to turn them off.
She started
to climb into the pilot rig. Misha grabbed her arm; she jerked
it away.
“What are you
doing?”
She said, “We’re
still being monitored.”
“So?”
“We’re still
being monitored.” She climbed into the rig. This time he
let her.
He went through
the co-pilot checks as she requested permission to leave
the station with intention to head back out to the asteroid
belt, back in six months, etc.
Misha hadn’t
removed her permissions; she could have left without him.
She piloted
the ship away from the station and ran for a few internal
miles to work out her kinks, but didn’t let the ship build
up external speed.
“Now tell me
what you’re doing,” Misha said.
“It wasn’t
a gas leak,” Anechka said, jogging. “It was an egg.”
“An egg-splosion?”
“No. The entire
asteroid had been hollowed out, filled with a worm. An egg.”
“Zavali
yebalo.”
She shrugged,
putting a shudder through the ship. “When I drank the Anerosma—”
“What?”
“Veronika came
to me and swore she would drink it if I did. So I did. I
thought you might be able to get rid of her for once and
for all. But she ran off like the coward she is.”
Misha cursed
under his breath. “Why?”
“It’s complicated.”
Misha didn’t
answer, and she was fine with never saying another word.
Finally he said, “She came to me and said she’d drunk the
stuff herself, and her feelings hadn’t changed. When you
came in—I’m sorry, Anechka. I know she’s bad for me.
But I can’t seem to get her out of my head.”
Anechka laughed. “Either
I want her, or I hate her. Now that the drug has worn off,
I hate her. But I know what that means now. You’re right.
I’m just trying not to want her.”
Misha said, “But
that’s not what we were talking about. You made first contact
with an alien? What did you do, kill it?”
“I ran away,” Anechka
said. “And when I ran away from you, I ended up back there
again. It took over my mind, Misha. I played with it like
a puppy for months, and then it let me go when the Anerosma
wore off.”
“So what are
we doing here?”
“We’re going
to kill it.”
“So it doesn’t
cut into profits? That’s cynical.”
“No. So it
doesn’t hurt anyone else.”
“How did it
hurt you?”
She fluttered
her fingers. It had seemed so obvious until he asked her. “It
made me stay here and play with it. It made me.”
Misha said, “Maybe
it was meant to be, you finding the first intrasolar alien.”
Anechka snorted. “Hardly.
If they’re so easy to find, they must have been found before.
And killed.”
“That’s sad.”
“Let’s take
it back to the station, then, and have it make all the inhabitants
come out and play. Think it understands about pressure suits?”
“It’s still
sad.”
She looked
over her shoulder at him. “Go to sleep, Misha. I will wake
you when we reach the alien.”
Misha sighed,
leaned back in his rig, and flipped a few switches, dimming
the lights. “I hate sleeping in this thing. No matter how
many times I try to set it for ‘feather bed,’ it always shifts
back into exercise mode and I bounce around. I swear this
thing is so sensitive that I can feel you breathing.”
Anechka held
her breath, then let it out in rapid pants. The ship twitched
with her as she wiggled a foot along with her breath.
“Ha, ha,” Misha
said. “It’s good to be back—in the ship.”
Anechka smiled
without smiling and went back to the controls. The next time
she looked, he was asleep.
The
worm was easy enough to find; it was inside the same asteroid
she’d
left it in, (227) 1996 RDR.
“Is it trying
to take over your mind?” Misha asked.
“I don’t think
so, but I haven’t taken the Anerosma.” She settled the ship
onto the asteroid. Despite what she’d just said, she could
feel a twinge in her guts. She knew where the alien was,
because she knew, not because the ship log had told her.
Her hands pressed
down on the steering collar, and she dragged her fingers
across the surface.
The asteroid
shuddered as she tickled it with the jets. It would be over
in minutes, it wouldn’t know what hit it.
“What are you
doing?” Misha asked.
She ignored
him as the asteroid shook out a pattern. It was one she knew,
and she was afraid she was never going to be able to figure
it out. She double-checked that the ship wasn’t making a
recording.
“Anchor the
ship,” she said.
“It almost
killed us last time,” Misha said. “I don’t think we should.”
“Zhopa,
what did you think we were out here to do? Pat it on the
head and give it a biscuit?”
Misha sighed. “Anechka—”
“What did you
come out here for? To try to talk me out of it?”
“I just think
you should—you should see your face, Anechka. Like
you’re killing your grandmother.”
“You can’t
see my face. You can only see the back of my head.”
Misha cleared
his throat. When she looked back, he was pointing at something
on the ceiling in front of her. A mirror. Damn him, how long
had that been up there?
“You don’t
want to kill that thing,” he said.
“It brainwashed
me!”
“You brought
all that Anerosma for a reason, Anechka. I think you should
use it.”
“I don’t know
what I brought it for. It was a mistake.”
Anechka woke
up with drool clinging to the side of her mouth, slumped
over the steering collar.
“You bastard,” she
said. But Misha was asleep.
She turned
off the rig and slowly unstrapped herself. The fasteners
made a ripping sound as she tugged them free, but Misha was
out good.
She pushed
away from the rig as slowly as she could, a bare touch.
As she got
closer to Misha, she noticed his eyes twitching under their
lids. His face clenched, unclenched. His mouth opened, and
he moaned. If he was trying to say something, she didn’t
know what it was.
She touched
him and said, “It’s just a nightmare. Don’t let it control
you.”
A fat tear
rolled down the side of his face. She touched it and started
to drift away from him. He tried to talk again, but she couldn’t
understand.
She bounced
herself around the ship until she was in front of his control
panel, disabled his controls, and assigned them a password.
Then she transferred the drill rig functions and climbed
back into her rig.
She activated
the rig and lowered the drill. Her stomach was quivering. “You
can’t do this to him,” she said. “Myself, I am nothing. But
you cannot do this to him. No matter how much you deserve
to live, to be recognized.”
The drill bit
in, and Misha jerked awake. “What are you doing?”
“I’m killing
the alien.” She was sobbing now, tears flying into the walls,
into the electronics, into her ears.
“You can’t!”
“It was controlling
you while you slept.”
The drill sank
into the rock, drilling down harder. Anechka found herself
hoping the drill would reach its extension before it hurt
the alien and forced herself to think of something else.
It was worming its way into her mind again.
Then the ship
wrenched against the drill so hard that it snapped off. The Uvlechenie tumbled
into space.
Anechka looked
over her shoulder. Misha said, “It wasn’t controlling me.” He
had the cover of the emergency button in his hand.
“You—” she
growled. “What have you done?”
“It wasn’t
hurting me.”
“You took the
Anerosma, didn’t you? It took over your mind.”
“No.”
“You were—it
was—”
“I was dreaming
about you finding me with Veronika. It was a nightmare. That
was all.”
Anechka slumped
in the rig. A warning buzzer sounded, and she jerked her
chin to turn off her access to the controls.
“What’s the
password?”
She dangled
in her straps. “Just ‘Misha.’” She rolled backward to face
him. He was upside down to her, which made her smile. She
found she could afford such a thing as a smile, for the moment
at least.
Misha turned
on his controls and assigned himself the pilot function,
bringing the ship back under control. “Don’t you understand
what a miracle this is?”
“No,” Anechka
said, truthfully. “But if you say it is, then it is.”
“Don’t patronize
me.”
“Do I sound
like I’m patronizing you? But don’t accuse me of believing
in your sacred space ghost, or I will.”
Misha turned
off his rig and unstrapped himself. He twisted around until
he had aligned with her, then grabbed the straps of her rig.
It was either a thrill of anticipation or the vibration of
the elastic cords, but she was shaking either way.
“Thank you
for stopping me,” she said.
He brushed
his hands across the back of her head and kissed her, then
pulled open the fasteners on her straps—and let her
out.
