redundantly armored door was to contain something in addition to men or
atmosphere. Something bigger, stronger, more cunning than a virus.
Some damn thing around which my usually vivid imagination was unable to
wrap itself.
Switching off my flashlight, turning away from the vault door, I called
to Bobby.
Mesmerized by the fireworks and the shadow show, buffeted by the wind
noises and the screams, he didn’t hear me, although he was only ten feet
away.
“Bobby! ” I shouted.
As he turned his head to look at me, the wind abruptly matched sound
with force, gusting through the egg room, whipping our hair, flapping my
jacket and Bobby’s Hawaiian shirt. It was hot, humid, redolent of tar
fumes and rotting vegetation.
I couldn’t identify the source of the gale, because this chamber had no
ventilation ducts in its walls, no breaches whatsoever in its seamless
glassy surface, except for the circular exit. If the steel cork plugging
that hole were, in fact, nothing but a mirage, perhaps these gusts could
have been coming through the tunnel linking the egg room to the airlock,
blowing through the nonexistent door, however, the wind blustered from
all sides, rather than from one direction.
“Your light! ” I shouted. “Shut it off! ” Before Bobby could do as I
wanted, the reeking wind brought with it another manifestation. A figure
came through the curved wall, as if five feet of steel-reinforced
concrete were no more substantial than a veil of mist.
Bobby clutched the pistol-grip shotgun with both hands, dropping his
flashlight without switching it off.
The spectral visitor was startlingly close, less than twenty feet from
us. Because of the swarming lights and shadows, which served as
continually changing camouflage, I couldn’t at first see the intruder
clearly. Glimpsed in flickering fragments, it looked manlike, then more
like a machine, and then, crazily, like nothing else but a lumbering rag
doll.
Bobby held his fire, perhaps because he still believed that what we were
seeing was illusionary, either ghost or hallucination, or some strange
combination of the two. I suppose I was clinging desperately to the same
belief, because I didn’t back away from it when it staggered closer to
us.
By the time it had taken three uncertain steps, I could see clearly
enough to identify it as a man in a white vinyl, airtight spacesuit.
More likely, the outfit was an adapted version of the standard gear that
NASA had developed for astronauts, intended primarily not to shield the
wearer from the icy vacuum of interplanetary space but rather to protect
him from deadly infection in a biologically contaminated environment.
The large helmet featured an oversize faceplate, but I wasn’t able to
see the person beyond, because reflections of the whirling light-and
shadow show streamed across the Plexiglas. On the brow of the helmet was
stenciled a name, HODGSON.
Perhaps because of the fireworks, more likely because he was blinded by
terror, Hodgson didn’t react as if he saw Bobby and me. He entered
screaming and his voice was by far the loudest of those still borne on
the foul wind. After staggering a few steps away from the wall, he
turned to face it, holding up both hands to ward off an attack by
something that was invisible to me.
He jerked as if hit by multiple rounds of high-caliber gunfire.
Though I’d heard no shots, I ducked reflexively.
When he fell to the floor, Hodgson landed on his back. He was propped
halfway between a prone and a sitting position by the air tank and by
the briefcase-size, waste-purification-and-reclamation system strapped
to his back. His arms fell limp at his sides.
I didn’t need to examine him to know he was dead. I had no idea what
might have killed him, and I didn’t have enough curiosity to risk
investigating.
If he’d already been a ghost, how could he die again?
Some questions are better left unanswered. Curiosity is one of the
engines of human achievement, but it’s not much of a survival mechanism
if it motivates you to see what the back side of a lion’s teeth look
like.
Crouching, I scooped up Bobby’s flashlight and clicked it off.