“There is evil in this place,” intoned Moorhouse.
He saw Becky on the moonlit porch on her farmhouse, her eyes closed, her lips slightly parted as her face curved up toward his. Before their lips could meet, a hand wrenched him away and cast him down into a large enamel tub of putrid-smelling vomit. He tried to pull himself out, but a horde of gnomes with blistered skin fought him back with pitchforks.
“Man has tried to be God,” gibbered Moorhouse from afar. “But he has created devils.”
Lance sloshed to the other side of the tub, his mouth choking with the stink. The gnomes rushed to head him off, stabbing at him with their pitchforks. Lance grabbed one of the gnomes by the neck and squeezed until he felt the tiny bones crumble between his hands. He flung the limp body at the others and they retreated. Using every remaining ounce of his strength, Lance vaulted over the side. He plummeted through a cold dark void. Above him, a tiny Trikon Station spun like a wobbly top between the huge eyes of Dr. J. Edward Moorhouse.
“The woman is weak, Lance. But you are strong. You are strong.”
Lance awoke with a start. Gradually, he realized that he was in the logistics module, safely nested among empty science-supply canisters and secured by a sleep restraint jerry-rigged out of his belt and shirt. He fumbled for a breath mint. As it melted on his tongue, he released himself from the restraint and peered over the top of his nest. It was morning; the connecting tunnel was brightly lit through the entry hatch. He hastily donned his shirt and hitched his belt around his waist. Speed was all-important. He wanted to be well into the day’s routine before anyone tried to talk to him. Freddy. Carla Sue. Commander Tighe. Anyone.
Lance started to disassemble his protective nest. As he pushed the canisters aside, one of the lids popped open. For a moment, the face that floated out seemed perfectly normal. The eyes were open and the lips were drawn back in a smile. It was only when he saw the purplish indentation on the side of Aaron Weiss’s neck that reality set in.
Lance tilted his head back to scream. All that came out was a torrent of bile.
Freddy Aviles guarded the entry hatch. The Aussie crewman Stanley carefully, almost gently, pulled the contorted body of Aaron Weiss from the aluminum canister into which it had been crammed. Lorraine Renoir hovered close by, dictating medical observations into a minicassette recorder.
“Let’s have that again,” Dan said to Lance. His face looked as grim as death itself.
“I was doing a routine inspection of the supply cylinders,” said Lance. “I had to move some canisters around. I accidentally bumped the latch and it opened.”
“You were working at this hour?”
“I know, sir, it’s early. I skipped breakfast. I haven’t been very hungry lately.”
“I see.” Dan assumed that Carla Sue Gamble was the reason for Lance’s loss of appetite. He made no comment. The affairs of his crewmen’s hearts paled in comparison to the discovery of Weiss’s body.
“All right, get this mess cleaned up.”
Lance used a vacuum cleaner to suck up globules of bile that drifted around the module like tarnished Christmas ornaments. Meanwhile, Dan instructed Stanley to hold Weiss steady. As Lorraine continued her dictation, Dan eyeballed every inch of the body. Weiss was frozen in fetal position. One arm seemed to clutch the backs of his raised thighs, the other was drawn across the front of his shoulders like a movie Dracula tossing his cape. His neck was loose and his head bobbed with each inadvertent movement made by Stanley. The tweed hat remained attached to Weiss’s ear by a single rubber band. The Minicam floated on its tether, still looped around the reporter’s broken neck. Weiss had been wearing his denim shirt with the pearl buttons. There was a small tear in the chest, and near the tear a button was missing. A few threads were still in place. Lorraine concluded her monologue.
“Broken neck,” she said in answer to Dan’s unspoken request to translate her medical jargon. She shoved the recorder into her pocket.