Against Gravity

Draeger's fingers danced across the panel and the door opened, sliding into the wall. He stepped through, the door immediately sliding shut behind him.

As soon as he was gone, Kendrick went over and studied the same panel. He could try using his augmented abilities to get it open but that might take too much time, judging by the sound of scores of small bodies slamming into the glass just behind him. He tried hitting random buttons in the meantime, but – not surprisingly – that didn't work.

Perhaps there was another way to get out of the station…

His wand crackled into life. "Kendrick? Kendrick, it's Buddy here. I want an explanation." The other man's voice sounded harsh and brittle.

Kendrick slammed open the door of the surface elevator. He could only pray that the thing would work. "There isn't time," he yelled into the wand.

"Tell me now, Kendrick, before it's too late. Tell me you aren't going to-"

Kendrick broke the co

Another great shudder ran through the hull around him, much more violent this time. From somewhere not so far away, he could hear a rushing sound again. He glanced at the display on his spacesuit's arm, which told him that the atmospheric pressure in the chamber above him was dropping rapidly. It seemed that the station was venting its air supply.

The rumbling noise grew stronger, rattling the teeth inside his skull. Kendrick had no idea if he'd be able to survive once all the air had been voided.

He pulled out his wand again and hit a switch. "Buddy, did you feel that?"

"Of course I fucking felt it." Buddy sounded distant, distracted. "Someone just blew one of the nukes."

"That's not possible. If one of those nukes had been blown, we wouldn't still be standing here."

"Not if there were other nukes, apart from those we saw." Buddy's voice became very thin, as if he was getting farther away. "Think about it. A station this size, if you wanted a real demolition job, you'd have to plant several of them externally at different points around the hull. You'd need more than one to be absolutely sure the station was fully destroyed, if you were relying on low-yield tactical nukes like those."

"Draeger must have figured that out and found one somewhere. If I can only find him-"

Buddy laughed shakily. "For what? To blow the thing up yourself? It's too late, Ken. It's time you…"

Kendrick stared down at the wand in his hands. Never too late, he told himself.

The elevator ground to a halt with a barely audible electronic ping.

He slammed the door open and stepped back out into the main facility building, immediately breaking into a run. His wand map would tell him where the other external airlocks were.

"Kendrick!"

He gazed down at the wand, his thumb hovering over the button that would break the co

If the air was venting he needed to find a spacesuit helmet soon or he'd suffocate before he could track down Draeger – unless survival without breathing was a real possibility for him now. But how long could he manage? Five minutes? Ten? An hour? Better to get himself a suit and take no chances. Still gripping the wand in his gloved hand, Kendrick stumbled back the way he had come. The winged creatures had vanished, at least for the moment.

"Wait, listen!" Buddy yelled to him.

"I've heard enough."

"No, just listen! There's a satellite array fixed on the outside of the station. If Draeger intends to upload any information to Earthside, he'd need to access that array directly – since the power for half the facility is shorted out. Do you follow me?"

No wonder, then, that Draeger had opted to find his way to the station's exterior. Kendrick suddenly realized that he was starting to hyperventilate, his lungs attempting to suck in air that was no longer there.

"How do you know he has anything he wants to send?" With that computer terminal deep down inside the facility Draeger could have already downloaded everything he needed.

"I don't know. But if he's heading for the array that kind of answers the question."

"I'm still sorry for the way things worked out, Buddy."

"So am I, believe me."

Static began overwhelming the wand, making it nearly useless.

"Can't you hear it?" said Buddy's voice, but it was hard to be sure he was actually addressing Kendrick and not someone else.

"Hear what?" Kendrick yelled over the static.

And there it was. He heard the singing – was that the right word? – which he'd heard while standing on a hill and talking to Peter McCowan somewhere in the far distant future. It sounded as though everything that ever was or ever could be had been condensed and refined into a simple cadence of unearthly beauty.

Part of Kendrick wanted simply to stand and listen to it. Instead, he finally cut the co

He pushed through to find that the cavern itself had become filled with a commingling of dust, leaves, grass and filaments. Many of the threads were now distinctly golden. He bent himself into the howling wind that had arisen out of nowhere and looked up to try to locate the breach in the hull.

Amid so much chaos it was almost impossible to see far ahead. More people, Kendrick was now certain, were going to die. He wondered how much abuse the Archimedes itself could take before it lost its structural integrity and simply fell apart.

Heavy vibrations rolled through the hull beneath his feet.

Something about the light in the chamber had changed. It was getting brighter.

Everything was getting brighter.

Kendrick saw that this light came from the filaments, which had by now lost most of their silver lustre. They were glowing with a kind of internal radiation. The light had a pale, translucent quality to it.

A golden light.

He ran through the door by which he'd first entered the facility. Something flew past his head, carried in a swirling maelstrom of air that lifted him off his feet before slamming him into the ground again. He watched as a twisted rope of filaments, as thick as a giant redwood tree, tore loose from the soil outside and smashed itself against the foyer windows, sending the glass exploding inwards.

All this happened in an eerie half-silence as Kendrick's ears popped painfully and his lungs laboured to draw in what little air remained.

He scrambled up and ran into the foyer, past some of Sabak's men who had suited up and were now trying to help one of their number whose helmet had been smashed open. They barely glanced Kendrick's way.

He pounded through the far doors of the foyer, heading for the canteen where earlier he'd seen two of Draeger's men slaughter themselves.

He reached frantically for their blood-slicked suit helmets, pulling each one in turn over his head before discarding it. Neither would fit onto his suit. He ran back to the room where Leigh's corpse lay slumped. But her suit was torn, her helmet lying nearby with its visor shattered.

Despair and hopelessness finally settling over him like a great black cloud, Kendrick ran back into the corridor, almost colliding with Buddy who stared back at him. He'd never be able to find a usable helmet in time.

But then, as he reminded himself, perhaps he no longer really needed to breathe. The idea that breathing might be something he could switch off or on at will had simply never occurred to him.

As if responding to this thought, something heavy, wet and translucent slid down over Kendrick's pupils from under his eyelids. He jerked his hands up to his face and touched the membrane, probing gently with his fingers.

What's happening to me?

Now he felt as if he were viewing everything through a very faintly tinted screen.