XVII.

Offloading the landing vehicle took a few hours, after which everyone piled into her again to be brought back up to the Pater Noster—everyone except Dr. Burstyle’s group, however, who remained landside for the night.

Loading the landing vehicle up with its second load for the colony would commence after a sleep shift for everyone.

Alberts was looking forward to some rest, but the moment he stepped aboard the Pater Noster again, he was confronted by Havisham and her two roommates. 

“It got worse! Ten times worse!” Havisham exclaimed. “The stink in the vent!”

Alberts looked at the three women, remembering how Havisham had initially told him the other two could not smell anything out of the ordinary.  “You can all…?”

Havisham exclaimed, “Yes! We can all smell it!”

Alberts shrugged. “All right. Let’s check it out.”

When they got to the women’s cabin, Alberts moved a chair over underneath the vent and stood on it. Using a multi-tool, he began to unscrew the cover. He had to agree with the ladies—there was indeed a very unpleasant odor wafting through the grill. It did not particularly smell like dead rat though. If it was a rat, he suspected the odd smell was due to the fact that the bacteria that were decomposing it were probably not the ordinary sort that usually assisted in decomposition. This odd smell was probably caused by some random bacteria that just happened to have made its way to the carcass first after the irradiation process killed all the regular bacteria.

Alberts handed the vent cover down to one of the women. With a flashlight in hand, he poked his head up into the vent and looked down the shaft. There was nothing to see. The vent continued on for a few feet then turned a corner. “It’s probably just a rat,” he reassured the women. 

He pulled his head down out of the vent and carefully turned around on the chair so he could look the other direction down the vent shaft. “Nothing that bit of cleaning fluid and few scented candles won’t—”

Alberts poked his head up through the vent again and lifted the flashlight. “Holy sh—!” He exclaimed. Banging his head on the vent opening, he dropped the flashlight and fell with a  crash on top of the ladies below him. There were several cries of dismay—Alberts among them—but fortunately it turned out no one was seriously hurt.

Alberts stared up at the air vent as if expecting something to come leaping out of it at his face, but nothing happened. Dimly he became aware of the protesting women he was tangled up with on the floor and carefully extricated himself while keeping a wary eye on the open vent. 

“What? What is it?” Havisham demanded, seeing how he kept his eyes locked on the vent. 

Alberts did not respond. Carefully he picked up the flashlight, righted the chair, and climbed back up. Holding the flashlight at forehead level, he slowly, and with halting movements, raised his head up partway into the vent again. After a moment, he pulled his head back down and stared at the women, who were demanding to know what he saw. He stuck his head in the vent again as if for confirmation, then crouched. He swallowed. “Get the Captain,” he croaked.

XVIII.

Very soon the Captain, Marala, and a few other crew members were clumped up around the outside of the women’s cabin. Everyone on board had heard the commotion when Alberts fell.

Using a long metal stick with a hook on one end, Alberts carefully began dragging something out from the vent, positioning himself so it would not fall on him when it came out. After some hassle, he succeeded, and a mound of red flesh and tentacles came pouring out of the vent like a dead cuttlefish. It fell with a plop onto the floor, where it burst open with the impact, and there were cries of shock and dismay from nearly everyone. This was no dead rat.

By its texture, the thing looked a lot like what the lower part of Constantini’s body had been turned into, but this thing did not have human shape. It had some parts that looked boney, but it was mostly an amorphous blob. A single large shrunken dead eye stared straight upward from the mass of flesh.

Dale swore. “It’s real!” he gasped, under his breath. 

“What’s that, Captain?” Alberts asked. He was not certain he had heard properly.

“Burn that thing,” Dale commanded. “Burn it immediately.” When no one moved, Dale turned to Alberts. “Go, immediately! Get something to burn that thing.”

Gathering his wits about him, Alberts pushed his way through the crowd, and set out at a sprint for the weapons closet near the CIC. He returned as quickly as he could with a sterilization-grade incendiary device.

Dale had moved everyone out of the cabin and away from the door. He took the incendiary device, armed it, and tossed it into the room. It landed right on top of the thing and began to spark and glow.

Dale pulled the door to the cabin closed and covered his ears as the incendiary device began to shriek like a firework.

“My things!” cried Havisham and her roommates.

After a few minutes, the shrieking died down and Alberts and the Captain peeked inside. Everything in the room that was not made of metal had been reduced to ash. Where the thing had lain, nothing remained but a pile of grey powder.

“I’m not sure that was entirely necessary, Captain,” Alberts said, quietly. “Whatever that was, it was completely dead—denatured. No danger of infection or infestation at all, not after you irradiated the ship.”

Dale pressed his thumb into his chin. “Maybe.”

The sound of Havisham and her friends weeping over the loss of their things finally appeared to break through the Captain’s indecision. He straightened and went over to them, apologizing for what had just happened. “I’ll make sure you’re compensated,” he assured them. “In the meantime, let’s find you somewhere else to sleep.”

Marala spoke up. Standing outside the cabin, she had remained remarkably unaffected by the appearance of the vent creature when she saw Alberts pull it out of the vent. “Captain, I’m sure my cabin can fit more than just me.”

Dale looked at her. “Let me think about it.” He turned to Lovecraft and Pullman, who happened to be closest. “You two, I want you to clean this up. Get the shop vac from the workshop.

The two men groaned, but began to obey.  Passing the open door to the cabin, they paused to look in. Lovecraft whistled.

“Hop to it!” Alberts said, sternly. They hurried away.

Dale turned to address the remaining crew who were crammed into the hallway. “All right. This is over. You can disperse.”

It took a moment for everyone to get the message, but eventually they began to comply.

As the crowd began to thin out, Alberts cast a suspicious look at the Captain. “Do you know what that thing was?”

Dale glanced at him. His thoughts seemed far away. “No, but I think it might have been what infected Constantini.”

Alberts eyes grew wide. “You mean that thing was crawling around in the vents right up until we got to Skapstoti?”

“Yes. Then the fumigation, or at least the irradiation, killed it.”

Alberts eyed the departing crew members. “Do you suppose it could have infected anyone else?”

Bizarrely, the Captain rolled up his sleeves and looked at his forearms before responding. “Burnstyle checked everyone: no unusual growths, no blood abnormalities.”

“Wait. Is that thing what’s been making that horrible sound in the vents?! That cackling?”

Dale looked at him. “When’s the last time you remember hearing it?”

Alberts thought for a moment. “I’m not sure. Not for a while. I think I tuned it out a while ago.”

Dale pressed his thumb into his chin again and began grimacing. 

Alberts was not entirely reassured by the way the Captain was behaving, but he did not push it. “What are you… What are we going to do?”

Dale looked uncomfortable. “I think I’m going to presume that this issue is over and done with.” He paused, then continued. “But I will have Burnstyle do a second round of check-ups on everyone. How big is the second shipment down to the colony?”

“Not very big, sir.”

“How fast could you unload it, I mean, without assistance from the locals? I’d like to limit any further interaction if possible.”

Alberts thought about it for a moment. “Forty minutes, if we hussle.”

“All right. We’ll head down early, before they’re expecting us, drop things off, collect Dr. Burnstyle, then get out of here.”

Alberts nodded. It was an overabundance of caution, but it could not hurt. “What about the mayor? Should we tell him anything?”

“I’ll call him after we leave, tell him what to watch out for.”

“What about that little government troll? What was his name? Hillman?”

Dale shook his head, not because Alberts had remembered the name wrong, but out of frustration. “I’ll… I don’t know. Hopefully we can avoid him.”

XIX.

On the way down to the colony, Captain Dale explained to the loading crew that he wanted to be on the ground for as short a time as possible. “They’re not expecting us this early, so we’re just going to make a pile and leave it for them. If anyone shows up, I’ll keep them away. You all just keep working. Get it done, then we’re out of here.”

Onobwe called back to the Captain. “Radio call for you, Cap. It’s the mayor. They detected us on our way down.”

Dale went forward and put on the headphones Onobwe handed to him. “We’ve got a bit of a scheduling conflict, Shropshire,” Dale said. “Had to push things forward. Please don’t send anyone to the landing pad until we’re gone.”

There was a pause before the mayor responded. He was no fool. He was probably coming to the conclusion that the unexpected delivery time had something to do with attempting to avoid the government toady, Hillman. “All right,” he said, slowly. “We’ll wait.”

Dale had already radioed down to Dr. Burnstyle, warning him that they’d be arriving early and he wanted them to bring all their equipment back onto the landing vehicle as soon as it landed.

Upon landing, Burnstyle and his people trundled up the loading ramp carrying all their gear. The isolation tent had been bundled up again. Dale’s eyes narrowed when he caught sight of the bundle. Part of it had a distinctly red discoloration marring its surface. He stooped to examine it more closely. It looked like blood

“Burnstyle,” he began, “did… did you do surgery while you were down here?”

Seeing what had caught the Captain’s attention, Burnstyle shook his head. “No, that’s from some animal. We woke up to some hideous screaming last night and found that mess outside the tent this morning. Some predator caught something. I wish I’d been able to see the animals, but I was stuck in the clinic all day.” There was a distinct look of disappointment in the Doctor’s eyes as he said it. He continued, “Marlowe says it was big. He stepped out last evening to take a look at them.”

Dale turned questioning eyes toward the Professor.

Marlowe was nodding vigorously. “Those critters are big!” he exclaimed. “Bold as brass too. During the day they just sleep out in the open. No wonder they need so much ammo down here.”

“You got close to them?” Dale asked.

Marlowe laughed. “No!”

Burnstyle spoke up again. “The people here say that all of the local wildlife have these… acid sacks under their throats.” Burnstyle tilted his head up and used both hands to gesture toward his neck. “The non-predators use it to burn their way into storage bins and silos.”

“Hmm, sounds like a nice place to live,” Dale commented. He was only being half-facetious. He could see the attractions of the simple colony life, even if they did have to deal with the occasional pest problem.

Albert’s guys rapidly offloaded the cargo. Before any time at all, it seemed, they were blasting off again and rising in the sky. From the air, Dale looked down to see Hillman’s car approaching the landing pad.

The car came to a halt near the landing pad, but the landing vehicle was already gone. Hillman climbed out of the car and stared up at the rapidly departing ship. He made an angry, frustrated gesture.

Keeping his eyes on the little figure below him, Dale spoke to Dr. Burnstyle. “How’d you manage with that Hillman guy? Any trouble?”

Burnstyle’s mood seemed to lift. “Oh, I kept him spinning his wheels with doctor-patient confidentiality and sent him running around town like a headless chicken looking for augmentation records.”

“Good, good,” Dale said, absently.

Burnstyle grimaced. “I did have to tell him about Constantini, though.”

Dale grunted and looked at the doctor angrily. “Why’d you do that?!”

“He found the health inspection report you gave him from the Skapstoti Port Authority.”

Dale suddenly looked like he might strangle the doctor.

Burnstyle continued. “He didn’t take a very close look at it, and I acted very dismissive about the matter. He dropped it pretty quick.”

The Captain sighed.

Alberts spoke up. “It’s a good thing you didn’t know about what happened last night!”

Burnstyle gave him an inquisitive look.

“We found the vector for Burnstyle-Marlowe Disease. We think, anyway. It was, like, this boney octopus-thing.”

“Do you have it?” Marlowe exclaimed.

“N–no. It was dead. Captain burned it.”

Marlowe turned to the Captain to protest, but the look that was fired back at him prevented the Professor from voicing his objection.

XX.

As soon as the landing vehicle had reentered the Pater Noster, Dale ordered an immediate departure from the planet. Within a few minutes, the engines flared up, and the ship was hurrying along on its way to Earth. 

Dale went to the CIC and sat in his chair for a few hours, looking uncomfortable as though he was expecting something bad to happen. He spoke briefly to the mayor of Shropshire over the radio.

“We had a bit of an outbreak ourselves recently,” Dale told him. “Or rather, an isolated infection. One casualty. I feel it’s only right that I give you a bit of a rundown on it, just in case you run into anything like it yourself.”

“All right. Go for it,” the mayor returned.

“It appears to replace parts of the human body with its own material. I can’t really describe it. We also think it causes cognitive impairment of some sort. You’ll find it if you look up Burnstyle-Marlowe Disease on the medical database. There’s some pictures. Pretty gnarly. The vector appears to be some sort of ambulatory macropathogen—a sort of octopus-thing with one eye—sixty, seventy pounds.”

There was silence from the mayor.

Dale continued. “Please don’t mention any of this to Hillman. What’s he up to, by the way?”

The mayor responded, “Oh, he seems to have forgotten about you. He’s harassing some farmers now. They tried to complain to him about landing his ship on their crops.”

Dale could not help but breathe a sigh of relief as he leaned back in his chair. After a moment, he said, “Shropshire, did you get my previous about B-M Disease?”

“That’s affirmative, Pater Noster.  Sounds pretty weird though. We’ll keep an eye out for it.”

Dale leaned forward again. “Well, I just wanted to let you know, just in case… you know…” Dale’s thought awkwardly trailed off into silence. Then he spoke again, “I don’t have anything else, so I guess I’ll sign off.”

“All right. Thanks again, Pater Noster. Signing off.”

The Captain took off his headphones and put them down. He stood slowly and stretched. Then he addressed some of the others in the CIC. “Oliphant, Franklyn, just keep the ship going in the right direction. I’m going to bed.”

Dale walked slowly back to his cabin and fell onto his mattress. A moment before drifting off, he was half-awoken by that strange cackling sound everyone had been hearing coming out of the vents. Part of him was vaguely relieved. The vector was dead, and that meant the sound really was mechanical in origin, some sort of squeaky hinge.

XXI.

Dale was awoken a few hours later by a loud mechanical screeching sound reverberating through the ship’s bones. This was no mere cackle. He got up groggily and stepped outside his cabin to go looking for the sound’s origin. He reasoned it must be coming from some part of the engine. When he started to get closer to the sound’s origin point, it became so loud  he had to cover his ears. He came across a few other crewmen, also trying to identify the source of the cacophony. Eventually he caught sight of Marala coming towards him—also covering her ears. She had already found the source of the sound, identified its cause, and come to find him. She beckoned and led the way to one of the engine rooms. She swung open the door and the sound suddenly grew much more intense.

Dale tried to shout a question at her, but without much success. Still covering her ears, Marala tried to stick one finger into the air. “Wait!” she mouthed.

The sound continued. Marala began to make spinning motions with her finger, which Dale interpreted as her trying to tell him she expected  something to happen momentarily. Suddenly the shrieking faded out and they both took their hands off their ears.

“What the blazes was that?” Dale asked.

Marala pointed into the engine room. “Every few hours the engine runs a purge protocol, making a lot of vibrations. Usually the dampening system quiets it down so it’s not noticeable, but something seems to have broken free in here. It’s not dangerous. It’s just an annoyance.”

“Any damage to the ship?” Dale asked.

“No. Engine’s still functioning properly. It’s just gonna shriek like that for about about twenty minutes every few hours.”

“Can you fix it?”

Marala nodded. “I haven’t taken a good look at it yet, but it’s not an uncommon problem. Shouldn’t be too hard. And the engine can keep running. I don’t need it to be off to repair this.”

“OK. Good to hear. If you need any assistance from anyone, don’t hesitate to ask me or Alberts.”

“Yes, sir. I’ll get on it right away.”

“Good. Any progress on the security system, by the way?”

Marala shook her head sadly. “No, sir. No joy yet.”

“OK. Keep me up to date. Guess I’ll go print some earplugs for myself.”

Dale headed back to his cabin. A few crew members tried to ask him about the noise, but he waved them off and said he’d send out a general update in a few minutes, which he did, informing everyone about the faulty dampening system.”

He tried going back to bed, but sleep did not come, so he got up again and started going over the ship’s finances. Eventually he got a notification from Marala asking him to join her again in the engine room.

When he got there, he found that Marala had pried open a large piece of engine cover on its hinges. It appeared to be stuck to the ceiling somehow. Marala was half inside the engine, and the engine cover seemed to be hanging precariously above her prone form. Dale eyed the large piece of metal with uncertainty as Marala shimmied backwards out of the engine and stood.

“That doesn’t look very safe. What's holding that up there?” Dale asked, pointing to the engine cover. The edge of it was just touching the ceiling.

Marala wiped her hands on a rag. “I welded it in place. Trust me, it’s not going anywhere.” She mimed holding it up with one hand and using a welding torch with the other.

Dale looked back and forth between the small woman in front of him and the large slab of metal suspended above her. “Wasn’t that heavy?” he asked.

She puffed out her cheeks and nodded. “Extremely, sir.”

Dale blinked but did not pursue the issue. “So, what’s the update?”

“This is going to take upwards of thirty five work hours to repair. I’ll need to print some metal parts and get one of Albert’s guys to do some fabricating for me. The engine’s going to purge itself several times before I’m done.”

Dale nodded. “OK, well I’m not going to ask you to work another thirty five hours straight. I’ll just tell everyone to print some ear plugs for themselves during their sleep shifts. Tell Alberts what you need and manage your sleep periods however you like.”

The girl nodded and picked up a pair of ear protectors that had been lying on the floor next to some tools. “Yes, sir. The next purge will begin in a few minutes. You might want to cover your ears.”

Dale did as Marala suggested and left the engine room, leaving the door open. A few moments later, the mechanical shrieking sound started up again.