A Call to Darkness - Michael Jan Friedman [5]
However, that sort of thing would have gone away after a few moments-and this wasn’t going away. He half pulled himself up onto the back of his chair, but he couldn’t seem to get his legs to support him. Soon, his arms got too tired to hold him up and he slithered back down to the ground.
“Computer,” he called-or rather, tried to call, hoping that he could summon help. But the word had come out tangled and slurred-nothing like what he had intended.
Again he tried it-but with no better results. If anything, his plea was less intelligible than before.
His mouth felt thick, sluggish. As listless as his lower body.
Now he lay on the carpeted deck of the geology lab, panic starting to eat into his overlay of reason. There was something wrong with him. Something very wrong. And if he didn’t get help soon, he was afraid of what might happen.
The door was just a few feet away. If he could reach it, he could trip the sensor…
The lab doors opened on a silent corridor, dimmed in accordance with the ship’s “night” cycle. Fredi gripped the carpet with splayed fingers and pulled himself toward the exit. He was weaker than he had been even a few minutes ago. He was fading, fading fast.
It was insanely difficult to drag himself along, his legs barely able to provide any help. By the time he reached the corridor, he was sweating in rivulets, gasping for breath.
Gasping…
Was it just from exertion? Or were the muscles that enabled him to breathe getting as bad as all the rest?
His arms and shoulders still seemed to be holding out, but they hurt-as if someone were twisting small, sharp knives into them. His right calf muscle was spasming savagely.
How long before he couldn’t move at all?
Fredi poked his head out, looked both ways down the curving passageway. Nothing and no one. And no sounds of approach, either.
“Help!” he cried-or at least made the attempt. But his speech was no longer just mangled-it had been pared down to nothing, not even a whisper.
Naturally, there was no response. Just the steady thrum of the ship’s engines, felt through the deck.
The nucleonics lab was two doors down. Surely, there would be someone in there. There had to be.
Fredi dragged himself out into the corridor, despite the steadily mounting pain in his shoulders. His breath was coming harder and harder. He was wheezing, struggling for air.
Come on, he told himself. Just a little farther.
It became too difficult to hold his head up, so he just let it droop against the deck. It made it harder to move, but he couldn’t help it.
Fighting, clawing, he passed the door to the astrophysics lab. At this hour, it would be empty-he was almost positive of that. And if he stopped to make sure, and there was no one home, he didn’t think he’d be able to get going again.
So he ignored it, kept his eye on his original goal. Clenched his teeth together and jerked himself forward. Again. And again. Like a fish on dry land, pop-eyed, frantic. And dying for lack of a way to fill its lungs.
The sound of his breathing seemed to fill the corridor now. Like one long, terrible groan, rising and falling and rising a little less each time.
Fredi started to feel light-headed. There was a bitter taste in his mouth, a taste of metal.
The door to the nucleonics lab was just ahead. Just a few feet away. But he knew he wasn’t going to make it. Eyes closing, he fell into a pit-a deep, black whirlpool that dragged him down and down and down…
Chapter Two
IT WAS DUSK. Outside the colonnades of the airy, open hall, beyond the orchards of pear and pomegranate and fig, there was a glorious profusion of color on the black and hilly horizon. Blushing reds, burnished orange golds and wistful greens, warring at angles in the fierce wake of the setting sun.
Geordi was glad he had programmed it that way. It was a fit scenario for Homer’s performance; anything less would have paled by comparison.
He was also glad for the opportunity to experience