Expendable - James Alan Gardner [35]
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, I don’t smell like one!” he snapped. “When you radioed me without warning, I fumbled my damned tube and pissed myself. Let’s get down to the damned planet so I can take this helmet off.”
Three abreast, we strode into the transport bay. The door closed behind us, and a metal safety hatch slid up in front of it.
With a tap, I switched my throat radio to full transmit. “Ramos to Jacaranda,” I said. “Is the tail anchored?”
“Affirmative, Explorer.” The voice coming over my headset was Harque’s perpetual smirk. “Pressurizing now.”
The ship’s Sperm-tail was now in position at our chosen Landing site, establishing a tube of hyperdimensional space from here to there. In effect, here was there; no physical space separated us from the planet’s surface. The Jacaranda would increase air pressure in the transport bay, just enough to exceed the pressure at the planet’s surface. Then, when the Bay Mouth opened, we would be squirted forward, down the tube to the planet, making the passage in a real-space time of zero seconds.
The subjective time would not be zero seconds. Human brains are perfectly conscious of the time they spend in hyperspace, even if the outside world perceives the transit as instantaneous.
Harque’s voice sounded again in my headset: “Ejection in ten seconds.”
I jerked my head around to glare up at the mezzanine, where Harque loomed behind the control console. He was supposed to wait for my signal before starting our ejection countdown. Insulting to the last, the petty bastard.
Yarrun nudged my elbow, and shook his head.
Fuming, I turned back to face the huge aperture in front of us: the Aft Entry Mouth, which was irised tightly closed for the moment. From this vantage point, the Mouth seemed immense—four storeys high and ready to eat us. Yarrun, Chee, and I, stood tall, shoulder to shoulder…and that mouth could swallow all three of us in a single gulp.
I closed my eyes. I had thought that perhaps this time, this last time, I would keep my eyes open. But I didn’t.
“Ejection,” Harque said.
Down
Down was the pull of ship’s gravity beneath my feet.
There was a sharp hiss of sound as the Mouth opened.
Down was behind me. Down was back where my stomach still wanted to be. I flew forward like a straw in a hurricane.
The world squeezed as I plunged down the gullet of the Worm, the Sperm. The squeezing was gentle, but unstoppable. My body compressed obligingly.
Outside the Sperm, the compression would have killed me: bones would snap and poke splinters through internal organs; eyes would burst; muscles would be kneaded to thread. Inside, however, the laws of physics were daintily overruled. I was a thing infinitely malleable.
Down was inside me, a point halfway between navel and groin. The Chinese call that point the dantien, the center of the soul. I fell toward my center like rain.
The center of my soul. The center of my soul. If I conceived a child, this was where it would grow. When I died, this was where I would run.
Down was everywhere around me. I flew outward. I exploded into my body. My skin snapped taut like a sail catching a gust of wind. I felt blood surging through my brain.
The world burned red outside my closed eyelids.
Down was the vector of my descent. My eyes flickered open.
I rolled with the impact of my landing. Grass lashed wet streaks across my faceplate. In that moment, I remembered how grass smelled on summer afternoons, when I was young and would live forever.
But I didn’t smell the grass; I smelled only my own sweat. My tightsuit and I were a closed system.
Breathing the odors of my body, I stood up.
Down was the pull of gravity beneath my feet.
Melaquin.
Melaquin Without Stories
Overhead, a cloudless blue sky surrounded a yellow sun.
Around me, a grassy field danced with wildflowers. Black-eyed Susans. Daisies. He loves me, he loves me not.
A few paces to my left, Yarrun scrambled to his feet. Green grass stains were streaked across the white of his suit. He shrugged off his backpack and began to