Release(27)

“On this model ship,” said Keirth, “the hyperdrive is above the bridge, so we’ll need to go up a level.” He swung his headlamp up so that she could see an opening to the upper decks of the ship. There was a ladder that could be climbed when the gravity was on. Keirth grabbed a rung and pulled himself up.

Ariana shivered, looking around. Everything was so dark and creepy in here. She followed Keirth, pushing off the ladder so that she floated up to the next level.

When she got up to the next deck, she collided with something floating in the air. She pushed it away. She floated backwards and the thing floated in the opposite direction. As it drifted away, she realized what it was.

It was a person. A man in a uniform of some kind. His face was cold and frozen. His eyes were deep black sockets in his head. She yelped.

“What?” said Keirth, who was ahead of her. He spun around to see. “Oh. Crap. Dead guy.”

“You said there wasn’t anything human on the ship,” said Ariana. She closed her eyes, trying to rid herself of the image of the dead man.

“Well,” said Keirth, “the scan doesn’t pick up on dead bodies, you know. It only looks for heat signals and stuff.”

“What happened to his eyes?” If the rest of him had frozen, why were his eyes missing?

“I don’t know,” said Keirth. He floated over to the body, halting it in the air.

“What are you doing?”

Keirth held something up. “He’s got a blaster. I’m taking it.”

Oh. Gross. On the other hand, Ariana guessed the man wasn’t using it.

“You see anyone else floating around, feel free to take one for yourself,” said Keirth. “You did say you wanted a blaster.”

She couldn’t see his face, but she could tell he was grinning. If they hadn’t been in null grav, she would have shoved him. “Let’s just get the hyperdrive,” she said.

“Sure,” said Keirth, attaching the blaster to his waist.

To distract herself from the cold creepiness of this floating tomb, Ariana decided to change the subject. “So, why don’t you want to go to Trioth, anyway?”

Keirth laughed. “Oh, that. That’s a mess.” He pulled himself along the wall of the ship, heading in the direction of the bridge, Ariana guessed. “See, on Trioth, they have this custom. I didn’t know about it, and I got myself in a heap of trouble.”

“Custom?” She pulled herself along the wall as well, focusing on Keirth. She didn’t want to see any other dead people.

“Yeah, the chief of the planet seemed like a really nice guy. I showed up, looking for Risciter, like I said, but he wasn’t there. I was greeted by this entourage of people wearing loincloths and carrying spears, and they took me back to their chief. He was so hospitable, he threw a banquet in my honor, and in the middle of it, his daughter came up to me and served me some wine or something in this fancy glass. She took a drink of it, and then she handed it to me. And, since I was an idiot, I drank out of it too.”

“Doesn’t sound very sanitary.” Something else floated into Ariana. She cringed away from it, but she could tell from the way it glanced into her shoulder that it wasn’t a body, so she looked it at.

“Well, it’s a backwoods planet. I was trying to be polite,” said Keirth. “I didn’t know what was going on.”

“Hey,” said Ariana, picking up what had bumped into her. “A blaster! A blaster just floated into me.” Ha! She didn’t have to pick one off of a dead guy after all.

“Score,” said Keirth. He turned back to look at her. Through his helmet, she could see he was smiling. He had a nice smile, didn’t he? Keirth was a little rough around the edges, but he was a good guy, wasn’t he?

Triumphantly, she attached it to her suit. “So, what happened? Why was it bad to drink the wine?”

Keirth had reached the end of a passageway. He pulled himself around a corner. “Well, it turned out that I had inadvertently agreed to marry her, which I found out when she appeared in my bedchamber later that night.”

“Oh,” said Ariana. She giggled. “How embarrassing.”

“Yeah,” said Keirth. “I tore out of there right away. Ran to my ship and took off with a bunch of men with spears chasing me and swearing at me. I’m really glad we don’t have to go back there.” He halted for a second. “Watch out. Another guy with no eyes is coming at you.”

Ariana flattened herself against the wall of the ship. She wanted to look away, but she couldn’t help herself. The man floated right in front of her, giving her a perfect view of his face. He, too, was missing his eyes. The rest of his skin was frozen, and she could see where chunks of it were broken away at his eye sockets, revealing bone that gleamed in her headlamp. The skin looked jagged, almost as if it had been chewed away... Ugh. She didn’t want to think about this. “Why didn’t you want to marry her? Was she ugly or something?”