Going Interstellar (collection)

The panel was a good three feet above Tie Dye’s head. It took her only seconds to reach it. As Tie Dye flailed at her, she popped the clamps. The panel swung open, showing the many-legged crawler folded tightly into the cramped space. Belatedly, she realized she should have chosen the other side of the tube, but there was no time now.

“Get your hands off that!” Tie Dye roared. He braced his foot on one of the handholds, and started climbing toward her.

There was only one thing she could do, and even as she thought of it, she was already doing it. She turned on her side, sucked in her stomach, and slid past the crawler’s sharp angles into the cool darkness of the sealing ring.

Behind her, Tie Dye swore and banged his fist against the panel frame. She wriggled further into the ring so he couldn’t reach her foot and haul her back.

She would wait him out. It was tight, her hiding place, and unlike the maintenance ring of the North America, it was dark. She couldn’t see a thing, but she could breathe. She could take it. He would give up eventually, and leave her alone. She would slip back to her quarters and lie low until his temper wore off. She’d done that before.

It was a good plan, but she soon understood the flaw in it. She had underestimated the full force of Tie Dye’s rage. He was an engineer, a good one. He knew how to make machines work. She was just settling into the least bothersome position when she heard the slither and click of something coming up the ring behind her.

The damn crawler! Tie Dye had launched the crawler. She thought of the thin blades of its legs opening, stretching, moving it along the ring. She shuddered, imagining those blades cutting through the soft soles of her shoes. He was serious this time, deadly serious. She was no stranger to trouble, but this had to be the worst.

Panicked, she wriggled further into the ring, feeling her way in the blackness. The crawler’s mechanical sounds were like the clicking of someone’s arthritic knees, and they came steadily closer, driving her forward. Was it her imagination, or did the ring narrow as it circled the lock? She could hardly move her shoulders, and only just find purchase with her feet and the tips of her fingers, pushing herself along. The maintenance tube of North America had lights, and room for her to move her elbows, bend her knees. This was a nightmare tunnel of blackness and constriction, a coffin indeed. If she were an inch wider, a pound heavier, she would be trapped. Her breathing quickened, and her mouth dried.

Shit, she thought. A rock and a hard place. There was no choice, nothing she could do but press on. It was all too much like the shelters, choosing between two or more evils every damn day of her life. When she got out of here, she promised herself—and she would get out of here—she was going to make Tie Dye’s life a living hell!

Anger served her better than fear. She scooted forward through the tube as quickly as her thrusting toes and scrabbling fingers could move her. She felt the chill as the tube arched above the lock, and she refused to think about the black, cold emptiness on the other side of the layers of plastic and rubber and metal. The ring grew even tighter, until she thought she might be stopped, but then, as she wiggled one shoulder and then the other past the most constricted part, she found there was room again. There was still no light, and the sound of her breathing filled her ears almost enough to shut out the gentle scrabbling of the crawler coming behind her. At least she was moving. She was gaining. She held her breath for a moment to listen. She was sure the sound of the crawler had diminished behind her.

It was then that she felt the slight movement, as if an infinitesimal breeze had touched her cheek. She froze for several heartbeats, holding her breath, trying to determine what it was. The sound of the crawler grew louder again as she paused.

The darkness seemed to accentuate the sensation, so subtle she could have imagined it. It was more a feeling than a fact. It was a bit like when she could feel the North America preparing to brake, a faint suggestion of something changing, something happening. It was subtle. But it was real.

It shouldn’t be there, but she had no doubt, as she began wriggling forward again, that she had felt it.

The crawler should, too. It should stop, and set up an alarm.

It didn’t. The damn thing really did need redesigning.

Gasping for air, praying she could reach the opening before the crawler did, she drove herself harder. For what seemed interminable moments, there was nothing in Isabet’s world but her own rasping breaths and the mechanical click and slither behind her. She wriggled, and wriggled, and wriggled, until she thought the skin of her hands and shoulders and knees must be raw. She peered forward, trying to see the glimmer of light that would mean she had reached the panel, and could escape this confining tube.