Barry Longyear - Adagio

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ADAGIO

Barry B. Longyear

Tobias sat on the red-stone grave marker on the side of Graveyard Hill and watched as Forrest

tortured the rocks with the portable generator he had taken from the cargo bay. Torture is what

Lady Name called Forrest's game. Lady Name was convinced that Forrest was insane.

Tobias raised a grimy hand and rubbed his eyes. Hell, Lady Name was wig-picker bait herself.

That's why she was called Lady Name. It was a temporary label for the woman until she could figure

out just who the hell she was. Or at least until she would say who she was. Cage and Forrest

thought she had amnesia. Tobias didn't buy that, but he didn't care.

He lowered his hand and let his gaze wander past the main shelter dome until it came to rest upon

the remains of the ship. Three kilometers behind the cargo vessel was the jagged ledge that had

ventilated

the command module as the ship ground to a stop. Through the rents in the command module, he could

see Lady Name. She was silently watching Forrest. Motionless.

It was entirely possible that Lady Name would kill Forrest. A matter of indifference to Tobias.

Somewhere below her in the twisted metal, Cage would be nervously working on the computer. Death

still seemed to matter to Cage. His nerves were the direct result of Lady Name frequently sitting

just out of his field of vision, staring at him, sharpening her knife upon one of the dead red

stones.

The dried and cracked crust that had formed over the surface of the red dust when it last rained

was almost all gone. The little bit of wind, the motion of the rocks, the feet of the humans had

eroded the crust. And it had been such a long time since it had rained. When they had constructed

the main shelter dome from the cargo-bay supplies, it had been gleaming white. Now it was covered

with dull-red dust.

It seemed like years had passed since they had put up the dome and installed the nutrition system.

Twenty meters in diameter, it was large enough to shelter all five of them. Lady Name was the

first one to move out and erect an individual shelter. There had been fifty of the plastic-plank

shelter kits in the cargo bay. Now they each had one, only meeting in the dome to eat. The fact

was that they could no longer stand each other.

The whisper of feet dragging in the dust interrupted Tobias's thoughts. Tillson. The footsteps

stopped. .

"Is it possible, Tobias, that God has done this to us

to provide us with a challenge against which to test our virtue?"

Tobias turned to his left and glared up at the chaplain. Tillson was naked again. "Stick it up

your ass, -Howard."

Chaplain Howard Tillson nodded gravely. "You are right, of course. You are very wise, Tobias. Very

wise."

The chaplain turned and stumbled his way down the back of Graveyard Hill, his droopy buns jiggling

with each step.

Tobias again pondered the fact that Tillson had a woman's ass. Another fact to ponder was that

rescue had best happen before Tillson's ass got to look much better. He hollered down the hill at

the jiggling ass, "Tillson, put some clothes on!"

The chaplain stopped, turned, looked up at Tobias, and nodded. "You are right, of course. You are

always right, Tobias."

Placing his hands upon his knees, Tobias pushed himself to his feet and dusted off the seat of his

flight suit. He turned and looked down at the grave marker he had been sitting on. Osborn's

marker. It was a smooth, red stone just like Mikizu's.

They had to use only the red stones for grave markers. They didn't walk off.

The gray stone Tobias had originally used to mark Osborn's grave was now several meters downslope,

running like hell, Forrest claimed. It had taken the gray stone five of the planet's month-long

days to race the short distance. Gray stones, white stones, green stones, black stones. They

littered the red landscape. They were alive. The red ones didn't move.

They were dead.

Osborn was dead. And Mikizu. He let his gaze wander two meters to the left to another red stone.

When Mikizu had piloted the ship, shearing it off that ledge, he had lost his head. Tobias knew

because he had carried that head to the grave while Forrest and Cage carried the pilot's

remainder.

Too quick, Tobias thought. Too quick and clean a death for you, Mikizu. Tobias unsealed his suit

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and pissed on the pilot's grave. When he was finished he stumbled down the hill, entered his

individual shelter, and flopped down on his cot. He closed his eyes thinking of dead red grave

markers.

Osborn was dead. Mikizu was dead. Mikizu was no loss. If it hadn't been for him they wouldn't be

stranded. But Osborn. Tobias wished Osborn were still alive. He'd know what to do. But Osborn had

to be a hero ....

He had sat in the sputtering flashes of the emergency lights, watching Osborn's eyeballs leak. The

chief engineer was in the wreckage of the engineering deck, inhaling vacuum, the seat of his

trousers puddling with piss and blood, the fluid from his eyeballs dribbling down his cheeks.

There had been plenty of time for Osborn to get on his suit. The hull damage in aft engineering

had dumped only the pressure from that compartment. The rest of the ship lost pressure only

because of the warped bulkhead seals. It took minutes for the ship to lose cabin pressure. But

Osborn wanted to flick switches, punch buttons, and twirl knobs. The rest of

them probably owed him their lives. The asshole.

"Tobias?" The headset in his suit spoke. It was the pilot, Mikizu. "Engineering? Osborn? Tobias?"

Tobias answered. "What?"

"Osborn?"

"Osborn's dead."

A brief pause. "Tobias, I need to know the power situation."

Through his suit's faceplate, he glanced at the remains of the engineering board. "I can't help

but believe, Mikizu, that you know just about as much as I do about that."

"The bridge panel is dead."

"No shit." He leaned back against the bulkhead, glanced at Osborn, and closed his eyes. "We're all

dead back here, too."

"I need power if we're going to go down."

"Is there any point?"

"Forrest thinks so."

Forrest. Second pilot. A little bastard but smart. Tobias shook his head to clear it. Time to

knock off the smartmouth.

"Main and auxiliary plants are down. Whatever it was that came flying through the hull took out

the engines. I couldn't sell what's left of them for scrap."

Another pause, this one longer. "What about the fuel cells?"

"They're okay. Osborn got the lines shut down before too much fuel escaped. What's Forrest got in

mind?"

Forrest's voice entered his helmet. "We can try for a dead-stick landing. If you can rig the

steering jets, Tobias, the computer says we have a chance of

making it through the atmosphere."

"How much of a chance?"

Forrest laughed. "Don't ask." He became quiet. "We have a better chance at making a landing than

we have trying to stay alive up here. Can you rig something?"

Tobias looked around the engineering deck, the challenges of practical necessity temporarily

crowding out projections of disaster and demise. With the board shot there would be some wiring to

do. He'd have to work off the batteries. And some plumbing, not to mention readjusting the

steering jets to use main-plant fuel. He didn't really know if that could be done. But there was

something else. The entry heat would turn aft engineering into a furnace.

"Forrest, I can make a try at the steering jets, but something has to be done about those holes in

the hull."

"Get to work on the jets. When you're ready, I'll help you with the holes. We can snatch some

plate from somewhere."

Tobias pushed up and began working his way toward aft engineering. He loved doing wiring in

atmospheric long johns. It was like doing watch repair while wearing a pair of boxing gloves. The

failing gravity would just make it interesting.

He punched the switch, and the hatch swung slightly open and jammed. With his foot he kicked it

the rest of the way open. He stood in the hatch and looked into the darkness of the engine room.

The only light came from the holes in the hull. Tobias knew that some of those flickers were

stars, but most of them were too bright for that. The bright

ones were the remains of the crumbled planets that formed the Oids Belt in orbit around a sun

called Mantchee.

Merchant crews don't like the Oids Belt and never go there. The union even got it in the contract.

Asteroids, planetoids, and paranoids. Tobias still had one of the buttons that says I AVOID THE

OIDS.

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