James Axler - Earthblood 01 - Earthblood

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IT WAS A DEAD-END CORRIDOR

No place to hide. No place to run.

Then there was a hissing of powerful hydraulic gears behind the reinforced walls

of concrete and steel, and the heavy security door slid sideways.

They rushed and jostled inside the familiar lobby leading to their quarters. Mac

was last, though, turning and stabbing a finger onto the red emergency button that

closed the door. After a moment's hesitation, it began to move shut, agonizingly

slowly.

Jim stood near the shrinking gap, peering into the passage outside. He saw a

flicker of movement and heard shouting.

A rough strident voice called out. "Hold it!"

A man appeared around the bend of the corridor, with a sawed-down scattergun

cradled in his arms. "Hold the bastard door!"

The gun was leveled, barely fifty feet away.

Jim Hilton was frozen, aware that the gap was still five feet, and that an ominous

grinding sound came from the door's gearing.

Earthblood

#1 in the Eathblood series

James Axler

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A GOLD EAGLE BOOK FROM WORLDWIDE

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY •

HAMBURG • STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN MADRID •

WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is

stolen property. It was reported as "unsold and destroyed" to the publisher, and

neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this "stripped

book."

It's sometimes difficult for a father to convey to his children the boundless extent

of his love for them. His pleasure in their company, his admiration for their

individual strengths and his respect for the way they have each coped with

adversity. With all of that, and immeasurably more, this book is for

David, Cathy and Matthew.

First edition November 1993

ISBN O-373-63807-8

EARTHBLOOD

this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other

means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying

and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden

without the written permission of the publisher, Worldwide Library, 225 Duncan

Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

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All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author

and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They

are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author,

and all the incidents are pure invention.

This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises B.V.

® and TM are trademarks of the publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are

registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade

Marks Office and in other countries.

"Beneath the urbane, smiling mask of polite society lies the bloody snarl of

primitive murder.

—from "Yesterday's Now,"

by Gordy Newman

Privately printed, 1990

"O brave new world,

That has such people in't."

—William Shakespeare The Tempest

Printed in U.S.A.

Chapter One

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The infinite cold and silence of the final frontier of deep space.

The exterior of the USSV Aquila had once been mirror smooth and diamond

polished. Now it was scarred and pitted, the heat shields pocked by dust and

radiation from the unknowable winds that blew between the dark stars.

The stillness beyond the locked observation shutters was continued inside the

vessel.

A light film of the thinnest oil eased tumblers. On the control panels there was a

dazzling array of changing colors. On the master console the micros selected from

the thousands of pieces of input data.

A comp clock revealed the date and the time, the pulsing chron crystal accurate

over a thousand years to one thousandth of a second.

The clock still registered Pacific coast time. It was fifteen minutes past three in

the morning on the twenty-fourth day of September in the year of our Lord 2040.

A liquid-crystal display beneath was running in tandem, showing the total elapsed

time of the Aquila's mission.

Thirty-two seconds.

Fifteen minutes.

Twenty-one hours.

Nineteen days.

Two years.

Apart from the almost inaudible humming and whispering of the computers, the

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vessel was silent, the crew all sleeping.

AFTER the blast-off in the bright dawn at the rebuilt Stevenson Air Base in

Nevada, the Aquila had been set on course for its exploratory mission. That was

seven hundred and fifty days and nights ago, but the ship's crew of ten men and

two women had been locked into sleep for all but twenty-six days of that time.

A form of cryonic suspended animation enabled them to be maintained at a

minimal level of life support during the months of darkness, with the on-board

computers, linked to those back at Stevenson, making the occasional minimal

correction.

They'd all been awake on six-hour rotating shifts for the first week of the mission.

Then they each entered a capsule of clear armaglass engineered to their own body

measurements. A mix of chemicals sent them sliding into something

approximating sleep. Respiration and circulation both dipped to almost

unbelievably low levels, levels that specialists would have interpreted as showing

certain clinical death only a few years earlier.

Tubes connected to the inside of each crew member's right arm carried regular

doses of balanced nutrients, while the waste products were siphoned hygienically

away.

They'd all been woken when the Aquila was close to the halfway point of its

research mission. They remained awake and busy with their various tasks for a

few weeks or so and then returned, with some reluctance, to their molded pods.

Aboard the Aquila there was almost no sense of time passing or of distance

traversed. But the vessel was speeding inexorably back toward its home planet.

Sling-shotting on its predestined orbit, back to Earth.

Eleven of the twelve crew were peacefully asleep.

One was not.

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Suddenly an alarm began to shrill on board the Aquila.

Chapter Two

Millions of dollars had been spent on researching the best sort of voice for the

computer control on board Aquila.

It was found that people responded best to a voice that promised them security.

The box most often ticked on the query-response documentation was the one that

said, "A voice that promises nothing will ever happen to hurt me."

It was a female voice, within the age parameters of thirty-eight to forty-seven.

Gentle and reassuring, yet with a hint of insistent strength, it was the kind of voice

that a rosy-cheeked lady from Kansas City might have.

All of the astronauts called her "Mom."

This calm, motherly voice responded to the high-pitched bell, buzzer and

whooping siren.

"Time to get up, boys and girls. Time to rise and shine now."

Nothing happened.

Hidden lights began to flash at the point where the Aquila's ceiling and wall made

their seamless kiss.

"This is not an emergency. This is automatic wakening to make preparations for

reentry and landing back on Earth. Time to be up and at them, boys and girls. Rise

and shineandshineandshine…"

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There was a loud click, and the voice ceased. But the lights, bells, siren and

buzzer all continued in a crescendo of noise.

Within the control units of each of the life-support capsules, there were changes

made in the chemicals entering and leaving the cardiovascular systems of the

astronauts.

Very gradually the state of suspended animation that had carried them through

infinite miles of space was itself being suspended.

The microcharges that had prevented muscles from atrophying disconnected

themselves.

Mom's voice clicked back on again. But it had suffered a subtle change. It had

risen very slightly in tone, as though mildly irritated by the slugabed tardiness of

her dozen recalcitrant charges.

"Wakening is proceeding. There are thirty-two hours to reentry into Earth's

atmosphere and approximately thirty-six hours to the projected landing time.

Wakening is proceeding."

During most of the seven hundred and fifty days and nights of the flight, the

lighting aboard the Aquila had been very subdued. Mission control back in the

Nevada desert had been monitoring everything that went on inside the vessel and

making minute changes every few hours.

Now the lighting was bright again, flooding the cream-painted interior and

bouncing off the array of instrumentation screens.

A couple of minor illumination fittings had malfunctioned, but it made little

difference to the overall level of light.

"There will be another call in sixty minutes. Meanwhile, all other audiovisual

systems will be closed down."

The ship was restored to its former silence, the twelve capsules, six to the port and

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six to the starboard, still slumbering.

A new clock had become illuminated, headed Time To ELT. It showed thirty-five

hours and fifty-eight minutes to landing, with touchdown scheduled at Stevenson

for approximately four o'clock in the afternoon of September 25.

EACH CREW MEMBER had been allowed up to sixty seconds of time to

describe himself/ herself for the media on a microtape that was then stored in the

ship's main data base. Some had used most of their minute, while some had used a

lot less.

"Hi, I'm Jim Hilton and I'm captain of the United States Space Vessel Aquila. I'm

thirty-two years old, stand six feet two inches tall and weigh in around one-ninety,

depending on how much chocolate fudge sundae I've been into recently. Been

with the space project for ten years since graduating. Been married for twelve

years to my high school sweetheart, Lori, who you've maybe seen on some of the

afternoon family vid shows. She was the psycho killer in Sunstrokers. We've got

twin girls, Heather and Andrea, aged eleven. I miss them a lot. And I miss our

house on Tahoe Drive, a quarter mile or so from the old Hollywood sign. Hobbies

are linked to survivalist skills. I'm a fair shot with rifle or handgun. And I love my

country."

James Carmel Hilton had thinning blond hair, visible through the cover on his

capsule. His heart and breathing were already beginning to speed up a little,

climbing back toward normal.

The next capsule along the row held a small incised plastic tag with the name of

the occupant: Marcey Cortling.

"I'm Marcey Cortling and I'm number two on the Aquila. My personal details and

my private life are just that. Personal and private."

She was twenty-nine years old and lived alone in a neat apartment on the

Stevenson base, the only crew member to do so. Her father and both of her older

brothers had been Air Force officers. Marcey was five feet tall and weighed one-

thirty-five. Her hair was short and dark, curling a little at the nape of the neck.

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One of the trivial and yet serious problems for the scientists in setting up the two-

year mission had been finding a surefire way of suppressing follicular activity.

Otherwise everyone would have woken up to find their pods brimming over with

their own hair and beards.

The next capsule along belonged to Steve Romero. "Steve Romero. Radio honcho

on this tub. Been interested in communications since I was knee-high to a

beanbug. I'm thirty-seven and a skinny six feet two. I'm a vegetarian and I practice

meditation. Been married but it didn't work out."

There was a hesitation in the voice. "Son called Sly who lives with… with his

mother in Aspen. She's married again. Twice more, in fact. Boy's eighteen. Wish I

saw more of him. That's all, folks."

In the identical capsule to the right of Steve Romero was a shorter, paler figure

whose light blue eyes were beginning to flicker as though he was going through a

period of REM-induced heavy dreaming.

"Thomas. Jefferson Lee. Twenty-four. Average height and build." The records

showed him at five-seven and one sixty-five. "I'm the superstar supercargo on this

can. Journalist for the West American, who put up a big pile of dollars to get me

aboard. I live on Jackson Street in San Francisco, and my hobby's battles of the

Civil War. Got a sick daddy in San Luis Obispo. Hope he's pulling on through

while I'm away. Absence makes his heart grow stronger."

After a pause, he continued, "Oh, and I got a steady little girl who can't wait for

me to get home and show her what she likes best." The tape finished on a cackle

of sniggering laughter.

"MAC. HENDERSON MCGILL. Some of the squids on this jaunt call me

Grandad, because I'm forty-five and the oldest crew member. Actually by the time

we get home again after the big sleep it could be I really will be a grandfather.

Specialty's astrophysics. Don't get much chance to use it. Machines have took us

over. Got two marriages, one still running. Seven kids here and there. Wife

numero uno is Jeanne. Lives on Mount Vernon Street in Boston. We get on all

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right, I guess. Angel…that's her real name…lives not far away in Mystic,

Connecticut, with the four youngest. We get on all right, I guess." He laughed.

"Hobby's keeping fit and paying alimony. Jim Hilton fancies himself with a gun.

But he can't bench press half what I can. That's all I got to say, except that there's

times I prefer being out in space to being stuck back here on our own sick old

planet."

MOM'S VOICE WAS ERRATIC. Every minute or so it would slow to a bass

slurring, like a fat old drunk on a park bench.

"Thirty hours to reentry and thirty-four hours to projected landing. Wake up, boys

and girls. You've slept long enough. Rise and shiiine. Recovery proceedings are

on line and—"

There was a loud snapping sound on the tape, like a dry branch cracking under a

heel. The voice went on, calm and unhurried. "There appears to be a minor

malfunction with off-target reanimating proceedings. Thisthisthis investigated

soonest."

THE LAST OF THE PODS at the end of the first row held the youngest member

of the Aquila's crew, who also happened to be the only black on board.

Kyle Lynch was tall and slender. "Navigator. Me and Mac feel the same about our

jobs." His voice was very quiet. "I watch a screen controlled by a preprog

computer. Anything needs changing in course or any other nav-factor input, then I

still sit and watch. I'm only there for a worst-worst scenario. Triple-red days for

Kyle. But if that ever happened to the Aquila, then I guess we'll all be chilled meat

anyway. I double up as the main stills and vid photographer for the mission. Load,

point and press. Ansel Adams I'm not. I live in Albuquerque down in New

Mexico and I surely hope my fiancee, Leanne, is still waiting for me when I get

back."

His lips moved in the stillness of the capsule as he whispered the name of his

dearest love. "Rosa," he said.

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James Axler - Earthblood 01 - Earthblood

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