The cancerous mass crawled along the exterior of the dome, a shadow passing over the fairway viewport revealed. I snapped my head around to find the thing that had been Lt. Lin stretching and scrunching caterpillar-like up the curved glass above. I reached for my pistol, but my hand stayed. Could my shot even break through to that monster, I’d only be signing my own death warrant, death by a cold, sudden explosion with a side of asphyxiation for a finish. Besides, hot lead didn’t seem to work on whatever it was, whatever Lin had become. What was happening? The whole thing seemed unreal, like a nightmare. I stared, watching as the shapeless horror’s trail of sludge began beading up in the planet’s barren atmosphere. Shaking myself from my daze, I rushed toward the nearest comm, slamming my fist into the button.
“It’s here, Lin’s here!” I shouted.
“What?” Sven’s voice came through the static.
“It’s Lin,” I growled. “The thing he turned into in the cave. It’s followed us back.”
Static.
“Sven!” I cried. “Sven, it’s outside right now. I see it.”
“Where are you?”
“Habitat B,” I said.
I stared up at the pale flesh of the monster and wondered if those dark warts covering this gangrenous worm were not—and then I saw that it must be. The pallid mass was covered in eyes, staring, unblinking eyes, watering, bleeding eyes. Careless eyes, grown without thought and just as thoughtlessly torn and scarred as it dragged itself along the craggy waste.
“Sven!”
“I see it,” he spat.
“It’s getting out of view now,” I said as it crawled beyond the glass. The shadow which had first disclosed it presence now slowly shrunk at my feet.
“The exhaust!”
“What?” I asked.
“It’s heading toward the exhaust.”
“It’s too big,” I said.
“Want to bet? It had to crawl out of that avalanche. I bet that was a squeeze.”
“Well, close it.”
“Close it,” mocked Sven. “And then what?”
I thought. Without the exhaust to vent the core, our lives wouldn’t last much beyond a day; however long it would take for the air to become saturated plus however long we could hold our breaths. Then I thought:
“The exhaust leads straight to the core?” I asked, though I didn’t wait for an answer. “We need a vacuum to suck him in and shoot him into the middle of the reaction.” I kept going. “We need another—”
Sven got the idea: “Running fans on full blast,” he said.
“Good,” I said. “Then we’re going to have to close everything the moment he’s pulled into the chamber.”
“That’s not automatic,” Sven’s voice rose. “Run. You’re going to have to…”
I didn’t hear the rest; I was already sprinting toward the station’s center. It took Sven a few moments before his voice started broadcasting from all speakers, and I could already see the danger signs warning me away from entering the reactor.
“He’s in the pipes now.”
I was shouldering my way through the massive door. The cacophony that greeted my ears stung like a punch in the face. No more Sven, but I knew what to do.
“Wheels within wheels,” some old quote passed through my mind as I closed the shut off valves. Sweat dripped from me like rain as my arms began to shake. It was about to get very hot inside the core, and I had closed every exit. We could last twenty-four hours, I thought as my hands grasped the last wheel. By then—my arms strained—whatever monster poor Lin had been made into by whatever means, there wouldn’t even be ashes left.
Tale Told 