The Last Leg
by James Verran and Scot Noel

Unlike her human stewards, Zodiaque's aging computers seemed oblivious to the chiming.

Unable to inform the crew as to the source of the noise, their electronic brains remained stumped as well by a pre-existing phenomenon, now intensified: the smell.

Unpleasant, noxious, the odor complicated things. It wafted about the ship at random, an acrid scent tinged with ammonia. Contemptuous of the recycler's efforts to remove it from the air supply, the smell had worsened to become intolerable in places. Captain Leisa Blundell had her Martian crew of three search the hold and the engineering crawl spaces. Finally, she ordered them to unseal and search the old passenger quarters, also without success. There seemed no obvious cause for the phenomena, and no way to alleviate the growing annoyance of either.

Yet within minutes of its onset, the noise ceased, only to begin cycling through a set of random, irritating performances. The sound heightened the crew's sense of misery, sensitizing them to other noises and preventing sleep. During one impromptu concert, Blundell believed she recognized the sound as that of crystal growth distorting the alloy of the hull. It had a distinctive, almost musical timbre, as if some previous crew had tied chimes in the bilges, there to release muffled tinkles with each new breath of the recycler. Swearing, her blood pressure rising at the thought, she put smell and sound together into a single, unwelcome conclusion.

Calling her crew together, Blundell parried what she perceived to be their vacant stares by posing for them one simple but important query. "I have a question," she said to the three young men, "about the smell ... the noises." On both sides arms were crossed, lips tensed. Accusation lay heavy in the air. "What I want to know," Blundell finished, "is which one of you bastards pissed into the bilges?"

Three embarrassed grimaces greeted her question. The First Mate's face turned red with anger. "I'll ah, well I'll um --" flight officer Gene Wade stammered, "check it out."

"You mean: check it out, Sir!" Blundell snapped.

"Yeah, that's what I meant, Ma'am ... uh, Sir," Wade replied, then turned to go, mumbling unintelligibly in the new Martian patois.

The First Mate, Oscar Lentov, caught Wade by the shoulder and whispered something in passing. When Lentov glanced to Blundell, his eyes told her everything his Martian words could not: the crew's contempt for her had become a living thing.

Upon returning from his sojourn in the ship's nether regions, the flight officer looked sheepish, even pale. Perhaps, Blundell thought, a bit spooked.

"Look mates, you must've heard the noises down in the aft storage bay." he said. "Not the ringing, but something -- I don't know --" He looked to fellow crewmen Decker and Lentov, but received only fiery annoyance from their sleep-deprived eyes.

"Spit it out, Mr. Wade," Blundell insisted.

"Sounds like something's groping around, behind the walls."

"No," said Blundell, as if answering for all present, "we did not hear it." Turning to Lentov and Decker for confirmation, she saw only pursed lips and hardened glances. "What about the bilges, Mr. Wade?"

"Dry, Sir. I mean, I didn't see a thing, just that noise --"

"Loose insulation moving in the recycler's breeze, that's all," Blundell interrupted.

"Yeah, must be," Wade agreed, utterly unconvinced.

Turning back to their watches, Lentov and Decker began to laugh softly.

Three weeks earlier, Blundell had watched the altimeter in the rising shuttle. They were on their way to rendezvous with Zodiaque.

After trimming the pressure in the primary tanks, she turned to her new crew, three young men who shared an appearance of affected boredom. They grinned, showing sharpened teeth, and she grinned back at them. The epaulets and ratings bars on their uniforms seemed difficult to believe, so youthful did their faces appear, so callow their demeanor. The swirling tattoos each sported about the face and eyes, as well as the unnecessary dental work, all spoke to Blundell of children playing at being warriors.

"Ah, Rebecca," Blundell whispered to the corpse sharing the shuttle with them, "they've just come along to gloat. The headhunters have won."

Blundell had retired, already. Once. Yet there were still favors owed an aging woman whose wit and health were as sound as ever, and if Zodiaque were to be cast back toward Earth as if it had never been needed, then it was time for Blundell to go too, and to stay. An ice crystal plume from Mount Ascraeus reflected pink, pre-dawn light onto the flight instruments until the rising sun silvered the UV filters of the view ports. An instant later the shuttle plunged over the horizon and high into the icy darkness of space. Somewhere in the starry night ahead lay Zodiaque.

For a few minutes, there would be time to relax and appreciate the view.

With the others apparently preoccupied, Blundell closed her eyes, and kept them tight. "Those who remember are soon followed into the grave by those who remember," she whispered to herself.

The young flight officer, Gene Wade leaned forward between the seats. "Say something, Ma'am?" he asked, careful not to look in the direction of the body bag.

Blundell, ignoring him, feigned interest in the controls, tapping a readout and removing a smudge with the heel of her thumb. Then the shuttle began to lose speed as it neared the apogee of its glide, and a moment later Blundell called out: "Ten seconds to boost. All strapped in?"

She watched her small crew scrabbling to check their belts, then hit the button early. The sudden boost punched crew and cargo alike firmly into their acceleration couches, while outside, the super-chilled atmosphere turned the exhaust to ice. It became a crystal fog, more spectacular than Ascraeus's glowing cloud. To starboard, the first fingers of sunlight probed the depths of the Mariner Valley. A second later, it was swept from view as the shuttle streaked upward, toward a planned rendezvous beyond Deimos.

"Message from Zodiaque," said Oscar Lentov, the second in command on this voyage. He removed his headphones. Agitated, his cheeks grew red as he said, "our boost was a few seconds early. It'll cause them extra work. We should have let the computer handle it."

"Poor boys," Blundell said, stressing the sarcasm, "did I upset them? By the way, Mr. Lentov, does that Decker fellow ever say anything?"

Lentov glanced back toward the youngest crewman, but Decker's head was down, his unwavering attention on the computer screen in his lap. Decker's job, cargo security, included the safe conveyance of the late Rebecca Price back to Earth. The rest of the cargo consisted of foodstuffs, for little else spoke so strongly of Martian independence than shipping the larder of the new world back to Earth.

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