Hull Zero Three - By Greg Bear Page 0,1

and the joy of planetfall.

A smooth jolt of perfectly designed machinery—

Severing connections with Ship. The lander is less than a hundred meters long, a tiny thing, really, yet sleek and fresh.

Time is moving so fast.

I unhitch and push off my harness to be closer to her. She scolds but she wraps her arms around me, and the web accommodates, the net stretches. We laugh to see so many others have done the same.

Viewing Ship from outside, along her great length, we marvel at her condition, weathered yet intact. Noble, protecting.

Ship, combined from an early formation of three hulls, now resembles two ancient stupas joined at their bases. Designed to protect against the hard wind between the stars, streamers of plasma convection once flowed and glowed ahead of and around the hulls like foggy gold rivers, ferrying interstellar dust—icy, glassy, metallic—aft, where it was processed into fuel or forged to replace Ship’s ablated outer layers.

Now, the last of the plasma feebly glows around the pinched middle, a vestigial beacon. The view distracts us for only a moment. We are lost in simple wonder. One out of a hundred ships, we were told, would survive. And yet we have made the longest journey in the history of humanity, we are alive, and

WE!

ARE!

HERE!

LIFE START

A jerk and an awful sound, like water rushing or blood spurting. Everything’s dark and muddled. A little redness creeps into my vision. I’m surrounded by thick liquid. My legs and arms thrash out against a smoothness.

Have we crashed? Did we break up in space before we landed? I’m already losing bits and pieces of what all that means. My memory is becoming like a puzzle picked up and shaken apart.

Puzzle. Jigsaw puzzle.

All wrong!

My entire body hurts. This is not the way it should be—not the way anything I know should be. But then I can feel what little I do know slipping away, including my name and why I’m here.

Alone in a shrinking tightness, like being squeezed out of a tube, legs still trapped, fingers ripping through the rubbery membrane, opening holes through which

I breathe.

I’m kicking my way out of a smothering sac. My chest aches and burns. The air hurts. Then the noise hits again and pounds my head, my ears, metal on metal. Doors closing. Walls moving, scraping, squealing.

My lungs seize. Hands and arms grow stiff. Naked flesh sticks to the deck. Skin comes away. I’m freezing.

A little one pulls on my exposed arm. She’s thin and wiry and strong. She tears at the sac until all of my upper body is cold. She makes sounds. I think I understand but my head isn’t locked in yet.

There was something wonderful before this.

What was it?

CHASING HEAT

Don’t just lie there—get up.”

The little one’s still tugging and pushing, dancing on the frozen deck. I try to move but I’m uncoordinated. I’m losing skin all over. I try to fight. Maybe she’s the reason I’m in so much trouble.

“Hurry! The air’s going to freeze!”

All I can do is grunt and cry out. I hate this skinny creature. Who is she? What is she to me? She’s pulled me out of the Dreamtime, and it’s no good.

I turn to look at where I came from. Bodies are pushing out of a gray wall. They’re enclosed in reddish sacs. They’re trying to move, trying to punch and tear their way out, but the bags crystallize and shatter. The room is long and low. Carts wait on the floor. Bodies flop down on the carts and squirm but they’re moving slowly, slower still.

They’re all going to freeze.

I lash out, pushing her away.

She encourages me. “That’s it,” she says. “Breathe deep. Fight. Hurry. The heat’s going fast.”

Standing makes my head spin. “Help… them!” I cry out. “Go bother them!”

“They’re already dead,” she says. “You came out first.”

So that’s why I’m special. This time, when she takes my arm, I don’t resist—I’m in too much pain, and I don’t want to freeze. She drags me through a tall oval door into a long hall, curving up far away where there’s brightness, to my left. The brightness is moving on, going away.

Receding. Strange word, that one.

The little one leaves me behind, running, dancing. Her feet never linger on the cold surface. Either I make it or I don’t. It hurts too much to stay. I stumble after her. My legs are getting a little stronger, but the cold sucks my strength away as fast as it returns. It’s going to be a close thing.

It gets worse. I