Boundary

  A.J. tapped out commands on the virtual control panel in front of him as he stepped over a sensor-outlined block of rubble to get nearer to the body. The ad hoc network was coming up and trying to link in with the emergency vehicles' frequencies. There! Got it!

  As he squatted next to Anne Calabrio's unconscious body, A.J. broke into the EMT frequency. "I've got a live one in here. We may have a few others. I think . . ."

  He almost started coughing, then rasped out: "I think I can get out with her, but tie in with . . . local net. . . maps. . . "

  He stopped talking and got Anne's limp form over his shoulders. The body was damnably heavy, even though Annie wasn't at all fat.

  A.J. just didn't seem to have much strength. Unusual, for him.

  It was puzzling. And the VRD wasn't focusing right at all. What the hell was wrong with it? It was supposed to project straight to the retina, focus shouldn't be . . . a problem . . .

  A.J. stumbled and almost fell. Oh, shit. I'm the one having trouble interpreting.

  He could make out some symbols showing that the conditions were already far worse than they'd been when he entered. His head was spinning. Which way was out?

  He couldn't tell. Black smoke was everywhere. Light, he needed . . .needed to find . . .

  He was on the ground, blood in his mouth, hurting. He realized he'd fallen. Someone . . . Anne . . . was on top of him.

  Got to get up. Get up, dammit!

  Light drew him. Orange flickering light. No, he realized, that was bad. Fire bad! Fire bad! The words came into his head from some long-distant movie.

  With a supreme effort, A.J. forced himself upright. The VRD had failed. Maybe the fall, maybe soot on the optics, who knew? It didn't matter. A.J. doubted he could have understood it at this point, anyway.

  He dragged his feet forward, one step at a time. Just one step more. Now just another step.

  It's a building, not a catacomb! You only have a few . . .

  The wall smacked him in the face.

  He knew that wall texture, though. He was near the back of the

  Atmospherics area. He'd gotten turned around and headed in just the wrong direction. A hacking cough hijacked his breathing, forcing him to stop and almost drop Anne. Disembodied knives stabbed deep into his lungs. Somehow he got the pain under control, and managed to turn around.

  But there looked to be flames everywhere! He'd have to run through . . .

  Running seemed out of the question.

  A dull explosion punctuated his oxygen-deprived panic. Move! Have to try!

  A.J. managed a sluggish trot. It was already stiflingly hot, but every step towards the flames seemed to double the heat. The pain in his lungs . . .

  I can't die yet, dammit. The Faeries haven't flown.

  Then he was falling.

  A.J. stirred slightly. Joe came alert, looking down at his friend's reddened skin, scorched hair, and streaks of black soot that even scrubbing hadn't yet managed to eradicate. The blue eyes opened slowly.

  "J-Joe?" The normally exuberant voice was barely a whisper, almost a hiss.

  "Take it easy, man. You were really touch-and-go there for a while. You crazy sonofabitch." He extended a small cup to A.J. "Try to sip a little water."

  A.J. sipped, grimacing at the pain in his throat, but sipped more anyway, trying to rehydrate the nearly cooked tissues. "Anne?" he finally managed, his voice now more of a croak.

  "Alive. And so are Lee, Susan, and Lindy. Meryl and Bryce, too. Anne's doing fine. She'll have a scar on her head from where a chunk of metal hit her, but the concussion was minor and because she was unconscious and not doing heavy work, her lungs are in decent shape. She didn't inhale much. Lee, well . . . he lost his left leg."

  A.J. winced. "Oh, hell."

  "Come on, A.J.," Joe almost scolded. "He's lucky to be alive. Wouldn't be—neither would most of the others—if it hadn't been for you."

  "Me? Ha. I went charging"—he coughed slightly and his eyes watered at the pain—"charging in there like an idiot and got myself trapped. Anne, too. And never did anything at all for Lee."

  "You certainly did, you moron," Joe retorted, with a touch of affectionate exasperation. "You also tied all your sensors into the local net, and with that the firefighters and EMTs who just happened to also have masks were able to navigate through the mess and find everyone in jig time. Apparently they caught you just as you were about to fall into the fire. So you did land yourself in the hospital, but you almost certainly kept the rest of us out of the morgue."

  A.J. looked somewhat gratified, if still embarrassed over having turned himself into a victim. "Still. With a leg gone, Lee's hopes to be on the mission are over." That was true, but Joe wanted to change the subject. Obviously,

  A.J. hadn't yet figured out the implications of Joe's earlier statement that Anne's lungs were okay.

  A.J.'s . . . weren't.

  His good looks had miraculously come through untouched, except for a small scar on one cheek that would just draw more attention. But A.J., unlike Anne, had been breathing heavily in that holocaust.

  The air in there hadn't simply been "bad" toward the end. It had been toxic. There'd been almost no oxygen left in the interior of the building. Instead, it had been filled with poisonous vapors from burning plastics, chemicals used in the engineering experiments, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides from the intense heat, particulates—a sheer witches' brew that would have felled most men with a single breath. Joe knew the doctors were astonished that A.J. had survived at all, much less managed to move around as much as he did. Under the flamboyant exterior, the man was about as tough as any human being could get.

  A.J. finished the cup of water as a nurse came in, checked his IVs, and went to get the doctor.

  "What happened?" he asked, after she left.

  "Not quite sure yet," Joe admitted. "It'll be a while. I think that we had a leak somewhere that caused oxygen to get into the mix, and once it started running away on us . . . anyway, we'll know in a couple days."

  "Play merry hell with our schedule," A.J. said gloomily. Then, obviously trying to cheer up: "Hey, how'd you and Ren get out, anyway? I thought you were a goner!"

  "Damn near was. I don't remember it all clearly, and neither does Ren. Near as I can figure, when the tank went up, the shockwave threw both of us towards the wall that blew out. A fire blanket was in the mess next to me, so I threw it over myself and Reynolds, and managed to get him to wake up so we could get out."

  "You seem to make a habit out of this kind of thing."

  Joe grinned weakly. He had a reputation for nearly getting killed—a climbing accident in which a belaying rope gave way, an explosion in a model rocket when he was a kid, going off a cliff in a car with no brakes, and a few other less spectacular but no less dangerous events.

  "It doesn't get any less scary, let me tell you. If anything, it's worse—I'm sure that somehow, somewhere, fate is saving me up for a really spectacular finish."

  "Well, I guess this one wasn't quite good enough." A.J. leaned back as Dr. Mendoza came in. By the time Mendoza finished his examination, A.J. had actually fallen asleep.

  "He must be exhausted."

  "He's got a ways to go yet, Mr. Buckley," Mendoza said briskly. "We'll be keeping him here for at least a few days for observation. With all the fumes he inhaled, and the high temperatures, he has significant damage to his lungs. Hope for the best, of course, but Mr. Baker is very lucky to be alive. I will be surprised if he comes out of this with more than eighty percent of his former lung capacity."

  Joe grimaced. Eighty percent . . .

  That would be enough to knock A.J. off the Mars mission. You didn't send people with respiratory problems into space.

  "Please do what you can, Doctor. He's on the short list for the mission."

  Mendoza nodded. "I know, and I will. But I can't do miracles. He'll have to do that himself."

  Joe couldn't help another smile. "Well, as he'd say himself, that's his main
job. Making miracles."

  Chapter 11

  Helen had intended to wait for Glendale outside another lecture late that afternoon, in order to thank him. But the call from Jackie Secord telling her about the accident at Ares not only distracted her for too long, but left her feeling much too depressed. Instead, she returned to her hotel room and spent most of the evening on or by the phone, waiting for further news.

  She was finally able to talk to Joe himself. That was a source of much relief, regarding him, of course. But the rest of the situation was very unsettling. In an odd sort of way that Helen still couldn't define—she'd only spent a few hours in the man's actual presence, after all—A.J. Baker had come to be an important person in her life. The idea of him dying was . . . horrible.

  Early in the morning, though, Joe called again.

  "He'll survive, Helen. The doctors say there isn't any doubt about that at all, any longer."

  "Oh, thank God."

  There was a little pause. "But he won't be one hundred percent again. Never. The damage to his lungs was just too extensive."

  "How bad is it?"

  She could almost hear the shrug on the other end. "Depends how you look at it. From the standpoint of most people, not bad at all. After a few months, you really won't be able to tell the difference, under normal circumstances—at least, that's what the doctors say. He won't be running any marathons, of course."

  Helen chuckled. "Did he ever?"

  "As a matter of fact, he did. Twice, once in the big Boston one. He even had a pretty respectable finish. The truth is, Helen, A.J. is one of the few geeks I've ever known who could have been one hell of an athlete, if he'd wanted to. Which he didn't, but he's always been in top physical condition. Even studies martial arts, if you can believe it. That's partly why he was placed so highly in the running for the expedition. Now . . ."

  Suddenly, Helen understood. "Oh."

  "Yeah. 'Oh.' Traveling to Mars just doesn't fall under the label 'normal circumstances.' And you know how much it means to him."

  "Yes, I do." She took a long, slow breath. "Well, let's hope for the best. And let's also not forget—and make sure you remind him, Joe, when he needs it—that as long as you're alive you can still hope."

  She finally caught up with Glendale in one of the hallways later that morning.

  "Dr. Glendale—Nicholas—thank you."

  The famous smile was muted but sincere. He didn't try to pretend he didn't understand, either.

  "Helen, there's nothing I despise more than a hatchet job. And that was one of the most cleverly repellent things I've seen in years. It was, I assure you, a genuine pleasure."

  "So you believe . . ."

  "I believe that you have found the most interesting case of Problematica on record," Glendale said firmly. "Nothing more than that, Helen. I know you have some rather . . . extreme conclusions. But. . . "

  "But? Nicholas—"

  She more or less dragged him into a side room, away from the circulating masses. "Look at it. There isn't a phylum that even comes close. The means of locomotion is utterly alien to this world."

  Glendale winced. She could see he had been hoping to avoid this conversation entirely.

  "Helen . . . my dear . . ."

  He stopped, looked at her, sighed, and then shifted into his professional persona that she knew so well. "Dr. Sutter, I suppose it would be easiest to speak directly about this. Can we do that? I know everyone else, including yourself, is avoiding direct statements. Can we be straight with each other here?"

  Helen nodded.

  "Very well. Dr. Sutter, your theory, and presumably that of your co-workers, is this: that the anomalous fossil you have named Bemmius secordii is, in point of fact, the remains of an alien creature. A star-traveling visitor to our world, who had the misfortune to encounter some of our nastier native predators sixty-five million years ago, and paid the price. Although he managed to finish off the predators as well, through the use of a weapon which used the ceramic-type pellets you found on the site as projectiles. Am I basically correct?"

  Helen found herself hesitating momentarily. She didn't think any of them had ever—even to each other—put it so directly. It had been more an assumption than anything else. But what other explanation was there?

  "Yes, that is correct."

  "An attractive theory, certainly. We all want to have something sensational in our careers, and I remember you well as an undergraduate. You were something in the way of my star pupil. Science fiction was one of your favorite reading areas, too, as I recall. So, naturally, such an explanation would occur to you when confronted with something that bizarre."

  "It would occur to a lot of paleontologists. I would have bet it would occur to you, too."

  Glendale laughed. "Oh, it most certainly would occur to me. Did occur to me, I should say, the moment I finished reading your initial report. I'm an occasional reader of science fiction myself, as it happens. Unfortunately—or fortunately—I am also far too aware of the logical flaws involved to retain such a theory for very long."

  Helen felt her jaw setting as it always used to when she started arguing with Glendale. She reminded herself sharply of how often that had presaged her getting roundly trounced in an argument, rather as Pinchuk just had.

  "What other theory is there?"

  "There are many possibilities, Dr. Sutter. Instead of immediately offering one, I want you to consider what you are asking us to accept.

  You are, as a paleontologist, intimately aware of the probabilities involved in fossil formation. You may not, perhaps, have considered the probabilities of other events quite so closely, reasoning—with some justification—that there wouldn't be sufficient information to judge them by, anyway. Still, let me summarize."

  He held up one hand and began counting off the fingers with his other. "You want us to believe the following unlikely chain of coincidences:

  "First, an alien from another world arrives here. Perhaps you have never considered how very improbable that is, what with all the science fiction books and videos ignoring that very point. But from everything we currently know, such travel between the stars is hideously unlikely, even for us. And, so far, we have absolutely no evidence that there is any other life in the universe. We may assume it, but thus far there is not the smallest shred of acceptable evidence that it exists at all.

  "Second, this creature lands on our world and manages to get himself killed. Perhaps not so farfetched.

  "Third, that he was traveling completely alone. That seems a ludicrous assumption unless we allow for truly space-operaticlevel technology—and in that case, what was he doing protecting himself with what amounts to a fancy shotgun? Or, if he wasn't alone, that his fellow beings didn't bother to retrieve his body. Human cultures do not just leave bodies to be savaged by random creatures, and I find it hard to believe that alien ones would either. Or, of course, something else killed off his fellows coincidentally before they could interfere or retrieve the body.

  "Fourth, that he managed to injure most if not all of his attackers— but not swiftly enough to keep from being killed himself, though the injuries he dealt made them expire just a short distance from him. Close enough that they could all be found together in a single death scene, sixty-five million years later.