Divergence

watched him, and then did the same with his own yellow suit. There was a loud bang.

“What’s that?” called Edward, dropping the suit and clapping his hands to his head. “My ears hurt!”

“Pressure doors,” said Maurice, feeling as if he had just drunk a liter of icy-cold water. What was going on? Only five minutes ago they had been watching the pretty orange flowers. Now the Eva Rye was disintegrating around them. It was too much to take in, in such a short time. Edward was standing fully naked, his hands still to his ears, his active suit lying in a sticky heap on the floor before him.

“Get into your suit, Edward!” yelled Maurice.

The neck on his own suit was expanding ever larger as he stroked it. Impatiently, he stabbed at his console and brought up another view of the ship.

“Oh, shit!” he moaned. The entire rear of the Eva Rye had gone. The teardrop’s read end had ablated in a cloud of silver spiders that rained back down on the swollen front end of the ship, devouring the rest of the hull. He looked away from the console to see Edward still standing there, hands clasped to his ears. Maurice shouted at him, his voice cracking with fear. “Your suit, Edward!”

Finally the big man began moving. He bent down and began to stroke the suit, opening its neck. Maurice turned back to his own active suit and saw that at last, it was big enough to step into. He pushed in one naked leg and then the other, the sticky, rubbery material fighting against him as he tried to pull it on. He forgot everything he had been told and began to jerk at the suit.

“Stay calm, Maurice.” That was Edward speaking. He was looking earnestly across at Maurice as he slowly, methodically, pulled on his own suit. “You’re rushing it and it’s fighting back. Do it slowly, like you told me.”

Maurice paused and took three slow breaths. He tried meanwhile not to look at the view of the Eva Rye floating over the dining table, the black-and-white pattern of its hull almost stripped clean by the devouring cloud. Many of the VNMs were now black-and-white themselves, dancing poisonously amongst the rest of the jostling silver crowd. That’s our ship turned traitor against itself. Don’t think about it! Another three breaths and he eased his left leg slowly forward, then, all of a sudden, the resistance was gone: the active suit was a part of his body, his foot and calf alive and tingling with a new awareness.

“Thank you, Edward,” said Maurice. “Thank you. We can do this together, can’t we?” Edward gave him a big beam of delight.

And then there was another bang, and black-and-white wasp-striped doors slammed over the entrances to the living area.

Now Edward was panicking.

“No!” called Maurice. “Remember what you said, Edward. Take it slowly. Keep it calm.”

Edward paused, stopped thrashing. “Maurice?”

“Yes, Edward.”

“Let’s both take three breaths, and then we can pull on the suit bodies.”

It was terrifying. At any moment, Maurice was expecting the walls to dissolve in a tangle of silver legs and for the atmosphere to boil away into space. Still, breathing slowly, they gently pulled the sticky material up their bodies and felt the sudden loss of resistance, the tingle and awakening that said the suits were correctly in place.

“Now the arms,” said Maurice and Edward together. “Just a wriggle of the fingers. No need to panic.”

There was a shout and a scream.

“Miss Rose!” exclaimed Edward. He began to whimper. “Somebody has hurt her!”

Another bang. Maurice turned off his console’s sound channel.

“Easy. Pull the suit on slowly, Edward, then we can go looking for her.”

Sobbing, Edward did as he was told.

“Maurice, this is Aleph. I’m overriding your console to tell you that something has just appeared out here….”

Miss Rose screamed again, her voice finding its way over the opened channel. Edward gave a shrill cry in return. Maurice slammed the lockout button on his console. He was shaking as well. What was wrong with Miss Rose? He had never heard anybody sound in such pain.