“Edward, the arms! Pull up the gloves and slip in your hands….”
Shaking, they both tried to force their hands into the sleeves, their flesh resisting, the stickiness gripping, and Miss Rose’s pain still echoing in their heads. And then Maurice felt a blessed relief and tingling. He was finally dressed. Quickly, he pulled the active suit’s hood over his head and turned to Edward.
“I can’t do it, Maurice.”
Tears splashed down Edward’s brown chest. The big man was tugging and tugging at the suit with one hand, burning his skin as he tried to force his other hand into the sleeve. There was another bang and the floor shook. Edward kept gasping and pulling.
“Stop it! Stop it!” shouted Maurice, panicking himself. “Stop it!”
Edward took hold of Maurice by the arms and began to squeeze. Maurice tried to break free, but he couldn’t. Strong as he was, Edward was stronger.
“Edward, you’ve got to let go of me. I can’t help you if you hold my arms.”
He looked at Edward, at his big brown chest and bare arms, at the silver tears streaming down his face. There was a rattling sensation. Then a flash of silver at the corner of Maurice’s vision.
“Edward! They’re coming through the walls! Let go so that I can help you!”
And then one of the walls dissolved in a flurry of silver legs.
Maurice stood sobbing in the middle of the room, feeling Edward’s grip weakening. He had his eyes tightly closed; he couldn’t bring himself to look at Edward as he died. What had happened? In the space of a few minutes they had gone from everything to nothing. The ship had been eaten up. Edward was dying, Miss Rose was…what? What had happened to her?
Edward’s grip finally loosened, and Maurice tried to open his eyes. He didn’t want to look. Okay, count to three and then…he opened his eyes.
The living area remained untouched. The black carpet, the dining table, the neat stacks of black-and-white dishes in the kitchen were all unchanged. Even Edward’s glass, lying on the floor where he had dropped it.
“What happened?” asked Edward, still standing before him, looking puzzled. Before he had time to think about it, Maurice helped Edward shrug his way into the arms of his active suit. Only when Edward had pulled the hood over his head did Maurice speak.
“I don’t know what happened. Look over there.”
They looked towards the wall where the VNMs had entered. There was a long empty corridor beyond that had not been there before. It led downwards.
“What happened?” asked Edward. “What’s going on?”
To Edward it was obvious what they had to do, so Maurice gave in and followed him down the corridor. There was nowhere else to go. Edward hated confusion, Maurice had noted. Whenever he was uncertain about what was going on, that was when he felt most ill at ease. When his choices were clear, he was happy. Edward felt that now their path was clear; they simply followed the seamless black corridor in front of them downwards.
“I think I can see something,” Edward said boldly, and then he stumbled and began to fall forward. Maurice made a grab for him and felt a stomach-wrenching surge of nausea as the world tumbled around him, leaving him floating free in the long tunnel.
“Help!” Edward called. “Maurice, help me.”
Weightlessness made Maurice feel sick. He was gulping down the thick acid bile that threatened to rise up and fill the hood of his active suit.
“Stay calm,” he gagged, then he clamped his mouth shut again and tried to overcome the nausea. A cool breath of scented air refreshed his face. The active suit was picking up on his distress. “The gravity’s gone,” he gasped. “We’ve left the zone of the
“Where are we going?”
“I don’t know, Edward.”
He was tumbling head over heels now. Back in the direction from which they had come, he saw the tube contracting. The view of the living area vanished. A pattern of expanding dots flashed into life before his eyes, a projection from his active suit.
