He screamed again and the thing was gone, an expanding cloud of dark fluid in its place that engulfed him completely. His lights could only penetrate a few inches into it. It was opaque and whirling around him with cyclonic force. The terror inside him spiked, overwhelming him, shutting him down on just about every level. He tried to jet free from it, but it held him in a dark, muddy stasis and there was no escaping it. His neurons were misfiring, his limbs quaking, his mind filled with horrible images—

14
BREAKDOWN

It took Bell a few minutes to clear the jellies away with the plodding, mechanical manipulators of the hand pods. But he did it. When he started waving them off, most all of them darted away except the ones that had attached themselves to Murphy’s suit for reasons he could not explain. They had been more tenacious. He killed dozens, their soft bodies rupturing beneath the metal manipulators, bursting into clouds of slime, rubbery shells floating about like used condoms. When he had peeled them off the view shield, he got a good look at Murphy—his face pale and sweaty, eyes staring. He looked to be in shock.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” Bell told him, guiding him up to the tunnel and into its mouth.

Maybe five minutes into it, Murphy started coming around. “They were attacking me, Chief.”

“No, Murph, they just got tangled on you or something.”

“Don’t give me that shit,” he said, his voice breathless. “I saw it! They were faces and they had mouths!”

Bell said, “Murph, calm down. I tore them off you and they did not have mouths.”

“They wanted to kill me,” was all he would say.

Bell kept him moving, pressing deeper into the tunnel, desperate to get them on the SDV and back to the habitat. He didn’t know how long they’d been out of contact with Javonivic.

They moved further and further through the tunnel, through the slime and silt, not talking, just fixed on what was ahead. And when the lights found the opening, Bell let out a sigh of relief because he had the funniest feeling that there would be no opening. Just a brick wall or something like there always was behind doors in haunted houses on TV.

But then they were out, dropping down towards the SDV, shadows swimming around the edges of their lights.

“I know you think I froze up, Chief,” Murphy said when they finally got on the SDV. “I know you think I lost it in there, but you didn’t see what I saw. Those things attacked. Do you hear me? They attacked…”

Bell didn’t doubt it.

Not really.