The Space Opera MEGAPACK ®. Jay Lake

did at that. But it was worth it. Man! How it was worth it! When I think of all the things this stuff can buy—” His voice broke. “Durgan!”

      “What is it?”

      “Durgan! Look! What the hell—”

      And then he screamed.

      It was a harsh cry of an animal in both fear and pain. Durgan spun from the controls, the hairs prickling at the base of his neck, nerves tense for unexpected dangers.

      “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

      Pendris didn’t answer. He stood beside the pile of slugs reclaimed from the wrecked vessel, the compact bulk of shedeena crystals, staring with bulging eyes. Over the heaped pile, glowing in the cabin lights, a green vapor clung like a thin liquid, coiling, pulsing with a strange energy, rising in tenuous streams. More of the green vapor clung to his hands, puffy balls of brilliant emerald, clotted and writhing as it crawled up his arms.

      “It burned,” he whispered. “It stung like acid. I touched the slugs and it felt like fire. Durgan! Help me!”

      “Step back! Away from the cargo! Stand back against the far bulkhead! Move, damn you! Move!”

      Durgan reached back, his right hand diving beneath the instrument console, reappearing with the weight of a gun firmly clutched in his fingers.

      “Insurance,” he said. “I’m not such a fool as to trust others. I planted it when I examined the ship. If you or Creech had any bright ideas about cutting me out I intended to be ready.” The muzzle of the weapon rose as Pendris made to step forward. “Stay where you are.”

      “You think I’m joking?” Pendris lifted his arms, balls of green fluffing like balls of emerald cotton, expanding as they climbed higher up his arms. “I tell you, this stuff felt like acid.”

      “Try wiping the stuff off. Use one hand against the other.” Durgan frowned as Pendris obeyed. “Jerk your arms. If it’s a gas, it should blow free.”

      It wasn’t a gas, or if it was, it was like none he had ever seen before. No matter how Pendris thrashed his arms, the vapor clung, clots of it catching his legs, his body. From the heap of slugs, more gas rose to join that attached to the man. Within moments, Pendris was covered in a green film that seemed to close around him, thickening, pulsing as with inner life.

      “Durgan!” He stepped forward, stumbling, hands extended. “Durgan, help me!”

      “Keep back!” Sweat beaded Durgan’s face as he lifted his pistol. “Right back. Quick or I’ll burn you apart!”

      “You’d kill me?”

      “If I have to, yes.”

      “You—”

      “Save it,” said Durgan sharply. “This is a tough life, Pendris, you’ve no cause to whine. How do you feel now?”

      “I don’t know. Just numb and weak.” Pendris lifted his hands and pawed at his face. His voice was thin, cracked. “It’s hard to breathe. For God’s sake, do something!”

      He lowered his hands and stood, swaying, tendrils of green vapor clinging tight to his body.

      And, as Durgan watched, he aged.

      He shriveled like a long-inflated balloon suddenly relieved of pressure. His face collapsed, prominent bone thrusting against skin that had grown sere and withered. His body stooped, his hands shrank to bony claws, a naked skull shone through thinning hair. His eyes glared from deep within shadowed sockets, lips parting to show toothless gums. He stumbled forward, one step, then crumpled to the deck to lie like a heap of discarded clothing.

      “Durgan!” His voice was a piping whisper. “Help me, Durgan! Help me!”

      The hair vanished, the skin, the flesh beneath. Naked bone hung from the ends of the sleeves, the neck of the blouse. In the open sockets of the eyes, green vapor rose in delicate plumes.

      Durgan fired, jamming his finger hard against the trigger, sending blasts of incinerating flame lancing across the cabin to where the skeleton lay. It flared, smoldered, burst into flame and smoke.

      Durgan lowered the weapon. Behind him, the control panel flashed with signal lights as automatie fans whined into life, clearing the smoke.

      Over the assembled stacks of reclaimed slugs, the emerald vapor rose until it reached the roof, recoiled, then rose again, clinging, surging over the metal as if it were a leech.

      From the radio came the insistent voice. “Brad, come in please. Sheila to Brad. Brad, please answer.”

      Durgan ignored it, watching the advance of the alien gas, remembering where he had seen it before.

      On Jupiter, the strange cloud which had streamed from the opened cargo container and which had settled beside the ship, remaining despite the wind which would have blown away any normal accumulation of gas. Nanset had touched it, reaching into it with both arms as he tried to recover the dropped slug, and Nanset had died. Pendris had touched it—and now Pendris was dead.

      Life, thought Durgan. Alien. Spawned in the chemical brew that was the atmosphere of Jupiter. Or perhaps the cargo itself had provided the stimulus, the concentrated life-force which the shedeena crystals provided. Or perhaps the strange thing had merely been attracted to the source of so much life-giving energy. It didn’t matter.

      It must have come aboard as they entered the cabin, unnoticed, drawn perhaps by the lure of the collected slugs. The release of pressure could have stimulated it, the flood of oxygen speeding its metabolism. It was a life-feeder and hungry. It would always be hungry. It would destroy every living thing it touched, sucking the life-force as if it were a sponge, compressing a lifetime of normal living into moments. It had to be destroyed.

      He fired again, spraying the cabin with searing flame, blasting the gas, the pile of slugs, the roof and deck and bulkhead. Metal glowed with red heat and the air grew stifling. But, when the gun was empty, the gas remained.

      Thicker, the cloud; larger, the green more intense. It lapped against the walls and billowed towards the control panel, the couches, to the place where Durgan stood. More avid now that it had fed, eager for fresh life, new life-force, added fuel so that it could grow and expand to—

      To cover a world if it were released on a planet. To hang waiting in space if he released it into the void. Hanging and drifting to, perhaps, be caught in a gravity well and be drawn down to Callisto or Ganymede, to maybe even reach Earth in time. A sea of emerald vapor to replace the blue seas, the white clouds, the rich brown of fertile soil.

      “Brad!” Sheila’s voice was ragged with strain. “For God’s sake come in, Brad! Come in!”

      Come in to warmth and safety, to luxury and the comforting softness of a woman’s arms. And then he saw her, tall and lovely, her hair a golden curtain to her rounded shoulders, a green vapor touching, clinging, sucking away her youth, her beauty, her very life.

      He looked down at his hand. On the back a spot of green swelled as he watched, spreading with a touch of fire, the pain instantly dying as the nerves were killed, the skin numbed and rendered senseless. A parasite, insidious, beautiful in a way but still a parasite. A freak of life which, with luck, would never be repeated.

      The ship drummed as he sat before the controls and adjusted the power. In the screens the swollen ball of Jupiter rose as he dived towards it, the tenuous masses of upper-cloud ripped and torn by the savage winds. They closed around the vessel, whipping, streaming, the sound of their passing a droning thunder against the hull.

      He would not hear them for long. Nor would he feel the sudden implosion which would send the ship and what it contained down to where it belonged.

      The Red Spot made a wonderful target.

      KILLER ADVICE, by Kristine Kathryn Rusch

      Sixteen minutes. Sixteen minutes was simply not enough time to prepare for an onslot. One would think with the recent breakthroughs