Episode 17 — May I Reach Your Orbit (4)
Thud.
The two of us dropped into a place neither of us had ever seen.
"Nnngh..."
A small round window. The only thing that told us, and only vaguely, that we were somewhere aboard the spaceship was the view beyond its frame.
So a mini portal is... moving from one point inside the ship to another.
I got to my feet and looked around. Get back to the company, fast— ah. My keyring.
...Damn.
The door keyring that could take me back to the agency was installed in the conference room.
Which is why I turned to the unreliable companion stranded here with me.
"We need to get back to the company... You have your keyring?"
"Nope. Left it at the office."
...Right. Absolutely no help at all.
Then what was the point of him hauling that bag around?
Guess I'd better look the place over.
Face pinched against the hopelessness of it, I took in the room we'd fallen into — and what met my eyes were an examination table, and things that looked an awful lot like hospital chairs.
"......"
Beside the chairs, mechanical arms were simply... holding scalpels. Syringes. Medical shears.
"AGH!! My eye!!!"
I screamed and clapped a hand over my left eye on pure reflex.
"Huh? Something get in your eye?"
"...No. I'm fine."
I'd blurted out the thing I'd been picturing. Mortified, I pretended nothing was wrong.
"Looks like the infirmary."
Perfectly calm, Seo Gwan-yul said it as if it were obvious.
How do you read a room this hopefully? On an alien spaceship, isn't the first thought usually some kind of live experiment?
"......"
...Still. Thanks to him, it was a little less terrifying.
"Wanna ping the team on the company messenger~?"
"The door that leaves from the agency connects to the conference room anyway. If we're not in there, they can't help us."
"Haha, yeah, fair. Then we get back to the conference room first."
Even so, I left word in the team chat so the others would know where we stood.
While I'm at it, maybe a quick chat with VantaBot.
Right. Marooned in space like this, you take whatever a clever AI can give you. In the sci-fi movies, it's scraps of trivia like these that draw the line between living and dying.
......And, if I'm honest, I also just wanted someone to make me feel better!
I asked after a handful of space facts, and we made small talk for a little while.
Mm. Once I'd taken in that particular flavor of AI comfort, I did feel better.
Seo Gwan-yul had been watching me work my phone in silence. At last his patience ran out.
"Shall we get moving? We do need to get back to the conference room~."
"Yeah."
I didn't like it — it might be dangerous — but we had to go back. Better find a way to the conference room, and fast. And the thought of lingering on a client's private property without them knowing left a bad taste.
"Earlier the panel by the door glitched and set off the mini portal, right? Let's take a look."
I switched on the screen beside the entrance, and a cascade of incomprehensible icons spilled across it.
"If it were text, it would've translated. Looks like they only use icons here."
"Yeah~. Which means we can't understand a thing."
Still, an icon tends to follow the shape of whatever it means.
When we moved through space, there was a black swirl...
Of the icons in front of me, I pressed the one that looked most like a vortex.
A voice answered.
Oh. So this was the button the malfunction had hit earlier.
The space we were standing in was drawn as something like a chair, and every other space had been rendered as an icon standing in for it.
"Which one's the conference room?"
"Hmm, hard to say~. How about this?"
Seo Gwan-yul pointed to an icon made of many small squares gathered in neat order. Sure enough, it called to mind an office full of chairs.
"...All right. I'll press it."
He nodded, and with his agreement I pressed the icon.
Fwaaah—!
The same darkness as before wrapped around us.
This time we landed cleanly. When I looked around, what I saw was an enormous warehouse of storage racks.
"...Not the conference room."
"Yeah. Must be where they keep the pieces painted on canvas."
On the steel shelves were the abstract paintings I'd seen in the portfolio. Mm. Even better in person. Artwork really does have to be seen with your own eyes!
The admiration didn't last.
A mechanical arm — camera mounted beside something like a cylinder — came toward our faces.
"What is that...?"
"...A robot?"
Whirrr—
The device swept up and down, as if it were reading our faces. It made a sound like something calculating, then let fall a cold announcement. The contents, somehow, were vicious.
Form recognition. Unregistered user detected.
Enacting security protocol.
Ziiiiing—!
......!
On instinct, I ducked.
BANG!
Something like a laser burst from the cylinder that looked, unmistakably, like a gun muzzle.
"Hhk!"
Luckily my gut had been right. I'd moved at exactly the right moment, and because I'd shoved Seo Gwan-yul's head down with one arm, both of us came through unhurt.
Shuuuuk—
Where the beam had struck, the wall behind us was slightly gouged and smoking.
"Down!!"
Ziiiiing—!
BANG!
A second shot started before we could catch a breath. We slipped past it by the barest margin — truly by a hair — and, leaving behind the vicious bloom of scorched stink and smoke right beside us, we ran for the door.
"Run!"
Ziiiiing—!
The laser was charging again. Insane — the reload was too fast. I was halfway through the grim thought of whether we could dodge this one too when—
Fsssssh—
...?
The charged laser powered down, and the mechanical arm crawled along the wall, adjusting where it was mounted.
"What?!"
"Just keep running!"
I didn't break stride, but I looked back. Behind where we'd just been, unlike before, there was a shelf with canvases slotted into it.
Built to protect the art — so it only fires from angles where the work won't be damaged?!
Gasping, I called to Seo Gwan-yul.
"There was an announcement about form recognition before the laser actually fired, right?!"
"Yeah, pretty sure that's what I heard?!"
Then — apologies to the client, but...!
Maybe this would work too.
I yanked a canvas out of the drawer beside me. Good. Hold it toward the laser like a shield, and when we crossed a stretch with no shelves, hide behind it...!
Ziiiiing—!
Fsssssh—
Whoa. Just as I'd thought — the laser stopped!
In exchange, the robot arm shifted position a little faster than before.
"Hurry...! I don't know how long this'll hold, so we have to get it working!"
We were at the door now, working the panel, one hand still gripping the canvas.
Kreeeeek—!
The robot arm was on the move. Metal scraped on metal.
The portal took a while to actually kick in, didn't it?
This time I didn't press the swirl. I looked. What caught my eye was a shape of two tall vertical rectangles set side by side.
...Didn't that look a lot like this door?
Ziiiiing—!
Please. Please.
Be the right button...!
In the same instant as the charging laser, I pressed the icon with the two rectangles.
And then—
Beep—
Along with the little chime that said the icon had registered, a sudden stillness. Every sound stopped.
That did not mean we'd gotten what we wanted. The door hadn't moved at all.
"...??"
"What...?"
Bewildered, I looked at the touchpad.
......A number was floating there.
And then—
Before long, the number changed.
...A number, climbing down toward something smaller.
The one mercy was that the robot arm had stopped too.
The arm stopped? Then...!
In a flash, I understood what we'd actually pressed.
"Pause! It's an emergency stop!"
Two tall vertical bars — so the icon language really did match our world!
Damn it. Before that countdown ran out, we had to get the door open...!
If an abstract mark like pause was identical, maybe the rest of it was too. An arrow, say.
So if I read this icon as arrows parting to either side — then this, of all things, had to be the button that opened the door...!
Beep—
The moment I hit the arrow, just before the count could become one, an announcement came through.
Yes! The door was opening!
Come on, hurry......!
Ziiiiiing—
The countdown ended, and the sound of the laser charging came right on its heels.
KWAAANG—!
Leaving that downward blast behind us, I flung away the canvas I'd been clutching and threw myself through the gap.
Then came the sound of that thick iron door swinging shut.
What found us after was perfect stillness.
An empty corridor welcomed us.
"Hah... hah."
"Huuuk."
We were alive!
I sprawled on the floor and dragged air back into my lungs, drinking in the sharp, electric joy of still being here. After a long, wordless rest, I got up again and leaned against the glass wall.
"...Haha. We almost died, huh."
...This guy really stayed easygoing, even now.
I was in the middle of marveling at those absurdly steady nerves when—
Beep—
...Somewhere, a mechanical sound. Only it wasn't the polished, futuristic kind that belonged to the ship.
What followed was a low-quality voice. It was quiet, and the speaker was in bad shape, so I couldn't make it out.
"...What was that?"
"Ah, something in my bag got pressed by accident..."
BEEEEEEEEP----!
...!
Damn it — that ringing from before...!
I checked the time. It was well past one.
And yet, why again......!
Ksshhhhk---!
Beep—
Beep—
Beep—
Once again, without fail, the panels stuck here and there along the ship's walls spat noise and started running programs on their own.
Announcement piled over announcement, the scrambled voices devouring one another.
And then—
[...Releasing the %+ cartridge.]
[Opening and closing the air%lock^#.]
...A phrase I felt sure I'd heard more than once in sci-fi movies came spilling out.
Airlock. If it's an airlock...!
The pressure inside a spaceship and the void outside are not the same. So when astronauts go out, the door doesn't open straight onto space. There's a sealed chamber that equalizes the pressure first. That's an airlock.
Which means opening the airlock is...
......A door leading out into space. Opening.
Wooooooom—
Insane!
The door directly ahead of the section where we stood was opening. A pitch-black night. The stars began to show themselves with nothing between us and them.
"Hold on!"
We seized the fixtures bolted to the ship so we wouldn't be dragged out into the void.
...But we weren't the only things in here.
Kiiiiik—!
The gas generator. A massive machine — the sort of thing the client seemed to have started up for us, on the news that guests were coming. Its main body...
...released its cartridge.
Clang— kang— KWANG—!
The metal cartridge raised a dazzling racket as it was sucked out of the ship, and—
...On that cartridge, written large, was a marking that read as oxygen.
...Now the screen above the gas generator was spitting out a warning.
The number reporting the oxygen level inside the ship began to fall. Far too fast.
"Hhk, Lee-hyun! Did you see that? The oxygen...!"
"......"
Damn it, damn it, damn it!
The oxygen cartridge turned slowly, as if swimming through space, and drifted farther away.
"...!"
At the very brink, something VantaBot had said flashed through my mind.
......Right.
Even if you were out in space with nothing on you, just for a little while.
......You don't die right away. That's what it said, wasn't it?