Ephialtes (Ephialtes Trilogy Book 1) (59 page)

Another dust
storm was gathering in the dusk as Steiner walked towards the horizon.  He
felt strange.  It was cold, but he didn’t feel it.  He felt removed
from his body, like he was looking down on himself.  He felt an urge to
rip his helmet off, like the urge he had felt to run towards the hangar doors,
only this one he was able to control, to start with anyway.

It had seemed
like he was watching a film as he had run to the doors.  It seemed like he
was going too fast, and he knew he had no chance of clearing the doors with his
jump.  But somehow he had.  He had leapt like a gazelle and somehow
landed outside, and had kept on running
far
further
than he would have thought possible.

He wondered
if he had some sort of altitude sickness.  Maybe there was a leak in his
suit and he was losing air.  Maybe the lack of oxygen was addling his
mind.  He felt all wrong and once again came the powerful urge to take the
helmet off.

He looked at
the HUD.  He was now more than fifteen kilometres from the spaceport, in
open terrain where they would never find him.  Without even considering
the consequences, he pulled the helmet off and laid down.

In some weird
dreamstate
he knew he didn’t need the helmet to
survive.  He dropped it by his side and forgot that he had ever resisted
removing it.  He noticed for the first time that he was no longer
breathing and that the HUD remained, even though the helmet was gone.

Staring up
into the deep black sky, and with the dust already blowing up around him, the
dream part of his mind, the other self, calculated the length of time it would
take the USAN to build and send new ships.  Allowing for setbacks and
errors, five years seemed reasonable.

The dust was
starting to cover him.

His other
self was now dominant.  It set himself to reactivate in five years, sent
himself the deep sleep command, and closed his eyes.  Within a few minutes
he was covered by the sand.  A passing person, or even a survey satellite,
would never even know he was there.

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