AntipodeanSF - "Fahrenheit 41" by Simon Petrie

Simon Petrie is an Australian Kiwi (or is that a New Zealand Aussie?) born in North Canterbury and now living in Canberra. He writes true things about science (so far as he knows) during the daytime, and not-so-true stuff about science during the evening. Aside from AntiSF, he's had stories accepted by Andromeda Spaceways, Yog's Notebook, Worlds of Wonder, Jupiter and a few other places.

T'nyfa was cunning; patient; methodical.

Jorge Pedersen awoke. Drowning? No. The breathing-fluid receded, and darkness remained.

The sarcophagus … he scrabbled the catches of the restraining straps, found the latch, cracked open the casing above him. Emerged, legs unsteady, into the dormitory, dim diffuse lighting that glared until his eyes compensated. Rank after rank of drab-coloured hiber-caskets, opaque, sealed. Him only, standing, sleep-befuddled.

Christ, it was cold.

Jorge stood for some minutes beside his opened hiber-casket and those, secure, of wife and daughter. He patted their lids: cold to touch. Normal. Him being awoken, though, wasn't.

When? Might still be years away from Epsilon Eri and the new life.

Maybe elsewhere on the ship, there'd be help, explanations, assistance with reattaining hiber-mode. He padded down the gently curving corridor. Comm stations, wall-mounted, active but unresponsive. Everywhere cold, like a meatworks freezing room, a precise algorithmically-controlled chill that cut through his thin sleep-smock, air unnaturally dry.

He passed other dormitories, elevators to other decks. Thousands of souls hibernating.

A whisper, on perception's edge, then gone again. A human voice? Jorge retraced his steps, descended an escalator. The sound strengthened, yet still quiet: an instrument. Violin, playing some long-dead classical composer, McCartney, maybe. Somewhere on this deck. Another lengthy corridor.

A storeroom, clinically white. The violin's tune issued from piled fabric in the corner. A discarded spacesuit, status panels dimly lit. Curious, he hefted the bulky suit.

The sound issued from the detached helmet; but the empty body of the spacesuit arrested his attention. The suit's lining was warm.

Wearing this garment, he could probe the ship, find help, without the distraction of freezing alive.

Hands a-tremor, he climbed into the suit. Not-cold. Bliss.

Bit tight, actually, at wrists and knees.

Something was wrong. The suit's limb joints constricted. Not painful, exactly, but awkward. Must be the suit was too small, although it hadn't felt like that to start with.

Movement. Within the suit. At his back, along his legs, around his neck. A sense of pliancy, a series of ripples enveloping his body, within the suit. Soft. Brittle. Sharp. Knife-edged. The suit must be malfunctioning, he'd need to remove it. He pressed the shuck icon at the suit's neck.

Eruption. Long incisors ripped simultaneously into his legs, abdomen and chest — from the suit itself. Its warmth became blood-heat. He screamed, kicked, thrashed at the creature that lined his suit.

Jorge Pedersen slumped to the floor. The violin began the next track, ironically more lively.

Many hours passed.

When the hominid's meat was fully absorbed, T'nyfa oozed from the suit, a mudwater droplet writ large. More time passed; T'nyfa budded. There was tidying-up to be done, here and elsewhere in the food-animals' ship. Finally T'nyfa returned to the storeroom, re-entered the suit, and stretched and contorted to follow the suit's interior contours. The bodily distortion ached, but less so as the memory biopolymers of T'nyfa's protoplasm acclimatised to the suit's confines.

Fortunate, to have encountered this ship.

Waiting was hard, but T'nyfa was cunning; patient; methodical.

Emily Pedersen awoke, befuddled, within the casket. Awkwardly, she released the restraining catches and sat up, clutching her teddy. Nobody else was up.

It was very cold …