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“That thing ate 3 of my crew!! How could you just let it happen? You insensitive bastard!” suddenly he leapt at the Director, and nearly made it to his throat before he was restrained by 2 guards.  It was only then he noticed the tortured look in his eyes.
         “Harry, we had no choice. We need that thing, as you call it. Desperately.  Have you not noticed the way things are dwindling here? We have technology but very few know how to use it, let alone how to make it. We are down to two live broadcast stations on the whole planet! Two, that’s it. People can think all they want that it is a conspiracy- oh don’t worry I know you thought so, but its alright. It was better that people believe that than the alternative, that we simply lack the ability to replace them when they break. Thank goodness that our ancestors found a way to make the satellites work forever it seems, because if not, people would not even have that, and we wouldn’t have the resources to even send you to the moon.”
         “But damnit Director!, My crew was invaluable too! Each one of them-“ he choked back with great effort the thought of his Marie stalked and eaten as prey while He was in the tank-“was irreplaceable!  What has that killer hunk of space fish got to do with technology?”
         The tortured look grew more pained.  “You never knew...the suffering, the deprivation outside the Nasa.  There is precious little left to eat.  What is left is homogenized, recycled as best we can, grown in the oceans, and even as few as the human race has become, even these people we cannot properly feed.  This is what has become of us, Harry.  Scavengers of our own past, left with a legacy of a decaying planet and a technology we no longer understand.  Your crews were the best our society could produce, exceptional, every one of you, in your ability to understand it, but even you, Harry, so very smart, even you could not hold a candle to what once was.  Did you never wonder, even a little, why we were sending you to the Moon to bring back scrap iron and salvage?”
         Harry had wondered, he realized now, but had pushed it down, way down, covered it with an almost desperate need to be useful, to have a purpose, to matter. To matter to her.  He had let himself believe that the stuff they were bringing back was of such high quality that nothing like it existed on Earth anymore.  Nothing left of the huge piles of scrap and garbage, long ago cannibalized, recycled, turned into energy, made into new things, made into the domes, the city-domes.
         “We kept sending you there in hopes we’d find something to save us.  When they ran out of space on this planet for garbage, for scrap, for the junk of an advanced society, they started in on the Moon.  Part of it was museum, we know that much.  Those cars you bring back, even we know they were far older than anything that should be up there.  The archives that still work dated some of them to a time we can hardly comprehend...1940.  We can only conclude that the environment up there was far less harsh on these antiques, and were originally sent there to preserve them. Don’t get me wrong! They are of incalculable value, and one piece of scrap from a car can be used in combination with other synthetics to make a whole citydome. Or to repair the 2 shuttlecraft You are captain of.  Those missions were vital.” Harry could not help but notice the past tense of the Director’s words. “But this, this is what we dared to hope for. We are running out of food, Harry. Plain and simple.  The stock we have left is so diluted, so far distant from what it should be because our ancestors tampered with the natural order.  The clones of clones of clones have finally begun to fail us.  We can make it taste like a hundred different things, but in the end, the food is failing.”
         Understanding finally dawned on him.  “We- we were Bait???” He struggled to fight free, but these guards were oddly strong. “You used us to lure in some new kind of food??? Jack, Fixer, Marie” oh Marie my love, “all of us? You risked us???”
         The Director just stood there, face impassive at last, his familiar composure reasserting itself .  One doesn’t get to be Director for nothing, he supposed. And then it hit him again, like a gut punch.  One of his crew had to know.  One of them had to know what to look for, and it wasn’t him.  “Who was it?” Harry growled. “Who was the snake that brought that thing onboard?.”
         To his credit, the Director did not break again, although it was clear he wanted to.  “Harry, I- I don’t think you really want to know that.  That person is a hero, and they knew it. Leave it at that and let their memory lay in peace. They brought us new food, and they knew the risks.”
         “So, it was one of the half that died then. Thinking to be redeemed because they sacrificed their own life. Thinking it would be okay to kill half the people under my care and not tell me about it!  Maybe I wanted to be the one to sacrifice, huh?” I could have saved her- “Ever think about that?  That is what a captain does, puts Himself before the crew, becomes the example for them, makes the hard decisions-“
         “Harry stop!  You know very well why it could not be you, if you think about it.  If the mission failed, if somehow something went wrong, we were going to need you for another try.”
         Harry was beyond anger now. This was something white-hot and burning, and it pushed him to a place where calm was, where he was in the center of himself. “You filled both hulls.  The inner one and the outer one.  That was a fish, it needed water.  I hope, “ Harry snarled” I hope for your sake that the water in the outer hull was oxygenated. That You did not just kill my crew so that thing would have something to eat. That they at least were able to face death with some kind of honor. You sadistic son of a bitch!”
         At last something Harry said seemed to get to the Director.  He stepped forward and placed a hand on his shoulder, albeit that he was still restrained. No risk in this gesture of “kindness” then, but a calculated move. Harry was not impressed, and shrugged his shoulder, but the hand remained.  “We knew this much about that fish, Harry. That it was the closest thing to immortal we knew of.  That even dried for a hundred years it might still be alive in some way..that maybe water could revive it.  And- it needed to feed to reproduce.  That almost certainly if it ate, it would, was inevitable.    And Harry, it would not eat something that was already dead.”
         Harry could not fight the images that poured on him now.  Himself and the 3 other crew that were put into the Tank, they all drew straws like they always did. The 3 shortest got outer duty, piloted the ship in space suits, while the rest, this time 4, got to ride home in the buffered, buoyant Tank, where the g-forces were just a light tickle, and they could sleep the whole way.  It saved on resources.  He saw Marie holding the straws in her hand, it was her turn to, saw each of them pull a straw. Kissed her lightly on the lips, saying “next time we’ll be in the tank together...and we can have a fun trip home.” Marie winking at him as she sealed the hatch. The note he found as he was undressing, the simple little note she’d slipped into his open suit, that said just “Love you.”  The tank filling, Harry doing the breathing mantra that allowed each of them to overcome the natural tendency to hold their breaths....to instead breathe in the oxygenated water.  Of that thing somewhere in the outer hull reviving as the 3 of them on the outside did the same thing.  Ohh Marie! were you first? did you fight till the last as you realized what was in there with you? did you try to get to me in the end? could I have saved you? If I had only known it would have been me out there-  it would have been me out there...but it wasn’t.  It wasn’t. 
    Oh no! no no no no not her! Not Marie! Harry gave one last groan as he slumped. There was nothing left. No reason to fight, and he was done.
         “She was my daughter in all things, even to the last, Harry.”