Our ride back to base was a silent one. I stared out the window, my emotions wavering between self doubt and a paranoid mistrust of everyone around me.

Was Kingston only pretending not to see that boy running around on those rocks? Or was I merely delusional, seeing things that weren't there?

If the boy was real, what was he doing there? How was it that he could run around without an environment suit? Or was he some sort of alien specially adapted to breathe from a thin or toxic environment?

As I asked myself these things, I began to wonder if I had maybe watched too many science fiction programs.

"You seem very quiet," Kingston said. "Were you frightened by the dust storm?"

I had to say something, so I just gave him what I thought he wanted to hear.

"No. It's just...this pregnancy has caught me off guard, that's all."

Kingston smirked. "Babies are always unexpected. Which is strange because pregnant woman is called `expecting.'" He chuckled at this little joke.

For the rest of the ride, we said nothing to each other.

When I returned to the drill site, I saw Wayde working on one of the walls.

Scarcely believing my eyes, I ran up to him, touching his shoulder. "Wayde! Wayde!"

He stopped drilling and just looked at me.

"Wayde! I was so worried! Are you all right? What happened?"

He only stared at me.

"Wayde, say something to me. Please."

He did not.

"He suffered some brain damage during the collapse," Dee said. "I'm afraid he's lost his speech centers."

"Can he write?" I asked.

"Unfortunately, he can't even do that."

Wayde gave me a thumbs up, resuming his drilling.

The rest of the day was boring routine, no pun intended. Dinner consisted of pizza, with banana splits for dessert.

Later that night, I sneaked out of crew quarters, slipping down to the room with all the environment suits.

The room was a gray concrete box, lined with lockers and machines that refilled and ran diagnostics on our space suits.

The diagnostics I planned to do were much more basic.

To be honest, Kingston didn't have that much of a reason to make up a story about a defective suit, but something sounded sketchy about the idea.

For one thing, he never checked the time, or appeared to have any concern about his oxygen levels.

I dug his suit out of his locker, giving it a good test.

The regulator could be removed from the helmet for inspection. I switched everything on, pressing the device to my face.

Nothing.

No air flow.

It made no sense. I saw the man inhaling.

I pulled some tubes out, expecting to receive a cold jet of oxygen and other gases, but they were dead empty. I frowned, plugging them back in.

And then I found the vent.

When I was flicking the various switches on his pack, the helmet, lights, radio, electrical, I came across one that didn't seem to do anything, but made a strange clicking sound.

I turned the suit around, flicking the lever repeatedly.

Then I saw it. An intake vent on the bottom of his tank. The lever flipped the slats open and closed.

Intake.

On a space suit.

What was he doing, borrowing air from the base and breathing it?

How the hell would that even work?

"You are at the wrong locker," said a voice behind me.

I spun around and found the spacesuit owner smiling back at me.

"Planning a little space walk?"

I had been caught red handed. I swallowed hard.

"Why is there a vent on the back of your pack?"

He acted like he didn't understand, so I showed him.

"In previous days, they would conserve O2 by shutting off the supply and taking intake from space station or shuttle."

"I checked yours," I said. "There isn't any air in there at all."

"It's leaking," he said. "So I returned air to the compression unit." He indicated the big supply canister.

"I'm going to bed," I said.

"Perhaps you better. You are acting funny."

I'm acting funny? I thought. You're the one who's walking around with a bad suit with an intake vent.

I didn't challenge him on this, I just returned to my quarters.

The next few days were spent in mindless routine. I kept to myself, I drilled, I ate, I watched movies.

I spoke to no one, for there wasn't anyone I felt I could trust. If someone asked me a question, I'd answer it, but that was the extent of my conversation.

Every day, my belly grew larger. It was okay for awhile, but eventually, I couldn't hardly walk, and I was forced to spend the days going between the couch, my bed, and the bathroom.

The baby kicked powerfully. No matter how much I rubbed my stomach, cooed, or sang to it, the fetus kept bumping around in there, enough to make me scream out in pain.

And then I passed out for an entire day.

When I woke up, I was on an examination table in the infirmary, and Cat was giving me a sonogram.

What I saw in the holographic image looked like a normal baby, but it flickered from time to time.

During the flickering, I saw things.

My baby's head would look like a skull.

Or wiggling snakes.

Or both.

One time it looked like a giant cockroach.

"Isn't she purr-fect?" Cat was saying as she moved the camera around the twitching insect. "The limbs and other organs all appear to be normal. She's going to be a very beautiful little girl."

She wasn't even looking at it. She stared through the hologram, at the wall, thoughtlessly reciting the comments someone had programmed into her system.

I thanked her, but only to fulfill the expected social interaction required to earn my release from the infirmary.

A couple days later, as I was microwaving a burrito, my water broke.

It wasn't water.

In fact, it wasn't even amniotic fluid.

A flood of black ooze exploded out between my legs, pooling around my shoes.

An instant later, I felt something like fish hooks stabbing through the walls of my uterus. I screamed as the red dripped down and mixed with the black, like an accident in the factory where they made Chick tracts and Frank Miller comics.

Topher, Wayde and Kingston carried me screaming down to the infirmary.

And then I was back up on the examination able, stripped down to one of those flimsy medical gowns with the drafty back end, my legs propped apart with stirrups as Cat injected me with drugs, including a spinal epidural.

My coworkers stared at me with worriment, maybe excitement.

The drugs made things foggy. Cat was saying some things about uterine damage, and a lateral transverse breach, as opposed to a sedimentary transform fault breach, and the position of the baby's head in the relation to the two.

And then a large centipede burst out of my womb.

I don't know how else to describe it. Its head was just about an inch or two larger than an actual baby's head, but it was chitinous. It had these sort of pincer things for a mouth, and a long segmented body.

The thing was so damn big that I could hardly understand how it could even fit inside my body, but there it was, tearing at my cervix as it reared up on its scissor-like legs, clawing at Cat's face.

Topher screamed as the thing climbed onto his face, boring a hole through his forehead.

Cat smiled at me with milky coolant dripping down her fuzzy face, one eyeball hanging out of its socket. "Isn't she just adorable?"