BACK   

= NEBULA EXPRESS =

a DarkSF novel

by John Argo

Page 15.

"Okay, now what?" Tomson said as he pushed his way gently through the panicked crowd. He did not bang on the locked, sealed steel doors. Instead he laid one palm on the steel and then closed his eyes as if slipping into some kind of psychoactive dream. Sweat rimmed his face, which turned a sickly shade of yellow. He opened his eyes and shook his head. "Those vibes are bad, my friends. We can never go in again. We're finished."

"That's insane," Ridge found himself saying. Several others yelled out in agreement.

Tomson shook his head again. "Sorry, folks. I'm not being psychic. I was just thinking about all that's happened. There was no key. We locked the place up and threw the key away, so to speak."

Ridge looked carefully along the grating and down the ledge below, but saw no sign of the dazed, bloodied man who had pounded on the window. Mudmen must have taken care of him, Ridge thought. He could imagine the lunch feast they must have had in the dark below. Shivering, he walked close to the riveted wall, beside Tomson, and gripped the railing. "If you and another person will brace me, I'll climb up and take a look inside." With Tomson and Yu supporting him, Ridge climbed up onto the railing. The forward sloping windows were still several feet above his head. The two men supported his legs as he stood on tiptoe. He leaned palms-forward against the wall and pressed his right cheek against the cold steel. It was to no avail. He must get higher. "Grab me if I fall," he said. Carefully, he flexed his knees. He rose up and down several times, aiming carefully how to place his fingertips. Then he jumped. His fingertips caught on the steel rim under the window. Before his grip could weaken, he pulled himself up. As he did so, he slipped his fingers into a flat area just under the thick plate windows. He figured he had enough strength to chin-up for about a minute. Dismissing his fears of plummeting down past the platform, he pulled himself up. His entire torso trembled at the effort, but he managed to raise himself high enough to get his eyes above sill level. What he saw puzzled him. The interior of WorkPod01 was well lit and clean-but there was nothing there. There were a number of oblong, slightly glowing bluish-white objects that seemed to form the tops of a number of boxes. There were intricate designs all around on the walls, which glowed with light from the boxes on the floor. In the ceiling were fixtures that looked like fluorescent tubes, but they looked cold and gray, emitting no light. There was no sign of life in WorkPod01. There was no hint of left over dinners, of chairs, of tables, of moon doors, of showers, of exercise sets, of ancient Homeric poems stashed on shelves. All the clutter he remembered was missing. It did seem that the overall floor plan vaguely resembled that which he remembered from the galley. The only other thing he glimpsed that made sense, before his strength gave out and he dropped down to the grating among his team members, were one or two places on the wall with rounded rectangles that might have been the viewing screens where the crew had seen and heard Captain Venable speak to them.

"Well?" Tomson asked. "What did you see?"

Ridge shook his head as they all crowded around. He knew his face must be pale, and their faces reflected his shock. "Nothing," he said. "I saw nothing that I recognized."

"Did someone clean it all up?" Jerez asked. The others babbled simultaneously with similar questions and anxieties. Ridge shook his head and staggered to the railing, trying to assimilate what he'd seen, or not seen. "It's crazy," he said, feeling a sickness in his gut. He banged his fist on the cold steel and yelled: "There's nothing there. No galley, no showers, no books, no moon doors, no cubicles. It's like we never existed."

"We are ghosts," Mahaffey said. His eyes looked crazy, and he started walking in circles on the platform. "We are dead people."

Brenna smiled. "We bleed when we are hurt, and you see that Mughali died. That hardly makes us ghosts."

"Bullshit," Tomson told Mahaffey. "I pinch myself, I feel it. That means I am real. You're talking nuts."

Ridge tried to grasp Mahaffey by the belt. The young man was tall, and strong, and wild. He was filled with emotions as he windmilled his arms. "Don't you see? It's all a bunch of bullshit." He looked at Jerez. "Can you tell me the names of your children?" She stared mutely back at him. He looked at Yu. "You say the woman with the tits came home every day for lunch. It's a long commute between Pudong and Fengjiang to the south. It would take her hours each way in heavy traffic. It's not real, Yu." He turned from the stricken Yu and said to Brenna: "Your children. What are their names?" She slowly shook her head, her eyes filled with denial. "You see?" he continued. "None of you remember critical things because it's all bullshit." With that, he leapt onto the railing.

He balanced precariously, squatting on the railing. Both feet were on the thick metal bar, and he leaned left with one hand touching the railing while the other hand windmilled in space for balance. Several people shouted, and several reached for him. Ridge wanted to reach out and grab Mahaffey, but felt paralyzed, partly because it all happened so quickly and partly because he had been wondering all morning what were the names of his own children. He couldn't even really picture them in his mind's eye, much as he loved them, much as he thought about nothing but his family. Mahaffey rose fully to his feet on the slender railing. He balanced there for a minute, rotating his arms while several people screamed and reached for him. Tomson dropped his gun to the grating with a loud clang and started to wrap his arms around Mahaffey's legs, but wasn't quick enough. With a wild look in his eyes, and a long trailing scream, Mahaffey jumped. Ridge watched him sailing downward. Mahaffey's shirt rippled in a breeze, and his arms and legs stuck out as if he were jumping onto a horse. He fell out of sight and everyone on the grating fell silent until they heard a single sodden splash far below. It was a splattering sound, like a palm striking down on a countertop, or a melon falling from a window to a sidewalk, and the sound left no doubt as to Mahaffey's outcome, which was the end of all struggle and some sort of eternal peace amid the debris of the universe here in this mysterious place, this dead or half-dead ship of ghosts drifting far from the sun. The remaining six team members held each other and sobbed. Several stood at the railing, clenching their fists around the steel where Mahaffey had last stood, and looked down.

"Ideas?" Tomson said, retrieving his weapon and slipping it into his belt. His eyes had a haunted look as he stared out at the distant surfaces inside the ship. Even then, Ridge thought he glimpsed tiny blurs of reddish light moving stealthily and strategically into position in the void. Were it not for the sobbing of Brenna and Yu, he thought he would clearly hear the flute drones of a dozen rounded mouths amid the slag and dross.

"I'm fresh out," Ridge said. He could almost feel the impact of his words striking his team members like a blow, sending them reeling. He shook his head to clear it. "Look, while there is life there is hope. We have no idea what's going on here. Mahaffey lost his mind and bailed out. That's not the solution I recommend."

"What do you recommend?" Tomson said.

"Yeah, what bright idea do you have now?" Jerez added.

Ridge sighed and looked up and down the steel wall, which was tighter than a safe. "We might try to make our way to the CP. We might try to find Venable in person and have a serious discussion about just what the hell is going on inside his ship, if he knows."

"And where is the CP?" Tomson asked softly.

"Where is Venable?" Yu asked.

"That's the next thing we should try to find out," Ridge said.

TOP  |  MAIN

Copyright © 2018 by Jean-Thomas Cullen, Clocktower Books. All Rights Reserved.