by Samuel Best
Deal.
How’s work?
Merritt grimaced. You don’t want to know.
Don’t worry, Dad. Only four more months.
He coughed into his hand, then winced and covered his stomach.
Hungry? asked Merritt.
Gavin shook his head weakly. Merritt knew he wasn’t telling the truth, but he couldn’t press the matter. What could he say? Here, son, eat more food that will make you feel like you’re dying.
He pulled the apple from his pocket and gave it to Gavin.
A gift from Willef, he signed.
Gavin stared at the apple in disbelief. He pressed it to his nose and sniffed its bright red skin, a slow smile spreading on his lips.
Merritt ruffled Gavin’s hair and said, “I’m working in the shuttle bay this afternoon. I’ll check back afterward.”
The boy gave him a thumb’s up and took a loud bite of his apple, then immediately fell back into the world of his story.
Merritt walked away slowly, mind torn with concern.
He had been expecting to get Gavin into one of the hypergel tanks as soon as they got on board. His son could ride out the voyage in stasis, without the need to eat food his body rejected.
Yet, the hypergel tanks were only for red ticket holders, a detail Merritt neglected to notice before boarding.
He hunted and he queried, hoping to find alternative menu items in the ship’s official stores, but without luck. Seemingly, the only food to be had on board came fresh from the rapid-grow soy-vats behind the galley.
Merritt had heard of a man on the ship, someone who might be able to help him.
He’d been ignoring that path for a while, because this man didn’t work for free. Merritt heard that a fair amount of crew members had gone into serious debt by doing business with him.
Some said he was a man best avoided.
Others said he could get you anything you wanted, day or night, no questions asked…for the right price.
LEERA
The administrative section of the starliner Halcyon occupied most of Deck 1, and was comprised of officer’s quarters and the bridge. On a minimal-occupancy cruise, the number of active officers had been significantly trimmed from the usual fifty or so to a lean half-dozen.
Each having oversight of a different department, they only saw each other for meals in the officer mess hall or for social events in the late evenings.
The captain never joined them for either.
As Leera strolled the stark white hallway leading to the bridge, she glanced at portraits of past captains on the wall. They began with the daughter of Cygnus Corporation’s Chief Financial Officer who commanded the ship’s maiden voyage and progressed all the way to the man Leera was on her way to meet for the first time.
Two months aboard the Halcyon with not much else to do besides gossip had brought a lot of rumors her way.
Regarding the captain, he didn’t fraternize with his subordinates because he worked twenty hours a day in the bridge, taking meals in his chair, watching every data screen for anomalies. He had the best operational safety record of any vessel in the company. Additionally, he wasn’t much fun at parties, whenever he did pause long enough to attend them.
Leera had heard the rumors, but she still knew little of the man himself. She paused in front of his portrait in the hallway, and shivered. His piercing, glacier blue eyes stared out from a plain, unremarkable face that was neither hard nor soft, striking nor repulsive. In fact, Leera reflected, there was nothing to make his appearance stick in her memory besides those eyes, which, though she couldn’t articulate the reason, unnerved her to her very core.
She checked her watch and realized she was a minute late for the requested meeting. Several empty frames lined the wall as she hurried toward the entrance to the bridge farther down the hallway, awaiting portraits of future captains.
The thick blast door at the end of the hall rose steadily as she approached.
The captain sat in his command chair in the center of a large circular room, facing a wide, curved wall of viewscreens. Warm, subdued lighting glowed from the outer edge of the low, round ceiling. In the light, rich, golden hues bloomed on the various darkwood workstations.
Leera entered the bridge, stepping onto padded carpet which muted her footsteps.
The entire room was nearly silent, she noticed. There was no music; no audio playing from the many security camera feeds displayed within a portion of the viewscreen wall.
Besides the captain, and now herself, only one other person was on the bridge: a young female officer sitting at a console, absorbed in a string of data running up her screen. She wore a pair of thick headphones and typed soundlessly on a small keyboard.
The captain sipped from a small white teacup as Leera crossed the expansive room. As she approached his chair, he set his cup in a matching saucer and stood abruptly, tugging down the hem of his black uniform shirt as he turned to face her.
Even in the modest lighting, his eyes immediately stabbed her consciousness.
A thought leapt into her mind, unbidden: This man sees everything.
“Doctor James,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Captain Williams. Thank you for coming.”
His palm was pleasantly warm in hers. “My pleasure, Captain. I wasn’t sure I’d ever get to see the bridge.”
“They wanted to redesign it before this voyage,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back. He walked away, following the curvature of the viewscreen wall. It took a moment for Leera to realize he meant for her to join him. “They said it was too outdated. I disagreed. It is efficient.” He stared at her. “Clean work spaces are the most efficient, wouldn’t you agree?”
“I would.”
He nodded and looked forward, seemingly satisfied. Next to them, the towering viewscreens cast flashing various colors on their clothes: green from the text of multitudinous data streams, white from the security feeds, and greenish-purple from the large screen dedicated solely to an image of the Rip.
Leera stopped before it, then took several steps back so she could see it all at once.
The viewscreen was roughly six meters tall, and the Rip took up four of those meters, the screen surrounding it filled with darkness.
From the angle of the Halcyon’s approach, the 300-mile-wide Rip appeared as an asymmetric circle with shredded edges, as if the claw of some great animal had torn a hole in the very fabric of space.
“Do you know why it’s a circle?” asked the captain.
“Ceres was spherical,” Leera answered.
“Correct. If we had detonated a mass of any other shape, the Rip would hold that shape instead. Though I wonder what else would have served.”
“Lucky we had Ceres,” said Leera.
“Indeed,” he replied, looking at her inscrutably.
A dancing ribbon of brilliant purple and green light delineated the outer edges of the Rip from the void surrounding it. Through the ragged outline, the dim light of a distant blue star was barely visible.
“That’s Aegea,” said the captain, pointing up at the star on the screen. “The first of seven we can see through the Rip. The other six aren’t visible to the naked eye, but Aegea burns the brightest.”
He stared at the star reverently, his face awash with purple and green hues.
“The farthest of her two planets, Canis, is an ice world. Scans show evidence of ancient riverbeds in the frozen surface. Yet the nearest planet, Bastia, has oceans. Continents. Mountains and rivers and streams, just like 7.”
“But a toxic atmosphere,” said Leera, recalling a passage from one of the thick binders detailing every piece of information about the space beyond the Rip. “Not only isn’t it breathable, exposure to it would boil our skin.”
A small, sad smile touched his lips and vanished just as quickly.
“Alas,” he said, walking on. “How is the rest of your team? Are they enjoying the journey?”
“Actually, Walter is already in a hy
pergel tank, and I believe Niku is going in as we speak.”
“What about you?” he asked pointedly. “Are you enjoying yourself? It’s a far cry from what you’re used to on Earth, I’m sure, but we try our best.”
“Have you been there recently, Captain?” asked Leera with a slight grin. “I can assure you, this is much better. But I can only double-check our equipment so many times. To be honest, I’ll be joining my colleagues in stasis this evening.”
“Truly? Before the Rip?”
“We’re interested in a planet beyond it, Captain,” said Leera. “And I suspect we’ll need to be well-rested when we get there. May I ask a question?”
“You want to know why I asked to see you.”
“It crossed my mind.”
He straightened up as they walked next to each other.
“As you know, the Halcyon will remain in orbit around Galena for one year so the hull can shed all the radiation it absorbs passing through the Rip. At the end of that year, I’ll send a shuttle down to collect you and your team.”
“That’s my understanding, yes,” Leera agreed.
“I believe you were instructed to return to Earth with organic material native to Galena.”
Leera was momentarily speechless. Unless one of her team members had spoken of their plan to bring something back to Earth through the Rip, there wasn’t any way for the captain to know.
She took a slow breath and regained her composure.
“I don’t know how you came by that information, Captain,” she said coolly, “and I certainly don’t know that it’s any of your concern how my team chooses to conduct their research, especially while not on this ship.”
“It very much is my concern, madam,” said Williams. “Galena is a unique place. What we see with our own eyes does not always make up the entire picture. I will not be responsible for transporting organic material back to Earth which could potentially harm its citizens.”
“Of course we would run any samples through rigid quarantine procedures before bringing them on board.”
“Take pictures,” he said as they continued their stroll around the bridge. “Study. Do your research on the surface, but don’t bring anything back, or I’ll have it destroyed. I wanted to inform you before we arrived to save having this conversation in the future.”
Leera took a deep breath and let it out very slowly.
“That’s not an option for me, Captain,” she said. “If we don’t come back with a sample that proves it’s worth going back to Galena, this could be the last trip anyone ever takes through the Rip. You’d be out of a job.”
“A price I would gladly pay.”
They stopped at the door to the bridge.
“Thank you for meeting with me,” said the captain. “I apologize for the circumstances.”
Leera smothered the urge to scream as the blast door rose into the ceiling, spilling white light from the hallway onto the carpeted floor. She left in silence, trailing a black cloud of rage.
Later, in her stateroom, she took the maximum allotted five-minute hot shower, letting the scalding water hit the knot of tension at the back of her neck. Afterward, she neatly folded her clothes and put them in the faux-wood dresser, then stuffed the rest of her personal belongings into her travel bag and slid that under the bed. She wore only a clinging black-and-white neoprene body suit, specially-designed to accelerate hypergel absorption while in stasis, and a pair of slippers one size too large. Before leaving, she thought better of it and donned a thick robe hanging from a hook on the bathroom door.
She passed no one on her way to the stasis room. It was several decks below hers, on the bottom-most level before the habitable portion of the ship ended and the radiation shielding began.
A blast of icy air hit her when the doors to the stasis room whooshed apart, revealing a long room with metal, rust-colored walls and a grated floor. To Leera, it appeared as more of an industrial warehouse than a hub for sophisticated technology. The ceiling was twenty meters high, the walls were ten meters apart, and the end of the room was not visible from the entrance.
Cylindrical hypergel tanks filled with thick, pinkish fluid lined one side of the room, starting near the doors and disappearing into the distance. They were attached to the floor and connected to the ceiling by long metal tubes as wide as the tanks.
Leera checked the tank assignment code on her ticket as she shuffled over the grated floor in her slippers, grasping her robe shut with a white hand. The first few tanks were unoccupied, but then she passed one with a slender woman suspended in the viscous pink gel, wearing a black-and-white neoprene body suit to match Leera’s own. The woman hung like a fly in amber, with a small black oxygen mask covering the lower half of her face. A thin black tube ran from the mask to a cluster of apparatus on the side of the tank. The woman looked peaceful, as if she had simply dozed off for a nap.
Leera had never been inside a stasis chamber before. One could pay good money on Earth to sleep for years at a time, leap-frogging into the future with the dim hope of a better life on the other end, or the dimmer hope that a member of one’s now-deceased family struck it rich and left behind a sizable inheritance.
She passed Walter’s hypergel tank, and couldn’t help but smile when she noticed the surprised look on his face within the mold of pinkish gel, obvious even though he wore an oxygen mask. His slight paunch pushed against the neoprene of his body suit. While the open legs of Leera’s suit nearly reached her ankles, Walter’s suit stopped just below his knees.
One of the tanks next to his was meant for Niku, but it was empty. Leera frowned inwardly, guessing he was probably still drinking at the bar, yet hoping he wasn’t.
She checked the number on her ticket to the one etched on the thick plexi surface of a nearby tank, verifying it was coded for her use. She swiped the ticket over a small control panel and a large exclamation point flashed on the screen. A flurry of warnings scrolled by. Leera tapped all the accept buttons the warnings threw her way.
There was a beep at the end, and a small door popped open on the side of the tank. Leera stepped out of her slippers and took off her robe, the cold air nipping at her wrists and ankles. She placed her items in the nearby storage compartment and shut the door, then stood in front of the tank, waiting for something to happen.
A small red square pulsed on the plexi surface of the tank. She pushed it impatiently. The curved plexi exterior parted down the middle, hinging apart to expose the pink gel within.
Leera had watched the safety videos. She had replayed the stasis orientation a dozen times, yet still she was nervous.
A black oxygen mask rested in a formed pocket on the right side of the tank. Leera slipped it over her head and tightened the strap. A cold blast of oxygen hit her mouth and cheeks. After a few breaths, she felt more calm.
Enter quickly, she remembered from the safety videos. Push into it and turn.
She stepped onto a metal lip protruding beneath the tank, then leaned forward with her eyes tightly shut and squished into the tank in one quick motion. The warm pink goop sealed around her back as she pushed forward, and she turned around while she still had a loose pocket of disturbed gel in which to move.
As soon as she went still, the gel formed to her body, seeping between her toes and fingers. Following the instructional video’s advice, she relaxed her muscles. Her legs contracted slightly, bending at the knees on their own and rising from the floor of the tank. She risked a quick peek, but the gel stung her eyes.
It could take anywhere from five to fifteen minutes for the stasis effect to take hold, she remembered reading. The delay depended on the physical makeup of the person in the tank, how many times they’d previously been exposed to the gel, and how resistant they were to stimulants. Leera couldn’t help but think it would take Niku half an hour to pass out.
Her skin tingled.
She wanted to scratch her itching scalp but found she was paralyzed. Her body was absorbing the gel that seeped throug
h the pores of her body suit, pulling it into her bloodstream.
Just a quick sleep, she told herself as she drifted off. Four months for the ship, but mere seconds for me. A year on the ground, then back home to my family. My family…what am I going to do?
And with that thought, she fell asleep.
TULLIVER
Too many stars, thought Tulliver.
He sat on a bench in the domed atrium, staring up at the ceiling. Beyond the looming palm trees, a field of stars was projected on the ceiling, each one burning with a brilliance Tulliver had never seen.
On Earth, catching a clear glimpse of the night sky was rare, at least in the bigger cities. Blankets of fog seemed to settle in over the populace in late evening, if they hadn’t been there all day, glowing with the sickly light cast upon them from below.
Tulliver shivered and looked away from the ceiling. Such a sight unnerved him. It was difficult for a man his size to feel small, but gazing into the endless reaches of space did the trick every time.
He shifted his bulk from the bench and walked across the bridge, glancing down at the reflection of the stars in the pool’s surface below.
Tulliver felt a presence walking behind him, a void in the constant background murmur of his surroundings. A hawk-faced man with a sharp widow’s peak had appeared from an inconspicuous spot tucked away behind the bridge. He was nearly as tall as Tulliver, but possessed only a quarter of his mass and a fraction of his intellect.
Though he walked with a loping gate — the result of a childhood injury to his left knee, courtesy of his own father, leaving him with a permanent limp — he managed to do so with shocking deftness, and, just once, had managed the difficult feat of sneaking up on Tulliver.
That was how they met, a week after the Halcyon left Sunrise Station.
Tulliver was sitting in the galley, pushing cold soy mush around on his plate with a fork, when he felt a faint rustle in his back pocket. With surprising speed, he whipped around and snatched his ticket from the would-be thief. It was a wiry man, eyes wide with fear at being caught red-handed. He had curly black hair, a pencil-thin mustache, and tufts of downy fuzz on his cheeks which were, Tulliver thought, the result of his attempt to grow a beard.