Vessel

by Lisa A. Nichols

  “Tom, I’d like to search your quarters,” Ava said, without preamble. “I just want to make sure that everyone, including you, is safe.”

  Richie stood by the door. He was the biggest guy on the crew, so if Tom tried to bolt or, God forbid, fight back . . .

  Tom didn’t show any signs of fighting back. His shoulders slumped and he stood up, moving away from his bunk. “Sure. Whatever you want.”

  While Ava searched, Catherine pulled him aside. “I’m sorry about all this,” she said. It was hard to radiate sympathy through a pressure suit, but she tried. And Tom looked so utterly lost that the sympathy wasn’t a lie.

  “Catherine . . . I didn’t do this,” he said quietly. “I swear to you.”

  “Son of a bitch,” Richie said. “You’re on video.”

  Tom grew more agitated. “I don’t know why I’m on that tape! I didn’t do any of this! You have to believe me!”

  The look Richie gave him was one of disgust. Ava looked resigned. Catherine . . . she didn’t know how she felt. He sounded so sincere it broke her heart.

  “There’s nothing here that shouldn’t be,” Ava said. She’d collected a few items with sharp edges, anything that might possibly be used as a weapon. “Come on.”

  “Catherine, please!”

  Catherine followed Ava and Richie out, but the sound of Tom’s voice followed her down the hall. “Ava, hang on. Let me talk to him some more.”

  “I don’t think going back in there is a good idea,” Richie said.

  “I won’t go in. I’ll talk to him through the door.”

  Ava sighed. “All right. Come to the mess when you’re done. I think we need to get the crew together and have a talk.”

  Catherine went back to Tom’s door. “Tom, it’s Catherine. What’s going on, really? Can you tell me?”

  Tom was silent for such a long time that Catherine didn’t think he was going to answer. “I don’t know what’s going on,” he said, so quietly she barely heard him.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean . . . I don’t know. Cath, something is wrong with me. Really, really wrong.” His voice got stronger, as if he moved over to the door but stayed quiet. “I . . . I don’t remember doing any of the things that are on the tape. I don’t remember messing with any equipment. But I . . . I guess I must have.”

  Was he lying? Trying to cover his tracks somehow? Catherine didn’t think so, but how could she be sure? “I don’t understand.”

  Tom laughed harshly. “Yeah, I don’t either.” There was a soft thump, as if he’d bumped his head on the other side of the door. “I don’t know what I did last night.”

  “How do you not know?”

  “I mean . . . I remember having dinner in the mess with everybody, then going back to my quarters, and then . . . nothing. The next thing I remember is waking up in my bed this morning. It’s happened a few times. Like the night before the oxygenator failed.”

  At first Catherine didn’t know what to say. What he was describing was terrifying, both from her perspective and imagining what it must feel like for him. “I-I’m going to have to tell Ava about this, you know that, right?”

  “You can tell her, but she’s not going to believe me,” Tom said dully. “And I don’t blame her. I wouldn’t believe me either.”

  “We’re going to get to the bottom of this, I swear,” she said. “I’ll come back when I can, okay?”

  When she got to the mess, the others were already gathered.

  “I’m just saying we can’t keep him in there forever,” Claire was saying.

  Catherine leaned against the counter, and the other crew members looked at her with varying expressions: Ava looked troubled, Izzy and Richie looked skeptical, poor Claire just looked shaken.

  “It’s too dangerous,” Richie argued. “How many times might he have tried to kill us already? And he nearly succeeded killing one of us this last time. You wanna give him another chance to try again?”

  “Did he say anything, Catherine?” Ava asked.

  “He’s still saying he didn’t do anything.”

  “How the hell does he expect us to believe that?” Izzy asked. “We’ve all seen the footage.”

  “I know.” Catherine leaned her head back against one of the cabinets and closed her eyes. She sighed. “He says he doesn’t remember doing any of it. And that he’s . . . well, that he’s lost time. Waking up in his bed and not remembering how he got there. That sort of thing.”

  “So which is it? Is he saying he didn’t do anything, or that he doesn’t remember doing anything?” Claire asked.

  “He’s saying both,” Catherine said.

  “Convenient amnesia.” Izzy folded his arms. “I’ve been doing medical workups on all of you regularly, and I haven’t found a single thing wrong with any of you.”

  “Would some sort of trauma-based amnesia show up on an exam, though?” Ava asked. “Are there any tests you can give him?”

  “We don’t exactly have the facilities for a full diagnostic battery of tests,” Izzy said. “I mean, I can test him for a few things, but . . . the thing about amnesia and fugue states—which are what he’s describing—is that they’re really fucking easy to fake. How am I supposed to say, ‘Yes you do so remember what happened’?”

  “Ava,” Claire said quietly, “don’t you think it’s time we stopped trying to deal with this ourselves and got NASA involved?”

  “I tried.” Ava ran her fingers through her cropped hair. “The comms are now completely down. I couldn’t send a message of any sort.”

  “The comms are down? What, did Tom sabotage them, too?” Richie said.

  “Shit.” Izzy looked around the table. “What if he’s been doing that all along? What if NASA’s been sending us messages and he’s just . . . not sharing them?”

  The five of them fell silent.

  “We don’t know for sure that he did anything to them,” Catherine protested. “What he’s done is worrisome, yeah, but . . . maybe we shouldn’t start blaming him for everything.” Not yet.

  “Oh, of course. Of course you’re going to stick up for him,” Izzy said with an eye roll.

  “What do you mean?” Catherine had a sinking feeling she knew exactly what he meant.

  “Sagittarius is a small ship, Catherine. You think we didn’t know the two of you were sleeping together on the trip out?”

  “Look,” Catherine said, then paused, realizing she was about to defend the indefensible. “Yeah, okay. We did. Once! It was New Year’s Eve and I was drunk. Then I told him it couldn’t happen again. I know it was a mistake, and it never should have happened.”

  “Wait a minute,” Richie interrupted. “That’s when he started acting distant and grouchy. And it got worse when we landed. Are you saying that all of this happened because you screwed him?”

  “No!” That couldn’t be it. Catherine refused to believe that. “The thing is, no matter what he did, and no matter what happened between the two of us, if we’re going to get a message to NASA, we’re going to have to let him out at some point. We need him.”

  “Maybe you need him,” Izzy sneered.

  “Doc, come on,” Claire tried to interject.

  “No, I mean it.” He turned to Catherine. “Your boyfriend might be trying to kill us because you felt guilty and now you’re feeling guilty about that, so you’re trying to believe he’s innocent. And you expect us to just trust you. To trust him.”

  “It’s not like that!” Catherine’s temper was quickly fraying. “If you had talked to him, you would have seen how rattled he is by this. I don’t believe he’s lying.”

  “And I’m supposed to just trust my ass with him because he gave you a big sad puppy-dog look?”

  “Enough.” Ava cut them both off. “Catherine isn’t wrong. We don’t know for sure that he’s deliberately and consciously done anything to hurt us. But more important, he’s the only one who can get us back in touch with NASA. As long as the comms are down, we can’t tell the
m anything.”

  Richie spoke up. “And if he’s the one who sabotaged the comms in the first place?”

  “Well, if he was,” Ava said, “then he’ll know better than anybody else how to fix them. It’s in his interest, too. He agrees to fix the comms, we let him out—for a little while at least.” She looked around at all of them. “Look, we need to get in touch. This is the sort of thing NASA ends missions over. But it’s too big for me to make the call alone. I’m not calling an abort until I’ve heard from Mission Control. Are we clear?”

  The four of them nodded, the men grudgingly.

  “All right,” Ava said. “Richie, Catherine, come with me. We’re gonna see if Tom is in the mood to bargain.”

  “You’re gonna fucking get us all killed,” Izzy muttered. “Just watch.”

  17

  CATHERINE YAWNED AND rubbed her eyes, squinting at her office computer. Last night, she’d tossed and turned, unable to get comfortable in the hotel bed that was hers for the foreseeable future; there was no time between now and the launch to find an apartment.

  Her phone beeped and she saw a text from Aimee: there’s a new apt complex not far from house. U looked there yet?

  Catherine smiled. Aimee seemed to be taking things in stride so far, eager to help Catherine find a place to settle. Aimee was so perceptive that Catherine wouldn’t have been surprised at all if she had seen this coming. God knew Catherine should have.

  No, I didn’t know about it, she replied. Text me the address?

  Aimee loved to give her shit about how she texted in complete sentences with proper punctuation, but Catherine had never gotten the hang of abbreviating everything.

  She took a sip of her lukewarm coffee and turned her attention back to her computer. She was going to be one of the flight controllers on launch day, a first for her. Tradition said the CAPCOM desk—short for Capsule Communicator, although there hadn’t been a “capsule” launched in decades—should be staffed by an astronaut, and as the only surviving member of Sagittarius I, Catherine wasn’t just the logical choice, she was the only real choice. When John Duffy radioed the call sign “Houston” on launch day, Catherine would be the one who answered him.

  The role was an extremely visible one, one that she’d never have been given if anyone at NASA knew about her blank periods. To distract herself from the fear that she might have one of those spells on launch day, she threw herself into memorizing all the protocols.

  An hour later, she picked up her mug and walked to the kitchen area down the hall, smiling at Aaron on autopilot as she passed him.

  “Catherine!” The voice was far away and not immediately identifiable.

  She stuck her head out into the hallway to see if she could tell where it had come from, her brow furrowing.

  After a moment or two, it came again, more impatient. “Catherine, come on!”

  The mug of coffee fell out of her fingers, which had gone suddenly nerveless, and shattered on the tile floor.

  The voice was Tom Wetherbee’s.

  That’s impossible.

  “Let me out already! Be reasonable!”

  Catherine’s heart pounded. It sounded as if the voice was coming from the end of the hall, down past her office. The only things down there were the stairwell and a supply closet. Was someone playing a cruel joke? Catherine walked down the hall, forgetting the broken mug.

  The voice didn’t sound again right away. The stairwell was empty. No sounds of movement. No voice. Catherine pushed open the door to the supply closet, heart in her throat. She fumbled for the light switch. No one was in there.

  “Catherine?”

  This time the voice came from behind her, and Catherine jerked in surprise. But the voice wasn’t Tom’s. She turned around to see John Duffy standing there, a concerned look on his face. “You okay?”

  “John. Yeah, you just startled me.”

  “Is that your mug on the floor?”

  Catherine gave him an embarrassed smile. “Clumsy me. I-I was looking for something to clean it up with.”

  “Don’t worry, I called Facilities; they’re sending someone up.” Before she could thank him, he said, “Are you sure you’re all right? I, um, heard about you and David. I’m sorry.”

  Sometimes the rumor mill around here moved faster than the rockets. “Thanks. I guess nearly a decade apart was just too long.”

  “Well, listen, if you ever need someone to talk to,” he said, smiling wryly, “or need someone to recommend a good divorce lawyer, just let me know.” She must have looked surprised, because he added, “Come on, you have to know how high the divorce rate is around here.”

  “Oh,” Catherine said. “Um, thank you.”

  She escaped back to her office as quickly as she could, the strain of keeping a normal face on wearing on her too much. Tom’s voice hadn’t come from anywhere but her own mind. Dr. Darzi would dismiss this hallucination as a completely normal response to trauma. Catherine could probably have a screaming, ranting breakdown in Darzi’s office and she’d sit there and say the same thing.

  Hell, maybe it was.

  But what if Tom’s voice was coming from a memory? What if it had really happened? What if what really happened? You locked him up somewhere?

  That didn’t make sense. It was just her guilt over the affair bubbling to the surface.

  The problem was, it didn’t stop once she went back to her hotel that night.

  As she was waiting in line for her takeout, she heard him again.

  “Catherine! This isn’t fair!”

  It was so loud and sharp she jumped, looking around. No one else reacted at all. Trembling, she paid for her food and raced back to her hotel, the radio turned up to full volume to drown out any noise—real or imagined.

  Once in her room, she had a bottle of wine with dinner, and the voice stopped. Blissful silence. And when she slept that night, she actually slept.

  The voice was back the next day, so she took a couple of the miniature bottles from the minibar to work with her, tucked in her purse. She told herself it was “just in case.” And just until after the launch. Then she’d have time to figure everything out.

  By the end of the day, both bottles were gone, but so was Tom’s voice.

  18

  THE ASTRONAUTS’ LAUNCH-DAY breakfast was a long-standing tradition. Half the crew—Commander Duffy, Kevin Park, and Leah Morrison—had done this multiple times before for shorter missions, while Grace Kowalski, Zach Navarro, and Nate Royer were all relative rookies, with one or two missions apiece.

  Cal was the only true rookie of the bunch. This was his first launch-day breakfast, joining the crew with Aaron and a few of the other support staff. It was embarrassing how . . . emotional he was. They were sitting in the same room where the greats ate breakfast before heading out: Glenn, Armstrong, Ride, and all the rest. Some of them had never come back. Everyone acted as if it were no big deal, as if this momentous thing that they’d been planning for years wasn’t about to happen.

  In a nod to tradition, all the Sagittarius II astronauts had ordered the favorite steak-and-scrambled-eggs breakfast, except their lone vegetarian, Kowalski, who stuck with the eggs. It was just as well, because she barely ate anything anyway, but kept a resolute “I’m absolutely fine” look on her face nonetheless. They all did. Including Cal.

  He’d done everything he could to prepare his crew. He’d done absolutely everything in his power to make certain that no issues from Sagittarius I would harm them. The rest was out of his hands. That wasn’t easy for him to acknowledge, but if he’d learned anything working for NASA, it was that there were always some things that had to be left to chance. He watched the minutes count down on the clock, wondering what random things might crop up on this mission.

  When it was time for the crew to suit up, Cal had a chance to say goodbye to each of them.

  John Duffy was the first, and gave Cal a hearty handshake and a slap to the shoulder that threatened to knock him off his feet.
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  “Keep ’em in line up there, Commander,” Cal said.

  Duffy gave him a salute and a grin. “You know it.”

  Morrison was next, and she already had her game face on. Of course. While the others would mostly be passengers for a bit, Morrison would bear the brunt of the responsibility following the launch. To keep from distracting her, Cal just offered a handshake. She looked at his hand, then cocked an eyebrow at him before hauling him into a hug. “Relax,” she said in his ear. “You look like you’re about to get your ass kicked or something. We got this, all right?”

  “All right,” he confirmed.

  When Morrison pulled back she was smiling. “Better. See you, man.”

  He said good-bye to Navarro, Park, and Kowalski in turn, a lump forming in his throat. He kept it hidden from them under his smile.

  Nate was last, and Cal couldn’t resist needling him. “Saw you were late for breakfast. You oversleep or something?”

  “Nah, I had to make sure I was looking just right before I made my appearance.” They clasped hands and pulled each other into a hug, one that was tighter than Cal intended. Nate picked up on it and pulled back with a frown. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” Cal cleared his throat. “Yeah, I’m fine. Prelaunch jitters. You know how it is.” He tried on a grin and it almost fit. “Dude, my best friend is leaving for six years, I’m allowed to have a feeling or two about it.”

  “Think of all the stories we’ll have to swap when I get back.” He gave Cal’s shoulder a shake. “Just don’t screw up the launch, all right? After that, it’s all down to us.”

  “That’s what I’m worried about,” Cal teased.

  “Yeah, well, next time you can haul your ass out there if you don’t like the way we do things.”

  That made Cal laugh, and he felt a bit of tension drain away. “Yeeeeah, I think that ship’s sailed, my friend. I’m gonna keep my feet right down here.”

  “Then quit bitching.” Nate gave Cal one last swat to the arm and then turned to go. “See ya.”