The Dark Ship

by Phillip P. Peterson

  Owl grunted.

  Castle looked up. “That sun is very weak.”

  “It’s probably designed to provide light but not heat,” Jeff guessed.

  “Just as well, it already feels like a sauna in here,” Joanne said.

  They stood huddled together in silence as the elevator slowly descended. Jeff had to constantly wipe the sweat out of his eyes in order to see anything at all. His head was pounding and he wondered if it was from all the pent-up tension or the horrendous heat.

  The descent seemed to go on forever. The platform they had come out on must have been very high up. But finally they reached the ground, and Jeff was the first to step out onto the rocky terrain. Up close, the landscape didn’t look one jot friendlier than it did from above.

  “Strange,” Joanne said, looking around. “We’ve come out in the middle of a wilderness. No paths, no streets, no buildings. It doesn’t look as if anyone ever lived here.”

  “Maybe they dismantled the buildings when they got to their destination planet,” Castle suggested as he bent down to touch the ground. He ran the palm of his hand over the sharp rocks.

  “But then there would still be roads, and foundations,” Owl retorted.

  “Or they never lived here,” Jeff said. “Maybe it was a kind of nature reserve and they came here to recuperate.”

  “Recuperate?” Shorty guffawed. “Here?”

  Jeff shrugged. “Let’s keep going,” he ordered. “Which way do we go?”

  Eyes fixed on her handheld, Joanne turned around in a circle several times. She appeared to be having difficulty orientating herself. “I think we need to go this way,” she said finally, waving an arm.

  “Are you sure?” Castle asked.

  “Pretty sure,” she replied, and marched off. “If not, we’ll notice soon enough and change our course.”

  Castle shrugged and trotted after her.

  “How far still?” Jeff asked.

  “About eighty miles,” Joanne answered. “Then we should hit the outer wall of this cavity and get to the corridor that leads to the center.”

  “And how deep inside this ship of horrors are we now?” Owl asked.

  “About seventy-five miles.”

  The radio operator groaned. “Not even a third of the way. Unbelievable. Feels like we’ve walked thousands of miles already.”

  “And now we have to walk hundreds more without getting any closer to the center,” Mac said.

  Joanne shook her head. “You’re wrong. Every step takes us closer to the center of the ship.”

  “Bullshit,” Mac scoffed. “We’re not even going downhill.”

  Joanne sighed. “Actually we are. The ground of this cavity doesn’t run parallel to the outer surface of the ship, it slants down at an angle of more than sixty degrees.”

  “Yeah, but—” Owl began.

  “Dumbass,” Shorty interrupted. “Think of the corridors up near the surface. They changed the vector of gravity again here. In this ship, down is not simply down.”

  Owl and Mac didn’t respond.

  Even Jeff had trouble imagining that this huge cavity was slanting downward toward the center of the ship.

  They trudged on in the direction Joanne had indicated. They wouldn’t manage eighty miles in a day. Even if they kept up a good pace and didn’t encounter too many obstacles, they would need three full days. Or probably four, because despite his sturdy boots, Jeff’s feet were already aching from clambering across the rugged terrain.

  22.

  Jeff’s neck was aching when he woke up. He looked at his watch. He’d slept four hours since his watch. It felt more like four minutes. He yawned.

  “Here you go!”

  Joanne was standing over him with a cup of coffee.

  “Great service!” he struggled to smile.

  “You’ve been tossing and turning for the last half hour. I thought you’d wake up sooner.”

  Jeff sat up, and took the cup gratefully. He looked around. Apart from Owl, everyone was up already. Mac and Shorty were sitting a little to the side, talking in low voices. Green was fixing something on his suit. Castle was heating up his cup of coffee with the immersion heater.

  Jeff took a big gulp of the lukewarm brew. It would take a while before he felt the invigorating effect of the caffeine. “Anything to report?”

  Joanne shook her head. “Nothing,” she said. “Absolutely nothing.”

  “No sign of the light aliens?”

  Joanne shook her head. “Maybe they only exist in the area of the ship we left behind.”

  Jeff blinked in the light of the reddish sun. “Day and night don’t seem to exist here, either.”

  “No, apparently not,” Joanne said. “Eternal darkness in the other parts of the ship, and perpetual depressing reddish-gray daylight here.”

  “I’m surprised the aliens didn’t shut down these areas when they left the ship.”

  “Don’t expect me to give you an explanation.”

  Jeff shrugged. “Of course not, I’ve given up trying to understand anything about this ship.” He finished his coffee and placed the cup on the ground beside him.

  “I’ll go and wake Owl,” Joanne said.

  Jeff waved a hand. “No need, I’ll do it.”

  “OK,” she said and returned to the equipment sled, which formed the heart of the camp.

  Jeff groaned as he stood up. Every bone in his body ached. As he walked over to Owl’s sleeping bag, he looked around at the depressing landscape. The light was extremely weak. The scene resembled a dreary November day on Terra at twilight—making it all the more odd to look up and see the sun in its zenith. It was uncanny, and he had to admit that he almost preferred the depressing darkness of the wide corridors of the alien ship.

  Jeff bent down and shook Owl’s shoulder. “Wake up!” he said. “We have to get moving.”

  There was no reaction from Owl and Jeff felt a shiver run down his spine. He moved his hand to his shipmate’s neck to feel his pulse and sighed with relief when he felt a heartbeat. But Owl’s skin was very cool.

  “Owl! Wake up!” Jeff said loudly.

  Finally, Owl scrunched his eyes before slowly opening them. He looked up in silence and Jeff felt another shiver run through his body. His shipmate’s eyes were glazed, as if he had a fever or taken drugs.

  “Owl?” Jeff asked quietly. “Can you hear me?”

  Several long seconds passed. “What is it?” Owl finally asked in a toneless voice.

  “Are you OK? Do you feel all right?” Jeff wanted to know.

  What had happened to the man?

  He motioned to Joanne to come over to him, and she immediately sprang up.

  “I don’t know,” Owl whispered.

  “What do you mean?” Jeff asked.

  “I don’t know if I feel all right,” Owl asked in a strange, throaty voice. “Should I feel OK?”

  “What is it?” Joanne asked.

  Jeff stood up and whispered softly in her ear. “He seems so apathetic.”

  Joanne nodded and dropped to her knees. Jeff took a step back. She felt Owl’s carotid artery, his forehead, and shone a little flashlight into his eyes. His pupils didn’t contract.

  “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes, I can.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What don’t you know?”

  “How I feel.”

  “Are you in any pain?”

  “No.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Edward Owens, Corporal.”

  “Where are we?”

  “On the alien ship.”

  “Who am I?”

  “What kind of a dumb question is that? Can I get up now?”

  Joanne nodded, stood up and went back to Jeff.

  “And?” Jeff asked quietly, while Owl got up and searched for his belt.

  “No idea. He doesn’t have a fever and doesn’t seem to be confused, either. Maybe we woke him up from
a dream and he’s just a bit off kilter. Let’s wait and see.”

  Jeff shrugged, went back to his camping spot, picked up his sleeping back and rolled it up. He used the belt to tie it into a small bundle that he stowed on the equipment sled. He glanced around. “Where’s Castle?” he asked, when he noticed the WSO was nowhere in sight.

  “No idea,” said Shorty, who was also stuffing his sleeping bag onto the sled.

  “Joanne!” Jeff called.

  “Yes?” Joanne turned away from Mac, with whom she was immersed in a conversation.

  “Where’s Castle?”

  She hesitated. “Call of nature.”

  Jeff groaned. “Didn’t I say we should use the recycling systems in our suits? What way did he go?”

  Joanne shrugged.

  “Castle,” Jeff called. Despite the haze, there was visibility of about a mile. Castle couldn’t have gone far.

  “Castle!” he called again.

  The others stopped talking.

  “Did anyone see what direction he went?” Jeff asked but nobody answered.

  Jeff shook his head. He was upset rather than angry. Everything was falling apart. How was he supposed to lead the group if nobody listened to him?

  “Castle!” he called again as loud as he could.

  It was pointless. Joanne returned his concerned glance. “Shall we split up to search for him?”

  “No. We stick together,” Jeff replied firmly. “We’ll look for him together. We’ll circle outward from the camp.”

  “What about the equipment?” Green said, pointing at the sled. “Should we leave it here?”

  “No. We’ll take everything with us. Pack anything that’s still lying around and then we’ll leave.”

  “I’m here!”

  Jeff looked up to see Castle running down a small hill. He could feel his blood pressure rise. “Damn it, I told you we need to stick together. What should we do, if—”

  “I found something,” Castle said, gasping for breath. “Over there. You’ve got to come and see!” He pointed in the direction he had come from.

  “What did you find?” Joanne asked.

  “Come and have a look for yourselves,” he said excitedly, and started running back up the hill.

  “Mac! Shorty!” Jeff called and pointed at the equipment sled. Then he scrambled after Castle.

  When he reached the top of the hill, he saw what looked like a big trench a few feet below them. It was filled with something.

  “What is that?” Joanne asked, as she came panting up behind him.

  Castle clambered down the hill until he reached the edge of the trench. It was about three hundred feet long and sixty feet wide. Jeff joined him and peered into the hole.

  “Oh my god,” Shorty said, letting go of the handle of the sled. Mac cursed as it tipped over and some unsecured objects fell to the ground.

  Jeff squeezed his eyes shut in the hope that his imagination was playing tricks on him. But when he opened them again, he was greeted by the same sight. Bones. Whole skeletons. Hundreds of them. Thousands. It was a grave. A mass grave. The skeletons had two legs, two arms, ribs, a skull. Were these the extraterrestrial builders? There was nothing that distinguished them from human skeletons. Jeff could have sworn he was looking at a human grave.

  “The aliens?” Shorty asked quietly.

  “Who else?” Mac retorted.

  Joanne crouched down on the edge of the pit and then jumped in among the bones. The edge of the grave reached up to her chest. She bent down and lifted up one of the arms of the corpses. “Four fingers and a thumb. Exactly like a human.”

  “Any idea how old the grave is?” Jeff asked.

  Joanne stroked one of the naked skulls and finally shook her head. “No idea. I trained as a paramedic, not a coroner. It would depend on the environmental conditions, too. It’s very warm and humid here. Depending on the microfauna, it can go very quickly. I would say anything between a month and a million years.”

  “Maybe this is where the aliens buried their dead during their journey,” Shorty suggested.

  “And why did they never cover them with anything?” Castle said. “No, I think this happened after the aliens left the ship.”

  “What makes you say that?” Joanne asked.

  Castle shrugged. “Nothing. Just a feeling.”

  Joanne snorted.

  “Can you tell how they died?” Jeff asked, feeling increasingly queasy gazing into this mass grave.

  Joanne took her time examining some of the skeletons.

  “It varies,” she answered finally. “Some of them have terrible injuries. This one had his skull smashed in, that one had his chest crushed, as if he was put in a vice. But some of them don’t appear to have any injuries.”

  “So how did they die?” Jeff asked.

  Joanne shrugged. “How should I know? They might have been poisoned or gassed.”

  Jeff helped his shipmate out of the pit. “Weird that they’re just like humans …”

  “Maybe we have common ancestors,” Castle speculated.

  “Not likely,” Joanne said. “How could we have common ancestors if they come from another galaxy?”

  “Maybe the computer lied to us, like it did about almost everything else,” Mac said.

  Jeff frowned. “Come on, let’s get going,” He hoped against hope they would find answers deeper down in the ship. He swung his backpack over his shoulder and marched off. The others followed him.

  “What’s up, Owl?” Mac cajoled his shipmate. “Come on, get a move on!”

  Jeff turned around. Owl was still standing at the edge of the pit. As Jeff approached him, he turned his head and looked at Jeff with glassy eyes.

  “What is it?” Jeff asked.

  “They died,” Owl said in a completely monotone voice. “The ship killed them.”

  Jeff swallowed.

  “And we’re next,” Owl added indifferently. Then he turned around and followed the others.

  23.

  “I can’t stand another day in this depressing place,” Joanne said quietly to Jeff, taking an unenthusiastic bite from her concentrate bar.

  Jeff shrugged. What could he say?

  “I’m almost looking forward to leaving the cavity and getting back into the dark corridors.” Joanne’s eyes were red—possibly because of the terrible air in the cavity, or from lack of sleep.

  “I kind of wish we’d gone with the other option and tried our luck in space,” Joanne concluded her monologue.

  Jeff sighed. Was even Joanne losing heart? Was he the only one who wanted to carry on? No, wanted wasn’t the right word. He didn’t want to go deeper. He’d seen enough of this damn ship. But they had to go deeper. It was the only logical way out. Their last chance. They had to find something down there. Quite apart from the fact that he wouldn’t have the strength to go all the way back the way they had come. Back across this bleak and desolate terrain. Back through the same corridors of the ship, only to vegetate in their quarters with the fear of being killed at any moment. No, it wasn’t an option. And he hoped that the second cavity, which they still had to cross, would be more hospitable.

  The gloomy atmosphere was dragging them all down. Even Mac and Shorty’s open defiance had given way to resigned silence. As if this cavity were slowly but surely robbing them of their energy and free will, turning them into soulless robots. Owl was the most afflicted. He had stumbled along behind them all day without a word, without a gesture, his eyes glassy and unfocused like a zombie. And now he was just sitting there, the concentrate bar Castle had given him dangling limply and uneaten from his hand.

  “Owl? Don’t you want to eat?” Jeff asked him gently.

  His shipmate appeared not to have heard him. He looked past Jeff toward the hazy horizon, beyond which the outer wall of this cavity must lie, and which they would hopefully reach tomorrow.

  “Owl!” Jeff repeated, this time a decibel louder.

  “Yes?” Owl replied quietly, without looking at h
im.

  “Aren’t you hungry?” Jeff asked.

  As if he’d been given an order, Owl bit off a little corner of his bar and chewed slowly and mechanically.

  Jeff shook his head. He threw a glance at Joanne, but she seemed to be immersed in her own thoughts and uninterested in Owl’s state of mind.

  Jeff sighed and got up. “I’m going to sleep. Castle, Joanne, you’re on first watch.”

  Castle nodded, then rummaged around in his backpack.

  Jeff crawled into his sleeping bag, which he had already prepared before dinner, and pulled up the zipper. He closed his eyes and within a few seconds had fallen asleep.

  “Psst!” Joanne was shaking his shoulder. Jeff was wide awake within a second.

  “What is it?” he hissed.

  “Owl!”

  “What’s the problem?”

  “I don’t know exactly.” She pointed toward a small hill. Jeff sat up and saw Owl standing with his back to them. Both his arms were stretched out slightly from his body. In his left hand he was holding a long knife. It looked like it was covered in blood.

  Jeff scrambled out of his sleeping bag and together with Joanne crept over to where Mac and Shorty were already standing a few feet away from Owl.

  “For God’s sake, what are you doing?” Jeff asked.

  Mac turned around and looked at him wide-eyed. He was white as a sheet.

  “What …?” Jeff asked. He saw that something was dripping out of the front of Owl onto the ground. What was he doing? Was he vomiting?

  “Owl!” Jeff yelled. He wanted to run to his shipmate, but something stopped him. “Owl!” he yelled again.

  Owl turned round as if in slow motion.

  Jeff cried out in horror.

  “Oh my God!” Joanne whimpered.

  Mac retched.

  Shorty threw up all over his boots.

  There was a huge wound from left to right across Owl’s entire abdomen. Blood was running in thick rivulets from the wound and dripping to the ground. With every breath he took, Owl’s intestines bulged out of his abdominal cavity. One loop was already dangling in front of his crotch.

  “What are you doing?” Shorty asked hoarsely. “What have you done?”