The Dark Ship

by Phillip P. Peterson

  Jeff wanted to run over and hold his shipmate upright, but he was rooted to the spot.

  Owl’s face was completely impassive. He seemed to feel no pain, or even to notice what he was doing.

  To Jeff’s horror, he now jerked the knife up into his chest.

  “Don’t do it!” Joanne screamed.

  To Jeff’s utter amazement, Owl began to laugh. He turned to look at them. “I am now part of this ship,” he said, with a wild joy in his voice, as if he were announcing his upcoming wedding. “And you will be soon, too!” Then he thrust the knife deep into his chest.

  Within a split second, his eyes became completely clear and his face was distorted with pain.

  “What …?” he gasped. He looked down at the loops of his intestines, which had slopped down to his feet and at the knife in his hand that was still halfway inside his chest. Owl stared at his shipmates, mouth agape, eyes wide. Then he dropped to his knees, pulling the knife out of his body. The blood gushed out in a thick stream. The weapon clattered to the ground. Owl had time to scream before he fell forward and his face fit the bare rock.

  24.

  “The outer wall of the cavity is over there,” Joanne said huskily. “About one more mile.”

  Jeff nodded. The haze had cleared a little and he could see the dark-gray, vertical wall that seemed to rise never-endingly into the sky. He couldn’t yet make out any details or see an opening.

  They had been walking nearly all day. In silence. Nobody seemed able or willing to talk about Owl’s gruesome death. Jeff needed to process it himself. They had left their shipmate lying on the rocks covered in just his sleeping bag. What else could they do?

  Jeff simply couldn’t get his head around what Owl had done. Had this strange place driven him mad? Jeff remembered his dilated pupils. Had Owl secretly taken some drugs that he’d smuggled on board? Unfortunately they couldn’t do an autopsy, so they would never know.

  Jeff glanced over at Joanne, who was marching alongside him but at a slight distance. Her lips were pursed and her eyes were fixed on the wall in front of them. “What do you think happened?” he asked her tentatively.

  She shrugged.

  “Drugs?” Jeff asked.

  “Possibly,” she replied. “If we were anywhere else, I’d bet on it. A hallucinogen with a dissociative effect. Maybe phencyclidine or an overdose of ketamine. But I’m not an expert.”

  “And if it wasn’t drugs? Could he have lost his mind?”

  Joanne shook her head. “Not from one day to the next.”

  “Not even under the influence of the ship?” Jeff pointed in front of them, where the wall of the cavity reached seemingly endlessly up into the sky.

  She shook her head again. “We haven’t gone mad. No, I can’t imagine it. Yesterday he was fine.”

  “Could it happen to the rest of us?”

  Joanne didn’t answer.

  Jeff flinched. It was a nightmarish thought. To wake up in the morning completely out your mind and slit open your own stomach with a knife. He shook himself.

  This goddamn ship. What was going on? Maybe Owl had been right. Maybe they never should have come on board. But now it was too late. From now on they were closer to the core than to the outer shell.

  “There’s a ramp going along the wall,” Mac said.

  Jeff could see it, too. It was wide enough that even the Charon would have fit on it comfortably. It led to a huge gate, set into the wall, through which you could have pushed an entire building. But it was closed.

  After a few minutes the group had reached the ramp. The angle was flat enough that it required no effort to climb up. When Jeff reached the gigantic gate, he was overwhelmed by its sheer size. He had visited cathedrals on Terra that were smaller than this. The question was whether they would be able to open it.

  “There’s one of those squares on the side,” Castle said, moving past Jeff to the edge of the gate, which was clearly marked with a swath of yellow paint. He pressed it, and Jeff took a step back. But the gate didn’t budge.

  “And now?” Mac asked wearily. His voice had all its former hostility and cynicism.

  Joanne pointed to the left edge of the ramp. “I think there’s another smaller door.” She set off and Jeff followed her. She was right. There was another doorway, just big enough for a person to pass through without having to bend down. Joanne pushed the square and the door swung inward.

  “We’ve found a way in!” She waved to Castle, Green, and Shorty, who were still standing in front of the big gate.

  Jeff let the others pass, and then took a last look at the vast cavity they were about to leave behind. They would be passing through one more on their way to the center of the ship, and Jeff wondered if the same kind of scenery awaited them. They would find out soon enough. Tomorrow, hopefully. They had another thirty miles to cover.

  “Are you coming, or do you want to carry on staring into space?” Castle asked, holding the door open for Jeff.

  Jeff gave a start and turned around. Somehow it was easy to get lost in thought down here. He put it down to the weak light and gloomy atmosphere. He tried to refocus and pulled the door shut behind him.

  Joanne had already switched on her flashlight. Jeff wasn’t surprised to find they were in another airlock. It was small and only just big enough for the six remaining members of the team and their equipment sled. Suddenly there was a hissing noise, which quickly died away. No need for a big pressure equalization here, then. But unlike the airlock through which they had entered the cavity, this one was at ground level.

  Joanne easily swung open the hatch at the far end of the airlock and stepped through the opening. Jeff was the last to enter the corridor that lay on the other side. It was no more than forty feet long. At the end of the corridor was a door, and on the side wall next to it, another door. Without waiting for an order from Jeff, Joanne headed toward them. There was nowhere else to go, in any case.

  When Joanne reached the end of the corridor, she pushed on the square next to the door, but it didn’t open.

  Castle came up beside her and rapped his fist against it. There was a loud clanking noise, but it still didn’t budge. “I think the big airlock is behind this door—the one on the other side of the big gate that we couldn’t open out in the cavity.”

  Jeff hoped the other door in the corridor would open. Castle must have had the same thought, and pressed on the square. The door slid upward with a loud hissing noise.

  Warily, Castle stepped through the opening and shone his flashlight around the room. Jeff followed him.

  “This is interesting,” Shorty said, coming up behind him.

  Jeff looked up and nodded. Gray-brown rock face stretched up in every direction. Although the whole space was probably as big as a sports stadium, Jeff felt like he was in a chimney. Castle pointed his flashlight upward, but the beam of light petered out some way above them. The room must be several miles high. Most bizarre of all were the warm drops falling on his face.

  “Is this some kind of tropical shower?” Mac asked.

  Jeff stepped up to the rock face and ran his hand over the rough surface, which was completely wet. He looked up again, but closed his eyes instinctively against the drops of water.

  “I think the room is so high, the humidity in the thinner air higher up is condensing,” Castle mused.

  “Rain?” Joanne asked incredulously.

  Castle nodded.

  “Why did they even go to the effort of building cliffs in the cavity and parts of the interior of the ship? Just so they would feel at home?” Shorty wondered.

  “I reckon this ship used to be an asteroid,” said Green, who had been very quiet over the last few days.

  “What makes you say that?” Jeff asked.

  “I think the aliens took an asteroid or minor planet with a high level of iron from their system, and used that iron to help build the ship. Maybe some original parts of the asteroid were left over and simply incorporated into the structure.”
<
br />   Castle shook his head. “Why would they do that? This much rock is heavy and would have slowed them down.”

  “Maybe they wanted to take along a little bit of home,” Green shrugged.

  “Can we get out of this damn rain already?” Mac asked and started marching over to one of the doors on the other side of the chamber.

  “No,” Joanne said. “That way.” She pointed to another door. Mac grunted and changed direction. He reached the door, but waited for the others to join him before pressing the square. It slid upward.

  On the other side was a huge hall, but instead of rock, the walls here were made of a gray-blue metal. And again, the ceiling was so high it was barely visible. Jeff turned on his headlamp and let the cone of light glide along the wall. The beam didn’t reach far enough to light up the other end of the room. He shook himself. The dimensions inside this ship were beyond comprehension. Somewhere far in the distance shone a faint, red light.

  “Is that another one of those cavitys?” Mac asked.

  Joanne looked at her handheld and shook her head. “It wasn’t on the hologram, that’s for sure. It can’t have a diameter of more than a few miles, or else I’d be able to see it on the map.”

  “Which way now?” Jeff asked.

  Joanne turned in a slow circle as she looked down at her handheld, then stopped abruptly and pointed forward. “This way. After about half a mile the corridor should branch off and go down.

  “Down?” Castle asked.

  “I presume the vector of gravity will change again,” she said.

  The red light was coming from exactly the direction they were about to take. Jeff took a deep breath and set off. “Come on, let’s go.”

  Joanne, Green, and Castle trudged after him. Shorty and Mac brought up the rear with the equipment sled. They made their way through the spooky hall in silence.

  Gradually, the red light grew stronger and they could see it shining a few feet above the ground. Beneath it was a platform covered in yellow and grey stripes and surrounded by a low railing. It was big enough that they could all fit on it. Attached to the middle of the railing was a narrow box with a square. It was similar to the elevator that had taken them down to the bottom of the cavity.

  “No gravity vector change here,” Castle said laconically. “Just an ordinary elevator.”

  “What are we doing?” Shorty asked.

  Mac snorted. “What kind of a dumbass question is that? Our commander is sending us down into the abyss.”

  “Quit complaining. If the hologram is right, this will take us straight to the next cavity,” Joanne retorted. “Would you rather have walked?”

  Mac waved off her comment and helped Shorty push the equipment sled onto the platform.

  Jeff was standing a few feet in front of the elevator and regarding it critically. Could a simple construction like that really take them down sixty miles? He suddenly felt a wave of nausea wash over him, and an inner voice was whispering to him not to get into the elevator and travel into the depths.

  “Jeff?” Joanne asked. “Everything OK?”

  He rubbed his chin. “I don’t like this. The elevator I mean. We shouldn’t use it.”

  “I don’t want to get in that thing, either,” Castle agreed.

  “If it gets stuck in the shaft going down, we’re dead meat,” Mac added.

  “Let’s look for another way down,” Shorty suggested.

  “Is there another way?” Jeff asked, turning to Joanne.

  She swayed her head from side to side uncertainly while jabbing at her handheld. “A few miles further on there seems to be a corridor that also leads down. Looks a lot like the wide corridor we came down at the beginning.”

  Jeff glanced at the screen and nodded. “We’ll use the corridor, even if it means more walking.”

  “What’s that?”

  Jeff looked up. Castle was standing on the edge of the platform and pointing into the darkness. Jeff looked in the direction he was indicating but couldn’t see anything. “What are you talking about? What do you see?”

  “Turn off your lights,” Castle suddenly hissed.

  Jeff and Joanne quickly switched off their headlamps. Now only the faint red light illuminated the platform.

  Now Jeff saw it, too. There was a pale shimmer—over in the direction from which they had come.

  “Is that …?” Shorty began, but the words dried up in his mouth.

  “Yes, it is,” Jeff answered quietly. “It’s standing at the door we came through. I wonder if it’s been following us the whole time.”

  “Let’s go,” Joanne said urgently and turned in the direction of the corridor she hoped was there. But after just one step she came to an abrupt halt. “There’s another one.”

  Jeff swung around. She was right, there was one standing in the middle of the path they wanted to take.

  “And there,” Joanne was screaming now as she pointed in another direction. “We’re surrounded!”

  “Are they coming … closer?” Castle was trembling.

  It was the first time he had seen more than one of the light aliens. Were there so many of them because they were deeper down in the ship? Or had whatever was following them brought in reinforcement? The light they emitted was getting stronger. “Yup, they’re coming toward us,” Jeff said in a voice so calm he surprised himself. “Everyone on the platform. It’s our only escape route.”

  “I don’t want to go down on that thing,” Shorty whined.

  “You’re welcome to stay here …” Mac snarled.

  Jeff shoved Joanne onto the platform. Green pulled Shorty on by the arm.

  The aliens were nearing them at breakneck speed.

  “Press the button!” Jeff yelled at Castle, who was standing right next to the control panel.

  The WSO obeyed.

  Nothing happened.

  Oh God, we’ve had it!

  “Shit!”

  Then, finally, Jeff felt a faint vibration beneath his feet.

  Another railing rose out of the ground, enclosing the platform, which began to descend, slowly.

  Too slowly.

  The first light alien was already there. It came to an abrupt stop in front of the sinking platform. Mac and Castle tore their pistols out of their holsters and fired. Two fine lines traced the path of the bullets through the semi-transparent body of the strange being and then dissolved again.

  “Shit!” Shorty yelled and threw himself on the ground. Without thinking, Jeff took a step back and wondered if the creature would jump down onto the platform.

  But suddenly two door halves slid out of the wall and closed the shaft above them.

  Mac helped Shorty get up. “Damn, I thought they were going to get us that time.”

  “Did you see that?” Castle asked, his pistol still in his hand. “The bullets went straight through it.”

  “We don’t stand a chance against those creatures,” Joanne said, catching her breath. “Next time I doubt we’ll be so lucky.”

  “At least we’ve shaken them off for now.” Green was smiling with relief.

  “What’s to grin about?” Castle yelled, and stuck his weapon back in his holster.

  Gradually, Jeff felt the adrenalin drain from his body. Around them the walls slid upward and doors closed at regular intervals as they passed. Castle suspected this was to keep the air pressure in the shaft stable. Nevertheless, they progressed at a snail’s pace. If the elevator really did take them to the next cavity, Jeff estimated they would have to spend almost twelve hours on this platform. They would have to set up camp for the night here, strange a location as it was.

  After they had been traveling for a few hours, they warmed up some of the remaining cans of food with the immersion heater. Soon all they would have left was the concentrate bars. Then Jeff assigned the watches and lay down in his sleeping bag. Despite the humming and slight vibration, he had no trouble falling straight to sleep.

  25.

  “Damn it, how much further down is
this thing gonna go?” Mac asked.

  Nobody answered him. Jeff had slept, completed his watch, and slept again. The platform had been descending for over twelve hours. According to Joanne’s calculations, they’d already covered sixty miles. His shipmate picked up her handheld. “It can’t be much further. We’re approaching the end of the shaft that we thought from the map was a corridor. We should reach the bottom any minute now.”

  “And how much further to the cavity?” Castle asked.

  “Not far. A few hundred feet.”

  “And we have to cross the whole thing?”

  Joanne nodded. “Almost. About fifty miles.”

  Suddenly the platform screeched to a stop. Shorty, who was bending over the equipment sled, fell to the ground with a curse.

  “And now?” Castle asked.

  Jeff looked around. They were stuck. They were surrounded only by the metal walls of the elevator shaft.

  “Shit and damn,” Mac said. “Didn’t I say that—”

  “Shhh!” Joanne put a finger to her lip. Mac fell silent.

  Jeff heard a soft hissing noise coming from above. “Sounds like the air pressure is being adjusted again. I’m sure …”

  Suddenly one of the walls rose up into the ceiling and turned into a door.

  “There we go,” Green looked pleased. “That was much faster and more comfortable than traipsing through miles of corridors.” He stepped out of the elevator and into a long corridor with rock walls.

  Jeff followed him. The corridor was just wide enough for two people to walk along side by side. The elevator had been pleasantly cool, but down here the air was hot and humid again. Beads of sweat were already running down Jeff’s face.

  “This air is unbearable,” Mac gasped as he maneuvered the sled into the corridor.

  “Ninety-four degrees,” Joanne said crisply. “One hundred percent humidity.”

  Castle was the last to leave the elevator. “Why the hell isn’t this ship rusting away under our asses. I don’t get it.” The hatch closed behind him. Jeff felt a slight lurch in his stomach as he noticed there was no manual control next to the hatch. There was no going back. But that wasn’t the plan, in any case.