Derelict

by Albert Berg

to Mars with no crew? It's not like it would save them much money, and it's taking a big risk. Even today, some computer systems fail on the orbital approach. Pilots have to be there to counter those kinds of failures. It's insurance pure and simple."

  "I'm not arguing any particular point sir," Henderson said. "I just think we should try to think outside the box."

  "Well keep trying," Warrick said. "In the mean time, lets keep moving. There's still a lot of ground to cover. Maybe we'll find some clue that will explain all this."

  "Yeah," Jones said. "We'll be like the Hardy Boys. In Space!"

  Warrick glowered at him and continued down the corridor, but before they had gone more than a hundred feet their lights played over a solid gray wall up ahead. A dead end.

  "Shouldn't this keep going?" Warrick asked Henderson when they reached the wall.

  "That's what the schematic says."

  "Yeah, because that's been so reliable up till now," Jones said.

  "Is it your mission in life to be an annoyance?" Warrick snapped. "If you don't have anything constructive to say then keep your mouth shut!"

  Jones took a step back, and seemed to have been genuinely surprised by the outburst. "Didn't mean anything by it," he muttered.

  "According to my records, this hallway should extend through the engine room into the control area," Henderson said. He paused as if waiting for some kind of response, then said, "I'm not sure what's wrong."

  Warrick looked at the metal barrier in their way willing it to give up its secrets with no effect. "Alright," he said. "I've seen enough. We're getting out of here."

  "What about the mission?" Henderson asked.

  Warrick shook his head. "Forget the mission," he said. "We were told to find out what happened here, but none of the intelligence we were given makes any sense. I smell a rat in this pie somewhere, and I'm not jumping through any more hoops without all the information." And, he added to himself, this place is really starting to scare me.

  On the way back down the corridor Warrick looked at the long rows of identical doors and shuddered. There was something alien in all that uniformity, something unnatural. He found himself wishing he could see a tree or a rock or anything without crisply defined angles. He yearned for chaos.

  This is getting ridiculous.

  He had thought that it would only take a few minutes to retrace their steps. On the way in, they had stopped to look in nearly every one of the doors hoping to find some clue to unravel this maze of a mystery. Surely the trip back should be shorter.

  It wasn't.

  With each passing step Warrick fought the terror growing within himself. He thought about asking Henderson to check the schematics again, but he stopped himself. He kept silence, because this time he did not want to be the one to point out the awful absurdity of their situation. He knew what he was thinking. But to put such thoughts into words....unthinkable. So he clung to a single shining thought, in much the same manner that a drowning man might clutch at a single straw floating above him in the murky depths. There has to be some reasonable explanation.

  A few minutes later they came to another dead end.

  They stood looking at the grey featureless wall of metal, and this time none of them dared to speak.

  It's a trick, Warrick thought. It has to be.

  The thought gave him new inspiration. "It's some kind of test," he murmured.

  Jones's gaze snapped away from the wall toward Warrick. "Test? What kind of test?"

  "Psychological," Warrick said. "I think."

  Henderson nodded. "It might make sense."

  "With all due respect to the both of you, that's insane."

  "Yes," Warrick mused. "Insane. That's exactly the idea."

  "They're trying to push us to some kind of breaking point," Henderson said. "They try taking away the normal bounds of reality, and see how we handle it, as individuals and as a team."

  "Rats in a maze," Warrick added. "That's what we are."

  Jones shook his head. "Uh uh. I'm not buying it."

  "Why not? It's the only idea that makes sense."

  "Because it doesn't make sense. Sure, if we were planet-side, then maybe I'd buy into it. But we're in orbit. We've been on customs duty for three months. You can't fake that." He paused then when on. "There's too much. Don't you see? If they were going to do an experiment like this it wouldn't be in orbit. The cost alone...well it's too much. Don't get me wrong. I'm as cynical as the next man, and about twice as ugly, but I don't see how any of this fits."Warrick knew that for once at least, Jones had a point, but he didn't want to admit it. He couldn't admit it. Because such an admission would force other, less conventional lines of thought. He tried not to think of half eaten eggs with steam still rising off of them in the dining room of a weirdly deserted ship.

  "It's the only thing that makes sense," he said again, though this time it was more to himself than anyone else.

  "We need a plan," Henderson said. "Whatever this is, we need to know what we're doing next."

  Warrick banged against the wall in front of them with his knuckles. He guessed the barrier was at least an inch thick and possibly much more than that. "Well we're not getting through here," he said. "Which leaves us with only one other option. We go back."

  "You know I hate to be the negative one in the group," Jones said, "but if you're right. If we're really in some kind of weird test, shouldn't we like, you know, not do the most predictable possible thing we can think of?"

  "Do you have a better idea?" Warrick asked. "You want to try to break through that wall with your fists? Be my guest."

  "I'm not saying that," Jones said. "I just don't like feeling like I'm being pushed around. That's how this feels."

  "If you want to stick around here, then fine," Warrick said. "I'm going back. The faster we run this maze the sooner we find the cheese at the center."

  He started back down the hallway, not bothering to look behind him, but he heard Jones mutter, "Yeah, but what if it's not cheese we find?"

  They passed down the long hallway for the third time, but now Warrick walked as if he had a purpose. At least now he had a handle on this thing. The straw he was clutching at had grown into a full-size life preserver, and he felt a little better. We're going to be fine, he told himself. We're going to get out of here.

  He desperately wanted to get out of there.

  He was so enveloped, so immersed in niggling away at the hanging threads at the edges of his psych test theory that he nearly didn't see it. He could have walked right on by. He almost did anyway. But he did see it. He did stop.

  "That door," he said, pointing. "It's open."

  "Must have forgotten to close it," Henderson said.

  "Yeah," Warrick said. "Maybe."

  Something in his gut told him to grab the molded plastic handle and pull the door closed, begged him not to-

  But he already had. He brushed against the door ever so slightly and sent it swinging open. There was darkness beyond.

  Warrick turned his light up to the highest setting and shined it through doorway hanging open (like a mouth, he thought and wished he hadn't) but still he could see nothing.

  "How did we miss this the first time?" Henderson asked.

  "We didn't," Warrick responded. "We couldn't have."

  Jones stepped up to the doorway too, turning his own light to the highest setting, shining it into the interminable darkness. Still there was nothing but darkness stretching on and on, swallowing the high powered beams of light as if they were no more substantial than a candle flame.

  "This is not normal," Jones said.

  "What is it?" Henderson asked.

  "It's...nothing," Warrick whispered almost in shock. "Void. The ultimate abyss."

  "Wow, steady there," Jones said. "Somebody's got a poet's soul just dying to get out."

  Soul, thought Warrick. Oh yes. He could feel himself flaying apart inside. In his soul.

  "It's wrong," Warrick said. "There's no way this can be here.
"

  "Maybe it isn't," Henderson suggested.

  Warrick felt a chill that had nothing to do with temperature. "What do you mean?"

  "Maybe it's some kind of trick," Henderson said. "Like an optical illusion."

  Warrick's pounding heart calmed somewhat as he realized what Henderson was saying. "Yeah," he said. "Maybe it is. How can we test it?"

  Henderson reached into his pack and pulled out a small black case which opened to reveal a computer screen and a small detachable camera on wheels. "It's for getting into tight places," Henderson explained. "I didn't think we'd need it but..." he shrugged.

  "And you're gonna do what?" Jones asked. "Just toss it in there?"

  "No." Without another word of explanation he ducked into one of the doors on the opposite side of the corridor. Warrick's breath caught in his mouth as the door swung open, but beyond this doorway everything seemed to be completely normal. He ducked his head in and saw Henderson standing on one of the beds reaching for a long bar that was set in some brackets mounted in the wall.


  "What are you doing?" Warrick asked. "We're wasting time." He wasn't nearly ready to admit it aloud, but what he really wanted to do was get as far away from that door as possible.

  "Just a second," Henderson said. "You'll see."

  He took the bar meant for hanging clothes on, and with a roll of tape from his pack he lashed the camera to one end.

  "Why do you have it pointing back toward you?" Warrick asked.

  "If it is some kind of illusion then the odds are good we wouldn't be able to see anything more looking out with the camera then we would with the naked eye. But there's got to be something on the other side of that door, and our best chance of seeing it, barring going through ourselves of course, is to try to see what sort of structure surrounds the door itself."

  Warrick thought of telling him to stop. He wanted to say it wasn't worth it. That part of his mind that had so desperately begged him not to open the door, was still screaming, pleading with him to leave that darkness far in his wake.

  "Well let's not just sit around here talking about it," Jones said, interrupting Warrick's thoughts. "Let's see what we can see."

  Curiosity killed the cat, Warrick thought. Stupid, stupid cat.

  Henderson fiddled with the screen for a few moments, then said, "All right, I'm set. Here goes nothing." He pushed the camera out into the void.

  Warrick crowded the screen, his heart filled with a kind of morbid fascination. The terror in his heart had grown until it was a thing of its own, living out an entire separate existence from the rest of his emotions. He did not know what he would see in that screen, but whatever it was he didn't think it was likely to calm his fears.

  The image in the screen shook a little as Henderson tried to hold the bar steady. For a moment, they were only looking at themselves huddled around the tiny screen, but as the camera pushed on into the darkness they saw the truth, the whole truth, and nothing... Nothing at all.

  It wasn't possible. Warrick had thought he was prepared for the worst, but this...

  The doorway was still clearly visible in the screen, but beyond its borders...nothing. It simply hung there, against all possible reason, a single rectangle of light alone in a void of darkness.

  Warrick whispered a single, "No!" and stepped back away from the screen, turning his eyes away, unable to look at the image before him.

  Henderson on the other hand held his gaze fixed on the screen as if it were the only thing left in the world. He seemed to be trying to speak, at least Warrick saw his lips moving, but no sound emerged. He pushed the camera further out into the darkness, as if he thought that if he could find the right field of view that the horrible impossibility in front of him would resolve itself into something that made sense.

  Then Warrick saw what he was about to do, and screamed, "Henderson, no!"

  Perhaps his warning came too late. Perhaps Henderson's mind was so shut off that he could not hear. But whatever the reason, he reached out with the pole, pushing his hand into void beyond the