Ad Astra

by Jack Campbell

  "You don't think they died heroically?"

  "I don't know. I don't know what we'll find over there. Frankly, I wish someone else was going to see. Maybe they're all sitting at their posts, after working until the end. But it could be very bad. Can you handle that if it is?"

  "Captain, contrary to Walker's beliefs, I don't think the dead can hurt us. The only thing we need to fear is what's within ourselves. I'm not afraid of what we might find."

  "Good enough." I double-checked my own seals, then led the way into the airlock. "Okay," I announced over our suit circuit as the inner hatch cycled closed, "we can see an access hatch on the outside of Odysseus. Wata's maneuvered our ship so our own airlock is opposite it. We should have a straight shot." The outer hatch popped softly, revealing Odysseus' hull stretching from right to left across our field of vision, framed on top and bottom by strips of black spangled with brilliant stars. Clearly visible against the still-bright hull of the other ship was a large rectangle which should mark the access. I fired a grapnel across, watching as it locked onto the other ship next to the access, then led the way hand-over-hand. I reached one hand out, tentatively, my suited fingers finally brushing against the metal of a ship out of legend.

  "Unbelievable," Val whispered. I turned and saw she was also gazing at the Odysseus with something born of disbelief and wonder. A moment later, she tore her eyes away to focus on the nearest portion of the hull. "This looks like the control panel," she noted, prying at a half-meter square panel. It resisted her efforts, frozen by time and space, until a tool forced it open.

  "Will that still work?" I wondered.

  Val grinned, though with tension, not humor, as she punched a series of buttons. "If not, I'll run a power cable from our ship. It looks operational, though." After a moment, I felt a lurch through the Odysseus' hull, followed by the smooth opening of the access hatch. "Bingo, Captain."

  "Thanks." I led the way again, fighting down a feeling of intruding where I shouldn't be. The clean technology of the airlock clashed incongruously with my mental vision of penetrating an ancient burial mound. Val and Doctor Ortega hung close to me as the outer hatch sealed and the airlock began compressing. My right hand swung down to caress the holster where my sidearm rested, a rarely-used weapon usually safely sealed in the ship's safe, intended more for show than action. Memory of Wata's speculation of a survivor, and what condition such a survivor's mind might be in, moved me to free the seals on the holster. My hand closed on the weapon's grip as the inner hatch swung open with a soft sigh audible on our exterior mikes.

  I'd prepared myself for a variety of sights when the interior hatch swung open, but none matched what met my eyes. An immaculate, empty passageway ran off in two directions, its dimensions obvious in the low illumination provided by glowing light fixtures at regular intervals. Occasionally, a dimmer gap showed where a fixture had failed, but otherwise the inside of the Odysseus seemed ready for inspection.

  "There's still plenty of power." I didn't attempt to hide my surprise.

  Val jerked her head to indicate aft. "They outfitted this thing with enough nuclear material to provide energy for a millennium, if it's properly rationed."

  "I read plenty of atmosphere."

  Doctor Ortega nodded, squinting at her read-outs. "Yes, Captain. Pressure is a little below standard, but not much. Unfortunately, it has a fairly high CO2 component and appears to be very stale."

  "Stale."

  "Yes. The air in this section of the Odysseus, at least, has not circulated for a very long time. I would not attempt to breath it. I also would not care to smell it."

  "Noted. We won't try."

  Ortega peered forward and aft down the passageway. "Very tidy. It appears we can rule out hysteria, panic or insanity."

  "Maybe." I reached out and began to swing forward. "Let's check the bridge."

  As I'd guessed, the large passageway led through a major bulkhead, then dead-ended at another. Following the cross-passage, empty of bodies or debris like its counterpart, my little boarding party soon reached a hatch with 'Bridge - Authorized Personnel Only' spelled out in the blocky text spaceships had inherited from their seagoing ancestors. My right hand nervously patted my side-arm even as my left punched the hatch access control.

  It cycled open with a deliberation which suggested resentment to my heightened senses. Biting my lower lip, I leaned in, taking in the entire bridge with one glance. "Empty."

  Val followed, crowding me in the access. "I thought we'd find the Captain here, for sure."

  "Me, too. This is getting spooky." All the stations were clearly labeled, making it easy to single out the Command seat. "Val, can I access the Captain's Log from here?"

  "Should be able to." She studied the controls for a moment, punched in some commands, scowled, punched some more, then smiled triumphantly. "There you are. Since there's atmosphere, I set it to normal sound playback. We should pick that up easily on our external mikes. What do you want to hear?"

  "All of it, but that'll have to wait. Give us the last entry."

  Val punched again, then waited. Moments later, the Odysseus' Captain spoke to us from the past. His voice was harsh, each grim detail coming in words spaced as steadily and heavily as the footfalls of someone headed for their execution. "Chief Engineer Kurosawa confirms our worst fears. Even though we had the means to fabricate a replacement Umbari Coil, the failure of the first Coil resulted in the destruction of the rest of the Trans-Light Drive mechanism, as well as numerous associated systems. The last month of effort, futile effort unfortunately, served only to prove that repair, to put it bluntly, is impossible. The power plant remains functional, and in a cruel irony Odysseus remains on course for our objective. Unfortunately, at the speed we are condemned to travel we will not reach that star for centuries. The same is true of any attempt to return home. Life support will not function long enough, even for a drastically reduced crew. I have called a meeting with all hands to discuss our options."

  I kept waiting for several seconds after the voice stopped, sure that it would continue. "Val, where's the rest?"

  "That's all there is," she confirmed. "Last entry, in full."

  Doctor Ortega tried to scratch her head, flinching in surprise as her gloved hand instead rebounded off her suit helmet. "I would have expected the Captain to leave some final message. Perhaps something happened during this meeting?"

  "Perhaps. Let's go."

  There's a certain consistent logic to the interior layouts of most ships. Given a need to fit a certain number of spaces with a certain number of functions within a limited area, designs usually ended up following the same relatively efficient patterns. The mess deck turned up about where I thought it should be. Unfortunately, it proved as empty as everywhere else. "Where the hell are they?" I muttered angrily. "That meeting the Captain referred to had to take place here, and he didn't leave any more log entries."

  "Apparently he chose not to," Val noted. "Captain, why don't we check some of the cabins?"

  "I guess we have to," I agreed reluctantly. "I don't mind telling you that if we don't find anybody in those, I'm going to be really upset."

  I needn't have worried. The first cabin we checked turned out to be occupied. "I never thought I'd be so happy to see dead humans."

  The bodies had been mummified in the dry, sterile environment, so that peaceful expressions were still apparent. Crossed arms rested over their upper bodies, reinforcing the impression of ancient pharaohs somehow clothed in the garb of Third Millennium space explorers. Ortega leaned over to nudge a small container floating near one bunk, bringing its label into view. "Barbiturates," she announced. "A lethal dose for each, no doubt."

  "Suicide," Val sighed. "Perhaps the best option left them." She fingered a sheaf of paper lying nearby, then smiled at me with humorless triumph. "Farewell message, right here."

  "They wrote them out?"

  "Sure," Val carefully returned the papers to their original configuration. "They had no idea
how long it might be before they were found. Any automated storage media might deteriorate in the interval, especially if power failed and let radiation sleet through the ship. But paper would last a very long time in this kind of environment."

  "That makes sense. I guess they thought it out beforehand."

  "Exactly." Val turned to leave the cabin. "No panic. No insanity. They left this life calmly. Heroically."

  "Some of them did," I agreed.

  "Some of them?"

  I pointed one finger toward the fourth bunk in the cabin. "Where's the other room mate?"

  Val stared, her thoughts running across her face too fast to read. "Perhaps at his or her work station," she finally suggested.

  "Every work station we've seen so far has been empty. But you might be right. Let's find out." We made our way from cabin to cabin, the repetitive tragedy of the vignettes within rapidly dulling our senses. Outside the last, I tried unsuccessfully to rub my neck through the helmet seal. "We're missing three bodies, people."

  "Work stations," Val repeated stubbornly.

  "That's a lot of territory to check, and we're going to do it really carefully."

  "Why?" she snapped, then bit her lip. "Sorry, Captain."

  "That's okay. I'm glad we found your great-grandfather, but it can't have been pleasant for you. Walker may be right. I don't like disturbing these people's rest."

  "Then why keep looking?" Val demanded.

  "Because the three missing crew might have decided to end it all at their work stations, or they might have changed their minds. Maybe tried to live, maybe went a little over the bend after a while. Or a lot. We don't know what they might have left behind."

  Ortega nodded. "Like the genie in the bottle. You know, in the original story the genie begged to be released but then declared his intention of killing the one who had released it. After waiting so long for rescue, it had become consumed with hatred. This could happen to a human, lost out here with no rescue ever coming."

  Val looked around slowly, eyes narrowing. "Booby-traps, maybe? A self-destruct sequence rigged to our entry?"

  "Can't rule it out. Doc, is there a quicker way to find those last three than checking every compartment and maybe tripping a bomb?"

  Ortega spread her hands in apology. "Alas, no, Captain, not with what we have. A building scanner might do, but such are designed to locate living people within collapsed structures, and in any event we do not have one." Her face brightened suddenly. "Wait! The crew might have been equipped with implants to monitor their health and locations during exploration activity. If so, the sick-bay may contain a panel allowing us to pinpoint them."

  "Great. Let's find it."

  Painted arrows beneath the ancient sign of the red cross led us to a nearby hatch. Ortega pushed confidently through, then froze in mid-push. "Captain?"

  "Yeah." The side-arm was in my hand, though I had no idea what it could do against a trap set centuries before. "What is it?"

  "We have found your missing crew." She slid carefully to one side so I could see within. The hand holding my useless weapon drifted unheeded as I stared.

  Three bodies floated within, so thin as to be almost skeletal, long strands of white hair drifting in gentle air currents. "There's circulation in here," I suddenly realized. "Val, seal the hatch!"

  Ortega moved carefully around the figures, one forefinger tracing tubes leading into shrunken limbs, then pausing to rest against one of the small cushions on the loose frameworks surrounding each body. "Silk," she announced.

  "What the hell is this?" I breathed the question. "What were they doing?"

  "Staying alive," Doctor Ortega stated. "You see? A slow, steady nutrient feed, waste removal tubes, and the bodies set within an environment of absolutely minimal strain. They have simply drifted here, conserving life as best any human body may given severely limited food supplies. This area, and probably only this area, received fresh oxygen and had CO2 scrubbed from the air. They sought to maximize the duration of their life support as well." She pointed to screens positioned above each figure's head, one still flickering with constant gray static. "Even entertainment, once. Perhaps voice activated. At some point, no doubt, the isolation and inactivity still overcame their senses. It must have been a horrible experience."

  "But why?" I moved closer, repelled and fascinated by the emaciated, drifting figures. "What was the point? Why die like this instead of with some degree of dignity?"

  "Die?" Ortega shook her finger at me. "One, yes. But the other two still live, Captain. There is respiration. There is circulation. There is brain activity. They still live."

  #

  "So that's it. Doctor Ortega says the two crew still living can't be moved by us without killing them. Accelerating or decelerating Odysseus would also kill them."

  My audience, crew and passengers again gathered in my ship, exchanged glances. "It sounds as if that would be a mercy," Garand noted stubbornly.

  "It might be," I admitted. "It might also be murder."

  "As a rule," Doctor Ortega added, "any action taken with such fragile lives must be with the aim of aiding them. Something certain to cause death instead would not be lawful. Not without their consent, and such cannot be acquired while they remain comatose."

  "So we can't move the Odysseus," one of my crew noted, "but we can still claim it, right?"

  "I guess so." I grimaced as I replied, meeting the eyes of my crew. "I'm still not sure that's the right thing to do."

  "If we don't do it, someone else will," Garand stated brusquely. "You won't be preventing harm to the derelict, you'll just be giving someone with perhaps fewer scruples the chance to rape it instead."

  "And you'll be robbing everyone on this ship of their share in the wealth that claiming this wreck will bring," one of my engineers noted, flinching as Val turned a withering glance on him.

  "The ship and crew which found the legendary Odysseus will themselves be somewhat famous," Doctor Ortega observed. "That will surely translate into some degree of wealth for those so inclined to exploit that fame."

  "That won't be any damn fortune," someone grumped.

  "Probably not," I conceded. "In any case, I don't know what choice I have. If I don't claim Odysseus, someone else will."

  "No, they won't." First Officer Watabayashi, standing in the entry, shook her head as everyone's attention focused on her. "Boss, I just finished checking something I suspected as soon as you found those two crew members. We can't claim the Odysseus, and neither we nor anyone else can loot it. Once we make our report, a government ship will come to guard it as fast as it can get here."

  "Explain, Wata. What difference do two near-corpses make?"

  "Near-corpses," she emphasized. "Don't you realize what their presence means, boss? Part of the crew of Odysseus is still alive, which means the ship was never abandoned, which means legally it's not a derelict."

  "So who's it belong to?" Val demanded.

  "I checked. The quasi-private organization which launched Odysseus went belly-up after the failure. Its assets were eventually all absorbed by its government. Hence, Odysseus belongs to that government." She bent a polite but insincere smile toward Garand. "Sorry, everybody. Legally, we have no claim, and the only money associated with Odysseus is whatever finder's fee the government might offer."

  #

  My cabin had precious little in the way of space, but it did have privacy and room for another chair. Wata sat strapped in there, gazing toward the bulkhead as if she could see through it and the Umbari distortion to where Odysseus, now far behind us, plowed with steadfast stubbornness through normal space toward her far-off destination. "What's up, boss?" she finally asked.

  "I just wanted to thank you, for finding out that Odysseus' legal status had changed, and for telling us."

  Wata smiled, shaking her head. "Thank me? Knowing is my job, and as for telling, what else was I supposed to do?"

  I grinned back, mentally at peace for the first time since we'd foun
d the lost ship. "You could have kept quiet long enough for us to pull stuff off Odysseus, enough 'souvenirs' to generate a small but tidy fortune on the black market."

  "Wrong, boss. I couldn't have kept quiet. I have friends who've died in wrecks, just like any other sailor does. I never knew those people on Odysseus, but we're brothers and sisters under the skin." Her gaze switched back to the bulkhead. "I'm glad we didn't take anything off that ship."

  "We took something." I waved toward my personal safe, ignoring Wata's sudden look of surprise and disapproval. "Val picked up the last message written by her great-grandfather. It's hers. She asked me to keep it here where it'd be safe."

  "Did you read it?"

  "No. It's not addressed to me. I did read a couple, but not that one."

  Wata hesitated, staring at me in puzzlement. "You read some?"

  "Yeah. The Captain's, because I wanted to know how he handled the worst crisis any Captain can face."

  "One isn't some."

  "No. I also read the messages left by the ones who lived."

  "So why'd they do it?" Wata shivered. "I'm going to have nightmares, boss, just thinking about what they endured."

  "Then don't think about it," I advised. "It turns out they did it partly for exactly the reason they needed to; to ensure the Odysseus wasn't legally abandoned. I guess Earth was in the midst of a fairly laissez faire period when they left, and they figured if someone didn't try to stay alive to look out for the others then all their bodies might get carved into pieces and sold for knickknacks or something."

  "Good guess."

  "That wasn't the only reason, of course." My expression shifted into admiration. "They didn't want to give up short of their goal. After calculating the resources available they figured by stretching everything to the max they might just be able to keep three people alive long enough to reach that star. They'd have to live an extraordinarily long time, but with zero strain on the bodies it might happen."

  Wata stared. "The Universe screwed them and they wanted to see if they could still beat it, eh? Tough bunch of sailors."