Event Horizon

by Steven E. Mcdonald

  Weir tapped another key. If the first recording had spooked the crew of the Lewis and Clark, this one shook them to the core. It was a howl from a soul abandoned and despairing on the far edge of hell. Weir felt it in the darker recesses of his soul even now, having heard it several times.

  “Jesus,” Smith said. He looked as though the voice had cut straight through him. The other crew members, even Miller, were having a hard time staying put and listening to the playback. DJ had his head down, concentrating.

  Miller looked at Weir, intent.

  “We’re not even sure that it qualifies as language,” Weir said, as the playback ended.

  DJ looked up at him, his expression dark. “Latin.”

  Surprised, Weir raised an eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

  DJ opened his mouth again, then hesitated for a moment, almost looking inward. “I mean…” He took a deep breath. “It sounds like it might be Latin.”

  Cooper stared at DJ, disbelieving. There was no trace of his sense of humor now. “Latin? Who the fuck speaks Latin?”

  Starck looked around at Cooper, her lip curling. “No one. It’s a dead language.”

  “Mostly dead,” DJ said, his voice firm. He stared directly at Weir, who refused to flinch.

  Miller leaned forward, looking down at DJ. “Can you translate?”

  DJ licked his lips, then said to Weir, “Play that back, please.”

  Weir tapped the key again, and the voice screamed through the room. This time he tried to focus on the voice, tried to sketch words out of the electronic muck.

  “Right there,” Weir said, hearing something in the sound. “That sounds like ‘liberate me.’” He frowned, losing the thread. “I can’t make out the rest. It’s too distorted.”

  Miller leaned forward, now looking at Weir. “‘Liberate me’?”

  DJ turned to face Miller. “‘Save me.’”

  Cooper turned back to DJ, a dubious expression on his face. “From what?”

  Miller sat back, steepling his hands, his eyes on Weir. “You’re convinced the crew could still be alive?”

  “The Event Horizon only had life support for eighteen months,” Weir said, considering the possibilities. He had considered just about everything along the way, including the possibility of some kind of time distortion that might have thrown the Event Horizon seven years forward. “It seems impossible, but in light of the transmission…” He took a deep breath. He had never been able to make the math work for a time distortion. “I have to think that some endured until now.”

  Cooper looked up at Miller. Some of the playfulness was creeping back into his expressions, his voice. “Skipper, do we get hazard pay for this?”

  “You heard the tape, Coop,” Miller said. The Captain had a wry expression.

  “We’re looking for survivors.”

  The bridge was suddenly filled with the sound of a blaring alarm. Miller looked up, consulting readouts.

  “Here we go, people,” Miller said, his voice gruff. “Stations.”

  The bridge cleared as Peters, DJ, and Cooper raced back for their standard stations. Weir clambered down the bridge ladder, heading for the flight seat that had been made ready for him.

  Strapping himself in, he noted that he was almost excited. He was coming home to his ship.

  His creation.

  He smiled.

  Chapter Ten

  Lewis and Clark was closing on Neptune. Miller looked over the Heads-Up Display on the main window, squinting at the bright blue light pouring in through the thick quartz. It was easier to draw the pertinent data from his own readouts, so he turned his attention to those instead.

  Starck, also ignoring the HUD, announced, “Crossing the horizon. Optimum approach angle is fourteen degrees.”

  Miller looked over his instruments and made some quick decisions. Weir could twist space to his heart’s content, he thought, but he could never gut-fly a ship like this one. Miller was in his element, no matter how far out they were.

  Miller said, “Come around to three-three-four.”

  Scanning over his displays, he wondered what they were going to find when they met up with the Event Horizon. That gut-wrenching racket Weir had played was an indication that something strange was going on here. As far as Miller was concerned, second-guessing these situations was a bad idea, sometimes fatal. You could not set expectations and go charging into potentially deadly situations with preconceptions locked into place. You had to be flexible.

  Smith said, “Heading three-three-four.”

  Miller felt the ship shifting. “Make your approach vector negative fourteen degrees.”

  “One-four degrees,” Smith echoed, and Miller felt the ship adjusting course again. There. He could feel the thrusters moving to new positions, firing a controlled sequence of bursts that would kill some of their velocity and tighten their orbit. There was something else now—a mild vibration that traveled through the frame of the ship. They were starting to encounter the fringes of Neptune’s atmosphere and from here onward the journey could turn into quite a roller coaster ride.

  Miller watched his instruments as the Lewis and Clark continued its cautious descent. Blue light was replaced by blue-tinged gloom as methane clouds rushed by the bridge windows. The hull temperature was rising as they ploughed into the atmosphere, but the ablative shielding and heat tiles were holding up beautifully, keeping the heat away from the main body of the ship.

  Graphic images flashed and scattered across the displays, with one significant image locking into the center of the HUD. Miller scanned this new display with some satisfaction. The information in the display came from the main ID transponder for the Event Horizon, and included the ship’s registry codes and other identification.

  Smith said, “We have a lock on the Event Horizon’s navigation beacon.” He made some quick corrections, focused on his boards. At times like this, Miller would have sworn that Smith somehow fused his mind to the main piloting computer. “It’s in the upper ionosphere. We are in for some chop.”

  Some chop. There were times when Smith displayed a mastery of understatement. “Bring us in tight. Justin, how’s my ship?”

  Justin was looking from display to display, continually gathering information. He glanced up for a moment, at Miller. “Everything green on my boards, Skipper.” He turned back to his boards again as the ship shuddered, buffeted by Neptune’s outer atmosphere.

  Miller had to wonder how the Event Horizon had managed to stay aloft. As its orbit decayed into the atmosphere, the Event Horizon should have been slowed by friction, pulled down by Neptune’s gravity and torn apart before the atmospheric pressure crushed the pieces.

  Answers. They needed answers.

  “Matching speed… now,” Smith was saying. “Range to target ten thousand meters and closing.” The pilot looked up and around at Miller. He had a worried, almost fearful, expression that told Miller that Smith had been asking the same kind of questions about the Event Horizon. “Captain, this is… this is wrong.”

  Sympathetically but firmly, Miller said, “We’re all on edge, Smith. We’re a long way out.”

  Smith shook his head. Miller could read the tension in the man, watch it ripple under the skin. “That’s not it, sir. That ship was built to go faster than light… that’s just wrong.”

  Miller did not want to debate the issue or to discuss oddities and fearful symmetries. Smith was making the mistake of thinking things through. At a time like this, it could lead to disaster.

  “Keep us slow and steady,” Miller said, his voice firm. Listening to him, you might have thought he had not heard Smith.

  Smith knew differently. “Yes, sir,” he said crisply, turning back to his controls.

  Miller turned to Starck. “Starck, get on the horn, see if anyone’s listening.” He doubted there would be a response, but there were protocols to be followed here.

  Starck’s fingers flickered over her boards as her eyes took on a slightly unfocused look. “This is U.S. A
erospace command vessel Lewis and Clark hailing Event Horizon, Event Horizon, do you read? This is the Lewis and Clark hailing Event Horizon…”

  Miller shut out the sound of Starck’s voice as she did the contact mantra.

  He leaned to the side, looking down in the direction of the extra seat and Bill Weir. Give the scientist credit, the man had not budged from his position since being sent there.

  “Dr. Weir!” Miller called. Weir was in the hatchway in a flash, looking up at Miller with undisguised excitement. It made Miller feel like a fresh steak placed before a starving dinner guest. “I think you want to see this.”

  Weir clambered up the ladder and onto the flight deck, giving every impression of not noticing the shuddering of the ship as it pushed its way through the fringes of the Neptunian atmosphere. The scientist peered through the thick windows, trying to pick out his ship.

  “Where is she?” Weir said. He looked back at Miller, then at Smith.

  Without turning, Smith said, “Dead ahead, five thousand meters.”

  The Lewis and Clark shook violently and rolled sideways. Weir grabbed a stanchion and braced his feet. Starck was silent for a moment as Smith’s hands flew over the controls.

  “We’ve got some weather,” Smith muttered. The ship righted itself but continued to vibrate.

  “I noticed,” Miller said. He swallowed hard, trying to force his body to relax and quit trying to find a good place to run and hide. Surprises like that were never easy to deal with. They were fine, they were okay, Smith had it under control. “Starck, anybody home?”

  Starck looked up, shook her head. “If they are, they’re screening then-calls.” - “Range three thousand meters and closing,” Smith said.

  Weir was leaning forward, still holding on to the stanchion, peering out through the windows, trying to see past the clouds of methane crystals. “I can’t see anything.”

  Neither could Miller, who was trying the exterior cameras. The weather was thickening out there, as though trying to force them back, or into a change of course. Compounding the visual difficulties, the camera mounts were icing up as the icy clouds struck. The deicing systems were being hard-pressed to keep pace.

  “Fifteen hundred meters,” Smith said, his voice urgent. “We’re getting too close.”

  Miller looked away from his visual displays, trying to see something through the bridge windows. “Where is it?”

  Starck went over her instruments, shaking her head, punched a control, putting an animated graphic up into the HUD. “The scope is lit. It’s right in front of us.” The graphic flashed confirmation: something there, something big…

  “One thousand meters,” Smith announced. Now his voice held warning. Warning lights flashed red as a shrill beep pulsed through the bridge. The beep vibrated in Miller’s teeth and made his ears hurt.

  “Proximity warning!” Justin called.

  Weir looked back at Miller, then turned back to the window. Miller realized that he had begun to hold his breath, waiting. With an effort, he breathed out, making himself breathe normally.

  “Nine hundred, eight hundred meters, seven hundred,” Smith was saying, each word harder and harder than the last. “We’re right on top of it, sir, we’re gonna hit!”

  Starck whirled, staring at Miller, waiting for the command to helm that would get them out of there, save their asses.

  “Starck—” Miller began.

  “It should be right there,” she said, and turned to point, only to stare in shock as the clouds parted. “My God.”

  For the first time, Miller saw the Event Horizon, enormous and dark as it threatened to blot out the blue of Neptune.

  “Reverse thrusters full!” Miller yelled.

  Starck and Smith complied.

  The Lewis and Clark screamed.

  Chapter Eleven

  The ship bucked and shook, shedding velocity and changing vectors under emergency power. Weir was almost hurled forward, into the windows, but somehow managed to keep his precarious handhold on the bridge. The hull sounded in response to the thrusters, then settled.

  The Event Horizon was a dark blur as the Lewis and Clark’ shot past it, with no features instantly visible. Miller found himself trying to pick details out, but having no luck.

  They came around again, cautiously matching velocity, creeping up slowly.

  No one spoke. The proximity warning continued to beep.

  The Event Horizon could easily have swallowed the Lewis and Clark, taken it in without anyone noticing it. Weir and his team had created something that was more Gothic monstrosity than spacecraft, a thing of arching girders and strange angles, of darkness and depth that the naked eye and unaided mind could not estimate. The clouds had swirled away around the starship, leaving it at the eye of the storm, but this did not aid in perception.

  Miller stared into this darkness and felt cold. He had never felt cold in space before. He let his chair down, unbuckled, stepped onto the deck so that he could go forward.

  “There she is,” Weir said, pride in his voice. Daddy’s little girl is out there, Miller thought.

  Smith shook his head, his expression unreadable to Miller. “Can we go home now, please?”

  Justin had gotten himself into a position to see the Event Horizon. He stared for a few moments, his mouth working. Finally, he said, “Jesus, that is one big ugly fat fucker.” Miller raised an eyebrow at this uncharacteristic announcement.

  “She’s not ugly,” Weir said. His voice held an angry warning tone, a father protecting his child. Miller was not sure that he liked that tone, but he understood it.

  He stepped forward, leaning over Smith like a dark spectral presence. He had had enough of that damned proximity alarm now. He reached down and punched the defeat switch, silencing it.

  “Range five hundred meters and holding,” Smith said, coming back to business abruptly, a sign of respect for Miller looming over his shoulder.

  “Turbulence is dropping off.”

  Starck’s fingers were dancing over her board. “Picking up magnetic interference. It’s playing hell with the IMUs.”

  “Switch over to the trackers,” Miller said. Starck’s fingers flew again, and readouts changed. He turned to look at Smith. “Smith, you up for a flyby?”

  “Love to,” Smith said, using his least convincing tone of voice.

  Smith’s hands moved over the controls. The Lewis and Clark eased into motion, nudged along by gentle taps of the thrusters. Miller could feel the bursts through his fingers, through his feet, could feel the pulse of the ship and know when there was something wrong.

  They came up under the Event Horizon, looking into the belly of the beast.

  Seeing this craft was providing Miller with a different perspective on Bill Weir. He suspected that someone had had the idea to make the ship large and comfortable, a workplace, for interstellar crews who might spend a great deal of time researching newly discovered worlds.

  To Miller’s eyes, the Event Horizon was a dark Industrial Revolution monstrosity, the future as envisioned by Ste-phenson and Brunei, wrought from iron and powered by coal, a foul juggernaut tearing the heavens apart and polluting the remnants with its effluvium. This was not a ship that was easy to knock down.

  Smith concentrated on his controls, using the displays where needed, refusing to look at the ship they were passing.

  “Look at the size of that thing,” Starck muttered.

  Weir moved forward, leaning over Smith and Starck, ignoring Smith’s warning glare. “Can we move in closer?”

  “Any closer and we’re gonna need a rubber,” Smith growled.

  Miller’s eyes narrowed. It was time to face the beast. They had a job to do here. “Do it,” he said.

  Smith frowned angrily. His hands floated over the controls.

  Another course change, a bit more abrupt than required. The Lewis and Clark drifted in towards the Event Horizon, falling into shadow. Miller felt the cold creep into him again, and he wondered what they were g
etting themselves into here.

  Something spherical loomed within the shadows, in the heart of the starship. An arm jutted from the sphere, covered in small pods, dishes and antenna elements.

  Weir leaned forward, focusing, pointing. “There’s the main airlock. We can dock there.”

  Miller pulled his attention away from the spherical structure and turned to Smith. “Smith, use the arm and lock us onto that antenna cluster.”

  Smith nodded. He flicked controls, switching his monitors over to a view from the main camera on the Lewis and Clark’s boom arm. Cautiously, he nudged the salvage ship in toward the airlock, killing excess velocity with little blips on the thrusters.

  Slipping his right hand into a waldo glove, Smith extended the boom towards the Event Horizon. Miller watched over Smith’s shoulder, intent on the pilot’s work. Weir, in the meantime, was watching out of the main windows, trying to pick out the details.

  Floating the arm by the antenna cluster, Smith spread his fingers in the glove. The end of the boom spread open like a flower, the mechanical hand spreading wide. Carefully, Smith floated the hand in towards his target, touched it.

  His hand closed in the glove. On the monitor, the mechanical fingers closed around the main part of the antenna cluster, buckling it.

  “Be careful,” Weir said, turning to Smith. “It’s not a load-bearing structure.”

  Smith slipped his hand from the waldo glove and looked up at Weir, his expression dismissive. “It is now.” He turned to Miller, the attitude vanishing. “Locked in, sir.”

  Miller nodded, turned his head. “Starck, give me a read.”

  Starck’s displays lit, flashed with data, stopping and starting at Starck’s tapped-in commands. He liked it a lot when his crew was efficient and smart.

  “The reactor’s still hot,” Starck said, looking over her screens. “We’ve got several small radiation sources, leaks, probably. Nothing serious.”

  Miller tried to make sense of the displays himself, but the angle was wrong and all he got was a strained neck muscle. “Do they have pressure?”