“Pressure?” DJ said.
Peters looked terrified. “Forty over twenty and falling.”
“He’s crashing,” DJ said, flatly.
Blood suddenly bubbled from Justin’s mouth and nose. He gasped desperately, choked, and then screamed hoarsely. Blood sprayed the airlock, spattered DJ, Peters, Miller.
“He can breathe,” DJ said, his tone ironic. “That’s good. Let’s get him to Medical, go, go!”
All three of them bent to pick up Justin, Miller not even stopping to get his helmet off.
Chapter Thirty-five
Weir sat at the gravity drive console on the bridge, listening to voices in the air and watching a phantom spin on the display in front of him. He had tried to watch Neptune, but he could not focus on the planet for very long. He could have turned his attention to scanning for the rings of debris, or trying to locate the Neptunian moons, but he had no heart for that.
Voices in the air.
DJ saying, “Intubate, pure oxygen feed, get the nitrogen out of his blood.”
Then Peters, almost frantic: “His peritoneum has ruptured.”
Miller had managed quite a rescue, it seemed, but that was what he was good at.
It was too late, Weir thought, too late in the day. He doubted that Miller was as brilliant a rescuer as they would all need. They were drowning and no one realized it.
DJ again: “One thing at a time, let’s keep him breathing. Start the drip, 15ccs fibrinogen…”
The computer model of the gateway swelled on the display before him, rendered out now, showing the hotspots and the magnetic flow. It was a live thing, breathing energy in and out, flowing from the Core at the heart of the ship.
I am Death, the Destroyer of Worlds. J. Robert Oppenheimer, quoting the Bhagavad Gita, dismayed by the explosion of one tiny atomic device… what would he have said to a power source that involved the inescapable energies of a collapsed star? The physicists have known sin, Oppenheimer had said later, only to be pilloried by a world that wanted the destructive forces without the moral boundaries.
Peters, frightened but holding that professional edge: “Christ, he’s bleeding out, pressure’s still dropping… he’s going into arrhythmia—”
They were losing one. In times past, everyone had been lost, all hands down with the ship. What was the point of fighting back, fighting to survive? The darkness swallowed everyone eventually, no matter how much they might be loved, no matter how valuable they were. In the end, the only way to deal with the darkness was on its own terms, at a dead run, giving in to that one last plunge into the unknown.
DJ, urgent: “We have to defib… clear!”
The bang of the defibrillator, the sound of a body convulsing under the power of electricity. In the end, medicine had not progressed far. The galvanic force was as much a going concern now as it had been when Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley had written Frankenstein. He with the most electron-volts wins the game.
The diagram drew him in, seeping into the empty places where his soul had once lived. A live thing, it shifted before his eyes, compelling.
Gently, a lover’s caress, he touched a switch. He felt the surge of power, the changes within the heart of the ship.
The screen cleared. Pristine text flashed up in place of the embedding diagram: Commencing gravity drive initialization process. Gravity drive will be primed for ignition in two hours.
Chapter Thirty-six
Cooper and Smith had remained outside, working as fast as possible on the Lewis and Clark. The rest, Weir included, had congregated in the Gravity Couch Bay of the Event Horizon. DJ and Peters had managed to save Justin in the finish, but it had been close.
Miller was more exhausted than he had ever been in his life.
Justin was now floating in one of the Gravity Couches, suspended in a bilious green gel. He had become a patchwork man, his body damaged as much by the work that had saved him as by the original trauma.
“We were able to stabilize him,” DJ was saying, “enough to get him into a tank. He’ll live, if we ever make it back.”
“We’ll make it,” Miller said, firmly. “Good work.” He looked at Starck.
“How long?”
“CO2 levels will become toxic in four hours,” Starck said. She looked as though she was ready to fall down at any second. He figured they all were in shock over Justin… except for Weir. Weir seemed incapable of that sort of emotional investment.
Peters was standing in front of Justin’s Gravity Couch, her face a mask of grief. Almost losing Justin was as bad for her as almost losing her son.
Miller walked over to her, slowly, hating to do this to her now, hating the fact that he could not avoid it. If they were to survive, he needed everything he could possibly accumulate.
“Peters,” he said, keeping his voice gentle, soft. She looked around at him, her eyes big, red-rimmed, still close to tears. Medical detachment could go only so far, he realized. “We need to know what happened to the last crew.
Before it happens to us.”
“I’ll get back to the log,” she said, her voice weak. She looked away from him, off into her own personal distance. She was getting the thousand-meter stare. “But on the bridge. I won’t go back into Medical.”
“Fine,” Miller said.
Peters walked away from him, leaving the Gravity Couch Bay. He wished there was something he could do for her. At the moment he was not certain that he could do anything for any of them.
Weir watched Peters leave, wondering what mission Miller had sent her on this time. He knew she had been very attached to Justin, had tended to mother the crew. It must be very difficult for her right now.
Starck, standing next to him, said, “Justin said something about ‘the dark inside me.’ What does that mean?”
Weir looked up at the tank. Justin had been interesting to contemplate from an engineering point of view, just in terms of how much damage a human body could sustain and still keep on functioning.
It was not Justin in the tank.
It was Claire, his wife. She was naked, her hair streaming around her face, dark trails flowing from her hands.
He stared, perplexed.
Without thinking, he said, “I don’t think it means anything.”
He blinked.
Justin floated in the Gravity Couch, unmoving. “You weren’t there,” Starck said.
Miller had walked over to them. Weir looked at him, suddenly uncomfortable.
“That’s right,” Miller said, looking down at Weir, unwavering. “Where were you?”
“I was on the bridge,” Weir said. The truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
Without waiting for an answer, Weir turned and walked out of the Gravity Couch Bay. He could be useful on the bridge while the minutes ticked away.
He heard footsteps behind him, following down the corridor. Angry, he turned around. Miller almost ran into him.
“I want to know what caused that noise,” Miller said, his tone dark, almost threatening. “I want to know why one of my crew tried to throw himself out of the airlock.”
Weir sighed. “Thermal changes in the hull could have caused the metal to expand and contract very suddenly, causing reverberations’—”
“That’s bullshit and you know it!” Miller shouted. He waved a finger under Weir’s nose, making the scientist step back. “You built this fucking ship and all I’ve heard from you is bullshit!”
“What do you want me to say?” Weir muttered darkly.
Miller contained himself with an effort. “You said this ship’s drive creates a gateway.”
“Yes,” Weir said, trying to keep his patience.
“To what? Where did this ship go? Where did you send it?”
“I don’t know,” Weir said. It was interesting how disarming honesty could be, considering the circumstances.
“Where has it been for the past seven years?” Miller said, his tone darkening.
If 1 had that answer, we woul
d have been here a lot sooner, Weir thought.
“I don’t know.”
Miller was losing his temper again. ” ‘I don’t know?’ You’re supposed to be the expert, and the only answer I’ve had from you is ‘I don’t know.’ ” Miller grimaced, a man trying desperately to get blood from a stone. “The ‘Other Place,’ what is that?”
“I don’t know!” Weir yelled, taking a step toward Miller. This time it was the Captain’s turn to step back. Weir got himself under control, breathing deeply of the foul air. “I don’t know. There’s a lot of things going on here that I don’t understand. Truth takes time.”
“That’s exactly what we don’t have, Doctor,” Miller said, and he brushed past Weir, heading off down the corridor toward the bridge.
Weir watched him walk away.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Miller stalked through the corridors, taking the long way around to the bridge, trying to shake off the residue of anger that lingered after his attempt to get answers from Weir. He had been furious enough to want to smack Weir silly, but had known better than to let fly. They might yet need the scientist.
Jesus Christ, Miller thought, stalking, does he have to be so goddamned useless?
There was more there, though, something he had yet to put his finger on.
Weir had changed somehow, his attitude altering, hardening. Weir was a case and a half in himself.
He reached a junction, made a left turn.
“Don’t leave me!”
The voice echoed along the corridors from somewhere in the distance. Miller turned, his skin crawling, trying to figure out the direction it had come from.
“Where are you?” he shouted.
His voice reverberated in the corridors, but the echoes were the only answer he received. He stepped backward, turning, stumbled over sections of piping on the floor.
“What do you want?” he shouted.
“Oh God, please help me!” A hollow voice, dead for these years, screaming out a plea across time.
Miller bent down, scooping up a short section of pipe, driven more by instinct than anything else. “Get out of my fucking head!” he screamed.
He hurled the pipe down the corridor he was facing, heard it clang as it hit, clattering as it bounced and rolled away.
Silence. There was an emptiness in his head now.
Miller turned, his back against the corridor wall. He felt weak, weary.
Slowly, he slid down until he was sitting.’ He hunched up, putting his head in his hands, fighting the tears, the memories, the shame.
Corrick…
Chapter Thirty-eight
The Gravity Couch Bay was deserted now, except for Justin floating in his tank. DJ walked in, went over to the tank, checked the readouts. They were going to have to figure out how to transfer Justin to the Lewis and Clark eventually. Miller was not planning to try to retrieve the Event Horizon.
“Any change?” Miller said.
DJ whirled around, surprised. Miller smiled. DJ was tough to rattle.
Miller, however, had been sitting quietly in deep shadows, trying to marshal his thoughts so he could get on with the job, whatever the job had turned into.
DJ walked toward him. “No, no change,” he said. There was a long pause.
Something was troubling DJ. “I’ve analyzed his blood samples. There’s no evidence of excessive levels of carbon dioxide. Or anything else out of the ordinary.”
Miller laughed, a cold, grim sound that he knew would transmit to DJ the depths of the defeat he felt. “Of course not. He just climbed into the airlock because he felt like it. Just one of those things.” Miller straightened up, angrily pushing against the hopelessness. “We almost lost him today. I will not lose another man.”
DJ raised an eyebrow, watching Miller carefully. “Another man?”
Miller nodded. He unzipped his flight suit slightly, reached inside, pulled out a small service medal, showed it to DJ. He had kept it with him since it had been awarded to him in a service essentially devoid of pomp and circumstance. It served as a reminder.
“Edmund Corrick,” Miller said, softly. The memories flooded in again, just as they had in the corridor. “Young guy, a lot like Justin. He was with me on the Goliath.” A laughing face, a smart-ass kid on the way to making a name for himself in the service, a bit on the skinny side. Miller had considered the kid a bit of a geek, but he liked him anyway. “Four of us had made it to the lifeboat. Corrick was still on board when the fire…”
Roaring around corners, across the deck, the bulkheads, the ceiling, a living thing that melted metal and sang with a monster’s voice…
DJ waited, silent.
“Have you ever seen fire in zero gravity?” Miller went on, suddenly. “It’s like a liquid, it slides over everything. Corrick saw the fire and froze. Just stood there screaming.” Miller swallowed, remembering, his chest hollow.
“Screaming for me to save him.”
“What did you do?”
Miller was silent, staring.
Corrick, burning, screaming. It had been an oxygen fire. Fast and hot, from nothing to destruction in the time it took to draw a breath. Had the circumstances been slightly different, there would have been no survivors of the Goliath.
Miller tried to get the words out, but it was hard, almost impossible. He had lived with this for too many years now, had thought he had the grief and rage stored away somewhere else.
He pushed against his block, determined. The truth needed to be told. “The only thing I could do,” he said, finally, letting the images play. “I shut the lifeboat hatch. I left him behind. And then the fire hit him… and he was gone.”
Crawling up Corrick’s legs, along his arms, dripping over him like hot white rain….
He could not have gone back. Those in the lifeboat would have died along with Corrick. The Board of Inquiry had commended Miller for his forthright actions in saving the others. He did not tell them the complete circumstances of Corrick’s death.
He had always wondered if he should have gone back, tried to retrieve Corrick. He knew that they would both have died, but it did not remove the guilt.
“You never told me,” DJ said.
“I never told anyone until now,” Miller said, softly. “But this ship knew, DJ. It knows about the Goliath, it “knows about Corrick. It knows our secrets.
It knows what we’re afraid of. It’s in all our heads, and I don’t know how long I can fight it.” Miller slumped, frustrated, not knowing what sort of sense he was making, if any. “Go ahead, say it. I’m losing my fucking mind.”
DJ continued watching Miller, his gaze unshakable. Damn you, Miller thought, you should be a shrink, not a trauma doc. “Maybe,” DJ said, “maybe not.”
DJ’s tone pulled Miller out of his misery for a moment, gave him the suggestion of hope. “You know something.”
DJ licked his lips. He nodded towards the Gravity Couch Bay workstation.
“I’ve… I’ve been listening to the transmission again.” DJ walked toward the workstation. Miller stood up and followed him. “And I think I made a mistake in the translation.”
“Go on,” Miller said.
DJ tapped in commands, pulling up the filtered version of the recording USAC had picked up. Partway through it, as Miller’s nerves were jangling from the unholy racket, DJ stopped the playback.
“I thought it said ‘liberate me,’” DJ said slowly. “‘Save me.’ But it’s not ‘me’… it’s ‘liberate Tu-temet.’” DJ glanced down at the console, up at Miller. “‘Save yourself.’”
Miller tried to untense, but he could not. “It’s not a distress call. It’s a warning.”
“It gets worse,” DJ said. Miller stared at him, saying nothing. How much worse could it get? “It’s very hard to make out, but listen to this final part.” DJ started the recording again, and Miller’s nerves tightened another notch. If they made it out of here, he was going to have nightmares for years to come. “Do you hear it? Right t
here.”
“Hear what?”
“The final words.” DJ hesitated for a moment, then plunged on. “They sound like ‘ex inferis.’ Inferis, the ablative case of inferi. ‘From Hell.’”
” ‘Save yourself from Hell.’ ” Miller shook his head, trying to work all of this into something coherent. “Starck’s telling me this ship is alive, now you’re saying… what are you saying? This ship is possessed?”
DJ was shaking his head. “No. I don’t… I can’t believe in that sort of thing.” He glanced at the workstation again. “But if Weir is right, this ship has passed beyond our universe, beyond reality. Who knows where it’s been…
what it’s seen.” He looked at Miller, his expression wavering, his mask starting to slip away. “And what it’s brought back with it.”
Miller had no answer for this and could find nothing to say that would make any sense. The things that had happened aboard the Event Horizon defied reason.
The intercom hissed as the circuit opened. Both Miller and DJ whirled at the sound.
“Captain Miller?” It was Cooper.
“Better be good news, Cooper,” Miller said.
“Yes, sir,” Cooper replied. There was a jovial tone to his voice. “We are ready to repressurize the Clark and get the hell out of here.”
Miller could have kissed him.
Chapter Thirty-nine
Cooper and Smith remained on station on the hull of the Lewis and Clark, keeping an eye on their patches. Miller suited up again and went down though the umbilicus, into the ship, heading for the bridge. All of the systems had been powered down, conserving energy until the repairs were complete.
Time to get on with it, Miller thought. He reached out and turned a manual valve, opening the surviving atmospheric tanks.
“All right, Cooper,” he said.
“Cross your fingers,” Cooper said, but Miller knew that was intended for Smith’s benefit.
Air arrived as a thin mist at first, fading away as the pressure increased and the air warmed up. Miller stood stock-still, watching the readout for the EVA suit’s exterior pressure sensor.
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