Event Horizon

by Steven E. Mcdonald

  The catwalk wove between the machines, the end invisible in the gloom.

  Ahead of her a small figure was running.

  “Den?” she called.

  The lights flickered, reddened. The low, angry hum of the machines deepened in tone, making her head hurt. She felt the sound in the pit of her stomach.

  She ran forward, came to a junction, turned wildly around, searching.

  Denny was standing a few feet away, barely visible in the dimming light.

  “Denny?” she said.

  He was standing.

  “Mommy,” he said.

  The ship had brought him here, given him this. She no longer knew whether she should laugh or cry. All she wanted was to get him out of here, make him safe.

  The lights flickered.

  She eased ahead. “You can walk,” she whispered, staring, “Denny, you can walk… oh, my baby…”

  The tears were starting now. All she could think of was Denny, of getting him out. Another few steps and she could get him out.

  “Wanna show you, Mommy,” Denny said, holding out his arms to her, just like he had held his arms out at his birthday party, “wanna show you something—”

  Another step and she could hold on to him.

  The catwalk disappeared from beneath her. Screaming, she fell, plunging down. There was nothing to grab hold of, nothing to save her. She turned over in midair, seeing the darkness of the Core, then passing it, turning again.

  She slammed into the deck in front of the Core, feeling her body bend and splinter, the pain terrible for a few moments before it faded into a general numbness. She could not move, could not feel anything. Her breath came raggedly, suffused with blood.

  “Denny,” she whispered. A pool of blood was spreading out from under her.

  Even if she was found now, she knew that nothing could be done for her. She had fallen too far, too hard, there was too much damage.

  She wished she could move.

  Twenty meters above her, she could see Denny looking down at her, clapping his hands.

  He giggled.

  Chapter Forty-three

  My ship, Weir thought, walking through the darkness. My rules.

  The Event Horizon had its hooks in his heart, he knew that. He refused to accept the possibility that his wishes could be irrational. Far from it, in fact: his desires were in accordance with those of USAC, to retrieve the ship and resolve the mystery.

  Miller was a madman, driven by a terror of the dark. He had no way of knowing what had happened here, what that bizarre log entry meant. For all Miller knew, or could know, the log entry had been an elaborate fake, hidden behind a blind of signal noise. On the basis of this, Miller was willing to destroy the Event Horizon. Billions of dollars had gone into the project, along with millions of man-hours and astonishing amounts of resources.

  He walked through the darkness of the First Containment, into the separator tube. The sections spun around him, their vibrations feeding through his body.

  He had poured his. life into this vessel, had dedicated the lives of many others to its development and construction. It would seem that the lives of its first crew had been sacrificed in the course of its maiden voyage, lost in the headlong rush of some kind of madness. The Event Horizon had been a story of blood and pain… his blood, his pain. Once she had vanished, he had been nothing, had had nothing.

  Except Claire. Once she was gone, he had become a dead man, walking through the days. One day his body would have caught up with his mind and he would simply have stopped, shutting down like an obsolete piece of equipment. USAC had not been willing to fund another grand experiment in starflight, not without knowing just why the first one had culminated in tremendous and embarrassing failure without even basic telemetry to show for it.

  He could not give them answers. They would not give him another chance. In the end it had been people like Jack Hollis who had kept him going.

  The return of the Event Horizon had been his resurrection. He was not going to walk away and die again, spending his days as a zombie until his heart ceased beating.

  He walked past an abandoned CO2 scrubber case, incurious. Let Miller do what he would….

  He passed into the Second Containment, passing an open service duct, unable to recall if he had closed up the one he had been in. Perhaps not. It did not matter, anyway, not now. What mattered now was completing the jump, proving the point.

  He walked down toward the Core.

  He stopped, staring, his mind working without formulating anything.

  “Oh no,” whispered, dismayed. “Peters….” Even in the gloom, he recognized her. She seemed to have fallen from a great height, considering the way her body was twisted. He looked up, seeing an open service access overhead, one that would have been accessible from the magnetic containment generator bay.

  He went down to her, crouched down, tried to figure out what he should do.

  Her eyes were open, black as a result of the fall, and she was not breathing.

  There was a lot of blood, a lot of damage, and he doubted that she had lived long after the impact, if she had survived the fall at all.

  Peters had been kind to him. He had no friends in this world, and he was always grateful for a little kindness here and there. She had shown him that.

  He grieved for her son, back on Earth.

  He stood up, looking down at Peters’ body, wondering if he should report this immediately, or let it pass. Miller would blame him, either way.

  “Billy,” a familiar voice whispered.

  Slowly, unwilling, he looked up.

  Claire was standing before the Core, a pale reflection with eyes of milk.

  Her hair hung around her as though immersed in water. She was naked, water dripping from her, and she was radiant with cold.

  Weir stared, his eyes widening.

  Reality blinked and time turned upon its head.

  She lay on the bed, sapped of energy, drained of vitality, unable to function any longer. She stared at the wall, she had stared at the wall for hours. He could have gotten her off the station if he had wanted, taken her down Skyhook One and into the real light of day. He was dead though, and he had no compassion for her condition because she could not have saved him from the doom imposed upon him.

  Weir looked frantically around. They were back on Daylight Station, back in his past.

  He turned back to her. “Claire,” he said, but the reaction he had hoped for was not there. He walked toward the bed, toward her. “Claire, it’s Billy. I’m home….”

  He reached out.

  Reality blinked and there was the sound of water running.

  He turned his head.

  Claire stood in the bathroom, brushing her teeth with methodical strokes.

  He glanced back at the bed, but it was empty, unmade, unwashed. He had hardly been there, working himself into a stupor as he tried to solve the mystery of the Event Horizon without the resources he needed.

  These were moments in time.

  He could not change them. He knew that, knew all of the theoretical physics behind the laws of the immutability of time. He had bent space between his hands, but time had mastered him.

  He walked toward her, reaching out.

  “I know I wasn’t there for you,” he said softly, slowly, despising this sudden flood of platitudes, hating himself with each word, angry at a universe that could be so cruel as to do this to him. “I’m sorry. I let my work come between us, but I’m here now, I’m here. If you could just let me hold you. I’ve been—”

  Reality blinked, sweeping away his words, his thoughts, sickening him in the transition. His pulse raced,, and he felt the surge of adrenaline. Time was sliding beneath him, there was no time….

  Claire sat on the closed toilet, carefully shaving her legs with his straight razor, her strokes fine and even. She had always been good at that, teasing him in the early days when he worried that she would cut herself.

  Time was moving and he was
growing frantic. If she could hear him, if he could touch her, stop her, anything…

  “Claire, please don’t do this,” he said, trying to make her hear; she carried on, oblivious. “We don’t have to stay here, we can go somewhere else.”

  Gentle stroke after gentle stroke, wanting, to look her best. He should have done this, should have said these words to her, should have taken the actions that would have made a difference. Earth was not the best place to live, but it would have been better than this. “Another place, anywhere you want to go, just don’t do this. I’ve been so—”

  Reality blinked and he swayed on his feet, trying to keep up, trying to make it stop. More water was running, a bathtub filling with steaming water.

  She sat by the tub as it filled, idly testing the water with her fingers.

  “Oh God, Claire, no!” he screamed, but she did not hear him, could not see him. He seemed to be watching through glass, unable to go far enough to have an effect. “I’m pleading with you, please, please don’t…” Tears streamed down his face. He had not known he had so much emotion in him. Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?“Not this, not again, please, I’ve been—”

  Reality blinked and his soul twisted.

  The razor touched her wrist, slid down and along. Blood flowed freely, like running water. Then the other wrist, harder this time, difficult holding the razor in the left hand, especially now.

  The razor dropped to the floor.

  Reality blinked and he was standing by the bathtub, looking down at her, her hair floating in a wreath around her pale face. The water had turned a deep shade of red. Claire was gone.

  Gone.

  He was alone.

  He fell to his knees, weeping.

  “I’ve been so alone,” he whispered, “so alone…”

  “Billy,” she said, and reality blinked.

  He looked up. Now she was standing in front of him. The Core rose behind her, a dark setting for her pale, wet body.

  He fell against her, his face burning with the radiant cold from her belly.

  Pain shook him, tumultuous and terrible. His weeping turned to enormous sobs, grief and terror mingling.

  She touched his face, her fingers burning, stroking.

  He looked up.

  “It’s all right,” she said, “it’s all right. You’ll never be alone again.

  You’re with me now, you’re with me, and I have such wonderful things to show you….”

  She touched his cheek.

  Gently, her cold fingers reached for his eyes.

  Reality blinked.

  Weir raised his hands to his eyes. His nails sank into the flesh, tearing.

  Blood streamed down his face.

  He began to scream, releasing the pain, the anguish, the terror.

  The rage.

  I am Death, the Destroyer of Worlds….

  Exultant, he was reborn.

  Chapter Forty-four

  Cooper hung head-down over the ad hoc weld on the baffle plate, making one last check for flaws. As far as he could tell, everything here was just, well, peachy. So he was a perfectionist. And Smith can kiss my happy ass, he thought.

  “Solid as a rock,” he said aloud.

  Smith, being a pain in the ass and an intrusion into the sacred space of his helmet, said, “How much longer you gonna take, Cooper? I want to get out of here.”

  Cooper sighed. Smith could be such a humorless dork at times. “Zip that shit,” he said. “I’m done. Let me secure my tools, be two minutes, tops.”

  “Roger that,” Smith said, and cut the connection.

  Shithead, Cooper thought sourly. He had better be careful what he said—in the end Smith was the one getting them home.

  Done with Cooper, Smith turned his attention to unloading CO2 scrubbers, wondering where Peters had got to. If she did not show up soon, he was going to have to go back to the Event Horizon and find her, and that was something he did not want to do.

  He saw a movement out of the corner of his eye and turned toward it.

  “Peters,” he said, “it’s about goddamn time—”

  It was Weir, not Peters. Weir had been aboard the Lewis and Clark, probably heading out here when the Captain had been calling for them to watch out for the scientist.

  Figures it would be my watch, Smith thought. He had had his fill of this mission, of that ship, and of Weir.

  Weir ducked around a corner, head down. In a moment he was into the umbilicus, moving like a madman as soon as he hit microgravity.

  “Weir, hey, Weir!” Smith shouted. “Get your ass back on board! Weir!”

  Weir ignored him, spidering up the length of the umbilicus toward the Event Horizon.

  Smith keyed his radio, furious now. He could have happily throttled Weir.

  Keeping up with the scientist was turning out to be worse than cat-herding.

  “Captain, come in….”

  Captain…”

  Smith on the radio, sounding none too happy. The tone of his voice worried Miller. He slowed from the fast jog he had been maintaining along the Event Horizon’s main corridor and found an intercom panel, keying it on.

  “Go ahead, Smith,” he said.

  “I just saw Weir messing around on the Clark,” Smith said.

  Miller sighed. What the hell is he up to now?

  Something popped and hissed nearby, and Miller turned his head to see.

  Overhead, crudely severed, stripped wires were touching an exposed electronic circuit, shorting out with a small shower of sparks. It looked as though something had been yanked roughly out of that spot.

  He shook his head, starting to turn back to the intercom.

  A small box, closer to the floor, caught his eye, the explosives symbol standing out.

  He turned to the intercom. “Smith, get out of there.”

  “Come again, Captain?” Smith sounded startled.

  “One of the explosives is missing from the corridor.” He looked up again.

  The wiring was still shorting out. “Weir could have put it on the Clark.”

  Smith took a step back, going cold. That son of a bitch!

  “Get off the Clark now and wait for me at the main airlock,” Miller said.

  “No, no, we just got her back together,” Smith moaned.

  “Get out of there now!” Miller snapped.

  You know I can’t do that, Captain, Smith thought, bolting from the airlock and racing into the Lewis and Clark. There would not be much time, but maybe there was enough. If he could get the charge out into space, away from the ship, most of the explosive force would be wasted, shrapnel being the only problem then.

  He ran into the crew quarters, trying to figure out where the scientist could have put the case, ripping open lockers and spilling their contents to the floor.

  “Where is it…?” he muttered, emptying Peters’ locker, sending her vid unit flying, not caring how much damage he did. Peters could get mad at him later. “Where is it?”

  Smith?” Miller was yelling at the intercom, but Smith was not answering him. The stupid, crazy bastard! “Smith! Fuck!” He smashed his fist into the intercom panel, then turned and ran down the corridor, heading for the airlock, heading for his ship.

  He was going to be too late, he knew it.

  Smith plowed on through the Lewis and Clark. He pulled open a storage locker, started to reach in.

  Something was beeping.

  “I gotcha!” he said, and started pulling out the contents of the locker. “I gotcha!”

  Almost ecstatic, he grabbed a duffel bag that was sitting on the floor, yanking it out. The beeping was louder, clearer. He quickly opened the bag, letting clothing fall to the floor.

  The explosive charge was nestled in the clothing like a wicked uncle’s idea of an Easter egg, a warning light on top blinking in time with the beeps. The flashing and beeping had grown more rapid in the past seconds—the charge was reaching the end of its countdown.

 
; The beeps stopped. A steady tone sounded.

  Smith sat back, closing his eyes and sighing.

  No time to prepare to—

  Miller raced into the airlock bay.

  Thunder rumbled through the air, and he screamed in negation even as the thunder faded and a wave of heat and light slammed him back into the corridor.

  Klaxons sounded and he could hear the sound of pressure doors slamming as he tried to pick himself up from the deck.

  Through the windows, white light had momentarily replaced the blue of Neptune.

  The explosion was silent in the vacuum, opening out of the Lewis and Clark’s midsection like a flower of light. The force of the blast tore the ship into two ragged pieces, the drive section spinning away with fuel trailing and flaring, the forward section beginning a slow tumble as it passed over the Event Horizon.

  Cooper clung desperately to a stanchion, praying that none of the shrapnel from the blast would puncture his suit.

  The Event Horizon receded into the distance.

  Miller walked slowly forward, staring through the airlock bay windows as pieces of his ship tumbled away. Metal shards struck the window, bounced off, leaving no more than minute scratches.

  The drive section was tumbling into Neptune’s atmosphere. He doubted it would be long before it detonated, providing that enough fuel remained.

  The nose section had tumbled past the Event Horizon and out of sight.

  His ship was dead.

  His crew was dying.

  Miller turned and walked slowly to an intercom. He keyed it, turning so that he could see the drive section falling.

  “DJ,” he said, his voice soft with his grief and rage.

  “What’s happened?” DJ said.

  “The Clark’s gone.” There was a flash of white light. The drive section was disintegrating. “Smith and Cooper are dead. It was Weir. You see him, you take him out.”

  DJ had finished tidying up in Medical, downloading the med logs and getting his equipment in shape. Now he stood by the intercom, frozen, rage slowly rising as he considered Weir’s actions.

  “Understood,” he said, finally. He was capable of killing, especially when the target was murderously insane.

  “Be careful,” Miller said.