Nolan walked down the lowest corridor. Every thirty feet there was a small gyroscope with a coloured read-out. Each one was green: if they were red, then that meant something had shifted. Nolan made a note of each one as he did his rounds. They were all fine, just as he knew they would be.
Satisfied, he found a terminal and logged the last of his results. His job done, there was nothing left to do except relax. Only, Nolan didn't feel like relaxing. He found himself standing in front of the plexi-glass viewport once more, staring at the giant red star. Its glow made him feel even more mournful than he had before.
“Just go to bed,” he said to himself. There was no point staying awake, not today. Tomorrow—a year from now—he would wake up again and feel better. Yes, go back to bed.
Nolan sighed, then headed back to the hyper-sleep pod. The process for sleep was the reverse of the one for waking: he stripped naked, then headed into the shower for another wash. After the shower, he slipped into his dressing gown and slippers and padded through the large, empty sleeping bay towards his coffin-shaped hyper-sleep pod. He hung his dressing gown on the hook behind the pod, slipped off his slippers and slid into the waiting, sterile bed.
Nolan cursed, just at the last moment: he had forgotten his coffee cup on the captain's chair. Who knew what foul mould it would grow over the next year—but it was too late now; he was in his bed, and there wasn't anything he could do to stop the transition to hyper-sleep.
The glass lid closed over him slowly. The glass was transparent, and Nolan watched the lights flicker off as the ship went to bed with him. He waited and heard the faint hiss of sleeping gas pump into the chamber. He winced at the sound, felt a slight pang at the thought that he was sleeping his life away. But then the gas overtook him and he closed his eyes and his mouth fell slack and he was more asleep than anybody had ever slept before.
Except for the dead.
3
Nolan opened his eyes. Another day, another year. He blinked in the pristine coffin that was his bed and waited for the plexi-glass to slowly open, like a flower in spring, but the smell wasn't as sweet.
Strange dreams... Nolan groaned at the memories, but he pushed them aside. Still, they lingered—eyes looking down at him, voices in the night, the feeling of being trapped inside the coffin whilst creatures danced all around him. That horrible feeling of being awake and asleep at the same time, unable to move.
The hyper-sleep gas was supposed to prevent dreams, but nothing was ever perfect and there were times when dreams and nightmares would creep into Nolan's thoughts. The dreams were fine—once he had spent thirty years dreaming of naked women, begging for his caress. The nightmares were worse—an eternity of running through the dark, screaming as things came for him. Shapeless monsters that hid in the shadows, and whenever he looked for them they became a table or a chair or something inane, but the monsters were there, somewhere—still in the shadows.
This had been different, but it didn't matter. Nolan was awake now and the familiar noise of the ship washed over him; the hum and groan and steady shaking of the eternal reactor. The crack and pop of bulkheads heating up after being cold for so long... No, those noises weren't there. He must have taken longer to wake up than usual—hence the strange dream. The ship was already warm enough that his breath didn't hover in the air.
Nolan stood, grabbed his bath robe. He slid his feet into his slippers, and then stopped and looked down. His feet were still naked; his slippers weren't there.
“Odd,” he said to himself, and a chill ran down his spine. He could remember placing the slippers in their normal place, directly under his bath robe. He looked over towards the walls on the far side, expecting to see them there. He had read about the artificial gravity-gyroscopes, and how sometimes down was no longer down but to the side. No, his slippers weren't there.
Nolan headed for the locker room, unwilling to think about the slippers for much longer. There would be some simple explanation for it, but the bad dream lingered... Strange eyes watching him as he slept, and the dancing—how could he explain the dancing? Even as he snatched at the memories, his thoughts turned to smoke and ash in his mind. He could picture shapes singing as they moved around him, but the shape of those shapes... No, there was nothing there except a sense of unease.
“You've been alone too long,” Nolan said to himself, and he stripped naked and hurriedly stepped into the nearest shower. The hot water and steam did wonders at making him feel better, and the bad dreams gurgled down the drain along with the hot water and as soon as the steam had blown him dry, he was no longer worried.
He got dressed, and all of his clothes were as exactly as he had left them.
“You're just being forgetful,” Nolan said to his own reflection. He studied his face; he looked tired and drawn, and there were deep lines around his eyes. He knew he should take a break from hyper-sleep and spend a week or two sleeping like a human. The employee guide recommended it every hundred years, and he must be about due. Spending one more day awake would not make him feel any less lonely. “Next time,” he told himself.
Nolan headed for the observatory corridor, and it was only when he was standing next to the plexi-glass that he realised he had forgotten to make a coffee. With a groan—not because he was annoyed, but because he had a need to hear his own voice—he headed back to the galley and pressed a button on the industrial-sized coffee machine, then waited for the black liquid to be dispensed in a fresh cup. Not his usual cup: he remembered he had left that back on the bridge. It felt strange to drink coffee from a different cup; something akin to finding his mother's bra in the washing. Yes, it was clean and there was nothing wrong with it, but it just wasn't right.
There was a noise.
Nolan's head spun around so fast that his neck cracked. He stared into the shadows of the galley—the lighting didn't extend to the far reaches of the food hall, and the shadows loomed dark and sinister.
Nolan remembered his nightmares about the shapes in the dark that would chase him. They always began like this: a simple action, and then a noise that was indistinct but it had been there and then... And then Nolan would run and scream and keep running, and the shadows would always be right behind him, or sometimes even in front.
But there was nothing in the shadows. It was just a noise. Just a noise...
“Go and look,” he said to himself. He walked through the mess hall; as he walked, the lights above him flickered on to guide his way and the shadows retreated until there was nothing there but a bland bulkhead and faint specks of dust.
Nolan looked down at the dust. There were scuff marks in it. He let out a little groan and his heart twisted, just a little. Scuff marks... Caused by what? Nolan took a sip of his coffee, and he was glad that the light above him was powerful and bright. He looked behind him, to where the coffee machine was. It was painted in shadow now; the ship had sensed there was nobody there, so the light was gone. Shadows and things in the dark—and now scuff marks on the floor.
Nolan's attention returned to the scuff marks. They were recent, he could see that, but they were also small. A mouse, perhaps. A rat. Was that possible, on a ship like this? Nolan knew there wouldn't just be one rat—but he should have seen signs of vermin during his rounds. Hell, the ship should be crawling with rats if they had been on-board when he had left the dock. There was enough grain to sustain several thousand rodents for centuries, and once they finished the grain they could nibble on all manner of things.
“It has to be air currents,” he said to himself, although he could hear the lack of conviction in his voice. He stared at the scuff marks in the dust, tried hard to convince himself that they were just caused by air currents. Perhaps. There could be no other logical explanation.
Such a small thing, but it had him spooked.
Nolan finished his coffee, then hurried back to the machine to made a second one. Perhaps that was a mistake: did he need his heart racing more than it already was? No, but he needed the clarity of caff
eine, and he wasn't completely certain that he was fully awake. He felt groggy, like he had never felt before. Surely he wasn't coming down with an illness, not in a place sealed like this. Was that possible? Could there have been some contagion stored in the grain silos that had lain dormant for all these years, and he was only now catching it? What pathogens were being pumped through the air-vents? What mutations were flowing into his lungs?
“Stop it!” he told himself, and he saw his reflection in the polished-black of the coffee machine and was surprised at how reptilian he looked. Gaunt, with sharp cheekbones and a chin that jutted out aggressively. His eyes were sunken inside his forehead and his eyebrows were pressed together through tight wrinkles in his face. He looked away; he really should sleep like a human for a while. He was being drained, ever so slowly. Another few long sleeps and he would look like a mummy.
Nolan wiped snot from his nose and headed back to the observatory corridor. He didn't linger on the view today; he wasn't in the mood for beauty, and that was a shame because the ship was passing through the last remnants of an asteroid belt, and the tumbling rocks were lit up by the local star and they dazzled like fire-works. It was a view that no human had ever seen, and it remained that way as Nolan stalked down the corridor.
At least the corridor was his corridor. It felt like a teenager's bedroom, in many ways. This was where he spent the majority of his time, and he would know if there was anything wrong. It was spotless, just as he knew it would be. He could see the closed door of the bridge up ahead and he slowed his pace. A few deep breaths, some soft, empty thoughts of nothingness. Yes... The coffee and the view—ignored though it was—slowly made him feel better. There was nothing wrong with him, he was just over-tired and had the beginnings of a virus. He would sleep it off through the hyper-sleep pods and when he woke next time he would be completely healthy and then he would take two weeks to himself. He would sleep in the captain's bed—again, forbidden to a flight officer such as himself, but nobody would ever know—and perhaps even have a few drinks. It would be well-earned.
But not today: today, he had work to do.
Nolan reached the bridge and cycled open the door. He stepped inside, headed for the captain's chair. Too late, he remembered the coffee cup he had left here the last time and he groaned as he saw it smashed on the floor.
Nolan frowned.
He hadn't heard the cup drop. The floor was polished steel; the cup would have made a loud noise as it broke, but there had been silence. Nolan's frown deepened: that meant the cup had already been broken, and the liquid that was spilled by his feet had been there for some time—and that was a problem, because there was the unmistakable shape of a footprint on the steel floor.
And it was not his.
4
Nolan stared at the footprint in the coffee. He furrowed his brow and didn't move for a long time. Could the footprint have been his? No, Nolan didn't think so—it was far too small. It was a child's footprint and—importantly—it wasn't a boot print but a footprint. A naked foot.
Could I be going mad? Perhaps... Nolan didn't let his thoughts linger on that possibility for long and he stood, stared out through the view-ports of the bridge, where the vast emptiness of space stretched all around him. He hesitated for a few more moments. Countless moments. When he moved, it was like a machine: stiff, automatic, mindless. He carefully picked up the coffee cup remnants and threw them in the trash, then he wiped up the spilled coffee and the strange print in the middle of it. As he wiped, he saw that there were more footprints around the stain; they quickly disappeared into nothingness back towards the door that would exit the bridge. Nolan wiped these up, too. Satisfied, he collapsed into the captain's chair and took a moment to think.
No, they couldn't have possibly have been footprints. That was just his imagination. The air currents had blown the coffee in a strange formation, that was all. How long had he been asleep for? Long enough for the coffee to form shapes all on their own, and it was human nature to make the shapes appear like something familiar: a face, or the print of a foot. He should have taken a photo of them, and that way he would have realised just how stupid he was behaving. It was just lack of sleep—real sleep. It was making him jump at shadows.
Nolan rubbed his eyes, tried to put the thought of intruders out of his mind. It wasn't possible, of course. How would anybody have caught up to him, and why? If there was anything important in the ship's manifest, there would be more than just one lonely soul on board to watch over it. Nolan couldn't imagine pirates hunting him down just for some grain and spare parts.
And why didn't they kill him?
“Stop it,” Nolan said to himself, but almost as a whisper just in case somebody heard him. He repeated himself, louder this time: “Stop it!”
There was nobody else on-board but him.
With a sigh, Nolan tapped on the screen to run the diagnostics. Red lights flashed at him. Nolan sat up, eyes wide. Too much heat in the cargo hold; too much movement in the cargo hold; oxygen levels down twenty per cent; airlock cycle log entry; humidity levels high; blast-doors open warning; oxygen contaminant warning... The list went on and on. Nolan stared at them all, but one entry burned into the back of his retinas.
Airlock cycle log entry...
Slowly, because Nolan didn't want to know the truth, he tapped the entry and looked at the log. There were a dozen airlocks spread throughout the ship, from the large double-doored shuttle bay that he would never use, to the emergency purging blast-door that would blast all the air into space, to another ten airlocks spread throughout the ship. He worked his way through the list until he found the airlock in question. It was the closest one to him, which made him feel slightly queasy, and he wasn't sure why. The feeling was akin to finding somebody going through his dirty laundry. He would have to check it out, of course. The airlock had opened, and then half an hour later it had closed. That was all. The date was... Hell, Nolan didn't know what the date was now, but the computer knew and the response was: three months.
Nolan shivered. He felt naked, violated. Three months ago, somebody had boarded the ship and come to the bridge, stepped in his coffee, and then left.
Or were they still here?
Nolan spun around in his chair, stared into the shadows of the bridge. Everything looked as it always had. He relaxed, but only slightly. If somebody had been on board, why hadn't they woken him up? Or were they thieves? But if they were thieves, then they were very patient ones. What would they do with their cargo, and where would they take it? The nearest habituated planet was over a hundred years away. That didn't make any sense at all.
Nolan looked at the rest of the log entries. Too much humidity, too much movement. The logs showed that the disturbance was constant: whatever they had done in the cargo hold, they had made a real mess. Nolan wondered if the gravity drive had been knocked out, somehow. That would explain why things were being tossed around.
With a sigh that did little to betray his fear, Nolan stood and grabbed his checklist. He would have to check the cargo hold and find out what was going on. The gravity drive was running now, so whatever had happened back there must have been a temporary problem. If the pods needed to be re-stacked, then he would re-stack them. That was his job.
He headed out. The corridor seemed alien to him now; it was no longer his. He didn't looked out through the large window of plexi-glass as he headed down to the other end. He could feel people watching him—watching and laughing. He shuddered at the thought of it, even as he knew that it was all in his head. There was nobody watching him; there was nobody on board. Nobody but him.
Nolan reached the end of the corridor, and he consulted his checklist. He put it down, then picked it up once more and thought about the airlock warning, instead. He should check that out, just to be sure. He had to see the airlock.
Nolan headed down another set of corridors; he placed the checklist on a workbench in one of the rooms and grabbed a flashlight from the recess by the next blast-do
or. He tested the light to make sure it worked. It did.
There was a map by the blast-door, and Nolan stopped to read it even though he knew every inch of the ship. He was just delaying the inevitable, but he was fine with that. His mind was still racing through the possibilities, none of them plausible.
It occurred to him that there could have been an error in the diagnostics. Solar flares could have triggered some sensors, and interfered with the heating. He should check the external sensors for signs of trouble.
No, check the airlock, he told himself. With a sigh, he nodded to his shadow and opened the blast-door, stepped into the next section of the ship. He was careful to shut the blast-door behind him.
It was cooler in here, and there wasn't as much light. He let out a deep breath, saw it steam in front of him. So, the entire ship isn't heated, his inner monologue told him. Perhaps there really had been a solar flare, and it had only hit half the ship.
Deeper: into the ship, away from the cosy cocoon of the hyper-sleep pod. Perhaps if he went back to sleep, when he woke up again things would be different. Maybe he was still asleep... He had dreamed before, but did it feel like this? How did he know; he could never remember them when he woke up, at least not properly, only as a sense of unease and the knowledge that it had lasted for a long time. His dreams were like a book he had read as a child: he could remember reading it, and he knew what they were about, but he had no idea what it had been like at the time.
Not that it mattered: he had to keep going, whether this was a dream or not. Check the airlock, then go through the rest of the checklist—double-check everything in the cargo bay, and find out why the heating system had been running for so long. Simple stuff, it really was. Then he would sleep in a real bed for a change, and in the morning he would feel better.
Nightmare Ship: Space Exploration Thriller Page 2