by Chris Keith
Outside the room, Sutcliffe had seen a large, stainless steel pot tucked into the corner of a work station and one of the prep tables. He collected it, brought it back and began stuffing the pot full of tins with as many as he could manage. He carted a fair amount that first trip, going from station to station, ascending the door bridge where he put the pot down and, on his knees, peered through the entrance with the missing door for a view of the restaurant and two life-rafts knocking into each other in the ocean currents. Picking out a tin, he threw underarm and the tin somersaulted through the air, hitting the life-raft, the airless floor cushioning the impact. And that was how he built his collection, launching one after another into the raft, losing some, gaining most. It was an exhaustive process and by the time he had drained the pantry and filled the life-raft, he’d made almost fifty trips.
Outside, darkness encompassed the ship. Exhausted after the long day’s labour, Sutcliffe descended the anchor chain, but his body gave in and he lost his concentration, then lost his grip, falling into the dark water. He twitched and thrashed, the life-jackets yanking him back to the surface in a rush of bubbles and he swung his arms frantically through the water towards the life-rafts.
Hauling himself into the front life-raft, he rested a few minutes to recuperate his burning muscles. He could have stayed there all night, but the thought of his crew starving and worrying about him kept him going. He disconnected the anchor from the life-raft and cut the securing line from the support beam with the safety-knife.
Rowing the rafts out of the ship, the food trailing behind, he headed out of the restaurant. The second raft was extremely heavy in the water as he backed the rafts away from the ship and turned out into the Atlantic Ocean.
Into his mouthpiece he spoke. “Trev, you alright?”
But that time, Gable didn’t respond.
“Trev, this is Brad. Everything alright?”
Again, no response.
Using the nose of the cruise ship as a compass to direct him home, he rowed with all his power towards the dark horizon where glowing fire light guided him in. Finally, when he could faintly make out the beach, he rolled out of the life-raft and waded the last few feet to shore. Hauling the rafts up onto the beach as the crashing waves broke into them, he flopped to the sand, switched off his headlamps and on his back stared up at the black sky. It had taken him almost half a day, but now the crew had enough food and drink for a year.
Part 4
Chapter 25
The weather had turned unseasonably cold. A thick frost smothered the scalded land. The sky was growing darker and Trev Gable didn’t feel that he could be more frightened than he was right then. Panic-stricken, skirting the edge of tears, a sweat broke on his face and ran down his pockmarked skin. He had punched a fair distance inland and thought that from now on it was all about survival and the tiniest mistake would cost him his life.
“Oh God!” He swore over and over as if verbalising his fear made the situation less lonesome, as if voicing the sound of his pixie-conscience helped in finding a solution for the pickle he was in. In the depths of his mind, however, he knew the likelihood of getting back to the White Room alive was slim. He wondered if there was a God looking out for him, even though he felt there probably wasn’t a God as he came from a long line of agnostics.
Gable plunged to his knees and started raking away the frost, looking for the way home. Like a baby exploring its surroundings, he crawled on his hands and knees searching for the markings of white paint he had trailed on his way. It was such a long way back to the White Room and the oxygen on his back would not keep him alive for much longer. Running used more oxygen. Panicking too. Getting up off the ground, he walked, putting a bit of pace in his stride, but before long he was jogging and then running. On his way he passed a dead tree. He hadn’t painted it so he hadn’t passed it. Or maybe he had. He couldn’t remember. Which way? His feet and the backs of his legs were aching, the pain spreading up to his waist and moving upward, and his attention was drawn to his laboured breathing.
“Why me?” he grumbled in objection. “Why me?”
Don’t come back without something to eat or drink, Sutcliffe had more or less enforced upon him. In his eyes, that made him a victim of bullying. He had been bullied into searching for food. He had been bullied all his life and he was still being bullied. He hated bullies, unable to grasp their moral values and life choices. And, frankly, he was sick of being told what to do. If he made it back to the White Room alive and empty-handed, the crew would have scores of questions for him and they would be angry with his replies. But what more could he do? It was hard enough trying to see his environment without the assistance of artificial light. In the day’s half-light, everything appeared in different shades of grey. With his oxygen low, his legs could barely carry him another step. Just like his job at F1 Mission Control Base, he was undervalued, underpaid and overworked.
He spoke into his helmet mouthpiece again. “Brad? Anyone?”
They were ignoring him.
He sat on the hard ground in a morose sulk and started to lie down when he saw a faint white mark beside him. There, a faint line trailing off to his right. The paint! He looked left at the same white line. One way led to safety, the other to certain death, but which was which? He started off left, turned, and went right, stopping again, thinking, and his final decision was left, his pace quickening with each step as the last traces of light continued to weaken. A cluster of dead trees stood in his path. Had he gone through them on his way? He couldn’t remember, but something told him that he had. Wading in and out of the trees, a breeze rustled the branches and he was convinced he had heard a noise. A second or two later, he heard it again, the growl of a wolf or maybe a large dog. The snarl spoke of something evil and spooked the life out of him. He started to run through the trees, blind and full of dread. Low hanging branches scratched at his arms like talons, impeding his escape and tall trees now appeared as angry sentinels blocking his every twist and turn. He heard the growl again and craned his head in the direction from which it came. That was when he saw it; a giant black bear rising up on its back legs, stretching to full height. He back-pedalled across a ground of twigs and brushwood that popped beneath his feet under his weight. The giant four-hundred-kilo monster raised its paw and attempted to slap him, but missed. Gable fell into a seated position as the bear kept at him, swiping the air with its sharp blades protruding from large, meaty paws. Gable scurried backwards to avoid the irate bear, his feet and hands slipping and sliding. The bear thundered after him, the ground shuddering with each footstep. Then it disappeared in the dimness and Gable thought he’d escaped with his life. But it reappeared, bigger and angrier than before, and he was about to be torn apart. He collapsed to the ground and closed his eyes with his arms pulled over his head and just laid waiting for the bear to attack, pulling limbs from his body one by one, like an insect. The ground stopped shuddering. The growling faded and when Gable opened his eyes, the bear had disappeared again. Gaining back his breath, he got up, turned and legged it out of the trees.
Reaching the other side of the woods, he bent over to catch his breath again, hoping to slow his thumping heart and, in turn, his diminishing oxygen. Staring back at the dark woods, waiting, he had a lightning-bolt moment. There hadn’t been a bear at all. He hadn’t eaten for days and, factoring in the emotional stress and fatigue, he knew his mind was beginning to play tricks on him. Contemplating his sanity, he surveyed his surroundings. The paint line had unified again with the frost, if it was there at all, and now he had no clue where he was or which way to go and night had almost settled in.
An hour passed and, in the unrelenting dark of night, he came to the top of a hill. In any direction, thick darkness clung to him, except for the glowing light from his EVA headlamps. Descending the hill, he kept moving, feeling his way with his feet. He was looking over his shoulder when he slammed into a ruined wall. One of his headlamps smashed. But he could still see that the wall b
elonged to the ruins of the Mission Control Base. Against the odds, he’d arrived back in St. Ives, feeling enormous relief. But his suit was beeping at him, his oxygen tank drying up. Time ticking by, he paced about the ruins looking for the shaft, tripped and went into a somersault. He landed face first, sprawled on his front in pain. The second headlamp broke and he was blinded. He realised that his legs hung over a ledge and presumed that below him was the elevator shaft, though he felt the descent would be insurmountable as he couldn’t move another muscle, he couldn’t see and his oxygen had just about expired. Desperate and panicking, he threw himself down the shaft, his body bending and twisting, hitting the bottom with a terrible bone-crunching thud. It was a miracle that his spacesuit didn’t tear open or that a bone never broke.
Pulling himself heavily to his feet, he limped towards the door and exploded into the room clutching at the straps on his helmet. Inside, he felt his throat constrict and he couldn’t even gasp. Never had there been a more frightening moment in his life. He battled with the helmet, trying to pull it off, the end of his life seconds away, his eyes popping from their sockets, tugging on the tendons. The catches sealed the helmet to his head until he located them and flipped them up, pulling his head out. He made a loud, gasping noise as he sucked in a large breath, saturating his blood with air. An unpleasant smell was choking the room, compounded of stale urine and something undeterminable. The air was dense and fusty, as if an acrid breeze had blown in from a nearby dumpsite some time before and had never found a way out. He breathed through his mouth and pinched his nose, calling out to the crew. Feeling his way blindly along the wall, he collided with something at his feet – empty tins judging by the sound they made. Locating a second door, he pushed through it, entering another dark room and the scent in the air changed to that of blown out candle wick. The smoke was fresh.
“Brad? Simon?”
“Welcome.”
Gable almost leapt out of his skin. The circular beam of a torch poked at his eyes, the sharp light jarring him like an electric shock. That was not what frightened him. The voice that had spoken to him he did not recognise.
Chapter 26
The Fable-1 crew spent the best part of two hours loading the food provisions into the elevator outside the White Room and in the lobby where they were stacked to the roof. Six hundred and twelve tins of food, one hundred and fifty five cans of drink, sixty bottles of water. Hennessey, Matthews and Sutcliffe had made several return trips to the beach to collect them from the raft, along with sixteen life jackets, sixteen insulation blankets and two accessory cases. A human chain from the top of the shaft to the elevator completed the transfer. Keith Burch had stayed back to rest while Faraday took care of him. Otherwise, everyone had helped. Everyone except Trev Gable.
“Maybe he got lost,” said Hennessey, closing the White Room door behind her as Faraday lit a candle.
“Maybe you shouldn’t have sent him,” Matthews added. There was hostility in his voice. Sutcliffe sensed tension in the air and Hennessey confirmed it with a disapproving shake of the head.
“I sent him because everyone else was either ill or drunk. If everyone had been well enough, I would have suggested we all go.”
Matthews glanced over his shoulder. “You obviously didn’t need our help.”
“What’s your problem, Simon? Why are you such a defeatist?”
“What’s that supposed to mean, hero?” Matthews replied with unconcealed spite and provocation.
Sutcliffe vented his irritation by throwing his arms up into the air, sensing an argument brewing, one he didn’t want to have. Spirits were low and so was patience. For everyone. Nevertheless, he knew how important it was to remain calm. So he ignored Matthews, because he was acting like an idiot, but also because his idiocy was coming from a mind and body affected by a number of detrimental factors.
“Just forget it,” he said, walking away.
For a while no one spoke, the only sound chewing jaws and satisfied grunts as the crew tucked into food long-awaited. While Faraday, Hennessey and Matthews ate, Sutcliffe drank some water and sat on the bench where he put his hands behind his neck. A sharp, throbbing pain filled his head, extinguishing his immediate hunger. No sooner had he closed his eyes than someone nudged him and sprang him awake.
“Sorry,” whispered Hennessey. “I didn’t mean to startle you. It’s about Keith.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Come and take a look.”
Burch was deep in sleep. Several insulation blankets had been placed over him and a life jacket cushioned his head. Something was wrong. His face was ghostly pale and racked with sweat. Sutcliffe peeled off his sock. All five toes were discoloured, his entire left foot pooled with blood, double in size, black as month-old marrow. It looked as though it might explode.
“The cut on the sole of his foot has become infected. I think it’s gangrene.”
Hennessey agreed.
For hours, Burch moaned, twisting beneath the blankets in despair. They had been unable to feed him and he had been sick because painkillers had upset his empty stomach. He was a victim of his own paranoia as he kept the crew awake during much of the night. Around the room were half a dozen candles casting human shadows on the wall. Faraday believed they held a spiritual air and that the warm light might help Burch to relax. It didn’t seem to be working and Matthews was becoming increasingly annoyed. There they were, confined in one room and they had to listen to that. Burch wasn’t the only one hurting. His groaning only gave Matthews a new topic to complain about. He bemoaned the harmful effect Burch was bringing to their spirits and suggested that they lock him up in one of the toilet cubicles.
Nobody agreed.
Now Matthews was wide awake and he was determined to keep everyone else awake. “You know, there were people in the world that chose to have healthy limbs amputated you know, just because.”
Faraday looked up. “That’s absurd, where did you hear that?”
“I saw it on a documentary a long time ago. Some people went through life wanting to lose a leg or an arm. Many of them were filled with guilt from a young age after knowing an amputee. They said they wouldn’t feel like themselves without an amputation. Absolutely obsessed.”
Hennessey had been unable to get Burch and his terrible injury out of her head all night, knowing where it was leading him and she’d heard enough on the topic of amputations. She didn’t think she could listen to it any longer, so she went to the other side of the room to escape the zone of conversation. Matthews detected her acrimony and watched as she turned her back on the group. There was still something about her bothering him. A few times he had thought about it, but the opportunity to air his suspicions hadn’t arisen. Now, he felt, was an opportunity.
“You know, something about you Jen doesn’t add up,” he called out across the room.
“What are you talking about?” she shouted back.
“Why were you really assigned to Fable-1?”
Hennessey was quiet. Everyone thought Matthews was out of line, but they were interested to see where the conversation was heading.
“To launch Chandra II, originally, why else?”
“I don’t buy it. Chandra II could have easily been launched from the ground. NASA has done space balloons before. You didn’t need to be on our balloon to launch it.”
His words got the group thinking. Now they were all listening alertly as he continued. “Here’s what I think. NASA wanted a research pilot, i.e. you, not just to launch experiments, but to do research on our balloon and the flight into space in the hope of obtaining information for its own commercial space ballooning venture. NASA knew we were considering tourist flights and didn’t want us to be the first in the world to make space tourism a reality. It’s the old Russia-versus-America space race all over again. Am I right?”
She shook her head. “Think what you like, Simon, I don’t give a damn.”
“Just what I thought,” he said.
“If it h
elps you sleep at night.”
Oh, she was good, he thought. She was quite outstanding. She had everyone in the room fooled. Everyone but him. He had sussed her out a long time ago. The ever-present accretion of suspicion had hardened into fact.
“I knew it. She’s a fucking spy.”
Sutcliffe looked quizzically at Hennessey, hoping Matthews’ accusation held no truth. At the same time, he knew how important keeping the peace was because sometimes conflicts that were not resolved quickly were not resolved at all. Everyone was quiet, including Burch, at last. Whether or not that was a good thing could only be determined by slapping two fingers on his pulse, which Faraday did every so often. The peace in the room was bliss. The night had been long and distressing and all anyone wanted to do was sleep on fed stomachs beneath warm blankets. Now that Burch was sleeping, it was possible.
“At first light, I’m going out to look for Trev,” announced Faraday. With all the attention on Burch and his misery, she got the impression nobody had given Gable a second thought.
“I’ll come with you,” said Matthews. “I don’t feel like sharing this room with a spy right now.”
Faraday went around the room blowing out the candles. She paused on the last one, confirming the bearings of her bed before blowing out the flame, the light gone in an instant. Stepping carefully towards her bed, she nestled herself beneath her insulation blankets and pressed her head into the life jacket, the closest thing to a bed in ages.
It was about ten seconds later when they heard the disturbing scream, a sickening human noise. The blood-curdling shrieks were coming from Burch, as though he was trying to exorcise every morsel of evil from within his body. Matthews shakily retrieved his lighter and relit one of the candles. The room grew lighter and, steadily, the screams faded. What had just happened to him? They were all hesitant to attend to him, all except Faraday who was already kneeling by his side. “What is it, Keith?”