The Void

by Greig Beck

  Then she had it.

  The object was caught by one end in the pincers. Applause broke out in the NASA control room, but the cool and controlled language in the orbiter didn’t match it.

  “Bringing it in,” Beth said as the arm slowly retracted. She carefully folded the arm back in on itself and laid the object gently into a cradle on the payload bay floor, keeping the pincers engaged.

  The cameras zoomed in on the object and Russ squinted. There was glinting coming off some sort of crystalline structure on its surface, and the discoloration he had seen now almost looked like some sort of fluid leakage – impossible in space.

  Gerry immediately started the overhead door closing routines and then rushed to lock the object in place.

  * * *

  Commander Mitch Granger smiled and nodded at the cargo bay screen. “Atta girl.”

  The darkness of space was shut out as the bay doors gently closed. He then swiveled one of the cameras toward the object and enlarged the frame. It was longer and squatter than he expected – more pod-shaped, rather than a shard of something that had broken off. He saw the discoloration on its surface – perhaps some sort of ancient oxidation?

  A small pain began behind his eyes followed by a sound, or rather sensation, in his head akin to a soft buzz or thrumming. Stress, Mitch concluded.

  “Talk to me, Beth.”

  The mission specialist floated over to it, and held up a scanner. “It’s hot.”

  Mitch groaned. “What’s the count?” If it was too hot, they’d have to keep their damn suits on from now until they got home.

  “No, not radiation, that’s bang-on the astral background count, but I mean it’s physically hot.” She held up a hand just hovering over the object. “I can feel it right through my glove. It’s got to be 120 degrees, maybe more.”

  “Is it a stable or fluctuating heat?” Mitch’s eyes narrowed.

  He waited.

  “Huuuh? Oh, stable, for now I … I guess” Beth responded. “But, strange.” Her voice sounded dreamy, and she continued to hold her hand up before the fragment.

  Mitch leaned a little more toward his screen. “Okay, that’s close enough.”

  Gerry joined her, but just stood silently staring at the rock.

  “If the object is secure, please return to the cockpit.” Mitch cleared his throat and waited. “Gerry, Beth, can you hear me?”

  The pair ignored him; worse, he could see Beth’s hand began to move closer to the space rock.

  “Mission specialist Bethany Power, do not touch that object. Do you read?”

  There was a skittering sound from behind him and he looked over his shoulder to see the three mice going crazy in their glass tank. But that only drew his eyes to the next container, and caused his brow to deeply furrow – the giant earthworms were all up from the soil and had piled up on one side of their glass container. Also, the ants had created a mesh-like structure with their bodies. They weren’t moving, but instead were lumped against their wall that was closest to the rear hatch. It was if they were frozen, watching and waiting for something.

  Mitch turned back and licked dry lips. “Beth, this is a direct order – do not – touch – that goddamn …”

  “I just … can’t … oh-oooh, wait.” Beth seemed to crane forward.

  “Magnify Beth’s hand, times ten,” Mitch ordered. Ripley immediately complied and zeroed on Beth’s gloved hand. He saw Beth’s fingers inching closer to the sparkling fragment of asteroid.

  Mitch cursed. “Magnify, times twenty.” The screen images increased in size again. “What the …?” There seemed to be a tendril coming from a small fissure in the rock. It wavered for a moment as if testing the air, before becoming rigid as Beth’s hand approached.

  “Beth, watch out!”

  The tendril sprung forward like a piece of elastic, striking her fingertip. She screamed and pulled, back, but amazingly the tendril stuck, and then thickened, spread and continued to hang on.

  “Hey!” Gerry sprinted toward her.

  Beth screamed again, as a pulse passed through the Orlando and the cameras whited-out.

  “Shit.” Mitch unbuckled and pushed from his chair, heading fast for the rear door.

  * * *

  “What the hell?”

  Russell’s mouth dropped open as the feed from the orbiter whited out. “What just happened, people?” He swung one way then the other.

  “Lost comms, sir.” Scotty McIntyre was his right-hand man and one of his most senior ground technicians, and he, like the rest of his team, were already working furiously on communication diagnostics.

  “I can see that!” Russ backed up, looking over the banks of engineers, technicians, and programmers – all the computer screens were up, but there was no data. None at all. One after another his people sounded off – no communications – no telemetry – no topography, and then, exactly what he didn’t want to hear – Ripley’s gone dark. He ground his teeth; Ripley never went dark as she had her own isolated power source to protect against exactly this sort of thing.

  “Goddamn, talk to me people.”

  A hand gripped his forearm, and he looked down to see Anne’s ashen face. He had no answers for her.

  “Orlando’s still there.” Scott had brought up the radar image, and sure enough, it showed the elliptical lines of the shuttle still in its orbit. Russ breathed a sigh of relief. At least the orbiter was still in one piece.

  He finally breathed. “What happened, Scotty?” He looked back at the screen. “Did that damn thing we picked up just EMP us?”

  “High probability, boss.” Scotty McIntyre was running simulations, and then shook his head. “But we won’t know until the crew or Ripley tells us.” He turned in his chair. “They’ll need to reboot to bring everything back online.”

  Russ groaned. He knew even an automatic rapid reboot still took thirty minutes. We’ve just been struck deaf, dumb and blind, he thought, as he felt his stomach start to cramp. He looked at his watch – and there’s still twenty-eight minutes to go.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Cockpit, Space Shuttle Orbiter Orlando

  The images were reflected back hundreds of times in the multi-faceted compound eyes of the ant as it stared into the bay area through the door’s porthole-like window. It was the highest insect of the pyramid of tiny bodies, and its antenna twitched as it sensed for vibrations.

  Though no sound emanated through the hermetically sealed door, it could see the mouths of all three beings were open, and the tiny insect felt the vibrations from the screams right throughout the craft.

  The Orlando went dark then, and cold. The ant pyramid collapsed, and the tangled mass of bodies froze, waiting, as they drifted in space.

  CHAPTER 4

  NASA Control – Space Shuttle Orbiter Main Monitoring Room

  “Crossing into friendly airspace in three, two, one … now.”

  Scott McIntyre, senior NASA technician, continued to watch the screen before him as the blip passed over a red line indicating the Orlando space shuttle had moved out of Russian astro-territory.

  “We’re now over the Chukchee Sea, crossing the Bering Strait and coming up on Point Hope, Alaska. Co-ords are: 68°20′49″N, 166°45′47″W. We are looking good, people.”

  “Thank god. How long until reboot complete?” Russell Burrows paced, chewing his nails, sipping coffee and generally feeling like the last few hairs on his head were raining down around him like a cat shedding on furniture.

  Scott bobbed his head. “Well, if boot-up started when we suspected, then we’ve only got … fifty-eight seconds remaining, and counting down.”

  “Under a minute, Jezuz.” Russ clenched his fists and stopped before the largest of the wall data screens that was still dark. He felt it was now like a window onto the vacuum of space giving him back an empty nothingness. He unclenched his sweaty hands but then folded them under his arms, tight, and watched from under lowered brows.

  Russ glanced at Anne Peterson, w
ho stood a dozen feet away, her hands clasped before her, and he swore he could see her lips moving in silent prayer as she, too, watched and waited.

  Though Russ wasn’t much of a believer in the big head honcho in the sky, he decided, what the hell, he’d say a few words for luck as well.

  “Ten seconds,” Scott yelled without turning from his screen.

  Come on, Orlando, give me something. Russ used his teeth to nip off another corner of thumbnail.

  The room fell to tomb silence as every one of the people in the room stopped what they were doing and stared up at the large screen.

  “Three, two, one …” Scott took his hands off his keyboard and sat back. His eyes were wide as he stared.

  The panel fizzed for a few seconds, and then began to stabilize.

  “Yes! Ladies and gentlemen, we are back online.” Scott raised both fists, but then froze, his mouth hanging open.

  It was like a portal to hell – screaming, darting movement as if bodies were running blindly, knocking into things, jerking away and running again. The vision was blurred, or rather greasy, as if the camera lens was coated in something glutinous.

  Sticky string-like fibers seemed to reach for them, and were followed by more panicked screams – not just those of men and woman in fear or confusion, but rather like that of tortured souls, yelling in pain and horror from the pits of Hades itself.

  “Oh god.” Russ gulped; he couldn’t tell which of his astronauts was screaming, or even if it was a man or woman. He spun to look at Anne who went to her knees, mouth working and eyes wide and wet. He spun back to Scott.

  “Turn that down. Non-essential personnel clear the room, now.” He waved to his security detail, and then pointed back at Anne. “Help her out.”

  Russ then sprinted to the console next to Scott, as Anne straightened and brushed off any help. Anne glared, first at him, and then back at the wall screen. Tough woman, he thought as he sat down and opened communications with the Orlando.

  “Commander Mitch Granger, do you read?” Russ waited for a few more seconds, trying to hear through the hellish sounds on the shuttle cockpit. “Commander Mitch Granger, do you read me, over?”

  Russ waited a few more seconds. “Commander Mitch Granger, flight engineer Gerry Fifield, mission specialist Beth Power, do – you – read me, over?”

  The screaming continued for several more seconds before it lapsed into sobbing, then moaning, and then nothing.

  “Have we lost them?” Russ turned to Scott.

  Scott shook his head. “Comm link is strong and holding.” He eased back in his chair, and half turned to the room full of technicians. “Larry, what have you got on their PLSs?”

  Russ lifted – their Personal Life Sign should tell them something about their underlying physical state. From across the room, a brush-cut young man named Larry cleared his throat.

  “Well, we’ve still got all their signatures, but they’re …” The man looked pained. “… I dunno, different.”

  Scott’s forehead creased, and then both he and Russ turned to the technician. “What do you mean, different?”

  Larry shook his head. “Looks like they’re unconscious or maybe something even deeper; like a comatose state. Fading in and out. Doesn’t look huma—”

  “All of them?” Russ asked, feeling a knot tighten in his gut. “Have they still got atmospheric integrity?”

  “Yep, all good there.” Larry looked confused. “Even though their life signs are weak, Ripley says there’s still movement onboard.”

  “Least that’s something.” Russ got to his feet. He paced one way for a few steps and then the other. “What the hell is going on up there?” He walked closer to the large central screen, and put his hand to the microphone at his mouth. He swallowed dryly.

  “To all and any member of the Orlando crew, please come in. Over.” Russ licked his lips. “Please send a sign that you can read us, urgent. Over.” Russ knew there was a dozen ways they could communicate. Even if all the standard comms went down, they could use the cabin lights to blink out a Morse code message. He stared at the empty screen as the seconds stretched.

  “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” Russ paced again for a few moments. “We can’t wait.” He spun. “Bring them down, bring them down, right now.”

  “You got it, boss.” Scott started to type furiously, and yelled commands over one shoulder then the other. “All right people, by the books, we are going to initiate auto control.” He turned to a line of technicians behind him. “What are we over now?”

  “Nothing good right now, but we’ve got a couple of emergency drop sites in Canada, nearest being CFB Edmonton coming up – it’s a Canadian military forces base located in Sturgeon County.”

  “I know it, in Alberta,” Russ said. “I’ll alert them, and we can start a long reentry to glide on in to it.” He clapped his hands. “Ladies and gentlemen, let’s bring our astronauts home.”

  The babble of voices rose in the command center as every scientist, technician, and administrator worked rapidly at their controls. They quickly overrode Orlando’s cockpit control system and then began working directly with Ripley to initiate several gentle burns to angle the shuttle orbiter’s nose down toward the Canadian base at CFB Edmonton.

  On the large screen, there was an inbound trajectory plotted as a solid black line. The angle of descent meant that the shuttle would glide for thousands of miles, reaching speeds of Mach 2.5 on its way to the Edmonton emergency runway. It would still take hours to finally make touchdown, but Russ felt his confidence build as they had the shuttle in their control and his team had trained for this so many times he bet they could do it in their sleep.

  “Walk in the park,” Scott said.

  Russ straightened, feeling better … until the alarms started blaring.

  “What the hell, now?” Russ sprinted to Scott’s terminal.

  Scott was shaking his head. “Something’s gone wrong.”

  “You think?” Russ leaned over him, and briefly looked up at the large screen. “Hey …”

  “I know, I know, they’re way off course.” Scott grimaced. “I don’t know how, but Ripley is being overridden. Orlando has put herself into a dive – she’s going down, I mean, straight down.”

  “No, no, no, at that speed she’ll end up bug shit on a windscreen.” Russ wiped his mouth with a hand and felt nauseous.

  “Hooold it … she’s slowing.” Scott’s brow was now permanently furrowed.

  “Slowing?” Russ straightened. “Jesus Christ, there’s someone still alive in there.” Russ couldn’t think straight as the floor of the control room exploded into a chaotic melee of shouted voices and rushing people as information was sought, used, and sent. He pulled the headset back over his head, and switched it on, blanking everything else out.

  “Commander, Mitch, I don’t know if you can hear me, but you’ve got to relinquish manual control. Mitch, anyone, please, if you can hear me but can’t respond, just switch the orbiter back to auto-pilot, so we and Ripley can bring you in safely … please.”

  What the fuck is going on up there? Russ felt panic rising in his chest again. He looked back up at the screen. There was another directional line now branching away from the trajectory they had plotted into the Edmonton runway. They were pulling out of their death dive, but they were still far too steep on reentry.

  It was weird; if he had to guess, he’d say it looked like someone had detected NASA’s intrusion, and decided to break its control, and then, what? First, put the Orlando into a nosedive and destroy it and themselves? Russ wiped his brow with a sleeve, and tried to make sense of it.

  It was if they’d changed their minds and were now trying to glide the shuttle in. It didn’t make sense – it was like there was a war going on up there. He watched as the Orlando leveled out a little more.

  “Jesus.” Russ spun. “Scott, give me a destination, ASAP. Put it up on screen.”

  His friend’s hands flew, and then up went an extrapolated vector repres
ented as a dotted line. It ended at a point on the map way up in Alaska.

  “Hooooly shit.” Russ put a hand to his forehead and blinked for a few moments allowing his mind to catch up. “We, we need to be there.” Russ snatched up a phone, and held it away from his mouth for a moment. “I’m taking charge of this personally. “

  Scott stood. “Count me in.”

  Russ nodded. “We need a rescue and recovery plan. And we need to leave, like, now.”

  CHAPTER 5

  Senate Building, Kremlin, Russia

  “An American space shuttle has crashed.” Viktor Dubkin allowed himself a small smile as he sat before the Russian president.

  President Volkov, known as the ‘Little Wolf’ but never to his face, remained impassive, his unnaturally cold blue eyes didn’t waver or blink as he sat staring back.

  After another moment, one eyebrow rose a fraction and he grunted. “The shuttle that was photographing the nuclear missile sites across the globe, da?

  Dubkin nodded slowly. “The very same, my president.” He spread his hands. “Normally we could not care any less. We know that they know, approximately, where our missile fields are – just as we know where theirs are – these are no secret to any good spy agency.” He pursed his lips for a moment. “But where this becomes problematic is we now know that they were using the new ground-penetrating technology developed by their military. It has the ability to see inside the silos and identify the specific kiloton profile of each missile.” He paused. “It can also tell which are real or just decoys.”

  “Hmm, a little too much information.” Volkov’s eyes swiveled. “But the shuttle is crashed, so the problem is now solved?”

  “Perhaps not,” Dubkin said. “It broke its normal orbit, but we don’t believe it was a catastrophic crash. It came down hard in the Revelation Mountains in Alaska, and may still be intact.” His brows went up. “And that means the data could be still intact.”