The Icarus Void

by CK Burch

  For a moment everything was still, and he thought that it had all been a fluke, that now, now of all times after his and Tybalt's testing, the artifact would fail to produce its strange dance, but as he looked closely at the meticulously, mathematically carved grooves in the object's smooth surface, he saw it happen. The ideograms seemed to fill with liquid obsidian, as black as the artifact, and as they filled the solidarity of the artifact transformed into a rippling, wavering waterform. All across the surface of the artifact a shimmering glitter refracted the limited light in the cargo bay, until the artifact became entirely smooth all over. Then it remained still. The two engineers over on the opposite side of the artifact took two very large steps backward, looking up at the thing in shock and awe.

  ″Holy shit,″ Mac whispered.

  ″What just happened?″ Captain Markov asked. Everyone else in the group seemed to be handling the effect that they'd just seen with a reverence dedicated to certain magic tricks that couldn't possibly be real. Markov, on the other hand, had his hands on his hips and was squinting his eyes, staring at the object's surface, searching for something else to happen. Markov, Straub felt, was the only one of the military men on the ship who had any sense of wonder about the sciences, and seemed to be inspecting the object with the same mindset.

  ″That,″ Tybalt said, ″was just the beginning.″ She nodded at Straub and he dropped the electromagnetic shield. Once it was down, Tybalt approached the artifact with a multitool want in her hand. ″Watch this.″

  She held up the tool dramatically, to show that it was off – she must have been a stage performer, or a theater producer in a past life – and then lowered it so it touched the skin of the artifact. Where she touched it, the artifact visibly rippled outward and across the mass of it, as if she had just touched a pond. The group took a step forward, shock turning to curiosity, except in Captain Udeh's case; Straub watched him carefully. Udeh's forehead became slicker still, not with terror, maybe, but from anxiety. Straub had seen that look before, on the bridge. Udeh was fighting his claustrophobia again. Hard.

  The radiation is triggering his panic attacks, Straub realized. The extrawave radiation had to be causing the captain's claustrophobia-induced struggle. But how? Straub quickly looked around the rest of the group: Markov still seemed as at ease as he had before, Mac was looking at the thing with wonder and a smile, Collins had her arms crossed over her chest and looked skittish but otherwise fine. Laguardia actually had her hand on her fucking sidearm. She didn't seem aware of it, didn't seem aware of anything aside from being tense; her arms, bare in the sleeveless top she wore, were bulging as her muscles flexed. Which might have been outlandish behavior in anyone else, but for Laguardia it was typical. Meanwhile, Udeh looked close to hyperventilating, his chest rising and falling with shallow quick breaths, his jaw clenched tight and his eyes focused straight ahead on the artifact. He looked like he was fighting it. Straub was no psychologist, but he felt that that was a good sign. It meant that Udeh's panic wasn't natural, but forced, and that meant that if he could examine the radiation, maybe find a way to circumvent it...

  ″Now that I've gotten your attention,″ Tybalt said, continuing her show, oblivious to Udeh, as they all were. She pulled the multitool wand away from the artifact, changed her grip so she held it horizontally, and slowly slid the wand through the rippling water surface of the artifact. The wand went two, three inches into the surface, as it had during their initial testing phase, and then she pulled it out again to reveal that it had no physical damage. She flicked it on, flicked it off. Mac, Markov and Collins crowded around to see. Udeh didn't move. Straub knew this part of the show, knew that the wand was intact and fine and knew what further testing would require, so he ignored Tybalt's explanations and walked over to Udeh's side.

  ″Captain,″ he said quietly. ″Are you okay?″

  ″Hmm.″ Udeh did not look over, but damn, the muscles around his jaw was taut. Up close the poor bastard looked even worse; he looked pale and was sweating heavily. Finally the Prometheus captain turned to look at Straub, and Jesus if there wasn't pleading in Udeh's eyes. He realizes it, too, Straub thought. He knows that the artifact is causing this.

  ″The artifact will go back to normal in a moment,″ Straub said quietly. ″The radiation levels should peter out here soon. The more we agitate it, the higher the hydrogen concentrate surrounding it, the deeper the reactions become. When we stop the hydrogen exposure, the extrawave levels it exudes diminishes as the artifact returns to a solidified state. Look – ″ Straub turned and pointed at the object. Already the grooves in the material were etching themselves back into the surface, criss-crossing and telling some strange story. Ideograms. Straub remembered talking to Kerrick about ideograms in her quarters, just before they'd had sex, before he'd said Sarah's name. Straub shook his head. No, no more thinking about Sarah, he thought, and then wondered. If Udeh could be experiencing panic attacks from a condition he'd suffered, but beaten, what could the radiation be doing to the rest of them? And when had he suddenly gotten Sarah on the brain all over again? He turned back to Udeh, and saw that the man's face was already a lot better. Udeh was wiping his forehead with the back of his sleeve. He was breathing normally, taking large, slow, deep breaths. ″How are you feeling?″

  ″Better,″ Udeh said. ″So you understand that this is affecting us somehow.″

  Straub nodded, thinking of Sarah's red hair and long legs. How he'd never gotten one last kiss, one last I love you before her spacewalk on Mars had turned into a deathtrap. How he'd seen what the fallen rock had done to her helmet, how he'd seen what her broken helmet had done to her face. How he'd kissed that face once before and never would again. He nodded to Udeh. ″Yes. I do.″

  ″What's inside that thing?″ Udeh asked. ″Do you know?″

  ″There's nothing inside it,″ Straub replied. ″It's hollow, but there's literally nothing inside it. All pingback sensors show no bounce, no echo. The inside of the artifact is a void.″ So where was this radiation coming from?

  They both looked over at Tybalt talking about the necessary research required to discover what, exactly, this meant from the material of the artifact, of what it actually did, and how they could proceed, even here in the cargo bay, with minimal impact on the ship and the crew, and Straub knew that wasn't actually going to be the case.

  ″And what the next phase would be,″ Tybalt said, ″involves a higher concentrate of hydrogen and prolonged exposure. As you can see, the artifact solidifies quickly, but at higher temperatures, simulating deeper layers of the chromosphere, it becomes even more pliable. From what we understand of the interior, the artifact is indeed hollow but our detections of what is inside have proven fruitless. It's empty, but simultaneously shows no readings on the spatial details of the inside. Doctor Straub, will you assist?″ And now they all turned this way, saw him and Udeh standing conspiratorially, and Straub hated what he was about to do, but knew it was necessary.

  ″You know,″ he said to Udeh, ″I really hate picking sides.″

  ″You think they'll need picking?″ Udeh asked.

  ″I hope not.″ He walked forward. ″Doctor, I think we need to discuss something.″

  ***

  They were in sick bay again. The chief engineer had gone back down to the engineering deck to oversee engine repairs, but Markov, Laguardia, Collins and Tybalt had followed Straub and Udeh right back here, much to Tybalt's chagrin. They were waiting on Doctor Simpleton Apathetic Gaines to make his assessment of Captain Claustrophobic Udeh and decipher whether or not there were traces of extrawave rads within his system at present, or if the man simply was just losing control of himself as it obviously was the case. Tybalt stood with her arms crossed, tapping her foot, her gaze flicking between Kerrick, lying still on her medbed with glassy eyes gazing up at the ceiling, and Straub, who was nervously waiting with his hands on his hips, sometimes looking over at Tybalt and looking guilty, as he fucking should. Maybe Kerrick had the right idea. May
be he was a turncoat.

  No. For fuck's sake. Kerrick had lost herself and had attacked Straub. For no reason. But she couldn't stand standing here just watching as that slug of a chief medical doctor meandered around the medbed – good god, how heavy was the man? Was he even lifting his feet to walk? All Tybalt could think about was the artifact in the cargo bay, wondering what would happen to the artifact if she drew up the temperature to a higher degree, how far into the artifact she could go, maybe even see the hollow interior. If they could pierce the void and get inside...the readings, the possibilities. A Dyson bubble made up of this material might not be feasible, but the pure data coming back from the thing meant that construction of such material was possible. Jesus H. Christ, the way it converted and absorbed the heat of that electromagnetic shit they pumped all over it. She couldn't even think in technical terms. She didn't think that there were any at this point for this situation, all methodology to be discovered and catalogued on the fly. They were in uncharted scientific territory. And yet, Straub, no vision. Jesus, he practically was a turncoat. All of Tybalt's research potential was about to swirl down the drain if sluggish Gaines here found whatever the fuck he was looking for. He didn't seem to be looking very hard, however.

  Gaines lowered his medical tool, looked down at the datapad in his other hand, then shook his head and looked up at the captain. ″I'm not registering any kind of extrawave radiation in Captain Udeh's system. He's clean. His panic attacks are most likely being brought on as an aftershock from his medication wearing off.″

  Udeh sighed. He was frustrated. ″I've never had that happen before. I've never even heard of that terminology.″

  ″There's casework that's been done to provide substantial evidence,″ Gaines said. He looked over at Markov. ″I've got nothing to substantiate the claims being made. You're on your own.″ Then he turned around and walked towards Kerrick's medbed, casually brushing Straub aside.

  Markov rubbed the back of his neck and looked over at Tybalt. ″I'm in a precarious position here, Doctor Tybalt.″

  You're not the only one, she thought, glancing over at Straub. Now that the tension was over and Gaines had passed judgment in favor of ″nothing to worry about,″ she felt a little more at ease towards Straub. He was just doing what a good scientist should do, despite how both he and she had gone over the extrawave radiation emissions again and again and found no physical effects whatsoever. It was harmless stuff that, yes, okay, it was cutting the communication systems down and almost blinding the ship. Yes. But they couldn't go anywhere anyway and they had no idea if the Prometheus was out there waiting for them, either. There was no one to communicate with in all probability, and no way for them to move without significant risk to the ship itself. So...

  ″I don't believe that Captain Udeh's condition is being aggravated by the rads the artifact produces,″ she said. ″If it seemed like there was, or if there was any sort of evidence that it was affecting the crew in any way, I would agree that it should be removed from the ship.″ A lie, but a diplomatic one. She could make diplomatic lies. ″However, aside from communications systems, which we can't use anyway because we have no external broadcasting array as you know, and the external sensors, the radiation isn’t affecting anything. We can communicate just fine using personal communicators versus inter comms, and really, what's the likelihood that the Prometheus is still out there anyway?″

  ″She's there,″ Udeh said defiantly.

  ″She might be. Might. But even if she is, and we knew she was, what happens? Do we use smoke signals? Morse code by flashing the running lights on the ship on and off? We can't talk to anyone. There's no way for us to talk to the outside world. Yes, the artifact's radiation signature is possibly blocking communications, but we would still have to move out of the affected field once we set it outside the ship in order to get those systems back. And we can't even move out of orbit right now.″

  Udeh had no answer.

  Straub, however, stepped forward. ″Listen,″ he said, ″I feel that the extrawave radiation demands research. As a scientist, I'd have to insist upon it because we don't know what it does, and this thing exudes the radiation regardless of whether it's being activated or rendered inert. What matters is the strength of the radiation being produced, and I think that if we leave the hydrogen testing alone for the time being, we can perhaps run better research on the rads themselves and define just how dangerous they are. Maybe it isn't taking a physical toll, but perhaps it's taking a psychological toll.″

  ″You mean Kerrick,″ Laguardia said.

  ″And Captain Udeh. Claustrophobia is a psychological disorder, it's clinical. And myself too. I'm – ″ He hesitated. His face darkened. What did he have to be ashamed about? ″I'm unable to stop thinking about my ex-fiancee. She'd been dead for two years now, and since we came near this object, I've been increasingly unable to take my mind away from her memory. It's distracting. I hadn't made the correlation before until just recently, because I had no reason to think that there was any connection. Why should I have?″

  ″Do you think,″ Markov said, ″that there's a chance there might be other psychological effects on the crew that are going unnoticed?″ He looked worried, searching for something that he did not like. That was strange. Up until now Markov had been affable, but now he almost looked a little...pale.

  Straub shrugged. ″I hope not. But the evidence suggests – ″

  ″Evidence? What evidence?″ Laguardia raised an eyebrow. ″Your current girlfriend has a break with reality, the captain over here is relapsing into a known condition, and you're feeling guilty over getting laid. Giving the circumstances of what this ship and crew have been through in the last twelve hours, I'd say that those are normal circumstances coming to light. If you're trying to present that as evidence of radiation affectation then you've got a lot more filibustering to do. There's no evidence. You're piling speculation onto assumption.″

  Tybalt was taken aback. That was a lot of big words coming from a security officer. She was impressed at both the logic and the lexicon, but more with the straightforwardness. She'd always kind of liked Laguardia, except for when the sergeant was being an uptight bitch, but even then she was on top of things and got things done. Tybalt admired that in anyone, especially now. And maybe she was a little biased because the sergeant had saved her life. Maybe.

  Straub, meanwhile, determinedly moved forward, continuing to address Captain Markov. ″There is a strong possibility that all of the above is true, Captain, and Sergeant Laguardia makes good points. I am feeling guilty. Guilty to an extreme degree. And Captain Udeh has experienced his claustrophobia and resulting panic attacks before. Kerrick? Who knows what her previous mental history is like? She more than likely has a normal psychological profile and possibly snapped under the tension and stress of this mission, which is something that has happened on other ships time and again, and will probably happen still. What I'm looking at, here, is the evidence that all of these things are happening at the same time. Without precedence. Kerrick and I are one thing, and possibly could be passed off and left unnoticed, but Captain Udeh's condition resurfacing, after years of combating it and keeping it at bay, in conjunction with what's going on is impossible to ignore.″

  ″Impossible to ignore if you're connecting tangents,″ Tybalt said. She was trying to keep her cool again, but what the fuck? Straub was grasping at straws. Back in the cargo bay he'd been just as excited and ecstatic as she had been over the discoveries and the testing, but now? What the hell was he even thinking now? They'd gone over the null effect of the radiation in the science bay before the dive, had concluded that there was no imperiling factors the radiation had. Just waves that normally didn't show up on nominal frequency scans. It had been Straub then saying that there was nothing wrong with the radiation, and yet here he was, with her on the verge of important fieldwork, saying that yes, actually, there is something fucking wrong with this radiation. Tybalt couldn't wrap her head around it.

&
nbsp; Then it hit her.

  Stephen Straub was feeling guilty. Just like Laguardia said. Guilty over his fiancee – ex fiancee – guilty over his relationship with Kerrick, guilty that she had lost her shit and attacked him for whatever reason. Had it been a lovers quarrel gone wrong from the stress? Who knows; that would remain between Straub and Kerrick, unless Kerrick woke up and started talking. But Straub, now standing there and looking quite like a young boy with a determination to be right, finally, after being wrong for so long, was just simply feeling guilty for the things that had happened on his watch. Whether or not his fiancee's death was his fault was not a part of the equation; Tybalt suspected that he felt responsible for it regardless. And, on her own part, she felt that she ought to in part feel some responsibility for the damages the ship had incurred while salvaging the artifact, but she didn't. She'd put her own life at risk for this, and had nearly lost it. She knew the risks and the costs. The captain had known the risks and the costs. The signal blockage was something no one had seen coming, and yes, they needed sensors to steer the ship when the time came. But until that time, there was only time, and time enough for Tybalt to continue her testing. She breathed easily; in her mind, she saw that she had won. And that Straub was clearly, to everyone else, without proof or consequence.

  Up til now, Collins had remained quiet. Now she leaned over to Markov, and said, ″I have to agree with Laguardia. If there's nothing detectable, then there's probably nothing dangerous. I'm a little bugaboo myself, to use non-standard terminology. But I'm a seasoned military official. Kerrick is a scientist, so is Straub, and yes, Udeh has a pre-condition. So it stands to reason that Udeh is having attacks not unprecedented, but also unrelated to this artifact. The focus should be on repairing the engines and getting out of orbit. My recommendation is to let Doctor Tybalt here do her thing and maintain monitoring the radiation, and once we're out of orbit ditch the goddamn thing until we can send a ship more prepared to deal with it. Sir.″