Firmament: Reversal Zone

by Pennington,J. Grace

  “Nothing yet,” called Mr. Whales, the science exec.

  “They can't have gone far,” Crash insisted. “It wasn't too long after I left them that they disappeared...”

  He stopped talking abruptly. Then, “Slow to propulsion,” he commanded, jerking his head towards Guilders.

  “Captain...” Guilders started to question, but Crash snapped at him.

  “For the love of Andromeda, man, slow to propulsion and ask questions later!”

  Guilders adjusted sliders on the maneuvering panel at the helm in front of him, and simultaneously the Captain ordered, “Do as he says, Mr. Guilders.”

  The stars outside the windows slowed to a crawl, and I peered ahead, trying to see what had so alarmed Crash.

  Far ahead of us was what could best be described as—a cloud. It looked just like the clouds I remembered from my childhood on Earth; white and wispy and irregularly shaped—but much, much bigger than any cloud. It spanned what must have been several hundred AUs from side to side, and a few hundred up and down as well. I couldn't see through to the other side, so I had no idea how deep it was.

  “Propulsion to zero, Mr. Guilders,” the Captain commanded, and the ship slowed to a smooth stop.

  For a moment, we all just looked at it. Then Mr. Whales' voice spoke from the science station. “Sir...”

  “Mr. Whales,” the Captain interrupted. “What is... that?” He didn't need to point.

  “That's what I was about to tell you, sir... I don't know.”

  The Captain swiveled to face him. “You don't know?”

  “No sir. It's... it's not registering on our sensors at all. Everything is telling me that there's... nothing there.”

  Crash turned and frowned. “You mean no cloud?”

  “No nothing.” Whales glanced at his instruments again. “It's saying that it's just... a vacuum.”

  The Captain and Crash turned and peered at it again. “But I can see stars inside,” Crash protested.

  “So can I, sir,” Whales agreed. “But... the sensors can't.”

  I let my lips part as I stared at the cloud, but I said nothing.

  “That probably explains why the Pigeon vanished,” the Captain said slowly. He turned to Mr. Whales again and said, “Get Lieutenant Tristan up here to run a diagnostic on your panel.”

  “Nothing is showing up there in navigation,” August announced.

  “I'm not getting anything, either,” Guilders corroborated, his low voice rumbling through the silence on the bridge.

  The Captain stood up. “Have him run diagnostics on the whole sensor system, then.” He looked at Crash. “Just what does our guide think of this?”

  Crash's brows were furrowed with abnormal seriousness. “I've never seen anything like it. But you are right about one thing... it would make sense, in a very inexplicable and mysterious kind of way, for a ship to disappear in there.”

  The Captain pressed his wristcom and held it up to his mouth. “Gerry, I want you in the B-Deck briefing room immediately.”

  “Be right there,” the Doctor's voice replied.

  Switching frequencies, the Captain commanded again, “Mr. McMillan, to B-Deck briefing room, please.”

  “Aye, sir,” McMillan answered.

  The Captain lowered his arm, then saw me standing in the corner. “Did you need something, Andi?”

  My cheeks pinked. “No sir. I'm sorry.”

  He gestured to the science station. “Take over for Mr. Whales, please. Whales, come with me.”

  Whales arose and nodded at me, then followed the Captain and Guilders out.

  I took a seat at the science station, and nestled my knees up under the panel. Nothing should be required of me except to report anything that showed up, which shouldn't happen while we were stopped. That, and stay out of Mr. Tristan's way when he arrived to diagnose the system.

  Silence remained on the bridge, and I kept glancing up at the cloud. It was almost like a nebula—but much bigger and more wispy, and I'd never seen a pure white nebula before.

  After awhile, I broke the silence. “Why are we going after the Pigeon, anyway?”

  August swiveled towards me. “Because... there are more than fifty people aboard whose lives need to be saved, if possible?”

  “But I mean, why us? I was just wondering why we were chosen.”

  He looked down at his panel, pondering, and Mr. Yanendale answered for him.

  “Because we were the closest. The Pigeon only has provisions for another month and a half; any other ship would probably take longer than that to get here.”

  “Oh. I see.”

  I sat back in the science chair, pressing against its padded surface until it tilted back, and looked at the cloud again.

  The doors at the back of the bridge slid open, and Lieutenant Tristan, a middle-aged, bearded computer diagnostics technician, walked in in his green jumpsuit. “What's the trouble?” he drawled.

  I gestured to the panel. “Sensors. The Captain wanted to check them.”

  Mr. Ralston stood up and strolled over to the science station. “None of our sensors were detecting anything in the location of that... cloud out there, and the Captain wanted to ensure that it wasn't a problem with our systems.”

  “Ah, gotcha.” Taking a few steps closer, Tristan leaned over the panel, his head less than half a meter from mine.

  “Do you want me to move?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No, no. You're fine. I'll let you know.”

  Leaning all the way back in my seat, I stared at the high, blue-gray ceiling, wondering about the cloud and wondering what the Captain, Crash, the Doctor and McMillan were discussing.

  “Huh.” Tristan pressed a few buttons and stared at the indicators.

  I looked down at him. “What?”

  He kept staring. “I've... never seen them do that before.”

  Leaning forward, I looked at the panels he was surveying.

  The indicators seemed to have gone crazy. They kept flashing on and speeding through numbers and then blinking off again. As I watched, the phenomenon got even worse, with the screens blinking off and on, displaying different characters every time, and changing color.

  Ralston, who had been staring at the cloud, turned to look as well. His face pinched into a frown. “I've never seen anything like it, either.”

  August's head turned, but he didn't leave his station.

  “Is it happening to any of the other displays?” Tristan asked, his eyes still on the science panel.

  Ralston hurried off to examine the data control console. “Nothing here.”

  “Nothing unusual in navigation or the helm,” August reported. “Still sensing nothing.”

  “So it's just this console.” Tristan cupped his bearded chin in one hand.

  I stared at the blinking displays during the long moment of silence that followed. Tristan pressed a button on his wristcom and called, “I'd like to see you on the bridge as soon as possible, Captain.”

  He put his arm down and smiled apologetically at me. “I'm afraid I will need you to move now, Miss Lloyd.”

  “Yes sir,” I smiled back, and slid out of the chair. I glanced at my wristcom as I stepped to one side, and saw that it was nearly the end of the day shift hours. I doubted that a decision about the cloud would be made tonight, and I wanted to be up early in the morning to see what would happen. So I slipped over to August to bid him goodnight.

  “You'll tell me if anything interesting happens, right?” I asked, hugging him.

  “All right. Goodnight, Andi.”

  “'Night!”

  As I stepped through the doors, I took one last look back at the enormous cloud. It seemed to be waiting for something.

  Just sitting there.

  A horrible image of the Pigeon being sucked inside struck my mind, and with a shiver, I left the bridge.

  Chapter V

  I was almost relieved when, halfway through the next morning, we had a patient. It was only a small
burn, but it felt good to be working. A sense of satisfaction followed the healing of the reddened skin, and by the time we'd sent the mate back to engineering as good as new, I'd nearly forgotten about the cloud.

  “The trouble with being doctors,” I complained as the Doctor and I stripped the sheets and put our equipment away, “is that you're always secretly wishing people would get hurt, and feeling guilty for it.”

  “Andi,” he chastised as he closed the cabinet.

  “Well, isn't it true?”

  “Of course not.”

  I dropped the sheets into the laundry chute and pulled more out of a supply cabinet. “Not even a little tiny bit?”

  “Not even a little tiny bit.”

  “Not even a little teensy tiny bit?”

  “Andi,” he scolded again. It was his “that's enough” voice and I went quiet for a moment.

  “Anything wrong?” I asked, putting the new sheets on the vacated cot.

  He shook his head, then looked at me. “Did you see this... cloud?”

  “Yeah.” Finishing my task, I stood up and faced him. “I saw it.”

  “What's it like?”

  “It's like... um... a cloud. A really big one. In space.”

  He frowned. “Don't make jokes, Andi.”

  “I'm not! That's what it looks like. The sensors couldn't pick up anything about it...” I let my voice trail off as I remembered the strange flashing and incoherence of the indicators.

  “Yes. Trent told me that.”

  “What did he need the meeting for?” I asked, sitting down on the freshly-sheeted cot behind me.

  He shrugged. “Just wanting my advice, I guess. We don't know enough to know whether it would... pose any medical threat to the crew.”

  “What did you advise?”

  He sat opposite me. “I don't think we have enough information to go barging in there yet.”

  “But Yanendale told me they only have a month and a half's worth of provisions in there. What if we can't find them in that time?”

  He looked at me. “If they're in there, they've been in there a week. Why haven't they come back out?”

  I stared at him for a moment before looking away.

  “But...” he sighed. “Trent is under orders to find the Pigeon and rescue its crew, so unless he can prove an unreasonable risk to the Surveyor, I don't think he has much choice.”

  I thought again of the strange behavior of the sensors and opened my mouth to say something, but a tap on the wall back near the doorway stopped me and the Doctor and I both turned to look.

  The Captain stood there, alert, orderly, face furrowed into lines of concern. “Gerry, can I talk to you?”

  “Of course. Andi...”

  I started to rise, but the Captain stepped forward and held his hand up. “No, it's all right. She can stay.”

  I sat down again. The Captain paced down the long aisle between the rows of cots, stopping beside the two where we sat.

  His facial muscles relaxed as he looked down at the Doctor. “It's this cloud, Gerry.” He sighed. “Something is just... not right about it.”

  The Doctor listened, the understanding on his face mirroring the thirty years of friendship between the two men. No matter how they bickered and disagreed, their bond had remained strong.

  The Captain sat next to him. “Did Andi tell you what happened with the sensors last night?”

  The Doctor glanced at me and shook his head.

  “I didn't see it, but... Tristan and Ralston told me that they were acting... very irregularly. Flashing, changing rapidly with no apparent pattern, but only on the science station console, and only for about five minutes. August claimed his console did the same for less than a minute, but it had stopped before Tristan even got over there. Nothing on any of the other sensor systems. It's like when we point them at that cloud, they're just... dead. Nothing seems wrong with them.” He shook his head. “I don't like it at all, Gerry.”

  “Did you let ISA know?”

  “I sent out the transmission last night. They took an unusually long time to respond, but I just got their reply. They say that they don't have any information, and I'm under orders, and unless I can prove an unreasonable risk—which I can't—then nothing changes. Find the Pigeon, and rescue its crew if they're still alive.”

  “And that means going into this... cloud.”

  “It looks like it.”

  I looked back and forth between the two men, reading the apprehension on their faces.

  “What does Guilders think?” the Doctor questioned.

  “Guilders doesn't like it either, but... I think he recognizes it's the only option.”

  “Are we going in, then?”

  The Captain rubbed his forehead, smoothing out the wrinkles with strong fingers. “Yes, unless Tristan can find something notably wrong with the sensors, which so far he can't.”

  The Doctor stood up and faced his friend. “Do you want me to pray?”

  The Captain blinked and cleared his throat. “I... suppose you can. If you want.”

  “I do. So I will.”

  The Captain nodded and pressed his hands on his knees. “So... be aware. Alert me of anything unusual. We'll head in after I confer again with Guilders, Tristan, and Whales. We should reach the cloud in another couple hours.”

  “We'll keep an eye out,” the Doctor agreed, looking back at me. I nodded.

  The Captain flashed a smile. “Thank you both.”

  The Doctor put a hand on the Captain's shoulder for a moment, then let go. The Captain smiled, stood, tipped his cap to me, and left sickbay.

  ***

  It had only taken a few months of being on the Surveyor, back when I was only eleven years old, to learn to sense when the ship had stopped, when it was speeding along at warp, and when we were crawling by comparison at propulsion. Of course, if you wanted to be technical, we were moving faster at propulsion than at warp, because technically at warp we were moving space around us, while at propulsion we were still traveling faster than the speed of light. But as a child, I hadn't known that. And I couldn't explain how I could tell the difference between speeds. The Surveyor had top notch centrifugal dampeners and the smoothest engines of any starship I'd ever set foot on. But I could still tell.

  I sensed the subtle shift from warp to propulsion now as we approached the cloud. Already it filled the entire scope of our vision out the bridge windows, and the only way I could actually see that we were moving was that the vague, fuzzy stars inside the cloud grew slowly larger.

  I sat in the visitor's seat nearest the science station as we neared the apparition. A glance at the sensor indicators showed nothing. Lieutenant Tristan had been unable to come up with any explanation, and Whales's only thought was that the cloud must be made of some entirely unfamiliar substance, which was why the sensors showed nothing. He couldn't explain why the stars didn't show up, though, nor the momentary erratic behavior of the panel the night before.

  “Keep a steady course,” the Captain ordered. “Stay as close to the center as you can.”

  “Aye sir.” Guilders worked his console, skillfully maneuvering the ship nearer.

  “Cloud threshold in one AU, Captain,” Whales announced.

  The cloud kept coming closer. I shuddered as I watched the first bits of wispy white move past us, brushing the windows without leaving a mark.

  It was thin at first, reminding me again of Earth clouds. As the Surveyor passed into it, it grew thicker until it was hard to see ahead.

  “Reverse viewer,” the Captain ordered, and a section of the fore window darkened to show the view from behind the ship. At first I saw black, starry space. Then slowly, wisps floated past on either side, getting thicker and closing around us until a veil of white covered the rear of the ship, encasing us in whatever the cloud was made of.

  “We're in,” I whispered.

  I hadn't seen Crash since breakfast. Why wasn't he on the bridge now, to celebrate this new discovery and interject
himself into every moment?

  As if on cue, the doors behind me slid open and he sauntered through them.

  “Crash on the bridge. Are we in yet?”

  “Yes, Mr. Crash, we're in.” The Captain didn't turn around. “No news on the sensors?”

  “Can't find a thing wrong with them, and neither can Tristan or anyone else.” Crash rubbed his hands down the front of his jacket and stepped down into the command pit.

  Nothing out the windows moved except the few fuzzy bright points here and there, which I assumed were nearby stars. Everything else was only white in all directions.

  “How exactly are we supposed to find the Pigeon in all this?” Crash planted his hands on his hips and cocked his head towards the Captain.

  “Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Mr. Whales, keep sending out sweeps for the craft, even if you aren't sensing anything.”

  “Aye sir.”

  I frowned and rested my hand on my right knee. It hurt. Just slightly—just a very mild throbbing, tiny twinges, barely noticeable. But I was sensitive to any feeling in that knee, for obvious reasons.

  I pulled my wristcom up to my lips. “Doctor?” I spoke quietly.

  No response.

  I checked to see if it was on the right frequency. Had I called anyone since I last spoke with the Doctor? No. It was correct. I tried again. “Doctor?”

  Still nothing.

  “Nothing on the scopes, Whales?”

  “No sir. Nothing on any sensors... they don't seem to be functioning at all.”

  “Navigation is down entirely, sir,” August said in his soft accent.

  “Helm, report?”

  “Functioning as normal, sir,” Guilders replied.

  I saw a motion from across the room and turned to see Mr. Yanendale removing his headset. “Communications seem to be failing, sir. I'm getting no response of any kind on any channels.”

  The Captain and Crash stared towards communications. I cleared my throat. “My com doesn't seem to be working either.”

  They glanced at me, then at each other. Only the beeps of the computers broke the silence as we drifted further into the cloud.