Richard Russo

by Ship of Fools

  “How long until we’ve got the velocity?”

  “Checking now.”

  A long, tense silence. “We can do it in thirty-seven minutes if we maintain full acceleration.”

  “Do it, then.”

  “Captain.” Someone else’s voice. One of the crew?

  “Yes, Kirilen.”

  “I think they’re bringing up their own drive engines. We’re picking up massive field distortions from the far side of their hull. Not the same kind we produce, but it could be their drives.”

  No response from Nikos. Cardenas finally said, “Shit,” in a voice little more than a whisper.

  “What is it?” Pär asked.

  Jimmy shook his head. “If they get their drive engines up, and if they’re on the far side, they can counteract the acceleration of the Argonos. They might be able to prevent the Argonos from gaining enough velocity to make the jump. Or delay it long enough to attack in some other way. Something.”

  “Amar,” Maxine asked, “how are the batteries?”

  “Full reserve,” she said. “We’ve got hours.”

  “Okay, bring the monitors back up.”

  In addition to the bad angle, the two ships were getting smaller and smaller so we could hardly make anything out. The monitors came up, and Amar brought in the transmissions from the Argonos. The harvester’s cameras, even at full magnification, didn’t show much more than we could see with our own eyes, but the Argonos cameras were still transmitting clear signals.

  The alien ship looked dead again, although the view was slightly obscured now by the Metzenbauer Field. But the Argonos was definitely alive, the drive engines ablaze with blue and white fire, surrounded by a corona of distortion.

  “The trailing probe was launched,” Amar said quietly, as if we had to be careful even with the transmission locked out. Maybe we needed to be; what did we know?

  We looked at the monitor screen dedicated to the trailing probe’s video transmissions—we had a perfect view of the two ships, filling the monitor. The probe was trailing the Argonos, but far off to the side, so the images weren’t washed out by the drive engines.

  “Anything yet, Kirilen?” Nikos, again.

  “No, sir. The field distortions persist, but there seems to be no acceleration, no thrust of any kind in any direction. Maybe it’s not a drive.”

  I could hear Nikos sigh over the channel. “It may not be a drive,” he said, “but it’s got to be something.”

  “Twenty-nine minutes,” Cardenas said.

  Silence for a minute, maybe two. Maybe even longer. Time was distending, becoming impossible to gauge. There was nothing to do, nothing to say. But the Argonos engines continued to burn.

  “Captain.” It was Cardenas. “Do you see that?”

  No immediate response, then, “Yes. What . . . ?”

  “Look at that,” Pär whispered, pointing at the monitor.

  “Amar, bring that over to monitor one.”

  The video from the probe was switched over to the largest monitor, and now we could better see what was happening. There seemed to be a fracture forming in the alien ship, the gap flaring with a pale blue light. Then another fracture appeared on the other side so they were flanking the Argonos.

  A booming sound came over the command channel, but no voices. Then Kirilen’s voice, panicky. “Something’s coming out . . . !”

  Then we could see it, a dark, curling extension emerging from the alien ship. It appeared to be a massive cable of some kind, extending, lengthening; then it whipped around like the tentacle of a monstrous ocean beast. There was a brilliant flash as it penetrated the Metzenbauer Field and wrapped itself across the hull of the Argonos, another boom sounding, this one louder and more violent.

  Alarms blared over the command channel.

  “The Field’s down!” Kirilen shouted. “And we’ve got hull breaches!”

  There was another boom like the first; then a second cable or tentacle emerged from the other crack in the alien ship, whipping through space before it struck the Argonos and wrapped itself across the hull, overlapping the first.

  Leviathan, I thought, wondering if the bishop was watching this, if he knew what was happening. If he did, I’m sure he was convinced that damnation was coming for him.

  “More hull breaches, Captain.”

  “Shut off the alarms, damn it! And how are the engines?”

  The alarms ceased abruptly. Then another came on for a moment before it, too, was shut down.

  “Engines are fine,” Cardenas reported. “The Field is down and won’t come back up, but the engines are completely undisturbed. We’re still accelerating.”

  Two more booms sounded, and two more of the cables emerged from the alien ship, slamming across the Argonos hull. No alarms sounded this time, but Kirilen announced there were more hull breaches.

  “Time?” Nikos asked.

  “Fifteen minutes,” Cardenas replied.

  The Argonos now looked like prey in the clutches of its predator. There were no more booming sounds, no more cables. There was no change at all for longer than I could stand.

  “Captain?” It was the bishop.

  “Get off this channel, Bernard. We don’t have time for this.”

  “We have all the time in the universe, Captain. Don’t you understand what’s happening to us? Don’t you understand . . . ?”

  He was cut off in midsentence. “Thank God he’s not here in the bridge,” Nikos said.

  “We’ve got movement,” Kirilen broke in.

  “What the hell do you mean, movement?”

  “Inside the ship. I’m trying to pick up something on video. It’s in several areas, near the hull breaches.”

  “You sure it’s not our own people?”

  “No, I’m not sure, but there shouldn’t be anyone near those areas.”

  A tense quiet followed. More seconds, then minutes stretching out. It was agonizing being unable to do anything, unable to help.

  “Damn, most of the security cameras are dead around there, probably damaged during the breaches.”

  “That’s all right,” Nikos said. “Just keep trying.”

  “I am . . . wait. Here. Here’s something. The light’s not good, though . . .” His voice trailed away, and there was more quiet.

  “My God,” Kirilen whispered. “Look at that thing . . .”

  I looked from one monitor to another, just as the others were doing, but we had no interior shots. Whatever video Kirilen had picked up wasn’t being transmitted.

  “What do you think happened?” Nikos asked. His voice remained calm.

  “Boarded through the cable,” Cardenas answered.

  “How close is the nearest hull breach to us?”

  “Let me see . . .” Kirilen said, his voice still shaky. “Seven levels and eight sectors. I can’t get any video at that breach, but sensors are picking up some kind of movement there.”

  “Engines?” Nikos asked again.

  “No change, Captain. Acceleration steady.”

  “Time?”

  “Nine minutes.”

  “Good, then it doesn’t matter, whatever they are. There’s no way they can reach us in time to stop the jump.”

  “But, Captain. Look at it!”

  I squirmed in my chair, both wishing I could see what Kirilen was talking about, and glad I couldn’t. Glad we couldn’t really know what they would soon be facing.

  “It doesn’t matter,” Nikos repeated. “Besides, we’ve prepared, haven’t we?”

  There was a slight pause, before Kirilen spoke again. “Sorry, Captain.” The panic was gone, and he sounded composed.

  On monitor one, nothing had changed. The two ships were locked together, and the drive engines continued to burn fiercely. But other than that, there was no movement on either ship.

  We watched and waited in silence. Those on the Argonos were silent as well, except for Cardenas calling out the time every two minutes. Finally, it was time.

  “One m
inute,” she said.

  “Coordinates locked in?”

  “Locked in.”

  “Start jump sequence.”

  “Jump sequence started.”

  “Good luck, everyone,” Nikos said. “Lock down transmissions.”

  “Locking down.”

  The command channel went dead. So did all the video transmissions we’d been receiving except for the one from the probe, which remained on monitor one. We all stared at it, waiting. Waiting.

  I had never seen a jump from outside the ship, of course. None of us had. None of us knew what to expect.

  The universe opened up and turned itself inside out.

  A ring of distortion formed around the Argonos. Space seemed to twist; even the shape of the two ships appeared to bend and flow, as if becoming unstable. Starlight curved around the ring so that the stars became like liquid mercury, elongated arcs that slowly spiraled. The starlight stretched out, took on an almost reddish hue in places, blue in others.

  As the ring grew, it separated from the two ships, like a hole opening. In the gap between the ring and the ships was . . . nothing.

  Black. A deep black that was darker than night. No stars.

  An abyss. A true void. Discontinuity.

  The curved starlight began to spin faster now, a whirlpool of colors bending and stretching with a ghostly sheen.

  The harvester shuddered slightly, and I felt a queasiness rolling through my belly again.

  “What is that?”

  “I think we’ve been caught by the space distortions,” Maxine said.

  “We’re decelerating,” Jimmy announced.

  The ring continued to grow, the vortex of starlight swirling still faster now.

  “I’m not sure,” Jimmy said, “but I think it might be pulling us in.”

  “We’re too far,” Maxine said. “It’ll be over long before we reach them.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Of course I’m not sure.”

  “Then let’s start up the engines!”

  “Let it go, Jimmy.”

  I looked away from the monitor and out of the cabin. Maxine was right, I decided. Everything looked close on the monitor, but now I could barely make out the growing, swirling ring far behind us. I turned back to the monitor to watch.

  A cocoon of glistening white energy had begun to form around the Argonos. As the shimmering strands of light spun around the ship, they flowed forward and began to enclose the alien ship as well.

  Suddenly the black cables were released from the Argonos and began to writhe, whipping and slamming against the Argonos, both ships shuddering with the violence.

  “They’re going to tear the Argonos apart!” Amar cried out.

  “They’re trying to break free,” Pär said.

  I think he was right. But it was too late for that. The cocoon grew and swelled, filaments spinning, engulfing both ships, and soon we lost sight of everything within it.

  The cocoon and the two ships moved through the swirling rim of the discontinuity, into the blackness. All the light from the energy cocoon was sucked away, and suddenly there was nothing but the black void surrounded by the vortex of twisted starlight.

  The swirling of the vortex slowed, the starlight untwisting. Then it all collapsed in on itself, and the black night sky of space, spangled with the cold shining light of stars, returned to normal.

  They were gone.

  56

  THERE isn’t much more to write, now. We are nearing Antioch, less than two weeks away. Most of us have survived.

  We lost the last shuttle, the one piloted by Virgil Masters. I thought it meant we’d lost our new captain, but Geller had gone with the previous shuttle. We don’t know what happened to the last one. After the Argonos had made the jump, we tried to contact them, but without success. We continue to try, broadcasting a transmission every hour, but after all these weeks no one holds out much hope anymore. It’s possible the shuttle is out there, intact and functional, headed for Antioch just as we are, and will one day arrive and join us. Possible.

  Over the course of the three days following the jump, with the aid of navigational beacons and regular communications, all of the other vessels—shuttles and harvesters alike—were able to rendezvous, forming a space caravan which has stayed together now for nearly four months. We travel at a constant velocity, a static string of vehicles, and sometimes we have to take it on faith that we are actually making progress, getting closer to our destination.

  Faith.

  Four months is a long time under these conditions. Too long. Arguments and squabbles and screaming matches are too numerous to count. Actual fights erupt with regularity, and some have become quite violent; three people have been killed. Several others have died in accidents, two more apparently of old age. A number have died from illness, including fifty-three on Shuttle Six when an epidemic of a still unidentified disease broke out and swept through the passengers; but, as I’ve said, most of us have survived.

  Pär and I, along with Maxine, Jimmy, and Amar, periodically rotated out of the harvester and onto other vessels during the first few weeks, to give us a break from the confined pilot cabin, which is the only habitable zone on the harvester. But I soon discovered I prefer the solitude of the harvester, and I have not left it in three months.

  I am still blamed by most people for what happened. No one says anything to me, but it is obvious from the furtive glances, the sour expressions, the abrupt silence whenever I approach, the deliberate avoidance of my company. I can’t disagree with their feelings; even if Nikos was right, that docking to the alien ship didn’t make any difference, hardly anyone sees it that way. That I was able to come up with the means of escape does little to diminish the sense of resentment and hostility that emanates from nearly everyone.

  Sometimes it becomes almost too much for me to bear. At those times I wish that I had stayed with Nikos and the others on the Argonos, no matter what happened to them. I imagine that I would have felt a sense of accomplishment that seems elusive to me now.

  PÄR is one of the few people who does not seem to hold it all against me, and he has stayed on the harvester with me these last three months. His presence is a comfort. And there are small pleasures that come with his friendship—he loaded onto the harvester, in an easily accessible location, his entire store of coffee beans. He has carefully, although generously, rationed them during the voyage, sharing with whoever is stationed on the harvester. His supply will last, he says, at least a few weeks after landfall. He has also told me that he stored a large number of pre-germinated coffee-plant seeds, determined to start another plantation once we reach Antioch.

  He has become a great friend, and I feel I would be lost without him.

  FRANCIS, too, has become a friend, along with his sister, Catherine. They jet over to the harvester to visit for two or three days at a time. Francis seems much older than his age, as if whatever remained of his childhood had been taken from him. He almost never smiles.

  I think often of Father Veronica. It would be nice to believe that her spirit, her soul, lives on and is somehow with us yet: watching over us, guiding us in whatever way she can. I want to believe this.

  I don’t. I still do not believe—not in an afterlife, not in heaven and hell, and I do not believe in the existence of God.

  And yet . . . and yet she is still with me in a strange and mysterious way—through my memories of her, through my imagination. I talk to her, I imagine what her replies would be, and I talk further with her. I have long, internal conversations, discussions and even arguments; they sometimes bring me comfort, ease my grief, my guilt. She would probably say I was praying, and perhaps I am.

  WHEN I was in the shuttle bay all those months ago, standing at Pär’s side as we prepared to mutiny and leave the Argonos, I had believed we were about to begin a new life. It didn’t happen then, but we are about to now.

  Despite everything, I have great hopes for the future. Life is difficult for
all of us now, but that will change when we make landfall on Antioch. We will have other difficulties, to be certain, hardships and trying times, but it will be different. Now, we can do nothing about our circumstances. There, on Antioch, we will have the opportunity to work together to overcome our hardships, to share and cooperate as a real community and build a new life on a new world.

  Perhaps we will fail. Perhaps we will be unable to overcome our differences, our selfishness, the resentments and anger of our previous lives on the Argonos. But it is also possible that we will succeed. I find myself surprisingly optimistic and hopeful. This, too, may be part of Father Veronica’s legacy.

  THIS personal history is nearly done. I have taken a cue from August Toller, and have prepared one of the space-burial coffins. I’ll keep the original document with us, but I will put two copies in different formats inside the coffin, seal it, and launch it into space before we reach Antioch. Perhaps some day it will be found. Perhaps some day we will be found.

  And so I end this record with hope and anticipation. An old life ends. A new life begins.

  Life. That, at least, is something I believe in.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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