

From Out of the Dark

Edited by

Robert N Stephenson

FIRST PUBLISHED IN 2015 (OUT OF THE DARK) THIS EDITION PUBLISHED IN 2015 BY ALTAIR AUSTRALIA PTY LTD ISBN: 978-1506166414 (PAPERBACK) COPYRIGHT © CONTRIBUTING AUTHORS 2015 COPYRIGHT COVER ART © BOB EGGLETON 2012 THE RIGHTS OF THE COLLECTED AUTHORS TO BE IDENTIFIED AS THE AUTHORS OF THIS WORK HAS BEEN ASSERTED BY THEM IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE COPYRIGHT AMENDMENT(MORAL RIGHTS) ACT 2000.THIS WORK IS COPYRIGHT. APART FROM ANY USE AS PERMITTED UNDER THE COPYRIGHTACT 1968, NO PART MAY BE REPRODUCED, COPIED, SCANNED, STORED IN A RETRIEVAL SYSTEM, RECORDED, OR TRANSMITTED, IN ANY FORM OR BY ANY MEANS, WITHOUT THE PRIOR WRITTEN PERMISSION OF THE PUBLISHER AND OR THE AUTHORS

From Out of the Editor

The Out of the Dark project was designed to find some voices in the darkness of the void we call the science fiction and horror writing industry. While restricted by the money on offer for selected works, the task seemed impossible and at one time did feel as though it was destined for darkness itself. Many writers did get involved though and some great ideas were shown up by some very new writers, but alas the stumbling block came down to editing, or the refusal to edit. I do recommend all new writers work with editors if they have some ideas or guides; not all advice will sit well, but some will change a story from being average to being great. I have been pleased that all the writers here were open to some advice and guidance, and while some stories may fall a little short of perfection, these writers did take the efforts to oblige this editor.

Selecting stories for anthologies is a tough business and I always take my hat and shoes off for everyone that takes on this task. The efforts of the writers to craft suitable stories is always appreciated and the wonders of new technologies appreciated; it has been a few years since I have put together a collection like this, the last being Zombies, and I must say, I am still learning and still making mistakes. But as any editor will tell you, once there is ink in your blood, it is there for life.

Some of these stories you will like and some you will not and I know the vagaries involved in the publishing industry and the desire to meet everyone's taste. So, no numbers means you are just going to have to search in the darkness of words and find what you might like, or read something that will leave you cold. Space is cold, and most certainly, none of it is perfect. I hope you enjoy some of the stories here and even share the book about. This whole project has been done on a 'Not for Profit' basis. If you have a digital version of this collection, please do copy the book in its entirety and share it – for we don't really know what will come out of the dark.

Robert N Stephenson, January 2015

What has come from out of the dark?:

4

Gene Stewart Eschaton's Fate

34

Tony Shillitoe Hope

56

James O'Keefe Light in the Darkness

71

Alexander Zelenyj In a Room Empty But For You

86

Rob Bleckly The Grim

109

L.E. Bodillo The Dead Kind

143

Mark Rookyard Between the Worlds

175

Victoria Dylan Out in the Dark

202

Jason Andrew Fading Light From a Dying Star

250

Gregory L. Norris Fleeing into the Darkness of Disaster

Eschaton's Fate

Gene Stewart

Aboard the Eschaton, feelings ran high. As the ship plunged through vast emptiness, its crew sang songs of conquest and told tales of discovery. They wanted to know the very end and edge of things, where the Great All simply stopped.

It had been so long since they had last seen even the burnt cinder remnant of a star that most had forgotten about stars altogether. No one bothered even glancing out port holes anymore.

Around them, the darkness between stars had given way to plain darkness. It was estimated by on-board computers that the Eschaton would encounter a random atom of this or that element, most likely hydrogen, only once in 17.782 millennia, even with its vast drag chutes open to their maximum one light-year span.

Space-time neared its end.

Or was it that the Eschaton, good ship and crew, neared the Space-time end?

Either way, the hull should not have shuddered with impact.

Thrown from his bunk, sailing and flailing in free fall, Ar snapped awake and hollered. His growl brought answering yells; yes, everyone had felt it. Most had been hurled from their anchorage.

As Ar caught a pipe and pressed his feet to a bulkhead, he heard a scratching sound, like huge claws moving on the hull exterior. As security commander, Ar called battle stations. He pin-balled around his cabin, grabbing his back pack full of equipment and weapons, checking them quickly, and hoping his team remembered their duties. It had been ages since he had last drilled them in any emergency procedure.

In the corridor, Ar found chaos. A light flickered, strobing his vision. Sparks flew. Small objects drifted free. Some were sharp or hot. It made moving risky.

Ar wondered if he should order body armour.

"Sir," someone called. It was Ja, blood leaking past a quick plaster bandage on his forehead. "Sir, reporting damage to the bridge, engineering, and--"

Before Ja finished the gasped report, another impact sounded, this time accompanied by the sound of metal twisting and things smashing.

Ar braced himself effectively, being near a bulkhead, but Ja was sent smashing hard into a tangle of wire conduits.

He hit face first and went limp at once.

His body became another of the drifting objects hampering navigation through the corridors.

Ar ordered body armour for his team and only three responded. He asked for a sound-off, and got a count of five. Five out of fifteen? He was already down two thirds?

"Anyone know what happened to the rest of the team?" he asked.

El responded, voice sad even through the static now crackling through their intercom. "Sir, they're either wounded or done. So is at least half the main crew. Probably more."

"Any idea what is going on?" Ar asked, making his way through the sparks toward the bridge. "Sitrep, now," he demanded.

He got no situation report. His com unit went dead.

He had just entered the elevator to the command level when power cut off. He was essentially trapped in a metal box inside a disabled metal tube of a spacecraft, so far beyond the last outpost that escape meant almost literally nothing.

Ar thought about the mirror ship. It moved alongside the Eschaton, and was called the Teleos. Its purpose was backup. Each ship backed up the other; redundancy being the logical solution to system failures that would inevitably arise.

Each ship could accommodate the full complement of crew from both vessels. They could all go back in one ship.

If one managed to survive.

Taking out his weapon, Ar, by touch alone, set it from a modified pulse to a constant low drain. Or so he hoped. He'd last practiced recalibrating in the dark back in boot camp, more than a decade back.

He smiled. Decades meant as little as light-years out there. Might as well use archaic inches and minutes, he thought; history had always fascinated him, on his off time.

The low drain of energy from his weapon melted the thin metal of the elevator wall. He cut through, squinting against the bright blue-white light the beam made.

Pushing with his shoulder, feet braced on the far wall, he bent the new door down and left the elevator from above.

There were no cables; the elevator worked with air pressure only.

Ar broke open his back pack and donned battle uniform. He also unfolded and put on his helmet, activated it so it stiffened and sucked in an air pad, and turned on its forward lamps. He could see. He put his back pack on, then climbed the shaft using more of his battle gear, this time the covalent bond feature in his gloves and the knees of his suit. Bonding was for walking on the exterior of hulls, but worked fine there, too.

He came to a door and slapped the emergency button. Nothing happened.

He used his weapon to pry open the doors enough to slip a hand in. Brute strength pulled open one side.

Slipping through, he found himself on command level in a corridor full of bodies, some moaning semiconsciously, others limp and drifting. He shoved his way through, catching a slap in the face, ducking a knee, bumping an elbow.

His helmet lamps sliced through darkness, catching glimpses of familiar faces, some gooey with blood, others peaceful, as if sleeping. The few with worried eyes winced at the light, and then reached toward him.

"Settle down, we need to ascertain the problem."

"We hit something," someone in the darkness said.

"Are you sure?" Ar asked. He could not place the voice. "Sounded more to me like something hit us," he said.

"It grabbed us," another voice said, with much more emotion. This voice was strained into a high-pitched squeal of terror.

Ar ignored that one for now. No use cranking up the hysteria level. It was grim enough, he figured, without adding outright panic to the survival equation.

Shouldering his way to the end of the corridor, he had to untangle limbs and unwedge three bodies before he could force his way onto the bridge.

What he saw there brought him to a halt.

Tentacles.

Huge ones, at least half as big around as the ship itself.

"I cannot understand this," he said aloud, in a completely calm and rational tone that he at once recognized as madness. He clamped down on himself, suppressing a giddy giggle.

Moving to the control panel for exterior visuals, he flipped through various views, then thought to request a link to the Teleos. A screen flickered on, stitched with static, blurry, and full of random motion. Sound was no better, but he heard a voice asking, over and over, if anyone was there.

"Eschaton reporting," he said, keying a mike. He gave a quick assessment of the dead and wounded.

"Basically," he summed up, "we are dead in the water."

"Water?" the voice wanted to know.

"Sorry, old expression." His history buff status wasn't known on board the Teleos, so they weren't used to his archaic references.

"We are inert," he said. "Request assistance."

"Do you realize it has got you in its grip?" the voice asked, as a face blurred and distorted on the screen.

He could see that, yes. Looked like a squid, or octopus, except for the spikes, and the metal plate scales or whatever they were. Putting together images from the various exterior cameras did him little good. Ar could not envision the thing.

"Can we try EM?" came he voice.

Electro Magnetism? Ar wondered. What did they have in mind? Then again, what did it matter? Anything was better than the current situation, was it not?

He said, "Yes, please try EM."

"Insulate remaining crew," came the command, and for an instant Ar wondered what was meant. Then he remembered an old emergency drill, in which touching metal could get you killed.

He pressed the universal intercom button and said, "Attention, all personnel, get away from all metal, repeat, do not touch any metal until I sound an all-clear."

He then indicated they were ready, and the Teleos, after a count down from seven, jolted the thing holding the Eschaton.

At once the ship shook and groaned, slamming its contents in several directions at once.

The scent of fried meat permeated the ship.

Ar himself, prepared for the jolt, still drifted inadvertently into a metal bulkhead and received an electric sting. It did not render him unconscious, but hurt enough to make him curse out loud. He heard many yelps through the intercom.

Crew were coming to, joining the living.

"Emergency stations," he called. Probably needless, but protocol kicked in.

Back at the com panel, he asked Teleos for a sitrep. They told him, their signal clearer now, that the squid thing had retreated into darkness and was not there anymore.

"Damage reports," Ar called. "Repair crews prepare for EVA."

He decided to go out with one of the repair crews, to assess the damage for himself. It was his right, as security commander. Anything affecting the Eschaton was his business.

They got the breaches in the Eschaton's hull repaired. They also sorted dead from injured and ended up with three quarters of their crew still with them. With the help of the drag chutes, they recovered ninety-nine percent of the debris that had floated off from the attack.

Once the Eschaton was squared away, Ar opened up a discussion with Qe, security commander for the Teleos. "What," he asked, "could possibly have happened?"

"A huge squid thing came out of the dark and grabbed your ship," Qe said.

Ar did not buy it. "That is what it looked like," he said. "But what was it, really?"

"What do you think it was?"

"I don't know, but it is completely empty out here. We are near the end of the Great All. Huge things like that would have nothing to sustain them. They do not make sense."

Qe agreed, but asked again what Ar thought it was.

Ar had a theory, but first he asked Qe to check among the full Teleos crew. He wanted to know if they had watched any entertainments in the days leading up to the attack.

Turned out many had viewed a popular entertainment called TENTACLE ATTACK. It was based on an ancient Japanese tentacle hentai epic, UON-JE, as interpreted by a neo-slasher reclaimant director who wanted to bring some horror into the humour, or vice versa. The particulars did not much matter to Ar. What counted was many of the crew on board the Teleos had absorbed images of huge tentacles doing wild things to giggling girls and stranded spacecraft.

Speaking with Qe after discovering this, Ar said, "I think they projected these images into reality."

Qe was familiar with this theory. It was, in fact, one of the things their explorations were to determine, if possible: Whether the world we experience as reality arises from collective thought.

Qe scoffed, though. "I just do not believe in that."

"Maybe it is not a matter of belief," Ar retorted.

"How did we not see huge naked women, then?" Qe asked.

It was a good question and a telling point. Too many other questions arose, and Ar admitted he had no idea, really.

The discussion extended to the crew and philosophy became a popular pastime for a while.

The infestation was noticed several weeks ship time after the tentacle attack.

Crew members of the Eschaton -- but, strangely, not the Teleos -- began reporting tiny crawling things. First, they were glimpsed out of the corners of their eyes. Then they were found on clothes, in food, and finally in the electronics.

When some were captured and examined, they proved to be tiny versions of the tentacled thing that had grabbed the ship. Rumours of eggs ran rampant. The thing had somehow seeded the ship, and the tiny things were its babies.

They looked like a tesseract with tentacles, the number varying from a low of five to a high no one dared say, perhaps into the thousands.

Studying the problem, Ar decided it was not a case of projected subconscious terrors. These were real, as had been the huge one. Damage proved that.

And then no one could find any of the tiny tentacled things. They were simply not there anymore. Without recordings of them, the crew would not be able to convince anyone else they existed.

Why had it again been limited to the Eschaton? Ar wondered. He was sitting in his cabin, at his table, sipping a cup of something warm, when, as if crawling out of the table top itself, one of the tentacled things appeared. This one was about the size of his fist, and, before he could jump back or shout in surprise, it spoke to him.

"WE ARE OF THE PARDON," it said.

His brilliant first-contact words were, "What? Huh?"

"WE HAVE BEEN TO A SCALE OF WRONGNESS, PRESENTINGLY," it said.

He wondered if it meant to say, they asked pardon for having come at the wrong scale. He said, "Welcome."

"YES," the thing said at once, tentacles wriggling.

As with the tiny ones they had studied, Ar found he could not look directly at the tesseract body at the centre of the waving tentacles. This one had over a dozen; they were hard to count because they never stopped moving.

"TO A PURPOSE YOU COME WITHIN OUR SELVES," it said.

Hoping he got it right, Ar said, "We come to find out what lies at the end of Space-time."

Much wiggling of tentacles and the thing blinked out and flashed in again, this time slightly bigger. Its voice piped in a slightly lower register as it said, "OUR PLACE IS OF ONE ALL OVER, TO KEEP A BOUNDARY TOWARD REPAIR."

They kept things in repair all over, Ar thought. "Why," he asked aloud, "do you come to us now?"

It vibrated -- Ar felt it through the deck -- and slid closer to him, still waving its anemone-like appendages. "TO FIND ENDING MEANS A CEASEMENT, STOPPAGE OF ALL FOR ONE, INSIDE WHAT SPACES TIMES KNOWN UNKNOWN FINDINGS."

That one confused Ar, but he puzzled it out. He also thought to switch on his log recorder, so he would have some kind of record of this bizarre conversation.

"Do you mean," he asked finally, "that, if we find the end of space-time, we will cease to be?"

"YES," it piped, with much waving. "ALWAYS IF REAL IS INTO POTENTIAL, DAMAGE IS THE FINAL STASIS."

"We might damage space-time, if we probe too far?"

"YES," it piped. "TO THE LESS ONE HAS OF EVER, ONE TO THE NEARNESS WITH MANY NO MORE FIXING."

Ar stared, trying to figure that one out. "You cannot fix it if we break space-time?"

"YES," it piped.

Ar began to wonder if it understood what yes meant. Would it say that no matter what he said? He asked, "So we need to kill you all and steal your gold?"

Its tentacles flopped down and it said nothing for a few seconds. "ALL IS GOLD TO NOTHING, WITHOUT A FASTER NON ENTITY."

That, Ar thought, had seemed like a no. He asked, "We should turn back?"

"YES," it piped, its tentacles again flailing. "GUARDIAN AS FOR WITH US MANY, TO THE GOOD OF WITH AND OF MOST GOOD YES YES."

"You are the guardian of space-time, and it is for the good of the many you turn us away?"

"YES," it squeaked.

It seemed, Ar thought, to be shrinking, subtly but definitely getting smaller in all dimensions.

Before it vanished back into the table's surface, it squealed one last cryptic message. "LIFE FOR FORMS ON MOSTLY ALWAYS TOGETHER, TO LASTING IMAGE FOREVER."

Ar, stunned at what had just happened, hoped that meant something positive for every sentient being in existence. Rising from his chair, he wobbled and had to sit down again for a few moments, to catch his breath. Then he drifted to the portal and went to inform the captain, the scientists, and anyone else who wanted to hear.

They watched the recorded encounter, picking up where Ar asked if they would cease to be if they kept going. History buff that he was, he thought back to Columbus, and the idea of sailing off the edge of the world. Maybe it was not so silly a fear, after all.

All seemed reasonably explained as a hallucination, layered and complex but unreal, until the dead crew members showed up alive and normal and with no memory of having been dead, and no sign of injury or decay. One that happened, it was generally conceded that something incredible was going on. The tentacled guardians of the end of Space-time had given them back a life, and that was enough. Shouldn't that be enough?

More than enough?

Ar, soon after this eerie return from the dead, found the following passage in his own voyage journal; had he, too, been dead? He recalled no such thing, yet here was this journal entry. It was in his own voice yet no memory of what he had put down into words came to him.

This is what it said:

Slower, colder, darker. Love in the time of entropy has found me.

The sky is in the water and the water is in the sky. Mountains are coming out of the water through the frost lines. The sun is shrunken and the wind expanded. We walk the reflections with our eyes cast aside in case there are really wolves anymore.

There aren't, though. There are barely people. Animals are long since faded memories and grim stories. We are each other's pets now. There is nothing to eat, not even snow. Not even smoke to smell makes it easier for us.

Eating each other does not fill. Eating is not one of our habits. Why our senses work no one knows. Some call it a subtle torture. A few say it's a delusion of memory.

As the dark shimmers, our march takes us even closer to nowhere. All places are reducing to zero now. Soon there won't be a where to be. Entropy demands it. Slower, colder, darker: that is our goal.

Our fear is that we will still experience after there is nothing left to stimulate senses. What then? Can we continue to exist in nothingness? It is close now. We feel it as a kind of mental chill. It ices our thoughts. It makes our hopes brittle and our terrors sharp-edged.

How it is we remain coherent and distinct to each other we do not know. How it is we keep going when there is nowhere left to go, no reason to go anywhere, we do not know. Discussing it used to take our attention. Now we learn trance or Zen emptiness. Time passes, or it does not. We cannot tell.

Marking the changes in our world, such that remains, is our only way of gauging how much is left. Presuming it all ends when places cease keeps us from madness. Unless we are mad already, as some believe.

Locality shifts to nonlocality upon the heat death of the universe. So our smart ones insist. Those like me do not know even what that is supposed to mean. It doesn't matter, really. Whatever there is to experience, these senses of mine will meld with it, even if it is literally nothingness.

Being and nothingness makes for philosophy. Trouble is, philosophy does not heal or help. No comfort can be found in words and ideas. Only dreads inhabit our notions. We try not to have any. We flee our own thoughts.

When I say wolves, as I did earlier, that is what I mean.

How it came down to us no one remembers if ever any of us knew. It's questionable. There are thirteen of us trudging through this wasteland of water and sky and frost and wind. We find no others. We stay together because parting makes no difference.

I have wandered from the group. Each of us has. It leads only back to the group. Without a sense of time it makes no difference. So we talk, if that is what we do. Communication is linear and incremental. Each word adds a sound to the silence inside us. Each syllable pushes the umbra of being into the light of failing space-time.

There are considerations of comfort. An example is the one who walks near me often. I experience a she. She is not I, and I am not she. We are apart somehow in all this, but near enough. That counts as companionship I think.

Sometimes I love her. My passion waxes and wanes. I direct affection and concern her way. It is never returned. What she sends to me is simple presence. She receives what I give but there is no echo, no returned warmth.

Intention is the key when focusing will. As winds clash and our senses swirl there must be intent. With no goal intent is difficult to maintain, so I focus on her. She who is near me. She becomes what I want.

Developing a desire after however long it has been -- have I ever had one? -- proves nearly impossible. To be with her or to be apart from her is the same. And yet the idea of her in my mind provides a faint outside goal.

Reaching her may give me more. We walk endless tracts of a wilderness that begins to unravel. Place gives way to singularity and design fades to mere pattern, then to a jumble of accident and chaos. Still we remain coherent. We sense each other.

Once there were others, we know that. We remember rain and trees and crowds of people. We remember wolves and elk and bear and fish. We know of birds, lichen, molds, and germs. We recall teeming cities and lovely parks, a planet like paradise. Sad apes caper in our minds. Wild beasts and inglorious failures of nerve when it came to ourselves.

Oddly, there is no frustration. We have only existence and this miniscule hint of place. Vague outlines of matter offer ghosts of form. Wisps of shape taunt our memories. Still we stay whole, as whole as ever perhaps.

We have all asked why. We have asked ourselves, each other, and the nothingness around us. Projecting personality does no good. Pretending sentience surrounding us makes no difference.

Are we catchers or the caught? Are we of this, or is it of us? Do our senses stimulate our surroundings? Or are we encompassing what we think of as our world?

We are always slower, colder, and darker. We are never quite stopped, never entirely frozen solid, never darkness itself.

Perhaps that is life's curse. Like Zeno's paradox, life must go on with always a bit more to be sliced. Always another increment. Always a fraction more possible. Always another half.

Finding the half makes us whole, perhaps.

She is near and I am here and that is all I know.

It seemed to Ar like a warped vision of earth in the grip of entropy, with so little left even love became impossible. He began searching the ship, analysing its systems, in obsessive detail and made a discovery. It turned out a secret level of security blanketed the ship, one Ar had not been briefed on, and the ship had recorded the entire encounter, from the very start, automatically. For once, Ar was happy to let his outrage at this violation of privacy slide. In a spacecraft, privacy is largely a delusion, anyway, he knew. Anything that affected any of them, affected all of them, and they all learned that fairly quickly, in such close quarters.

They decided with a collective vote to become permanently lost, so as not to tempt others to follow them.

The captain recited a ceremony brought from home, took some visuals, and ejected the beacon Eschaton had carried. The Teleos ejected its beacon, too, and thus the end of Space-time was marked for navigation -- in theory, and in only one direction from the arbitrarily-chosen Reality Core, but still marked.

By people.

It was conquest and discovery, and on the long, long way back, the crew sang songs of victory and wealth, knowing their relativity envelope would bring them back only a psychological week after they'd left home, to adoring families who would be proud and happy and welcoming.

For Ar, it was as good a result as was possible, given the limitations. What kept nagging at him was the notion of scale, but he understood enough about himself to let it drop, once his arms went around his wife and daughter again.

What did you bring me, daddy? his daughter, Ej, asked.

This, he said, hugging her again.

By the time their signals ceased, it became obvious they had gone mad long before the end, and this was considered something of a mercy, because no humanoid mind could face infinite nothingness, or a totality of stasis, and remain unshattered. Or so it was said, among experts.

Most had forgotten about them, truth to tell.

Those waiting at home never heard directly from the Eschaton or the Teleos again in their lifetimes, after that last reported hug. A few generations later it was concluded that they had probably ceased to exist as they passed the still point at the end of space-time. Essentially, their atoms achieved infinite separation and the arrow of time ceased its flight for them, as their consciousness hit the stasis wall.

Unless, of course, everything looped back on itself in a closed system, in which case they were safe in the past, tracing out their lives along a new timeline and perhaps unaware of being pioneers of a parallel world.

Years, a wrinkle in space/time later, or before, or elsewhen, a ship was sent (was it again?) to seek them, failing that to explore. It roamed almost randomly, and then was ordered to set up and construct a base from which to continue deeper probe missions. Incrementally colonizing was the new approach to finding the end of the all.

The crews began to build a new outpost for mankind, only to be attacked by salvage pirates from the Lesser Principalities. That crew would stumble on Eschaton's crew in the form of what came to be called the photon ghosts of Nebus Omega.

Becalmed in the sea of starless darkness surrounding Nebus Omega, the ship glinted with residual energy bursts of sky-blue and lavender so pale it was almost pink. Legran bit his lower lip and tossed another sealer panel to Micals. "Looks like a unisex toy, pink and blue."

"Some places I know," Micals said, "the babies got no sex 'til they're like what we'd call teenagers." Saying this, he touched the crotch of his suit awkwardly with a thick-gloved hand. "Those tweeners, we call 'em sure can jiggle."

Legran nodded, untwisting a seal valve and depressurizing one of the release hatches for a quick test. He felt the release as vibration through his suit and nodded, satisfied. "I know. Been in those crèche towns, man. Can get pretty wild at First Mating."

The two worked methodically, chatted idly...

...and died instantly when a Luxon Migrater-class Cargo Vessel shaved in too close, having used the still-pulsing scout ship as a pink/blue beacon.

The men were crushed by the pressure wave, jellied inside suits made to withstand several times the psi but not able to handle the acoustic transfer of being right up against vibrating metal.

Records show that, as a result, neither the conversation about crèche communities nor the construction of the Habitat, which the scout ship had birthed, ever got completed. The Habitat they'd been building fell like a metal egg with a bite out of it into Nebus Omega's gravity well and was soon just a frozen afterimage in the black hole's event horizon.

Meanwhile the cargo ship, massing out at seventy-eight times the scout ship, entered a circular orbit. It locked metal hurlant aimers onto its erstwhile beacon.

"Don't shoot," said Commander Morton, Gary L., late of Her Majesty's Secret Service and serving now as unofficial privateer for the Lesser Principalities. He held up a hand, palm forward. His signal stopped the gunner from unleashing scrap metal in a molten torrent at the scout ship, which drifted inert, twitching with its residual energy.

"Must've really blown when we phased in, huh?"

Morton shrugged. "I've seen worse. Hull's intact; scans confirm only a few small breaches."

His first officer, Jailer Fyness, gave a sigh. "Hardly worth the nudge, though."

The plan had been to disable the personnel on board the scout ship, then attach small chemical rockets to push it back toward the Lesser Principalities, where snaggers would catch and salvage it. Of course it would be marked by Morton's molecular code so they'd know whose account to credit.

"It's something, and that's better than nothing. Get your thumb out and a team over there."

"Got them suiting up now, Sir."

"And you? You're not going with them?" Morton scowled at Fyness until the shorter man pushed off and drifted the hell out of there. It was an act of annoyance rather than the fact of it, but the truth was, his first officer wasn't doing so well anymore with the niceties. Morton made a mental note to keep an eye out for any accidents that might conveniently befall Fyness.

Salvage and pirating were dangerous businesses, after all.

"They were setting up a habitat, meaning they were going to observe Nebus Omega. Why?"

This entry in Morton's spoken journal left him uneasy as he reviewed it. He could hear the stress in his voice. He made sure his hand-coded journal was neutral, factual, and dry, knowing it would be boiled down and analysed far quicker. Voice was handy but took too long to review.

That he kept such logs and journals at all bespoke the faith Morton held in orderly living. It was the only way he'd found to keep out the chaos.

Yawning, he switched his bunk mate on and had himself a cuddle before setting the sonics to snooze. Dreamless sleep held him in its warm palm this time, a relief from the nightmares of blood, famine, and betrayal he'd been having the past few weeks.

"They're hailing us, the scout ship. You awake?"

Morton shook himself and sat up. "Yeah, yeah. Okay. Be on the bridge in a few minutes."

He got up and skipped the ion shower. Getting into his paint was hindered when he ran out of the red, but purple was an acceptable backup, so that crisis didn't scatter him.

On the bridge, quiet chaos reigned as the scout ship tried to manoeuvre out from under their guns and its captain, a narrow man with silvery hair and one mechanical arm, tried to negotiate from a position of strength no one believed he had, least of all him.

"Political theatre for the bosses."

"Owners, Sir." Fyness was none the worse for his EVA. He looked almost chipper. "Happy to report the boosters in place and all hands returned safe."

"So I see. Check the rations, would you? If we have to blast these idiots I might want to scramble a team to fetch me back their fresh fruits or whatever."

Fyness saluted with the faintest glimmer of sarcasm on his unshaven face and drifted off to do as told.

Meanwhile Morton checked the read-outs and decided a summary of the scout ship captain's demands was unnecessary. No one seriously believed anyone else cared.

"Open a link for me to talk to him," Morton said. When the little man appeared on the hologram stage, and the light came on indicating a reciprocal link, Moron cleared his throat. "We're here now. You can stand down, Cap'n."

"The fuck I will, we claimed this with an official notice of exploitation under the First Contact Resolu..."

"Look, just stop it, okay? This talk we're having is about whether your remaining crew gets to live long enough to see home port again, or not. I emphasize the 'or not' because this is free space and there is no law."

"You have any idea what's here?"

"Your ship's what interests me. We lost the Habitat Sphere when we shaved in, and I'll catch hell for that. It was our prime target for salvage."

"For piracy. You're from the LPs, right?"

"You know that, come on. Have the common courtesy to speak to me man to man."

"We are on a mission to find the End of the All. Nebus Omega is--"

"A black hole, I know. Isolated, no stars in the general quadrant. Free space. No laws. I don't care about your religious quest to find the end to end all endings, or the edge, or whatever you fanatics from the Ocular Cluster call it."

"No, listen. It's inhabited."

For a nanosecond or so Morton's skin wanted to ripple, or shiver, or just register a drop in temperature, but that silly impulse passed quickly enough when his overt thinking told him how ridiculous was the notion of a black hole with inhabitants. "What are they, photon ghosts?" he sneered.

A pause showed the scout ship's captain frowning, then nodding. "You know, that's not a half-bad name for it."

"For what?" Morton was having none of this nonsense. "I'm transferring some files. Consult them, analyse them, do what you want, then get back to me. Just remember, we have initiated contact with them. They are in touch with my people, not yours."

"They? Look, Capt..."

But the scout's captain had broken the link.

"Son of a bitch. Com, did you receive files?"

"Aye, sir. Looks like 44 of them, sir."

"Access them to my cabin only, code NG. First shirt? I don't want to be disturbed for a while, understood?"

Morton didn't wait for Fyness's sarcasm this time but pushed off and sailed through the hatch, banging his left elbow on the bulkhead and cursing at the welcome pain.

They communicated in images by arranging photons frozen in the black hole's event horizon, somehow exploiting parallax to focus said images for the scout ship alone. It was akin to direct laser communications, which didn't have sidereal leak, didn't have sideband frequencies that could be unjammed, and were not susceptible to tapping. If interrupted, the beams were compromised and discounted. There was no way to eavesdrop on such communications, not yet.

They know our culture well, Morton realized. What got him was an image of a woman in a bikini. She was shapely and curved in the right places and if it weren't for her somewhat concave nose and bulbous eyes, she would have been attractive.

In human terms, they'd come as close to a bull's-eye as possible without actually scoring one. Morton knew that it was hard enough for one human culture to appreciate another's well enough to find hot buttons to exploit in advertising. Here was a life form -- no, intelligence form, we don't know they're alive in any biological sense -- that did it apparently sight unseen.

Had they been studying human transmissions for centuries or had they done this quick-and-dirty analysis of what appeals to us in the incredibly brief time since the discovery of Nebus Omega?

Morton finally felt the cold chills as he drafted a terse emergency memo to be short-beamed at once to the LPs, where all hell would break loose as they scrambled to position themselves to open up trade ahead of the scout ship's claim. Wouldn't do to have the Neo-Empire gaining such a profitable advantage.

Morton downloaded, after he sent the memo, a dram of his personal allotment of genuine single malt scotch. He sipped some of it, and then downed the rest when his hands refused to stop shaking.

"You have to kill them. Surely you see that."

Morton looked away from the eagerness in Fyness's eyes. "We can take them prisoner."

"Every second they continue to live gives them a chance to wreck this chance for us, Sir. And by what authority would you arrest and hold them? We're privateers; the LPs would have to declare war with the Old Sol System for that to happen legally. Surely the Ocular Cluster crazies have already lodged complaints with the Alliance."

"I'm not a murderer. I will not commit genocide."

"This is political, Sir. Where's the murder in expedience? They got in our way. Not our fault, any more than, what, a small animal getting in front of a ground car."

"They're people, like us. Well, sentient beings at least."

"Are they? I thought they're the enemy. They're crazies. Oracular Clusterfucks. They believe in finding the end of all things, the edge of reality. We're just trying to make a living. Are we going to let the crazies block us? Look, if you can't do this, I can. I'll give the order. It'll be my responsibility."

Morton saw the eagerness flash into lust. He knew Fyness wanted this, saw it as a way to advance his career, be a big hero among the Machiavellians.

Sliding open an old-fashioned drawer hidden just under one side of his desk, Morton removed the particle beam wand and with it sliced an X-shape into Fyness's chest. Watching the man bubble, blister, and bleed gave him only one qualm, and it spasmed through him like a quick puke before going on stage.

Morton said, very quietly, "I'm not a murderer."

As Fyness fell he wondered if that were true anymore.

"Send a Bos'n and medic to my cabin, there's been an accident," he said into the intercom.

He guessed he was probably not yet a murderer, in the strictest sense, but he also knew it would catch up with him eventually.

"These photon beings, or whatever they are, offer trade. Trade the likes to transform worlds. I'm telling you, there's enough to go around regardless of ideological differences. Many times over."

Morton regarded the hologram of the scout ship's captain, a man named Neibauer, and tugged his lower lip. "What can they trade? Nothing comes out of a black hole but energy."

"We can tap that as usual, but they're offering information. Think what they've absorbed over the millennia of sentient space. They are amazing."

Ah, one of those, Morton thought, recognizing the term "sentient space" from the one Historical Mind Society meeting he'd attended years ago, out of curiosity about the Ocular movement and, more to the point, to get closer to a young woman. They believed intelligent species proliferating in space/time actually rendered space/time itself intelligent. Thus, finding the end of the end, or the edge, meant finding the Life/Death point, as they called it. The singularity from which all flowed, into which all flowed.

Morton framed his next words carefully. "You must be glad to have found these, uh, photon ghosts. I mean, they tend to confirm HistMind and Ocular doctrine don't they?" A stiffening of Neibauer's features showed displeasure at what might be mockery. "Personal beliefs don't enter into this, nor do the political. It does not matter if one is Ocular or Principality."

"Oh, I'm not so sure they don't. After all, how do I know this isn't a ploy on your part?"

"You can record images yourself from them."

"So far, no we can't. Nothing. It's a basic black hole, suitable for energy capture. That's all."

Neibauer demurred. "Hardly just that. I'll request they focus on you, so you can receive images too."

"How can we know this isn't originating from you somehow, though? You see?"

"Just wait, the content will convince you."

"You mean the content you didn't see fit to include in the less-than-convincing files you transferred to us?" Morton bristled, wondering how the man, faced with fairly certain obliteration, could hold back key things that might ease the pressure.

Again Neibauer blinked off. An instant later Comm reported incoming signals, like laser but tighter if that were possible. "Really layered, too, sir. I mean, this stuff is dense."

The snippet proffered by Nebus Omega lasted twelve point six seconds and, when on-board computers finally unravelled it, came in at over one million images, each one comprised of so many bytes that it strained their software to display it.

The chills started in Morton again. No known technology could do that with data or information.

"If it's a scam, and I fall for it, I'm history's goat."

"I doubt you'd feel it, after they behead you, sir."

Morton glared at Fyness's replacement's bluntness but didn't say anything back. He almost missed Fyness's sarcasm. "When you're right, you're right." This young Stephens would go far.

"A benefit of beheading."

Morton was about to open his mouth to let some stray thought or other out when a bos'n's mate third class burst into the officer's lounge, itself an unprecedented breach of protocol on that ship, and shouted, "Mutiny, sir; you have to do something quick. They're on the bridge."

Like all Commanders, Morton carried a transmitter that, if switched on with the right code, would activate the gut-bombs every able body on-board had to swallow in order to continue working for the Lesser Principalities. These prevented mutiny; any rebellion en-masse resulted in one of the officers using his code and killing the enlisted men. Usually also themselves, in suicides of failure's shame.

The little pills all who spaced choked down lodged in their small intestines and would, if triggered, explode, sending toxins through the body to kill slowly if the explosive charge detonating didn't do the trick.

"Who's on the bridge, bos'n?"

The young man's face contorted as if he'd been punched. "Not sure what they are, sir. Like watery or wavery, only air, cobwebs and stuff; I don't know."

"Make sense, damn it." Morton shoved past the kid and used the handrails to speed himself down the corridor toward the bridge. Over his shoulder he told Stephens to check engineering, make sure it was still in ship's hands.

As he rushed to see if his presence could save things from total anarchy a fraction of his mind was boggled that the intelligences from the black hole could apparently project images not only into the ship, but onto the bridge. Did they understand the significance of the bridge?

Had to, he told himself. Too much of a coincidence otherwise. So where, he wondered, did mutiny come in?

"Hurry up, Stephens," he yelled, but of course his new First Officer was long out of earshot.

How had he let it get so far out of control so quickly? Morton wondered, frozen in the hatchway gaping into the bridge, where a scene from a farce was enacting itself without a script.

Several of the officers were cowering, one shrieking and two others just crying outright. One was swiping at one of the intruders, ineffectually; it looked like trying to chop smoke with an axe, except that he was using a cable torn from a wall unit. The motions were mechanical, almost as if controlled.

The ghosts were vaguely humanoid, with a torso and head at the top and limbs. Some had more than the usual four limbs, some had disproportionate heads, and some seemed to be fragmented, parts of whole people. Not that they were people. They had no faces, for one thing. Some of them were hard to focus on; other details sprang out in relief, such as the pulsing gaps oozing a white smoke in the belly of one.

All were naked.

Some were, nevertheless, in rags.

They floated, they loomed at this or that terrified person, and they put out some kind of energy; Morton felt it. And his head began filling with horrific images; his own death featured strongly along with the dismemberment of his loved ones, the destruction of his home world, and the obliteration of anything he held dear.

He didn't scream for someone to make them stop, the way his pilot trainee was doing, but he wanted to.

Just as Morton forced himself to enter the bridge and bellow for everyone to take their places at once, it stopped. Instant silence in his head, immediate reduction of screaming and shrieking to a quiet set of sobs.

The holostage flickered and Neibauer appeared. "You see?"

"If this is your weapon--"

"It's not a weapon. They're just showing you their displeasure. They can make us miserable."

They can haunt us, literally, Morton thought.

Aloud he asked, "What is it they want, then? You've dealt with them longer. Have they made demands?"

Neibauer laughed. "You won't believe it."

"Try me, damn it."

For an instant the hologram of Neibauer stood motionless, head lowered as if in thought. Then the shoulders shook. Perhaps he was crying, over there in his doomed little scout ship. But then he lifted his face, and showed that he was laughing. "What do they want, you ask?" "That's what I want to know, yeah." Morton shuddered, knowing he didn't want a repeat of those images in his head, so vivid, so violent, and so appalling. What they made him feel was worse than even witnessing his teammate's burn when the engine blew on the race around Procyon VII. He gagged.

"What do they want, you want to know?" A giggle.

"Damn it, tell me. What is wrong with you?"

And, through laughter, Neibauer said "What you might call, well, world peace." And he collapsed into laughter.

Neibauer asked for permission to come aboard for a face-to-face talk, and Morton granted it.

Once ensconced with single malt scotch and scones for both, Neibauer leaned forward in his harness and said, "There's a third alternative."

"Always is. Expatiate."

"One, we tell what we've found. Let things happen and hope for the best. Two, we lie about it, keep things to ourselves as much as we can, and try to work a compromise."

"So what's the third?"

Neibauer smiled. "We forget all about it. Report this black hole as old and not worth bothering with. Chart it as a dead loss and hope no one else comes poking around for a good long time. We skate with our lives and sanity."

"You think They will let us do that?"

Neibauer's shrug was worthy of a Pope.

"I'll have to think this over; I'll let you know."

"Fair enough, but that's my vote. Forget it all."

They toasted each other's health, each with reservations, and Niebauer returned to the scout ship.

We behave ourselves, Morton thought, and get access to a storehouse of knowledge and information such as we cannot conceive, or we misbehave and suffer horrific nightmares day and night. We cease war and we stop using our minds and machines for harming other intelligences, including ourselves, or we experience the worst losses we can imagine, and then some, over and over, feeling them emotionally with the intensity of heightened awareness, as punishment.

Paradise or Hell? It should be an easy choice, yet had never been, and mankind had more often opted for Hell.

Morton tried dozens of times to draft a report covering this, then gave up. He and Neibauer talked some more, via secure comm link, becoming almost fast friends from having to face something so outré together with no one else to consult.

Morton decided to lie, finally. No use trying to shape or carve the truth into something the Princes or Oculist visionaries would swallow. He would claim the scout ship phased away before they shaved in and that they found nothing there at Nebus Omega worth bothering with. That threw the ball into Neibauer's lap. If the scout Captain leaked the truth it would fall on him to suffer the consequences of political upheaval and career suicide. It was somewhat Machiavellian but Morton washed his hands of the problem with no qualms. After all, it hadn't been he who'd opened a dialogue with this bizarre new-found sentience.

He knew his lie wouldn't hold up for long. Inevitably crew would talk or some other scout ship would show up, following the beacon of energy every black hole promised. Habitats would be built and inflated. New cluster worlds would start.

He understood this as inevitable, but he also knew, with a certainty that surprised him, that he didn't want to be the one who brought a vengeful god, or its equivalent, back to the Lesser Principalities. If the Oculists ducked this fate, too, well, so be it, and by the time Nebus Omega's weird intelligences were rediscovered he'd be long dead, safely out of harm's way, a life well-lived without nightmares.

"We're just not ready yet," he told his journal, speaking for mankind without so much as a blink of shame.

Neibauer's ship was late getting back to home port but amended its report to the Oculist ministry to say that Nebus Omega was not worth pursuing for various technical reasons.

Morton's ship returned a few weeks later, having done some further scavenging and privateering, to confirm Neibauer's conclusion, which by then had been reported by spies to the Lesser Principalities.

Neither captain referenced the Eschaton's fate from so many otherwhen's ago.

Neither crew experienced any bad images once they left the vicinity of the black hole. If any told what they'd experienced, they weren't believed. Drunkenness has its virtues when it comes to covering up the bizarre truth.

It was always like that with ghost stories.

Hope

Tony Shillitoe

"Hope is a waking dream."

― Aristotle

Collage. Pulsing crystal. Light shimmering on water. Jemma and Mila's piping voices. Cornell, striding into the low curling waves, dark skin glistening, back muscles taut. Bouncer barking at gulls. Ebbing and flowing. The wash of waves.

'Are you happy?' Javel's voice, warm, like the sun, deep, like the ocean's darkest blue. The welling emotion surges, and stretches her mouth into a grin.

'I've never been happier.'

Deep tingling. She feels it at the edge of her dream. In her chest. Unexpected.

Cornell holds a tiny bat, broken wings, ball of pain, cupped in his adolescent hands, a precious wonder. Dying. 'What do I do with it?'

'Put it back.'

'I can't. It's hurt.'

She feels his pain. 'There's nothing we can do.'

'Can we ring the vet?'

'The vet won't get here in time.'

'But that's so unfair. There has to be hope.'

She sees his tears, the pain deep in her own chest. 'It's in the nature of things.' Her mother would have said it was all part of God's plan. Cornell wouldn't accept that reasoning any more than she had. 'Give it to me.'

'What will you do?'

I don't know, she thinks, as she holds out her hands to take the pain from her son.

The tingling is insistent at the extremes of her fingers and toes.

'Is everything packed?' She casts her green eyes over the bags and equipment. Javel is fastidious and methodical, everything in its place. As she would want it to be.

'Kiss me.' She lets him pull her in, enjoys the crush of her breasts against his broad chest, and luxuriates in his embrace, the tender insistence of his soft lips. Then she remembers, pushes back, takes a breath to whisper, 'The kids.' He laughs his irresistible laugh that melts people, and makes him popular with everyone at the university.

And Mila pulls on her hands. 'Are we ready?'

And she watches, with hollow prescience, the grey SUV rounding the corner at the end of their street, hands waving emphatically, glowing gold in the rising sun, voices blown away in the chill morning breeze.

The pain expands, and she sucks in a lungful of oxygen – cold, exhilarating.

'You fully understand the enormity of your decision?'

She stares, first at him, then at her. Why this question at this point? It could be rhetorical. 'Yes.'

'Sign here.'

She reaches forward, presses the screen with her index finger, and a retinal scan flashes across her green eyes. She blinks. 'When do we leave?'

The tingling is pervasive, painful.

A dark blue police uniform stands at her door. She thinks there should be two. There were two, originally, but now there's only one. She can't see his face clearly, but she thinks he looks like Javel. But he can't be Javel. Javel died in the accident. That's why the policeman is here. To tell her. Only, there were two of them before.

Overwhelming sorrow seeps through her soul. 'That's part of the waking effect you will experience,' the young technician explains, during a pre-flight briefing. 'Psychologists are fascinated by it, this inexplicable sadness generated when waking from an induced coma.' The tingling throbs in her extremities. 'There will be pain, but we've provided a drug to compensate. It will be administered automatically. Your pain will be brief.'

Bouncer is pressing his wet snout against her bare thigh. She knows it's him, but she can't look down. She can only watch Mila, long dark hair, like her mother, dancing in her new ballet shoes, spinning like a prima donna, like the dancer she might have become. The dancer she might have been.

She wants to open her eyes because she knows she's waking. The synthetic pain relief hasn't come, and she wonders, disconnected, whether there's a malfunction. Then the surge rolls from her shoulders, through her head, and the pain dissipates, like waves on a shallow beach.

'Are you sure it will function after that much time?'

The girl technician gives her advertising smile, brimming with trained confidence. 'Of course it will. Test failure is less than one in a trillion.'

'But you've never been out there to test it.'

'Laboratory replication is rigorous, Major. If it was ever going to fail out there, it would certainly already have failed in here. And it hasn't.'

'Except for one in a trillion tests.'

Advertising smile. Perfect teeth and skin. 'Less than one in a trillion.'

She opens her eyes. Blinks. Darkness. Sucks in another lungful of oxygen. Blinks again. Light envelops her. Her instinct is to sit up, roll over, but she's strapped tight. Her response is to struggle against her invisible bonds.

'That's likely to be your first response,' Doctor Alard advises her in prep. 'You won't remember where you are. Six years asleep will do that for you. Relax. Clear your head. Wait for the rejuvenator.'

Brittle liquid rushes into her veins, courses through her right arm, into her chest. It hurts. Her heart jumps. The puzzle coalesces. Consciousness snaps into clarity. 'Welcome, Major Whenan. I hope you've had a restful and comfortable journey. When you hear this, Hope will be orbiting the fifth moon of Alpha Centauri Bd, the moon code-named Asimov. You, and your team, have successfully travelled across the 4.5 light year gap in just over six of our Earth years, and your team will be now engaged in revival and rejuvenation. Relax and enjoy the remaining preparation, before you open your pod to reunite with your colleagues.' She knows that electronic voice. Jeni Stavic. She works in the program, and she personalised the experience when she programmed the ship's computers. It's good to hear a friend, she decides, even digitally, and she relaxes to let the automated processes finish.

'As you all know, the essence of the mission is simple – to see if your team can determine what level of life, if any, exists on Bd.'

'So all the results from unmanned probes sent to Bd suggest life is possible?' Major Alan Wilkinson, who heads up the team, is asking the question.

Major Jorgensen runs his hand through his thinning grey strands of hair, looks at his program colleague, Professor Haran, shrugs, and replies, 'The results are inconclusive.'

'Why?' Wilkinson persists.

'None of the probes have been able to function in orbit above Bd, beyond a few minutes.'

She intervenes, curious. 'Any clues as to why?'

'None. They just go offline.'

'They go permanently offline,' Professor Haran adds.

'Then why are we going? Wilkinson asks, but it's a pointless question because they all know why, even before Jorgensen answers.

'Because we have no other options.'

'You should now focus your thoughts, Major.' Jeni's voice breaks in. 'Your biological systems are stabilising. Continue to relax. In three minutes, your pod will adjust the relative atmosphere, and automatic functions will cease. You can continue the pod release process through manual voice control.'

'Each pod runs from its own internalised energy source, and is individualised for your physical comfort. Intake of foods and liquids are regularly administered and monitored to sustain your ideal weight. Your muscles are digitally exercised throughout the trip to ensure muscle density and function is maintained. All bodily waste is removed.' The doctor introducing the pod functionalities to the team smiles, a salesperson, like the girl technician.

'Every care and effort is in place to ensure you arrive at Asimov trim, taut and terrific!' his buck-toothed trainee adds.

Major Li is not sold on the concept. 'Why the individualised power sources?'

'Safety. It's a long trip -' Doctor Wynn begins.

'\- and something might fail in that time,' the assistant adds again.

'Calculated contingencies,' says Li.

'Insurance. Yes,' Wynn confirms.

'Nice,' Li says, winking to the team. 'We might not all make it.'

'You know the risks.'

'Yeah. We know the risks. Just confirming them.'

The diffused blue LED, illuminating the pod's glass screen, is annoying and her breath smears the glass. Relax, she tells herself. Too many thoughts. Stop compromising the procedures. Clear your head. She's hyper-conscious of machinery massaging and manipulating her limbs, back and neck, preparing her for moving again. Relax. She repeats the mantra, over and over. Relax.

'All of us have our reasons for taking this trip. So what's yours?'

She looks at the team's expectant faces. 'I like space.'

They stare in disbelief, then smiles spread through the team. Norton laughs. 'No family?'

'No,' she replies, her voice deep and sharp, but she realises she's answered too abruptly, because she sees understanding in one pair of eyes. Tristan. 'Complicated,' she adds, to prevent questions, and she flicks aside a wisp of her brown hair that has escaped her ponytail band.

'All of us are complicated,' Tristan Weckert says calmly. 'That's why we're here.'

'Vital signs are stable, Major,' Jeni informs her. 'Automated pod checks are complete. Voice activation is now operational. We will dim the screen light. The Heads Up Display will appear on the glass, and the ship's lights will kick in. Over to you.' A pause. Jeni's digital voice adds, 'I hope it goes well, Rhee.' She smiles at the unexpected personal message, and wonders if Jeni did the same for the others. A click and whirring begins behind her head. The blue light fades. She waits for the lights to come on in the ship's chamber, but fog obscures the glass. She sees her reflection – a woman in her forties, skin pulled tight by her dark blue space suit – and wonders how she will face getting older. My family dies and I go on. How is that fair? She shudders. Focus, Rhee. You have a job to do. Moisture inside the pod is unexpected. Assuming, from Jeni's automated report, the HUD is operating, she orders, 'Adjust interior humidity to zero.' Air moves gently around her face evaporating the fog. Lime green HUD lines and points appear on the glass, but her gaze rushes to the vista beyond – darkness, pocked with mesmerising starlight and coloured swirls of gaseous nebulae. Space. For precious seconds, she stares into the heart of the universe, into a quadrant no human eye has seen. Raw beauty overwhelms her. She gazes at the clusters, becomes aware of an anomalous empty patch to the left of her screen - before panic erupts. At the top corner, she spots jutting shadows of twisted metal. 'Status report! All pod systems!' she barks. Her pulse rate is rapidly rising. She waits, squinting at the peripheral chaos, the vast emptiness where there should be walls and light, terror gripping her throat and twisting her gut.

'Pod systems fully operational,' Jeni's voice reassures her. 'Biological responses erratic. I recommend you relax, Major Whenan.'

'Oxygen status.'

'Oxygen at ninety-three percent capacity.'

'Estimated time for oxygen depletion?' Her heart is thumping, her breathing sharp, ragged.

'At current rate of consumption,' Jeni reports, 'pod oxygen supply will be at zero percent in two hours forty four minutes.' The voice clicks, and adds, 'Relax, Major Whenan.'

Relax, she mutters. You can't see what I see. 'Status report on Hope vessel's systems.' The reply takes longer than she anticipates, so she searches the star field for familiarity, patterns, shapes, but nothing prompts her memory. I'm too far out, she decides. No one has seen space from this point. How can I recognise anything? She notices another patch of emptiness, low on her screen, like the first she had spotted, an aberration in the star field, but she can't fathom its cause.

'Ship systems are offline,' Jeni reports.

'Try again!' she orders abruptly, and then corrects her phrasing. 'Status report on Hope vessel's systems. I repeat, status report on Hope vessel's systems.'

'Ship systems are offline,' Jeni repeats.

She pulls her gaze from the wider view to study the HUD glass. 'Activate communication channel.'

A dull lime green light brightens into emerald. 'Communication channel activated.'

'Contact Major Wilkinson.'

The green light flashes, and Jeni replies, 'Major Wilkinson is offline.'

'Contact Major Wilkinson.'

'Major Wilkinson is offline.'

'Contact Major Li.'

'Major Li is offline.'

'Contact Major Tippins.'

'Major Tippins is offline.'

'Contact Major Weckert.'

'Major Weckert is offline.'

'Status report on pod communication system.'

'Pod communication system is fully operational.'

They might all still be going through rejuvenation, she tells herself, but the vision beyond the glass tells her there has been a catastrophic event.

'So,' says Professor Michael Larkins, the Director of Deep Space Research, tapping the screen. 'You will travel at slightly under the speed of light. The photon sails take a little while, when deployed, to pick up energy, but once they do you will move increasingly faster through space, until you reach maximum speed. Assuming all parts work as planned, you will arrive at Bd, orbiting the moon, Asimov, in slightly over six Earth years.'

'Those sails are the size of a planet!' Tristan exclaims.

Larkins laughs, his perfect white teeth gleaming, and nods. 'Almost. That's why the Hope was built just beyond the Moon. When we open the Mylar sails, it will be a big event. We'll see you shining from Earth for a very long time.'

'But surely sails that big have a higher propensity for damage?' Li Zhou asks.

'You won't avoid some damage on a trip this far into space. But we've plotted a course to get outside the immediate Solar System that will help you dodge many of the dangers. In saying that, we can't guarantee absolute protection from random or unpredictable events.'

'Sounds like an insurance policy speech,' Tristan whispers to her. She smiles.

'Like?' Jo Tippins asks.

Larkins shrugs. 'We don't know. A meteor we've never plotted? But the chances of anything big enough to cause structural damage to Hope, once you're in deep space, are so astronomically tiny as to warrant zero care. The sails are so big that space debris will have minimal structural impact. But we have taken precautions. In fact, the Hope has many backup and individualised support systems, so that, if one component fails, or is damaged, another will take up the slack. It's the most expensive space expedition we've ever undertaken, and you guys are the most expensive lab rats we've ever used.'

'We're going to be a new shining star!' Jo Tippins declares.

'Contact Major Wilkinson.'

'Major Wilkinson is offline.'

She assesses her situation. If the pods are programmed to revive the team simultaneously, all ten team members should be online. 'Open all communication channels.'

'All channels open.'

'Hey,' she gasps, and takes control of her desperation. 'It's Rhee – Major Whenan.' She takes a steadying breath, and remembers how her ninth grade teacher taught them all to pause, take a breath, and relax, before speaking to an audience. 'Looks like we've arrived a little worse for wear. Anyone getting this?' She waits. When no one replies, she continues. 'Okay. So. All systems are operational on this pod, so I'm going to assume you can hear me, even if I can't hear you. Okay? Everyone copy that?' She waits. 'Good. Okay. Well, I'm still secure, and I will continue manual preparation for disembarking.' She stares at the stars, and controls her breathing to calm her nascent fear. 'However, unless I hear otherwise, I will not activate pod evacuation. Copy that? I will not activate pod evacuation.' She pauses, and hears her thumping heart. Okay, Rhee, relax. You need to relax. There's much to do. She takes another deep breath. 'Okay. So, listen up. I will link to the ship's communication system, and let them know back home that we've come online. Jo, if you can hear me, as soon as you can, get us an update on our position. If I don't answer you, assume I still can't hear anyone. Okay? Transmit directly to home in that case.' She pauses. 'I'm recommencing evacuation procedures now. I'll close the pod communication channels, briefly, while I link to the ship, and then I'll switch back in. Copy that?' She pauses again, hoping for a reply, but the lines stay silent. Okay, she tells herself. This is why we trained so hard. This is not what we expected to happen, but now we deal with it. Now I deal with it. 'Activate Home Base channel one.'

'Home Base is offline.'

Panic niggles at her gut. 'Activate Home Base channel two.'

'Home Base is offline.'

'Status report on ship's communication systems.'

'Ship communications systems are offline.'

'Status report on Hope vessel's communications systems,' she repeats.

'Ship communications systems are offline.'

She swears and strains against her restraints. Why? Why this? 'Why!' She hears static in hear headset. Then a voice.

'Rhee?'

She stops. 'Yes?' She stares at the HUD.

'Rhee?' The voice is scratchy, crackling.

'Jo?' There's no answer. 'Jo? Jo? Hey! Speak to me.'

She hears crackling, a hiss, and part of a reply. '- Jo – penter – Ann – ter –'

'I can't hear you clearly,' she says. 'Repeat.'

'\- sAnn C – nter – nn Carp – '

'Ann? Ann Carpenter?'

' – s –'

Her excitement rises. Someone else is alive. 'Ann, it's me. Are you okay? Can you hear me?'

' – what ha – d'

She searches her screen, the peripherals, and spots a faint blue light, a tiny luminescent square, in a shadowy oblong shape outlined against the stars, far to her right, at the edge of her screen. 'Ann, if you can hear me, what's your status? I repeat, what's your status?'

' – scared – someth – not work – leak – can't –'

'Ann, I think I see you.'

' – hel – don't – this –'

'You keep breaking up, Ann. Conserve your energy. Go through your routines. I don't know what's happened. I'll try to get the ship's systems online again. Copy that? Okay? Ann? Ann?' She hears a whisper, crackling, and the line goes silent. At the corner of her screen, the blue light flickers, and vanishes. The oblong shadow is dark. 'Ann!' she cries. 'Ann! Say something. Ann! Ann!' Her anger and frustration set her HUD indicators ablaze with red warnings, and Jeni's voice hums, 'Relax, Major Whenan. Relax. Conserve your resources. Relax.'

'I can't fucking relax! Damn you! Shut up! Shut the fuck up! Shut up!'

'Relax, Major Whenan,' Jeni recites patiently. 'Relax.'

She screams. She closes her eyes, and screams, and screams, until her throat hurts.

When she stops screaming, she opens her eyes to see the last vestige of fog fade from the screen and the crystal clarity of deep space restored. She gazes at the stars, a tear easing down her cheek. They circle across her screen as Hope slowly rotates. Did we make it? she wonders. Is one of those stars the Sun? Am I looking back at Earth, somewhere out there? A soft orange glimmer appears at the edge of her screen, backlighting the jagged wreckage, and she turns her eyes right as the glow slowly expands along the periphery. Alpha Centauri B. My first and only sunrise in six years, she thinks wistfully, mournfully. The orange light sharpens, and she squints against the glare, remembering that, while Alpha Centauri B lacks the Sun's luminosity, this close it's intensely bright. 'Activate screen block,' she instructs, and a deep blue light expands, leaving the HUD visible as it conceals the star-pocked background. I have to complete the checks, she tells herself. 'Status report pod oxygen.'

'Oxygen is currently at seventy-two per cent.'

'Contact Home Base.'

'Ship communication systems are offline.'

She sighs. 'Initiate pod oxygen recharge.'

'Ship systems are offline.'

'Position report.'

The pod electronics whisper and her HUD morphs into a star map. 'You are currently 1.34 parsecs or 4.37 light years from Earth, orbiting Asimov, the fifth moon of Alpha Centauri Bd. Calculations indicate that your orbit is diminishing under the moon's gravitational pull. Your craft will collide with the moon in approximately eight hours.'

'If an emergency arises,' explains Wynn, 'your pod can function independently of the main ship. You can initiate a sequence that will disengage the pod from the ship.'

'You mean evacuate?' Li asks.

'Eject, actually.'

'The pods are designed to act as escape vehicles?'

'Technically, yes.'

'What do you mean by technically?' Wilkinson asks.

'A pod will eject from the ship, but it isn't designed to be self-propelled by voice activation for more than a few short manoeuvres. They're meant to sustain life until a rescue craft arrives, and be able to be manoeuvre into docking position to effect the rescue.'

Wilkinson laughs at the irony. 'That should be very effective four and a half light years from Earth.'

She checks her health systems. Satisfied that her body is coping, she rechecks each of the pod's components, one by one, to make sure she's missed nothing and left nothing to chance. That leaves the final step – open the pod, she decides. Which I can't do in a wreck. 'Dim screen light to fifty percent opacity.' The blue light dims, until she sees the orange sun masked at the centre of her screen. I'm going to die, she reflects, and feels the chill in her core. Then she thinks, Poor Ann Carpenter. She was so scared. So am I. We never really believed we would die out here, did we?

Alan Wilkinson mutes the digital dance music in the recreation room and, as he strolls back to the maroon couches where the team is gathered, three nights before departure from Earth to travel past the Moon to board the Hope, he says, nonchalantly, 'So, we're all prepared to die then?'

Jo is shocked. 'Are you kidding me?'

'Why would I kid about that?' Alan asks.

'The statistical odds are stacked against us,' Li Zhou says. 'We're not exactly taking a bus trip to Winslow.'

'Yea, but it's morbid to say it out loud like that,' Jo argues.

'The drink is talking,' complains Anton Minz, the team physician.

'But we all think about it,' Tristan says, lowering his glass of cognac. 'Don't we?'

'I don't.' Everyone turns to Ann, who seems surprised to become the centre of attention. She blinks, as if caught in a spotlight, and says, 'Seriously, I don't think about. I have no intention of dying out there, or anywhere.'

'We all die sometime,' Alan says.

'Do we?' Ann challenges.

Alan stares, snorts and shakes his head. 'Did you do the psych test?' he taunts.

'It's not about psychology.'

'What then?' Tristan asks.

Ann hesitates, before saying, 'It's about faith.' She looks at Jo, and then at Rhee. 'I don't believe we will die on this trip. If I did, why would I bother to go?'

But we have died, she thinks, and another wave of bitter sadness oozes through her chest. 'Oxygen status?'

'Oxygen is currently at sixty-five percent.'

'Estimated time before full depletion?'

'One hour forty-seven minutes.'

She smirks as she recalls the facts about dying from oxygen depletion, as the doctor explained them. 'You will lose consciousness within a couple of minutes, if you hold your last breath. There will be that terrible moment, before blackout, when your body will desperately, agonisingly try to suck in air in a vacuum. Then you will pass out, your brain cells will die, and the process will be over within seven minutes.' Clinical. Do we really die? she asks, and she tries to imagine Ann's view of a universe with God, where death is simply transition, not an end.

The purple light in the Officer's Lounge is surreal, the music annoying, the crowd dancing. She lowers her glass, unwraps her thin fingers from it. 'You really believe don't you?'

Ann smiles, and mouths, 'Yes.'

'But why?'

Ann sips at her cocktail, licks her lips, the joy in her face more than alcoholic, and says, 'Hope. It's all about hope. If we don't have hope, there's no point to any of this, is there? God gives us hope.'

'I have hope,' she argues, 'and I don't think any god runs the universe.'

'It's different,' Ann replies.

'How is it different?' she challenges, but Jo shuffles between them, sweating from dancing.

'What are you two serious pusses talking about?'

'God.'

'Hope,' Ann adds.

Jo laughs. 'Everyone has hope!'

'You do?'

Jo grabs Ann's arm, laughing happily, and nudges Rhee as she announces, 'I definitely have hope! I hope I get that hunk Alan in bed tonight!'

'Initiate eject sequence.'

'Eject sequence initiated.'

She watches the thirty seconds countdown on the HUD, listens to the whir and clicking of the mechanics and electrics. 'I'm not ready to die,' she tells herself. 'Not yet.' The pod shudders and she hears an unexpected grinding sound.

'Ejection in ten, nine, eight, seven...'

She closes her eyes, tenses, grits her teeth, but when the moment comes all she feels is a gentle motion, as if the ship simply loosens her from its shattered grip. She opens her eyes. The orange sunlight is shifting to the left on her dimmed HUD. 'Restore display,' she orders. The screen's blue light dissolves. The star field is rotating faster, and more of the broken ship becomes visible. 'Stabilise.' The pod's rotation steadily eases. Beyond the wreckage, there is another crescent of light, a shimmering reflection. Blue. Green. Orange. Alpha Centauri Bd. She glimpses a flash of white light at the edge of her screen.

Professor Haran shuts down the Alpha Centauri system hologram and activates the lights. She glances at her colleagues as the professor continues. 'Research in the early decades of the Twenty-first century suggested there was an exoplanet orbiting Alpha Centauri B, but it appeared to be too close to its sun, probably mainly gaseous matter, certainly uninhabitable. Anomalies in orbits and gravitational forces led people to postulate there was another planet, a smaller one, at that point in time invisible to us. The second planet theory proved false, in so far as the second planet being habitable, but it led to the discovery fifteen years later of a third planet, one that appears to have the right astronomical conditions to imitate Earth. Recent studies indicate the planet is larger than Earth, rotates more slowly, a day being the equivalent of almost four Earth days. And it has multiple moons, much like Jupiter and Saturn. However, everything suggests that it has Earth-like conditions and, if any place can sustain biological life, this one sure should be able to.

You all know the Prime Imperative. Our planet is vastly overpopulated and its resources exhausted. Humanity is dying. The proto-colonies on the Moon are still dependent on Earth's resources and won't survive once the Earth dies. The opportunity to start afresh on another planet seemed plausible, but travelling to one in any vehicle we have and in a time span of a single human generation was a pipe-dream – until the discovery of Alpha Centauri Bd. You all know that probes have been unsuccessful in confirming the full extent of Bd's habitability, but we can't afford to wait for a successful probe report. Time is against us. So we're sending your team to do what mechanical technology cannot.'

She stares at the emerging cusp, the promise for humanity, the last vestige of hope for a dying species, and sees the colours of oceans, of continents, of polar caps and deserts, clouds streaming across the atmosphere – sees the dream of a future – and she can't stem her tears. So close. We came so close.

'If your report on the state of Alpha Centauri Bd recommends it can support human life, we will launch a team of colonists who will set up the first community. They will pass you on your return journey, should you choose to return.'

Major Jorgensen pauses, and Jo raises her hand, like a school child, to ask, 'We have an option?'

'To remain on Bd? Yes. You do.'

'How?'

'I thought that would be obvious.'

'Wait,' Li Zhou says. 'Proof that the planet can sustain life isn't proof that we could survive there another six years.'

'But I'm sure you could,' Jorgensen counters, and he illustrates with a hologram of the Hope. 'There are enough resources on your vessel to support a fifteen-year journey for all ten of you. You will have plenty of essentials to survive – oxygen, food, water – even if you find the planet less hospitable over a period of time.'

'And if it isn't? And we use the resources; we don't come home, do we?' Wilkinson says. 'Because the colonist ship wouldn't be set up to return, would it?'

'I said it was an option. You will make a choice. As a team.'

The planet fills her screen, mesmerising her – until a shrill beep and Jeni's voice breaks her reverie. 'Alert. Impact imminent. Impact imminent.' She checks the HUD. Red lines arc towards the centre. Beyond the HUD, she sees jagged lines of metal bearing down. 'Forward forty-five degrees one hundred metres!' she barks. The pod shudders and drifts in the ordered direction. She swears. I'm stationary, the wreckage is rotating. Stupid mistake. The ship's metal strut skeleton swings perilously close. She braces. A metal finger taps the pod and starts it oscillating. 'Stabilise!' she screams. The pod settles, the screen facing deep space and the stars. She draws a very deep breath, and notices, again, an anomaly, an absence of stars in a small patch of her vision. She blinks to clear her eyes. The patch appears in a different quadrant, like a shadow stalking her. 'Okay,' she whispers. 'Odd. Wrong.' Am I hallucinating? She squeezes her eyes tight and opens them. The anomaly remains. 'Oxygen status.'

'Oxygen is at fifty percent capacity.'

'Time to depletion?'

'One hour, twenty-nine minutes, thirty-two seconds.'

She sighs. Three hours was all they gave a survivor to be picked up in an emergency. She snorts. Out here? 'Status report on pod systems.'

'All systems are operational. Non-life-threatening minor structural damage evident on the right exterior panel.'

She studies the star field, is aware the shadow has disappeared, and her suspicion deepens. 'Status report surrounding life forms.' The HUD sparkles and transforms into a tracking radar screen. And is empty. She sighs and makes her decision. 'Rotate one hundred and eighty degrees horizontal.'
The pod trembles as the propulsion jets turn the tiny craft. When she sees the full view of the Hope, renewed despair overwhelms her. Whatever happened was devastating. The once vast Mylar sails are tattered shreds on shattered frames, tiny glittering golden fragments. The Hope's white fuselage is torn open, shredded, as if a gigantic explosion ripped out the guts, leaving jagged, distorted remnants and slowly spinning particles.

How did I survive that? she ponders. Why did I survive it? What the hell happened? She examines the view, hoping against all odds to see a tiny blue light, an indication that one or more of her companions also survived, but the only light is sunlight reflecting from the wreckage. How did this happen? What else is out here? 'Open log,' she says. The HUD log lights deepen to emerald. 'Voice report. Automatically log date and time. Commencing.' She gathers her nerves and thoughts. 'This is Major Rhee Whenan, Second Habitation Officer of SS Hope. I have woken in degenerating orbit above Asimov, eighth moon of Alpha Centauri Bd. The SS Hope has suffered an, as yet unidentified, catastrophic event. The ship is destroyed. It appears I am –' She swallows, her mouth drying out – 'It appears I am the sole surviving team member. Upon inspection of my situation, and unable to raise communications with other team members –' She hesitates; the ghost of Ann Carpenter's broken fear echoing in her mind. 'I repeat, being unable to raise communications with other team members, or with Home Base on Earth, and given the degree of destruction of the ship, I have activated pod eject. I am now ascertaining the extent and cause of damage to the ship. I repeat, the SS Hope has suffered a catastrophic event and is no longer –' What word do I use to describe this? Functional? Operative? 'The ship no longer exists.' She pauses to study the wreckage. 'I will move closer to inspect the damage. The pod has limited manoeuvrability, and the rotation of wreckage poses significant risk. I will report what I find.' What the hell am I doing? she asks. No one will hear this. I'm slowly being pulled towards the moon and when I hit it there'll be nothing left to find. 'But I have to do something,' she says aloud. 'I'm not dead yet. I'm not - dead - yet.'

'Biological systems functional,' the pod voice replies.

She laughs at the ironic misinterpretation, saying, 'Thanks, Jeni. Good timing.'

She runs another check, and when it completes she says, 'Steady forward thirty metres, descending twenty degrees, fifteen degrees left.' The jets fire, and her pod shifts towards a large chunk of metal. I really wish I could release my hands and legs, she thinks as she approaches the target. The chunk is a portion of the crew deck, but it takes a moment to recognise – reduced to the outline –another pod, melted against the lining. Melted? Something attacked us? 'Two metres, ten degrees right.' The angle adjustment shifts her pod's shadow across the wreckage, allowing her to see more twisted metal, fragments spinning with frictionless momentum.

Beyond the chunk, she spots another pod, floating, tethered by wires and tubes to a large piece of fuselage. 'Twenty metres forward. Fifteen metres vertical down,' she guesses, and lets the jets carry her to the next pod. As she closes the distance, she realizes the outer case is warped, again as if melted, and the screen is shattered. Hovering beside the pod, she sees Li Zhou's grey face, eyes closed, as if asleep, a jagged shard of glass buried in his neck. She feels guilty for staring at the dead.

The doctor nods to the police officer, who looks away when he withdraws from the cold grey room. She is left standing at the mortuary tables. Her hands tremble as she fights fear and anticipation. 'I know this is a horrible thing to ask,' the doctor says calmly, 'but we need to positively identify the vict – your family. Please?'

She looks at him, tear-stained cheeks, trying to control her quivering lips as she replies, 'I'm ready,' but she has never before seen a corpse, and now she has three to view.

She struggles with tears and sniffs. 'Turn forty-five degrees right. Up forty metres,' she tells the computer. She spots a larger remnant rolling slowly against Asimov's bright backdrop. 'Forward thirty metres.' The metal shines with moonlight as she nears it, but she instructs the pod to manoeuvre carefully until she can study the damaged edges. Again, she sees that the metal is punched inward and melted, not torn. Scorch marks stain the white exterior. 'Open log,' she says, as she watches the spinning debris. 'Major Rhee Whenan. Second entry. Having inspected portions of the SS Hope, I can confirm that the ship was exposed to intense heat and was almost certainly damaged by an external source. The scatter of debris confirms that the ship exploded. There is absolutely no sign of life.' She checks the pod's systems carefully, recording the readings. 'I have less than one hour of oxygen. The pod's jets have less than five minutes fuel. I am caught in a slow spiral towards the moon's surface, along with the Hope wreckage. I will use the remaining jet fuel to shift the pod into a stable orbit above the moon, although I suspect that won't work. If it doesn't, then I guess no one will hear this log.' She sighs and shuts her eyes. I would really like to move my arms and legs, just move around. This is like being buried alive. And she remembers the Edgar Allan Poe story that haunted her childhood nightmares – about a woman who feared being buried alive - The Premature Burial. 'Now I am that woman,' she murmurs.

She opens her eyes, checks the instruments, and orders the pod to rise out of the falling flotsam and jetsam to a point where the moon's gravitational pull will let her tiny craft become a satellite. When the jets expire, she sighs again, and contemplates the wonder of Alpha Centauri Bd drifting against a starry backdrop. So close, she repeats to herself. So close. The future is so close. 'Open log,' she says, and maintains her gaze on the planet. 'It might be a romantic assessment I'm making, at this point in time, in these circumstances, but Alpha Centauri Bd looks beautiful from up here, very Earth-like, on a grander scale. It looks habitable, for all humans. It's a shame the probes failed. I think we would already be sending colonists, if we'd known.' She pauses, reflecting on the conundrum of the brevity of the probes' existence. What destroyed them so consistently? Were we destroyed by the same thing? And if we were, what could it be? 'I suspect we are not the only ones here.' She considers the point of her statement, the impact it will have on anyone who hears it. 'I don't think we will be welcomed.' She searches the stars for the shadow, the anomaly, the cause and the effect, but it's not in her field of vision. 'I don't think we're alone.' She pauses to check her oxygen supply. Plenty of time left, she decides, and wonders what it will be like to die, whether it will be as clinical as they'd been told, or whether it will be something entirely else. If there's a God, I guess I will know, Ann.

'Why the faith?' she asks.

Ann Carpenter smiles. 'It gives me strength to face my trials.'

'You don't need faith to do that.' she argues. 'We all face our trials with strength, in our own ways, but we don't all believe in a god.'

'It will make a difference when you face the trial of death.'

'Why?'

Ann's smile fades into a serious expression. 'People without faith are afraid of death. They see it as the end of everything, worse than emptiness. That terrifies them. It terrifies me to even imagine thinking like that.'

'It's just death,' she counters. 'I'm not terrified of it. We die. There's no ongoing pain or regret. It doesn't matter.'

'That's so very sad that you don't have hope.'

'Hope? In death? What hope?'

'That there's something more to come. That death isn't the end, but a new beginning. We don't die in desperation. We can die with dignity, knowing God is waiting for us to return. Hope gives us the strength to face death with dignity.'

She blinks. Die with dignity. Ann had her faith, but when death came she – She changes the thought to a decision. I will die with dignity if I have to die now. At least I can do that. She stares at her reflection in the screen. Reduced to a thinking, talking head, she considers and chuckles at her sorry state. It would be good to stretch my legs, brush my hair, wash my face, just one more time. She smiles grimly, remembering how she, as a child, wondered what people condemned to death thought about as they were about to die. 'Now you know,' she murmurs. 'Little things.' She draws a breath. 'Pod status report.' Jeni rolls through the systems – external damage, oxygen remaining – and Rhee closes her eyes. Perhaps the only real hope we can have is to die with dignity. Perhaps that's all we really have left in the end.

'You are beautiful,' Javel whispers, close to her ear.

'I didn't expect to die like this,' she murmurs.

'Hush. I love you –'

'Alert. Imminent collision. Alert.'

Her eyes snap open. 'Evade! Evade!' she yells. The HUD flashes red from the left. Spinning junk rolls towards her – a gigantic mass, a quarter of the original ship. She should be out of the debris field. Something has gone wrong. 'Evade!' she screams. And remembers the pod's jets are depleted. And braces. The lump hits like a silent hand, spinning the pod violently on its vertical axis. The HUD green lights explode red. A crack rips across the screen. She shuts her eyes, grimaces, opens her eyes to a madly spinning star field, and shuts them again. Screams.

Light in the Darkness

James O'Keefe

I kick the soccer ball with a gentle flick of my foot to Tracey. It slips through her hands and bounces away. She giggles as she chases the ball. Her white dress flows like a sheet billowing in the wind behind as she runs, her golden hair trailing behind her. The vivid green leaves rustle as the trees sway; the gentle breeze turns into a gust. It's time for us to go inside.

My hands hover over the keyboard; eyes glued to the monitors before me. I can't physically move but I know that in an instant I can do anything to help the ship. The music blaring from the speakers reverberates around the cold grey interior. It doesn't disturb anyone; I'm the only one here. I sing along in my head, the lyrics I know off by heart. My music choices stave away the boredom before my next break.

The smell of dinner wafts through my nose. Julie has prepared another delicious roast lamb and vegetables for us. The table has been laid out with care. The wine is breathing. The meat carves easily, falling to the plate. I dish up servings for us all. As I wait for Julie to sit, I rest my head on my arms. The meat is melt-in-your mouth tender; the gravy thick and rich. We eat, chatting away about our days; about how Tracey is going at school and what we are expecting when we finally reach our destination. Time seems to stand still whilst I am here.

The day we left was something that is burned into my mind. The sight of the blue Earth, the Moon just peaking from behind; one of beauty and yet one that made us realise how small we were in such a vast universe. For the first year of our journey, we were all awake on board the ship, watching Earth get smaller as we travelled. There are only a select few born to witness this. It's one I will remember for the rest of my life.

I sit in the brown leather lounge chair, talking about my struggles with the intense loneliness, the lack of physical company I face each day. The psychologist sits listening, hanging on every word. His face creases, the age-lines showing as he frowns or smiles. We talk for hours. After our session we head to the bar. Commander Rison and Eric, one of the many scientists, are there. We talk about the mission, our hopes and fears, what we want to do when we reach our destination. Rison still intimidates me even after all this time – a strong leader with a commanding presence but also a brilliant mentor. A man I look up to. Eric is more like me; a quiet, reserved man.

Six months had passed when we reached Mars, the ship gliding through the vacuum with ease. We stare through the windows in awe at the gigantic ship yards above the moon Deimos. We send communications back and forth with the giant city established over a hundred years ago around Olympus Mons. The gigantic inactive volcano protrudes from surface, the glittering metal of buildings spreading out like a spider's web from the middle. Soon after I say goodbye to everyone as we enter the cryo-sleep units and the VR world.

I sit and watch the stars go past, one by one until there is just darkness. The Andromeda Galaxy is dead ahead. I can't see it just yet. One day in the next thousand years or so it will be a small speck of light and before we know it, we will be there. I've lost count how many times I've asked these questions. Why are we going there voluntarily? Are we alone in this place? Why are we doing this when we could have stayed on Earth? The signal discovered by SETI in 1977 set this program in motion. It may have taken engineers almost three hundred years to get us moving, but we are finally on our way.

I spend time with my family. Both Julie and Tracey haven't aged a day since we left Mars. The software of the virtual reality makes us appear ageless. I have lost track of how many times I have been here, running the automaton. I catch up with Eric for a beer. I tease him about the new moustache he is attempting to grow. We reminisce about our time at the Academy and wonder how life is back on Earth. We will never hear from those left behind.

A bright flash cuts through the boredom of systems monitoring. I check the logs. Nothing. Is it a glitch? Or something else? I run a quick diagnostic. Negative. Could it be my mind slipping between the virtual world and real? The diagnostic runs again with yet another negative result. I put it aside as a possible glitch and log a report.

The small dot of the Andromeda Galaxy is growing steadily larger. According to the computer systems it will still take another thousand years. The passage of time is meaningless with all of us in cryo-sleep. I am tempted to send the signal to wake the engineer to help with the feeling of restlessness. I need to talk to someone in person. I'm resisting the temptation.

Another flash of light. It's a touch longer than the first one from the other day... week... year? I check the logs again, this time more thoroughly. There is something out there. The reading was so brief it barely registered. What is happening out there? My heart would be racing but I can't feel anything. Is this the first sign of a new form of life? Is it a meteor or a comet? Could it be a hypervelocity star shot out of our galaxy by the supermassive black hole in the centre?

Alarms go off everywhere. Proximity alert. I pause the music. What the hell? Sensors should have picked up something earlier than this. The alarm escalates from a ping to a constant ring, the noise so loud it would deafen anyone. I hit the override to stop the alarm.

A screech rings from several decks above. The whole ship shakes; I struggle to keep her steady. There's been an impact on the hull. I adjust retro-rockets to keep our heading. The smallest point of a degree this far out could prevent us reaching our destination. It doesn't help. Rather than wasting the critical fuel for the rockets I kick the main engines into full burn. It takes a few hours to get the ship back on course.

I send an inspection probe to check out the area of impact. The view from the probe's camera appears on the monitor directly in front. As it approaches the damaged area, air plumes like steam into the void of space.

The probe moves closer, closer. It reaches the damaged area; a chunk of rock sticks out from the hull. Air has stopped escaping, the automatic sealant having kicked in, sealing the inside area of the hull. I release maintenance-bots to deal with repairs whilst a reconnaissance probe is sent to bring the rock specimen aboard.

I watch on the screen as the R-probe cuts the rock from the hull, the M-bots repairing the damaged section. A blue glow shoots out from the R-probe as it speeds off to the quarantine deck to unload the rock into an automated laboratory. Its mission simple – recover, analyse, destroy.

As the probe docks, a signal is sent to one of the scientists. Within a few moments I receive a message from the lab automaton. I respond, giving him a quick rundown of the events. Another message appears on screen from Rison, giving me authority to wake anyone from cyro if I deem it necessary. He also thanks me for keeping the ship on course. The rare compliment puts me on a high.

The sun burns my skin as I toil away in the garden. I head back inside to escape the heat and to eat another meal with my family. Julie can't believe that we hit something. Its appearance without warning still plays at the back of my mind. I decide to cut my rest period short, anxious to get back to duty. Julie and I spend the last few hours before I return to work at our favourite view-point in the hills. It may not be real, but we still spend time there, the place we had our first kiss. The sun is setting across the ocean, the sky a brilliant orange. The clouds turn from white to red to a dull grey as the sun slips out of sight beyond the horizon.

Reports trickle through. A new one each day lodged in the ship's log. I try to read and understand the material. Most of it goes way over my head; chemical compositions, radiation readings, full spectral analysis. Nothing stands out. To me it's just a pretty standard asteroid, like those in the asteroid belt near Mars. Report after report comes through. The first paragraph of the fiftieth report grabs my attention. The lab has found what appears to be organic material. Is this the first confirmation of life outside our own galaxy?

The detailed analysis of the organic material takes several weeks - its carbon based and appears to need oxygen to survive. The carbon dating results give it an approximate age of over a billion years; it's older than the human race. The DNA report suggests it is a distant cousin of bacteria found on Earth. Eric puts in a hypothesis that it may have originated on Earth at one point and shot into space during a major asteroid impact. The characteristics are so similar that the evidence on hand supports that theory.

Alarms ring out. There is a problem in the lab. I send the signal.

I awaken in the cryo-bed. My eyes feel like they are glued together. They finally flutter open; brief flashes of light; my head heavy from the grogginess. The clear Perspex shield that keeps us protected is frosted over, a dull light piercing through the thawed gaps. A gentle hissing sound; the oxygen supply is creeping up to full levels. I breathe in deep, holding the fresh air in my lungs for several blessed moments. The warm air melts the frost, leaving snail trails as it slides down the sides. I feel like a kid again, breathing warm air on to cold glass just to see it fog up. I lie for a while; I count to one hundred before the centre seals sigh and hiss, the shield opening down the middle and pulling back to the sides of the cryo-bed.

I rest for a few more minutes, allowing my body to wake and get used to breathing again. The sound of feet walking across the deck draws near so I push myself up and hang my legs over the edge of the bed. My head spins, I hold myself in place gripping the edge, the metal cold as I stare down at the grey deck. I bite back the bile that rises to my throat; hibernation sickness.

"Come on then Matthew, we got work to do," Commander Rison says as he placed his warm hand beneath my chin, lifting my gaze to his rugged face. "Feeling okay?"

"Yes, sir, just shaking this fogginess out of my head. Help me off?"

Rison takes a hold of my arm, his grip firm and tight. It was the first human contact I'd had for a long time. Pins and needles run up my arm; the first physical touch. He pulls back, his other hand reaching up to my shoulder as I slide down the bed. My bare feet thud onto the deck, the pattern of raised circles on the floor sending more tingling through my whole body.

"Here, take this, it should help with the sickness." He hands me a small white pill. I put it in my mouth, crunching it into small pieces. The fog lifts from my head; the pins and needles dissipate.

"That's much better," I say as Rison lets go of me. I quickly put on some socks and shoes before leaving the cryo-chamber.

I follow behind as we make our way to the laboratory deck. Corridor after corridor, staircase after staircase, it feels like a labyrinth. If it wasn't for the bright red signs at each junction or in each stairwell, it would be easy to become disorientated and get lost. The laboratory deck is deep in the bowels of the ship at least twenty floors from the cryo-chamber.

My family is in another chamber, as far away as possible from the laboratories, less risk of anything being able to get through. I wonder about how safe they are but put that thought to rest. No point dwelling on them at the moment. The drill sergeant at the Academy would have something to say about that. Two guards meet us at the laboratory deck, handing Rison a phased plasma gun.

We reach the main door of the laboratory. Rison keys in his override command on the door panel. It takes a moment before the giant door slides open, a large hiss of air escaping. The smell is so bad it makes us gag, dry retch. It smells like something had died and rotted in there. I stay my ground, taking shallow breaths through my mouth to help calm my stomach. The overhead ventilation fans kick in, sucking the bad air away. Now I know how archaeologists must feel when opening centuries-old tombs.

Rison holds his gun ready, motioning to the guards. He enters first, the guards close behind. I take a deep breath and enter.

The viewing area looks fine, no signs of any breaches. Rison stands, his weapon held loose at his side. I look into the lab area – the place is a total wreck. Tables split in two; black and red marks splattered all over the walls and ceiling. It has to be blood. The robotic arm that usually hangs from the ceiling is shattered. Something has to have come from the asteroid piece, but we couldn't see it. "I can't even see any of the asteroid, sir," I say.

"Neither can I. That worries me. What were the initial reports on it?" he asks. He's testing me.

"Nothing much. Similar to the asteroids in our own solar system. It was only the most recent report that indicated some sort of organic matter in there. The following report stated it was old, very old. The lab was in full quarantine mode. Judging by how it looks, it failed. Maybe something exploded in there, causing the issue. I can't say for sure though, as I'm not that familiar with that system."

"I wasn't expecting you to know every system in the ship Matthew, but I would agree. It does look like something exploded in there. That would explain those marks on the walls. I hope there is some sort of residue we can test." Rison glances behind me. "At last. Took your time."

I turn around. Eric. We shake hands. His grip is firm, the same firmness as when I first met him. He flashes a smile at me as Rison fills him in.

Eric peers through the viewing window, studying the lab. He whistles before pressing his hand against the glass, activating the computer system display. Pale blue and bright green text and charts flow all over the glass. From what I can tell, he is checking the most recent examination reports, the reports that were due that night. He stops the display for a moment, pushing his hand along the glass. The other images reduce in size to a small section at the bottom while the area he had stopped grows to fill almost the entire screen. "Watch this," he says as he scratches the back of his head.

The screen turned to a view from above the asteroid piece. It explodes with a bright flash. I cover my eyes, peeking through the gaps in my fingers, the image so bright. I blink a few times, allowing my eyes to adjust. The explosion dies. The laboratory remains in the same state.

Eric presses more points on the glass and the images change to a different angle. He slows down the playback of the explosion. He adjusts more settings, going into infrared view. As the asteroid fragments explode, the image turns to shades of red, yellow, orange and white. For a moment, from the centre, a dark spot; colours from dark blue to green move across to the airlock door before vanishing.

"Did you see that, sir?" I ask Rison.

"I did. That concerns me. Where did it go Eric?" Rison's brow furrows.

"I have no idea. As soon as it hit the airlock the sensors lost track of it. There should be some trace of it, whatever it was, but there's nothing there now." He turns to look at us. "It's like..."

Eric's face contorts in pain. He raises his shaking hands to cover his eyes. He falls to his knees as blood pours from his ears. I step towards him, but Rison pulls me aside as Eric topples over onto his side, his hands falling from his face. His eyes turn black, blood seeping from around the sockets, more blood gushing from his nose. Spasms wrack his body. Eric's body flails for a moment before coming to a shuddering halt. I hold my breath. My heart beats hard in my chest like it's trying to break out. Before any of us move, his body explodes; a muffled splat as the body tears apart. Blood and entrails fly in all directions, covering us, the walls and the ceiling. One of the guard's dry-retches.

I wipe the blood from my face as best as I can. A moment later, the emergency decontamination system kicks in. The door behind us hisses shut before the room fills with foamy water. It reaches up to our waists before it stops and I wade over to the laboratory air lock but the door won't move. I turn and look at Rison walking towards me. The guards behind him wash the blood and gore off. I do the same, the foam helping scrub it all off with ease. I unbutton my shirt and let it drop into the water, it's ruined.

For several minutes we all scrub ourselves down before Rison uses the control panel by the main door. He presses a few buttons, keying in his command code, overriding the security protocols. "We can only move around in a small area. The quarantine situation is at a high enough level that I don't want whatever happened to Eric to be loose on the rest of the ship." He presses another button, the door sliding open, the water and foam gushing out into the corridor. "For now, get changed in the room just down the hall to your right. We need to work out what happened."

"But Eric just exploded!" one of the guards cries. I share his panic but hold it in check.

"More reason to work out what is going on." Rison is all hard professionalism.

"We have to get out of here. We have to..."

"Follow protocols," Risen snaps. "Do our jobs right and things will be fine. Panic and we end up like Eric. Of that I am certain."

We make our way down the corridor, the foamy water disappearing down the grated drains that opened when Rison keyed in the override.

We all sit at the plain white table in the middle of the quarantine bay, all wearing the same grey and black jumpsuits. Rison is reviewing the incident with Eric on the pop-up screen that sits in the middle of the table. We can all see it. My stomach churns as I watch Eric's body explode again and again. We had started to become good friends on this journey and now he is gone. I manage to hold back my tears. Now's not the time to lose it. Rison and I stare at the screen whilst the guards sit, grim looks on their faces. I'm sure they want to find out the cause and deal with it as much as Rison does, but that edge of panic isn't too far from their eyes.

Rison adjusts settings for each playback, infrared, ultraviolet and several other modes I had never heard of. The only one that gives us any clue is the gamma readings. At last something that might help. Rison replays the gamma recording, this time in slow motion. We watch as Eric turns to talk to us. Before he collapses, a small, fiery ball enters his mouth. The readings flare as the convulsions hit Eric. As the body explodes the screen turns from orange to white hot. At last we found a way to track it. Rison rests back in the chair, staring at the red dot as it floats out of view and the room fills with water and foam.

"Well, at least we have a way of finding it," I say. "The way it moved I would say the quarantine protocols are useless. It was able to pass through the double air lock from the lab to the viewing room."

"Agreed," says Rison.

"We need to wake the ship, wake a security crew," one of the guards says. "We aren't safe."

"The ship is not in danger yet, " Rison says, trying the calm the man. "We need the tracking devices and heavy rifles from the armoury." Rison flicks another switch; the view changes into a detailed analysis of the foreign entity. "At least it's organic, but I have no idea if our weapons will be effective against it. The only way we are going to find out is by hunting it," he says as he stands. He keys in the command override to disable the quarantine protocols. "I have already sent for more men to help us, a full security team should be waking up now, we will help them while arming ourselves."

Joined by some more guards, we make our way to the armoury. The guards pick the assault phased plasma rifles from the racks and give them a quick inspection to ensure they are operational. The design of the phased plasma weapons is perfect for ship based security, the heated plasma affecting flesh but not the thick metal of bulkheads or airlocks. I hunt around until I find the scanning devices. I turn one on and switch it over to gamma mode. The display shows blue blobs where we are standing; the radiation emanating from us is quite minor. The entity from the recordings will be giving out far more radiation than we do, so should be easy to track.

"I'm getting a signal just ahead, sir," I say as I watch the screen on the tracker, the entity displaying as an orange blob. Has it been stalking us? The guards are nervous and jumpy and unless they all had readers the orange blob would be invisible.

We make our way in silence towards the destination of the reading. It hovers in the air before darting back and forth. The entity is invisible to the naked eye; though it does act like an intangible flash like when you close your eyes for just a moment and the impression of a bright light is left there. I hold the scanner up, watching the readings. The blob on screen moves side to side.

Rison motions for the guards to turn their weapons on to wide beam. The guards acknowledge, and I stand back. They take careful aim down the corridor in front of us before firing several shots. The energy shoots out like a net. It has no effect – the phased plasma attuned to our own biology. The energy hits the bulkhead and dissipates rippling out into nothing. The blob on screen continues to dart back and forth.

It stops.

I'm holding my ground.

It moves towards us, growing larger as it approaches with such speed that there is not time to warn anyone. The guard next to me falls to the ground, his body bleeding and convulsing the same way Eric had in the lab. He screams the sound echoing down the corridor.

"Find cover," Rison shouts.

We all run for cover. I dive around the corner as another guard runs past me. The scream cuts off as the splosh of the guard's body exploding, followed by the sound of blood and meat splattering everywhere. I hold the tracking device up and observe the entity speeding away from us, down through the bulkhead and floor.

My earpiece crackles for a moment. "It's making its way to the laboratory level," an unknown voice comes through. Rison must have issued another wake up alert for more crew and I was glad for it. Unfortunately the internal sensors aren't as strong as the tracking device. They can only give us a broad indication on the entity's destination.

Several minutes later we return to the laboratory level. The radiation shielding used makes it hard to track it via the hand-held device. Rison orders the crewman using the internal sensors to guide them to the entity's location. "Make a sharp left," the crewman's voice comes through our earpieces.

We turn left into another laboratory. The door slams shut behind us as we walk into the centre, weapons held ready and gazes sweeping the room. Rison stands to my left, a guard to my right, the rest of the guards behind us. We huddle together, our backs to each other, forming a tight circle. There's enough space to lift our weapons, but close enough I can hear the guard breathing through his nose, his nostrils vibrating, the sound almost deafening at such close proximity. I wipe the sweat away from hands. My heart beats faster.

Rison orders with an authoritative whisper, "keep an eye out for any sudden movement of light. It could be anywhere."

I nod in reply, others holding their weapons firm, ready to fire. I hold my. A cold shiver slides down my spine. My breath fogs in front of me as I exhale. The temperature's plummeting. I hold the scanner up, moving it slow, allowing deep scans. I hover over the local environmental controls along the far wall. A faint signature of the entity displays on the screen. I motion to Rison.

He indicates to the guards to fan out and aim at the wall. The guards move, weapons high ready to loose the fanned beams. He holds his hand out before dropping it. The guards open fire on the array, Rison unleashes a full volley from his weapon. The entity grows in size as it shoots out of the wall, the first real physical presence. It's shaped like an old fuzzy tennis ball, rapidly changing in size. I don't know if my eyes are playing tricks on me or not. It buzzes around the room like an angry wasp. I follow it with the scanner as best as I can, watching it change colour on the screen from blue to green to a brilliant red. "We must have hurt it, sir," I state, keeping a watchful eye on the screen.

I glance at Rison as he's lifted up into the air, raised clear off the ground. His whole body shakes as the entity takes control of him. The body shudders in the air, his arms and legs shaking like a puppeteer had lost control of his marionette. Rison tries to fight the entity from taking control. I can see in his eyes he is still there, his mouth grimacing, his hands in fists, digging in deep. He's fighting as best as he can against a being far more powerful.

As his body convulses, I notice the guards lower their weapons, all bar one. He has careful aim at Rison.

"Kill... me..." Rison says through his clenched teeth. Blood trickles out the side of his mouth. The pain must be so strong he has bitten into his tongue or a cheek.

The guard takes careful aim, but hesitates. The others still stand, guns wavering. I snatch the rifle from the nearest guard and take aim. It is the first time I have had to hold a weapon since basic training.

"Do... it... please..." Rison pleads with us.

I pull the trigger.

Plasma bolt after plasma bolt bombards Rison's body. Another guard follows suit. For a split second, it's just the two of us firing before the rest of the guards take aim and fire.

The bolts tear through the flesh, burning gaping holes into his torso. The smell of charred meat is strong. We continue to fire at the floating puppet until the entity shoots out. The corpse falls to the ground in a crumpled heap.

The entity hovers. It flies toward me. I take a step back. It stops right in front of my face. The heat emanating from it almost burns across my nose and cheeks.

I hold my breath and close my eyes. Is this the end? Will I see my wife again? Will I step foot on an alien planet for the first time?

Nothing.

I open one eye, like a child taking a peek to see if a parent was still there. The entity hovers. I open the other eye. The light emanating from the entity turns to a pale yellow before dissipating into the ether.

I check over the computer systems on the bridge. The guards perform a full ship-wide sweep, attempting to find the entity. They find no trace of it. I wonder where it has gone.

I slip into an EVA-suit, a hiss of air as the helmet seals around the neck. My fingers feel fat on keyboard as I key in the decontamination protocol command. The mag-clamps hold me in place as all the air rushes out of the bridge.

White gas fills the room. Any organic matter it touches will disintegrate. I stand and watch out the window, taking in the sight of the void between galaxies. The Andromeda Galaxy is still the same small ball of white as it was yesterday, but now I have seen it with my own eyes. I wonder if we will come across any other new life as we continue the journey. What about the entity? Did it really originate in our galaxy or is it far older?

I shiver. How can that be? My breath turns to fog inside my suit. I turn around slow, the mag-clamps clunking on the metal deck as I move. In the open doorway is Rison. How is he alive? The gases should have vaporised his remains and been flushed out into space. His face is blank and dull. He's not breathing. I lower the mag-clamp settings to step back, his eyes flash a bright red. I trip and my foot catches in the automaton chair. I twist it left and right. It won't budge. I fumble with the mag-clamp release as Rison approaches. His shadow casts over me. I look up, his face twisted into a perverse smile.

In Room Empty But For You

Alexander Zelenyj

1. Voices From Between Stars

The blackness between stars is a bottomless kind, and heavy. It's loneliness at its most profound and astonishing. It's enough to break a man when he considers himself in relation to it.

He listened to the echo of his words rebound from the high walls, though he hadn't spoken at all.

The deep silence returned quickly to the observation deck. He was weary but wakeful with troubled thoughts. Everyone was asleep. The lights everywhere dimmed to night-time luminescence. The station slept, the void waited. In the uneasy peace he fretted.

Hello.

He spun, dashing an elbow against the porthole glass in his fear. He looked across the shadow-drenched room: he was alone. Where the speaker was he didn't know but he knew he'd indeed perceived the voice it was an unfamiliar voice belonging to no man or woman of his sparse crew.

Again: Hello.

He flung himself the length of the wall. The instinctual gesture, hastened by the reflexive fear he felt at that alien voice, itself unnerved him. Arriving at the console owning the corner of the room, his hand moved to touch the prominent crimson button in its centre.

Stop. Do not touch it. Do not wake them. There is no reason.

Again he raked the large room with eyes grown accustomed to the uncertain lighting conditions but questioning every console and curvature of hull made strange and threatening through the deception of shadows.

"Johnson?" he called in a tremulous voice, hand trembling on the air over the console. "Horace? Simmons?" But of course he knew it was no member of his crew, each of whom slept and dreamed then. It was only ever he who paced the station during the lonely hours.

Stay your hand. Let them sleep. They are tired. Let us speak.

He trembled. He considered his sanity after years of interstellar travel and limited social contact outside of the men and women with whom he journeyed and who were potentially crumbling mentally as he might be. He pondered the last five years stationed where he was and the toll this type of extended isolation must take on the mind, the senses.

"Where are you?" he repeated. "Who are you? How did you get inside this station? We received no transmissions, no notification of visitors. Come out if you want to talk."

No answer came. In the great stillness he felt his breathing grow calmer, though a cold sweat chilled him beneath his suit.

He peered through the porthole glass near at hand. The blackness seemed deeper then, beyond measure as it was always and yet more bottomless still. An endless field of ink. Light years of abyss. A distant nebula cast its forlorn glow amid the colossal dark, appearing weak, falteringly casting its light.

Somewhere out there he'd once had a wife: this thought came to him then as it often did. Perhaps she still lived somewhere, alone, too, among all the void.

He felt his eyelids as a great weight then. He was weary, despite his uncanny predicament and fear. He needed sleep, too, but knew this to be a fruitless notion. Even the sleep inducers didn't help him anymore. He hadn't slept for years.

"I said: who are you? Come out if you want to speak with me. I'm the captain here. This station is under my command. Please." He cringed at the plaintive note in this final word, effectively crushing his attempted voice of authority. He shuddered at his faltering courage. In that moment – queerly time-stilled and growing more somnolent as seconds passed – he considered things such as past missions and his myriad career stations and those things he'd left behind him throughout the long years. He felt time in his skin, within his bones. It blanched his hair. It liver-spotted his hands. It muddled memory. It bowed him deckwards. It was the weight of the universe he carried inside himself, he understood at last.

And then the voice was with him again.

Yes. Let us speak. We will speak of things great and things small.

A queer peace overcame him. The initial apprehension he'd experienced while in the presence of the inexplicable speaker seeped from him. He stepped from the console and its array of warning communications. An intense curiosity – the likes of which he recalled from long, long ago, during his nascent days of travel and exploration, before concepts of infinity and hopelessness became birthed in him – arrived with his newfound serenity.

He glided across the room. He eased himself into a chair. He swivelled it to face the windows lining the length of the opposite wall. He waited. He was patient. The universe slept. The universe slumbered and he was prepared to converse with its dream-voice. He was prepared to speak with any voice then that called to him from the endless kilometres and silence, and which might provide him answers to the questions that hounded him and kept him haunting his station in the bottomless hours, keeping perpetual vigil at portholes everywhere.

2. Only Another Mote Swallowed

Are you prepared to begin our conversation?

The captain ruminated. Wonderment touched him. Under its influence he said, "Let's begin by you telling me who you are, and why you've come here, and how you came to arrive here."

Silence. Only the low machine-hum of the walls and ceiling, the subtle pulse of the station's electrical heart reaching through the floor and touching the astronaut through his boots. Then:

No. Let us begin this way: Tell me who you are, and why you are here, and how you have come to be here.

The astronaut shuddered. He thought. He knew not how to answer the voice. He thought with great concentration. A distant ache awakened in his temples. A moment later he whispered, "I...I don't know." In the wake of his admission a strange relief filled him. He sighed audibly. His heart – which had quickened to a racing pulse – fell back into its lazy rhythm. He waited, anxious. He was eager – and fearful – to learn the answer to these questions.

The voice was there again then.

Yes. These puzzles you cannot decipher.

A touch of resentment touched the man. The certainty of the voice and its claim vexed him. He was an intelligent man, of many years' experience in a variety of disciplines. He was a man of science, dedicated to its principles and tenets. The deciphering of puzzles had always seemed an essential component of who he was.

He said, "I'm here to...to study, and to learn. I'm a scientist."

The voice, though still solemn, yet seemed to stab the air.

What have you learned?

He thought. He fidgeted in his chair. Its leather groaned mournfully. After a moment he gave his answer. "I've seen great things," admitted the astronaut. "Things of wonder."

Have you? What have you seen?

He thought a moment. He considered the many races he'd encountered in his decades of exploration. He recalled the myriad creatures he'd examined. He considered the friendships he'd made (and, against his will, thought also of those he'd lost through the years). He remembered pleasant times, exciting times, days of progress in the duties of science and discovery to which he'd dedicated himself.

He said, "I've seen so many things. I'm blessed, truly, to have seen so much. And I've done things. Good things. I've done good deeds and am proud of them."

Oh? And what good have you done? Tell me.

The astronaut thought. His head throbbed with his fervent concentration. He was a man of science and therefore had many stories to recall. There had been days of adventure, young and hot-blooded, and nights of discovery and experiment. Faces and landscapes flitted across his mind's eye. A vision of fire and courage seized his roaming thoughts. He latched onto this. He said:

"I once saved a man's life on a colony world, Bruntell-IV, thirty years ago or more. An elderly man, he'd been farming his plots. A geyser had spouted under his feet. He'd been blinded and burned badly, and then swallowed by the torn ground. I'd been on a hazard team there. We arrived, and I was first to follow him down. Another eruption – a farm or two down the line – caused a ripple that hit our hole. There was rock fall everywhere. There was no room for another rescuer to climb down with me. I found the farmer deep down. He was hysterical with pain. He was...He'd been burned badly. The smell of it was...the smell was awful; cooked meat, but different. Like nothing I'd ever smelled, it...I calmed him, somehow, I don't know how but I did. No, I remember: I told him about his family, waiting above. How they were waiting for him, worrying for him. A wife and daughter, I think that was the thing that calmed him. He became brave like I asked him to be for me. He cried the entire climb up, but he was brave and didn't scream or fight me despite his huge pain. We made the climb but barely, before another geyser fired down the line, nearer this time, and we ran. All of us together, family and our team, running through the fiery fields; they had to move the farm afterwards, it became so bad in their area. The land just burned up completely. But...I saved him. I saved the farmer. I...This is one good thing I've done. There are others, of course, but this one...This is one good thing that I'm proud to have done. I gave a family back their father. I brought him up from the hole and...this...This is good."

In the wake of his story, the astronaut shivered, noting the returned tone of entreaty his words carried. Misplaced, surely, but then he'd never felt so uncertain of the deed's significance – and his own valour – when recalling the tale in the past. He waited, chilled. Before him through the porthole glass the darkness seemed to flicker at the stars' edges, hungrily.

The voice was there. It said:

No. You have done no good. Never in all your life have you done anything. This gesture you describe is meaningless, as invisible as your existence.

The astronaut rose with a show of indignation, eyes livid, fists clenched at his sides, but felt the reflexive nature of the gesture even as he played it out. He fell back into his chair a moment later with a disheartened-sounding sigh from its leather cushion, his brief ire evaporated. A yet more pervasive feeling of weariness came over him. He was drained of what little energy he'd owned earlier. He felt drained in a deeper way than he'd ever felt before.

He resigned himself to his defeated mood. In the aftermath of the voice he only murmured, despondent, "Then...why? What's the point of...Why would we try, if...Why am I...Why am I...?" And realizing he'd already spoken the question which plagued him he repeated with finality: "Why am I?"

A cold laughter sounded in the machine quiet. Surrounded by it, he suddenly thought of his childhood home, so far in time and space. He envisioned his little old house in the quiet county where he'd lived with his mother and father and younger brother before the nearby river claimed him, drowning him on a winter's afternoon when he'd slipped through a fissure in its ice floor and been lost. He thought particularly of snow in these old times: snow drifting from the evening sky while he watched entranced from his bedroom window, with his brother at his elbow in the before-years, just as spellbound by the phantom-like drifts gathering outdoors as he was; and then, in the after-years, alone in his window aerie, but still watching the descending sheets of ice as if seeking to decipher something from them before succumbing reluctantly to drowsiness and going to bed.

The laugher fell like snow in the observation deck, unabated. He shivered beneath it. He flinched before it, as if it carried wind with it. His breath drifted thickly, a ghostly stream like ectoplasm exiting his mouth. Anger ignited in him again at that inclement clamour, utterly indifferent to his plight and to the confusions and emotions seizing him all at once.

"Why are you...You're laughing at me. Don't laugh at me...Why would you do that when I... I ... I...?"

The laughter grew. It echoed in the air. It stormed about his ears. He shut his eyes against its savage clamour.

The astronaut, suddenly frantic with the need for his query answered, shouted, "Answer me! Why am I here? Why am I? Why am I here? Why am I?"

After an endless moment, the laughter dwindled. The voice came again and it said:

You ask why. But how can I answer you? How can I answer you when you would never understand the answer?

A notion came to the man: if this was the essential him – this mote-like insignificance – then so be it. As a man stunned by his loneliness, and made incalculably desperate by it, he had a simple plea to make and nothing else.

"Tell me! Fuck you and tell me! Please will you tell me!"

The laughter dwindled incrementally, as if it had left his side and drifted further across the deck; a moment of stillness in which the astronaut trembled and sweat cold sweat. Then the voice was there with him again.

You wish an answer to why. Here is one answer: We do not visit you anymore. Nor will we ever again, except for perhaps in many and many millions of years, treating you ever as curiosity. We grew quickly bored with you. As a species you grew tiresome to watch, even if initially we were curious; your development slow and your inclination towards the primitive elements of hatred and violence disheartening. We grew weary of watching you early on. And, of course, all of what I have said to you now is a lie.

The man, who had been clinging to every word, trembled in the newly descended silence. A gasp left him. He shook his head. He was confused, aghast, angry and humbled within the presence of the voice that lay beyond explanation or reason.

"Do you mean to say...that...you're not – that you were – "

The laughter returned to claim the room. Though it was a human trait, its icy sound held no humanity whatever.

The astronaut reeled in the wake of the revelation. "You lied? You lied about – none of that is true?"

No.

"You never...You never came, and watched over us?"

No.

"You won't return to us? Because you never-"

No.

"Are you even...Do you even come from out there?" Here the astronaut gestured frantically to the window. The blackness beyond seemed to breathe at the glass. He'd never felt so lonely in all his life. Wifeless and friendless: this state was that which had filled him with loneliness before. Now, though, a new weight was upon him. Now, for the first time in his fifty-eight years, the astronaut understood what it was to be alone in the universe.

No, came his answer.

"Are you from...?" He raised a hand to his temple, too afraid to give voice to the notion of senility or madness having conquered his intellect and reason.

No, came the answer.

"Who are you? What are you? Oh, please..."

A hush in the room. The man trembled. Tears wetted his cheeks. Space licked at the porthole glass.

And:

I am a malicious god. I am lies. I am everything. I am nothing. I am you.

"I don't understand." The astronaut wept. He ran his hands through his silvered hair. He shook his head. He was unable to think. Lucidity was too deeply buried beneath the deluge of his tears. "I don't understand this. I can't understand this."

Laughter again. From its midst, words:

At last. You accept the truth of this.

The voice ceased. The room remained quiet but for the sound of the breaking man. Eventually, the astronaut watched space again. Minutes or hours or days he put his gaze into the void. After a time, he considered his companions slumbering at that moment, perhaps walking in dreams much more serene than this. Perhaps their dreams made sense to them. Perhaps their dreams felt right to them and their bodies remained still, at peace, while they roamed in these places of ease.

Suddenly, a queer thought arrived. Perhaps the voracious void on the opposite side of the glass summoned it. Perhaps the conversation he'd taken part in had awakened it from where it might have slept dormant within him. The astronaut whispered, "Will they awaken? My friends? Have you harmed them? Will they awaken?"

Does it matter?

The astronaut sat pondering this question. Outside the window space continued to breathe its cold unfathomable breath. He felt it then inside himself, too: a cold beyond sensation.

He knew then, of course, that it had been there all along.

3. New Loneliness

He murdered them.

Each caught fragile in sleep. Methodically he made rounds of each sleep capsule in turn. Using a simple butcher's knife retrieved from the kitchen he whispered open the glass from around them and slit their throats and watched entranced the spurting of blood from their throats. He'd left each of them hurriedly but for Simmons, whom he killed last and who he raped even while she convulsed in the pooling curdle of her blood, eyes like twin moons orbiting an uncannily frenetic dance in the electric darkness. As he committed this act he understood its human character, and remained unmoved by it. Given his new knowledge this was a triviality. Given his new understanding he felt nothing from the act at all, neither pleasure nor self-loathing nor any emotion between these poles.

A realization came to him as he left her bloody and still in her capsule: He was more alone in the space station without them; friends, peers, companions of long years now never to awaken. He was more alone in the wake of this holocaust, with only the wicked or wise voice ghosting his steps and thoughts. He felt his new solitude in his heart. Deeper inside himself than this, too, in some place in which he'd never experienced emotion of any kind until then. He shuddered. He shuddered deeply and despair – true despair, undiluted by lingering traces of his old reserve or naiveté or optimism – awoke in him.

He drifted through the silent halls. The murder-knife he clutched reflexively in his fist. Blood was congealing along the arm of his suit, in the thick hair along the back of his hand. This remnant of his companions he took with him into the bowels of the station. Their memories he took with him, too. Johnson, snow-haired and bespectacled and wearing his wrinkles regally; friend of old since their days serving on hazard teams on multiple worlds; Samson, brilliant and eccentric and as enthused as young scientists came, perennially immersed in his work to the neglect even of satisfying simple needs of the body, seemingly oblivious to the long glances following him from the station's few women; Simmons: red-haired, full-lipped, his hunger for her unabated since the sole moment they'd shared a clandestine accident together; alone in the kitchen during sleep-hours, both of them alert and perturbed by the lonely months accumulating on the station; sharing a kiss, and then another, and then sex on the floor and afterwards vowing to never bow to temptation again, from respect for their respective families, so far in space but ever close in their thoughts.

His footsteps rang loudly in the corridor. He cringed at their echoes, a reminder that he and no one else heard them.

Then the voice and his loneliness grew.

You are tired. You have not slept in a very long time.

He stopped in his place. Silence. He looked about him. The overheads, set to night-time mode, were dim and suffused the corridor in a somnolent orange glow. He shook his head fiercely but the echo of the voice remained.

He reeled on his way. He felt inebriated, befuddled, and steadied himself with a hand along the rounded wall as he went. When he arrived upon the observation deck once more he crossed immediately to the porthole wall. His breath frosted it. His breathing, ragged, grew calmer while he stared into space.

Countless kilometres away, a blue line crossed the black. A comet wending its way from somewhere to elsewhere. Its flight made him frown. Its icy beauty awakened an ache everywhere. The solitary glow of it in the wasteland before him brought to mind the predicament of his life. He thought of his wife but found, as he'd been finding of late, that he could no longer recall the colour of her eyes, was no longer able to conjure the kind of smile she'd smiled when he might have done something kind for her. Perhaps he'd simply never done anything kind for her at all.

The voice:

You are very, very tired.

He sought to see his wife's eyes, but found only stars pulsing in the black void.

He plunged the knife blade into his neck. He gasped, cried out. The pain startled him. Blood jetted. Red rivulets ran down the glass. His hands grew sticky in its mire. The pain grew and engulfed him. Distantly he thought how peculiar that the pain, stemming from the knife inside his neck, should travel everywhere throughout his body and reach even his toes in his boots. He placed his fingers around the resin-glazed wooden handle and, struggling with the awkward angle, managed to guide the blade with a violent wrench from its initial point of entry and gouge it through to the front of his throat until the pain became unbearable. He was blinded by it. His vision swam with stars and faces half-remembered: a derelict shipyard like a desiccated wilderness trapped to forever orbit a desolate star; lush-furred herd animals, coats striped with crimson and white, gambolling in a savannah in a world visited once but remaining with him forever for its abundance of natural beauties and sheer, untouched purity and peace; a blackened farmer screaming amid fire and rock; a teenaged girl smiling at him from across a classroom, the same age as him and with his sandy hair colour but owning a beauty surpassing anything incredible that there might have been in him.

Vaguely he sensed his knees touch the deck heavily. He knelt in place, awash in reeling pain. His thoughts were a quagmire. Through their tangled fibres a question struggled to be voiced:

Have I done good?

He thought this while trying to regain his feet, staggering in his place, clutching at the cold glass before him, reddening it everywhere.

The answer floated to him from the blackness encroaching:

No. You have never done good. You could never do good.

Through the red agony a quiet desperation seized him.

Have I done...bad?

The unequivocal answer came:

No. You have done nothing at all.

The voice dimmed even as it spoke, like a light put slowly out. Then it was faded altogether, leaving the astronaut with his new solitude. With it filling him up – blackening his vision, muddying his hearing, devouring him inside in deep places – he slid the length of the glass wall until deepest, deepest sleep finally claimed him.

4. Silent Universe

Hours or days or years later.

Haunting a dimly-lit hallway, he watched through the porthole glass.

A star shifted. A shadow grew in its centre: a ship formed from this. Its engine-fire frosted in the blackness. Minutes and minutes and minutes passed. It drew closer. The nearer it came to the station the more ragged became its appearance, evidence of its having travelled long, and far. It contained stories, he considered, stories and memories within its scarred hull and its many walls and its men and women.

And for what? thought the new astronaut, watching the ship draw ever nearer.

And for what, he found himself thinking forlornly many minutes later when the clamour of the ship attaching itself like a bug to the immense station's hull sent prolonged, groaning dinosaurian echoes through the many corridors and rooms and decks.

And for what, he thought desperately when, thirty minutes after this, the sounds of heavy footsteps invaded the silence with their echoes reverberating everywhere through the empty station.

And for what, he thought, suddenly calmer, as the group of astronauts drew within sight at the opposite end of the corridor he haunted; striding down the long hallway, their suits bulky and casting horrid shadows before them, the beams from their head-lamps a divine blue cutting away the dark in thin, efficient pieces.

And what for?

No answer came from the blackness, until he gave it with his own voice:

You have come all this way for nothing. There are no answers for you here. You are not meant to know. We are unable to learn.

The astronauts slowed their progress and peered about them, as if suddenly attuned to the great voice of the void surrounding them; or of the immense emptiness of the desolate space station; or as if sensing the ghost of something savage and bloody hiding in the matrix of the station beneath their boots, trapping the echoes of their voices between the stifling walls.

Then, unnerved but confident that they alone owned the derelict station, they continued on their way, their lights pushing back the shadows.

In the wake of their noisy passage, a voice:

I am a malicious god. I am lies. I am everything. I am nothing. I am you.

Welcome, to these rooms barren but for you.

The GRim

Rob Bleckly

Tyranol

The Day Tripper's captain looked up, annoyed at planetary scientist, Karl 'Baron' Baronsky. His expletive threatened to disrupt her breakfast.

Baron stood motionless at the retractable sink, staring into the sugar bowl.

"What is it?" Cheral asked absently.

Cheraline Edrich, DT's medical officer was standing next to him holding her cup under the gushing hot water spigot.

"See for yourself," he said and shoved the sugar bowl under her nose.

"Bloody hell," Cheral squeaked and dropped the cup. The stream of near boiling water hit the corner curve of the stainless polymer sink exploding upwards and outwards. Cheral jumped back, an involuntary movement in anticipation of searing pain and crashed into the Day Tripper's captain on her way to the floor.

Captain Tyranol Smith's morning coffee sloshed over her hand. "What the fuck?" The expletive just slipped out as happened all too frequently these days. Flicking coffee from her hand, she tried to stand and avoid further scalding from the spill heading her way across the tabletop and in the process lifted the table with her knees.

"Hey, watch it the table will..."

Guy Monmart's warning came too late. The table sensed the movement and began to pack up against him. Curses multiplied as three more steaming cups jumped to their deaths. Cutlery and crockery clattered in a cacophony to the floor. In the confined space, it sounded worse than it was. Nothing broke, nothing could; it was all unbreakable polymers.

The table pinning DT's engineer Guy Monmart and systems officer, Adelia Redway to their seats dumped what remained of the setting, a jug of reconstituted milk, some pale butter substitute and a couple of rubbery eggs into their laps.

"Get this bloody table off me," screamed Adelia trying to heave it back into place against the whining servos.

Tyranol had had enough. "For fuck's sake Baron, you're the closest. Hit the damn button."

Baron reluctantly looked up from his contemplation of the sugar bowl and absently pushed a button next to the hot-water spigot marked 'TABLE'.

Adelia immediately jumped into the aisle and emptied her lap on the floor. "Look what you've done to my suit," she accused Baron.

With what she though admirable restraint, Captain Tyranol Smith took control. "Right, you and Cheral caused this, you clean it up. And I mean now Baron."

"Me," Cheral protested from the floor.

Tyranol watched as Baron, still lost in his own world, (very fitting for her planetary scientist) ignored the belligerent stares of Guy and Adelia and carefully placed the sugar bowl on the restored table.

"How?" he said shaking his head. "It isn't possible."

Tyranol leant over to have a look. She stared up at her planetary scientist. "Sugar," she said. It was all she saw in the bowl.

"Sugar," Guy repeated and before Tyranol could restrain him, he reached out, up ended the bowl and slammed it down on the table. The bowl bounced away.

Little black things scurried away in all directions from the small mountain of raw sugar.

"How pathetic," Guy sneered. He made a sweeping gesture to encompass the shambles made of the Day Tripper's cramped galley, "all this because Baron found ants in the sugar bowl."

Not for the first time, the Day Tripper's captain wondered how she ended up babysitting such a varied assortment of down but not out space jocks. They called her 'tyrant' behind her back and it was not a term of endearment. Except for Guy, he called her Terry when they were alone and for that she could forgive his occasional outburst of temper.

As she made her way to the command module, however, she worried that Baron might be onto something. How in these distant reaches of space did they get ants into their sugar bowl? They had been on this supply drop run for nearly two years without making planet fall. So why had they suddenly appeared now? More worrying, as Baron had muttered, was how?

Guy

Guy Monmart, still fuming over the milk jug slapping him in the groin and hoping it hadn't damaged anything important, slowly stroked Adelia's nipple with his tongue. Both were crammed into her life-pod. Of the Day Tripper's crew, Guy was the only one who liked Colonial Admin's money saving ploy to make their lifeboats double up as crew billets. The pods dual-purpose meant every bedroom had a full range of facilities, including food, wine and music.

Despite his constantly active tongue and adroit hands, Adelia remained unresponsive. He hoped he wasn't losing his touch. There was very little else to do out on the GRim.

"I don't get it Guy. Why was Cheral so upset about a few little sugar ants?"

Guy ignored her and let his tongue drift down the firm white curve towards her navel. Adelia slapped him away.

"Will you stop that? I'm not in the mood."

Guy's face reddened, as he rolled away in anger rather than embarrassment. More correctly, he rotated in place; there wasn't enough room to roll. He enjoyed sex and hated having his personal pursuit of happiness interrupted.

"I'm sorry." Adelia continued. "I just want to know why the fuss. It's not as if ants are a going to eat all that much."

"That's it," Guy grunted. "If you're going to prattle on about bloody ants all night, I'm off."

With the deft movements of someone used to confined spaces, he wriggled into his shorts, pulled on his T-shirt and reached over his head to touch the [open] icon on Adelia's screen.

Nothing happened.

"Damn it Della, its locked. What's your release code?"

"How much do ants breathe I wonder?" asked Adelia.

Guy tapped her on the head with a forefinger, "anyone home?" He knew immediately he gone too far, Adelia's pale blue eyes iced him.

"You are a right bastard," she said, her breasts sliding gracefully across his chest as she rotated in place to get at her pod's screen. Propping herself up on a forearm she tapped her PIN onto the displayed number pad.

Again, nothing happened.

Guy groaned. "Some systems officer, you can't even remember your own damn code." Why did I say that, he wondered? It could jeopardise his access to the best body in the crew. He needed anger management and he knew it. We should have brought a councillor and left our useless bloody planetary scientist behind. He grinned at that thought, almost useless he corrected. Luckily, Adelia seemed to have missed this outburst.

"If the code was wrong it would say so, this looks dead." She said tapping the display in several places outside the number pad. Then she licked her finger, wiped it on her bare arm and re-tapped the code.

"Try resetting the system."

Adelia almost snarled at him. "Give me a break."

"I'd be delighted." Guy squeaked, catching a note of hysteria in his voice, "as soon as you let me out of this bloody coffin."

"Don't shout in my ear. I can't think. It's not wrong I tell you, the system is down, unresponsive, dead."

Guy saw a frown crease Adelia's brow. "We'll have to get Cheral to open it from the other..."

"No way, not Cheral, get T..." He was going to suggest Terry but that wouldn't be politic either.

Adelia looked sideways at him and he looked away. That's torn it he thought. Shit. This was going to be one of those days when his carefully compartmentalised life imploded. When he glanced up, the pale blue eyes paled further.

"You bastard, I'm not enough for you."

Guy couldn't keep the grin off his face.

Adelia's eyes narrowed then widened. "You're banging the Tyrant as well?"

His widening grin vanished when she punched him in the face with a right cross that twisted her around and dropped her off her forearm prop. The top of her short, blond head banged into her pod's console. There was a sharp click followed by loud hiss and the dull thump of something seating home.

Their grappling stopped immediately. Blood streamed unheeded from Guy's nose and dripped off his lip onto Adelia's breast as she scrambled to reposition so she could reach the console. There was a muffled explosion. The lighting in the pod went to the dull orange of impending ejection. A maddeningly pleasant electronic voice warned. "Please stow any loose objects and cleat your sleeping bag to the pod wall. This module will eject in thirty seconds."

Adelia's fingers flew frantically over her screen, "Come on, Come on, answer me damn you."

Guy stared at her with a face full of apprehensive hope.

"Thank you for your cooperation," continued the voice. "Your safety is our primary concern."

The pod trembled. Adelia was still screaming "Override! Override!" and thumping the touch-screen when the pod ejected and they were suddenly and silently weightless."

Guy's only thought as they drifted away from Day Tripper was how great weightless sex with Adelia would be.

Cheral

Karl Baronsky was on his elbows and knees in the passage outside Adelia's pod with a magnifying glass shortly after it had ejected. Cheraline Edrich, crouched beside him, sensed he was angry and supposed it was because no one but her had taken his ant problem seriously.

"Were looking for the ants, right," Cheral whispered at the same time eavesdropping on the adjacent command module and the Tyrant's conversation with the ejected pod. Poor Adelia, she thought. She didn't give second thought for that two timing bastard with her.

"Adelia, Guy, this is Captain Smith. What can I say people? We are all so terribly sorry."

Thankfully, the automatic gain control limited the jumble of shouted recriminations. Despite the fact that the torrent was mostly incoherent, their Captain seemed to get the message. "I understand," she kept saying.

"There not ants, they're spiders" said Baron startling her.

"What? But they flew." Cheral said. "I was just getting up when they dropped off the edge of the table and took flight straight into the aircon duct." She glanced over her shoulder, then up and down, left and right. Flying spiders, she thought with a shudder, that's all I need. Suddenly she held her arms out for a closer inspection and just in case, patted herself down, hard. She yelped when something dug into her thigh. She patted it again before reaching in and pulling out a spoon. Only a spoon, she thought with relief. It must have dropped into her pocket during the breakfast fiasco yesterday.

"They only fly as a last resort," Baron continued. "Mostly they're using our cables as roadways."

Cheral looked startled and forgot to whisper. "You don't think...?"

"Why do you think I'm looking here?" he snapped and pointed to the pod door. The oval window in the hatch labelled ADELIA now looked out into the near empty space beyond the GRim.

"Quiet you two," snapped the Captain.

"What?" the speaker squawked, the shrill voice distorted, the gain control pushed beyond overload.

"Not you Guy. I was talking to Cheral and Baron."

Baron lowered his voice to a harsh whisper. "We've been out on the GRim for eighteen months. We've made two drops, no pickups," he paused and scratched his brown stubble, "except for these little beasties. I have to find the nest." Disconcertingly, his deep, blue eyes flicked from Cheral's mouth to her eyes and back again. She couldn't really tell if he was away with the fairies, trying it on with her or like her, trying to follow Tyranol's monologue.

"Normally the pod would have enough air, water and food for a month but with two of you, it's less than half and there's the additional heat to consider and waste recycling. You're lucky the pods are gender neutral. Despite being designed for one, it will have equipment suitable for both of you."

"There," yelled Baron in her ear.

Cheral following where he pointed, saw a small black spider, wings folded back, crawling along a cable in the open duct. She banged it hard with the spoon.

"One less problem," she said with satisfaction.

Baron put his forehead on the floor and sobbed.

"Will you two shut up? No, I didn't mean you Della. Dr Eldrich, leave Baron to his ants and get up here."

"Gladly," Cheral said, pissed at Baron's reaction. Trying to help him get rid of the ants/spiders was too hard.

She climbed the spiral to join Tyranol in the command module. Out the small window (it wasn't really a window but a screen made to look like one) she could see the ejected lifeboat was already a tiny spec of reflected light no bigger than an ant against the black backdrop. There were very few stars in that direction and each of them was a galaxy. The Day Tripper was between systems on the galactic rim, known colloquially as the GRim. On bitter reflection, Cheral considered it an appropriate term for Guy and Adelia's situation as they headed out into the nothingness between this galaxy and the distant next.

As she sat at her console, something about the spider she had hit with the spoon troubled her but the insistence of multiple winking tell-tales overrode it. Instinctively she glanced at her own pod's status, then quickly up at Tyranol whose worried grey eyebrows jiggled while she calmly talked to Guy and Della.

"We have sent a mayday. Search and Rescue have launched a recovery mission but I have to tell you." She stopped abruptly, cupped her hand over her throat mike and whispered to Cheral. "Arm Adelia's pod, give them the option." She then continued, as if she had just paused for breath. "But I'm very much afraid it won't catch you before..."

The captain's voice cut out as Cheral donned headphones to isolate her from the hubbub and allow her to concentrate. They're as good as dead, she thought. Recovery would never catch them.

She had several serious problems needing attention. Day Tripper's Oxygen levels were way down. It was half what they should have at this point and usage was inexplicably high. If she didn't find the problem and fix it, they would run out of air sooner than Guy and Adelia. No wonder the Tyrant had sent out a mayday. It's for us, not them.

With deft fingers, tapping and sliding, she armed the drifting pod's self-destruct and returned her attention to her own survival. Somehow, something had connected their air supply to an attitude jet, which was leisurely squirting air into space. Something and somehow, she thought, two unknowns and she didn't have a clue where to start. Cheral was about to do the only thing she could and shut down the attitude jet, (which shouldn't even be on) when the icon under her finger disappeared. The screen went to an error message: UNRECOGNISED TOUCH - AUTHORISATION REQUIRED. I didn't touch it, Cheral thought, as she ripped off the headphones.

"Captain, I've just been locked out. Get Della..." Cheral stopped mid-sentence. Adelia was gone, out there in the deep black beyond the GRim. She managed a pleading look at her captain.

The tyrant tapped her own console and got the same message. She looked at Cheral with something akin to resignation in her eyes. "Here, you have some psych training, you talk to these two. They may as well bonk themselves to death. I'll have to go out and physically plug the jet. If Search & Rescue call, don't mention the ants. I don't intend dying out here."

Cheral sat reluctantly in the captain's chair. She had no wish to speak to Monmart. If it was not for Adelia, she would happily press the pod's destruct button.

"Hi Della, it's me. You're very faint..."

Tyranol

On her way to the airlock, Tyranol picked up Baron. She wondered why they gave her such a useless first officer, not that he wasn't good at his job but on this trip but a Planetary Scientist for fuck's sake. He collated and/or collected any new information on any new specimens from the GRim outstation worlds. His work began and ended whenever they made planet fall but there was nothing but drops scheduled this trip.

"But I haven't found the nest yet," Baron protested.

"Fuck the nest, we're running out of air." Until this infestation, Baron had been supernumerary. Now he was in his element and naturally, he resented her taking him away from it.

"But they're the reason for all..."

"No Baron. The reason we're losing air is we're jetting it into space and the electrics are shot, I'll need your help to go out, so I can plug it."

"What? Our air isn't connected to the jets - is it?"

"It is now," she said.

"It's the ants I tell you, only they're not really ants, they're spiders. The electrics are the only part of the ship that isn't polymer, the insulation is and the spiders love it."

Tyranol suspected he was right. His 'spiders' had to be alien in origin, picked up enroute and responsible for the Day Tripper's current shambles.

"I believe you but dead you will never be able to submit a paper on them. You can go back and route them out as soon you passed me out the airlock."

She could see the tussle on his face as he tested the balance of probabilities. Whatever she might think of the disparate members of her crew, they weren't stupid. She tried to tip it with authoritative friendliness. "Now, if you don't mind, Karl."

The defiant expression building on his face expired with her use of his name rather than his nickname. "I need you to crank the outer airlock shut just in case and wait to let me back in. I'll be twenty minutes tops and then you can go look for your aliens.

While they suited up, she instructed him to stay close to the airlock and look for her again in twenty minutes.

Baron nodded as he secured her helmet. "Yes boss."

They stepped into the airlock and Tyranol waited while Baron closed the inner hatch. They cranked open the outer hatch together, any hiss of the precious air escaping went unheard. Why Colonial Admin hadn't put a mechanical locking wheel on the outside the outer hatch wasn't as obvious as making the lifeboats double as sleeping quarters; the money it would save wouldn't amount to much. The official reason was to prevent pirates gaining access, pirates for fuck's sake. In thirty years on the GRim Tyranol had never encountered, nor heard on anyone else encountering pirates. She reached through the opened outer hatch to grab the hull ladder and thanks to the gravitational effects of the Day Tripper's constant one gee deceleration, began to climb with some ease. Old and unfit, she sweated buckets as she climbed up past the galley and command modules toward an expanding cone of frozen air droplets, ten minutes hard slog.

As she sprayed hull sealant into the small attitude jet, she could hear Cheral chatting to Adelia, the replies barely audible. The pod's speed into the void was negligible just all in the wrong direction, out from the GRim into the nothing and speeding away from the Day Tripper at right angles. The pod would soon be out of sight. Tyranol resisted the urge to wave goodbye.

Satisfied the jet was well and truly clogged she began to head back when she noticed forward thruster three was driving slowly back and forth across its small variable arc.

"God's teeth people, this isn't funny anymore," she cursed and went to check.

Baron

"Holy shit," yelled Karl a moment later as he watched from the airlock. Tyranol was standing in front of thruster three trying to stop it jiggling when it fired. The Tyrant was gone, fried to a crisp, a little black thing, attached to the hull ladder.

"What now?" Cheral asked.

Karl couldn't answer. He was retching in his suit, his mike clogged with vomit. The suit's air filtration system was labouring to process the particulate matter. Most of his lunch was sliding down inside his helmet on its way to his boots. He was steaming by the time he got the outer hatch closed, the inner one open and was able to unsuit.

"What the hell did you think you were doing firing the thrusters?" he screamed at Cheral as soon as he reached the command module.

Cheral cringed away, her expression a mixture of disgust and hurt.

"I didn't fire them, their sub-system did."

"Don't give me that," he trailed off. Cheral was right, there was no way she would have fired the thrusters. She didn't have a vicious bone in her body. That left the spiders. He began to see battle lines being drawn, their insulation eating, which shorted the electrics, weren't random; it was strategic.

"I tried to stop it," Cheral said, almost in tears.

She's afraid of being alone I'll bet, Karl thought, and reached out to comfort her.

"God you stink," she said, pulling away.

It didn't register with Karl. He was suddenly interested in what she had said earlier. Could it be, he wondered. Surely not, it was all solid state. "How do you know the sub-system did it?"

"It told me it was going to," was the nasal reply as Cheral blew her nose into a piece of rag. "It wouldn't let me in, I couldn't override. So what do we do now, Captain?"

Baron's head snapped up looking around for the captain. It took him a second or two to realise Cheral was talking to him.

"Er right. Well first I need to get cleaned up."

While he changed and washed, by hand because the flash shower was also defunct, he reviewed all he had learned, mostly inferred from what the alien insects had achieved. They weren't eating the insulation at all; they were stripping it back to get access, tapping into our systems and causing havoc. For us at least, they were space borne if not space born. Bloody fascinating, a paper on these alien spider/ants would make him famous, if he survived them.

Cheral

Cheral had wanted to race down and hug Baron the moment he returned. With the captain gone, he was the only one left. His tirade forestalled that first impulse. The second self-destructed when she noticed half-digested food in his stubble and the smell. Guy he wasn't, though he was probably more reliable. She still found it hard to believe Guy Adelia and Tyranol were gone but the pieces were starting to fit. She had decided the spiders were a fault. Whatever they were doing, it was interfering with their systems.

Her tears had slowed by the time Baron returned clean in fresh threads but unfortunately still perfumed in his own bile.

"How are those two - out there," asked Baron.

"Long gone," Cheral said.

"Did they...?"

Cheral shuddered and wiped a resurgent tear from the corner of her eye. "Dunno. I was busy with three. They were gone next time I looked. I hope they do. Tyranol's end would have been instant."

Now that he was here, she nodded towards the life support panel, knowing Baron wouldn't fully understand it but anyone could see their air supply was nearing reserve when it should be half-full. "How far behind us is the rescue mission?"

"Right on schedule, but..."

"There are only two of us now," Baron interrupted. "Provided nothing else goes wrong and we conserve our air we can still make it."

Cheral eyed him sceptically, trying not to let her fear show.

"But what," he added. "You said 'but' but I butted in - sorry."

"Our systems are still degrading and both techos are out there. How are you going make sure nothing else goes wrong?"

"I'm going to kill the little buggers before they do any more damage and conserve air at the same time."

The troubling itch at the back of her mind surfaced when he said 'little'. The insect she had hit with the spoon had clearly been a winged spider. Those in the sugar bowl had been so small, she hadn't seen the wings, let alone count the legs. They had still looked like ants when she saw them take flight.

Cheral shuddered again. "They aren't little anymore, what can they be eating to grow like that?" she asked as the rest of what he had said registered – kill them and save air at the same time.

"How?"

"I thought no one would ever ask. They're not eating the insulation as I first thought. They probably can't eat anything of ours." He paused as if to collect his thoughts. When he looked back at her, his voice was excited, too excited for Cheral's liking. This time, he was off with the fairies, mentally writing his paper on the spiders' attempts to destroy them.

"They're actually eating each other. They were playing cannibals in the airlock while I waited for the Tyrant. I'm guessing the last one standing will somehow give rise to the next generation of the ant form, or perhaps just little eggs. Who knows what form they take out in space, or how long they have been drifting. They obviously don't need to breathe."

Cheral nervously scanned the monitors, checking for signs of the rescue ship, trying to visualise the flying spider she had spooned at double or treble the size and gave a gasp when something like her imagined beastie flitted across one of the screens. Perhaps not, perhaps it was merely a manifesting of her innermost fear; trapped alone with a giant flying spider. I have to get somewhere safe, she thought as Baron ploughed on.

"I figure they saw the ship as just a place to nest and regenerate. They probably see us as an infestation. They needed to fumigate their nest first, get rid of any potential threat to their progeny. Bloody smart thinking I say. We discounted them as mere insects and yet they got into and manipulated our systems.

Cheral thought his theory just whacky enough to be true, but she didn't say anything. The sheen of sweat on his forehead and the glazed expression in his eyes frightened her. She wondered if one of the spiders had bitten him.

"We have to be smarter," he said. "Trying to find the nest was a waste of time, there won't be one until there's only one left." As he spoke, he began vacuuming the inside of his helmet with the battery-powered dust-buster from the kitchen. "I'm going to space the lot 'em. We need to suit up, re-compress all our air, open the ports and send them back to where they came from."

Cheral began edging away. He was looking less and less reliable now. She had her own survival plan. It didn't involve tyring to outsmart intelligent alien spiders. Just stay out of their way, don't pose any sort of threat.

"Well go on, get suited."

"Right," she said, "I just have to go to the dunny first." Cheral scurried off down the spiral in the central column towards the amenities section. Once out of sight she kept going. She would wait out the time to rescue in her own private life-capsule.

A blast of cool air hit her when she opened her pod sending a chill up her spine, what if the spiders had already scuttled her pod. She hesitated before pulling the pod into the room for a quick inspection. Except for the cold, everything seemed to be as she had left it this morning. She swung up onto the bed and touched the console to check the thermostat. It was set on twenty degrees Celsius her preferred sleeping temperature. In all the excitement, she had forgotten to reset it. She touched pad icons [two], [four] and [set temperature] then pressed [closed]. Her berth slid smoothly back into the pod.

When her teeth began chattering Cheral re-checked the thermostat it had gone down to twelve degrees. Damn, one of her taps hadn't registered properly. The temperature was heading down to either two degrees or four. "Damn all computers," she muttered and aiming for a quick response, carefully touched each icon: [three], [zero] and [set temperature]. There was a cheering beep after each registration. She was safe from Baron and his war with the spiders. She sat and waited, not bothering to reply when Baron asked if she was suited up yet, hoping he would go away and get on with it, without her.

The temperature went down a degree, the drop more chilling than the previous fall of eight degrees. Bloody spiders, she moaned. Can't they see I'm not a threat? With resignation, she went to tap the [open] icon when Baron's face appeared in the small hatch porthole.

Baron

When Karl heard Cheral's 'Damn all computers', on the suit com, he asked if she was suited yet, and told her he was on his way to the airlock.

Cheral did not reply so as he headed down, Karl checked the dunnies, both empty. To hell with her, he thought, have to space the beasties first. Only as an afterthought, as he passed through the sleeping bay, did he look in on Cheral's pod.

Startled Cheral looked up then instantly back at the pod systems panel. "I just came back to my pod for an extra jacket."

"Well hurry up. Whatever the spiders are doing is causing more and more failures."

Through the hatch window, Karl saw the temperature readout inside her pod change to two degrees Celsius. He checked readout on the outside, also two degrees and Cheral wasn't suited.

"Aren't you cold?'

Silly question, he thought as she tapped [open]. The pod started to move but then ground to a shuddering halt and stuck. He saw a wave of panic strike Cheral and felt himself respond in sympathy. "Mother of god no," she wailed in his headset. "I don't want end up like Della trapped in my bloody pod. It's freezing."

"Hang on," said Karl. He broke the polymer sheet covering the override button and thumped it to switch the locking mechanism to manual. He expected to hear a thump but nothing happened. He shrugged at the hapless Cheral, now so cold, or fearful, she was vibrating like a pneumatic drill. He tried the wheel manually. It spun without engaging as the temperature inside fell to zero.

It can't go much further, thought Karl, as Cheral wrapped up in every available piece of clothing and crawled into her thermal sleeping bag. She'll be right, he thought, hoping it was true. Surely, her trapped body heat would sustain her until he could work out a way to open her pod. He had to go. Finish the job he started then write it up. He waved and turned away.

"Don't leave me," Cheral said in a staccato chattering of teeth.

"I'll be back as soon I do for the spiders."

Amazing he thought how 'spiders' had stuck, not ants or aliens, which they truly are. The last one he'd seen on the bathroom monitor had looked like a squid.

As Karl set about having the air sucked from the Day Tripper and compressed back into the tanks, he was grateful that the rarely used compressor wasn't computer controlled and thankful the spiders were smart. He supposed the only reason they had left it alone was that it was stored and not connected. He was eighty per cent done when the motor started to grind. He shut it off. The gauge showed his efforts had only improved their air reserve from thirty-one per cent to thirty-two per cent capacity. He consoled himself that those last couple of air days might just save his life.

Satisfied he opened the inner airlock door, stepped inside and hooked a long tether from his belt to the rail just in case. Then he rigged a shorter one from the hatch wheel to a handhold on the wall and used the tether's ratchet to make it taught. It only had to hold against the reduced atmospheric pressure. Finished he turned the wheel to open and sat on the floor to wait.

Karl theorised that as the only other active entity in the ship, he was now the spider's only potential threat. Vindication of his theory wasn't long coming. The spider appeared, carefully climbing down the central spiral. It was now much more squid-like, a bulbous black body- head section and multiple tapering legs. Karl waited until the last leg disengaged and it stood on the floor antenna quivering before he hit the tethers release.

The outer swung open and Karl had to duck as anything not tied down flew past his head: a foam pillow, several packets of potato crisps - various flavours, some issues from Guy's comic collection - pages flapping and tearing. He lunged out to rescue the toaster sliding along the floor but his tether held him out of reach. The toaster hit the lip of airlock and tumbled over. The cord whipped up and the plug smacked him in the chin.

The spider, now as big as beach ball, appeared. Hairless legs flapped in all directions looking for purchase. Two managed to grip either side of the airlock's outer hatch and hold. The strength of the turbulence was dying quickly and Karl could see the flailing legs retracting toward its body. Soon another limb gained purchase on the airlock's jamb.

Karl gripped the rail, unhooked his tether, took two stumbling steps toward the spider and jumped. He landed feet first deforming the black body, popping it soundlessly out the airlock. Using muscle power alone the sinuous legs swept around trying to lock on to his feet. He pulled his legs up and the distance between them steadied to a few inches. Then his tether pulled him up short and the spider disappeared into the blackness.

As he pulled his way back along the tether into the airlock, Karl fervently hoped his thesis would prove correct and that the beastie he just kicked out was the last one standing. He had no way of knowing.

Back in the ship, he felt light as if walking on air or perhaps swimming in it. Bit by bit, he manually sealed off all the unused modules then headed up to command, to re-pressurise and warm the rest up flooding the Day Tripper's command and pod bay module with air. In the monitor, he noticed Cheral had stopped moving and her face looked pale. The pod's temperature readout stood at minus forty degrees.

Battling his way back down into the pod bay, Karl again threaded one of the thick power cable spares, the only item with any metal in it, through the lock on Cheral's pod. He hooked a hand winch to the central pole of the spiral staircase and began to crank open Cheral's pod. The lock's handle snapped.

"Bloody polymer shit."

Karl cursed the stupidity of plastic space ships. They said it was to save weight but it was really to save money, in space weight was money. Every part of the ship except for the power cables and circuit boards was 3D printed polymer. Only when he stopped cursing did he notice a chill breeze around his feet. Cheral's pod door had opened a fraction. A cold mist was flowing out and dropping to the floor, warm air behind it. He looped the cable around the berth stuffing it into the gap and cranked the berth fully open.

When he reached out to touch Cheral's face, he burned his finger. Cheral's cheek was ice cold, frozen solid. How did that happen he wondered? Then he noticed her hip stick out the side of her sleeping bag. He lifted it at that point with the end of the cable; found it neatly sliced open from head to toe. The last spider's parting gesture.

Karl spent a couple of hours, pulling up plates and opening panels, jamming bits of polymer between raw conductors and resetting breakers. Bits of the Day Tripper came back to life. Pointless thought Karl as he returned to the command module; he was still alone and now very dispirited. The captain's screen began playing a pornographic video.

Karl watched fascinated. There was something familiar about the bum. The pair rocked, knocked the camera and the view changed. Like ghosts from the past, Monmart and Adele smiled out at him from the screen. You bastard, he thought. It confirmed what he already suspected; Guy was bi. Then he noticed the timer in the corner click over, the feed was live. That's not possible, he thought. They couldn't possibly be in range. He looked around at the locator. The blip representing the Day Tripper was off the line representing the GRim by several AU, heading outward.

"Shit a brick."

Karl checked the monitors, located the pod then checked the clock. Twenty-seven hours since the pod ejected and he'd caught them.

"Thruster three," he shouted with sudden insight and the bodies on the monitor scrambled to part. The bloody spider really was going to have the last laugh.

Adelia

After a quick glance at Baron, Adelia turned to her screen and found power beamed from the Day Tripper again available. She started playing the pad like a concert pianist.

"Baron, you came for me," Guy said, emotion cracking his voice.

In a small box on the screen, Karl exploded. "In a pig's eye, piss off and die whore."

This took Guy aback for a second but only a second. "Sorry, I really thought I was going to die or I would never..." he shrugged. "You know how it is."

With a withering look full of contempt at Guy, Adelia tried to rescue the situation with an appeal to Baron. "Karl," she said using his name, knowing his preference. Now was not the time to upset him. "Are you able to fetch us," she asked sweetly.

Baron grimaced, an internal fight playing out on his face. "I don't know if I can on my own."

Adelia exchanged a desperate glance with Guy.

"What the hell happened to Cheral and the captain?" Guy asked.

"It's a long story and sort of funny in a way. Tyranol fried and Cheral froze. I did manage to get rid of the spiders."

How is that funny Adelia thought? He's insane.

"That's just typical, Karl. I'm out here dying and you're playing with your spiders. What spiders, don't you mean ants? Don't answer that just come and get us."

"How?"

"Fire a bloody grapple as you pass," said Guy, turning to Adelia for conformation.

She ignored him, her fingers tapping and sliding across her screen. "No need, on his present course he'll hit us. Brilliant navigating Karl, I couldn't have done better myself." She was being sarcastic but Baron glowed. "I can tweak our position to match." She glanced up at the camera. "My pod started working again as soon as you came in range."

"You'll reach us in twelve hours," Guy added after scanning Adelia's screen. "In the meantime get some sleep Karl, you look knackered."

She saw Baron start to leave and called out. "Come back a couple of hours before you catch us please Karl, We'll need your help."

She heard him say, "Alright" but in a tone so depressed, she wondered if he would bother when the crunch came.

"Karl, are you still listening. If you can get us back on board, we can rejig a thruster to turn DT around and meet the rescue ship."

There was no response. She turned to Guy trying to come to terms with his revealed promiscuity. "You idiot, your dick is going to the death of us."

"You weren't complaining and hour ago," he said and she felt his hand slip between her legs.

Her forehead hit his nose. He snapped back at her in unthinking rage, head to head. The last thing she felt was a blinding flash of pain behind her eyes as her head smashed into her screen.

Baron

Remarkably, Adelia's pod camera still transmitted and Karl was able to watch his slowly approaching doom. Guy and Adelia would crash into him and nothing he could do would prevent it. Without one or other of the techos, he was done for and they couldn't help themselves. Adelia had smashed the pods communications and control pad. Guy obviously knew the camera was working and had tried miming instructions to Karl but without any response from him, Guy soon gave up.

Karl watched avidly as Guy cradled the broken Adelia, gently stoking her brow right to the end. The screen went blank when the pod bounced off the Day Tripper's hull and spun away into the black. He felt the blow emotionally.

They were gone.

They were all gone, even the alien hitchhiker's and he was alone without any chance of rescue. His solitary journey into the emptiness between galaxies would last months, possible a year if he was careful. One of the items his repairs had fixed was the water recycling system. Air and water would now outlast his food supplies. He was going starve to death. He pondered his meaty legs.

The view back oppressed him as much as the view forward. He couldn't see the rescue ship against the glare of stars. Not that it mattered they would not be coming after him, not now he was too far off the GRim. So was the spider. He wondered if it was still alive. Its desperation when he kicked it out suggested not. Adelia and Guy were part of the fragments floating around the Day Trippers after the collision.

As he sped away from the GRim into the sparse intergalactic black, he thought deeply about the alien spider ants. Despite nobody would ever read it, Karl 'Baron' Baronsky began to write the paper that might have made him famous.

The Dead Kind

L. E. Badillo

"How's it looking out there, Dane?" The voice crackled over the speakers.

"O2's lower than normal," replied Dane, his reddish stubble becoming more of a beard to go with his choppy crop of hair. "Coolant on drill three is low too, running a bit on the warm side."

"Wrap it up and let's call it a day," said the voice.

Dane hated to finish the day early, even for equipment failure. "Let me push it another five minutes, Stan. I can finish here and we'll head back."

"Fine, but I'm not giving you mouth to mouth, you homo," said Stan.

Ramon laughed. "Dane, that five minutes isn't going to get us out of this gravel pit any faster. Let's move."

He was right. Their mining outfit was contracted for at least fifteen months in a small patch of rock that left the Kuiper belt. A high concentration of pure silver was discovered there. Both its abundance and properties for conducting electricity made it the gold of the space era.

"Done," said Dane.

"Better be on time boys 'cause I've already done my good deed for today."

"What's that, Dennis?" said Dane through a half-hearted smile.

"I dumped your asses off."

"Fuck you, Dennis," came the replies.

"This ain't Disney, mother fucker."

Dane secured his helmet and set the pressurization and air valves just as the O2 monitors on his mining rig went into the orange. Dennis and his magic bus were on their way.

The hatch opened enough for him to leap and pull himself up with the rebar handles along the outer edge. The transport shuttle was as greasy and grimy as the main ship or any of the tools they used. The shuttle turned into the remaining mining lights and Dane spotted something peculiar on the ship.

"That hatch shut, Dane?" Dennis called over the crackling headset. The oldest of the group, Dennis could still break rock as well as anyone. His thick moustache earned him the nickname Walrus, though Ramon often called him Crabby for being just that.

"No," Stan replied for him, "he's busy trying to hump the ship." Dane was half over the hatch with his legs below and out of sight. "He hasn't seen a real life set of tits and ass in so long he's going for anything that moves." The others laughed.

Dane ignored them and studied the side of the transport. A filmy substance coated the ship. Dane used the forefinger of his glove to scrape some off. Looking at his sample, Dane observed a deep green colour in the particles. When he rubbed the finger and thumb together the particles moved like magnetized metal shavings. Each fragment twinkled like crystals in low light.

"Hey, Dane, finish yanking your twig later and close the damn hatch," Dennis hollered. "Approaching hanger."

Once the shuttle docked inside the main ship, Trevor and Alexei secured the silver into rail carts that would then be added to the rest of the silver collected.

Dane and the others were coming off the shuttle. They were met in the hanger by Peter's tall, wiry frame, he was second in command to Luger. He stood in his deep grey coveralls with his hand resting on the handle of a flatbed cart. "Dane," he said, "you can kindly deposit your find and your suit, please."

"The man wants you to turn your head and cough, Dane," joked Stan, who claimed he was the only black man ballsy enough to search the outer reaches of space for new and uncharted pussy.

"Hey," replied Peter, "we're not gonna forget your full cavity search before you boarded the ship and had that dildo removed from your ass."

Ramon laughed and slapped Stan on the shoulder. "That funny walk of yours was cured, man." A whole head and a half shorter than Stan, Ramon and Stan could have been brothers if Stan were Spanish.

"Yeah, now it's just Peter up my ass," shouted Stan over his shoulder.

The others were on their way to get cleaned up then to the cafeteria. Dane carefully removed his gloves and put them with the boxed up sample to one end of the cart and the rest of the spacesuit in a pile at the other.

"Hit the decontamination chamber to be safe," said Peter sealing the gloves in heavy gage storage bags.

The following day Dane and the others readied for their morning run. Dane touched down on the asteroid near his rig. Dennis orbited the miners, watching over them as the shuttle drifted from site to site. Standard procedure was a three-man team worked each site. What they were doing was against regulations but much faster.

Dane followed staked tethers to each of the site lamps and activated them. Next, Dane checked his augers. He noticed a fine layer of green metallic dust on the machinery. There was no trace of it yesterday on his site.

"Hey," he called over his headset, "any of you dick-holes find any of that green shit on your sites?"

"No mutant-robot jiz here."

"Here either," came replies.

As colourful commentaries continued, Dane saw a strange shadow two meters away. It had long deliberate straight edges. Whatever he saw, wasn't there yesterday. Dane took a step forward. Then another. He was standing in its long, solid shadow.

"Dennis," he said, "I need you to swing by, take a look at something." Dane saw what caused the shadow. His lighting arrangement gave plenty of light in either direction leaving nothing to chance for an accident or mishap. His site was bordered by a high wall of solid rock. Wedged against it, where it wasn't yesterday, was something they cast out from the main ship weeks ago.

"Dane," said Dennis, "don't tell me your little find is making you loopy." Dennis and the shuttle whirred overhead. The boosters let out a quick burst to bring it to a stop.

"You seeing this?" asked Dane sounding out of breath. His eyes hurt from not blinking in case it might disappear before Dennis arrived.

"What the fuck did you do, Dane?" He almost defended himself against any allegation but was unable to speak. "Is that what I think it is?" asked Dennis.

"You seeing it makes me feel better, and worse," said Dane.

"I'm sending this to Luger," said Dennis. He turned on more lights at the front of the shuttle and sent a video stream to the command module of the main vessel.

Dane stood in the light. This time his shadow cast against his discovery. A period of radio silence followed other than the random crackle.

A thin layer of the new green element covered the capsule. It was stuck in the ground like a shoved in tent stake at a campsite, crooked. Dane reached out to clear away the fine dust from the ovoid window and with a quick stroke to his left saw inside. His body shivered as if an ice cube was unexpectedly dropped down the back of his suit.

"Jesus..." said Dane, frozen at his dismay.

"Dane, Dane," said Dennis. "I'm lowering the towline, Luger's orders. He wants the capsule recovered and inspected." A long pause followed. "He wants to know \- if he's inside...."

Dane stood before the capsule immobilized. He forced his answer, "Yes."

The rest of the dig was cancelled. Everyone, on duty or not, was called into the cafeteria. The only exceptions being Warren, who continued testing the green residue, and Peter, Luger's second in command, helped him.

Luger broke the silence. "Do any of you have any idea how this could have happened?" His strong frame with folded arms and brown bearded face looked around at the bewildered expressions. He was no nonsense with hard eyes under a shaggy head of hair. "Who set the coordinates when Felix got jettisoned?" No one responded. Glances wandered from face to floor. "No one's getting busted, fuck; we're the only ones who know he got sent out. It's as much my ass as anyone's, we broke protocol and I'm running this dig."

Trevor mumbled, "We never should have shot him out, man." He was tall and his dark, slightly curly hair thinned near the back and around the hairline.

Stan sat backward in his seat leaning forward with his arms crossed over the backrest. "It's what he wanted. The man had no family or next of kin."

"So we shot him out like trash?" Trevor's tone became heated.

"Come on, how many times did he say it was the ultimate way to go?" countered Stan.

Ramon drew a finger along the table top. Without looking up he said, "Felix loved it out there. It's like he was from outer space."

"Never mind all that," said Carl itching his closely cropped black hair. "The issue is we went against regulations on what to do with a dead crew member..."

"We're talking about a dead man's last wish, Carl," said Stan.

"If we took him back, none of this would be an issue," said Carl.

"You mean besides the other non-regulation shit we've been up to," said Stan.

"Oy," said Alexei, with his hands raised, "we're taking advantage of all the same loopholes and shit as all the other crews..."

Carl raised his arm indicating the outside. "They're not shucking bodies..."

"Hey, hey, hey," shouted Luger with his palms up. "We did what we did, whether regulations say we did it wrong or not. What's throwing me here is how he ended up at our dig site when we shot him out 60 degrees the other way more than a month ago."

The room fell silent.

"What do we do with him now?" asked Alexei, composed. His light blue eyes often as cold as his demeanour. He kept his head shaved and claimed only British fighters were so bad ass being bald had no effect in the cold, to which Ramon would say as cold as space was a head of hair wouldn't make a difference.

"Can't throw him out," said Stan. "His ass boomeranged itself back."

Ramon gave a humourless chuckle while chewing on a straw removed from its drink.

From the hall a crash followed by hard pounding footsteps. Peter and Warren barrelled into the cafeteria startling the others.

"Jesus-fuck, man," said Trevor, jumping from his seat.

Both men were speechless and terrified. They turned to the doorway behind them. In walked a man pale and drawn. The others scrambled out of their chairs with a clatter.

"Felix," gasped Luger.

Felix stood in the doorway and scanned the group in a weary daze. "Hey, guys." His tightly cut hair somehow seemed a mess. A few scars peppered his face from on the job carelessness. He looked out of sorts. The most noticeable difference was a light yellow-green around his eyes like they were blood-shot in that strange colour. Felix wore his old coveralls with a black T-shirt that said BITCHIN in white letters. Over that, he wore his durable faded orange, denim jacket that he kept tools in.

Wide-eyed, Trevor moved closer slowly waving an arm. "Felix. How are ya, buddy?"

Felix turned to Trevor, who visibly regretted drawing his attention.

Brian also stepped forward peering out from under his ball cap. "Feelin' okay, Felix?"

Dane whispered harshly at Warren, "How the fuck is this possible?"

"I checked him," came the answer equally harsh and quieted. "He was dead." Warren's blond stubble never formed a full beard, even at forty three years old. His round glasses rested near the end of his nose. He studied Felix.

"What the fuck is he now?"

Warren had no answer.

Luger stepped forward from the cluster of men. "Felix, why don't you have a seat?" He motioned to the nearest seat, which was where Ramon's unfinished drink sat. Ramon cringed.

Brian stepped closer and held his hand out to help Felix. He touched Felix's upper back to help guide him to the seat. Felix dropped to the floor and groaned a terrible sound as a rush of air was pulled at once through his gaping mouth. Felix's right hand reached over and clamped on Brian's on the way down sending Brian into a screaming fit. The others belted out collective curses and shouts pressing further from the scene and against the walls knocking over chairs or each other.

Dane and Luger rushed to help Brian after their shock subsided.

Felix went into a coughing fit. His body recoiled on the floor. Brian's hand was still hostage. Dane and Luger covered their faces in the insides of their elbows as they tried to free Brian. Felix went into a severe state of dry heaving and groaning in agony.

Behind them the others clamoured. Trevor rushed forward screaming with a chair above his head. He swung it down as his shadow loomed over Felix when the sudden screams of Dane and Luger stopped him. Felix was unconscious. Brian's hand was free.

Reluctantly, some of the men carried Felix to the medical bay where Warren, Luger and Peter observed him, still unconscious on a gurney.

"His vitals are there, but I don't understand it," said Warren. "He was clinically dead."

Peter drew a long breath. "I know we're a long way from home and the whole..." he bobbed his head side to side, "embalming thing might be different, but did you open him up?"

Warren scoffed and glanced at Felix's vitals.

Peter continued taking a closer look at Felix's torso, which was exposed for the placement of nodes. "If you removed organs, where are the incision marks?"

"Good question," said Warren chuckling. "He's an organ donor. They're there in the cooler labelled with his name, date and time of removal." Both Luger and Peter involuntarily glanced. "Check me, go ahead."

Luger held up his hands. "Warren, this whole thing is just fuckin' nuts."

"I know," Warren said.

Reluctantly Luger stepped to the drawers. He released the first and cool white vapours hissed out. Peter and Warren watched. Luger pulled one canister.

"It's his liver," Luger said.

"Right?" Warren said. "There should be traces of a Y incision," he motioned to Peter, "but there's not even a scar. The kicker?" he exposed Felix's lower abdomen.

"Where the fuck's the belly button?" asked Peter.

"Call Command," Luger said to Peter, "fuck this." He turned to Warren. "Get him on ice, now. I don't know what the fuck it is, but it's not Felix."

Suddenly, the body writhed and gagged between coughs.

"Jesus," shouted Peter, who was closest.

"Tie it down, tie it down!"

"Lift the arm."

"I can't hold it!"

The calamity lasted seconds until the body ceased to struggle. Luger and the others braced Felix to the table with nylon straps. Something like a sigh escaped Felix's mouth ending in a tight gagging sound. Then, mounds of tiny insects flowed from the mouth.

"Fuck!"

They were like yellow-green coloured grasshoppers only translucent and black-eyed with no reflective hint. Peter screamed as one flew up and landed on his shirt. He spasmodically flapped at it, knocking it off and stomped on it repeatedly. Others leapt from the face onto the floor in a scurrying mess. Luger ripped a fire extinguisher from the wall and sprayed Felix's face point blank. Co2 filled the room, blinding and choking the others.

Heavy footsteps came into the room.

"What happened?" shouted Dane.

Luger, Peter and Warren heaved in large breaths through grimacing mouths. Peter stammered but couldn't speak.

Luger turned to Warren. "Burn it and throw it the fuck out." He looked at Peter and said, "Command." He needn't say more. "Where's Dennis and Brian?"

"Here, Boss," came a timid reply.

"Get our asses out of here. We're done."

Warren scrambled to collect equipment.

"One of you gawky fucks give me a hand." No one moved. "Goddamn it, you pussies," Warren shouted as he threw a handful of latex gloves at random and struck Dane in the chest. Dane picked them up and started putting them on with a look of repulsion. He handed the rest of the gloves behind.

Stan shook his head. "Ugh, ugh."

Dane tossed them at him anyway then helped Warren, who was trying to fit a black body bag around the corpse. As he bumped it, the chest cavity collapsed like a deflating balloon letting out a disgusting, reeking groan.

"Jesus!"

Even Warren recoiled. By the second, the body decomposed.

"Hey," said Ramon with a little more concern in his voice than he probably meant, "did you kill all that shit?"

"I... I... think a couple of those things got away," said Warren trying to recall the chaos.

"You shitting me?" said Trevor, involuntarily swatting at his ear.

"What are we supposed to do about them?" asked Ramon.

They each looked from one to the other.

"Look," said Luger, "they're bugs. Bottom line we treat 'em the same."

"We've got to have bait for pests somewhere," said Dane. "I'll see what we have in storage block."

"We'll have to section off the ship," said Luger.

"Meaning?" asked Trevor.

"We'll have to keep only the most important sections clear until we get picked up."

Peter returned. "Command moved. They gave me their coordinates and I fixed position. We're on the way. We'll be a safe distance until they can figure out a safe way to get us aboard."

"What'd you tell them?" asked Luger.

"There was a situation that required us to return. We lost one of our crew. Command said they'd head our way once they're ready for us."

"Hey, Dane," called Carl, who observed the remains more closely. "Doesn't this shit look like what you found outside?" Warren and Dane drew closer.

Dane took a nearby set of tweezers and moved the fibres around. "Yeah, only they're not magnetic." The more he moved the fibres, the more fibres clung to the tweezers. "Looks like... they're becoming electro-magnetic."

Luger peered over Dane's shoulder. "What the fuck is it?" He looked back to Warren. "I told you to burn that shit. Get on it." Warren got back to work but had to scoop or sweep the remains into the body bag.

Dane held up the tweezers and pulled up a thinning trail of fibres like a long string of spit only in metal shaving form.

Peter turned to Carl. "Where's the capsule we recovered?"
"Transport bay, secured," Carl replied with a nod of certainty.

"Let's go," said Peter. He and Carl rushed out. "I'll radio if I find anything."

Warren finished clearing off the gurney. The body bag was like a partly filled, lumpy sand bag. Dane went to toss in the tweezers.

"Sink," said Warren hurrying to the basin.

"Toss it in," said Ramon with his tazer-like cigarette lighter on.

The fibres caught quickly and burnt out fast as struck cotton. What remained was like burnt wire surrounded with a black residue that coated the wash basin. Warren poured concentrated cleaning solution over all of it. The odour of burnt metal and strong lemons filled the air.

A crackling over the intercom startled the group as Peter called. "The casket's just like the body."

"Pete, Pete," called Luger.

During the exchange Warren worked with Dane and Ramon on burning the remains of the body.

"Don't breathe in any of it," said Warren as he emptied the contents of the body bag into the same wash basin. They turned their heads as a light dust lifted out. It was like pouring dry cement mix.

"Is there a better place you could be doing that?" asked Trevor.

Warren finished pouring. He looked up and saw the room filled with dust clouds.

"Light it, fuck!" said Luger frustrated.

Ramon lit it up with a whoosh and a burst of heat.

Peter and Carl returned. They halted at the door.

"That container," said Peter, "it let a whole shit load of those things out." The others stared in horror. "We closed off the section to storage, nothing in or out."

Carl covered his face with his arm to protect from dust inhalation. "But there's still the duct work."

"Why don't we freeze them out?" said Trevor. "Shut off all heat and they die."

"Sounds good to me," said Dane.

"If those things are generated through those fibres somehow, the cold might only make them dormant," said Alexei.

"Dormant gets us off this shuttle and someplace safe," said Stan.

Carl made for the door in a reluctant jog. "I'm headed to the engine room to shut off heat."

"We'll need supplies," said Dane. "I need help getting food and water."

"How long you expecting us to be stuck, Dane?" asked Trevor.

Dane furrowed his brow. "What? You think we're hailing a cab?"

"Peter said Command is on the way. If we meet them in the middle it won't take long at all."

"We're still not just going to hop on board," said Dane. "They're going to make damn sure we're not bringing any of those things along, however long that takes."

Alexei noticed Brian scratching away at the back of his hand. "Oy, Brian, what's going on, buddy?"

Brian looked up at the others trying to be inconspicuous. "Dry skin. What?"

Trevor looked over the shoulders of the others. "You been at it a while, Brian. Look how red that is."

"Let me take a look," said Warren.

"It's nothing," protested Brian with a scowl.

Luger stepped in to see for himself. "Let him take a look."

After a silent protest Brian held up his hand, palm up.

"Over," said Warren not being fooled.

Brian turned his palm down revealing a deep red irritated patch of skin from the back of his hand and over his wrist leading up his sleeve causing a hushed anonymous gasp.

"What? Come on! Everybody's itchy. When was the last time we got to have real baths? Pete was chewing on his nail earlier, why don't we see what his finger's looking like?"

"Easy, Brian," said Ramon.

"If it's just dry skin, I can get some ointment when I gather basic medical supplies for the bridge."

"Brian, help Warren get some shit together and hurry back to the command module," said Luger. "Stan, Trevor, go with Dane."

The two groups hurried as the rest scrambled for the bridge.

Dane, Stan and Trevor raced to the cafeteria. They checked the room before entering.

"Man, I could use a smoke," said Stan as they scoured the cupboards.

Dane chuckled involuntarily as Trevor worked up the nerve to open his first cupboard. His fingertips wiggled as his hand reached for the handle. Slowly, he opened the door. Using his pen he pushed boxes of cereal around.

"Grab and go," said Dane startling Trevor.

Stan rummaged through drawers pulling boxes of snacks. "We're going to need bags for this shit."

Dane looked around. "Try by that sink."

Stan turned his head. "Hear that?" he asked. The others stopped. Little thumps against the metal ductwork along with a thin humming chorus grew stronger; each small ping against the metal erratic and like the randomness of rain. "It's in the ducts, it's in the ducts!" Stan ran for the door.

Dane found an aerosol cleaner on one of the counters. "Lighter!" His hand outstretched for Stan. "Lighter, now!"

Stan dropped the cases and fumbled for his lighter while stepping closer to the doorway. Finding the lighter, he tossed it across the room to Dane. In one motion he lit it and sprayed the cleaner into the duct above eye level just as dark little eyes could be distinguished from the black void within the vent. A burst of flame and the stink of burnt metal followed.

"Bag that shit," shouted Dane to Stan and Trevor.

They hustled as Dane shot two more streams of flame through the vent.

"We're good, we're good," shouted Stan.

Dane checked the vent again, swiping away the billowing smoke and stink. He couldn't see through the dark clouds. Not taking any chances he shot two more quick bursts. "Mother fuckers." He found two more aerosols under the counter. "We're going to maintenance for more," he said waving the cans.

"Lighter," said Stan motioning to Dane.

"Fuck you," said Dane, "you bitched out and took off. Carry that shit. You'll get it back once we've found more."

"You're a bad mother fucker, Dane," said Stan. "Don't lose my shit or I'll kill your ass."

Warren and Brian gathered as much as they could in the medical bay. Brian held bags open following Warren around while Warren struggled to keep focus.

"How much more do we need?" asked Brian. A cold bead of sweat built upon his brow. The ointment Warren put on his arm did nothing to alleviate his maddening desire to scratch. It was like a wound, itchy on the inside. Brian didn't deliberately scratch but kept finding new and innovative ways to rub it against edges of counters so Warren wouldn't notice.

"Let me get some medical tape," said Warren.

"We can cut and tie gauze," protested Brian.

Warren ignored him and tried to think of anything else they might need. "What else, what else...?" He looked around opening various drawers.

Brian began coughing and couldn't stop. Warren took a bottle of water from a nearby mini fridge and passed it. "Take a few drinks." Warren then went over to a cabinet. "Cough suppressants...."

Behind him the bottled water smacked against the floor with the glug, glug, glug of water emptying. Warren spun around. Brian's coughing worsened. He couldn't get a breath in. His face reddened and his eyes bulged, around them veins rose from the building pressure.

Warren quickly found an Albuterol mister, connected it to a breathing mask and held it to Brian's face covering his nose and mouth.

"Breath, breathe."

Brian collapsed. Warren tried to keep the breathing apparatus flush against Brian's face as Brian convulsed on the floor with each strenuous cough. Then part of his face moved. From under the mask, stress formed creases over Brian's face and separated like skin from a steamed tomato. Three imperfect sections slid away revealing a bloody, fibrous mess. Beneath the gore emerged a strangely small head the size of a child's only it wasn't a child. It was a humanoid version of the insects that sprang from what they took for Felix.

The apparatus fell from Warren's hand landing with a dull wap against the floor. Warren screamed. Scrambling, he stumbled for the door tripping over the bags of collected necessities and ran his ass off down the corridor not thinking of closing the door.

Behind him, soft wet splats struck against the floor. Warren rushed to the bridge empty handed and looked back only once. He entered the bridge and slammed his palm against the door controls frantically trying to close it.

"Fuck, Warren," said Carl. "Where's all the shit?"

"Where's Brian?" asked Peter before Warren had a chance to speak.

"Brian's not Brian," gasped Warren with his hand over his face and leaning against the wall of panels and switches. "It changed him, it was him but it's not anymore." Warren let out a mixture of fear, confusion and guttural sickness.

The others recoiled finding distance from him in the crowded room. Luger asked about the others.

"Don't know," said Warren leaning forward with his hands on his knees, sweat on his brow and terror in his eyes. "I just got the fuck back." He suppressed a cry and wiped the tears from his eyes with the palms of his trembling hands.

"What are we dealing with here?" asked Luger sternly, trying to get Warren to control himself.

"One of those giant... things," came the answer. "Like his body became a shell to incubate it and now it's out."

Dane, Trevor and Stan rushed to the storage block. They stopped outside the bay, Dane's hand on the control panel to the door. He nodded a silent countdown three... two... one, slapped his hand against the release, the others got ready to run. Dane started the lighter and had an aerosol ready as the door opened. The lights were on. At first sight nothing looked out of the norm. They entered cautiously waiting for an ambush of trilling alien insects.

Stan and Trevor followed closely as Dane lead them around a corner of shelving units. In the open bay where the larger items were stored they found what was left of Felix's capsule.

"Fuck that," said Stan in hushed disbelief.

Dane focused on every crevice searching for the invaders. Without turning to face his companions he said, "Lighters, propellant. Go."

Trevor went for a shelving unit and hurriedly searched among the containers. Then he felt a light wind against his cheek. Instinctively he swatted away then felt the back of his hand strike something. He looked up and let out a scream.

Dane was elbows deep rummaging around in a storage drawer. He pulled out a portable torch. The remaining propellant swooshed around in a mostly empty canister. He smashed the head against the edge of the tool chest like a beer bottle. The head came away enough for a fat-foxtail like burst of flame.

From above Trevor on the higher storage shelves a growing cloud of creatures descended, wings humming. Trevor and Stan ran for the door. Dane tried to cover them by shooting bursts of flame into the cloud. Bunches the alien creatures fell in melted clumps with the steady clatter of a kid's pack of metal jacks spilling on the floor.

Dane ran out to the hall and heard the others fleeing. He gave a momentary listen to know which way they went. Dane ran too. He glanced over his shoulder to see the regrouped swarm rounding the corner.

"Fuck."

He didn't want to lead them to the bridge so he circled back around the other way. Already the ship grew colder. His lungs burned with each cold breath. He looked behind again and they were gone.

Trevor found a maintenance closet and locked himself inside. He turned on the light and rummaged through various chemicals for flammables. Two opened gallons of bleach were the best he could come up with. No lighter.

"Shit. Fuck."

He checked the lock again. His breathing came under control. Trevor looked at his half-filled bag of rations. Some of the contents fell out during escape. He put his head against the door and closed his eyes.

The hall was quiet. Slowly he reached for the door panel. It was a plain panel with no two way communication like in the other rooms. Trevor collected himself and opened the door. He peeked his head out.

Trevor heard someone running toward him followed by a growing hum of little wings. Quickly he re-entered the maintenance closet as Stan rounded the corner.

"Hey," shouted Stan.

Trevor frantically worked the panel to close the door.

"Hey," Stan's palms pounded on the metal door, then his boots could be heard running further down the corridor. A series of pings against the door could be heard as if it were under attack by handfuls of paperclips.

Trevor fumbled against the counter at his back as he panicked. A jostling of items rattled as they knocked over and an eek slipped from Trevor's mouth. Adrenaline coursed through him. There was nowhere to run. Then, the sounds stopped. The gentle hum carried on after Stan. Trevor slunk to the floor. The half empty bag of food next to him. He looked up to find an apron hanging from a hook. Little good it would do against the falling temperatures of the ship.

Dane found his way back toward the bridge. He ran to the closed hatch at the end of the hall to his right with the torch in hand, propellant swishing. The lighter and aerosols got left behind. What he heard next stopped him cold. Hard pounding on the metal door and shouting from within muted by the steel.

Dane looked behind to make sure he still had options. Then he rushed to open the hatch. Metallic pinging against the doorway followed by horrid gagging sounds, then a constant humming changed his mind.

Cautiously, Dane backed away and was startled by a high pitched screech. He turned to his left and saw what nothing could prepare him for. A creature almost as big as a man covered in metallic plates. Six limbs with oddly placed joints protruded from its strange torpedo-like body. The creature stood half climbing the wall, one foot still on the floor. Its head a series of shifting plates becoming complicated as they neared what could be assumed was the mouth. Something like a pair of gills undulated along the sides of its neck, and somehow centred in the face four black orbs twitched one way then another as it observed Dane. Then, it emitted a sound like grinding metal, shrill and terrible. The creature took three quick steps toward him along the wall, then a fourth.

A shout came from Dane's parted lips as he ran the other way. Another piercing cry followed along with metallic clatter of its tarsal hairs from its limbs and feet upon the steel and aluminium panels of the corridor. Then the sound of a large standing fan sputtering to life forced Dane to turn and look. The creature attempted flight in the otherwise cramped hallway. Each time one of its four wings beat against the walls it sounded like a saw blade skimming metal.

Dane rushed to the transport never again looking behind. The main ship was compromised but the transport shuttle might be safe. He reached the cargo bay and did a quick search of the hanger, torch ready but he had to be conservative with it. The thing that followed had gone another way or given up.

"Dane! Holy shit." Stan came running from the fuel station equipment. He was carrying a case of demolitions devices used for their excavations. Stan was sweating. "Looks like we had the same idea."

Dane noticed him alone. "Where's Trevor?"

"That mother fucker holed himself up in a maintenance closet, saw me coming and left me outside with those things to die."

"Can you blame him?"

Offended, Stan replied, "Fuck yeah."

"Well, when people ask why we left him, we'll hope they understand."

"He had a bag of food with him."

Dane noticed only the explosives. "Any food on the ship?"

"Just what I plan on feeding those mother fuckers if they get on board."

"Fuck it," said Dane. Dane shut off the torch, set it down to cool, and helped Stan. "I'll get on the intercom. Anyone left hustles their ass to the transport, including Trevor. If there's trouble, we're out."

"Shuttle's clean," said Stan as they resumed loading it.

Dane went back for the torch.

"Alright, hey," said Stan with his hand out, "where's my shit? My lighter?"

"Storage, where you bitched out again," said Dane.

"Your mother fuckin' ass better go and fetch that shit," said Stan.

"Yeah, after you bend over," said Dane holding up the torch, "This'll only tickle, promise."

"What about the others?"

"Bridge got taken," said Dane. "I made it back just to hear them go."

Stan closed the hatch behind them. "Goddamn it, man, what the fuck are those things?" He leaned exhausted with his back against the wall in defeat.

Dane began heading for the command cabin. "I don't know. But those things... they got bigger." Stan looked at him in disbelief. "One of those things, about a teenager's size, came after me outside the bridge.

"You're fucking with me now, Dane."

"And they fly."

When they reached the command cabin Stan unconsciously began grouping explosives with detonators. "We're getting out of here, Dane. We're getting out."

The transport shuttle was not large, only large enough to carry about eight with a command cabin to seat two. Below was the larger cargo bay.

"We got to radio Command, let 'em know we're coming," said Stan.

"Get on it. I'll start the ship."

Dane set the torch by his feet at the pilot's seat. Stan kept an explosive and detonator nearby. Dane began waking systems to depressurize the bay and open the bay doors of the main ship. Stan searched for a channel from the co-pilots seat. In all the scramble he couldn't concentrate enough to remember the standard frequencies used by Command.

Dane raced back to pull his and Stan's spacewalk suits from their storage lockers behind the pilots cabin. "Here." He tossed Stan's to him then hurried to put on his own.

They kept watching through the portholes to see if anyone else made it.

Once Dane finished putting on his gear he activated the intercom while not wasting a moment to get the transport's controls online. "Anyone left head to the transport deck. We're abandoning ship. You have five minutes."

"We ain't waiting five minutes," said Stan, sweating and working the communications channels.

"Less if those things show up," replied Dane. "Keep searching those channels and those minutes will fly. Ship is ready and online. Beginning decompression sequence. I won't initiate point of no return until take-off."

Stan kept checking frequencies. "Fuck Trev, Dane."

Dane let off of the intercom and said, "Five minutes, then fuck Trev, fuck all." He paused then looked out into the bay. "We can't leave the ship like this. Those things will spawn and take it completely over. Then who the fuck knows."

Stan chuckled. "You think I didn't think things through when I went shopping for bombs? Top detonator is primed; the whole stack of explosives I left behind is wired. We leave, ship go boom." He made an exploding motion expanding his fingers and widening his eyes.

Dane gave a mirthless chuckle as though strangely comforted to know the ship would be destroyed as soon as they were clear.

Inside the maintenance closet Trevor listened to the last communication through the one way speaker. Dane's voice already sounded distant, gone. Trevor stared at the door silently holding his bag of rations ever closer. In minutes it would be only he and those things aboard the large, silent ship.

Stan kept working the channels until he came across a good line.

"H... hello?" Stan shouted excitedly. "Command, this is outpost 93-721, copy?"

A staticky response followed, unclear but there.

"The survivors are abandoning the main vessel. We require pickup. At present we are inside the transport shuttle headed towards your location. We are looking for intercept and rescue, over."

Another response came mixed with static.

Stan looked at Dane in frustration and shrugged, shaking his head. "Sending our coordinates, over. Looking for pickup and rescue, over." Stan sent their position in a series of Morse Code-like chirps and squeaks.

Dane rushed to the portholes and scanned the bay. "That's time," he said. "Fuck!" He jumped into the pilot's chair normally occupied by Dennis, who Dane suspected long and horribly gone. "Get your ass ready," he said.

Stan secured himself to the seat left of Dane and listened for Command.

The engines kicked on, their deep whirring becoming faster and higher in pitch.

"Shit, shit," Dane saw someone bursting into the bay. It was Ramon carrying a bag of items over his shoulder, frantically hailing the shuttle. Behind him was a churning steel cloud flying in pursuit.

"Jesus Christ," said Stan.

"Get to the cargo hold," said Dane. "Get your helmet on. I'm opening the bay..."

"What?"

Dane worked feverishly flipping switches on consoles around him. "I'll depressurize the bay and open our hatch. When the doors open he'll fly right out, those things too. We'll get him. Hurry."

Stan did as instructed. Dane motioned through the porthole for Ramon to get down. The hanger alarms went off. Ramon was terror-stricken. Yellow hazard lights flashed while the shuttle rose from the steel floor. Depressurization took moments. Dane watched as unsecured carts and containers were pulled by the vacuum of space. The shuttle faced away from the bay door. Ramon appeared to be screaming as he held on to a strapped cluster of silver loaded crates. A cloud of steel pulled quickly out of sight and into space. In moments Ramon followed clinging to the bag as if it might save him.

Then it was over. Airlessness and weightlessness overtook the bay. Dane turned the shuttle quickly banging and scraping against the floor or ceiling.

Once clear, Dane accelerated ramming various carts and raced for Ramon. Outside the debris scattered like slow moving confetti, a distorted perception as they hurtled through space.

Dane activated all exterior lights and scanned the debris for Ramon until finally locating him. Carefully nudging the boosters to catch up and turn simultaneously, Dane called to Stan over the intercom. "Get ready."

Stan secured a pair of boosters to his arms. Each booster had small jets at the elbows to propel him. Stan leaped into the void for his comrade. Skilled with the boosters he retrieved Ramon and returned in under a minute.

"Shut the hatch, shut the hatch," screamed Stan over his headset.

Dane quickly began the closing and pressurization of the hatch. He swung the ship around and glanced up to see the bow of the Command vessel bearing down.

"Fuck," Dane fired jets to steer the shuttle hard to avoid collision. The command vessel rushed by in a smear of modules and compartments before slowing to a stop. The link up point was aligned perfectly to the shuttle.

Dane called to Stan over the speaker. "You guys alright? How is he?"

Stan replied over a scratchy communication. "We got to get him to a medical bay now or we're going to lose him."

"Perfect," said Dane, "Command nearly ran us over. I'm going to link us up. Thirty seconds."

The shuttle was stable and the tunnel extension was connecting. Dane left the controls and helped secure Ramon to a stretcher. They tossed his bag of supplies aside.

"Hang on, Ray, hang on," Stan encouraged. Stan shot a glance at Dane, who could see the fear in his eyes.

A muted clang later and the safety light came on.

"Move," shouted Dane. The shuttle hatch released and the three chased down the corridor to the open hatch of the Command vessel. They were greeted at the other end by five men in spacesuits. Taking the stretcher they shouted to Dane and Stan, "Get to the decontamination chamber." None of them looked up as they rushed Ramon to their emergency medical station just inside Command.

Dane and Stan looked on to be sure their friend was fine.

"Hurry," shouted one of the men. His voice was strangely familiar. Muffled by the helmet, he sounded like... someone.

Dane and Stan took a step forward. The man who spoke turned to face them and shouted, "Hurry."

Dane gasped.

"What the fuck?" The words came out of Stan's trembling lips.

The man in the suit was Felix, but strangely different.

Each of the other men scowled at them for not following directions. They were also Felix and also somehow different.

Behind Dane and Stan a voice startled them.

"You made it, good." There was a strange quality to the voice, like a clicking at the back of the throat as he spoke. As the two turned to see the speaker they froze. It too was Felix only a more perfect one than even the one they knew; no scars and neat.

Dane and Stan stepped backward awkwardly not knowing which way to go.

The muted hiss of the Felix's removing their helmets broke Dane and Stan's terror stricken spell. They turned back to see the Felix's setting their helmets down. One knelt beside an unconscious Ramon. Spasms occasionally jerked a limb. The Felix leaned over Ramon. Then, the oddity of this and the other Felix was revealed. Its face parted in sections as if his face were made of hard plates revealing something alien beneath. The opened face was like a metallic flower, each petal some strangely positioned segment. From within came a thick cloud of shimmering green. Dane recognized it at once.

Stan whimpered as they looked on.

The cloud descended upon Ramon's agonized features. His veins protruded as a result of his time in the void. The cloud plunged into his grimaced mouth, choking him. Coughing commenced and some of the shimmering cloud exploded from his nostrils followed by a stunted gasp, then silence and his tense body slowly relaxed.

Dane's hands were naked without the torch.

Stan howled and charged at the cluster swarmed around his friend. Dane chased after. Stan leaped into the group and tackled the one that brought down the cloud on Ramon.

Dane attacked the others. His gloved fists clubbed against their cold, solid faces. Each strike sent a tremor through his fists and up his forearms. The imperfect Felix's took their beatings quietly.

Stan checked Ramon. Dane went to take their friend by the legs so they could carry him off. The perfect Felix calmly walked over to them and chuckled.

Dane and Stan desperately struggled to get their friend up. Ramon didn't move. Then an eruption of those tiny insects exploded like a raging flood from his mouth gushing over his face and chest. Ramon was gone.

Stan screamed and took a loose helmet in his hands. Tears streaming, he raised it above his head and brought it down with a horrific wet thud. The terrible sound echoed in the large open bay. Dane dropped the legs and watched horrified, mouth agape. Stan wailed and struck again and again. His friend was lost and he would not let those things harm him anymore. The remaining insects skittered away under Ramon's clothing or beneath him and out of sight.

The Felix's watched while the one standing bore a simple grin.

Stan let the bloodied helmet fall from his hands to the side with a clunk and he sobbed.

Dane noticed something strange happening to Ramon. His gory face was overcome with the green fibrous metal, which grew like a fast spreading moss. Ramon's body began to sit up.

Dane quickly grabbed Stan under the arm and pulled him back. Stan wiped the tears to see his friend looking at him, only it wasn't Ramon. His face reconstructed until it was a poorer version of Felix than the others. His face appeared hard and plated, expressionless.

The perfect Felix said as Dane got Stan to his feet. "His makeup interferes with the one from the void."

"What are you?" asked Dane, carefully backing away and pulling Stan toward the tunnel.

The other Felix's sprang up to their feet including the newest addition startling Dane and Stan.

The one that spoke answered. "Your kind might declare us symbiont." That strange clicking continued as it spoke. "We evolve the host," it took a step forward. The others followed. Dane and Stan kept walking backward toward the tunnel back to the shuttle. "Our kind gains the knowledge of their kind."

"That's... that's..." stammered Stan.

"Evolutionary," said Felix. It lunged forward, the others behind it.

"Run!" Stan pushed Dane, who sprinted to the shuttle.

"Stan." Dane paused, but Stan sacrificed himself and was hauled down by the others. The perfect Felix chased after Dane. Dane sprinted the rest of the way. Felix was absurdly quick.

Dane reached the shuttle and pulled the emergency close lever for the hatch, then bolted for the pilot's controls. Leaping and grabbing hold of the hatch, Felix pulled itself inside as it shut.

Dane secured part of his restraints, put on his helmet, grabbed the controls and ripped the shuttle clear. The tunnel pulled apart like it was made of paper. The others were pulled outside drifting into space; limbs stretched grabbing for anything to stop themselves. Unsuccessful, they spun out like rotor blades into eternal night.

Dane struggled to seal his helmet and set his oxygen.

Felix scanned the ship searching for Dane.

Dane found the detonator for the charges Stan had set and kept it near. He steered the ship starboard side to the Command vessel. As he moved the shuttle he noticed the Command ship was incomplete. Gaping sections were missing as if the ship were still under construction. Green fibrous material coated those areas. The shuttle's lights cast a shimmering gloss over edges of the green material.

Had the organisms taken Command?

Dane moved the shuttle backward to ram the imposter ship and left the controls with the torch ready in hand. He had to check the explosives. The second detonator for their main ship was by the co-pilot's centre where Stan made contact with the Command ship for help. Whether that's who he spoke to or if it was in fact the Felix was unclear. Dane stared hard at the two potent solutions in his hands. One was primed and ready to take out Luger's compromised ship. Stan hadn't set the second. But Dane would.

Dane carefully went to the lower deck. The doors to the storage bay were already open. Dane sneaked his way to the explosives crate Stan had packed. He no sooner found the crate when he heard the strange voice.

"I've searched for you, Dane." The clicking at the back of its throat altered what would have been a perfect likeness for Felix, though the original had a slight southern drawl. It advanced with purpose. "Your kind shares something with all others," it said through its unmoving face.

"What'd that be?" asked Dane eyeing the explosives before returning his glance to the Felix.

"You matter so much. The centre of the universe, when you know nothing of what has only begun to waken."

"That so?" Dane quickly grabbed an explosive and ran off, firing a quick stream of flame that licked the side of the evading Felix's face. A dark smear coated its left cheek. Dane disappeared, hiding among the empty crates.

"Your knowledge of this shuttle will become ours. You will lead me back to our ship, and we will return to glory."

Dane worked quickly setting the lone explosive he grabbed. The Felix stalked between large, empty crates. Dane kept ahead careful not to walk into a dead end.

"We have encountered the greatest of predators, meticulous hunters," at that, the distant sound of the voice paused long enough to be interrupted by the Felix landing softly in front of Dane. It backhanded him and said, "You will not escape."

Dane fell backward and the flame of the torch went out as it was lost among the crates. He also lost his grip on the explosive as it clinked passed the Felix and rolled. Dane had sweat so badly his damp hair looked like teeth from a circular saw blade. Wide eyed he tried to crawl away backward. Felix stared at him with a cold, humourless smile.

Dane Struggled to his feet and dashed away. Felix chuckled behind. It kept up effortlessly leaping from crate to ceiling and speedily crawling over support beams as if they were pillows on the ground.

Dane found his way to the heavy equipment for the digs. Felix caught up and dropped behind him.

"Too bad for me you're so 'evolved,'" Dane said, then quickly reached behind an apparatus and flipped two switches. He leaped out of the way as Felix came hurtling at him. Felix collided with a large flat surface like a sledge against an anvil.

Dane fell to a knee covering his ears. Both detonators clanged at his feet. "It's what we call an electromagnet," said Dane. "AKA giant fucking magnet."

Felix struggled against the surface of the electromagnet. It then liquefied and tried to manifest into another form. The green fibrous material worked and reworked fighting against the immense magnetism. A terrible shrieking came from the mess that sounded like screaming into a metal box.

Dane collected the detonators and fled.

In the next moment Dane gasped and looked down at a long, black spike that poked out from the front of his suit on the right side of his chest.

The terrible clicking voice was no longer a replica of Felix's but more like putting metal to a grinding wheel to make shrieking alien speech. It was like a sea urchin, its long black spikes moved like feelers searching for Dane.

Dane fought against the pain and struggled to get free.

A Felix shrieked through a victorious grin still maintaining its visage.

The knowledge gained by the alien was symbiotic, an exchange on a psychological level. Dane felt his memories not being taken but absorbed. The sensation was a bizarre smudging of his past that felt like his mind being groped. In exchange a floodgate exploded with lifetimes of alien worlds, moons, and species overwhelmed Dane until he physically gagged. The new memories ended with countless deaths of each species overtaken; civilizations crumbling.

Dane struggled to remain conscious. Unable to speak, he let his will do the talking. He refused to succumb.

Dane walked against the spike to free himself and the alien struggled to keep him. The tip of the spike curled like a finger motioning to come back. Dane became lightheaded more from shock than the wound. From what Felix had learned of human anatomy, Dane's vitals were missed. A dead Dane was of no use.

Each step was more difficult than the last but Dane willed his feet to move. He turned his body left to turn with the spike. Dane was free.

He almost dropped to the floor. The groan that escaped was like no other sound he'd ever made. Collapsing would have been easy but his work was not done.

Dane turned to face the wreckage of his tormentor as it struggled against the irresistible power of the magnet. A swirling mass of shimmering green fibres became confused chowder of alien torsos and limbs. The Felix form trembled with effort to push away only to slam back against it. Felix opened its mouth in a desperate attempt to release that green death cloud but the magnetism pulled the cloud back.

A huff of air left Dane's mouth as close to a laugh as he could muster. He stood outside of its range as the corner of Dane's lips curled into a smile.

"Baby homesick?" asked Dane tauntingly. "Don't worry, I'm sending you back to your fake-ass ship with a case of explosives straight up its ass."

Dane found a medical kit, cleaned his wounds with painful cries using every germ cleaner available on his chest and pouring the rest down his back, and bandaged himself as best he could. He found another space suit to replace his because of the punctures. The suit belonged to Dennis and was a bit oversized. Next, he found the booster pack and checked it. There was enough juice for what Dane had planned.

Dane depressurized the bay. Felix showed no signs of harm from it as it glared at him from the churning pool of metal fibres. Dane secured the case of explosives to the back of the magnet weaving heavy duty straps to eyelets meant for cables. A grin crossed his face. Dane opened the bay hatch and released the magnet from its binding.

Moving the magnet to the open hatch was easy in zero gravity. Dane equipped himself with the booster pack and guided the alien, explosives and all, to its kin. He had nothing clever to say. He let the ruckus of Felix's screams do it for him.

Dane let the magnet go and it drifted closer and closer.

A crackling came over his headset.

"Dane, Dane!"

Looking all around, Dane turned on his helmet lights and found Stan drifting well above.

"Are you shitting me?" hollered Dane.

"I got out, I got out," came the reply.

"You're full of shit," said Dane.

"When the tunnel ripped away we all came out," said Stan. Dane activated tiny bursts from his boosters to keep up with the drifting Stan.

"Dane, I promise you, it's me!"

Dane kept his helmet lights on Stan in part to keep him blind and to study his face. There appeared to be no seams sectioning off his face with metal plates only sweat and creases on the brow of a terrified man.

"Please..." pleaded Stan shielding his face from the bright lights. A look of terror upon his face suggested his own uncertainty of his comrade. "Why you in Dennis's gear?"

Dane paused.

"Tore a hole in mine." He turned his lights away letting Stan study him. After a few moments Dane slowly reached out his hand. Stan watched him carefully. Reluctantly Stan took his hand.

"We're going home," said Dane.

"What was that thing you sent into the void?"

"That gift you packed on the shuttle," said Dane, "I put a bow on it and shipped it. Now, we get back to the shuttle, get a little distance and blow those fuckers back to hell." He held up the detonator he secured to a loop on his suit for a safety cable.

Stan smiled and chuckled anxiously. "Let's get the fuck out of here, man."

Upon returning to the shuttle, Stan worked the communications console and managed to find one of the other outposts. They in turn contacted their base of operations on a moon from Neptune.

Stan and Dane would be saved yet. They just had to survive long enough to get picked up.

"What do we do about Trevor?" asked Stan clutching the bag Ramon left behind.

Dane considered the question with care. "I can't take him out."

Stan offered a trembling, merciful hand rather than a vengeful one. Dane passed the detonator.

They shut down the exterior lights of the shuttle and stared out the front windows.

Dane swallowed hard. "Let's watch some fireworks."

The pack of rations between them; each held their respective detonator and pressed the triggers. In the distance, two bright flashes blinded them. The matter that was the mock vessel exploded only to come crashing back choked into silence. Then, just as quickly, darkness reigned leaving greenish blotches in their vision like sunspots.

Stan averted his eyes from the brightness. He glimpsed light upon Dane's sweating face. A bead ran down the edge of his wincing face. Was it sweat?

Dane caught Stan staring and turned slowly to face him.

A moment of silence passed. Dampness glazed Stan's troubled brow. With the slightest of tremors Stan asked, "You really you?"

Between the Worlds

Mark Rookyard

The Spacefarer's Hall was hot and cramped and buzzing with a thousand different languages and accents. I had to stand on tiptoe and crane my neck to find the table I was looking for. There, Captain Miros of the Fleetwing. He looked hot and harassed as he tapped details into a datapad.

Shit, I hoped I wasn't too late. I slid and elbowed my way through sharp insectoid bodies, soft human bodies and other alien forms that even I didn't recognize. Kharatim surely was the Crossroads of the Worlds.

I arrived at the table of the Fleetwing, adjusted my collar and tried not to look too flushed and eager.

"Name?" the Captain asked, his red uniform tight and his expression bored. I could barely hear him above the chatter in the Hall.

"Varin," I said, leaning forward over the table. I'd caught a glimpse of a beautiful redhead with pale skin standing at the Captain's shoulder and I deliberately didn't look again. Wouldn't do to ogle the man's woman if I wanted to join this trip. "Varin Seaworth."

The Captain tapped the name into his datapad and waited a moment, looking at the screen, probably checking to see if I was wanted on any of the Fed Worlds.

Obviously satisfied, the Captain looked up at me, his hands clasped on the table before him. "Human?"

I smiled, even tried a chuckle for him. He only looked at me expectantly. "Yes," I conceded.

He nodded, tapped again on his datapad. I chanced a look at the woman at his shoulder; tall and thin with a hard body and high cheekbones with lavender eyes that caught me looking at her. I looked away and swallowed.

"I take it," the Captain said, after I'd finished checking out his woman. "That you know where the Fleetwing is going? You're not one of these chancers working table to table trying to get off this rock?" His hair was greying and swept back, held in place by something greasy.

"No, no. Never been to any of the other tables." I looked around as though to suggest I was surprised to see all the other tables there. There were about a hundred and fifty of them, all of them with longer queues than the Fleetwing.

"So you know we're going into Darkspace?"

"I know you're searching for the Waystations, yes," I said. "I know you've been once before and the crew did pretty well out of it."

"And yet still the decent crews flock to Jennin and Besh. Where's the sense of danger? You think anybody's gonna make a thousand credits in one trip with Besh?"

I had no idea who Besh was, but a thousand credits sounded good to me, so I could only raise my eyebrows and shake my head at the general cowardice of the Spacefarers around me.

The Captain was lost in his morose thoughts for a moment before he looked at me again. "And what would you bring to the party?"

"Two years studying stardrive principles at Yaffilk and before that I was Harrotin's Student of the Year in holographic computer studies."

"Were you, indeed?" These achievements seemed to annoy the Captain. "And what makes you want to join the Fleetwing?"

I had a feeling this was the real question here. I Read him, just for a moment, more of a glimpse, a delicate brush of my mind against his. No surprises, but I could be confident in my answer.

"Money," I said. "Where else could a bookworm like me chance to land a thousand for less than a year's work?"

The Captain laughed, but there was little humour in it. "Where else indeed." He pointed a pudgy finger at me. "But don't you go thinking this is easy money, boy. You've never been to Darkspace. This is a darkness that can steal a man's mind in a second. You turn the lights on, try and hide from it, but still it's out there, watching and waiting. I've seen men turn the lights off and just sit there, looking and saying nothing, just looking at that Darkspace. I had to bring a man home in chains, just to get him to leave that dark."

I wasn't too sure what to say to that. I wanted money and whether I earned it in the dark or in the light, it was all the same to me. "Some people," I ventured, shaking my head.

The Captain looked at me. His thick neck bulged over the collar of his uniform. "Not gonna get any shit like that out of you am I, kid?" He spun a picture round on the table, pushed it to me. A giant space station, shaped like an octagon with a central giant hub surrounded by smaller hubs, all interconnected with a spider web of corridors and bridges against a vast backdrop of blackness. "The ancient humans built them big," the Captain said. "It takes time to search them. Two weeks in the Darkspace. Minimum." He looked at me as though I wouldn't last two days. "The Fleetwing wasn't cheap, those stardrives cost big and we don't rush at the Waystations. We search and we search well. People pay big for Ancient tech."

"I'd be okay," I said. Darkness; if I didn't like it then I wouldn't look out the window at it. I looked at the Waystation in the picture. It was said people had manned these two years a time. Two years in the dark waiting to refuel the Wayships trundling through intergalactic space.

The Captain grunted and pulled the picture possessively back to him. "You can tell me one thing," he looked at the datapad. "Varin. What makes a kid like you think you can handle the dark when there's all these others who are bigger and uglier than you avoiding my table?"

I felt it then, a brush, a whisper, a caress of my mind. For a moment I flinched, then swallowed and forced a smile. "I'm good at what I do, Captain, and I'm not afraid of the shadows."

"You will be lad," Captain Miros said. "You will be by the time we're done."

"There's one thing you should know about me, Captain." I met his eyes. "I'm a Reader." Better get it out in the open before he was told.

"A Reader, eh?" I noticed his lack of expression. How desperate was this guy for a crew? "What school?"

"No school," I said, waiting for him to tell me to get lost. Readers who hadn't been to schools were known to be dangerous to others as well as themselves.

"No school?" he grunted. "Not many unschooled make it to your age. Sure there isn't something you're not telling me?"

I glanced again at the Waystation on the table, white and silent in the surrounding blackness. "We all have our stories to tell, Captain."

The Captain grunted. "That we do, lad. That we do."

I left him typing my address into the datapad and wondered if I wanted to hear from him again. The Hall hummed with voices, Captains calling out and waving datapads in the air. There had been no more than three standing in the line for the Fleetwing when I left it.

Superstition; grown men afraid of a couple of weeks of darkness. But perhaps they knew something, these creatures who had been travelling the stars for so many years?

I shrugged and hurried through the throng and wondered if the Captain knew his beautiful wife was a Reader.

I was the last of the crew to arrive on board the Fleetwing.

I recognized the crew from their bios on the holoviewer. Vena was a pretty brunette, short with a slim body and she raised her glass to me with a faint smile. Jame was a big guy with a crew cut standing next to her.

The Fleetwing was massive, as all stardrive ships had to be to create the energy needed to go into drive. The quarters, though, were small. Not much room would be needed for a crew that would be doing little but sleeping the journey away. Even in stardrive the journey was going to take seven standard months. I didn't want to think how long it would have taken the ancient humans in their Wayships.

"Here we all are," Captain Miros said. He looked tired, his hair thin and slicked back. He was still in uniform, looking a relic of a bygone age himself. "You all know each other." He looked among us all as though waiting for some argument. Helena passed me a drink of the green stuff. It felt warm through the glass and I couldn't help looking at her as I took a sip. Her hair was tied back in a loose pony tail and it made her white neck look long.

Nine sleepcubes were circled around a central hub that speared through the ceiling and down through the floor. Comm panels were in the walls and a holograph station was cramped in the corner. Six autobots stood quietly in another corner.

Bezzo was the first to come to me. He was a tall man, all knees and elbows, and his knuckles were large as he held his hand out to me. "Good to meet you, I hear you're the computer boy."

"That's right," I said, shaking his hand.

"Easy gig," Bezzo said. "Tech on there isn't going to be too complex. All this time, everything's going to be gone to hell."

I shrugged. "I think the idea is we scavenge what we can and get out of there."

Bezzo nodded, took a drink. "Exciting though, isn't it? To think we're going somewhere nobody has seen for thousands of years. To think what we might find there. To think people used to live on these things, live in the darkness just waiting for the Wayships to come past. It's history, Varin, real history we're going to find out there."

I nodded, and the unbidden thought came to me of a fair-haired child standing with her face pressed against a window, staring out wide-eyed at the blackness of space. Real history. People, families had lived on these Waystations.

"So it doesn't bother you, then? Going into intergalactic space? The Captain says it can play with your mind, dominate your thoughts, and lull you into loving the darkness."

Bezzo only smiled; his dark hair thick and brushed to the side. "Where is the adventure without risk? Where is the reward? This is the history of the little man, people who had been so desperate they gave up two years of their lives to live in the darkness."

For a moment, just a moment, I wanted to Read Bezzo, to feel some of his emotion, some of his sense of wonder. I swallowed the urge and cursed myself. When had I become so eager to Read? Had I taken to falling back on it to guide me through life, to feel other's emotions when I had so few of my own?

There was a Reader on this ship. I had to control myself, rein in the urge. I'd heard of people who'd ended up as shells, eyes mindlessly flicking, unable to move, their mind turned to mush by constant Reading.

Money, I'd said when Miros asked me why I wanted in on the trip. Bezzo's passion shamed me.

The central column, about ten metres in circumference, glowed blue and then red and there was the faintest humming beneath my feet.

"Stardrive's starting." Vena had come over to join us. She watched Miros keying commands into a holo keyboard. "Makes you wonder," she said, her drink was already empty. "The last trip was such a success, but none of the crew has returned? Not one of them?"

"Well," I said, walking over to the sleepcubes, the seats already out and the jacks already raised. "We'll find out soon enough if we'd fancy a return trip."

The floor was shaking more violently now, the column glowing green and red as I sat back in the sleepcube. I'd never been jacked before and looking up at the two prongs above me on the metal arm made me cold with nerves. The floor beneath us juddered as the stardrive whined in protest, getting ready for the journey.

Helena stood above me, looking down, her lavender eyes creasing in a smile, her teeth white as she touched me on the cheek, as she touched me with her mind. Relax. Think of me when you sleep.

I had to fight not to flinch against the nakedness of the touch of her mind. Readers tended not to be so open with the skill; it was something to be hidden, to be fought against, and to be ashamed of.

"Relax," Helena said, aloud this time, her eyes bright as she brought the arm down.

A puncture of the skin, quick and sharp, and then a screeching sound, and I felt my being leaching away in a riot of sound and motion.

And then all was darkness.

Miros woke me. I was disappointed, still expecting Helena to be looking down at me. I half-stood and then collapsed back into my sleepcube, my legs feeling weak.

"Relax, kid." Miros said, putting a hand on my shoulder. "You've been under for months. It takes the body time to adjust."

I was the last one out of the sleep, all the others standing around talking in hushed tones, heads close together. All the others except Vena, she must still be under.

"Shit," I smiled to hide my discomfort, tensed the muscles in my legs. "We're there then? The Waystation?"

"Yeah," Miros nodded. "But," he glanced over to where the others were talking. "You were under a bit longer than we thought. Something went wrong."

"Longer? How much longer?" The ship sounded quiet without the thrumming of the stardrive. Helena had moved away from the group and pulled out the holo keyboard, looking at the blue screen in the wall while Bezzo was working on one of the autobots. Everybody seemed to have their place in the crew.

"No more than a month," Miros said. "Vena didn't make it."

"What?" For some reason, I thought of a little girl alone and afraid looking out at the darkness, her hands pressed to the window, her expression sombre. I rubbed a hand across my face. "What? Vena?"

"It happens," Miros said. "Never happened on the Fleetwing before. She'll be fine, though. We're insured. She downloaded good."

Jame and Bezzo were arguing next to the autobots, sleek white machines with white bodies and silver eyes. Helena swore at the computer and tapped away at the holo keyboard, swiping screens aside with her free hand.

I tried to rise again, my legs still weak, the muscles feeling atrophied after seven, or was it eight months in the sleepcube. Miros pulled me up, his hand tight around my forearm.

"Shit happens, eh?" he said. "But we're here now and we move on."

"What happened?" I asked, flexing my legs and looking around the Fleetwing. We were here. At the Waystation. Was it my imagination that made the darkness feel heavy around the ship?

"Who knows? Nobody's ever explained it. People just die in their sleep. People die in their sleep in their beds; people die in their sleep in stardrive." He shrugged. "She'll get used to it."

"What? Can't you—" I was tired and my mind was reeling. I rubbed a hand through my hair. It felt greasy.

"We need her. You know how anything works on that thing?" He gestured to the view window. The Waystation was out there, waiting. All I could see were dark walls, the lights of the Fleetwing reflected back on themselves as though the Waystation rejected our very presence.

There was a commotion from the corner where Bezzo and Jame had been arguing. One of the autos was rattling, shaking, and Bezzo was holding it by its arms, shouting.

"Fuck," Miros said, hurrying over. I followed him. Helena stood at the holo console.

The auto was struggling in Bezzo's grip, shaking its head, the other autos watching, still and silent, their silver eyes empty.

"No!" The auto shouted, shaking its smooth white head. "No! I can't! I can't!"

"Vena, listen. Everything will be okay," Bezzo said, looking into those blank silver eyes.

Miros charged in and pushed Bezzo out of the way, grabbing the auto by the arms. "Vena! Vena, we're here. This is what you wanted, we're at the Waystation. It's out there, waiting for us, waiting for you. Two weeks, two weeks and then we'll be gone and you'll be under and there'll be a new body waiting for you back on Kharatim. I promise. A new body. Two weeks."

The auto stopped struggling and looked at Miros, their faces close together, the auto's sleek and white and shining in the lights from above.

And then it screamed and screamed and screamed in its emotionless robot voice.

I followed Vena through the docking port, my helmet seemed to smother all vision and sound and I had to focus my mind against fear. Either side of me were Helena and Jame, drifting in the dark, arms wide and torches shining here and there and somehow only seeming to accentuate the darkness that enfolded us.

Breathe and relax, I'm here with you. A seductive touch, a caress of my mind; I'd dropped my defences, too aware of the shadows, too aware of my fear. I could sense Helena smiling behind her helmet, and a part of me wanted to feel her touch once more.

I focused on Vena before me, her movements still unnatural and awkward in the body of the auto. She was white against the darkness of the Waystation. Even though autos didn't breathe, I could hear her panting in fear over the comms unit. It set my teeth on edge.

"Okay, first thing will be to find the oxygenator and grav field. The control room won't be far from the docking port." Miros's breathing sounded loud. "Everyone stay together until we find those. We've got plenty of time to search the station."

He clicked off when he reached the door, pried open the control panel.

The door slid open, silent and smooth and revealing cavernous blackness beyond. Blackness betrayed by a single golden light in the distance.

I took a breath as I floated closer to Miros. Someone's hand touched my arm. I looked at the light, small against the smothering shadows all around it.

Miros's comms clicked. "The power's still on," he breathed. "It can't be." He drifted through the door, the rest of us following.

"Someone else could have been here," Helena said.

"No." Miros sounded angry at the thought. "You think we wouldn't have heard of it?"

The room beyond the docking port was dark, the single light still beckoning us on. Black shapes hunched and crouched in corners. I kept my eyes on Miros before me. The datapad in his hand shone a ghostly green on his helmet.

"This way," he said, and swam to another door on the right, prying the panel open and watching it slide silently aside. He paused a moment, looking at the sliding door accusingly before swimming through.

Our torches spilled about the control room, walls covered with screens and panels. Empty chairs strapped to the floor watched us as Miros and Bezzo were already at the main control wall, a large desk there with a multitude of dials and keyboards. I thought of the humans who would have worked at this station thousands of years ago; thousands of years ago when there would have been light and life here. Light and life with the inky blackness waiting outside.

"Varin, come here. Look at this." Miros's voice sounded clipped and harsh through the comms unit.

I pulled myself across the room, torch beams lighting my way, highlighting panels and computers and pale faces behind helmets.

"What? What's up?" I asked, and then only as I drew near did I see that not all the lights in the room were from our torches and datapads. Some of the lights were on the panels, and these were glowing dully like watchful eyes.

"This bastard's still on," Miros said quietly. "The computer's still on. The power's still on."

"Turn it on," Helena said, her hand resting on my shoulder, her legs drifting behind her.

Miros looked at me, the computer guy. A power source lasting thousands of years? Did the Ancients even have that kind of tech?

The Captain looked at the panel before him, dials and levers and keyboards spanning a desk that nearly stretched the length of the room. He shone his torch about.

"So how do you do it, then?" Miros finally asked.

I adjusted my helmet, cursing the limited view and the claustrophobia it induced. I looked at the layout before me, so complicated and complex compared to today's systems. I looked up at the ceiling. A viewing window was there. Did the ancient humans love the darkness? Did they love looking into infinity and seeing nothing but their own emptiness?

"On," I said. Nothing happened.

Jame coughed.

"On!" I shouted, louder, to be heard through my helmet.

Still nothing; and someone sighed over the comm unit.

"Computer on," I shouted.

And cringed as machines whirred and golden light sprang into the world and banished the darkness out into the black maw of space.

"Welcome," a cold, clinical and sexless voice said.

Vena had started whimpering and someone was shouting and swearing.

Miros grabbed me by the shoulder as we hit the ground, helmet to helmet.

And everywhere on the Waystation the lights blazed.

Outside the darkness waited, silent and watchful.

Helena came to me on the second night. Her body was smooth and hard and pale in the cool green glow of the sleeplights. We all slept with the sleeplights on.

"Helena I..." I started, clutching my thin blanket to myself like an embarrassed girl.

I've seen the way you look at me. No words, she spoke in my mind, cold and seductive, teasing and touching as she walked towards my bed, her footsteps soft on the cold metal floor.

My stomach felt empty with need, my throat dry. "But what..."

Shhh. She touched me with her mind and with her hands, her long red hair falling about her shoulders, and her thin lips curving into a smile. I can feel how much you want me. You think you hide yourself. Let yourself free.

And I could feel her, however much I fought the mingling of our minds. I saw us making love, our bodies together, our minds together.

I groaned aloud and pulled her to me then, her triumphant smile only making me more aroused as I kissed her lips, kissed her naked breasts, and all the while she teased me in my mind, touching and caressing.

I pushed her back onto the bed, her eyes gloating and bright in the sleeplight as she looked up at me. "Touch me," she said.

I kissed her hard, my hands on her hips, on her thighs.

"No," she said. "No." Her pale cheeks were flushed, her breasts moving as she breathed hard. "Here," she touched her temple with the tips of two fingers and met my eyes. "Touch me in my mind," she whispered.

"No," I said. "No, I don't think so." I started to climb off her, the sheet wrapping around my foot.

She sat up, her hand fast as it grabbed my cock, stroking and squeezing, her red hair falling about her cheeks. "What are you afraid of, Varin?"

An image in my mind; Helena with her legs tight around my waist; another image, Helena moaning, her lips close to my ear...one after the other, all in my mind until I didn't know what was real and what wasn't.

I let myself free then, touched her mind with my own, opened myself to her, and then I was on my back and she was riding me, our bodies and our minds as one.

"What about Miros?" I said, looking up at the white ceiling.

Helena smiled; her teeth white and her leg draped over mine. "A bit late to ask about him, don't you think?"

I shrugged. "Does he know you're a Reader?"

She was silent a long moment, idly playing with the hair on my chest. "What about the computer?" she asked. "What do you make of that?"

I'd spent the better part of the past two days studying the computer while the others searched the station. "What about it?"

"Did they even have AI when they built this station? And would it still be operational even if they did?"

I shrugged again. "Something happened to the computer. It wasn't always like this. Ancient tech..." I stroked her leg. "They never had anything like this. I feel...feel like it hides something from me. I ask it questions and it seems evasive."

Helena sighed, shifted her body against mine. Her skin was smooth. "You're the computer guy. Isn't my husband paying you to find out the truth?"

And what was he paying her for? I wondered. "I'm getting there," I said. I remembered the data screens, data from so long ago that it made my head hurt just thinking about it. "There was something."

"What?" she said, propping herself up on an elbow.

I almost didn't want to tell her. I didn't want her telling her husband. I wanted to keep it secret and I didn't even know why. Her hand stroked my thigh.

"There was something," I said. "Something a long time ago, something big and bright and it made the computer the way it is today."

"Something?" Helena looked doubtfully at me, her lavender eyes questioning. "What kind of something?"

"I don't know, but it came from out there. Out in the darkness."

She'd started to stroke me again, her eyes brightening. "Take me," she said. "Take me again."

So I did, and this time I flooded her mind with mine, opened myself up to her until she screamed into the silence of infinite space.

We were woken by more screams. They echoed down the shadowy corridors of the Waystation and I ran as I pulled my shirt over my head, my feet bare and my breath high in my throat. I'd thought Helena had been with me, but looking back there was no sign of her.

More screams, and the fact that they were robotic and emotionless and so loud made them even more terrible. I ran harder, metallic walls and empty doorways veering all around me. I didn't know where I was running to, all I could do was follow that freakish sound. I ducked through a doorway, my shoulder banging painfully against the frame, and ran through the engineering room, ancient machines humming all around me.

I could hear more voices now, deeper and gruffer voices asking the auto to calm down. I hurried through the exercise room, weights and benches and balls scattered about, the walls littered with charts covered in the faded ink of the ancient humans.

Through the wardroom and then I saw. Jame was dead. His blood pooled on the floor of the shower room. His head was tilted to one side, his open eyes staring at the feet of the auto shaking above him. His thighs were white and the blood red.

"What the—" I shook my head, a distant part of me wondering how I should react. Helena arrived and stifled a scream. Her hand covered her mouth. "What happened?" I asked, looking at Miros, then looking at the body on the floor.

The floor of the shower room was wet, one footmark was smeared as though Jame had slipped and the towel rack had fallen over where he'd tried to grab it to stop his fall. The blood looked pink as it circled and spiralled and mixed with the water.

"Looks like he had a shower, came over here, slipped and hit his head on the sink," Miros said.

Vena shook her robot head, her distress at odds with the expressionless features of the auto. "He didn't, he can't have. We need to go, we need to go now. I need to get out of this thing, it's cold and empty and I can't sleep, and I went for a walk and found..." she started sobbing again, more of a cold robotic panting that made me want to scream.

"Shut the fuck up!" Miros almost snarled. "Go? You think I came all this way to leave after two days? You know how much it cost me to come here? We've found nothing yet. Sometimes these bastards hid their things. We'll search and we'll search well. And you," he pointed at me. "Sort that computer out. Find out what the fuck happened here."

We all stood looking down at the body of Jame. Did any of us really believe he'd slipped and hit his head? There was blood spatter in the sink. And shouldn't someone cover him? His buttocks looked fleshy.

"What about Jame?" Helena asked.

"We'll have to take him home," Miros said. "Me and Bezzo'll put him in the lock. The sooner we're off here the better, but I'm not going bankrupt for this shit."

"Something's wrong here, can't you feel it?" Vena said in her robotic voice. She'd joined me and Helena after we left Miros and Bezzo dealing with Jame.

"It's just being in the auto," I said. "It must be hard, knowing what happened and being locked in there. It's only natural." A part of me wanted to Read her, but I thought there would be nothing but cold and winding corridors with her little self-hiding away somewhere, sobbing and weeping.

"It's not that. Can't you sense the emptiness here? Two of us have died and we haven't been here three days yet. Something's wrong!" Her voice rose a pitch and I thought she might start to sob again.

"We're all in this together, Vena. We'll keep an eye on each other and we'll be home before you know it," Helena said. "Miros would take us home if he could, but stardrives cost so much, he has to make his money back."

Vena only nodded and sniffled and I wondered if Helena had used the Read on her. The thought of it sent shivers down my spine.

We made it to the computer room, all bright lights and empty screens and desks with keyboards and monitors. I pulled out a chair. "Computer on."

"Hello, Varin," the dispassionate voice said, the screens still empty.

"Hello," I said, Vena and Helena sitting on either side of me. I took comfort from their presence. The computer shouldn't have been as advanced as it was, and its voice sent a cool sliver of dread skittering through my soul. I called up the data screen with the keyboard and scrolled through some diagnostics.

"Is something wrong?" the computer said. "You sound troubled, Varin."

I flicked through some more screens. "There was an unfortunate incident, computer," I said. Vena had come to stand behind me. She smelled cold and sterile and I fought the urge to shrink away from her robot body. "Jame," I took another breath, "Jame fell in the shower room and banged his head."

"I'm sorry to hear that." The computer didn't sound sorry at all.

"I thought you might be able to tell me what happened there," I said.

"Unfortunately you asked me to turn off all recordings," the computer said blankly.

"Did I?" I had to think. Yes, yes I had. The thought of the computer watching us had made me uneasy.

"Yes you did, Varin."

"There," Vena said, pointing at the screen before us as more numbers rolled past. "What's that?"

I pressed more buttons and the numbers slowed as I slid another keyboard before me.

"Will he be all right?" the computer said, the quiet voice sounding smooth and loud in the quiet of station.

My fingers stopped on the new keyboard and I glanced at the empty windows showing nothing but a blackness that watched and waited. "No, computer, he's dead."

"Oh." The silent screens all around the room were as empty as the windows.

"And you weren't recording, computer?"

"No, you requested me to stop all recordings."

"What is it?" Vena whispered, her cool metallic head leaning closer over my shoulder.

I didn't know. I'd never seen anything like it. I transferred the figures over to the other screen, glancing between the two even as I spoke, "What about the other people, computer? Those that were here before us..." I paused, wishing I'd thought of what I was going to say before I'd started to say it. "Did you become the way you are now while they were still here?" I worked on the keyboard some more, a blurred image starting to appear on the screen.

"The way I am now?" the computer said, somehow sounding quieter, more watchful. The way it always did when I touched on the subject of its awareness.

"You must know that you weren't like this, as aware as you are now, when you were built, computer," I insisted.

"Oh," the computer said, thoughtful. I felt the darkness outside the station pressing on us, enveloping us and my head started to ache from the pressure of it.

"Will you take me with you, when you go?" The computer asked after a silence in which I brought the blurred image into more focus. What was it? A Wayship? But it looked too large, too bright, and too unnatural. Was that webbing spiralling about the ship's sleek form?

I looked up from the distorted image. "Take you with us, computer?"

"That's why you're here, isn't it? That's why you woke me from my slumber, to take everything of value from this station?"

"I suppose we are. But we're here to learn, as well," I said. "We're here to learn how the people lived, those who were here so many years ago. We'd like to know what they thought, and what they saw. Like this." I pointed at the screen before me, wondering if the computer could see me, or could only hear me. "This image on the screen I have. I think it's from the time the Ancients were still here. It's some kind of ship, but it looks too large and bright and nothing like we've seen relating to Wayships. The webbing around it, so bright and thin, it seems to move. It's like nothing I've heard of before."

More silence and I looked at Helena and Vena. Both of them were studying the image.

"I've never seen anything like it," Helena whispered, almost awestruck by the ship on the screen. It sounded like Vena wanted to start whimpering again.

"I wasn't the way I am now then," the computer finally answered, its voice cold and sterile and yet somehow something more. Afraid? But then, a machine couldn't be afraid. "Not long after it arrived so long ago, I remember knowing more, being more."

"And the people?" The strange ship still hung on the other screen, bright and beautiful and inexplicable. "Were there people still here then, computer?"

"People?" The computer sounded distant, almost lost in thousands of years of memory. "I remember people. Arguments. Lots of anger."

Vena's grip on my shoulder was almost painful.

"Arguments, computer?"

"About the lights," the computer said. "They argued about the lights."

Helena didn't come to me that night.

Even so, I couldn't sleep. I lay awake and listened to the silence and thought of the dark emptiness all around us.

The computer's voice, its words, had chilled me and I didn't want to be alone and so I opened my mind and searched for another Reader. All the years of controlling and curtailing my talent, now I let it roam free. I let my mind roam the corridors of the Waystation and it heard only cool drafts and ancient loss.

My mind spread through guardrooms and shower rooms and echoing corridors and computer rooms and upstairs and over balconies looking down on nothing but more silence and more emptiness. I breathed deeply and slowly, my chest rising and falling and still I sought for Helena, sought for comfort.

I spread my mind further, past the air lock and through the garden and down another corridor. It had been years since I spread my mind like this, since I Read like this. My vision was distorted, images blurred.

A man there, at the end of the corridor, lurching away from the Commander's quarters; was he lurching, or was it my weakened state? I tried to flee, to return to my mind, but I was held there, held there and horrified by the man's face. He staggered towards me, bloodied and wounded. Was he wounded? I tried to turn away, but he continued on, dragging his left leg behind him. He had something in his hand, something bloodied and horrible. A knife. And his lank black hair clung to the blood on his cheeks and forehead. He was gaunt, his cheekbones stark and the tattered uniform clung to his ribs and shoulders.

His lips were thin and fixed in a smile, his eyes wide and blue, a blue that burned cold. "It's mine," he whispered, his voice needy and needful. "I saw it, it was there. It sang to me." And still he came to me and still I was frozen there, immobile.

No! I wanted to scream. No! But I could neither talk nor move.

"I was there with them," the man said, closer now, closer so I could smell the sweat and the blood. There was a terrible glee in his voice, and a terrible fear. "You weren't there! I was there with them and they spoke to me."

I was breathless, screaming when there was no breath and no voice. And still I tried to scream but there was only blackness and desolate silence.

Rough hands gripped me and shook me and I could hear shouting. A voice I recognized. I shook and arched my back, grabbed arms and shoulders and screamed, and when I could hear my screams, I wracked my breath and screamed some more. The man was there, an ancient man with blood on his face and fear and terrible murder in his eyes. I shook him and pushed him away and screamed for help, screamed for mercy.

"Varin! Varin!" I remembered now, it had been a voice I recognized.

I took a breath that seemed to shake my soul. Helena, it was Helena's voice. I remembered that I had eyes and I opened them to see beauty and fear. I wanted to hold her and never let her go.

"Varin, what is it, Varin?" She held me as she might a child.

The man still waited for me, bloodied and fearful. But had it only been a nightmare? Did grown men really scream like I had at nothing but nightmares? A dream, it had been nothing but a dream. I pushed Helena away and smiled, though it felt weak and freakish on my face.

Helena didn't return the smile, she looked pale and worried and beautiful. "What was it, Varin?" she whispered, looking deep into my eyes.

My eyes slid away. "Nothing." My heart felt cold in my chest. "A dream."

"You're a Reader, Varin." Helena looked even more concerned now. She smoothed the hair away from my forehead. "How do we separate dreams from realities? How do we separate our dreams from our desires?" Her hand trailed down my cheek, and then I felt her touch my mind, probing and feeling and then she was kissing me and we sank back into the bed.

I was alone in the control room, watchful screens all around me, and black windows all along the walls.

"Haven't seen much of you lately," Bezzo said, coming into the room. His hair was uncombed and he looked pale and tired.

I reluctantly turned from the screen in front of me. "How's the search going?" I said.

Bezzo shrugged and came and sat next to me. "It's a strange thing," he said. "All this Ancient tech. Being here, where people lived and worked so long ago, where man first started expanding into the stars; touching walls, and chairs and computers that Ancient hands touched, and all I want to do is get the hell out of here."

I swivelled on my chair to face him. "I know what you mean. I think Jame's death shook us all up." I shrugged. "Coming all this way, out here between the galaxies just to have an accident that he could have had in his own bathroom." I tried not to think of Jame's body in the lock.

"What's that?" Bezzo said.

I'd forgotten about the image, and a jealous part of me wanted to cancel it. "Nothing," I said. "Vena and Helena thought it might be a Wayship."

"That?" Bezzo peered at the screen. I'd done a little work, and the image was clearer, though it still strained the eyes to look at. The webbing protruded from the ship and spun gold and blue and silver, blinding even in the darkness. It looked to be hexagonal in shape with a black hole in the centre and blinding lights all around it. It was beautiful and the thing that struck me was that even in this still image, the ship seemed to move, to ripple and swell. I imagined the lights flowing up and down the sleek hull of the ship, the webbing rippling as though underwater.

"That's no Wayship," Bezzo said, entranced by the image. "That webbing around it, I've never seen anything like it."

"What else could it be?" I said. "It's like no ship I've ever heard of."

Bezzo looked up at the empty banks of screens staring blankly at us from above. "What did the computer say about it?"

"Says it was when this came that it changed, that it came when the ancient people were still here," I said. I felt uncomfortable talking about the ship and continued working. I called up another screen on the computer before me, hit some more keys and more images scrolled past.

Bezzo got up to leave.

The comms unit buzzed and clicked. "Miros? Miros are you there?" It was Vena's voice. She sounded afraid even in her expressionless robot voice.

I pressed the button and leaned close to the unit. "Vena? It's Varin. What's the matter?"

"Varin? Varin can you come quick? I'm in the lock and the doors closed behind me. I...I thought I heard something and then the doors closed. Come quick, Varin."

I looked at Bezzo and he was pale, his dark hair sticking to his forehead. I felt a cool slither of dread idling on my spine as black screens watched me from above. "The lock? What were you doing in there?"

"I was seeing Jame. Just come will you?" That last was almost a scream and it was enough to get me moving.

"Vena. Stay calm, we'll be with you soon. Just stay calm." Miros's voice came over the comms unit. He sounded breathless and afraid.

We all arrived at the lock together.

"Shit," Helena said, hurrying to the doors. Vena was in there, her expressionless robot face reflecting the glare of the lights. The door was locked tight.

"Fuck, what's she doing in there?" Miros shouted.

Helena was working on the panel next to the door, and all the time Vena was shouting something behind the sealed doors, her beating at the door at odds with the expressionless silver eyes.

"It won't fucking work!" Helena shouted. She punched the panel and swore again.

"Lock doors opening in ten seconds," a toneless voice announced from the speakers above.

"What? Computer!" I shouted. "Override. Override the lock doors. Cancel the ejection."

"Nine seconds."

"Computer!" I shouted again.

"Eight seconds." The computer was calm, its voice dispassionate.

"What the fuck's going on?" Helena shouted. She ran over to the computer at the wall, pulled the keyboard out and began typing and swearing.

Vena had stopped beating at the doors now. She turned away and sat on a table, her hands on her knees. There was a bundle in the corner wrapped in green cloth. Jame's body. The two of them waited there together.

"No fucking way, hold that door!" Miros shouted before beginning to strip off his uniform, a space suit ready at his feet. "Hold the fucking door!"

And still the dispassionate voice counted down.

Vena didn't look at us. Her hands still on her knees, staring ahead at the doors that were about to open on the infinite blackness of space.

I could reach out to her, I could Read her, lend her some comfort. Miros was shouting something but he seemed very far away, and somewhere else Helena was screaming and hammering at a keyboard. I ignored them both, ignored the computer's monotonous voice.

Vena, I said in her mind, soft and tentative so as not to frighten her. I tried to give her comfort and love, thought of these things and shared them with her.

Varin. I sensed confusion and fear. I wanted to see Jame, to be with him. The thought of him being here alone on this station. I was here, talking to him, you know?

As she communicated this to me, speaking in her mind, I was there with her. I felt her emptiness in the auto body, of her fear of sleep, and I was with her as she came to see Jame. I felt her sadness, her sense of loss and then I felt her fear as we heard the shrill laughter together, the doors beginning to close. Too clumsy in her unfamiliar robot body, Vena had been too late, the doors were shut.

Vena...The laughter still haunted my mind. It had been shrill and cruel and gleeful.

Goodbye, Varin. Will it be long, do you think?

I tried to give her a sense of comfort and hope, thinking only good thoughts for her. Will what be long, Vena?

I don't breathe in this body. What will happen to me out there? How long will I survive?

I sensed blackness, nothing but blackness waiting out there. I sensed a distant light in the inky maw of space, a light always out of reach, taunting and beckoning but forever distant. Vena was terrified of the waiting darkness. I could think of nothing to say, nothing that would offer her hope. What would happen to her out there, to her mind trapped in this metal form? Would she live forever in eternal blackness? Only too late, I realized I was transferring these thoughts and fears to her. I pulled my mind from her.

"Vena!" I shouted. The doors opened and she was gone, gone in a vortex of tables and chairs and machines and wires, and Jame was there too, the cover whipped from his body as they spun together into space, silent, black space. Vena was white, like a distant star as she spiralled out into the darkness.

I wondered if I could Read that far, if I could send my thoughts to her, give her the answer that she wanted. I could still see her, small and white and alone, but I didn't have any answers for her and cowardice made me turn away.

Helena was crying and Miros had given up putting on his spacesuit and was raging against everyone and everything.

And outside, the blackness waited while in my mind I still heard the cruel laughter.

I wondered if Vena could still hear it, too.

"He's finished, you know," Helena said. "This'll ruin him."

She sat on a table next to my workstation, and even now I couldn't help noticing the way her breasts pressed against her shirt, how tight her trousers were around her thighs.

"Do you know how much the stardrive cost? What's going to happen to him when the Spacefarer's find out Jame and Vena are dead?"

I blinked and ran a hand over my face. Tried not to think of Vena out there, small and white and spinning into nothingness, screaming and pleading and begging for release from her torment.

"I know it's rough." I couldn't help feeling jealousy over her concern for Miros. Exactly what did she feel for him? "What can we do, though? We can't stay here after what's happened. I can't believe he's messing about taking what he is."

After a day of shouting and arguing, Miros had finally agreed to abort, and was now carrying what he could onto the Fleetwing.

"You can stop looking at that fucking thing for a start," Helena snapped, her pale cheeks flushed.

I looked at the screen and the ancient ship there. Despite my best attempts, I hadn't been able to make the picture any sharper. It was so beautiful, I could almost hear it, the webs opening and closing, the lights singing an ancient song of voyage and discovery. A ship that had been here so many thousands of years ago. I cancelled the image. "There, can we get out of here now?"

Helena pulled a sour face, her lips thinning. "What about the computer? You ever get anywhere with that, all the time you spend with it."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you say it became more advanced not long after this ship came, but for such an advanced machine, it sees nothing and hears nothing. Couldn't it have overridden those doors?"

The screens above us were dark and silent.

"Something went wrong," I said, a quiet laughter echoing in my mind. Had Vena really heard it, or had her mind started to fray after being trapped in the auto's body? "It's Ancient tech, whatever happened to it, it's still ancient and it's pretty amazing that it still works the way it does."

Helena sighed. "We seriously need to get the hell out of here."

I reached out with my mind, touched her tentatively, questioningly.

She jerked back as though my touch burned. "Don't," she said.

I sighed and the computer watched us silently from silent black screens.

"Helena. Bezzo." The comms array came to life. Miros was panting, struggling. "Helena."

Helena jumped to her feet and pressed the comms button. "Miros. Miros, what's wrong?"

"Argh," Miros panted into his comms unit, there was a banging sound and grunting. "Helena. Fire. A fire on the Fleetwing. I'm trapped on the second deck." More banging and Miros grunted. There was a sound of hissing and somewhere in the back of my mind, I heard laughter, high and shrill.

"Fuck," Helena whispered. "Miros, can you make it back?" She gestured to me with a wave of her hand, pointing at the screens that were silent and judgemental above us. I called up the computer, my hand shaking.

"Miros, can you make it back?" Helena was leaning close to the comms, her hair falling about her face. "Can you make it back to the station?"

A long silence in which I could feel Helena looking at me. I concentrated on working on the computer, calling up the vid screens. All operational. "Computer," I said. "Can we get a visual on Miros?"

The comms hissed and Helena gestured for me to be quiet. "Can you make it back to the station, Miros?" she shouted.

"Shit, Helena. There's smoke everywhere. The fire..." Miros sounded faint, nothing like his usual strong voice. "I'm trying to get to the vents. The pressure there..." More silence.

"Miros!" Helena shouted. "Miros!"

"Miros?" the computer said, its voice almost sounding like a mockery of Helena's fear.

"The Captain, computer. On the Fleetwing, second deck. Can we get a visual on him?"

The computer was quiet a long moment, long enough for me to wonder if the thing had faulted somehow. "I will try, Varin," it finally said.

"All the vid screens are operational, computer," I said, working some more on the keyboard. "I'll do it."

"As you wish, Varin," the computer said, emotionless.

"For fuck's sake." Helena pressed another comms button, this one higher. "Bezzo, Bezzo, meet me at the guardroom."

"You keep an eye on him," she said. "Let me know what's happening."

And with that, she was gone, leaving me alone with the computer.

I found the feed for the camera and got to work. "Shit," I whispered as I looked up at the screens. A score of Miros's were there, black silhouettes struggling through licking flames and coiling smoke. An explosion, the flames spitting higher and the rigging beginning to collapse. "Shit."

"Varin?" The computer said.

So entranced was I with watching Miros's struggles that it took me a moment to realize the computer shouldn't speak to me unless it was spoken to.

"Yes computer?" I said, adjusting the camera.

"Are you preparing to leave?"

"We have to leave, computer," I said.

The computer fell silent, thoughtful. Miros continued his silent struggle.

"It has been interesting having other people here with us," the computer said.

Bezzo was already in his spacesuit when I arrived. He looked frightened behind his helmet.

I turned him around and checked his tank and pipes and all the while Helena was telling him what to do. Miros had been silent for the past ten minutes.

"Bring him back to us," Helena said.

After I finished checking him over, I turned Bezzo back around to face me. "Be careful out there, man," I said, looking deep into his wide eyes and patting him on his shoulder.

Bezzo nodded. "I'll get him for you," he said to Helena, touching her on the arm.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" she asked, her face pale and her lavender eyes bright.

Bezzo smiled. "He's our only ticket home. We've got to hurry."

The explosion on the Fleetwing had been loud enough even to shake the Waystation. We could only hope the damage to the stardrive could be salvageable and Bezzo would be able to sort out the docking bay.

If he could do that, and save Miros in the bargain, then we would be able to leave the Waystation. Miros and Helena could be together again and we would be home, away from the darkness.

Without a thought, I pulled the cable from the wall, sparks already spitting about the corridor. I plunged it into Bezzo's neck, holding him up as he fell to his knees. He jerked and convulsed and screamed and still I held him by the neck, feeling his juddering paroxysms weaken even as Helena screamed and beat at my shoulders and arms. The light of the sparking cable lit her pale face in a ghastly light that made her even more beautiful.

I smiled as I pulled her back by her hair and punched her in the mouth.

Bezzo kicked and shook on the floor. I watched, fascinated, and was almost disappointed when he fell still and dead.

I sighed and looked at Helena, unconscious next to him.

It's dark outside. Dark and empty.

It's quiet on the station, now Helena has stopped screaming. She wouldn't stop screaming until I took her tongue. But even then she would be able to see the Ship when it came, so I had to take her eyes and now she sees only darkness. She sits next to me, and we wait together.

Once I'd waited inside the computer. I'd known death was coming and downloaded into the computer and we'd waited for the Ship in silence together, alone until the Fleetwing had come to disturb our slumber. A new mind to give me life once more.

The Ship will return. And its beauty will be only mine to behold.

I knew what they thought when the Ship came all those years ago, its webs singing and its lights soaring out of empty space to bring light to our dark world. Even when the light was blinding and brought pain, still it was beautiful, and when we woke and the Ship was gone, we all wept that such wonder was gone from our lives.

We prayed for it to return, prayed together, but I knew what they thought. I could see into their minds, and they all thought the Ship was theirs, that it sang its songs of time and space only for them. I took their ears so they wouldn't hear the beauty of the song, and then I had to take their tongues to silence their screams.

Silence and darkness.

The only true light is the light of the Ship. It brings light and truth to worlds beyond reckoning.

The Ship will return.

I take hold of Helena's hand and wait.

We watch the dark together.

Out in the Dark

Victoria Dylan

The lights went out again and for a brief moment panic set in. Over two hundred generations had lived and died on the dark orb and still the humans panicked when darkness came. It was the same panic the first explorers reported when they discovered what could have been a city a hundred or more kilometres from their crash site. Panic and the belief in the spiritual world caused problems; had always caused problems and this time could cause something more serious. While things were problematic and he felt the strain of the oppressive dark, he knew he was the one who would need to deal with the situation. Machus pressed the buttons on the tunnel wall a few times to give one of the backup generators a kick and the lights slowly crawled back to their usual 180 lumens and safety. He checked the far door of the outside access tunnel, the red lock light was on and even at fifteen metres he could tell the airlock was empty; the rough cut stone enclosure was a grey blankness behind the clear wall of the lock's inner door. 'Nothing had come in,' he sighed. After all this time even he expected something to suddenly appear and come into their underground community. A shot of darkness always brought the fear, even though the human population had seen no one other than themselves enter that lock, or any lock around the Shell. A proximity alarm had flashed briefly before the darkness fell. A malfunction or something else and while malfunctions were regular it was always the something else that jumped to everyone's mind. He had to get a team; every alarm meant going outside.

The human population, the colony sent out to find a new world to call home, never made it, they never found a planet capable of supporting human life, but they were in the blackness between galaxies, thrown there by human kinds first attempt of a worm hole travel for a populated colony ship. The science said it would work, the technology they used made it work but there was no control, no destination plot that was worth noting and no shutting it down until it exhausted the power cell they used to create the field. When they emerged, they were in the nothingness, the great expanse that shows other galaxies as stars and distant stars are swallowed by the black. Machus had learned the history of those first years, like every child did, but knowing how and why didn't help him sleep at night, then maybe that was why everyone learned the history of the colony's founding, so they wouldn't sleep and be caught in danger again. If the ship had come out of the worm hole and just been left with the impossible task of getting to another galaxy and its outer rim then they might have had hope, but they had crashed into a rogue planet that had once circled a sun, going by the minerals in its depths and the supply of light oil deep in the crust. The ruins suggested a thriving and populated planet in the past.

What had it been like to be thrust away from your sun to be sent hurtling into death? And for how long had this lightless world been out in the depths between the distant galaxies? He closed his eyes and looked up at the low, rough cut ceiling and sighed. They had been trapped in the darkness of neutral space long enough to even doubt they had even come from a distant star themselves. Earth was a story some questioned but not enough to say it was false. If it wasn't for the recycled air locks from the original generation ship and the manufacturing machines that still turned out new machines to make things, they would have long ago forgotten their past. In a cavern far below was a new space ship, a large vessel that might one day free them from the crash site and prison, but it would not be of any benefit until they could create a power source equal or better to the one that had marooned them so far from all they had originally understood. Oil was good for generators, but you couldn't power a star ship with the heavy liquid.

"It's Geana," he heard Karvan say from behind him. The Governor and friend's voice was unique in its deep, harsh tone.

He turned from the door and saw the man standing at the top of the stairs leading down into their underground city. Karvan looked afraid, and Machus knew why. Geana was different to the others, she was not only paler than the sun starved population, but she also had clear eyes, a genetic rarity seen every generation or two.

"What did she see?"

Karvan looked to the floor and the hundreds of years of trampled rock. "She says it is the spirit of the ruins."

"Again?"

"Not again, this time it is here, she said. She could hear it outside, scrabbling at the star dome trying to get in." Karvan lifted his head, his bald pate glistening with perspiration. "When the dark came I heard it too, we all did."

Machus checked the controls on the power circuits and made a note of which generator was silent and needed repair. There were fifteen in the city with only five ever going at any one time, redundancies were an imperative on an airless world. They had plenty of fuel; the dark planet had obviously supported a biosphere and ecosystem once in its long past. No, the humans would never really run out of fuel; with a population of barely three thousand they would never use all of the world's pale oil reserves. The distraction of reading the gauges helped him put aside the visions of Geana. While there was no actual religion inside the dead world, people still clung to superstitions easily enough and with no contact being possible with any other population, superstitions were often all they had to rely on for their stories and legends. Geana would be part of some prophecy or another, there always was a prophecy when it came to clear eyes, but fortunately the majority of people accepted things for what they were and worked to a common goal; to escape the planet and be free to find a home of light in Andromeda somewhere.

Geana was a clear eye, you could see right through her pupils into the red muscles and nerves attached to her cortex. In a normal human, you would only see the black of the pupil and the white of the eye well set in a deep browed forehead void of hair; the vision was disturbing at times, but so too were some of the birth deformities that weren't allowed to survive. Webbed fingers and strange body growths were acceptable, but some genetic mishaps put their limited medical resources under pressure, and while more space was being carved out of the hard rock every day, there was a limit to how much air and water they could make from the resources available. There was surface ice and they had many shafts leading up to the surface to dig it out from crevices and shallow frozen lakes, but it was poisonous without filtration and the filters were hard to make.

"You can't just stand there and ignore me, Machus."

"I suppose you have organized a team to go look?" It was what he would have done if he hadn't have been busy restarting a generator.

"Three women have volunteered, but won't go without you."

He looked at Karvan and frowned. While women out numbered men almost five to one, it was unusual for them to specifically ask for him to go outside. Karvan was the experienced one for a journey, but since getting himself into the Governor position he stopped volunteering. Karvan obviously understood his frown and slowly raised his hands as if in defence against an attack. The look in his eyes said it wasn't his idea and that he was really only delivering a message.

"Who are the women?" He hadn't worn an environmental suit in a couple of years and didn't like the idea of going outside in one of the imprisoning things.

"Reen, Hathur and..." he hesitated. "Geana."

"We can't go outside with one..."

"Don't say it, Machus; these tunnels have ears." Karvan stepped forward, his overalls were clean, too clean at times and not quite like the man Machus had grown up with. He could see dirt under the man's finger nails and knew he had been doing some kind of dirty work before coming up to get him. Maybe he'd been down in one of the new shafts. Machus knew if he were to speak out against the Sayers then they would never develop a new fuel source for the ship.

The Sayers were not really an influential part of the population but if they wanted to they could start creating fear amongst the people by using Geana's visions as a more divine prophecy. He half suspected Karvan had used the Sayers to get his Governor position from the Captaincy. They were a small group with many fingers reaching into all parts of the colony's life and through a few whispers doubt could easily be spread. They had done it before and fifty eight died of asphyxiation because they believed the air was contaminated. Small things in this environment killed and did so quickly. The Sayers wouldn't be open and protest, that was not their way but he was sure work on experimentations wouldn't stop immediately, but over the period of a few years they could create enough doubt to stop all star ship production. So, not an immediate threat but he understood what Karvan meant. He had to work with the clear eye; Geana was a slight woman, barely forty kilograms and if put against a white background she would almost appear transparent, her blue veins were easily seen through translucent skin. Machus thought about it and knew he wouldn't actually see her physical strangeness while she was all bound up in one of the space suits, her face would be hidden behind a bank of blinding lights, hopefully. Reen was a strong girl and experienced with going outside but he hadn't heard much about Hathor beyond enjoying a good fist fight after a digging shift. He supposed he owed Karven a reply, but he was right, there really would be someone somewhere listening to the conversation; there were no secrets in the Shell.

"Are the com systems working?" It was a fair question.

Karven nodded and started moving back to the stairs. There were a few suits near the airlock but Machus was a little taller than the average 180 centimetres so would be more comfortable in his own suit.

"Another thing," Karven said. "The Celestials have been woken from their slumber."
"Why now?"

"The noise, the lights, who knows, but I saw some on my way up, so it could mean trouble."

Machus didn't want to think about the political factions, there was enough to concern him for the moment. He followed Karven down one flight of stairs passing the landing that led into generator rooms and oil pumping stations, only a few families lived this close to the surface, which made the work crews for these areas generational. At the third level they left the wide stair well and entered the main living cavern and technological hub of the Shell, the name they'd given the hollowed out area because it was carved out around the shell of their space ship. Part of the command section stood in the centre of the cavern, a memorial of sorts and a functioning computer system that was almost intelligent enough to be given rights, though some distrust of the system sat deep in the psychic of their rudimentary civilization. He walked across the open space looking to his right and seeing the many tiered rows of the hydroponics garden, a level lower was the mushroom farm and the key food source, along with pitiful potato crops.

Geana was standing by the lower rail of the garden, her head covered in a white scarf. She was trying to hide the fathomless depths of her eyes, he knew, but soon they would have to look his way and once their eyes had met the deal and agreement would be sealed, the others would simply meet them by the hatch ready to venture up and into the darkness above. The gravity on the dead world was a strange thing and after many generations of survival he supposed they had grown used to its effects on them. Down in the mushroom farms it was heavier and some suggested it could be close to Earth normal, but as there were no survivors to verify this they could only take measurements and calculations word for it. In the higher levels things were indeed lighter, or felt easier on the body. That was the only thing Machus was looking forward to by going outside, that and the spread of galaxies that dotted the blackness of the alien sky. One of them was the Milky Way, their home galaxy but like the others it was distant and a smudge amongst millions of smudges in the eternal night sky.

"She won't look at you, not yet anyway." Karven stood beside him, his arm against Machus' elbow suggested he should keep on walking to his quarters and the environmental suit.

"This is her chance, the worshippers should know as well as she that this contact will shift some of the power base towards her." Machus hated to admit the fact, but just maybe the power shift would be a good thing. The central Captaincy and office rankings struggled to keep people at peace with each other; it was more a forced existence at times.

"She doesn't want the power." Karven eased Machus around to stare at another gathered group, they wore brown long shirts and white shorts, their feet shoed in thick hemp, their bare, bald heads painted with circles. "The Celestials don't want her to gain power too soon, they haven't groomed her enough."

"How many have woken?" He hadn't seen one of them in a decade or more, they were the only colonists who still trusted the deep sleep cases stored a few levels below.

"This lot and I think a few others are being cajoled out of dreaming."

"So, if they don't want her to take power from the Captaincy, what do they want?"

"No idea, but I can be sure of one thing, they have seen an opportunity and are acting."

"Just so long as no one gets killed, I don't care." Machus watched the group of men and women staring at him, their heads bobbing in quick discussion. "Just keep the Sayers silent."

"The Sayers will have the last word on this, as they also have the ear of the Captaincy, so just keep the prize safe and all will work out." Karven would also have his hand in somewhere Machus knew and he would sacrifice his crib mothers given half a chance at the big chair.

"And what if Geana dies outside?" Machus didn't like the idea of being a protector.

"I would also presume you would have also died, so I wouldn't concern myself with that outcome just yet."

The gathering all wore thick rings of knotted weed rope around their necks, the symbol of the continuity of the heavens, the circular motion of the galaxies and of course the noose was handy should a good strangling be needed for any who broke with the ranks. Machus could almost understand the Celestials, he could see where their dogma came from and amongst the other beliefs and acceptances of the forced colony it did have a connection back to the crash landing. Those who had tried to seize control from the first Captaincy were hung until dead with chord rope. The Celestials claimed they were the children of those who saw more in the stars than just imprisonment beneath the surface of their new home. Two Celestials broke from the group of a dozen or more and walked briskly across the polished grey of the general floor space towards Geana.

"It appears I may have been wrong, friend," Karven said, his voice quiet but serious.

Geana looked directly at Machus, her clear eyes a smattering of liquid and red muscles. That look sent a shiver through his shoulders and chilled his blood. Some had said her eyes were like the clearest waters of Earth and that from such water life was born, all life. To him it was simply frightening, but he had matched that gaze and they were in agreement. The two Celestials reached her and guided her away; she would be taken and suited up ready for the investigation. The Sayers would not be amused so he expected there would be some harsh words behind the scenes before they headed out.

"Will there be much difference when we get back?" Machus asked, watching the girl leave the chamber down one of the many corridors that radiated away from the central free space.

"Bring Geana back alive and with answers for the noises above and you will be favoured when the power shift is complete. Die and the Celestials will replace the Sayers and have to wait for another like Geana to be born. And hear me, Machus, they will be gene manipulating to get this sooner than later."

Machus shook his head in frustration, every time there came a sound from the surface political movements swirled like oil down a pipe. Every time they went topside into the oppressiveness of the darkness they found nothing, saw nothing but the glitters of distant galaxies. He'd seen many an image and recording of the stars seen from the ancient Earth, the wide sweep of lights filling the night sky, but here, so far away from a galaxy where there are no living stars you could feel the weight of distance on your mind and it tugged at the heart with it hopelessness. He'd been outside over a dozen times and still he dreaded looking up, others had only been out once and would never venture forth again unless a dire need was at hand. There would be nothing to see as usual, the noise would prove to be imagination based on extreme isolation, the only possible and explainable cause for any sound from outside.

He left Karven to investigate more of what was to transpire while he was away, he needed to know nothing other than if he still had a job in the air recycling sector and if there was a meal ready before he retired to his bed on return. Once away from the crowds and the intrigue he allowed himself to be calmed by the close press of the black stone walls of the tunnel and the assorted colours of the door curtains that protected privacy. No one would dare push past any of the curtains to gain entry, everyone, no matter how urgent the news, waited courteously to be welcomed into the room. An airlock was easier to gain access to, and you had to cycle that with leavers and wheels. His dirty green curtain was open, indicating he was out. He entered the room, closed the curtain and touched the shelf by the door and regretted the act as he felt the fine dust of time on his fingertips. He did not clean and saw no need given the dust was always present in the air. The recyclers made it dry and cool, if only a little humidity was added to the system the dust would settle easier, but water was precious and until they managed to extend their ice salvage pipe deeper into the frozen lake the air would remain dry.

The environmental suit sitting hunched in the corner of the front room looked like a man had toppled forward drunk and fallen asleep in a strange crouch. The helmet was on the floor beside it and Machus already fought back claustrophobia. He stripped naked, backed into the suit making sure his feet were properly settled into the cushioning in the boots before pulling the suit up over his hips, attaching the catheter with some difficulty and pain then slipping his arms into the tight fitting arms. The suit was really two suits in one, an inner cool suit with a crisscross of water filled tubes and the outer air vessel, which kept a constant pressure and allowed him to breathe. The big flaps across his chest sucked closed as he closed the neck ring under his chin. Power lights flickered to life around the forward section of the ring and once they were all green he attached the helmet. The HUD ran through checks again, he ignored them as he closed his eyes and settled into the isolation and imprisonment of the suit. If something was wrong the suit would warn him and take protective action. That was one thing they had got good at over the centuries, making environmental suits.

Getting to the airlock through the main hall was not possible, too many would want to stop him and wish him luck and even more would approach and possibly sabotage his suit. He chastised himself for the thought but knew it had happened once. A different mythology and prophecy but it did happen. He made his way from his home and down to the end of his corridor. He entered the small lift that took him up three levels. Each corridor had an airlock lift, though it wasn't used as prevalently as in the past. The whole exercise took Machus thirty minutes and when he rounded the corner of the level three corridor he saw the others were already waiting, including the small form of Geana. Her suit wasn't white, as anything white would easily turn grubby in the dirty air, but it was pale enough to show she was some kind symbology on this trip. His orange suit was functional compared to her elaborately embroidered tool pockets.

"Synchronize suits," he said as he neared. "Set in five seconds, full transmit burst of twelve seconds." He watched the countdown on his HUD. When it hit zero the suits HUD flashed for twelve seconds as his computer sent out its signal and received and synchronized the other three suits. Now his HUD display a list of names which he could access at any time, the others would have the same information. With everyone knowing each's vital signs and suit condition it would make the excursion safer.

"The Governor has requested a recording of this event. I am equipped with recoding apparatus," Geana said, pointing to a square, black patch on her shoulder. "It is not part of the suit's main controls, shall I include you all in what it picks up?"

"Don't include us in the recording," Machus said, he didn't want anything he did showing up on some propaganda feed later.

"Very well."

Geana's voice was soft with a hint of airiness displaying she never yelled, or raised her voice for any reason. To Machus she sounded like she was speaking through a wind tunnel, the breeze shifting words about like dust motes. He chinned the toggle for the suit light down and turned his attention to the airlock. The airlock could easily hold all four of them, so he ushered the women in then closed the large swing door behind them. He pulled down the long red lock leaver, changing the interiors door light from red to yellow. Air pressure was lowered to outside, which was zero, but also the temperature in the lock was lowered by turning three blue taps. Outside was cold, seriously so and if they stepped straight from the lock outside they ran this risk of their helmets cracking in shock. The suits were a very strong hemp fabric, but the helmets were still an oil plastic product, and no matter how thick they made the clear face plate, it always cracked when exposed to the outside environment quickly. On his HUD he could see the external temperature of the suit was dropping slowly. He checked the three women, who seemed to be resigned to the wait. Geana's face plate frosted a little on the inside. She was running cold inside as well, it made sense; once they started moving about their body temp would go up and put a strain on the cool suits. He set his own suit at seventeen Celsius, while the outside plummeted past minus twenty.

Reen's black face looked concerned, though Machus could see nothing wrong with her vitals or suit functions. He checked his tool functions on both wrist rings, the short knife on the right suitable for cutting and digging if he had to and a claw for scrapping on his left. They popped out and retracted with gentle flicks of his wrist. Reen was checking hers as well, but more absent-mindedly.

"Reen, are you okay?" He stepped up to her making sure she could see him as he spoke. She looked back as if waking from a trance. "Reen?"

"I'm not going," she said, backing away, her tools retracting back into her wrist rings

"What do you mean you aren't going? We're already cycling out."

"I said I'm not going." In a flash Reen had switched channel on her com.

"Machus, let me." Hather stepped in and said something on her secure channel to the woman. Reen looked her way but shook her head. More must have been said as Reen's eyes darted between Hather and Machus, getting wider and more frightened by the moment. Hather turned to face him, she shook her head. He checked the HUD and saw Reen's pulse had risen and she was showing signs of anxiousness.

"Reen," he said, placing his opened palm against the side of her helmet. "You don't have to go." The look of relief was immediate. "But you will have to stay in the lock until we get back. It will take too long to reheat the airlock and reset it to allow us back in after the trip. Is that okay? Will you be okay?" If the woman could have turned green to match her suit Machus thought she just did. "You keep the outer door closed and the lights down low, you will be safe." He had to give her a deadline, a deadline always made things easier. "If we aren't back in two hours, cycle back through and report to Karven first and then to the Captaincy." She nodded again and with relief.

He turned to Hather, found her channel and tapped in. "What got to her?"

"Says she saw a ghost on the other side of the hatch. Saw the face of her abusive uncle who died five years ago." Hather also looked troubled and was holding something back, he could see it in her eyes; the watery blue looked on the edge of tears.

"What else did she say? I want it all, Hather."

"She said her uncle claimed he was going to kill her if she stepped outside," Geana broke in, her airy voice starling him. "I felt his presence but I did not see anything outside through the view port."

Machus wanted to squeeze his fingers into his eyes to push aside the annoyance and frustration, but the best he could do was take a deep breath and hold it for a few seconds. A ghost was the problem. His head itched and he wanted to scratch at his nose, all nervous gestures he knew but in a suit you didn't have much of an opportunity to display nervous ticks or stress relieving gestures. He calmed and thought the situation probably became safer as he only had two to watch out for now. Maybe he should leave Hather to watch over Reen, then it would just be him and Geana, a simple look around the ventilators, take some recordings of nothing and come back. He looked to Hather and the determination he saw on her face said she was going out. He didn't even look at Geana, this was probably more about her than anything else.

Ghosts were not uncommon, or the belief in them wasn't out of the ordinary, the remains of what could have been a city had been discovered when they though exploration in the dark could be beneficial. Now the only time anyone went outside was when they heard something. Machus stared at the view port and the darkness beyond. All he could see was the reflection of the light from the air lock and the faint green illumination of the ready light. He looked to Reen, who had backed up against the inner door, the lights in her helmet casting a green glow over her dark, frightened face. He reached forward, grasped the long red lock bar on the door and pulled it upwards. There was no sound and it was eerie. The unlock light flashed twice before settling to red. He pushed the door open the same time as turning on his suit lights. The bright beams punched out into darkness, a darkness so complete he hesitated in taking a first step. His mind threw up problems, obstacles that he wouldn't be able to get around. What if there was no ground outside the door? What is something big and ugly with massive teeth jumped out and grabbed him in its claws. He was being foolish. Geana waited for him to lead, he imagined her clear eyes boring into his back wondering why he wasn't moving. With caution he stepped forward and out into the top side and the dead surface of the world. Dotted about the blackness overhead were lights and swirls and whorls, the brilliance of galaxies so long in the past many might actually be gone.

Other lights came on around him, Geana to his left and Hather to his right. The ground was grey rock in the glare, barren and undulating. If they headed out to the right of the airlock for five kilometres they would find the first of the frozen lakes; water ice with some nasties, but they weren't out to look for ice, they were going left, across the crumbling surface to the rise less than two hundred metres away. This was the first of four heat vents and evaporation tunnels, it was from here the noise had emanated. The vents were small, not even big enough for a small child to fit down, but they were vital in the filtration and ventilation of the underground city. From the top of the vent a service crew could change lock in filters which worked like tiny airlocks when releasing built up heat and gases, and from the tubes bottom was a similar system but with more filters and intricate parts. If something blocked one filter things could get uncomfortable in around three weeks, all four and the colony was under threat within five days. Even in a sealed environment you needed ventilation. Machus had completed a number of filter changes and noise investigation, aside from Karven, he was the most experienced, but that didn't make things any easier.

"It's a slow climb to the top," he said, looking to Geana, whose face was hidden behind the glare of her helmet lights. "We're looking for rocks in the top of the funnel."

"What would have moved the rocks?"

Geana's question echoed in his helmet and despite his problems with the position she had put him he knew it was a damn good question. He waited, listening to his breathing and knowing he was exerting himself climbing the rise. Their lights flashed over the surface, grey and brightness with chunks that could have been black or dark brown.

"Let's just hope the planet's got a little seismic activity still going on, shall we?" He looked up and the flash of red, the funnel came into view. The lights of galaxies above were lost in his halo of light.

"Yes, let us hope." It was Hather, her deep voice reassuring.

In front and slightly above nothing moved and if all was well, hadn't moved for millions of years and would remain unmoved for millions more. Machus had jumped at shadows the first time he'd come outside to gaze up at the lights and to marvel at the immense distance between him and another world of life. Now he jumped at light, other people's light, because he needed to know where they were at all times. He looked behind and past the glare of the lights of the two women and saw the red glow of the airlock, so small and smothered by black. The lock was built into a rock face ten metres high and barely double across. After the colony ship had been buried deep in the planet – a shipment of mining equipment designed for use on their new world had made the job easier than it sounded, it took two years to tunnel up and out into an area that was flat, and through an outcrop that was strong enough to withstand some of the pressures of the airlock. On an airless world, even with gravity, they didn't know how stable the rock was less than one normal Earth atmosphere. To Machus those early explorers and engineers were heroes and their names were engraved on one of the three bell housing of the new starship, and every year more names are added.

It was deeply troubling to move through this world without sound, seeing others, watching their footfalls, seeing dust rise from their boots and fall again just like it would on any oxygen world. Machus didn't like watching this part, it made him claustrophobic and when that happened he noticed the stink of his own body in the suit, first sweet and wafting and then strong and cloying to the point of suffocating; he would often change the regulator setting on his oxygen feed when this happened, though he never told the Captaincy about it, he would be suspended from suit duty.

"The red funnel there," he pointed his lights towards the tubes funnel. "Once we are around it and clear anything inside, we can move on to the others."

"How long will this take?" Geana asked, not impatient but more a gentle inquiry.

"If we don't find any obstructions we should be back in the airlock in two hours." He checked his HUD, they'd already been out ten minutes and still they hadn't reached the first funnel. "So, let's get a move on, Reen doesn't want to be alone any longer than necessary. And if she reports to the Captaincy before we are back, then guess whose head is up for a slap?"

With all three sets of lights loosely focused on the funnel it was easier to estimate distance, they were close enough now to read the number painted on its side in yellow. #1 shone like a beacon and he sighed with relief they had at least made it this far.

"What was that?" Hather snapped, her light shifting away from the unified beam.

"What?" Geana's light joined hers.

Reluctantly Machus combined his light with that of the women. Everyone got the jitters in the dark. There was nothing but grey and black rock flashing up through their dancing beams. Hather's light was dancing haphazardly about as if panic had set in and she was looking for a fast escape somewhere.

"Take it easy, Hather," he said, reaching out and grasping her arm; it wasn't until he squeezed hard did he feel any resistance in his glove. "There is nothing out here. Let's check the funnels and get back."

"There!" She pointed with her hand and the light.

For a moment he saw something. A movement. A lightness against the dark. Geana's light joined theirs and they slowly panned back and forwards over the region Hather and he had seen the movement. The lights picked out and caused small sparkles; frozen water ice and other silvery crystals. None of them spoke as the lights illuminated a wide area down the slope and in front of them. Machus thought they should go back. Yes, there was something out here but they were also unprepared.

"Contact Reen," he said to Hather, "Explain to her we are coming back now and that she is to have the lock door open. Hather," he added trying not to sound concerned. "We want to cycle through as quickly as possible so see if you can get her to prime a quick pressurization without setting her off." He couldn't see her face because of the strong light reflection off her face plate. Geana was the same but he had another task for her as they traipsed back. "Lead the way down the slope and back, I'll bring up the rear and protect Geana should whatever that thing is come closer.

"That thing is our future," Geana said, breaking into the channel. "I have seen it and felt its presence since the moment of my birth." She turned off her helmet lights so he could see her face through the shield. Her eyes were closed but red lines tracked across her translucent skin. "It is in communication with me. I am to stay here. I am to welcome it into our community."

"Hather, you head back, see to the preparation yourself and keep Reen calm." She turned away and started down the slope and towards the red glow of the airlock.

With Geana's lights off and Hathors slowly moving away from them the darkness pressed in harder. He needed Geana to see his expression and to read his face while he spoke, it was important for her to see rather than just hear. Machus switched off his external suit lights and the night dropped on him like a great weight. His heart skipped and for a moment he closed his eyes so they could adjust. When he opened them he saw the sky littered with distant galaxies then he turned to Geana, her face light up by the suits internal heads up display and control board, his face would be lit up in the same fashion. He faced her, trying not to think about the thing that was out in the darkness with them. He had to admit he was afraid, the most afraid he had ever felt. Geana's eyes were still closed and the red veins had increased around her neck; it was hard to determine the full extent of what was happening to her without tapping into her suits bio-system, but right now he was even too afraid to attempt that. He looked to the light thrown out by Hather, a candle in a cavern the size of the universe, and wished he'd left her with Geana, and headed back himself.

"It says we must leave," Geana said, opening her eyes and startling him with their clearness and the pulsing of blood inside the holes they inhabited.

"Who?" He put his right hand on her shoulder, hoping the action would get her attention. "What was that we saw?"

"Death." She looked at him, her placid face twitched with a smile. "It has been alone for millennia. It was here when the planet was cast out onto the void when its sun... when its sun failed to protect them from the Coming."

Geana wasn't making much sense but he had to get her back to the airlock and back into the colony. So much rested on her return. He looked behind and saw darkness with the glitter of lights on the far horizon. So far from everything they were, so, so far from a galaxy that could have a planet for them to live. He sighed and readied himself for an argument. Hather's light blinked off some distance from the red glow of the airlock. He chinned her channel.

"Hather, what are you doing?"

Silence, not even radio static.

"Hather, do you read. Hather."

"She is gone," Geana said cutting into Hather's channel again. "It has come and taken her like the night takes the stars."

"Reen," he said, changing to her channel. "Reen, cycle the airlock and lock the outer doors. We are not coming back. Tell..."

"She is also gone," Geana's haunting voice cut him off. "It has taken a long time to find us, a time so long that it thought it would be alone for eternity." He looked to her, the solemn face whispering out the words so dead to the ears he felt as if he were in a sound proof room. "Turn on your lights, let it find you, let it embrace you and take away the fear that comes with darkness." He was blinded by Geana's lights as they sprang to life. He turned away and tried to get out of their shine. "Stay, Machus. Stay and come with me as I let it into the colony. It is so lonely; it is so over joyed to have another taste of life."

Machus wanted to run but he couldn't see and if he could see then whatever it was could see him. He stumbled away from Geana, her lights finding then losing him as he scrabbled over rocks and uneven ground. The suits made it difficult to feel his way and he had to be careful not to put a hole in the tough fabric; if he did he would have to wait for it to get him. Moving was too difficult and trying to see via his HUD was simply ridiculous. Machus stopped stumbling and lay flat of the ground. He chinned off his HUD and control board lights and lay still, listening to his own heavy breathing and feeling sweat running down his face. He didn't know if he closed his eyes or not, nothing could be seen, absolutely nothing. He though he caught the hint of a light, perhaps Geana searching for him, so he tried to press himself further into the rocky ground; in stillness he hoped to be invisible, then he remembered he was wearing a high visibility orange suit; if her light did sweep his way he would stand out like a beacon. He prayed to the Captaincy, something he had never done before, he wasn't one for faith systems sold on the black market, but for now it was all he had and he hoped they understood his pleas.

"Machus," Geana's voice erupted from his helmet mike. The tiny green glow from the live channel icon made him stab wildly at the control board with his chin to extinguish the tell-tale. "I know you can hear me, Machus. Come to me, come to it and find salvation in dark."

He held his breath for a moment then realised that was stupid thing to do, she would know his channel was alive; it would show as a green light on her control board. If he spoke she wouldn't know where he was, there was no real atmosphere on the surface to carry sound and she couldn't track by his voice of the radio. He took many deep breathes and thought about the oxygen supply, he had several hours before the sighting, but could he lay face down on the planet's surface for a couple of hours until she went away. He could, only she wanted to go inside and take that thing with her. He didn't want to be a hero. He didn't want to save anyone's life by being brave. He wanted to dig a hole and hide.

"It wants to talk to you, Machus; it wants to know all your fears and your dreams. It wants to know all about the human race and from where we have come from." Her voice was higher now, as if she was speaking with effort. This was not the calm Geana who had spoken to him in the airlock.

Machus pushed himself up to his knees and searched for Geana's light. She was maybe fifty metres away, though with reference points unseeable, she could be a hundred. The lights were focused on something in front of her; it was pale and tall and thin. He turned away from the light and made his way down the slope, slowly and carefully, keeping low to the ground so if he stumbled he wouldn't sprawl flat on his stomach and run the risk of holing his suit. He moved slightly away from Geana's suit lights but in more or less the direction of the distant red glow of the airlock. He had to get there first and secure the lock so Geana and the thing couldn't get in. Time felt slow as he moved around large rocks. The suit hiding the sensation of touch until it was almost too late. In a way he bounced from place to place, or rebounded off boulders. His ankles were aching from stepping on the rocky ground randomly. The reinforcing in the boots would save him from simple sprains, but if he happened into a sizable hole he could break a bone.

"Machus, come to me, let us talk of the future." Geana's voice was now strained. He could hear the high pitched changes. "You will not be harmed. All is safe now it has come to us."

He looked up the rise. Geana was still standing there, her lights searching the area he had been when he'd made his initial dash. She would know he would make his way to the airlock so why was she searching in the opposite direction? He looked away from her, the red light, it was near, and he could just make out the opened door in the face of the cliff. He looked to his right and saw a pale glow, radiance barely bright enough to trouble the dark. Machus edged his way closer. His heart raced. What if this was another of those things? It couldn't be, as far as he could tell it gave off no light.

"Hather," he breathed, seeing the face behind the pale light of her helmet's control board. The face plate looked smashed but he could see nothing else of her so intense the dark pressing around him. He drew closer and saw blood one her blue lips and her open eye empty and frozen. IN the light of the control board she looked grey. He wanted to scream at Geana, tell her what he was looking at, tell her what had happened to Hather and probably Reen.

With determination he made his way towards the red of the lock, the closer he got the more he could make out of the ground around him; he saw nothing clearly but shadows appeared and shifted and changed as he grew nearer the light. He stopped when he was ten metres away from the large opened door, he could see Reen's green suit inside the airlock; she was on her back, suit light on and the bright white beam creating a large spot on the ceiling of the lock. As soon as he broke into a run the last ten metres he would be seen. He knew as he crouched behind a bolder. He looked to the rise, no lights shone. Had it now taken Geana? Given two dead already he couldn't consider anything else. Listening to his breathing Machus felt he was labouring more than he should; the climb down had been difficult but he had gone slowly. Something wasn't right. He ducked down behind the rock and allowed the dots of galaxies to distract him while he thought. Maybe he had used more oxygen than expected; maybe he had a loose hose or a hole in his suit. The echo of his hard breaths made it clear he didn't have time to contemplate much more than getting into the lock and slamming the door closed. Feeling weak he pushed himself to his feet and edged around the rock until the red light was full in his face plate. Then he ran.

The airlock didn't seem to be getting any closer and every step felt like a heavy weight to be lifted and thrown forward. He was breathing hard now, struggling for air. The lock grew larger. The body of Reen on the floor grew in size. He was nearly there.

The blow came is slow motion. He was almost at the door when something hit him from the side and knocked him down. He gasped and flailed. Weight pressed down on his chest. The darkness was everywhere but the faint glow of red highlighted a large shadow over him. He pressed up with his arms, trying to hold whatever it was from crushing him. He chinned the lights. Light reflected back. It bounced off a face shield. An environmental suit's face shield.

"Geana," he cried. "Geana, stop." He held her off while chinning the all channel broad-caste, it wouldn't be as effective as direct channel but she would at least hear him. "Geana, get off. My suits..." he gasped again and sucked in a deep unsatisfying breath, then another. "Get off, I can't breathe."

He wrestled some more. Geana's suit was off-white, this one was yellow, a faded yellow but definitely not white. The face plate was shielded so he couldn't see inside but this was not Geana. Whoever this was, was strong and he had difficulty in holding them off. Something bounced off his face plate. A rock. This person was trying to smash open his helmet. The exertion was tiring him, air was thin and he didn't want to die of suffocation. He did want to die from decompression either. He just didn't want to die. With effort he thrust his right arm up hard into the midriff of the person on top of him while at the same time triggering his tool attachment on his wrist wring. He felt something give and the weigh eased and moved away. He rolled to his front and to his feet and lunged into the airlock. Struggling to breathe he pulled the large door closed, grabbed the locking bar and fell on it until it locked down. He had to hit the pressurization button, but it would take too long, he would be dead by the time the pressure was inside normal and warm. He crawled to the inner door, climbing over the still form of Reen, whose body was near the controls. The controls were waist height and had been set so just in case of an emergency. Machus opened a small hatch and depressed the emergency door release. He felt the great locking clamp vibrate through the floor as the outer door was locked. He lay flat on the floor and waited.

The first sound he heard was perhaps one of his ribs popping and then the loud crash of atmosphere. The outer airlock door broke his flight as the inner atmosphere equalized the airlock.

There was no air left in his helmet. He sucked and sucked and panicked. He grabbed at the locking rings on his helmet but his fingers felt too big, the gloves clumsy. He yanked and yanked until he felt the seal pop. The helmet was off and tumbling away as he sucked in his first full breath. He did nothing else but enjoy that sweet taste in his lungs. As he slowed his breathing the sound of alarms broke into his recovery. He looked to the opened inner door and could see the frame was buckled. Lights flashed orange and yellow and he had never felt so glad to see such sight of danger in his entire life. He looked to his side and saw the crumpled form of Reen. She had known something was wrong. He should have listened to her. His ribs hurt and moving was difficult, but he slid over and removed her helmet. He needed to see her face out of respect. She was breathing; he saw as the helmet popped off, her eyes flickered for a moment. Machus felt relieved.

"Machus, Machus," it was Geana, her voice soft and airy as he first remembered it. "Please Machus, tell me you made it."

"I'm here." He sat back up hard against the outer door wishing the alarms would turn off; it was hard hearing the woman's voice. He reached into the neck ring with his fingers and upped the gain, as neck movement seemed too difficult right now.

"Thank the Captaincy," she said, actually sounding relieved.

"I suppose you can explain what just happened out there?"

She might have answered but he wasn't sure, pain and screams and alarms filled his head and wracked his body. Noise was the last thing he needed he thought as he closed his eyes. He felt so tired, so terribly tired.

The Celestials had tried to seize power while Machus was outside and they had tried to do so by manipulating Geana. Machus was comfortably sitting on a small balcony over-looking the central cavern of the colony, his ribs hurt and he was bruised all over from his ordeal. The Celestials had retreated to their deep meditation tanks for possibly another hundred years, or until the new space vessel was completed, tested and ready to go.

"I've brought you some tea," the airy voice said from behind him.

Geana placed two cups on the table between the chairs and sat, slightly facing him as well as having a clear view over the milling population. Machus smiled but also felt guilty, as he in part was responsible for the threat in the first place.

"Thank you." He lifted the cup and sipped the spicy drink. "If you had accepted the offer all this would be yours now." He sipped again and watched her clear eyes gaze out over the railing.

"I see things, Machus and I sometimes don't know what they mean, but I know when something is wrong. I can feel at least that much." Her mauve slacks and green smock clashed and the colours only seemed to enhance the clearness of those frightening eyes. "I did my best to help you but he'd already killed Hather and had control over my suits systems through that black recording patch the Celestials had made me wear."

The Captaincy had been quick to piece everything together once he'd blown the inner lock door. The Celestials had swooped but without the word of Geana, the people didn't flock to their cause and had turned against them. Some Celestials were killed while trying to take hostages and when it was reported that Geana was dead the whole over throw idea fell to ruins. He looked to the diminutive woman and was startled by her resilience and ingenuity. She'd dropped and rolled and ran from her controller and had made her way to the lesser used garbage airlock on the other side of the small range the colony was built under. She had made the whole journey in the dark with only the distant flickers of galaxies and some of the largest stars to offer any form of guidance. Shed walked into the cavern well after calm had been restored and he was in the medical centre getting treatment and explaining what had happened.

"I didn't mean to kill him, you know?"

"I know." She sipped at her tea now and dropped her gaze to her lap.

"Karven was my friend. He was the one who'd suggested the Celestials would want control through you." Even though he'd never seen Karven's face through the reflection of his lights, he still imagined the look in his eyes when he knew he was going to die. "His wife will never forgive me."

"You don't need forgiveness, Machus," Geana said, reaching across the table and touching his shoulder. "What you need is to help finish the ship so we can leave this place. We have spent far too long in the dark, far, far too long."

Fading Light from a Dying Star

Jason Andrew

Mia Wells slept in the foetal position, in her bunk, with her uncovered feet pressed firmly against the metal bulkhead to feel the rhythmic hum of the Phoenix. The Captain's old comfortable habit allowed herself to be lulled to sleep by the pulse of her ship. While the Phoenix travelled through hyperspace, the bulkheads maintained a consistent low-frequency vibration, indicating that all was well and the ship was safe.

She usually found it difficult to sleep while transporting valuable cargo. Since the Sundering, every Colony with a proper Navy wanted their share of tariffs - official or otherwise. To avoid patrols and gravity interceptors, Mia had ordered Wang to plot a slipstream course, which gave the standard routes a wide berth.

The direct route would have only taken a week, but Wang's stealth route would take almost two months to circumnavigate most of the trouble spots. It left the Phoenix light-years away from civilization and any potential threats. The crew was anxious from the long trip, but secretly Mia felt like it was a vacation away from her worries.

The sputtering disruption of the vibrations slowly woke her. The only thing that could change the rhythm was deceleration into normal space. Mia slowly pulled the blanket back and sat up on her bunk. She was rubbing her eyes when the comlink buzzed.

"Captain! Sorry to wake you, but we have trouble."

Mia eased into her grey trousers. "What is it, Wang?"

Her pilot answered quickly. "We've hit some sort of gravity disruption. We should have avoided all of the celestial bodies, so that means..."

"Gravity interceptors," Mia said, "We're about to meet a colonial barricade or pirates. I don't like either option, Wang."

"No one should have been able to follow my flight plan," Wang said. "It's not my fault."

Mia groaned as she wrapped her gun belt around her waist. Wang could be finicky at the best of times, but he was a solid pilot who always delivered. She just didn't have time to soothe his ego at the moment. "I promise that there will be time enough to figure out what's what when we're safe. ETA?"

"We should be folding into normal space in about five minutes, Captain."

Mia flipped a switch on the com-panel activating a general alarm klaxon. "This is the Captain. It looks like we're five minutes from uninvited visitors on the path of our quiet little excursion. Likely we'll be hung in the morning."

The ship's engineer was the first to reply. Her voice high-pitched earned her the nickname Mouse. "Captain, I don't want to be 'hung.'"

It pained Mia to hear the fear in Mouse's voice. She used her calm, confident; everything is going to be alright, tone. "Well then, you'd best scurry to the engine room and see what you can do to help out with an easy re-entry." The faint outline of a plan was already forming in the back of her mind. She toggled the com-link once more. "Styles, you have the port gun turret. Establish locks, but don't fire until you get the OK from me. With a bit of luck, this might this might be a misunderstanding. Wang, as soon as we hit normal space, find some local colour to hide us as best you can."

A deep bravado voice replied over the com-link. "Last time you said that Captain, I ended up in jail for a month and almost married," Styles grumbled.

"You and Cletus were a beautiful couple," Mouse interjected.

"Didn't he send you a postcard at our last mail stop?" Wang asked, smugly.

"Cut the crap and do your jobs!" Mia barked, a bit more forceful than she intended. "We can always make fun of Styles later."

"I'll do my best to find someplace to hide, Captain," Wang promised. "There shouldn't be anything out there, though. We were trying to give anyplace occupied a wide berth."

She had been afraid of that, but Mia knew she needed to keep the crew calm and confident if they were going to survive. "Do your best and we'll get through it, same as always."

The Phoenix's crew was sometimes a bit lax in discipline, but Mia was proud of them and her ship. She had more than her fill of military decorum during the Sundering Wars, and now she was content to run her ship and crew much like any other family, with a mixture of anarchy and authoritarian discipline in the right measure.

Wells discovered the Phoenix mothballed as a cargo merchant marine vessel in the surplus stockyards five years ago. She had survived the Sundering Wars, much like Mia had, damaged, mostly intact, and decommissioned. Mouse and the crew had made hundreds of minor alternations, legal and otherwise, but it was Mia who transformed it into a home.

The Captain slid into the starboard gun turret station, seat-belted herself, and logged in. Wang's steady voice provided running commentary on the ship's status. "Entering real space in five. Four. Three. Two. One."

The transition from hyperspace always turned her stomach. She had heard the science lectures dozens of times, but the math never really settled properly in her brain; quantum this, entanglement that. Mia imagined it akin to a pebble skipping across a pond, as the ship bounced off the slipstream filament that lead them through the emptiness of hyperspace, and then quickly sinking as gravity took hold.

Unconsciously, she grabbed at the arms of the gunnery station as she was hit with severe g-forces. Faint light from thousands of stars quickly dotted the darkness. Sensors caught three blips on the screen. Her targeting computer quickly locked onto the ships and started calculating firing solutions.

Two of the fighters were waiting for the Phoenix in a classic crossfire. An old frigate, painted black with a white sigil bearing skull and crossbones, blocked the Phoenix's flight path. None of the ships broadcast a Colonial ID, which was illegal, even out on the rim. She accessed the com-link and set it for a wide band ship-to-ship communication. "This is Captain Mia Wells of the Phoenix. Please be advised that we're armed, we're agitated, but we're not looking for trouble."

"This is Captain Sergio from the Kalashnikov Fleet. Drop your cargo, Phoenix, and we'll let you leave peacefully."

The Kalashnikov fleet was universally known for its savage piracy, distinct lack of mercy, and cowardice if it faced a fair fight.

"Ed, you wall-eyed moron, is that you?"

She could almost hear the groan across the void. If he paused long enough, she might be able to talk them out of a fight. Sergio's voice crackled over the channel dripping with irritation. "Save yourself some time and heartache, Mia. Surrender the goods. Having a cute ass isn't going to save you this time."

Mia's voice turned to honey. "Ed, I just don't understand where this hostility is coming from."

"You cut off my ear!"

Mia grinned and tried not to laugh. "You had your hand on my ass, as I recall. I thought I was doing you a favour. A lonely guy like you needs your hand."

"If you don't drop the goods I'm authorized to scuttle your ship."

"Ed, maybe you could turn your toy off and back away. Your fleet is spread out. You obviously didn't expect a ship that could fight back." The threat was implicit. The Phoenix had teeth, and taking her would be costly.

"Mia, you can't win," Sergio replied with a bit of bravado. "We have you dead in a killbox. You can't escape without us. We have gravity inductors."

"Then why are you scared, Ed?" Mia asked coyly. "I can smell the piss in your pants all the way in here."

The fighters fired across the Phoenix's port. She had to admit that this was a solid trap. Who knew these clowns could be so smart? "You have one minute to dump the cargo," Sergio stated, closing the channel.

Mia switched to internal coms. "Mouse, how long until the fold engines recharge?"

"I can cut the time down to fifteen minutes by charging the coils manually, Captain, but that's dangerous if this end of the ship gets hit," Mouse answered.

It would be difficult to convince the pirates to shoot at the heavily shielded sections of the ship. "Understood. Be careful. Wang, I'm not seeing anything on the scanner. Is there any place we can hide or anything we can put between us and them?"

"There's a huge comet about half a light-year away, that's all that's showing on my screens," Wang reported.

"That's way too far to try to outrun them," Mia muttered. "The fight will be over by then. How's the scan of the frigate going?"

"We're being jammed, Captain, like you'd expect," Wang explained. She could hear the sounds of keys being pressed quickly. "The thing is I served aboard a frigate of that class. Gravity inductors are fairly large and cumbersome. They must have gutted her to be able to carry them, much less power them. I'm seeing rail-gun ports, but I can't tell if they are charged or not."

That was the first bit of good news since she woke. "That dumbass would have killed us by now if they were. If they had weapons, they wouldn't be jamming us."

"You sure, Captain?"

"I paid for this ship by beating that fool in cards. He still can't bluff worth a damn." Mia thought for a moment. "Styles, what about the fighters?"

"Those are Starhawks, Captain. Cheap, but effective at short range. Not strictly military; mostly used in Corp Security. They'll fall apart pretty easy if we can hit them, but that's going to be a trick. Those suckers are fast and manoeuvrable. Both of them are on different axis than we are. We can't escape one without making ourselves vulnerable to the other."

"OK, Wang, we're going to go for an inverse deep loop around the frigate and then head for the comet," Mia ordered. "That will protect our backside and only give one of the fighters a place to attack."

"I thought the comet was too far," Styles said, surprise heavy in his tone.

"If it looks like we have a destination, maybe they'll chase us while Mouse is manually charging the coils. Otherwise, they might just decide to use us for target practice on account of feeling annoyed."

"Captain, I don't know that the engines will take that loop when I'm doing a manual charge," Mouse warned. "Internal gravity inducers will be pushed hard."

"I don't see that we have a lot of choice in the matter, Mouse. I don't expect that they will let us live, even if we do dump the cargo." Mia thumbed through her screen. Mouse was right, but the risk was their only hope. "We can do this if everyone concentrates on their job and trust everyone else to do the same. Wang, punch it!"

Wang set the thrusters for full. The Phoenix groaned as it moved forward on a collision course for the Kalashnikov frigate. As Mia expected, the Kalashnikov remained still. "The gravity inductor is taking up too much of their power, Captain. They can't fire their railguns unless they shut it down," Wang said. The screen showed their vector and she hoped Sergio wasn't suicidal today.

"I imagine they spread their fleet out hoping to get lucky," Mia said. "He didn't expect us to fight back. Speaking of which, Styles, once those solutions are through open up."

As the Phoenix began to turn in a slow arc towards the frigate, the port gun turret slowly locked onto one of the Starhawks. The small ship made a rapid strafing run towards the Phoenix, firing its twin auto-cannons into the topside hull. The ship was moving too fast for the firing solutions.

The other Starhawk engaged its engines and began to follow the Phoenix. As Mia hoped, it needed to move around the frigate before it fired. The Phoenix passed over the Kalashnikov and its powerless railguns. Mia accepted the first solution for the frigate and fired, pounding it unmercifully with her cannon. A line of brief fiery explosions dotted the frigate.

The Starhawk trailing the Phoenix seemed content to follow her over the frigate, but at the apex of its arc, it turned ninety degrees and raced under the frigate instead. "I lost Starhawk Two. It's not showing on my scanner," Mia announced.

Styles continued allowing the computer to adjust and fire at will. The small ship maneuverer parallel to the Phoenix. The trap locked the fighter into the firing arcs of both cannons! Style's weapons began a rapid series of controlled bursts forcing the Starhawk to weave and dodge, but it couldn't escape the sheer magnitude of the volleys in time. Style's computer managed to tag the Starhawk with several bursts before it sputtered completely out of his attack arc. "Starhawk One's hit and dropping right to you."

"I knew there was a reason I kept you around, Styles, besides your cooking.

Starhawk One turned under the belly of the Phoenix, hoping to lock into a strafing run. As the fighter turned towards the Phoenix, the Phoenix began to rotate starboard. Starhawk One unknowingly zoomed into the dead centre of Mia's cannon range. The Phoenix's Captain watched as the system locked onto the fighter and blasted it continuously until it exploded into a dazzling yellow and blue ball of fire and metal. As the oxygen dissipated, the flames snapped away leaving a floating field of debris.

Wang continued to keep one eye on the scanners and the other on piloting the ship. "Starhawk Two is coming up under us!"

"Turn into him! Protect our ass!"

Mia's order came too late. Wang tried to turn the Phoenix away from the frigate and towards the second Starhawk, but the big ship was too slow. Starhawk Two used manoeuvring thrusters to level itself and fired into the rear of the ship. The Phoenix bucked wildly as a section of the hull exploded. Lights and power flickered throughout the entire ship. "Wang, bring us about! Mouse, you OK?"

Wang replied affirmative and Mia could feel the subtle shift of the Pheonix's. Mouse's line was silent. "Mouse? Mouse?"

"Internal scanners are down, but it looks like we have a couple of hull breeches. Looks like the engine room's been sealed," Wang reported.

"Captain, you want me to go get her?" Styles asked.

"Stay where you are, or we'll all be dead," Mia barked. "Run those cannons manually if you have to, but get that fighter."

"Starhawk Two is coming around," Wang said.

"Turn to face that son of bitch!" Mia ordered. "Get him inside of both our arcs!"

"The gravity inductor has stopped broadcasting. The frigate is likely powering up her railguns," Wang reported. "We need to get out of here."

"Ignore the frigate for the moment. It needs to turn to get a lock on us. Get us into position on that Starhawk."

The Phoenix rolled towards the Starhawk. The Phoenix's long, narrow nose pointed directly down at the fighter. Mia and Styles pumped the load levers so the cannon could continuously fire. The fighter was reduced to fragments. A large section of metal hull slammed directly into the view port of Mia's gunnery pit, creating a long serpentine crack.

"Railguns are charging."

"Dealing with a crack. Styles, target the rail gun ports. I'll join you as soon as I can." Mia flipped the lid on the emergency locker.

She pulled a roll of thick hull seal tape from the box and started to patch the crack, trying to keep it from expanding. As Wang flew the Phoenix into an attack position, the frigate quickly rotated into view. Oxygen and water vented from the previous attack. It froze and scattered into a low orbit around the frigate. The Phoenix had managed to knock out its communication dish and port thrusters during the previous volley.

Styles began firing upon the frigate's starboard thrusters after there were no sure solutions for the ports, hoping to hobble the ship and leave it without manoeuvrability. Mia lost a full rotation in vision and had to allow the systems to do the bulk of the work. She dropped the tape, checked her screen and joined Styles, pouring fire into the Kalishnikov's engines. Explosions pocked the frigate.

"Captain, the frigate's showing an energy cascade. I think we're about to get a fireworks display."

"Get us out of here, Wang!"

Slowly, the Phoenix pulled away from the frigate. "I'm having trouble getting a response from the main engines!"

"Styles, meet me in the engine room!" Mia said, knowing what would happen if they were too close to the frigate's explosion.

Mia unlocked her safety harness, slipped out of the egg-shaped station, and raced down the hall. She was joined by a tall, thin man with dark skin and a short afro. He stood in front of the engine room's sealed door while pulling on a sleek black EVA suit with exo skeleton. It reminded her of a natural beetle she once saw on New Earth shortly after she enlisted.

She pulled another suit out of the locker near the airlock. Once she was dressed, Styles cranked the giant crusty wheel, slowly unlocking the sealed door. Mia and Styles stepped inside the airlock and closed the door behind them.

"Wang, we're going to try to access the engine room. Do your best to get us out of here. Get us to that comet." She slapped her hand on Styles' back; he turned and looked at her though the helmet shield. "Can you cycle us through?" He shook his head.

Styles indicated the internal hatch. The control panel had been burned out, and the 02 meter on the bulkhead showed that all of the oxygen had been vented. Mia spun the locking wheel and the inner door swung outwards into the bay. She scanned the room. The breech and subsequent explosion had disabled the primary engines. The engines appeared intact, but a variety of metal and plastic-covers had been strewn throughout the compartment. It looked like someone had taken sledgehammers to everything else of value in the compartment. It would take Mouse weeks to put everything back in order.

"Mouse," she called over the suits system. Did she have time to get into an EVA suit? Or was she locked in a secure cabin somewhere.

"She could have been sucked out the hole," Style said, indicating the rent in the hull.

"Let's not panic just yet. There are two life hutches in the back. She's a clever girl."

Styles checked the starboard life hutch, but it was empty. Mia discovered the other hutch sealed closed. She wiped away the condensation and peered through the tiny view port to see a short mop of blue hair shivering. Mia toggled her suit com to connect with the hutch. "Mouse, you OK?"

A thin, Eurasian, girlish face popped up to porthole, and waved slowly. Her face was bloodied and bruised, but she smiled at the sight of Mia. She covered her mouth and nodded. Mia nodded in return. There wasn't a suit in the hutch so Mouse was trapped until they could fix the breech.

"Wang, are we out of the blast zone?" Mia asked.

A small rattle vibrated throughout the ship. She knew from battle experience that it was the debris field from a massive explosion. Wang answered the com sheepishly. "We managed to clear the most of the trouble, Captain." Mia waited, there was more, she could hear it in his voice. "Got a few small holes to deal with though."

"Mouse is alive. We're going to patch the holes down here and then let her out of the hutch."

His audible sigh of relief carried over the comlink. Wang wasn't alone with the sentiment. They nearly lost Mouse and as she thought more about the situation, they had nearly lost the ship as well.

Mia and Styles diligently worked to patch the various holes flexbond plates and two spare metal hull plates. Mouse would complain and redo the jobs later once they made a space dock, but it would get them on their way and free Mouse. Once air was pumped back into the engine compartment and some smaller leaks repaired with pressure goo, Mia cycled the hutch's door and let Mouse out.

Crying, bruised, and bloody, the thin woman hugged Mia. Mouse was technically an adult, but at times she looked twelve. "Captain, I couldn't control it. I heard the explosions and got in the hutch!"

"You did the right thing," Mia said, checking her wounds.

Mouse's right arm had been badly cut and burned by the explosion. Wang had a smidge of medic training from the Academy, so he cleaned the wound as best he could and then used a quick skin to repair the burns.

Mia hated to ask her mechanic for anything in this state, but they needed the primary engines online otherwise it was going to be a very slow journey home. "Mouse, I need you to take a look around the engine room and tell me what's what, Styles and I will get to work while you rest up for a while." She turned to the others. "Wang, once we reach the comet scan it to see if it has anything we can use. Styles do a run through of our supplies and see if you can work up something to eat. I'll restock the weapon loaders and help Mouse until you get back."

They separated, each leaving to complete their individual tasks. Mia checked the ammunition, they'd wasted a lot and there wasn't much to put in the reloaders. Chavez had offered her enough credits to pay off what she owed on the Phoenix, restock all the weapons and actually pay the crew on time. This was a run she couldn't refuse, but what could be in the cargo that was worth the Kalashnikov risking trouble with Chavez? Surely he would have known what she was carrying to risk so much.

The four of them sat in the galley, sipping coffee and glancing at datapads. Mia was the first to speak. "OK, I could use some good news about now."

"We're at the ass-end of space, Captain. Nothing out there, except a comet. If Mouse can repair the engine, it would take us ten years to get someplace civilized in normal space. Sensors are limited and communications are dead," Wang reported grimly.

"Even if we could call for help, the pirates could track us down, and this trip would end quickly," Mia said. "Not much ammo and I think we lost some of the weapons computer, it fuzzes when I ask for solution to simple problems."

"The good news is that I think I can repair the engines," Mouse said, her little voice the only brightness in the room. "We should have enough power to run up the main drive. The bad news is that the fold coils are broken. I might be able to jerry-rig something to help us limp back to a port, but we need a dense metal filament to contain the jump," Mouse said, defeated, losing the small light that had shone.

"What about salvaging the remains of those Kalashnikov turds? Or making our own?" Styles asked hopefully.

"We could look, but I wouldn't expect much," Mouse answered. "The engine room had a containment leak. Anything that survived would be so hot with radiation that we'd burn alive just trying to take it on board."

"Well, I had better luck with provisions. Enough for six months if we go light, but only a month's worth of water," Styles said.

Mia sipped her coffee a bit and considered her options. "How far away is that comet?"

Wang tapped his pad and did the math. "About six hours, Captain."

"How large is it?"

"Big," Wang admitted. "It looks about the size of a very small moon, and there appears to be a shell of ice covering and trailing it."

"Is this comet on the charts?" Mia asked, getting an idea.

Wang scowled. He liked to impress and didn't like admitting not knowing something. "I haven't found it yet, but I'd imagine that something like this would be listed on the nav charts."

Mia patted her pilot on the shoulder. "We survived. That counts for something. Styles made us a proper meal. Let's celebrate." She turned towards her mechanic. "Styles and I will be your hands, and we'll get the engine room fixed as best we can. Never know we might find something on the hunk of ice."

"Won't the Kalashnikov Fleet find us?" Mouse asked, fearful.

"They had to stay radio silent so they wouldn't alert us. So I'm hoping the failed welcoming party won't be missed for a couple of days. I'm guessing they didn't know exactly the who's, what's, or when's of the situation and just tried to take advantage. By the time they figure out, we might be able to find us some cover."

They ate slowly, savouring the food and grateful to be alive. When they were finished, Styles helped Mouse into the engine room. Mia and Styles took turns following Mouse's vague directions to fix the engines and reboot the power systems. Three hours later, the main engines were spiralling unevenly, but running. Mouse swore that she would right the ship as soon as possible, but Mia was just glad they had proper power again.

Once the engines were running, Wang rechecked their intercept course for the comet and engaged the main drive, it would shorten the time having more power to burn. While Styles cooked dinner and Mouse tinkered in the engine room, Mia and Wang sat in the command cabin, staring at the unfamiliar stars. "You don't look too happy, Captain."

Mia shrugged at her petite pilot. Wang was a short, boyishly handsome man who could almost always get her to smile. It was difficult to believe that this pretty face had been a deadly fighter pilot during the war. "I can't explain it, Johnny. There's something odd gnawing at my insides that I just can't explain."

Wang dropped his smile. "That weird gut of yours saved us more than once. I'll keep on guard."

Mia waved away his concern. "There's no one out there. It's just nerves. If we're lucky, we might not starve to death getting home."

"Speaking of home, I've figured out our exact position. We're really far past the rim of known space." Wang pointed to a bright star in the distance. "That's Sol 1."

"Really? Are you sure?" It was like seeing a ghost of a murdered friend. "I remember looking in the sky as a little girl. My father used to point to the light in the sky to remind me where we came from. The light faded a few years after he died."

Talking about the stars was the only time when the sarcasm dropped from Wang's voice. "It could be; I am grasping for ideas at the moment, Captain. We all are."

She leaned down and kissed him on the forehead. "I hate to break up the philosophy lesson, but my stomach is feeling awfully neglected. Let's check on what Styles is cooking and then look tomorrow."

The hydrogen tail from the comet stretched out into a triangle that spread over six hundred kilometres. Wang maneuverer the Phoenix just above the cascading waves of hydrogen, skimming along the top, absorbing fuel for the reactor. Light from the thrusters reflected and refracted of the ice into a thousand rainbows through the ship's port. Mia didn't have time to enjoy the spectacle. "This should put us almost to capacity. Why is the tail so huge?"

"Usually a comet's tail is only visible when it gets close to a star, but our engines give off just enough light to get a good look," Wang explained while carefully keeping his hands on the throttle. "It won't last long. We'll burn off most of the dust. With luck, the right people will see it."

"Or with a lot of bad luck, the Kalashnikov will find us and kill us all," Mia said grimly.

Wang ignored her and continued to check his monitors. They were now close enough to collect solid readings on their destination. "Captain, I don't think this is actually a comet."

She tilted her head, confused. "What do you mean? You said it was a comet."

"A comet seemed like the right fit from a distance, especially with the amount of hydrogen in the tail." Wang smiled uneasily, not liking being caught surprised. "Scans estimate that the nucleus of that planetoid has a diameter of almost a thousand kilometres with a super-thick core. This could be an iron ball planetoid, with an unusually thick ice layer."

"If this really is a rogue planetoid with metals, why hasn't it been mined?" Even objects near the rim were tagged by deep miners. "Search for any claim beacons, and see if you can track the orbit to verify that it hasn't been by any of the colonies recently."

Wang fervently entered the calculations into his computer and flicked a switch activating a holo-display. "This old girl has been in a really wide orbit through the lower spiral of the Milky Way. I think this is as close as it's been to a star in almost ten thousand years."

"Does that account for stellar drift?" Mia asked, curious.

Wang rolled his eyes and continued to enter commands into the computer. "Yes, Captain. And look at that, it might have come near Old Earth." He pointed to a beam of light in the display that took the rogue planetoid through a reverse path that lead to Sol 1 - the birth place of humanity. "It would have crossed Old Earth's orbit ten thousand years ago. Small wonder it isn't on any of our charts. The early humans wouldn't have advanced much past fire by then."

"I'm sure that its orbit has changed over the years," Mia argued. "Asteroids, solar wind, or any number of a dozen different hazards could have changed the course, even if only slightly."

"If it has, it was a long time ago," Wang said, putting the sensor readings on the main screen. "The background radiation is fairly unique. I don't think it's been near a star in a very long time. We're on the outside of the orbit of a class M star with weak radiation output. I don't see anything else that could cause these readings."

She smiled for the first time since waking. Maybe their luck was starting to change. "Well then, our profit margin might not be shot after all. If it turns out being worth anything, we can sell it to a university or a mining corp."

Styles entered the command cabin, holding a thermos. "More coffee?"

Mia extended her cup and nodded gratefully. "That's uncommonly kind."

"My life is in your hands. I can't let you fall asleep at the stick," Styles replied as he poured the coffee. He glanced out the command cabin screen, startled to see the massive planetoid in the distance. "I don't understand why the hell we're going so close to that thing?"

Wang offered one of his annoyed faces. "It's a good vacation spot. I'm thinking of retiring there."

Styles stared at the pilot without blinking, opening and closing his hands. "Sometimes I think we've lost a certain element of our survival instinct in our evolution. What sort of weasel could mock a man like that and not expect a smack to the mouth? I could just reach out and snap your neck like a twig, and then finish your coffee before you dropped to the deck. If I felt like taking my time, I could simply choke the life out of you while you stared up at me helpless."

"Shut it, Styles!"

"Captain, I've been slaving away at the stove all day, and I'll follow orders. I just want to know the plan is all," Styles complained.

"That planetoid looks like a proper comet from a distance and thus likely shows up on all sorts of astrological maps. If we're lucky, all sorts of monitoring stations track it," Mia explained.

"You think that one of the stations will see us?"

"Not at first," Mia said. "But we're going to alter the orbit."

"What good will that do? We're years away from anything useful," Styles asked, irritated.

"Cultellus Ursus will detect the course change if we pull this off and with luck, they'll send a ship to investigate."

"And, if we're lucky, this rock will actually be worth something," Wang added. "Scans show potential for heavy metals. Might even find something Mouse can cobble together to replace our slipstream filament so we can leave on our own steam."

"Really?" Styles said. He suddenly seemed a lot less worried.

"If you are done here, Styles suit up and gather your tools. We should take a couple of soil samples so we can register a proper claim either way," Mia said with a knowing wink. "We could all retire from this."

Styles set the thermos on the control board and quickly left the command cabin. "You don't need to take samples to make a claim," Wang replied, amused.

"If all goes well, we're going to be on that rock for quite some time before pushing it into the new orbit. Giving Styles something to do will go a long way towards bringing us a bit of calm," Mia said, smirking. "I figure you've been working hard and deserve a chance to finish your coffee."

Wang clicked the com. "Mouse, we're pulling into our landing orbit."

Mouse's high-pitched voice buzzed on the link. "Understood. I'm strapping myself in now."

"I found a good spot on the southern axis," Mia said. She highlighted a spot on the screen that denoted a small ice valley on the southern hemisphere.

"That's going to make the course change difficult," Wang complained.

Mia nodded. "According to the sensors, that side has the thickest density of metal under the thinnest layer of ice. We'll have the lowest chance of sinking there. Best of a bad lot. The ice is thicker everywhere else, and we could get stuck."

"I'm on it, Captain."

It was a slow, difficult landing. The nucleus was egg shaped, which was odd, as most planetoids have a roughly spherical shape due to gravitational formation. Wang had to match the slight rotation of the comet's nucleus and slowly descend to its orbit. Then, he landed the sleek, one hundred-eighty meter long cargo vessel upon the targeted area. As the weight of the Phoenix pressed heavy upon the ice field, the landing struts dug into the ice and slowly skidded to a stop.

The ground beneath the Phoenix bucked wildly and then stopped. Mia and Wang glanced at each other worried and then when it became clear that the landing had held they laughed.

"Alright, protocol people."

Wang remained in the command cabin to calculate the required thrust to change the course of the planetoid. This was a complication manoeuvre and the crew couldn't afford for him to be wrong.

Mia and Styles donned EVA suits to manually adjust the pitch of the engines and fired holding cables over the skids to hold the ship tight to the planetoid. Once Wang calculated the length of the required burn, they'd be able to push planetoid into a new course, but it would take a full burn to accomplish the task.

Meanwhile, Mouse repaired the holes in the hull and reinforced any weakened structures.

They worked quietly for almost an hour before hitting their first snag. Wang toggled the com-link. "Captain, something is really off with my calculations."

Styles groaned. He was standing on the starboard engine helping align it for the manoeuvre. "Don't tell me we did this for nothing."

Mia silenced Styles with a gesture. "What is it?"

"This rock masses more than it should, even for an iron ball. Take a look." Wang sent a wave of data over the com-link. A series of measurements flashed over the screens in their EVA helmets. "Our scanners can't seem to identify the metals mixed in with the rock under the ice. The density readings are all wrong."

"What does that mean?" Styles asked.

"We'll have to do a longer burn to change course." Mia stepped gingerly onto the ice. She looked at the haze of ice turning to mist and escaping the orbit of the planetoid. "There might be caverns below us. The rock might not be as stable as we were hoping. Before we burn, we should try to see how stable this rock is. Scanners can't penetrate past the ice.

"We'll look around a bit and see if we can bring back a sample." Mia didn't need complications.

The Phoenix wasn't equipped for a full-scale mining operation, but it did have a wide range of tools that could be used for almost any situation. There was always a chance of finding a score on a new planet. Corporations paid huge bounties on planets ripe for terraforming between trade routes. Discovering new or rare elements could jack the bounties so high that it was like winning the lottery a hundred times. The crew had done dozens of surveys, but thus far hadn't found anything of note.

The Phoenix had a large array of search lights and a high beam on to illuminate the area. The ice reflected and magnified the light enough to threaten blindness. The EVA's helmet shield closed, allowing some light through and more reliance of the suits screens. Styles and Mia first carried out giant heaters to melt the top layers of ice. Once activated, the white ice quickly dissipated into a hazy mist and trailed off the limited gravity of the planetoid. There was just enough gravity on the rock to keep them in place, provided they did jump, as a precaution Mia had them fire pitons into the ground and tie themselves to the planetoid.

Once the internal patches were sealed, Mouse donned her EVA suit and joined them outside to weld an additional hull plate to the aft section of the Phoenix.

Mia opened the cargo hold and used the lift to pull out drilling equipment. Styles used a jackhammer to crack the second layer of ice and to build a lower staging area for the burns. They lifted the drill platform onto the staging area and locked it into place. Under standard planetary gravity, it would have taken twenty men and a hydraulic lift to perform this manoeuvre, but Mia and Styles let the low gravity do most of the work and gently guided it into position.

"It would be nice if Wang could get off his pretty ass and help us," Styles grumbled.

"Wang has his job."

"Some job!" Styles sneered. "Sitting on his ass while we're digging in the ice."

"If we want to be rescued, he has to do the math correctly. We have to hit the target arc so this planetoid triggers all the possible monitoring systems. Imagine playing pool on a table the size of a soccer field, and we only get one shot. You think you can do the math, get to it. Otherwise, do the job and quit your bitching!"

"I'm sorry, Captain. There's just something about this rock that makes me edgy, you know?"

Mia understood. She put a gloved hand on his shoulder. He barely felt it through the padded EVA suit, but the comfort of contact seemed to calm him down. Styles was a giant of a man who knew how to use his height to intimidate, but Mia couldn't help but look at him as a younger brother who had somehow out outgrown her over the summer. "Yeah, I understand. Nothing about this rock feels right, but this is our best way out of here. I need you in the game without getting too ornery."

Styles revved the drill a couple times and grinned. "Sure thing."

They drilled thirty meters down before the press stopped cold. The pipes shook wildly. Confused, Mia shut down the engine and motioned to Styles. He turned the retracting crank on and then eased the excess slack from the drill pipes. After it cleared the surface, they bent down near the hole to examine the bit. It had been designed to withstand most common rock and metal formations, but they discovered that it had cracked and then split. "We still have that diamond tipped bit?" Mia asked.

"Been saving it for a rainy day, Captain."

Mia impatiently gestured for Styles to get on track. "Let's see how she does then."

The diamond-tipped drill bit made it five additional meters and then shattered. Styles shook his head with disbelief. "Captain, I worked the mines at Laoshin for two years once. Never seen a high-pressured artificial diamond bit break like that."

Mia tapped the ship-wide com button on her wrist. "Mouse, what do we have in the way of scanning equipment?"

"I have a portable scanner on my belt. It's very short range; ten meters at best," Mouse reported through the hiss of the com-link. "It works pretty well. I use it mostly to check radiation, temperature, and take vids of those hard-to-reach places."

"Can you bring it down? We've got a problem."

They duct-taped the scanner to the end of the drill and set it for general scanning. Styles rigged the pipes to return to the bottom of the shaft, stopping half a meter from the bottom. They waited five minutes and then retrieved it.

"Let's take it inside and view it over lunch," Mia decided. She flicked a switch on her wrist. "Wang, can you take a break and meet us in the galley?"

Wang didn't answer for almost a minute. Mia toggled the com-link twice more before he answered. "Shit, Captain, this isn't working!"

"Wang? You ok?"

There was something unsettling about the tone of the pilot's voice. "No. The numbers aren't working! I should be done by now, but I can't figure out the pitch or the yaw. It's like space changes every time I try to check my work. I must be going out of my mind."

Mia tapped the comm. "Ease up there, Wang. Take a break and meet us in the galley. We have something to take a look at. It's not like we're going anywhere until we're ready."

Styles heated up a spicy chicken gumbo while Mouse, Wang, and Mia replayed the video on the monitor. The shaft passed through thirty meters of ice lit, only by the flashlight on the camera lens. Ice gradually gave way to sheets of dirt and rock. The radiation counter clicks increased in frequency. "I've never seen a frequency like that!" Mouse observed, excited.

"It looks fairly low-level, so it shouldn't be too dangerous," Wang added.

At the end of the shaft, a metallic flat surface gleamed. Mouse froze the image and expanded it. "That looks like some sort of hull plate, Captain."

"Can't we date the metal, the rocks, or something? Maybe this thing was built by aliens?" Styles asked.

Mia scoffed. "We haven't found aliens in five hundred years of space travel. I'm thinking it's unlikely."

"Then why do the big corps have bounties on alien artefacts, huh?" Styles asked.

Wang rolled his eyes. "Sooner or later, it is a mathematical probability that we'll find alien civilizations, but we might not meet them for hundreds or thousands of years. Space is huge! We're barely out of the Old Earth's local playground."

"Exact isotope dating requires a mass spectrometer," Mouse said, slyly. "But I could try to cook something up. Might be fun to study."

Wang sighed and pushed away his bowl. "Does it matter exactly how old the rock is? The metal has to be man-made. During the Sundering, the brass on all of the sides squared away hundreds of ammo dumps, cache boxes, and weapons in little bunkers just like this and then put them on Omega Carriers and dumped them all over. Some of those bunkers have been around for a hundred years."

"There could be all sorts of treasure in there: gold, antique weapons, or even working tech from before the Sundering. Collectors pay a mint for stuff. We gotta break into that vault!" Styles said, serving a plate of steaming sweet rolls.

"Wang, when do we need to start to hit our main burst?"

"We need to start in the next couple of days or we could run out of fuel before we'll hit the proper vector." The pilot shook his head wearily. "I'm having a bit of trouble. The numbers almost have a mind of their own. I'd swear that the constants of the universe are plotting against me."

"You've been up for almost twenty hours. I want you to finish dinner and hit your bunk." Mia folded her arms. "If you won't go to bed willingly, I'll have Styles put you to sleep. I'll leave it to his discretion as to the method of getting you there."

Styles smiled quietly, clearly hoping that Wang would argue. The pilot groaned and accepted the captain's order with a nod.

"I'll have the engines online by tomorrow for when you are ready," Mouse promised.

Mia shook her head. "Yes, you will, but it can wait until morning. Don't argue! You inhaled a bunch of smoke and who knows what else? You get tired and make a mistake, we all die."

Styles raised his hand a bit too eagerly. "Captain, I'd like to volunteer to put Mouse to bed."

The Captain was unamused. "You and I are going to keep watch. No time for games."

Styles grunted his disapproval. Mouse laughed, feeling flattered. It looked like he might protest the arrangements, but instead he took a large bite out of the last sweet roll and chewed savagely.

After dinner, Styles and Mia played a competitive game of backgammon over coffee to determine who would take the first watch. Mia won despite his rampant and obvious cheating. Of course, she wasn't above cheating either, but she rarely got caught.

Mia napped on the couch in the command cabin under a thick blanket while Styles sipped his bitter coffee and monitored the passive scanners. She would have preferred to sleep in her bunk, but knew from experience that Styles would be less likely to slack off if he could physically see her.

Wang and Mouse often wondered why Mia didn't push Styles out an airlock. He was irresponsible, rude, and often had an unpleasant odour. But she knew if she were trapped with her back against the wall in a dark alley, Styles would be there with his knife ready to cut the throats of their enemies.

Her sleep was brief and shiftless. Mia dreamed of the Sundering Wars, but this time she was pregnant. It was difficult running from the trackers through the barbed wire with her full belly, but she was determined that this time they weren't going to get her baby. She wasn't sure what happened to her last child, but it must have been horrible because the thought of it happening again chilled her.

"Captain! Captain! Don't shoot me!"

Mia slowly became aware of the feel of ivory in her hand. She opened her eyes surprised that she was pressing the muzzle of her pistol into Styles' sweating forehead. Confused, she directed her pistol away from him and then quietly holstered it. "What happened?"

His eyes were dilated with primal fear. "Hell if I know, Captain. You were sleeping there on the couch like a baby and then the next thing I know you pressed the gun against my skull and started whispering in some gutter language. Then you started yelling at me and ordering me to get started. I didn't move fast enough and you almost made me eat that pistol."

She shrugged apologetically. "Sorry. I must have been having flashbacks. Sometimes I get bad dreams, but never like this. I about woke in a puddle of my own sweat and piss."

He poured a cup of coffee into Mia's mug and passed it to her. "I've deserved it at one point or another. Just kind of surprised you were going to bite the bullet. Would have been sad if I had to kill you."

It took several moments to calm down. Mia pondered her dream. She had never considered having children; her life was too demanding, but the experience was very real. "How long did I sleep?"

"I'd say just an hour. You still have two hours before your shift." Styles held out his hand gingerly. "Just give me your pistol before snoozing this time. We'll all be a bit safer."

Mia shook her head. The thought of sleep made her gut twitch. "I don't think I'll be able to sleep for a while. You can head to your bunk, if you want."

The comm buzzed before Styles replied. Mouse's voice squeaked two or three octaves higher than normal.

"Captain, something's wrong with Wang. I think I just heard him scream!"

"On my way..."

Styles and Mia rushed to Wang's room. It was in the crew quarters closest to the bridge. Mia drew her pistol and tapped on the porthole. "Wang? You OK in there?"

No answer. Styles banged on the door. "Aw, come on Wang, I just got permission to nap!"

The door slowly unlocked and opened. Mia motioned for Styles to wait and then peeked through the crack. The compartment was completely black. It stank of sweat and rot, which wouldn't have caused her to blink if it was Styles' bunk, but Wang grew up as a military brat and learned early to keep his space clean and orderly. "Why are you sitting in the darkness?"

Wang's sweating face moved closer to the light, causing his almond coloured eyes to squint. His cheeks were puffy and the colour of his skin slightly jaundiced. He waved away her concern. "I was just frustrated, Captain."

Mia flicked on the light switch. The room was small but serviceable. Clothing was spread out everywhere. Wang was out of his flight suit and wearing a pair of sweatpants and an undershirt. His hair was slick with perspiration and his skin was oily. "You were supposed to be sleeping."

His speech was rapid and slurred. Wang couldn't look her in the eyes. "I just couldn't sleep, Captain. You know how when you are worried or have a puzzle, you fixate. It's like that, but a hundred times worse. I really tried to go to sleep, but I kept having flashes about the numbers. I'd go to sleep and wake five or ten minutes later very dizzy. It felt like the ship was turning on her axis."

Mia reached out to touch her friend and feel his forehead. His skin burned with fever. "What were you dreaming about?"

He shook his head. "You'll think I'm crazy, but I'm not. The math doesn't work here. It's like this planetoid reaches out across more than three dimensions. I had to bend my mind a little to think along those lines, but I have it. I figured it out."

Mia tried to smile to encourage the crew. "That's great, Wang! Grab your data pad, and we'll head to the bridge and test it out on the nav computer."

Wang blushed slightly. "I didn't use the data pad, Captain. I did it by hand."

"You did the math by hand?" Mia asked, impressed. A robust computer could easily solve navigation equations if the pilot entered the proper inputs. Solving the problems by hand could take hours or days to account for stellar drift and objects in motion. "You sure it will work? Those are fairly advanced equations."

Wang gestured to his bulkhead. He had written symbols and numbers in a delicate hand across the bulkhead in equation format, but it was gibberish as far as Mia could tell. He liked to practice calligraphy in his off hours claiming that it was good meditation and it kept his hands flexible.

She sniffed once more and hoped that she was wrong about the source of the rot scent. It had an all-too-familiar coppery smell. Mia took a closer look at the equations to examine the strange red paint. Glancing over at his desk, she dipped her finger into the inkwell and then smelled her finger. It was blood. "Show me your hands!"

Wang reluctantly pulled his hands out from behind his back. They were both bandaged in several places. "I ran out of ink."

Mia glanced at the equations once more. "You couldn't have used the datapad?"

His reply was cold and frightening. "Sometimes, finding the right answer requires a sacrifice."

"You don't take razor blades to your fingers! Mia scolded, shaking her friend. "We need you to fly!"

Startled, Wang shivered. He looked around as though in a daze and then gingerly scratched his head. "Uh, Captain, why are you in my bunk?"

"Damn, this boat is turning into a nut house," Styles complained through the hatch.

Mia motioned to the equation in blood and patted Wang on the back. "Looks like I'm not the only one to have a waking nightmare."

"Did I do that?" Wang asked, studying the equations.

"Looks like. Does it mean anything to you?" Mia asked.

The pilot studied the equations for several minutes and when he finally answered; his voice couldn't help but quiver. "This is like listening to the voice of God. I think this is a set of equations for moving an object with more than three dimensions rapidly through space. Physics suggest that certain shapes can extend beyond the normal dimensions thus appearing to be completely non-Euclidean."

"We all learned about tesseracts and hyperspace at school. What's the point?" Mia asked.

Wang shook his head with frustration. "Captain, this equation is the exact inverse of that theory. This is for moving a non-Euclidean construct, like a tesseract, through normal space, instead of putting a ship into hyperspace. Quite amazing, if it's correct."

"I just want to go home," Styles whined quietly.

Mia didn't have the heart to admonish Styles for killing morale. "Something about this place is giving us all nightmares. Best we not sleep for a while until we know what's what." She ran through her mental checklist and realized she had forgotten someone. "Wait! Have you two seen Mouse?" Styles and Wang shook their heads. "Styles take Wang to the command cabin and try to sort out the equations. If he goes crazy, knock him out. I'll see to Mouse."

Styles smiled, flashing his teeth to Wang and bowed. Wang grabbed his datapad, took pictures of the equations, and then followed Styles to the command cabin, lost in thought and calculations.

Mia waited until they had left and then crossed the hallway to her mechanic's room and knocked on the door. "Mouse? Are you there?" She waited in silence for what seemed like a very long time and then banged on the hatch. "I have the override code. I can open any hatch on this ship. Don't make me use it."

A familiar voice squeaked from inside of the compartment. "I'm fine, Captain."

The maglock clicked off, echoing loudly in the silent corridor. Mia sighed with a bit of relief and opened the hatch. "I'm sure you are, but I just need to check on you. Something's not right on this ship, and we need to stick together until I figure out what's what." Mia flicked on the lights to discover Mouse sitting on her bunk, dressed in a white nightshirt, with her arms cradling her legs. "Talk to me, Mouse."

Mouse tried to cover her eyes with her blue hair, but it wasn't quite long enough to hide the tears. "I'm fine, just had a dream about the pens. I couldn't breathe..."

Mia found Mouse years ago in the Jovian Slave Pens. Her parents sold her to escape debt from the Leng Cartel. It took every last credit, but she bought Mouse's freedom. She tried to dump her in a home for wayward orphans three times. Each time, Mouse managed to sneak away and follow her. Eventually, Mia gave up and let Mouse join the crew. "Everyone seems to be having bad dreams tonight. Must be something in the air."

"What about you?"

She didn't like to admit any weakness, but something about her friend's tears brought out Mia's nurturing side. "Yeah, me too."

"The last time I felt so alone and powerless," Mouse said quietly. "I was in chains..."

Mia hugged her mechanic tightly. "There's not a power in all of the stars that will make that happen. We'll fight whatever this is, but we need you up and front. We need our star mechanic in case something goes wrong."

Mouse wiped the snot and tears from her face. "You can count on me, Captain."

She left Mouse to get dressed in private and returned to the command cabin. Styles paced back and forth, watching Wang fervently enter data into the pilot keypad. "How is it you are the only one not going crazy, Styles?"

Styles shrugged. "You keep me grounded. Besides someone has to protect the rest of you from this nonsense."

"How are we doing?"

"It's working, Captain!" Wang announced excitedly. "The numbers are finally making sense. Why didn't I see this before?"

"Why would using those equations make things add up for the burn? Where's the tesseract?" Mia asked.

"That's just it Captain, this planetoid is a tesseract of some sort," Wang said, enthralled.

"This ain't right, Captain. There ain't anyone human who has this sort of technology," Styles said, frantic.

Wang nodded, not looking up from his monitor. "He's right, Captain. This technology is a thousand years ahead of us. That thing trapped in this planetoid is from some sort of advanced species."

Styles rubbed his hands together joyfully. "We're going to be rich. Rich!"

"STOW THE CELEBRATION!" Mia yelled. "We're stuck between the systems without slipstream. We get home, we celebrate. Until then, we have work to do. In case you haven't noticed, this place is screwing with our minds." She pulled her pilot away from the station, forcing him to look into her eyes. "Wang, can we really do this? By that I mean successfully, without all of us dying in horrible agony."

Wang smiled distantly as he turned towards the numbers once more. "Sure thing, Captain." His speech seemed quiet for a moment, as though he was light-years away. Suddenly, his eyes narrowed into focus as though waking from a coma. "It will take a series of bursts from the engines; two quick ones to set the vector and a long one to give us the proper punch to go the distance. That should put us on the correct course for civilization."

Mia toggled the com-link. Her voice echoed throughout the ship. "OK, here's the deal. Wang's will announce a countdown at five minutes. He's going to start the first of a series of bursts from the main engines. Mouse, I need you to make sure the engines are ready for the stress, and if there are any problems, to cut power. Don't bother asking me first, I trust your judgment."

The mechanic's squeaky voice warbled through the com-link. "Give me fifteen minutes and I think I can have the engines prepped."

"Perfect. Styles and I are suiting up again in case there's a problem outside."

Mia studied the landscape of rock and ice through the fogged porthole. The desolation of the valley's empty planes crept upon her as Wang started the countdown. The e Phoenix's engines cycled, ready to ignite. Mouse fussed over the fuel mixture and kept her hands steady on the controls in case of a burn out.

There was a cheery calm in the pilot's voice that worried Mia. Wang had never failed the crew. Why did something feel wrong? Mia caught herself rubbing her stomach. She opened her mouth to order a shutdown, but then stopped. What choice did they have in all of this? If they didn't try Wang's equations, they would all die of starvation.

The pilot's voice echoed over the com-link. "Five. Four. Three. Two. One."

Blue flames flared from the Phoenix's twin engines. The results were visually disappointing. "Is it working? I can't tell." Styles asked, trying to look past Mia.

"It's working!" Wang announced. "We're changing the vector. Shut-down to start in ten minutes."

Vibrations shook the Phoenix. Mia got hold of the railing to keep from falling on her ass. She pulled herself back to the porthole. This wasn't a problem with the ship; the entire planetoid was beginning to shake and quake.

Heat from the engines began to melt the ice, causing the Phoenix to sink further into it. The blast ignited the hydrogen tail illuminating a river of fire several kilometres long. Styles grinned with a child's delight. "That almost looks like a Phoenix, Captain."

Strange that Styles, of all of the people on the ship, is holding it together the best, Mia thought. What did that say about him? "Let's just hope that the right kind of people see it and come to help."

"I'd rather fight pirates to death than starve out in the middle of nowhere," Styles explained. "You can kill a pirate. Death ain't so easy."

As the ice and rock shook and crumbled from the planetoid, sections of the metal interior began to become visible. Wang announced the end of the blast over the clinks. "One minute to shut down." The Phoenix sank further into muck, until it settled against the metallic foundation, and the extremely low temperature froze the liquid once more. Mia tried not to panic as the ice slowly covered the porthole in an oblique haze. This was all part of the plan. Why did she feel a panic coming on?

"Starting shut-down procedure now."

Mouse cut the engines and the thrusters slowly died. The spark from the planetoid's tail quickly fizzled into the black void of space dotted with thousands of visible stars. "Two hours until the next burn," Wang announced over the com-link. There was a slight pause, and then the pilot toggled the link once more. "Captain, you have to see this. Everyone, come to the command cabin!"

The burn had shifted the ground considerably. From the high-angle view of the ship's command cabin, the horizon of the planetoid nucleus became visible. There was a crack in the crust that revealed more of the metal structure. It was vast beyond belief. Six dividers curved the egg-shaped object into inhuman and obscene arcs and angles.

Mouse blinked. "It's a ship!"

"It's got to be three kilometres long!" Styles added. "Think anyone is alive in there?"

"I don't see how that would be possible from the dating of the ice and rock. That thing has been covered for ten thousand years," Mouse said, peeking from behind the Captain.

The crew was looking to her for answers. She turned to her pilot. "Are we still lodged in a good position?" Mia asked.

Wang checked the readings from his monitors. "I think so, Captain. The planetoid lost quite a bit of ice and rock during the burn, but we're lodged between that weird divider and a good portion of the remaining rock. We'd have to try to disengage the tie downs and shake loose. I think we're safe from additional quakes."

"See if we can scan this thing now that the rocks are gone," Mia ordered.

Curious, Mouse hopped into the co-pilot's chair. "I'm reading more of that low-level radiation."

Wang charted the size and scope of the object on his monitor. "There's a possible opening at the apex of the object."

"OK, good. We'll have someplace to start looking. Once we get done with the next burst, we can suit up and take the skiff. That will give us ten hours to explore, before we have to do the final burn."

The second burn went without incident. The plateau remained stable, and the Phoenix was secure. Wang reported that the planetoid was now heading on the proper course to get noticed. Life rarely was simple or easy for Mia, and when there were no further problems, she started to wonder why. The crew prepared themselves for any foreseeable possibility, but there was a potential alien spacecraft on the horizon, and thus the typical rules went right out the porthole. It felt foolish to attempt to visit the craft, but what else could they do?

The sensible thing would be to leave at least one of the crew on the Phoenix to keep watch against the pirates, but she didn't feel right leaving any of them alone. Wang seemed to be entranced by the numbers and she had no idea how he might react if allowed to be alone. Mouse had one foot on the grave of despair and they needed her tech skills on the run. Styles seemed to have his head in the game, but she need him in case they all found trouble.

The crew slipped into their EVA suits and strapped themselves into the hoverskiff. Styles used one of the industrial heaters to melt the ice from the aft section of the Phoenix, and then he opened the hatch to the launch bay. Wang lowered the skiff onto the surface of the planetoid. Mouse oriented them with the scanner, and then they moved away from the ship, surfing along the ice and leaving behind a serpentine trail of melted and crushed ice and rock.

Mouse looked up to see a rotating galaxy of stars and had to steady herself. Mia smiled and put her arm on her mechanic's shoulder. "The universe is really big. The trick is to remember perspective."

Ten minutes later, they arrived at the object's apex. Now that it had been freed from the rocky crust and the ice, they could see that it had a number of visible joints in the hull, making it clear that this section opened. Wang scanned the area. "It looks like some sort of launch bay."

"How do we open it?" Styles asked.

Wang unstrapped himself from the hoverskiff and hopped outside to investigate. "I'm not sure that we do. If this were a human ship, the controls for that would be coded somehow. Or there would be a manual way to open it in case of an emergency. If this thing has been floating around for ten thousand years, its crew is likely dead."

Mouse joined Wang, eager and excited, forgetting her fear. "I'd imagine there has to be an airlock, right? Most emergency airlocks are designed to let anyone in. Getting past the inner door is usually the trick."

Mia smiled at her mechanic and then turned to the crew. "Scatter about and look for anything that might be a hatch or an airlock. Keep in constant communication."

The crew investigated the area, dispersed widely to increase the odds of finding something. The landscape was a hodgepodge of metal covered in rock and ice. Wang eventually toggled the com. "I found it! Just like I dreamed."

Mia let that statement go by unchallenged, but her stomach turned. They all made their way to the hatch, staring at it as if it was going to open itself.

"Mouse, think you can open it?"

"I'll see what I can do. Can't promise it will be pretty." Mouse knelt next to the alien airlock and opened her toolbox. Mia watched as the mechanic experimented with the strange controls that she found inside one of the deep cylinders near the hatch. "These critters must have really long fingers."

The hiss of atmosphere washed past them, as the small hatch opened. The entry was tall, but thin. They each entered, but Styles had to move through the passage sideways due to his broad shoulders. Mouse closed the door behind them and turned a triangle to lock the door. "The other side should open as soon as this room is pressurized."

Atmosphere vented into the chamber. Red lights flickered. Mouse took readings from her wrist scanner. "Atmosphere is steady, almost Old Earth levels. But I'm reading weird contaminates. We should keep on the suits."

"What sort of contaminates?" Styles asked, horrified.

Mouse shrugged. "Unknown biological elements, which I suppose makes a certain sort of sense. The computer registered a number of strange carbon molecules."

The lock on the interior door clicked and then that section of the wall silently folded down onto the deck. "That was brilliant!" Mouse exclaimed.

Beyond the egress there was only darkness. They all adjusted their helmet lights to the gloom. Mouse trigged the flashlights on either side of her helmet. She placed her hand on the internal bulkheads. "The walls are perfectly smooth. No cracks or lines. I can't even see how the plating goes together. How's that possible?"

"We need to secure this area before we start marvelling at the wonders." Mia nodded to Styles. He clicked the safety off his rifle with an overtly macho grunt. "Don't fire on anyone or anything unless I give the order."

Mouse was horrified. "Is that needed, Captain?"

"We're not a threat to them, Captain," Wang argued softly. He spoke again as an afterthought. "They are dreaming, unaware of our existence."

Styles edged his rifle towards Wang. "How do you know that? How does he know that, Captain?"

Mia agreed with Styles for once. "Answer the question."

"I don't know, Captain. Things come to me. I think maybe whatever's in there communicates by dreams."

"I thought whatever was in there was long dead," Styles countered, nervous.

Wang shrugged. "Maybe some things can't die. Death might just be a mortal concept."

Mia and Styles exchanged a worried glance. She gestured to her eyes. He nodded and then turned his head flashlight beams to max and entered through the hatch. Mouse and Wang followed, trailed by the Mia.

Red and blue light glowed from multi-coloured crystals woven into the metal of the walls. As they approached, the lights intensified, as though the vessel registered their presence and needs. The walls and sections curved into alien oval shapes. "It almost looks like we're inside a living creature and that's the skeletal system," Styles observed.

They wandered through the passages lost, encountering similar locked hatches at every intersection. It was a gruelling, time consuming process. "You'd think that the ship would have alarms. Or that there would be an easy way to open these doors," Mouse complained.

"The builders of this vessel didn't need locks. They had servants that simply did their will," Wang explained. "We simply lack the ability to communicate with the ship."

The hatch opened as though triggered by Wang's words. They progressed forward without hindrance. Doors, hatches, and access panels opened upon their arrival, almost by will, until they reached an expansive metropolis.

It lay under a gigantic domed section of the vessel somewhere near the presumed forward section. It was built, or rather carved, from some sort of black stone into a horrific landscape that boasted of pyramids, strange apertures, and menacing spires. Mia set her visor to zoom to get a closer look at the city. Horrific grotesque faces were carved into the walls with twisted expressions of agony and elation.

Mia activated her external speakers. "Is anyone here? My crew and I are stranded and need help!"

The dark city of black stone and metal remained silent. It was an uneasy quiet. Mouse touched one of the walls and checked her scanner. "Captain, feel the wall!"

There was a subtle vibration, much like on board any ship. "This wasn't there before."

Mouse nodded. "Something turned on the engines."

"The vessel is awakening," Wang added dreamily.

"Maybe we can get some help then," Mia said, hopeful. "Mouse, think you can find the engine?"

Mouse checked her scanner and thought for a moment or two. "I think it is closer to the centre of the vessel, but I'm detecting a shaft on the other end of the city. Looks like some sort of transport system. This place is huge."

On the other side of the city, as Mouse predicted, was a transport shaft. Stepping on it activated a gravity propulsion system, which carried them gently to the next stop within seconds. They made three such trips before entering a massive chamber surrounded by crimson crystals embedded in sleek metallic walls. In the centre of the chamber was a large heart-like object that pumped out fluids and energy through dozens of tubes, which seemed to serve as arteries. There were several consoles with soft, gelatinous buttons.

Mouse pointed to a series of coils connected to the base of the engine. "That's some sort of fold system, Captain! It's bigger and more complex than I've ever seen."

"Think they would work on the Phoenix?"

The mechanic examined one of the coils coming from the beating engine and then shook her head. "Maybe if I had several months and a fully equipped machine shop I could build some sort of adapter. I understand the basics of the technology, but I don't have any practical knowledge." The mechanic studied the spidery-styled machinery. "A coil is just a filter for charging the fold drives. If this ship uses a coil system, then they must have some sort of filament. If we could find one of those we could limp back to port."

"How many would you need?"

"I think just one would do the job," Mouse explained. "We could open one of these coils and snatch it. I doubt it would even hurt the system since there are so many redundant elements. This ship requires a lot of juice to get moving compared to the Phoenix."

"Do it," Mia ordered.

Mouse experimented with the console, attempting to control the flow of the energy. There was a telepathic diagram of the vessel that project into their minds. Mia stepped away from the engine until she no longer felt the probe inject the data into her mind. "I'm not sure I like the idea of telepathic controls."

"The builders use dreams and thoughts to share information and concepts not limited by words and language," Wang explained. "That's how I know so much about this place instinctually. I'm the pilot so maybe that's why they contacted me first."

"My brain is off limits," Styles protested as he cradled the rifle.

"Look at this, Captain!" Mouse pointed to something in the air that she only saw in her mind. "Everything that we'd want to know about this vessel is right here."

"Why don't you and Wang run down everything for us?" Mia suggested. "I'd rather Styles and I stay telepathy-free at the moment."

Wang and Mouse took turns detailing information about the vessel. It appeared as though eighty percent of it was hollow, empty space. There were two fold drives at the end of the bottom curve. The engine produced enough energy to power an entire planet, but Mouse couldn't tell exactly what was charging it. "Wow, this thing is powered by a quantum singularity!"

"Yeah?"

"We need to be careful, or this engine could suck us all through a tiny hole and implode everything," Mouse said, cheerfully.

"It's awakening," Wang announced.

The pilot bumped the mechanic slightly and pressed a series of buttons. The engine lay in the centre of a dome that appeared to have a diameter of roughly fifty meters. The walls of the dome faded, becoming transparent. The vast remainder of the object swirled around them in sea of murky fluid. "It's like we're underwater! Could the aliens be aquatic?" Mouse asked.

There was a flurry of movement, causing waves of motion in the dark liquid against the dome. An amorphous tentacle of inky protoplasmic tar touched the crystal. Hundreds of postulating luminous, sickly green bubbles crept along it. The creature was long enough to wrap itself completely around the dome. "Look at that thing!"

"Keep working, Mouse!"

Having shutdown the power to one of the coils, Mouse unbuckled her toolkit and began the process of cutting off a section of the filter. It was large enough that Mouse would be able to make several filaments strips with just this single coil.

After her second cut, the engine purred intensely.

"This is only a servitor," Wang explained. "The ship is showing me thousands of cities built across the universe. It awaits their masters."

"A slave?" Mouse asked.

Inhuman flesh pressed together to create sounds and alien words. "Tekeli-li! Tekeli-li!"

"It's a living tool called a shoggoth without an independent will of its own according to the ship. An independent strain mutated and developed sentience on a world visited thousand years ago. My God! Old Earth! These creatures were on Old Earth a hundred thousand years ago."

"Tekeli-li!"Tekeli-li!"

Mouse flinched. "What does that mean?"

"It's the call of the slaves to their slavers. The only voice their masters gave them," Wang explained. "The ancients left them alive in their pens, alone in the dark knowing that their slaves were effectively immortal while they slept."

A colossal, ravenous eye opened within the murky primordial sea and focused on the crew inside of the dome. The eye was much larger than the dome and seemed to gleam with unnatural presence. The burden of the gaze weighed down upon them. It emitted a high-pitched scream that, although muted by the dome and the liquid, pierced their ears.

"Back to the ship!" Mia ordered

"Captain, we have to help them!" Mouse protested.

"We restarted the cycle too early, Captain. The Old Ones haven't properly regenerated, but they are strong enough to snuff us out in an instant," Wang added. "The shoggoth rebelled against them on Old Earth once. I think they would again, if they had a chance."

"If it can help us escape without eating us, I'm all for it, once we have the filament. Mouse, how are we doing?"

Mouse flashed the thumbs-up sign. She helped Wang lift the chunk of heavy, dense metal shaped into a hook and set it on the ground. "This is heavy."

"How do we help them?" Mia asked.

Wang banged against the wall. "We need to open their pens!"

"You lot get on the transport and prepare the filament." Styles glanced up at the crystalized glass dome and chuckled. "I can open the pens."

Mia nodded, understanding his plan. "You sure this is a good idea? They might try to kill you along with their masters."

"I'll be right behind you, Captain." Styles cocked his rifle and started aiming at the apex of the dome. "You wanna know why this place doesn't affect me as much as the rest of you? I already saw the worst the universe could shuffle at me during the wars. Wanna know what that was?" Mia didn't have the courage to ask. "Me. I saw what I was willing to do to survive. Run!"

They ran as fast as they could to return via the gravity shaft. Styles changed the setting on his weapon and fired a series of bursts at the dome. Explosions rocked the vessel, forming a long serpentine crack in the crystal. The shoggoth slammed itself against the crack again and again. "Tekeli-li!"Tekeli-li!" it cried.

"Same to you," Styles muttered and joined the crew on the gravity lift. Their passage was blocked by a small mob of gibbering, bloated creatures. They were grey, lean sapiential humanoids with large bulbous yellow eyes and shivering webbed hands and feet. They glistened in the light as though they had just slithered from the muck.

Mia held out her hands, submissively. "We don't want to fight! We need help!"

The foul, mob screeched hideously and bared fangs. They charged hungry for the kill. Mia drew her pistols and fired driving them back only for a moment.

"Duck to the side!" Styles cocked his rifle, set it to auto-burst, and laid down cover fire. The blasts devastated the first wave of the creatures, rending their flesh and splattering their blood to the deck. The carnage briefly sapped their courage until an angry howl from the muck motivated them.

Mia joined Styles in forming a firing line that prevented the creatures from overwhelming them. The first creature to survive the hail of bullets leapt upon Styles and bit into his arm. The sharp fangs tore through the EVA suit and cut into his arm.

Styles screamed and fell back against the bulkhead. Mia turned and blasted the creature's head from its body, but that allowed the others to ramble forward.

"My suit's been torn!" Style grumbled.

Mouse set her end of the filament down and fished a suit patch from her pouch. She peeled off the sticker and slapped it over the hole. "Try not to touch the sticky part too much with your skin. I can't remember if I have the solvent or not," Mouse warned.

As soon as they cleared the path, the crew hopped on the transport system. At each stop, more of the creatures waited in ambush. It was a long trudge back to the ship.

"Why don't they shut down the transport system?" Styles asked.

"Maybe they don't know how. They don't look all that bright. Maybe they've been around so long they forgot," Mia suggested.

Wang's eyes were dilated. He began to slow down. Mouse had to constantly yell at him to keep moving. As they ran through the dark city, more of the creatures attacked. Twice, Wang wandered away from the crew almost into the creature's arms, but Mia's determination and occasional crack shots with her pistol stopped them cold.

As the airlock came into sight, the mob seemed to explode in numbers. Thousands of them massed together into a surging wave of fangs. Mia checked her ammo and glanced over to Styles, who just shook his head. They had to run out sooner or later, she just wished it was a little bit later.

Mouse quickly jimmied the airlock and ushered the rest of them through. Slipping inside, she closed it behind her and then unhooked the small blow torch from her belt.

"Mouse, what the hell are you doing?"

"We don't know they can't follow us, Captain. I'll just melt the hinges a little."

Mouse went to work as the creatures slammed against the hatch and wildly tried to open it. Satisfied, Mouse flashed the Captain a thumb's-up. As they exited the airlock, Wang glanced back wistfully. As the others ran towards the hoverskiff, he stood listless. Mouse, who was running with the other end of the coil, was jerked back. "Wang! Come on!"

"Something very beautiful is going to happen here," Wang stated.

"We don't have time for this," Mia complained. "Styles bring him."

Styles quickly subdued Wang, who didn't defend himself. Styles attached a cable to Wang and then just dragged him along, letting him hang behind him the light gravity. Mia and Styles dragged him back to the hoverskiff and locked him in the back seat. Mouse pulled the filament awkwardly into the hoverskiff. It was close to weightless, but still different to manoeuvre.

As the hoverskiff sped towards the Phoenix, the planetoid started to quake once more. The alien spacecraft started its engines. Plates of metal hull flaked off the surface. Mia had to dodge several plates spinning off the hull, hurtling into space. As the Phoenix entered their view, Mia sent out the command to open the landing pad. The crew slid into safety and quickly sprang into action.

Styles and Mouse carried the filament to the engine room. Mia took off her helmet and shook Wang. Worried, she slipped off his helmet and slapped him across the face. "Wang! Listen to me. We need you. I need you."

Flinching, Wang opened his eyes. "I can hear it, Captain. Beautiful. Terrible. Demanding worship."

"I need you to get to the bridge and get us off this rock, now!"

Wang wiped the tears and sweat from his face. "I'll do my best, Captain."

"You'll do better than that, now get to it."

The pilot slipped into his familiar, comfortable command cabin and immediately seemed to feel better as though here he understood the universe.

"Mouse is connecting the filament to the jump drive, but the main engines should be safe enough," Mia warned. "We need to not take any hits in the aft section while she is calibrating it."

Wang grinned with confidence. He hit the lateral thrusters and the Phoenix strained against the cables holding it to the planetoid. The engine groaned. Mia felt sick and was preparing to head outside and cut them free. The engine whined louder before she was thrown to the deck as the cable broke and they were free. The Phoenix took flight over the object. Wang dodged several plates. The planetoid seemed to be cracking, like an egg, allowing the vessel to escape. Sections of the alien hull shattered then drifted away. Buildings and sections of the dark city floated away through the holes. Giant tentacles poked out and tore at the object, attempting to rend it open.

Mia toggled the com-link as the devastation moved closer and closer to the Phoenix. "Mouse, the faster the better."

Styles replied back. "She's almost done, Captain. Said it wouldn't take long to charge up."

The object's shell of the object crumbled leaving a scattered array of junk, rocks, and ice. A gargantuan gelatinous behemoth with a single glowing eye and a hundred vicious mouths arose from the debris. It had a dozen tentacles, all of them reaching for the Phoenix.

Wang pulled the Phoenix into a roll to avoid the first tentacle, but under thrusters there was no way the Phoenix could escape.

Mouse toggled the com. "I jerry-rigged it, Captain. Hit it. Either way, you won't be able to get mad at me."

Wang activated the main engines. The Phoenix raced forward at full power. The beast somehow kept pace. "It's following us, Captain. How the hell can it do that?" Styles asked.

"Maybe it was made to fly through space? Who knows? We need to fold now. Mouse, how long?"

"Maybe a minutes to a solid charge."

Wang took the Phoenix through its paces, avoiding the tentacles and the creature. As the creature moved within striking range, the green light flashed on his console, indicating that the fold generators were charged. The computer had already charted a course, so Wang hit the fold button.

The Phoenix folded into hyperspace. The quick fold jerked Mia's stomach, but she sighed, relieved. Wang's eyes widened in terror as the tentacles continued to chase them, even though hyperspace. "Punch it!"

The tentacles were able to chase the Phoenix a short distance, but couldn't keep pace. Slowly, the hideous tentacles faded from view. Mia slumped into her chair, relieved. Her crew had survived and the ship was intact.

"We should hit our target in about five days, Captain," Wang announced.

Mia broke out her hidden bottle of bourbon from Old Earth. The crew had done well, and her nerves were shot, so it seemed like a perfect time to celebrate.

Styles held out his arm while Mouse sterilized the abrasion wound. The bite had infected his arm with green pus, but thankfully the pain was fading. He would need a doctor, but with luck the wound would heal. Mia poured each of her crew a drink. "We survived!"

The others, except Wang toasted. "Something wrong, Wang?"

Wang sighed. "Captain, that thing is still out there and now it knows we exist."

"So, it will never find us, right? I mean it can't track us across the stars, can't it?"

"Not us. It doesn't care about us. Humans, I mean. It knows where we are now. What we are. What we can be if it lets us live. It pulled everything from my mind. Star charts, histories, everything. It's intelligent, Captain, a billion years ahead of us, and it hates us for our freedom. It believes it created life on Old Earth and was punished for it?"

"You were in contact with it, somehow, weren't you?"

"The Old Ones came from a dead galaxy, eons ago. Fading light from a distant, dying star. They ruled that galaxy, and one day the monster they created will rule this one."

Fleeing into the Darkness of Disaster

Gregory L. Norris

The crisis that sent Walter Anchester and I past the bulkheads and into the cursed realm of Exham Priory began generations earlier, when that part of the Euphrates first went dark. As legendry goes, religious zealots in the form of the nefarious Magna Mater cult took possession of the Northwest Biosphere, one of four vast open-air living spaces attached to the topside superstructure of our generational starship. In the tunnels that lead closest to that lost, mysterious expanse, the cult's hated name and numerous arcane symbols were long ago scrawled or painted across the bulkheads, many of the later in what was confirmed to be human blood.

Since the loss of the Northwest Biosphere and, presumably, all who lived there, Euphrates had limped forward on sub-light engines, aimed toward an unthinkably distant destination: a small blue globe known as PL1-311. A moon, really, in orbit around a gas giant whose atmosphere crawled with numerous red eyes, Euphrates—along with The Great Wall, Acropolis, Fertile Crescent, and their eleven sister ships—set out to reach mankind's new beginning and second chance. That was four hundred years ago. The latest chapter of the crisis that sent us through the bulkheads and to Exham Priory began six days ago. God help us.

Worries over diseases like the blight that wiped out not only crops but also seeds on Earth had been a factor in Euphrates' and the exodus fleet's design. Four biospheres, each separated from the others by safeguard measures, primarily a system of emergency bulkheads, would insure protection should infection break out in any one section of the ship. We had first noticed the evidence in gnaw marks through the corn and in the rows of root vegetables upon which the people of the Southeast Biosphere depended. No vermin existed here, or shouldn't. While the genetic biodiversity of Earth travelled with us, the material remained safely stored in a life bank, which all four biospheres were outfitted with in readiness for planet-fall when we eventually arrived to our new home.

My name is Garson Delapore, and I am the Southeast's Primary Agritect. For generations, my family has supervised the husbandry of our land, which presently feeds one thousand souls. We have maintained that number in our populace since the light-drive was sabotaged, and communication with the Northwest went dark and silent. There was twice that number here before.

Walter Anchester, my trusted Secondary, brought the situation to my attention. "Look."

A man of few words, his one telegraphed the nightmare soon to unfold. A row of corn at the outer edge of the agristretch had been shredded, the ears gnawed down to cob. We discovered a similar situation in the nearest bed of vegetables. We couldn't afford the loss of even the woodiest, most unpalatable crops; strict trade rules imposed by our fellow travellers to the Northeast and Southwest had forced us to be self-sufficient.

"Let's check the seed," I said, and drew in a deep breath.

I instantly knew more was wrong than only our gutted crops. The air in the agristretch had always been pleasant—lush and green and, I assumed though I had never been there, earthy. Now, I detected a wrongness, something dark and musty, the smell of the rot that had invaded our isolated society and now threatened to destroy it.

The seed stores were protected behind powerful armoured doors. No one had accessed them beyond what was expected, according to security logs. But as the doors trundled open, Anchester and I immediately found further proof of the wrongness: bins of sealed seed lay spilled and pilfered, and a sickening fetor hung over the interior of the chamber. The spilled treasure crawled with a kind of fungus, which we found coating the rest of our crops in the days that followed.

Blight," I said to Anchester, Avello, Patton, and Helaine Canfield, our community liaison, after all had gathered around the conference table in Citizen's Hall. "We'll need to ration. We've burned the infected crops and salvaged what seed we could."

Of course, there were questions, and also lies. My Secondary and I didn't tell them about the other thing we discovered in our seed stores. Armoured doors hadn't been forced, no. But in one far corner of the structure, behind overturned storage bins, we discovered a rip in the reinforced metal fabric of wall. Conduit ran back there, though parts of that, too, had been removed. Gnawed through, by powerful teeth.

And, in the fields, we discovered holes in the soil, leading deep down into the hydroponic sub-layers. Something had tunnelled through the ground and into our biosphere.

They couldn't know what we'd discovered. If word got out before we were done gathering our data, a panic would sweep across the Southeast Biosphere, leaving us likely in the same predicament as the doomed populace to the Northwest.

"Something got in, past the bulkheads," I said.

Anchester's eyes filled with dark emotion and said all that his tongue refused to.

We harvested early everything we could, and did our best to smooth down the tunnels with soil-tending equipment. Eyes were ever upon the agristretch, so we went about our business, putting forth an illusion of normality as unfeeling stars shined beyond the transparent dome and the vast bulb simulating sunlight burned at twelve-hour intervals.

Two days later, more tunnels appeared, and the sour smell of rot in the air deepened. Our attempt at concealing the truth had failed.

In retrospect, we went by the book, Anchester and I. We did what should have been done in order, as may have our counterparts in the Northwest Biosphere leading up to the tragedy that befell them following the launch of Euphrates from a blighted Earth fouled by cultists like the Magna Mater and others of similar wretchedness—the followers of the Hellstone, and Crecelius the Yellow, and Atys, who made rivers run red in three of the six remaining terrestrial continents according to legendry, B.E.—Before Exodus. Anchester and I did what we thought would save our people and ourselves.

"Can I trust you?"

He nodded. I led him to the maglev, which once connected all four biospheres and travelled to the farthest corners of the Euphrates' damaged star-drive. Now, the system went only as far as the Central Nexus, heart of the vessel's superstructure. Bulkheads automatically triggered after the main engines were sabotaged by those Magna Mater devils blocked access to the remaining biospheres, our only communication with our neighbours after that via regular broadcast updates. I could only wonder if reports of the blight had travelled past our borders to the two remaining quads, as they were no doubt spreading through our citizenry.

We departed the maglev carriage, and pressed forward the rest of the way on foot, sona-rifles at ready. I only hoped the high-intensity sound bullets would prove effective against anything we encountered in the realm beyond those hated and arcane symbols.

Track lights fed by solar power ran at half-strength. I wondered if the stories were true, about how the Nexus had once been a thriving centre of trade between the four quads. Little refuse lined the dusty floors and walls to prove it, though it's entirely plausible that even the most banal of castoffs had been repurposed over the centuries.

"Why are we here, Delapore?" Anchester asked, shocking me out of my wandering thoughts.

I turned and saw that his face had taken on an ashy pallor in the sparse glow of track lights being starved on the glow of unnamed stars. Rarely had I travelled far from the comfort of the agristretch, but I remembered one of my father's stories, and mused that my shoe treads were now following his from years long ended.

"Direct vision ports, past the Nexus," I said. "In my father's youth, on an expedition with his father, he told me of one that faces the Northwest. He said the dome was visible, and through it, a glimpse of Exham Priory where their seeds stores were housed."

Our voices, low as they were, reverberated through the vast throat of the corridor. My imagination painted an eerie picture of that abandoned place, Exham Priory, a collection of towers and wings, like a medieval castle on Old Earth, only one made of metal and composites rather than blocks of stone.

The reality was far different after Anchester and I moved northwest at the junction, into an area where the lights had failed, and we reached the first of the direct vision ports. Following the sabotage of the star-drive engines when the system of emergency bulkheads was activated, so, too, were most of the blast covers throughout the ship. Not so here. The first space window we encountered offered a view toward home soil, the Southeast Biosphere. The vast domed space rose up from the superstructure, visible in the distance, alive and, yes, quite beautiful to see. I'd never beheld such a sight.

But as I stood and gazed at our quad, the same musty door of wrongness I remembered from the agristretch assailed my nostrils, and I experienced a vision of some twisted abomination, not quite human anymore, more vermin in identity, standing in my exact spot, staring at the Southeast Biosphere with rabid hunger.

Our glimpse through the half-shuttered direct vision port onto the Northwest Biosphere existed beyond the first of those ruddy scrawls across the bulkheads—an open eye that dripped more than wept, and a rough image of a tree wreathed not in branches but tentacles, above which I read the cursed words: Ungl Ungl Hellstone Steryx Magna Mater!

I caught Anchester standing frozen; his focus fixed upon the tree symbol, and set a hand upon his shoulder. My Secondary jumped. His grip on his sona-rifle tightened. We approached the space window and faced past, present, and our uncertain future.

The vision from my youth superimposed over the day's reality, only there in afterimage between blinks. The Northwest Biosphere dominated the wedge of vision port left unprotected by a stalled blast shutter. Exham Priory stood clear, surrounded by dense greenery. The dead realm was nowhere near as lifeless as we all believed.

"The seeds," I said, and paced the patch of dirt that should have been home to thriving vegetable crops but wasn't. "If the stores in there are still intact...even if they aren't, if there are heritage crops growing wild now in there that we can bring back with us."

My mind raced. My stomach knotted, the cramps born of nerves, not hunger. Not yet, though that was inevitable. A thousand hungry mouths would burn through our stores in short time. We needed to act. We needed to heal what had been done to us and fix what was damaged.

"You and I are going through the bulkheads, into Exham Priory," I told Anchester.

He nodded, and, after leaving our team in charge of tilling and replanting—and sealing the holes in the granary, we departed for that cursed no-man's land.

Navigating back through Euphrates' Central Nexus was relatively easy, and required no more than the equivalent of four hours' worth of the solar bulb's morning light. Without maglev service, however, the kilometres of corridor and bulkheads past the direct vision ports would be arduous and time consuming.

Again, I asked myself why our ancestors—among who were Delapores in comparable duty positions to the one I occupied—hadn't done more to help the Northwest quad's citizenry. Was it the dark stain of the Magna Mater that had cropped up among others who were surely innocent and had no part in the sabotage of the Euphrates' star-drive? Magna Mater cultists had, reportedly, gazed upon their handiwork of an irrevocably desecrated Earth with pride, so the legendry went. In condemning the cultists, had we also doomed those not responsible for the unthinkable crime of wholesale slaughter?

Such was the nature of my thoughts on that long and dark march away from the Nexus, and toward whatever waited at the far end of the corridor.

We had prepared well, with flashlights that easily attached to our sona-rifles, meagre provisions, and my copy of the original schematics, which we used to navigate our way through unfamiliar territory. I had also, smartly, saved my father's copy of the Primary Access Codes, stamped on a yellowed strip of laminated paper, which had passed all the way down the Delapore line. All Primaries since the launch of Euphrates possessed such a failsafe. If the residents of the Northwest Biosphere were, indeed, all deceased, and none had reset their codes following the destruction of the ship's main engines, the codes might serve us well once we reached the shuttered bulkheads.

I needn't have worried on that one count.

Anchester and I pressed on, our flashlights illuminating more references to the Magna Mater, more madness, scrawled across the walls. What seemed days instead of hours after crossing through the Central Nexus, meeting point between the biospheres, we came upon a colossal fissure in the deck plates, one easily measuring three dozen meters across. The split seemed to originate in a break between the original welds and was, I assumed, a result of the powerful eruptions that had taken out the star-drive. The jolt had sent sections of deck spilling down, down into darkness.

I shined my light into the gap. The wreckage lay canted in jagged chunks. There was no going forward, at least not by the route we intended. A scan of the Euphrates diagrams revealed that the corridor opened beneath us led in the same direction, straight into the underbelly of Exham Priory, the former cultural, political, and religious capitol of the Northwest Biosphere.

Also among our preparations were two solid lengths of rappelling cable. I glanced at my trusted Secondary, that man of few words, who nodded and affixed the cords to the nearest support column. We were already steeped in the madness flowing out of control in that section of the ship and into ours. How infected the situation was, however, had yet to reveal itself fully.

The wrongness first spoke to us as we slowly descended, one-handed, with rifles held parade-ready and flashlight beams strafing this underworld we had willingly entered.

It manifested in a scratching of nails along the walls that filled my insides with primitive revulsion, a race memory from the home world that my race had destroyed and then escaped; a world neither I nor the last six generations of Delapores had known. It seemed to my ears that the scratching came from behind the bulkheads, a sound of rats moving on the other side of the walls. Both Anchester and I swept the stygian realm around us with our flashlights, but the beams only revealed the pitted, centuries-old metal. Through gaps in the bulkheads, I imagined eyes—hundreds if not thousands. Dark lenses devoid of compassion, tracking us as we descended. Gooseflesh dimpled across my arms.

We reached the broken deck plates and made the rest of the distance to the corridor floor in decent time. I remember setting my shoe treads down and, at first, worrying that Anchester and I would topple through the porous metal and even deeper into the Euphrates' long forgotten lowest sections. After the sabotage of the star-drive, the superstructure was abandoned for fears of explosive decompression and no longer maintained. Sub-light was automated, and ran off the same solar collecting tech that powered interior lighting. Few if any believed the ship capable of reaching its destination anymore; we were living in the present and barely thinking about the future beyond the closest days.

If we didn't locate a new source of seed in the Northwest Quad—or mercy from our fellow travellers in the two remaining biospheres—the Southeast's residents would be lucky to survive for six more months.

We aimed our lights toward the heart of the Northwest Quad and noticed after an hour of walking that the way grew steadily less dark. The stagnant, fungus smell, however, intensified; a fetor of rot I associated with standing water and upturned graves. The light thickened instead of actually brightening. What we were witnessing, I realized, was a kind of bioluminescence from the skeins of fungus growing on the walls, feeding off the chemicals in the makeup of the bulkheads.

More scratching filtered out from the walls. I dug in my treads and halted. The terrible scraping stopped, too. I tipped a look at Anchester, standing at my side, and my trusted Secondary opened his mouth, intending to speak, I assumed, but too afraid to form the words.

"It's following us," I whispered, my voice sounding twice as loud as I'd intended for it to in the empty throat of the corridor.

It sounded more like them, plural, a multitude of scurrying vermin on the other side of the fractured bulkheads. The urge to return to our rappelling cables overwhelmed me. But what if we made it back to the chasm and, for whatever reason, by whatever sinister hand, the ropes had been cut? I reminded myself why my Secondary and I were there, lost in the bowels of the generational ship's superstructure, and indicated for us to press forward. According to the schematics, which I referenced again soon after resuming our march, we were close to the lower levels of the priory.

At the bend that turned our course toward the biosphere, the scratching resumed, this time so loudly, so concentrated, I thought the bulkheads wouldn't stand the unholy clatter. I thought of long talons, filthy but also polished sharper than razors, working holes into the bulkheads, creating tunnels and warrens through the marrow of Euphrates; some abominable life form released from the ruins to our Northwest while we in the other quads went about the business of our daily lives, none the wiser.

We turned another bend—and that voice inside my head, the one still sane by a sliver, worried not only about severed rappelling cables but also if we'd be able to find our way back to them. Fear smothered the aches in joints, bone, and flesh. We had walked for kilometres, through desolate space. We had walked what felt like a distance of light-years.

Ahead of us, a single hatch appeared. The release did not require my override. We manually pushed on the metal wheel, which resisted turning and felt damp, slick, to the touch. The wheel groaned and the hatch eventually rolled open on its tracks.

Something unholy spilled out, knocking me to the deck.

I screamed.

And screamed.

Hideous thing, it was part of an articulated skeleton that had held onto its shape. Only the shape wasn't correct. A quadrupedal approximation of human form, I later realized it was the abomination's clothing that kept its bones intact.

Those bones, particularly the thing's misshaped skull, had been gnawed upon, like the bulkheads surrounding us.

Anchester pulled the remains off me and helped me to stand. My next shallow sip of breath filled with the foul stink of fungus and worse; of slop piled up in strata over several centuries, and the rancid door I now equated with urine. The waste of vermin. The vermin of the Northwest Biosphere.

We had arrived at the lowest level beneath Exham Priory, the centre of civilization to our neighbours in the northwest who, according to rumours, legends, and theory, had suffered at the hands of bloodthirsty cultist-infiltrators. And those dark, hellish rooms lit by the sallow jonquil glow of the fungus crawling across the walls were filled with skeletons.

Some had been butchered, according to the instruments we found among the pieces of bones. Others had been caged, and their remains suggested they, too, had been devoured. All that had died were eaten, even the butchers, and their skeletons bore deep gouges that could only have come from teeth.

In another room, we discovered the remains of the life-bank, emptied long earlier of its precious cargo. Anchester invoked God's generic name. But all of the gods had shunned this place, and only demons had answered prayers here in the Northwest Biosphere.

I think we both went mad in the deep level beneath Exham Priory, for it was madness to believe we could still complete our mission. We moved from one horrific scene to another in our search for seed stores, which clearly were no longer in existence and hadn't saved the people from this quad or their mutated descendants from the orgiastic frenzy that swept through hundreds of years in the past during those dark, early years of the Euphrates' flight. It occurred to that sane sliver, that last piece of what I now believe was my soul that we were ascending higher, ever higher, along a ramp of sorts, and that the jaundiced glow had shifted.

We came upon an open-air courtyard high in Exham Priory that gazed out at the interior of the Northwest Biosphere. The uniform terraces that housed human citizens and families were there, as in our realm far to the Southeast, though they formed a city of the dead. Windows were shattered, and whole sections of the structures had collapsed or were intentionally destroyed, according to the dark, oily blast marks. What was agristretch in neat patchworks to the southeast was wild jungle veldt here, an overgrown landscape of foul yellow-green fungus fed off the glare of alien stars, set beneath the dead sun-bulb draped in foul, toxic skeins.

And what was that statue-thing, erected at the centre of the fungus woods, neither human nor rat but constructed with features of both?

"No," Anchester said. He repeated the protestation again and again.

At first, I thought he meant the hideous statue, which seemed to stare up at us with its vast, dead black eyes. An evil tribute, in my mind it embodied all of mankind's sins since our species rose up from the muck to destroy the world of our birth. Worse, in those eyes, that sharp and hideous smile, it also promised to do the same should Euphrates ever reach her far-flung destination at PL1-311, the Promised Land.

But it was a nightmare even more horrific than the statue constructed by either Magna Mater cultists or those who followed Hellstone worship, or evil Atys. The towering fungus began to stir though no breeze whispered through the stagnant tomb of the Northwest Biosphere. The priory trembled from the movement, the stampede. Whatever the cultists had created or unleashed from the genetic life-bank, perhaps initially to breed and stem the famine in this quad, was coming, and it sounded hungry.

I caught up to Anchester. We ran down the ramp, our own steps kicking up bones and bone dust and that bitter urine-stink. Down, under the priory, I led us back through the hellish abattoir, to the hatch, and through, into the corridor.

We sealed the door and resumed running. The bulkheads wouldn't keep out the horrors, we sensed. Oh no; the rat-things born in the Northwest Biosphere had eaten their way past the metal walls, through conduit, and had tunnelled up, up, through hydroponic layers and carefully-tended agristretch soil.

We ran, ran. At one point in the chaos of escape, I heard laughter. Perhaps the mad cackles were Anchester's. I didn't recognize the voice, though it's quite possible it was mine.

The rappelling ropes were exactly as we had left them secured to columns high overhead. Would that the abominations we'd heard scratching behind the walls had chewed through the cords, trapping us below. It might have been a kinder and quicker fate.

We scaled the slope of the collapsed deck plates, and were doing the last leg of the climb back up to the overhang when that sound—that terrible, evil sound!—thundered down the throat of the sub-corridor. I ordered myself to not look down, which would have been the correct course of action in the sane world that no longer existed.

I looked and, as I did, the beam of the flashlight attached to my sona-rifle strobed the corridor below. I saw them. Gods and saints and whatever holy powers exist in this universe help me; I saw the ravenous hoard that had pursued us out of the cursed realm of the Northwest Biosphere.

They weren't human. Not fully. And not vermin, either, as they were once known and shown in history texts and in the catalogue of the life-banks. No, what was born there was something wholly different, and completely abominable.

Anchester looked, too. As I scrambled the remaining distance to the precipice, I noticed he had stopped his advance. Saying nothing, as was my Secondary's way, he calmly let go of the rope and fell willingly into that seething, biting mass. The sounds that emerged as the abominations frenzied for my best friend's blood and flesh were chilling to hear, and severed that last string of my sanity. I started firing. And laughing.

I made it back to the Central Nexus and boarded the maglev, though I have no memory of returning to the biosphere, where members of the Delapore family have watched over the care of the agristretch and the feeding of our people for generations.

I have been held in the Detention Centre for days—at least I think so; time has fallen off track since my return, mutating some hours into seconds, and seconds into hours. They say I murdered Anchester, that I lured him out of the quad intentionally. One less mouth to feed. Others in the council, like the Canfield woman, have accused me of intentionally releasing the blight across our food supply and of covering up evidence of a manufactured disaster by tamping down the soil following the shortened harvest.

When they thought I wasn't listening, the new Primary Agritect, Hetri Avello, let slip that foulest of accusations: "Magna Mater," he said, and tipped his chin toward my prison cell.

But I can see it in their eyes, the same look that was in Anchester's right before he let go of the ropes. It has begun. And it will most likely end the way it did in that evil place, because, as they waste time building their case against me, there is an undercurrent of wrongness building in the air, and a smell that wasn't present here before yet now is. It's the smell of the rats in the bulkheads, which have found their way into the Southeast Biosphere.

I've heard in their whispers that people have started to vanish.

And the rats...the rats are coming!

