Jeff nodded gratefully and beckoned to Shorty and Mac. “Let’s go.”
Together they crawled through the narrow tunnel and climbed down the ladder into the wide corridor, which would take them back to the cavity. They had around ten miles to cover; Jeff hoped they could make it in about two hours.
“This ship is really starting to piss me off,” Mac said.
“Me too,” Jeff agreed.
“Do you think there might actually be extraterrestrials in that central sphere who are controlling all this?” Shorty asked.
Jeff didn’t want to speculate. He knew they wouldn’t get to the truth by guessing.
“Maybe the onboard computer is part of all this?” his shipmate persisted.
“Listen, Shorty,” Jeff replied crossly. “I don’t know. I really don’t. All I know is that we’ll find the answers we want in the center of the ship. And we’re going to get them.”
“Ooh, the boss is mad,” Mac quipped. Jeff ignored him.
Finally, they reached the anteroom to the cavity, where everything was as they had left it. The pile of ash that had been his father was still lying on the ground. Jeff swallowed and hurried past it.
They stepped into the dim light of the huge cavity and looked down at the barren landscape. In the distance, Jeff could see the group his father had been a part of. And he could see the equipment sled—no more than a black dot—beside on of the little hills. They made their way to the group of people, keeping themselves hidden from view as best they could. It looked like the group had found new victims, who were lying on the ground and watching stoically as the torturers built up the funeral pyres. Did they never sleep? Or eat? Jeff simply didn’t get it.
“Shall we just take the belts? Or shall we try and take the whole sled?” Shorty asked quietly.
Jeff considered. If they slunk up from behind and took out the bag with the belts, they stood a better chance of going unnoticed than if they tried to take the whole sled.
“We won’t take any risks,” he decided. “We’ll grab the belts and get out of here.”
“OK,” Mac nodded.
They had almost reached the sled. The men and women in front of them were still busy building the pyres and took no notice of them.
Jeff dropped to his knees and crawled the last few feet. The bag with the belts was now right in front of him. He stretched out a hand, easily pulled it out from under the straps and hung it around his neck. They’d done it. Now all they had to do was get out of here.
Jeff lifted his head to take a last look at the men and women.
His eyes fell on a thin man who was helping pile up the pyre. The man turned and looked in his direction.
“Dad!” Jeff screamed.
The men and women turned round to look at him.
Shit, what had he done?
But it was too late. They’d seen him.
“Seize them!” his father said sternly.
Jeff jumped up and wanted to run away. But a powerful hand had grabbed him by the shoulder. Mac cursed and fired his pistol. A slender woman fell whimpering to the ground. Then a man with a broad back knocked the pistol out of Mac’s hand.
Another woman pulled Jeff’s weapon out of his holster and tossed it away in a high arc. Two muscular men in loincloths grabbed Jeff by the arms and dragged him toward the pyre—directly in front of his father, who stood, straight-backed, in front of him.
“You were dead! I saw you burn!”
“I told you. We’re already dead. We can’t die anymore,” his father said tonelessly.
Jeff looked him in the eyes. Yesterday they had been clear and focused. Today his pupils were dilated and his eyes glazed.
“What happened to you?” Jeff asked quietly.
“I’ve been born again,” his father replied icily. “Just as everyone here is born again and again to contribute to the eternal cycle of punishing and being punished. And this time I’ve been born again to punish.” He leaned his face forward until his nose touched Jeff’s. “And today you will be punished. Because you have done something forbidden, and are therefore a sinner in the eyes of Him.”
“Him?” Jeff asked in desperation.
“The Prince of Darkness, who watches over us from the center of hell, commanding us to punish and suffer, as is his right and his task.”
Jeff felt a shiver run down his spine. “Dad! Please!”
His father took a step back and pointed at Mac and Shorty. “Bind them to the free stakes,” he ordered the surrounding men and women. “So that they are exposed to the purifying fire.”
Shorty screamed as they dragged him to the nearest stake and tied him to it.
“Fucking bastards!” Mac cursed, as he was tied to the stake next to it. “I’ll kill you all!”
Jeff’s father picked up a burning torch from the ground. The throng of people cheered as he set light to the pile of logs.
Jeff tried to break free, to help his shipmates, but there were too many hands holding him back. “You can’t do this, you pigs!”
As if someone had dumped accelerant on the piles of wood, they immediately caught fire and Jeff’s shipmates were quickly engulfed by flames. Shorty’s hair burned like tinder. Jeff closed his eyes, but he couldn’t block out their shrill screams of pain. And it got worse. In the end, the sounds they made sounded almost inhuman. Finally they fell silent and the only thing Jeff felt was the burning heat of the fire on his skin.
When Jeff opened his eyes again, Shorty’s body had collapsed onto the pyre. Mac, however, was still tied to the post with his feet on the pyre; a human torch. Jeff would be next.
As Mac collapsed, too, the guards around him hollered and raised their fists in the air.
At that moment, Jeff broke free. He almost stumbled, but he was free, and he ran.
“You will not escape your punishment,” his father shouted from behind him. “You will be back, and together we will punish ourselves for all our sins.”
Jeff bit his tongue and ran. He ran like he had never run before in his life. He looked around and saw that some men had taken up the chase, but they soon gave up and turned back. The last thing he heard was the maniacal laughter of his father.
He stormed up the steps, through the antechamber and into the corridor, where he closed the hatch that led back into the cavity. Then he slumped on the ground and closed his eyes, overwhelmed by fits of sobbing. He tore the bag with the levitators from his shoulders and threw it on the ground.
30.
Jeff stumbled back down the corridor. He had to stop several times to wipe the tears from his face. He knew he was close to collapsing. He had no more energy left.
He had no idea how long he had sat in the corridor, howling.
Now Shorty and Mac!
Their death screams echoed through his head, and every echo pierced his very being like a hot, glowing knife.
Now only Green and Joanne were left. And who knew if she would ever recover from her fit. Would any of them reach the center of the ship? Jeff had his doubts.
He dragged himself, one foot at a time, down the dark corridor, when he saw a faint light. Hastily he switched off his headlamp.
He wasn’t mistaken. In front of him, not far away, was one of the light aliens. And it was coming closer. It was hard to tell how fast. Jeff wanted to turn around and run back, but he didn’t stand a chance of reaching the cavity before it reached him. And what would be the point?
The creature was now close enough that Jeff could see without his headlamp. A little way back down the corridor there had been a turnoff. Maybe he could hide himself there somehow. It was his last chance. He ran.
He raced down the corridor that branched off from the main one and which, a little further on, turned a corner. He looked back. The corridor was illuminated by the pale light of the alien being. It must be just past the fork.
Jeff slipped through an open door into a room. He briefly flicked on his headlamp to get his bearings. The place looked like it had once been a
lab or a workshop. There were several tables and various large implements attached to the walls. In the back wall was another door. As quietly as he could, Jeff slipped over to it. Once through, he briefly switched on his headlamp. He was frightened almost to death when he realized it wasn’t a way out, but a small chamber without any further doors. He had fled into a dead end.
He swiveled round in a panic. A shaft of white light fell from the hallway into the lab. Any moment now, the light alien would float through the door. He looked around frantically but there was no other way out. Nowhere to hide. It was over. Once and for all. Now he was going to die.
He resigned himself to his fate. Maybe it was for the best. Then this nightmare would finally come to an end.
The light alien had already entered the room. It stopped in the doorway and turned around slowly, as if it were searching for him. It must have seen him, because it remained motionless just a few feet away from him.
As with the light alien he had encountered before, this one had no discernable eyes. And yet it seemed to be looking straight into his soul.
Jeff’s hands automatically reached down to his holster, but of course it was empty. He didn’t have a weapon anymore. And in any case, a gun would have been pointless. Trembling all over, he surrendered himself to his fate.
The light alien was moving closer. It came toward him slowly but inexorably. Finally it was right opposite him. If he stretched out his arm, he could have touched it.
“You won,” Jeff croaked. “Now do what you have to do.”
But the being didn’t move. It stood motionless before him.
What felt like an eternity passed. Jeff’s heart was pounding like a drum. Why didn’t it just kill him, like those other beings had killed Major Irons and Fields? What was stopping it?
Fascinated, Jeff looked at this creature that was slightly smaller than him. The head seemed to shine from the inside and the light flickered slightly. It was like looking at a light just beneath the surface of rippled water.
“What are you?” Jeff whispered.
Very slowly, the creature raised both arms. It stretched them out, palms first, and Jeff was reminded of old paintings of a benevolent Christ giving his blessing. Then the creature floated back a little way and turned around. It lowered its left hand, lifted its right one a little, showing him the back of the hand.
Jeff stood completely rigid. This wasn’t the behavior of a creature that wanted to kill him. Gradually, his fear began to subside, although his heart was still pounding like a jackhammer.
But what does it want?
The creature had now retreated as far as the door. It stopped there and continued to hold out its hand in Jeff’s direction.
Does it want me to follow?
Robotically, Jeff took a step forward, but then hesitated. Should he really follow this creature? What if it was a trap? On the other hand, it hadn’t attacked him like it had Fields, Irons, and Finni. Jeff was suddenly overcome by a dreadful feeling that he may have completely misjudged the situation. What if the light aliens hadn’t been responsible for the deaths of his shipmates? But then what was? Or were there good and bad versions of these creatures?
Jeff took a deep breath and clenched his fists until his nails dug into his palms. The pain triggered him into action. There was only one way of finding out.
Jeff walked toward the alien being. It waited until he had almost reached the door, then drifted down the corridor. Jeff followed it back down to the long corridor that connected the cavity and the central area. There, it swished round to the right. Jeff looked over his shoulder nervously, fully expecting to see a whole group of light aliens, but there were none to see.
For a few minutes, Jeff followed the ghostly creature and wondered if it wanted to take him to Green and Joanne. But at the intersection, it turned left and took him on a zigzag course through the bowels of the black ship.
Finally, it stopped in front of a door. Jeff waited a few feet behind the creature; the door opened as if by magic. The creature floated in and Jeff followed.
The room resembled the projection room where they had found the map of the ship. Several armchair-like objects were dotted around the room. It reminded Jeff of the small movie theater on board the Orpheus space base. Did the creature want to show him a film?
The alien floated to the front of the room to the projection screen and came to a stop in front of one of the armchairs. Then it raised an arm and touched it with the palm of its hand.
Was the thing telling him to sit down?
Nervously, Jeff stepped closer. Could he trust this creature?
Finally he sat down, not taking his eyes off the alien.
He sat there tensely while the figure hovered in front of him. It lifted both arms and moved its hands backward slightly.
It wants me to lean back. But why?
Jeff tried to relax, and rested his head on the back of the chair.
Suddenly there was a hissing noise. Something cool wrapped around his head and he couldn’t move anymore. His hands shot up in panic. With his fingers he could feel a piece of tight-fitting metal covering his head. Only his face was left uncovered.
And now what? Was he going to be tortured? Had it been a mistake to follow the alien? He broke out in a cold sweat.
The creature made a soothing gesture.
Jeff tried to calm himself.
It drifted to another chair and lowered itself into it. Jeff could only watch it from the corner of his eye.
Suddenly the projection screen at the front of the room lit up. Unlike the other map he had seen, this wasn’t a hologram. Individual characters were projected onto the wall one after another.
“I’m afraid I can’t read that,” Jeff whispered more to himself than the alien.
“But I’m sure you can understand me,” replied a sonorous, robotic voice from an invisible speaker somewhere in front of him.
“Yes,” Jeff whispered.
“Good. Finally we can communicate.”
Now Jeff understood why they had come here. The device seemed to be some kind of translation machine. Finally, he would get some answers! But would this creature tell him the truth? He had to think of Irons. He couldn’t rule out the possibility that one of these creatures was responsible for the deaths of his companions. And not to forget all the lies the onboard computer had told them.
“Who are you?” Jeff asked finally.
“My name is Jerry, I am an—”
Jeff pulled a face. “You’re kidding me, right? Jerry?”
There was a short silence. Then the voice could be heard over the crackly speaker again. “It is unlikely that my actual name exists in your language. I imagine the translation system selected a name at random.”
That made sense.
“Sorry for interrupting. Please continue.”
“I am one of the last survivors of the original crew of this spaceship.”
“How is it that you’re so … so …?” How should he phrase this?
“Don’t be deceived. This is not my actual body. This is a hologram with limited manipulative abilities. An avatar, so to speak.”
“An avatar,” Jeff repeated in confusion.
“I will explain later. My real body is in stasis in another part of this ship.”
“So some of you did stay on board after you reached your destination,” Jeff said.
“I don’t understand. We never reached our destination.”
Jeff pricked up his ears. “You didn’t?”
“No.”
“But the onboard computer told us you left the ship before it embarked on a discovery expedition.”
“What onboard computer?”
Jeff was utterly confused.
“The computer that controls the ship.”
There was a pause, which seemed to last an eternity.
“This ship is not controlled by a computer.”
“It isn’t?” Jeff was baffled.
“No.”
“
Then who controls it?”
“He does.”
“He?”
A long silence.
“The demon.”
31.
“Our galaxy was doomed. Several supermassive stars at its center burned out and died in a massive hypernova. The expanding gamma-ray flash gradually erased all life in our galaxy. With our drive technology, we could not travel more than a hundred light years per year, so we built this ship as a way of escape. A ship constructed from an asteroid that would be able to accommodate all the inhabitants of our world. Ten billion of us, approximately. And we began a journey that would take us to the next galaxy in twenty-five thousand years, where we hoped to find a new home,” the voice explained.
“And all those billions of people lived in cavitys, like the ones we saw?” Jeff asked.
“Only their avatars.”
“I don’t understand what you mean by avatars,” Jeff admitted.
“We are freedom-loving beings and our home world had a beautiful, dark-blue sky. We couldn’t bear the thought of living for hundreds of generations in the cavitys of the asteroid ship without ever seeing our new world with our own eyes. We also wanted to spare our children and future generations this fate. That’s why we used a cryogenics system.
“You went into hypersleep?”
“We thought that when we awoke from our frozen state, we would be able see our new world with our own eyes and spend the end of our days under an open sky instead of an artificial one.”
“So why the avatars?”
“Our lifeless bodies could survive over millennia. But our souls could not. The soul wastes away during the inactivity of cryostasis and cannot be revived after thawing. As a result, the body dies with it. The only solution was to create avatars that could occupy themselves in the cavitys during the flight.”
“But what could you do in the cavitys as disembodied spirits?” Jeff asked.
“Do not be deceived. This is just an emergency avatar.”
“Emergency avatar?”
The Dark Ship Page 28
