SHEDDING LIGHT

by Michael Edelson

  “Housing slaves was expensive,” Merrick said. “You had to feed them, treat the sick, give them shelter. Having tens of thousands of slaves when you have big projects to build is one thing, but when you are finished, why bother to feed so many people? Why support so many slaves that aren’t doing anything?”

  “So what did they do with them?” Jack asked.

  “The easiest and cheapest solution, of course. They let them go. Not all at once, but a few at a time. The more complete the projects were, the less slaves they needed. That’s why there is a direct correlation between project completion and slave population.”

  “So where did they go?” Debbie asked. Her voice recorder was on and she was scribbling in her notepad.

  “Here,” Merrick said, pushing another button on his console. A large scale map of Egypt popped up, with several red dots labelled “Concentration.”

  “The free slaves lived as nomads on Egyptian territory, slowly gaining in population as more were released. These sites represent their largest population concentrations. When almost all of the slaves had been freed, their populations grew too large for the land to support, so either the Egyptians ordered them out or they left of their own accord, moving North, to Canaan.” He zoomed in to a couple of the concentration points, showing overhead views of nomadic settlements.

  “But what does that prove?” Carl asked with a hint of irritation. Jack didn’t blame him; it was intuitive, but not definitive. The professor would need a lot more than this, though he had to admit it was a very good start.

  Merrick frowned. “It proves there was no mass exodus. It proves Moses didn’t lead the Israelites out of Egypt, or split the Red Sea. It proves that a major part of the bible is a blatant lie. The slaves left Egypt slowly, over many years. Not all at once behind some biblical figure and a trail of miracles.”

  “Okay,” Jack said. “But what about the other thing? The reason we’re out so far?”

  Merrick’s eyes lit up. “Oh yes, this one is my favourite. It’s two-fold, actually. The first is the least, and the simplest. According to the bible, the Earth is roughly six thousand years old.”

  “Right,” Jack said.

  “Well we’re four hundred thousand light years away from the Earth,” Merrick said smugly.

  “And it’s still there,” Jack finished.

  Merrick nodded. “It’s still there.”

  “This better not be the only reason we’re out here,” Jack said. “We could have come seven thousand lights years out to prove the same thing.”

  “Not at all, commander,” Merrick said proudly. “Not at all.” He pushed a button. “Behold!”

  The holoscreen changed to an overhead view of what looked like an African savannah, though it was subtly different in ways Jack couldn’t consciously identify.

  “What are we looking at?”

  “Right,” Merrick said, sounding annoyed. “Give me a sec. I thought I had it.” The view panned back and forth, then stopped as the professor found what he was looking for. The scene grew larger until Jack saw two people walking. The zooming continued until there was enough detail to see that they were holding hands.

  “Let me tilt it,” Merrick said, working the controls. The merged perspectives of the VTF field allowed for a three dimensional image when viewing conditions were optimal. Angles were limited, but there was usually enough data to tilt at least forty five degrees. Merrick managed an almost seventy degree tilt.

  “Holly shit!” Debbie said, gasping. Jack understood how she felt; the people—if they could be called people—were not what he expected. They were wrong somehow. Jack’s initial response was an instinctive hostility, though he quickly shrugged it off. They looked almost human, but not quite. Their noses were flat and wide, their jaws large, and their brows pronounced. More than that, the shape of their heads, their bodies, it was different, alien. People, but not quite people. Not homo sapiens.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” Merrick said. “I give you homo erectus.”

  “My god,” Jack said, staring at them, his heart thumping loudly in his chest. They were male and female, man and woman. He was looking at something no human being—no homo sapiens—had ever seen before. Except of course for Merrick, who had been the one to locate them.

  “No god,” Merrick said. “At least not like in the bible. This man is not Adam, and she is no Eve. I have images of a whole tribe of them, but these seemed like the ideal presentation.”

  “Some people aren’t going to like this,” Jack said.

  “No,” Merrick said. “They aren’t. But whether they like it or not is irrelevant. It’s the truth, and you can’t change that with a bomb.” His words were harsh, perhaps too much so, but their effect was quickly felt. Jack thought of the captain, and wished he was here to hear them. Would he have felt shame?

  “I think what we’re doing here is incredible,” Jack said. “Imagine all the other mysteries we can solve on the next trip, or the one after that. I wish…” he stopped what he was about to say. His excitement waned, replaced by bitterness. He had been about to say he wished he could be a part of the next expedition. There was no way, of course. They would have plenty of time to replace him with someone more suitable.

  “You wish what?” Merrick asked, pleased with his enthusiasm.

  “Oh nothing.” Jack forced a smile. “Nothing important. I guess we’re all ready then?”

  “Ready?” Merrick asked.

  “To go home,” he said. “I have a course laid in, with an optimum departure window of right about now.”

  CHAPTER 13

  “OKAY,” JACK SAID, SNUG in his capsule. “We’re going to be in here for one hundred and thirty eight hours. Who wants to remain conscious?”

  “Har har,” Debbie said through the intercom. The neural pacifiers could knock a person out indefinitely, with the all too familiar side effects of extreme grogginess and upset stomach. It was, however, better than spending nearly six conscious days in a capsule.

  “Let’s get started then,” he said, then loaded his course and activated the probability drive. The usual jolt shook his capsule as the ship began to hop. Nothing flew at him this time, they had done a thorough job of stowing everything.

  A green light came on in his intercom display screen. One of the capsules had opened up a channel. He waited, hoping it was Debbie calling to wish him goodnight. He was growing more fond of that woman than he felt comfortable with.

  “Hello?” he said when no one spoke. Checking the screen, he saw it was the professor’s capsule. He turned up the volume adjustment to maximum. He heard faint groaning.

  Instantly, he aborted the hop and another jolt shook the capsule.

  “Everyone out, we have an emergency!” he shouted, pushing open his own capsule and jumping out. The others followed more slowly, glancing around in alarm. Everyone but the professor.

  Jack ran over to his capsule and opened the canopy. He braced himself for what he expected to see. When he saw the professor, intact, he let out a sigh of relief.

  Merrick was alive, though his eyes were closed and he wasn’t moving. His skin was a dark shade of red and rivulets of blood poured from his nose and ears.

  “Yelena,” Jack yelled. “Get over here.” She was at his side before he finished saying her name.

  “Help me get him out,” she cried. “We need to lay him down.” Carl ran over to assist as Yelena and Jack lifted Merrick and put him down on the deck. The major began to scan him with her device.

  “Help me move him,” she ordered. “I need to get him to the medical station to see how much damage there is.”

  “Right,” Jack said, moving over to a control console. “Everyone get ready.” He turned the gravity down to its minimum setting and almost lost his lunch as he felt his stomach try to fly out of his mouth. Disorientation clouded his vision as his body weight dropped to eighteen pounds. He saw Jonathan double over and vomit onto the deck.

  “Let’s get him out of here,” he said,
carefully walking back to the others. Too much spring in his step and his head would bounce off the ceiling.

  Yelena picked Merrick up, cradling him as she would a child. The image was strange to behold, a hundred and twenty pound woman carrying a two hundred pound man as though he were an inflatable doll. She disappeared down the corridor, Merrick’s added weight giving her stability the others lacked. When Jack and the others finally made it to the medical station, she had him laid out on the examination bunk.

  They gathered around in silence as she prepared various instruments. The medical station was a small chamber in the same area as the crew quarters. Only one or two people could fit inside at one time, so Jack kept back and the others followed his example.

  “He’ll live,” she said, holding a large translucent panel over him. Jack saw shifting patterns of color displayed on the instrument as she passed it over his body. “There is some internal damage to the organs, but nothing serious. His eyes are severely stressed, but they’ll be okay in a few days.” She held the panel over his head. “His left ear may have a ten to twenty percent loss in acuity. Otherwise, he will make a full recovery. If he had been in there even a few seconds longer…”

  “What happened?” Debbie asked, her arms folded across her chest. “What’s wrong with him?”

  “His capsule,” Jack explained. “It failed, somehow. The fact that he’s still alive means it wasn’t a total shut down. Otherwise even the first hop would have turned him into soup.” He shivered, remembering the paper cup on his capsule door. “He was able to activate the com link to my capsule, but then he must have passed out.”

  “You saved his life,” Yelena said without taking her eyes off the panel and her examination. “I really mean it when I say a few more seconds would have killed him.”

  “How long before he regains consciousness?” Carl asked.

  Yelena shrugged. “Don’t know. Could be a few hours, could be a day.”

  “Carl,” Jack said. “Let’s try to figure out what the hell happened to that capsule. We need to know why the safety systems didn’t stop the hop.” He turned to the rest of them. “We’re not going anywhere until we figure out what went wrong. This will not happen again.”

  Jack and Carl left the others with Merrick and went to the capsule chamber, where they began their tests with the interface panel. Jack doubted the problem was software related, but the diagnostic procedures were most reliable if performed in sequence.

  “Son of a…” he cursed as soon as the first diagnostic screen pulled up. It was so obvious he had almost missed it.

  “What is it?” Carl looked up from his work. He was removing the access panel from the back of the capsule.

  “This is ridiculous,” Jack said, shaking his head. “I don’t believe this. The capsule was working properly.”

  “If that’s true,” Carl said. “Then why are we having this conversation?”

  “No, you don’t understand. The capsule was working within its parameters. Each capsule is set to automatically measure body weight, but someone messed with the calibration. That’s why the safety systems didn’t override it. That’s also why Merrick is alive. He wasn’t subject to a full velocity differential.”

  “Who did it?” Carl asked, coming over to examine the screen.

  “Whoever it was, he used the captain’s access code.” Jack was a little relieved at that. He already knew the captain had tried to sabotage the mission. If it was the captain who did this, their problems were still over. Then he saw the time at which the change had been entered.

  “So the captain did this?” Carl asked, perplexed. Jack and Debbie had never told him about their suspicions.

  “No,” Jack said, shaking his head. “Not unless he came back from the dead. One of us did this.”

  “Could it have been a mistake?”

  “That would be some mistake.”

  CHAPTER 14

  LOCKING THE DOOR TO HIS quarters, Jack leaned against a bulkhead and took a deep breath. He was still a little wet from his shower, shivering slightly as the cool cabin air chilled his damp skin.

  Pulling the blanket off his cot, he draped it around himself as he sank into his chair and turned on his terminal. He accessed the crew bios, reading carefully through each one. He thought maybe he could find something there to give him some clue as to what was going on. Two saboteurs so far, and still another on the loose. Unless they were wrong about the captain.

  The absurdity of the situation was starting to overwhelm him. This was, with the exception of himself, a hand-picked crew. Career professionals, the finest in their field. The likelihood of one saboteur was infinitesimally small. The possibility of two saboteurs called for divine intervention. Now they had three.

  “I damn well know it isn’t me,” he said aloud. “So it has to be Carl, Yelena, or Debbie.” He hesitated, tapping the desk with his fingertips. “Or Merrick. I guess it could be Merrick, but that would make him a real head case. Just like me, talking to myself.”

  He decided to continue his conversation inside his head. As he scanned the bios using his new command codes, he learned a few more things about the others. Debbie had been married and divorced twice, to the same man. Yelena’ parents had recently been killed in a car accident. Merrick’s oldest son had a history of drug abuse. Carl’s wife had spent time in rehab for alcoholism. The level of detail gathered was frightening, though it was interesting to note that even supposedly perfect people had something wrong with their lives.

  He avoided his own bio, fearing what he would see. Unlike the others, he had never accomplished anything worth mentioning. Merrick had been nominated for the Nobel prize, and would return just in time to win. Debbie had every journalism award worth having, except the Pulitzer. Like Merrick, though, she was sure to get it if they came home. This was the single greatest event in human history. There was nothing else that could even come close. With a single space flight they were opening up the entire galaxy for mankind. More missions like this would follow, along with exploration, colonization, mining, and whatever else could be done in space. This was the start of the golden age of human civilization, the next level of technological and social evolution.

  “Will anyone remember my name?” he asked the screen, which failed to respond. He shut off the terminal and climbed into his cot, preparing for some much needed sleep.

  There was a knock on his hatch. Climbing to his feet, he walked up to the intercom, the blanket still draped over his shoulders.

  “Who is it?” he asked.

  “It’s me,” came a woman’s voice. “Debbie.” He opened the hatch.

  “Yes?” he asked, drawing the blanket tighter around him.

  “Can I come in?” she asked, one hand on the doorway. She was looking at him anxiously.

  “Um, sure,” he said, his mind swimming with questions. “I’m not exactly dressed for company, though.” What could she want?

  She stepped inside, folding her arms across her chest. This was only the second time he had seen her do that since he met her. Something must be bothering her.

  “What can I do for you?” he asked as he closed the hatch behind her. “Would you like something to drink?”

  “You have vodka?”

  He raised his eyebrows. “No, not really. Water, tea, cola. One can left.”

  “Some tea.” She sat down on his cot.

  He poured her a cup from his dispenser, then sat down on his chair, facing her.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “Remember how I said I wasn’t scared before?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well now I’m scared,” she said, looking down at the deck. “Whoever messed up that capsule was trying to kill one of us.”

  “You?” he asked incredulously. “Scared? I don’t believe it.”

  She smiled. “Yup, me. I’m scared. Reporters have feelings too, you know.”

  “That might make for a front page story,” he teased.

  “So can I stay or w
hat?” She blew at a lock of hair that dangled close to her mouth. “I don’t want to be alone.”

  “Stay? You mean, in here? With me?”

  “No, I mean curled up outside your door.” She turned serious. “If you don’t want me to, it’s okay.”

  He stared at her. His heart beat faster as he contemplated the implications.

  “I, um,” he stammered, unsure of what to say. “I mean yes, of course. I’ll sleep on the floor, you can have the bunk. Let me go to the supply room and get one of those styrofoam…”

  “It’s big enough for two,” she said, patting the bunk. “Unless you don’t want to get that close to me. I showered, you know.” She looked at him with an amused expression. “Looks like you did too.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  “Good. I’m very tired.” Before he could say anything else, she stood up and unzipped her jumpsuit. Underneath, she wore a matching set of black undergarments. The light from his LED lamp cast soft shadows around the contours of her hips and waist.

  “You want the inside or the outside?” she asked, about to climb into the cot.

  “Uh, whatever, I don’t mind either way.” He averted his gaze before she noticed him staring. She was exquisite, her body was slender and supple, yet curved in all the right places. Her skin was tanned and smooth, seemingly perfect. With a shrug, she climbed into the bunk, scooting over to the far bulkhead.

  Hesitantly, he joined her, careful not to intrude too much on her side. The bunk was big enough for one person, but way too small for two. He felt his skin touch hers and barely suppressed a sharp intake of breath.

  “Um, I’m sorry that there isn’t more room, I can always go get that pad…”

  “So,” she interrupted him. “How come you never came on to me?” She lifted her head and leaned on her elbow. Her other hand came to rest on his chest. “You don’t like me?”

  He blinked in surprise. “I do,” he confessed. “Very much. I just assumed that you wouldn’t be interested.”

  “Never assume,” she said, staring at him intently.

  “But…”