by Mark Anson
‘Well, I guess that’s not surprising after all this time.’ She pulled again, harder this time, to no effect. ‘You’ll have to help me.’
Collins moved himself next to her, and they both took hold of the hatch release.
‘Ready – pull!’ They both heaved together, and suddenly it freed, and the handle rotated through ninety degrees, releasing the hatch. As the seal cracked, a long sigh of air rushed round the edges. It felt like they were opening a tomb.
They swung the hatch inwards, and peered cautiously inside. A white mist had formed with the sudden influx of warm, moist air from the Mesa’s airlock.
‘Can’t see anything in this,’ Collins muttered, waving his flashlight around. They both stared in, trying to peer through the mist.
Clare froze. ‘Hey, there’s something moving in there,’ she warned, and suddenly, flapping upwards from the darkness of the ship’s interior, came a white shape, rushing towards them with terrible speed.
They both recoiled as the object shot past and into the airlock. It fluttered round inside the small space, and Collins let out an involuntary cry of alarm, raising his arms to fend it off. Clare reached out and grabbed it.
‘It’s a shirt – it’s only a shirt,’ she said, holding it up to him. ‘It just got carried up by the air current.’
‘Shit.’ Collins sighed. He peered closer at what she held in her hand. The shirt was filthy, like a rag, and covered in brown stains. They exchanged glances.
‘Are you okay, lieutenant?’ Mordecai’s deep voice was full of concern.
‘I’m fine. Just – never mind. Let’s get on with this.’ He looked down into the dark interior of the Ulysses, and thrust his flashlight inside. The mist in the air was clearing, and the shaft of the flashlight beam stabbed deep into the interior. ‘The inner hatch is open – looks like they left in a hurry. I can see the central stairwell … parts of the command deck … No lights. No sign of any life.’
‘Okay, let me test the air.’
Collins moved aside, and Clare pulled out an air monitoring gauge, and held it in the opening. ‘Oxygen nineteen percent. CO2 point two percent, trace of methane. Temperature’s one hundred and sixty below – too cold to breathe until it warms up a bit.’
‘Roger that.’ Collins looked across at her expectantly. ‘I guess it’s captain’s privilege, then.’
‘Yeah.’ Clare pushed the air gauge back into one of her suit pockets. ‘Doctor, I’m about to go inside. Any concerns?’
‘No captain, go ahead.’
She swung her legs inside, and looked at Collins. ‘Stay here until I’ve done a once-round, then I’ll call you down. Don’t touch anything without checking.’
‘Got it.’
‘Okay, here goes.’ She pushed herself into the airlock chamber below them, her body floating through the hatch opening.
She clicked on her helmet lights. The twin beams filled the white-painted interior of the airlock, and she let out a gasp of surprise. The inside was covered in writing, apparently daubed in blood, repeating the same words over and over again:
PORTA CLAUSA EST
The words stood out, reddish-brown against the curved white walls of the airlock. Clare stared at the sight for a moment, then recovered herself and panned her helmet cam slowly around the interior of the airlock. ‘Are you getting this, both of you?’
‘Jesus. Yes, I’m getting it. “Porta clausa est.” Is that Latin?’
‘Yes,’ said Mordecai, ‘it says: “the door is shut.” Or “the door is closed”.’
Clare considered this for a moment. ‘Is it referring to the hatch?’
‘I have no idea.’ Mordecai’s voice sounded puzzled. ‘And why use Latin? The crew all spoke English between each other.’
‘He seemed pretty keen to get the message across,’ Collins observed drily.
‘Yeah.’ Clare glanced round once more, and then turned her attention to the inner hatch, which yawned into the interior of the ship. ‘This shouldn’t have been left open.’ She pushed against the hatch, and it swung easily on its hinges. She operated its handle a couple of times, and the locking mechanism moved easily, the retaining cams sliding in and out as they should. Either they had forgotten a basic airlock safety rule, or they had been in a real hurry to leave.
She pushed herself through the inner hatch and floated slowly down into the command deck. A ladder ran straight down ahead of her and on into the other two decks, forming a stairwell that ran the length of the crew module. She grabbed hold of the ladder, and panned her helmet lights slowly round the circular space of the command deck.
It was bigger and more spacious than the Mesa’s, but this was an exploration vessel, designed for scientific research. The deck space was filled with instrument consoles, presumably for the scientific mission planned at Saturn. She moved her lights past the kitchen, to the small gym area, the bathroom cubicle, and finally to the flight deck. The place was grubby and untidy; there were stains and smears on nearly every surface, and pieces of paper and clothing drifted about the deck. She was half-expecting more writing on the walls, but there was none; it seemed to be confined to the airlock.
She puzzled over the sense of disquiet this gave her, but couldn’t put her finger on it. Frowning, she pushed off from the ladder towards the flight deck, which was her priority target.
She caught one of the grab rails as she floated past, and swung herself round to face the control panels. They were all dark; nothing appeared to be working. She checked the master switch in its guarded recess in the electrical panel. It was still in the ON position. So, the batteries had run down, and the ship’s systems had shut down one by one, until nothing was left.
She turned her attention to the lighting panel, and it confirmed her diagnosis; all the interior lighting switches were set to ON. She switched a couple of them off, then on again; nothing.
Well, without power, she wasn’t going to find out much. She cleared her throat to speak to Collins, and that was when she saw the bone floating past.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
It turned over slowly as it went by in her helmet lights; a human humerus, instantly recognisable from the ball joint at the top, the elbow joint at the other end, the ridges in the middle where the muscles had once been attached. It was brown and discoloured, and had been scraped clean of most of the flesh; only tiny scraps remained, stuck to the bone.
For a moment, she stood there, frozen in disbelief at seeing the object. She wasn’t aware of making any sound, but she must have let something out, because Collins’s voice came over instantly on the suit radio:
‘Captain, are you okay?’
His call went unanswered, and a moment later, Collins shot out into the stairwell, his lights swinging round until he found her. He pushed himself swiftly across the deck, concern on his face.
‘Are you all right?’
She turned to point at the bone, which had bounced off the far wall and was heading back across the deck. For a moment, Collins didn’t see what she was pointing at, and then he saw it and grabbed it from the air.
‘Oh, holy fuck,’ he breathed. His eyes were wide behind his helmet faceplate as he looked back at Clare. He turned around with her, and in the combined light from their helmets, the scene on the command deck was lit up for them to see.
The place was strewn with rubbish and discarded clothes; the shirt that had been blown up into the airlock was just one of many that floated around the deck. The kitchen area was covered in the brown stains of dried blood, and the circular kitchen table, around which the entire crew could sit for meals, had evidently been used as a butcher’s block. It was covered in blood, bits of dried flesh, and pieces of bone dried into the blood. Even the ceiling over the table was spattered with blood. The whole place glistened faintly in the thin film of frost that had formed on the cold metal surfaces.
Neither of them said a word as they took in the scene; they just stood there in shocked silence. Collins was the first to speak, after a
pause of many seconds:
‘I guess they ran out of food.’
‘Yes, it would appear so,’ Mordecai said slowly over the radio channel. Clare didn’t speak; she felt nauseous.
‘What the fuck has gone on here?’ Collins shook his head slowly in disbelief. ‘They bring the ship all the way here, hide it behind Psyche, run out of food, and resort to … this. It doesn’t make any sense.’
Silence from Clare.
‘What do you think happened? To make them do this?’ He turned to Clare. ‘Oh no, no, no, don’t do that—’
Clare had folded over, her stomach contracting, and was moments away from vomiting into her helmet. Collins grasped her by the shoulders, turned her quickly towards him and got his hands on the faceplate release. Before she could stop him, he unsnapped the catches and lifted the faceplate slightly. Clare’s eyes opened wide as the icy air hit her, but the shock worked. She stood there, looking away and saying nothing, taking the occasional gasp of the freezing air, until the spasm passed. Eventually she reached up and closed her faceplate.
‘You okay?’
She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.
‘Nearly did that myself.’
‘Do you need any help, captain?’ Mordecai asked from the flight deck.
‘No – no, I’m okay.’ She glanced at Collins. ‘Thanks.’ She sniffed the air that had come into her helmet. She was steeled for a bad smell, but none came; the air was musty, like a damp cellar, but not unpleasant. She glanced at the gauges on the outside of her suit. ‘It’s coming up to forty below; we could probably breathe the air now.’
‘We’ve got to do it sometime.’
‘Yeah. Well, there’s no time like the present.’ She lifted her faceplate all the way open, and took a deeper draught of the air. She shrugged, and made an OK sign with her fingers.
Collins followed suit, and cautiously lifted his faceplate. He sniffed the air carefully. ‘Not as bad as I thought it’d be, after all this time.’
‘Okay, so we can breathe the air.’ Clare looked around the deck – it was so much easier without a helmet – but her gaze kept finishing up at the kitchen area. She sighed. ‘We’d better get on with this – we’ve got a job to do.’
Collins nodded, and they approached the table cautiously.
‘No other large bones,’ he observed, keeping his voice as level as he could. ‘No skull or anything – a few small bone fragments. Some deep cut marks in the kitchen table. It’s possible they shoved – parts out of the airlock when they’d finished with them.’
‘Yeah.’ Clare kept her commentary to a minimum; she was still feeling nauseous. She needed to focus, to stay professional. She looked round the kitchen area. Jesus, the place was filthy. In the stark white of their helmet lights, all the work surfaces were covered with brown streaks of dried blood.
‘Nothing more here,’ Collins said. ‘We can take samples later – try to match them with the crew records.’
Clare nodded, and they moved away from the table, and searched the rest of the deck. Apart from the litter lying and floating around everywhere, the place was deserted, and they found no more human remains. They met up back at the central stairwell.
‘Where next – the lounge deck?’ Collins looked down the ladder, his helmet lights probing the darkness.
‘Yeah, I guess so.’ Clare glanced down the ladder.
‘Captain, is it safe yet for me to join you?’ Mordecai’s asked over the radio. ‘I could be of considerable assistance to you.’
Clare considered. She looked at Collins, who shrugged.
‘Very well doctor, come through and meet us here. You can follow us on our initial investigation, but I’m not handing over to you until we’ve searched the ship thoroughly, is that understood?’
‘Perfectly, captain.’
‘Alright. I’d recommend you wear a suit, it’s very cold in here, but you can keep your helmet open.’
‘Very well captain, I’ll be with you shortly.’
Clare muted her suit microphone and signed for Collins to do the same.
‘Watch him. I’m still in charge until I hand over. I don’t want him touching anything.’
‘Got it.’
They remained there in the centre of the deck, until some thumping noises above them announced Mordecai coming through the airlock. He appeared above them a few moments later, and floated down to join them. He stared around the command deck, his eyes pausing over the kitchen area, and turned to face Clare.
‘I don’t know what to say, captain. This is – terrible.’
‘Yeah. Well, we haven’t found any other remains here, so it’s likely there’s worse things below. Are you going to be okay?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
‘Okay. Please keep behind us, and don’t touch anything for now. Okay, are we all ready? Let’s go take a look.’
Clare took hold of the ladder and they followed her in turn, pulling themselves along as they floated down into the next level of the crew compartment. This was the lounge deck, set aside for off-duty time, with the sleeping areas for the crew set around the walls of its ten-metre circle, and a reading and sitting area in the centre.
They panned their lights around the space. Like the command deck, it was grubby and untidy, and the curtained berths were filthy – it looked like a nineteenth-century sailing ship, not a USAC scientific vessel. There were no bloodstains here, though.
Clare and Collins floated slowly round the deck, checking inside each of the berths. Collins stopped by one of them and shone his lights onto some sketches stuck to the wall. He looked more closely. They all appeared to depict the same thing; a gate or set of doors, set in a wall. In some of the sketches it was on its own, in others it stood at the base of what looked like a cliff face, but the door/gate appeared to be the same in all the drawings.
He moved on. In the next berth, there were some more sketches. Again, they all showed a similar scene, but drawn by a different hand.
‘What do you think that is?’ he asked Clare, who had stopped at the other side of the room and was examining more drawings, again showing the same scene.
‘I don’t know,’ Clare said slowly, wondering what its significance was. She glanced round the room, and her eyes stopped at a section of blank wall, in the gap between one of the berths. In the gap, someone had stuck a much larger drawing of the same scene. She pushed herself over to take a closer look. It appeared to be the same drawing as the others, but in much more detail. The door had a high, Saxon-style arch and was in two slender halves, with ornately worked pillars in geometric designs on each side. It stood at the base of a cliff, and there were stars in the sky above it. The doors stood slightly open, but had no handles that she could see. On the outer surface of each door was an elaborate decoration of a serpent coiled around a shield. She stared at it for several moments. Mordecai came up to stand beside her.
‘What do you make of this, doctor?’ She turned to look at him, and for an instant, saw a flash of surprise cross his face, swiftly concealed.
She glanced at the drawing again, and back to Mordecai.
‘Something you recognise?’
He turned to her. ‘No – but this same picture is everywhere.’
‘Yes.’ She stared at his face intently.
He avoided her eyes, and moved off to the centre of the room, to the movie screen, where several sheets of paper were stuck to the screen. ‘There are more of the drawings over here.’
Clare watched him carefully. ‘Well, it’s obviously significant, but I have no idea what it means. Do you?’
‘No.’ He looked back at her, and he seemed to have recovered his composure. ‘It’s clearly some kind of door.’
Clare thought about the writing in the airlock. ‘“The door is closed” – was the writing in the airlock referring to these drawings, do you think?’
Mordecai shrugged. ‘It might be, but I don’t know what it means. And it’s not closed in any of the drawings; the d
oors are slightly ajar, as if you could just push them open.’ He went back to examining the drawings.
Clare nodded slowly, but stayed there, watching him.
Eventually, Collins said: ‘There’s nothing else here. Can we go on?’ He indicated the continuance of the ladder, down into the third deck. At this, Mordecai’s head came up, and he abandoned the papers to join Collins by the ladder.
Clare floated across, and led the way down towards the third deck. She was surprised to find her way barred by a hatch, with a prominent message on it:
CAUTION
EXPERIMENTAL EQUIPMENT AREA
AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY
‘Are we authorised?’ Collins asked.
‘Yes, we are,’ Clare said firmly, before Mordecai could speak. She grasped the hatch release and turned it. It opened easily, and she swung the hatch inwards and they peered in. Like the rest of the ship, it was utterly dark inside, but the darkness seemed somehow deeper here, and the beams of their helmet lamps less able to penetrate it.
‘Don’t touch anything,’ she reminded them both over her shoulder. They followed her inside to stand upright by the central ladder. Below them was the heavy, radiation-proof hatch to the hibernaculum. Around them, filling the curved walls of the deck, tall racks of what looked like computer memory modules, in transparent cases filled with some clear liquid. To one side of the central ladder was a large, tilted couch, with a drum-shaped device at the head end, and a control console positioned within reach of the couch’s occupant. Thick cables snaked across the floor to the memory banks on the wall.
‘Will you look at that,’ Collins said. ‘Is this the playback facility – where the memory engrams were re-inserted?’
‘No,’ Mordecai said, going over to one of the memory banks. He reached out and touched it, holding the flat of his palm against it for several seconds; it was almost a caress. ‘This is the engram storage unit. All the memories of the crew – their entire lives – are stored here in this room.’
