by Mark Anson
‘I know you can hear me, captain.’ The rustling voice of Mordecai’s thoughts sounded in her helmet speakers, and she glanced up in surprise. ‘I know you can see this. Do you believe now – do you understand why we came all this way?’
Clare couldn’t speak; the scene was beyond her comprehension; every fibre of her being told her that what she was seeing couldn’t possibly be true.
‘I need to say goodbye now,’ his voice said, ‘We’ll be going in very soon. Your sacrifice won’t be in vain. You might even get a glimpse of where we’re going – if it is permitted.’
Her sacrifice. She understood immediately, but with no sense of surprise, more a sensation of calm inevitability. She wondered what has happening to her; she felt as if she had lost control of all willpower. She knew she should be panicking, trying to figure out some way to save herself, but she just stood there, the warning light from her failing air supply blinking, illuminating her face in a rhythmic flash of amber light.
‘Goodbye, captain …’ Mordecai’s thoughts whispered across the radio channel as the ship began to move forward. As Clare’s eyes adjusted to the light, she saw—
A golden vista opened before her; she looked out through the doorway onto a great fall of land that opened into a huge, bowl-shaped valley. The Sun was setting over the distant hills, and its mellow light illuminated a city, its stone walls straddling a wide river that wound through the valley below. Ships plied slowly up the river towards the city’s quays, their sails bellying in the gentle breeze. Graceful domes and spires, rising out of the city’s buildings, glowed in the golden evening light.
In the distance, she saw wooded slopes, and nearer to the city, they had been cleared and terraced. Vineyards, fading now into the evening, climbed the serried slopes, and small hamlets dreamed of the day that was nearly gone, the spires of smoke from cooking fires winding their way into the heavy air.
The scene smote her heart; it was staggeringly beautiful, and she moved towards it; she couldn’t help it. She had forgotten where she was; all she wanted was to tread the verdant hills, to make her way down the winding path that led down from her vantage point, down towards the golden city.
Ahead of her, the Ulysses floated, suspended in the evening air. As she drew closer to the portal, the ship started to move downwards, following the road down towards the city. To each side of the road, statues of men and women lined the path, their hands raised in welcome, their perfectly-formed bodies swathed in marble robes. To one side, she recognised the landing craft of the Ulysses, tilted sideways in the grass, its crew standing outside, smiling and waving at her. They had come through; they had made it. Tears of joy started in her eyes. They turned away from her, and started down the road, following the Ulysses.
‘Goodbye, captain.’ Mordecai’s voice wafted up to her. ‘You have been permitted to see what awaits us, beyond the gate. Lieutenant Collins is alive and well, standing next to me. Thank you for your sacrifice. Goodbye …’
She came to the threshold of the doorway. A loud thrumming grew in her ears. She knew instinctively that it was the onset of oxygen starvation, and that it wouldn’t be long before she collapsed, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the beauty of the scene. With every fibre of her being, she wanted to follow the Ulysses down the road to the golden city, to breathe its air and its fountains, to look up at its domed buildings, and watch the stars come out in the sky.
She stepped into the doorway.
As she stood there, poised to enter the glorious land that lay in front of her, a shimmer went across the doorway, like the quivering of air in the summer’s heat, and the light changed to a pale rose. Clare sighed, realising that evening was falling, and the lights of the distant city twinkled in the gloaming.
But the light continued to darken, and the rose changed to a burnt orange, and then to a deadly shade of red. The road leading down to the city wavered, and the perspective altered, changing into a colossal staircase of crumbling stone heading steeply down, down into a valley of black, lifeless rock. The marble statues by the side of the stairs shuddered and changed, becoming grotesque figures of humans and animals, frozen in poses of fear and pain, their eyes moving, staring madly back at her.
She tried to turn away, but some unseen force held her there, her limbs shaking as she tried to move, to turn, to get away from the sight. Her oxygen alarm shrieked in her helmet. She was forced to watch, helpless, as the city’s walls crumbled and fell, its spires and domes collapsing inwards. Fire belched up from the ruins. The river became a line of molten rock, and the ships burst into flame, turned over and sank in clouds of ash and smoke.
The scene darkened into night, and receded into the depths, a huge vista of fire-blasted plains opening up all around it. A terrible rush of fear coursed over Clare as she stood there, rooted to the spot. The city in its valley was gone; rivers of molten rock snaked across a fire-blackened landscape, consuming everything in their path, heading somewhere in the distance that she never wanted to see.
‘No! No! Noooh!’ Mordecai’s voice was an anguished scream in her ears. ‘I did what you wanted! I gave you a sacrifice! Stop! Don’t take me!’
The Ulysses floated there for a moment, suspended above the cracked and broken stairs. Another voice came over the radio; it was Collins, and she heard him cry out, but she couldn’t move or speak:
‘Captain! Save me!’
The Ulysses started to move downwards, floating inexorably down the stairs. Flames, yellow and scarlet in the darkness, belched upwards, rising to embrace it. The crew of the landing craft, caught on the stairs, tried to climb back up, but the steps steepened in front of them, and the flames engulfed them, their screams echoing back up to the doorway.
A wave of heat broke over Clare as she stood there, making her step backwards from the threshold, her arm raised to protect her face. When she looked up, the doors were closing. Mordecai and Collins’s voices, faint with distance, cried out for help, but the ship was far down the stairs.
Flames exploded from the narrowing doorway, and now the scene beyond became a vast tunnel, stretching down and away into unfathomable depths. Countless other staircases came into view, all converging, heading downwards into the red-lit plains. Dead suns and planets spiralled down, and a terrible wave of despair and loss sucked at her from the closing doorway. She fell to her knees, and in front of her the great doors came together until there was just a slit of blood-red light. It paused there for a moment, as if looking at her.
The asteroid’s surface around her stood out in great hummocks and pits of blackness, illuminated by the slit of red light, and then her legs wouldn’t support her any more, and she fell to the ground, the red LED of her exhausted air supply staring at her.
The doors began to move again, but just before they closed, shutting out the scene forever, she heard a chorus of unearthly screams, faint but clear, echo back up the stairs. The slit of light dulled to a dark crimson, and faded into night.
As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could see the stars above her, looking down into the valley. One of them was much brighter than the others – it was the Mesa, reflecting the sunlight as it came around the limb of Psyche. With her last strength, she reached out towards it. Her vision was fading, and her temples throbbed with each heartbeat; a loud buzzing noise drilled through her hearing. It grew louder and more insistent, growing and growing until she thought she would scream with the pain …
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
It became a buzzing sound; a thin, high-frequency thrumming, like the beat of some insect’s wing.
She opened her eyes, and she was in the airlock of the Mesa. The fluttering came from a half-folded sheet of paper, trapped in the flange of the outer airlock hatch, and she stared at it in disbelief.
She remained like that for a long time, before she thought about moving. She turned her hands over slowly, and her wrists had a small set of cut marks, already healing, which might have been made when she burst out of the bathroom
, or by a sharp knife, used in haste.
The ship was silent around her, and the Ulysses had gone.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
She went back over the landing site, of course.
She took the Mesa down as close the surface as she dared, and timed it so that the valley would be lit obliquely by the Sun, so that any features would stand out. But there was no valley there; just a huge mountain of iron, pitted with endless, dust-filled hollows, turning slowly in space beneath her.
Of the Ulysses, there was no sign. She called USAC Command as soon as she came out from behind the asteroid’s shadow, and reported what had happened. Command were at first relieved that the Mesa and its arsenal of nuclear charges were safe, then incredulous that she couldn’t locate the larger ship.
Responding to their endless requests, suggestions and orders, she used the long-range radar to scour the sky around Psyche, computing every likely trajectory the ship might have taken down to the surface or in the orbital plane. She spent days scanning the surface with radar and infra-red, looking for any metallic object that might have been wreckage, but against the conductive, iron surface of the asteroid, it was an impossible task.
At one point, they even intimated that she wasn’t trying hard enough, to the point where she felt they thought she was under scrutiny herself, so she turned the ship over to remote command and let them search themselves. By that point, her fuel was running low for the journey home. They searched for another two days, going over the same old ground, but found nothing, and finally had to admit that the Ulysses, temporarily found, had to remain listed as officially lost in space.
Mordecai and Collins’s disappearances would be harder to explain, but she left that up to USAC; they had organised and conducted the mission in secrecy, and they could figure that one out themselves.
She felt little sympathy for Mordecai; he had tried to kill her, and had gone ahead with the experiment on the Ulysses’ crew despite knowing the defects in the equipment. Wherever he had gone, she felt few people would mourn his passing. Collins, though – she didn’t know about him. Perhaps he had been killed when Mordecai backed the Ulysses away from the Mesa, or perhaps he was with Mordecai now. Either way, he wouldn’t have gone willingly unless he had been forced into the machine. She remembered saving him from the bad revival, and she thought about that for a bit, and decided she had done everything she could for him.
When it came time to get back into the stasis chamber for her long flight back to Earth, she hesitated for a long time. She had just accepted stasis as a part of her career; the risks and the rewards. She knew more about the dangers now, thanks to Mordecai. It hadn’t changed her view on her career, but she wondered how long she would be prepared to keep accepting the risk.
The Mesa turned slowly in space until it was pointing toward home, and slipped away quietly from Psyche. The asteroid’s dust-strewn surface faded to a bright speck in the distance, and Clare checked the ship’s trajectory and locked down the navigation systems. Ignoring standing orders, she disabled the ship’s remote command system; she had had enough of USAC’s interference, and she wanted to wake to the sight of Earth in the sky, not the blackness of empty space, or some urgent target.
Lying in her stasis chamber, Clare’s mind hovered on the edge of consciousness as the drugs took effect, and the familiar sensation of deep calm folded round her. She didn’t feel it when the needles went into her arm, but just before she disappeared entirely into the blackness of stasis, a vision came to her again of the valley on Psyche, and the two huge doors.
This time, the doors were closing, but on the scene of the wonderful city in the golden light of evening. The rays of sunlight illuminated the domes and spires, and a figure, standing at the head of the winding path that led down towards the city.
It was her father, and on the nearby hillside, the figure of a horse paused in its grazing, and looked up at her.
Her father didn’t say anything, just smiled at her as the doors closed, and lifted his hand in farewell. The golden light flooded out of the narrowing crack, enveloping her in its warmth.
I’m proud of you, his lips said.
She tried to speak, to will him to stay, and—
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Here she was again.
The last time she had been waiting outside a USAC courtroom was over Venus, on the huge aircraft carrier Wright, to be called into the inquiry into the downing of the Langley. Back then, she had been twenty-four, a newly-qualified pilot on her first tour of duty flying over Venus. Now, she was thirty-one, and a commander of a Space Interceptor.
Former commander, she reminded herself. Since returning to Earth three weeks ago, she had been relieved of command of the Mesa. With the minor damage to its interior repaired, it had already left with a new captain, heading back out to its station over Mars. Her fate would be decided now, in the courtroom facing her, whose soundproof wooden doors were closed.
She shifted position in her dress uniform as she sat on the chair in the corridor. At least this uniform fitted her; last time she had to borrow one, and it had been too big for her. She eased one leg in the stiff riding boots, stretching it out in front of her. Her officer’s sword lay across her knees, the belt wrapped around the scabbard; she would have to surrender it when she went in, to be returned if she still retained her commission afterwards.
She had been to endless debriefings, and submitted her written reports of what had happened. They had asked her questions of course; demanding more details, always more details of things she couldn’t possibly remember or even know about, until she felt she could scream. A forensic team had been over the Mesa in minute detail, down to taking fingerprints off surfaces and controls, but they hadn’t shared any of their findings with her.
The right-hand door opened, and a hatchet-faced officer stepped out. He looked at her directly, without any trace of emotion. ‘Captain Foster – please come in.’
She picked up her sword and followed him in; she knew where to stand, in the centre of the room, next to the single chair that had been set there for her, facing the long table of faces.
She stood to attention and saluted, and waited, facing straight ahead.
‘Please raise your right hand.’ The voice came from the presiding officer in the centre of the table.
‘Do you affirm that the evidence you shall give in the case now in hearing shall be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?’
‘Yes sir.’
‘State your name and rank for the record.’
‘Clare Judith Foster, Captain, United States Astronautics Corps.’
‘Captain, surrender your sword.’
She walked forward and placed her sword on the desk in front of the speaker. The belt clattered as she laid it down.
‘Please be seated.’
She stepped back, and sat down on the chair, the only comfort in a room full of strangers. She didn’t recognise any of them, except for the grey-haired Colonel Jordan, who had delivered the attack briefing on Mars, before the ill-fated mission to deflect the asteroid. She wondered what he was doing here, and an uncomfortable feeling stirred inside her.
‘Disciplinary hearing into the near-miss incident of the USSV Mesa with asteroid 2010 TG4, June 17, 2148. Brigadier General Tracey presiding.’
Clare looked back at him. Tracey was tall and lean, with dark, wiry hair and thin lips that looked like they didn’t smile much. She didn’t know him either by sight or reputation.
‘Captain Foster, let me introduce you to the officers on this panel, who will be reviewing your testimony and performance during the events in question.’ He gave their names in turn; she knew Colonel Jordan of course; then there was a Lieutenant Colonel Nichols, and a rather aggressive-looking, overweight officer with narrow-set eyes whom he introduced as Colonel Helligan, from Spacelift Command. The others weren’t as high-ranking, but there were none below the rank of Major.
‘Captain Foster, you are charged
with taking unnecessary and excessive risk with the piloting of the USSV Mesa, a Philadelphia-class deep space interceptor, during the interception of asteroid 2010 TG4 on June 17, 2148. Specifically, that you ignored clear warnings from your Executive Officer and from the automatic terrain avoidance system, and took your vessel to less than one hundred metres from a rotating body, wholly against all your training and standing orders to the contrary. I must warn you that if you are found guilty of this action, your command and promotion prospects could be severely affected. How do you respond?’
‘Not guilty, sir.’
There was a shuffling of papers as the panel settled down to the business of the hearing. She had already indicated in advance that she would be contesting the charge; this had been her last chance to change her mind. Since returning to Earth, she had been unable to make any contact with Major General Wesley, who had promised that they would go easy on her if she delivered a successful mission to locate the Ulysses. She felt as if she had been shunned by USAC Command; the inexplicable second loss of the Ulysses seemed to be too difficult for them to accept.
‘Captain Foster, I note that you have not requested a fellow officer to accompany you, or speak in your support during this hearing. Is this correct?’
‘Yes, sir.’ The only person who could properly speak of the circumstances of the interception was Colonel Randall, and he had already been called as witness for the case against her. Collins, who offered to put in a good word for her after she saved him in his stasis chamber, was gone, and she didn’t dare think where. Her vision of the last moments of the Ulysses, as the doors closed to a red slit in the darkness, was something that haunted her dreams still.
