But The Stars

by Peter Cawdron

  For Mags, swearing is like breathing. Dante tries to use that to reach her friend. “Jesus H. fucking Christ, Mags,” she yells, just inches from her friend’s face, so close spittle settles on the woman’s flushed cheeks. “Get your goddamn ass on that shuttlecraft!”

  Mags tightens her lips, widening her stance and clenching her fists. It’s as though she heard someone else, not Dante. Whatever these creatures said to her, it’s made her more resolved. At six foot four in height, Mags is formidable, even for Cap. Her arms flex, making micro-movements. It’s as though she’s trapped in a nightmare, fighting to escape.

  “Come back to me, Mags,” Dante says, pleading with her friend, knowing how convincing the illusion can be, hoping to break through to her.

  Cap paces, mumbling to himself, ignoring them, trying to talk himself through the problem. “With core spikes hitting twenty thousand degrees, the magnetic field won’t hold for long. We’ve got maybe an hour at most. It’s just a matter of time. The radiant heat is going to cause cascading component failure, taking failsafes offline one after the other. Minimum survivable distance has got to be at least a hundred klicks. We’ve got to go. Now!”

  “You’re going to leave her?” Dante asks.

  Cap leans against the side of the airlock, resting for a moment, wanting a reprieve from the oppressive gravity. He breathes deeply. Blood smears on the wall as he drags himself on.

  “I don’t know. I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he says in frustration. “We don’t have the luxury of waiting for her to wake. This ain’t a fucking drill, Dante!”

  Cap leans forward, grabbing at his thigh, trying to massage the muscle. Blood runs from beneath his fingers. Rather than dripping as it would on Earth, tapping out time like a metronome, deep red blood rushes from his wound. The drops are surreal in the heavy gravity. They’re as fine as needles, thin and elongated, streaking down to the metal grating where they barely splash.

  Cap looks at Dante, appealing to her. “Are you going to drag her in there? Because I sure as hell can’t. She’s too big, too strong.”

  “How do you know?” Dante asks, ignoring Mags for a moment and looking down the corridor, changing the subject and taking Cap by surprise. Cap is already inside the airlock pulling a medical kit off the wall. Rather than lowering it to the seat running along the curved wall of the airlock, he drops it. The small plastic box plummets as though it weighs a ton, crashing into the padded seat.

  Cap is breathing heavily. “Know what?”

  “You said they were dead. Vichy, Mac and Angel.”

  “They are. They must be.”

  “But you don’t know that,” Dante yells over the sound of bending, crunching metal. The superstructure of the ice station is succumbing to the heat weakening the support beams. “It’s Angel we’re talking about out there. Your Angel. If she’s still alive, you can’t just leave her.”

  The look on Cap’s face is one of pained anguish. He’s torn. Conflicted.

  “We’re going to die. You understand that, right?” he says, pushing a needle-less injector into the exposed skin on his leg and giving himself a shot of painkillers. Almost immediately, the tension in his shoulders dissipates and his arms sag. Relief floods his brain, masking the pain, lying to him about the state of his body.

  Dante appeals to him. “We have to try.”

  “There’s no time!”

  “We can’t leave them.”

  “I’m not abandoning anyone, but we can’t wait forever. We can’t wait more than a couple of minutes.” He waves, gesturing down the corridor. “The containment field could fail at any point and all this will be over in a picosecond. You want that? Is that really what you want?”

  “I’m not leaving Vichy,” she says. “Not without knowing for sure.”

  “Fuck,” Cap says, making his way back to her. “Goddamn it, Dante. Let them go.”

  Cap’s bloodied fingers grab at the rim of the airlock as he steadies himself. He hands her a shot of painkillers, saying, “When the core blows, it’s going to leave a crater the size of Manhattan. Do you really want to be here when that happens?”

  Dante pops the cap off, positions her thumb over the plunger and works the end beneath her torn trousers before squeezing the tube. For a moment, she feels like a superhero. Adrenaline surges through her torn muscles. Analgesics numb the pain.

  Cap positions himself behind Mags, bracing himself before slipping his hands under her armpits and reaching back over her shoulders. Mags reacts immediately, swinging her arms and head, catching him on the jaw, but he drags her backwards anyway, crouching and pulling against her efforts to resist. Mags kicks, but that only helps him. Cap leans back as far as he can, planting each boot with care, moving as though he was wading through a raging current, dragging her into the airlock.

  Once inside, he lets go. Immediately, Mags stands upright. Her head turns, looking around, but through the whites of her eyes she sees only the illusion created by these monsters. Cap blocks her path, frustrating her as she tries to step out of the airlock.

  “I’m not leaving Vichy,” Dante says, more defiant the second time.

  “I don’t want to do this any more than you do,” Cap replies as he punches commands into the central computer. Blood drips from his fingers. “But I’m not staying.”

  “Where are they?” Dante asks.

  “E4. In the control room,” Cap says through gritted teeth, pressing against his leg, trying to limit the blood loss. The act of hauling Mags inside has caused the bleeding to intensify. He yells at Dante, “If you go back there, you won’t make it out alive.”

  “I’ve got to try.”

  Mags becomes violent, striking Cap with wildly swinging fists, desperately trying to get out of the airlock even though she has no idea where she actually is.

  “Why?” Cap yells, pushing Mags into a rack of spacesuits hanging on the wall. She fights with them, striking at these ghostly assailants rather than hitting him. She’s lost in a nightmare. “What if you run into one of those things again? What if they put you back under? What then, Dante?”

  “They need us.”

  “We’ve got to get off this rock,” Cap counters. “We’ve got to warn command. You’ve got to understand—those fuckers out there will stop at nothing to kill us. If we die down here, they win.”

  “Give me ten minutes.”

  “You’ve got five. It’ll take me that long to prep for takeoff, then I’m leaving. With or without you.”

  Dante doesn’t waste time with a response. She pushes off down the corridor toward the control room, limping. Although the pain has subsided, her left leg simply won’t carry her on as it should so she swings from her hip, pushing off the pipes running along the wall as she limps into the darkness.

  Walking in 2.2 gees is akin to carrying a backpack full of rocks. Dante stabs with her feet. Although she wants to be more careful, knowing a fall could break bones or shatter her hip, gravity doesn’t oblige, slamming her boots against the metal grating. Raising her leg and stepping forward is like struggling with a deadlift at the gym. Just the slightest change in muscle tension and her foot thunders back to the deck. Everything is difficult. It’s as though she’s chained to the planet.

  “They’re going to get you,” Cap yells. “Again. And then what? All this will be for nothing!”

  Dante crouches beneath a fallen beam.

  “I’m not coming back for you,” Cap yells. “Not this time. You’re on your own!”

  Dante can’t explain why, but she feels as though she’s always been on her own.

  Growing up in overcrowded New York City, there was always someone around. As Dante shared a bedroom with her younger sister, being alone was more a state of mind than place. She desperately missed the quiet of rural Alabama, but a good pair of headphones helped. South Beach, Staten Island, in the depths of winter, was the closest Dante ever came to actually being by herself, but even then, joggers and fishermen dotted the sand. It was a stark contr
ast to her old home in Fairview, Alabama. Back there, the mountains seemed to stretch forever. In New York, it was the concrete roads that were eternal. South Beach was nothing like Hawaii or Pensacola, but that thin stretch of sand was a refuge for her.

  As far as islands go, Staten wouldn’t make the top ten thousand on Earth. Oil would drift on the water, coming in from the shipping lanes. The sand was gritty. Garbage would wash up along the shore whenever the wind would blow in from the ocean. In summer, the beach would be packed with people claiming every square inch of sand with a towel as though South Beach had somehow been transformed into the French Riviera, while in winter, it could only be described as bleak, and yet she loved it—probably because that small fringe of sand marked the boundary between the madness of the city and the seemingly infinite ocean beyond.

  Seagulls would glide above the waves, held roughly in place by the onshore wind. They seemed to hover, neither advancing nor sliding back, barely holding their own in the blustery winds as they looked for crabs and scraps of food left on the sand. With the twitch of a wing and a twist of their tails they’d dip as the gusts shifted. They had to duck and weave merely to stay still, being trapped by the wind, eking out a meager existence on the lifeless beach. Caught without a net. Constantly fighting just to stay where they were. Working hard but going nowhere. As a failed astrobiology Ph.D. candidate, Dante understood their frustration all too well. Oh, she told the flight selection committee her shift to medical research was tactical, that she had more interest in medical application than abiogenesis theory, but that was a lie. She flunked. That’s the thing about lies—they never help. They leave people even more isolated and alone than before. As Dante wades through the bursts of steam coming from the cracked pipes lining the corridor, she knows precisely why she’s going after Angel, Mac and Vichy. She can’t stand living a lie, pretending she did all she could. She’d rather die than not try and then have to live with the uncertainty of giving up too soon.

  The lights within the base flicker, briefly threatening to and then dramatically plunging the station into darkness. Starlight reflects off the ice outside, but the thin windows running down the corridor were designed as viewing ports, not for external lighting, leaving the interior nearly pitch black. Dante shuffles her way along the wall with her hands.

  She’s close. She can feel waves of air pulsing down the corridor, washing over her. Her fingers glide over the wall rather than pressing against the panels, trying to avoid the steam pipes.

  “Where are you?” she asks the darkness, not entirely sure she wants an answer.

  Dante slides her feet over the grating, no longer confident lifting them in the pitch black darkness, fearing a fall that could incapacitate her. In the shadows, it feels as though she’s standing on the balcony of a tall building at night, edging her way along, desperate not to fall. Her heart pounds in her chest.

  “Daaannnteee,” echoes down the corridor behind her.

  “Goddamn it, Cap,” she whispers in reply. “Don’t you leave me down here.”

  Her mind races. What if one of those things made it out of the reactor room? What if they’re already here, lurking in the darkness? What if they cut the power to the lights? What if her fingers are inches from brushing up against their cold, clammy skin?

  Her trembling hand finds a door handle. Dante pulls on the lever, activating the emergency access reserves that power the door. Deep within the smooth metal surface, locks click and whir. Even without mains electricity, the failsafe sensors have tested the pressure, temperature and atmospheric mix on the other side of the door and determined it’s safe to open.

  “Mac?” Dante asks, struggling to see anything as she pushes against the heavy door with her shoulder. She inches forward, edging inside. “Vichy? Angel?”

  The silence is ominous. If they’re alive, they’re deep under—just like Mags.

  “Is anyone there?”

  Something’s wrong. Something other than a base that’s about to collapse around her. Dante thought she was peering into the control room, but there’s nothing beyond the door, nothing but darkness. It’s alive. She can feel it—like static electricity hanging in the air.

  Although she knows better, she steps forward, understanding this is the end yet again. Tentacles wrap themselves around her legs, squeezing tight, holding on to her as they work their way up her body, but Dante’s not afraid. She should be, but a rush of endorphins flood her mind. Instead of fight or flight, it’s as though she’s addicted to the swell of emotions coursing through her neurons. She wants to be afraid, but she’s not.

  Once again, Dante slips into the void. She looks around, wanting to see something familiar. Behind her lies the window. Beyond that, chunks of glacial ice dot the frozen plain. Dark mountains rise in the distance, reaching up toward a sky that’s alive with stars. Oh, the stars. They’re beautiful. They shine with a brilliance that cuts through the night. The stars are majestic. Dante’s at peace with what’s happening to her, but the stars—the stars burn brightly, raging against the darkness, refusing to surrender.

  Dreams

  For Dante, there’s something hypnotic about watching an entire planet drift past the windows of the Acheron in the darkness. Even after all these years, she never tires of the view. Her instructors told her life in deep space would be like living in Colorado. After a while, people take the Rockies for granted, seeing them as little more than the backdrop on a stage, but for Dante the allure is still there.

  On the daylight side of the planet, the motion of the Acheron can be a little unsettling, as instead of being sedate, the planet itself appears to turn sideways through 360 degrees every few minutes. Each orbit takes just over two hours but the motion of the Acheron itself makes the planet appear as though it’s turning in front of her. What she’s witnessing is the spacecraft rotating about its axis, but it’s hard to shake the feeling of being still and the entire universe twisting around their tiny starship. At night, though, Dante can almost pretend the universe is at peace.

  The Acheron has opened out into its standard, bicycle-wheel configuration, revolving about a central axis to simulate the effect of gravity as it orbits the planet, but it makes everything beyond the windows disorienting. During their hour-long days, the clouds, ice shelves, glaciers and mountain ranges all appear to turn when it’s actually the spacecraft that’s in motion—but not at night. In the darkness, the planet appears still.

  Dante’s a retro-buff. She’s always felt as though she was born out of time, feeling more of an affinity with the origins of the US space program than the interstellar gold rush of her age. Although almost a century separates her from Sally Ride and Mae Jemison, to her they’re mentors. She feels their influence on her life.

  Dante has always surrounded herself with nostalgic knock-offs. Actual antiques are too pricey, but for her, watching the view out the window is a bit like watching an old fashioned analog clock hanging on the wall, only instead of the second hand moving, it’s the entire clock that’s turning.

  Were it not for the stars appearing in motion, the planet would seem entirely still at night. Those pesky stars drift in unison, tracing a circle as the craft turns. If she stares at them too long she knows she’ll feel sick.

  Dante has lost count of how many times people asked her what she would miss most about life on Earth. Friends, reporters, psychiatrists and even her mom all questioned her about the things she would miss going out into interstellar space. Oh, there were the usual answers. Ice cream. Going to the beach. Walks in the forest. But once she got out here the thing she missed most was the horizon.

  People on Earth take being stationary for granted. Sit in a chair. Stare at the mountains. Watch a bird fly past. All of it seems to unfold against the unmovable backdrop of Earth. Of course, Earth is anything but stationary, spinning at over a thousand kilometers an hour at the equator, racing around the sun at tens of thousands of kilometers an hour, while orbiting within the spiral arm of an immense galaxy at hundre
ds of thousands of kilometers an hour—and yet the illusion of being still, stable and fixed on Earth is convincing—and strangely comforting. Not so on the Acheron.

  Benson marches into the medical bay, arguing with Cap.

  “This is bullshit,” he says. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

  Dante swivels in her chair, turning to face them.

  “Relax,” Cap says, trying to calm his Executive Officer.

  “I never should’ve said anything.”

  “There’s no shame in a psychiatric evaluation.”

  Benson lets out a laugh. There’s an undertone of bitterness in his voice. “You’ve just fucked my career. You know that, right?”

  “We can be discreet about these things,” Cap says. Dante’s already on her feet, trying to assess what’s happening. Cap holds out his hand, not wanting her to get up but it’s too late.

  She wants to ask, “What’s wrong?” but given the way Benson’s shaking his head in disbelief, she suspects that wouldn’t be good form. Besides, she’s about to find out.

  “I want this off the books,” Cap says.

  Dante nods.

  “No records. No identifiers. This never happened, understood?”

  “Of course.”

  Benson’s eyes dart from Cap to her. His lips tighten.

  “Hey, it’s going to be okay,” she says.

  Benson laughs, only this time it’s hearty and intentional. His eyes go wide as he says, “Oh, you have no idea.”

  Dante gestures for him to hop up on one of the beds. Benson sits on a thin foam mattress covered in a crisp white sheet. For a moment, that stirs something in the depths of her mind. Memories come in and out of focus. There’s something she’s forgotten. Something important. Something nagging at her, but it doesn’t concern Benson, of that she’s sure. No, she has a vague recollection of sitting in roughly the same position, facing some other doctor. But there aren’t any other physicians on the Acheron. There’s no one within about ten light years of them. No gas for sixty trillion miles.