Event Horizon

by Steven E. Mcdonald

  Starck nodded. “Affirmative. The hull’s intact, but there’s no gravity and the thermal units are offline. I’m showing deep cold. The crew couldn’t survive unless they were in stasis.”

  Even then, the odds are lousy, Miller thought. He smoothed at his close-cropped hair, refusing to jump to conclusions until all the evidence was in. “Find ‘em, Starck.”

  “Already on it,” Starck said, her fingers moving over her console.

  “Bio-scan is online.” She was silent for a few moments, looking over her displays, mentally organizing the data. Miller expected her to come up with an answer any moment now. Instead, she frowned, uncertain. “Something’s wrong with the scan.”

  Miller leaned further down, trying to take a closer look.

  Weir was hanging back, trying once again to stay out of the way. “Radiation interference?” Miller said.

  Starck shook her head and bit her lip as she looked over the displays, calling up different readouts. “There’s not enough to throw it off. I’m picking up trace life forms, but I can’t get a lock on the location.”

  Miller looked around as Weir took a step toward them. “Could it be the crew? If they were in suspended animation, wouldn’t that affect the scan?”

  “I’d still get a location,” Starck said, turning away from the frustration of her displays, “but these readings, they’re all over the ship. It doesn’t make any sense.”

  Miller straightened up, squaring his shoulders. “Okay, we do it the hard way.” He looked from Starck to Weir, back to Starck again. “Deck by deck, room by room. Starck, deploy the umbilicus.” Miller turned around, found his next target down at the engineering console. “I believe you’re up for a walk, Mr.

  Justin. Go get your bonnet on.”

  Justin displayed an unseemly level of enthusiasm for this suggestion, snapping back with a crisp, “Yes, sir!” before leaving his station and heading for the hatch.

  Weir started to follow Justin off the bridge, hurrying to keep up with the younger man.

  “Doctor,” Miller said, firmly. Weir stopped and turned, giving Miller an impatient look. “Stay here on the bridge. Once the ship—”

  “Captain,” Weir interrupted, coming closer to Miller, his face set and his attitude filled with a desire for argument, “I didn’t come out here to sit on your bridge. I need to be on that ship.”

  Miller took a deep breath, trying to squeeze the tension from muscles that had no desire to be untensed. “Once the ship is secured, we’ll bring you on board—”

  Sharply, Weir said, “That is unacceptable.”

  Miller hissed in frustration. “Once we’ve secured the ship,” he said, and now his temper was certainly fraying, “that’s the way it is!”

  Weir glared at Miller in abject silence. Miller let him have a few breaths to get used to the idea of defeat, then added, “I need you to guide us from the comm station. This is where I need you. Help us to do our job.”

  Weir breathed out, relaxing. Miller felt relieved. While he expected Weir to be aboard the Event Horizon sooner or later, he much preferred it to be later. The last thing they needed was for the main designer of the ship to be stomping around, getting in the way and giving orders no one could follow.

  “Very well,” Weir said, and he went to sit down.

  Miller headed for the hatch.

  Chapter Twelve

  Down in the airlock bay, Miller watched the monitors while Starck deployed the umbilicus, carefully extending the heavy plastic tube from the Lewis and Clark to the Event Horizon, locking the docking collar in place over the outer door. At least Weir and his team had done something that followed standard protocols. Miller’s crew could have managed without using the umbilicus, but their lives would have been far more complicated.

  Miller turned away from the monitors as Cooper, behind him, said, “Come on, Skipper, I already put my shoes on.” It was a bit more than his shoes, Miller noted. Cooper was ready to hit space at a moment’s notice—all he needed to do was get his helmet in place.

  Miller was already fully rigged for EVA, as were Peters and Justin, the bulky suits making it a little difficult for them to move in the airlock bay.

  Cooper dropped Miller’s helmet into place, sealing it securely. Cooper seemed to have an almost infinite capacity for extra-vehicular activity. A liking for EVA was a rare thing even in the Big Rock Range, where being outside was a daily occurrence.

  “You’ve had plenty EVA, Coop,” Miller said, his voice muffled by the helmet. “It’s Justin’s turn. Stay on station. If anything happens…”

  Cooper was all serious business. “I’ll be all over it.”

  DJ finished checking over Peters and Justin for problems with their suits.

  He walked over to Miller, checking seams and connectors, confirming the helmet seal.

  “Any survivors are gonna be hot,” Miller said to DJ.

  DJ nodded. “Radiation I can handle.” He finished his check of Miller’s suit and stepped back. “It’s the dead ones I can’t fix.”

  That’s all we’re probably bringing back for you, Miller thought, turning away from DJ and nodding to Peters.

  “Opening inner airlock door,” Peters said, doubly muffled through two layers of helmet. She turned and tapped the control panel in the airlock door.

  There was a resounding clank as the main lock disengaged, allowing the door to slide open.

  Miller stepped into the airlock, followed closely by Peters and Justin.

  Justin turned as he entered the airlock, pulling out the end of a safety line and attaching it to an eyebolt on his suit. Cooper had followed them, still making visual safety checks—one of the reasons Miller respected the man, despite the smart-ass approach to life—and he smiled now at seeing Justin setting up a safety line.

  “You still need the rope?” Cooper said to Justin, even as he reached out to check the integrity of the line and its connection to the eyebolt. “I thought you were one of those spacemen with ice in your veins.”

  Justin tugged on the rope, getting an approving nod from Cooper. “I’d rather be on the rope and not need it,” he said, as he tensioned the line a little more, “than need it and not have it. Now step aside, old man.”

  Cooper made a face at this, but confined his revenge to making Justin bend down a little so he could double-check the younger man’s helmet seals. In a serious voice, Cooper said, “You just keep your nose clean. Baby Bear. Clear the door.”

  With a wave, Cooper backed out of the airlock. The door rolled shut, the locks engaging with a hollow boom that resonated through the ship. Warning lights flicked on. Through his helmet, Miller could hear the low hissing of air being evacuated from the airlock.

  He pressed back against the airlock wall, waiting. The seconds ticked away.

  Silence around them. The cotton-wool feeling of vacuum, shot through with the sounds of the suit systems, electronics, and electrics warming and cooling, air aspirating through the suit ventilators, odd creaking sounds from the material.

  The outer airlock door opened. Light poured in from the umbilicus.

  Miller turned and stepped out, launching himself.

  Starck had indicated that Weir should follow her down into the lower level of the bridge area. He saw no reason to object to this slight change of environment, so he did as she requested.

  Waving him to the seat usually occupied by the engineer, Justin, Starck sat down and started activating monitors and consoles around them. Weir turned his head, taking in the different displays. Three of them were direct video feeds.

  Time code, and names had been overlaid in the lower right corner; the monitor for Miller’s video feed was directly in front of Weir.

  At the moment, the feeds showed only the featureless interior of the umbilicus. Once in a while a figure would drift into range.

  Next to Weir, Starck said, “Video feed is clear.”

  Smith climbed down behind them, his eyes on the monitors.

  “Are you with
us, Dr. Weir?” Miller, made tinny and distant by the radio system.

  Something looming up on the monitors now. Weir was beginning to react with excitement as Miller, Peters, and Justin closed on the Event Horizon. He should have been with them, but he could not win every battle. Perhaps it was to the good—let the professionals face any initial danger, and then go in to open up all the secrets hidden within the ship.

  Weir focused intently on the monitors now. “I’m with you,” he said. “You’ve reached the outer airlock door.”

  Miller did not waste time with the Event Horizon’s outer airlock door, motioning for Justin to get it open in a hurry. Justin quickly complied.

  Peters pushed by him, then, getting a thumper up against the inner airlock door. The device emitted bursts of sound, measuring the return response.

  Peters scanned over the readouts. “We’ve got pressure,” she said, putting the thumper away on her belt.

  “Clear and open,” Miller said. He and Peters got out of Justin’s way.

  Justin floated up to the inner airlock door, turning himself carefully. He reached to his utility belt, extracting a slim tool, inserting this into the airlock operations panel. The inner airlock door opened slightly. Particles swirled through the gap— crystals of ice, frozen dust, more that they would have needed additional equipment to identify. Atmosphere from the Event Horizon would fill the umbilicus, helping to keep it stable as long as the docking ring seal remained intact.

  Justin continued working. The inner airlock door opened all the way, a doorway into pitch darkness.

  Justin stowed his tool and checked his line as Miller led the way into the Event Horizon. Their helmet lights caught ice crystals whirling in the silent darkness, and light scattered around them, only to be swallowed in the darkness.

  Miller glanced around, trying to get some sort of perspective. As far as he could tell, they had stepped into some kind of access corridor, but the corridor was seemingly endless, an immense pool of darkness broken once,in a while by a deep blue patch of light that he assumed resulted from windows filtering the light from Neptune.

  He looked up. Somewhere far over his head, his helmet light reflected from a ceiling. He could have used a hundred times the candlepower, he realized.

  The lights they had with them would show them almost nothing.

  “Jesus,” Peters said, and he looked around at her. “It’s huge.”

  Trying to wrench his mind away from the scale of the starship, he said,

  “Ice crystals everywhere. This place is a deep freeze.” That was more for Weir’s benefit than anyone else’s.

  Weir’s voice was in his head now, courtesy of the suit radio. “You’re in the central corridor. It connects the personnel areas to engineering.”

  Miller was about to suggest they pick a direction when his attention was taken by something hovering just at the edge of his field of vision. “Hold on a second,” he said, quietly and firmly. He started to crane his head forward, around. “Everybody hold your position.”

  Justin and Peters froze where they were. “What is it?” Justin said.

  “I don’t know,” Miller said, edging around, trying not to move too fast.

  Small objects afloat in microgravity tended to prove all three of Newton’s laws of motion. One too-quick move here and they would be chasing this particular mystery down the length of the corridor.

  Miller edged down, closer, focusing on the object. It was small and white.

  A human tooth, complete with the root.

  Shocked, Miller said, “DJ?”

  DJ was normally unflappable, but his voice was shaky now. “I, uh, think it’s a right, rear molar.”

  Miller rolled his eyes. Time for the pragmatic voice. “Yeah, thanks, I can see it’s a tooth.” Yes, DJ, he thought, this is not what we were looking for here.

  “Looks like it was pulled out by the root,” DJ added helpfully. This was not the sort of statement Miller wanted to have made dead-center in his head.

  As it was, Miller’s spine was chilling, and he could feel the hair rising on his arms.

  This was not getting off to a good start___

  Come on,” Smith said, looking away from the monitors. “What is that all about?”

  Weir and Starck were both staring at the bizarre image on the monitor displaying Miller’s video feed. The tooth floated there lazily in midair, flecked with frozen blood and little bits of flesh.

  Weir felt as though he had entered a timeless place, one where the shadows lengthened and the light twisted all the images. His dreams came back to him, haunting. Whatever had happened to the Event Horizon seven years ago, it was beginning to seem that the end result was catastrophic and ugly-Cooper had arrived at the flight deck now, nudging Smith aside as he leaned between Starck and Weir to stare at the monitors. “This is some weird voodoo shit!” the rescue tech exclaimed, shaking his head. Weir looked at Cooper, then turned back to the monitor, wondering what sort of answer he could have given him.

  Starck gave Cooper an annoyed glance. “Get back to your post, Cooper.”

  Weir wondered whether it mattered if Cooper spent his time here on the bridge or down in the airlock bay playing doorman. Cooper did not stick around to debate the point, leaving the bridge after a curt nod to Starck.

  The image on Miller’s monitor shifted.

  Miller stood up straight, stretching his arms out, the motion sending the vagrant tooth spinning away down the corridor. This mission was beginning to give him the creeps, and that was just not acceptable.

  “All right, all right,” he said, pushing his feelings aside and trying to regain his professional demeanor, “let’s move on. Peters and I will search the forward decks.” He turned to look at Justin, who was trying to follow the progress of the flying tooth. “Justin, take engineering. Don’t forget to breathe.”

  Justin turned his head. Miller could just about see him smiling through the faceplate. “I won’t, sir.”

  Miller and Peters started cautiously down the corridor. If Miller had his bearings right, they would eventually arrive at the bridge. In contrast, Justin tackled the travel issue by kicking off-hard, aiming for a wall, turning over in midflight, and kicking off from there to increase his momentum. He vanished down the corridor, trailing line.

  Miller shook his head, smiling. Justin was good, but he was young and sometimes impetuous.

  He passed through an archway, surprised at the suggestion of Gothic design here. It took him a moment to realize that the archway disguised a join in the corridor—sections of the main corridor had been joined together this way, rather than simply being welded or bolted. He stopped and turned carefully, inspecting the coupling.

  Near the floor, a box caught his attention. There was an explosives symbol on the cover.

  “Dr. Weir,” Miller said, slowly, “what’s this?”

  Before Weir could answer, Peters said, “Here’s another one.” She was at another coupling, hovering over another of the boxes. She pointed towards the other side of the corridor. “They’re all over the place.”

  Looking around, Miller could pick out those within range of his helmet light. They nestled into the couplings at floor or ceiling level, looking for all the world like mechanical molluscs.

  “They’re explosive charges,” Weir said, finally.

  Miller sighed, shaking his head. “I can see that. What are they for?”

  “In an emergency, they destroy the central corridor and separate the personnel areas from engineering. The crew could use the foredecks as a lifeboat.”

  This made sense to Miller, though he had some difficulty seeing it from an aesthetic point of view—all this immensity, this grandeur, and the panic button led to a collection of explosives out in the open. The Event Horizon had been the prototype. Not everything gets covered up in a prototype.

  Miller joined Peters and they began moving down the corridor again. “That means they didn’t abandon ship,” Peters said.

  Miller wa
s looking around again, trying to figure out what was really wrong here. “So where are they?” he asked.

  No answers were forthcoming.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Weir scanned the monitors with an almost boyish enthusiasm, concentrating mainly on the feeds from Miller and Peters—right now, Justin’s progress was more dizzying than informative.

  Miller and Peters had reached the Event Horizon’s Gravity Couch Bay. This would be one of the places they would find any crew members in suspended animation. Against all reason, Weir held out hope that they would find someone alive.

  Peters said, “We found the Gravity Couches.” The radio link made her voice tinny.

  There were eighteen Couches in the bay, nine on each of the two walls, all essentially the same in form, size, and function as those on the Lewis and Clark. The bay itself was considerably larger, of course, but everything aboard the Event Horizon was designed to be on the large side.

  “Any crew?” Weir said, as Peters and Miller each walked along a row of Gravity Couches.

  “Negative,” Miller said.

  Weir sat back, drained, empty. It was hopeless, then. No one left alive, no easy route to the answers. They had to

  know. There must be something aboard the ship….

  The video monitor showed nothing but one empty Gravity Couch after another.

  They gave no sign of having been used. Weir shook his head, trying to will something into being there.

  “They’re empty, Dr. Weir,” Miller said.

  Weir’s fists clenched. Hopeless. Everything he had done ended up in a condition of hopelessness. He looked up, looked into the darkness of the Event Horizon and tried to think of Claire, but he could not get the focus now, could not bring her back to mind.

  “Starck,” Miller continued, “any luck with that scan?”

  Starck’s hands were playing over the console in front of her. Weir turned his head to look at her and saw frustration written in lines and knots in her face.

  “I’m running diagnostics now, Captain.” She shook her head again, glaring at the readouts. “Nothing’s wrong with the sensor pack. I’m still getting trace life readings all over the ship.”