by Razor Blade
“Better than nothing,” Dr. Mueller stated and pressed the enter button. The screen went blank for a second and then a simple command array displayed on the screen. But there was nothing that would allow them to turn the power back on.
“What will it let you do?” Lange asked. She was deeply concerned and feared for her life more than anyone else.
“I can access data files for the ship, check the status of the life support, which reads ‘disabled’, get basic readouts for fuel, temperature, and a few other minor things,” Dr. Mueller replied.
“You’re a computer expert, can’t you override the system and turn the power back on?” Lange asked.
“I have to have a way into the system. And this is not a valid entry point.”
“How about the main computers by our crew quarters?”
“It’s not like I can take a crowbar and pry my way inside the system, there has to be a terminal that will allow me to read the code, and to make changes. This prompt is so basic that it hardly qualifies as a terminal.”
“Can’t you at least check?” Lange asked. She was becoming manic.
“I think we’re going about this all the wrong way.”
“What do you mean?”
“I think we should take out the last drone and explore the asteroid. That’s why we are here, right?”
“What good will that do? Who will you report your findings too? Earth? Looks to me like they shut off communications. And we are running out of time. How long will it be before we freeze to death?” Lange asked in a panic.
“We’re not going back, you knew this was a one way trip before you signed up.”
“No, they told us there was a good chance that after we surveyed 2120 Titus we could turn around and come back.”
“Nobody told me that,” Dr. Mueller replied.
“Me neither,” Hart agreed.
“So fucking great, you want to run off and look at that piece of shit rock while we stay back here and suffocate? Or freeze?”
“It would take a week for the temperature to drop to below freezing, and there’s enough liquid oxygen to run this ship for a decade.”
Lange buried her face in her palm and began to sob. She knew there was a chance she’d not survive the journey, but now it was all too clear her days were numbered. “I don’t want to die on this Godforsaken shithole.”
“I would say I’m sorry but I’m not. You signed up for the trip, you knew the risks,” Dr. Mueller replied. “The drone has room for two, do either one of you want to go with me?”
Both Hart and Lange looked at the asteroid on the monitor. It looked like a cold dead world. They both loved the space program, and they lived the life of astronauts, but 2120 Titus looked uninviting. “Not me,” Hart replied.
“Me either,” Lange added.
“That’s fine, I can run the drone by myself,” Dr. Mueller replied. “I’ll need to calculate when to jettison from Plios 3 so I can rendezvous with the entrance point into the asteroid.”
“What entrance point? There is no hole in that fucking rock,” Hart said. “Give it up, that is a rock in space, that’s all.”
“What do you care?” Dr. Mueller asked. “You can watch me from the monitor. I don’t know if I’ll be able to communicate with you since the power is mostly out here. But I’ll try.”
Hart looked at Dr. Mueller and sighed. She didn’t want him to leave but had no reason or way to make him stay. She thought the trip to the asteroid was a total waste of time, but then with time running out, why did it matter? Then a question crossed her mind. “Do you remember that day when I walked in on you in the shower?”
“Yes,” Dr. Mueller replied. “This is an odd time for an apology. You could have said something months ago.”
“I wasn’t going to apologize,” Hart replied. “I was wondering if you’d take me up on my offer, you know, since we’re going to die and all.”
Dr. Mueller chuckled. “For a second there I thought you were serious.”
Hart unzipped her shirt and slid it down to her waist. She stood wearing nothing on top but her bra. “I am serious,” Hart replied.
Time stood still for a moment as Dr. Mueller took this in. In what crazed mental state would a woman ask to get laid when she knew her death was imminent. “I’m sorry, but no,” Dr. Mueller replied.
“You won’t grant a dying woman a last wish?”
“I don’t want to offend you, but my answer is still no.”
Hart unzipped her pants and let them fall to the floor. She kicked off her shoes and stepped out of the crumpled clothes on the ground. Next came her socks, then her bra.
“Please---stop,” Dr. Mueller said. “You’re embarrassing yourself. I’m going now.”
“You fucking queer!” Hart yelled.
“Yes, you’re right, I’m a queer,” Dr. Mueller replied as he walked away. He didn’t look back as he stepped into the hallway. From there he entered the zero gravity of the bow. As he flew weightless, he wondered if Earth had turned off the anti-gravity of Plios 3. Without the rotation of pods two through four, the crew would have become weightless. But then it would have taken maybe a day or so before the rotation slowed enough to feel the effects. Inertia alone may have been enough to keep the rotation going until friction slowed it down.
Drone two set attached to its moorings in a bottom compartment of the bow of the ship next to the empty space once occupied by its clone. Dr. Mueller assumed that the power to the drones wouldn’t be effected by the loss of power to Plios 3 and he was right, he was able to use his com link to energize the drone and unlock the canopy. From inside, he checked the dash and familiarized himself with the controls. He had run many simulations over the last few months in the science lab and had become very proficient piloting the craft.
Before opening the bay doors he used the onboard computer to calculate the right time to leave the mothership and head down to the asteroid. Since 2120 Titus was rotating, the drone had to match up with its rotation in order to save fuel and not back pedal to where he intended to go. And that location was the hole in 2120 Titus.
With the destination locked in the computer, the drone read that it would take forty five minutes before the asteroid was in position. If he spent a little fuel, he could get there in fifteen, but he wasn’t willing to waste a precious drop of the liquid fuel stored in the tanks behind and underneath him. Forty five minutes it would be. Until then, he could sit back, try to relax and think about what it would have been like to screw Chief Science Officer Jessica Hart.
Chapter 13
Noah
The time had come to launch the drone from Plios 3 into space. With no fanfare, the outlet door opened from the mothership and the drone slid out effortlessly gliding without power. The drone automatically fired its engines and the liquid fuel rockets shot the drone towards the preset target at three thousand kilometers an hour; the target---a hole in 2120 Titus. From his vantage point, the asteroid grew huge, filling his entire field of view. And for a moment panic rushed through Dr. Mueller’s body feeling he and the drone would crash into the asteroid at any moment. But on cue, the sub rockets fired and adjusted the trajectory of the drone across 2120 Titus instead of into it.
The trip to what Dr. Mueller felt was an entrance into the asteroid was less than twenty minutes away so the drone cut power and allowed the single passenger ship to glide unaided. Even without the rockets, the drone would continue on its path independently and not lose power until the drone was acted upon with another smaller rocket engine. It was Newton's First Law of Motion---That an object will remain at rest or move at a constant speed in a straight line unless it is acted on by an unbalanced force.
On his console, he had the image of Plios 3 as it slipped further and further away. In his view out the front window, he saw the asteroid rush underneath him as he sped across the uneven, crater laden and rocky surface. Maybe he was wrong and this was just a regular asteroid. Maybe an alien craft had landed on 2120 Titus thousands of y
ears ago and was too small to detect from Earth. Maybe this was all a wild goose chase.
Then he felt the drone slowing and the asteroid below became less of a blur. On his monitor he read the distance to his destination. 500 kilometers, then 300 kilometers, then 100 kilometers and finally he saw the dark spot for himself and what he saw amazed and shocked him. It was a hole, not a crater that led deep inside the asteroid.
At this point he was able to take over control of the drone and turned off the autopilot function. He used retro rockets to slow his approach and enter the space where the hole was located. Using radar, he was able to determine the hole was over a kilometer wide and a bit longer creating a ragged egg shape.
For a while he hovered over the entrance, keeping up a synecious orbit with the asteroid below. He tried to scan what lie inside the asteroid with his radar and came up with nothing. From his viewpoint, the asteroid looked hollow, like an eggshell. He noticed a few blotches on the screen that didn’t mean much to him, but for the most part, he was looking at an artificial asteroid, or a ship of some kind.
Checking his oxygen, he saw that he had enough to last seventy two hours. He wasn’t sure if the read out was meant for two people or one, but he figured his time was short anyway and seventy two hours would probably suffice. Now that he had found the hole he had seen on the photographs, he realized if his trip was going to be worth anything, he’d need to explore the chasm and find out what lie inside the asteroid. So he pitched the drone down aligning it with the entrance and found the light array mounted in the bow of the drone. He had the ability to focus high beams of light from the drone to any space around him. The sensation reminded him of hunting coons back home at night using the lights from his pick-up truck.
It was now or never Dr. Mueller thought to himself and applied power to the engines flying the drone through the opening of the outer shell, into the heart of the asteroid. His motion and proximity sensors read nothing ahead, but he proceeded with caution. The inside of 2120 Titus was pitch black, and the minimal lights he was using did nothing to illuminate his surroundings. So he voice commanded the drone to use its higher intensity bow light and half power lateral lights. The additional lights shown nothing more than blackness.
For the next ten minutes Dr. Mueller continued to venture deeper inside the asteroid. The only lights he could see were those from his dashboard computers and the glow of the light emanating from the bow of his drone. “This is fucking boring,” he said out loud.
“Why don’t you put on some music?” a familiar voice asked. It was the voice of Tom Yapchanyk, the Chief Religious Officer who he shot and sent out into deep space. Only Yapchanyk wasn’t dead and to Dr. Mueller’s horror, sitting next to him in the drone.
“Holy fucking God almighty!” Dr. Mueller screamed as he looked at the man sitting to his right. “How did you get in here?”
“The same way you did,” Yapchanyk replied looking the same as he did before he was murdered.
“No, you’re dead, I shot you and sent you into space with that horrible woman.”
“Yes, that’s correct, you did shoot me. And left my body in space to float for eternity.”
“Yeah, so how the fuck did you get in here? And how are you still alive?” Dr. Mueller asked.
“You will find out in good time doctor,” Yapchanyk replied.
“You don’t look like you’ve been shot---or been in space. You look like you did when you were trying to sell me all that religious bullshit.”
“Slow down, you are coming to your destination,” Yapchanyk stated.
“What destination?”
“You’ll see.”
Dr. Mueller fired the forward retro rockets and slowed the drone to a crawl. It was then he saw what Yapchanyk was referring to. Before him, in the faintness of the light, he saw what looked like row upon row of shelves. Only these shelves were massive and went on for as far as the light would illuminate. The closer to the shelves they moved, the more in focus they became, and Dr. Mueller saw objects on the shelves, like kids toys stacked side by side, or books all in a row. Only these toys were the sizes of houses and looked like animals. Ancient, extinct animals.
As the drone drew closer, Dr. Mueller could see the distinct outline of dinosaurs, in profile, standing side by side along the shelves for as far as he could see. He saw four legged dinosaurs, two legged dinosaurs, huge house sized dinosaurs and small car sized dinosaurs. They didn’t move, they were frozen in place like objects on display in an icy zoo. Dr. Mueller asked the computer to increase the light and the drone complied. It sent double the amount of light to the far wall and now Dr. Mueller could see what looked like frost covering all the animals. He could see the twinkling of light reflecting off what looked like flash frozen dinosaurs.
Then it hit him, this was no asteroid, it was a transport ship. A ship designed and used to either transport dinosaurs from the Earth to somewhere else in the universe, or to deliver them to the Earth from a faraway civilization. “Why?” was all the doctor could ask.
“It’s an ark,” was all Yapchanyk replied.
“What do you mean it’s an ark?”
“Do you remember when you asked me if there were dinosaurs on the ark? What was my answer?”
“Are you saying these dinosaurs are being transported to Earth?”
“No, the exact opposite, they were harvested from Earth and were on a journey when an asteroid collided with the ship. All the atmosphere was sucked out of the ark and the animals quickly froze. They have been here ever since,” Yapchanyk replied.
This ship has been in the asteroid belt for millions of years?” Dr. Mueller asked.
“You know my answer to that question. But I will say it has been here a very long time.”
Dr. Mueller tried to make out what kinds of dinosaurs he was looking at. The drone was about one hundred yards away from the inner wall of the ship, close enough to make out the features of most of the dinosaurs he could see. “Is that…I don’t recognize any of them.”
“They look different in person, most of the art you have seen is wrong. A good guess, but wrong. But they’re dinosaurs, I can assure you that.”
“So why is the ship moving towards Earth?” Dr. Mueller asked. He looked at Yapchanyk and knew he was having some sort of psychological episode that he couldn’t describe. Was he emanating from his subconscious? Was he a delusion? Was he a result of a physiological malfunction of his brain or blood chemistry? Many things could trigger visions of dead people, but it was hard to pin it down when you were in the middle of one. The fact he was able to recognize what was happening made him feel better, but what about the dinosaurs on the wall?
“The ship came back online,” Yapchanyk replied, “A signal from Earth triggered the mechanism that controlled the ship and told it to seek its source,” Yapchanyk replied.
“You’re not saying that code…”
“No, not at all. That was pure coincidence. The signal came from one of the transport vehicles used to carry the dinosaurs to the ship. At one time this ship was docked in near Earth orbit as the dinosaurs were harvested and transported up here. When this ship was filled to capacity, it was designed to move out to the edge of the solar system where the animals would be then changed into pure energy and transported across space to a different world altogether.
“How do you know all this?” Dr. Mueller asked.
“I was created here and sent to aid in the ships arrival back to Earth. I am part the man you knew, and part of what this ark is, or was. We used your friend as a base so we could communicate with you and harvested his memories so we would appear---less foreign.”
“Friend? That’s a stretch. Are you a hologram? Or a robot?”
“No doctor, I can’t explain to you what I am. But trust me, I am real.”
Absolutely lost, Dr. Mueller took a moment to think about what this ghost alien was telling him. The story sounded farfetched at best but in a way made sense. How else could the asteroid’s behavio
r be explained? Of course it was a transport ship. Of course it had been hiding in the asteroid belt for a hundred million years. No wonder it looked like an asteroid. All the pieces were falling into place now. Or were they? “You said there was a transport ship that sent out a signal. What ship are you talking about?” Dr. Mueller asked.
“It was buried a long time ago, in the flood. The ship recently came online and sent out a homing signal that was picked up by this ship,” Yapchanyk replied.
“What was the transport ship doing on Earth?”
“It was lost in a great storm. As well as others.”
“So you’re telling me there are alien craft buried underground on Earth right now?” Dr. Mueller asked.
“Yes, but they are in poor condition. The ship that sent the message is not more than pieces now. The transmitter still works, but that it about it.”
“And what triggered it to start sending signals now?”
“Could be many things. Earthquake, magnetic storm, change in climate, I can’t tell you,” Yapchanyk replied.
“Where is it?”
“I don’t know the exact location. And it doesn’t matter anyway. In a few months this ship will enter Earth’s orbit again.”
“Then what?” Dr. Mueller asked.
Yapchanyk looked at the dash and noticed a blinking orange light. Dr. Mueller took notice of Yapchanyk’s glance and looked at the message blinking before him. The message read, ‘Fatal error code 000xygn.snr.”
“Fuck, what does that mean?” Dr. Mueller asked.
“You’re the computer expert doctor. But I believe there is an error in your oxygen delivery system,” Yapchanyk replied.
The abbreviation in the code made sense. Dr. Mueller wasn’t familiar with the error but he was sure Yapchanyk was onto something. “So I guess my trip is about over.” Dr. Mueller stated in flat tone.
“Think of it this way doctor. You lived much longer than the forty seven people you murdered in cold blood. I would think you’d be happy. It’s all relative.”
