The Oceans between Stars

by Kevin Emerson

  “What?”

  “Maybe they belong to people who were lost in the attack, like who were on the bridge at the time. Except that one I looked in had no pods or personal effects.”

  “Maybe they were trying to reduce weight since they lost those engines.”

  Liam shuddered with a surge of adrenaline. It was partially due to their travel through that doorway, but worries about Mina and Shawn were also fresh in his mind. “We should get to the bridge.” Liam tapped his pockets. “We can give the data to command and see if there’s a way to find the cruiser.” His heart faltered for a moment as he wondered just how far away their parents and JEFF were and how they would even contact the cruiser with no comms.

  “Which way is the front?” asked Phoebe.

  Liam pointed. “The stateroom numbers get smaller as you head forward.”

  They hurried down the long walkway, through the quiet and flashing red light. Liam kept looking around, and his nervous feeling grew. It took them ten minutes to reach the end of the core segment. The ship rumbled again, this time so hard that Liam lost his balance and—

  Suddenly he was back in the skim drone. The great red sun was before him, spinning its flares, and Liam was watching it, terrified, certain it would destroy him. But he wasn’t alone this time; Phoebe was slumped over against him in the cockpit. Her face was Telphon blue, all of her makeup gone. Her eyes were closed, and there seemed to be something shiny on her lips. Ice, Liam knew, and she was so cold, but at least she was breathing. And yet he also knew that there was so little time—

  “Liam?”

  A hand on his arm. Things sliding around loosely, no direction or balance. Liam thudded into something hard and found himself leaning against the walkway railing.

  “You okay?”

  He blinked at spots in his eyes. Phoebe stood beside him, still in her human makeup, and they were on the starliner. “Yeah. I’m fine.” He pushed himself upright and fought off a wave of dizziness.

  “You didn’t seem fine.”

  “It’s just from going through that door,” he said, but as he continued down the walkway, he worried it was more than that.

  They reached the far end of the core segment. Elevators led like spokes from all the decks to a central platform where the airlocks were located. Liam pressed the button to call one. No response.

  “Are they shut down?” Phoebe asked.

  “Looks like it. Maybe to save power. Let’s take the stairs.”

  They switched back and forth down flight after flight of metal stairs, gravity shifting as they did, so that they were always upright. When they reached the airlock platform, the walkway they’d come from was nearly above them.

  They stood before six sets of wide, clear airlock doors that led into the next segment. Liam worried for a moment that these doors wouldn’t work either, but their panels were lit, and when Liam pressed the button, the first of the double sets slid open.

  The next segment was as quiet as the last one had been, and as spartan: no cable transports, no climbing domes, and while many of the staterooms had red lights as if they were occupied, again there were others that were empty. The emergency lights still twirled on each deck, lighting the space in red.

  It took them twenty minutes to cross this segment, and Liam’s fear gripped him tighter.

  “There should be more people,” he said quietly.

  “Or at least bots,” Phoebe agreed.

  “It’s like a ghost ship.”

  They reached the next set of airlocks, and Liam saw a much smaller space beyond.

  “This must be the front section,” said Liam.

  They passed through the doors and found themselves in a wide, dimly lit hallway with many branching corridors. A shrill alarm sounded steadily. There was no one around.

  “There.” Phoebe pointed to a pedestal up ahead in the center of the hallway with a diagram of the ship. They approached the glowing map, and the tremors of worry in Liam’s gut became a full-blown earthquake.

  The diagram showed a starliner with a single core, not six. It had only two egg-shaped fusion engines, a shorter bridge section, and a smaller X-shaped array beyond that. Liam leaned against the pedestal and his breath caught in his throat as he read the name of the ship, in glowing white letters across the top of the map:

  ARTEMIS.

  “That’s impossible,” Liam said after a moment.

  “I don’t understand,” said Phoebe.

  Liam’s mouth had gone dry. “The Artemis was the prototype starliner.”

  “So we’re somewhere else in the fleet?”

  Liam shook his head. “The Artemis was never part of the fleet. It left our solar system on its own, but it was lost . . . almost thirty years ago.”

  Phoebe kept staring at the screen.

  “It was eight years into its mission when it disappeared,” Liam continued. “Nobody knows what happened to it. It stopped transmitting and vanished.”

  “So we just found it?” said Phoebe, gazing around. “When no one else has?”

  “I guess so.” Liam tapped his link and pulled up his location settings, but a message flashed: ERROR: UNABLE TO DETERMINE COORDINATES.

  “If we’re really on some lost ship that’s been floating through space for thirty years,” said Phoebe, “who knows how far we are from the cruiser and our parents. Let’s go back into the timestream together. We have to find that door again.”

  “We should talk to the captain first,” said Liam. “We can send help to find this ship once we’re back with colonial.”

  “But how are we going to explain how we got here?”

  “I don’t know. Tell the truth, I guess. How we used the watch. They need to know about the Drove and the chronologists and everything, too.”

  “Are you going to tell him about me?”

  “No. They need to know about the war with the Telphons, though.”

  “I guess. But how do we know we can trust them? What if they want to take the watch—”

  “They may not be your people, but they’re mine,” Liam said. “I have to tell them.”

  “I didn’t mean it like that,” said Phoebe.

  “It’s okay.” Liam pointed ahead. “The bridge should be at the end of the hall.”

  The ship rumbled again, causing them to stumble as they hurried toward a wide, open doorway. Beyond it, they started up a short flight of stairs—

  Hands instantly grabbed them both by the shoulders.

  “What are you two doing up here?” The soldier lifted Liam momentarily off the ground, then dropped him back to his feet and pinned his arm tightly and painfully behind his back.

  “We need to talk to the captain,” said Phoebe, who had been similarly pinned by another soldier.

  “No one’s supposed to be out of stasis,” said the soldier holding Liam. “You’re violating direct orders.”

  “We’re not part of the crew!” said Liam. “We’re from another ship: the Scorpius.”

  “The what?” The soldier gripped Liam tighter.

  “It’s another starliner, the last one in the fleet. We might be able to help you.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “We know you’ve been out here for thirty years—”

  “What’s going on, Corporal?” A tall woman had turned from where she was overseeing a few officers sitting at terminals.

  “Caught these two sneaking around, Lieutenant,” said the soldier. They pushed Liam and Phoebe the rest of the way up the stairs, to the top of a wide room with levels stepping downward, all curved like an amphitheater and facing an enormous window. The levels were lined with workstations, though only a few of them were occupied, by soldiers wearing gray uniforms. Red lights flashed throughout this room, too.

  Another wicked vibration shook the ship, but Liam barely noticed, because of what he saw out the giant window.

  There, in space before them, floated a great black doorway, illuminated by the massive lights on the Artemis’s fro
nt array. It was exactly the same trapezoidal shape as the doorway Liam and Phoebe had found in the timestream, except that this one was far larger. Liam guessed that it was over a kilometer tall and nearly as wide, like one of the skyscrapers he’d seen in pictures of old Earth. There was a small ship hovering closer to it: a military cruiser, its lights probing the inky black within the doorway.

  Liam shared a wide-eyed glance with Phoebe as the guards pushed them over to the lieutenant. She wore a black uniform, and her gold-streaked brown hair flowed over her shoulders.

  “Sorry, Lieutenant Lyris,” said the soldier holding Liam. “We were just about to take these two back to their quarters.”

  “It’s all right, Corporal.” Lyris peered at them. “What were you saying about being from another ship?”

  “We—” Liam began, but he was cut off by a flash from outside and a rumble throughout the ship. Everyone staggered, metal creaking beneath their feet.

  A wild, jagged scar of light seared across the dark, like a burst of lightning. It crossed diagonally in front of the doorway but also seemed to pass through it. As it did, the structure lit up with a complex threading of silver circuitry. Sparks flew. The Artemis shuddered and lurched forward.

  “Lieutenant!” shouted another officer. “Gravity emissions are increasing.”

  “Burn the retrorockets at ten percent!” Lyris said.

  “Electromagnetic scans are off the charts,” said another officer.

  “Are the rockets holding?”

  “Barely, sir; we’re not going to be able to maintain this position much longer.”

  “Any word from the captain?” said Lyris.

  “No, sir!”

  “Hail him again! And again after that.” She turned back to Liam and Phoebe. “Is there another ship around here? As you can see, we’re caught up in whatever that thing is, and we could sure use some assistance.”

  “We’re from a cruiser that’s part of the fleet,” said Liam, “but we’re supposed to be on the Starliner Scorpius. Though I don’t think either of them are nearby, or anyone else.”

  Lyris peered at him. “Starliner? The fleet? As in the colonial fleet?”

  “Yeah. The Scorpius is the last ship. We’ve been trying to catch it. We just left Delphi.”

  “Hold on. Delphi? Where is that?”

  “It’s the first waypoint,” said Liam. “I guess you probably wouldn’t know about it, as you never got there.”

  Lyris winced. “Let me try to understand this. Are you saying that you are from a ship that has left Mars, and that has already departed the first waypoint en route to Aaru-5?”

  “Yeah. We left Mars ten years ago. Right before the sun went nova.”

  Two different officers turned in their seats as Liam said this.

  Lyris turned to the soldiers who’d grabbed Liam and Phoebe. “Did you scan them?”

  “No, sorry, sir.” Liam’s soldier pulled a small wand-like device from his belt and pressed it against Liam’s neck. It buzzed with electric current.

  “Ow.”

  The soldier studied the readings on the device.

  “Anything?” asked Lyris.

  “DNA scan’s negative. He’s not indexed.”

  Lyris tapped one of the officers sitting at a nearby workstation on the shoulder. “Bring up our latest images from Kazu-4.” The officer flashed through screens. Lyris pointed to one. “Is this what you mean by Delphi?”

  Liam saw the dim blue-and-white orb. “Yeah, that’s it.”

  “What year is it?” said Lyris.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What year is it, right now, for you? What Earth year?”

  “It’s 2223,” said Liam.

  One of the officers gave a sharp intake of breath. Lyris bit her lip. She pointed once more at the image of Delphi. “This planet is called Kazu-4. A rogue planet that we are scouting to be the first waypoint. It’s part of our mission, here, now, in 2194.”

  Liam repeated the number to himself and glanced at Phoebe. Her eyes were wide. Nearly everyone on the bridge was staring at them now.

  “And you’re telling me that you’re from a starliner thirty years in the future. You realize you’re standing on the prototype, right? That no other starliners exist yet.”

  Liam swallowed. “Yeah.”

  “And how exactly did you get aboard this ship?”

  Liam pointed to the window. “We came through that. Well, a smaller version of that.”

  “Lieutenant!” an officer a few rows below called. “We’re getting a signal from the captain!”

  “Put him on.”

  A large screen appeared, overlying the window. It showed a static-filled image that was hard to make out; maybe some kind of structure, illuminated by floating lights. The image clipped and sputtered.

  “—you copy, over?”

  “Captain Barrie!” Lyris called. “We read you! What is your status?”

  The captain breathed hard over his microphone. “It’s incredible,” he said.

  “Where is he?” said Liam, looking from the video feed to the view of the doorway.

  “He went into that thing, or through it,” said Lyris. “He’s on a tether, from that military ship. I told him it was a completely crazy thing to do, but he’s the captain.”

  The video feed clarified—it seemed to be coming from a camera on the captain’s helmet—and now a great geometric structure became visible, like a cityscape folded on top of itself, all made of glistening black metal. There were giant towers, long twisting arms, stretching far beyond what the camera could capture.

  “What kind of readings are you getting from this?” asked the captain.

  Lyris bent over one of the officer’s shoulders. “Metallic molecular composition, but whatever it’s made of is definitely not on our periodic table. It’s giving off a strong radioactive signal as well as gravity emissions like nothing we’ve ever seen.”

  “Unbelievable,” said the captain.

  “Sir, we need to pull back,” said Lyris. “We’re having a hard time holding this position.”

  “Did you put all nonessential crew in stasis lockdown? Reroute core power to the engines?”

  “Yes, sir, but I’m not sure that’s going to be enough. We need to get away from this thing before it breaks us in half.”

  “Any word from colonial command?”

  “Communications are all messed up,” said Lyris. “Our transmissions might be making it through the interference, but there’s no way to be sure.”

  “It’s massive,” said the captain, awestruck.

  Liam peered at the great structure, and it reminded him of ancient Earth cities—the pyramids, the Roman temples—but also of the strange black buildings on Phoebe’s world. And he was fairly certain he’d glimpsed it before—when they had traveled through the smaller doorway.

  “And this is only one arm of it,” said the captain. “I . . .”

  “Captain, you should come back through. We can study this gateway, and whatever that complex is, further once we get to a safe distance.”

  “They’re connected,” said the captain. “And there are more of them. More doorways, I think. . . .”

  “We also have new evidence here, sir, that you really need to see.”

  “What new evidence?”

  “Well,” said Lyris, eyeing Liam and Phoebe, “two kids have shown up here who claim they traveled through a doorway like this one, and they’re from the future—our future, thirty years from now after the sun is gone.”

  There was a long silence.

  “Captain?”

  “I’m here. Future humans . . .”

  “Here comes another gravity spike,” an officer reported.

  The lightning flashed again, the doorway’s circuitry igniting, and the Artemis bucked and lurched closer. A new siren wailed.

  “There’s a partial meltdown in energy cell two!” an officer shouted. “We’re losing power.”

  “Retrorockets to full!”
Lyris called. “Captain, sir, Peter . . . please come back through.”

  “I need a closer look. If this is what I think it is—”

  “Captain! We’re not going to survive a closer look!”

  “Nobody survives,” the captain said, almost dreamily, “if you tell the story long enough.”

  A huge rumble shook the Artemis to its core.

  “Gravity is off the charts!” an officer called. “We’re losing our position!”

  “Get him out of there!” Lyris shouted. “Extraction team, go!”

  The military cruiser edged toward the great doorway. Suddenly the ship upended into a spin and tumbled through, vanishing from sight.

  “Report!” Lyris shouted. “Captain!”

  The Artemis lurched again, throwing everyone across the room. There was a huge whumping sound from somewhere behind them.

  “We’ve lost the stabilizers completely!”

  “Reroute all power to the retrorockets!” Lyris yelled.

  “They’re gone too, sir!”

  The Artemis began to careen toward the doorway in space. Officers tumbled and ran to their workstations. Sirens blared. There was shouting everywhere.

  Liam stumbled and watched the giant structure growing to fill their view, with its empty blackness inside. He grabbed Phoebe’s hand. “What are we going to do?”

  “We’re going through it again,” said Phoebe quietly. “Don’t you get it? This is how the Artemis was lost.”

  “I do not think that is the best course of action,” said a voice from behind them. A hand fell on each of their shoulders. A hand with more than five fingers.

  Liam spun to find the towering, spindly chronologist standing right behind them, blinking her filmy white eyes. Phoebe suppressed a shocked scream.

  “I have been looking everywhere for you,” said the chronologist.

  “What is it saying?” Phoebe asked.

  “I’d suggest you come with me before you pass through that portal. If you’re confused about space and time now, trust me: you do not want to go through that thing again.” She produced her orange crystal and pressed her fingers against the top and the bottom. It split open at its equator, bursting with bright light.

  Liam glanced back and saw Lyris looking up from a workstation, eyes wide. “Can we help them?” he asked.