D

by George Right

  "No," he concluded, "doesn't look like it. They simply tried to destroy each other's brain."

  "What for?"

  "And for what reason did that guy above beat his head against a wall until his eyes flew out?"

  Eve did not answer. She stood, heavily leaning on a door jamb, and again fought against nausea–a nausea from which there was no relief even in vomiting.

  "I think, he didn't beat himself against the wall simply because of rage... or pain," Adam, who also felt rather nauseous, continued to reason. His eyes automatically fixated on the terrible mess in the open skulls. It was quite apparent, in answer to his own question, that a significant portion of the brain could be missing before one lost the ability to move a hand. But words helped at least somehow to prescind his thinking from the feeling of hopeless horror entangling Adam like layers of a heavy wet rubber sheet which were closing up his nose and mouth, stopping his breathing. "He wanted to destroy his own brain. And tore at it with his fingers after breaking the skull. But to do such with your own head is... not too efficient. With another one it is much easier. That's why these two tried a more thorough approach."

  He looked around in search of bloody inscriptions which, probably, could explain at least something. But they did not present themselves. Here there was nothing.

  On a sleeve of the dead woman, sitting to the left side of the door, it was still possible to perceive an emblem–a dark blue circle surrounded by a red ring. Along the top part of the ring the inscription "HYPERION" was curved. On the bottom there was a figure "III." In the dark blue circle a hand stretched toward a beam-spreading star. The designer of such an emblem probably considered that the image had come out proud and encouraging. However, it seemed to Adam that this was the hand of one drowning, vainly grasping at air in a last desperate gesture.

  On the left breast pocket of her overalls there was one more emblem, but it couldn't be understood under a crust of blood. Adam had distinguished only the large letters ISA and remembered that it meant "International Space Agency." Lower there was a rectangular stripe with a personal name. Lida... no, apparently, Linda... A surname was not distinguishable at all. He was going to try to clean off the stripe but heard splashing sounds from bare feet behind him.

  "Where are you going?" He turned back. There was already no one in the doorway. "Eve! Stop!"

  "I... I cannot" came from a corridor. "I cannot be stopped. It seems to me that I'm at the edge of remembering. I am so frightened! Anything, only not this horror! Not to think! Nottothinknottothinknottothink!" Judging by the sounds, she ran like mad along a corridor towards the lift.

  "Eve! Come back!" Adam shouted. "You shouldn't wander here alone! You have absolutely no weapon!"

  But she probably didn't hear him–or could not conceive words.

  "No," Adam thought gloomy, "I won't abandon everything to run after her just because she has womanish hysterics. Right now I should exlore everything here."

  He put the skull shard on the lap of the dead woman and unbuttoned her left pocket. What's here? A comb. Oh yes, to preen feathers is the most important thing for him now–especially taking into account that there is no mirror nearby. He put the useless thing back. And what is in the right pocket? It appeared to be empty. No, there is something. A pen. Nowadays it is seldom necessary to write by hand (he remembered this), but, obviously, such a thing is still included as part of the outfit of astronauts. Could a pen be useful to him? Who knows, but he had neither a third hand nor pockets. He considered dressing in the overalls of the dead man, but he felt no desire to put on those bloody rags–all the more so because all who did this before have died.

  Adam realized that all this blood did not belong to one person, or even to two. These two in the infirmary were not the ones who had undressed the pilots. They had obviously removed overalls from other dead persons, and those, possibly, from others. And here now the relay reached the last survivors. Is it possible that the clothes somehow influenced what was going here? No, that's madness. But what was not madness here? He had better not repeat any of the actions of these predecessors, madness or otherwise.

  Adam turned to the male corpse. He pulled out the spoon from yellowish-crimson jumble in its skull. He could not look at it. He had the feeling that the spoon was biting into his own head, so he flung it into a far corner. Then he moved on to the pockets. The right one was plump.

  There was something like a scroll inside, which was not just barely twisted but also folded so that it could be pushed into the pocket–a scroll with some drawing... or schematics.

  Unfolding it Adam understood that it was not paper. And not fabric as it had seemed to him for just a moment. As the scroll was rolled open completely, Adam understood instantly just exactly what he was holding in his hands.

  It was human skin which had been cut off from a stomach. The hole of the navel and the top shred of dark pubic hair were clearly visible. But the rest of the area of the skin was glabrous. The stomach was female.

  And on this skin, while it still belonged to its mistress–a living mistress, who bled when it was being done to her–someone had cut out a certain rough drawing. The clotted blood had distinctly depicted its contours and some short inscriptions. At the first moment they seemed to Adam a cabalistic abracadabra, but then he realized that he simply held the drawing head over heels.

  Now he understood that what he looked upon was a simplified schematic drawing of the ship. Not all compartments were labeled, and inscriptions resembled a wedge writing, but nevertheless they could be spelled out: "CONT R", "LIV COMP", "GEN", "BIOS." BIOS is, apparently, an abbreviation connected with computer technology. But why had it been labeled at the infected level with the crucified woman? Also what is "gen," which is situated, judging by the schematics, exactly in the middle of the ship? Something concerning genetics? (He felt again an attack of irrational fear at this thought.) Well, no. "Gen" is, probably, a generator. The Kalkrin generator, the engine of "Hyperion." On spacecrafts of the past the engines were situated at the aft end, but a dark starship had other means of movement. She travels by means of the field of dark energy shrouding the ship.

  Adam casted almost a mechanical look at the headless body on the couch, then, stumbling on an idea, approached closer. He tried to bring together the edges of her peeled flesh and disemboweled stomach, and then put the "drawing" in from above. Yes, skin was definitely cut off from here. If this woman was lucky, by that time she was already dead.

  Why, by the way, is the drawing turned upside down? Was she hung legs up?

  Adam decided not to take this dismal picture with him (That guy kept it in his pocket... yeah, and now he is dead, his brains scooped out by a table-spoon.) Eventually, the schematic was simple enough to remember–provided he does not lose memory again.

  He quickly examined the infirmary in search for scalpels or something similar, something capable of serving as a better weapon than a sharp piece of occipital bone. But alas it seemed that the majority of medical tools had also been destroyed by the vandals who were smashing the ship–or at least they were carried away somewhere. The saw with which the skulls had been cut open obviously did not suit for a fast effective blow. With a sigh he again took his bone tool, though he did not know whether he still believed there were murderers wandering the ship.

  If only Eve were not succumbing to madness. Yet, it seems she is not so far from it.

  He went out to the ring corridor, then beyond to the lift, and loudly called her several times. The silence of the dead ship was the only answer he received.

  It was, however, not completely dead. The engine obviously was still working. And illumination–it was undoubtedly becoming brighter.

  He reached the lift, almost running. Eve was not there. So where should he search for her now? All over the ship? "Eve!" he hopelessly shouted–with the same result.

  He bypassed the lift shaft and glanced in the opposite corridor, which now shone from end to end. The dead man with ripped up stomach la
y in his former place, and, as Adam could judge from such distance, in the same pose. The annulated creature, of course, had crept away long ago. He was curious about where it might have crept to now because it would be undesirable to step on such a thing unexpectedly.

  "If I were a woman, flooded with despair and fear, would I run towards a corpse?" Adam asked himself and answered: "No. Then, all the same to the staircase."

  From an exit to staircase he called his companion again and had a depressing thought that if there were still someone else onboard, the two of them were doing everything to facilitate the enemy's goal. Well, upward or downwards? She had unlikely decided to hide in the control room–though who knows what she can do in such a condition. After waiting a few more seconds, he moved downwards, without having the slightest idea what to do beyond that. Eve could have gone to any of compartments, in any of the premises.

  He decided at first to pass all the staircases down to the end, continuing to call her. Then if that didn’t help, he would have to examine each level systematically. At the same time he would also learn what was going in places where he had not yet explored. However, he had no doubt any more that anything good was going on there.

  He found Eve almost at the very bottom, near the entrance to the terrible level where the woman-hive hung on wires. Eve lay on steps, twisted in an unnatural pose, with her head down, as a person would never lie down of his own volition. The picture became clear to Adam at first glance: She had run, being beside herself, had stumbled on the steps, and had broken her neck.

  Or maybe someone had helped her. Though if so, she had gotten off lightly, considering the condition of the other victims.

  Anyhow, Adam was again alone. Face to face with this awful ship, and this thought filled him with such desperate anxiety that he might as well plunge his head downwards on the stairs.

  Tramping heavily, he descended to the body, sat down nearby and put a blood-stained hand on Eve's shoulder, hidden under dirty bandages–and immediately realized that he had jumped to a hasty conclusion. The woman was trembling, but alive. Or was it a shiver of agony?

  But no, she, leaning her hands on a step, slowly raised her head and looked at her companion in misfortune with a look of a small animal tortured by children. Blood drooled from her mouth to the bound up chin.

  "You are wounded?"

  "No," she said in the voice of indifference.

  "And what is this?"

  "This?" She mechanically licked a lip. "Looks like I bit my lip." She grew silent again.

  "I have found a map of the ship," said Adam primarily just to say something. What this map was, he of course did not specify.

  "So what?" Eve responded in the same impotent tone.

  "Well... now we know where the generator is. It is necessary to go five levels up..."

  "So what?" Eve repeated.

  "Perhaps there is a duplicating control system there. As we can do nothing from the main control room... There should be an emergency switching-off on-site, for example, specially for carrying out a repair."

  "It won't help," Eve shook her head.

  "Well, of course, we will fall out in the middle of interstellar space. But, at least, we will stop spending fuel or whatever our generator works on. Also, we will stop heading away from Earth. And then, maybe, we will manage to understand and repair something." The last phrase has sounded quite frankly false, and he understood it as such.

  "Nothing will help us," Eve wearily said. "Has it not dawned on you yet? My God, what a jackass you are."

  "All right then," he resolutely stood up. "All your moaning irritates me to no end. I’ll go to deal with the generator. And you, if you want, can lie here on the staircase and wait, until the wormbugs crawl from there and make a nest in you." With that he went up the staircase, without looking back. After a while from a splashing sound behind him he noticed that Eve was following him.

  The scheme didn't fail. The engine compartment turn out to be where expected. But the passage way to the generator was blocked by a tightly closed heavy door painted in diagonal black and yellow stripes. Instead of the usual handle this door had a matte image of a palm, gleaming red. On its smooth surface there were marks from an object hitting it with something sharp, but apparently the material appeared to be perfectly firm.

  "A touch panel," Adam guessed and bit his lip with disappointment. Obviously, access is granted not to just any crewman, but only to an engineer or someone like that. And how do they search for an engineer among all these corpses? And the most important, it would not work. Modern biometric scanners are smart enough not to work from a dead hand.

  The only hope was that at least one of them had the admission. Adam still did not remember what his duties were onboard, but the probability wasn't too great.

  He put a hand on the panel, mentally preparing himself that it then would be necessary to ask Eve to do the same, and when it also would not work...

  The melodious signal sounded, and he saw even through his hand how the panel was lit green. As soon as he moved his hand away, the door moved aside.

  They entered an airlock beyond which was one more door, with the inscription "External Contour Authorized Personnel Only" and some annunciator which, however, didn't light. And on the right, on a wall between two doors, there indeed was a reserve control panelboard.

  Adam's sight at once struck on the caption "Generator Emergency Turn-off " on the panel with a red button. But this button turned off nothing–it only removed the blocking from a protective casing. Without hesitation Adam pressed it. The casing folded back. Under it there was a big red handle–fully turned downwards.

  Something was wrong. Adam could lose his memory, but something deeper than any intelligent memory–the reflex developed by uncountable repetition–told him that on any flying machine, from a glider to a starship, any switch "up" means "on," "down" means "off." Never vice versa.

  Still without accepting it, he all the same flipped the switch to the top position–nothing changing–then returned it to the bottom one. Well, that's right: near to the bottom position there were the letters "OFF." And only then did Adam pay attention to the indicators on the board.

  Main contour power : 0

  Reserve contour power : 0

  Remaining fuel: 0

  System shut down

  "Impossible," he muttered.

  "So!" Eve exclaimed with hysterical notes in her voice. "Now you have understood, at last?"

  "Understood what?" he bellowed in response. "What should I understand?"

  "That we are dead."

  "Our situation stinks," Adam agreed, "but nevertheless..."

  "What ‘nevertheless’? We are dead already. Got it? We have died, and this is our hell!"

  "You are talking through madness."

  "My God, haven't I said you are a jackass? How did you not listen? This is an eleven-person ship!

  "Do you mean that list?

  "The hell with the list! How many corpses have we found?"

  "Eight plus in those in the infirmary... Eleven," Adam understood, shocked.

  "That's it."

  "No," he wildly shook his head. "That cannot be."

  "What can't be is the possibility of stowaways on an interstellar ship. Even on a city bus you cannot enter without a card."

  "I don't know. There should be a rational explanation," Adam muttered, while before his eyes there was a bloody inscription which he saw only during an instant before it was absorbed by darkness: "NO DEATH."

  "For the time that you remember yourself, did you want to eat?" Eve put the squeeze on him.

  "You scoff? In such conditions?"

  "And to drink? And to the loo?"

  "It just didn't pass enough time."

  "Shit, we even cannot vomit when feeling sick! Also, we do not sweat when we run! Are you saying that’s not true for you?"

  "Well..."

  "And this?" She jabbed her hand into the panelboard. "How can the ship fly if the fuel has run out
long ago? It had to run out. Gliese 581 is just twenty light years from the Sun." She apparently remembered this fact. "And we? You saw how far we have gotten. The first starship simply could not be designed for such a distance."

  "Perhaps the image in control room is in error? Computer failure, especially considering how everything was crushed here? And actually we have fallen out long ago into normal space and are drifting there with subluminal speed. After all we don't know what is actually going on outside."

  "And light? Where is the electricity coming from–if the power registers at zero? I assume it doesn’t only concern the engine work."

  "The accumulators have simply not exhausted yet."

  "You said the light became brighter. Who charges them?"

  "Solar batteries. Perhaps we are actually near some star."

  "By the way, if we drift freely, where is the weightlessness? Just don't say to me that this thing rotates. Gravity in different places would be different for each, and we visited already plenty of...

  "I am sure everything can be explained."

  "Let's go."

  "Where?"

  "To the infirmary."

  "You ran away from there."

  "Yes. And now I want to look more attentively on something and to show it to you."

  She turned away and went to the staircase, and now it was he who had to follow.

  "By the way," he caustically noticed, walking upwards on abrupt stairs, "if we are ghosts why do we stamp on this staircase? Why wouldn’t we soar through walls and ceilings? Perhaps some of our physiological reactions have been interrupted, but personally I can feel my body and it is quite material."

  "Perhaps as it should be," she answered, without turning around. "Whatever gave you the idea that ghosts fly–cartoons? If the dead felt nothing, how could torture exist in hell?"

  "I don't believe in a hell."

  "I also didn't believe before."

  A few minutes later they entered the medical room again. This time Eve resolutely approached the dead woman in the armchair and began to clean off the blood from the name tag. Adam shrugged his shoulders and began to do the same to the man.