The Void (7 page)

“More like riding a wave,” Aidan said.

“Yeah, whatever.”

“So you can imagine what that would do to the mind,” Dr. Ridley continued. “To see everything you know about the universe ripped apart and reordered? It would be the very definition of insanity, I think. But it also explains the dreams, at least partially. It's the mind's way of dealing with what is going on around it.”

“But no one's ever seen it? No one's ever stayed awake? Just to see?”

Ridley hesitated. “No.”

“What about the
Hypnos
?” Cyrus asked.

For the first time that evening, Jack Crawford looked interested.

“The
Hypnos
is a myth,” Captain Gravely said. “I don't think it ever existed.”

“I don't know, Captain,” Cyrus said. “I've always believed it, and I think most people in the trade do.”

“What is the
Hypnos
?” Rebecca asked.

“It's a ship,” Captain Gravely said. “Or it was a ship. The story goes that the
Hypnos
was the first warp ship.”

“But that's not right,” Jack interrupted. “Everybody knows the
Armstrong
was the first ship to go warp.”

“Right,” Cyrus said, “that's the official story. But some people think that the
Armstrong
was just the first successful ship. Well, in that the crew survived, at least.” 

“Or didn't go insane,” Aidan offered. “That's the way I always heard it. That they went crazy. Before they died.”

“Wait,” Rebecca said, “I'm confused. What exactly happened?”

“You have to understand,” said Cyrus, “it's probably just a story.”

“A conspiracy theory, more like it,” Aidan added.

“Right. Anyway, my father used to talk about it. He said that there were rumors about a test. Decades ago. Years before the
Armstrong
, even. The ship went out beyond Pluto with a crew of four. A short warp test to Proxima Centauri. When the time came, they fired the engine and went to warp. The relay station at Jupiter was the first to hear from them. They had received a beacon from Proxima Centauri as soon as the ship dropped out of warp, and the celebration was already underway.

“Champagne, speeches, the whole deal. But then, the transmission came in. My father's best friend was a communications guy in the Navy. He had a buddy who was assigned to Jupiter Station at the time. He said the crew never radioed in. Jupiter tried to contact them but they couldn't raise them.

“At first, they didn't think it was a big deal. You know, warp does funny things to the equipment. But then something strange happened; the ship started heading toward Proxima Centauri. Slow at first, but then faster and faster. They sat there and watched them fly the ship right into the star. Nothing was left, and nobody ever knew why.”

“That's pretty much the story I heard,” Aidan said. “But I was told one other thing as well. After the
Armstrong
, they sent out a ship to see if they could find out what had happened. Turns out, when the ship started to break down and melt, the computer fired off an information packet. But it was too close to the star and too far from a listening post to broadcast. Anyway, the rescue ship found it.”

“Where they able to figure out what went wrong?” Rebecca asked.

“Depends on who you ask. Some people say there was nothing but static, that all the circuitry was fried. Makes sense, given how close it was to the star. Others say that there were voices but you couldn't make them out. But some people, some people say that you could see and hear everything. The bridge was mostly destroyed. Two of the crew were dead. The other, who knows. But the captain was still alive. Still alive and in control. It was he who drove the ship into the star. He turned to the camera for only a moment. And he only had one thing to say.”

“Well?”

“The last broadcast, the last thing they heard from the
Hypnos
.
.
.
'They are here.'”

“They?” Rebecca whispered, but to that question, no one had answers.

“Like I said,” Captain Gravely offered, breaking the silence that had suddenly fallen over the room, “it's probably a myth. But in any event, you see now, Ms. Kensington, why it is worth the dreams. Cautionary tale or reality, it's dangerous out here, and we take every precaution, for your safety as well as ours.”

*  *  *

“You really think it was a good idea, letting them talk about all that?”

Gravely poured two glasses of brandy and handed one to Dr. Ridley, who stood perusing a faded yellow newspaper clipping hanging from her wall. He recognized the man in the photo as an ancestor, the first to join the Navy. Gravely sat down behind her desk, leaning back in her chair till she was almost horizontal to the floor.

“People talk, Dr. Ridley,” she said, taking a long drink from the glazed, crystal snifter engraved with the name U.S.S.
Alabama
. “Better to have them get it out in the open now. Especially Ms. Kensington. Or should I say Dr. Kensington. What do you think about that whole charade she played today?”

“You mean the talk about warp technology?”

“Given her background, we weren't telling her anything she didn't already know.”

“Who can say,” Ridley offered, his glass already near empty. “Perhaps she was just making conversation. Maybe she was humoring the boys, Aidan and Cyrus, letting them show off some of their own knowledge. I stopped trying to figure out why people do things like that a long time ago. Maybe she's afraid of the dreams and wanted to hear some reassurance.”

“In any event, her fears are legitimate, don't you think?”

“The fact is,” Dr. Ridley said, gesturing with his glass, “no one has ever proven that the dreams cause insanity. It is my theory that it is the anticipation as much as the dreams themselves. That people work themselves into a frenzy. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy.”

Ridley looked at Gravely and saw her grin. Then she said, “Dr. Ridley, you've been on this trip before. You've experienced the dreams. Do you really believe that?”

Ridley smiled and finished his drink. Then he stood and walked to the door. He turned and hesitated for a moment as he glanced at the scale model of the
Alabama
Gravely kept behind her desk. Then he looked at her and said, “Touché.”

Chapter 5

Rebecca found him on the bridge, even though she didn't know she was looking. Just wandering aimlessly through the ship, passing the days until they reached the warp point—days that seemed to crawl by in the vessel's cramped and twisting quarters. Aidan was seated at his station, feet propped up on the panel in front of him, watching Jupiter as they passed by. He heard the doors open behind him and wasn't surprised when he heard Rebecca gasp at what she saw.

“It's beautiful.”

“Yep,” said Aidan, “it truly is.”

“I've never seen it before,” she said. “At least, not like this. I've only been as far out as Mars.”

“I've seen it a hundred times. But I never get tired of looking.”

“You mind if I sit?”

“Of course not, make yourself at home,” Aidan said, sweeping his arm over the chair beside him.

“So what exactly do you do here?” she said with a smirk, only half-kidding.

“Well,” he replied, looking at her for the first time, “I’m your navigator.”

“Is that what you're doing now? Navigating?”

Aidan cocked his head to the side as he grinned at her. “As a matter of fact, yes. But you're observant. The computers can do most of the work these days. All of it, really.”

“So why do we need you?”

“Regulations call for it, for one.”

“Ah, Navigators Union particularly strong?”

“As a matter of fact, the Interstellar Guild is very powerful. But that's not it. At least, not all of it. The computers do break down on occasion and trust me; you don't want to get lost. Not out there.” Aidan pointed to some point in the distance, some point beyond.

“I hope that doesn't happen often.”

“No, not often. Usually only after the warp. Screws with the system sometimes. Maybe even most times. Nine times out of ten you come out of warp and something's wrong. Sometimes the whole computer is fried. Not permanently,” he said, seeing the look on her face. “It only takes a couple minutes to bring it back up, usually. Every now and then you can't get it done. That's when it's good to have a navigator.”

“Ah. So that's why you sit up here all day? Just in case something goes wrong?”

“Do I spend all my time in here?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact you do.”

Aidan looked back at the screens. For a second he was quiet and Rebecca was afraid she had said something that offended him. But that wasn't it. There were darker things on Aidan's mind.

There was no reason for him to be here. No ordinary reason. The computers could take care of themselves and if something did happen, he could be in the control room in plenty of time to handle it. No, he liked to spend his spare moments staring into space for other reasons.

Rebecca sat beside him still waiting for an answer.

Aidan supposed her curious nature lent itself well to her job as a scientist. And while inquisitive people often bothered him, there was something about Rebecca he liked.

“No,” he finally answered. “That's not why I do it.”

“Why then? You just like to look at the stars?”

He sighed and rapped his hand on the console three times in quick succession. “If I tell you,” he said, “I'm afraid you'll think I'm crazy.”

She smiled. “I won't think you’re crazy.”

“Don't be so sure.” He picked up a glass of water and took a sip. She simply stared and he knew she wouldn't let it go.

“Ten years ago I was on a transport ship like this one. We were carrying mining equipment out to Anubis in the Omega quadrant, one of those industrial colonies past the Scutum-Crux.”

“You've been to Anubis?” she almost whispered.

Aidan nodded once. They both knew the truth; Anubis wasn't just any colony.

The images flooded back to him, ones he rarely thought on if he could help it. Anubis was a place of dark legends, carried mostly on whispers that floated through the spacing guilds, growing more mysterious with every telling. It wasn't just that it was deep in space. That added to the mystique, of course. But it was everything else that sealed that planet as a place made of nightmares most God-fearing people preferred to forget.

Anubis sat in the middle of a part of the galaxy that many scientists called simply, “strange space.” It was an appropriate moniker, but didn't quite capture it. The guild navigators had another name for it—the necropolis. Because all that once moved there was long dead.

Space was not a void. It was a thing unto itself, a great sheet of emptiness on which sat all that was. And like any sheet, it could be torn. For reasons no one had yet explained, the nebulae of the Omega quadrant had built stars so massive that they bent the very fabric of space. In that one magnificent place, all the golden glory of the universe was concentrated in those radiant spheres.

Aidan sometimes wondered what it must have been like. Or what it would have been like, if there had been anyone there to see it. A thousand great red and blue giants, burning in the night sky. There would be no night in that perpetual light. No darkness, no shade. It would have been what Heaven must be like, he thought. Worlds, if worlds there were, where the sun never set.

Who can speculate what civilizations might have grown there? Bathed in warmth that never ceased. Building monuments and temples to the great globes of fire in the sky. Never knowing darkness. Never cowering in fear of a Plutonian night. Never wondering if the sun would ever rise again. But alas, Nyx could not be denied forever. And when she came, she came in fire and death.

Some stars ended in crackling hypernovas that thundered across the void with such violence that the heavens rang with their sound. Others fell upon themselves, devouring fire and gas and matter until there was nothing left but a black abyss, impossibly emptier than space itself.

And as the void was twisted and torn, as it was ripped and stretched until the laws of physics no longer mattered, whatever cities and civilizations, monuments and memories, that might have been were simply washed away, like sand castles before the rising sea.

What was once a shining beacon in the night sky fell into darkness, and the Omega quadrant would likely have become little more than a curiosity, intriguing to few but a handful of astrophysicists. Except that one star remained.

It sat in the very center of the Stygian night that was the Omega quadrant. Officially, it was called Kruger 27-B, having been so branded in a time when scientists, rather than artists or philosophers, named the stars. It was tiny by even common standards and but a speck of dust compared to the mighty giants that once ruled Omega. But the star remembered, for it had been one of those giants in days gone by. Before the nova rippled across its surface and gravity collapsed its shell into a diamond-dense spinning pulsar.

A planet turned about that glowing gemstone, zipping so quickly around its center that it fell to the star's watchtower pulsating energy beam twice a day. Kruger 27-B Prime those same uninspired scientists called it. But it had another name. The men who provided supplies and carted away the rich ore that poured from the planet's mines called it Anubis.

Anubis, the Egyptian god of the Underworld, “he who sits upon his mountain,” the mountain of death. The mountain of madness. If the ancient Egyptians had ever seen Kruger 27-B Prime, they would have agreed with the appellation.

Nothing lived on Anubis. It was a dead world, as every day the beam of radiation scoured its surface clean of life. Nothing moved on Anubis but the men who had come there to dig out the precious ore from its soil . . . if men they still were.

Aidan couldn't say. He had been to Anubis only one time and only then to Dejima, the quarantine port. It was forbidden by the men of Anubis for outsiders to go beyond Dejima's walls and the few who had tried had all met an end as mysterious as Anubis itself. The old mariners, the ones who had been but children in the early days of the colony, claimed that it had not always been so. That when the first settlers arrived on Anubis, clad in the full body suits that protected their lives but gave them an inhuman look that added to the planet's legend, it had been no different from any of the other mining colonies.