Andrew Morgan - Vessel

Sean unfolded it.

‘That’s a photo of Ruth,’ Banin said.

‘God — she looks just like Sally.’

‘I know.’

Sean stared at it for a while, thinking. ‘Here’s an idea: you don’t suppose that Bales’ father, Rupert, was the scientist in Ruth’s story, do you?’

‘I don’t know the story.’

Sean told him.

It was the crushing weight that woke Sally, a heavy force that sat on her chest, making it difficult to breath. She was lying in a bed — a hospital bed — and beside her was a trolley carrying a selection of machines wired to her arms and chest. It was dark, the only light the soft glow of dawn peeking through the drawn curtains. She tried to move under the uncomfortable and unfamiliar force of gravity, and the sting of the IV drip in the back of her hand made her wince. She lay there for minutes, hours, listening to the sound of talking through the door. Occasionally a head would flash past the window, too quick for her to see if she recognised the person it belonged to. As the light behind the curtains built, so did her hunger. She could feel it rumbling beneath the bed sheets, and she willed food to come to her. Eventually, it did, riding on the back of a silver trolley, wheeled in by a young, kind-faced nurse.

‘Good morning, Sally,’ the nurse said, smiling. ‘It’s good to see you awake. How are you feeling?’

‘Hungry,’ Sally said, wincing as she heaved herself up.

‘Here,’ the nurse said, ‘let me.’ She pressed a button on the side of the bed and the top half folded upwards, bringing Sally into a sitting position.

‘If you need to adjust it yourself, it’s just here,’ the nurse said, showing her.

‘Thanks.’

The nurse wheeled a tray over to Sally, sliding it over the bed just above her lap, then transferred the food and drink from the trolley. There was a bowl of cereal, a jug of milk and a glass of orange juice. It all looked very appealing to Sally, and she eyed it with gusto.

‘I hope you enjoy it, and I’m so glad you made it back okay,’ she said, beaming. ‘I hear you’re quite the heroine.’

The nurse continued talking, but Sally didn’t really hear it. Her mouth went dry and her appetite vanished as she remembered everything.

‘Mikhail…’ she whispered.

‘That makes sense,’ Banin said.

‘What does?’

‘Well, here’s the thing: Ruth Shaw is Bales’ mother.’

‘Bales’ mother?’

‘Yeah. That’s how I came across her. She was moved to a psychiatric facility shortly after he was born. Made it a real pain to track her down. I eventually found her file in an old folder of declassified NACA material from the fifties.’

What was a smear of a thought at first grew to a clear and definite idea in Sean’s mind. Bales didn’t want the vessel destroyed: he wanted to protect it . ‘So it’s happened before, and now it’s happening again…’ he said, thinking aloud.

‘What has?’

‘The first vessel, the one at Roswell in Ruth’s story — maybe it didn’t have the chance to do what it needed to do before it got destroyed. Maybe Bales has been trying to make sure that whatever went wrong then didn’t happen again this time around. The first vessel chose his father and his mother to make him , but when it was destroyed, the result — Bales — was tainted somehow. So now the vessel is back, and Bales has chosen Sally to… to try again.’

Banin was shaking his head in disbelief. ‘That’s a big stretch of the imagination…’

‘But think about it: Bales said we were wrong about what we thought of him and it seems he was right, so perhaps we’ve been wrong about everything else, too?’

‘You think that Bales is working with an alien spaceship to produce… well, I don’t even know what.’

‘I — I think so…’

They both laughed, Banin’s a hearty rumble. ‘It sounds like madness when you say it out loud,’ he said, ‘and maybe it is.’ His laughter faded and his eyes shone. ‘But maybe — just maybe — it isn’t.’

‘Doctor!’ the nurse called out through the open door, before turning her attention back to Sally. ‘Don’t worry, everything’s going to be okay.’

Sally found it hard to believe. Mikhail’s memory had hit her like a train, the full force of it knocking her clean off her heels. He was gone, forever, and she was never going to see him again. A man in a white jacket skipped in through the door.

‘Is everything okay?’

The nurse looked anxious. ‘I think it’d be best if you update her,’ she said, taking a step back.

The doctor nodded, pulled up a chair and sat next to Sally’s bed. She watched him, not caring what he had to say — it wouldn’t bring Mikhail back, whatever it was.

‘You had some serious head trauma,’ the doctor said in a kind but serious way. He brushed the greying flecks of hair that fell in front of his eyes back again. It was strange, Sally thought, being back here, back on Earth, talking with normal people about unimportant things. As she looked into the doctor’s eyes, she imagined the journey she might have had, the worlds she might have visited, if only she could have stayed. She thought about everything Mikhail had told her, that she would be an important part of mankind’s future, and she smiled sadly. The doctor mistook this as a positive reaction to whatever it was he was saying, and returned the smile.

‘I’m glad that you’re coming along well. You’ll be fighting fit in no time, and despite the problems, your baby will be too.’

The doctor’s words brought her thoughts back to the present in an instant. ‘What?’ she whispered.

‘Sally,’ the doctor said, his smile gone. ‘I thought you knew? You’re pregnant.’

All she could do was cry.

She spent the rest of the day in something of a daze, stuck in a subconscious netherworld that wouldn’t let her go. Even though her body was on Earth in a hospital bed, her mind was two hundred and fifty miles up, still on board the ISS. She replayed her final moments with Mikhail over and over, watching him writhe and thrash in his last few minutes of life. She didn’t watch by choice: she was trapped there, forced to relive the horrible scenario for what seemed like forever. Time had lost its power over her, until at last wake gave way to sleep and she slipped into unconsciousness. But she was not afforded rest in her sleeping state; she was still trapped aboard the station.

But this time, the station was empty. It was quiet. There was no Mikhail, no Novitskiy, no Chris, no Gardner — just her. Only the latent hum of the life support systems were there to keep her company. Perhaps she would go and look at it one last time. Perhaps that’s what her mind needed to let go and move on. She could never be free of her love for Mikhail, but there was a chance she could be free of this place.

The weightlessness of low Earth orbit was a welcoming relief on her joints and muscles, which had been tender under the unfamiliar press of gravity. She floated with ease through the lab, up into the narrowing cone of PMA One, over the cargo bags filling the bottom half of the FGB. The yawning chasm of the downward chute into the MLM no longer held fear over her; she hovered above it for a time with butterflies of anticipation dancing in her chest. She took a breath and dropped down into it, the spinning orientation no more confusing to her now as her womb would be to the baby inside her. The window looking back glowed with the eminence of Earth, the singular world that homed the billions of people who tore at each other’s throats through greed and desperation.

But when she looked up to fill her vision one last time with the familiar shape of UV One — it was gone. Nothing but empty, black space was left behind. Somehow, she felt she’d known this would be the case. A part of her even wondered if it had been there at all. She stroked her abdomen, and even though it felt as it always had, the touch of flesh on flesh was enough to convince her that the part of her that wondered was wrong. An overwhelming sadness stung her eyes, but she smiled anyway. Her love was fleeting, but it had changed her life. ‘Goodbye, Mikhail,’ she said to the empty space.