Richard Russo - Ship of Fools

“Yes.” I hesitated. “I wish you were going with us.”

“I wanted to,” she said. “Despite my reservations about that ship. Bishop Soldano told me that Eric Casterman would be going as the Church’s representative, and I asked if I could replace him. The bishop refused.” She paused. “Perhaps it’s better this way.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. Maybe it is, that’s all.”

I wanted to know what she was thinking, but apparently she wasn’t going to tell me.

“How soon are you going?” she said.

“Four days. Maybe five. I don’t think there’s any rush.”

“Let me know when everything is ready, and I’ll come by and bless the ship.”

“And will you pray for our success?”

“Someday we’ll have to talk about that.”

“Talk about what?”

“Prayer. Most people have the wrong idea about it.”

“And what’s that?”

“That prayer is to ask for things. To make requests of God.”

“It’s not? Then what is it?”

She shook her head. “Some other time, Bartolomeo. It’s a serious subject, and not to be dealt with lightly.”

“All right, some other time.”

“Do let me know when you’re prepared to leave.”

“I will.”

She turned, and I watched her walk away, feeling as always an aching sense of loss. Pathetic.

GHOSTLYblue light and a black surface that seemed to draw in that light and swallow it: that was the alien ship from two, three kilometers away as we slowly approached. Already the ship was blotting out much of our field of vision, cutting off the stars like a rent in the universe.

Nikos was right. The alien vessel was enormous, and it seemed we were being deliberately sucked into it. I also felt a hint of what Father George and Father Veronica had suggested—the sense of some malign quality to the ship, though it appeared dead and harmless.

I was in the front cabin with the pilot, watching the alien starship grow and spread all around us, appearing to extinguish the stars in all directions until there was nothing to be seen but the black mass coming at us. I felt lost in all that darkness, and I had the strong urge to retreat from the pilot’s cabin, find a window looking back at the stars. For a moment I had to close my eyes, overwhelmed.

“Jesus,” I whispered, opening my eyes once again to that dark immensity.

“Don’t take His name in vain,” the pilot said to me.

I turned to her, but there was no indication that she’d been joking. “Sorry,” I said. She shrugged, not looking at me, keeping her gaze on the ship ahead of us and the instrument panels. I wondered how many of his own “agents” the bishop had managed to include on this expedition.

We passed near one of the bright blue navigation lights, a space buoy hovering untethered. More blue lights in the distance helped provide a sense of perspective that threatened to disappear as we neared the black vessel. We passed another blue beacon, then another, until there were no more to be seen. Then, directly ahead of us, I made out an oval of dim white lights on the black surface, and some of the surface features became indistinctly visible—half-pods, shallow depressions, a series of raised ridges, long thin projections.

“The white lights mark the entrance,” the pilot said. She slowed the shuttle’s progress, and eventually brought us to a halt seventy-five meters from the alien vessel; then she turned the shuttle around so the bow faced away from the ship, and the stars came into view once again. She had orders to leave if anything serious went wrong and she thought the shuttle and those aboard it were at risk, even if it meant leaving people behind on the alien ship.

I regarded the dense, crystalline ocean of stars, unable to pick out the Argonos from among them. Although I could no longer see it, I could feel the alien ship behind me, could feel it drawing all of us toward it, both physically and psychologically. My skin buzzed with fear and anticipation.

ONCEoutside, Trace Youngman took the lead, pushing off the shuttle; he drifted across the seventy-five meters and landed gently on all fours just outside the circle of lights. We would use suit jets to get back to the shuttle, since it was smaller and easier to miss, but this was the easiest and presumably safest way to reach the ship.

“Don’t kick with too much force,” Youngman reminded me, his voice clear and sharp inside my helmet. “And you’ll be surprised at the number of projections that will serve as handholds.” Youngman and Winton were taking me on a reconnaissance excursion, to give me a feel for the alien ship before we officially resumed exploration with the new teams.

Like most of the inhabitants of the Argonos , at least those in the upper levels, I’d made a number of excursions outside the ship, but I was thankful for the reminder. I flexed my knees slightly, then straightened them and floated off. I was overcautious, perhaps, and it took me much longer to reach the alien ship, but I landed only a few meters away from Youngman, hardly feeling my touchdown. Almost immediately I had a grip on a smooth-cornered cube projecting from the ship’s hull, and anchored myself.

Then I made my first mistake: I looked “up” along the ship’s hull. The hull rose vertically to the sky above me like the metal face of an insurmountable cliff. Suddenly I lost my orientation, and the stars seemed to shift, lurching into slow, slow motion; with no gravity, I suddenly felt that if I didn’t hang onto the ship I would fall away from it, hurtle helplessly into the cold night of space. I scrambled desperately for a second handhold, while my legs were flailing about of their own volition, my feet searching for some purchase.

“Relax,” Youngman said. “I warned you about this. This ship is huge, and the way it sucks light away… Stop struggling and don’t look at anything except the surface directly in front of you.”

My left hand found another projection, and I did just as Youngman told me—stared at the hull in front of me, and stopped the kicking of my legs. Another minute or two, and my breathing had returned to normal.

“You okay?” Youngman asked.

I nodded. “Yes.” My mouth was dry, but I did feel fairly calm. “I’m fine.” As a test, I worked my way across the dozen or so meters to Youngman’s side, without trouble.

Within minutes Winton had joined us. We gathered together inside the lights, around a rectangular panel larger than I had expected—about ten meters long and eight or nine wide. Youngman popped open a smaller panel above it, twisted something inside, and the large panel slid open. He went in first, swinging himself into the ship, and saying, “Wait here for a minute.” A few moments later, the interior of the air lock brightened slightly, and Youngman said, “Come on through.”

The air lock would have been large enough for all twelve members of the team; it was illuminated with a ghostly light from two portable lanterns that had been mounted to the air lock walls with adhesive pads. Every passage and room in the alien ship had to be illuminated.

When Youngman wheeled the outer door shut, cutting off the night and the stars and sealing us inside, I felt a brief shiver of panic. Then the inner door slid open, as large as the outer one, and we moved through dim light growing dimmer until Youngman switched on the next lantern. Even then the passage—far larger than any passage on the Argonos —remained dark: the lanterns cast faint gray light like the Argonos lights at night.

“Raise the brightness,” Winton said. “He’s here to see what it looks like.”

Youngman looked at me. “They’re on reserve mode, to prolong battery life. But I can boost them.”