Richard Russo - Ship of Fools

“Not quite thorough enough, apparently.”

Cardenas gave me a hard smile. “People usually underestimate the crew.”

“Nikos knows about one trip.”

She nodded, still smiling. “And I guess I underestimate Nikos.”

“What was the bishop doing?”

“Don’t know. But we think he brought something back to the Argonos on his second trip.” She shook her head. “No idea what.”

That was distressing. And I wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that there was no longer any gravity in the room that had killed Santiago.

“Any suggestions?” I asked. “A plan of action?”

“Not really. The crew’s looking, but it’s unlikely they’ll find anything. The bishop is too smart, and the Argonos is too big. You want a plan? We keep a close eye on the bishop. Wait, and watch our backs.”

THEnext day we secured the shuttle to the alien ship’s hull, after extensive and contentious discussion with the pilots, Nikos, and the bishop—we argued that extra stability for the shuttle was necessary since we might be there for weeks—but only after working out a way for the pilots to perform a quick-release and takeoff. Rita Hollings set up a system of boosters and relays throughout that part of the alien ship already explored, so video and sound would be transmitted from the suit helmets to the shuttle with minimal loss of signal quality. We could have someone monitoring the exploration teams at all times.

As a precaution, we continued to use two remotes, although they slowed our progress considerably and were too crude to be much real help. We sent them first into each new passage or cabin, but aside from acting as a decoy that could spring any traps awaiting us, and providing preliminary images, they were practically useless. In addition, each of us had a hand stunner secured to our pressure suits, although none of us expected to use them.

I would like to say that the following days were filled with awe and excitement, with marvels and wonders, astonishing discoveries. If they were, the marvels went unrecognized.

Mysteries we did find, and they were many. But I learned that something can be too mysterious, too alien—so mysterious or alien as to approach being meaningless:

—Two connected rooms crisscrossed by metal rods; we had to laboriously climb through them each time we went in or out of the ship until we found a curving passage that bypassed them. We couldn’t even guess at the purpose or function of the rooms or the rods.

—More bare and empty cabins with walls so featureless, the rooms appeared to be incomplete.

—Mazes of interlocking tunnels that doubled back on themselves and led nowhere.

—A series of dead ends—high, narrow corridors ten to twenty meters in length that simply ended at solid, featureless walls.

—And finally, a large spherical room we dubbed the Greenhouse. Ninety meters across, the inner walls consisted of hundreds of hexagonal facets of clear material like steelglass; with the hand torches and lanterns we could see through the facets to another layer about a meter behind the glass, this one consisting of smooth unmarked metal. There was only one entrance to the room. Did we really think it served as a greenhouse? No. What would have been a light source? Where would plants be mounted? As with everything else we’d seen, we had no idea what the Greenhouse’s function was.

But there was one major plus during those early days: there were no deaths, and there were no injuries. We made steady, though slow, progress farther and farther into the alien starship, and there was a growing sense of accomplishment, and a belief that better things were to come.

TWOand a half weeks after we’d arrived, the team of Starlin, Cardenas, and Winton explored a room with blistered walls—metal covered with crusted, discolored, irregularly shaped bubbles. They spent some time studying and probing the blistered metal, speculating on whether the discoloration and blistering were intentional, or were symptoms of neglect and abandonment. Then the team drifted toward a wall adjacent to the one through which they’d entered, and approached a second door.

Instead of sending in one of the remotes, Starlin got careless. Perhaps because they were at the end of their shift and tired, the door seemed to be in the “ceiling” of the room, and it had been weeks since we’d encountered any portion of the alien ship that had gravity—nothing since the room where Santiago had died. The door was quite large, wide and tall enough to accommodate three or four people at once; when Starlin turned a handle on the wall beside it—a rectangular bar that moved easily with the slightest pressure—the door slid smoothly open, disappearing into the thick wall.

Starlin swung himself “up” toward the opening, holding out one of the lanterns. As the lantern and his hand moved through the doorway, followed by one of his legs, the gravity kicked in. He didn’t have a good grip on the lantern and it was pulled out of his hand; it shot off like a jet beacon. Starlin, too, was pulled into the next room, but he had one hand and arm outside, his hand still gripped around the bar, and one leg hooked on the doorway. He let out a cry, but managed to hang on, half in the next room, half out.

“Help me!” His helmeted head was still in the blister-walled room, but his grip seemed to be weakening.

It’s uncertain just what happened next. Starlin was never unsure, and neither were most of the rest of us, but the seeds of doubt are still there even now.

Sherry Winton pushed off the wall and floated across the room toward him, moving quickly. Starlin wasn’t looking at her, and his helmet camera was directed down at the door bar; Winton’s own video was too jerky, shifting around, missing much of the action of her hands and arms; and Cardenas’s view was blocked by Winton’s body. Winton crashed into Starlin, and he lost his grip. Winton claimed that in her panic to save Starlin, she misjudged her speed and direction and accidentally struck him, then scrambled to catch herself. Starlin said she intentionally crashed into him, then deliberately pried his gloved fingers from the door bar.

With his primary hold gone, Starlin began to slide farther into the next room, his fingers scratching frantically for something to hang onto. Then Winton’s leg kicked out—accidental, she swore; deliberate again, Starlin accused—knocking Starlin’s leg through the doorway. Starlin’s slide accelerated.

But as he went through the opening, he managed to get both hands onto the door frame, with just enough grip to stop his fall.

He hung there, and I remember watching on the shuttle monitor—by that time Aiyana, who had been posted on the monitor, had alerted us to what was happening—and feeling that time was stretching out interminably; an aching fear drove through me, fear that he couldn’t hold on. But it was probably no more than twenty or thirty seconds before Cardenas was at the doorway, anchoring herself to the door bar with the security cable attached to her suit, and reaching out to Starlin.

By that time Winton was settled, and began to help. Starlin, of course, later argued that Winton no longer had a choice; her opportunity was gone, and she had to help in order to cover herself. Whatever the reason, Winton worked with Cardenas to pull Starlin up through the doorway and out of the other room.

As soon as he was free of the other room’s gravity, Starlin lunged at Winton. They struggled, although the suits made fighting awkward and difficult. Cardenas tried to separate them, but her own actions were clumsy, and everyone was losing control. Cardenas kept her head, though, quickly unhooked her security cable from the door bar, then turned the bar back to its original position. The door slid out from the wall and sealed shut just moments before Starlin and Winton both struck it; if it hadn’t shut, they both would have gone through the doorway and plunged to their deaths. As we were later to learn, the room was like the one Santiago had died in: the gravity was twice Earth normal, and the fall would have been more than thirty meters.