Richard Russo - Ship of Fools

After a short time, I slowed a little. Not by choice, but because the dread returned and seemed to drag on my limbs, although I was still in zero gravity. Damn him. I moved slowly but steadily from room to room, passage to passage. As I continued, I periodically called out Francis’s name, but never got a response. If not for the lights, I would have believed there was no one in the ship.

It took me two hours to reach the section with Earth-normal gravity and atmosphere. I was already sweating, and it got worse; in normal gravity, I was working harder just to move.

I found Francis in the circular blue-lit room. He was sitting on the steps holding his head in his hands; his pressure suit lay on the floor halfway across the room. He heard me come through the doorway and looked up.

The blue light was dim, but I could see the haunted look in his eyes. Something was terribly wrong. I wasn’t sure he knew where he was.

“Francis.” Then I realized he couldn’t hear me and switched on the external speakers. “Francis, it’s Bartolomeo.”

He didn’t respond. His expression didn’t change.

“Francis, put your suit back on. We don’t know what’s in this air.” I spoke gently, afraid to spook him.

His mouth turned up slightly and he said, “I’m still alive, aren’t I?”

I started toward him. “Put it on, Francis.”

“I needed air,” he said.

“You’ve got air in the suit,” I said.

“I needed air,” he repeated.

I sat beside him. “What happened, Francis?”

He turned to me, his expression still haunted. “What are you doing here?”

“Looking for you. Your sister called me.”

“Oh. It’s been that long?”

“It has. Francis, what happened?”

He buried his head in his hands again. He mumbled something I couldn’t understand.

“What did you say?”

He raised his head and without looking at me said, “Go see for yourself.”

“Where?”

“Past the place you people got stuck. One of the doors just opened when I tried it. A couple more empty rooms, then an air lock.” He breathed in deeply, then slowly exhaled. “Be careful. You lose air and heat and gravity all over again.”

I was afraid to leave him alone, but I had to go see. Besides, I told myself, he’d been alone here for hours, and he was still alive.

“I’ll be right back,” I told him.

Istood waiting in the air lock, weightless and unsure, reluctant to work the bar in the wall which would open the door. What had Francis seen? I was afraid to find out.

I had a single lantern with me. After breathing deeply once, then again, I reached forward and grabbed the bar. I pulled and turned it, and the door slid open.

A short empty passage that angled to the right. I pulled myself into it, drifted along until I reached the angle. Ten meters farther on, the passage ended, opening up into darkness. I moved slowly forward and stopped at the opening.

I held up the lantern, but its dim light did not penetrate deeply into the darkness beyond. I had the sense of an immense room, but that was all. I maximized the lantern’s brightness, and the light radiated somewhat farther, but only revealed that the room was even larger than I’d thought. Something like a strange, frozen mist seemed to swallow the light from the lantern.

I held the lantern out past the opening to confirm there was no gravity. The lantern remained weightless in my hand, but as an extra precaution I released it. It hung in the air before me, turning slightly. No gravity. I put my head into the room, looked around the opening, and saw only walls that extended beyond the reach of the lantern light; no floor or ceiling was yet visible. I took hold of the doorway and pulled myself into the room.

I hung there in front of the opening, searching the emptiness before and above and below me. Nothing happened, nothing changed. But I knew there was something out there. I breathed very deeply once, set my boot against the wall behind me, and kicked off into the gloom.

As I moved forward, a deep blue luminescence slowly bloomed, filling the open space as if my entrance had triggered it. The strange mist itself seemed to glow with the blue light, revealing this place at last. The room was enormous, a vast artificial cavern whose dimensions were still unclear. The light continued to grow, then stabilized, slightly brighter than the blue-lit room where Casterman had killed himself, and where Francis now waited for me. Like the Argonos corridors at night. As my eyes adjusted to the light, and as I continued to drift steadily across that huge cavern, I finally saw on the distant wall what Francis had seen.

Bodies. Human bodies. Men and women and children naked, blue and gray and dusted with ice crystals twinkling in the faint light, the bodies impaled on hooks like the skeletons of the dead infants back on Antioch.

Rows of them on the far wall, row after row both rising and descending until I could no longer see them in either direction. Thousands of mutilated corpses preserved in this cold dark chamber for who knew how many years, how many decades. Preserved for what purpose? Why would they let us discover this? Why now ?

I drifted closer, paralyzed, unable to think, unable to stop myself, unable to look away. The bodies stared back at me with open, frozen eyes glittering with a false life. Drawing me to them.

Vicious metal spikes protruded from broken ribs and ragged flesh. Other wounds decorated their bodies, their faces: bloodless gashes, deep holes rimmed with scorched and blackened skin, blossoms of deep blue-black and purple, broken limbs and broken fingers with jagged bone visible in the open wounds, torn and shadowed sockets that had once held eyes.

Still closer, still paralyzed. I felt pulled to them by my own horror.

Finally, when I was no more than a few meters from the nearest body, I found I could move again. But it was too late; I could not stop my momentum. I fumbled for the suit jets, but couldn’t locate the controls and drifted toward the corpse of a man with flesh more bruised than not and a broken jaw twisted unnaturally to the side.

I panicked. I kicked out, I flailed with my arms, desperate to get away. The corpse’s hand seemed to reach for me and I kicked again, making contact with its leg and sending myself at last back across the metal cavern.

Terrified and disoriented, I tumbled slowly across the deep blue abyss, the endless wall of tortured bodies flipping in and out of my vision. I may not have believed in God, but in those interminable moments I believed in Hell.

I made contact, stopped tumbling, and scrabbled for purchase on the wall just above the opening through which I’d entered. Trembling, I managed to hold myself against it, facing the smooth dark metal. I closed my eyes and didn’t move for a long time. I was sick and dizzy.

And then, against my will, I slowly turned around to again face the horror of those innumerable mutilated bodies. I stared, and did not turn away for a long, long time. It was as if I felt an obligation, to them and to myself, to witness this, and to sear their images into my mind so I would never forget.

Idragged myself back into the air lock, shaking violently, barely able to control my own hands. Somehow I managed to work the wheel and the door sealed shut. My breathing was way too fast and irregular and I tried to slow it, concentrate on each breath, control it… control it….

I needed gravity. I pushed myself across the air lock, worked the other door, then pulled myself into the short corridor and back into normal gravity. I sealed the air lock door, then lay down on the corridor floor and stared up at the ceiling.

My breath was still ragged and loud, and I was feeling hot again. A clammy sweat broke out all over my body in places that didn’t normally perspire—forearms, thighs, knees, every inch of skin, it seemed. I understood why Francis had taken off his suit.