Steven McDonald - Steven E. McDonald

Without waiting for an answer, Weir turned and walked out of the Gravity Couch Bay. He could be useful on the bridge while the minutes ticked away.

He heard footsteps behind him, following down the corridor. Angry, he turned around. Miller almost ran into him.

“I want to know what caused that noise,” Miller said, his tone dark, almost threatening. “I want to know why one of my crew tried to throw himself out of the airlock.”

Weir sighed. “Thermal changes in the hull could have caused the metal to expand and contract very suddenly, causing reverberations’—”

“That’s bullshit and you know it!” Miller shouted. He waved a finger under Weir’s nose, making the scientist step back. “You built this fucking ship and all I’ve heard from you is bullshit!”

“What do you want me to say?” Weir muttered darkly.

Miller contained himself with an effort. “You said this ship’s drive creates a gateway.”

“Yes,” Weir said, trying to keep his patience.

“To what? Where did this ship go? Where did you send it?”

“I don’t know,” Weir said. It was interesting how disarming honesty could be, considering the circumstances.

“Where has it been for the past seven years?” Miller said, his tone darkening.

If 1 had that answer, we would have been here a lot sooner, Weir thought.

“I don’t know.”

Miller was losing his temper again. ” ‘I don’t know?’ You’re supposed to be the expert, and the only answer I’ve had from you is ‘I don’t know.’ ” Miller grimaced, a man trying desperately to get blood from a stone. “The ‘Other Place,’ what is that?”

“I don’t know!” Weir yelled, taking a step toward Miller. This time it was the Captain’s turn to step back. Weir got himself under control, breathing deeply of the foul air. “I don’t know. There’s a lot of things going on here that I don’t understand. Truth takes time.”

“That’s exactly what we don’t have, Doctor,” Miller said, and he brushed past Weir, heading off down the corridor toward the bridge.

Weir watched him walk away.

Miller stalked through the corridors, taking the long way around to the bridge, trying to shake off the residue of anger that lingered after his attempt to get answers from Weir. He had been furious enough to want to smack Weir silly, but had known better than to let fly. They might yet need the scientist.

Jesus Christ, Miller thought, stalking, does he have to be so goddamned useless?

There was more there, though, something he had yet to put his finger on.

Weir had changed somehow, his attitude altering, hardening. Weir was a case and a half in himself.

He reached a junction, made a left turn.

“Don’t leave me!”

The voice echoed along the corridors from somewhere in the distance. Miller turned, his skin crawling, trying to figure out the direction it had come from.

“Where are you?” he shouted.

His voice reverberated in the corridors, but the echoes were the only answer he received. He stepped backward, turning, stumbled over sections of piping on the floor.

“What do you want?” he shouted.

“Oh God, please help me!” A hollow voice, dead for these years, screaming out a plea across time.

Miller bent down, scooping up a short section of pipe, driven more by instinct than anything else. “Get out of my fucking head!” he screamed.

He hurled the pipe down the corridor he was facing, heard it clang as it hit, clattering as it bounced and rolled away.

Silence. There was an emptiness in his head now.

Miller turned, his back against the corridor wall. He felt weak, weary.

Slowly, he slid down until he was sitting.’ He hunched up, putting his head in his hands, fighting the tears, the memories, the shame.

Corrick…

The Gravity Couch Bay was deserted now, except for Justin floating in his tank. DJ walked in, went over to the tank, checked the readouts. They were going to have to figure out how to transfer Justin to the Lewis and Clark eventually. Miller was not planning to try to retrieve the Event Horizon.

“Any change?” Miller said.

DJ whirled around, surprised. Miller smiled. DJ was tough to rattle.

Miller, however, had been sitting quietly in deep shadows, trying to marshal his thoughts so he could get on with the job, whatever the job had turned into.

DJ walked toward him. “No, no change,” he said. There was a long pause.

Something was troubling DJ. “I’ve analyzed his blood samples. There’s no evidence of excessive levels of carbon dioxide. Or anything else out of the ordinary.”

Miller laughed, a cold, grim sound that he knew would transmit to DJ the depths of the defeat he felt. “Of course not. He just climbed into the airlock because he felt like it. Just one of those things.” Miller straightened up, angrily pushing against the hopelessness. “We almost lost him today. I will not lose another man.”

DJ raised an eyebrow, watching Miller carefully. “Another man?”

Miller nodded. He unzipped his flight suit slightly, reached inside, pulled out a small service medal, showed it to DJ. He had kept it with him since it had been awarded to him in a service essentially devoid of pomp and circumstance. It served as a reminder.

“Edmund Corrick,” Miller said, softly. The memories flooded in again, just as they had in the corridor. “Young guy, a lot like Justin. He was with me on the Goliath.” A laughing face, a smart-ass kid on the way to making a name for himself in the service, a bit on the skinny side. Miller had considered the kid a bit of a geek, but he liked him anyway. “Four of us had made it to the lifeboat. Corrick was still on board when the fire…”

Roaring around corners, across the deck, the bulkheads, the ceiling, a living thing that melted metal and sang with a monster’s voice…

DJ waited, silent.

“Have you ever seen fire in zero gravity?” Miller went on, suddenly. “It’s like a liquid, it slides over everything. Corrick saw the fire and froze. Just stood there screaming.” Miller swallowed, remembering, his chest hollow.

“Screaming for me to save him.”

“What did you do?”

Miller was silent, staring.

Corrick, burning, screaming. It had been an oxygen fire. Fast and hot, from nothing to destruction in the time it took to draw a breath. Had the circumstances been slightly different, there would have been no survivors of the Goliath.

Miller tried to get the words out, but it was hard, almost impossible. He had lived with this for too many years now, had thought he had the grief and rage stored away somewhere else.

He pushed against his block, determined. The truth needed to be told. “The only thing I could do,” he said, finally, letting the images play. “I shut the lifeboat hatch. I left him behind. And then the fire hit him… and he was gone.”

Crawling up Corrick’s legs, along his arms, dripping over him like hot white rain….

He could not have gone back. Those in the lifeboat would have died along with Corrick. The Board of Inquiry had commended Miller for his forthright actions in saving the others. He did not tell them the complete circumstances of Corrick’s death.

He had always wondered if he should have gone back, tried to retrieve Corrick. He knew that they would both have died, but it did not remove the guilt.

“You never told me,” DJ said.

“I never told anyone until now,” Miller said, softly. “But this ship knew, DJ. It knows about the Goliath, it “knows about Corrick. It knows our secrets.

It knows what we’re afraid of. It’s in all our heads, and I don’t know how long I can fight it.” Miller slumped, frustrated, not knowing what sort of sense he was making, if any. “Go ahead, say it. I’m losing my fucking mind.”