Lisa Nichols: Vessel

“HOUSTON, THIS IS Acting Commander Catherine Wells of Sagittarius . Do you read?” Catherine leaned over the comm panel, watching the swirling colors of nothingness outside the ship.

“Mom, they can’t hear you.” Aimee sat on the edge of the console, twisting the end of her long braid around her index finger. She was wearing the PROPERTY OF NASA shirt David had bought Catherine the Christmas before she left.

She was right, of course. But any moment now, the blurry colors of the wormhole outside her window should resolve into normal space, meaning that she’d arrived back in her own solar system. Back within radio contact. Finally.

The ship’s chronometer told her she had been traveling for at least six years now. It felt much longer. She wasn’t sure she trusted the reading, but at this point, her mind was even more untrustworthy than the chronometer.

When she looked at Aimee again, her daughter had gone from being an eight-year-old in an oversize shirt to a five-year-old holding a stuffed stegosaurus. She fidgeted in her chair. “I’m tired of waiting. Are you going to be home soon, Mommy?”

“I hope so, baby girl. I hope so.” She reached out to push a lock of Aimee’s dark hair behind her ear. Her hand went straight through her daughter, bumping against the heavy glass window separating her from the dark vortex of space outside.

Catherine knew, of course, that the Aimee in front of her was the result of too much time alone—more alone than any human had ever been before.

She’d had a crew once. The other five individual quarters on the ship were empty now, but each bore marks and remnants of its former occupant: a data disk labeled in Claire’s neat handwriting, Richie’s battered Mets hat, photos of Ava’s children on a shelf, Izzy’s copy of Catch-22 , Tom’s antique compass. If she closed her eyes, it almost felt as though they were right there, just as Aimee was, present but beyond reach. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen them. Or why they weren’t with her now.

All she knew was that she had to get home. To Aimee. To David. To Earth.

The ship gave a small lurch beneath her and for the first time in years, she saw stars again, the blackness of space stretching out before her, drawing her toward home. Her breath caught.

“Try the radio again, Mommy!” Aimee said, bouncing in her seat.

Catherine smiled at the vision of her daughter. She was still too far away for communication, but she had to try. For Aimee. She leaned over the comm panel again.

“Houston, this is Acting Commander Catherine Wells of Sagittarius . Do you read?”

All that met her was silence.

Tucked away in a corner of a basement of a satellite NASA office in Houston, largely forgotten, was central command for the Sentinel program. Its sole mission was to monitor the Einstein-Rosen bridge that had opened up past Mars’s orbit in 1998, in case something came through it. Calling it “ERB Prime,” as if it might be the first of several, seemed ridiculous then and even more so now. In the fourteen years that Kenny Turner had been working the graveyard shift for Sentinel, nothing ever came through. In fact, in the entire lifetime of the Sentinel program, exactly one thing ever had: the Voyager 5 probe, expected and ahead of schedule. Until now.

At 0341 central standard time, the alarm went off, startling Turner away from his nightly perusal of various subreddits. With hands suddenly clammy, he scrambled to his computer to see if he could identify what had just appeared out past Mars.

He couldn’t believe what he was seeing.

The ship’s transponder identified the craft as Sagittarius , a ship that wasn’t supposed to exist anymore. A phantom ship. Kenny’s skin crawled. The crew of the Sagittarius I mission had been lost six years ago. After some initial earthshaking reports back from TRAPPIST-1f—evidence of the existence of primitive, mostly microscopic life on the planet—all transmissions had abruptly stopped, and the life-support readings for all six members of the crew failed.

Who the hell should he call? There were protocols in place if something unidentified came through the wormhole, and for when a planned mission made its return… but there was nothing on the books for what to do about a ghost ship.

The Sagittarius I mission was over, finished, and the mission’s original flight director had died two years ago. Sagittarius II was still in the works… maybe he should call that flight director. No, Kenny decided, this was too big for anyone but the top. He placed the call to Sentinel’s director, George Golding.

“Golding,” came the growling voice over the phone. “This better be good.”

“Sir, this is Kenny Turner. We have a situation at Sentinel.”

Kenny could hear his boss snap to full attention. “Tell me.”

“ Sagittarius , sir. It came back.”

“Is this some sort of prank, Turner? Who put you up to this?”

“No joke, sir. I’m picking up the transponder signal loud and clear. No radio contact yet, but it’ll be a bit before we hear.”

“Jesus Christ on the cross.” Golding took a deep breath. “All right. We gotta wake up the folks at JSC. I’ll call the administrator. Oh hell, you should probably call someone with Sagittarius II. Llewellyn’s off on some godforsaken wilderness trek right now. Morganson’s covering for him. Call him.”

Kenny stopped short of groaning. “Sir, don’t you think that call would be better coming from you?” Kenny had heard about JSC’s wunderkind. He’d never met him, but everyone knew his reputation. If there was a problem to find, Cal Morganson was the guy who was going to find it. And he walked into every situation expecting to find a problem. It was too damn early in the morning to deal with that.

Golding laughed. “You woke me up; you get to wake him up, too. Call Morganson and I’ll handle the big guns.” He hung up without another word.

Kenny took a long swallow of coffee gone cold and grimaced before looking up Cal Morganson’s contact information.

Cal Morganson drove like the devil from his apartment in Midtown, Houston, to Sentinel’s tiny office. He’d been awake when Kenny had called, staring at the ceiling, his mind swirling with logistics and timetables and question after question, all unanswerable. The closer they got to the launch of Sagittarius II, the greater the specter of Sagittarius I’s unknown fate loomed over the crew and staff.

Sagittarius returning! It was impossible, more than they could have hoped for.

Now, finally, they could get some answers about what had happened out there.

The Gulf Freeway was nearly empty this time of night, and he made it much faster than he’d expected. He jogged through the darkened office building that served as Sentinel’s home base, bursting into the control center.

“What’s their ETA for Earth?” he asked Kenny immediately. “Does JSC have a plan for getting them back on the ground yet?”

“Current trajectory puts them back in Earth’s orbit in about three months. Director Golding is probably on the phone with the folks at Johnson as we speak.”

Before Cal could throw out any more questions, the radio crackled to life.

“—of Sagittarius . Come in, Houston. This is Catherine Wells calling from Sagittarius .”