Cixin Liu - Death's End

It took a while before the door opened, and a not-completely-awake Verenskaya demanded to know what he wanted.

“I came to see if you are… all right.” Ike’s gaze shifted down, and he saw that Verenskaya’s beautiful legs were perfect below the hem of her nightgown.

“Idiot!” Verenskaya slammed the door shut.

After returning to his cabin, Ike put his sleep cap on and set it for eight hours. As for what he had seen, the only wise thing to do was to shut up and say nothing. Due to Gravity ’s special mission, the crew’s psychological state—especially that of the officers—was subject to constant monitoring. There was a special psychological monitoring corps aboard, comprising more than a dozen crew members out of the full complement of just over a hundred. Some crew members had wondered whether Gravity was a stellar ship or a psychiatric hospital. And then there was also the annoying civilian psychiatrist West, who thought of everything in terms of mental disorders and illnesses and blockages, until one could come to the conclusion that he would subject a clogged toilet to psychiatric analysis. The mental screening process onboard Gravity was extremely strict, and even slight mental disorders would result in the sufferer being forced into hibernation. Ike was terrified of missing the upcoming historical encounter between the two ships. If that happened, when the ship returned to Earth in half a century, the girls back home would not see him as a hero.

But Ike did feel a slight diminution in his dislike for the psych corps and Dr. West. He had always thought of them as making mountains out of molehills, but he had never imagined that people could suffer such realistic delusions.

Compared to Ike’s minor delusion, Petty Officer Liu Xiaoming’s supernatural encounter would be considered quite spectacular.

Liu was performing a routine exterior hull inspection. This involved piloting a small pinnace at a certain distance from Gravity and examining the hull for any abnormalities, such as evidence of meteor strikes. This was an ancient, outdated practice no longer strictly necessary and rarely performed. The ship was full of sensors that monitored the hull continuously; any problems would be detected right away. Also, the operation could only be done when Gravity was coasting instead of accelerating or decelerating. As the ship approached Blue Space, frequent acceleration and deceleration was necessary for adjustments. This was one of those rare windows when the ship was coasting again, and Petty Officer Liu was ordered to take advantage of the opportunity.

Liu piloted the pinnace out of the bay in the middle of the ship and smoothly glided away from Gravity until he was at a distance where he could see the whole ship. The giant hull was bathed in the light from the galaxy. Unlike when most of the crew was in hibernation, light spilled from all the portholes, making Gravity seem even more magnificent.

But Liu noticed something incredible: Gravity was shaped like a perfect cylinder, however, right now, its tail ended in an inclined plane! The ship was also much shorter than it should be—about 20 percent shorter, to be exact. A giant, invisible knife had cut off Gravity ’s tail.

Liu shut his eyes, then opened them a few seconds later. The tail was still missing. He felt chilled to the bone. The giant ship before him was an organic whole. If the tail were suddenly gone, the power distribution systems would suffer a catastrophic failure, and the ship would shortly explode. But nothing of the sort was happening. The ship cruised along without trouble, as though suspended in space. No alerts of any kind came from his earpiece or were shown on his screens.

He pressed the switch for the intercom and got ready to give a report, but shut off the channel before saying anything. He recalled the words of an old spacer who had been at the Doomsday Battle: “Your intuition is unreliable in space. If you must act based on intuition, count from one to one hundred first. At least count from one to ten.”

He closed his eyes and began to count. When he got to ten, he opened his eyes. The tail was still missing. He closed his eyes and continued to count, his breath coming faster now, but he struggled to remember his training, and forced himself to calm down. He opened his eyes when he reached thirty, and this time he saw the complete Gravity . He closed his eyes again, sighed, and waited until his heartbeat slowed down.

He piloted the pinnace to the stern of the ship, where he could see the three giant nozzles of the fusion drive. The engine wasn’t on, and the fusion reactor was kept at minimal power so that the nozzles only showed a faint red glow, reminding him of the clouds back on Earth at dusk.

Petty Officer Liu was glad that he hadn’t made a report. An officer might get therapy, but an NCO like himself would be forced into hibernation. Like Ike, Liu Xiaoming didn’t want to return to Earth a useless man.

Dr. West went to find Guan Yifan, a civilian scholar who worked in the observatory at the stern. Guan had a midship cabin assigned to him as living quarters, but he rarely went there. Most of the time, he remained in the observatory and asked the service robots to bring his meals. The crew referred to him as “the hermit at the stern.”

The observatory was a tiny spherical cabin where Guan lived and worked. His appearance was disheveled, with an unshaven face and long hair, but he still looked relatively youthful. When West saw Guan, he was floating in the middle of the cabin, looking restless: sweaty forehead, anxious eyes, his hand pulling at his collar as if he was unable to catch his breath.

“I already told you on the phone: I’m working and don’t have time for a visit.”

“It’s precisely because your call betrayed signs of mental disorder that I came to see you.”

“I’m not a member of the space force. As long as I’m no danger to the ship or the crew, you have no power over me.”

“Fine. I’ll leave.” West turned around. “I just don’t believe that someone with claustrophobia can work in here without trouble.”

Guan called out for West to stop, but West ignored him. As he expected, Guan chased after him and stopped him. “How did you know that? I am indeed… claustrophobic. I feel like I’m being packed into a narrow tube, or sometimes squeezed between two iron plates until I’m flat as a sheet….”

“Not surprising. Look at where you are.” The doctor indicated the cabin—it resembled a tiny egg nestled in a nest of crisscrossing cables and pipes. “You research phenomena at the largest scale, but you stay in the smallest space. And how long have you been here? It’s been four years since your last hibernation, hasn’t it?”

“I’m not complaining. Gravity ’s mission is bringing fugitives to justice, not scientific exploration. I’m grateful to have this space at all…. Look, my claustrophobia has nothing to do with this.”

“Why don’t we take a walk on Plaza One? It will help.”

The doctor pulled Guan Yifan along, and the two drifted toward the bow of the ship. If the ship were accelerating, going from the stern of the ship to the bow would be equivalent to climbing up a one-kilometer well, but in the weightlessness of coasting, the trip was a lot easier. Plaza #1 was located at the bow of the cylindrical ship, under a semispherical, transparent dome. Standing there was like standing in space itself. Compared to the holographic projections of the star field on the walls of spherical cabins, this place induced an even stronger sense of the “desubstantiation effect.”