Greg Bear: Hull Zero Three

Profound silence. Not even the little egg-craft makes a sound. We are adrift, breaths held—afraid to provoke another whim of fate, or perhaps afraid to alert Destination Guidance to the fact that we are still alive. That we are about to become visitors.

Nell breaks this silence with a deep breath. “How old is Ship, do you think?” she asks, looking at me. As if I have an answer.

I’m spent. I shrug. “Five hundred years,” I say, surprised that this figure sticks in my head. “Maybe.”

“So it was launched from… where? Earth? Five centuries ago?” Kim asks.

“From the Oort cloud,” Tsinoy says. She has shrunk to a more manageable size, to give the rest of us room, rearranging her muscles and “bones” to a less energy-intensive posture. She’s still in pain.

“What’s a wart cloud?” Kim asks, perhaps to distract her from her pain.

“O-O-R-T. It’s the afterbirth of our solar system, a big halo of leftover ice and dust,” Tsinoy says. “Some of the conglomerations are hundreds of kilometers wide. Ship was constructed among the inner planets, then sent out to the far limits. An Oort moonlet was selected, trimmed, and compacted. All this took fifty years. Ship was attached and launched five hundred years ago, as Teacher says. If we can believe any of it.”

“Can we go back?” Kim asks.

“No,” Tsinoy says, and lifts a paw-claw to lick. She shudders at the taste of her wounds. “Once launched, Ship is forbidden to return. Too dangerous.”

Another silence, a long one. We are revolving, reorienting. Our short journey—a few dozen kilometers—is coming to an end. Nell and Tsinoy move toward the viewport. They almost bump heads. I marvel at the contrast.

Our females.

“First things first,” I say. “Will Destination Guidance let us in?”

“Others have sought refuge before us,” Nell says.

“What happened to them?” I ask.

“I wish I knew.”

“We’re about to connect,” Kim says.

Sounds of joining, sealing. Our ears pop as pressures equalize. Tsinoy moves toward the hatch, our first line of defense.

The hatch opens. We are flooded with cold air. Very cold. Frost plumes before our faces.

The disembarkation stage is a broad cylinder slung with cables and nets. The end of the cylinder is open—but beyond lies frigid darkness. The moon-bound sphere was never designed for spin-up. Whatever lived here, lived in eternal weightlessness. Did they also live in eternal cold?

“Tell it to be hospitable,” I suggest to Nell.

“All right,” she says. “A little help, please!”

No response.

“How about some heat?” she adds.

“Sure you weren’t speaking to a ghost?” Kim asks, shoulders flexing. He drifts out of our hatch. No one wants to touch the frosted cables or netting. The air hurts our noses and burns our lungs. At least it’s breathable, aside from the cold.

There’s a flash, a streak of light. It’s in my eyes, not from any illumination in Ship itself. Everyone makes a startled sound, even Tsinoy. We all saw it.

“Cosmic ray,” Tsinoy suggests.

But I’ve seen something like it before. My saving ghost. The one that can’t possibly exist.

A small glow begins, blue-green, then brightens to a dim yellow. The interior of the chamber beyond the landing stage is equipped with tiny glim lights, like the walls of the hulls. I’m back where this all began—moving toward light, chasing heat.

“I get it,” Nell says. “We were taught to fear Destination Guidance because Mother didn’t want us to come down here.”

“Or because it’s dangerous. Maybe they aren’t even remotely like us….” Kim trails off on that idea, and we cringe at the rudeness of even suggesting such a thing, at this of all times.

“That’s confusing,” Tsinoy says. “If we were chosen by Destination Guidance…”

“We could still be dangerous,” I say. “We’re still Mother’s children. In a way.”

Tomchin makes a humming proclamation I don’t catch.

Another streak of light. Tsinoy whistles and begins to bulk up. We gather close as she puts out more heat.

“Don’t cook the babies,” I remind her.

She turns her eyes on me and blinks slowly—three different lids, all transparent. She doesn’t sleep, doesn’t stop seeing—ever. I know the babies are fine—warmer than us, but fine.

We hold our ground, like children on the porch of a haunted house. Autumn leaves, moonlit October nights, long dirt roads alive with tree shadows, bags filled with candy… flickering candles in carved-out pumpkins. So much in the way of lost, false memory wells up at that comparison—haunted houses and small towns and Halloween—that I’m momentarily blinded by tears.

Someone had fun with me way back when—had fun putting me together. Or perhaps I’m based on someone real, long dead, way back on Earth.

I’m the haunted house. My brain is the ghost here.

“Nothing,” Nell says. “You try.” She points to me, then around to all of us. “We’ll all try, one at a time—but you first.”

“A little help down here!” I call out, my breath turning to snow. More minutes pass. Nell raises her hand toward Kim, and then we feel a current of air lightly flow along the cylinder. The darkness begins to creak, snap, and then groan—long metallic groans underscored by a low whoosh. We move back toward the hatch, having had quite enough, thank you—just before the warmer air brushes our faces, circles us, caresses our hands, luffs at our clothing, rustles Tsinoy’s spines—and becomes a wind.

The sphere is finally coming to life.

A voice speaks. We all recognize the gentle, precise tones. “I await a decision,” it says.

“About what?” I ask.

No answer. Nell moves forward. “We need to shut down Hull Zero Three. We don’t like what’s happening there. How can we do that without damaging Ship?”

“Ship is already damaged,” the voice says. Lights brighten. The darkness beyond the cylinder vestibule is filled with smoothly curved surfaces, volumes, in strikingly beautiful colors and patterns, some translucent, others pale and milky. It’s like nothing we’ve seen elsewhere on Ship, as if a mad artist began blowing huge glass shapes and arranged them to an irrational aesthetic.

But this is just one tiny part of the sphere, which is at least half a kilometer in diameter. It could be a greeting, meant to impress—or a distraction to hold and confuse us while examinations are made; a 3-D psychological test that might determine whether we live or die, are welcomed, or are flushed back into space.

“Did you make this?” Kim asks, and I see that of all of us, he’s the most affected by the unexpected elegance and beauty.

“This space was designed by Destination Guidance,” the voice says.

“Are you Destination Guidance?” Nell asks.

“No.”

“Are you Ship Control? You sound familiar….”

The voice asks, “What do you not like about Ship and its operations?”

This is a loaded question, obviously, and we need some time to think it over. We haven’t moved from the cylinder, our hole of relative safety on the edge of a coral reef of color and unfamiliar beauty. If we venture out, will something grab us while we’re distracted?

Put an end to all our worries?

“What do you not like about Ship operations?” the voice asks again.

Nell swallows, presses her hand against her lips, and looks to me. They’re all looking to me.

“We think there was a war to stop Ship from killing a planet. We’re refugees.” I stop, feeling foolish again and totally unprepared. And besides, who or what am I talking to? There’s nobody here, nobody visible. The space is warming quickly. Soon, we might be invited in… sit down for tea and cookies, discuss the local interstellar weather.