Derelict

  by Albert Berg

  Copyright 2009

  The moment he stepped out of the air lock into the dark hallway beyond, Warrick felt something. It was difficult to define. Foreboding would have been too strong a word, but it pointed in the right direction. If nothing else it was a faint kind of deja vu, a subtle suggestion that he had been here before. He waited a moment for the feeling to pass then radioed back to the ship.

  "So far as I can see it's empty," he announced, his voice sounding loud and plastic inside the helmet.

  "You sure?" Jones's voice came through the radio.

  Warrick looked at the dark corridor ahead of him, at the hanging cobwebs, and the dimmed lights from the consoles. "Pretty sure," he said. "There's no one here."

  "Well where are they?"

  Warrick had no answer for that. To tell the truth, the whole business creeped him out. Seven days ago, martian orbital traffic control had registered a ship docking in orbit without the usual communication of intention. Usually such behavior indicated smuggling or some other kind of illegal operation, but in this case it hadn't seemed likely.

  Superficial scans had rated the ship at an upper level E-class, and Warrick had never heard of smugglers using ships of that size. They were too large, too hard to hide.

  A routine check with earth had unearthed slightly more information. The strangely silent ship was the Persephone, a combination freighter/passenger vessel on a routine run to Mars with a full load of passengers and mining equipment. At least that's what the report they had sent to Warrick's orbital customs enforcement outpost had said.

  At first the customs authority had ignored the anomalous ship, but after it had been almost a week without a word of explanation or intent, they had sent Warrick and his crew to check it out.

  "Henderson's almost suited up," Jones's voice came back. "We'll be over in a minute."

  "Roger that. Hurry it up."

  While he was waiting Warrick mulled over the situation. He was not a superstitious man by default, but he felt that something about this situation was very wrong. He had felt it even before boarding, and now that he was here...he shuddered a little, an involuntary manifestation of a growing sense of unease.

  He wondered if there could be anyone alive out there in the darkness. It seemed unlikely at best. The derelict's air purification system was off line, and yet his helmet sensors clearly showed breathable levels of oxygen in the air around him. If this ship had been inhabited, he suspected most of the clean air would have been used up. Still, he couldn't help hoping that something, anything, even the smallest insect was alive on this mystery ship. It would make it better, easier somehow to face the darkness ahead if he could let himself believe such a thing was possible.

  Then, without warning, a sudden wave of claustrophobia overtook him, forcing him to face the suddenly horrifying fact that he was essentially trapped within his safety suit. He grappled with the latch at the side of his neck almost frantically and popped it open. His helmet popped off with a hiss, and Warrick tasted the stale air gratefully. He knew it was a foolish move. So far they hadn't detected any signs of life on the derelict ship, and there was no telling what it was that could have killed all the crew and passengers. It could be some kind of exotic virus or toxin carried through the air. It could be anything.

  But if there was some kind of infection where were all the bodies? A ship of this class was rated for nearly a thousand passengers. The accommodations were far from luxurious, but they would do for someone trying to escape the crowded spaces of earth.

  So far he had explored an entire deck without seeing so much as a finger.

  Not that he was disappointed. If there were dead bodies on this ship they would be well into the late stages of decomposition by now. He tried not to imagine rotting faces, and missing eyes, and failed miserably. He shivered again, though the temperature in the suit stayed, as always, a balmy seventy-eight degrees.

  "Henderson? Jones? You guys on the way yet?"

  For a second no one answered. The response crackled back, "Hold your horses Warrick. We're almost ready to come through."

  "Well hurry it up," Warrick said. "This place is giving me the willies."

  A few minutes later he heard the crack and hiss of the airlock, and the doors opened to let the other two through.

  "What happened to this place?" Henderson said with a low whistle. "It's like a ghost town in here."

  "Don't say ghost," Warrick said. "I'm creeped out enough already."

  "What's the matter?" Jones asked. "You afraid?"

  "Leave him alone," Henderson said. "This place is giving me the shivers too. Let's just get this over with as fast as we can."

  "Won't be too quick," Jones said. "We're gonna have to go over her with a fine toothed comb. Ship of this size has plenty of nooks and crannies where something could hide."

  Warrick didn't ask for an elaboration of exactly what kind of something Jones might be referring to. Instead he said, "Well then, we'd best get a move on."

  Jones snapped his helmet off and breathed in deep. "Not bad," he said a moment later.

  "No point in putting the thing on, if you're going to take it off five seconds after we get through the lock," Henderson grumbled.

  "Ah, quit your whining," Jones said. "I can handle myself."

  Henderson shrugged.

  "So," Jones said. "What's the plan of attack?"

  "It'll be faster if we split up," Henderson suggested.

  "No," Warrick replied. "Call me whatever you want, but I'm not taking any chances here. Something about this ship isn't right, and both of you know that. We stay together."

  Henderson shrugged, and said, "Whatever you say, boss. Lead the way."

  Warrick swallowed the lump in his throat. He reached up and turned his helmet light on "high".

  The beam stabbed out in front of him, painting a circle of light on the floor of the corridor ahead.

  "You know the layout of this class of ship?" Jones asked.

  "No," Warrick answered. "She's a new model, fresh off the Toyota orbital assembly line. You Henderson?"

  "Not me. Intel downloaded the basic layout layout into my HUD though. This corridor runs under the belly of the ship and come out into the cargo hold."

  "Alright, then. Let's go slow. I do not want to get lost in this thing."

  "We couldn't go any slower if we were dead."

  "Yeah," Warrick replied. "Right. Let's get this over with."

  The first step was the hardest. Something in him sensed this wasn't right. He knew it was childish, but he couldn't help wishing he could abandon this mission and return to the safety and comfort of his own bunk. But after the first step, the second was easier and the third almost took itself, and after that all thoughts of turning back floated away.

  They encountered nothing of interest in that first corridor, nothing to give any clue why this ship was floating in the empty black of space without a soul on board.

  Ahead his light played over an ascending staircase that he thought must lead up into the cargo hold. He stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked up but even his light seemed insufficient to penetrate the darkness beyond. He expected Jones to make some remark about the pause, but surprisingly neither of the two men said anything. They feel it too, he thought. Something is really wrong here.

  He shut the lid on his fears and climbed up the stairs one at a time, all the while expecting his lamp to play across something in the darkness ahead, and feeling all the more unnerved, when it revealed nothing at all. Even when he had almost reached the top of the stairs, Warrick still couldn't get past the feeling that he would stop at the top to find a complete void beyond. But when he reached the top, his light played across a vast gray metal floor that in the darkness seemed as if it might go
on for miles.

  "This is it," Henderson. "Cargo bay."

  "Where's all the cargo?" Jones asked.

  "Maybe they took it," Warrick said.

  "They who?" Henderson asked.

  Warrick didn't answer. He didn't know the answer. The cargo bay was the largest space in the ship, and for good reason. So why wasn't there anything here? Not a single crate, no long rows of shelving, not even a dust bunny on the slate gray floor.

  "Where next?" he asked Henderson.

  Henderson consulted the inside of his helmet for a moment, then pointed. "That way. I think."

  "Be sure."

  Another pause, then, "Yeah, I'm sure. There should be a passage that leads through crew quarters, and forward to the command deck."

  "Wait a minute," Jones said. "We're just moving on? What about the cargo?"

  "What cargo?" Warrick said. "Do you see any cargo here?"

  "Exactly. Where did it all go? Why aren't we looking for it?"

  "Looking where, exactly?" Warrick asked. "You can almost see all four corners of the room from here. It's empty."

  "Calm down Jones," Henderson said. "I'm sure we'll get some answers. Just cool your jets okay?"

  "Yeah. Sure."

  Warrick accepted the non-apology without comment. He was losing patience with Jones already, but he knew why the man was being like this. It was the ship. It was getting to them, getting to all of them, worming its way into the nooks and crannies of their minds and nestling itself into the very folds of their brains.

  He led the two men across the empty floor of the cargo hold, all the while thinking about what Henderson had said about answers. He supposed they might find some reason to all of this, some underlying framework that put everything they had seen so far in perspective, but part of him hoped they wouldn't. He had a feeling that this wasn't going to be like the detective novels he had read as a kid where everything was wrapped up with a neat conclusion and justice for all. This was an entirely different kind of mystery: the kind better left unsolved. At the end, he thought, there will be blood. But that wasn't right. Not quite.

  They reached the place where the door to the crew's quarters should have been, and found themselves facing the blank wall of the bulkhead.

  "You said you were sure," Warrick said.

  "I was sure," Henderson said. "It should be right here."

  "Tell that to the wall," Jones said. It was obvious he meant it as a joke, but not even he laughed. Instead they all stood there for a moment looking at the wall, as if their stares might unmask the missing door. Nothing happened.

  "Must have got turned around or something," Henderson said. "Sorry boss."

  "That's okay," Warrick said, though his mind was telling him that it was very much not okay. "Which way?"

  Henderson paused for a moment, then pointed back the direction they had come. "It must be that way," he said. "I guess I got the diagrams turned around in my head."

  "Happens to the best of us," Warrick said. "Come on."

  From wall to wall the cargo hold was nearly a third of a mile wide, and it took them nearly five minutes to reach the opposite side. During that time Warrick tried not to think about the darkness. There was so much of it in here, so much space their beams could not illuminate. The dark was an unknown like a blank slate waiting for someone to come along with a piece of chalk. And what would they draw? Would it be a flower? A beautiful sunrise over a quaint house with a door and two windows? Warrick didn't think so.

  When the opposite wall proved to be blank as well, he felt himself begin to panic.

  "I'm sorry boss," Henderson said. "I was sure..."

  "Alright," Warrick said. "Maybe the map's goofy. We know there has to be another door in here somewhere right? Let's just follow the wall until we find it okay?"

  He expected Jones to make some snide remark, but both of the men just nodded.

  They followed the wall of the cargo hold until they reached the first corner, and Jones said, "Something about this ain't right."

  "Understatement of the year, Jonesey," Warrick said.

  "No, I mean something else. It's the floor."

  Warrick looked at the floor and saw nothing of any particular interest. "What about the floor?"

  "It's clean. Too clean. You ever worked a cargo ship captain?"

  Warrick shook his head. He had enlisted in the Corps at the ripe young age of nineteen.

  "Well I had a summer job loading these things one year. Hotter'n you could imagine, but the money was alright. Anyway, they put some pretty hefty stuff in these holds, and they pack it in all the way to the ceiling. The report says this ship's been doing this run for ten years, but there's no way. The floor on any real freighter would be scuffed up and used looking. Not like this."

  Warrick looked again, and this time he saw what was missing. Jones was right. The gray floor was clean and smooth, unused.

  "So you're saying this isn't really a cargo ship?" Warrick asked.

  "I don't know. I'm just saying something ain't right here."

  "Henderson, could our information be wrong?"

  "Hard to see how sir," Henderson answered. "The ship left earth with a full load according to all the intel we've got. Then it parked in orbit, and...well nothing. No radio transmissions, or communications of any kind. Unless..."

  "Unless what? Spit it out," Warrick ordered.

  "Unless they're not telling us everything."

  "You think that's likely?"

  Henderson shrugged, though the motion was muted somewhat by the confines of his suit. "I've heard of things like that before. Nothing official of course, it wouldn't be acknowledged officially, but there are plenty of rumors. Men sent on mission with bad information, somebody high up trying to cover their dirty laundry without worrying who else they bury in the process."

  "What, you mean like this is some military experiment gone bad?" Jones asked. He threw his head back and laughed. "Now there's one for the books."

  Warrick mulled the idea over in his head. It made sense. He knew the brass liked their secrets to stay secret, and he knew that they considered grunts like him to be expendable. He wasn't sure how he felt about that just now. On the one hand he hated the idea of being kept in the dark by his superiors, but on the other hand the idea that there was a logical explanation to all of this gave him some form of comfort, something to anchor his mind to.

  "Okay, so we're flying blind," he said.

  "Meaning what exactly?" Jones asked.

  "Meaning nothing we think we know is real. Disregard any information that you don't know first-hand. Maybe some of what they gave us is real, but maybe it isn't. We stand a lot better chance if we don't lean on it too hard."

  Both men indicated that understood, and the trio continued their walk down along the hull of the cargo bay. About midway down the wall Henderson pointed at something on the floor.

  "There," he said. "What were you saying about marks on the floor?"

  Warrick followed Henderson's finger and saw something carved into the steel of the Hull. Three long marks, furrows in the otherwise perfect surface. He tried not to think of claws.

  Jones went over to the marks and traced them out with his finger. "It's not possible," he said. "This is heavy duty alloy. You could use a jackhammer on this stuff and not scratch it."

  "Then what was all that you were saying about marks on the floor?" Warrick asked.

  "Scuff marks," Jones said. "Residue from pallets and..." he waved a hand vaguely, "things."

  Things, Warrick thought. Oh yes.

  But aloud he said, "We're not learning anything here. Let's keep moving."

  They reached the second corner without encountering any more anomalies or irregularities of any kind.

  Along the way Warrick kept turning things over and over in his mind trying to make some kind of sense out of their situation. He was looking at a cargo hold that, according to Jones, had never seen a single shipment of cargo. It almost seemed as if he had stepped into
a ship that was just out of the construction yards before her first voyage. But of course that wasn't possible. Mars didn't have the construction capacity for this size ship yet, and no one was going to fly a freighter all the way from earth with no cargo. So what exactly was he looking at?

  But he was no closer to an answer when they came upon the impossible door.

  "No," Henderson said.

  "Yeah. I'm thinking the same thing," Jones said. "Weren't we just at this wall?"

  Warrick looked at the door for a long time before answering. There was nothing strange about it. It was a standard bulkhead door, of a type he had seen many times before. The only problem was, it hadn't been here before.

  "We must have missed it," Henderson said. "That's all it could be."

  "Yes," Warrick said, but inside he knew there was no way they had missed the door the first time, not a chance in the world. But the thing that unnerved him most was that he knew Henderson knew it too.

  "Yeah. Of course," Jones said sarcastically.

  "Let's just get it open," Warrick said.

  "Are you sure we want to?" Jones asked. "All kidding aside captain, there's no way we missed this door earlier. It's not that dark in here."

  "You want to go back?"

  Jones shook his head. "Not saying that. It's just...weird."

  Warrick thought that weird was possibly the mildest way the sudden appearance of the door could be described. "What about you Henderson. You think we should turn back?"

  Henderson shook his head. "I'll admit something strange is going on here, but to be honest, the more I see the more want to know what exactly is going on here."

  Jones said, "You know what they say: Curiosity killed the cat."

  "Satisfaction brought it back," Henderson replied.

  "All right then," Warrick said. "Lets get this thing open."

  If the ship had been powered up the door would have opened with the push of a button, but as it was, the mechanism had to be operated by hand. Jones found the crank handle in a compartment next to the door and folded it down. At first when he tried to turn it, the door resisted his efforts, but then something inside the mechanism gave, and the handle turned a little. The gears inside gave off a groaning sound so human that it made Warrick start in his suit.

  The door swung open and reveal the gaping maw of a corridor beyond.

  "Smells funny in there," Jones said.

  Warrick nodded, almost without realizing he was doing so. There was a certain smell, a kind of musty quality to the air, that invaded his nostrils the moment the door was opened. It wasn't a necessarily nasty smell. In fact it reminded him faintly of cinnamon. But no. Not cinnamon. Not quite.

  He didn't like it.

  "Shouldn't you put your helmets back on?" Henderson asked.

  "You got a reading on that air?" Warrick asked. "Is it clean?"

  "Clean enough," Henderson replied. "I'm not picking up any major pathogens or poisons in the atmosphere. It should be safe, but..."

  "But what? Spit it out?"

  "Nothing sir," Henderson replied. "I guess I'm just on edge."

  Aren't we all? Warrick thought. Aren't we all?

  Jones led the way into the dark corridor. Their suit lights, illuminated a small area in front of them, but the region beyond was as black as pitch. It was easy to start to think what might be hiding beyond the light, just at the edge of the shadows. Too easy to think of things with fangs and tentacles in all the wrong places, slobbering in anticipation of their next meal.

  It's just your imagination, Warrick told himself. That's all. You've been reading to many horror stories. Come on, you've been through worse than this. Pull it together.

  The corridor was lined on each side with virtually identical doors. Looking down that long row of doors brought to Warrick's mind the infinitely receding images that appeared between parallel mirrors. As a child he had loved the effect, the magical sensation of looking down an endless hallway filled with unlimited copies of himself, but now it unsettled him. Somehow in this place the idea of being copied over and over again into eternity seemed utterly horrifying.

  They checked behind all the doors. These were the passengers sleeping quarters with rows and rows of eerily identical bunks, neatly made. All of them were empty.

  "Where did they all go?" Henderson wondered aloud, after the fifth such eerily creepy room had been explored with no evidence of any kind of inhabitants.

  "Maybe they were never here to begin with," Jones said. "Woooh, spooky."

  "Shut up," Warrick snapped. He didn't mean to snap, but the empty rooms were starting to get to him too. "What is wrong with this ship?" he wondered aloud.

  "There doesn't seem to be anything wrong with the ship," Henderson said. "It's all in working order. There just aren't any people on it."

  "You know what I mean," Warrick said. "This is so wrong. All of it."

  "Like the Mary Celeste."

  "Jones, the last thing I need right now is a ghost story, okay?"

  "I'm just saying it. You must have thought of it by now."

  To be fair, Warrick hadn't thought of the fabled ship, until the words were out of Jones's mouth, but once he had thought of it, there was no unthinking it.

  He hadn't thought of the Mary Celeste in years. He remembered reading about the ship as a child. His father had had some book of stories called, Stranger than Fiction or some such nonsense, and it was filled with stories of sea monsters, and psychic astronauts, all of them supposedly true. And then there was the tale of the Mary Celeste, a ship that had sailed out one day with a full crew, only to be discovered days later completely deserted. There were half eaten meals on the tables, and a captain's log entry for earlier in the day, that had been only half completed. It was the thought of that half completed breakfast that had always chilled him most for some reason. He could almost see himself walking into that cabin and seeing those eggs on a china plate yolks spilling out like blood, letting off steam into the empty air. He had thought about it before going to bed the night after he read the story, trying to puzzle out what could have taken the man who had intended to sit down and eat those eggs, and erased him from the pages of reality.

  "Not the same," Henderson said, breaking Warrick out of his thoughts. "It's not like the Mary Celeste. In some way's it's the antithesis of that story."

  "How so?" Jones asked.

  "The food, the logs, everything on that ship pointed toward the probability that it had been recently inhabited. On this ship, there's no evidence of habitation at all. The problem lies, not in wondering what happened to the original crew, but rather in the fact that there appears to have been no original crew to begin with."

  "That doesn't make any sense," Warrick said. "Ships don't fly themselves."

  "Autopilot," Henderson argued. "The first ship sent to colonize Mars were unmanned craft filled with supplies and inflatable habitats. It's not inconceivable-"

  "It is," Warrick interrupted. "No one would send a ship like this through space without a crew. These things cost...well more money than you or I are ever likely to see. They're not going to risk some computer glitch turning their investment into a big metal pancake. What you're talking about happened years ago, even before the pulse drive was more than a sketch on some mathematicians lunch napkin. It couldn't happen today."

  "I could," Henderson said. "You know it could."

  "Okay, theoretically yes. But why? Why send a ship into space with no crew. The cost of paying them would be minimal compared to the investment in the voyage itself. What purpose would it serve?"

  "What if there is no purpose?" Jones asked.

  Warrick glared at him. "I'm not even going to dignify that with a response," he said. "Anyway we know there must have been a crew. We saw the boarding roster."

  "You told us to forget about we had been told, and focus on what we could learn," Henderson said calmly. "That's all I'm trying to do."

  Warrick bit his tongue and nodded. "You're right. That is what I sa
id. I still think it doesn't make sense, but lets take your theory. Why? Why would someone send a ship