“Commander Salam, this is Islamabad, do you copy? Over.”
“Commander Salam, do you copy? Over.” The ground controller let go off the rectangular black button and stared at the flight director who was standing next to him. Their ties that once clung tightly to the button around their necks were now loose and dangling from their chest. Their expressions were of concern and confusion.
“Markhor 5, please respond. Over.” The director scratched his beard and stared intently at the screens across which were now black. “Bring up the flight log please Yasmeen”, he commanded. “Right away sir”, the ground controller responded and started depressing the keys of her keyboard.
“Markhor 5 lift off reported at 15:02 PST, stratosphere entry logged in at 15:04 PST, slight drop in 02 levels reported by system 15:05 PST, Orbital Phase registered at 15:08 PST”, Yasmeen slowly repeated the data with her back to the director, for the 2nd time now. “Markhor 5 followed the flight trajectory until 17:18”
“Remind me again what happened?”
“We don’t know SIR, fuel levels, 02 capacitors, the satellite tracking system and baseline physiological indicators were all near optimum levels, one minute he was there, and the other, gone”, her words seemingly echoed in the director’s ears. He was finding it hard to remain calm. “Col. Rana, I want to speak with you right now”, the director ordered into the air, straightened himself and started walking towards his office with the certainty that the colonel would follow him in. From behind the swarm of monitors, a man dressed in a brown uniform stood up. His hair had thinned while serving his country but his commitment and perseverance remained unabated. He followed the director inside, closed the door and stood across from him.
“2 years of planning, billions of rupees spent, 10 honorable men lost, and now when push comes to shove all I have to show for it is a damn space mystery.”
“How did this happen Colonel?”, the director allowed himself to become angrier in the confines of the room.
“Sir, the mission was going according to plan, we don’t know what happened. I’m as concerned as you.”
“Dammit Colonel! Your concern is of no use to me. You need to go out there and make sure we find him.”
We can’t have the country’s only space program look like a complete failure”
“Yes sir.”
“Well go on then!”
The door opened and out walked Col. Rana, visibly unnerved. As if to exaggerate the seriousness of the situation a mechanical voice bellowed from a corner of the room. “Mission control no longer tracking Markhor 5. Time elapsed is 3 hours 16 minutes, 43 seconds and counting.” The colonel showed no emotion, rather straightened his back, looked across the room and spoke: “Ladies and gentlemen, our priority right now is to find Markhor 5 and get Commander Salam back home safely. I want everyone to be vigilant, check the flight log, review the audio transcription tapes, look at all the simulation data, scour every friendly satellite near the trajectory and find me something to work with. Is that understood?”
“Sir yes sir”, the crowd shouted in unison.
“Good, it’s going to be a long night everyone.”
It had been 2 hours since the colonel had made the demand. The enthusiasm that it had injected in the staff had now dissipated as more and more evidence pointed to the fact that no one had a single clue as to what happened to Markhor 5. Yasmeen shifted in her chair, straightened her lower back and retracted her shoulder blades hearing the grinding of her muscles in their joints. The colonel had now started pacing his desk while relaying small morsels of outdated or unimportant information to the director who had stopped nodding a while ago and was growing more and more anxious as every second passed by. Everyone else in the room was on edge, furiously scanning their screens and trying desperately to get in contact with the spaceship that had left Earth carrying the first Pakistani to ever travel to space.
Commander Salam had been traveling steadily when suddenly his spaceship had changed trajectory. He had tried contacting mission control but had been unable to get through. Then the thrusters failed and he noticed that he had begun to spin faster and faster. Dizzied and disoriented, he felt his body being pulled apart and the pain was so sudden and intense that he had blacked out. His eyes opened as he weaved in and out of lucidity. He looked down and saw his legs being stretched down towards nothingness. It was as if some gigantic intergalactic creature had pinched his spaceship and was now stretching it like bubblegum. He let out a hollow scream which turned into an animalistic howl as his face was pulled into the void. He closed his eyes, hoping that he would stop the pain somehow if he didn’t look at how his body was being mangled. Immediately, he felt like he had just materialized into a dark expanse, like his body had disintegrated into atoms and regenerated out of the same particles and was now floating in mid air. He had never felt or heard silence like he did. His brain was lagging behind to compute what his eyes were witnessing and all he could think of was that anytime now his alarm would go off and he would wake up in his bed.
“What is going on?”, he managed to speak but he only heard it in his head. “Ya Allah, protect me!”. From beyond the blackness of the abyss he saw something move, as if his reality had suddenly rippled.
“What the hell was that?”. He started slapping the control panel furiously and shouting into the headset. “This is SALAM, DO YOU COPY!? please God!” He felt terror, the kind that takes over your soul and immobilizes you. The darkness shifted again around him and he felt like something had side stepped him and was now standing behind him. He turned his head slightly in his seat and felt more of the same coldness. A sharp scream pierced through his ears slowly abating in amplitude and forcing him to concentrate but the more he did the more he found it to be a memory of a sound he had once heard. He started to hyperventilate and closed his eyes tightly, hoping and praying that he would wake up.
“Oh God, please take me back, please take me back, Allah! Please take me back! I beg you!” his voice, fading into his thoughts which faded into a memory of him furiously calling for divine help. Something he hadn’t done ever since his sister had passed away 10 years ago. He felt himself starting to contract, as if he was becoming smaller and the space around him was becoming larger.
“No, no no! What is going on?” he cried. His head spinning, he was forced to close his eyes yet again but his eyes were open and he was looking at himself becoming smaller and smaller. He saw his tiny body being slowly enveloped by a black space; paralyzed he tried to move but the more he moved the quicker he dissolved. Something inside the void became visible, next to his body, a face with smooth and sharp edges. Eyes that looked like pockets to other dimensions and then a mouth which expanded and twisted within the horrid dark obscurity that he was trapped in. The more he looked, the more he could see it, whatever it was. He couldn’t comprehend it; in one instance it was a geometric monster, in another an amorphous entity. All he knew was that this was worse than death. He called out to it. “Let me go back, please, whatever you are. I want to go back! Please!!”
Salam was no longer a part of Markhor 5, he had been engulfed by the cold dark space. He felt like he was falling but he remained fixed, terrorized. He tried closing his eyes but whatever he did, he saw the blackness shifting and turning within itself materializing into corners and folds, distorting and undulating. He saw himself disappear into it, then reappear and disappear. He saw it happen again, and again, and again, an eternal loop of his death and reincarnation.