The stars didn’t seem quite right.
That strange thought filled my mind as I looked up from the hull of the ship and off into the dark canvas that was space. It had been weeks since Neptune and many months since Jupiter; the million million stars of the galactic plane were all there was to be seen. The sun was among them, only faintly brighter than any other star. It had been a hollow feeling; dizzying and cold that all those stars were somehow very wrong. Their light shined; white, blue, orange and red; hazy through the heavy visor of the spacesuit and normal at first glance. Yet, normal, they were not.
It was like peering into darkness; shadows spinning and stirring as your eyes tried to adjust; the feeling that there was something just barely too dark to see, slowly revealing itself. It was like a dream that was about to become a nightmare; the shadows growing too long, crooked, a feeling of wrongness that weighed down on everything. I pulled my eyes back down onto the ship to see Robert. He was unmoving in his spacesuit, the light from his visor casting the hull around him in a deep orange that reminded me of street-lights in winter. His helmet was turned up and away into the stars.
I called out to him through the radio link: “Hey Rob, how’s the weld coming along now?”. The silence stretched with the static of the channel for a few moments before a sound picked up. It was hard to hear at first, a tapping, against metal, it seemed, that ran through the hull beneath my feet before reaching my ears. I looked towards Rob again to see a movement between the glow of his helmet light and the sharp shadows that it cast against the ship. It was a wrench. He was striking the breaker box in front of him with it, with a harsh rhythm that seemed to get faster with each strike. The rest of his body was motionless in an uncanny way; completely still despite the force behind the blows. Rigid like some kind of mannequin.
I spoke once more, with a voice a few notes higher than I’d intended, my throat suddenly tight and nervous: “Rob? What are you doing there, man?”. The only answer was the same sound of metal against metal, getting louder and louder. Clank Clank Clank… I assumed something was just wrong with the comm link, swallowing the uneasy feeling that feld cold and tense at the back of my neck. I took a few steps forward, to get to Rob and talk directly; you could speak and hear through the glass if your visors touched, carrying the sound waves.
I was keenly aware of the silence around us as I made my way over, feeling exposed with the sounds that every movement made; I took slow, mechanical steps as the magnetic boots cycled on and off with each stride. Rob was still hacking away at the breaker box, casting shifting and dancing shadows on the metal that stretched in between. I was maybe 5 meters away when he suddenly stopped.
The wrench was frozen in his hand, suddenly caught in its arc. That, too, had looked strange; his arm coming to a stop in a single instant; without any of the bounce or weight of a person’s movement. Closer, I thought I could see a tremor in his body. There was a shimmer of orange light on the surface of the wrench; blinking rapidly as his hand seemed to twitch; it was like an electrical spark; bright and erratic.
I came to a stop despite myself then, shaken by a sudden tightness in my stomach that wouldn’t let go, that forced me to stay. My legs wouldn’t budge, heavy like cement as something about Rob sent shivers down my spine. I felt a wave of frustration swell inside me then: What the fuck is this? Why am I scared? Nothing’s even happening for Christ’s sake. I spoke again, talking to myself really, not expecting an answer: “C’mon Rob. This shit’s not funny. What are you doing?”.
To my surprise, I got an answer to my question. It was a slow movement from Rob as the tension in his body seemed to ease away. His raised hand slowly lowered, coming to rest at his side with the wrench. He stood for a few moments as his other hand seemed to be working at something, hidden behind the breaker box.
I was more than a little perplexed when I saw his tether floating up from behind the metal box, twisting as it came away from his body. He leaned forwards onto the hull, grabbing a metal pipe that ran along the surface. He pulled himself close for a moment, his boots connecting with the ship as he squatted down. I was stammering out a confused question when it happened. “Hey, Rob, what the fuck are you doing, man? Get your tether ba-” He jumped away from the ship.
I saw the orange light of his EVA spinning around as he fell back into the stars, twisting like a dancing flame. The beep of a radio connection rang inside my helmet as a scream blared through the static of the channel. Rob’s voice was calling for my name, distorted horribly with a mix of interference and agony: He was whimpering in between his screams as his words broke down into pleading murmurs: “No, no, no, no, no…”. Crying, screaming and mumbling, he gasped for air in a broken rhythm as his voice got louder and louder: “No, no, no, no, no…”.
I could see his arms flailing in front of him; bursts of gas spewing out as he tried to steady himself. It only seemed to make things worse as he got smaller and smaller in my field of view; flying off with a soft orange glow like the many billions of stars he was disappearing into.
I was tugging at my own tether to disconnect it as I tried to speak to him through his panic; stammering as my words were cut off by his screams. I heard the muffled beep of another connection on the channel through his shrieks as Ada spoke: “Matt, what the hell is going on?”. I had just gotten off my own tether when I looked back to see Rob.
Everything seemed to slow down as I looked out into the dotted darkness stretching in front. The sound of metal as the fitting at the end of my tether bounced off the back of my suit. The panic in Ada’s words as the channel buzzed with static and screams. My own breathing that rose and fell; loud and everywhere like the wind, inside my helmet. The faint glimmer of Rob was floating softly between a pocket of stars. I remember so vividly how he was in between Aldebaran and Orion; connecting the constellation and the star, drawing a sword into the hunter’s hand. Everything seemed peaceful for one moment.
Rob was gone the next. His light suddenly disappeared, snuffed out as I blinked. The radio channel had gone quiet. That same wrongness was in the stars as it seemed like something moved through them. It was like an earthquake in the ocean; a deep roar that rushed through the water; colossal yet invisible on the surface.
I thought I saw the light of Betelgeuse snuffed out for a moment before a blink brought it back. Something moved far away as the channel filled with the sound of Ada’s voice again: “Matt… Where is Robert? Matt? Matt?”
The silence was very loud inside the cabin. The hum of the life support unit, the buzzing and beeping from the navigation consoles, the soft groans of metal as the hull of the ship strained under the thrust of the engine; a busy sort of quiet as the conversation hung in the air, not wanting to happen. Ada and I were across from one another in the living area; a low table and 3 chairs huddled around it below the flight deck. One of the seats lay empty, bright and cold under the led light that shined above.
The mission had been wrong from the beginning.
Just learning that we had the technology to send manned missions far beyond Neptune had been shocking enough. Learning that there existed an entire research station orbiting at beyond 90 times the distance from the Earth to the Sun had been a whole different matter. Sometimes I wonder how a government that can’t keep a blowjob inside the Oval Office quiet can keep such secrets but I know it’s best not to ask questions and find out.
Our briefings had been limited. All we knew was that there was a distress call from the station Astrea II. Sitting in the living area right then, I played all sorts of scenarios in my head; some freak accident that left me bed-ridden for a few months or maybe a sudden alien invasion that threatened the world; anything that would have kept me home and away from this mission.
Ada’s voice broke me out of my reverie: “They’re not letting us search for his body, Matt”. Her voice was cold as was her face stern. It seemed like the death of our crewmate had hardly registered on the radar of our dauntless captain. “Observation deck and data are admin-access only until we reach the Astrea II”.
I was watching a bottle spin under the LED that hung over the table, the water and plastic shifting and dancing with the light that hit them from above. Spinning and spinning like Rob’s visor, the static of the bulb growing loud like screams in my head. I saw her silent eyes watch me from the edge of my vision before entering something into her data-pad. She got up from her chair without saying a word as her shadow passed over the bottle like an eclipse. I just kept watching the bottle spin as I sat alone in the room.
Admin-access only, huh? We were gonna see about that.
The hatch to the observation deck slowly cycled as I entered in the right commands on my console, peeking over my shoulder between the lines of code. A light from beyond a hatch cast an orange glow on the far end of the hallway, a thin shadow of a cable swaying with the air-currents of the life-support unit. Barring entrance to the corridor, the elastic whine of the cable would be my alarm if Ada came anywhere near.
The deck was more like the inside of a cockpit; a large chair surrounded by monitors, keyboards and a whole mess of wires that tied the disparate equipment together like a spiderweb. The red light of the information lockdown was strobing inside the room, shining and reflecting off the monitors, creating a maze of light like a city after rain.
I connected my datapad once again to key in the necessary overrides and, before long, had the entire set-up singing again. It whirred and hummed back to life as the computers booted back up. Through it all, I thought I heard the clanking off metal somewhere down the corridor but nothing came of it; the wire’s shadow lay undisturbed.
Captain Ada had told me that I hadn’t seen anything; that the disappearance of Betelgeuse had been nothing but a play of my imagination, a glitch in my mind induced by panic. I hadn’t even told her about the rest. Not that I understood that part myself. What I had seen, or hadn’t seen to be more precise was concerning enough already.
The video log of the incident had already been separated onto a hidden folder by the ship’s systems; tucked away into some digital corner along with the data of all the myriad off sensors aboard the vessel. That wasn’t part of any lockdown procedure that I’d ever heard of. The files must have been scrubbed and moved manually. I rummaged through the assorted streams of data that the file contained to arrive at infrared camera 7-b; the one observing the port-side of the vessel; the one who had seen the incident and the stars.
The video started with an undisturbed view of our galaxy; of its nebulae and stars and the fractal painting they produced. Taken in infrared, the image was a mirror of our everyday milky-way yet also a total stranger. The plane of the galaxy stretched across the screen like a crimson smile from side to side; the bulge of the galaxy in its center a glowing eye fit for a cosmic god; all-seeing and all-knowing.
Then came our space-walk, Robert and I walking across the surface of the vessel; dark shapes against a cosmic background; our backpacks glowing a fiery red from behind with the excess heat they dissipated. Then came Robert’s jump; within seconds he was gone from the frame, lost between the red glow of the stars. The video was silent but his screams echoed in my head as I saw myself struggle against my tether before I realized it was too late. My arms went slack by my sides as my helmet tilted up to look out at the stars.
Before the monitor, the red glowed upon my face as I squinted my eyes looking for Orion. In it, the light of Betelgeuse was flickering amidst the constellations. It was shining like it always had until one moment, it wasn’t any longer. For a few moments that feel like days, the light of Betelgeuse was snuffed out. I wound back the video over and over again, seeing the star go out every time. I went through the feed of the other cameras; 7-a, 6-b, 6-a, in visible light, x-rays, radio waves and so on. In every feed, the star was snuffed out before blinking back to life.
Disconnecting from the console, I felt every bit as confused if not more so than I’d been before. But what I did know was that I hadn’t gone insane; what I had seen happen had in fact happened. The cable in the hall was pushed away and off into the side of the hatch when I came back through. A light flickered off from behind a bend in the corridor as I got back out and into my cabin; it felt like eyes watched me from the darkness all through the night.
The habitation ring of the Astrea II spun before my console as I watched from the command deck, Captain Ada by my side. 300 meters in diameter and at the very edge of our solar system, it was likely the single greatest feat of engineering anyone had ever laid their eyes upon. Lit only by the searchlights of our vessel, the true scope of the station was hidden from view; the many many decks of its rings and habitats hidden in the darkness of space.
The sound of our footsteps echoed as the airlock cycled off and our headlights pierced the darkness of the station. All attempts at establishing communication or ascertaining the state of the station from the outside had failed; so inside we went
The Astrea II was as silent on the inside as it had proven to be on the outside. Not even the occasional creaking of metal or the hum of the life support unit. Only silence. By all accounts, the systems of the station were operating within normal bounds; everything in its place but the people manning it.
Our destination was the command deck, at the center of the station rings and disconnected from their artificial spin gravity. The captain had strictly informed me that our priority was not to look for survivors but to retrieve the data of the station. She had started carrying the standard issue pistol that had come along with our vessel, so I’d started just going along with things instead of really questioning them. Sometimes power really did just come out the barrel of a gun.
We came along a junction in the station’s main habitation ring when the captain called for a stop. Darkness stretched down both corridors, twisting and shifting out of view in the curved halls of the gravity rings. We were after a panel with the proper authorization to let us into the command deck. We were to split up, me headed for the lounging area to find a keycard while the captain would tinker with the station’s systems. It certainly was strange that I wasn’t allowed in the system considering my position as the ship’s engineer but hey; the captain had a gun and she called all the shots.
Away from the safety of the gun and by my lonesome, the halls of the station seemed to get louder inside my head as I walked through the lounging area. Not the kind of loud the ears pick up on, but a loudness in the air that feels static, that has you looking over your shoulder. A loudness born from silence that makes you wary of every sound and move you make. A loudness inside your mind that can’t decide if it’s time to run or time to fight. An unknown that is scarier than any single of the many monsters that race through your mind. A fear of the unknown. A fear of the dark.
Chairs, couches and stools were all laid haphazardly around the common areas and rooms; many left unlocked, beds inside left unmade. Glassed half-finished stood on counters in crowded bars; splitting the beam of my flashlight as when they caught it and casting the rooms in a crystal glow. I could almost imagine the cramped, bustling kind of fun that used to happen inside; from the empty martini glasses to the half-finished hamburger that had become a desiccated husk, everything seemed frozen in time, almost ready to go, only missing people. I was about to head into an observation room when I saw them. The Stargazers.
The room stood before me in the harsh shine of my flashlight, one giant reinforced window opening up and away into the stars. The infinite expanse of the universe seemed to swallow the room whole as the glass curved up and into the ceiling. It was like being on a boat at night over a still ocean; the galaxy painted above as well reflected below on the still surface of the water; surrounding you like a deep dream.
Between the stars and I was the crew of the Astrea II. None of them moved as my flashlight first cast its shine upon their heads; still likes stones, facing the stars. Hundreds of them, crammed into the observation room, heads tilted up, all in the same direction, transfixed by something in the stars. I heard a chime on my radio before I could look up and see what it was they were seeing.
“Matt, I’m joining you in your current location. Do not move away from the observation room, Copy?” the captain’s serious voice boomed over the radio channel before I mouthed out a short reply. Something in me held me back from telling her what I was seeing. Something in me that wanted to look up into the stars to see whatever it was that the stargazers were looking at. I almost did before a sudden feeling seized me.
That same inexplicable feeling back from out on the spacewalk took a hold. The feeling that there was something colossal moving about; something invisible but unfathomable in its scale. The feeling I had had when I’d seen Betelgeuse snuffed out of the sky. The feeling of wrongness when I’d seen Robert untether himself from the ship.
Everything in me wanted to look into the stars yet every fiber of my being wanted me to run. I felt my head slowly tilting up towards the glass, my muscles seeming to have a mind of their own as they turned towards the stargazers. They were all unmoving but it was like something in them was stirring inside, clawing to get out and turn away. There was a twitch in some of their hands, almost impercetible, as they were all held in place by some unfathomable power that drew them in, that forbade turning away. My eyes were almost level with their own when the captain’s footsteps entered the room.
The silence broke for a moment as did whatever spell I was under as I suddenly regained control of my body and jerked my head away. Breaking out into a sudden sprint, I headed for the door: “Captain, turn away from the win-” my cry was cut in half as I stumbled forwards and saw Ada’s face. There was a shine in her eyes that I can’t bear to think about.
It was a vision of all the pain that there had ever been, condensed into one single moment as her soul seemed to be ripped away and out through her eye sockets. I only caught a glimpse of what it really was, reflected in her eyes. Ancient, older than the stars and of an intellect that spanned lightyears. It was a colossus in space, idle at the edge of your solar system, waiting and hungering, having watched us for billions of years.
I saw the captain reach for her gun as her body seemed to go more and more rigid; her arm strained as she willed it to rise despite the pull of the stars and lay the barrel against her head. I heard the gunshot rip through the air as I stumbled out of the room and onto the hallway. The muzzle flashed brightly as it cast her shadow upon the wall. There seemed to be a shadow around her; many lanky arms grasping and wrapping around her body and straining against her. The image flashed for only a moment before it was gone.
The stars still call to me as I’m writing this. It’s in between breaths, in the silence in between steps that I’ll feel a gentle tugging at my head, a slight push on the back that, if I’m not careful, will lead me to the observation room, to some window looking out. I sneak back to our ship every now and then to gather supplies and stretch my legs. I don’t know when I’ll muster the courage to hop back on that ship and find my way back to Earth but something in me tells me that may be a long while away.
So for now, this is the Astrea II, signing off.