CALL ME ISHMAEL
CHAPTER 1
We were tired. All of us were just too damn tired.
We'd been galloping through the universe on the U.S.S. Cygnus for what seemed like forever. Our mission, like that of many other spaceships, was to discover habitable life in outer space. In the beginning, it felt like a great adventure, and our captain, Dr. Hans Reinhardt, seemed perfectly normal. Some people—like Dr. Frank McCrae, our second-in-command and Dr. Reinhardt's closest friend—called him a genius, and others said he was a little out there. But then again, what scientist isn't "a little out there"?
We all wanted to go. I know I did. All my life, I was more than a little convinced that there were other worlds out there, and I'd always dreamed of traveling through space and making those discoveries.
If only I'd known then what I know now.
It was 20 years ago, but I'll never forget the day the Cygnus was recalled to Earth and our mission was declared a failure. Don't get me wrong, I was disappointed, as were my shipmates and Dr. McCrae, but nobody took the news harder than Dr. Reinhardt. We always knew he wasn't the kind of guy who took no for an answer so easily, and that all this time in space was taking its toll on him, but not one of us thought he'd go over the edge the way he did.
If you were to ask anyone on board what the one thing was that made Dr. Reinhardt go off the deep end, they will tell you—without hesitation—that it was the day he discovered the black hole. To him, it was pay dirt: all those years of space travel had finally paid off. When he first saw that gigantic, swirling, bluish-purple mass, he thought he'd hit the jackpot. Even though he was well aware that nothing can escape a black hole, not even light, he wasn't afraid. After all, the Cygnus had the anti-gravity fields to hold us in place and prevent us from being sucked in.
To us, it was the perfect metaphor for just how far gone our trusted leader had become. In fact, he even made Captain Ahab, the main character in Herman Melville's Moby Dick, look like a sane and rational person.
Which is why it didn't surprise any of us when he ignored the order to return to Earth.
I still remember what happened next, and I'll remember it for the rest of my life. I'd just finished my shift in the Cygnus' control tower and was on my way to my room for some much-needed shut-eye when I heard a loud ruckus coming from inside Dr. Reinhardt's quarters. When I made my way outside his door, Old Bob, this little robot from the storage and maintenance department, zipped out and almost collided with me. He said Dr. Reinhardt and Dr. McCrae were really going at it in there, and there was no mistaking the panic in his voice.
All of a sudden, I heard an ear-splitting, gut-wrenching scream. It was Dr. McCrae. I knew deep down what had happened, but against my better judgment, I made a beeline for the door to see for myself. It's a damn good thing Bob stopped me from doing so, because if he hadn't, there's no question that I would've been dead, too.
Had I known what would soon be in store for my fellow crewmen and me, I would've much rather preferred death.
At any rate, Bob and I knew what we had to do. And after what I'd just heard, there was no way in hell I would get any sleep now.
We ran to the crew's quarters, woke up everyone we could, and told them what happened. Part of me almost expected them to tell us we were crazy, that it couldn't possibly be true, and that all that time away from home was just playing tricks on our minds. But much to my surprise—and, as sick as this may sound, my relief—they believed us. In retrospect, I think they too were expecting something like this to go down.
Bob and I gave them specific instructions not to tell anyone on the night shift what we'd just told them, get all the necessary previsions they could carry, and get to the escape pods immediately, the reason being that they were programmed to head for Earth in case of an emergency—which it obviously was. After all, if you were just told that your captain had gone stark raving mad, wouldn't your first instinct be to get the hell out of Dodge?
No sooner had the last our shipmates blasted off—I don't even know how many made it out of there, nor did I stop to count—did the door to the pod bay slide open in a nanosecond, and in marched the sentry robots, along with Maximilian (or Max, as we called him), the head robot on board and Dr. Reinhardt's mech-anical version of Frankenstein's monster. That big red bucket of bolts never spoke, but he was obviously pissed. Poor Bob was shaking like a Chihuahua in a blizzard. He knew we were in big trouble. It's a wonder he didn't fly apart into a million pieces right on the spot. That's how scared he was.
Max and the sentries surrounded us, marched us out the door, and made their way down the hallway of the crew's quarters. As Bob and I watched in horror, the sentries barged into each room and yanked the crewmen out of bed. Those who refused to comply were killed execution-style right in front of us. It was something right out of Nazi Germany.
During the carnage, I thought of my shipmates who were lucky enough to make it off the Cygnus with their lives, and prayed to God that they'd make it home and spread the word to the authorities about what was going down. I also wondered how long it would be before anyone on the night shift would realize how much danger they were in, and hoped they would escape in time as well.
Tragically, they never got a chance to do either.