“And a certain monster wanders till now in compartments and corridors?”
“If nobody could wrest it down—and it seems that indeed… And if it hasn’t died by itself.”
“No, wait. Okay, it is possible to explain some of the deaths this way—especially if this monster is sentient. An animal can hardly crucify a person on a wire. But these pilots have obviously committed suicide, and not in the most pleasant way!”
“We don’t know,” Eve objected. “The broken teeth and nails can be a result of struggle. And wounds too. That the shape of the bite marks are similar to human, proves nothing. We after all don’t know what it looks like.”
“Or they.”
“Yes. Or they.”
Adam was silent for some time, looking at the mutilated body of the dead man. Then he moved the flashlight beam aside, unable to bear the view anymore. But it was even worse: Somewhere from the darkest depths of his consciousness, where even in the most sober-minded person the irrational is hidden, a feeling, almost a certainty, was rising that the dead man who had disappeared in a gloom, now, using his invisibility, would move, would start to rise silently in an armchair, would stretch the gnawed hands toward a victim for which he had long last waited. After all, it was not without reason written (in blood) across the staircase leading to the control room: “DO NOT GO THERE.”
Adam tried to drive away the delusion and to force himself to think rationally.
“Perhaps you are right about landing on Gliese or somewhere else,” he said slowly. “All these creatures—spiders and cockroaches—still could mutate from those on Earth, though I cannot imagine where they could come from on a starship. It obviously had to be disinfected before it started. But the others—these hybrids of worms and insects—there is nothing similar on Earth.”
“Do you remember so well—what is on Earth?”
“No. But there is a difference between “forgot” and “never knew.” Anyway, I vaguely feel it. And I am absolutely sure that these creatures are not from our world. Possibly we took them aboard as samples of local fauna, and then something happened so that they could creep away all over the ship. I don’t know whether there is anything big among them. But even small insects can serve as transmitting agents for the disease which somehow affects the brain.”
“And now? You think we became immune already?”
“I don’t know.” He heaved a deep sigh. “I know nothing—except one thing: We have no chance of getting out from here.”
“Perhaps it is still possible to turn the ship towards Earth,” said Eve without much real hope in her voice. “Or at least we could send the distress signal.”
“How?” Adam hopelessly moved the beam around the crushed panel. “Even if we find tools… Do you have even the smallest clue how everything was arranged here? We even don’t remember that people in general are able to fly to stars.”
“Well, we may find not only tools but also instructions,” Eve objected with considerable doubt. “And also, we managed to remember something, though…” She became silent.
“What ‘though’?”
“I’m afraid.”
“No wonder.”
“No, not about that. I’m afraid to remember. Sometimes it seems to me that I have already almost gotten at my past and then at once such horror strikes me, as if someone in my head were shouting: ‘No, don’t do it. Don’t remember. Don’t think about it!’ Haven’t you felt the same? I mean, since you have come to your senses?”
“Yes,” Adam confessed. “Nothing mystical here, we just came in for a lot of trouble, especially you. Natural defense reaction… Hmm, ‘Don’t think,’” he remembered. “It is written on a warehouse door at the bottom level. By the way, doesn’t it seem to you that if the crew struggled against monsters, they would have left more intelligent writings? Even assuming that they had really nothing to write with except blood, then especially it was necessary to write only the most useful and informative things. And here; ‘Don’t go there!’ Well, here we have come, and what?”
“We have learned that we are on a spaceship.”
“Also what is dreadful in it? Though… Yes, certainly. To learn that we are billions of miles from Earth, on a dead starship, uncontrollable flying further and further in infinite emptiness. If this starmap is anything to go by, even stars aren’t present here. But if we had not learned it, how would our position have become better?”
“Perhaps we would die in ignorance,” Eve sighed.
“Like these two? And the others? I hardly think any of them died easily. And in general, forewarned is forearmed.”
“All right,” Eve interrupted. “All these conversations only lead to despair! (He shuddered, having heard this word again.) Let us search—for tools, instructions, others survivors—anything!
They left the control room, listening to the silence of the ill-fated ship even more tensely. But still no sounds reached them, except of the electric crackling of agonizing light fixtures. However, now Adam had no doubt anymore that their light had lately become slightly brighter. He did not know how it could be explained and what it was fraught with, like everything that took place on this damned ship. He shared his observation with his companion, but she only shrugged her shoulders and assumed that the light seemed brighter to them after control room’s gloom.
They descended a level. Here it seemed there were also some control posts, but they had been crushed in the most ruthless way too, so their purpose could be only guessed at. Here and there among the spoiled fragments dead cockroach mutants lay while their living brothers crept about lethargically.
“What if neither madmen nor monsters made all this destruction?” Eve asked suddenly. “What if it had been done purposefully?”
“By whom?” Adam grinned wrily, fastidiously trying to find a place where to put his foot. “Suicide terrorists?”
“Crewmen who have understood that this ship shouldn’t return. Never should get to Earth… or any habitable planet. Therefore they have directed it into starless space, and then…”
“But what for?”
“So that what has happened here would not be repeated on Earth.” She shrugged shoulders.
“Because of these creatures? No, ridiculous. Even if they are infectious, there are quarantine measures. The ship could be held in an orbit while scientists tried to understand the situation.”
“And if these measures are insufficient? Probably, when they… that is, we…took these wretches aboard, it was done not to spread them all over the ship! You say that most of all this is at the second level from the bottom. Probably, our zoo was on that level—or the samples repository, or how it is called? And we were sure that no bacterium would slip out of there.”
“Well, suppose someone has committed an error, didn’t close a door in time, ignored disinfection. But it doesn’t mean that this muck is capable of getting through the walls of the ship and the space vacuum!”
“I do not know. Perhaps the point is not in chemistry or the physical passage through walls.”
“But in what?”
“Any remote influence from which our protections do not save us.”
“Worms-telepathists?” he skeptically hummed but at the next moment thought seriously about this idea. “Necrophages causing an uncontrollable penchant for violence in larger creatures and thus providing themselves with stocks of dead flesh…and apartments.” He remembered the crucified corpse of the woman transformed into the huge…ant hill—hive?—and that made him shutter. “Generally, such hypotheses explain much. For example, why do these corpses not decay here. If this fauna produces some preservative… But still, why destroy all the devices of the ship, leaving no hope for the last survivors? After all, if we survived and remained normal, the protective mechanisms do exist!”