Mac stared at him open-mouthed. Joanne blinked in surprise. Jeff wasn’t sure if he’d hit the right tone.
Now Mac narrowed his eyes, approached Jeff, and looked down at him condescendingly. “You are not a commander. I only obeyed your orders because Irons was there, and he is no longer around. I’m not listening to your orders.”
How should Jeff react? Should he put him under arrest as a deterrent? Would the others support him? What would Irons have done in this situation?
Jeff didn’t budge an inch. He had to show Mac, once and for all that he was in charge, and he needed to be sure he had the support of the other officers. There was only one way to find out.
“Private McGuinness, you’re under arrest. Lieutenant Castle, Corporal Herrmannsson, please disarm the Private and take him to his sleeping quarters.” It was a game. And Jeff didn’t have the slightest idea how it would end.
Mac’s eyes widened as if he could not believe what he had just heard.
Finally, Castle stepped forward and pulled the pistol out of Mac’s belt holster. Finni grabbed the burly man’s arm. “All right. Come on.”
“You can’t do this,” Mac stammered.
Joanne opened the door to the corridor. Not even Shorty made a move to support his buddy. Jeff sighed with relief. He had won the game. Or at least this move.
“You can’t lock me up. That monster! What if the creature comes and gets me?” Panic had crept into his voice.
“Stop!” Jeff said.
Finni and Castle stopped, and Mac twisted in their grip to look round.
“Private McGuinness. Are you ready to follow my orders?”
Mac stared at him in silence and pressed his lips together. Finally, he nodded. “Yes,” he said, barely audibly.
“Excuse me?” Jeff asked.
“Yes, Sir.” Mac almost choked on his own words.
“I don’t want to hear any more dumb jokes from you. Or I really will put you under arrest. Have I made myself clear?”
A long pause. “Yes, Sir.”
Jeff nodded. “Good. Let Private McGuinness go.”
Finni and Castle took a step back almost simultaneously.
“My weapon?” Mac asked, almost timidly.
Jeff didn’t want to give it back to him. He didn’t believe Mac would shoot him from behind, but he needed to teach him a lesson.
“You need to earn it back, Private.”
Gradually, Jeff felt himself relax. Since he had been in the space fleet, this was his first real confrontation with a subordinate. It was a test he should have passed much earlier.
“What now?” Owl asked. Then he looked at Jeff. “Sir?” he added.
That was a question Jeff couldn’t answer. “I have to think about if first.” Then he remembered something. Something very important. He turned around and went back into the corridor to the sleeping quarters.
“Where are you going?” Joanne asked.
“I need to go back to the major. All of you: collect your belongings and bring them to the rec room. From now on, nobody sleeps alone. Later we’ll talk about what we’re going to do.”
He didn’t wait for an answer, but opened the door to the major’s room, stepped inside, and closed the door behind him. He retched violently as the repulsive smell of flesh and blood rose into his nostrils. He stepped to the end of the bed and pulled up the sheet to the major’s waist. He removed the major’s pistol from his holster. The butt was smeared with blood. Then he reached into the belt pouch to take out the major’s handheld. It was empty.
Had the intruder taken it? Or had the major hidden it somewhere else? There weren’t many places to hide something in these rooms. Jeff bent down and shone his flashlight under the bed. Nothing there. Jeff moved tables and chairs aside, but there was nothing behind them, either. That left only the bathroom. Jeff opened the cupboards. Empty. The toilet didn’t have a cistern where you could have hidden anything. Jeff couldn’t avoid looking at his reflection in the mirror above the basin. He got a shock when he saw the deep rings under his eyes.
He turned on the tap and waited for the water to get hot. He scooped a few handfuls of water and splashed his face until his cheeks became flushed. He still looked like shit. And now what?
Hot steam rose up, as more and more water gathered in the basin and condensed on the mirror, until Jeff could no longer see his face. But now he saw fingerprints on the edge of the glass. They must be the major’s.
But what had the major been doing with the mirror? A glimmer of hope rose up in Jeff and he tugged at the glass. It was attached to a rail that Jeff could push to the side. Behind it was a small niche… and in the niche was the major’s handheld.
Jeff took it out, turned off the water, and put the mirror back in position. As he weighed the device in his hand, he went back into the bedroom and sat down on the chair, being sure not to turn his back to the hole in the wall.
Jeff looked at the back of the device with the red flap beneath which was the handheld’s self-destruct mechanism. Gingerly, he lifted the flap with his thumb. The button was tiny, but protruded clearly from a small hollow. The manufacturer had obviously wanted to ensure that even the slightest pressure of a possibly seriously injured commander could trigger the destruction process. Jeff was a little surprised that Irons hadn’t destroyed the chip long ago. That he had even taken the risk of letting the codes fall into enemy hands. Especially after the revelation that this huge, sinister ship was set on a course for Earth.
For a moment, Jeff toyed with the idea of destroying the device himself. But what about the major’s strange premonition? Had he really foreseen his own death? He had also said that the codes might save the lives of the crew. What if the major had been right about that, too?
Jeff closed the cap. But if worst came to worst, he wouldn’t hesitate to destroy it. And that brought Jeff’s mind round to the next problem. He was now in command. What should their next move be? It was up to him to make a decision.
He pushed the chair to the top end of the bed and leaned forward. He could see the outline of Irons’ head under the sheet. Jeff laid his hand on the sheet on top of the major’s forehead. He had spent over a year with the major. He had always admired Irons; he’d been his role model. Albeit one he would never live up to, no matter how hard he tried.
Jeff sat next to the body for a long time and pondered. Ideas popped into his mind, which he rejected again a moment later. Create an opening to the outside with the explosives, as Owl had suggested? That would be suicide. At least here in the interstellar void. Talk to the computer and hope that it was all a misunderstanding? No. It had lied to them and stalled too often. If they waited here in their quarters to reach Sigma-7, which would never happen anyway, then they would die—one by one. Killed by the sinister something which was responsible for the deaths of Field and Irons. What had Green said? That they would probably only find answers in the center of the ship. The engineer might be right. Jeff was also convinced there was more in the vast interior of the giant ship than the computer was telling them. The longer Jeff thought about it, the more convinced he became that that is what they needed to do. They needed to penetrate further into the ship. The idea terrified him, he was afraid of what they would find—but it was the only option. To escape the abyss, they would first have to descend deeper inside it.
Jeff slipped Irons’ handheld into his belt pouch next to his own and returned to the rec room.
The others were sitting at the big table, engrossed in conversation.
“What were you doing?” Joanne interrupted the discussion.
Jeff decided not to tell the others about the major’s handheld. “I wanted to say goodbye to Irons,” he said simply.
“And what are your orders, Sir?” The last word contained all the hatred that Mac clearly felt toward Jeff.