The gloomy atmosphere was dragging them all down. Even Mac and Shorty’s open defiance had given way to resigned silence. As if this cavity were slowly but surely robbing them of their energy and free will, turning them into soulless robots. Owl was the most afflicted. He had stumbled along behind them all day without a word, without a gesture, his eyes glassy and unfocused like a zombie. And now he was just sitting there, the concentrate bar Castle had given him dangling limply and uneaten from his hand.
“Owl? Don’t you want to eat?” Jeff asked him gently.
His shipmate appeared not to have heard him. He looked past Jeff toward the hazy horizon, beyond which the outer wall of this cavity must lie, and which they would hopefully reach tomorrow.
“Owl!” Jeff repeated, this time a decibel louder.
“Yes?” Owl replied quietly, without looking at him.
“Aren’t you hungry?” Jeff asked.
As if he’d been given an order, Owl bit off a little corner of his bar and chewed slowly and mechanically.
Jeff shook his head. He threw a glance at Joanne, but she seemed to be immersed in her own thoughts and uninterested in Owl’s state of mind.
Jeff sighed and got up. “I’m going to sleep. Castle, Joanne, you’re on first watch.”
Castle nodded, then rummaged around in his backpack.
Jeff crawled into his sleeping bag, which he had already prepared before dinner, and pulled up the zipper. He closed his eyes and within a few seconds had fallen asleep.
“Psst!” Joanne was shaking his shoulder. Jeff was wide awake within a second.
“What is it?” he hissed.
“Owl!”
“What’s the problem?”
“I don’t know exactly.” She pointed toward a small hill. Jeff sat up and saw Owl standing with his back to them. Both his arms were stretched out slightly from his body. In his left hand he was holding a long knife. It looked like it was covered in blood.
Jeff scrambled out of his sleeping bag and together with Joanne crept over to where Mac and Shorty were already standing a few feet away from Owl.
“For God’s sake, what are you doing?” Jeff asked.
Mac turned around and looked at him wide-eyed. He was white as a sheet.
“What…?” Jeff asked. He saw that something was dripping out of the front of Owl onto the ground. What was he doing? Was he vomiting?
“Owl!” Jeff yelled. He wanted to run to his shipmate, but something stopped him. “Owl!” he yelled again.
Owl turned round as if in slow motion.
Jeff cried out in horror.
“Oh my God!” Joanne whimpered.
Mac retched.
Shorty threw up all over his boots.
There was a huge wound from left to right across Owl’s entire abdomen. Blood was running in thick rivulets from the wound and dripping to the ground. With every breath he took, Owl’s intestines bulged out of his abdominal cavity. One loop was already dangling in front of his crotch.
“What are you doing?” Shorty asked hoarsely. “What have you done?”
Jeff wanted to run over and hold his shipmate upright, but he was rooted to the spot.
Owl’s face was completely impassive. He seemed to feel no pain, or even to notice what he was doing.
To Jeff’s horror, he now jerked the knife up into his chest.
“Don’t do it!” Joanne screamed.
To Jeff’s utter amazement, Owl began to laugh. He turned to look at them. “I am now part of this ship,” he said, with a wild joy in his voice, as if he were announcing his upcoming wedding. “And you will be soon, too!” Then he thrust the knife deep into his chest.
Within a split second, his eyes became completely clear and his face was distorted with pain.
“What…?” he gasped. He looked down at the loops of his intestines, which had slopped down to his feet and at the knife in his hand that was still halfway inside his chest. Owl stared at his shipmates, mouth agape, eyes wide. Then he dropped to his knees, pulling the knife out of his body. The blood gushed out in a thick stream. The weapon clattered to the ground. Owl had time to scream before he fell forward and his face fit the bare rock.
24.
“The outer wall of the cavity is over there,” Joanne said huskily. “About one more mile.”
Jeff nodded. The haze had cleared a little and he could see the dark-gray, vertical wall that seemed to rise never-endingly into the sky. He couldn’t yet make out any details or see an opening.
They had been walking nearly all day. In silence. Nobody seemed able or willing to talk about Owl’s gruesome death. Jeff needed to process it himself. They had left their shipmate lying on the rocks covered in just his sleeping bag. What else could they do?
Jeff simply couldn’t get his head around what Owl had done. Had this strange place driven him mad? Jeff remembered his dilated pupils. Had Owl secretly taken some drugs that he’d smuggled on board? Unfortunately they couldn’t do an autopsy, so they would never know.
Jeff glanced over at Joanne, who was marching alongside him but at a slight distance. Her lips were pursed and her eyes were fixed on the wall in front of them. “What do you think happened?” he asked her tentatively.
She shrugged.
“Drugs?” Jeff asked.
“Possibly,” she replied. “If we were anywhere else, I’d bet on it. A hallucinogen with a dissociative effect. Maybe phencyclidine or an overdose of ketamine. But I’m not an expert.”
“And if it wasn’t drugs? Could he have lost his mind?”
Joanne shook her head. “Not from one day to the next.”
“Not even under the influence of the ship?” Jeff pointed in front of them, where the wall of the cavity reached seemingly endlessly up into the sky.
She shook her head again. “We haven’t gone mad. No, I can’t imagine it. Yesterday he was fine.”
“Could it happen to the rest of us?”
Joanne didn’t answer.
Jeff flinched. It was a nightmarish thought. To wake up in the morning completely out your mind and slit open your own stomach with a knife. He shook himself.
This goddamn ship. What was going on? Maybe Owl had been right. Maybe they never should have come on board. But now it was too late. From now on they were closer to the core than to the outer shell.
“There’s a ramp going along the wall,” Mac said.
Jeff could see it, too. It was wide enough that even the Charon would have fit on it comfortably. It led to a huge gate, set into the wall, through which you could have pushed an entire building. But it was closed.
After a few minutes the group had reached the ramp. The angle was flat enough that it required no effort to climb up. When Jeff reached the gigantic gate, he was overwhelmed by its sheer size. He had visited cathedrals on Terra that were smaller than this. The question was whether they would be able to open it.
“There’s one of those squares on the side,” Castle said, moving past Jeff to the edge of the gate, which was clearly marked with a swath of yellow paint. He pressed it, and Jeff took a step back. But the gate didn’t budge.
“And now?” Mac asked wearily. His voice had all its former hostility and cynicism.
Joanne pointed to the left edge of the ramp. “I think there’s another smaller door.” She set off and Jeff followed her. She was right. There was another doorway, just big enough for a person to pass through without having to bend down. Joanne pushed the square and the door swung inward.