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“Aless, please. We don’t have time for this.”
It was like he was sleeping, and she wanted to slap him until he would open his eyes. She wanted to shout.
“He’s been lying to us this whole time.”
“Priya, please,” Sanesh was half inside the airlock, trying to pull away from her. They were minutes away from optimal approach, and Sanesh clearly wasn’t in the mood to wait, “I’ll explain when I get back, but you have to trust me. It was an accident. Martin knows what he’s doing.”
Aless took a breath, and let go of his sleeve. She knew he was probably right, but she wasn’t ready to let go of the feeling that something was wrong.
“What if he tries something?”
Sanesh grinned, “I’m sure you can take care of him. He’s scrawny.”
The airlock’s aperture squealed as it closed, and the door sealed shut with a rubber kiss. She made it back to the bridge just in time to see the small, one-man repair craft jetting away toward the planet’s rings. Martin was back in one of the command chairs, eyes squeezed shut, whispering his prayers to whatever prophet he worshiped. She noticed he was curled over, with something in his lap. Aless took the chair on the other side of the bridge, but made sure to angle herself so she could still look up and see him.
The screen turned on as her weight sank into the low chair, and she connected to the repair craft’s cockpit. From her screen, she could see Sanesh flipping through the controls, running through his in-flight checks.
“Well done, Martin.” Sanesh’s voice crackled through the bridge’s speakers, “Everything’s in order.”
Martin nodded and let out a strained ‘mm-hm’. Tendons pressed out of his neck. Aless had to keep herself from grinding her teeth, and she told herself Breathe, focus on your breath. Don’t let him bother you. Thin veils of dust swept over the viewport, and half of the view was taken up by the orange planet, rotating slowly beneath them. Loose streams of rocks and dust gathered in a line below them, like a highway curving beyond the edge of the planet.
Sanesh spoke, “Still no visual on the satellite. Any idea how soon I will see it?”
“It should be on the other side of the planet, so fifteen? Twenty minutes?”
“Understood.”
Aless watched as his eyes darted around the cockpit, checking one instrument, then another.
Sanesh made a face, “Hey, Aless, this thing with the rings- is this normal?”
She pressed a key and her screen switched to the repair craft’s forward view. That was when she understood what they meant by ‘bent rings.’ The rocks, ice, and other particles should have remained in a band, in a tight orbit around the planet, but the bands were curving too tightly, and she couldn’t imagine how they weren’t being pulled to the surface.
“That is not normal.”
She was about to say something else, when a loud clang interrupted her. It rang through the speakers, and an alarm started beeping.
“Sanesh, what was that?”
For a moment there was no response, and Aless switched her screen back to the cockpit. Sanesh was buckling himself in and rubbing the top of his head. He reached forward, shut off the alarm, and said, “Rogue debris. Nothing serious, I just didn’t see it coming. Martin, I need you to rescan, see if there’s any other misaligned debris.”
Aless looked up from her screen, and she felt a jolt in her stomach. Martin’s chair was empty. She almost leapt up before she saw the Pathfinder standing in front of the viewport. Idiot, she thought.
“Martin, get back to your station,” Aless demanded.
There was a rattling sound from Sanesh’s stream as more dust and pebbles pelting the repair craft.
“What is he doing?” Sanesh’s asked. Sanesh was focused on his flying, and his knuckles were white from squeezing the repair craft’s controls.
Martin held a circular stone in both hands, held it up to the viewport so that it knocked against the glass. A gouge deformed one face of the stone. His mouth was hanging open, and he swayed back until it looked like he might fall over.
In a hushed voice, Martin uttered, “It’s a planet.”
The shower from the speakers grew louder, and Aless could barely hear Sanesh over the noise.
“Martin! Get back to your station!”
“The stone- It’s a planet. It’s the planet.”
“— can’t find — where the dust —” Sanesh said, but the crackling showers rose in pitch until she couldn’t hear a word he was saying. His image was still clear on her screen, and she could see the sweat beading on his forehead as he shouted commands that nobody could hear.
Martin had his nose pressed to the viewport, like he was trying to soak in the planet with every surface of his body. Below, a huge mountain range crested into view, arching from the north pole, down to where they could not see it anymore. The stone slipped out of his hands and rolled across the floor. It came to a rest under Aless’s chair, with the gouge facing up.
“-too much- can’t-” Sanesh’s voice broke over the crackling.
A screech pierced the speakers. Sanesh’s video went dark.
“Sanesh?” Aless tapped on her screen. Her breath was gone. Like all the air had been sucked out of her.
No.
“Sanesh? Can you hear me? Sanesh, answer.”
No.
“Sanesh, answer. Please? Please, Sanesh. Captain? Answer me right now, damn it.” She could feel her heart pulsing in her neck.
Martin laughed, hands against the glass.
Aless gripped her screen with both hands, shouting, while Martin watched the planet reveal itself. Somewhere on the ship, an emergency signal blared: the connection with the repair craft had been severed. Through blurred vision, Aless saw unthinkable data from the ship’s sensors, gravitational readings that could not have been possible. Then, the sensors blinked out. She looked up, and saw the rings.
Emotion squeezed her throat from the inside-out. This isn’t possible. None of this is possible.
The rings curved inward, avenues of rocks and dust and ice, pouring down to the planet’s surface in a thin stream of super-heated matter.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” His voice was even, peaceful. Satisfied. “Look, Aless. Look, and know. The Path goes before us. We have found the Path.”
No.
Like a huge beast in a black sea turning onto it’s back, the planet spun, revealing another mountain range running parallel to the first. Together the ranges looked like the edges of a vast, open wound. Inside the wound, instead of a deep valley, there was a gouge, dozens of kilometers wide, and stretching south as far as she could see.
White streaks of cloud clawed out from the barren surface of the planet, over the mountain ranges, and pooled before slipping into the gouge. The fragments from the rings fell in a fiery stream, some fragments slipping into the gouge, others smacking and tearing away sides of the mountain range. As their ship arced over the edge of the mountains, the gouge seemed to grow deeper, and blacker, until she could not perceive it’s depth.
Something pulled her up, out of her chair. It was easy, walking to the stone on the ground. It made sense to pick it up. Everything fell into place.
Martin is wrong. He has always been wrong.
With the stone in both hands, she advanced on Martin. She could barely see the back of his head through her tears.
They are all wrong. There is no Path.
Before the Seer’s Stone cracked the back of his skull, Martin looked into void that went through the planet, and in the void, swirling and sparkling like sunlight scattered through shattered ice, a field of stars.
The End.
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P.S. Hoffman
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