New Worlds

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. But on a multi-billion dollar intergalactic science vessel, with the rest of the crew in suspension and only yourself for company, no one can hear you scream here, either.

Cold. Everywhere was cold. Sunndowners’s floor was cool to the touch of O’Malley’s bare feet. Though climate control kept the ship at a very comfortable 66 degrees Fahrenheit, the flooring was, unlike the quarters he’d just left, not carpeted. He was more than comfortable in his old Station 82 t-shirt and baggy black sweatpants that were beginning to pill, but he’d need shoes soon enough. First things first, however.

The faint sound of his flesh padding across the bridge was the only noise to be heard, save the odd beep from a computer terminal, and the ever-present hum of the craft’s engines. Dimmed crew lights illuminated the flight deck just enough for him to find his way to the central command console. Otherwise the room looked much the same as it did outside; pitch black, peppered with small white dots of guiding light. After a few seconds of searching he found the shutter controls, illuminated by the least-dim of the running lights.

With the ghost of a hiss, the shutters began to glide upwards, the light of one hundred-thousand-million distant stars streaming into the room, sort-of blinding before his eyes adjusted. Punching a few more buttons, O’Malley began to run through the start-up procedure. The procedure he’d been drilled and drilled and drilled on all those years ago until he knew it inside-out, top-to-bottom, back-to-front. The procedure he’d run in test-mode once a month the entire journey. The procedure he was only just now executing for real. Finally.

The main cabin lights began to flicker on, racing the still-opening shutters to illuminate the room first. O’Malley began to take in the room as a whole. The team responsible for building the craft had, like the ship itself, been the best of the best; he knew the bridge’s somewhat modest physical size in metric dimensions, but it felt as grand and wide as an ancient amphitheater in spite of that. Consoles covered in buttons, dials, switches, and screens lined the sides of the room, leading to the viewport he’d just opened. The central command console was home to Captain Gibbon’s chair, and in front of the command console stood Navigation; two solid, hulking, stainless steel masses - like the trilithons of ancient Stonehenge.

O’Malley stepped around one of the blocks and approached the bow, his vision finally adjusting to the new brightness. Gazing off through the multi-layered view ports, the vast endlessness of space sent a shiver up his spine. His previous posting had been a scientific research station in Antarctica, and the parallels weren’t lost on him. At least the Sunndowner wasn’t wet.

Out there, beyond the window, directly in Sunndowner’s line of sight, lay XKL-330. O’Malley had only seen long-range probe data of the planet, this was the first time he’d seen it in person, so to speak. They were still a good month out of anything resembling orbit, and the planet was only a slightly-larger blip amidst a sea of blips, but none the less...there it was.

It dawned on O’Malley that he was the first person in human history to see it with his own eyes. There was an odd thought considering his position amongst the crew; not a navigator or a pilot or even a member of the Survey Team, no, a doctor was the first person to view their destination. Funny. A ripple of excitement and possibility ran through O’Malley, and he grinned.

“I really hope we do it right this time...”

A shrill beep emanated from his wrist. His daydream breaking, the doctor silenced his data-pod’s alarm, and turned from the window to begin reveille. He took one last look at the distant planet, curious for what the next couple of days had in store for everyone during their approach to the uncharted destination.

O’Malley moved to the auxiliary control bench for the Navigator’s station, and punched a couple of keys. Small strobes flashed, hidden mechanisms hissed and whirred, and the two huge blocks began to slowly pull apart, before receding into the flooring. It had been so long since they’d gone up, that O’Malley had almost forgotten that what appeared to be two enormous blocks were in fact just blast shields, protection and partial atmospheric insulation for the flight officers during their limited suspension.

The shields finished tracking back into the floor with a dull thud. Beneath, now fully revealed, were the two navigators, Leung and Daniels. O’Malley had been present to monitor them not only jacking-in to the ship’s systems, but also entering into limited suspension after the one-year mark, and had found them to both be nice people; Leung quiet, Daniels not so much. He waited as their seats slid down from a semi-upright position into an ergonomically attentive one in front of their respective command consoles. The process completed, he peered at small LED readout screens behind them. With all vitals checking out okay, he now had only to wait for them to gain full consciousness.

O’Malley slowly and quietly moved back around to the front of the navigation station. The officers, both clad in flight suits, were strapped in to their chairs by standard belts, nothing more. In flight mode, they had a plethora of hand controls to aid them in physically moving the ship through space, but they were almost redundant, the real work was far more sophisticated.

A team of almost a thousand engineers, bio-technicians, coders and programmers, doctors, surgeons and industrial designers had come together for the better part of three decades; the end result of their work was the Cranial Control System. The technology allowed two navigators with surgically-implanted control adapters to connect to the ship’s central computer core, to make use of the teraflops of information processed by it, and to control basic flight functions, among others. The control adapters were protected by helmets that housed and internal view screen, yet obscured the wearer’s faces from the nose up. It still blew O’Malley’s mind, that science, and the human race with it, had come so far. Astounding.

O’Malley edged closer, moving closer to Daniels. He had been briefed on how to treat the navigators at any given stage of the journey, and knew that even in basic suspension conditions, certain care and delicacy had to be exercised when reviving someone; for the navigators, this care was a thousand times more critical. He leaned in, trying to peer under the lip of her headset.

“Good morning doctor!”

O’Malley’s heart span out of control as Daniels’ voice, distorted by feedback of the ship’s PA, broke the silence in the cabin. It took him several seconds to sputter out a startled response.

“Good...good morning Officer Daniels,” he almost forgot what he was doing, “systems check?”

Daniels’ voice boomed once more.

“Systems check out okay, operating at nominal efficiency. Do you want an entire break-down?”

“That’s...that’s fine, thank you.”

"I'll send a breakdown of my vitals to your data-pod."

O’Malley watched Daniels smirk, felt his cheeks redden as the device on his wrist beeped at him.

“Leung and I will hold things down if you want to revive the rest of the crew?”

The doctor felt for a second as if the offer was by way of apology, but his sense of duty got the better of him. He could, after all, take a joke, and she’d gotten him a good one.

“Thank you, Daniels. You’ve got the helm, I’ll be back.”

Daniels nodded, smiling, and O’Malley turned and left. Padding out of the flight deck, he wound his way to his quarters. The ship was state of the art, top of the line, but a luxury vessel it was not. ICO-Corp had built her with simplicity, economy and most of all, utility in mind. The halls were tight, and almost strategic in their layout, more like shortcuts between rooms than legitimate pathways or corridors.

The doctor had become very familiar with the walls of the Sunndowner, and ran his hand along the bulkhead as he walked. The texture changed from sleek, smooth paneling to exposed access conduits and piping, back to panels again; all painted white with red accents, with hazards highlighted in tiger-striped black and yellow. He’d grown accustomed to the running lights, modest globes mounted along the floor that gave off just enough light to see. Now however, clinical, cool white lighting illuminated the ship.

O’Malley split off from the corridors into his modest but adequate quarters. With a single bed, a desk and chair, and a cupboard, there wasn’t much more to the room. Still, despite its coziness it was preferable to Antarctica; no matter how many times the phrase “jail cell” ran through his head. Everything was neat and squared away, save for a duty tablet and a pair of tattered burgundy slippers, both of which sat on the clearly broken-in office chair in the corner of the room. O’Malley picked up the tablet and tipped the slippers onto the floor in one motion. Pushing into the worn footwear, he turned briskly on his heels and exited the room, grabbing a swipe card off his desk along the way, stuffing it into a pocket of his sweats.

As he headed to the Suspension Dorm, O’Malley mused on the labyrinthine nature of the ship. He’d gotten lost countless times in the first couple of months after launch. Stubborn as always, he’d resolved to learn the corridors of the ship until they were embedded in muscle memory. That didn’t work so well; if it hadn’t been for the schematics on his data-pod, he’d still be winding up facing dead-ends or access hatches, wondering where he’d taken a wrong turn. But now he could walk the ship blindfolded, with almost complete confidence. Closing his eyes, he counted in his head.

Seven steps, a left, nineteen steps and then a right, thirty five and a half steps, another right, two steps and then stop. He opened his eyes. He was there; facing him was the Suspension Dorm / Medical door. He held his data-pod up to a small plate on the side of the door, unlocking it. It groaned ever so slightly from disuse, and then slid open.

The air inside was cool but stale; it took a mild conscious effort to breathe it at first. O’Malley manipulated controls on a wall-mounted panel, and the room’s air supply kicked into overdrive, ceiling vents pumping fresh, crisp O2 into the dorm. He keyed the lights on, illuminating the two long rows of suspension beds. Booting up his duty tablet, he slowly strolled down the row, humming a tune to himself as he walked.

Passing the final pair of beds, the rows gave way to an open-plan clinic, the ship’s Medical Bay. O’Malley opened a storage cupboard, and rolled a trolley out. Raiding storage bins and refrigerators, he neatly assembled the supplies he’d need for the morning on its tray. Morning. Was it even morning? Potentially, somewhere back on Earth it was. The wheels of the cart glided silently on the lab’s floor as he guided it back up the row of beds.

Holding the tablet over the first pod, data flashed to life on its screen, giving O’Malley a wealth of information on the pod’s occupant. Monitoring data of heartbeat, breathing, brainwave activity and every vital statistic a supervising medical officer could want scrolled down the tablet’s display, a program checking them off one at a time. As the tests ran, O’Malley placed the tablet next to a glass panel in the pod’s surface. Wiping five years of condensation off the small slot, he peered through.

Inside, oblivious to all going on around him, was the ship’s Chief of Operations, Mister Pearce. The file photo on the tablet showed him clean shaven; through the viewing panel on the suspension bed, under the cool blue internal lighting, he appeared different to O’Malley’s eye, though he couldn’t say exactly how. Less alive, perhaps? Funny.

The tablet finished its battery of assessments and beeped, declaring the pod’s occupant to be within acceptable health parameters. O’Malley logged the tests as complete, and tucked the tablet under his arm. Taking the swipe card out of his pocket, he opened the unit’s access panel. Inside lay a card reader and basic keypad. Sliding his card into a slot, he punched in a command string, and stepped back.

The suspension bed hummed, slowly coming to life. After a couple of seconds of inactivity, the internal gears spun, the humming growing louder, and the lids cracked open, chilled air hissing out. The dual canopies rose in perfect mechanical synchronization, and O’Malley couldn’t help but think of a flower, opening in a graceful, time-lapse bloom.

“Okay Mister Pearce, up and at ‘em...”