Phoenix Falling

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. That’s what made the ear shattering scream coming out of my ship’s communication console so unnerving. I had been traveling alone in the uncharted sector, lost in the far reaches of the galaxy for nearly 10 years now, and had not heard a sound from the ship’s communication device since the last radio call had come through some 3 years after my mission had begun.

That final radio signal had been foreboding. The fading sound waves, crackling with the hiss of static and distorted under a cloak of distance and time as it catapulted through space to my location, had simply ended mid-sentence as my commander had uttered, “You’re on your own, now, son. Good luck ….” before hissing away to silence. Since that fateful transmission, the console had remained stubbornly quiet, despite my efforts to revive it with pleas of “Mayday, mayday! Is anybody there?”

My mission had been simple; to find habitable planets to sustain our dying civilization. Well, simple insofar as exploration of uncharted space was a common occurrence in our technologically advanced society. The task had proven to be more daunting when undertaken as a last resort to save a failing planet. And it was a lonely task as well. I had not heard another living soul since that last transmission.

Our planet had been slowly dying for centuries; at first experiencing the minor inconveniences of small weather changes and dwindling resources, and then tumbling downhill at breakneck speed as food grew scarce and the air become increasingly unbreathable. In the months before my ill-fated mission, massive fires had darkened the skies over the few remaining inhabitable parts of our planet, and the few beings left breathing on the planet’s surface were doing so with increasing difficulty.

It was with an impending sense of doom that I had strapped into the cramped quarters of my tiny spacecraft, Phoenix, and blasted off to explore the furthest corners of reachable space. My craft was sturdy enough, and although sparsely equipped, it contained a few minor conveniences.

I slept upright in a cozy capsule that monitored my vital signs; although I feared that no one on my home world was left to read the results or care about my well-being any longer. My ship had been stocked with several years’ worth of powdered rations, but a self-sustaining agro-compartment had kept me reasonably nourished, if not completed sated, over the long-term. Most of the powdered stock was now gone, but I had been moderately successful at rationing some of the more palatable items and enjoyed a rare treat on special occasions. These were becoming scarcer as supplies ran out, but I still managed to enjoy a slightly more substantial meal on the anniversary of the start of my voyage each year. I was optimistically saving a few powdered luxuries to celebrate my finding a new home for my people, although I feared that I might be the last of my kind.

It was into the crushing silence of my ruminations on this fate that the ear-piercing scream encroached. My communication console had suddenly wakened, as if smacked by an unseen hand, with a pop of static and a high-pitched electric whine. This was followed by what can only be described as a scream of terror. Shrill and sustained, the scream registered an octave higher than my own vocal tone. And then, as suddenly as it had started, the sound had cut off leaving me soaked in terrified silence once more.

I stood there, facing the ship’s controls, trembling with fear. What creature had made that sound? Was it someone from my home world? A survivor who had been frantically reviving damaged equipment over the past 7-years to reach me before succumbing to his own demise, perhaps?

Or was it someone else? Another being somewhere in this vast network of what appeared to be uninhabited (and uninhabitable) worlds maybe, or someone lost beyond where I had wandered in my quest. I shuddered at the thought of encountering the unknown.

With the memory of that scream still ringing in my ears, I took control of the Phoenix from the ship’s automatic navigation system, and with trembling hands began to steer her toward home. In the years since last hearing from my home world, I had allowed the ship to meander aimlessly. The navigation system had long run out of programmed instructions, and lacking any input from mission control, had simply guided the ship in a casual grid pattern, crisscrossing the void in a lazy diagonal.

It was on such a criss, or maybe it was a cross, about 7-years into my ill-fated mission when the navigation system had sounded an alarm. Red lights flashing and sirens blaring in the background, I had scrambled to the main controls just in time to watch helplessly as my ship, with me in it, had been pulled into a distortion of time or space. A wormhole? Perhaps. Or maybe a black hole. Perhaps it was some as-of-yet undetermined folding or tearing of the space-time fabric that I encountered; but whatever it was it carried me further away from home than I had intended to travel and left me disoriented and even more alone.

The Phoenix’s navigation system had dutifully recorded the location of the phenomenon, and it was toward these coordinates that I steered my craft. If going through the hole had taken me out into the unknown, surely going back through it the other way would bring me back. There had been no point in testing this theory when all had seemed lost at home; but now there was a glimmer of hope. If I could get back to my home world, maybe I could pick up the survivor. Ah, the thought of company on my lonely voyage overrode the irrationality of returning to a dying planet. For in my addled state, the sound must have come from home. Any other explanation was too terrible to consider.

As I approached the wormhole, or whatever it was, my hands deftly handled the ship’s controls without consideration of what might lie ahead. My mind was focused only on home and the hope of survivors. I steered my vessel into the gaping maw of the void; and was immediately brought back to reality by the cacophony of sounds emitting from the ship as she tumbled through the undulations of the hole’s interior. Again, sirens and flashing lights accompanied the voyage, this time complemented by the sound of grating metal as the ship tumbled and rolled. Bright flashes of light from the many small fires that were spontaneously igniting burned my eyes, while smoke and the pungent odor of toxic materials burning filled my nostrils. The ship rocked and staggered as it was battered against the invisible walls of the wormhole; bounced about by the unseen forces of nature.

When at last we emerged, it was clear my ship was in peril. Most of the controls were now burning, and the thick smoke was becoming more toxic by the minute. I keyed the communication device, calling desperately for help into the emptiness. It was a miracle that the comms console had remained intact throughout its tumble through the wormhole, as most of the remaining controls were now reduced to smoldering jumbles of wire and metal. Looking over my shoulder into the remaining rooms of my once stalwart vessel, I could see smoke and the glow of flames. I was lost. In a panic, I continued to choke my mayday into the console as my watering eyes scanned the emptiness of space outside for a glimmer of hope.

I was almost to the point of giving up when an indistinct shape began to form in the distant darkness of space ahead of my failing craft. My ship’s momentum, driven by our tumbling and rolling exit from the wormhole, was slowing in the vacuum of space to a casual drift. Would we make it to the other craft in time? Was this a rescuer, coming to my aid after hearing my mayday call? Frantically I keyed the communications console again, hoarsely croaking my call for help in the hope that the mysterious vessel would speed their approach. Still, we rolled lazily toward one another, tumbling end over end in the quiet of space.

We were not going to make it. That much became abundantly clear as the small craft in the distance grew only minimally larger as our approach slowed to a crawl. The flames throughout the Phoenix became more frantic; desperately consuming everything in their path. My sleeping quarters was reduced to ash, as was my sustainable garden. Soon the smoke and toxic fumes would overtake me. In sheer terror, I screamed. The voice that sounded in my ears seemed to belong to someone else. An octave higher than my usual voice, the scream I emitted encompassed all the fear and loneliness of someone lost without hope. Then it stopped as suddenly as it began, as the glowing flames consumed the communications console and cut off my transmission. I sank to the floor of the ship’s control room and gasped my last breath of toxic air as the room burned around me.

My ship, now serving as my coffin, drifted slowly in space until it bumped against the damaged hulk of the other ship. As it scraped along the other ship’s side, the two vessels rolled and tumbled as if in harmony. The other ship’s name rolled into view as the two spun together. Engraved into the other ship’s side was its simple designation: Phoenix.

Epilogue

As the doomed space craft catapulted out of the wormhole, tumbling and rolling like a leaf in a storm, the glow of burning fires could be seen through the ship’s portholes. The ship, and its frantic and dying pilot, were lost, drifting through space. In the distance, the burned-out shells of two ships could be seen. As the dying pilot called out for help from the unheeding hulks in the distance, his cries turned to screams of terror.

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. But I know that’s just not true.