"Oh, man." " You ever get tired of looking at it?" " Frankly, yes." "You're 10 minutes early." "You trying to make the rest of us look bad?" "So sue me." "I still get off on it." "There was a time that you did too." "It gets old." "It gets real old." "No fluctuations in our field strength." "All vectors normal." " Want coffee?" " Thanks." "So what is it you want?" "Military pilot, one of those big naval ships?" "Nothing wrong with commercial transport." "I'd just like to sit in a different seat for a change." " You mean command?" " Yeah." "Sure." "Why not?" "Nothing." "I didn't expect you'd be interested this late in your career." "You know, man, I'm only 37 years old." "I'm not some doddering old" "Damn!" "What the hell did we hit?" "I don't know!" "The engines are goin' off-line." "Damn!" "We're dropping out of hyperspace!" "I can handle this!" "I'll pull us back!" " What's going on?" " The engines are off-line." "No particle emissions in the hyperdrive!" "Is something on the hull blocking the view screen array?" " No, it's all clear." " Then where the hell did the stars go?" "There is nothing wrong with your television." "Do not attempt to adjust the picture." "We are now controlling the transmission." "We control the horizontal... and the vertical." "We can deluge you with a thousand channels... or expand one single image to crystal clarity... and beyond." "We can shape your vision... to anything our imagination can conceive." "For the next hour... we will control all that you see and hear." "You are about to experience the awe and mystery... which reaches from the deepest inner mind to..." "The Outer Limits." "For the crew of the transport vessel Nestor, their moment has come." "The eternal night of space has vanished... and the night to come will be longer and darker... than they can possibly imagine." "There's nothing wrong with the equipment." "This shouldn't be happening." " Did you try a cross-check?" " I've run five damn cross-checks!" " Why don't you take a crack at it?" " Well, I'm thinking" "That's enough!" "Now what is it?" "Is it some kind of damping field?" "Near as I can tell, the plasma's just gone inert." "But we still have internal power?" "It could be that only radioactive sources are affected." "Our sublight drive is chemical." " That still works." "We can maneuver at least." " Where?" "Where are we?" "Well, damned if I know!" "There's no stellar radiation in any direction." "Our distress signals just bounce around like something's reflecting them back." " There are no planets out there?" " There's something out there." "I'm picking up readings of over two billion Earth-masses..." " but I can't isolate the location." " Can't you triangulate?" " With what?" " Using the hyperspace distortion." "We're not a science vessel." "We're a cargo ship." "We don't have that sort of instrumentation." "This has got to be some kind of distortion of space-time." "Its damping field caused us to drop in from hyperspace." "It's a kind of a cosmic speed bump." "We need some way to figure out the parameters of this distortion." "We've already got all the information my system can provide." " I can't do any more with what I've got!" " Look!" "I know none of us has had any experience in situations like this." "We're all a little scared, but if we're going to get out of this... we're gonna have to work with what's at hand and with each other." "Or we may not get out at all." "Understood?" "Paul, aren't we carrying a couple of mining probes?" "Yep." "Two gamma class asteroid mining probes, chemical engines." "Can you jury-rig one of those, feed its telemetry into the nav console?" " I think so." " Good." "Do it." "Rob, go with her." "Check the rest of the cargo." "Why was Rob at the helm?" " He said he could handle it." " What he said he could do... what he wanted to do, is irrelevant." "You have 12 years more experience." "You should have been at the helm." "Besides which, it was still your shift!" " How do you know I'd have done better?" " We'll never know, will we?" "You all right, guys?" "Hey, big fella." "Girl." "Yikes." "Rob here." "Zoo specimens check out." "Cargo bay secure." "I'll be damned." "It worked!" "Rig the other probe too." "We might need it." "Swing it around us." "Standard pattern." "Still getting nothing visually." "Mass readings are still intense." "It's got an onboard light source, doesn't it?" "Turn it on." " There!" " Bring the probe around." "It's a ship." "Looks like a military vessel." "700 kilometers from us." "I'll magnify." "My God" "The Slayton?" "What about it?" "The Slayton was lost with all hands aboard 10 years ago." "It was never recovered." "Paul's brother was- what, junior comm officer?" "Just promoted to second lieutenant." "I'm so sorry." "Any power readings?" "Just some random particle emissions from their chem rockets." "That's it." "Can we send the probe on board?" "Guide it through one of the engine tubes and tap into the Slayton's computers." "Get us their data logs." "The Slayton?" "Isn't that" "It's hooked into the access panel." "It's reading vacuum on the other side." "No life support." " Open access panel." " Entering their engine room." "Hold it." "Back up!" "Back up!" "Magnify!" "Kevin." "Kevin." "I'm sorry, Paul." "If their hyperdrive went down... why couldn't they use their sublight to get home?" "Why don't you take an hour, maybe get something to eat." "You too." "You've been awake longer than we have." "Go." "Even though you know better, a part of you can't help thinking... maybe they made landfall somewhere." "Maybe somewhere, somehow, he's still" "I don't give a damn what anybody says." "Knowing is a damn sight worse than not knowing." "The last thing I wanna do is sound like a choirboy... but do you have any spiritual beliefs?" "I haven't been to temple in 30 years." "That wasn't what I was asking exactly." "What, you mean, do I believe in God... heaven, eternal rewards?" "Sorry." "No." "I've never seen any evidence, one way or the other." "Well, I'm not trying to convert anyone." "I was just wondering." "What, you're a Christian?" " I'm a Catholic." " Well, I'm Jewish." "So at least we have guilt in common." "And just so I feel like less the hypocrite... my brother could be a real jerk sometimes." "Most of the time actually." "In fact, the last thing I think I said to him was "Screw you."" "Well, he knew you didn't mean it." "No." "That's just it." "He knew I did." "Get up here, fast.!" " Not an Earth ship." " What do you mean it's not an Earth ship?" " It's alien." " It's alien all right." "I don't recognize the configuration." "Great." "Why couldn't a military ship have found this?" "One did." "The Slayton." "What if this alien ship is responsible for what happened to the Slayton?" "Hell, we don't even know if the aliens are still alive." "Maybe they ran out of air too." "Send the probe in for another look." "Let's get out of here." "Erin, fire chemical engines." "Paul, bring us 180 degrees around and keep going!" "You got it!" " There's something straight ahead." " It's a ship." "That's another one." "It's the same one!" " What?" " Full stop." " Damn it!" "We're back where we started." " How the hell did" "Something here is distorting space." "It's like it curves in on itself." "Maybe nothing can get in unless... it drops in from hyperspace." "But then nothing could get back out." "Erin, ready the other probe for launch." "According to the Slayton's logs... the aliens were already here when they arrived." "The aliens tried to transmit something to the Slayton... but the methods of data encryption were so, well, alien... that the Slayton couldn't even figure out... how to reassemble the signals into data, much less decipher the language." "Then suddenly the aliens turned hostile, tried to ram the Slayton... which moved away and stayed away." "Were the aliens still alive when the log ended?" "There's still gigabytes of data I have to page through." "You know, whatever zapped our probe... could've been triggered by some automated defense system." "There's no gaseous emissions coming from the ship at all." "Any life-support system has some waste product." "None of them are completely closed." "They could all be dead over there." "Or they could be very, very good at recycling." "What the hell's gotten into you guys?" "Hey, listen, everything's all right." "Just relax." "Get away from me!" "It was one of the aliens." "This is crazy." "Has their ship changed position at all?" " Not a centimeter." " How could they even get over here?" " We should run another" " There's a time for speculation... and a time to just get in there and see- guess which time it is." "Erin, run the security scanners in cargo." "Rob, can you show us where they were?" "Whatever they were, they're not here anymore." "They could be using some kind of... short-distance Dirac jump for boarding other vessels." "Maybe." "What happened to him?" "Med telemetry indicates heart attack." "There's also evidence of contact with something very cold." "Almost absolute zero." "One of those things must've touched it." "Run a full diagnostic on it." "Then freeze it." "We may need all the food sources we can get." "You know, your hunch was right." "The aliens boarded the Slayton too." "They first appeared in engineering." "Reached out to touch a junior officer... and she died instantly- heart attack." "Autopsy showed a fingertip-size point of... absolute zero and cellular disruption." "Did they try to take over the ship?" "They might not have had time." "The Slayton moved away from the alien vessel and the boardings stopped." "Possibly out of range of their jump technology." "We're gonna take their lead." "How do you do it?" "How do you stay so calm?" "Process all this information coming from 12 different directions at once... and you're still so balanced." "My first day of command, I was overwhelmed." "All these people coming to me, asking me what to do, decisions to make." "I'd make the decisions, I'd tell them... then I'd go to the head and throw up for 10 minutes." "At the end of the day, I talked to an old friend of mine, a freighter captain." "I told him how terrified I'd been." "He said, "Did you make the right decisions?" I said I thought so." "He said, "Did the crew know how frightened you were?" I said, "No, of course not."" "He said, "Congratulations." "You're a commander."" "I just don't know if I want it for the right reasons, you know?" "My brother Kevin, he was flying light planes before he was 20." "Graduated top of his class, first posted on the UNS Gagarin." "We all know what happened to her." "He helped rescue three men when the magnetic containment fields collapsed." "Medals of honor, citations for bravery... promoted to second lieutenant within the first year." "Pretty impressive." "You must've hated his guts." "Well, no, no, I was used to it by then." "High school, he was a track star." "College, it was football." "Golden boy of the family." "I was the only one who knew the real" "It's all past." "It's all in the past." "You look exhausted." "Get a few hours sleep." "We're not going anywhere for a while." "Good night." "Give me a break." "You didn't do squat to Melanie." " Hey, ask her yourself, man." " Stein, you're such a jerk." "You know how to spell 'jerk"?" "V-l-R-G-l-N." "Take that back, you little turd!" "Methinks thou dost protest too much." "Methinks you're a scumbag, scumbag." "Don't listen to him, Beanpole." "He's full of it." "Besides, a little pisher like you shouldn't be hearing this kind of crap." "I'm not a pisher!" "Beanpole.!" "This is the source of the distortion?" "Not much to look at, is it?" "Here, I'll have the probe fire an ion flare." " Freeze it!" " It's a... nonluminous, planetary-sized chunk of matter that's incredibly massive." "So massive that, theoretically, it could warp time and space." "If it's so massive, why aren't we being crushed by the gravity?" "Well, we would be if it were normal matter, but it's not." "Scanners can't make heads or tails of it." "Its atomic structure is damn near impenetrable to our science." "Amazing." "Dark matter." "There must be some way to analyze it." "Something we can do to" "Lydia, I'm getting unusual energy readings on deck two, section four." "I thought we were out of range of the alien ship." "I thought so too." "I can take us further out." "Let's see what we're up against." "Paul, Erin with me." "Ordnance." "Rob, take the helm." "Prepare to bug out at my command." "If I wanted this much excitement, I'd have joined the damn army." "Wait, stop!" "Stop!" "This is saying that they're within 10 meters." "And it won't pinpoint the direction." "I thought you said 10 meters." "They're here." "Paul, Erin, take the left." "I'll take the right." "There!" "Drop to the deck!" "Forget it!" "Retreat!" "Go!" "Rob, get us out of here!" "You can't kill these things." "Lasers go right through them." "Course not, dummy." "They're already dead." "We all are." "Let's go!" "There were no life readings." "At least, nothing that I can recognize as life." "Those same weird energy traces." "Could be residue from their Dirac jumps?" "They weren't Dirac jumps." "We all know it." " We don't know anything." " I don't believe in ghosts." "What do you call it?" "Everyone on the Slayton was dead." "We all saw it." " What is it you think happened there?" " Damn it, Rob." "Can you throw away the rosary beads just for one second and think rationally?" "It could have been a hologram or an illusion." "Paul, visuals aside, was that image anything like your brother?" "Its voice, its manner of speaking- was it at all like him?" "Telepathy." "They could've taken all that from your mind." "Yeah, Erin's right." "I mean, it could be telepathy." "And Paul's brother could be an illusion, but why?" "I mean, they can appear at will anywhere." "They can kill with a touch." "They could take control of this ship in five minutes." "Why create fake ghosts?" "I mean, what's the point?" "Whatever these apparitions... the closer we get to the alien ship, the more they appear to us." "Let's see what happens when we get that close to the Slayton." "Okay." "Keep us as close as you can." "No farther than 100 meters." "Getting those weird energy readings again." "Outside the ship this time." "Full stop." "Maintain this position as long as you can." "Commander Lydia Manning." "You're aboard the merchant transport vessel Nestor." "Captain John Owens." "UNS Slayton." "Welcome to hell, Commander." "I would try to shake your hand... but we seem to exist in a different quantum state from you." "It's not... congenial to the human nervous system." "Captain Owens, what happened to your ship?" "We ran out of power." "Then life support." "Trapped here for two years." "Weapons useless because of the damping field." "Scanners unable to analyze that... damn piece of rock out there." "Some of us took Thanos pills before the air ran out." "I stayed with the ship till the end... and as I lay there gasping for one last breath of air..." "I thought, "At least it's over." "At least we won't have to stare into that darkness... knowing we'll never see home again... never see our... families again." "But thank God, at least it's over."" "But it wasn't." "When I opened my eyes, I knew." "I was no longer alive, and I knew we were going to be denied... even the peace of the grave." " But how?" "Why?" " That thing out there." "So heavy, so massive, it's turned space back in on itself." "Nothing can escape." "Not even the souls of those who died inside of it." "Wherever we are supposed to go, we'll never get there." "Heaven, hell, oblivion- we'll never see it." "And neither will you." "I'm sorry." "Hey, Beanpole." "It's okay." "It's okay." " It's just me, kiddo." "It's Kevin." " Is it?" "You know, I've been waiting 10 years to tell you something." "Screw you too!" "It is, isn't it?" "Wow, this is weird." "You shouldn't try to touch me." " What does it feel like, Kev?" " Being dead?" "Maybe I'm not dead." "Maybe this is just some biological energy trace that should've died when I did." "Wouldn't that be a kick?" "Maybe I'm not me." "Maybe this is just a memory of me." " The aliens, memories of themselves." " Can you talk to the aliens?" "Why would we wanna talk to the aliens?" "They tried to ram us." "First they tried to snare us with a magnetic grapple... then came abreast, tried to slam our port side." "Forget about the damn aliens." "I came because I know a way to get out of here." "You do?" "How?" "A forced plasma injection in the hyperdrive." "Use your chemical rockets to ignite the plasma." " Jump-start your engines." " Kev, this isn't the Slayton." "We don't have the tech support for an operation like that." " Use equipment from the Slayton." " And besides... people don't use forced plasma injections anymore- they're obsolete." "Stop arguing with me, Beanpole." "Go tell your captain." "Goddamn it, Kevin." "I'm not nine years old anymore!" "Listen to me." "I'm 37." "I'm your older brother now." "You're dead!" " This'll work, Paulie!" " No, it won't work!" "It won't work!" "It's shoot-from-the-hip." "It's irresponsible..." " like almost everything you ever did." " This is not aboutJason!" " That's not what I meant!" " Fine!" "Go ahead!" "Die!" "Go to hell." "See if I care." "Stein, you're so full of it!" "Whatever I'm full of, you wish you had some, pal." "Kev, I'm not supposed to go this far." "You would've told that to Lewis and Clark, now, wouldn't you?" "Go home if you're afraid." "Go!" "Rob, stop it.!" "Somebody help me.!" " What the hell's the matter with him?" " We were just talking... and he went berserk." "Cool down, man!" "Come on!" "It's me, Paul!" "Let go!" "You can't understand!" " What the hell did you say to him?" " Nothing!" "I just said he was right." "Maybe something of us does survive after death." "Yeah, I was right!" "Damn it!" "You don't know what it's like, either of you!" "I mean, you grow up your whole life believing... that God is all-seeing, all-knowing... that he's just and kind and loving." "And that if you love him... and if you live a decent life... that you'll be rewarded." "You'll join him in heaven." "But those poor bastards on the Slayton... they're not going anywhere." "I mean, they don't deserve what happened to them." "So therefore, God is either punishing the innocent... or he... just doesn't know." "He doesn't know!" "Come on, man." "Rob's asleep." "The sedative finally took effect." "You handled him very well." "Could've been any one of us, given time." "I smuggled this in from Ryder's World." "I think we're due." "Thanks." "Cheers." "My brother visited me again." "Yeah, we got along about as well as we did when he was alive." "After he left, I found myself thinking..." ""Is this what's in store for me?" "Sibling rivalry for all eternity?"" "Thank God my mother's not on that ship." "Then I remembered something he'd told me." "About the aliens ramming the Slayton." "So I worked out some simulations based on what he said." "Here, take a look." "First, the aliens tried to snare the Slayton... using magnetic grapples." "That's bad tactics." "That limits your own maneuverability." "Then, even stranger, the alien ship's approaching parallel to the Slayton." "I mean, if you're gonna ram a ship, you use your bow." "You don't use your belly or your flank." "So the Slayton maneuvered away." "But what if the Slayton hadn't maneuvered away?" "It stayed there." "I factored in the locations of both ships within this distortion and" "The dark matter." "With the engines of both ships pointed straight at it!" "The aliens weren't trying to ram the Slayton." "They were trying to dock with it, I think." "Maybe they'd analyzed the dark matter, had a plan to destroy it... couldn't communicate it with the Slayton, tried to grab control of her." "If we knew what they knew, maybe we could carry out their plan." "If we had some ham, we could make ham and eggs." "If we had some eggs." "Not necessarily." "I mean, we know what the dark matter could be made of, right?" " The various theories?" " Yeah, hundreds of them." "So?" "So we create schematics." "Schematics of the various theories." "Schematics so clear, so easy, that even an alien can read 'em." "No!" "Absolutely not!" "Their touch is deadly." " Even if they aren't hostile, no." " I can get the ship out of range... at the least hint of danger." "If we can get the aliens to tell us what this dark matter is made of... maybe we can think of a plan to destroy it." "Lydia, I don't often trust myself, and I know you don't quite trust me either." "But this I know can work." "This is something that I understand." "It's something that I can do." "Please." "Please let me try it." "For all our sakes." "500 kilometers." "Keep us outside the range of their automated defenses." " Simulations ready?" " They're ready." "I'm not." "Run simulations." "All monitors." "Now!" "Superstring particles?" "That makes sense." "High-frequency superstring particles are immensely heavy... but if you add energy to them, their frequency lowers- their mass decreases." "Enough maybe that this entire space bubble might just pop right out of existence?" "Thank you." "You'll have your peace." "I promise you." "Take us out." "Erin, start accessing the Slayton's computers." "We have our work cut out for us." "Lights." "Computer on." "Open file." "File name" ""Kevin."" "Okay, so what did you do to Melanie, then?" " What?" "What, did you feel her up?" " Shut up, Jason." " No, come on." "Did you touch 'em?" " I said shut up!" "No, really." "I wanna know." "Did you use your mouth or your hands?" " Hey, you got such a big mouth" " Go to hell!" "What the hell are you doin'?" "What I should've done 30 years ago" " Tell the truth." " To who?" "Maybe nobody." "Maybe nobody'll ever read this." "Maybe we'll never get home." " But at least I'll know I've done it." " I didn't mean to do it!" " You know that I tried" " That's not what it's about." "It's about taking responsibility for your actions." "You told them he tripped and fell, and you got me to go along." "You threatened, cajoled and got me to lie... and I've never trusted any decision I've made since." "What if you get out of here?" "What then?" "I am a hero, damn it!" "I saved three men off the Gagarin." "And you made a mistake!" "A long time ago." "We both did." "That doesn't diminish what you did later." "You still saved those men." "You're just not perfect, that's all!" " I won't let you do this to me." " You can't stop me, Kev." "You son of a" "I'm sorry." "I'm sorry." "You cried that day too." "I'm scared, Paulie." "What if I can't get out of here?" "What if this is just an energy trace?" "What happens to me?" "I don't know, Kev." "All I know is that we all face that question eventually." "You faced it on the Gagarin." "You'll do it again." "You're a hero." "Yeah." "Beanpole." "Tell Mom and Dad I'm sorry." "Both engines are aligned." "Assuming control of the Slayton's helm." "Diverting nonessential power to helm and navigation." "Full stop." "Bring us around." "Helm computers are overloaded." "We may lose the Slayton after this." "Fire engines!" " We need at least 30 seconds." " We may not last more than 20." "Twenty-six." "Twenty-seven." "Twenty-eight." "Twenty-nine." "Thirty seconds!" "Disengage!" "Yes!" "Good work, Paul." "Really good!" "She's right, Beanpole." "Not much time, Paulie." "I'm going somewhere." "I don't know where, but... that's why I went into space in the first place, right?" "It wasn't your fault, Paulie." "I bullied you into it." "You were just a kid, but I should've known better." "Anyway, just don't let me run your life any more than I already have." "It's okay." "It's all okay." "Good-bye, Beanpole." "Have a good life." "Computer on." "File name- "Kevin."" "Within the human soul reside mysteries dark and deep... about our frailties, our fears, our shame." "Today, or a hundred years from now... the darkest matter will still lie in the human heart."