“You can call back if you like,” she said. “I don’t believe I will answer, but I didn’t think I would answer this time either. Maybe I’ll surprise us both.”
Her image dissolved as he snapped “I’m seeing another woman.” He didn’t think she’d heard him. When he tried the connection again, it failed. He sat alone for a time, growing more aware of the depths to which he had just humiliated himself. He didn’t weep, but he permitted himself to feel the sadness that had been his silent companion since the day she’d left.
Later, he made a cup of smoky tea, and set it across the table from him, watching the steam rise from it as if it might tell him something.
A mystery that cannot be solved and one that simply hasn’t been solved yet are difficult, if not impossible, to tell apart. We have learned a great deal from the Carrath stones, and this new one has yielded another dataset that may hold the key to deciphering all of them. Or it may not. If not, the next one—assuming there is another one found—may. Or there may be no key. The secret of the stones and their creation may require contextual knowledge we don’t have and never will.
It is possible that I have spent decades of my life on a problem I lack the ability to resolve. Even if I remain dedicated to this study—and I expect I will—I may die with a deep knowledge of trivia about the Carrath stones and no insight into the issues that brought me here. Or, maybe next time it will all line up, we will find the thing that puts all the unknowns into a formula, and I will be able to write an equation that lays bare the mysteries. Maybe I already have the information, but haven’t developed the wisdom yet to see the critical connection.
For me, for now, the Carrath stones and the alien civilization that fashioned them are a paradox. They remind me that, as we explore and travel this vast, glorious, tragic universe, we are not alone.
And also that we are.
The Wreck of the Tartarus
By Lee Murray
October 2033
Strapped in her seat, Captain Kennedy R. Jones clutched the console as the submarine rolled on the Atlantic seabed. Seaman McNaught wasn’t so lucky; flung across the control room, his skull smashed against the interior wall. The young man’s face registered an instant of surprise before it slackened and collapsed. Then Kennedy lost sight of him, the submarine still toppling, rocks and debris from the volcano battering the Tartarus’s graphene laminate exterior. The sub groaned, and Kennedy caught a whiff of burning rubber—electrical circuits—tasted blood, fear.
Orange warning lights flickered.
The hull shrieked, grinding, sliding on rock.
Behind Kennedy, someone screamed.
The vessel spun 180 degrees to starboard. Kennedy gasped. Her grip broke. She snatched at the arms of her chair as the sub twisted, tumbled, then tumbled again. The pride of the US Navy tossed like litter scattered carelessly on the wind.
Would it never stop? And would the Tartarus survive? Kennedy prayed the ship’s designers knew their business.
For a moment, she thought of Cole and their girls, Carlotta and Marie, at home. Right now, it was fall in Wisconsin. At Devil’s Lake State Park, the trees would be glorious, all gold and red and green; nature’s fireworks reflected and amplified on the water’s surface. Kennedy swallowed as the vessel jolted again. Why had she forsaken that majestic landscape for the darkest vaults of the ocean?
Her head whiplashed, a stab jolting her spine. Was the roll slowing? She clung on. The wait was excruciating, interminable.
Eventually, the sub ground to a stop. Upright, thank God. There were only a handful of her crew members in the control room, yet Kennedy could swear she heard a collective exhale. Then, just as they dared to breathe, there was a tearing, followed by an inexorable thrumming on the hull. Once more, they waited.
Minutes passed.
At last, everything fell quiet.
Kennedy unsnapped her seat belt, ignoring the nausea that welled in her throat, and took two steps to portside to check on McNaught. She touched her fingers to his neck, but he was dead—poor man. Hardly surprising, given that the back of his skull was dented cruelly inwards. Had he lived, his seafaring days would likely have been over; his right knee was shattered, the lower limb twisted unnaturally back on itself. Kennedy winced. He’d been spared that pain at least.
Fighting dizziness, she reached for a handhold, instead her fingers touched her executive officer, Cohen, slumped against the wall. Glassy eyes stared up at her. His mouth agape in a silent scream, his still-warm skin already leaching color. Kennedy’s heart clenched. The Tartarus assignment was their first together, so she hadn’t known him well, but he’d impressed her as competent and dependable. Solid. The son of a single mother, he wasn’t—hadn’t been—ruffled by a female commanding officer, rare even in these progressive times. She closed Cohen’s eyes with her fingertips.
Where was everyone? Kennedy’s pulse thrummed. Her scalp tightened. Was she the only one still alive? She stifled panic, an odd pang of loneliness already stealing over her. No, she mustn’t panic. There were fifty crew members on the Tartarus, and she was responsible for them all. She needed to get her head together, assess the damage, see to the wounded, and make a plan to get back on course.
Steadying herself against the wall, Kennedy got to her feet.
“Captain Jones.”
She started at the voice close behind. It was Chief Petty Officer Masterton. A quietly spoken man out of Ohio, he was a meat-and-potatoes sort. The type you’d expect to find behind the counter of a hardware store. A large bruise was blooming on the man’s cheekbone. His eyes drifted to the side.
“Executive Officer Cohen?” he asked, squinting.
“Deceased. McNaught, too.”
“Shit.” Masterton shook his head. “Begging your pardon, ma’am. What do you need me to do?”
A console burst into flame on the wall behind McNaught.
The fire siren wailed.
Fuck! Extinguisher. Where is it? It’d come adrift from its bracket. Rolled somewhere. Where? Kennedy whirled, caught the flash of red, lunged for it. God, that’s heavy. Pulling the pin as she clambered over McNaught, she aimed the nozzle at the base of the flame, pressed the trigger, and let the foam fly.
Speckles of foam landed on McNaught; Kennedy kept spraying. The fire sputtered; she didn’t stop until the foam slid in clumps down the wall.
The siren ceased its blaring.
“It’s okay; it’s out,” Masterton said.
Panting, Kennedy nodded. She lowered the extinguisher. Blew out hard. “Right, well I’d better assess the damage to the Tartarus,” Kennedy said. “You check with the medic.”
Masterton lifted his chin. “Yes, ma’am.”
Several others were on their feet now, looking dazed and disoriented. Faces blanched when they spied the dead men.
“Masterton—before you do that, see about covering Cohen and McNaught.” Kennedy clicked the extinguisher back into its bracket. “Let’s give them a little privacy.”
“Ma’am.”
Kennedy took her chair at the console and checked the screens. Breathed in relief. At first glance, the Tartarus’s double-hull structure appeared intact. With thousands of feet of water above the vessel, it was a comfort to know they weren’t in any immediate peril. Kennedy illuminated the outer hull, set the built-in eyes to scan, then checked the screens.