Ghost Ship

Ghost Ship

By

R.C. Mantley

Chapter 1

Unmoored 

  Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say. So, I didn’t scream, I didn’t panic, the moment I realized my tether, my lifeline, had broken loose from the ship and I was adrift. At the same time, the coms (communication) link with the bridge abruptly went down. Thus, the symbolic umbilical cord was no longer attached. I watched, almost numb, as the spaceship receded. It was difficult to judge the speed at which I was moving away from the IGF (Inter-Galactic Federation) Bayard Rustin, a Class C transport vessel, where I had spent the last five months of my life as a member of a crew of seven. If I were on Earth, subject to gravity, I’d be free falling at the rate of ten meters per second per second. But every schoolchild knows there is no gravity in space; I was floating in the vastness of the cosmos, like jetsam bobbing on the surface of the ocean, but not knocked about by waves or batted around by the wind. It was a matter of seconds before the ship was reduced to a pinprick and then disappeared entirely. It was indistinguishable from among the other distant stars in the Andromeda galaxy. There was no sound except the exhalations of my breath. The lifeline that kept me anchored to the ship was just that. It was an oxygen hose. I had reserve packs strapped to my back. They were designed to be automatically triggered in case…in case the hose became severed. I remembered the training exercises. The hours spent breathing in the oxygen from the reserve tanks. It had an odd smell and taste, slightly metallic as I recalled. After the exercises were over, and we removed our suits and our gear, we remarked on the taste and smell. We laughed. We made jokes about it. At the same time, we gave thanks that the oxygen we breathed everyday was odorless and tasteless. And then this motley group of trainees I had bonded with, those of us who sought comfort and camaraderie after the stressful training exercises, would rendezvous at the Galactica. It was a watering hole for space jockeys a few miles off base. Beneath all the revelry fueled by alcohol our greatest fears were buried, deep and unspoken. Space is an unforgiving place and there is no return from misfortune. 

 Those thoughts echoed in my mind: Space is an unforgiving place. Space is an unforgiving place. The worst-case scenario, we were taught. It was drilled into us. Oxygen from the reserve tanks would last approximately an hour. Then you would drift into unconsciousness. You wouldn’t struggle for breath. There would be no last gasps. Civilians don’t know it (it’s one of the best kept secrets of the Space Program) but a strong, but fast acting, sedative, flunitrazepam, has been mixed with the oxygen in the tanks—in a low dose. The effect is designed to spare the unfortunate souls like myself the pain and agony of gasping for breath. For trying to breathe in the remnants of oxygen that is fast being replaced by carbon dioxide—the wasteful byproduct of our breathing. Far more deadly than the waste from our bowels and our bladders. Flunitrazepam is more commonly known as Rohypnol—the infamous date rape drug. As my oxygen intake diminishes, I’ll simply fall asleep. My death will be painless. In my case, death will be merciful. English literature was my minor in college (my major was electrical engineering) and I recall the words of the poet, John Donne 

Death, be not proud, though some have called thee 

Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so. 

For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow 

Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me. 

From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be, 

Much pleasure: then from thee much more must flow, 

And soonest our best men with thee do go, 

Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery. 

Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men, 

And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell, 

And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well

And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then? 

One short sleep past, we wake eternally 

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die. 

 In the hour that was measurably left, felt but not seen, I had time to review my life. The first thoughts that stood in line were about my ex-wife and the children we brought into the world. After twenty-two years the end of our marriage had been bitter, ugly, and marred by false accusations, invective, and hard feelings galore. She accused me of neglect. She accused me of infidelity. The first indictment rang true. I had neglected my children and I neglected her. The second was demonstrably false. It wasn’t because of the Other Woman. She hurled her recriminations at me like meteorites. The extended periods away from my family took their toll. That was the inevitable result of my career choice. I did choose space over the terrestrial sphere of my existence. The solitude and the darkness and the twinkling stars. My mistress beyond the veil. The far-flung galaxies always beckoned me. More than the gardens of earthly delights. The Sirens were irresistible. All the New Frontiers. They were a space jockey’s bailiwick. While our marriage wilted under a withering Arizona sun. My son suffered the most. I neglected him even more than my wife. A true father-son bond was never established. He grew up to find refuge in street drugs and life on the streets. He became a homeless drug addict. And my wife constantly reminded me that it was my fault. The sins of the father, guaranteed to make my son’s life miserable. My daughter, on the other hand, somehow learned to rise above the fray. She kept her nose to the grindstone and her eyes on the prize. She hunkered down and completed school. The college years were difficult; she had to take on a job that combined with her academic course load made the road a rutted slog. Yet she burst out triumphant. She had a knack for chemistry and biology and parlayed that into becoming a pharmacist after graduation. She found a partner—we knew about and supported her sexual preferences—she came out in college, and we didn’t gainsay it. She did good for herself. She and her partner were co-owners of a drugstore, part of a nationwide franchise. And she had decided to keep her family at bay. My crazy, mixed-up family, she would say. My dad with his head and his ass in the stars. My poor, long-suffering mom. A walking harridan of grievances. My homeless, dope fiend of a brother. Sleeping on the streets one moment; finding a bed in a shelter the next moment. Being kicked out on his butt for violating the rules. He often ended up in jail for committing one infraction or another. And he had to be reminded: Drug use is a felony. Drug possession is a felony. But it wasn’t the infractions that sent him to jail so much as the failure to appear for court hearings. He was always being picked up for having a warrant for his arrest. It was like he was trapped in the revolving door of the criminal justice system. A tiny creature caught up and flailing in the gelatinous amber. He had burned his bridges and couldn’t be rescued. We were all out of lifeboats and bubble gum. 

 In the vastness of space, the temperature falls below Fahrenheit and the Celsius scales. My space suit is a marvel of design. All the materials from the helmet to the gloves are made from titanium mesh. Impenetrable to the cold. The tinted visor is made from Kevlar and built to keep out the ultraviolet rays that would lead to severe retinal damage or worse. I was wrapped in a technological cocoon; but I can never break free of the chrysalis. I would not shed my skin, emerge from the husk and molt into a lepidopteran wonder. Due to the vacuum, I was afloat in and the lack of bacteria, the inner and outer layers of my dermatological armor would not decay. I would turn into a mummy instead. One day, I would go on display in some space museum. Would my ex-wife and my children be among the throngs of visitors? Probably not.  

 This wasn’t supposed to happen. I was on a routine maintenance task; replacing solar panels that had stopped working. These panels supplied 90% of the ship’s power. It’s a long and arduous undertaking. But once my line detached from the ship—and space is the perfect hothouse of Murphy’s Law—the MAIN-Man Adrift in Space- alert should have sounded at once. It’s like the old, “Man Overboard,” alarm from ships at sea. A SAR—Search and Rescue—procedure would start. On Earth and at sea, lifelines would have been tossed into the roiling waves. The captain would order the helmsman to bring the engines to a half-throttle. The eyes of the lookout and radar would be employed. It would be a pull-out-all-the-stops rescue effort. It is a delicate task to retrieve a drifter or what we refer to as a floater from space. Once the speed and direction are figured out the ship needs to be calibrated to match the coordinates. Once the ship reaches the floater, calculations are made as to when to lower The Cradle—a hammock attached to a long cable, so that he or she can latch onto it safely, climb inside, and be hauled back up into the comfort of the vessel. The Mothership. Two thoughts came to mind as to why SAR had not been implemented: it was either a monumental mechanical breakdown or—and this is unimaginable but cannot be dismissed—it was a deliberate act of sabotage. Had one of my crew members committed what he or she thought was a perfect act of murder? I shuddered at the thought. At how cold and calculating their homicidal intentions were. And how successful. Then the words of W.B. Yeats, another favored English poet came to mind 

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree, 

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made; 

Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honey bee, 

And live alone in the bee-loud glade. 

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow, 

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings; 

There midnight's all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow, 

And evening full of the linnet's wings. 

I will arise and go now, for always night and day 

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore; 

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey, 

I hear it in the deep heart's core. 

Cabins made from wattles and clay. Henry David Thoreau finding solitude on Walden Pond. My mind had wandered back into the folds of our great, green planet. Planet Earth. Her welcoming arms. Where the Hudson River School of visual artists reigned. The painters I most admired: Thomas Cole, Alfred Bierstadt, and Frederick Edwin Church, among others. I had reproductions of their famous paintings. And one day my wife chucked them out onto the desiccated Sonoran landscape. Pastoral scenes scoured by grit and desert debris. It was a spiteful thing to do, and I was wounded beyond repair. Yet, I gathered them up, stuffed them into the back seat of my car and into the trunk. It was a tight fit. I carried them to a storage facility. Now they await the tender mercies of scavengers. Where they will be pawed over by grubby hands, appraised by beady eyes, their real value beyond filthy lucre, never really appreciated. Not Star Wars but Storage Wars. 

I had slipped past the bonds of Earth. Many of us had before. Yet there was nothing tangible, nothing but the void and the deep. The heavenly firmament turning into a hellish vastness. “YOU ARE IN THE OTHER PLACE!” Sabastian Cabot roars at the hapless, petty gangster who has mistaken the tawdry felicities of Hell for the con leche delights of Heaven. In an episode of the Twilight Zone. Ironically enough, there’s nothing here but there’s plenty of there surrounding me as I hurtle past nebulae, celestial bodies, asteroids and comets, dense clusters of stars, the moons of orbiting planets. But I mustn't be pulled into their gravitational maw. It would mean only a fiery death. The death due to meteors. The incendiary demise destined for gangsters. The way James Cagney went out in "White Heat,": "Made it, Ma. Top of the world." Do I have control of my fate? Hasn't it already been decided? Like the fate of soldiers fighting and dying for some reason or other. Whether they know it or not? Whether they care or just want glory. On the cusp of unconsciousness and a final farewell, I think of the words of the young English poet, Wilfred Owens—who died quite young, as well—and how his words have such resonance and meaning in the mind of a floater. DOA or not: 

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, 

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, 

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, 

And towards our distant rest began to trudge. 

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, 

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; 

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots 

Of gas-shells dropping softly behind. 

Gas! GAS! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling 

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time, 

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling 

And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime.— 

Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, 

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. 

In all my dreams before my helpless sight, 

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams, you too could pace 

Behind the wagon that we flung him in, 

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, 

His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin; 

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood 

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, 

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud 

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,— 

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest 

To children ardent for some desperate glory,  

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est 

Pro patria mori.

Ah, but there are the sounds of silence. Hello, darkness, mi nuevo amigo

Aboard the IGF Lazarus. A ghost ship traversing our fevered dreams.

Captain: What are the bioreading's on the floater we just picked up. Stat.

Ship’s Surgeon: Technically, there’s a cessation of all body functions. Both voluntary and involuntary. But we picked up a glimmer of brain wave activity. He still has consciousness at a subliminal level.

Captain: Can he be revived?

Ship’s Surgeon: You mean will he ever walk and talk, sip coffee, laugh at bad jokes, feel the pleasure of a kiss, and feel the need to take a shower at the end of a long day? No. He’s too far gone. Cellular necrosis cannot be reversed. But he thinks, therefore, he exists. Remember Descartes famous dictum: ergo cogito sum? I think, therefore, I am.

Captain: So, he has become a ghost. Like the rest of us.

Ship’s Surgeon: Aye, Captain, he’s a ghost. With your permission, sir, we will go ahead with CRP—Consciousness Restoration Procedure.

Captain: Yes, you have my permission to proceed.

Ship’s Surgeon: Captain, this is strange. I’ve barely started the procedure and yet I’m getting an extraordinarily strong surge of conscious thought.

Captain: Doctor, say that again? What’s going on?

Ship’s Surgeon: This is amazing. Captain, I’m putting his thoughts on speaker. It’s poetry, Captain. Sheer poetry. I believe it’s from someone named T.S. Elliot, sir

Between the idea

And the reality

Between the motion

And the act

Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

Between the conception

And the creation

Between the emotion

And the response

Falls the Shadow

Life is very long

Between the desire

And the spasm

Between the potency

And the existence

Between the essence

And the descent

Falls the Shadow

For Thine is the Kingdom

For Thine is

Life is

For Thine is the

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but with a whimper.