The Clockship

Nobody can hear a scream in the vacuum of space, or so they say.

I screamed. I’m not proud of it, but I screamed. And they were right; no one heard me.

But Christine and Avery screamed, right before they died. I definitely heard them both.

No one heard mine, though, because my crewmates were both already dead when it happened. Their scream was more like a yelp, then their lives quickly ended in the explosion. My scream was a bit longer and didn’t happen because of surprise, like theirs. Mine was…in horror, after.

I was…lucky, I guess? I survived with only a few bruises, and some shrapnel from the bulkhead that exploded into my right thigh that’s probably infected, but I can’t get to the medical bay since I shut that part off from the rest of the ship, and it would take too much energy to get it habitable again. Luck sure seems like a funny way of putting it, though.

I’m adrift in our ship, the Rhea, orbiting Saturn. But you already knew that. Something struck our port hull, hard, close to our Phase Core, the fancy new engine drive our crackerjack engineers back on Earth devised. It’s actually really ingenious – it phases the entire ship and everything in it, decreasing our mass to almost nothing, and then our propulsion system pushes us fast. Really fast. Our experimental engine got us to Saturn in only three days. It’s the most expensive space exploration project we ever attempted. Ever. But you already knew all that, too.

The world was cheering us on, and I’ll admit it – I was so proud of myself for being chosen for the mission as the primary science officer.

Too bad my field is Cosmic Geology and not engineering theory. That was Christine, our commander, and Avery, our flight operations lieutenant’s expertise. They could take the whole ship apart and put it back together. Me? I have a passing knowledge of ship engineering, but I was supposed to study everything outside of the Rhea. Lot of good that’s doing me now. I don’t think it would have helped, though. Not with this catastrophic hull breach right near the engine core. The escape capsules were also, unfortunately, destroyed in the crash. They only have enough life support for three days, though. Wouldn’t have been much use.

Rhea is leaking plasma, which charges the Magniv batteries, and those batteries power everything – the Phase Core, the sensors, all my science equipment… and the gravity generators and life support. The plasma could have powered our batteries for months. But now, the Magniv batteries are basically depleted and I’m sure I’ve lost all the plasma at the rate we were hemorrhaging it.

The last time the ship’s computer was working, it said at the current rate of plasma loss, I’d have enough air for a week. That was ten days ago. I know I shouldn’t be wasting the last bits of energy on recording this log, but I figure, eventually, someone will come by and be able to hear what happened in my own words. Maybe in another few years when they’ve constructed the Rhea II they can fetch our perfectly preserved remains.

Sorry, back to business… We still don’t know what hit us. We were far enough from the rings, and sensors showed nothing incoming, and our deflector wasn't even damaged. Whatever struck us certainly hit us in the perfect spot to cause cascading failures. And it was really loud. Christine and Avery, like I said, both screamed but just barely before the console and bulkhead exploded in the command center. I was down the hall, at the science station when it happened. It was…like a hoverplane crashed into a mountain. You’d think our engineers who were smart enough to design, build, test and successfully get three Stratonaut officers across the solar system would have designed some better hull plating…. No, that’s not fair. They got us here in one piece, and we would have gotten back if it wasn’t for…whatever hit us.

It’s really too bad. I’ve already detailed my findings of that new metal I discovered in the rings in an earlier log entry. It really could have changed everything. Its properties were…unlike anything on Earth. Impossible levels of conductivity, a clean, perpetual energy signature emanating from within the cellular structure itself… I want to call it Chambernium. I guess no one will think it's egotistical to name it after myself in another few years when this finally gets heard. It’s ironic that I found it right after we were struck when the sensors were still working.

Anyway, the air’s getting a bit thin in here, so I better shut up. I’m going to divert the remaining power in Magniv batteries to life support, turn off everything else and…enjoy the view. Love you, Beth.

End log.

Henry laid his head back in the chair he was sitting in. He wasn’t sure if it was because of the infection, or because the air was indeed getting thin, but his head swam. He’d had enough food to last him for several months; he wasn’t hungry. He’d lost his appetite a few days prior.

He fell into a delirious, half-sleep where his mind started piecing together random thoughts into a hazy dream pattern that drifted from one image to another – all were of him outdoors, some with his wife, Beth, some with old colleagues and former high school teachers and classmates, others with the dignitaries and politicians he’d shook hands with just a few days ago, all wishing him good luck while posing for photo ops. He even dreamed that he’d begun to wake up to see a very fast-moving light circling within Saturn’s rings at far faster than Rhea was capable of orbiting.

He finally fully woke when his head lolled onto a window. “Ow,” Henry said to no one.

He rubbed his head in the spot where he hit it, but he felt so slow and rather stupid. His leg didn’t even hurt him anymore which Henry figured must be one of the signs of oxygen deprivation. He tried to take a deep breath but it was unsatisfyingly shallow. The dark side of Saturn began to hurl Rhea into complete blackness. It was probably only a matter of minutes now.

But there was something in the darkness of the huge planet that was coming straight at the Rhea. Some…mass. Henry sat up and peered out the window. It wasn’t an asteroid. No, it looked too deliberate, symmetrical, and it had what looked like lights shining from rectangular windows? This was a ship. A spaceship. A really advanced spaceship. Surely these were the last stages of oxygen deprivation. Henry’s hallucination was now so close that he could see inside the windows, into rooms of the mystery ship.

Surely if this thing wasn’t a hallucination, it was going to collide with him any moment and finish off the Rhea once and for all. Henry counted to ten… but no impact. Indeed, there was a mechanical sound, like landing gear coming down. The Rhea shook a little and groaned in protest. He felt the rattle of the ship very clearly.

Despite the thinning air, his heart was beating fast and he was definitely awake, but getting rather dizzy. Another mechanical sound, but this time like a high pitch drill. He was sure he wasn’t hallucinating now. He felt more awake and panicked than he had in days. Sure enough, on the bulkhead above, something was precision-cutting a hole right through two meters of the titanium alloy hull. Henry scrambled out of his chair, his leg searing pain again, but the piece of hull didn’t drop down after a perfect circle of it was cut. Instead, it dissolved into nothing, leaving a huge hole. Henry stumbled back and got as far back from the hole in his hull as he could without going into the oxygen-less adjoining compartment.

Hissing then filled the cabin. Henry thought he was probably being gassed, by why? They could have just waited a few more minutes and he would have asphyxiated, peacefully. But instead of slowly losing consciousness and gasping for air, Henry found it easier to breathe as the seconds ticked by. His mind began to clear even more, and he breathed in deeply again. It was no longer a struggle. Henry stayed put where he was, as far away from the new hole in his hull as he could get.

Suddenly a lithe woman jumped down from the hole and Henry yelped. The new person was definitely a person – definitely a non-alien human. And this human female with tight curly hair in a style he’d never seen before appeared to be wearing an embroidered fabric jumpsuit of sorts, with markings Henry didn’t recognize. The new woman looked around, spotted Henry, and strode over to him as if people often jumped in between a hole connecting two space vessels orbiting the rings of Saturn.

“Greetings, Doctor Chambers,” she said as she approached, extending her hand.

“What the hell is going on?!” Henry said, trying to reach for the nearest sharp object he could find.

“Please, don’t be afraid. I know this is shocking to you,” said the woman, arm still outstretched, offering it to help Henry up. “I’m Captain Anderson, of the Interplanetary League clockship McTaggart.”

As the Captain was making her introduction, a second person, male, jumped down into the Rhea, and hurried over to Henry, who hadn’t moved from the corner. Henry recoiled, not having found anything sharp, but it didn’t seem to bother either of these intruders.

The second person waved his hand over Henry, and Henry chanced a glance to see a mechanical pair of rings on the man’s hand. It emitted a faint beeping sound.

“What are you doing? Who are you people and how the hell did you get out here?” Henry finally got out.

“I just scanned you. You have a deep bilateral laceration on your right flank. A few more centimeters and it would have fractured your femur. You’re developing gangrene; I’ll have to perform minor surgery.” said the man. His jumpsuit was less intricate than Anderson’s. “Nice to meet you, Doctor Chambers. I’m Doctor Ansara.”

Henry recoiled again. This man had just scanned him somehow and made a very fast medical assessment.

“How did you do that? Our most advanced medical scanners are the size of a brick.”

Doctor Ansara glanced at Captain Anderson, who finally lowered her hand.

“It’s a bit of a long story, Doctor Chambers. I could have Translocated you directly to the medical bay, but I figured this was a little less invasive. And…I’ll admit I wanted to see the Rhea for myself. I’ll deal with the consequences later,” she finished with a half smile.

“You cut a hole directly into the Rhea!” Henry said.

“Yes, it was the only way to get air back into this vessel,” Captain Anderson said. “You would have died within a few minutes had we not done something.”

“Who are you people? What the hell is an ‘Interplanetary League? What’s a…clockship? What is going on?!”

“Doctor, I know this is going to be hard to accept, but the McTaggart, her crew, myself, Doctor Ansara…we are not from this time. The Rhea was never meant to be destroyed or its crew die on this mission. You were supposed to make it back to Earth, safely. This one Discordant Event changed the future.”

“What?” Henry spat.

“We’ve traveled approximately five hundred years in the past to restore the timeline,” Captain Anderson said slowly as she crouched down to Henry’s level. “And we cannot do it without your help.”