The Interrogation of Wheaton Sharpe

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

Not that it matters anyway. You don’t need to hear the noise of a scream to feel a man’s unencumbered terror. You need only see his face, a face that knows a terrible end is in store.

Have you ever looked into the eyes of a man who knows he will be dead in an hour? A man who, safe in one moment and doomed in the next, has made a fatal mistake and has only realized at that very moment that it will be his end? It shakes you to your very core; I don’t think I will ever forget it.

The face isn’t all. Because after that shared moment of dread washes over you, time begins to speed and slow at once. You frantically search for some way to save him, and you know that time is running short.

But the ruinous moment for James Harquist came as soon as he stepped out of the escape pod with a faulty harness. There was nothing to be done. After I was hit with that realization, all I could do was watch. Watch as his body moved vigorously, reaching out, trying anything however impossible to get himself back to his lifeline.

On Earth, we always have something to lean on. To grab hold of and hang onto for dear life when we’re frightened. Harquist had nothing. The end of his life and he had nothing.

His body stopped moving eventually. It felt like hours, but could only have been fifteen, maybe twenty minutes. There was just under an hour of air in his tank when he stepped out, so he was still breathing. His back was turned to me now, so I didn’t know whether he had accepted his fate or if he had just become too exhausted to continue physically manifesting his panic.

I lie awake nights wondering whether I began to weep before or after he took his final breath. The most inconsequential question from those eight years after we arrived on Beischel-1, but somehow, it haunts me the most.

When I finally pulled myself together, I found that he had been successful in fixing the wiring before becoming untethered from the pod, allowing the nav software to route me the rest of the way home. He didn’t know it when he stepped out, but Harquist gave his life for mine.

And now you’re trying to determine whether I deserved saving. Ain’t that-

“I think that’s enough for today,” Inspector Briden said, cutting off the depressed rambling of her witness. She leaned into the microphone sitting next to the video camera on the table and continued, “Close of Interview 34 with Wheaton Sharpe regarding the incidents of April 2131 through August 2138. The time is 16:37 on 13 November 2138.”

Over the last eleven weeks of debriefing Wheaton Sharpe for the Unified Space Technology and Intelligence Group, Inspector Briden had grown fond of him. She found herself sympathetic to this man who had been through so much. It had taken him nearly three months to recount his experience, which made what she had to say next even more difficult. She turned off the camera.

“We’ll have to go through it all again starting tomorrow.”

“Was there something wrong with the equipment today,” Wheaton replied, not yet understanding what she had meant.

“No Mr. Sharpe, I mean we must start from the beginning. From 2131 through ’38. They want to make sure you didn’t make it up as you went along.”

“Octa-,” Wheaton caught himself, “Inspector Briden, it’s been eleven weeks! I haven’t gone anywhere; I haven’t seen anyone. I’ve told you the truth. I just want to go home.”

“I know, but it’s out of my hands,” the Inspector stood.

“Back to my cell then.”

“It’s not a-” Inspector Briden decided not to argue the point as she had done before. Telling Wheaton that his living arrangement was not a cell and that her own apartment was smaller than his quarters had never persuaded him before, and it wouldn’t now. She left the interrogation room and headed back to her office to wrap up for the day and prepare for the task of comparing tomorrow’s testimony with the story that Wheaton had begun to tell in August.

Moments later, a uniformed security officer entered and led Wheaton to his quarters.

• • •

Back in his residence, Wheaton began to cook. It was early for dinner but preparing food had always helped him to think. His kitchen was furnished with top-of-the-line appliances which had been put together in attempt to ease his isolation.

He had left on the mission to the Orgen-7 system when he was 26. It was the third expedition to a so-called “goldilocks planet” to find a new home for the human race. Trained as a cook and nutritionist, his task, along with the botanists and wildlife experts, was to identify whether the planet, Beischel-1, had enough food to sustain the species. Otherwise, valuable weight on the spacecraft would be lost to importing Earth’s nutrients. Not that they ever got that far.

Now 49, Wheaton thought about the three months he had been sequestered to his quarters and the interrogation room. Reliving what had happened to his companions. It had taken 15 years to get to Orgen-7 and along the way every member of the 141-man crew had become like family to him. He thought about how relieved he had been to tell that final portion of his story today, thinking he would be free at last.

The idea of telling it all over again was agonizing. Repeatedly, he had been told that the more he cooperated and the faster he told his story, the sooner his imprisonment would be over. Now that he knew his captivity would endure much longer than anticipated, Wheaton decided before cooperating further, he needed to be allowed to walk around the grounds of the USTIG Headquarters and interact with some of the workers there.

Octavia Briden seemed a good person, but she was just doing her job and Wheaton needed a friend. He couldn’t take being alone with his thoughts for another day.

Washing up from his meal, his mind began to drift back to his last friend. The sacrifice Harquist had made. The face of a condemned man. Wheaton turned off the lights and went to bed, but he wouldn’t manage more than three hours’ sleep before he would be awoken for the next day’s questioning.