D A Novel (George Right)

"Linear..." Eve muttered suddenly.

"What?"

"A picture in the control room. If it indeed is linear–at least approximately–and if we were to draw a line through the Sun, Gliese 581 and the screen center, it turns out that the Sun is father from us than Gliese. And if all that happened had occurred on the way back, and we had slipped Earth, it would have been on the contrary."

"That is you want to say that we didn't land in Gliese 581 system?

"Indeed. It is difficult to believe that we landed there, and then continued to fly in the former direction. And the image on the screen–after all, this star there has been emphasized."

"Where then have these wretches come from?"

"I don't know."

Adam kept silent, then again took the skull shard. "Anyhow, they are here. And I should finish the check."

Further picking in the intestines of the dead man, however, did not resulted in any discoveries. Adam found some more pieces of paper, but they were too small and raveled out under his fingers. Apparently this man had torn a part of the list to pieces before swallowing it. Probably a professional criminologist with the appropriate equipment would manage to restore the full text, but it was beyond Adam capabilities. He already felt sick from what he had done, and, above all, from growing perception of hopelessness regarding all their efforts.

Any traces of parasites in the corpse, however, were not found.

"I still think that in the system of Gliese 581 there is life," Adam said, rising. "Otherwise we wouldn't have been sent..."

"Life in the system of Gliese 581 was found out by the probe ‘Hyperion-1,’" suddenly said a calm male voice.

Both Adam and Eve shuddered. Eve darted a wild glance at the dead man. It seemed to her that it was he who had spoken. But the grinning jaws of the corpse remained motionless, while the voice continued.

"From the seven planets of the system, potentially habitable are the third, the fourth and the fifth. The orbital scanning by the probe ‘Hyperion-1’ has shown that the average temperature on the surface of the third planet is about 360 degrees Kelvin because of the greenhouse effect, and the quantity of free oxygen in the atmosphere is not enough to support aerobic forms of life. At the same time, the atmospheric composition and radiation level do not exclude the presence of anaerobic forms on the third planet...”

"Who are you?" Eve shouted, raising her head up to a ceiling.

"Easy," Adam answered in a low voice. "The vocal interface of information system somehow activated."

"... remains unclear," continued the voice. "The atmospheric composition and practical absence of a magnetic field on the fourth planet make it, most likely, unsuitable for life. No signs of lift were actually revealed. Conditions on the fifth planet are more favorable. The average temperature of the surface is 280 degrees Kelvin (considerably varying during a year because of the high ellipticity of the orbit. However, a year lasts only 67 days, which, together with the considerable mass of the planet and its atmosphere, mitigates temperature fluctuations). A sizable part of the planet is covered by ocean, free from ice in tropic latitudes. The presence in the atmosphere of twenty-six percent oxygen testifies to its biogene origin. Direct proofs of presence of life on the planet were received by landing modules A and B, which found bacterial flora in the water and soil, respectively. Orbital observation allows the assumption of the presence of extensive vegetative tracts on a land of tropical belt and large forms of life in the ocean, though, according to opinion of doctor Nakamura, a possibility of other interpretation of the received data still remains. Further research of both planets with disembarkation on surface is necessary. However, the gravity on the third planet is 2.7 g, and on the fifth is 3.4 g, which hinders human work on the surface. Consequently, though the starship ‘Hyperion-3’ is designed for eleven crewmen, nobody..."

Something clicked and the voice broke off.

"Hyperion-3," Adam loudly and distinctly said. "Information on the ship ‘Hyperion-3.’ Expedition course. Crewmen. Diagnostics. Emergency situations onboard."

But his appeals remained without an answer. The damaged system died as unexpectedly as it had begun.

"Damned metal crap." Adam wearily exhaled.

"Yes," Eve responded dead-pan. "Damned. We were damned from the very beginning. Kalkrin, Wong, Nakamura... everybody concerned with this project..."

"Not everybody," Adam objected. "In the listing other scientists were also mentioned. Bernstein, Kozelsky... who else... Miller...

"Probably they are theorists," Eve answered. "They didn't participate directly in the ‘Hyperion’ program."

"And what? What's wrong with this? I don't believe in any mystical nonsense. Though... well, let us assume, nevertheless, that those landing modules have brought some sort of infection to Earth. Well no, that's nonsense. We wouldn't have been sent anywhere in that case."

"Explain more clearly why our ship is called ‘Hyperion-3,’ when there’s no mention of the second–only about the first probe."

"Well, probably the second was sent to survey another star. Therefore it doesn't relate to the topic."

"I do not think that interstellar expeditions are such a cheap pleasure, nor is life in space such a frequent phenomenon that mankind would stray from this course. If the first probe has found an inhabitable planet, plus also one more where at least anaerobic life can exist, for certain the subsequent programs would be focused in this direction. And ‘Hyperion-2’ was sent there. Only it hasn't returned."

"And, without having understood the reasons of it, they sent us? As you say, it's a too expensive pleasure."

"Perhaps we were a rescue party. Or it seemed to them that they have found the reason, but it was only a consequence."

"All right." Adam heaved a deep sigh. "Do you have any ideas? Well, other than that all is hopeless?"

"Well, we still didn't complete the exploration of the level where we regained consciousness."

"Okay, let's go." He somehow mopped up his hands on his "skirt" and armed himself again with the bone weapon. He gave the flashlight to Eve, wishing to keep one hand free.

They went downstairs again and walked along a corridor which before had led Adam to Eve's jail. Only now he turned not to the left but to the right.

And almost at once he found himself before a door with a red cross on it.

"The infirmary," he ascertained. "Well, at last. It absolutely slipped my mind that it should be somewhere on the ship. I hope there are antidepressants there. I for sure wouldn't refuse of them." With these words he opened the door.

"Oh m-my..." Eve exhaled, convulsively turning away.

Here light was shining, too, lighting up medically white walls, empty cabinets with open transparent doors and racks with the broken equipment. On a couch along a wall there lay a naked female corpse, decapitated and disemboweled. And in the middle of the room, tied to armchairs, two more bodies sat opposite one another. They were dressed in once blue, but now brown, stiff from blood, overalls (but they had no footwear, only socks). At the left was a man, and at the right a woman. Her gender, however, could be guessed at only based on her figure, for her face was hidden by blood-stained bandages. More precisely, the remaining part of her face.

"Well, so we have found those who have undressed the pilots," Adam murmured.

"You... do you see, with what they are tied?" Eve squeezed out from herself, trying not to look.

"Yes," Adam calmly answered. "Entrails! But not their own–hers," he nodded towards the couch.

Indeed, no wounds could be seen on the corpse of the sitting ones, at least while they were in clothes. But their heads were sawn practically in half–a rough, inept horizontal cut passing over the eyebrows. The dirty surgical saw by which it had been done lay on the floor between the armchairs. Also, both of the tops of their skulls, still covered with skin and hair, lay nearby. Whoever the unknown fan of trepanations was, he obviously had not taken pains to shave the heads of his "patients." Judging by the blood which covered their faces, they were still alive when it was done to them.

But that was not the most horrifying thing of all. Most likely the one who cut off someone’s skull did not hurt the brain, only bare them–anyway, initially. But here lumps of brain, similar to big dead slugs, were scattered all over the infirmary. And this was not done all at once. The tools used for this purpose were very visible–ordinary tablespoons. One of them stuck out of a skull of the man, as if left in a appalling kettle. The second one lay under his powerlessly hung arm.

"The one who has done this..." Eve began, having first thrown a fast sidelong glance and then having turned away again.

"There was no mysterious murderer," Adam interrupted. "They have done this by themselves."

"What... what are you saying? You mean, tied themselves, then..."

"Not each one–himself. Each other. Look, their heads are firmly tied to headrests, but their right hands are free."

"There is only one saw," Eve observed, having taken one more look.

"Yes, obviously, they had to saw each other's head in turns. But there were enough spoons to scoop out each other's brains simultaneously. Well, otherwise it wouldn't be possible."

"Do you think," Eve squirmed, "they ate this?

"Give me the flashlight."

Adam approached the dead bodies and illuminated the drooping open mouths.

"No," he concluded, "doesn't look like it. They simply tried to destroy each other's brain."

"What for?"

"And for what reason did that guy above beat his head against a wall until his eyes flew out?"

Eve did not answer. She stood, heavily leaning on a door jamb, and again fought against nausea–a nausea from which there was no relief even in vomiting.

"I think, he didn't beat himself against the wall simply because of rage... or pain," Adam, who also felt rather nauseous, continued to reason. His eyes automatically fixated on the terrible mess in the open skulls. It was quite apparent, in answer to his own question, that a significant portion of the brain could be missing before one lost the ability to move a hand. But words helped at least somehow to prescind his thinking from the feeling of hopeless horror entangling Adam like layers of a heavy wet rubber sheet which were closing up his nose and mouth, stopping his breathing. "He wanted to destroy his own brain. And tore at it with his fingers after breaking the skull. But to do such with your own head is... not too efficient. With another one it is much easier. That's why these two tried a more thorough approach."

He looked around in search of bloody inscriptions which, probably, could explain at least something. But they did not present themselves. Here there was nothing.

On a sleeve of the dead woman, sitting to the left side of the door, it was still possible to perceive an emblem–a dark blue circle surrounded by a red ring. Along the top part of the ring the inscription "HYPERION" was curved. On the bottom there was a figure "III." In the dark blue circle a hand stretched toward a beam-spreading star. The designer of such an emblem probably considered that the image had come out proud and encouraging. However, it seemed to Adam that this was the hand of one drowning, vainly grasping at air in a last desperate gesture.

On the left breast pocket of her overalls there was one more emblem, but it couldn't be understood under a crust of blood. Adam had distinguished only the large letters ISA and remembered that it meant "International Space Agency." Lower there was a rectangular stripe with a personal name. Lida... no, apparently, Linda... A surname was not distinguishable at all. He was going to try to clean off the stripe but heard splashing sounds from bare feet behind him.

"Where are you going?" He turned back. There was already no one in the doorway. "Eve! Stop!"

"I... I cannot" came from a corridor. "I cannot be stopped. It seems to me that I'm at the edge of remembering. I am so frightened! Anything, only not this horror! Not to think! Nottothinknottothinknottothink!" Judging by the sounds, she ran like mad along a corridor towards the lift.

"Eve! Come back!" Adam shouted. "You shouldn't wander here alone! You have absolutely no weapon!"

But she probably didn't hear him–or could not conceive words.

"No," Adam thought gloomy, "I won't abandon everything to run after her just because she has womanish hysterics. Right now I should exlore everything here."

He put the skull shard on the lap of the dead woman and unbuttoned her left pocket. What's here? A comb. Oh yes, to preen feathers is the most important thing for him now–especially taking into account that there is no mirror nearby. He put the useless thing back. And what is in the right pocket? It appeared to be empty. No, there is something. A pen. Nowadays it is seldom necessary to write by hand (he remembered this), but, obviously, such a thing is still included as part of the outfit of astronauts. Could a pen be useful to him? Who knows, but he had neither a third hand nor pockets. He considered dressing in the overalls of the dead man, but he felt no desire to put on those bloody rags–all the more so because all who did this before have died.

Adam realized that all this blood did not belong to one person, or even to two. These two in the infirmary were not the ones who had undressed the pilots. They had obviously removed overalls from other dead persons, and those, possibly, from others. And here now the relay reached the last survivors. Is it possible that the clothes somehow influenced what was going here? No, that's madness. But what was not madness here? He had better not repeat any of the actions of these predecessors, madness or otherwise.

Adam turned to the male corpse. He pulled out the spoon from yellowish-crimson jumble in its skull. He could not look at it. He had the feeling that the spoon was biting into his own head, so he flung it into a far corner. Then he moved on to the pockets. The right one was plump.

There was something like a scroll inside, which was not just barely twisted but also folded so that it could be pushed into the pocket–a scroll with some drawing... or schematics.

Unfolding it Adam understood that it was not paper. And not fabric as it had seemed to him for just a moment. As the scroll was rolled open completely, Adam understood instantly just exactly what he was holding in his hands.

It was human skin which had been cut off from a stomach. The hole of the navel and the top shred of dark pubic hair were clearly visible. But the rest of the area of the skin was glabrous. The stomach was female.

And on this skin, while it still belonged to its mistress–a living mistress, who bled when it was being done to her–someone had cut out a certain rough drawing. The clotted blood had distinctly depicted its contours and some short inscriptions. At the first moment they seemed to Adam a cabalistic abracadabra, but then he realized that he simply held the drawing head over heels.

Now he understood that what he looked upon was a simplified schematic drawing of the ship. Not all compartments were labeled, and inscriptions resembled a wedge writing, but nevertheless they could be spelled out: "CONT R", "LIV COMP", "GEN", "BIOS." BIOS is, apparently, an abbreviation connected with computer technology. But why had it been labeled at the infected level with the crucified woman? Also what is "gen," which is situated, judging by the schematics, exactly in the middle of the ship? Something concerning genetics? (He felt again an attack of irrational fear at this thought.) Well, no. "Gen" is, probably, a generator. The Kalkrin generator, the engine of "Hyperion." On spacecrafts of the past the engines were situated at the aft end, but a dark starship had other means of movement. She travels by means of the field of dark energy shrouding the ship.

Adam casted almost a mechanical look at the headless body on the couch, then, stumbling on an idea, approached closer. He tried to bring together the edges of her peeled flesh and disemboweled stomach, and then put the "drawing" in from above. Yes, skin was definitely cut off from here. If this woman was lucky, by that time she was already dead.

Why, by the way, is the drawing turned upside down? Was she hung legs up?

Adam decided not to take this dismal picture with him (That guy kept it in his pocket... yeah, and now he is dead, his brains scooped out by a table-spoon.) Eventually, the schematic was simple enough to remember–provided he does not lose memory again.

He quickly examined the infirmary in search for scalpels or something similar, something capable of serving as a better weapon than a sharp piece of occipital bone. But alas it seemed that the majority of medical tools had also been destroyed by the vandals who were smashing the ship–or at least they were carried away somewhere. The saw with which the skulls had been cut open obviously did not suit for a fast effective blow. With a sigh he again took his bone tool, though he did not know whether he still believed there were murderers wandering the ship.

If only Eve were not succumbing to madness. Yet, it seems she is not so far from it.

He went out to the ring corridor, then beyond to the lift, and loudly called her several times. The silence of the dead ship was the only answer he received.

It was, however, not completely dead. The engine obviously was still working. And illumination–it was undoubtedly becoming brighter.

He reached the lift, almost running. Eve was not there. So where should he search for her now? All over the ship? "Eve!" he hopelessly shouted–with the same result.

He bypassed the lift shaft and glanced in the opposite corridor, which now shone from end to end. The dead man with ripped up stomach lay in his former place, and, as Adam could judge from such distance, in the same pose. The annulated creature, of course, had crept away long ago. He was curious about where it might have crept to now because it would be undesirable to step on such a thing unexpectedly.

"If I were a woman, flooded with despair and fear, would I run towards a corpse?" Adam asked himself and answered: "No. Then, all the same to the staircase."

From an exit to staircase he called his companion again and had a depressing thought that if there were still someone else onboard, the two of them were doing everything to facilitate the enemy's goal. Well, upward or downwards? She had unlikely decided to hide in the control room–though who knows what she can do in such a condition. After waiting a few more seconds, he moved downwards, without having the slightest idea what to do beyond that. Eve could have gone to any of compartments, in any of the premises.

He decided at first to pass all the staircases down to the end, continuing to call her. Then if that didn’t help, he would have to examine each level systematically. At the same time he would also learn what was going in places where he had not yet explored. However, he had no doubt any more that anything good was going on there.

He found Eve almost at the very bottom, near the entrance to the terrible level where the woman-hive hung on wires. Eve lay on steps, twisted in an unnatural pose, with her head down, as a person would never lie down of his own volition. The picture became clear to Adam at first glance: She had run, being beside herself, had stumbled on the steps, and had broken her neck.

Or maybe someone had helped her. Though if so, she had gotten off lightly, considering the condition of the other victims.

Anyhow, Adam was again alone. Face to face with this awful ship, and this thought filled him with such desperate anxiety that he might as well plunge his head downwards on the stairs.

Tramping heavily, he descended to the body, sat down nearby and put a blood-stained hand on Eve's shoulder, hidden under dirty bandages–and immediately realized that he had jumped to a hasty conclusion. The woman was trembling, but alive. Or was it a shiver of agony?

But no, she, leaning her hands on a step, slowly raised her head and looked at her companion in misfortune with a look of a small animal tortured by children. Blood drooled from her mouth to the bound up chin.

"You are wounded?"

"No," she said in the voice of indifference.

"And what is this?"

"This?" She mechanically licked a lip. "Looks like I bit my lip." She grew silent again.

"I have found a map of the ship," said Adam primarily just to say something. What this map was, he of course did not specify.

"So what?" Eve responded in the same impotent tone.

"Well... now we know where the generator is. It is necessary to go five levels up..."

"So what?" Eve repeated.

"Perhaps there is a duplicating control system there. As we can do nothing from the main control room... There should be an emergency switching-off on-site, for example, specially for carrying out a repair."

"It won't help," Eve shook her head.

"Well, of course, we will fall out in the middle of interstellar space. But, at least, we will stop spending fuel or whatever our generator works on. Also, we will stop heading away from Earth. And then, maybe, we will manage to understand and repair something." The last phrase has sounded quite frankly false, and he understood it as such.

"Nothing will help us," Eve wearily said. "Has it not dawned on you yet? My God, what a jackass you are."

"All right then," he resolutely stood up. "All your moaning irritates me to no end. I’ll go to deal with the generator. And you, if you want, can lie here on the staircase and wait, until the wormbugs crawl from there and make a nest in you." With that he went up the staircase, without looking back. After a while from a splashing sound behind him he noticed that Eve was following him.

The scheme didn't fail. The engine compartment turn out to be where expected. But the passage way to the generator was blocked by a tightly closed heavy door painted in diagonal black and yellow stripes. Instead of the usual handle this door had a matte image of a palm, gleaming red. On its smooth surface there were marks from an object hitting it with something sharp, but apparently the material appeared to be perfectly firm.

"A touch panel," Adam guessed and bit his lip with disappointment. Obviously, access is granted not to just any crewman, but only to an engineer or someone like that. And how do they search for an engineer among all these corpses? And the most important, it would not work. Modern biometric scanners are smart enough not to work from a dead hand.

The only hope was that at least one of them had the admission. Adam still did not remember what his duties were onboard, but the probability wasn't too great.

He put a hand on the panel, mentally preparing himself that it then would be necessary to ask Eve to do the same, and when it also would not work...

The melodious signal sounded, and he saw even through his hand how the panel was lit green. As soon as he moved his hand away, the door moved aside.

They entered an airlock beyond which was one more door, with the inscription "External Contour Authorized Personnel Only" and some annunciator which, however, didn't light. And on the right, on a wall between two doors, there indeed was a reserve control panelboard.

Adam's sight at once struck on the caption "Generator Emergency Turn-off " on the panel with a red button. But this button turned off nothing–it only removed the blocking from a protective casing. Without hesitation Adam pressed it. The casing folded back. Under it there was a big red handle–fully turned downwards.

Something was wrong. Adam could lose his memory, but something deeper than any intelligent memory–the reflex developed by uncountable repetition–told him that on any flying machine, from a glider to a starship, any switch "up" means "on," "down" means "off." Never vice versa.

Still without accepting it, he all the same flipped the switch to the top position–nothing changing–then returned it to the bottom one. Well, that's right: near to the bottom position there were the letters "OFF." And only then did Adam pay attention to the indicators on the board.



Main contour power : 0

Reserve contour power : 0

Remaining fuel: 0

System shut down



"Impossible," he muttered.

"So!" Eve exclaimed with hysterical notes in her voice. "Now you have understood, at last?"

"Understood what?" he bellowed in response. "What should I understand?"

"That we are dead."

"Our situation stinks," Adam agreed, "but nevertheless..."

"What ‘nevertheless’? We are dead already. Got it? We have died, and this is our hell!"

"You are talking through madness."

"My God, haven't I said you are a jackass? How did you not listen? This is an eleven-person ship!

"Do you mean that list?

"The hell with the list! How many corpses have we found?"

"Eight plus in those in the infirmary... Eleven," Adam understood, shocked.

"That's it."

"No," he wildly shook his head. "That cannot be."

"What can't be is the possibility of stowaways on an interstellar ship. Even on a city bus you cannot enter without a card."

"I don't know. There should be a rational explanation," Adam muttered, while before his eyes there was a bloody inscription which he saw only during an instant before it was absorbed by darkness: "NO DEATH."

"For the time that you remember yourself, did you want to eat?" Eve put the squeeze on him.

"You scoff? In such conditions?"

"And to drink? And to the loo?"

"It just didn't pass enough time."

"Shit, we even cannot vomit when feeling sick! Also, we do not sweat when we run! Are you saying that’s not true for you?"

"Well..."

"And this?" She jabbed her hand into the panelboard. "How can the ship fly if the fuel has run out long ago? It had to run out. Gliese 581 is just twenty light years from the Sun." She apparently remembered this fact. "And we? You saw how far we have gotten. The first starship simply could not be designed for such a distance."

"Perhaps the image in control room is in error? Computer failure, especially considering how everything was crushed here? And actually we have fallen out long ago into normal space and are drifting there with subluminal speed. After all we don't know what is actually going on outside."

"And light? Where is the electricity coming from–if the power registers at zero? I assume it doesn’t only concern the engine work."

"The accumulators have simply not exhausted yet."

"You said the light became brighter. Who charges them?"

"Solar batteries. Perhaps we are actually near some star."

"By the way, if we drift freely, where is the weightlessness? Just don't say to me that this thing rotates. Gravity in different places would be different for each, and we visited already plenty of...

"I am sure everything can be explained."

"Let's go."

"Where?"

"To the infirmary."

"You ran away from there."

"Yes. And now I want to look more attentively on something and to show it to you."

She turned away and went to the staircase, and now it was he who had to follow.

"By the way," he caustically noticed, walking upwards on abrupt stairs, "if we are ghosts why do we stamp on this staircase? Why wouldn’t we soar through walls and ceilings? Perhaps some of our physiological reactions have been interrupted, but personally I can feel my body and it is quite material."

"Perhaps as it should be," she answered, without turning around. "Whatever gave you the idea that ghosts fly–cartoons? If the dead felt nothing, how could torture exist in hell?"

"I don't believe in a hell."

"I also didn't believe before."

A few minutes later they entered the medical room again. This time Eve resolutely approached the dead woman in the armchair and began to clean off the blood from the name tag. Adam shrugged his shoulders and began to do the same to the man.

"Linda Everett," read Eve, having finished the work.

"Victor Adamson."

"I would say, as is customary, ‘nice to meet you,’ but it does not exactly fit the situation."

"Are you saying that... we are they? That is, our bodies?" Adam already had had time to get used to corpses and touched them without any special emotions, but now suddenly he involuntarily was repulsed from the one sitting in an armchair. "Only because their surnames are similar to..."

"Not only surnames, the placement of her bandages are the same as mine. And, I think, under the overalls is the same."

"Bandages aren't..."

"Aren't the proof, I know. How about this? Would you hold his head even?"

Eve, having come toward him, lifted the top part of the dead man's skull from where it was on the floor and put it where it had been before it had been cut off. The result was not ideal, but the head once again looked like a head, instead of a cup from a nightmare.

"I don't know how well you remember your face," said Eve, "but if you can believe my female observations, the similarity is formidable."

The blood, which had covered the face of the dead man, made it not so obvious, but now, having peered more closely, Adam had to recognize the similarity with what he has seen in a mirror soon after awakening. Only on the forehead, where he had a bandage, the terrible crack of the saw-cut purpled.

"So you saw it before running away?

"Yes. And something clicked in me. All pieces began to match. Just don't try to say that this was your twin brother on the crew," Eve added. "Oh, what is that–a pen? Also fitting. Have you kept the paper with the names?"

Adam wanted to say no, but glancing at the flashlight in his hand, he discovered that its handle was still wrapped up by the sheet of paper. Obviously, he has taken it mechanically before leaving the information room.

"Write..." Eve began, but then interrupted herself. "No, it's more likely a female handwriting. Dictate," with a pen in her hand she approached a little table near a couch and was going to write on its white surface.

Adam unrolled the sheet. It was bedraggled and blood-splodged, but the letters still could be read.

""Dr. Kalkrin - s-e. Dr. Hart - heart attack..."

"You see, I didn't look at all at the list," Eve commented, "so that you couldn't say that I tried to simulate the handwriting. All right, now give me the sheet.”

Adam approached and put the list near the fresh inscriptions on the table. Comments were not required. It was obvious that both lists were written by one hand.

"Stop," Adam said. "Something doesn't match. After all, I did not find this sheet here, but instead in a pocket of a dead woman in a warehouse compartment. If you are here, how could it get there? And by the way, even if we assume that we are they," he pointed a finger towards the corpses in armchairs, "these names can't be ours because the overalls are not ours, that is, not their. They were stripped from the pilots in the control room."

"So we assumed. But maybe right here we are wrong. We still don't know what happened with the clothes of the majority of the crewmen."

"As well as with the crew itself," Adam reminded her. "And more. Let us assume we have died–and our souls are locked here, as on "Flying Dutchman"–oh really, flying... But where are, in that case, the others? Where are the other nine ghosts?"

"Perhaps they have gone to paradise and only we were so guilty that..."

"Paradise, hell–what bullshit! To be flying on an interstellar ship and to take seriously this medieval nonsenses!"

"Perhaps," Eve didn't listen to him, "perhaps, actually we were the ones who killed all the others! And at last–each other."

"Aha," Adam screwed up his face, "and I personally gnawed the pilot's arms."

"Why not? We assumed that either he did it himself in a fit or a certain extraterrestrial monster with a human-like jaw did it. But there is also the third, simpler and more probable variant–another human being."

"And we remember nothing. Why? Even if we accept your version that we are damned, shouldn't the punished know what they were punished for?"

"So it is that we are gradually learning it."

"I do not believe it," Adam obstinately repeated, looking at the sawn half-and-half face of his double. "Ridiculous. Nonsense. It can't be."

"Well, let us go to the control room. We will examine the pilots more carefully than before."

"I guess you don't want to offer an investigatory experiment–to gnaw a piece from the arm of a corpse and to compare tooth marks," he squirmed.

"I don't insist on anything, Victor."

"Don't call me that!"

"The engine doesn't work, the fuel is empty, the ship is uncontrollable and the whole crew is dead," she wearily listed. "And we are locked here without any exit and hope. So to believe or not to believe–that is your own problem."

"Well all right." Adam helplessly shrugged shoulders. "Then to the control room. Anyway I don't know where to go and what to do further."

And they ascended again to the control room. There was still no light there, but Adam had a firm feeling that the flashlight, while already almost discharged, would begin to shine more brightly. And this already didn't match any reasonable explanations. The flashlight for sure was not recharged from any panels or batteries.

Adam stopped before the armchair of the first pilot ("The first is who is in the left seat," had emerged from the depths of his cut-off memory), attentively examined with the flashlight the mangled hands of the corpse, and then directed a beam to his face, on which he had only thrown a passing glance during the previous visit (and Eve, apparently, had not look on this face at all earlier).

"What did you say about twins?" he asked hoarsely.

Eve stood near, distrusting her own eyes. Excluding scratches, the broken out teeth and the absence of a seam on the forehead, the face looking at her with its eyes gone was the same as the one in the infirmary.

"I dont understand anything," the woman muttered. "Which of them is you?"

"I am I!" Adam aggressively shouted, striking his chest. "And these... I don't know, who they are! Maybe... " he added in more judicious tone," maybe, there really were brothers in the crew? Or, more possibly, clones..."

"Nobody would send clones in a distant expedition," Eve objected. "There are different specialists required, not copies of the same one."

"But clones, as well as natural twins, are similar only outwardly, while their specialities can be different."

"All the same. Their presence onboard can create psychological problems." Fragments of once read space psychology manuals emerged in her mind. "From the usual confusion, including ill-intentioned, to...."

"But even if your crazy version is true and I had died, I couldn't die twice!"

"I don't know. I know nothing anymore. All this seems a nightmare."

"I am real, damn it!" Adam shouted and swiped the corpse in the face. Several of weakly held teeth fell into the dead mouth. One of them hung under the upper lip on a bloody thread. "Hear, you, carrion? Real! Real!" He thrashed again and again, while in his head there palpitated the comprehension of the fact that the faces of all the dead people found out here were either not visible, or mutilated, or deformed and soiled. And yet, even despite his insistence, he could pay attention to earlier similarity–if his subconscious did not resist until the latest moment, until he was rubbing his nose in it. "I am not a f*cking phantom!!"

"Victor! Adam! Stop!" Eve tried to grasp his hands, but he dashed her aside. The living woman, caught off balance, fell into the lap of the dead one in the right armchair, and the corpse she encountered dropped its head on her shoulder, snapping its jaws. Adam struck the helpless corpse of the male pilot twice more, then powerlessly let his hands fall. In the broken face of the dead man it was already difficult to recognize his own, but this didn't help. The fit of rage subsided as suddenly as it had begun, giving way to something much more terrible–a huge and inevitable, like a tsunami, wave of despair, the most dark and hopeless despair, which surpassed in many times over, he was absolutely sure of it, any sorrows of his former forgotten life. And feeling how this wave fell upon him with all its weight, he dragged himself away from control room–without seeing, where he was going, reeling to and fro like a drunken man.

"Adam!" Eve climbed out of embrace of the dead woman and overtook her companion near the exit from the control room. Almost by force she turned him around before he could rest his forehead against the partly closed door.

And at this moment of silence a sound was heard, which they least of all could expect–the opening of lift doors.

Adam and Eve, having nearly collided heads, stared at a gleam between the control room doors. In the shined aperture of the lift cage, leaning to its edge, a man stood–barefoot, in dirty and blood-stained underwear.

He was the one who could not be here in any way–just because he was the twelfth.

However, he did not stand for long, for just a fraction of a second, and then he tumbled forward and, without any attempt to soften his falling, fell to the floor. The thud with which his forehead struck the floor made both witnesses shudder.

Adam was the first to squeeze between doors and sat down near to the fallen. Then he lifted a hopeless look at Eve.

"Dead?" She understood.

"And long ago. He probably got stuck in the lift when the power went off. And died in this position, leaned on the doors which he couldn't open."

Saying this, Adam was looking at the face of the corpse–the face which he saw today already at least three times, including the reflection in a mirror.

But Eve was already looking at something else.

"My God... Just look at his hands!"

Adam looked. Then heavily stood up and glanced into the lift cage which remained opened because the legs of the dead man remained between the doors.

All the inside walls of the cage had been scribbled in red. And there weren't anymore separate phrases with large letters. It was continuous text (not divided even by punctuation), covering the walls in a spiral, beginning from the height that the writer could reach and continuing almost to the floor. And on a floor there lay pieces of what he used instead of a felt-tip pen.

"He bit off his own fingers," Adam ascertained. "Piece by piece. To write this. When blood ceased to flow, the next finger was used. And the last phrases," he peered at wide and smeared, almost unreadable letters just inches from the floor, "it seems to me, he finished by using his tongue. Dipping it in the blood flowing from his wrists."

"And... you think, it is the answer?" Eve asked, fearfully looking at the curve lines.

"I guess, yes."

"I am so frightened. It seems to me that we shouldn't read this!"

But Adam, of course, had already stepped in the cage. The text began, most probably, from a big blot, from which a dried stream was stretching downward almost through the whole length of the wall. At that moment the writer still had plenty of "ink."

"despair darkness it really darkness dark energy despair only sense and essence of universe my god god doesn't exist there is only despair which created the world what idiots we are we understood nothing when probe explorers began to hop the perch we trusted only to instruments even when it gobbled up ape too late to back away told computer error only changed number all the same biosynthesizer two idiots volunteers save prestige of program for science's sake morons morons we would better be real morons though won't help finally it will absorb all for it is alpha and omega law of increase of despair..."

For Adam it wasn't at all incoherent gibberish. With each word read the wall in his consciousness fell with a crack and a roar of a ruptured dam, the truth uncontrollably rushed outside, and he spoke, spoke, even understanding that he shouldn't do it, that he doomed Eve, that is Linda, to premature–though all the same inevitable–torment, but his own torment didn't allow him to stop, and soon he even needed not to look at the bloody letters, just a view which filled with a pain the scars on his fingers.

"We named it dark energy. Energy of the vacuum which produces particles and antiparticles, the force interfering with the recession of galaxies. In general, all this is true. But its true name is Despair–the essence of the universe and its basic force. Once people considered that the primary law of the universe was the law of nondecrease of entropy. But, be it so, any evolution, any transformation from simple to complex, from interstellar gas to stars and planets, from inorganic molecules to live cells and organisms, would be impossible. Then it had been postulated that self-organizing processes can proceed in unclosed systems where there is an energy inflow from the outside. But that meant that the universe itself is a unclosed system, otherwise from where can it receive the energy? Now we know what this energy is and what law of the universe is really primary: the law of increase of the despair. It is possible to say that the despair is the force making galaxies to scatter in horror, though this run into eternal void will not help...

"But unless galaxies can feel anything?" interrupted Eve, whose consciousness still resisted memory. "They are not alive!"

"It's only a terminology issue. Can we say whether a stone feels heat or cold? But after all they operate on it quite objectively, forcing it to crack or even to melt. But, really, inanimate objects are incapable of feeling despair to the full. Therefore, all processes in the universe develop, eventually, in the direction of the evolution of life and sense. For life, and in particular sense, is nothing else but despair capable of realizing itself and thus to complete the positive feedback and to realize the unique purpose and sense of existence of the universe–the achievement of absolute, infinite despair.”

"But after all despair is just an emotion! Arising in our brain in reply to strokes of misfortune. It is subjective! How can it be any fundamental cosmic force?"

"If a person is forcefully hit on his head, he sees a short flash–the proverbial stars before eyes. It is a subjective illusion, but it doesn't mean that an objective light doesn't exist somewhere. This is the analogy of that despair which we feel in common life. And now compare this flash to a necessity to look with the lidless eyes, with the eyes capable neither of blinking nor of looking away–to look at the Sun, no, at thousand, trillions suns, at all the stars of the universe simultaneously! In comparison with this torment, with the force of despair, on 120 orders of magnitude surpassing the force of gravitation, any of the most horrible physical suffering is only a desired strategy at least somehow to distract, to get relief at least for a moment! And we, we ourselves, drew it nearer! Developing science, improving our mind, aspiring to comprehend the world–that is, to comprehend the despair... Though wise men still in the ancient time smelled a rat and warned others, who increases knowledge increases sorrow. And the statistics accurately showed that the highest level of suicide is in the most advanced countries. But we didn't come to these conclusions even when ‘Hyperion-1’ has returned. The next triumph of human science... automatics completed its mission faultlessly... and then the scientists who worked with the returned probe started one after another to commit suicide, go mad or slip into a coma. And besides this, they have felt only residual emanations of dark energy. But the instruments registered no threat to life for the whole flight time, and even the samples of protozoa, worms and insects onboard were okay. Their organisms were too primitive to feel despair. Therefore, certainly, the fate of scientists was hushed up ‘in order to avoid a sensation in the yellow press that would damage the image of the program’; explaining all as a series of tragic coincidences. But nevertheless, before sending humans to the stars, they have sent one more starprobe with a chimpanzee onboard. And ‘Hyperion-2’ has disappeared without a trace. If it had returned with a dead or mad ape, possibly, our flight would not have taken place. But it has simply disappeared, and it has come to nobody’s mind that the reason could be in the live being who had no access to the control systems. Everything was written off as a failure of the onboard computer. The launch of ‘Hyperion-3’ had been too widely advertized already, and a great deal of money had been invested in the project, so it was too late to give it up. But because of this series of accidents, some changes nonetheless have been made in the flight program. It was planned from the very beginning that people wouldn't land on massive planets of Gliese 581. This role has been alloted to biorobots created and modified according to arising tasks directly onboard, in a biosynthesizer with the protoplasm stock, placed on the second from below level. The miracles of Earth gene engineering... The crew should only process the data collected and delivered to them. But under the pressure of skeptics who pointed out the dangers of the flight for people, it was decided that the most of this data would be processed on Earth. The ship had been already designed and constructed for eleven crewmen, but only two have flown. You still haven't remembered, Linda? There are not twelve corpses here, but much more, this ship is full of them. But actually there is nobody here–except us!"

"You... you’re trying to tell me that all these dead persons are biorobots?"

"No, no, everything is much worse! Our technologies don't allow us to create exact copies of a human! Biological models for which our synthesizer is designed are too primitive. But IT doesn't need an intermediary in the form of a synthesizer, for IT is itself the life creating force. And it won't release us."

"It?”

"Despair! Aren’t you listing? Despair! It is capable of organizing life from lifeless matter, but that requires millions of years because it doesn't have its own mind. But with such a gift as an already-existing protoplasm all happens much faster. All these creeping creatures are the life which has evolved here onboard! Consequently they are so ugly and clumsy. They didn't pass through natural selection, apparently. The majority of them are even not capable of eating and breeding. But the main thing is both of us, Linda, we! The microcosm is a similar to the macrocosm! A soul actually exists, and it is not an ethereal angel with wings. It is a steady matrix of dark energy, or, that is to say, a structured despair. For the whole time that we tried to investigate dark energy in depths of space, it was in ourselves! But the accuracy of our instruments was insufficient to detect it. We after all searched only for the gravitational component, which is ten to the one hundred twentieth power weaker than the true essence. The Kalkrin generator was required to transport us to the phase of dark matter and thus to tune our despair to resonate with the great despair of the universe. The theory predicted that switching off the generator would lead to a spontaneous return to the initial condition, but it was true only for an inanimate probe. When there are animate beings onboard, the Kalkrin generator only starts the process which then becomes self-sustaining. In a dark phase it is not necessary for us to eat, to drink, even to breathe. The dark energy feeds us directly."

"I breathe!" the woman interrupted.

"I too, because it is a reflex, but I am not sure that we really need to. It's like a sailing ship which was equiped with an engine. And all systems of the starship is fed with the energy of our despair. Therefore, when it grows, light becomes brighter, and what has gone dead, turns on again.

"But corpses..."

"That's just it! We cannot die! We have tried already numerous times! But every time when we kill a body, on the matrix of our soul a new one is recreated! The law of increase of despair won't allow us to escape! Neither us, nor anyone else. Sooner or later all will fall into despair. At first, the crews of interstellar ships like us, then the whole civilizations, whose sense will reach an adequate level to enter into resonance with universal despair directly. Probably sooner or later even stars and galaxies will evolve to the same level, and in the whole universe nothing will remain except dark matter filled with infinite despair. Actually this process is already closer to the end than to the beginning: There is already four times more dark matter than what we consider normal."

"And bandages?" asked Linda, clutching at a straw. "Well, let us assume we revived without clothes. It is logical, but didn't somebody bind us up? And why did we need it in the first place?”

"They are not bandages," Victor sighed. "It's dead skin. Our subconsciousness tried to save us from the truth, representing it as just dried bandages. Look! Look at them attentively!"

The woman brought her bound up arm to her eyes. Now she saw that the edges of the "bandages" were actually ugly peeling scars, and on the cadaverous-gray surface of the "bandages" it was possible to make out pores and some separate not yet fallen out hairs. That means, her head also... her face actually wasn't wrapped. It became these terrible rags.

"A soul it not just personality," Adamson continued to explain. "The energy matrix stores the information about the body as well, otherwise resurrection would be impossible. Naturally there is no information about clothes there, nor about putrefactive bacteria. That's why bodies don't decay here. Small wounds don't influence this matrix, but those that are really serious and cause especially severe pain are reflected in it. That's why we revive with dead skin or, at least, with scars in place of such wounds. However, even this won't help us die. We tried. Oh my God, how many times we’ve tried.

Linda shuddered and with a groan fell to her knees, clenching her head with her hands. Now she too could not escape the memories which rushed on her like a torrent. She now remembered how she had torn her own face and squeezed out her eyes–how with all her force had pushed off her feet from the floor, empaling herself through the stomach and breast on pipes, cut out the schematics of the damned ship on her own body, hung, stretched on wires, while the man now speaking with her skinned her slowly...

"Remember how you crucified me?" she dully asked.

"No," he answered. These memories were probably too awful, and his subconscious still tried to hide at least them. "Could it be that I... though, of course, who else... what for?"

"I begged you myself–to torture me as long and painfully as possible. I couldn't do it myself, I have tried already. I hoped that I would go mad. That such pain would destroy my mind, and I wouldn't revive any more."

"And I had agreed, though I understood that there would be nobody to render me the same service. But all the same it was no go. And then we tried to achieve the same goal by destroying our own brains. But it also didn't help. Only the amnesia after revival was deeper. Maybe the point is that the nerve tissue of a brain itself cannot feel pain."

"But why did we destroy all equipment? Simply out of despair?"

"Not only. The devices would quickly reveal the truth to us. We tried to prolong the pleasure of ignorance after the next revival. After all, in order to feel the whole power of despair it is necessary to realize it to the full extent."

"And now? Are we realizing? I myself feel awful and frightened, but I wouldn't again go in for that, about what I've asked you before."

"Still not realizing to the full. Some time is required. It's like an automatic tuning... but later even that pain will seem to you the lesser evil, than the despair! We already have gotten rid of tools because of fear of the pain which we would cause ourselves with their help later, and when ‘later’ came, we damned ourselves for having done so."

"I've told you, we had not to read it!"

"Sooner or later the despair all the same would cover us–even without hints. It happened already many times, since the very first time when we didn't know what was what yet. And beyond that, with each new death and revival this period is reduced."

"Thus, we haven't much time." Linda stood up. "We should do something!"

"We can do nothing." Victor shook his head. "We or anybody in the universe. Despair is not a god, not any sentient essence with which it would be possible to negotiate. The most cruel god can be cajoled with prayers and victims. But we deal with an absolutely stupid natural power–with the fundamental law defining the direction of all processes in the universe. Against it everything is impotent."

"Last time we jammed the doors of several rooms where I usually revived," Linda had remembered, "but I have all the same appeared in one of them. How does it do this?

"I think those are the features of the dark matter. Remember that our coordinates are actually smeared out across the universe."

"So, we can pass through walls?"

"Consciously, no." Victor punched a wall to make his point. "But the death is probably similar to the transition into a quantum state, and revival to a collapse of a wave function–only not within the universe, but within the ship.

"Can our souls exist without bodies?"

"As far as I understand, no. Anyway, such a condition would be unstable. Therefore, each time new bodies are formed."

"But it happens only on a ship entered into the dark phase by the Kalkrin generator. We cannot leave the ship, can we?"

"No. From our point of view, the space is closed within a field created by the generator."

"And if we blow up the ship?"

"I don't think that it will destroy the field. I've said already, it is kept stabilized during a long time not by the generator, but by ourselves."

"But in an explosion we would be lost simultaneously! Till now we could not achieve that, even when we tried. Probably, in that case a field will slack? And, the main thing, the biosynthesizer with its protoplasm will be destroyed! New bodies will simply have nothing to arise from!"

"Well," Victor responded slowly, "maybe we still have a hope to die–theoretically. For in practice we can't destroy the ship. Only in idiotic old fiction were spaceships equipped with self-destruction systems. I would like to ask those authors of such bunk, whether their own cars, trains, planes were supplied with such systems? And if no, why the devil would the designers of spaceships should behave differently?"

"We have no fuel," Linda reasoned, "but that is speaking about a reactor which fed the generator. But we still should have onboard landing modules for delivery of biorobots to planet surfaces and back. And they have their own engines. If I remember correctly, it’s a chemical fuel.

"Yes," he nodded. "We didn't want to cause a damage to planets' biospheres . Therefore, no radiation, but chemical components should be enough for a good explosion. I do not know whether we can manage to do it. All right, there is nothing to lose all the same. Let's go. The hangar deck is on the third level.

They didn't risk using the now working lift, remembering (Victor especially), how it had ended last time. Driven by hope and fear–hope to die and fear not to have time to do it before the despair would fall upon them again with its full power–they ran down the stairs. When they at last rushed into the hangar deck after that racing on a spiral staircase, they felt themselves a bit giddy, while in former times these trained astronauts would not even notice such an easy challenge. It is probable that all that had happened contributed to such exhaustion.

There was an identification touch panel here, and Victor wasn't surprised anymore that it identified him. The green indicator lit confirmed that the hatch to outer space was closed and access to the hangar deck was permitted, and then the door slid aside.

Cone-shaped landers stood on the floor ruled out in squares, kept by perforated pylons. The modules didn't reach even a meter in height. Two were absent.

"Damn," Victor said fatefully.

"We couldn't fly away on them even if we had a destination," Linda sadly agreed. "Now I have remembered. Bioengineering is my speciality. Biorobots, which we were going to synthesize, should have sizes, roughly speaking, from a bug to a big crab. Gathering of samples and recording doesn't require more, while delivering of each superfluous gram into an orbit... especially taking into account the supragravity..."

"It is unimportant. In any case we cannot escape the field limits," interrupted Adamson. "Above all, we have already tried to use probes," he pointed to empty places, "and, obviously, with no success."

"We still do not remember everything," Linda realized. "And what if we get into a trap of our own perceptions? We come, we see that have already tried, and we leave, without trying more. Over and over again. And these probes, maybe, weren't here at all. They were reduced, as well as the number of crewmen."

"No, the probes couldn't be reduced," Victor objected. "Without them the whole expedition loses meaning. We tried to use them for explosion, but not here. Here they have only low-power engines allowing them to fly smoothly into the hangar and to take off from it. But outside there are rocket stages with fuel and real engines, to which the landers mate before departing."

"Can we reach them? There is a vacuum outside after all? Though there should be spacesuits somewhere. Our mission plan didn't involve our exit from the ship, but for an emergency…"

"I won't be surprised, if in our present condition we can survive even in a vacuum," Victor gloomy uttered. "But anyway it will allow us no more than to knock with a fist on a rocket wall. And even if we would blow it up out there, it won't damage the starship. In a vacuum there is no blast wave. That's why rocket stages are places outside. Perhaps, in previous times we forgot exactly about that! But if we manage to ram the ship with a rocket, especially near the biosynthesizer, it may work.”

"How can we operate the rocket?"

"Directly, no way. Only to program the lander computer."

Linda approached the nearest landing module and scraped its smooth surface with her nails. Hair-thin grooves depicted outlines of several hatchlets, but they, of course, had no intention of opening.

"And how will we reach the computer?"

"Without tools we cannot get inside." Victor shook his head. "But it is unessential. Besides the main control room there is still a reserve post of remote controls, right in this compartment." He was silent for several seconds, remembering, and then resolutely turned and showed her a door in a distant corner: "There."

"If it isn't broken, too..." Linda muttered, following him.

Her suppositions were confirmed. The bulky stand had been broken open, and the torn out wire stuck out of the wall to the right of it.

"Didn't think that we would have such ancient cables here," said Linda. This part of her memory still remained in darkness too. "I suppose, nowadays conducting nanochannels directly through walls is used everywhere?"

"That's because it’s a reserve system," Victor explained. "Here everything is purposely made on a primitive but reliable element base–more difficult to break, more easy to repair."

"You think we still can repair it?"

"I will try. I apparently have already remembered enough."

With an effort he removed the bent cover of the stand and got into the electric interiors. Linda went backwards and forward in the small room of the post, unable to remain in one place. It seemed to her that she could physically feel how despair, like a black poison, spread through her body, corroding it from within...

"It seems, we have a chance," Victor suddenly said. "I do not remember which of us broke this stand, but he did not made the problem too bad–probably because of a shortage of tools. In general, considering the raised durability and numerous reservation... contacts, of course, will be jury-rigged, but... at least for some time, I think, it will work." He still picked inside for some time, then turned to Linda. "There is only one problem. Too long a piece of cable is torn out. Perhaps you remember where we have put it?"

"No," she shook her head.

"Then there is no conductor of suitable length here. To feed the panel, at least a half-meter conductor is necessary."

"I understand. I will do it. I will take the wire ends."

"Actually I wanted to offer to draw lots."

"To hell with drawing lots! I am a bioengineer. I've passed pilot's training, too, but you’re the first pilot. Onboard computers are your domain."

"All right. But there will be high voltage, I don't guarantee that you will withstand it."

"Victor, this is ridiculous. I will die once again. What's the damned difference? The circuit will remain closed. Begin it now, until I can't bear it any more!"

"Okay, then hold it here and here."

She knelt near the stand. Having ripped off the insulation, she wound the end of the wire round a finger of her right hand and clutched it in a fist, and put her left hand inside the stand. Adamson helped her to insert a finger into the socket. Then he somehow fit the stand cover back on–it did not, of course, lie in place completely, but it was still possible to connect the screens and keyboard. Even the buttons on the keyboard were real, as in former times, instead of an image on a touch surface of a screen.

"Switching on," Victor warned and connected the perviously opened jumpers.

Linda's body curved in an arch, and she tried to cry out, but a sharp spasm which had twisted all her muscles didn't allow her to open her mouth. She could only low through the rounded nostrils. With a dry crackle the remaining scraps of her hair began to move on her head. The singeing reek began to spread in the air.

But Adamson could not let this distracted him. He could not even allow himself to think about her suffering. Screens lit up, self-diagnostics lines began to run. Victor hasty interrupted the test and disabled all warnings. He knew himself rather well that in such mode the stand would work several minutes at the best, until the first contact connected end-to-end would fuse or any other element would die from rating violations. A human body is nevertheless a bad replacement for the certificated cable.

Victor tried to activate the computer of the first probe. "Unable to communicate," appeared on the screen. Where is the problem–in the stand, in the probe, somewhere in between them? There is neither time nor the possibility to find out! The second probe: "Unable to communicate." The third… still too early to consider the stand fully operational. Especially while–yes, it was true–the smell of burning human skin began to mingle with the smell of the burning wafer-type components. Even to start the full diagnostics, it will take not less than three minutes.

Linda continued to low, her body curving so much that it seemed that her vertebrae were about to crack and break. Victor shot an instant glance at her and continued furiously to click the buttons. The fifth probe... No, it's all useless... if only by any miracle the sixth, the last one, would revive... Yes!!!

Victor's fingers danced over the touch panel. Despite its archaic look, the panel was not as primitive as it would have been at the beginning of the space age. Flight programming did not require entering tens and hundreds of lines of code, to point the purposes on the rotatable and scalable scheme was enough. A departure from a hangar and an attachment to the rocket are, in general, basic operations which do not demand a special program. Now a turn and...

"Now, Linda," he said, pressing the confirmation button.

"The chosen route threatens the safety of the ship. The program is canceled."

Stupid metal crap, he thought, while on the contrary, it was too clever.

Linda still lowed and, thus, was alive. She would better to die, Victor thought, die and resurrect again in blissful ignorance in her room.

"Stand it a little more," he helplessly muttered, activating the settings on the screen. Adjust safety level... "Enter the password."

The password! Holy shit! Well certainly, he knew the password... once... many deaths ago.

The terrible lowing broke, replaced by a choking rale. It smelled of burned flesh. But she was still alive.

And suddenly, as if having come up from the most black depths of despair, letters and numbers of the password appeared before Victor's eyes. He entered them so hastily that he made a mistake. Once again, don't hurry. Don't pay attention to sounds and smells. Bingo! Maximal g-load, check, remaining fuel, check... turn off, turn off everything...

There was no place to check intentional collision with the starpship in the settings. It couldn't be turned off. As Adamson had absolutely correctly noticed before, the situation when the crew needed to destroy its own starship couldnot come to the mind of any normal designer. To risk a probe, yes, even to destroy a probe, but not the ship!

Victor put his hand out to switch off the power. Nothing would work. They were doomed. Doomed again and again to sustain the universal burden of cosmic despair, to search an easement in physical torments, to die and revive for new suffering, forever locked in this damned ship.

Stop! He jerked back his hand. The space is closed in a cocoon of a field. The computer of a probe knows nothing about it! It wasn't pre-programmed for launching from a dark phase–of course not, after all such a launch is senseless. It considers that outside of the hangar there is a usual continuum, where to accelerate with the ship astern means to move away from her.

Adamson's fingers began again to dance on the panel and to hit the buttons. If only he could make it! The smell of burning details increased. The panel could be cut off at any moment. So, start with the maximum acceleration. He was right to cancel all restrictions on g-loads and fuel. Then, when the ship suddenly appears ahead of the rocket nose, the maneuvering engines would not have time to turn the rocket to avoid collision.

"Program confirmed. Launching sequence initiated."

The red indicator shone, showing that the exit to the hangar was blocked, and one more screen, displaying the view from the probe's camera, turned on. In normal conditions decompression of the hangar would take several minutes, but because of the canceled safety options the wide doors have slid apart at once, letting the air out into a space. However, outside there was not the usual blackness of space, but some qualmish gray-brown twilight, certainly without any stars. The landing module, turned by its mobile pylon head-on to the exit, ignited the engines.

Victor would prefer to track the process of attaching to the rocket and its further flight to the end, but Linda was still alive, and he couldn't torture her anymore. The computer should do its job. Adamson again moved his hand to turn the stand off. At that instant, as it was required for any operations in near-ship space, spaceship orientation lights turned on outside, and in their light through a doorway coming nearer to the module, Victor saw on the screen a scattering of some small objects floating in space. He understood what it was–the tools which they had thrown out (the field was configured so that it created gravity inside the ship, but not beyond its hull, the pilot remembered). If the probe collided with them, could it affect its direction? Probably not because they are too small.

"That's all, Linda." He exhaled when the probe reached outer space, but before he had time to open the circuit, a short crackle of electric breakdown sounded in the stand bowels. But capacitors which had time to be charged kept the image on the screen for a few of seconds more. And during these seconds the lander camera showed one more item–drifting in the same cloud of garbage, much larger than the others: a body with outstretched arms and legs. And Victor even had time to make out whose body it was. The screen had gone out, but before his eyes there was still the grinning grimace of his own corpse.

Linda fell backwards, with a wooden knock hitting her nape against the floor. Her blackened fingers smoked. From her nose bloody slime was leaking. Victor bent down over the woman. She gave no signs of life. Dead after all? But even if so, it's not even possible to say about the deceased, "She suffers no more." Not anyway, until the rocket fulfills its task.

But if she was now revived in the nose part of the ship, will she perish when the rocket hits here, in the aft part? Probably not. But if the biosynthesizer with all protoplasm is destroyed, the series of regenerations will end, and on the dilapidated ship she will not survive for much longer. As he had just ascertained, they nevertheless cannot live in a vacuum, though he was sure that he was then killed by a vacuum? Perhaps he couldn't commit suicide for quite some time, until he managed to catch one of the tools flying nearby? Feeling sick from this thought made Victor understand that he, most likely, had guessed right.

Well, where is the explosion? Victor felt, as a hard weariness, the true companion of hopeless despair, bore heavily on him again. He leaned against a wall and closed his eyes, as it happened, just in time to hear the short obtuse rataplan of hits pass through the wall. None of them were strong enough to make the colossal ship shudder even slightly. Certainly it couldn't be the explosion of the rocket. Collision with tools or whatever else they had thrown out? But where, where is the damned rocket? Could it really miss? If he had incorrectly estimated the curvature of that pseudo-space in which they are captured, however, the rocket still has nowhere to go, as there is too little space here, so sooner or later... but where exactly will it hit?

If Linda is dead, it would be possible to connect her body again to the wires and to try to establish communication again with the rocket. He had already taken her hand with this thought, but at that moment the body of the woman suddenly convulsively moved. She coughed so as if she had choked on her own tongue, again convulsively shuddered, and then heavily raised her head.

"We are still... here?" she hoarsely exhaled.

"What idiots we are!" Victor exclaimed, having surmised something from his last thought. "You shouldn't grasp the wires! We could drag any corpse here and use it!"

"Never mind." She awkwardly wiped her face with the back of her right hand, trying not to touch anything with the burned fingers. "It is better, than IT.”

"IT," Adamson blightly nodded. "Perhaps, IT influences even our decisions, forcing us to choose what serves its law–the law of increase of despair."

"The rocket. What is with the rocket? You didn't manage to launch it?"

"I did, but... I got it. We are idiots twice," Victor gloomily stated. "The ship has no self-destruction system. But unmanned rockets have! And when the computer has understood that collisions is unavoidable... We were reached only by small fragments."

"And we can't turn it off in any way?"

"No. And even if we could, it was the only lander with which I managed to establish communication. And the stand, I am afraid, won't work any more."

Linda sat on the floor, looking at her blackened fingers. The suffering grimace curved her mangled face, making it especially eerie–layers of dead skin, crawling against each other, rumpled in rigid folds and chapped here and there.

"Very painful?" Victor asked. "Perhaps you, well... a new cycle?"

"Death as the best medicine, murder as first aid..." she muttered. "No. I do not want it again from the beginning. Again to remember that all... to pass from hope to... especially, it becomes shorter... Listen. I know what to do. We will blow up this damned ship all the same. Anyway, the second level for sure."

"How?"

"Hydrogen. Detonating gas."

"And where will we get it, especially in such quantities?"

"We will force this rubbish to create its death by itself. We will introduce a virus into the protoplasm. Its cells are very flexible. Capable of serving as a material either for human tissues or for anaerobic biorobots, and emission of biogene hydrogen is a routine biochemical process. It is very simple to program. Currently protoplasm grows owing to dark energy, as the vegetative biomass of Earth–owing to solar one. Well, let it grow, the more, the better. The virus will build in all its cells. And will make them produce hydrogen."

"You can create such a virus?"

"I am still a bioengineer."

"Yes, but everything is crushed."

"At the second level there is a reserve control post too."

"If it is in the same condition, as this one..."

"What do we have to lose? Let's go."

"All right," Adamson agreed in a colourless voice. "Let's go–if you insist."

"You don't believe that we will manage to do it?"

"It won't release us. I do not know, how, but it won't."

"Victor, don't speak like that! It is IT that forces you to think this way! You have said yourself that it is an absolutely stupid force, not an artful enemy! We should fight it!"

"You can still ... have any... hope?" The wave of apathy and powerlessness which overtook him was so heavy that he hardly forced himself to move his lips.

"Pain. I think, it's the point. While I think of the pain, I can't concentrate completely on despair. But it will become, of course, stronger. Let's go, while we still can bear it." Seeing that Victor does not move at all, she managed a mighty slap across his face and then another, before she moaned from the pain in her own fingers. Adamson grudgingly put his hand on the panel opening the exit. The hangar was already filled with air again and automatics allowed them to leave the dispatching post.

At the second level little had changed since the last Adamson visit–except for the disgusting life that had seemingly bred even more. But as with the previous time, Victor did not look at the mucous mushrooms and meat stalactites hanging down from a ceiling but instead on the mangled corpse crucified across a corridor. In its dead flesh all halfworms-halfbugs droopingly crawled about, it seemed, there were more of them now, as well as their dead bodies on the floor. Now he knew that this was Linda's corpse and that he was the monster who had done it to her.

The memories about what happened here sharply splashed out on to his consciousness, causing a feeling of almost a physical blow. Adamson shuddered and squinted tightly, but that made the dreadful scene only more clear before his eyes.

"I remember it, too," Linda said in low voice. "Let's go." She resolutely moved sideways by her own mutilated remains, having dived under the hand ripped up by a wire. Victor followed her, trying simultaneously not to look at the body and not to touch it. Underfoot dead insectoid creatures damply crackled and crunched. In many places the floor was already covered with a continuous carpet. His boots stuck and slipped in the slime. He was glad–as much as that adjective in general fit the situation–that he had put on the dead man's footwear–that is, of course, his own. But Linda walked on all this muck barefoot and, apparently, even paid no attention to it. Meanwhile the corridor around them resembled less and less a construction created by humans, and more and more an interior of some monstrous gut, affected with polyps and ulcers. Light could no longer penetrate all that grew on light fixtures, so it was necessary to use the flashlight again. In one place their way was barred by something like a soft log. Linda stepped on it (the sound similar to a squelched sigh came out) and went further, and Victor stumbled in the dark. He shined the light at feet and made a wry face when he understood what it was. It was a corpse which had become now a part of the general goop which covered the walls, floor and ceiling. It was accreted so densely that it was already impossible to understand, if it was male or female, least of all the cause of death. It was possible to distinguish only a hole of an opened mouth, a black cavity in the continuous knobby crust which completely hid all other facial features. Victor feared that further passage was overgrown completely, and they would have to almost literally gnaw their way through to the post.

Nevertheless, they reached the desired door without any special problems. On the whole perimeter of the door through a slit between it and the wall some spongy substance had squeezed, and the identification touch panel had grown with a fetid black mold, but seemingly it still worked and, as much as it was possible to discern, was shining red. Adamson fastidiously wiped away the mold with his elbow, then habitually positioned his palm. However, nothing changed–the same ominous red light glowed between his fingers.

"Step aside!" Linda ordered and, almost having pushed him away, postioned her hand. "This is my domain."

Confirming her words, the panel lit up green, and then a door, tearing at the spongy mess, moved aside.

The biosynthesizer control post turned out to be less fouled than a corridor near it. Most of the growth was on the walls near the door, while on the control panel itself there were only small puddles of oily slime here and there overgrown with mold. On the walls and ceiling, however, a lot of quasi-cockroaches were creeping, periodically breaking away and falling to the floor. Those falling on their back couldn't recover and thus lay whitish bellies up, weakly moving their chela. "I'm about to vomit," Victor thought, though he knew already that it was not possible.

But the most important–the panel worked! It had no indications of purposeful destruction.

"Looks like we didn't get in here yet," said Adamson. "Probably it was more disgusting than anywhere else."

Linda touched the clammy seat of an armchair. When she took her finger away, sticky threads stretched out from it–and, having moved the armchair aside, she knelt in front of the panel. Screens revived, obeying her touches. Victor discerned a pimply chain of some complex organic molecule on one of them. Another screen, which broadcasted an image from an observation camera, showed something like a round pool filled in fat and viscous bubbling gook. "The protoplasm," thought Adamson.

"Do you know exactly what to do?" he asked.

"I have thought over the general virus scheme already, and will finish off the details now. This system has all the necessary tools."

"How long will it take?"

"Programming or synthesis?

"All process up to the end. Until we can blow up everything."

"I don't know. The minimum natural period of mitosis is about twenty minutes. We use catalysts to accelerate it, but all the same to infect the whole biomass, and then also to produce enough gas, requires at least several hours. Probably, days."

"Days?! We won't sustain it! I feel... I feel ITS power already now!"

"We don't have choice. We have to endure. If we kill ourselves or each other halfway, it will be necessary to begin again from the beginning.”

Something stirred in Victor's hair. He mechanically flipped it off onto the floor. It was a cockroach which had fallen from the ceiling. Adamson fastidiously crushed the creature with his boot.

He didn't know how long he had been walking up and down the post, biting his lips and grasping his hair, while more and more horrible waves of intolerable despair fell upon him. Linda continued to conjure with the panel. It was easier for her, as she was busy, and besides she was distracted by the pain of her burns. When it became especially bad, she purposely pressed on her charred fingers. Adamson understood that she suffered less than he, and felt hatred toward her for it. During one moment this hatred became so strong that he was just about ready to grab her and tear, tear her flesh with his teeth and nails. Instead he heavily punched himself in the face several times, until he felt on his lips blood running from his broken nose.

"How long still?" he shouted. "How long will you snail about?"

"That's it," Linda exhaled in a dead voice. "I have started the synthesis. Now I will run tests and will be able to tell approximately how long we have to wait."

Victor sat down on the filthy floor, digging his nails into his palms and pressing his temples with his fists.

"Hydrogen level..." Linda muttered. "No. It can't be!"

"What?" Victor moaned. "You were mistaken? All is in vain? I knew, knew that..."

"No. On the contrary, there it bowl loads of hydrogen! The whole synthesizer is filled with detonating gas. But it is impossible! Only the few minutes passed, no virus breeds with such speed!"

"Then the instruments are wrong."

"No. Not wrong... It seems... it seems… I know what happened. It's like with the rockets. We didn't remember that we have tried twice already. We have broken the panel to prevent the third hopeless attempt, but you nevertheless managed to make it work."

"You mean to say the idea of a virus also came to you not for the first time?" Adamson questioned.

"Yes. After all it is natural that we think out the same ideas over and over again. Only this idea wasn't hopeless. We just have to understand that we will succumb before the end of process. But it already went automatically. Our participation wasn't required. The main thing was not to disturb it–not to destroy all that is here in the next fit of despair, especially without yet having remembered what was what."

"So," Victor said in shock, "that means, we... that is, I... had hung you in a corridor as... a ‘No entrance’ sign?"

"Yes, by this time we already knew that bloody inscriptions like ‘don't go there!’ didn't work. And when you saw this–you after all did not go further? And I wouldn't go... no, I really hoped that the pain would destroy my mind, and for me all would finish, but if not... as it in fact happened..."

"And how much time is left till the end of the process?"

Linda looked at the screen again.

"It is finished. All protoplasm is infected."

"So, we have lost a wilderness of time while you created the virus anew!" Victor again flew into a rage. "We could finish that all a way back!"

"Don't shout. We are almost there. Let's go."

They didn't need to return to the corridor. It was possible to pass to the synthesizer tank directly from the control post. After descending a short low-sloped stairway and passing a hanger, on which protective suits once hung (Where could they be now? On which of still not found corpses?), the astronauts found themselves before one more door covered by outgrowths. Under the outgrowths it was still possible to discern a sign of biological danger. That certainly couldn't stop them anymore. In principle, behind each door there should be a leakproof airlock, but how then had all this living muck gotten outside? Was it thanks to the paradoxical properties of dark matter, or had they let it out themselves? Linda put her hand again on the scanner and they, having passed the airlock, went on to a balcony surrounding from within the large round premise which they already saw on the screen. At a closer look the life cradle made an even more repellent impression than on the monitor. Viscous bubbles were slowly overflowing and loudly burst two meters below their feet. In the air there was a dense heavy smell of some rotten concoction. Now Victor understood what these bubbles meant: Hydrogen was evolving–odorless by itself, of course.

"Well now," Adamson inquired, "how will we set it on fire?"

"Oh," Linda was confused, "actually I has absolutely forgotten about that. We had electrolighters but where are they now?"

"I suspect, overboard."

"And here," she inspected the walls, "there are no wires which we could reach."

"If only this crap were metal!" Victor punched a balcony handrail. "There would be a chance to strike a spark. But there is only plastic around."

"Chemically inert and fireproof," Linda gloomy nodded. Then she suddenly gazed on the first pilot. "Wait. I have an idea. I will bring it now."

With these words she ran out to the door, leaving Victor to grasp a round handrail in powerless anxiety. What an idea? The circle of the progress had been closed. On board the most advanced achievement of human science there is the same problem as in a stone age cave: the problem of making fire. Only here it is necessary not to survive, but to die. And to do it is much more difficult: Things at the hand of an ancient savage were not made according to the rules of maximal safety which excluded any casual spark. But let her come back and bring anything! He cannot bear this despair any more! A little more and he will jump into this shit gurgling below, even knowing that it won't help him, but instead would only restart everything from the beginning.

When at last, panting, Linda ran back, Adamson didn't even notice her. He desolately whined, reeling in place, with gritted teeth and closed eyes. She had to call him twice to draw his attention.

"Brought it?" he asked greedily.

"Here."

She stretched out a comb toward him. A completely ordinary comb, without any high-tech frills, once scornfully left by him in a pocket of her overalls.

"What the hell is that?"

"Brush your hair."

"Why the deuce?"

"I have too few hair left. And yours are almost undamaged. They should suffice."

"А-аh," he understood at last, taking the comb. "Electrostatics?"

"Exactly."

He began to furiously tear at his elven locks with the comb. Probably, he thought, no schoolboy before a first date had ever preened his feathers with such a frenzy. What was his first date? Did it happen at all or had he been only interested in science? Obviously there were still too many blocked in his memories. But this is not important now.

"Victor."

He stopped. His hair crackled slightly. Linda looked uncertainly into his eyes.

"We in fact were... not just colleagues? Between us... there was something?"

"I do not remember." He honestly shook his head. "If it were... the despair has erased it all. I can't remember even how you look actually. That is, I saw your corpses, but..."

"I remember very little too. But it seems to me that... I feel... Tell me, would you like, that between the two of us if it were started over again? If not all this..." she helplessly moved a hand in the air, pointing either to her spoiled face and body or to the tank walls.

He looked at the terrible scrappy mask which had become her face–a mask almost devoid of facial expression. Only in her eyes an entreaty still lived.

"Yes," he told her, thinking that it was only a noncommittal consolatory lie. However, he understood with surprise that it was not exactly a lie... and maybe, even not so at all. This part of his memory remained in darkness, but something very vague, almost intangible appeared there–something so much in contrast with the present hopelessness, with the hopelessness of the fate of the whole universe. "Yes, I would like it," he repeated more firmly and even tried to smile.

She had answered this smile as much as her current face allowed and stretched a hand to him. He stretched his hand towards her, clearly understanding what it meant. Their fingers met.

The spark drily cracked, stinging them with instant mutual pain.

But already they could not hear the bang of the explosion.



In the beginning there was nothing, except blind horror. Then sensations began to come back, sensations of his own corporality, which frightened him even more than their absence. He understood that he could move neither a hand, nor a leg, nor a single finger–and at the same time he was not paralyzed. He felt his body–big and heavy, really huge, and at the same time he could not tell "here is that organ, and here is this one.’ He couldn't even tell where his top was or where his bottom was. It was just a sensation of monstrous inert weight. But his eyelids still obeyed him, and he opened his eyes.

There was nothing around him except a gray-brown emptiness, and in this emptiness there was he. Or they. Or it... His head poked out of the huge spherical clod of the flesh which had been clumsily stuck together from human corpses, spongy stuff, slime and the remains of other forms of the life generated by the synthesizer. It was all henceforth a single whole, as if a certain mighty force had crumpled and rolled together playdough figures. However, some small wormlike and arthropodic creatures which had survived the accident had not become a part of the general building material and now freely crept on the sphere, getting into skin-covered hollows between concrescent bodies, corporal cavities and ragged holes.

Here and there from the common lump of the spoiled flesh, dead heads jutted, sometimes entirely, sometimes only half or less, which made their faces stretched and warped. In just a meter from the face of the one who erstwhile called himself Victor Adamson (and who remembered now the past much faster than after previous revivals) the peeled to meat head of Linda the hive stared with blind orbs and grinned with lipless jaws. And a little more to the left from it one more head–Linda the mummy–stuck out. But this head wasn't dead. Her eyelids began to tremble and then painfully opened.

Even incomparable horror and despair didn't deter Victor from realizing that in what happened there was no ominous intention to punish the rebellious sinners–only laws of physics which, as he had noticed correctly earlier, are more ruthless than any dark gods. When both retranslators of the despair were simultaneously lost and the material for their regeneration was destroyed, a spontaneous qualitative transition occurred. Sharp collapse of dark energy made the field shrink to the minimal volume and to the most energetically favorable spherical form. Thus all the inanimate matter of the ship, useless for the maintenance of despair, was thrown out beyond the field and dissipated in the continuum. In the closed volume inside there remained only that which yet could serve as a life carrier–the non-decayed flesh of dead bodies.

And now very little remained, which he still could use to oppose the despair (Despair, DESPAIR!) To chew his own lips–then tongue–and then IT will fall upon him with all its weight, one hundred twenty orders of magnitude surpassing the force of gravitation.

He looked in the eyes of the living Linda, goggled with horror almost as wide as dead Linda's eyes nearby, and understood that henceforth he and she would always stay together, and that they would never die. And then he cried–cried so that it seemed his own eardrums should burst, and his lungs should tear and be splashed with blood out of his throat. But nothing came out from his mouth. First, he no longer had lungs. And second, he was surrounded by airless emptiness.

The first cockroach climbed out of the mouth of the flayed head of Linda the hive and, hobbling awkwardly, begin to creep towards his face.