Jack Pompeo slept horribly. He tossed and turned on the luxurious orthopedic bed in his extravagant suite, fancying he heard a muffled grinding sound from the adjacent dark walk-in closet. What if it was Carter? Woken up, remembered all their old grudges, and was now creeping through the dark corridors with a wrench in hand to settle the score? The detective sat up in a cold sweat and froze, straining his eyes into the gloom.
No, it's quiet... Hell, what a stifling night! And where's that smell coming from? flashed through his mind. The air, always sterile and fresh, now held a sweetish, musty tang, like in a derelict cargo hold. He imagined he could hear a soft rustling—as if something were crawling through the ventilation shaft. Or was it his imagination? Maybe a drink for courage?
Pompeo hadn't just started making nightly forays to one of the abandoned bars on the promenade deck, where locked cabinets still held reserves of premium liquor.
He made it to his destination safely, groping his way through familiar but now ominously dark corridors, and had just taken a large gulp of twenty-year-old whiskey when he heard a distinct metallic clang. In the labyrinth of empty decks and halls, it was impossible to tell where the sound came from. A cold dread settled in Pompeo's gut.
He's searching. What a jolly night. Just don't let him find me before morning... Holding his breath, he began to inch toward the far corner of the bar, behind the counter. And then, from somewhere behind the wall, right at his back, came a long, grating sound, as if a multi-ton steel jaw were slowly grinding through debris. The mysterious noises began to grow. And suddenly, Pompeo felt a soft but powerful tremor shudder through the deck beneath his feet. Neither a meteoroid nor a hull breach could produce such a strange, deep vibration. The first tremor was followed by several more, accompanied by dull, rhythmic thuds, as if an impossibly huge bolt were being screwed into the Voyager's giant hull.
An icy, animal terror seized Pompeo—a primal fear of the incomprehensible. Woe to those who cannot suppress it immediately: a blind instinct snuffs out thought, paralyzes will, and strips away the last shreds of composure.
Pompeo felt a cold trickle run down his spine, and the hairs on the back of his neck stirred. He felt every nerve as they stood on end. With a wild, inhuman shriek, he bolted away, stumbling over bottles he himself had scattered, and fled up toward the living quarters.
To meet him, emerging from the corridor's half-darkness, came Carter. Pompeo, forgetting all their enmity, in his terror nearly threw himself into the arms of the very man he'd been fleeing like a hare.
"Did you hear that?!" he exhaled in a hoarse, breaking whisper (a spasm tightened his throat) and clutched Carter's sleeve with sweat-damp fingers.
"I know no more than you..." Carter stood pale, listening intently. "First there was a jolt, then the ship listed to port. Barely noticeable, but there's a tilt. I was already dressed and went to check the sensors."
"Pompeo, is that you? What happened?" came a voice.
"Miss Rose, please come here," said Carter, seeing Alice.
She approached Carter, and Pompeo, emboldened by her presence, dared to follow. The young woman's presence calmed him.
"Have a look, Miss!"
In the harsh light of the emergency floods, the deck shone stark white. And against this white background, a deep dent was visible, as if a giant fist had struck the hull. Long scratches radiated from it, as if something enormous and rough had been dragged across the plating.
"Look," said Carter, who had just returned from an external inspection. His spacesuit was covered in cosmic dust. "Something struck us. Or we struck something."
Pompeo involuntarily stepped back, bumping into the wall.
Carter unzipped a pouch on his suit and poured several strange fragments onto a table. They shimmered with a dull luster, like dirty ice.
"And this?" asked Miss Rose, picking up one of the fragments.
Carter shook his head.
"Frozen gas crystals... with metal impurities... Yes, no doubt about it! These are interstellar dust particles characteristic of gravitational anomalies. This is where we've drifted. Damn it all! This is taking a bad turn. We need to discuss our situation."
All three of them went up to the command deck. Danger had drawn them closer. Pompeo waved off his "rights"; he understood that only Carter's knowledge, experience, and energy could save them now.
What troubled the detective most was the unknown. He didn't pay much heed to some cosmic "dust."
"What do you think, Carter, about our uninvited guest?" asked Pompeo once they were seated.
Carter shrugged, still turning a fragment in his hand.
"It's not a meteoroid swarm or debris... Possibly, we've encountered a manifestation of some field anomaly."
"What if it's... them? Aliens?" whispered Pompeo, turning pale.
"We must be prepared for anything. But, I admit, what worries me isn't hypothetical aliens, but these readings," he jabbed a finger at a graph on the screen. "We're losing speed. Something is slowing us down."
"What will become of us?" asked Pompeo.
"Likely, the same as others. Such anomalies are called ship graveyards. Few manage to escape. If the crew doesn't perish from system failures, they slowly die while their ship drifts in this invisible web."
Miss Rose listened intently.
"Horrible!" she whispered, looking at the ominous graph.
"We are, at any rate, in better conditions than many. The ship is holding. With strict rationing, the supplies will last a long time."
"A long time?!" cried Pompeo.
"Yes, dear Pompeo, you might have to postpone receiving your bounty. Take heart."
"To hell with the bounty, I just want out of this cursed trap!"
...Monotonous, oppressive days dragged on. The eternal hum of systems, the meager light of emergency lamps. Despair began to gnaw at them.
Fortunately, the ship's computer memory contained an extensive library. Miss Rose read a great deal. In the evenings, they all gathered in the main lounge. Alice played an old electronic piano. And more and more often, Pompeo began to appear at these evening gatherings with a bottle of wine from the captain's reserve: out of despair, he had taken to drink.
But he was now afraid to drink alone in his cabin as before—the silence beyond the walls had become sinister, and every creak of his own chair echoed in his fevered brain as the footsteps of an unwelcome guest. And so, on another of his nocturnal expeditions, he settled at a table in the bar with the last bottle he'd hidden away, quietly and miserably conversing with himself.
And then he thought he saw a male figure flit past the glass door in the dark corridor beyond. Tall, indistinct, yet perfectly distinct. Pompeo was stupefied, unable to move for a long time, and only when the shadow disappeared into the corridor's depths did instinct force him to lurch from his seat. But after several agonizing seconds, he heard a distant, yet perfectly clear clang of a docking airlock—that same metallic grinding which meant a ship had undocked from the liner.
Forgetting all fear, Pompeo dashed toward the airlock compartment. His heart hammered wildly. He ran through empty, brightly lit corridors, imagining he was on the verge of catching the fugitive. But, reaching the airlock, he found only a hermetically sealed hatch and a blinking "SYSTEM LOCKED" indicator. No one. Just an echoing silence.
In the morning, waking with a terrible headache, he thought it all must have been a drunken delirium. Wanting to check his theory and calm his nerves a bit, he told Carter everything.
Carter had to lock the bar. Pompeo tried to object, but Carter was implacable.
"The last thing we need is to have to deal with someone in an altered state. You must understand, you ridiculous man, that you will soon perish if you're not stopped."
Pompeo had to submit.