The below novel is the sole work and property of Michelle Ann Earl.
The Lost Sheep Trilogy:
The Beholder
PART 1: Rojan
Forward
Written by Austin Striedlen
"Don't take any short cuts," Mike, my psychologist, had joked when I boarded the spacecraft. If only I'd listened to him on that perfectly rosy September morning. My mind, however, was on take-off as I stepped up into the one-man craft. Even though I had trained for the almost two years since I had gotten out of college, I didn't feel like I was prepared to just leave Earth like had been planned for that day. My heart had raced, taking my mind with it, right up until the countdown ended: then my training kicked in and I did it all automatically. Well, ok, almost automatically but it was good enough.
I remember my best friends' reaction when I told him where, or rather who, I was working for. "NASA?" Laurence said, unable to control his laughter. "NASA!?" He practically choked on the word. "Any particular reason?" he asked, calming down a little. "I mean, I know you're qualified and all but I had no idea you wanted to fly!" As I recall, he was still laughing when I hung up the phone. Not that he was laughing at me, mind you, just that he was vaguely amused because, as he said later, 'the fact that you're afraid of heights just tops things off.' I'm not sure myself if I think it's all that funny.
Now I know what you're thinking, mostly because people have often expressed their doubts about my sanity concerning the matter, usually with the words 'are you nuts!?' So I suppose you're thinking the same thing; You, Austin, are nuts. Flipped completely. You have a fear of heights and a psychiatrist, and you want to go up, WAY UP, into space? Are you nuts!?
I hear that a lot, almost as much as I've heard Spock say 'Fascinating' on Star Trek. Sorry to disappoint you, but I consider myself perfectly sane (and I am not in denial), with the ability to explain everything I've told you so far except why I chose to watch Star Trek a couple centuries after it was made. First of all, when you're in space, the Earth no longer is a dangerous center of gravity to fall towards; the floor of the spacecraft is, and in a one-man ship it's hard to get far enough from that to fall. The Earth is something in the background, totally unthreatening, like the tree out you're bedroom window in unthreatening. Taking off is a little different, what with the G forces, but I trust the scientists at NASA. Secondly, and the one thing I would prefer you remember between the two, is that every astronaut sent on a mission for any length of time is appointed a psychiatrist. I never really understood why, I guess it's in case you go stir crazy.
So, now that we have established that I'm mostly sane and a little on the weird side, I can continue.
After all the stressing out done by myself and my colleagues about boarding the craft, taking off, and making sure that nothing was going to fall apart anytime soon, I relaxed and enjoyed the view. There were four small windows, with pairs of them on opposite sides, and the pairs perpendicular to each other: as if someone on the outside needed to look through the ship. The first time I looked out of those windows into space, I couldn't help thinking that if I were claustrophobic I would be having a rough time of it because the windows were more like horizontal slits than squares.
I also couldn't help thinking, once I had gotten close enough to a window, that space is big. I know that sounds idiotic, but you don't know the meaning of big until you've seen the stars envelope you on all sides, like infinite, small particles of gold to accompany the rare gems most call planets. However I have one word to describe space in general, and that word is not big, but boring. I wonder if you really can go stir crazy, because if it's possible space is the perfect environment for it: everything in the ship is automated and nothing new is likely to happen. It's even mathematically improbable for anything extraordinary to happen in your lifetime as far as the charted cosmos. And the boredom simply exaggerates the fact that the only contact with a human being, or any being for that matter, is purely virtual. At least, it did for me.
As I was thinking such profound and utterly useless thoughts, the head honcho of my mission, Cluseau, suddenly came on screen and asked, "Hello, anybody up there?" It was about five weeks into my voyage and the reception was getting fuzzy, so it took me awhile to realize who was on the other end as I made my way to the monitor. I made a mental note to check the gravity settings when I tripped and didn't fall, but I netherless made it to the controls, or more specifically, the controls in front of the monitor where Cluseau had appeared.
"I'm right here as always," I told him, wondering for the zillionth time why he asked if I was there when the cameras and other monitoring devices could tell him if I blinked more than average. Ahhh... loneliness without privacy, wonderful (and I mean that sarcastically). "Someday," I threatened lightly, indicating the cameras, "I'll just switch these off."
"I doubt if you could," the important government worker replied with a polite, cold smile, reminding me that Earth would continue it's deathlike grip on my ship's controls until I was out of range. "Report," Cluseau demanded impatiently.
I should have said, 'yes, eternally cranky one' but as it was I said, "Yes sir. Everything is A-O.K. All controls and readouts at recommended levels." With a sideways glance at a different screen I continued, "Except for the gravity, I'll have to adjust it again."
"That's exceptable. I'll want a full report when you-" The equipment rebelled against the distance from me to Earth, or maybe just at life itself, by sputtering and masking the rest of his words static. I worked for a few seconds to fixed the reception. "-Austin?" He had probably been repeating my name; he sounded fairly frustrated.
"When...?" I prompted.
"I'll want a full report when you are back in range." The equipment sputtered, considered another rebellion, but gave up. When Cluseau was sure I could hear him, fully conscious of the little time we had left and proving himself to be quite a boring person he said simply, "Cluseau out." Control was switched to my side of the link about three seconds before the communications equipment quit. It wouldn't come back on until I was back in range of the command base at Earth, and then control would automatically return to the base. And that wouldn't happen until a total of six months had passed, allowing me to expand the borders of charted space.
That sounds neat: 'expanding the borders of charted space'. Trust me, though, it's boring and tedious. All I was there to do was make sure the controls didn't blow up and keep from steering into a planet or asteroid. Everything else is automated, and the sensors are good enough to warn you about anything an hour before you have to steer away. Plus, once you're to the edge or beyond of charted space, there's not even virtual human contact: now I truly was alone. Lucky me: this happened to be my job, and my first mission.
I sighed, partly to fill the silence but mostly because I had nothing to do. So I looked around at the controls, at the charts, at the dead monitors, at the silence. Believe me, you can see silence, at least you could have then. The gorgeous universe outside my windows only served to make it more visible. Lacking anything else to do I sat there. I sighed again. This time it was solely to fill the silence, and at the rate I was going, I'd be sitting there sighing at the emptiness until I returned to Earth. I turned on some old music at random. The words 'and everything is blue for him...', came on, so I turned it off.
I tried desperately to think of something, anything, that I could do for six months. For once in my life, something I tried worked; I thought of what Lazurus, my psychiatrist, had suggested an hour before my boss had come on screen. "Why don't you visit Trinoron 5?" he said. "If you want to I've plotted the course; I hear it's a beautiful star as far as stars go anyway."
Trinoron 5 was in the farthest reaches of charted space. It was the farthest visited star from Earth recorded and had it's own zigzag path from what had previously been the borders of charted space. The path looked abnormal compared to the mainly circular border of explored territory that surrounded the Earth, as if someone had traveled to the star and headed right back without pausing to look around.
I looked at the course Lazurus had worked out for me. It wasn't straight as I had expected, but a curved course that I had yet to leave. I thought at the moment that Lazurus had done this so that I had a large amount of time before I had to integrate the course into the computer, seeing as I had a full day before I had to do so.
The last thing I wanted to do, however, was spend more than the six months already required for my voyage. Considering this, I changed the course to represent more of a straight line. I then plugged the new course into the navigation systems and sat back to listen to the music, which I decided to turn back on.
My actions of that evening seemed at the moment to be completely innocent. Talk about the most insignificant course change in the history of mankind: so you'd think. Unbeknownst to me as I began to fall asleep, it would change my life.