Our captain cut in. “Leviathan?!”
Enderby gasped. “You know it?”
“You tracked it then?”
“Tracked it, hell, it bled me white and cracked my bones!
I only just escaped with my life.”
“Ah,” the captain cried. “Do you hear, Redleigh?”
Enderby continued. “I do not mean to stretch the joke. It tried me, sir. It swallowed me, my ship, and crew in one great hungry gulp. We lived in Leviathan!”
“In! Hear that, Redleigh? In!”
The Lightfall 1 commander went on. “You do make it sound jolly, sir.”
Our captain stood, all stony silence. “I meant no offense. Of all people, I well know…”
“And jolly it was!” Enderby continued. “What else can one do when stuck deep in the belly of the beast? We danced a rigadoon in Leviathan’s gut!”
“And yet—you’re here!”
“Sir, it could not stomach us! We poisoned it with laughter. All round within it we rose, we fell, we rose again, mystified by Fate, hysterical with chance. We fired our laughs like cannons at its heart!”
The captain shook. “Laughter? Dancing?” he wondered.
And Enderby of the Lightfall 1 touched his right eye. “Yes! Though before it took us into its maw, it spoiled my sight and killed this eye. See? Pure forge-cast Irish crystal. Glass! I swear. Shall I pluck it out and play at marbles?”
“No, no. Let it be,” our captain said with a sigh. “I believe you.”
“I see you do,” Enderby replied. “Leviathan did blind me once, but completed only half the job. It would have destroyed my other eye, if it’d had the chance. But we raised such a riot that Leviathan suffered sickness and spat us out back unto the stars!”
Our captain seized Enderby’s arm. “Where?”
“Ten million miles beyond the outermost circumscape of Saturn’s transit.”
“Do you hear that, Redleigh?” our captain cried. “It is still on course!”
“Course?” The Lightfall 1 captain laughed. “What course? Do you think it knows what it is doing, where it is going? How can chaos be plotted, planned, coursed? Where is that gin? I need another drink.”
Redleigh stepped forward and doled it out.
“My charts are right and true,” said the captain, grabbing Redleigh’s arm and spilling gin in the process. “I will go to meet that ghost!”
“On my recommendation?” Enderby said, astonished. “Did I make it sound too bright? Hell.” He shook his head. “Here’s to caps and bells and rollicking tunes. Here’s to Leviathan and you, sir. May you cap its bile as it spits you out. God will that it may spit you out.”
“We must be away, and now,” the captain said, his brow glistening with sudden sweat. “All hands, on deck!”
Enderby stood and said, “But Captain, can we not stay a bit longer? My crew would do well for some more time with new faces, new friends, news of home. We are weary, and dry as sand.”
“My thirst is greater,” the captain thundered. “We must be off.”
Enderby drained his glass and slammed it on the table. “To hell with you, sir! Go on your fool’s mission, if that is what you choose.”
Enderby stood, and motioned for his crew to follow. They wound their way through the corridors to the airlock doors, donned their suits, and left.
In moments, Lightfall 1 and all its crew were gone, lost again to soundless space.
Chapter 6
Deep in the false night, our captain walked along the sleeping quarter corridors. Quell scanned his mind and spoke his words to me in whispers: “‘What, pretending at sleep? Do that, and bite your bitter tongues, which hate me for spoiled games. But if Christ Himself walked through space this night—’”
And Quell, speaking in his own voice, added: “Not Christ. But one of His lost shepherds.”
The next morning, Redleigh summoned Quell and me to Small’s communication console. There we met crewman Downs.
“This communication occurred last night,” Redleigh said, nodding at Small, who touched a contact on his console. We listened, and heard at first the usual static and pulses of space, and at last a fine voice began to speak.
“This is starship Rachel,” a far voice said. “Theological starship Rachel, the spacecraft of Pius the Wanderer, calling Cetus 7. Answer, Cetus 7.” And the captain, switching on, said, “Cetus 7 here.”
The mournful voice of Pius filled the air. “Have you seen a small life-rocket adrift? A space storm carried it away. Fine priests were in it, pacing that comet—”
“Leviathan?!” asked the captain.
The Rachel’s captain responded, “Yes! My son, my only son, good child of God, was on that rocket. Fearless, curious. The Great White Bride, he called it. He went to search the White Bride’s wake, with two other good men. And now I search for him. Will you help?”
“I have no time, sir,” said our captain.
“Time!” the Rachel’s captain cried. “Why, I’ve lost my whole life. You must help me.”
The captain spoke again. “Away! I go to redeem your son. God help you, Captain.”
The Rachel’s captain, voice fading, said, “God forgive you, master of the Cetus 7.”
And the recording went dead. We five looked at each other, stung by the exchange. I said, “So the Rachel, mourning her lost children, fell away and we move toward what, annihilation?”
My companions looked away, uneasily.
Quell spoke. “Mr. Redleigh, you sent for us?”
Distantly, an airlock door opened and somewhere, above, out of sight, we felt the captain’s strange magnetic tread.
Downs looked upward and said, “Is it about him?”
“Him, and more,” said Redleigh. “About clouds of old radio time that spoke in tongues, which we let pass. Fellow spacefarers travel-weary and lonely. Priest ships we refuse to rescue. Jobs left undone—”
Downs cut in. “But, sir, the captain has told us that this comet is our job.”
“Well, then,” said Redleigh, “here are the captain’s charts. Leviathan will strike Earth, yes?”
“Yes,” we all agreed. “Why, of course, yes.”
“Here is Earth,” Redleigh said, pointing at the chart. “Now, Downs, light its substance. Now, let us illuminate Leviathan, there. Move both Earth and white light on their ways, here, and see how they travel. The computer sums and keeps the score. There!”
The great star chart took fire. We saw our planet Earth. We saw the comet. Earth moved. Leviathan moved. The universe wheeled. Leviathan rushed along space and Earth spun about the sun.
“There, see,” said Downs. “A collision course! The comet will destroy Earth! Just as the captain said.”
“No, it will not,” said Redleigh.
And as we watched the unfolding of the great star chart, the huge comet streaked by without striking Earth.
“See, it goes,” commented Redleigh. “The comet continues on, leaving Earth untouched.”
We watched the comet fade.
Redleigh switched off the chart.
Downs spoke up. “Captains don’t lie.”
“They don’t,” said Redleigh, “unless they are mad. Then lying’s all the truth they know. Quell?”
We looked at Quell, who shifted uneasily.
“Quell knows,” said Redleigh. “Quell, these men are drowning. Give them air.”
Quell remained silent with his eyes shut and when he spoke, spoke only to himself. “O fathers of time, forgive me. Here,” he gestured, pulling us close into his spider arms. “Let me gather your minds. So. And thus.”
We felt our souls embraced. We looked up. Quell had gathered us and bound it to the soul and mind and voice of the captain.
From the uppermost deck of the ship, beneath the stars, we heard our captain cry, “I think I see!”
We were shaken, for we did hear him clearly, though he was impossibly far away.
Quell shook his head and pulled back and the captain’s voice faded.
“Quell,” I urged. “Go on! Please. We must hear.”
Quell gathered us to him again. There was fire in his eyes and strange green cheeks. The captain’s voice grew strong again as it moved through Quell.
“Yes, I almost think I do. Far worlds, long dead, break on these eyes with living sights, again, again, again, and say: ‘We live! Remember us! Oh, think on us. Our sins forgive! Our virtues celebrate, though flesh and blood, and blood’s sweet will are gone. And with it that despair called hope, which wakes us at dawn. Remember us!’
“You are remembered, though I knew you not. Your ancient plight inspires, your nightmare’s not forgot…I keep it here kindled with my own; your ghost of outrage I give flesh and bone; your spirit war moves my arm to smite; you speak my noon and instruct my night.
“As you to me, so I to other worlds will one day be when this night’s deeds, the things we say and act out on this lonely stage, one million years on from this hour will break and flower on some far shore, where such as you look up, and behold, and know our loss or gain, life’s wakening or death’s yawn.”
And again, quietly, our captain continued.
“So we, like they, pass on, forever ghosts, knocking at portals, prying at doors, speaking our actions, re-promising old dreams, welcome or unwelcome. Yet on we go, light-year on light-year, and no one there beyond to know. Thus they and theirs, and we and ours will shadow-show eternity, two films projected to opposite screens and nothing and nothing and nothing in between.
“I murder or murdered will be this night. But there, trapped and traveled in storms of light I am not yet born.
“O God I would be that child, to start again and, starting, know some peace on a clean baptismal morn.”
Quell let us go, dropping his arms, his eyes closed.
“Oh, God…,” Redleigh said, touched and anguished.
“God, yes,” said Small. “No more, no more of this. It must be stopped.”
Quell drew in a breath, and then again the captain’s voice came. “Eternal noons, I asked, O Lord! Eternal midnight, my reward. O whiteness there! My pale and wandering lust. O spirit dread, stand forth! This time I will not
