"Off we go." Ralissa pushed gently on the edge of the airlock and drifted away. Lorkis joined her, followed by Kolya, Donovan, Dylan, Grishnag, and Ayastal. Everyone fired a quick burst from their thruster packs to accelerate them across the distance between the Jemison and the Vancouver.

Hard to believe we’re here already. Kolya stared across the empty space between herself and the muddy orb that was Gamma Orionis b, with the slowly tumbling Vancouver crossing from the nightside to the dayside. The last few days had passed so quickly. She’d expected the anticipation of this moment to make it feel like the trip here was taking forever, but it hadn’t. The company of Cora and her crew, plus Donovan’s companionship, probably had a lot to do with it.

"How’re you doing, Donny?" Kolya glanced over at him as he nudged his thruster and launched off to the left. She couldn’t see his face through his darkened visor, but imagining his eyes popping out in surprise made her giggle.

"Uh, I’m -- well, I’m having a little -- oh, shit!" He tried to correct his course and rejoin the rest of the team. His efforts sent him flying past them and Kolya burst out laughing. "Aw, hell."

"You sure you don’t want to come back in and watch the experts handle it?" Cora chuckled.

"Hey, cut me some slack. Even with the training, I’ve never really done this before. And I’m sticking with Kolya." He tried to correct his course once again and shot off at another angle. He sighed and grumbled, "Augh, fuck me!"

"Most of the Jemison’s crew grew up in pre-medieval cultures," Grishnag reminded him with a quick laugh, "and they managed to figure these things out. Give yourself a chance. I think you’ll catch on quickly enough."

Kolya giggled again, darted after him, and grasped his hand. She maneuvered behind him and put her arms around his waist. Her helmet picked up her brain impulses as she concentrated on guiding him back to the rest of the team, and her suit’s thrusters fired accordingly, easing them back into their proper positions.

"You’re a lot more graceful in bed." She grinned at the memories of their last several nights together. "And that’s where it really matters."

"Heh. Well, thanks. That puts all this into a much better perspective." Donovan took a few slow breaths as they caught up with everyone else and followed them across the remaining distance to the derelict explorer ship. He stared at the slowly pinwheeling vessel and his breathing quickened. "I’m not sure how we’ll board that thing, though, with it spinning like that."

"Aim for the middle and then make our way along the hull until we reach one of the hatches on the command module," Ralissa answered. "Then we’ll see about bringing the primary systems back online if there’s still any power left in the reactors."

"Right there." Kolya pointed to a spot in the center, between the two inner centrifuges, where the probe and shuttle bays were. "Where it’s barely moving, just sort of rotating in place."

"Okay. Sure. Simple as that." Donovan took another deep breath.

Kolya stared at the central section of the hull and frowned. At first the formerly gray metal had appeared to be covered with dirt or soot, but now that she was close enough to make out details, she spotted dozens of tendril-like shapes weaving over the hull.

"Huh. Looks like something grew all over the ship. Tentacles or vines, maybe."

"Hmm. Wouldn’t be the first time we’ve encountered something organic that can survive in hard vacuum," Ralissa said. "If we’re really lucky, it’ll be something we’ve never seen before. Who knows where -- or when -- this ship has been."

"Still not picking up any electronic emissions or human life signs," Cora said. "The crew either evacuated or died on the Vancouver."

"I hope they left," Donovan muttered. "I’m not looking forward to finding a bunch of dead bodies."

"Even if that’s what we find, at least we’ll be able to tell their families what happened to them and have their bodies transported home for funeral rites." Ralissa grasped a handhold on the hull, latched her tether to it, and made her way along the two forward centrifuges as if rappelling down a mountain.

The huge, rotating drums must have seized up, Kolya speculated, or someone on the ship had shut them down. Maybe if they’d stopped suddenly, their momentum had transferred to the rest of the ship and started it spinning.

Soot puffed up around the spots where Ralissa’s environment suit-encased hooves touched the hull, and the same happened when everyone else followed her.

"I wonder what the ship drifted through," Kolya said. "Looks like it’s been near a fire."

Lorkis plucked a handheld scanner from his belt and swept it over the cloud of dislodged dust in front of him.

"That’s not ash or soot. They’re more like spores."

"That’s never good," Donovan grumbled, and Ayastal chuckled.

"We’ll have to go through a thorough decontamination when we pass back through the Jemison’s airlock." Ralissa paused to scan the spores near her before continuing. "They don’t match anything in my database."

"Something completely new, then. Well, new to us, at least." Kolya grinned. "I like it already."

"It’s only good if it won’t kill us or mutate us or some goddamn thing," Donovan said with a slight shudder.

"True enough. It’d be a good idea to keep our spacesuits on the whole time we’re onboard, even if there’s a breathable atmosphere. There’s no way to know what those spores could do if we inhaled any."

"Good thing we’ve got a backup team ready to relieve us," Lorkis said. "If our oxygen runs low before we can finish reviving the ship’s systems, we’ll have to return to the Jemison."

Kolya noticed a sensation of her weight increasing as she slid closer to the command module. Not enough to cause any discomfort, given the ship’s slow rotation -- not nearly as much as the gravity on Earth’s moon -- but it would take some getting used to.

She passed by one of the vine-like structures and gave it a casual tug without slowing down. It snapped off like a dry twig and tumbled up toward the planet as it rose over her right shoulder.

"Huh. Whatever this stuff is, it survived in space long enough to grow all over the hull, but couldn’t last any longer than that."

"If the vines’ function is to produce these spores, then I’d say they lasted long enough." Ayastal swatted a hand through a fine black cloud she’d stirred up. "I just hope none of them are inside the ship, because then they could still be alive."

"Gah," Donovan said under his breath, and Kolya held in a nervous giggle.

Ralissa stopped at a hatch on the side of the command module and dusted off the control panel beside it. "The spores could remain dormant in space indefinitely, too. When we return to the Jemison, we’ll definitely need to scrub every square millimeter of our suits to be sure there aren’t any of these things left in a crack or crevice."

"Not helping," Donovan grumbled, and Kolya couldn’t hold in her laugh anymore.

Ralissa chuckled, prodded the control panel, and tugged on a small hatch beneath it. The hatch swung out, revealing an opening about the size of a hatbox with a circular mechanism inside. The upper surface of the round thing had six slots crisscrossing it. Grishnag opened one of the compartments on Ralissa’s backpack, pulled a gadget out, and handed it to her. Ralissa fit the round end over the circular mechanism, made sure it was locked in place, and pushed a button on the side. The end rotated, turning the mechanism, and the airlock cranked open slowly.

A puff of air sent a thick cloud of spores jetting past everyone. Ralissa leaned over the edge and aimed her helmet lights inside.

"It’s empty. The inner hatch is sealed. Looks like there’s just enough room for all of us to fit inside, so we won’t have to cycle through in groups." She detached her tether from her belt, clipped it to a nearby handhold to prevent it from drifting out of reach, and climbed down into the airlock.

"Okay, Jemison, we’re in."

***

"Still no luck?" Kolya leaned against the edge of a console and watched the team poking at the controls and connecting devices to interface ports.

"Nope." Dylan stifled a yawn. He, Grish, Ayastal, Kolya, and Donovan had kept out of the way for the past half-hour while Ralissa and Lorkis tried to power the systems on and access the computers. The flight deck had been illuminated only by everyone’s helmet lights at first. Lorkis had pulled a high-powered lamp from Ralissa’s backpack and secured its magnetic clamp to the wall. A cloud of spores filled the air, turning the light murky. The team’s movements had kicked up a lot of them, and they’d needed to brush even more off the control panels and monitors.

Ralissa sighed. "Either the reactors are shut down or depleted, or power to these panels has been cut off. We’ll check the engineering section and see if we can power the systems on from there. If we can’t, we’ll pull the main computer’s memory core, plug it into a power supply on the Jemison, and view the flight recorder files. At the same time, the backup team can bring the thrusters over and attach them to the hull to stop the Vancouver’s spinning and boost it into a stable orbit. After that, Galactic Expeditions can send a crew to retrieve their ship whenever they want."

"While we’re here," Grishnag said, "we should search the ship and see what we can turn up. Looks like the whole ship has been powered down for a very long time, so I doubt we’ll find any survivors even if the crew didn’t abandon ship. Still, there’s a good chance that their personal effects are still here, and we can pack those up to send home to their families."

"And maybe we can find something that’ll give us an idea of what happened to the crew," Kolya said.

"That too, yeah."

"And when we’ve finished the morbid and depressing stuff here," Lorkis added, "maybe we can take a look around one of the ruins down on the planet."

"I don’t see why not," Cora said over the comlink. "It’d be a shame to head back without doing a little exploring, and it might be just what we need to take our minds off whatever you find on the Vancouver."

"Just what I was hoping to hear." From Kolya’s tone, Dylan guessed she was grinning even though her face was hidden by her helmet’s visor, just as everyone else’s was.

"Exploring a deserted alien outpost," Donovan said. "Sounds like a nice romantic outing."

"That’s what I’m thinkin’. And maybe we can get a head start." Kolya turned to the scientists. "We’ll cover more ground here if we split up. Like, someone goes to Engineering, and the rest divide into pairs or whatever and start searching the ship."

"Sounds good," Ralissa said. "Lorkis and I will check out Engineering. Everyone else, pick a partner, I guess."

"Dibs!" Kolya glomped onto Donovan and dislodged part of the spore coating on their spacesuits. He laughed and put his arms around her.

Ralissa motioned at the lamp. "Each of you has a supply of these lights in your backpacks. Attach them to nearby surfaces as you progress through the ship, so you can find your way back here easily. We’ll leave them here when we head back to the Jemison to make it easier for the Gal-Ex follow-up crew to find their way around."

"Cool." Kolya pulled three lamps from Donovan’s backpack, clamped them to her right thigh, and waited for Donovan to do the same. Then she hopped into the air, overcoming the low gravity easily, and grasped the edge of the doorway into the main corridor. She pulled herself up, braced her feet on the edge, and sprang to the next doorway. She grasped the edge, attached a lamp to the wall, and switched it on before pushing herself past the door.

Donovan hurried to catch up with her.

"So, do we go off on our own or stay together?" Dylan glanced at Grish and Ayastal, hoping they wanted to stick together. He didn’t want to admit it, but the pitch-darkness, spores, and the emptiness of the ship had already done a good job of unsettling him. He couldn’t help imagining himself in any of a few hundred scenarios in the sci-fi and horror movies he’d seen while growing up, particularly the ones with the cast being picked off by some unseen monster stalking them.

"We’ll finish sooner if we all split up." Ayastal glanced at him, hesitated, and put her huge hand on his shoulder. "You and Grish stay together, just in case. I’ll head off on my own."

And now I’ll be worried more about you than about myself.

Ayastal patted his shoulder and shrugged. "You know me. If an alien monster jumps out of nowhere and attacks me, I’ll punch its head off." She pushed off the floor and into the central corridor.

"Heh." Grish held his hand while taking a couple of lamps from his backpack. She turned away and waited for him to take a few from hers. "Dylan and I will check out the first centrifuge. That’s crew quarters, right?"

"Crew quarters, lounge, gymnasium, and mess hall," Cora said over the comm. "Second centrifuge is science and research, labs, and the medical bay. Third one is equipment storage, fabrication and repair facilities, and so on. Fourth is life support and other primary systems. The shuttle bay and emergency escape vehicles are housed between the second and third centrifuges, and the module directly behind the fourth is Engineering."

"Donovan and I can take a look at the central section," Kolya said, "and see if the shuttles and EEVs are still here. If some of ’em aren’t, then the crew’s probably gone. Some of ’em, at least."

"Sounds good."

"I’ll start looking around the second centrifuge, then," Ayastal said. "Whoever finishes first can move on to the third one."

"Works for me." Grishnag gave Dylan’s hand one more gentle squeeze before launching into the central corridor. "Okay, kid, let’s see what we can find."

***

"Looks like all the doors are open," Dylan muttered as he swept his helmet spotlights along the walls.

"At least we won’t have to pry or cut them open, then." Grishnag drifted along the wall beneath her feet, leaned over, stuck her arm through the first doorway, and reached up to attach one of the lamps beside the door frame. She switched it on with a tap of her thumb and took a slow look around the room.

It was more of a cubicle than a room, with a bed taking up most of the floor space, leaving a narrow strip for the crew member to walk from the door to the tiny bathroom at the far end. A fold-down desk was attached to the wall at the foot of the bed, with a built-in keyboard and a monitor set into the wall. Everything on the desk had slid off. It was empty except for a small, powdery black cloud dislodged when she stuck the lamp to the wall.

More of those vines stretched across the walls, ceiling, and floor. Everything was covered with a thin coating of spores.

Ugh. Grishnag expected the rest of the crew quarters to be in the same condition.

"Dr. Denise Winston," Dylan said. Grish glanced up and found him aiming his helmet spots at a nameplate beside the door. "She was the mission commander, right?"

"Yeah," Cora said. "From what I saw in the personnel files, she was more of a generalist, while the rest of the crew were all specialists in a wide range of fields."

Grish glanced over the items that had fallen onto the wall across from the bed and found a tablet and a fold-out photo album that could hold several dozen wallet-size pictures. She moved on with a sigh. Seeing photos of Dr. Winston’s family, whom she’d never seen again, would be too depressing. She glanced into the bathroom, found nothing noteworthy, and returned to the door.

"No survivor or body here. There are a few photos and a tablet, which can be packed up with her clothing and returned to her family."

"I see a few media cards, too," Dylan said, pointing at the floor. He picked up the tablet, dislodging the spores covering it, and pressed the power button. "I doubt the power cell has any juice left in it." He held the button down for a few more seconds before shaking his head and putting the tablet back where it was before, kicking up another small black puff. He flicked his hands to shake loose the spores that had clung to his suit. "I wonder where this ship has been?"

"Guess we’ll find out when we look through the flight recorder and ship’s logs." Grishnag waited for him to leave the room, then she plucked the lamp off the wall, slipped through the door, and stuck the lamp to the ceiling.

"We’re not detecting an atmosphere," Ralissa said over the comlink. "Looks like all that was left was the puff that came out of the airlock when we entered."

"At least that means all these spores are probably dead or dormant." Dylan aimed his helmet lights at the small plaque beside the door across from Winston’s cabin. "Justine Feldman."

"Co-pilot," Cora said.

Dylan nodded, activated a lamp, and stuck his arm through the doorway to take a quick look inside. He froze for several seconds and then grunted, "Fuck!"

Grishnag kicked off from the opposite wall and was at his side in a split-second. She braced her hand on the doorframe to stop her forward motion and reached out to touch his arm. She stared into the cabin and found a body sprawled on the bed. Like Dr. Winston’s cabin, this one was covered with spores and ropy black vines. The vines had grown over the corpse, pinning it to the bed.

"We’ve found a body." She entered the cabin and approached the bed, aiming her helmet cameras at the corpse’s face. "Can you identify her? Is this the co-pilot?"

"Looks like her," Cora said softly. "Well, barely."

Grishnag nodded. The poor woman’s face was contorted into a rictus and her skin had tiny cords running underneath. From the patterns, she guessed they followed the nerves or blood vessels. Grish swept her lights over the body and the surfaces around it. She paused and arched a brow.

"There’s a dark splotch on the wall. Could be blood." She nudged herself toward the head of the bed and leaned over for a closer look at the body. She grimaced and pushed away. "The top of Feldman’s skull is gone. Looks like it was blown off from the inside." A suspicion formed and she moved back toward Dylan to get a look under the woman’s chin. "Ah. Just what I thought. There appears to be an entry wound under her chin."

"Oh, no," Dylan whispered.

Grishnag shifted her gaze toward Feldman’s hands. The left hand rested beside her, and the right lay across her chest. A pistol sat under it, the fingers wrapped loosely around the grip. Grish pointed at it and let out a slow breath.

"Yep, she shot herself."

"Shit," Donovan blurted. "Wait. An explorer ship had weapons onboard?"

"Since they were in a part of space no ship from Earth had ever been," Kolya said, "they had no idea what they might run into. The probably had a few guns in case they had to defend themselves against vicious animals or hostile aliens."

"And instead she ended up using it to off herself." Dylan turned away and returned to the corridor. "Probably to end her suffering. Whatever those things running under her skin were doing to her …"

"Do you think the spores did that to her?" Ayastal said.

"Wouldn’t surprise me. Something probably started growing inside her after she inhaled them." He shivered and Grishnag put her arm around him before moving on to the next cabin.

"Anyone else find anything gruesome?" She tried to make it sound half joking, but couldn’t.

"Not yet," Kolya said, followed by another grumble from Donovan.

"Probably will any moment now."

***

Any moment now. Ayastal found a particularly thick batch of vines covering the corridor and nudged her foot against the wall just hard enough to send her drifting in a slow arc over them. She found another open door, planted a lamp on the wall above her head, and maneuvered herself into the next lab. The vines had grown around the doorway and into the room.

Ayastal swept her spotlights over the wall above her and found the vines thinning out the farther inside she floated. A few seconds later, her feet touched down on bare wall. She set up another lamp and turned slowly, taking in the workbenches and equipment around her.

"I’m checking another lab," she reported. "Haven’t found any corpses yet. I can’t even guess what sorts of projects they had in here. I still have a long way to go before I’m up to speed on modern science and technology."

She passed by a set of consoles and monitors, heading for the shadows beyond the pool of light from the lamp. One more over there should be enough to light up the whole lab if she could find a big enough area that wasn’t covered by …

Her helmet lights passed over something on a table at the far end of the lab. She caught herself holding her breath and forced out a sharp, annoyed sigh.

"Something wrong?" Cora’s tone was suddenly tense.

"I’ve found something." Ayastal maneuvered herself over to the table and pointed her spotlights at the object. "It’s a … pod, I guess. Or maybe an egg or a seed."

"Describe it."

"Well." Ayastal tried to inject a little humor just to push back the feeling of dread that had started creeping over her. "It’s about the size of one of Syala’s tits."

"Must be heavy, then," Dylan said in a perfectly deadpan tone, prompting a sharp snicker from Kolya and a faint giggle from Syala herself, somewhere in the background.

"It’s oblong," Ayastal continued. "It appears to be made of the same stuff as the vines, but the texture reminds me of coconut shells. One end has burst open." She leaned closer and then recoiled. "Those vines have sprouted from it and almost completely covered the table and the wall behind it." A shiver rippled through her body. "It’s a seed."

"The crew must’ve found it somewhere and brought it aboard for study." Ralissa sighed. "Please tell me they at least had it in an isolation lab."

"Nope. It’s out in the open. Not the brightest move they could’ve made."

"Assuming they had a choice," Cora said. "It’s possible some of them were infected somewhere off-ship and brought the seed onboard either because they weren’t thinking straight or were being controlled."

"And I’m moving on." Ayastal shuddered again and hurried back into the corridor. "I’m not getting anywhere near that thing. There are no bodies or anything else in here, anyway."

"Same here," Grishnag reported. "We’ve checked all the crew quarters and found nothing but their personal effects and those vines and spores. We’re going to check out the mess hall next."

"Copy that," Cora said. "Be careful, everyone. Those things caused at least one person to commit suicide. Who knows what else they’re capable of."

"Thanks for that," Ayastal growled softly as she drifted down the corridor. "I feel so much better now."

***

"We’ve reached the shuttle bay." Kolya grasped the edge of the door to stop her forward motion. "The inner door is open. Leaving it open wasn’t a good idea, but we’re lucky they did. Couldn’t have gotten in without restoring power if they hadn’t."

"Could be the power failed before they could close it." Donovan sighed. "I really hope the rest of the crew evacuated. Like I said, I’d rather not find any bodies."

Kolya passed through the doorway and found the shuttle bay partially illuminated by sunlight from Gamma Orionis coming through the large viewports along the far wall. She craned her neck up and found the inner bay doors wide open. She glimpsed the top of one of the shuttles beyond and raised an eyebrow.

"Looks like a shuttle was lowered into launch position, but whatever happened here … well, happened before they could open the outer doors." She turned to give the walls a quick sweep. A long rack lining one wall held twenty-six spacesuits. There were no gaps in the rack. "Say, uh, guys? How many people were on the Vancouver’s crew?"

"Twenty-six," Cora answered.

"They’re all probably still onboard, then. The spacesuits are all hanging right here."

"Some of them are definitely here." Donovan’s voice quivered.

Kolya turned and found him pointing at something off to the left3. She followed his gaze and found four bodies crumpled more or less straight in front of her.

How’d I not notice that? The bodies, exposed to vacuum, had been preserved pretty well, though they were covered with those spores. "Poor guys. Probably inhaled a ton of those things."

"Yeah," Donovan mumbled. "I’m staying away from ’em. Who knows what ended up growing in their lungs?"

"Right, I wouldn’t want to see it, either." Kolya sighed, shivered, and sprang up to the shuttle’s nose. She found a handhold and leaned over for a quick look under the shuttle. "The outer doors are open, but something prevented the shuttle from launching." She dusted the spores off the main viewport and her helmet’s visor and aimed her lights into the cockpit.

Five more human bodies rested lightly against the console. Three of them had weird ridges under their skin.

"Oh, shit," Kolya whispered.

"Found more of them?"

"Yeah. Looks like a couple of them tried to get away in the shuttle." Kolya leaned closer and noticed a screwdriver shoved into the chest of one of the normal-looking men. The hand of one of the ridged humans was still gripping the handle. Kolya backed away and shuddered again. "Jesus Christ!"

"What’s wrong? They got some horrifying growths coming out of them, or something?"

"No." Kolya dropped back down to rejoin Donovan and crossed her arms over her chest. "It looks like the ’infected’ ones killed the others."

"That’s it," Cora snapped. "Evacuate the ship! Ralissa, yank the computer core and get the hell out of there. Let’s keep our distance until we know more about what happened. It’s not worth the risk."

Next Chapter: Chapter 7: Apocalyptic Logs