Hull Zero Three

“No.”

The spidery woman rouses. “Great. We have an unknown protector.”

“Or somebody was trying to kill you and missed,” the Tracker suggests, poking its head from the corner.

STARSHIP

Spin-down rouses us too soon. We barely feel the difference—a nudge.

“I think I remember more now,” the spidery woman says with a yawn.

“Sleep can do that,” Big Yellow says. “That’s why I don’t sleep much.”

She scowls at him. “All the hulls start out the same. If my memory is accurate—and that’s a big if—there’s access to a control center in the bow, across the staging area. We should be able to get through that side hatch.” She points to an otherwise anonymous impression on the far wall, almost hidden by the ceiling.

“It’ll have to do,” Big Yellow says.

The Tracker comes out of its corner. It extends a paw-claw, a formidable appendage, and the little girl gives it her hand, dainty flesh almost lost in that multiply capable span of digits, gripping ridges, and horny extrusions. Her trust seems absolute.

The spidery woman’s memory is accurate, so far—there is forward access. We pass through into a corridor, railed and cabled, designed for people. At her touch, another hatch opens on the forward end, and we clamber and float out into the acrid air of the staging area.

The smell of burning and destruction is fierce, accompanied by a too-familiar, fine mist of stinging droplets. “More stink,” the little girl says, wrinkling her nose.

We form a chain and launch across the staging area, with the Tracker as our leading grapple. Crossing takes us several long, painful minutes, past tangles of broken supports and burned equipment, through a heartbreaking ring of useless landing craft. The masses all around shift and groan, wobbling after spin-down. Pieces are drifting loose.

The far wall, closer to the bow, is less than fifty meters wide. There can’t be much more forward left to go. My memories stop at the staging area. It makes sense that there could be an observation chamber, a blister, maybe even a command center, but what are the chances it’s going to be damaged as well?

It’s incredible that one of me reached this far and yet went back—why? Because he was alone, didn’t know where else to go? Teamwork. There has to be a group that combines all the right knowledge—I’m just not sufficient. But who puts us together?

Who decides who gets made and what they know?

A loose chunk of support frame revolves slowly between our party and the hatch, blocking the view, but Big Yellow joins the Tracker, leaving us for the moment to grip an I-beam bonded to a relatively stable bulkhead.

Together, the pair stops the frame’s motion, pushes it aside, where it collides with a tangled seedship cage and sticks.

“Hatch up here,” the Tracker announces. “Big one.”

The opening is clear.

The Tracker plants a sticky claw-foot against a smooth surface, takes hold of Big Yellow’s leg, swings him out, and uses him to retrieve the rest of us. Rather neatly, we separate as we’re arcing toward the wide hatch, drift through, and grab whatever we can inside.

This could be where equipment is stored or stowed—a space about ten meters deep and five meters square. Or it could be some sort of elevator. My mind draws a blank—this area isn’t part of my job responsibility.

Where load jockeys hang out.

“Load jockeys,” I murmur.

“What’s that mean?” Big Yellow asks.

“Stevedores. Cargo managers. Crew chiefs. I’m not sure—it’s fragmented.”

The whole journey has taken us about a third of a spin-up. “Not too bad here,” the spidery woman says. “No mist—except what’s coming through the hatch.”

She feels her way around the hatch perimeter, then attempts to push, tug, and finally shout at it. Nothing closes the hatch. She backs away. Big Yellow tosses her a gray bag to wipe herself off.

But our presence has triggered another response. The forward bulkhead rotates, splits, and seems to melt into the outer wall. A ring of large fluorescent panels switches on. The chamber fills with shadowless light. Now we see a series of copper-green arches—and beyond, another bulkhead, curved, shiny black, and covered with myriads of glim lights.

As we pass through the arches, that curved bulkhead also splits into three sections, which rotate and then seem to melt aside. For a moment, my eye is confused. I think I’m looking at more glim lights but they’re different. Sharper, brighter against an even deeper darkness—very many and very tiny, like an infinite spray of luminous dust.

We’re in a big blister, the hull’s forward observation dome. Beyond the bow, the darkness is thick with a billowing canopy of minute, cold brilliances.

Stars. Even seeing them for the second time, they startle and surprise me.

So lost.

The spidery woman reaches with long fingers and kicks out, as if she’d fly through them if she could. Big Yellow makes a grab for her, but she neatly draws in her arms and legs and he misses. She floats right by us all.

She’s the first to make it into the bow. “This is hull control,” she says. “It feels like I’ve been here already….”

“What are those?” the girl asks, pointing at the glowing dust.

“They’re why we’re here,” I say, and it’s all I can say, because my heart is in my throat. This is the view to where we’re going.

Somewhere out there, maybe, is home.

To our left stream long, grasping wisps of ionized pale blue and pink. And directly ahead, a vague grayish bull’s-eye sends back a ghostly cage of barely visible bands. Not part of the stars—part of Ship. I didn’t notice the thin bands at first, because the stars are visible right through them.

We follow as caution permits—quickly for the girl, while Big Yellow and I trail behind her, taking it all in. The Tracker is last, protecting our rear.

The bow chamber forms a blunt cone, with a transparent blister or dome covering the very tip, about ten meters wide and four meters deep. A hexagonal web of cables and slings allows for purchase, movement, and tie- down.

For a long moment—too long, my caution tells me—we stare out through the dome.

Tsinoy points to the colored streamers and wisps. The Tracker’s eyes have turned violet in the dark. What it says doesn’t register at first, I’m so lost in the spectacle. “Nebulae don’t look that bright, unless you’re very near a recent nova—or worse yet, a supernova.”

I pull back reluctantly. There are control stations already in place, mounted on narrow pylons around the perimeter of the dome. The spidery woman is gliding from station to station, hands swiftly lighting up curved displays and panels.

Even having seen this place, I can conjure no memory of it. Likely it will be dismantled, subsumed by the triad, before the end of our journey, when the three hulls join. But Ship’s timing seems skewed everywhere. Why is the staging area completed? And why are some of the landing ships already constructed, only to be smashed? Useless. Wasted. Like all those bodies in the freezers.

The spidery woman seems very much at home here, rapidly becoming more and more aware of her function. That fits—she’s built for low weight or zero g. She’s probably part of the group that crews the Ship during the last few decades of journey, guiding it into orbit, preparing the way for the colonists. Does that mean she dies before I’m made?

Assembly crew is not landing crew. We were never meant to be one big happy