Pelops harvests the next pod in the same way, but runs out of sedative after ten days. First Officer Bernard Hoffman wakes up on the table, restrained and entirely legless. His panicked screams draw Pelops into the infirmary.
“Shhhhhh . . . ” Pelops comforts him. Gives him cool water to drink. “Take it easy, Hoffman.”
“What . . . what’s happening?” asks the terrified man, his brown eyes pleading.
“Shhhh . . . it’s all right. It’s just a bad dream. The mission is going to be a success. We’re only ten months from Dantus. Go back to sleep.”
Hoffman writhes against his restraints, tearing at the leather straps. The stumps of his legs begin to bleed. “What the fuck are you talking about? You look . . . look . . . where are my legs?
Pelops breaks down. He apologizes and explains everything. Tells Hoffman about the comet, about the radiation, about the pods, the lack of food, how he must ensure the mission’s success. Reminds him of the thousands of people depending on his UV converters.
But Hoffman doesn’t get any of it. He just screams.
Screams and screams until he makes himself hoarse.
Pelops begs him to stop, but the screams go on and on. He knocks Hoffman unconscious. But the man only wakes up screaming again. Pelops stuffs a rag in his mouth and leaves him on the table. In a few days, he won’t have the strength to make any more noise.
Pelops uses a local anesthetic now instead of sedative. Hoffman may have to be awake during his amputations, but he won’t feel a thing. His eyes grow large as golf balls as he watches Pelops remove his left arm, then later his right. He finally stops trying to scream. Spends most of his time unconscious now. Sometimes he wakes and mutters nonsense, so Pelops sits in a chair next to him, his belly full, and listens.
He reminds Hoffman that this sacrifice makes him a hero. One of the Saviors of Dantus colony.
When he harvests the torso this time he learns to salvage the intestines, filling them with minced organ meat. He discovers how to make a week’s worth of sausages in this way before Hoffman’s heart finally gives out.
He decides to keep the white bones instead of flushing them into the void.
He’ll bury them on Dantus, beneath a growing field of wheat. With stone monuments.
He comes to this decision over dinner.
The next pod contains a gorgeous blonde woman.
After he gets her onto the table, he wakes her and talks at length about their situation. Lets her know the heroic role she will be playing in the mission. She weeps, begs, pleads with him. He sobs with her, sharing in the tragedy of the situation. He unbuckles her restraints and embraces her tenderly.
“Don’t worry,” he whispers in her ear, arms wrapped around her. “Don’t worry. It’ll be okay.”
He chases her down when she slips away from him, but manages to corner her in the cargo bay and knocks her senseless with a crowbar.
He smacks himself across the face.
So it’s back to the table where the harvesting begins. Still a good supply of sedative, so she won’t feel any pain.
Somehow, she wakes in the middle of things and starts wailing. The sound pierces his ears in a way that Hoffman’s guttural bellows never could. He has to gag her so he can finish.
Later, enjoying the last of her, he smacks his lips and remembers the lovely blue of her eyes. So delectable on his tongue, like tender Swedish meatballs.
The void persists, and so does his hunger. It returns like clockwork every 48 hours.
He doesn’t bother looking at the name of his next harvest. He cuts out the tongue first to avoid any more conversation.
A few days later he goes to the table-bound crewman, removes the gag and offers him a taste of his own thigh meat. The man eats ravenously, saving his questions until his own hunger is sated. Then he stares at Pelops and tries to form words. The stub of his tongue rattles around inside his mouth. His mute eyes plead desperately. They remind Pelops of the blonde’s blue eyes.
He eats them next.
The human body is indeed an amazing thing.
So many different flavors.
Five and a half months left, five CryoPods unopened.
With proper rationing, he will make it. However, the anesthetic is nearly gone.
This complicates things, but is in no way a barrier to success.
He has it down to a science now: Open the pod. Tie the sleeper’s hands and feet with copper wire before they come fully awake. Drag them to in the infirmary, strap them to the table. Remove the tongue, put the gag in place. Ignore the screams. Ignore the blood. Slice. Tourniquet. Ignore the squirming, the moans of pain. The tears, the squealing.
Forty-eight hours later. Slice. Tourniquet. It’s no longer a person, despite all the writhing and moaning and muffled screams. It’s only meat.
Forty-eight hours after that. Slice. Tourniquet. They’re usually too weak to scream much more after this.
Some are lucky enough to sleep through the whole process from this point on.
Three more crew members and thirteen weeks later. Only two months away from Dantus.
His next meal is the last female. But this fact barely registers; Pelops no longer sees them as women or men.
They’re only meat.
Yet this one is something special. When he slices into her abdomen he finds her secret. The command board would have grounded her had they known. Or maybe she didn’t know. Two months along before Cryo, he estimates. Her eyes are glazed by the time he discovers the prize inside her. Strapped, gagged, limbless, and unblinking, she stares at the antiseptic ceiling as he vivisects her. And there it is . . .
A tiny thing . . . only eighteen centimeters. Barely recognizable as human. More like something amphibian . . . a vestige of our marine origins.
Miniscule arms more like fins, or flippers. The stubs of barely formed legs. Round head no larger than an orange.
Expanding and developing meat on a rack of expanding and hardening bone.
He carries it to the bridge, shows it to the stars. He imagines the universe itself as one big womb . . . an inescapable uterus containing planets, stars, and galaxies.
In the end, it’s little more than a snack.
Sweet, a bit crunchy. A fresh flavor.
Bit of a fishy aftertaste.
Its mother lasts another eight days.
In these months he’s decided to put all those bones to good use. At first he carves them into tiny figurines: goblins, serpents, scorpions, or wholly new creatures birthed in his imagination. Then he decides on a project. A sculpture. He drags all the bones and skulls onto the bridge and works nonstop in the pale starlight, baring his creative spirit to the naked universe.
Directly ahead, a red star shines. Wolf 359. His destination, the color of spilled blood gleaming brightly in a mantle of eternal night.
A new god observes and blesses the success of the mission. Its lofty head is a ring of ten bleached skulls gazing in every direction. Its body is a tangled conglomeration of leg bones, arm bones, and rib cages. It wears a necklace of finger and toe bones. With screws and caulk and ductile adhesive he has brought it to life.
He sits before it in the captain’s chair, discussing with it the secrets of the universe, watching the void outside and the red star that is their final destination.
