Nighthawks
by Roger Ley
Roger Ley has self-published eight novels and one anthology of speculative stories.
He was born and educated mainly in London, but spent some of his formative years in Saudi Arabia. Later, he worked as an engineer in the oilfields of North Africa and in the North Sea before starting a career in higher education teaching computer-aided engineering.
His early articles appeared in publications including The Guardian, Reader’s Digest, The Oldie, and Best of British. His short stories have been published on a multiplicity of websites and broadcast on BBC Radio.
He lives in Suffolk (UK).
Visit his website at rogerley.co.uk
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‘We are on a closing trajectory now, Captain,’ said Ship. ‘The object is definitely the Digory Kirke. It will be visible shortly.’
‘Amazing,’ said the Chief Engineer of the Francis Holmes. ‘A pre-Hawking Drive ship, travelling at a snail’s pace, a real bucket of bolts. It’ll take another sixty years to reach Proxima, and it’s already been on its way for fifty.’
‘Approximately correct,’ said Ship. ‘The records say that Kisumu Mission Control lost contact with it twenty-three years into its journey.’
Some hours later, they matched velocities with their target.
‘It looks as if it hit something, or else something hit it,’ said the Captain.
‘Can we talk to it?’ asked the Engineer.
‘I have been trying, but there is no response,’ said Ship. ‘The solar sail is gone, the hull is ruptured, and there is no sign of internal power.’
‘You’d better get over and take a look, Chief,’ said the Captain. ‘Ship, get on the Ansible and tell Kisumu that we’ve found her.’
‘Certainly, Captain.’
‘It had a crew of two?’ asked the Engineer.
‘Correct,’ replied Ship, ‘records name them as astronauts Emmaline Lampeter and Paul Burton, now presumed deceased as their cryopods are unlikely to be functioning.’
‘Yes, well, I’ll just have to go over and get them,’ said the Engineer. ‘After all, that’s what we’re paid for; retrieval of remains is one of our major mission directives, but you never know what else I might find.’
‘Be careful,’ said the Captain. The two had signed a five-year nuptial agreement four years before and planned to renew it.
An hour later the Captain watched the suited figure drift over to the hulk, attach a line, and clamber inside.
‘It’s a real mess in here,’ said the Engineer, his voice distorted by his helmet mike. ‘Worse than it looks from outside.’
‘Can you see the cryopods?’ asked the Captain.
‘The ship’s specification states that it has a dual hibernation module,’ said Ship.
‘Aw, how romantic, a Jack and Jill,’ said the Captain. ‘Very Sleeping Beauty.’
‘I don’t think you’d want to wake either of these two with a kiss,’ said the Engineer. ‘I can see them through the plexiglass. They’re pretty much dried out and mummified. Hold on, I’ll jack into the monitoring unit and see if Ship can discover anything.’
‘The unit is not completely dead,’ said Ship a moment later. ‘There is a small amount of residual power left in its circuits. It is telling me that after the collision it kept its charges viable for several years, but as power and resources dwindled, it concentrated its efforts on the brains of the module’s occupants. It is not sure whether they’re still recoverable.’
‘I’ll plug my suit’s power unit into it, detach the whole pod, and bring it over. There’s plenty of room in the hold, and I don’t fancy lifting the hood on King Tut and Cleopatra here. Ship can do what it can for them while we take them back to Kisumu.’
The Engineer unclamped the cryo unit and manoeuvred it out of the Digory. The Captain watched as, with puffs of nitrogen from his EVA backpack, he manoeuvred it back to the Holmes.
‘One of them is responding weakly,’ said Ship a short while later. ‘It is the female. Estella Lampeter. The male does not seem to be viable.’
#
The background music was the first thing she became aware of. It was a Rodgers and Hart number, from one of the old musicals she loved. Then the diner, Phillies, materialised around her, with its yellow walls, and the huge plate-glass window looking out on Greenwich Avenue and 11th Street. She knew where she was, but how had she got here? She looked around the diner. A man wearing a fedora and an old-fashioned blue suit was sitting at the counter opposite. Another man was sitting on the stool next to her. She got the impression that they were together. He seemed to be waiting for her to speak.
‘I think we sat and talked like this before, but I can’t remember where or when,’ she said.
The grill jockey with the red hair and freckles came over and topped up their coffees. His white jacket was flecked with fat and coffee stains, but his disposable paper forage cap was pristine.
‘What about those Knicks?’ he offered, but she and her mysterious partner were concentrating on each other and neither responded. He shrugged and carried the coffee pot back to the machine.
Her friend smiled and took a sip from his cup, but didn’t say anything. Yes, his smile was familiar, so were the clothes he was wearing, but still she couldn’t remember his name. Déjà vu. She had a strong feeling of déjà vu.
She wondered what sort of relationship they had? Were they lovers, married, just friends? The lights in the diner began to dim. The music continued to play, but still she couldn’t remember where or when she’d met him before.
#
‘I am losing her… She is gone, I am afraid,’ said Ship. ‘I doubt that they will be able to do anything for them at Kisumu.’
‘Oh, well,’ said the Captain, ‘there never was much of a chance. We’ll take the remains back. The families can do what they want with them, but it’s nice that we retrieved them. I hate to think of homeless wraiths drifting in the void.’
‘Well at least they had each other for company,’ said the Engineer as he popped the top off a tube of chicken flavoured gloop.
‘Ship, take us home,’ said the Captain. ‘We’ve done enough this trip, and we’ll be up to our contractual hours by the time we get back. Log the details of the Digory and message Proxima Traffic Control. They can arrange to salvage it when it arrives.’
‘In sixty years’ time,’ muttered the Engineer.
Two weeks later they docked at the Elevator dispersal and left Ship to deal with the cryopod and its associated red tape. A shuttle took them across to the main station, and they booked a private cabin on the next descender down to Kisumu.
‘This is the worst part,’ said the Captain. ‘It really shouldn’t take two days to get us back on the ground.’
‘It’s all a matter of economics, my dear,’ said the Engineer, dispensing with rank now that they’d left the ship.
‘I’m getting sick of the salvage game,’ she said. ‘I’m bored with bringing home mummified corpsicles. What say we look for something else? Passenger work — you’d like that, wouldn’t you?’
‘We’d get tired of wearing smart uniforms and being polite to the customers. I’d rather stick to what we know. So, where would you like to start our leave?’
‘New York, I think, that okay with you? We can register our new nup agreement at City Hall. Then do some sightseeing and find a hotel in the Village.’
#
Late evening found them sitting in a diner on Greenwich Avenue. They’d been to City Hall, lunched in style to celebrate their nup, then gone to see a live show, but their body clocks were still set on UTC time. As they sat at the counter drinking coffee, the Engineer reached across and lightly took the Captain’s hand. He’d noticed that her eyes were wet.
‘You know I went to check on them after you got them aboard,’ she said. ‘They looked like they were made of wood, all dry and black and leathery, but they were still holding hands. They must have held hands when they first climbed into the pod, and fifty years later they still were.’ A tear ran down her cheek.
‘I noticed that too,’ said the Engineer. He gripped her hand more tightly and sighed as he looked at the empty urban street scene outside the diner.
‘Have we been here before?’ he asked.
‘Who knows?’ she said. ‘I think we have, but I can’t remember when.’
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