Ship of Fools

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WE had not made landfall in more than fourteen years. One disastrous choice of a star after another. The captain viewed this string of failures as absurdly bad luck; the bishop, as divine intervention. Either way, I saw it as prelude to the captain’s downfall, which would almost certainly mean my own downfall as well.

When we detected a transmission from the world that would later be called Antioch, I sensed opportunity. But opportunity for whom? The captain, or his enemies? It was impossible to say. The captain’s position was tenuous at best, and everything was uncertain aboard the Argonos.

I was exploring one of the dark, abandoned vaults of disabled machinery deep in the core of the ship, studying a length of cable scorched and fused at one end, neatly severed at the other. Shiny blackened metal sparkled in the light of my hand torch. The air was warm and stuffy and smelled faintly of burnt plastic and old lubricants. There were dozens of such rooms on the Argonos, some quite small, others like this one—large vaulted chambers that had become dumping grounds for machinery that had ceased to function and which could no longer be repaired or salvaged. I loved those rooms and spent hours in them, hoping to find some engine or device I could rebuild and bring back to life.

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