Sound in Space

by Kat Beyer

The Scrabble-playing lawyer, Senshu, (every colony ship should have one—it’s amazing how many skills someone like that brings to a new planet) said he’d been fighting with the head chef at the time. What about? Asked the judge. A dictionary entry, the lawyer replied.

The head chef, Montague, said, yeah, that’s where he was, too, and anyway while it was certainly his 10-inch steel Martian-made the murderer used, he shouldn’t be a suspect, because he’d have had better sense than to use one of his own knives. And anyway he’d have cleaned it afterward. Not like the prep cook. Why didn’t they ask her?

Of course I did it, said the prep cook. I’m crazy. Got a card says it. And she pulled out, not a standard colonial Form F-120 (a.k.a. “Crazy-page”), but a dirty napkin with numbers written on it. The judge ordered a psychiatric evaluation, pending charges. But she was one of those get-to-the-bottom-of-it type judges. Jupiter just bristles with them. Anyone wanting quick verdicts should leave the solar system.

I got called up after the prep cook. I told them that I was where the log book said I was, on the bridge, doing the trajectory numbers like a good little subnavigator. Anyway, Jared, I’m sorry, “the deceased,” and I were pretty much finished by the time we came aboard. No, no hard feelings. I started seeing Monty—the head chef—about 1020 hours into flight.

Monty’s ex Sarah, who’d never liked me, said she thought I’d taken a break from the bridge about the time she’d heard Jared’s life-support hit the landing dock.

At about 0600 hours? Asked the judge.

Yes, she said, and pointed out she’d already testified to that.

The landing dock on the outside of the ship?

Yes, she said, that’s where landing docks usually are. Otherwise other ships can’t land, y’know.

The judge ignored her sarcasm, and charged her.

He Had a Void in His Chest

by Luc Reid

He had a void in his chest. It wasn’t a hole, like the kind of thing a shotgun would make. It was very dark, and it only barely had edges, and it seemed to make you bend toward it, and it made a low sound like water running over something electrical, and frightened me nearly to death.

He, the homeless man, sat stiff against a tree, his legs crabbed back and his arms splayed out and his throat exposed and quivering with wiry black hairs. A boy–he can’t have been more than five or six–threw a pine cone at a passing rollerblader on the bike path, but near the path the pine cone veered as though it were being swung on a string … veered toward the man with the void, slowed down, rolled across the ground, sped up, skittered over the dry, sandy earth, leapt into the hole, and was gone. The noise, the water running over something electrical noise, went up in pitch just a tiny bit.

I turned, and there were people wandering toward us through the park, a pair of lovers whose held hands were losing their grip, a man in an expensive suit who had forgotten his laptop case on a park bench, a pair of girls dangling Barbie dolls … all staring at the void.

My shoes started scraping against the dirt. I was sliding toward it.

“Go away,” said the man with the void. “Far as you can get.”

I shuffled backward, my treacherous feet nearly sliding out from under me, moving toward the void.

“What is it? What’s in there?” I said. But he shook his head, and shuddered, and suddenly he folded in on himself and the void was much larger, a gap in the ground that was beginning to swallow the tree. I ran, pushed through the people, out into the traffic that all seemed to be veering now toward the park. I ran for the river, where there were oceangoing ships. I imagined the ocean roaring in, pouring into the relentless gap, the earth collapsing in on itself like the man had done.

But I didn’t understand, because when I turned to look, fearing I would see the void already engulfing the park, instead there was a light in that direction, a brilliant light that shone like a new star.