Seventy Hours on Raener-12 : Part 9

Back in the foyer, after another march, I decided to take the middle route of the trident, which seemed to immediately branch farther and snake into the bowels of The Mastery.

Down that path we trekked. The angle of depression forced me to counterbalance the gear on my back with my respirator and gun on the front. The hall stretched hundreds of yards, a straight shot to a dead end that we all saw--a tiny light, winking and pulsing.

The blue beacon.

"If for any reason we are separated," I told the four men behind me, "that is our rendezvous point."

"Affirmative," they answered. We moved on.

There was no cool, steady blue light dotting the walls and floor in the next hall. It was simple, unknown darkness.

"Lights on," I ordered.

The hall hummed with our battery packs and flashed with spotted white light. The instant my own bulbs ignited, myself at the stern of the group, I had no clear idea of what I was looking at. I had grown accustomed in the few hours we had inspected the ship to certain normal patterns - lab equipment, grated paths, blue light. But what I saw ahead made me clutch my own gun tighter, made my group shuffle nervously behind me.

It was an absolute disaster area. Until that point the ship had seemed almost unhurt. It was collected and clean, save for several places where glass was strewn about.

This looked violent. This looked like a crash.

It had obviously been used as a lab corridor. Beakers, fragmented and jagged, lined the floor. Large tools were toppled and even larger machines were ripped open, their contents exposed like innards to the cold air. To me it finally felt like a legitimate crash, almost familiar in a macabre sense. It bothered me that the destruction only lasted a short length. The ship was spotless save for those few meters of mayhem. The only other explanation was...

A struggle.

I examined closer. On a nearby countertop there were stripped files of paint, five curls in waving lines. The only thing I could think of snapped to mind: fingernails.

I concocted my own scenarios as I walked the hall, writing a story I had not seen or heard or felt. Hands had groped out for support, had knocked supplies to the ground. The person was dragged, from shoulder height over the counter...

"What do you see sir?"

I was pulled back to the group and expressed my hunch. It was worth investigating. We all activated our heat seeking monitors and my world turned shaded in the yellows and reds of the men. If life remained there, if it was close, it would show.

We would find it.