Dr. Langstrom 2

*Dr.?

“Yes?”

*Nearing initial point

“Very well. I’ll be up shortly.”

*Very well.

“Mersis?”

*Yes.

“Run: Diagnostic: Payload; Navigation; Tomb; Tomb sustainment, propulsion, and avoidance systems; Full ship and Pod auxiliaries.”

* Run: Diagnostic: Payload; Navigation; Tomb; Tomb sustainment, propulsion, and avoidance systems; Full ship and Pod auxiliaries. Aye.

Gold eyes stared down on a prone figure laying on a thin white shelf.  One hand reached out from the thin blanket and checked the system time. The body had the frailty that comes from too many years in fractional gravity. The thin bluish body of the doctor rolled out of bed and contacted the floor.  The surface warmed before his feet hit.  Through a short corridor, he bounced from one wall to the other.  The tomb laid as a gleaming gold and silver polished fuselage, gaping mouth hanging open at one end and mirrored black motors wrapped around the tail.

*Dr.?

“Yes.”

*Dignostics complete. Systems all returned positive. Would you like to know our distance to initial point?”

“Just elapsed time to arrival.”

*Approximately 5.7 minutes.

“Very well. Mersis?”

*Dr.

“Leave us until we reach the IP.”

*Very well.

Golden eyes faded slowly along the ceiling and wall and the lights lowered.  The gleam of the tomb reflected the brightly lit goings on of the computers on either end of the lab, down blacked out corridors.  His hand went to the tomb and ran along the bullet hull, tracing his creation.  That creation had come at great expense to his financial resources and a few very serious laws. He sat in silence. The words had all been said and systems had all began their final run-up to launch.  The tomb glowed warm, but was not radiating.  It would only radiate when it had achieved relative-to-light speed and its voyage fell almost out of time.

*IP approaches.

“Very well.”

The doctor grabbed onto the handles along the walls as the gravity ceased.  He pulled himself into a seat forward of the lab and strapped into the only seat in the ship.  His mind ran a diagnostic of his being and his decisions. The ship rumbled slightly as the ship’s vectoring motors fired. It lined up along the equator of the distant Earth and began a sharp descent into a failed orbit. The golden eye on the forward superstructure of the small ship held constellations and earthly points in its mind as the ship fell in a death spiral toward the Earth.

*Release imminent.

“Very well.”

A gentle shudder went through the ship and the pilot and its lone passenger.  The tomb was released toward the Earth below.  It fell sharply and nosed down into the pale atmosphere.  The doctor watched a visualization of the craft fall away.  As the nose began to glow in the reentry, a fire began in the spiraling tendril of compressed and stirred air behind the tomb.  The fire crept in a thin silver line down the contrail and grew thick.  The tomb had almost disappeared into the blue when the contrail exploded in flame.

The view of the earth below was split in two by the rapid tearing of its sky beneath the ship.  The streaking tomb, occulted in flame, shot up out of its freefall and rolled over the far horizon, circling the Earth below.  The doctor held the small breath he had and the biometric system immediately filled the room with more oxygen rich atmosphere.  The visualization panned behind and caught the silver dawn and the professor breathed again.  The tomb rushed up around the blue globe and shot by to dive again, following its curve one last time.  With no delay, the false dawn and streak of silver flame erupted behind the ship and leapt free.

The doctor looked out the porthole to his side at the silver streak blasting away into the darkness and he grew cold.  He touched the window as the red haze of his ship burning up on its own non-sustainable reentry swallowed his view.  The golden eye on the superstructure exploded in the heat and the rushing fiery atmosphere eroded at its borders until the mast sheared off and fell behind to burn up alone.  The ship, its pilot, and its passenger rode the comet down into the heavier air as their entombing fire began to eat the least aerodynamic features away for the hull.

The doctor called up from the lagging pilot one last visual, hazy and reddened, of the tomb, or rather its exhaust plume as the main engines fed on the acceleration away from him.  He held her face in his mind and called to her, hoping that the mythologies of the last generations were true as the hull split into two and then four pieces. And then into oblivion raining down.