The Void Read Free Page B

reach Earth orbit.
    “You might as well relax,” Dr. Jackson would say. “It's another two weeks till we get home.”
    Aidan frowned. The cargo ships he was accustomed to moved at much greater speed, and he had never had to sit and wait around like this before. He didn't want to act like a spoiled child but he couldn't help it. Dr. Jackson saw. “The fleet moves at its own speed, Mr. Connor. You know that. It's not as if we aren't all ready to get home. I've only got two patients on this trip and that's two more than I normally have.”
    If Aidan hadn't been looking, he might not have seen. But he was, and he did.
    “Two patients?”
    Dr. Jackson paused, and in that pause, Aidan knew he had come upon something that she had not meant to reveal. “Well . . .” she began, “we had an incident.”
    “An incident?”
    Aidan watched as the doctor blushed and part of him felt bad for pushing the matter.
    “I really shouldn't say anything else. It's a long story anyway.”
    “Doc,” he said, “I've got nothing but time.”
    Everything, every tenet of her profession, every piece of common sense, every rule of etiquette, dictated that she stop there. That she say nothing else. But for any number of reasons, she did the opposite.
    “Well, our mission was to Eridani,” she said. “And of course, we had to jump.”
    Aidan saw her pause and he worried that the story was slipping. “And?” he urged.
    She exhaled deeply and let herself fall into a chair. “We've all felt it,” she said. “All of us. If you say you haven't, you're a liar. I hate the sleep.” She stared at the floor, as if Aidan wasn't even there. “I hate it. Everyone does. It's the dreams, you know?” She looked up. “But of course you do. You've seen it too.”
    They sat there together, silently. In their minds' eyes, they saw the same thing. But different. Unique. Special to them both, in the way that only something so horrible can be special.
    “They have testing, of course. Special testing for the Navy. You don't make the fleet unless you are rated to the point that you never should crack. And most people never do. But this trip. . .”
    “God.”
    “Yeah.”
    It happened sometimes, more often than the spacing guilds wanted to admit. The people who worked the deep space trade didn't often talk about it. It was taboo. As if talking about the creeping madness had the power to bring it about. But sometimes people snapped, whether you talked about it or not.
    He had heard that space didn't always drive men mad. Back when all anyone did was float around the Earth, go to the moon. Then space was an adventure. But it wasn't like that anymore. People said that the problems began when men started going farther. To Mars. Venus. Beyond.
    The general consensus was that Earth was the key. People were fine when they could see Earth. When it was just beyond them. Like they could reach out and touch it. But when it was no more than a great, big, blue star . . . when it was gone, truly, irrevocably gone . . . then they would break. And it's a dangerous thing, that. Nothing worse than a madman when you are oh-so-very far from home.
    That was a lie, of course. A shroud to cover a darker truth, one that no one wanted to face. But he knew, just as they all did. It wasn't Earth. It wasn't the distance. Not just the distance, anyway. The distance probably had some effect, when the dreams came. And they always did. It was the dreams they all feared.
    “I just feel so awful,” Dr. Jackson said. “Lieutenant Felix was such a good kid.”
    “Was it his first trip?”
    “How did you know?” she said.
    He shrugged. “I've heard that's when it normally happens. If you make it through your first time, you can probably keep it together.”
    “Probably,” she said. “But there have been those who have been in the deep for decades. And then one day . . .” She snapped her fingers, and Aidan shuddered.
    “And that's what happened to Lieutenant Felix?”
    “Yes,”