Planet Eyes: Part Four

For Planet Eyes: Part One, click here. 

For Planet Eyes: Part Three, click here. 

 

17

Alone in your office, at last, you open the drawer. The code doesn’t work the first time, but you must have input it wrong, because it works the second. Then you have the data tab in your hand, and it’s like it’s happening all over again, like you’re seeing the shadows on the surface coalesce before your eyes in the space of this room. You blink and it’s gone and you tell yourself you need to rest, drink less coffee. You are riding on the dregs of adrenaline, on the tail end of a long, stressful day. Anyway, it wasn’t a hallucination, you don’t think, more a powerful memory, but it leaves a sour feeling in your stomach. 

You plug the data tab into your screen and pull up the file, hands trembling so much it takes a moment to press play. The first thing you notice, as the video begins, is that the file is corrupted. Though the ambient temperature remains the same, your blood cools as you see the static blurring most of the picture. You can still make out some of the surface, the rock spire in the distance, glimpses of color through the greyed-out blur, but you don’t see the shadows, you don’t ever see the shadows, because the rest of the video is a hissing blizzard of static, rogue pixels exploding across the screen, and then darkness, and then the end of the vid file. 

You don’t realize what you’re doing until you’re already doubled over the trash can, vomiting up bile and coffee and nothing else because you haven’t eaten all day, and it burns, it burns so bad, but it just keeps coming up. Up and up and up until you are empty, sitting on the floor, propped against your desk, your legs too rubbery to stand. All you can hear is the hiss of static, lodged in your ears. 

Somehow—somehow someone got into your office and tampered with the file. Or, if not then, then before. Back in the lab. Back on the surface. Before you even left the ship. Someone damaged Parsons’ camera. Maybe she did it herself. And then your thoughts are racing in that direction, no way to stop them, no way even to slow them down. 

You can’t trust these people—you can’t trust anyone. She had to have done it herself. Who else would have had that much opportunity? But then you remember that this doesn’t make sense, that she wouldn’t have told you she had the footage if she was planning to destroy the evidence, wouldn’t have installed the camera in the first place. So it must have been someone in the lab, whoever pulled the file from the camera and transferred it to the data strip—you should have done it yourself—or it was Maugrim, and you can’t even think that it was Maugrim, but he was the one who inspected the tech before and after the first mission, before and after the second. He was the one telling you everything checked out, when obviously nothing did. 

You take a deep breath, force yourself to hold it in for fifteen seconds, though it burns like you’ve inhaled boiling water. You’ll figure it out. Someone will be able to tell you if the footage was damaged as it was being recorded, or after. It’s possible that the original file is still intact and viewable. 

Right now you need to sleep—you know you need to sleep, and everyone else that you need to talk to about this situation is already in their quarters for the night. It would be insane, it would be psychotic for you to start paging them. Everyone would realize that you’re losing it. Besides, you need to be rested for tomorrow. 

Instead you find yourself shambling down the hallway to the lift, down another hallway, and then another one, bisecting that, and suddenly you are in the tech lab with no clear memory of how you got there. It isn’t as hard to find Parsons’ camera—now removed from her helmet—as you would have expected it to be. It sits on the shelf where you left it, labeled with a strip of tape covered in neat handwriting. You hold it gently, like you’re afraid you’ll drop it at any moment, and your hands are shaking so badly you realize you’re right to be scared. Glancing both ways as you leave, you try to imagine what you look like, sneaking into the lab in the middle of the night and burglarizing your own ship. 

Halfway down the hallway, you stop dead in your tracks. You’re not sure what alerted you to their presence, whether it was a whisper or a soft footfall, but all of a sudden you’re aware that you’re not alone in this stretch of corridor. When you turn, you see two small, dark figures peeking out from a doorway, and you clutch the camera more tightly to your chest before you realize who you’re looking at. Even then your heart refuses to slow down. 

“Children,” you say, advancing on them. “What are you doing up? You’re supposed to be with your parents.” 

These are the Hiraeth’s young. Both are toddlers, no more than two years old. When they look at you with their huge baby eyes, you fight to keep your breathing even. “How did you get out?” 

As much as it makes you feel like a monster sometimes, you have no choice but to keep their parents locked in the brig, though you’ve made their quarters as comfortable as possible. It is an awkward situation, with no true solution. On Earth, they would have been discharged. Here, you don’t have the luxury of sending them home, and if you do nothing, the rules that protect the delicate balance on your ship will disintegrate. 

The littlest of the two, Gia—she was born five weeks early, and still hasn’t spoken a word—holds out a small object. When you take it from her, you see that it’s an intricate clay sculpture of Icarus III, its topography so different from Earth’s. You wonder who made it for her. 

“Play,” the little boy lisps as you hand the planet back to Gia. “She opened door.” 

At first you think he’s referring to Gia, but that’s not possible, so then you have to consider who else on this ship might want to release your prisoners. “Where are your mommies and daddies?” you ask, trying not to lose your grip on the camera as you stoop down to their level. 

“They seeping. Daddy has bad dweams.” He nods solemnly. 

“Let’s get you back, then.” You page security, tell them to meet you down at the brig. Then you take Gia’s hand, and she clutches her planet with the other as you troop down the hallway, toward the brig. The children’s feet make soft padding sounds on the decking, and their eyes are huge in the blue light. You can’t help but notice that they stare long and hard at every window you pass, turning their heads to look behind them until there’s another window to grab their attention. It leaves a cold, crawling feeling under your skin. 

By the time you reach the brig, security is waiting for you. Right away, it’s evident that the four prisoners were still in bed when you called. Now that they know what’s happened, they’re worried sick. So you think that has to rule them out. 

Once you’ve bundled the children off to their respective units, you turn to your head of security. “Lieutenant Lawson, show me the footage.”

 He pulls it up on his screen. “For whatever reason, we didn’t get an alert when both units were opened.” He points at the time stamp, indicating that the footage is less than an hour old. On screen, under the blue light, both doors swing open in eerie synchronicity. It’s immediately evident that no one was standing near them when they opened, also evident that no one was at the control board, either. “Best we can figure, a power surge caused the locking circuits to short out. But we’ll look into it and let you know what we find.” 

You give him a nod and glance down at the camera, still clutched in your hands, suddenly remembering your mission, why you were out so late, why you stumbled on the children only by chance. What might have happened to them had you talked yourself down from that ledge? Probably nothing. Probably they would have been fine, and an on-duty officer would have found them, playing in some corner. But you don’t want to consider how much powerful machinery is onboard, how they could have damaged something, how something could have damaged them. This ship was not built for children. 

“Good night, Lieutenant,” you say. Then you leave before he can ask you about the camera. 

Back in your office, the smell of vomit is noticeable—you would have expected to have gone nose-blind to it by now, but it’s only grown stronger. Now you feel nauseous for a whole new set of reasons. You remind yourself to clean it up before you head to your room for the night so no one will find it and ask questions. 

As you link the camera up to your screen, you think about the people centuries ago who had to navigate a spaghetti tangle of cords: for data transfer, for charging, for who even remembers what else. People hiss at the idea now, but you wonder what it would have been like to feel the authenticity, to imagine the flow of information through the cords like formula through a feeding tube. 

Once you’ve interfaced with the camera, it isn’t hard to locate the file. Something like a sigh of relief escapes your lungs. Some unconscious part of you must have thought that it wouldn’t be there, that it would have been erased from the camera or maybe that it never actually existed in the first place. 

Your relief is momentary. When you play the file, the static is the same, the file as corrupted as before. This leads you to another thought, one that brings you panic and clarity in equal measure. It might not be that someone messed with the video, or even that the camera itself is faulty, although that is surely a possibility, and you will have someone—you will have someone other than Maugrim look into that. No, it could be that whatever it was on the surface, this entity that can live on an uninhabitable planet, is able to interact with your technology in ways that break the rules of your sane world. This would also explain the poor oxygenation in your blood after the surface missions. 

It’s a weak thought, and you’re willing to admit it. Your scans are thorough and comprehensive. Even if the life on this planet was something other than carbon-based, your scans would have shown you, at the very least, the outline of its existence. You would have seen moving shapes, for instance, unusual patterns or unknown molecular compositions. None of this was in evidence. 

Whatever this entity is, if it exists, it could simply be incompatible with what you have at your disposal, impossible to see with your digital eyes. It’s a crazy thought—you’ve entertained so many of those lately—but you add it to the list and make a mental note to mention it only to Fleurie. You have to look into all your options, even the most far-fetched ones. After all, you are in an alien sky, orbiting alien soil; in this place, normal is the unexpected. But you have a feeling that, however vague this possibility might be, it would be problematic if the crew were to find out that you’re considering it. 

Even though you still have nothing to show the admiral, you’re starting to sense that you have something like an anchor. None of this is certain, of course, and it probably won’t be for a while yet. It will take time to see the various threads of your theories, where they start, where they end, how they intersect. But you have the beginnings of something—you have purpose now. For the first time in days, you feel like you could actually get some rest. 

18

At first you don’t notice when Ensign Halloway appears in the doorway to your office, and you feel a measure of surprise, hot and painful in your chest, when you finally see her standing there. She is backlit by the bright hallway, and even though you would not have thought the lighting in your office was so dim, you have trouble making out her face in the contrast, have to convince yourself, in no uncertain terms, that you are not looking at a ghost. 

Once you’ve talked yourself off that ledge, it is only a matter of remembering that you called her supervisor thirty minutes ago to ask for her. This leaves you unbalanced, the thought that you could forget a detail so significant in so short a space of time. Proof of how distracted you are, how stretched thin. 

“Captain, you wanted to see me?” she asks. Her voice is deeper than you had remembered, soft and mellow and gentle, and you think that you could listen to it all day. You wonder, briefly, if she has a good singing voice, if she missed out on an entirely better career. 

“Have a seat.” You indicate the chair across from your desk. Once she’s comfortable, you offer her a stainless steel cup and the pot of coffee you’ve had sitting on the burner for who knows how long. 

“I heard there was an incident at the lab a little while back,” you begin, measuring your tone so it’s conversational, so she doesn’t feel like you’re judging her or, God forbid, reprimanding her. “As I recall, you had a panic attack and dropped some blood samples. I just wanted to make sure you’re okay.” It’s a bit of a lie, to frame it this way. Your primary concern, you tell yourself, is her well-being. Underneath that, you don’t especially want to look at your motives, the roiling mass of questions, each more nameless and vague than the next. You want her to tell you why she’s afraid, to spell it out in clear and certain terms, want her to voice your private fear as your own. It is too much to ask of anyone. 

“I haven’t felt like myself,” she says. Her eyes are distracted, restless. It takes you a moment to realize what she’s avoiding. You consider that it’s impossible to realize the full extent of your peripheral vision until you are trying not to see something that’s right in front of you. 

Maybe it was selfish to move your desk for this meeting, to have her sitting across from the window in your place, but you needed to see how she would interact with the view. And you don’t know if it’s actually better, not being able to see what’s happening behind you. The more she can’t tear her eyes off the window, despite her efforts, the more you can’t shake the feeling that something is sneaking up on you and she doesn’t want to warn you about it. 

“Can you elaborate?” you ask, when it becomes apparent she doesn’t intend to volunteer more information. 

She starts talking in a rush, words spilling out of her so quickly you struggle to catch them all, to cup them in your hands; you feel them escaping through the cracks between your fingers. “It’s like there are ants crawling over my skin when I’m trying to sleep. Sometimes it feels like someone’s watching me, like there isn’t enough privacy on this ship.” She looks embarrassed, gulps a little, and her eyes grow huge in her reddening face. “I didn’t—I didn’t mean it that way, not really. I’m not going crazy, not like—” She doesn’t have to say it, doesn’t have to invoke him—MacAvoy is a presence here already, name scribbled on the walls, face reflected in the window, voice drifting in the air like toxic fumes. 

“Then what do you mean?” You have to fight to keep your tone professional, because your heart keeps catching in your throat, your lungs have entangled themselves in your ribs. Your arms belong to a separate entity when they pour another cup of coffee. 

“I was talking to Ensign McGrath,” she says as she pulls out her screen. Hers is a smaller edition, more limited, meant primarily for personal communication among the lower ranks. She scrolls for a moment, glances up to offer you a rueful smile. “I could just paraphrase it for you, but I don’t remember exactly what McGrath said. I don’t think I would explain it well.” She scrolls and scrolls for the better part of a minute, and you have a moment where you have to ask yourself if she is breaking the non-fraternization policy with McGrath. On Icarus III, the rules will be different—they will have to be. Here in space, they remain strict for a reason. You’re not asking anything of them that you’re not asking of yourself; it’s as hard for you as it is for them. 

By the time she finds what she’s looking for, you can taste the anger in your mouth—copper and bile. 

“Okay, so this is what he says. ‘We traveled by passing through space and subspace. We couldn’t remain in subspace—it takes a lot of power to do that. Physics follows different rules down there, and we don’t know all those rules yet, just that there is no speed limit in subspace. No friction, either.’” She glances up, presumably to make sure you are tracking with her, have not wandered off into some other portion of your mind. She reads for a moment, silently, before continuing. “He’s of the opinion that we could be experiencing some sort of residual phase shift, a negative side effect of subspace travel, or if not subspace, then the constant jumping between dimensions, that what I’m experiencing—what, what Ensign MacAvoy experienced—that’s just a side effect of long-term exposure.” 

You feel yourself sinking, like all your thoughts have taken on water. “Thank you for sharing with me.” Almost reflexively, you indicate the coffee carafe, where only a small amount remains. “You can have the rest if you’d like.” As she pours, you order your thoughts, work to assemble them into some sort of framework. “Did Ensign McGrath have any more to say on the subject?” It is a bit of an embarrassment to you, deep in some untapped portion of your mind, that you did not consider this sooner, that it was an ensign who thought of it before you did, who is now, by extension, more qualified for this job than you are. 

How are you going to explain this to the admiral? And then, on the heels of that thought, a more vicious one, that maybe the admiral already knows, was aware of what would happen, sent you on this mission anyway with the knowledge that you were bound for failure tucked up his sleeve like a winning card. You told him what was happening, and all along he knew it wasn’t your fault, wasn’t all in your head, lied to you anyway. He wanted this to happen to you; this was the point of the whole mission. When you spend too long thinking about him, you find yourself sinking to a portion of your mind you rarely visit. It is dark and ugly down there. 

“Thank you for sharing this with me,” you hear yourself say as you stand and move to the door, realizing you did not listen to a word of her answer or anything that came after. “I hope that the med techs are taking good care of you. Maybe it would be best if you took a couple days off and got some rest.” 

She pauses in the doorway. “Captain, do you think Ensign McGrath is right?” 

You keep your voice as calm as possible, feel gratified when it sounds almost bored. “We’ll look into it.” 

19

As you make your way to MacAvoy’s quarters, you realize with a sense of disembodiment that you are afraid to spend time in his mind, afraid of what it might do to you. But you don’t want to put it off any longer, want to take care of the worst before anything else. If you can see his room, you reason that you will have some framework with which to understand him when you finally do visit his makeshift cell. And if you speak to him before you speak to Head Psychiatrist Lane, your ideas of him won’t be clouded by hers. You’re not sure if the order of operations actually matters, but you want to know that you’re seeing what happened with your own eyes. 

From the moment you enter the room, he’s a palpable presence. The walls are steeped in him. You get the strangest sense that if you were to listen closely enough, you might still be able to hear him, sitting in the corner, mumbling to himself. You fight the urge to bolt. You can almost feel hands reaching out to encircle your neck. 

Right away you see the window, find your reflection, and the chill comes on so strong you have to pause to shake it off, like it’s a physical thing. You feel yourself giving ground. 

You step to his desk and rifle through the mess on top in hopes of finding his screen. Something tells you it won’t be that easy. Though your crew are required to keep their quarters neat and clean, inspections are less frequent now than when you first took off. MacAvoy has let his go. No, phrasing it that way makes the mess sound tame, almost unintentional. His room looks like it’s been ransacked, objects thrown with force, the wall bruised in places. It comes to you, with a sense of clarity, that he might have been checking for bugs or cameras, that he might have believed someone was spying on him. That, for instance, he might have felt like he was being watched. Your gaze flicks to the window. At some point, you need to start writing these things down. 

Wading through his belongings, you start to feel a dull pain in the pit of your stomach, something alarmingly like sympathy—and guilt, there’s guilt in there too. You are wandering through an open wound. This strikes you as a violation, though as captain you have every right to be here. 

If you were MacAvoy, you think, and you had something on your screen that you didn’t want them—whoever they are—to know about, where would you hide it? Almost as soon as you ask the question, your feet turn toward the bathroom. You step inside and close the door behind you, remembering the relief you have felt in your own bathroom, closeted away, hidden from your window. If it’s anywhere in these quarters, it will be here. 

You scan the floor, lift up the shower mat, open the medicine cabinet. So far it’s bare. A chill passes through you. You’ve started to think there’s a chance you’re more paranoid than MacAvoy when you see it, the bulge of the wall panel, down near the floor. Somehow he’s managed to pull it out, and when you lift it slightly, you see the screen, wedged into the tiny space, scratched from the abuse. Though the screen is slim, it’s too thick for the wall panel to fit back in place with it there, which is the only reason you found it. The bulge isn’t horribly evident, but you still have to pause and consider what it says about MacAvoy’s mental state. Did he know how obvious his paranoia was? Could he see himself at all, towards the end? Did he mistake his insanity for cleverness? 

And then, of course, because you can’t leave the thought where it rests, you have to follow it along its natural progression. If someone were to go through your room right now with a fine-toothed comb, would they see your paranoia spelled out on display? Are you hiding it as well as you think you are? How much of a barrier is there between your mental state and MacAvoy’s? 

You pry the screen out and seat yourself on the floor, back to the wall, face to the door, and tell yourself that you will read for a little while, enough to get a sample of what he was really thinking over the last few days. But after the first couple paragraphs, you find you can’t read any further. It’s not that his thoughts are too scrambled to understand, it’s that they’re too lucid. You’re sure that if you finish reading, all the way to the end, something bad will happen to you. It took you all of three seconds to start putting yourself in MacAvoy’s shoes, to start questioning if he was right about the cook, to wonder if, in his own disturbed way, he knew something about Montez that nobody else did. Because it would make sense—wouldn’t it?—for everyone to feel on edge if you’re all being poisoned. It’s insane—you know it is—but you add the idea to your growing list of improbable hypotheses before you can stop yourself. And then you force yourself to leave MacAvoy’s quarters, screen in hand, because the crazy is oozing off the walls, it’s sticking to your skin. 

 

Copyright © 2025 by Elizabeth Brooks