D A Novel (George Right) - By George Right Page 0,136
of a cup from a nightmare.
"I don't know how well you remember your face," said Eve, "but if you can believe my female observations, the similarity is formidable."
The blood, which had covered the face of the dead man, made it not so obvious, but now, having peered more closely, Adam had to recognize the similarity with what he has seen in a mirror soon after awakening. Only on the forehead, where he had a bandage, the terrible crack of the saw-cut purpled.
"So you saw it before running away?
"Yes. And something clicked in me. All pieces began to match. Just don't try to say that this was your twin brother on the crew," Eve added. "Oh, what is that–a pen? Also fitting. Have you kept the paper with the names?"
Adam wanted to say no, but glancing at the flashlight in his hand, he discovered that its handle was still wrapped up by the sheet of paper. Obviously, he has taken it mechanically before leaving the information room.
"Write..." Eve began, but then interrupted herself. "No, it's more likely a female handwriting. Dictate," with a pen in her hand she approached a little table near a couch and was going to write on its white surface.
Adam unrolled the sheet. It was bedraggled and blood-splodged, but the letters still could be read.
""Dr. Kalkrin - s-e. Dr. Hart - heart attack..."
"You see, I didn't look at all at the list," Eve commented, "so that you couldn't say that I tried to simulate the handwriting. All right, now give me the sheet.”
Adam approached and put the list near the fresh inscriptions on the table. Comments were not required. It was obvious that both lists were written by one hand.
"Stop," Adam said. "Something doesn't match. After all, I did not find this sheet here, but instead in a pocket of a dead woman in a warehouse compartment. If you are here, how could it get there? And by the way, even if we assume that we are they," he pointed a finger towards the corpses in armchairs, "these names can't be ours because the overalls are not ours, that is, not their. They were stripped from the pilots in the control room."
"So we assumed. But maybe right here we are wrong. We still don't know what happened with the clothes of the majority of the crewmen."
"As well as with the crew itself," Adam reminded her. "And more. Let us assume we have died–and our souls are locked here, as on "Flying Dutchman"–oh really, flying... But where are, in that case, the others? Where are the other nine ghosts?"
"Perhaps they have gone to paradise and only we were so guilty that..."
"Paradise, hell–what bullshit! To be flying on an interstellar ship and to take seriously this medieval nonsenses!"
"Perhaps," Eve didn't listen to him, "perhaps, actually we were the ones who killed all the others! And at last–each other."
"Aha," Adam screwed up his face, "and I personally gnawed the pilot's arms."
"Why not? We assumed that either he did it himself in a fit or a certain extraterrestrial monster with a human-like jaw did it. But there is also the third, simpler and more probable variant–another human being."
"And we remember nothing. Why? Even if we accept your version that we are damned, shouldn't the punished know what they were punished for?"
"So it is that we are gradually learning it."
"I do not believe it," Adam obstinately repeated, looking at the sawn half-and-half face of his double. "Ridiculous. Nonsense. It can't be."
"Well, let us go to the control room. We will examine the pilots more carefully than before."
"I guess you don't want to offer an investigatory experiment–to gnaw a piece from the arm of a corpse and to compare tooth marks," he squirmed.
"I don't insist on anything, Victor."
"Don't call me that!"
"The engine doesn't work, the fuel is empty, the ship is uncontrollable and the whole crew is dead," she wearily listed. "And we are locked here without any exit and hope. So to believe or not to believe–that is your own problem."
"Well all right." Adam helplessly shrugged shoulders. "Then to the control room. Anyway I don't know where to go and what to do further."
And they ascended again to the control room. There was still no light there, but Adam had a firm feeling that the flashlight, while already almost discharged, would begin to shine more brightly. And this already didn't match any reasonable explanations. The flashlight for sure was not recharged from any panels or batteries.