Starship Walker

The Star Mask

Starship Walker, by Andrew McBurnie

Copyright (c) Andrew McBurnie; all rights reserved.

The thing looked wrong: a black ski mask with no eyeholes, just openings for her nose and mouth. When Gillian Berry pushed her hand through the neck to give it shape, she thought it was like a shrieking, eyeless gargoyle.

"But I won't be able to see anything!" she exclaimed.

"You don't need to see this place," Abel Yegg, her tutor, croaked in reply, gesturing around them at the Navigation centre. He had long dark hair, and a half-shaven face. He looked like a pirate. As he spoke, he sniffed.

"You need a surgical mask to cover your face," Gillian remarked. "Someone might complain."

They stood before the stage in the Navigation centre. A silver globe hovered above them. Specialised interstellar navigation equipment filled the rest of the centre, connected to sensors and quantum tractors throughout the ship.

The centre was a small building in bizarre parkland down on the rotating rim of the ship's main wheel. The location provided near Earth normal gravity. Through viewports in the floor, stars swung below their feet. But along the walls, a line of windows revealed green meadows and what appeared to be a forested hillside.

The mask felt strange: infinitely smooth, almost slippery. Its material was thin, soft. Its colour was dark-grey, almost black. As Gillian turned it in her hands, small areas caught the light and shimmered with complex coloured patterns.

"Put it on, Gillian," Abel said.

She lifted the mask over her scalp, pulled it down around her ears and across her face, and tugged and tweaked it until it fitted comfortably. She had expected the headpiece to be clammy, but it was warm and light; there wasn't much pressure on her skin. It was not in the least transparent; she saw nothing but blackness.

She felt Yegg fitting something around her ankles.His voice came from below. "I'm giving you ankle bracelets to give you the basic feel of Walking. You don't need to wear the complete body skin for this little intro."

"You don't sound well, Abel."

Gillian sensed Yegg standing up. He said, "You won't have real access to the ship's helm, of course." He took her arm. "Here, I'll help you up on to the stage."

He sniffed again as he guided her. She was blind, standing bare footed on the coarse carpet of the stage, a little nervous. She hoped she wouldn't fall.

Was this really the start of a new career?

A thin green line slid across the bottom of the blackness before her and stopped. When she tilted her head, it sloped the opposite way, providing a horizon to help her balance.

Abel said, "It'll just be a short introduction today. I'll finish putting my suit on and connect us to the external sensors. Meanwhile, look around." Abel's voice grew distant as he moved over to the control panels.

"Look around?" Gillian repeated. "I can't see a thing!"

"It'll take a few moments. Relax. Try shutting your eyes; it might help. The system feeds into your optic nerve, so your eyes won't register anything directly."

Gillian heard or sensed a soft click. The blackness surrounding her deepened and somehow became three-dimensional. It was no longer the blackness inside her headpiece, but a vast emptiness. Somehow, she was registering depth with no visual cues.

Abel's voice said, "Just try to stand quietly for a moment, relax and enjoy the scenery. I'll go and put my gear on."

Gillian took deep breaths through the mask's nose and mouth openings. She lowered her head. A few seconds passed as she waited, blind inside her mask.

Suddenly, she gasped in surprise. Strange shapes had developed in the surrounding blackness: semi-visible forms, only distinguishable as geometric outlines at the edge of her perception.

Then she shrieked.

"There are stars! Oh! I can see stars!"

She saw stars everywhere, and above and below her: immense splashes of stars, like billows of burning sand.

"This is amazing, wonderful!" she cried, spinning around, gazing wildly in all directions.

Radiantly coloured nebulae and drifts of interstellar cloud surrounded her. It seemed odd, looking at this incredible view, to hear Abel adjusting his clothing as he changed into a full Walk skin suit. His voice came from a short distance. "You're seeing a prospect out to about fifty light years all around the ship - well inside the local bubble. It's real-time, not a simulation, but if you take a step it will start simulating. We can't let you pilot the ship yet, of course."

Gillian turned her head slowly, but still eager, impressed by the way the system detected her movements and adjusted her view in a natural way.

Abruptly, there was a subtle change in her vision, and she perceived relative distance. She could tell which stars and nebulae were close and which were further away. Her range and depth of vision had exploded: now it was truly astonishing. The scene that surrounded her, projected into her mind by the outlandish headpiece, had become animated. Although the stars did not visibly move, she could nevertheless perceive the direction of travel for each star. On a much vaster time-scale, she saw that the stars, the dust clouds and nebulae were rotating about a distant and terrible darkness immensely far away at the centre of the galaxy. Everything was in motion. Gillian was so overwhelmed and excited by this vision that the immense perspectives did not, so far, disturb her.

Abel's voice sounded close. He said, "With a bit of practice, you can see in infrared and ultraviolet, instead of only the visible light spectrum - and beyond."

"What do they look like?"

"Well, infrared is just redder than red, and ultraviolet is just - bluer than blue!"

Gillian laughed, exhilarated. "Where's 581?"

Abel answered, "Look down, it should be there."

Gillian lowered her gaze. The dull red orb of Gliese 581d was beneath her, as Abel had said. She noticed that her feet appeared to be standing on nothing.

"And where's home?" she asked. "I mean, our home system."

At that moment, a new, grim voice intruded: "Is this the new Walker?"