Bill Silver padded naked down the vacant steel halls of the starship Wanderlust, exposed and fervently hoping he could make it back to his quarters before one of the crew saw him. He'd woken up in the nullroom, just floating there curled up in a ball, nude as the day he was born, completely alone. He had no idea how he'd gotten there. Luckily it was the middle of the night cycle on the ship, so most of the crew was asleep.

Bill hated being naked. It made him feel hideous—and not just because of his aged, sagging gut. He detested the sight of his arm without his cybernetic prosthetic hand, and even now he hid the smooth stump of his left wrist underneath his good right hand.

The last corner before his room was just ahead. Silver peeked cautiously down the next hall, both ways. Clear. He was quick on his feet despite his declining figure—there still lingered some remnant of his taut-muscled youth. He darted down the hallway and allowed himself a sigh of relief as the doors to his private quarters slid open for him just as he approached.

This wasn't the first time he'd had to make the nerve-wracking trip. It reminded him of his childhood, tiptoeing through the hallways past bedtime, frightful of making the slightest noise—and then the sweet relief of safety. He pulled a bathrobe off the back of his desk chair and wrapped it around himself.

He was beginning to worry about these types of incidents, as they were getting more frequent and lately did not limit themselves to his sleep cycles. Sometimes he just blanked out. That's what he had started calling it. He'd found himself in the dining hall one morning a few months before, just sort of came to in the middle of eating breakfast. He had attempted to retrace his steps, but came up with nothing. No unusual activity on his finances. No visible wounds or other bodily damage. Just a three-hour gap in his memory. All he remembered was waking up that morning.

Bill knew he should check the records on his neural implant. The tiny computer at the base of his brain stem allowed him to control his prosthesis. He could use its logs to track his movements, figure out where he'd been, and maybe from there put his mind to rest. Probably just sleepwalking. Nightmares or some such. He just couldn't bring himself to look.

This squirming feeling in his gut told him he shouldn't.

Facing the turquoise glow of his computer's display, Bill Silver stared aimlessly and chewed his lip. He couldn't access the ship's security logs without raising eyebrows, and he definitely didn't want to draw attention to the incidents. But he had to know. His eyes lost focus as he walked himself through the mental process of sending the location data from the implant to his personal computer. Just the thought of bringing up the logs was enough to tie his innards in slippery knots—a belly full of snakes. He mentally peered inside the location data folder.

Before he could send the data to his personal computer his mind snapped shut. He began to hyperventilate, then watched in horror as his right hand trembled violently. The tremors spread up his whole arm. He felt sweat beading up on his skin. A fierce shiver shook his body, but then the episode passed as quickly as it had come upon him. He caught his breath in heaving gasps, in deep through his nose and slowly out from his mouth.

As much as these incidents terrified him, Silver refused to tell anyone about them. If he was deemed incompetent in his duties the other officers would toss him planetside and forget about him. No room for dead weight on a crowded ship, and what use is a man who can't be trusted with his own brain? Especially a man of his standing—he'd been Quartermaster aboard Wanderlust for three years running. The crew trusted him, depended on him. He'd spent a long time cultivating that trust, working his way up to his current position.

It wasn't easy starting from scratch with a new crew, but he'd proven his worth as an able crewman since his first trip through the belt with them. It was valuable to him on a personal level in addition to the obvious benefits. He didn't want to leave that way.

He moved to his bedroom and pulled on some underwear as he considered his options. He could leave with dignity, retire with his reputation intact. Plenty of land available on Surface. It would be much simpler. He had more than enough credit saved to buy a new identity, a healthy plot of land, and a home. He could live out the rest of his days in relative comfort and obscurity, posing as just another colonist. But Bill Silver knew he'd be stuck there for the rest of his days if he ever abandoned ship. It was the only thing that stopped him—fear of settling down again. Letting his old bones take a rest and having them decide they wouldn't get up again.

Last time he settled down he got fat. And there were few among his crewmates who ever let him forget that. Silver sat with a heavy huff on his bed. His robe fell open, revealing his belly hanging grotesque beneath sagging pectorals.  He lay back and swung his legs up onto the bed, then groped for the gravity controls. The Quartermaster's bedroom came equipped with an adjustable gravity plate beneath the floor, as did all the other officers' rooms.  When his hand found the little pad he swiped the intensity down to its lowest setting.

The cruel artificial gravity released its steady pull on his aged body. The force was enough to keep him from drifting away from the bed, but if he just pushed he knew he could easily propel himself to the ceiling before being drawn back down gently to the bed. As he drifted off to sleep he tried not to think of the planet Surface below, its great bulk spinning ceaselessly, its gravity clawing at him, pulling him down, down....

#

Silver woke with his sheets floating around his face like some kind of fabric manta ray. He must have been thrashing in his sleep and thrown the blankets around. The gravity was set so low they hadn't yet settled back down. He flattened the sheets against himself and wiped the crusty sleep from his eyes. Another day. Silver swiped at the gravity controls, returning the pull to its regular levels, and rolled out of bed. As he rose his eyes caught the clock and saw it was still early. He'd only slept three more hours.

With a sigh that turned into a phlegmy grumble, Bill shuffled to the bathroom.

After he finished bathing and dressing for the day, he sought to occupy himself for another hour or two before he started on his morning duties. He tried to keep abreast of current events in the system as much as he could, so he sat at his desk and logged in to his computer to check his news feed. He hadn't put his prosthetic on yet; he tapped in the password with his right hand in his own familiar way.

When he opened his browser to check the news his screen was filled immediately with bold headlines like EXPLOSION AT HOTEL KILLS ONE and FATED LOVERS FESTIVITIES CANCELLED AFTER HOTEL BOMBING. After reading a few of the articles he learned that the bombing appeared to have been a targeted attack against a guest in the hotel. No one else was killed, or even injured aside from a few ruptured eardrums. The name of the victim, however, was not released.

Bill already knew in his gut that it was Slack Dog.

He closed all the windows onscreen and rose from his chair. He had to go tell the Captain. With equal parts dread and determination, Bill exited his quarters and began to walk the path toward the Captain's quarters. There was a nagging doubt at the back of his mind that perhaps he was wrong, that maybe everything was still going according to plan after all.

He didn't know for sure which hotel the old space dog had chosen to stay in. That was the plan. Slack Dog was to wait at the hotel in his room from morning until late afternoon, then meet Bill on the orbital station in the transport shuttle from Wanderlust.  From there the two would leave the station for the orbital launching platform Wanderlust was docked at. The ship would be prepped for travel, ready to depart at a moment's notice. Silver would see to that.

If his worst fears were true it would throw a wrench in his machinations. Slack Dog was supposed to be their guide—he was the only one who had been there before, albeit a couple of decades previously. If the map proved unreliable, they would at least have Slack Dog as a backup. Now all they had was—the map—

Bill realized with a jab of fear in his chest that Slack Dog was supposed to bring the map, but it could have been destroyed in the explosion—or stolen. Bill knew then that Slack Dog was the only target of the bombing, and that somehow, someone knew what he had in his possession. Now the whole expedition was threatened. Without those coordinates they would be flying completely blind through the great dark spaces between the asteroids. Not a chance they'd find their big haul.

He resolved suddenly to find out for sure before telling the Captain. He ducked out of the hallway into the empty kitchen. Breakfast prep didn't start for another half hour, so he had the room to himself. Bill grabbed his phone and dialed Slack Dog's number, silently begging it to ring. 

#

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