The Island of Hope Read Online Free PDF

the ugly sparkling sphere, it was changing its course, attracted by the heavier body.
    A few stray fragments began to appear around. They floated past, grinning with hideous rupture holes, their molten sides deformed. Bent barrels of laser guns protruded out of an assault module like broken human arms.
    Then a cruiser floated into view, rotating slowly. Andrei's attention was drawn to the wide open lock gate and a cloud of black dots floating around it. Because of the rotation of the massive cruiser, some of them had formed a sort of circle around the spaceship, similar to a broken string of beads.
    The module started turning. The cruiser must have had gravity. Andrei peered at the monitor, deciding whether he should go and open the valve. His trajectory would lead him directly to the open airlock, the internal gates of which remained closely shut. There was a high probability of finding some atmosphere inside the ship. Wouldn't that be nice. There could be oxygen, food, a powerful transmitter, maybe some survivors even.
    The next hour was one of wearisome waiting. His compartment got caught by the cruiser's gravitational field and was now carried away from the mass of wreckage following an extended elliptical route. The black gaping mouth of the airlock loomed ever closer.
    Unable to stand it much longer, Andrei put on his spacesuit and got out.
    His dexterity had notably increased during the last days. He was now quite accustomed to the infinite abyss, the blood-red lights and the sense of utter loneliness. He secured himself with the safety tether, switched on his magnetic boots and stood up straight on the hull.
    One of the black dots was heading directly for him. Others too began approaching his little "ship" which gradually drifted almost into the very midst of the weird cloud. Andrei took a better look.
    At first he could make out arms; then he saw the gleam of a pressurized helmet's visor. Finally, the scene zoomed in with all its dreadful details.
    He was drifting among corpses.
    Standing amidst the icy silence of the vacuum on top of his mauled spaceship fragment, he watched the approaching body, unable to avert his eyes.
    He had been a commando. Their group must have attacked the cruiser: his gray commando spacesuit had been cut up by a laser ray, and some dark stains of blood had crystallized on the edges of the carbonized wound. Through the cracks in the burst visor he could see a young face and huge empty eyes distorted by agony.
    'Space was too small for us,' he thought, realizing the monstrous absurdity and corniness of that phrase. They had traveled through a tiny sector of boundless space where there still remained thousands of unexplored planets — and immediately afterward had begun killing one another, obeying some laws of economic and social development or, to be more exact, obeying their own nature and herding instinct; due to their lack of personal mentality, a small group of paranoid bastards pushed them toward each other, ordering them to kill and destroy.
    Andrei could have been in that commando's place, floating in this nameless sector of space: a lump of frost-covered flesh, a cold, indifferent, dead satellite of the destroyed cruiser.
    He didn't believe anything anymore. The body floated past, its outstretched arms almost touching him — followed by another one and by dozens of others here and there.
    The suffering inside him was too great. He didn't feel anything anymore. He just stared at them, his eyes empty with pain, knowing he'd never be happy again. Even if he survived. A memory like that never fades, and time cannot help it.
     
    * * *
     
    A few lights glowed in the depth of the battle control room of the battered cruiser. All of the crew had died. The spacecraft was depressurized, practically bereft of power. But those who were now floating in the vacuum around the wreckage of their stronghold had constructed the most perfect destruction systems. Their killing machines were