The USS Scorpion, Lost with All Hands

The sun shines and plants grow. From this, all else: French cuisine, Gregorian chants, a rusty Corolla by the side of the highway, a tennis call rolling down a paved road. A green leafy thing figured out how to turn sunshine into energy, and men close the seal on their pressurized tube and plumb the depths of oceans, frequently, but not always, returning to the dry air. Mysteries abound, and this episode plays with them.   

"Roused from a Sleep Newtonian" -- with "Closing" by Paul Dietrich

"i. e. Got Me a Girl" and "In Lines Like Seaweed on the Tide" -- with "72325/5" by Tad Neuhaus, Joanna Dane, and Loren Dempster

"The Screecher Comes in the Night" -- with "Five Quarter Tone Etudes 5" by Ed Martin

"The USS Scorpion, Lost with All Hands" -- with "By Ship" by Bill Gillard

"On My Reptilian Origin" -- song by Bill Gillard 

"Dyatlov Pass" and "One Day in the Rocky Island North" -- with "Liberabaci" by John Mayrose

"How to Pray to a Spider" -- with "War on Locks" by Offsite

 "Visions of Half Sleep" is a dreamlike soundscape, a collaboration among artists in northeast Wisconsin. It is Bill Gillard's words and voice along with music by many.

More from Bill Gillard

Website: www.billgillard.com

Instagram: billgillard3

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

This episode is titled The USS Scorpion Lost with All Hands. It features music by Paul Dietrich, Tad Newhouse, Joanna Dane, Lauren Dempster, Ed Martin, John Mayrose, Offsite, and Bill Gillard. Hypnagogia, Presomnal, Anthipnic sensations, Phantasmata, Praedormitium, the half-dream state, dreamlits, the wakefulness, sleep, transition. These all describe the land between wide awake and deep sleep. The borderland realm where we are neither alert nor unconscious, awake nor asleep, where we are neither our daytime selves, nor the free roaming spirits of the dream realm. We are there right now in this pre-dream condition. Welcome to Visions of Half Sleep, a radio show by Bill Gillard that features music by artists from all over Northeast Wisconsin. The idea is that the show takes place in the middle ground between wakefulness and deep sleep, the time between when your head hits the pillow and when you've completely vanished from this world. The words and music ease you into this other world, the place we live for one-third of our lives. Poems and stories are by Bill Gillard, and the music is by Nanny Agbeli, Greg Sabulski, Joanna Dane, Lauren Dempster, Paul Dietrich, Bill Gillard, Ed Martin, John Mayrose, Tad Newhouse, Nadia Nordhaus, Offsite, Tom Washatka, Drew Whiting. Find out more about the show, about the musicians, the writing. All of it's at billgillard.com. Dreams have a species of coherence. Fragments of one vision rest on another and careen off still another until something new is birthed. But we do not enter the dream world in a mad rush, no. The journey from wakefulness passes through the middle realm of half-sleep, a rocky highland where we spy deep dreams as they build scenery and fill their casts. We are aware and yet not. We shudder as the dream realm flashes into bright life. That morning. When a radio report on iron mining in northern Wisconsin excites me to a higher orbital. Their plan? To build the largest open pit mine in the world among spruce trees that cover these hills. A complex net of reflective star stuff and the source of fifteen rivers. The crater in the earth, four and a half miles by one and a half miles by one thousand feet deep. Northwoods residents shake Madison with their songs. My response to shine a tiny light on it, to see the thing itself before it burns, never to reassemble as it is right now. After a solo drive to the doomed Pinocchio range, I pitched my REI on pine needles and set up camp in the gloaming. Sleep comes easy on the cold early May nights, and I am absorbed into the matte black dream realm. I am transformed into a photon unbirthed among spruce cellulose fibers, the smallest spark deep inside sap-filled wood, an impossible creature of massless momentum, xyleming my own business. Not yet, but soon, the unsettling dream tells me, after the protests fail, and the human calendar hits the ignition point, I will burst eagerly ruful from splintered wood to bright life at precisely Albert's limit. I know I'll move too fast for them to tag and burn me, my capsule, yes, and all the forest that cradled me, but not me, roused from a sleep Newtonian at the sound of digital chimes. I'm returned to this relativistic nylon tent morning and relieved for a moment that a tree's non-digital gong tam-tams once each spring, and that has always been sufficient. Hurdling upward into the void of a new day, I vow to find a way in my next life to be better admired by those with the big yellow machines of the next inhabited planet. I must learn to do something pungible, not just be a tree. To be someone measured by dollars, judge worthy by those whose frames trudge down the marble rotunda steps to fumble for the handle at the end of the dark hallway. Push open that door, not to the assembly chamber, but surprised to a photon-filled lot crowded with Christmas trees, the bag tagged and clear-cut, the spruce trees, the now as good as dead Pinocchio range. Afterward, the flames will procreate as they do, to birth my photon cousins from their cellulose wombs. Oh, the things I'd do had I mass and not simply momentum. But I know that I will fly vectorward and be absorbed again one day to dream of how things might be if we all calendared by a tree's Tam Tam. A lot. The only one that ever did what I wanted it to do, i.e., got me a girl, was this little piece of a song about a small town girl moving out on her own. She left in the summer night, just walked out the back door, across the yard, across the spinach farm next door, down the gravel road to the truck stop, the interstate, where she waited for an honest-looking driver to stop in and fill up. But it took hours. Made her think hard about her life. And then a storm rolled in in my line. Turn your face into the rain. Then she learned something important about herself that night. My band played for gas money in those little roadhouses in the corner of any bar, the tables pushed against the wall. People want to dance. That night I saw her, face framed by a beer sign, all dressed in blue. She smiled and turned away. Then I sang that line, and there she was again. I could feel the heat coming off her body as I sang that little song in that North Country bar. We loaded out under the awning by the dumpster in the cold autumn rain. And I filled the back of our van with cymbals and drums, amps and keys. Woman in the shadows, back to the wind. Turned to me, turned her face into the rain. Didn't blink. Her eyes and mine. I held notes. She breathed deep. And I laughed. Hey, you want to get some coffee? Okay, that's two lines that worked. I don't remember seeing the snow start. Here inside the warming sun shines through porch windows into my study. Where I sit and push a pen across a page. As if it were a snake. Tense, striking again and again at a skittish small thing. Just past the next pen stroke. Out of fang's reach. The fangs that leave a jagged black line across the page. The pen that leaves a jagged black line across the page where they have both missed their prey. Whence the snow, the cold that penetrates the walls, a thin skein of ice on the window panes, the second skin, invisible before, but now unmolting itself, crystalline and pure. And whence my breath, visible in lamplight. I don't remember these first flakes falling. New white skin over the earth's tender belly, smoothing over jointed complications until all freezes beneath layered gauze. A sharp memory lies bandaged beneath webbed experience. My hand stiffens, its reptilian self, who dreams of basking in sundapled summer lowlands, instead testifies to deepening cold, the skin of decay. Did you hear it last night? And you nod, solemn, quick, quick, quick, and then turn your eyes away. Some of the kids say it's a ghost. Others say it's a lost cousin of the human race. A giant ape-like ancestor, something like Bigfoot, carnivorous, merciless, immortal. Parents don't hear the unholy screech the thing makes. They never know about the real things. And when you try to tell them, they say go back to sleep. Or it was just a dream. You find a book in the library that tells you that the early white settlers just west of what is now called Mina knew exactly what the creature sounds like. In the deep heart of the night, night, a high-pitched moan, a scream, not human, followed by a terrifying grunt as heavy footfalls like distant thunder crash through the brush. The book says that on some mornings farmers find huge animal prints in the mud near their lonely house. They kick dirt and snow over them so the wife and kids won't start talking about moving to a south, to a place where the screecher can't track them by their scent. That's what those early white settlers called the beast, the screecher. Check the papers from that time. Kids went missing, dogs and livestock, too. No explanation, but for the strange noises reported. Dismissed as imaginary. And there are still reports, even to this day, of strange sounds in the night coming from fields and woods out by Larson and Clayton. A malevolent phantom, a spatter of fear as it seeks its next victim. Go ahead, go ahead. Drive out there at night, night. Find a field, any field, shrouded in mist. Shut down the headlights and the engine if you dare. And then wait, wait, wait. If you see a strange glow in the distance that seems to be coming closer, as if the night itself has taken on an eerie cast, greenish, menacing. If you hear something unearthly out in that field, a high-pitched moan, you just can't place something terrifying. And if it is coming closer and closer in the night, drawn by the heat of your body, the smell of the blood coursing through your veins. A radio experience that is one hour long. It's poems, music, and stories, the illusions that flash in your mind in the moments before sleep. Stories and poems by Bill Gillard, music by Bill Gillard and others. All details are available at BillGillard.com. This episode is titled The USS Scorpion Lost with All Hands. It features music by Paul Dietrich, Tad Newhouse, Joanna Dane, Lauren Dempster, Ed Martin, John Mayrose, Offsite, and Bill Gillard. White calves fizzed and bubbled in all directions as Steve, a 15-year-old boy, struggled with the sail in his little boat. The sun had fallen behind the roiling clouds in the west, leaving him out in the middle of Lake Winnebago a mile from shore, trying to tack across a stiff breeze and maybe soon a storm, too. To the west, the lights of Mina, his hometown, flickered in the gathering twilight, but soon became fuzzy in the fog that rode the advancing bank of clouds. Captain's log, a supplemental, a routine storm mapping assignment he pulled on the boom line. I can still tack my way there, Steve said nervously to himself. No problem, even if it takes all night. He was wiring and strong and thought himself an experienced sailor. So when he borrowed the little sailboat from the marina that afternoon, he thought he'd be clean out of sight and gone before anyone would notice. Not that he'd get into trouble. He was special and he made it work to his advantage. Steal a boat? Puppy dog eyes, wipe away a tear. No problem, poor kid. Take the boat anytime you want. He'd be needed down in Florida for real space travel soon, Steve thought. That's where I need to be. Not here, where all they could talk about is bad news. July for Apollo 11. Two months to get there. At maximum warp it was possible. Definitely. They can make it to the moon. I can make it to Florida, he thought. As the sky darkened, however, he was still having trouble tacking the boat south and across the wind when the first stinging icy drops of rain pelted him. The little boat struggled to stay pointed in any one direction as waves pressed it over the bow and water sloshed around the boy's ankles. Steve let the boom swing port and starboard, trying to get everything headed in the right direction. But no matter what he tried, the boat's prow kept turning east, pushed irresistibly by the wind toward the sparsely settled eastern shore of the lake. Waves broke over the gun whales, and little boat was in danger of getting swamped. Again and again, Steve filled the empty coffee can and dumped it over the side. He tried to bail and till at the same time, but neither was having much of an effect. With the cresting waves and steady rain, he could barely keep up. Soon he abandoned the sail altogether and grabbed another rusty coffee can and bailed with two hands. The little sailboat spun and drifted where the wind pushed it while the shivering, soaked boy frantically dumped water over the side. He stopped for a moment and scanned the wooded shoreline in the distance. Now Nina was nowhere in sight, and the cold wind now stung him, blasted through his wet clothes and through his skin. He opened his knapsack, unfolded the three shirts he brought with him, and put them on. He stuck socks on his hands for warmth, too. But none of that helped. He was cold and getting colder. If he couldn't get turned in the right direction soon, if the temperature kept dropping, he might end up in Fond du Lac at the business end of an iceberg. That thought made him laugh. Aye, sir, just getting my space legs under me, Steve lied to himself. He was getting good at lying to himself these days. All part of sailing. We'll be out of the Ion storm any minute now and on our way again. Steve stopped bailing and hunched over for warmth. He knew he was somewhere out in the middle of the lake now. He bent forward, closed his eyes, and focused on the sound of the wind hissing through his mast lines. But just as soon as it had blown up, the wind stopped. No more raindrops fell either, it had all stopped. He'd seen that before here in Wisconsin. A strong front blows through, leaving calm behind it. The trouble here was no longer the rain, but the cold. The northwest wind had brought with it an icy air. The rain had stopped shore, but on this May afternoon, Steve could swear he smelled snow in the air. He shook out his wet ball cap. If only he could stop shivering. His light spring clothes were soaked through. He hadn't planned on a survival mission in Arctic temperatures just an escape from home. And the bad news that waited there. If he could outrun the news, travel at warp speed, maybe he could keep it all from happening. The wind and rain were bad enough, but he preferred them to what he now faced, a dead calm and a mounting cold. Steve searched all around him in the failing light. Except for the water immediately nearby, he could see nothing but a black wall of gray, as if he had been scooped out like ice cream from the world. Alright, now what do we do? Steve fingered the zipper on his jacket. He checked the knots of the sail rigging. He didn't want to have to explain himself, even if it was to himself. He hid from the truth like that. But then he remembered something that his older brother Frank had told him last time he was home. How long ago was it? Two years now? A submarine crewman Frank was, out on some secret missions to the world. He just didn't have time to come home much, and Steve didn't blame Frank one bit. Why would anyone want to come home to a dump like Nina? Well, you're outsea in the world. Going where no man has gone before. But what was that thing Frank told him? Take stock of the situation. Be honest. Find the things you can control and make them work for you. Alright, let me see. It looks like the wind's died down a little bit, but we need a little wind to get us moving again. I ate plenty today, and I have food for a few days packed. I know the shore is around here somewhere, and any dryer land is better than being out here, so if I pick a direction, I'll get where I'm going. As he spoke, the last remaining light of day dwindled. Darkness pressed in on him from every direction. And soon even the darkness was gone. It was like dying. Steve thought Lake Winnebago, the final frontier. He couldn't help but laughing. He pulled the collar of his jacket up over his head. He'd never liked the cold. Even after spending all his winters in a frigid northern outpost, Nina was a kind of remote ice planet that Captain Kirk would find, conquer, and abandon in an hour. Not live there forever and watch his life disappear into nothingness, or even worse, a pity job at a paper mill. Captain's Lock, Stardate 6271. Steve flipped open his hand and spoke into his palm. Stranded on the surface of Alpha 177. Tell Spock it's fine if the transporter duplicates things. I'm willing to live with the evil blanket. Sometimes the shove bugged him. Not usually, but sometimes. I'll let Sulu have the good-natured, gentle blanket if that's what worries you, Spock. Get the replicators working overtime here. Start beaming down blankets, and I'll drink the evil hot chocolate too. Steve sat back against the gunwale, his arms folded across his chest. He could hear the lake whisper beneath him. He could even hear the distant whirr of mills on some shore, menasha, Oshkosh. Where were they coming from? He couldn't tell. In the sky above, the endless expanse of blankness and stars up there, the moon itself. Well, it was all obscured by the black mist that hung in the air around him. Just get across this lake, he thought to himself. Once I get across, no one knows me. I can make a good time hitching down to the Cape. It's long past time to get my life going, he hummed to himself. The news just pushed me where I wanted to go. He squinted. The mist had changed somehow. It carried a faint, deep red as if he had rubbed his eyes too hard or shined a flashlight through the thin skin of his fingertips. Then he heard something strange and sat up tall, his ears alert. A hissing, her gentle wish. It would have been a sound from the shore, from another boat. Lieutenant, open a channel. This is Captain Steve T. Van Dyke of the USS Enterprise. We're on a peaceful mission. Please respond. And he saw it in the fog ahead of him. The water glowed red as if lit from below. Steve whispered, Spock analysis. He stared intently into the darkness. The water churned frothy, bubbles rising rapidly to the surface, all bloody in color as if the earth itself had been wounded. Pure energy, Steve responded, like nothing we've encountered before. He remembered the film strip from a science class on luminescent fish of the deep ocean, how they used light to lure their prey. Film strips were his favorite. The dark room, no one staring at him, no one making fun. Just the big world out there, flickering in the dark. Not real like Star Trek, but still better than stupid school. Steve leaned over the side of the sailboat and gazed into the water. The usual brown murk of the lake glowed red. Behind him, beneath him, in front of him, but it wasn't moving like a school of fish might. The light seemed to be coming from one place as if someone had a powerful red lamp deep down there. As he watched, the bubbles intensified, the red light illuminating the misty air around him like fire. Suddenly the water below him roared to life, and the red glow enveloped his little boat. He rocked from side to side as the water roiled beneath him. The red light had been below him. Now it was at surface level, and then above him. It was all he could do to keep his little boat from flipping over. And then, bathed in the glow of the red light, the lake calmed down again. The bubbles and frothing stopped. The island of blackness rose. A steep, sheer cliff of glistening metal glowed in the strange red life. Steve froze in terror. The little sailboat balmed. The little sailboat bobbed in the turgid water, banged up against something hard. Steve reached out for it and touched cold metal, a ship, he whispered. How could it be? Something heavy scraped above him, out of sight, followed by a loud clank of metal on metal.

SPEAKER_01 29:16

A submarine, he whispered.

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Just then, one end of a heavy rope landed with a thud inside his little sailboat. The other end snaked up into the blank, black side of the mystery ship. For a moment, Steve couldn't breathe. It was all so fantastic. Alone in the boat, he wondered what he should do next. A captain goes down with his ship. Captain Kirk would never abandon the Enterprise or his five-year mission. Steve clung to the side of the little sailboat and imagined what his father might say when he told him he had stolen and then lost somebody's boat. But this submarine, how would anyone believe that? But if he died out there, his father might be mad too. Steve smiled. There was no way his father would not be mad about this, so why not abandon his little boat? He took the rope in his hands and felt its weight and would certainly hold him. He stood in his little boat and tugged on the rope. He could climb that, no problem. He looked down at his little boat that sparked in the red glow. Try to make it back to the marina by dawn, okay? You remember the way, right? And with that, Steve climbed the rope higher and higher. Until he reached the deck, he climbed the ladder up the outside of the subsail. The main hatch was open, and he climbed down the interior ladder to the empty and dim submarine control room. Above him, the hatch clanked shut, locking out the nighttime cold, hocking him inside. From deep inside the sub, steam hissed and valves clanked as if the whole thing were alive somehow and was digesting a meal of Steve. He looked around at the various gauges and lamps that flashed and spun, wondering what it all meant. He thought about Frank's advice. He knew there were some things he could still control even in this weird situation. But the loud bang of a hatch closing somewhere in the humid distance brought him back to reality. Yes, something he could control. Ghosts on a ghost submarine? Luckily, no, that was not something he could control. He stepped away from the forward hatchway. He frowned and imagined what might come through the door. The sub had rescued him, it was true, so maybe they're friendly. But whoever heard of a submarine in Lake Winnebago, maybe there's something else. Klingots, Romulans, something like that. He tensed his fists, ready for battle. The heavy black latch spun to release the hatchway door. Steve breathed deeply and raised his fists. The door swung open, and a man in navy uniform stood revealed in the opening. For a moment, Steve's eyes stopped on the uniform, the starch blue and white, the metals festooding his breast. Then he lifted his eyes. A face he recognized. It was Frank. Steve leaped into Frank's arms with a whoop. Frank smiled and hugged him tight. How are you, squirt? Steve sobbed into his brother's shoulder. You're here. I knew you would be. They're all wrong. Dad and all of them, he croaked, a hard lump, clogging his throat. Frank laughed, tossed Steve's hair. What's the idea, you, Mr. Knucklehead, out there in the middle of the lake? About to get frozen solid. I was Steve stammered. I was I was running away. He hung his head embarrassed, then his face brightened. I was going to Cape Kennedy to watch the launch of the moonshot. Frank looked at him quizzically and then nodded gravely. And why were you running away? Because they said well They said you weren't coming back. That you were never coming back, that your boat sank. Frank left sank? Impossible. Who told you that? Dad, all of them. And you believe them? Steve closed his eyes. His head hurt. Believe them? Yes. No. He he didn't know anymore. Frank looked at him closely. You sure you want to run away? He let his brother go. I know you probably have a lot of questions. I don't have a lot of time. Believe me, I had to move mountains to sign this boat out for the night. So let me show you around a little bit. Sit right here. Frank said, pointing at one of the seats along the hall that faced a dizzying array of gauges and switches. Here's how you control the speed of the engines and the pitch of the diving planes. Here, push her up to quarter speed. But how do we know where we're going? Steve asked seriously. Frank leaned over and pointed to the various instruments did. Steve tuned him out and shook his head.

SPEAKER_01 33:36

None of this is happening.

SPEAKER_02 33:37

None of it. He rubbed his eyes. He felt a heavy hand on his shoulder. He opened his eyes to see his older brother's energetic face beaming at him. Time to bring us home, Captain. Steve frowned. Who, me? Frank nodded sturdy. Orders, Captain? Steve nodded deep in thought. Please just take us home. Course, speed and depth, sir. Back to Nina. Frank smiled uneasily and leaned close to Steve. You're not playing the game the right way, Steve. Come on. Believe it a little bit. He stepped back and lifted his chin. Course, speed and death, sir. Steve hated being conned. He hated the feeling that someone was pulling something on him. Happened all the time at school, recess, even a teacher sometimes. Frank, too. He hated being played for a fool. Nina was to the west. He knew that. He had sailed almost due east before he lost his bearings. The wind likely pushed him south. Steve cleared his throat, whispered uneasily, uh, course 300 degrees, one quarter speed, dive to. Hey, is it possible to dive to ten feet? I mean, it's like Winnebago, we're talking about. Frank snapped, your orders, Captain. Finally, Steve smiled and said, Helmsman, bring us about. Course 300 degrees, three-quarters speed, periscope depth. Frank beamed. Aye, sir. Frank leaped from station to station. The ship came alive. Somewhere in the distance, engines rumbled to life. Steve felt the deck beneath his feet shift slightly, as if they were underway and picking up speed fast. He flicked switches and spun dials as if he were born for it. Frank raised the periscope to Steve's eye level. Steve grabbed both handles and peered through the lenses. Outside he saw nothing but darkness. The fog remained on the surface, and the lake was calm. Still, they made headway. He could feel it through his shoes. They reached some shore soon. He scanned ahead of him off to the port and starboard, looking for lights, a town, anything. The ping of sonar brought him back to the interior of the sub. Frank pointed out the readings on the circular scope. Then back to the periscope, out in the middle of the lake. This depth was no problem. Steve knew enough about the lake to know it near the shore, however, it was shallow, muddy, perfect for mucking things up. He had already done that enough for one day. But in all this thick fog, how could they see the shore before they ran aground? But then he saw it. At first he thought it might just be a trick of the twin periscope lenses, but there it was again, a faint white light. Steve knew exactly what it was, knew exactly what they were, and he was alarmed. He had to think fast. Full stop, he shouted. Helm answering, Frank replied. Steve pulled back from the periscope as he felt the ship slow down dramatically when Frank cut the engine. He noticed a compass mounted in the periscope, and in a second he knew how to read it. Surface running, Helmsman. Change course, heading. Steve thought for a moment, did the calculation again to make sure of himself. Checked the faint light in the periscope. The light at Lighthouse Park. Right there in his hometown of Nina. He took a deep breath. Heading 297. Take us home, Frank. Hey, you gotta call me Helmsman or Lieutenant or something. Steve smiled. Okay, Mr. Sulu. Bring us in slow and easy. Frank leaned forward in his seat. I captain, slow and easy. Through the periscope, the lighthouse beamed its white light high above everything else. But soon the lights of Nina materialized through the mist as if from a dream. His course was straight and true, bought him toward the opening of the channel just south of Doty Island. Most houses were dark. It must have been after midnight, Steve thought. But the mills and lights downtown shone brightly. Through his feet he felt the engines wind down to silence. He felt the sub decelerate and then drift. He pulled his eyes from the periscope to see Frank beaming at him. Are you home now for good? Steve asked. Frank smiled uneasily and slowly shook his head. Nah, but it's time for you to go home, little brother. He reached for the ladder that led up to the sail hatch where they'd climbed in. Steve studied his brother's face. Aren't you coming too? Dad's gonna be mad if you don't. Frank pulled Steve close and hugged him hard. You tell Dad I always meant to come home. I didn't mean to stay away for so long. Tell him that I miss him. Frank took hold of the cold metal ladder and climbed up through the narrow tube to the hatch. He spun the hatch open, and night air pressed in on them from above. He hopped down on the deck next to Steve. There you go, Captain. In a daze, Steve climbed the ladder out onto the sail. The night had turned colder. The lights of the Nina Marina flickered dimly in the mist. Steve looked back, down, into the hatch. For a moment the world spun beneath him and he grasped the rail for balance. The black circle at his feet yawned open, his mouth drawing him closer. Darkness, a doomsday machine. Frank, Steve shouted, come up here right now. He wanted to reach his foot downward for that first step of the ladder. He wanted desperately to go back there to join Frank no matter where he went. But if what those men said was true, then none of this was real. How can anyone tell what's real and what's not? Frank, Steve shouted. He wanted to leap back inside the sub, jump into the maw of the doomsday device, destroy it from within. But he couldn't get his feet to move. He felt cold tears running down his face. I'm a coward, he thought. He's right there, my own brother, and I'm too weak to save him. He rocked back and forth at the rail on top of the subs towering sail. There is no third planet, he whispered again and again. You think I don't know that? Finally he closed his eyes and let go. He fell backwards away from the void, out into the darkness. Somebody was shaking him gently awake, his mind cleared enough to hope it was Frank, but when he opened his eyes, he saw the concerned face of his father. The sky had brightened towards sunrise. Frank! Steve sat up excitedly. No. His father whispered, it's just me, I've been looking for you all night. Steve struggled unsteadily to his feet. Water slashed through his shoes as the little sailboat moored securely at the marina, rocked from side to side. He's here, Steve shouted. I wish he was too, believe me, his father whispered. He helped Steve up onto the dock. Steve looked around confused. The scorpion, it was right here, right here, and Frank was Frank was here too. Steve's father put his hands on his son's shoulders. You had a dream, son, that's all. You're in this boat. You've been out here all night. Too cold from your own good, and you had a dream. And some little thing came back to Steve. The black sedan in the driveway, and the two Navy men who rang the front door, the hushed conversation, Dad. Dad walking into the TV room, just as Commodore Decker told Kirk and Spock that to save his crew he had transported all of them to the surface of the third planet in the system, and Kirk's reply. Steve tried to shake out that dream in favor of the other one. He tried to make a choice that would save Frankie. He knew that what you believed was important and how hard you believed it made the most difference. He established a group of like minded adventurers to tackle some of the most difficult winter terrain in the Soviet Union. They were all certified at the highest possible level and were ready for it. Anything that the winter world could throw at them. The eleven skiers planned their route and departed on January 23rd, 1959. They took a train and then a truck to the northernmost settlement at the base of the Ural Mountains. Their aim was to pass through the highest peaks, a challenging and dangerous route. And then up Gora O'Torton, a peak inaccessible except through strenuous effort. Early on, two of the group turned back with injuries, either physical or emotional. The rest pressed on. On January 31st, they made base camp preparing for the climb of Gora Otorzin. They stored food along the way for the return journey. Evidence shows that all was well and that their plans were rolling along as scheduled. However, a sudden storm obscured their trail. They went off course. They were ascending Kolat Cycle, the adjacent peak. When Datloff realized their mistake, he decided to make camp on the side of the mountain to practice that skill rather than to return to the relative safety of the wooded area a thousand feet below their location. Before they left, Datloff told friends they would be returning to the settlement on February 12th. It might be a little longer than that. By February 23rd, the families of the missing group members demanded a search and rescue be mounted, and so police, military, and local volunteers hiked into the wilderness in search of the missing nine. What they found shocked them. The group's tent was abandoned and badly damaged on a high slope of Kolat Cycle. One of the searchers said the tent was half torn down and covered with snow. It was empty. All the group's belongings and shoes had been left behind. The tent had been cut open from the inside. Nine pairs of footprints led down the slope to the forest. Nine pairs of bare feet. Or only socks, down that frigid mountainside. At the edge of the wood, they discovered two bodies, both frozen, dressed only in their underwear. Then they found three more frozen and mostly nude corpses just inside the tree line. It took four months to find the other four bodies. They were discovered under 13 feet of snow, about 250 feet into the forest. It looked as if they had taken clothing from the previously discovered bodies and tried to use it to protect themselves. All four of the bodies had severe trauma to their faces. One was missing her tongue. Another had his eyebrows removed as if surgically. Another was missing both eyeballs. There's no indication that there was anyone else present when the deaths occurred. Only six of them died of hypothermia. The other three died of blood force trauma. There was no indication that the exit from the camp was anything but voluntary. There were no animal prints or signs of physical struggle. The group appears to have cut their way out of the tent voluntarily and then walked with very little clothing down the mountain to their deaths. Medical examiners ruled that the blood force trauma to the final three victims was so severe that it was impossible that it was caused by any human who might have been in the area. This conclusion has many, many detractors, as you might imagine. For one thing, the search and rescue team found no evidence at all of an avalanche. The tent was upright and intact, except for the evacuation hole. The preceding hundred expeditions to the air reported nothing even close to avalanche conditions. The team was skilled and knowledgeable. They would not have set up camp in an area that was at all vulnerable to an avalanche. A different group of hikers, 31 miles south of the incident, reported that they saw strange orange spheres in the sky to the north on that night. Similar spheres were observed in Aedel and adjacent areas continually during the period from March to April 1959, some in February as well by various independent witnesses, including the Meteorology Service and the military. These sightings were not noted in the 1959 investigation. Various witnesses have come forward years later. I saw a bird pick lightly through its mud-diminished kingdom. Shapes of seeds, like shapes of words, like spring, summer, fall when snow goes to water, goes to ice. One day in a rocky island north. The seasons are reflected and symmetrical and nest in snow in hollows on hills in Newfoundland. Her life of web weaving and eating. The toughest kid on the block, eight-eyed monster with mandibles from here to next week, and she stops too. She's curious. She might be feeling she's being watched from above. Maybe that she's not alone. Should I give her a sign from the heavens? I am here. And that I built all of this for her. Well, not exactly I, but not exactly for her, but that her safe passage across the floor is my doing. I could end it all with a flick of my toe. A sign, like maybe waving my arm in front of the sun. Shadow passed. An ancient omen, the warning in our tired blood of all that wakes and waits in the coming blackness. We meet our nightly death, surrender our will, our purpose, ourselves, to visions of half-sleep that flow from that midnight realm, our fragile lives, these tired lights, they make soft shadows. We float silently toward sleep's moonlit gate, gossamer life in this black blankness, this nightly death summoned, we surrender now to haunt the land beyond the moonlit gate of dreams. In visions of half sleep, visions of half sleep, visions of half sleep. Visions of half-sleep is a radio show by Bill Gillard that features music by artists from all over northeast Wisconsin. The poems and stories are by Bill Gillard, and the music is by Nanny Agbeli, Greg Sabulski, Joanna Dane, Lauren Dempster, Paul Dietrich, Bill Gillard, Ed Martin, John Mayrose, Tad Newhouse, Nadia Nordhaus, Offsite, Tom Washatka, and Drew Whiting. All details are available at BillGillard.com. We'll be back next week at this time for more visions of half sleep. Until then, pleasant dreams. This episode is titled The USS Scorpion Lost with All Hands. It features music by Paul Dietrich, Newhouse, Joanna Dane, Lauren Dempster, Ed Martin, John Mayrose, and Bill Gillard.