Vessel (Lisa A. Nichols)

Vessel
Lisa A. Nichols
Atria
Fiction, Sci-Fi/Thriller
***+ (Okay/Good)

DESCRIPTION: When the wormhole appeared beyond Mars, NASA sent a ship investigate... and discovered a shortcut to the Trappist star system. Thus, the Sagittarius was launched with a six-person crew, destined to be the first humans to set foot on an alien world. But shortly after reporting the discovery of microscopic life, all signals vanished. Back home, their loved ones mourned the losses and slowly got on with their lives, even as NASA began working on the next mission. Then the impossible happens: the Sagittarius returns. But while it left Earth with six astronauts, it returns with only one.
Commander Catherine Wells does not know what happened on the alien world. She does not remember what happened to her companions and friends, or how she came to be the last survivor piloting the ship home. There are disturbing holes in the ship logs, as well, and signs of a catastrophe of some sort on board, but she has no clue what happened, or why. She struggles to reconnect with the husband she left behind and the daughter who went from being a little girl to a college-bound teen in seemingly the blink of an eye, trying to put the trauma behind her, until the blackouts start - moments where she'll blink and be somewhere else, hours missing from her memory. Then there are the intrusive, violent thoughts, where even her closest friends seem like strangers. Maybe it's just post-traumatic stress, or the physiological strain of her prolonged isolation or years spent in deep space; after all, the first astronaut to investigate the wormhole wound up cracking. But Catherine can't shake the feeling that there's more to it than mere stress, that something very important and very terrible happened in the Trappist system - and that many more lives may be in danger if she can't remember just what that something is.

REVIEW: Vessel starts with a compelling mystery and a traumatized, amnesiac woman, but sometimes doesn't quite seem sure what to do with either. Catherine sets out to be a strong, self-sufficient commander, but for at least the first half she feels more like a passive victim of her circumstances, refusing to heed the little voice in her head that keeps telling her something is not right, not with her or with the NASA party line she's expected to follow. And, in her defense, she does have some pressing problems Earthside to keep her occupied: her husband David, assuming she had died, moved on, bringing a new woman (an old friend) into his life and a new mom into her daugher Aimee's. It doesn't help that parts of the mission that she does remember cast doubt on the stability of her relationship... parts that she tries to hide from her superiors and therapist. She feels almost like a stranger in her own life, now, having missed so much. But dealing with a marriage on the rocks and a daughter who has grown into a veritable stranger (and a mother whose dementia diagnosis further alienates her) can't keep her from thinking about the mission she can't remember, or noticing the blackouts and "sleepwalking" incidents, and no matter what the NASA commanders and staff therapist insist, she just knows in her gut that this is no passing psychological issue but something bigger.
The only one who seems to share Catherine's suspicions is a stranger: Cal Morganson, part of the ground crew for the impending Sagittarius II mission - a misson that started after contact with Catherine's crew was lost, to follow up in the reports of alien life. He hasn't even left Earth and never trained for space missions, but he's the one who grows suspicious about Catherine's answers and the party line. He's the one who pushes and digs and investigates, while Catherine flails and frets and struggles to hide her dangerous blackouts and other symptoms, eventually resorts to anesthetizing her troubles with alcohol, before finally - finally - reaching out for help... and even then, she sometimes feels like a passenger on Cal's quest for the truth, rather than the one with the most skin in the game.
It goes without saying that there is, indeed, more going on than mere stress (and anyone who has read or watched tales with even vaguely similar setups can probably guess the jist of it), though there are some logic holes with that aspect... as well as why NASA keeps throwing live astronauts at problems that robotic probes might be better suited for, at least until answers are forthcoming as to why things keep going so disastrously wrong when humans poke their noses through the wormhole. (Catherine is not the first to come back altered by the journey, and NASA's ostracization of the previous astronaut to report odd side-effects really should've been a bigger red flag much earlier than it was for everyone involved.) Despite the logic holes, and the way characters start feeling like picks from the stock bin rather than their own people, things do pick up and start moving well in the back half of the book, though the conclusion feels too neat, even as it shows hints that it wants a sequel.
Vessel isn't a bad little science fiction thriller, but a few too many quibbles held it back from a solid fourth star.

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