Home Planet: Awakening (Part 1) (12 page)

The upper three-quarters of Module 7 were a giant warehouse with a curved part-cylinder side walls. It housed liquid storage tanks beneath the warehouse floor: potable water reserves, liquid fuel and numerous other chemicals contained in smaller tanks. From training, I also recalled that under the floor was also the super-cooled freezer store. Although no one back on Earth had tested it for one hundred and twenty years, it had been designed to preserve fresh foods for that length of time. The majority of the warehousing space comprised of metal shelving units extending from the floor to the ceiling in rows that ran bow-to-stern. In between the two-hundred-foot-high shelving arrays ran eight aisles and, above each, a yellow gantry crane affixed to rails plied its route. Or it would have done if there was anyone left to instruct it to. A stock-picking robot hung suspended from each crane. Assisted by reduced gravity, they could deliver items to the warehouse floor where driverless electric vehicles received them, or to the service bore, which ran along the center of the module. As one of the components of the ship’s spine, it ran from Module 1 at the front to Module 8 at the rear.

I arrived via the airlock located on the level above the warehouse ceiling. As well as the airlock, it contained a minor maintenance facility and amenities for the crew that worked below. Having removed my suit, I made a quick search of the desuiting room, finding spare suits, helmets and air bottles, as well as a few other assorted items. The most interesting of them I spotted inside an open locker—a pair of hand-held two-way radios. Useful in the warehouse below, not so useful with a spacesuit on. The fact that they worked surprised me, but I left them there next to the transceiver and would decide if there’d be useful later when I returned. Unencumbered by the bulk of the transceiver, I bounded along the metal grating above the warehouse below. The sonorous echoes from a loose grate reflected off the shelving and boxes below. In the fifty-percent Earth-gravity, each step took me further than the average Olympic long jumper, or felt like it did anyway. The lighting here and below looked subdued, but functional nevertheless. I passed though the double doors at the end and made my way down the open metal stairwell and onto the warehouse floor. The air smelled musty with hints of grease, but I couldn’t detect the smell of rotted food from the super-cooled freezers below. That meant either they were still doing their good work or that the access platform and hatch were so well sealed that no odor had found its way out.

A small control box with all plexiglass sides nestled in the corner. I had no illusions about the picker-bots actually working, but I had to try. If they did, then a simple product search would take away some arduous manual hunting. Even in reduced gravity, my aching arm didn’t relish the prospect of climbing the shelving.

The control box consisted of computer terminals for four workers, all arranged to be looking out on the warehouse at forty-five degrees from the corner. I could see that the two edgemost aisles extended across the girth of the ship and along the starboard flank. In the far corners were two more control boxes. Halfway to the one on my right, an empty electric vehicle—little more than a platform on wheels—waited as if for some long overdue work.

I looked up at the neatly stacked standard plastic storage containers of which there were only a few different sizes. Each had its own color from largest to smallest: yellow, red, blue and green. They made a colorful patchwork across each shelving array, reminding me of
Tetris.
This amount of materiel would’ve been unthinkable in the days before single-stage-to-orbit shuttles, Luna industry, and 3-D fabricators. None of it would’ve been necessary, either, because the
Juno Ark
would’ve been an economic impossibility. Then three technologies changed all that, slashing the cost per ton of getting stuff into space.

I tapped on each terminal display in turn—no success, no surprise—then bounded over to the other three control boxes. Same result. I’d also tried the several electric vehicles sitting idle during my trip—all were dead.

I stepped outside of the control box and looked up at the towering shelves above, so neatly stacked by the mechanical hands of the picker-bots. In a way, it was a mundane yet marvelous application of technology—work that would’ve taken hundreds of human hands weeks or months to complete probably took less than a day. For me, though, it was something less than marvelous. Without the access to the database, it’d take way too long to go through all of the thousands of boxes for what I needed. But they did have labels and there had to be some logic their layout. I returned to the first control box, opposite the end of the outer shelving array labeled
Row 1.

Gotta start somewhere,
I told myself and went over to read the labels on the nearest boxes.

I started at spares for air ducting, searched the ground-most shelves then climbed under reduced gravity to some higher up. It was easy going and halved the load on my wounded arm. After a few minutes, I got to electrical fittings before deciding Row 1 contained only hardware items, mostly for infrastructure. Row 2 was a mix of hardware and hand tools which graded to clothing, footwear and bedding partway along. I dug out a pair of comfortable socks and some size thirteen leather boots a quarter the way up, around fifty feet above floor level. I’d grown used to running around bare-footed, but wasn’t sure I’d feel the same in the wilds of Aura-c. Shuffling along the shelving, I got to the once-yellow-now-grubby top of the now stationary picker-bot and sat down to put on the footwear. With my new boots on, I got up feeling weaker than ever. A large part of the stores should’ve been food and I decided I’d started at the wrong end. Even at around half Earth-gravity, at fifty feet up, care was needed in climbing down. I did a quick calculation in my head using a formula drummed into us during high school math class and worked out I’d still hit the deck at thirty-five feet per second—seventy percent of the speed under Earth-gravity. Until that point, I’d not realized the potential danger, so I went more cautiously from then on.

In terms of food—something my blood sugar level and growling stomach were demanding—Rows 1 and 2 were a bust. I chose a higher numbered row semi-randomly: Row 6. There I struck gold... or food, anyway. After reading a few ground level labels—all food items—I couldn’t resist any longer and dragged out a red plastic box containing dried water biscuits. I opened the cardboard box inside and ripped open the first vacuum pack with some urgency. On examining them, there were no signs of decay so I took a bite. Although bland, they tasted wonderful to me and I kept on munching until my mouth became dry. As I sat there eating, I realized that ninety-nine percent of the shelves I’d seen were stocked. I wondered what this meant in terms of the colony on Aura-c. Maybe I was mistaken, but it suggested only a very small population of survivors.

Time will tell ... once I make it down and find out
, I concluded.

After a few minutes, I started to feel my energy levels pick up as I went in search of something to drink. As I soon discovered, Row 5 contained bottled and sacheted drinks. I selected a blue container labeled
Isotonic Drinks
, and thirty seconds later gulped down a half-liter bottle of the sugary orange liquid. Just like the biscuits, the drink had lived up to its long life description. Its effect was nearly instantaneous and I felt my old self again for the first time since waking from stasis. I read the contents and saw
Caffeine
, and realized stasis must have preserved my coffee craving along with the rest of me.

Whether it was the dose of the good stuff or just happenstance that led to it I didn’t know, but I spotted something I hadn’t noticed before. Further along the aisle, the dusty, grimy floor looked different somehow. About fifty feet away, at the side of the aisle was a cleaner patch, more like the original floor color than the grayish-brown of the dirt, which covered most of it. And although subdued, there was still enough light from shelf-mounted light strips to reflect from a patch of something shiny. I rose to my feet, strode closer and saw that for
shiny
read
liquid
,
spilled liquid
.

I bent down and touched the small slick. It felt sticky with sugary residue, most of the water having already evaporated. Against my better judgment, I tasted it and found it had once been apple juice. It was the main spill but not the only one, and there was a trail leading to one of the blue containers at ground level. I checked the label confirming its contents as cartons of the offending juice, then dragged it into the aisle beside the spill. On opening the lid, I saw the container was half-empty.

I crouched beside it, thinking through the possibilities.

It couldn’t have been accidental—a falling carton hitting the deck and splitting—as there was no carton and the juice container was at ground level, anyway. And although rats and other vermin existed on the ship, I’d only seen one rat since waking up, so perhaps many of the thousands of digester traps onboard must have still been working. I knew rats were smart, but I doubted they could’ve opened the container and removed a bunch of cartons. And there were no signs of gnaw marks, either. From its consistency, the juice had been spilled within the last few days, a week ago at most. There was only one explanation—a survivor had spilled it and the prime candidate was one Arnold T. Reichs.

I shouted, “Reichs … Reichs, I know you’re alive! Why don’t you come out and say
hi
?”

I continued, calling out.

“If you’re there, don’t be afraid. I won’t harm you … I’m a nice guy once you get to know me!”

I listened to my own echo reverberating off the hard surfaces, attenuating into the background noise. I analyzed my own words for signs of insanity. The trouble was, I’d began to forget what normal behavior
was
. With no social yardsticks to judge against, there was just my mind’s internal conversation to listen to—a standalone brain cut off from its network.

Search as I might for any other signs of his presence, I came up blank. No trail leading to him. No obvious disturbances other than his one mistake—the spill.

So I called off the search and contemplated my next move while hunting down the medical shelves. Waiting here at the source of the food was one option. Like a watering hole in the desert, it was a place both of us would need. Although meeting Reichs was important, it could wait. I needed to push forward with the plan for reaching the planet and there was something I’d overlooked, something that occurred to me only after I’d left, something I recalled from the induction tour of the ship—the maps of Aura-c. The printed back-up maps that I’d seen the old scientist poring in Module 3—the science and research module. This professor had been by far the oldest person on the
Juno Ark
. I’d remarked to the tour guide on his use of the big sheets laid out on his desk and it seemed he just preferred working with paper copies. But it was what was
on
those copies that mattered: detailed survey maps of the planetary surface derived from the powerful telescope array near Earth. The computer network may have been reeling, but if the paper maps survived this would give me some idea where the colony might be—the so-called
Hyland-Alpha
location.

A few minutes later, I located the right medical supply container and found antiseptic liquid. Some more hunting nearby yielded gauze and dressing material. I cleaned the wound and dressed it before going on to find the small green container with the antibiotics. Necking the single-pill course, I washed it down with some isotonic drink, relieved that I’d dealt with the potential infection.

That left me with one more thing to do before heading in search of the maps. What I needed was up top, above the warehouse. Taking four steps at a time, I quickly climbed the metal stairwell, and a short time later found myself back in the airlock desuiting room. In the center sat the bench with the transceiver and the two-way radios next to it. I picked up the compact walkie-talkies and pocketed them before taking a double right into the maintenance facility. The medium-size room had the near and side walls devoted to shelving with myriad raw materials—mainly metals, plastics and graphene in bars and sheets. Beside the wall opposite were four large 3-D fabricators for making a whole variety of spare parts and tools. Some tools sat already made on the shelves nearby. I checked the back of the two-way radio and found a screwdriver to open it up. Next, I retrieved one of the spare intercom badges I’d taken, switched it on, then muted its volume. After slipping it inside, I replaced the walkie-talkie’s cover. I pocketed the screwdriver and some electrical tape I’d found and went back down to the warehouse floor.

On returning to the scene of the apple juice slick, I started scoring a message on the dirty metal floor.

Greetings Arnold Reichs,

Switch on for first 5 min every hour on the hour.

I will do the same.

Luker.

Beside the message, I left the walkie-talkie with the intercom hidden inside. The fact I had no functioning watch and didn’t know the time of day didn’t matter. He didn’t know that. Maybe he’d do it, maybe he wouldn’t, but it was worth a try and could save a lot of tracking on my part. My guess was that he’d take the walkie-talkie and mull it over. Once he did, the intercom badge would reveal his location. But it’s always good to have a plan B, so before I re-shelved the container with the juice, I took out an unopened carton. The intercom badge was only the size of a penny, so I tucked it into the fold underneath the juice box. Taking the reel of electrical tape from my pocket, I secured the intercom in place with a small length. If Reichs failed to take the walkie-talkie, he was sure to take the juice eventually. Now, with
two
intercom badges to track him with, I felt confident I’d catch up with this guy and get some answers. If not, then I’d stake the place out until he came. Until then, I’d use my time more productively.