One Small Step, an anthology of discoveries (40 page)

“
It’s called a ‘prom’,” said Sol.

The walls of the chamber melted into a softly lit dance hall festooned with red streamers. Overhead, a slowly revolving glitterball painted the walls with silver stars, and yellow rose petals rained slowly to the floor.

“
May I have this dance?” said Sol.

Ven nodded, and did her best to imitate his hold. They swayed slowly to the tune of ‘We Three’ by The Inkspots, and she found herself resting her head on his shoulder. The music seemed to drift from far away, and Ven realised that this was what a party should be like.

The pod suddenly rocked, and Ven crashed into a wall, the dance hall vanishing in a crackle of light. Klaxons sounded for a few seconds, then went silent. Ven stopped to check that Sol was unhurt, then rushed to the bridge.

“
Mike! Status!” said Ven.

“
Hull breach on the starboard module,” said Mike. “Hypervelocity meteoroid impact.”

“
Can you patch it?”

“
I’m compensating with the shield, but we’ve lost cargo bay three.”

“
We’ll need to seal the fracture,” said Ven. “How bad is it?”

“
Two hundred and forty-seven by five millimetres. Thirty-one metres from the hatch.”

Ven swept her hand across the console, studying the blinking red gash on the ship’s schematics.

“
I’ll suit up,” said Ven.

“
You weren’t designed for space walks.”

“
The
Morning Star
wasn’t designed to fly twelve years without a pit stop,” said Ven. “Just take care of Sol, okay?”
 

“
Ven—”

“
Ultimately, it’s what I’m here for—”

“
Ven!” snapped Mike. “Sol’s just turned off surveillance in corridors nine through sixteen.”

Ven glanced at the schematic. He’d blanked out almost a quarter of the lower module.

“
Hell no,” said Ven. “Mike, seal off corridor sixteen now!”

She skidded down the chute to the module, bolted past the darkened multimedia pod, and slammed into a sealed hatch.

“
I said corridor sixteen!” yelled Ven, wrenching at the unresponsive wheel.

Through the porthole in the door, she could see Sol at the inner door to the secondary airlock, already suited up, the panel beside him carefully detached to expose a fretwork of wires.

“
Sol!” Ven pounded her fist on the window, but Sol continued to tap and twist at the electronic nerve bundle. “Mike, get this open!”

“
Ven, he’s—” The sine wave flared and contracted, then the monitor beside Ven went dark.

“
Mike? Mike!” said Ven.

On the other side of the hatch, the inner airlock hissed open. Ven knew teenage boys were susceptible to high-risk behaviours due to some kind of interaction between the frontal lobe, the amygdala, and fermented beverages, but this went far beyond riding a wheelie bin down the sky tube. Sol had never worn a counterpressure suit, never had EVA training. Ven wasn’t even sure if their microcapsule sealant still worked.

Doctor Josh hadn’t entrusted the last human in the universe to Ven only to have him die in a freezing vacuum full of micrometeoroids and searing radiation. But Ven could think of nothing she could do or say to stop Sol. She could only press her hand to the glass.

Sol turned to look at her, and mouthed the words:
It’s okay
.
 

And the airlock slid shut.

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Three hours later, Mike came back online, full of hellfire and expletives.

“
I’ve a mind not to let the brat back in,” he snarled.

“
He’ll just override you again,” said Ven calmly from her seat on the bridge. She continued to inspect a set of holographic maps, each hanging at a slightly different angle.

“
He can try,” said Mike. “I’ve electrified the access panels.”

“
Mike—”

“
Only four milliamps,” said Mike. “You could do more damage with a coconut.”

Ven continued scrolling through the charts, trying not to think of Sol clinging to the frozen skin of the ship. She wasn’t going to pine by the airlock — she was his friend and protector, not his dog. And they’d lost cargo bay three, so they were down to four years’ worth of supplies.

“
We’ve passed a few Earth-like planets that weren’t completely hellish,” said Mike, his sine wave bristling a little less.

“
No landing gear,” said Ven.

“
You’ve cruised a few crash landings in your time.”

The thought had crossed Ven’s mind — find a planet, settle down, let Sol live out his life with some kind of earth beneath his feet. She’d put the suggestion to him years ago, and he’d looked at her with something resembling panic. He’d said simply, ‘No, thank you’, then locked himself in the multimedia pod for several hours.

Ven swept the glowing charts back into a pinpoint of light.

“
Mike, set a course for
Demeter
.”
 

There was a long silence, and Ven glanced at the monitor to make sure Mike hadn’t vanished again.

“
That’s several billion light years away,” said Mike finally. “That’s billion with a ‘b’.”

“
Your phase jumps are getting better,” said Ven. “The distances you’re achieving have surpassed even Wen’s calculations.”

“
Don’t flirt with me,” grumbled Mike. “Odds are
Demeter
met the same combustible fate as every other station. Weapons, humans, and inexplicable deaths are a nasty mix. If we get there and we’re out of supplies, the station’s a skeletal mess … it’ll be like the finale of some terribly depressing series.”
 

Demeter
had been Earth’s greatest space ark — the first to be equipped with a phase drive. It carried a crew of two thousand plus their families, and had been designed to transform into a space station once it reached its destination at the edge of the mapped universe.
 

It was the
Morning Star
’s last hope for supplies before they sailed into uncharted territory, chasing the shadow of the
Darwin
.
 

“
Ven,” said Mike. “External sensors just came back on.”

“
Status?”

“
Hull breach has been sealed,” said Mike. “No sign of life outside.”

The door to the bridge slid open, and Sol stood there, rumpled and wan.

“
I’m going to lie down,” he said.

“
Sol,” said Ven.

He paused in the doorway.

“
On this ship, we’re equals, you and I,” said Ven. “I want your word that you won’t treat me like that again.”

Something flickered through Sol’s eyes, too brief and complex for Ven to understand, although she would replay it later many times over. A heartbeat passed, then another, and Sol left without a word.

“
Course set for
Demeter
,” said Mike.
 

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23 years after Day Zero

3.4 billion light years from Earth

These were the furthest stars grazed by humanity’s reach. The
Morning Star
had passed choirs of pulsars, singing out their eulogies, and swum through a dense wall of galaxies, their glittering filaments entangling the dark. But Ven wasn’t watching the stars.
 

The medibay glowed with a hundred holographic slides, all hanging in the air at disordered angles, like a storm of papers frozen in mid hurricane. Ven slid a pale green image of cellular mitosis towards her, comparing it to a magnified model of a mitochondrion.

“
I’m sure it has something to do with the mitochondrial DNA,” said Ven.

A blue sine wave squiggled across the benchtop monitor.

“
Doctor Gillian discounted that in her
Chronoscience Journal
article,” said Mike. “We already went over that last month.”
 

Ven rubbed the dust from her lashes.

“
That’s right,” she sighed.

Her batteries had been sitting at twenty-nine percent for a while, but her memory had been getting patchy.
Wear and tear
, she told herself.
Nothing to worry about.
 

Sol was twenty-four now, roughly the same age as Doctor Josh when she’d first met him. But Sol was gaunt, and getting thinner by the day. He’d cut his caloric intake the day they’d lost cargo bay three. He meditated a great deal, and encouraged her to join him. They would sit side by side in the viewing chamber: Sol in a state of higher consciousness, Ven in hibernation mode.

“
Ven, when was the last time you regenerated your processor?” said Mike.

“
I don’t have enough free memory.”

“
Use mine,” said Mike, and a panel in the wall slid open.

“
Are you hitting on me?”

“
I run Solitaire on that server,” shrugged Mike.

Ven locked the medibay door, and carefully pried open a small panel in the nape of her neck. She unwound a slender, silver cord and inserted the narrow prongs into Mike’s matching socket. Ven closed her eyes, and initiated her regeneration routine.

A loud crackle burst from the wall, and sparks sprayed from the connection. Ven yanked her cable free, and patted out the embers on her shirt. The regeneration routine had aborted, but her processor seemed otherwise unaffected.

“
There goes my Solitaire,” said Mike. “Did Doctor Josh mess with your programming?”

“
No,” said Ven defensively, although Doctor Josh had adjusted her processor just prior to launch.

One last tune up
, he’d said.
 

“
Sorry,” said Ven. “I’ll try to pick up a spare server on
Demeter
. What’s our ETA?”
 

“
Forty-eight minutes,” said Mike.

“
Have you taken care of the viewscreens?”

“
They’re all on streaming loop, and I’ve closed the viewing chamber for maintenance,” said Mike. “All navigational displays indicate we’re still two weeks away.”

Ven nodded.

“
Where’s Sol?”

“
In the rec room,” said Mike.

Ven wound the cable back into her neck, and snapped the panel shut. She couldn’t risk another incident like the one six years ago, not with Sol in his current condition.

“
Seal him in,” said Ven.

For the first time in eighteen years, she strapped on her red flight-suit, methodically checking her comms and data recorders. She paused at a twinge in her right thigh — her quadricep cables were thinning, and she hoped perhaps there’d be spares on
Demeter
.
 

Preliminary sensors showed functioning environmental systems on
Demeter
, but there’d been no response to their hails. Ven stopped by the viewing chamber, unlocked now that Sol was secure.
Demeter
hung amidst the stars like a black and scarlet hive, studded with open claws that had once snared passing asteroids. The station was intact, and although scans showed no signs of life, they’d picked up odd energy fluctuations.
 

“
He’s trying to bypass the lock,” said Mike. “You sure you don’t want me to zap him?”

“
Just stay ahead of him,” said Ven.

Ven passed by the rec room, and Sol stopped his frantic rewiring to pound at the porthole in the door.

“
I’m sorry,” said Sol desperately. “Whatever I’ve done, I’m sorry.”

Ven kept her voice steady.

“
I’ll be back soon,” said Ven. “Don’t worry.”

Sol saw her flight-suit, and what little colour remained in his face drained completely.

“
Mike, you can’t let her go,” said Sol. “The intruder defence systems could be active, we can’t verify the structural integrity of the interior.”

The blue sine wave on the wall shifted uncomfortably, but said nothing.

“
I’ll take care of it,” said Ven.

She forced herself to walk away, Sol still pounding at the door. Her earpiece clicked as Sol patched into her comms.

“
Let me out! Please don’t go! Ven!” His breathing was ragged, and Ven realised that Sol was crying.

Her footsteps faltered, and Sol’s voice dropped to a small whisper in her ear.

“
Please don’t leave me…”

Ven stood motionless. There were choices in life that required judgement, the weighing of necessary evils, of greater goods. Ven
had not been programmed with wisdom, and had no way of assessing the psychological damage that would be caused to Sol by leaving him here, versus the physical danger he would be exposed to on
Demeter
.
 

How do you measure a broken heart
, Doctor Josh had asked her one night. He enjoyed asking her odd questions, and never seemed to mind that she didn’t understand them. But that night, he’d laughed wonderfully at her response, kissing her on the forehead.
 

By mending it
, she’d said.
 

Ven tapped the panel beside the rec room, and the door hushed open. Sol staggered out and wrapped his arms around Ven, so tightly she worried that her ribs might bend. She patted him gently on the back.