Running With Argentine (42 page)

Once back at his own flitter he deflated the ball and
stuffed the whole package into the right-hand seat. While simultaneously
lowering himself into the left-hand seat he hit the Canopy Close button and
slapped the Cabin Pressurization switch.

It was a very small cabin and only took a minute to
re-pressurize. Which was about the same amount of time it took him to remove
his own helmet and gloves…

"Mandi? Mandi can you hear me?" he asked as he
gently tried to feel around the bag for its opening.

He thought he heard a muffled response about the same time
he realized that she was upside down.

They were in a zero gravity environment but the cabin was
small; it took him a lot longer than he would've thought to get her sitting
right side up.

He opened the seal wide enough to pull the bag down around
her shoulders. Her eyes were still closed and she… She didn't look good.

He made sure she was still breathing and then got the
flitter pointed back towards the Pelican. It would take them a good forty
minutes to get back to her and there wasn't a whole lot more Argentine could do
until they did.

Deep
Space

Once they
reached the Pelican Argentine repeated the procedure. He hated to subject Mandi
to anything more, but he had no choice...

Leaving his flitter some distance away, his spacesuited
figure towed the now re-pressurized ball to the open cargo hatch in the
Pelican’s side.

Once inside, he closed the hatch and re-pressurized the bay.

He removed her still unconscious form from the space ball
and then took off his own suit.

Carrying her, he stepped through the hatch into the ship
proper and opened the bay to space – jettisoning his suit, the habitat, and
everything else back into space.

He quickly took her to the medical alcove and placed her on
the table. Her skin didn't look good so he took a dermal repair salve and
rubbed it over her. He even massaged into her scalp.

He took special care around her lower face and knees; blood blisters
had formed everywhere the moisture of her breath had frozen into ice…

Again checking her vitals, he piled blankets on her and
hooked up an IV for full-spectrum antibiotics and to replenish her fluids.

He then went to the bridge and got the Pelican started on
its two-week journey to rendezvous with the Roosevelt.

Only then did he bother to go get dressed.

Well, actually… He had a cup of coffee first.

ΔΔΔ

"You
really know how to show a girl a good time," announced a weak voice from
behind him.

He looked back from the Captain's Bench on the bridge to see
Mandi shuffling towards him. She was wrapped in a blanket and had obviously
just regained consciousness.

She'd slept for two days and her vitals had consistently
grown stronger, so Argentine wasn't overly concerned… But still…

"Are you sure you feel good enough to be walking
around?"

"No," she said as she sat on the bench beside him.
"But it's better than lying on that table in the corridor.

"I've got this sticky stuff all over me," she
continued.

When he didn't say anything she went on…

"I feel like I passed out on a date with someone that
slipped me a Mickey."

"Maybe you're dating the wrong type of guys."

"I've been told that before…"

After another moment of silence she said, "Thank
you."

Argentine again didn't say anything which, surprisingly to
him, seemed to piss her off…

"It was a stupid thing to do, you know? All those
people were counting on you and you just abandoned them! I thought you were
better than that…"

"So, you're mad at me for saving your life?"

"I'm mad at you for being so… Normal! For a moment
there I thought you might actually be this mythical noble person that's
supposed to exist somewhere in this mass of humanity…

"But no… You're just like all the rest. You do what you
want to do, what you convince yourself is the right thing to do regardless of
how many other people it affects or hurts…

"What about Sami? What did she think about you
abandoning her and the others like this?" she said angrily.

"I don't know," Argentine admitted. "You'll
have to ask her."

Mandi looked up sharply.

"We rendezvoused with the Roosevelt in ten days…"

Aboard
the Roosevelt

It felt good to
Argentine to be back in the Captain's Chair aboard the Roosevelt.

He hadn't been 100% sure that he would ever sit here again.
The chief had finally, though, bought into his reasoning.

The conversation had been tense…

"So, you made it."

"Yeah Chief, we made it," Argentine said from the
bridge of the Pelican.

"You know I can't let you back on board," he said
sadly but strongly.

"If that's what you decide, Chief, I'll understand. But
I'd ask you to hear out my reasoning first."

"No matter how well you’ve thought this out there's always
going to be some chance that letting you aboard could contaminate this ship.
What makes you think anything you could say would make a difference?"

"Because you're still here at the rendezvous
point," he responded. "If you weren't at least open to the
possibility that this could be safe you'd have moved on a long time ago."

The chief mulled on that for a moment and then said,
"Go ahead then… Explain."

So Argentine did…

He explained that there had to be some intelligence to the
contagion. Whether it was a virus, or a gas, or whatever, if it attacked its
host immediately upon coming in contact it could never spread from one system
to the next.

Conversely, if it just had a specific gestation period, like
many viruses did, then the afflictions on any given planet wouldn't happen
simultaneously - people would have time to isolate themselves.

To be this efficient, some type of intelligence had to be at
work, giving the signal to activate the contagion
after
it was
transported to a new population, or when it couldn’t be spread further.

"Also, keep in mind that all of the ships still in
orbit at Asperia when the Roosevelt left were catastrophically afflicted. It's
my belief that the contagion had already spread itself beyond that system or
the trigger wouldn't have been initiated.

"Which brings us to our situation…

"First, let's talk about the Roosevelt…

"It's possible that the Roosevelt's shields protected
it from being contaminated by any ejected debris, but we can't know for sure
because, if I'm right, whatever intelligence that is controlling things
wouldn't trigger until you reached another planet or population.

"If I'm right, there's actually a greater chance that
the Roosevelt is infected than we are… But we’re willing to take that
chance."

Argentine could see on his view screen the chief sharing
glances with others…

"Now, as to us…

"As I explained to you when you helped me set this up,
we've taken a number of extreme steps to reduce the possibility of transferring
the contagion. The possibility still remains, however, that Mandi was infected
before she left the planet (just like the scientists you already have aboard)
or that she became infected leaving the planet in her orbital shuttle.”

“I think that’s the major worry, Frank. All… well, almost
all the ships in orbit were infected - it’s a stretch to think that hers
wasn’t.”

“I agree with your thinking, Chief. But here’s where we get
to my point… I can show you evidence that our transfer procedures worked; that
she and her shuttle didn’t infect the Pelican.”

“And what would that evidence be?”

“The fact that we’re still here… Don’t you see? If there is
some type of intelligence at work, it would have triggered once we transferred
to the Pelican. We’ve been monitoring star systems all along our path. For the
last two weeks we haven’t detected emissions from a single one - they’ve all
gone dark…”

“It could have been waiting for you to reach us,” he said
without much conviction.

“I suppose that’s possible, but how would it know? We’ve
spent two weeks utterly alone in the galaxy.

“The truth is, Chief… at this point there’s a greater chance
that the Roosevelt’s infected than us.”

“And you still want to come aboard?”

Argentine glanced at Mandi, who was sitting beside him…

“I don’t think we’d last long here… you know it takes more
than two people to keep this ship going.

“I’m proposing we follow the same procedure for this
transfer… We’ll jet across in our suits and then strip in the airlock. Once
we’re inside you can jettison our suits into space.”

After a moment the chief grinned…

“Welcome back aboard, Captain. I’ll illuminate your airlock.”

“Hey, don’t forget to have some clothes ready for us.”

ΔΔΔ

Argentine was
sitting back in his Captain's suite, legs propped up and sipping on a snifter
of cognac.

"Technically, it's not cognac," the chief, who was
the only other person sharing this moment, explained. "But I guess there's
only so many ways you can ferment grapes."

Somehow, somewhere along the line, the chief had managed to
snag a case or two of this wonderful elixir.

"How long before we reach the void?" he asked.

"We’ll be there in about a week," Argentine
responded. "Call it twelve days until we get far enough in."

"Still nothing from the Eridani system?"

Argentine shook his head. Eridani had been the last
inhabited system on the edge of the void between the spiral arms – up until two
days ago it had still been active.

Making their way to that void had been like traversing a
minefield. They not only had needed to avoid the gravity wells of systems, but
they’d felt it best not to intersect any of a number of the currents of solar
wind that could constantly cross their path. Both Barry and Sami had performed
remarkably.

It reminded Argentine of a documentary he'd once seen about
how easy it was for firefighters to get cut off when fighting a forest fire.

"I keep thinking about that ship with the guy that
claimed to be the head of Asperia's only Secret Society," the chief said,
changing the subject.

"Mandi said that she knew for a fact that there was
more than one Secret Society; that guy was lying."

"And just how would she know that?"

"I asked her that very thing… And she changed the
subject."

"I'm shocked," lamented the chief.

After another moment of silence…

"So, are we really going to do it?"

"Do what?"

"Fire up the temporal engines… Are we really going to,
uh… Go back in time?"

"I don't think there's anything for us here, Chief. I'm
certainly not going to find a cabin on a lake…"

"Yeah, about that… A lot of the scientists are still in
a tizzy about the extinction event."

"I don't think anyone's over it yet," Argentine
reflected.

"No, that's not what I mean… Barry says they're all
falling
arse over tit
trying to figure out what caused it. I know for a fact that a
bunch of them want to keep on studying it."

"They can do whatever they want, as far as I'm
concerned…

"I'm tired, Chief," he suddenly said. "I
think I've done my bit; or at least I will have once we make the jump and get
to an era where everyone can survive.

"Seriously, all I want to do is find a nice quiet
place. It's all I've ever wanted, really…"

After a moment of silence the chief changed the subject
again, "Not everybody discovers a temporal drive. If these extinction
events have been happening over and over, how come we've never found an eight
million year old derelict ship?"

"I was talking to the lieutenant about that. You have
to remember that we have the advantage of knowing it was coming, even if we
didn't really believe it was going to happen to us…

"At any rate, most likely any surviving ships figured
it was simply a normal virus or contagion. They probably waited as long as they
could, until their supplies started running thin, and then hoped that whatever
it was had already burned itself out."

"So you think that whatever it is doesn't just go
dormant, or die or whatever?"

"Well, we know it doesn't last eight million years, but
yeah… I wouldn't bet that it won't be around for centuries. Which is another
reason we need to make the jump."

"Well, I guess Sami won't be
too
disappointed," the chief said.

Argentine looked at him…

"It's just that she's been going on lately about duty
to mankind, or some such. She's got Rory thinking about it too…"

"I know," Argentine grumbled. "Mandi can't
shut up about it… But, dammit Chief! I'm not stopping any of them from doing
whatever they want…"

"Well, you
are
their Captain…"

"They can find another Captain. You, for example."

"No way! Besides, I don't think they'd follow me, at
least not the way they follow you."

"Listen Chief… I want to make this absolutely clear.
I'm done. Get it? I'm going to find some nice quiet moon or uninhabited planet
and for once in my life be able to close my eyes at night and fall asleep
without worrying about everything and everyone."

"I understand, but…" the chief started…

"No! Don't even go there. There are no buts. I mean it,
Chief. I'm serious about this…"