Spindrift (19 page)

Without another word, Harker turned to open the door. Emily followed him. The command center was very quiet. The rest of the flight crew had heard the raised voices of an argument, yet no one looked away from their consoles; this was none of their affair.

Emily watched Ted as he strode across the compartment to his station. Taking his seat, he pulled up his lapboard, punched up a status report. The countdown stood at 00:27:14. In less than a half hour,
Galileo
would fire its main engine and depart from the solar system. Into the abyss, and whatever awaited them.

A peaceful scientific mission
, she thought.
God help us.

 

The diametric drive made no sound. Despite the immense power generated by its zero-point energy generator, it operated in total silence, the torus creating an invisible bubble that wrapped itself around the
Galileo
. Within the ship, the only noise was the steady hum of the main engine, slowly but inexorably thrusting the vessel toward cruise velocity, at which point the fusion reactor would automatically shut down and allow
Galileo
to glide across the fabric of space-time like a surfer riding the crest of a wave that would never break.

Emily finished making up her bunk. Satisfied that the bedspread and pillows were neatly in place, she reached down to pick up the bunk by its bottom and lift it into its slot within the bulkhead. Stepping back, she took a last survey of her cabin; all her belongings had been put away, nothing had been left out that might fall over and break during retrofire and turnaround maneuvers.

Seeing that she'd taken care of everything, she unzipped her jumpsuit and hung it within the closet, then pulled out a hemp-cloth robe that she put on over her tank top and panties. She slipped her feet into a pair of paper moccasins, then, with one last look behind her, she opened the door and stepped out into the corridor. Even though she didn't need to do so, she turned off the lights before she slid the door shut.

The passageway was deserted, as quiet as the rest of the ship. From behind the closed doors of the cabins around her, there were no voices, no clicking of keyboards. Deck C was already getting colder; obeying its programmed schedule, the AI had lowered the thermostat to 18.3°C to conserve energy. Emily padded down the corridor, her arms folded around herself, until she reached the access shaft. As she opened the hatch, she looked back to see that the AI, registering the departure of the last crew member, was dimming the ceiling lights to a thin twilight glow.

Deck B was the section of
Galileo
's hab module that was the least visited, yet it was also the part of the ship that would be occupied for the longest period of the voyage. Windowless and heavily shielded, it contained the hibernation compartment in which crew and passengers would spend most of the journey. Until then, it hadn't been used at all; the shakedown run to Mars had lasted little more than six months, and
Galileo
's life-support systems were sufficient to keep the crew alive for such a relatively short time. But this mission would last considerably longer than that, so biostasis was necessary to conserve air, water, and food, not to mention to preserve the sanity of all aboard.

When Emily arrived, she found most of the flight crew already there. Shivering in their robes, they impatiently waited for Nick to put them into the biostasis cells. “Ah, there she is! Fashionably late as usual.” Arkady gallantly swept open his left arm as he assayed a formal bow. “Right this way, m'lady. Table for one or two?”

“One, please.” Emily looked around the compartment. Tables, indeed. All she saw were rows of boxlike cells, beige-white and sterile, faintly resembling old-fashioned refrigerators save for their thick windows and readout panels. Yet she knew that, if she laid her hand upon one whose lid was already shut, she'd feel not cold but warmth. No clumsy cryogenics here, but instead the more benign technology of DNA reconstruction; she'd awaken literally feeling like a new person, her dead cells replaced by nanites that, over the course of weeks and months, would select, discard and substitute them with new material cloned in situ according to the patterns of her individual genome, while drugs shut down her mind and kept her brain functioning only at those levels necessary for survival.

Immortality, of a kind…and yet, she couldn't help but regard hibernation as a short-lived form of death, with the biostasis cells little more than temporary coffins. Like the others, her training had included a twenty-four-hour term in suspended animation, and despite the predictable jokes—
You don't look a day older than when I last saw you
—she couldn't help but regard the whole process with a certain suppressed horror. Like it or not, she was about to enter a dreamless sleep that was as close to a coma as she could get without her condition becoming terminal.

Turning away from the others, she found Ted leaning against a cell, hands shoved in the pockets of his robe. Walking over to him, she expected no more than a polite nod; to her surprise, he pulled his hands from his pockets and reached out to her. She hesitated, then let him pull her body against his, an embrace that was both comforting and sexual.

“Hey, that's a change,” she murmured, sliding her arms around him. “Not afraid the captain's going to see this?”

“Relax. He and Martin are upstairs, closing down Deck A. They'll be the last ones to go down.” Ted patted the side of the cell. “This one's mine,” he added, giving her a lascivious grin. “You're welcome to share, of course. I'll even let you get on top…as always.”

“Hush!” From behind her, she heard Arkady laugh out loud. Feigning irritation, she started to shove him away. Harker resisted, though, and instead pulled her closer, affectionately burying his face in her hair.

“Something's going on,” he whispered in her ear. “Nick tells me the captain gave him instructions to change the revival schedule…”

“The
what
?” She tried to keep her voice low. “I don't…”

“The order in which we're supposed to be revived.” Ted gently stroked her back, keeping up the pretense of giving her a farewell hug. “Lawrence told him to bring us up last, even after the science team. He didn't say why, just told him to do so.”

Emily frowned. “I don't get it. Why would he…?”

“I don't know…but I've got my suspicions.” Ted released her, but took her hands to keep her close. “Nick's on our side. He's going to revive us first, right after himself, and leave the captain for last. Or at least before he brings up the science team.”

She glanced over her shoulder. At the far end of the compartment, she saw a row of six cells, their lids sealed. The science team had already been put to sleep. “He can do that?” she murmured.

“He's the doc. He can do anything he wants.” The smile reappeared. “He'll tell Lawrence that he noticed readings on our cells that led him to believe that our conditions were unstable, so he brought us up first as a precaution.”

“Nice.” Emily cocked her head to one side. “You talked him into this, didn't you?”

“Sure. I just had to promise that I'd let you sleep with him.” He winced as she swatted his arm, then his expression became more serious. “Really, though…he knows something's going on. Everyone does. That little quarrel we had with Lawrence didn't exactly go unnoticed…and even if they don't know the details, they're on our side.” He hesitated. “Most of them, at least.”

“You think someone else…?” Her eyes widened. “Martin?”

“That would make sense, wouldn't it? Who else is in a better position to assist him?” He shook his head before she could interrupt. “Like I said, the others are with us…but if this is going to work, we're going to have to go down first. You and me both.”

She stared at him. “Why?”

“Nick's programmed our cells to display the revival sequence Lawrence wants. We're counting on him checking our readouts to be sure. But once the captain himself goes down, Nick will reprogram the cells so that we're revived before he is. That way, Doc's got his alibi, and we get a few minutes to see…well, to see whatever he's up to.”

“Right.” Still holding Ted's hands, Emily looked around the compartment. The other members of the flight team were quietly chatting among themselves, yet from the way Antonia, Werner, Simone, and Arkady occasionally glanced their way, it was clear that they knew something was amiss. Ted had earned their respect a long time ago, while Lawrence had been nothing but trouble. And so far from home, they were willing to trust one man more than the other, rank notwithstanding.

“All right, now…who's first?” Nick had been inspecting the cell next to Harker's; he turned to glance around the room. “Got a nice, warm place for a little nap. Who's up for it?” Then he looked directly at her. “Emily, my dear…how about you?”

Knowing that she wasn't really being given a choice, she reluctantly nodded. Yet Ted held on to her for a moment longer. Pulling her close again, he gave her a last kiss. “See you on the other side,” he murmured. “Love you.”

“Love you, too,” she whispered. Then she pried herself away from him and walked over to her cell.

Nick drew a privacy curtain around the cell, then asked her to strip. Despite Ted's earlier joke, though, he didn't stare at her as she took off her robe and removed her underwear, and treated her no more or less than if she was another patient under his care. The doctor had already told everyone that shaving their scalps wasn't necessary for short-term biostasis—if their hair grew longer than they felt was comfortable, he'd play barber after they woke up—yet for the sake of hygiene he used an electric razor to remove her pubic hair. She'd endured the procedure before, but that didn't make it any easier; she closed her eyes and hummed an old country music song her mother had once taught her. The half dozen injections Nick administered to her arms and buttocks weren't the worst part of the ordeal; her biggest moment of humiliation was the suppository he let her insert by herself, and during that he gallantly turned his back.

Finally, she was allowed to climb into the cell. Lying down upon a soft pad, Emily clenched her teeth while she watched Nick gently insert an intravenous feeding tube into the soft flesh of her left elbow. The breathing mask came next; lifting her head, he carefully fitted it around her nose and mouth, tugging on it to make sure that it had an airtight fit.

“Ready?” he asked. She nodded. “All right now…sweet dreams.”

She closed her eyes. Another spark of pain as he inserted a second tube into her right elbow. A pair of small plastic caps were placed over her eyes, but by then she wasn't feeling very much of anything save for a certain euphoria, sensuous and almost erotic, as liquid gel began to flow around her body.

Suspended within a warm blue cloud, she allowed herself to be carried upward into darkness. Her last conscious thought was that sleep should always be like this. Without anxiety, without pain, without bad dreams. A lovely cruise to oblivion, with a starless night as her destination.

JANUARY 7, 2291—EASS
GALILEO

H
arker sat on the edge of his biostasis cell, watching as blue gel dripped from his body to form a pool at his bare feet. Nick had given him a plastic cup filled with a yellow liquid that smelled vaguely of citrus and tasted like lemonade mixed with rubbing alcohol; he did his best to drink it, but his stomach roiled at the odor and it was all he could do to keep from throwing up. His mind felt sluggish and stupid, and were it not for the fact that the doctor had already extracted the tubes from his elbows and drained the cell, he would just as soon have gone back to sleep until
Galileo
returned to Earth.

Hearing a harsh, phlegm-filled cough from behind him, Harker slowly turned his head to see Emily come back to life. Nick stood beside the open hatch of her cell; he'd removed her air mask and eye protectors and was helping her sit up, holding her shoulders as she fought to breathe normally for the first time in over thirteen months. Like himself, her naked body was covered with a blue film that matted her hair against her head; Harker duly noted that it had grown a few inches since he'd last seen her and almost reached her shoulders. The doctor lowered the left wall of her cell, then carefully turned her around until her legs swung over the side. Emily doubled over and coughed a few more times, then raised a listless hand to rub her eyes. She looked like a little girl who'd just been rudely awakened, and Harker could only empathize; a few minutes ago, he'd been in the same condition.

Nick murmured something else to her, then hurried away, no doubt to fetch another cup of the vile medicine he'd given Harker. As he passed his cell, the doctor paused to look at him. “Doing all right there?” he asked. “Not getting sick, are you?”

“No…fine.” His voice came as a dry rasp. Truth was, he felt like hell, but he didn't want to distract Nick from looking after Emily. “Just…wanna get cleaned up…s'all…”

“Hang on. Be right back.” Nick went to a nearby bench to pour some more of the liquid into another cup. He returned to Emily and handed it to her, and waited until he was sure that she drank at least half of it before he strolled back over to Harker. “Can you stand up? Let's see if you can, hmm?”

Lazarus, come forth…
Harker inched forward a little more until he was sure that his feet were firmly planted on the wet floor, then he carefully rose from the crypt. His legs felt rubbery, and he felt a joint in his left knee crack, yet it was easier than he expected. More blue goo slid down his body; more than anything else, he wanted to get the obscene stuff off him. “Okay…I'm okay…”

“You sure?” Nick offered a hand to steady him, and Harker nodded. “I see you've enjoyed my little refreshment.” Harker scowled as Nick took the cup from him. “Head's over here,” he added, taking Harker by the arm to guide him toward a frosted-glass door on the other side of the compartment. “Don't take too long…we're going to have more people wanting to use it soon enough.”

Through the dense fog that shrouded his mind, Harker caught Nick's meaning. It wouldn't be long before the rest of the flight crew were revived. He needed to get up to the command center before Lawrence if he was going to find out what the captain had done before they'd gone into biostasis. “Bring up Arkady next,” he mumbled. “Simone, too. I'm going to need them.”

“I'll do what I can.” Nick stepped over to a cabinet, pulled out a plastic pouch containing a fresh change of clothes. “Get cleaned up,” he said, handing it to him. “Your girlfriend's going to be waiting for you. And Ted…?” Harker stopped to look back at him. “Remember that promise you made me?”

It took Harker a second to recall what Nick was talking about. “Sorry, Doc,” he said, forcing a grin. “Don't think I do.”

“Good.” Nick grinned. “Just checking.”

The toilet had a commode and a sink at one end and a shower stall at the other. His bladder was empty and his bowels were void, though, so there was nothing else for him to do but stagger to the shower and pass his hand across the temperature plate. As he waited for the water to heat up, he caught sight of himself in the mirror above the sink. A Neanderthal stared back at him. He needed a shave and a haircut, but those would have to wait. First things first…

Harker stepped into the stall. He gasped as hot water hit him; planting his hands against the tile wall, he let it sluice the suspension gel from his body. How long had it been since the last time he'd had a bath? He didn't want to think about it, but it forced his mind to get back to work. Seven and a half months at cruise velocity, shiptime, plus six more months for acceleration and braking…how long would that be back on Earth? About twenty-five months. Two years. More than two years. Christ…

So what secret task did Lawrence perform before the crew went into biostasis? Harker didn't have time to investigate before he and the others had gone to sleep. Indeed, it was pure luck that Doc tipped him off at the last minute. Highly probable—no, more than that; very likely—it had something to do with the nuke
Galileo
was carrying. The fact that he'd confronted the captain about its presence might have forced Lawrence to take action of some sort.

What would Lawrence have done? No reason why he would've jettisoned the torpedo, however sensible that action might be. So far as the captain knew, only four persons aboard were aware of the nuke's presence. Five if Harker counted Martin, who'd helped him close down the command center and thus might be part of the conspiracy. Six if he also included Ramirez, who'd been sworn to secrecy; Harker still wasn't sure on whose side he was playing. Yet even so, what could Lawrence have accomplished in the command deck that would have made any difference when they were so far from…?

The sound of the stall door sliding open, a sudden rush of cold air. Harker looked around to see Emily stepping into the shower. “Move over,” she murmured. “I feel utterly nasty.”

“You couldn't be nasty if you tried.” Harker moved aside, allowing her to get the benefit of the hot water. “Blue does a lot for you, y'know,” he added, reaching up to gently wipe some gel from her face. “Brings out your eyes…”

“Behave yourself.” Emily slapped away his hand as she slipped beneath the spray. Sighing with relief, she let the water wash away the suspension fluid. “Damn. Time goes fast when you're having fun, right?”

“Thinking just the same thing myself.” This was the wrong time and place to let himself get aroused; leaving the shower, he found a locker containing a stack of folded towels. “Soon as you're done here, I'd like you to go below and check the torpedo…if you're up for it, that is.”

“If it means avoiding any more of that wretched stuff Nick made us drink, I'll go EVA if I have to.” Emily paused. “You know, that's not a bad idea. Might find a way to get rid of the damned thing…”

“Don't even think about it.” He didn't want to do anything that might constitute mutiny. Or at least not until he had a better sense of what Lawrence had in mind. “Just give it a visual inspection and report back to me. I'll be on Deck A.”

Her response was lost beneath the water cascading down around her head. Harker finished drying himself off, then ripped open the pouch Nick had given him. A two-piece outfit of drawstring trousers and a loose tunic, along with underwear and a pair of monkey boots. Not as warm as his uniform jumpsuit, but at least he wouldn't be prowling the ship in a bathrobe.

“Oh, and one more thing…” Emily cracked open the stall door to peer out at him. “Lose the beard but keep the hair. Looks good on you.”

“I'll take that under advisement.” Harker dressed quickly, then left the toilet before she could offer any more grooming tips.

Arkady was awake. Sitting on the side of his cell, his shoulders slumped and his hands clasped together around a cup, he stared at Harker like a drunk coming off a three-day bender. Behind him, Nick was helping Simone sit up in her cell. “You doing okay there?” Harker asked, and Arkady gave him a groggy nod. “Drink that, then take a shower and get dressed. I need you upstairs as soon as possible. Tell Simone, too.”

The com officer looked at him as if he'd just suggested that he run a three-minute mile, but he yawned and nodded again. Harker gave him a slap on the knee, then headed for the access shaft.

 

The shaft was a dark and bottomless pit, its metal walls echoing with the distant throb of the main engine. Harker found the switch that turned on the lights, then began to climb upward. The fact that he could hear the engine indicated that the AI had automatically initiated the braking maneuver, rotating
Galileo
's stern in the direction of flight and firing the fusion engine for the braking sequence. With any luck, the ship would be on course for rendezvous with Spindrift.

The command center was cold and dark. The temperature on Deck A still hadn't risen to a comfortable level, and the only illumination came from comp screens above the workstations. Harker briefly considered going below to get some warmer clothes from his quarters but decided against it; that would take too long, and he'd need every spare minute. So instead he switched on the ceiling lights, then temporarily adjusted the thermostat to 23.8°C in an effort to get more heat into the compartment.

At Antonia's station, he located the controls that raised the shutters from the windows. As they slowly glided upward, he walked over to the center window to gaze out into space. He wouldn't be able to see Spindrift, of course—
Galileo
was still oriented stern first toward their destination—but he might be able to see the Sun. It took a few seconds, but he was finally able to discern a white-yellow star slightly more luminous than the ones surrounding it.

Despite his hurry, Harker found himself staring at it. From a distance of almost two light-years, Sol was little more than a bright point of light among many, its planetary system invisible to the naked eye. Everything he knew, everyone whom he'd ever met, indeed all of human history…reduced to insignificance, just another world somewhere in the cosmos.

No time for this sort of contemplation. Harker sat down in his chair and pulled the lapboard across his legs. Typing in a series of commands, he pulled up a status display. He absently rubbed his fingers through his whiskers as he went down the menu, one item at a time.

The diametric drive had been powered down, and the main engine was operating at rated capacity. With fuel reserves standing at 64 percent, the consumption rate was more than he would've preferred, but the tanks still held enough helium-3 and deuterium to allow
Galileo
to make rendezvous and orbital maneuvers with Spindrift, then get them home with fuel to spare. Life-support systems were satisfactory: the oxygen-water regeneration plant was nominal, with atmospheric carbon dioxide and nitrogen at tolerable levels and no apparent air leaks. Internal temperature was still low, as he'd already discovered, but now that the AI had sensed human movement within the hab module, it was raising the thermostat and switching on internal lights. Electrical systems were okay; same for all computer networks.

In short, everything seemed fine.
Galileo
had operated like a precision machine, its dozens of subsystems working together in harmony, while its crew and passengers slept in biostasis, dreaming of…well, nothing really, or at least not anything that Harker's conscious mind cared to remember. If there were any nightmares, they were of his own creation.

He closed his eyes, rubbed the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger.
Is that it? Am I just getting paranoid?
He let out his breath. Perhaps he was wrong. It could well be that Lawrence had done nothing more than make sure that his ship was safely closed down. There wasn't a plot of any sort, aside from the fact that the ESA had put aboard a nuclear torpedo as a precaution. He was jumping at shadows, seeing things that weren't there…

“Goddamn it,” he muttered. “I'm such a fool.”

“Pardon me, sir? Did you say something?”

Startled, Harker looked around. He hadn't noticed that Arkady had entered the command center. The com officer's hair was still wet, his beard flecked with blue gel that he hadn't quite rinsed away. “Sorry. Just thinking aloud.” Harker managed a wan smile. “Apologies for getting you up so early. Maybe I should've let you sleep a while longer.”

“Well…so be it.” A shrug of surrender to the inevitable. “I'm here, and Simone's on her way. Might as well go to work,
nyet
?”

“
Da. Spacibo.
You can start by transmitting a message home. Tell them we've arrived safely.” He paused. “Then keep the signal open. I have something private to add to it.”

“Sure. Whatever.” Arkady shuffled over to the com station, pulled back his chair, and slumped down into it. Stifling a yawn, he tapped at the keyboard; a menu appeared on one of his screens and he moused it to open a page. Harker smiled as he watched him work. Even if Arkady was half-asleep, he needed him just now.

Turning back to his lapboard, Harker typed in a command to open a text file. The next order of business was to send a coded priority message back to ESA headquarters in Geneva, care of Director General Beck and Associate Director Shillinglaw. Harker intended to issue a formal protest in regards to their covert decision to place a nuclear torpedo aboard
Galileo
. He didn't know how much good this would do, but at least it would put his opinion on the record, just in case there was an official inquiry somewhere down the line.