Galaxia

by Kevin McLaughlin

  “Hold on tight,” he said. “I won’t fly high. If you lose your grip, keep your feet down and knees bent. Don’t forget, you can fall from a lot higher here than you can on Earth.”

  She nodded. He looked down at his wrist, which had some sort of display she’d never seen before. It looked like it must be an interface for the thruster. Then he did something with a control in his hand, and they…

  …were…

  …flying!

  “Ohhhh!” She couldn’t help exclaiming. This was amazing! She looked down, watching the domes slide by underneath them. Patrick wasn’t feathering the thrusters, the way he had coming to get her. It looked like the extra weight was pushing them hard. But it was working. They sailed up, and then straight toward the ship, still sitting a short distance from the domes.

  “Why the ship?” she asked.

  “There will be unloading equipment nearby. We can use one to haul him to medical. Fastest way.”

  All too soon, they were sinking toward the ground, raising huge plumes of dust as they approached. Carmen would have happily continued flying out there for much longer – but Jacob was still in danger, and she still needed to figure out something to save her father’s samples. Maybe Patrick would help with that, after all?

  He brought them down right in front of the ship’s crew airlock. Carmen stepped off his feet and got out of the way as he cycled the airlock and hauled Jacob inside. She followed him in. A few seconds later, and the lock was done filling with air, the inner doors open, and crew were there, taking Jacob off his shoulder and pulling the spacesuit off Jacob as fast as they could move. Patrick unlocked the thruster pack from his back and undid his helmet.

  “How is he?” Patrick asked.

  “Breathing. We’ve got a cart ready to haul him to medical.”

  Carmen undid her helmet and took it off. She bit her lip. Jacob looked so pale, lying there. If he was badly hurt…!

  “Go, get him moving,” Patrick said. The crewmen had a stretcher already waiting. They lay it on the floor next to Jacob, rolled him to his side, and slid it beneath him. Then they were off, carrying him away.

  Once they were gone, Patrick whirled on Carmen. “What the hell did you think you were doing out there?”

  “I–”

  “You’re not rated to be outside. Have you ever even been in a suit before? You sure as hell had no clearance for it. I’d know, because you’d have had to get it from me.”

  Carmen struggled out of the top half of her suit. “The power was out in my father’s lab. I went to get help, and Jacob said he couldn’t go fix it without a second person.” She shrugged. “I was a second person.”

  Patrick groaned, putting away bits of his own suit. “There are rules here, Carmen. For a reason. This place can get you killed in a hurry if you’re not careful.”

  She slid out of the bottom half of the suit. “Dad’s samples,” she said, remembering. Maybe Patrick could help her out? He’d been pretty sharp in a crisis just now.

  “Huh?”

  “Dad’s virus samples are losing refrigeration. I don’t know how much time is left, but…”

  He was already moving, leaving her behind in the airlock. “I need an electrician in the hall for the new dome, stat. No, I don’t care what else you’re up to right now, Fred.”

  Carmen shoved the bottom half of her suit back into the suit locker and chased after him. He was headed down the ship’s corridor fast – making tracks for the main cargo bay.

  “Just like that?” she asked.

  “Just like what?” he replied. “Right now, your father’s work is the most important thing going on up here. Nothing takes priority over that. Come on.”

  The cargo area was mostly emptied out already. They’d unloaded pretty quickly – there had been a lot of big cargo containers in this space! Patrick swept past all the work still going on and headed for the big airlock doors, which were sitting open. Carmen almost stopped in her tracks when she saw them, but managed to keep going. She felt a stabbing pang of guilt whenever she thought about the man she’d trapped. The man Patrick executed without looking like he even cared. Seeing the scene of the incident brought back bad memories.

  He wasn’t waiting for her, though, and she wasn’t about to miss whatever was happening next. She’d see this through.

  The airlock was connected to the domes by a long tube made of stretchy material. When the ship wasn’t here, it was tucked back in against the dome. That first dome was all storage area, anyway, so it made for a quick unloading site. When the ship docked, they ran the tube out to the cargo doors, connected it, and opened the side of the ship up to facilitate unloading. It was an awesome setup. But the ship landed a good ways from the dome for safety – five hundred feet or so. To get back and forth quickly, they used machines like forklifts for the heavy lifting, and Segway devices for people who needed to get back and forth fast.

  There was only one Segway sitting on this end of the tube. Patrick hopped on, and looked back at Carmen.

  “Get on,” he said.

  She gingerly stepped up behind him. This was just like stepping on his feet and hanging on while he flew through the air, right? She put her hands on his hips, and he started the Segway down the passage – fast! She quickly realized her grip wasn’t tight enough, and slid her hands forward around his waist to hang on tighter. That forced her to press her entire body up tight against his.

  Totally like the space suit trip. Except that this time there were no suits between his back and her front. Or her hands and his abs. She could smell him through the ship-suit he wore, the faint scent of sweat after being stuck in the space suit a while. She wondered what she smelled like and wrinkled her nose at the thought. She was already starting to daydream about showers. You couldn’t shower in zero gravity, of course. But water was rationed out here on Luna, so no showers here even through the gravity would have made it possible. There was water though. And soap. She’d be able to get clean maybe, once all this was over.

  They were almost through the passage by the time she’d gotten done daydreaming about being clean again. He slowed down as they reached the dome and went inside. This first dome was packed with stuff just shipped up from Earth. She guessed a lot of it was probably food. They’d sent a lot more people along than usual. The lunar base was generally a tight knit team of a dozen or so men and women. Her dad had over a dozen people just on his research team, and that meant they’d sent along tons of support staff too. The population of Luna had quadrupled overnight. It was a lot of extra people to feed and house.

  “You can relax a bit now,” Patrick said, intruding on her thoughts. Carmen realized with a start that she hadn’t relaxed her grip even after he’d slowed the vehicle down. She eased her hands back to his hips again, shifting her weight back so that that was their only point of contact.

  They sped around the ring of domes until the reached the passage out to the new research lab. A heavyset man with a bushy beard was standing there, a duffle bag in one hand. Carmen guessed that had to be the Fred that Patrick had spoken to on the radio.

  “No power to the lab you said, right?” Patrick asked her as he pulled the Segway to a stop.

  Carmen hopped off. “Right.”

  “I hooked those lines up myself, boss,” Fred groused. “They should be working fine.”

  Patrick looked down the hall into the lab. The lights were all off. People were moving around inside using flashlights and portable lanterns to see. He cocked an eyebrow at Fred.

  “OK, OK!” Fred said. “I can see it ain’t working.”

  “We’ll need to run a temporary conduit down the passage,” Patrick said.

  “That’s against regs,” Fred replied, a warning note in his voice.

  “So is messing up Doctor Rosa’s chances of finding a cure. You know how many people will die if we have to ferry more virus samples out here?” Patrick said.

  “No?” Fred replied, his tone saying the word like it was a question.
r />   “Me either,” Patrick said. “But too many. Put the conduit in.”

  Fred dumped his duffle on the floor with a long suffering sigh and began digging around in the contents. Soon a couple of enormous cables had been unearthed from its depths, and he was hauling them over to a big socket in one of the walls.

  “Fred’ll take care of it,” Patrick said to Carmen. “We’ll have power on in a few minutes.” He didn’t tell her that the power would already have been on if she’s simply come to him with the problem in the first place, but she could see it in his eyes. And it was true. Maybe she should have taken the problem to him in the first place, instead of going to Jacob.

  Jacob! “Can we go see how Jacob is doing now?” Carmen asked. She wasn’t even quite sure where the sick bay was, although she was pretty sure she could look it up on her tablet.

  “In a minute,” Patrick said. “I want to go talk to your father, first. Come with me, please.”

  His tone said it wasn’t a request. She followed.

  Her father saw Patrick as soon as he came in. He must have heard something of the commotion down the hall. “Mr. Wynn, so good to see you. We have a problem here…”

  “Please, call me Patrick. I’ve heard about the power problem. I’ve got a man working on a temporary solution right now. You should have power within a few minutes.”

  “Oh?” Doctor Rosa said. “Excellent! You have my thanks.”

  “Sir,” Patrick said.

  “Yes, was there something else?” Doctor Rosa asked.

  “Your daughter brought word to one of the engineers about the issue, and the two of them went outside to solve the problem. He’s down in medical, unconscious. She’s unhurt, but could have been. I’d appreciate it if you would brief your staff,” he said with a pointed look at Carmen, “not to take any more trips outside without direct authorization from central control. We’d like to make sure everyone remains as safe as possible during their stay here. The moon is not a safe place.”

  Her father gave her an intense stare. Not a glare, perhaps, but a serious look. He pursed his lips. “Yes, I will. I assure you, Patrick, my staff will not be breaking your rules again.”

  “Thank you, sir. Now if you’ll excuse me, I wanted to go check on out injured man,” Patrick said.

  “Very good. Do let me know if he is all right? I’d be happy to come help…” Doctor Rosa said.

  “We’ve got an excellent trauma guy, Doctor. Ex-Special Forces. Thanks, though.”

  Patrick turned to go. Carmen went to follow him, but her father caught her hand in his. She turned, and this time she could read the disapproval in his eyes.

  “I need you here in the lab please, Carmen,” he said.

  With an effort of will, she managed to not roll her eyes. It was going to be a long day. “OK, Dad. Patrick, let me know how Jacob is, please?”

  Patrick looked back over his shoulder at her. “I will,” he said. He flashed a smile – was that sympathy she saw there? Whatever it was, it vanished as quick as a flash and the stern mask settled back into place.

  Chapter 4

  PATRICK GROWLED under his breath. That woman was going to drive him around the bend. First she was in the wrong part of the ship – which reminded him, he needed to change the damned password on the ship’s locks. Then she saved the day by trapping a man whose presence could have killed everyone aboard. If she hadn’t been there it might have been a disaster, which made it hard to fault her for being in the wrong place! But then she yelled at him for doing the hard but right thing and spacing the virus victim.

  And now this! Yes, the power issue was a serious problem, and yes, it needed solving right away. So instead of coming to him for a fast solution, she went to one of the brand new junior staff, batted her eyelashes at the kid, and got him to take her on an unauthorized walk outside that almost got him killed.

  She was seriously going to drive him space-happy. And getting her out of his head? Impossible, at this point. He could still feel where her hands had been wrapped around him, where she had pressed up against his back for the Segway ride. He’d enjoyed that ride a lot more than he should have.

  He passed Fred in the hall. “Give me a holler over the radio when the job is done,” he said.

  “Will do, boss,” Fred replied. “Almost through, just got to run the power cord down the hall.”

  “Good,” Patrick said. “Got another job for you, after.”

  “Yer kill’in me, boss.”

  “Not yet,” Patrick said with a grin. He hopped back on the Segway and sped off down the corridor for medical. Real medical, not this new lab the doctor was setting up. That place made him nervous, frankly. I mean, he knew they were going to set up an airlock inside the lab, and that all the work with real virus would take place in there. And intellectually he knew that finding a cure for a virus meant you needed to have some of the real virus around. But having the stuff on the moon made everyone jittery, and he wasn’t immune to it.

  He reached the medical bay. They had an excellent trauma unit here. They needed it. It was two days to get someone back to Earth, so if anything bad happened out here that they couldn’t stabilize in place, the person died. Accidents happened. The moon wasn’t a playground, and people got hurt. So he’d pushed for getting the best equipment possible, and they had an amazing guy running the show.

  David MacInness was just a nurse practitioner, not even a ‘real’ doctor. But he had fifteen years in the US Special Forces as a medic before retiring to go back to civilian life. Life outside the military hadn’t suited him. When the call came for medical personnel with trauma practice to go into space, he’d jumped in with both feet. David went out on the first run with Patrick, Amy, and a handful of others. All the rest of the original crew had died or moved back to Earth. They were the last three.

  Patrick jumped off the vehicle and stepped into the bay. There was only one patient right now. Nobody else was sick, just the kid he’d rescued. Jacob, that was what Carmen had called him. And it looked like he was going to be OK. He was awake and chatting with David, anyway, so it looked good.

  “What’s the prognosis, doc?” Patrick asked.

  “The patient will live,” David replied. “I want to keep him in here overnight, just to be sure. That was a nasty jolt he got. But everything checks out so far.”

  “I feel OK to get back to work, sir,” Jacob broke in. “Really.”

  “No, time for that tomorrow,” Patrick told him. “Listen to the doctor’s orders.” He wanted to as what made him think he could take a suit outside without authorization. But it was clear from the kid’s face that he knew he’d screwed up badly. Ripping him apart in front of other people wasn’t Patrick’s style. Best to save that chat for later. “We’ll talk in my office tomorrow morning, once you’re out of here.”

  That was enough to make the kid wince and blanch at the same time. Patrick kept a stern straight face, and David managed to do the same. It wasn’t the first time someone had come out here and gotten into trouble within a day of arrival, after all. So long as the trouble wasn’t fatal, it was usually a good learning experience.

  “I’m sorry I screwed up, sir,” Jacob said quietly.

  “You’re alive. Let’s keep you that way,” Patrick said, clapping him on the top of the shoulder. “Talk to you tomorrow.”

  Then he headed back out again. Time to link up with Fred. There was something really odd about those malfunctions. Jacob was a newbie to space, but how the hell had he gotten a jolt like that changing a breaker? It didn’t make sense. It should have been an easy out-and-back-in job. And then there was the airlock in the central dome. It had failed, failed so badly that nobody could get it open from the inside to pull Carmen and Jacob back in.

  Now random failures happened sometimes. But two, close together like that? It struck him as odd, and worth checking out.

  * * *

  Carmen helped her father empty crates of fragile supplies and place them into shelving units. She had to
be careful. The light gravity made moving things trickier than usual. She was used to seeing something and assuming its weight before she lifted it, and everything here weighed less than it looked.

  Her father also hadn’t spoken to her since Patrick had left. She waited until the other staff were a little ways away from them before trying to speak with him.

  “I’m sorry, Dad. I was trying to help.”

  He stopped messing with the machine he was calibrating and looked up at her. “Carmen. Of all the people out here on this mission, I count on you the most to be mature, solid, responsible.”

  “Thanks?” she said, not sure where this was going, but she had a bad feeling in her gut.

  “Don’t thank me. Live up to that expectation. You had no business being out there and you know it,” he said.

  She winced. She did know it. But at the time, she’d been honestly trying to help as best she could. “I’m sorry, Dad.” What else could she say? She felt horrible. Her father was in the middle of the most important work of his life – maybe the most important work anyone alive was doing. She wanted nothing more than to help him achieve it. She knew now that she should have gone to Patrick in the first place. The man was clearly making her father’s project his top priority. He’d bent over backwards to get her and Jacob back inside safely, and then turned around immediately to fix the electrical issue as soon as he heard about it. If she’d just gone right to him, Jacob would never have been hurt and the power would have been fixed that much sooner.

  She still couldn’t get over how cold he looked, when he cycled the lock and put that poor man into space. It haunted her. Even more so now that she’d been around him more, since it didn’t fit with what she’d seen of him since then.

  “You know that people are saying I only brought you to keep you safe,” her father said, breaking her away from her thoughts of Patrick with a jolt.

  Carmen sucked in her breath. She had worried people might be saying such things, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the truth. Sometimes, truth hurt. Carmen realized that she desperately didn’t want to know what he was going to say next. If he’d really brought her out here just to get her out of danger, then it would be more than she could bear. She was smart, damn it! And good at her job. All she needed was a chance to prove that.