by Greg Cox
He snatched the mask out of the air. “What about you?”
“There’s another one in my compartment.” She flew out into the corridor. “Be right with you. Don’t wait for me!”
There wasn’t time to argue the point. He secured the mask to his face and made sure the seal was airtight. A toggle initiated the oxygen flow, and he breathed deeply of the uncontaminated air before exiting his quarters and heading for the hatch to the lower level. Smoke was already wafting up from below. He clicked on an attached searchlight to make his way.
He heard someone coughing downstairs. Zoe!
He dived headfirst through the hatch into the rec area and looked around hurriedly for the stowaway. The fans had gone silent, slowing the smoke’s progress, but a sooty haze still made it hard to see.
“Zoe!” he called out, but the mask muffled his voice. “Where are you?”
At first, he couldn’t find her, and he feared she was passed out or worse, but then she swam out of the smoke toward him. A wet rag was wrapped around the bottom half of her face, making her look like an old-time bandit. Sweat gleamed on her bare arms and legs, as though she had been working out on the treadmill. Her dark eyes were watering from the smoke. Despite the rag, he could hear her gasping for breath.
He fumbled with the straps on his mask, intending to share his oxygen with her, but Fontana beat him to the punch. Joining him in the smoke-filled compartment, she thrust a spare respirator at Zoe. Her own mask was already affixed to her face. He guessed that she had acquired the third unit from O’Herlihy’s quarters.
Good thinking, Kirk thought.
Zoe pulled the mask over her head. Kirk checked quickly to make sure that it was working. She gave him an encouraging thumbs-up, then saluted Fontana, who more than deserved it. The fact that Fontana, of all people, had possibly saved Zoe’s life was not lost on him. That was worth a commendation or two, as far as he was concerned.
Unfortunately, they still had the fire to deal with.
The respirators made verbal communication difficult, so they had to rely on hand signals. Kirk located a fire extinguisher and indicated that Fontana should grab one, too. Leading the way, he pushed off toward the command module. Zoe started to follow him, but Fontana held up her hand and pointed back at the hab emphatically. Her message was clear: Stay here.
She slammed the hatch shut, sealing Zoe in the hab, and trailed Kirk into the murky vestibule leading to the command module. A blast of intense heat hit Kirk as they cautiously approached the open hatch at the opposite end of the tunnel. His eyes widened behind his mask.
The blaze was worse than he had feared.
Unrestrained by gravity, a bright blue fireball, at least a foot in diameter, spread out from the center of the mid-deck, scorching the surrounding minilabs and payload racks. The roaring inferno fed eagerly on the ship’s air supply, throwing off fiery orange sparks and gouts of flame in all directions. Irreplaceable lab equipment crackled and burned. Chemical reagents in airtight containers exploded, blowing apart overheated cabinets. Rubber gloves bubbled and melted. A sealed containment box cracked, releasing toxic fumes. The bulkheads blackened alarmingly.
He briefly considered sealing off the module and venting its atmosphere to extinguish the fire, but the hatch door was already too hot to touch—and O’Herlihy was trapped one deck above. They could seal off the vestibule at the other end, try to contain the blaze to the command module, but what about O’Herlihy? Kirk wanted to call out to the man, find out if he was okay, but he couldn’t remove his respirator mask. He could only hope that the endangered scientist was still alive and that they wouldn’t have to sacrifice him for the good of the ship.
Here’s hoping it doesn’t come to that, Kirk thought.
He flew as close to the hatchway as he could, feeling the heat of the blaze through his mask and jumpsuit, and hefted the bright orange fire extinguisher into position. He wondered briefly what they used in the twenty-first century to fight fires. Carbon dioxide? Nitrogen? A more advanced compound? Whatever it was, he prayed it was effective.
Before he could aim the nozzle at the fire, however, Fontana tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention. She used her hands to pantomime a missile flying back the way they’d come.
Right, Kirk thought. In zero gravity, the spray from the fire extinguisher would act as a thruster, propelling him in the opposite direction. They needed to brace themselves securely first. But how?
An idea occurred to him. Putting his extinguisher aside, he wedged his feet beneath a guide rail, grabbed a nearby truss with one hand, and wrapped his other arm around Fontana’s waist. Getting the idea, she braced herself against him and aimed her own extinguisher at the conflagration. She twisted the nozzle.
A spray of white fire-retardant foam shot from the nozzle, the unleashed pressure driving her backward into Kirk. Grunting, he absorbed the impact and held fast while she emptied the extinguisher into the heart of the fireball. Steam rose from the flames, adding to the smoky chaos. Burned foam splattered the walls, floor, and ceiling.
But the fire kept on burning. To Kirk’s alarm, he saw globules of molten metal boiling off the charred bulkheads. Sparks erupted from exploding terminals. His heart sank. There was no containment field outside the ship to protect them in the event of a hull breach. If the fire burned through the outer hull, they would vent their atmosphere whether they wanted to or not. Explosive decompression would blow them all out into the vacuum.
They needed to kill this fire!
Fontana’s extinguisher sputtered. The spray slowed to a trickle, before dying out entirely. She shook it angrily, but it was no use; the entire contents of her extinguisher had barely made a dent in the inferno. Chucking the empty container aside, she claimed Kirk’s extinguisher and resumed her efforts. A fresh supply of foam battled the blaze.
Keep it up, Kirk thought, holding on to her against an equal and opposite reaction to the spray. Peering over her shoulder, he watched anxiously to see if the second helping of foam was doing any good. For a second, he wondered what had started the fire, then pushed the question aside. They could worry about that later, if and when they saved the ship.
A hatch opened in the ceiling above the mid-deck. More foam sprayed down from the upper level, joining Fontana’s efforts. Combined, the twin sprays attacked the blaze from different angles.
O’Herlihy, Kirk realized, relieved to discover that the other man had not suffocated yet. But the ceiling separating the flight deck from the fire was in trouble. Kirk watched in dismay as the flames ate away at the bulkheads. Molten steel sprayed from the ceiling, weakening it. A sudden gout of flame lunged at the open hatch, forcing O’Herlihy to slam it shut again. He was alive, but for how much longer?
Fontana let loose with the extinguisher. Kirk wasn’t sure, but it looked as if she might finally be making progress. The flames and sparks retreated, compacting back into the central fireball, which began to dim in intensity, going from blue-hot to red to orange . . .
That’s it, Kirk thought, feeling a surge of hope. You’ve got it on the ropes. Don’t stop.
The extinguisher ran out of foam.
“Dammit!” he cursed inside his mask, even as Fontana hurled the empty canister away in anger. He shared her frustration. Just when it looked as if they were on the verge of extinguishing the blaze!
Was there time to go searching for another extinguisher? Kirk doubted it. He glanced back at the tunnel behind him. If they hurried, there might still be time to seal off the vestibule and the command module. Had the moment come to sacrifice the module and O’Herlihy?
Kirk had faced this decision before, during ion storms and radiation leaks back aboard the Enterprise. Sometimes a captain had to jettison a pod or seal off a deck to save his ship, even if unlucky crew members had to pay the price. But it never got any easier.
I’m sorry, Marcus, he thought. But we’re running out of options.
He heard a metallic bump behind him. Glancing back over
his shoulder, he saw a petite, shadowy figure rushing toward them through the smoke. Zoe flew awkwardly out of the haze, clumsily bearing a third fire extinguisher. The metal canister smacked noisily against the side of the tunnel. She thrust the extra extinguisher at them.
Kirk could have kissed her.
Fontana snatched the canister from Zoe. She opened the valve and delivered a foamy coup de grâce to the blaze. To Kirk’s relief, the third extinguisher seemed to do the trick. Fontana kept on spraying until the foam completely smothered what was left of the fire and didn’t stop until she exhausted the new canister’s supply. By now, there was more foam than embers floating through the blackened mid-deck. Kirk let out a sigh of relief.
That had been a close one!
Zoe applauded their success, clapping her hands loudly. She started to take off her mask, but Kirk signaled her to wait. There was still too much free-floating smoke and ash; they needed to give the ship’s air filters a chance to scrub the atmosphere thoroughly.
Letting go of Fontana, he squeezed past her to inspect the charred ruins. The mid-deck, which had primarily served as the ship’s onboard laboratory, had been gutted by the fire. Loose debris and foam drifted amid the wreckage. Kirk doubted that they would be conducting any more experiments there.
Could have been worse, he thought. We could have lost the hab or the flight deck. Or maybe even the engines.
But one troubling question remained. What—or who—had started the fire?
“Take a deep breath,” the doctor instructed.
The fans were churning noisily as O’Herlihy checked out Kirk and Zoe in the infirmary. Paper filter masks, clasped over their mouths and nostrils, had replaced the more cumbersome respirators. The air was getting cleaner by the hour, but they still needed to avoid inhaling any lingering smoke or soot. Kirk sat on the examination pad, while O’Herlihy applied a cold stethoscope to his bare chest. Kirk breathed evenly.
“Not bad,” the doctor pronounced. “Your lungs sound clear enough. Looks like you got that respirator on in time.” He put away his stethoscope. “But I’m going to want to check everyone’s blood-oxygen levels regularly for the next forty-eight hours at least. Lord knows what sort of fumes and contaminants have gotten into the air.”
They had all washed and changed into fresh clothing, rather than risk spreading more soot and ash through the ship’s atmosphere. Sometime soon they would have to scrub down the mid-deck and the rest of the ship to contain the contamination. This was going to be a laborious and painstaking task, but there was no way around it. Left alone, the residue from the fire would make it into their air supply and their lungs.
“No problem, Doctor.” Kirk pushed away from the pad. “I’m just glad you’re still around to look after us. For a while there, I was afraid we had lost you.”
“I was worried about that myself,” O’Herlihy said. “Thank God for that fire alarm. I might not have even noticed the smoke otherwise. As it was, I barely had time to secure a respirator and close the hatch.”
That wouldn’t have been enough if they hadn’t managed to put out the fire, Kirk knew. “So, you have no idea how it started?”
O’Herlihy shook his head. “I was engrossed in my work, completely oblivious, when the alarm went off. Next thing I knew, smoke was billowing into the flight deck.”
“Weird,” Zoe commented. “Who knew this ship was a fire trap?”
She floated nearby, sipping water through a tube. Kirk had insisted that the doctor examine her and Fontana first, since he had donned his respirator before them. Zoe was still coughing occasionally, and the doctor wanted to keep a closer eye on her, but apparently, there was no immediate cause for alarm. It seemed they had all managed to come through the crisis without any serious burns or injuries. Kirk figured they owed that to their prompt response to the fire and a hefty dose of luck.
“It’s not supposed to be,” he said. “Something here doesn’t smell right, and I don’t mean the smoke.”
“You can say that again,” Fontana said, rejoining them in the rec area. She had insisted on investigating the site of the fire the second the doctor had given her a clean bill of health. She carried a blackened steel cylinder that looked as if it had been baked inside and out. The cylinder was wrapped in a clear plastic bag to keep any charred residue out of the air. “Take a look at this.”
O’Herlihy squinted at her burden. “Is that one of the spare oxygen generators?”
The device, which was roughly the size of a wastebasket, was intended to supplement the ship’s life-support system in the event of an emergency or a temporary power failure. The solid-fuel canisters contained a chemical mixture that, once activated, could generate several hours’ worth of oxygen. They were stored at key locations throughout the ship.
“You bet,” she said. “I can’t be sure, but pending a more thorough investigation, it looks like this was the initial source of the fire.”
Kirk peered at the cylinder. Certainly, it was capable of generating enough oxygen to produce a fireball of that magnitude and keep it going indefinitely. But surely it wasn’t supposed to ignite like that.
“A malfunction?” He searched his memory, vaguely remembering a similar incident from the early days of space travel. “Didn’t something like that happen before? On a Russian space station?”
“Mir, 1997.” She gave Shaun a puzzled look. “Come on, Shaun. You know that. Every astronaut does. Don’t tell me you’re fuzzy on the details!”
Well, it was nearly three centuries ago, Kirk thought, and there’s been a lot of space history since then—at least, for some of us.
“The point is, there’s a precedent.”
Fontana shook her head. “That was more than twenty years ago and shoddy Soviet-era craftsmanship to boot. The ones we’re using today have been redesigned with safety in mind. You’d have to make a real effort to ignite one that way. It wouldn’t just happen by accident.”
“What are you saying?” Kirk asked, frowning. “That somebody tampered with the canister?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying, and I think we all know who the obvious suspect is.”
She glared at Zoe, who suddenly realized that she was on the hot seat. She lowered her straw. “Whoa there, Detective Fontana! Are you implying that I’m responsible?”
“I’m not implying anything. I’m accusing you flat-out. Somebody sabotaged this ship, nearly killing us all, and you’re the only one who doesn’t belong here!”
“But I was nearly killed, too!” Zoe protested. “I helped you put out the fire!”
“So? You wouldn’t be the first terrorist to be willing to sacrifice themselves. Maybe you just chickened out at the last minute.”
“That’s crazy!” Zoe said. “I wouldn’t do something like that. I’m no terrorist!”
“That’s what they all say,” Fontana scoffed. She swung the bag containing the cylinder around, as if she was thinking of throwing it at Zoe. “Who else could have done it?”
Kirk put himself between the two women. “Hold on. Let’s not rush to judgment here.” He turned toward Fontana. “Alice, are you certain it was sabotage? Is there a chance that the generator ignited spontaneously?”
“Well, I’m no arson investigator,” she conceded reluctantly, “but those things are supposed to be foolproof. The odds that one would just go off like that must be a hundred to one. They’ve been carefully designed not to do that.”
She had a point, Kirk realized, but he knew from experience that even the most reliable technology could malfunction sometimes. Like the transporters back on the Enterprise, for example. Those had actually split him in two once. And on another occasion, they had transported him to a mirror universe. A primitive oxygen generator igniting by accident seemed fairly plausible by comparison.
“What do you think, Marcus?” he asked.
“I hate to say it,” the doctor answered, “but Alice may be right. Zoe’s motives and background are iffy. We don’t really know why she
smuggled herself aboard.” He spoke more in sorrow than in anger. “This whole business is suspicious.”
“What?” Zoe sounded hurt and surprised. “Et tu, Doc?”
“I’m sorry, Zoe,” he replied. “But you are a stowaway. And oxygen generators don’t just ignite themselves.”
“I never trusted you,” Fontana snarled. “And it looks like I was right all along.”
Zoe grabbed Kirk’s shoulder and spun him around to face her. “Please, Skipper! Don’t listen to them. You’ve known me for months now. You know I wouldn’t do something like this. That’s not me!”
His gut told him she was telling the truth, but that wasn’t good enough, not when the safety of the ship was at stake. He couldn’t take the chance that she was more dangerous than she seemed. Another “malfunction” like that could kill them all.
“I’m sorry,” he told her. “But you’re going back into the airlock, for the duration this time.”
“But I’m innocent! You know I am!”
“Maybe so,” he said grimly. “But that’s for a full forensic examination to determine, maybe back on Earth. In the meantime, I can’t have a suspected saboteur running loose on my ship.” He took her by the arm. “Fontana, please help me escort the prisoner to the brig.”
“With pleasure,” she said.
Seventeen
2270
“It’s dead, Mr. Spock. As the proverbial doornail.”
Montgomery Scott stepped away from the inert probe, which had been beamed directly to a force-shielded laboratory pod. In an emergency, the entire pod could be jettisoned into space to avoid harm to the rest of the ship. Antigrav lifts suspended the massive probe above the floor. A battery of specialized scanners, far more powerful and sophisticated than a standard tricorder, were aimed at the relic. Data from the scanners scrolled across a wall screen at the opposite end of the pod. Spock studied the data, which appeared to confirm Mr. Scott’s colorful diagnosis.
