The Comet's Curse

by Dom Testa

“C’mon, I’m serious.”

  “No, Tree, you’re not serious. You’re shaken up right now, and no one would blame you. It’s not like you didn’t have pressure on you to start with, and now you’ve got all the drama with Peter. That’s a lot on your plate.

  “And here’s the best part, Tree: this is the first week. Only about another two hundred sixty weeks to go.”

  Triana bit her lip. “That’s very encouraging.”

  “Look, my friend, if you think this will be the last crisis, you are crazy. This incident is magnified because we’ve only just launched. Everything is new, everyone’s nerves are stretched tight, and then this happens before you can even get settled.

  “But over the next five years there will be more conflicts. Remember your psych training with Dr. Armistead. She did a good job of preparing you for the changes all of you will experience over the years, both physically and emotionally. You’ll hardly recognize the person you are now. And you’ll find that your friendships will change, too. People you are very close to now will not be as close down the road. On the other hand, some people that you barely know now will turn out to be your best friends. That’s not unique to Galahad. It happens to every young person as they mature. You’ll need time and space to think and grow. The difference here is that you can’t really run away and hide for very long. You’re confined to this ship for a big part of your lives.

  “I, on the other hand,” he added, “will continue to be the same sophisticated, charming and witty intellect that I’ve always been.”

  Triana laughed. “Charming?”

  “Extremely. I’ve got excess reserves of charm that I probably won’t even begin to tap for years. You’re very lucky to know me. Don’t you feel lucky?”

  “Sometimes. Maybe not right now,” Triana said, the smile still on her face.

  “You’re obviously tired,” Roc said. “Maybe a nap would be good. You’ll like me much more when you wake up.”

  Triana again bit her lower lip, a habit she kept promising herself she would break. Her thoughts returned to Peter’s encounter near the storage area. It was true that stress could have played a big part in the episode, but one thought kept bothering her: Gap’s story of space station crew members who had believed they were seeing family members or friends floating outside. It was almost always someone they knew, as if their brains were plugging in familiar faces for their fantasies. That didn’t seem farfetched to Triana.

  But Peter couldn’t name the man he’d seen. The closest he came to it was to admit that the man looked vaguely familiar, but not someone close to him. Did that mean something? Had Peter actually seen an adult aboard Galahad? And an adult with a beard, a trait that was common many years ago, but today was extremely rare. Well, Gap would be checking in soon after looking around the Storage Section. Perhaps he would shed some light on the event.

  Triana yawned, weariness beginning to overtake her. “Oh, anything new on that … what’d you call it? Imbalance?”

  “Still working on it,” Roc said. “In the meantime, if I may make a suggestion …”

  “Sure.”

  “All kidding aside, I think it would be a good idea if you did try to sleep a little bit. You’re not immune from the stress we’ve talked about, you know. How much sleep have you had in the last week?”

  Tree smiled and rubbed a hand through her hair. “We should add another entry to your list of job responsibilities, Roc.”

  “Oh, and what would that be?”

  “Mother hen.” But she knew he was right. Wasn’t it just like Roc to push the right buttons at just the right time?

  “All right, I’ll try,” she said to the computer. “I don’t know if I can, but I’ll give it a shot. Do me a favor, though. Wake me as soon as you hear anything new from Lita or Gap. With this outburst from Peter, things might get a little hairy with the rest of the crew.”

  “I’m on it,” said the computer. Within two minutes Triana was dozing.

  And Roc was deep in thought.

  Lita was sitting in Sick House, tapping a stylus pen against her cheek. Her eyes focused on a glass cube that sat atop a folder. The cube was filled with sand and small pebbles, one of the personal items from her home near the beach in Mexico. Over the last few days she had found herself constantly picking it up and watching the sand slide back and forth, creating her own tide, imagining the cool touch of the wet sand on her feet during a morning walk. In her room Roc was more than happy to provide faint sounds of the surf rushing ashore, an occasional cry from a gull. It was her tenuous link with home.

  She had just finished her report on the status of Peter Meyer, and, like Triana, she turned her thoughts to what Gap had told them about the early space colonists. She imagined the ghostly specter of familiar faces floating outside Galahad, clawing at the windows to get in, mouths gaping, eyes locked wide open. She quickly shook her head, trying to erase the image, but all she did was succeed in replacing it with an image of the man Peter claimed to have seen. The bearded man with the dark eyes. Another ghost?

  For some reason she believed Peter. For one thing, his roommate had told her that Peter was fine when he left the group gathered around the window in the recreation section, hoping to find some other spot where he could see the moon. He hadn’t been any more depressed than anyone else; in fact, he was even slightly upbeat. Plus, nothing in his psych file led her to believe he would be prone to an anxiety attack. All in all, a pretty tough fifteen-year-old … until he was carried into Sick House, screaming. It was true that some people could camouflage their anxiety, bottling it up until it finally burst like an overburdened dam.

  So what did that mean? If she really believed Peter Meyer, then Lita knew that meant there could be an adult somewhere in the Storage Sections of Galahad.

  As Lita sat thinking about it, Alexa Wellington stuck her head in the open door and tapped on it. “Are you busy?”

  “No, come on in. I’m just finishing up.” Lita let out a long sigh. “I didn’t know what to expect during the first week, but it sure wasn’t this.”

  Alexa nodded, a gentle smile on her face. Her long blond hair had escaped from the clip and was now hanging over her shoulders.

  “By the way,” Lita said, “Tree and I were both impressed with the way you took charge of the situation in here. You handled it like a total pro.”

  “Well, it’s probably just because Peter was screaming his head off. I was so fired up on adrenaline I just reacted. Dr. Armistead used to call it the ‘fire drill.’ She said doctors and nurses usually were at their best in those cases because they didn’t have time to stop and think. They just jumped right into action. I can’t believe it, my first fire drill and we’re still inside the orbit of Mars.”

  Lita looked down at her stylus. “Well, all I know is that we have one big mystery on our hands. I think most people want to write off Peter’s actions as some kind of space hysteria.”

  “But you don’t think so?”

  “No. I might have at first, but not anymore. Not after going over his file and talking to his roommate. It doesn’t fit. But …”

  Alexa raised her eyebrows. “But …”

  The young head of Galahad’s Health Department sat forward and said in a hushed voice, “But if Peter wasn’t just wigging out over the launch and leaving his family, then that means he really saw someone down there in Storage. An adult.” She paused to let that sink in, then added, “And I don’t like that idea any better than him temporarily losing it. In fact, I don’t like that idea at all.”

  Alexa looked off into the distance. “It’s creepy,” she said with a slight shiver. “But … but could that even be possible? Security was so tight, how could anyone have snuck aboard?”

  Lita shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, really. We can’t worry about how someone might have gotten on board. If it’s true, we’ll have to figure out what we do about it.”

  Alexa stood up. “Well, if you’re really convinced that Peter might have seen someone, then
you need to talk about it with Triana immediately.”

  Lita looked up at her and said, “I’m going to have another talk with Peter first. I don’t want this to turn out to be a false alarm and have Tree thinking I’m quick to overreact. She needs to be able to trust me during a crisis.”

  “All right,” Alexa said. “But if you still have doubts, don’t wait. Part of her trust in you is based on you trusting your instincts. That’s one of the reasons you’re on the Council, you know.”

  With that, she turned and walked out of Sick House. Lita sat quietly for another minute, then began softly tapping the stylus pen against her cheek.

  10

  When Dr. Zimmer first suggested a lifeboat to ferry hundreds of Earth’s children to the stars, his original design idea was actually very close to the finished spaceship that became their home. His dream of a ship broken up into various segments, each with a different purpose, came true.

  “Why are you calling it Galahad?” he was asked countless times.

  “Sir Galahad was considered the perfect knight,” he would reply, “a member of King Arthur’s Round Table. Legend tells us that he had the strength of ten men. And, as the knight who successfully completed the greatest quest of all—the search for the Holy Grail—I find him to be the perfect namesake for our own quest. Call it superstition, if you must.”

  The ship itself was an engineering marvel, a testament to the skills of many people from many nations. It showed what they could accomplish if they put their petty differences aside for a common goal. This goal, of course, being the most crucial mankind had ever faced.

  One deck of the ship housed the Conference Room, Recreation Room, Dining Hall, and various control centers and offices. Galahad’s Sick House was on this level, too.

  The Engineering Section was close to the bottom of the ship, home to the ion power plant that helped propel Galahad through space. The solar sails, used primarily to get the monstrous vehicle out of the solar system, and also available as a backup propulsion source, were managed in Engineering. Shops, tool supplies and emergency gear were located around the perimeter. Gap Lee supervised this section.

  The Agricultural Domes, or what the crew simply called the Farms, sat at the top of the ship. Bon Hartsfield’s background with alternative farming made him a good choice as head of the department that sported crops of vegetables, grains and fruits. With a couple hundred mouths to feed for at least five years, Galahad’s Farms were flush with row after row of specially engineered varieties, each chosen or designed for its toughness and bounty.

  The bottom level was broken into two parts. One side was very active, with the gym (or Channy’s Torture Chamber, as some had dubbed it) and an Airboarding track.

  The other half, usually dim and deserted, was home to the Spider Bays. The small escape craft, called Spiders, were kept ready for any emergency needs outside the ship, but were primarily to be used for transporting the crew once Galahad reached its destination.

  The mysterious, locked Storage Section was also on this end of the lower level. Hallways that meandered throughout these rooms were almost always empty, unless someone wanted to get away and have a quiet walk by themselves. The doors, sealed and impenetrable, held their secrets locked inside.

  But the most personal compartments on the ship were placed on the middle decks. Galahad’s Housing Levels were sometimes compared to college dormitories. Dr. Bauer and his group of designers knew that privacy was a luxury they could not afford with so many space travelers packed into such a small area. But they did the best they could, making sure that only two people would be squeezed into each apartment. So, everyone on Galahad had a roommate, with the lone exception of Triana Martell. Dr. Zimmer was the one who had spoken up on this matter, demanding that whoever was in charge should have the chance to get away from the responsibility, to unwind in private. No one argued.

  Because the apartments would be home for each of these kids for years, the design team spent many long hours visiting with teenagers from around the world in an effort to supply an atmosphere that best suited them. Yet it was important that the housing levels should also be able to adapt, especially since the space explorers were going to literally grow into them. Each of the 251 young people on Galahad was going to mature as they rocketed toward the star awaiting them, and the ship would have to accommodate those changes. Roc would, of course, oversee the alterations, and decide when they were necessary.

  But almost everyone was happy with the way the project’s plans had turned out. Each room was a decent size, with comfortable beds, an entertainment center and private wash facilities. When the final list of teens was selected, they were even allowed to come aboard and, with their new roommate, finish the room off with their own decorations. Some of the kids chose posters featuring famous entertainers, either musicians or actors that they idolized. But most made the same decision as Triana, filling their walls with pictures of Earth, including mountains, oceans, clouds, forests and sunsets. There was no telling when, or if, they would ever see anything like them again. By the time of the launch, Galahad indeed looked like a dorm that had just been set upon by hundreds of college freshmen.

  All in all, Galahad was the most ambitious space project ever conceived. And it had to come together in two years.

  But what about this lifeboat’s destination? Galahad could not be set adrift in space to wander aimlessly. A target was needed, a course selected, a plan put in place. After weeks of information gathering and many heated debates, Dr. Zimmer sat late one night with his assistant, Dr. Fenton Bauer, determined to make a final decision.

  The office was dimly lit, the glare of the computer screens lighting primarily the faces of the two scientists. Dr. Bauer, his long, sad face showing the signs of increasing weariness, rubbed his eyes and yawned. Dr. Zimmer knew that his close friend and associate was beginning to face another strain as well. In the past month Dr. Bauer had shown the first symptoms of Bhaktul Disease.

  “Do you want to run the numbers again, or are you comfortable with what we have?” Dr. Zimmer said.

  “Well, this is the one, I’m sure of that. I mean, we can run the numbers until we drop, but this is the one.”

  With two quick clicks, Dr. Bauer brought the image of a yellow star up on a large vidscreen. “This will be their new sun,” he said. “Eos. I even like the name.”

  “The Greek goddess of the dawn.” Dr. Zimmer gazed at the screen. “Remarkable, isn’t it? Galahad represents the dawn of a new human civilization. They obviously can rename it once they get there, but I hope they don’t.”

  “Ten planets in orbit, two of them apparently similar to Earth conditions,” Dr. Bauer said. “Eos III looks very encouraging. Eos II may be just a tad too hot. I think either one, however, offers as good a chance as they’ll get. They both have water and an atmosphere. And five years is not too bad for the trip.”

  Dr. Zimmer nodded. “Eos. Home away from home.” He looked across at his assistant. “We’ll announce it Tuesday at our weekly press conference. For now, though, I’m going to bed.”

  “All right. I’m going to work out one or two more things.” Bauer stretched his arms over his head before reaching down and tilting the screen up slightly. “There will be a million questions on Tuesday, and I want us to have a million answers.” He coughed once, then again. Dr. Zimmer knew that his assistant had been doing that quite a bit lately. Before he could say anything about it, Dr. Bauer added, “Tomorrow we should talk a little more with Dr. Armistead about the Council, too. I think the sooner you finalize those positions, the sooner the rest of the crew will learn to start trusting them.”

  “I agree,” Dr. Zimmer said. “We can start on that first thing in the morning. I already can tell that you’re uncomfortable with some of the possible choices.”

  “Oh, I’m sure they’re all good kids. But you never know, do you? We’ve all been fooled by kids who turned out a little differently than we imagined.”

  There was an awkward si
lence between the two men. Dr. Zimmer was sure that personal feelings were creeping into Dr. Bauer’s work, which was only natural. But he wasn’t sure how to address it and still respect the man’s privacy.

  He decided to take a chance. “Changing the subject, and begging your pardon if this is none of my business …”

  “Yes?”

  “Have you talked with your son lately?”

  Dr. Bauer fidgeted for a moment. He rubbed his face and glanced back at his vidscreen.

  Zimmer immediately regretted the question. “I’m sorry, that’s none of my—”

  “No, it’s okay.” Bauer dropped the hand from his face and cleared his throat. “I, um … I had a quick talk with him about three days ago. He knows I’m working on this project now, and … well, I guess I thought it might make him proud.”

  “Yes?”

  “It didn’t. He’s part of the rebellious side, the side that seems to agree with your old friend Tyler Scofield. He asked me how I could devote the last days of my life helping complete strangers instead of my own family.”

  Dr. Zimmer looked down and shook his head. There were way too many people with that same polluted opinion. It had to be tearing up Dr. Bauer on the inside.

  “You’re doing the right thing, Fenton,” Zimmer said in a soft voice. “You know you are.”

  “Yeah, I know that.” Bauer paused before adding, “Sure.”

  Dr. Zimmer wanted to say something else, but decided that the matter was best dropped. “Good night, then,” he said, and walked out of the dim room, leaving the silhouette of Fenton Bauer hunched in front of the computer.

  So which are you, Swedish or American?”

  Bon Hartsfield eyed the girl who had asked the question. They had finished a long week of classroom studies and were slowly walking across the Galahad training complex grounds towards the cafeteria. Bon didn’t think much of the girl. She tended to talk more than listen, qualities that would certainly work against her when it came time to pare down the candidates to the final 251.