The Cassini Code

by Dom Testa

  To complicate matters, one of the working eight had been lost in the near-deadly encounter with the mad stowaway. Merit wasted no time reminding his followers that this left only seven Spiders to safely deploy more than 250 passengers to the planet’s surface. The math, he preached, did not work with eight; to rely on seven was dangerously foolish.

  The Storage Sections were a mystery indeed. Loaded aboard the ship just prior to launch, they were sealed and impenetrable. Dr. Zimmer had deflected any and all questions from the young crew members concerning the contents, refusing to say anything beyond “you’ll find out when you get there.” Tucked into the desolate lower corner of the ship, most of Galahad’s crew had practically forgotten about the massive containers once the ship was outside the orbit of Mars; that was exactly as Dr. Zimmer had planned.

  Just around a bend from the entrance to the Spider bay was a lone window that provided a solitary view into space. It was one of Gap’s favorite spots, a secluded setting that offered a rare break from noise and company.

  He stood there now, leaning against the window with his arms crossed, scanning the spectacular star field. It often struck him as odd that there was no sensation of movement, how the stars seemed almost like a painted backdrop that never changed, even as the ship flashed through space faster than any human-built device ever conceived. He wondered if he would catch a glimpse of one of the Kuiper objects, perhaps a tumbling boulder, as it wound its way around the sun.

  His temper had finally cooled. He scolded himself for lashing out at Triana, yet at the same time he recognized that many factors had played a part in his anger. Anxiety, fear, frustration, and self-doubt. They had all mixed together to create a vicious mood, and once again his emotions had bubbled to the surface, overriding his rational side.

  Perhaps guilt had played a part, as well. He had vented to Triana about Balin and Merit…and yet he, himself, had entertained thoughts of turning back. He had fantasized about reuniting with his family and friends, then had taken out his frustrations on Triana.

  The outburst still troubled him, maybe because one other emotion—one that Gap had thought was suppressed—kept clawing its way to the top, demanding attention.

  There was no time for such thoughts.

  He heard the soft approach of footsteps, and turned his head to find Hannah walking toward him, a tentative smile on her face.

  “Your favorite place,” she said. “You would be the world’s worst hide-and-go-seek player, you know?”

  “You’re probably right,” he said, forcing a return smile. “But it’s still the best place to get away and think.”

  He felt a rush of feelings that surprised him. Part of him was glad to see Hannah, one of the sweetest people on the ship. She was so easy to get along with, so understanding, and so caring. He had to admit that his mood could swing pretty rapidly, and yet she had weathered his shifting emotions without once complaining.

  If he began to catalogue her other qualities, they would be impressive. She was brilliant, artistically talented, kind, and even sported a dry sense of humor. On top of all of that, he was attracted to her looks, too. She had so much going for her, and he knew that he was a lucky guy.

  So why, when she came around the corner, had he also felt a touch of annoyance? It wasn’t simply that he wanted time to be alone; it was her. He hadn’t felt this way before. In fact, he was the one who had insisted on spending so much time together, who had pushed the relationship perhaps faster than it would have normally progressed. And now he was irritated when she showed up? What was that about?

  He tried to rationalize the feeling. His inability to solve the ship’s heating problem, coupled with all of the contributions that Hannah had delivered, might be causing a temporary surge of jealousy. Or his heated argument with Triana had opened an old wound. Or maybe it was simply the combination of those issues, along with the added stress of a crew in turmoil.

  In any event, something was different. Complicating things even further was the twinge of guilt that overlapped his feelings. Hannah had done nothing wrong, so why was he pulling away from her now?

  He decided to ignore the conflict for the moment, especially since he suddenly found her head resting on his shoulder. He draped an arm around her.

  “It’s beautiful,” she said, staring out the window. “You would think we’d be used to it by now, but it still leaves me in awe every time I see it.”

  “That’s why it’s so easy to find me,” Gap said. “I hope I never get tired of it.”

  They were quiet for a minute, each taking in the scene before them. Then Hannah pulled her head back and looked up at him. “Is there anything you’d like to talk about?”

  Now he was caught. He knew that he was lousy at camouflaging his feelings, and to say no would be an obvious lie. He chewed on his thoughts for a moment before responding.

  “You’ll think it’s silly.”

  “I’ll think it’s silly if you don’t talk about what’s bothering you.”

  He sighed, an uneasy smile playing across his face. “Listen, you’re putting me in a tough spot, because no guy likes to show weakness, you know?”

  Hannah shook her head. “Do you think I want you to be a machine or something? It’s nice to know that there are genuine human emotions floating around inside there.” She grinned. “Okay, so I like the strong side of you, too. But a little sensitivity from time to time is…attractive. Get it?”

  Gap shrugged. “Sure. I get it.” He withdrew his arm, walked across the corridor and leaned against the far side, his hands behind him. Hannah leaned against the window and faced him.

  The slight distance between them seemed to help him. It was a buffer zone, of sorts, and he found that the words began to flow out of him.

  “It was an honor to be selected for this mission. For all of us. I remember how proud my parents were. Even though they were sad, they were also happy, you know? Then, to be named to the Council, I thought my mom was going to burst with pride. When I wrote to her with the news she wrote back to say, ‘Dr. Zimmer has put a lot of faith in you; he sees what I have always seen in you.’”

  “She was right,” Hannah said.

  “Was she? I think I’ve talked a pretty good game so far, but when you get right down to it, what have I really done?”

  Hannah stared across the corridor at him, a look of irritation spreading across her face. “What are you talking about? Stop it right now.”

  Gap ignored this. “What did I do when we were confronted by the stowaway? What did I do when the Cassini almost did us in? What have I done with this whole Merit Simms trouble? Nothing. Now my one job was to repair the heating system, and I couldn’t even finish that. Roc took care of it without me.”

  He dropped his chin to his chest. “Tomorrow I’m going to meet with Triana and talk about resigning from the Council.”

  Hannah covered the distance between them in a flash. She pulled his chin up in her hand. “What is wrong with you?” she snapped. “Where is this coming from? Remember when I said that a little sensitivity was attractive? Well, this is not.”

  He gave her a wry smile. “Great. So I’m failing with you, too.” She let go of his chin and took a step backward. “I can’t believe this is the same Gap I fell for. Are you listening to yourself? If you can’t be the hero all the time, or the knight in shining armor, or whatever you want to call it, you suddenly sulk and quit? I don’t believe that.”

  Gap had no response. “Hey,” Hannah said, her voice softening. “Whatever you’re going through right now, let me help you. Don’t be this way.”

  After another moment of silence, she stepped up and encircled him with her arms. He waited a few seconds, his arms dangling at his sides, before slowly returning the embrace. He looked over her shoulder, toward the window and the backdrop of starlight.

  Every eye turned to watch as Triana and Bon stepped out of the lift into the Control Room. Every conversation abruptly ended.

  Triana noted with a q
uick glance that Gap’s station was once again vacant. Given more time to reflect on it, she might have been angry that he was consistently unavailable lately. But with more pressing matters at hand she dismissed the concern for the time being, while making a mental note to deal with Gap as soon as possible. Their last meeting had turned nasty, and she wondered if that played a part in his absence.

  The room remained quiet as she and Bon walked up to the interface that allowed direct programming access to Roc and Galahad’s ion drive. Triana looked at the Swede.

  “Do you need me to do anything?”

  Bon shook his head. He had spoken with Triana as they made their way from the Domes down to the Control Room, but had only begun to give her a brief description of what would have to take place in the ship’s navigation. He didn’t understand all of it himself, but an almost eerie sense of the task at hand was imprinted upon his mind; an hour earlier none of it would have made sense.

  “I think I can handle it,” he said, inspecting the vidscreen before him. He pulled up a chair and placed his hands on the keyboard. “I’ll need Roc for some of this.”

  “I’m happy to lend a hand,” the computer countered, “but would it be asking too much for you to fill me in on what’s about to happen?”

  Bon looked around the room at the crew members before looking up at Triana. She read his thoughts. “It’s okay,” she said, “they’ll all find out sooner or later. Tell him.”

  Sitting back in the chair, Bon looked at the glowing red sensor. “I’m going to patch in a code that will help us maneuver through the Kuiper Belt without smashing into something.”

  “Okay,” Roc said, “and when you’re finished I’ll plug in a code that will make rabbit poop turn into jelly beans.”

  Bon smiled. “You don’t believe me?”

  “Of course I believe you. Trillions of chunks of rock and ice, all bouncing off each other, without any pattern to their movements whatsoever, and you have the magic formula to slip past like they weren’t even there. Why would I possibly question that? By all means, change the course settings. If you guys need me, I’ll be over here putting my will together.”

  Triana leaned on the console. “Roc, the code comes from the Cassini.”

  “Oh, you mean the same Cassini that tried to blow us out of space a few months ago? Why didn’t you say so? I feel better already. Listen, most wills use the phrase ‘sound mind and body.’ Do I lose points by not having a body?”

  “You know that the problem at Saturn was a misunderstanding,” Triana said. Then, looking at Bon, she added, “Don’t mind him. Go ahead, do what you need to do.”

  “Um, may I ask a question?” Roc said. “How will this affect our course to Eos?”

  “To be honest with you, I can’t worry about that right now,” Triana said. “The big issue is avoiding a collision; getting back on course once we leave the Kuiper Belt will have to be secondary.”

  She was aware that the conversation was having a troubling effect on the assembled crew members. The tension in the room was obvious, and out of the corner of her eye she noticed Mika, one of Merit’s followers, lean over and whisper something to the boy next to her.

  Triana tapped Bon on the shoulder once and nodded at the panel. He leaned forward and began to type on the keyboard. Slowly at first, with several pauses, then a little more. For a moment he closed his eyes and furrowed his brow, as if he was trying to remember something. Triana could only speculate as to how he was retrieving the information from the Cassini.

  She started to ask him about this, when suddenly an alarm sounded. The loud, pulsing tone made her jump and grab onto Bon’s shoulders for support. “What did you do?” she yelled over the alarm.

  “Nothing,” he said back to her. “I’m only doing preliminary work. I haven’t even uploaded anything yet.”

  “It’s not Bon,” Roc said. “It’s the collision warning system down in Engineering.”

  “What about it?”

  “It just failed. It’s out completely.”

  Triana’s eyes grew wide. “How could that happen?”

  “Checking,” Roc said. “It may take awhile to track down.” Bon turned and looked up at Triana. “That means we’re flying blind right now.”

  She felt her breath catch in her chest. There was no way for them to know what was coming at them, or where it was, or how to avoid it. They were completely vulnerable.

  She looked back at Bon, then pointed to the keyboard before him.

  “Hurry,” she said.

  28

  The red ribbon that she often used to tie back her hair was still missing, and Lita looked around her room for the third time since that morning. “Why,” she wondered to herself, “do we always look in the same spot over and over again?” It was not in the room. She sighed, opened a dresser drawer, and dug around until she came up with a pink ribbon. Close enough for now, she decided.

  As she stood before the mirror, adjusting the ribbon, she thought about the episode with Bon in the dome. It had rattled her a little bit, but on some level she realized that maybe she was becoming almost numb to the bizarre events that piled up during this journey. Each strange occurrence made her aware that the universe was not only vast, but was full of more wonders than the human mind could comprehend.

  And what of Bon? He seemed fine when he and Triana had left for the Control Room…but was he? There was an odd change in him that Lita had noticed, but it was so vague that it wasn’t worth commenting on. She kept it to herself, mainly because she wouldn’t have been able to describe it anyway. It was simply a feeling. He was the same Bon as before, yet not the same Bon. What was happening to him each time he connected with the Cassini?

  The only thing to do, she decided, was to wait and watch. Perhaps others would notice it, too. Channy, for one. It was hard to get anything past her.

  She turned to examine the room, which could use some tidying up. But she also felt a need to get back to Sick House as soon as possible. The decision was made for her a split-second later when the alarm sounded.

  The loud, pulsing tones jolted her for a second. Her first instinct was to call Triana, but she also knew that the Council Leader and Bon were already in the Control Room, and undoubtedly were in the middle of whatever was taking place. Instead, she quickly grabbed the medical kit that she had carried up to the dome, and dashed out the door.

  Three minutes later, with the alarm now muted, she stood at her desk in Sick House. Two of the clinic’s workers had questioned her immediately, but no, she told them, she had no more information than they. It was hard to concentrate on the mundane tasks that faced her while her imagination worked through all of the possible emergency scenarios. Finally, she tossed her stylus pen onto the desk and walked into the hospital ward to check on Alexa.

  Each time she had entered the room in the past few days her heart ached. Although she had done everything with textbook efficiency, her friend and co-worker lay unconscious, and the feeling of responsibility was heavy. Lita stood beside the bed and smoothed the covers. Once again she briefly wondered if Alexa sensed what was going on around her, and again felt certain that she must.

  “You should have seen it,” Lita said in a soft voice. “Bon did his mind-merge trick again with the Cassini.” She smiled as she gently pulled Alexa up, adjusted the pillow beneath her, then laid her back again. “I guess they gave him the key to the back door out of the solar system. But an alarm went off a few minutes ago, so I hope he knows what he’s doing.”

  She took a step back and looked at the monitor which reflected Alexa’s vital signs. “Of course, I suppose we should be lucky that we have a Cassini ambassador aboard the ship, right? Somebody who speaks their lingo, anyway. Although I have to tell you, this time when he connected he—”

  Lita stopped short when she heard it. A small hiss, barely audible. She stepped closer to the monitor to see if it was coming from there, then looked behind her to see if someone had entered the room. But they were alone.r />
  When it happened again she was startled to hear a high-pitched moan underneath the sound. She quickly darted back to the bed and looked down into her patient’s face.

  Alexa’s eyes were open halfway.

  Lita felt her heart race. “Alexa!” she said, grasping the blonde girl’s hand. “Alexa, can you hear me?”

  Again she heard the hissing sound, with more of the moan, and this time there was no doubt it was coming from Alexa. “Hey, Alexa. C’mon, you can do it. C’mon.”

  She grabbed a cool wash cloth that was on the night stand and patted Alexa’s forehead. It was something her mother had always done for her whenever she was sick, and it just seemed…right.

  “Alexa?” she said. “Do you know where we are?”

  Alexa’s eyes drooped shut for a moment, then opened again, this time a little more than halfway. She seemed to be staring into nowhere, until seconds later her eyes shifted and made contact with Lita’s. Lita felt a surge of excitement.

  “Hey, welcome back. Did you have a nice nap?” Her emotions began to take hold of her again, and she could feel tears roll down her cheeks. She didn’t care. Keeping one hand holding onto Alexa’s, she leaned over and pressed the call button to summon some of her help from the other room. Two of her assistants quickly scampered into the hospital ward, their eyes growing wide when they saw Alexa.

  “Run a scan on her right away,” Lita said without taking her eyes off her friend.

  “Blood, respiration, cardio vascular.” She paused, then added, “And neural. I want a brain scan, too.”

  While the workers began their preparations, Lita leaned close to Alexa’s face. “You’ve been asleep for awhile. Are you able to talk?”

  The wheezing sound came, but no words at first. Then, as if she was thinking hard about something, Alexa scrunched her eyebrows and closed her eyes. Her lips moved, but she seemed to have difficulty forming words. One of the assistants handed Lita a cup of small ice chips, and she gently put one into Alexa’s mouth.