Analog Science Fiction and Fact - Jan-Feb 2014

by Penny Publications

  The ship's event log showed that pressure had dropped first in the galley, so he started there, beginning a tedious visual examination of the f loor, the bulkhead that comprised part of Gandhi's outer hull. It took over an hour, but he finally located a hole less than a millimeter in diameter, next to the leg of a stainless steel counter. By inserting a thin wire and probing until he located the hole in the outer hull, he was able to establish the trajectory of the particle that had punctured the ship. Using that to point the way, he was able to quickly find the corresponding hole in the inner bulkhead that the galley shared with Hibernation Deck 3. He marked it and returned to the hole in the hull. It took another hour, but he gathered the materials he needed and welded a small plate over the hole. Then he did the same with the interior hole. Adhesive patches would have been faster—mere seconds—but he wanted permanent repairs, not slap-dash fixes that would have to be redone later. As it was, it would take a trip outside to repair the hole in the outer hull, but this would do for the time being. Assuming that this was the only hole, the ship would hold air and he could shuck the suit until it was time to go extravehicular.

  Adrian reentered the MOD and this time he pressurized it. After extricating himself from the hard suit, he gratefully collapsed into the seat at the Engineering station and initiated partial repressurization of the galley and hibernation deck. There was no need to waste air if there was another hole. While that was going on, he brought up reports on the colonists. From the path the micrometeor had taken, he assumed that at least one or two cocoons had been breached, but that didn't explain why so many cocoons were dark.

  Only one colonist had died, but sixteen colonists were missing from Hibernation Deck 3. There were no indications that there was anyone in those cocoons, live, hibernating, or dead. Oddly, the cocoons were completely functional... they seemed to have been turned off.

  Adrian leaned back in his seat, frowning. There were no spare cocoons. The Gandhi had been filled to capacity when it left Earth. So where were the colonists?

  He leaned forward and began typing, bringing up reports on the other hibernation decks. What he saw stunned him. A total of seventy-three colonists were missing. He began a scan of the ship, looking for warmth, oxygen consumption... anything that would indicate that they were aboard the ship. He found nothing.

  The pressurization had reached 10 percent of normal when he stopped it. He set the pressure monitors to alert him if the pressure fell below current levels in the galley and hibernation deck, and returned to the problem of the missing colonists.

  Their cocoons were scattered here and there, with no pattern that he could see. All the cocoons passed self-tests. He tried looking at their specialties to see if the ship's computer had awoken certain people because their skills were needed. That appeared random, as well. It wasn't until he brought up a list of the missing colonists by name that it hit him. It was alphabetical. All the missing colonists had last names that began with A through C.

  Dreading what he would find, Adrian next brought up the log for the accessors. Scrolling past his use of one earlier, he came upon an entry showing Accessor 2 at the garbage chute next to the galley. Prior to that it had removed Cully, Frank from Hibernation Bay 176, extracting his cot automatically.

  Stunned, he sat back in his seat. The accessor had spaced Frank Cully. No, Gandhi had spaced Frank Cully. The accessor was nothing but a large, mobile robotic arm under the control of the ship's computer. And that computer had told the accessor to put Frank— alive, but sedated by the hibernation drugs—in the garbage chute, then ejected him into space without a suit. Working back through the accessor logs showed the same thing for each of the missing colonists. His face a mask of horror, he disabled all the accessors from his console. No more colonists would be ejected from the ship.

  Seventy-three colonists dead—killed by Gandhi. A sudden chill hit him. What was to keep the ship from killing him, too? What if the ship's computer vented the air? He eyed the hard suit, estimating how long it would take for the air in the MOD to drop to dangerously low levels versus how long it would take to get into the suit if worse came to worst. In the end, he retrieved one of the smaller soft suits, placing the helmet by his side. He'd be able to don the helmet in seconds should pressure begin to drop.

  The suggested test period was twenty-four hours. After six hours had passed with no measurable drop in pressure in the galley and hibernation deck, he initiated the revival process for another colonist, a computer specialist. He was going to need help determining why the ship's computer had committed murder.

  There were—or had been—five computer specialists. Adrian selected Robert Blanton, one of a small number of colonists who had somehow been spared as the computer swept through the colonists whose last names had begun with B. He assumed that each of the five probably had some sort of specialty, but he had no way of guessing which might be needed beforehand and it was likely that Blanton might take a personal interest in figuring out why he had not been cast into space. A near brush with death should provide powerful motivation.

  Given that bringing a colonist out of suspended animation took nearly four hours, Adrian was sorely tempted to get some rest, but he was afraid that the ship would find some other way to kill him besides venting the air from the MOD and gave up on the idea of sleep. He tried looking at the computer code that governed the operation of the accessors, but realized he was in over his head when he found himself tracing the same subroutine four times in a row. He understood the concept of recursion, but had never been able to keep it all straight in his head.

  He wasn't hungry, but he finally forced himself to eat a small meal. If he couldn't sleep, he should at least eat to keep his strength up. As he ate, he looked over the names of the dead, trying to remember something about each person. They had met while training, and although he couldn't say that he was actually close to anyone, he had certainly liked some of them. It seemed unreal that they were dead. How could a ship turn rogue and kill its crew? How could a ship named Gandhi participate in such a violent action? It was hideous.

  All he could think was that there was a bug in the code, somewhere. How such a serious flaw had escaped the intense scrutiny of hundreds of people before leaving Earth was beyond him.

  For the first time since awaking, it occurred to him to wonder how far from Earth they were. He queried the computer, which responded instantly with a diagram of the Solar System and an overlaid lavender line ending with a small triangular, yellow icon showing the ship's current location. They were just rounding the far side of Jupiter.

  It made as little sense as anything else he had seen since opening his eyes. They weren't supposed to be anywhere near Jupiter at any point during their journey. He asked the computer to project the Gandhi's future course and stared at the pink extension to the lavender line with his mouth open.

  We're going back to Earth? He knew his mind was slow due to an unavoidable hangover from the hibernation drugs, but this would surely make anyone doubt their sanity.

  Earth had been receiving telemetry from Gandhi, so they must be aware that the ship was not following its intended trajectory. They would have attempted to contact the ship to ascertain why. And sure enough, once he accessed the log of incoming radio traffic, there were reams upon reams of recorded incoming messages, both to the ship's computer and attempts to contact any colonists who might have been revived. Not one of which had been replied to. He could understand no human responses going out, because as far as he knew he was the first colonist to be awoken since departure, but why was the ship not responding?

  That was simple enough. Gandhi's computer had been instructed to ignore incoming radio traffic. He pondered this for a full minute before tagging the icon to restore communication. He watched as the ship began flagging the automated messages as acknowledged and responded to. Given the distance between their current position and Earth, it would be over thirty minutes before Earth received the first responses. Adrian recorded a brief report an
d sent it along with a request for instructions as to how to proceed.

  He spent the next hour scanning news from Earth that had been archived since departure. In the nine months since they left Earth, diplomatic relations between India and China had deteriorated, Exxon-BP had begun drilling an oil well less than fifty kilo-meters from the geographic North Pole, the American Nationalist Party had won suff icient seats that they—in coalition with the Republicans—now had control of the Senate, and the city of Miami had been officially declared a Drowned City, eligible for Federal relocation funds—negotiations with Georgia and Alabama were underway to determine a site for relocation; Louisiana was protesting that they were not being considered. Nothing he saw struck him as being particularly shocking. China and India had been tense for years, the petroleum industry had been salivating over Arctic oil for decades, and Miami had long known that the Atlantic Ocean would rise far enough that they would have to either leave or become the Venice of the New World.

  Adrian checked on the status of Blanton's revival. Less than ten minutes to go. Adrian tucked his helmet under his arm and made his way to Hibernation Deck 2.

  The readouts outside the cocoon indicated that Blanton was awake by the time he got there, but when he looked through the window he saw no movement. Remembering how he had been content to drift when he first woke up, he rapped a knuckle on the window. The plastic was thick and his knocking didn't make much noise, but it was enough to get Blanton's attention. He twisted his head and looked at Adrian. He frowned, clearly confused.

  It took a while to get Blanton out of his cocoon and up to the MOD, complaining all the way of how sleepy he was and how sore his muscles were. Once there he collapsed into the nearest seat and laid his head back. "Man, I sure didn't expect to see you."

  Adrian shrugged. "I didn't expect to be waking you, but there's a problem with the computer. I know a bit about coding, but I'm no expert, so... here we are."

  "And there's a leak in the ship?" Blanton said, rubbing his face with his hands.

  "I took care of that. Well, we're two-thirds patched—I welded plates to the inside of the galley and the interior bulkhead. I still need to go out and patch the exterior hole."

  "And then you found out that people were missing?"

  "I noticed a lot of deactivated cocoons so I knew something was wrong, but I wasn't sure what."

  "So you think the ship woke you up to fix the puncture, right? You just happened... it was a coincidence that you happened to catch onto the missing people thing, right?"

  "As far as I can tell, it was just a matter of timing. Who knows what would have happened if we hadn't lost pressure. The ship might have thrown everybody out," Adrian said.

  Blanton muttered something under his breath, shaking his head. "I reckon the computer went into safety mode when we got holed. It would have dropped everything it was doing and woken you up because the first name on its call list was... uh... unavailable. It's awaiting human intervention before it resumes normal operation. All the essential stuff like life support still goes on, kinda like the way your brain keeps your heart beating no matter what else is happening, but all the higher programming functions would have been put on hold."

  "That's what I thought, too. I haven't cleared the error yet because we're not done with the pressure test and I still need to do the outside patch." Adrian gave a wry chuckle. "The ironic part being that I doubt we would have been holed if we hadn't headed for Jupiter. There're little bits and pieces of junk everywhere in space, but they're so widely scattered—even in the asteroid belt— that it's almost impossible to hit something. But going through the belt increased the odds enough to where our number came up. Under the circumstances, I guess it was lucky we got hit so I could find out we had this other problem."

  Blanton grunted. "Well, I guess there's nothing for it but to get moving."

  Adrian nodded at the computer screen nearest Blanton. "Any idea as to how long it will take for you to identify the problem with the code?"

  "Never ask how long it will take to debug a program—it only annoys the programmer. Some things you can find in five minutes. Some things take hours, weeks, months... who knows?"

  "There's one thing I was wondering—does the computer have any sort of subroutine that might have been triggered once the accessor began throwing people out? What I mean is, would it have recognized that there was a problem and altered course to return to Earth? If so that would explain why we're headed back home."

  Blanton blinked. "Uh, no. That's the sort of decision that would need to be made by a human. The computer's not that autonomous. Nice try, though. Why don't you start preparing for your EVA while I take a look at this code?"

  Since he'd already gathered the majority of the things he'd need when he'd made repairs in the galley earlier, it didn't take long to get ready. Adrian chose the hard suit for the trip outside. It was tougher and could carry more air, which he was careful to recharge, even though he didn't intend to be in vacuum anywhere near the limit of the suit's air capacity. After working through the extensive EVA checklist with Blanton, he entered the air lock with his tool carrier.

  "Okay, I'm ready when you are," Adrian said.

  "Roger that. I'll initiate the air evacuation from here," Blanton responded.

  The sound of the air-recycler started strongly, but faded as the air left the air lock chamber, leaving only a bass thrumming coming through the soles of his boots. When the hatch opened Adrian found himself looking at the dark side of Jupiter. The bulk of the planet was blocking the Sun and occulting a large part of the sky—swallowing stars by the score.

  "Whoa! Looks like there's lightning down there," Adrian said.

  "Don't forget what you're out there for. I show you as clear for EVA," Blanton responded.

  "Roger. I'm on my way."

  There were no problems finding the hole or welding the patch to the skin of the ship. In a little over an hour, he was on his way back to the hatch. "Looks like that storm is still going on. If anything, it's stronger."

  "I can confirm electrical activity. I show some radio disturbance, but it shouldn't affect us."

  Adrian reached the hatch. "Okay, I'm back at the hatch. Initiate lock cycle... I'm ready to take a shower and get some sleep."

  "I can't do that," Blanton said.

  "What's wrong? I've got the hull patched and there's nothing else on the list for the EVA. What's the holdup?"

  Blanton said, "The holdup is that you've done what you needed to do. We don't need you any more. So, now you go the way of your buddies."

  Adrian tried the external controls for the hatch without result. He checked the display within his hard suit, then made an adjustment. "What are you talking about, Blanton?"

  Blanton laughed harshly. "Well, isn't this rich? Either you truly don't know, in which case you're a pawn, or you do know and you're playing coy."

  "Okay, fine, have it your way. I'm a pawn. A pawn in what?"

  "The United Nations...?" Blanton said teasingly.

  "What about the United Nations? They're funding the Anish colony. So?"

  "Exactly. They put up the money. They got control," Blanton said.

  "And this is a surprise? The United States couldn't afford the colony by itself. So what are you getting at?"

  "For years, the UN has been trying to push through a new world order. Now they're trying to take their political agenda off world. We're going to stop them. Anish will be a patriotic colony. Our patriotic colony. The Chinese can take a flying leap if they think they're going to get away with making it some sort of communist outpost!"

  Adrian sucked his teeth. "Okay, so... let's see... if I remember from training, you're from Alabama, right? Let me guess... you're a member of the American Nationalist Party."

  "God, you're slow," Blanton sneered.

  "And the seventy-three colonists... that was no accident. You murdered them."

  "It took a lot of planning and a lot of political pull—not to mention a few b
ribes—to seed the colonist candidate list with so many of us. Then we had to weed out the undesirables—only, along came your micrometeorite and you found out."

  Adrian bit his lip. "I don't understand. If you're trying to start some sort of Little America on Anish, then why is Gandhi going back to Earth?"

  Blanton snorted. "This is why people like you aren't going along—aside from the fact that you're an America-hater—you're so damned stupid! We're going back to Earth to pick up colonists to fill the empty cocoons, you idiot!"

  "So... what?... you'll match up with another ship coming up from Earth, transfer replacements over, and sail away? Why not put the people you killed on the other ship and send them back to Earth? Why murder so many people?"

  "One, there are three ships. There's not one big enough to carry that many people and if we built one it would raise too many questions. Two, the ships are going to lift from Luna, not Earth. Three, why would anyone with the IQ of a house cat send the UN's little pets back to Earth? We're better off without them."

  "You don't think that other nations will have something to say about this? You're killing, not only Americans, but citizens of other nations."

  "Oh, they'll piece together the evidence. Then they'll wonder. But they'll never really know and so they will ultimately do nothing, because they're weak and indecisive."

  At that moment a small ball of fire dawned over the rim of Jupiter's disk.

  Adrian turned his attention to the console in his suit for a moment.

  "Hey, Blanton, guess what? From where I am, the Sun just rose. That means the recording I just relayed from my suit to the ship's radio has been squirted to Earth, which is just a little to the left of the Sun. In a little over half an hour, the signal will be received and I imagine that there will be quite a few people, from any number of nations, who will find your comments very interesting, indeed. Now, if you don't mind, I'm coming back inside."

  Bravado, pure and simple, but if I can get him agitated enough, he won't be thinking logically.