I drain my cup of nothing and everything, and prop my chin on my fist. Mwalunga’s eyes are shut; he’s chanting like a monk, for the pure sound of the words. Kosinski has got into the bartender’s innards, over the bartender’s feeble protests, and started tinkering.
There’s no space where Sarge should be. Just memories. And stories. Old stories. Stories so old they’re new again.
I get up. Mwalunga doesn’t notice. He’s chanting the refrain; I’ve gotten so I can recognize the words as they repeat. Kosinski shoots me a glance, but he’s too busy to talk. I quicksign him the Peacekeeper’s good-bye. Him, and Mwalunga. Sarge, too. Sarge more than either of them.
Die well, my fingers say. Live forever.
oOo
Judith Tarr...
... is known primarily as an author of fantasy novels, especially historical fantasy, but she grew up reading and writing science fiction. She especially enjoys writing science fiction short stories.
Kinds of Strangers
Sarah Zettel
Margot Rusch pulled open the hatch that led to the Forty-Niner’s sick bay. “Paul?“ she asked around the tightness building in her throat. She pulled herself into the sterile, white module, focusing slowly on the center of the bay, not wanting to believe what she saw.
Paul’s body, wide-eyed, pale-skinned, limp and lifeless, floated in mid-air. A syringe hovered near his hand, pointing its needle toward the corpse as if making an accusation.
“Oh, Christ.“ Margot fumbled for a handhold.
The ventilation fans whirred to life. Their faint draft pushed against the corpse, sending it in a slow arc toward the far wall of the module. Margot caught the acrid scent of death’s final indignities. Hard-won control shredded inside her, but there was nowhere to turn, no one to blame. There was only herself, the corpse and the flat, blank screen of the artificial intelligence interface.
“Damn it, Reggie, why didn’t you do something!“ she demanded, fully aware it was irrational to holler at the AI, but unable to help it.
“I did not know what to do,“ said Reggie softly from its terminal. “There are no case scenarios for this.“
“No, there aren’t,“ agreed Margot, wearily. “No, there sure as hell aren’t.“
The crew of the Forty-Niner had known for three months they were going to die. The seven of them were NASA’s pride, returning from the first crewed expedition to the asteroid belt. They had opened a new frontier for humanity, on schedule and under budget. Two and a half years of their four year mission were a raving success, and now they were headed home.
There had been a few problems, a few red lights. Grit from the asteroid belt had wormed its way into the works on the comm antenna and the radio telescope. No problem. Ed MacEvoy and Jean Kramer replaced the damaged parts in no time. This was a NASA project. They had back ups to spare. Even if the reaction control module, which was traditional methane/oxygen rockets used for course corrections, somehow failed completely, all that would mean was cutting the project a little short. A magnetic sail handled the long-distance flight; a gigantic loop of high-temperature superconducting ceramic cable with a continuous stream of charged particles running through it. No matter what else happened, that would get them home.
“Margot?“ Jean’s voice came down the connector tube. “You okay?“
Margot tightened her grip on the handle and looked at the corpse as it turned lazily in the center of the bay. No, I am not okay.
The mag sail, however, had found a new way to fail. Particle discontinuities caused by a combination of radiation and thermal insulation degradation raised the temperature too high and robbed hundreds of kilometers of ceramic cable of its superconductivity.
Once the mag sail had gone, the ship kept moving. Of course it kept moving with no atmospheric friction to slow it down. But it moved in a slow elliptical orbit going nowhere near its scheduled rendezvous with Earth. They could burn every atom of propellant they carried for the RCM and for the explorer boats, and they’d still be too far away for any of the Mars shuttles to reach by a factor of five. Frantic comm bursts to Houston brought no solutions. The Forty-Niner was stranded.
“Margot?“ Jean again, calling down the connector.
“I’ll be right up,“ Margot hoped Jean wouldn’t hear how Paul’s suicide strangled her voice.
Margot looked at the empty syringe suspended in mid-air. ‘Drunk all and left no friendly drop to help me after.’ The ancient quote made her swallow hard. Stop it, Margot. Do not even start going there.
“Is there another request?“ asked Reggie.
Margot bit her lip. “No. No more requests.“
Margot pushed herself into the connector and dragged the hatch shut. She had the vague notion she should have done something for the body — closed its eyes or wrapped a sheet around it, or something, but she couldn’t make herself turn around.
Margot’s eyes burned. She’d flown four other missions with Paul. She’d sat up all-night with him drinking espresso and swapping stories while the bigwigs debated the final crew roster for the Forty-Niner. They’d spent long hours on the flight out arguing politics and playing old jazz recordings. She’d thought she knew him, thought he would hang on with the rest of them.
Then again, she’d thought the same of Ed and Tracy.
Tracy Costa, their chief mineralogist, had been the first to go. They hadn’t known a thing about it, until Nick had caught a glimpse of the frozen corpse outside one of the port windows. Then, Ed had suffocated himself, even after he’d sworn to Jean he’d never leave her alone in this mess.
Now, Paul.
Margot pulled herself from hand-hold to hand-hold up the tubular connector, past its cabinets and access panels. One small, triangular window looked out onto vacuum, the infinitely patient darkness that waited for the rest of them to give up.
Stop it, Margot. She tore her gaze away from the window and concentrated on pulling herself forward.
The Forty-Niner’s command module was a combination of ship’s bridge, comm center, and central observatory. Right now, it held all of the remaining crew members. Their mission commander, Nicholas Deale, sandy haired, dusky-skinned and dark-eyed, sat at one of Reggie’s compact terminals, brooding over what he saw on the flat screen. Tom Merritt, who had gone from a florid, pink man to a paper white ghost during the last couple of weeks, tapped at the controls for the radio telescope. He was an astronomer and the mission communications specialist. He was the one who made sure they all got their messages from home. The last living crew member was Jean. A few wisps of hair had come loose from her tight brown braid and they floated around her head, making her look even more worried and vulnerable. She stood at another terminal, typing in a perfunctory and distracted cadence.
Margot paused in the threshold, trying to marshal her thoughts and nerves. Nick glanced up at her. Margot opened her mouth, but her throat clamped tight around her words. Tom and Jean both turned to look at her. The remaining blood drained out of Tom’s face.
“Paul?“ he whispered.
Margot coughed. “Looks like he overdosed himself.“
Jean turned her head away, but not before Margot saw the struggle against tears fill her face. Both Nick’s hands clenched into fists. Tom just looked at Nick with tired eyes and said, “Well, now what?“
Nick sighed. “Okay, okay.“ He ran both hands through his hair. “I’ll go take care of... the body. Tom, can you put a burst through to mission control? They’ll want to notify his family quietly. I’ll come up with the letter... .“
This was pure Nick. Give everybody something to do, but oversee it all. When they’d reeled in the sail, he hadn’t slept for two days helping Ed and Jean go over the cable an inch at a time, trying to find out if any sections were salvageable from which they could jury-rig a kind of storm sail. When that had proven hopeless, he’d still kept everybody as busy as possible. He milked every drop of encouraging news he could out of mission control. Plans were in the works. The whole world wa
s praying for them. Comm bursts came in regularly from friends and family. A rescue attempt would be made. A way home would be found. All they had to do was hang on.
“In the meantime...“ Nick went on
“In the meantime we wait for the radiation to eat our insides out,“ said Tom bitterly. “It’s hopeless, Nick. We’re all dead.“
Nick shifted uneasily, crunching Velcro underfoot. “I’m still breathing and I don’t plan to stop anytime soon.“
A spasm of pure anger crossed Tom’s features. “And what are you going to breathe when the scrubbers give out? Huh? What are you going to do when the water’s gone? How about when the tumors start up?“
Tom, don’t do this, thought Margot, but the words died in her throat, inadequate against the sudden red rage she saw in him. He was afraid of illness, of weakness. Well, weren’t they all?
Paul’s chief duty was keeping them all from getting cancer. One of the main hazards of lengthy space flight had always been long term exposure to hard radiation. The mag sail, when it was functional, had created a shield from charged particles, which slowed the process down. Medical advancements had arisen to cover the damage that could be done by fast neutrons and gamma rays. Paul Luck maintained cultures of regenerative stem cells taken from each member of the crew. Every week, he measured pre-cancer indicators, inky areas of the body. If the indicators were too high, he tracked down the “hot spots“ and administered doses of the healthy cultured cells to remind bone, organ and skin how they were supposed to act and viola! Healthy, cancer-free individual.
The Luck system was now, however, permanently down, and the only back-up for that was the AI’s medical expert system and the remaining crew’s emergency training. Right now, that didn’t seem like anything close to enough.
“We have time,“ Nick said evenly. “We do not have to give up. Come on, Tom. What would Carol say if she heard this?“ Nick, Margot remembered, had been at Tom’s wedding. They were friends, or at least, they had been friends.
“She’d say whatever the NASA shrinks told her to,“ snapped Tom. “And in the meantime,“ he drawled the word, “I get to watch her aging ten years for every day we’re hanging up here. How much longer do I have to do this to her? How much longer are you going to make your family suffer?“
For the first time, Nick’s composure cracked. His face tightened into a mask of pent-up rage and frustration, but his voice stayed level. “My family is going to know I died trying.“
Tom looked smug. “At least you admit we’re going to die.“
“No...“ began Jean.
“Help,“ said a strange, soft voice.
The crew all turned. The voice came from the AI terminal. It was Reggie.
“Incoming signal. No origination. Can’t filter. Incoherent system flaw. Error 365...“
A grind and clank reverberated through the hull. Reggie’s voice cut off.
“Systems check!“ barked Nick.
Margot kicked off the wall and flew to her station at navigation control.
“I got garbage,“ said Tom from beside her. “Machine language, error babble. Reggie’s gone nuts.“
Margot shoved her Velcro-bottomed boots into place and typed madly at her keyboard, bringing up the diagnostics. “All good here,“ she reported. She turned her head and looked out the main window, searching for the stars and the slightly steadier dots that were the planets. “Confirmed. Positioning systems up and running.“
“Engineering looks okay,“ said Jean. “I’ll go check the generators and report back.“ Nick gave her a sharp nod. She pulled herself free of her station and launched herself down the connector.
“You getting anything coherent?“ Nick pushed himself over to hover behind Tom’s shoulder.
“Nothing.“ Margot could just make out the streams of random symbols flashing past on Tom’s terminal.
“Reggie, what’s happening?“ she whispered.
“I don’t know,“ said the voice from her terminal. Margot jerked. “Unable to access exterior communications system. Multiple errors on internal nodes. Code corruption. Error. 34... .“ the computer voice cut out again in a pulse of static, then another, then silence, followed by another quick static burst.
“Margot, can you see the comm antenna?“ asked Tom, his hands still flashing across the keyboard.
Margot pressed her cheek against the cool window, craned her neck, and squinted, trying to see along the Forty-Niner’s hull. “Barely, yeah.“
“Can you make out its orientation?“
Margot squinted again. “Looks about ten degrees off-axis.“
“It’s moved,“ said Tom between static bursts. “That was the noise.“
“All okay down in the power plant,“ Jean pulled herself back through the hatch and attached herself to her station. “Well, at least there’s nothing new wrong...“ she let the sentence trail off. “What is that?“
Margot and the others automatically paused to listen. Margot heard nothing but the steady hum of the ship and the bursts of static from Reggie. Quick pulses, one, one, two, one, two, one, one, one, two.
“A pattern?“ said Nick.
“Mechanical failure,“ said Tom. “Has to be. Reggie just crashed.“
One, one, two, one.
“You ever hear about anything crashing like this?“ asked Margot.
One, two, one.
“Reggie? Level one diagnostic, report,“ said Nick.
One, one, two.
“Maybe we can get a coherent diagnostic out of one of the other expert systems,“ Margot suggested. Reggie wasn’t a single processor. It was a web-work of six interconnected expert systems, each with their own area of concentration, just like the members of the crew. Terminals in different modules of the ship gave default access to differing expert systems.
“Maybe,“ said Nick. “Tom can try to track down the fault from here. You and Jean see if you can get an answer out of si... the power plant.“ Margot was quietly grateful he remembered what else was in sick bay before she had to remind him.
One, one, one.
Jean and Margot pulled themselves down the connector to the engineering compartment. As Jean had reported, all the indicators that had remained functional after they’d lost the sail reported green and go.
“At least it’s a different crisis,“ Jean muttered as she brought up Reggie’s terminal, the one she and Ed had spent hours behind when the mag sail went out.
“Remind me to tell you about my grandmother’s stint on the old Mir sometime,“ said Margot. “Now there was an adventure.“
Jean actually smiled and Margot felt a wash of gratitude. Someone in here was still who she thought they were.
Jean spoke to the terminal. “Reggie, we’ve got a massive fault in the exterior communications system. Can you analyze from this system?“ As she spoke, Margot hit the intercom button on the wall to carry the answer to the command center.
“Massive disruption and multiple error processing,“ said Reggie, sounding even more mechanical than usual. “I will attempt to establish interface.“
“You hear that?“ Margot said to the intercom grill. She could just hear the static pulses coming from the command center as whispering echoes against the walls of the connector.
“Roger,“ came back Nick’s voice.
“I am... getting reports of an external signal,“ said Reggie. “It is... there is... internal fault, internal fault, internal fault.“
Jean shut the terminal’s voice down. “What the hell?“ she demanded of Margot. Margot just shook her head.
“External signal? How is that possible? This can’t be a comm burst from Houston.“
Margot’s gaze drifted to the black triangle of the window. The echoes whispered in ones and twos.
“What’s a language with only two components?“ Margot asked.
Jean stared at her. “Binary.“
“What do we, in essence transmit from here when we do our comm bursts? What might somebody who didn’t know any
better try to send back to us?“
Jean’s face went nearly as white as Tom’s. “Margot, you’re crazy.“
Margot didn’t bother to reply. She just pushed herself back up the connector to the bridge.
“Tom? Did you hear that?“
Tom didn’t look up. He had a clip board and pen in his hands. As the static bursts rang out, he scribbled down a 1 for each single burst and a 0 for each pair. He hung the board in mid-air, as if not caring where it went and his hands flew across the keyboard. “Oh yeah, I heard it.“
Rocket Boy and the Geek Girls Page 8
