Airlock

by Simon Cheshire

  While the Commander had been telling Parker off, George had noticed something unusual on the Commander’s touchscreens. A small progress bar was creeping to the right, and changing colour from green to red.

  “Umm, Commander,” said George, putting up his hand hesitantly, “you’ve got a problem in Number 2 fusion reactor.”

  Commander Ferguson looked over his shoulder at the screen. “Are you trying to tell me my job, boy?”

  “No, of course not,” said George quietly. “I just thought you ought to know. Doesn’t that show an overload alert?”

  “It shows a minor imbalance, boy,” spluttered the Commander. “Do you think I don’t know my own readouts? Get this child out of here, Parker!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I think George is right,” said Amira. “We’ve all studied this station in class. That indicator is moving too fast to be a minor imbalance.”

  “It is moving very quickly, sir,” said Parker.

  The Commander marched over to the screen and began to adjust various settings. “Soon have it sorted out,” he barked. “No need to panic.”

  Parker frowned. “What could possibly cause the reactor to suddenly –?”

  She never finished her sentence. Suddenly, a violent jolt rocked the entire space station. Everyone in the Control Centre was knocked off their feet. From somewhere deep within the station came a rumbling sound.

  Chapter Three

  Overload

  The lights flickered. George felt a rush of fear as the entire station shook again.

  “W-what’s happened?” cried Mr Snodbury, terrified. “Is that normal?”

  “Number 2 reactor has overloaded,” said Parker. “Your students were right.”

  The lights dimmed and flared. Technicians began to run from screen to screen. The doors to the Control Centre slid open and a team of scientists rushed in.

  George and his friends were too scared to speak. Finally, George turned to Jane Parker. “Is there anything we can do to help?”

  “Stay there, and try to stay calm,” said Parker. She dashed across to a machine that was emitting a high-pitched alarm signal. Ian Ash was already there, and together they tried to work out what had gone wrong.

  Commander Ferguson barked into a communicator fixed to the sleeve of his uniform. George could hear his voice echo along the space station’s corridors.

  “This is the Commander. Full emergency procedure. Technical staff to workstations. All departments report in. This is not a drill. I want this done by the book!”

  By now, Mr Snodbury was dabbing so much sweat off his face that his handkerchief was wringing wet. George, Josh and Amira looked at each other, frightened by the way that the station’s staff were clearly so worried. Even Dwayne was looking nervous.

  “Are you OK?” whispered George.

  Josh and Amira nodded, with grim expressions on their faces.

  The lights returned to their normal brightness. Technicians called out figures and readings to each other. The floor wasn’t shaking any more.

  Commander Ferguson called over to Ash and Parker. “Report!”

  “Overload in reactor 2, Commander,” said Ash. “I think we’ve got it under control.”

  The Commander turned and was surprised to see George’s group huddled in a corner.

  “What are those people still doing here? You children, go to your cabins, and stay there until further notice. We’ve had an emergency situation, but now the emergency is under control. There’s nothing to panic about. Our normal routine will continue shortly. There is no cause for concern. None whatsoever. Is that clear? All of you, is that clear?”

  George and his friends didn’t answer. They were stunned into silence by what they could see through the Control Centre’s many large windows. Josh, who had turned ghostly white, pointed at the window with a shaking finger, unable to speak. Commander Ferguson turned to see what he was staring at.

  From the left-hand side of the station, drifting slowly into view, came pieces of twisted metal and shards of shattered solar panels. Some were very large, while others were little more than shreds and scraps. They gradually rotated, weightless in space, moving past the Control Centre’s windows and off into the distance, shining like metallic dust in the light from the sun. Behind them, the curve of the Earth glowed blue and bright.

  Parker gasped and clapped her hands to her mouth.

  “What…?” croaked the Commander, hardly able to believe his eyes.

  “That noise we heard must have been an explosion,” gasped Josh. “And a big one.”

  “The overload must have been huge,” said Amira. “Think of all those poor people that were out there!” She buried her face in her hands.

  Commander Ferguson’s voice cut across everyone’s thoughts. “Parker! Escort those children to the canteen and keep them there! Ash! Take over in here! I’m going to assess the damage.”

  “Aye, sir,” called Ash. He hurried over to the Commander’s touchscreens. Parker ushered George’s group out of the room, as the Commander swept past them. He marched out into the corridor.

  They hadn’t got far before they found their way blocked. An emergency seal, striped red and yellow, had inflated across one of the walkways. A uniformed man was working close by.

  “What’s happened here?” barked Commander Ferguson.

  “The explosion tore a section of the hull open, sir,” said the uniformed man. “The reactor controls in corridor B-6 weren’t damaged, but walkways B-9, B-10 and B-11 all blew out. These pressure seals will be fine for a while, sir, but they can’t last too long. You can get around this blockage by going through the kitchens.”

  The Commander thought for a moment. “I’m going to inspect the reactor. See why it overloaded. Doesn’t make sense.”

  He marched off in one direction, while Parker, Mr Snodbury and Dwayne went in the direction of the canteen. Josh and Amira were about to head for the canteen too, when George held them back, pressing a finger to his lips to urge them to be quiet.

  “Let’s follow the Commander,” he whispered. “We need to find out what’s going on.”

  “He’ll be furious if he sees us,” hissed Amira.

  “I’m not sure I want to get into any more trouble with the Commander,” muttered Josh. “I’m scared enough as it is.”

  “We’re here to discover all we can about the station, aren’t we?” said George. “I’m scared too, but I don’t want to sit around with nothing to do but read the toilet instructions. I think we ought to do something to help.”

  “Like what?” whispered Amira.

  “Well, er, we don’t know that yet, do we?” said George. “We’ll just have to see.”

  With that, he headed off in the direction the Commander had taken. With worried expressions clouding their faces, Josh and Amira took a fleeting look over their shoulders and followed him. They made their way through the station’s cramped kitchens, and emerged into a corridor which was cloaked in darkness apart from a line of blue emergency lights set into the floor.

  “It’s cold in here too,” said Josh.

  “Maybe the heating system’s been damaged as well?” said Amira.

  George had reached the far end of the corridor. He turned and put a finger to his lips to silence his friends. Then he pointed around the corner. Josh and Amira crept up behind him.

  They all pressed themselves into the shadows, peeking slowly around the corner to see what was going on at the control panels outside the room that housed fusion reactor number 2, the one which had overloaded.

  Commander Ferguson was there, talking to Ian Ash. Ash was speaking in a low voice. George and his friends screwed up their faces in concentration, trying to overhear the men’s conversation. Once they did, they almost wished they hadn’t.

  “It’s far worse than we thought, sir,” said Ash. “Three of this reactor’s four fusion chambers exploded. If the fourth had gone too, this area where we’re standing would have been vaporised. As it is, the
control panels here weren’t damaged. They’re working normally, although I can’t understand how. Sir, I estimate that twenty-five per cent of the entire station has been destroyed.”

  The Commander stared at Ash in horror. “A quarter of the station, man? Gone?”

  “Yes, sir. All the labs and the docking ports. The emergency seals kicked in straight away, but we still lost a huge volume of our atmosphere. There are power outages all over the station. And …”

  “And what, Ash?” demanded the Commander.

  “Sir, the labs are where most people work. So …”

  The Commander was quiet for a second or two. The colour seemed to drain from his face. “How many of the crew did we lose?”

  Ash sighed. “Apart from the Control Centre staff,” he said at last, “I think there are less than a dozen of us left. All the rest are… floating out there. There isn’t even anything we can do to retrieve them.”

  “Keep a grip, Ash,” growled the Commander. “We’ve got to play this by the book. Follow proper procedures.” He ran a trembling hand across his forehead, then straightened up and pulled his uniform straight. “What’s the outlook?”

  “Bad, sir,” said Ash. “Atmosphere, power, all life support systems are damaged.”

  “Prepare both the escape pods, just in case.”

  “They went up too, sir, they were next to the docking bays. I’ve followed the rule book, Commander, so I’ve called to Earth for a rescue ship. But …”

  “But what?” cried the Commander.

  “Well, sir, it’s MaxiBoost who run the shuttles, and they’re insisting that all the correct forms have to be filled in back on Earth before they’ll even send for the refuelling truck.”

  Commander Ferguson slammed his fist into the nearest wall. “Those blasted MaxiBoost fools!” he spat. “They’ve gone too far this time! Get it sorted! I want that rescue ship on its way!”

  He stormed off, Ash following in his wake.

  George, Josh and Amira emerged from the shadows. George’s heart was thumping.

  “This is terrible,” wailed Josh. “This trip was supposed to be a reward for coming top of the class. Now it looks like we might never get home again!”

  “Try to keep calm,” said Amira.

  “Not easy,” muttered George. “Especially when you realise what caused that explosion.”

  The other two were puzzled. “They don’t know what caused it yet,” said Amira.

  “I think I do,” said George. “Look at these control panels, the ones which operate what’s left of the reactor. Ash said they’re working fine.”

  “So?” said Josh.

  Amira suddenly remembered something she’d read on her mini-screen, technical information about the station. “Oh no,” she whispered.

  George nodded his head. “An accidental overload would have fused all these controls. They’d be useless. But here they are, undamaged. The overload could only have been caused by the controls being set that way. That explosion wasn’t an accident at all. It was sabotage. Someone did it deliberately.”

  Chapter Four

  Sabotage

  “Who?” cried Josh.

  “Why?” cried Amira.

  “We’ll just have to work that out as we go along,” said George. “Right now, we need to tell the Commander what we’ve discovered.”

  “He’s not going to like this,” gulped Josh. “He is really not going to like this.”

  Josh was right.

  A few minutes later, when the three of them arrived back at the Control Centre, they told Commander Ferguson the bad news.

  His face flushed with anger. “Sabotage?” he snapped. “On my station? I’ve never heard such nonsense!”

  At that moment Ash arrived, reading figures from a mini-screen.

  “Sir,” he said, “I’ve worked out why the explosion happened.”

  “Oh, I suppose you think it was deliberate too, do you?” scoffed the Commander.

  Ash blinked in surprise. “Yes. The reactor’s controls would have fused if there had been any accidental… Hang on, did you kids already know that?”

  “Proper little smartypants, aren’t they?” said the Commander.

  “Sorry, sir, I should have worked it out straight away,” said Ash. “I guess the whole emergency situation stopped me thinking clearly.”

  “The situation is that there’s a saboteur on board,” said George.

  “Keep quiet, boy,” hissed the Commander, glancing around at the technicians working frantically at their screens. “I don’t want talk of sabotage getting out and distracting my staff from their duties.”

  “So, you believe us now?” said Amira. “Now that Ash has confirmed what we’re saying?”

  “I believe we’ve got a remarkable coincidence here,” growled Commander Ferguson.

  “How do you mean?” said George. He thought he saw what the Commander was getting at, but even thinking about it made his stomach do somersaults.

  “I mean,” said the Commander, looming over the three students, “that every last member of my crew was selected for duty by me, personally. Every last member of my crew is a highly trained expert in their field, loyal to me and to MegaZone Corporation. I cannot and will not believe that one of them would not only destroy our work here but also cause the deaths of many of their fellow scientists. If there is a saboteur loose on this station, then they’re an outsider. And guess what? I have three outsiders standing right in front of me now.”

  “You can’t think one of us did it?” gasped Josh.

  “Why not?” said the Commander. “You’re all top of the class in Science, aren’t you? You’ve all studied how this station works. The three of you could easily have set that reactor to overload.”

  “But why?” cried Amira. “What possible reason could we have?”

  “Oh, I think there’s a very obvious reason,” said the Commander in a low voice. “I’ve already had to question your loyalty once today.”

  Ash took a step forward. “Those caps,” he said. “MaxiBoost baseball caps. Could these kids be spies for MaxiBoost?”

  “What?” cried George. “Spies who wear the logo of who they’re spying for? Don’t be daft!”

  “It could be some sort of bluff,” said the Commander. “A feeble attempt to divert suspicion. Here’s that remarkable coincidence I mentioned: Fact one, outsiders arrive; fact two, only outsiders would sabotage this station; fact three, within a couple of hours of outsiders arriving, this station has been sabotaged. Do you follow my logic?”

  “Y-yes,” stammered George, a feeling of terror sending icy shivers up his spine. “But we didn’t do it! Why would we sabotage the station and then tell you about it?”

  Ash ignored him and turned to the Commander. “It would make sense for them to be spies, sir,” he said. “MaxiBoost tried all kinds of underhand tricks during the company wars. They certainly wouldn’t hesitate to use kids as spies. They could send them on board, undercover, posing as school trippers. Then they could secretly sabotage the station and we’d be forced to call in a rescue shuttle. A MaxiBoost rescue shuttle. The station would be disabled, and MegaZone Corporation would get blamed for running things badly, maybe even lose the contract to build in space. Meanwhile, the undetected saboteurs could simply sneak away on the rescue shuttle along with the remains of the station crew.”

  “That’s not how it is!” cried Amira. “We’re not spies for anyone!”

  The Commander loomed over them. “Are you trying to ruin me? Were you sent here to wreck my career? Were you?”

  “No, we swear!” said Josh.

  “Well, there’s a sure way to find out,” said Ash. “I can run a DNA spectrum test on the reactor’s control panels. That’ll tell us exactly who’s been near those controls in the last twenty-four hours.”

  “Get to it, Ash,” barked the Commander.

  “How can they tell that?” hissed Josh to George and Amira.

  Amira leaned towards him to whisper her answer
. “DNA is your genes, the biological recipe that’s in every cell of your body. If someone handles something, or even stands beside it, microscopic bits of skin, and hair, and stuff from your hands, all kinds of things, end up on and around where you’ve been. Using the right equipment, you can detect even tiny little particles of it. That’s why there’s so little crime back on Earth these days. The cops can work out exactly who was where, when, and what they did.”

  “Stop that whispering!” cried Commander Ferguson. “More scheming? I’ve heard quite enough from you three. Stand there, where I can see you, and don’t move. You can consider yourselves under arrest, until the rescue ship arrives.”

  At that moment, Mr Snodbury came bustling in. “Ah! There you are! You three were supposed to stay with me and Jane Parker. I’m so sorry, Commander, I hope they’ve not been making a nuisance of themselves.”

  Commander Ferguson slowly turned to face Mr Snodbury. The expression on his face declared that he’d had about all he could stand for one day. Within a matter of minutes, he and Mr Snodbury were having a heated discussion on the topic of George, Josh and Amira.

  While Mr Snodbury was squawking things such as “Under arrest?” and “Outrageous accusation!” George turned his attention to other matters.

  “Where’s Dwayne got to, I wonder?” he muttered to himself. Making sure that the Commander wasn’t looking in his direction, George nudged Amira with his elbow. “Does this station have security cameras?”

  “Yes, I think so,” said Amira. “I don’t know how many will still be working.”

  “Can you hack into the camera system with your mini-screen?”

  “Sure, easy.” She booted up some software, entered some data, and up popped a picture of the corridor outside the Control Centre. “Here. You can flick between cameras by pressing this button.”

  “Thanks,” said George, taking the mini-screen and tapping his way through various views. At last, he found what he was looking for. A thin, furtive figure was sneaking along towards the crew quarters. The image from the camera was jumpy and crackling, but George could clearly see that the figure was Dwayne.