by Glenn Damato
Charge 433 kw-hours, forty-seven percent, the big drop caused by continuous gas compression to run equipment, plus life support for twenty-four people: oxygen generation, CO2 scrubbing, air heating and dehumidifying.
I tell Eric to shut off the heaters. Will be okay for a while, but after sunset comes the supercold. And it looks increasingly unlikely the reactor will be running by sunset.
The depleted BioSuit backpacks need recharging before noon. They’re swapped with those that still have about four hours remaining. By mid-afternoon there are only four partially-charged packs left.
Mikki, Eric, and Darien debate solutions. Above ground would take more time and use up a lot of power—but yield certain results. Or, print a ten-meter extension for the power and air cables, allowing holes to be tried as far as thirty-five meters out.
The extension method will be faster and use up about half the power of the above-ground method. But the results are uncertain. What if drilling further out doesn’t produce an ice-free hole?
The sun drops behind the western hills.
If the extension doesn’t work, will there be enough power remaining to try the above-ground method?
Eric calculates. Yes, but barely.
He recommends the extension method first. The ground thirty meters south is different, not as flat, with more rocks. Before we start the printer, Ryder finds a pick-like tool in the cargo hold and pounds out a half-meter hole in the new area.
No ice.
He swings non-stop down to a full meter. No ice. But it’s over thirty meters from the receptacle.
The printer completes the gas and cable extensions in under an hour, but the power reserve sinks to 357 kw-hours, thirty-nine percent. And we don’t yet have a hole big enough for the reactor.
I devour a food bar as the sky darkens. It takes longer than usual to chew and swallow. No one talks. They know this is taking too long. The windows go completely black and soon acquire a thin coating of frost.
“We’ve have to prioritize on comfort,” I remark casually. “Scrubbing CO2 and replenishing oxygen are necessities, warmth merely optional.”
The joke falls flat. They’re back in thermals. I lower the lights to a minimum red glow to encourage sleep. Every centimeter of floor space is occupied and it’s easy to step on people.
Just after ten Ryder and Mikki emerge from the airlock shivering and covered with dust. The reactor is installed and connected.
284 kw-hours, thirty-one percent. That’s over four times the power needed to start the reactor.
I tell Eric’s bleary eyes, “Whatever it takes, my friend, do it.”
He sets to work. I lie back on the equipment bay floor with Ryder and Alison. Sleep comes. The nightmares start immediately. Starry nights and display panels with bad news. A web of cables and hoses to be untangled, the price of failure imminent death.
I wake with a jump. Dull throb under the forehead. Eric’s imposing frame directly above me, fingers flicking across the power panel, eyes narrow in concentration.
“Time?”
“After midnight. Go back to sleep. Let me work.”
More sleep, then Eric shakes my arm.
“It’s running?”
The look on his face tells me it’s not.
FORTY-FOUR
There are decisions to be made.
Eric stammers, “Still a chance.”
“What went wrong? You promised to tell me everything.”
“I put the reflector at the bottom of the range and moved it up incrementally. The script works. But I think I should have started higher. The problem is the startup rate. If it’s too high, the reactor shuts down. That’s a safety feature, impossible to disable. But if the rate is too low, the startup takes too long and the program times out. That’s also a safety feature to prevent the internal power supply from depleting.”
“The thing’s got its own power?”
“Yes, but only to run the local CPU. We have to supply a lot of kilowatts to get the process going, liquify the sodium and bring it up to design operating temperature. Right now the flux levels are increasing slowly. If I put it too high, the whole thing shuts down. That happened three times, and we can’t afford a fourth.”
“Why?”
“Current draw—”
“Shit, Eric. Shit. You told me eighty kilowatts for forty minutes—”
“I didn’t lie to you, Cristina. That’s the nominal requirement when the auto-sequencer does a routine startup. That’s not what we’re doing. I drew a lot of power.”
“Get to the point.”
Ryder stirs and sits up.
“I turned off everything except the emergency lights. We got twenty-four volts and low oxygen and CO2 is dangerously high. I can probably start the reactor with the power we have. But we’re down to a hundred kilowatt-hours. With the rate I’ve been raising the reflector, it’s going to take six to eight hours to increase the flux enough to sustain fission and produce power.”
Every bit of energy drains from my body. “Can we breathe that long?
“I figured it. We still have a reserve of compressed oxygen. We can bleed oxygen in to replace what we use, and purge air out to reduce the CO2 buildup. We’ll have to bleed nitrogen too, to keep the O2 partial pressure reasonable, but we have enough.”
“Do it, then. Get the reactor—”
“Cristina, I figured it and refigured it. Can’t do it for twenty-four, not for eight hours, not even for six. We’ll all suffocate in under four hours. If I try to speed up, it’ll trip on high startup rate and it’ll take more power than we have to try again.”
“You’re telling me we can’t keep everyone alive until we have power.”
“You wanted the truth!” he growls. “Those are facts. And we tried to tell you this, Cristina. We tried to tell you this. You didn’t want to listen.”
Ryder leans back and covers his face. Alison is awake too. She lies motionless, eyes fluttering, tongue licking her lips over and over.
There’s a stirring above. Three people at access hatch. Hannah, Tess, and Jürgen.
They heard it all.
I pull myself through the hatch and look around. The dim yellow glow reveals cold, wild-eyed faces, mouths releasing puffs of vapor with every breath. Jürgen stands and motions with his hands. He’s stronger than anyone.
“Half of us can survive—”
“Sit down!” My voice fills the compartment and stops him mid-sentence.
“We want to hear him,” Giselle says. “We want the truth.”
“The truth?” I repeat. “Here’s the truth. We’re going to live, all of us.”
Walt sits up. “You have to tell us exactly what’s happening.”
“I agree. So here it is. There’s been a delay. We’re making progress.” I turn to Eric. “You want to confirm that?”
“Progress, yes. Power in six hours. Or not.”
“We don’t have enough oxygen for all of us, now that we shut everything down,” snarls Hannah. “We heard you. You expect us to go back to sleep and give you a chance to kill us with a needle? I’m not closing my eyes again!”
I face Jürgen. “You have a right to speak. But you don’t have a right to create panic. So I’ll tell you again. Sit down.” I scan the entire control center. “You’re going to do exactly what I say. We’re going to conserve energy and air until this is over. Once we have power you can sleep, scream, cry, eat, shit, I don’t care. For now, you’re going to listen and get a fucking grip. I’m scared shitless the same as you. You think your fear right now is any worse than the fear felt by all those people on the ships? Knowing they would be burned alive the instant we launched?”
“You’re using too much oxygen right now, sweetie,” says Blair. “With six hours to get power and more oxygen, we have the right to decide among ourselves what to do. Some of us may need to leave so that others can live. I’ll take that over all of us suffocating together.”
Senuri’s head is barely visible from the to
p of her thermals. “Cristina, we may pass out from lack of oxygen sooner than we anticipate. We must face facts and make a decision while we can.”
“I’ve made the decision, Senuri,” I tell her evenly. “All twenty-four of us will live.”
Giselle growls, “And if you’re wrong, all twenty-four of us will be dead.”
Eric’s head pokes up from the access hatch.
I tell him, “Move the reflector higher, start producing heat and power.”
He stares back, expression vacant.
“Eric,” I call softly. “Write a script to raise the neutron flux so we can generate power. Do it now. We don’t have a lot of time. But we have enough time, I promise you that.”
They settle down, even Jürgen. We defeated panic, but as the air grows thicker it will return. And it’s already an effort to breathe. I climb down into the equipment bay. “Ryder, do you know how to do the O2 bleed? Get more oxygen in here. Get it up to a minimal level, above twenty.”
“I can write a new script and raise the reflector higher,” Eric says, voice low, “But it will use up the last of our power. I can isolate some banks and rig in series, keep the voltage from going too low.”
“I’ll help you.”
We re-wire the batteries with jumper cables from the emergency repair kit. Over the next hour Ryder periodically bleeds the cabin pressure outside to drop the carbon dioxide concentration while bleeding in oxygen and nitrogen from two storage tanks.
“We got zero oxygen,” he reports. “When I open the valve there’s no hiss at all.”
I lose track of time. We can’t breathe without gasping. Eric says, “Point of adding heat in less than an hour. Or not. Unlike you, I promise nothing. The cross-connected cells are keeping us above twenty-one volts for now. This is it. If I positioned it too low, the flux won’t be high enough to sustain a positive startup rate, go critical, generate power. If it’s too high, the system will trip and the core cools down. Then we are done.”
My brain is fogged with rotten air. I lift myself up the ladder. People pant in short puffs, their eyes staring ahead. Everyone touches someone else. I sit for a while listening to the breathing. Jürgen and Tess are in each other’s arms, her eyes nearly closed, his staring back at me. Not hostile, just empty. He trusts me too, in his own stupid way.
Below me, Eric is no longer at the power panel.
The panel flashes red.
UNDERVOLT DISCONNECT
The battery voltage is below the critical level. It’s now impossible to run any equipment except for the panel itself, not even with the banks wired in series. No more oxygen, and no more power.
Eric blinks and mumbles two words.
“I’m sorry.”
FORTY-FIVE
“What do we do now?” asks Shuko, tone more annoyed than terrified. “Wait to pass out?”
I can’t keep the trembling out of my voice any longer. “Eric. Run another script. Move the thing higher. We’ve got to try.”
He shakes his head slowly. “The system . . .can’t do it with voltage below twenty-one. Just trips. Even cross-connected, don’t have the voltage to try again.”
“We got eighty-seven kilowatt hours. You said it takes eighty.”
“At the proper voltage. If we series more . . . it just trips out. I’m sorry.”
Jürgen rises to his feet.
“Our only choice is how we die,” he proclaims, voice clear and crisp.
He pulls Tess to her feet. She faces Jürgen and says, “I love you,” in three gasps.
Walt and Abby pull themselves up, then Norberto, then Paige and Indra. We’re all so tightly squeezed, there’s no room to even turn around a look them in the face. Shoulders jostle me, then someone’s suit pack slams me in the hip and knocks me into Abby.
Indra says, “Goodbye, my friends. I love all of you.”
“You’re not going to die.” My voice shakes and I can’t stop it. “No one’s going to die.”
But their eyes go to Jürgen. “We can stay here, go to sleep. A hundred years from now, someone will find us huddled together, fearful little animals in a cave, beasts who died where they happened to be. Or, we can choose to face death with courage and daring.”
I need to kick him, kick his cojones, anything to shut him up. But my leg can only lift a tiny bit. No energy left, all empty, all gone. But maybe enough to choke him. I stumble, clutch at his thermals. I try to shake him, hurt him, but he’s solid as a tree.
Anger provides new strength. I say to his face, “Found your voice now?” I turn to the others. “No one is going to die. Eric, solve this. Solve this now!”
Eric hangs his head, defeated. He even quivers.
Walt covers his face to muffle his sobs. That gets Eric crying too, wiping and snorting his nose like a niño pequeño. “I tried,” he stutters through tears. “Tried so hard. I just can’t. I’m sorry, Cristina. I just can’t.”
I check their faces. Wild eyes, clutched hands, furious panting.
Ryder? A blank. Neither scared nor brave. Empty. Useless.
“Suit packs still have a few minutes of air,” says Jürgen. He’s confident, even while gasping. “We don’t have to die crammed into this place, not if we don’t want to. I don’t want to. I’m going to suit up and spend my last minutes under the stars. Who will join me?”
“I will,” says Tess.
The rest of them shift positions, grab hands, pull each other from the floor. One last time.
“Help me do this,” Mikki says to Alison. “Don’t want to die alone.”
“You won’t be alone,” Alison answers.
“Let me out,” someone whimpers from behind me. “Let me out, let me out, let me out . . .”
My legs bend. It’s over? Like when Paco died? Like cancer? A problem that can never be solved?
The Lord is my shepherd.
The death song.
It’s here.
Why now?
The death song, the card in Paco’s fingers.
Why did he clutch the death song? What use was it to him?
Paco—smart, rational, competent.
They put on BioSuit packs and helmets. An elbow shoves me. Everyone’s standing.
The Lord is my shepherd.
I take Ryder’s hand. “I need your help.”
“I’m sorry I won’t get to fully know you,” he says. “But we still have a little bit of time to share. Let’s do this together.”
I stare at him. It’s so hard to think.
“Cristina, wasn’t it almost suicide when we volunteered? Just took longer than we expected. We shared some times. Seen some sights. Lived free, for a while. Think of those things. We’ll be under the stars, together.”
“I need your help.”
He doesn’t understand. The low oxygen makes us a bit stupid.
I close my eyes.
The Lord is my shepherd.
When there is calm, there is hope.
I swallow and manage to shout, “Wait!”
They stop what they’re doing, all of them. Don’t cry. Think of Paco! “I can’t do this. I can’t do this alone. I need your help. Please help me.”
They stare at me.
Ryder whispers, “How can we help you, Cristina?”
“I’m asking all of you to do one thing for me. Please. Do this one thing for me, this one last thing to help me. Because I can’t do this alone.” I find Eric. His lips tremble. He’s in a panic, unable to think. Same with Darien and Andre. “I need you to calm your mind. I need everyone calm, calm and thinking. That would help me very much. But I can’t do this without . . . you. All of you.”
Jürgen’s moving, helmet on. The depressurization valve! Blow the air out, he’ll do it. He wants to have this his way. I pull myself between Jürgen and the access hatch and brace against the frame. But it’s no good. I’m too weak. He shoves me out of the way like a piece of trash.
Ryder’s arm lashes out against Jürgen’s face. A solid thump, then two flailing bodies
twist wildly. Both men grip each other’s throats and throw punches with their free fist. They fight on top of everyone else. Ryder pulls away and wraps an arm around Jürgen’s head, locking him in place, rendering him powerless.
“Did you hear her?” he pants, one breath per word. “She asked for help!”
No one moves. Our breathing fills the small space with short, rapid huffs. They watch as I run my fingers over the main panel. I search for it, find it, and push the text to every panel on Endurance, the whole block of words, the whole of Paco’s song. We can all see it.
“This gave my father peace. Now we read it. Together.”
FORTY-SIX
Mouths open. Eric shakes his head. Kelis squints and points a shaky finger. “What’s this?”
I suck in a lungful of thick air. “The Lord is my shepherd.”
Most just stare. A few repeat tentatively, “The Lord is my shepherd.”
I speak the first line again, driving each word out firmly. Ryder places his hand on my shoulder. He gets it. We lead the others through each line.
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;
He leadeth me besides still waters. He restoreth
my soul;
Blair gasps, “Why we . . . doing this?”
I continue reading out loud. More voices join.
He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His
name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of
the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for Thou art
with me; Thy rod and Thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of
mine enemies; Thou anointest my head with oil; my
cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall
follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the
house of the Lord forever.
I start again. Immediately, no hesitation.
“The Lord is my shepherd . . . I shall not want.”
How many speak with me? Eric says each word, and he is the most crucial. Only a few remain silent. Blair, Jürgen, Tess.
