Fatal Boarding

  Chapter 13

 

 

  An irritating ‘be-deep, be-deep’ awakened me from a deep, golden sleep. My body tingled with pleasure and refused to move.

  The be-deeping persisted.

  It felt like I had only slept a few hours. My eyelids felt too heavy to open. Through narrow slits I could make out only a gray blur. The room lights had automatically been brought up to dim. With a low moan, I wiped one hand across my face and tried to focus.

  Gray blur.

  After a slow wince, my vision finally switched in. Gray wall, six inches from my face, gray conduit running across it.

  But there were no conduits attached to the wall near my bed. Slowly I looked left and right and realized it was the ceiling. I held to a section of conduit, rolled myself over and found my stateroom below. My blanket was lingering mid-air in one corner, like a ghost in the low light. Several cushions hovered around it. A stack of plastics cups floated in the door to the bath. As consciousness crept in, I laughed at the absurdity of it. My body had become so accustomed to weightlessness it had not bothered to alert me when ship's gravity had failed. Once you have adapted to weightlessness, it ceases to be a burden. In fact, it becomes a pleasure. But, for most of the crew on board Electra, a loss of gravity was certain to be hell.

  I pushed gently off the ceiling and grabbed the edge of my desk. On my terminal a security message window had been opened:

  "Tarn, report to the Bridge conference room. Code Ten."

  Code Ten meant emergency. The timer on the screen read 03:17. I fumbled through my drawer, found clean, tan coveralls, and with a graceful backward somersault squeezed into them, then pulled on black deck shoes. People typically forget to put on shoes in unexpected zero-G. Then when the gravity returns, you see ship-board Ice Capades as they slip and slid their way home to get them.

  The corridor was deserted. Just outside my door, a black brassiere drifted by at eye level, followed by an empty cardboard box. At the end of the hall a brown, stuffed bear was plastered to the ventilation intake. On my way to the elevator, I passed an open stateroom door. A sick ensign in pajamas clung to his bathroom door, bent over. He gave me a pitiful look and kept one hand clamped over his mouth.

  I pushed along the walls to the elevator and tapped at the open key. When the doors finally parted, there was a body floating inside. Blood and vomit were drifting around the compartment and splattered on the walls and ceiling. I braced against the door and grabbed him. Nasty head wound. Six-inch laceration across the crown. A small stream of blood from it was forming globs in the air. He had completely forgotten the safety briefing given before the mission. He had tried to use the elevator in zero-G without bracing himself. He had pressed the down button and the car had shot down and slammed him in the head.

  There was a good pulse in his neck. I carefully let go and tapped at my watch. "Tarn to sickbay."

  No answer.

  "Tarn to sickbay. I have a medical emergency!"

  A good half minute passed before a shaky female voice came back. "This is Ensign Moore. Go ahead."

  "I have someone in the midship elevator on level five with a serious head wound. He needs a med team right away."

  Again the pause was unusually long. "Mr. Tarn, can you bring the patient to us?" Now the voice sounded afraid and uncertain.

  "Yes, but he should have medical attention, immediately!"

  "Sir, we don't have anyone to send! We're swamped down here. If you could bring him in, it would be the fastest way."

  I shook my head in disbelief. "Okay, we're on our way." An elevator filled with floating puddles of blood and vomit was not my idea of the best way to travel, but it happened to be the fastest route. I clamped my bare hand over the laceration and eased in, trying not to create air currents that would further disturb the pollution. I hugged him and braced against the ceiling.

  With one foot, I tapped the down key. The vomit and blood rained upward as we lurched down. As the car began to slow, we glided down to the floor and stood in the momentary gravity of deceleration.

  The doors opened to another corridor littered with floating debris. Around the first corner, a floating drove of ill people waited to get into sickbay. They stared at their wounded comrade with little compassion. I had to work my way around and over them, dragging the limp form behind me. Near the entrance, someone with a fat vacuum hose was cleaning contaminants from the air. An ensign with an exasperated look on her face came and gently hauled my patient away. Not the usual treatment for seriously injured friends.

  When I was finally clear of the sick zone, I stopped at the first restroom and for the second time washed someone else’s drying blood from my hands. I switched on my watch communicator. "Tarn to Main Engineering."

  "This is Derns, go ahead."

  "Have someone go to the main electrical section and shut down power to all the elevators until further notice. People are getting hurt."

  "I'll need orders posted to do that, Sir. But I'll do it on your verbal if you promise to get it posted as soon as possible."

  "Agreed. Make sure you secure them at a deck level, with the doors open."

  "Roger."

  Before I could thank him, a priority call overrode our connection. "Grey to Tarn. Report!"

  "Tarn here, Captain."

  "You were due up here twenty minutes ago. What's the problem?"

  "Medical emergency, Captain. I'm on level three. Be there in a few minutes."

  He clicked off without acknowledgment. It was the Captain’s way of expressing displeasure. Ironically, in zero G I could reach the upper decks faster than if there had been gravity. I made my way to the level three cable access hatch at the intersection of the North-South, East-West corridors and opened the access door to the forward vertical cable shaft. The tunnels are just big enough to allow technicians and engineers inside. They run straight up. Generally, ascending a cable duct in zero gravity is not recommended. If ship's gravity is suddenly restored, you can find yourself bouncing off walls as you plummet through seven floors. I edged myself inside and looked up to be sure the way was clear. Bundles of dingy black cable bundles, secured by hangars, flowed upward. Using the hand and foot holds embedded in the walls, I pulled myself up.

  I found the spot where the cables parted for the access door with the big red 4 imprinted on it, punched out the access door and left it to drift in mid-air. In the corridor, several pasty white crewmen stopped to stare as I emerged. The conference room was just around the first corner.

  Captain Grey had somehow fastened himself to his chair, his arms floating free above the table. He ignored me as I entered. Two Engineering officers held to the conference table nearby, trying to appear reassuring. Grey's tone was insistent. "Any gravity is better than no gravity, damn it."

  The engineer on his right answered. "We can do it fairly quickly, Captain. It'll be hit or miss, at first. The amplitudes will probably be either excessive or attenuated. We might start off with say, two Gs and then we'd have to tweak it down slowly. Even after we got the gravity field generators stable, there'd be lapse zones and heavy zones all over the ship. A team would need to stay at the field interface controller constantly to readjust it. And of course, you already know we could not bring the ship up to hyper speeds without the computer system to compensate for the changes in acceleration."

  "Well, get on with it. We can do nothing about getting out of here without some kind of gravity."

  They nodded and pushed past me on their way out. I grabbed one of the conference table chairs anchored to the floor and pulled myself down to the Captain's level.

  "You don't get space sick, do you Tarn?”

  "Too much time outside, Captain."

  "I wish I didn't. But, at least I hide it well."

  "From what I can see, very well."

  "The system that regulates the gravity field generators has apparently been affected in the same way our other systems
have. That's what all this is about. We will now attempt to bypass the controller and run power directly to the generators and force them on. It should be an interesting experience. It's never been done on a ship this size."

  "The crew does not seem to be handling weightlessness very well. I'd say it was worth a try."

  "Please spare me your understatements, Mr. Tarn. I did not call you here for advice. There is another problem I require your assistance on as if there aren't enough already." Grey rubbed one sleeve against his forehead and exhaled. "We have been unable to locate Commander Tolson for the past hour or so. A Security team has already been dispatched to look for him. Please take charge of that operation and report to me on the hour, every hour."

  "When and where was he last seen?"

  "I spoke to him over the net at 01:30. He was in his quarters. No one has seen or heard from him since."

  "I'll head down to the office immediately and bring you up to date after I'm briefed. Is there anything else?"

  "Oh yes, there is one other thing. There will be a ship-wide announcement just before they energize the gravity field. I expect that period to be complete chaos. Please do what you can to minimize it."

  Grey remained seated, silently staring ahead as I floated from the room. He left me with the impression of a very orderly man whose life had suddenly become completely out of control. He was in charge of our oasis. I wanted him to be content and indifferent again. I did not like what he'd become. For the first time, our situation was testing me. My mind was telling me that it was time to be afraid. I managed to put it aside, but it continued to stare at me from the distance.