There is such a thing as an astronaut’s Communication’s Scale of Concern (CSC). When response to radio communications takes 1.25 times longer than the inherent delay in transmission time, something is amiss. Mission control has always prided itself on having already worked out the answer to every possible question before the mission begins, so when reply to an important question does not come back instantly with a touch of indignation attached, awkward surprise is indicated. When the answer to a question is not known, veiled alarm arises in the minds of those seated at Capcom. There are usually a few moments of fear and disbelief that the answer is not immediately in hand, followed by some tentative exchanged stares in which everyone is hoping someone else will pop out with the answer, each pretending they already know the answer but are waiting to see who else does. At 1.5 on the scale, it can be assumed higher authorities are reluctantly being contacted in a deceptively casual comportment which suggests the matter is a simple formality and certainly nothing that reflects incompetence on the part of anyone.
The higher authorities never have the answers. They make good guesses about whom to ask next. At 2.0 those aboard the spacecraft who posed the question in the first place now know higher authorities have contacted other higher authorities and the answers have still not been forthcoming. Never a good sign. Usually at that point Mission Control has established that this particular unknown is not any fault of theirs, and a great flow of relief travels backward down the flow chart to Capcom. The standard message is then sent, “we’re trying to get some answers for you on that.”
Our two and a half hour wait finally brought the recorded image of an agency executive I did not know: Walter Provose. The knot of his black, violet-stripped tie was too large, keeping him consistent with the don’t-quite-understand-style demeanor most agency upper echelons seem prone to suffer. The collar of his black dress jacket was too shallow against the high blue collar of his dress shirt. His graying-brown hair was well cut but stuck out on one side, making a somewhat loveable overall appearance any pandering grandmother would quickly embrace. The man probably had an IQ higher than Einstein but had now achieved such a high level position in management that it would seldom ever be called upon again.
“Commander Tarn, the Japanese Aerospace Exo Agency and their Resource Ministry have finally responded to our inquiries about the Akuma. It seems you and your crew have caused quite a stir over at JSA. Apparently you have stumbled upon something that is a complete surprise to them. The Akuma was on a resource survey mission and was not due back for another two months. If the lack of Akuma emissions is as complete as you say, it would explain why none of the outpost grid stations have detected its presence. Needless to say, they are very upset by this and requesting our assistance. There are no appropriate vessels immediately available to investigate. We have advised our JSA friends that you are on a test flight and are not certified at this time for any other extra-system travel, but the Akuma has a crew of eighty so there is a very serious human issue here. Washington has advised us that they are willing to authorize a deviation of your mission to allow you to make visual contact with the Akuma and establish its condition. The deviation will only be granted on the basis of your recommendation, however. Very sorry about this, Commander. We understand your flight had enough unknowns already. Didn’t mean to put you on the spot. Advise us of your decision and we will support whatever that is. Provose out.”
Before I could speak, Doc shouted from up front. “For God’s sake, let’s go!”
JR agreed, “Go.”
Danica nodded, “Damn right, go.”
The rest in rapid fire, “Go; Go.”
All except Paris. Even through the red-face nausea, “Absolutely not. We will not be improvising a new mission. It’s not even an American spacecraft. I did not sign on for rescue duty. Let a trained rescue ship come do the rescuing. They might not be in trouble, anyway. Stupid, going on a wild goose chase. We are here to evaluate this ship and nothing more. We should head back now, anyway. That’s all been accomplished. We don’t need to recover a stupid car part. We’re done. We’re going back. I insist.”
Danica became terse. “There are lives at stake here, Paris.”
“Yes. Our lives. Let’s preserve them by returning immediately. This is not our job and not our problem.”
I hadn’t noticed Shelly leaving the copilot seat. As she brushed past me, it occurred to me the burn scar on her face was a much brighter red. I did not understand what she was doing until she grabbed Paris by the collar of his flight suit and got in his face.
“Listen you selfish little asshole. I’ve heard enough from you over the past few weeks. Go sit your self-important ass down in the back and turn up the mag level so it keeps your ass there or I’ll take you back myself and super glue you to the fucking seat.”
Wilson and I looked at each other with raised eyebrows. He mouthed the word, “Wow.” We both silently agreed no further instructions were necessary. It was one of those moments where you wonder if the idiot is going to break out swinging or be exposed for the spoiled child that he is. In Denard’s case, the wimp factor kicked right in. He made his practiced ‘humph’ sound, pushed away from her grasp, and turned and floated back to his chosen restroom as though his departure would hurt everyone’s feelings.
Shelly gave me an incensed look and returned to her copilot position. I did not like the fact she had left it, but decided this was not the time to discuss it. I looked back at the deflated form of Paris Denard hanging sickly to the door. “Paris. I’m sorry but this is not your decision. We’re going to see if those people need help.”
He would not look at me. He gripped the cloth in his hand, stared at the restroom door and punched at the button to open it. Without another look in our direction he disappeared inside.
“Danica, would you please relieve Doc and ask him to come back here? Pull up RJ’s coordinates and program a jump to the Akuma that drops us out in visual range but not too close. Let me know as soon as you’re set up. We’ll get ready back here.”
With a touch of hesitation she nodded and headed up front. A few moments later Doc coasted back alongside me.
“You know why I pulled you back here, right?”
“Not my first rodeo, Adrian. I guess the water tank training was a good idea, eh?”
“We may not need that.”
“You realize of course if there is no communication from that ship you must not dock with it or make physical contact with the hull in any way until the situation is understood.”
“I have some experience with this sort of thing.”
“As Chief Medical Officer on this spacecraft, that would be my recommendation.”
“You’re not going to turn into a Paris Denard on me, are you?”
“There are medications which could help that man.”
I left him and pushed myself through the forward airlock up to the flight deck door. The four of them turned back to face me.
“RJ and Wilson, strap in and stay at your stations. Keep trying to make contact. Continue looking for telemetry, and let Ground know we are proceeding to investigate. Danica and Shelly, after dropout keep us orientated to forward view. We’ll see what we can get out of viewscreen scanning.” I turned to speak to the others and found Erin bumping up against my shoulder. Doc was already deploying jump seats.
We had to knock on the restroom door to get Paris out. His red face seemed a bit more puffed up than it had been. He appeared in no condition to speak, much less protest further. We strapped him in so he could continue to clutch the fresh white towel against his mouth. We buckled up around him and waited. Out the right hand portals the brown dwarf seemed to wink goodbye. It did not take Danica long. She came over the intercom in her most reassuringly professional voice. “Ready, Commander.”
“Proceed, Danica.”
“View ports closing. In five, four, three, two, one, engage.”
The jump lasted less than five seconds, but that was longer than
the time it had taken us to reach the dwarf. The slight press against our harnesses signaled final deceleration. Danica’s voice switched back on. “Jump successful. Station keeping at six hundred meters.”
I had a short tinge of irritation. That was closer than I had wanted. We all hurriedly unbuckled and pulled our way to the front. The Akuma was a lonely silhouette in the empty distance. She was precisely in the center of our view screen. I had to admit a flush of admiration for Danica’s piloting.
RJ wasted no time. “She is drifting, Adrian.”
“Magnify to 100 percent.”
The big ship came plainly into view in our window displays. Gray, dish-shaped hull, the shape of a standard gravity field generator envelope. An aft array of engines cascaded behind it.
RJ continued, “There doesn’t seem to be any obvious exterior damage. I don’t see any venting anywhere, but there is an open airlock outer door forward and to starboard.”
Wilson said, “There are power signatures within her, Adrian. Temperature and O2.”
“Do either of you see any other ships in the vicinity or any other unusual signatures?”
“There’s nothing, Adrian. I’ve been tracking that since the start,” replied RJ.
“Send a message to Ground that we have rendezvoused with the Akuma and have visual. Outer hull appears intact. Standby for additional data. Danica, take us in halfway, then hold.”
“Thrusting forward.”
We held on as Griffin pushed ahead.
“There’s an awful lot of darkened portals on that ship,” commented Shelly. “It’s like nobody’s home.”
RJ added, “There’s a small object that’s fallen into orbit around her. Amazing how fast that can happen. It’s gone behind. It’ll come back around to visual in a just a minute.”
“Hold position.”
Danica said, “The antenna arrays all look intact. They should be able to communicate.”
Shelly added, “There’s no external damage at all that I see. Sure seems strange. Something is definitely wrong.”
RJ’s voice rose in anticipation. “Here comes the orbiting debris. Looks like it might be ice with some organics.”
“Full magnification.”
RJ suddenly sounded anxious, “Wait, wait a second.”
His warning came too late. The screen zoomed in and tracked the Akuma's small, adopted satellite. We stared silently at the full screen image of a frozen man turning slowly in space as he made his way along the ship’s superstructure. He was frosted over from head to foot, but somehow held the posture of rich man who could have been posing for an oil painting, chin slightly up, blank white eyes staring off into providence, full head of Jack Frost hair, flat smile of superiority. He wore a frosty black vested tuxedo, modern cut, with an icy bow tie on the high collar of a white dress shirt. There were no shoes, just frozen stocking feet. His arms were locked slightly outward from the waist, hands baring large rings with an icy bracelet on the right.
The silence in the cabin was deafening. Someone pulled the camera view magnification back to normal so that the image once again became a small satellite orbiting a mystery ship, but the tiny spec of light flying along the superstructure was now too clearly defined in our minds.
Doc spoke. “I’d say we have definitively established something is very wrong.”
I looked down at Danica. “Keep the nose pointed at her midsection and do a 360-degree orbit above and below so we can see all of her.”
It took a moment for everyone to overcome the shock. Danica could have done the maneuver with one hand tied behind her back, but she had to shake it off to refocus. She brought us in closer and then thrust into a large X-axis circle above the Akuma. As we passed over the top, everything continued to look intact and undamaged. I expected to find something on the underside but as we circled beneath the ship continued to look unscathed. We came around and back to our starting point with nothing out of place.
“Okay, let’s do the same thing Y-axis front to back.”
Danica moved us to a point in front of the ship. With the nose fixed, she began a slow thrust toward the back end. Maybe there was damage in the engine section. Maybe we would find something there.
We completed the orbit and sat facing the Akuma without a clue. I looked at Doc. He raised one eyebrow and lowered his chin, but said nothing. I waved him to follow me back. The others knew enough not to come along. Paris stared, still strapped in his seat, as we made our way back to the aft airlock.
In the airlock, I held to a pressure door for stability. Doc braced himself against the wall.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“What do you think?” he replied.
“Do we try to get in, or wait for someone else to come out here?”
“As a medical professional I am trained never to wait for a patient to get worse, but can we get in?”
“There’s an open airlock outer door. The airlocks have a key code. These suits are the K-version. We can have them on and decompressed in an hour. By that time, we should be able to get the access codes from Earth. We might not need them.”
“You know the moment we put a hand on that ship even without going inside, we cannot return to the Griffin.”
“Is there a decontamination procedure for this sort of thing?”
“There’s really no such thing as decontamination in space. There are so many new substances and life forms out here that no decontamination process can account for them all. We visit other worlds and expose ourselves every day and that’s a big risk, but it’s only when there’s a sign of trouble that the quarantine rules kick in.”
“So if I tap in an access code and it doesn’t work, we’re screwed.”
“Your space suit is. Yes.”
“So you will hang back, and if the airlock door fails to open you can still return.”
“Oh, I don’t like that.”
“And if we do get inside, we are there to stay until we establish that no contamination exists, or until we can prove we have not been infected by it.”
“Yes.”
I tapped the intercom button on the wall. “RJ, please send a message to Ground Control requesting the entry codes for the Akuma airlocks and authorization to board her.”
There was a long pause, followed by an annoyed response. “Roger.”
“Danica, take us to within three hundred yards of the open airlock, and then station keeping.”
“Understood, Commander.”
“Erin and Wilson, please report back to the aft airlock.”
Doc and I began suit-up, a procedure I had done more times than I could count. We were pulling on our white, veined suit liners by the time Erin and Wilson arrived. They worked silently to get us the rest of the way there. They were businesslike but I could tell they did not like what was happening.
When the sagging white outer trousers and rigid torsos were locked in place, Doc and I faced each other from opposite sides of the airlock and worked the sleeve and inside collar procedures. These were top of the line Bell Standard K-series EVA suits, the best you could ask for. On my last, very memorable space walk, I had been forced to use a pilot’s flight suit, a lightweight that left me feeling naked and unprotected. These suits were a blessing, less agile than flight suits but packed with bells and whistles. Bell Standard EVAs were considered to be miniature spacecraft. A man alone could get into one, but not easily, and once the airlock bled out if you found you hadn’t tightened something correctly, getting things set right could be a fear-provoking episode. Having suit personnel to help get it right was a welcome luxury.
We hung against the wall without our helmets, waiting impatiently for the readouts on our sleeves to show suit electrical checks complete. When the displays came up all green, Wilson gave me a last look, adjusted my microphone, and pulled the helmet over my head. He twisted it in place and tapped on the visor. Suit arms and legs began to inflate.
When suit pressure had stabilized and we had successfull
y become balloon-boys, the countdown timer on my sleeve automatically began clicking down, the gas mixture bar graphs slowly increased, and the suit-pressure bar graphs slowly began to fall. It would be a forty-minute wait for our blood chemistry to adapt. If we made it into the Akuma it would take the same amount of time to get back out. Since our suits were now sealed in theory we could go right out the door, but lessons of the past have taught us working in the suit and human body is best not done until both have stabilized.
When we were fifteen minutes from ready Wilson and Erin withdrew and set the airlock to depressurize. Five minutes later RJ’s voice cut in over the headset. “We’ve got authorization to enter the Akuma, Adrian. I’m transmitting the airlock codes to your suit display. The JSA is bringing the Akuma ground station back online and linking it to ours. They’ll be assisting every step of the way but the time lag will be slightly longer.”
Our suit status lights turned green at the same instant the airlock doors clicked to unlocked. I pushed the side door open as Doc gathered up the satchel Erin and Wilson had brought for us. We paused at the door. Wilson’s voice came on. “By the way, Commander, there are weapons in that satchel. I’d suggest you both strap them on when you get there.”
“Yes, mother.”
I never get used to how much nothingness awaits you outside the airlock door. Even though you’re already floating, it feels like you will fall over the edge. As the door swung open, the cold began to chill our suits and our visors tried to fog. I felt the veins in my suit liner pump up as the environmental control system reacted to keep me warm. Air jets around my visor gushed air and the haze quickly cleared. We pushed out into the grand light show of stars and became smaller than nothing, feeling the brief compulsory fear of absolute loneliness. Once Doc was clear we closed and sealed the outer door. In the distance, the gray ghost of the Akuma waited. The small, dark silhouette of the frozen man patrolling her coasted out of sight behind her.
“Let’s jet over and look through a couple of the lighted portholes.”
“Okay. I’d suggest caution, Commander. If anyone is in there we’ll scare the hell out of them.”
“Let’s take the nearest one. Follow me, but you stay clear of the bulkhead.”
We pulled down our backpack handles and jetted over the bottomless expanse toward the closest lighted window on the Akuma. It was three quarters of the way up the side, just starboard of the ship’s forward section. It was a small round window. The light coming from it had a yellowish tint. My approach was a bit too aggressive. Extra braking was needed to park. With my thrust controls in micro, I maneuvered next to and below the portal.
It was a small conference room; one long table with chairs alongside, one chair tipped over. The room was deserted.
“There’s gravity in there. But I do not see anyone.”
I backed away and propelled to a window lower down and more forward. With careful jetting I got within inches and steadied myself with one hand on the bulkhead. It was the office of a high-ranking officer. A cluttered desk, overturned cabinet, broken display case with a model ship in it. Once again, no one there. I backed away and rotated around to face Doc.
“Can’t tell what’s going on in there. No one around and the place is a mess. Let’s check out the airlock.”
As we headed in that direction, frozen man came speeding back around from behind the Akuma, approaching us like a macabre guard dog making rounds. We paused to let him pass and I noticed a frozen carnation attached to his lapel. He coasted by, his cold stare seeming to evaluate potential intruders, then turned away as though regarding us as unimportant. Leaning slightly forward, he headed out on another endless orbit.
The open airlock glowed yellow-orange from emergency lights. I pulled myself in and suddenly became weighted in the Akuma’s gravity. I shuffled and rocked my way across the grated floor to the inner door. Spacesuits hung against the walls, control panels marked in Japanese surrounded them, a few umbilical cables dangled near the floor. The inner door was closed, but the keypad panel beside it had three illuminated green buttons. No key code required. My guess was that frozen man had departed here and left no one behind to secure the airlock.
“Doc. This airlock looks ready to be recycled. Last chance to change your mind and return to Griffin.”
I heard a scoff over the intercom and watched Doc jet through the outer door, pulling our satchel in behind him. He sank to the floor, bent at the knees, and signed off on his commitment by grabbing a handhold on the wall.
I shuffled aside to the outer door controls and suddenly the Griffin came into view. It was a striking image. Griffin’s white fuselage had a golden tint. It was the first time I had seen her hanging in space, back dropped by a thick wall of stars. She was more than beautiful. She had become a guardian. It gave me a streak of fear. Closing this hatch might mean never returning. How did we get to this point again? Was there another option I missed? She was only a short backpack distance away, but already out of reach. We had touched the Akuma. We now belonged to the Akuma. We could change our minds, break the rules, and re-board the Griffin. This was probably the last chance to do that. Endanger my own ship and crew? Never. Nor would the man beside me.
“RJ, I’m closing up. The keypad is active and still waiting for the close command.”
“Copy, Adrian. Standing by.”
The door mechanism had a large lever. I pulled it down and silently the oval door swung shut and rotated its latches. In the middle of the airlock, there was a big red button on the wall with big red exclamatory Japanese underneath it. Emergency Airlock Control. You didn’t need to read Japanese to understand. I slapped it with the heel of my palm and a rotating light began to flash. Vented pressure vapor came out of ports around the outer door. Valves in the floor and ceiling began to open and emit similar vapor streams, precursors to emergency pressurization. Doc leaned against the crowded wall across from me but said nothing.
“What do you think?”
“Spacesuits need to stay on for the time being. Isolate us if there’s really a pathogen in there.”
“Understood. Depending on what’s on the other side of that door when it opens, where do you think we should head first?”
“We need to know what’s going on as quickly as possible.”
“Yeah. I’m thinking the bridge or somewhere we can get to the Captain’s log.”
“If at any point it looks like an epidemic, we should change up and get to sickbay, try to find out what we’re up against.”
“You’d better pull those weapons out of the satchel. It’s kind of late to be asking but, you ever handle one?”
“I’m from Texas.”
“Sorry; I forgot. Let’s set them to wide beam, half second pulse, the stun-1 setting.”
He dug in the satchel and drew out the pulse-beam guns. He leaned forward and handed me one. It was hard to imagine firing one in an EVA suit, even though it would not be a first. I secured it to my waist and sat back. The screen on my wrist showed outside pressure rising rapidly. We both looked at the inner door, knowing it would slide open at any moment. The question was, what was on the other side?
Chapter 19