With my suit off at last, I peeled away the sweaty white suit liner and stuffed it into the torso. I stood in only my stretch shorts not caring that Erin was standing a foot away staring. She made an “Ooo” sound and touched a scar on my shoulder. “How did you get this one? It’s kind of close to the throat.”
“A small piece of shrapnel from an explosive.”
“Don’t you know you’re supposed to be elsewhere when those things go off?”
“Yeah, but the bad guy who was holding it wouldn’t let me.”
She dipped her chin in disbelief, opened her mouth to ask, then decided against it. Instead, she knelt and dug into the satchel, found my gray flight suit and handed it over. As I pulled it on, she held out my stretch boots.
We piled my suit by the console and pulled out my com unit. With a stolid expression of disapproval, Wilson came around the table holding a tablet. I straightened my flight suit and tried to look optimistic. “Man, what a relief. Bell Standards aren’t made for walkin’. RJ, you still with us?”
“Griffin standing by.”
“We’re gonna need you guys to ship us over some water at some point. It’ll need to be a heated transfer container so it doesn’t freeze on the way. You should pack in some food, too. We can’t chance the food here.”
“Got it. Anything else?”
“Just stage it in the aft airlock. When we’re ready to come get it we’ll let you know and you can depressurize and open the outer.”
“Griffin copies.”
I turned back to the others. “Did you guys bring anything with you?”
Erin answered. “We were in a hurry. Just the water and candy bars in our suit packs.”
“Good idea.” I bent down, dug in my suit, and pulled out a candy bar. As I unwrapped it, Wilson handed me the tablet.
“This one’s set up with a map of the service ways, the ones you need.”
I took the tablet and a bite, and studied the map. “How bad are we on time?”
“We need to get going, right now,” said Erin. She handed me a shiny silver tool. “This is the self adjusting wrench that fits all the transfer valves. There’s a lift over there to the upper levels. No climbing required. I’ll take you over.”
She adjusted a setting on her spacesuit sleeve and waved me to follow. On the way to the caged service elevator, she stopped and picked up the mysterious tool that had fallen. It was the same type. “See what I mean?” she said. I nodded and took it from her and zipped it in a pants leg pocket.
The lift was made for a single person. She pointed upward at the third level catwalk, where a small, oval opening waited. I rode up, keeping it in sight, watching for anything out of place. At the top the dark, narrow grated walkway had good handrails and guards. I paused at the crawlway entrance, left my half-eaten candy bar on a shelf by the catwalk, and looked down. Erin waved.
Service crawlways are okay as long as you don’t have to go too far in or too far up. They are a bit eerie because you cannot back out very easily or very quickly. If you are lucky you are on your hands and knees, but you must keep your head down to avoid banging it on cables or boxes. The lighting only comes on as you progress and automatically shuts off behind you. It leaves you looking at darkness ahead and darkness behind. There is an absolute loss of sense of direction and unless you leave breadcrumbs, no way to recognize where you have been. People have been known to get caught in rectangular loops in service access-ways, spending hours figuring out how to break out. There are always noises, and since darkness both follows you and awaits you, the sounds always come from one darkness or the other. The best of ghost stories have never gotten to me. Deep within the service crawlways, I sometimes get edgy.
I crawled along and made my first left hand turn, then a right, and already began to get the creeped-out feeling. Then it got worse. As I made the next turn at a T-intersection there must have been moisture coming from somewhere, or some kind of temperature differential, because a shallow hang of fog began to form near the floor. It was only six inches deep, but the floor was no longer visible. It made the passageway seem smaller than it already was, and in places there were little hypnotic swirls where air vents were bleeding airflow.
A loud bang from equipment cycling somewhere made me jump. I laughed out loud. Erin heard me over the com.
“You okay up there, Commander?”
“A London fog bank has moved in. All I need now is Jack the Ripper.”
As I rounded the corner to the first of the valve junctions, the fog deepened and took on a slightly violet hue. There was now a fire-hose-sized pipeline running along the wall to my right, a clear indication of coolant routing. Out of the darkness the valve assembly station finally appeared, a concave indentation in the wall with its own yellowish light and large automatic valve sitting at eye level. There was no wrench fastened to it. I pulled out the one Erin had given me, fixed it in place on the turn-bolt head, and pushed. It wouldn’t budge. “This thing’s frozen. It won’t move an inch.”
I heard Wilson under his breath say, “Shit.”
“Let me try a different position, hold on.”
I repositioned myself as best I could, gave a silent three count and shoved on the handle with all my strength. “Crap. It’s a bastard.”
Erin tried to sound supportive. “There’s no other way, Adrian. You’ve got to cycle it somehow.”
“Hang on. I’ll try something else.”
It’s not easy to change direction in a crawlway. People frequently get stuck trying. You have to fold up your legs, then position your face so that it’s looking at your knees, then slither like a snake past them. At six-foot-two, it’s risky business for guys like me. I have the agility, but not the extra inches. As I wiggled through the maneuver, it made me wonder what being stuck in a fog-covered tube would be like with almost no one to come to the rescue. The thought provided extra motivation. Somehow, I made the switch.
I positioned myself with one foot on the handle, holding on to conduit in the ceiling for leverage. With all my might, I stomped on the wrench handle, praying. The wrench went flying off into the darkness, clanking and bouncing away. I sank back against the floor but the fog covered my face, forcing me to sit back up.
The second wrench fit much more tightly. I had inadvertently kicked the first one with an upward angle. It needed to be a straight shot. I braced myself took my best aim and stomped once more.
Nothing happened. The wrench stayed, but the valve held. Two more poundings and it seemed like there was some give. On the third try, I mustered up something extra and to my delight, the wrench handle spun around and smacked against the wall. I hurried back through the one-eighty maneuver, ratcheted the wrench and opened the valve to full.
Erin’s voice yelped over the com. “That’s it! You did it. Coolant is flowing.”
Wilson added, “One more and we get to live, Adrian.”
“Have I mentioned what a comfort you are, Wilson?”
I dragged along toward the darkness, and on the way recovered the first valve wrench. There were four more intersections with turns at three of them. The fog continued. As I reached the next intersection the lights were slow to come on. The valve was somewhere to my right. I happened to glance in the other direction and froze.
In the distant darkness, there were eyes. Nothing else, just two yellow eyes staring back from the blackness. They were there for only a second and then disappeared. I listened, but heard nothing. Some kind of optical illusion, maybe. Why would anyone hang out in these godforsaken crawlways? It bothered me but there was no time to dwell on it. I felt my way into the next tube and crawled along.
As I crossed into a set of working lights, for some reason the entire tunnel lit up all the way to the farthest intersection. It was a good ten or twelve yards to the end of it, and the violet-toned fog made it look like a pathway leading to another dimension. As I focused ahead, something absurd happened. A moving shadow from an adjacent corridor was projected on the wall of
the intersection. It was far enough away that I couldn’t be sure, but there seemed to be something moving within the fog as well.
It was more than I dared risk. I fumbled around and drew my weapon. With the tablet in one hand, and shooter in the other, I began to crawl, but again stopped abruptly.
At the end of the crawlway, a large white rabbit suddenly hopped in from the adjacent corridor and sat in plain view above the fog rubbing its paws. I let go of the tablet, rubbed my eyes, and when I opened them it was gone. A pang of fear raced though me. I fumbled around in the fog, squeezed my communicator button, and switched to a private channel with Doc.
“Adrian to Doc.”
It took a few seconds for him to answer. “Go ahead.”
“Doc, I think I’m infected. I’m hallucinating.”
“No, Adrian. You are not.”
“Why do you say that?”
“The doctors here were very good. They did not have time to create a cure or an inoculation, but they did develop a method to detect the disease. It’s done with a brain scan. They documented the incubation period as two hours or less. I have been scanning myself every thirty minutes. I am not affected. If I am not affected, you are not affected. I have not been monitoring the three of you. Are you out of your suit?”
“Yes. It was necessary.”
“You are not infected.”
“Doc, I’m on the third level in Engineering, deep in a service crawlway. I just saw a white rabbit. If I wait, I’ll bet Alice will be along any time now.”
“Did it have a watch?”
“This is no time to be funny, Doc.”
“I’m not. Did it have a watch?”
“No.”
“Then I put it to you, you did see a rabbit.”
“Oh for God’s sake.”
“Do you feel sick?”
“No.”
“If you were infected, that’s the first stage. How do you feel?”
“Like an idiot?”
“I’m in a hurry here, Commander. We both need to get back to our duties.”
“You’re sure?”
“You are not infected. I’ll explain more later.”
“Tarn out.”
I switched back to the others. “I’m approaching the last intersection.”
“Hurry, Adrian. There’s no more time buffer on this,” answered Erin.
I inched around the corner. The valve junction came into view just a few feet away. A wrench was already mounted atop it. I crawled up, shifted onto my side and tugged at it. It turned easily.
Erin’s voice came over the com. “Thank God. We see that, Adrian. Fresh coolant is on its way to the core. We’re stable here. Come on out of there.”
“With pleasure.”
I have never crawled quite that fast, even with a drill sergeant standing over me with a twitch. When my head accidentally met an equipment box on the ceiling and the box won, my cursing echoed off into the distance but did not slow me. Main Engineering finally came into view. I scrambled out and shook off the eeriness of it. For reward and comfort, I looked for my half-eaten candy bar, but it was gone. The service lift brought me down to floor level where Erin and Wilson were tapping though different schematics on the table display.
Wilson looked up with a discerning appraisal. “Good job. Piece of cake, eh?”
“Thought I saw a rabbit.”
He burst out a laugh and then stared to see if I was serious. He decided I might be and wrinkled his brow.
“Don’t worry. Doc says I’m fine. Which of you guys took my half-eaten candy bar?”
They both looked on with a questioning stare.
“My half-eaten candy bar. I left it on the catwalk up there. It was gone when I got back.”
Erin answered, “Adrian, we’ve been at this station since you left. Maybe it fell off.”
While they worked through their flow displays I went and searched. There was nothing.
“Maybe it’s partway up the wall, stuck in a cable track or something,” said Wilson.
“I told you stuff has been going on. I have an idea,” said Erin. She opened the pocket on her spacesuit leg, pushed aside the glow sticks, and drew out a fresh candy bar. She peeled it halfway open and then left us and went into a hallway and disappeared around a corner. A moment later, she returned.
“I put it on a shelf back there. Bait. Let’s see what happens.”
Wilson tapped at the schematics display and spoke without looking up. “Boy, we got to those valves just in time. The last time the system was cycled was two days ago. If that core had lost containment it would’ve meant a cascade failure; multiple detonations. We’ve got plenty of time now. We just need to take care of the power systems generator. It’s the same thing, Adrian, only no service crawlways. You just have to climb down below the floor and there should be a big distribution network of valves and switches down there. We’ll have to monitor the cross-flows and talk you through the switch-overs as they happen.”
“Where’s the access point?”
“It should be over by the lift you used, a large panel entrance in the floor. It opens from this console.” He tapped at an icon on his panel and a rotating yellow light came to life on the wall near the lift. A large floor panel rose up on four sides and light appeared from below.
The power system stabilization proved easy compared to the crawlway work. I was in and out in less than thirty minutes. Back at the console display the mood had changed from apprehension to maintenance. Erin tried to fold her inflated arms, gave up and leaned against the console. “Well, that’s it. If there are no other failures we can maintain systems safety margins until help arrives and the sooner the better.”
Wilson agreed. “We cut it too close. If RJ hadn’t picked up on this, the Akuma would not have made it through the day. Once they stopped cycling the damaged valves the end was inevitable.”
Wilson’s commentary stuck in my mind for a moment. “That’s kind of funny, isn’t it?”
“What’s that?”
“When did you say they last cycled the valves?”
“Two days ago.”
I rubbed my forehead and tried to remember. “The Captain’s log said she was one of the last to become sick. Then her reports turned to gibberish.”
“What’s funny about that?”
“I thought it was two weeks. Two weeks ago.”
They looked at me with uncertainty. Erin said, “So you’re saying some of them must’ve remained well until a few days ago.”
“Doc, we’ve stabilized the core. The danger is past for the time being. We have a question.”
“Thank God. Go ahead.”
“Doc, could any of the crew who were infected still have been able to perform valve rotations on the ship’s systems?”
“Absolutely not. The pathogen shuts down areas of higher reasoning. There is no logic in the actions of the victim. It is all completely arbitrary and impulsive.”
“Someone cycled these valves as recently as a few days ago, Doc. So you’re saying some of them held out that long then, right?”
“No way, Adrian. You drink the water and the blood accumulation is simple math. Drink enough to live and you drink enough to be infected. There’s no getting around that. If valves were reset, it had to be done some other way.”
“Thanks, Doc. Tarn out.”
We stared at each other in bewilderment. A loud crash from the nearby hallway shattered the silence. Erin took off in a dash toward the sound.
I yelled, “Wait. Be careful.”
She ignored me and charged around the corner. Wilson and I started after her and met her in the alcove.
“Candy bar’s gone. Shelf is tipped over.”
“So if you’ve become a Looney tune you like candy bars, so what?” suggested Wilson.
“For someone without higher reasoning, they sure are doing a good job of staying out of sight,” said Erin.
“And a good job of cycling valves?”
“You thin
k some of them are immune and are just afraid to come out, Adrian?” said Wilson.
“Why would adults hoping for rescue be afraid to come out?”
We stared at each other for a long moment. Pieces began to fit.
“This can’t be what I’m thinking,” I said.
Erin took the leap. “Children?”
Wilson joined in. “Oh my God, I get it! The adults knew they had to drink the water and were going to be sick, so they trained the children to cycle the valves. The kids are afraid of them and have been hiding ever since but still doing their job.”
Erin added, “Until that valve froze up. So one of them threw the wrench down hoping we’d help.”
I considered it. “But that would mean…”
Erin cut me off. “Yes, the children were immune.” She grabbed her tablet and began typing furiously. I watched the message.
‘We are not sick. We are visitors here to help you. We have more candy bars. Please come out.’
With the tablet set to translate to Japanese, she set the audio, held it up and began walking around, playing her message at the loudest setting. Wilson and I stood gawking.
A minute or two passed with no result. Erin persisted. Suddenly there was movement on the second level catwalk, a disturbance in the shadows. Ever so slowly, a young face peered out from the darkness. He was seven or eight years old. He held onto the guardrail with one hand, ready to run, and looked down at Erin in her spacesuit.
“Kichigai,” he yelled.
Quickly Erin repeated the word into her tablet and read the translation. She typed in a reply and played it back in Japanese. The boy hesitated and slowly withdrew into the shadows. Wilson and I set our tablets to translate.
The boy returned to the catwalk with a friend. The friend yelled down “Kichigai?” but this time it was a question, not an accusation. Wilson and I read our tablets. The translated word was ‘insane, crazy’.
Erin played back her message once more. Our tablets translated for us.
‘Not sick. Friends sent to help you. Come out. We won’t hurt you.’
There was noise behind me. I turned to see a young girl holding a doll in the corridor where the candy bar had been hidden. As I looked back up other children were emerging onto the catwalks. On the third level, a young girl stood tightly holding her pet white rabbit.
To my dismay, Erin placed her tablet on the floor, reached up and twisted off her helmet. She put it down, and with her tablet back in hand, turned in a circle, waving to the children.
I looked at Wilson in dismay. “When the hell did she start recompression without telling me?”
Wilson shrugged. “So can I take mine off too?”
Chapter 23