have set up the autodoc program right. People in comas do not dream.”
“Well, ma’am, Doc, Natalia,” Parker again, “it sounds as though you could use some genuine sleep. I think we’ve gotten what we need from you. We’re not set up for passengers, but there is room to rig a fourth sleepsack and we’ve got food and water enough. I suppose if you insisted, we could take you back to TSFHQ and let them get you back to Terra, but we’ve been asked to see to the dignified disposal of your friends’ remains and investigate what happened to your home. After a shift or two of sleep, perhaps you could let us know what you want from us.”
“I can tell you that now. I would like to stay. I can help you and I would like to say good-bye to my friends.” She moved to leave. Parker motioned Cathcart to go with her. He’d rig her sleepsack and otherwise get her squared away. Parker and Winters watched their passenger leave.
“Winters, I believe this is your watch.” Parker also started for the hatch. “I’ll be at the command console for a bit and then I’m for sleep as well.” Winters nodded an acknowledgment. “Tell Cath when you see him that we’ll resume salvage operations tomorrow.”
Day two salvage began easier. The small reactor was still in place in Howard, the hatch was already open. Winters drew the short straw and stayed behind in Kestrel while Parker and Cathcart donned EVA suits and made the crossing to the station. During his watch the evening before, Winters had serviced the suits and downloaded the PSR files to Kestrel’s data server. Anticipating their passenger’s needs, he’d also rigged two of the console monitors to display the visuals from the suit PSRs. Watching the show would keep her occupied. Parker and Cathcart were almost to Howard when Natalia appeared and asked, “Where should I sit?”
Winters gestured to the command chair facing the two monitors showing suit PSR visuals. He was talking to Parker at the same time, “Contact with Howard, aye.” He turned to Natalia, “You can see what they see there,” gesturing to the monitors. “Parker on the left, Cathcart on the right.” Cathcart’s monitor showed a darkened room on the other side of the port, inadequately lit by suitlight. Parker’s showed Cathcart’s back ahead of him and the coaming of the port as he passed through it.
Cathcart pulled a stickylite from his satchel and affixed it to the overhead just outside the corridor that led forward to where the small reactor was supplying partial power to Howard. As soon as it was in place the LEDs lit the room somewhat more effectively. He turned down the corridor. Parker followed. “Doc . . . Winters, can the doc hear me?”
“Aye, she’s right here, monitoring the visuals and the command channel with me.”
“Doc, you said that bachelor quarters were along this corridor, right?”
“Da, correct.” She’d given them a rough layout of the station over breakfast.
Cathcart set a second and then a third stickylite against the overhead in the corridor at twenty-meter intervals and was continuing forward. Parker approached the first hatch starboard side, high. The label said BQ2a. He tried the handle. “It’s not turning.” He tried again. “Feels stuck, not locked. There’s no rattle or give at all. Doc, was it normal to lock quarters?”
“Nyet. Except in married quarters if a couple wanted privacy. We were like a very open family.”
Cathcart had the fourth stickylite in place and Parker could see the small reactor secured to the bulkhead near him.
Parker toggled both the EVA and command channels open. “Anyone see a problem with me forcing the hatch?”
“Sir, I see a problem.” That from Cathcart.
“Why would you have a problem with me forcing the hatch?” Parker let just a little annoyance slip into his voice. He still had both channels open.
“No sir, not with the hatch, with the reactor,” said Cathcart.
“Kestrel, stand by.” Parker switched off the command channel. “What’s the problem, Cath?”
“Power loss forward has grown from a needle quiver yesterday to twenty-five percent of reactor capacity today,” said Cathcart. “Still nothing on the bus, just the command and control pathway.”
“Kestrel.” Parker had switched to the command channel.
“Kestrel, aye,” said Winters.
“Do you see any sign of life forward of our position on Howard? We’re showing significant power usage on the command circuitry that leads that direction.”
“Stand by,” said Winters. He commanded a battery of the ship’s sensors to sweep the forward third of Howard. After a moment, “There’s some infrared coming from the reactor module—not much, but definitely more than we saw on approach.” There was a pause. “Hang on. I think I see a hot spot. Lemme increase resolution.” Another short delay and, “The wiring harness between the BQ module and engineering is definitely warm. Same for the one between engineering and the reactor module. No heat forward of that.”
“Kestrel, stand by,” Parker responded. Apparently he had moved forward to consult with Cathcart. The two monitors showed the two suits facing one another. “Kestrel, we’ve got to resolve this before we can proceed. Cath and I are moving forward. Cath thinks it’s too risky to try to cut power from here until we know where that potential short is. I defer to his judgement.” The monitors showed Cathcart leading, Parker following.
Cathcart handled the twin hatches separating the habitat and engineering modules much the same way he’d opened the docking port hatch the day before. This, time, however, suitlight shone off more than bulkheads. The first bodies had been found. The two young officers swung to face each other, deliberately restricting the fields of view of their PSRs. “Kestrel,” said Parker.
“Kestrel, aye,” Winters replied.
“Warn our guest that we’re encountering bodies. She may want to discontinue monitoring video.”
Winters threw a glance at Natalia. She gave a minimal shake of her head, almost a tremor. She looked grim.
“Acknowledged. Doc says she’s staying.”
“We’ll have engineering lit in a few moments.” He switched to the EVA channel. “Go ahead, Cath. She says she wants to monitor.”
Cathcart placed a stickylite on the overhead near the hatch. There were four bodies, desiccated husks in faded green singlesuits, floating nearby. The station’s slow, complex tumble had gathered them all in one corner of the engineering space. Parker approached them as Cathcart moved off to place additional stickylites.
“Jeffries,” Parker read aloud the name embroidered above the right breast pocket. He made certain his PSR was aligned to take in as much detail about the body as possible.
On Kestrel, Natalia said, to no one in particular, “Chief Engineer.”
Parker moved to the next body. “Denisovna.”
Natalia said, “His wife. My friend.” A short sob escaped her.
“Sayyad.”
“Technician. I did not know him well.”
“Westfall.”
“Technical writer. Also our best cook.” A pleasant memory coaxed a momentary smile from her.
The monitors showed Parker and Cathcart drawing shroudsacks over each body in turn and taking them to the mudroom. They returned to engineering.
Unlike the habitat module, which for both safety and functional reasons was broken up into a warren of compartments and work spaces, engineering was a single open space, thirty meters long, with plumbing, tanks, conduits and valves exposed for easy access. Here were the station’s lungs, liver, kidneys, intestines, and bowels. All the functions of waste removal, filtration, reclamation, the ugly, sometimes unpleasant, always necessary side of the shiny metal worldlet man had created for himself were accomplished in this space.
Nothing betrayed the status of Research Station Howard more clearly than the corruption, the obvious death, of this single room. The various plumbing systems, air, potable water, steam, heat exchange, waste, all were indistinguishable from one another under heavy layers of rust. Neither officer saw any reason to attempt the decayed valve wheels. They passed forward to the hatches that separated
engineering from the reactor module.
Cathcart touched the hatch with a metal probe, the great grandchild of a mechanic’s stethoscope. “There’s definitely something active in there, sir.” There was that sir again. “I’m getting a low frequency buzz.” He tried again to peer through the hatch windows but the far side was pitted and cloudy and all he could see was a dim green glow and a vague shape moving, perhaps spinning, in the center of the room. “Force the hatch?”
“Stand by, Cath.” Parker switched to the command channel. “Doc, you there?”
“Da. Yes,” Natalia replied.
“We see movement through the hatch windows, movement in the reactor module. I doubt the PSR video is showing it too clearly. It’s not too clear live, but does what you can see look right? What would do that?”
“Ensign, I do not know.” She paused. “There should be the gravitic reactor, electrical distribution busses, a control station. If the conduit were active there would be a cuboid framework held in place above the reactor by pressor fields, but none of that would be in motion.”
On the EVA channel Cathcart cut in, “I don’t like this, sir.” It wasn’t like Cathcart to interrupt.
“Kestrel, stand by.” Parker shot Cathcart a look that might have intimidated anyone else. On the EVA channel, “Go ahead, Cath.”
“We’re getting vibration that feels like noise, but the pressure telltale on the hatch shows no atmosphere over there. We’ve