Kravitz jumped out of the hatch and Ralphie dogged it behind her. The captain keyed the intercom and said, “You ready up there?”
Nancy’s voice came back after a few heartbeats. “Ernest says he needs another couple ticks, Skipper.”
“Roger that. Lemme know when he’s got it.”
Vasily grabbed the handle of the grav pallet and started towing it away. “Ms. Kravitz? If you’d give me a hand stowing these?”
“Sure thing, sar.”
The two of them dragged the pallet away, heading for galley storage.
Gunderson crossed to peer out of the small port at the life pod.
“Think it’ll help, skipper?” Ralphie kept his voice low.
Gunderson shrugged without looking around. “It’s something to do and we’re not gonna be able to heave-to at the cross roads. Slow as we’re moving, we still have too much momentum to kill it all with what we have in volatiles.” He patted the hatch. “This will be our marker buoy in the crossing zone.”
Gunderson heard Ralphie sigh.
“Yeah. I know,” Gunderson said and turned to his engineering officer. “But you got any better ideas?”
Ralphie shook his head. “Nope, but you and I both know how hard these buggers are to spot.” He jerked his chin in the direction of the hatch.
Gunderson didn’t answer, just gave a short nod.
“Ready when you are, Skipper.” Nancy’s voice interrupted them.
“Kick it loose then. We’re secured here,” Gunderson said, turning his head toward into the pickup.
The pod jumped free almost instantly, taking the hull fairing with it as it blew clear of the nest that had held it for a decade or more.
The two men peered through the port as the garishly painted pod drifted away from the hull. In a moment the tiny engine licked to life and pushed the pod off around the ship and out of sight.
Ralphie patted the hatch one last time, and turned. “Well, I’ll get started on the routing box.”
“Ernest will be down to help in a bit.”
Ralphie waved a hand and headed for engineering storage while the captain climbed the ladder back up to the main deck. As he cleared the hatch he felt the attitude jets start their programmed pulsing to turn the ship and slow it as much as they could before they drifted too far off course to be found.
Chapter Ten
Deep Dark: September 20, 2333
Jordan scowled at the captain. “Sar? With all due respect, why aren’t we doing something?”
Gunderson sighed and looked around at the rest of the crew before answering. “That’s why we’re here, Mr. Jordan. To find out what we else we can do.”
Nancy patted Jordan on the shoulder. “Got any ideas, James?” she asked.
He looked up at her, his stress evident in the grimace across his face and the heavy patches of sweat dampening his suit. “Well, no, sar, but I’m just an ordinary spacer...” His voice trailed off.
Gunderson said, “Well, ordinary or not, Mr. Jordan, if you have any ideas, this is the place for them.” He turned to the second mate. “Ernest? Where are we on comms?”
“We got back online this mornin’, Skipper. The life pod will be at the crossroads in another...” he consulted a timer on his screen. “Another sixty odd stans. We’re saving fuel by letting it mostly just run ballistic until it gets out there. That should leave enough fuel to heave-to at the crossing point.”
“Is it squawking?” Gunderson asked.
Ernest clicked a few keys and a speaker clicked on. “...mayday, mayday. Clipper Wanderer on ballistic trajectory with no Burleson drive capability. Request immediate assistance. Course data follows...” A string of numbers describing the ship’s course and velocity spooled off followed by, “ Mayday, mayday, mayday.” After a few seconds the message started to repeat and Ernest shut off the speaker. He looked up at the captain. “All standard modes, all distress frequencies, skipper.”
“How soon before we get there to the crossroads?” Nancy asked.
“About nine days,” Ernest said. “We’ll be a month or more in transit on this vector.”
Nancy nodded.
“We kept some fuel in reserve, right?” Gunderson asked.
“Oh, yeah. We’ve got five percent left. Not exactly fumes, but not enough to stop us altogether if we burn it.” Ernest shrugged. “We’ll be in the neighborhood for a good long while.”
“Thanks, Ernest.” The captain turned to the engineer. “How’s the new routing panel holding up?”
Ralphie made a sour face. “It’s holding up okay, skipper, but we’ve got it cobbled together with gobs of spit and a tangle of string. We can hear okay and even use the scanners...” He looked to Ernest who nodded in confirmation. “But we’ve got just a fraction of our normal broadcast power.” The engineer sighed and rubbed a hand across the top of his head. “I don’t understand why that set of boards doesn’t have a spare.”
Gunderson rolled his shoulders in a shrug. “Ya have to draw the line somewhere, I guess, or you wind up sailing with two full ships and that’ll eat into cargo capacity, I’m thinkin’.”
Ralphie snickered but Gunderson noticed that Jordan still scowled.
“Well, we have a router. It does work. It’s jury-rigged--no question about that--but it’s workin’.” Ralphie paused and tugged on the end of his nose. “Long as we don’t try to push it too hard, we’ll be okay there, I think.” He looked at Ernest again.
Ernest shrugged and nodded. “We can’t yell real loud, but we can see pretty good and we can yell loud enough.”
“What about the other life pod?” Jordan broke in.
All eyes turned back to him.
“What about it, Mr. Jordan?” Gunderson asked.
“How are we all gonna fit into it? There’s only six seats and there’s eight of us.”
Gunderson didn’t flinch from the challenging glare the younger man threw at him. “Well, Mr. Jordan,” he said at last, his voice a low rumble in the silence of the bridge, “I’ll be stayin’ with the ship in that case and I suspect somebody will either stay with me, or you’ll all get real cozy in the pod.”
The answer seemed to startle Jordan and Gunderson could feel the rest of the crew staring at him.
“But why would we need the life pod, Mr. Jordan?”
Jordan opened and closed his mouth a couple of times before responding. “What if something happens to the ship, sar?”
Gunderson could feel his mouth start to twitch up and somebody else on the bridge snickered a little. “Like a hull breach, Mr. Jordan?”
“Yes, sar! Exactly, sar! What if the …” Curtis’s voice petered out as he realized the reality behind the captain’s question.
Gunderson gave the man a half smile and glanced around at the rest of the crew assembled on the bridge. “The pods are only really good in settled systems, Mr. Jordan. You know that. They’re hard enough to spot as it is, but out here?” He shrugged. “We’re in better shape on the ship than out there in the pods, aren’t we?”
Jordan seemed to think about the captain’s words, his front teeth worrying his lower lip as he stared at the captain.
“Aren’t we?” Gunderson asked again after too many ticks had gone by.
Jordan gave in and nodded. “I s’pose so, skipper.” He looked around for support from the others and seeing none, he slouched back into his chair.
“Besides,” Gunderson slouched back against the cold glass and crossed his arms. All eyes turned back to him. “What do you think old man Malthus is gonna say when we don’t jump into Breakall on time with those steaks?” Gunderson jerked his chin in the direction of the drifting cargo pods.
Vasily snickered. “Knowing Mr. Malthus,” he said, “he’ll be out here himself looking for his lost freight in about three weeks.”
Vasily got a round of chuckles from the crew as a whole.
“Damn right he will,” Gunderson said. He looked around at the crew, ending with Jordan. “He’ll send a ship
out to look for us pretty damn fast, if you ask me. It’s our job to be here when they get here to look.”
Jordan nodded, but the captain could see the doubt written on the younger man’s face.
Gunderson sighed inwardly and hoped his own doubts were not so clearly visible.
Chapter Eleven
Deep Dark: October 20, 2333
Ernest looked over at the captain, his brow furrowed. “Skipper? Did you notice anything odd in the mid-watch?”
“Like what?” Gunderson crossed the bridge to see what the second mate had on his console.
“Like the life pod going dark?” Ernest kept his voice low and pointed to a meter on his screen. It showed no signal.
Gunderson blinked several times, his mind trying to process. “What the—?”
Ernest shook his head and shrugged. “It’s been working solidly for weeks now. Ever since it went on station.”
“You think somebody found it?” Gunderson turned his head to look at the place in the Deep Dark where the life pod should have been.
“If they did, why haven’t they called?”
Gunderson straightened up and ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know.” He noticed that Kravitz and Jordan appeared to study the helm display. “Let’s relieve the watch,” Gunderson muttered.
After Jordan and Ernest left the bridge, Kravitz turned to the captain. “Any idea where that pod could have gone, Skipper?”
Gunderson leaned back in his chair and shook his head. “Could be anything,” he said at last. “Power failure, another rock strike—”
Kravitz snorted.
Gunderson shrugged in reply. “Yeah, long shot but possible.”
“Somebody could have picked it up,” Kravitz said, her voice trailing off without really finishing the thought.
“Yeah,” Gunderson admitted, “but why haven’t they contacted us?”
“What the—?”
Gunderson looked over to see Kravitz looking at something behind him to starboard. He swiveled his chair and looked out of the armor glass in the direction of her gaze. “What?”
“Maybe just my eyes playing tricks but I just saw one of those stars wink, skipper.”
“You sure? Stars don’t—” Gunderson’s voice clipped off as one of the brighter stars blinked out and then back on again.
“Did you see that, Skipper?”
“Yes, Ms. Kravitz, I did. Looked like an occlusion to me.”
“Me, too, sar.” Kravitz checked her helm display and looked back in the direction of the missing life pod. “Sar--?”
Gunderson kept his eyes on the distant star field. “Yes, Ms. Kravitz?”
“That’s the opposite direction, sar.”
“Opposite direction?” Gunderson’s confusion overcame his vigilance and he turned to face her. “Opposite to what?”
Kravitz pointed towards the port bow. “The cross roads should be over there. If somebody picked up the life-pod, they’d be in that direction.” She jerked her chin at the star field where they’d seen the blinking star. “That’s the direction we’re drifting toward.”
Gunderson scowled and looked back to starboard. He gazed for two full ticks before saying, “Yeah. It is.”
Neither of them said much for the rest of the watch. With little to do on the helm, Gunderson didn’t blame her for spending much of it gazing out of the armorglass in the direction of their slow drift.
Chapter Twelve
Deep Dark: November 16, 2333
Beefalo steak, again?” Ralph bit his lip and shrugged an apology to Vasily.
“Sorry, Ralph,” he said. “Under the circumstances, it’s the best I can do.” The wiry man swept the table with an apologetic glance of his own. “I’m not much of a chef. If anybody else would like a go?”
Nancy Gaston patted him on the shoulder. “You’re doing great, Vasily.” She shot a glare at Ralph who shrugged in return.
“We’re all a little wound up,” Gunderson said. “Can’t be helped.”
“Sar, any word on the missing pod?” Jordan asked. His eyes kept jerking to almost look at Gunderson before returning to his plate and the fork he used to stir the food without actually eating it.
Gunderson paused and looked around at all the faces turned in his direction before shaking his head. “No. Sorry, Mr. Jordan. Nothing yet. It could be almost anything so don’t read too much into it – good or bad – okay?”
“What do you think, tho, sar?” Jordan said. “What are some of the things?”
Gunderson watched Jordan’s fork trace around the plate. “Most likely is that it just had a power failure. It could have been picked up, but if it had been, then I can’t imagine they wouldn’t look for us.”
Jordan looked directly at Gunderson for the first time, hope a bare glimmer in his eyes. Gunderson saw the fear there and sympathized with the man.
“It was probably some malfunction,” Ralph said. He sawed away at the beefalo steak and stuffed a piece into his mouth.
Gunderson saw Jordan’s hope fade as he looked at the Chief Engineer and then back at his plate. “Yeah. Probably. Sar,” he said.
Nancy’s body jerked in her seat a bit and Ralph looked up, startled and reaching for his leg under the table. He started to say something but the stormy look on Nancy’s face seemed to make him think twice.
Gunderson noticed the exchange and arched an eyebrow at Nancy.
She gave a small shrug and did a credible job of almost suppressing a sigh.
Kravitz broke the silence. “You think maybe we could make stroganoff or something with this stuff?” She held a chunk of beefalo up on the end of her fork. “You know? Just as a change?”
Vasily frowned at her. “And do you think that because I have a Russian name I know stroganoff?”
She looked up at him and shook her head. “No, no, sar! I was just thinking of ways to cook this that don’t involve frying or grilling.”
“We have a great deal of it to cook, Ms. Kravitz. Perhaps you might like to take a turn doing some of that cooking?”
Kravitz looked to Nancy and the captain before looking back at Vasily. “Well, sure, Mr. Dubrovka. If that’s alright with everybody and it’s maybe on an off day?” She shrugged. “I think I’d like that.”
Vasily blinked. “You are serious?”
Kravitz nodded and Gunderson saw a small blush crept up the side of her neck. “Yes, sar. I’d like the break from--” She bit off whatever she was going to say, a quick glance at Jordan punctuating her words. “That is, I think it would be fun.”
Nancy asked, “Are you a good cook, Gail?”
She shrugged. “Dunno. I used to cook all the time at home. Da liked my cooking well enough.”
Nancy looked to Vasily. “Looks like you got an assistant cook, Vasily.”
Vasily looked from Kravitz to the first mate and back again before turning to Gunderson. “Is this satisfactory, Captain?”
Gunderson rolled his shoulders in a shrug. “Long as it doesn’t get in the way of watches, it doesn’t really matter to me. I’m sure you could use a break yourself, Vas. You’ve been doing the cooking for weeks now.”
Vasily drew in a deep breath and blew out a sigh. “Yes. This is true. I could...as you say...use a break.” He glanced at Gail Kravitz out of the corner of his eyes. “Would tomorrow evening work, Ms. Kravitz?”
Kravitz rolled her eyes up to the overhead in consideration. “Two days, sar. I’m on watch tomorrow afternoon, but I’m off the day after that during dinner.”
“Excellent.”
Gunderson thought Vasily seemed very pleased by the development. He glanced at Nancy across the table who gave her head the slightest of nods.
Ralph asked, “So how much of this steak do we have left?”
“Nearly four hundred kilograms,” Vasily said.
Ralph whistled. “That’s a lot of beefalo.”
“Indeed. Enough for a stanyear of dinners. Or more.”
Ralph snorted. “Well, that’ll nev
er happen.”
Vasily raise one eyebrow in response. “Really, Chief Engineer? And why is that?”
Ralph cut another piece of steak and poised with it on his fork before answering. “Because, Cargo Master, we only have about seven months of air.” He grinned as if he’d scored a point and stuck the meat into his mouth.
Gunderson watched Jordan’s fork twitch and didn’t like what he saw.
Chapter Thirteen
Deep Dark: November 25, 2333
Ten weeks.” Kravitz didn’t take her eyes off the distant cluster of bright dots.
Gunderson looked over at her. “Huh?”
Her eyes flickered once and Gunderson noticed the tightness around the corners and a pinched look across her brow.
“Oh,” he said and sighed. “Yeah. Ten weeks.” He turned and followed her gaze out to the Deep Dark. “Have you seen any more flickers?”
She grunted. “A few. Sometimes I think it’s just my eyes playing tricks. It happens so fast.”
Gunderson saw a star blink off and then on again. “Like that one?” he asked.
“Yeah. Like that one, captain. If we both saw it...”
“Well, I did.” He scowled in concentration. “That’s a different part of the sky isn’t it?”
“Yes, sar. It’s a few degrees off from where we first saw it, but they’ve been creeping in that direction over the last couple of weeks.”
They sat in silence for a few ticks, lost in thought.
“Will we ever get home, sar?” Kravitz whispered.
Gunderson sighed and turned to her. The woman’s face looked cast in stone and she refused to look at him, keeping her eyes fixed on the distance outside the armorglass.
“I don’t know, Ms. Kravitz. I hope so.”
She did look at him then. “Thank you, Captain.”
“Just the truth, Ms. Kravitz. I’d be a bigger fool than I am if I tried to tell you anything else.”
The stony mask relaxed a fraction and a smile threatened the side of her mouth.