Across the Void

by S. K. Vaughn

  17

  “Rise and shine,” Eve said over the ship’s comm.

  May groaned and sat up in her berth. Blood had seeped through the bandage on one of her hands, reminding her of Stephen’s sweater. Feeling vulnerable in her sleep-addled mind, she couldn’t help but think that whatever it was that had sullied their relationship was her fault. Look at the first day you met. The poor bastard left with a gash and ruined pride. Her mother had never prepared her well for social interaction beyond just being well mannered, and she wasn’t even great at that. And courtship? Zero advice. In fact, she remembered her mom actively discouraging her from ever having long-term relationships with boys. They were always referred to as “distractions,” and when Eve had had a few whiskeys in her, she’d occasionally used the term “dream killers.” It was a miracle she’d managed to stay with someone long enough to get married.

  “How long have I been out?” she asked Eve, her voice slightly hoarse.

  “About seven hours.”

  “We don’t have that much time to spare, Eve,” she said angrily.

  “May, you are still recovering from your illness and posttraumatic stress. You needed sleep to function properly and avoid further health complications.”

  The way May felt, she could not disagree. She hurt everywhere. It had taken an hour to clean and dress all the glass cuts and apply cold gel to the bruises. It took a few more to knock out the persistent visions of horror with meds so she could get some sleep. But despite her injuries and the childish absurdity of her outburst, sometimes she needed to huff and puff and blow the house down in order to remain in possession of the last of her faculties. Catharsis was a word that came to mind.

  “Humans. We’re a fragile bunch.”

  The meal panel above the small table in May’s berth glowed orange.

  “Please eat your breakfast,” Eve said. “We have a lot to do.”

  “Living up to your namesake.”

  “Someone has to look after you.”

  “Amen,” May said, with a smile.

  An unconvincing omelet, with potatoes and sausage, slid out of the meal panel. Of course, it smelled like those things. They had even come close to mastering the taste. But it was nearly impossible to take something made entirely of synthetic animal and vegetable proteins genetically engineered to maximize nutritional content and make it look like a proper meal. The food did its job, keeping one healthy and energized while cutting down on the amount of solid waste, but even after a hundred years NASA had still not managed to make it all that appetizing. May didn’t care. She was so hungry that she would have eaten a handful of cockroaches as long as they were drenched in her beloved HP sauce—a creature comfort afforded only someone of her rank. She doused the mush liberally and pined for an accompanying beer to replace her lukewarm coffee-flavored caffeine supplement.

  On her screen, May scrolled through more photos of Stephen. She stopped to look at a candid shot of him sitting behind his desk, smiling at her from behind a pile of books. He was the only person she knew who still read books like that, even went out of his way to acquire them. The trappings of academia just made him happy, especially when he was up to his eyeballs in them. May felt an overwhelming desire to speak to him, to hear his voice. He had always been able to comfort her and make her feel safe when her tough facade crumbled. But there had also been plenty of times he’d simply shut down. Like her, he had also been ill prepared for the complexities of romantic love.

  “I was able to pinpoint our communications problem,” Eve announced.

  “Do tell,” May said, excited to finally hear some good news.

  “The antenna array is offline due to a power shutdown.”

  “That’s it?” May asked, somewhat incredulous.

  “It does not appear to be damaged, only powered down and inactive.”

  “Odd. What’s the fix? I’m ready to roll up my sleeves.”

  “I’m still unable to communicate with the array remotely, so we will need to do a physical inspection to reconnect it to my processors. Then I can assess it, repair any damage, and restore orientation. I’m sorry, May. I’m sure you don’t feel like getting right back into another EVA situation.”

  “No worries.” May stood up and stretched. “After what I’ve just been through, I could use a little fresh air.”

  The antenna array was located on the topside of the Hawking II, in the center of the communications deck. There were twenty antennas in all, each with a different function, standing thirty feet high from the top of the dish to the control-center base. May’s refreshingly simple task was to inspect the array for external signs of damage and reestablish its communication with Eve. As she exited the airlock and made her way along the outside of the communications deck, she saw the antennas standing in a row, dishes pointing down and to the right, like the faces of soldiers in funeral formation.

  “Are you seeing this, Eve?” she asked as she focused her helmet camera into a wide shot of the array.

  “Yes, May. That is the default preflight orientation of the array. This is encouraging: uniform shutdown could mean a single cause for failure.”

  As May stood looking at the sleeping soldiers that controlled all the Hawking II’s communications, her sense of isolation was profound. The breathtaking expanse of space, surging for billions of light-years in every direction, made her feel like less than nothing. It also made their efforts to save the ship seem entirely futile. Even if they were able to get it back online, how could the antenna array, as massive and powerful as it was, ever regain connection with NASA? There was a reason onboard engineers worked around the clock to ensure that communications with Mission Control remained connected at this distance. All it took was one instance of letting go of the lifeline to be lost forever, like losing your grip on a safety rope in stormy seas.

  Since losing contact, Mission Control would have been blasting space in all directions with a powerful communications net. But considering the ship’s original distance from the station, that already had a mathematically bleak prognosis. To add to the complexity, NASA had no idea in what direction or how far they had gone off course.

  May recalled her psych training and backed off on the Murphy’s law self-talk. Anything, when surrounded by eternity, would seem futile. The void just had that effect on the relatively primitive human brain. Best to occupy the mind with physical tasks. Do your job. Trust your training. Trust your team. She continued on to the array, determined to keep her head. After forty-five minutes, she had completed the methodical systems check required to assess each antenna and manually restored their connections to Eve’s brain.

  “All array antennas appear to be fully operational,” Eve finally said.

  “Any idea what the problem was?”

  “I have a full diagnostic view, and I am not seeing a specific cause.”

  “That’s weird,” May said.

  “In light of everything else we’ve seen, weird is a highly relative term.”

  “Good point. Probably a casualty of our larger power-loss issue. Let’s hope NASA is still looking for us.”

  “I’ve already sent a broad-spectrum SOS transmission to NASA and any other potential receiving parties.”

  “How long until the transmission reaches Wright Station?”

  “If we had a communications lock, it would take approximately seventy-eight minutes. Since we are trying to reestablish communications, I cannot give you an estimate.”

  “How are the engines looking?”

  “Degrading at a 15 to 20 percent higher rate than previously calculated.”

  May could feel herself dipping into the darkness again. “Jesus. Any idea what the cause might be?”

  “I don’t know. There are many potential—”

  “Find it, Eve. We’re running out of time.”

  18

  While they waited by the phone for NASA to call back, May went to the bridge to search for the MADS recorder. Although it went by the same acronym used by NA
SA’s earlier Space Shuttle program, the Modular Auxiliary Data System was far more sophisticated than its predecessors. In addition to logging all onboard voice and data communications, as well as those telemetered to Mission Control, it also video-logged the entire mission and kept daily records of the general health and vital signs of everyone on the ship. In order to protect it from a processor meltdown, it was not connected to Eve’s brain, and it could switch to full solar-power operation in the event of internal power loss.

  May removed the drilled-down flooring in the bridge’s data closet, revealing the flight recorder’s metal sarcophagus. The top access panel was intact. She used the chip key embedded in her dog tags to open it, then had to pass a retinal scan to open the second panel. When she removed it, she saw that the MADS device was gone. The connector cables attached to the ship were shredded, with bits of them scattered around the empty housing.

  “Houston, we have a problem,” May said sarcastically. “The recorder is gone.”

  “Define gone,” Eve said.

  “As in, it’s no longer in its housing.”

  “Do you have any recollection of removing it?”

  “Of course not,” May said, annoyed. “Why on earth would I do that?”

  “You are the only person on board with access to the housing.”

  May felt light-headed. Retrograde amnesia. Short-term memory loss. If she had removed it, that would have likely happened closer to her illness—aka the dead zone.

  “No one else has access?”

  Dead crew. Sole survivor. Only one with MADS access . . .

  “Not according to my records.”

  “If it’s removed from the housing, I’m guessing it would automatically emit its beacon signal,” May said. “Otherwise, what’s the point?”

  “You’re correct, May. I am not detecting the beacon signal on board.”

  May breathed a sigh of relief. “It must have been jettisoned,” she said. “We learned in training that it could deploy its own propulsion and nav to get to the nearest NASA satellite or station if the ship were destroyed or incapacitated.”

  “That seems like the only logical explanation for its absence,” Eve said.

  “But because we have no other records to access and it’s no longer here, of course, we have no way of knowing if that is indeed what happened,” May pointed out.

  “Correct. I’m sorry I can’t be of more assistance.”

  “It’s all right. Spilled milk and all. That means—”

  “No use crying over it,” Eve said. “I incorporated another English language colloquialism base in my linguistic modules.”

  “Great,” May said.

  The given reason for the absence of the MADS unit did make the most sense. However, it didn’t feel completely resolved to May. There had been something in the way Eve said she was the only one who could open the access panel; it wasn’t accusatory, but it lacked the usual intonation in Eve’s voice, sounding more like her old robot voice. Did it mean anything? If so, was it related to Eve’s being suspicious of May, or, worse yet, indicative of Eve’s trying to conceal something? May set it aside for the moment. Her gut told her there was no upside to mentioning it. If she came across it again, she would know it was not all in her head.

  May reviewed the original navigation charts for the voyage. “When I was intubated, we were outside the range of the landing vehicles, right?”

  “Yes. They have a maximum range of approximately one-tenth of that distance.”

  “What about other vessels? Are you able to see if there were any in the vicinity at that time? I’d heard a rumor that the Chinese were going to attempt to reach Europa before us.”

  “The Hawking II detected no other vessels in the area at that time.”

  “That makes no sense. If my crew intended to abandon ship, one would think they’d do it with a solid, reachable destination. Otherwise, it’s suicide.”

  “Correct. But that isn’t the only thing that defies logic. Even if they believed they could make it somewhere, that does not explain their cause of death,” Eve pointed out.

  “Tell me about it. Is there any possible type of malfunction that could create such a catastrophic result?”

  “None that I am aware of. With a total loss of atmosphere and power, one would expect a hull breach to be the cause. I have not detected any.”

  “The bodies are still in there, mostly intact, so if there were a breach, it would have been small, and they would have had plenty of opportunity to patch it. The only real explanation is that the atmosphere was physically bled out of the hangar.”

  “There are several fail-safe mechanisms in the hangar designed to prevent that. In fact, one of those mechanisms prevents the hangar door from opening if the ship’s navigation system cannot identify a destination within landing-vehicle range.”

  “Well, this just keeps getting better and better,” May sighed. “I’m going to the infirmary to check medical records. In the meantime, I would love it if you would please pull interment protocols. I want to make sure I give my shipmates proper treatment.”

  “Of course.”

  Back in the infirmary, May looked up her medical records, hoping they might shed some light. Not surprisingly, like the memory of her illness, the files were incomplete. Suzanne Dowd, chief flight surgeon, had initially admitted her with a high fever, swollen lymph glands, red skin blotches, loss of sensation in peripheral nerves, and an alarmingly high white blood cell count. Eight hours after entering the infirmary, she had a seizure and was put into a medically induced coma. The records ended there. The lab reports prior to that were also missing. Same story with the rest of her shipmates.

  “Jesus, Eve, I can’t find any medical records associated with my alleged illness or anyone else’s. Everything is accounted for just prior, but that’s it. How could data collection just stop like that?”

  “I am not aware of any scenario in which that would be possible, save for the total destruction of the vessel. Even then, chances are that NASA would have redundant copies continuously beamed to Ground Control.”

  “I have a bad feeling about all of this, Eve. I’ve been trying to remain objective and find logical reasons for our predicament, but I think we need to start talking about sabotage.”

  “That certainly would make more logical sense than a chance occurrence. This vessel has far too many protections in place to support an accident theory.”

  “I agree. And let’s not forget the other factors here. In addition to my mystery illness, the missing data, and the mass crew death, we have a reactor and propulsion system that are damaged and failing. Even I know that the likelihood of that happening by chance is next to nil. Even with the crew incapacitated . . . this ship barely even needed us to run, Eve.”

  “I would give sabotage high probability,” Eve said. “No offense, but human beings have proven themselves—”

  “Capable of all manner of base, despicable, and murderous behavior?” May said.

  “Yes.”

  May’s memory flashed back to the bulging eyes of her dead shipmates in the landing-vehicle hangar. Their faces were frozen in shock and surprise. They had had enough time to have an emotional reaction to their fates, but not enough to save themselves. In May’s training, she was taught that the average human body exposed to the vacuum of space would die within thirty seconds from explosive decompression (expansion of gases in lungs and digestive system), ebullism (rapid boiling and evaporation of bodily fluids), and freezing (–135 degrees Celsius). This explained the state of the bodies when May found them. Within the first ten to fifteen seconds, the crew members would be rendered unconscious and paralyzed.

  Everyone on board was well aware of this. If there had been a potential problem in the hangar, they would have gone in there in EVA suits, and definitely not as a group. Someone had ordered them to evacuate—a person in a position of authority. And when they’d gathered in the hangar, it had lost its atmosphere and gravity quickly enough to make
it impossible for those inside to do anything about it or to escape. It must have been completely unexpected. Sabotage was an excellent explanation, but it left a lot of questions unanswered, like who on board would have the knowledge and desire to do such a thing, and how that person could pull it off under the nose of the ship’s AI. As much as she loved Eve, May reminded herself that she would be foolish to forget the fact that “she” was a machine, programmable by humans, and therefore capable of the same things they were.

  “Excuse me, May,” Eve said. “I’ve detected a hull breach in the biogarden.”

  “How bad?”

  “A bit more than one inch in diameter.”

  “Where?”

  “Six feet to the left of the oxygen storage tanks.”

  “Oh my God.”

  19

  May snatched up an emergency patch canister and sprinted through the ship to the lab deck. On the way, tremors shook her to the ground twice. Breach alarms screeched.

  “Eve, turn off those goddamn alarms,” she yelled.

  The alarms went quiet. May had to manually crank open the biogarden doors, which had been automatically sealed when the breach was detected. There were ten huge oxygen storage tanks, all with the capacity to store enough compressed oxygen to supply the ship for the entire journey. The extras were there as backup. One ruptured tank could ignite like a hydrogen bomb and incinerate the entire ship in a matter of seconds.

  May took a shortcut through the garden foliage and had to slash her way through the thick, wet branches and leaves. The closer she got to the hull breach, the more she could feel its relentless pull. Even with a tiny breach, the vacuum of space was powerful enough to suck huge items through. In training, May had seen a simulator hull breach suck a full-sized adult male dummy through a five-and-one-quarter-inch hole, shredding it to bits that shot out like a cloud of dust on the other side. The breach in the biogarden was barely half an inch in diameter, and it was already creating a hurricane-strength wind that was uprooting trees and ripping off leaves and branches. The debris pelted her back and legs relentlessly, and she had to dodge the larger pieces to avoid serious injury or death. A hull breach was one of the few things capable of rupturing the thick titanium tanks.