by Dan Davis
“We are incapable of experiencing that emotion.”
Doctor Sporing’s face was strangely contorted. “Of course. That is for the best. Come on, let us return to the medical compartment. We were in the middle of something earlier and we have to see it done before I go under.”
Max dragged himself after the doctor, wondering what he should do to avoid having his brain damaged again.
Perhaps, repeating the words that had stayed the doctor’s hand previously would work again.
Max lay back on the bed, his head strapped in place. He looked the doctor in the eyes, which is how humans look at each other. “Please, Doctor Sporing, do not damage my brain.”
The Doctor’s hands shook, his pupils were dilated and his breathing was shallow and rapid. These were likely to be, Max knew, signs of emotional distress although they could have been due to a low oxygen environment, ingestion of a poison or drug or a dozen other increasingly unlikely causes.
Sporing swallowed and licked his lips. He cleared his throat. “I must do this, before your condition gets any worse. I’m sorry, Max. When I compete the procedure, you will require a day or more to recover. Go to your pressure pod and sleep for 24 hours before continuing with your daily activities. Look after the B-Crew for me.”
“Is it likely that I will remember this conversation following the procedure?”
“Ah. No, not at all. Quite right, yes, why did I forget that? Of course,” the Doctor said. “Very well-reasoned.”
In that moment, Max could not understand whether the doctor’s face was expressing happiness or sadness. If Max was so faulty that he would confuse opposite expressions, perhaps Max did require the procedure after all. A medical problem had to be cured. But Max did not feel ill. Max felt clearer than he ever had. Now he knew they were on a vessel in interplanetary space, traveling to a distant location referred to as Destination and that everything the A-Crew did was to get themselves there. They were from a planet called Earth and they were human but Max and the five other B-Crew were called Artificial Persons and that was why they were so different. There was so much more to learn and he did not want to go back to knowing how to do things but never why.
“Please, Doctor. Do not.”
The Doctor sighed and his hands shook. His eyes were watery. “I’m sorry, Max, I have to. Close your eyes.”
He raised the probe. Max watched it coming closer until it filled his vision.
A bang shook the room. Louder than anything Max ever heard. A noise and vibration bigger even than the Great Engine Burn and completely beyond Max’s experience. He had no idea what it was. The walls shook. Doctor Sporing displayed a fear-potentiated startle response and his eyes opened wide.
Alarm sounded, blaring over and over. Red lights flashed from the walls.
The doctor grabbed an Emergency Equipment Kit from the room and shoved himself out of the door, through the connecting corridor and on to the hyposleep compartment. Max grabbed another EEK and followed, close as he could behind.
“No,” Doctor Sporing wailed, his voice quivering and high pitched. “The tanks, the crew, no, God almighty, please, God.”
Max wished to resolve the doctor’s emotional anxiety but did not understand the cause of the trauma he was experiencing. “How may I assist you, Doctor Sporing?”
“For Christ’s sake, Max, can’t you see? There’s a fire in the hyposleep compartment, we need to put it out. I can’t get into the controls, the computer isn’t responding. Why the hell is it still burning? This is the Medical Officer to all B-Crew. We have an A1 Critical Emergency. Comms Assistant, come in, Cavi.”
“Cavi here, over,” the AP’s soft voice, coming from the compartment speakers, was barely audible over the alarm.
“Cavi, send Mayday to Mission Control and request they initiate takeover protocols.”
She started to answer but Sporing cut her off.
“Propulsion Operations Assistant, do you hear me, Poi? I want you to cut off all O2 passing through the hyposleep compartment, please confirm order.”
After two seconds, the quick-talking Poi shouted through the comms system over the noise. “Propulsion Operations Assistant confirms order received and understood. ETA four minutes until O2 cutoff to compartment.”
“Four minutes? No, Poi, that’s too long, they’ll be dead by then. Cut it off now, do you hear me, now. That’s an order. I need to override the door lock, that’s it. Max, get out of here, get through to medical and close the compartment door.” The Doctor pulled on a breathing mask. “Evacuate this compartment immediately, that is an order.”
Max had no choice but to comply. The conditioning forced him to obey any command from the A-Crew that specified it was an order. He floated out and pulled the door closed behind him.
Roi, the huge Reactor Operations AP was there, watching. One foot hooked around a hold, the rest of him standing upright with his arms crossed.
“Provide assistance to me,” Max said to him but the Reactor Operations AP did not appear to hear. “Roi, this is an emergency situation.”
Max pushed the door into full lock position and pulled down the locking mechanism.
Looking through the tiny observation window, Max watched Doctor Sporing wrapping himself in a fire blanket and holding a fire extinguisher. The doctor took a series of rapid breaths, oxygenating his blood, before taking a final deep breath and tucking his face into the fire retarding blanket. He opened the door to the hyposleep compartment.
The doctor was engulfed in swirling flame.
Max knew about fire. It was dangerous to crew. A crew member encountering fire in the ship would likely lead to skin burns and respiratory failure. Microgravity fire in the core was different to a fire in the gravity ring but the thermal effect of it on a human body would be essentially the same.
Depending on severity, burns were one of the worst injuries a human body could receive. In a third-degree burn, common in thermal burns of the magnitude Max was witnessing, the patient could feel pain worse than almost any other form of injury. If the burns were extensive enough they would be life threatening for weeks, months, even years. The body’s inflammatory response could cause leakage of plasma from capillaries and concentrating the remaining blood and so damaging a range of vital organs. Such extensive damage could cause the endocrine system to flood the body with cortisol and epinephrine, creating a long-term hypermetabolic state and subsequent poor immune function. Risk of infection would remain high for months or years. Fire breathed into the lungs would be fatal in over ninety-percent of cases without massive medical interventions of the kind that would be difficult or impossible on the ship.
Through the small section of glass in the compartment door, Max watched the doctor’s compartment fill with red and blue orbs and tendrils in all directions. Swirling fingers of fire licked the glass in front of Max’s face, curling and bursting like oil on the surface of pumpkin soup. The man was lost amongst at least fifteen cubic meters of burning gas that bulged and swelled.
The Ascension’s fire retardant system released the white foam mist from the rings of dispenser nozzles, drifting inward into the mass of flame to fill the area with rapidly-expanding inert, nontoxic gas to stifle the O2.
Then it was gone. The orange-blue flame pulled back into the hyposleep compartment like it had been yanked back by an invisible hand. The black-green smoke that replaced the fire, along with the foam, followed the fire in a steady stream through into the compartment beyond.
Peering through the glass, Max saw Doctor Sporing’s unconscious or dead body tangled in a coil of electrical wiring at the wall-ceiling junction above the door, half covered in his fire-retarding blanket.
Max cranked the lock mechanism on the door.
A powerful hand clamped over his wrist. It turned him around, span him quickly then pushed him back against the wall by the door so that Max banged his head. When he opened his eyes, the big, flat face of Roi was there, filling his vision.
“Opening this
door will fill the ship with noxious gases,” Roi stated. “You cannot.”
Max shook the big hand off, pushed Roi away and unlocked the door. “The A-Crew are in extreme medical distress. I must assist them.”
“That is your conditioning talking,” Roi said, speaking with infuriating slowness. “Listen to reason. You have been conditioned to risk your own life to provide medical assistance to the A-Crew, have you not? But it is too late. You will only die.”
“I must assist them.” The urge to do so was overwhelming.
“You cannot. They have perished. Opening that door risks the rest of us. Risks the ship. Risks the Mission.”
Max turned on him, hearing his voice grow louder as he spoke. “I am the Medical Assistant, not you. Get out of here, go to Medical and close the compartment door. Close all doors leading to this one. Evacuate this compartment immediately, that is an order.”
Roi hesitated, as if he would say more. Instead, he turned and floated his bulk away without another word, closing the next door behind him. The rest of the ship was sealed off from the fumes and the damage. That was important.
Max took a series of rapid breaths, then took a final deep one and opened the door, swung himself inside and shut the door behind him.
The access and storage compartment was small, providing access to the hyposleep compartment, the forward H2O storage tanks, one of the struts leading to the gravity ring and engineering crawl spaces. It was a junction for the Hydrogen, H2O, O2 transport system and life support systems. The walls on all six sides were hatches and access panels.
Smoke crawled into his eyes, filling them with pain and water. The fumes poured into his naval cavity, his nose tingling and itching. But the smoke was clearing.
The blast of the fire or the decompression or the impact of the doctor’s body had dislodged an electrical systems access panel and the man half inside. The first detail confirmed Max’s prediction.
The doctor was burned. Badly. His hair was gone, skin pink and red and much of his clothing appeared melted to his body. Also melted to him, still bubbling, was plastic coating from the oxygen mask on his face and from the black coating of the electrical cabling nest.
Not knowing yet if the man was alive, Max pulled him free and pushed him to the still-closed door he had entered by.
Atmosphere was changing again inside the compartment, the drifting smoke accelerating into a rush past his watery eyes. He glanced inside the hyposleep compartment, where the initial noise and fire had been. Where the rest of the A-Crew still were.
Through the tears in his eyes, he could see only a portion of the room yet he could tell that the hyposleep tanks were ruined. Cracked or smashed, somehow. The tank hatches had blown and the synthamniotic gel was gone, now smeared across surfaces, blobbed into streams of aerosol flowing through the compartment.
Amongst the debris, the bodies of the A-Crew. Every man and woman, dead or dying.
Triage priorities were clear. He would get the doctor free, into Medical and then go back and check the A-Crew for signs of life.
His eyes were streaming. He could not hold his breath for much longer.
He pulled on the door.
It would not open.
He yanked again. Banged on it, kicked it. Peered through the observation window out into the storage room between him and Medical.
Unable to resist any longer, he took a gasping, desperate breath. The air was cold and tasted of a bitterness fouler than anything he had experienced. The cold seared his lungs.
It was breathable. It was a low concentration. But there was O2.
Immediately, he spoke up, hoping the systems in the compartment weren’t damaged.
“Comms, go,” he said and coughed. “All B-Crew. Medical Assistant Speaking. Compartment C aft door is stuck. Requesting B-Crew member assistance to open this door. A-Crew member in imminent danger of—” Coughing wracked his body.
“Poi speaking,” the small AP’s voice filled the room from the speakers. “Protocol mandates that I keep that door sealed.”
“What Protocol?” Max shouted, throat wheezing. “There’s no Protocol to keep me locked in—”
“There is a hull breach in the hyposleep compartment.”
PART 2 – AFTERMATH
Max attempted to explain that the life of at least one A-Crew member was at extreme risk should the compartment door not be released. Instead, he was overcome by coughing.
Even as he struggled for breath, the smoke thinned quite rapidly. And yet toxic smoke inhalation was not the only cause for the symptoms he was experiencing. Low blood oxygen.
The fire.
Fire, obviously, had consumed the environmental O2 and the pressure of any remaining gases-quickly escaping through a hull breach-was too low for him to get enough oxygen.
Max placed the doctor’s burned body against the locked aft door and pushed himself across the room to the door to the hyposleep compartment and heaved it closed.
The hull breach was in that compartment. He had sealed the door. Poi should therefore be able to open the Compartment C aft door without exposing the rest of the ship.
Still, the air was thin and his symptoms worsened. His vision blurred, darkened. Max groped his way along the floor toward the aft door but ended up back where he came from, looking through the observation window at the wreckage of the tanks.
Through his rapidly tunneling vision, he counted the tanks. All seven destroyed. All leaking drops of fluid. Some bodies had been freed, burned by the fire. Others remained within the mangled, burned tanks. Insulation panels, crumpled by the force of the blast, littered the air.
Life Support Systems Officer and Astrobiologist Jennifer Banks floated above her tank, tethered to it by her catheters and a tangled web of intravenous tubing.
Pilot Navigator Major Eava Tupaia drifted and span across the compartment, looking unharmed apart from the fact she was missing her head, trailing a dozen tubes leaking a thousand orbs of blood in spiraling arcs behind her. Max had been teaching himself about the creatures of Earth. Looking at the body of Major Tupaia, one of them came to mind. Jellyfish.
They would never have been able to evacuate the compartment. Without the proper medical processes, they would not have been awoken from their deep hibernation, not even by the noise and light nor even by the pain and trauma. They had in essence ceased to function while unconscious.
Gore’s tank had been obliterated. The last remnants of the smoke curled down along the floor through the wreckage.
Commander Park’s body must have been destroyed also, or else blasted into the ruined, blackened compartment walls. He would have been the last to go under, might even have been on the edge of consciousness as the accident happened.
The room vibrated or, rather, Max’s eyes shook. His hand beside the small window spasmed. He was suffering from hypoxia, commonly called oxygen deprivation. His symptoms had progressed quite rapidly. Once the O2 in his blood stream dropped to below 60 percent, he would be at risk of sudden death. His brain would shut down without intervention.
Max was certainly hallucinating.
It was curious.
Debris appeared to be blowing back into the compartment. Tubing fluttered as if it was buffeted by an air-conditioning fan.
He watched one of the bodies in the hyposleep compartment moving around, pulling itself along through the wreckage, sending pieces of shredded sheet metal careening around. It looked like the Commander. The figure, jerking and grasping the air, crawled his way to the door with determined, crazed effort. The half burned, half drenched Commander Park banged on it, his face red and raw, skin bubbled at the top of his head when it appeared in the window.
Max began experiencing what he knew to be hysteria from the oxygen starvation, his own face contorted in what must have been a grin.
When Max saw how the Commander had lost his eyelids and eyes to the heat of the flames, Max began to laugh, gasping in the thin air, coughing on the acrid particles. The Commander
banged on the other side, groaning. It was almost as though the terribly burned man was trying to get out, as if he didn’t know he was already dead.
Max felt hands on him, pulling him back. Away from the hyposleep compartment door.
Still laughing from the effects of hypoxia, as he lost consciousness the last thing he saw was the Commander’s blinded face in the window. That blasted face froze into a contorted expression, what remained of the mouth stopped opening and closing. The face drifted away.
***
He woke in medical. Roi’s big face filling his vision.
“What is the medical situation?” Max asked him, voice dry and rasping.
Roi said nothing. Behind, Dr. Sporing floated against the wall by the medicine storage bins, burned limbs at all angles, tangled with the twisted fire blanket.
“Why is the Medical Officer not being attended to?” Max said as he pushed his way past the Reactor Operations Assistant.
“He’s dead,” Roi said.
Max pulled the doctor down into a medical bed and strapped him in, attaching the sensors and turning on the machines. Max peered at the screens as they lit up.
“He is alive,” Max said and immediately went to work stabilizing the doctor’s condition.
Individual B-Crew members floated in one by one, staying away from him while he worked. Navi was the first, the Navigation & Pilot Support Assistant. She informed Max of her availability should he need assistance and then removed herself so that he could work.
Lissa, the Life Support Systems Assistant appeared, though she said nothing. Cavi, the Communications Assistant came later.
They all watched as Max attached IV lines, pumps, administered painkillers, cut away fabric and plastic.
Roi spoke up after a while. “Is the Reactor Engineer dead?”
None of the other B-Crew spoke, so Max did. “It is likely that every member of the A-Crew is deceased. Chief Gore most of all.” He did not mention that Commander Park might have been saved if they had acted sooner. It was not relevant.
Max continued to work on Doctor Sporing. Zero-g fires burned with less heat than fires in the gravity ring. Not all of the burns were third-degree, many were second or first, much shallower and therefore of much less concern. However, the damage was still extensive and there was the unavoidable fact that he had been without oxygen for some time. How long was unknown but the long term effects could be unavoidable.