by Martin Tays
“Ah. I do so love to see professionals at work.” Moses pulled up the nav panel and studied it. Satisfied, he announced, “is everybody set?” on the ship wide system. Everyone checked in. He nodded and gripped the little ship’s controls. “All right, then. Let’s go play.”
“Now a friend of mine ― good friend, and a good man, used to preach at a place right down the road from my church ― said to me once that ‘if God intended us to live forever, don’t you think he’d of given us that gift?’
I told him he reminded me of the old joke of the preacher facing a flood. He turned down rescue by car, and by boat, and by helicopter, all the time saying ‘God will provide’.
Well, of course he drowned, and ended up in front of that Golden Throne where we’ll all be someday. He looked up and asked God, a little querulously, ‘Lord? I thought you’d provide a rescue for me. Why didn’t you?’
And God said ‘I sent you a car, and a boat, and a helicopter, you old coot. What did you want ― a brass band?’”
Timothy Jackson, on “Father Tim’s Power Hour”
“To use a personal example: the year I was born, the number one killer of Americans was heart problems, followed by cancer.
Do you know what the number one North American killer was last year? It was the rather euphemistically titled ‘ingestion incidents’. People who choked to death on their food. All three hundred and twelve of them.
If there was an end goal for all of the medical research done by man over the years, I suppose it was that ― that last year, the major killer left in death’s arsenal was aspirating a clam.”
J C Harringer, from “A Brief History Of Immortality”
Chapter 4
“The surprising thing about young fools is how many survive to become old fools.”
Doug Larson
“It looks like a cocoon.”
“It is a cocoon. I mean, really. That’s what they call it.” Moses was looking up from the controls, pointing at the bulky shape they were drifting toward as he replied to Ami. “It’s a foam filled Mylar Two sheath around the entire body of the ship. Protects her from micrometeorite impacts.”
Ami smiled. “A cocoon. I like that.” Her grin faded as she looked back to Moses. “A cocoon means a butterfly, right? If Endeavour is a butterfly, then…”
“Then I’m a monkey’s uncle.”
She side eyed him. “Meaning?”
“Meaning that you’ve about beat your analogy to death.”
Ami shrugged. “I don’t think so. I like butterflies. I like analogies.”
“I like ice cream. What’s your point?” Moses peered through the viewscreen and pointed. “And does that look like a docking collar?”
“My point ― and yes, it does ― is that butterflies need to fly.”
Leaning back and stretching, Moses shook his head. “I know what your point is, or was, or whatever. And it’s moot. She’s an old, rusty hulk. She’ll never fly, so to speak, again. You need to remember that before we go on board.”
“Fine.” Ami unfastened her harness and drifted up from her seat, pushing off toward the door. Leo had left right after they lifted off from the moon, and Mattie had followed a few minutes later, leaving them alone in a companionable silence on the shuttle’s tiny bridge. She caught herself on the edge of the door, then turned to speak. “You know, sometimes I wonder if you have any romance left in your soul at all.”
Moses looked up at the large, dark, lonely shape they were approaching. After a long minute, he replied in a quiet voice to the otherwise empty room. “Yeah. Me, too.”
☼
He was just nosing into the docking ring when Ami returned, Leo in tow. There was a slight lurch, then a muted thump, and then they were secured.
“Nice docking.” Leo drifted up and looked over the controls as Moses began his power down sequence.
Moses shrugged. “I’m actually kind of surprised, to be honest. It’s been a while. Thanks, though.” He locked the docking mechanism down, safed the board and pushed back from the controls. “Well, why don’t we go see what we can see, then.”
The docking attachment, a standard shipyard 'latch to any hatch' affair, was oriented to lead into the Endeavour’s main hatch. There were internal connections made specifically for the auxiliary power unit. Everyone was drifting nearby, suited up but helmetless, when they arrived at the shuttle’s cargo bay.
“Okay, let’s get some power to her.” Moses pushed over to the APU and began untangling the power leads.
Leo had verified pressure in the airlock and opened it up. Now he was powering up the maintenance access panel in the lock. He checked the readouts, then said “Okay, looks good. There’s a full atmosphere of pressure on board. And… hang on… huh. That’s odd.” He glanced back at Moses. “It’s not air.”
“What?” Moses looked up, confused. He handed the tangle of power leads to No, who was assisting him, and came over. “What do you mean, it’s not air? There’s pressure, right?”
Leo shrugged, pointing to the readouts. “See for yourself.”
Moses looked at him questioningly, then pulled himself up to the panel. “Huh. That’s… huh.”
“See? That’s what I said.”
Ami spoke up. “Okay. Would either of you care to explain what has you so flummoxed?”
Moses rubbed the back of his neck as he replied, confused. “Weird. It’s, um, it’s pressurized with nitrogen.”
Mattie, assisting No at the APU, looked up sharply. “Seriously?”
“Yep.”
“Wow.”
Ami looked from one to the other. “Nitrogen. Nice. And that is fascinating why, exactly?”
Moses tapped the readout absently, as though it were a stuck gauge, then turned to Ami. “Okay, oxygen is a reactive element, right?”
Ami nodded. “Check.”
“So leaving an item in an oxygen rich environment will mean a certain amount of decay, right?”
“Check again. Oh! Okay.” She nodded again. “So why not leave it in vacuum?”
“That’s a damn good question, actually. A lot of times that’s just what they do. But the problem is that you get vacuum welding ― things tend to stick together with no air around.” He slapped his gloved hands together in an apparent effort to demonstrate. “The atoms of the surfaces actually migrate together. It’s hell on moving machinery.”
“Ah… so they left it pressurized with nitrogen…”
Moses shrugged. “… which doesn’t react to anything, really, comparatively.”
“Reasonable thing to do, then. Good for them ― whoever ‘them’ are.” She looked at her brother, then back to Moses. “So why are you so astonished?”
Leo answered. “Okay, now, nitrogen would have had to have been shipped up from Haven, right?” Ami nodded. “When the Endeavour was first put into mothballs, ground to orbit costs were still kinda high. The thing is, nitrogen is used in farming. Can’t farm without it, in fact.” He pointed at the readout. “Waylaying enough to dry store a ship this big from orbital stations that needed it badly represents a considerable investment. Very considerable.”
“And that’s not all.” Moses added. Leo looked over at him questioningly. “Well, think about it. It’s been a couple of hundred years — no, more. Nothing will hold pressure for that long. Plus, the temperature’s above water ice, and that’s just… well, ridiculous, really.”
“Oh…” Leo stared at him, then turned and looked toward the closed airlock door. “You mean…”
“Yeah. Someone has been doing regular maintenance on her. For the last two hundred years.” He smiled over at Ami. “Guess there’s someone out there who still likes butterflies.”
☼
The Endeavour was a fairly conventional deep space design
, archetypical of the ships to follow: a zero gee core tube covered with storage and lab modules, an engineering cluster on one end and a command cluster at the other. A great disk of a meteorite shield fronted the command cluster; anchored at the rear of it was the rotatable habitation ring. It was the spaceship epitome of form following function.
The main airlock cluster was just forward of the engineering module. Moses manually slid the airlock door open and looked south, toward the engineering cluster and the engines beyond ― the mechanical heart of the ship. He glanced around the darkened compartment, then reached around the outside of the hatch and pulled himself into the ship by the closest handhold.
He snapped on his helmet light as he spoke to the group still in the airlock. “Okay, then. I’m Julie, your cruise director. Welcome aboard. Goes without saying that we need to be careful. Leo?”
Leo pulled himself past the crowd to stick his head through the airlock hatch, gesticulating with the fist full of power leads. “Yep?”
“Plug those in there by the hatch, and then you’re for engineering.” Moses pointed south. “Follow the signs marked ‘Maneuvering’. We’ll need housekeeping ― lights, air, heat ― and we’ll need them in that order. Unless someone’s changed things around that’s going to be the first panel on the left as you enter the compartment.” He looked around. “Who’s going with you?”
“I will.” Mattie replied over the radio. “At least, I will if you can get him to move his big butt out of the way.”
“Leo, move you big butt out of the way.”
“Hey, I’ve got a nice butt.” Leo pushed off from the hatchway toward the other side of the compartment. “Don’t I?”
Ami emerged next and swung around to the other side of Moses. “I really hope you’re not asking me that.” She said as she drifted to a halt. “You’re my Brother. I’d rather not think about your butt.”
Mattie came out next, pushing off to glide over to drift next to Leo. “I’m not sure any of us want to think about his butt.”
“Well, I like his butt.”
Leo waved toward the hatch. “Thank you, Sher.”
“Can we please stop discussing Leo’s butt?” Moses growled over the open circuit. “And if it’s not too much trouble could you also please identify yourself when you speak?”
“Okay. This is Sher. I like Leo’s butt.”
“Quit it.” Moses growled. “Sorry, my bad. This is Moses. Quit it.”
“Sorry.”
“Feh.”
“No! Nice of you to join us.” The rest of the group had emerged from the oversized airlock and were now positioning themselves around the compartment. Moses looked around at the drifting people. “Okay… Moses here, sorry… okay, we need to make sure that we can survive in here before we de-suit. Leo, Mattie?”
“I know… Leo here… we need to get the temperature up and the recirculators going.” Beside him, Mattie nodded.
“Bingo. Don’t worry about the core or engineering. That’ll save some time. There’s an integral airlock before the command cluster, so you just need to activate life support for everything north of that ― that’s command and the hab ring.”
“Leo ― check.”
“Don’t do anything unless both of you agree on it.” Moses pointed at the two of them. “Got it?”
“This is Mattie. Got it. No? Want to go with us? You can be our safety.”
“No… yes.” He pushed himself over toward the engineering bound duo, and Mattie reached out and grabbed his arm as he drifted up, absorbing his momentum and anchoring him in place.
“You’ve been waiting to say that, haven’t you?” Mattie transmitted.
“No, and no.”
“Shush, people… Moses, shush, sorry. Mattie brings up a good point, though. Nowhere alone. None of you. Pick a buddy and stay with ‘em.” He waved at the dark ship around them. “We don’t know what shape the equipment is in, and we don’t want to take any chances. Got it? This is important, folk… I want to hear individual acknowledgments.”
“Oooo… you make me hot when you get all leadery like that.”
Moses sighed. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that. Especially since that was a dude talking.” He pointed to Sher. “Sher, why don’t you join the engineering crew? It’ll give them another set of eyes, and a buddy for Leo.”
“And his butt.”
“Doug, I’m going to come over there, unplug your radio, and whack you with it.” Said Moses. There were muted cheers over the open circuit. “Now, does everyone understand the buddy instructions?” One by one, the others acknowledged.
“Moses, here. Okay, you four…” He pointed to Leo and his group. “The black gang. Off you go. The rest of you? Stick close. Remember, don’t touch anything you don’t understand. No buttons, no switches, no pretty colored lights. Now, let’s see what shape the old girl’s in.”
☼
Leo radioed just as they reached the airlock to the command cluster. “Boss? Leo, here. We’re looking good, I think. Says here we’re hot up to the shore power breaker ― all we need to do is bring it on board.”
“Moses, here. Good. Mattie, you concur?”
“This is me. Yeah. It looks like everything downstream is tripped, so we should be able to bring up the housekeeping functions one at a time without overloading the APU.”
“Okay.” Moses paused before the north core airlock hatch. “Let’s do it, then. Pop the shore power breaker. Lights, first, I think, then you can work on recirc.”
“So you said, boss, so you said.” There was a brief pause, then Leo continued. “And… bam! That’s power to the bus. Lights right about…” Around the group in the core, indirect lighting flickered and sprang to life. “Now.”
Moses blinked. “Well, I’m blind.” He looked around, then replied to Leo. “That did it. Good job, guys.” He glanced over at the others around him. “It’s a small airlock. Lock through two at a time, with your buddy.”
“This is Ami, and I approve of that.”
“Get a room, you two. Sorry, get a compartment.”
Moses glared at Doug, then pushed Ami into the airlock ahead of him. “Fiona? Can’t you do anything with him?”
“Well, I’d like to, but we’re both wearing pressure suits.”
“I have no response to that.” Moses squeezed in beside Ami and manually cycled the lock. They waited on the other side for Doug and Fiona. With pressure on both sides, it was a simple procedure.
Around them was the tube corridor intersection. Moses pointed. “That tube and that tube over there lead out to the hab ring. The cocoon’s going to preclude spinning that up, and we won’t have the power anyway. Life support controls for the hab ring are on the forward bulkhead, just upturn ― that’s clockwise ― of either tube tunnel hatch. Fiona?”
“Hey.”
“Why don’t you two go power it up. Leo’s going to need someone there.”
“No problem.” She nudged Doug and pushed off toward the closest of the two tunnel openings.
“Don’t forget… power up the panel, only. And only bring up the life support on Leo’s okay. Got it?”
Doug waved. “We’ve got it. No worries.” The two of them floated off down the tube.
Ami looked over at Moses. “So, we’re going to the bridge?”
Moses nodded. “Yeah. That way.” He pointed forward. Ami pushed off in that direction, then paused when she realized Moses was not following.
She came back over and looked at his face through his helmet. “You okay?” When he didn’t reply, she switched to a private sub-channel, pulled up his arm, and keyed the same sub-channel into his idiot pad. “Okay. What’s wrong?”
“Sorry.” He shook his head and looked out at the ship around them. “There’s just a lot of ghosts, he
re.”
“Yeah. I imagine.” Ami reached out and squeezed his arm through his pressure suit. “Come on. It’ll be fun. We’re having an adventure, here, you know.”
“I suppose.” Moses smiled. “Yeah. An adventure.” He shook his head, then reached out to grabbed her hand. “Let’s go.”
“Well, all right then.” She smiled back and gripped his hand back through the suit.
Leo’s voice came over the main channel as they approached the central bridge hatch. “Moses? This is Leo. We’ve started tanking excess N2. There’s a full tank of oxygen, so we can just heat it as we bleed it to bring us back up to one atmosphere again.”
Moses keyed back to the main channel. “Say again. You said there was a full tank of O2? Liquid?”
“Mattie, here. Yeah, one full tank of liquid oxygen. The other oxygen tanks have all been drained and locked off with one atmosphere of nitrogen in them.” She sounded puzzled.
“Huh. Curiouser and curiouser.” He shook his head. “Okay, then. Doug and Fi are both at the hab ring life support panel. Coordinate with them. Ami and I are on our way to the bridge, so we can get the command cluster’s on line.”
“Gotcha.” She called Fiona and walked her through which bulkhead valves to open in order to line up the air flow. Moses paused at the matching life support panel outside of the bridge to do the same. He felt his suit stiffen slightly as the pressure dropped, then relax again as the piped in oxygen brought the air pressure back up to normal.
“Leo to all. Check your idiot pads, but you should all have something to breath, now. The recirc fans are up and running, and with ‘em the heaters. Give it a few minutes, and you should be able to pop your seals.”
“Leo? Fiona, here. I have a request for you.”