The Tau Ceti Diversion

by Chris McMahon

  Both Evelle and Gemma were on stasis couches, their supine forms wrapped in the shimmering nimbus of suspension fields, as immobile as statues. Evelle’s long blonde hair was carefully coiffed around her pale face, like some space-age sleeping beauty waiting for a magic kiss. Gemma lay straight and rigid, the posture so typical of the slim redhead, her severe, close-cropped hair standing in spikes as prickly as her combative personality. That much appeared normal. Yet instead of the usual whitish haze, the collapsing suspension fields were shot with ragged veins of blue, red and green, the surging fields skewed by the incoming radiation.

  Careful to compensate for the lowered gravity, he closed the distance between the hatch and the workstation in two long strides, his feet lifting slightly off the deck with each step. He steadied himself on the console and switched the screen to the monitor feed from the crew’s suspension chamber. Like here, the room was lit with flashing warning lights. The crew’s suspension fields, not in the midst of a recovery cycle, were more stable. He panned and magnified the feed. A sickening taste of bile rose in his throat as he saw the burns on the motionless faces and hands. Their cellular tissue — held in a delicate state of enforced equilibrium — was being torn to shreds. The horror of it burned into his retinas. Soon, the suspension fields would be preserving nothing more than corpses, warped beyond recognition by the radiation.

  For a long moment, he could not take his eyes away. He watched the face of Bolan, the chief warrant officer, char to black. Rotund, energetic, prone to pranks that endeared him to his shift crew, his voice would never be heard again. On the couch beside him was tiny Resk, a gentle biosystems tech who worked with Evelle, her slim hands curling like claws as they reddened. Her delicate face sinking into itself like a melting waxwork.

  Evelle.

  Karic tore himself away from the footage, turning back to Evelle and Gemma. Their revival process was incomplete, but the suspension fields were doing untold damage, transforming and destroying cells they were designed to insulate and protect. The technology was an intricate synthesis of field theory and cellular biochemistry. Carefully configured fields interacted with the electrochemistry of each cell, targeting key organic molecules, altering charges, shifting every single cell into an enforced equilibrium where chemical and electrical potential was reduced to zero. Where there was no action. Stasis from the inside out. No metabolism. No corruption. Just matter — as stable as a crystal lattice.

  Now, instead of carefully restoring the pre-suspension biochemistry, a cellular wrecking ball was loose. The delicate balance in each cell was being randomized with each radiation-induced surge, the chain of chemicals that drove the machinery of the body twisted beyond recovery. Cell death would follow, leaving a wild, unpredictable trail of biological destruction.

  He had no choice but to halt the process early and hope they could be revived.

  Karic’s fingers flew over the keyboard of the suspension computer.

  The fields cut.

  The life-sign monitors for both Evelle and Gemma began to scream with warning tones, adding to the alarms that already blared through the confined space. Both of their hearts had failed to start, the interrupted electrochemistry of the cardiac muscles too out of kilter. Without hesitation, Karic took a set of defibrillators from beneath the suspension couch and began to work on Evelle.

  He ripped open her jacket. Her two lieutenant’s bars flew off the faded fabric, hitting the wall with a series of pings. He applied the paddles. The first shock lifted her from the couch, but failed to start her heart. He tried again. Then again. Finally, her heart started, and she started breathing. Her eyes flickered open.

  Then she screamed.

  Evelle’s limbs turned blue. She writhed on the couch. The internal damage must be immense. Her eyes rolled wildly, focusing on him without recognition. He grabbed a vial of morphine from the medical kit, took her arm in a clinch under his own, and injected the drug.

  Gradually, her pain subsided.

  Janzen appeared at the hatchway to the suspension room, followed by Ibri. The commander pushed across the room with too much force, his long arms and legs thumping into the wall. He stabilized himself, his eyes quickly scanning the revival status.

  “You have cut the sequence,” said Janzen. The tall commander checked Gemma’s vitals then grimaced. “No pulse.”

  Mara and Andrai took in the situation in an instant and went to work on Gemma, trying frantically to revive her. But there was nothing they could do. Gemma was gone.

  One look at Evelle told them Gemma had been the lucky one.

  Evelle was in shock. Every few seconds, a tremor passed through her body. His arms around her, Karic looked across the room to Mara.

  “What are the radiation levels?”

  Mara quickly checked the screen. Her hands shook. “Still rising!”

  Karic touched the screen of his comband, bringing it to life. “Ryal. Where are you?”

  “Almost there, boss. Two minutes.”

  “Head straight for the central hold when you finish,” said Karic.

  “Understood. Ryal out.”

  A hot rage built in Karic. How could this have happened?

  Using every shred of his willpower to contain the emotional firestorm inside him, Karic slowly lifted Evelle. Andrai stepped forward to help, but he shook his head. He could easily bear her weight in the low-g.

  “Go,” hissed Karic.

  Janzen was first out the door, followed by the rest of the crew. Andrai stayed close to Karic and Evelle, his eyes wide with concern. They all made their way in bouncing steps down the corridor to the access tube. There they passed through the hatch into the vertical accessway, then up through another hatch into the ship’s axis, which was stationary relative to the habitat’s gravity-inducing rotation. Andrai helped Karic to gently lift Evelle into the zero-g. She was still in shock, and looked around her with glazed eyes. Her body grew taut with every tremor, and she whimpered in pain.

  They pushed through the zero-g to the huge hatch of the central hold, then passed through it. As they drifted into the hold — a vast open chamber more than four-hundred meters long — Karic blinked in the dim lighting. For a moment, it felt he had entered some alien space. He had forgotten to activate the dock lights, and could not pause to issue a command to the Shipcom through his comband. Crates and machinery brooded here, draped in shadow, floating in a three-dimensional space that made a mockery of planet-learned spacial reasoning. Their breath, coming fast, frosted in front of them. Everything was chilled by the inexorable heat-sink of deep space.

  He sprang lightly from a strapped-down storage crate and drifted through the center of the dock with Evelle in his arms; the others followed on the same trajectory. He pushed off again, gaining speed, and sailing past the seven capsule-shaped emergency reentry pods, each fully fuelled and ready for deployment.

  The heavy lander emerged from the gloom.

  Karic looked down at Evelle’s face, creased in pain. Her eyes were getting focused now, as the shock wore off. By the sound of her tortured moans, the pain was worsening. He bit the inside of his cheek in frustration, tasting blood. Her situation seemed hopeless, but at least inside the lander, they would be able to give her some rudimentary medical help. He gritted his teeth and fixed his gaze on the landing craft, his eyes searching out its familiar contours for the entry hatch, his mind groping for anything to distract himself from his grim thoughts.

  The vehicle stored here was only the core section of the full landing craft, which would be augmented for planetary landfall with external tanks. It was a big craft. An aerodynamic vehicle that owed its design lineage to a long line of spaceships dating back to the old NASA Space Shuttle. Like the reentry pods, it was a miracle of lightweight metals and ceramic that could alter its profile in-flight.

  Karic braced himself as he hit the heavy lander’s airlock. He hit the release, and they clambered into the cabin, each of them taking hold of something to halt their forward momentum a
nd anchor themselves in the zero-g. The interior was outfitted with many handles for that specific purpose, padded to reduce the risk of injury. Lights blared, triggered by their movement, outlining the off-white synthetic fabric of the walls, floor, ceiling and chairs, and gleaming from the silvered steel of the console. The lander’s flight-deck was compact, built on a square frame, designed to seat eight personnel in comfort — ten in an emergency. It took them into its steady embrace, enclosed them in familiar technology. The vehicle was heavily shielded in its own right. It would afford them the best protection they could get from the intense X-ray radiation. Ibri leant across to close the heavy outer hatch, lean muscles poised.

  “Wait for Ryal,” said Karic.

  Mara tapped her comband. “Ryal. Where are you?”

  There was nothing but static.

  Janzen’s face flushed red. “Ibri, close the hatch.”

  Bracing himself on a handle next to the hatch, Ibri pulled down the locking lever. The heavy hatch shut with a deep boom. The finality of the sound was unnerving. The lanky tech touched the hatch sensor and the internal locking bars slid into place with a low whir and click, securing the outer hatch to the hull. A moment later, the internal hatch whispered from its niche and enclosed the tiny decompression space between the two doors.

  What about Ryal? They turned to Janzen with the unspoken question.

  “We’ll open it when he’s outside,” said Janzen.

  Evelle’s tremors had ceased and she was becoming more lucid. Most of the cellular damage was to her thickset lower body, which was swollen and misshapen. Her soft round face and lustrous, long blonde hair were untouched. Her lips were terribly pale. Her green eyes glowed against her pallid skin. Karic brushed strands of her sweat-damp hair away from her face.

  “Karic. What is it, Karic? What’s happened?” She looked down at her lower body and broke down in tears.

  “You can survive it. You can. As soon as the radiation levels lower, we will get you back into stasis. On Earth, they have the best facilities …”

  Evelle nodded, growing calmer, more certain. Fully aware now, she watched the lander’s small screen with the others as the intensity of the radiation continued to climb to lethal levels throughout the rest of the ship. “Karic, the crew? What about the crew?”

  Karic shook his head. He saw Resk’s face again, burning to a withered husk.

  “The biodome,” whispered Evelle.

  There was no hope that any of the stored biological material would survive this. Whatever happened, the dome was lost to them. That meant surviving on rations and relying on chemical purifiers for their air. But there was something deeper about the loss. Those living things had been a very real link to Earth.

  Evelle listened quietly as Karic told the whole story, from his detection of the radiation levels to his decision to begin the revival sequence. But then the morphine wore off, and the tremors worsened.

  “You did the right thing. The only thing you could have. If Janzen hadn’t cancelled the revival. They … they would be alive.”

  It was true. And if Karic had not acted as he had, only he and Ryal would have been able to make it to the safety of the lander. The surviving crew turned to Janzen, drawn by the shared realization. Mara’s eyes were hot with accusation. Andrai was stunned, his gray eyes, usually lit with humor, now darkened. Ibri alone seemed unshaken. The tall tech’s dark eyes were fixed on Janzen with a sort of hunger, an eager fascination with the horror of the moment. The commander remained silent, his blue eyes distant.

  “Ryal, come in?” said Mara across the link. Static.

  “Shipcom. What is the status of the fusion drive?” asked Karic.

  “Fusion drive is now in standby mode.”

  Karic felt a heavy weight settle into the pit of his stomach. Ryal had sacrificed himself to save them. He could not have survived out there. He must have collapsed in some narrow accessway on his way back from the fusion plant at the rear of the ship — and died there. Alone.

  Hours passed. There was no reply from Ryal and Evelle’s condition worsened. She began to cough up blood, the perfect droplets making ghastly clouds in the zero-g that drifted inexorably toward them in the confined space. Mara worked in grim silence with a handheld fluid vacuum-cleaner to intercept them, but crimson splashed the walls where the blood escaped her. Evelle’s face grew deathly white, while her abdomen continued to swell. Her eyes took on a glassy clarity. Unearthly. Frightening.

  “I won’t make it …” said Evelle, shaking with fear, pain and shock.

  “You will, Evelle. You will,” said Karic, but he knew she was dying. Bleeding internally. He sat beside her, holding her hand. Karic cursed the order of the revival sequence. But who would he have die in her place? Mara?

  “Tell me … love me,” said Evelle. Blood rouged her lips.

  Karic’s heart tore with guilt. Throughout all the years of their separation, the long years when their marriage faded from love to a companionable distance, never once had Evelle spoken like this. His feelings for her had simply faded. When he had told her of Mara, she had seemed so understanding. He thought it was all the same for her. Only now did he realized how terribly wrong he had been. She had never, ever, stopped loving him. Letting him go was a sacrifice she had made: for him. Yet she had never said a word, supporting him even though he broke her heart. The crew’s promotional tour must have been torture for her. The same torture he was experiencing now with Mara.

  “God, forgive me, Evelle. Forgive me.” The guilt and pain were overwhelming. Beside him, Evelle’s body was cold. Strange. Now, only as she lay dying, did the years roll away to reveal the love he still felt for her. Once more they were two eager young scientists, sharing their life, their work, their dreams …

  Karic stared into Evelle’s eyes. “I do love you, Evelle.”

  Through the pain, the terror of death, she managed to smile.

  Evelle reached up slowly and touched his cheek. Sweat broke out on her brow with the effort of movement. Her eyes filled with pain, but the tremors slowed.

  “Lead them home, Karic.”

  Karic’s heart raced like a stallion, running in fear. “Just try and relax.”

  She shook her head.

  “… dying. Ship is dying. Not built to survive — this. Crew … Biodome. Gone.”

  Her hand fell back to her side, lifeless. For a long minute, she concentrated on breathing, her eyes filled with determination. Bubbles of blood filled her mouth, and Karic gently wiped them away.

  “This is not … company field trip anymore. This is survival. Janzen cannot lead. Not through this. Must be you. Take command. Otherwise,” she took a rattling breath, “no one will survive.”

  Not even at Epsilon Eridani, when he and Janzen had their first serious clash, had he considered taking command. He feared the power of ExploreCorp. They were one of the few corporations big enough to fund space travel. They had absolute power over their own operations, and would remove him from subsequent missions without a second thought if it suited them. He could not let his dream die, not that way. Not after all the sacrifices he had made. Yet, if he had taken command at Epsilon Eridani, thirty-three men and woman would still be alive. Evelle …

  She grew increasingly lethargic. Overcome with pain, she began to cry.

  “I don’t want to die here. Not so far from home … hold me.” Karic tightened his arms around her.

  Evelle convulsed in pain. Her abdomen swelled to a huge size, then she collapsed. Her heart had stopped. Despite their best efforts to revive her once more, she was gone.

  Karic knelt beside her, cold and empty. He had taken her for granted. What he had understood as an amicable decision to keep working with him must have been a desperate attempt to keep him in her life, at any cost. He was humbled. “She never said a word,” whispered Karic to himself.

  “The radiation is starting to level off,” said Mara.

  “OK,” said Janzen, in an authoritative voice, “everyone prepare t
o get back to their stations. We will need a full damage report.” He looked around at the silent crewmembers.

  “A friggin’ damage report?” snapped Mara. “What about Ryal!”

  Janzen’s eyes flicked rapidly between their stony faces. He raised his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “All respect to the dead, Mara. We need to keep this ship — and ourselves — alive.”

  “You make me sick, Janzen. What’s the matter? Worried about the cost of the repairs? Well, at least there are thirty-three less people you have to pay!” Mara’s eyes blazed.

  Janzen tilted his head back and looked down at her. “Mara — I think that is quite enough.”

  Karic’s pain and anger surged inside him. He wanted to strike out at Janzen. If not for him, those thirty-three people would be alive right now. Yet the commander was right. They had to stay focused. The intensity of his feelings burned away, leaving a numb acceptance in their wake. The fact that he had been right was no consolation at all.

  “We have to deal with the situation, Mara,” said Karic softly. “That comes first.”

  Janzen’s gaze rested on Karic for a moment, where he held Evelle’s still body. Droplets of blood floated from the corner of her mouth, leaking into the zero-g in a silent, incarnadine procession.

  The commander straightened as much as the zero-g allowed, bracing himself between the floor and a handle on the roof. He lowered the left data-screen of his odin. “Everyone to your stations. We have a lot of work to do.” Ibri left right behind Janzen. Mara hesitated, her body rigid with tension, then she followed.

  Karic’s blood pulsed at his temples, the air shimmering. Two whirlpools turned in his mind. Eyes that glowed with satisfaction. Huge, alien eyes. Karic shook his head.

  Andrai drifted over to Karic, his body slouched in the zero-g. He stopped himself with a hand on Karic’s shoulder. His hand tightened in silent support.