'I know, but what's happening to our crazy new friends isn't going on out there,' he said, pointing towards the MLM. He then pointed at his own head. 'It's in here.'
A noise from the other end of the module made Sally turn and look. It was Novitskiy. How much had he heard? Not too much, she hoped.
'Morning,' she tried to say in a cheery way, but her voice ended up as an unnatural squeal instead.
'And to you,' Novitskiy replied. His grin was absent. 'Did you sleep well?'
'Yes,' Sally and Gardner said at the same time.
'Good.'
He floated up alongside them. His face seemed to have aged decades without the smile tightening the lines of his cheeks and jaw.
'I want to apologise,' he said, 'for not being forthright with you about Romanenko.' He scratched his beard, eyes unfocussed. 'Let it be said that he was a good man. A great man, in fact. But for some too much is just too much.'
Sally looked at Gardner, whose face was blank, like he didn't know what to think. Novitskiy's smile re-appeared, but it was heavy with sadness. His bushy black eyebrows upturned, making his eyes sparkle with regret.
'He hadn't been able to cope with it, with being here. I should have done more to help him, but I just didn't think to.' He stopped talking, his face flushed. He looked to the floor and sniffed a wet sniff. 'He didn't deserve this — none of us did,' he said, still looking at the floor. He sniffed again, and when he looked up, his eyelids bulged with weightless tears. 'Excuse me, I have to go,' he said, and he turned and left, swimming through the module and out of sight.
Chapter 13
'Hi, David, Sean here. Have you managed to dig up any more information with that card?'
Sean waited, mobile phone pressed against his ear, while David proceeded to knock over a pile of something loud.
'Sean — I've hit a dead-end. This thing is seriously well protected. I can't get anything off it, I can't use it with anything — this is proper homeland security level stuff. To be honest, I'm not comfortable playing with it any more.'
Sean swore to himself and took a second to recompose. 'No worries, thanks for trying. I'll come and get it off you now if that's okay?'
'That's fine. And Sean?'
'What?'
'I'm sorry I couldn't be of any more help. I know how much this means to you.'
David really was a good egg. Sean smiled. 'Don't worry about it.'
'Okay. Bye then.'
'See you soon.'
Sean hung up the call and tossed the phone on the bed. He leaned back in his chair, cradling his head in his hands, cursing the cul-de-sac he seemed to have wandered down. He had tackled some difficult stories before, but this — this took the biscuit.
'What am I going to do now?' he said to himself, watching through his hotel window as yet another aircraft thundered overhead. Easing himself up from the chair, he shuffled to the bathroom, unbuckling his belt on the way. As he sat on the toilet, a familiar digital chiming chirped in through the doorway.
'God damn it …' he muttered through gritted teeth, wrestling his trousers up again and stumbling back into the bedroom. He picked up the phone: unknown number. Frowning, he put it to his ear.
'Hello?' he said, answering in a cautious voice.
'Is that Sean Jacob?' a Russian accent replied.
'Who's asking?'
'My name is Aleksandar Dezhurov. I work — worked, I mean — with Lev Ryumin. He gave me your card. I was hoping that I could talk to you about — well, you know.'
Sean's heart skipped a beat. 'Sure, of course.'
'Where shall we meet?'
'Can you get to the Novotel hotel next to Sheremetyevo airport' — he needed time to get the card back first — 'in, say, four hours?'
'I'll be there.'
* * *
'This has been given a proper going over,' Sally said, looking in disbelief at the brutalised wiring that made up what was left of the communications system. 'Long range comms are shot, short range comms are shot — even the inter-module comms are shot.'
'There's nothing you can do?' Gardner asked.
'Not a thing. There isn't a component here that hasn't been trashed.' She probed inside with an insulated rod, re-examining the extent of the damage, and shook her head. 'I wonder why Romanenko did this?' she muttered.
'I'll be damned if I know,' Novitskiy said. 'Chris and I discovered the damage when we tried to radio him after he'd taken Soyuz. Perhaps he didn't want us to contact him. Is there any way we can use the communications module on board Progress? That should still be working, yes?'
'Progress is decompressed,' Gardner replied. 'Seal failure. We'd need to make some repairs before we could use it again. Chris is an engineer, isn't he? He'd probably know how to repair Progress.'
Novitskiy pulled back as though he'd been shocked by the exposed wiring. 'Ahhh, I don't know …' he said, crinkling up his face. 'He's very delicate at the moment. I don't think that would be a good idea.'
'Do we have any other choice?' Sally asked.
She and Gardner looked at Novitskiy, who opened his mouth, then shut it again.
'I suppose not,' he said.
'Great. I'll go and talk to Chris,' Gardner said. 'You never know, it might be good for him to have something to focus on. Oh, and Sally — do you feel up to starting your research on UV One? That's why we're here, after all.'
'Yeah, I think so. I'll have to make do with the equipment on Columbus what with this lot being out though,' she said, gesturing to the bird's nest of severed cables.
'As long as you're sure. It's fine if you want to take a day out to recover.'
'I'll be okay. Like Chris, I probably need the distraction.'
Silent nods all round confirmed agreement. Gardner and Novitskiy floated away to the MLM to talk to Chris, while Sally headed to the Columbus module to begin her research. On her own, she noticed how quiet the station was. Yes, there was a constant low-level hum from the air extraction vents, but the silence of space seemed to permeate through it, mask it somehow. She was certain it was just her mind playing tricks on her, the very knowledge of being in space making her awareness so acute. That didn't stop it being unnerving, though.
As she perused the equipment on offer — and there was a lot of it, from floor to ceiling and left to right — she could hear voices getting louder. They were talking to each other, varying intonations passing a verbal ball back and forth, muffled by the many twists and turns between them and her. The voices got almost loud enough for her make out the conversation they shared, but before they did, they faded again into a muted burble. Gardner and Novitskiy must have persuaded Chris to come and help them.
Now Sally knew the MLM was empty, she felt an urge to go and look out the rear-facing window again. It was a silly thing to want to do, she knew that — after all, what possible benefit would looking at UV One bring over the quantifiable results of scientific equipment? But still, she wanted — almost needed — to go.
Oh, what the heck … she thought, and dusted off into the main shaft of the station. As she slid towards the Russian section, the voices grew louder again, peaking as she flew past the junction with MRM One where Progress was docked. She shot into the FGB module, excitement pounding in her chest, and changed direction with a clumsy roll down into the MLM. It was dark at its end, darker than before, and as she tumbled to a stop she realised the window covering was down. A small crank underneath the window with directional arrows marked in Russian seemed the obvious way to open it again. Sally turned the crank and sure enough the covering retracted. She blinked as the stunning bright glow of Earth's multi-coloured surface shot in through the growing gap, and by the time her eyes had readjusted, the crank had reached its stop.
And there it was, floating in the vacuum of space, its course so resolute that it did not bob or shimmy as it followed them. It was uncanny the way it did that, almost serene, as though its existence could have been explained as a smear on the window. Colours danced and sparkled on
its surface, a kaleidoscopic ripple of an alien sea somehow coming from deep within it, like it was a window to a distant planet. Perhaps it was? She could imagine the warmth of a faraway sun as she looked out over the iridescent sea, the dancing glimmer bright but never harsh, the radiant heat even and soothing.
'Sally, are you okay?'
Gardner's voice slashed through her with diamond-sharp clarity, and she jumped.
'Oh,' she said. 'I didn't see you there.'
She looked back out the window. UV One trailed along, lifeless and dull, bar the occasional wink of a star disappearing behind its black hull.
'You weren't in the lab, so I came looking for you. You had me worried.'
Sally snorted, thinking he was joking, but his expression was that of genuine concern. 'I'm fine,' she said, feeling a little foolish. 'Sorry if I scared you. I just came down here to look, that's all.'
'Okay,' Gardner said, 'but I'm not sure I like you spending time down here alone.'
'Why?' Sally said, bemused.
Gardner narrowed his eyes, as if he misunderstood what she'd said, or didn't believe she'd said it. 'Sally, do you know how long you've been down here for?'
'I don't know, ten minutes maybe?'
'Almost two hours.'
* * *
The door knocked and Sean got up to answer it. 'Aleks?' he said to the drenched Russian on the other side.
'Yes. Hello.' They shook hands. 'I got here as fast as I could.'
His soaking coat pattered water onto the floor.
'Come in, please,' Sean said, moving aside to let him by. He bolted the door shut behind him.
'The traffic was a nightmare,' Aleks said. 'It must be the weather.'
Sure enough, the rain that had drenched Aleks was still streaming down from slate-grey clouds. Sean had managed to miss it when he'd returned from David's not half an hour ago. It was clear then, and now the rumbling of jets overhead was almost lost among the steady thrum of droplets hitting the window.
'You can grab a towel from the bathroom and dry off if you like,' Sean said.
Aleks thanked him and went to mop himself up. While Sean was waiting, he hung up Aleks' coat — which dripped onto an expanding patch of dark carpet — and clicked on the coffee machine. 'Just chuck the towel on the floor when you're done,' he called out. When Aleks emerged, looking fuzzy and damp, Sean handed him a cup and they sat down.
'Funny,' Sean said, taking a sip, 'it wasn't long ago that Lev was sat right where you're sitting now.'
Aleks, who was hugging his cup, smiled a forlorn smile. 'I'll miss him,' he said.
'He was quite the character.' And look where that got him.
Aleks nodded, looking around the room in a non-committal kind of way. 'Yes, he was.'
Although Aleks seemed to be keeping his feelings as close to his chest as the cup of coffee, Sean could tell he and Lev had been close. Why else would he risk his life coming here?
'When I last saw Lev,' Sean said, 'he left me this key card.' He passed it to Aleks. 'It's registered to Bales, I know that much, but I can't get anything off it and I can't do anything with it. Do you think you might be able to help?'
'I can certainly try,' Aleks said, examining the card. 'It looks like it should work with our card system. Do you have the login details for it?'
'I don't.'
'Hmm. Do you know how Lev got it?'
'I don't know that, either. Can you crack it?'
'I'm not really sure. Lev was the computer expert, not me.'
'That figures.'
'He was always very keen to keep our work secure. If he could break in, it wasn't good enough. Cold War habits die hard.'
'I bet. Do you think he might have left any clues?'
Aleks pondered the question. 'It would make sense.'
'Where would we find them?'
'We could check his blog?'
Sean laughed, but his laugh faded as he realised Aleks wasn't joking. 'That guy — sorry, Lev — had a blog?'
'Yes. He enjoyed posting on it.'
'Did you ever read it?'
'No.'
'Do you know how to find it?'
'Yes, of course.'
Sean booted up his laptop and put it on the table where he and Aleks could both see it. He pivoted it towards Aleks. 'Type in the address at the top.'
Aleks typed and hit return. The website loaded.
'That's a pretty straightforward Wordpress template,' Sean said, 'nothing you could really hide anything in. Oh look — his last post was from the night of his death.'
They read the post. Sean shifted in his seat, disappointed. 'It's about his cat.'
'He loved his cat.'
This wasn't going to be easy.
'Maybe if I look in the image metadata …' Sean said, clicking on the image and looking through its properties. Nothing. He scrolled back through previous posts, which were prolific, but nothing jumped out at them. Sean scoured the code, hunting for any clues or hidden messages, but every avenue was a dead-end. 'Well, I'm stumped. Must be nothing here,' he said, returning to the blog's home page where the shot of Lev's cat stared back at them. 'Any other ideas?'
Aleks started to chuckle, a small titter at first, then loud bursts of laughter.
'What?' Sean said. If this was a joke, he really didn’t get it.
'That old dog …'
Sean looked at the page again. Still Lev's cat. 'What is it?' he said, frustrated. The cat seemed to be taunting him.
Aleks composed himself, patting his stomach as if to wring out the last few laughs. 'I'm sorry,' he said, his grin wide. 'When we were younger, we used to write secret messages into our dissertations to see who could get the most ridiculous statements published by the university. The best one was Lev's: I have nothing but contempt for the odious man, Professor Tselner. Tselner even read the thesis to the class it was so good, but the message always stayed a secret.'
'So there's a message in this post then?'
'Yes — it's right there, clear as day.'
Sean looked again, leaning in close to scour the text. Frustration was becoming desperation, to the point where he was staring through the screen rather than at it. 'Please just tell me,' he said, despondent.
'Write down the last letter of the last word of every sentence and tell me what you read. If the last word is a number, write down that number instead.'
Sean's eyes bobbed up and down as he tried to work it out in his head, but he gave up after a minute and snatched his notepad from the bedside cabinet, almost knocking a stale glass of water over. 'T …' he said as he wrote, '… H …' He continued writing until there were no more words. Then he spaced out the letters, organising them into more a understandable arrangement. He looked at his pad in disbelief.
This key card will give you access to Bales' file. You need to see what's in there. Lives are in danger. Be careful. User JohnRBales Password USDF1T42
'That old dog …' Sean whispered. It was no joke after all.
Chapter 14
While Gardner and Chris worked on Progress, and Novitskiy took care of the station's day-to-day operations, Sally spent her time analysing UV One. Patience was a virtue she was blessed with in abundance, but after four endless days of futile effort, she was beginning to tire. Coupled with the onset of insomnia — weightless sleeping seemed to be evading her, a common problem she'd been told — and life on the station was taking its toll. How she longed for the exhaustion-fuelled sleep she'd had on the first night.
She hadn't been into the MLM to see UV One since her conversation with Gardner, conducting all her experiments from the Columbus module on the opposite side of the station. As she ran a thirty-second pulse of microwaves one more time before wrapping up for the morning, she decided she could no longer ignore the fact that the only response she'd had from the vessel was when she'd looked at it, deep into its formless shape. The thought made her shiver; in retrospect, what she had experienced in the MLM was more akin to a reaction than an action — a
s though it knew she was watching it and it was watching her back. Alone in the quiet of the American end of the station, she couldn't be sure that it wasn't looking for her still, and the last thing she wanted to do was to expose herself to it again. She knew in her heart that it was the cause of her insomnia as well, that in her sleeping state she would be vulnerable to — to what? She didn't know. But she could feel it.
The morning shift over, she affixed her notepad and pen to the wall, logged off her computer and guided her way to the galley at the Russian end. She was hungry, but like every mealtime she felt a nauseating sense of unease as she floated over the downward hatch to the MLM. It yawned at her, open and dark, threatening to suck her down into its belly. Looking forward, she gave a firm kick to propel herself over it, catching herself on the far side next to the food store.
She was alone: Gardner and Chris were performing an EVA, examining Progress in a survey that seemed to be taking a very long time — 'We need to check absolutely everything,' Chris had said — and Novitskiy was — well, she didn't know where Novitskiy was. She only came upon him every now and then, most often crossing paths to and from the galley as he shepherded storage bags along like cuboid sheep, still performing the mission he came here to do in the first place.
The food heater pinged. She retrieved the pouch from its hollow and brought it to the table. Steam wafted from its nozzle in that strange micro gravity way as she tore off the cap, and with it came an aroma she still wasn't used to. She couldn't place her finger on what it was, but it was present no matter the flavour, and it clung to the back of her nostrils like mucus. Wrinkling her nose, she tucked in anyway. She'd almost finished half when she froze, nozzle still in her mouth. Was that a noise she'd heard, or had she imagined it? She listened hard, the loud whooshing and humming of the Russian module masking the last essence of detail. Nothing. She carried on eating. But there it was again. It sounded like — like crying. She affixed her meal to the table and tried to trace the source of the noise, following it as it got louder. It seemed to be coming from the next module along, the FGB. But wait — as she neared the downward tunnel to the MLM, the sound changed direction. It was coming from its dark mouth. Chest tightening, she peered into the gloomy hole.
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