by Josi Russell
He nodded, waiting for her to go on.
“I think we should try to get in there, find out what it is. It’s too weird that it exists at all. I’ve worked on fifty-six of these ships, and I’ve never seen it before.”
“Okay. I don’t have any other plans today.” He tried to lighten the mood, but the sinister feeling he’d been getting throughout the last few days persisted behind his levity. “What do we do?”
“Well, I think we should take off several of these panels and see if any of them are open in the back. They shouldn’t be, but it’s a good place to start. Grab the other tool that looks like this.” She held up the one in her hand. “It’s slightly bigger, but it should still work fine. These panels seem to be sized somewhere between the two anyway. Crack all the panels that don’t have visible equipment: monitors, keyboards, readouts, any blank panel.”
Ethan was a little nervous. “It won’t mess it up any worse?”
She shook her head. “Not if you don’t unplug anything. Just open the panels and the system doesn’t know the difference.”
“Okay.” Ethan grabbed the other tool and went to work at one end of the wall. Kaia started at the other. Every panel opened to reveal wires, plugs, equipment, and a shining silver solid wall behind it. They were sweating when they met in the middle. Behind them a stretch of panel doors hung open and several yawning holes of various sizes made the wall look like an abandoned house.
Ethan looked over at Kaia. She was pink-cheekedand exhausted. “How about we eat something?” he suggested.
She nodded.
He gestured toward the wall. “Will this be okay until we get back?”
She nodded again. “It’ll be okay.”
They made their way back to the hold, ate a huge lunch, and then headed back to the nav room. They were almost there when Kaia stopped in the hallway and put an ear to the wall. Her palms were spread against the silver surface, and she looked somehow stronger to Ethan.
He brushed the wall with his fingertips.
It’s in there, Ethan. I know it. I can hear the space.”
“I believe you.”
She slid her hand along the wall. “There’s no way in here. These walls are structural, thick and reinforced on the inside.”
They proceeded to the secondary nav room. It was slightly warmer inside now that the panels were all open.
“Ethan,” Kaia said carefully. “I want to do something. I’m not sure if its a good idea or not.”
He felt tense. “What?”
“Well, I really really want to see what’s in that room. I want to crack it open.”
“How? I didn’t see any more panels, just a solid wall.”
“Yeah . . . We’d have to . . . cut through the wall.” She went on quickly. “We could use an attenuated laser. I could make it so it would only cut through the wall, not through anything important. I . . .”
Ethan’s brow was furrowed. “Is it dangerous to the passengers?”
She looked away. “A little. If we somehow cut through a cable . . . it could leave us without navigation.”
“Drifting in space?”
“We could navigate manually,” she said quickly and then reconsidered. “Maybe. It would be tricky.”
“Navigate manually for forty-eight more years? And never make a miscalculation? We could end up missing Minea and drifting forever.”
“But we could just be really, really careful cutting the panel.”
“How reliable is the attenuated laser? Really?”
“Very reliable. And this is a thin wall.” She knocked on it, cocking her head to listen to the sound. “Almost a partition, a false wall. It’s thin and solid. There’s no room inside it for ductwork or anything else important. I can guarantee I won’t cut through anything in it or on this side. I just don’t know what is on the other side.”
“What else could be there?”
“Worst-case scenario? Life support systems.”
“It could kill us?”
“Well, if for some reason that closet has extra life-support systems, or climate controlling, or . . . there are hundreds of systems on this ship, and I suppose theoretically any of them could have been put in there for some reason. So, if I messed up some of those, yeah, it could be bad.”
“Why don’t we cut in through the shafts?”
Her eyes widened. “No way. Everything important runs alongside the shafts.”
“Kaia, going in any way seems pretty dangerous. Why risk it at all?” Ethan began pacing around the room.
“Honestly?” she said. “Maybe it’s just my curiosity. I can’t stand not knowing what’s in there. But there are also a lot of weird things going on on this ship. Out-of-the-ordinary things. And the colonization of Minea is, as far as I’ve seen, a completely uniform and ordinary thing. It makes me nervous. Anything could be in there . . .” She paused, hesitating. “And, Ethan, I’m wondering something else.”
He looked at her, a question in his eyes.
“It’s far-fetched, but not impossible. What if . . . what if they decided to hide the military contingent for some reason? What if they wanted them inaccessible?”
“You’re hoping your dad is in there?” He tried to keep the doubt out of his voice.
She was defensive. “It’s not impossible. He’s supposed to be on this ship. He’s not in his chamber. There’s this weird room . . .” Her voice trailed off. “It could be.”
Ethan nodded. He tried to picture Aria’s chamber behind this wall. What would he do to get to her? “We can try. If . . . if we’re really careful.”
Kaia smiled. “I thought I was going to have to come down and do it while you were asleep.”
Ethan sensed that she was only half-joking.
He swallowed the acid taste of fear in his throat. “What’s next, then?”
“Well, I’ve got to set up the laser. I’ll need your grooming laser. We’ll have to go back to the hold.”
“Should we just leave this . . . mess?” Ethan was surprised how much it bothered him to see the room in disarray. Perhaps the last five years of absolute order and predictability were affecting him.
“It’ll be fine for a few days. It shouldn’t take me long to tinker with the laser. Anyway, I’ll have to have access to all those cables eventually so I can tune the laser not to affect them.” She was already walking into the primary nav room, and Ethan followed.
As they crossed, he shot one more look out the big windows. The bright dot of Beta Alora sent a feeling of dread through him. He turned and headed for the hold.
Once there, Ethan began to feel unnecessary. Kaia took over from the minute she stepped into the room. “Command the computer to give you a haircut,” she said.
“I just got a haircut.”
“The computer doesn’t care. It will trim the millimeters that your hair has grown in the past few days. I need to see the actual laser. There are three designs of grooming laser installed on these ships. I need to see which one this is. That will affect where it originates from, how portable it is, and how easily I can modify it.”
Ethan could see she was determined. “Okay.” He crossed to the bathroom and stood in front of the mirror. Computer, I need a haircut.”
Kaia watched through the open door as the laser immediately shot out of a panel next to the door behind him.
Ethan stood frozen, terrified to move, even as he saw the hair falling. Finally, he blurted stiffly, “Millimeters?!”
Kaia stifled a giggle. “I’m sorry. I realized too late that it would be set for David’s preferences since you’ve never reset it. Ethan, it can’t hurt you. Move a little. You’ll see. It’s only capable of cutting your hair.”
He stayed still.
“Ethan,” she crooned, “turn your head to look at me. I promise it won’t hurt you. This is the great genious of an attenuated laser. It resonates at just the right frequency to cut through the material it’s designed for. It’s not even a laser in the traditional sense—it
’s much more sophisticated.” Her voice was gentle, inviting. “Come on. Turn your head. It will make you feel better about our whole plan. Look at me . . .”
He turned slowly, stiffly, and saw from the corner of his eye how the laser shifted, following his movements. He felt the laser still ruffling his hair slightly. “Hey,” he said cautiously. “It didn’t vaporize my brain.”
He had now turned all the way around to face her. His eyes darted to the panel from which the laser was shooting.
Kaia laughed her smooth, bubbling laugh. “Of course not. It’s tuned to only affect the hairs on your head. It won’t cut your clothes, your flesh, your bones. It’s harmless to the tissues.”
He turned back around abruptly. “It still makes me nervous.”
She laughed again. “No, not now.” She turned back to the laser. “Hmmm. Okay. It’s the ICT 160. Great. I can do it.”
“It’s the right one?”
“Yeah. It won’t be as easy to modify as the Tracer, but it’s definitely easier than the other option, the ICT 140.”
The laser suddenly ceased.
“Looks nice,” she said.
He grunted. “Did you see everything you needed to? If not, maybe we could just go for the bald look. It wouldn’t be much different.”
She smiled and ruffled her hand across the cropped hair. “Thanks for letting me check it out. You’ve earned a piece of pie. Go have one while I get this thing out of the wall.”
He scowled at her as he edged past on his way to the AAU. She moved to the panel, and he heard her digging in her tool kit as he ordered his pie.
* * *
She had the laser out within the hour. Ethan watched an old Earth movie as she cracked open the laser and started her modifications. He heard her mumbling about various lengths of specific wire, certain bits of hardware, or tools with complex-sounding names. When he glanced back late in the evening, he saw that she was working on a box connected by wires to a long steel tube. The tube was tapered at the end like a giant pencil. He recognized the taper as the part of the laser that poked out of the wall while he was getting his hair cut. The box was laid open like an oyster, and Kaia was holding it on her crossed legs, using impossibly tiny tweezers to remove and replace small bits inside the box. She finished what she was doing as he was watching.
Looking up, she said, “Let’s test it.”
“I don’t have any more hair to cut,” he said bitterly.
“Oh, no. It’s not a grooming laser anymore. It would slice right through you now. Let’s see what it does on the titanium.”
She laid the box carefully on the floor and sprang up, retrieving from the bathroom the small panel that had concealed the laser in the wall. She set it against one leg of the massage table.
“Okay. You might want to stay back a little.”
Ethan crouched down on the couch further.
Kaia pointed the tapered end of the steel tube at the propped-up panel and flipped a switch in the open box. A beam shot out, boring an instantaneous hole through the titanium panel and into the floor behind it. As she moved to turn it off, the beam moved, slicing the panel, the leg of the massage table, and the floor behind it. She quickly turned it off as the pieces of the panel fell to the floor and the table tipped crazily to the side.“Whew. Well, that seems to have worked.” She laid the tube down, carefully pointing it at the empty back wall of the hold.
Ethan crossed cautiously to the table and picked up the sliced-off piece of the leg from the floor. He held it up between them. “Seems to?”
“Okay, I may have the intensity turned up a little . . . too much.”
“Maybe.”
Kaia sat back down and fiddled with the settings in the box.
Ethan put down the severed leg and looked at the clean edges of the titanium panel, sliced partway across. He shivered, running his other hand over his freshly-cut hair. “If you don’t need me, I’m going for a walk.” He crossed the hold and got his journal and glyphtol. Then he backed toward the door.
“Okay. I’ll page you when I get it working.”
Ethan crossed into the hall. He felt helpless again, like something was happening to him that he couldn’t stop and didn’t understand. The gleaming ship stretched before him, and he took the elevator to the observation deck.
The passengers had spent time here waiting to be put into stasis, so it had a much more communal feel than the rest of the ship. Here there were comfortable chairs and sofas, placed in various positions to take advantage of the 360 degree view of the stars. There were several AAUs and several bathrooms. He found his favorite chair, the one very nearly in the center of the deck. If he sat just right, he couldn’t see the silver walls behind him at all, only the transparent bubble that looked into the universe. He stretched out and lost himself in the stripes that were stars around him.
He opened his journal and the case for the glyphtol. He started writing quickly in Xardn. He poured onto the paper his feelings for Kaia: his awe at her engineering abilities, his appreciation of her wit, and his intense desire for her. He’d been fighting them, but they hadn’t subsided, and her words came back to him. He knew he couldn’t spend the next five decades pretending he didn’t feel anything. It felt good to write about it, to admit it. If he wanted to remain true to Aria, he could never let Kaia know how he felt. He scrawled for hours, writing all he’d thought about her over the happenings of the last several days. Finally, he had written all he could about this fascinating, funny woman who’d awakened and walked into his lonely life. It was liberating to have let it out, and he set the journal and glyphtol aside with a sense of peace and confidence. Then he found his way back to the hold.
“Holy cow!” he said as he walked in.
Kaia was asleep on the floor beside the laser. She awoke when she heard his voice. “What?” she asked sleepily.
“What? What? You’ve turned this place into some kind of arts and crafts project.” The broad walls were carved with intricate designs: her initials, his initials, and pictures.
“I had to test it, Ethan.” she said irritably as she stood up.
“On the walls?”
“Where else? The Caretaker’s hold has the most free walls of anywhere in the whole ship. Anyway, I didn’t just burn random holes. I think it’s kind of nice.” She was moving a little stiffly from her nap on the floor.
Looking at it, Ethan had to nod. “Okay, so it’s not so bad. It is kind of nice to have a change.” He ran his fingers over one of the pictures. It was a tree on a hill. “Actually, you are quite artistic.”
“Thank you. I think I’ve got it down, finally. I’ll have to finish calibrating it when I get to the nav room because there are some cables in there that aren’t found anywhere else on the ship. But it’s pretty close to done. Watch this.” Before he could stop her, Kaia had pointed the laser at the couch. She flipped it on and before his eyes he watched the beam shoot through the couch and through the chest, where she carved a little bird in the floor in front of the movie screen. The couch and chest were untouched.
“That’s crazy!” he said. “I can’t believe it works.”
“It’s just physics. The laser is set to only vaporize the titanium molecules. It doesn’t affect the others—” Her sentence ended in a colossal yawn.
“You’re beat. You should get some rest.”
Kaia nodded. Then a shadow crossed her face as she glanced at the massage table, still careening off on one corner. “I’m sorry about your bed. You can have the couch. I’ll sleep down here.” She pointed to the floor.
“You know what? I just remembered the observation deck. There’s plenty of room for me up there. I hadn’t been up there in so long that I’d forgotten how amenable it was. I’ll sleep up there.”
“Oh, that’s not fair, to run you out of your hold.”
“You’re limping again, and you’re exhausted. I’m not making you go all the way there.”
She started to protest again.
“No
argument. I’ll go up there for tonight. We’ll talk more about it later.” He was already leaving. “Maybe we’ll trade off.” He stopped and turned around on the other side of the door. “And Kaia?” She looked at him. “No more art. Get some sleep, Picasso.”
He saw her smiling as the door closed.
On his way up he evaluated what he’d told her. It was true. In the last nine days, he’d never once considered the observation deck, though it was a perfectly suitable place to sleep. He realized with chagrin that he hadn’t wanted to leave the close quarters of the Caretaker’s hold. He also admitted to himself that he didn’t want to leave now, but he kept walking.
Chapter 14
Ethan opened his eyes to a dazzling array of stars. He lay still, watching the nearest stars, visible as stripes against the sky, and letting his eyes roam to the soft spots of light further out. He was amazed anew at the rainbow of colors he saw outside the windows of the observation deck. Large golden suns shone at various distances from the ship, and smaller stars winked red, blue, purple, and white. The vastness of the galaxies both thrilled and scared him. He finally rose and grabbed a glass of milk from the AAU.
“Computer,” he said, “where is Kaia?”
“Passenger three six nine two is in the secondary navigation room, Mr. Bryant.”
“Already?” Ethan exclaimed, wolfing a quick breakfast before heading down to meet Kaia.
She was leaning inside one of the panels they’d cracked open yesterday. He noticed that she’d exchanged her stasis suit for a pair of engineer’s coveralls.
“New outfit?”
“Yeah. I had the computer find them for me. They were stashed in one of the miscellaneous compartments. I needed something with more pockets. Stasis suits weren’t designed for this sort of work.” As he approached, he took a closer look at the open panel. The cables inside had been carefully moved aside and attached by small clips to the inside of the wall. He watched as she secured a small cable inside a clip and then turned to him triumphantly.
“I tuned the laser to avoid any cables in this room. I also adjusted the cutting depth to the exact millimeter of the walls. It should be ready as soon as I make a big enough space to cut here.”