“Is my name really Al Clark?”
The captain took a sip of his wine and chuckled, “That is the name the technical assistants gave you. They thought it was clever. The name on your compartment door said ALARM CLOCK. How you got Al Clark out of that, I don’t know…but you were pretty close.
“You were our backup if the computer failed and was supposed to wake us up if all else failed. It worked too, only ten years later than we planned.”
A Porter stuck his head through the door and asked if they were ready to start dinner. The captain said, “Yes, of course, come on in.” While the Porter was with them, they lapsed into silence, both thinking thoughts of their own.
The cheeseburgers were good. He couldn’t remember ever eating one, but the taste was familiar. Somewhere in his past, he believed he had liked cheeseburgers, and still did.
As Al was eating, several more questions came to mind, and he voiced one, “Why do I eat and drink? My robot body doesn’t need it…does it?”
“Your body runs on a power pack inside your chest. Your brain and the outer layer of your skin, however, are organic and require nutrition and fluids. You get that by eating and drinking. You need less than most people do, though,” the captain explained.
His cheeseburger was only half eaten, but Al found he’d lost interest in it. He was already full. The captain was right, he did seem to eat less than other people. He pushed himself back from the table, leaned back in the chair, and picked his next question.
“Do I need sleep?”
“Your brain needs sleep, but there again not as much as other people.”
“Why can’t I remember anything before my…awakening?” Al wasn’t sure if he woke up or was turned on.
Captain Effinger answered, “Now there I can’t help you. The first time we met, before departure, you knew precisely who you were. You volunteered for this you see. The paperwork I received said you were in a bad accident and left without the use of your arms or legs. They offered to give you a new body and a ticket on the Excalibur and you jumped at it. You were excited and counted the days until departure. I don’t know what happened.”
What the captain said made Al feel better. His life had apparently taken a turn for the worst, and when they offered him a chance for a better life, he had accepted. Now he wanted to know more about the benefits of his decision. What’s good about his robot body?
“I don’t seem to be unusually strong or that much faster than an average person. Do you know why?”
“The roboticist that designed your body, a Doctor Hawthorn, said your body was locked in a human mode until conditions allowed the setting to be overridden or changed. They didn’t want you to draw unnecessary attention to yourself.”
Al thought it might be nice to talk to his creator, “I would sure love to talk to that guy.”
“Hawthorn was aboard, he managed to get a pass to accompany you, but he died before we could wake him…sorry. I’ve done some checking, though, and there is a roboticist on-board that was familiar with Doctor Hawthorn’s work. He’s someone you might want to talk to.”
“What’s the other one’s name?” asked Al.
There was a twinkle in Tobias’ eye as he answered, “His name is Edward Florida. I should warn you, though; he is quite a character.”
The captain’s smile grew when he said, “He works in the robot repair shop, and I think he can fix you up.”
“That’s funny sir,” Al replied half-heartedly. “I have some coordinating to do with my officers about your investigations and won’t be leaving until tomorrow, so I think I will look him up.”
The captain and the security chief spent another hour talking about the situations both on-board the ship, and down on the planet. Al asked if he needed more men to find the saboteur, but the captain declined believing Al had the men he needed.
By the time they parted company, Al was feeling much better. It was the most enlightening afternoon of Al’s life—that he could remember.
****
He wanted to spend some time with his friends while he was on-board, so he made his way to Elizabeth and Chris’ quarters to finish the evening. Al was struggling with whether or not he should tell any of them and was stepping through the airlock into the yellow section when the lights flickered, and then went out.
For a few seconds, everything stopped. Total silence joined the absolute dark until the emergency lights stuttered, flashed, and relit the corridor. In the distance came the sound of running footsteps—and the world restarted; quickly winding up to full speed.
Elizabeth was running down the corridor toward him. As she reached him the ship jumped, followed by the sound of a distant explosion. That’s not good.
“What’s going on Liz?”
The racing woman used him to stop her forward momentum and slid to a stop. She took a moment to catch her breath and then said, “We have a fire in the habitat ring’s main power room in the blue section. That was an explosion, and we need to get there fast.”
Any fire on a spaceship can be a ticket to disaster. In such a contained space, if the flames didn’t get you, the smoke would. There is also the risk of breaching the hull and rapid decompression. Fires created fear on a spaceship.
They worked their way through the airlock and ran down the orange section to the blue access airlock. The closer they got, the more people they saw going the opposite direction towards safety. Liz and Al did not have that option. She was the senior electrical engineer, and he was responsible for security. This problem was their job.
The air around the airlock was smoky, and they had to force their way through the people leaving to wait for the doors to cycle, then push their way into the blue section. The blue corridor on the other side of the airlock was thick with black smoke.
“The power room is at the end of the passageway by the number three spoke,” Liz told him in between coughs. They made it halfway there before she collapsed onto the floor and passed out.
Al could barely see, but he picked her up and rushed back to the airlock to hand her to the last of the evacuees. He pointed to one of them and said, “Give me your shirt, I need something to wrap around my face.” With the man’s shirt held up to his mouth, he went back to try again.
He ran to the other end of the corridor and noticed he didn’t need the shirt over his mouth. He seemed to be breathing just fine. When he reached the power room, he found all three airtight doors standing wide open, blocked from closing. That is not supposed to happen.
He crouched as he entered the room, trying to discover the reason for the smoke and alarms, and found a blazing cabinet of large circuit breakers in the middle of the room. Al knew the fire system couldn’t operate with the doors open. Closing the doors might activate the system and allow it to extinguish the fire.
Al crawled to the nearest door and gave it a solid push. Nothing happened. It was getting harder to see, and the reason was hard to determine. He pushed again, only harder. Something popped at the bottom of the door, and it reluctantly closed. He pushed firmly on the other two open panels, and they too swung shut.
Slipping out of the room as the last door closed, he was relieved to see the fire system activate and empty the room of air. Fans came on in the corridor, and the air began to clear. Just like that, the crisis was over.
He walked back down the hallway entering living quarters looking for casualties. Inside the door of one apartment, he found a little girl lying on the floor who, passed out but was still breathing. Quickly, he picked her up and carried her to the airlock.
When he walked out of the airlock, all smoky and dirty holding that little girl, the entire corridor full of people burst into applause. The parents took her and were standing there in tears, thanking him over and over. Al thought, that worked out well, and nobody suspects I am more than I appear.
A much recovered Liz took his arm as they left the crowd, and she walked him to her quarters. She left him to recover and get cleaned up while she went ba
ck to assess the damage. Chris was there, and she filled him in on Al’s heroic deeds before she grabbed a flashlight and left.
“Are you okay?” Chris asked.
“I’m all right, there really wasn’t much to it,”
“Not according to my mother. It sounded like you saved the day.”
“Really Chris, it was nothing.”
The young man knew about the saboteur and thought of a logical question, “How do you think it started?”
Al told him what he discovered, “Someone blocked all the doors open and set a fire. It was sabotage—no doubt about it. We need to catch this guy before he starts killing people.”
“He already has. A girl died a little while ago from drinking the water. She was only twelve years old.”
While Al was saving one girl, another had died.
He was getting angry, and he didn’t understand what kind of person would hurt people on purpose.
“I need to get back to the scene of the fire and see if I can help,” he told Chris.
He got up and went to the kitchen to get cleaned up. Chris went to Al’s quarters to get him some clean clothes and half an hour later; Al was going back to the power room to talk with his men already there. His problems would have to wait.
The power room looked bad. Liz told him it would have been a lot worse if he had not put the fire out. She was busy reading schematics on her pad, throwing switches and resetting breakers to try to reroute and restore power. It was a breaker in a primary breaker cabinet that exploded, and the debris was strewn everywhere.
His men were off to the side using their pads to review the camera video from the room before the fire started, and they got lucky. The person responsible had known where all the cameras were—except one. This one camera recorded a slight figure in a big hurry to weld the doors open. At one point, the figure looked around, and they got a full view of the face. It was the face of a woman. Why do people automatically assume saboteurs are men?
“Run that through the computer and see if we can get a name,” Al told them.
One of them exclaimed, “I think I know her, she works in the shuttle bay during the night shift. She’s a bit of a loner that doesn’t talk much, but I always thought she was just shy. We should probably talk to her?”
“We were just given a gift gentlemen. A clear image of the person that blocked those doors, and probably started the fire. Let’s not waste our gift. Please, let's get this done, I would like to talk to this person within the hour. Let me know when you have her in custody.” They hesitated, and he reiterated, “Go on—get going.”
Al walked over to check on Liz. She was leaning over a bank of breakers close to where the fire had been and was pulling on something.
“Need some help?”
Liz looked up and smiled, “As a matter of fact, I can’t get this panel to break loose.”
“Here, let me see.” Al reached over and saw her hand on a handle. “It pulls straight out?”
“It’s supposed to.”
Al grabbed the handle and carefully pulled, trying not to have it fly out and bounce against the wall; he increased the pressure until it broke loose and slid open.
“You are my hero for the second time today, I should ask you to dinner or something,” said his friend.
“Sorry, but I still have things to do. I’ll take a rain check, though.”
Liz got an inquisitive look on her face, “What did you and the captain talk about?”
“I think it's top secret. Need to know and all that.”
She laughed, “I’ll get it out of you, just not right now. I have to get the power back on.”
“Need anything else?”
“No, I’m good. I should be finished here in an hour or two. Maybe I’ll see you then?” she asked.
“I don’t think I’ll have time tonight and I go back to the surface in the morning. I expect to be interrogating the person that did this shortly. Maybe we can stop this before it gets any worse.”
“I hope you can stop it before more people get killed. If you come up here again, before I come down, give me a call.”
They said their goodbyes and Al left to head for the security office. A couple of people acknowledged him on his way and shook his hand, saying things like, “Way to go Chief.” and “Nice job.” He was embarrassed and dismissive. He didn’t think of himself as a hero, but it was kind of nice.
****
When they brought her in; she was small like Ana, but not like Ana. This girl did not have the advantages that Ana had been born with, and it showed in her demeanor. Her name was Tammy Shoemaker, and she was young; under twenty. Now a scared and fidgety bird in a trap.
Tammy hid her fear with anger at the officers that held her arms and guided her to the holding cell, cursing at them with a wicked tongue.
“Let me go you **** planet stealers! I don’t care what the hell you do to me; I will tell you nothing because I have done nothing wrong.”
Al watched from his desk. Not saying a word and trying to get a handle on how to deal with her. They put her in the cell and locked the door, leaving her alone and in a lot of trouble.
“Let me out of here. I haven’t done anything. I demand you let me go.”
She suddenly realized that they did not particularly care what she had to say. The look in their eyes told her they didn’t care for her at all. She threw herself onto the bunk and sat there in defiance, not entirely hiding her fear.
Tammy had long brown hair and a pixie face with a turned up nose and green eyes. She had on the dirty uniform of a maintenance worker that didn’t quite fit but suggested a small, slender frame.
“Where did you find her,” Al asked the man standing next to him.
“She was in her quarter’s sir, getting ready to take a shower. I think we surprised her. There was a portable welding set-up in her closet and some chemical containers that she could have added to the water. They are analyzing it now. Fingerprints and DNA are also in the process.”
Al, the man responsible for all the colonists’ safety, sat watching his prisoner. He continued to keep his eyes on her as he grabbed a chair, set it down backward in front of the cell, and wrapped his arms around the seatback. The girl was now quiet and staring at the floor.
She must realize they would charge her with endangering the lives of all on board—and possibly murder. What would make someone capable of something like this?
Al sat watching her for a while and thought.
He forced a reasonable tone into his voice and asked. “When a crazy person does something really crazy, the one question that normal people are always left with is—why? Why would you do this?”
She hesitated for a second and then raised her head. Defiantly she exclaimed, “I am not crazy. I am here to stop you. You have no right to steal someone else’s planet. You ruin your own world, and then build big ships to go out and destroy other people’s worlds. This mission is what I was destined to give my life for, and my only wish is that I was better at it.”
Al was stunned. He did not need to ask more questions because the hatred apparent on her face made him think this girl was more than likely the product of highly radical thinking. What kind of life must she have endured for her to think like that?
It struck him that she could be a victim of chance; wrong place, wrong time, wrong people. Al’s anger turned to frustration when he realized this was probably not all her fault. This belief was the twisted view of humans she had been taught and made to believe. Punishing her would change nothing.
He decided to change his tactics. “Are you hungry, or thirsty?”
“I could use a plate of freedom.”
“Sorry, can’t do that. You’ll stay where you are until we can figure out what to do with you.”
Al stood up and returned the chair to its place by the desk. He motioned to Sid, the senior officer, to move out of the girls hearing and told him, “Sid, I want you to make sure she gets some psychiatric help. That is one mi
xed up kid. I’m going to file a report for the captain but make sure you keep him up-to-date, okay?”
“Will do Chief, have a safe trip tomorrow,” Sid replied as the chief walked out the door.
Al went back to his quarters. It was late, and he was tired. Even though he didn’t need as much sleep as other people, he needed it now. Tomorrow would be a whole new day for him, and he wanted to be at his best. In the morning, there was one more stop to make before he rode the shuttle back to Avalon. He wanted a talk with the robotic expert.
****
That night he had the dream again. The recurring dream that always ended at the same point. He was standing on a grassy hill looking down on a village; a person was running towards him yelling something he couldn’t quite understand.
He woke up confused, but the longer he was awake, the more the dream faded. There were, though, fragments that remained in his memory. He remembered it made him happy.
Al left his quarters early and made his way directly to the hangar bay where the repair shop was located. As he approached the door, he heard music. A group singing an old song Al found vaguely familiar—something about a silver hammer.
He walked through the door into the room, with the smell of oil and plastic permeating the air; he saw a short wild-haired man standing on a table with one of the robots lying underneath him. He was belting out the song and preparing to swing a large silver hammer at its round silver head when Al spoke to him, “Hey—It looks to me like he gave up.”
The white haired man jumped and turned to determine where the voice had come from, “Well…hello there Sheriff. I wasn’t expecting anybody this early. Grab a seat, I’ll be right with you.”
He set his hammer down and climbed down from the table. Al watched the short older man of fifty or so, with an energetic face, unruly long blonde hair and bright blue eyes, as he got down from the table. He wore a long white coat with more than a few stains.
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