by Patty Jansen
“What did you do to your face?”
Jonathan looked sideways where the three remaining thugs were listening to the conversation. He still felt dizzy. “Um, can I talk about that later?”
“Come to the hospital to get that fixed up.”
She took him by the arm and led him down the corridor, catching up with the wheelchair.
“Didn’t I warn you not to go down that road?” Gaby said in a low voice.
“I didn’t go down any road. I only asked you about reporting the man with the broken leg as abuse victim. I never did anything about it.”
She glared at him.
“All right you don’t believe me. It’s true. You are the only person I mentioned it to. Funny how they found out, isn’t it?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Whatever you want it to. Feel guilty if that suits you.”
She pushed him aside, pinning him into the wall.
He called out, “Hey!”
Her face was less than a hand’s width from his. She spoke slowly, articulating each word for extra effect. “Don’t you dare suggest anything like that ever again.”
Jonathan snorted. “Then tell me how they found out.”
“You’ve left a trail of stupidity all over this station since you started. No one needs to have heard what you said to me to have enough reason to bash your face in.”
“So, I’m stupid, huh? It’s stupid to do my job properly, to flag situations that can be dangerous, to report bribery, to help people who are powerless against bullies. I can be either stupid or a coward. Guess what it’s going to be?”
She met his eyes for a few long moments, then let him go and continued walking. All the rest of the way to the hospital, neither of them spoke.
Into the hospital room, where it smelled strongly of antiseptics, a couple of nurses had put Stan on a bed in the middle, his eyes half open. One of his mates sat on the bed next to him, glaring at Jonathan.
“Wait here,” Gaby ordered him, her voice cold and professional. She went to the cupboard at the side, took out a bag and gave it to him. “Hold that to your face, unless you want to look like a gerbil tomorrow.” The bag felt like it was filled with gel. It was cold.
Jonathan sat on one of the chairs near the door. He pressed the ice pack to his lip. The outside of it was made out of cloth and blood smeared onto it. He hoped that was okay.
Some nurses wheeled Stan away, to the imaging room, he presumed.
The mate stayed behind, studiously avoiding Jonathan. His overalls said Ferguson. Jonathan guessed those weren’t his overalls either.
Jonathan wondered what was going to happen now. Would he be charged with anything?
There were a few other patients in the small ward, but all were unconscious or asleep. The first, probably, because he couldn’t imagine sleeping through the racket that everyone had made. One of the patients was attached to a machine that issued small beeps, the other had a mask over his face.
He grew sick of watching their unmoving forms. There were no screens, nothing to read or do. And he couldn’t look at half the room because the thug sat there. Jonathan’s mind kept going over the incident. He hadn’t pushed Stan that hard, had he? How could an arm just break like that?
He had no idea how long he’d been sitting there when Gaby came back. She spoke briefly to the mate, and the man left, flipping Jonathan the bird while going out the door.
Gaby said, “Now let’s have a look at you.” Maybe she hadn’t seen the mate’s gesture, or ignored it. Her expression was hard.
She took him into her practice room off the main ward. Again, he sat on the patient chair while she produced a box from a shelf and pulled the lid off. She rummaged inside.
Jonathan noticed an electronic photo frame on her desk which displayed a picture of herself with a middle-aged white-haired man and a dark-skinned woman with a plait of glossy black hair that hung well past her shoulders.
There was a pad on the desk, showing an image that looked suspiciously like an X-ray. The guy’s arm, he guessed.
Gaby had taken out bandaids, a bag with balls of cotton wool and a bottle. She came to sit next to him with a tray that contained all those things.
“Now, what actually happened?”
Jonathan recounted the story through a swollen lip and tongue that was starting to go stiff, while she sprinkled fluid on cotton wool and dabbed his face. “Couldn’t sleep. Went to the rec room. Some thugs came in. Said they didn’t like my father and when I wanted to leave one of them knocked me flat. I pushed him against the wall. Not very hard.”
She was cleaning his lip, face screwed up in concentration.
He asked, “What did you think of the break?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss other people’s medical details.”
“But you did before. Come on, Gaby, I need your help. What do you think? Because I didn’t shove him that hard. You know, me being the size I am. I’m not exactly your ultimate gym hunk.”
A ghost of a smile crossed her face. “I haven’t seen the photos yet. My colleague is looking after him.”
Bullshit, and she knew it. The photo was right there on her desk. All she needed to do was pick it up. She wasn’t meeting his eyes. Yet Jonathan didn’t understand what she was hiding. After all, he had pushed the man. There was no abuse in this case.
The pile of red-stained soggy balls of cotton wool grew while she worked on his face. She was very close, her big and dark eyes concentrated on his mouth. Her hair was slightly longer in the neck, where soft curls lay against her skin, which was olive brown. That dark woman had to be her mother.
Ouch. He took in a sharp breath.
“Sorry. It bleeds a lot, but I think I can fix it up with a bit of glue and a piece of tape. You won’t look very pretty for the next few days.”
“That won’t make much of a difference, then.”
One corner of her mouth lifted.
He liked seeing the smile on her face. Did it mean she forgave him for challenging her? “Sorry, I didn’t mean to call you a coward.”
“I get called all sorts of things in here. You get used to it.”
She put some sort of glue on his lip. The stuff smelled funny and left a lump on his skin. He raised his hand—
“No, no, don’t touch it. It needs to dry. It will fall off by itself after a few days.”
Great. Walking around with a lump on his lip.
When the glue was dry, she proclaimed him ready. “You can stay here in the ward if you want.”
“That’s not necessary.” He’d rather not stay with this other guy.
“Will you be fine to walk back by yourself?”
“I’m not going to faint or anything.” But that probably wasn’t why she had asked. His cabin was in the other sector. He thought of the long corridor that ran past the storage and recycling area that he needed to traverse. All the places where someone could wait for him and finish off what they started. They would know where he was. Someone could knock him unconscious and stick him in one of the maintenance tunnels.
He shuddered.
But he pretended to be calm. He reached his room without trouble.
Chapter Thirteen
BUT WHATEVER that simple trip to the rec room to get hot chocolate had done, it hadn’t cured his insomnia.
As soon as he lay down, Jonathan felt alert again.
He dragged his computer to his bed and lay propped up on one elbow. Looking up the Launch Station’s crew was easy enough. Stan Ormsby was indeed an electrician. Fifty-three, 1.93 metres tall. The database showed him with a short pepper-and-salt beard that stood out clearly on his black skin.
Yeah, even if he’d since shaved off the beard, there was no way that “Stan” was who he claimed to be. Since the real Stan Ormsby had worked at the station for more than ten years, Jonathan found it very hard to believe that Gaby wouldn’t know who he was.
She’d lied to him, about Stan, about the X-rays.
At that very moment, his electronic photo frame chose to show a picture he’d added to his collection at the very last moment before leaving: his father in uniform, at some sort of ceremony, collecting an award.
He thought of the paper he’d read detailing the many cases of abuse, including the horrific case that had concluded with his father’s dismissal for whistle-blowing.
He did not want to follow his father’s path. If these things still happened aboard the Everbright, he was in a position to stop them.
All he needed was the hospital records and proof of Chrysalia use on board, because then he could stop the ship on Quarantine grounds.
Halfway down the passage was an alcove with hazard suits. If he put on one of those helmets, he could enter the hospital without being recognised. During the night shift, there would not be many people. He could sneak into Gaby’s room and have a look at the records.
For the second time that night, he changed out of his pyjamas. He armed himself with his pad—to copy the evidence—and considered taking a real weapon, but a quick search of his cabin didn’t yield anything that looked like a stick and he figured if anyone came close enough for him to use a stick, he was pretty much lost anyway.
He did, however, tuck the pad in his jacket so that he’d have both hands free.
Then he opened the door. The corridor had returned to its semi-dark slumber. It was empty and his footsteps sounded loud. He tried to walk quietly, but that didn’t make much of a difference.
He hurried around a corner and almost crashed into someone who came running from the other direction. He swerved and tripped, narrowly missing bashing his head into the wall. He went down on his knees.
Ouch.
He patted his busted lip gingerly. Thankfully, there was no blood.
“Jonathan!”
The hand that was stretched out to him was Gaby’s.
She heaved him up, still out of breath from running. “I apologise. You were right. I was just coming to talk to you.”
“I was going to talk to you.”
Gaby was still out of breath. “Jonathan, you have to see this.”
They ran through the corridors back to the hospital.
In Gaby’s room, she switched on the screen at the back of the room, and an X-ray image flicked onto it.
An arm and the bottom half of the hand was visible. The two bones in the lower arm were completely shattered.
“That’s just like that guy’s leg,” he said.
She nodded and brought up the leg X-ray alongside. “Only with this one we have more detail. I took a second scan at a higher resolution.”
She moved her fingers. The image of the leg vanished and the one of the arm enlarged. The shards of bone grew bigger and bigger until they filled the screen.
This close up, the break lines weren’t straight, but kind of jagged, with little semicircular crevices. Those semicircular holes matched up with semicircular holes on the opposing fragment.
When Jonathan was little, an old lady used to live next door. She was happy for the kids to play in her garden, which was overgrown with bushes. There was a dead tree in the yard, and one day there was a big storm which blew the tree over. The inside of the trunk and branches was tunnelled through with little holes.
Termites, his mother said.
That was what the bone looked like.
“What do you think?”
“I think we’re going to need a sample of that.”
“Well, guess what?”
“You have a sample?”
She nodded. “It’s all yours. Exobiology is your field of work, isn’t it?”
“Yeah. I presume you have a microscope here.”
She nodded. “Can I help?”
“Wow,” Gaby whispered when Jonathan put the image from the microscope on the big screen. It was dark in the room and his eyes felt scratchy from the lack of sleep. His head pounded and his face hurt. Part of his lip felt like he’d lost sensation in it, and as if it was twice its usual size.
But there it was on the screen: a fragment of bone with a tiny critter. The organism consisted of a few simple cells and looked like a sausage with an enormous mouth.
“What would you call that thing?” Gaby asked.
“It’s a calciphage,” Jonathan said. “I’ve only heard people talk about these. They were mentioned in a paper I had to read for a subject in my degree. Apparently, they’re common on some of the asteroids, but mostly they’re dormant. Maybe they’re quite common throughout the solar system. I’m guessing that this particular type finds our bones a rich source.”
“God. No wonder I’d never seen breaks this bad. The bones are just reduced to pulp.”
“That’s why we’re seeing all these small holes. They’re space termites, hollowing out our bones.”
She shuddered. “I hate termites or ants.” Then she looked at him with wide eyes. “The Everbright.”
“Yes, there will be more cases on board. They’ll all be infected. Heck, we could be infected.”
“No, that’s not what I mean. I saw the ship’s name on the departure log.”
“You’re serious? Who cleared them?” Jonathan scrambled from the microscope to a computer. He pulled up the departure screen.
There was the Everbright, almost at the top.
“Shit.” How did this happen? They weren’t supposed to leave until all the bureaucracy was cleared. “Who cleared them?” But he knew the likely answer: Danna White, bending over backwards to Captain Farrell.
He stared at Gaby, her eyes wide. “How do we stop them?”
“I don’t know. But we have to.” She scooped up her computer and rose from her chair.
Jonathan followed her into the emergency room. Someone said, “Gaby?”
But she didn’t stop.
The nurse called, “What’s going on?”
Jonathan yelled, “Raise a general alarm.”
Out into the corridor, through the main passage that led through the docking area. It was still early, and the passage was quiet. Once, Gaby almost crashed into someone just coming out of a door. Over there was the Everbright’s access tube, at the very end.
Jonathan yelled, “Stop, stop!”
He almost crashed into Gaby who had skidded to a halt.
The screen showed that the tube had been closed and the umbilicals already retracted.
“It seems you missed your flight,” said a dock crewmember.
Chapter Fourteen
JONATHAN RAN TO Danna White’s office, where the usual queue of pilots and ship crew already sat on the hard bench against the wall, waiting for her office to open officially.
He bypassed all of them and burst into the door.
White was with a client, a scruffy bearded man who looked like one of the Russians who ran private transport to Mars.
“Bartell, what is this—” Her eyes widened. “What the hell did you do to your face?”
“You cleared the Everbright for departure?”
“There was no reason to keep her here.”
“Yes, there was. There were investigations.”
“Paperwork only. Please, Bartell, I’m busy, can you get to some kind of point?”
“You must stop that ship.”
“Can’t. They’ve gone.”
“Listen, they carry a bone-eating organism to Earth.”
“What the hell are you talking about? Get out of my office, Bartell.”
“Stop the Everbright.”
“I can’t. She’s gone, thank goodness.”
“Then get someone who can stop the ship.”
“Bartell, I’m warning you. . . .”
Someone came into the office. “Any trouble here?”
Damn it. Cresswell.
“Yes, take these two out of here. They’re bothering me.”
Cresswell came in, followed by one of his mates. They dragged Jonathan and Gaby into the main passage.
Jonathan yelled,
“Why won’t anyone listen to us? That ship needs to be stopped.”
“The time for listening to you, Bartell, has long passed. The rot started with your daddy’s suggestions that the ship crew routinely abuse their mates and culminated in your stupid handling of the Everbright’s application. I’ve never heard anything so ridiculous. What other bullshit have you made up in order to divert attention away from your bungling?”
“It is not bullshit. Look at the photos. Gaby, show them.”
But there was no point. The two men dragged the two of them through the corridor. A couple of people came the other way, one of them was Manuela. She said nothing, but met his eyes in a shocked expression.
Jonathan mouthed, Help. He wasn’t sure if she understood. Or, if she did, whether she could do anything. Being small and female, and having lived here longer then he, she might also be afraid of Cresswell.
Cresswell and his mate took Jonathan and Gaby to a disused office and shoved them inside.
“You can cool off here.”
Jonathan ran back to the door. “We demand to see your superior. That ship carries a dreadful disease.”
Cresswell closed the door in his face and locked it.
“Hey, you can’t leave us in here.” He banged on the door. “Let us out! Anyone, can you hear me? Let us out!”
“Jonathan—” Gaby called from behind.
Jonathan whirled around. “But we have to—What are you smiling at?”
She held up her computer.
Cresswell’s superior was someone named Major Pascoe. Jonathan didn’t know him, but Gaby said that he was the officer in charge of the small Military Police unit at the station. Gaby herself fell under the Corps’s Special Services, which were under Lieutenant-commander Cirano. Neither of those people replied to Gaby’s messages.
From inside the office, they could hear people outside, but no one came to open the door, no matter how much they knocked. Gaby’s face looked haunted. She started pacing around the room. Jonathan was still trying to contact someone who would help them. He sent messages to Manuela and David and Kerry and anyone he thought might help.
Meanwhile, the section log showed the Everbright getting closer and closer to Earth. He got desperate and mailed the X-ray and the photo of the critter to every account that had a large enough inbox to receive it.