Chapter Fourteen
Ragtime: Shell
Laid out in sick bay, in Node M, Shell acknowledges that Joké is good-looking, but the girl is uncooperative. The service bots have cleaned up all the blood from the autopsies, and there’s no visible gore, but Shell thinks she can smell a whiff of the abattoir on the air. Must be her imagination, though. It’ll take time and therapy to get this trauma out of her mind, but only if they make it out alive.
“I’m fine,” says Joké, attempting to get up.
“Stay where you are,” says Larry.
“I fainted, Father. It was hard work, hmm?” says Joké.
Fin lounges at the door, staring, silent, but Salvo steps forward. “I’ve been analysing the telemetry from your suit. What it tells me doesn’t make sense.”
“What do you mean?” says Shell.
“It says half the suit went outside,” says Salvo. “And it is still there.”
“Oh, that,” says Joké.
“Did you throw a suit out?” asks Shell.
“Uh-uh, I didn’t. I got flung out the airlock.”
“How did you get back?” says Fin.
Joké raises her head and locks eyes with Fin. “You know how.”
Shell says, “Will someone please explain to me what’s going on here?”
“Lambers can slip between realities and back,” says Fin. “She left her suit behind in space when she moved.”
Shell looks to Larry who avoids her eyes, a conversation for another time. “So we’re down a space suit.”
“Mmm, but we’re up one life – me,” says Joké. “And I did stop the leak.”
“One of the leaks. There are still some minor ones, but the one you blocked was the largest. Good job,” says Shell. “I have bad news, so if Joké’s all right, then I’d like to go to the bridge.”
Each of them hangs off whatever they can find. Shell floats at the opening of the cupola because, well, she feels stronger there. Joké beside Uncle Larry, Salvo at Fin’s side – IFCs synced, no doubt. Shell feels the loneliness of leadership but struggles to keep her body language neutral, which is less than they need. The crew, such as it is, needs inspiration, not neutrality, but it’s the best Shell can muster at this time.
“On Earth there used to be this soothsayer, the Delphian Oracle. Supposedly it spouted glossolalia, gibberish, and the seekers of wisdom took away whatever message they wanted to hear guided by projections of their own subconscious. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but I do know that whatever oracle we choose to consult will tell us we are cursed.”
Joké says, “Umm—”
“Shut up. Let me finish,” says Shell, not unkindly. “The breaking off of Node 7 cost us atmosphere, but when it detached, it bounced off the hull twice before disappearing. Among other things, it broke off the long-range antenna. Half of the backup was attached to the terminal segment.”
“So we can’t contact Bloodroot?” asks Fin. Seems alarmed.
“We can’t contact Bloodroot. On Earth we have a satellite array, but the space programme on the colonies is… rudimentary. That’s not all. That wetness all over Joké was bioreactor fluid. It has sprung a significant leak.”
This is non-trivial because the algae make oxygen, food and energy for the ship. Combined with solar thermal fuel, the bioreactor fluid flows on the outside in transparent channels to trap sunlight, then all round the ship.
“I’ve run some numbers and had Salvo check them. In the current circumstances we have one hundred and thirty hours of life support left.”
“Five days and change,” says Larry, unperturbed. Which makes sense for a pioneer pilot whose life could have ended at any time during any number of his missions.
“So let’s get all of us down to Bloodroot,” says Fin.
“Don’t be daft, son,” says Larry.
“What? What do you mean?” asks Fin. He looks from Larry to Shell and back.
“The Ragtime is not a planetside ship,” says Shell. “It was built in orbit and designed to park in orbit. It’s less a large ship than a small, travelling space station. You need shuttles to evacuate. For shuttles, you need mission control. For mission control, you need—”
“Long-range transmitter, yes, I got it.” Fin frowns. “So we take one of the docked shuttles, fly down to the surface and radio them. We don’t even need to land. We just need to get in range and transmit a mayday.”
“I agree,” says Lawrence. “It’s a two-hour mission at most.”
Shell nods. “It’ll have to be the Equivalence. The Decisive has no landing gear to speak of. It’s for space station capture, not atmosphere or terra firma.”
“There might be a problem with propellant,” says Salvo. “Fin and I were only meant to fly here and back. After the various burns that we used to stop the Ragtime’s rotation, there won’t be enough fuel to take us back, even when you take into consideration that we will glide a lot of the way. Slowing down for re-entry takes fuel.”
“I’m kicking myself for that. Ragtime was unreliable. I had to use the shuttles to stop the spin.” Shell swallows. “Uncle Larry? Ideas?”
“Fuel from the Decisive to the Equivalence?” says Lawrence.
“In zero grav, at 7.67 kilometres per sec?” says Salvo. “You have very little solid propellant and depend mostly on ion thrust. It does not seem wise, Governor Biz.”
“It’ll make a pretty fireball,” says Joké. She seems amused at the prospect.
“Retrofit the Equivalence for ion thrust?” says Larry.
“In five days with unreliable bots and no specialist engineers? Plus, ion engines won’t work in atmosphere. You know that,” says Shell.
“What about the passengers?” asks Fin.
“What do you mean?” says Shell. “I’m open to all ideas.”
“These colony ships tend to be experts in something or the other, right? Why don’t we go through the manifest and find engineers and rocket scientists to figure out our refuelling problem and AI experts to fix Ragtime. We can wake them up.”
“Good idea, but you can’t just wake up and get to full functioning, Fin. It takes about two weeks. I repeat, we have five days. You’ve got muscle atrophy, biochemical changes, all kinds of adjustments the body has to make. Plus, they’re cooled down to keep metabolism down. When they wake up, they’ll use more oxygen and require more nutrients. Each additional person we wake reduces the survival time with no guarantee that they’ll give us the silver bullet we’re looking for.” She sighs. “We’re not going to be getting help from those quarters.”
“Do we have the humanpower and expertise to fit the Decisive with landing gear?” asks Lawrence.
“No,” says Shell.
“One way trip, then. I fly to Bloodroot, broadcast a mayday, then glide to the ground.”
“No,” says Shell. “Because when you say glide, you mean crash, and we’re not doing that. Everybody lives. I’m not losing any more, especially not you. Tell him, Joké.”
“He’s a grown-ass man. He can decide for himself if he wants to volunteer to go splat on the north face of a mountain on Bloodroot. Action Governor!”
Larry groans. “There’s a time and place, Joké…”
“Hey, tick-tock everybody. Why am I the only one panicking?” says Fin.
“We’re all panicking, rest assured. We’re astronauts. They trained us not to show it,” says Shell. “All right. Can we fix the backup antenna or build a new one?”
“I can run through options,” says Salvo.
“Good. I have worksheets for everybody else. The backup AI is kind of malfunctioning too, and we can’t trust the robots. Maintenance is more important than ever.”
“What are you going to do?” asks Fin.
“I’m going to sleep for four hours, then I’m going to fix the reactor leak. Right now it’s plugged, so it won’t get worse. You’ll find sleep schedules on your sheets as well.”
“Umm, I don’t rest like you do,” says Joké.
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br /> “Joké, if you can survive outside a spaceship is there a chance you can… I mean, can your kind… we need someone on Bloodroot,” says Shell.
“I’m exploring options, Captain. I have to figure it out,” says Joké. “I’ve never been to Bloodroot. I have no mental anchor there.”
“Whatever that means. Do whatever you can,” says Shell. “I’ll see you all in four hours.”
Shell meditates.
The distractions come, but she is expecting them. She hangs in her sleeping bag, right hand flipping phantom beads one after the other. She has an EVA suit in her quarters with her, prepped, just in case something happens while she sleeps, and she ordered the same for the rest of the crew. Crew. That’s amusing. A found crew, like a found family.
She thinks of her father all the time now, what he would think if he knew she had fucked up her first commission. She would say it wasn’t her fault, but words like that just bounced off Haldene Campion. There is no fault; there is only duty, sacred or near enough. There is only crushing responsibility.
Maybe it is true that she is too young, too inexperienced for this – whatever “this” is. Uncle Larry didn’t seem to have any problems obeying her commands, though. Didn’t call her aside to chide her or question her choices, isn’t giving her shit. If he’s calm about it, surely that’s some kind of endorsement? Or perhaps he’s too old to know better.
She yawns. She is tired, but none of her tricks is helping her sleep. She briefly contemplates drugging herself but discards the idea. Sedatives can affect cognition for days, even after a single dose, and she needs clear thought. That’s the whole point of sleeping in the first place.
She is so glad that her brothers will not hear of this until it is too late. She’ll either be dead or the crisis will be over and she’ll have a tale to tell.
A year before take-off from Florida, Shell was at the end of a relationship. It is not dead, but dying, just as doomed as the Ragtime, winding down. Fred Singer-Ward. They had been together for three years, and Shell loved him. Maybe he loved her. He certainly said he did.
Fred was fun, quick to laugh, accepting of the media and government as purveyors of fine truths, close to his parents, loyal. People flocked to him all the time because he was that kind of guy. Shell has a different relationship with people, and that created a paradox. Nobody flocks to Shell because she knows things and lets people know that she knows. She and Fred were opposite poles of a magnet: stronger together, but, when it came to interacting with others, confusing. They came for Fred and left because of Shell. It wasn’t a problem at first, Fred being willing and able to smooth troubled waters, but the closer Shell got to the end of her training, the more intense she was. It’s difficult to understand if you’re on the outside, and perhaps it was her mistake to date someone… uninitiated, but the sex was good, the conversation better, and she needed a break from understanding radiation shielding.
“You don’t have to say everything you know, Shell,” Fred said. They were driving home from a disastrous dinner. “You don’t have anything to prove.”
Yeah, she did. She’d had to prove herself from a very young age. To everyone. Fuck them.
“Fred, the Dark Side of the moon isn’t dark. I thought everyone knew this.”
“I didn’t,” said Fred.
Don’t say it. Don’t say it. Don’t.
“Well, then you’re an idiot. We’re in a solar system. How could that possibly be the case?”
Shouldn’t have said that.
Shell apologised, but in retrospect that was the moment the relationship ended. They stumbled on for another year, fulfilling the bare minimum of interaction required. Conversation died, so did the sex, but neither Fred nor she could pull the trigger.
Ultimately, it fizzled, going out with a whimper rather than bang. It still hurt when he stopped calling, or when she saw him with someone else. Tara, her name was. Nice girl, no dark secrets, shame about the hair.
Shell did what she always does and threw herself into work. Whenever anyone asked about That Guy, she changed the subject.
When the Operations Officer of MaxGalactix US called her in, she hadn’t spoken to another human outside the training for six weeks straight, not even her brothers.
“What are your plans?” he asked.
“Well, I’ll know in two months if I qualify for—”
“You’re going to qualify. What are your plans?”
“I was thinking NASA.”
“Why?”
“Sheer breadth of experience. Resources. Vision.”
He laughed at that. “You’ll run tests for a few months, then you’ll go into orbit, run more tests there, come back, they’ll consider you for Mars, pass you over, then accept you, but by then you’ll have a hard-on for interstellar work. Not that you don’t have it now, but you need to know an acceptable outlet – a sublimation of your erection, so to speak. You follow?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, sir.”
“I’m saying you’ll go in there with a dues-paying mentality, thinking you ought to do your time, let those with seniority travel to the stars first. People like your father. Old-timers who respected the chain and expect to be respected in turn, am I right? I’m sure you learned that with mother’s milk.”
Shell says nothing. Why is this guy being disgusting?
“I can send you to the stars in six months, guaranteed.”
“Is this a test?”
“No test, although if we did, I’m sure you’d ace it. I’ve seen your record.”
“What are you asking me to do?”
“Finish your studies, then commit to a trip to one of the colonies under the MaxGalactix banner. Don’t think the prep will be easy. We’ll stretch your considerable intellect and discipline to the limits of your sanity. What will really annoy you is you’ll never get to use what you learn. You’ll be Second Mate to the AI. You won’t have to do anything at all. You’ll be backup, but that just means you’ll sleep for like ten years and wake up on the other side.”
“Unless the AI fails.”
“Ship AIs don’t fail. It’s never happened. In some commonwealths they have been granted personhood without voting rights. In the UK they’re thinking of giving them citizenship status. Theoretically, a ship can become an individual. It’ll never happen, but it shows their degree of confidence that the technology is near-human.”
“Humans fail, sir.”
“They do, don’t they? That’s why we use AI for the interstellar work. Better than human.”
The motto of one company that manufactures them.
But here Shell is, on the Ragtime, with AI failure, and human casualties. Historic. A moment in time that will live in infamy. Her name, eternally linked with her father, will be… the family name, Campion, will always be associated with this.
When she sold her stuff for practically nothing, Fred asked her if she was coming back.
“I don’t know,” she had said. That wasn’t entirely true. She could not imagine being back on Earth after a mission that would be effectively a twenty-year round trip, with the relativity weirdness altering her ageing. She could not see a future for herself in space, either. Did that mean she would settle in a colony? Did she precognitively not expect to survive?
Her hands work the imaginary beads faster.
She hopes Salvo can come up with a workable solution. They need not just call-making but telemetry information, otherwise the shuttles would not be able to rendezvous safely.
She has never felt a keener sense of her own mortality, but she isn’t terrified. Astronauts circled the globe without their pulse or blood pressure changing. Shell read all the telemetry from the Apollo missions as a child, and she knows Neil Armstrong’s pulse better than her own. Her IFC glows with her own vital signs. She cycles through the rest of her crew and sees Fin struggling with tachycardia. She wonders if they’re going to have to sedate him.
Finally, exhausted, she sleeps.
&n
bsp; Chapter Fifteen
Ragtime: Fin
“We’re due a fifteen-minute break,” says Fin. “Right about now.”
“Mmm,” says Joké.
Fin and Joké have merged tasks. They are inventorying the dry-food packages which are stowed on the walls. She stops, hand hooked into one of the net holes, and she turns to him. They are inches apart and Fin can smell her.
“Are you going to stop?”
Joké wags a finger from side to side. No.
“Why not?”
“Do you know what a zeitgeber is?” she asks. She hasn’t bound her hair, so her braids float about in the microgravity. Each braid seems an independent, living thing and Fin can’t stop staring. Free-floating long hair doesn’t seem like the right thing to do, but what does he know?
“The cutting edge?”
“Uh-uh, that’s zeitgeist. Zeitgeber is what helps humans maintain circadian rhythms. Biorhythms. Light-dark, sleep-wake cycles. Cortisol and shit. You follow?”
“Not really. Sort of.”
She checks something off the list she has. “When you’re planetside, the sun helps you do that. In space, it’s not so reliable. Work schedules help maintain those rhythms and stop us from going nuts. Without proper rhythms, the crew is prone to mistakes. That’s why she’s giving us this work.”
“So Shell’s wasting our time?”
“It’s not a waste of time. She’s being a good captain.”
“But you don’t want to obey her schedule.”
“That’s different. This is a worksheet for humans. I’m not entirely that. I require less sleep.”
“You like her,” says Fin.
“I like everybody,” says Joké. “Shell gets those cute little creases on her forehead when she disagrees with you. Sure, I like her.”
“Nobody likes everybody,” says Fin. “Some people are shitty.”
She sucks her teeth. “Some people are just more difficult to accept than others, and you shouldn’t dislike someone because of their weakness, rather enjoy them for their strengths. Now, Rasheed Fin, what shall we do with your fifteen minutes?”
Far from the Light of Heaven Page 9