She looked round the group. “Arnold?”
He shrugged. “Vihaan.”
Beth nodded. “OK. Lauryn?”
“You,” said Lauryn without hesitation, and Beth smiled at her.
“One each. Lucy?”
“I … ah … I do not know.” Lucille squirmed, looking from one to the other, avoiding eye contact. She’d suggested the vote, but didn’t seem to like the idea now. “I theenk –” her accent had become very strong – “I will … abstain? I do not know. I am sorry.”
“That’s OK,” said Beth. “Don’t worry.” I thought Lucille would vote for me. “It’s OK.”
She took a deep breath. “Mikkel?”
Mikkel was sitting with his arms loosely wrapped round his knees, looking down. He didn’t react when Beth spoke; she wondered at first if he’d even heard her. After a moment, though, he nodded and looked up.
He said, “I think Vihaan is better at leading, yes?” He nodded again. “Yes. He would be better maybe. I would vote for him.”
Beth’s heart sank, and Vihaan stood taller.
“But …” Mikkel continued calmly, “this is not a vote place. This is a starship. We follow the captain. We do not have a game of who will be captain today. We have a … like the rope, yes?”
“Chain of command,” said Vihaan flatly, not looking at him. “You mean we have a chain of command.”
“Yes, a chain, yes,” said Mikkel. “On a starship, we follow the chain of command. So I say, the captain is the captain, and we do not vote the captain out. Yes?”
There was a silence.
“Thank you,” said Beth in a thin gasp. She realised she hadn’t breathed out the whole time.
And that was it. Arnold shook his head. Vihaan raised his eyes to the ceiling, but then nodded.
“OK,” he said calmly. “It is settled. From now on Beth is captain, and we do what she says, understand?”
They nodded.
Vihaan glared at Arnold. “Understand?”
“Sure,” said Arnold, shrugging. “If you say so.”
“I do.
”Vihaan turned to Beth. “Well, Captain,” he said, as if nothing had happened. “What are your orders?”
13
Investigations
What are your orders?
Beth faced them. This was it. She was the captain, this was her crew, and her job was to get them home.
“Right,” she said, as confidently as she could manage. “Like Vihaan said, this is an unexpected situation but not an emergency. We have a ship that can keep us alive for as long as we need. We don’t know how to repair the Jump drive, yet – but we’ll figure it out. We’re not helpless, and we’re not alone. We’ve got Ship to help us, keep us safe. We will get home. It’s just a question of figuring out how. Now,” she said, looking round. “Does anyone have any other questions?”
“Yeah,” said Arnold. “Is there anything to eat? ’Cos I’m starving.”
They ate in the main canteen. The little kitchen droids still worked, and they served up a table full of fresh sandwiches, plus some salad that nobody touched.
The canteen seemed strange with only the six of them. One wall was still playing the simulation of the Eos Five landscape, its blue-green grass waving in an imaginary breeze. Whenever she saw the movement at the corner of her eye Beth thought someone was walking in on them. All the lights were on, which was inefficient, but at least there were no shadows in the corners of the room.
They didn’t talk much. Lauryn munched quickly and absently, her hand twitching on her knee. Arnold had gathered a ludicrous number of sandwiches and was working through them with mechanical determination. Lucille wasn’t eating at all. She sat with her knees tucked up and her arms wrapped round them, staring at the simulation without seeing.
Beth sighed, and sat down next to her. “Hey.”
“Hey,” said Lucille, in a small voice.
“Have a sandwich,” said Beth. “They’ve got peanut butter and jelly. It’s the USA’s contribution to world cuisine. It’s a travesty, and bizarrely delicious. Want to try?” She held it up, but Lucille didn’t take it.
Beth nodded. “It’s going to be OK, Lucy. We’ll get the Jump working, or build a new message shuttle, or something like that. And then we’ll get to a colony, and they’ll Wake everyone up, easy. And then we’ll be heroes, right?”
“I do not want to be a hero,” said Lucille softly. She pressed her face against her knees. “I want Maman et Papa.”
“Yeah. Me too.” Beth remembered standing over her mum’s sleep pod, resting her hand on the glass as if she could reach in and wake her up. She put an arm round Lucille. “We’ll just have to look after each other for a bit,” she said. “But that’s OK.”
After a few seconds, Lucille nodded and lifted her head, wiping her face on one arm. She looked at the sandwich in Beth’s hand.
“That looks disgusting,” she said. She took it and ate a bite and nodded. “This is the worst thing I have ever tasted.”
“You’re welcome,” said Beth.
After lunch, Beth sent Arnold and Vihaan off to look at the ship stores, and Mikkel and Lucille to check life support and communications, and to try to figure out the navigation systems. She wanted Lauryn to help, but Lauryn was still trying to find her pad.
“Maybe I left it in my quarters,” she said doubtfully. “I’ll have a look.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Beth. “We shouldn’t go off alone.”
Lauryn shrugged and waved at a camera. “We’re never alone. Ship is always watching us.” But she waited for Beth.
The corridors were quiet. Although the generators were running again, Beth and Lauryn’s feet still seemed to echo against silence as they walked. The side panels that usually showed all the activity on board were almost dark, just six tiny white dots moving around the ship. It was creepy.
It seemed to bother Lauryn as well; she wasn’t as chirpy as usual. Her hands kept twitching, reaching for a pad that wasn’t there. She sped up as they approached her cabin and jabbed the door button eagerly.
The door stayed closed.
“Ship, the door won’t open,” said Lauryn. She kept pressing the button over and over, jab-jab-jab. “Ship, open the door.”
Ship’s hologram appeared next to them. “This room cannot be accessed,” it said.
“Why not?”
“Some rooms have been destroyed or damaged and are not safe. Structural damage has occurred throughout the ship. This room cannot be accessed.”
“But I need to get in there!” said Lauryn.
“This room cannot be accessed.”
“Beth! Order Ship to open the door!” beseeched Lauryn. “Let me in!”
Beth frowned. “Sorry,” she said. “If Ship thinks it’s not safe, then we can’t go in.”
“But my pad! All my stuff, it’s all on my pad! I need it!” Lauryn was almost wailing now.
“Look, we can get you another pad. We have supplies. We can—”
“It won’t be the same!” she cried. “It’ll be some rubbish with a sub-processor that you can just about play Pong on; it won’t be security hardened or have any scanning modules or—”
“Stop!” snapped Beth. “Get a hold of yourself!”
Lauryn stopped. “You told me we’d get my pad back,” she muttered. “You promised.”
“Look, I’m sorry,” said Beth. “We can’t get it and that’s that. We’ll get you one from Supplies.” She held up a hand. “A good one. Best we can find. Come on.”
They headed back towards the canteen. Lauryn was quiet, but her face was dark and ugly, angrier than Beth had ever seen. She hissed something about Ship as she walked, but Beth pretended she hadn’t heard.
Mikkel and Lucille returned at about the same time. The first part of their report was fine. Mikkel believed the life support systems were all intact – power, oxygen, gravity, water purifiers. They needed servicing occasionally, but in theory they could keep everyone
on board alive pretty much forever. Navigation hardware was working too; they just needed the software to talk to it. Lucille had tried to figure out how their Jump had taken them so far, but was struggling to make sense of the readings. And, of course, they still had to work out how to fix the emitters on the ship’s hull without Gizmos. But it was a start. Lucille seemed happier now that she had something to do.
Communications were less promising. There was no way to build message shuttles, and no relay station close enough to send a message to – unless they wanted to wait five years for a reply. Beth nodded; it was what she had expected. And she was starting to realise that part of her job was to nod calmly and look as if everything that happened was under her control. Never dismayed, surprised or alarmed. Always confident.
“There is something else,” said Mikkel. “The Sparrowhawk is gone. And Captain Kier is gone also.”
Beth gasped. She suddenly remembered Kier jogging past her and her mum, as they’d been walking towards the sleep pods. He’d been sent out to check a nearby anomaly, she remembered. Probably nothing, he’d said, grinning. Or an alien invasion.
“He made it out,” she said. “He escaped!”
Mikkel shrugged. “Perhaps. Or something happened to him as well, yes?”
But Beth shook her head. “No,” she said. “He’s out there. And the Sparrowhawk can Jump, like us. Maybe he Jumped home to tell everyone. Or maybe … maybe he’s looking for us.”
“It’s unlikely,” said Lauryn. But Beth could see that part of her wanted to believe it. She chewed her lip. “We’re a long way away; how would he find us?”
“Still. Maybe, eh?”
It was another twenty minutes before Vihaan and Arnold signalled them, appearing on a large display above the table. Vihaan was standing with his arms folded, too cool to look into the camera, but Arnold seemed very pleased with himself.
“Hey, guys!” he shouted. “Wait, I – Arnold and Vihaan reporting to the captain, sir! Ma’am. I – sorry, sir. I mean, ma’am.”
“Arnold, shut up,” said Beth, grinning. “What have you got?”
“Captain, we’ve got this.” Arnold reached up, lifting the camera from wherever it had been perched and swinging it round towards a large container door. He wrenched the door open with a flourish.
Six white spacesuits hung on a rack along one side of the container. On the other side were backpacks, and the far wall was lined with boots and helmets.
Beth stared. Arnold swung the camera back to his beaming face. “What do you think, captain?”
Spacesuits…
Beth grinned. “We’ll be right down.”
“We checked the equipment lockers,” said Vihaan. “We found where the suits should have been, but they were all gone.” He and Arnold walked down aisles of shelves stuffed with thousands of plastic containers, with the others following.
“Then I remembered the supply run,” said Arnold. He grinned at them.
“My mom,” he said. “When she was a recruit, she hated the supply run. If you were late, or your boots weren’t polished, or you spoke back to the sergeant, they’d send you down to Supplies and make you carry back a whole suit – backpack, helmet, the works. Then they’d send you back down again with it. And they’d make you do it again, I don’t know, maybe five times.
“Those suits weigh about sixty kilos. And the backpack’s awkward to carry and the helmet’s a total b—” He stopped. “I mean, my mom, uh, really hated the helmet.”
He turned left down an aisle that looked identical to the others.
“So, Mom used to say, if I was slow picking up my room or whatever, that she’d send me on the supply run, you know, just foolin’. But then I thought, maybe it’s worth a look. So I looked. And … look!”
He waved his hand like a magician towards the back wall and a stack of cargo containers. One of them was open and had lights on, and Beth could see the suits inside.
“Right,” she said, nodding. “Let’s take a look.”
“It was good work, Arnold,” said Vihaan. Arnold beamed.
“Oh, I mean, yeah, good work,” said Beth, frowning. Giving praise, that’s something you’re supposed to do, she thought. So many things you’re supposed to do.
They went inside.
The container was bright white. Each suit hung in front of a locker that contained layers of underclothes, like old-fashioned long johns. The suits themselves were large, though not as bulky as she’d expected, but the backpacks – with their oxygen tanks, power supplies and manoeuvring thrusters – were huge and unwieldy. She lifted one off its hook and gasped.
She tried on one of the helmets. It was large, with a wide visor, and she could see surprisingly well from inside. There were two thin tubes near her mouth; water and liquid food, she guessed. She was very aware of her breathing, and the way it pushed back into her face when she exhaled. It felt quite claustrophobic and after a second or two she took it off.
The others were trying out the equipment too – boots, gloves, helmets, even climbing into the suits. Arnold was juggling some of the gloves, laughing, and Lauryn seemed to be trying to dismantle a helmet with her pocket screwdriver kit.
“Stop!” Beth called out. “STOP!”
They stopped. Beth said, “We’d better be careful. We’re going to need these.” She looked around. “Six suits. I guess we could all go out.”
“Not Lauryn,” snorted Arnold.
“Hey!” shouted Lauryn. “Why not? I’d be as good as you!”
“Sure, I know you would,” said Beth. She frowned at Arnold, but Vihaan shook his head.
“He’s right,” he said. “Lauryn is too small.”
Beth realised what he meant. The suits were designed for adults, of course; Lauryn would be bouncing around inside it. Arnold and Vihaan would be OK. Beth, too, and perhaps Mikkel. Lucille would struggle – although Beth felt that getting Lucille out on to the surface of the ship was never really an option.
“OK,” she said. “Sorry, Lauryn, but it’s true. Anyway, we’ll need support from inside while we go out, and you’re our best techie.”
Lauryn grumbled but didn’t object.
“So what do you think, captain?” asked Arnold.
Beth stared at the suits. Was it feasible? To fix the emitters by hand? To go out on to the surface of the ship by themselves?
“OK,” she said. “We’ll bring four up to the main airlocks for now, figure out how to get them working. Arnold, you find the instructions and safety protocols. And then…” Beth grinned. “Maybe we’ll go for a little walk.”
14
Suits
They spent the afternoon heaving the spacesuits from the supply room to the main airlocks, three decks up and halfway round the ship. Mikkel found a trolley, but the suits were heavy, and the backpacks worse, and the helmets – large, shiny and difficult to hold – were everything that Arnold’s mom had claimed. It took three trips and a fair amount of bad temper before they were done.
Arnold wanted to try them on right away, but Beth refused. Everyone was tired, and the suit fastenings and safety systems looked complicated. She called it a day and they gathered in the canteen again for dinner. They were weary but hopeful; finding the spacesuits gave everyone a feeling that there was a plan. Arnold and Vihaan spread the instructions out and argued over them between mouthfuls of pizza. Lucille and Mikkel discussed their navigation investigations, and how close they were to working out what needed doing, and Lauryn had retrieved a shiny, expensive pad from Supplies and was reinstalling her old setup on to it.
The image of Eos Five behind them dimmed, and the room lights too, as the ship dropped into evening mode. Beth was tired; her muscles ached, and it was hard to keep her eyes open. It had been a long day. But as the shadows grew she realised that once she left the canteen, the only place to go was her old room. Alone.
The thought flicked across them all, one by one. It cast a gloom over the group; they fell silent, thinking about the walk back alon
g the corridors, the smell of unused air. The coldness of a room with no other people, no brothers or sisters, no parents.
Suddenly Mikkel said, “We should try to save energy.”
Beth shrugged. With two generators and only six active crew, it wasn’t really a priority.
But Mikkel persisted. “Lighting and heating all our individual rooms, it is not efficient, yes?”
There was a thoughtful pause.
Vihaan said, “Also, it leaves us scattered around the ship. That’s not very good in an emergency.”
“Well … we could set up a dorm room,” said Arnold. “Or two rooms. Then we won’t be alone— I mean, it would be more efficient than being alone.”
And everyone breathed out a long sigh, and nodded, and smiled. And that was that.
They converted a storage area into two dorms, one for the girls and one for the boys, near the canteen. The dorms were basic, just long boxes with low ceilings, but they looked good once they were set up. Cosy, Beth thought. The children went back to their old rooms for bedding and any personal items. Beth and Lauryn went together to Beth’s room.
Entering her quarters was creepy. The room felt unused, the air stale. There was a thin layer of dust over everything, perhaps shaken loose from the Event. It felt like a long time since she’d last been there, and her own tiny bed seemed both comforting and strange. She looked wistfully at a small stuffed rabbit on her shelf but decided to leave it. It didn’t seem very Captain.
She reached under her pillow for her diary, but it wasn’t there. She looked all over the bed, and then in the few drawers and cupboards she had, and in the small gap behind the bed, but couldn’t find it.
“Ship, where did I leave my diary?” she asked, but Ship couldn’t tell her. She sighed and made a mental note to find out if there was another book in stores. You could get pads easily enough, but physical books were rare, heavy and expensive. It would turn up, no doubt.
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