by Glenn Damato
I examine the ring of red around Liberty’s hatches. The dust has a burnt stink most noticeable inside the airlock. Memories come, the sickening stench of Lysol in Paco’s hospital room.
There’s a little card in his dead fingers.
The Lord is my shepherd. Don’t look at it. It’s there. So what?
The Lord is my shepherd means Paco is gone.
The rosies don’t help. The rosies are Paco alive and healthy. Strict, but patient and understanding. His knowledge, his intelligence, his optimism.
A little white plastic card. The Lord is my shepherd.
Why did Paco cling to that little white card while he was dying? What’s so good about it?
Paco’s dead. I’m alone.
The Lord is my shepherd. It’s a death song. No wonder the nightmares.
The dust is abrasive? That could be a useful property. I get a damp wash towel from the pit and drag it across the dust around the hatch. Rub circles around The Lord is my shepherd, the whole multi-line message. Written neatly in black pen, maybe covered over with a clear paint to make it last against accidental destruction. What about deliberate destruction?
Red swirls across the writing. Yes, it’s coming off. In a minute every trace is gone. Only a blank pale green rectangle remains.
Victory.
Then why the tears?
FORTY
They secretly spoke with Ryder about the battery—what other possible reason could there be to make him walk out there? But he doesn’t say a word. Still in his thermals, he slides to the equipment bay floor and pulls me close. He wipes around my eyes.
“Here’s something I think you’ll like,” he whispers. “A lot of us are getting together early tomorrow morning to see Earth. You haven’t seen it, have you?”
“Not since we left.”
“It’s an incredible sight, trust me. Everyone’s going to be there, kind of like an Earth party. I think you should join us. Say a few words. Wouldn’t be the same without you.”
The rest of the night passes in a flash. People are awake and cycling through the airlocks soon after five. Heavy thermals, Eric reminds everyone. A frosty minus sixty-nine degrees out there.
I do this because Ryder asked me. Despite the chill, I feel better outside. The eastern horizon glows an exquisite indigo blue, with lavender higher up. The hills are absolute black. Orion sets in the west.
There it is! A brilliant bluish-white star just above some mountaintops. No, two stars—the Earth’s moon is a much dimmer star next to its companion.
Jürgen is out and about. Why not? Discovery Team Four will soon depart. He reminds us, “We are the first to see our home planet from the surface of another world.”
Ryder plants himself between me and Alison and drapes his arms across our shoulders. The sky brightens and individual rocks become visible. But the surface isn’t the same deep red as it was after sunset. A thin sheet of hazy white coats the ground and rocks.
“Carbon dioxide frost,” Eric says from the vicinity of Constitution. “Dry ice. It’ll be gone ten minutes after the sun comes up.”
Darien’s probably over by Constitution, too. Should I confront him? What would that accomplish? Focus on something else. The Earth and moon are beautiful against the pale yellow of dawn.
Liberty is surrounded by a dark border a meter wide—the heat radiating from the spacecraft prevented carbon dioxide from precipitating as frost. My eyes trace the AC power cable to where the reactor is buried. The gray metal fill port sticks up half a meter above the mound.
It’s coated with frost.
I push Ryder’s arm away and walk toward the reactor. Yes, frost. Frost all over the mound and the fill port itself. Thick frost, the texture appearing almost fuzzy.
“Ryder,” I call out, voice quivering. “I want you to look at this.”
Alison and Mikki come with him. This is Mikki’s reactor. She buried it with Shuko. Almost froze her fingers doing it.
I ask them, “A hundred kilowatts of heat. How could there be frost?”
Mikki answers, “It’s deep, over two meters under.”
“But it’s hot,” I snap at her. “The top is supposed to be nine hundred degrees!”
“It doesn’t always operate at full power,” Ryder says.
“It’s still hot. The fill tube is metal, and it connects directly to the top of the reactor. It conducts heat. How could there be frost?”
The light is brighter, the seeing better. The darker, frost-free zone around Liberty is undeniable. The methane bladder and the mining rover have no frost. Only a tiny amount of heat was necessary to keep those surfaces clear.
Now I’m certain.
I point to the ground. “It’s not running!”
Ryder says, “Cristina—”
“Listen to me! Don’t you have eyes? The reactor is cold, not doing anything, not charging the batteries.”
I need to get back inside. Ryder intercepts me.
“Calm down, okay? It’s under a ton of cold dirt and that’s a heat sink. It’s supposed to be a heat sink. That’s the idea.”
I pull open the hatch. “We need to find out if the other two are cold!”
I try to close the hatch but Ryder wedges himself into the airlock. “Quit screaming! It’s not helping anything, Cristina.”
“This is wrong! People are lying, hiding information.”
“Not a single engineer agrees with you.”
“There’s a voice inside your head speaking the truth. Listen to it!”
He hesitates, but answers back, “I’m out of my depth with this reactor shit and the way they have the battery rigged. But Eric knows everything’s running as designed.”
The instant the airlock is fully pressurized I push open the hatch and yank off my helmet. Shuko’s in the equipment bay, waiting. He blinks with sleepiness. “Cristina, be calm. Let’s sit down and talk things out. Please.”
“Listen to me,” I plead with him. “There’s no frost around the reactor. It’s cold. I think the other two are the same. Do you know what that means? We’re not getting power!” I point to the window. “Look for yourself!”
Shuko doesn’t look.
Ryder says, “Cristina, I’m going to get you a hot cup of tea, and we’re going to talk, okay?”
People cycle back inside and plan breakfast meetings to discuss the day’s activities. Who will be the first to fire bricks? Produce ethanol and plastics? Mikki, Paige, Alison, they all chat happy banter. Ryder claims he wants to talk, but he does no such thing. He simply sits and practically forces me to drink tea.
Eric pushes a vid to all spacecraft. “I have information to put out,” he says, speaking slower than normal. “I don’t do this gladly or with any sense of vindication. I’m doing it because there’s a critical lesson to be learned. Jürgen directed me to investigate the reason Resolute crashed, and why Endurance missed the landing zone. I had a hunch it had something to do with the engines burping or misfiring, and I was correct.”
I ask, “Why talk about this now?”
Eric’s face is replaced with a diagram of the landing configuration at high gate, thrusters and parachutes deployed. “We don’t know why the engines didn’t fire immediately. These things happen when liquid-fueled equipment is kept at near cryogenic temperatures. We can’t eliminate every failure. What matters is how we ourselves react to the unexpected. There’s the answer to your question, Cristina. I want to get this out of the way right now, for all of our benefit.”
The image zooms out so that the full parachute is visible. “When we reached the high gate position, all four thrusters were supposed to fire continuously and then the chute automatically breaks away. The sequencer knows to wait for stable thrust before releasing the chute. The aerodynamic pull of the chute provides directional stability to the spacecraft.”
The pic shows the chute flying free.
“Suppose the chute is released but the engines misfire, especially if one or two of those engines provide more
thrust than the others.”
The image spins out of control.
“This is what occurred on Resolute. We don’t have the data or the vid, but I’m certain that Naldo or whoever was seated at the GNP released the chute manually as soon as they reached high gate. They overrode the system, something I have specifically and repeatedly recommended against. We lost Resolute because the thrusters could not recover from the fast spin that began when the chute was manually released.”
A deep cold washes over my body.
Shuko asks, “Why didn’t Endurance also crash?”
“I’m guessing pure luck, as the data shows they recovered after sixteen relatively slow spins. By that time, they were too low and too far northeast to land in the programmed zone.”
Senuri covers her eyes. “I released the chute.” She glares at me. “You told me to override the landing sequence if something doesn’t work.”
“The thrusters on Independence and Constitution fired as designed,” Eric continues. “Liberty’s thrusters shot all over the place, putting all kinds of off-axial forces on the spacecraft, yet they did not spin. Why? They didn’t release their chute. It stabilized them until their engines recovered. But why did they hang onto their chute?”
A new vid, all jittery—inside Liberty during the landing decent! The image bounces and sunlight flies all over the control center. The memory sets my pulse racing.
The sound of thrusters banging. A lot of vibration, hard to see.
The GNP announces, “Misfire. Misfire. Misfire.”
Ryder screams, “Shit!” The vid slows to show his arm extending to the main panel. He wants to release the chute.
I grab his arm and shout, “Leave it! Sixty percent! Need sixty percent!”
The control center jerks and throws us sideways against our harnesses. Then the engines roar and the shaking subsides.
A thump. The chute breaking free?
I yell, “We’re good!”
The vid ends. Eric’s worn-out, scruffy-bearded face comes back.
“I do this without joy. I do this because it’s necessary. Cristina didn’t listen to her own advice. If she had, she’d likely be dead, along with everyone else on Liberty. Moral of the story? Follow the procedures. The biggest danger facing us is failing to properly operate the tools we have been provided. The results can be fatal. Don’t make these kinds of decisions on your own. Talk to me, or Darien, Ryder, Paige, or Norberto.”
I don’t want to look at anyone. This is a punch to my gut. No, a physical attack can’t come close.
If not for me, everyone on Resolute would be alive. Vijay Mehta would be alive. He could experience the freedom he dreamed about. Now he would never do that, and one person is responsible.
My skin tingles. Ryder places his hand over mine, but I jerk back as if to avoid contaminating him.
“I deserve to be punished!” I scream as loud as I can. “So punish me! No matter what you do, I’ll live with this forever. But that doesn’t change the fact. We’re not getting any power! Get your sand rover to dig a hole through the mound. See if it’s hot. I’m going to do that right now.”
I rise but Andre blocks my path. He’s light. Am I mad enough to shove him aside? But Ryder’s powerful grip seizes my upper body and pulls me away from the access hatch. “Sorry, Cristina. I can’t let you do that.”
“I can prove it if you let me!”
Shuko fumbles with something in his hands. Ryder grasps my head and holds tightly. He forces my face toward his.
“Relax. Please relax.”
Shuko mumbles, “Mental exhaustion.”
I scream, “Screw you!”
A sharp, hurtful pinch on my neck.
Ryder’s face blurs. The control deck shimmers into curves.
Vision fading. Words from far away. Then silence.
Then black.
FORTY-ONE
A whisper. “She’s waking up.”
Dark shapes, just blurs. Not enough light. Only a faint red glow.
Piercing headache, right in front. Breathing, panting, from someone else. Faces, and close.
“Cristina?”
Gentle hands, but cold.
“Cristina. Can you hear me?” That has to be Alison.
“Drink this, Cristina.”
A cup of apple juice, slightly warm. Sweet and wonderful.
I jump forward in the sleeper. Ryder? Shuko? What are they doing?
Alison gently positions me against the cushion. Everyone’s eyes are tense, almost wild, and their chins quiver. From the cold, or from fear?
“Drink it all, Cristina,” says Senuri. “Need to wake up.”
Time and thought become real. Alison steps backward. Her breath rolls out in puffs of vapor.
“Why is it so cold? I have to piss.”
“Sure. One step at a time. How do you feel?”
“Like shit.”
It’s night, and it’s been a long time. Since the struggle. What was that about?
The reactor. The batteries.
I toss the empty cup to the floor. “What the fuck is going on? Tell me right now. Better be the truth!”
The sleeper door slides open. Ryder.
I murmur, “Estúpido bastardo.”
Ryder squeezes into the tiny compartment with his eyes cast down. He wears thermal coveralls, they all do. Don’t they know thermals are supposed to be kept in the equipment bay? Maybe it doesn’t matter anymore.
Ryder takes my right hand. Alison shifts to make room for him to lean forward. “I’m going to take you into the control center, okay? Ready?”
Alison and Senuri back out of the sleeper. The room sways. A trace of the drug, or something else?
The cold! It has to be zero degrees. And why so dark? I pull on thermals while Ryder’s grip keeps me upright. They’re cold, damp, and gritty. The control center is dimly lit by yellow emergency lights. The usual hums from the vent fans and the equipment bay are almost gone. Unnaturally, weirdly quiet.
People! They’re packed into the cramped space, bunched around the table and seated against the walls. Everyone from Liberty, plus Senuri, Andre, Darien, Jürgen, and Eric. Eleven total. They stare at me. Terrified children, clutching each other, wriggling fingers, weakly rocking back and forth. Jürgen is different. He’s thinking, thinking hard.
“I have to pee,” I tell them before carefully descending into the hygiene pit. It’s a freezer that reeks of stale urine. I poke my head into the equipment bay. Only one CO2 scrubber running, plus one of the six vent fans.
The power panel flashes a lot of red.
UNDERVOLT DISCONNECT
Batteries exhausted.
Then it was true all along. The reactors never put out any power. Current time 11 Gemini 01:39 PCT. Out for almost twenty hours. No wonder the weakness and hunger.
Mikki gives me her seat. Ryder is directly across the table. He whispers, “I’m sorry, Cristina.”
I run my hands over my numb face. “Are the backpacks charged?”
Eric and Ryder answer at the same time. “Yes.”
“A few aren’t fully charged,” adds Darien. “But they all have at least five hours’ oh-two and power, not counting the thirty-minute reserve.”
I look at the tabletop. There’s a perfectly round stain from some beverage. “Is there any possibility of getting power from the reactors?”
Eric’s words are low and soft. “No possibility. Cold start up requires a minimum of eighty amp-hours at twenty-five volts. We don’t have the charge remaining, even if we wired the cells in series to get the voltage up.”
“What about using the trucks as generators?”
“The fourth Discovery Team used all three trucks, and practically all the methanol we had left.”
The silence hangs. In the dim light Eric is just a beard, a mouth, and a pair of eyes.
“I have one more question. Do we know why this happened?”
Paige grumbles, “What difference does it make?”
Eri
c leans forward. “The reactors are an early series. The startup scripts failed, but they didn’t generate a specific error message. The reactors can’t be tested because once the core goes critical, they’re radioactive from fission decay even if they’re shut down. There’s a movable reflector ring, and it wasn’t in the expected position. I’ve edited the sequencer that writes the script, and I honestly believed the reactor was at criticality based on the neutron flux.”
Andre nods. “I saw the same. No errors.”
“I knew my scripts were timing out,” Mikki says.
I glare at Eric. “How can you say you didn’t know those reactors weren’t generating current? How could you lie about it, given that eventually the batteries would go out?”
Eric lets out a slow breath. “I didn’t lie.”
“Then you didn’t understand what you were doing.”
“None of us had a deep understanding. When the charge dropped below seventy percent, the SMB automatically started isolating banks as a protection against a short circuit or other accidental drain. I edited the kernel to keep that from happening, and I got what I thought were accurate readings. I believed the other two reactors were producing power.”
I look around our tiny, cramped space. “You assumed even if your reactor wasn’t charging, the other two were. You assumed it, you believed it.”
Mikki covers her face. “I didn’t want to be the only one who couldn’t do their job. My stupidity killed us.”
“Shut it,” I snap. “Darien! You’re the physics kid. Do you understand what happened with the reactors?”
Darien raises his head. “The key is the startup rate. I believe we didn’t get the expected result because the fission fuel is a couple of decades old, and the higher gravity here compared to the moon might be a factor too. But if we had enough electricity, we could script the reflector ring to the bottom range and move it up a couple of millimeters at a time to keep the startup rate below the trip threshold. If we could do that, the reactor will achieve criticality and produce rated power.”
“Eric, can you try all that with the Endurance reactor?”
He nods.
Jürgen says, “I have a plan.”
“We have a plan,” Eric repeats. “We worked out the numbers.”