by Gabriel Just
whether these directions should be avoided or pursued, which resulted in even more crashes.
Finally they reached the central object. It was too big to be illuminated by the shuttle’s lights.
“What is this thing?” Katara wondered.
“I have no idea,” Dwakk confessed. “But it is definitely too big to be fired by a Transcannon. It looks artificial. Could it be a station?”
They flew around it for a bit and soon found a docking port.
“Must be a station,” Katara mumbled. “A very old one, judging from this port. It looks abandoned. Patcher, could you scan it? Is somebody onboard?”
After a short scan Patcher replied, “I have difficulties scanning the inside of the station. Something is scrambling my scans. It is located in the middle of the station. I sense a minimal power signature. Possibly emergency power. Atmosphere is breathable, no hull breaches detected. Should I do another scan?”
“Any lifesigns?”
“Scanning… no lifesigns. Better check again, just to be sure. Scanning… I found something. Confirming result. Scanning… now it’s gone.”
“Must be the scrambling device,” Katara guessed.
“Why would someone scramble a station out here? Wherever ‘here’ is,” Dwakk whispered. “Maybe it’s a military base? Or a secret research facility?”
“There is only one way to find out. We have to go inside and look for ourselves,” Katara suggested.
“No way! I am not entering this station. Didn’t you pay attention. Somebody went through a great deal of trouble to keep this thing a secret. And I don’t want to provoke those people. I say we stay in the shuttle. It is nice and warm, we have food and water. Somebody will rescue us eventually.”
“We don’t even know where we are. Nobody will come get us. There is no alternative, we have to board this station if we want to find answers.”
“Suddenly I am not that interested in answers anymore.”
“Fine, just stay here. But Patcher and I, we will go. And we will leave the shuttle docked. So you might be alone in here for hours. And after that you will most likely hear someone knock from the other side of the docking port. And I can not guarantee you that that will be us.”
“Can I change my mind again? I want to go back to the shuttle. Waiting for you doesn’t sound so bad after all,” Dwakk said in a worried voice.
“Too late for that. Now we are inside and we will not split up, whatever happens. That’s the most important thing,” Katara reminded everyone.
“But nobody told me there will be no lights. Flashlights make everything so much worse.”
“I wouldn’t call Patcher’s fusion lamp a flashlight. This station is now better illuminated than it probably was when there still was power.”
“So you think it was operational at some point?” Dwakk asked.
“Of course. Nobody builds space stations that are abandoned from the beginning. Well, not a lot of people at least.”
“Who do you think build it?”
“I don’t know. It looks old. Judging from the height of the doors it may have been Piki.” Katara bumped her head while entering the next corridor. “Yes, definitely Piki.”
“Could have also been Dranik,” Dwakk mentioned. “The doors are big enough for me.”
“Well, the thing is,” Katara explained, “that Dranik always built their doors much bigger. The size of a door is not determined by how big a race is, but how big it thinks that it is.”
Katara was able to smile so friendly that Dwakk did not realize that her statement could be considered an insult.
“So you think it’s a research station?” he asked her.
“I have no idea. Not all Piki are scientists, you know.”
“What are we looking for here, anyway?”
“I don’t know yet. Just be observant.”
Dwakk concentrated. “I hear footsteps!” he shouted.
Katara tried to calm him down. “Those are ours. I think.”
They continued to wander around but didn’t find anything insightful. Empty crew quarters, abandoned mess halls, maintenance rooms, nothing that would hint at the stations origin or purpose. Finally they found a room that attracted Katara’s attention.
“You see what I see?” she asked.
“Of course,” Dwakk replied. “I recognize this machine. I am not a complete idiot. That’s really good news. We should… use… this machine. But first we need to find a way to power it.”
“Why would we want to power an emergency generator?”
“A generator? Yes, of course, I knew that. It looks exactly like a generator, very similar to all those I studied during my training. I meant to say ‘We need to find a way to power it up.’ Any ideas?”
“The on button, maybe?”
“Good idea. The honor is all yours.”
Katara pressed the big red button on the generator and with a humming noise it powered up. Soon after, the whole station was illuminated with emergency lights. Also a terminal seemed to receive energy. Katara approached it.
“It’s frozen,” she said. “It doesn’t accept my input. However, we can read the last thing that was written here. It seems to be a log entry. ‘Now I am the last one alive. I don’t know what to do. I don’t think it matters anymore. I decided that I will power down the generator. Maybe that will at least slow it down. But to be honest, I don’t think so. Good bye.’”
“Turn it off again!” Dwakk shouted.
“Why?”
“Didn’t you pay attention? Everyone on this station was killed by something. And turning off the generator slowed it down. Whatever ‘it’ is, I don’t want to accelerate it.”
“I don’t think we need to be afraid. Whatever ‘it’ was, it must be long gone. But if you insist, we can turn the lights back off,” Katara suggested.
“No way! We need the lights. Just promise that you will be careful. Is Patcher armed in any way?”
“Patcher is not a combat robot,” Katara replied. “But it can defend us, if necessary. However, it has to deactivate its fusion lamp in order to power its weapons. Isn’t that right, Patcher?”
The robot didn’t reply.
“Patcher? Are you alright? Patcher, reply!”
Patcher remained silent. Katara waved her hand in front of its big eye, but Patcher kept staring in the distance.
“What’s wrong with it?” Dwakk asked and began to panic.
“I don’t know. Normally it’s never that quiet. Maybe it’s this scrambling device. But Patcher is still following us, so I think we should not worry too much. Maybe it just needs a reboot. Let’s take a look around, maybe other terminals work now.”
Patcher remained closely behind Katara and Dwakk tried to keep up with them. They found some more terminals, all were frozen. Most displayed some cryptic messages or numbers, only a few showed log entries.
Katara read them out aloud, since Dwakk was to nervous to concentrate on reading anything.
“This one sounds interesting. ‘I don’t think it will work. I mean, there is a reason it isn’t realized anywhere in the universe. Some things are just forbidden by the laws of nature. And there might be a reason for that.’”
“I don’t like the sound of that,” Dwakk noted.
“That could mean anything. Let’s look for more terminals before we jump to conclusions.”
Soon they found some, but none of the log entries put Dwakk’s mind at ease. Some were complete gibberish, but the following entries were at least somewhat insightful:
“We did it! We finally did it! It is possible after all. And it was so easy in the end. We all wonder why nobody tried it before.”
“The experiment was successful. Containing it might be a different issue. We did not anticipate how powerful it is. But we will find a solution.”
“Something is happening. It affects all our hardware. But we can not abandon the project now. It’s too late for that.”
“Day 4 after the incident. We still don’t
know what happened or where we are now. Most of our equipment is affected by it. The food printers don’t work. People are scared.”
“Day 7. We had to destroy all the maintenance robots. Their malfunctions became dangerous. Nobody knows what we should do next. We think it is contained for now, but nobody can say that for sure. Not after what happened.”
After the last entry Dwakk decided he heard enough. “I say we leave this station right away. Something happened here, everyone is dead and Patcher behaves funny. Enough reasons to leave this station as soon as possible.”
“And go where? We have to find out what exactly happened here. Patcher needs to scan this station. But for that, we have to deactivate this scrambling field.”
“There might be a reason for this field, you know?”
“There is no alternative. I will not spend the rest of my life here. Patcher and I will go to the center of the station to do something about this field. You can come with us, or you can go back to the shuttle alone.”
“At least let me go in the middle,” Dwakk pleaded.
“You can try to squeeze in between Patcher and me, but it is very keen on following me closely and still not very responsive.”
The three walked through a long corridor and were now very close to the center. A closed door labeled “Prime Laboratory” blocked their way.
“I can’t open it,” Katara realized. “It may be broken or sealed on purpose. No way to override it.”
“Bad luck, let’s go home,” Dwakk said and turned around instantly.
“We can’t give up now. There must be a maintenance tunnel nearby.”
After a brief search Katara found an access point. She removed a panel and found a tunnel that lead