The Disturbance: Hard Science Fiction, page 8
It was true. Benjamin zoomed in on the central structure again. If Christine was in there, she could have survived. But why was her capsule hit near the thrusters? Was she trying to fix a problem there? Why? The ship’s thrusters were currently on standby. They wouldn’t be powered up until it was time to fly back in a couple of months. And even if she had attempted a repair, it would make more sense to exit from the main ship instead of flying there with her capsule.
“None of this makes any sense,” said David.
“I’ll be there in about two hours,” said Aaron. “Then we’ll know more.”
“Be careful,” said Benjamin.
Space capsule A, April 21, 2094
The capsule drifted unpowered toward a vertical wall. Fifteen meters, ten, eight, six meters. Aaron watched his flight path on screen. He had chosen to dock on what looked like an undamaged area of the ship’s outer hull. Benjamin was right. He couldn’t help anyone if he took unnecessary risks. His finger hovered over the thruster trigger. He felt impatient, but he pulled himself together. If he braked too early, it would take longer.
Now. A short burst from the main thruster was enough. Aaron braced himself to stop himself crashing into the screen. Three meters to go. The capsule had extended the manipulator arm. It was designed for repairing defective probes. But it should also be capable of anchoring the capsule to the rail that ran around the outside of the ship.
The display told him he was moving at five centimeters per second. He had applied the main thruster perfectly. A second longer and the capsule would now have a negative speed. But its inertia was significant even at that speed. What was its mass? He could only guess. Five tonnes at least, probably more. Could the arm hold that? It suddenly looked very fragile. But that was in comparison to the huge dimensions of Shepherd-1 looming toward him.
And... grip. The three fingers on the end of the manipulator arm reached for the massive rail that ran all the way around the ship. On the first attempt, only one finger hooked over it. Try again. Two fingers gripped the rail. And then the third. But the capsule’s inertia dragged it farther. The friction caused the fingers to heat up. Various warnings appeared on screen. Structure endangered! Overheating! But it was slowing. The arm was holding! The capsule still wasn’t playing ball. It had slight lateral momentum, as if it wanted to roll across the hull of the ship. The arm’s two joints twisted unnaturally. If the capsule could feel pain, it would be screaming. Aaron sympathized.
But the arm held. The capsule came to a standstill. Now it was up to him. He had to get to Christine as soon as possible. She hadn’t replied to any of his calls. He had already removed his tracksuit. He closed the diaper around his waist, drifted out of the control room into the workshop, and climbed feet-first into the exosuit. He checked the equipment. The life support, heating and cooling, sensors, and radio were working. He quickly closed the hatch above his head. Time to uncouple.
Everything was black. He panicked. Breathe slowly, Aaron, breathe slowly. But it didn’t help, he breathed faster. There was a loud drumming in his ears. He was the only thing left in the world. The others had never existed. He was finally awake. Breathe slowly. Breathe slowly. He perceived a loud buzz. The suit’s life support. He reached out with the arms, but there was nothing there. He was alone. Breathe slowly. Something was pressing down on his chest and causing him to wheeze.
Another force squeezed his pelvis. He knew what it was, it was panic, but he couldn’t get it under control. He needed to urinate, so he let it happen. A warm patch spread out in his diaper. He could feel himself again. That was his heat, his body. He was in a suit and the suit was floating in space. The capsule that brought him here must be nearby. The drumming in his ears faded. He slowly regained control. The panic was still there, but he was able to isolate it, put it in its place.
He reached up to his helmet and activated his headlamp. It projected a pale gray circle on the steel wall in front of him. Shepherd-1 was less than a meter away. He oriented himself. In his panic, he had moved three meters away from the capsule. It felt like he had merely spun around a few times. The universe was a deceptive thing. In his capsule, with all its sensors, it felt bright and manageable. In the exosuit, with just a few millimeters of metal and textile between him and the infinite darkness, it showed its true face. They should have spent more time training in the space suits.
Aaron moved the suit into a horizontal position using the corrective thrusters. His feet were pointing toward Shepherd-1. He closed his eyes and imagined himself standing on the ship. He opened his eyes again. Now he felt like he was floating upright above the ship. To be safe, he moved down until his feet touched the hull. He swiveled the helmet lamp. The drives must be in that direction, forward. The airlock was in the other direction. He moved forward in a strange combination of walking, floating, and flying.
The headlamp lit up the distinctive bulge of the ship’s drives. The crack was obvious, a gaping wound in the outer hull, ten or twelve meters long, two or three meters wide. The metal looked like it had burst outward, as though something had been desperate to get out. And a metal strut was missing from above the damaged area. He drifted past the wound and looked directly into the bowels of one of the direct fusion drives. It appeared to be irreparably damaged. But the radiation sensor wasn’t measuring any activity. So the drive itself couldn’t be the source of the explosion. The only possibility was the reaction mass – or one of the small chemical thrusters that were used to start the fusion drives.
He drifted out a couple of meters. The crack looked menacing, but as far as he could tell, only one of the ten DFDs was affected. So a return flight to Earth should still be possible. He turned his head to the right and the lamp beam followed. That was where capsule C had got caught on one of the spokes. A shiver ran up his spine. Christine’s space capsule looked like a cracked egg. It had been cut in half by the metal strut that was missing from above the crack in the ship’s hull. The explosion must have accelerated it fast enough to cut through the capsule like a sharp knife. If Christine wasn’t wearing a space suit, she was dead.
Aaron hesitated, then gathered himself. He was here to help Christine. He flew directly to the capsule. The headlamp illuminated a square object. He touched it. It was a pillow, frozen solid. Aaron flew closer. Most surfaces were covered in a layer of ice – the capsule’s frozen atmosphere. The floor was split open between the living area and workshop. Pipes stuck out of it. He floated around the capsule. A human figure was hanging from the bottom of it with its legs pointing down. His heart started racing again, before he realized it was an exosuit. Every capsule had one. He touched it. The leg bent easily, so there was nobody in it.
He approached the place where Christine’s capsule had ripped open. The split was surprisingly clean, like a smooth cut through butter. The capsule’s hull had a special coating to absorb and disperse any impact. But it clearly had no chance against a thin metal strut propelled by an explosion. Energy was mass times speed squared. If the strut was moving fast enough, it could cut through anything.
What struck him as bizarre was how well preserved the furnishings were. The microwave oven in the kitchen, only thirty centimeters from the split, looked immaculate and probably still functioned. Christine had made her bed. The covers were neatly smoothed and folded back. There was nobody in the capsule’s control room, which also served as a living room. The commander’s seatbelt was hanging down. A small indent indicated that someone sat there regularly. He nervously opened the WHC door. It was empty. In the shower maybe? Please, no! He checked, but there was just some ice glittering on the walls. He searched the workshop. A tool chest had jammed itself in a corner. It was open. Had Christine tried to repair something? That seemed unlikely.
“Aaron? How does it look?” asked Benjamin via radio.
“I don’t know. The capsule is scrap, but there’s no sign of Christine.”
“How are you holding up?”
“I’m OK.”
“Good. Be careful. David can’t be far behind you.”
Aaron didn’t reply. Christine definitely wasn’t in the capsule. But that was no reason to be hopeful, far from it.
The screen in his capsule went gray. Aaron switched the scanner to infrared. Christine wasn’t in her capsule, so she must be drifting in space. Maybe the explosion flung her out. It had been a couple of hours, but a body didn’t cool down to absolute zero that quickly. Space was a vacuum, so heat could only be lost via radiation.
In the direct vicinity of Shepherd-1, the scanner showed an overexposed image; the residual atmosphere was still too dense and warm for infrared to pick anything else up. But if Christine were there, he would have found her already. He turned his capsule so that the scanner was looking out into open space. He saw various bright and not-so-bright points. Aaron examined them individually. He zoomed in on the first one, cautiously, as though it might escape him. No, that object was too flat. It was probably a piece of hull. Near it, some kind of hammer was spinning through space. He zoomed in on it and saw that it was a door hinge. The explosion had flung all sorts of debris out into space.
Then he noticed the mannequin. That was what it looked like. Her limbs were pointing in unnatural directions. His first instinct was to wish her a safe journey. It would be better for him not to haul the corpse on board. The image would haunt his dreams. But the idea of leaving Christine all alone out there was unbearable. He accelerated the capsule to bring her back in.
Ten minutes later he was floating in the exosuit beside her. It was Christine. He finally believed it. Her hair was braided, as usual. The braid was stiff. He was afraid to touch it in case it shattered into a thousand pieces.
He had to get her inside. The capsule had an airlock he could open from outside. He grabbed her feet. She wasn’t wearing shoes, just socks, and a kind of tracksuit. She had worked out so much. The suit was stretched out in places – she had preferred it to the clothing supplied by NASA. It kept her warm, she said. The suit was still fulfilling its purpose.
He carefully pushed her to the capsule, then let her go.
“Wait here,” he said, but she didn’t answer.
He was going nuts. He must be losing it if he was talking to dead people. The last corpse he had seen was his wife’s. She was just as pale. Why hadn’t he waited for Benjamin or David?
He opened the outer airlock door, hoping Christine would fit inside. It was only for emergencies. He drifted around to Christine’s upper body. It would be best to get the legs into the airlock first. Then maybe he could bend her at the hips. But first he had to get her arms down. Christine had stretched them up over her head, as if she had decided just before she died to dive into space like it was a swimming pool. Maybe the cold had suddenly driven her crazy. Hypothermia sometimes had that effect.
He held her still with his left hand and tried with his right to bend her arm at the shoulder. The joint was too stiff. This wasn’t going to work. But he had to get her in the airlock in order to get her inside either the capsule or Shepherd-1. Christine would have a proper funeral. He tried to bend her arm again. It was still stiff. But her fist opened easily and a small gray object drifted out of it. It was the pansy seedpod. Aaron began to cry and his helmet visor fogged up.
Christine was now in the shape of a V. That was David’s idea. The limbs froze faster than the torso. Aaron had braced Christine’s legs against the capsule and pushed down on her back. She looked like she was doing yoga. Her back was slightly arched. That’s not healthy, thought Aaron. Yes, he was losing his mind.
He carefully pushed the V through the airlock door, ass first. He checked that there was enough space above and below. He didn’t want her to sustain any more damage. It worked, she was in. He closed the airlock door.
Three minutes later, Aaron was standing on the other side of the inner airlock door in his underwear. He placed both hands against the metal, arms outstretched as if he was fighting with the door – or trying to make contact with the person behind it. The airlock was heating up to just under zero degrees Celsius. It was important Christine didn’t thaw out, but he needed her body flexible enough to get her into a lying position. What a lot of drama for a dead person to endure! Would she have wanted this?
Aaron struck his forehead against the wall until he felt pain. It was somehow his fault. He had flown out here so he never had to see anyone die again, but the curse had followed him. Christine was dead because of him.
That was enough for one day. He couldn’t bring himself to open the airlock door. Not long now and David and Benjamin would be back. They could take care of Christine. He didn’t have the strength. He needed to rest. Maybe he should turn off the life support. That was the only way to be certain. His curse might not be satisfied with Christine. What if it demanded Benjamin or David too? He had a choice. He had always had a choice, he had just been too cowardly. Nobody could stop him now.
“Aaron, Dave here,” he heard over the radio. “I’m at the door. Let me in please.”
Space capsule B, April 21, 2094
“He’s in pretty bad shape,” said David. “I gave him a shot. He’ll sleep for twelve hours.”
“Good. And Christine?” asked Benjamin.
“She’s still in the airlock. It’s cold enough in there that she won’t thaw out. She’s not our most urgent problem.”
“I saw it too. The ring...”
“Not just the ring, Ben. There’s no air in the control room, if we can believe the computer. We need to get life support running again. The capsules only have supplies for a few more days.”
“I’ll take care of it,” said Benjamin.
The ring was so damaged that they couldn’t dock their capsules, which they hadn’t realized until they got close. But that wasn’t their main problem – they could board the ship in their space suits if necessary. They needed Shepherd-1 to be functional. They depended on air and heating. If they didn’t sort that out, they’d soon be as stiff as Christine.
Benjamin steered his capsule to the ship’s main airlock. It was huge, designed for large cargo. They could almost fit a capsule inside it – but not quite. So he had to go outside and open the door, hoping the airlock controls worked better than the life support system.
It was very cold in the exosuit, contrary to what it said on the display on his visor. He looked at the controls on its wrist. The mini display there also told him the heating was turned right up. He shook his hand and looked at the display again. Now it read five degrees Celsius. Warm air blasted against his forehead.
Stupid tech. What if the drives had a similar problem? A false temperature reading in the system and the DFD would overheat until it exploded. But surely that was impossible. The systems had double and triple security. If the pressure of the reaction mass gases became too high, the tank would automatically vent itself. Benjamin pushed off. He was ten meters from the airlock, which was surrounded by a ring of light. The ring was red, meaning it was locked.
“Control room?”
The ship didn’t respond, but David had been able to get a status reading earlier. So the main computer was still working. Maybe only a few modules were online.
“Control room? Open the main airlock.”
He tried again. The light around the airlock remained red. No reason to panic. He could open the airlock manually. Benjamin maneuvered his exosuit to the manual override on the ring at his 3 o’clock. It was a handle that he had to pull out and rotate 180 degrees. This didn’t require much strength. It was designed so that even a half-dead astronaut could use it in an emergency. It was weird – he had never considered the possibility of his own death, even though everyone thought of him as death-defying. It simply wasn’t an option. Period. And he wasn’t dead. They wouldn’t die here. He wouldn’t die here.
The ring of light changed from red to orange to yellow to green. Benjamin turned the handle back 90 degrees and pushed on it. A clever mechanism magnified the pressure and unlatched the airlock door. A slight vibration spread across the metal surface. He pressed the handle again and the roughly four-meter door opened far enough for him to get a finger under it. It had no weight in zero gravity, but it still had the inertia of its mass. He slowly pulled the door outward, far enough to slip past it into the airlock. He climbed through the gap, but his jetpack got caught, so he had to push it open a little farther.
Step one complete. He braced his feet on either side of the door and pulled on the large wheel at its center to close it. Then he turned the wheel counterclockwise to lock it. Benjamin was sweating. Everything was strenuous in the exosuit. He should have spent more time training in it. The airlock filled with red light.
Normally, the system would recognize at this point that someone had come in from outside, and would fill the space with air. He waited half a minute, but nothing happened. Fine. The inner door also had a manual override. He drifted to it, pulled up the lever and turned it. Then he moved to one side so the door didn’t slam into him when it opened – the area outside the airlock should still be pressurized. But this didn’t happen. It took a lot of effort to push it open. Apparently, there was no breathable air left in Shepherd-1.
Benjamin viewed a map of the ship on the device on his arm. He had never entered through the main airlock. Yes, he had once, before launch, twenty years ago. He transferred the map to his visor. Shepherd-1 looked like a bowling ball. The drives were located at the polar axis. He was at the equator. The life support system was at the stern and to get to the main computer he had to move to the front of the ship. He hoped to solve the problem there.
“David, can you hear me?”
