Saturn Run (26 page)

And then the engineering operation stopped being routine, and turned into a nightmare, a train wreck. Everything happened in a fraction of a second, but Sandy’s combat-trained brain played it out in slow motion, so he wouldn’t miss any of the uglier details.

The radiator boom-wall ruptured right next to the hot spot his IR camera had highlighted. Molten radiator metal poured out of the breach, a surreal liquid explosion of silvery blobs moving at different speeds. One droplet of spray, traveling at over one hundred kilometers per second, pinged on the large front port. He instinctively recoiled—sniper! Then his explosion reflexes kicked in. Look for bricks coming down.

He leaned on the joystick, realizing in the first second that he would be hit. The bigger blobs moved more slowly, like oncoming cars, but there was no hole in the spray he could duck into. He couldn’t move the egg fast enough to avoid all of the molten metal. A major hit on that big Leica-glass window would be very bad. He needed to rotate the pod to get the window out of the line of fire. The egg’s least sensitive equipment was located in the bottom, where the heavy mechanicals were, and Martinez had given him the good training. He started spinning the egg so the bottom would take the impact.

He didn’t quite make it, but it was good enough. The impact came a second later, on the corner of the utility cradle, below his seat. It felt like the rubbery impacts of a bumper car at a carnival, but a
lot
harder, but that was okay, because it came through his butt. If he’d taken it on the face, even if the window had held, which was doubtful, he’d be looking at a fractured vertebra.

Then the electronics started screeching at him, and the life-support indicators went to a screaming yellow. And though he was upside down to Becca, he saw a barrel-sized slug of molten metal slam into her egg at head-on-auto-collision speed.

No sound, other than his own electronic warnings: he was locked on Becca’s channel but heard not a word or a scream, the vid was down, nothing but the sight of the egg getting hit, and the egg flying off, tumbling, at ten, twenty, thirty meters per second. He wasn’t sure. His own egg was rotating, and she’d passed out of his field of view.

“Becca’s hit, oh fuck oh fuck, Becca’s hit, I’m going that way, I’m going that way . . .” He slammed over the joystick.

Nothing happened.

He slammed it again.

Nothing happened.

Martinez: “I’m coming, I’m coming . . .”

—

Sandy called Becca once, twice, three times, got nothing back.

One of the techs called from the egg base: “Sandy, your egg’s screwed. Stay off the electronics . . . stay off the electronics . . .”

“Becca’s hit, you gotta—”

His microphone shut down—Martinez could do that from his command egg—and Martinez said, “Shut up and listen. I’m in my egg, but it’s gonna take a couple minutes to get out there. The data feeds say you’ve got a fire in the R-Box, you’ve got to pull the flush ring for R. Can you pull the ring?”

The emergency panel was overhead and Sandy swatted the cover away, saw the red flush ring for R, and pulled it.

“R ring pulled. Joe, you gotta move. She was hit hard. Jesus, she was hit, I can’t see her, my maneuvering gear is all red—”

“Sandy, I’m losing your data feeds, I don’t know if it’s the fire, I think that’s gone but it’s possible the metal is still hot and is reigniting, but the feeds are going down one by one.”

“What about Becca? You gotta get going . . . you gotta go—”

“Do you have a status on your air?”

“No, not anymore. I’m dead in the water, man, all the vids are going out, they went yellow and then red and now they’re going out. The LEDs
are still powered, but they’re going to red, too, I’m not gonna be any help.”

“Listen. Did you take that bag of cookies with you?”

“What? What? Cookies . . .”

“Listen to me, man. The cookies. Did you eat the cookies?”

“What the fuck are you talking about, Joe? Are you out—”

Martinez’s voice was cool, but sharp: “Sandy, this is important. Did you eat those cookies?”

“No, no . . . I . . .”

“Look at the bag. Is the bag normal, or is it all puffed up? Is it fat?”

Sandy looked at the lunch box—the container where they kept the food, picked up the bag of cookies. It looked like somebody had been pumping air into it.

“It’s fat. It’s like a ball.”

“Goddamnit. You’re leaking air, your pressure is dropping. Hold real still, spit a little, just easy, small drops of spit . . . see which way the spit drops drift . . .”

“Tell me about Becca . . .”

“Becca’s a separate problem and we’re working on it,” Martinez said. “We’ve also got to work on your problem. Spit.”

Sandy spit, and the tiny drops of saliva hovered in front of his face for a second, then another, and then they began drifting down to his right. As he did that, he heard Martinez shouting over the open link, “Elroy! Elroy! Call Butler and see what the situation is with the other eggs,” and “Sandy, what happened with the spit?”

“They’re drifting down to my right, not outward . . . it’s not centrifugal force . . . they’re going down behind the seat, I can’t see . . . Joe, I think if there’s a crack, it’s probably in the bottom of the interior shell. I can’t reach it.”

“Shit. You smell anything?”

“No, I—”

Sandy’s microphone went dead, and so did the sound feed coming in; a new red LED light began blinking up and to his left. Now he
really was dead in the water, and not only that, he was isolated from the others.

He couldn’t see the ship itself, but he could see one section of the radiators, which seemed to be moving along in a smooth flow. It had been the other one where the problem occurred, he thought.

The interior lights flickered, and another LED popped up: the lights had gone to emergency battery power, and the emergency batteries were in the ceiling, away from the impact zone. He should have light.

Anything he could do to help himself? Nothing came to mind. He looked up at the emergency box, and a half-dozen additional flush rings. Couldn’t hurt to pull them, he thought: they were basically fire extinguishers, mechanically operated, and the egg was dead, anyway. He pulled them all, one at a time.

His egg continued its slow tumble, the ship was now below his feet. Then he picked up Becca’s egg. He almost missed it: it looked like a large dim star, and he wouldn’t have noticed it at all except that it was moving. Maybe three or four kilometers away, he thought, though he didn’t know for sure.

Nothing, nobody was going after it.

He screamed at it: “Becca! Becca!”

Captain Fang-Castro sucked thoughtfully on her second bulb of pouchong of this watch. The delicate tea soothed her nerves and gave her something to do with her hands. Bridge watch was uneventful on the
Nixon
, and thank God for that. Still, it meant the officer of the watch mostly had little to do but sit in the big chair and look, well, watchful.

Fang-Castro liked to keep busy. Doing nothing, even watchfully, made her fidgety, and a fidgety commander was not good for morale. Consequently, tea was usually in hand.

The crew was excited about midcourse turnaround. It was the first tangible evidence of progress since they’d completed their slingshot pass of the sun, and it meant they were more than halfway to Saturn.

They were two and a half hours into restart and the engines were up to three-quarters thrust. Fang-Castro was finishing her tea when the faintest of shudders rippled through the bridge.

“Nav, what was that!” she snapped. “Comm, give me Engineering and patch Mr. Martinez in.”

Navigation came back instantly: “Command: we experienced a lateral impulse, ship’s aft. It turned us slightly off course. Attitude control is bringing us back on heading.” A second later, “Our acceleration is dropping rapidly. It looks like the engines are shutting down.”

“An impact?”

“Don’t know, ma’am, we’re inquiring.”

Frank LaFarge, who was on engineering watch, spoke up. “I’m not seeing damage indicators commensurate with an impact big enough to shift our heading.”

Comm spoke up: “Engineering’s on.”

“Dr. Johansson, what just happened?” Fang-Castro kept her voice calm and level, belying her twitching gut.

“Captain, Greenberg here. Becca’s on EVA, observing the radiator
ramp-up. We’ve lost contact with her. Radiator Boom 1 experienced a blowout. We don’t know how serious it is, but we’re hemorrhaging radiator melt. I’ve initiated rapid shutdown and containment procedures on the damage.”

“Are we in any immediate danger, Dr. Greenberg?”

“I don’t believe so, Captain.”

Nav came back: “Command, we’re accessing the fore cameras, we’ll have them up in a few seconds.”

Comm: “We have Mr. Martinez on—”

Fang-Castro: “Nav, hold the pictures. Comm, show me Joe: Joe, what happened?”

“I’m really busy right now, ma’am, so I gotta be short.” Martinez was buckled into his egg. “We blew a radiator, looks like, some of the melt hit Becca’s and Sandy’s eggs. Sandy’s damaged but I think recoverable if I can get out there, but my best bet now is that Becca’s gone.”

“Gone? You mean . . .”

“Dead. The monitoring vid showed her getting hit by a wad of metal the size of a chair. Hit hard, head-on. The shell’s intact . . . maybe . . . but the cradle, power system, propulsion, they’re trashed. Her egg’s been hurled away from us. I gotta go, I gotta go, if I can get the goddamn garage door open, I gotta go . . .” Fang-Casto heard him shouting at somebody, “Get off the line: get off the fuckin’ line, get off the fuckin’ line and get me out there . . .”

Fang-Castro: “Keep me informed when you can, Joe.”

“Yeah, I will, ma’am. Sandy’s losing power, we’re losing his data feeds, get me out there, you motherfuckers, I don’t care about that, use the crank, use the fuckin’ crank if you have to and get into suits. I’ll bring Sandy back into Bay 12.”

The captain went back to Comm: “Get me the command link to Dr. Johansson’s service egg.”

Two seconds passed. “Now, Comm.”

“I’m trying, Captain, but I’m not getting a ping back.”

“Pull up the last feed you have. Ten seconds’ worth.”

Two more seconds passed and the main screen lit up, showing the
vid from the egg’s internal safety monitor camera. For three seconds, it was just Dr. Johansson peering intently through the main port. Then sudden darkness on the port, interior lights coming up instantly and Dr. Johansson’s head slamming into the inside of the port hard, very hard, and her head snapping back, as the vid feed dropped off-line.

Comm spoke, barely audibly. “After that we just have maybe three seconds of low-grade telemetry, but it’s showing cascading failures, one subsystem after another. Environmental’s out, atmosphere toxin levels skyrocketing, there’s a breach somewhere, the egg is losing pressure fast. . . .” Her voice trailed off.

Shit. Double-shit,
thought Fang-Castro. “Get me any of the other working channels. Try Mr. Darlington’s egg.”

“Trying all channels.”

A moment later, she heard what sounded like breathing. “Mr. Darlington?”

“Yes. Yes. Jesus, who is this?”

“Fang-Castro. Are you injured?”

“No. Becca’s been hit, hard. I can see her egg some of the time, I’m rotating, can’t stop it, but she’s way out there. You don’t have much time. I think she’s taken a lot of damage. I don’t see anybody after her. You gotta get going—”

“We’ve got everything under way, Mr. Darlington. You hold on tight there. Joe, Mr. Martinez, is on the way out. . . . I don’t see you on my screen.”

“I don’t see you, either. All the vid and all the audio channels seem to be out, except this one. I can’t reach Becca. Joe oughta go after her, if he can. She’s gonna need air, for sure, and probably power, her heater could be down.”

“Mr. Martinez is coming up on you,” Fang-Castro said. “Get ready for recovery. And I’ll say again we’re on top of the situation.”

She clicked away and said, to Navigation, “Get the aft view on my screen.”

The aft view came up.

“Spot Dr. Johansson’s service egg.”

That took a few seconds, but the camera finally locked on the egg and began zooming. There was nothing but empty space between the excellent lens and the egg, no heat ripples, no dust, no humidity, and when the camera got out to full zoom, and a further digital zoom was applied, they could see that the egg had been totally disabled. The metal slug that had hit it had taken out power, propulsion, comm. The shell looked intact, but it was splattered with now-frozen radiator metal. There was a crack in the view glass behind which Johansson had been sitting, visible between splashes of metal.

Somebody on the bridge said, “Oh, my God.”

Fang-Castro said, “Comm. Get me Mr. Martinez if he’ll take the call.”

Martinez came up: “I’m closing on Sandy’s egg.”

“Yes. I can get him on the command channel, I’ve spoken to him. He knows you’re about to do the recovery. Your assessment of the impact on Dr. Johansson’s egg is correct. I’m afraid there’s no prospect that Dr. Johansson has survived.”

“Okay. Listen, Sandy can be a handful. If you’d get the people he talks to—Fiorella, Crow, and get Dr. Ang for sure—get them down to egg operations to meet him when he gets out of his egg. I don’t know whether he’s physically injured—”

“He says not.”

“Okay, but his head’s gonna be seriously messed up. I don’t know if you’re aware of his relationship with Dr. Johansson . . .”

“I am. And I will get you that help. Also, I’ll have Comm patch my command channel into your egg so you can talk to him.” She clicked off: “Comm: patch my command channel through to Mr. Martinez. Also, order Mr. Crow, Dr. Ang, and Ms. Fiorella to report to my quarters, immediately. If I’m not there when they arrive, I will be shortly.”

She went to Engineering: “Dr. Greenberg? Where are we?”

“Off-line and shutting down. We’re shutting down everything as fast as we safely can.”

“Inform me if you start seeing more anomalies.”

“Yes, ma’am. We need to talk to Becca as soon as she can get back online, this is a rather complicated situation.”

“Do everything you can, Dr. Greenberg. Consider yourself in charge until I tell you otherwise.”

“Oh, no . . . oh no.”

Greenberg was no dummy.

With the situation stabilized, Fang-Castro turned the bridge over to the second officer, told him to get the off-watch executive officer up to the bridge as fast as he could be roused from his sleep time. “I will be in my quarters for a few minutes, but available at a second’s notice. Comm, keep me active all the time. And get me Joe Martinez right now.”

Martinez came in over her implants as she walked down to her quarters. “What’s your status, Joe?”

“I’m grappling onto Sandy’s egg. Man, the kid’s got some reflexes: he flipped the egg over when the radiator blew and took most of the damage on the corner of the undercarriage. I’ll have him back in half an hour. We’re gonna have to take this slow, the whole hookup’s pretty unstable. But I’m talking to him on the command channel and I think this is gonna work. He’s leaking air, but he should have plenty to get him inside.”

“Good. We’ll see you there.”

The second officer: “Ma’am, we’re getting a flood of inquiries about the shudder that went through the ship.”

Shit and double-shit.
“Tell Comm to put me on the ship-wide.”

“Comm: you’re on, Captain.”

Fang-Castro said, “Your attention, please. This is Captain Fang-Castro. We experienced a difficulty on engine restart. This was the shudder some of you may have felt. The ship is in no danger whatsoever. Please continue with your normal operations. Engineering is shutting down the engines while they analyze the difficulty, so the ship will be in free fall for a while longer. I’ll inform you of our status further when we’ve fully evaluated the situation. Captain out.”

Crow, Fiorella, and Ang were waiting at her cabin door. Crow asked for them all, “What just happened?”

“Come inside,” Fang-Castro said.

She shut the door behind them. They all remained standing as she told them about the accident, and Fiorella buried her face in her hands and Ang said, “Oh my God.”

Crow shook his head.

Fang-Castro: “I want you all to come with me down to the egg section, to meet Mr. Darlington. I suspect you’re all aware of his relationship with Becca. We’re not sure how he’ll handle it. He’s a young man . . .”

Crow put up a finger.

“Mr. Crow, you have something to tell us?”

“Sandy’s not exactly what he appears to be, or rather, he is, but he’s also quite a bit more. We’ve held it close, but he’s actually one of my people. I expect all of you to hold this confidentially, but Sandy was an army officer in the Tri-Border fight, and not just an officer, but in a rather . . . extreme . . . or elite . . . outfit. He saw quite a few of his comrades killed. His friends. He suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome, which accounts for his somewhat . . . lackadaisical . . . attitude. From which he has been recovering, as you may have noticed. He’s been extremely effective in his job—in all his jobs. But: what this will do to him, I have no idea.”

“I do,” Ang said. “I will meet you down at the eggs. I need to run get my bag.”

Fiorella was speechless. For almost the first time in her life.

Fang-Castro asked her, “Are you all right?”

“No. Yes. I mean . . .”

“I know what you mean. Let’s get down there.”

—

Martinez maneuvered Sandy’s egg up to the garage, and two space-suited techs hooked up the egg and pulled it inside. The air lock was resealed, and the interior atmosphere checked for any toxic emissions from the egg. There were none; if there had been anything coming out, it had been harmlessly outgassed into space.

The lock was pressurized and the rear garage doors opened. Sandy
had no power in the egg and the techs didn’t want to power it up, should there be some problem, so they opened his access hatch with a hand crank.

He was met by Fang-Castro and the others. Sandy eased out, looked at their faces: “She’s dead, isn’t she?”

Fang-Castro said, “She was killed instantly.”

“Are you going after her egg?”

“No,” Fang-Castro said. “We need to concentrate our resources on the crisis here. Going after her would present an unnecessary risk.”

“Then don’t do it,” Sandy said. “Dead is dead. No point in throwing good bodies after a dead one.”

Ang muttered, “Oh, boy.”

Sandy gave him a toothy grin: “Dr. Feelgood. I hope you know what I need.”

“I do. Where are you at?”

“About a five and going down. I was at a nine when the metal hit the fan.”

“Are you using any drugs?”

“Stims, from time to time. Not for several days.”

“No street drugs?”

“No.”

“Adrenal implants?”

“They’ve been pulled.” Sandy looked at Crow. “You told them.”

Crow nodded: “Had to.”

Ang said, “Roll up your sleeve. I’m going to get you started.”

Sandy nodded and smiled and pulled his sleeve up. Ang pushed the pressure injector against his arm and said, “Here it comes.”

Tears started running down Sandy’s face and Fiorella put an arm around his waist and said, “We’ll walk you back,” and Crow patted his shoulder and said, “Captain Darlington. I just . . . I just . . .”

Sandy thought through the drugs,
So that’s what Crow looks like when he’s sad . . .

Later that evening, Sandy was lying on his bunk, watching an incoming episode of
Celebrity Awards
, with Kilimanjaro Kossoff—
KayKay—in a stunning red half dress taking a golden trophy for her sponsorship of a massive troop of penguins being relocated in Antarctica, away from their particular melting ice shelf. “When I saw those birds . . . penguins are actually flightless birds, which a lot of people don’t realize . . . when I saw those poor birds, I just knew in my heart . . .”

His door buzzed, and though he didn’t feel like talking to anyone, he said, “Come in,” and the door unlatched and Crow came through and tossed him a can of beer. He had another for himself, and dropped onto Sandy’s chair.

“How you doing?”

“About as well as usual.”

“I don’t know quite what it’s like—the drugs.”

“It’s like somebody removed a couple of cc’s of your brain,” Sandy said. “I don’t feel much concern for anything, or anybody. I really don’t. Ang will start pulling the drug levels down in a week or so, and if he does it right, I’ll be all smoothed out by the time we reach Saturn. Crazier than a fuckin’ bedbug, but smoothed out.”

Crow stared at him for a minute, then said, “Really?”

Sandy popped the top off the beer: “Really. I’m surprised you haven’t done this.”