The engines played a fast tune. A mazurka shuddering Kallandra’s body back and to in a vicious fairground ride in hell. Hibernation seemed a good idea after all.
She heard an aria of expletives and groans from Claude in syncopation with her own howls. More worrying was the metallic screaming and clanging from Apoidea. What was she thinking? No way could they match the speed of the spheres’ flickering, so the chances of their gut-wrenching yet comparatively slow velocity changes being observed as time-altering communication was negligible. A second of calm allowed her to consider that the chance was maybe worth it, but then she was hurled against her seat restraints harder than ever.
“I’m gonna have a helluva lot of bruises.” Her voice burst out in rasps, her chest heaving and sometimes failing to suck in sufficient air for speech. He’d likely not hear her anyway, as she wouldn’t from him. Her ears filled with Apoidea’s complaints, so she gave up.
Moments later she saw floating star-motes as she rushed towards blacking out.
* * *
Consciousness drifted in. Why had she been asleep? Did Houston force a hibernation? Messing with their air supply? A low-frequency siren warbled, and then stopped. Her eyes remaining closed, she tried to remember the code for that alarm. It repeated. Maybe Claude was letting her lie in and he was fixing whatever it meant; seemed familiar—on a sim. Next time the wail quietened to allow the computer voice output. “Warning. Malfunction transmitter array.” Nothing serious then, she thought, as she undid her restraints. She pulled a face at the caked blood on her legs and stomach from biting belts.
“You there, Claude? I’m covered with blood. Kick that racket into touch, will ya?”
No response. She had to sit up, fighting painful bruises, maybe a cracked rib or three. She could make out Claude’s sleeping form, strapped in his reclined seat. She stumbled to the control panel and hit the alarm. No thinking made sense with that din scrambling brain cells.
A glance at Claude revealed a pallid face.
“God, Claude, don’t die on me, man.” She threw herself on his chest; instantly regretting the self-inflicted pain. Claude released a groan, she a sigh.
“Merde,” he said, not opening his eyes.
“Agreed, but you might as well wake up. We’ve a bit of an emergency.”
“How long?”
“I don’t…hang on.” She checked her watch. “Thirty hours. No wonder I need a pee.”
Like the cripple she felt she was, she headed for the shower and first aid, while Claude made for the console.
* * *
She met him again as he replaced her in the shower. She raised an eyebrow at him shaking his head.
“A genius configured the alarms to allow a minor fault to override a more critical one. No, I’m not saying it must have been Derek. Even I know thousands of people helped design this bird, insect, whatever. Yes, there is a fault in the Ship-to-Earth transmitter array, but while we could survive without those postcards, the cause could be catastrophic.”
He rapped the bulkhead with his knuckles, and his usual jovial face looked strained. “Ice seems to be damaging the array, which could be fixed, but the ice is coming from a leak in a nearby coolant conduit.”
“We can shut those off.” She saw a deep red weal in his forearm, and found similar in both of hers. Damned restraints.
“Not that one. It leads to several others. The engines would overheat.”
“We shut it off now. The engines are on idle so we shut that off, too, and then think of a long-term solution. Why the leak?”
He rubbed his stubble, “Kal, we’re lucky this bee is alive at all with the hammering we gave it.”
“Sure. I guess increased pressure in the coolant system breached tolerances.”
“The status computer will tell us. If we’re lucky the auto-repair would’ve fixed most of them. That coolant leak is a worry. It might require an EVA fix.”
“Too dangerous, Claude. Any idea how fast we’re going? And if we’re unstable—”
“Speed is irrelevant. It’s the rate of change that would be dangerous. We’d better run through some tests and re-routing scenarios.”
* * *
Two hours later she knew one of them had to go outside.
Claude showed her a task sheet generated by a procedures program. A panel to be unsealed, lifted, and the pressure-rupture fixed.
He laughed, and then said, “It’s not rocket science.”
“True enough, but it could be hazardous. We should attempt it with the Repair-robot first.”
“It’d be much quicker for me to suit up…ah, you’re only saying that in case you lose me. How sweet, mon cherie, come here.”
“Not now, Claude,” she said, and wagged a finger. “And who says it’s to be you if an EVA is necessary?”
“Try and stop me.”
Kallandra admitted a dislike of wearing the EVA pressure suits. She often developed a rash in delicate places so didn’t fuss. She helped him suit and tool up.
She urged him to take care but with hugs and digs in the already bruised ribs rather than a speech.
The cabin felt strange. She’d often been awake while Claude was asleep, but this was different; a stomach muscle-tightening gripe. At least she could follow his movements on the monitors and hear his commentary. She held back from comfort chatting, enabling Claude to focus on the task.
She watched the signal feedback return to eighty percent normal just by his knocking away frozen coolant and realigning the aerial array—mainly a parabolic dish pointing back at the pinprick that was Earth.
Keeping an eye on Claude’s progress, Kallandra expected to hear a tirade from Mission Control. Sixty minutes had passed since the link worked. She smiled at the psychological scenarios they must have tortured themselves over and then to arrive at the softly softly approach she received.
Capcom Elaine Stringer’s calm voice merely asked: “Good to receive your telemetry, Apoidea. Now, do you have voice?”
“Roger that, Cap. As you’ll see, we have a problem but Claude is outside fixing it. Sending you the data. Over.” She pulled back from the console, knowing it would be at least an hour for the response. She swivelled to concentrate on Claude’s progress.
His helmet cam showed his hands working inside the troubled conduit housing.
Blue bubbles escaped from an ice-crusted pipe and jetted while freezing past Claude’s face.
“Why is there pressure in those pipes, Claude?”
“There must be residual coolant. Can you check the console and turn it all off?”
He sounded calm, considering there was a possibility of a blow out.
“Checking now.” Kallandra’s face heated as she saw that section’s coolant pump-light flickering green.
“Claude, get out of there while we re-think this. The indicator’s flickering. Maybe the actuator’s damaged and the pump won’t switch off.”
“I’ll be all right, peut-être. Turn off the master switch, and then turn the switch for this section on and off again a few times.”
The now steady green light glowed at Kallandra, daring her to play. Its colour had become not only irrelevant but dangerous. She should not have let Claude bamboozle her out of using a remote robot with its grabbers. Her stomach quivered all the way, such that her normally cool head exuded a tear.
“Abort the attempt, Claude. I can’t tell if this switch is on or off. The master switch might be affected by rogue feedback.”
“The leak appears to have stopped. I’m going to slap on a patch and squirt QuickCem over it.”
“No! Back off from it. Come back.”
“Ten seconds. Twenty tops.”
Although she was technically in command on this mission, she knew there was no point asserting authority in a two-man crew. No effective reprimand was available on return because they weren’t expecting to make it back. Maybe she could use a carrot instead of a stick.
“You’ll not get your birthday treat tonight if you don’t obey me.”
“It’s not my birth—ah. Trust me, I can see what to do. Hey, there’s an oxy pipe leaking too, but I can turn it off. Done. We might not have made it much further if I hadn’t seen it.”
“Good one, Claude. Hey, you’ve not only saved the mission but our lives! You deserve a Congressional medal, and a UN one, if it exists.”
She should be seeing the view change from the patch on the pipe to the stars as he made his way back, but his arm blocked the view.
Once again she scanned the schematics to see if there was an alternative and safer way to shut off all coolant movement in that section or in the whole ship.
“Kal?”
A wave of relief washed over her as a combination of switches occurred to her.
“Just a minute, I think I can shut it all off.”
As she reached to turn off a control button she was jerked away and drifted across the cabin as a vibration rattled through the ship. Trying to keep calm she glanced at Claude’s live bio-signs panel while calling him.
“You OK, Claude?” She propelled herself to the panel but could see his vital signs were green, and so within a normal range. But his helmet cam was blurred. He must be jerking his head around too much or coolant from the blowout had frozen over the lens, she thought. While her own heartbeat rose, she twisted to look at a fixed exterior camera—cam four. It too showed a fog.
“Speak to me, Claude.”
Unlike helmet cams, cam four had more controls. Fighting growing apprehension she touched a button that discarded one of its transparent covers. If debris had smudged the lens, that would dispose of it. Her mouth had gone dry but she had to wait for the autofocus.
Cam four had looked at the troublesome panel area and it still did. The panel remained hinged open, the jagged ends of a pipe peeped out at her, but there was no sign of Claude.
“Claude!” Screaming at him could help wake him up although logic told her the volume was automatically adjusted in his helmet. Another glance at his vital signs showed he lived, but where? With sweaty hands she grabbed the joystick operating cam four and twisted it. Too far. Now all she saw was the black universe. Taking a deep breath and telling herself to keep calm, she manipulated the cam to Claude’s last tether anchor point. From there she followed the straight-line twenty metres into the void, and there he was; arms and legs motionless, his face obscured by his visor.
“I see you, Claude. Move an arm, or leg, if you hear me.” Nothing. She took a more careful look at the screen showing his vital signs. BP 95/65 and falling. Pulse, 40 and falling. Respiration, 15. Body temperature normal. She hit a diagnosis button.
Possible causes: haemorrhaging; trauma, dehydration, orthostatic hypotension , vasovagal syncope, overdose of dyazide,….
“For Christ’s sake, I don’t know half of this crap, though it’s probably trauma. Are you listening, Claude? No, of course you’re not. You never listen.”
She stopped the scrolling illnesses and hit the prognosis button. Remain unconscious; coma or death in minutes.
She gasped. Shocked, her face flushed so hot she felt a headache coming on.
She had to get him back in the Apoidea real fast. She found the remote controls for the tether anchor point and programmed it to reel in. While it whirred, she initiated the remote grabber in preparation to push Claude into the airlock. Such activity sublimated her twin fears—Claude’s possible death and the grim prospect of being alone.
Ten metres to go. Kallandra frantically operated the remote grabber, while jabbing at a panel to turn cam four to bring the airlock into view. She needed to pee but had no time. Damn, she’d sweat it out anyhow. A change from the beeping to an urgent continuous wailing startled her.
“No, no. Fight in there, Claude!” The vital signs had all flat-lined. With the coolant sensors playing havoc, maybe the medical transmitters or receivers had malfunctioned. She bought a spot of comfort from the minimal probability store.
Although desperate, she couldn’t reel him in any faster in case his suit was breached when he hit. On the other hand, what’s a few bruises or broken ribs compared to death? She upped the retrieve speed to maximum.
She’d hardly had time to find the airlock entry with cam four when she felt the thwack reverberate through the ship. Damn. Too hard, and she wasn’t ready! The high pitch flat-line wailing continued—no time to find the right button to shut the darn thing off. At last she could see him via Cam four splayed across the tether anchor, mercifully close to the airlock.
“Houston, when you get these transmissions bear in mind how useful it would’ve been to have a tether point inside the damned airlock.”
No doubt, some smartass, probably Derek, will come up with a logical reason why such an idea was preposterous. Bah.
Frantic button punching and joystick waggling resulted in Claude being pushed into the airlock, and with a sigh, Kallandra hit the emergency hatch shut and re-pressurized the airlock. Precious seconds later, training overcame emotion as she unclipped his helmet and slapped a forced-oxygen mask to his face—his cyanotic lips and alabaster skin.
She was too late. Maybe it was too late ten minutes before when she couldn’t persuade him not to go out. It was her fault. She’d yet to give up. After stripping his suit, she pounced on him with aggressive CPR. If he hadn’t any broken ribs from his battering outside, he had now. After a few exhausting minutes and in desperation, she shocked him. He might have a pulse, but she didn’t want to find he hadn’t or there wouldn’t have been any logic to using the defibrillator, which she’d turned up to 360
Joules before abandoning the effort.
Only then, kneeling beside the forlorn body, did the dam burst. Through her wet wailing, she heard Elaine coming through.
“No one must go EVA until we’ve run a sim test here. I hope that instruction is redundant if you’ve followed procedures.”
Too upset to respond, she lay on her side next to Claude, gently massaging his chest, still sticky with defib-gel. She kissed his pallid face. Whatever fragment of remaining soul lingered in him would know she loved him. Not like Derek, but she didn’t want to go there just now, and wiped the incipient argument. Minutes of quivering sobs later, she rose to obey her bladder’s demands.
With a cold-washed face, her red eyes stared back from the unwelcome mirror.
Was Claude’s death real? She returned to the suiting-up bay and saw the prone form.
Adding to her despair, she seemed already emotionally distant from Claude’s body. It was bad enough missing him, now she was afraid she might miss missing him.
She heard Capcom’s voice again. “Kallandra and Claude, it is imperative you do not, repeat not, attempt a repair from outside at this time.”
“You’re too late, Elaine,” she called back from her kneeling position while cradling Claude’s head, and stroking his short hair. The microphone might not pick her voice up, but it’s academic with the time lag. Houston would know what happened soon enough.
And then what? They’d insist on activating the protocol for disposing of a demised person—set him adrift. She couldn’t face that, not yet, if ever. There was a clause in the protocol for storing a body in the cargo bay: if the mission was on a home leg, and if the cause of death was uncertain. The last criterion held. NASA medical experts would have had Claude’s biometrics automatically packaged and transmitted, as they would hers. The data of one stopped heart, and of one confused heart.
Surely NASA would want to investigate the cause of Claude’s death? He’d been traumatized by a blowout and so jerked back to the end of the tether, but unless he got real unlucky and ruptured an internal organ…. Then what was on that diagnostic list?
Overdose of dyazide? As far as she knew, neither of them were taking any prescribed medication. She tapped at the console for his medical file. Tylenol for the first few days for headaches. Trivial, though it disturbed her a little because she hadn’t known. What else had he kept from her?
Zupiklone, a sleeping tablet. She checked further and found it was a barbiturate with possible internal haemorrhaging if taken with paracetamol and alcohol. Surely they had no alcohol on board? And she thought she knew everything about him.
Through sore eyes she looked at his face and stroked his moustache. “What went wrong out there, Claude? This cocktail give you an ulcer that burst while you were EVA? I finished you off by slamming you up against the ship with a too-fast-tether-retraction, didn’t I? You’re not supposed to die, dammit. How am I going to get my kicks with our arguing now?”
The ship rocked a little, more like a sway that for a fleeting moment Kallandra put down to the escape of Claude’s spirit rather than more coolant leaking as a lateral jet.
Was his body more than the sum of his parts now?
She hit his chest with her fist, and then lay on her stomach with her head on his chest. She smelt the antiseptic in the defib-gel, glistening on his skin. She closed her eyes, and reminisced of their adventures: in training at White Sands, shouting at superiors at the JPL, and the weirdness with the El Capitan sphere. A memory of something there made her catch her breath, but before the notion could form definition, an incoming call beeped.
“Kal…” Elaine Stringer’s voice conveyed concern across the void. They must know by now; seen the images of Claude working, then…. Elaine lost her husband two years last fall, and Kallandra was there.
* * *
Two years before, Toulouse, France
“Hey, Kal, are you on this shindig too?” Elaine asked at the bar. Not any bar, but the long curved one at the European Aerospace factory lounge.
They hugged and kissed on both cheeks as they’d experienced with their French hosts.
Kallandra tapped her nose. “There was a vacancy for a six-weeks test-pilot exchange program. So, je suis ici! But why are you here? Is there a Euro-US meeting of minds and protocol?”
“Isn’t there always? No, Jasper’s here on an engine components compatibility test; across the road as we speak. I’m here for shopping and sight-seeing. Did Paris at the weekend, and off to Lyon tomorrow. Hey, you coming with me?”
“Love to, but although I’ll be there, it’ll be eight kilometres up.” Kallandra pointed up as she spoke, then her eyes followed her own arm and stayed looking up at the ceiling, noticing for the first time the suspended models of spaceships and airplanes.
“Go on,” Elaine said, lifting her white wine upwards, “which have you flown?”
“Umm, none. They’re mostly European, and Russian. Hey, there’s one; a Stealth F35b. Good grief.”
“What? They’ve got it wrong?”
They walked across the half-empty bar area to be directly beneath the metre-long model jet.
“On the contrary, it’s worryingly perfect, and top secret. Lockheed would go ape.”
“My God. What’s such a good model doing here then?”
A dark-suited man looked round at them from his window table. The lounge lights played in the large plate-glass window so it looked as if there were two of him.
However, he was alone and playing cards—solitaire, and now seemed to have his interest piqued by the two American women. His large black brown eyes twinkled at them from his amused face. He sported a deep tan right into his plentiful laughter wrinkles.
“Excuse me,
Mademoiselles, but how else can our fighters learn to shoot the planes your country sells to our enemies?”
Elaine stifled a snort. Just as well, Kallandra thought as she detected his manner for the tease it was.
“You mean the enemies that use French Exocet missiles against us?”
“Touché. May I get you a drink?”
Kallandra was about to tell the smarmy tormentor which hell to go to when the window alongside him smashed, sending shards lacerating his shirt and head.
Before the screams started, Kallandra had thrown herself backwards, pulling Elaine with her. They fell to the floor away from the glass but, while others looked at the imploded window and the screaming Frenchman, Kallandra looked at the bar.
Something very fast must have entered from outside, so where was it? Satisfied that this wasn’t an attack or an ongoing accident she stood, then crunched glass, over to the wooden bar. Embedded near the top was a smoking piece of twisted metal.
A barman had already spotted it and aimed a soda siphon. Kallandra let the sizzling die down before peering closely. “It’s from a jet engine rotor blade. There must have been an accident in a test rig—” She turned to stare at Elaine. Her Jasper was working late at the factory, but surely not….
Elaine beat her to the door. When Kallandra caught up they could see a fire in a hangar across the road and silhouettes of people running around.
“He’s already dead, Kal, I feel it.”
“Nonsense. Your brain knows a bad accident has happened but Jaspar might have been hundreds of metres away.” Nevertheless, she knew Elaine was sensitive to upsetting events when they happened to people emotionally close.
The serenade of grief from sirens came at them from up the road as fire-engines and ambulances broke speed limits.
Sadly, Elaine hadn’t erred with her premonition. Jasper was one of two engineers killed outright.
* * *
Kallandra shook her head to escape the disturbing reverie. How long had she spent daydreaming? It didn’t matter. She felt like abandoning the radio transmissions and going to bed. Maybe take the hibernation procedure again and wake up in a year or two to find the nightmare was over.
No, she couldn’t bury her head in sleep no matter how welcome, and it wouldn’t have been what Claude would’ve wanted. She hit the button to replay Elaine’s latest message.
“Kal… we know what’s happened. It’s awful, I’m so sorry. You’ll be grieving even though Claude isn’t…wasn’t the love of your life. Kal, I know you’ll just want to hide away, listen to music, read a silly book, anything to immerse yourself in nostalgia or into nothing at all. But, I’m afraid we need you to focus your energies to some emergency work on the ship…”
Kallandra paused the message and listened to Apoidea. She heard the usual creaks, and hisses from the ship’s infrastructure, whines and whirring from computers, actuators and other machinery, distant pumps and, ah, there was no sound of coolant pumps working. She’d turned them off along with the master for audio alerts. She covered one ear, and pressed audio-on. Immediately the air filled with the sound of sirens and warning voices. She turned it off again.
At the status console she enlarged the screen showing a triaged list of urgent tasks. The first was to re-engage the coolant pumps. The failure-to-comply box told of the engines overheating if engaged, and since they augmented the power plant’s coolant….
She knew she couldn’t just switch on the coolant pumps; she’d lose it through the ruptured pipe. How important was the coolant for the power plant? It had a self-contained coolant system. Surely, by throwing the master switch, that hadn’t shut down too?
After checking what she already knew, the small nuclear power plant device needed nothing from the damaged coolant system except as emergency backup.
Phew! The main problem, as she saw it, was the lack of coolant protecting the ship from hot externals such lateral jets, re-entry heating, or being close to the sun. The latter was unlikely and the former wouldn’t apply until the ship changed course again.
Ready to argue that nothing was urgent, she resumed the message from Elaine.
“… You probably think the engine coolant isn’t urgent while you are merely using your inertia to chase the spheres but, when we checked an hour ago, your navigation computer lock was still connected up with the correction module and so…”
Of course, fuck, bugger and re-fuck, the auto-correction would re-engage the smaller jets to keep her pointed at the spheres. The coolant pumps would adjust, but not if they were switched off. Not that a lot of heat would be produced for minor corrections, but the lack of coolant pumps could mean the jets would refuse to fire and so the spheres could have disappeared out of sight.
She rushed to the nav console. No problem, the spheres were still in range.
Another beep sounded from the radio, followed by Derek’s voice.
“Kallandra, I need you to listen.” It seemed strange hearing Derek’s voice. He wouldn’t normally be on comms duty, but these were unusual times. Damn, she hadn’t finished listening to the earlier message from Elaine. It was probably just about the coolant engines. Maybe with a solution.
She wished Derek and her could chat live with only the normal five seconds delay—half a second for her, and four and half for him. She smiled at her joke. She did love him, even though he had the charisma of custard. Actually, he was custard with hidden flavoured depths, whereas Claude was a flambéed crêpes with rum and lime.
She allowed another tear to escape, and tried harder to listen.
“…so it’s imperative to effect a repair. I emphasise, Kallandra, that you do not need to go EVA to do this, but to use the repair robot. It’s designed exactly for this type of job, though the setup and programming will take an hour. I could attempt to do all that from here, but the chances of success are greater and quicker if you operate the robot from the ship. I’ve sent you an assessment and suggested program routine.”
Oh God, she didn’t want to have to focus on anything difficult. It was interesting neither he nor Elaine had mentioned disposing of Claude’s body. No doubt they were prioritizing for her.
“Kallandra,” Derek continued, “I love you. Always.”
Arrgh! She wanted the immediacy of human contact to hug the man, kiss him, apologise, explain and tell him she loved him too. Did he know about the intimacy between Claude and her on the flight? He must, so he pretended it didn’t matter. Had Capcom or the director told him not to have a go at her? It didn’t really matter, and yet it was going to bug her.
“Love you, too, Derek,” she blurted into the mike. “I’ll look over your upload, and report back when ready to activate the external repair robot.”
As she checked Derek’s procedures, an odd thought occurred. Why was she still on course for the spheres? All that coolant leakage must have pushed her off course at least a few degrees, unless the backup hydrazine jets spurted out to keep the spheres on target. That must have happened unless…. Another possibility flitted in and out of her ideas box, but nothing realistic settled.
She activated the repair task equipment. It was robotic in that once programmed and switched on, it could move without her and make some decisions. The most important of those was when to halt and ask for help.
There was little for her to do for another forty minutes while it collected items from storage and manoeuvred into position over the ruptured pipe. Feeling a few niggling hunger pangs, she swivelled in her chair before rising to head for the galley.
Claude was in the way. Prone, drifting a few inches off the deck. Now what?
Nausea replaced hunger as she missed the stupid, lovable lug, and faced decisions. A flash of inspiration sent her to the computer and she pulled up Claude’s private file.
She’d been too busy both prior and during the trip to consider nosing around in his personal data. They’d decided months ago it would be churlish to have passwords, but the system insisted so they’d agreed hers would be queenbee and his hornet.
Both were advised to make out a will while on Earth, so maybe a copy sat in his personal files. Sure, there it was. Umm, nothing for her, and who was Amanda Belton?
The proceeds of the sale of his Quebec property goes to her, along with all his personal files—strange. Ah, he wanted to be buried at sea or in space. Fair enough.
“Elaine, just to let you know Claude’s will says he wanted to be buried in space, so I’m activating the procedure now. The repair to the coolant pipes is progressing as per Derek’s coding.”
The message was matter of fact, her emotions put on hold for as long as necessary to function. She’d a niggling feeling she was being kept sweet by Derek, even though she’d kinda betrayed him. Maybe he’d been told to go easy on her in view of the mission. And he’d devoted years of his life into this ship. OK it wasn’t on its way to Mars, but its unknown destination added that mystery-tour element; an added frisson.
It was inevitable she’d develop paranoia. Hopefully it was mild and its awareness would avoid side effects.