“I think you owe me the rest of that story,” Joanna said,
handing a pouch of coffee to Eric, who had stopped by to chat about the data
that had come back from his atmospheric probes. Joanna only understood a little
of it, but listened patiently. She’d taken three of the little blue pills that
morning, and felt a little distanced from everything around her. She made a
mental note to ask the station doctor to adjust the dosage instead of trying to
do it herself, and tried to focus.
“Which story?” Eric asked, somewhat confused.
“The whole ‘I was a teenage conspiracy theorist’ story.”
Eric laughed, and the tips of his ears turned pink. “Ah. Yes. That one. Where did I leave off?”
“I don’t think you ever really got started.”
He sighed, and took a deep draught of coffee. “Alright. When
I was younger, I read every space-related conspiracy theory I could find.
Ancient astronauts, ruins on other planets, everything. And that stuff sucks
you in, one claim at a time. It sounds just plausible enough that you don’t
question it too much; after you’ve granted a few of their claims, the others
get wilder and wilder, but they sound like they flow logically from the things
you’ve already accepted. Especially when you’re a kid. Anyway, by the time I
hit college, I knew all the arguments and had even started doing some research
of my own. I didn’t really believe the people who said the Sorenson expedition
was sent to cover up ancient ruins in Cydonia; that stretched even my
highly-flexible credulity. But I was convinced that there was evidence for
ancient civilizations around the solar system. I wrote papers about the
civilization that must have been annihilated when a mysterious planet was
destroyed, forming the asteroid belt.”
Joanna inhaled a sip of coffee, and was lost in a fit of coughing.
“Yes, I know, it’s ludicrous. But it didn’t seem that way at
the time. I thought I was a crusader for truth, finding hidden facts in the
darkness of corporate greed and governmental need for control.” He smiled
ruefully. “Not that those things don’t exist, they just weren’t the cause of my
problems. Anyway, I was convinced that any alien ruins would be found on Venus.
We can hardly see under that atmosphere, and it’s nearly impossible for us to
land anything there, especially if we want it to last longer than a few
minutes. A perfect hiding spot, and near enough to Earth to get back and forth
fairly easily a few times per year. I had reasons why all of the odd things
about Venus, like the backwards rotation, the runaway greenhouse effect, and so
forth, were actually proofs that an ancient alien civilization had lived there.
Of course, once I got out here, on my first study, it all fell apart. There was
nothing here but clouds, rocks, and a planet that had been dead for hundreds of
thousands of years, if not longer.”
He fell silent for a few moments, sipping at his coffee.
Then, he looked toward the door, and whispered, “You know, I miss it
sometimes.”
“Miss it? Why?”
“Because I thought I knew where I was in the world, that I
knew what was really going on behind everything, and knew the truth. Now? Now
I’m just muddling through like everyone. I miss the certainty.”
Joanna mumbled something in response. How is anyone ever that certain, she wondered. I’ve never been certain of anything in my life. Except during the
accident, I was certain I was going to die. But even that ended up not being
certain at all.
Eric drained the last of his coffee and stuffed the empty
pouch into a nearby recycling unit. “Thanks for the coffee! I need to go work
on crunching this data so I can get the next test ready.” He turned to go, but
paused, and looked over his shoulder. “You won’t tell anyone, right? I mean,
it’s not that I buy into any of these ideas anymore, but it’d be better if
no-one knew that I’d ever believed them.”
“Of course.”
As Eric left, Joanna pulled up the med station info on her
computer. It was late, but perhaps she could make an appointment for the
following day. There was one open slot remaining, early in the morning; she
reserved it, and unbuckled herself from the chair. I hate the paperwork, she thought as she stretched. This would be a perfect job if all forms
filled themselves out.
She locked the equipment room door behind her ; during open
hours, anyone with the public code could open the door, but while she was out,
only someone with a high-clearance code could get inside. There had been talk
of hiring a second person to handle the night shift, but since all equipment
requests had to be approved and scheduled in advance, there hadn’t been need. Still, Joanna thought, it would nice to feel like I’m not on call
at all hours.
Joanna made her way down the corridor leading to the outer
section of the station. It took some getting used to; as the corridor moved
away from the central hub of the spinning station, gravity increased, and it
became a deep well. The trick, Joanna had learned, was in holding on to the
handholds before you felt like you needed them. A fall would start slowly
enough that you could right yourself without injury, but it was best not to
fall.
She felt the familiar twist in her stomach as the hallway,
without changing in appearance, suddenly began to feel very distinctly
downwards. Instead of drifting laterally, she was beginning to sink. Most of
the temporary station residents chose to sleep in zero-gravity quarters, since
the health impact would be low. For station residents, staying anywhere from
six to twelve months, sleeping in Mars-gravity quarters was mandatory.
Instead of drifting peacefully, Joanna was now dropping slowly
from handhold to handhold, her weight increasing with each meter. As the end of
the corridor neared, she grimaced as the weight of her body hung from her arms.
She dropped from the last handhold to the floor of the corridor that ran around
the rim of the station and turned left to go to her quarters.
When she got back to her quarters, she locked the door
behind her, and let out a long breath. Despite being alone most of any given
day, she never really felt like she could relax until she was in her own
quarters for the night.
She stripped down to the shorts and tank top she wore under
her jumpsuit, and shivered as the cold recycled air hit her bare skin. With a
quick tug, her bun came down, letting her hair flow across her shoulders.
Joanna braided it swiftly and turned on the heater for her room. It wouldn’t be
enough to make the room feel toasty—nothing in deep space ever felt completely
warm—but it would at least stop the goosebumps that prickled on her arms. She
pulled on a simple robe, and looked around the quarters.
In the years since she’d started focusing on stable jobs,
Joanna had begun to collect a few choice items that could be taken to nearly
any deep-space station; it wasn’t exactly what her mother would have called a
real home, but it was close. Most of her book collection was on her computer,
but a few well-worn volumes rested on a shelf, along with a handful of curios
from some of the more interesting places she’d visited. A small snowglobe model
of Andronivi City
Joanna grabbed her computer and pulled up the book she was
reading. She sat on the bed somewhat awkwardly; it took time to readjust to
gravity at the end of a day. She read until her eyes began to close, then turned
out the light and slept.
She could see the gap
just ahead. She’d seen worse breaches, but this was bad enough. She moved
forward carefully, keeping an eye on the jagged edges of metal surrounding the
breach. The hole was big enough to fit two people through with ease.
She clamped her
toolbox to the wall with a magnet and opened it. As she drew out the sander,
she felt a tremor go through the interior wall. She turned her head to look,
but only caught a blur as the wall exploded outward. Her forehead hit the glass
of her helmet, and she saw stars.
Floating in the black,
she saw a million white-hot points of light, rushing at her from all
directions. A streak of blood on the inside of her helmet turned a few of them
red. She gasped for air, saw the crack in the helmet, and felt cold all over.
She twisted around, saw the station behind her, the brightly-lit hull breach
pouring atmosphere out into nothingness. Saw a rip in the arm of her suit and
felt the cold fill the suit.
Then, a sharp tug at
her back, and she was moving toward the station again, though facing back out
into nothing. Her lungs ached, and her fingers felt like brittle sticks. She
felt herself be pulled back through the breach, felt the sharp edges clutching
at her suit…
Joanna woke, gasping for air, holding back a scream. The
dream, again. It had been months since the last time; being so near the open
airlock, even behind a door, must have triggered it. She sat for a long time in
the dark, breathing and flexing her hands. She tried the breathing exercises
her first psychiatrist had recommended, and felt her heart rate slow.
She bent forward and rested her head on her knees. The first
time the dream had come, it had been months after the accident; she’d been
terrified, unable to sleep for fear of finding herself back in that corridor.
Joanna tapped her computer and checked the time. 2:18am,
standard station time. A good four hours before her usual waking time. She
groaned and pulled herself out of bed, wrapping her robe around her to ward off
the chill of the air. She knew from long experience that it would be worthless
to try to go back to sleep, and resigned herself to a very long day.
The thought of coffee drew her out of her quarters. After
slipping into a clean jumpsuit and pulling on her boots, Joanna made her way
out of her quarters and up the corridor that lead to the interior sections of
the station. As she moved upward, the gravity lessened and she found herself
drifting easily forward. She debated going to her own office for coffee, but
the thought of another plastic-tasting brew was less than appealing at such an
early hour. She turned down the corridor and headed for the cafeteria.
As she passed the door to the archival room, Joanna saw a
light in the window. She hesitated, telling herself that it would be a much
better idea just to keep moving, but found herself unable to keep from looking
in.
There was something inherently strange in seeing a
middle-aged man in slacks and a sweater vest floating between stacks of computer
drives; Joanna thought it would have been less strange if he’d worn the
jumpsuit that the majority of the residents wore. As it was, he looked like
some odd magical character out of an old children’s book.
Joanna was about to move on when Carson looked up and spotted her through the
glass. With a smile, he waved her inside; she groaned inside, regretting the
impulse to stop and look in. Too late
now. She punched the public-access code into the keypad and opened the
door.
“You’re up awfully late, Joanna,” Carson said as she entered. “Or is it early?”
“I could say the same about you. I didn’t think the archives
were open at this hour.”
“Technically, they’re not. But no-one ever comes by, so I
don’t bother locking the door. And I’m here because here is more interesting
than my quarters.”
“Don’t you ever sleep?”
He shrugged. “Not much. Five or six hours at a stretch. I’ve
been told that when I was young, I decided that sleep was very boring, and
decided not to engage in more of it than was strictly necessary.” He paused and
looked up from his computer. “You look as if you’ve had a rough night. I can
make tea, if you’d like.”
A voice in the back of Joanna’s head told her that she knew
better than to accept, but she ignored it. “Tea would be wonderful. Caffeinated,
if you have it.”
He fiddled with a machine that looked almost identical to
her own coffee infuser, and in a few moments, handed her a teardrop-shaped
cylinder full of amber liquid.
“Ah, a real cup,” she smiled.
“What passes for one here, anyway,” he said, using a small
tube to add tea to another cup. “Most people think the pouches are more
convenient, but I can’t stand the plastic taste they add.”
“How much of your space allowance did these take up?” Joanna
sipped the tea carefully; the shape of the cup allowed the liquid to be wicked
up the narrow edge of the cylinder while the surface tension kept it from
sloshing.
“Too much, probably, but we all have our own priorities.” A
silent moment passed, in which Joanna forced herself not to notice how nice his
shirt looked.
“Having trouble sleeping, then?” Carson asked, draining the last of his tea,
and putting the cup inside a mesh bag on the wall to keep it from floating
around the room.
Joanna nodded. “Bad dreams. An old one, nothing I can’t deal
with. But I know I won’t sleep again tonight, so I was headed to the cafeteria
to get something hot. Thanks for the tea, again. It’s a lot better than a
premix.”
“Much better. This dream, you say you’ve had it often. Would
it help to retell it, or would that only make things worse?”
“Oh, neither. I’ve been over it with a psychiatrist, and it
doesn’t scare me anymore. Just crops up from time to time, and pumps enough
adrenaline into my system that I can’t go back to sleep.” She hesitated, then
took a deep breath.
“I was twenty-six, and I’d signed aboard the Clytemnestra.
She was a deep-space research ship, and I had gotten a job on board as a
mechanic and engineer. A chance meteoroid struck the outside of the ship and
gouged the hull. I was part of the crew sent to do repairs. There was a weak
seam on the interior wall of the corridor, which no-one knew about. Just as I
got near the breach, that weak seam ruptured. It blasted me through the breach,
and into space. We always followed safety procedures, so I was wearing my
tether. The rest of the crew was able to haul me back inside, but my suit had
been damaged. When I woke up in the infirmary later, the doctors told me I had
suffered damage from the cold and lack of oxygen. It all healed, eventually,
but it took months of physical therapy to get back to normal. By the end of it,
I’d decided I was getting too old to be putting myself in those kinds of
situations anymore, and started looking for jobs with a distinct lack of access
to the vacuum.” She wrapped her hands around the rapidly cooling cup, trying to
soak up the last of the warmth. “In these dreams, I’m back in that hallway,
walking toward that breach. Every time, I know what’s going to happen, but I
can’t stop it, and I’m blown through that hole again.”
“That’s terrible,” Caron said softly.
Joanna shrugged. “It happens. I was very lucky. No lasting
physical damage, except this.” She touched the scar above her eye. “Most people
who spend time in the vacuum aren’t so lucky. I’ve worked through it with a
psychiatrist, I’m not scared of space. I just get the dreams once in a while.”
Suddenly self-conscious, she handed him her empty cup. “I’m sorry, I’ve been
blabbing on. I should let you head to your quarters.”
“It’s no problem. I rarely get visitors in here, and it’s
nice to have a little company. I don’t mind listening.”
“Thanks for the tea.” Joanna slipped out of the door, and
let out a deep breath. That visit had been a mistake. She checked the time.
2:53am. Four hours til her appointment. The time couldn’t pass quickly enough.
“I can up your dose a little bit,” Dr. Harris said as she
adjusted Joanna’s prescription in her computer. “But I’d advise against it. This
only suppresses the physiological causes of your feelings, but it won’t negate
them. You’re going to have to work through them on your own.”
“Oh, I know,” Joanna said. “But this should help me focus
while I do it.”
Dr. Harris nodded, then clipped her computer to her belt and
turned to face Joanna. “Ms. Regent, from one woman to another, maybe you should
just consider telling this person how you feel. Clear the air.”
“That…is never going to happen. It’s unprofessional, and the
last thing I want is to be stuck on a station for months with someone I’ve made
a fool of myself to.” She smiled, and made her way back out to the main
corridor, making a mental note to pick up her new prescription as soon as
possible.
As she neared the equipment room, she saw several groups of
people in the corridor, hunched over computers. There was a tension in the air
that sent a chill down her spine.
Montse looked up from one group, and waved her over. “Have
you seen the news?”
Joanna shook her head. “No, I had a doctor’s appointment.
What’s happening?” She bent over the computer, trying to make sense of the
video feed.
On the screen, a white plume of smoke stretched from the
ground to the sky; it was indistinct near the edges, and Joanna knew the launch
must have been at least twenty minutes past. A crowd milled around, obscuring
the base of the cloud, and a reporter struggled to keep on his mark in the
midst of the crush.
“If you are just joining us now,” he shouted, trying to
drown out the noise around him, “the Hermes-class supply shuttle, Titan, has
been overtaken by protestors following its launch here a few minutes ago. Those
in control of the shuttle claim to be from the protest organization KERR, Keep
Earth Resource Rich. The KERR officials we’ve been able to contact deny that
they are behind this, and we will have a statement from them shortly. The Titan
launched without incident, but all communications went silent forty seconds
after they achieved orbit. One message, proclaiming KERR’s responsibility for
the attack, came through, but mission control has been unable to receive any
further information. At this time, we do not know what the protestors plans are
for the shuttle. They have not yet deviated from the original flight path, and
the ship appears to be preparing to leave orbit on its supply run to the
Haephestus, orbiting Venus.”
Joanna tapped the screen, and the video disappeared. “Turn
it off.”
As someone in the group began to protest, she held up a
hand. “We don’t know anything right now. It’ll take them hours to find out what’s
going on, and that’s if they work quickly. Even if they are still headed for
us, that’s a three week journey at maximum burn. Right now, all we’re going to
get is speculation and panic. Keep it off, wait for the real news to trickle
through.”
The station public announcement system whispered to life,
and everyone turned to look at the nearest speaker.
“Station-wide bulletin: the supply shuttle Titan has been
attacked and may be under the control of a rogue group of uncertain origin. At
this time, we do not anticipate any interruption to our supply schedule. Please
keep calm and do not spread rumors that may lead to panic. We will keep you
informed of verified information as we receive it. Thank you.”
As the speakers faded into silence, the people in the
corridor glanced at each other, and Joanna saw fear in every glance.
Yay for knowing about the accident!!
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