3.6
08 July
I.R.V. Intercession
Extra-Kuiper Space
2,000 A.U. from Earth
The next three months passed in a haze of safety drills, academic discussions, meals and work and exercise and sleep. Lots of sleep. The sense of isolation resurged in the middle of this period, and morale flagged accordingly. Even Igbal’s enthusiasm was, for once, nowhere to be seen. To Michael, Igbal seemed downright sad—even angry—and these were worryingly uncharacteristic emotions for him. Had some sort of deeply upsetting news trickled in over the radio, that Igbal was determined to keep secret? But oh, when he asked about it, Igbal angrily shrugged it off. “It’s business,” he said. “You wouldn’t be interested.”
“It doesn’t look like business,” Michael said, “and I am interested. Cislunar space is every bit as perilous as a starship journey, and I can’t help wondering if one of those many perils has manifested itself. And if so, on whom.”
“It’s frankly none of your business.”
“The morale of this crew is my business,” Michael said.
“Well, then don’t flip over this rock right now. Trust me.”
“Very well,” Michael said, unhappily, letting his confirmed suspicions dangle unaddressed.
Nor was Igbal the only one regulating emotions poorly! But the ship and crew were also getting close to their goal, and so Michael began shifting the safety drills into the more expansive, more hypothetical realm of what could happen when there were a hundred people on the ship.
“The Encounter Bubble has ruptured,” he said one day to the assembled crew. “What do you do?”
And then, when nobody answered, he zeroed in on Dong Nguyen and said, “What do you do, specifically?”
“Is it a slow leak?”
“No. It’s a rupture.”
“Well, I guess I close all the hatches and to hell with everyone trapped on the other side.”
“All eight of the hatches? By yourself? Okay, you’re dead. Everyone’s dead. Try again. Igbal, what do you do?”
“I order the hatches closed. Everyone, close these hatches, now!”
“Better,” Michael said, “But everyone is still dead.”
He was surprised, frankly, that Igbal hadn’t asked which side of the hatches he was on when the rupture happened.
After letting all that sink in, he said, “The problem is structural. This design, eight spacesuit lockers alternating with eight hatches leading into a supposed cargo hold, is an artifact of this ship being a copy of Concordia. We don’t actually need that. The Encounter Bubble wraps all the way around the ship. Do we need more than one entrance?”
“I wanted it to feel like part of the ship,” Igbal said. “Like a wraparound porch, open from all angles.”
When Michael didn’t say anything, Igbal said, “I see your point. Maybe we just keep two hatches open.”
To which Dong added, “And someone stand watch.”
Igbal seemed to think that over for a moment, and then said, “Except during the Encounter itself. We need everyone drugged at the same time. That’s my operating theory, anyway, and nobody’s going to be in any condition to guard any hatches.”
“Is that wise?” Michael asked.
“It’s why we’re here,” Igbal said. “You want to volunteer to miss the Encounter? Just float there playing recess monitor?”
Michael thought that over, and shook his head.
“Didn’t think so,” Igbal said. “It’s an acceptable risk, for an hour, in a stationary ship. But your point is duly noted; we’ll have to think harder about things like that.”
“Correct.”
On a different day, over breakfast, he told the crew, “The sleepers are awake, and they’ve mutinied. What do you do?”
“All ninety-two of them?” Harv wanted to know.
“Enough of them to be a problem,” Michael answered.
“What do they want?” Thenbecca asked.
“Does it matter?”
“Of course it matters,” she said. “Are they hungry? Are they upset about their sleeping arrangements?”
“Let’s say they want something you can’t give them.”
“Like what?”
Michael thought for a moment. “Hot showers.”
“I’ll microwave some damp washcloths.”
“We don’t have enough washcloths,” Michael said.
“I’ll invite everyone into the galley, one by one. Clean the washcloth in front of them, then heat it. Give them privacy when they wash with it.”
“A hundred times? Even if it’s covered in shit?”
“A hundred times,” she confirmed.
“You run out of soap.”
“I use vinegar.”
“You run out of that.”
“And they can’t wait for the synthesizer to catch up? Fine. I use water and a scrub brush, like our primitive ancestors. Get it as clean as I can.”
“All right,” Michael said, nodding. “We survived that one.”
On a different day, after the morning staff meeting in the wardroom, he said to Rachael Lee, “You observe Sandy acting erratically. Upon examination, you discover she has a brain tumor from all the radiation we’re absorbing. What do you do?”
Rachael snorted and set down her spork. “Well, first of all, a digestive tumor would be far more likely, because the cells in those organs are fast-replicating, especially in comparison to the brain. But in your scenario, I’d thaw out her backup, and freeze Sandy in the vacant pod.”
To the group: “That would be Sienna Delao, right? I’ve not made her acquaintance. Can she be trusted to shut down the engine properly? And restart it when it’s time to head home?”
“That’s why she’s aboard,” Igbal said.
“But would you bet our lives on it?”
“Leave me awake,” Sandy said. “Tape me to the chair so I can’t touch anything, but let me watch over Sienna, so I can tell her if she makes a mistake. Let Igbal watch, too. He’s the third-most knowledgeable.”
“Okay,” Michael said. “Everyone survives.”
“Why can’t Ptolemy shut down the engine?” Thenbecca asked.
“Wouldn’t that be a dream?” said Hobie. “This whole ship is what businesspeople call a minimum viable product. That engine doesn’t even have a throttle, ’cause it don’t run reliably at anything but maximum.”
“The hibernation pods, too,” said Rachael. “No one’s figured out a way to automate that process, which is half the reason I’m here.”
“And what happens,” Michael said, “if one of your patients experiences a medical emergency during the de-hibernation process? For my own edification; I honestly don’t know.”
“Refreeze,” Rachael said immediately. “No matter what’s going wrong, they won’t die at two degrees centigrade. We bring them all the way back to Earth, and try again in a hospital setting.”
“I see.”
Eventually, Michael had a hard time coming up with new scenarios, and an even harder time stumping the crew. They were thinking about the problem, planning on things going wrong. Light on their feet in more ways than one, they were ready to do this strange, strange thing that no group of people had ever done before.
Which was good, because it gave Michael a chance to ponder the much harder problem of how to keep the crew occupied on the way back to Earth.