Holly and her crew watched a spider-like robot crawled on the top of the chairs in the mess. It’s many legs twitched and shifted around as it went trying to keep its balanced and not fall, and it explored the entire row of chairs. It found no path to the table and so it positioned its legs for maximum effect and leaped onto the table. It’s small feet were carpeted and it made no discernable sound as it landed.
Samoylova and Nieves had set up a ring of microphones on stands spaced around the work area. The main display showed a spectrogram from this new robot in yellow. Superimposed with this was the frequency signal from the previous drone, which was shown in blue and of higher energy. Holly understood that this newer model was quieter. But she didn’t notice a perceptible difference and she could see from the stares from most of the others that they didn’t either.
“How does making it a tad quieter help us?”
Samoylova got up and pointed at the higher frequencies. “We don’t notice any perceptible difference. But humans don’t hear frequencies higher than 20kHz. Some animals hear up to 100kHz, and the energies of these frequencies have decreased too.”
“The carpet boots makes it even more quiet,” Moussa said while wiping his eyes from fatigue. “You don’t see the full effect of that in the spectrogram.”
Holly stood to ward off her own fatigue. She still thought the most likely cause for the alien creature being able to evade them before was that it saw the light energy they emitted in the ducts. “You really don’t think it saw the light pulses we used for our vision systems?”
Samoylova, Moussa, and Nieves all shook their heads. Moussa stood up and switched the display to show their goggles’ duty cycle (the percentage that their emitted signal is on and off). “If this thing is like every animal we know then it’s eyes integrates things. We emitted twenty-five microsecond pulses sixty times a second. It’s nothing. On average, that’s zero light.”
Samoylova nodded. “It was sound that tripped us up.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Or that thing smelled our scent. We didn’t clean the drones after making them last time. And I would bet Ghost or Stocky could have smelled our scent all over them. We’ll clean them next time and wipe them down with an oil that’s used in those ducts as a mask.”
Holly tried but couldn’t find any fault to their reasoning. “I do think this may be an improvement. Even still, I don’t believe we can afford another casualty. We’re going to have to keep the Nineveh running for a long time.”
“I’m not advocating going into the Systems Access ducts either,” Moussa said, holding up his hands as if pleading. “What the three of us talked about when we made this drone was to breach into Aux Two, deploy maybe twenty of these stealthy drones, and try to find this thing and learn about it.”
Samoylova nodded. “Learn about it and then kill it.”
“Would these last longer?”
“Yes,” Nieves said, looking embarrassed. “Most of the autonomous drones in Aux Two are still functioning. The ones in the ducts died because I didn’t program them to work autonomously, and I didn’t give them a walk back routine in case they lost signal.”
The spider drone leaped onto the deck and Samoylova triggered its shutdown to stop it from wandering off. “We just missed that with the time constraint.”
Holly shook her head to kill that kind of self-blame. “You did better than I could have. It was good work then and this is too. I’ll tell De Silva about it.” She looked around the whole room, making brief eye contact with each of them. “Stay together. Try to rest. We’ll refresh before going back in.” She suspected it would be a massacre if they didn’t.
Chandna silently walked into the Mess. He curiously studied the equipment that was assembled. Samoylova saw him first and asked, “Have you found something to use against that thing?”
“What are you doing here?” Garvey asked. His tone seemed accusatory.
“We’re still collating information,” Chandna said. “We have made great progress on understanding the disease progression and how it remains active in subzero temperatures, and we should obtain useful results from that knowledge in the coming days. I have TURING preparing the labs for new testing. Stocky and Patterson are resting, and I’ll take a rest break afterwards.” He looked at the displays. “It looks like you have plans.”
Holly assured him they weren’t going to do anything right away and asked if Sci-Med had learned anything to support going into Aux Two. He shook his head and warned them that they would have to sample the air first to reconfirm that there are no airborne contaminants, and afterwards they could do as before. And he asked about Qureshi.
“Qureshi’s doing okay,” Nieves said. “We made chicken soup for her and she hasn’t lost her appetite.”
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Chandna was pleased to hear than and then examined the drone. Holly and Moussa told him about the improvements and Chandna seemed a lot more certain about their helpfulness than Holly had been. She was glad he had come by to boost her confidence, and she suspected most of the others were too.
Moussa bent over and picked up the drone. “Let’s go tell the Captain.”
Holly nodded. “Stay together, and one of you should be armed.”
Samoylova holstered her revolver and stuck a 9mm in her belt. Moussa took a shotgun lying on the counter.
“Holly,” Garvey said, “the problem with Chandna going to is that nobody in Sci-Med is working to solve this.”
They can’t work around the clock.”
“They better damn well try!” he said. “They are the ones who let it get loose!”
The whole room was silent for a second. Holly wished De Silva was here to manage this. There was so much blame to be passed around. (She had let Zhu go.) She wasn’t fit to say who was right or wrong.
Moussa saw Holly’s avoidance. “Zip it, Garvey. We all have a role to play in solving this. And rest is part of that role.”
Chandna nodded, looking sternly at Garvey. “Get some sleep. Now. Doctor’s orders.”
Rage flashed in Garvey’s eyes and he pointed his finger. “You don’t…” He stopped himself from finishing and looked around confused as if he was only now aware of what he was doing.
Moussa, Chandna, and Sam left and Holly looked at each of them who were left. “Everyone kick back and get some rest. De Silva will be back soon.”
Garvey looked at all of them in turn, pouting silently. He turned his back to her and began to walk away. “The Captain’s already lost his nerve, NAV. You’re in command, but you’ve never been fit for that.”
Those words hurt. The truth often did. She stood silently and watched him walk away and coughing. She felt a growing sense of dread. She couldn’t lead the crew as well as De Silva had. But De Silva was in a compromised mental state. She vividly remembered him drinking on the Mess, shaking and sweaty. He was struggling with a measure of fear he had never known.
“He didn’t mean that,” Nieves said.
“But if De Silva isn’t his usual self,” Ginting said, “we’re going to work around that right?”
She looked at him and thought about how to answer. She couldn’t just dissuade him from that thought; he had seen De Silva’s shaky nature too. “If it comes to that. But it won’t, understand?”
He nodded, seemingly realizing his need to correct himself. “Yes, NAV.”
She sat back down at the table and closed her eyes. She needed to try to get some sleep too, if she could. All of her senses seemed more perceptive. Fear seemingly had every nerve tuned, and she remembered a line of words in a poem she couldn’t remember. Things fall apart; center cannot hold.
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Garvey went down a level to go to Berthing. His entire body ached and his mind couldn’t concentrate, but it was probably just a cold. A good rest followed by a hot meal would put him on the mend. He was entitled to that. If the Captain could space out from nerves and Sci-Med could doze while an alien disease spread through two Gates – maybe more – then he could too.
He opened the door and looked into the dark room. There was something on the floor in the back. He stepped in a few paces to look closer and saw that they were clothes. And, as he listened, he heard a rolling thunder. Did one of them leave it like this when they woke for the rendezvous? The closed privacy curtains began to feel threatening. And it was strangely cold – just how the alien liked it.
And then he heard breathing. At first he thought it was a dreamy moan, but on listening further it wasn’t. It was a deep, hungry growl. A kind of snarl. The sound a predator makes when it’s bearing its fangs and about to strike. And it was behind one of the curtains.
His heart began to race. He glanced back at the pile on the floor as he began to back away. One of the items on the deck was a Sci-Med lab coat. He was sure of it even though he would have to get closer (or turn up the lights) to properly see. (And he didn’t dare turn on the lights.) The growling went on. Several of the curtains began to ripple. There were lots of hungry monsters.
He stepped out and closed the door behind him. Chandna had contaminated their Berthing. He thought of going to the Captain’s stateroom – to show him. But then he heard the accessway to Propulsion Two open and he saw Qureshi walk through the corridor. She glanced at him and beckoned.
She shouldn’t be up. But it was good that she was since nobody was to be alone. He followed – going through the narrow walkway and between the propulsion sets. A second will within his mind compelled him to go after her. She went up to Robbie and greeted him. And then he came up and switched him off. The will compelled him to.
They looked at each other, and he wondered if she was Qureshi. Something was a bit off with her. She went into the walkway to Aux Two and Zhu, and Fuller, and Soliman were all there. He didn’t make a sound. They stared back at him with their emaciated faces and deep sunken eyes. And they bid him to become one of them.
I’ve lost my marbles. He closed his eyes and counted in his mind. He would concentrate and when he opened his eyes he would see that it was just a daydream. The dead crewmen were not real, and neither was the monster he heard in Berthing. But they were still there when he opened his eyes! And now they were inspecting the camera and sensors that they had installed to detonate their bombs.
And he thought that was a good idea. The bombs had become a danger to them all. If the camera and lasers faulted and detected this delusion… He decided to fix that, and he did. Together they reprogrammed the camera to play a constant loop of a clear passageway. And they bypassed the laser sensor outputs to reflect a safe passageway.
He looked around when he had finished his work. And he sighed with great relief. The horrible phantoms of the dead were gone and it was just him and Qureshi. Robbie stood silently, guarding the passage. Everything was as it should be – except for that Qureshi looked gravely ill.
You really need to lay back down and get some sleep. He helped her back to her bunk and tucked her in. She thanked him and promised that they would both soon be well. He hoped so. He had to admit that he was feeling quite under the weather too. And it was all Chandna’s fault – he had let the devil aboard to torment them.
He went back to the mess and helped himself to a big bowl of soup. He didn’t tell anyone what he had saw. He couldn’t; it was crazy. He only saw those things because he was tired and sick. And besides, it was fixed now.