Anton's Odyssey (33 page)

Dr. Zanders explained that we would be decelerating soon. Since my brother was unusually prone to motions sickness, Dr. Zanders wanted to be proactive. “If we start Cotton on an antiemetic now, you might not have to bring him in for a shot later.”

I thought the idea was great. I wouldn’t have to clean up Cotton’s vomit, nor would I have to strain my back lugging him to the medical center. Best of all, I wouldn’t have to see his ugly pimply ass when Dr. Zanders gave him a shot. Cotton agreed he would rather take pills now rather than get a shot later.

“Give him one pill in the morning right before breakfast,” Dr. Zanders explained. “From what I hear, landing on Gliese 581e is pretty rough. The atmosphere is unusually dense, and very high winds are a given. This ship is pretty much guaranteed to experience some sort of turbulent-mediated centrifugal yaw acceleration, so give him two pills the day of the landing. As a side effect of a double dose, he might get a little loopy, but he should be able to keep his lunch down.”

Outside the medical center, Cotton asked if he could take a triple dose right then and there just to see what the doctor meant by “loopy.” “Don’t be stupid,” I barked angrily. The last thing I wanted was to have to explain to Dr. Zanders why I let Cotton poison himself.

Mr. Yongscolder posted that classes would be canceled the day of the landing. I could hear cheering throughout the ship as kids read the announcement on the vid screen.

Ellen sent me a message asking if I wanted to go to a tea party at her place the next morning, right before landing preparations. Without Boldergat around to pitch a fit, tea parties and potlucks were becoming commonplace in living units. At first I thought Ellen was asking me out, but as I read the next few lines my heart rate returned to normal, my dreams dashed. She also invited Allen, Hammond, and Cotton and explained that she expected us to wear shirts with collars and “no tough guy baggy pants,” which were the only kinds of trousers I owned.

I gave Cotton his double dose of antiemetic before breakfast. After we ate, we put on our collared shirts. Cotton’s made him look like a total dweeb. I hadn’t worn mine in years, and I had out grown it. My arms barely fit through the sleeves making me look like one of those meatheads you see pumping themselves at the gym.

Cotton was cackling by the time we arrived at the door of Ellen’s living unit, pointing at every shadow and laughing, “
tee hee hee.”
I guess this is what Dr. Zanders meant by “loopy,”
I thought.

I pressed the buzzer and a slim woman in a classy dress opened the door, Ellen’s mother no doubt. She looked just like her daughter, only with the hint of crow’s feet lining her eyes and a few grey streaks in her hair.

“What’s with all the adults on this ship cloning themselves,” Cotton mumbled loudly, “first Hammond’s dad and now Ellen’s mother too!”

Ellen’s mother was clearly expecting better manners. “What’s wrong with your brother?” she asked.

“Sorry ma’am. Dr. Zanders gave him some medication so he won’t puke during the landing.” I explained. “He’s experiencing some side effects. Normally he’s not this bad.”

Ellen’s mother cringed slightly when I said the word “puke.” Perhaps she also expected Ellen’s friends to be a little less vulgar.

The elegant lady led us inside. Practically every boy on the ship was there, even Charlie, the jackass son of the first mate. Most of the boys had brought Ellen flowers from the commissary. Bouquets were stacked seven high in the living room.

“Why didn’t you get Ellen flowers, doofus?” Cotton said loudly. “Now she’ll never go out with you.”

“Shut up!” I said softly, my face turning red.

“Hey check out Mr. Biceps! You been going to the gym without me?” a familiar voic
e said. Hammond sat on the couch, his midget foot propped up on the ottoman, and his crutches leaning against the wall. He was still holding his bouquet of flowers. Apparently he had not yet found a chance to give them to Ellen.

Ellen stood in the living room surrounded by boys that looked much less dorky than us in their collared shirts. I waved at her and she smiled and nodded. She didn’t come over though.

“Man this place is a total sausage fest!” Hammond said. “I’m pretty sure the whole point of this party is to punish us for being boys. You know, let us know there’s so much competition nobody stands a chance. I can’t believe I paid fifteen hundred dollars for these,” Hammond nodded at his bouquet. “What a waste of money!”

Ellen’s mother handed us each a cup of tea. Most of the other boys got fine china but Cotton, Hammond, and I got recyclable plastic cups.

Ellen tossed her hair and giggled at a joke made by some tall blond prosperous-looking kid. A strong jaw and his physique well sculpted, he looked like he came straight off a recruiting poster for the Space Marines Officer Candidate School.

“Hey I know a joke too!” Cotton said, “What’s the cause of a large pee value?
Too much tea!” Cotton cackled maniacally.

The puzzled look on Hammond’s face indicated he agreed that my brother’s joke had been phrased rather awkwardly.

“Lovely dear,” Ellen’s mother said, frowning.

“Who’s that big pretty boy over there?” I asked, pointing to the space marine poster child.

“That’s Johnna,” Hammond said spitefully. “He’s a senior and a cocky jackass if ever there was one!”

“Language boys!”
Ellen mother shouted at us. She projected her reprimand loud enough for all to hear. Many of the other guests looked over at us and frowned. Ellen tried to bury her face in the palm of her hand, as if to say, “I can’t believe I invited those guys.”

“Where’s Allen?” I asked.

“I haven’t seen him.” Hammond said. “He’s kind of small, so maybe he’s hidden behind some of the bigger kids in the next room.”

“I’ll go check.” Cotton said. He nudged his way into the living room, shoving the other boys out of the way as he searched for our missing friend. With a jolt from behind, Cotton nearly toppled Johnna. The large boy clinched his fist and bit his lip, using every bit of restraint he possessed to keep himself from slugging my brother.

Cotton came back and said, “He’s not here. I even checked under the couch. Tee hee hee!”

Something about Allen’s absence made me feel very uneasy. Of course, Ellen probably didn’t even notice Allen wasn’t there with the attention she was getting from all the other boys.

“Let’s go find Allen.” I said.

“Good idea,” Hammond agreed.

“I know he’s not under the couch,” Cotton chuckled, “tee hee hee.”

We left without saying goodbye. I knew it was bad manners but I figured after hearing her mother holler at us, Ellen wouldn’t be
talking to us for quite some time, regardless of whether or not we gave her a proper farewell.

Allen was still in his pajamas when he answered the door. He looked bleary eyed and frazzled, like he had been up all night.

“Wanna hear a joke?” Cotton asked.

“Okay.” Allen said.

“What’s the cause of a large pee value? Too much tea.’’

All
en actually laughed. “I get it,” he said. “You must be learning basic statistics in math class?”

“I am,” Cotton said laughing, “get it, ‘pee,’ p-value; ‘tea;’ T as in T-test. Tee hee hee!”

“Yeah, I got it the first time around,” Allen said. Leaning forward the small boy asked me quietly, “Your brother okay?”

“Yeah, it’s nothing. Doc gave him a double dose of antiemetic for the landing.
Said the side effects could make him loopy.”

“Sure, they can do that.” Allen said, amused.

“He practically got us kicked out of Ellen’s tea party.” Hammond said.

“Oh is that today?” Allen’s jaw dropped. “I totally forgot.”

Allen was one of the most reliable people I knew. It wasn’t like him to flake on a commitment. There was definitely something peculiar going on.

“What’s going on?” I said. “What have you been working on?”

“I haven’t been working on anything. I’ve been watching TV.”

“Oh cut the crap!” Hammond snapped. “We know you’re too smart to just sit around and watch TV like the rest of us.”

Allen frowned. He realized he couldn’t fool us. “Okay, you guys better come in.” he said. We wandered into his bedroom. Allen sat at his desk and activated his computer. “You guys don’t know much about machine code do you?” We shook our heads, feeling rather stupid. “Then I should probably just tell you, rather than show you.”

Allen walked over to his closet, took off his pajama top, and traded it for a slightly rumpled shirt. Hammond and I shared shocked glances at how flabby the boy was. His upper body was completely devoid of muscle tone.

“I’ve been monitoring the preparations for landing these past few days.” As if reading our minds, he continued, “You guys may be wondering why I would bother to do something that seems so boring, and the answer is simple: To the technically enlightened, it isn’t boring at all. Landing a spacecraft with the mass of a small city while preserving the safety of thousands of crewmembers, not to mention the cryogens, is probably the most difficult task in all of space travel. There are so many variables to consider and so many things that can go wrong. Our destination, Gliese 581e is particularly hazardous —”

“Because of the dense atmosphere and high winds invariably lead to turbulent-mediated centrifugal yaw acceleration.” I interjected. I had not forgotten how much Allen hated interruption, but for once in my life, I possessed knowledge relevant to Allen’s science lectures, and I felt the need to show off that I wasn’t stupid.

“Yes,” Allen said, rather surprised. “How did you know that?”

Of course I didn’t inform Allen that Dr. Zanders told me about the problem when he recommended Cotton’s current medication. Rather, I shrugged my shoulders and said, “We all know that.” Turning to Hammond I asked, “You knew that, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I knew that,” Hammond lied rather convincingly.

“I knew that, too,” Cotton said, followed by, “tee hee hee.”

“Well good for you guys.” Allen said. “Let me cut to the chase then. Someone has been reprogramming each of our stabilizer motors. It wasn’t any protocol I recognized at first. I kept re-checking my calculations, checking planetary charts to make sure I was comparing the code to data appropriate for Gliese 581e. There was something kind of familiar about the motor ignition and duration sequence. I couldn’t quite place it, but I knew I had seen it somewhere before. Gretchen finally let me browse the old hard copies in the archives. She wasn’t going to let me at first, but I begged and pleaded, and she finally agreed because I was a good kid who never caused her any trouble. I found the sequence in a very old journal dating back over seventy years. Back before the development of enhanced-precision interstellar navigation systems, stabilizers were bigger and weren’t just stabilizer motors. They were also used to change a ship’s trajectory midflight when updated data revealed the vessel had drifted off course. That’s what the new code is. It’s a set of abbreviated trajectory corrections. Someone is taking great pains to blow us off course.”

“You mean make us crash?” Hammond asked, alarmed.

“No, the code doesn’t necessarily interfere with a gentle touch down. But there is something else, a second set of codes that will make the ship dump its auxiliary cubane fuel stores. Both codes have the same activation sequence, meaning by typing in a single command, whoever wrote the code can cause the ship to land thousands of kilometers away from the nearest colony and have no remaining fuel, essentially stranding us.” Allen scratched his head. “What I can’t figure out is why would someone would do that?”

I shrugged.

“Maybe it’s some sort of emergency code.” Hammond explained. “Ship starts to go down hard, you divert it someplace safe and dump the fuel to prevent an explosion.”

“I thought about that,” Allen said, “and that may very well be the case. What disturbs me
, though, is that I cannot identify the computer user who inserted the code. Whoever he is, he is doing it from within in the engine room, but when I check the security system, the user seems to be using a computer that isn’t being manned. I have no idea how he’s doing it.”

“Why can’t you just delete the code?” I asked.

“I can’t. It would need to be done from within the engine room. Also, I’m not sure if it’s a good idea, just in case Hammond is right, that it’s some kind of emergency diversion procedure.”

Allen’s computer flashed the new ship announcement.
“Landing preparations initiated. Crewmembers not participating in touch down should return to their living units. Charles Pecelschmidt Sr., first mate (on behalf of the captain).”

“Oh no!”
Allen shrieked. “I need more time!”

Hammond put his hand on the small boy’s boney shoulder. “I think you’re maki
ng a big deal out of nothing.” he said, trying to reassure Allen. “I don’t think you should worry about it.”