Arrival (6 page)

“Are you kidding? I’m losing shit all over the place! We’re lucky the flight control systems are still functioning!” Frank made a quick glance across his systems status board, wondering how long they would hold together.
Hurry up, Jack
, he thought.

The explosion of the oxygen tank hit Jack’s area of the ship a lot harder than it did the LRV. It was like someone was shaking the tube from the aft end. He bounced off the walls, his helmet striking one of the handrails. The buffeting eased back into its regular pattern, and Jack paused to regain his composure. He pushed the large button on the top edge of his chest piece to activate the HUD display. Instantly, numbers and gauges were painted on the inside of his helmet’s visor. Suit pressure was holding, temperature still in the safe range.
Good
. That bump to his helmet had left him none the worse.

“Frank! What the hell was that?” Jack called into his comm-set. But there was no response, not even the usual pops and clicks the system usually had in the background. “Frank? Do you copy?” Jack reached down to the comm-set control pack mounted on his belt, fumbling to feel the channel-select knob through his suit gloves. He changed channels. “Anyone copy me? Anyone? This is Jack! Hello!” He switched channels again and again, calling out to anyone who could hear him, but he got no response. He pulled the control pack off his belt to check it. It wasn’t an easy task in a pressure suit, but he managed to get it off his belt and hold it up to look at it. The case was cracked, and the little red power light was out.
Shit! No communications!
Jack tossed the broken comm-pack aside and continued on through the last few meters of the tube, opening the hatch and exiting at the end.

The bay was dark; even the emergency lighting was off. It wasn’t a place that was usually occupied by humans. It was only kept pressurized for occasional maintenance trips into the engineering spaces above the bay. Even then, the crew wore thermal suits to keep from freezing to death. The air in the bay was so cold that you had to wear a mask to warm it up before you inhaled to prevent your lungs from freezing.

Jack could feel the temperature in his suit dropping already, but he didn’t have time to deal with the discomfort. It would take at least ten minutes before his inner suit temperature would drop low enough to cause hypothermia. And he planned on being long gone by then.

Jack reached up and turned on his helmet light. The narrow beam pierced through the darkness of the bay, shining down the empty corridor. It was twenty-five meters long and about three meters wide across the floor, and slightly less along the ceiling as the walls angled in. Every seven meters, the walls bulged into the corridor, wrapping around the cargo drop pod capsules in their holding bays.

At the far end of the bay was the multi-purpose satellite. Once placed in orbit, the MPS would provide communication with the Daedalus and serve as a scanning platform and long-range surface communications adjunct. At the front of the bay on his left was the emergency escape pod. If the ship and the LRV were disabled, the escape pod could carry all of them to safety, hopefully to the surface of a habitable planet where they could await rescue. Jack hoped they wouldn’t need it.

Deciding that the cargo pods containing the equipment they would need on the planet’s surface were of a higher priority than the MPS, Jack decided to start dropping them first. He could drop the MPS last. Besides, the cargo pods had to be dropped in the entry window in order for them to land within a recoverable distance from the LRV’s landing site. The MPS had its own propulsion system and could be positioned anywhere in orbit through the command console on the LRV’s flight deck.

Jack opened a small utility locker on the forward bulkhead to the right of the hatch and pulled out a data pad. A small handheld device, the data pad could scan internal systems for inspection and link into the ship’s mainframe to provide remote access to systems status information. It could even be used to issue remote commands. But Jack was only interested in its ability to link into the ship’s navigation information displays. Without voice communications, it was the only way he would know when to start dropping the cargo pods.

Jack moved over to the first drop pod, activated the data pad, and called up the nav-display. He only had thirty seconds before they reached the leading edge of the entry zone. Then he would have about five minutes to drop the pods and return to the LRV before the crew would be forced to leave him behind. He activated the manual override for the first drop pod and armed the release charges.

The first three pods all carried the same manifest: equipment they needed to survey each of the three presumably habitable planets in the Tau Ceti system. Upon arrival at a survey planet, one pod was to be dropped to the selected landing site, unpacked, and its contents left behind after each survey mission ended. The last three pods contained the equipment they would need to prep the selected site for colonization.

He quickly assigned the tertiary landing site as pod one’s landing target, and then watched the data pad as the seconds ticked away.

“Jack, it’s almost time to drop.” Frank called into his comm-set. He waited for a response, but it never came. “Jack?” he queried, growing concerned. “Jack, do you copy?” Frank began switching channels and calling Jack’s name. But there was no response.

“What’s wrong?” Lynn asked.

“I can’t raise Jack on comms!”

“Could the system be malfunctioning?”

“No way,” Frank told her. “Each unit is independent. It doesn’t rely on any ship-board systems to operate. If he can’t hear us, then his unit has the problem.”

“Or worse,” Lynn added pessimistically.

Frank hadn’t even considered that possibility. Not Jack. Ever since they were kids, Jack had always managed to get by intact, through one scrape after another. If Jack couldn’t hear them, then it meant that his comm-set was malfunctioning. Frank was sure of it. “Five seconds to entry window,” Frank announced as he watched the drop pod status board. If Jack was still alive, the first pod would drop on cue.

Jack watched the data pad as it counted down to zero. On cue, he pulled the manual release handle, activating the explosive bolts that held the pod in place in its berth along the bottom of the Icarus. Immediately, there was a sharp crack like a gunshot, and a tremor erupted within the pod’s housing wall. That was followed by a larger, more definite vibration as the jettison charges ignited. Jack peered out the access hatch window as the drop pod left its receptacle, dropping down to the planet below.

The first drop pod’s release changed a status prompt on Frank’s display from a green “SECURE” to a flashing red “POD AWAY”. “Yes!” Frank hollered. “I knew it! Jack’s alive! The first drop pod is away!”

Lynn said nothing, though she was also relieved. She was busy with her own problems behind the Icarus’s flight controls. The ship was sluggish to respond, and the damaged balloot was trying to drag their nose down into the plasma wake. It was a constant struggle to keep the nose up, and they were running out of fuel.

Suddenly, a sharp increase in the orange-red glow from the plasma spilling out from between the balloots, lit up the inside of the flight deck. This caught Frank’s attention. “We’ve got trouble here,” he announced grimly. “That balloot is not gonna hold much longer. And when it goes, I doubt we’ll last more than a minute before the plasma cooks us.” Frank didn’t realize it, but with Jack out of communication, he was looking to Lynn to make command decisions.

Lynn, however, did realize it. After all, she was technically second in command. Without thinking twice, she made her first command decision. “We’ve got to get Jack back up here, now!” she decided. “Send someone to bring him back. We can’t wait for him to drop all the pods!”

Frank reacted without hesitation. He wanted his best friend back in the command seat where he belonged. “Tony!” Frank called over the secondary comm-channel. “Can one of you fetch Jack? His comm-set is down and we’re running out of time.”

“
No way!
” Tony answered over the comm-system. “
We’re barely holding our own here! One of us leaves and we’ll lose the whole compartment in less than a minute!
”

From his seat at the back of the passenger corridor, Will overheard Frank’s request and Tony’s response over the comm-set. He looked at the back of his fellow crew members’ helmets, almost hoping that one of them would rise to the occasion.
Maybe Sara would like to go,
he thought.
She is always trying to prove that she’s as capable as anyone else.
But he knew he was kidding himself. He knew it would be his responsibility. Eden Project ethics dictated that men should avoid putting women in harm’s way. He had been raised to believe this. His grandfather had given his life to remain true to this edict.

Besides, Sara wasn’t budging. Will summoned his courage and unbuckled his harness. “I’ll go,” he announced over his comm-set as he removed his thigh straps and pulled himself forward.

Laura and Sara both twisted in their seats to look as he passed between them. They all understood why he was going. Nevertheless, it was still a surprise to see Will rise to the challenge without even a moment of hesitation.

Will couldn’t see their expressions, but he could feel their respect. It was an unusual sensation for him. He had felt the respect of others for his knowledge as a scientist. He had felt the respect of his wife for his honesty and loyalty to her. But he had never felt respect for his bravery.

“
Make it quick, Will!
” Frank’s voice crackled in Will’s helmet. “
We’re running out of time!
”

Will passed between Maria and Adia, breaking Adia’s grip on Maria’s hand. Maria reached up and took Will’s arm. Will turned to face her and saw her worried look through her helmet visor. He had seen this look several times before. Once, when his wife had been ill, after the birth of their first child. Maria had been there by her side, the most loyal of family friends. And when Maria’s brother joined the Luyten Separatists, she had that same look for weeks afterward, until they had received a transmission from the fledgling outpost on Luyten Seven, and she learned that her brother was doing fine.

“Hurry back, Will,” Maria pleaded.

“Don’t worry,” Will assured her, patting her hand with his own. “I’ll be back before you notice I’m gone.” He gave her a half-hearted smile before he turned and continued toward the airlock compartment.

Maria watched him as he entered the next compartment. She couldn’t believe he was going. Of all the people she had worried about, of all those whose safety she had questioned, she never thought that she would fear for Will. He was such a quiet, diminutive man. So unassuming, polite, and trustworthy. So careful and safe—not at all the type to volunteer for something like this. She thought about Will’s wife, Abigail. She had been her closest friend for as long as she could remember. She had been Abby’s maid of honor at their wedding. Maria had delivered both of their children, and had nursed them all through various illnesses. And she had watched as Will and Abby became what every pre-selected couple on board hoped to become: a real, loving family. She couldn’t imagine what Abby would do without him.

Jack moved across to the other side of the corridor. The pods were arranged in a row—three pods on each side of the corridor, each offset from the other. He reached the second pod, and activated the manual override system on the wall next to the pod bay’s access hatch. According to his data pad, he had to wait at least twenty seconds between each pod launch to avoid any collisions during their planet-fall.

Will couldn’t believe it had been so easy. All he had to do was get up and start moving. And just like that, his crewmates saw him as brave. But Will knew that the first step was probably the easiest. After all, he hadn’t been left with many choices.

“How much time do I have, Frank?” Will asked as he opened the hatch to the transfer tube.

“
You’re not back yet?
” Frank’s impatient voice crackled over the comm-system.

“Understood.”

The status indicator on the second pod changed on Frank’s display. “Pod two away!” Frank glanced at the ship’s status board. “Plasma must be reaching the engine cowlings on the tail. Their surface temperature is rising sharply.”

“Change your stance, Tony!” Mac yelled. Tony shifted his torso sideways as Mac reached down and activated Tony’s mag-boots. “I’m gonna recharge this bottle.” Mac launched himself gracefully through the midship hatch into the airlock bay and stuck the fire bottle into the recharge fitting in the wall next to its storage locker. The recharging system hissed as it filled the bottle with pressurized, fire-suppressive chemicals. Within seconds, the bottle was filled, and the red light on the recharge mechanism turned green. Mac released the locking mechanism from the bottle’s base and pulled it from the wall.

Will came floating down out of the transfer tube overhead as Mac spun around to return to the fire. “How’s it going?”

“Like shit!” Mac confessed. “Get Jack and haul ass back here before there’s no
here
to come back to!”

“I’ll do my best!” Will promised. Mac patted him on the back as he moved through the hatch. Another strange sensation for Will. Bravado. Male bonding. Not something he would have expected. Especially from Mac.

Will glanced briefly at the fire as he passed behind Tony. He was scared to death of it, and the less he saw, the better. He moved quickly along, hand-over-hand along the overhead rail, across the wardroom and then aft through the berthing corridor. His arms strained as he struggled to pull his own mass, as well as his pressure suit and life-support pack. He found himself wishing that he had spent more time working on his upper body strength, especially his arms. Movement in zero gravity was all about arm strength, and he had concentrated more on overall body conditioning during their journey, striving to combat the detrimental effects of prolonged living in microgravity on his cardiovascular system and overall health in general.