The Drake was now
two hours, forty-seven minutes, and eleven seconds overdue for a
ten-light-year-jump to the next point in its scheduled journey. It was the only
way that its passengers and crew would ever make it to the Outer Cygnus Arm
within their children's lifetimes. Not that they would not survive to that
point; suspended animation prolonged a lifespan by about fifty years, and the
ship would hold together just fine as long as it did not collide with anything.
But the Virgo Foundation was sponsoring this trip; failure to deliver what was
promised was not an option. Wormholes were to be opened every three hours on
the dot. For reasons that the crew would soon learn, the ship's computer was
just now beginning emergency measures.
To the Drake's
sleeping captain, Adrienne Gorrana, the world was just a blank void that she
visited here and there, an amorphous dream which she was sometimes just
conscious enough to experience. And yet lately something definite had been
entering that dream. It was a single, repetitive tone. Boop-boop-boop.
Eventually Adrienne realized that the sound was much too
real to be part of a dream. Like a gently prodding finger it nudged her awake.
She began to panic as she remembered where she was. When the pod’s hatch had
closed over her back on Mazin, the holographic face on the screen had told her
that what she would hear upon waking up was soft music. This was to indicate
that they had entered the OCA and were within less than fifteen light-years of
a habitable planet. So, something was quite wrong. She started and pressed hard
against the glass above her.
The face appeared before her again, neither quite male nor
female. "Please wait as final release procedures are performed." As
her eyes continued to adjust to the light, she watched blue liquids flooding
the various intravenous lines that had fed and regulated her body since she had
gone to sleep. Small electrodes stimulated her muscles. Then, just as suddenly
as it had all begun, the apparati around her ceased and began to retract from
her body. The nodes at the ends of the intravenous tubes applied an adhesive to
the small, crater-like holes that they had left in Adrienne's body, before
withdrawing completely into the walls of her coffin-like chamber.
"Report," she demanded of the face in front of
her.
"Energy input below minimum threshold for extended
duration," it answered.
Raz. Pneumatic
systems hissed as her compartment finally opened. She stepped onto the cold
floor and immediately grabbed the door of the chamber across from her to get
her balance. Her muscles did not feel weak at all, but merely disoriented. Amongst
the wires that had been plugged into her were muscle stimulators.
Think, Adrienne.
At this time she needed to verify the severity of the situation before she woke
any other crew. If it was something that she could fix on her own, there was no
need to waste resources having someone else go through the process of
disconnecting and reconnecting to the sleep pod. Foundation protocol forbade
it, in fact. So her damp feet made the only sounds that were to echo through
the halls of cold metal for some time.
She made a mental note to check atmospheric levels; the
SuspAm chemicals could sometimes produce headaches, but it felt like something
was hammering its way into her skull. She stopped at a water dispenser and took
in a few handfuls before continuing on.
A door opened after her face was scanned as she came to the
end of the hall. Adrienne stepped onto the cold metal floor of the colorless
bridge. The moisture on her feet seemed to suck the heat from her body. There
was no time to fix it, though. "Active protocol."
The face appeared again on a monitor above her. "Active
protocol: preservation of ship's power."
"Reason."
"Reason: loss of access to sufficient solar power
source."
"What?" That was impossible, according to the
numerous astronomers that had helped to train her all those months. The route
had been precisely calculated dozens of times to avoid such obstacles.
"Down periscope."
A metal tube slid down before her, and a screen on its side
activated, displaying the view from outside the ship. It certainly seemed
plausible; the closest stars were as faint as the furthest away from the night
sky she'd grown up with on Tandul. She spun the view around, trying to orient
herself and process the incoming data that streamed along the left-hand side of
the screen.
Her breath caught in her chest when she swung the periscope
around to the left side of the ship. "Even if the only things before you
are other galaxies, you will see light," she'd been told. But before her
was pure blackness. Furthermore, no data was coming in: no electromagnetic
readings of any kind came from that direction.
“Up periscope.” She moved over to an array of screens.
“Activate emergency energy reserves. We’ll get the wormhole generator up and
get closer to some stars.”
“Activating.”
A moment of silence. Adrienne bent forward and put her
fingertips on her toes. The SuspAm system was good at keeping muscle from
atrophy, but it was no good at keeping it from stiffness. Standing and
stretching her arms, she demanded an update from the computer.
“Unable to activate emergency power.”
“Is it dead as well? There’s supposed to be enough for at
least one boost.”
“Emergency power at ninety-nine percent capacity.”
“Run diagnostics on connective apparati.”
“Diagnostics already run. No damage or malfunction found.”
Adrienne stared, now confused and growing frightened.
“You’re saying that everything is perfectly fine for an emergency wormhole
creation, but the power won’t leave the batteries?”
“Affirmative.”
That settled the issue, then. As much as she hated to do it,
she’d have to wake the ship’s first officer and engineer, Edwad Jonsin. And it
wasn’t just that she found him to be annoying; even with justification, taking
such action would be a nightmare in terms of the reports she’d eventually have
to file, and of course there was the little problem of waking someone up and
putting them back under right away and the health hazards it posed. But that
beat freezing to death in the middle of godforsaken empty darkness.
Adrienne’s feet were now dry, allowing her to sprint back
down the corridor to the SuspAm chambers.
