Alpha Centauri: The Story Episode 6 (part 2)

Journey to Centauri : Episode 6 (2)

Captain Garland entered the command mod and felt the pleasant post-workout relaxation drain away as the heat and tension of the ship's crisis returned. Pravin Lal still sat hunched over a touchscreen, his normally calm face knitted in concentration. Saratov hunched over another touchscreen at the other end of the bay, flanked by two of his staff, Ensigns Khosa and Webb. Garland could see the sweat glistening on Saratov's brow.

"Doctor Lal, you are relieved for four hours. Get some food and rest."

Pravin looked up, his deep black eyes uncomprehending for a moment, still lost in the computer's dataclouds.

"Affirmative, sir, in one moment please. I am still querying on the medical records you asked for."

Garland nodded. No response from Saratov. "Dr. Saratov, what is the status of the repairs?"

"They progress, Captain. We have 36-point-four hours." He lifted one long finger to point to a set of scrolling white numbers on an overhead screen. "My gift to you...a doomsday clock."

"I should hope not. I don't think spending five more decades in space with you and your crew was in the mission charter."

Saratov cracked a tight smile. "Indeed. We are working around the clock, but there is this matter of a pulse test. It is somewhat risky, but I feel it is necessary..."

"Understood, but we can not risk further damage to the ship or the remaining crew. Send five of your best people to Hydroponics Mod Three and take measurements on the hull. Find out why Skye is worried. There is more than just our lives in the balance."

Saratov nodded. "Very well." He issued a stream of guttural orders into his wrist link. He spoke quickly and sprinkled his speech with so much technical jargon that Garland realized it was almost a foreign language.

Saratov finished the order and looked up as if to take the Captain's measure. "And now, here is something you may want to see, Captain."

Garland walked over to Saratov's station.

"Ensign Khosa has scanned back through the ship's records to decompress the D7 footage captured by the ship's exterior cameras. We began scanning the video matrix for the time just before the hull damage occurred...just before two of the cameras went offline, in fact. Observe."

On Saratov's touchscreen a grid of tiny high-resolution images appeared...records from an array of cameras placed inside and outside the ship, recording and storing compressed images once a second for the entire length of the journey. Saratov tapped one of the squares in the grid and the image inside ballooned out into a larger size. Garland watched.

The camera showed the exterior of the ship, smooth metal arcing away in a man-made horizon. A data readout gave the ship's speed...3,359 kilometers per second, a phenomenally high velocity.

"We all knew the risk," murmured Saratov as if to answer Garland's developing thoughts. "The smallest particle at this speed would hit the ship like a nuclear warhead."

A few moments passed, and then...

One of the cameras automatically swiveled and zoomed, tracking a foreign body in its range. Garland leaned forward, his breathing quickening...the magnification on the camera quickly increased by orders of magnitude, and still there seemed to be nothing, or perhaps now a speck, a tiny fragment of space-born minerals tumbling through the infinite darkness...

Garland lifted one hand involuntarily...there, a flash of darkness filling the camera, which suddenly jumped and went to static. Saratov quickly tapped up another camera and Garland watched as the side of his ship disintegrated, metal warping and tearing as if burned by a thousand invisible dragons.

He strained to hear the explosions, the tearing of metal and the alarm sirens. He imagined the chaos in the ship, cryocells shattering, lives spilling onto cold metal floors, but of course he heard nothing. His throat closed as the magnitude of the event reached him...his crew, his ship, the lives he shepherded, torn away while he slept helplessly.

Garland looked over to Saratov, who watched the screens with a dark fascination, the mathematics of destruction blooming in his head. Garland spoke.

"I trust that proved useful."

"We are using it to calculate the areas of greatest damage to the ship. It was a piece of space debris, purely a random occurrence."

"Transfer the video to the primary logs and mark it...wait." Garland leaned over and pointed at a camera view in the lower left corner of the grid. "What's that?" He tapped the image to expand it as Saratov looked on.

Down one hallway somewhere in the depths of the ship, figures moved, staggering and trying to right themselves as they tumbled from the shock of the impact. Dark figures, keeping to the shadows even as they signaled each other urgently.

Garland watched as one of the figures finally righted itself and moved quickly on, vanishing into the shadows. Followed by another.

And another.

Then, abruptly, that camera went out, leaving only static in its wake.

"I knew it," whispered Garland, as he watched the gray static dance on the viewscreen.

Log Entry Received,
Pravin Lal, Chief of Surgery.

I am currently assisting Saratov's personnel in scanning back through the visual records made since our journey began. Although they probably won't tell us much, they hold a fascination for me...they are our history, and show the passage of time even as we remained unconscious. The prologue to our next chapter, so to speak.

Mostly they show blackness, cold and empty. Endless amounts of it.

Saratov's people are awake and seem to have survived the sleep well. I have issued them stimulants to help them work. We will need every advantage in the coming days.

Next episode.