“They were trying to rescue a supply shuttle bound for Titan,” Starck said, slowly. “The freighter’s tanks ruptured, flooded both ships with pure oxygen.”
That was one of the great spacer nightmares: a ship filled with oxygen was a deathtrap about to happen. “Miller and three others barely made it to a lifeboat. If not for Miller, no one would have made it.”
Weir gazed at her, thoughtful. Miller was strong, then, resourceful. That was good.
Wasn’t it?
Peters had managed to open the hatch to the bridge. Taking a deep breath, she eased inside, glancing quickly around.
“Okay,” she said, “I’m on the bridge.”
She moved slowly around, finding a briefing table and several chairs. This was an antechamber to the bridge, a small briefing room that the crew would have used for mission discussions and assignments. She looked over the table and chairs but found no indication that they had ever been used.
There was a brilliant flash of lightning, storm activity going on in the atmosphere of the planet beneath them. She started to look up, but the flash had thrown off her night vision for a few moments.
She turned to move deeper into the bridge, leaving behind, high up on a wall, unnoticed, a frozen mass of blood and tissue that had once been a living human being.
Miller worked at the science station for a couple of minutes, and was suddenly rewarded by displays lighting up. He smiled to himself. Something was finally going the way he wanted it. This was something he could deal with.
Pausing for a moment, he said, ‘ The science workstation has power. I’ll see if I can find the crew from here.”
He got back to work.
We’re not going to find anyone,” Smith said to Starck, his face an angry mask. “This place is dead.”
Weir ignored him, ignored Miller’s monitor and Justin’s continuing walk into engineering. He was staring at Peters’ monitor now, reading the details of the bridge as best he could. They needed to restore power to the Event Horizon as quickly as possible.
“Ms. Peters,” Weir said softly, “turn back and to your left, please.”
He watched as Peters’ camera view moved, bringing something new into view.
Starck leaned over, peering at the monitor, then at Weir. “What is it?”
“Ship’s log,” Weir said.
“I see it,” Peters said, and the view on her monitor shifted again.
Peters stepped toward the log unit. It was really nothing more than a small videodisc unit built into one of the consoles, but it was enough to keep a running record of bridge and ship activities.
She reached down and pressed the eject tab. Nothing happened. She leaned down, checked that it was receiving power. A small green light was glowing in one corner of the operations panel. She tried the eject button again, without success.
“It’s stuck,” she said.
She reached down to her utility belt, extracting a small probe. Carefully, she slipped the probe into the video unit, feeling around until she was sure she had the eject mechanism. She pressed down, pulled back, felt something give.
A tiny laserdisc emerged halfway from the unit, jamming there. Peters grasped it carefully and pulled, but the disc would not move any further. She tugged again, frustrating herself in the effort.
“It’s really jammed in there,” she said.
She sighed, then growled softly. They needed that disc, needed it badly. It might well answer a lot of the questions about the fate of the crew. It might even answer some of the questions about the disappearance of the Event Horizon. All things considered, she would be glad to see Weir’s mind put at ease.
She tried the probe again, trying to pull the laserdisc away from whatever part of the mechanism was jamming it in place. This did not seem to help. Once again she grasped the disc and pulled, was frustrated, tugged harder, thought she had it this time, but didn’t.
All the air rushing out of her in one explosive gasp, she put all of her strength into getting the disc loose. This time it came free, sending her spinning and tumbling in the microgravity.
She flung an arm out, trying to stabilize herself long enough to get back to a position where she might be able to stop her motion. Her heart leapt into her mouth as her helmet lights flashed on something floating in the bridge with her.
She turned helplessly, only to find herself being struck by something with considerable mass. Holding on to the laserdisc with her right hand, she reached out with her left, grasping cloth and, beneath that, something hard.
A face came into view, lit brightly by her helmet lamps. A man’s face, contorted, mouth open, swollen tongue protruding. The veins stood out, bloated and frozen, all over his face and neck.
She stared for a moment, her breath catching in her throat. She pushed away from the body, rebounded from a wall, managed to bounce herself down to the deck, catching hold of the edge of a console to stop herself from moving any further.
Her tone utterly professional, she said, “I found one.” Her heart was pounding, but it did not feel as though she was in any danger of her control slipping. Good enough.
Over the radio link, Miller said, “Alive?”
“Corpsicle,” she said.
She lifted her head, aiming her lights up at the floating corpse. Anchoring herself against one of the console units, she reached up, snagging the corpse by a foot, pulling it down.
Weir sat back now, regarding the face of the dead man on Peters’ monitor.
Whoever he was, he was a mess, and they’d be lucky to identify him easily.
DJ came into the bridge, joining Weir and Starck at the monitors.
“What happened to his eyes?” Smith said, staring at the screen.
“Explosive decompression,” Starck said.
DJ shook his head. “Decompression wouldn’t do that.”
Weir had to agree there. The dead man’s eyes had been gouged out, going by the images.
That would have to wait for the time being. Justin had finished his long walk.
Chapter Fourteen
Justin walked slowly out of the spinning tube, his head filled with an annoying buzz that he knew he would not be rid of for some time. He looked around, finding himself in some kind of operational alcove that opened out into a huge spherical chamber.
It was not easy to see anything. His helmet light reflected from a gray slick that seemed to coat everything in the alcove. He had only a moment to try and figure out which way to turn before something wet and massy struck his suit. Liquid gray shot up in front of his faceplate, out in front of his hands, splashing over his fingers. Other floating globules of liquid caught the light from his helmet.
Then his light was gone, coated by the same thick gray fluid as a another globule struck his helmet.
He reached up, trying to clear the stuff from his helmet. He managed to get some of his light back, but it was very little help. This was already trouble, and not likely to get much better if he stayed in here.
For the benefit of those on the bridge, he said, “I’m in the Second Containment. There must have been a coolant leak.” He wiped at his faceplate and helmet lights again. Looking around, he was able to get an idea of just how much of the gray stuff was actually hanging in the air. Fluid in microgravity was a menace. “Man, this shit is everywhere. I can’t see a damn thing.”
That wasn’t quite true. There was a console nearby, facing out into the larger chamber. He could, see some dim lights on the board, beneath the muck.
He floated himself over to it, batting balls of coolant out of the way, mainly causing them to become smaller balls of coolant. Grabbing the edge of the console with one hand, he hauled himself down, anchoring himself as best he could while he used one glove to wipe coolant away from the console. He tried not to think about the radiation level.