“I like the idea of the supernatural. That doesn’t mean I believe that’s what happened. How’d the plastic seal the breach?”
“Maybe there was plastic residue on the hull?”
Sierra’s tone showed that even she thought the explanation was weak. Anise shut the lid and relatched it.
“Ah, ha!” said Sierra. “Take a look at this.”
Anise hurried past the vats, squeezing between the last one and the storage lockers that made up the wall. Sierra was on her knees. “See,” she said, “there doesn’t have to be a supernatural component. Rationality rules.”
On the floor was a white pile of plastic, spilled from a small rupture at the back of the tank. Sierra said, “So, some of the plastic wasn’t in the vats.”
Anise dropped to her knees, pushed her finger into the gap, provoking a mini plastic avalanche. “Huh! It’s a long way from this room to the crack in the hull. How did it get from here to there?”
“One problem down, one to solve,” said Sierra triumphantly. “Maybe this time luck was on our side.”
“Luck of the Irish?” asked Anise.
Above Anise’s head, from an air vent, came a quick scratching, like twigs on metal. She looked up. “Did you hear that?”
Sierra looked up too. “No. What was it?”
Anise held her breath, waiting for the sound to repeat. “I don’t think it was a bot.” She contemplated the pile of plastic on the floor. “Normal maintenance should have caught this long ago.”
Sierra leaned her back against a locker. “Are you sure you heard something?” A distinct thump of thin metal rebounding echoed through the room, as if something weighty had moved in the air duct. Sierra jumped, then rubbed her arms, still looking up. “The bots are practically perfect. They never miss stuff.” She stood, holding her elbows tight, her arms close to her side as if she were cold.
“No, they shouldn’t. Let’s go back to my station. I want to check something.”
Before she closed the door to the module, Anise looked back into the room. It didn’t take much to picture faces in the dark, to see tiny fingers wrapped around the air vent where something hidden studied her.
Anise said, “We have to eliminate possibilities. First, is it possible that a Caretaker was awake during the collision?”
Sierra consulted her monitor. “According to the computer records, no.”
“Could the computer be wrong?”
“Not likely. Not only does the computer keep track where everyone is, but each sleep tank has its own start-up and shut-down history. I checked all fifty of our shift’s tanks, and also the one-hundred and fifty tanks from the other three shifts. No Caretaker was awake.”
“Is it possible there’s another person on board who never uses the sleep tanks?”
Sierra laughed. “He’d be over 2,600 years old.” She sobered. “I haven’t been able to think of a single explanation. Not only that, but I ran an analysis of duty logs since the trip started, and from nine-hundred years or so ago, the incidence of unexplainable phenomena began going up. Not just misplaced tools either. Clothing has been moved. Doors open that should be closed. Repairs made that weren’t ordered. All kinds of stuff. If you look into the public journals, there’s dozens of other odd reports too. Many crew members have recorded feelings like they’re being watched, or that something moved in the corner of their eye. It gives me the creeps. The computer monitors everything that happens on board, and it reports nothing. Maybe we do have gremlins.”
“Leprechauns,” Anise said absently. “We’re missing a bet, here. There’s a factor we’re overlooking. I’m going to put some equipment together. Come back tomorrow. I’ll need your help again.”
Sierra looked pained. “Yatmaso says we go back into the sleep pods in two days. I don’t like the idea of leaving the ship to ghosts and other slithery creatures while I’m unconscious. Do you think they come look at us?” She shivered.
“Now look at who’s not being rational.”
“It’s your fault. I’ve examined the computer records, the bot work schedules, and every anomalous occurrence on the ship in the last nine hundred years. It doesn’t make sense. If there was something else on board, there would be computer records, but there’s nothing there. Something put the plastic into the breach, and the best explanation is your leprechauns. We’re on a possessed or infested ship.” Sierra tightened her hands until her knuckles whitened bright as paper. “I’m not sleeping tonight. I’m not sleeping ever again.”
“Come back tomorrow.” Anise put her hand on Sierra’s shoulder, whose muscles were rock tight and trembling.
After Sierra left, Anise gathered her supplies. First, to the kitchen for bread and cheese, and then to the electronics warehouse. Finally she visited cryogenic storage, where drawer after drawer of frozen, fertilized ovum waited for their test tube births. She searched for over an hour, opening one drawer after another until she found what she’d been looking for.
As she set up the equipment in the access crawlway, near where she’d discovered the sealed crack, she remembered that Yeats wrote once, “I have been told that the people of Faery cannot even play at hurley unless they have on either side some mortal… . Without mortal help they are shadowy and cannot even strike the balls.”
When Sierra entered the room, it was clear she hadn’t been sleeping. Her face was haggard and her hair uncombed. “I ran a zillion scenarios on the computer last night, and none of them add up to an explanation. It’s not rational.”
Anise smiled. For the first time in days she felt both excited and relaxed. “I have some recorded video I want you to watch. Take a seat.”
Sierra collapsed on a chair. “If it’s more that a couple minutes, I’ll drift right off.”
“Oh, I think you’ll stay awake for this.” Sierra pressed a button that flashed an image onto her desk monitor.
Sierra leaned forward. “What’s that? It looks like bread and something else.”
“Cheese.” Anise forwarded the image, keeping an eye on the time record. “Watch close.”
Sierra shook her head, puzzled. “Where is this? Why’s it so poorly lit?”
“The maintenance crawlway.”
“There isn’t a camera there. Is that from a bot?”
“No. It’s one I rigged up to transmit its images straight to here. Hush, now.”
The two women studied the screen.
“There!” said Anise. A long, fuzzy, shadowed shape reached from one side of the image, grabbed a piece of bread, then disappeared.
“What the hell was that?” Sierra gripped the desk’s edge, her face only inches from the monitor. Anise hadn’t seen her get out of her chair.
“Wait, there’s more.”
This time the movement was slower. Whatever it was was too close to the camera to be clearly focused. It blocked the image, turning the screen black. Then, it turned, sitting beside the cheese, still dark and nebulous until it stood, the rest of the bread and cheese in its arms. It looked toward the camera as if sensing the spying presence. For an instant the light was right, and the creature’s eyes were clear, its large, round head distinct. It vanished again.
Sierra gasped. “Is that a… leprechaun?”
Anise laughed. “No, it’s a mouse. Or its great, great, great grandfather was a mouse a thousand years ago or so, a couple thousand generations ago.”
“A mouse! What do you mean? It’s a foot-and-a-half tall if it’s an inch.” Sierra touched the monitor where Anise had backed up the image to the face in the dark, its arms full of cheese and bread.
“I went over all the data you did last night. The absence of evidence. No video of anything untoward. No record of increased air, food or water consumption. Nothing that indicated the presence of other beings onboard the ship, and yet it was clear that we weren’t alone. You know what was in common in all my negative searches?”