Pretty weak, but he didn’t much care.
The Captain’s seat was set back and to the starboard side of the helmsman’s position which lay dead centreline. Gimballed for comfort, the mechanism had long since seized up and chunks of yellow upholstery burst from seams in the greying cover. He took a seat and pulled out a packet of Prince Golden Taste cigarettes he’d stashed in one of the torn seams, more upholstery tumbled to the deck. Rattling the packet before opening, he counted three left and the lighter he’d stowed within.
Tor squinted at the chronometer as he lit up, momentary flame-light cast eldritch shadows in the dim. October 12th 1992, they should have docked at Talus Station two weeks ago, that was a significant delay but not uncommonly large. Still, he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was amiss, a nagging sensation that things were not quite in place. He brushed the feeling aside, the product of a skipping mind as synapses thawed.
October 12th 1992, he’d missed Olaf’s birthday. Another. Soon his son would be a man and birthdays would become meaningless dates, shop bought birthday cards fulfilling a calendar obligation. He’d missed his wife’s too. Slowly, inextricably, Lucia was catching up to him in age. After sixty-three months spent in cryo and the reduction imposed on metabolic rate, Tor’s forty-three years could effectively be counted thirty-eight, or so he liked to think. Lucia, however, would be older.
He tried to shake the sense of loneliness away. They always liked the presents he brought home and he supposed that meant something. Money and lifestyle had taken him into deep space. He’d joined as a cadet in 1980 as the industry blossomed after the Iban arc discovery. The race to deep space had broken the prestige of the cosmonaut and turned it into a workaday profession. People from all walks of life were now aspiring space farers.
While the cachet quantitively faded, the fiscal reward remained high. He’d been away nine of the last twelve years and he’d quickly learned to live with solitude. Suicide was uncommonly high for all those blue collar cosmonauts, the frontiersmen were dying or retiring out as the industry streamlined and professionalized. Tor was the last of his alumni still ‘at-space.’
The last not growing fat behind a desk. Or dead.
Tendrils of cigarette smoke laced upward. The armrest of the chair dug uncomfortably under his ribs. He tried to adjust his position, but found himself being gently, but relentlessly, pressed into the arm. His body, the chartroom lamp, they were being pulled to port as if the Riyadh was pivoting – spinning. Then he noticed the quiet, the familiar cadence of the engines were white noise to a man who’d lost so many years on spacecraft. Now he realized there was only silence, silence and the faint click of electronic bulbs.
Tor pushed himself out of his chair just as the elevator opened, dispensing piercing white light onto the bridge. Jan Nilsen and his second engineer Oscar Pettersson stood ashen faced in the elevator light. “Tor, there’s a problem in the Medical Bay. You better come quick.”
“What do you mean he’s gone? Doctor…?”
“I mean he isn’t here.”
“How did you not notice that before? Doctor…?”
“I was attending to the rest of you.”
“You were awake a whole fucking day before the rest of us. Doctor…?”
“I assumed it was an empty cryobed.”
Tor stood in the doorway of the Medical Bay, Pettersson and Nilsen behind him. The whole crew were now up and in their jumpsuits and doing their best to avoid looking like they were eavesdropping on the flustered Doctor and the Captain still dressed in only a thermal blanket. Tor took a long drag on his cigarette, trying to calm the onrush of anxiety and inventory the consequences of the Chief Officers absence. Nobody had turned turtle on a voyage Tor Gjerde had captained, but that was the first conclusion he was drawing.
“Will you put that out? This is a medical ward.” The Doctor gestured to the cigarette in Tor’s hand.
His face twisted into an angry gurn, cheeks flushing. “This? I’ll extinguish this when you tell me where my fucking Chief Officer is. And what the hell is your fucking name?”
The Doctor smiled in victory and uncrossed her arms. “Smith, Rebecca Smith and as to where your Chief Officer is I obviously do not know. I can furnish you with his name though.”
Tor extinguished his cigarette, crushing it into the deck and languidly ran his palm down his face. “Thank you Doctor Smith, that won’t be necessary.”
Doctors routinely saw themselves above Captains on voyages. Better trained and better paid, they usually entered deep space manning pools to escape some bad experience or malpractice. Smith was young though, probably one of those looking to experience-the-galaxy types. Those were the ones who could never hide their superciliousness.
Tor had flown the last six years with Dr. Pawel Tomarczyk, an ageing Pole who had ties to Solidarity. He spent his shore leave on service stations, never daring to return to Earth. He’d been an ornery prick to deal with, but the type of ornery prick Tor liked. He’d been replaced at Reticuluum with no explanation, he’d simply vanished into the station. Some of the crewmembers hypothesised the Politburo had finally caught up with him. Tor wondered if the chase had simply become too much and he’d spaced himself. Either way, he knew he wouldn’t see the old bastard again. He remembered that familiar sadness.
“Are you sure he was even in the cryobed in the first place? Or has he been missing for the last eight months?” Condescension was never the answer with Doctors, but she was young and a woman, maybe he could cow her.
“I iced him and counted him up.” She waved a meaningless clipboard at Tor’s face.
“But didn’t count him yesterday?” The Doctor pursed her narrow lips but remained silent. Eyes squinted daggers at the Captain, suddenly she looked very young.
Tor took a step beyond the Doctor to address the bay, twelve men and women kicked their feet in the body warm room, trying to look very interested in the deck. “Okay, you all heard that, the Chief is missing, we’re going to conduct a manhunt. Each person keeps to his department. Engine guys search the engine, galley guys search the galley, stores and habitation. Bosun, you and Tala search corridors, wiring ducts and take the cadet. Don’t break anything. Everybody keep a close eye on logs, especially on the airlocks. Hopefully he’ll turn up but be careful, stay in your groups. This isn’t a drill.”
He watched the crew buddy up, they were all familiar with each other, all on the same long haul rotation thirty-six month contract, no outliers or animosity as far as he knew. They were a good crew, capable if not exceptional. They’d conduct the search well, but if they found anything it’d almost certainly be a corpse. He could sense the paperwork and delays ahead.
Tor stepped aside to allow the crew to filter out of Medical as wiry Jan sidestepped beside him. “We may have a bigger concern, Tor,” he said in an ululating Troms Norwegian dialect, low and gruff at odds with his gaunt physique. “The engine is idle, she’s been offline a while. Totally cold, could be seized.”
The blood drained from Tor’s face. “Could we be at Talus?”
“Not a chance, Skip. Thrusters and rockets haven’t fired for months and there’s something else.” Nilsen’s stubbly face was equally pale. “In eight months, the EM drive was never activated.”
A rushing sensation filled his ears. Where the hell are we?
Beside the Doctor, only two men remained in the bay, duties unassigned. Bulgarian Navigation Officer Atanas Mihailov and Radio Officer James Stewart, Brit. “Everybody else on the bridge.”