“How soon before someone trapped in that cargo hold starts showing symptoms?”
“From which contaminant?” the ship asked.
“Any of them,” Yu said, wishing the damn computer wasn’t so literal.
“Well, the first compound—”
“No,” he said. “When will the first symptom from anything in that hold show up?”
“Mr. Yu,” the ship said in that rich voice, which at the moment seemed more sulky than sexy, “symptoms should have started appearing within the first hour of contamination.”
“Scan the life form. Is it healthy?”
“I do not have a baseline for my scan. I do not know what condition the life form was in before it got on the ship.”
“Just scan her, would you?” He clenched a fist, then opened it slowly. He didn’t dare hit a ship that ran on touch.
“The scans are inconclusive. If the life form was in perfect health, then it is showing symptoms,” the ship said.
Yu cursed again. “How long do we have before the illnesses caused by this stuff become irreversible?”
“Impossible to say without a baseline,” the ship said.
“Assume she was healthy,” Yu snapped.
“Then two to twenty-four Earth hours. I would suggest a treatment facility, since you do not want to download a medical persona. Would you like a list of the nearest venues?”
Yu rolled his eyes. Any treatment facility in this sector of the solar system would be an Earth Alliance Base. He didn’t dare go near those places.
“Download the best persona you can find,” he said. “Better yet, download two or three of them. Pay the fees if you have to. I want cutting-edge stuff. Modern technology. Nothing older than last year.”
“Yes, sir,” the ship said. “This will take fifteen Earth minutes for the various scans and downloads. May I suggest you remove the life form from the cargo hold and put it in quarantine?”
“You may suggest any damn thing you want,” he muttered. But he opened his links and sent a message to Nafti.
Get her out of there, but don’t go near her. Put her in the quarantine area, the regulation one for humans, okay?
How do I get her there without touching her? Nafti asked.
I dunno, Yu sent. Tell her she’s going to die if she doesn’t do what she’s told.
But you said we can’t kill her, Nafti sent.
Not us, stupid, Yu sent. The hold itself’ll kill her. Tell her the quarantine room is our exam facility. She’ll run for it.
Hope you’re right, Nafti sent, then signed off.
Yu hoped he was right too. Because this job was a lot more trouble than he had bargained for.
Yu monitored the decontamination from the bridge. He wanted to avoid the woman as much as possible—not because she was contaminated, but because he didn’t want her face burned into his memory any more than it already was. He wanted to be done with this job—and quickly.
Unlike some of his equipment, the decontamination machine was state of the art. He needed the best for his own use. Often he went into areas that weren’t Alliance supervised or Alliance approved. He didn’t want to wear an environmental suit all the time, and he didn’t want to bring back any exotic diseases.
Shindo’s decontamination went well. The machine caught and eliminated more than 95 percent of the contaminants. The remaining 5 percent would be tough to get, however, and that was why he needed the medical personas.
He had them installed in the medical lab, which he had never used. He kept the lab well stocked, however, since he traveled alone so often.
Nafti had supervised Shindo’s trip from the cargo hold to the decontamination unit to the medical lab. Then Nafti had locked her in there, and had gone exploring the rest of the ship himself.
Yu didn’t know what Nafti was about, but he could guess. The man was a horrible hypochondriac, and he was probably trying to see if those contaminants had spread from the cargo holds to the rest of the ship.
A bell sounded. It was an audio alert that he had set up so that he would notice any unusual behavior.
“Yes?” he said to the ship.
“The medical lab has sealed itself off,” the ship said.
“What does that mean?” Yu asked.
“I can no longer access information from the medical lab,” the ship said.
“How is that possible?” Yu asked. But he knew. The ship had several systems grafted one on top of the other. If a knowledgeable person managed to tap one system, that person could lock out the remaining systems.
Apparently Shindo was more knowledgeable about ship’s systems that he knew.
Yu cursed and bent over the board, trying to override whatever the hell she had done. He had investigated her as best he could before taking this job. He had thought he knew the limits of her knowledge.
She was a scientist, but one that specialized in chemical and biological systems. She had never flown a ship, never taken piloting classes, never so much as hired a private vehicle.
She seemed to have no technical skills at all except for the ones needed for her job.
Apparently she had more technical skills than he realized.
The door to the bridge opened and Nafti came in, wearing a battered environmental suit.
“You were wrong to trust those bots,” Nafti was saying. He tapped on his suit. “You should be wearing one of these. You should go through the decontamination just like that woman did.”
Yu didn’t say anything. He had to concentrate on getting the medical lab back on line. Whatever the hell that woman was doing—good or bad—it worried him.
He was hoping it was just the new medical personas causing a glitch in the system, but if that was the case, so far he couldn’t find it.
“You’re not listening!” Nafti said.
Yu sighed. He hadn’t been listening. But he lied. “I am listening. You don’t understand.”
“What don’t I understand?”
“That you’re a hypochondriac.”
“What?”
“You got a headache when she started pounding. Then the canny woman mentions contaminants, which all ships have, and you go off the deep end. You put on that suit, which, by the way, looks like it might have some integrity issues, and you go all over the ship looking for contamination, forgetting that the suit is probably contaminated from its contact with the hold.”
Nafti looked down. The suit creaked as he did so, and Yu saw a rip along the neck.
“I did carry the wrong cargo in the hold,” Yu said, “and I clearly didn’t double-check whether or not the bots were full. I thought they worked. Obviously they didn’t. But the ship is fine or we wouldn’t have been allowed in and out of the ports, especially the ports in the Earth Alliance.”
Which wasn’t really true. He had dozens of ways to make sure his ship wasn’t thoroughly inspected.
“Honestly?” Nafti sounded vulnerable.
“Yes, honestly,” Yu said. “Remember that the holds have their own environmental systems. I showed you that when I hired you years ago. You asked about it.”
Nafti reached up and removed the helmet. His face was covered with beads of sweat and his skin was red. Obviously the suit’s environmental system hadn’t worked properly either.
Yu tapped a few areas on the security monitor, trying to get access to the medical lab.
“I did ask, didn’t I?” Nafti said.
“Yes,” Yu said.
“I’m not a hypochondriac,” Nafti said.
“Then what are you?”