‘What the heck was that?’ Ludokrus demanded as the shudder of ejecting escape pods convulsed the ship.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know,’ Knock Knock sounded panicked.
‘But you are in charge.’
‘I mean, I do know. But I don’t know what caused it.’
The scene on docking plate Q3-91 now resembled the chaos on the ship’s lower deck. Two of the escape pods had bounced off Selene Station’s cladding and gone skittering out into the vacuum of the overbay. The rest had spewed forward and now lay in a jumbled heap against the bulkhead leading to the station’s core.
The docking bay, normally dim in the interior half-light of the station, was flooded with emergency lighting, throwing the mess into sharp relief. As if to underline it, alarm lights began strobing throughout the entire segment.
Corridor Q3-9 contained ten docking plates, seven of which were currently occupied by other ships. And they were watching. Judging. Knock Knock Who’s There? could sense their disapproval and was almost relieved when pressure doors came down, sealing off the site of its shameful landing and flooding the area with air so rescue crews and clean-up bots could get to work. Still, the other ships would have seen it all. Knock Knock closed its sensors down, shut off radio links and wished it could just dissolve into the dock.
* * *
Half the gel slurped out as the lid of the his bed slid back and Tim had to grab the sides to stop himself slurping after it.
His walrus mask showed him an exterior view. C-7’s escape pod lay on its side, right up against the back wall of the docking plate, pushed there by the much larger evac pod from C-5. There was a tangle of other debris, sucked out of Knock Knock’s lower deck by the ejecting craft, and the ship itself sat looking crumpled and spent in a cloud of dust and smoke and fire-retardant foam.
Sound slowly returned as the enclosed area outside was flooded with air, alarms and klaxons rising in volume as it filled. They didn’t really help. The buckled docking plate, the crumpled ship and the arc of surrounding debris made it pretty clear there’d been a problem.
When the gauge in his mask showed the outside pressure had equalised, the escape pod’s hatch popped just wide enough for them to crawl out. They slid down the floor of the steeply angled craft and stopped by the opening.
‘Man, this gravity’s killing me already! It feels like twenty G, not one,’ Norman said as he squeezed through the gap and looked around to get his bearings. Coral followed him out. Tim trailed. While he’d been crawling around Knock Knock’s innards, Albert had been briefing the others on the best way out of the docking bay.
The space was ablaze with lights and filled with the sounds of alarms. Tim blinked and shaded his eyes. Fortunately, the way ahead was mostly shadowed by the inclined hull of C-5.
‘That looks like a junk-bot hatch.’ Coral pointed.
‘Affirmative,’ Norman said.
‘Affirmative?’
‘It means “yes”.’
‘I know what it means, but why not just say “yes”? Why waste four syllables when you can use one?’
‘You’ve just wasted about a million moaning about it. Look out, here come the junk-bots!’
* * *
Floor lighting showed the way to the emergency exit, but it wasn’t really needed as the regular lights were still on. A trolley-bot appeared carrying a radiation casket. The box had a brushed metal finish, reinforced sides and edges, and looked a bit like a coffin with a faceplate. Behind the clear glass window was a lifelike facsimile of Albert’s head.
‘Why do we need this?’ Alkemy said. ‘We could have make a robot, like on Earth.’
‘You forget the biometric sensor in Immigration. Robot will be seen. This way he is shield.’
She handed him the memory bulb. ‘You do, please. I do not want to see.’
Alkemy had loved the old syntho, yet technically she’d killed him. Following his instructions, she’d removed the memory bulb that contained his thoughts and personality after he’d been half-buried by a cave-in. Although he lived on when plugged into a suitable apparatus, copies of his old bodily form were still painful reminders of their lost friend and guardian.
Ludokrus unlatched the lid revealing a head and shoulders copy of Albert. There was nothing else. The racks below the mock-up contained batteries, expanded memory cubes and microwave communications gear. There were also random blocks of metal to make up the weight of an actual body.
Ludokrus slotted the bulb into a socket where Albert’s stomach should have been and the mechanical face came to life at once, blinking and winking at him.
‘Testing voice module,’ the head said.
‘Sound good.’
‘OK. Close the lid.’
Ludokrus did so and there was a faint hiss as the casket vacuum sealed.
‘Second skin, please.’ Albert’s voice was now muffled inside the closed casket.
Ludokrus set a skinner globe on top of the casket and activated it, releasing a thick film of clear plastic that ran down the sides. It took several seconds for the second skin to set by which time they heard an evac crew outside the ship working on the emergency escape hatch.
A winking light on the skinner globe confirmed the seal. Ludokrus removed it, gestured to his sister to lead the way, then tapped the trolley-bot with his toe to indicate it should follow them. An evac crew consisting of at least a dozen bots and two real people in spacesuits met them at the exit ramp.
‘This it? Three passengers?’ one of them asked.
They nodded.
‘Hand luggage only, please.’
Alkemy shouldered her pink backpack containing the calculator.
‘This way.’
Bots of various shapes and functions streamed past them, heading into the ship to assess the damage, determine the cause and begin repairs. Docking plates – especially priority ones – were expensive. A quick turnaround was essential.
Alkemy paused, turned back and called, ‘Thank you, ship.’
The ship said nothing.
‘Hey, Knock Knock Who’s There?’ Ludokrus called.
‘Yes?’ the ship said quietly.
‘Say your name.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Go on. Say your name.’
‘Knock Knock Who’s There?’ the ship said.
‘Boo.’
‘Boo who?’
‘Oh, don’t cry about it!’ Ludokrus laughed.
It might have been her imagination, but as they walked away, Alkemy thought she heard the ship sniff quietly.