part0040

THE PIERCING SOUND of alarms snapped Alvarez out of his ruminations. We must be at the probe, he thought. But just coming out of IST wouldn’t cause this kind of ruckus.

He went into the helm. The alarm was even louder there. “What’s our status?” he said.

“We’ve reached our destination,” Thomson, the navigator, said. “The computer says there’s an engine malfunction.” Alvarez looked at Parker who was working at his console.

“That’s what I was afraid of,” Parker said without looking up. Terra York, who was beside Parker, turned and left.

“Where’s she going?” Alvarez said.

“Colonel, we need to shut down immediately,” Parker said.

Alvarez motioned to Jitters. “Pull it.” Jitters complied. The siren fell silent, the lights darkened, and the consoles went blank. A dim red glow, the emergency lights, emanated from the floor. They were enough to help someone escape during a crash landing but not enough for much more.

Above the helm’s doorway the alarm light continued to blink, detached from its siren. Alvarez felt like the ship was underwater. “Apparently, the main computer still thinks we have a problem,” he said to no one.

Everything except minimal life-support systems was offline including consoles, engines, and communications. He asked Thomson, “How close are we to the star?”

“Sir, we landed at our target coordinates, so we should be in the same orbit as the probe.”

The word should always made Alvarez feel uneasy. At least they hadn’t crashed into the star. “Parker, report,” he said.

Parker gripped his console. “Sir, the engines are blown.”

“We’re stranded?”

“No, interstellar travel is still possible. I’m talking about our thrusters. We won’t be able to maneuver when we’re not in IST.”

Alvarez bit his lip. He didn’t understand how interstellar travel was even possible, let alone the actual mechanics of engine design.

“That’s not our only concern,” Parker continued. “York is on her way to disengage the energy-transfer coupling from the main reactor. If she doesn’t do it within about three minutes, it will overload and blow the reactor. Then we really are stuck,” he paused, “or worse.”

Alvarez clenched his fist trying not to appear shocked. He kept his panic locked down. He learned long ago that the most important thing in a crisis was to keep yourself together. It didn’t matter how you felt. There was no way to feel calm. You had to act calm. What you did was more important than what you felt. Focus on doing the next right thing. He swallowed the lump in his throat and said, “What’s the cause for the malfunction?”

“It’s just a new design. I knew something like this could happen. We took the Constance out too soon, before the customary six weeks of extensive testing. I don’t know why McKinley was so dead set on using the Constance.”

“At least he allowed you to bring extra parts,” Alvarez said.

Parker eased up a bit. “Yeah. We’ve got enough parts to rebuild the ship twice over...” He stiffened. “If there’s time.”

Thomson interrupted, “Colonel Alvarez, look.”

Out the main bay window Alvarez saw a small shuttle appear. “What’s he doing?” Alvarez said. He grabbed the communication console, hit the transmitter, and said, “Brennen, report. Brennen.”

Jitters said, “S-s-sir, it’s no use. Communications are down.”

“If we get through this alive, I’m going to…” Alvarez controlled himself. He couldn’t lose it in front of the crew. He turned to Parker. “Do you need to assist York?”

“There’s little I could do. Where she’s going, there’s barely enough room for one person. Her size and skill means she can do it faster than I could.”

The crew was silent. A faint hum, first sounding like ringing in the ears, grew louder and higher pitched. “Jitters,” Alvarez said. “Go check on the grunts and report back.”

“You got it, Colonel.”

Everyone else at the helm waited by their consoles. The hum continued to rise in pitch but grabbed new, lower frequencies that combined into a nauseating oscillation.

Alvarez watched Brennen’s shuttle. No doubt, Alvarez shared the thoughts of everyone else on board: was the combustion chamber going to blow? Would they be stranded or die? But Alvarez’s overriding thought was unique; if they blew up, Brennen would get away with acting like a spoiled child. No, if they blew up, he would get away with murder, because he took their only shuttle, their only mode of escape from the ticking time bomb inside the Constance.

Brennen’s shuttle moved at the same rapid speed as before, but now, because of the distance, it appeared to drift like debris in an asteroid belt. Not far beyond the shuttle, Alvarez saw a small glimmer. It must be the probe, he thought.

The crew grew restless. A bead of sweat, blood red from the track lights, dripped from Thomson’s brow. Parker paced the dark room with one hand covering his face, the other on his hip. The two technicians sat holding their heads in their hands. Alvarez felt a blender in his guts as the high frequency hum grew inaudible.

Suddenly, a rapid metallic clang pulsed for a couple seconds and then nothing. Alvarez looked at Parker who exhaled an unmistakable sigh of relief. The crew cheered.

Jitters returned to the helm. Sitting down at his console, he said, “The men are fine, sir. Except for a couple stationed in the cargo bay, everyone was in their barracks. They were a little confused by the lights going out, but I got them settled down.” Alvarez wondered what substances that had entailed.

Terra York returned to the helm. She reported to Alvarez, “We’re in the clear, sir. Now it’s time to start making repairs.”

“Is it safe to turn on the systems?” he asked Parker.

“I think it should be fine now, but we’re not going to have sub-IST maneuverability until repairs are made. York disengaged the power coupling, which isn’t hard to replace. But I’m guessing we’ll need to swap out some major components. I won’t know for sure until we run a full diagnostic and manually inspect the combustion chamber and its contiguous components.”

Alvarez looked at Jitters and gave him the nod. Within moments the lights, communications, and computers were back online.

Either Parker wasn’t satisfied with Alvarez’s non-response, or he was stuck in engineering mode and was thinking out loud. “I’m certain we’ve got all the parts we need,” he said, “and the energy-transfer coupling might even be in good enough shape to continue using it. I suspect the problem is the combustion chamber. Replacing it is a real bear. We can’t do it from within the ship. We have to take it on a transport table outside the main cargo bay doors, space-walk it around the ship, open the service hatch, pull out the old chamber, and secure the new chamber from outside.”

Alvarez heard him but said nothing. He was busy pulling up ship schematics, the combustion chamber specifically. “I can’t seem to find the service hatch, the service shaft, or half of what you’re talking about on the computer’s diagrams.”

“Oh, that’s to be expected,” Parker said. “Much of this was an after-thought, something we changed late in the design process.”

“Mistake is too strong a word. This is par for the course. Initial designs only work on paper. Once metal meets rivet, there are going to be some disconnects between theory and practice. The only reason the schematics aren’t up to date is because we took the Constance out ahead of schedule.”