She opened her eyes. Pain came back into focus. The images in the periphery of her vision reminded her of hell. She closed her eyes.
Two infants cried in the distance. The sound came closer until Savanna awoke. Her thoughts were not fluid but sporadic. The pain was worse. She needed to check on the babies. They should eat at some time, probably not right away. Where was the food? It would be a day or so before her milk came in appreciable amounts. Nursing would stimulate the production factories. She sat up, still dizzy. The picture of carnage was unchanged. No cleaner-bot had been out yet. And probably wouldn’t be, she realized. It took a minute to stand up without falling. She shuffled over to the bubble that contained the sounds of life emerging. She picked up the boy and then put him down. She lifted her shirt up, removed her bra, and then picked him up again. He just cried when she put him up to her nipple. She kept trying, and, finally, he started to root and then found the teat and started to suck in little runs of five or ten. Her pain became worse. As she looked at Michael Adam at her breast, she had an emotion of happiness briefly. Then she saw that she was naked below her shirt. Turning and twisting, old and new blood appeared on her legs.
“Zhivago, what day is it?” Savanna called out.
“You declared it to be the first day of the year, Commander.”
“No, I didn’t. I asked what day it is. Don’t confuse me.”
“It appears that you do not recall your words from an hour ago.” Then a recording of her speech broadcast from his speakers.
“Eden, huh? I don’t remember that.”
“Your memory is adversely affected by the pharmacology you used.”
“Copy that,” she murmured to herself. “Have you established telemetry?”
“No, Commander. I have unreliable communication with the hub through the docking connection.”
“What is the status of the ship?”
“Moderate structural damage. The hub computer is offline. I cannot ascertain if it is functional. Fire damage on floors two and three, contained. Power production is limited and falling.”
“What is the status of the exit?”
“Cannot ascertain.”
As she attempted to nurse, she continued running through a checklist of concerns. Zhivago could not respond with data for many of the questions. She jerked her IV out and held a finger over the oozing spot. Michael was quiet. She put him down and painfully clambered down to the stairwell door. After feeling it to ensure it was not hot, she opened it. She found no smoke, no evidence of fire except the smell. She ducked through the threshold and crawled to the mess hall and Recreation area where the heat shield had failed and breached the hull of the ship. Few of the materials used in construction were flammable below four hundred degrees centigrade. The fire was out, and there was a sunken discolored area about three meters wide.
She bent down to inspect more carefully and noticed a different smell to the air. She could see nothing other than fire damage; the interior tile too hot to allow her to probe or inspect further. She scrabbled to the Engineering room. It had the smell of ozone. In the corner of the room, at floor level of both flight and horizontal modes, was a door about one and a half meters square. It led to the outside door. It had safe and fail-safe electrically activated opening mechanisms. She could not get the door to open, activating these. There was also a cumbersome mechanical opening process. It took fifteen minutes to open the door, longer because she was weak and in pain. There was a shallow passage of half a meter to the outside door. Likewise, the electrical, motorized opening procedure failed. She worked for half an hour trying the mechanical process without luck. She left, stopping by the food room for herself and a couple of bottles of sugar water for the kids.
When she returned, the plaintive, shuddering wails of both babies ratcheted her guilt higher. She picked up her daughter and rubbed the tummy and chest of the boy. They quieted somewhat. She put the infant to her other breast and patiently tried to feed her. It eventually worked out but not satisfactorily. She tried to feed the boy again to keep him quiet without much luck. Then she found a way to prop up both the little ones and tried to feed them the sugar water. She found some success but again not what she wanted. At least they were quiet.
She searched the floor for a bottle of pills for pain and was soon rewarded. She took one and lay down on the floor to rest and wait for the drug to work.
After an hour, she got up feeling minimally better, maybe not at all. She was cold and shivering. More fresh blood had dripped from her uterus down her thighs. She took a towel to a sink and found the faucet was horizontal. Turning the tap, no water emerged. There was a sucking sound as air was drawn into the pipe. She turned it off. She found saline, poured it on the towel, and scrubbed her legs and perineum mostly free of blood. Wanting to get dressed, she searched and found her underpants. They were soaked, so she threw them aside. She went to her quarters, navigating the horizontal stairwell, and found underwear and put them on, holding a pad to absorb the blood. She pulled on her pants and a warm tunic. She snugged a thin blanket around her shoulders, still shivering slightly. She returned through the same arduous passage, resolving to open the stuck doors. She walked over to Maricia and reclosed her cold eyelids. She curled up on her mattress and fitfully slept a few minutes until a baby woke her up.
Hours passed in this pattern of interrupted sleep, decreasing pain, and bone-deep fatigue. She was breast-feeding the girl the next day when Zhivago’s voice interrupted the quiet.
“I have cut power to all but the vital systems. Would you prefer to have ventilation or lighting, Commander?”
“What is the air quality?”
“Marginal overall but stable.”
“How long will the power last if ventilation is stopped?”
“Perhaps another two or three days, depending on light use.”
“How long will you be functional?”
“Approximately two days.”
“The exit portal is stuck and will not open. What other options are there for getting out?”
“Recommend lubrication of exit portal door and adding leverage if available. No other exit is designed in the ship. However, air quality indicators indicate a hull breach on the second level.”
After nursing, she offered a bottle to her daughter, but it was ignored. She placed back in the incubator and shuffled to Engineering. In the access shaft, she found tools including the stowaway box that had stalled the lift early in the mission. To call it a box now would be a misnomer. It had corroded almost completely. A collection of rusty clumps were scattered up the shaft for meters, spread by the landing. It reminded her that she saw the tools about a year ago in her mind but fifty centuries of time for them. She crawled most of the length of the shaft until she spotted a crowbar that she recalled being in the box. It had not been made of steel but of the titanium alloy like most of the metals used in the ship and had not corroded into dust. Crawling back, her knees screamed for padding. Her belly throbbed. Exiting the shaft, she wanted to rest before working. She did not. She found lubricant and then opened the interior access and sprayed all around the external door. She gave the fluid a chance to penetrate by lubricating all the stuck doors between Engineering and Medical. She donned work gloves and the crowbar and started working on the door, prying and hammering before operating the manual opening mechanism. It still did not work. She repeated her efforts for a few hours until the manual mechanism suddenly shattered into several pieces. Shattered as well were her hopes of escape.
She sat down, feeling deflated like a prisoner whose tunnel twenty years in the making just collapsed. It was so apropos for her life, another cynically perverse absurdity, the ultimate paradox, she thought. They travel trillions of kilometers only to die because the door is stuck.