Freefall Read online

  Elle’s thoughts turned again to the oddness around the HCH data. Of course everyone aboard compared test results with everyone else. This was the first long-term HCH mission to deep space, and the colonists were scientists first and foremost, and so avidly curious. Time and time again, Elle’s data stream revealed less sleep time, fewer side effects, and faster recovery rates. This anomaly intrigued them all. I knew there would be questions once I started deep-space travel, Elle mused, I just didn’t think they would start with me.

  At the end of her last cycle, in a rare moment of bureaucratic transparency, Bea had shared with Elle that of all the participants’ responses to HCH in the computer database, Elle’s reactions seemed to be the mildest. Initially Elle was puzzled why Bea was so forthcoming. She had no illusions that Bea favored her over any other colonists or trusted her more. There was no real reason for Bea to repress the truth of the results, either. The candor was most likely due to the fact that Bea had been preprogrammed by Control to relay the medical data to Elle, but only if she asked. Always, with computers, the data you received was intimately tied to the question that was asked. Finding the right question was often the biggest challenge to getting useful data.

  Since that first revelation, Elle now asked Bea every conceivable permutation of why her data was different, or how it was different, after every hibernation cycle. Bea continued to pour forth data for Elle on group norms, personal norms and deviations, test variables from Earth research groups, and more in a blizzard of information. It was too much, really. The over-abundance of data left Elle pondering the significance of this knowledge. Why her? Why was she different? And what did it mean, anyway? And had Control known?

  Using the gathered data, Elle thought it would be fun to try to predict specific things about her next cycle of sleep. She didn’t really think she had collated quite enough information yet for predictions, but the thought intrigued her. The questions themselves certainly provided a mental focus upon waking that might be missing in her teammates’ transition from HCH. Maybe that lack of focus is a key to their extended lethargy and volatility? Elle wondered. They have no real reason to “wake up” just to be put back to sleep again. Elle slowly shook her head. There always seem to be more questions than ready answers when I wake up after each cycle.

  Right now Elle was paying strict attention to the data that streamed across the console during the post-cycle downloads of her vitals. She’d requested that Angie always copy her on the files and send them to Elle’s personal data pad for further study. Again the computer was compliant without hesitation. Had Control expected Elle’s hibernation experience to be different enough that she would notice, and begin her own scientific study of herself? The scientist in her said it didn’t really matter. This is interesting. This is space science and so is well worth doing. Elle couldn’t shake the feeling that Control never told any of the colonists all they actually knew.

  The murmur of approaching voices put further speculation on hold. A grin ghosted across Elle’s face as she launched into a stiff trot out the dining hall door. She dove straight into a covey of five of her teammates, and squealed at the same time the two women in the group shouted a greeting and reached to embrace her. The three men in the group wrapped their arms around them all, their deep laughter booming off the walls of the narrow hallway. Brief, smacking kisses were slapped on cheeks and then everyone stood back to really look at the others.

  Elle grinned wider as she let her eyes race over them. “Looking good.” She nodded. “Really, looking good.”

  Solid, square-shouldered Micah grimaced. “Ugh, looks are deceiving. My head is pounding, my mouth is dry, and I feel like a wonk.” The group groaned in sympathetic agreement.

  As they moved back into the dining hall their voices grew louder, and the light in the dining hall brightened, revealing color everywhere, subtle and constantly changing over the course of a twenty-four hour period. When the colonists had trained in the simulator on Mars, all of them had complained about the lack of the sense of time passing on the faux spaceship. With enough nagging, Control had eventually instituted evolving light patterns in all the crew compartments to give the colonists a sense of the movement of time in a day. The entire crew reported the changes were tangibly more satisfying.

  An ever-changing array of colors played off walls that might be white on the surface but were infused with pinks, oranges, blues, violets, and greys, all in muted, soothing tones. In various places the walls were sculpted, raised, or beveled and the colored light pooled in a manner evocative of nature. The total sum of the lighting, color, and textures was simply a beautiful paraphrase of the natural world they had left behind.

  They chose a large table, and Vihaan pulled out a nearby chair and nudged Micah towards it. “Sit.” Ashok pulled out another chair and motioned for the women to seat themselves too. Micah pulled out a laser pen and began to diligently carve graffiti into the pristine white tabletop. Ashok grinned. “Still trying to make your mark on life, Micah?”

  Micah glared at Ashok but refused to respond. The crudely burned lettering was in stark contrast to the soft elegance of the rest of the dining hall and the tabletop itself.

  “You can’t defeat nanotechnology, Micah.” Ashok laughed.

  Micah continued writing, finishing off a slogan in the center of the table. “Wanna bet on that, Ashok?” He started burning a fancy border to enclose the phrase.

  Vihaan sat down next to Micah, elbowing him in the process and skewing his laser pen. “Vihaan, for frack’s sake,” Micah growled. “Watch it.” He went back to his doodling, oblivious to the others’ looks of concern.

  Caught off guard, Vihaan hesitated, then continued with forced humor. “Yo Micah, speaking of bets, bet you Elle will take our orders for breakfast and allow the rest of us to sit back and catch up on the mission. Whaddaya say, Elle?”

  Elle immediately leapt in to support Vihaan’s attempt to cover the rough patch between them. She whipped out her data pad, holding it ready as if to take orders. “Of course, kind sir. May I suggest the house specialty to start this morning?”

  Achebe, a vibrant Nigerian woman, grinned across at Elle and asked, “Can you describe the house specialty in all its glorious detail for us, Miss?”

  “Most assuredly. This morning’s special is eau de toilet…three months of waste water lovingly filtered not just once, but multiple times to rob it of all its natural bouquet. Once the house beverage has been returned to its state of origin, microscopic bacteria are added that will soothe your colon and bathe it in a feeling of well-being. And finally, the piece de resistance: we infuse your drink with vitamins, minerals, and even add a tiny, brightly colored umbrella on the rim for your delectation.” Elle peered at her teammates over the rim of her data pad. “Who would like to be first to order?”

  Ashok leaned closer to Elle and leered, “I’ll take three if you come with it, sweetheart.”

  The group guffawed. They were young enough to be certain there couldn’t really be anything permanently wrong with their libidos—but not perfectly certain. As a result, the sexual banter had become de regueur the minute that any more than two of them were in a room together.

  It didn’t diminish the male colonists’ underlying performance concerns, knowing that in the cryo-lab there were flash-frozen sperm donations from every male on board the Vera Rubin. For good measure, and genetic diversity, Control had insisted on a large sampling from the male colonists on Moonbase and Marsbase as well. Control was taking no chances that their young, healthy, deep-space colonists would not be able to procreate.

  Elle waltzed over to the water cellars and poured a dozen glasses of water, placing them on a tray to return to the table. She placed the tray in the middle of the table and pulled a chair over to sit between Ashok and Achebe. “Don’t be shy. Drink up,” Elle commanded lightly, lifting her own glass off the tray. She raised it and paused. “Hey Micah, what shall we toast?”

  Micah raised his eyes from his doodling
and frowned at Elle, then grimaced.

  Across the table, Jin-Hai lifted her glass and reached over to bump it gently against Elle’s.

  “I say urine,” Jin-Hai deadpanned. “Where would we be without urine?”

  Achebe barked out a laugh and raised her glass too. They all intoned with one voice, “To urine,” and clinked their glasses together before chugging down the first glass of water.

  Vihaan reached over and wrapped one arm around Micah’s shoulders, clinking his own glass against his. “C’mon Micah, drink up. I’ll race you to the bottom.”

  Micah lifted his glass reluctantly but emptied it completely. They all drank down a second glass of water in quick succession.

  THREE

  Micah weaved slightly as he shuffled along the narrow white hallway. He stopped and groaned and leaned against the wall, resting his head against the seamless surface. The wall beneath his forehead was cool and as he continued to remain motionless, the lights dimmed slightly to conserve energy. That helped. Micah wished he could close his eyes, but when he did that he felt dizzy. Even worse, dizzy made him feel nauseous. When his eyes were open they burned. Elle said her eyes burn too sometimes, he thought. The way she described it, it doesn’t sound as bad. Maybe she knows something that could help soothe my eyes.

  The inner core of the Vera Rubin space shuttle, running the entire length of the ship, was built to rotate independently of its shell when needed. The rotation created a moderate amount of gravity as necessary in habitable sections when the crew was awake and functioning normally. It also generated electricity. The other benefit of the independent inner core was the additional layer of shielding it provided from space radiation for the sleeping colonists.

  Sandwiched between the outer shell of the Vera Rubin and the inner core was a honeycomb of mechanical rooms, storage rooms, cryo-labs, medical labs, hydroponic food tanks, and a vast water filtration system that enabled the indefinite reuse of wastewater.

  A timer on his cuff beeped brightly and he sighed, righted himself slowly, and pushed himself into motion with a groan. Maybe Elle is just tougher than I am, he thought as he trudged down the hallway. That is a pathetic thought. Stop it! He reached the little alcove where Elle had said he could find her. He tapped politely on the bulkhead to announce his arrival and then stuck his head through the doorway. “Can I come in?”

  Elle was curled up in a hammock she had hung in an open space between two thick pipes. It swayed slightly with her weight as she turned towards the sound of his knock. She was just in time to see Micah’s expression as he stepped into the room.

  “Crikey, do you actually ever sleep at all, Elle?”

  Micah let his eyes sweep the walls of the alcove as he rotated in place. Before him was a riot of color. From floor to ceiling long, trailing tendrils of vine painted in a fluid but rudimentary style drew his eye. The vines were festooned with flowers, which led to budding shrubbery, and then to a tall, red-leafed tree arching up and over it all, its branches spreading onto the ceiling. The wall closest to the door remained a vacant, impersonal white surface.

  Micah stopped turning. “How did you do this? Do you repaint it every cycle?”

  Elle wore a big grin as she rolled over completely to face him. “Slowpoke. What took you so long?” She held out her arms to him.

  Micah blinked, then frowned. “Not until you answer my question. Does it stick?”

  Elle nodded her head avidly. “Yeah. I figured that the nanotech was too expensive to use anywhere except crew quarters. Every cycle that I woke up early, I made it my mission to find out where the ‘tech’ ended and plain old wall space began.” She pointed to the blank white wall and added, “The edge of nanotech lies right before your eyes.”

  Micah offered up a wan smile. “So that explains your little hidey-hole down here, then?”

  Elle smiled. “Well, it’s one of the reasons.” Her smile became inviting. “And it’s quiet; no company unless we invite someone intentionally.” Elle slid over a bit to give him some room. “You want to join me?”

  Micah laughed softly. “I do. I am definitely ready for a hug.” He crossed the room and stopped in front of her. “Anything more than that will be a bonus, though.” He turned his back to Elle and rested his bum on the edge of the hammock. “This is how this works, right?”

  Elle pulled gently at his jumpsuit. “Drop the jumpsuit before you climb in or the hammock will just twist it up around your neck anyway. May as well take it off now.”

  Micah didn’t pause to question her. He lifted the long strand of Velcro that held his suit together and let it drop. He turned his back to her again and edged over the rim of the hammock, squeezing himself in next to her. Elle’s arms immediately went underneath his shoulders and over his chest. She pulled him close to her and flung a leg over his midsection.

  Micah exhaled a long breath and slowly closed his eyes. For a millisecond he felt serene—then he bolted upright. “I’m gonna be sick, Elle. I think I’m gonna be sick.” Micah’s breathing was suddenly fast and rasping. He stared wide-eyed at the bulkhead, consciously trying not to puke.

  Elle gently grasped his near hand and curled it between her own hand and her breast. She spoke very softly. “I don’t think you have to be sick, Micah. Try putting your attention somewhere else.” She lay back down and gently pulled Micah to her. “Try lying back down and relaxing by just listening to me breathe. Try matching your breath to mine.”

  Slowly Micah allowed Elle to lay him down and they practiced breathing in tandem. Slowly she let go of his hand and slipped her arm and her leg back across his body. Carefully he closed his eyes. Micah’s chest rose and fell, rose and fell. Elle leaned over and gently kissed the corner of his mouth. He smiled slightly and a tiny dimple hollowed his cheek. Elle kissed that too. “What are all those viney things, Elle?”

  Elle grinned. “Passiflora Grandifolia. Before your eyes is the result of years of research and painstaking hand copying of images from old Earth-based field guides. Not to mention my dreams of what the Mars lava tubes could really be if we ever—” Elle stopped in mid-sentence. A soft snore escaped Micah’s lips. Elle shook her head and sighed in resignation. She noticed he was still smiling, though. She snorted quietly to herself. What did it say about her powers of persuasion if, after hibernating for ninety days, the first thing Micah did with her was fall asleep?

  Elle lowered her head to his shoulder and used her free hand to smooth the soft down beginning to appear again on his chest. She smoothed the hair forward and then back again. It would be lasered off as soon as he headed back into HCH sleep, but right now it was softly appealing.

  I’m worried about Micah. She was worried about all of them, if she was being honest with herself. We aren’t even a third of the way to the Three Sisters, haven’t even found the marker for the wormhole, and too many of the colonists are having problems. Elle couldn’t help thinking that the problems were caused by the HCH.

  Elle looked up at Micah’s sleeping face and frowned. The truth was, she was mostly worried about Micah. She brushed her palm over the fuzz on his chest one more time, her eyes wide open. She began tapping an anxious finger gently against his sternum, thinking. There must be a correlation to the HCH and Micah’s volatility. If she could find the connection, maybe she could also determine if this was a permanent change. Would time out of HCH sleep bring back the Micah that I love?

  As a scientist, Elle really wanted to believe that the answers were in the data streams.

  FOUR

  They were on a training mission on Mars. Base camp was still twenty kilometers away, at the entrance to one of the largest lava tubes on the Tharsis shield. Lava tubes from extinct volcanoes housed the colonists-in-training, and shielded them from some of the planet’s less benign attributes. The trainees could not afford to spend a night out in the rough. They had left base in the early morning wearing only their lightweight Extra Vehicular Oxygenated outdoor suits. The EVO suits supplied oxygenated air and they fit
like a second skin.

  Their cross-country training exercise had run into one glitch after another. Now heading home, they were all strung out, strictly against orders, across the Martian landscape moving doggedly north. They were tired and discouraged and they were sick of schlepping rocks in bags on their backs just to keep themselves fit in the light Martian gravity. It was work, damned hard work, to maintain muscle strength.

  Elle realized almost immediately that she had packed her bag of rubble badly. But the squad had been starting to move out and she didn’t want to hold them up, so she made the cardinal mistake of not speaking up. As she ran, she swore her pickaxe was gouging a hole in her scapula. Elle shifted her pack, trying to move the axe without the hassle of stopping and taking it off her back. She shrugged her shoulders and then shoved the pack roughly to reorient it. Thrown suddenly off balance, she tripped on a small escarpment and fell. Even with the full pack, in the light Martian gravity it shouldn’t have mattered. But the pickaxe tore loose and sliced a tear in her suit.

  Elle rolled as she fell, but as she righted herself she could feel the blast of frigid air against her shin. At the same time, she felt the oxygenator in her EVO suit stop working and her rebreather kick into gear. The oxygen in the EVO suits was a little more concentrated than Earth standard. Instead of 20 percent oxygen it was roughly 32 percent, mixed with inert, harmless filler from the Martian atmosphere. The rebreather functioned exactly the way its name suggested: it captured the breath Elle exhaled and recycled it. You could usually get three or four good breaths out of your rebreather and then you died, unless you fixed your suit. The rebreather was kind of like mouth-to-mouth without the ick factor.