James Gardner - Space Inc (collection)

“Are you all right?”

“Fine!” Jamie stormed down the corridor without thanking his rescuer. Marching right past the mess hall, he headed for the Beta sector habitation modules. He quickly found the room he was looking for, and pressed the door buzzer.

“Who is it?”

“Jamie!”

“Give me a minute.”

Maria opened the door. It was clear he had woken her.

“No offense, but this had better be important.” She looked him over, and her tone quickly changed. “Good grief, Jamie, you’re trembling. What happened?”

“You have to say something.” Jamie’s breathing was heavy. “You and Crenshaw, you guys have to say something.”

“We can’t make a public announcement until we know exactly what’s going on. We’d cause a panic.”

“There’s a panic now!” Jamie snapped. “What the hell was Crenshaw thinking, making a public announcement for medical tests without saying why? People are scared. I’m scared, Paul’s scared, we’re all scared.” He stared at Maria, his eyes pleading. “If there’s anything for people to be afraid of, at least let it be on the basis of facts, even partial facts, not rumors and hearsay.”

Maria nodded slowly. “You’re right. I’ll talk to Crenshaw and Montreal about this.”

It was an angry and frightened crowd that packed the mess hall to capacity. Those who couldn’t make it in person were watching through the monitors.

Crenshaw had to shout to be heard, calling for quiet three times before she could speak. “You’ve all received the briefing material through your consoles and organizers, but I’ve called this meeting to personally answer any questions you might have on the current…” she hesitated, “… situation, at Maryniak.”

Jamie squeezed his way between people to put trays of sandwiches on the tables.

“Why won’t the company come clean?” Predictably, the first to speak was Paul. “We’re all sick from the solar storm!”

“That’s not true,” Crenshaw said. “The total dose inside the shelters was within safe limits.”

What if the dosimeters were faulty?” asked Suhana.

“The TLDs are ancient technology, but they’re reliable,” Billy said. “I’d have preferred solid-state dosimeters throughout the base—not just in the shelters—but the company prefers to use the cheaper TLDs for the modules. In any case, I have no reason to think the readings are wrong.”

“I don’t believe anything you people are telling me!” Paul shouted. “How do we know the shelters were buried deep enough? How do we know there was enough shielding?”

“The storm shelters meet all applicable UNSDA standards,” Crenshaw said.

“Do they? We all know how this sorry-ass company screws up and cuts corners. Look at what happened on Banting. For God’s sake, there’s even a rumor they stocked the rover with the wrong rations!” Paul pointed at Jamie. “The company’s to cheap to even hire a decent cook! I think they skimped on shelter construction, and Billy over there doctored the dosimeter data to cover it up.”

“Are you calling me a liar?” Billy’s face turned red. “Why would I go along with a cover-up? I’m sick, too, you moron!”

Paul didn’t let up. “We have been exposed to a harmful dose! Everybody’s sick. My hair’s been coming out in clumps every time I shower.”

Jamie fought the urge to make a sarcastic remark about Paul’s hygiene.

“The TLDs don’t lie,” Billy reiterated.

“Then maybe kitchen boy’s been putting something in our food!” Paul exclaimed.

Jamie decided to speak up. “Billy, are you sure the food in the logistics module wasn’t compromised?”

“Yes,” Billy replied. “The logistics module is shielded, just not to UNSDA human-rated standards. The food’s fine.”

“How do these TLDs work?” Jamie asked.

“They’re tubes of lithium borate manganese.” Billy held up his hand, with his thumb and index finger apart. “The crystals absorb energy from ionizing radiation. After exposure, I plug them in an analyzer, where they’re heated up to three hundred degrees Celsius. This causes the energy to be released from the crystals as photons. The analyzer’s calibrated to determine the total dose absorbed by the tube based on the light it gives off.”

Jamie thought about Fred Sabathier’s birthday cake. “Do you watch these tubes as they heat up?”

“Do I watch paint dry? Of course not. I usually step outside and do something else.”

“What would happen if the power got interrupted as the tube from the logistics module was being heated up, before it got up to three hundred degrees?”

“Well, the TLD would cool down, and then when the power came back on, they would…” A look of horror flashed across Billy’s face. “Oh, crap…”

A deathly silence fell over the mess hall.

“The food,” Crenshaw said at last. “It’s the food.”

Paul said, “I knew it all along.”

Nobody touched the sandwiches.

Maria sipped her coffee. “Quite a meeting, wasn’t it?”

Jamie nodded.

“You helped solve the big mystery.”

“All I did was ask a question.”

“The right question,” Maria said. “When the TLD from the logistics module was heated and cooled, it partially reset the crystals, so when it was heated up to its proper temperature the second time, fewer photons were emitted, producing an erroneously low reading.”

Jamie nodded again. “According to the nutritionist in Montreal, the radiation could’ve destroyed up to forty percent of the pyridoxine and thiamine content in our food.” He shook his head. “We’ve been suffering from vitamin B deficiency.”

“I’ve prescribed mega doses of supplements,” Maria said, “but everything in the infirmary got zapped worse than the food in the logistics module. The company’s sending up a contingency supply shuttle, but until it gets here people are going to be popping pills like crazy to make up for the depleted dose in each capsule.”

“I can tweak the menu,” Jamie said. “Try to make the best of whatever vitamin B is left in our nuked food. How does chicken and brown rice sound?”

“You’re quite a hero, Jamie.”

He laughed. “Will you stop that!”

“I mean it. You’re a big part of the Maryniak team. I really hope you stick around.” She glanced at her watch and drained the last of her coffee. “Gotta go.”

“Hey, uh… How about dinner?”

“I’m always here for dinner,” Maria said coyly.

Jamie grinned. “Would you like something other than chicken? I can make something else if you like.”

“Surprise me.” She smiled, touching his shoulder. “A man’s place isn’t just in the kitchen, you know.”

Jamie watched her walk out of the mess hall. Smiling, he got up from the table and started toward the kitchen, all the while trying to decide what he would make.

Eric Choi was the first recipient of the Isaac Asimov Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Story Writing for his novelette “Dedication,” which was subsequently published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. “ Divisions,” his lead story in Robert J. Sawyer’s Tesseracts 6 anthology, was a finalist for an Aurora Award (Canada’s equivalent of the Hugo) and was reprinted in David G. Hartwell’s Northern Suns collection. His work has also appeared in Science Fiction Age magazine, the Canadian alternate history anthology Arrow-dreams , and Julie Czerneda’s Tales from the Wonder Zone series. He holds a Masters degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Toronto, has worked at the Canadian Space Agency as an orbit dynamics analyst for the RADARSAT Earth-observation satellite, and has trained satellite operations teams at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Currently, he is with MacDonald Dettwiler Space and Advanced Robotics in Toronto, working on mission operations support for the robotic manipulator aboard the International Space Station as well as advanced concepts for robotic systems applicable to future Mars misssions.