David Brin - The Heart of the Comet

“Don’t worry, I will,” Virginia said angrily. “Maybe I’ll just quarantine myself, too!”

She kicked off and sped away, not bothering to look back. Hell, Vidor looks worse than Saul. Then she put her irritation behind her as best she could.

When she entered the lab, Saul looked up in surprise. In the enameled lab glow his haggard, gray face lit with joy. She knew she had made the right decision.

“You really shouldn’t risk…” he said without much conviction.

She bore down on him.

The hell with poetry , she thought. I’ll take the real thing.

Jim Vidor wasn’t being much help.

He coughed into his hands, leaning against the wall of the sleep-slot prep room. Vidor was pale, with the same pasty mottling and strange stiff sheen that Quiverian had developed less than two days ago.

Carl finished fitting the nutrient webbing around Quiverian’s body and attached the sensor tabs. Everything looked right, but he went over the whole chemline and circuit layout again. You couldn’t be too careful. One bad connection and they died on you. The monitor computer should pick up errors, but the moment you started relying on the backup systems, well, that was the beginning of the end as far as he was concerned.

As the crisis went on and on, Carl increasingly found himself being meticulous, his way of compensating for fatigue.

“Blood pH stabilized. Metabolic Q-10 on track. Might as well file him,” Carl said.

Vidor nodded, eyes runny, and shuffled forward to help. Together they maneuvered the body into the slot, sealed it, and attached the external hoses. The banks of filled containers in the prep room formed a sphere around them, so they worked under a frosty dome. Cottony clouds drifted lazily in the air currents over their heads. These slots had flown out on the Sekanina and had tricky hose connectors. Somehow nothing ever gets completely standardized on a mission , Carl thought moodily. Then you spend years tinkering and retrofitting.

“No ceremony this time?” Carl said.

“Don’t feel like it,” Vidor agreed.

They were all too worn down to keep up the niceties. “Go on, get some rest,” Carl said kindly. Not that he really thought it would do much good.

He logged Quiverian into the over-all monitoring programs while Vidor left, moving as though his joints were sore. Same as Quiverian , Carl thought. But neither of them got that brown rash that grew all over Samuelson. Different symptoms—or different diseases?

Not that it mattered all that damn much, now. At this rate they’d all be gone inside a week.

Which meant he had to start some more unslottings right away. Now.

They were at a crucial point. The six thawing in sick bay would not be enough to keep Halley Core running, not while they recuperated. If the diseases felled Virginia, Saul, himself, Lani… the expedition would fail. Unattended, the slots would malf one by one. Halley would become an endlessly orbiting cemetery of frozen corpses.

He thumbed in his Priority control code and set to work. Some simple systems had to be warmed up, calculations made, drug inventories drawn on. Carl had some experience with the procedures from the Encke mission. He worked as well s he could, referring to the manual whenever he had doubts. Saul Lintz could advise him if absolutely necessary… even with rusty skills, Saul was still the doctor. But…

But what? Yeah, I know—I don’t want to call him. I don’t care if I never see the bastard again. And I know it’s just childish jealousy, too. But that doesn’t make things any easier. Just the opposite, maybe.

It was a good idea to get this practice himself, anyway. In a few days he would probably be slotting Saul. I hope Virginia doesn’t catch whatever he’s got.

He was working slowly, his thinking mired in mud. He had to shake off the mood, he knew that, or else he’d make some dumb mistake. Music? That was about all he had these days. He’d been listening to Mozart and Liszt and Haydn for sixteen hours every day, the only way to distance himself from the backbreaking, unending job of cleanup. And all the time watching over one shoulder to see if a goddamn purple hadn’t broken through the insulation nearby, wasn’t there waiting for him to. brush against it, burn through his suit, get its deadly poisons into him …

“Carl!”

He turned, surprised by the feminine voice. Virginia! She didn’t go to him after all.

The sight of Lani entering the prep room crushed his sudden hope.

“I heard about Quiverian, thought I’d come down and…oh You’ve already slotted him?”

Carl nodded.

“No ceremony?”

“Wasn’t in the mood. Jim’s not feeling too well, and a ceremony by yourself…”

Lani studied him sympathetically. “I understand.”

“Maybe we’ll all get together tonight, hoist a few beers ….” He let the sentence trickle lamely away, remembering that they had almost started a romance, back a few lifetimes ago. He hadn’t thought of that for some time. Every day he revised his opinion of Lani upward, but his pulse still quickened for Virginia. Not that it matters … We’re all run ragged.

She nodded emphatically. “Yes. We could use a little group solidarity. You’re the leader now, Carl. You’ll have to hold us together.”

He had been nominal leader for more than a week, though without time to think of himself that way. “All six of us? With two or three sick’? Some crew. Half of shift one gone in—what? ten days? No, less.” He shook his head. “Things’re movin’ too fast.”

What would Captain Cruz have done that I haven’t? What have I missed?

“You’re tired.” She put a hand on his shoulder and patted him gently. Like I was a big dumb animal , he thought. Well, I’m not much better than that right now.

“I… I’m glad you came.”

“So am I. You obviously need help.”

“I started unslotting a couple more.”

“Won’t we need a dozen at least?”

“That’s what I need help with. We must have good people, but… well, who would you pick to introduce into this death house?”

Lani nodded silently, her face pensive and withdrawn. He wondered how she was dealing emotionally with the ever-present threat. She might be catching something from him—or vice versa—right now. They had no real idea what vector these diseases followed.

“Not my friends…”

He was surprised. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. I’m figuring on picking people I know can stand up to this.”

“I see. I considered first sheltering my friends; you think of pulling out those you can trust. That’s why you are suited to command, and I am not.”

Carl shrugged. He knew he was no real leader, not remotely like Captain Cruz; he just did what seemed obvious. Her other point was right, though. It was a lot less painful to watch comparative strangers sicken and die.

“I don’t like having to make these decisions on my own. I’m just an ordinary spacer, This is life and death, for chrissakes.”

“So it is.”

In a subtle way Lani withdrew from him, standing apart, face blank and eyes wary, waiting for his orders. She didn’t want the responsibility. Neither do I.

“Okay, I’ve got to tell the system which slots to start warming, or we can’t go any further.” He turned to the big console and began running his hands down the displayed list of crew skills. He pressed a finger at the dimple points next to two names.

“Jeffers and Sergeov,” he said grimly. Then he managed a dry, crusty chuckle. “Boy, are they going to be surprised.”