Chapter 4

Jass tried to empty her mind of everything but the pounding of her feet against the treadmill. The straps that held her against the treadmill to simulate gravity dug into her shoulders as she ran. Her braid thumped against her back, and she could feel every beat of her heart. She blasted her favorite rock songs through a set of small headphones, and tried to shut out every thought that tried to cross her mind. Now was not for thinking. Now was simply for doing. For running.

Just as she was beginning to enter a trance state free of thought, her handheld computer vibrated with an alert. Jass groaned, and looked to see what it was. Her next shift in the main cabin wasn't for another hour and a half. The computer showed a call incoming from the main cabin. She paused her music, and answered the call. “This is the captain, what is the problem?”

“Captain, this is the main cabin. We've just received word of a solar event that may affect our communications. I'm sending you the main details now, but the full version is only viewable on the screen up here. I'm afraid we'll need a decision fast.” Kristin's voice was tight with stress, but controlled.

“Acknowledged. On my way. Please let Communications and Navigation know that they will be needed in the main cabin as soon as possible.” She hit the button to stop the treadmill and began to slip the straps off her shoulders.

“Already done, they're on their way. Over and out.”

Jass didn't stop to change out of her sweaty tank top and pants, but pulled herself down the corridor to the main cabin as quickly as she could.

As she passed the science lab, she nearly collided with Martina, who was pulling the door of the lab closed behind her. “Look out!”

Martina flattened herself against the wall as Jass shouted, and the collision was averted. “Follow me to the main cabin, you might be needed.” Jass called over her shoulder, and Martina quickly pushed herself off the nearest wall and followed. The young intern pulled her rumpled hair into a quick ponytail as they soared down the hall.

“I hope this doesn't take you away from anything important,” Jass said, navigating a slight corner. “But we might need someone else in the main cabin for this, and even if we don't, it'll be a good learning experience.”

“Should we have waited for Merriam?” the young woman asked, giving herself a lunge forward by pulling a handhold.

“No time. Call him from the cabin.” Jass soared through the open door of the main cabin, followed closely by Martina, who pulled herself into a seat and quickly buckled herself in so she wouldn't continue to float around the room. She quickly activated the desk comm and called Merriam to come up to the cabin. Kara and Aaron were already at their desks, and Dana was just buckling herself in.

Jass took her seat in the captain's chair, and pulled up the main alert screen. An animated sun was glowing brightly in the center of the screen, and long tendrils of energy were leaping off of it into space. One tendril reached out and out, flinging its energy out into space.

“Is this flare headed our way?”

Kristin nodded. “It was detected about five minutes ago by the Camilla satellite, and we just got the warning. We've got about another five minutes before it hits us. Kara's already sent an update back to Mars, so we're clear to shut down the comms anytime.”

“Shut them down, but keep one line open for updates. We'll shut it down a minute before we're scheduled to hit that storm.”

“Acknowleged.” Kara's fingers spidered over the console, flicking switches with the grace of a concert pianist. “All lines of communication shut down, antennae have been retracted under their shields. One antenna exposed, one line open, ready to be shut down on command.”

“good work, Kara. Navigation, how will this affect our course?” Jass turned to Aaron, who was typing information into his console as quickly as he could.

“It depends on how long it lasts, and how much we're effected. We're scheduled for another ion engine burn in a few hours, but if our communications get knocked out, I may not be able to send the command to the engines. We may need to reset them and reschedule the burns. That's several days of lost work, at best.”

“I'll assume that's the worst case scenario, and hope for something better than that, then. Thank you, Navigation.”

Jass turned back to the screen in front of her. The simulated energy storm grew closer and closer to the blinking dot that marked the current location of the Curious Machine. She didn't know if there was a delay in what the screen showed, so she wanted to make sure they had plenty of time to lock down the delicate instruments.

“Merriam, all of your payload is adequately shielded, correct?”

The scientist had entered the room a few moments before, and was strapping himself into his seat. “Yes, captain, all experiements have some shielding built into their storage boxes, and the whole room is radiation-proof.”

“Excellent. Communications?”

“Ready and waiting, captain.”

Jass took a deep breath. “Retract the last antenna. Let's get this baby locked down and ride out the storm.”

“acknowledged. Retracting antenna. Antenna is safely stowed and the shield is in place. We are in radio silence.”

The crew watched the window in silence, waiting for the blast of the storm, but there was nothing. “Of course, we won't be able to see a thing,” Merriam commented, trying to will himself to relax. “None of this energy is in the visible spectrum, and it won't feel like a windstorm. But it's here. It has to have hit us by now. If we were near a planet with a magnetosphere, the show would be incredible.”

Suddenly, Kristin pointed to the window. “Look at that!” Little tendrils of lightning played across the surface of the ship, crackling away into nothing as the energy dissipated.

“Surface charging,” commented Merriam, peering out the window intently. “Do we have a camera on this? I'd love to document it properly.”

“Kara, can you point the interior cabin cam at the window and catch some of that?” Jass asked.

“Yeah, I think so. Here we go. It won't be the best quality of image, but it should work. We're shielded enough in here that the camera's recording shouldn't be affected, but we may have to replace some of the exterior cameras.” Kara focused the camera and hit the button to begin recording.

“It's a good thing we're this far out from the sun. If we were in a planetary orbit, we'd be experiencing pretty severe drag. It can play havoc with your fueling estimates.” Aaron kept scanning the navigational options that he'd set up before the communications had to be shut down.

“How do we know when we're out of the radiation?” asked Martina, getting restless.

Kara pointed at an indicator on her console. “This screen shows how much radiation the ship is experiencing. When it gets down to a safe range, I'll get an alert.”

Jass watched the strange lightning play across the window. It was almost unheard of to see weather phenomenon this far into space, but radiation bursts from the sun produced strange effect on spacecraft. She was glad that the hull of the Curious Machine was shielded to prevent the worst effects.

After a while, she noticed that the lightning seemed to be lessening. A few minutes more, and it had subsided entirely.

“Kara, I'm seeing no more visible surface charging. How's our radiation level?"

“Coming back towards nominal ranges but still too high to risk the antennae.”

Jass sat back in her chair. “Alright, keep me advised. Once we hit nominal levels, let it go for five minutes, then let me know the situation.”

Martina fidgeted in her seat, and combed her hair with her fingers before pulling it back into the short ponytail she usually wore.

Finally, Kara called out, “We've been in nominal levels for five minutes, captain, and the levels are dropping steadily. I think we're out of danger now. Sending the report to your screen now.”

Jass scanned the report that appeared, and nodded. “Agreed. Raise the antennae and see if we can restore contact with Mars.”

The communications expert ran her fingers across the console, and Jass could hear the slight scrapings of the antenna extending back into place.

“We've definitely lost communication during the storm, but I can't tell yet if it's due to any damage on the equipment or just that the antennae aren't pointing the right way. It's going to take me a while to determine that.” Kara watched her screen with an intensity she rarely showed anywhere else.

“Acknowledged. Keep me appraised of the situation. Navigation?”

“Good news: the engines are communicating just fine, so once I have new routes drawn up, we should be good to go. It was a short storm, so we only missed one engine firing. Won't take much correction. Do you want to see the new plan before Dana programs it?”

“No, I'll trust your judgment on it. Keep a sharp eye on our course, though, just in case something we haven't seen affects it.”

“Copy that.” Aaron was already plotting an adjusted route with new engine firing points.

“thank you everyone, for your hard work and quick responses. This could have been a lot worse than it was, so thanks for being so on top of things.” Jass smiled as she turned to face her crew. “I can't think of any crew I'd rather be in the black with.”

The faces she saw were slack with relief, and weary smiles were beginning to break out. With a sudden jolt, she realized that one of the people in the cabin, one of the these people who had worked to prevent disaster in the storm, had smuggled explosives aboard and tried to destroy the ship. The thought made her sick, but she maintained her smile. There would be time to worry later. For now, they were all safe.

By the time Jass dismissed the crew, it was time for her watch in the cabin. She felt sticky from the sweat she hadn't had time to wash off when she left the treadmill, and her hair was slipping out of the tight braid she usually kept it in. She pulled off the band that held it back and shook it loose. It bloomed into a glossy black cloud that billowed behind her head. She'd never told anyone, but she'd kept her hair long because of a video she'd found in an archive. Almost all spacers of her era kept their hair short, but this image was from the early days of spaceflight. In the video, a female astronaut showed a collection of flutes she had taken with her to the primitive space station of the time, and played a song on one of the flutes. Jass had barely noticed the music, or the crude technology of the station; the only thing she saw was the mane of hair that blossomed from the head of the astronaut. The brunette mass floated free, following every motion of the astronaut, and Jass had never forgotten it. She would never leave her hair unbraided in front of any of the other crew members, but alone in the cabin for a moment, she couldn't resist. She shook her head and her hair bobbed with the motion.

Jass could see herself reflected in one of the thick panes of the window. Her face looked lined and tired, and she wondered if she'd looked this way before the launch. When life was simpler. She reached out and touched the window, which always held the chill of space no matter how warm the cabin might be. The stars never moved, but they were so bright, here away from the reflected light of any planet, that she always felt like she could reach out and touch them. Her reflection seemed to hover outside of the ship, floating in the blackness between the stars.

With a sigh, she turned away from the window and buckled herself into the captain's seat and began to check the console.