Waiting (2 page)

Lee said,
'Caution is not an unattractive characteristic in a captain in my
opinion. It has a tendency to keep us all alive. Don't knock it,
Sam.'

'I'll go easy
on him. You go shower and pack enough for a few days. We take off
at midnight. That gives you a little under two hours. Meet me in
the hanger.'

'All my gear on
board?'

'Yours. Some of
mine. More than enough. Go. Midnight.'

'Gotcha.'

They split up,
Lee off to her room, Clifton to the shuttle bay.

Chapter 3

'She'll never
make it on time.'

Clifton slapped
Jacobs on his bony shoulder. 'Relax, Jay Jay. Cut her some slack.
She's our principal biologist, but she's still a woman. I told her
to pack for a week. That probably means a month in her mind.'

'Great. Like we
have an abundance of room on this little bird.'

Clifton sighed.
'There's a heap of room. Enough for four crew and there's just the
three of us going. Are you intending to be this jittery the whole
trip?'

'That depends
on what we discover on that rock. I fear the worse.'

'Of course you
do, Jay Jay. It's what you do best. Fear the worse.'

Jacobs glared
icily at his chief engineer. 'It wasn't my choice being captain,
Sam. Anytime you want the job, go for it.'

'Not that
again, Jay Jay. I'm just the wrench monkey. You're the creative
genius of the whole shibang. Not one of us gets the entire big
picture the way you do. Even Joe Friar would make a poor substitute
for the real thing and his I Q is off the charts.'

Jacobs forced a
wry smile. 'Brilliant but still young.'

He glanced at
one of the cameras knowing Senior Technical Officer Joe Friar and
the shuttle bay team were hard at work preparing for the shuttle
take off with Friar trying hard to exude confidence as he
instructed the others. They were all well trained and highly
competent so needed little instruction. Jacobs was Friar's god and
he had a natural, barely concealed nervousness about him, knowing
that should anything happen to Jay Jay, he would be the one to
assume command. That was a responsibility he wasn't ready for.

'Seventeen
minutes and thirty seconds till launch, Captain.'

'Indeed, Doctor
Friar. Perhaps we should deploy someone with a bucket of ice water
to hurry Doctor Lee along.'

'No need,
Captain. I'm here.'

Jacobs and
Clifton looked at the biologist weighed down with a dozen large
bags, then at each other.

'A good job we
only have a change of underwear with us,' said Clifton.

Friar said,
'The shuttle will auto-recalibrate for weight once everything is on
board. But the flight path has been calculated from midnight. I
suggest you all get on board or I might just let it take off
without you.'

Jacobs, Clifton
and Lee climbed through the main hatch, secured the luggage,
strapped themselves in and the black visors of their helmets
blocked out their faces. The shuttle calculated all other
pre-programmed factors for the flight and compensated for the
weight. The weight could fluctuate all over the place during the
trip, but it was calculated to within point one of one ounce for
the first seconds of take-off. Get that part right, everything else
falls into place.

'Ready?' said
Friar.

'No, but we'll
go anyway,' said Jacobs.

Take off and
the trip was completely controlled from the ship until the shuttle
reached the outer atmosphere of the planet and then Clifton would
take over.

'From ten,'
said Friar. 'Nine, eight, seven...Good luck, six...' The shuttle
bay door opened like a precision built flower as the craft blasted
through it with less than one inch clearance, the petals closing
behind them.

'Pressure ok,'
said Clifton. 'Velocity ok. Plasma exhaust initial
temperature...hot. Very. Oxygen...Ok. Helmets can be removed.'

The three
removed their helmets and secured them.

'I spy with my
little eye...' said Lee.

'Don't start
already, Anne,' said Jacobs. 'There are still a few long days in a
small can and we need to make the trip as tolerable as
possible.'

'Sorry, Jay
Jay. But hey. I am missing out on my sleep, thanks to being so
rudely interrupted. I'll go bunk up.'

'Good
idea.'

Lee couldn't
resist rubbing her captain's head of thinning long grey hair as she
wriggled past him and out of the flight-deck to the sleeping
bunks.

'She's got the
right idea, Jay Jay. Will you at least
try
to relax?
Nothing to do but let the
computers do their job.'

'They're a
good crew, Sam.'

Clifton knew
Jacobs was was just thinking aloud; expressing his opinion of those
left on the ship, assuring himself of their capability, all with
the hopes of the human race their combined responsibility,

'They're the
best of the best, Jay Jay. Hand picked by you.'

Jacobs
unstrapped from his seat and floated to the still open hatch to the
sleeping bunks. 'Yes. Quite right, Sam. One thing I don't have to
worry about is the ship.'

'Oh, but you
will anyway. Take something to relax will, you? Enough to take the
edge off at least.'

'I'll have to
check the ship's log to see when you turned into my mother.'

Clifton said,
'And neither of us would be brave enough to argue with her, God
rest her soul. I'll keep an eye on things in here for an hour or
so. Go. Goodnight.'

'Goodnight.'

Chapter 4

Melissa
Torville, a science officer and incubation supervisor, also had
trouble relaxing. Naturally a light sleeper requiring only five
hours of sleep each night, her body clock had a life of its own.
Her technicians knew that when she was out of her shift pod, she
could appear in the incubation chambers section at any time. Sandy
Beech had a friendly and professional relationship with Torville
but was always relieved to be found busy when her commanding
officer suddenly appeared. Torville smiled at Beech, glancing
between the technician and the nearest individual incubation
chamber.

'All
good?'

Beech made a
show of tapping in figures into the rec-pad with a flourish. 'All
good, Mel.' There was little formality on the ship when it came to
names, rank and gender. 'I was about to eat. Care to keep me
company?'

'When food
seems to only be in brown, grey or green it does little to
stimulate my appetite. Oh, what the hell. Ok.'

Beech saved
her work and turned off the rec-pad and hung it on the charger on
the wall. 'You'll break Slim's heart if he hears you knocking the
food.'

'For a man who
has fallen in love with every available female on the ship, he's
used to having his heart broken.'

Beech giggled.
'You have to admire his determination. He's really quite sweet when
you get to know him.'

'You think? Why do you think
I'm
on another pod shift to his?'

The ship's one
half gravity made getting around effortless. Passing other crew
members doing their numerous and various duties, they found only
three others in the "diner". To be sociable, Beech and Torville
selected from the assorted slop containers as they were generally
referred to, Torville pulling faces as she put three small heaps,
one brown, two yellow, onto a tray before joining the others.

'Note to Slim.
Just because it's yellow, does not make it taste like banana.'

Dale Polowski,
Goliath's propulsion supervisor, said, 'Banana? I thought this
flavour was supposed to be pineapple.'

Torville poked
the brown lump. 'I just hope this tastes nothing like what it looks
like.'

Steph Fowler,
mechanical engineer, had managed to liberally stain her suit and
some of the smears were at least days old. Fowler really didn't
give a damn even when people like Torville suggested she'd had a
taste-bud by-pass to consume such large amounts of food. The food
stains covered up most of the indelible grease and oil stains. Her
suit, it had been remarked, had a D N A of its own and was widely
believed to be able to walk by itself unaided. It was so much a
part of the urban myth of the ship that Fowler didn't deny the
possibility. The conversation, naturally, turned to the mission Jay
Jay, Clifton and Lee had embarked upon. It was what Beech came out
with which had the others rolling their eyes in feigned
derision.

'I do
understand basic deep space propulsion, I really do. But...'

'Sandy,' said
Polowski, anticipating Beech's train of thought. 'Yes. We could
start the plasma drives of the ship and increase our velocity and
have no need for the shuttle to go off without us, and yes, the
velocity reached would be sustained after we cut off the drives
again, until we hit the brakes. But that is not the point.'

'Which
is...?'

Fowler licked
her fingers and then wiped them on a relatively clean part of her
suit. 'Timing. We get there when are meant to get there. At about
the time the terraforming is close to completion.' She shrugged to
emphasise her statement. 'Not much point in being earlier than need
be, when we just use the achieved velocity of the ship without the
need to use the drives to arrive when all the hard work has been
done for us.'

'And,' added
Polowski, 'The shuttle is just as capable of
atmospheric entry and landing, should the need arise, with minimal
risk to human life and equipment rather than risking this
ship.'

'You mean the
cheaper option,' said Beech.'

'Of course,'
said Torville. 'Expedient and efficient. No other way. Jay Jay
knows that.'

'Still risky,'
said Beech. 'Surely we shouldn't have risked the captain?'

Polowski said,
'It was his idea. We all know something is very wrong. He wants to
see for himself. If the terraformers have failed, he'll have to
come up with an alternative plan.'

Beech was one
of the youngest on the mission at twenty seven. She had grown up on
the ship. All the talk of the mission being a failure made her
nervous.

'There is no
alternative. None I ever heard of. Spero is the only closest planet
even realistically reachable and capable of sustaining life...'

'Terraforming
not withstanding,' said Torville.

'Well, yes,'
said Beech. 'We all get that much. But if the war has killed Earth
so they have lost control of the terraformers, we have nowhere to
go.'

Torville tried
to reassure the young woman and squeezed her arm. 'We cross bridges
one at a time, Sandy. Dreaming up unpalatable scenarios we can't as
yet substantiate is a pointless, even dangerous preoccupation. We
have gotten this far, carrying the human life we need to continue
our species, so I'm inclined to believe it is meant to be. But this
is space. Careful planning is one thing. Out here, it will and
often doesn't always go the way we want. That's when we really have
to earn our pay and come up with something else.'

'Sorry, I
just...'

'Hey. We all
get a little scared. Have you finished your work duties?'

'Almost. I'll
get back to it.'

There came a
deep and meaningful silence as Beech gathered up her tray and
cutlery and returned them to the zapper where they were
scrupulously cleaned, the dry, grey residue falling into the
collection bins below. She didn't look back at the others as she
left the diner to return to he duties.

'We need to
keep a lid on this. Kids like Sandy could easily become frightened
with all the speculation. It's up to us to keep them calm,
regardless of what we really think.'

'Yeah,' agreed
Polowski. 'We can but try.'

Chapter 5

Joe Friar was
satisfied with the progress of the shuttle. He was responsible for
its flight up until the small ship reached the outer atmosphere of
the planet, when the crew would assume control. Friar had a
temporary team of twenty monitoring the ships status and every
aspect of the crews well-being. All was good.

'Jay Jay's
looking good for his age,' he thought out-loud.

Doctor Valerie
Cormack wasn't surprised. 'Naturally. We are all so damn healthy,
I'm practically redundant.'

Friar looked up
into her vivid green eyes and grinned. 'I could stub my toe or
something if you're desperate for something to do.'

'I'm not
desperate enough to want to examine your feet. Don't worry. When we
start populating the planet, me and my team will be flat out.'

Mel Torville
agreed with that. 'Over two thousand babies will keep us busy.
After all these years of waiting to initiate growth, things are
about to get crazy.'

'If we've a
planet ready to populate,' said Dale Polowski. 'We know for certain
that something hasn't gone according to plan.'

Friar gave
Polowski a frosty stare as he said, 'You take pessimism to a whole
new level.'

'Pragmatism is
often mistaken for pessimism,' countered Polowski. 'Earth had total
control of the terraforming and we lost contact with Earth nearly
two months ago. There was a full-scale war going on down there,
remember?'

'Durr, yes,'
said Friar. 'Which is why Jay Jay is on his way to take a look for
himself. The atmospheric conditions have all but made it impossible
for us to see anything useful from here.'

'Which means,'
said Polowski, 'They'll have no more chance of investigating than
we do ourselves, unless they go down to take a closer look.'

Doctor Cormack
was horrified at the prospect. 'Captain Jacobs would never be so
reckless.'

'I don't see
that he has any alternative,' said Friar. 'Jay Jay is a cautious
man by nature, but he has overall responsibility of the mission. My
guess is he'll not waver at taking the shuttle for at least a
couple of sub-atmospheric orbits possibly even a landing.'