A Just Determination (9 page)

One month out of Franklin Station, weeks away from routes frequented by humans (though
frequented
often meant little in the vast spaces of the solar system) the
Michaelson
proceeded on a patrol marked so far by isolation and emptiness. Paul glanced at the time as Tweed worked at the casual pace of someone who knew they had hours of boredom yet to endure. The midwatch had started at midnight, ship's time, even though Paul had actually been on the bridge a half-hour earlier for turn-over with the officer he was relieving on watch. It would run until four in the morning, or 0400 on the twenty-four hour military clocks. Paul's thoughts idly wandered back to the days when he'd called that time 4 A.M., back before the Academy had rearranged the way he thought about time and a lot of other things. Back then, the eerie quiet of a world where almost everyone and everything else was asleep had been foreign to him. Now, the low lighting, the hushed silence aboard the
Michaelson
and the cold-beyond-cold outside the ship's hull combined to leave him chilled and subdued.

Tweed leaned back again. From the speaker near her position, odd sounds began issuing. Something like whale song, veering wordlessly up and down the scale, snatches of almost-words growing to near-audibility then fading away, bursts of random static that somehow seemed to formed patterns just beyond his grasp, and beneath it all a low hiss of background noise.

Paul shivered again. "What
is
that?"

"Space ghosts." Tweed's lips quirked in a smile that was only half-humorous. "That's what they're called, anyway. You lower the noise filters for your radio receiver and expand the frequency reception band. Then you hear them."

A long, low moan whispered across the circuit. "Jeez. That's weird. I guess it's actually really weak signals, Earth-origin and like that, too weak and distorted to be understood? And background radiation and stuff like that?"

"Technically, yeah. A physicist can give you a full run-down of the likely origin of every sound you hear. But . . . if you listen to it, out here, you hear other stuff. Stuff that doesn't seem to fit technical models." A sound like a whisper, seemingly just a fraction too quiet to be understood, echoed softly, then vanished into a series of static bursts that almost sounded like Morse code, but weren't. "That's why they're nicknamed space ghosts. If you listen long enough, you start to hear things. Long lost ships calling for help, maybe. Aliens sending messages, maybe threats or maybe greetings. Other stuff." Jan Tweed half smiled again. "I served with a warrant officer once who swore that one night he heard his name called, clear as a bell, by an old shipmate. A shipmate who'd been dead several years."

Paul fought down another shiver. "He was probably just messing with you. You know warrants. They love to play games with the minds of junior officers."

"Maybe."

"Mr. Sinclair?" Paul turned as his name was called. Petty Officer Juniro, the quartermaster of the watch, was nodding solemnly. Usually, the quartermaster and the bosun mate of the Watch sat in the rear of the bridge, conversing among themselves in a social world separate from that of the officers until professional duties required communication. "Sir, there's stuff out here that doesn't belong in any technical manual. That's a fact, sir." The bosun nodded as well, her face somber. "You heard of the Titan Expedition, right?"

"The Titan Expedition? Which one?"

"The second, sir. Where they lost those people?"

"Oh, yeah. An ice quake, wasn't it?" He glanced at Tweed for confirmation. "They'd landed on what they thought was a stable section of the ice sheet covering that moon of Saturn, but then the sheet started breaking apart and throwing out plates of ice that could have sliced through the ship, so the lander had to do an emergency lift off to avoid being destroyed. Several members of the exploration team didn't make it back in time."

"Right, sir. And then the fourth expedition."

"The fourth? That had two landers, if I remember right. That's about all I know of that one."

Juniro nodded, his eyes intent. "Right, sir," he repeated. "The third expedition, that one went somewhere else on Titan, but the fourth came back to near where the second one had landed. And it had two landers. Well, they hadn't been down long, the first ship's night in fact, when the watch standers on the first lander spotted some people moving on the surface." Paul raised his eyebrows to indicate interest as Juniro continued. "They was surprised, you see, 'cause there wasn't supposed to be anybody out exploring just then. But they spotted these suits moving. After they saw the first couple of them they tracked back and spotted the others coming up out of a cleft in the ice. Then they watched 'em, six of 'em, walk up to the second lander and walk up the access ladder and into the airlock."

Paul glanced at Tweed, then back at the quartermaster. "So?"

"So, like I said, sir, there wasn't supposed to be anybody on the surface just then. The watch notified the expedition commander and he called the second lander and demanded to know who the hell had sent a party out. And the second lander says 'Nobody.' They said they hadn't sent anyone onto the surface. So then the commander asks 'em who just came aboard the lander and they said 'Nobody.' And sure enough, the auto-logs for the second lander didn't show anybody coming in through the airlock. But the three watch standers on the first lander, three of 'em, sir, all swore they'd seen six suits walk to that lander and climb aboard."

Juniro paused, looking from Paul to Lieutenant Tweed to the bosun. "That's when they remembered the second lander had been the same lander used in the Second Expedition. The one that left those crew members behind, sir." Juniro paused again. "And there'd been six of 'em, sir. Six crew left behind to be swallowed by the ice. Well, the instruments all said nothing had happened, but the watch standers on the first lander, they knew what they'd seen. Those six crew members, they'd finally made it back to their lander."

Silence stretched, before Paul became aware he was holding his breath and inhaled deeply. He glanced at Tweed, who was frowning at the deck, then at the two enlisted. The quartermaster and the bosun nodded at each other, apparently sharing in a knowledge born not of physics but of years riding the deck plates, no trace of covert mirth on their faces. A long, undulating rhythm of static rolled out of Tweed's speaker, ending in a brief shriek which seemed to choke off abruptly. Outside, the stars glittered coldly.

* * *

Carl Meadows chuckled softly. "Juniro's a bull artist, Paul. He can spin a great sea-story, but don't buy any bridges from him."

"So that stuff about the fourth Titan expedition isn't true?"

Carl shrugged. "I've no idea. Could be."

"The logs from the expedition—"

"Wouldn't prove anything. If the incident wasn't there, you could argue the commander ordered them not to log it, or that the logs had been censored afterwards."

Paul frowned. "I thought logs couldn't be altered once they were recorded."

"Oh, hell, Paul. Maybe
I
ought to try to sell you a bridge. Of course they can alter logs. They're just electronic data. I don't care what safeguards officially exist, I'll guarantee you there's ways to get around them. Stuff happens that no one wants to be in logs, right? So you change history a little. Click, click, click. Never happened. All is right with the world."

Paul laughed. "Okay. So I'm naïve. I'm an ensign."

"You've been one for a few months, now." Meadows grinned. "You've got to start learning sometime."

"Yes, sir, Lieutenant Junior Grade Meadows, sir. So what do you, personally, think? Is that Titan stuff just a ghost story?"

Meadows pursed his lips, then shrugged again. "Hell if I know. Sometimes that stuff is easy to believe. Other times it sounds like nonsense. On the bridge, on the mid-watch, in the middle of nowhere, it plays real. But tell it in a bar on Franklin Station and you'd probably find yourself laughed out of Earth orbit."

"Then you're an agnostic on space ghosts?"

Carl grinned again. "Human spirits can seem a long ways away out here, but it's too damn cold and empty to be comfortable with atheism. Call me a space ghost pragmatist."

"Aye, aye, sir."

"Hey, Sinclair!" Paul winced slightly as Ensign Sam Yarrow stuck his head in the stateroom. Turning, he saw Yarrow standing in the hatch to the ensign locker and smiling at him with apparent commiseration. "I just wanted to give you a heads-up. Commander Garcia was checking how his junior officers were doing on their Open Space Warfare Officer qualifications." Paul barely kept from wincing again. With everything else demanding his time, he hadn't even looked at his OSWO qualification requirements in over a week. "He wasn't too happy. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news."

Yeah, I bet. I also bet you were the one who got him thinking he should check on my OSWO quals, after you'd gotten a bunch of your own OSWO stuff signed off
. Outwardly, Paul just nodded. "Thanks."

"No problem. Just—"

"Coming through. Make way," Kris Denaldo barked, elbowing Yarrow to one side. Ignoring Yarrow's glower, she focused on Meadows. "Carl. You promised to check off some of my OSWO qualifications. I've got maybe half an hour before all hell breaks loose again. You free?"

"Free enough." Carl gestured to Paul. "And, by sheer coincidence, Paul here is also ready to get some of his OSWO stuff signed off. Right?"

"Uh . . ."

"Right. Come on." Meadows and Sinclair crowded out past Yarrow, then Denaldo flattened herself against the bulkhead to let Meadows take the lead as he headed for the compartments near the outer hull.

Paul steamed silently until Kris tapped his shoulder. "What's up?"

"Oh, our supportive bull ensign just screwed me again. I suppose he's screwed you plenty of times, too."

"He'd like to." She laughed as Paul reacted to the double-meaning. "Not that he has a hamster's chance in hard vacuum of getting his wish. But as for the sort of screwing you're talking about, don't let it get to you. Life's too short. Days are too short."

"How do you keep going, Kris? Every time I see you, you're in motion."

"My mind's always five minutes behind the rest of me. By the time I realize I'm exhausted, I'm already past that point and doing something else."

Carl Meadows stopped at an access hatch leading toward the outer hull, keying the monitor next to it. "Lieutenant Meadows, Ensign Denaldo and Ensign Sinclair accessing maintenance trunk B-205-E."

An engineering watch stander responded, his voice tinged with boredom at the routine. "Purpose of access, sir?"

"Officer qualification review."

"Anticipated duration?"

"Fifteen minutes."

"Permission granted to access maintenance trunk B-205-E, Lieutenant Meadows. Notify the Damage Control watch upon exiting the space."

"Affirmative." Carl cracked the hatch, its squarish dimensions betraying the constricted nature of the maintenance trunk it guarded, then waved Kris Denaldo through. "Ladies first. Paul, you follow me." Paul fought down a tinge of claustrophobia as he watched the other two swing inside a tunnel-like access trunk with sides measuring only about a meter wide. As if sensing Paul's misgivings, or perhaps remembering his own experiences, Carl grinned back at Paul as he swung in. "We're lucky, you know. If they didn't have to make these things wide enough for someone in a full protective suit to squeeze through they'd be a lot narrower."

"Lucky us." Paul followed cautiously as the small party moved several meters along the trunk before Carl called a halt.

"Okay." Carl Meadows pointed to the outer surface of the trunk they were in. A pattern was visible there, of hexagons joined at every side and repeating as far as could be seen. "Ensign Denaldo, what are we looking at?"

"The water-blanket."

"That's its nickname. The official nomenclature is . . . ?"

"Sorry. That's the Ship's Inner Hull Thermal Absorption Barrier System. Mark Four."

"Mod?"

Denaldo twisted to look back at Carl, her expression exasperated. "Why do I need to know the mod? This is a, uh, Mod Two. But that doesn't matter, because the only difference between the different models is superficial."

"Who told you that?"

"Jen."

Carl nodded. "Jen's right, but you're wrong. Why do have to know the mod number? Because your qualification standards say you have to know the mod number. And that means when you go up for a screening board they'll ask you the mod number."

"So I have to know it not because it's important but because I'm going to be asked anyway?"

"Exactly. Sometimes it is important to know the mod number, so they make you know it all the time. Okay, here we have a Mark Four Mod Two Ship's Inner Hull Thermal Absorption Barrier System. What's it do?"

"What it says." Kris waved her hand at the hexagonal honeycomb. "Every one of those hexagons outlines a cell filled with water and interconnected to every hexagon next to it. That water barrier forms the inner hull of the ship, and absorbs all the heat generated by the crew and equipment."

"What else does it absorb? Paul?"

Paul swallowed, thinking through his answer before replying. "It also absorbs any incoming heat or radiation striking the outer hull. That protects the crew from radiation, and our reflected heat signature is reduced to a minimum, making the ship harder for anyone to spot against the background of space."

"Right. Why do we use water for that?"

"Because water is the best heat sink in the known universe?"

Carl nodded. "Right again. It also stops radiation pretty darn good, and using it as a barrier gives us a place to store water we need for the ship and crew anyway. But what happens to the heat this stuff absorbs? Kris?"

"It gets circulated by pumps, with higher temperature water cycled toward the main machinery room. Once it gets hot enough there, they run it through a low pressure tube—"

"Which is actually named?"

"A Venturi tube. Increases velocity and reduces pressure. The hot water flashes to steam, and the steam gets shunted to counter-rotating turbines which supply some of our electrical power. We convert our own waste heat into another source of energy we can use."