Heart of the Nebula (38 page)

They made love as desperately as if it were
their last time, not the first. And when they were finished and
James collapsed in exhaustion beside her, she realized that he was
weeping.

Chapter 19

“
So we’ve solved the fuel
problem?” James asked.

“
Yep,” said Sterling. “The
termination shock is a lot denser than we thought it would be. With
all the hydrogen we’re collecting now, we should have no problem
getting up to ramjet speeds.”

James leaned back in his chair on the ship’s
bridge, relieved to hear that they wouldn’t be stranded. Out the
porthole window, the starfield was nearly twice as cloudy as it had
been only a couple weeks ago. Here, where the solar winds of Zeta
Nabat met the magnificent plumes of the Good Hope nebula, a thick
band of compressed hydrogen gas extended like the wave of a giant
ship cutting through the starry sea. The excited hydrogen glowed
faintly enough to be transparent but bright enough to cast the
normally white stars in a distinctive orange hue. It was quite a
stunning sight, made all the more beautiful by Sterling’s
report.

“
What about life
support?”

“
Fully operational,”
Sterling answered. “We still need to make a few patches, but the
critical systems are all online.”

“
And the aquaponics
modules?”

“
They’re coming along
slower than expected, but they should start producing at a stable
rate in the next few months. Once the fabber’s up and running, we
should have plenty of food to feed the whole ship.”

James nodded. The fabber still needed a lot
of work, but with most of the population frozen in cryo, at least
the specter of a ship-wide famine no longer loomed over them. He
sighed and settled back in his chair, relaxing for what felt like
the first time in months.

“
So the crisis is
past.”

“
Yeah, but there’s still a
lot of work to do,” said Sterling, eyes glued to his holoscreen.
“Our waste processing systems are totally shot, but with some
modifications to the ship-wide plumbing system, we could reroute
the vats to the…”

James closed his eyes as Sterling droned on.
In some ways, it felt as if he were coming out of a bad dream. The
last few dayshifts had passed in a high-stress blur, everything
merging together in his mind. Now that they were coming out of
crisis mode, though, all that was coming to an end.

Which meant that it was time to say
goodbye.

“
Good work, Chief,” he said
after Sterling had finished with his report. “It sounds like you’ve
got a handle on things. I’m sure you’ll do good work while I’m
gone.”

Sterling’s eyes widened. “You mean you’re
going into cryo soon?”

“
Why not? My work here is
finished.”

“
But… but I
thought…”

James rose to his feet and put a hand on
Sterling’s shoulder. “I have every confidence in you, Chief Jones.
The quality of your work is excellent. Whatever problems you face
in turning this rickety old colony ship into a decent home, I’m
sure you’ll rise to them.”

With a tear in his eye, Sterling stood up
and gave him a salute. “Well, then, it’s been a privilege serving
with you, sir.”

The privilege has been
mine,
James thought silently, a lump rising
in his throat as he returned the salute.
The privilege has been mine.

* * * * *

Sara slept fitfully, tossing and turning
next to James on the lumpy mattress. In her dream, she walked alone
down the dimly lit corridors of the colony ship, dressed only in a
thin patient’s gown. The cold air blowing through the floor level
ventilators pricked her skin and made her shiver. Cryotanks lined
the hallway like glass coffins, and the bodies of the people inside
were bloated and pale, with frost growing across their skin like
some kind of eerie white mold. She looked again and realized that
they weren’t bodies, but skeletons—dead, brittle skeletons, waiting
to shatter the moment the cryotanks were opened. She opened her
mouth in horror, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t
scream.

The ghosts of the dead floated down the
hallway, heading for the starless void of the great beyond. She
recognized some of them: Alex, who had died on the shuttle; Lars,
who had chosen to stay behind; and the stowaway Kyla, along with
the other girls that they’d rescued. Their faces mingled with those
of the Nabattan pirates, all of whom had died because of the
super-intelligence Sara had released. They glared at her, making
her cringe. She wanted to close her eyes to shut it all out, but
her body refused to obey.

“
Why, Sara?” a voice
whispered from further down the hall. “Why?”

She turned and saw her father round the
bend, his ghostly face clouded with a look of supreme
disappointment. A terrible sinking feeling grew in her gut, pinning
her feet to the floor.

“
I-I had to,” she said, her
voice trembling. “I didn’t mean to kill them all.”

“
Why?” As he drifted
closer, the air became colder, chilling her to the bone. Her gown
dissipated, leaving her naked and shivering.

“
I didn’t mean to!” she
cried, collapsing to her feet. “Please, forgive me!”

But the ghosts would not stop glaring at
her. They surrounded her, pulling her toward the end of the curved
corridor—and the empty cryotank that waited there.

“
No!” she screamed,
struggling in vain to kick against the invisible hands that held
her. “Don’t take me! Don’t take me!”

“
Sara?”

James touched her on the shoulder, the
warmth of his touch dispelling the nightmare. She wrenched open her
eyes and found herself lying on the cold tile floor of the empty
bunkroom, the sweaty covers cast aside in a tangled mess. The
gentle stream of air blowing through the ventilation shaft in the
ceiling sent goosebumps across her skin. She shivered, and James
gently helped her back to the mattress, draping the musty blanket
over her shoulder.

“
Are you okay?” he
asked.

“
Yeah,” Sara lied, pulling
the blanket close to stop the shivering. “Just a bad
dream.”

“
Must have been pretty
bad.”

She nodded, but shook him off when he tried
to massage her. He hesitated for a moment, then rose to his feet
and slipped into his olive-green pants.

“
If you’re not feeling
well, we can put off going into cryo until you’re
ready.”

Sara cringed as she remembered the glares of
the ghosts in her dream. The way they’d pulled her to the open
cryotank, as if dragging her to her own coffin—just thinking about
it made her want to throw up.

“
Sara?”

What if the dream is a portent of some kind?
What if we never wake up?

“
How much time do we have
left?” she asked.

“
A few hours,” he said,
reflexively checking his wrist console that was no longer there. He
knelt down beside her and rubbed her arm. This time, she didn’t
shrug him off.

“
Everything’s going to be
fine,” he whispered reassuringly in her ear. “When we wake up,
we’ll be together in a beautiful new world. We’ll have our own
house, next to a clear river of water, and we’ll grow our food in
soil—not in aquaponics, but real, earthy soil. And every day, we’ll
take our hovercraft and go exploring. They’ll name mountains after
us, mountains and seas and islands, and we’ll come up with all new
constellations, because it’ll be just us, with no pirates or Hameji
or anything.”

“
And our kids?” she asked,
a lump rising in her throat.

James kissed her on the cheek, nuzzling up
tenderly beside her. “We’ll have as many as you want, and they’ll
all be beautiful and spirited like you.”

She smiled, but it was a fragile smile—a
hesitant smile. Though the memory of her dream was fading, the cold
sense of dread had not.

“
We each need to write a
letter,” she said impulsively. “A contingency letter, in case one
of us doesn’t make it.”

James frowned. “A letter? But Sara—”

“
When we left Karduna, I
was recording a final message for my mother. She never received it
because I couldn’t finish it in time. I’m not going to make that
mistake again.”

“
Sara,” he said, caressing
her shoulder. “This is different. We’re not saying goodbye—we’re
just going into cold sleep.”

“
But what if we don’t wake
up?”

“
We will,” he said with
unshaken confidence. “You’ll see. In just a little while, we’ll
both be together again and this will all feel like a bad
dream.”

“
Still, we should write
each other a contingency letter, just in case.”

He stared at her for a moment, then took a
deep breath and shrugged. “All right. If it makes you feel better.
But you know we’ll just laugh about it later, right?”

“
I hope so,” she said,
smiling halfheartedly. In her mind’s eye, though, all she could see
was a long line of cryotanks full of dead bones.

* * * * *

The farewell gathering for the last few
colonists to go into cryo was held on the mid-level observation
deck of the colony ship, a large recreation room that extended
around the entire doughnut-shaped deck. Kyla tried to avoid the
crowd, but with all one hundred and fifty of the ship’s waking
passengers crowding the place, it was hard to find any place where
she could be alone. Since most of the people were focused on each
other, she turned toward the window and the magnificent vista
beyond.

“
Beautiful, isn’t it?” Lars
asked, walking up next to her with his hands clasped comfortably
behind his back.

“
I guess.”

“
It’s strange,” he mused
aloud, speaking to himself as much as her. “Here we are, saying
goodbye to our friends, and I can’t tell who is leaving and who is
staying.”

She turned and gave him a puzzled look.
“What do you mean?”

“
Well,” said Lars, “from
their point of view, it’s a voyage across decades of time and
space, leaving us far behind. But from our perspective, we’re the
ones who are building a new society, leaving the others frozen in
cryosleep. What do you think?”

“
I don’t know,” she said
after thinking about it for a bit. “Does it really matter? A
goodbye is a goodbye, no matter who goes where.”

“
Are you going into
cryo?”

“
Me?” she asked, surprised
at the question. Jessica and Adam weren’t going under, so of course
she wasn’t either. But then she thought about it and realized that
her choice was kind of unusual. Almost all of the people her age
were going under, since they were the ones who were most likely to
survive the freezing and thawing process. For someone as young as
her to refuse was strange indeed.

“
No,” she answered. “I’m
staying awake.”

Lars raised an eyebrow. “So you’ll be
building a new society with the rest of us?”

“
I guess.”

“
I’m glad to hear it. What
you did back at the station was very noble. We need more people
like you.”

Kyla frowned and turned to face him, one
hand on her hip. “Why does everyone keep saying that? It’s as if
they think I sacrificed my life for the good of the whole ship or
something.”

“
But that’s exactly what
you did,” said Lars.

“
No, the people who died to
rescue us did that. I just volunteered to stay behind.”

“
But the things the
Nabattans would have done to you—”

“
It would have been
horrible, yes, but it’s not like they would have killed us,” Kyla
answered. “Raped us? Yes. Sold us into slavery? Yes. But honestly,
that’s how I’d been living ever since the Hameji took over.
Besides, it’s not like I have a family.”

“
You have Jessica and Adam.
They care about you very much.”

“
Yeah, but what about those
other girls? They had real families, and they didn’t know how to
survive like I do. So if someone had to go with the Nabattans, it
was me.”

To her surprise, Lars’s admiration for her
only seemed to grow. From the starry-eyed way he regarded her, it
was almost as if she were suddenly one of his heroes.

“
That’s exactly what I
mean,” he said. “You thought about others before you thought about
yourself. You put the needs of the many ahead of your
own.”

Kyla shrugged. “I suppose. I mean, after you
and James gave me a second chance, it was all I could do.”

Lar’s face fell ever so slightly. “I see.
Well, I’m glad to hear that you’re staying with us.”

“
What is it?” Kyla
asked.

“
What?”

“
The way your face fell
just now—what’s wrong?”

“
Nothing,” Lars said
quickly. “What makes you think something is wrong?”

“
It’s James, isn’t it? Your
face fell when I mentioned James.”

Lars sighed and turned away from her. “It’s
fine. James and I—well, we have our differences, but it’s nothing
to be concerned about.”

“
Have you said goodbye to
him yet?”

“
No,” Lars
admitted.

“
Why not?”

He folded his arms and stared out at the
nebulous starfield in silence for several moments. When he spoke,
his voice was low and tinged with regret.