Home Planet: Awakening (Part 1) (2 page)

I peered inside the stasis pod and immediately found the source of the struggle rearing toward me, her face contorted and flush. Her entire body convulsed. Although she gave no scream through her gritted teeth, the terror in her eyes said it all as the slight form of Kate Alves writhed and bucked against her restraints. I need to act and fast. I dove down to the left-hand side of the capsule and found what I was looking for—the external canopy release. Ripping off the cover, I pulled hard, but the handle didn’t move. After anchoring my bare feet on the grating, I jerked at the handle with both hands—still a no-go, not even a little. I looked around for something to smash the canopy with, but saw nothing, so I pulled myself astride the curved canopy and did the next best thing. As the thumping noises continued, I surpassed them with a series of devastating blows with my fists. The first one fractured the lid. The second bounced off. The third widened the crack and the fourth made a fist hole wide enough for one hand.

“It’s okay, Kate. I’m getting you out. Hang in there!”

This wasn’t going to work, so I reached inside ignoring her now twitching body. I lay down and inserted my arm to the shoulder, straining to reach the internal release. The handle cover had gone and I made one last push, willing my fingers to get within grasping range of the handle. Barely clasping it with my middle and index finger, I pulled and the retaining bolts retracted. I quickly slid out my arm and glided to the base of the pod as the canopy opened up to reveal the now still Kate Alves.

I pulled myself beside her. Her eyes were now closed, her body still except for the merest twitching in her torso.

I felt for her pulse and said, “Kate! Kate! This is Dan Luker. Can you hear me? I’m with you now. I’m going to try to help you. Hang in there.”

There was an almost imperceptible pulse and no breathing, but I started CPR anyway, trying desperately to save her. I peeled back her eyelids—the pupils were dilated and lifeless. I knelt over her, straddling her body giving the kiss of life and compressing her chest. Her long dark hair and tan skin were wet with preservation fluid. I connected once more with her soft, cold lips injecting much-needed air. As I continued my work, I thought back to when I’d met her.

Sitting beside me in the pre-stasis briefing, she introduced herself with a warm smile in her eyes, her voice soft and somewhere between her native Portugal and her adopted Boston. I liked her immediately. Kate Alves told of her love of her job as a primary school teacher. She loved the beauty of children’s minds and their perspective on the world. Although childless, I imagined she’d make a wonderful mother and wife when the time was right. I’d asked her why she’d signed up for the mission and she told me she was still asking herself the same thing but put it down to wanderlust and the desire to help shape an entirely new generation of kids into something more than they could be on Earth. Noble aims from someone I viewed a fundamentally good young woman. Too young to be in the state she was in right now.

I checked once more for her pulse—now there was nothing. I wouldn’t tire or give up on her.

“Come on, Kate … Breathe, damn it!”

There was still no sign of anyone else.

“Help! We have a medical emergency—is anyone there?” I called.

No reply.

I rose once more and continued compressions. Even with her pale pallor in the eerie half-light, she was a beautiful woman. Her eyes stared into the distance, glassy and still. I gently closed them on my next mouth-to-mouth. I wouldn’t let her slip away. I couldn’t. But as one minute turned into five minutes then became fifteen, it seemed I’d failed her.

Continuing frantically for another five, I ignored the aching in my shoulders. Tears welled in my eyes.

I stopped compressions and looked down at the departed Kate Alves. Twenty-seven years old. Too young to die and I didn’t even know why.

I bent down and stroke her cheek, kissing her forehead.

“I’m sorry, Kate. I tried.”

She died a long way from home, but she didn’t die alone. Small comfort in her final minutes, but now she’d found peace. I hoped there was a place called heaven for Kate Alves.

After easing myself from the stasis pod, I closed the canopy then sat down, wedged between my pod and Kates for a while, feeling sad and numb. For over a century, we’d slept six feet apart and this was what it had come to.

With my muscles cooling from their exertions, once again I felt the chill creeping back into me and remembered the other light at the bottom of my other neighbor’s pod. I hoped in my melancholy that I hadn’t left that one too late as well. I stood up and glided to the foot of the pod in zero-g.

The status light was still solid red. There were no sounds of struggle from this pod. Once again, I quickly cleaned the plaque near the status light to remind myself of who the guy was.

Evert J.A. Rietmuller

DOB 04-Jan-2025

The Netherlands

Colonist JA-01014

Yes, that was his name: Evert. A tall, skinny Dutch guy with floppy blond hair and glasses who looked young for his forty-five years. I seemed to remember he was a research engineer of some sort from his former life. Serious, nerdy guy—quiet, civilized, courteous. I didn’t know him well; just that he planned to do some experiments once we got to the planet. Unlike Kate, Evert was married with kids. They had remained back on Earth. When he’d told me this, I wondered what the hell would possess a guy to leave his wife and kids with the knowledge he’d never see them again. I knew it took all sorts, and we all had friends and family, but to me, leaving a wife and kids was something else. If things had turned out differently for me, there’s no way I’d have done the same.

I slid up until my face was a foot above the canopy and then paused for a moment, floating and looking down at the dirty stasis pod. Pushing past my hesitation, I wiped away the century and a bit of grime. It took a second for my eyes to adjust to the dim interior and a second more for my brain to what I was looking at.

“Whoa!” I cried, reflexively pushing myself away until I gently impacted the grating of the level above.

“What the hell
happened
to you, Evert?” I murmured.

Clearly dead, his eyes were gone, leaving only dark pits beneath his round plastic frames; the fleshy part of his nose had decomposed leaving just skin and bone. His face looked gaunt and mummified. I’d seen plenty of corpses before in my former life, but not many decomposed ones like this. Not a pretty sight. I looked away, aghast. Less than a perceived hour ago, I’d been speaking to the poor guy.

Whatever befell Evert Rietmuller might give a clue to what was happening on the not-so-good ship
Juno
. With only emergency power coursing through the pod’s circuits, I once again went for the emergency release. And once again, it was ceased solid. Sighing at my sore fists that had pummeled the last canopy, I decided to go looking for a less nerve-bundled battering ram. I had another look around, keen to keep myself anchored in the weightless environment. Like before, there was nothing. I gently propelled myself away from the pod, gliding silently and effortlessly through the chill, dim air. I passed half a dozen more stasis pods, each within arm’s distance should I have needed to stop—after all, there was no other way in zero-g. No way available to me, anyway. I passed over the metallic grating of Level 8 and below its counterpart forming the ceiling and the floor of Level 9. A few more pods ahead stood a pair of sturdy-looking vertical I-beams—one either side of the walkway nestled between the nearest pods. Using friction, I brushed the dirty canopies of five pods, turning my head as I passed the girder, slowing myself to a halt at the sixth pod. I’d seen what I needed. After reorienting myself toward the rear side of the structural column, no more than five feet away, I flew toward the fire ax affixed to it.
Why didn’t I think of this before?
I asked myself; although I doubted it would’ve saved Kate Alves. Whatever had taken her young life was beyond the skills of a first aider with no medical equipment.

With hands outstretched like Superman, I cushioned my approach and hung on with my left arm while releasing the ax with my right.

Retracing my steps, I arrived back at the stasis pod of Evert Rietmuller. As the first ax blow bit into the plexiglass, I wondered what the other pods contained. Were the red status lights of Evert and Kate the harbingers of their demise? All the other lights I’d seen showed no illumination at all apart from my own, which was green. What this all meant, I didn’t yet know, so I tore into Evert’s canopy glad of the warmth of exertion. I wasn’t so glad of the rancid smell of death that came wafting from the breach. I continued breathing only through my mouth, a technique I’d used many times before in a former life.

I wedged the ax handle into the gap under the pod to keep it from floating away and then pulled the internal canopy release.

The corpse of Evert Rietmuller lay there in its restraints, the stasis suit loose fitting around his skeletal limbs. Unlike Kate Alves, he was dry all over, his blond hair swaying slightly under the direction of some unseen airflow. The fact that skin still covered his bones meant that he’d died relatively recently—relative to the twelve decades we must’ve been traveling for. There’d been moisture—preservation fluid at least—inside the pod meaning his state was more a case of recent death than long-term mummification. I bent down and felt beneath his back. It was still damp—a disconcerting mix of preservation fluid and God-knows-what from his body. I made a mental note to wash my hands at the earliest opportunity. Surveying the body both front and back of the corpse for causes of death, I could see no clues. I removed the stasis suit—a task well worth avoiding—in search of the same, but still found nothing. Redressing Evert for dignity’s sake, I closed the stasis pod and floated above what had become the modest, intelligent man’s casket. I still didn’t understand why he’d left a wife and kids back on Earth—he must have had his reasons—but I doubted they were still alive after so long. Yet again, my only consoling thought was that he might see his loved ones in whatever place he believed was waiting for them.

Bowing my head, I said, “Rest in peace, Evert Rietmuller.”

Keen to start breathing through my nose again, I retrieved the ax and glided away from Evert and Kate and back to the ax’s former home. As I held onto the cold steel column, I listened once again. Still nothing. It could have been like this for a hundred days or a hundred years, there was no way to know.

I spent the next ten minutes going from pod to pod, cleaning an aperture, and then looking inside. The first was a young man I didn’t recognize. The second a young woman, perhaps just a teenager. Both were just like Evert Rietmuller—very decomposed and very dead. Their youth saddened me more than I otherwise would have been. It made me change my strategy too. From then on, I’d first wipe the info plaques clear before checking inside. This was for one simple reason. Although I wasn’t squeamish—I couldn’t afford to be in my former job—there were some things I never wanted to see again. The corpse of a child was near the top of that list. A dozen stasis pods and a dozen dead later, the plaque read:

Charlotte Ross

DOB 21-Jun-2065

United Kingdom

Colonist JA-01028

I closed my eyes, frowning deeply, my mouth downturned as I realized she was just five years old. I shook my head at the lunacy of it all.
Why do we humans try to be so damn clever all the time?
In the case of the
Juno Ark
, I knew of course. Many of the reasons for the voyage were the same as for my ancestors that arrived on the shores of America three hundred years before. None of this lifted my heart, though.

I was done with seeing the dead. They’d yielded no clues as to the cause. But there was one person I needed to find. My only real friend on board: Mike Lawrence. I needed to know if my own Level 8 was the exception or the rule.

I took a moment to visualize the module’s layout. There were between one and thirteen aisles on each of the twenty levels holding 12,521 people and 12,800 pods—a little over two percent spare capacity. The engineers must’ve been pretty confident in their technology to have so few spares. From the mounting body count, it seemed they shouldn’t have been. At opposing ends of each level’s central aisle were steel-grate stairways up to the next level and down to the one below; it was the same on every level. The hull got narrower toward Level 1 at the bottom and Level 20 at the top—so there were fewer aisles on each level. By time one reached the top or bottom, there was just one aisle on each. It was a natural consequence of the stasis module’s cylindrical shape. Overall, the double-skinned module measured three hundred feet in diameter and the same in length. The population of a small town was crammed into the something the length of a football field, although many times the area. The aisles ran in the direction of the
Juno’s
axis with. Access to the adjacent modules—Modules 4 and 6—was via link tunnels on Levels 1 and 20. One of my more useful virtues was my good memory. Not quite photographic, but nearly. Mike Lawrence was just one level above me on Level 9. If recall hadn’t failed me, then he was on aisle five, stasis pod fifteen.

The gloomy, cold place still showed no evidence of life. I listened intently but still had only the sounds of the
Juno Ark
to keep me company. Before set off, I tried shouting one more time.