Chapter 51 Day 132 On the Edge
'I need three mumble-garble more bloody meters of mumble-garble power line...' growled Riv, loud in the speaker of my armored space suit.
Riv was working with Min in the main rocket nozzle, setting up the plasma cutter to finish the job of cutting free the bell's after section, which explained the garbled passages of his request.
I was in a large egg shaped space suit – which smelled pretty sour until I got used to it – anchored on the edge of the starboard engine room access lock with the coiled power line next to me. 'Was that three meters?' I asked, just to annoy him, as I went about manipulating the suit's mechanical arms to unwind the required three meters.
'Three meters. Make it four,' he snapped.
Kie in his bright yellow space suit was stationed right aft where the hull angled sharply for the ship's stern and the ten-meter-wide bell nozzle that now extended from it. He hauled the heavy and wavy line as I unwound it and fed it to Min stationed on the rim of the rocket's bell. He didn't say much, preferring not to offer himself as a target of Riv's ill temper. However, since our owner was working alongside, Riv had to mumble his most colorful adjectives mostly to himself.
We'd finished cutting the inner liner four hours ago and were now, finally, setting up the plasma cutter to cut through the outer D-Steel casing. The inner lining of D-Rad liner is impervious to the intense heat the plasma cutter projected and so had to be cut with a circular saw. With that done, we could use the plasma cutter to cut through the outer D-Steel casing. We were, however, making our cut in the center of one of the circling support ribs, so that the process would still take the better part of three days to complete – if all went as planned. The bell could be cut at a thinner section of the casing faster, but by doing it this way, we'll end up with a flange on both sections that we'll use to bolt the sections back together when we're ready to re-plate the bell and restore the engine to its proper form. Riv was setting up a service bot to follow the groove in the inner lining and rigging a harness for the heavy wire line to keep it from dragging the service bot off course.
After unwinding the required section of wire, I'd nothing more to do than wait for the next request and stare about me. Of course the sight was a familiar one, seen in many view-panels over many years, but there's a certain awesome intimacy when you view the Nine Star Nebula directly through the clear dome of a space suit while clinging to the hull of your ship. You really feel it. The intense solitude. The absolute silence. The illusion of emptiness. And this time, the fact that it seemed that something was looking over my shoulder. My unseen companions had not gone away.
I awoke today to find that the feeling of being watched was even stronger than it had been yesterday. It seemed with me all the time now, back there just at the very edge of my awareness. I tracked down Dyn, who assured me that all our pet systems were in operational order. I asked him why the cats acted the way they did, and he gave me a look and a vague answer, that boiled down to, cats – who knows? And walked away.
It's hard to say if other people were feeling the same way, since not only is my view colored by what I'm feeling, but we've all been under a great deal of pressure and work to get the makeshift repairs of the engine done against the looming deadline. Still, it seemed to me that everyone was a little more on edge, and either more unsocial, or more social than normal. And I didn't want to ask anyone outright and then have to explain why since it had to be in my head anyway, and it'd likely undermine the crew's confidence in me, which I didn't think was warranted just yet. I didn't think I was down the dark hole – on the edge, maybe, but not down it.
I could hear over the suit's radio Riv giving instructions to Min, but paid little attention to it. Instead I studied our glowing wake, the whirls and swirls of glowing ionized gasses, their subtle colors streaming behind us. Beyond, the glowing nebula and the ragged black fingers of the dust and rocky drifts that held the glowing nebula's faint light as if it was shining through a vast, half closed, fist. The wake of our passage was brighter ahead and astern. Ahead, because the ship's shock wave of captured gas and dust was being pushed through the extremely thin gas and dust atmosphere of the nebula, and it streamed behind us as a wake of ionized gas and dust. The electromagnetic shell created by the ionized gas and dust that surrounds the ship was almost too faint to see. Working out here, one hoped that the shell was just strong enough to deflect any bit of the nebula that was big enough to put a hole through this armored suit. At this speed, it wouldn't have to be too big. The hazards of the trade.
We spent another half an hour outside once Riv got the plasma cutter going to watch how it worked to make certain he'd not have to come out here again an hour later, as was often the case with the circular saw. I secured the power line in the air lock and we returned to the ship via the starboard boat deck airlock.
The rest of the day was spent checking all the engine systems – fuel and coolant lines, control lines, and auxiliary equipment – to make certain everything had been reconnected, and reconnected properly. Everyone seemed short and sharp when speaking, but stayed mostly silent, if only not to be short and sharp. I, like everyone else, was looking forward to being under power again, and hopefully reliably so. Failure would not be pretty on several levels.
I kept busy, just to keep from constantly looking over my shoulder, and forced myself to make my usual, bottom to top, tour of the ship before retiring.
The cats must have posted a look out, since I was hardly in the companionway before they were streaming around my feel. We were still pals. I checked the locks on the strong room and the telltales on the containers, and headed for the bench against the bulkhead to commiserate with my feline friends. We were talking back and forth, when someone – not one of the cats – asked 'Who are you talking to?'
We all jumped, like a little wave hitting the shore and I looked up to see Min silhouetted in the light of the companionway.
'Scare us half to death, will you Min,' I exclaimed, adding, 'I was just talking to my new feline friends.'
'Talking to what?' she asked as she walked rather hesitantly towards us.
'You do see the cats, don't you?' I asked, suddenly wary.
'Oh, yes, I see cats.'
'Well, that's good.'
'Is it, Captain?'
'Well, it's better than the alternative. Join us, won't you? It's liberty hall here, right mates?'
I cleared some cats out of the way to give Min a place to sit, and with a look I couldn't make out in the gloom, she settled down beside me. The cats didn't mind. It was, after all, liberty hall, and they climbed aboard her as well as me.
'What's this all about?'
'Neb knows,' I replied, brushing a cat tail away from my nose. 'I've been their best friend since yesterday when I stopped in on my nightly rounds. They jumped down from the mezzanine and clustered around like they're doing now. Makes you sort of wonder if something is, well, upsetting them,' I added. I wasn't certain of what I wanted to say to Min about my own issues, but it wouldn't hurt to at least dance around it and see where it leads.
'What would be upsetting the cats?' she asked and with a glance towards me, added, 'Have they told you?'
'They may have, but I don't understand cat,' I replied lightly, thinking hard as to what I wanted, or needed, to say. 'But then, this behavior is rather unprecedented, so you have to wonder what has brought it on...'
'Maybe you just smell different, more attractive. To cats.'
'I rather doubt it’s that.' Well, I suppose she needed to be given a hint. If I was going down the dark hole, she'd need to act. 'The thing is that I've been feeling that something's wrong. I can't quite put my finger on it, but it seems as if there's, well, something aboard that wasn't before... Which I know isn't possible, but still... You don't happen to have some sort of intuitive feeling like that too, do you?'
'I can't say I do. What exactly do you think is aboard?'
'I don't know. That's the point. It'
s just a vague feeling, and the impression that things are moving at the corner of my eyes, though there's nothing there when I look. And well, it seems like the whole atmosphere of the ship has changed, everyone seems more on edge and wary. I don't want to read too much into that – everyone is worn down from getting the engine moved and all, but still, I'm not certain that's the whole of it...'
'Have you asked anyone about it?'
'No. You're the first person I've mentioned this to. And only because I think giving you a warning that I might be going down the dark hole is the responsible thing to do.'
'Are you going down the dark hole? Have you visited the medic bay? Do I need to be concerned?' she asked.
'Well, given these irrational fears I'm entertaining, I have to wonder. I'm aware of the impossibility of something being on board, and can deal with it, but well, if things get worse, you'll have to act. I've dropped by the medic bay and it returned nothing but a slightly elevated level of stress, which is understandable. So I don't know. As I said, I'm mentioning it now to you just in case I slipped deeper into whatever it is that's happening to me.'
She considered that in silence for some time, absently petting the two cats on her lap.
'But you're still able to function normally now?'
'Oh yes. I'm not that far gone. It's just that if it continues to grow worse, there may come a day that you'd probably better put me in a sleeper-pod to be sorted out later.'
'You'll keep me informed?'
'Oh, yes. Of course.'
'Right, then. Have you finished communing with your new friends?'
'Yes, we can go.'
As before, the cats followed us to the access well, and seemed upset to see us go. Min and I had little to say after that, and I retired to my cabin.
Hopefully I did the right thing in telling Min. Hopefully I'm not going down the dark hole. But, why did I just glance at the shadows in the corner of my cabin?