Chapter 1

In nanoseconds it elongated to a meter length and charged particles jetted out. In milliseconds the slit extended to a kilometre, if the process had stopped at that point then they would have shot by oblivious and impervious. The process did not stop, the growth of the rent accelerated. Particles escaped in a vast sheet into 3D space. Then the Perryman wormhole ruptured.
Two weeks since departure and two days after ingress, it was mid morning as Max pushed through a loose crowd of people and approached the port side elevators. He entered the nearest as a breathless smaller and younger man followed him and asked,
‘Where were you last night?’
‘Cards with Isaac and Bob,’
‘Again?’
‘Twice a week.’
The younger man changed subject, ‘so if I only do three months do you really think I can get back in time?
‘I am sure you can Enrique,’ the doors closed as he hit the twelve button and the large elevator began its smooth drop past eight levels.
‘But why do you…’ he paused as the box swayed, ‘why do you want to give up the opportunity of a lifetime?’
‘It’s because I have two opportunities of a lifetime, and I want both.’
‘You can return to the formal anytime,’ the floor panel indicated deck twelve, and the doors hummed open.
‘I know but this formal stuff is at Oxford,’ said Enrique.
They exited the elevator onto a less crowded deck, weaved around a woman and two small children, turned left, and left again into Passage Four. The taller man with the cropped brown hair strode ahead of his companion. Enrique’s thick black wavy hair bounced as he skipped every third step to keep up.
‘So do you think I can get enough done in three months, if I really put the effort in, because I still want to pass.’
‘You could pass with a distinct….’ Max veered left his shoulder brushed the wall, ‘did you feel that?’
‘Kind of vibration, weird.’
Max continued, ‘with a distinction but not if you cut it short.’
They passed a dozen cabins either side before reaching 4.19. Apart from two cleaner-utes further along the passage was empty as Max punched a code into the key pad, the door slide open and he entered home. At the entrance to the cube he paused, the place needed tidying, dropped clothes on the floor and across the un-made bed to the left. Books, papers and maps covered most of the desk to his right. Opposite the door the kitchenette sink and countertop was littered with pots, crockery and cutlery, there were food packs left out, and the cupboard doors above the sink were ajar.
His work schedule was not due to start till two in the lab back on deck Four.
‘Come in and sit down, let’s talk this through,’ he said.
In many other cabins crew and passengers went about their business. Most of the population ate, slept, played and worked, Routines continued as the four thousand souls aboard the PaxCargo Liner Jacquard had a further two days to barrel down the Perryman before it re-emerged into another bubble of civilisation.
Transitions through wormhole egresses were well known precision navigations; the ship had been through dozens as it traversed between bubbles over two decades, and had run the Perryman route a few times between the Earth and New Albion.
This time ship and crew were unprepared as they approached a unique event in human space travel. No sound, no light, no gravity shift indicated anything unexpected was about to occur. There was nothing to alert complacent crew and passengers that a miniscule subatomic hole had opened on the skin of Perryman.
Minutely at first the ship’s course deviated as it went into a series of microelectronic spasms.
There would not be a smooth automated transition of a planned egress. Every single unsecured artefact and person was tossed into the air. On Deck Twleve, Cabin 4.19 the bed Max was sat on suddenly catapulted him towards the opposite grey panelled wall, mattress, pillow and covers followed.
‘What the…’ Max twisted in mid air, he glanced at Enrique, who lay crumpled into the corner of the sofa. Then Max’s horizontal body hit the wall side-on above his desk, breaking off the wall lamp with his shoulder.
The lights went out and there were sounds. Alarms rang in Passage 4, from the washroom toiletries clattered, in the kitchenette pots and utensils clanged and the coffee jar shattered. There were bangs and screams outside, chaos, and from Enrique a panicked high pitched squeal.
The lights flashed back on and the photo of Max’s brother and his family bounced out of the wall fitting and fell upwards, along with papers, pens and maps. The surroundings rotated as blue ceiling and grey walls wheeled. The air born contents of the room bounced from the desk wall upwards. Max thudded into the blue plastic ceiling, the impact dented several panels as his left knee and left side of his head both hit hard.
A few seconds after being thrown off the bed he was motionless, and for a minute he lay and looked down to the floor, coffee granules and broken glass floated in the air between as they spread from the kitchenette. Enrique was in the far top corner, wide eyed he stared at Max.
After several minutes it ended as abruptly as it had begun, the Pod gravity returned and men and debris fell to the floor, which caused Max more bruising and a nasty cut across his lower back as he landed on a metal frame chair. Enrique had been luckier when he landed half on the sofa where he had started and half on Max’s flung mattress.
Max was on the floor and gradually got his breath back. The noise of mayhem from outside had subsided, but the alarm bells kept going, and there was a strong smell of coffee.
‘This place really needs a tidy now,’ he said.
He got up slowly, rubbed new bruises and saw Enrique was unhurt. Instinctively Max picked detritus, and then above the general noise there was knock from outside, a familiar voice yelled, ‘Max, let me in’
He opened the door ‘Jess, were you outside in that?’ he looked down to a blond 21 year old, grazed forehead and a thick lip.
‘I was in P3 just leaving for top deck, what the hell was that?’
‘No idea, quite a shake up.’ He looked down the passage, there was little debris, one of the cleaner-utes struggled upside down like a beetle, and other passengers emerged from nearby cabins, several nursed at minor injuries.
‘Come in,’ he had to shout above the alarm. Inside he switched on his monitor, power was OK, ‘I’ll check ships-net.’ Jess rubbed her neck, ‘I was thrown all over the place.’ She pulled her crucifix chain back into position.
Max tapped the keyboard, and saw the announcement page had not been updated, it still showed the evening’s schedule. ‘I need to call around, Enrique keep checking the ships-net’. Glass and coffee crunched as he walked towards his desk and up-righted his bent chair. It reminded him of the pain in his back, he felt with his hand, there was blood on his shirt.
‘Grant and Asif were working out, Dino was out with that girl, the rest I don’t know,’ said Jess.
Max grabbed the cabin phone and rang two numbers, each time no one answered, there was blood on his fingers now, and that smeared the phone, on the third dial he got a response.
‘Yeah.’
‘It’s Max - you OK Phil?’
‘Yeah, I’m OK, do you know what happened?’
‘God knows what it was,’ Max panted with adrenaline, he forced himself to speak in a steady voice. ‘The cabin systems seem to be functional so it may be over. Can you get the others on your deck; I am in my cabin with Jess and Enrique. We will check deck 12, OK?’
‘Sure.’
‘If they can walk tell them to meet at the lab, in twenty minutes. Call me as soon as you’re done.’
He dialled again, ‘Turner, you OK, its Max.’
‘Oh, man, you don’t waste time’ Turner groaned ‘I think I bust my fingers.’
‘Can you walk? If so make your way to the lab, right now’
‘Sure can, how’s everyone else?’
‘Jess, Phil, Enrique and myself are OK, working on the rest, see you there in twenty minutes.’
He completed one more call then turned to Enrique at the computer, there was still no information but he looked relieved.
Jess repeated her first question ‘What was that?’
‘I have no idea, wormholes are supposedly smooth, just transitions can get a bit bumpy I’m told, if the alignment is off.’
‘That was no off alignment, that was a car crash,’ said Enrique.
Max looked at them both, he felt unsure and responsible, ‘there is nothing on ships-net, or the PA, so I don’t think the bridge knows either, let’s go to the lab’.
It was seventy meters down P4 but he couldn’t get into his long stride as people congregated in groups up and down its length. Max led the students up the stairs to avoid the elevators in case a further power failures. On Deck Nine someone had been flung down the stairs, a dozen people surrounded a motionless woman in a blue track suit.
What do I do now? thought Max, ‘bloody hell’ he mumbled, then a bit louder, ‘keep going.’
They reached Deck Four when the alarms ended, and emerged from the stairwell just as an announcement came over the public address.
‘Attention all Passengers, the incident we experienced is over. All support and engineering systems are functioning. The crew are making thorough checks and we will update you with the status as soon as possible.’
They passed offices and workshops, nameplates identified the NA Government Statistics Department and the Ariston Laboratory. Out of sight there was a cacophony of indistinct shouts and bangs, amidst them clearly audible were commands from an officer for everyone to calm down. Max decided to ignore it. The noise was from the far side of the deck, probably the opposite corner to their lab and so not my problem, he thought.
They reached the lab, the sign on the door said Comm. U Project Office. Val the lab technician was there as were two female students, they all looked healthy, unhurt. At the same time three male students arrived, one with the sound of loud skinrock music, Max frowned at him, and the music was quickly muted. They were followed by Dino with his girlfriend and then Isaac who was a year older than Max but still a student nonetheless. Finally ten minutes later two sweaty lads in sportswear came in from the fitness centre, everyone was there except Ronan.
The room was part laboratory and part classroom. Fortunately most of the equipment was stored away and safe, though one cupboard door was open and a smashed microscope lay on the floor.
Max expelled air, and addressed the group ‘Ronan has messages in his cabin and on his comtube. We will wait here an hour, if he doesn’t show up we start a search. Can everyone walk?’
‘Why wait, we should start looking now,’ said Phil,
‘OK, OK, let me think a minute.’
Max saw Phil held a comtube in his left hand ‘Who has their comtubes with them?’ Seven hands went up. ‘Good, I lost mine, are they working?’ they nodded.
‘Split into pairs, with at least one comtube between you. Three will stay here, Jess and Phil’ he then nodded to a third, the mature student, and emphasized who was to be in charge, ‘and Isaac, the rest will search AccomDecks 10, 11 and 12, this deck and TopDeck’
‘We just came from 11,’ an irritated voice from the back interrupted him.
‘I know but I wanted us all together here first to take stock of ourselves and our situation. Anyone know where else Ronan could be?’
Asif answered ‘He was mates with a crewman, could be in their quarters.’
‘First we cover the passenger areas, Jess, keep calling his numbers, Phil use the ships-net. After that we should hear from the bridge about what is happening.’ Max glanced around at young worried faces, ‘about what just happened, I have not felt any more – um, shocks.’
‘Space-quakes’ said Turner, which brought a few laughs.
‘I need the cleaner-utes in here,’ more tidying he thought, ‘and get the med box from the back please Enrique, I need to check Turner’s fingers, and we need to dress any cuts.’

* * *

Captain Pierce had broken his nose in the chart room when he was thrown forward from his chair onto a rail, at the impact he heard the bone crack, and pain lasered into the middle of his face. Momentarily stunned he lost his footing and fell to the deck, his hands splayed out ahead of him as he hit the floor, the full weight of his stocky frame followed and the index and middle fingers of his right hand took most of the force of the fall, they broke as he rolled under the briefing table. He was saved from further injury because all the furniture in the room was bolted to the floor. Through watery eyes he saw his crewmen tossed like flotsam across his field of view, and then heard Tarek call for him.
His eyes hurt, his nose was swollen and painful, there were drops of blood on the starched white uniform, and felt it run down the side of a once proud Roman nose, he tasted it. Everything above the trim bloodstained grey moustache was tender. His hand throbbed, his fingers screamed. Tarek came into view, bleeding from a gash above his left eye. Pierce tried to look unperturbed by his own injury as his secretary helped him stand.
‘I need to get to the bridge, now.’ in a slow nasal voice.
He left the chart room, where he had reviewed the planned docking manoeuvres. Tarek followed as he stepped over a toppled maintenance-ute and walked as steadily as could be mustered the thirty meters to the bridge. Other wheeled utility robots that still functioned manoeuvred around debris, crew ran towards the bridge whilst others walked or limped back, all acknowledged Captain Pierce. The bridge was the largest room on the AdminDeck and it was crowded with additional crewmen summoned by the second officer to clear up the mess and get systems and operators fully functional. Perplexed faces turned to the Captain as he entered the bridge. He knew what was expected of him.
Cartwright approached, his blue eyes blazed with intensity. ‘Captain we are a…’
‘Mr Cartwright please wait, are all stations manned?’
‘Yes Captain, four injuries requiring treatment, replacements are at their stations.’
At that point Peirce heard a raised voice from the far side of the bridge, a deeply tanned bald man demanded attention from the crew, he was one of a dozen passengers who had been on a tour of the bridge. To Tarek he said quietly. ‘Get those passengers off the AdminDeck as soon as possible.’
He then raised his voice to address the wider audience. ‘Get back to your consoles everyone, check and cross check everything you are responsible for and report your status to your duty officer as quick as you can.’
His head throbbed, he turned again to his secretary, ‘Call the heads to the senior team room in ten minutes.’
‘Captain…’
‘Not now Mr Cartwright, we do this in the correct way.’ He knew his image, and needed the stereotype right now to maintain normality, keep the crew on the level. Inside he peddled madly, he knew something was really going to test him, ‘and Tarek, get me some painkillers please.’
The six senior officers joined Tarek and the Captain in the senior team room, just twenty meters behind the bridge. Several had already placed their comtubes in front of them, both holograph slots activated, the angled translucent display screens emitted from the upper slot and red or green outlined keyboards from the base slot that faced the user and superimposed on the top of the dark highly polished Plas-Teak surface.
He nodded to his officers, a temporary splint had been applied to his two broken fingers and with that hand he instinctively motioned them and to be seated.’ He turned to an unfamiliar female in a medics uniform, ‘and who are you?’
‘Dr Morgan, Captain, The Passenger Services director could not be found, his office had requested Doctor Derrycke deputise, but he is busy, we have so many casualties.’
‘Thank you Dr Morgan, and welcome to an unusual meeting of the senior team.’ Then nodded again to the remaining officers, ‘Mr Bilderberg, Mr Lim,’
‘We will do this in due order, engineering first, Mr Redfern please report.’
‘All major systems are functioning sir, hundreds of utes of all types were damaged, the AMN’, he looked to Dr Morgan ‘ The Auto Maintenance Network’ then refocused towards the Captain, ‘is identifying dozens of non catastrophic failures in subsystems and will draw up a repair schedule by shift end. The nuclear engines are operational, we are checking their UDL shields, and local power batteries are being checked too, and we are reviewing the Scoop petals. Many of my crew have sustained injuries, some serious and two crewmen are unaccounted for....’ His voice trailed off eyes looked down, ‘That’s the status for Engineering Sir’.
‘Thank you Mr Redfern, please keep me informed,’ Peirce looked along the table, and said ‘Life systems.’
The Life Support Systems Chief replied ‘All systems are in good shape, our air and water were unaffected but we did experience a brief failure of the Podborsky Torus gravity field generator. All systems and backups are either functioning normally or under repair as we speak, Sir.’
‘And the power feeds from the Podgrav to the shuttles are still in place?’
‘No problems detected sir.’
Sue Morgan interrupted. ‘Excuse my ignorance but why do you feed power from the gravity generators to the shuttles?’
Captain Pierce was measured and serious. ‘In the worst case we can abandon ship, but only if we are within range of rescue or a habitable planet. The shuttles double as lifeboats, and in a catastrophic failure we reverse the Podgrav power and fire an anti gravity surge to the shuttle launches, initiated from either my back office, or a couple of other locations.’
‘Isn’t that dangerous?’ she asked.
Redfern reassured her, ‘with everyone on board the sixteen shuttles the surges are kick starts that fire each shuttle every few minutes many klicks from the ship. The ventral shuttles launch first, then the starboards, the dorsals and finally those on the port side.’
‘Out here?’ she was incredulous.
‘It won’t have to happen, the ship is secure,’ said the Captain. His licked his lips and took a sip of water with the dissolved painkiller from his glass, cleared his throat and said, ‘public decks Mr Bilderberg.’
‘A lot of chaos sir, but only one serious incident which occurred on the Business Deck. People were trapped in the Americas room when a steel beam came through the roof. Crew and medics are assisting other pax with the rescue. There were perhaps two dozen people inside at the time, Sir.’
‘Passenger Services now please Dr Morgan’
She looked up from her comtube display, swept a long strand of brown hair from her face and spoke quickly ‘Deck managers and their teams are attending to the passengers in their areas. In the Medical centre we have received over two hundred walking wounded, forty brought in with more serious injuries, and triage is underway. We have six emergency cases and six fatalities sir, but we do not have any in from the BizDeck accident or from the lower decks yet.’ Dr Morgan paused, the hair fell over her face again. ‘We have limited facilities, medics, medicines and other consumables to cope with the scale of what just happened sir.’
‘It will get worse I fear, you will need extra resources, Mr Lim will see to that.’ Pierce thought it would be two weeks before the ship terminated at the high orbit docking station above New Albion. He would request help to meet them as soon as possible after egress.
‘First Officer Lim’
The tall Chinese spoke, ‘I have re-assigned rosters to cope with crew casualties, will prioritise repairs and pax management Sir, and send a team to support the medics.’
‘Mr Cartwright, the bridge?’
The second officer took a slow breath and spoke. ‘We are no longer in the Perryman, Sir’
The simple statement provoked everyone’s maximum attention.
‘We’re in 3D,’ he said flatly.
Around the table they all stared at Cartwright. Dr Morgan was open mouthed, and stammered out ‘but it’s nearly two days early, how long will it take now to get to New Albion?’
‘Enough please Doctor,’ Pierce raised his left index finger and prodding motioned the doctor to quieten.
‘But we have casualties, we need to know how long….’
‘Enough.’ Pierce jabbed the finger towards the doctor. ‘Mr Cartwright, please continue.’
‘Whatever just happened,’ he looked around the table, ‘it took us out of the wormhole into 3D space, and we cannot detect where we emerged from the wormhole.’
‘Bubble communications?’ asked the Chief Engineer Redfern.
‘There are none,’ he paused, ‘none at all.’
All were quiet, all focused on the implications. After some seconds Captain Pierce pre empted Doctor Morgan, asked the obvious on behalf of them all. ‘So where are we, Mr Cartwright?’
‘I don’t know sir,’ and after another slow breath added,
‘We are adrift, Sir.’

* * *

P3 on BizDeck was crowded, even though it was three times the width of P3’s on cabin decks. Dozens of frenzied people were massed at the entrance to the Americas meeting room. The double doorway was blocked with smashed panelling where a large man in his late fifties grappled with fallen thick plastic panels.
‘Quiet back there,’ he yelled to the crowd behind him, ‘we have to hear the people inside.’ The doors had collapsed under a lintel split apart from a fallen H section heavy steel beam. With strong calloused hands he pulled aside a panel, coughed, rubbed at his eyes, and said ‘pull this out the way.’
Two men were near, one in a green passenger services uniform with ‘O’Boyle’ written above his breast pocket. The big man said, ‘hi there O’Boyle, I’m Rocky, help me shift this lot,’ and then to himself added ‘wish I had my lads here right now.’
Together they forced apart several panels and cleared a way through into the Americas room. They stepped in, and then to the left of the girder. Little light entered from the passage but enough to reveal a collapsed ceiling that covered the floor, tables and chairs and they could hear groans and coughs. The spray of a single functioning sprinkler could be heard too from the other side of the girder. There was a short but loud sliding sound above their heads and then more material fell, which lifted and swirled dust in front of them.
‘Jesus, can’t see anytink’ the crewman said in an Irish accent, dust polluted most of a very limited field of vision, eyes reddened and noses itched with dirty black crud. A dozen rescuers entered the room and split either side of the girder. Someone behind Rocky had a torch which illuminated funnels of dust particles as the beam reared around and picked out a signboard with the words New Albion Transportation Investment Seminar. The torch-beam moved towards the end of the girder. It was embedded into the floor near the entrance, angled at 45 degrees up into the ceiling mid way into the room, where it had fallen pivoted from the secured end above. Most of the ceiling panels, ducting, lighting and cabling had come down with it.
The murky torchlight moved from the collapsed girder across the floor, it swept in widened and lengthened arcs and penetrated deeper into the room. On a leftward swing they saw a pair of dust covered business shoes and the torch holder swung back ‘You OK?’ he asked.
From above the shoes a soft crisp voice replied ‘I’m OK, there are others trapped I think.’ The right shoe stepped forward one pace and revealed grey specked charcoal trousers, and then as the torch-beam lifted a grey silhouette came into the light.
‘You hurt pal?’ asked Rocky.
‘My hand was cut, that’s all’ he answered, hair and face were ashen, coated in dust. The only thing about him that was not grey was the fresh red blood on the back of his hand.
‘I was leaning against the wall watching, everyone else was seated in the middle when the whole place was thrown about and that steel beam crashed through.’ He spoke in a precise measured way.
‘Let’s get you out, follow me’ and the torch-beam left his face and rotated up and towards the exit. Rocky grabbed the man’s sleeve which made him flinch, and led him out and over the debris. He and O’Boyle got the grey man, Naismith to the passage, whilst other victims were extracted from the mess, several were immobile. A junior officer had arrived at the scene and supervised crew to clear the entrance and take over the rescue.
Scores of people crowded the corridor, they moved in all directions and many used their comtubes. Rocky looked around him, listened to bits of conversation as they got clear from the Americas,
‘What the hell are you clowns doing,’ some guy demanded of a bewildered crewman, a caterer.
‘I don’t know any more than you,’ was the reply.
Next to him a young man called out a girls’ name, and an older woman was crying onto a sympathetic shoulder of a younger version of herself. The officer’s badge spelt Herbert, and when he spotted O’Boyle he tersely said ‘You, crewman, help the others take the injured to the VT and down to the medical centre,’ he looked at Naismith’s hand, ‘and take this passenger with you.’
‘What’s a VT?’ asked Rocky
‘It’s crew speak, means Vertical Transition, or stairs and elevators to you and me,’ said O’Boyle.
‘Oh, well good luck O’Boyle, I’m going to stick around here, help a bit more,’ Rocky slapped the crewman across his back, turned around and pushed his way through the crowd back to the Americas.
A medic and a passenger checked the injured, and some casualties were put on improvised stretchers, one made from a banner that advertised the resident skinrock band due to perform the next day. Crewmen and women pushed a pathway through the crowd and carried the stretchered victims towards the elevators, others were escorted. Naismith joined several passengers that tagged along behind.
The medical centre was located on ServiceDeck a deck below BizDeck, the injured streamed towards it from all directions. The crowd parted to let the seriously hurt through, and in time the trivial injuries wondered off and left the less traumatized but needy to queue patiently outside the centre. New arrivals conformed, and amongst them were Max and Turner who lined up a few places behind Naismith.
‘I can wait here myself Max, you can go now,’ said Turner.
‘I need to find out what happened to Ronan, but will stick around here a while just so I know you’ll get seen to.’ Max answered. Just then the Captain accompanied by a Doctor and an Indian office clerk rounded the corner, and almost bumped into Max. Startled by the queuing the Doctor motioned to continue past the line.
‘No Doctor Morgan, I’ll wait my turn.’
A few paces away Naismith looked at the Captain.
Max did too and saw Peirce’s bloodied white uniform and face, a third of his moustache was stained a dull red, his nose was large, swollen, purple and in profile had a distinct angle half way down its length. His eyes were also swollen and bruised.
‘That looks painful Captain,’ he said.
‘The pain is easing now, a lot of others have worse, I will be okay thanks.’
Turner raised his hand to show his broken fingers. ‘Snap, Captain.’ he said as he looked at the Captains bandaged hand.
‘Snapped, young man,.’ he replied.
‘Is the ship OK now?’ said Max.
‘We’re working on it, it is stable and I expect we will announce an all clear status soon.’
A wiry man moved forward to the Captain, ‘my name is Miron Ferko, of the Ariston Laboratory and need assistance with my animals please.’
Pierce asked the clerk, ‘Tarek make a note for Mister Ferko.’
A second man interrupted them ‘Excuse me Sir,’ said Naismith, the back of his cut hand clearly visible, ‘Do you know what the cause was?’
‘Space-quake’ interrupted Turner,
Naismith, Pierce and the Doctor looked puzzled. ‘I’ve never heard that term’ said Pierce.
Max shook his head, ‘take no notice, he made it up, he is one of my students, supposedly.’
‘What are you studying?’ asked the Doctor, ‘any medicals amongst you?’
‘All geologists I am afraid, they have a six month survey project on NA. We’re from Commonwealth University. I’m the supervisor,’ Max smiled ‘I hadn’t expected to round up all my students until we were in field ready to go home.’
Pierce frowned, looked away and surveyed the queue, and Max regretted his joke. Naismith came closer, ‘this space-quake thing, have you much experience of these sorts of events Captain?’ A number of other passengers and a few crew members were now turned towards the conversation.
Peirce saw abundant abrasions and cuts, he saw bandaging and blood stains. He also saw alertness on a dozen faces turned his way, they listened and watched, and a woman chewed her lower lip. There was more than curiosity here, so he replied carefully. ‘Events of this nature are extremely rare, we are stable and expect to announce the all clear soon. Now excuse me everyone, I should return to the bridge. Doctor Morgan please join your team, Tarek come with me, your cut will have to wait.’
The Captain turned to leave, and then Naismith stepped forward again, and offered a handshake ‘Of course Captain I understand you have many concerns, I am William Naismith, just a middling corporate man but I do have a lot experience in business recoveries, if I can be of help, re-organising rosters, teams of passenger volunteers, that sort of thing.’ Peirce looked at the dust covered man, and the cut on the back of his proffered hand.
‘Thank you for your offer Mr Naismith, but for the time being please concentrate on your own immediate needs, get your hand seen to, and I expect you are looking forward to a shower too, the plumbing is in working order.’
Then to the gathered crowd, ‘the crew is in control and assessing the situation, I am well aware of expertise amongst the passengers, and should we require assistance it will be announced, but at this time I am confident we have all the resources we need.’ He then left for the elevators, Tarek followed, and the Doctor walked in the opposite direction to the medical centre.
A young man further up the queue said, ‘That’s right, go and sort this crate out, it’s a right shambles.’ Somehow during the panic he had found time to grab his voyage ticket, and waved a plastic card in the Captain’s direction, the words Jacquard Assisted Passage were clearly visible. ‘I didn’t come here for this mess,’ he added.
Naismith looked over at him. ‘The Captain will sort it out, but too many with your attitude will slow it down.’
‘Couldn’t give a monkeys,’ said the man, ‘I’m just a middling corporate guy’ he mimicked.
‘You’re a freeloader and should be at the back of the queue, red tag’ sneered Naismith.
‘We pay a price, get stuffed, creep.’
‘Pumpkinface,’ retorted Naismith.
‘Hey guys, cool it, let’s just get patched up and get on with our own business, the Captain looks a capable man, the ships in professional hands,’ said Max.
The man then asked Turner ‘What’s a Space-quake?’
Without hesitation the student pre-empted anything Max could say and said, ‘It’s a cosmo-geological term used when two galactic entities such as Andromeda and the Megallanic cloud pass each other in the void, then hyper-gravimetric forces are unleashed which cause the fabric of the Universe to be temporarily inverted.’ He grinned, and seemed to have completely forgotten his broken fingers.
‘Blimey,’ said the man, and Max rolled his eyes.

* * *

Two hours later and Max and Turner were about four places away from the triage station set up just inside the medical centre entrance.
‘Why he call the other guy a red tag?’ asked Turner.
‘Red tags are the indentured immigrants to New Albion,’ said Max.
‘What’s red tag mean?’
‘Just the colour of their baggage labels when they boarded,’ explained Max.
‘What do you mean by indentured?’
‘Minor criminals sentenced to work the frontier on NA rather than prison.’ explained Max, as he stepped aside to let someone pass. All around them people were being patched up, behind them others were sat or laid down awaiting more treatment. Doctor Morgan organised medics, porter-utes and crewmen and beyond her through a double doorway into the rest of the centre Max caught sight of a prone figure lying in a horizontal trolley covered head to toe in a grey blanket.
He left Turner in the line and walked along the passage to the shafts. Quite a few passengers remained unsteady on their feet and he noted that none had regained the confidence to ride a gyroscoot. The crowds thinned near the stairwell, and three people emerged from the adjacent elevator, two carried the blue track suited woman he’d seen on his way up, in what seemed hours earlier. She was bandaged and unsteady, but conscious, her eyes even briefly met Max’s. He felt guilty he had not stopped to help, but decided that was irrelevant as she clearly had assistance, my responsibility is to my students, and right now I have one missing he thought.
The ServiceDeck was one below the BizDeck, six above deck 12, and his cabin. He pounded down the stairs two or three steps at a time and got a bit of a rush with the physicality and arrived barely panting on deck 12. He went along passage 4 and re-entered his cabin. He voice activated the cleaner-utes for the flooring and kitchenette, briefly rummaged for his comtube, gave up and made a series of unsuccessful calls on the cabin phone. Ronan didn’t answer his comtube or from his cabin, and Jess in the lab had no word about him from his searching classmates.
Max knew one thing about Ronan that the other students didn’t. He picked up his cabin phone and called Jess again, ‘I am going to look for Ronan on the lower decks, don’t have my comtube yet but will call back in an hour.’
He reached up into a high cupboard pulled out a small rucksack, which he slung over his shoulder and set off. This time he exited his cabin and turned right and walked on the thick industrial strength carpet to the far end of passage four, at the end turned left towards starboard on corridor one, crossed two more passages on the way until he stopped at a small door with a sign saying crew only.
It was a narrow old style hinged door, painted dull yellow, it was heavy alloy metal and very thick. He opened it inwards, the rubber seals stuck for a second and then it swung free in a smooth easy motion as the massive hinges took the weight. The dark space inside contained a second steel door, also heavy and manually operated, he pushed hard on the vertical handle bar and it slid to one side easily within oiled tracks sunk well below the floor level. Behind that was the third and final door of the two metre deep portal through the inner hull of the ship. It was a mirror of the first door and Max opened it outwards and entered the grey void beyond.
He had stepped onto a meter wide platform which linked to a narrow metal staircase in the middle of a five meters gap between the inner and outer hulls. The interhull stairs were seldom used and the air was noticeably stale compared to the accommodation sections of the ship. Lighting was minimal, and he could not see the full extent of the flights of stairs that rose above him, but below the platform he could discern the slate grey floor. All around the stairs were supported and stabilised by steel struts to the hull walls on either side.
His shoes clanged against the latticed steps as he zigzagged on the flights past two more decks, both allocated as crew accommodation. Occasionally when he rounded a corner between flights he looked along the length of the ship, huge stress struts spanned between the hulls in all directions and at regular intervals as far as the gloom would allow him to see. Even if the interhull stairs had been better illuminated his view would have been limited, at the edge of illumination were large grey blocks of metal, the housings and casings of airlocks, cargo bays and the like.
Eventually he reached the bottom and went through another combination of hinged and railed doors to arrive on Deck Fifteen, the lowest deck.
In front of him was a long narrow passage. He was at the most extreme front end of the habitable zone of the ship, a service passage extended before him which ran its full length of eight hundred metres, ideal for a gyrosoot but Max had to walk.
The deck was scarcely attended by crew and off limits to passengers, even so he normally made his way surreptitiously via corridors and depot areas. He was less inhibited than usual and strode down three quarters of its length, his heels clanged along the passage. He passed the elevator shafts and stairs to the rest of the ship above, passed hydroponics and water tanks, local power generators and into the largest area of the ship, the cargo holds.
He reached a loading bay where most of its volume was filled with a ramp withdrawn into the ship. Hidden behind the ramp was a set of three small offices only occupied during on-load and off-load operations. Max entered the third and least observable office, virtually empty save for a desk and two chairs bolted to the floor. Behind the desk was a door, he knocked.
The door panel grated as it slide into its wall cavity. ‘Come in fella, not seen you a while.’

Chapter 2

The overhead fluorescent tubes of the bridge were dimmed, the blue glow of the few dozen monitors dominated the lighting. Half the workstations were manned, the consoles were black and most had numerous light emitting diodes with steady or flashing red, white, blue and yellow illuminations.
It was five hours since they had been ejected from the wormhole and entered 3D space. Cartwright stood at a forward workstation twelve stressful hours into his shift. He stroked new stubble on his chin, leaned on the high backed imitation leather chair and looked over Brakespear’s shoulder at a navigation console. Four large screens arrayed in a semi circle before them displayed dazzling images whose glow lit the lined, drawn faces of the two officers, their reflections ghostlike in the two middle screens.
‘Talk me through,’ he asked the navigator.
She indicated the far left monitor, ‘the first screen is a map of our new neighbourhood, I have measured distances and vectors from the ship’s detection systems to build it up. Our position is the red V in the centre, I can toggle around to get any sliced view of the sphere of space around us.’ She pushed a joystick and the map swivelled around the V.
‘What is the scale?’
‘A radius around us of four light years.’
‘It’s a busier region than around Sol or NA, any radio waves?’
‘It’s silent,’ Brakespear paused, ‘the next screen is a section of the Milky Way around the local spur of the Orion Spiral Arm,’ Brakespear stretched her arm and pointed with an index finger in a circular motion at a group of stars Cartwright instantly recognised as home. Her finger almost touched the screen, its mirror image backed off into the depth of the stars. ‘Sol’ she said needlessly.
She swivelled her chair to the right, ‘I am scanning images of deeper space around us shown on the third screen, nebulas, clusters anything that might be distinguishable, and having the processor run comparisons through each part of the Milky Way.’ She tapped at the console keys and a series of images popped up into the top right corner of the screen. ‘The green square on the local deep space image is the feature I am trying to identify, in this case an emission nebular, which I’ve labelled 02N.’ She reverted back to the Milky Way image ‘The white square here is the part being checked for a match with 02N.’
Cartwright could see a window inset on the third monitor with a list of thirty codes, with 02N second from top and highlighted. ‘So let me get this straight, we are in an unrecognisable region of space, and first indications are that we are nowhere near anywhere that we can recognise, right?’
‘That’s correct’ said Brakespear.
‘And it is only a matter of time before you can correlate between what we know and what we can see from here, correct?’
‘Well it’s not so straightforward, look’ Cheryl Brakespear tapped at the keyboard and pulled up more images which filled the screen and showed deep space from their current position. Several images had distinct bands of millions of stars, others were areas less populated and a few showed clusters of countless stars.
‘These images clearly indicate spiral arms and a galactic core.’
‘But,’ anticipated Cartwright.
‘For the moment that’s all this place has in common with the Milky Way.’
‘So not only are we nowhere near home, we may not even be in the same spiral arm.’
Brakespear swivelled around in her chair and surprised Cartwright as the back of the seat spun away. She looked directly into his eyes and said ‘we might not even be in the Milky Way.’
Cartwright was momentarily stunned, but she continued ‘There is another but, a better one though, because we could still be relatively near home. It is impossible to say right now if we are in our galaxy or even our spiral arm, but to my knowledge no wormhole has been discovered that spans more than eighty light years.’
She swivelled back to face her workstation, ‘we are not a survey ship and have very limited technology and skills on board and there is just so much stuff: stars, pulsars, nebulas et-cetera, to search through to identify something we know. But’ she emphasized ‘we could find a match that tells us where we are. In fact there could be hundreds of identifiers.’
‘How long do you need?’
‘Each candidate identifier will take a couple of hours to run.’ She brought up the local deep space view on the third screen. ‘The ones I have already selected are labelled and circled in yellow. I have to be methodical and it will take a long time.’
‘Can we speed up the process, run multiple comparisons in parallel?’ Cartwright asked.
‘Sure, it’s heavy on processing power but we can do it if we re-allocate computer resources.’
‘Okay I’ll authorise it. What’s on the last screen?
Brakespear said ‘the last screen is a series of views of the nearest star systems.’
Almost under his breath Cartwright mumbled as he leaned around the chair and closer to the last monitor. ‘So where are we?’
Brakespear tapped at a keyboard and clicked through images of star systems, as they did he said ‘fore, aft, starboard, port, dorsal and ventral’.
‘Planets?’ asked Cartwright.
‘Most of the stars do, I have picked out a few gas giants, and there is an asteroid belt on the port side star, a G type like Sol. There are also signs of ice and rocky planets.’
‘Which is the nearest system?’
‘Binary, forward image, quite close, about three light weeks, I think we are already close to its outer Oort cloud.’ She tabbed back a couple of images.
The binary stars were almost the same size, one was a vivid yellow orange colour, its slightly smaller companion a bright white, there were small discs on the periphery of the image, typical of gas giants.
Cartwright leaned closer, his finger pointed to one of the discs. ‘Interesting for a binary to have planets,’ Brakespear tapped another keyboard and zoomed into one of the discs. The gas giant was a blue green banded miniscule marble with a couple of dark spots that suggested moon shadows. She zoomed out and panned left.
‘And see this,’ she zoomed back in this time onto a small blue brown dot.
‘Rocks too eh, but it is no help to us now. You have done well, keep searching,’ Cartwright patted the woman’s shoulder and left.

* * *

The door grated closed behind Max, ‘Hi Kemp,’ he said.
‘What a racket, you know the drill what’s up with you?’
‘I was a bit too direct, sorry, I am trying to find Ronan in this chaos, have you seen him?’
‘Don’t do it again or you’re barred, and no I haven’t seen Ronan for a few days,’ Kemp’s face lifted into a stained toothy grin above a dark goatee beard, ‘ready to pay?’
‘Yes, here,’ Max swung his bag from his shoulder, loosened the cord in the same movement, reached in with his free had fished until it came out with a thick brown wallet. As he extracted some notes Kemp heaved a couple of yellow plastic coated mattresses across the door behind him. ‘Forty, right?’ said Max
‘Forty five, plus five late payment charge.’
‘Forty five, here, ‘he slapped the cash into Kemp’s open palm.
Kemp strolled ahead briefly checked the cash, and Max followed. They entered a dull yellow tunnel, passed a stack of monitors by the door that displayed multiple views of passages and corridors in Deck Fifteen.
They walked a dozen paces up to more mattresses, Kemp grappled with two of them, shoved them to one side and revealed a hidden amphitheatre. It was an ovoid construction excavated from within a plastic coated cliff face of predominantly yellow and occasional pale blue mattresses. The stacked mattresses formed three lower tiers within the oval and then continued upwards compressed up to a low ceiling. Suspended from above was a pilfered cargo net that held a jumble of coloured drapes, carpets and other fabrics. The floor was similarly covered plus additional pillows, cushions and quilts littered the floor and tiered seating.
A couple of dull white lights poked out from a top corner and a vent dropped down a half metre from the centre of the roof netting. Smoke weaved from various angles from the tiers towards a roiling mass in the centre of the space before being extracted up and through the vent.
Max quickly scanned the room and saw three females and four males, one with his head engulfed in the sparkling iridescence of a kopfgurtel’s charged particles. They were all in flaked out reposes sprawled along the tiered mattresses. Some quietly puffed their contribution to the smokey mass in the middle and he recognised a couple but no Ronan.
‘What chaos?’ asked Kemp.
Max was incredulous, ‘you didn’t feel anything a few hours ago?’
‘We felt a big bump, nothing else.’
Surveying the den Max visualised how these mellowed out folk in a yellow hideaway womb had been in a better place than his cabin, and he smiled at the thought, then frowned and said, ‘it shook the whole ship, what did you think was going on?’
‘We just figured something heavy on the deck above took a fall,’ said Kemp, who then added cheerfully, ‘what’s your poison?’
A small part of Max’s ambition to go to NA was a desire to put distance between himself and readily available weed back home. It had come as both annoyance and a pleasant surprise at the end of the first week of the voyage to find it being available on board. Kemp was crew though Max could not guess what his duties were or when he had time to attend to them, he always seemed to be in the foggy yellow den of his. It was an even bigger surprise and not so pleasant when a week later Ronan turned up. As far as either of them knew none of the other students had a weed habit.
The mattress store was between the loading bay offices and a hydroponic greenhouse. The two rooms shared both a common wall and a common secret with a small proportion of each misappropriated for Kemps unsanctioned commercial enterprise. Fifteen per cent of the crop located in the far corner of the greenhouse had been replaced with Grand Ganja, colloquially known as Double G on the streets back home. On board it was called Kemps Hemp or just Kemp. In fact the eponymous Mr Kemp was a resourceful entrepreneur with considerable skills in excavation, electronic surveillance, cultivation, retail and air conditioning. He had built a tunnel from the smoking room through the rest of the mattress store leading to a doorway cut through the wall into his private section of a hydroponics hall where he grew six varieties of Double G.
‘Not today, it’s really important I find Ronan.’
Behind Kemp’s shoulder Max’s eye caught some movement as the kopfgurtel wearer’s right hand lifted from his lap and disappeared into the glittering globe. A second later his fingers tapped a stop button and the kopfgurtel projection disappeared, his hand still touched the thick necklace of the comtube variant and his face displayed the typical startled look, with pinprick pupils in his eyes.
‘Yeah yeah,’ Kemp motioned Max to leave and hauled mattresses to cover the smoking room entrance.
‘If Ronan shows up, get him to call me immediately, better still can you call me?’
‘I don’t even know who you are,’ said Kemp.
‘Yes you do, so please call as soon as he turns up, Okay?’
‘Okay fella.’
Max wandered down the passage to Kemps hidden exit and looked at the wall of monitors and consoles.
‘How much can you see from here?’
‘Pretty much all the passages and corridors on this deck, why?
‘Can you check other decks? Can you watch out for Ronan that way?’
‘I can see some public areas, and even hack into the ships system. Don’t like to risk it too often but need to check my invisibility now and then. But no, I can’t sit here all day trying to spot young Ronan. Don’t worry he’ll turn up, probably come here first when he needs a fix.’ Kemp then gently pushed Max through the old door into the office.
Kemp watched his departure through his monitors and satisfied himself that Max took the prescribed meandering route back. A few minutes later Max neared the stairs to go back up to Deck Twelve, then he turned and waved at where he remembered Kemp’s camera position was and gestured with his thumb and little finger by the side of his head, call me.

* * *

‘Governance for Deep Space Vessels.’
It was 7PM as Captain Peirce returned to his office on the AdminDeck with Tarek towed behind in his wake. Pierce dropped the tome to his desktop.
‘Irrelevant,’ he said, ‘and get Lim and Redfern, and some more painkillers,’ Tarek nodded and left.
The small table and easy chairs were on his left, he desk to the right and the door to his backoffice was directly opposite. The only evidence of the shakeout event were the papers that covered the floor, overturned chairs and a packet of small cakes, also on the floor. He picked up the packet and tossed it into the trash can, affixed to the wall. He righted a chair and sat behind his plas-teak desk.
He looked again at the heavy manual that had guided his whole career, and slid it to the left of his workspace, righted a photo frame, and then checked his messages from his desk mounted monitor. His gaze lifted to the photo of his wife and three adult children, the glass was cracked across the image, and it triggered an unexpected reaction, he cleared his throat and turned the photo away from his gaze. A tear welled, and when wiped his eye the pain of his broken nose brought an audible ‘ouch’, everything was getting just too painful he thought.
Redfern knocked and entered, followed by Lim. They both looked at Peirce’s nose.
‘No time to fuss with it now, grab a chair men and give me some straight answers.’
He looked at the First officer, ‘Do we know where we are yet?’
‘Cartwright has men on the job, but right now we have absolutely no idea sir, there are no communications of any type detectable, no recognisable star formations or nebulas’ he replied.
Tarek quietly entered the office and placed a glass of dissolved painkillers on the desk.
‘Do we know where we emerged from? Can we trace back to the egress point?’
Lim replied again ‘We can trace our route directly back to when we discovered we had been ejected, but there are no signs of any wormhole, no transition zone, nothing to indicate where we emerged from.’
‘What has been our course and velocity since ejection?’
‘No deviation sir.’
Peirce brooded, and Lim was expressionless, eventually he lifted his head and looked at the print of Earthrise over the moon, pinned to the port side wall. Redfern fidgeted, then leaned forward and said, ‘until we know our location we can’t plan our next action, we can stop put and try to find the egress, but the propulsion power needed to get back up to speed again will drain our reserves far more rapidly.’
‘Mr Lim, what is your prognosis?’
Lim looked back to the Captain, unsure how to reply, Redfern jumped in, ‘There is no known occurrence of any wormhole ejecting a ship in mid voyage. Once discovered ingress and egress transitions have always remained stable. There is no evidence of wormholes bifurcating or disappearing, but right now do we even know if the Perryman still exists!’
In a flat voice Lim finally spoke, ‘we do not know when precisely we left the Perryman. We may have moved a considerable distance within the wormhole between us being aware of a problem and actual expulsion, or we may have been ejected before any awareness. At sixty per cent light speed velocity the exact moment of expulsion is critical, every second we vary our calculation equates to vast volumes of the void. In the worse case we confront an enormous envelope of space to search. Finding the transition where we exited may take years.’
After a long pause Redfern waved his arms and said ‘it might be impossible even if we had years.’
The Captain put his hand on the book, ‘Do we stop or keep moving? If we stop we can await rescue because within a day of our expected egress NA control discover our delay, and whilst we wait we search for the transition.’
‘Assuming Perryman is intact, how will any rescuer find the ejection point?’ asked Redfern.
‘It will be harder to locate the transition from within Perryman than we are having from outside because we at least have a vague idea where to look,’ Peirce then finally drank his medicine, which prompted a thought about medical supplies.
‘So we cannot assume a rescue.’
Lim remained impassive and Redfern shook his head.
Peirce continued ‘I must know our location and how long our critical supplies will last.’ He picked up the GDS and swivelled around and placed it on the cabinet behind him. ‘This book offers me no guidance. I know it back to front and trust me there is no section about what to do when your ship is lost in unknown space.’
He looked at the chief engineer, ‘Mr Redfern, what is our engineering status with Ramscoop propulsion?’
Redfern leapt into his reply ‘We noticed fluctuations on two of the twenty four petals and their magnetic field extensions show a decline in hydrogen harvesting, that has left maximum power at 98% potential. But if we stop we do not have enough liquid fuel on board to get up to 4% light-speed more than once, after that we will lose the Ramscoop.’
‘I understand that, what about the Podgrav?’
‘The Ramscoop continues to supply the Torus engines normally, and the Podborsky converter was undamaged so gravity generation will remain Earth normal sir.’
‘and ships power?’
‘Deck Thirteen engineering report all three nuclear power plants are fully functional, and if there is a recurrence of the problem the ultra dense lead shields have been checked, we can initialise containment from engineering control in seconds if we need to.’
‘Can you route the same control from my back office?’
‘Yes sir, I will see to it.
‘Everything else okay?’
‘Yes sir, internal electrical needs are fully functional.’
‘So we have almost unlimited internal power and propulsion power if we don’t stop more than once?’
‘Yes sir.’
Peirce then picked up his phone and dialled, he pressed the loud speaker button. ‘Life Systems’ came the answer.
‘Pierce here, with Redfern and Lim, I have a question, how long can our air and water systems last at normal consumption rates?’
‘The air from the hydroponics is recycled, but it is not a sealed system, we normally expect a five per cent loss over a week, but we do have substantial reserves. Water is more efficient at two per cent loss per week, both systems could last several months.’
‘and if we had to economise?’
The other man calculated, then said ‘De-compress the passages in the cargo holds would add 30% capacity to air, rationing water could double the duration of our supply. If you are trying to estimate our survival time we could triple it with some hardships, but it is not the critical system sir.’
‘What is?’
‘We would run out of food long before.’
‘Run out of food?’ Peirce glanced at the packet of cakes in the trash can, ‘how long with rationing do you think?’
‘We have about five weeks of food supplies, rations could stretch it out to twelve weeks, perhaps longer and there may be usable supplies in the cargo holds.’
Medicine, food, air, water, ramscoop, all these systems suddenly under stress. What the hell am I to do? Pierce was thinking. ‘Thank you gentlemen,’ he said, ‘and remain quiet about our situation until we know where we are.’
He hung up the phone and then said, ‘we cannot expect rescue, we cannot expect to find the Perryman egress transition, and we cannot waste power by stopping, so for the time being we stay as we are. We calm pax and crew and put all available resources into finding our location. In the meantime I need a beacon.’
He looked at the phone and dialled again.
‘launch bays’
‘This is the Captain, who is this?’
‘Jeffries Sir,
‘Tell me Jeffries, how long do you need to prep a probe with an all channels omni directional beacon, no propulsion power?’
She answered ‘The probes are on standby but the beacon will need to be set up. It could be ready in five or six hours sir.’
‘Prep two probes with beacons, and keep it confidential,’ he stressed.
‘Yes sir.’
Peirce hung up again, and looked at Lim, he never could read him but had actually worked with him far longer than with Redfern. The latter raised an eyebrow at him.
‘I propose to leave a probe in this region so the beacon will signify to any rescuer that we emerged intact from Perryman. Once we know our location we release the second probe giving our rescuers a direction to follow us.’
‘What could be our destination?’ asked Lim.
‘If we are very lucky a star system with a wormhole transition point we recognise, we must assume it’s a way-station because of the absence of bubble communications.’
‘If we can reach a way-station, then we will be on our way home.’ interjected Redfern.
Pierce summarized, ‘Propulsion at maximum, food, air and water consumption need precise calculations. We tell the pax we have three weeks supplies and because we egressed Perryman early we now have twice the travel time to NA.’
‘If there is no lucky destination, what is our alternative?’ said Lim.
Redfern answered, ‘We pick up supplies en route, the universe is full of planets. We use a gas giant for methane or similar fuel, and make more stops at rocks with atmospheres for air and water. Our very meagre diet remains a problem, perhaps we can solve that along the way.’
‘You are remarkably optimistic Mr Redfern, but first Cartwright’s team gets all the resources he needs,’ Peirce raised a finger on his undamaged left hand ‘One, to find our location and two,’ he lifted a second digit, ‘to plot a route home.’
Peirce sighed, he had a plan and better still the passengers would not find out until they were safe and sound.
Lim and Redfern left and as they turned into the passage Lim quietly said, ‘The Captain looks relieved but this is misplaced, as is your optimism. We are in great danger, no cruise liner has ever been in 3D space with the total absence of bubble communications. It has never happened before and I think it means we are a long, long way from home.’

Chapter 3

Forty four fatalities were listed on a large screen by the entrance to the Medical Centre, a second list showed twice as many had been hospitalized. Max was relieved, apart from Ron Weatherford the Passenger Services Director he did not recognize anyone, but he was shocked at the scale of the disaster.
He did recognise Ronan Kilpatrick one of nine names on a third list of missing persons. It has been twenty four hours. Max now reunited with his comtube had co-ordinated the twelve other students into a systematic search of the public decks, but there was no trace of the young man.
The ships formal name was the Jacquard, one of six in the line named after Victorian inventors. However it was universally known by its nickname, The Gargoyle, a reference to the blunt ugly nose of the vessel. Max pondered how a space ship even as large as the Gargoyle could lose people. They must be dead or unconscious, but he clung to the hope that Ronan knew of another hideaway like Kemps.
It was getting late and he was about to leave when Doctor Morgan came out of the centre.
‘Hello Doctor’ said Max.
‘Hello, do we know each other?’
‘We met briefly when you brought the Captain through after the ship was shaken up.’
‘Ah, yes you’re the physicist.’
‘Max, a geologist actually, and I am with a group of students, one of which is on your list of missing persons.’
She gave a brief smile, ‘I’m sorry it was such a traumatic day yesterday, we are still overwhelmed by it all, everyone is exhausted.’ Her hair was pulled back, which exposed drawn features. ‘Which one is your student?’
‘Ronan Kilpatrick, an independent spirit who wanders off and gets into scrapes. We think he must have been up to his usual self and gone off somewhere, and is now perhaps alone and needs help but we can’t find him.’ For the second time an image of Kemps drug den popped into his mind.
The doctor replied. ‘Only two of the missing persons are passengers, the rest are crew from remote areas of engineering.’ She looked Max straight in the eye, ‘If Ronan is found I will let you know immediately I promise.’
‘Thank you,’
She took a breath and almost apologetically said, ‘your student said something about a spacequake?’
‘That was Turner, with the broken fingers, he was just fooling around, even in a crisis seriousness eludes him.’
She paused a good thirty seconds, with furrowed brow, took another deep breath and very quietly said, ‘but he was somewhat closer to the truth than he thinks.’
Max interrupted, ‘no, no no, you have misunderstood, there is… ‘
She whispered, ‘come with me.’
Surprised by her sudden conspiratorial manner Max followed the Doctor back into the medical centre, across what had been the triage area now occupied by a dozen beds, all with yellow mattresses and yet again sparked an image of Kemp. Patients slept, read and a couple of them with mild curiosity watched Max stroll by. He tried to act nonchalantly, as if he belonged there. She led him down a short corridor where he had glimpsed the body the day before. They passed two small but full wards either side, through the open doors he could see patients attended by a few medics and several others in regular crew uniforms. Two knee high porter-utes rolled across the floor with a stretchered patient secured above them, when they neared the empty bed, synchronised together their hydraulics raised the stretcher and gently slid the patient onto the bed. Beyond the wards other doors were closed, and she stopped at an office door with a sign.
‘Doctor Derrycke I presume,’ Max read.
She offered her hand, which Max shook lightly, ‘actually Doctor Morgan, just promoted to acting head of Medical as Dr Derrycke has replaced the poor Ron Weatherford as the new Passenger Services Director, that office is on the AdminDeck. I will get the sign changed soon, come in and sit down.’
Derrycke’s possessions still owned the office, certificates and awards photos on the wall, a man concerned with status thought Max. Even his large black jacket remained on a stand by the door. There were papers and folders piled on the desk and filing cabinets with half the draws open. There were several boxes of files labelled as Doctor Morgan’s on the floor which they stepped around as they entered.
‘Bit of a mess, the shake out, and moving my stuff in,’ she said. Doctor Morgan checked the hallway outside and closed the door. She invited him to sit at her desk, there was a jug of water on a side table and she offered him a glass. ‘It’s all I have to offer.’
Max accepted, and as she poured he said, ‘space-quakes are a figment of Turners imagination.’
‘Max, what I am about to say, please keep to yourself,’
‘Okay, sounds very intriguing.’
‘No it’s not intriguing, it is deeply worrying.’
‘Please go ahead’, Max became wholly attentive.
‘In the chaos of yesterday I had to deputise for Doctor Derrycke and Ron Weatherford and attend a meeting with the Captain and his senior officers. Your space quake turns out to be some kind of fault within the wormhole and the ship was thrown out.’
‘We are out of the wormhole? So where is New Albion?’
‘I shouldn’t tell you, but I can’t sit on it any longer and I am out of the loop now Derrycke is in place. Please keep this to yourself.’
‘I promise, tell me.’
‘They are going to make an announcement soon anyway about the journey being extended a couple of weeks, but the thing is they don’t have a clue where we are.’
‘You mean we are not in the wormhole and are nowhere near NA?’ Max was incredulous.
‘My concerns are all these injured people, our facilities are completely insufficient to care for the injured over an extended time.’ She said.
‘Nowhere near NA,’ Max repeated, ‘I don’t know enough about star charts and wormholes but we must surely be somewhere near either end, in the region of Sol or NA?’
‘No, at the meeting this officer called Cartwright said they could not identify anything in this region of space that’s familiar. He said we were adrift!’
Stunned into silence, Max stared at Doctor Morgan.
‘How can that be? Why keep it quiet, why are they going to say the journeys to be a bit longer?’ then answering himself Max added, ‘because they want to avoid panic. Look one of my students, Enrique, is pretty clued up on space travel and he might have a better idea of what you’re talking about. Do you have any other information?’
‘No that’s the only bombshell.’
‘That’s quite some bombshell,’ Max said. Then he changed the subject, ‘do you need any more volunteers to help here? Once we find Ronan we will have time on our hands, I can ask the students to come over.’
‘For the moment we are OK, but the crew have their normal duties as well and fatigue will become a problem. I will consider your kind offer and get back to you.’
‘Good, I will ask Enrique to check out your bombshell,’ Max drained the glass of water, stood up and offered a handshake.
‘Max Lewis, junior lecturer at the department of Geology at Commonwealth University.’
‘I went to Commonwealth, medical studies of course, over ten years ago now, I am Susan Morgan, very pleased to have met you Max Lewis,’ she smiled.

* * *

The gullible and complacent accepted the announced two weeks extension which doubled the journey time. Naismith was not placated.
A wealthy handful had been appeased with promised compensation to be processed on New Albion. Naismith was puzzled.
There was a vacuum of meaningful information and ship to NA communication were nonexistent, though he knew only the wealthy or panicked would afford such a luxury, and Naismith was neither. The revised schedule from the new egress transition point meant the ship was beyond the reach of NA’s bubble. A side effect was the food supplies had to last longer and calories would be reduced.
There was confusion amongst the passengers and as it became clear the crew were equally ignorant of what was going on the mood changed to apprehension, and tension increased.
Naismith had overheard a group of sceptics in the Piano Bar, ‘the distances surely were not great enough to put them that far out, so either something was wrong with the comms, or the distance to NA was more than being let on.’
And a lone drinker nearby interrupted the conversation and said ‘it’s odder than a cuckoo in a rats nest.’ He had a pinched, hard expression and the group ignored him.
‘Oi, I’m talking to you,’ he eased off his bar stool and took two steps towards the group when the barman intervened.
‘Leave it Riggs, or I’ll have to bar you again.
Riggs muttered about the ruling classes and returned to his bar stool, the others were visibly relieved and changed the topic of their conversation but Naismith thought there was some truth in Riggs’ statement.
Since launch Naismith had networked hard, focussed on building a business advantage for his arrival at NA. Now he re-set his agenda on the new circumstance. He mingled and eaves-dropped with the crew, mostly junior ranks as senior officers had become scarce, one crewman had joked how he enjoyed not having the lightweights float around all the time, and another complained that standards had slipped because Captain Pedantic had not been seen on the public decks since the shake-up.
In search of officers he idled time in the sumptuous Mayfair Club and mused.
‘Something is afoot,’ he said out loud.
‘Pardon me, Sir?’ said a matronly redhead who looked up from putting glasses away beneath the counter in front of him.
‘Oh, sorry, I was daydreaming.’
‘You said that something is afoot, that’s not day dreaming, you’re like me honey, you are observant.’
Naismith took to the theme, ‘NA comms down, meal portions down, senior officers not down here.’
She ducked below the counter again, a double crown visible within her thick curly red locks, when she bobbed back up she corrected him, ‘what you meant to say was; no comms, no food and no officers.’ She continued in a low voice, ‘I don’t hear so much on TopDeck, because it’s mostly passengers.’
‘But?’ said Naismith.
With a hushed voice she said, ‘the lower ranks live below Deck Twelve, and down there is talk, the extension has to be longer than two weeks, for all the reasons you said and more.’
Naismith leaned forward, ‘such as?’
She had finished with the glasses, put an empty tray to one side and scanned the bar. ‘Strange re-allocation of duties, a couple of guys moved and not seen since, rumour is they are on the AdminDeck. They are all clever clogs, young bright sparks you know.’
‘Why move to AdminDeck?’ Naismith pondered, and answered himself, ‘because they have skills and knowledge needed urgently and on the quiet.’
‘I also heard,’ she lowered her voice further, ‘they moved a passenger up there too.’
From the next day on Naismith followed a daily routine, he visited the Mayfair usually during the Redhead’s shift. He roamed TopDeck’s bars and restaurants, any public areas. He listened, ingratiated, and was very alert to the emerged pattern.
In a café off the Market Square he ran into the crewman, O’Boyle, and said, ‘I want to thank you for your help.’
O’Boyle looked up from his plate of toasted sandwiches, ‘No problem, just glad to assist, part of job.’
‘No uniform today, off duty? May I join you?’ Naismith sat down.
‘A few hours off, then I start again, and yes feel free, want some toast there isn’t much available.’
They chatted for a few minutes about food portions, then Naismith asked. ‘Do you work on the ServiceDeck?’
‘No I was passing through after my shift ended, I am a steward on the AdminDeck,’ said O’Boyle. He shifted a little, uneasy at Naismith’s question and his avoidance of eye contact.
‘I didn’t know there were stewards up there, so you don’t usually come down to the other passenger decks?’
‘Well I was accommodated up there, but yesterday had to move down to Deck Fourteen, swap my cabin with some guy.’
‘Why was that?’
‘No idea ‘cos I still have to get up there to do my job, right pain so it is.’
‘How many cabins are up there?’
Between mouthfuls of toast O’Boyle answered, ‘about twenty for senior officers and forty for the likes of me, but several of us have been moved down below now, right hassle getting onto the deck since that Murdo Munro poked his nose in.’
‘Who is Murdo Munro?’
‘A jumped up Scottish bully.’
‘What’s he do?’
‘You’re asking a lot of questions there, what’s with it?’
‘I appreciated your help after the shake-out and am just interested in how the crew goes by its business on a ship this size. That’s all, no offence,’ explained Naismith.
O’Boyle took another bite, chewed and swallowed, ‘he’s the Master at Arms, which means his amateurish security operation stops folk getting up there and makes my life more tedious, well it would be if I stuck to the rules, but I know a way up there that he don’t. Not much of a security guard is he.’
‘I would have thought he expected an easy ride on this voyage, he is probably not experienced in crisis management. How do you get by him?’
‘Oh, it’s easy really, a ship this size has many routes most folk don’t know about. I have been on this crate a long time and know my way around far better than any officer I reckon.’
‘Such as?’
‘For example crew decks have access to interhull stairs, port and starboard. That is the bottom four decks and the top two used for admin and senior crew. The stairway links them but is out of bounds for passengers.’
‘But Deck Twelve is passenger accommodation isn’t it?’ said Naismith.
O’Boyle looked up and failed again to get eye contact. ‘Oh the modifications made a five years ago reduced crew numbers to make room for cheap fares, the redtags. Deck Twelve was converted to pax but the stairs are still there.’
‘But that would mean you have to climb a lot of stairs to get to the AdminDeck.?’
‘True, but there are always alternatives, I use a small elevator Munro has forgotten about, it’s by the morgue behind the medical centre on ServiceDeck, and it goes directly to a side passage, P5, near the bridge.’ O’Boyle munched away at the last of his toast. ‘This food is becoming a bloody disgrace.’
‘I will check it out,’ Naismith thanked him and got up to leave.
O’Boyle said ‘but the food is no better, why do you want to go up there?’
‘It’s where the power is,’ said Naismith.


* * *

They used gyroscoots to speed up the searches on TopDeck and BizDeck but still failed to find Ronan. Max wore his favoured field wear, a corded blue shirt and khaki trousers, pragmatic hardiness and multiple large pockets. He faced several large empty worktops which dominated the centre of the lab. Three students remained, Phil and Grant were engrossed in their project preparations and had a map spread out before them. It depicted their neighbouring research areas that spanned an ancient volcanic thrust belt in the Southern Ranger continent. The zone had been selected by Max’s sponsors because of the potential for rare minerals. Other geological and topographical maps of NA adorned the walls.
Enrique was at his preferred spot at the front, opposite Max’s desk. He was reading a science paper on his monitor. It was the evening of the third day since the event.
Max walked over to Enrique, ‘can I interrupt you with a quick question?’ he received a nod of approval, ‘you can read star charts and know about wormhole navigation correct?’
‘I know a bit, why?’
‘Hypothetically, how would you determine where you were if you were in a new bit of space?’
Enrique turned from the monitor, ‘why?’
‘Just that the extra couple of weeks journey time puts us further out from NA, I was wondering what was out there.’
The student shrugged, ‘just stars that aren’t close to wormholes probably, so we will never know.’ Enrique turned back to his monitor.
‘How do wormholes work?’
‘Oh come on, we all know the basics.’
‘So how do you pop out early and suddenly need only two more weeks to get to NA?’
‘Is that what they are saying? Not possible. A wormhole just links two points in space, bridging the folds in space-time to make a shortcut. Wormholes themselves don’t lengthen or shorten, as far as I know.’
‘So how come we need the extra time?’
‘Max I don’t know what you’re getting at, we are geologists, at least you are and I hope to be one day, we’re not astrophysicists. I don’t know.’
‘If you had a star chart of the region of space we are in now could you recognise some stars?’
‘Yeah, probably, why?’
‘I’d like to see that chart and you point out the stars.’
‘Ask ships-net to show you our position, it’s all there on the passenger information pages,’ said Enrique.
Max’s comtube rang, he pulled the slender black and silver tube from his pocket. Can you take a look for me now please?’
‘Okay’ Enrique answered with a sigh.
Max answered the comtube.
‘Hi fella, its K’
Max recognised the voice, ‘Hi, what’s up?’
‘Got some news about your boy, don’t worry he’s alive, can you come down, it’s urgent, with a bit more discretion this time.’ Kemp hung up.
Max popped the comtube away and announced, ‘got to go guys, see you tomorrow, lock up after you.’
‘One thing Max,’ said Enrique looking up from his monitor, ‘they’ve removed the star charts from the ships net, odd isn’t it.’
Max left the lab and sped down the stairs to Deck Twelve and then followed the familiar route to the triple interhull doors, onto the unused metal stairway and clanked his way down to Deck Fifteen. This time he zigzagged quietly along the route to Kemps secret office. As usual the deck seemed uninhabited, though he heard the odd bang and clunk from somewhere over towards the port side. Soon he was in the disused office but before he even knocked the creaky door opened with Kemps stained grin greeted him.
‘Better this time,’ said Kemp, behind him Max could see a mop of jet black hair.
‘Come in fella,’ Kemp stepped aside, and closed the door as Max entered. He faced someone small, in the green uniform of the crew, she was young woman of astonishing prettiness, oriental, and wide eyed, pale skin and pursed red lips.
Kemp gestured with his open hand ‘This is Asami, an occasional client of mine and a close friend of Ronan.
‘Hello Asami, tell me about Ronan, is he Okay? We’ve been looking for him everywhere,’ said Max.
‘Who are you sir?’ she said,
‘I am Max, his’…
‘Sensei, yes I know about you. Lonan is in a coma, I can’t wake him.’ she had a distinct Japanese accent, otherwise her English was excellent.
Max looked at Kemp, ‘What did you sell him?’ The drug supplier stroked his goatee in a fake gesture of trying to recall. ‘Come on man this is serious, no haggling.’
‘Some number six’ said Kemp flatly.
‘Jesus’ said Max, then to the girl he asked ‘where is he?’
‘He is in my loom.’
‘You can’t go on the crew decks Max,’ said Kemp.
Max thought Asami looked scared, both for Ronan and her job, drugs and passengers in her cabin meant she could be in serious trouble.
‘Don’t worry Asami I think I know someone who can help, please take me to him,’ he said.
‘No I can’t take you,’ she said, ‘it’s crew area only.’
‘Where is your cabin?’
‘two, oh three, Deck Thirteen’
‘Go to Ronan, I will call your cabin in half an hour.’
Max and Asami left Kemps den, she veered off the main corridor towards the crew elevators and Max weaved back to the interhull stairs and then eventually to his own deck. To avoid being overheard he stopped at the T junction between corridor one and passage six, with both corridors in view he got his comtube from his pocket and called Susan Morgan.
‘Doctor, its Max’
‘Hi Max’ she sounded pleased to hear him, ‘it is very late, I am about to finish for the day, what is it?’
‘I have found out where my student is,’
‘Oh thank goodness, I’m so pleased for you.’
‘He needs help, he has crashed out in his girlfriends cabin in crew quarters, he had smoked something like a very strong Double G and has been unconscious since, that is before the shake-up.’
‘That’s sounds not so good, and the girl will be in trouble too getting involved like this.’
‘Can you help please? now, and give the girl a break,’ he asked.
‘Okay, as long as he recovers, where are they?’
Max told her and thanked her, and added that he had another student working on the star charts, and then it hit him. He hung up and called Enrique.
‘You still in the lab?’
‘Yes, all route information has been taken off the ships-net. There is nothing there,’ he answered.
‘Stay there I will come up, I have an idea.’
‘Will do, see you soon.’
He called Asami ‘mushi mushi’ she said, he told her the doctor was on the way and reassured her that she was could trust her to keep quiet about the matter.
‘Thank you Max-san’ she said.
Max then tried to dial-back from Kemps earlier call but got a dead tone, he had to walk. He re-entered the stair well and two steps at a time got down as fast as he could, and then half walked and half jogged back to the den. Max began to breathe hard and his shirt arm pits had small dark blue stains. This time Kemp was surprised to see him. ‘That was quick.’
‘Ronan will be taken care of, but I need to ask a favour.’
‘All favours deserve favours,’ the negotiation began.
Ten minutes later Max was yet again on his way back up to Deck Twelve, once there he finally eschewed more stairs and took elevator number four. He shared it with four other passengers who left in pairs at Deck Eight and Deck Six, most of their sparse conversation was about food.
Alone in the lab Enrique looked bored, ‘what have you been doin,g a marathon?’
‘Feels like it,’ Max sat heavily into a chair, ‘right, enter this address.’
He shoved his hand is one of his shirt pockets and handed a piece of paper etched with scrawled handwriting. Enrique frowned at the paper, but did as requested and the screen switched to a contents page. ‘Select appendix four, click here and again, and now go to log in’ Max instructed.
Max pointed to some spidery letters, ‘enter this login ID and this password.’ The screen changed to a central processor dashboard. Max explained, ‘we are looking for navigation.’
Both heads panned up and down and left and right as the younger man scrolled down. ‘Here’ he said and clicked.
‘Now enter this password.’ Max pointed at more scrawl.
‘Where did you get this stuff?’
‘A misguided genius.’
‘Bingo!’ announced Enrique and they were into the navigation computer. They looked through the displayed menu.
‘Open up the current course map,’ urged the lecturer.
Enrique completed a series of clicks and a stylised star map opened up before them, there were G and H type stars, white dwarves, red giants, clouds, clusters and a spiral arm, all without a name or code.
‘Recognise anything?’ asked Max.
‘Nope, nothing springs out at me, it looks like an automated mapping tool taken from visual images.’
‘We can only stay logged in for ten minutes, so have a quick peak, and copy as many maps and images as you can and then get the dodge out.’

* * *

TopDeck had a shallow sky blue dome ceiling that was much higher than the other decks. It reached its maximum height of three stories over Market Square which was a little forward of centre and had four routes leading off from the midpoint of each side of the square, Stern Avenue was wide and lined with artificial trees, the Avenue linked Market Square to VT Plaza. The Plaza was a smaller elongate space where the elevators and stairs were accessed and was the gateway to the ships entertainment deck. Entering Market Square from Stern Avenue there were three narrower exits, Forward Close opposite, Port Street to the left and Starboard Way to the right. Along these four main thoroughfares and the curved lanes that branched off them were shops, restaurants, bars, salons, theatres, clubs and dance halls. It was a town centre.
Naismith was again on a bar stool in the Mayfair, he rarely sipped his beer, the club was one of the quieter more upmarket establishments in a lane just off Stern Avenue. He chatted to the bartender again for thirty pleasant minutes. Prices had doubled and patrons were now limited to two drinks a day, everything was automatically counted and debited from his cabin card. Customer numbers were down, but the ambiance was still there, themed as a tropical island with wall-screens of surf rolling up a sandy beach. Artificial potted palm trees dotted the generous space between the bar and the tinted glass doors to the main promenade.
Close by was a group of well heeled men talking quietly in educated tones, and on Naismith’s favourite topic, conspiracy. Listening unobtrusively the conversation carried on in unenlightened fashion until one of the four, a short balding man with a dark suntan and contrasting crisp white short sleeved shirt said, ‘I heard that the Captain has called for a crisis meeting this afternoon.’
‘Who is to attend?’ said a taller man in a maroon blazer.
‘My source says it’s just senior officers and a few technicians.’
‘We should be involved,’ added a third, and the fourth nodded.
Naismith caught baldy’s eye. The group quietened, toyed with their drinks, mineral water.
‘I am sorry to interrupt gentlemen but your conversation is fascinating, how did you hear of this crisis meeting?’
Baldy spoke again, dismissively ‘just conjecture, we are becoming increasingly bored with this monotonous trip.’
Naismith would not let it go, ‘did you know that a dozen crew from the lower decks and some passengers have been permanently moved to the AdminDeck.’
Eight eyebrows were raised simultaneously.
‘How do you know that?’ asked the blazer.
‘I have a few good connections with the crew myself, and the ordinary ranks are being restricted away from the AdminDeck and they are noticing things.’
‘Well I,’ Baldy emphasized ‘have it on good authority from my connections within the crew that all the chiefs are having a powwow tomorrow afternoon.’
‘Where is your information coming from?’ asked Naismith.
‘We are all from Deck Four, there are a few more officers around there and you pick up things you know. This morning an engineer said his chief officer had been summoned to a special meeting. I thought this a bit fishy and decided to ask around. I have not seen you before though what deck on you on?’
‘A middle deck’ said Naismith impassively.
Baldy took another sip of his drink, Naismith could see it was actually gin or vodka, Baldy dropped his voice to a whisper. ‘So I asked around, all chaps I know through my club’
Freemasons or some other cabal thought Naismith immediately.
‘Two others confirmed that their chiefs are unavailable at 3 pm today.’
‘Do you know where?’ asked the blazer a little louder.
Baldy frowned ‘keep it down Jeremy, they say they hold such meetings in the senior team room, wherever that is.’
Naismith was thinking, Deck Four meant first class tickets, well heeled, well spoken, freemasons or whatever, all connected people used to having influence. ‘Tell me, why you should be there?’
The fourth man in a polo shirt, slacks and deck shoes finally spoke. We are a group of concerned citizens, Marcus’ he indicated Baldy ‘is in the government trade department,’ then to the blazer ‘Jeremy is the Finance Director at PPJ, Clive here is the representative for Ranger North West on New Albion and I am Graeme Sharkey, CEO of Sharkey Corporation’.
‘I have heard about you Mr Sharkey, and am very pleased to meet you all, I am William Naismith a business consultant, and I think you are correct. Distinguished people like you need to be involved on whatever crisis the Captain is wrestling with. If I can facilitate your endeavours and get you in, would you like to join this meeting?’
‘You can arrange an invitation?’ said Sharkey.
‘Not exactly,’ smiled Naismith.
‘Gatecrash the powwow. Yes of course’ said baldy Marcus.

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Tag der Veröffentlichung: 02.09.2011

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