Deep Black

By John M. Collura

When an empty space freighter that’s been missing for ages is found adrift, the only clue as to what happened is the captain's journal. What it reveals may be something better left unknown.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Feb 9, 2024
• ISBN: 9781312404939

Book preview

Prologue

The hatch of the derelict freighter opened with a menacing hiss, and the burst of air that rushed into the airlock startled the leader of the boarding party.  He knew these older ships always made unusual noises and cursed under his breath for being taken off guard. Everyone was already anxious enough about this mission, he thought, and this spooky old vessel created enough uneasiness among his people without his jitters adding to their stress levels.

  As the swirling air was still settling around them, his anger forced him to quickly step inside the freighter, leading his small squad forward. As the last person crossed the threshold, the hatch automatically shut behind them with another disquieting hiss, as if the ship was unhappy to have them aboard, and this time the entire squad flinched at the sound.

The gravity and lights were all still on, as if this particular vessel hadn’t been adrift for years, and that at any minute someone would be strolling down the corridor to welcome the new people aboard.  But the only greeting they received in the empty corridor was silence. It wasn’t as if the boarding party had actually expected to find anyone here.  All prior scans had showed no living beings aboard, but, still… The leader broke the eerie silence by calling for an air check and was told that the sensors confirmed healthy, breathable air in the cabin, which would allow them to go on without their O2 packs.  While the sensor worked well enough in a laboratory, in the real world, it still wasn’t to be trusted until someone tested the air by actually breathing it in. 

And survived.

Normally, the lowest ranking person was the first to take a breath, but the leader lived (and maybe someday would die), by the ancient leadership philosophy that he would never ask one of his people to do anything he wasn’t prepared to do himself.  So, taking a last deep breath from his oxygen supply, he unlocked his helmet’s visor and slid it up and open, exposing his face.  The air was cool and dry.  He waited to experience some type of physical reaction but he didn’t feel any tingling or pain.  The cold air actually felt good on his skin. 

With his senses now heightened, he sipped a small wisp of air and both literally and metaphorically held his breath.  And waited.

Nothing happened to him. 

He exhaled all of his safe air and then, after a short pause, breathed in deep.  The air tasted stale to him.  Dead air, he thought.  His gut told him that no living thing had breathed it in for a very long time and for some reason, he was troubled by that thought.  Nevertheless, still finding himself upright and alive, he gave a thumbs up to his crew and they all opened their face shields. 

They moved forward silently, their footfalls soft, weapons at the ready, alert for any surprises.  The bridge was only a short walk from the airlock but they covered the distance at a slow, steady measure. 

Like the passageway, they found the bridge empty and silent.  The leader motioned for his people to fan out and check the area thoroughly.  The task was accomplished in short order and the deck was found to be as vacant as it appeared.   

A search of the rest of the ship would come later.  For now, they needed to determine the worthiness of the drifting vessel.  Following protocol, the leader posted his security detail at the bridge’s entrances while his technicians examined the ship’s systems. 

For his part, the leader moved to the captain’s private sea cabin, tucked away just under the bridge.  Scanning the room, he quickly located the interface and opened it to the Captain’s Log.  Despite the long stretch of inactivity, the machine powered up quickly and the screen came to life. 

  Last entry, he ordered. 

  A sad, wan, face greeted him and a melancholy voice began…

Chapter 1

"Everyone’s dead except me.  And now that I’m the last living crewmember, it falls on me to ensure that the story of what really happened to everyone on Ceres, is told.

Hmm...Ceres. 

  That’s not the official name. During formal correspondence, it’s known as Freight Ship number Zero-seven-eight-three dash nine-two.  But informally, it’s Ceres. It even says so on the hull.  My best guess is that after the war ended, the ship never received a refit at a facility that was capable of doing the exterior paint work.  And as a result, the old name still exists, stenciled boldly right where they first put it all those years ago.

  I can remember that time.  Back when they gave ships real names.  The names of people, places or even ideas.  But after the war, that practice ceased. Bold proclamations of individuality were erased, to be replaced with sterile numeric codes.  But Ceres is still Ceres, and I must confess that I’m glad of that, as I possess a soft spot in my heart for before.  But sadly, those big red letters are just about the only thing that still remains of Ceres today.  Our mission saw to that.

Chapter 2

Where to begin?  I suppose I should start from the very beginning.  I’ll try to stay on the straight and narrow, but I know I’ll stray from time to time, so please indulge me.  A personal fault I’m afraid, but I promise my tangents will be as short as possible.  However, I feel that to accurately give the full account, it will be necessary to touch on some parts of my own personal journey to understand how I became part of this ill-begotten one.

As a rule, I am very careful and deliberate in choosing my new ventures, but for some reason, in this case I signed on to Ceres rather impulsively.  I don’t know why I did.  Perhaps my fate was somehow pre-ordained? And who’s to say it wasn’t?  I’ll leave that question for you to decide.

Ironically, I was never planning to even go to space, and if I had to point to one factor that led me here, I think I’d have to blame my father.  He wanted me to be like him, but as I grew older, I came to believe that we were opposites and I did everything in my power to prove that true.

  I didn’t purposefully aim to be a disappointment to my family, but I just couldn’t see the point of pleasing everyone else at the expense of my own happiness and when the day arrived that I should head off to university, I rebelled.  And so, on that morning, I announced to my parents that I would not be going to school, but rather, that I was departing for the Army.

  Surprisingly, my father did not disapprove of my startling news.  His only advice was that I should remember that the nail that sticks up will get hammered down.  At first, I was dumbfounded as to why he hadn’t erupted, and then I became alarmed, for I perceived that if my news did not anger him then I must have made a grave error.  But it was too late to change course, as the Army, then, as now, takes your signature on a piece of paper much more seriously than one should reasonably expect of such trivialities.

My trepidation, I presently found, was well-deserved, and I soon discovered that becoming a soldier doesn’t just occur when you put on a uniform. You have to earn the title. The first days in my new position were difficult, to put it mildly.  My former social rank and position was inconsequential to my new taskmasters, a concept that was very difficult for me to reconcile with.  Further, my success or failure was not an interest to them, and they particularly rejoiced in reminding me of what I had given up to become so miserable. 

Physical and mental stress had previously been only concepts to me.  Now they were real.  Pain, sweat and fear were constant, but oddly, after a while, they were no longer disheartening, but rather challenges to be overcome.  And once that done, I had, I think for the first time in my life, actually earned what I newly possessed.

  Eager for more, I volunteered for the Army’s elite forces and if I thought my transformation from citizen to soldier was the most difficult thing I had ever done, I soon found I was sadly mistaken. But, as before, I prevailed…just in time for hostilities to break out.  This had the somewhat unfortunate result in me realizing, perhaps much too late, what the real purpose of a soldier was, and that, to be quite blunt, is to kill. 

  My first foray into combat saw me survive even the worst of circumstances, but instead of being grateful for my good fortune and putting the whole business behind me when my enlistment ended, I found myself horrified at the thought of returning to civilized society.  I had become a warrior and I confess…found it to my liking.  And when peace finally came, I was actually sad. 

As a consequence, with no enemies to fight, I became self-destructive. I travelled down darker alleys than I intended (both metaphorical and real), becoming acquainted with a much seedier side of life than I had bargained for. It was almost my downfall, and to be honest, I expected the end of me to come at any moment.  Ironically though, it was the next war that saved me.

Well, I seemed to have become quite dreary.  Perhaps now is not the time to detail those years, but I think I may have to get back to that particular subject later. 

  In any event, I emerged from that global calamity more practical, if not a little more stoic.  Yet, I felt adrift, and searched for meaning in my life.  Deciding that I was finally done with soldiering, I tried my hand at many other occupations, but none seemed a good fit. At a dead end, I was faced with the reality that I had not run away from my father’s pre-arranged life, but rather, only postponed it.  And so, I turned to the very same field he wanted me to pursue, medicine.

The war had wounded me spiritually as well as physically and after taking so many lives, I would now dedicate myself to trying to save them.  This mostly healed me, but I needed an escape from all the bad memories that I was constantly reminded of on Earth. 

  Regardless of the serenity my new profession gave me, the new post-war society insisted upon a large amount of conformity, more than I was willing to give, and as a result I found myself going off-world to start over, where I could at least pretend to conform without anyone actually forcing me to. 

Once out here, and with ample finances to live a moderate life, I had no compelling need to be constantly employed.  My independent nature allowed me to be an itinerant sailor and I developed the habit of signing on for short-term voyages, owing no allegiance any one ship or employer.  In between jobs I was carefree until I eventually felt the urge to once again sign on to the next ship that was heading…anywhere.

Which now brings us to the true start of this misadventure.

I was hungry.

  As a rule, I’m a light eater, but on this day, I was particularly so.  An army moves on its stomach they say, and although I am now but an army of one, I am no different from the rest of creation in that respect, so I opened my eyes and began to think of food.

As I lay in my rented, budget-friendly berth, contemplating my meal to come, the only thing visible was the dim, green control panel button glowing faintly off to my left.  Its weak shine threw just enough light in that place of total darkness to remind me that the ceiling lay only about one hundred centimeters from my nose.  An experienced space traveler, I knew enough not to sit up abruptly.  To do so would result in a sharp blow to your head, the first of many dos and don’ts one learns while occupying third-class space billets.  Bruised foreheads are a dead giveaway of inexperience, or a sign of nightmares, either of which in space are usually portents of accidents. 

The black is not as safe as they say it is back on the planets.  And like the liquid sea of Earth, this expanse’s stark beauty can suddenly become cold and brutally unforgiving of errors.  Many a wide-eyed youth has been destroyed by this place and the veteran sailor will be more than a little wary of some new face.  New people have a very bad habit of not only killing themselves foolishly, but also those unlucky enough to be too close at hand.  So, until those wide eyes become a little less wide and little more experienced, they are the eyes of loneliness and fear, frequent visitors here.

    As my own eyes adjusted to the dimness, I reached up and pressed the soft, green ember gently, awakening the rest of the control panel which bathed me in a soothing emerald glow.  I then turned on my interior lamp, which, thanks to some ingenious engineer (who either listened to enough complaints or, perish the thought, actually used one of their own products), powered up in intensity softly, ever-so-slowly, to avoid temporarily blinding its user. 

Beginning as a faint and soft rosy hue, the lamp’s light built in     luminosity and when it had transformed itself into a warm yellow glow, I stopped the progression. My berth, now transformed from a dark and lonely universe to a cozy, almost womb-like enclosure, made me feel rather mellow.  The invisible roof of my oblong box was now a white sky, and its ventilation pinholes above me appeared as a million tiny black stars.  It struck me that my view was the exact opposite of the view from a first-class stateroom, where upon awakening, one can stare through the luxury of a porthole into the blackness of space where endless, tiny white stars are forever winking ‘Good Morning’ with their light of countless eons. 

  But of course, for me, and most others on this station, seeing the stars, or our sun, upon opening their eyes was out of the question. 

And at this distance out, our sun is just another cold light against an even colder black sky, and it’s more often than not, an unpleasant reminder that all of us are trapped together in this large, floating cage, an eternity from where we belong.

Finally ready to rise, I reached up over my head and pressed the OUT button on the small control panel.  After the two customary warning beeps, the retaining wall to my right silently withdrew downward and I and my bunk slid right, delivering me slowly out of my cubbyhole and out into the open space of the rest of the compartment.  My cozy berth, once a safe haven, was now transformed into a dangerous ledge jutting over a black abyss.  Upon reaching its outermost limit, the sliding bunk stopped with a slight bump and not for the first time I thought that today would be the day it shall dump me unceremoniously to the deck.  However, my bunk held (perhaps that anonymous engineer again), and I sat up without fear of bruising my head.  Swinging my legs over the bunk’s edge, and placing my feet on the deck, my bunk was now transformed into a place to sit.  And it was from there that I looked into the dimness of my lodgings.

To the immediate right from where I currently sat, recessed a mere one meter into the wall, was a small head. Clearly designed for utility, the space, except for the addition of a shower head at the top and a multi-purpose drain at the bottom, was a vertical copy of my bunk.

  Save for a small gear locker above my bed and the exit to my left, there was nothing else to my berth. All in all, it was a functional, little peg hole, that was designed simply as a place to exist. I imagine a hermit of old would find them very comfortable, even if we so-called modern humans do not. 

  With my stomach still protesting, I made a decision about food. While my choices weren’t as varied as on the planets, they were by no means not without variety.  So, after tidying up, which took little time at all, I opened the door and re-joined the rest of space station IO-1. 

As I exited my berth (this particular compartment was officially designated as D3-15S, meaning Deck 3, compartment 15 on the starboard side), I was reminded once again of my proximity to the station’s exact center.  While the deck of my berth was flat, the deck in the passageway outside of it was concavely flowing upward in both directions.  In all my years aboard space stations, I have never gotten used to seeing an arcing floor under my feet. The curvature itself is actually not so pronounced that you can feel it.  It’s what you can see that’s the curiosity, as it creates the illusion so that you will eventually strike your head on the ceiling if you walk far enough.  Of course, that’s not what actually happens, the deck and overhead just continue to curl perpetually upward, never converging, allowing you take a long stroll in a straight line and ending up where you started without ever having had to turn back.  A sort of ‘round the world tour, if you will.

  I’ve seen visitors from the outer decks (where the curvature is very slight and thus much less obvious), standing in our lower-level passageways with amused expressions on their faces trying to get a ball to roll continuously on the curved surface, only to have it stop eventually and remain securely in place as it would on a flat surface on Earth.  This seeming anomaly is courtesy of the constant pull of our rotating station’s artificial gravity. 

    An (unintended) result of the station’s architecture is a rather decidedly un-One hierarchy which has developed. Those living the closest to the outer decks also happen to be the upper ranks of the space station’s command, while the inner decks are mainly left to the technicians and laborers who have somehow evolved into their own lower-deck society.  As this type of system goes against official One dogma, it is therefore officially unrecognized.  Yet despite this non-existence, certain sections of IO have developed their own sense of identity, and competitions, mostly friendly (sometimes not), occasionally take place that pit section against section in every type of contest imaginable. But for the most part, we all get along pretty well.  You have to.

From the outside, however, these divisions are invisible, and all one can see is IO’s general shape, which is that of a giant wheel.  At its hub are the Continuous Orbit Reactors, which are rather unimaginatively referred to as the Core, and wrapped around it are successive, circular decks. 

Onboard a circular station like IO-1, artificial gravity is produced throughout the station by a constant rotational force, which is created by reactors in the Core.  Because the gravity is directed outward from the Core, your head is always closer to the Core than your feet, therefore up is towards the center and down is towards the outer edge.  Seems simple enough, except that the deck numbering system starts just outside the Core with Deck 1, with each successive deck moving away from the Core being numbered, 2, 3, and so on.  Again, this would seem simple enough, but it can present a bit of a problem for newcomers accustomed to the ground floor of any multi-level building being numbered 1, with each additional floor number rising upward the higher it goes.  IO’s rather un-intuitive system lends itself to a fun game aboard that we play with novices, who are sent on errands with directions only entailing going ‘up’ or ‘down’ a certain number of decks without the benefit of a specific deck number as their destination.  It’s all in good fun (for the old hands, anyways) and no more harmful than sending someone to borrow the occasional left-handed wrench.

  Regardless of the numbering system’s rationale, the station’s decks are sensibly configured to maximize efficiency.  Immediately outside the Core are the varied utility systems of IO such as power, plumbing, climate, etc., and the technicians immediately assigned to those sections reside close to their work decks.

  Moving out beyond that, are the living spaces and working stations for support staff, then command and control decks, officer’s quarters and then executive level spaces. But the decking does not stop there and the rest of the decks are not for people.  They’re for essential stores, cargo and finally, the whole reason IO is here, the docks.  But despite the importance of the docks, none of that matters as much as the ultimate priority on IO, and that is the giant Korn reactors in the Core.

Named for their inventor, these ten behemoths do more than just keep the IO-1 space station continually spinning on its axis for the sake of gravity.  They provide all the power, oxygen and water the station can use, and from what I’ve seen, with much more to spare.

However, despite their grandeur, like all machines, the larger they are, the larger their potential for problems and the Korns are no exception.  But to be fair, they’ve had very few recorded accidents and all of them occurred because of human error (i.e., stupidity), something Korn was always quick to point out.   

  However, there was one terrible accident that Korn did not want to speak much about, most likely because it occurred at the Korn Corporation’s very own reactor testing facility on Mars.  Almost a hundred people were killed when a new model reactor exploded while being tested at the Loel facility.

  The cause was officially blamed on a welder (who, as it turned out, conveniently died in the blast), who was somehow so foolish as to ignite his torch in a highly oxygen-rich environment. Why that occurred, no one can answer, but regardless, the blast caused a series of other explosions.  One of these (most inconveniently), took all main reactor room audio-video feed off-line, rendering everyone outside that area blind as to the extent of the damage, and most importantly, as you’ll soon see, the nature and number of the injuries. 

What wasn’t damaged was the newly installed, most advanced, fire-suppression system. Any flames were quickly dealt with by the extinguishers and fresh oxygen was quickly pumped in.  Thus, rescue crews were confidently informed that not only had the fire danger been neutralized, but that the air was safe to breathe. Armed with this information and zealous in their intent, no one donned any type of respirator.

This was a fatal mistake, as the reactor’s most critical component, the tightly sealed internal fusion chamber, was leaking and incredibly, unbeknownst to anyone, a brand-new substance was being produced that was diabolically poisonous. 

The toxin, a slightly heavier-than-air gas, uncaring about the how or why of the blast, was now free from its constraints and it flowed along the reactor room deck as a grey fog, moving and spreading like an incoming tide.  This mass was unfortunately identical to the cloudy by-product produced by the new fire-suppression system, so, despite it being clearly visible, it was largely ignored by everyone.  Everyone, that is, except a technician named Juun. 

Juun was the last in line of a group of rescuers making their way to the reactor.  Because of her haste, she stepped wrongly, sprained her ankle and then crashed headlong into a hatchway frame, sustaining a concussion. Despite being injured and momentarily losing consciousness, she continued forward, but trailed far behind her comrades, who were unaware of her fall and had by then already reached the reactor spaces. 

  When she finally caught up, despite the blood running down her face and into her eyes, she could see well enough to discern that everyone, including her rescue group, was dead or dying.  She was also astute enough to realize that whatever was happening to them appeared to be caused by the low-lying fog that was by then lapping at her feet. Recognizing it was beyond her means to stop the carnage, and bad ankle or not, she beat a hasty retreat to raise the alarm. 

  On her way out, she ran into another rescue party, led by a senior Korn executive.  This person took one look at her bloody head, pronounced limp and concussion induced slurred speech, and incorrectly assumed that she was a wounded refugee from the initial explosion.  Despite Juun’s frantic attempts to warn them off, she was tranquilized and brought to the infirmary.  So, it wasn’t until she and her escort reached that destination that she was finally able to convince the staff there that there was still danger in the reactor room. By the time there was a response to her warning and the hatches were remotely locked down, of the scores of people who had entered, none came out alive.

Ironically, the gas, if left undisturbed, was no threat to anyone above it, but, once it was stirred up and breathed in, it was fatal.

  When the gas is inhaled, it imitates oxygen molecules, fooling the body into allowing it to go for a ride along the bloodstream.  There, they begin to chemically react with the white blood cells, who are not fooled, and in doing their job, the resulting chemistry produces little corrosive bubbles.  But these little buggers don’t stay little for long. 

By the time they reach the small capillaries in the brain, the bubbles, now growing rapidly in size, create significant blockages in the narrow vessels. With the heart pushing the blood forward and the newly formed embolisms resisting any further movement, the ever-burgeoning bubbles cause a blood back-up and when nothing can move back or forward, they go sideways, all-the-while dissolving the outwardly expanding the arteries.

Hemorrhaging begins in the brain, disorienting and debilitating the victim while the now enlarged carotid arteries, which are not encased in heavy muscle and are rather close to the skin, bulge grotesquely until they burst under pressure in an uncontrolled arterial spray.

But none of this was known to the people most desperately in need of that information and it wasn’t until after the reactor was locked down and a rational and methodical plan was formed, that the next wave of forays into the quarantined zone discovered the scope of the devastation.

The first probe entering at the outer edges of the reactor spaces learned very quickly to stand back as each locked hatch was slid open, to avoid being engulfed by the cascading piles of the dead. 

Those victims, foiled in their not hasty enough retreat by the lockdown of all the exits, had apparently resorted to ripping the control panels apart in a desperate attempt to override the locking mechanisms.  Sadly, their struggles were hopeless, as the demon gas had already silently swirled about them. One by one, they were cut down in the panicked press against the hatches, and investigators were greeted by the sight of contorted, fear-filled faces, burst open necks and worst, the victims’ own hands firmly, but helplessly around their own throats in futile attempts to keep their life’s blood from escaping.

  Perhaps the most gruesome scene of all was in the reactor room itself. Entering there, they saw that the formerly scrupulously clean, white-hued space, had been transformed into a new color scheme with bright red now decorating everything, and everyone.

In the aftermath of the incident, there is no doubt that if the Korns were not essential for society’s energy needs, they all would have been shuttered immediately. However, there was no ready replacement for the non-polluting, clean energy, water and oxygen producing machines.  No one was in a hurry to even suggest shutting them down, including the government, but there were serious concerns about safety and future occurrences.  And the biggest question raised was whether Korn knew about the gas before the accident.

Regarding that small point, he never addressed the question.  The Council, determining that the Korn’s were essential to society, had immediately classified the resulting investigation as top secret. 

As to the gas in question, now officially known as diaphanous semi-oxygenated fusion effluent gas (but usually shortened to fusion effluent gas, or feg), it’s been determined that eliminating the process that makes the deadly fumes is impossible.  So, the simplest solution was to just live with it and have gas masks on hand in the event of any re-occurrence. 

An uneasy public was made even more alarmed after the similar failures of other Korn’s (mostly the smaller, residential units), but they were proven to be acts of sabotage by those intending to sue Korn, and after The Council decreed Korn could not be sued, no more feg related accidents occurred. 

  As for the Korns, they underwent a robust anti-tampering upgrade, and along with a multitude of public service announcements regarding safe practices and the wonders of the Korns, most everyone accepted the inherent danger of the machines, and as time went by, the Korns were universally considered safe.  Not too different a situation, I guess, than how the Pompeiians and Californians once viewed their own tempestuous neighbors. 

  But we still have gas masks on hand, just in case.

Sometime after emerging from my latest little temporary home, I walked up the curving passageway and found Mess D3-23S.  Despite this particular mess being no different than any of the other lower deck mess halls; same architecture, same food and after a while in space, seemingly the same faces, it had become my normal haunt.  Besides, it was the closest one to my berth.

Wandering in, I looked at the IO-1 timepiece over the doorway, which showed it was about 09:30 Earth Mean Time, as well as the date, the currently working shift and the amount of time remaining until the next shift came on duty, all of which meant little to me, and took a seat at the bar, or what passes for one out here.

If one were to walk into a real bar, they’d find beer taps and a wall lined with bottles of every shape and size, each containing a liquid with its own particular hue.  But in this faux bar, none of that exists. Even photos of the real stuff are forbidden.  All you see on the wall out here are an eclectic assortment of non-alcoholic decorations.  Travel posters of Earth or Mars are prominently displayed, along with not-so-subtle reminders of our mission and the importance of One.  What is also evident, and very authorized, are the reminders of home in the form of photos of family smiling from millions of kilometers away.

In contrast to those artificial splashes of color, is the flat surface of the bar itself.  Made of a white synthetic that resists even the smallest stain or discoloration, the better to prove cleanliness, it is completely devoid of character. It might as well have been a sterile table taken from some equally sterile laboratory. 

Despite the rather temperate and antiseptic look and feel of the place, there actually was some sort of alcohol available, but only just so to technically call the counter a bar. And it was very weak to boot (obviously, to keep people relatively clear-headed), and if that weren’t enough of an obstacle to inebriation, the drink chits are so miserly allotted that no one just plops down and orders a cold one without giving it careful consideration.  However, the end result cannot be denied, there are very few alcohol-related problems in space. But despite all that, the fact that people congregate here still makes the mess halls the social hubs of every deck.

  On this particular day at the start of my story, the mess had a smattering of people, all of whom were regulars.  The mess steward on duty, who was apparently not very busy that day, saw me come in and began to walk over to me as I took a stool. 

He was a friendly sort once he got to know you, but his friendliness towards you never seemed to propel him any faster than his usual gait, which was decidedly slow.  He was clearly tired of space and had another seven months until his contract expired before he could head home, or back in, as they say out here.  A handwritten placard behind the bar prominently displayed his remaining time aboard.  It currently proclaimed, Only 207 days until Earth.

  Morning, I said.

  He only nodded in reply, noticeably deviating from his usual, ‘And good morning to you!’, so I asked, Everything okay?

He shook his head, still silent, and inclined his head to the tables behind me.  I took a careful look around the mess and noticed that   everyone was in deep, but quiet conversation, and all seemed to be giving surreptitious glances at one particular table where a couple sat silently just a few meters away from me. 

The two Korn technicians at the small table had the remains of their dinner pushed aside and forgotten, replaced by six small canisters of beer, a three-day allotment, and the maximum for one sitting.  The techs, whom I knew well enough to say ‘Hello’ to, but not well enough to know their names, seemed to be rather glum.  They sat across from each other without either one so much as making a peep.  One, the female, was solemnly staring at her now empty canister, apparently hoping for a miraculous refill, while the man slowly rotated his own empty in one hand.  As I sat there watching them, it occurred to me that they were usually very chatty with each other. While pondering this unusual silence, one of them, the woman suddenly turned in my direction as if she could feel my gaze.  The man followed suit. 

  What are you looking at? she said accusingly, an uncharacteristic harshness in her voice.     

  Nothing, I said quickly, taken aback at her tone.  I just thought that you seemed, well, down today.  Something wrong? 

  She looked at he, and vice versa, and then back at me, each with a surprised look. 

  What?  Have you been in an airlock? said the man.  Didn’t you hear about the accident?

  No, I said, sitting up suddenly.  What accident?

  By now the other patrons had decided their own conversations were not quite so interesting anymore and were quietly eavesdropping in on ours. 

  My facial expression must have convinced both techs that I wasn’t as well informed as they thought I should be and they became less harsh. 

  Had a problem with one of the Korn’s early in the shift, said the man slowly, with serious deliberation, we lost…  The empty beer canister he had been turning in his hand was suddenly compressed into an hourglass shape with a quick metallic crunch.  The woman reached over and placed her hand on his, which was still enveloping the crushed canister. Looking up into her sympathetic eyes, he slowly loosened his grip while his own eyes began to water.  He turned back to the can and began softly working it again in his hand. Every now and then it made a small pop as it was dented a little more by the man’s flexing fingers. 

  I’m sorry, I stammered, What happened? I asked earnestly.

  The man, for all his outward toughness, apparently did not want to answer.  The woman, however, provided the details.

  No one’s sure exactly what happened, she said, but around the change of date, we had an electrical failure on number seven. We shut it down and our supervisor, Merk, sent us for a replacement part.  She didn’t need to send us both, I think she was just being generous, giving us a chance to take a break together. While we were on our way back, just outside the reactor’s hard space, we heard the feg alarms go off and all of the airtight doors in front of and behind us closed and locked.  We were stuck in the C ring area until help could come.  We were okay where we were, but in A and B rings...  Her voice trailed off and she too became too choked up to continue. 

  I decided to let her take a moment to compose herself before I would ask another question, but she continued on without further prompting.

  "After the alarms stopped, a rescue team from outside the Core rings came to C.  They took their time verifying our space was clear, I mean they could see us and we weren’t having any issues, but they still took their time.  Then they went into the airlock between B ring and C ring to get a diagnostic.  They