ELECTRONICS WORKSHOP
Andy Corvus was not smiling as he bent over the electronics components scattered across the worktable.
“Murphy’s Law,” he muttered to himself. “If anything can go wrong, it will.”
“What seems to be the problem?” Dorn asked.
The cyborg was sitting easily on a swivel-topped stool a meter or so from Corvus, who was on his feet, staring unhappily at the hardware strewn along the table. The electronics workshop was small, hardly big enough for the two men. Its one workbench was fully equipped, though, with tools and diagnostic instruments. Corvus wondered how
Corvus looked up at Dorn and his face went from a frustrated scowl to a sheepish expression. “I’ve been working on this rig since we left Selene and it’s still not right.” Pointing at a gray titanium cylinder resting on the workbench, no bigger than his fist, he said, “I’ve got to get all these components to fit into that container. Six kilos of goods in a five-kilo bag.”
Dorn waved his human hand. “Get a bigger container.”
“It’s not that easy,” Corvus said, looking chagrined. “The size of the container is dictated by the volume available in the dolphin’s skull.”
“Dolphin?”
Grinning crookedly, Andy said, “Sure. Didn’t you know we’re carrying dolphins aboard the ship? Taking them out to the
“Dolphins.” Dorn seemed incredulous.
“It’s part of my work,” Corvus explained. “I’m brain-linking with the dolphins as a sort of preliminary test, to see if I can make contact with the leviathans.”
“And we’re carrying dolphins on this ship all the way out to Jupiter?”
Corvus nodded enthusiastically. “We sure are. Four whole decks have been converted into an aquarium for them.”
Dorn shook his head in disbelief.
“I was going to try to make contact with them later today, but if I can’t get my transceiver into the volume they’ve allowed for their skulls…”
“You’ll have to make smaller components,” Dorn said, quite matter-of-factly. Then he added, “Or make more room in the dolphins’ skulls.”
Deidre had slept poorly, her dreams filled with scenes of war and bloodshed. Dorn—Dorik Harbin—didn’t appear in those dreams; at least she didn’t remember his presence. But the dreams were horrifying, people being slaughtered, villages burned to the ground. And the old
She was glad that Dorn wasn’t in the dining room when she came down for breakfast. But as she slid her tray along the dispenser tables she saw Max Yeager sitting off in a corner by himself, as if he’d been waiting for her.
As soon as he saw Deirdre the burly engineer got up from his solitary table and buzzed over to her.
“Good morning,” he said, smiling widely. “I hope you slept well.”
“Not very,” Deirdre replied.
She filled her tray with a plate of eggs, a mug of fruit juice, and a dish of melon balls, Yeager beside her every step of the way. She found an empty table and Yeager immediately pulled out a chair in his meaty hands and held it for her.
“I didn’t sleep all that well, either,” he said as he sat across the table from her. “Strange surroundings, eh? Have you done much traveling?”
With a shake of her head, Deirdre admitted, “This is my first trip away from home.”
“I’ve traveled a lot,” Yeager said. “Been to Mercury twice, helping Yamagata Corporation design those big solar energy satellites they’re putting up out there. Rumor is, they want to use some of ’em to power lasers that’ll propel lightsail ships out to Alpha Centauri.”
“Alpha Centauri?” she marveled.
Before Yeager could respond, Deirdre’s pocketphone buzzed. She fished it from the pocket of her slacks and saw the text message on its minuscule screen: “DEIRDRE AMBROSE, PLEASE REPORT TO DR. POHAN IN THE INFIRMARY. AT ONCE.”
Staring at her, Yeager wondered aloud, “What’s that all about?”
Deirdre pushed her chair away from the table and got to her feet. “I have to go,” she said.
“You haven’t had any breakfast!”
“I’m not that hungry, really.” And she hurried out of the dining room, glad to leave Yeager standing there alone.
Wrinkled, bald, mustachioed Dr. Pohan smiled at her as Deirdre stepped into his office, but somehow his smile seemed tense to her, forced. The wall screens showed images of medical scans, slices through her body, circles of intestines, interiors of lungs like budding, branching flowers, pulsing, beating organs.
That’s what I look like inside, Deirdre said to herself as she sat, staring fascinatedly, in front of the doctor’s desk.
Without preamble, Dr. Pohan said, “We have a puzzlement on our hands, young lady.”
“A puzzlement?”
“You have rabies.”
Shocked, Deirdre gasped, “Rabies? That’s impossible!”
Gesturing to the wall screens, “Impossible or not, your scans show the rabies virus lurking in your bloodstream. It can infect your brain, you know.”
“I can’t have rabies,” Deirdre insisted. “You get rabies from an animal bite, don’t you? I haven’t been bitten by any animal. We don’t allow pets on
His strained smile still in place, Dr. Pohan said gently, “How you acquired the virus is puzzling, very puzzling. But the important thing at the moment is to neutralize the virus before it reaches your brain and you begin to show symptoms.”
“Neutralize it? You mean kill it?”
“If possible,” said the doctor. “There are injections that can eliminate the virus, but unfortunately we don’t carry such medications aboard ship. Who would expect cases of rabies to show up on an interplanetary liner?”
Deirdre caught the plural. “You said cases?”
“Yes. The woman you are replacing, she died of rabies on the trip out from Earth.”
INFIRMARY
“I could die?” Deirdre cried.
“If untreated,” said Dr. Pohan.
“But you said you don’t have the vaccine.…”
“The treatment requires human rabies immunoglobulin. We were able to fabricate a small amount of same in
