She had been tapping on her command panel as she got the information, “Doctor Stoker, how much time do we have?”
He hurriedly checked his data pad, “I . . . ah . . . just over twenty minutes, I think, maybe.”
“Captain Helt, you have just over twenty minutes to get us off this planet.”
CeCe looked up at the screen, “What can you do?”
The wide-eyed engineer was speechless for a few seconds before the challenge sunk in, “It would be possible to use some structural materials to short across the gap, but the resulting control would be very sloppy, I’m sure. The real problem is that it would take at least an hour to get people out there and a couple of hours to do even a bad job. Even if we did a good job, the whole thing is theoretical at best. The only other wild-ass thing that comes to mind is to use the floaters to lift the ship, but we would need something like two thousand of them.”
He swept his eyes around his panels and screens, looking for that one thing that would solve this problem. Finally, he slumped in surrender, “Give me a week, and I could do it.”
The alarmed voice of Doctor Stoker riveted everyone, “Admiral, we’ve just lost the monitor.”
Wills jerked his head around, “How? To what?”
“Radiation; there was a huge spike and it was gone.”
“I thought that equipment was hardened against that?”
Stoker looked at Wills with a wide-eyed expression, “It was; that’s why we have a problem. That radiation wave is less than three minutes behind the data stream.”
They all just looked at each other; each assimilating in their own way that what had been a marginally successful mission that they were heading home from had just disintegrated into a horrible death from radiation exposure.
CeCe placed one finger over a command activation touch pad, “We have power, we have control, and we have an isolator drive. Shall we take the quick way or the long painful way to Valhalla?”
Wills looked at where her finger was and realized that she had been entering the isolator drive release sequence. He looked at her, “You can’t do that; the Silverman won’t deactivate its lockout this close to a mass object.”
CeCe looked slightly embarrassed, “Actually, sir, the Silverman was never set up with mass proximity lockout authority. Chalk it up to paranoia about being attacked by kitchen utensils; it made everyone feel better if humans retained control until we knew more about how the Silverman performed. So, activation of our isolator drive requires my command release and that of Captain Helt. You were sent a memo describing the modification.”
A stunned Wills just slumped in his chair and nodded.
CeCe turned to Helt, “Captain, if you would please.”
Helt leaned forward and checked his board, “You do realize that the first time this was tried was the last time this was tried, don’t you?”
CeCe smiled at Helt, “It has always fascinated me that no trace, even microscopic, was ever found of the original isolator test device or its crew. We have more power and better control. Given the choice of sitting around watching our skin peel off or getting it over with in a hurry . . . well . . . .”
Helt grimly nodded and entered his release code, “I could really use a beer.”
CeCe looked around at the group on the bridge and touched her finger to the pad.
Nothing happ--
#
It was days, hours, or no time at all. There was no sight, no sound; just the smell of onions--CeCe’s Mother was fixing her French onion soup. The only thing that reached her mind was the chilling cold and the soft murmur of the ventilation system. She tried to open her eyes, but wasn’t quite sure where they were. She jolted back to awareness, snapped her eyes open, and tried to suppress the spasms that racked her body. Gradually, her breathing slowed, the shivering and shaking calmed, and her mind tried to report for duty.
She was looking at the control console, “Admiral, are you there?”
A familiar and shaky voice came from the vicinity of the floor to her right, “I . . . well . . . I think I am. If this is . . . Valhalla, it’s a lot like the last place I worked.”
Right then, the alarm blared.
“FIRE IN ACCUMULATOR STACKS 8, 9, 10…RESET-FIRE IN ALL ACCUMULATOR STACKS - ALL FIRE SUPPRESSION SYSTEMS ACTIVATED.”
“WARNING - ALL REACTORS OPERATING AT 114 PERCENT OF DESIGN LIMITS.”
“WARNING - CURRENT REACTOR WASTE HEAT PRODUCTION WILL EXCEED THERMAL SINK CAPACITY IN 6.3 HOURS.”
Confusion froze everyone’s minds; none of them had ever heard those messages or anything like them. CeCe did what seemed to be the smartest thing and focused her, still fuzzy, thought process on the most obviously immediate problem, “HELT, THE FIRES…GET THE FIRES OUT.”
Helt was still blinking and rubbing his face, trying to grasp the information in front of him. Finally, he smashed a hand down on a remote part of his board; the alarm stopped.
“I CAN’T THINK WITH THAT THING GOING.”
He still had his hands pressed to the sides of his face like he was trying to squeeze his brain back into operation. As with all professionals, it was training and experience that came back first, “Ah . . . all accumulator stack tanks show sealed and flooded with nitrogen.” He started rapidly tapping at his panel and looking at the screens around him, “I . . . ah . . . I have no response from any of the stacks - AI, say accumulator status.”
“ALL ACCUMULATOR STACKS ARE OFFLINE.”
He tapped another inquiry and checked another screen, “The isolator drive is operating, but if we shut it down we’ll never get it started again without those accumulators.”
Wills had crawled back into
