Jupiter

“Krebs said she’d complained of chest pains,” Frankovich pointed out.

“Yes, that’s true. She seemed to lose her physical coordination, but that isn’t unusual when the pressurization starts to rise. It happens to all of us. It’s a temporary thing.”

“Then she doubled over?” Grant asked.

“Yes. I think she had a heart attack.”

Frankovich scratched his balding pate. “She had a clean bill of health, though. No indicators of cardiovascular problems.”

Muzorawa made a helpless little shrug. “It’s different down there, my friend. Very different.”

They stayed by the airlock, talking, guessing, worrying, until the hatch slid open again and Christel Krebs stepped through, blinking uncertainly, like a burrowing animal exposed to unaccustomed light.

“Where is Pascal?” she asked, her voice sharp, cutting.

“In the infirmary,” Grant said.

“Take me there. Immediately.” And she extended her hand to Grant like a blind person asking to be led.

“WITH YOUR SHIELD …”

Grant got only as far as the security guards stationed at the access tunnel’s entrance. One of them took Krebs up the corridor, toward the infirmary, while another told the rest of them to follow him. He walked the group to the small conference room that they had been using as a wardroom.

The guard captain was already there, standing at the head of the oval conference table.

“Dr. Wo wants you to stay here until further orders,” he told them.

“What about dinner?” Frankovich bleated. “We haven’t had anything to eat all day, just about.”

The captain eyed Frankovich disdainfully. “We’ll bring in dinner trays for you a bit later on. For now, you remain here. The director’s orders. No exceptions.”

He left and closed the door firmly.

Karlstad puffed out a breath. “That’s the longest speech I’ve ever heard from old eagle-beak.”

“We’re prisoners,” said Ukara, scowling at the idea.

Grant wanted to try the door, but realized that even if it was not locked, there would be guards posted in the corridor. Maybe even Sheena was out there.

Abruptly the door slid open. Startled, Grant jumped back.

Krebs stepped into the room, stopped, peered at Grant as if she could barely see him. She was fully dressed in a turtleneck sweater and jeans.

“How is Irene?” O’Hara asked. She and the others had not been able to put on fresh clothes. They still held blankets wrapped around themselves.

Krebs turned toward the sound of her voice. “They are still trying to revive her.” She limped to the table, leaned both hands on it. “We are to remain here until Dr. Wo can talk with us.”

“Well,” said Muzorawa, clutching his blanket, “I suppose we should follow the ancient dictum: When handed a lemon, make lemonade.”

And he pulled out one of the molded plastic chairs from the table and sat down. The chair creaked slightly.

Krebs made her way to the head of the table as the others took chairs for themselves. Instead of sitting, though, she remained on her feet.

“We should use this time to review what happened,” she said, flat and cold. No room for disagreement or even discussion.

“Could we get some decent clothing, d’you think?” O’Hara asked.

“Later,” said Krebs.

She used the conference room’s smartwalls to display the mission’s data records. Grant studied the propulsion and power systems’ performance. Nothing out of the ordinary. Everything functioned normally, with smooth efficiency. No one else seemed to find any anomalies in their areas, either.

Even Pascal’s medical data showed her to be fine, until suddenly her heart rate, blood pressure, and pulse all spiked at once.

“There’s nothing to indicate the chest pain she complained of,” Frankovich noted.

Krebs snapped, “Then it was not severe enough to register on the monitoring systems.”

“Let’s look at her EEG,” Muzorawa suggested. “That loss of limb control should show something in the record.”

It did not.

O’Hara murmured, “Could it’ve been psychosomatic, do you think?”

They went through the data for hours. Two guards came in with dinner trays. Krebs ordered them to bring clothes for the three blanket-clad crew members. They ate as they talked, discussed, argued over the data.

“As far as the records are concerned,” Kayla Ukara said, frowning angrily, “nothing went wrong.”

“Not until Irene doubled over,” Muzorawa said. He looked troubled, Grant thought.

Karlstad had recovered some of his old flippancy. “Maybe she scared herself to death.”

“She’s not dead!” Ukara snapped.

“Want to bet?” Karlstad sneered. “If she was okay, Patti or maybe even Old Woeful himself would have come in here and told us.”

“They are still working on her, most likely,” said Muzorawa.

“If they’re still working on her after this many hours, she’s a goner,” Karlstad said.

“That’s a terrible thing to say,” O’Hara muttered.

Karlstad shrugged nonchalantly. “It’s like the ancient Spartan mothers used to tell their sons, ‘Come back with your shield or on it.’ Irene came back on hers.”

“I still think it’s a terrible thing for you to say,” O’Hara repeated.

Ukara glowered at him.

“Why? Are you afraid that my saying it will make it come true?”

“I—”

The corridor door slid open and Dr. Wo wheeled his powerchair into the room. He looked exhausted, drained. For the first time, Grant thought of the director as old.

“Dr. Pascal died without recovering consciousness,” he said, his grating, rough voice desolate, bleak. “All attempts to revive her were useless.”

Grant read the emotions on their faces: shock, loss, fear. Kayla looked angry, but beyond her grim expression Grant thought he saw tears in her eyes.

“Mr. Archer,” said Dr. Wo, “you will assume Dr. Pascal’s place in the crew. You will prepare yourself for the necessary surgery tomorrow.”

It hit Grant like a thunderclap. Me? Surgery? Stunned, Grant felt his heart flip in his chest. He looked across the table at Karlstad, smirking at him now.

“With your shield or on it,” Karlstad mouthed silently.

SURGERY

With growing nervousness, Grant smeared the depilating cream over every part of his body. They’re going to immerse me in that goo, he kept saying to himself. They’re going to drown me.

It had been difficult enough to chop the hair off his head and then shave the remainder down to bare skin. The depilating cream worked only on thin body hair or shaved stubble. Trying to reach his calves and buttocks in the cramped confines of his lavatory made him feel clumsy and stupid. He kept banging elbows and stubbing toes as he contorted his limbs. The cream was slick and slimy; when he washed it off it was furred with his hair. He wondered