The Darwin Effect (8 page)

“Certainly, Ward.”

“How do we get back into cryosleep?”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible. This ship is not equipped to reinstate cryosleep.”

Ward looked at Cromartie with a smug smile, satisfied with himself. “MAC controls this ship. There’s no way around him, and none of us are going to get back into cryosleep without his help.”

Abraham exhaled an annoyed sigh. He sipped his coffee and then tried to coax Butler into eating another bite of food. “Cromartie’s right … you’re not helping.”

Ward ignored Abraham and looked right at Cromartie. “There’s a question we haven’t asked MAC yet.” Ward sat back in his chair and looked at the rest of them one at a time. “A very important question.”

“What’s that?” Cromartie asked as he tried to control his anger, much like Sanders was doing.

Ward looked back up at the ceiling. “MAC, it’s Ward again.”

“Yes, Ward.”

“I have another question for you. Do you think you can answer it?”

“I will do my best, Ward.”

“How much food do we have on board for us to survive? The six of us.”

“Ward, what are you doing?” Cromartie asked.

“We need to know,” Ward snapped at Cromartie, and then he glanced at the others as they waited for MAC to answer.

“Based on the average two thousand five hundred calorie diet, my calculations for survival for six humans comes up to seven months, two weeks, and five days.”

Ward looked at Cromartie with a victorious grin on his face. He raised his arms out in a “told ya” gesture. “Look at the food in the freezer and the storage cabinets. It doesn’t take a genius to see that there’s less than a year’s supply of food on this ship. That’s because we were never meant to be awake during this flight, only right at the very end.”

Sanders stood up and pushed her metal container of food away. She stared at Ward. “You’re an asshole,” she said and stomped out of the room.

“That computer fucked up and woke us up early, and
I’m
the asshole?” he called after her.

Ward looked at everyone else in the dining area. “I’m just trying to face the reality of the situation here, that’s all.”

Rolle got up and took his empty food container to the counter. “I’m going to check on Sanders,” he said and left the room.

S
anders was in her room sitting cross-legged on her bed with her back against the wall.

She heard a knock at her open doorway and saw Rolle standing there with a lopsided grin on his face. He seemed to be waiting politely for an invitation. She didn’t feel like having company right now and she suddenly wished that she would’ve shut her door all the way.

“Mind if I come in?” Rolle asked her from the doorway.

She shrugged. “Be my guest.”

Rolle entered her room and closed the door softly. He walked over to the built-in desk across from Sanders’ bed and leaned against it.

“Sorry about Ward,” he said.

“Don’t be sorry,” Sanders said. “It’s not your fault he’s an asshole.”

Rolle smiled and nodded.

“I just needed to get out of there before I lost my cool,” she said.

“Totally understood. We’re all under a lot of stress right now.
Including
Ward. We need to remember that Ward is just as scared as we are, but he’s showing it in a different way … his own way.”

“You sound just like a shrink, all right.”

Rolle stared at Sanders, and she could feel him studying her.

“You’ve seen shrinks before?” he asked.

“Of course,” Sanders admitted. “After a shooting, it’s required.”

Rolle seemed to perk up a little at the mention of a shooting, and Sanders wished she hadn’t said anything about it. “Shooting?” he asked. “You’ve shot a person in the line of duty?”

“A few times. It’s not something I really want to talk about right now, if you don’t mind.”

Rolle nodded, backing off even though she could sense that he was very curious about finding out more about her past.

“I guess what bothers me the most is that Ward is right,” she said, trying to change the subject. “I should’ve realized that we don’t have enough food to survive. I should’ve figured that out when Cromartie and I explored the ship the first time.”

“It’s okay to overlook things like that. None of us is perfect.”

Sounds like a shrink again,
Sanders thought. “But Ward is right,” she admitted again. “We needed to know how much food we have here. We needed to assess the situation we were in right away.”

Rolle nodded, his eyes scrunched in a practiced expression of concern.

“But please don’t tell him I said that,” Sanders added quickly. “I don’t want to see Ward gloating.”

Rolle smiled. “Of course not. You know, Ward told us that he’s a survivalist. It’s probably just in his nature to observe things like the amount of food and water around him, anything that pertains to his survival. It’s probably second-nature to him.”

“Yeah, that sounds right, but it doesn’t make me feel any better about not seeing it before he did.” Sanders thought about Abraham talking earlier about all of the skills each one of them had. And already Ward’s skills had come in handy. But to what end? The end was always the same every time she thought about it.

Rolle still leaned against the built-in desk as he watched Sanders. He didn’t seem like he was planning on leaving any time soon and his expression seemed neutral like he was thinking something over. “We could all eat less food. A thousand calories a day, maybe. Less than that, even. I know a person can survive on that.”

Sanders sighed and shook her head in defeat. “We would just be delaying the inevitable for a few months.”

Rolle didn’t say anything—he didn’t seem to have an answer to that.

“Can I tell you something in confidence?” Sanders asked as she locked eyes with him. “It’s about Ward.”

Rolle seemed to perk up again. He sat down in the swivel chair that was bolted to the floor in front of the desk. He hunched forward towards Sanders, eager to hear what she had to say. “Yes, please.”

“I just have this feeling that there’s something … off about Ward,” Sanders told him. “Something he’s hiding.”

Rolle just nodded like he was indicating her to continue.

But Sanders didn’t have anything else to add—that was it. She sighed. “Sorry, I know it sounds like I’m suspicious of him. I can’t explain why. It’s like a cop’s intuition. When you’ve been around bad people long enough, you just get a sense about them.”

“And you think Ward’s a bad person?” he asked, sounding even more like a shrink than ever.

Sanders was starting to get a little uncomfortable and she wished now that she hadn’t brought it up.

“I’m not saying that,” she said. “I just get a weird feeling around him. That’s all I’m saying.”

They were quiet for a long moment. Sanders wanted to be alone, and she was hoping that Rolle’s perceptive skills would pick up on that soon.

Rolle stood up and showed Sanders a tight smile. It seemed like he had finally caught on that he was wearing out his welcome and beginning to irritate her. “I should let you get some rest. I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

Sanders watched him as he walked towards her door. “Since you’re a shrink, maybe you can answer a question for me.”

He stopped at the door and looked at her, waiting for her question.

“How long do we have before we’re at each other’s throats?”

C
romartie sat by himself on the bridge. He had walked around the captain’s chair a little earlier and checked out some of the instruments lining the arms of the chair. He had touched the display panels, the buttons, and the levers. And then he had walked over to the rows of keyboards in front of the bank of computer screens at the bottom of the windows in the front of the bridge and run his fingers across the keys. None of the buttons or screens seemed to be affected by his touch. Data continued to stream by on computer screens, and the few beeps that emitted every so often from the displays carried on.

He had asked MAC about the buttons and displays, but the computer informed Cromartie that he was not authorized to use any of those functions and they were all automated right now.

It made sense … it probably wouldn’t be a good idea if any of them were in here fiddling with buttons and computer screens.

That got Cromartie thinking again about why they were on this ship and not pilots, navigators, and other space-trained personnel. Even if they had been woken up at the end of this mission like they were supposed to be, which one of them was supposed to fly this ship? Which one of them was supposed to land it?

It just didn’t make any sense. Maybe MAC was going to land the ship. Maybe MAC controlled everything on this ship.

Maybe MAC
was
the answer,
his mind whispered.

Where had that thought come from? It felt like a sticky remnant of his dream lodged inside his mind somewhere.

Cromartie sat in one of the swivel chairs in front of the bank of computer screens on one side of the bridge. He stared at the computer screen in front of him, watching the ISF logo as it floated around against the dark background of the screen. It was the same computer screen he had used before to pull up the schematics of the ship.

“MAC,” Cromartie said, “I’d like to see the schematics of the ship we’re on again, if you don’t mind.”

“Certainly, Cromartie.”

Cromartie stared at the screen as an instant digital reproduction of the ISF Darwin appeared on the screen—a spaceship drifting through space. A moment later the schematic he’d seen before was on the screen. He brushed his fingers over a clear pad on the desktop in front of him and the ship on the screen rotated different ways. He could see the bridge at the front of the ship in this schematic and he zoomed in on it. The bridge was a large room, longer than it was wide. He moved his fingers on the pad and the image of the bridge shrank until the whole ship was visible again, but now as an exploded view which showed the four discernible levels of the ship.

“MAC, what’s the propulsion system on this ship? Can you explain it to me again?”

“Of course, Cromartie. The ISF Darwin is equipped with a hydrogen propulsion system. Two large scoops at the front of the ship on each side of the bridge collect hydrogen molecules from space. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe. A small nuclear fission reactor on the lowest level, near the rear of the ship, splits the hydrogen atoms, which then emits the energy to propel the ship forward through space.”

On the computer screen, the schematics of the ship changed into a digital animation of the ISF Darwin floating through space, picking up pinpoints of hydrogen atoms into the two scoops at the front of the ship on each side of the bridge.

“At what speed?”

“At its maximum—twenty-seven point three percent the speed of light.”

“What about the layout of the ship? I’d like to see that again, please.”

The spaceship drifting through space on the screen faded away and was replaced by the exploded schematic of the ship again.

“There are three main levels on the Darwin,” MAC said, “not including the reactor and magnetic ball at the lowest level which creates an artificial gravity. This is an area you are not allowed access to.”

“Yes, you already told me that,” Cromartie grumbled.

He stared at the computer screen and he zoomed in on the middle level of the ship. Each room on the schematic became labeled as he magnified them. The bridge was at the front of this level, then the corridors that led back to the kitchen and dining area, then the quarters, then the recreation room, and finally some supply closets that took up the rear of the ship on this level. There was also the stairwell that led down to the next level—the storage level.

“You are looking at the mid-level right now, Cromartie,” MAC volunteered. “You have a never-ending supply of water from the recyclable water station and a never-ending supply of electricity from the nuclear reactor.”

A never-ending supply of water,
Cromartie thought.
But not food.

Cromartie brushed his fingers across the clear pad in front of him and a new diagram appeared.

“This is a schematic of the upper level,” MAC said. “This holds the ventilation units, air handlers, water recycling, Cryo-room, and the airlock.”

Cromartie remembered exploring those areas before. He brought up the lower level on the computer screen, which was mostly marked storage.

“What exactly is in those storage units down there?” Cromartie asked even though MAC had already told him this before. He wanted to see if MAC’s answers were any different. He needed to find something, some kind of clue, even though he wasn’t exactly sure what he was fishing for.

“There are a variety of plant seeds, plants, insects, fish, birds, and certain mammals in suspended animation.”

“A regular Noah’s ark,” he whispered.

MAC didn’t respond.

“MAC,” Cromartie said.

“Yes, Cromartie.”

“Those storage units all have a small computer panel on the front of them with numbers—”

“They are not permitted to be opened until we reach our destination,” MAC said as if he was already anticipating Cromartie’s next question.

Cromartie just nodded. But he began to wonder if maybe their answer was inside those storage units.

Sanders entered the bridge and walked up silently behind Cromartie. She touched his shoulder, startling him for a second.

“Jumpy?” she asked as she sat down next to him in another swivel chair. The computer screen in front of her lit up right away when she was in front of it, but she ignored it.

Cromartie was a little embarrassed at jumping from her touch. He hadn’t even heard her walk up behind him.

“Find anything interesting?” she asked.

He shrugged. “There are all kinds of plant and animal samples stored on the lower deck in those storage units.”

“Yeah, we know that already,” she said.

Cromartie leaned back in his chair and shook his head with confusion like something wasn’t making sense to him.

“What is it?” Sanders asked.