The Methuselan Circuit (9 page)

“Less than that,” Admiral Hinohosa added gravely. “I checked the records. There haven’t been any more than two from the same town of that size in the last seventy-five years; that happened only twice, and each time the students had parents who graduated from the Academy.”

“Alexander Wolfe’s father did serve,” Augesburcke reminded her.

“Yes and young Alexander fits the Academy profile very well. He has some confidence issues because of his size but his leadership quotient is quite high. However, the parents of the other cadets have no such history, at least no history I can find. One has a mother in the FBI, but he doesn’t stand out academically. He’s got a high determination profile more suitable to a Settler—he’d stand a very good chance of being a Community Leader. The young lady scores extremely high academically,” Hinohosa told him. “Even more intriguing to me is the fact there was a fourth candidate. She lost her slot because of attitude problems in the First Flight ride, but she was by all the data the most qualified candidate from the town, maybe even the most qualified candidate in the entire class.”

“If she is all that then we may still have to deal with her next year,” Augesburcke growled. “For now, we have these three; three cadets that shouldn’t be here—not all at once.”

“Should we separate them,” Centurion Fjallheim asked. “If there’s something behind this other than coincidence perhaps we should make complicity that much more difficult.”

“No, as the great warlord Lincoln said of his cabinet; let’s keep all the dangerous people in one spot where we can keep an eye on them!”

“Should we perhaps send someone to question Commander Wolfe and gauge his intentions?”

“No!” Augesburcke turned and looked directly at the Centurion. His voice was sharp and forceful, leaving no room for any doubt. “I have the utmost respect for Commander Wolfe; however he travelled farther than any of us, farther than any other man in this man’s Fleet. He saw things out there we can only guess at; if one of those things is coming to roost now I don’t want to let him know that we know—not yet.”

“I could have him watched.”

Augesburcke laughed. “We might as well tell him all of our suspicions then. He’d know, believe me he’d know. That farm of his is probably locked down tighter than the Vatican or the White House. If he suspects we suspect we’ll be answerable for it.” He gritted his teeth, and growled. “Something’s going on, but until I’m desperate or certain he’s not actively involved I won’t tip him off.” He watched the sandy haired Alexander disappear with the throng of cadets down the corridor. “Besides, the key is not Commander Wolfe but his son and I’ve already got someone watching him, someone even the Commander himself would never suspect!”

#

Space Physiology was almost as boring as it sounded. Professor Cantor was very knowledgeable, but seemed on the verge of falling asleep during the lecture. It was only when he showed a particularly gruesome presentation of what happened when the unprotected human body was exposed to the vacuum of space that he perked up. He got off his chair and shuffled to the base of the huge visiplate. “Ah now, here’s one of my favorites, very demonstrable about everything we’ve been discussing for the last half hour.”

“Discussing,” Lisa whispered, “we haven’t discussed anything. He hasn’t even taken a breath!”

Alexander stifled a laugh.

“I hope the rest of the classes aren’t this bad,” James grumbled.

“He’d make a very bad diplomat,” Treya observed. “He has no voice inflection at all; he sounds like a bumblebee.”

“You have bumblebees on Chem?”

“Of course,” she said, looking with surprise at Alexander. “How else would the Terran roses get pollinated?”

Professor Cantor cleared his throat, the most demonstrable thing he’d done all day. “Now if I may direct your attention to the screen, I want you to watch in detail,” He turned from the screen and scanned the class. “Those of you with weak stomachs, the bags are under your desk. Please use them; otherwise you get to clean up the mess.”

There was nervous laughter. Alexander and James exchanged glances of male bravado. Still, they and everyone else checked under their desks. There were small plastic yellow bags with sealable tops.

The screen brightened to show two legionaries holding a man by the arms. Without any explanation they threw him into a white airlock with red stripes. One of the legionaries held the small rounded power pack normally attached to the uniform belt. The power pack powered the uniform’s emergency sustaining field. The grim legionary held the pack up to the airlock window so the man could see it and laughed at his shocked expression. He clutched at his belt and finding the bracket empty, he leapt at the hatch, clawing at the window. The legionaries laughed that much harder, and Alexander felt himself cringe. The man in the airlock wore the coveralls of a Fleet technician his eyes were wide, bulging with fear.

Using a laser pointer, the professor pointed out the various physiological details. “We’ll run it through full speed first and then go over the same file with more exactness. At this point the pressure is released as the outer doors open. Loss of pressure is instantaneous.” A warning siren wailed and a red light flashed. There was a loud whoosh drowning out the screaming madman. To their horror, the man began to bloat. The next sound was almost as terrible as the sight. With no atmosphere to carry sound waves everything went silent but for the commentary by the legionaries.

“Whoa there he goes, like a bloody balloon filled with tomato juice!”

The man’s body puffed out and exploded outward, leaving the bloody wreckage of what was once a man.

“Do you think he’s far enough out?”

Alexander had no idea what that meant until—boom! The image on the visiplate showed a bright flash where the man had been. Did they shoot him? The image rocked for a moment and then the stabilizers cut in and there was nothing to be seen except the inside of the white and red airlock, which was now only a mottled, disgusting red.

“That was close. Is everyone alright? Someone get me a damage report!”

The Professor stopped the film and went back to the beginning. Surveying the class, his smiled thinly and said, “Got about a third of you did it, well I’ll see what I can do about that.” Alexander, who felt a bit queasy, looked around. The professor was right. A third of the class had their heads buried in the yellow bags. The smell of vomit drifted through the air. That just about set him off right there, his stomach tightened and he felt the bile rising in his throat. He fought it back, but just barely. He was sweating.

James looked disdainfully at Lisa and Treya. “They can’t handle it; it’s a man’s world in space!”

Alexander bit back the foul taste in his mouth and nodded, crossing his arms and leaning back into his seat as if he saw this sort of thing every day. James did the same, purposefully moving as far away from his bag as possible. The girls glared at the boys from their sick sacks.

“Let’s go over this again in a more clinical fashion,” the professor said. He zoomed in with the image until the man’s eyeball almost filled the visiplate. “Now we’ll go forward in super slow motion. I want you all to take special note, here we see the capillaries of the eye bursting first, giving the pinkish effect to the iris just before it starts to tear from the lack of pressure. Now here’s the really good part, as the retinal fluid burst through,” but Alexander heard no more. This time there was no stopping that horrible volcano in his stomach. He tossed all bravado aside and dove for his bag; he didn’t make it. With one hand he reached for the bag. With the other he tried to stop the torrent of vomit spewing forth. The remnants of his last breakfast on the farm, eggs, bacon, sausage, strawberry pancakes and toast—a special farewell breakfast—sprayed his desk and the backs of the cadets sitting in front of him.

Alexander was horrified and sickened at the same time. Still, as bad as he felt it was nice to know that James did exactly the same thing. Nor were they alone. The Professor continued on, apparently oblivious of the carnage, and he didn’t stop until he’d exhausted the last second of the file. Only then did he turn to the class and say, “You’ll find cleaning supplies in your desks. Spic and span please, you have fifteen minutes before I have another class—they should be breaking from lunch right about now! Do you have any questions while you clean yourselves and my classroom up?”

“Who was he?” James asked. “It looked like they just threw him in the airlock.”

“And just in time too, didn’t you see him blow up?”

“Well yes, but I thought,” James started.

“My dear boy, you don’t think we threw him out in space just for your academic entertainment, do you?” The professor shook his head and his voice turned quite serious. “Ladies and gentleman, this tape is from the Caliphate Wars. The Fleet Technician was a man by the name of Cain Mahmud. He was a traitor. The Fanatics implanted a small iridium bomb in his femur. On the medical scans it looked like a plate of the type used to repair bone breaks. He served on the hospital ship
Mother Theresa
, and he served with distinction for two years before this event. The ship had taken on board five thousand colonists from the ravaged settlement on Achaea, men, women and children—all non-combatants. He left his post and headed for the reactor core of the ship. If he’d succeeded the
Mother Theresa
and all the families on board would have been destroyed.”

Alexander swallowed hard. How, he wondered, could any human being commit to slaughtering innocent civilians? He’d heard stories about the Caliphate Wars, a purely human war. No one said anything brave or honorable about that war, instead they said little or nothing at all.

The Professor said, “We don’t have to worry about that now.” He stabbed at a switch on his control board. The ventilators started to hum and the sickening stench of vomit began to dissipate. “What I do have to worry about is the next class. The mess hall is serving fish today. I don’t know what I did to get them mad; Lord, I hate the stench of vomited fish!”

Ten minutes later, Alexander filed out of the class with the rest of Kilo flight. Alpha flight passed them, wrinkling their noses at the smell and making various smug comments. Alexander simply smiled. No one let the Alpha’s know what they were in for.

Fortunately, they had the next period free. It was obviously to get cleaned up. His afternoon schedule was a microcosm of his daily schedule: Space Physics, Military History—his favorite—Math, PE and finally Weapons Training. As everyone in the flight was going to the same place it was simple or it should have been. They started by following the signs posted on the ship’s walls. The nomenclature was straight forward; i.e. everything had a vertical designation of deck 1, deck 2, deck 3 and so forth. That was easy. Furthermore, the cylindrical pods were divided into ninety degree wedges designated Bow, Starboard, Stern and Port. Even for those who knew nothing about ancient nautical terms it wasn’t that tough a concept. Then things began to get complicated. As with the terminal the ninety degree sections were subdivided into Alpha, Bravo, Charlie and so forth. That was fine, and it worked out quite well considering there were eight different classes of students. For instance, Alexander was a brevet cadet in his probationary year. As a member of Kilo flight he was quartered in the Cadet Pod, Bow Deck 1 Kilo. A third year cadet from the same flight would be in the Cadet Pod as well, Aft Deck 1 Kilo. A fifth year cadet would move up to deck 2 and be quartered in Bow Deck 2 Kilo. It all made perfect sense. They were in the Academic Pod. All they needed to do was to get to the lifts and head down to the Cadet Pod and get off at Deck 1. However, when they arrived at the lift it didn’t work. There was no sign saying it was out of order, but it didn’t come when they punched the button.

They tried various ways of calling the lift, speaking, yelling and hand signals. It never showed up. After three fruitless minutes it was decided that the flight should proceed to the next lift. That would be the most logical way to go about it. They were quartered in the Bow Section so they walked around the curving corridor from the Port Section, where they were, to the Bow Section. That ate up five minutes, so it was doubly frustrating when the Bow lifts didn’t work either.

Another flight arrived. It was Uniform. After them came India and Foxtrot. The area was getting crowded, and everyone was getting frustrated.

“What kind of ship is this, nothing works?” said a cadet.

“It’s not meant to work, they want us to find another way to the Dormitory,” Lisa said, stating the obvious.

Alexander was already in his compad. He brought up the ship’s diagrams and pointed to the central axis of the ship. “The only other way up or down the ship is through the central corridor in the middle of the old Methuselan ship. It says here, that’s the preferred route from one pod to the next during emergencies.”

The lifts were all outboard so they turned around and headed inboard from the lifts. A long axial corridor ran all the way from the outer hull and the lifts of the Academic Pod to the central corridor in the middle of the old alien ship. It was a walk of 300 yards. They started down the corridor and the other flights followed. The first hundred yards went through the pod. There were various classrooms and auditoriums on either side, and the corridor was wide enough for two flights to pass each other without jostling. They reached the interior bulkhead of the pod and passed into the spoke that held the pod onto the Methuselan ship. There were windows along the entire length of the spoke, in fact, for fifty yards the spoke was completely transparent except for the structural ribs and stringers. It was a magnificent sight. Over their heads was the North American continent. It gave Alexander the unsettling feeling that he was walking upside-down. Ahead of them was the mottled metallic green, gray and amber Methuselan ship.