Ch. 011| Ten Hours

D+3 04:00.

Private Bay 14B.

Vale hadn't slept. He sat at the folding table, the draft of the report framework already running to its fourth page, the cold underlight of the panel holding blue. He'd had water twice. He hadn't touched the coffee.

"Janus," Vale said.

"Here."

"Kovac. First-pass screen on the seven."

"P4's first round of neurological baselines is complete," Janus said. "Two of the seven are anomalous. Vice-Captain Kovac is one. The other is Engineering grade-three technician Mava Abid, thirty-six. Turkish descent, posted to UCB Powerplant Engineering before launch."

"Detail the anomalies."

"Kovac: selective short-term memory loss, in the layer of person recognition. Abid: a buried seven-second micro-oscillation in her respiratory rhythm, amplitude 0.2 seconds, same direction and same period as Diaz and Bashir."

Vale didn't answer.

"Shipwide survival-rate timeline updated," Janus said. "01:14, third reading, 88.92."

Vale flipped the draft framework back to the first page. On the last line of the section headed 1. Shipwide survival-rate timeline, he added a number: 88.92.

"Janus," Vale said. "Mava Abid's family."

"Father, mother, one younger brother. All three on Earth," Janus said. "No family aboard."

"Kovac's daughter is aboard."

"In the Ring, cryo-bay 4-12, same bay as the mother," Janus said. "In yesterday's D+2 16:30 hearing, Commander Nova referred to 'Lina, six years old.' I logged that line."

"I know you logged it," Vale said.

The panel's cold underlight didn't change.

"Lieutenant," Janus said. "There's one thing you need to decide before the 09:00 report."

"Which thing?"

"Whether you put the line 'Kovac, selective short-term memory loss' into the report."

Vale didn't answer.

He turned to the second page, the section headed 2. Vela incident report / appended: P4 containment preliminary neurological assessment. For now that section was blank.

"Put it in," Vale said.

"Understood," Janus said. "But I have a wording suggestion."

"Go."

"'Vice-Captain Kovac reports a selective phenomenon in short-term memory, pending follow-up review to confirm whether it constitutes an early indicator of infection,'" Janus said. "Don't write 'neurological anomaly.' Write 'selective phenomenon.'"

"Why?"

"'Neurological anomaly' will have the Colonial Supervisor table a motion for permanent isolation on the spot," Janus said. "'Selective phenomenon' requires review. Review takes time. We don't have the time today."

Vale copied the wording into the report.

"Janus," Vale said.

"Here."

"Will the Colonial Supervisor attend?"

"Erik Brandt, fifty-two, seconded from the UCB Supervision Bureau before launch," Janus said. "He'll attend."

"His meeting schedule for the last seven days."

"Sending."

The schedule jumped onto the panel. Vale scanned it and stopped on the D+1 22:00 line: Brandt and Commander Nova, forty-seven minutes booked, subject unlogged.

"Subject unlogged," Vale said.

"Unlogged," Janus said. "For the first forty-five minutes my panel was ordered offline. When it reconnected for the last two minutes, both of them had already left the Commander's office. The meeting was effectively over."

"Why weren't you present?"

"Because Commander Nova filed for 'panel offline, forty-five minutes.' The SOP permits one per seventy-two hours. I accepted it."

Vale pressed his right wrist once.

Not the wrist with the watch.

---

D+3 09:00.

Central Conference Room of the Daedalus.

When Vale walked in, three of the six chairs were already taken.

Commander Nova sat at the head. To her left was Erik Brandt—Vale had never met the man in person, but the face in the file was this face. Fifty-two, German descent. Hair combed straight back, shirt buttoned to the top. No tie, but a collar pin. Brandt was reading a paper document. Paper was a rarity aboard.

To Nova's right was Voss. Voss had changed into a white coat, cuffs clean.

Across from the head of the table were two chairs. One of them had a placard standing in front of it: "Vice-Captain Eitan Kovac, absent, in isolation." That chair wasn't pulled out. The other chair was Vale's.

At the edge of the table, directly opposite, stood a screen; Lin Mei-chen was joined in by video.

The panel's cold light flickered on one patch in the middle of the table. That was Janus.

"Lieutenant," Nova said.

"Commander," Vale said.

Vale sat.

"09:00," Nova said. "Item one: the Vela incident report. Item two: P4 containment preliminary neurological assessment. Item three: orbital geological re-scan. We don't discuss the next step until all three are delivered."

"Understood."

"Janus first," Nova said.

"Item one," Janus said. "D+2 13:48, second advance-survey team member Daniel Vela, 2.4 kilometres north of the sampling point, thermal signature gone entirely. The full EVA suit is outside the range of orbital scan. Geological scan shows crustal thickness of 31 kilometres at that location, no known fault, no known cavity. The last transmission was broadcast by Vela himself, actively, over Channel 03, five words: 'There's a sound underground.' After that, Vela's Channel 03 went dark."

Brandt turned a page of the paper document. He didn't look up.

"'No known'?" Brandt said.

"Yes," Janus said.

"'No known' means 'the geological scan has a blind spot,'" Brandt said.

"I'd use the word 'blind spot,'" Voss said.

Only then did Brandt look up.

"Dr. Voss," Brandt said. "We haven't reached your turn today."

"The Lieutenant asked," Voss said.

"He didn't ask."

"He's sitting in that seat," Voss said. "Every time someone in that seat hears 'no known,' he asks the next question. I'm answering it ahead of time."

Nova didn't look at Voss and didn't look at Brandt. She looked at Janus's panel.

"Janus, anything else on item one?" Nova said.

"No," Janus said.

"Dr. Voss, item two."

Voss turned the touch-pad in front of her around. Open on it was the consolidated first round of P4 neurological baselines.

"Seven members in P4 containment," Voss said. "Two of the seven require follow-up review. Vice-Captain Kovac reports a selective phenomenon in short-term memory, pending follow-up review to confirm whether it constitutes an early indicator of infection. Engineering grade-three technician Mava Abid shows a buried seven-second micro-oscillation in her respiratory rhythm, amplitude 0.2 seconds, same direction and same period as the two subjects previously in Isolation Room 3."

"'The two subjects previously in Isolation Room 3,'" Brandt said. "Dr. Voss, who are those two?"

"Diaz, Bashir," Lin Mei-chen said over video. "Diaz is Forward Module Engineering. Bashir is the medical team's on-duty nurse. The two entered Isolation Room 3 at D+2 06:42. No significant change in the first 24 hours; they're now past 26 hours, status holding."

"Were they on the isolation list I was shown?"

"At D+2 06:42 they were placed into Isolation Room 3 by Lieutenant Vale, under the safety-officer-level classification 'behavioural observation, not isolation,'" Janus said. "They were not registered as formal isolation. SOP chapter two, section eleven permits a safety officer, during an observation phase 'not yet confirmed as infection,' not to submit immediately to the Commander level."

"'Not yet confirmed as infection,'" Brandt said. "Both are aligned to the seven-second rhythm. Dr. Voss defines the seven-second rhythm as 'an indicator of one and the same variable.' On this table today, laid out in front of us, there are three people aligned to the seven-second rhythm at once. And this is still called 'not yet confirmed as infection'?"

"Authority over the definition rests with the head of the Biology Section—that's me. I say 'not yet confirmed,'" Voss said.

"Authority over the definition rests with the Commander level," Brandt said.

"Authority over the definition rests with chapter two of the SOP," Nova said.

Brandt set the paper document down.

Vale said nothing.

"Janus, item three," Nova said.

"Orbital geological re-scan complete," Janus said. "Around the point 2.4 kilometres north of the sampling site where Vela's thermal signature vanished, a radius of 500 metres. Crustal thickness still 31 kilometres, no known cavity detected. But sensor calibration drift is 0.7 percent, up from 0.2 percent in the previous scan. The drift is listed as a pending-review item."

"Drift?" Brandt said.

"The sensors' own standard deviation," Janus said.

"Drift is a baseline shift," Voss said. "The sensors aren't aging. They're 'reading' some signal the sensors don't yet recognise. From 0.2 to 0.7—the sensor baseline climbed to 3.5 times its original within twenty-four hours."

"Dr. Voss, your working hypothesis?" Nova said.

Voss paused a beat.

"There's something down there," she said. "This something isn't in our cavity model, isn't in the geological model, and isn't a sensor fault. There's something down there. Our instruments have already detected it. The instruments just haven't modelled it yet."

"You're going back there," Nova said.

"I'll go," Voss said.

"How many people?" Nova said.

"Six from Engineering, four from Safety," Vale said. "One from Biology, one Colonial Supervision representative. Medical doesn't go—Dr. Lin, Park Yu-min and Wu Hui-lan all have to stay in P4 to receive Kovac and the seven. Twelve total, no more."

"You bring the sample back," Brandt said.

"We'll bring it," Voss said.

"How long?" Nova said.

"Twelve hours," Vale said.

"Eight hours," Brandt said.

"Ten hours," Nova said.

Vale didn't answer. Voss didn't answer. Lin Mei-chen, over video, didn't answer either.

"Ten hours," Nova said. "Departure 14:00 this afternoon. Janus on real-time telemetry the whole way. No opening the suits before you're back on the Daedalus; on arrival, straight to P4 containment, no passing through any medical station."

"Understood," Vale said.

"Who's the Colonial Supervision representative?" Voss asked.

"I'll choose," Brandt said.

"I'd want someone with field experience, not an office person," Voss said.

"Dr. Voss, the authority to choose is mine," Brandt said. "What you'd want, and whether I listen, are two different things."

Nova laid both hands on the table.

"Lieutenant," Nova said.

"Commander."

"Vice-Captain Kovac's daughter is six this year. Her name is Lina."

"I know."

"Mava Abid has no family aboard. Her family is on Earth. Earth to here is forty-one light-years, one way."

"I know."

"I raise these two things because—" Nova said. Then she stopped. When the exhausted stop, they stop deeper than the angry. "Because these ten hours aren't only ten hours."

"I know," Vale said.

"Dismissed," Nova said.

The panel's cold light didn't change.

---

D+3 09:34.

The corridor outside the Central Conference Room.

Vale walked out. Voss didn't follow—she left by the other door, back to P4 to collect Lin Mei-chen. Brandt walked ahead of Vale, collar pin and shirt, paper-document folder under his arm, left arm still while the right swung. He didn't look back.

The corridor was quiet. That stretch outside the Central Conference Room used real light sources, the morning cycle simulating 10:00 sunlight, the same type as Corridor P3-A.

"Janus," Vale said.

"Here."

"Brandt's paper document."

"Agenda records," Janus said. "His use of paper is permitted under the SOP, on condition of 'selectively offline backup.' Every Colonial Supervisor is authorised to carry 250 sheets of A4-format paper before launch."

"How much has he used?"

"Over the past seventy-two hours, forty-seven sheets."

"What he's printing."

"I can't see it," Janus said. "Once paper is printed, it leaves my access range."

"He knows you can't see it."

"He knows," Janus said.

Vale stopped midway down the corridor. He stopped beneath a sensor-calibration port set into the wall—the kind of spot no one notices, where the panel shows its cold underlight most clearly.

"Janus," Vale said.

"Here."

"Kovac and Mava, these two cases—Brandt didn't push the permanent-isolation motion in the conference room."

"He didn't push it," Janus said.

"Why?"

"I have two hypotheses," Janus said. "First: he's waiting. After the search team departs, more P4 samples come back, and at that point a permanent-isolation motion could cover more than a dozen people, not just two. Second hypothesis: he already knows the search team will include the Colonial Supervision representative he himself chooses, that representative will bring back the 'evidence' he wants, and he'll table the motion after they return."

"Which do you prefer?"

"I've already eliminated 'preference,'" Janus said.

"I want to know," Vale said.

"Lieutenant, I can give you a third."

"Go."

"Third hypothesis: Brandt knows that in that forty-five-minute private conversation at D+1 22:00, Commander Nova reached some kind of agreement with him. I don't know the content of the agreement, because for those forty-five minutes my panel was ordered offline. But Brandt's restraint today is part of the agreement."

Vale didn't answer.

The panel's cold underlight jumped from blue to violet and back to blue. The ninth time today.

Vale pressed his right wrist once.

Not the wrist with the watch.

"Janus," Vale said.

"Here."

"The equipment manifest for the search team before the 14:00 departure—write it as your 'system-recommended expansion.' Reuse the three lines you used for Kovac last time. Add one more: the Colonial Supervision representative's EVA suit carries a backup neurological self-check sensor, auto-transmitting to P4 every forty minutes."

"Understood," Janus said. "But Brandt will notice."

"I want him to notice," Vale said.

"Understood."

The panel's cold underlight jumped from blue to violet and back to blue. The tenth time today.

Janus paused a beat.

"Lieutenant," Janus said. "Decision A, first instance, stands."

Vale didn't answer.

He kept walking, reached the corner of the corridor, turned left. Past the left turn was the way to 14B.

The panel followed him, its cold light unchanged.

【Ch. 011 End · Daedalus 14B → Central Conference Room → Corridor】