Fever Pitch

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“This one’s reading normal, too,” Harlan said grimly, straightening up as he stepped away from the engineering console. “The virus must have messed up the computer link from the engine room to the command post - the computer’s not receiving updates from the engines anymore.”

The commander nodded as he walked by, merely acknowledging that he’d heard. “Radu, check the computer systems.”

Picking up the CompuPad which sat on the edge of the engineering console, the young Andromedan typed in the access code which permitted authorized users to view the computer system itself. He wasn’t really sure what he should be expecting to see - engineering and computer systems were most definitely not his strong point. But as the inner workings of the ship’s “brain” became visible on the CompuPad’s small viewscreen, Radu felt as though he had suddenly turned to ice. It was clear, even to him, that the mechanical aspects of the Christa weren’t the only ones malfunctioning. Something was wrong in the computer system. Very wrong.

The orderly lines of code which formed the backbone of the Christa’s programming, the commands which instructed the ship on everything from the location of homework assignments to the fact that the jumptube system was harboring free-flowing electricity, were literally disappearing as Radu watched. Erasing themselves. That’s why the systems are going off-line, Radu realized in horror. The commands that keep them operational no longer exist.

And yet, something didn’t quite add up. If the security systems are off-line because they don’t exist any longer in the Christa’s memory, the young Andromedan rationalized, how would the ship have known there was something wrong in the jumptubes? The Christa had always shown the tendency to intervene when there was no other option, in order to protect its crew from the dangerous situations that they encountered. When it realized Rosie would get into that situation in the tubes and it couldn’t shut them down to cut off the electricity, it had to push her out instead, he realized. Clearly, the ship still had some sentient awareness left. It would try as long as it could to protect its crew, to keep the life-support systems on-line. But the commands which controlled those all-important systems were simply lines of code, exactly like all the others . . .

“What is it?” Harlan asked, his voice breaking into Radu’s mind. As the young Andromedan looked up, he saw an expression of fear in his friend’s eyes that he knew must be mirrored in his own.

“It’s your face,” Harlan said quickly. “You couldn’t keep a secret even if you wanted to. Whatever you saw in the computer system, it’s got you seriously freaked out. What’s going on?”

Radu didn’t say a word. He simply hit the button on the CompuPad which would project the image onto the command post’s large viewscreen. As the system’s self-destruction became visible for all to see, Commander Goddard wasted no time before issuing his orders.

“Get Suzee up here,” he said briskly.

Within a few minutes, the young engineering genius was in the room. She analyzed the situation at a glance and stepped immediately to the main computer uplink panel. The others followed her anxiously as, without a word, she settled herself at the console and began typing in commands, her fingers flying over the rows of control devices.

After only a few minutes, Suzee was trying desperately not to let her concern show on her face. She had tried several different commands, attempting to initiate something, anything, which would break the system out of the horrible destructive pattern it had been locked into. But nothing was responding. It was as though the ship had lost all contact with its own control panels.

Standing at his post on the other side of the command post, Radu watched with a strange sense of detachment as his crewmate worked to try and communicate with the ship’s unresponsive systems. The others were peering anxiously over Suzee’s shoulder, looking for any sign of change in the system’s ominous self-destructive pattern, but the young Andromedan couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that they should be focusing their attentions somewhere else. It reminded him somewhat of the feeling he’d gotten when he’d looked at the strange computer console, back in the auxiliary control room . . . that there was something he’d neglected to notice, something crucial that only he could grasp, and that he had completely missed it. Why would I think that? he wondered. What could possibly be more important than trying to restore our computer network? But then, in a flash, he knew.

An image had suddenly filled his mind. A huge, angry red orb. A dying star, but one whose core temperature might still be four thousand degrees Celsius. And trapped in the horrible attraction of the star’s gravitational field, fighting the inevitable as it was slowly dragged in toward the terrible behemoth, was what looked at first like a bug or a small silver bird. Suddenly, the truth came to him, in a flash of horrified insight. The tiny bird was the Christa.

“No!”

The outburst was utterly involuntary - the fact that he had been the one to cry out hadn’t even registered in his mind. But it had been enough to break him out of his trance in time to notice the shocked expressions on his crewmates’ faces as every head in the room snapped toward him.

“Radu?” the commander said, sounding concerned. “What’s wrong?”

“W-we need to do an exterior scan,” the young Andromedan said in a rush. “There’s something wrong out there. I know it. I saw it.”

“Okay,” Harlan said, walking over to where his nervous friend was sitting, “relax. We’ll check it out.” His statement was robbed of any calming effect it might have had by the fact that the human seemed to be having a difficult time keeping himself calm.

Radu was mentally berating himself for letting his strange hallucination affect his judgment, even momentarily. But as the Christa’s exterior cameras powered up, giving the crew a view of the area of space directly surrounding them, the young Andromedan felt a chill go down his spine. He blinked his eyes and shook his head, trying frantically to convince himself that he was still in the grip of the vision. But he knew this was all too real.

The sight which was visible from the Christa’s main viewport was nearly identical to the one Radu had seen in his mind only moments before. A glowing red sphere filled the screen; the heat radiating from it was almost a palpable entity. As the young Andromedan looked around him, he realized that everyone in the room, himself included, had removed the insulated jacket of their jumpsuits, allowing the lighter shirt underneath exposure to the air. Even so, the room was still uncomfortably warm - the ship’s temperature, Radu realized, had been steadily increasing, but not at a pace which was alarming enough to register consciously with the crew.

A bit of a heat increase, however, wasn’t their only problem.

It was true that the temperature in the room was still continuing to rise, but the young Andromedan realized with a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach that it was highly unlikely they’d be around long enough for that to become much of a problem. While he set the course at the navigational console, he could hear the engines’ hum picking up in intensity as Harlan increased the ship’s speed. The intent was to reach escape velocity - the speed necessary to escape from the star’s gravitational field. But the engines were sluggish, barely responding. Radu found himself wondering if the Christa even had enough power remaining to make the jump. If they weren’t able to break away, they would continue their slow, reluctant approach toward the star until the ship’s hull finally self-destructed from the heat.

It took Commander Goddard only an instant to make his decision. Motioning for Harlan to step down from the central control console, he moved hurriedly to the main intercom system outlet. “Attention all hands; this is Commander Goddard. Report to the command post immediately. This is an emergency situation. Repeat, all hands on deck. ”

Within a few minutes, the rest of the crew had arrived in the command post.

From the look on Bova’s face, it appeared that even he might have been taken off guard by the scene visible through the viewport. When he’d first stepped through the command post door, his normally composed expression had slipped for a moment, revealing an unfamiliar look of fear in his eyes. But by the time he had stepped to his post, he was back to normal; looking a little bored, perhaps even a bit annoyed that he’d been called away from whatever he might have been doing for something so trivial. If one had the ability to overhear the Uranusian’s pounding heart, however, it became immediately obvious that he was, to say the least, a bit agitated over this.

As for Rosie, she seemed barely to notice the huge star looming in the Christa’s viewscreen. One look at her face revealed that she had something far more important on her mind - and she wasted no time in letting Radu know what it was. Stepping closer to the navigational station, she said quietly, “The sample I took from the engine room was nearly identical to the one from Suzee’s gills.”

The young Andromedan absorbed this information quickly - and realized almost immediately that it wasn’t something he could keep to himself. “Commander!” he said urgently. “Rosie just finished the tests in the medlab - there’s no doubt about it now.” With the last sentence, his voice seemed to wobble a bit. “The ship’s been attacked by a mutated disease virus.”

For a few seconds, there was an atmosphere of stunned disbelief in the room as this piece of information sunk in, but Commander Goddard quickly got the team focused again. “Rosie, go back to the medlab,” he said immediately. “Try and determine if there’s something we can do to counteract the effects of the virus. The rest of you . . . ” He turned to the others. “Well, you can all see the situation we’re in. Give me some feedback.”

“Course is set to 20 degrees port,” Radu said quickly.

“Shields functioning at full power.”

“The engines - ” Suzee paused for a moment, bent over the engineering console as if she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing. “The engines are functioning at roughly three-quarters full capacity.”

“Our speed’s increasing,” Harlan said grimly, “but the ship’s barely responding to my commands. It’s like I’m not getting through to her.”

“Of course you’re not getting through to her!” Suzee snapped back. “Half of her programming codes are gone!”

At that comment, the commander seemed to realize the difficulty of his situation for the first time. He had four crew members, and five stations that needed manning. A decision had to be made - quickly. So he made one.

“Radu, take engineering,” he said quickly. “Suzee, go back to the scanning station and keep trying to salvage the programming.”

Both of the crew members concerned moved quickly to their new stations, and Radu tried to assess the situation in engineering. What Suzee had said was true - it appeared that the engineering console was once again receiving input from the engine room. But the information it provided wasn’t very encouraging - the engines were now functioning at only one-half of their normal capacity. The young Andromedan felt a rock drop into his stomach. The computer, the engines . . . he thought. How long will it be until it takes the life-support systems, too?

At the helm, Harlan was struggling, trying to get the ship to respond to something - anything. The command he needed to input was a simple one - taking the ship twenty degrees port, just enough to turn its nose away from the star. But there wasn’t a hint of a response from the console itself. It was as if Harlan was trying to input commands during a complete power loss . . .

Within the barely conscious sentient mind of the ship, there was only a dim awareness of what was going on. Even the psychic link which the Christa had been able to use to save her crew only minutes earlier was only a dim memory. And yet, there was still some sensation. The pull on the hull . . . the repeated commands, growing frantic, which were coming from the central control console . . . the picture of what was happening was fairly complete in the ship’s mind. There was nothing more her crew could do alone. They needed her help. But the virus which was eating away at her mind and her body had left her weak, disoriented and confused. She couldn’t even interpret the instructions from the command post anymore. And yet, deep inside, some scrap of determination remained. She would not let her crew go down without a fight. Pulling together every remaining particle of energy, she sent it all into one final push from the engines . . .

When the lights in the room wavered and finally went out, there was a collective sharp intake of breath. What was going to happen now? But within a few seconds, the lights and the viewscreen flickered back on - to reveal the star slowly growing smaller as the ship’s speed began to increase. They would reach escape velocity in only a few minutes.

As usual, Harlan was the first one to react, letting out a whoop and raising his fists in the air in triumph. The atmosphere in the command post went from agitation to celebration in a few seconds - everyone seemed to suddenly assume that this turnaround meant that the ship had beaten the virus. The only one who wasn’t noticeably excited was Radu himself, who was still standing quietly at his post.

While the young Andromedan watched the other cadets congratulating one another on their successful escape, a phrase had suddenly emerged from the depths of his mind: something which had been said by one of his teachers, long ago. “The greatest celebration is in the moment before the fall.”

. . . and with that, the Christa was gone.

Almost as though his instructor’s remembered words had been prophetic, the room suddenly went black again. All that Radu could hear in the engine room was the ominous hum of the engines shutting down - for the last time. The ship had just died on its crew. Literally.

For a few seconds, no one said a word as the truly ominous nature of their situation sank in. Without power, they were stranded in space. The life-support systems were now officially off-line, meaning that things would be decidedly uncomfortable within an hour or two. The air systems held enough oxygen for a day or so. But there were the matters of heat, depressurization . . . yes, meeting your end on a dead ship would not be an easy way to go. There was an even grimmer nature to the crew’s situation, however. The shutdown meant that their velocity would quickly become nothing; they would simply continue to be brought increasingly closer to the star by the deadly gravitational pull. Within a few hours, the hull would melt from the steadily increasing heat. There was no escape now - one way or another, the crew of the Christa was doomed . . .



“Nooooo!”

Radu woke up with a start. For a single terrible moment, he thought he was still in the command post of a dying ship - but with a sigh of relief, he suddenly realized that the darkened, silent room around him was the bunkroom. It was the middle of the night, and he was in the bunkroom. He was safe. It was a dream, he realized, feeling a wave of relief wash over him. It wasn’t real. It only existed inside my head.

But - but how much of it was a dream? he wondered. The events he’d just experienced had been so clear that it was difficult to distinguish what had been in the dream and what was reality. All right, he said to himself, trying to think rationally, if I’m still in bed, that means I must have gone to bed last night. The last time I remember going to bed was - was right after Bova and Harlan and I were talking about mutating viruses . . . That’s it! he realized. That’s what planted the idea for the dream in my mind! But although that explanation made perfect sense, he couldn’t quite believe that the entire dream sequence was just a product of his imagination. It had been far too real, too vivid to be only a dream. The young Andromedan could remember the most minute details as if they had actually happened - something most unlike his normal dreams, which tended to be swept out of his memory almost as soon as he awoke.

Suddenly, as some unusual sound caught his attention and abruptly pulled him out of his thoughts, Radu was surprised to realize that he was no longer in bed. As a matter of fact, he wasn’t even close to the bunkroom anymore. Without even noticing it, he had walked down to the corridor outside the lounge . . . and he felt himself turn to ice as he realized that he was once again in the room from his dream. The auxiliary control room.

It wasn’t quite the way he’d seen it before. Unlike the room in his dream, this one held more than one control panel; as befit a normal control room, the walls were covered with panels and consoles, each of which had its own readout screen. But the console which had so fascinated Radu in the dream seemed to stand oddly apart from the others. It might have been because it was the only familiar thing in the room - or because of the fact that the readout from this particular console hadn’t left Radu’s mind once he’d discovered it during the dream sequence. Whatever the reason, he was suddenly walking across the room, determined to check the readout on the console and see if it compared to the one in the dream.

Well, one part of it was certainly true, the young Andromedan thought a few seconds later as he peered at the readout screen. The readout was indeed in the oddly familiar Lumanian characters which the crew had seen on the control panels when they’d first boarded the Christa. It made perfect sense that this particular console would never have been translated - each one had to be done manually, and since they had never found the control room, the crew had never imagined it existed. And yet, as he stared at the alien language, the young Andromedan couldn’t help but remember his feeling from the dream, that this wasn’t something he should blow off quite so easily. That there was something important he needed to understand which could be accessed from this console.

You’re just being paranoid, he said to himself, shaking his head and feeling relieved that none of the others could see him. But no matter what he did, the nagging feeling wouldn’t leave him. I’m never going to get back to sleep until I know what this says, he realized. “Thelma?”

As usual, the android was peering over his shoulder almost before her name was out of his mouth. “Yes, Radu?”

“C-could you translate this readout for me?”

“Certainly.”

Within a few seconds, Thelma stepped away from the screen, allowing him to read the translated screen . . . and as he scanned it, the young Andromedan felt his heart leap into his throat:

SYSTEM STATUS: CONTAMINANT OF UNKNOWN TYPE HAS ENTERED COMPUTER SYSTEM AT APPROXIMATELY 1930. APPEARS TO BE BIOLOGICAL IN NATURE. TO INITIATE DISINFECTION PROCESS, ACTIVATE DECONTAMINATION PROGRAM. MANUAL ACTIVATION SWITCH IS LOCATED BELOW.

The dream wasn’t just a dream, Radu realized in horror. It was a warning. The ship really did catch Suzee’s virus. But as he looked at the screen again, he realized that the situation wasn’t quite as grim as he’d first thought. Th

r

was some kind of disinfection program . . . something that needed to be activated manually.

The switch was fairly easy to spot if you were looking for it - a small green one, with DECON. PROG. printed on it. And once he’d flipped it, the readout on the screen changed:

DECONTAMINATION PROGRAM INITIATED.

After a few moments, it had located the contamination problem - and within a few minutes, the contaminant was eliminated. The system was clean . . . . the horrible things that had happened in his nightmare dream sequence would remain just that. Nightmares.

As the young Andromedan stepped back out into the corridor, making a mental note to tell the commander of the incident in the morning so that the crew could make sure the system had been disinfected completely, he suddenly realized why no one had ever noticed the door to the secret room before - it was the same texture as the wall, and slid back into place so quickly that the doorway almost seemed to blink out of existence.

Back in the bunkroom, the young Andromedan was just settling back into bed when he heard Harlan roll over. “Where were you?” the other boy muttered sleepily.

“Nowhere,” Radu said casually. “Go back to sleep.”

As he lay down and prepared to go back to sleep himself, a thought suddenly occurred to him. If . . . if I hadn’t told Thelma to translate that console into the universal language, he realized, we wouldn’t have known about the virus until it was too late. Things would have ended up exactly the way they were in my nightmare.

So . . . so was it really just a nightmare? Just a dream? Or was it - something else? Did the ship plant those ideas in my head so that I would get up and find out what the problem was?

Suddenly, the meaning of what he was considering abruptly seemed to catch up with him. The ship planted ideas in my head? he thought, not sure whether the idea was laughable or all too true. I’m not in the dream anymore . . . the ship couldn’t really communicate with us that way. Could it?

In the depths of the ship’s computer system, there was a general feeling of contentment now. The Christa’s plan had been successful. The thoughts which she had planted in Radu’s mind had produced the desired result; he’d corrected the problem with the computer before it had a chance to turn into anything dangerous. Because he was the only one who would have taken such a warning seriously, the young Andromedan had saved his crewmates from a fate which would probably have been similar to the one from the nightmare.

Now that the crew was safe again, the Christa, too, could relax, focusing once again on her true task; getting them home.