Stepping Stones (29 page)

Julie spoke up again.  “How could this happen, Mac?  To my knowledge, an onboard computer has
never
malfunctioned on a starship.  Aren’t there redundancy
systems
—something to prevent this sort of
thing
?”

“Of course.”

“Then how . . .?”

I shrugged.  “The alien transmission got inside Carla
,
and
it
did something to her.  Since then she’s been . . . changing.”

Cruz slammed his fist on the table.  “We’re screwed, and all you can come up with is that some million-year-old scrap heap infected our computer?”

By then my frustration lev
el was approaching the red line, too
.  “Screw you, pal,” I shot back, rising from my seat.  “I don’t know what your problem is, but—”

“Sit down, Mac!” ordered Stringer.  “And you,” he added, glaring at Cruz, “
dial it down
.”

“Yes, sir,” Cruz mumbled
.

I sat back down, and for the next few minutes we all concentrated on not looking at one
an
other.  Finally Julie
moved
to the drink module.  “He
y, Cruz,” she said,  “How
about a little more caffeine?”

I busted up.  Before long Stringer joined in.  Then Cruz cracked
up too, and that big dumb grin of his said
everything was all right.

After
we had
settled down, Stringer regarded me pensively.  “That bit Cruz said about Carla being infected.  Is it possible?”

I hesitated.  C
enturies earlier,
entire
computer networks had
often
been crippled by viruslike programs.  The digital intruders, like their biologic counterparts, had subverted host elements to replicate themselves, then spread to other
computer
networks as information among them was shared.  Effective countermeasures had been devised, and nowadays every computer contains an integral and sophisticated immune system against viral infe
ction.  Carla was no exception.  But
were her defenses adequate to block an alien organis
m that had never before been encountered
?

“
Maybe
,”
I answered softly.

“Can you do anything about it?”

“I don’t know
.
  But I’ll try.
”

If I didn’t sound hopeful, it was
because I wasn’t.  If the Omni’s built-in defense hadn’t
worked
, I suspected there wasn’t much I could do.

“Get on it,” said Stringer.  “In the meantime, Cruz and I will make another visit to the larger of the two ships—see whether we can find an answer
over
there.  If you don’t have Carla fixed when we return, we’ll move the
Magellan
and investigate the smaller
vessel
.”  He glanced at Julie.  “We can
still
maneuver
on
inertial thrusters, right?”

She nodded.  “No problem.  We just can’t jump.”  Then, to me, “One
more
question, Mac.  Could the beam that smaller ship directed at us be some sort of weapon?”

By then she and Stringer had viewed the video recordings
that
Cruz and I had
taken
on the alien ship
.  I remembered the stripped
panels and the cut wiring. 
I knew we were all thinking the same thing.  “Yeah,” I said.  “It’s possible.”

It happened two hours later.  At that point
I had
made little headway with Carla.  Hearing Stinger and Cruz talking over the intercom as they returned from the alien
ship
, I decided to finish up and meet them in the airlock.  They were already half out of their EV suits when I arrived.

“Any progress?” Cruz asked me through the open inner
airlock
.

“Not much,” I answered glumly, wishing I had better news.  Standing outside the cramped airlock, I watched as Cruz shrugged off the rest of his suit, plugged it into the bulkhead, and activated in the recharge cycle.  “How about you?  Find anything over there?”

“Nothing that’s gonna help,” Stringer answered.  “We’ll check the smaller ship next.”

Stringer was
only partway out of
his suit.  Cruz
was
giving him a hand when the inner airlock door
slid
shut.  “Hey, Mac, that’s not funny!” Cruz called through the observation port, slapping the hatch button on his side.

The door stayed shut.

I tried the button on my side.  Same result.  By now both Stringer and Cruz were staring through the glass.  “I didn’t close it,” I yelled.

Stringer pressed his face to the window, attempting to check the outer control panel.  “Try removing the—”

He never got to finish, because just then the EVAC alarm sounded.

“Get your suits back on,” I shouted.

There was no hope for Cruz, and he knew it.  In his last moments, as air was rapidly
being
pumped from the chamber, he tried to help Stringer back into his EV gear.  They almost made it.

Unable to help, I watched in horror as their bodies
suddenly
swelled in the vacuum.  Globules of frothy pink filled the airlock.

H
id
eous seconds passed, seeming like hours.  And then
it was over.  The outer hatch swung open.  Riding the last outrush of air, Stringer and Cruz drifted into the void.

I found Julie on the bridge.  When I told her about Stringer and
Cruz, she listened quietly
.  “How could that happen?” she asked
when I was done
, her voice
trembling with shock
.

“There’s only one explanation.”

“
Carla.”

I nodded.

“But for an accident like that to—”

“It w
asn’t an accident.  The airlocks
are under direct computer control.  Carla, or whatever she’s become, kill
ed
them.”

Julie was silent for a long moment.  “Can we shut her down?”

“Not completely,
at least
not without losing life support.  But I’ll lock her out of as much of the rest of the ship as possible.”

“What can I do to help?”

I hesitated.  I wanted to recover Stringer and Cruz before their bodies
had drifted too far from the ship.  But
considering the situation, I was
also
reluctant to leave Julie alone.  Still, I didn’t see any other way.  “I have to go EV
to
collect the bodies,” I answered.  “Monitor me from the bridge.”

“Right.”  Then she asked something
I had
been trying not to
think about
.  “What do we
do if Carla shuts down our life
support systems?”

“There’s always cryo-
suspension, at least till the research vessel arrives,” I
suggested
.  Like
most
Federation ships too small to have onboard medical facilities, the
Magellan
was equipped with a single cryo-suspension unit, a holdover from man’s early ventures into space.  Serving as an emergency backup, it could maintain an injured crew member in frozen stasis pending arrival at a medical base.

“There’s only one unit onboard,
”
Julie pointed out.

“I know.  It won’t come to that, but if it does, I want you to use it.”

Julie shook her head.  “We’re in this together, Mac.”

I could tell from the look in her eyes that there was no use arguing.  Nonetheless, I made my way to the cryopod, set
the controls
on auto, and disconnected the computer-override cable—making sure Carla couldn’t sabotage the pod if Julie
needed
to use it.  Perhaps I was kidding myself, but I felt better after that.

The outer hatch was still open when I returned to the airlock.  It took me twenty minutes to get the control panel disassembled and cut the computer leads.  I
didn’t intend
to end up like Stringer and Cruz.

Shortly
after that
I was suited up and
floating in space
outside the
Magellan
.  Although I couldn’t spot the bodies, I knew they had to be dead ahead.  Julie was in
contact with me over the radio.  She
informed me that she had two objects on the scanner around four kilometers out.  I hit my thrusters and took off.

Once
I had
picked up
some
velocity, I shut off my jets and drifted
in silence
.  Fifteen minutes later the bodies came into sight.  Upon spotting them, I started my deceleration, winding up using more fuel than planned.  I knew
I would
have to be careful on the return trip.

The bodies were tumbling, separated from each other by about twenty meters.  I got a line on Cruz, then dragged him over and got a line on Stringer, too.  I tried not to look at their faces.

With Cruz and S
tringer in tow, I headed back
, surprised at how distant
the
Magellan
had become.  At that distance t
he smaller of the alien derelicts was lost against the backdrop of space, but the huge wars
hip was still clearly visible.  T
he
Magellan
looked
tiny and insignificant beside it.  All at once something about the position of the ships struck me as wrong.  At first I couldn’t figure
it out
.  Then I saw it.

The
Magellan
had
moved
. 
Her
inertial-drive cylinder
was
glowing.  “Julie, what’s
happening
?” I shouted into my radio.

No response.

All the way back I kept trying to raise Julie on the radio, without success.  Though tempted to increase my velocity, I knew if I didn’t keep enough fuel in reserve to kill my speed once I arrived,
I would
overshoot the
Magellan
and wind up drifting forever in space.  But if the
Magellan’s
ion drive kicked in before I got back . . . well, I wouldn’t get back.

Inexplicably, the
Magellan
never moved.  The drive cylinder had shut down by the time I got back, but its thick metal rim still glowed a dull, angry red.  After dragging Stringer and Cruz inside the airlock, I sealed the outer door and waited for the chamber to repressurize.  As soon as air began seeping back in, I heard the piercing wail of the radiation alarm.

Leaving the bodies in the airlock, I rushed aft without removing my suit, wondering what could have caused a reactor leak.  But deep down I
knew.

Carla
.

I found Julie on the deck outside the fusion chamber. 
She was horribly
burned, but alive.  Barely.  I ripped off my helmet and gathered her into my arms.

“Y
ou
. . . you
made it back,” she
mumbled
.  Her face had escaped the terrible searing I saw elsewhere on her body, but dried blood caked her nose and mouth, and something was wrong with her eyes.
  “I . . . I can’t see, Mac.”

“You’re going to be all right, Julie,” I said, praying I was right. 
“What happened?”

Blindly, she
reached
up to touch my cheek.  “Carla tried to move the ship.  I cut the control cables, but she lowered the shields while I was in the
reactor
room.  I got the shields back up, but . . .”

“Y
ou’re going to be all right,” I
repeated softly
.  “Just hang on.”

Cradling her in my arms, I carried her to the cryopod.  “What are you doing?” she asked as I gently laid her inside.

“You’re going to sleep.  When you wake
up
, the research vessel will be here.  Their med team will know what to do.”

She struggled to sit.  “Mac, before Carla
attempted
to move the ship, she shut down
our
life-support systems.  You won’t—”