Contamination Read online

  Crap, that sounded like a real hassle.

  Blood rose to his cheeks.

  “You’re very green, right? Ever been to space before?”

  He shook his head, and for some reason added, “My father has.”

  She frowned at his nametag. “I did notice you last name. You’re not the son of Paul Bartell are you?”

  He nodded.

  There was a small silence, which he didn’t like. He glanced over the heads of the seated people in the canteen. At the far end sat a large group of high-ranking military officers wearing nice suits, not the regular overalls. Captain Farrell was amongst them. She met his eyes and seemed to recognise him. Jonathan cringed.

  He asked Gaby, “Do you know my father?”

  “Not personally, but he’s got a bit of a reputation in the Corps.” Then she added, before he could ask if it was a good or bad reputation, “You don’t look like him.”

  Jonathan shrugged, lost in the backhanded remarks and innuendo. Clearly, there was something he was missing. What sort of reputation? His father rarely spoke about his work other than give him warnings that were outdated and sounded like an old man complaining.

  “My parents divorced when I was little. I grew up with my mother and don’t know my father very well. He’s not easy an easy person to talk to.” He wasn’t sure why he said that. His awkwardness around his father had more to do with Jonathan himself than his father’s character.

  “No, I can imagine.” And then she changed the subject “The most important thing to know about this place is that you should not to confuse civilians and the military, because different rules apply to them. The civvies are meant to love and adore their military heroes.”

  He glanced at her badge. “But you’re—”

  “I’m a doctor, and I happen to work for the military. I’m not serving on a ship, but I work in the Launch Station’s hospital. They don’t consider me real military. Even if officially, I am.”

  “Oh.” He glanced at Captain Farrell across the room. She was speaking to someone next to her. “A doctor, huh? At the hospital?” Then he got an idea. “Do you help people on board the ships?”

  “If I’ve been requested to do so, yes.”

  “Because the captain of the Everbright said that she had a crew member with a broken leg who needed urgent medical attention.”

  She frowned. “Haven’t heard of that case yet.”

  “Can I . . .” He swallowed. “Can I offer her your help?”

  “Sure. That’s what I’m for. They will have medical personnel on board, but we have better equipment, and we can send any results straight to whatever hospital they want to go to on Earth.”

  When Jonathan finished his dinner, Gaby showed him the bench at the far end where people stacked their trays, plates and discarded their rubbish. A stream of people filed out the room and turned right in the corridor.

  Gaby said, “You want to come? After dinner most people who aren’t on duty hang out in the rec room. We got movies, games, a library, a gym. . . .”

  “Yeah, sure. But I want to do something else first. You go ahead. There’s signs everywhere. It’s not as if I’ll get lost.”

  She grinned and left.

  Jonathan gathered all his courage and went to the far side of the hall, to the table where Captain Farrell sat.

  “Excuse me, ma’am.”

  She turned around, frowned and then her face cleared. “Ah, yes, you’re the shrimp from this morning.”

  Yeah, well, she could always pretend that she had to think about it to know who he was, just to impress his insignificance on him.

  “I just wanted to say . . . um . . . I’m sorry for . . .” Why did he always become tongue-tied when someone higher in authority gave him the evil eye? “I didn’t know about the agreement you had with quarantine. I’m sorry, I only started working here today. I just wanted to—”

  “You have a point?”

  “Yes, yes. The Orbital Launch Station has a doctor. She can treat your crewmember, you know, the one you were talking about who broke his leg. She says they have better scanners in the hospital than you have on board, and she can send the results to any hospital on Earth so that they can look at them before you arrive.”

  While he spoke, her expression went from belligerent to one of interest. When he finished, there was a small silence.

  “Well, well, I actually like that idea.”

  Chapter Six

  JONATHAN FOLLOWED GABY through the access tube that led from the dockside to the giant ship, wheeling a hospital trolley.

  Light was sparse in here, and the ground wobbled under his feet. The tube was flexible and, in stationary position, the ship took its gravity from the station’s rotation, so when they walked in the tube and the tube swung, the direction of the gravity appeared to change. It made for a slightly nauseating experience. The flow of air sounded really noisy here, or maybe the low rumbling noise came from the huge ship that was attached to the end of the tube.

  They met several military people coming the other way, and Jonathan did his utmost best not to stumble or lean on the trolley too heavily; and, with the uneven footing, that was a real feat.

  He had to admit to being excited. He’d read about the deep space cruisers many times, but he’d never hoped to board anything more than one of the behemoth ships that travelled the long routes to the outer solar system and back.

  His father had served on these ships before taking the position of Nuclear Engineer at the Orbital Launch Station. If his father only spoke rarely of his time at the Launch Station, he’d spoken even less of his time in the long-haul ships.

  The airlock of the Everbright stood open, a cubicle that would hold at least ten people at full capacity. On the other side, a lift took them down to the deck below, deeper inside the ship. A spotless white corridor led in both directions. It had doors both in the walls and the floor, and even in a stationary position, with artificial gravity determined by the rotation of the station, the nauseating sense of directionlessness crept back into his subconscious. It was not a good feeling.

  A young soldier waited for them here, dressed in overalls with a ship patch. “The captain has told me to escort you to the hospital, ma’am.” He frowned at Jonathan. “Is this a nurse?”

  “Assistant,” Gaby said.

  The man nodded at Jonathan, his gaze fixed on the nametag that said J. BARTELL. He didn’t say anything and didn’t return Jonathan’s smile.

  Jonathan was sure that he recognised the name, because it was not as if Bartell was such a common last name.

  Via a set of stairs, they descended further into the ship. Jonathan had imagined a cramped grey interior like a submarine, but the Everbright had light-filled passages, bigger cabins and wider corridors than the Launch Station. For one, it was much newer, but also bigger and more cumbersome. Ships like this were not built for speed. When they were in deep space, they were bases for smaller and more nimble craft. The Everbright would take the best part of a year to reach Titan. The ship itself would rarely if ever see military action. It was the smaller chasers that went on missions. Hero pilots like Nicky Jones and Silvio Pellegrini were ready to defend the outer settlements against attacks from the mysterious enemy ships coming from interstellar space that were slowing down to pay a visit.

  Or so the stories went.

  Jonathan imagined his father in a place like this, walking around in uniform wearing his usual distant expression. Would his father have had friends on board a ship like this? Lovers? He had never spoken of anyone still in the force. He’d never spoken of his time on the long journeys and the only thing he would say about the alien enemy was that they were a fabrication of the Corps just so that they could keep their ever-increasing level of funding for military projects.

  Jonathan didn’t know what to believe anymore. Back on Earth, people had started to question everything. Did the aliens exist? Was there really a pilot named Nicky Jones? All the preparations and information-gatherin
g were supposedly happening in the outer solar system, and no one except the Corps knew the truth. No one on Earth had telescopes powerful enough to see what the Corps claimed to be seeing.

  On the one hand, it seemed too elaborate an operation for the alien enemy to be a hoax. On the other hand, if the alien enemy was approaching as fast as the military telescopes calibrated, by the time they had any corroborating evidence, it would be far too late.

  The injured soldier sat in bed in the ship’s tiny hospital room. He’d been listening to music, his eyes closed.

  “Hello, Peter,” their guide said.

  The patient half-opened his eyes and tried to say something, but the words came out in a mumble.

  “You got him sedated?” Gaby asked.

  “He’s in a lot of pain.”

  Not being a medical person, Jonathan shuddered. He was less than an assistant; he’d just offered to help wheel the patient to the station’s hospital because this had been his idea and the Launch Station hospital seemed very busy. Gaby had told him it wasn’t necessary, that the trolleys were designed so she could do it alone, but he didn’t like that. He didn’t want her to get into trouble because coming here had been his idea.

  The soldier asked the patient, “Is John around somewhere?”

  Presumably John was the ship’s doctor.

  “Gone . . . out t . . . get . . . somefing.”

  Jonathan felt chilled with how rough and slurred the patient’s voice sounded.

  The soldier continued, “Anyway, these are Doctor Larsen and an assistant to move you to the Launch Station hospital, where they’ll take some detailed scans.” He frowned again at Jonathan’s nametag. “Hey, can I ask you: are you by any chance related to Paul Bartell?”

  “He’s my father.”

  The man’s eyes widened. “No kidding.” In a you dare show your face here? tone.

  Gaby and the nurse each undid clips on the patient’s hospital bed and lifted the whole thing onto the trolley. The patient did a fair bit of wincing through the necessary bumping. He never opened his eyes completely. It seemed to Jonathan that there was more wrong with this man than a broken leg, but he was no doctor, so what did he know?

  The ship’s doctor, John, turned up, and he and Gaby talked medical stuff. It all seemed quite amicable, even if he had little idea what they were talking about.

  Then Gaby and Jonathan wheeled the patient out of the hospital, through the ship’s corridors, up into the lift and through the wobbly access tube. Jonathan wasn’t sure if he was more of a hindrance than a help. He hadn’t quite found his balance yet and the trolley was awkward.

  He left Gaby to deal with the patient at the station’s diagnostic unit and returned to the day’s batch of impatient and disgruntled pilots. Hopefully, helping this man would improve the Captain’s and Danna White’s opinions of him.

  Chapter Seven

  OVER THE NEXT two days, Jonathan learned how to get the right and somewhat truthful answers on the form, how to annoy Mars runners—because they were cockroaches and much of their trade was illegal anyway—and how to keep his boss happy by not flagging any more military ships for further processing.

  He even pleased his boss by processing a number of military ships in record time. He discovered where to find the pathology files and knew he should have entered the Everbright’s details there. He felt ashamed about that now. It seemed he was making every newbie mistake in the book. At least he got used to the movement of the station enough to stop leaning.

  His appetite also returned.

  The Everbright remained in dock, and every time he walked past he imagined that the two guards at the access tube glared at him, even though they were different people every time and could not possibly know that he was responsible for their being held up.

  They had powered down the engine. The info screen next to the tube entrance now said 5% readiness, like it did for all the other ships. He admitted to himself that he’d be glad when they finally left the station for a lower orbit so that they could send the crew to Earth for their long-awaited leave that he was holding up through a silly mistake.

  On his second night at the station, he had also met a few other Quarantine workers in the dining hall and had dinner with them the next night as well.

  They were a rather odd group of varied people, not ones he’d have chosen as friends on Earth, but it beat having dinner alone, because Gaby didn’t come to the canteen on either night. Jonathan figured she was probably on duty.

  David was ex-military, on sick leave from active duty with an unspecified illness he wouldn’t mention—the subject of his illness was the butt of jokes amongst the others—and impatient to return to duty when he passed certain tests that he also wouldn’t mention. He spoke in single-word sentences.

  Manuela was quite young and seemed to have gotten the job through no other virtue than that her father owned the company that made a lot of interior outfits for the station and spacefaring vessels.

  Kerry was, like himself, a jobless ex-student who explained his presence at the station as, “My dad was going to kick me out of the house. Man, I had nowhere else to go, so I thought I’d sign up some place as far away from my parents as possible.”

  Manuela laughed long and hard, which she did a lot and which was kind of annoying.

  Kerry gave Jonathan a puzzled I didn’t think it was that funny kind of look.

  Jonathan cringed and looked aside, and spotted Gaby sitting alone at a table. She wore her hospital overalls minus apron and gloves, and stared into her tray.

  It occurred to him that two days ago she had perhaps been looking for someone to talk to when she spotted him sitting alone. He glanced at her every now and then and wondered if he should invite her over, but she was too absorbed in her thoughts to notice him.

  “Hey, that’s Gaby Larson; not your type, mate,” Kerry said.

  “I wasn’t—” His ears warmed.

  David said, “Yes, you were, you’ve been ogling her since she came in. She’s a neat package. You should see her at the gym.”

  “Don’t get involved with her,” Kerry said.

  “Even if I was ogling her, why not?”

  “She’s the doctor.”

  “Yeah, and?”

  “She knows everything about you and about everyone else. If you tell her something, you don’t know where it’s going to end up.”

  What, seriously? “Don’t doctors have a code of conduct?” Even during his studies, professors had always stressed the point of confidentiality in medical records if they would ever find themselves in a position where they might need to access them.

  “Huh, who’s going to police that up here?” Kerry’s face was serious.

  True.

  The same person who was also not going to check all those details he fed into the computer with the ship files. People got sick in space all the time. People took illnesses with them and there was no way all transport could be stopped for the sake of something that looked like the flu. Yet that’s what the Quarantine Authority’s instructions had told him to do.

  What could you do? According to the three-point questionnaire, no ship should be allowed into Earth space without a lengthy quarantine process.

  Gaby wasn’t the only one eating alone. There were a few others, who seemed absorbed in reading material. One was the housing officer who had allocated Jonathan his room. Another wore a pair of overalls. It wasn’t so much that they sat alone, but that the people at the far end of the canteen—closest to the kitchen—actively ignored them.

  Amongst those people he recognised the louts who had made fun of him on the shuttle ride. Those same ones who had, for the past two days, occupied the large couch in front of the biggest screen in the rec room.

  “Jonathan!”

  He looked up.

  Manuela had called him. She was getting up from the table.

  “Uh—what?”

  “You were daydreaming. Do you want to come and play Space Invaders with us?�
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  “Sure.” Playing games seemed to be all they ever did, but it was pretty decent entertainment if you counted the rivalry between teams from the military and base personnel.

  They returned their plates to the kitchen and made their way to the door. When they were in the corridor, away from any curious listeners, Jonathan asked, in a low voice, “I have a question about work.”

  She gave him an oh? look.

  “When you are filling in that questionnaire and a ship fails two of the questions, what do you do?”

  “Well,” Manuela said, “aren’t we supposed to go to White’s office?”

  “Have you ever done that?”

  All three shook their heads.

  “Why not? You’ve been here—how many months? Have you never seen anything that’s suspicious, or material hitched a ride into the ship that could be organic and could come from off-Earth? Surely you’ve met crews who have done on-ground work. The Moon or asteroid belt miners, for example—”

  “But they have pre-approved permits,” Kerry said. “You just punch in the number. The system takes care of the rest.”

  “Yeah, and so do the military,” added David.

  “What about the private miners? Plenty of contractors for the asteroid mining consortiums come through here. Don’t tell me they always have their stuff in order.”

  There was a small silence. David walked ahead. He walked as if he marched, leaving Jonathan to look at his broad back. He wondered what kind of illness had made David unfit for service. He looked pretty healthy.

  Manuela lowered her voice. “Most of the private miners have standing arrangements with Quarantine.”

  “By standing arrangements you mean cheating,” Jonathan said.

  Manuela met his eyes, intense.

  What? Jonathan spread his hands. “Look. I see things this way: Earth wants these checks, but the Orbital Launch Station is too powerless, too spineless or too much involved with the big players to implement them. So they implement farce rules, where no one who would fail the questionnaire actually gets to complete it.”