The Madman's Clock

Chapter 9

CHAPTER 9

The decontamination room was small, and very white. Everything was white; the deck, the bulkheads, even the ceiling. There was enough space in the room for perhaps ten people. The room was maybe five by five meters, and barely tall enough to stand up in.

As soon as we closed the hatch, the system automatically kicked in. A female computer voice instructed us to close our eyes. It then counted down from five, and began the decontamination sequence. I had no idea how the system worked, but there was bright light, and the moment it started, my faceplate went opaque in order to protect my eyes. A small display appeared in front of me, the faceplate acting like a monitor, showing me the view from a small camera on top of the helmet. It wasn't perfect, but the whole point of the CEVA was to allow soldiers to fight in any environment. When the computer announced that we were clean, the sequence stopped, and my faceplate returned to normal.

We moved towards the exit, a sliding hatch that David said would lead us into the central core. He stopped us before we entered.

"Guys, remember," he said, "take it slowly. I have no idea how bad things are in there, and I don't want anyone walking through a fragment, and having their faceplate or oxygen canister aging a thousand years. Remember what happened on the needle-jumper."

We all nodded. If the radiation levels were as high as we expected, even the smallest breach in our suit would be fatal. Maybe not right away, but levels that high meant spending your last conscious moments throwing up your own liquefied organs. Not cool.

David opened the hatch, and a small amount of suction pulled us forward as the pressure equalized between this room and the core chamber. We stood very still, watching and listening. The room was dim, with only a few of the lights still working. We waited for a good thirty seconds. Nothing. No shouting or movement. David stepped into the dimly lit chamber first, keeping a close watch on his radiation counter. It was crackling loudly. He took a single step through the hatch, and instantly his counter fell silent.

"Whoa," he said, stopping in his tracks. "What the hell?"

"Are the levels that high?" I asked. "Did they fry your counter?"

"I dunno," he said, watching the counter.

He stepped back into the decontamination room. The moment he was back with us, the counter started crackling again. He stepped back into the core, and it went silent. Back in with us, and it started up again. He stepped out again, and had us all follow him into the core. As soon as we crossed through the hatch, each of our counters went quiet.

"I have no idea what's causing that," he said in a less than pleased tone. "Don't trust it, though. Keep your suits sealed."

"Yeah," Kyle muttered over the comms gear, "I've got better things to do today than die."

The hatch closed behind us, sealing us in the central core. We were on a catwalk, at the top of a spherical room three decks high. The catwalk made a complete circle around the top of the room, with the upper support pylon rising up the middle. I looked up to see the window for the upper control room. The window was hard to see through; as though it had been windswept with sand like the windows we were so used to seeing on Alpha Centauri's western continent. I didn't see any movement, though. In fact, the entire core chamber seemed deserted.

"For a place that everyone says blew up and took half the ship with it," Kyle said, "things look pretty good here."

"No wreckage, no burn marks, and no signs of repair work," Raj added.

I looked over the railing of the catwalk. The two decks below us were just as undamaged. Control console were situated around the core on the center deck, small square stations with displays and smooth touch-pad controls. Some were closer to the core, others against the bulkhead. All were unmanned, and intact. The time core itself, a massive sphere which filled the bulk of the deck below us, stood silently, held in place by the pylons above and below it.