The next two days consist of packing and preparing the ship. Every little item and piece of rock we bring on board has to be accounted for. Even the weight of the fuel has to be accounted for to know how much more fuel the ship needs to carry it. And just to make really sure we don't waste our takeoff, we add two hundred kilos to our estimations. Once we're sure nothing is missing, we drive the ship into its position a few kilometers away from the laboratory. This planet has been used a lot for landing and takeoff so the road to the launch pad is as smooth as a highway.
Finally, the day comes. Pretty much everything is done already but we spend the morning doing check-ups on the ship.
I've just triple-checked the calculations of our takeoff program and I'm on my way to look at the engines. Walter is checking the tables and chairs in the cafeteria, making sure they're all stuck to the floor. I continue to the engine room and meet Pich in the corridor.
"Buck," she says, stopping me. "I saw that two of the spacesuits are damaged. Do you know anything about that?"
"No," I say, blinking. "Damaged how?"
"Holes," Pich says, crossing her arms. "You're sure you didn't rip or damage yours?"
"I'm sure."
"And they looked whole when you hung them up?"
"I think so. Have you asked Owen? Or Charlet?"
"Yes." Pich taps her arm with her fingers, taking a moment to think. "So did the holes appear afterward? Need to get to the bottom of this. But we don't have time right now. In the worst-case scenario, the ones without spacesuits can seal themselves in navigation. If everything goes smoothly, we shouldn't need them anyway."
"Another weird thing," I say. "The door out was open a few hours after Owen and I last came inside, even though I'm pretty sure we locked it."
"Pretty sure?" Pich asks.
I pull my hands up in a helpless gesture. I wish I could say I was absolutely certain but that wouldn't be true.
"We shouldn't stop and investigate the matter?" I ask.
"Stop to investigate holes in a spacesuit?" Pich says. "No. We have a schedule to uphold and we can look at the spacesuits after we've launched."
"Always the schedule," I say.
Pich looks at me with the same mix of concern and authority that a parent might when explaining something obvious to a child. "Yes. We have a lot of data about a potentially habitable planet and we want to get it back to earth as quickly as possible. They could really use the opportunity. This mission is quite literally greater than any one of us."
"Yeah, I know," I say.
"And Buck," Pich says as I'm about to leave, "if you're feeling worried, just scan the ship for lifeforms."
Pich is right of course. Since our mission is to look for life, we've made a habit out of being careful. Anything we poke at could bite back with immeasurable speed and strength. But Polus is just a fuel station. The first arrivals looked for life before they began building - even though the toxic atmosphere shouldn't allow for organic life anyway. There shouldn't be any reason to be worried.
So we leave it at that and I continue down the corridor, curving left through the engine room and taking a right into the reactor room. The large computer screen tells me we've got plenty of plutonium and plenty of liquid nitrogen and no radiation leaks. The log is showing no errors but I reboot the system just to make sure it can handle a reboot too. While I wait for it to start up, I hear quiet footsteps behind me. I turn around just as Grady strikes my sides with his fingers. I flinch back and deflect his hands.
"Hah!" he says. "I got you."
"I heard you coming," I say.
"Barely," he says with a smirk.
"How old are you?"
"Thirty-two. We celebrated my birthday last month, remember?"
"Hard to believe," I say. Grady's clean-shaven babyface and green hair - and behaviour - makes him look more like a teenager than an astronaut.
Grady sighs, almost looking annoyed. "Just 'cause everyone else here hates fun."
"Charlet doesn't," I say, taking no offense from the comment.
"And neither does Yuki." Grady wiggles his head to the sides. "But I don't wanna be like a third wheel or anything."
"Don't worry about that," I say. "Give them some space, sure, but they're still your friends. Didn't you start learning Japanese from Yuki?"
"Yeah. I was just thinking... " Grady looks down on the floor. "Do you think we'll still be friends once we're back home? Or will we sort of split off and get busy with our own lives?
"Oh, we'll keep in touch," I assure him. "Probably meet up every now and then."
"Yeah. You're probably right." Grady is about to leave but stops himself. "By the way, you were the last one to be outside, right?"
"Yeah, why?"
"The outer door was open. I closed and locked it now."
"Huh," I say. "That's weird. I noticed the same thing two days ago."
"Oh," Grady says. "Well... maybe someone wanted to eject some trash and forgot to close it."
"Maybe," I say, but I don't feel convinced.
Grady leaves and I go back into the security room and check the logs again. The outer door was closed a few minutes ago - by Grady, I assume - but it had been open for two hours before that. You can't unlock the door from outside, only open it if it's already unlocked. Someone on this ship must have unlocked it. Or maybe there's just something wrong with the panel. Maybe it's leaking false positives for some reason.
I open the program for the door configuration and find a setting for multiple confirmation. I tick one box for "Airlock door panel" and another for "Security control panel" and hit save. At least now, you need two confirmations to open the airlock doors; one from the door panel and one from the control panel three meters away. As a final measure, I set a password on the settings, so nobody will change them back. That should do it.
I get back to the reactor screen and do my last checks. The engines are warming up and systems checks are all green. Everything's going smooth as silk.
"Fucking shitballs on a stick!"
Charles's voice cuts through the air as I pass the electrical room. I stop and poke my head in. Dressed in an old-fashioned overall with shoulder straps, Charlet is standing in the midst of a sea of tall metal boxes with screens and buttons behind opened panels.
"Everything alright in there?" I ask.
She turns around for a second before turning back to the wires under the panel she has opened.
"No," she says. "The console in admin isn't getting any power but all the wires here are working."
"So... the problem is somewhere along the way," I guess.
Charlet looks up at the ceiling. "Yeah. Somewhere along the twenty meters of wiring hidden in the ceiling."
"But they're all colored. You can just check which wire is faulty in admin and pull it out from here."
She shakes her head. "Oh I wish it was that easy, but they're stuck up there. Someone has to climb up to get it out - and to lay down a working wire. Delays all the way. Whatever. I'll check with Lee. She's the smallest of us."
"I'll check the wires in admin," I say and grab a multimeter from the tool box next to Charlet.
"Thank youuu," Charlet says as she disappears into the corridor.
I make my way to admin and pull out the metal panel from the wall. Red wire is working, and so is blue and... aha. Yellow wire is dead. I head back to electrical, finding Charlet there already.
"Yellow wire is faulty," I tell her.
"Great," she says, putting the metal panel back in place to cover the wires. "We'll deal with that once we're in space."
"Oh."
She shrugs. "Yeah we figured since the engine is already warming up and because getting up into the ceiling will actually be easier in low-grav... It's not like we need the console for anything right now."
"Well, actually," I say," I was hoping we could scan the ship for life first."
"Why?" Charlet asks. "We've done that several times already. Just wait until after the launch."
"Maybe I'm just being paranoid but-"
I'm interrupted by an announcement from the speakers.
"THREE HOURS UNTIL LAUNCH."
Three hours may sound like a lot of time, but for a liftoff that's the final check-up point.
"Yeah, you're right," I say, and put the multimeter back in its box.
The crew gathers in the navigation room to check off all the tasks, confirming that everything's running and nothing is lying loose. For the last hour, we just lie strapped in our bunks, waiting.
"FIFTEEN MINUTES UNTIL LAUNCH."
We all have to click a series of buttons on our bed screen to confirm that we're ready.
"TEN MINUTES UNTIL LAUNCH."
As I lie in my bunk, staring at the ceiling, it really feels like we're finally heading home. Maybe we didn't find any life in the TRAPPIST-1 solar system but we gathered a lot of data that we're bringing back home. Another few months of analysis and we should be able to find a way for humans to colonise it. With the state of things back on earth, we could sure use another planet.
"FIVE MINUTES UNTIL LAUNCH."
Makes me wonder how it went for the T-1000 ship, which went to check on the Teegarden planets. They should be back on earth already. But we'll have to wait a few months to hear about it. Once you're light years away from someone, it's faster to go there by warp drive than to try to communicate with them.
"ONE MINUTE UNTIL LAUNCH."
I steel myself for the incoming forces and sure enough, the ship soon starts shaking.
"THREE. TWO. ONE."
My body is pressed down into the mattress, becoming heavier and heavier. I struggle to keep my lungs from being crushed and I can barely move a muscle as everything shakes and the roar of the engines take over any other sounds. I feel heavier and heavier, reaching three times my own weight, until after a while, everything stops. The engines quiet down, the ship feels still and I feel lighter. Much lighter. Floating.
"ACTIVATING ACCELERATION."
I'm pulled back down into the bed and feel how I slowly gain weight again. After a while, it almost feels like lying in bed back on earth. My screen says we're accelerating at nine meters per second squared. I relax for a few minutes before the ship speaks again.
"ACCELERATION STABILISED. YOU ARE NOW FREE TO ROAM."
It's always tiring going through a launch, even if you just lie there and the takeoff lasts for no more than seven minutes. But those seven minutes really make you feel like you're leaving an entire world.
Grady is the first to get up, heading to the front of the ship on light feet. The rest of us soon get up too, making our way to navigation to stare at the screens by the control panel. Two of them are showing the gray piece of rock we just left. Another few are showing the millions of stars around us. I manage to spot the glowing, white disk that is the andromeda galaxy.
Another hour goes by as we unpack, check the machines and eat. Walter makes us a nice salad, the chef that he is.
After lunch, Charlet reminds me of the wiring problem and we get to fixing that. I check again that the yellow wire is faulty and she helps Lee get up into the ceiling to lay down a new wire. It takes no more than an hour before the console is working again. I initiate a lifeform scan of the ship just to see that it's functional. While the scan is running, I go and check on the reactor. I find Owen in there, standing over a ventilation shaft. He stands up as I come in, putting his hands to his sides.
"There's nothing wrong with the oxygen, is there?" I ask.
"No, nothing wrong," he assures me. "Just a bit inconsistent flow, is all. Oxygen levels are at twenty point five percent instead of twenty-one. I'll try to fix it but... " He inhales for demonstration. "There's no noticeable difference."
I shrug and start checking the screen for the reactor. Owen is in charge of oxygen, he knows what he's doing. And if the levels drop below nineteen percent, the ship will sound an alarm. The reactor is doing fine so I head back to Admin to see what the scan says. The screen shows an equally confusing and worrying message.
TWELVE LIFEFORMS FOUND
I stare at the words, working my brain to try and figure out what they mean. We're ten passengers. We've been ten since we left earth. I count the crew on my fingers, just to make sure. Walter, Rachel, Lee, Grady, Pich, Benny, Owen, Yuki, Charlet and me. That's ten. It has to be some sort of malfunction. I scan again, staying in the room for the fifteen minutes it takes for the computer to finish. Again, it says twelve. I change the settings to only scan this room. It's done after just a minute:
ONE LIFEFORM FOUND
Okay, so the scan seems to be working. I turn on another scan of the entire ship before I head out, taking a right to the cafeteria. Only Walter is there.
"Where's the rest?" I ask.
Walter shrugs and gestures vaguely toward the corridors. I head to the front of the ship, finding Owen by the oxygen generators.
"How's the oxygen coming around?" I ask.
"It's definitely coming around. Just think there's something wrong with one of the vents in the back."
"You don't know anything about the life scan in Admin?" I ask him.
"Nope. That's Rachel's area, isn't it? Why?"
"It just seems to be working... inconsistently, that's all."
I continue down the corridor, which curves to the right and then left into the navigation room. Benny is sitting alone by the control panel, quietly watching the screens.
"Have you seen Rachel?" I ask.
"No," he answers without turning.
I continue my round through the right side of the ship, passing the communications room and going straight through Storage. Hearing something in the electrical room, I head inside. Charlet is in the far back, testing some wires again.
"Something wrong?" I ask.
"The stupid doors to the engine room won't open," she says. "Probably some kind of malfunction."
"Or sabotage."
Charlet looks at me with a puzzled face. "Why... would anybody sabotage them?"
"Dunno," I say, afraid to voice my worries. "Try rebooting the doors."
"Okay..."
She flicks a large, white switch next to the wiring, waits a few seconds, and flicks it back on.
"I tried the life scan by the way," I tell her. "But it keeps saying we're twelve people on the ship."
Charlet's eyes grow large. "What?"
"Yeah. So now I'm trying to find Rachel, to see if she can explain that."
"She was heading to the back last I saw her. But... do you think the scan is right?"
"I don't know," I say honestly.
I keep on moving, heading toward the back. The large, metal doors to the engine room are still closed so I slide open a panel by the wall. Underneath sits several buttons and a large switch. I switch it off and on again and the doors slide open. The engine room is empty but over the roar from the engine, I hear metal clang against metal in the reactor room. I take a peek inside but it's empty. And so is the security room. Weird.
I keep going and find Owen in the other engine room, checking the vent.
"I didn't do shit but now it's flowing again," he says with his hand above it. "Weird."
"Have you seen Rachel?" I ask.
"You still haven't found her? No, I only saw Grady in the cafeteria."
I move on through the corridor and take a look through the doorway into Medbay on my right. In the white-walled room, behind four medical bunks, I find Pich and Rachel standing by a control panel by the left wall.
"Finally," I say. "Rachel, I need you to come to admin."
We head out and I spot Grady on the couch in the cafeteria, playing some VR game. When Rachel and I reach the admin room, we are met by a disappointing screen.
TEN LIFEFORMS FOUND
"No, no, no," I say. "It said twelve before. You have to believe me."
"Why would it say twelve?" she asks.
"That's what I want to know. Could we have brought hitchhikers along?"
"I... don't think so," Rachel says. "Haven't we scanned the ship several times already?"
"Not in the last few days," I say. "We had to replace a wire and figured we'd do it after the launch."
I initiate another scan and we wait in there for fifteen long minutes. When the scan is complete, the words that pop up on the screen do nothing to still my worries.
NINE LIFEFORMS FOUND