The starchild compact, p.8
The Starchild Compact, page 8
"This is crazy," Noel muttered to Ari. "This guy was sent here to kill us!"
"You don't know that," Ari said. "Let's at least give him a chance to explain himself."
Ari examined the stowaway as they moved him through the lock and into level six. He could be my brother. Saeed Esmail – Happy, prosperous son of Abraham…what is this deluded young fool doing out here? What does the Caliphate intend? Where does this lead?
The Captain arrived and took in the stowaway with reserved astonishment. "Prognosis, Doc?"
"I say pitch the little terrorist through the main lock," Noel said through clenched teeth.
Jon gave him an intense look, one that Ari had seen from time to time in his relationship with his American Navy friend. "Stow it!" Jon said curtly.
"Give me an hour, and I can be more specific, Captain. This man is near death from radiation exposure."
"Ari, stay with her. If he poses an immediate threat, do what you must, but try to keep him alive."
"He's too weak to be a threat, Jon," Carmen said.
"Not necessarily," Ari commented. "This guy is driven by a fanaticism no one onboard can ever really understand. I'll stay with you."
#
Jon returned to the Core and strapped himself into the Control Console chair. He set up a Flash transmission to Houston. The message: "Set up an Eyes Only reception for Mission Director Zakes. Acknowledge by return Flash Message. Include my Zulu time to transmit." Since the one-way transmission time was now fifteen minutes, Jon wanted to ensure the privacy of his communication to his old friend and shipmate on the Mars Expedition, Rod Zakes. He sent the transmission, and then unstrapped and floated across the Core and up the ladder well to the Canteen for a cup of coffee. Cup, he smiled to himself, we drink from a bulb, but still call it a cup. Creatures of habit we are. Even that poor wretch down in Sickbay – a creature of his own habits and beliefs.
Jon glided into his cabin with the bulb of black coffee, settled onto his easy chair, grinning to himself again, as he noted the habitual behavior. Why do I like the feel of the chair when I can float in perfect comfort anywhere in the room? He lifted himself from the chair and rolled over so he was looking at the deck. So why does this feel less comfortable? He asked himself, as he rolled back and settled against the chair fabric.
Jon couldn't get over the utter strangeness of a stowaway on his expedition. The Caliphate had not participated in the process nor competed for a place in the crew. The Ayatollah had been noticeably quiet about the entire expedition. The Islamic mindset was one Jon simply could not understand. Christians and the Jews, and most of their derivatives, had adapted to the modern world. They had allowed their faiths to evolve with the progress of knowledge, so that being a Jew or being a Christian still had meaning within the framework of a modern world. Islam seemed to reject the modern, except for weapons technology. When the Iranians had established their nuclear arsenal, they quickly swallowed up the entire Arab world, establishing an Islamic Caliphate that stretched from Pakistan in the East, to Uzbekistan in the North, Turkey in the Northwest, and across the entirety of North Africa from Somalia in the East to Mauritania in the West. The only holdout was the tiny nation of Israel.
The entire Caliphate was ruled by the current Ayatollah Khomeini, the Nizari Aga Khan of the Isma'ili Shi'i, who derived his power in a "strict" succession from 'Ali, the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet Mohamed. The Ayatollah, with his council of twelve Imams, ruled the Caliphate under strict Shari'ah law as interpreted by the Shi'i branch of Islam.
And now, Jon thought, one of their guys – one of their Jihadist Warriors – is on my ship half-way to Saturn. And I really can't let him die. The Caliphate certainly knows he's here. If he disappears, the Caliphate could launch a nuclear attack on Israel, or even Europe, Asia, or the U.S. Jon shook his head in dismay as his Flash Traffic indicator roused him from his reverie. He took the call on his Link. CapCom wanted him to commence his Eyes Only transmission in five minutes. Obviously, they had hustled to get Rod to Mission Control.
Jon wrote out a general description of the stowaway and what they had found. He explained Saeed's serious medical condition, and indicated that they would do what they could to keep him alive.
A half-hour later he received a cryptic response, informing him that Houston would get back to him, and not to transmit anything else about the matter until then.
#
"Captain, I need to speak with you," Carmen said to Jon on her executive override. "Saeed is sedated and restrained in Sickbay. Ari is with him. May I come to your cabin?"
"Of course. I'll have a Latté waiting."
When Carmen arrived in the Canteen, she could still smell the pungent coffee aroma from the Captain's activities. Apparently, while he waited for her to arrive, Jon busied himself in the Canteen, operating the complicated gadget that enabled a person to make a Latté in zero-g. It was an ingenious device that mixed coffee, a special powder, and air resulting in a Latté that was close to the real thing. Jon handed her the bulb when she floated through his door shortly thereafter.
He commands our lives, but he makes me coffee, she thought, remembering how Jesus had washed his disciples' feet. She noticed that he seemed to be sitting in his easy chair, although it was obviously for effect, since one place was as good as another in zero-g. "Thank you, Captain." She put as much warmth into her voice as possible. He nodded expectantly. "Saeed apparently was exposed to the full brunt of the solar storm we experienced. He is suffering from a serious case of radiation sickness, and will die unless he receives a bone marrow transplant." She paused to let that information sink in. Jon waited quietly for her to go on. "Back on Earth, a bone marrow transplant is no big deal. But out here, under these circumstances…well, it's never been done in zero-g, and I've never done it." Jon raised his eyebrows and looked intently at her, making her feel a pressing need to say more. "I know what to do, and certainly am capable of performing the procedure, but you have to know that it is a huge risk. It might be a death sentence instead of a cure."
Jon smiled encouragingly, and said' "What happens if you don't do a marrow transplant?"
"He dies…in two or three days maximum. He dies."
"What about a donor?" Jon's question surprised Carmen, because of its obvious implied insight into the problem.
"I ran his DNA against the crew. Ginger is a surprisingly close match given the obvious physical differences between her and Saeed, but Ari is as close as a person can be without being an identical twin." Jon looked at her, his face expressing surprise. "They could be brothers," Carmen told him.
"I'll be damned! Does Ari know?"
"Not yet. I wanted to discuss the matter with you first. We could use Ginger, but the odds of success would be less than fifty percent. If we use Ari, we're up above ninety percent – basically as good as it gets if you don't have a twin."
"Okay, set it up, but let me inform Ari. How are my injured crew?'
"Ginger will be out of her cast in a couple of days, Demitri's knee is virtually healed, Ari's bandage comes off tomorrow, and Michele is more bothered by the shaved patch of hair than anything else – she's doing fine. Chen hasn't changed, and I'm worried about him. What bothers me is that his brain wave pattern is normal, yet he remains in a coma. I don't understand why, and Houston hasn't come up with anything useful, either."
#
Ari's initial reaction to Jon's request that he donate bone marrow for Saeed's transplant was incredulity. As he thought about it, however, it began to make sense. His entire family came from Semitic stock that had Palestinian roots going back centuries. The Persian Caliphate had eliminated borders throughout its empire, even forcefully resettled entire villages to compensate for perceived differences or requirements that fell out of its interpretation of the Qur'an and Sunnah. It was not unreasonable, therefore, to find a Shi'ite of Palestinian heritage closely linked to the Persian Caliphate out of Teheran. Assuming Saeed survived, it would be interesting to see how he handled having Jewish bone marrow.
Ari presented himself to Carmen for the procedure. "I'm going to put you under," she told him, "and remove bone marrow from your iliac crest with this." She showed him a rather large syringe. "I'll remove about two-hundred milliliters, and slowly infuse it into Saeed's blood stream. You'll be done in about an hour, but I'll keep you under observation for another hour, so I'll have you for just under three hours." She smiled at him with a professional demeanor that almost seemed a bit cold to Ari. "You'll be sore for a couple of days, as if you had smacked your upper hip during the tumble. That's it, really. Your body will replenish the missing marrow in about a week."
"You understand the irony, don't you Doc?"
"I do," she answered with a smile that felt much warmer. "Here, let me strap you down."
Just under three hours later, Ari peered through bleary eyes at the Doctor's pretty face. "How are you feeling, Ari?" she asked.
"I've felt better," he said, with a nonchalance he didn't feel. "It feels like you whacked my hip with a sledge hammer."
"Just be happy we are in zero-g," she answered. "I thought you were the tough guy in the crew."
Ari tossed her a wry grin as his world came into focus again. "Let's keep it a secret," he said, winking at her. "I got work to do." He sailed out the Sickbay door.
Chapter 8
This time Ari and Noel stopped briefly in the forward Box end cap to examine the huge horizontal tether reel. The tether was tightly wound on the horizontal reel, layer upon layer, each winding tightly set against the previous one, exactly as it was supposed to be. They continued through the Box to the lower end cap.
Noel got there first, and when Ari arrived, he found Noel staring at the take-up reel. Instead of being tightly wound on the horizontal reel, as it was in the forward end cap, what Ari saw was a jumble of winding over winding, sort of a rat's nest that is every fly fisherman's nightmare, but on a gigantic scale.
"Jon," Ari said on his Link, "You're going to want to look at this in person."
Jon showed up a few minutes later, followed by Demitri not long after that.
The four men took some time to examine the reel and rat's nest from every angle, occasionally probing between loose windings.
"The way I see it," Jon said at last, "is that we have only two options." He floated down over the part of the reel where the end passed through a guide and then to the exit point in the center of the end cap. "We can take a chance that the aramid cable wrapping is undamaged. After all, the conductivity appears intact. That means we return to tether using this one. And while we do it, you, Ari, remain right here physically monitoring the unreeling. Assuming it goes well, when we are on extended tether, you can EVA your way back to the Pullman. If you find a damaged area, then we retract it back, and go to Plan B. The other option, Plan B, is to change out the reel now." He paused for a bit. "Give me some feedback."
"No need to EVA back," Ari said. "We just retract the tether long enough for me to return to the Pullman. Then extend the tether again."
"If it's damaged," Demitri said, "then we obviously save time by changing the reel now."
"But," Ari interrupted, "if it's in good shape, we waste the good tether. If we need it in the future, we're screwed."
"I agree," Noel said.
"I guess I do, too," Demitri said. "I'd rather use up some extra time now, and have a spare available, if we ever need it."
"Okay," Jon said. "I think I want to hear from Houston on this one." He headed back.
"I'll follow up with Jon," Demitri told the other two, and headed forward after Jon.
Ari and Noel went through the lock into the Caboose, and proceeded to check out the circuits locally. They split up the task, with Noel checking the reactor circuitry and Ari checking the VASIMR circuitry. To Ari's great relief, there appeared to be no damage. With that, they wrapped it up, and returned to the Pullman to eat and rest up before their EVA.
#
Jon put a call through to Houston. Since the signal would take seventeen minutes to reach Houston, he put everything into his message "It's like this," he told them, after explaining the problem with the rat's nest of tangled windings. "The after tether has electrical integrity, but until we let it out, we simply don't know about the aramid wrapping. I thought about having a couple of guys go EVA and pull it out, but the tether is designed to be pulled out by the Caboose at one gravity. No two guys on this vessel are going to make that happen. We can extend the tether with someone watching at the reel. Probably, he will detect any degradation of the outside of the tether. If it's good, we extend it fully, and the observer makes his way back to the Pullman in an individual flyer, since there is no way he can descend two clicks in a gravity field. If it's damaged, then we replace the reel – that's a two-day operation. We're seventeen days away from the Jupiter boost, and fifteen days away from retracting the tether before the boost.
"Now, here's the problem. If the tether is damaged, we need to make a command decision whether to continue the mission, or return home. If the decision is to return home, we should be thinking about using Jupiter to give us the homeward momentum. This means we need to examine the tether in the next ten days or so. I'm sure you see the ramifications. I don't want scrubbing the mission to be my decision. My take – our take – is to go, no matter what. We're happy staying in free fall until after the boost, and then extending the tether and determining any damage.
"I'll be standing by for your analysis and recommendations."
What Jon got back from Houston thirty-four minutes later was a curt: "Roger…stand by."
The full answer took several hours. When it came, it was from Rod Zakes, Eyes Only, double encrypted.
"I don't need to tell you that the implications of your stowaway have potentially staggering repercussions here on Earth. You need to ensure absolutely whether Esmail transmitted anything back to Earth. We are assuming he was trained, and left to his own resources, once he got to El-four. We traced him to the provisioning crew, where apparently he staged an accident that "killed" him, using the surrounding activity to set up his surreptitious presence. Did he have a transmitter with him? We presume from the sophistication of the enterprise that he very likely had a burst transmitter – possibly more than one. If he didn't transmit, our task is easier, but if he did, we will have to prepare for the inevitable onslaught of propaganda. The answer to this question has the highest priority.
"You need to consider that if he transmitted, and should he succumb for any reason at all, the Caliphate will be all over it. No matter what happened, we will be blamed for his death. With Ari on board, it will be twisted into a Zionist plot, and two billion Muslims will rise in protest. The Europeans will appease, the Asians will delay, the Russians will stir the pot, and we alone will be holding back the tide. It might even give the Caliphate the reason it has been seeking to nuke Israel.
"I'm NOT being melodramatic – this is our best assessment, fully vetted by State and the White House. So, assuming he's transmitted, we NEED to find a way out of this! Deal only with me about this, always Eyes Only.
"As to the tether situation, we will not order you to continue if you believe – in your best judgment – that the mission is fatally compromised by the asteroid impact on the tether. Assuming, however, that you will do what I would do, we recommend you remain coupled until after the boost. Then solve your problem. You have a good spare. Remember, the likelihood of this happening in the first place was infinitesimal. The odds of it happening again are equally small. One caveat – keep the old tether. You never know when it might come in handy.
"Good luck, and God's speed, my old friend. With all your troubles, I still envy you. We picked the best man for the job, and I guess you now have the opportunity to show us just how right we were."
#
Jon brought the entire crew together in the Canteen. Carmen had assured him that Saeed was sedated and would remain out for several more hours. Chen remained in his coma with virtually no change in his condition. His vitals were strong and his brain wave pattern continued to be normal. Carmen had transmitted to Houston the entire store of data she had taken on him since the accident. The best medical minds on Earth were working on a solution, but in the meantime, Chen remained in Sickbay, apparently sleeping peacefully. Chen's condition bothered Jon, but he left its solution to his ship's doctor and her Earthside support team. Ginger sported her cast with a certain air of pride – hinted at, but not expressed, and Jon thought she winked at him as she glided into the Canteen. Ari was fully recovered, having discarded the adhesive bandage after returning from the Caboose. Jon was grateful for his friend's dedication, and gave him a warm smile when he and Noel floated in. Michele found a way to cover her shaved spot, sporting two ponytails that fanned out around the back of her head in zero-g like a halo. They made her look younger – a fact that she discovered almost immediately. Jon thought she was pretty as a picture, and said so when she and Elke arrived, knowing how much it mattered to her. Elke continued to be solicitous toward Michele, which was fine with Jon, because this gave Carmen more time to handle Chen and now Saeed. Demitri was the last to arrive. In zero-g, Jon couldn't tell about his knee, but Demitri was not one to complain, and Jon respected his decision not to make an issue of his injury.
"We've heard back from Houston," Jon said without preamble, "on both matters." The group formed in interesting picture. Jon and Noel tended to respect the visual up and down, orienting themselves as if they were under gravity. The rest of the crew placed themselves in whatever position gave them a good vantage. In addition, Jon couldn't help but notice that Michele ensured he had a good view of the physical effect that zero-g had on her breasts. He gave her the satisfaction of noticing, and then tried his best to keep from noticing any further. "Houston is concerned that our guest may have brought burst transmitters with him – even that he might already have used one. Because we don't know, we have to assume that the Caliphate knows he made it onboard successfully. Houston wants heroic efforts to keep him alive."
