Destination Europa: Chapter 18

A New Hypothesis

This is Destination Europa, a psychological sci-fi thriller set aboard the R. G. Leifr, a colony ship headed towards Jupiter to establish a settlement on the ice moon Europa.

← Previous chapter

→ Next chapter

Navigation Index

Previously, Quill was being questioned by FSS Security about the text painted opposite his cabin, when the interview was interrupted by a mysterious Morse code message broadcast to everyone aboard the Leifr.

-- . -. .
-- . -. .
. -.- . .-..
.--. .- .-. ... .. -.

MENE, MENE, TEKEL, PARSIN

Quill stared at the translation AiLeifr had output. He wasn’t the only one to have recognised the sequence of electronic shrieks and whistles as Morse code, but he thought with a grimace that he was one of the very few aboard who would understand the translation without asking AiLeifr for further context.

“Mene, mene, tekel, parsin,” he repeated softly. “You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting.” The original writing on the wall. He flicked open his Bible and read the chapter in the book of Daniel. “Suddenly the fingers of a human hand appeared and wrote on the plaster of the wall…” He shuddered.

All the chat channels were spiralling and pinwheeling with speculation all evening. It hadn’t taken long for others to pick up the basic meaning of the message: Judgement is coming. The speculation roamed from technical discussion of how the takeover of the ship’s audio system could have been accomplished, to the possible states of psychosis that could give someone such delusions, to whether Babylon was intended to represent the FSS, or SymbioNor, or both. Quill paced his cabin, striding the narrow channel between the bunk and the locker, wishing there was more space, until he crumpled into his chair. I should say something. Nobody seems to realise this is a real threat. We’re all in danger, deadly danger, and nobody knows except Safira. I know she said FSS intelligence knows about the threat, but they’re not saying anything and I don’t know that they’re taking it seriously. I should say something. Should I say something? Lord, grant me wisdom.

A ping from Safira, a call request.

“Hey, Saf.”

“How’s your evening been?”

Is she still playing Darmok and Jalad? “Uh, you know, strange as everyone else’s, I guess.”

“All quiet on the Western front?” Is she asking about my interview?

“Well, things got cut short, because, you know..”

“You ever in the Scouts? You know how to use a compass?”

Crap, she is still being cryptic. Compass, direction, which direction were they going? “Uhh, yeah. I do have some sense of direction. But I think it’s like, uh, you know when you’re climbing that hill near Olympus? And you think you’re going the right way but actually that path takes you to, uh, the crematorium?”

Silence. The urgency and fear churned in Quill’s belly, then swelled and burst into speech.

“Dammit, Saf, I can’t take this any more! The time for Darmok and Jalad is over! We have to—”

“I’m doing the best I can,” she interrupted, before he had time to say more. “Got to go. We’ll talk later.”

A hollow rumble in Quill’s stomach reminded him he had missed dinner. He checked the time. 2103. The mess should still have hot drinks and snacks available, and presumably they were allowed to go and get them. He ran his fingers through his hair. Shower slot tomorrow. Unless we’re all dead. I need to do something. But what? The uncertainty and inaction of the last couple of hours crystallised into a decision. He sent Tark a message.

The mess was nearly empty; Quill had never seen it so quiet. When he ordered a hot chocolate from the drinks machine, the whirr of nozzles and hiss of steam startled him. As he grabbed the beaker and went to pick up a cold sandwich from the self-service rack, he saw Tark out of the corner of his eye. She approached the drinks machine and began to order something, ignoring him. He turned away, cramming a bite of locust-ham sandwich into his mouth and slurping his drink to wash it down. When he heard the noise of the drinks machine stop, he stuffed the rest of the sandwich into the pocket of his overalls and headed towards the corridor.

The toilets just outside the mess were empty. Quill double-checked, prodding each cubicle door open and looking inside. He then set his mostly-full beaker of hot chocolate on the narrow shelf by the washbasin and began to wash his hands.

Tark came in just as he was rinsing the soap from between his fingers. He looked up and caught her eye in the mirror, then nodded at his hands. She took the hint, and began to wash her own hands, saying nothing.

He squeezed past her to use the hand dryer, and waited for its roar to fill the tiny bathroom.

“Tark.”

She moved closer, placing her own hands under the dryer alongside his, leaning in towards him.

“Nice idea!” she said. He had to strain to hear her, but that was the point. It wouldn’t stop the ai listening in, but it might make it more difficult to parse what they were saying, to disentangle their words from the background noise.

“We don’t have much time,” he said. “Tark, this sounds crazy. But there’s a terrorist on board.”

He saw the blood drain from her face.

“How do you—”

“I’ll explain later. But right now, our evidence, we need to send it to Security. We need people to know.”

“Then why are we doing this?” she said, waving a hand at the dryer. “Just let them hear what we’re saying!”

Quill shook his head. “What if AiLeifr’s compromised?”

Her eyes opened wider. At the same time, one eyebrow rose in a question mark. “But—”

“Can’t risk it!”

“But— OK, so what do you want to do?”

“Take the data from the files. Give it to Captain Strand. And Chief Gundarsson. In person, if you can. Explain what it means. They’ll trust you more than me.”

Tark nodded. The hand dryer faltered briefly and they both waved their hands vigorously to restart it. She still had the questioning look overlaying her shock.

“But the data from the files, how does it point to a terrorist?”

“I’m not exactly sure, but it’s got to be connected!” he replied. “I didn’t tell you—”

“Wait!” Her eyes were flitting to and fro the way they did when she was calculating something. “Occam’s razor!”

“What about it?”

“Think about it! Excess O₂ consumption! Water dispenser! Missing fruit! All of it!”

“Yeah?”

“What if we have an extra person? A stowaway?”

The echoing roar of the hand dryer faded as they both dropped their hands, processing the conclusion Tark had just drawn.

“But how?” said Quill, his voice suddenly loud in the quiet. “I mean, how would that even be possible?”

Tark shrugged, then to Quill’s utter surprise threw an arm round his neck and pulled him into a deep kiss. He found himself involuntarily responding, drawing her closer, until he heard a cough behind him. The bathroom door had opened and Tasha NiDorn from Security was standing in the entrance.

Quill jumped, breaking away from Tark as if she were electrically charged.

“Alright,” said Tasha. “Break it up.” She sounded bored, or just exhausted.

“Sorry,” said Quill. “I, uh, this isn’t…”

“Nothing against two friends bumping into each other on their way back to quarters, is there, Tasha?” said Tark.

“Yeah, right,” said Tasha. “Just get back to your quarters and sim it like everyone else, OK?”

Tasha held the door open until they were in the corridor, then escorted them back to Deck 8. Quill felt his face burning. She’s going to think… What kind of witness is that? But it wasn’t my fault! I didn’t know Tark was going to do that. Though it’s a good job she did. Probably. He tried not to think about how good it had felt, for those few seconds.

He would have liked to go to the Observation Lounge for a while, to sit and watch the universe roll past, to mull things over, but Deck 9 was now out of bounds for him. Instead, he lay back in his bunk and asked AiLeifr to display the view from the forward camera. Jupiter hung to the side of the field of view like a grapefruit, noticeably bigger now than even a week ago. Quill zoomed in on the planet as much as the resolution would allow, letting his eyes drift back and forth across its stripes and vortices, the colour of sand and rust and pale-ribbed mushrooms.

Would that really be possible? Could someone have stowed away without being discovered at port? How would AiLeifr not have picked up their chip? Even if they used a Faraday net, they can’t have lived in it 24/7 for the last two years. Could they have hacked AiLeifr at such a fundamental level? Is that possible? Aren’t there failsafes against that sort of thing? And where would they live for all that time? Sure, the stowaway hypothesis explains the weird anomalies we’ve seen, but is that really the most likely scenario?

He shifted position, and felt the hard lump of the Fiducezol bottle where he’d hidden it under his pillow after the break-in. I still need to get rid of that. Come to think of it, how would the break-in fit in with the stowaway hypothesis? Easy enough to imagine that a terrorist agent hidden on a ship on a long voyage might want something to pep up their resolve and devotion to their cause. And presumably the pharmacy supply is carefully protected. But how would they know I had it? It doesn’t make sense.

An alert flashed in his optics, interrupting the view of Jupiter. A call from Tark.

“Hey, Tark.”

“Hi, Dr. O. You’re not sleeping?”

“Not sure I can at the moment. Listen, I’m not sure this hypothesis really flies, you know?”

“Maybe,” said Tark. “It doesn’t answer all the questions. But it might.”

“What about, uh, what happened in my cabin?”

“That’s one data point I’m not sure about. But it does fit the other stuff.”

“What about the bee?”

Tark made an impatient noise. “I think the bee is the least of our worries. Anyway, I’ve sent the data to the Captain and to Gundarsson.”

“OK, great. Did you, um, explain?”

Tark hesitated for a second. “I said I believed it was a sign of suspicious activity, possibly suggesting the presence of an additional person aboard, and urged them to consider it in their investigation. I didn’t say anything about a terrorist—”

“Shh!”

“Dr. O, listen, I’ve been thinking about this. If there is a terrorist, I really don’t think it’s feasible for them to have hacked or tapped AiLeifr to continually monitor the entire ship for stuff like this. I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations on the compute power, and I honestly don’t think it would work.”

Quill said nothing, troubled.

“In any case,” she went on, “even if we drown out speech in noise, like in the bathroom, don’t you think it could lip-read, if it really was monitoring that closely?”

“Oh…” Then Safira’s riddle-talk is the only way, really. But Tark’s probably right, could a ship’s ai really monitor continuously, in real-time? He thought back to Bowen’s request to use AiLeifr to search for the strawberry thief and how that had been refused as a frivolous use of compute power.

“Right,” said Tark. “Explain to me why you’re saying it’s a terrorist. I mean, if there is a stowaway, they’re probably up to no good, I get that. And if there isn’t, that means someone, one of us, is at least psychotic enough to write crazy stuff and send crazy coded messages. But that might just be a crazy person, someone who’s totally spaced, no?”

“I, uh—” Quill stopped short. Crap. I’m bound by the Official Secrets Act. I probably shouldn’t even have mentioned the word ‘terrorist.’ “I’m really sorry, Tark, but I can’t tell you right now.”

There was a cool silence. Quill flailed for something to say. “Like you said, if there’s a stowaway, they’re not here for a good reason. And if it’s someone going psychotic, why would they have stolen fruit and taken large quantities of water in the middle of the night?”

“OK then,” said Tark. She sounded a little hurt.

“Please, Tark. Trust me. Heaven knows I wish I knew who to trust myself, but I know that whoever is behind all this, at least it’s not you.”

“Well, isn’t that a high compliment,” she replied drily.

“That came out wrong! What I mean is, you’re the most trustworthy person I know aboard this ship. Anyway, I think the person who wrote the stuff was Martian.”

“Thanks,” she said after a heartbeat of silence. “Seriously, Dr. O — Quill — I do take that as a compliment. And I will take your word for it. Stowaway or not, there is someone aboard who means harm to the ship. And we need to stop them.”

Quill felt a sudden swell of gratitude. That’s three of us, now. Surely together we can do something.

“Right,” he said. “I guess we should try and get some sleep. Let’s see how the Captain responds to your message.”

“Sure. Goodnight, Dr. O.”

“Night, Tark.”

He couldn’t sleep. He lay in his bunk looking at the forward camera view again for a while. He recited some psalms. He tried deep breathing. Eventually he got up and got some water, then sat in the dim light and checked his Alliance messages. Two messages. One with material for the Annual Day of Prayer. One from Pamela and Patrick. He ignored the first, and opened Pamela and Patrick’s eagerly.

Dear Q,

Apologies for the delay in replying to your last. We were having a few days’ break over in Olympus. There was rather a nice concert at the new Concert Hall. Holst, and some newer stuff. Interestingly, while there we attended Weir Street for Sunday worship and of course ran into P’s parents. She seems to be doing well, though they do wish she would settle closer to home. She had that job with the Phobos consortium for a bit but she’s doing something on Luna now, it seems.

All for now.

Love, P&P.

Quill closed the secure shell with a sense of relief. Sounds like Priska really is OK. I guess what I saw was just a nightmare, not a spiritual vision or something.

He eventually drifted into shallow sleep, only to awaken an hour or so later. There were shouts outside and the sound of running. Quill checked the time: 0214. He got up and opened the cabin door to see what was going on. The corridor lights were the dim green of night mode, and the writing on the wall opposite straggled dark from the shadows. Up and down the corridor people were coming out to see what was going on, though no-one was venturing far from their own door.

The shouting came from just around the curve of the corridor, the direction of the Deck 8 bathroom. Quill heard Demas’ voice, and someone else yelling, then a half-scream. A few seconds later, two Security officers rounded the curve, dragging Demas between them. One of them was holding a shock gun to his ribs.

“Injustice!” cried Demas as they passed. “Report this, brothers and sisters!”

The guy with the shock gun — a junior officer — gave Demas another jab, causing him to double up in pain.

“Everyone back to quarters!” ordered the other officer, before they disappeared round the corridor, towards the hatch to the Blue Ring.

← Previous chapter

→ Next chapter

Navigation Index

If you enjoyed this story, let me know with a like, comment or share!

Cover image of Jupiter © National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, colour modification by SDGL.

Divider image: NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), and M. H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley) and the OPAL team, adapted by SDGL.