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CHAPTER 36

January 16, 2091 (Earth timeline)

March 19, 2090 (Ship timeline)

approximately 6 light-months from Earth

3.64 light-years from Proxima

Roy had about the worst hangover he remembered ever having, ever, in his life. Once Cindy and Pankish had dragged him to his room, he was still nauseous. He had kept one leg off the bed touching the floor with the hope that connecting to the floor would help keep the ceiling from spinning. It hadn’t. Finally, Roy had just taken his blanket to the bathroom and slept there. The air toilet looked similar to normal ones, but there was no water flow; instead there was an air-sleeve that activated once the lid was opened. Roy hadn’t been certain how it would respond to projectile vomiting, but after about the third time he realized that the design was quite capable of handling anything he could throw at it—or more to the point, throw up at it.

Midway through the next morning his brain was becoming almost coherent enough to realize that he was curled up into fetal position on the bathroom floor shivering against the cold metal deck plating. His body being in direct contact with the very efficient heat sink was sapping all the heat his body could generate and was bringing him close to hypothermia. The loss of body heat actually had probably helped his hangover, acting somewhat like an icepack on his pounding head. But, in reality, Roy wasn’t sure that anything could help.

Roy wanted to die. Flat out, all he wanted at the moment was for his head to quit throbbing, the uneasiness in his stomach to go away, the scratchy sore throat to heal, and most of all, the lingering depression from the knowledge that he couldn’t go home to fade. Drinking might not have been the best idea as he was already fighting that severe depression as it was. He was on antidepression meds the doctor had given him and then he had mixed them with alcohol, lots of alcohol. The knowledge of being lost in space from his wife and the daughter he’d never meet or even get to speak to in real-time was just too much for him without the added toxins to his brain.

Roy crawled to the bed and pulled the weighted magnetic blanket up over him. He lay shivering for what seemed like an eternity, but the heater coils in the sleep unit, combined with the thermal sensors and the feedback control loop, finally brought his body temperature back to normal. He drifted in and out of sleep. Recurring nightmares of not being there for his family made what sleep he managed to be unrestful. Once, he thought he was going to have to get back up to go to the toilet and heave, but he managed to choke the throat-burning bile back down and mentally force himself to keep his mouth clenched.

A few hours later, he managed to get up and drink some electrolytes and brush his teeth. He thought, very briefly, that a slow walk about the ship might do him some good. Then he thought less of that idea and crawled back into his bunk. After another thirty or forty minutes of lying sleepless in bed, he rolled over and reached out to switch on the light nearest the bed, knocking over the holoprojection of his rapidly growing daughter. He froze motionless and took a deep breath. He picked up the little silver-and-pink cube, rolled up onto his back, placing the cube on his stomach. Roy depressed the on switch and the data cube updated. It seemed to him that his daughter had grown an inch since he’d looked at the cube just hours before.

“Nigel?”

“Yes, Roy?”

“Are there any new letters from home?”

“Not yet, Roy.”

“Damn. Okay. Play the latest one.”

“Okay, Roy.”

* * *

“I think we’re going to have a hard time getting Roy to go to long-term cryo,” Cindy told Captain Crosby. She wasn’t as hungover as Roy and Pankish because she’d more or less sipped at her drinks, knowing that somebody was going to have to make sure they had gotten to bed safely. “He is afraid he’ll miss a video from home, I think.”

“If I have to do something, you’re right. I’ll make it an order. Or I’ll wake up the doctor and let him do it,” Crosby replied. “This is just a damned mess. If we hadn’t already gotten into the no-return level with the Samara Drive, then I would say to hell with the Proximans and turn this ship around.”

“Well, by the time we did that . . . I’m not sure we even could.” Cindy had thought about that already and wasn’t sure about their ability to go anywhere due to the astronavigation problems. “With the PINS being done for, I don’t think we could go full speed home without getting lost.”

“I’ve thought about that too. I think you are right about that. Roca and I talked it through a couple days ago,” Crosby said. “We’d have to go at a slower speed and make nav measurements by hand and do trajectory mods continuously. We’re in one helluva bad spot right now. And poor Roy is just stuck with us.”

“I think it would be better for him to go to cryo as soon as the doc said he could. That’s in a couple weeks, right?”

“Mak said that he wanted him to avoid deep cryo for the first six to eight months. We picked mid-March as a generic time in that window to assess him. I’d say if he’s not showing physical symptoms of his concussion, then we need to talk him into napping as soon as we can.” Crosby spun about in his desk chair so he could look out the forward-view window in the ready room. Cindy followed his gaze and could see him looking for Proxima. It was hard to miss as it was dead center straight ahead. “It is hard to believe it is so difficult to navigate to a bright shiny beacon like that.”

“It is a great deal harder than it looks for sure,” Cindy agreed. “I’ll talk Roy into letting us have the autodoc do a concussion assessment on him and then I’ll try to get him to cryo. I’m pretty sure if the damned thing cleared him for EVA, then it should clear him for cryosleep.”

“Don’t bet it on. I thought so too, but Mak said the system used different protocols and algorithms for the two different things,” Crosby said. “If you need me to come make it an order just let me know, subtly and privately.”

“Yes sir. I’ll get right on that.”



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