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Parker.

  “Cath, let me take the cable and the tool bag,” said Winters on the local EVA channel.

  “’Kay,” said Cathcart. “I’m pretty sure we can patch into the grid at the hab junction box about eighty meters forward of here, just off the central corridor.”

  Null-g made moving the massive reactor doable for a single man, but dangerous. Winters stayed well back from Cathcart and his package to give him room to maneuver. Forty minutes later, Cathcart reported. “We’re go for computers and comm when you’re ready, Winters. I’d hold off on lights and mechanical systems for a bit.”

  “Fire it up,” came the reply. On the command channel, “Parker, we’re go for power momentarily. Advise immediately if systems are on beyond the hab module.”

  Ensign Parker was watching the station rather than the command board so he heard the alert before he saw the message scroll across the console. He brought his attention back to his own ship and scanned for what might have triggered the low-level alarm. There it was. . . .

  UTS synchronization signal received outside of expected maximum deviation.

  Process or ignore?

  Parker keyed his mike. “Winters, what’s the status of the UTS program?”

  There was a pause; apparently they were conferring on the EVA channel. Winters replied, “Program was left in poll-response mode in case Howard sent a signal. Neither of us thought to shut if off. Is there a problem?”

  “I don’t think so. Howard just sent a sync and Kestrel says it’s outside expected maximum deviation.”

  “More than likely the computers crashed hard when the power failed and aren’t restarting gracefully.” Winters’ reply was without any sign of uncertainty.

  “Recommendation? It’s asking for instructions.”

  “Process the input. We might be able to tell something from the offset.” Again, a confident response. Parker keyed in the command. The console responded with

  Local date/time set to November 18, 5318 22:12:37.172263

  Parker noted the date. “Howard’s computer’s futzed. Shows current date as about thirty-two hundred years from now. I’ll reset to TSFHQ offsets and shut off UTS polling. Just bear it in mind when you’re rooting around the logs.”

  “Aye.” Winters was already moving slowly through the dead hab module aft towards the station command center. Cathcart was still at the junction box double checking electrical routing to be sure their pony reactor wouldn’t be called on to do too much. On the EVA channel, “I’m at command, Cath. We stable on power for a while? I’ll start offloading files.”

  “Got some wiggles on the meter, but nothing too worrisome. This place is cold, dead and weird.” Cathcart paused. “We’ve got a power drain forward, not through the bus—it looks like it’s bleeding over through the command circuitry. We’re probably leaking into that dead reactor. I’m going to see if I can’t physically disconnect the coupling. I don’t want to try to fiddle with it at the junction box.” He tucked a few tools into a small satchel and started forward from the jury-rigged reactor.

  Parker, his attention returned to the station, scanned the structure. Because the light was so fleeting, he almost missed it. “Winters, we had a flash forward of your position.”

  “Aye.” The response was immediate and automatic. No doubt he was checking with Cathcart to determine what had happened. “Cathcart reports a power drain forward, probably bleeding back into the dead reactor. He’s on his way to confirm and physically disconnect it.”

  “Keep me posted.” Parker wasn’t worried, not really. But it was always disconcerting to him to be the puppeteer in situations like this. He preferred direct action.

  “Kestrel.” Winters’ clipped voice was emotionless.

  “Kestrel, aye.” Parker was still visually scanning the station, estimating the locations of his crewmates.

  “Primary offline storage is fused. I get a good checksum off the holographic backups. You want me to download them?”

  Most complex computer systems mirrored their offline datastream into molecular holographic storage during system idle time. It had the advantage of providing a zero-energy, non-volatile copy of the data, but reading it corrupted it. The checksum was really an evaluation of the interference patterns of a laser fired through the memory crystal. “Confer with Cath. If he thinks power’s stable enough, go ahead.” Winters switched to the EVA channel to do just that.

  Another alert sounded, not a warning, just an advisory. The console to Parker’s left lit up. Communications.

  Incoming data transmission. Kestrel is not the designated recipient.

  Contingency buffering initiated and can be maintained for 90 seconds.

  Commit to storage? (y/n)

  “What the hell?” Parker keyed the console to store the datastream and display it simultaneously. “Winters.” Gibberish filled the screen and scrolled for several screens before the data resolved itself into a view of Research Station Howard from somewhere above the plane of the ecliptic and far enough away that everything in the frame was in sharp focus.

  “Winters, aye.”

  “Did you leave the EM census program running?” The station filled approximately one-tenth of the frame widthways and did not show the metal fatigue evident upon Kestrel’s arrival.

  “Aye, sir.”

  A utility craft flashed on and off the screen—this was obviously time lapse photography. From the rate of rotation of the hydroponics bays, Parker estimated one frame every hour or so. Why a probe had been set up to do a time study on the station, he had no idea. The file was tagged to be routed to a Daniel Westfall. Between one frame and the next the station’s condition changed. The lights went out. The metal fatigue was apparent, the tumble and drift became so quickly. In less than a minute the sequence ended. In the final frames, Kestrel had been visible.

  “Winters.” Parker was calm as he spoke, but atwitch inside.

  “Winters, aye.”

  “Status.”

  “Cathcart is attempting to force the hatches into the engineering module. Until he resolves that power drain he can’t guarantee a clean holographic storage dump.”

  “Pack up and get back here.” Some of the edginess he was feeling must have come through his voice.

  “Boss, he’ll have it in a few minutes.”

  “That wasn’t a suggestion.” Parker never pulled rank.

  “Aye, sir.”

  While he waited for his shipmates to return, he made two backups of the data transmission he’d intercepted. Then he went to the galley to fix dinner.

  Physics Research Station Howard hung motionless in the void, some lights blinking, others steady, a long stretch unlit and blotting out the stars. Amber flashers marked docking ports. Blue strobes so bright they were nearly white warned of navigational hazards. The high-gain antenna, the heat-sink array, the fore and aft limits of the station itself. The quiet calm of Sol-spectrum fluorescents glowing through the portals of the residential and command modules beckoned promising the comforts of food, companionship, rest and safety. In this nearly empty system, and despite a design aesthetic that could fairly be described as punitively ugly, Howard was home to twenty-two scientists, engineers, technicians and crew who worked on or supported the project.

  A Bug, one of Howard’s complement of utility vehicles, fired attitude jets on its roll, pitch and yaw axes simultaneously. Compensating bursts on each axis fired a few moments later as the tiny craft aligned itself with its new vector. Main thrusters fired and the Bug started for home. The maneuver spoke of a pilot of consummate skill, but in fact it was being controlled by an AI running on Howard’s primary housekeeping cluster. With no backup living quarters this side of Terra, centralized control of local traffic was necessary. A benefit was that it reduced the complexity of piloting a Howard auxiliary craft to specifying destination coordinates. If more specific control of the route was desired a set of waypoints could be used. Within a light second of Howard, the mechanics of piloting were handled by the AI. As a
matter of routine, the Bug’s course at this stage would not bring it directly into contact with the station. If its course remained unchanged, the small vessel would pass beneath the command module with a considerable margin of safety. As the range closed, the Bug would be slowed and coaxed into its docking port. Understandably, the AI piloting program ran with the highest available priority for system resources.

  The Bug closed to ten kilometers and the first deceleration burn kicked in on schedule. The station was visible to the naked eye only as a string of lights and a narrow band of occluded stars. The lights went out. Seconds later a priority alarm sounded. A klaxon, under-console lights flashed red and a calm-but-urgent voice of indeterminable gender said, “Emergency. Assume manual control immediately. Remote piloting has been discontinued. Risk of collision is grave.” The voice repeated itself.

  Natalia Volonskaya gasped a scream and woke up. At first the disorientation of waking defeated her. She looked around blankly. There was a machine voice nagging at her, “. . . protocol terminated. Contact with Research Station Howard reestablished. Stasis protocol terminated. . . .” Then it all fell together with a crash that was almost audible. Someone had come!

  She bolted out of the autodoc’s monitoring chamber and pulled herself from one handhold to another across the tiny ship to the command console. Two screens were active, one with a UTS confirmation request