Someone noticed Ship was ill when all the port lights started to wink in unison, in and out, as he coughed.
“I’m fine,” he snapped, waving away Largin as she swooped in with a stethoscope. “That mouthful just went down the wrong way, is all.”
The whole mess had gone very quiet. Rows of faces turned to each other over our noodles. Petra leaned over to me and muttered, “Did you hear about yesterday?”
“No,” I said, hoping she’d get the hint.
“They were realigning some panels when Ship said he felt dizzy and needed to take a break. Then the whole truss started to lean over to one side. Nearly took Harrison out.”
Despite myself, I looked at her. “Why didn’t anyone put it on the risk register?”
“They’re scared,” said Petra. “They know what it means. They don’t want to cause a panic.”
“Captain doesn’t want to cause a panic,” I corrected. I looked at Ship again, over at high table between First Mate and the gunner’s empty spot. He was sitting resignedly as Largin crawled all over him with the stethoscope, noodles sat uneaten on the table. She had an intense expression on her face that I couldn’t place, one of extreme concentration.
Largin put out an all-hands telling everyone to come in for physical examination as soon as they’d finished shift.
Mine was late, a queue of people stretching out the door to the sickbay and into the mess by the time I arrived. Katy was just in front of me, but we just sort of nodded to each other without saying anything. All those people could’ve gone off and come back without missing their slot – it was clearly going to take at least an hour – but somehow there was an understanding among us that this was more important than gym, or pub, or a few snatched minutes of private time looking out the cupola at the stars.
That, and we were scared. Everybody was talking about Ship now, not in forum where it was written down, but in snatched asides as we passed each other in the corridors, in darkly muttered comments between two shiftmates, or after hours, between bunkmates, when we couldn’t sleep. The word that kept showing up again and again was “contagious”.
Yaroslav, Largin’s nurse, leaned his head out and said, “Next.”
I went in. I hadn’t been into the sickbay for months, since my last annual checkup. It was cramped even with all the bunks folded away to make room for a big tangle of machinery. Yaroslav directed me towards a couch right in the middle, deep in a thicket of hoses and cables. Largin was in the corner writing up the previous patient. Katy.
I looked over her shoulder at the screen and caught a glimpse of the words NO MATCH before she cinched it up and turned to me.
She looked exhausted. She probably hadn’t slept since the previous night in the mess. Yaroslav was in better shape; he’d probably tagged in for Jane, the other nurse. I wondered how far through the crew they were and how many they had to go.
“Sit,” she indicated.
I wedged myself into the chair, picking my way over and around the pipes. One of them seemed to have been taken from the vegetable garden; it was a nutrient feed. Others I didn’t recognise. It looked improvised, amateurish, almost comically so.
“What’s the test, Doc?” I said.
“Put these on,” she said, handing me a pressure cuff and some sort of headset that covered one eye. I obliged. Yaroslav was stony-faced in the corner, setting up something that looked like a scan. I was at least expecting him to answer me, but he didn’t say a word. Clearly these examinations were taking a toll.
“Give me your hand,” said Largin. I gave her my left. Without a word she stabbed a needle into my forefinger and drew a neat ruby of blood, which she swabbed and bundled away into a beaker which she fed to the machine. It hummed happily.
Something beeped. She looked up at me. “Try and relax, please. It’ll interfere with the test.”
I belatedly realised the pressure cuff was tensing on my arm. I breathed out heavily. The headset was playing gentle lights into my retina. It was like being underwater, or like how I remembered being underwater.
Yaroslav said, “Doctor.”
She looked up, eyes wide, and crossed the room to the screen he was showing her. I tried to look but couldn’t with the headset. Yaroslav was saying, “98%. That’s the highest yet.”
“I’d prefer 99,” said Largin, but her voice had a tone of urgency to it, like she was on the verge of tears. “What’s the T count?”
“I’m right here, you know,” I said, from under the headset.
Footsteps surrounded me and then Yaroslav was lifting off the headset. I blinked in the sickbay lights, needling into one eye like a blue-white icicle.
“You’re free to go,” he said.
“Hang on,” I said. “What am I 98% on?”
“Once the examinations are complete we’ll – ” he began, but Largin interrupted.
“Ship is dying.”
I assumed I’d misheard.
“What?”
“You heard me. He has between ten and twelve months. Roughly. I haven’t got enough data on how fast the glioblastoma is growing in his skull.”
I sat dumbstruck in the chair. Vaguely I registered Yaroslav taking the cuff from my limp arm. “I know what you’re thinking,” continued Largin. “Shouldn’t Ship be immune? Doesn’t the procedure reinforce the body’s defences, bring all of our resources to task to prevent him from taking ill?”
Yaroslav helped me to my feet. “No,” I said. “I was wondering what happens to us.”
Largin gestured. “I think you already know. Ship is responsible for the ship’s homeostasis. If he dies, that means the ship can no longer regulate itself. We can probably get so far by manually configuring the core life support; oxygen, water, UV and so on.” She tapped twice on her tablet and frowned to herself. “Then, eventually, something disturbs the equilibrium and we all die.”
I reeled, and not because of the wavering lights that were still imprinted on my skull.
“So you’re –”
“We need a replacement. Yes.” Largin sat back down in her chair. “We have everything we need to perform the procedure exactly once. We’ve been compatibility testing the crew.”
“And I’m your replacement.”
“The best so far, yes. The closest we’ve come until you is 86%. Nowhere close. It won’t take until you’re at least in the high nineties. And it’ll kill you to boot.” Largin sniffed. “Your chances of surviving are, all considered, really very good indeed.”