Novak's Last Theory, Part 11: Out of the Loop

I wake in my stasis bed, with the dome still closed. Not what I expected. I open it using the internal controls and sit up, yanking the IV out of my arm. The ship is still in foldspace – things are shifting and blurring with a pulsing rhythm. I haven't endured this since the academy... I can feel the dizziness and nausea already setting in as I pull on my jumpsuit.

I stumble to a terminal and bring up the fold drive status. Several indicators are already climbing past normal limits. I initiate a premature drop out of foldspace. That will take a couple minutes to process, and I can't wait. I'm staggering off down the hall, swimming through the liquid facets as fast as I can go. Halfway to the engine room I drop to my knees, retching.

Things start to coalesce, then snap back into focus. We've dropped out of fold. I get back up and run. When I get to the engine room, it looks like I've rarely seen it: functioning. I check a control panel and see that the indicators are still rising though – the drive isn't shutting down properly. It's cascading toward critical. I key in the emergency termination. No response.

So this is it. I rush to the fold control chamber and enter the lock. No time to put on a suit. The outer door closes behind me. My hand hovers over the inner control. Faces flash through my mind... I open the door and step in.

The room is awash with a blue glow. I have just seconds to pull the fuel rods. I open the panels; enter the override codes; reach in and twist the handles into release position. With the fold drive still cycling, this is going to be bad. I shut my eyes and do it by feel. As I pull the first rod, I'm engulfed in a hot cloud of gaseous uranium-hexafluoride and hard ultraviolet. My skin is burning. By the time I've got the third rod out, the fail-safe cutoff has triggered and the engine is powering down.

I stumble for the lock... and barely make it out of the chamber before I collapse. I've done it.

The crew should be up by now, and headed this way. Mori appears first, running to my side.

"Hold on, Captain – Matiba's getting a medkit." She bites her lip.

I look up at her face. "Hey... didn't we just do this?"

Matiba arrives; kneels next to us.

Mori looks up. "How bad is it?"

I cough. "Just over 127..."

Matiba meets Mori's eyes. Shakes his head.

She looks back to me, swallowing. "Sir..."

Matiba does something to my arm. Lays a compress on my forehead. A pleasant numbness is spreading through my body. He must have given me something. It's getting harder to focus.

"Listen," I say to Mori. She leans closer. "Sometimes true learning –"

I never finish. I've noticed someone else standing off to the side. Someone I didn't expect.


[Jump to part 12: A Sea Without Shores.