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“Yes,” I say. “Come to the control room.”
“Yes.”I hear him skitter through his tunnel.
I climb up and it’s just as dark. The entire control room is dead. The monitors are off. Even the airlock window provides no relief—that part of the ship happens to be facing away from Tau Ceti at the moment.
“Control room also have no light, question?”says Rocky’s voice—presumably from his bulb in the ceiling.
“Nothing—wait…I see something….”
Off in one corner of one panel, there’s a small red LED. Definitely glowing, though not very bright. I sit in the pilot’s seat and squint at the control. The seat wobbles a bit. My repair job on it was subpar, but it’s anchored back to the floor again, at least.
Instead of the usual flat-panel displays found all over the control room, this one little section has physical buttons and an LCD display nearby. The light is coming from a button.
Obviously, I push it. What else would I do?
The LCD display comes to life. Some highly pixelated text appears, stating:PRIMARY GENERATOR: OFFLINE. SECONDARY GENERATOR: OFFLINE. EMERGENCY BATTERIES: 100%.
“Okay, how do I use the batteries…?” I mumble.
“Progress, question?”
“Hang on.” I peer all around the LCD panel until I finally spot it. A little switch, covered by a plastic safety shield. It’s labeled “Batt.” It’ll have to do. I lift the shield and flick it.
Dim LEDs light up the control room—nowhere near as nicely as the normal lights do. The smallest control screen—and only that screen—comes to life. TheHail Marymission patch shows on the center of the screen and the words “Loading Operating System…” appear at the bottom.
“Partial success,” I say. “My emergency battery engaged. But my generators are offline.”
“Why no work, question?”
“I don’t know.”
“You air is okay, question? No power, no life support. Humans turn oxygeninto carbon dioxide. You will use all oxygen and become harmed, question?”
“It’s okay,” I say. “The ship’s pretty big. It’ll take a long time for the air to be a problem. It’s more important that I find the cause of this failure.”
“Machines break. Show me. I fix.”
Not a bad idea, actually. Rocky seems to be able to do pretty much anything. Either he’s gifted, or all Eridians are like that. Either way, I’m incredibly lucky. Still…how well would he do working on human technology?
“Maybe. But first I need to figure out why two generators would both die at the same time.”
“Good question. More important: Can you control ship without power, question?”
“No. I need power to do anything.”
“Then, most important: How long until orbit decays, question?”
I blink a couple of times. “I…don’t know.”
“Work fast.”
“Yeah.” I point at the screen. “First I have to wait for my computer to wake up.”
“Hurry.”
“Okay, I’ll wait faster.”
“Sarcasm.”
