Space Inc (anthology)

A Man’s Place by Eric Choi

Jamie Squires was dicing onions for his omelet when the alarm sounded.

The klaxon blared through the small confines of the kitchen, synchronized with the flashing red light on the ceiling. Jamie put down the knife and, after a quick check to ensure everything in the kitchen was off, ran out into the mess hall. The diners must have stood up quickly from their seats, given the number of chairs knocked backward. Their faces were apprehensive.

“An X12 solar flare is in progress,” barked Laura Crenshaw, the general manager of Maryniak Base, over the intercom. “All personnel are to report to their designated storm shelters immediately.”

Billy Lu, Maryniak’s chief engineer, appeared in the doorway. His red cap designated him as the emergency warden for this sector. “All right, everyone, follow the signs, straight down the corridor. Let’s move!”

Jamie followed the crowd into the passageway. He tried not to think about the X rays and gamma rays that were even now going through their bodies. Traveling at the speed of light, they hit Maryniak at about same time as the warning from the space weather satellites at the L1 point. The imperative now was to get to the storm shelters before the arrival of the protons and heavy ions.

Joe McKay, the Shift Two foreman, stood at the entrance to the shelter. “Right this way, people!” he said, pointing to the hatch on the floor.

Jamie mounted the ladder and lowered himself down into the tunnel. Across Maryniak, personnel were gathering in six other protective chambers buried beneath the base’s larger modules. The structures and the lunar regolith were supposed to protect the crew from the incoming stream of solar particles.

There were already a dozen people in this shelter. Jamie found himself a spot on the bench along the chamber wall. Ten more descended the ladder, followed by Joe and Billy.

“Is that it?” Joe asked.

“Crenshaw’s on her way,” Billy said.

The base manager arrived a few minutes later. “All set?”

Billy did a head count. “That’s everyone for here.”

“Close it up,” Crenshaw ordered.

Joe climbed the ladder to close the outer hatch. Once he was back down, Billy slid the ladder up the tunnel before trying to close the inner hatch. The hinges creaked, and he seemed to be having difficulty engaging the latches, but he finally managed to seal the door.

“What’s our status?” Joe asked Crenshaw.

“We’re the last ones to lock down,” she reported. “All personnel, both in-base and EVA, are in shelters. The proton stream should be sweeping through here in about twenty minutes.”

“Are we sure this thing is buried deep enough?” Jamie asked nervously. He looked around, and was disappointed not to see Maria Clarkson, the base physician.

“I just hope we aren’t in here for too long,” Billy said. “I’d hate to have to eat those rations for any length of time.”

Paul Kashiyama, a large, muscular man with a crewcut, spoke up. “Those rations are no worse than Squires’ cooking.”

Jamie wanted to ask him which bad movie he’d stolen that line from, but said nothing.

Jamie met Maria his first day on the job, after he’d almost gotten into a fight. He remembered it all too well. Jamie had run out of the kitchen upon hearing the clatter of dishes and cutlery hitting the floor. A wall of flesh had stopped him before he’d barely taken three steps into the mess hall.

Paul Kashiyama grabbed Jamie by his apron. “What the hell are you feeding us?”

“Cajun stew,” Jamie replied meekly.

“It’s burning my goddamn mouth! What the hell are you trying to do, kill us?”

Jamie tried to peer around Paul’s massive bulk. The diners he could see had odd expressions on their faces. “It’s supposed to be spicy.”

“Spicy?” Paul tightened his grip. “This isn’t ‘spicy,’ it’s goddamn nuclear. What the hell did you put in this?”

“Well, the recipe does call for hot sauce—”

“How much?”

“I put six tablespoons—”

“Your idiotic recipe calls for six tablespoons of hot sauce!”

Jamie shook his head. “No, no! the recipe calls for three, but I always double up because—”

“That’s enough, Paul,” a female voice interrupted. “He’s new. Cut him some slack.”

Paul released his grip. “You watch it,” he said, jabbing a finger into Jamie’s chest “You’re going to be the death of us.”

The woman coughed. “Get yourself a drink, Paul. And clean up the mess you’ve made.” She was in her early thirties, of medium build, with long, curly light-brown hair. She turned to Jamie. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m Maria Clarkson, the base physician.”

They shook hands.

“Jamie—”

“—Squires. Yeah, I know. Our new cook.” Maria grimaced and swallowed. “Did you really put six tablespoons of hot sauce into that stew?”

“Well, yeah. At my last job, everyone complained my food had no flavor. I’ve doubled up on spices and condiments ever since.”

“Your last job was where?”

“Canacian Pacific. Earth to L5 shuttle.”

“There’s no spin gravity on those shuttles, right?”

“No.”

Maria nodded. “That explains it. I guess those terra-centric cookbooks don’t tell you that food tastes different in zero G. Weightlessness redistributes body fluids. People tend to feel congested in the head, so food seems to have less flavor.”

“Oh…”

“Don’t worry, new guys are entitled to one nonfatal mistake. And don’t let Paul scare you. He’s all bluster.”

Jamie could see Paul cleaning up his mess.

“Welcome to Maryniak Base, Jamie.”

“Thanks.”

Maria covered her mouth and coughed again. “By the way, may I have another glass of water?”

Maryniak Base was a mining facility on the lunar farside owned by the Alamer-Daas Corporation. Headquartered in Montreal, ADC’s properties included three other commercial Moon bases, half a dozen Earth orbiting stations, and an industrial unit aboard the L5 colony. Maryniak produced titanium and iron extracted from lunar ilmenite for export to the burgeoning Lagrangian point settlements.

The solar storm lasted eleven hours before the United Nations Space Development Agency gave the all-clear signal. Jamie returned to the kitchen to find things exactly as he had left them. Using the back of a knife, he scraped the diced onions into the trash, and dumped the liquid eggs. He then got some garbage bags from the cabinet and walked to the refrigerator, a secondhand unit purchased by ADC at a former rival’s bankruptcy auction.

There was a knock on the doorframe.

“Mind if I come in and pick up the TLD?” Billy asked.

“Go ahead.”

Billy walked to the wall beside the refrigerator and pulled the thermo-luminescent dosimeter from its bracket. The TLD was a stubby fat tube, about the size of a fountain pen.

“It’s a shame to waste all this food,” Jamie said as he surveyed the refrigerator’s contents.

“Yeah.” Billy held up the TLD. “But until I’ve had a look at these, we don’t know if the food in the shielded logistics module is compromised. If it is, we’ll be eating those disgusting rations from the shelter until the company bothers to send up a shuttle.”

Crenshaw broadcast a briefing on the status of the base at the end of the workday. Being one of the largest common areas, the mess hall was a natural gathering place. A large post-dinner crowd gathered to watch the monitors.

“On behalf of the company, I want to commend everyone on the manner in which we handled this emergency.” Crenshaw’s image was dotted with dark spots, indicating pixel dropouts from the radiation-damaged CCD elements in her office camera. “The good news is that the impact on production will be minimal. The total dose in the shelters was less man twelve millisieverts, and the reading in the logistics module was also within limits.”

Jamie let out a bream. The food supply was okay.

“Now, the bad news. The proton degradation of the solar arrays was severe. Output from the power farm is down almost twenty percent. In order to maintain production levels and have adequate battery margin for lunar night, there will be unscheduled brownouts of nonessential systems over the next several weeks.”

Jamie spotted Paul talking to Maria. She seemed to be grinning at something he said. Jamie frowned.

“The other major loss is the greenhouse. All the plants will have to be destroyed. This will impact atmospheric regeneration, requiring increased duty cycles of the metox canisters for CO₂ scrubbing…”

Jamie tried to push Paul and Maria out of his mind, shifting his thoughts to the loss of fresh fruits and vegetables. He would have to adjust the menu to meet the nutrition requirements while maintaining variety.

“… other than that, we fared well. Some of the essential electronics we couldn’t power-down suffered single-event upsets, but the redundant systems kicked in as designed. We should be fully back on our feet when the supply shuttle comes through next month. In the meantime, we have a business to run.”

Crenshaw’s image faded to black.

The people in the mess hall began to disperse. Jamie managed to recruit two of them to help transfer supplies from the logistics module. He’d asked their names, but promptly forgot them, and they took off immediately after the job was done.

Jamie activated his organizer to plan next evening’s dinner. Suggested menus, based on UNSDA food guidelines, were uplinked by the company nutritionist in Montreal. But on-site cooks had wide latitude in meal preparation to accommodate local preferences and nutritional needs. Jamie scanned the proposed choices: macaroni and cheese, quiche Lorraine, or fish and chips. He called up the nutrient specs for the shelter rations. They were short of the 150 microgram UNSDA RDA for iodine, so that would have to be made up.

It would be fish and chips tomorrow night.

The stethoscope felt cold against his chest.

“Breathe in,” Maria ordered.

Jamie inhaled.

“And exhale.”

Maria removed the stethoscope from her ears. “How do you feel overall? Sleeping well, eating okay?”

“Sure, same as always.”

“Most people were due for a checkup in a couple of weeks, but because of the storm Crenshaw and I thought it would be wise to do it now.” She took his arm and wrapped the blood pressure cuff around it. “How do you like Maryniak so far?”

Jamie normally hated medical checkups, but being able to spend some time with Maria made this one more than tolerable. “I’m having some trouble fitting in. Everybody seems to be in a clique or circle, and I feel kinda left out.”

Maria inflated the cuff, opened the valve, and slowly released the pressure. “I felt the same when I first got here. Maybe it’s the corporate culture. ADC doesn’t have the best reputation. You’ve only been here a month. Give it time. Look at the chart on the far wall, please.”

Jamie stared ahead as Maria shone a light into his eye. “I guess you’re right. Maybe it’s me. I’ve had trouble fitting in all my life.”

“What do you mean?”

“My parents divorced when I was small,” Jamie said, “but neither of them wanted permanent custody of me. So I grew up getting shuffled around between them and various relatives and family friends. I guess that conditioned me not to settle down anywhere. Even for college, I ended up quitting and reapplying at three different schools before I finally got a degree.”

Maria turned off the light. “What was your major?”

“Business.” Jamie blinked. “I hated it. My classmates were arrogant snots who liked to hear the sound of their own voices, and the profs were eggheads who never left campus but still felt qualified to lecture us on how the ‘real world’ works.”

“I see.” Maria handed Jamie a cup of water. “Swallow when I tell you to.”

She stood behind him and placed her fingers on his neck. “Take a sip now, please.” As he swallowed, she felt his thyroid for tenderness.

Maria took the cup and disposed of it. She then went to a cabinet and got a syringe. “I need a blood sample. Please put your arm on the side rest.”

Jamie felt a prick as the needle went in.

“How’d you get from business school to cooking?”

Jamie sighed. “I met someone in college, but she wanted to stay in town after graduation and I wanted to try something else in another city.” He shook his head sadly. “Maybe it was the way I grew up that made me feel so compelled to move all the time, but it broke her heart. Took me two years to realize I’d made the biggest mistake of my life, but by then it was too late. Next thing I knew, she was married.”

“I know how you feel,” Maria said as she withdrew the needle. “But how does cooking come into this?”

“It just reached the point where I figured the only way to make the hurt seem worthwhile was to keep moving, to go as far away as I could. Can’t get much farther away than space, right? Every facility out here seemed to need engineers, doctors, and cooks. I’m not an engineer or a doctor, but I like to think I became a pretty good cook back at the college co-ops, so here I am. A man’s place is in the kitchen, right?”

Maria labeled the blood sample. “Well, I think you’re doing a great job, especially with the crappy food the company makes you work with.” She smiled. “You’re fine. I’ll call if there’s anything you need to know about in the blood work.”

A few years ago, Jamie’s list of jobs in the commercial space sector would have been shorter by a third. Companies believed the only purpose of food was physical nourishment, so having a dedicated cook was considered an extravagance. But food provided psychological as well as nutritional sustenance. Many corporations, including ADC, learned the hard way when productivity dropped by almost forty percent. Taking a lesson from terrestrial oil platforms, space companies began hiring full-time cooks, and worker morale improved immediately.

Such was the importance of Jamie’s role in psychological support that Crenshaw granted him a power rationing waiver to use the oven. Tomorrow was the birthday of Fred Sabathier, the Shift Three foreman, and coffee cloud cake was his favorite.

Jamie had just poured the batter into a tube pan and put it in the oven when he got a call from Maria.

“Jamie, do you have a minute?”

He glanced at the timer. “Sixty-five, actually What’s up?”

“I need to talk to you about something.”

Jamie frowned. It had only been a few hours since his blood test. She wouldn’t be calling him unless something was wrong.

“Thanks for coming.”

Nervously, Jamie took a seat. “So, what’s wrong with me?”

Maria laughed. “Nothing’s wrong with you! I just needed your advice on something. This is confidential, of course.”

“Of course,” Jamie repeated, visibly relieved.

“I just examined the rover crew. They were out on a two-week helium-3 assay at Mare Marginis, but got back to base just before the solar storm.”

Jamie nodded. He’d heard that ADC was studying the economic viability of Maryniak harvesting helium-3 isotopes from the lunar regolith, in response to demand to feed the new generation fusion reactors on Earth. “Are they all right?”

“They’re all complaining about being… constipated.”

“Really.” Jamie raised his eyebrows. “When did this start?”

“A couple of days into their expedition.”

Jamie thought for a moment. “Well, they’ve been eating the same things as everyone else since they got back, and I stick religiously to the UNSDA guidelines. Anything I make has enough fiber, believe me, and the rover rations are also supposed to meet UNSDA standards.”

“Maybe they weren’t eating regularly,” Maria suggested. “That and stress can be causes as well. I mean, the stupid rover broke down halfway through their mission.”

“Maybe…” Jamie rubbed his chin. “Do you have the serial number for the rover rations?”

Maria consulted her organizer. “51800-8493227.”

“Can I use your connection to tie-in to the company logistics database?”

“Sure.”

Jamie linked in. “That’s odd. Give me mat number again?”

Maria repeated it.

“That can’t be right. It looks like the number you gave me is for an EVA ration. Let me do a search.”

A few moments later, Jamie put down his organizer, slowly shaking his head. “You’re not going to believe this. I think they stocked the rover with the wrong rations.”

“What?”

Jamie read the screen. “8493227 is a type of EVA ration. According to this, they’re eaten by crews on ships without spin gravity before spacewalks. They’re high in iron and sodium but low in fiber, so they won’t have to take a dump when they’re outside. The correct ration for the rover should have been 8493277. Somebody screwed up.”

Maria rolled her eyes in disbelief. “All right, I’ll let them know.”

“I can do up a high fiber menu for the next few days. How do garbanzo pitas sound?”

“Yummy. While you’re at it, make some of your blueberry oat bran muffins for the next rover expedition.”

“I’ll ask for a power waiver for those muffins.” Jamie looked at his watch and stood. “Gotta go. Fred’s cake needs attending.”

“Thanks for your help.”

Upon returning to the kitchen, Jamie immediately knew that something was wrong. It should have been filled with the smell of freshly baked cake. Instead, there was nothing.

He turned on the oven light. “Oh, no…” He opened the door. The cake was flat. “Damnit!” A brownout must have hit the kitchen while he was gone. Fred Sabathier’s cake was ruined.

Jamie was in a bad mood.

Crenshaw had denied him another power rationing waiver to use the convection oven, so for the birthday party they had to make do with a prepared microwave pie. Fred seemed not to mind, but Paul had made endless jokes to Maria about Jamie not being able to “get it up.” Jamie ground his teeth as he stirred the pot of pea and broccoli soup. Given ADC’s miserly pay scales, Jamie thought it was a miracle there weren’t more people like Paul at Maryniak. He briefly considered trying to slip something disgusting into Paul’s serving.

Jamie could hear snippets of conversation from the doorway to the mess hall. He thought he heard someone say “explosive decompression.” Instinctively, he glanced at the red ceiling light. It. was off. He turned down the heat, covered the soup, and made his way outside.

Nobody was eating. In addition to those in the mess hall for their scheduled dinner slot, others had come in from the corridor and were standing. They were all watching the monitor, which was turned to CNN Interplanetary.

“… details continue to emerge on the accident that occurred at Banting Station just under an hour ago…”

Banting Station was one of ADC’s Earth orbiting research labs that used the microgravity environment to develop new pharmaceuticals. Jamie stepped closer to the monitor.

“… explosive decompression of the laboratory module…”

The mess hall lights suddenly flickered, and the screen went momentarily dark. When the image returned, it showed a gash along the end cone of the lab module. Around the edges of the opening, serrated aluminum was bent outward like a twisted, metallic flower.

“… emergency bulkheads engaged, sealing off the rest of the station but trapping four researchers in the lab, who are now presumed dead. The rupture occurred near a docking port on that module, but no vessel was attached at the time…”

Jamie spotted Maria and Paul. She put a hand on his shoulder, whispered something into his ear, then turned and strode quickly out the door.

He took a step to follow her, when a sudden wave of dizziness hit him. Instinctively, he grabbed a chair.

“Are you all right?” someone asked.

Jamie nodded. His light-headedness disappeared as suddenly as it had come. But Maria was gone.

Jamie didn’t see Maria again for almost a week following the Banting accident.

The cause of the tragedy was found within days. As a matter of procedure, the UNSDA investigation team reviewed the maintenance records of the station. They discovered that seven years earlier, an automated cargo vessel had collided with the laboratory module during a botched docking, cracking the end cone pressure bulkhead but not breaching it. ADC had dispatched a repair team to patch the bulkhead, but they took a tragic shortcut. The crew had spliced on the reinforcing section with only a single row of rivets instead of double, compromising its long-term structural integrity. Seven years of thermal contraction and expansion from orbital sunrises and sunsets every forty-five minutes had taken their toll. The bulkhead simply blew out.

The accident itself was bad enough, but news of the company’s complicity in the tragedy further eroded morale at Maryniak. Jamie noticed people were eating less, leaving more on their plates for him to clean up.

He finally saw Maria seven days after the accident. She was sitting at a table in the mess hall after the Shift Three dinner slot, sipping a coffee, alone.

“May I join you?”

“Jamie!” She gestured at the empty chair. “Please.”

“I haven’t seen much of you lately,” he said. “You’ve been eating in your quarters?”

She nodded, and sipped her coffee again.

Jamie thought for a moment “I know just the thing to go with that.” A moment later, he returned to the table, his right hand hidden behind his back.

“What’s that?”

Jamie whipped out a raspberry muffin, and with a flourish placed it on a napkin in front of Maria.

She bit her lip.

Jamie sat down, concerned. “What’s wrong?”

“Rick Chang was one of the guys killed on Banting Station last week.”

“A friend?” Jamie asked.

“My ex-husband.”

There was a moment of awkward silence. “I’m sorry,” Jamie said at last.

“I hadn’t as much as gotten a message from him in over five years. Didn’t even know he was on Banting until the news reports came in.”

The lights dimmed momentarily before flickering back on. Jamie waited for Maria to continue.

“We met at a summer job in the university medical biophysics department. On my birthday, he came to my desk with this huge raspberry muffin he’d bought at the coffee shop in the bookstore. He took out a napkin and put it down, much as you just did, except he’d stuck a candle in it.”

“Sounds like he was a sweet guy,” Jamie said.

“He was a jerk.”

Jamie’s eyes widened.

“He could be sweet, sometimes. But overall, he was a really selfish person. He’d do things for me, but he’d only go so far until it started encroaching on what he wanted, and then it stopped. One day, he came home and told me he’d accepted a job with Honeywell-Dettwiler in Darmstadt. He never even told me he’d been applying for other jobs! Rick expected me to follow him, just like that. It was all about him. So he went to Germany, I did not, and that was that.”

Maria looked up at Jamie. “It seems we have something in common, don’t we?”

Jamie started to reach over the table toward her free hand—but stopped. He felt a runny dampness in his nose. A red blotch appeared on the table.

“What the—” Jamie put a hand to his nose.

“Are you all right?” Maria grabbed some napkins and handed them to Jamie.

He nodded.

“I’ve gotten some complaints about nosebleeds lately. Maybe we should ask environmental control to increase the atmospheric humidity,” Maria said.

“Dat wud be a gud idee-uh.”

“So there’s three golfers, a priest, a chef, and an engineer. They’re at this course, but it’s very frustrating because the guys in front of them are really slow and won’t let them play through. So back at the clubhouse, they ask the owner who these jerks were. The owner says, ‘Oh, please try to be tolerant of them. You see, they’re firefighters who put out a blaze here at the clubhouse last year. Sadly, they damaged their eyes saving the building and they’re now legally blind. So, in gratitude we let them play here for free.’ The priest says, ‘That’s terrible! I’ll go back to my church and pray for them.’ The chef says, ‘What a heroic bunch of guys! If they come to my restaurant, they can eat for free.’ Finally, the engineer says, ‘Why can’t they play at night?’”

Billy started laughing hysterically.

“That’s a good one,” said Suhana Aziz, a mass driver technician.

Jamie was seated to her left. “I’ve heard that joke before, except it was a doctor instead of a chef.”

“Well, I thought I’d make a slight variation in honor of present company.” Billy gave Jamie a pat on the shoulder. “Listen, you probably don’t hear this much, but I just want you to know that I think you’re doing a great job.”

Jamie was surprised. “That means a lot to me, Billy.”

“I’m also glad the company didn’t cheap out and got us a real cook,” said Suhana.

“Thank you,” Jamie said quietly. He eyed the unfinished plates of baked chicken around the table. “Although, I guess I didn’t do so good today.”

“Oh, no, it’s not that at all!” Billy said. “I just haven’t been very hungry lately.”

The conversation was interrupted by a retching sound. The threesome turned simultaneously in the direction of the noise.

Sarah Schubert, a rover driver, was throwing up.

“It wasn’t that bad,” Paul called out as the pungent odor of vomit filled the room.

Billy and Suhana helped Jamie clean up the mess, amid a string of apologies from Sarah. She had no idea what had happened, but told them she’d had a queasy stomach for days. She promised to make an appointment to see Maria at the earliest opportunity.

Jamie went to the sink to wring out the mop. He was rolling up his sleeves, when he suddenly stopped and brought his arms to eye level.

“What the hell?”

The insides of his forearms were dotted with blisters.

“Do they itch?”

Jamie shook his head.

“Okay, if you don’t mind, I need another blood sample.”

As Jamie pressed the cotton against his arm, Maria gave him a small tube. “This cortisone should ease the blistering.”

“Do you know what caused them?”

“No,” she admitted, securing the cotton with a bandage. “How do you feel overall? Anything unusual you’ve noticed?”

Jamie thought for a moment. “Sometimes nosebleeds, like when I was with you in the mess hall a few nights ago. I’ve also been getting these sudden dizzy spells. Just for a moment, then it goes away.”

“What about your appetite?”

“I don’t think I’ve been eating as much as I usually do.” He paused. “Actually, I’ve noticed people seem to be eating less in general.”

“People all over the base have been coming to me with similar symptoms. Billy’s got blisters like you. Others have been complaining about nosebleeds, loss of appetite, nausea, and vomiting. Even I’ve felt light-headed sometimes.”

“What would cause these symptoms?” Jamie asked.

Maria exhaled slowly, staring at the ceiling for several seconds before replying. “I probably shouldn’t be telling you this, but… the symptoms appear to be consistent with low-level radiation sickness.”

A knot formed in Jamie’s stomach. “Who else knows?”

“Crenshaw, Montreal… and now, you.”

Jamie’s voice was trembling. “Wh-what do we do? Do we… are we all going to get cancer or something?”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions. According to the monitors, we weren’t exposed to a dangerous dose.”

“What if they’re wrong?” Jamie exclaimed. “After what happened on Banting, how do we know… what if the company didn’t build the shelters to spec?”

“Both Sarah and I show normal white blood cell counts. That’s the weird part. If it’s radiation sickness, particularly sickness advanced enough that we’re seeing vomiting and nausea, we should also have reduced white blood cells.”

Jamie calmed down, a little. “So what else could it be? Food poisoning?”

“You tell me.”

Jamie thought for a moment. “It’s not likely. The refrigeration systems in both the kitchen and the logistics module are fine. Almost everything I make is well-cooked, especially since we lost the greenhouse. Also, we eat a wide variety of foods, so it can’t be any one item.”

“That’s what I thought.”

An uneasy silence fell between them.

“If it is radiation sickness, or even it isn’t, you’ve got to tell people,” Jamie said at last.

“We can’t say anything until we know for sure,” Maria said. “We’d cause a panic.”

Jamie spotted the table with Billy Lu and Suhana Aziz.

“May I join you?”

Suhana looked up. “The chef graces us with his presence.”

“Have a seat,” Billy said.

Suhana poked her fork halfheartedly into her spaghetti.

“Something wrong?” Jamie asked.

“We almost had an accident in the field today,” she said.

“What happened?”

“Freddie Wilson was out doing an induction coil change-out on the mass driver. The IVA guy, Grant McPherson, was supposed to have applied inhibits to the power bus before Freddie even went out, to give enough time for the capacitors to discharge. Except, he didn’t Caught his mistake at the last minute, thank goodness. I could hear him screaming on the loops, ‘Don’t touch the coil, Freddie! Don’t touch the coil!”‘ Suhana shook her head. “It was damn close.”

“I know Grant,” Billy said. “That’s not like him at all. He’s one of the most careful guys I know.”

“He said he was feeling tired, a little dizzy,” Suhana said. “Just lost his concentration for a moment.”

Jamie looked at the unfinished plates of spaghetti. “How do you guys feel?”

“I don’t seem to have much of an appetite. But your cooking’s great, as usual,” Billy added quickly.

“Sometimes, I feel like I want to throw up,” Suhana said, “and I haven’t been eating much either.”

“Have you guys talked to—”

Jamie was interrupted by three short beeps, indicating the monitor was about to come on. Seconds later, Crenshaw’s image appeared on the screen.

“This is a general announcement for all personnel. Staff are to report to Dr. Clarkson immediately for medical evaluations. Individual appointments have been scheduled and will be downlinked to your organizers within the hour. Every attempt has been made to accommodate shift requirements, but should you be unable to make your appointment, please reschedule with Dr. Clarkson at the earliest opportunity.”

The mess hall erupted with noise even before the screen went dark.

“Something’s wrong, and they’re not telling us!” Jamie could hear Paul shouting over the commotion. “That solar storm did something to us!”

Jamie entered the infirmary, a tray of freshly baked cookies in one hand, a pot of coffee in the other.

“Chocolate chip?” Maria was impressed. “You got another waiver for the oven?”

Jamie nodded. “Crew morale.”

“Where the hell did you get the chocolate?”

“Base facility food manager’s discretionary logistical supply,” Jamie said as he put the coffee and cookies on her desk. “In other words, my own personal hoard. For special occasions only.”

“What’s the occasion?” Maria asked before taking a bite.

“Our last week alive.”

Maria almost choked on her cookie. “That’s not funny!”

“Maybe I wasn’t trying to be funny.”

“Jamie, I don’t know exactly what’s going on yet, but I do know a few things. One thing is, we are not going to die… at least, not this week.” She stared at Jamie. “Did you hear me?”

Jamie nodded slowly. “What else do you know?”

Maria grabbed another cookie from the tray. “I know you make great cookies, Mr. Squires.”

Jamie did not sleep well. Over the past few days, he started having thoughts that somebody was tampering with the food. Twice he woke in a cold sweat, the second time going so far as to get dressed and run out to check the kitchen. When he returned to bed, his dreams were of Paul… and Maria.

He woke up feeling nauseated. Much like a hangover, except that he hadn’t been drinking. He wished that he had, because it would at least have made waking up like this worthwhile. The shower made him feel better, but his gums were tender when he brushed his teeth, and when he finished his toothbrush was pink.

Jamie stepped out of his quarters and headed for the mess hall. The corridor was practically empty at this hour. Such was the call of duty, to prepare breakfast for the Shift One crew.

He turned a corner—and was suddenly grabbed from behind and thrown against the bulkhead.

“Paul!”

The big man tightened his grip, pressing hard against Jamie’s chest. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You know damn well! People are sick all over base. Nobody’s saying anything. But you…” Paul jabbed a finger into Jamie’s chest. “I know you’ve been talking to Maria. We’re all sick from the solar storm, right?”

Paul tightened his grip when Jamie did not answer. “Joe McKay barfed in his suit last shift. Pretty gross, huh? He’s lucky we’re on the Moon. If he’d been in free space, he could’ve suffocated.” He brought his face right up against Jamie’s. “So, what is happening to us?”

“I don’t know,” Jamie repeated. “I’m sorry about Joe, but I really don’t know. I haven’t been feeling so hot myself. Why don’t you ask Maria or Crenshaw?”

“Oh, I’ll definitely be talking to Maria,” Paul said. “But I thought I’d ask you first.”

“Yeah, well I’m just the stupid cook, remember?” Jamie decided he’d had enough. “You’ve been on my case since I got here! You’re just jealous because Maria doesn’t—”

Paul raised his fist. “What the hell do you know about Maria, kitchen boy?”

“Paul!”

Jamie turned his eyes and saw Suhana Aziz.

“Leave him alone.”

“He knows something!”

Suhana said calmly, “I know that I kicked your ass in aikido last year, and you can be damn sure I can do it again, right here, right now.”

With a growl, Paul let go of Jamie. He glared at him for a moment, then abruptly turned and walked away.

“Are you all right?”

“Fine!” Jamie stormed down the corridor without thanking his rescuer. Marching right past the mess hall, he headed for the Beta sector habitation modules. He quickly found the room he was looking for, and pressed the door buzzer.

“Who is it?”

“Jamie!”

“Give me a minute.”

Maria opened the door. It was clear he had woken her.

“No offense, but this had better be important.” She looked him over, and her tone quickly changed. “Good grief, Jamie, you’re trembling. What happened?”

“You have to say something.” Jamie’s breathing was heavy. “You and Crenshaw, you guys have to say something.”

“We can’t make a public announcement until we know exactly what’s going on. We’d cause a panic.”

“There’s a panic now!” Jamie snapped. “What the hell was Crenshaw thinking, making a public announcement for medical tests without saying why? People are scared. I’m scared, Paul’s scared, we’re all scared.” He stared at Maria, his eyes pleading. “If there’s anything for people to be afraid of, at least let it be on the basis of facts, even partial facts, not rumors and hearsay.”

Maria nodded slowly. “You’re right. I’ll talk to Crenshaw and Montreal about this.”

It was an angry and frightened crowd that packed the mess hall to capacity. Those who couldn’t make it in person were watching through the monitors.

Crenshaw had to shout to be heard, calling for quiet three times before she could speak. “You’ve all received the briefing material through your consoles and organizers, but I’ve called this meeting to personally answer any questions you might have on the current…” she hesitated, “… situation, at Maryniak.”

Jamie squeezed his way between people to put trays of sandwiches on the tables.

“Why won’t the company come clean?” Predictably, the first to speak was Paul. “We’re all sick from the solar storm!”

“That’s not true,” Crenshaw said. “The total dose inside the shelters was within safe limits.”

What if the dosimeters were faulty?” asked Suhana.

“The TLDs are ancient technology, but they’re reliable,” Billy said. “I’d have preferred solid-state dosimeters throughout the base—not just in the shelters—but the company prefers to use the cheaper TLDs for the modules. In any case, I have no reason to think the readings are wrong.”

“I don’t believe anything you people are telling me!” Paul shouted. “How do we know the shelters were buried deep enough? How do we know there was enough shielding?”

“The storm shelters meet all applicable UNSDA standards,” Crenshaw said.

“Do they? We all know how this sorry-ass company screws up and cuts corners. Look at what happened on Banting. For God’s sake, there’s even a rumor they stocked the rover with the wrong rations!” Paul pointed at Jamie. “The company’s to cheap to even hire a decent cook! I think they skimped on shelter construction, and Billy over there doctored the dosimeter data to cover it up.”

“Are you calling me a liar?” Billy’s face turned red. “Why would I go along with a cover-up? I’m sick, too, you moron!”

Paul didn’t let up. “We have been exposed to a harmful dose! Everybody’s sick. My hair’s been coming out in clumps every time I shower.”

Jamie fought the urge to make a sarcastic remark about Paul’s hygiene.

“The TLDs don’t lie,” Billy reiterated.

“Then maybe kitchen boy’s been putting something in our food!” Paul exclaimed.

Jamie decided to speak up. “Billy, are you sure the food in the logistics module wasn’t compromised?”

“Yes,” Billy replied. “The logistics module is shielded, just not to UNSDA human-rated standards. The food’s fine.”

“How do these TLDs work?” Jamie asked.

“They’re tubes of lithium borate manganese.” Billy held up his hand, with his thumb and index finger apart. “The crystals absorb energy from ionizing radiation. After exposure, I plug them in an analyzer, where they’re heated up to three hundred degrees Celsius. This causes the energy to be released from the crystals as photons. The analyzer’s calibrated to determine the total dose absorbed by the tube based on the light it gives off.”

Jamie thought about Fred Sabathier’s birthday cake. “Do you watch these tubes as they heat up?”

“Do I watch paint dry? Of course not. I usually step outside and do something else.”

“What would happen if the power got interrupted as the tube from the logistics module was being heated up, before it got up to three hundred degrees?”

“Well, the TLD would cool down, and then when the power came back on, they would…” A look of horror flashed across Billy’s face. “Oh, crap…”

A deathly silence fell over the mess hall.

“The food,” Crenshaw said at last. “It’s the food.”

Paul said, “I knew it all along.”

Nobody touched the sandwiches.

Maria sipped her coffee. “Quite a meeting, wasn’t it?”

Jamie nodded.

“You helped solve the big mystery.”

“All I did was ask a question.”

“The right question,” Maria said. “When the TLD from the logistics module was heated and cooled, it partially reset the crystals, so when it was heated up to its proper temperature the second time, fewer photons were emitted, producing an erroneously low reading.”

Jamie nodded again. “According to the nutritionist in Montreal, the radiation could’ve destroyed up to forty percent of the pyridoxine and thiamine content in our food.” He shook his head. “We’ve been suffering from vitamin B deficiency.”

“I’ve prescribed mega doses of supplements,” Maria said, “but everything in the infirmary got zapped worse than the food in the logistics module. The company’s sending up a contingency supply shuttle, but until it gets here people are going to be popping pills like crazy to make up for the depleted dose in each capsule.”

“I can tweak the menu,” Jamie said. “Try to make the best of whatever vitamin B is left in our nuked food. How does chicken and brown rice sound?”

“You’re quite a hero, Jamie.”

He laughed. “Will you stop that!”

“I mean it. You’re a big part of the Maryniak team. I really hope you stick around.” She glanced at her watch and drained the last of her coffee. “Gotta go.”

“Hey, uh… How about dinner?”

“I’m always here for dinner,” Maria said coyly.

Jamie grinned. “Would you like something other than chicken? I can make something else if you like.”

“Surprise me.” She smiled, touching his shoulder. “A man’s place isn’t just in the kitchen, you know.”

Jamie watched her walk out of the mess hall. Smiling, he got up from the table and started toward the kitchen, all the while trying to decide what he would make.

Eric Choi was the first recipient of the Isaac Asimov Award for Undergraduate Excellence in Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Story Writing for his novelette “Dedication,” which was subsequently published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine. “Divisions,” his lead story in Robert J. Sawyer’s Tesseracts ⁶ anthology, was a finalist for an Aurora Award (Canada’s equivalent of the Hugo) and was reprinted in David G. Hartwell’s Northern Suns collection. His work has also appeared in Science Fiction Age magazine, the Canadian alternate history anthology Arrow-dreams, and Julie Czerneda’s Tales from the Wonder Zone series. He holds a Masters degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Toronto, has worked at the Canadian Space Agency as an orbit dynamics analyst for the RADARSAT Earth-observation satellite, and has trained satellite operations teams at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. Currently, he is with MacDonald Dettwiler Space and Advanced Robotics in Toronto, working on mission operations support for the robotic manipulator aboard the International Space Station as well as advanced concepts for robotic systems applicable to future Mars misssions.