“I can say this much at this point,” I answer. “They weren’t disabled instantly. But I won’t know until I have a better sense of their internal injuries, as much as that’s possible under the circumstances.”
“What did Horton do to help them?” asks the secretary of state.
“What I can tell you is the victims bled extensively, based on what we’re seeing.” I look around at the grim faces staring up at morbid images. “You don’t continue bleeding unless you have a blood pressure. The longer they bled, the longer they were alive.”
“Are there any signs that first aid was attempted?” the vice president asks me.
“Nothing I’m seeing,” I reply.
“But who turned off all the cameras, the radios?” More questions and comments erupt around the table.
“Horton. Who else?”
“Why?”
“So that he could make his getaway undetected until it was too late to stop him.”
“The cameras were turned off hours before he made his getaway,” Benton reminds everyone.
“How is it possible his crewmates didn’t realize that was happening? That suddenly they were disconnected from Houston?” the secret service asks.
“We may never know the answers to some things,” Benton says.
“Horton has a lot to answer for,” the FBI decides. “But good luck making much sense of the disaster up there,” addressing this to me. “I’m not sure what else we can do beyond taking care of the bodies. It’s not like we can bring them back down here for autopsies.”
There are no good options for how to handle the Thor crewmates’ bodies. They couldn’t be stored or returned to Earth. We don’t have morgue coolers in orbit, and forget loading the bodies onto a spaceplane and carrying them to the ISS. Then what? They can’t be left at room temperature inside the trash room.
It’s also out of the question leaving them inside the Thor orbiter to decompose, abandoning the laboratory-habitat. That would be a multibillion-dollar loss, not to mention the years of research and development. The only real solution at this time and under the circumstances is to litter in space, which no one is supposed to do.
The director of the FBI doesn’t elaborate on the protocol for handling human remains in space, and he may not know. But I certainly do. Outlining plans for such unpleasantries, and finding shortcuts to determine what killed someone, is my responsibility on the Doomsday Commission.
“Returning to the lab,” Chip says.
With a flick of a finger, he propels himself that way while I ask Anni if she can locate the emergency medical hardware locker.
“It’s right here.” She directs her chest camera at the large panel with the red cross symbol in the metal decking.
“Okay, very good,” I reply. “We’re going to want to try ultrasound, and I need you to power up the rack.”
“Powering HRF One.” In good astronaut fashion, she echoes back what I tell her, and NASA explains to the Situation Room what’s going on.
The Human Research Facility rack feeds electricity to life-science equipment including various radiation detectors, gas analyzers and the ultrasound imaging system, NASA says as Chip gets the power going.
“And while we’re at it, let’s see what’s going on with this.” Anni floats up to the ceiling, reaching a mounted video camera. “It’s been disabled manually,” she reports.
In other words, switched off deliberately as opposed to a malfunction. She turns it back on just like that as the story we’ve been told continues changing before us. Lies and more lies.
“So much for the spacecraft being damaged,” the president remarks grimly as Anni floats to other mounted cameras around the lab.
One by one she turns all of them back on, some of the lenses speckled with dried blood. Then the radios are next, and momentarily we’re linked to the orbiter’s camera system, more images appearing on the data walls. Another organ floats into the picture, an escaped liver that had been lurking behind a bioprinter. Stabilizing herself with a foot loop, Anni opens the medical storage locker, finding the handheld wireless ultrasound machine.
“Chip, Anni, what I’d like you to do now is to pull out medical and surgical packs.” I begin shepherding them through it. “I apologize in advance that what I’m going to need you to do will be difficult.”
That’s putting it mildly, and I tell them that to start with we’re going to need a thermometer. It would appear the only one they can find is an infrared scanner in the medical bag they brought on board. That’s fine for checking fevers but not ideal for postmortem purposes.