"Don't worry, Jackie. I don't want to find myself spewing in my suit. Or just passing out from heat exhaustion, for that matter."
Jackie smiled wearily. "Okay, then. Let's go on to the next part. On the four corners facing you, there are bolts . . ."
"I think we're finally getting back to normal," Hathaway said. "A.J.'s moving around and trying to catch up on his work, and no one else seems in any danger. We're down to only twenty percent of the crew being ill, and all of them are in the recovery stage."
The time delay was quite noticeable now, with millions of miles separating the Nike from Earth after a couple of weeks spent en route. Finally, however, the image of Glendale smiled.
"That's good to hear, Ken. Everyone was very worried. So you don't think anything major has been impacted by the epidemic?"
"No, Nick. The only real problem was the need to replace the control valve on Number Five, and that was really more of an annoyance than a major issue. Tim Edwards performed admirably even though this wasn't at all his usual line of work, and Number Five has been tested and works just fine now. After taking apart the original valve, it appears that some of the bearings had suffered minor damage, possibly during manufacture, and after a short period of use the wear started to cause it to stick. We're testing all the others now and looking for signs indicating whether or not we might need to do other replacements, but so far it's all negative. The integrated distributed sensors are working fine."
After another long pause, Glendale nodded. "Good. The medical people are looking forward to your data. This is the first significant epidemic of any kind in space, so naturally it's of great interest. And all the other recent readings—radiation and so on—should accompany those."
"Don't worry, we've got tons of data to send and it's all been carefully arranged. Madeline—Ms. Fathom—has gone through the material and approved it, too."
"Well, then, we'll let you get back to work, Captain. Our best wishes to you and your people, and please let us know if there is anything we can do for you."
"Thanks much. I'll pass it on, though aside from the moral support you're already giving I don't think there's really much you could do. Nike out."
Ken sank back into a chair, feeling heavy despite the one-third gravity. The last two weeks had taught him the full meaning of the old phrase "weight of command." It had seemed that everything rested on his shoulders. He'd been sick himself, but had refused to impose on the heavily embattled medical staff—which consisted of Wu, Janice Ortega, Madeline Fathom and Helen Sutter. The last two were not officially part of the medical staff but they were the only two on board who had never caught the bug and had a pretty good knowledge of field medicine. That turned out to be especially true of Fathom. In fact, she'd volunteered to remain a regular assistant in the medical department, since her own duties as security officer wouldn't really take up much of her time until they arrived at Phobos.
Ken couldn't afford to be sick. As his staff dropped like flies, he was the one who had to decide which of the increasingly small pool of healthy people filled which positions. No one else could really take the responsibility, and he wouldn't have given it up anyway. Even under these conditions . . . it was still his dream.
But a tiring dream. "System notification."
"Recording," the Nike's automatics replied.
"Captain is resting. Do not disturb except for emergencies."
"Notification posted. Expiration time?"
"Ten hours from now. Give me a wake-up call in eight hours."
"Wake-up call in eight hours. Understood."
"Thank you," he said reflexively as he moved towards his bunk..
"You are welcome, sir," Nike replied.
It may not really understand anything, Ken thought, as he lay down and closed his eyes. But whoever did the programming understands very well.
Chapter 31
Joe cleared his throat. Then, cleared it again.
I can't believe I'm even thinking about this.
"Would you like to come in?" he asked, a bit gruffly.
"Said the spider to the fly?"
Joe managed a grin of sorts. "I don't have a parlor. Besides, I watched you and A.J. If I had any dishonorable intentions, I'd choose someone who couldn't break my arm just by looking at me funny."
The answering smile dazzled him, like it always did. "And you don't find that intimidating?"
"No. I don't."
"Good. A lot of men have a hard time with it. Especially because I'm so small."