“Mr. Watson, are you in need of any assistance?”
“No, Quixote, I just have to reroute this circuit, here, to there,” he explained to the trio that had no visible reference from their positions. “Some of the ship was cannibalized. There, I got it!”
The three snapped their attention to a portable monitor set up next to the misshapen vehicle and a visual message began to play. Watson hopped out to watch it with them.
Some numbers appeared that were likely a date, followed by the recording of a young man, a human, at least he appeared human. Jane considered him quite attractive regardless of whatever other genes he might be carrying. His hair was dark, his eyes large, round, and a pale green. His skin was a most unusual shade of light brown, almost like her morning coffee with cream.
“This is the last entry,” Mr. Watson explained. “They have to play in reverse order, so we’ll be going backward in time.” He looked at the three unsmiling faces. “I didn’t mean that to be a joke.”
“Travel Log, five April, twenty-three seventy-six Common Era, Commander Vaughn James Wiseman.”
“That sounds pretty human to me,” Kym said. Quixote shushed her.
“Living in the ship is no longer an option with my illness progressing. I’m abandoning the Deja Vu to head for the humanoid settlement where hopefully I can find hospice care or a euthanasia technician. Their technology is limited by Earth standards so I don’t hold out much hope. I’ve nowhere to go in this time, so I have nothing to lose.”
The video stopped and a new video began.
“Travel log, Commander Vaughn James Wiseman, one April, twenty-three seventy-six, Common Era. Left Tennant Sunack Munn has died at, well, the chronometer hasn’t been working properly, so I’m afraid I have to say I’m not positive but my best guess is time of death at 15:30.”
Wiseman stopped and coughed for a few seconds and then continued.
“I’ve confirmed that this is a planet in the Eta Cassiopeia system, probably the fourth, based on my star charts dated Eighteen Fifty CE. This explains my original inability to confirm my coordinates. Apparently, I am twenty light years from Earth and twenty light years from Pegasus 85, and the temporal distortion is also halfway from today and Earth’s Late Middle Age.”
The four watching the video each looked at each other quickly then snapped back to the video. Jane covered her mouth with her hand.
“This planet is odd, like Mars but with plants and animals, although the biome does seem fragile. I thought we’d have been able to resettle here, since there’s no space travel, but Munn’s injury in the crash was too much to overcome while infected with the Yersinia.”
“Stop!” Jane shouted. The message began up again but Stuart was able to shut it down quickly enough. “Wiseman and Munn had Yersinia. Our mummy is one of them!” She shook off a shiver that shot down her back, rubbing the bumps down on her arms with her hands. She took a few steps in a circle and looked from Quixote to Stu and then Kym.
“Let’s see the next one,” Kym said to Stu. He fiddled with some control pads and another message started.
“Travel log, twenty eight March, twenty-three seventy-six Common Era, Commander Vaughn James Wiseman. Our best assessment is that dark energy pulled us out of our temporal vortex. This wasn’t a nebula on our current star charts, so perhaps it was, or is, there now but is not now, the real year 2376 now, not the whatever year it is now, which is the new now for us. I’m not sure that made sense. I will continue to use our current date of twenty-three seventy-six to avoid confusion for the record.”
The man stopped to cough and turned away to collect whatever had come up from his lungs into a cloth.
“Isn’t this the stupidest fortune, Munn? We take a cure for the Black Plague from seventy-six and land in thirteen fifty something, right where we targeted, but now we’re somewhere in space and time dying from the damn thing.”
“It had 900 years of mutations we didn’t consider. Don’t know how the General Medical Authority overlooked such a profound fact but they did,” came a weak female voice from off the recording. Munn was a female.
“Munn has a valid point,” Vaugh Wiseman said. “Our Yersinia is nothing like the Yersinia of 1350. I think this was a doomed mission from before we even left Pegasus’ Prime Colony. Wiseman out.”
“Quixote,” Jane said. “I need to sit down. Can we watch this someplace else, like sick bay or the conference room, even the mess hall? I’m about to pass out, I mean it.”
“Are there many more entries to view, Mr. Watson?”
“There are several more, sir. Perhaps another hour’s worth of recording.”
“Dr. Ferris has a good idea. I think Dr. Adams needs to hear this portfolio of travel logs as well. Let’s reconvene at 13:00 in sick bay. Mr. Watson, you’re in custody of the data modules. I suggest you take additional precautions over standard to secure them and the space capsule.”
“Aye, understood, sir.” The quartet broke up and went in four different directions. Jane watched Stu climb back in the capsule, and Kym and Quixote took the elevator, presumably to engineering. She wandered toward the elevator and waited for it to return.
This handsome young man, Commander Wiseman, was going to die from someone else’s negligence. Negligence wasn’t a strong enough word. Someone didn’t apply common sense when a mission of such magnitude clearly deserved the consideration. Perhaps there was an explanation to still be revealed.
She shook her head a little and boarded the elevator, stopping in the mess before heading for sick bay. She’d been so hungry for something that tasted good she didn’t know why cherry pie and coffee didn’t appeal to her just now. She looked over the snack buffet and picked up a peanut butter cookie. She took a bite but it didn’t have any taste.
The mummy was male. Only one male spoke on that video, and only room for two in the ship. The mummy was Commander Vaughn James Wiseman, a time traveler from what must have been the late 24th century.
She wandered down the corridor towards sick bay. He’d said his normal time was year 2376, and he’d mentioned being in Earth’s Middle Ages, about 1350 when Yersinia was raging across Europe. So how did he end up on Cuatro in Earth year 1850? Some slip of a temporal vortex because of dark energy? Is that what he’d actually said?
Jane’s head couldn’t put together all the pieces with the little bit of information they’d discovered in the ship’s logs. Time travel wasn’t possible, at least, it wasn’t possible in 2165. She wasn’t sure how it was possible at all, ever, but then, the Greeks probably didn’t think humans would ever have technology to take them off Earth, much less to the Moon, and from there to other planets and stars.
She looked down at her empty hand and realized she’d eaten the cookie and hadn’t even tasted it. She shook her head slightly and continued on her way to sick bay.
“Ferris, what’s going on?” Dr. Adams asked as soon as his eyes met hers. “Something about that damn body?”
“How’s Rianya?” she asked.
“She’s going to live. Woke from the coma an hour ago, she’s asleep now, but no longer unconscious.”
“Can I see her?”
“Just be sure you use some sterilization gel before and after. Her immune system’s weak as a kitten. I don’t want her to have to deal with a single microbe she doesn’t have to.”
Jane doused her hands in an orange fluid and let it dry before using the UV sterilizer, and she went in her newest friend’s room. Rianya almost seemed at peace, snuggled in a blanket on her side, her hair free, a couple of tresses in her face, but she looked worse than dead. Her pink skin was still greyish, taught, her lips pale, her breathing almost imperceptible; her lymph nodules were still huge but slightly diminished, the gaunt hint of death vanquished. At least the angry red of fever had gone.
“She’s over the hill now,” Adams said from behind. Jane looked over her shoulder at the small man in white, with white hair, pale blue eyes, and no smile. “I thought I lost her last night.”
“She’s the sweetest person I know.”
“She’s also a tenacious fighter, stronger on the inside that the outside. Working with her this last year, well, I’ve come to envy Jack a little.”
“Has anyone heard from the captain or Dr. Gregory yet?”
“Not that I’ve heard. Now, tell me what this meeting is all about.”
“The mummy-”
“I know that much. What about him?”
“The data modules Mr. Watson recovered from the space capsule are his.”
“What?” His face contorted but his eyes stayed focused on hers. “How do you know? Maybe it’s just coincidence.”
“You’ll see.”
“How so?”
“Doc, the mummy is from the future, the space capsule is a time ship, and he brought the Plague from 14th Century Earth. He’s not the victim. He’s the vector.”
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