Chapter 11 Jeopardy

“I can’t find any possible escape point, Captain.” Shellie Barone shoved her sidearm into its hip holster and seated herself on a cargo container. “Every door is sealed.”

“Byrd, Painter, anything we can use in these containers?”

“I found some blue crystals,” Ms. Byrd said. “I’m not sure but they smelled like ammonia.”

“Ammonia? Cleaning supplies? That’s archaic.”

“More likely for opto-electronic materials. But it’s a potential explosive if we can find a reactant.”

“What else?” 

“It’s a shame we can’t use gold for something. There’s a hundred small containers of gold ore right here,” Painter said, giving a hitchhiker’s thumb to several stacked boxes behind them. “Probably what they paint the ship with.”

“Anything we can use?” Jackson asked his small group. Heads shook slowly. He stood up and walked across the cargo room inside the Zlōger ship. An commercial aero plane could have fit inside with room to spare. Some metal racks lined the walls, and some neatly stood organized across the deck like the never-ending racks of library shelves.

All this stuff and nothing they could use? He refused to accept that conclusion. His crew just wasn’t thinking. They had relied too much on technology and rarely found themselves in a survival situation. He strode back to the others.

“Look for materials, tools, antique components, ordinary stuff. Think simple. Open every box if you have to. Zoe can make a list of everything you come across. Everyone take a few rows at a time. Go.”

Jackson found a sturdy neoprene-type box that he could use as a ladder, given he didn’t suspect Zlōgers used ladders. Nothing was legible, but all was well organized. His section had various sized and colored boxes filled with metal cubes, crystals, ores, shavings, and each box had a diagram on it:

And another:

And yet another:

All unique but with similar ball and stick designs.

It’d been years since his last chemistry class but these looked like molecule diagrams. Or perhaps they were simply alphabetical marks, words, letters, ideas. Alien alphabets could be near impossible to read or write, even if he’d learned to speak it.

“Which of you know chemistry?” he called out to the dim room in general.

“How well?” Zoe Stone answered.

“Come here and bring your data pad.” He climbed down. “You see those labels? Get up there and snap a picture, then tell me what you think it is.”

“Aye, sir.” She easily hopped onto the first block and adroitly made her way up about four meters. When she’d scanned about a dozen different pictures, she easily bounced down and tapped two icons on the electronic pad.

“I think they’re molecules, sir.” The computer ran its data files and each picture promptly reappeared, accompanied by a description.

“Here you go, Captain. These are compounds, these are molecules.” She handed him the list but pointed to the names as they were listed. “Sulfur, Sodium, Chlorine, Potassium, Iridium, oh, that’s what they gave us,” she stopped, climbing up one level to pull down a small container with Iridium. “I think we should have more for all our trouble.”

“This one is chlorine?” he asked. Zoe nodded and looked at the box with the appropriate label. “Isn’t it… a gas?”

“We use a solid form on Maria Mitchell. It’s bound to calcium, in our water purification system, just as a back-up when our ultraviolet sterilizer goes down. I always keep a little supply on board.”

Jackson’s brain focused on the brick, the little circles winding tighter and tighter as the seconds ticked by.

“I know there’s a bomb in here somewhere. Think.” Chlorine was explosive. Sulfur was gun powder. Sodium, well, with chlorine that was just table salt. Potassium was a vitamin and a fertilizer.

“Potassium?” he asked.

“We keep potassium on board, too, for use in the hydroponics bay and to balance salt intake by the crew.”

“I really need a cup of coffee,” Jackson muttered. “Byrd, Painter, Barone!” When all four crew members had joined him at the base of the elements stack, a laser light came on.

“We need to do this fast. I don’t know how much time we have left to get out of here. Barone, go get the blue crystals and take them to the cabin door.”

“Aye, sir!”

“Monkey Girl, climb back up there and get the one with the picture of chlorine. Be careful.” Zoe snickered and again scaled the tower to collect her part of the puzzle.

“Painter, find us come containers – solid enough to hold chemicals but not so strong we can’t destroy them.”

“Aye, Captain,” he answered and jogged off.

“Byrd, come with me. We need to find a fuse.”

“I ran across some flat braided metal strips,” she said, her face lighting up. She dashed across the cargo bay and dodged a shelf. Before Jackson could take a step to follow her she was back with a meter-long, flat strip of dull grey, finely braided wires, about a centimeter wide. “I think it’s magnesium. You’ll find this in antique machinery for battery cables and the like. My old street car back home, my Voltage, it has these. But they’re copper with tin coating, not magnesium.”

“How can you tell?”

Kym Byrd smiled and raised her thin brows until they rose halfway up her forehead. She dropped to the floor and plowed through her tool box, plucking the object of her search from under a couple tools and presenting it to the captain. He took it from her, realizing it was a Flame-lighter.

She dropped a centimeter of single braid on the floor and took the Flame lighter to it, starting a miniature blaze. An exotic, pearlized white flame burst from the metal and smoked as it consumed the fuel.

“Magnesium! A fuse for our bomb.”

“Good job.” Jackson clapped her on the shoulder and they headed to the cargo door, booty in hand. “Nobody get this stuff too close together until we’ve all taken cover,” Jackson said. He pushed the blue ammonia crystals to the left and the chlorine tablets to the right. Painter handed him two plastic containers that would hold about a liter of each substance. With crystals in one, and the cubes in another, he pushed them as close to each other as he dared. Byrd had connected several meters of the magnesium braid together so they could be a safe distance before they even lit the fuse.

“Give me some fabric,” he said to all of them. Painter unzipped his coveralls and tugged on his dingy undershirt until the hem ripped off in his hands. Jackson curled the strip into a crumple and tangled it with one end of the magnesium. He picked up the Flamelighter.

“Everyone, take cover as far back as possible. I’ll be right there.”

“Captain—” Byrd said.

“That’s an order, go, all of you. Now.”

When the crew were out of sight, Jackson took careful measure of his crude explosive. He replayed the tale his father told him about a man assigned to clean the Officers’ Club who thought combining ammonia and chlorine bleach would make an excellent bathroom cleaner. The custodian didn’t live to tell about it, and the restroom was blown to smithereens. His dad’s lively telling made a lasting impression, fortunately.

He stepped to the farthest end of the braid, ignited the Firestarter, touched it to the braid, and watched the silver-white flame begin crawl away, a centimeter at a time, toward the two bottles of chemicals.

Jackson sprinted to the back of the cargo bay where his team waited for him. They all huddled behind heavy metal panels and covered their ears. And they waited. They waited an eternal minute. Jackson uncovered his ears, stood up, and saw that the braid had burned but the containers hadn’t blown up.

“Damn. Damn it, the damn thing didn’t work,” he groused. Jackson took a couple steps toward it when he saw a dull, red flame burst upon the fabric of Painter’s old shirt. “Shit!” He dove back at the moment of success. A gargantuan ball with a thousand shades of orange flames detonated in an angry rage, blistering the air, and destroying the doors, the frame, and several cargo containers near the doors as well. A searing heat filled the room but quickly subsided.

Jackson’s ears had such a loud humming tone he couldn’t hear what his staff were telling him. They stood and brushed away chunks of bulkhead, the burned pieces of containers, and black, unidentified particles, most likely charcoal given the way they smeared and disintegrated under their touch.

“What is that smell?” Barone asked, placing her hand over her mouth and nose. The others did the same.

“That’s the smell of sterilization,” Jackson kidded. “Try not to breathe. Come on,” he said, taking the lead and gingerly stepping over debris, divots, gaps and holes, ducking from dangling conduit and live wires, on the way out of the cargo bay. Painter and Byrd took their tool kits, Stone took the iridium, and Barone pulled her laser gun to stop any Zlōgers that might have been lurking or had heard the explosion and were running toward them.

In the corridor, greenish grey smoke obscured the view in all directions, including the deck. All shoved their face into the crook of their elbow and squinted. Jackson coughed hard, struggling in the smoky air. It stung his eyes, burned his nose and throat, and his lungs refused to take in the poison.

Respirators would take too long to find, and wouldn’t fit anyway, Jackson was certain of that. He jogged several meters until the air was less colorful and he could stop coughing, taking in deep breaths of relatively clean air and hacking out the yellowish ammonia-chlorine gas.

“Captain,” Barone’s mucus covered voice called out. “This was a war weapon! They called it Mustard Gas!”

“This doesn’t have any sulfur in it. It’s not mustard gas,” he choked. “And I told you not to breathe. I meant it.” He leaned over and expelled as much of the toxins as possible with a deep, hacking cough. “Come on, it’s going to catch up with us.” He hurried up the corridor to find cleaner air and the docking port. He could only hope the Osprey was still attached, and that Maria Mitchell was still attached, as well.

He kept checking for Zlōgers but didn’t see any. He saw Barone doing the same thing at the rear of the party. The acrid air became less visible the closer they got to the hatch. He stopped and held up a hand for the party to stop. He closed his eyes and listened hard, but it seemed the ship was empty of Zlōgers. At least one would have come clacking along to explore the explosion at the cargo bay. Perhaps they had gone down to the planet by now.

The humans scrambled the last few meters until they found the same place they’d entered a couple hours earlier. The corridor had a distinct lighting pattern that shone on the double doors, ready to temporarily blind anyone who was coming aboard. Controls on the left side panel. No buttons.

“How do you open this thing?” Jackson growled. He banged a few times on a panel with orange light glow.

“Try that one,” Zoe suggested, indicating a round spot that glowed in green light.

“No, this one,” Jackson said, about to press a square spot that glowed blue. She shrugged and didn’t counter as he expected her to, so he pressed the square spot with his knuckle, imitating one of the Zlōgers’ claws.

Waaaank! Waaaank! Waaaank! screamed a siren above their heads at a deafening decibel. The lighting pattern on the door disappeared and the corridor went dark. The horrid sound, however, persisted.

Jackson slammed the green light but nothing changed. And as suddenly as it had gone on, the alarm went off, the lights illuminated, and the doors slid open to the airlock vestibule. On the other side, the Osprey.