Alpha Centauri: Sawyer's World (T-Space: Alpha Centauri Book 2) by Alastair Mayer

Author:Alastair Mayer [Mayer, Alastair]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Mabash Books
Published: 2017-05-30T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 23: Surprise!

USS Anderson, at the landing site

Elizabeth Sawyer sat reviewing the ship’s systems and supplies at a computer console aboard the Anderson. The recycling systems had been shut down and flushed. If they did end up needing to fly the Anderson to orbit, assuming someone arrived with a refueling pod, she wanted to keep as many of the systems they’d need in good repair, and the easiest way to do that was to not use them, except for occasional maintenance. For all that, she had her doubts as to how space worthy the Anderson would be after all this time on the ground. The Chandrasekhar had held up well, but it had the refueling pod’s reactor to supply almost unlimited power. Here they had to make do with solar—okay, Alpha Centauri—panels, and most of that power went to the various scientific instruments and electronics. I wonder when those will start to wear out?

The supplies were another question. They still had several months’ worth of concentrated rations, and they’d been slowly transition the food processing systems to deal with local vegetation. Even cooked local eggs were becoming a thing, now that they’d found reasonably-sized birds with eggs that didn’t taste strange. That specifically excluded terror bird eggs, which apparently had a strange gamey flavor. Sawyer took Dejois and Tyrell’s word on this, she hadn’t tried them herself. She suspected that the only reason they had eaten one was out of a personal grudge against the beasts.

There was a rapping on the hull near the open hatchway. It was Krysansky, the medical doctor.

“Yes, Doctor? What can I do for you?”

He dropped the statement on her like a bomb. “Ulrika Klaar is pregnant.”

“What?”

“As in ‘with child’. She is about two months into it.”

“You’re sure about this?”

“Please, Captain. I am medical doctor. But no, there is a small chance it is something else. Somebody neglected to include pregnancy test kits on the manifest—”

“And that such an important survival item for interstellar travel. I’m shocked.” She was, but not at this omission. Everyone had received contraceptive shots or implants before leaving Earth, a pregnancy shouldn’t have happened. Although given the amount of time Klaar and Tyrell had been spending together, if it was going to happen to anyone it would have been her.

“As am I. And I don’t think anyone has the appropriate sensors on their omnis.”

“Have you asked?”

“Not yet. Just asking lets the—what is phrase?—cat out of the bag, and I wanted to give you option of how to handle it.”

Sawyer grunted acknowledgment. Yet another burden of command. “Thanks for that. I think we should inventory the capabilities of everyone’s omnis. That will answer your question and is good information to have. I shouldn’t have overlooked that.”

“You can’t think of everything.”

“No, but what I don’t think of, or nobody else thinks of, could be what kills us. But back to Klaar. Why do you think she’s pregnant?”

“She asked me to check. Missed periods. No pronounced morning sickness but some queasiness. I ran tests and found elevated hCG levels.

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