Permutation by Patty Jansen

Author:Patty Jansen [Jansen, Patty]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Patty Jansen

Chapter Nine

Two crew members arrived who said they’d been ordered to help Gaby with the samples. She called the two—both young women—her lab rats.

After Gaby took them to start work, Jonathan learned that Kenzie was still taking other people to the station today because apparently certain automated mining-related processes needed to be shut down.

He and Lance boarded the shuttle with three other crew members. Jonathan had seen these people before. As far as he knew, they were part of the maintenance crew at the Renae Stellaris.

Jonathan tried to quiz them on their task at the station, but they were quite vague. He wanted to tell them: look, it’s OK, I’m well-versed in tech that works in space.

But he also understood that certain things had to remain confidential within the company for the sake of protecting their work.

He didn’t press for answers.

After arriving at the station, the three went to the control room, while Jonathan led Lance to the labs. Jonathan had brought another set of sample containers.

The first thing Jonathan did was to check the fruit bar he’d left on the shelf. It was still there. So much for that theory.

Oh well.

He swept some more sand off the tables and collected it into the jar.

Then he noticed something that he hadn’t seen before: the grate to the ceiling vent hung loose.

Jonathan got a chair and pulled the thing right out, giving him a perfect view of the inside of a very grey and very boring duct.

He could hear voices. Where did this come out?

Still standing on the chair, balancing awkwardly in his environment suit, he checked the map.

Crap. This room was immediately above the auditorium. And the air flow diagram showed that cool air was forced down from the recycling plant into the residential layers, to return when it grew stale and warm.

“Do you see anything in there?” Lance said.

“Uhm… no.” Jonathan swiped the map away, but as he stepped off the chair, he continued looking up, wondering how someone—because this had to be deliberate—would pump carbon monoxide into the vent. And where they got the carbon monoxide.

Could the recycling vat have something to do with it?

It was a round container, which stood on a pallet with little sturdy wheels that had made scrape marks over the floor as first it had been moved to the bench and then across the room to its current position against the wall.

It was made out of heavy duty plastic, and about three paces in diameter. It had an equally thick and heavy lid that would normally sit in a bracket that allowed maintenance personnel to lift it with a lever. But this mechanism had been damaged and the lid hung to one side.

It looked like someone had tried to force the lid open or remove it entirely.

“Help me lift this,” Jonathan said.

He grabbed the top edge of the vat and nodded for Lance to take the other end. But the vat was so heavy that they couldn’t lift it back onto the pallet. There was no way that someone could have shifted it accidentally.

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