Curse of the Iris Read Free Page B

sensors warned that the air remained unbreathable and perilously cold. He still felt like he was intruding in a tomb, but at least now the bodies were out of sight, covered with tarps in the empty hold.
    As the bridge consoles flickered to life, Carlo settled into the captain’s chair, with Mavry looking over his shoulder. Tycho admired his brother’s easy confidence but found he couldn’t bring himself to sit in the navigator’s seat. Instead, he chose to lean over the dead man’s console and peer at the screen.
    â€œWant me to pull up her logs?” Carlo asked their father, fingers already hovering over the keyboard.
    â€œNot yet,” Mavry said. “Prospectors are paranoid—you could trigger a software trap and erase everything. Plus we’ll only get a few hours out of our generator. First thing is to see if we can figure out what malfunctioned and fix it.”
    Carlo pulled up the main diagnostics screen, and Mavry let out a low whistle.
    â€œLook at that—the air scrubbers are off,” he said. “Carlo, see if you can reset them. It’d be nice to able to breathe.”
    Carlo typed a command, tried again, then shook his head.
    â€œLet’s take a peek in the engine room,” Mavry said.
    Mavry was already on his way aft. Carlo and Tycho hurried down the dim, silent corridors after their father.
    â€œWhat happened to the others?” Tycho asked.
    â€œI sent them back to the Comet ,” Mavry said, then smiled. “Richards and Porco made the crossing in record time.”
    Carlo scoffed, the noise a little burst of static in their ears. “I don’t understand. They’re from belowdecks—it’s not like they’ve never seen dead men before.”
    â€œTake it easy on them, Carlo,” Mavry said after a moment. “Dying in a fight doesn’t scare them—it’s the life they chose, just like their parents and grandparents did. But a slow death in deep space, with no one back home ever knowing what became of you? That frightens them, and there’s no shame in it. It frightens me too.”
    â€œIs that what you think happened, Dad?” Tycho asked as they entered the engine room, now once again vibrating faintly with the thrum of a living ship. “You think they died slowly?”
    Mavry’s eyes traced the conduits where they ran along the ceiling.
    â€œSlowly at first, then all at once,” he said.
    â€œWhat does that mean?” Carlo asked.
    â€œI’ll show you. Power up the engineer’s console and get me an atmosphere reading.”
    Tycho tapped out the commands, and Mavry shoved a red valve hard to the right, grunting with the effort.
    â€œDad, the air scrubbers—” Tycho began.
    â€œAre back on,” Mavry said. “I know.”
    â€œThey were working?” Carlo asked. “Then why turn them off? That’s suicide!”
    â€œYes, that’s exactly what it was,” Mavry said. He crept along on his knees, hands tracing a conduit’s route from the main reactor behind them to a boxlike vault about a meter high. He popped open the vault’s doors and sat back on his haunches as much as his bulky spacesuit allowed.
    â€œThe energy feeds run from the main reactor to the power converters,” Mavry said. “Notice anything?”
    Tycho and Carlo peered over his shoulders, accidentally bumped their helmets together, and glared at each other. The converters inside the vault should have been gleaming metal but were a dull black instead.
    â€œThey’re cooked,” Tycho said.
    â€œAnd upside down,” Carlo said. “Which is why they’re cooked.”
    â€œSo why didn’t they install backups?” Tycho asked.
    â€œGood question,” Mavry said. “Let’s see if we can figure out the answer.”
    Carlo saw the converters first, lying on the deck beneath the engineer’s station. He returned to find Mavry had