The Clone Apocalypse Read Free Page A

further instruction. During that time, his engineers scanned
Magellan
for biological weapons. They scanned for carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and internal radiation leaks. They checked the internal temperature of the ship. They scanned for broadcast malfunctions.
    After each test, Matthews sent the results back to Navy Command, then ordered his men to begin looking for some other hazard. Answers from Earth began trickling in. By the time Navy Command ordered Matthews to open the Explorer’s hatch, his medical team had already attempted to diagnose the pilot’s cause of death by parking a drone outside the windshield and photographing the dead man’s face and limbs.
    Matthews called sick bay, and asked, “What did you find?”
    “He isn’t moving,” said a medical corpsman, a lieutenant.
    “Corpses don’t move much; that’s my experience,” said Matthews.
    “We don’t know that,” said the corpsman.
    “The hell we don’t!” said Matthews. “I have seen all kinds of dead people over the last few years, and I can tell you with absolute certainty, they don’t move.”
    “Yes, sir,” said the corpsman, “but we don’t know if these men are dead.”
    “They aren’t moving,” said Matthews.
    “He doesn’t appear to be breathing,” the corpsman agreed. “He could be alive, hibernating or in stasis.”
    “The temperature in that ship is seventy-eight degrees.”
    “Warm for hibernation,” the corpsman conceded.
    “Don’t people normally hibernate in a chamber?” asked Matthews.
    “Normally.”
    “Why would he need to hibernate in a self-broadcasting ship? He could have broadcasted himself anywhere.” Space travelers never hibernated, they never needed to. Hibernation was a way of keeping them alive and sane during prolonged spaceflights. Since self-broadcasting ships could bathe themselves in energy, then transfer themselves to any location instantaneously, staying sane during prolonged spaceflights never became a problem.
    The medical corpsman considered this, and said, “Ah damn; they’re probably dead, sir.”
    Matthews asked, “Do you think it’s safe to send a boarding team?”
    “That ship out there is one hundred years old. For all we know, she’s no longer capable of sustaining life,” said the corpsman.
    Matthews said, “I’ll make sure the team wears space suits.”
    “In that case, there’s nothing to worry about,” said the corpsman.
    *   *   *
    Matthews and his medical corpsman both died five days later, on August 22.
    *   *   *
    An away team with six engineers and two medical technicians rode the sled from
Fillmore
to
Magellan
. An open platform designed for traveling short distances in space, the sled had tiny booster rockets all along its edges and underside. It did not have walls, rails, or seats, just a floor large enough to accommodate eight men in space gear.
    Lieutenant Devin LaFleur steered the rig and led the team. An experienced technician, LaFleur had done everything from rebuilding reactors to plumbing barracks. Though he’d never boarded an Explorer before, LaFleur had studied
Magellan
’s layout; he knew enough to park his sled on the roof of the ship, near the rear hatch.
    He stepped off the sled and stared into space. Over five hundred million miles away, the sun nearly blended in with more distant stars. Sol was a shining dot, the other stars pinpricks.
    Having been built for scientific exploration during a time of expansion, the Explorer didn’t have locks or security systems. LaFleur opened the outer hatch with the press of a button, and he and his engineers crowded into the air lock. The outer door closed behind them, then the air pressure equalized, and the door leading into the ship slid open.
    While his engineers ran diagnostics verifying the remote readings, LaFleur contacted Captain Matthews.
    “Report,” Matthews ordered.
    “Oxygen, good. Temperature, good. Radiation level, normal. No toxins in the air.” That didn’t mean