Bodies of Light by Lisabet Sarai Page B

They’d had the courage to volunteer for Earth’s first interstellar mission, to risk their lives for the future of humanity. Hell, they’d fought hard for the opportunity, beating the hundreds of other candidates. They’d endured the two years of gruelling preparation. They’d climbed willingly into the suspension capsules knowing they wouldn’t emerge for years—if ever. Each had left his or her life on Earth behind, well aware that the odds of the mission succeeding were small and that, even if it did succeed, they could never return.
    Now they were gone and, with them, all hope of establishing a colony. The mission was a failure—one final failure in the long series that had been her life.
    Guilt and grief crashed down upon her. She bent double, her forehead against the floor, sobbing until knives of pain lanced through her chest.
    If only she had found the key, the missing variable that would make the equations work, none of this would have happened. Physicists were convinced that faster than light travel was possible. Everyone knew there had to be a way to bend space and create wormholes—science fiction tales had assumed this for generations. Yet nearly a century after men had first landed on the moon, no one had figured out the mathematics to support the widely-held conviction.
    Christine had poured twenty years of her life into solving the problem. She had failed along with everyone else. That was why she’d dedicated herself to the Archimedes mission. Her lack of insight meant that only the closest stars were plausible targets. Even then, an interstellar crew would need to spend years in stasis before they reached their destination. She was determined to pay the price for her failure. Somehow, signing on to the Archimedes had seemed like a way to make amends.
    And now what? Her tears trailed off, leaving her throat sore and her eyes prickly. She was on her own, the only survivor of some bizarre accident. Well, she was used to being alone, wasn’t she? She’d always been by herself, ever since her parents had succumbed to the plague. Her grandmother had taken Christine in and had tried to compensate for the loss, but it had already been too late. The solemn six-year-old had decided she’d rather wall herself off from love than risk the pain of losing it again.
    Christine’s practical side reasserted itself. Rising on wobbly legs, she surveyed her surroundings in an attempt to evaluate the situation. The ship as a whole clearly had power. A glow-strip along the ceiling illuminated the suspension bay. The fact that she was breathing proved the life support systems were functional, at least in this sector of the ship. She needed to get to the bridge and examine the instruments.
    In one of the storage cabinets lining the walls, she found a coverall and magnetic sandals that fit. The ship’s atmosphere was a bit too cool to make nakedness comfortable, while the artificial gravity was no more than half a gee. Her chestnut hair, cropped short before departure, now hung in her eyes and reached halfway down her back. She raked her fingers through the tangles, then tied the heavy mass into a knot at the base of her neck.
    She needed to discover how far along the ship had come in its journey and if possible—if the malfunctioning suspension equipment was an isolated fault, rather than a symptom of wider system failure—send a message back to Earth. A transmission wouldn’t arrive for years, of course, but at least the family of the crew members would eventually learn their fate. They’d be heroes—assuming that Earth hadn’t been torn apart in the interim by war or natural disaster. Colonising space had been the planet’s last hope.
    And what about her own fate? How long could Christine survive, alone on a ship she didn’t really know how to control, headed into unknown reaches of space?
    She palmed the access plate and the hatch hissed open. She could deal with the solitude. She’d had lots of practice.