Yoshi wakes up retching. He vomits on his sleep sack before he can reach for anything else. What else does he have? He has no bag or bucket in his wedge. There is a very real possibility he is going to vomit again. Yoshi tries to kick himself out of the sack without letting the mess he has made spread any further. He cannot see his watch, or the door; it is unaccountably dark.
No, he is still wearing his sleep mask.
Yoshi shoves his sleep mask upward and lurches out of bed, banging an elbow on his clothing locker. He does not think about letting the sheets cool before making his bed. He moves quickly into the hallway and heads to the Lav, then realizes he is going the wrong way, also that he seems to be hugging the curved wall of the corridor. Anyway, he should not vomit into the toilet because this is connected to the Chute, and stomach acids are not the same as urine or fecal matter—he needs a bag.
When Yoshi reaches the Science/Lab wedge he finds Sergei already there, scrabbling in the bin that holds the nausea bags and, like Yoshi, naked except for disposable underwear. Sergei flips a bag to Yoshi, who grabs it and then lurches into Sergei, who half catches him and half loses his own balance, and they stagger into a table in a clumsy tango.
“What’s going on?” Yoshi can see Helen in the doorway over Sergei’s shoulder. He hardly recognizes her, she looks like a shocked little girl. It also appears as if she’s standing sideways, then not, and then she’s pulling Sergei upright.
“I fell,” Yoshi says. “Into Sergei. Dizzy.”
“Sick,” Sergei says. “Are you sick?”
“Yes—no,” Helen shakes her head. “Dizzy, headache. Something happened.”
“No alarms.” Sergei nods at the console. “Nothing.”
“We were hit,” Helen says. She is in front of the console board.
“Nothing, I see nothing.” Yoshi means that he sees no evidence of a breach on the console, but that is only because he cannot see the console. He sees stars, figurative stars, five-pointed. His head is pounding.
“What could hit us?” Sergei holds his bag up to his mouth and then continues speaking through it in Russian as his eyes scan the console. “Life support is nominal.”
They have not been hit; there are no alarms, no sensors, no warning lights.
“No.” Sergei coughs. “Yoshi, you are nauseated?”
“Yes. I woke up sick.”
“The alarm system failed,” Helen says. “Something happened.”
“I can’t read the fucking telemetry.” Sergei knuckles his eyes.
“Look,” Helen says. Her voice is calm. “We course corrected. Poorly. Incorrect amount of thrust, and it caused a slack in our centrifuge tether. Then a correction, then another course correction to compensate for the earlier one.”
“No alarm?” Sergei is furious. “If someone sneezes in the toilet we get an alarm, but this?”
Yoshi looks at his watch. How quickly can an astronaut go from deep sleep to high performance? Helen is already there, she is already alert and solving problems. He must get to that place immediately.
“Look,” Helen repeats. Her finger traces a line on the screen. Yoshi swallows the acidity in his mouth.
“Helen is correct,” he says.
They read the board, reassuring themselves, checking systems.
They must face this. To fly in an automated ship is to be at the mercy of automation, in a place where there can be no failure. Primitus has made decisions on her own.
“I will now send a very nice message to Ground.” Sergei tosses his nausea bag onto the table. “And say they should maybe install a little bell that lets us know if computer decides to make course correction like drunk person and maybe I will also ask them what the fuck. Someone look outside window. Is there comet? Is there alien death squad? Is there space wildebeest?”
Helen is now smiling at Sergei, who—in his disposable undergarments—does look very amusing, and is clearly enjoying his own wrath.
“I have too much adrenaline!” Sergei shouts.
They must wait now for Mission Control.
Yoshi volunteers to bring clothing for the crew. He would also like to rinse his mouth. While he does these things, he reviews his performance.
Sergei had reacted in nearly the same way as he had. Helen—and presumably the Observation team—had seen him naked and flailing. He is not worried about the near nudity; he is proud of his physique (Sergei is quite hirsute), but he’s concerned about the lack of coordination. Additionally, there is the bother of vomit on his sleep sack. Odors on Primitus have a way of lingering.
Mission Control informs them that they are aware of the problem, which originated with a computer error at Mission Control, and not on Primitus, that the problem was quickly identified and corrected, and a decision was made not to alert the crew during sleeping hours.
“The language,” Yoshi notes, “is somewhat starchy.”
“Life Systems Support is recommending we have a cup of decaffeinated tea,” Sergei says. “I think this is maybe joke, but still, good idea.”
“The thing I’m curious about,” Helen says, when they are gathered in the Galley, “is the nausea.” She has put her hair back into its short ponytail. It was being loose that had given her the appearance of a little girl. Helen’s hair is very curly. Her ponytail is more like the tail of a poodle. She reaches for the whiteboard and starts scribbling.
“The explanation is not sufficient,” Sergei says. “I do not understand the game that is being played.”
“Our symptoms make sense if the balance of the centrifuge was disrupted,” Yoshi says. “Displacement of the inner ear fluid would cause us to be nauseous.”
“We were nauseated,” Sergei corrects. “Helen—who was constructed in a secret laboratory hidden in James Bond villain cave—only got a little dizzy.”
“And disoriented, apparently, since I thought we’d been hit.” Helen laughs. “I was staggering down the hallway. Maybe because, in the movies, when the spaceship gets hit by something, the crew staggers around.”