"Ken Jenks - Vectors" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jenks Ken)
I shrugged. "I hear a Congressman holds the record. He was sick from launch until a week after landing."
Bear grunted. "This I don't need to hear. I'll be on Atlantis for another two weeks."
Bear rubbed his jaw, looking uncomfortable. "I saw you and Trent after Mikhail's party in Houston." I looked at him, shocked. He stared steadfastly at the nearby caution-and-warning display, avoiding my eyes. "He's a good friend of mine, Trent is."
I couldn't think of anything to say. Trent and I had also been friends for years. He was a pilot in the astronaut corps, and I was an Astronaut Candidate, pronounced "ass can." That's what they call you during the one-year "probationary period" after you've been accepted into the corps. At that party, we all drank way too much vodka, and Trent and I talked for hours. Although I'd been working with this quiet, handsome man for years, this was the first time I got to know him as a person instead of a pilot, astronaut, hero. At 0400, when we found ourselves alone, I guess the inevitable happened. We made love that night, and he went into quarantine the next day. With my training schedule, I didn't even have time to fly to Florida to see the launch. While I was working down there in Houston, he had passed overhead sixteen times each day, but I couldn't find a valid excuse to call him from Mission Control.
"It's been a long time since that party, Bear." Almost two months. I thought about that stretch of time, filled with training, travel, more training, and precious little time for me to be myself. My coarse black hair barely stirred in the light breeze from life support.
Bear chuckled. "Not for Trent. I had CAPCOM duties in Houston, and I got a chance to talk to him a few times on the phone instead of air-to-ground. The poor guy has the whole world hanging above his head, literally, and now you on his space station."
I looked away. "Despite his best efforts, you mean." Trent had been campaigning to keep me from this mission.
"I know he asked for Charlie instead of you, but the Powers That Be include more than just our friend Trent. You have more allies than you realize."
I thought about the complicated political structure back in Houston, where the head of the Astronaut Office was only one of the people involved in assigning crew manifests for upcoming missions. I must have had some friends pulling strings to keep me assigned to this flight despite the long-distance objections of the station's commander. "Bear, I just can't understand what's happening with Trent. To my face, he's civil, but behind my back, he tried to sabotage my flight assignment!"
Bear shrugged. "I can't know what's in his mind or his heart, but I know the man has a good soul."
I pouted. "I just wish I knew what the score is."
Bear shrugged again. "Good night, Mademoiselle." He pulled himself across the dim module toward his bunk on Atlantis. I drifted off to sleep, dreaming of plumbing diagrams and etouffe.
The next day, Atlantis departed to complete the rest of her mission, leaving Kathy and me on Calypso, while rotating two other astronauts back to earth. James, Bear and the rest of the Atlantis crew had a busy schedule, including a satellite deployment and several on-board experiments. I drifted into the cupola with Andreii and Chen to watch the departure. Seen from the outside, the ghostly spray cast off by the shuttle's maneuvering jets was even more dramatic, albeit without the sound effects.
After Atlantis coasted out of sight, I returned to the lab and checked my cultures. Some were growing, others showed remarkably little change. One sample, on TCBS agar, had tiny yellow colonies. I rechecked the label on the slide. This sample was taken from Calypso's potty. An ill-defined suspicion made me look at the other media I used to culture that same sample, I saw iridescent green colonies on the chocolate agar. I put the data into the microbial pattern recognition system, but the results were inconclusive.
After taking careful notes, I stained two slides from the colonies, then stored one for later analysis in Houston. I put the other slide under the microscope and adjusted my foot restraints. When I was comfortable, I focused in on the first slide, which I found covered with comma-shaped Gram negative rods. Puzzled, I prepared a wet mount from one of the small yellow colonies on the TCBS medium. Once I found my focal plane, I saw spiral shaped bacteria darting quickly across the field of view.
I prompted the pattern recognition software, which analyzed the growth and stain characteristics, apparent shape and motion, then indicated that a Vibrio species was 85% likely, with no other species ranking above 5%. Most probable: V. cholerae.
I leaned back in my foot restraints and stared at my experiment rack. The implications were enormous:
A cholera outbreak in space.
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After I did my homework on cholera, I found Trent at one of Calypso's workstations. He and CAPCOM, down in Houston, were working through a procedure to re-route data around a failed multiplexor in Calypso's command and data handling system. I waited impatiently while they finished the procedure, then pulled Trent aside. His short brown hair waved slightly as he moved.
I began earnestly, "Trent, you were right about the priority on real-time sampling of life support."
Trent raised his eyebrows. "Oh? What did you find?"
I squared my shoulders. "I want to confirm it with Houston, but I'm pretty sure it's cholera."
Trent looked incredulous. "That's not possible. Cholera only happens in backwater countries. How could it get into space?"
"I don't know, yet, but I'll certainly find out. However, cholera isn't confined to 'backwater countries,' although 'backwater' is usually the operative word. The on-line Bergey's Manual says that genus Vibrio organisms are found in surface and marine waters. Infection is usually spread by poor sanitary conditions, or by poorly cooked seafood."
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