SEP-010, Chapter 10.

[Scav]

Time to bring 'em home!

[FONT=&quot]SEP-010, Chapter 10.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]"Are we ready to do this?" Mission Commander Brian Adkinson said mildly as restraint belts clicked into place. Pilot Jamie Cunningham took a deep breath as her blue eyes tracked upward towards the floating blue-white ball of life in front of them.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]The last two days had been a study in both boredom and sheer, terrifying excitement. She had walked on the moon -- she still hadn't quite gotten over that concrete fact in her mind . . . and in doing so, she had joined the list of twelve (now fifteen) people who had walked on the moon.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]Filling her lungs with the recycled air, she sighed deeply. It would be good to get back home, she reasoned . . . and yet there was a part of her that wished she could stay where she was forever.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]Not that that was all that feasible. The only way one could justify landing on the moon and staying there forever was in the face of a major mechanical failure; that type of event was usually frowned upon.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]Staring at Earth for a few more seconds, she nodded resolutely. Yes. It would be good to get back home.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]"Let's do it," She said.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]"Houston, Constitution," Adkinson said.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]"Go ahead, Brian."[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]"Houston, for your information we have all of our astronauts, cosmonauts and loose articles stowed and secured. We are ready to proceed."[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]"Copy that, Brian. You are 'go' for orbital insertion whenever you are ready."[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]"Roger that, Houston, and we are 'go' for orbital insertion." He clicked his communications dial out of VOX, and turned his head. "Jamie, let's get our altitude hold to local horizon. Vertical acceleration to thirty feet per second, please."[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]Jamie nodded as she turned to the panels in front of her, taking a second to re-familiarize herself with the instrumentation. She found the buttons at her keypad.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]After a moment of typing, she nodded firmly. "Okay, Brian. I've got the burn programming soft-coded into the main engines' programming. We'll need a heading of 268.13 degrees to run the trans-Earth injection for a fifty-one degree orbital inclination."[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]"Alright then. I'm gonna miss this frickin' place."[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]"True that," Jamie replied. Pursing her lips, she glanced at her control panel. "Alright. APUs are coming online . . . I'll have the cargo bay doors and radiators in in a moment. Attitude control is online . . . vertical ascent is set."[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]"Let's do this!"[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]* * *[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]"So I was thinking about our little problem the last time we were up," Jamie Cunningham said as she swam into her seat. Constitution was well underway. Her altitude was quickly exceeding five thousand miles above the surface of the moon.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]"Hmm?" Brian Adkinson said absently.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]"I was thinking about that data glitch that caused that RCS anomaly two years ago," Jamie repeated. She looked at Adkinson curiously when he didn't respond. He looked pale, he had a sheen of sweat on his forehead, and he seemed very distracted.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]"Are you alright?" She ventured.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]"How's Downs doing?" Adkinson barked.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]"He's fine," She said as she blinked at the non sequitur. "He seems to have finally beaten the sickness syndrome. What about you?"[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]"All I know," He replied crossly, "is that we're running really low on dramamine, and I'm not helping things any."[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]"What's wrong?" Jamie soothed as she leaned forward.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]"I've had a headache ever since we landed," Adkinson said lowly, "and I've been feeling really funky downstairs. It's probably nothing, but it's damn persistent . . . and I think it's getting worse."[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]"Do you . . . uh . . . want me to get Svetlana in here?"[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]Brian Adkinson replied by turning an abrupt, alarming shade of green. Coughing roughly as his hand shot to his mouth, he loosened his restraints as he vaulted himself from his seat.[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]The next thing out of his mouth was a technicolor explosion, and Jamie fought hard not to avert her eyes as his ejecta shot across the cabin. Her arms shot out to steady Adkinson as he curled up in a ball mid-air.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]"I'd call that a big 'yes'," She chirped lowly. "Svetlana!"[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]"[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Constitution, Houston," She heard in her ear. Swatting her hand up to her earset, she activated the feed.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]"Go ahead, Houston."[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]"[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Constitution, we're looking to raise Brian on the channel. Is he alright?"[/FONT]

[FONT=&quot]She took a moment to help Adkinson through the compartment hatch into the aft-deck, and she sighed. "He's a little busy at the moment, Houston."[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]"Jamie, this is from the surgeon. We're getting some anomalous readings from Adkinson's medical feed. Can you verify that?"[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]"I'd . . . give him a point-five Garn . . . maybe higher, Houston," Jamie said lowly as she helped Adkinson into the toilet and closed the door. She heard him retching loudly -- painfully -- through the door, and she flinched.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]"What is the matter, Jamie?" Svetlana Zaytseva said as she floated up through the mid-deck access tunnel.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]"Brian's sick," Jamie replied shortly. "Started complaining about a headache, and he just started upchucking on me. Happened real suddenly, too."[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]Svetlana's eyes probed carefully, and her mouth set in a frown. "I'll take a look at him." [/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]Jamie swam back to the cockpit slowly, and frowned at the sight in front of her. Some cleanup work would be necessary, of course . . . and she put herself to task as she dealt with the stunned silence in her head. The mission commander falling ill wasn't any type of scenario to ignore . . . but this . . . happened at probably the worst possible moment possible during this flight. They were on their way back to Earth; Adkinson needed to be at the controls for this.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]Moreover, Jamie Cunningham needed[/FONT][FONT=&quot] him at the controls.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]** *[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]"I need to take a blood sample," Svetlana said coolly as she wiped a cold washcloth across Adkinson's forehead. He looked terrible, she thought. His eyes seemed glassed over, and his skin was clammy -- almost toad-like, were it not for the complete lack of toad-like warts. His breathing was ragged at the moment, but it was more likely for the fact that he'd just spent the last fifteen minutes vomiting violently.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]She took Adkinson's arm and rolled up his sleeve. Taking a sanitary wipe from her kit, she swabbed it across the site of his basilic vein.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]"This may sting a little," She said as she drove a needle in smartly.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]* * *[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]Svetlana set the vial into the centrifuge and turned the device on. As the wheel spun dutifully with its load, she considered what she was seeing. Space sickness syndrome was well documented . . . but its classical onset was during the beginning[/FONT][FONT=&quot]of a spaceflight; not already halfway through. It was true that he was experiencing these symptoms after having been in a partial gravity . . . but she didn't buy that sudden adaptation to lunar gravity, and being yanked back into a microgravity could have caused this type of vestibular stress.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]No, something else was going on here, and as she removed the vial from the stopped centrifuge wheel and held it up, she frowned even deeper. The contents of the vial were milky white. That didn't make very good sense, she thought sourly. Blood plasma tended to become forced to the bottom of a cylinder in a centrifuge . . . and as she rolled the cylinder in her fingers, she noted that it was very difficult to find any 'red' blood in the container.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]Slipping the cylinder into a microscope, she held her eyes to the eyepiece.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]"Bozh[/FONT][FONT=&quot]é[/FONT][FONT=&quot] . . ."[/FONT][FONT=&quot] She allowed herself to exclaim softly.[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
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[FONT=&quot]* * *[/FONT]

 

[Aeadar]

Uh,oh.

Well, now I'm going to be thinking about this all day tomorrow!


:thumbup:

 

[Scav]

Uh,oh.

Well, now I'm going to be thinking about this all day tomorrow!


:thumbup:

Yes! :headbang:

Thank you for that. You just made my night.

On a more serious note: Not too graphic, I hope?

 

[PhantomCruiser]

Not too graphic. Hmmm, low red blood cell count with abdominal distress. Non of the diagnosis I can think of sound too good, particularly 3 days away from home.
Cancer (bone marrow type), should have been caught during the medical workup prior to flight.
Any signs of intestinal bleeding? My dad had an adhesion along his small intestine that had similar symptoms.

 

[ky]

Woah, this doesn't sound too good. Hope he recovers before return :thumbup: