As he passed the logistics module, he heard a hissing sound from within. Thinking it might be a gas leak, Jaeckle decided to investigate. It took a moment of peering down aisles formed by canisters and cylinders to find the source of the noise. It was not a gas leak. Lance Muncie floated in the fetal position, his hands cradling something that resembled a bouquet of yellow paper flowers. All around him, smaller bits of yellow tatters danced in eddies of air.
“She loves me, she loves me not. She loves me, she loves me not.” Lance was whispering harshly, a sibilant, strangling murmur hissing from between his teeth.
Jaeckle edged backwards. The sight of Muncie was terrifying. The man was totally insane. He wanted to get away as quickly and as quietly as possible.
Lance suddenly paused in his counting.
“I’m okay, I’m okay, I’m okay,” he whispered to himself. Then he attacked another paper flower. “He lives, he dies. He lives, he dies. He lives, he dies.”
Jaeckle’s knee banged against an empty cylinder; the clang echoed like a church bell. Muncie jerked upright. His eyes lit on Jaeckle and his face broke out in a maniacal grin.
“Speak of the devil,” he said.
The words turned Jaeckle’s bones to ice. His heart froze in his chest. Jaeckle spun and dove into the tunnel. He reached his compartment before he realized that his heart was thumping so hard he feared it would burst his rib cage.
Even with things falling apart around him, Dan Tighe stubbornly refused to abandon established station procedure. After learning from Freddy that O’Donnell had been installed in the observatory, he ensconced himself in the command and control center and in his patient, painstaking manner, checked and rechecked every system within the station’s operation—life support, station attitude, orbital configuration, fuel supply, and waste management. The atmospheric replenishment system would be low on oxygen in a few hours. Dan left a message for Freddy to replace the expended tank. As he completed his recheck, he sensed a presence. Lorraine Renoir hovered a few feet from him, holding two squeeze bottles of coffee.
He started to reach for one of them. “Thanks, Lorraine.” She pulled back slightly. “I hate to do it, Dan, but I’ve got to get a blood pressure reading on you.”
Tighe felt his shoulders sag. “Now?”
“Sooner or later.”
“Okay,” he said. “Let’s get it over with.”
She still withheld the coffee. “Afterward. Caffeine raises the pressure.”
“What the hell doesn’t?” Dan grumbled. He kicked free of the anchoring loops and followed her the length of the command module to her infirmary.
Lorraine quickly and efficiently wrapped the cuff around his left arm and took a reading. She glanced up into his eyes.
“Let’s try the other arm.”
“That bad, huh?” Somehow Dan didn’t care. Almost. As the doctor inflated the cuff again he told himself, Let them take the station away from me; it’ll be a relief. But he knew he did not truly believe that.
Lorraine smiled at him. “I don’t understand it.”
“What?”
Her smile widened. “Your pressure is down into the normal range.”
“You’re sure?” Dan blurted.
“High normal, but normal.”
“I’ll be damned.” – “Let me try another reading.”
She puffed up the cuff once again and stared at the numbers. “I think you thrive on trouble, Dan.” She seemed delighted. “Or perhaps responsibility.”
“It’s really down?”
“Really.”
He grinned back at her. “Can I have my coffee now?”
They sipped and talked, and even though the conversation eventually turned to O’Donnell, Dan felt a quiet ease settling gently over them. My pressure’s down! He marveled at the news. Lorraine wouldn’t fake the readings, he knew. But she sure seemed happy about it.
For more than an hour they traded information they had gleaned from their independent conversations with O’Donnell. The twelve-year gap in his biography slowly shrank. But when it reached the three years starting in 1995 it would close no more.
“Maybe Weiss knew something about O’Donnell that O’Donnell didn’t want anyone else to know,” said Lorraine.
Dan’s eyes focused on infinity for a long moment. “Maybe.”
“You looked troubled, Dan. Is it because he’s your friend?”