11:09 (Universal Time)
Friday, January 29, 1982 ‘C’
Ship’s main kitchen, Main Deck, Quadrant 01, Carrousel ‘A’
U.S.S. PROMETHEUS, on its way to the Saturn System
Joan Brewster, like the other cooks and assistant-cooks present in the main kitchen, was quite busy as they made the last preparations for the noon meal. Tasked by Nicholas Buscemi to change the dirty vegetable oil in one of the deep frying pans, she used thick thermal gloves to take the heavy vat of still hot canola oil out of its electrically-heated receptacle and started carrying it towards one of the large sinks of the kitchen, where it would be able to cool down before its oil would be sent for recycling. As she passed by a series of hot plates used to grill meat, she didn’t notice the puddle of greasy water that had just been inadvertently spilled by another assistant-cook, who had gone to get a mop and was thus not present to warn her. With the heavy vat of hot oil compromising her balance, Joan’s left foot slipped on the puddle, making her fall backward. About half of the oil inside the vat flashed into flames the moment it spilled on top of one of the hot plates, while the other half splashed over Joan’s face, front upper torso and arms, burning her and making her scream horribly. Her head violently struck the steel floor of the kitchen, knocking her half-conscious for a few seconds. Then, the hot oil covering her also flashed into flames, touched off by flaming droplets of oil from the hot plates. Her whole upper body was then enveloped with flames, making her scream even louder. Nick Buscemi, who was only a few paces away, saw the whole thing and immediately ran to the nearest fire extinguisher while shouting at his kitchen crew.
‘’FIRE, FIRE, FIRE! EVERYBODY OUT, NOW!’’
As his kitchen staff ran out, he pulled the handle of the fire alarm situated just above the receptacle of the fire extinguisher, starting a loud alarm bell. Next, he grabbed the fire extinguisher, a model filled with halon gas which could smother all types of fire by depriving them of oxygen, and ran back towards the flames which were now rising nearly to the ceiling. He couldn’t help freeze with horror for a second when he looked at the poor Joan, her upper body in flames and screaming and flailing on the floor. Taking back control of himself, he then sprayed halon over Joan, to smother the flames burning her, even though he also risked asphyxiating her at the same time. However, burning alive was a much more serious concern for Joan than asphyxiating for a couple of seconds. Thankfully, the halon gas quickly succeeded in taking out the flames enveloping Joan. Buscemi next concentrated on taking out the flaming cooking oil on top of the hot plates: if the flames were allowed to propagate through the ship, the results would be no less than catastrophic for the 530 occupants of the PROMETHEUS. He was helped then by the fact that the ship, including its internal furnishing, had been made nearly entirely of non-flammable materials. The burning oil thus had next to nothing to feed its flames and was extinguished within ten seconds by Buscemi’s extinguisher. Throwing away the now nearly empty extinguisher, the chief-cook hurried to Joan and grabbed her under her armpits, then started dragging her out of the smoke-filled kitchen. The firefighter specialist on duty in the food court then ran in, a breathing mask on his face and a large halon extinguisher in his hands. Seeing him enter, Buscemi immediately shouted at him.
‘’QUICK, HELP ME CARRY JOAN OUT TO SAFETY!’’
Thankfully, the firefighter didn’t hesitate and helped Buscemi at once by grabbing Joan’s feet, raising her off the deck. They nearly ran out of the kitchen with her, finally putting down Joan on the deck in the middle of the central hallway. By then, Joan had stopped screaming, now under severe shock from her third- and second-degree burns. Seeing his shaken cooks gathered nearby, Buscemi shouted at them.
‘’SOMEBODY CALL A MEDICAL TEAM HERE, QUICKLY!’’
One of the cooks, who was a military member of the Space Corps, ran at once to the nearest public telephone, situated near the lift cage serving this quadrant. Buscemi then looked back down at Joan to evaluate her wounds. Her whole face and much of her arms were black and red from the flames and the whole upper torso part of her ship’s internal coverall had been burned to a crisp. Buscemi felt tears come out of his eyes as he understood that the young woman was most probably going to be left horribly disfigured for life.
Ingrid was working in her office, situated halfway around the carrousel from the kitchen, when she heard the fire alarm bell. Looking immediately at the video monitor on one corner of her work desk that showed her the type and location of any alarm signal triggered around the ship, she swore to herself when she saw that it was coming from the main kitchen: off all the places in the ship, the kitchen areas were probably the most probable ones for a fire, as combustible oil and fat were routinely used there. Jumping out of her chair, she ran out of her office and down the short corridor linking the offices of her more senior officers, emerging at a near sprint into the central hallway linking at main deck level the sixteen quadrants of Carrousel ‘A’. Ingrid then accelerated to a speed even Olympic sprinters could not equal, while shouting at the few people walking up and down the central hallway.
‘’MAKE WAY! MAKE WAY AT ONCE!’’
She ended up covering the 200 meters between her office and the central kitchen in less than twenty seconds but had to abruptly brake when she saw a burned-up woman lying in the middle of the central hallway, next to the kitchen’s main door, from which black smoke was coming out. Running to the woman on the floor, over which Chief-cook Nicholas Buscemi was kneeling, she also knelt next to the woman and examined her quickly. She was not a little shocked and saddened when she recognized Joan Brewster, whom she had spoken to quite often in the past few months. Having a long experience about battle wounds, Ingrid understood at once that Joan would end up being covered with ugly scars and would probably end being disfigured for life. There was now only one way to avoid that, but it would entail a price that Ingrid would have to pay personally for her actions. She however didn’t hesitate and gently put her hands over Joan’s forehead and chest while speaking to Buscemi.
‘’Stand aside, Master Senior Sergeant: I will take care of this.’’
‘’We called for a medical team, General. It should be here in a couple of minutes at the most.’’
‘’But they won’t be able to do much about those horrible burns. You may watch but please don’t interfere with what I will do now.’’
Ingrid next closed her eyes and concentrated. Buscemi, along with the dozen or so people around, recoiled with surprise when Ingrid’s hands started glowing. Soon, a white glow surrounded Joan’s body, gradually becoming so bright that Buscemi could not look directly at her or at Ingrid, who was also glowing. One of the other witnesses to this happened to be Doctor Sasha Smirnov, who had come early to the main food court to serve himself a frugal lunch of soup and salad at the self-serve salad bar. Smirnov had felt genuine distress on recognizing the poor Joan Brewster but his distress was now being replaced by utter awe and disbelief. However, he kept silent as Ingrid and Joan glowed for nearly a minute. When the glow faded away, Smirnov felt his hair nearly rise on his head: Joan’s face, arms and torso now appeared normal, with no traces of burns left other than the blackened coverall she wore. Even her hair appeared restored after having been half-burned away. Joan, shaking like a leaf, looked up at Ingrid with utter incomprehension.
‘’What…what just happened to me, General?’’
‘’I healed you, Joan.’’ Answered softly Ingrid. ‘’Can you sit up?’’
‘’I…I think so.’’
Helped by both Ingrid and Buscemi, Joan sat up on the floor of the hallway and looked with disbelief at her arms, which were now apparently intact despite the sleeves of her coverall being burned away.
‘’How…how could this be possible? How did you do this, General?’’
‘’I am a Chosen of The One, the same powerful spiritual entity who gave me my ability to remember my past incarnations. One of the powers he bestowed on me is the power to heal by touch.’’
‘’A Chosen? You are some kind of prophet?’’
‘’No, I am not a prophet, as I do not publicly promote the words of The One. I simply live by his words and help others as much as I can, occasionally with his help. Come, let’s get up: you will still need to go get checked at our medical center after this.’’
Looking next at the firefighter specialist standing close by, Ingrid gave him a few orders.
‘’Sergeant, get a firefighting team here on the double and check thoroughly the kitchen for any remaining flames or hot debris that could spark a new conflagration. Check in particular the ventilation system thoroughly. I am declaring the central kitchen closed until further notice, until it could be declared safe and be repaired and cleaned up. Crewmembers will have to temporarily use the fast food court and the coffee lounge to eat in the meantime.’’
‘’Understood, General. Our duty firefighting team is in fact arriving right now.’’
Ingrid nodded with satisfaction when she saw the approaching pair of electric carts carrying four firefighters in full protective gear and a reserve of halon extinguishers and other tools. Not far behind was a medical cart carrying two medics and a medical stretcher. Ingrid, again helped by Buscemi, escorted Joan to the medical cart and laid her on top of the stretcher before looking at the senior medic.
‘’Misses Brewster will now be mostly okay, but she still needs to be checked for shock. Tell Doctor Biddle that I will soon speak with her to explain what happened. You may now bring Misses Brewster to the infirmary.’’
With the medical cart now departing and with the firefighting team entering the main kitchen, Ingrid was left in the middle of the hallway, surrounded by a dozen persons looking at her with wide eyes. She looked back at them while speaking in a calm but firm voice.
‘’Listen carefully, my good people. What you saw may have stunned you but you have no reasons to fear me or my powers. I will make a public address later today to explain all this. In the meantime, please return to your occupations. Chef Buscemi, take your day crew of cooks with you and go to the fast food court to help the cooks there, as they soon will get swamped with customers.’’
‘’Uh, we will go there at once, General.’’
Ingrid’s next action was to go to the nearest telephone and, punching a special code in it, switched it to ship wide address mode.
‘’Attention all hands, this is General Dows speaking. An accident and fire have forced the temporary closing of the main kitchen and food court. You will thus have to use the fast food court and the coffee lounge for your meals, and this until further notice. Thank you for your attention.’’
She then paused for a few seconds before adding a few more words.
‘’Sergeant Jack Brewster is to report immediately to the ship’s infirmary. I say again, Sergeant Jack Brewster is to report immediately to the ship’s infirmary.’’
Ingrid then put back down the receiver and thought about how she was going to manage the fallouts from all this. While she had confidence that her crewmembers would react positively to her demonstration of her power of healing, she was less sure about the reactions from the foreign scientists traveling aboard the PROMETHEUS, or from various people on Earth once the news about this would reach it.
After making sure that the situation inside the main kitchen was under control, Ingrid started walking towards the ship’s medical center, situated in Quadrant 13 of the carrousel she was in. When she arrived at the reception desk of the medical center, the duty nurse directed her to one of the two medical examination rooms adjacent to the sick parade waiting lounge, where she found Joan Brewster being examined by Colonel Jennifer Biddle, the ship’s chief medical officer and chief surgeon. Ingrid didn’t miss the cautious look Biddle briefly threw at her when she entered the examination room.
‘’How is Misses Brewster doing, Doctor?’’
‘’She is understandably severely shaken but is otherwise fine, General. Is it true…’’
‘’That I healed her? Yes! Touch healing is one of the powers I got from The One, on top of slow aging and being able to remember my past incarnations. I have been hiding most of my powers for the past decades in order to avoid creating a circus around me, but I could not and would not let an innocent suffer just to protect my secrets. With this said, I am still counting on the medical talents and skills of you and your team to take good care of my crew.’’
Ingrid then eyed Joan Brewster, whose coverall was half burned away, while her blackened bra had been removed by Biddle, exposing her chest.
‘’I have called your husband to the infirmary, Misses Brewster, and he should be here soon. He will be able to escort you back to your cabin, where I want you to rest and recuperate with your husband and son for the rest of the day. We will lend you something to properly cover your chest.’’
Joan hesitated for a moment before speaking, her voice still a bit shaky.
‘’Are you an angel, General?’’
Ingrid grinned at that question, genuinely amused.
‘’Me, an angel? Not if you listen to some of the preachers who damned me to Hell for my off-duty partying. And they still don’t know about half of my so-called ‘sins’.’’
She then became most serious before continuing.
‘’No, I am not an angel, Misses Brewster. I am still a mortal woman, despite my powers and prolonged youth. Yes, I benefited repeatedly in the past from divine interventions from The One, whom most would wrongfully equate to God, but I will eventually die one day, like everyone else. Right now, my sole concern is the safety and happiness of you and the rest of my crew.’’
‘’Can you tell me more about your ‘One’, General?’’
‘’I will only say that it is an immensely powerful spiritual entity who has been following Humanity’s evolution for millions of years. What we call our souls are actually tiny parts of The One which inhabit us from the fetus stage until our death, then return to The One for a period of cleansing before going to inhabit a new fetus. The One’s gift of individual souls is the main reason why us Humans stand out among all the other lifeforms on Earth. However, The One has no wish to be worshiped, nor does it want to impose its will on us, contrary to what you will see or hear in most organized religions practiced on Earth. When it acts, which is fairly infrequent, it is normally through a Chosen like me. Even then, it will take something truly major to push it into action.’’
‘’You say ‘it’ and not ‘him’ or ‘her’, General. Why?’’
‘’Because The One is neither male nor female. It is a gender-neutral entity. I will stop it at that, if you don’t mind, Misses Brewster: I already said a lot more than I ever did about The One.’’
Jack Brewster, worry on his face, entered the examination room at that time and nearly ran to Joan, who was sitting on the examination table.
‘’JOAN, ARE YOU ALRIGHT?’’
Both exchanged an emotional hug before Joan answered him.
‘’There was an accident at the main kitchen and I got badly burned, but General Dows healed me. I am alright now, thanks to her.’’
Joan then spent a minute to explain to an incredulous Jack what had happened. At the end, Jack looked at Ingrid with a mix of disbelief and gratitude.
‘’However you did this, General, I can only say ‘thank you’.’’
‘’You’re welcome, Sergeant. A nurse will provide your wife with a medical gown, to properly cover her chest. Then, I want you to escort your wife to your cabin. Consider both of you as being off for the rest of the day.’’
Biddle, who had left the examination room for a short moment, then returned with a medical gown and gave it to Joan.
‘’Here you are, Misses Brewster. You may return to your cabin once you will have put this on.’’
Joan promptly put the gown on, with Jack helping her by tying the back strings, then stepped off the examination table. Before leaving, she went to Ingrid and pressed one of her hands with both hands, while looking Ingrid in the eyes.
‘’Thank you again, General: you saved me from being disfigured for the rest of my life. I will never forget this.’’
‘’I would have done the same for any other occupant of this ship, Misses Brewster. Go enjoy the company of your husband and son and spend some good family time with them.’’
Joan nodded her head once, then walked out with Jack, leaving Ingrid alone with Biddle. The latter gave her a cautious look again.
‘’How are you going to explain all this to the crew, General?’’
‘’Mostly, I won’t! I will call a command staff meeting for two o’clock this afternoon and will publish a short ship-wide statement afterwards. I want you to be present at that meeting, Doctor.’’
‘’I will be there, General.’’ said softly Biddle, still overwhelmed by this extraordinary event.
13:56 (Universal Time)
Command conference room
Main Deck, Quadrant 09, Carrousel ‘A’
Ingrid looked around the large conference table at her senior staff members, eyeing their expressions and evaluating their individual states of mind. On top of her usual command staff officers, she had invited as well the heads of her medical, scientific, administrative and general support staff, plus a few select extra persons. One of those select extra persons was Doctor Sasha Smirnov, who was the senior Soviet scientist aboard the U.S.S. PROMETHEUS. If she was going to reveal and explain some of her secrets, then she wanted to be fully open about this. Seeing that everyone who had been summoned was in, she started speaking in a light, facetious tone.
‘’Okay, guys and girls! I know that many aboard qualify my ass as ‘divine’ but I am no angel, as our three chaplains could attest to. Whatever you heard up to now about the incident at the main kitchen this morning, I want you to simply consider me as your mission commander, no more, no less. First, I would like to know what kind of reactions and comments you saw and heard since then around your respective departments. Is this impacting negatively in any ways on the good functioning of this ship?’’
Her deputy, Rear Admiral John Young, a man who had been under her command for years and who both knew her well and admired her a lot, was the first to speak, using a cautious tone of voice.
‘’From what was reported to me to date, General, I would say that there were no negative comments or reactions around the ship to your healing of Misses Brewsters. There are however a lot of questions and speculations about you. One item that was reported to me was the fact that our internal security surveillance cameras, which we use to quickly locate any significant breakdowns or accidents around the ship, recorded you when you left your office and when you arrived near the main kitchen. According to the time stamps on those recordings, you covered the 190 meters between those two spots in no more than fifteen seconds. You thus unofficially broke the Olympic record for the 200-meter sprint by a good six seconds.’’
Ingrid made a contrite smile on hearing that.
‘’Gee, I am slacking off: I thought that I could do better than that.’’
She then became serious as the others around the table looked at her with shock.
‘’Listen, people, I may be able to easily break Olympic records in multiple disciplines but that, along with my other powers I hold from The One, is irrelevant to our mission. We are still engaged in a multi-year deep space exploration mission and I still am responsible for the safety and welfare of over 500 persons on this ship, along with ensuring the success of this mission. Whatever other people think of me is unimportant, as long as I still have their loyalty and respect. Do I still have those?’’
Getting affirmative answers from around the table, Ingrid then looked at Sasha Smirnov, who seemed unsure about why he was present. She then spoke up in Russian, making a few of her officers stiffen a bit.
‘’Doctor Smirnov, I summoned you to this command meeting because you are the senior Soviet scientist aboard this ship and are well respected by both your Soviet colleagues and by the other scientists who are members of this crew. Contrary to what you may have expected, you have my permission to pass the news about this morning’s incident back to Moscow, when you will send your next personal message by radio to Earth. I will only ask you not to describe me as some capitalist experiment into a super-soldier project.’’
Smirnov nearly laughed at that and played her game in turn.
‘’You mean that you are not, General?’’
‘’Definitely not, Doctor! I am only a perverted girl who likes her fun.’’
‘’I will pass that along to Moscow, General, including the perverted girl part.’’ replied the smiling scientist. Ingrid’s smile widened on hearing that. She then looked at Katherine Johnson, the bespectacled African-American mathematical genius who was the ship’s navigator and chief-mathematician.
‘’Misses Johnson, how are we doing in terms of our navigation towards Saturn?’’
‘’We are still on our calculated path and will arrive in the Saturn System in late March of next year, in fourteen months, General.’’
‘’Fourteen months…’’ said softly Ingrid to herself. Watched by her staff, she then thought about what she had planned to do with her personal life. With babies seemingly popping up nearly every month aboard the ship, her own urge for motherhood was getting stronger and stronger by the day and her initial decision to wait until her return to Earth before having a baby was now becoming shakier by the day. She then took a decision and looked at her deputy, John Young.
‘’Admiral Young, you may end up in temporary command of the ship in about nine months, so that I could take a period of paid leave of a few months. Are you ready for that?’’
‘’Of course, General! I believe that you in fact have accumulated an inordinate amount of unused paid leave due to you, so you could even take over a year of leave without using all that you are owed. Uh, may I deduce that you are planning to become pregnant in the coming months?’’
‘’You may, Admiral Young. Since we will be in space cruise mode for the next fourteen months, with our sole outstanding activity being astronomical observation, I believe that this year would be the ideal time for me to take a couple of months off duty. I would of course stay available to take any major command decision as needed during that time period, but that would involve only major decisions which would impact directly our mission.’’
‘’Understood, General.’’ replied Young, with the Protestant chaplain, Major Ronald Jefferson, following up with a hesitant question.
‘’Please excuse my indiscretion on this, General, but could I assume that you also intend to marry in the coming months?’’
Ingrid didn’t get irritated at that question and simply smiled to Jefferson as she answered him.
‘’You would assume wrong, Father Jefferson. I have no plans to marry right now and will have my future baby as a single mother.’’
Jefferson, like the Catholic chaplain, Captain James Greenwood, and the ship’s rabbi, Captain Joshua Wiesenthal, barely managed to hide an expression of disapproval then.
‘’But, the eventual father will have to be registered as such as a matter of legal documentation, General. That is a standard administrative procedure of the Space Corps and of the American armed forces.’’
Her smile now gone, Ingrid bent forward and put one forearm on the conference table while drilling Jefferson with her eyes.
‘’The father of my future baby will stay unnamed, as my intention is to raise my future child alone. The administrative procedure you mentioned may be a standard one but it is not a mandatory one. I anyway plan to leave the military service once back on Earth, as I will have by then accumulated over 44 years of service in the American forces and will have fought for my country in six wars. And that is not counting my year of war service with the German Luftwaffe in 1940 and 1941.’’
Her words, along with her tone, stunned most of the people around the table, including John Young, who did say something then.
‘’The country will indeed lose a great officer when you will retire from the service, General. Are you planning to leave completely government service? Apart from being presently the commander of the Space Corps, you are also our director of national space programs and a special presidential advisor.’’
Ingrid nodded slowly her head at that, acknowledging the correctness of Young’s declaration.
‘’You are right about my other titles, Admiral young. However, I have not taken a firm decision yet on my future personal plans after I retire from the military. In truth, I suspect that headhunters from various aerospace companies and prestigious universities, including from the Boston’s M.I.T.{24}, will be hounding me the moment that I will announce my retirement from the Space Corps. As for my positions as director of our national space programs and as presidential advisor, President Reagan will be out of office by the time we will come back to Earth, as he will have by then completed two terms as President. I can’t predict who will replace him in the White House, so I don’t know if I will still be popular in Washington by then. Well, with all this said, I believe that we have covered the subjects I wanted to cover. Does anybody have a last question, comment or suggestion? No? Then I declare this meeting adjourned.’’
The participants to the meeting got up as one from their chairs and started filing out of the conference room. However, one person lagged behind the group: Katherine Johnson, who ended being alone with Ingrid. The mathematician then closed the door before looking cautiously at Ingrid.
‘’First, General, let me say that the cause of equality for American women will lose its biggest supporter with you. Second, while I wholly approve of your decision to become a mother, even while staying single, I must warn you to expect busybodies to watch your cabin’s door and to hear all kinds of rumors every time a man will enter your cabin after duty hours. I myself saw plenty of that kind of unhealthy social court of opinion in my past.’’
Ingrid sat against the edge of the table and crossed her arms, showing visible frustration, but not at Katherine.
‘’I’m afraid that you are too right about that, Katherine. I am wondering if any single man will be willing to expose himself to such personal speculations in exchange for possible sex. As for the married men on this ship, they will probably avoid entering my cabin like the Plague, for fear of being accused of possible adultery. Only visiting women may be safe from such rumor-mongering now. Damn!’’
‘’You will find a way, General.’’ said softly the mathematician. ‘’You always do when confronted with a problem. I sincerely wish that you will find a good, decent man as a father for your future baby.’’
‘’Thanks, Katherine: I really appreciate your counsel and support.’’
‘’My pleasure, General.’’ replied Johnson before leaving the conference room.
20:09 (Universal Time)
Ingrid Dows’ cabin, Upper Deck, Quadrant 10, Carrousel ‘A’
U.S.S. PROMETHEUS
Ingrid felt some discouragement and also some frustration as she entered the standard individual cabin she occupied on the ship. Her cabin shared the upper deck of Quadrant 10 with four family cabins, a common lobby-lounge, a laundry room, a storage room and a janitor’s corner. She thus lived surrounded by four families with children. Even though she was a four-star general and was the mission commander, she had insisted on using only a standard individual cabin, which measured six meters by five meters and was split into a bedroom, a lounge and a bathroom. That was in fact plenty enough for her, as she was used by years of service in war zones to be frugal in her personal needs. While crossing the eight-by-five-meter common lobby-lounge, she had noticed how the conversation between the three spouses sitting in the sofas and easy chairs distributed around the open space had suddenly died down when she had appeared, coming from the wide staircase linking the upper deck with the main deck of this quadrant. She had also noticed how the eyes of those three mature women, wives of three of her more senior officers, had not so discretely followed her until she had entered her cabin. Katherine Johnson’s warning was thus already proving prophetic.
Hooking her service cap on one of the wall hooks next to her cabin’s entrance door, Ingrid turned around to go to her bathroom and take a s