Then another thought crossed her mind. She got to her feet and quickly headed for the door, comforted by the presence of her weapon in her jumpsuit pocket. She returned to her sleep chamber and passed by her capsule, stepping around the mostly dry vomit on the floor. She continued toward the back of the room and saw two capsules which had no green indicator lights. One had a blinking standby light, and the other had a glowing red light. She slowly approached the one in standby mode and peered through the clear cover. Carter's capsule was empty.

Next, she went two rows over and stared into Fitzpatrick's capsule. She gasped, staring at the horrifying sight in front of her. There was dried blood smeared all over the inside glass of the capsule, including several bloody handprints. The skeletal remains of Fitzpatrick were lying face down. RJ could clearly see that one of his legs had been broken as were many of the electronics within the capsule. The hoses that connect from the port on the inside of the capsule to the mask on his face were wrapped around the neck. RJ accessed the individual capsule computer and saw the error message from almost thirty years before. DOOR MECHANISM FAILURE.

So that probably explained part of what was happening. The computers woke Fitzpatrick, and he couldn't get out of the capsule due to a mechanical failure. Fitzpatrick had obviously struggled and fought to free himself from the capsule but failed. When he didn't respond, the system woke Carter who had apparently handled the problem. She suspected that due to the nature of the emergency, by the time he discovered what had become of Fitzpatrick, it was too late to help him.

RJ walked two rows over and peeked into the capsule of Kelly Meyers. She remembered Kelly was a nurse who had seemed very friendly and vivacious the one time they'd spoken.

It was clear Kelly had died many years before. Accessing the computer, she confirmed the fatal failure was related to an inappropriate decompression of the capsule.

She was starting to get a picture of what had happened, but she needed more answers.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

RJ Anderson returned to the command center, considering her situation. The answers were being revealed, but the more answers she had, the more questions developed. She had to keep forcing the image of a frantic Fitzpatrick fighting to escape out of her mind.

RJ sat at the terminal and pulled up the status of the reactor. Everything was operational, and radiation levels were within normal limits. Next, she pulled up the communications logs and listened to all incoming transmissions which had come in since they'd gone to sleep.