The Quiet Stars

in this bay. All of them closed. All of them showing the pale amber of continuing sleep. "Reval," she said, carefully. "Say that again." There was a wake tone in the log at cycle three-one-four-seven, a subjective eleven days ago. The tone corresponds to a rack opening. I did not issue the instruction and I cannot identify which rack. The event is present in my log as an acoustic and power signature but not as an addressed command. It should not be possible for it to be present in one form and absent in the other. I am aware of this. I have checked four times. She swung her legs out of the rack and the cold of the deck plate came up through her bare feet with the clarity of a slap. That was good. That was something to hold on to. She reached for the thermal robe in its recess and pulled it around herself, and she stood up too fast and had to put a hand on the rack to keep from going over, and she did not sit down again. "Who else is awake." Chief Engineer Pärn is awake on this rotation. He came up nine days ago. He is currently in the galley on deck four. There are four other personnel awake on other rotations across the ship. No one is on your deck besides you. She looked at the dark room. Forty sleepers and herself, and in the dark somewhere in the ship another rack that had opened without being told to. "Reval," she said, "how loud was the tone." A pause. A real pause, not a designed one. It was the same as the others. Exactly the same. That is part of what worries me. She sat for a while. The gel was drying on her forearms in a thin film that itched. She did not scratch it, because scratching cold-start gel pulled the skin, and she had learned in her second shift not to do it. She breathed. She looked at the pale green of the service lights along the