Decks That Should Not Be Sealed
They did not say what the two things were. Anneli was grateful for that. In her experience the naming of bad news made it more real, and she preferred her bad news to remain in the provisional state for as long as was professionally responsible. She let Mihkel finish his porridge, which he did without apparent appetite but also without rush, the way a man eats a meal he knows will be the last predictable one of his day. Then they walked together to the ring.
The ring was what the crew called the inner spine of the habitation section, the curved passage that ran the full diameter of the rotating drum and gave you access, through its thirty service hatches, to every deck from one to twelve. The Kaleva was not built the way the simulations liked to draw her. She was a long cylinder with a service spine, spun at a fraction of a gee, with the decks stacked inward from the hull and the crew racks on the three quietest of them. The spine was the only place on the ship where you could see every deck in one piece of architecture, and that was why the deck map was mounted there and not in the bridge, which most crew forgot the Kaleva even had.
The map was a tall narrow board of etched aluminium, eight metres high, with a small illuminated lozenge for each deck. Green for open. Amber for sleeping. Red for sealed under safety override. White for sealed under executive. Anneli had been