Chapter 2

The shrill sound of an alarm klaxon cut through the monotony of Esme's typical day, sitting at her desk doing paperwork.

"Hull breach on Deck 8! Emergency crews to stations! Deck 8 personnel to emergency suits! Deck 7 and Deck 9, prepare for corridor airlocks in 10... 9... 8..."

Esme didn't move from her chair. She had approved the emergency drill the day before, giving Marcus the go-ahead to put the rest of the ship through the necessary paces to ensure that each member of the deck crew could find and put on their emergency suits should anything rupture the hull.

She'd barely taken command of the Clarke six months ago when it became apparent that the crew had let boredom deaden their sense of caution in dealing with the vacuum around them. A chunk of debris which, in size, took up roughly the same space as a third of the Earth's Moon, had passed the survey ship on its way to being absorbed into the Ellison singularity; it was one of perhaps thousands of pieces of rock, metal, and assorted flotsam that drifted past on its way to feed the never-ending hunger of the black hole. It was its very ordinary-ness that almost became the undoing of the crew of the Clarke. Without warning, the gigantic rock split, sending pieces of itself tumbling in every direction... including directly into the hull of the Clarke. The result, Esme thought, was very much like that of a shotgun she'd seen used to break up a riot on Earth: bloody, messy, and devastating. 35 members of the crew were hurt, mostly from depressurization-related injuries - most typically when a stationary object was suddenly flying through the air, pulled toward the suddenly-formed hole in the hull caused by a small chunk of rock. Six crewmembers died, their bodies found in airless compartments, exposed to space; four others were presumed dead, their bodies never recovered.

Having barely warmed the seat in her new command chair, Esme was forced to initiate an investigation of exactly why the crew wasn't ready for such a situation and hadn't taken precautions in the event of just such a circumstance. In the investigation that followed, the best hypothesis of the scientific crew of assigned to determine why the "planetoid" (a term used to distinguish the size of the ball of rock as a degree larger than an asteroid) had come apart was simple: before it ever reached the Clarke, the drifting debris had developed a number of faults and cracks throughout its entire length, most likely as a result of whatever forces tore it from the even larger mass from which it had come. As it came alongside the Clarke, though still a few hundred miles away, the increasing gravitational pressure exerted by the singularity and caused a torsion inside the planetoid, pulling it apart with a force that mimicked the eruption of a small volcano. The resultant debris path mostly fanned out along the same course the planetoid was already taking - toward the singularity. However, the force of the split was great enough to explode chunks of rock the size of the human head and smaller away from the rest of the massive debris at various speeds and angles - including into the hull of the Clarke.

The explanation of how the planetoid came to impact the Clarke, right or wrong, was good enough for both Esme and the upper echelons of U.E.F. brass. It was the explanation of the rest that had proven unsatisfactory.

When the Clarke had first been put at station around the Ellison singularity, several protocols had been put into place regarding the approach or passing of large objects within 5,000 miles of the rear or sides of the science ship. 5,000 had been an arbitrary number; it might have been 10,000, or even 20,000, but in the end it was thought that there was no need to bring the crew to full-alert status for anything outside 5,000 miles, since any hazardous space debris caught in the gravity-well of the singularity simply could not change course to collide with the Clarke - and, even if something such as an explosion were to occur, the chances of any debris traveling laterally to strike the ship seemed unlikely in the extreme.

However, the Clarke had been on station for 10 years. In the interim, millions upon millions of objects had passed within 5,000 miles, and only five times had the ship actually had to move out of the way of any of them. Up to the moment of Esme's arrival, no object had ever penetrated the hull of the Clarke as a result of the pull of the singularity, a testimony to the automatic systems and anti-collision devices that projected like an old-fashioned parachute from the rear of the ship.

Still, in the event of any possible danger, the original crew of the Clarke had been instructed to go to full alert. Once such a situation had been established, all non-essential scientific personnel were to go to especially constructed "safe" zones, where hull plating was thicker and emergency oxygen and pressure suits were readily available. Within 60 seconds of a full-alert, pressure hatches throughout the ship were closed, so that any penetration of the hull would hopefully affect only a small area. Any personnel remaining in those areas were to be clad in pressure suits, and, with any decompression due to hull breach, were to immediately seal their helmets and anchor themselves to the nearest wall-mounted O-ring, to prevent any possibility of ejection into vacuum.

Had all of the emergency measures been in place and working at the time of planetoid's split, the investigating team estimated that there would have been no deaths, and 20 or fewer injuries to the crew. However, beginning with the first crew rotation one year into the Clarke's mission, instruction and drill for just such an emergency began to wane. By year three, virtually the only crewmembers putting on pressure suits with any regularity were those going EVA for repairs or visual inspections of the ship's outer surface. By year five, the captain of the Clarke, tired of having his sleep interrupted by alarm bells each time a possible threat came within 5,000 miles, had the programming for the proximity alarm changed so that it would only go off if the debris in question was on course for a direct impact with the ship.