And Silent Were The Stars

-15-

Lynn was asleep, curled up on the narrow cot under the blanket, her breath steady and peaceful. Rebecca sat next to her on the edge of the cot staring at the holoscreen. She logged into the system and checked the med-personnel message board. No news from Arthur who was aboard the Traveler or from Doctor Dawson. Then she looked up the footage from the quarantine area from two days ago. She opened the file marked "Patient A-03" and watched the video, lowering the sound not to wake Lynn up.

Rebecca saw herself in the biosuit trying to restrain the man who had grabbed her by the arm. She switched the camera to the one that was located directly above the patient and saw Doctor Dawson rush in and then both of them try to subdue the seizure. She watched the part where the man spoke, zoomed in to see his face closer. Then she rewound the recording back and watched it again and then again, pausing it as the man slid back into unconsciousness. "Anechka..." Rebecca repeated under her breath.

Lynn shifted in her sleep and gave out a faint noise but didn't wake up. Rebecca was hoping that Lynn had fallen into a dreamless sleep, no nightmares disturbing her. She closed the video file and opened the search engine and then typed 'Anechka' into the search field. The first search result made it clear.

Anechka: female name of Russian origin, a diminutive form of Anna; meaning 'grace'.

Then she opened the report called "Novaya Nadezhda" and found the list of the colonists. She typed the word into the search field there.

Anechka... 0 results...

Rebecca tried Anna but to no avail. The search results still showed zero. Scrolling down through the list she found only one other name that caught her attention.

Tamara Anatolyevna Kazakova

Rebecca opened the record. The short bio of Tamara revealed her to be Vasily's wife. She scanned through the report, nothing had caught her eye. Then she opened the medical history. There were sentences in Cyrillic letters staring at her from the screen, each one marked with a different date. All she could understand were the numbers and the names of the medications spelled in Latin.

Cetozane... A painkiller.

Zontax... Something to help settle the stomach, also used to reduce nausea.

She scrolled through the record but it was a puzzle she could not have solved on her own. Then she took out a small memory stick and downloaded the file onto it. She held it in her hands as some long lost treasure and then hid it in the pocket of her jacket.