Chapter 5: Waking

It took them half an hour to make their way down to the lower levels of the station. The elevators didn't work, so they had to find a stairwell and then try to navigate through the labyrinthine complex in the general direction of the docking bay. Lister had guessed it was about five floors underneath them. They wandered through medical and science departments, passing numerous offices. Here and there on the walls were schematics of the station's layout, which they used to judge the location of the docking bay.

Everywhere was evidence of a sudden evacuation. Glancing into offices as they passed they saw coffee cups abandoned on desks or spilt on the floor. Notebooks and files littered the doorways as if they had been abruptly dropped at the moment of the emergency. In one corridor, ominously, there sat a woman's high-heeled shoe. It lay over on its side, up against the wall as if it had fallen off and been kicked there.

Lister tried not to think what might have happened to the owner of that shoe.

Best not to do that.

After descending another staircase, they emerged into a wide, grey, carpeted hall. There were exposed pipes and metal grating on the ceiling. A yellow-and-black striped sign to their left read 'SHUTTLE BAY SW01'.

"I think we might be in the right place," Lister said. They followed the corridor along, passing a few closed doors, which seemed to be storage areas. Ahead of them, the corridor was shrouded mostly in darkness, but from the periodic flicker of the ceiling lights Lister could see a large, metal door with glass windows inset into it. As he watched it gave a series of hydraulic wheezes, slid halfway open, clunked, and slammed shut again. A few seconds later the process repeated itself. They approached the door. Beyond it was something like a control room, but Lister couldn't make out much except a panel of instruments and some chairs.

Rimmer looked doubtfully at the door. It gave another heavy clunk-fsshhh and opened.

"Kryt, is there any way you can disable that door?" Lister said.

Kryten stepped up beside the door and examined the wall. There was a little panel there with some switches on it. He tried pressing the switches, but nothing happened.

"One moment sirs, I'll just see if I can override the automation..." He flipped off the panel's cover and began fiddling with some wires.

The doors suddenly jammed to a halt, leaving a small gap through which they could squeeze. Lister went through first, and the rest of them followed.

They stepped into the dark control room. Well, it would have been completely dark if not for the huge wall of glass through which light streamed from the cavernous shuttle bay. In the middle of the high-ceilinged bay, sitting on the floor which was a long distance below, the gleaming white vessel Coronis filled the observation window. They could see only a third of it. It was so huge it seemed to span several separate bays that measured the length of the station. This was the back end of it. Thousands of portholes, unseeing eyes, glittered along its smooth hull. Just inside the huge doors that opened out onto the next bay, were the last two letters, 'I' and 'S', painted in a deep, startling red. This was the undamaged, pristine half of Coronis.

"That's it," Lister said. "That's the ship I saw on the design." He glanced eagerly at the others. "Let's see if we can find a way down."

"Lister, why are you so keen to see what's on that ship?" Rimmer asked, tapping his chin and eyeing him mistrustfully.

Lister shrugged. "Just curious. Clearly their technology's greater than ours... maybe there's something in there we can salvage." He deliberately avoided Rimmer's gaze, instead leaning out over the control panel to peer down into the room below, looking for doors. In truth, he only had a plan half-formed in his mind, and he didn't feel like sharing it with Rimmer right now. Not until he was sure.

They took a battery-operated lift from the control room down into the shuttle bay. From down here, the ship loomed high above their heads, making them feel like ants in comparison to it. A retractable staircase had been extended down onto the floor of the bay, from which they could gain access to the ship via an open airlock.

They climbed up into the ship and found themselves in a cargo area. Lister led the way, walking quickly, and the others had to jog to catch up with him.

"Hey! Slow down! What are you in such a hurry for?!" The Cat called.

They were now passing through the central part of the ship. Doors lined the way. Lister stopped and glanced at one. Armoury, it read. Nope, wrong place. Lister jogged on ahead.

He would have gone right past the room if Kryten hadn't stopped in front of it, looked in and said, "It's a Hologram Projection Unit!" In a fascinated voice.

Lister immediately stopped, spun around, and retraced his steps back to the door. "You're right." He glanced surreptitiously at Kryten and went inside.

Rimmer followed him in. The room was large and bright. The electrics on this part of the ship worked fine, and a bank of computer monitors circled the room, spewing out graphs and data. In the centre of the room stood the complicated-looking Hologram Unit.

"You were looking for this, weren't you?" Rimmer said quietly, walking around the room. The Cat entered behind Kryten and walked over to the device.

"Why would we want another one of these?"

"We don't want another one," Rimmer said impatiently.

Lister looked hopefully at Rimmer. "It's intact. It should still be working."

"No."

"Rimmer, we could bring her back!"

"No."

"Why not?" His voice rose angrily.

"Because we're in the middle of deep space on a derelict that might explode at any moment, and we still don't have a way of bringing her back to Red Dwarf."

"But we could figure something out!" Lister shouted, and his voice sounded too loud in the quiet space. A computer beeped somnolently in the background. Lister sighed tiredly. "I'm doin' it. She deserves a chance to live."

"Aren't you forgetting something, sir?" Kryten said, confused. "Miss Miranda's holo-disk is still aboard Red Dwarf."

"No it isn't," Lister said guiltily, and, embarrassed, he reached down into his space suit and into the pocket of his jacket. He pulled out a shiny, flat disk.

Rimmer stared at it. "You were carrying it around with you?"

Awkwardly, Lister put the disk down next to the Holo Unit. "I know you'll think I'm crazy, but... when I walked past the Holo Unit, before I took Blue Midget, I just... picked it up." He stared moodily at the floor. "I must've put it in my pocket and forgot about it. I just wanted her to be near me, or something... I thought it might help me think..."

"Ok, ok. You're breakin' my heart here, bud. But can we just decide what to do and do it? This place is givin' me the heebie jeebies." The Cat looked at all of them impatiently.

Lister picked up the disk again and looked imploringly at Rimmer, who only shook his head sadly and turned away to face the wall. "You just better think of something," he said.

Lister looked down at the device. He searched a row of buttons, typed in the activation sequence and slid open the drive, placing the disk inside. He waited as her personal data was loaded into the computer.

He glanced once more at Kryten and the Cat before pressing 'initialize'.

"We will."

He pressed the button.

A girl materialized to their left, just beside Kryten. Her brown hair was messily tied behind her head in a ponytail. She wore a puffy grey vest with the insignia of her ship, Poseidon, sewn onto one arm, with a black turtleneck sweater underneath. Her shorts, made from the same grey material, covered black leggings. Grey and white boots reached up to her knees. Her face was pale and childlike, with a faint dusting of freckles on her cheekbones. Her eyes remained closed for a few seconds after she materialized.

Then they opened. She gasped, glancing around the unfamiliar room. Then she recognized Lister, and slowly relaxed. She smiled.

Lister felt as if a weight had been lifted from his heart. "Hey," he said softly.