CHAPTER 92 - CORN
The cafeteria was busier than usual.
Elizabeth suspected it was because it had been announced that they were serving vegetable lasagna, which was one of the better meals. Those passengers arriving too late risked missing out and getting stuck with baked potato patties which tended to be the boring second choice for most meals.
As soon as they got through the cafeteria line with their trays of food, the twin girls ran off to eat with their friends.
Elizabeth was wiping oatmeal mixed with applesauce from Acorn's hands as she alternated feeding him a spoonful of the mushed-up food with giving herself a forkful of lasagna, when Jack approached with a tray.
He set the tray on the table and pulled out a chair next to Elizabeth.
"Geez, what happened to you?" one of the diners asked when he saw Jack's swollen eye.
Elizabeth's head jerked up and she quickly ran her own eyes over Jack. She had to twist her body to see what the man had seen on Jack's left side of his face.
"A little fight in the hearing room," Jack replied as everyone at the table stared at him.
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah," Jack shrugged off Elizabeth's concern and sat down. "I took an elbow to the face when I tried to intervene."
"In what?!"
"There was that hearing that Luna wanted because she refused to accept responsibility for her staff putting food down the drain and into the water pipes. The First Officer, Captain, and five crew members were there. Tight space. Hot tempers."
Jack took a sip from his water bottle and then continued. "Luna challenged the Captain, and insisted that without physical evidence, there was no case against her. She demanded to see the food which was supposedly put down the drain. Of course, it was cleaned up the night of the first water pipe explosion and put into the compost bins. So, we all trekked down to the composting station but it was impossible to find remnants of the food from the night. She knew it would be. It's been too long and too much has been added. The Captain was furious. Blamed me."
"You? How is it your fault?"
"He told me I should have kept the evidence. How the heck was I supposed to know he'd want to press charges for illegal food dumping down a drain," Jack said with a roll of his eyes. It was clear that he thought the Captain was being too intense with the entire situation.
"Who the heck would have thought to keep a few food scraps exploding out of water pipe burst," he added as the diners, curious to hear more drama, had all paused eating to listen to him.
"They didn't teach you that at the Academy?" Roger, one of Jack's racquetball friends, asked with a chuckle.
"I must have missed that class. Somewhere between black marketing and drug enforcement," Jack replied humorously.
"What happened? With the eye?" Elizabeth motioned towards Jack's injured face.
"We went back to the hearing room. Luna insisted that her staff disposes of food properly. All her staff agreed. The First Officer insisted there were food scraps. Luna said that if the First Officer couldn't produce the food scraps, she would not accept responsibility. Honestly, I think there's some hidden sexual tension between those two."
"They used to be an item," Kiera, a short brunette crew member from the engine room, piped up. She set down her fork and whispered conspiratorially. "On the last flight. They were hot and heavy for a while."
"That explains the dirty looks he kept giving her and her huffy responses. It also explains why she got in his face and said that if he knew her at all, he'd know she'd never violate the rules. And his response that that was why everyone called her uptight Luna."
Jack took another sip of water. and then continued. "He moved past her, accidentally – possibly intentionally- bumped into her, she shoved back. The Purser put his hands on her, she pushed the Purser, and well, you get the picture."
"Everything end okay? Other than your face," Paulette, who was an engineer, asked.
"Depends on how you look at it. Luna got off on the food waste violation, but now, she and four others have assault and disturbing the peace charges against them."
Roger shook his head and chuckled. "All that over some left-over eggs and hash or whatever."
Jack smiled. "It was actually just some left-over kernels of corn, and apparently, still unresolved feelings about a bad break-up."
"Can you imagine dating Luna?" one of the men asked. "I mean she's gorgeous and all, but really particular. She probably interrupts making out to fold her clothes as the guy takes them off."
The diners chuckled, and returned their attention to their meals.
"Elizabeth, did you hear me?"
"What? What did you say?" Interrupted in her thoughts, she looked curiously at Jack.
"I asked if I could have the rest of your peas? You're not eating them."
"Yeah, sure." Elizabeth pushed her plate over to Jack.
Without saying anything more, she began looking at everyone's plates. A pensive look on her face.
"Corn," she declared. She looked at her plate as if she had just discovered the solution to all the world's problems rather than simply said the name of a vegetable.
"Actually, they're peas," a puzzled Jack replied. "Green is peas. Yellow is corn. Just how long have you been gone from Earth?"
"Corn," she repeated. "We haven't had corn. We haven't HAD CORN!"
The occupants of the table looked at her and then at Jack, wondering what they were missing in the conversation, but Jack was just as confused.
"What are you talking about?" he asked.
"We've never had corn," she repeatedly excitedly. "We've had peas and carrots and green beans and beets, but we've never had corn! Not on the transporter."
"Yes, we have."
"No. No, haven't," she said with confidence. "Can any of you remember a single meal where we had corn?"
"Yeah," Kiera said with a motion to Jack. "The night of the first pipe burst down on the lower level. Like Jack just said. They found corn in the pipe. That's what Luna's on trial for. We must have had it that night."
"It wasn't a trial," Jack corrected. "Just a hearing for nonjudicial punishment."
"But did you actually eat corn that night? Did any of you actually ever eat corn on this ship?" Elizabeth looked questioningly around the table. "And Luna said she never put food down the kitchen drain! Because she didn't! Because we didn't have corn!"
"She's got a point. I don't remember ever seeing corn served on this transporter."
"What about those kernels we found in our room? That fell out of my tee-shirt after the second water pipe explosion," Jack reminded her. "It must have been served that night." His voice trailed off as he considered whether he had actually eaten corn.
"Yeah, that was quite a night," Paulette noted. "What a mess. There was food everywhere. Tables overturned. Water pushing stuff around. People used their shirts to sop up the water and plug the hole."
"Did any of us actually eat corn that night?" Elizabeth asked again.
"I don't remember," Roger answered, while Paulette, Kiera, and the other couple at the table shook their heads in the negative.
"That's it, Jack!" Elizabeth gasped in awe as she looked towards the ceiling. "That's it!"
While the other diners, bewildered by what was going on, agreed to watch Baby Thornton, Elizabeth grabbed Jack's hand and they hurried to the kitchen.
It took less than five minutes in the kitchen to prove that Elizabeth was right. Corn had never been served on the transporter.
The kitchen staff had a schedule based on shelf life. Fresh fruits and vegetables were used the first few weeks of the flight, then root vegetables, then frozen foods, and finally canned products.
Canned foods were saved for the last few weeks because they could last indefinitely without worry about power outages.
And corn was stored in cans.
"You figured it out," Jack repeated in proud amazement as he looked at his wife. He set down a piece of scrap metal from one of the pipes.
The couple, full of excitement, had raced from the kitchen to the ship's cargo room, where damaged pieces of metal from the exploded pipes had been stored until they could be recycled in Coal Valley.
Jack had run his hands along the smooth metal until he found what he was looking for. What no one had noticed before. The left-over residue of adhesive.
"The corn was being smuggled to Coal Valley in the water pipes. Feel this." He held out the metal to Elizabeth. "The corn must have been attached to the pipe. But it came loose and was pushed about. It came spewing out when the water pipes burst. The first time, we assumed it was food down a drain, and the second time, in the cafeteria, we just assumed it was the dinner meal thrown about in the chaos."
Elizabeth, felt the stickiness on the otherwise even metal, and then bounced on her heels. A large grin covered her face.
The happily stunned couple stared at each other, until Jack leaned forward and pressed his lips onto hers.
"God, I love being married to you."
The mystery of how the corn was getting smuggled into Coal Valley was solved.
Unfortunately, proving the responsible parties wasn't as easy.
Three days after the revelation that the corn sample was smuggled inside a water pipe, a frustrated Jack explained to Elizabeth that there was not enough evidence to bring charges.
He had notified Coal Valley and Earth – by satellite relay of Morse code messages – which was faster than hologram messages - in an effort to find sufficient evidence against whomever had orchestrated the scheme.
He had also spent hours interviewing passengers and crew and had hours to go. Every thirty minutes or so, an announcement came over the intercom instructing another ship occupant to report to the security office.
The Thornton quarters were quiet except for the faint hum of the air circulating through the vents.
Aaron, wearing a dry diaper and a soft warm sleeping outfit, was sleeping on his back in his berth with the railing to keep him inside in case he woke up and decided to escape the confines of his allotted space. He slept like a baby. Sweet and without a care.
Elizabeth had checked on him once more before she had turned off the light. She loved how he looked when his eyes were closed and he was peacefully in a deep sleep.
Elizabeth was in her own berth. Sound asleep.
She and Jack has used up more than their allotted protection when they had confined themselves to their room for three days, and she didn't anticipate any romance tonight. Not only were they trying to space out their intimate moments on the transporter, but she was too exhausted for romance. With Jack involved in the investigation, she was kept busy juggling Aaron, teaching, preparing for her upcoming job in Coal Valley, and trying to exercise in the fitness center.
When Jack told her that he would be working late and to go to bed without him, she hadn't argued.
Now, with Jack in his office and Aaron asleep just a short distance away, a sleeping Elizabeth's eyes moved in a rapid motion under her closed lids as her brain and body energized.
Her mind was dreaming of corn. She had been lost in a giant corn maze when she had turned a corner and suddenly found Julie in her and Jack's house on Mon Amour street back on Earth. Only instead of a cozy house made of brick and wood, it was made of corn stalks and hundreds of ears of corn.
Julie, wearing a gorgeous pair of silver high-heels, was leaning out a window pulling tassels off of the house.
"Stop pulling my house apart, Julie," Elizabeth demanded, but Julie just continued to pull on the silky hairs at the corn tops, and entire parts of the house fell to the ground.
Elizabeth, wearing shorts, a wet tee-shirt, and brown cowboy boots, hurriedly began picking up the ears and trying to put her house back together, but none of the pieces seemed to fit correctly.
Long blond-colored hairs became tangled in her fingers. Or else they were so silky that slipped to the ground.
The husks looked perfect but when she pulled off the green strips from one of them, the yellow corn ear was absurdly tiny.
Elizabeth tried another, but once again the ear was too tiny and wouldn't fit back into her house wall.
Luna, the perfectionist from the ship's kitchen staff, was now pulling apart the house. Elizabeth glanced at the woman, her long blond braids which fell almost to her waist, were made of the soft silky hair of an ear of corn.
Elizabeth's own hair was a drab boring, somewhat rustic looking quality
Elizabeth looked to the sky which had quickly turned from beautiful blue to dark grey as rain clouds suddenly sent a torrent of water down onto her and her roofless house of shoes and corn.
She hurriedly tried once more to rebuild a wall of corn while Julie complained in the background that the ears had to be perfect. That the man needed perfect ears.
Two squirrels sat on the roof and began eating her house.
One spat out a kernel, which rolled down the roof as an acorn.
"Not sweet enough," Julie noted. "And I can't find a good man. There's no one decent in Coal Valley. Maybe on the next transporter."
All the words filtered through Elizabeth's brain but nothing made sense. Her dream was becoming stranger and stranger, as all dreams seem to do.
"Stop it!" Elizabeth yelled as her house came tumbling down.
At the same time, the door to the corn maze opened up and a steam of sunlight came through.
The sliding door and the momentary light from the hallway had brought an abrupt end to Elizabeth's dream, but not the revelation.
She awoke with a start when the door to the cabin slid closed.
That's it! The evidence Jack needs! She realized with a start as she lay on mattress.
Her mind, now wide awake, went over everything she knew. Her eyes got wide with realization.
The hologram messages that I got by mistake! From that man!
The room's faint night-light allowed her to see the shadow of a figure move quietly towards her desk. The stealth movement was an effort not to wake her, but she was already awake.
"Jack" she hissed excitedly as she sat upright in her berth. "I figured it out!"
She was so excited she didn't wait for him to reply but continued in a rapid hushed voice as she tried not to wake Aaron.
"It's on my laptop! The evidence is on my laptop! It proves the plot to substitute the corn! It was in code!"
She watched as the figure was already picking up her computer and carrying it over towards her. "I thought it was women he was talking about, but it wasn't. It was corn! Sweet perfect ears of corn!"
Her delight was evident in her voice. "Hand it to me. I'll pull up the holograms," she said with a nod towards the laptop. "I can't believe I didn't figure it out sooner! It's been there all along in the –"
The aim was good. Even in the darkness.
The two-pound electronic device was surprisingly destructive when swung by a strong arm.
When the laptop computer smashed against Elizabeth's jaw, the effect was so quick that she didn't even feel pain.
Her neck violently flung to the side, putting torque on her spinal column and shocking her nerve.
Rendering her almost instantaneously unconscious.
She never had the chance to finish her sentence.
The laptop forcefully hit her again but she was too far gone to feel the pain as it ruptured the small blood vessels in her face.
Instead she slumped sideways, her upper body hanging limply over the mattress.
Up Next: Chapter 93 Code Emegency