Across the Universe - Beth Revis [110]
Eldest scans his thumb on the biometric scanner at the energy room’s doorway. “Eldest/Elder access granted,” the scanner says pleasantly. I pause. I’ve never gone past this room. But Eldest keeps going to the door on the far wall. When it opens, I hear the deep growling of the ship’s engine.
I’m finally going to see the engine.
The engine room is hot, oppressively hot. I tug at my collar and push up my sleeves, but Eldest does not show any indication that he’s even uncomfortable. All around us, scientists rush around. Some hold vials or metal boxes, nearly all of them have floppies under their arms, flashing important looking charts and diagrams.
“Follow me,” Eldest says.
But I don’t.
My eyes fill up with the thing in the center of the room: sunken into the floor, and huge, is the engine.
For some reason, I never imagined the engine in the engine room. I mean, I knew the engine was there, obviously, but I never bothered to think about it. I knew from Eldest’s lessons that, in its crudest form, the engine is a nuclear reactor running off uranium. The thing before me looks almost like a test tube, although giant and with heavy metal pipes extending from its head and wrapping around it. An undercurrent of whirr-churn-whirr cycles over and over and over. This is the heartbeat of the ship.
“It’s loud,” Eldest grunts when he sees where my attention has wandered. “And it smells.”
I hadn’t noticed the odd scent of grease and cleaner before. “It’s beautiful.”
Eldest snorts, then stares at me more intently. “It’s not beautiful.” His gaze shifts to the engine. “It’s the ugliest thing I’ve ever seen,” he says in a flat voice. “Do you know what kind of engine that is?”
“Nuclear,” I say.
Eldest rolls his eyes. “Be a little more specific, why don’t you?”
“A lead-cooled fast reactor?” I guess, remembering the engine schematics in the Recorder Hall.
Eldest withdraws the scale model of the engine, the one I last saw on his desk when I snuck into his room, from his pocket. He breaks it apart so that I can see the tiny innards. The engine is like a living thing with veins and organs and the slow whirr-churn-whirr of life.
“We use uranium,” Eldest continues. “The uranium goes through the reactor, then here—” He points to a small box that’s outside the test tube of the engine, connected by tubes and wires. “The uranium is reprocessed in the back end of the nuclear fuel cycle. We are supposed to be able to use and reuse the uranium over and over again, a constantly recycled fuel system.”
The key words—supposed to be—are not lost on me. “Is that not what’s happening?”
“The reprocessing part of the fuel cycle isn’t working like we thought it would,” Eldest says. “It’s supposed to maintain the uranium’s efficiency.”
“But it’s not?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “No.”
“What’s happening?”
I can tell Eldest wants to look away, but I don’t break eye contact.
“The short answer? We’re going slower. And slower. At first, we were at 80 percent maximum speed, then 60. Now we sometimes hit 40 percent maximum speed, but it’s usually worse.”
“That’s why the ship’s landing was delayed? That’s why it’s taking extra years to land?”
Eldest snorts—his first betrayal of emotion since we entered the Engine Room. “Twenty-five years behind schedule? I wish. We’re not even halfway there. As of now, we’re 250 years behind schedule.”
63
AMY
DOC IS WAITING FOR US ON THE FOURTH FLOOR. HE’S NOT surprised to see either of us, which I take to mean that the fat nurse downstairs used her ear button to call ahead. I knew we couldn’t trust her.
“Steela, how are you?” the doctor says in falsely bright tones. “Amy, I can handle her on my own; you go on back