The nightmare came, as it had nearly every sleep period for the past ten years, sharp and clear, as if played directly into her mind through her LIN/C.
Heat. The stifling rage of fire in a confined space. Smoke. And the choking fumes of burning insulation.
She approached the air-tight door to Engineering Department's crew's quarters and brought the back of her hand to within a few inches of its polished metal surface. It radiated sufficient heat to instantly blister her flesh.
Searching by feel, she groped for the dogging wrench she knew should be in its rack beside the door. Twice her hand came off the bulkhead minus skin before she found it. She put it to one of the dogs and strained. The dog moved grudgingly, but finally gave.
Another dog…Another…Six in all. All tight due to metal expanding in the tremendous heat.
Finally, after what seemed a lifetime, they were all loose. Using the dogging wrench, she pushed the door inward.
Flames leaped out at her, singeing her hair and blistering the flesh on her face and the backs of her hands. Through the wall of fire she saw others, men and women, rushing toward the open hatch, then forced back by the heat and flames.
They were members of her crew. And they were trapped in there.
Movement to her right, beyond the wall of flames in a dark corner of the compartment, caught her attention. She turned toward the movement.
Then nothing…
Susan woke in the middle of the night, screaming, the charred and twisted bodies of nearly three hundred dead hanging before her eyes. The nightmare had been particularly bad this time. And, as always, it had been incomplete.
Had she jumped through that wall of flame in an attempt to save those others? That was the scenario which had emerged during her court-martial, but she could not be sure. She simply couldn't remember. For all she knew, she might have turned and ran. The last thing she remembered was turning toward sudden movement in a corner of the compartment. Then nothing.
And she couldn't use her LIN/C to verify the occurrence. For some reason, the device had not recorded any events her conscious mind had not registered. The technicians couldn't explain it, but there was simply no record.