Another long night slowly passes by. Again, you hear the sounds of a struggle and a scream. Still, you can do nothing. Not until the beeping stops.
Once it does, you climb out of your pod. Who's missing?
Oversoul. You walk to his pod and see his mangled corpse inside. There was little he could do without a ray gun in his hand. You extract his body, load it into the airlock and blow it out into space. A fitting funeral for a space cowboy.
Just then you see that the comm station has received a signal. Could help be on the way? You go to the station and patch through the message. The origin comes up as your own vessel. You investigate further and realize the signal is coming from the ship's flight recorder. It has activated itself and is now sending a continuous loop from the final half hour of the voyage, before the explosion.
You listen to the dialogue between the pilots and the engineer:
Pilot: "We're seeing a radiation leak on reactor 4. How long to fix it?"
Engineer: "Just got the diagnostics back. It's a minor leak; should be corrected in 10 to 15 minutes. I'm sending Parsons in now to patch it up. He's been immunized for the radiation. Advise slowing to sub-light speed while we cut power to reactor 4."
Pilot: "Acknowledged. We'll coast until the repairs are done."
There's a long pause in the recording. Then the pilot's voice comes back.
Pilot: "The reactor's going into overload. What's going on down there?"
Engineer: "I don't know. No response from Parsons. I'll need to go in there and shut it down manually."
Pilot: "Hurry up and take that reactor offline."
Co-pilot: "We'll need to eject the core if he can't reverse the overload."
Engineer: "Going in now. Parsons? AAAHHH!"
Pilot: "What the hell just happened? Who's down there?"
Co-pilot: "It's too late. Eject the core. Eject the core!"
You hear an explosion. Then nothing. Then the recording starts over. You shut it off.
Now, you must turn your attention to the task at hand. Seven survivors are left and there's a killer among you. You were wrong about Mooseman, but you must go on to have any chance at all.
Mooseman and Oversoul are now both out of the game. They can still chime in as ghosts, but no offering any advice or insight.
Voting for the second cast-off will begin now. I'll tabulate the votes again on Thursday.
