Kerstin Holm

Threshold Institute · Staff record

Name

Kerstin Holm

Role

The Institute's liaison on the space agency's flights

Years

Years 38 to 44

First file

T-038 Tomorrow Radio

Last file

T-056 Toxic mutant

Kerstin Holm was the Institute's liaison on the space agency's flights to the planet. The agency had flown there since year 38 and kept a colony there since year 39, in a secret partnership with the Institute, which had its own people aboard every flight and took charge of everything the flights brought home (T-043). When the Institute gave the agency the battery to carry, the form was signed by Holm, with a line in her hand: "Carry it on a pole." (T-042). She asked for the radio at the launch site as well, and was refused (T-038).

On her third flight home she heard scratching among the cargo pods, which the agency's crew put down to the cooling lines, and sealed the hold on the second day by the Institute's authority (T-043). Her log for the landing reads: "I will open nothing on the pad." (T-043). The agency's ground crew wanted the hold opened on the pad. Holm refused, and it was opened in the hangar with the big door shut (T-043). She told Tomas Rehn afterwards that the colony's survey team no longer sent its film to the agency, because nobody answered, and gave it to her. From then on she brought it to the Institute (T-044, T-045).

When the colony went silent in year 43, the Institute put her aboard the relief flight with an order to bring back whatever the colony's lab dome held (T-046). She found the airlocks standing open and the colony's people gone, or turned into things that came at the crew with their hands (T-047). In the lab dome's sealed room a sample case stood on a cleared bench, labelled in Ines Varro's hand: do not open, do not send. She took it under the Institute's order (T-047). The flight log lists it as carried aboard by K. Holm for the Institute and entered in no manifest (the flight log, a journal find).

The grass round the hangar where the case was set down died, and the pollution spread from there (T-047). When the first infected were brought in from the town nearest the launch site, Holm saw them in the lower cells and told Rehn: "They are what came at us in the colony." One of them was a crewman who had carried her bags off the flight, and she asked whether he would know her (T-048). After the fall Rehn set her finding first among the things he knew: something came back from the planet, and the pollution spread from it (T-056).

Papers under their name

• Addendum T-043-1: Holm's flight log, the third flight home (extract), in T-043 Alien skitter
• Addendum T-044-1: Interview with Kerstin Holm, Year 41, month 3, day 22, in T-044 Alien spitter
• Addendum T-047-1: Holm's report on the relief flight (extract), in T-047 The pollution
• Addendum T-048-2: Interview with Kerstin Holm, Year 44, month 2, day 14, in T-048 Infected

In the case files

Kerstin Holm is named in 9 case files. The last column says where in each file.

Part III: Going through (the objects)

File	Found	Where named
T-038 Tomorrow Radio	Year 36, month 10, day 5	Addendum T-038-B
T-042 Endless Battery	Year 40, month 8, day 30	Addendum T-042-B

Part IV: The planet and the pollution

File	Found	Where named
T-043 Alien skitter	Year 41, month 3, day 14	Discovery, Addendum T-043-1, What followed
T-044 Alien spitter	Year 41, month 3, day 20	Addendum T-044-1, Addendum T-044-2
T-045 Burrower	Year 42, month 7, day 2	Discovery
T-046 Drifter	Year 43, month 1, day 9	Discovery, What followed
T-047 The pollution	Year 43, month 9, day 4	Discovery, Addendum T-047-1, What followed
T-048 Infected	Year 44, month 2, day 11	Addendum T-048-2

Part VI: After the fall

File	Found	Where named
T-056 Toxic mutant	Year 48, month 9, day 30	Addendum T-056-2

In the journal

• Flight log, last return, a terminal at the launch site