Saturn Run (The Planetary Trilogy Book 1)

by Stanley Salmons

  The most substantial structure, which clearly contained all the living and working accommodation, was styled like an extravagantly modern house, with a long curved bay punctuated by elliptical porthole windows. Above it, mounted on several masts, were dish antennae of a variety of sizes. To either side a pair of solar panels extended like huge sails. This much Dan recognized from pictures he’d seen of an identical Station in Mars orbit, although it seemed to him that if anything these solar panels were even larger. What he did not recognize was an extensive, and obviously unfinished, framework of struts and girders that appeared to be growing downwards from the main body of the Station. The structure was interspersed with spheres and pods, arranged in a regular matrix, and he guessed that these were destined to be the equivalent of the weapons bays he had equipped on Solar Wind. Where was the Deep Space Observatory? He’d seen pictures of the one in Mars orbit so he knew what he was looking for, yet it didn’t seem to be there. He put up a gloved hand to shut out even the weak light from the starboard robot arm and from the Station itself. As his eyes adapted he could make out the dark hemispherical shape of the Deep Space Observatory, floating to the left of the Orbiting Station and apparently unconnected to it.

  What surprised him was how large the whole thing was. When he was travelling towards it across the vastness of space it had seemed as if he was aiming for an impossibly small pinprick in the fabric of the universe. Now, fourteen months later, he was finally here. He closed his eyes, savouring a moment of pure exaltation. All he had to do now was get inside Solar Wind and wait for the shuttles.

  53

  He boarded the first shuttle because he had to make his report before the unloading could start. As he stepped out of the other side of the airlock he was astonished to find what looked like the entire crew lining the corridor on either side and applauding. People were shaking him by the hand and clapping him on the back. He was pleased and embarrassed at the same time. His immediate task, however, was to report to the Station Commander and give him a quick account of the flight and a rough estimate of the damage. Based on that they would have to decide how they were going to unload the depressurized holds. He’d then request their help in undertaking a proper damage assessment. At the moment it wasn’t certain how much repair work would be needed before he could undertake the return journey, and whether it fell within the scope of the facilities they had out here.

  The Station Commander was one of the military personnel. His initial warm welcome evaporated when he learned how Dan had armed the freighter.

  “Are you telling me you took stuff out of the cargo holds and armed that craft?”

  “I am.”

  “Despite the Convention on the Militarization of Space.”

  Dan started to see red. He wasn’t going to stand for this, not after what he’d been through.

  “If the Convention was such a big issue, Commander, I wonder what you’re doing out here.”

  The Commander went purple and chewed his lip, staring at Dan all the time. “I can’t believe this. You used munitions that I ordered for the equipping of this Station.”

  “That’s right. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be here, and neither would your precious cargo.”

  “What did you use?”

  “Shell-throwers and torpedo launchers, eight on each side. I fired about a hundred and fifty rounds from the shell throwers and launched sixteen torpedoes. The torpedoes work very well, by the way.”

  “Jesus.” He was walking back and forth holding the back of his neck.

  “And don’t expect me to leave all that stuff here. I’ll be returning with the sixteen launchers and a full complement of torpedoes.”

  “That’s out of the question!”

  “Look, Commander. I’ve suspected for some time that there’s a serious threat just outside Mars orbit and my encounter proves it. I’ve made a fair dent in their navy but I don’t believe for a moment that I knocked out all of it. If they see me coming – and I’m a bit too large to miss – they’ll want revenge. I’m not going back undefended.”

  “I won’t allow it. I need that stuff here.”

  “Commander, you don’t outrank me. SpaceFreight was chartered to deliver this cargo, but not at any cost. Nothing takes priority over the safety of the company’s ships and personnel. As pilot, that’s my responsibility. I’ve made my assessment. I’m sure SpaceFreight will honour its Contract and you’ll be reimbursed for the shortfall.”

  He flung an arm out wildly. “Reimbursed? That’s a fat lot of use to me out here, isn’t it?”

  “You won’t be in such bad shape. So far as I know the cargo holds you’re concerned about – 52 through 60 – weren’t damaged in the attack or in the asteroid belt. Most of the consignment is intact. You have enough in there to blow Titan out of the sky, let alone a few asteroids. Now I need a meal and I need a rest. I’d be grateful if your people could give me a damage assessment as soon as possible. I have a window for the return trajectory and I don’t want to miss it.”

  “You haven’t heard the last of this, Larssen. I’ll be making a full report, including all missing cargo, and I will be transmitting it to Mission Operations.”

  “That’s your prerogative, Commander. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ve had rather a trying year.”

  *

  “You’ll be taking back some fantastic samples, Dan. They’ll be rolling out the red carpet for you, all right.”

  “Well that would be a first, Tony.”

  Dan was taking a coffee break with Anthony Redman, a planetary geologist, and Zev Polak, a cosmologist. Like the other scientists on board Station Saturn they were friendly and keen to talk to him. Tony and Zev were in their thirties. Both looked very fit, despite their prolonged exposure to microgravity conditions.

  “No, seriously, Dan,” Tony Redman continued. “We’ve got some real good stuff here: geological cores from a whole bunch of important sites on Rhea and Titan, frozen chunks from the A, B, C and E rings—”

  “How the hell did you get those?”

  “Unmanned probe picked them up. It flies just in and out of the plane of the rings, then it brings ’em back here. We’re going to get some more if we can.”

  “What about the samples from Rhea and Titan? Those must have come from manned expeditions.”

  “That’s right,” Tony said. “You know the small cargo shuttles?”

  “C45s? Yes.”

  “Well, we have two of those – they came out here with us. They’ve got enough cargo space for samples and they’ll take a crew of five, including the pilot. Pilot’s military, of course. He stays with the craft while the rest of us go walkabout.”

  Dan said, “I didn’t see the shuttles on my way in.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. They’re hung under the rear loading bay.”

  “What about long haul? Isn’t there a spaceliner docked somewhere?”

  “No, we’re on our own out here. The liners that brought us out refuelled and went back.”

  Dan frowned. “Liners? How many are you talking about?”

  “Just two. We didn’t see the other one during the journey but we gather it was close enough to do a rescue job if something went wrong with ours. And vice versa. Just a safety measure, this being such a long trip and all. Quite reassuring, though.”

  “Nice,” Dan commented dryly. Freight pilots were obviously more dispensable than scientists. “So they split the crew between the two liners?”

  “That’s right. The five civilians travelled in one and the five military travelled in the other.”

  “We thought the other ship was carrying more scientists,” Zev put in. “We only found out they were military when we got here. They were real tight-lipped about that part of the deal.”

  Tony looked round at Zev. “But it’s handy to have them, right? None of us can pilot a shuttle and they can, all five of them.”

  “True,” Zev said grudgingly. “I guess it’s okay, really. They’re inclined to do things by the book but
they’re all right when you get to know them.”

  “The crews who flew the liners were probably military too,” Tony said. “But of course they went back afterwards.”

  Dan said, “Suppose someone gets sick?”

  “Well,” Zev said, “we do have some facilities here, but they’re limited. If anyone was real sick and we couldn’t treat them, the idea was you’d take them back with you. They could cryosleep all the way – it’d keep them stable until they could be seen to. But we’re all okay, so we’ll stay here till the next crew arrives. We’re on a rota. The liners that bring the next crew here will take us back.”

  “I guess you’re looking forward to that.”

  “Are you kidding? I never had so much fun in my life! Every time we go out we discover something new. It’s not just the samples and cores, it’s what we can do on site. Geophysical and acoustic and magnetic surveys, mapping, monitoring movements of the crust – I tell you, Dan, we could work Earthside for a lifetime and never discover one per cent of what we’re finding out here.”

  Dan looked from one to the other. What must it be like to love your work as much as that? He felt a twinge of regret. He might have gone that route himself if he’d been allowed to complete the course at the Academy…

  He dismissed the thought. Right now he should be thanking his stars he was still alive.

  He said, “You have a lab here too, don’t you? I saw it when Ray was showing me around.”

  Zev nodded. “In between field trips two of the guys work on the samples. But they can’t do a fraction of what the folks back home can do. See, that’s why you’re so important. You’re the one who’s going to get those samples to them.”

  Tony grinned and prodded him. “You da man!”

  Of course it was part of Dan’s mission to do precisely that. The samples would be priceless politically as well as scientifically. He changed the subject.

  “Don’t you get fed up living on the Station?”

  “Not really. It’s designed for this, lots of room and plenty of facilities.”

  “I noticed.”

  Soon after his arrival and his encounter with the Station Commander he’d been shown to his quarters. He found them to be surprisingly comfortable and spacious. He’d slept for twelve straight hours. Then he’d woken ravenously hungry and was pleased to discover that the food on the Station was a good deal better than the standard rations on his own ship. It all made for a welcome change from life on board Solar Wind.

  “And you find time for exercise?”

  “Oh, that was really drummed into us during training. We work out in the gym every day.”

  “What about family, partners, that sort of thing? Do they let you communicate with them?”

  “Sure. They have to monitor everything that goes out, of course. A lot of what’s going on up here is classified, so we have to record the message first. That way they can censor it if it breaches security.”

  “The hell with that,” Dan growled. “I’d sooner not send a personal message if I knew someone was listening to every word.”

  Tony shrugged. “You could look at it that way. We just accepted it as part of the price of being out here. I mean, you do have to sacrifice quite a lot of your privacy anyway, living in a place like this.”

  “What about you, Zev? You’re a cosmologist. I guess you spend a lot of time in the Deep Space Observatory.”

  “Not in it, no. Everything’s done remotely from here. The idea is to have a perfectly stable, low temperature platform. Human operators would only introduce mechanical vibrations, temperature fluctuations, and convection currents. It’s monitoring continuously for asteroids, of course, just like it was meant to. But we’re also getting superb images from deep space. I’ve worked on the Observatory in Mars orbit and this one is way, way better. Which reminds me: my slot’s coming up now.”

  Dan pushed back from the table. “I got a few things to attend to as well. See you guys.”

  As the others left, Dan bent to one of the elliptical windows of the dining area, holding a hand to the side of his eyes to cut out reflections. Solar Wind was floating out there, its huge bulk almost invisible except for the way it eclipsed the star fields. One of the cargo pods gleamed briefly in the forward light of a cargo shuttle.

  *

  Unloading progressed quickly. Although the Station had only four cargo shuttles to work with there were no appreciable distances involved and no gravity to overcome, so the turnaround times were short. It took five weeks to transfer the cargo of Solar Wind to the Station and as each hold was emptied they loaded it with samples, including the core samples from Rhea and Titan and the samples taken from Saturn’s rings that Tony and Zev had told him about.

  The shuttle pilots helped Dan build up a picture of the extent of the damage. Unfortunately there wasn’t a whole lot that could be done about it, but although it looked bad they didn’t think it would affect the handling of the ship.

  Dan filed his own report to Mission Operations. He gave a brief account of the attack outside Mars orbit and repeated the coordinates he’d already given them. He also reported the encounter with the asteroids and asked them to send out the most up-to-date asteroid map they had, so he could see if he had to make any changes to the return flight path. He wasn’t taking any chances this time.

  They spent the last week checking all systems, reloading vital supplies and replenishing the fuel tanks. Six weeks after his arrival at Station Saturn the crew turned out again to see him off. The Station Commander was conspicuous by his absence. Dan shook hands all round. A shuttle took him out to his ship for the last time. He ran the final checks, fired up the APUs and left the Station behind. Fifty miles out he engaged the plasma drives.

  He was on his way home.

  54

  Five hundred thousand kilometres before reaching Mars orbit he was awakened from cryosleep. He’d programmed this into the flight plan; it would give him a few hours to get the cobwebs out of his head and prepare for another encounter with Rostov’s navy. He emerged unsteadily from the chamber, got dressed, and went to the flight deck. After making all the usual system and navigation checks he made sure he was linked as before with the weapons platforms. When all was ready he settled down to wait for the attack.

  Nothing happened. He crossed Mars orbit without incident. In barely three weeks’ time he would be docking the ship in Earth orbit.

  He’d been so focused on the likelihood of an attack that all other thoughts had been pushed to the the back of his mind. With that threat suddenly removed, fears which had been gnawing away subconsciously came to the forefront.

  Neraya hadn’t heard from him in two years. She didn’t know if he was dead or alive. Had she found someone else? It wouldn’t be unreasonable. After all, she was a beautiful, intelligent woman and at Space Fleet she’d be mixing every day with powerful, charismatic men. Was it realistic to expect her to wait patiently for a hack pilot to return – or not return – from some half-baked mission?

  He told himself he was being unfair to her. This wasn’t some giddy girl who’d fall into the arms of the first eligible man who walked by. Hadn’t she demonstrated her loyalty to him, her love, her understanding? The thought gave him little comfort. He was tormented by worry and self-doubt. The blissful time they’d shared in the weeks before his departure made the prospect of losing her all the more painful.

  In an effort to seek distraction he prepared for Earth gravity with an even fiercer exercise regime, putting in hour after hour in the small gymnasium, working to exhaustion on one apparatus and then forcing himself to switch to the next.

  He needed to establish a twenty-four-hour rhythm, so after a normal day length he would settle himself in his bunk to get some rest. But as soon as the retreating turmoil of his waking thoughts had surrendered him to sleep, the nightmares would return. Shadowy figures emerged from the gloom under the arches, converged on him with their pale, wild eyes, reached for him with bony fingers… He would jerk up
right, straining against the self-tensioning covers, shouting and soaked in sweat. Then he’d fall back and stay awake for what seemed like hours, aching for Earth, longing for the natural alternation of night and day, and wondering whether it would break this fearful pattern and give him peace.

  Two years, four months after his departure he cut auxiliaries and allowed the space tug team to take Solar Wind into Orbital Dock 3. There was some paperwork to deal with in Flight Control and then he went down to Earth in a standard passenger shuttle. He came out of the tunnel wearing the black uniform with the gold Saturn emblem on the tunic, the uniform that he had now earned.

  And he was promptly placed under arrest.

  PART THREE:

  EARTH

  55

  The two soldiers were wearing the armbands of Military Police.

  “Captain Daniel Larssen?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re under arrest pending court martial.”

  “I’m what? On what charge?”

  “Sorry, sir, our job’s just to take you into custody. Please come this way.”

  As they marched him off he scanned the crowd waiting for the passengers from the shuttle. His heart gave a leap. Was that Neraya over there? The crowd shifted and someone’s head got in the way. He tried to hang back, turning his head, straining for another look, but the MPs gripped his arms more tightly and hustled him away and into a waiting skimmer.

  *

  He was less than delighted to find himself in a prison cell for the second time in his life. He recalled Tony Redman’s remark about rolling out the red carpet and uttered a short, ironic laugh. They’d mentioned a court martial. That figured. SpaceFreight had gained its independence from Space Fleet, but it retained the Fleet’s curious mix of privately owned company and military organization. Trying him by court martial would make it easier for them to hear the case in private. Of course they would say it was because of the security implications. The real sensitivities were obviously political and commercial.