by Samuel Best
Once the government scrapped their only starliner that could transport colonists to Galena, they further delayed the Farming Initiative, and Cygnus Corporation was awarded the flight contract. They were the only corporation with a Rip-capable vessel, and passage was no longer free. The cost of a ticket was more money than most people saw in a lifetime.
Applications to join The Farming Initiative on Galena were still available — one just had to buy their own way.
An artificial voice spoke over the terminal intercom.
“Flight six-four-three to Sunrise Station is now departing. Please present your tickets at the gate and exit in an orderly fashion.”
“Here we go,” said Merritt.
He picked up Gavin and carried him with one arm. The boy hugged his father’s neck and rested his head on his shoulder. Merritt left his poncho and empty backpack in a pile on the floor.
A dozen passengers lined up at the automated ticket station near the gate, shuffling through like cattle, silent and resigned. Merritt stood behind a large, bald man with sweat stains around the collar of his heavy jacket.
Gavin scrunched his face at the man’s offensive odor, but Merritt squeezed his leg sharply, scolding him to be polite.
After swiping their tickets at the gate, Merritt carried his son down a long flight of stairs and out a door that opened onto the launch field. Their clothes flapped in the cold, misty air wooshing across the ground.
A spaceport employee in a bright yellow vest guided them to a passenger elevator at the base of the nearest J-ramp. The passengers crowded in, looking everywhere but at each other. Merritt stood in a corner as the elevator rapidly ascended, angling Gavin away from the crowd.
He wondered if his instinctive protectiveness would fade the farther he got from Earth.
At the top of the J-ramp tower, a short jetway led to the open door of a sled. The small, slender craft was reminiscent of a private jet, but with stubbier wings and a bell-shaped housing at its narrow tail that covered its ten-core engine. After passengers were secured on board, the docking clamps would pop free and the sled would coast a few meters on an angled track. Then it would tip over the precipice and drop a hundred meters before the track curved upward at a forty-five degree angle.
Merritt chose two seats near the back of the small cabin. He set Gavin down near the foggy window and strapped the boy in before securing his own harness.
A woman wearing a black jacket and dark green pants sat across the aisle. She tucked her silver-shot brown hair behind her ears and took a deep breath as she wiped away a tear.
Merritt looked away before she saw him looking at her.
Gavin craned his neck to look out the window.
“Scared?” asked Merritt.
The boy shook his head quickly, but Merritt could see that his hands were trembling.
There were no spaceport employees aboard the sled. The pilot was a computer. Shortly after the last passenger had taken their seat, the hatch closed and the jetway retracted.
“Passenger in seat J-5, please secure your harness,” said the same artificial voice from the terminal.
Merritt looked up the aisle, toward the front of the sled. The large, bald man cursed under his breath and struggled to get the straps of his harness over his broad shoulders. There was an audible click from his seat, then a small red light at the front of the cabin flicked to green.
“Prepare for launch,” said the voice.
Gavin grabbed his father’s hand and squeezed it with the intensity of one hanging off the side of a cliff.
The sled jerked forward as the gate clamps popped free. Merritt leaned over Gavin to look out the window. The track wasn’t visible, and the ground below was lost in fog.
After coasting down the track a few long moments, the nose of the sled dipped slowly. The vessel seemed to waver at the precipice of the ramp, as if it might not drop after all.
Then it rolled over the edge and plummeted down the ramp.
A few passengers screamed.
A short burst from the engine slammed Merritt back into his seat. His stomach fluttered as the sled dropped into the curve of the ramp and shot back up.
The engine roared to life, pushing the passengers deeper into their seats. A bone-rattling tremor shook the hull.
There was a terrifying downward lurch as the sled dropped off the track and a jarring shove from behind as it lifted again under the awesome power of its engine. The sled-rails, now empty of fuel, popped off with a loud TING, and the vibration in the cabin subsided.
The sled rose higher into the atmosphere, heading for Sunrise Station, leaving Earth behind.
Merritt did not look back.
TULLIVER
Tulliver hated flying.
He hated everything about it, from the sinking feeling in his gut to the sweat that constantly dripped from his pores no matter how hard he tried to convince himself he wasn’t scared. It was a shame there was no other way to get to Sunrise Station.
Yet the station was in space, and Tulliver hated space even more. The very idea of it made his skin crawl. Cold, silent, and never-ending; indifferent to his existence. There was no power to be exerted over it. There was no way to bend it to his will. A few moments of raw exposure to its simple existence would be the end of him.
Up until a short time ago, Tulliver couldn’t imagine why anyone would willingly leave the cozy embrace of Mother Earth. Space was the frontier of trillionaires and madmen, as far as he was concerned — if there was even a difference between the two.
He tightened his straps for the tenth time, then gripped the flimsy arm-rests of his seat with damp, white hands. Apparently, the pilot had figured out a way to make a three-hour journey feel like eternity.
Tulliver’s bulk spilled over into the neighboring seat, forcing the small, aging man beside him to lean away.
“First time off-world?” said the aging passenger in a friendly manner. “The first time is always the hardest.”
Tulliver growled low in his throat, and the man minded his own business.
The sled cabin had gone deathly still since the main engine cut off several minutes ago. Outside the window, the brown-tinged blue of Earth’s atmosphere thinned to twilight, then gradated to black.
Tulliver’s feet drifted up from the floor. He obstinately stamped them back down.
Despite the fact that achieving weightlessness shed its collective awe-inspiring novelty long ago, passengers still gasped in amusement when loose possessions floated into the air.
A slowly-tumbling stylus bumped gently against Tulliver’s temple. He swatted it away, cursing its owner.
Outside, there was only void.
He gulped and closed his eyes, praying as only the godless can do for salvation.
“Prepare for arrival,” said the disembodied, artificial voice over the intercom.
Tulliver risked a peek out the window through his clenched eyelids.
The sled maneuvered in a wide arc around Sunrise Station, coming around toward a dock at the tip of one of eight tapered arms that jutted like spikes from a central core. The station resembled a white and gray star-like Christmas ornament.
A centrifuge ring spun slowly around the central core of the station.
Tulliver’s dirty fingernails dug into the fabric of his chair’s armrests as the sled drifted alongside one of the station’s arms, then bumped to a stop as docking clamps latched on to the hull.
More sleds were docked on nearby arms, and Tulliver was genuinely surprised at the sheer enormity of the station. The other sleds looked like cars parked near skyscrapers. He couldn’t imagine why the station would need to be so large. From what little information he’d picked up in passing, once a passenger rode the elevator down to the central core, they spent all of their time in the centrifuge.
It struck him as a failed dream, once being a hopeful venture that had since soured. The groundwork for vast future expansion had been laid, the infrastructure installed, yet the dream limp
ed along, unfulfilled.
Tulliver sighed with no small amount of relief when the artificial voice announced it was safe to leave the sled. He squirmed out of his harness and floated up into the air, his stomach doing somersaults as he struggled to right himself. Using the top of the seats to propel himself, he floated down the aisle toward the exit, bumping other passengers out of the way without apology.
Popping out of the shuttle’s airlock hatch and into the arrival hallway, he took his first deep breath of space station air, then nearly lost a lung hacking it back out.
A nearby worker wearing suction boots and coiling a length of cable around his arm grinned. “The trick is to try not to breathe,” he offered. “Only two more months until the next shipment of oxygen filters.”
Tulliver scowled at him as he drifted past.
He had been expecting the air in Sunrise Station to be filtered and pure, a far cry from the polluted smog he was forced to choke down on Earth. Instead, it was thin metallic, and burned the back of his throat with a sharpness that triggered an instant gag reflex.
The arrival hallway was windowless and without decoration, the four walls an identical off-white, smooth but for the occasional electrical junction box. Tulliver reflected that there was no distinguishable floor nor ceiling. One didn’t need either of those when one’s feet never touched a flat surface.
He grabbed a hand-hold on the wall at the end of the arrival hallway and mashed the elevator button. When the doors opened, he and several other sled passengers drifted in. They bumped into each other, mumbling apologies, until everyone was able to grab one of the dozen silver poles evenly spaced within.
The elevator slowly ascended. Tulliver and the other passengers slid down the poles until their feet hit the ‘floor’, feeling an increase in pressure as the elevator accelerated. For a moment, it felt as if they could have been riding an elevator on Earth.
To give them time to adjust, the elevator slowed down gradually. They lifted off the floor, floating in zero gravity, as the doors opened.
A sign up ahead read CENTRIFUGE ENTRANCE in big, orange letters. Tulliver pushed away from his pole and drifted past the sign, entering a dimly-lit hallway that gently curved upward. Bright light faded behind him and was replaced by a dull red. The red hallway led him to a spherical room, also lit by the same dull red. Several exits, which were no more than holes in the outer edge of the sphere, were each labeled with a destination.
Promenade, Food Stations, Hotel, and Conference Hall were Tulliver’s options.
He chose the exit for Promenade, and maneuvered himself into the passageway leading away from the spherical room.
After a few moments, he found himself being pulled to one side of the hallway. A ladder was bolted to that particular wall, and soon Tulliver grabbed onto it as gravity slowly increased.
He realized he was climbing through one spoke of the centrifuge, moving from the central core of the station toward the rotating ring surrounding it.
Tulliver let out a sharp yelp as a section of the ladder he was clinging to spun like the needle of a compass, rotating him around until his head was aimed back at the way he’d come. Hesitantly, he stepped off the ladder to the small platform below, and bent his knees several times, testing the gravity.
A door whooshed open in front of him, and he walked into the station proper.
What had been pitched in the advertisements on Earth as a thriving hub of commerce was, in actuality, the shadow of a shadow of that vision.
The promenade followed the gradual curve of the centrifuge, rising up into the distance at either horizon. Couches, lounge chairs, and neglected vendor stalls populated a wide walkway. Streaks of dark mildew crept across the furniture. Empty pots sat near the couches, the plants that occupied them a distant memory to even the most seasoned station employee. Plastic sheets covered most of the vendor stalls. The rare few that were occupied offered traveler’s insurance, sightseeing tours of the lunar colony, or discount dental work — performed on demand, inside the station.
Tulliver’s shoe soles peeled off the sticky floor with each step. He wheezed, breathing the thin, stale air as he walked the promenade, grateful for the slight decrease in gravity compared to Earth’s.
Dejected employees wandered at random, picking up the occasional piece of garbage.
How is this still here? thought Tulliver. Why haven’t they melted it for scrap?
He had seen a place like that, as a child, before he lost his parents. It was a shopping mall, run-down and forgotten. The shop owners had slowly migrated away to find cheaper rent, or had closed permanently, shuttering their doors from a public unable to contend with rising inflation. Online retailers, having already dominated the shopping market for decades by that time, had swung the killing stroke to physical stores across the nation by locking prices on many of their household goods, protecting them from future price-hiking. Some of the more adaptable brick-and-mortar stores had attempted to match this tactic. Without being able to shift their gains to a myriad other product lines like their online counterparts, they were unable to eat the profit loss, and eventually went under.
A large kiosk dominated the center of the walkway up ahead. It was three-sided, with a large diagram of the space station printed on each side, and a smaller information screen above each diagram.
After finding the first two screens broken, Tulliver successfully activated the third.
A three-dimensional model of the station spun toward him, growing from a single pixel to fill the screen. Small text labels faded into view over various parts of the station. A small red dot told him You are here.
The left side of the screen listed a dozen options for more information. Tulliver tapped Arrivals & Departures.
Destination: Avalon, Sunrise Earth Cruise, Mars Mining, Galena, Other Spaceport?
He tapped Galena.
The 3D model of the space station faded away and was replaced with three buttons: Book Tickets, Flight Details, Cancel Reservation.
Tulliver pressed Flight Details.
A soft, feminine voice spoke to him from the kiosk.
“Starliner Halcyon. Current voyage: Champagne Cruise over Avalon. Recently departed from Tensu Station. Expected arrival at Sunrise Station: three… hours… twenty-three… minutes.”
Tulliver navigated to the screen detailing the voyage to Galena and tapped More Information.
The screen faded to white, then black. Stars glowed to brilliance in the void. From the left side of the screen, the nose of a large ship drifted into view.
“Starliner Halcyon,” said the computerized voice. “Your chariot to the stars. On board, you’ll find every amenity you can imagine, from a warm bath once a week to fresh fruit in your stateroom upon arrival. Red ticket holders will enjoy private staterooms and an upgraded dining experience. Want to catch up on your sleep? Passengers with red tickets can take advantage of the ship’s hypergel stasis system, which offers increased radiation protection and the opportunity to arrive at your destination with that fresh, just-woken-up feeling. Speak to your travel agent to upgrade your ticket.”
Frowning, Tulliver ran a thick thumb over the plastic surface of his etched, blue-lettered ticket.
More of the ship came into view on the small screen.
A blunted pyramidal nose, like the head of a pit viper, pulled an elongated, rectangular body. Its hull was the color of sand. Three massive, bell-shaped engine wash shields protruded from the back, aligned side-by-side.
“Traveling through the Rip can be dangerous,” the voice continued, “but we at Cygnus Corporation have worked diligently to ensure your safety from every possible form of radiation. The hull of the starliner Halcyon houses a series of—”
Tulliver thumped the screen with the bottom of his clenched fist. The voice stopped with a burst of static and the display flicked to black. He clenched his blue ticket in his other hand, eyes scanning the promenade.
Besides a few employees, he was alone.
Continuing along the promenade, he eventually entered the food station. It was a wide-open space filled with mostly-empty tables and chairs, with a few food stalls lining the walls.
Tulliver plopped down onto a bench heavily. He covered his belly with the flaps of his open jacket and crossed his arms, studying the few people eating meals.
A group of four passengers, three men and a woman, sat at a circular table near a food stall that claimed to specialize in old-world Chinese fare. A haphazard pile of hard-shell travel suitcases rested on the floor nearby, each plastered with expressive FRAGILE stickers.
Three of the passengers seemed to know each other somewhat intimately, but one man sat conspicuously apart, chewing his food with deliberateness while the other three conversed. Tulliver took special note of the man’s military uniform, then disregarded the lot of them.
A middle-aged man sat alone, methodically cutting his soy ham and eggs. He wore a tailored suit, and his briefcase was manufactured by one of the few companies that specialized in custom accessories.
Was he going to Mars, perhaps? Tulliver mused. Or was he a corporate supervisor along for the ride to Galena?
It was possible he wasn’t heading that way at all. Maybe he was waiting for the next sled departure to Earth.
At another table, a man in a long, baggy jacket offered tiny bites of food to a small boy, who was equally as disheveled. Tulliver’s eyes narrowed as he studied them. They carried no baggage, no possessions of any kind.
Did they live on the station? Were they stuck there? It wasn’t unheard of for passengers to spend their last credit just to travel to Sunrise Station, enamored by glitzy brochures proclaiming it to be a wealth of affordable luxury the likes of which no longer existed on Earth: hydroponic fresh fruit farms, cheap hotel rooms, purified air, and ample employment opportunities.