by Samuel Best
Immediately after floating into the room, gravity increased, and Leera wind-milled her arms as she tried to aim her feet at the floor. Instead, she gently alighted on her hands and feet, crouching like a frog, before standing and tugging down the hem of her shirt.
One of the stewards, a man with brilliant white teeth and yellow cat-eyes, grinned at her. “Better than most,” he said.
Leera took a sachet of water and a warm towel before continuing on.
The hallway beyond the refreshment room ran perpendicular to the hull, cutting deeper into the ship, toward its core. Soft, diffuse lights glowed from ornate settings in the wall, illuminating the rich, red carpet and brown pin-stripe walls. Thick anti-radiation doors hung suspended in the ceiling every ten meters, ready to slam down in the event of a hull breach.
After fifteen minutes of walking, Leera came to her first hallway junction. Consulting her ticket, she followed a series of guide signs around corners and down identical passageways, hunting for her stateroom.
She passed several starliner employees as she walked, each one greeting her with a broad smile and a quick nod — yet she saw no other passengers. Perhaps they were all in the observation lounge, awaiting the starliner’s departure. She wouldn’t mind seeing Sunrise Station once more at close distance. Even from far away, it was a sight to behold.
Stateroom 843 had a genuine wooden door and a polished brass handle. Leera stared at the door as if she’d never seen one before in her life, her mind stalled on the thought of where the wood had come from. Stockpiles were discovered on a fairly regular basis — perhaps Cygnus Corporation had purchased a cache for the starliner.
Her stateroom was dim, damp, and slightly cold, but quiet save for the gentle hum of the GravGen unit under the floor. She rested a hand on her pack, which awaited her on the pristine, one-person bed, relieved to see something familiar.
Besides the bed, there was a faux-wood dresser, a sink sticking out from one wall, and, tucked inside a broom closet, a toilet and cramped shower. A slim spacesuit hung from a hanger on the wall, and beside it, from a small hook, dangled the accompanying helmet. EMERGENCY USE ONLY read the inscription on a small plaque above the suit.
Leera sat on the bed carefully, as if not to disturb the room as it was in that moment.
Atop the dresser was a welcome card and an info tablet. She picked up the tablet and activated the ship’s directory.
“Welcome aboard the starliner Halcyon,” said the narrator in a deep baritone. “Don’t be fooled by the practical exterior. As a red ticket holder, you’ll find every amenity you could wish for…and more.”
Leera skipped past the opening spiel and navigated to the technical specifications.
On the screen, a profile view of the Halcyon split apart into its component pieces, showing a detailed view of its layered interior.
“Over eighty percent of the starliner is radiation shielding,” said the calm narrator, “designed that way for your protection.”
The three-dimensional exploded image of the Halcyon rotated and enlarged on the tablet screen, spinning closer to show the nested-doll construction of its various hulls. A long, cylindrical section at the heart of the ship was highlighted in bright yellow.
“The central core of this great vessel will be your home for the duration of your voyage. Let’s take a closer look at the luxuries you will enjoy as you—”
Leera turned off the screen and tossed the tablet onto her bed.
“Still nervous about the radiation?” Walter asked.
She jumped, then put a relieved hand over her chest when she noticed him standing in the open doorway.
“Guess I forgot to close that,” she said.
“I should have knocked.” He leaned against the doorway with his hands in the pockets of his puffer vest, watching her carefully.
Leera sighed. “It’s enough concentrated radiation to cook all of us alive. You bet I’m nervous. It would be like floating exposed in space—”
“—a hundred miles from the sun,” he finished. “I remember the briefing. This ship’s already been through the Rip eight times, twice with each voyage to Galena. The fact we’re not glowing already is proof we’ll be fine.”
“Until we get there, at least.”
“When did you become the pessimist?”
“Someone has to pick up your slack. You’ve been uncharacteristically cheery so far.”
He shrugged. “It’s exciting. Don’t worry, I’ll switch back to normal soon.”
“No rush.”
“Niku already found the bar. I was about to go through the equipment one last time, make sure everything’s still there. Wanna come?”
“Thank you, Walter, but I need some rest. It’s been a long day.”
His brow furrowed with concern.
“I may explore the ship for a while, then get some sleep,” she added.
He hesitated, then nodded reluctantly and turned to leave. “I’ll see you later?” he asked.
“Nowhere else to go,” she replied, offering a weak smile.
As soon as he left, she closed and locked the door behind him, dimmed the lights, and curled up on the bed, facing the wall.
She hoped the ache of leaving her family would fade the farther she got from Earth, the pain stretching like taffy until there was no more material to sustain a connection. It was the only way she could imagine being able to do her job.
Leera clenched her eyes shut, scolding herself for not being stronger. She had tried to prepare herself for this, tried to train her mind to delay any negative emotions until she had the strength, or the distance, to cope with them.
She was failing.
She was failing because she loved her family, she missed them, and, in that moment, she feared she was never going home again.
TULLIVER
The center of Tulliver’s bed sagged as he sat down, surveying his stateroom with the cautious gaze of one who expects his newfound gains to be taken from him at any moment.
It was small, but clean, much like the emergency-use spacesuit hanging from the wall. Tulliver didn’t have to try it on to know it wouldn’t fit. The chances of a hull breach making it through all the blast doors, deep into the passenger levels of the ship was so minuscule as to be unmentionable in all the brochures. Yet that didn’t stop Tulliver from being slightly disturbed by its presence, as if it was a reminder that he was hurtling through space in what, as far as the universe was concerned, was little more than a flimsy tin can.
Yes, thought Tulliver, a person could be happy in this room.
Yet he wouldn’t allow himself to be impressed; wouldn’t allow himself to like it. Maintaining that distance was the only way to protect himself when they came to take it all away. So, he would make use of it, but he wouldn’t grow complacent with its presence.
Tulliver noticed a small blood smear on the corner of his ticket. It quickly vanished with a rub from his thick thumb.
He nodded, pleased with the way things were going — mainly because they were going his way.
Time to rest on your laurels, Tull? said a voice in his head. Tulliver looked up sharply. It was the gravelly tenor of Roland Day, his partner-in-crime at the spaceport.
Time to relax? asked another voice, higher-pitched. It belonged to the man from the spaceport bathroom.
Tulliver closed his eyes and wiped his sweaty face, shaking his head to clear away the voices. He hoisted his bulk from the bed and shuffled for the door, working the creaks and cramps from his thick legs.
The air pumping through the starliner’s circulation systems was a notch above Sunrise Station’s in breathability. Tulliver qualified this on the basis of not hacking out a lung with every step.
A diagram on the wall of the hallway near his stateroom displayed a layout of the passenger areas of the starliner. Red-highlighted sections indicated areas of the ship only accessible by passengers carrying red tickets. Blue indicated the cramped compartment stuffed near the aft of the vessel that ho
used the sleeping quarters for passengers holding blue tickets. A yellow section in the middle of the ship was open to everyone.
Tulliver ran his finger over the various rooms until he found one that suited his needs, then tapped it with satisfaction.
He was a large man, and powerful. Still, as he walked the long hallways, he found himself wishing for a moving walkway. After five minutes, he would have settled even for a return to zero gravity.
The hallways were empty. As he navigated the maze of corridors, heading for, what he hoped, was the center of the ship, he began to suspect that only a small fraction of the staterooms were occupied. Clearly, Cygnus Corporation would not cancel a voyage if they didn’t meet capacity, which left Tulliver wondering if they were getting funding from somewhere else.
Finally, breathing hard, he emerged in a dome-shaped atrium, with towering palm trees curving up to dangle vibrant green fronds above a glimmering pool of water. Gripping a handrail, Tulliver walked onto a small bridge over the water. He looked down into the pool, curious how the engineers had managed to make it stay in place. A slight vibration tickled the water’s surface, and he had his answer: they must have lined the base of the installation with a blanket of GravGen units, keeping the water pooled in its shallow bowl instead of floating around the atrium in globules.
The ceiling of the domed room was glass, supported by a grid of chrome crossbeams. Behind the glass was a massive projection of the ship’s surroundings, as realistic as if the glass were a true window to space.
Sunrise Station drifted away, a spiked ornament gleaming in the foreground. Earth lay in the background, glowing blue, green, and brown.
Tulliver frowned. He had expected to feel the engines kick on as the ship departed from the station, yet there had been no noticeable movement. For a reason he couldn’t articulate, that lack of tactile proof deeply disturbed him.
The bridge led to a large opening in the wall of the dome. Soft lights dance under the floor and above the ceiling as Tulliver passed through the opening and entered a promenade as well-tended as the space station’s was neglected.
The pathway stretching before him was five meters across, decorated with verdant planters and faux wood benches. Chandeliers on rigid poles hung from the vaulted ceiling, their light sparkling off the black tile floor.
A procession of shops lined both walls. Most of them were closed, only being in use for the shorter cruises to the lunar colony or sunset dinners over Earth.
Light spilled from a shop entrance farther down the promenade, and soft music played within. Tulliver followed the stimuli like a moth to flame, arriving at The Velvet Speakeasy, a bar seemingly ripped straight from the back streets of every run-down city in the United States.
The air was a different kind of stale, more textured. Tulliver took a deep breath of it as he crossed the bar’s threshold. Warm, multicolored light from open bulbs in the ceiling welcomed him. Inoffensive ambient music pulsed quietly from hidden speakers.
The Velvet Speakeasy was deeper than it was wide, an elongated box containing several distinct sections. The first was a small, currently empty live music stage next to the entrance. A long faux dark-wood bar lined the wall beyond that. After the bar, several dining tables stood before a large, padded booth that filled the entire back wall.
Three men sat in the booth, which hugged the curved wall in a half-circle, their drinks resting on the circular table before them. They were dressed as if they had come from a business meeting, the tails of their fitted collared shirts untucked, the top buttons undone. Administrators of some kind, perhaps, thought Tulliver. Mars inspection team? He remembered hearing something about a corporate disruption at the headquarters on Earth.
Only one other patron sat at the bar. It was one of the group of four Tulliver had watched in the food section of Sunrise Station — the man with straight black hair pulled back in a ponytail. He wore a blue collared shirt and immaculately-pressed tan slacks, a drunken smile plastered on his face. The small glass of amber liquid he spun slowly between his fingers on the bar was only half-full. Six empty glasses stood in a line near his elbow.
Tulliver lowered himself onto a bar stool and signaled to the robotic barman, which had been polishing an already-clean glass with a white rag. It was a delicate construction of thin metal rods, gears, and wires, having the general shape of a humanoid down to its waist. A thick metal piston connected it to a metal track in the floor behind the bar. Two glowing white discs in place of eyes blinked occasionally.
“Gin and tonic,” said Tulliver as the robot barman whisked over on its track.
The robot tapped a small screen in the surface of the bar: a hellocard reader. Tulliver showed it his red ticket, hoping it would be enough to get him a drink in lieu of actual money. The robot shrugged.
Scowling, Tulliver shoved the ticket back into his pocket and turned away.
The other man at the bar mumbled something to himself, his eyebrows rising over closed eyes as he proceeded to reply.
Tulliver turned his attention to the men in the padded booth at the back of the bar. One of them burst out laughing, the sound carrying easily across the room. He slapped his friend on the back and approached the bar.
“One more please, my good man,” he said to the robot. His boyish face was flush from the alcohol. A shock of red hair tumbled over his eyes. He swept it back, then grabbed the bar for support and pinched the bridge of his nose with his other hand, swaying in place.
“You okay?” asked Tulliver.
The young man blinked hard and sniffed.
“Forgot my sleeping pills on the station,” he said, chuckling and shaking his head. “Can’t sleep without them anymore. ‘Non-habit forming’, it says on the bottle.” He shook his head again.
Tulliver looked into his eyes. They were so bloodshot he could hardly see any white.
“Your friends don’t have any?” Tulliver asked.
“Nah. And the ship doesn’t sell ‘em. All the shops are closed!”
The robot barman set a fresh drink in front of the young man. He swiped his hellocard over the reader in the bartop and drained half the drink in one gulp.
Tulliver watched every move carefully.
“I could get you some,” he said.
“Some what?” asked the young man. “Oh, pills.” He regarded Tulliver doubtfully. “Really?”
“Sure. I can get anything.”
A few minutes later, Tulliver strolled from the bar in search of a bottle of sleeping pills and an empty hellocard. On a ship that large, he surmised, they had to be somewhere.
If he were a whistler, he would have whistled. Instead, he passed the time daydreaming of his future. It was getting brighter every day.
CHAPTER FOUR
MERRITT
Until he received a schedule for his first farming session, Merritt had thought there were no rooms on the Halcyon larger than the atrium, which itself appeared larger than its actual size due to its domed ceiling and strategic placement of towering palms.
He stood in the gymnasium on Deck 4, forward, with a dozen other farmers, awaiting their instructor. Gavin stood next to him, shifting on his feet impatiently.
The farmers stood around a large rectangle of fresh soil that took up most of the floor, roughly ten meters by twenty, covering up and extending beyond what Merritt assumed used to be a basketball court. Two sawed-off poles rose from the soil, approximately the same distance apart as two goal support posts.
The walls of the room were a deep cream color, and its ceiling had been painted black. Halogen lamps hung from long cords in the ceiling, warming the soil.
The rest of the converted gymnasium was empty save for a collection of ancient farming equipment along one wall. The pieces looked like they were on loan from a centuries-old agriculture museum, built of faux wood and metal, all of them hand-powered. Merritt recognized one of them as a plough, but, even with his multiple readings of the government-supplied farming primer in the ship’s archives,
he couldn’t name the other equipment.
None of the other farmers had children, Merritt noticed, or they had come alone. There were two couples standing near each other opposite Merritt and Gavin, and eight men spaced out at the soil’s edge in between.
“Thank you for waiting,” said a woman as she strode briskly into the gym. She carried a dirty pint jar filled with dark seeds.
Her curly brown hair was pulled back in a haphazard bun, several strands spilling out to bounce on her shoulders as she marched to the middle of the patch of soil. Tanned skin spoke of a life spent in sunny locales. She was in her mid-forties, lean, and wore a green collared shirt, unbuttoned, over a dark maroon T-shirt, khaki shorts, and faded brown hiking boots.
She set her jar on the soil by her boots, then put her callused hands on her hips as she addressed the group.
“I’m Uda Jansen, your instructor,” she said with a hint of Northern European accent. She made eye contact with everyone in the room, her eyes a deep blue that gleamed in the glare of the overhead halogen lamps. Her gaze lingered on Gavin before moving on. “And you are farmers.” She smiled, her sun-worn skin crinkling at her temples as she flashed bright white teeth. “Or at least, you will be when I’m through with you. There will be time for introductions later. Who knows what this is?”
She stamped one boot on the dark soil.
“Galena soil?” said a tall man standing at one corner of the rectangular patch. He was older, with a thick white mustache.
“It’s our best guess,” said Uda. “Which means the real thing will be different. Which also means your crop won’t grow the same on the surface as it will in here. It isn’t all bad. There are freshwater springs for irrigation, and the sun is in the sky for twenty hours a day. But you are not here to learn the exact steps you must take on Galena to produce a decent crop. You are here to learn the theory behind those methods, and how to improvise in a foreign environment. This knowledge will be crucial if you hope to survive. Each one of you owes your government seventy percent of your harvest. Failure to pay attention in here will lead to a loss of crop down there, and that is something none of you can afford.”