Neptune Crossing

by Jeffrey A. Carver

  *

  “Thank you, John. We’ll be in touch as the investigation proceeds, and we’ll call you back if we have further questions. You can report to mining ops now.”

  “Right. See you around, Cole. Lonnie.”

  The quarx spoke softly as he slid back down the pole to the first level.

  /// What was the purpose of that meeting, John? ///

  Bandicut stepped off and walked toward the ready room for the second time that morning. /Charlie, you’ve just witnessed modern management at its best. What you saw was a careful effort by Jackson to make sure that he and the company are covered, if any questions arise—either about safety, or productivity./

  /// Uh-huh. ///

  /Plus, Lonnie was probably hoping to catch me in a lie, because that would prove how sharp he is./

  The quarx didn’t sound happy.

  /// Uh-huh. Anything else? ///

  He reached the ready room. /Plus, let’s give them credit. I suppose they really were trying to figure out what the hell happened./ He let out a long breath. /And I have to say, my quarxian friend, that the hypocrisy of all this has not escaped me. I do not feel too wonderful about having, yet again, lied through my teeth./

  Charlie was silent a moment, but Bandicut could feel the mental tension building. When Charlie answered, it was in a very soft voice in the center of his consciousness.

  /// I do understand, John Bandicut.

  I share your ethical misgivings. ///

  /You do?/

  /// Yes, but I am afraid I must say, as well . . .

  that meeting did not give me reason to feel

  that we would dare entrust our secret

  to those individuals. ///

  Bandicut nodded, his vision clouding as he realized what the quarx was saying. They were not going to be sharing their secret with anyone, anytime soon. But neither could he muster any good reason to disagree.

  “BANDICUT! Get the hell over here!” Herbert Massengale was standing in the doorway to his office, clipboard in hand. As Bandicut approached, Massengale glared at him. “I just got the bad news, Bandicut. You’re on my team.”

  “So I’m told.”

  “Now, what the fokin’ moke am I supposed to do with a nine-pin-head goak who don’t even got his pins anymore?” Massengale rapped his knuckles on the clipboard in disgust.

  /// What’s he talking about?

  What’s a nine-pin-head goak? ///

  /It’s an, er, “affectionate” nickname for neurojackers./

  /// Affectionate? ///

  /Well . . . no. See, he doesn’t neurolink himself, and he hates the guts of anyone who does./

  /// That doesn’t seem reasonable. ///

  /What’s reasonable got to do with it?/

  “What are you grinnin’ about?” Massengale growled. “You look like you’re plugged into a mokin’ computer right now. Are you gonna go zombie on me before you even start?”

  Bandicut felt his face redden. He was going to have to learn to talk to Charlie without looking like an idiot. “Herb, if there’s something you have for me to do, maybe we could just get on with it,” he said, straining for politeness.

  Massengale stared at him as if Bandicut had just done something to his nice clean windshield. “Yeahhhhh. We’re shorthanded on the crawlers. Report to Bronson on number three.” Without waiting for an answer, Massengale strolled away.

  Bandicut curled his lip downward. It was more or less what he had expected. He knew nothing about crawler operations. If he were lucky, he would merely get in the way, instead of becoming an active hazard to the operation.

  Shaking his head, he reported to the equipment window and signed out an outdoor exposure suit. When he had finished gearing up—and it had been a long time since he’d checked a suit so carefully—he went outside through the pressure lock, looking for Crawler Three and Bronson. He peered about the vast unroofed crawler bay, trying to figure out where he was supposed to be. Two of the huge mining machines had already pulled out of their docking bays and were lumbering off toward the work fields, amber beacons rotating in the perpetual night of the Triton sky. About a hundred meters down the docking bay, he spotted a faded, dusty numeral 3 on another crawler. As he set off toward it with a loping stride, its beacons flicked on, glaring in his face. He hurried, calling out on the comm. “Bronson!”

  The crawler chief was halfway up a ladder on the transom of the enormous machine, one hand raised to wave the driver on. He turned his helmeted head and lowered his hand. Bandicut could just make out a frown through the faceplate. Bronson’s voice moaned with an exaggerated, aggrieved tone through the background chatter on the comm. “What the—Bandicut! Now don’t tell me that asshole Herb sent you out to work with me!”

  Bandicut halted at the base of the crawler and looked up with a grin. “Can I quote you to the boss on that? Especially the asshole part?”

  Bronson snorted, white eyes gleaming through the visor from an almost invisible black-skinned face. “Lissen—I’m the mokin’ boss out here, and unless you wanna try mind-meldin’ with some a’ that rock out there, I suggest you shut up and get your tailpipe up in that hold. So how ya’ doin’, anyway, Bandie?”

  “Okay. What am I supposed to do here?”

  “Oh, whatever my man Jake tells you,” Bronson drawled. “Now, get your tail up there. We’re late already.”

  Bandicut gave Bronson a jaunty salute and grabbed a ladder up to the work cabin. As he climbed, he saw Bronson mounting the ladder to the roof of the crawler and heard him drawl: “Get ’er movin’, Fitznell.” The massive machine rumbled for an instant, then lurched forward, just as Bandicut was ducking through the cabin threshold. He lost his balance momentarily, slamming his left shoulder into the bulkhead. Grabbing the handrail with a curse, he heaved himself the rest of the way in and pulled the door closed behind him.

  The inside of the crawler looked more like a small, machine-filled factory than a vehicle—except that it was in jerky motion. He was on a narrow platform that connected to a series of catwalks spanning the interior. A suited man was standing at a forward control panel. He turned, saw Bandicut, and waved him over. Bandicut threaded his way forward, ducking to avoid cables and pipes. Below him on his left, two mining drones hung in their cradles like enormous crabs waiting to go scuttling over the mine bed. Farther to the left, he vaguely recognized the shadowy bulk of the power reactor and ore processor.

  /// I gather

  you’re not too familiar with this equipment. ///

  /Nah, I was shown around one of these things when I first arrived on Triton, but I haven’t had any reason to be inside one since./ He finally reached the man at the control panel. It was Jake Looks-Over, a part Amerind whom he knew from games of EineySteiney in the rec lounge. “Hi, Jake. What can I do here?”

  Jake grinned behind his faceplate, eyes bright against a burnished face. “Hey, Bandie! That depends, I guess. You just along for the ride, or did they send you in from the frontier to find out what real work is like?”

  Bandicut grabbed another handhold. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do any real work. From what I hear, you guys need more brains than brawn out here.”

  Jake raised one eyebrow toward a monitor on the control board, where a woman’s helmeted face was visible. “You hear that, Amy? John Bandicut’s here to give us the benefit of his brains. Someone must’ve squealed on us.”

  The woman’s face jounced with the vibration. Bandicut realized that she was driving the crawler. “Haven’t I been threatening all along to squeal on you guys?” she said. Bandicut could just see the landscape moving outside the cockpit, past her head.

  “Fitznell, whose side are you on, anyway?” Jake protested.

  “You guys must be hard up if you want me out here helping you,” Bandicut said. “But that’s what they tell me to do, so I do it.”

  Jake nodded. “Well, we can put you to work driving a miner. An ace pilot like you ought to be able to h
andle some drones, right?”

  “That depends. How hard is it?”

  Jake grinned without answering.

  Bandicut peered at the external monitors. The crawler was rumbling down a long access road out of the main camp. Soon it would begin descending into a vast depression a kilometer or so to the west. The mining area was ringed with lights that glared and shifted surreally in the monitors.

  “We’ll be there in five minutes,” Jake said. “You can stash your lunch in that locker.”

  “Lunch?” Bandicut croaked.

  “No one told you to bring a lunch? Hoo boy, you’re going to be one hungry customer by the time we’re done here.” Jake shook his head. “Well, never mind. You want to go up and have a look from the cab before we strap you in? That okay, Amy?”

  “Sure,” said the driver.

  Jake hooked a thumb toward a ladder on his left. Bandicut mounted the ladder, glancing nervously to see where he would fall if he slipped. The sight of the vibrating machinery caused him to tighten his grip on the handholds. He caught a handle at the top, a hatch slid open, and he climbed up into the back of the cab.

  Amy Fitznell’s helmeted head bobbed as she drove. She glanced up into the overhead mirror, her visor shifting in the polished glass. “Hi, Bandie. Have a seat and take a look around.”

  Bandicut slid into the right-hand seat and peered out the forward window. In the perpetual Triton gloom, the crawler and roadway lights combined to make an eerie highway landscape. Two crawlers ahead were turning off into various sectors. “Which one we going to?” he asked.

  “Northwest sector.” Fitznell, scanning the instruments and monitors, looked every bit as busy as a pilot. Bandicut felt a little envious; he wondered what it felt like to drive one of these monsters. “Eat your heart out,” she murmured, as though reading his mind. “Mine’s bigger than yours.”

  Bandicut laughed.

  /// What’s that mean? ///

  /Never mind. Too hard to explain./

  “Better go back and let Jake get you squared away,” Fitznell said.

  “Okay, thanks for the look.” Bandicut exited the way he had come.

  As he stepped off the ladder onto the work platform, Jake pointed to one of the mining drones hanging in the cradles. “Bandie, I’m putting you on drones three and four there. Think you can handle ’em?”

  Bandicut grimaced. “You sure you want me to run those things? I don’t know the first thing about it.”

  “Don’t worry, I’ll check you out.” Jake pressed several switches, then spoke again in a fast rattle. “Okay, now listen. You’re gonna be riding the drones on the inside track. It’ll be easier at the start, ’cause I’ll be tracking the outer walls on the first pass. But when we get tight on the inside, you’ll have to watch your step. Okay? Go get yourself strapped into that jump seat.”

  Bandicut peered to his right and spotted the jump seat folded into the crawler’s outer wall. “Get going,” Jake said. “We’ll be on station in a minute.” Bandicut made his way along the catwalk, pulled the seat down, and turned to sit, facing back toward Jake. “Strap up and plug in your comm,” Jake instructed.

  Bandicut found the straps and, with some difficulty, got them buckled and adjusted. “When was this setup designed?” he muttered. “Last century?”

  “As a matter of fact . . . yes, I think so,” Jake said. “Plug in your comm.”

  He located the jack and did so, and Jake’s voice became slightly clearer in his ears.

  “See that control board on your right? Lift it into position in front of you.”

  Bandicut groped and found the board hanging vertically against the wall. He yanked. Nothing. He groped for the release. The board jerked up suddenly and swung into his lap. He grunted and lifted the cover. He found a display board and a worn-looking key and joy pad. “Now what do I do?”

  “Click off the safety and press the ENGAGE button.”

  “What the hell, Jake, half these labels are worn off!”

  “I know. It’s on the right.”

  Muttering, Bandicut found the button. The wall behind him suddenly jerked and turned, and he spun out, seat and board and all, and found himself hanging out over the right side of the lumbering crawler. The ground sped by beneath him, blurring with the shifting of the light-augment in his helmet. He swayed dizzily against his safety harness, feeling utterly naked in the seat as the crawler heaved over a large bump in the roadway. He caught the gurgling sound rising in his throat, but his hands tightened on the control board as it flexed up and down on its extended support. In his helmet was a cackling of merriment.

  “ ’Kay, Bandie, you’re doin’ great!” Jake called. “Don’t hang on so tight you break the thing off! Just hook your feet in those stirrups and pretend you’re riding a horse.”

  Riding a horse? Bandicut thought dimly, and shouted, “I don’t know how to ride a goddamn—”

  /// Yee-hahhhh!

  Grab those reins! ///

  The quarx’s voice cut through the din like a cleaver.

  /What—?/

  /// Like this, John! ///

  For an instant, his vision was overlaid with a scratchy image of two men riding horses, and whooping, and shooting handguns into the air. They were pounding along a dusty dirt road at a frightful speed.

  /// That’s how you ride a horse! ///

  /Charlie, you idiot! That’s goddamn Hollywood! It’s not real! Get it off!/

  /// Sorry . . . I just thought . . . ///

  The image vanished.

  “Just relax and ride with the bounces,” Jake was calling. After a moment he added, “How you doin’ out there?”

  Bandicut finally got his feet hooked into the stirrups.

  “How’s he doin’? He’s doin’ like a dink!” chortled someone—Bronson, he realized. Peering around, he spotted the boss in the observer seat way up on top of the crawler, peering down over the side. Bronson was shaking with laughter. “Hang in there, Bandicoot!” he called.

  “Take a look at your board,” Jake said. “Don’t touch anything, just look for the row labeled DEPLOY, with some numbers.”

  Bandicut squinted, trying to read the labels against the jerky movement. “Okay,” he said finally. “Now what?”

  Before Jake could answer, the crawler slowed and began a sweeping turn. Bandicut looked up and saw walls of carved ice, mottled with stone, rising alongside the roadway. Suddenly the walls opened out, and the crawler slowed even more. Bandicut gazed out over an expanse of scarred land, depressed below the surrounding terrain. They had arrived on station.

  “Now,” Jake continued, “get ready to deploy. You’re gonna use those controls to guide the drones. Just like driving a buggy. Switch on your field monitors.”

  Bandicut fiddled a bit, and a display came on, giving him a split screen, both showing him the inside of the crawler. Nose cameras on the mining drones, probably. “Jake,” he muttered, “you haven’t forgotten that I have no bleeking idea what I’m doing?”

  “Hey, you think any of us knew what we were doing the first time we hung our fannies out there?”

  Fitznell snorted from the cab. “Do any of you know what you’re doing now?”

  “If you morons would knock it off and deploy,” called Bronson.

  “Rog’—”

  “Deploying,” said Jake.

  Bandicut felt a new rumble behind his back, which he presumed was the opposite-side station swinging out with Jake on board. A few moments later he felt a lower and deeper rumble and the movement of heavy hydraulics. “Bandie,” he heard, “deploy number four first, then number three.”

  “Just press—?”

  “Yup.”

  He felt an almost surreal sense of uninvolvement as he placed his finger on the button. Glancing up at the blue scythe of Neptune, he thought of Earth so far away he couldn’t even see it; and he shook his head in sudden bewilderment. What in God’s name was he doing here? Out across the scarred landscape, he saw two p
uffs of condensing vapor, barely illuminated by red laser light. Then he saw the recon robots responsible for the puffs, and he realized that they were sending probing beams into the ice and sending the telemetry to the crawler’s computer. He realized with a pang that he would feel a lot more confident if he were linked into that computer, neuron to neuron, instead of hanging out here with his eyeballs and a couple of joysticks.

  “Let’s get going,” Bronson called.

  “Bandie, do it,” said Jake.

  Bandicut pressed the button. His seat shuddered as the side of the crawler opened up and disgorged a drone, its dusty position lights glowing red, like some sort of large, demonic cockroach. The drone veered a little, then matched speeds with the mother cockroach. A green light blinked on under Bandicut’s hand. On his monitor, he saw a drone’s-eye view of the ground streaming past. An amber light strobed. “It’s down!”

  “Press the key marked AUTOTRACK,” Jake continued.

  He squinted anxiously. “What key marked AUTOTRACK?”

  “Top row of keys—”

  “You mean where all the labels are worn off?”

  “Third key from the right,” Jake said, unperturbed.

  Bandicut pressed the key. The amber light went green. He peered down and saw the drone moving away from the crawler, taking up a parallel course about five meters to the right. A thick umbilical dipped and swayed across the intervening space. It must be working right, he thought. He hadn’t heard anyone yell yet.

  “Deploy number three.”

  He pressed the button. A new rumbling announced the ejection of a second drone. He wasted no time in putting that one on automatic, and soon the two drones were flanking each other, with number four trailing behind and to the outside, forming a perfect half of a V with the crawler.

  “Are we dragging now?” he asked.

  “Naw,” Jake answered. “Bronson’ll give us the word. How we doin’, Chester?”

  “Hold on to your mokin’ drawers,” Bronson drawled. “Almost there.” Bandicut glanced up and saw the boss bobbing atop the crawler, his helmet gleaming in the running lights. “Get ready to drop in about ten seconds.”

  Jake’s voice cut in, “Bandie, on his call, press the next button to the left.”

  “Drop ’em now,” Bronson said.

  Bandicut jabbed the button and waited for something to happen. He felt nothing, but in the monitors, the head-on views shrank and new split-screen images appeared; and he glimpsed mining lasers burrowing into the surface and saw confusing images of surface materials churning and being separated inside the drones. Glancing back at the actual drones, he saw light flickering beneath them; and emerging from behind them were twin clouds of vapor and dust.

  “Hey Bandicoot, you’re a miner now!” Jake called.

  He watched, nodding, as the two drones under his command churned their way through Triton’s surface like two moles burrowing for metallic remnants of an eons-old civilization.

   Chapter 9 

  Download

  THE MAIN POINT of the job, it turned out, was to ride herd on the drones to keep them from blundering into each other on turns. The rest of his day alternated between stupefying tedium as he bounced in his seat watching everything track a straight line, and frantic concentration as they turned corners and he fought to keep the two drones in formation. The control board never seemed to work quite right, and the drones had a strong tendency to overcontrol, resulting in repeated fishtailing and skidding.

  The effort gave him a thumping headache, and it didn’t help that his every mistake was accompanied by whoops and snorts from the top of the crawler. He half suspected Fitznell of racing around the corners to see how much he could take without demolishing the drones. And he wondered at Jake’s claim, when he asked why the computer didn’t handle the turns, that the control module had failed so many times that they’d simply given up on it and gone to manual control.

  By the end of the day, he was tense and exhausted—and ravenously hungry, even though Jake and Amy had shared their lunches with him. As they started back to base, Charlie broke a long silence to ask Bandicut if he was okay. Yes, Bandicut grunted silently, making it perfectly clear that he was in no mood for conversation. Charlie took the hint and disappeared again.

  Back at the base, Jake and Amy congratulated him on surviving their hazing, and invited him for a beer after dinner. Bandicut squinted in thought, then shook his head with a sigh. “I just want to eat and go straight to bed. Rain check?”

  “Sure,” Jake said. “Tomorrow, you’ll sail through it like the wind.”

  “Like the wind. Sure,” Bandicut muttered sardonically. With a wave, he jumped off the ladder from the crawler and strode off to the showers.