by Jon Lymon
They were up and London was below, the rows of streetlights orange like diamonds lined up in a jeweller’s window.
The crew all missed the magnificent sight of an explosion to the south, down Croydon way. Another ship down, another dream up in flames.
The Baton Uric was still gaining altitude. They knew that until they were outside the Earth’s atmosphere this was a dangerous time. Remember the space shuttle, Remnant thought. Actually, don’t. Anything else but that. But that was all he could think about. He liked to torture himself. He pictured the engines, the liquid hydrogen raging within. One loose screw, one misplaced valve and they would be gone, scattered in the night sky like failed, falling stars. More statistics and new numbers to add to the dead. DT might get a column thick obituary in a jewellery trade magazine, but there’d be nothing for Remnant, no memorial, no kind words.
They were still going up as Remnant managed to force open one eye. He soon wished he hadn’t. There was nothing to see except what DT had eaten earlier. Remnant felt the G-forces spreading his cheeks as the ship pulled hard and right and Bettis slammed his hands against the dashboard. Remnant bent double in his seat, dry retching as he had so little food in his system to expel.
The ship was heading ever upwards at precisely forty seven degrees to the perpendicular. DT opened both of his eyes and looked over to Bettis who had something manic about his mouth, which was not so much closed as clamped shut.
DT noted that the pilot’s hands were barely touching the control stick, and he watched as Bettis quickly steered left to dodge another vessel that was spinning out of control, back down to Earth, one of its engines on fire.
DT watched the craft disappear in a ball of flames into the light brown clouds below. They’d been warned about taking off at night. The less responsible diamond hunters sported vessels without any exterior lights. So they were taking a big chance being up so late. But launching at night gave you the advantage of not having to worry too much about the kids who took pot-shots at ships from atop the high rises in Barbican, Islington and wherever else they could reach you.
DT looked over again at Bettis and saw his eyes rolling in his head, his cheeks puffed out, like he was hiding solid matter.
“Not over the dash…”
Bettis released the contents of his stomach over the dashboard, coating the flashing red in solid orange and loose beige.
“There’s some pretty severe G-forces at work here,” Bettis garbled, feeling better already, but with the fear of further sick in his watery eyes.
“Pilots aren’t meant to get sick,” said DT.
“I don’t think I like flying” said Remnant, beginning to recover his senses.
“Wait until we land on Mars,” spat Bettis. “That’s going to be a whole lot worse.”
DT wished they were safely on Mars now. If only they had a hyperspace button or something equally rapid to make the millions of miles between them and their fuel stop pass in a flash. Why hadn’t someone invented that yet? What were they doing with themselves, these space scientists, transport experts, whoever they were? Lock them in a room somewhere and don’t let them out until they’d produced an engine that propelled you along at light speed. How hard could it be?
Bettis felt himself slipping into a trance-like state. He stared out of the cockpit window. The moon wasn’t there to guide them or offer any variation to the vista, and the distant stars all looked alike.
“I think we should switch over to the computer now, don’t you?” asked DT, worried by Bettis’ loud humming of a non-descript tune.
“Who’s flying this ship?” Remnant asked.
“I want the computer in charge,” DT told Bettis. “You look a mess. I want you breathalysed.” DT reached for the autopilot button but Bettis stopped him, sparking a slapfest of wrist-slapping.
Remnant was disconcerted by the wrestling occurring in the seats in front of him, but unsure who to side with. “Break it up, lads,” seemed the best approach, but it cut little ice.
“Come over here and press that red button,” DT yelled to him.
“Don’t go anywhere near that red button,” Bettis countered. “You’ll get us all killed.” Much more persuasive that one, Remnant thought, so he stayed where he was as the two men battled for control. DT was standing up now, each of his hands gripping Bettis’ arms. In an adroit move, he flicked his right leg, allowing his ankle to make contact with the red button. But the contact was too forceful, and cracked the button’s shell, smashing the small bulb within.
“Great, now I’ve no idea if autopilot is on or off,” said Bettis.
“Let’s find out,” DT cried, pushing Bettis’ hands from the control stick.
The ship veered sharply to the left, sending DT flying onto Bettis’ lap, his head crashing against the mercifully thick glass of the port window.
“You idiot. Now we’re definitely going to die,” Bettis yelled.
Remnant certainly felt like dying. He had never veered as sharply to one side this sober. Was this it? Was this death? End it now, Remnant’s brain urged him. I can’t take this spinning swirling, sickening feeling. And then he was on the dance floor with his daughter in ‘the second dance’ of the wedding night, his estranged wife looking on from the sidelines, almost forcing a smile seeing how happy Daddy made her little girl look. Champagne was swilling around his brain. The happiest day of her life, the most expensive of his. Then, a yell. Not his daughter. Bettis. Trying to regain control but his cocktail of a brain could not decide if manual control was on or off. And DT was only now beginning to lift his considerable weight off his lap. In desperation, Remnant dived for the cracked button and pushed it.
Part II
25
Green men, black holes and red Martians were off limits. No-go areas at DT’s insistence. They were going to get to the asteroid and triumphantly make it back to Earth as rich and famous men.
Positivity was just one of the ground rules DT took upon himself to try and establish aboard the Baton Uric. Others included a rota for the galley so each man knew when it was his turn to add water to the freeze-dried meals and shove them into the microwave oven. There was a rota too for the cleaning of the bathroom and shifts for sleeping in the cabin. Bettis accepted this regimented approach more readily than Remnant, who resented DT’s attempts to ease himself into the position of authority aboard a ship he wasn’t even meant to be on.
But Remnant had no desire for confrontation in such a confined space. And so the early days of the mission passed peacefully. But as the first week blended into the second, all three men started to notice their faces bloating and reddening. The symptoms showed up most noticeably on Remnant’s slack, underfed skin that was usually stretched tight and white over jutting cheekbones and a malnourished frame.
“Do I look red to you?” he asked Bettis and DT as they sat in silence in their cockpit seats. They both turned around, Bettis immediately turning away after seeing on Remnant’s face what he saw on his own in the mirror.
“You look like you’ve caught the sun,” DT quipped.
“I feel really fat,” said Remnant.
“You look really fat.”
Remnant didn’t know whether to take that comment as jocular or malicious. He still barely knew DT and hadn’t worked out his sense of humour yet, or indeed if he had one. Unwilling to turn the incident into an issue, he returned to his bunk, where he prodded his face and thought about the four pack of Gates in his bag. His lips tingled, the back of his mouth cracked, his tongue yearned to drown in its soothing froth.
He jumped on the bag and pulled out the first of the quartet, rotating the can to view the logo and read the legend ‘Brewed In Great Britain’. He clipped it open, recoiling slightly at the velocity and volume of the release of air pressure, but in a flash his mouth was over the hole. The lager was warm but welcome. A taste of home. He closed his eyes and imagined himself supping outside The Old Mitre, a lazy afternoon’s drinking ahead, Edgar inside on the quiz machine,
Gordon tea towelling the clean empties.
His eyes flicked open and explored the cabin. Its walls multi shades of silver courtesy of the sheets of scrap metal he’d managed to beg, borrow, but mainly steal. The room was lit by a lone strip light, the searing white of which reminded him of police stations and time spent under Ramage’s scrutiny. He sat on the edge of the bottom bunk, on top of the duvet cover he’d lifted from his own bed. What was he doing here? In space. Space. Him. Simon Remnant. He’d only been abroad once before, on a school boat trip to France. This was his first time in the air.
After another sip, he became aware that the Gates was having a strange effect on him. Not prompting the usual surge of brief-lived euphoria. Instead, it was inducing a heaviness behind the eyes, a wave of tiredness that spread over him like a bank of dark clouds.
He rested his can on the cabin floor and lay back on the thin pillow, but his brain refused to relax. He slapped the springy mattress in frustration. He turned first left, then right, his knees forcibly bent from the lack of room. He wanted to stretch, breathe fresh air, see the sun, drink lager in a beer garden. He prodded his face. Still fat, but sore now from the prods. He shot out of his bunk and examined himself from multiple, unflattering angles in the miniscule mirror.
Half a can of Gates had brought him out in the sweats. And if his face continued to expand and redden at this rate, he’d be a ball of fire before they got anywhere near Mars. What if he had a rare space virus? There was no getting help this far from home. No helpline to call, or emergency assistance to save him. He felt the capacity of his lungs diminish. He had to think about every breath. He flicked off the cabin light, conscious of his heart beating faster. He felt a headache coming on. He gulped the rest of the Gates in the darkness, ensuring every last drop found a home. The liquid muddled his brain and soon his breathing regulated and the steady hum of the engine lured him into unconsciousness.
As he slept, the Baton Uric powered its way a few thousand miles further from Earth. DT and Bettis sat in almost total silence for the duration, having exhausted all avenues of apology to each other for their behaviour before, during and after take-off. Bettis told DT of his bitterness at how his aircraft flying skills were being usurped by the more trustworthy computer programs that commercial airlines were increasingly relying on to fly and land their expensive aircraft and demanding passengers.
“New software will be the death of us old pilots,” he told a struggling-to-be-sympathetic DT. Bettis told him how he had fought hard to remain safely in the employ of a major airline, even securing a few pay rises as his responsibilities diminished. The day before DT called had been the day he’d given up the fight. Computers had reduced him to the smiling guy in the uniform at the front of the plane whom nervous passengers would want to catch a glimpse of, to check he looked like the kind of guy who could get them where they wanted to go in one piece. And Bettis’ face still fitted the bill. He wore his hair slightly long for a pilot, but it was sensibly and trustworthily grey in patches, parted to the right without a hint of dandruff. Some said he had the kind of face and head shape that was ideal for advertising men’s hair dye.
He’d enjoyed the easiest gig on a plane for years, but the future all pilots feared was already upon him. Bettis’ dislike and distrust of computers was sealed. During his last few flights, he’d become confused as to who was in charge or when he should wrest control from the machines. He often picked the wrong moment, much to the consternation of younger co-pilots who happily embraced their mechanised assistants, and who had to rapidly right the older pilot’s wrongs. Bettis soon found himself scared to make any decisions at all in a cockpit, however trivial. ‘Black or white coffee?’ the stewardesses would ask. ‘Black with an unopened sachet of milk,’ he would answer. ‘One sugar or two?’ ‘Bring me three, then I can have either or both.’
He told DT how he hoped this mission would be different. That he’d be shown some respect. That it would rekindle his enthusiasm for flying. But already, he’d seen from his fellow crew that they had more faith in the computer than the man.
“I did not mean to cause any offence,” said DT awkwardly. “I thought we were going to die. I was panicking.”
“So was I, if truth be told. But I won’t let you down next time,” he said.
Bettis found himself mulling over his poor performance at take-off during the first few weeks of the mission. These were days in which there was no dawn to wake to, no midday sun to lift the spirit, no dusk to usher in sleep. The world outside was merely relentless dark empty space peppered with distant stars that never got closer as the ship propelled the three amateur astronauts deeper and deeper into a solar system none of them knew much about.
There were few things outside or onboard that could be used to kickstart conversations, no landmarks of historic significance or insignificance to point out, nor other vessels to abuse or direct hatred toward. Even though they all suspected (correctly) that there were other ships out there, joining them in the race to the diamond asteroid, they saw no one. This particular road to riches was thousands of miles wide.
Remnant awoke on the bottom bunk, feeling groggy and hungry. He stumbled into the cockpit, knowing it was his turn to prepare the next meal, according to DT’s rota. “I’m microwaving something, a spagbol, do you want one?” he asked Bettis and DT who were dozing in their cockpit seats. Both snorted, stirred and asked him to repeat the question before nodding.
As Remnant moistened the dehydrated meals, he thought how much his life resembled that of a dog – the only things he had to look forward to were food and sleep. But at least dogs had walks to vary their days. Remnant did at least enjoy the novelty of having cupboards full of food to choose from, even though its quality was suspect. And meal times gave them all something to talk about. Occasionally, one of them would offer up a criticism of the dryness of the rice in the chilli con carne, or congratulate themselves when they chewed on something that resembled meat in the spagbol. Some merriment was derived from the humourless and utterly pointless question of ‘what’s for pudding?’ when they knew full well all there was to choose from was dry jam sponge or even drier apple crumble, moistened by custard made from a substance that was as far from milk as they were from home.
After he had eaten the spagbol that Remnant had heated, DT excused himself and headed for the cabin, where he had secured the top bunk for all of his sleeping shifts on the back of him being the captain and the major source of funding for the mission.
Remnant seized the opportunity to try the co-pilot’s seat for size and immediately got a sense of Bettis’ discomfort at having him sitting so close. “Looks complicated, all these buttons,” Remnant said.
“It is.”
There was an awkward pause.
“How we doing? I mean, are we on course?”
“We’re on autopilot. So we should be, as long as your friend has programmed it correctly.”
“I trust Edgar.” Remnant leaned closer. “More than I trust DT.” He looked at Bettis, hoping to see some kind of reaction, agreement even, but he saw nothing. “How are you getting along with him?” he added
“I find your question inappropriate.”
“Why? He seems to have made himself captain of the ship.”
“A ship needs a captain.”
“Right, yeah, I know. I just thought there’d some sort of vote.”
“I’d vote for him, you’d vote against him, I presume, and we’d get nowhere.”
“So you’re really OK with him being the captain?”
“Listen, I’m the pilot of this ship. If he wants to make himself captain, that’s all fine and dandy with me. It still doesn’t mean he can fly the ship like I can fly the ship.”
“But you’re not flying it, are you? The computer is.” Bettis glared it him. “You can stare at me all you like, mate, it’s the truth. You’re just sitting there. Why are you letting the computer fly it?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’
ve learned how to fly, so fly.”
Bettis faltered. “I, er… I need to familiarise myself with the controls.”
“You could do that while you’re flying.”
“I could, but it wouldn’t be safe. And there’s no guarantee I’d be steering us in the right direction. There’s no SatNav up here, you know.”
Remnant sensed Bettis’ discomfort. “Alright, I’m not having a go. I’m just interested to know why you wouldn’t use the skills you have.”
“Is that because you haven’t got any?”
Now it was Remnant’s turn to stare. He slowly moved his head close to Bettis’ right ear, and whispered with menace, “I reckon you’re as much of a waste of space as I am, mate.” He pulled a fake smile and slowly pulled away before walking back to his seat at the back of the cockpit.
He sat down and let his thoughts wander back to Earth and his daughter, in the loving arms of another man now. It hurt to think she’d have taken her walk down the aisle on the arm of a man she hardly knew. It was a walk he had dreamed of taking many times, his daughter gripping on to his hooked arm, needing him to be there in case she stumbled in her dress.
A shudder that shook the ship interrupted Remnant’s train of thought. Bettis scanned the dashboard with his fingers as DT entered the cockpit.
“Everything OK?” he asked Bettis as he and Remnant crossed paths, the latter on his way to the galley to clean the microwave oven he’d stained earlier by over-cooking one of the spagbols. As Remnant wiped, he could just make out voices from the cockpit.
“Just a bit of turbulence, nothing to worry about.”
“Did he say anything to you?” DT asked.
“He had the audacity to accuse me of wasting my talent. Like he’s got any talent to waste.”
There was a pause filled, Remnant presumed, by defamatory hand gestures.
“We could remedy this situation quite easily,” DT said.