“You know?”
“Lattimer thought I should understand why we had to come early.”
Ortiz gestured to a chair. Going from weightlessness to the moon’s gravity wasn’t as severe as going back to Earth, but it was still an adjustment.
“She’s been focused. She’s gotten through most of her assigned tasks. Without Beauregard’s pranks the crew has been working smoothly. We managed to make up a little for the loss of a crew member, but not the loss of time, so you’ll find we’re behind on construction of the new lab. You’re also going to have to take over some of the experiments.”
“I know. But how is the crew holding up?”
“They know something happened. They know Anders had something to do with it. But that’s all they know.” She offered him a drink. “Any idea what happens to her when we get back to Earth?”
“Not sure. I know Morales is pushing for a case of self-defence, with extenuating circumstances. I think some of the lawyers are eager to…”
A blaring alarm cut him off. Ortiz checked her PDA. “Damn it. It’s the Infirmary. This way.”
The outgoing crew, more accustomed to moving in the lunar gravity, reached the Infirmary first. Anders was lying on the floor, her eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling, her face slack.
“Report,” barked Ortiz.
Silverstein was kneeling on the floor beside her, a box labelled Medical Supplies at his side. “I came in and found her like this, but I was too late.” He was on the verge of tears.
“How?” Ortiz looked around. Anders’ access to chemicals had been disabled.
“With this.” Silverstein held up an empty syringe. “I found it sticking out of her throat, right where the artery is.” He pointed to a bloody spot on the dead woman’s neck. “She must’ve given herself an air embolism. A bubble in the artery can be fatal.”
“Damn it, Julia.” Ortiz swore. She looked up at the shocked faces of her crew. It was going to be a long ride home.
Rocket Garden
By Jack Bates
A trickle of sweat rolls down the side of Jacobs’ face. He actually feels the little bead pop out of his forehead. He knows it isn’t from the weather. Florida is experiencing one of its cold snaps. A balmy sixty-eight degrees. Maybe a little cooler there in Titusville. Cape Canaveral is an island off the east coast of the Sunshine State. Ocean air is always a few degrees cooler.
Jacobs is aware of all of this. He is on staff at Kennedy as a meteorologist. Twenty years of his life spent tracking weather patterns and storm systems in order to go thumbs-up or thumbs-down to the latest launch. The flip of his thumb could cost taxpayers millions. Twenty years of giving the go-ahead or delaying the launch and what does he have to show for it?
An inland, carriage house, condo. A hybrid car. A couple of melanoma scars on his face.
So why is he sweating?
There is a crunch of the pea-stone gravel spread around the base of the retired fuselages in the rocket garden. The machines stand upright like denizens worshipping the moon they never got to orbit. Jacobs peers around the towering Mercury stage rocket. A man approaches.
The Visitor Center has closed hours earlier. The last of the employees have driven away. Like the man walking in his direction, Jacobs has come back and gone around the building following a service walkway where tour buses line up to carry passengers out to the launch buildings. If the security cameras show anything they show a man in a custodial jacket pushing a garbage can on a dolly. Jacobs doubts the cameras show anything. There is no need for a live feed and thanks to a government shutdown, no one to view the tapes. If there were, the images captured every fifteen minutes are, for the most part, grainy. It seems crazy to Jacobs as the Center has cameras that can show a flake of dust on the moon but can’t detail a license plate of a car left in the parking lot. The rocket garden is well out of range of the roof-mounted eyes-in-the-sky.
Halfway across the gravel the figure stops. A small burst of light illuminates the figure’s face and Jacobs thinks, Oh no. Don’t call me.
Jacobs feels the vibration of his phone in his pants pocket. He doesn’t answer it. Instead, he puts a hand under the hem of the jacket and feels the handle of the gun he has tucked into the back of his pants.
Jacobs steps partially out from behind the Mercury stage rocket he’s hiding behind. The figure has his back to him. Jacobs moves lightly over the gravel. Twenty yards away he can hear ringing from the man’s phone before Jacobs hears his own prerecorded voice. The man on the phone turns this way and that. I could shoot him right now, Jacobs thinks. I could walk right up and put a bullet in the back of his head. The only problem with that is Jacobs isn’t sure the guy has the money on him.
“I’m right here, Bobby,” Jacobs says.
Bobby nearly drops the phone into the gravel.
“Jesus,” Bobby says. “You scared the freak out of me.”
“Why so jumpy?” Jacobs asks. If either of them should be jumpy it should be Jacobs. After all, he’s never contemplated murder before.
“If you saw the gator I nearly hit on the causeway, you’d be a little freaked out to.”
“Gators? They’re all over Florida.”
“I thought this one was a man lying in the road.”
“So you got out to check?”
“Hell no. I drove around it.” Bobby slaps a hand against his neck. It is too cold for mosquitoes but the guy is on edge. “I hate this state. I can’t wait to leave it.” He looks around the rocket garden. “Why we meeting here?”
“Look at the moon,” Jacobs says.
This perplexes Bobby. “Yeah. It’s the moon.”
True, it is spectacular. Full and bright. It peeks out behind the red bell atop the Mercury rocket. The lunar landscape’s detail is clear enough to see with the naked eye.
“Did you bring the money?” Jacobs asks.
“Did you bring the printouts?”
Jacobs reaches behind his back. The gun is still there. So is the creased manila envelope in his back pocket. He takes out the envelope stuffed with postcards.
“Right here,” Jacobs says.
“Money is back in my car,” Bobby says. “Let’s go get it.”
Jacobs studies the young rocket scientist. He senses Bobby wants the ordeal to be finished. Not yet thirty, Bobby Grissom—no relation that he knew of to the astronaut of the same last name—is the rocket man in charge of the Mars Environmental Exploration Project, or MEEP. His task? Search the Martian landscape for life-sustaining materials for future manned expeditions. Privately funded by a west coast computer billionaire, the pressure on the young guy’s shoulders must be massive. Like a G4 pull without ever leaving the planet. Desperate to show results, Bobby Grissom fudged his data.
Bumping into Jacobs the night he tried to sabotage his own project wasn’t helping his reputation.
“You coming?” Bobby asks.
“Hold on,” Jacobs says. “Just look at that moon.” Jacobs pulls a pair of sunglasses out of his pocket and puts them on.
Bobby laughs. “You afraid of going blind looking at the moon?”
Jacobs ignores the question. He lowers his gaze from the moon to one of the illuminated launch pads. Just over a mile away, the night sky erupts in a flash of orange white. There is a rush of boiling orange and black clouds. The rumbling intensifies. Bobby stares stupidly at the sky. He is saying something but Jacobs doesn’t hear him. The thunder in the heavens drowns out the cry of the frightened birds, Bobby’s screams, and the gun’s shot.
Jacobs watches the vapor trail extending behind the rocket’s engines as if it is pushing the rocket free of the earth’s gravitational pull. Aboard the payload is one of Bobby Grissom’s dummy test probes, bound for the moon for a trial run. A month from now it will be all over the news that Robert Grissom’s grand plan to find a life-sustaining environment on Mars was nothing more than a sham. It will explain why on the night after the test launch of his probe his body is found in the rocket garden.
Why he is holding the gun he used to blow his brains out. Why a half a million dollars of the billionaire’s money is missing from the research account. Someone is bound to point out the irony between working with projectiles and using one to end his life.
Jacobs tucks the gun into Bobby’s hand. He reaches into Bobby’s pocket for the car keys and what else does he find? Bobby has brought his own gun along. Little snub nose .22. Mommy’s Little Helper. Jacobs wonders why Bobby didn’t pull it on him to begin with. Maybe the guy had planned to off himself for real. He puts the gun into the pocket of the custodian’s jacket.
There are two cars out front. Jacobs goes to the one that isn’t his. He uses the key fob to unlock the car. The taillights flash and then the dome light goes on as the driver’s side door swings open. A thin, young woman gets out of the car. Jacobs stops walking.
“Where’s Bobby?” the woman asks.
“He’s back there,” Jacobs says. He turns and points at the tops of the rockets rising over the Visitor Center roof. “Watching the launch of his probe.” When he turns back to the woman, she is holding a large, heavy, gun on him. Instinctively Jacobs reaches behind him for his gun. All he feels is the small of his back. His shirt is damp.
“Bobby said you might try something like this,” the woman says. She brings her other hand up to her gun holding hand. She is trying to steady herself. “He brought me along in case you tried something at the car. But I guess you did what you did back there.”
Jacobs watches her. He has seen her around the labs. Probably a research assistant. Late nights, shared vision, all the chemicals churning in their young bodies.
“You knew the probe was a bust, didn’t you?” Jacobs asks.
“It was never going to work. Bobby knew it was only so long before his scam was discovered. He wanted to get out of town before the launch, but then you told him you knew he was up to something. I kept asking him how a guy who watches clouds could have figured out what he was doing, but he said it didn’t matter because you had proof of his tampering.”
She lowers one of her hands and flexes her fingers. Jacobs takes a step forward. The woman brings her hands together again. The gun points at Jacobs’ chest. He stops.
“Not so fast, honey,” she says. “Tell me what you know.”
Jacobs shrugs and slips his hands into the pockets of the custodian jacket. “All I know,” Jacobs says “was he was here late one night and he saw me. When he asked me about what I saw, I told him I saw him. A few days later I said there were shots from the security cameras with him in them and I had accessed them while I was monitoring a couple of low depressions coming up from the Keys.”
“What do you really know?”
“That the guy had a guilty conscious. Or a greedy conscious. He was ready to give me half a million dollars to shut up, so he must have been sitting on a helluva a lot more.”
The woman laughs. “You’d be surprised.” She pats the trunk of the car.
“He never planned on giving me my cut, did he?” Jacobs asked.
“I think you knew that. That’s why he’s back there and you’re out here.”
“We could split it,” Jacobs says. “You go your way and I go mine.”
“Sorry, hon. I can’t risk it.”
She steadies the gun a second time but Jacob fires the .22 from his pocket before she can squeeze the trigger. The bullet tears open the fabric of the jacket and bores into her chest like the MEEP rocket hitting the lunar surface. She flops over backwards on the trunk and slides off to the pavement. Her hands twitch and then she lays still.
Jacobs opens the trunk. There are three duffle bags in the trunk and each is filled with bundles of cash. He transfers them to his car. Sweats beads once more on his forehead as he lifts the heavy bags one at a time. When he is done with the money bags, he drags the woman into the passenger seat of the other car. By now he is drenched in sweat. He takes off the jacket and rolls it into a ball he tosses in to the backseat of Bobby’s car. He keeps her large gun and drops the .22 into the back seat after he wipes the small gun clean.
Jacobs drives Bobby’s car to the causeway. The ditches are deep and full of water. He lowers the windows and rolls the car off the road. Gators along the space center’s roads are large for a reason.
They like to eat.
Jacobs walks the two miles back to the Visitor Center parking lot. Off to his left the lights of the launch building are shutting down. He looks to the sky he knows better than any person on the planet. It’s as clear as his future. The MEEP rocket is just a flickering dot that doesn’t seem to be moving any closer to the full, bright moon. He uses it as a beacon to lead him back to the rocket garden until at last, like the two rocket scientists who weren’t all that bright after all, it blinks out and dies.
When Egos Collide
By Laird Long
Martian Territory Correctional Facility. Warden’s office. Night.
The warden bangs his pipe against the side of his oak desk. Ashes fall into the wastebasket. A robot stands at the door. A tall, thin man sits in a chair in front of the warden’s desk. The man is agitat—
“Get on with it!”
The warden speaks: “I say, do you mean to tell me that you’re turning yourself in? Is that the nuts and bolts of it?”
“Correct.”
“You say that your life is in danger?”
“Right.”
“And just who or what is going to kill you, old boy?”
“I am.”
Silence.
“You know, we’re not in the business of providing free lodgings and vittles to every space-suited Tom, Dick, and Harry who thinks they might like to do away with themselves. You see, under regulation 1.22 of the Freedom Revocation Act, I—”
“Stow the regulations in the dark side of your moon, brother.”
“Now see here, I’m an official of the United Nations penal implanting program here on Mars; I don’t have to take that sort of back-talk. Therefore, I would suggest that you ooze back into the spacepod from whence you were spawned and show me your afterburners, or I will personally get up from this desk and give you a swift kick in the knackers. How do you like them apples?”
“Warden, I think we should hear what the gentleman has to say. It may be useful.”
“Ursula, I believe I told you before that you were not to speak unless spoken to, and only by me. Now, do I readjust your programming, or are you going to keep quie—”
“You have no authority to reprogram my functions, Warden. Only Dr. Galindez in Houston can—”
“I’ll solder that mouth of yours shut if—”
“Lovers, can we discuss my situation before you file for divorce?”
“Quite right, old chap. Sorry. Just because we’re on Mars, doesn’t mean we can’t be civilized. Would you care for a cup of moonsap? No? Okay, well why don’t you tell me all about it? And keep a civil tongue in your head, please.”
“Have you heard anything about the crisis on Earth? Does any news reach this place, or does it freeze in space?”
“Indeed, I have had reports concerning a madman attempting to extort ten billion dollars from the United States government, if that is what you are referring to. I believe he says that he has some sort of apparatus that can push the Earth out of orbit unless—”
“Pull.”
“I say, what?”
“Pull the Earth out of orbit. You couldn’t possibly push the Earth out of orbit; to do so would require a power source so incredible—”
“Yes, well, I’m sure I wouldn’t know.”
“That much is obvious.”
“Either way sounds preposterous to me. Anyway, that’s all I know of the situation, you see all my information coming from Earth takes twelve hours to arrive and vice versa. That way I can edit out the dirty words, old boy.”
“Funny. Well, I won’t keep you guessing another Martian half-day: the crisis is over. The Earth is saved.”
“Oh, good show. You know,
it was going to get awfully crowded on Mars, otherwise.”
“You don’t seem too concerned.”
“My dear man, if I worried about every crackpot on Earth, I’d have no time to worry about my crackpots here on Mars.”
“What exactly do you do here, when you’re not rolling out the welcome mat?”
“My work is to monitor and maintain this facility, the first of its kind I might add, and the ten thousand prisoners kept here.”
“Ten thousand? That sounds crowded.”
“I can’t say I’ve had any complaints. You see, most of the prisoners never see each other, or me, as the vast majority are confined to their cells permanently. This is no playpen like your correctional facility at Attica, for example. We house the most despicable people born of man and woman. Not just politicians, mind you, but murderers and rapists and lawyers, as well. These are the people who have opted out of the brain-rehabilitation program. And since the death penalty was abolished by World resolution, these animals have to be kept in a high-security farm somewhere, and that somewhere is here. I have a staff of a thousand robots to tend to the chores and guard the prisoners. Ursula here is Captain of the Robot Guard. Not, I say not that guarding the prisoners is really required, as this prison is quite escape-proof. Outside of the artificially created, pressurized atmosphere of this prison lies the inhospitable and poisonous Martian atmosphere—an atmosphere completely devoid of oxygen. There are only two spacesuits, and they are kept locked away, with only myself having the key. I count them daily. We have no spacecraft of our own, as everything comes from Earth, one way.”
“Why did you let me in?”
“We do honor distress signals, old sock. And your ship was searched, as were you, before you got as far as my office.”
“Yes, can you ask your friend Ursula with the big metal hands for my colon back—I may be needing it later.”
“They can be a little—cold, can’t they?”
“His sphincter was clean, Warden.”
“What in blazes—”
“He had no concealed weapons of any kind.”
“Oh yes, I see. Thank you, Ursula.” Something like a smile creases Ursula’s metal face.
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