Beltrunner

by O’Brien, Sean

  “I’m sorry,” Collier said.

  Now Su looked at him, her eyes moist. “What would you know about it?” she snapped. “You don’t have children, and your only relationship with a woman ended so badly she is out to capture you for your secret.”

  Collier felt the sting of her words, but was more concerned with her own feelings. Something had hurt her deeply — enough to crack her shell and cause her pain enough to be noticed by an outsider. He knew her well enough to know how much it was costing her to reveal her innermost pain.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, moving closer to her, tentatively reaching out his arms. She either did not notice or did not care, for she did not shrink from him. He continued to close the distance between them, when she made the barest movement toward him, and they embraced.

  He held her while she allowed herself to be held. Had he been asked, he would not have been able to estimate how long they stood together.

  The moment lived its brief life and died gently. Su and Collier separated, but when they broke off the embrace, they did not retreat to their customary distance.

  He looked at her, seeing her not as a psychiatrist, but as a kindred soul. She, like him, was lonely in her own way — she surrounded by people, he cut off from them. Perhaps it was the loneliness, perhaps it was the budding of a genuine love that sparked the kiss.

  *

  The sessions that followed for the next several days grew more intimate. Su’s questions began clinically, but the discussions that followed were increasingly personal for both of them. Collier touched her now, when she entered the ship, when she left, and during their sessions. They had kissed more than a few times with growing passion.

  After a particularly intense session, Su put her notes down and looked away. “I … I want to ask you something,” she said, her voice unaccountably shaky.

  “You’ve been asking me things for eight days,” Collier said, smiling.

  “That’s not what I mean. What would you think of me if I…”

  “If you what?”

  Su looked directly at him. “I’ve become attracted to you, Collier. You have to have seen that.”

  Collier sighed. “I had noticed something. It’s the same with me.”

  Su paused. Collier looked at her, seeing the expectancy in her eyes. “What?”

  “Are you going to make me ask you?”

  Collier was definitely lost now. “Uh — yes?”

  “I haven’t been with a man for a long time. But I’d like to be with you.”

  “Oh. Me, too. I’d like that, Su.”

  Su nodded, then licked her lips. “I suppose we should discuss contraception,” she said.

  “I’m fixed,” Collier said simply. “Not that I was broken to begin with,” he added.

  She smiled warmly at his humor and flew across the cabin to him. She smoothed his body with her hands. They explored each other, Su’s breath quickening as he caressed her breasts. She both submitted to him and pulled him toward her, managing to be both willing and demanding to be penetrated.

  Afterwards, they were perched somewhat precariously side by side on the bed, Su turned away from Collier and toward the bulkhead. He was squeezed next to her, his legs folded into hers. Although she was not facing him, she was not turned away in shame either.

  “I don’t suppose that was part of your ordinary interview technique,” Collier joked after several minutes of silence.

  To his surprise, Su didn’t laugh, or even chuckle. He raised his head slightly, checking to see if she had fallen asleep, and found her staring at a point on the wall, her mouth turned slightly downward.

  “Su?”

  She closed her eyes, and Collier sat up suddenly. “Hey, what’s the matter?”

  “You need to get away,” she whispered.

  “What?” Collier said, anger growing in him. Was she ashamed of what she had done?

  “You need to get away. Soon, they’ll come for you again.”

  She wasn’t talking about his proximity to her on the bed.

  He turned her by her left shoulder to look at him. “Slow down. Who is coming for me?”

  She allowed him to turn her to face him, placed her right hand gently on his cheek for a moment, then removed it and said in a voice approximating her professional tone, “Tacat. Sh’he’s losing patience with me. They are making contingency plans for a more forceful method of information extraction.”

  Collier simply stared at her.

  “Collier, they know about your secret.”

  He scrambled to his feet and held out a hand to help Su up as well. Both were nude, but there was no longer anything sexual between them. “How?” he asked, retrieving his undergarment singlet from the floor and tossing Su hers.

  She caught her clothes and said, “A transmission from Ceres. Got to Ganymede long before you did. There’s a rather significant bounty on you from one of the corporations.”

  “The Ad Astra Corp. Sure. And they told you that I had a ‘secret’?” His head was spinning. Could all of this have been an elaborate trap? Send in this woman psychologist, seduce him, and try to trick him into revealing something? Maybe the Ganymedians were simply fishing — tell him they knew his secret and then reel him in as he revealed it. His stomach started knotting as he thought about what Su’s real mission might have been.

  “No, of course not. We found that out through other means.” Su smiled without mirth. “There is a significant black market of information in the system. Although we like to think of ourselves as a perfect socialism, we still do considerable trade with the rest of the system. It didn’t take long to discover what the Ad Astra Corporation was after.”

  “Yeah? And what was that?” he said, zipping up his singlet.

  “I’m not sure about the details, but something about a new mining method or a new way to synthesize certain metals. Cheaply and efficiently.”

  “And you were sent here to get it out of me. However you could.” He returned her gaze with a steel-eyed coldness.

  Su spread her hands in supplication. “Not quite. I was supposed to try to get it out of you through the interview, or, failing that, drug induced hypnosis. This,” she turned to the bed slightly, “was not a tactic, Collier.”

  “So why didn’t you?”

  Su sighed and bit her lip slightly. “I got to know you. I can’t say I am in love with you — after just eight days, that’s not reasonable. But I spent enough time with you, learning about you, that you became … well, a person. Not a subject. More specifically, a man.”

  Collier shook his head slowly. “I can’t believe that. Why shouldn’t I think this is all just part of some deeper plan? Get me to admit my secret to you because I am hopelessly in love with you or something like that.”

  Su stepped closer to him, but Collier retreated. “Oh, no,” he said, dropping into a near-crouch. “Keep your needles away from me.”

  Su’s face fell. “I don’t have any needles. Not on me, I mean. There’s a hidden compartment in one of the recorders,” she pointed to the device on the control panel. “Collier, I was nude a moment ago. Where could I hide anything?”

  Collier snorted. “Subdermally. Or in a flesh pocket. Disguised as a nail or a strand of hair. I’m sure your espionage training has dozens of ways.”

  Su sighed. “You’re angry, understandably so. I haven’t had any espionage training, but I understand your point of view. I’ll stay away from you. You’re missing the larger point. You need to get away from Ganymede. I’ve been stalling Tacat and hizzur people for several days, telling them I am close. I don’t know how much longer I can keep it up.”

  “Assuming I believe you are trying to help me, how am I supposed to leave? You have me locked into this drydock. We’re not in launch attitude, and with the extra weight of the cradle, the attitude jets won’t be enough to lift us. Unless y
ou are saying you have the means to free us, which I very much doubt.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Let me guess some more. You are about to ask me to reveal my secret to you, so you can use it to bargain with Tacat for my release. And since I am such a virile male specimen, you have fallen under my masculine spell. How’s that? Am I warm?”

  Su did not react, at least not visibly. “You can waste your breath in sardonic comments, or you can let me help you. I merely need to leave this ship, tell Tacat that my methods aren’t working, and you will see that Ganymedian engineers are more than capable of cutting their way into your ship to get at you.”

  Collier stared at her for a long moment. He had never believed that he possessed some kind of special power to discern truth from falsehood merely by looking into the eyes of the suspect, but he was at a loss as to how else he was going to evaluate Su’s claim. Despite the eight days, and despite their lovemaking, Su was still alien to him. She was a woman on a moon where even being a single gender was consider gauche, and was part of a collectivist society that Collier understood only superficially. She was older than he was but looked far younger. Normal reference points were of no use to him.

  I never liked normal, he thought. “All right. I trust you,” he growled.

  “You do? Why?” Su asked.

  Collier’s threw his hands up. “Shit, does it matter?”

  “I’m just curious. It’s my job.”

  Collier stared at her for another moment, shaking his head slightly. He answered with incredulity, “I don’t know. I guess because I don’t really have any other choices. And because you are hurting.”

  “I’m not hurting.”

  “Yeah,” Collier said, “you are. You showed me how much you are hurting. Living here in this prison has damaged you. I figure anyone who can show someone else that much pain must be an honest person.”

  “I could have been lying about my past.”

  Collier flexed his fingers. “What do you want from me? I told you I trust you — now it has to make sense?”

  Su met his ragged voice with calm. “In a way, yes, it does. I want to know how—”

  Collier interrupted. “This has to be the strangest goddamn conversation I’ve ever had. Listen, we’re both hurting. Somehow, we found each other. It doesn’t make sense. Nothing on this hermaphroditic, Marxist collectivist society makes sense. Nothing in the Belt makes sense, and maybe nothing in the system or the whole goddamn galaxy does. But here we are anyway. That’s enough right now for me. How about you?”

  Su laughed — a strangely musical laugh that was at once melodic and unrestrained. “All right. I concede.”

  “Super. Can we plan the escape now?”

  Su continued to smile. “Of course.”

  “Good, because I am out of ideas. And I don’t think I’m going to get a shipment of any new ones for a while.” Collier turned, indicating that Su should follow, and entered the control suite. “Sancho, have you been listening?”

  “Of course, Skipper. Didn’t understand all of what I heard, though. Especially the stuff before your conversation just now. Elevated heart rate, increased blood flow to your—”

  “Skip it,” Collier said. “Assuming we could free ourselves of the cradle, will the ventral maneuvering thrusters have enough lift to get us off the surface?”

  “Not even close, Skipper. Even if we were in a tail-down position, we couldn’t do it. We don’t have enough thrust with the main engines. We’re not a craft designed to touch down anywhere.”

  Collier nodded. He knew the answer before he had asked it, and he was chagrined to admit that he had hoped Sancho would come up with an answer where he couldn’t. He turned to Su. “What do you suggest?”

  Su said in surprise, “Me? I don’t have any idea about spaceship operations.”

  “Ganymede does business with the rest of the system, you said? What kind of business?”

  “Well, again, I’m not entirely sure. Let me think for a moment,” Su said, and stared off at a deck plate for a few seconds. When she spoke again, her voice was slow, as if feeling her way through a thought. “It seems to me we have goods on Ganymede we could not have produced locally. We do not advertise this — that is, no one refers to a piece of fruit as ‘Martian peaches’ for example, but what little I know about our hydroponics and machine shops would support the assertion that we must sometimes trade for goods we cannot manufacture or grow on Ganymede.” She had resumed her professional demeanor, but now Collier did not see it as a shield but as part of her character. Inexplicably, he found himself growing slightly aroused by her precise, clipped tones.

  “Okay,” he said, willing himself to concentrate on the issue. “That means you must have a way to receive spaceships. Of course you do,” he said suddenly, “because you were able to capture mine.” He addressed the computer. “Sancho.”

  “Yes, Skipper?”

  “You said the gravity assist braking worked well?”

  “You bet it did. The Ganymedians seemed to have it well under control.”

  “Like they had done it many times before,” Collier murmured.

  “I’d say that’s a pretty good assumption, Skipper.”

  Collier nodded and turned back to Su. “You guys receive cargo shipments from elsewhere in the system.” He wracked his brain and tried to remember if he had ever heard of a launch from Ceres to Ganymede, and had to admit he may have. It was not anything he would have even remotely considered as part of his own business — only a corporation with its own launch system would attempt it. Similar to the launches to Mars, Earth, and Luna.

  But Ganymede’s receipt of cargo did not interest him. “Do you ever export anything besides information?”

  Su answered quietly, “We haven’t for a long time.”

  Collier waited for her to complete the thought.

  Su looked at him and said softly, “When we were first established eighty years ago, we were never going to be a permanent community. No,” she corrected herself, “that’s not quite right. The facility itself — the habitation pods, research labs, and so on, those were of course going to be permanent — but there was supposed to be a rotation of personnel. The idea was that the station — that’s what we called it back then, not a ‘community’ — would house some of the best and brightest exoscientists in the system. You’d come here for a solar year or so, contribute your part, then leave to go back to your home world so much the richer. Over time, Ganymede would become the ‘vacation home’ to the intelligentsia. That was the idea. It didn’t work out that way,” she added bitterly.

  Despite his eagerness to escape, Collier found himself fascinated by the story. “What do you mean? What happened?”

  “The Originals — the scientists and engineers who were in the first wave of the colonists — did not all want to return to their home worlds once their semesters were up.”

  “Semesters?”

  “About half a solar year. Twenty-five Ganymede revolutions,” Su explained parenthetically. “Many of them wanted to stay, perhaps indefinitely. It was not a good time.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “My mother and father were Originals. They were part of the faction that wanted to stay. Not only that, but those who wanted to stay felt like the building of the Startram was therefore a waste of time and resources. Resources that could and should be used for building the community itself.”

  Collier’s voice rose in hope. “Startram … a non-rocket launch system?”

  Su nodded.

  “Is there one? Did they build it?”

  “Yes and no,” Su said slowly.

  “’Yes and no’?” Collier almost shouted. “What does that mean? Is there a launch system or not?”

  Su glared at him. “If you’ll shut up for a second, I’ll tell you.”

  “Sorry.”


  “The system was supposed to be some kind of gun, as I understand it, that would literally shoot spacecraft away from Ganymede at high speed. I don’t know the specifics of the—”

  “A mass driver. Probably a coilgun,” Collier mused. If such a launch system existed on Ganymede, and it had been designed for human passenger tolerances, it would probably be many kilometers long. It would also take up a considerable amount of power. “Was it built?”

  “Yes, but it was only used once. To send back home the Originals who did not wish to stay. After that, I don’t know what happened to it.”

  “How did the Originals get home? Didn’t the colony dismantle their colonization ship for parts to build the settlement?”

  “Yes, but we received a second load of settlers a year after the first Originals got here. That ship was used on the return journey.” Su’s face betrayed a sadness that did not match her story.

  “Something happened, didn’t it?”

  Su looked at a point in space between them, her eyes focused on the past. “We never did find out. All we know is that an accident destroyed the ship soon after it left here. We lost transmission and our telescopes saw the debris. The accident served to keep the remaining settlers on Ganymede. Despite all the intellect and rationality, a superstition developed around leaving Ganymede. No one said it directly, but when I was growing up, it was just sort of accepted that you didn’t leave the community, or something bad would happen to you.”

  “And the coilgun?”

  Su shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s rarely talked about, and when it is, there is an air of dread around it.”

  “How did you come to learn all of this? I mean, if no one talks about it—”

  “It’s possible to find it. We prize knowledge here, remember. Even though the powers that be would rather some things not be spoken of, as a psychologist, I have access to stories in my professional capacity an ordinary community member would not. I learned the myths and superstitions from my parents, who did an excellent job inculcating me into the Ganymedian culture,” Su made no attempt to hide her venom. “As I grew older, I wanted to find the truth behind the myths. I sought out others, especially other Originals and Firsters, who might know the story first- or secondhand. That led me to some hidden data files in the community computer.”