Torino Nine

by Mark Anson

  ‘Doctor, I asked you not to touch anything,’ Clare said quietly.

  ‘Forgive me captain, I could not help myself. You see, these memory modules will only retain their data if they are kept very cold. I was checking that they were still immersed in their coolant liquid. You can see the liquid behind the panels if you direct your lights this way – and this means, this means …’ his voice tailed off.

  ‘Yes, doctor, what does it mean?’ Clare asked, and then realised that Mordecai seemed to be struggling with his emotions; he was on the verge of tears. He controlled himself with an effort. ‘This means, captain, that all these memories are still intact. I can read them, and I can try to find out what went wrong, and why the Ulysses came here.’ He bowed his head.

  They were silent for a moment, letting him recover himself. Collins was the first to speak. ‘Just how much memory is in here, doctor?’

  Mordecai looked up. ‘Twenty-five modules to each rack, and forty racks surrounding you –’ Mordecai swung his arm round the room. ‘A thousand memory modules, each holding a zettabyte of date. Ten to the twenty-four. A yottabyte of data, all held in quantum memory traps.’ Mordecai’s eyes were shining.

  ‘I’ve never seen this much memory in one place,’ Collins said in awe.

  ‘It was one of our biggest challenges, to get it small enough to fit into a spacecraft. We had to make use of experimental technology, to get the memory modules small enough. Even with the advances since then, this is still the densest memory array ever built.’ A note of pride came into Mordecai’s voice.

  Collins pulled himself slowly along the curve of memory banks. ‘Hey, some of these have got the names of the crew – Hutchinson, Moreno, Young – these are those guy’s memories.’

  Clare gazed around the deck. For some reason, it was an eerie thought, to be surrounded by the preserved thoughts of the dead crew. Missing crew, she corrected herself. There was still one place where they hadn’t looked.

  ‘We need to search the hibernaculum,’ she said, indicating the large hatch at the end of the ladder.

  Collins drifted over, and together they looked at the hatch. ‘Looks like new,’ he said, ‘evidently they didn’t come down here very much.’

  Clare said nothing, but opened the hatch and swung the heavy door aside. A sigh of slightly warmer air flowed out; the insulation surrounding the chamber had kept it at a stable temperature long after the rest of the ship froze. They moved inside, running their lights along the rows of stasis chambers that lined the walls. Mordecai remained behind on the deck above; clearly the memory array held more interest for him.

  ‘These chambers are different,’ Collins observed. Each of the chambers had the same large drum-shaped device at the head end, and the covers were shaped to close shut round them. A heavy cable ran from each of the head units, and snaked off back up into the deck above; evidently to reload the memory engrams into the crew as they awoke.

  Collins glanced up, towards the memory deck. ‘So what’s the chair up there for, if the memories get downloaded here?’ he said, ‘I don’t get it.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ Clare said quietly. She approached the nearest stasis unit with a sense of foreboding. Its cover was opaque; a thin film of frost covered the transparent plastic. She wiped it clear and peered in, steeling herself for what she might find.

  The chamber was empty. She moved round the others; empty as well. In little more than a minute, they had confirmed that there were no crew, alive or dead, in the chamber.

  She looked at Collins, who stood there, a look of surprise on his face. ‘So where are they all?’ he said at last.

  ‘Not on this ship, that’s for sure. Apart from that bone, which only accounts for one of them, there’s nobody left on board. For some reason, they left the ship.’

  ‘That explains the missing lander.’

  ‘Yup. And the only place in range of the lander is Psyche. Which is a barren lump of iron. And they went to extreme measures to hide this ship from anyone trying to find out where they went.’

  PART IV

  The Kingdom of Shadows

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  In the blackness of space behind the asteroid Psyche, two spacecraft floated, held together by the powerful grip of their docking clamps. The larger one, its slender shape ornamented by strangely curved radiator fins and sabre-like antenna arrays, seemed dark and dead, while in contrast the shorter, military-looking ship facing it was covered with lights, shining brilliantly like tiny gems in the darkness.

  It started slowly at first; just the occasional glimpse of a light flickering out through the grimy portholes. As the hours passed, the larger ship’s internal lighting came on; first the red glow of emergency lighting, then as the vessel slowly regained power, in white. Then the external lights came on – just the navigation lights at first, then the flashing strobe beacons, and finally the spotlights that illuminated the USAC lettering on its side and its name.

  Eventually, an even more promising sign emerged – clouds of gas and vapour venting from the thrusters and from the reactor housing at the rear, followed by short test firings of the thrusters. Then, after a long pause, the two ships turned slowly as one, and come to rest pointing in a different direction. The six rocket engines of the smaller ship fired for several seconds, and the two ships started to move slowly out from the asteroid’s shadow.

  ‘How long until we can bring up the reactor?’ Captain Clare Foster’s voice was brisk and efficient as she sat on the flight deck of the Mesa.

  ‘At least another two hours.’ Collins’s voice came from the flight deck speakers, from where he sat on the Ulysses. ‘Got to let everything come up to temperature and stabilise first, or we risk damaging the fuel channels. This is one cold ship.’

  Clare didn’t respond, but sighed inwardly. It had taken nearly two hours to run the umbilical power cable from the Mesa into the Ulysses, and begin the slow process of restoring power to the derelict ship. Right now, the Mesa was supplying all the power, and its reactor was running at high cruise setting to keep both ships going. Not until they brought the Ulysses’ reactor online would it be able to support itself.

  Way below her, at the very end of the Ulysses, behind the thick metal of its neutron shield, the heating elements were warming the frozen reactor coolant in the tanks, pipework and pumps. Only when it had reached its operating temperature, would they be able to start the pumps and withdraw the control rods, to allow the reactor to begin generating heat and power. Clare wasn’t even certain that this had ever been attempted before; no ship had ever been this long without power in the cold of space. There were no tried and tested procedures for it; they had to improvise, using the guidelines supplied by Mordecai.

  The thought jogged her mind. ‘Where’s our passenger?’

  ‘On the third deck.’

  ‘What’s he doing there?’

  ‘Dunno. Seems to be checking over the systems. He hasn’t moved from there for hours, except to ask for more power so he can restart the hibernation systems.’

  ‘He’ll have to wait for a while; we can’t risk overloading the umbilical, it’s on maximum power as it is. I’ll go down and see him in a few minutes. I need to get a message off first.’

  ‘Roger.’

  Clare glanced up out of the forward windows. Ahead of the ship and slightly to the right, the irregular shape of Psyche’s dark side blotted out the Sun and the stars. They were moving slowly retrograde, and she watched as the bright star of Earth – a thin waxing crescent in the telescope – emerged from behind the asteroid.

  The chatter on the deep space channel, which had been almost silent while they were behind Psyche, came slowly back as they came out of radio fade. The transmissions from Earth crackled and hissed with the disruption caused by the proximity to the Sun, and Clare realised that this was only going to get worse – Earth was moving into conjunction.

  She checked the ephemeris while she listened – full inferior conjunction on August 14, but radio
would be unusable for two weeks either side. That meant using the Mars relay, which was only usable for eight hours each day, and a time delay nearly four times as long. They had to make maximum use of the direct link while it lasted.

  She checked the antenna boresight display. The crosshairs were centred on Earth, as it peeped out again from behind the asteroid. It was clear of the mountains – that was good enough. She marshalled her thoughts, and opened a channel.

  She spoke briskly, summarising their situation, reporting that they had successfully docked with the Ulysses, and were in the process of powering up the derelict vessel. She also reported the bone and fragments they had found, but was careful to make only a factual report; she could imagine how many people would be poring over her words afterwards. After a brief pause, she turned to the fate of the crew:

  ‘We have confirmed that apart from these few remains, which are possibly just of one individual, there are no crew members on board. The evidence so far suggests strongly that the crew – the remaining crew – left the ship in the lander at some point after the Ulysses arrived at the L2 libration point. We do not know the destination of the lander but it is a reasonable conjecture that it was the surface of Psyche. Wherever they chose to go, however, the air supplies in the lander cannot have sustained them beyond a maximum of fifteen days – the duration of the planned Titan landing mission. Therefore, we must assume that the crew of the Ulysses is dead.

  ‘We do not know what there is on Psyche, that could possibly have caused them to abandon their mission and leave the ship. If you have more information, please advise.’

  She paused a moment, thinking if there anything she could add at this stage. She wondered if she should mention the drawings, then decided that she should keep it to essential information for now; she could always add more later.

  ‘This concludes our initial report. I am satisfied that there is no danger to ourselves or the Mesa and I have turned over the investigation to Doctor Mordecai. Awaiting further instructions. Mesa, out.’

  She released the record button and sat back, considering her next priorities.

  Thus far, their mission had been a success; they had achieved most of their primary goals, with one glaring omission – discovering the fate of the crew. None of it made any sense, Clare thought, for the twentieth time. Why abandon the safety of a working ship and go down to a barren asteroid? Of course, they had no food – but there was nothing to eat on the surface of Psyche either.

  She found herself staring at one of the strange drawings. She had brought it back with her from the Ulysses, and clipped it to one side of the Mesa’s control panel.

  It looked like a gate or doorway, but to what? Why so many drawings of it, all of them identical, and by different artists? Some of the crew lacked the skills of others, and were crude by comparison, but they were unmistakeably the same object, drawn from slightly different perspectives and distances.

  This one was unusually detailed and showed many details of the cliff face in which the doorway stood. It was at the end of a cleft in some rocks, and there were stars in the black sky above the cliff. None of the pictures appeared to be in daylight; the ones that showed the sky were always at night. There were no trees or vegetation in any of the drawings, or indeed anything that gave a clue as to where it was.

  She shook her head; it would have to wait for the analysts on Earth to identify the location. She got up from the commander’s seat, and pushed herself over to the central ladder. She propelled herself forwards with her arms towards the airlock, stopping to open and close the inner hatches as she floated through into the Ulysses. As she sailed on down into the ship, she waved at Collins, sitting upside-down on the flight deck, and continued through the crew lounge, finally ending up in the third chamber, forty metres from her seat on the Mesa.

  The room was lit, and the console by the couch appeared to be working, but the memory banks were still dark. Mordecai was standing by the console, and he turned to her as she landed.

  ‘Captain, I was just explaining to your lieutenant, I need power.’ He spoke urgently, and seemed agitated. ‘The memory banks are warming up with the ship; I have to turn the cooling systems back on, or we risk losing the data.’

  ‘I’m sorry doctor, but I can’t put any more power through the umbilical cable. As soon as I get the reactor started, you can have as much power as you want.’

  ‘I need power now, or we risk losing vital data!’

  Clare considered. ‘How much do your memory banks draw?’

  ‘Ten kilowatts.’

  ‘Well, we can reduce power to the fuel heaters. But it’s only going to delay us getting the reactor started.’

  ‘I think we can tolerate that. If we lose the data, then everything we’ve accomplished so far could be lost – we will never know what happened.’

  She nodded. ‘Okay, give me a moment.’ She pulled herself over to an intercom speaker. ‘Hey, Collins.’

  ‘Captain.’

  ‘Can you reduce power to the heaters by at least ten kilowatts? Then when you’ve done that, give the doctor his power.’

  ‘Roger that.’

  The ship’s lighting flickered fractionally as the power loads rebalanced, and a few moments later, blue lighting came on round the perimeter of the room. Mordecai relaxed visibly as the memory banks started coming online, rack by rack, in a forest of coloured lights as they flickered through their self-test routines.

  ‘Thank you, captain.’ He smiled. ‘You’ve taken the right decision. I’ll get back to my work.’

  ‘Well doctor, there’s something you can do for me.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ He smiled, but she could see he was barely suppressing his impatience.

  ‘Can you tell me if the hibernation units were used at all, on the journey from the Jupiter system to here? It just strikes me as odd that they would make such a journey in real time, if they could go into hibernation.’

  ‘What? Oh, yes, I see.’ He frowned, and punched some commands into the console. After a few moments, his head came up. ‘No, they were operational, but none of them were used.’

  ‘Why do you think that would be, doctor?’

  Mordecai looked away for a moment, then back to Clare. ‘I don’t know, but I would suspect that something might have happened, that made them reluctant to go into hibernation again.’

  ‘Like what?’

  He shrugged. ‘A bad revival, perhaps. We know the emergency revival sequence was triggered. That’s shorter than the normal one. You saw what a bad revival did to your lieutenant. Maybe they didn’t want to take the risk of anyone having another.’

  ‘Yes.’ It did make some sort of sense. But once again, she couldn’t help feeling that Mordecai was concealing something from her. Not exactly lying, just telling her what she needed to know, and no more. Well, there was one possible way of finding out. ‘Doctor, I’m going to start going through the ship’s log. Maybe it will have some clues as to what went on.’

  ‘I must ask you not to do that yet, captain. The logs are vital evidence; I haven’t had time to examine them yet.’

  ‘They may tell us where the crew went, and we still don’t know that. Our stay time here is limited; if they’re down on the surface of Psyche then I need to get searching for them as soon as I can.’ Clare kept her voice reasonable, but she wanted to see how far he would go.

  ‘I must insist that you leave the examination of the logs to me.’ His face darkened.

  ‘I’ll take a copy and read that; I won’t access the original. There’s no chance of me damaging the original data.’

  ‘I must insist that—’

  ‘—and I can request permission direct from USAC if I need to,’ she finished up quietly. Mordecai glared at her, but it seemed to have worked; she had guessed he wouldn’t want such a request going out to his superiors; it might raise some questions.

  ‘Oh – very well captain, but this is over my objections, do you understand?’ He was trying not to shout.<
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  ‘Perfectly, doctor. I’ll take great care, I assure you.’

  He pushed himself away, and turned his back on her to hide his annoyance.

  ‘By the way, doctor, do you have any objections if I restart the shipboard rotation? It should make it easier for us all to work.’

  He shook his head, his back to her. Clare pulled herself back up the ladder, wondering why he was so sensitive about the mission log. What could it possibly contain that he wouldn’t want her to see?

  She emerged onto the Ulysses’ command deck, and floated over to Collins. ‘Everything okay?’

  ‘Okay for a derelict spacecraft, sure. Estimate another two hours before we can begin turning the pumps over.’

  ‘Are you okay if I restart rotation? We could all do with some gravity.’

  ‘Yes, sure. The thrusters are slaved to the Mesa’s.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll get on it when I get back upstairs.’ She moved to go, and then stopped. ‘Have you tried accessing the ship’s log yet?’

  He turned around to face her. ‘No – you said don’t touch anything I didn’t need to.’

  ‘Can you try it now?’

  ‘Sure.’ Collins punched up some commands on a nearby console, and pointed at a file display. ‘That’s it, right there. Looks like it’s encrypted.’

  ‘That’s okay; I’ve got the captain’s command code. Can you make a copy, and send it up to the Mesa? I’ll go through it up there.’

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  It turned out to be slow going.

  She first restarted the ships’ rotation, sending them turning around each other at their common centre of mass, which was somewhere in the airlock module. This way, there was a semblance of gravity on both ships, although it would fade away to zero for anyone passing through the airlocks between the two ships.

  She called Collins and Mordecai in turn, to check that everything was okay, and then locked the rotation controls in automatic, before turning her attention to the Ulysses’ log.