Crescent

by Phil Rossi

  “He’s going to want more money, that one,” Cortez said and sighed. He gestured over to Vegan with a cock of his head. Vegan noticed and waved one gnarled hand.

  “Probably. This is his hangar, after all, Donovan,” Gerald said and smirked. He looked over to Ina for a moment, watching her shove a large duffle bag into Bean’s belly hatch. Donovan was just about to speak, but Gerald didn’t give him a chance. “Just be happy Vegan is greedier than he is loyal. By the way, this Core Sec auditor…  He discovered the deleted departure record. Doesn’t sound like he figured out where we parked your little lifeboat, but you might want to be a little more careful with this run. That is, if you don’t want Core Sec or Kendall knowing about your…  intellectual pursuits.”

  With that, Gerald patted Cortez on the thick arm and then climbed up the docking ladder.

  When Gerald poked his head through the bridge hatch he found Ina already seated in the control couch, the black harness crossed over her chest. Her smile turned into a pout as Gerald climbed the rest of the way onto the bridge.

  “Hurry up,” Ina said. “I don’t know how much longer I can wait.”

  He wasn’t sure if she was kidding or not. She seemed not to be.

  “Just be happy we’re going at all. I had my doubts and I was ready to say no,” Gerald said. He still couldn’t believe he was going through with the trip after the trauma of the lifeboat job.

  “Well, don’t you worry. This is for the best and you know it,” she said.

  This struck Gerald as a strange response.

  “It means the world to my dad,” she explained, “and so it means the world to me. Since he retired, my dad has been so lost. You see, he threw himself into being a surgeon after mom died. And when he hung up the smock, he didn’t have his work to focus on anymore…  he started to fade away. When I introduced him to archaeology… or rather forced him into pursuing it as a hobby, well, it…  it really got him going again. Look at him now. It’s his life. So, you do you see how helping us means the world to me?”

  That’s not what she was getting and you know it, Gerry. His subconscious had adopted Marisa’s voice, and her voice sounded pissed off. That skinny little bitch isn’t telling you something. And it has to do with what’s going on here on Crescent. She knows something, Gerry. Better be careful. An added level of caution was not a bad idea. He seated himself in the control couch and crossed the harness over his own chest. It locked into place with a click.

  “We’ll be on the surface in just under two hours,” Gerald told her. “Prior to entry we’re going to have to put life suits on, in case we lose pressure or anything else goes wacky. Okay?” Gerald was none-too-thrilled at the prospect of donning the too-small life suit again.

  “Sure,” Ina replied with a serious nod. “You can never be too careful.”

  She knows something.

  Gerald could see Walter Vegan approaching Cortez via one of Bean’s external camera feeds. Gerald felt bad for Ina’s father. Vegan was not only a slimy fuck, he smelled like asshole, too.

  “Bean. Do you have the updated coordinates for the Anrar site synchronized with current surface scans of the planet?”

  “Of course, Captain. A foolish question.”

  “Well then. Let’s go. Time isn’t on our side here.”

  Bean lifted from the deck. The hangar’s auto-guidance system carried the ship toward the large, shimmering docking porthole. The ion field that stretched across the big opening kept the station’s atmosphere and the vacuum of open space politely sequestered to their respective sides. The barrier shifted like heat rising off hot asphalt. Ina put a hand on Gerald’s knee and blinked up at him. He patted her hand and called up several control overlays. He felt ill at ease. Touching her cool flesh only seemed to amplify that feeling. When they were free of the hangar, Bean banked and then rolled until the ship was inverted. They flew back over the docking hub and toward Anrar III. A few ships came and went as they sailed by, but overall, the traffic pattern was quiet.

  Time stretched endlessly between beats of awkward conversation. Gerald was thankful when Bean finally spoke up.

  “Captain. The entry window will be reached in T-Minus fifteen minutes,” Bean said.

  “Thanks, Bean.” Gerald looked to Ina. “Time to put on your life suit. I bought an extra. It’s stowed underneath the control couch.” He unhooked the cross harness and got to his feet. “You can put it on over your clothes,” he added. The last thing that he needed was Ina getting frisky as Bean throttled toward the hard surface of the planet. She’d be able to fit into the suit with her jeans and tee shirt still firmly in place. Gerald, on the other hand, had to lose most of his clothing to don his suit. He left Ina on the bridge to dress in the privacy of the small sleep quarters.

  Gerald and Ina were suited up and restrained in the control couch just as Bean began to tremble from the first molecules of thin atmosphere bouncing off the hull. Ina’s smile broadened as the sympathetic vibrations began to increase. She gripped Gerald’s knee again, this time harder. The hull began to glow a feral red as friction worked its magic.

  “Bean’ll shake more than a normal lander,” Gerald shouted over the racket. “Haulers aren’t the sleekest of vessels—not really meant to go planet-side. Capable, but still won’t give you the smoothest ride.”

  “This is wonderful!” Ina cheered in return. “I love it!”

  “I do not love this, Captain. Were I capable of feeling pain, I’d have aborted five minutes ago. Structure is in the yellow. Thermal monitoring is in the yellow. Still below tolerance thresholds, however. Eighty percent of our systems remain in the green. Regardless, I’m not enjoying this.”

  “Let me know if we explode,” Gerald said.

  The shaking subsided to a low vibration, and then all seemed still as Bean began to glide. Tangled wisps of cloud dashed the viewports with condensation. Ahead of them, the sun crested the craggy ridge of a distant mountain chain. Beads of moisture on the fore viewport captured the light and threw it back out as the colors of a rainbow.

  “Captain,” Bean said, “I’m detecting man-made structures close to our destination coordinates.”

  “Mining facilities,” Ina said. “A geological outpost. A refinery. Crescent’s initial materials were mined right out of this planet. The yield was low, though, and there were a lot of accidents. Quite a few people died down here in the early days. The mines were quickly abandoned in favor of asteroid mining. The asteroid mining actually turned out to be the cheaper route in the end. Can you believe that?”

  “You know more about Anrar III than you let on, Ina,” Gerald said.

  “Obviously, the precursor to any successful archaeological expedition is research.”

  “Captain. I am altering our vector now.” The ship banked hard. Gerald’s belly dropped to his feet. There was a big difference between space and atmospheric flight. His stomach had never quite gotten used to the latter. He glanced over at his adopted copilot. She still seemed thrilled; pleasure glowed rosy on her cheeks.

  “There are probably some really nice finds here,” Ina said. “I wish Dad were here.”

  Would he be squeezing the life out of my other knee? Gerald thought, and detached her hand from his leg. He then proceeded to call up an overlay that showed the topography of the area below them in a shimmering relief. The cluster of sites pulsed crimson. According to the overlay, they were less than 15 kilometers away from their destination. Gerald dipped his thumb into the hologram. Ripples of light trembled outward, and he chose a landing spot where terrain looked reasonably level. When he removed his thumb, a yellow circle glowed in its place.

  “Set us down there, Bean. Looks like as good a place to land as any.”

  Hydraulics whined as all-terrain landing struts extended from compartments on Bean’s round belly. There was a crunch when they touched down. The ship lurched forward, jerking Gerald and Ina hard in their chest harnesses, and then all was still.

  “We good, Bean?”
Gerald inquired.

  “We’re good, Captain.”

  “Time? Weather?”

  “There are eight hours until sunset in this region. Doppler radar indicates a sizable storm front one hundred kilometers south of our location, traveling north by northeast at thirty kilometers per hour.”

  “Hope you brought our umbrella, Ina,” Gerald said.

  “Well, no,” she said and laughed. “But, I’d like to stay as long as we can.” She unbuckled her harness. “It’s been a long time since I stepped foot on a planet.”

  “Well, this won’t be any kind bargain. It’s cold, the air is thin, and gravity is three percent greater than Crescent’s artificial gravity. We’re going to be dead tired long before that rain gets here.”

  She got to her feet, her eyes bright.

  “We shall see about that… Captain.”

  (•••)

  The air was thin, but bearable. Gerald had once gone mountain climbing on the planet Caen. Just a mile and a half into the ascent, his lungs had burned with the effort of each step. That air had been thin. That atmosphere of Anrar III didn’t seem that lacking at the outset. He looked to Ina. She stood toward the aft of the hauling vessel, hand shielding her eyes from the sun as she gazed back at the mountain range they had passed over on their descent. It was barely visible on the horizon. Gerald glanced at his PDA. The LCD showed their position as blinking white dot. The first site was within short walking distance. They could be there in less than twenty minutes—if the terrain cooperated.

  The wind lashed out at them as they moved out of Bean’s protection. Thick clouds were rolling in from the west, diffusing the light. The assaulting air was cold; small bits of dirt and grit bit at their exposed flesh. Gerald pulled up the hood on his excursion suit. Ina, her own hood pulled tight over her head, was already on the move ahead of him, eyes cast down to her PDA. He jogged to catch up to her, the effort sucking the breath right out of him. The extra gravity felt like weights around his ankles. He reached out and wrapped a gloved hand around her elbow.

  “You’ll want to look at the ground just as much as you look at your PDA. You don’t want to trip and break your ankle. Not here,” he said.

  She looked up at him and batted her long lashes.

  “Gerald. Are you being chivalrous?”

  “Don’t call it chivalry, sweetheart. I just don’t want to have to carry you back in this gravity. Don’t think I could do it,” he said.

  “You are my hero!” she exclaimed, then spent the next several seconds catching her breath. When she spoke again, her tones were more serious. “I see what you mean. Sometimes, I’m a little over eager.” She paused and looked at him with a slow grin. “But you knew that.”

  The display on Gerald’s PDA counted down the meters that remained until the pair reached first waypoint. When the digits reached zero, Gerald looked up. The dark rock plain was strewn with large and curled pieces of charred, weather-worn metal. The scraps had clearly been part of some unknown larger whole that had likely met its demise in a powerful explosion. Gerald nudged a piece of metal with his foot. It was heavy and didn’t budge. Upon closer inspection, it looked like a hull plate. He knelt beside it. If there had been any defining characteristics on the plate, they had been stripped away by hundreds of years’ worth of blowing grit. Beyond the debris, there were towering rock formations; the protrusions looked like weather-worn pillars. It looked like the things had grown there. The wind howled through the stone grove.

  “What is this?” Gerald called ahead to Ina.

  “I’m not sure.” She had her hands on one of the pillars. Her glove was removed and she was running her fingers across it. “It’s ice cold.” Ina quickly slipped her fingers back into the glove and then she disappeared into the rocks. Gerald crouched beside the hull plate and turned it over, expending more effort than was wise. He sat cross-legged, panting for air. Everything is heavier down here, he told himself; don’t waste your energy. You don’t want her to carry you back to the ship, do you?

  Gerald caught his breath and got back to his feet, moving into the stone grove after Ina. He came out the other side to see her standing dangerously close to the edge of a gaping maw in Anrar III’s face—so close that the toes of her boots were over the edge. Gerald approached her with caution; he didn’t want to startle her and risk her falling in. He stepped alongside her and forced her back a step, then leaned over for his own look. The hole was large enough to accommodate Bean. The walls of the pit were smooth—smooth to the point of appearing polished. Pieces of metal sprung up around the opening’s perfect circumference in tatters. There had been a man-made structure over the hole. That much was clear.

  The clinging bits of the structure were all that was left of the first mining site, as indicated by the PDA.

  Cold air rose from the abyss—colder than the wind that roared across the planet’s surface. He turned to Ina, but she remained silent. Her unwillingness to speak was a sign of growing fatigue. He felt it, too. His urge to say, “What the fuck is this about?” translated to a mere lift of his eyebrows.

  Gerald pointed beyond the opening to where a dark structure stood at the top of a nearby slope. It wasn’t far, but it was a decent incline. He glanced at the PDA. The building was their next waypoint. By the time Gerald lifted his eyes, Ina was taking the first hesitant steps of her ascent. He stopped her by grabbing the thick material of her excursion suit. With a few quick hand gestures, Gerald showed her how to hook up the supplemental oxygen supply that was contained in her parka. Once Ina was situated, Gerald took care of uncurling the oxygen line from his own excursion suit and inserted the small tubes into his nostrils. He increased the air flow gently and made sure it wasn’t set too high. Supplementing the air he was breathing was one thing, getting high off it and falling into the bottomless pit—that was another.

  Ina inhaled deeply. “Much better.”

  “No way we’d make it up that hill without help. I should’ve thought of this sooner. I’m not used to crawling around on empty planets like this.”

  “Isn’t it exhilarating?”

  “I was thinking it was cold and tiring,” Gerald said. She looked at him and gave a shake of her hooded head. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “This is all very scientific and wonderful. Let’s go. Maybe we can reach that place before the rain starts.”

  “Think so?” Ina said.

  “Nope, but it’s worth a shot.”

  (•••)

  The pair walked for what felt like an endless stretch of time. With each thin inhalation Gerald took, he thought the rain would start falling to deepen his misery. He cast his eyes skyward and then brought them back down to look at a destination that had come no closer.

  At long last, Ina and Gerald stood panting in front of a long, single-story building constructed from dark slabs of concrete. The concrete looked to be made up of the same dark material as Anrar III itself. An unimpressive metal door with a wheel protruding from its surface seemed to be the only way inside. From their vantage point, Gerald couldn’t see any windows. If there were any, they’d be obscured with ages of grit and dirt kicked up by the forces of nature.

  Wind roared across the surrounding plains and flattened the parkas against their bodies. With the wind came more clouds. Gerald placed a hand on the building to steady himself. It wasn’t raining yet, but it would be soon.

  Gerald looked at the door. He’d have put money on the entrance being sealed shut from prolonged exposure to the elements. Words were written on the pocked metal face in faded block letters that were obscured with clots of dirt and grime. Ina pulled the sleeve of her parka down over her hand and began to rub at the lettering with it. Gerald watched her for several minutes, then left her there and started around the perimeter of the building in slow, shuffling steps. He came across a slanting system of shelves that hung lopsided from the side of the building, ready to fall at any second. Long, metal tubes were scattered around the base of the shelves. He picked one up and wasn’
t surprised to find it almost too heavy to hoist. He set it against the side of the building and unscrewed the top. Gerald nudged the tube with the toe of his boot and it fell over, allowing bits of dark rock to spill out onto the ground: core samples. He returned to Ina, who was looking at the door, perplexed.

  “What is it?” he asked and she pointed at the block letters.

  “Strange name for an outpost,” she said. “Does that word mean anything to you?”

  At first the word teetered on the edge of legibility, but the block letters seemed to grow clearer the longer he stared at them. In an instant, they stood out starkly against the dark metal of the door. Gerald took two jerking steps backward, unaware that he was moving at all. M-U-R-H-A-T-É.

  “Murhate?” Ina asked. She was staring at the door and not at Gerald.

  “No,” he said and shook his head. “No. It’s pronounced Mur-ha-tay.”

  “How do you know that?” Ina turned to face him. Half of her face was concealed by the hood; within, her eyes sparkled.

  “I just do.” His first instinct was to run, but he felt a tingling of suicidal curiosity that made him incapable of fleeing. Let’s see what’s behind door number one! He found he was unable to speculate. Each time he tried to think beyond the door, a fog settled over his mind. He took in a deep breath. The air tasted of minerals and rain.

  “Let’s get that door open,” he said at last. He heard the words falling past his lips, but couldn’t quite believe it was he who was speaking them. “We’ll check it out.” He cast a glance over his shoulder. The rain was still a good ways off.

  Gerald wrapped his fingers around the metal wheel that protruded from the door’s face. The thing refused to budge. He looked up at Ina. She nodded and added her hands to the wheel. Together they grunted and pulled. Nothing still. They stood gasping for air with their hands on their knees. Gerald stared at the dark, pebble strewn ground. Luminous spots floated across his field of vision.