by Allen Steele
“Okay, one-twelve, I’m through my airlock. Over.” At the sound of Old Bill’s voice, Tiger’s head turned around until I was looking back toward the Marius. I saw a large man-shaped silhouette against the searchlight’s bright corona: Smith-Tate’s radiation-proof exoskeleton, advancing toward the Barnard.
“We copy, eight-sixteen.” This time it was Betsy’s soft voice over the comlink. “Please be advised that neither of the survivors are wearing hardsuits. Repeat, neither of them are in hardsuits, only pressure gear. Once you get them out, you’re going to have make it quick…”
Montrose abruptly cut in: “Bill, we’ve got three minutes until communications blackout. After that, you and Yoshio are on your own. Do you copy? Over.”
“Shit. Oh, shit…” It was the first time I had heard Old Bill use profanity; the tension of the operation had overwhelmed his Mormon asceticism. No wonder; he was now faced with two more immediate problems.
First, since neither Nimersheim nor the critically injured Bellafonte were wearing radiation armor, they would both be subjected to Jupiter’s radiation the moment they left the shuttle. Unless a quick transfer was made to the Marius, their rescue would be futile: the REM’s they would receive if they lingered for very long on Amalthea’s surface would kill them just as surely as if they had died in the crash.
Second, the radio link between Medici Explorer and Marius was about to be lost. Although Yoshio could conceivably take control of Tiger, the time wasted while he jacked into telepresence would slow down the rescue operation considerably…and with each minute that passed, the window for the orbital rendezvous between the Marius and the Medici Explorer was narrowed even further.
“Geoff, how’s Tiger doing up here?” It was getting harder to hear Old Bill; the comlink was becoming rough with static. “Are you through that hatch yet? Over.”
Tiger’s head rotated back to the upper fuselage of the Barnard. The view was becoming increasingly scratchy, yet I could see that the laser had almost completely made its way around the circumference of the hatch. “We’re almost through,” Geoff said, “but I don’t see any signs of it giving. Should be sagging by now, but it isn’t. Something’s still holding it in place. Maybe the gaskets we melted froze up again, I dunno…”
“Bill, this is Saul.” The skipper suddenly sounded tired. “If the hatch doesn’t give…I don’t know.” A long pause. “You might have to give it up. You gotta get yourselves out of there…”
“No sir, we’re not.” Smith-Tate’s voice was determined. “We didn’t come all this way just to give up now.”
I couldn’t see him, but I guessed Old Bill was standing beside the Barnard, just below Tiger. If so, he couldn’t climb up to the hatch because the robot was in the way. Chaos theory in action: problems breeding more problems, everything sliding down a slippery slope.
Saul: “Bill…”
Bill: “Shut up, skipper…Geoff, listen to me. As soon as you cut through the hatch, get Tiger to jump on it!”
Geoff: “What…? Eight-sixteen, we don’t copy, please repeat…”
Betsy: “One minute until blackout.”
Bill: “You heard me. Make Tiger jump on the hatch. Maybe it’ll kick the damn…durn thing in.”
The laser was only a couple of centimeters short of finishing its work and I still couldn’t detect any sign of the hatch buckling. Telemetry between Amalthea and the Medici Explorer was becoming increasingly furry: it was hard to make out Bill’s voice through my headphones, and thin white bands were beginning to race across my field of vision.
Geoff: “Umm…we copy, eight-sixteen, but that would probably trash Tiger…”
Bill: “Screw the ’bot, just do it!”
Saul: “Do what he says. We’re running out of time…”
The torch reached the end of its path; there was now a blackened circle running through the edge of the emergency hatch, yet it stubbornly remained shut.
Bill: “Do it, boy! Jump!”
A second later Tiger lurched forward into the ragged circle the laser had traced, placing it full weight upon the hatch.
In the next instant I felt the surface of my world collapse beneath me, saw a flurry of motion, then the scene within the VR helmet blacked out to be briefly replaced by random test-patterns and numeric codes before everything went stark grey, and all I heard was Old Bill’s voice shouting through static: “It’s through! It’s…”
Then the comlink went dead.
“Eight-one-six Victor X-Ray Hotel, this is one-twelve Whiskey Bravo Navajo, do you copy, over…Eight-one-six Victor X-Ray Hotel, this is one-twelve Whiskey Bravo Navajo. Do you copy? Over.”
An hour and fifty-six minutes after telemetry with the Marius was lost, the Medici Explorer successfully completed its flyby of Jupiter. The vessel slingshot around the planet’s far side, following an elliptical trajectory which had begun near Jupiter’s south pole and ended above its north pole, bringing the ship within 100,000 kilometers of its stratosphere before it shot around the planet’s vast limb. The polar flyby kept the Explorer out of the plasma torus between Jupiter and Io; even though we were now only 300,000 klicks from the planet, there had been very little buffeting when the ship entered the magnetotail extending from Jupiter’s leeside.
Yet we had not heard from Marius since the beginning of the blackout almost two hours ago. Although this could be attributed to electromagnetic interference, the fact of the matters was that the crew had no way of knowing what had happened down on Amalthea. Although we were close above the tiny moon’s orbit, Amalthea itself was now on the other side of the planet, out of reach of our transmissions. The Marius would have lifted off from the moon by now, according to the rescue plan, and should be climbing the gravity well for its rendezvous with the Medici Explorer.
That’s what should have happened. Here we were, though, in the right place at the right time, and there was no Marius to be seen or heard. There was only one correct way for William Smith-Tate to bring the boat back home…and a thousand different ways for him to go wrong.
“Eight-sixteen Victor X-Ray Hotel, this is Medici Explorer, one-twelve Whiskey Bravo Navajo. Please come in, over…”
Geoff s voice was raw. He hadn’t left the bridge since he was woken out of bed by Young Bill almost twenty hours ago, and as we neared the end of the third shift it was apparent that he had reached the verge of collapse. His first-wife Betsy was not doing much better; she had been awake longer than Geoff and there were now dark circles under her eyes. Yet both of them refused to leave the bridge, even when Saul gave them direct orders to go below and get some rest; at best, they had catnapped in the rest alcove for a few minutes before dragging themselves back to their duty stations. Now Betsy wearily slumped over her console, watching the radar screens, while Geoff repeated the same call-signs over and over, his voice becoming a little more hoarse with each repetition.
If this was mutiny, then it wasn’t the sort of insubordination a captain could fight, and Saul wasn’t inclined to hold captain’s mast. He hadn’t sat in his chair since the completion of the periapsis burn nearly an hour ago; instead, he paced the bridge and slugged down reheated coffee until he loudly proclaimed he was giving up the stuff because he was just pissing it away. No one laughed; everyone had reached the point of exhaustion a long time ago. Now there were only unspoken fears and sick-at-stomach feelings of helplessness.
Leslie Smith-Tanaka had escorted Wendy and Kaneko to bed before returning to the bridge with a bag of doughnuts from the galley. The doughnuts had gone uneaten and Wendy didn’t stay put; she meekly returned to the bridge in her pajamas, saying that she could not sleep, and none of the adults were in the mood to argue. Wendy took a chair in the rest alcove next to her Aunt Lynn, who had been in the bridge since the beginning of the mission, watching the screens and rarely saying anything to anyone. When Wendy fell asleep against her shoulder, Lynn Smith-Tate cradled the child’s head in her lap and covered her with her sweater, but her eyes seldom left the scr
eens.
That left only Young Bill. He had been inside one of the observation blisters during the flyby and burn maneuver, and I had expected him to man the telescope until his father returned. When Geoff failed to re-establish contact with the Marius when anticipated, Bill climbed out of the blister and, without saying a word to anyone, left the bridge. By the time the ship’s chronometer flashed 2200, Saul walked over and asked if I would mind going below to find him.
“He needs someone to talk to,” he whispered, “and neither his mom nor I are up to that right now.” He handed me a headset, which I clamped around my neck. “I’ll let you know if…when anything changes up here.”
Finding Young Bill was easier than I expected; although my first thought was to try the Smith-Tate quarters in Arm One, I anticipated searching the entire vessel for him. Yet no sooner had I left the bridge and was climbing down the hub access ladder toward the carousel when I heard a soft, rhythmic pounding sound from the other side of a hatch just below the bridge. I thought it was a normal mechanical noise until it made a peculiar double-beat and I recognized it for what it was: the bouncing of a rubber ball.
The hatch was marked STORES 1; beyond it was a small compartment whose walls were lined with recessed metal drawers and cabinets, each marked with the names of various items: food rations, clothing, medical supplies, tools and spare parts and so forth. The bouncing ceased as soon as I undogged the hatch and swung it open; Bill lay against the far wall where he had used an elastic strap and two grommets to secure himself, and he was holding a frayed yellow tennis ball in his hands.
We stared at each other for a few moments, each mildly surprised to see the other, neither of us knowing quite what to say. I then noticed a small handwritten sign taped to the ceiling just above his head: No Handball In This Area!
“Pardon me, is this the handball court?” I asked as straight-faced as I could. “I thought it was the swimming pool.”
The corners of Young Bill’s mouth ticked upward for a moment; he followed my gaze to the sign and shook his head. “Dad hates it when I do this…says it leaves marks on the walls.” His smile disappeared. “Want to close the door? I’m kinda busy at the moment.”
I shut the hatch, but not before I pulled myself into the storeroom and grabbed a ceiling rail. An annoyed look crossed his face, but he didn’t protest. “I tried handball once,” I said. “When I lived in Washington and belonged to the downtown Y…”
He blinked. “The Y?”
“The YMCA,” I added, but he still looked confused; nothing like that on the Moon. “Young Men’s Christian Association. Sort of a club. They’ve got great gyms.”
“Oh…yeah. I’ve heard of them.” His fingers absently traced the stitching of the tennis ball. “Never been to one, sorry.”
He continued to stare pensively at the ball. I cleared my throat. “Not exactly a regulation court, but I guess it’s good enough for practice.”
He responded by suddenly hurling the ball at the hatch, missing me by less than a meter. It ricocheted between the floor and the hatch, shot up and hit the ceiling, then sailed straight back into his left hand. “Nice shot,” I said.
Young Bill cupped the ball within his hands and was quiet for a couple of minutes, gazing at the ball as if it was all that mattered. “You know,” he said after awhile, “I don’t think people back there…back on Earth, I mean…I don’t think they know what it’s really like out here.”
“They know it’s dangerous. I knew that even before I decided to do this story.”
He shook his head. “No…no, they really don’t know. They think they know it’s dangerous, but they really can’t have a real idea what it’s like to…”
He paused, letting out his breath as he idly tossed the ball back and forth between his hands. “You asked Aunt Betsy last night about what it’s like for Wendy not to have a normal childhood, but you didn’t ask me.”
I shook my head but didn’t say anything. “I think a normal childhood,” Bill went on, “is when your father goes off to work and you know for certain that he’s coming back alive at the end of the day…but I wouldn’t know, because it’s never been that way for me.”
“Do you wish you had a normal childhood?” I asked.
Bill shrugged. “Too late for that now.” He paused again. “Yeah, man. I wish I had a normal, happy, stupid childhood, no matter what Aunt Betsy says about the joys of being a precocious kid. In fact, I want it so bad, I don’t think I’m going to stay around here anymore.”
“Your mom told me this afternoon you were thinking about jumping ship and going to college on Earth.”
“Yep.” A smile briefly crossed his face. “In fact, I’m more than just thinking about it. Before we left the Moon, I got a fax from the University of Edinburgh. They’ve accepted me for early admission into the undergrad program. The last thing I did before we split Descartes City was transfer the first year’s tuition from my savings. So it’s done…I’m in. One month after we get back, I’m off to Scotland.”
He gave me a sharp look. “The folks don’t know about it yet,” he said. “I’m going to tell them after this run is over, but do me a favor and don’t let on, okay?”
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I won’t tell them, I promise.” Bill nodded his head and bounced the tennis ball off the wall again. “Congratulations,” I added. “I’m glad you got in. What are you going to study?”
“I dunno.” Again the fleeting smile. “I told them I wanted into the astronomy school so they’d give my application a second look, but it’s going to be anything but, y’know. I’m sick of astronomy. Sick of space.” He shrugged again. “I just want to live in Scotland for awhile, that’s all.”
“I’ve been there,” I said. “You’ll like Edinburgh. It’s got a giant castle overlooking the city. Every day at noon they fire the cannon from the inner keep for the tourists. You can see the Firth of Forth from up there.”
“Sounds pretty mondo.” He hesitated. “Dad’s going to be pretty pissed when he hears the news. He wants me to step into his shoes, be a space engineer and so forth, but I dunno…I’ve talked college with him before and he wants me to go to Brigham Young, but I can’t get myself jazzed about living in Salt Lake City.”
“Not the same thing.”
“Uh-uh.” He laughed drily. “I mean, I’ve been to Utah, or at least as far as Salt Lake. When you stop and think about it, it’s not much different than living on the Moon. I couldn’t take that for…”
He stopped short, listening to an invisible voice, as I simultaneously heard the forgotten headset around my neck begin to whisper to me. I yanked the headset to my ears in time to hear Geoff s voice.
“…X-Ray Hotel, this is Medici Explorer, we’re standing by. Please repeat, over.”
There was a short pause, then William Smith-Tate’s voice came over the comlink: “Roger that, one-twelve Whiskey Bravo Navajo, this is Marius eight-sixteen. We’ve got you on the scope and we’re coming in, bearing X-ray minus six-two, Yankee eleven, Zulu minus five-point-five-two. Over.”
As Young Bill cupped his hands over his ears, listening to his father’s distant voice through the subcutaneous comlink, there were hints of mixed emotions in his face. Relief, yes—his father was alive and coming home—and astonishment.
Yet, even though he would have been the last to admit it, there was also the slightest twinge of regret.
“Marius, this is one-twelve Whiskey Bravo…aw, hell, Bill, we’re glad to see you. Can you give us your present condition, please? Over.”
“Affirmative, one-twelve. We’ve got one…repeat, one…survivor. Sorry, but we lost a man down there.” A short pause. “Yoshio and I are okay. So’s Dr. Nimersheim. Sorry for the delay, it was a rough flight. Eight-sixteen Marius, over.”
“The co-pilot didn’t make it,” I said.
“Uh-huh.” Young Bill was already unfastening the straps; he opened a drawer and stashed the tennis ball under a stack of folded jumpsuits, like an Earth kid h
iding a pack of joints from his father. “I better get down to the airlock to help him and Uncle Yoshi out of the boat.”
“You don’t sound all that surprised,” I said.
Young Bill shut the drawer. “Like I said…my father always comes home after work.” In the instant that he looked my way before he vaulted across the compartment toward the hatch, there was silent desperation—and defiance—in his eyes.
“Always have,” he finished. “Always will.”
6. THE CATACOMBS OF VALHALLA
Once the Marius rendezvoused and docked with the Medici Explorer, Old Bill and Yoshio Smith-Tanaka took Casey Nimersheim straight to the infirmary on Deck 1-A. The shuttle co-pilot, Marlon Bellafonte, had died shortly after takeoff from Amalthea; the doctor pronounced him dead from injuries sustained during the shuttle crash plus the stress of being hastily moved from the Barnard to the Marius. At least the rescue party had been able to bring back his body; they were unable to pry Wayne Reese’s corpse from the wreckage before the launch window shut, and Old Bill was forced to leave the shuttle pilot on Amalthea.
Nimersheim, though, was in reasonably good health and spirits, considering the ordeal she had suffered. Once Yoshio examined her and tended to the minor cuts and bruises she had suffered, he administered a sedative which put her to sleep for the next eight hours. However, when the doctor checked her suit dosimeter, he discovered that the amount of radiation to which the young woman had been exposed while marooned on Amalthea had reached seventy-two REMs. The maximum number of REMs allowed per annum under union health regulations is seventy-five. Although she was still safe from contracting leukemia, she couldn’t expect to continue working in the Jovian system; a single EVA, even in the outer fringes of the system, would certainly push her over the limit.