by Allen Steele
“Switching to manual control of the ’bot.” Marie’s hands spread open as if she is groping her way through a dark room. As Isidore exits the airlock the ’bot casts off the hull and follows him, its stereo-optic eyes catching tiny flares from his EVA pack as he begins his untethered spacewalk toward the Hershel. In one sense, Isidore is being accompanied by his first-wife; she controls the ’bot as if her mind has been transplanted into its arachnid form.
“Mark, one minute,” Jon says from his console. “Dosimeter count nominal.”
Kinnard nods. Here within Saturn’s magnetosphere, Isidore’s spacewalk is limited to a maximum REM exposure-time of twenty-six minutes; after that, Kinnard has to pull his crewman back in, regardless of whether his objectives have been accomplished or not. The ’bot can continue an external inspection of the ship, but it’s not designed to fit into Hershel’s airlock.
As Isidore floats toward the Hershel, his suitcam catches a glimpse of a bat-winged shape nestled in the argosy’s payload bay, above the fuel tanks and behind the rotor arms: Ulysses, the ship’s lander. Kinnard takes note of the fact: it either means that the science team had returned to the Hershel, or that some of the Hershel’s flight crew were still aboard the ship, before the communications blackout.
To his relief, it takes Isidore just less than ten minutes to cross the void between the two ships, and less than a minute after that to locate the main airlock on the hub. It is then that they encounter the first surprise:
“Intrepid, the airlock hatch is open.”
This observation is almost unnecessary; through both the ’bot’s eyes and suitcam lens, Kinnard can see a dark, circular hole where an iris hatch should be. “Check the inner hatch,” he says, but Marie’s ’bot is already scuttling closer on its magnetized legs, its stalk-mounted eyes peering down into the black maw. A moment later, Isidore’s helmet lamp illuminates the airlock interior.
Nothing reflects the light except the airlock walls. Beyond that there is only more darkness, as if they were peering into a bottomless well.
“Inner hatch open, too,” Isidore says.
There is a quaver in his voice, and Kinnard knows why. Both hatches cannot simultaneously open by accident; the ship’s AI would automatically prevent such a catastrophe from occurring. The only way this might occur would be if someone deliberately reprogrammed the AI to disregard a vital fail-safe routine, and that was suicidal…
“Mark, thirteen minutes,” Jon says.
Kinnard nervously rubs his chin. Isidore has to begin his return to Intrepid now…or he goes inside Hershel. Before Kinnard can make a decision, though, his first-officer does it for him.
“Going in,” Isidore says.
On one set of screens, the airlock fills the suitcam’s field of view; on another, the ’bot sees his spacesuited body disappearing headfirst through the outer hatch.
3.12.2070 0246Z—Huygens Base
Bravo Squad advances on the base as a V-shaped formation, the beams of their helmet lamps quickly swallowed by the darkness around them, guided by little more than the dim ring of floodlights surrounding the habitat. The soldiers have only ventured twenty meters from Excalibur before it becomes invisible save for the dim glow of its wing lights; only the lights before them and telemetry from the shuttle, displayed on the heads-up screens within their CAS armor, prevents them getting disoriented and lost.
Digital gauges inside their suits inform them that the surface temperature is 93 degrees Kelvin; the only sound they hear, aside from the voices on the comlink, is the sullen crunch of methane ice beneath their boots.
Power Chuck: “Look sharp, guys. Keep the formation tight.”
Swee’ Pea: “Look at what, Sarge? I can’t see a damn thing.”
Power Chuck: “Just follow the guy in front of you.”
No-Shit: “Shit! I’m slippin’ and slidin’ all over the place!”
Power Chuck: “Keep your gun pointed down. I don’t want no one getting shot in the back if you fall.”
Smoker: “Can’t you just go to jump-jets? We can cover ground a lot quicker that…”
Power Chuck: “Negatory on that. Just head toward the lights and keep walking.”
And so they do, six tin soldiers alone in the freezing darkness, sky and ground nearly indistinguishable from one another, until they enter the ring of lights and a metal hemisphere abruptly looms before them. The flashing red beacon at its apex reflects dully off their massive carapaces. A small rover is parked nearby, empty and abandoned, like a dune-buggy stolen from a California beach by space aliens who went joy-riding before ditching on the other side of the solar system. The airlock is surrounded by hundreds of frozen footprints; its outer hatch is closed.
Sergeant Clay opens the hatch and peers inside. The airlock is just large enough to accommodate four armored soldiers. Power Chuck orders Swee’ Pea and Smoker to recon the habitat from the outside, then informs Colonel DeSoto—who, along with Slick Nick, is still aboard the shuttle—of his intent to enter the dome. She concurs, and so he takes No-Shit, Doc, and Little Jimmy into the airlock.
Cycle-through takes five minutes; a green light flashes on the control panel as the inner hatch thumps slightly. Power Chuck pulls the locklever up, then slowly pushes the hatch open.
At first, he can see nothing except the bright oval of his searchlight reflecting against a bulkhead wall five meters away. No other light to be seen; the ceiling panels are dark, either burned out or deliberately switched off. Sergeant Clay pans his lamp around the antechamber; its beam casts shadows off the empty p-suits hanging from racks, the long row of helmets arranged along a shelf.
“We’re in the suit-room, Colonel,” he says. “Looks normal so far, other than that the lights are all out.”
“See anyone inside?” DeSoto asks.
Power Chuck shakes his head. “No, ma’am.” As he steps further into the ready-room, his searchlight finds an open hatch at the opposite end of the compartment, leading off to the left.
Corporal Barnes’s voice comes over the comlink. “Nothing on the outside,” Swee’ Pea says. “Perimeter secure. Outer hatch of the ambient environment lab is open, but we looked in and didn’t see anything.”
“We copy,” DeSoto responds. “Clay, take your people further into the base. Barnes, you and Hernandez proceed to main airlock but remain outside.”
“Roger that.” Power Chuck takes another two steps into the ready room, allowing his squad mates to enter the compartment. Startled by a faint metallic grinding noise from behind, he turns to see Little Jimmy shoving the inner airlock hatch closed behind him.
“Hey, Sarge,” says No-Shit. “Request permission to pop tops.”
Power Chuck checks his suit’s ambient-environment panel. Atmospheric composition is oxygen-nitrogen and pressure is Earth-normal, but the temperature is nearly zero Celsius. If the base’s power supply is still operational, it must have been diverted to keeping the habitat warm even this little.
Nonetheless, it would be good to stick their necks out of these damned suits. And it might help their search for survivors if they didn’t have to peer at everything through periscopes or the tiny slots in their armor. “Colonel, Corporal Ballou has requested…”
“I heard,” DeSoto says. “Permission granted to pop tops.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” Clay hears relieved sighs over the comlink as the other three men toggle palm switches which raise the oval lids of their suits. Frigid air rushes around his exposed face and neck as Power Chuck does the same. For a moment it feels delicious, after the humid warmth of his suit, then he coughs little clouds of steam as the cold penetrates his lungs. It’s cold as hell in here…
And it smells bad. Beneath the iciness, there is a stench. His nose wrinkles at the first inhalation.
Sergeant Clay turns toward the open hatchway at the end of suit-up room. As he does, his lamp beam grazes a small, dark object on a shelf containing p-suit helmets, in a corner where he hadn’t looked until just this moment
. Something about the object catches the light in a subtle, familiar way that makes him do a double-take. He turns back and fastens the light on the object, and jerks back as a pair of eyes stare back at him.
A pair of eyes in a decapitated human head, carefully placed on the shelf so that it looks straight at the first person to enter the ready-room.
3.12.2070 0317Z—PARN Intrepid
Images on the multiscreen, relayed to Intrepid’s flight deck from both the Hershel Explorer and Huygens Base:
The headless corpse of Henri Marquand, sprawled across a carpet of dry blood covering the floor of the base control room.
The naked man found in the central passageway of the Hershel, hands locked in a death-grip upon the shaft of the reactor probe that was used to impale him to the bulkhead wall.
The woman hanged from a ceiling conduit in the base galley, her bare feet charred and blistered from exposure to the stove top just below her.
The body of a man floating weightless in the argosy’s command center—no apparent signs of violence, dead nonetheless.
Stark silence in the command center as the grisly pictures are displayed on the multiscreen, broken only by an occasional static-laced comment over the comlink from either Isidore aboard the Hershel or one of the soldiers exploring the base…and the sound of a woman weeping.
When Marquand’s severed head appeared on the screens, Marie screamed out loud. Her MINN-link with Lieutenant Clay’s suitcam had relayed the image into her mind just as clearly as if she had been in the CAS herself. Disconnected from the comlink now, she is curled into a tight little ball, hugging her knees against her chest, her tears tiny spheres that float around her face. Cayenne has temporarily taken her post at the communications console; Kinnard notes that she hasn’t connected her own MINN to the comlink.
“Dead…all dead…” Marie whispers.
Kinnard swallows painfully; his throat and mouth are dry. Three bodies on the Hershel, six on Titan; virtually everyone met one sort of gruesome fate or another. A woman’s throat was cut from ear to ear; a man was found in the base’s secondary airlock to the AEL, still trying to prise open the inner hatch with his fingertips even as the gaseous nitrogen/methane filled his lungs…
Movement behind him. Kinnard pulls his eyes away from the multiscreen. Peter and Anna Christ-Webster have come on deck. They’ve watched everything from below decks; nothing has to be explained. Anna nestles Marie’s head against her shoulder, trying to calm her. Kinnard catches her eye and nods toward the deck hatch. Anna says nothing; she takes her clan-sister in her arms and carries her toward the hatch. Peter watches them go, then glides over to Kinnard’s seat, locking his feet around a ceiling rail.
“Okay,” Kinnard says softly, “you tell me…how many of these are murders, and how many are suicides?”
Peter’s thin lips purse as he studies the multiscreen. “Tell for certain cannot, without being there…”
“Nobody leaves Intrepid until Isidore and the landing party come home,” he says. Bravo Company has scouted the entire base; Isidore was still making his way through the Hershel Explorer. Three crewmembers are still unaccounted for, including Captain Baylor. Kinnard is unwilling to risk anyone else going EVA until he knows what killed nine men and women. “From what you’ve seen so far, give me your best guess.”
Peter hesitates. “No pathologist I am, no can sure tell without autopsies…”
“Best guess. Off the record.”
Peter lets out his breath. “S’kay…most look like murder two, murder three. Nada suicides, far as I can tell. Two tortured during murder, like the woman in the galley, but suddenly most died, like caught by surprise. But see here…”
He touches his wristcomp; the image on one of the screens blurs as it goes into retrieval mode, then freezes on an image captured by Lieutenant Hernandez’s suitcam fifteen minutes earlier: a dead man sitting against a bulkhead, his head bowed forward, his arms and legs sprawled out. Near his right hand is a bloodstained knife. “Look here,” Peter says. “Nada injury. No mark on him. Just sat down and died, that’s all.”
He taps his wristcomp again; another screen whips into the recent past, stopping to show the weightless body Isidore discovered in the Hershel’s command center. “No marks on him either,” Peter says. “Entire hub decompressed when main airlock went open, but that’s not what killed him. People in a blowout don’t go into fetal position, but look…that’s what happened to him. Just curled up and died.”
Kinnard studies the bodies. “You think he died before the blowout?” Peter nods his head. “You think both of these people…?”
“The last ones to die, yes, I think.”
They study the multiscreen for few moments. “So what are the chances of both of two people going psycho at the same time?” Kinnard finally asks.
Peter ponders the question, then finally shakes his head. “Bet on that, I wouldn’t. Think they killed each other, until only one person was left alive on both the ship and on Titan. Then they just up and died…”
“But what killed them?”
Having no answers and apparently unwilling to speculate, Peter doesn’t reply. Kinnard is about to press him for a response when Isidore’s voice speaks in his right ear:
“Captain? Found something, I think.”
Kinnard glances up at the center screen. It displays the real-time image from Christ-Ortega’s suitcam; caught the luminescent oval of his helmet lamp is a closed rectangular hatch. “What have you got?” he asks.
“Entrance hatch to Arm Two, Captain.” Kinnard is mildly surprised; while he and Peter were talking, Isidore must have left the command deck and gone back down the axis passageway to the carrousel connecting the hub to the argosy’s three rotor arms. “Just tried to open it, but jammed shut it is.”
“Jammed?” Kinnard’s brow furrows. “You mean the handle doesn’t work, or the button?”
“Neither one. See?” Isidore’s arms come into view. His gauntleted hands grasp the lock-lever in the middle of the hatch and twist it: first clockwise, then counter-clockwise. The lever doesn’t budge a centimeter either way. “Then tried the button. Look what happens…”
His right hand moves to a panel on the bulkhead next to the hatch. His finger pushes a red button; the hatch remains shut, but a message appears on the panel’s tiny LCD screen.
“Zoom in on that, please,” Kinnard says. A moment later the LCD fills the center screen:
ERROR 10
ENTER CODE A-300
Something cold slithers down Kinnard’s spine.
“Code A-300?” Peter is confused. “Mean what?”
Without looking away from the screen, Kinnard snaps his fingers at his navigator. “Jon! Give me a holo cutaway of the Hershel, Arm Two!” As Christ-Caswell moves to comply, Kinnard turns to the chief engineer. “Cayenne! Get ready to download files from Hershel’s primary memory buffer! Prefix code alpha three hundred!”
Peter is confused. “Marion, what are you…?”
“Hush.” Kinnard begins entering a memorized nine-digit string into his wristcomp. “Stand by to transmit counter-code on my mark…”
“No can do, Captain,” Cayenne says.
“What?”
Cayenne is just as bewildered as Peter and Jon. “Can’t download or transmit,” she says. “Still don’t have telemetry with the Hershel. Can’t download anything until we…”
“Damn!” In his rush, he has forgotten that the comlink between the two ships is still dead; the only operational radio channels were those with Isidore and the ’bot. He forces himself to calm down. “Isidore, leave that section and go topside, mucho pronto. Get the AI back on-line, then reactivate the com panel and open an S-band channel to Intrepid. Move.”
“Copy that,” Isidore says. The center screen blurs out-of-focus as he pivots away from the Arm Two hatch and begins moving back through the carrousel to the hub.
“What you find?” Peter asks as he follows Kinnard to the map table. The holo tank has
already lit, displaying a rotating translucent diagram of Arm Two that Jon has summoned up from Intrepid’s AI library subsystem. “Something important, now?”
“Damn straight, it’s something important.” Kinnard traces the arm’s six levels with his forefinger, starting at the top: 2A/Labs; 2B/Life Support and Logistics; 2C/Hydroponics; 2D/Hydroponics; 2E/Sickbay…
“Bingo,” he murmurs as his finger reaches the lowest level of the arm: 2F/Hibernation.
Peter stares at the holo. “Last three people are down there, you think?”
“Think so, yeah.” Kinnard nods his head. “They barricaded themselves inside Arm Two, disabled the locks, then put themselves in biostasis. Decided to wait it out until someone came to rescue them.”
“Then survivors there might be, nyet?”
Kinnard glances at the doctor and smiles. “Possible,” he says, then his smile fades. “But Error 10 means that a main hatch has been disabled from the inside. The A-300 code is a security lockout…it means that the computer can’t correct an AI error unless a Pax captain enters his password. No one else aboard Hershel would know it but Captain Baylor…and I’m the only one aboard Intrepid who knows the counter-code.”
He gazes at the holo once again. “If Steven Baylor was one of the survivors and he locked himself in Arm Two on purpose, then that means he was counting on someone finding him. And if that’s the case…”
His voice trails off. “So you’re saying what?” Peter asks.
“That he left us a message,” Kinnard finishes.
3.12.2070 0331Z—Huygens Base
Barnes stills stands outside the main airlock when DeSoto and Simms arrive at the airlock. As the two officers emerge from the darkness into the floodlighted perimeter, Swee’ Pea automatically raises her rifle-arm into firing position: a twitch of her right index finger, and the soft outer garment of their p-suits is shredded by razor-sharp flechettes fired at 500 rounds per second.