by Allen Steele
“So you may not be able to mine Venus for very much longer.”
“Oh, we can. There’s enough down there for ConSpace to exploit the planet’s resources for many years to come. Yet it’s going to become progressively more difficult, because all the easily reached lodes have already been located. Before long, ConSpace won’t be able to achieve maximum profitability, and Venusian mining will grind to a halt.” Then she smiled. “Yet nature may soon provide us with a solution.”
The screen had changed again. Now the regions surrounding the volcanoes were white-hot, the jagged vents within the rift valleys glowing like cracked glass in a kiln. “Ever since Evening Star began operation, we’ve observed a steady increase in seismic activity, particularly in the highlands. Everything indicates that Venus will soon experience much the same sort of catastrophe that occurred hundreds of millions of years ago. Exactly when, we cannot accurately predict. It could be next year, next month, tomorrow afternoon…we don’t know. But it will happen, no question about it.”
The Brain could have interpreted all this for me, but I wasn’t comlinked with the Comet. “So? What are you trying to tell me?”
She sighed. “When this second event occurs,” she said patiently, “Venus will be resurfaced once more. Vast pressure within the planet’s core will cause volcanoes and vents to erupt, and billions of tons of lava will be vomited up through the mantle and crust. Surface heat will cause various chemical processes to occur, and once the lava solidifies—a couple of years, my geologists estimate—then the planet will become…”
“Sweet Elvis.” I suddenly realized what she was trying to tell me. “The biggest motherlode in the system.”
“That’s one way of putting it, yes.” Jenny Pell smiled. “Another way to think of it is that a new planet will suddenly appear, one closer to the Pax than Mars or the Belt. Untapped resources beyond human imagination, worth…” She shrugged offhandedly. “A trillion megalox? Ten trillion? A hundred? How high can you count, Captain Future?”
For once, I ignored the nickname. For all my life—and before that, the lives of my parents and grandparents—humankind had sought the riches of the solar system. When Earth’s surface resources had become rarified and nearly exhausted, it had ventured into space, prospecting first the Moon, then near-Earth asteroids, then Mars, finally the Belt and the Jovian moons and even the satellites of far Saturn. Yet these were old, cold worlds; like rats gnawing the bones of long-dead carcasses, everyone had subsisted on relics left over from the solar system’s prehistory, all but ignoring the hot young planet in our own backyard.
A planet on the verge of rejuvenation.
“The Pax wants Venus,” I said.
She nodded. “The Pax wants Venus, yes. It knows what’s about to happen here, and it’ll do whatever it can to take Evening Star from ConSpace.” She leaned against the console and crossed her arms. “I don’t know what it hopes to accomplish by having me abducted, but I think your Prime Minister hopes to force ConSpace to surrender this station. That won’t happen, of course, but at very least they probably intend to brainwash me. Perhaps get me to divulge crucial information. The location of the best lodes, proprietary info about ConSpace, that sort of thing.” She grinned, shook her head. “Poor Neil. He must be getting desperate, resorting to this sort of low-grade skullduggery.”
Indeed he must, and so was the Pax. Jeri and I were being used as pawns in a far greater game than we had ever imagined. If the idea of kidnapping a hero of my youth had been repugnant before, it was now absolutely repulsive. I may be a fool, at times, but please don’t treat me as such. It makes me mad.
“So there’s the truth,” Jenny Pell finished, “and now it’s back to you. As I said before, you have only a couple of choices. You can shoot me, or you can press the red button and blow up the station.” She shrugged. “Up to you, M’sser Furland.”
I thought it over for a moment. More than a moment, actually. When I was done thinking, I carefully placed the case on the floor. Then I pushed the button.
Everyone in ComOps flinched as the case hissed loudly and its lid fell open. Even Frank the Lizard fell back. Everyone lost a minute of their lives except Jenny Pell, who smiled knowingly. Just as I had figured, she had known all along that I was pulling a hoax.
“So much for the first option,” I murmured, keeping the gun on her. “Now for the second.”
“Why didn’t Captain Future come?” Tiko Thrin asked tersely. “I told you in my message that it was urgent.”
The Brain, posed beside them, contemplated the excited little Martian with expressionless lens-eyes as he spoke in his rasping voice.
“Captain Future and the other two Futuremen went to Venus a week ago,” he declared. “They’ve been helping Ezra Gurney smooth out some trouble with the marshmen there. But before I had Joan bring me here, I teleaudioed them to come on here. They should arrive at any minute.”
—Hamilton; Planets in Peril (1942)
We had trouble finding a berth at Highgate. The traffic controller didn’t acknowledge the Comet’s primary approach until we were nearly at the outer marker, and when he finally he did he kept us on the periphery of the station’s halo orbit for nearly four hours while another inbound freighter was docked ahead of us, offering neither explanation nor apology. It wasn’t until Jeri threatened to file a formal complaint that the Highgate trafco allowed us to dock at the outer ring; we were slipped into a berth next to a Royal Navy frigate, which guaranteed that we’d receive second-priority status for postflight maintenance.
It only got worse after that.
A ferry didn’t swing by to pick us up for another three hours; its pilot knew Jeri and me and was usually friendly when we returned from a voyage, but this time he was sullen and aloof, barely saying a word as he transported us to Highgate’s terminus. The next shuttle to Tycho was overbooked by the time we arrived, causing another three-hour delay, so we went to the TBSA lounge, only to receive more of the cold-shoulder treatment. Conversation dropped dead when we walked in, and it has hard to ignore the hostile glares from fellow spacers we’d known for years. I went to the bar and tried to order a drink, and the bartender told me he was on break and to use the ’bot instead before he went back to mixing an aldrin collins for a cargo grunt. Jeri and I found seats in a distant corner of the room, where we watched sitcoms and handball games on the screen for the next two and half hours. Nobody stopped by to say hello, and even the ’bot refused to run a tab.
It was a long, quiet flight to Tycho. We sat quietly in the passenger compartment, watching the Moon come ever closer, saying little to one another. The steward was polite the first time he came by to offer us refreshments, but then he apparently recognized my face; after that, he hastily moved past our seats. After awhile Jeri took a nap against my shoulder, and I passed the time by replaying the events on Evening Star in my mind.
No matter how many times I re-examined the situation, though, it came out the same way. I had done the right thing, and it was exactly the wrong thing.
The door of our time-share didn’t open when I pressed my thumb against the lock, nor did it respond to Jeri’s hand. She called the rental office, and was informed that our contract had been voided. The other partners co-opting the suite had unanimously voted to have us evicted as undesirable nuisances; our belongings have been removed and placed in storage, and the balance of our rent had been deposited in our savings account.
When I called the Exchequer Lunar, I discovered that even that money had disappeared. The bank had removed the TBSA Comet from its AAA-list; our loan had been forfeited, our savings account placed in escrow. Our cash reserve was still available, but it was now capped at 500 kilolox…just enough for us to pay for the Comet’s postflight and refueling operations. Maybe more if we hocked some stuff. Our friendly vice-president, who had once eagerly posed for a holo with Jeri and me, was in a meeting just now, and could not be disturbed.
No apology. No explanation. Thank you, M’sser Furland,
goodbye.
And that was when I realized, during all this time, no one had called me Captain Future.
I excused myself from Jeri. I left her standing just outside our former home, our bags piled against the door, and stalked down the corridor to a public toilet. It was vacant, which was just as well; I spent a centilox to get inside, two to use the head, and three more to wash my face and hand. And then I kissed off 100 kilolox wrecking the place. Demolishing a sink, a dryer, and a vending machine was an adolescent tantrum, to be sure, but it made me feel a little better, and I managed to beat it before a cop arrived. No matter; the damage was eventually billed to my account.
We hauled our stuff down to a union hostel on the crater floor not far from the shuttle pits, where we checked in under the names of Curt Newton and Joan Randall; a cheap joke, but it was all we could afford. Our new address was a tiny, windowless cell smaller than the Comet’s wardroom; the floor and walls shuddered every time a ship lifted off, and the bunk’s top rack sagged ominously when I climbed on it. We switched beds, and Jeri was attempting to get through to our union rep while I tried to take a nap when someone came knocking at the door.
I rose to answer it, and shouldn’t have bothered. When the Pax comes calling, it doesn’t need permission to enter; knocking first was only a polite gesture. The door slid open, and there were Agent Jarvis and Agent Dann.
On second thought, it was a good thing I had just demolished a public toilet. Assaulting a Pax official will get you five-to-ten in Mare Selenium, if the magistrate doesn’t decide that you’re not worth the oxygen or cell space and give you the long walk instead. But I was homeless and destitute and tired, so I just sat down on the bunk and let them come in.
“Sorry I can’t offer you a drink,” I said, “but I’m fresh out of everything.” They didn’t sit down, mainly because Jeri had the only chair in the room. Her hand strayed to where she had placed her rapier against the wall, but Dann brushed back her jacket, revealing the taser holstered on her hip, and shook her head. “So I’ve heard,” Jarvis replied as he closed the door behind them. “I’m sorry this happened. That wasn’t our intention…or our doing, if you’re wondering.”
There was no reason for me to believe them, but I did. It wouldn’t have served any purpose for the Pax to have us ostracized or impoverished. “I don’t suppose we’re going to receive knighthoods after all, are we?”
Jarvis almost looked embarrassed, if such a thing were possible. “I’ve been told that Her Majesty would prefer to distance herself from the events on Evening Star. Parliament, along with the news media, has been informed that the two of you were working alone, and your actions were neither requested nor sanctioned by…”
“Bastard.”
“…by any government agency. You were attempting to collect a bounty which didn’t really exist…”
“Which gets you off the hook from having to pay us.”
“Please.” Jarvis held up a hand. “Let me finish. We’re still willing to pay you for your…ah, services, if it can be called that…pending the outcome of this investigation. However, it’ll have to done discretely, and…”
He coughed in his fist. “We first have to know that you’ll never disclose the role our agency had in what happened out there.”
“And suppose we do?” Jeri asked.
“Then we’d be forced to publicly reveal the full circumstances of Captain McKinnon’s death.” So much for sympathy and understanding. “How much worse your reputations would be damaged by this knowledge, I couldn’t say. You seem to have done a pretty good job yourselves. But the TBSA hasn’t rescinded your charter, and you’re still licensed for commercial freight operations within Pax territory. We may even be able to help you straighten out your financial difficulties. If you decide to go public, though…”
“Still playing the trump card.” Damn, what I wouldn’t have given to get him alone for just a few moments.
Jarvis returned my glare. “We didn’t ask you to do what you did. All we wanted you to do was get Pell back here and…”
“Well, y’know, what can I say?” The palms of my hands felt slick with sweat; I placed them on the mattress. “Sorry, but she didn’t want to go? I gave her a chance, but when she told me that she thought you’d only throw her out an airlock…”
“So you took it upon yourselves to do that.” Dann hadn’t said anything until then. “You marched her into an airlock…”
“I didn’t have any choice!”
“…and hit the button, and blew her out into space.”
“Hey, lady…”
“Fuck you.” Her face was cold as hard vacuum. “I’d do the same to you if I could, just to let you know how it felt.”
As if I didn’t know…
“I didn’t have a choice,” I protested. “Everyone knew why we were there the moment we came aboard. We had a drink in the bar, asked some questions, and when we realized that their security chief was wise to us, I sent Jeri back to the ship while I went to find Pell in the command center.”
“The idea was for Rohr to dose her with the drugs you gave us,” Jeri continued, “while I swung the ship around to the airlock for a pickup. Which I did, but he told me to go to the west airlock…”
“East airlock!” I snapped. “Goddammit, I told you to rendezvous with the east airlock!”
She ignored me. “He said west airlock. Maybe he had one too many in the bar, but that’s what he told me. So I got back to the Comet and brought it in close to the west airlock, but by then…”
“Okay, okay.” Trying to get the story straight, Jarvis shook his head and raised both hands. “So the pickup was supposed to be at the east airlock and not the west. Did you give her the drugs?”
“You kidding? I didn’t have a chance!” I let out my breath. “Look, it was everything I could do to get her out of ComOps and over to that airlock. I had to march her over at gunpoint, with their security people on my ass the whole way. I managed to suit up, but she wouldn’t do the same, so I figured, hey, if I just voided the airlock…”
“She’d go over.”
“Right. Exactly. Figured that, if the Comet was there, I could push her through the hatch and…”
“But the Comet wasn’t outside.”
I lowered my head. “It…it was at the wrong airlock. I didn’t…I didn’t know.” And nor did these guys, or anyone else who saw the event as captured by a camera in the airlock ceiling and recorded on disc, and later transmitted to the Pax. They had seen me, protected by a hardsuit, forcing a frightened woman into an airlock. They watched while I shut the inner hatch behind me and then, while holding Jenny Pell—hysterical, begging for mercy—at gunpoint, I hit the button which blew out the outer hatch.
And they had seen her being sucked out into space, to just the sort of sudden and horrible death that gives screaming nightmares to the most hardened spacers.
No matter how closely anyone studied the footage, they couldn’t know that Frank the Lizard was waiting just outside the airlock, carrying an emergency airmask. Nor would they know that there was a ferry holding station only three meters away, running lights darkened, hatch open and ready. Jenny had been exposed to hard vacuum for less than five seconds. I had to give her credit, having the guts to fake her own death that way, but she endured her carefully staged blowout with far less barotrauma than Jeri and I experienced during our blowout.
“It was an accident, I swear.” I heaved a deep sigh, rubbed the corners of my eyes. “If I’d known there wasn’t…I mean, if I didn’t think the Comet wasn’t…”
“You shouldn’t be so upset, M’sser Furland,” Dann said. “After all, it isn’t the first time you’ve committed murder.”
I nearly laughed out loud. Instead, I squeezed my eyes shut, and hoped that they wouldn’t notice that I was biting my tongue.
“But it accomplished the same purpose, didn’t it?” Jeri picked up the slack for me, her voice utterly calm. “After all, you wanted Pell for treason. If the court h
ad found her guilty, she would have received a death sentence anyway, would she have not?”
“If she had been found guilty, perhaps,” Jarvis said, “but there might have been mitigating circumstances. The magistrate could have found reason to grant a stay of execution, if she had agreed to…” Dann shot him a warning look, and he stopped himself. “Well, that’s a moot point now, isn’t it?”
Yes it was. And it was also a tacit admission that extraditing Jenny Pell on treason charges hadn’t been the true purpose of our mission. Jenny was right; the Pax only wanted her as leverage against ConSpace. I wasn’t about to bring that up, though. After all, I was the idiot who had screwed up by killing her.
“At any rate, what’s done is done.” Jarvis folded his arms above his chest. “Although ConSpace has accused our agency of attempting an abduction, the Pax denies any involvement with your actions. This will remain the official version. Have I made myself clear?”
“Perfectly, yes.” Jeri stared back at him. “And I hope it’s also clear to you that we never wish to see you, or any other member of the agency, ever again.”
“Don’t worry, Captain Lee-Bose,” Dann said. “I sincerely doubt we’ll ever call upon you or M’sser Furland again.” She took a step toward the door. “In fact, it’s a foregone conclusion that this entire operation was a serious mistake.”
She wouldn’t get an argument from me there, although she’d never know the reason why. Forty-one million kilometers away, Jenny Pell was alive and well on Evening Star. Deceased so far as the Pax Astra was concerned, finally unencumbered from notoriety, free to pursue her own private agenda…namely, the downfall of the Monarchist government of the Pax Astra. She might be a revolutionary-in-exile, but I had no doubt that she would eventually return to the country to which she had midwifed.