Below Mercury

by Anson, Mark

  The cutting ended in a wall of blackness that their lights could not penetrate. They had reached the main entrance, a huge opening in the rock, ten metres high and thirty metres wide. Matt stopped in front of it, and the others came to a halt behind him, reluctant to go forward through the open doorway into the darkness.

  Matt looked from side to side. ‘Where are the doors?’ he said, his voice almost a whisper. ‘They should be lying here …’

  Then, as his eyes adjusted to the darkness of the opening, Matt realised that the two huge sliding doors, each weighing many tonnes, were still there. The two halves were retracted into the rock walls on either side, the huge locking pins on each edge poised and waiting for the command to close again.

  ‘No, I don’t believe it,’ he whispered. He suddenly felt weak, staggered, and fell to his knees in the dust.

  The explosion out in the fuel refinery hadn’t caused the main doors to fail at all. This had been a deliberate act, one that had killed everyone working in the mine. The doors hadn’t failed; they had been unlocked and commanded to open.

  How many safety interlocks had been overridden to do this, Matt couldn’t imagine. It just didn’t seem possible; nothing in his wildest dreams had prepared him for the evidence he was seeing with his own eyes.

  ‘The stupid bastards! They opened the fucking doors!’ Matt yelled into his radio, his voice quivering with anger and disappointment.

  Bergman came over and dragged Matt to his feet.

  ‘Come on, we need to find some air, quickly.’

  ‘But don’t you see?’ Matt pleaded, grabbing Bergman’s arm, ‘They opened the doors! The stupid fuckers opened the doors, and everyone in the mine died!’

  ‘Yes, we all see it!’ Bergman said sharply, throwing Matt’s hand off, ‘But we need air! Where’s the air, Matt?’ Bergman turned away and walked through the entrance.

  Matt steadied himself, and after a moment followed the others. He shivered as he passed through the huge open doorway and into the mine. He felt a sudden fear of what might be in the darkness, waiting for them, and he kept close to the others.

  They reached the centre of the hangar, and swung their helmet lights round the huge, empty space.

  All around them, the floor was strewn with wreckage from the explosion. Doors and smaller airlocks, dimly seen on the walls, led off deeper into the mine. Up above, a maze of gantries, crane tracks and servicing decks could be made out, running round the interior. Some were hanging off the walls, where they had been ripped away by the gale of air.

  ‘Guys, we need air, and fast. Essential conversation only. Keep searching.’ Clare’s voice reminded them of their desperate need, and they spread out and began searching among the debris on the floor.

  ‘Captain, I’m on amber reserve,’ Wilson called, trying to sound as calm as he could.

  ‘Okay, Steve, you need to conserve your air. Stop your search, lie down, and stay calm. We’ll keep on searching.’ Clare tried not to show her mounting anxiety. Their situation, already grim, was deteriorating by the minute, and there was still no sign of any air.

  Anger suddenly kicked in, and she kicked about in frustration in the sea of useless scraps of paper and bits and pieces, looking for anything that resembled an air cylinder or a suit backpack.

  Inside her helmet, an amber LED lit up and started blinking, and the panic rose, constricting her lungs. Another few litres of air and it would start to blink red, and then it was just a countdown to the end.

  She fought back tears of frustration and despair. Where the fuck was the air? It was as if someone had been there before them, and had removed anything that could have saved them.

  In the distance, she saw Abrams stagger, go down, and lie immobile on the floor. Elliott was on his knees in the dust, close to where Wilson lay.

  ‘Steve,’ she said, slowly and carefully, ‘can you hear me? Move your arm if you can hear me.’

  Wilson’s arm twitched slightly, then he raised a hand. She felt a surge of relief that she was not going to die alone, and then she spotted the air cylinder.

  It was lying behind a fallen roof girder, and she only saw it because of the way she was facing; she had missed it on her first pass. She started towards it, trying not to hurry, but it was definitely an air cylinder, with the familiar black-and-white marking on its neck. She hauled the cylinder out of the dust, and turned it round to see the gauge, just as her helmet LED started to blink red.

  The gauge read empty, and she saw her death. She tried the valve in case the gauge was faulty, but the valve was wide open; the cylinder was completely empty. She sagged at the knees, and muted her mike as she gave herself up to sobs of despair.

  Not like this, she thought, not like this. Not in this empty hangar in a forgotten mine, millions of kilometres from the air and oceans of Earth, with no way of telling anyone what had happened.

  There was no air. They were trapped in vacuum on an airless world, and they were going to die.

  She felt a sick slide of fear at what would happen to her as the air ran out. It wouldn’t be quick; she would subside into panic, hyperventilation and convulsions, before death finally claimed her. She wondered if she would have the courage to end it all, before it got that far.

  Matt was still moving; she could see him in her helmet lights, as she slumped over sideways in the dust. She would watch him, she thought; it would give her something to do while her life ebbed away.

  Matt was crawling towards a large object near the outer doors. His helmet LED blinked red. He crawled some more, until he was in front of the huge armoured form of a mining robot. It lay sprawled where it had fallen, face down in the dust that covered the floor.

  Matt pulled himself up to the body of the robot, and hauled himself up the armoured carapace until his face was over the maintenance panel on its back. Already, he could feel difficulty breathing. He was running out of oxygen, and his head was aching with the exertion; his temples throbbed with every pulse beat.

  He wiped the dust off the status display, but it was dark; the robot’s power pack had shut down years ago.

  ‘Please, let there be something left,’ he whispered, and turned the main mode switch to the start position. It was hard to turn, and for a moment, he thought it had stuck fast in the cold, but then it slid into position. He found the restart button, popped the safety cover off with shaking fingers, and pressed it.

  ‘Come on boy, fire up,’ he breathed, as he released the button. He waited for several seconds, his head throbbing with pain. Nothing happened; there wasn’t enough left in the power pack for a restart. Matt closed his eyes, and slumped down besides the robot’s body in despair.

  Unseen by Matt, a small LED glowed green, the first light in the darkness of the mine that was not their own, and a group of smaller LEDs blinked on.

  Long moments passed as the robot lay motionless. Inside its body, the power pack was starting up; electrical power slowly rose and stabilised. The main status display came on as the primary cortex restarted and sought out its instructions.

  A faint whine of motors came through its steel body, and the heavy bulk of the robot stirred in the dust. Matt pushed himself back and away, too weak to stand up, as the robot flexed its huge, ball-jointed arms. It planted them firmly on the ground, and heaved itself slowly onto its knees. It stood up, one leg at a time, dust streaming off its body, its armoured head swivelling round and downwards as it sought out its master. A ring of green LEDs came to life round each of its two video eyes.

  ‘Identify,’ Matt gasped, knowing that the robot could hear him on the suit radio channel.

  ‘I AM BOB FIVE,’ the robot’s deep voice replied in Matt’s headset.

  ‘Bob Five – emergency.’ Matt struggled to get the words out. ‘Help us. We need air.’

  The robot gazed down impassively at Matt.

  ‘Bob Five. Emergency. Help us.’ Matt was gasping now. ‘Get us some air. Hurry.’ The headache was intense now, a drilling pain between his temp
les, and his vision was contracting.

  The robot started moving. It swivelled round, and lumbered off towards one side of the main hangar doors.

  ‘No – Bob Five. We need help. Don’t – don’t go …’ Matt tried to shout, but it came out barely louder than a whisper. He collapsed in the dust, arms outstretched towards the robot, imploring it to come back.

  The robot stopped by the hangar door controls, and extended one of its giant hands to take hold of the manual door winder. Its metal claw squeezed closed on the handle, then its wrist started to rotate, spinning round like an electric drill as it turned the winder.

  A deep moan of seized machinery reverberated through the hangar floor and into Matt’s helmet, followed by a slow, grinding vibration, as metal moved against metal in the dark.

  The hangar doors were closing.

  Clare felt the noise, and turned round to face the doors. She could see them moving, shutting them in, sealing them off from any help, as if anyone could help them here, in this forgotten corner of the Solar System.

  The robot continued to wind the vast doors closed, the edges crawling together, centimetre by centimetre. Each half of the door was made from overlapping sections, and as each section latched shut, there was a dull boom, and the remaining sections of the doors continued their slow march together.

  It must have taken many minutes, but in Clare’s oxygen-starved brain, it seemed as if the doors were racing shut, and she tried to reach out her hand, to try to claw her way out of the hangar, out into the crater and the distant sunlight. But no sunlight fell on the entrance to Erebus Mine, there had never been any sunlight here, not ever, and the doors were nearly closed now.

  Boom.

  The sound reverberated through the mountain and into Clare’s clutching fingers, as the last section of the doors thudded home, and the locking actuators moved to seal the entrance.

  Thunk.

  Dust sprang up, and collapsed back to the floor like water, as the locking pins slid home and locked the doors shut. They were trapped, entombed forever in the mine, and they would never be found.

  They would never send anyone to rescue us, Clare thought, they would never send another ship, not after another loss. Helligan had been right; a few more dead bodies wouldn’t make any difference – they should have left this cursed place alone, left it with its dead, left it alone in the deeps of space.

  The robot thudded past, near to where Clare lay, and moved away from them, leaving them to die in the darkness. Clare lay down and gave up; she had no strength left. She felt the cold of the hangar floor creeping through her suit, draining the heat from her body, and she wondered how much longer it would take.

  The red LED in her helmet filled her contracting vision. Already, she was beginning to lose control of her breathing; it came in short, sharp gasps, and her chest heaved, trying to draw oxygen into her lungs.

  This is the end, she thought, and her fingers crept towards her faceplate release; this is how it all ends, entombed in a dead mine on a dead world, and no one would ever come to recover her body, not out here, so close to the Sun, although it was darker than the night.

  She closed her eyes.

  She felt another vibration coming through the floor, and in her confused mind, she thought the mine was collapsing, burying them in their tomb. She squeezed her eyes shut and cringed, waiting for the roof to fall in on her and crush her, but the pain didn’t come.

  She opened her eyes, and the light from her helmet had turned into a cone of light, stabbing upwards. She puzzled over this for an age; there couldn’t be any shafts of light in a vacuum, then she realised that a dense fog was whirling about in great clouds, rolling across her vision. It filled the hangar, reaching into the corners with ghostly fingers. Dust and scraps of paper whirled about in the mist, and she heard a faint noise, like a seashell held to her ear when she was a child.

  Something nudged her, and again, and she realised she was being buffeted by something. Something was blowing around her, blowing against her, and with her last strength, she turned her head towards the back of the hangar.

  She was unable to take it in at first; her mind refused to believe what she saw.

  Twenty metres away, the robot was operating another manual winder. Another set of doors, huge in the darkness, opened slowly, and air was gushing out, blowing dust and debris around in the great empty hangar.

  Air. There was air in the mine. It billowed out into the hangar, filling it up, fogging as it expanded and cooled.

  Clare’s chest heaved, and she convulsed; there was nothing to breathe any more, there was nothing in her lungs. She was surrounded by air – if she could only get her helmet open. She tried to unlock her faceplate, but her fingers would not move. Try, she told herself, and her fingers responded, but it was too slow, too late—

  Someone grabbed her shoulder and turned her onto her back, then there was a fumbling, a click, and a sudden suck of air as pressures equalised. A hand lifted her faceplate, and blessed fresh air rushed into her lungs.

  She took a deep breath – too deep, and the ice-cold air burned in her chest, but she didn’t care, all she wanted to do was breathe, breathe. She inhaled dust, and coughed, but it didn’t matter, she just sucked more air down.

  A face loomed over her as she lay there, and she saw that it was Matt. He knelt down beside her, his eyes searching her face. He looked away for a moment, speaking to someone else, and then turned back to her.

  She gazed up at him, unable to speak. The emotion at still being alive, of coming so close to death and surviving, rose up and overwhelmed her. Her face broke up and she turned away, sitting up on one arm, not wanting him to see her like this. Matt put a hand on her shoulder. Her body shook with sobs.

  ‘It’s okay,’ he said, ‘you’re going to be all right.’

  ‘I thought – I thought I was going to die,’ she whispered through her tears.

  ‘Didn’t we all,’ Matt said, and laughed, wiping his eyes. He moved round so that she could lie against him, and put an arm round her. They remained that way for a while, neither of them moving.

  Eventually, Clare pulled herself up onto one shoulder, and sniffed as she composed herself. Her chest hurt, and her throat was dry from breathing in the cold air.

  ‘How are the others?’ Her voice was hoarse and unsteady.

  ‘They’re all okay. Steve’s in the worst way, but he’s going to be all right. Rick’s with him now.’

  Clare looked around her, and her eyes widened.

  ‘Air – how come there’s air in here?’

  ‘I know. I don’t understand it.’ Matt looked to the far end of the hangar, to where the robot stood by the open inner doors, then back to Clare. ‘You should take it easy for a while; you’re suffering from hypoxia.’

  Clare complied reluctantly, and lay back down. She closed her eyes and focused on her breathing, letting the oxygen flow back into her lungs.

  As her body recovered, the memory of the crash and the frantic race for survival came flooding back. Her mind flicked over ever detail of the last hour; remembering it, analysing it. The crash, the explosion, the open outer doors, and now air in the mine. She didn’t know what all of it meant, but one thing was certain.

  They had to get a message back to Earth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Later, nearly an hour after the great rush of air that had saved them, they were gathered together in a circle in the middle of the hangar, helmets off, sitting in their spacesuits on some freight boxes they had found. They had opened some of the emergency rations from the spacesuit survival packs, and shared the small bars of food round between themselves.

  Clare checked her watch. It showed 19:06, so it was still August 9 – the day of their arrival over Mercury. She worked back over the events in her mind. It seemed hardly possible that, less than two hours ago, she had been sitting in the commander’s seat on the spaceplane, coming in to land. Now the ship was just a twisted pile of scrap metal out on the crat
er floor, and they were marooned, trapped inside an abandoned mine.

  Her breath smoked in the frigid air. All around them, a layer of frost lay over every exposed surface. The air had dropped all its moisture when it encountered the deep cold of the hangar, and it had frozen out on the metal structures and rock walls.

  The robot stood by the inner hangar door, its eyes glowing in the darkness, waiting for a command.

  There was no telling whether they could find any more food, but Clare had insisted that they eat something to get their blood sugar back up before they did anything else. They ate in semi-darkness, by the lights on two of the helmets; they had switched off the others to save the batteries.

  Clare picked out the last crumbs from a food bar wrapper, and crumpled it in her hand. It was time to take stock.

  She knocked on a freight box for attention, and looked round at them all. Their faces were lit from below, giving them all an eerie appearance.

  ‘Okay guys, let’s assess our situation. It seems we’ll be staying here awhile.’

  She chose her words carefully. She didn’t want to underplay their situation, but she had to keep everyone’s spirits up and talk positively.

  ‘Our most important needs right now are air, warmth, water and food. If we can secure those, we can start thinking about how to call home.

  ‘First – air. Seems like we’ve got plenty of that.’ She gestured in the direction of the open inner doors. ‘I guess we’ve all got some questions about how it came to be there, but let’s do this in order.

  ‘Second priority – warmth. It’s pretty cold in here, but we can manage okay with our suits on. Steve, what’s the temperature doing?’

  Wilson glanced at his suit gauges. He had been keeping track of the air temperature and pressure while they were eating.

  ‘Minus eleven degrees and still rising. Oxygen partial pressure is stable at ninety percent nominal – we’ll be fine as long as we take it easy.’

  ‘Okay, good. Now – water and food. We’ve got enough emergency rations for another forty-eight hours, and that’s it. We’ll run out of water before that – all we’ve got is what’s in the bottles in the ration packs.’