Below Mercury

by Anson, Mark

  The display also showed an ominous message next to the plotted course:

  INSUFFICIENT FUEL FOR FLIGHT PLAN

  The last segment of the curve was red, showing when they would run out of fuel. Clare tried not to look at it; they would not know just how far they were away from meeting up with the tug, until they had a more accurate reading on the fuel tank contents.

  Instead, she focused on entering in more details of the planned climb, and calculating the launch windows, which happened once every ninety-six minutes.

  She forced herself not to get her hopes up, but no matter how hard she tried to detach herself from the situation, her mind kept returning to the hope that this might be their escape from the mine, and from Mercury.

  It seemed too much to hope, and she pushed the thought down again, because she had something else, something more precious to her personally, if they ever did escape and make it back to Earth.

  The memory module didn’t just contain a copy of the detailed mission plan, it also held a data recording of the last thirty minutes of the spaceplane’s flight – which would be very interesting to a crash investigation team, if they ever got back to Earth.

  If there had been any sabotage of the spaceplane’s systems, it would show up, and exonerate her and Wilson. The recorder would have captured everything they had done, every control that they had touched, every word that the flight crew or the passengers had said.

  As she thought of the passengers, her earlier unease over Matt came back to trouble her. She stared at the cockpit console as her doubts resurfaced from the dark waters where they had been brooding.

  He went straight for the mine entrance, and the hangar.

  Did Matt know that the mine would be full of air?

  He went straight to the robot.

  Did he know that Bob Five would be there, waiting to help them?

  She thought back to the many conversations they’d had on board the tug, about what they’d find in the crater. Then there was Matt’s antipathy towards Elliott, and his reluctance to accept any suggestion that the mine personnel hadn’t followed safety procedures. If he was concealing what he knew, he was very good at it.

  And what of her own feelings towards Matt? Was her judgement clouded by her attraction towards him, and had she missed the clues that had been staring her in the face all along?

  The silent cabin had no answers to her questions, but her natural instincts urged caution. She resolved to say nothing, but to be very careful about accepting Matt’s advice without questioning his motives.

  With a sudden shock, she realised where her thoughts were leading her.

  In the silo control room, Wilson sat back in his seat, watching the rising temperatures inside the shuttle’s fuel tanks. The situation was looking healthier already, and he just had to wait. Clare was busy doing something inside the shuttle, programming the MMS most likely.

  Wilson got up and walked round the bloodstained control room, and shivered. He found himself imagining what had happened in here – the knock at the door, and then the sudden shock as they burst in.

  Then the killing had begun.

  Wilson’s eyes flickered across the sprays of blood droplets that zigzagged across the walls, and the screams started inside his head.

  He stood up suddenly. He had to get out of here, if only for a few minutes. He called Clare on the intercom, and told her he was going to look for a bathroom.

  He stepped out of the crawling horrors of the control room, and took a few deep breaths as he leaned against the wall of the corridor outside. His mind cleared a little.

  He pushed himself off the wall, and walked back down the corridor, past the T-junction and along the other arm of the corridor, peering into the other rooms, taking his time.

  He came to the unlocked door of another control room, and pushed it open cautiously. The silo beyond the glass window was empty, and its roof lay open to the sky. Dust and broken rock had been blown in from the refinery explosion, and lay piled at the bottom of the silo.

  Wilson pressed some of the controls on the console, but the silo appeared to be dead. He left the room and walked further down the corridor. Most of the remaining rooms contained nothing but empty lockers, and after several minutes of finding nothing of interest, Wilson was about to retrace his steps.

  As he reached the end of the corridor, however, he noticed a security door that hung open on its one remaining hinge. He pushed it aside, and looked into a strongroom. Beyond the broken door, two separate barriers of heavy-duty steel bars were set into the rock on all sides. The doors in each barrier had been forced open by heavy equipment, and inside the room, large amounts of dried blood lay spattered over a number of cardboard boxes that were stacked in piles. It looked like someone had retreated into the strongroom, but they had broken in and killed him, Wilson thought, and the anger surfaced again.

  He wondered what was inside the boxes. He bent down to the nearest one, and pulled back the sealing tape. A number of tamper-evident security seals popped off with the tape. The box contained about twenty thick cardboard packets, each about ten centimetres wide by twenty long.

  He picked one of the packets up. It was incredibly heavy in his hand. He tore back a corner of the cardboard wrapping, and the bright silver of a metal ingot glittered back at him. He unwrapped it completely. The PMI logo was embossed into its surface, with various stamps underneath, showing the metal’s purity, its serial number, and its elemental symbol – Pt. He was holding a solid bar of refined platinum. It felt slightly greasy to the touch, and it shone in the light.

  His gaze flickered back to the other bars, and the other boxes. There must have been tonnes of platinum, gold, and rhodium here, awaiting shipment back to Earth. He wondered how much it was all worth. Could they take any of it back with them? There must be some way they could find some room—

  ‘No.’

  Clare’s voice came from behind him, and he spun round, nearly dropping the bar on the floor. She stood in the strongroom doorway, watching him.

  ‘I was just—’

  ‘It’s okay.’ Clare raised her hand. ‘You look at it all you want. We can barely carry our own weight, let alone any extra. I came to tell you that the fuel readouts are showing we’ve just enough for the climb – if we take out the unused seats and anything else that isn’t actually welded down.’

  ‘Hey, that’s – that’s great news.’ A smile grew on Wilson’s face as the prospect of getting back to the tug became more certain. He put the bar back in the open box, and stood up. ‘Can we tell the others yet?’

  ‘Yes, I think we can risk it now. I’ll go out into the main airway and see if I can get a message to them. Can you keep an eye on the fuel pressure?’ Clare left from the doorway, and Wilson heard her footsteps as she walked back down the corridor, towards the exit to the silo.

  He looked back at the boxes in the room. Clare was right; they didn’t have the fuel to carry any unnecessary weight.

  He knew he should get back and check the tank pressure, but he didn’t seem to be able to leave the room. He bent down again and picked up the bar of platinum. It seemed to have grown heavier since he last handled it, and he turned the metal in the light, watching the reflected gleam run across its liquid surfaces.

  He remained like that for a long while, only tearing himself away when he heard the sound of Clare’s footsteps returning.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  Rick Bergman’s comlink beeped.

  He stopped walking, and held it to his ear. Matt stopped a few paces on. They had passed the abandoned shaft station a few minutes ago, and were almost back at the main shaft station.

  ‘Bergman.’ He listened for a few moments, and a smile broke over his face. ‘Hey, that’s excellent news. Are you sure?’ He listened a few moments more. ‘No, throw out anything you need to. As far as I’m concerned, we don’t need to take anything back but ourselves. What? No, we’re not back at the shaft station yet. I still can’t believe it, this is
fantastic. Did you get my message earlier?’

  He spoke with Clare a little longer, letting her know that Abrams and Elliott were on their way to the peak.

  ‘No, I haven’t heard anything from them yet. They’re not due to report until one. Okay. Speak to you then.’

  He flipped the comlink shut, and turned to Matt. ‘My friend, it looks like we might yet be returning home. The good captain and our trusty copilot are in the final stages of prepping a shuttle for flight, and it’s got just enough fuel to get us back to the Baltimore – if they strip everything out of it that isn’t welded down.’

  Matt grinned. ‘Well, that’s the best bit of news I’ve ever had in my life. How long before it’s ready?’

  ‘She reckons several hours to take out all the unnecessary weight, but there’s no point in rushing; the earliest transfer window back to Earth isn’t for a few days.’ Bergman was grinning as well now.

  Matt shook his head in disbelief. In less than a day, they had gone from being marooned in an abandoned mine, to figuring out a schedule for returning to Earth. It seemed too good to be true.

  ‘Is she sure? I mean, is the shuttle serviceable?’

  ‘That’s exactly what I asked. They’re going over its systems now, but she reckons it’s flightworthy, it’s just the fuel that’s an issue.’

  ‘Does she need any help? I mean, shouldn’t we go back there and give her a hand?’

  ‘They’re fine. We need to stay on plan. Come on.’

  They set off again, with a new urgency in their step, and soon emerged from the passage, back in the main shaft station.

  It was exactly as they had left it; the cage waited at the shaft head, its doors open.

  Matt set the hoist controls so that they could control it from the cage. He turned to Bergman, who had picked up two mining helmets from the debris on the chamber floor and was dusting them off.

  ‘Look, before we go down there, there’s something we need to get straight.’

  ‘Sure. What?’

  ‘If anyone’s still alive down there, and they see us, we need to be watch what we say. If there’s been a mutiny, they might not want us to get any messages back to Earth, right?’

  Bergman considered, and nodded.

  ‘So let’s get our story clear. We don’t mention the shuttle, or getting the radio to work. As far as they’re concerned, we’re just two mining engineers on a survey mission that crashed in the crater, and we’re looking for any help we can find, okay?’

  ‘So we don’t say anything about the others, right?’

  ‘Right. We say we were the only survivors. If they’re armed, we’ve got to keep something up our sleeve until we can figure out what to do.’

  ‘I’ll go along with that. But, you know, I’ve been thinking too. Here we are, we’ve turned on the emergency lighting in the mine, we’ve got the hoists working – they must have heard something. If there are survivors down there, surely they’d have come looking by now?’

  Matt considered. He wanted to agree with Bergman, but the image of the gunfight in the control centre, and the ransacking of the mine manager’s office, kept returning.

  ‘I hope you’re right.’ He turned back to the control panel, and punched the selector buttons. ‘Okay, I’ve set the cage to go straight to the four hundred level. Are we ready?’

  Matt took the mining helmet that Bergman held out, and the two of them clambered aboard the lower of the two cages, and stood on the short section of rail track in the cage floor. Matt held the interlock handle closed, and turned the control handle to DOWN.

  The cage door slid down, the safety gate closed, and the bell rang twice. Matt and Bergman gripped the side rails inside the cage as the brake blocks released, and the cage squealed down its guide rails and into the darkness of the shaft.

  The cage fell past the wind slit, a wide, dark opening in the shaft walls where the fresh air entered the shaft. Even though there was no forced ventilation in the mine, a rush of air surged through the open frame and wire mesh grilles of the cage.

  It lasted only a moment, and then the cage fell past and out of the guide rails, accelerating down the shaft. It was utterly dark, and the cage turned from side to side in the four guide ropes as it picked up speed. Matt and Bergman switched on their flashlights in the rushing darkness, and the concrete lining of the shaft sleeted by, dark grey in the gloom. Pipes carrying water and compressed air, and heavy-duty electrical cables, snaked past in undulating streams.

  The air grew dank, and the mine-smell filled their nostrils. Matt breathed deeply of the familiar air as the cage fell past a section of shaft that glistened wetly from some leaking joint in a water main.

  The cage’s construction – an open metal framework, and wire mesh covering the outside – allowed Matt and Bergman to look upwards and see the diminishing square of red light from the shaft station that they had just left, and look down beneath their feet, into the blackness of the shaft.

  ‘Take a look,’ Matt said, pointing down, and clicking off his flashlight. Bergman did the same, and stared down into the darkness. Deep below the cage, he saw that the darkness was not absolute; there were small spots of red light, strung out like beads in the shaft below him.

  One was coming closer, and as Bergman watched, it expanded towards him and flew past. Bergman had a moment’s glimpse of a wreckage-lined shaft station, and a large sign that read 100 METRES ALTITUDE, and then it was gone, vanishing upwards into the darkness.

  Depths – and altitudes – in the mine were referenced to the surface of the ice field. Since the hangar levels were considerably higher than this, in the rising ground at the base of the mountains, they had some way to descend before they even reached zero level.

  They went past two more shaft stations, at zero and one hundred metres depth. As they passed the 100 level station, a sudden whoosh close by the cage marked the ascent of the counterweight in its twin guide ropes, flying past on its journey to the surface.

  After that, there were no more shaft stations, and the cage fell in darkness. Matt and Bergman stared at the walls sleeting by, mesmerised by the long fall down the shaft.

  Eventually, the smooth motion of the cage was interrupted with a slight jerk, and the cage’s downward plunge slackened as the cage drew near to the final shaft station, on the 400 level, 600 metres below the hangars.

  The cage slowed to walking pace, then slower still, so that it crept down the shaft towards the station. Guide rails moved inward from their parking positions at the walls of the shaft, and the cage slid into them. Red light flooded into the cage as it drew level with the station, and stopped.

  The cage bounced slowly up and down as the long length of the wire rope absorbed the kinetic energy of their motion. The motion faded, and the brake blocks slammed home, locking the cage in the shaft.

  The shaft station was a square cutout in the curved wall of the shaft, with the familiar heavy-duty mesh grille protecting the opening. The doors slid aside, and Matt stepped across the gap, not bothering to extend the short gangway.

  Bergman followed, and he had a glimpse of the gulf still below the cage as he stepped across. He was acutely aware that there was nothing to stop him falling into the gap. The shaft did not stop here, but continued down for another fifteen metres or so, to provide a sump for any water that found its way into the shaft. Something glistened way below; the surface of a lake that had never seen the Sun, and Bergman shivered.

  The two men started walking along the main haulage way, which led away from the main shaft station, heading towards the ice field. It was a major transportation route, and when the mine was operational, trains had shuttled back and forth along its length, carrying men and materials between the main shaft and the deeper parts of the mine.

  The passage followed the familiar pattern, with roof supports at regular intervals and a rail track on one side. Pipes and cables ran along the walls, taking power, communications, water and compressed air into the mine.

 
Every 300 metres, the passage was punctuated by a set of sliding pressure doors in their heavy-duty metal frames. Matt stopped by the first set of doors and examined them.

  ‘Another set of doors wide open, that should have closed the moment the mine pressure dropped,’ he commented bitterly. ‘I wish Elliott could see this.’

  ‘No sign of any damage to the doors,’ Bergman observed. ‘What do you think stopped them from closing?’

  Matt started walking again as he considered the question.

  ‘I can’t imagine a situation where the personnel would wilfully override the doors from closing automatically in an emergency. The only thing I can think of is that the doors somehow failed to close, and they didn’t realise in time.’ Matt looked down as he walked.

  ‘I suppose it’s possible they were distracted by the explosion, and everything else going on, so that they didn’t notice until it was too late. But, you know why I don’t buy any of this?’ He glanced at Bergman. ‘I knew these people. They took the mine integrity seriously. The very first action of the duty controller in any emergency – a breach, a fire, whatever – would have been to trigger all the pressure doors to contain any problem and prevent it spreading. I mean, you’ve been in plenty of space mines, would you expect any of these guys to not close the doors immediately? It just doesn’t make sense.’

  They walked in silence for a while.

  ‘The mutiny theory worries me,’ Bergman said at last. ‘I mean, it’s clear that there was some kind of fight between two groups, and that wasn’t something that anybody expected, not PMI, not the relatives. Just suppose – just suppose none of this was PMI’s fault?’ He watched Matt’s face carefully for his reaction.

  ‘What about the hangar doors being open? Why would anyone want to deliberately vent the mine? And what about the sabotage to the ship!’ Matt was incredulous.

  ‘I don’t have answers for that,’ Bergman said slowly, ‘I guess all I’m saying is, we’ve got to keep an open mind. I mean, we’re only assuming that the ship crashed because of sabotage. I know you’re not going to like the idea, but what if Foster made some kind of mistake on landing? Misjudged the fuel or something? I’m sure she believes that she didn’t do anything wrong, but what if she did? You know she was on suspension before she was assigned to the mission.’