by Scott Mackay
“Morgan, come here.”
When Morgan came to him, he clung to her tightly, because Louise had always been so worried about Morgan, and Morgan always needed a lot of support, and yet it was now Morgan, a ten-year-old girl, who stroked his hair, even as his own tears came faster, and said to him, “It’s okay, Daddy. It’s okay.”
She showed a strength that surprised him. Portrait of a family in great grief. With only the father left now.
And that was the worst of all possible situations because he wasn’t sure he knew how to be a father. He had always been a professor and a scientist, too focused on his career, and hadn’t even really watched his kids grow up.
He heard combat boots coming along the hall. He looked up. Lenny stared at him in the light coming from the communications apparatus. Lenny had a scratch on his face, not a deep one, but still angry and red. The airman glanced at Louise, then back at Neil.
Neil said, “Sorry. I tried.”
And Lenny responded by saying, “They got Douglas and Sinclair.”
“How long before they try again?”
“Who knows?”
“There’s a cave,” he volunteered. “Did you find the cave? It’s all limestone along this ridge.”
Lenny’s eyes narrowed. “Like for a fallback position?”
“The VMs will have a tough time.”
“What about your sister-in-law? If we go up there…”
And thinking of Glenda, he felt a great comfort. “She’ll figure it out. But maybe we should…maybe I should show you where this cave is…”
He lost sight of that particular objective over the coming days.
They buried Louise. Out by the pool next to the others. They wrapped her in a sheet, and put some photographs of the kids in with her, and also one of her watercolors, and Lenny said something about her even though he didn’t know her, the usual things: good mother, good wife, all-around decent person, and, god-damn it, they would make the Tarsalans pay for this. This last bit came in a sudden outburst that shook Lenny’s body from head to toe.
What was so strange about it was the heat, over a hundred and ten degrees, as if after triggering a short nuclear winter the phytosphere was now rebounding with a long and lethal summer, true to his prediction, even though they were well into October now.
And when Fernandes and Rostov broke the earth, it was like dust, as moistureless as talc, so that it blew away into the tinder-dry forest in little brown puffs, like so many fleeing ghosts.
33
Gerry stood next to the comlink in the mayor’s office. Around him were Ian, Mitch, Ira, Stephanie, and the mayor’s assistant, Damian. Hulke sat in front of the comlink, his face masked in his usual self-immolating grin. On the monitor Gerry saw Kafis’s face and, in the background, he caught a glimpse of another Tarsalan, this one checking something on another screen. It was this other Tarsalan that bothered Gerry. What was he doing? What was he checking? Was it game over for their little conspiracy, even before it had properly begun?
“Council has voted to accept your…uh…solution,” said Hulke, with not even the slightest quaver in his voice, as if his nerve had been hardened by years at the blackjack table. “We would like to invite you and your entire delegation to a celebration dinner in the Nectaris Council Chamber tonight at eight. My advisors and I think our new partnership should be marked in a special way, and so we’re bringing out of stores the finest cuisine still left in our inventory—I should tell you, Kafis, that the cuisine on the Moon is world-renowned. We of course expect you to make a speech, and I myself will make a speech as well.”
“You’ve taken an excellent first positive step, Mayor. My delegation will be eager to meet with your people. The Moon has turned a new page in its history.”
“I couldn’t agree with you more, Kafis.”
The communication ended. The mayor turned to Gerry. “How was that?”
“What was that other one doing in the background?”
“I imagine he was there to stop me from reading Kafis too easily. It’s an old poker trick. Always have people in the background for distraction purposes. That’s why I had Damian right next me.”
“What do we do now?”
“We let the caterers get to work.”
An hour later, Gerry, Stephanie, and Ian stood by the railing above the Council Chamber. Dining tables had been moved in, and caterers in white shirts, black pants, and black bow ties scurried around arranging artificial gardenias as centerpieces. Ian stood apart from Gerry and Stephanie, but kept glancing at Stephanie, lifting his chin from time to time and clenching his jaw, peering at her as if she were the strangest woman he had ever seen.
“I hope this works,” said Gerry.
Stephanie put her hand on his shoulder. “They’ll be arriving in an hour. Why don’t we get dressed?”
Gerry went back to his hotel room, put on a white blazer, a purple T-shirt with the NCSU logo, and his pair of baggy corduroys, the most stylish clothes he had brought to the Moon. He then went back to the Council Chamber. Drinks were served. People and Tarsalans sat. Speeches were made. And one by one, over the next half hour, humans inconspicuously left the hall. Some brave souls, equipped with hidden breathers, stayed, as a complete disappearance of all humans would make the Tarsalans suspicious. But at last, the big pressure doors closed, and oxygen thinned gradually, and at first the Tarsalans were none the wiser. But when they finally figured out what was going on, it was too late; they couldn’t get out. They upbraided the humans who had remained inside the Council Chamber, but by this time those humans had strapped breathers to their faces and barricaded themselves behind some tables.
In any case, there was nothing the Tarsalans could do to harm the brave humans, because they were too oxygen-deprived to do much of anything. Gerry watched everything on a monitor. He felt guilty. He didn’t like to trick people. Or Tarsalans. At one point, Kafis loosened his collar, as if that would help.
Gerry found the gesture pathetic, and wanted to assist Kafis in some way.
When ninety percent of the Tarsalans were subdued, oxygen was slowly pumped back into the Council Chamber—but it was combined with halothane, an inhalational anesthetic brought over from the Aldrin Health Sciences Center. Those not yet knocked out were rendered unconscious in a matter of seconds.
Nectaris Security moved in, faces masked with breathers, and cuffed every member of the Tarsalan delegation, then began moving them to detention. Gerry sighed. As much as he hated lying, he was relieved by how smoothly the whole operation had gone.
Gerry lived in his Computer Assisted Pressure Suit for the next three days, cramming a month’s worth of training into the space of seventy-two hours, thanks to AviOrbit’s ingenious CAPS software.
He was out on the Moon’s surface with Ian and Mitch, and they were anchoring a singularity drive mock-up to the ground. His boots bit into the surface with bear trap–like crampons—what he would have to wear when he walked around in the negligible gravity of Gaspra.
He fired a T-bolt through a brace with his pneumatic drill, the gray dirt puffed beneath him. The T-bolt, easily the size of his arm, penetrated the surface and latched the mock-up to the Moon, even as his monitor told him his crampons had increased their pounds per square inch tenfold—what they would have to do if he wanted to stop his pneumatic drill from shooting him off the surface of Gaspra, where the escape velocity was no more than a few scant miles per hour.
“Anchor seven secure,” he said.
“Say it with more enthusiasm, buddy. We’re going to the asteroid belt.”
“I feel like a Roman senator on the Ides of March.”
“Why does he talk like that, Ian?” said Mitch, who was getting ready with anchor eight.
“Bud, they got what was coming to them,” said Ian.
“I don’t like how we had to lie to them. What are all these other worlds going to think of us once they find out what we did?”
“That Malcolm… he’s a Fast Eddie, isn
’t he?” said Ian.
“I’m ready to secure anchor eight,” said Mitch.
“Go ahead, little guy.”
“They’re going to think we’re monsters,” said Gerry.
Another voice cut through their suit radios: Ira, speaking from control. “Could we cut the crap? We’re on a tight schedule.”
“Relax, Ira,” said Ian. “The CAPS will babysit us through the whole thing. You’ve taken the magic and
mystery out of suicide missions.”
“They walked right into it, didn’t they?” said Gerry.
“Hulke’s got a superb poker face,” admitted Ian.
“Yes, but the Tarsalans are supposed to be smart.”
“The Tarsalans were desperate. They wanted to believe what they wanted to believe.”
Gerry shook his head. “In other words, they still haven’t figured out that we’re willing to risk our own survival for the sake of our principles.”
“You think they would have learned that by now. It’s been nine years.”
“We should offer them a concession,” said Gerry.
Ira’s voice came over the radio: “Like you said, Ger, they walked right into it. It serves them right. And let’s remember who’s idea it was to depressurize the Council Chamber in the first place.”
“We don’t have any weapons on the Moon. What else was I supposed to do?”
“And the halothane was a nice touch,” Mitch piped in.
“And the way Kafis loosened his collar,” said Ira. “I haven’t had a good laugh like that in a long time.
You know what? I found it inspiring. To see a couple hundred Tarsalans all unconscious like that. It gave me… I don’t know… a secure feeling.”
“I feel sorry for them,” said Gerry. “They’re so far from home. They’re obviously terrified. And now we’ve locked them all away.”
“No one’s going to run interference on our damn mission,” said Ira.
A burst of dust came from Mitch’s area. “Anchor eight is secure,” he said. “Boy… that drill packs a punch, doesn’t it?”
“What’s the psi on your crampons?” asked Ira.
“Tenfold.”
“Then you have nothing to worry about.”
At the end of the seventy-two-hour training session—and with the CAPS it really wasn’t a training session so much as going along for the ride—they were ferried up to the AviOrbit launch platform fifty miles above the Moon and installed in the Prometheus.
AviOrbit and the Prometheus did a lot of the subsequent work by themselves. In fact, having a human crew was really nothing more than a fail-safe, though determining the exact placement of the five big FMC Transit Collective drives on the surface of Gaspra would require a human eye.
Gerry watched through the window as the Prometheus approached the five Federated Martian Colony drives. A strong titanium alloy frame locked the drives together, two at the front, three at the back, in a triangular boom. The Prometheus docked with the frame in a classic orbital rendezvous. At that point, AviOrbit Control asked the crew to make a complete systems check.
“I’m reading a glitch on the starboard number five thrust conduit,” said Ian. “Control, can you copy that?”
“We copy that, Prometheus. Please refer to Procedure 5-78a-11. It could be a misread.”
Ian referred to the procedure in question, then initiated the steps via the onboard diagnostics computer.
As Gerry watched his old friend, he felt a new admiration. Ian moved quickly and precisely, and looked right at home operating these complicated systems. After fifteen minutes, Ian finally had the system green-lighting him on the starboard number five thrust conduit. The pilot glanced at Gerry and gave him the thumbs-up sign. Ian’s head was now shorn—in fact, he had decided to go for the completely bald look, and his scalp was as pink as the skin of a freshly washed piglet, as if shaving his head was just another way he was reinventing himself. His handlebar mustache, however, was still thick and, for the most part, brown, but with some silver.
“I’m sober three weeks today,” he told Gerry.
“Congratulations.”
“This thing we’re doing… you have no idea what it means to me. I know you two are the ones with people back on Earth, but I finally feel as if I’m doing something…that really matters.”
Gerry gestured at the control panel, then at the CAPS they were wearing. “All this AviOrbit stuff… I had no idea. AviOrbit deserves a lot of the credit.”
“They’ve made it fairly foolproof,” said Mitch. “Though that warning… on the starboard number five thrust conduit.”
“It’s fixed,” said Ian.
“Are you sure?”
“I’m getting a green on it. And the procedure allows for a test fire. The test fire is a go.”
“I’ve just never seen it before. Especially in an M-class freighter. And as that particular thrust conduit is supposed to link FMC Drive Five—”
Ian gave him a wry look. “We got red-lighted all the time back in the old days. The thrust conduit’s just a minor system with a hundred redundancies in it. You don’t have to worry about it.”
34
They transited past Mars, which happened to be in closest opposition, a week later and the Martians sent them fresh oxygen, food, water, and the heartfelt best wishes of its citizens.
Then it was out to the asteroid belt.
The sun was no longer an orb but a gigantic star, a bright presence to their port side, bristling with
jagged rays, like a dangerous and sharp object one could cut oneself on if one got too close.
They settled into their own Kirkwood Gap seven million miles away from Gaspra. The Prometheus performed exactly to spec and braked as it neared the asteroid, spinning round so that the log-boomed singularity drives were now behind it.
Over the next sixteen hours, as they got closer to Gaspra, Gerry kept looking out the window, hoping to get a visual on the asteroid, but it finally had to be sighted through the telescope apparatus, and he got his first view of the misshapen rock on the monitor eighteen hours later.
Twelve miles long and seven across, it reminded him, in shape, of a peanut—a giant stone floating through space, twirling like a gargantuan football, rotating once every six hours and fifty-eight minutes.
The approach procedures were fully computerized. Gerry sat back and watched Prometheus take control.
She approached the asteroid’s “south pole,” though such directions were entirely relative, and for mission convenience only. She brought herself within five hundred yards of the asteroid’s surface, firing a final braking thrust to match Gaspra’s orbit, then initiated two axial bursts so that she began to rotate exactly in tandem. What Gerry saw below him was a bleak, moonlike surface, with horizons that dipped alarmingly and craters that looked disproportionately big on what was a small celestial body.
With its orbit and rotation established in Gaspra’s wake, Prometheus then fired three harpoons at the planetoid, instantly compensating for the force of the shots by five quick and perfectly timed blasts of its axial thrusters.
“She’s red-lighted our axial number three,” said Ian.
“Really?” said Mitch.
Ian quickly keyed in some queries on the diagnostics. “It’s a bug,” he announced a few seconds later.
“Like the one we got in the number five starboard thrust conduit.”
“That’s suspicious,” said Mitch.
The word choice startled Gerry. “Suspicious how?”
“One red-light I can accept,” said Mitch.
“We used to get red-lights all the time,” said Ian.
“And when was your last active mission?” asked Mitch. The question was rhetorical. Everyone knew Ian hadn’t flown in five years. Ian looked away. “You see what I mean?”
Then Ian brightened up. “Look, she’s green-lighting it.”
“What’d you do?”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Shi
t.”
“Mitch, it’s working fine. There’s just some small bug in the diagnostics. There’s nothing wrong with the basic equipment.”
“We got every single Tarsalan?” asked Mitch. “There weren’t any hiding out anywhere?”
Gerry got the drift of this with a jolt to his heart. “You think we’re sabotaged?”
“Don’t they want to stop us any way they can?” said Mitch, looking at Gerry through his visor screen.
“They don’t want us to save the planet. They want to keep it bagged until their reinforcements arrive.
They’ll keep us locked away like zoo animals on Mars, Mercury, and the moons, and roll into Earth unopposed.”
“Jesus Christ, Mitch,” said Ian, “we’ve had two red lights, and they’ve both been resolved. AviOrbit whipped this mission together in record time. What do you expect? And yes, we got all the Tarsalans.”
“But did we get all their macrogens? I don’t trust those things. I never have. Especially the way they reproduce themselves.”
“Gerry, I think he’s having some mission stress. You’re the medic proxy. Maybe you should give him something.”
Gerry pointed to the screen. “Look. We have target acquisition.”
The screen showed that the three harpoons had exploded deep into the rocky, sun-blasted dirt of Gaspra, and the panel was green-lighting them for rendezvous.
“There,” said Ian. “You see? A green light. Are you happy? Let’s roll this rig in.”
Over the next fifteen minutes, the Prometheus pulled itself along the harpoon cables, traveling at no more than two miles per hour. The rock got bigger and bigger, and Gerry was somewhat comforted to see that it was green lights all the way. Still, the thought nagged. Macrogens. Devices no bigger than his thumb, capable of all kinds of nasty work, including the deployment of millions of nanogens. Had Kafis outplayed him after all? Were the number five starboard thrust conduit and axial number three just the start? Was the Prometheus slowly going to self-destruct as it got deeper into its mission?