by Scott Mackay
The Prometheus touched down without any fanfare and hardly any dust.
The crew spent the next hour fastening her down with fluorescent green anchoring bolts, walking around on the surface with the special crampons on their boots so they wouldn’t drift away.
The FMC Transit Collective drives towered above them in an upside-down pyramid, an architecturally impossible structure anywhere but in the negligible gravity of a planetoid. The sun came up, the sun went down, all within the space of the first three and a half hours, but it was an odd sequence because the crew was on the south pole, and the sun didn’t so much set as hide behind a ridge, slipping out of sight on the left side, then coming out on the right, as if it were playing hide-and-seek with them.
The surface of the asteroid was different from the Moon in that there were only scattered deposits of loosely clinging regolith, like the pockets of snow that hid in the shade when spring came. For the most part it was bare rock, the best possible anchor for their specially designed crampons.
The work was a lot harder than Gerry had thought it was going to be, construction work, really, and he was glad his suit had artificial muscles, and that the gravity was so weak, because he wouldn’t have been able to take the strain otherwise. They jackhammered the Prometheus into the rock, and once all sixty-eight bolts were done, they stopped calling it the Prometheus and started calling it the PCV—the primary command vehicle.
After the PCV was established, they had a rest period of six hours.
At the end of that six hours they got up and launched a small survey probe—what the technicians at AviOrbit had christened Smallmouth 3, in Gerry’s honor, even though technically speaking Smallmouth 2 had been nothing more than a Styrofoam ball embedded with microinstruments.
Smallmouth 3 performed a complete survey of Gaspra, correlating the new topographical information to the known engineering tolerances of the five FMC Transit Collective drives, and feeding all this into a computer program that was meant to design, out of the misshapen rock that was Gaspra, the best possible spacecraft and, more importantly, the best possible planet killer. The program established five installation areas—these would be the five primary thrust bays, and operationally would be connected via laser through the PCV’s thrust conduits.
The crew sledded the drives one at a time to their installation areas, riding the sled two hundred yards above Gaspra’s surface. It was a bit like maneuvering an old-time zeppelin, as it had to be done with great care. The dual dangers were either that the drive would slam into the surface of the asteroid, or, barring that, would drift away into outer space. It had to be maneuvered through what Ian kept calling, with some nervousness, the “critical plane.”
Despite the finickiness involved, they managed, over the coming days, to anchor the drives into the installation areas with glitchless monotony. Gerry’s confidence climbed each time a new drive was installed. This was vindication. This was proof that he could do something like this. This told him that he was more than just Neil Thorndike’s younger brother.
Their third day, they sledded Drive Four to its installation area, what they were dubbing the Norbert Plains, after Mitch’s partner back on Earth. In fact, all the installation areas were plains of one type or another—the computer program had minimized the landform-thrust interference ratio as much as possible.
They maneuvered Drive Four over the selected area, then allowed the sled’s ion pump to give it a shove groundward. The crew capitalized on this downward momentum and soon had their boot crampons biting into the asteroid’s surface. Except for some minor irregularities, the surface was flat and devoid of loose particulate.
The stars swept by overhead as the short day counted out its two hundred and nine minutes. The three of them, like superheroes, held the drive above their heads, a unit that was fully the size of ten transport trucks but weighed next to nothing in Gaspra’s weak pull.
Ian said, “Let’s shift it a few yards to the left. We’ll miss that swell over there.”
So they moved it a few yards to the left, like three guys moving a big couch.
“Settle her down,” said Ian.
Which they did.
The mission continued with seamless predictability until Mitch started working on anchor seventeen.
Then Gerry heard through his helmet radio the two most dreaded words any crew never wanted to hear during a space mission.
“Oh, shit.”
Mitch drifted upward from Drive Four at a speed greater than escape velocity. His crampons had failed, and the force of his pneumatic drill had propelled him into space like one of the old Atlas rockets, his trajectory on an angle so that he didn’t drift straight up but floated quickly over the short horizon like a stray cloud. Ian fired a line to him, but by that time it was too late. Gerry keyed over to Mitch’s visor readouts and saw that the diminutive engineer had red lights not on one, but on both crampons. One he could accept. Two was…well, suspicious. Then both Ian and Gerry cramponed over to the sled. Ian interfaced the sled’s computer with Mitch’s CAPS computer to see if the two could arrive at a workable procedure. By this time, Mitch was well out of view beyond the short horizon.
“Mitch?” said Gerry.
“Jesus Christ…oh, shit! Where are you guys?”
Gerry and Ian looked at each other. It was Ian who delivered the bad news. “Mitch…the sled is giving us a negative on a rescue mission.”
“What? Are you sure?”
“Affirmative.”
“But that’s impossible. The sled should have more than enough thrust to reach me. I can’t be more than three miles away. Why’s it giving you a negative?”
Ian hesitated. “Because I’m afraid that the particular code needed to effect the proper burns and trajectories…it’s gone. Deleted. Not by me.”
The silence that came to the three of them was like the turning of a page. Gerry felt a tightening in his throat, and the tightness quickly spread to his stomach as the claw of an overwhelming apprehension closed its grip. He heard Ian’s voice through his suit radio, a few tense words, “What happened, Mitch?”
but the words seemed to come to Gerry through thick cotton batting.
“Both my crampons red-lighted at the same time,” said Mitch. “Do you know what the likelihood of that is?”
Mitch’s voice sounded hurt. Ian responded, telling the technician, “Even in my day we never got two red lights at the same time….” His words seemed unsure, as if the idea expressed was one Ian never expected to find in his mouth, especially in the current context. “And with the rescue software kaput… I don’t know. What are the chances?”
All the while Gerry felt Mitch was on a big river, and that he was getting further and further away. His face tensed into a mask of anxiety; he liked Mitch, and couldn’t believe they might lose him.
“Around one in twenty-five million,” said Mitch, because Mitch was always a man for statistics. Gerry heard the AviOrbit technician’s breath coming and going quickly. “It’s them,” he said, his voice going lower, dipping, like hanging onto the edge of a cliff and finally letting go. “They’ve done something.” Then a pause, accompanied by a little rough static from the radio. “You guys need redundancy procedures.”
Mitch might have spoken a foreign language. Redundancy procedures? Gerry was nonplussed. The man was going to die. “Mitch, just hang on. We’re going to save you.”
“That’s it.” Ian had gone into reckless mode, the damn-the-torpedoes Hamilton of old. “I’m getting on the sled. Just hang on, little guy. I’ll be there in a minute.”
“No! Listen to me! The two of you! My suit tells me I’ve broken orbit. There’s nothing you can do. If the rescue software is deleted, that’s…” Then, softer: “That’s it. Let’s face it, the delete is another Tarsalan trick. Ian, if you come after me in the sled, that’s two of us gone. You’re at work, Ian.
Remember? The first job you’ve had in five years. Let’s stay professional. Gerry?”
Gerry felt miserable, but managed to get the words out. “I’m here, Mitch.”
“Have you confirmed the delete? Let’s stick to procedure. Can you confirm?”
“It’s a no go on all fronts.”
“Then that’s it. There’s nothing we can do.”
“I’m sorry, Mitch.”
“I’ve got eighteen hours of life support.”
“Mitch, we could still…” This from Ian, but the words came out in the defeated tone of a man who had reached that cusp where hope and hopelessness merge, and, balancing for an instance on the possibility of last-ditch efforts, the pilot finally teetered into the territory of lost causes. He gave the console a petulant smack with a half-closed fist and turned to Gerry. He shook his head.
“There’s nothing we can do?” asked Gerry.
“There’s zero chance of getting him back, and we risk the whole mission if we try.”
Through his yellow-tinted visor, Gerry discerned his old friend’s face. Here they were again; not the first time they’d been in extreme circumstances—though riding an asteroid bronco-style while a friend drifted to his death was perhaps the most extreme circumstance of all. Ian’s lips had a curious curl, and his eyes had narrowed with resentment. Gerry, on the other hand, felt shocked into a kind of mild catatonia.
Mitch had guts of steel, though, because he was already on to the next thing, miles ahead of either of them. “There’s only two of you now.”
“Mitch, we’re sorry,” said Gerry.
“Think of the phytosphere.”
The dark, ugly thing that was suffocating Earth.
“Right… right. Go ahead, Mitch.”
“With me out of the picture, it means a lot more work for the two of you. Which in turn means new procedures. And if this virus thing keeps evolving, the framework for those procedures will constantly change.” His voice was high, tremulous. “You’ve got to work the procedures up fast, because this thing might balloon exponentially.”
And Gerry had to hand it to Mitch, because he went out like a hero, detailing the kinds of things they would have to do if they were going to get the mission accomplished against this increasingly growing threat, giving them guidelines and new timetables, interfacing with the PCV’s main computer to model fresh mission dynamics, and at last logging the whole thing into the mainframe. Only then did Mitch get weepy. Only then did Gerry and Ian loosen their hold on their own grief.
Gerry asked Mitch if he could still see Gaspra.
“I’m facing away.”
“Buddy, we’re going to miss you.” Ian’s voice was rough.
And it was true. Mitch was one of a kind.
They covered a few more technical possibilities, contingencies, and what-if scenarios, then Mitch’s voice got quiet. It was if the small man could already see the end of his life, was watching hours turn into minutes, minutes into seconds—those finite units of time that everyone had to measure eventually.
“You guys… make it count… that’s all I ask. And if you see Norbert… if he’s still alive… just tell him… you know.”
“We’ll tell him,” said Gerry.
And rather than drift toward Jupiter for the next seventeen hours—the remaining extent and breadth of his current life support—Mitch had his med-pak deliver an untenable dose of barbiturates to him intravenously, even as the Tarsalan infection in the PCV and its external components ballooned—as the small man had feared it would—exponentially.
35
As Glenda and her children ventured onto the final stretch of Marblehill Road, Hanna’s breathing grew more labored. Her coughing exploded into the still, hot air like small pneumatic reports. The trees in the forest loomed over them on either side, dead brown things. No cars, trucks, or people, just the awful silence. Glenda could barely see her kids in the dark. She looked up at the sky. No stars, Moon, or clouds—just the blackness of the phytosphere.
Hanna sank to the ground and coughed more violently. Jake kept looking down the road, gun held loosely in his hand. Glenda knelt next to Hanna. The perpetual darkness felt like something evil inside her body, a tumor she wanted to remove but couldn’t.
“Hanna, we’ve got to keep going.”
“I’m too weak, Mom. It’s never been like this before. I’m going to die. I know I am.”
“You’re not going to die. We just have to get to Uncle Neil’s. He has medicine.”
“Yes, but I can’t make it. I can’t get enough breath.”
“Get between me and Jake. We’ll help you along.”
“I can’t, Mom.”
“You’ve got to, Hanna. Buzz is going to come along.”
Hanna coughed some more, then choked out the words, “Just give me a minute.”
While Hanna rested, Glenda stood up and turned on her flashlight. She shone it up the road toward Marblehill, but its beam was weak and could barely penetrate the gloom. Still, it was strong enough to brighten a big tree that had fallen across the road. As the beam brought the tree’s spidery brown branches into relief, she had the distinct impression of something darting by overhead in the darkness.
She looked up just in time to see a large shadow, maybe twenty-five times the size of her car, disappear above the trees on the left-hand side, rustling above the uppermost branches.
“Did you see that?” she asked Jake.
“Yeah.”
“What was it?”
“I have no idea.”
But Glenda knew what it was, and didn’t want to say because her children were already scared enough as it was. She switched off the flashlight. She looked around at the dark forest with a sudden sense that they weren’t alone. That’s when she heard the bump and rattle of Buzz’s truck far down the road.
“Goddamn him,” moaned Hanna between coughs.
“Come on, sweetie. Let’s get up. Jake, give me a hand.”
“Maybe we should go into the forest,” suggested Jake.
“I’m not sure it’s safe.”
“Why?”
“Just give me a hand.”
They each took one of Hanna’s arms and lifted her to her feet. They struggled along with her as best they could, but she kept stumbling and they made slow progress. Glenda opened her eyes wide, something that was habitual now as a way to see as much as she could in the perpetual dark, and something that made her temples ache with a low throb.
She could barely see the left and right shoulders of the road. Her feet crunched through the gravel.
Hanna started crying, getting her weeping done in between her explosive coughing. The bump and rattle of Buzz’s truck got closer, the signature sound particularly noticeable on this potholed road. Glenda had the sense that she had already lost, and that dragging her daughter up this lonely rural road in the middle
of this perpetual night would be the last thing she would ever do. The futility of her situation made her want to weep, but she found that, despite these self-defeating feelings, her body kept going, as if it had an internal agenda for survival and couldn’t be bothered with the emotional fuss her mind was making.
“I don’t see his headlights,” said Jake.
“He’s behind that hill,” said Glenda. “He’ll be coming over the rise any second. Just keep going.”
They struggled and struggled, and finally came to the fallen tree in the middle of the road. The tree was huge and tinder-dry, and all the leaves had fallen off its branches.
“Let’s go around the left side,” she said.
She and Jake helped Hanna around to the left just as Buzz came over the rise. The dead branches, still thick, scratched her.
“Just push your way through. Hurry up. Hanna, lift your leg over the trunk.”
“I can’t see it, Mom.”
Glenda turned on the flashlight. “There.”
Her daughter climbed over the trunk, but it was as if death had already come to Hanna because, once on the other side, she collapsed.
“Just leave me here. Let him kill me. Maybe that
will satisfy him. You two go ahead.”
“Hanna, come on, get to your feet,” said Glenda, her voice now panicked. “He’s nearly here.”
“I can’t, Mom. I really can’t.”
And she simply lay there on her side coughing, too weak to move.
“Jake, let’s drag her.”
But Jake was looking over the tree. “I’m going to take him out.”
“No, no… not with a handgun. Not from this range. You’ll waste bullets like you did last time. Just grab her and let’s go.”
They dragged her—literally—so that her jeans scraped along the gravel and kicked up a small cloud of dust. Buzz’s truck rattled to a stop on the other side of the fallen tree, and she heard Buzz open the door and get out of the vehicle. She didn’t look back, couldn’t look back, because her eyes were glued to the sky above the road, where she saw the dark shape again—huge, hovering silently, with no lights, no visible means of propulsion. Now that she listened more closely, she heard a faint hiss, like water being sucked down a drain.
The headlights on Buzz’s truck shone through the dead branches of the fallen tree, making a wild tracery of shadows all over the road. She glanced at Jake and saw that he was outlined in the branch-broken glow of Buzz’s headlights. But it was as if he didn’t care, because he was looking up at the Tarsalan vehicle as well.
“Goddamn it, Glenda, why don’t you let me kill you easy?” called Buzz.
The sound of a rifle shot rocketed through the air.
That’s when lights exploded everywhere on the Tarsalan Landing Vehicle. Shaped like a clamshell, the TLV now glowed with a mother-of-pearl mix—violet, green, silver—and this light coalesced into a single beam, which quickly pinpointed Buzz’s ramshackle old truck, while a smaller, separate beam outlined Buzz. She saw Buzz clearly in this small beam. He lifted his arm to his forehead to shield his eyes from the light, and squinted at its glare. Then a series of blue and green embers floated away from the alien landing craft and drifted, in no particular hurry, toward Buzz and his truck.