“Well, buddy,” Daniel said after a time, “better you than me. I don’t mind visiting now and then, but I sure as hell wouldn’t want to have to live down there!” Kim didn’t speak, but from her expression James sensed agreement.
He shrugged. “I’m a geologist. There isn’t a lot of geology aboard a space station, so it’s either here, Luna, the asteroid belt, or Earth. There’s too much competition for geology jobs on Earth, Luna’s too picked over, and the Belt is just too damn far out.”
Daniel nodded his understanding. They watched the dust storm in silence for a while longer.
Inwardly, James quailed a bit. What have I gotten myself into? Three years is an awfully long time if I don’t like it down there.
The three explored the station for the rest of the afternoon. Green Section contained the administrative and public offices for running the facility. Blue Section had eating establishments and various forms of entertainment. Yellow Section held retail stores similar to those found in shopping malls on Earth. White Section was where station supplies and incoming/outgoing cargo were stored. Purple Section was used for facility construction, maintenance and environmental services. Brown Section held zero-gee commercial manufacturing, and medical and materials research. Silver Section comprised the overflow from Brown and Purple sections. Finally, Orange section was used for any other miscellaneous needs.
“This place is amazing!” Kim crowed. “I can’t think of anything a major city has that this station doesn’t: big business, schools for the kids born here, mass transit, places of worship, hotels, sporting events, concerts, and God-only-knows what else.”
Daniel nodded. “With a standing population in the hundreds, and thousands more transients, it couldn’t be any other way. But,” Daniel said after pondering a moment, “there are a few things the station lacks that you’ll find in abundance in all major cities: pollution, overcrowding, poverty, slums, rampant crime—”
“Okay, okay, I get the point!” she conceded with a smile.
“At least it should be exciting working here.”
“But it won’t have the three of us together,” James pointed out.
“Don’t remind me,” Kim replied. “Sagan Observatory has a grand total of eight people there, including me—nine temporarily, counting Prof. Langer. I hope it doesn’t start to feel claustrophobic after a while.”
“Hey, enough!” James declared. “This is our last night together for who knows how long. Let’s just have a nice dinner and enjoy each other’s company while we can.”
Daniel mock-saluted him. “You got it! I hear McGillicuddy’s Pub has some good grub.”
Kim shrugged and looked to James. “Sounds good to me. You?”
“Sure.”
Arm in arm, they headed for the cross-station tubetram.
* * * *
Because nearly everything had to be shipped to the ODFs from Earth, the cost of everything was high. And because the cost was high, the price paid by consumers was higher yet. On the other hand, the extremely generous wages paid to workers on Mars and the ODFs made up for it. All in all, the excellent pub grub was well worth what the trio paid.
James finished off his after-dinner cup of synthcaf. “So, what should we do next?”
Kim squirmed a bit in her seat and looked over at Daniel. “We, um, rented quarters for the night. This’ll be our first opportunity to, you know, share a bed designed for two.”
James pursed his lips. “Ah. Yes, of course. You two run along. I’ll just sit here by myself for a while, drinking in the sights.” He looked like a four-year-old whose puppy had just been taken away.
“Hey,” Kim said, “don’t take it personally. We’re not abandoning you.”
James chuckled. “I know; it’s just….” He shrugged.
“I’m sure you’ll find someone special on Mars.”
He shrugged. “One can hope, but there are still a lot more men than women down there. The odds aren’t good.”
She smiled. “Tell you what, I’ll keep my eyes open for any hot babes heading your way and let you know.”
He chuckled again. “Yeah, you do that.”
“Meanwhile, to make it up to you for abandoning you tonight, how about if we all meet at the caf-house over there—” She pointed to her left. “—at 0700 for breakfast to see you off. My treat. Okay?”
“You’ve got yourself a deal.” James smiled. “You two have fun and I’ll see you in the morning.”
The two scampered off like children on their way to ride the rollercoaster; which, in a way, they were.
* * * *
“Is everything in place?”
“Yes, sir,” the younger man replied softly. This discussion was not meant for general consumption. As planned, the boisterous cheers by half-sloshed patrons gathered in front of the pub’s main holoscreen helped mask his words. “He’ll do what we want.”
“Is there any way he can lead the authorities back to us?’
“No, sir. It was all anonymous. No names, no faces.”
“Good. Make sure he gets caught quickly. We don’t want anyone looking too deeply into this.”
“Will do.”
The older man tossed the stub of his sodden Diego Corona in a trash receptacle as he exited the pub and headed for the nearest airlock. In less than five minutes, he was outside and boarding his Mars Cat.
The last place he wanted to be was anywhere near the elevator when the shit hit the fan.
* * * *
The next morning the lovebirds met James for breakfast as planned. They were a subdued bunch as each thought about the imminent dissolution of the im-crowd. All too soon, James had to go. It was an emotional leave-taking outside the elevator car.
Kim reluctantly pulled away from a long hug, blinking back tears. “I’ll miss you, James.”
Daniel nodded. “We both will. Keep in touch, right?”
“You bet.” James smiled. “After all, who else do I know this side of Earth once the Flyer leaves? Ohrman and the other newbies will be scattered all over Mars. But don’t forget, v-mail works both ways.”
He and Daniel shook hands; then James picked up his duffel and turned to walk the rest of the way to the gate. The car was the last of the six on this cable to depart. The other passengers had already boarded. Through the doorway the car looked to be the twin of the one he and Daniel rode up to ODF Nautilus from Earth. A mother and her children were just buckling into their seats. Behind them, an elderly couple chatted with a young man. Several others were locating their seats.
James stopped to have his wrist scanned at the counter by the door. While the AI checked his ID, he turned and sketched a two-fingered salute In Daniel’s direction. Before he could lower his hand, the deck lurched and he stumbled, dropping the duffel. Even as he fell, the lights went out in the waiting area. A shrill whistling pierced the air, accompanied by a fierce suction tugging at his legs. A split-second later, he heard the sharp snap of the airtight doors slamming shut. The whistling and suction cut off, almost as if they had never been.
James struggled to his feet in the dark. What the hell? The red emergency lights clicked on, revealing an eerily blood-hued Daniel helping Kim to her feet. A second later the normal interior lights came back on.
“Oh my God. Look!”
James turned and followed Daniel’s finger. A large elongated object tumbled past the window. “What was that?”
“It’s the elevator car! The one you were about to get on.”
“But—” The doorway to the car was now sealed. James blanched at the thought of how close he had come to stepping into the vehicle. “What happened?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you think the other passengers are alive?”
Daniel shrugged. “I don’t see any signs of escaping air, do you?”
James shook his head, no, craning his neck to see around the curve of the wall adjacent to the window. “The car seems to be intact. Did the cable break?”
Dan
iel likewise was trying to look all around the exterior. “It’s hard to tell from this angle, but I think I see the cable. The car must have detached somehow.”
“That doesn’t make sense. Even if the safety features all failed at once, what caused the explosion—or whatever it was—that knocked us down?”
Daniel could only shrug helplessly as the elevator car slowly tumbled toward the thin Martian atmosphere below.
CHAPTER 7
Engineering Marvels: Orbital Docking Facility (ODF)—The slingshotting of cargo was so effective, and the mining colonies so efficient, that soon one Martian ODF wasn’t enough. By 2128, Earth’s newly completed ODF Olivaw (anchored northeast of Papua New Guinea to serve eastern Asia, Australia and Oceania) was used to build Mars’ second ODF, Moreau, and hurl it to its new home. Between ODFs Barsoom and Moreau, Mars is capable of operating at full capacity, producing the iron and other refined metals needed on Earth. In 2142, ODF Glory Road, was built to serve Europe and western Africa. It was positioned offshore, west of Gabon in equatorial Africa. The fifth and final ODF orbiting Earth, Montag, when built, will be anchored off the coast of the GALÁPAGOS Islands, in the eastern Pacific Ocean, to complete the global coverage of space elevators.
— Excerpt from Encyclopedia Solaris, 2176
* * * *
Daniel and James were startled from their stunned reverie by a commotion behind them. They turned to see the crowd in the waiting area part like a bow wave before a ship.
“C’mon people, move aside. Make way!” The gray-haired woman brandished nothing overtly like a weapon, but people jumped out of her path as if she were drunk and waving a plasma rifle. Following in her wake and moving just as determinedly was another woman, younger, with blonde hair pulled back in a severe ponytail. Neither was much more than 1.6 meters in height, barely up to James’ shoulders, but they exuded command.
“Okay, who can tell us what happened here?” The younger woman barked out the words as if expecting resistance. “I’m the administrator of the Barsoom facility. My name is Torri Cousins. This is Chandra Mason, Chief of Security. Did anyone see the incident?”
A woman’s voice cried out from the back of the crowd, a tinge of panic in her voice. With every sentence her voice got higher and her words came faster. “What about the passengers in the elevator? My husband was in there! Are they all right? What are you doing to bring them back?”
Cousins responded. “Ma’am! Ma’am, please remain calm. We’re doing everything we can right now. But we need to know what happened so we know how to proceed.”
Daniel cleared his throat. “Um, I was facing the doorway when it happened.” He pointed to the elevator hatchway, which remained sealed.
Mason spoke gruffly. Built like a fireplug, she wouldn’t have looked out of place playing the warden in one of the many trashy women-behind-bars holos made over the years. “What’s your name, sir, and what did you see?”
“Daniel Lim.” He shrugged. “Not much, really. An explosion or something knocked us off our feet and briefly killed the lights. The door slammed shut to cut off the escaping air; then the lights came back on. Next thing I knew, the elevator car was spinning past the window.”
“Did you see anyone suspicious hanging around the departure area?”
Daniel shook his head. “Nothing at all out of the ordinary. I’m sorry. One second everything was fine and the next I was flat on my back in the dark.”
A large, imposing man pushed his way to the front of the crowd, facing Cousins and Mason. His expression was a mixture of fear and anger.
“This isn’t getting us anywhere! You have to do something to get those people back safely. My son’s aboard and he may be dy—” The man’s voice broke. “Dying right now. What are you doing to get him back?” He now loomed over the much shorter and slighter Torri Cousins.
Mason removed her left forefinger from the spot behind her ear that marked the subdermal radio implant and stepped between the duo. “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to step back—now!” Her left hand hovered over the stunner clipped to her belt. “We’ve dispatched a tug to retrieve the elevator and tow it back. We’ve been in touch with one of the attendants on the elevator and she assured us that everyone is unharmed. So please control yourself and let us do our jobs.”
The man’s bluster melted away and he seemed to shrink several inches as he slumped in relief. “Oh, thank God.”
Another woman spoke up. “Are you sure they’ll be okay until the tug arrives? Do they have enough air and food and water? Will they be warm enough?”
“Ma’am,” Administrator Cousins replied, “they’ll be fine. The elevator cars have built-in safety measures to cover all eventualities. They’re airtight and well insulated out of necessity, because the whole trip down to the surface is in vacuum or near-vacuum. The cars carry three days worth of air and food just in case they should ever get stuck partway down. As you’ve already heard, they also have a radio and even a locator beacon to make it easier to track and find the car. Even if the tug somehow failed to retrieve the car before it entered the atmosphere, it contains three retrorockets that would fire to slow the car enough for the parachutes to deploy and land the car safely.
“Believe me; the elevator designers have thought of everything. I’m sure your loved ones will be back with us shortly, no worse for wear.” Her confident words and reassuring smile had the desired effect. The questioner, and many others in the waiting area, visibly relaxed. It all looked to be nothing more than a harrowing moment with which to entertain friends at future parties.
In an instant, everything changed. A bright flash through the window momentarily blinded those facing that way, until the window composite adjusted to filter out the glare. Many onlookers gasped. Daniel and James, facing away from the window, saw the shadows of the crowd of people limned in relief on the far wall. An eerie silence followed.
It lasted only a moment, until someone gasped.
“Oh my God!” “What happened?” “Did it explode?” “Are they dead?” “Somebody do something!” Cries, screams, and whispered prayers all jumbled together in the hectic seconds that followed.
Someone uttered the word “sabotage” and there was a stampede away from the window and out of the waiting area.
* * * *
Within minutes, nearly everyone on ODF Barsoom “knew” there was a band of armed terrorists attempting to blow up the facility. Administrator Cousins and Security Chief Mason had to go into crowd-control mode to forestall a panic. Mason directed a security detail to round up everyone who’d been in the waiting area and get statements from them.
Cousins hurried back to her office to activate the Emergency Communication System. It interrupted all other forms of internal communication on the ODF and piped Cousins’ face and voice into offices, shops, public areas and crew’s quarters throughout Barsoom. This being the first time she’d had to use the facility-wide system in her seven months as Barsoom’s administrative head, she was briefly nervous. She cleared her throat to give herself a moment to banish the butterflies in her stomach; then she turned on the camera.
Get it together, girl. They’re counting on you!
“Ladies and gentlemen. By now you have probably heard all sorts of conflicting rumors about terrorists and sabotage. I assure you, that’s all they are at this point—unsubstantiated rumors. So far, all we know for certain is that one of the elevator cars broke loose from the cable and drifted away from the facility. We launched a tug to retrieve it, but tragically the car exploded before we could reach it. There were eleven passengers and four crew aboard the car. All are presumed dead. Their names are being withheld at this time, pending notification of next of kin.
“You will be informed as soon as we learn something concrete about the cause of the incident. For now it is being treated as an unfortunate accident. The other elevators are temporarily closed to traffic pending a safety review. The best thing you can do right now is go about your normal business and keep y
our eyes open for anything out of the ordinary. If you see anything suspicious, please report it to the Security office. Above all, stay calm; panicking won’t help anyone. Again, I will be in touch with further updates as we learn more about what happened. Thank you for your cooperation.”
She cut off the transmission and took a deep breath. “So, how did that sound?”
Her personal assistant, Deedee Coffman, smiled. “Perfect. Calm, assured, in control. You didn’t give the impression there was anything to panic about.”
Cousins nodded. “Good. Now let’s hope I wasn’t lying to them.”
* * * *
Within minutes, the Security office was inundated with reports of suspicious-looking people carrying suspicious-looking packages or doing suspicious things, or with suspicious bulges under their clothing. Suddenly, objects and events that normally wouldn’t have given anyone pause took on ominous overtones. Security personnel were stretched to the limit, investigating hundreds of well-intentioned, yet nonetheless spurious, reports of mad bombers on the loose.
Chandra Mason shook her head in disbelief at the din around her. I don’t know whether to hope this was all just an unfortunate accident, or to hope that there is indeed a lunatic running around the facility—simply to justify all the time and effort that’s going into the hunt for the presumed culprit.
* * * *
“I’ve got people checking all the other elevators and public areas, but it’ll take some time to verify that there aren’t any more bombs anywhere. This is a big facility, with lots of places to hide a bomb.”
“How could this happen, Chandra?” Cousins had called Security Chief Mason into her office for a status report. “Don’t we screen for explosives entering and exiting the elevators?”
Mason shrugged. “I’m confident no one smuggled a bomb up here from Mars. The elevator screening would have picked it up. Someone must have built it here on the ODF. That wouldn’t be too difficult to do given the right knowledge. But the scanners would have picked up the bomb if someone had tried to take it aboard an elevator car from Barsoom.
The Imperative Chronicles, Books One and Two: The Mars Imperative & The Tesserene Imperative Page 9