by James Wilks
She glided down the row of edible plants and peeked her head around the celery. “Yes?” she asked, her voice even higher and lighter than usual.
When Dinah saw the large eyes with their heavy mascara, she stepped fully into the room and closed the door behind her. She checked her usually purposeful stride and instead sidled, a bit awkwardly, down the row of plants and towards Bethany.
“I was looking for you,” she said. Bethany did not reply, looking instead at the floor. She did, however, step the rest of the way out from behind the celery to face her would-be interlocutor. “I wanted to talk to you about that conflict with the Doris Day today.” Dinah stood in front of her, several inches taller, but Bethany’s silence continued. “You did really well. I mean really well.” The dark eyes remained on the floor, and the automated misting spray clicked on as if to fill the silence.
“Hey, look at me, girl,” Dinah finally said, not unkindly. Bethany looked up and somewhat tremulously met her eyes. “You’re a damn good pilot. I’ve seen pilots with twenty years of experience that are no better than you.” Bethany cast her eyes downward again, but this time she smiled at the compliment. Dinah put her fists on her hips. “That move where you backed up into the drone, right on cue: perfect timing. And that catch… not too many pilots could have done that. I don’t know where you learned or who taught you, but you have a really amazing ability, and I wanted thank you. You might have saved my life out there today.” Dinah knew that she was probably exaggerating, but she was determined to communicate with the reclusive pilot.
Another few seconds of silence passed, and finally Dinah nodded, turned around, and headed for the door. When she was nearly there, she heard Bethany’s reedy voice over the spray mechanism. “My dad.”
“What’s that?” Dinah asked encouragingly, stopping and turning around.
“My dad taught me,” the young woman said, a little louder, stepping forward.
“Was he a pilot?”
“Yes.” She paused for a moment. “He flew a transport ship between the Earth and the Moon when I was a teenager, and I did it with him.” She began moving down the row of plants as she spoke. “From when I was thirteen to seventeen, anytime I wasn’t in school, I was on the ship with him.” She stopped in front of a patch of herbs and plucked a sprig of spearmint, tucking it into her shoulder bag.
“What about your mom?” Dinah asked, following her at the distance of a few paces.
Bethany just shook her head, and Dinah thought for a moment that she wouldn’t continue speaking, but then she pressed on. “He drank a lot and did drugs. Sometimes he couldn’t fly the ship, so I had to do it.”
“Weren’t there any other crew members who could fly the ship?”
Bethany shook her head again, continuing to the next section of herbs and selecting two basil leaves that made their way into the bag. “No.”
“What sort of ship was it?” Dinah feared that she was pressing her luck, but she didn’t want to lose the opportunity to get something out of the young woman. As far as she knew, apart perhaps from the captain and the doctor, this was the most Bethany had shared with anyone on the ship.
“Boeing Light Courier, B-233.”
Dinah was shocked. “Bethany, that’s a tiny, two person ship, and a bitch to handle besides. You were flying that by yourself at the age of thirteen?”
Again, the pilot nodded and moved onto the dill. Her fingers began exploring the herb’s tender leaves, plucking what she wanted from the small plant. “I was actually nine the first time I had to fly it. He kind of showed me how, ‘cause he was drunk and he wanted to sleep. I knew if we didn’t make the deliveries, we wouldn’t have any money.” Her voice had been steadily approaching a normal speaking volume, unconsciously Dinah thought, as she collected the herbs that Kondratyev had no doubt requested to prepare the evening’s repast. “It was just letters, private letters from companies and stuff, and it didn’t pay that much, but the ship and the apartment was all we had. I missed so much school they wanted to hold me back.” She looked up at Dinah for the first time in several minutes, and her eyes were full of anger. “And I could do the work! I’m really good at math.” Again, her gaze returned to the plants and she seemed to deflate. “But I just wasn’t there to get the notes, and sometimes… sometimes I was just too sad and I didn’t want to go. I never got to finish.”
A second after she stopped speaking, she looked up at Dinah with shock and fear, realizing what she had given away. Dinah considered letting it pass, but instead she pressed the moment. “If you didn’t finish high school, how did you get into pilot school? How did you get your license?”
Bethany neither moved nor spoke. The misting spray clicked off, and the silence deafened. Bethany’s shoulders rose up and every muscle in her seemed to tense, then suddenly they released and the energy went out of her. “I never went to pilot’s school. I faked my graduation certificate when I took the test.” She looked at the other woman, her eyes wide and defiant. “I passed the test! I passed the license test with a perfect score.”
Dinah laughed. “I don’t doubt it.”
“I have my flight license,” Bethany muttered, despondent.
“But you lied to get it.” It wasn’t a question. Bethany nodded, doing a fair impression of a criminal just sentenced to the gallows. Dinah closed the distance to her and stopped when she was about a pace away. “Let me tell you something, Bethany. I don’t care how you got your license.” The dark eyes looked up at her in surprise. “I don’t even care if you have your license. After what you did today, I trust you with my life. And trust me, I don’t say that lightly. You’ve been on this ship for nearly a year now, and I have always been impressed with you.” Bethany smiled perhaps the biggest smile she had since she first came on board.
“And don’t worry, no one will hear about this from me. I’ve got my own secrets, my own past, you know.”
Bethany impulsively asked, “From when you were in the military?” Dinah stiffened slightly. The smaller woman seemed to retreat into herself, her shoulders hunched and her head down, as if in anticipation of a blow. The engineer wondered what other terrible experiences the girl had been subjected to beyond being forced to fly a rusty old courier ship, but she didn’t want to push too far.
“Yes, from my time in the military,” she finally responded. “It’s not a part of my past I like to talk about.”
“I understand,” she said, and Dinah thought she did, too.
Another moment passed. “See you at dinner,” Dinah said abruptly but kindly, and walked out of the room.
“Yes, sir,” Bethany murmured, smiling, and turned back to her plants.
At about eighteen hundred hours standard Earth time, the crew drifted into the mess hall from all corners of the ship. The dinner that Piotr Kondratyev had prepared sat buffet-style in magnetic bowls on the countertop against one wall. The main course consisted of seasoned chicken in a mushroom and wine sauce, pasta salad, buttered and peppered green beans, and fried potatoes. There was an appetizer of svekolnik, one of the cook’s specialties, and even a leafy green salad. Piotr encouraged everyone to eat the salad, as the greens would not keep.
Like the rest of the ship, the mess hall was designed to alter depending on whether the ship was in atmosphere or in space. It was wider than most of the other rooms to accommodate the whole crew and guests if necessary. As a result, its ceiling was over four meters high. The entrance was on deck two, but the room actually stretched up to encompass part of the deck above, and it had the same retractable skylight slats as the hydroponics bay. When in atmosphere, these allowed sunlight in through the ceiling, though right now they were located on the wall. The eating area consisted of several long tables with benches attached, much like those that might be found in a school cafeteria. In cases where the room was needed for other purposes, the tables could be folded up and pushed to the far wall or even attached to the ceiling if there was no gravity.
By ones and twos, the sixteen crew
members served themselves food and sat down at the table to eat. As was traditional, Templeton sat near Staples near the head of the table. The rest of the crew sat where they pleased or where they found room. They did not eat together often enough for people to develop favorite places, though Bethany invariably sat in a corner seat near the end of the table. As the tables filled and the meal progressed, the noise of the individual conversations grew, people talking in groups of two or three, a few eating quietly.
As dinner was winding down and a few scattered crew members were finishing their seconds, Templeton did his fork and cup routine to garner the attention of the others. The talk ceased and all eyes turned towards him. “We’ve got a bit of a tradition on this ship, something we do when we all get together like this, which ain’t that often, admittedly. The tradition is storytelling.”
At this, Staples took over. “As many of you know, I am a fan of medieval literature, of literature in general, really. One of my favorite stories is Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. It’s about one of King Arthur’s greatest knights: Gawain. In part one of the poem, the narrator notes that Arthur doesn’t like to have a meal until someone’s entertained him with a story or some heroics. Now we’ve obviously already sat down and had our dinner. I wouldn’t make anyone listen to a story before eating this great meal. Thank you, Piotr.” She said, turning to the ship’s cook who was sitting several seats down from her.
At this, various people spoke up to thank the large bald man with a heavy brown goatee flecked with grey. He muttered spasibo several times and raised his hand in acknowledgment.
“But now that we’ve finished eating, I’d like to hear a story. If possible, please make it full of adventures, marvels, princes, battles, or some combination thereof,” Staples finished.
Several of the seated personnel looked at each other. Some murmured, and a few looked as if they were considering volunteering. Templeton looked expectantly from face to face. The three members of the security team, who were seated together, were quiet as a graveyard. Charis’ arm rested around her daughter. Gwen was leaning against her mother, and her eyes were beginning to droop. Finally, Yegor, the communications expert who had first found the satellite, raised his hand.
Templeton nodded at him, faced turned his way, and he began. “I used to work for a telecom company: Global Telecom Systems,” Yegor began in his lightly accented voice, his elbows on the table and his hands folded in front of him. “I was part of a team of people who did satellite maintenance and repair. We used these one-person, short-range space skiffs to gain orbit and clamp onto our satellites. Sometimes we had to install hardware upgrades, sometimes replace antennae or solar panels, sometimes even do reactor maintenance. It was an okay job, sometimes tedious.
“Well, I used to work with this man named Felix. He was a small, kind of rat-like man. Greasy dark hair, beady eyes,” he squinted for effect, “even bucked teeth a little bit. And he always complained about the jobs. ‘Too much work,’ he said. ‘Not enough money,’ he said. ‘No promotions,’ he said. And he was mostly right. Occasionally people got promoted, but only if they were really good at their job. ‘Why not me?’ he was always asking.
“So one day, Felix gets this idea in his head. He thinks what if I pull off a big heroic adventure?” As he said the word adventure, Yegor tipped a wink at his captain, but didn’t miss a beat of his story. “Then I would get promoted, he thinks. We are basically repair men. Adventures for us… are not that common. So he decides to make one. This is what he does.
“Felix spends two weeks learning how to reprogram a satellite to do exactly what he wants. Next time he services satellite B66, he uploads his program. Next week, when he is up near B66 doing maintenance on another satellite, B66 suddenly, marvelously, tragically, starts to fall out of orbit. Felix is ready for this, of course. He flies his space skiff away from other satellite and starts to chase B66, yelling into radio the whole way, telling about how the satellite will ‘crash into city and kill millions of people if he can’t stop it,’ and ‘don’t worry, he will put his own life at risk to save the poor defenseless people.’” A smattering of laughter flowed up and down the table. Gwen’s eyelids were in danger of meeting each other in the middle.
“So there he is, rocketing into lower orbit to catch deadly B66. He extends his capture claws, steers in close, eases right up to the satellite…” Yegor had leaned forward as he spoke, and here he paused for dramatic effect. “And he catches it, perfectly. So, now all he has to do is thrust out of atmosphere and he is a big hero, he figures. So, he pulls up on the stick and…” Another pause. “Nothing happens. He checks his engines. Nothing. He tries to restart. Nothing.” The table was rapt, and Yegor was threading out the story expertly.
“The weight of satellite overloads the engines, and they are malfunctioning. He is good as dead, he thinks. So now he gets on radio again, only this time it is ‘Help! Help! Mayday!’ Fortunately for him, there is another space skiff doing maintenance near him. Mine. So I push burn all the way and head for him. He is in low orbit now and starting to heat up. Five minutes later, I get to him and he still has hold of this stupid satellite. I tell him ‘Felix, let go of this satellite! I can’t pull you both up.’ But he won’t. He has worked so hard on this programming, and he wants to be a hero very badly. Finally I tell him ‘Felix, if you don’t let go of satellite, I will leave you here!’” Yegor nearly yelled, and Gwen’s eyes opened wide for a moment before slowly closing again. Every other pair of eyes was on the storyteller. “So… he lets go of the satellite.
“I grab his skiff with my capture claws and I push for higher orbit. Poor Felix watches this multi-million dollar satellite and his one chance at promotion and riches fall away to Earth below. We manage to get into stable orbit, I bring him aboard my ship, and we radio for a tug to get his skiff.”
Yegor paused to take several swallows of his lemonade. In the pause that followed, Charis asked, “Did it actually hurt anyone?”
Yegor shook his head, his ponytail swaying back and forth. “Nyet. It landed in the ocean, in shallow water. Solar panels and antennae burn away in reentry, but it is well made. GTS retrieves it and does an investigation. They find Felix’s program and instead of big promotion and big raise, he gets fired. But me,” Yegor smiled and puffed out his chest, “I get promotion and raise for saving Felix!” Laughter and cheering rippled up and down the table, and there was scattered applause.
After it had calmed down, Templeton asked, “What ever happened to Felix?”
Yegor grinned, his big teeth showing. “He got hired by a satellite programming company. He makes more money than ever now!” This was followed by an even bigger chorus of laughs and applause.
“Excellent story.” The captain stated. “Thank you, Mr. Durin. And I believe that concludes dinner.”
“Yeah, don’t you all have jobs to do?” Templeton asked.
Chapter 5
Six days later, Gringolet was berthed at Tranquility space port on Mars. Planet fall had been routine, and now the crew had three days to resupply and pick up their charges before beginning the long part of the journey: the trip to Saturn. The spaceport had berths for over two dozen vessels, and more were being added all the time. Tourism was a large part of the burgeoning city’s business, and so public works made every effort to make visitors welcome. Vacationers could take rovers out to explore the planet’s surface, climb around, up, or camp on Olympus Mons, or engage in other more questionable activities. The Martian cities had all been founded in joint ventures by Earth governments, but as time passed they began to desire self-governance. There had been a bloodless rebellion fought in congress and through broadcasts and netlink, and the various countries such as the US, China, Brazil, and Europa that had helped to fund and populate the colonies had agreed to relinquish governmental control. Now the cities, ostensibly democratic, had their own governors and small senates. There was even an elected Martian parliament, but the constitution the cities had ratified left them so po
werless as to be mostly decorative. The difficulties of travel between the cities combined with the limited available living space tended to make each city insular. There was an intercity rail network connecting the various cities, and a small intercity tourism industry had cropped up, but interaction between the cities was cumbersome and limited.
The draw of visiting the red planet aside, many of the Martian cities also encouraged tourism though their lax legal system. By adopting soft laws on some of the most controversial issues of the day, the Martian cities could attract those looking for illegal genetic modification, advanced Artificial Intelligence research, questionable cloning practices, and a variety of other services that were illegal or heavily regulated on Earth and the Moon. The laws governing these were system-wide and beyond the power of individual cities to set aside, but enforcement was a grey area, and punishments were less severe as a matter of course on Mars. Tranquility also served as a rest stop, providing fuel, food, and parts to ships heading out to or returning from Jovian space. It was a port where, provided one had the money, one could hire new crew members, buy and sell exotic goods, or simply indulge in hedonism. It was in fact the ideal stop for the job that the crew of the Gringolet now had before them.
Once the ship was settled on its landing gear and the receiving tube was attached to allow the crew to enter and depart without the need for EVA suits, various members of the crew departed for errands both personal and professional. The receiving area, which extended tubing to seven ships currently berthed, provided a variety of delights. The concourse was filled with data shops featuring movies and books, boutiques with authentic Martian clothing made from imported materials, massage parlors for weary space travelers, restaurants promising authentic Martian cuisine, bars with robotic bartenders, and mini casinos with generous one-armed bandits. Holographic advertisements glowed and rotated over storefronts. Robotic automatons roughly approximating the human form gave directions, suggested places of interest, and otherwise answered questions as needed. Well-dressed men and women offered to introduce space-faring travelers to someone who might ease their long periods of loneliness, though they steered clear of families. Keeping up appearances for the tourist trade was in everyone’s best interest.