by IGMS
For the signal to reach Trill here, they must have been running it through all eight of the satellites the U.S. had orbiting the moon. Not good. He had counted on having more time before they realized he was gone.
Trill backed against a wall, wishing for somewhere to hide and transmit. Inside Wing's craft, the insulation cut his signal off; outside he was exposed. If anyone should hear his voice and come investigate . . .
Trill put Wing's vehicle between himself and what appeared to be the corridor leading to the rest of the station. He whispered harshly, "Come in, Armstrong Base. This is Trill. Vishti? Blacky? Whoever's on duty. Somebody talk to me."
"Trilling!" came the instant reply. "Where in blazes are you?"
It was Kirtley.
"I'm inside the Chinese base station, colonel," Trill said, prepared to tell the version of events he and Wing had concocted during the flight over.
"I was afraid of that," Kirtley interrupted. "Something about your demeanor during your last transmission was just odd, so I sent Blacky and Neru out to check up on you. When they reported that the ore carriers had been sabotaged and you were gone, I figured the Chinese had snatched you." Kirtley's voice hardened when he said, "Have they tortured you? Because I swear I'll make them pay. Nobody steals one of my men and gets away with it."
"Colonel, no; you've got it wrong. I snuck in."
There was a long pause as Colonel Kirtley processed this new information. Trill pictured a cartoon version of Kirtley's eyeballs falling out of his head and rolling around the floor.
Finally Kirtley said, "How'd you manage that?"
"Stowed away on the saboteur's rocket sled," Trill replied, glad he and Wing had rehearsed this story. "No one knows I'm here. If the crew is operating on Peking-time, most of them should be asleep for a couple more hours. I'll poke around, see what I can learn, then steal a rocket sled and fly home."
Trill looked at the front end of the craft he was hiding behind and hoped that he could fly one of these things if it came to that. He and Wing had discussed a lot of things during the flight here; how Trill was going to get home had not been one of them.
In a calculating tone, Kirtley said, "Negative."
Trill's eyebrows drew together. Excuse me, he wanted to say. Kirtley never gave him the chance.
"You are to proceed directly to their beanstalk and take it out of commission."
"Excuse me?" Trill heard himself blurt.
"We've been getting intelligence reports that suggest the Chinese are only weeks away from launching another beanstalk to Mars. If that's true, we're screwed. That makes you the perfect man in the perfect place at the perfect time."
"How do you figure?" Trill demanded. This was lunacy. What evil spirit had possessed his commander?
"All those times I had you strip down and rebuild our elevator controls? You know these systems inside-out; who better to remove that one key piece that will disable the entire system, yet take the Chinese months to identify? They'll never suspect a thing."
"Impossible," Trill protested. "They'll catch me."
"Let me put this in terms that your tiny mind can grasp," Kirtley said. "You can either put that thing out of commission and come home a hero, or you can die trying. Frankly I don't care which. But if you come back here and their elevator is still functioning, I'm going to drop a bomb on their station -- and it's going to be duct-taped to your ass. The Chinese government will not claim Mars. Do I make myself clear?"
Trill heard footsteps.
"Abundantly," he whispered.
It's probably just Wing, Trill told himself. Nothing to worry about. Just the same, he shut his eyes and willed himself invisible.
"Abundantlyyyyy . . .?" Kirtley repeated, looking for the military equivalent of the magic word.
Trill could actually hear Kirtley drumming his fingers on a desk, thousands of kilometers away, waiting for Trill to say, "Abundantly, sir."
"Trill?" a female voice called.
Wing. That solved half his problem.
But if Kirtley heard her voice - hell, any voice - calling his name while he was inside the Chinese station, Trill was going to end up with a bomb taped to his ass no matter what else happened. He reached into his helmet and snapped his radio off.
"Trill?" a puzzled Wing repeated a moment later.
He stepped out from behind the craft.
She was still wearing that damn black body suit. Breasts? Legs? Trill snorted. She had spoiled that for him. Now when he looked at all he could see her was thirty-four dead Chinese farmers. It was irrelevant whether the Chinese government executed them or just left them to starve when Wing's salary disappeared. They would die.
Trill weighed that against the death of his own career if he disobeyed Kirtley's order. He had worked his whole life to become an astronaut.
Dammit, why had she told him about those people? This would be easy if he didn't know about them.
"Trill?" Wing called again, penetrating his fog.
He looked at her, a stranger, really. Only slightly less unfamiliar than her thirty-four relatives back on Earth. He thought about Colonel Kirtley, and forced himself to smile.
"Right here," he said.
An answering smile crept across her face. She stood there for a moment, staring at him like she was wrestling with some idea that kept turning itself inside out. Finally she said, "Sorry to be gone so long. You ready?"
Trill climbed to his feet. "Take me to that elevator."
Wing left the bay. Trill followed.
"Damn!" he cried just as he crossed the threshold.
Wing froze. "What?"
"I talked. Dammit, what was I thinking? I talked to my colonel on the radio. If your people are monitoring our radio transmissions, they'll know I'm here."
"Not a problem," Wing replied. "I drugged the officer who's supposed to be listening. Dropped a sedative in his coffee. Then I had to take care of one more problem in the elevator's control room. That's why I was gone so long." After a moment, Wing added, "Why did you contact your base?"
"They were looking for me," Trill said. "Radioing." He omitted the details of that conversation, adding simply, "They think I snuck in on my own, so you're going to need to be quiet when I turn my radio back on."
Wing shrugged. Again, it was not the reaction Trill had expected. She was so hard to read. He turned his radio back on.
Of course, the moment he did, Kirtley was right there, barking in his helmet again. Trill cut him off, trying his best to sound sincere. "Yes, sir, I hear you," he said. "I must have passed through a shielded portion of the station and lost your signal for a minute. I heard your order though, and am proceeding in that direction. Be aware that it may be necessary for me to maintain extended periods of silence. There are crewmen and scientists everywhere."
Trill felt a little bit guilty. Wing wouldn't be leading him past security if she knew what he was planning.
Three minutes later, they walked into the control room of the elevator. Trill was stunned to find the room desolate. Whether the elevator was running or not, the U.S. station always had someone on duty. Then he noticed the three unconscious men on the floor.
Trill looked at Wing, who opened her hands, palms to the ceiling, as if to say, What else could I do?
The control room looked through a gigantic window into the bay where the elevator rested on a low pedestal. Trill snorted as he contemplated the millimeter wide carbon-nanotube tether that ran through the center of the elevator and off into space. It looked exactly like the U.S. model, except it was five or six times the size of the one Trill was used to working with.
Empty pallets lay everywhere. It looked as though huge quantities of material had been loaded into the elevator.
"Holy crap," he said out loud before he could catch himself.
"What?" Kirtley's voice said in Trill's helmet. Wing looked at Trill questioningly.
"That's the biggest damn elevator I've ever seen," Trill answered them both.
It looke
d as if it had been loaded with everything the Chinese owned. As if in preparation for a long . . .
. . . trip.
Trill froze.
Why would the Chinese have an elevator car that big, fully loaded, if the propulsion system wasn't functioning properly? Quite simply: they wouldn't. This elevator, loaded to the gills, had been prepared to run its cargo to the end of its tether and then loaded onto a Chinese spacecraft headed for Mars.
Trill's hands clenched into fists. Deep down he had suspected Wing wasn't telling the truth. But still, he had not been prepared for this.
Suddenly Trill felt not merely justified, but righteous about his decision to betray her and sabotage the Chinese elevator. His odds of escaping from the Chinese base were slim, but he was going to inflict major damage before they caught him.
He looked around the control room. A lot of delicate electronics winked back at him.
"Colonel Kirtley," Trill said coldly, "you were right about them launching an elevator soon. Only it's not weeks away. It's days away. At most."
He cast his eyes around the room, looking for the implement with which he could inflict maximum damage. Trill was sure that if he destroyed the control room, it would be a long time before that Chinese elevator went anywhere.
He was so focused on that task that he was only vaguely aware of Kirtley's voice in his helmet, ordering him to destroy everything Trill could get his hands on.
Hands . . .
Trill realized he already had the ideal implement of destruction in his hands -- his helmet. It was large, heavy, had a convenient handle, and was already right there in his hand, waiting to be swung like a giant sack of rocks. He stepped toward the nearest computer bank and raised it high.
A Chinese man appeared in the control room's doorway, shouting something as he raised his pistol. Trill spoke no Chinese, but the man's meaning was clear enough.
Before Trill could move, though, a shot ruptured the silence. Trill twitched, but it was the Chinese man who fell with a blood-soaked chest. Trill turned to face the source of the shot. Wing stood there, gun in hand. Then she lowered it.
"You really don't want to do that," she said, eyes drifting up to the helmet held by Trill's still raised hand. "Not if you and I are going to have a chance of getting to Mars."
That triggered a fresh barrage of shouts from within Trill's helmet. Kirtley was on a rampage.
Trill threw his helmet aside. He couldn't think with Kirtley yammering like that, much less comprehend what was going on.
What was happening? He had no idea, but whatever it was, it was happening fast. Too fast. And every time he turned around, Wing changed the rules.
Wing slid past Trill, pushed her dead comrade out of the way, and closed a heavy sliding steel door. She punched a series of buttons on the door's control panel, closing every other door that led into the launch bay and the control room, then fired twice into the door's control panel. It spit blue sparks in dismay. Then it, too, died.
"That won't keep them out for long," Wing said as the sound of stampeding feet came to the door. Voices shouted. Angry voices. More than once, Trill thought he heard Wing's name.
Next came an eruption of small arms fire. Though the bullets couldn't penetrate the door, Trill reflexively dropped his helmet and flattened himself against the wall.
"What the hell is going on?" he shouted over the nearly continuous gunfire.
Wing was about to shout her reply when the gunfire ceased.
"They've gone for better tools," she said. "They'll need an acetylene torch to breach these doors, but I'm hoping they won't realize that right away. Either way, we haven't got much time."
"Much time for what?" Trill shouted as if the bullets were still flying.
"Look," Wing said, placing her hand on his forearm. "I've got --"
Trill shoved her hand away. "NO! Play that game with someone else. I want to know what's going on and I want to know now!"
Wing snarled back, "You think I have time for games? If they get through that door and we're still here, I'm as dead as you are. Now shut up for one minute and listen."
Trill nodded. Wing spoke.
"I knew from listening to your radio transmissions that you're the engineer Kirtley always sent out on repair jobs. And you were right the first time; I didn't want you because of the maglev propulsion, I wanted you because you're the president's nephew --"
"Damn it; I knew it --"
Wing clamped her tiny hand over Trill's mouth. "You're listening, remember?"
Trill glared at her, but held his tongue.
"Look, we both know that that there's no such thing as second place in this space race. There's not enough ice on Mars to support two bases for any length of time. And we both know it's a very real possibility that both our governments would consider military options if they didn't get there first. Those asteroid crystals are going to set one country's economy light years ahead of the other's.
"But that's not what the world needs. Space is too important to turn into another battleground. That's why it's up to us to force our governments in another direction."
Wing paused to make sure Trill was following her logic. She said, "That's why I want you and I -- one Chinese and one American -- have to take this elevator to Mars together. Then no single government can claim the planet. They'll have to come to some kind of agreement. And the fact that you're the president's nephew is a major key to pulling this off; she's going to work ten times harder because you're the one up there."
Trill couldn't believe what he was hearing. It was insane. He said, "And you're sure that this is the answer? So sure you're willing to bet your life on it?"
Wing's eyes burned. "My life -- and thirty-four others."
That was not what Trill wanted to hear. He looked over his shoulder at the loaded elevator.
"It'll never work," he said. "It takes almost four days just for the elevator to get to the shuttle. Once your people get into the control room, they'll just shut it down and bring us back."
"I've rigged the elevator so that once it's launched, it can only be controlled from inside the elevator."
"There's still the crew of the shuttle to deal with."
Wing shook her head no. "If we build up enough speed, we can actually use the tether as a launching devise and whip this elevator all the way to Mars. We'd get there in a fraction of the time. I proposed it to our government, but no one would listen to me. I even know how we can land so that we --"
"You've got an answer for everything, don't you." Trill's voice ran rich with a sarcasm born out of desperation.
A shower of sparks appeared at the door. The Chinese had gone straight for the acetylene torch after all.
Wing said, "Except how to pull this off without your help. I could do it myself, physically -- I could push every button and pull every lever. But I need an American to come with me. You have to trust me, and you have to do it now."
Trill didn't move. Wing edged closer to him.
"Imagine it's ninety years ago," she said, "It's 1960 and you're inside a missile silo during the height of the Cold War. Radar shows incoming ICBMs and your commanding officer is screaming for you to launch a counter attack.
"But your instincts tell you not to launch those missiles. That it's a false alarm. There's been no build-up of troops, no saber-rattling, no reason at all to believe you're being attacked. So who do you trust? The guy screaming in your ear?" She cast her eyes to Trill's helmet where Kirtley's ranting continued unabated. Then she held out her hand. "Or that tiny voice whispering to your soul . . ."
"You've lied to me at every turn," Trill said. "How do I know you're not lying again?"
"Would you have come with me otherwise?"
Trill punched the wall. "That's not the point, dammit! How do I know you're not lying now?"
Wing reached out to him, fingers stretched to their limit. "You don't. How can you possibly believe a crazy-woman who wants to save humanity from itself?"
Th
e acetylene torch had almost cut through the door. Trill looked at Wing's hand, hanging in the air like the questions she was asking.
He pointed at the elevator car. "Are there enough supplies in there for us to survive until our governments come arrest us?"
Wing shrugged. "Maybe." She looked him in the eye. "Maybe not. Either way, the results will be the same. The Chinese and the Americans will have arrived on Mars together. Both will have a valid claim."
Trill paused to assess the big picture. It was simple, really. He would fly to Mars -- and piss off a lot of bureaucrats. It was as noble as it was suicidal. What more could he ask for? He took Wing's hand and followed her to the elevator.
Once inside, Wing pushed the button that released the magnetic clamps and the massive elevator began accelerating up the tether.
Trill leaned his forehead against one of the viewports. As he watched the receding Chinese base he shook his head and smiled. If only Vishti could have been here to see it. Wing had outplayed him at every turn, using a series of feints and misdirections to keep him off balance. Now that the pieces were in position, it wasn't hard to see. Not at all.
She was good. Very good.
God, he hoped there was a chess set on board.
Night Walks
by Robert Stoddard
Artwork by Jin Han
* * *
Ever since the hospital, Josh had been taking night walks. He'd wait until all the neighborhood dogs had been walked and most of the house lights were out. Then, he'd escape into the solitude of darkness where he could talk to himself or cry with nobody around to care.
He was doing a lot of talking and crying these days.
Josh didn't think he was crazy. After almost dying from cancer, he was just trying to figure things out. Night walks were perfect for that.
Plus at night, his wife, Megan, never wanted to go with him. During the day, she was always hovering or peeking in on him, looking for signs that he was getting better. Even when she was at the grocery store, she would call to see how he was doing, and he felt smothered by her concern. But by the time he went night walking, she was out like a light on the sofa in front of the television.