by John F. Carr
“Well, then, they’re for sure gonna die here, I can tell you that right now.” Owens grabbed his floating keypad and began making notes.
“Well, pickings have been pretty slim, lately,” Potter continued. Which was something of an understatement.
There’d been a lucky run of High Desirability planets discovered and placed on the “A” list in the last few years, and Survey Teams were assigned by seniority. The Explorers had been getting rich on discovery bonuses, the senior Survey Teams had been getting richer on all the “Priority:Rush/Habitation Study” orders, and the Companies had been getting richer still on their increased stock values for acquisition of high investment value worlds.
The only people who hadn’t been getting rich were, as usual, the commander and crew of the Fast Eddie.
The CDSS Edward V was her name on the roster, but her first master had been a Canuck drunkard who insisted on calling her Edouard Vee; somebody heard the “vee” in a Montreal accent, thought it was “vite,” which meant “quickly” in French, the joke made the rounds and the name stuck like a leftover curse, far outlasting the short and undistinguished career of the ship’s first, now dead, master.
Fast Eddie had a crew of eight: The master, Thomas Farrow, the flight crew, consisting of Captain Potter, First Officer Connolly and Navigator Owens, Chief Engineer William Liu and a black gang comprised of two engineers of indiscriminate but more or less Latin ancestry named Icaorius and Mi’huelo Costanza. Icaorius and Mi’huelo being something of a mouthful, they were known variously as “Ike and Mike,” “the Cisco Kids” or more commonly, “those Christless Spaniards.” They might actually have been Spaniards for all that the officers could decipher of their bizarre dialect, but in fact, they were Basques, and every reference to them as Spaniards by the rest of the crew was followed by mysterious failures in cabin humidity, air conditioning, and most frequently, the mean temperature of shower water. Consequently or not, as time passed there were fewer and fewer such references.
Of the eighth man, the less Potter thought about him the better he felt. Robert Miller was very low on his list of favorite people.
Captain Potter shook his head, thinking about how he had spent the last half of a year, and to what purpose? The ship was a patchwork embarrassment, the crew likewise, and as data began rolling in on the cheesy joke of a habitat beneath them, Potter couldn’t help but recall Hogan’s words. He’d been with Farrow when the Wayforth Station administrator, Vilmer Hogan, had called them in for the assignment. At the time, he knew the master hadn’t had much choice.
“Fast Eddie is just the ship for the job,” Hogan had told them. Potter had noticed that the administrator hadn’t met their eyes when he’d said that.
“It’s Edward the Fifth,” Farrow had said tiredly. He didn’t have much fight left in him, these days.
Potter had jumped in before the administrator could bully Farrow into submission. “And how can you say that, Hogan? She’s been laid up for eight weeks waiting for parts that your service crews claim have to be saved for ships with higher seniority. And you want to send us to a rock that’s over a year from Earth? We’ll be spending the next six months burning fuel to get from one Alderson Point to the next and another half a year to get back.”
“Your wages will accumulate, same as always. And you’ll be reimbursed for your fuel expenditures.”
Potter had given the administrator a sour smile. “Don’t insult my intelligence, Hogan. You know as well as I that we can’t come out ahead on this deal even if we hit the jackpot on a Survey Bonus.” It had seemed like such a good idea for the crew to buy out Fast Eddie once upon a time.…
Hogan had shifted in his chair, and for the first time Potter had noticed the sweat on the fat man’s upper lip; he was very nervous about something. “Look, Farrow, Potter. Survey of this moon is very important to certain people. These people are eager to confirm the moon’s habitability as soon as possible. I’m authorized to cancel all of the Fast Eddie’s outstanding debts, return her to full operational status at no expense to you, and absorb all your operating costs for the duration of the mission.”
Potter remembered listening to the very quiet air conditioning unit in Hogan’s office hum for some time.
“Why?” Farrow had spoken first, surprising them both.
Hogan turned to the Fast Eddie’s master, but Potter felt his attention on himself. “Wayforth Station is a hell-hole; we both know that. It, and places like it, exist only because they sit at intersections of Alderson Points. The CoDominium has written: ‘Wherever two or more Alderson Points are gathered together, there also am I.’”
Potter shifted uncomfortably; he was not a very religious man, but he was pretty sure Farrow was, and he resented Hogan’s sarcastic blasphemy in the presence of Fast Eddie’s master. Hogan’s attitude might also be taken as subversive by certain overzealous CoDo persons.
“Wayforth sits at the center of six such Alderson Points,” Hogan went on, leaning forward over his desk and steepling his fingers. “That makes it valuable, commercially and strategically. It connects to several of those Gold Rush worlds where all the other Survey Teams are even now making maps for the CoDo city planners and the corporate industrial developers. Earth-like worlds, easy to get to; prime stuff for the factions that can afford them, CoDo or otherwise. As for this moon, the Company wants to be sure it’s not missing out on some lucrative mining potential; the Universities are still whining about a wildlife preserve; even the religious nuts are rallying under a common banner—Harmonies, they’ve started calling themselves—for a place to worship away from CoDo interference in their affairs. An out-of-the-way place like this moon appeals to all sorts of people by the very fact of its lack of easy access.”
Hogan leaned back, his bulk making the chair creak even in Wayforth’s low gravity. “But there is another value to out-of-the-way places, too, gentlemen,” he finished.
Potter had sighed. “I see,” he had said, and he did.
Out-of-the-way places were for putting things out of the way, and the things that were most often put out-of-the-way in the CoDominium were people. Earth was still crowded, and the better colony worlds were taken, or their lobbyists were still able to resist forced refugee assignment in the Grand Senate.
You had to put them somewhere, he also knew.
Enter the CoDominium’s newest entity, the Bureau of Relocation, which had been created to find a solution to the increasing numbers of unwanted minorities, religious outcasts and undesirable politicals. The Bureau of Relocation was still in the organizational phase, but was rumored to be up and running by 2040. Meanwhile, the Bureau of Corrections, BuCorrect for short, moved product off Earth like there was no tomorrow, and its product was criminals. Sometimes the colonists were willing; more often they were not. But willing or not, they moved.
“Poor bastards, Potter had said, as he and Farrow signed the contract for the Survey order.
“Don’t worry about your crew,” Hogan had said. “Better they have something to do for two years than sit around idle.”
But Potter hadn’t meant the crew of the Fast Eddie. He had read the discovery team’s preliminaries on the moon of the Byers’ Star gas giant, and he had been thinking about the people who would someday have to live there.
Now that Fast Eddie had arrived; the crew began the long preparations that would culminate, however reluctantly, with the first extended visit of men to the moon’s surface, and Captain Potter’s mood shifted into the low gear of indigestion.
“Pack your long underwear, boys,” Owens pronounced, and transferred the last of the orbital survey data to the Fast Eddie’s shuttle computers. He turned at a chuckle from Connolly. “What?”
“Oh, just thinking about all the things I’ve said that wouldn’t happen ‘til hell froze over.’” The First Officer pointed to a screen rippling with ground images and overlaid with environment data. “They’re all down there waiting for us right now.”
“Cheery thought.
”
“All right, knock it off.” Potter’s admonition was quiet, almost weary; but not without a tinge of sincerity. Cat’s Eye’s moon was a NEW PLACE, words that filled the captain’s mind in large block letters, black as death. Too many names were entered in Wayforth’s Mariner’s Hall as having never returned from NEW PLACES, and Potter had no intention of adding any more familiar names to that list, least of all his own. His temper was short, anyway; it was no longer possible to avoid going and speaking to Miller.
The eighth man of the Fast Eddie’s complement was not, strictly speaking, a crew member. Robert Miller was listed on the Fast Eddy’s first-ever passenger manifest as a “CoDominium Xeno-Geologist.” While not welcomed by anyone since the day Hogan had forced him upon the Fast Eddie’s crew, Miller had made himself as unobtrusive as possible during the long flight from Wayforth, earning a grudging acceptance from the others that was best described as belligerent neutrality. Besides a gift for chess, he contributed nothing to the ship’s activities and took what Potter considered to be more than his share of food and oxygen; Miller was an irredeemable athlete, given to spending eight hours or more in the Fast Eddie’s centrifuge ring and eating like a horse afterward.
Half-a-G seemed never to be enough for Miller, and Potter had three times found the rotation setting increased beyond its long-term design limits. He’d finally ordered Liu to program a lock-out on the ring’s controls, and Miller had sullenly acquiesced.
Gripping the handholds above his seat, Potter picked himself up and kicked off in the direction of the bridge door, continuing the zero-G acrobatics as he proceeded down the corridor to the living quarters module of the Fast Eddie. At the last door he floated to a stop and tapped the button.
“Yes?” The voice from within was no less flat for being filtered through a wall speaker.
Don’t say “come in” or anything civil, Potter thought. Asshole. “We’re taking the shuttle down in about an hour. Bring your gear and come to the launch bay when you’re rea—”
Potter was cut off by the rapidly opened hatch, revealing in all his glory Robert Miller, Company Man. Miller was already wearing E-Suit underwear and had a golfbag sized canvas carry-all slung over his shoulder. “Excuse me,” he said as he moved past Potter into the corridor.
Potter noticed the slippery grace with which the man moved as he insinuated himself into the gangway and moved off in the direction of the launch bay. “Insinuated” himself, Potter thought. That’s a good word for it; that’s what he’s done since the first day we laid eyes on him.
“He’s a part of your contract.” Hogan was adamant.
“Then the contract’s broken; no non-union, non-essential civilian personnel on Survey vessels, for their own safety and that of the crew.” Potter felt his blood pressure rising; he was doing all of Farrow’s fighting for him again, and it always gave him a migraine.
“You’ll bear no responsibility for him.”
“Damn right, ’cause he’s not going to be aboard.”
Hogan sighed deeply. “Potter, there are Company operatives aboard every ship in the Survey Fleet. You and I both know that, so let’s cut the bull, shall we? At least this way you know who yours is. Miller goes with you.”
“What the hell for, Hogan? We’re a Survey vessel, we can’t file any claims if something valuable is found anyway.”
“You’re forgetting the most important thing about the Byers’ Star moon. Its value as a dumping ground for undesirables. What happens if those undesirables turn over a rock one day and find a vein of gold?”
“You’ve got a lot of rich undesirables, so what?”
“Money is commerce, and commerce means representation in the CoDominium Senate.”
Potter rubbed his eyes in weariness. “Rich undesirables who vote, right, I get it. Can’t be having that, now, can we?”
Hogan shook his head and pressed a button on his desk. “I’m glad we understand each other. Eve, send in Mister Miller.”
When Miller entered, Hogan had introduced him to Potter and Farrow, each man had nodded, and none of them had spoken another word to each other.
With few exceptions, their first meeting with Miller that day had set the tone for all Potter’s future conversations with the man. Which, he considered, watching Miller’s back receding down the corridor, was just the way he liked it.
Potter returned to the bridge, allowing First Officer Connolly and Navigator Owens to head for the shuttle bay to make the pre-flight check.
He sat down with a surly grunt as they left, thinking how glad he would be when this was all over.
“Shuttle One to Bridge.”
Potter acknowledged. From the shuttle bay, Connolly and Owens began calling off the pre-launch checklist in bored tones that belied their interest in the shuttle’s operating status.
Alone among Fast Eddie’s accoutrements, at least one of her two shuttles was always kept in perfect working order. They had to be: Fast Eddie might not be much, but it was the only way home, and getting back to the lumbering Survey ship waiting in orbit was only slightly less important than landing in one piece after leaving her.
Giving them the final green light, Potter threw the switches which detached the shuttle from its umbilicals. The squat, ungainly form dropped away slowly from Fast Eddie’s forward ventral bay, dwindling in the dark distance, finally backlit by the bright flare of its engines as it moved into its descent pattern.
“Godspeed,” Captain Potter said quietly. But for himself, the bridge was empty now, and lonely. Along with the First Officer and Navigator, the shuttle carried Ike, several hundred pounds of survey equipment, and Miller himself, stuffed unceremoniously and uncomplaining into an emergency deceleration hammock. Potter found himself envying the Company man even that. It would have been reckless to leave Farrow to oversee the operations of the vessel, and Chief Engineer Liu had enough to keep him and his remaining engineering lackey busy for months.
Potter sat back in the command seat, considering how much he hated being left behind, and how lonely the long trip home would be if anything went wrong down there.
The idea of things going wrong inevitably brought Potter’s thoughts back to Miller.
The man was no more than a Company spy, Hogan had admitted as much; had admitted too that Miller’s job was to be sure that Byers’ Star’s moon had nothing of sufficient value to prevent its designation as a future relocation site for the Bureau of Relocation, BuReloc.
Potter, rubbed his chin. All debts forgiven and a free ride for the Fast Eddie; if Hogan’s on the level. BuReloc is putting an awful lot of effort into getting a man out here just to verify that a place is worthless to the CoDominium government.
“Right,” Potter grunted. But in the last year, he’d had many opportunities to go over the available data on the moon, and there was nothing there to imply that it was anything more than an interesting exception in the Biosphere Rulebook.
Still…
He was nervously chewing the inside of one cheek when the shuttle crashed.
“Fast Eddie, this is Shuttle One down, mayday.”
“Give it a rest for a moment, won’t you?’ Connolly’s voice was weary as he massaged his temples, eyes closed.
Owens stared at his screens in tightly controlled terror. “Fast Eddie’s probably in farside orbit from us right now; goddamn-it, I must’ve told Potter a hundred times to recheck those relay satellites.”
“Well, he didn’t, we don’t have them, so if Fast Eddie’s in farside orbit right now, we can’t talk to them.” Connolly opened a panel on his own console and distractedly pushed a few buttons.
“It’s dead, for chrissakes,” Owens surrendered in disgust. “Leave it alone.” His own board confirmed his judgment that all the shuttle’s port side controls were inoperative. They’d landed very hard and with a lot of noise, and every screen monitoring the port systems had gone dark the same moment that the shuttle had developed an ominous, sickly list.
Ike arrived
with the results of his inboard systems inspection; the shuttle was small, and it hadn’t taken him long to ascertain that an outside inspection was necessary.
“Christ on a crutch.” Owens’ voice tightened by the minute as he struggled out of his seat against the unfamiliar gravity. “Well, that should make Miller happy.”
“Miller?” Connolly frowned. “We’ve an emergency here, Owens; we can’t have him toddling outside on a whim while we’re trying to perform damage assessments.”
“Oh? Why the hell not? He’s going to be useless as tits on a bull, and it’ll keep him out of the way while we work.”
Owens was at the door when Connolly added: “Look, Owens, I can’t say I’ve much use for the fellow myself; but we can’t spare anyone to buddy with him; what happens if he wanders off and gets lost, or hurt?”
“Who cares?” Owens mumbled without turning around.
Thomas Farrow, Owner and Master Aboard of the Fast Eddie, stared at the screens with great, sad owl eyes. He’d posted himself to the bridge immediately upon hearing of the shuttle crash.
Pausing only long enough to drop three tabs of Hangover-Be-Gone, Potter uncharitably thought.
Potter had found his temper shortening with every discovery of a new dimension of his own impotence to affect the crisis. He had just learned that the second shuttle was inoperative; there could be no rescue from that quarter. Farrow had neglected to schedule its hundred-hour check, and Potter had found a dozen problems that were sufficient to ground it for full overhaul. He sighed again. But it wasn’t Farrow’s fault that they had no relay satellites; Potter had made the mistake of trusting Hogan’s word on that one, and his ulcer was exacting payment for that folly, now.
Shuttle One was out of contact every ninety minutes for an equal amount of time as the Fast Eddie’s painfully slow orbit carried her around the far side of the Byers’ Star’s moon. Even when directly over the landing zone—Potter had forced the words “crash site” back from his mind so many times he’d lost count—the static generated by the gas giant, Cat’s Eye, was enough to make an unholy mess out of communications.