by Victor Koman
“Two degrees port,” the computer suggested. Baker complied.
“You know,” he said, “I rode motorcycles back on Earth. This is just like popping a wheel-”
“You should be in view of the crater rim now. Loss of signal should occur-” the computer’s voice crackled once and fell silent.
So long.
The dark rim of the crater bent over the horizon to rush toward him. His finger flicked at the controls and the lifeboat rose a few hundred meters. Through the darkened screen he discerned the smooth solar panels and heat sinks camouflaged into the crater wall. Everything on the night side lay in darkness.
Purple light bathed the cockpit for an instant. The boat plunged down into the crater and hottailed across the surface at an altitude of less than eight meters then crossed to the other side of the south pole, dodging mounds and boulders. Braking rockets immediately flared into life, kicking dust up around the boat. The craft performed a three-bounce landing, shuddered, and came to a rest in the shadow of the dayward edge of the crater rim.
The dust settled quickly in the absence of an atmosphere and Baker opened the hatch.
The crater looked like any other crater on any other planet, except that a faint aurora shimmered every few seconds overhead. The massive flux of the solar wind provided Mercury with its own cloud of particles to ionize.
Something moved against the stars. Another psychfighter.
He watched it flare and vanish.
Good shot, Circus. He looked about, seeing nothing in the crater to indicate an entrance to the cryonic unit. He wondered where they would put an access hatch. Depends on whether they merely wanted to hide during a brief war or whether they wanted never to be found. If it’s on a time lock, it may be sealed from the inside.
He strapped a hand laser to the back of his right glove and climbed out of the cockpit. Surface dust compacted under the soles of his boots. At less than half earth weight, his steps were long and easy, but cautious. Approaching a large boulder, he chose to leap over it rather than alter his pace. A burning on his back from the top of his head to below his shoulders distracted him enough that he stumbled on landing and slid through the sandy rim of a smaller crater.
He stood and brushed the dust off. His back still felt warm. Picking up a rock, he threw it straight up with all the strength the pressure suit permitted. At four meters high it glowed brightly, then darkened as it dropped slowly back into the crater shadow.
High jumps cancelled due to sunshine, he thought. We’ll just stick to the marathon.
He walked with long steps, but refrained from any more leaps. There was still no visible evidence that the floor of the crater was anything more than a level expanse of pitted dust punctuated by a single craggy hill at the center, a feature common to many impact craters. He reached the central peak and stood before it, crouching slightly. Another stone toss indicated that the sun shone just half a meter over his head. A sharp line separated the bright upper half of the hill from the shadowed lower half. Reflected sunlight illuminated certain portions of the shaded areas, so Baker could see them when he covered his eyes from the glare of the upper half of the peak. He found that he could not even look at the upper half for more than a few seconds.
He began to sweat. Conduction’s making the ground too warm and light reflected from the crater wall adds to the heat. Excess perspiration passed through the pressure suit and evaporated swiftly in the vacuum, cooling him. The Späflex adjusted its porosity to handle the new conditions. It was not enough. He knew he would have to find shelter fast or return to the shuttle.
Baker’s gaze searched around the crater, then considered the central peak before him. At the very top, drenched in blinding light, lay something black, curled, and weblike. It reached under a small mound of dust on top. Baker followed the slope of the mound with shielded eyes. Something about the dust did not look right.
Why would a crater peak have small dust rays extending from its base? And why that pile of dust on top?
He pounded one fist lightly against his chin. He reconsidered at the charred fibers near the summit of the tiny peak. Sure. Put the main shaft under the peak, drag out a canvas sack and fill it with dirt, wrap it in Mylar until it’s set on top of the peak, pull the Mylar inside and close the hatch. The canvas bag burns, bursts, and you’re covered.
He examined every square centimeter he could see without stepping out of his protective shade. He caught sight of something just above the shadow line-a soft rectangular bump that seemed too regular. He flung rocks at it until one hit above it. Dust tumbled away from an airlock handle in small-scale avalanches.
Straight. Now I hope I don’t need some code to unlock it.
He bent down to approach the base of the mound. Digging his boots into the ever-hotter sands, he worked his way up to the very edge of darkness. Crouching there, he squinted to see the exposed handle. Sunlight glinted dazzlingly on the upper edge of the polished metal.
Doesn’t appear locked. Here goes one hand. He reached up with his right hand, stopped before it crossed into sunlight, and lowered it. Better not risk the shooting hand. He quickly grabbed the handle with his left hand and yanked.
The Späflex did not burn. After only an instant of insulation, it efficiently transferred the heat directly to his palm and fingers. The hatch opened and Baker fell back to the hot sands, screeching. The sand and dust from the door sprinkled down upon him. He rolled clear, but some of it smothered his legs, burning like cinders. He leapt up to stamp off the dust. It sizzled on the sweat-soaked Späflex.
He grunted more in fury than pain, breathed lightly for a few moments, then looked up at the hatch. A shaft of sunlight entered through the opening, heating and boiling away the atmosphere that had condensed inside years before.
He climbed back to the barely man-sized hole and looked up toward it. Sets of instructions in several languages had been printed on the inside of the door.
Have to get inside to read them. Now how do I get inside without roasting? Wait until the planet makes a half-turn?
He touched the back of his shoulders. It no longer hurt. Not much of a burn. Maybe I can last as long as a second or two if I keep moving.
He dug his feet into the side of the mound, reached up and grabbed the bottom of the hatchway. Pulling and kicking, he wormed his way inside the compartment. A rounded square of light on the opposite wall blistered paint where it fell. Baker watched it for a moment, then considered closing the hatch.
His entire back hurt. He realized that both of his hands were now burnt when he tried to unclench them.
“God damn it!” He stood up, avoiding the deadly sunbeam, reached outside with his left hand, and drew the hatch shut. The clang reverberated through the floorplates. He sat down and drew his knees up, curling his hands into his crotch.
I’ve got no time to sit here and hurt, damn it. What do I have to do next?
A soft light shone from the top of the two-meter wide cylinder. Its ruddy glow revealed the square, blackened patch where sunlight had hit. Baker looked up at the hatch. The lettering on the inside had charred, but the letters showed up as black against a lighter gray. Baker stood to read the Americ version. The directions for operating the lift were simple enough. He opened the control box near the hatch and pulled the correct switches.
The lift rumbled once, then whined into life. The floorplate descended slowly, stalling intermittently like an old man walking down stairs.
Faster, damn you! He scuffed one boot and then the other against the floor. The top of a hatch appeared in one portion of the wall. He bent down to watch the floor drop past it. Before the lift even stopped moving, he had opened the control box and actuated the cycling switch.
Inside the airlock, he removed the clear protective cap on the exit optics of his glove laser. He squeezed his thumb against the switch alongside his index finger. The low-wattage sighting beam threw a red dot on the wall opposite him. It wavered nervously.
The hatch sealed
by itself and the airlock cycled. A light shone green. Baker steadied his hand and pointed it at the opening hatch.
All right. Let’s see what sort of greeting you people planned to give visitors.
The hatch swung silently open. A cold mist poured across the floor, chilling Baker’s ankles. He saw nothing. His arm ached from the tension of suspense.
The Späflex contracted against his skin, compensating for his sudden chill. The suit, manufactured to function in the perfect insulation of a vacuum, could not protect him from the cold atmosphere. Heaters throbbed into life someplace, struggling to replace a half century of slow heat loss.
He noticed more instructions on the wall. He pressed the button labeled AMERIC and switched on his outer microphone.
“Welcome to Pastime,” a woman’s pleasant voice said. The still-frigid loudspeakers distorted some of the lower frequency sounds. “Please be very careful when in the main chamber, as cryonic liquids are present and could cause damage if allowed to escape. All units are arranged alphabetically, but please realize that some people may have used assumed names.”
Baker switched on the outside speakers of his suit. “Are you a computer or just a recording?” he asked.
No answer. He strode down the black, indirectly lit corridor until he saw a sign reading MAIN CHAMBER in a number of alphabets. He worked the lock according to printed instructions and stood back. Another blast of cold hit him. Shuddering, he waited for the heaters to warm the enclosure.
Come on, come on. Why’d this suit have to conduct heat so efficiently? I can see them in there, unprotected but for their glasteel coffins. Not even a robot guard.
“You are entering the Pastime main chamber. Please do not touch any controls until instructed. All five hundred seventeen occupants of Pastime are civilians possessing no military secrets.”
Here comes the spiel, Baker thought.
“Pastime was built,” the recording continued as Baker walked quickly to the “T” section, “to house a group of people opposed to the Earth-Belt war of Twenty-One Fifteen. We await the opening of a sealed memory in the banks of the Star Consolidated Auditing Firm, notifying independent rescue agencies of our location. This will take place on Twenty-One June, Twenty-One Forty-Five. If you are from any of the following rescue agencies…” the recording ran through a list of fifteen companies. Baker shook his head in pity and looked around for Delia’s unit. The main chamber took up a lot of space. Unlike the cold holds on habitat ships, this place did not have to keep its mass or energy usage low. The cryonic units were efficient, well built, and large.
Baker located the gold-anodized aluminum plate marked “TRINE, Delia Diana,” listing her birth date and the address of her next of kin. The computer finished its list and said, “…then you are welcomed and we hope the war has ended. If you are a wayfarer who stumbled upon us, we welcome you and ask that you not disturb us if the war is still in progress. If you have come here from a military expedition, we assume there is some reason you did not merely destroy us from orbit.
“Please remember that we are civilians posing no military threat. We are to be considered Non-Combatant Escapees in accordance with New Geneva Convention Section Twelve, Sub-Sections Beta through Gamma. Thank you for your cooperation.”
There was no wake up call. They’ll be here forever.
He ran his hands over the three-meter-long capsule. Delia lay inside somewhere, floating in liquid helium and wrapped in thousands of layers of insulation per centimeter of the cylinder shell’s half-meter thickness.
The plaque explained resuscitation instructions. He read through them, then pounded the side of the capsule.
“I can’t stay here two days! Dee-how do I get you out?” No time! If Lee’s launched a Valli attack from Trans-Pluto, it’ll be here in a few more hours. I can’t carry the whole damn capsule back to the boat. And the deep-thrust battleship is nearly here! Good God.
He ran past the rows of capsules to the opposite end of the chamber. A small console extended from the shiny black wall to his right. Anxiety and the biting cold made his stomach muscles ache. He ignored the pain and leaned over the board.
Where’s the damn’ curator robot?
He punched the button with a question mark on it and typed in:
ARE CRYONIC UNITS REMOVABLE?
YES, blinked the reply.
How to get it out, though? How’d they get out if the rescue people didn’t show? There’s got to be an emergency contingency-
LOCATION OF LIFEBOATS?
PLEASE CLARIFY
ESCAPE SPACECRAFT?
SECTIONS 3, 6, 9 amp; 12-PERIMETER 4.
HEAVY LOAD LIFTING EQUIPMENT?
NONE.
What? How do they-
HOW TO MOVE CRYONIC UNIT FROM MAIN CHAMBER TO ESCAPE SPACECRAFT?
MAGNEPLANE GUIDEWAY-ORANGE LINES
Baker released a breath of pent agitation and fear. The console waited a few seconds, then shut off. He ran back to Delia’s capsule. The exertion warmed him.
An hour. A whole damn’ hour. Circus could be slag by now. And I’m not even loaded.
The cryonic unit slid down the corridor, floating several millimeters above the orange line painted along the center of the magnetized floor. Baker sat atop the capsule, watching the lackluster scenery pass.
Following Baker’s directions, the cryo-capsule, its massive tangle of peripheral equipment, and the superconducting sheet upon which it rested, moved quickly along the guideway on Meisner-effect fields. It slowed and turned, then regained speed.
A double set of doors slid open and the cryonic unit levitated into the shipping dock. Jumping off, Baker ran to the escape ship and looked inside. He took less than a second to decide that the fates were against him. He sat down against the bulk of the cryonic unit.
No cargo space. Just acceleration couches and two engines. What else could go wrong?
A telltale ticked frantically in his ear. His shoulders drooped.
Impurity overload in the rebreather accumulators. Now I’m going to suffocate. Circus’s probably gone from orbit again, one way or another, and the psychfighters are after me. I might as well take one of those engines and use it to defrost Dee, for all the good it’d do either of us.
He looked at the twin engine pods on the twenty-meter long wedge-shaped ship and breathed the thick recycled air. I’m sorry, Dee. I got you this far and now I’ve got to put you back before your batteries run out. I should’ve died back there…
His hands slipped from his thighs to the magneplate. The twin engine pods in his field of vision twisted and blurred.
Something hiccoughed in his breathing tube.
I didn’t get you back, did I Delia? Sorry. Sorry. I should have loved you more when I had the chance.
The pods came back into focus. His forehead burned.
A chance.
A buzzer sounded far away in his earpiece, then grew louder, closer, until it shook him to awareness.
Twenty minutes!
He scrambled to leap off the cargo carrier. The emergency oxygen bottle that cut in to revive him would probably not even last that long.
The port engine pod rattled open under the force of his frantic efforts. He ripped at loose cables and unscrewed fuel fittings. Why do I keep using these chances to live?
He climbed into the cockpit of the ship and actuated the systems dump. A light flashed the words “Emergency Engine Jettison.” A warning siren wailed noiselessly in the vacuum, and with a floor-shaking thump, the port engine dropped from its housing.
I’m an ass. I’ll probably be shot at or Vallied the minute I come out the chute, or I won’t be able to hottail it sideways.
He pushed the cryonic unit to the end of the magneplane guideway and left it hovering. He tried not to hyperventilate.
C’mon, there’s got to be a crane or something around here. The engine housing’s big enough to hold the blasted thing, but how do I get the engine out of the way and the-
A verni
er rocket stared him in the face. His gaze darted to the low rail on which the escape rocket rested.
Don’t stop to think about it.
He jumped into the cockpit and charged the engines.
Do it now!
The vernier rocket on the starboard side fired, sliding the boat sideways off the track. He laughed and hit the braking rocket. A short impulse shoved the fuselage a few meters backward. He looked behind him and fired the vernier very lightly a couple more times.
Close enough.
The empty port engine pod hung over the cryonic unit. Pieces of the guide rail lay scattered across the floor. He ran back to the unit, powered up the magneplane, and eased the load into the engine housing. With it levitating inside, he closed the pod hatches and locked them.
Finally.
The lifeboat checklist took a minute to run through. The air in his mouthpiece again started to taste stale. The launch ramp doors parted, a star-filled sky appearing ahead of him. He alerted the onboard computer to compensate for the single engine and the different mass of the cryonic unit.
The kick of the starboard engine slammed him back in his seat. He cleared the exit hatch and hottailed across the plain, the rim of the crater nearly a kilometer behind him. When the last liter of oxygen whispered into his lungs, he fought the urge to suck in as much air as he could and held his breath with grim force.
With one free finger he started cycling the air inside the cabin. The pressure rose. With every bit of his concentration centered on holding the boat safely on attitude, he had no chance to unfasten his helmet.
“Circus,” he said with his last exhalation, “this is Baker. Stand by to receive payload.”
Circus’s touchdown area appeared over the short horizon. He stared at the smooth circle of molten rock.
Overhead, in synchronous orbit, hung a score of psychfighters. Baker watched six of the tiny blips vanish from his radar scrim and reappear directly around him. No battleship, though. The anti-matter pod worked. Where is Circus?