Yury immediately asked Bo why he felt this way, saving Holly the trouble.
Bo shrugged. Without context it may have looked like a lazy shrug, but deflated would have been a better term. “Why do you think it will?”
“Three reasons,” Yury said. “It’s possible, it’s straightforward, and it’s safe.”
“How?”
“Well… it’s possible to make contact with the station because the people there are already looking and listening for a signal from this vicinity. This is where we went missing. Okay, we’ve been missing and silent for almost a week. But the station won’t give up on us that easily.”
Bo didn’t brighten, but nor did he argue. A welcome side effect of Yury’s attempts to lift the boy’s spirits was that Holly was hearing the old man’s reasons for optimism laid out more clearly than she had so far.
“And it’s going to be relatively straightforward because our radio setup from the Karrier does most of the work,” Yury continued. “The bunker’s dish facilitates the communication — it’s the necessary hardware, hidden within the plants a few metres beyond the stairway — but Ekaterina is very confident that it will work with our radio, which already has the station’s radio console as a pre-programmed target.”
“But how is it safe?” Bo pressed. That he asked this indicated his acceptance of the previous two points, which was reflected in Yury’s slight smile.
“Because Morrison isn’t listening. And even if he did, by some miracle, pick up a signal… communications between our radios are encrypted.”
“So you’re admitting that he could pick up something,” Bo said, still unconvinced. “And even if he couldn’t decipher it, wouldn’t he still know where it’s coming from?”
Yury turned his palms up in a casual shrug. “It doesn’t matter; he already knows we’re here. The Karrier was supposed to land safely, remember, so it would be plausible that Dante hadn’t yet had a chance to furtively destroy the radio and that it sent out an automatic distress call. But since Dante executed the previous data transfers, Morrison has no reason to think there are any problems. He knows Terradox can’t be seen, visited or escaped by anyone without changes to the cloak — which can’t happen without Dante’s remote device or access to the bunker — and he has absolutely no reason to think the cloak is in danger. No reason at all.”
At last, Bo seemed to buy it. “Can I come with you when you go back to the bunker?” he asked, turning to Holly.
“Of course you can,” she said. “We’re just going to wait a little while until we know that your dad is definitely okay.”
Bo, with a sudden sense of urgency, crossed the lander to check on Robert.
“Yes, all good,” Grav said, responding to a question Holly hadn’t heard. “He is going to be drowsy for a while with these painkillers, but we got it out okay and he has not lost a dangerous amount of blood. We are all good, kiddo.”
Holly and Yury shared a relieved glance, each sighing with relief.
“Grav says he’s stable,” Bo said, hurrying back to them. “Can we go now?”
Holly couldn’t help but laugh at how keen Bo had suddenly become to be present for the first attempt at radio contact. “In a few minutes,” she said. “Make sure you have some warm clothes and something to drink, okay?”
Bo gave her two thumbs up and busily rummaged through his small case for a zip-up jacket.
While Bo got ready, Holly checked on Robert. “Is he really as safe as you told Bo?” she asked Grav.
“Yes. He was lucky. Usual story… an inch or two the wrong way and he would have been gone. But yes, really: there are no major danger signs.”
“What do you mean no major danger signs?”
Grav shrugged, not quite dismissively but not far from it. “The wound is not as clean as I would have liked, but I do not think there is a chance of anything worse than a minor infection. And considering how it looked when he hit the floor, I will settle for that.”
Holly couldn’t disagree. “And you don’t mind staying with him, do you? I want to be there when—”
“Definitely,” he interrupted. “Go go go. Robert will be in safe hands.”
Holly nodded appreciatively and turned around. “Viola, are you coming?”
The girl looked down at her father and shook her head. “Look after Bo, okay?”
“Always,” Holly said, placing a warm hand on her back.
“And walk to the bunker,” Viola added. “That way we’ll have a rover. You know, just in case we need to reach you quickly.”
It was a good idea and the only smart thing to do.
Bo was disappointed when Holly told him he couldn’t help her drive because the rover was staying where it was, but she promised he could do so on the way back.
“I’ve got a better idea,” he beamed as they descended the ladder after saying their goodbyes. “When we make contact and the rescue crew comes to get us, how about you let me steer the Karrier back to Venus?”
Holly smiled. “We’ll see.”
sixty-six
Bo’s excitement grew with every step of the short walk to the bunker, along the route that his inquisitiveness had first discovered several days earlier.
Once there, he giddily typed in the code he still knew by heart — 2 8 2 8 0 2 — and walked inside with Holly.
They were greeted by the sight of Rusev sitting in one of the bunker’s two chairs, with the Karrier’s radio out of sight under the control console.
“Was there a problem hooking it up?” Holly asked straight away. “Do you need me to do anything?”
“It’s all hooked up,” Rusev replied. “Just finished. It has to sit down there because the main connection to the dish is only long enough to reach the part of the control console it was meant for. I haven’t activated it yet; I wanted to wait until you got here. Anyway, how’s Robert? Okay?”
Bo answered: “The bullet is out and Grav said he’s going to be fine. Drowsy, but fine. Grav has the right tablets in case any signs of an infection show up.”
“Excellent. Excellent.”
Holly, impressed by Bo’s succinct summary of Robert’s condition but impatient to get started, lowered herself to the ground for a better look at the exposed-looking radio which had been gutted from the Karrier. “So… how do we turn it on?”
“And how do we talk to them?” Bo asked. “There’s no keyboard or screen, unless we’re using this console… which we’re not, right?”
“We’ll be communicating by voice,” Rusev said, answering the second question first. “And as for switching it on, you should see a physical switch on the front there. Any time you like.”
Holly reached forward and flicked the switch. A small red light began to blink. “Now what?”
Rusev, now sitting on the floor along with Bo, breathed deeply. “Now we wait for that light to stop blinking and turn green. The radio is trying to connect to its counterpart at the station. I think from this location it’ll take forty or fifty seconds and then the same for the return signal, so we’re going to know within two minutes whether or not this is going to work.”
Holly looked down at her wristband. Without any question, these would be the longest two minutes of her life. After so many struggles over the past week, and with so much at stake over the next few days, it all came down to this. Weeks, days, hours and minutes gave way to seconds as the only relevant timescale.
After 93 seconds, the light turned green.
sixty-seven
“The small button to the right!” Rusev shrieked, almost overcome with joy. “Hold it to speak!”
Holly reached for the button. But before her finger got there, she heard a female voice she recognised from previous and less urgent communications. This voice, the greatest voice she had ever heard, resonated through the speaker on the front of the radio module.
“Grav?! Grav, do you read?”
Momentarily and understandably forgetting about the unavoidable time lag, Holly spoke over the
voice. “It’s Holly,” she said, struggling to contain her emotions. “Holly and Rusev! Grav is with us but not right here. Spaceman, too. We need help.”
The voice continued, becoming audible again when Holly stopped talking: “… completely lost you six days ago. What’s your status?”
“Wait for their first reply,” Rusev said, urging Holly to release her finger from the outgoing speech button. Unlike the crew on the station, whose radio module was fully and properly connected to the broader console, Rusev and Holly would not have recordings of whatever replies came back. They had to pay attention to every word.
The next 93-second wait wasn’t quite as dread-filled as the first given that the most likely point of failure had been safely navigated, but there was still room for uncertainty over whether the outgoing voice communications would be safely received and automatically decrypted at the station. The Karrier’s radio module was designed to retain its core functions in the event of a broader console failure — which was effectively what the absence of the rest of the console amounted to — but this had never previously been relied upon in a real emergency.
Bo, who knew nothing of this final potential stumbling block, was giddy with delight. “It worked!” he yelled. “It actually worked!”
The flood of relief that hit Holly when the familiar voice returned with confirmation that her message had been received was, to her surprise, even stronger than the first. It really had worked. She covered her mouth with her hand and tried not to cry tears of joy. When she turned away from the radio to see Bo, he pounced towards her like a kitten and threw his arms around her neck.
Rusev laughed at the outpouring of emotion and then moved forward towards the radio module to take control of the all-important communications. She responded to the request for details of their situation by stating it as plainly as she could.
Holly almost couldn’t believe how crazy it all sounded: they were stranded on an invisible planet-like body not merely controlled but built by Roger Morrison. Without going into the horrific choice the group would face if they weren’t rescued within the next five days, Rusev gave the explicit order for the remaining Karrier to be urgently dispatched towards the origin of their radio signal.
The next reply from the station asked for clarification of what Rusev meant about a man-made planet and sought absolute confirmation that the Karrier was to be readied for a rescue mission.
“We need to tell V that we got through to the station,” Bo said, facing Holly. “And Grav and Yury. And my dad, if he’s awake.”
Holly nodded in full agreement; the others did deserve to be kept in the loop.
“Is it okay if we pop back to the lander?” Bo asked Rusev.
“By all means. I’m not leaving this radio until the Karrier is here, so it would be good if you could bring more coffee and some of my things when you come back.”
“Definitely,” Holly said.
“Can I drive the rover back?” Bo asked.
“I thought you said you wouldn’t care as long as we made contact?” Holly laughed.
“I know, but…”
“Fine, you can drive.”
Bo literally jumped with joy and punched the air. “See you later,” he said to Rusev before dashing to the door.
Rusev, her finger hovering over the button to reply, looked at Holly. “We couldn’t have done this without you,” she said.
“Everyone has done their part,” Holly said. “And it was my job to get these people to that station. I don’t think the description said anything about all of this, but…”
Rusev laughed and turned back to the radio before commencing her reply.
Holly exited the bunker and joined Bo in the rover. “Not too fast,” she said. Within thirty seconds she had to add “I didn’t mean this slow” as Bo drove ultra-conservatively. “At this rate, they’ll see the rescue Karrier arriving before we get back to tell them about it,” she joked.
Bo sped up slightly, but by the time he parked outside the lander Holly still felt that she could probably have gotten there faster on foot.
Before Holly stepped out of the rover, Bo was already past the lander’s external security lock and halfway up the ladder.
“We got through,” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “They’re coming to get us!”
Day Eight
sixty-eight
A fresh air of positivity filled the lander in the minutes and hours following the news that contact had been made with the Venus station.
Predictably, Viola was most full-hearted in her celebratory cheers while the adults were slightly more reserved.
Out of the children’s earshot, Grav qualified his joy with the words: “I will celebrate properly when we are on board the rescue Karrier.” He then paused. “In fact, I will celebrate properly when we are on the station.”
He said the words with a degree of jest, so Holly joined him in smiling.
One person who didn’t smile was Yury. “I’ll celebrate when Morrison is exposed to the world for what he is,” he said flatly.
Grav and Viola made a trip to the bunker to bring Rusev some supplies for her encampment and to enjoy the novelty of communicating with the station. On their return, they informed Holly and the others that everything was in place for the rescue Karrier to set off within hours.
The evening had passed quickly. Robert, becoming more like himself again but still extremely drowsy, slept in the lander in the bed that had been Dante’s while Bo slept in Rusev’s. Holly, Viola and Grav slept in the extension as usual.
With Robert unable to do so, Viola had administered Bo’s evening injection.
Fortunately, by the time Holly and Viola entered the lander the following morning, Robert was sitting fully upright and insisting that he felt fine.
Robert was evidently still hopped up on Grav’s super-strength painkillers, but he seemed lucid enough and was full of questions about precisely how long the Karrier would take to arrive.
“I already told you this,” Yury impatiently answered from his seat at the table. “Around 72 hours. We will have a more specific time soon.”
Holly walked over to Yury and saw that he was poring over the large map they had taken from the bunker’s wall. Viola joined her.
“I still think the prime landing site is the valley where the other Karrier settled,” he said, pointing to the area which was by now very familiar to both Holly and Viola. “It’s well clear of any major zonal lines, and landing near the other Karrier offers the natural advantage of making it far easier to transfer important cargo.”
While Holly focused on the circle Yury was tracing with his finger, Viola moved around the table and tapped the area to the map’s extreme top left. This area was dominated by a series of intriguing, irregular and unexplored structures.
“What about New Eden?” the girl asked, referring to the zone by the name she’d gleaned from the bunker’s emergency backup binder. “We have some time…”
“I’ve been thinking about that, too,” Yury said. He didn’t address the second part of Viola’s comment — her implicit suggestion to visit the site.
Too intrigued not to, Holly voiced her own opinion: “I think I should go. Not for curiosity’s sake, but because we’re the only people who can ever find out the whole story about this place. We’re the only people who can tell it, but before we tell it we need to know what it is.”
“I’m coming with you if you go,” Viola said.
Holly knew what Robert would have to say about that, and likely Grav and Rusev, too.
“I’ve done everything you’ve asked me to do,” the girl continued. “Please?”
“Ask your dad,” Holly said, slightly caught off-guard by how quickly the general discussion of visiting the site had morphed into a negotiation over who would be going.
“But he’ll say no.”
Holly couldn’t help but smile at the girl’s straightforwardness and decided to accompany her as she asked. On their way — all of ten or f
ifteen paces — Viola whispered a request for Holly to do the asking. She agreed.
“I’m going to check out the New Eden site to document what’s there,” she said, standing over Robert’s bed. “Viola wants to come with me.”
“We’ll be careful and safe and back before you know it,” Viola strived to add.
Robert looked at Viola for a few seconds, then at Holly, and then back to Viola. “Stay with Holly at all times and do exactly what she says,” he said.
Viola hesitated for a moment, as though mentally making sure that he really had said yes. When it clicked, she leaned and hugged him in thanks until he winced from the contact. “Sorry,” she whispered.
“Do you think you’ll be able to look after your dad for us?” Holly asked Bo, crouching to his level. Knowing how difficult it would be to keep an eye on his inevitably energetic exploration techniques, she hoped the boy wouldn’t ask to come along.
He nodded. “But if you find anything cool, bring it back.”
Holly ruffled his hair before returning to Yury at the table. She was surprised to see him standing and packing a small bag. “What are you doing?” she asked.
“Coming with you,” the old man replied. “I want to see what Morrison was doing on Terradox while Terradox is still here. I want to see exactly what we’re taking down.”
sixty-nine
Though Grav had no desire to join the unlikely trio on their expedition to New Eden, of which he had no strong opinion either way, he was happy to share their ride to the bunker.
Having expected an argument with Rusev — known for her conservative approach to just about everything — Holly and Yury were as glad as they were surprised to hear her agree with their view of the trip’s inherent merit.
Grav ended up being the most sober voice, insisting that they wait the necessary hour for a backup rover battery to fully charge. He had already drawn up a checklist before they left for the bunker, which included EVA suits, an emergency shelter, blankets, and what Holly considered a needlessly large contingent of water containers. She saw no real risks to the journey, which covered a distance she could comfortably traverse on foot fairly quickly should their rover — the only real point of failure — run into any problems. Holly hadn’t considered the potential reward of the trip in any great detail; but given the countless wonders they had discovered on Terradox before its horrific context emerged, an area called New Eden promised much.
Terradox Page 28