The Sunspacers Trilogy

by George Zebrowski

  I lay back and dozed, feeling shut in. I would be locked up with these people for two weeks, and then I would have to work with them on Mercury for at least a year—in the space around Mercury, to be accurate.

  I turned my head and saw Rosalie looking at me, and it seemed wondrous that she could know how I felt about anything. I touched her cheek, realizing that I loved her without a doubt, and that I would have come with her even if there had been no other good reason.

  I was falling, my stomach told me suddenly.

  Then I bumped my head.

  People were laughing and talking loudly.

  I opened my eyes. The ceiling was only a few inches in front of me. I pushed away and turned to see the whole chamber filled with floaters. Rosalie drifted below me.

  I grasped a rail and pulled myself to her.

  “They shut the drive down for minor repair,” she said.

  “Who undid my strap?”

  “You were floating when I woke up.”

  I looked around, trying to catch the prankster’s eye.

  “Strap in,” the captain ordered. “Boost will resume in three minutes.”

  Ro and I pulled ourselves into our couches and fastened up. I yawned. She smiled at me. We waited.

  I felt the soft vibration in my stomach. It seemed slightly different, less of a growl, smoother. Weight crept into my body.

  When the green light went on, I unstrapped and stood up, hoping to make the toilet before the line got too long.

  “Feel better today?” Ro asked, stretching appealingly.

  “I’ll be okay.”

  The toilets were just off the main chamber. I walked over and stood on line behind some ten people.

  “How’s it going, pal?” Jake asked from behind me.

  “Fine,” I said.

  Jake looked sulky.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “This ship is not in the best shape. Even the captain sounds nervous.”

  “Do you think it’s dangerous?”

  “Who knows?” he said softly. “Junk heaps have been known to hold together. We’ll only know if it doesn’t.”

  My turn came. I went inside and brushed my teeth, then stripped and took a shower while my clothes were cleaned.

  “Hey, kid!” Jake called from the next stall. “Imagine we lose our g force now. Hah, hah!”

  “Hurry up in there!” someone shouted.

  Breakfast was served three decks down. The floor was white. We sat ten-a-table. A large wall screen showed the stars, Earth/Moon, and a small sliver of the Sun. I had eggs, oatmeal, juice, and coffee. Rosalie sat across from me, but we didn’t feel much like talking. Not enough privacy.

  I thought of Dad as I ate. Old problems, drawing farther away. New problems drive out old ones, whether you’ve solved them or not; that was the only way it was ever going to be …

  I noticed Linda and Kik. They were not aware of anyone as they talked.

  Rosalie and I began to feel more at ease in the group. We didn’t care who was listening after a few days. We were all on the ship together, and that was all there was to it. People grow less impressed with each other through familiarity, even if you’re very special. Some people will say anything in front of you after a while.

  “You’d be good-looking if your ears weren’t so big,” I heard a girl say, and she was not joking; it was true, I saw, when I looked at the boy.

  Dinner on the third day was some kind of beefy stuff with leafy greens in a gooey sauce. It was a shock after the better meals. The cook apologized, promising that if we ate this batch it would not happen again; it sounded like blackmail.

  The air smelled of the stuff that night, making it hard to sleep. Most of us woke up looking glum, wondering if this shabbiness was a sign of worse things to come.

  We got used to the routine: three meals, sitting around in the rec area staring out into space; exercising in the gym; reading, watching broadcasts from Earth. A few couples managed to steal some privacy in the showers from time to time.

  Earth was very proud of itself. From the broadcasts, you could almost feel like thanking it for creating such a bad situation on Merk, just so Earth Authority could do something noble about it.

  “What a load of slag!”

  I turned and saw a short, stocky guy with white hair and pale complexion—the kid with the big ears—sitting with Kik. Everyone in the rec room looked bored.

  “Don’t knock slag shielding,” said a tall, thin girl with closely cropped red hair. “It keeps you from growing funny critters on your skin when the Sun smiles at you,” she added with obvious perversity. I wondered if she meant that Earth had to shield itself from the pain of truth, or was simply babbling.

  “Did you ever notice,” the white-haired boy continued, “how people care for their health, clothes, underwear, but not for what’s in their heads? Probably the dumbest species in the universe.”

  “We’ve still got you,” the girl said.

  There was some feeble laughter. I wondered what it would be like to see myself from outside. Would I like myself? Would I think that I would ever be anything? Maybe I was the villain in someone else’s story? Who was the hero? Maybe there are no heroes or villains, and we’re all stuck somewhere between beast and angel.

  Things could be dumber and harder than I thought—too hard for the kind of human being I knew. Life was simple and complicated at different times, even at the same time.

  What are you anyway? You look into your eyes and imagine the grayness in your skull, and you feel alien. You might easily not have existed, but here you are, gazing out of soft gray matter with watery eyes, examining yourself and the stars, wondering at the darkness, which would be complete if there were no eyes …

  I got up, deciding to visit Bernie on the engineers’ deck.

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  14

  Mercury

  TheWells reached maximum speed, eating up the light minutes toward the center of the solar system. The Sun grew larger on our screens. As we crossed the orbit of Venus, the shrouded planet was a half-disk mirror catching the Sun. Human beings were on Venus also, probing from orbital stations, living in its clouds aboard high-atmospheric islands, exploring the hostile surface. Venus was a place of new dreams, constructive wishes that would one day change the planet into another Earth—if human beings could ever decide where they best liked to live, on planets or in free space habitats. I didn’t think they would ever decide, and why should they? Life would always make a niche for itself, as it always had, wherever and whenever possible. Human beings would live inside the Sun if they could.

  Mercury was just swinging in front of the Sun, becoming a dark spot as it crept across the solar face. Planetfall was still days away, but I felt a rising sense of expectation as Mercury grew on our screens. There were fewer fights among us, less bickering. We were looking forward to getting there and starting work.

  On the day before arrival, one hundred fifty of us crowded into the rec room. Ro and I found ourselves in the middle, sitting on the deck. The chatter grew louder as we waited for the meeting to start. I looked around and saw Bernie standing with some of the engineers near the spiral stair. Something was very wrong, and we were going to be told about it.

  “What could it be?” Rosalie whispered.

  There was a sudden lull. A small, thin woman in a white uniform was making her way to the screen. Her hair was gray, short, but her face was youthful, with high cheekbones and a small nose. Captain Maria Vinov seemed to be holding her anger in check.

  She turned by the screen, and her gray eyes searched the room. “I don’t know quite how to tell you this,” she said in a low, slightly hoarse voice, as if she’d just come from a shouting match, “but I will have to leave you off at the mining complex on Mercury’s surface. The hollow asteroid has not arrived and is not expected to arrive in Mercury’s space for at least three more weeks, due to delays and course corrections.”

  “A
nd the construction sphere?” one of the engineers called out.

  “Those quarters are with the asteroid. I’ve been told that the hollow is in the fastest possible powered orbit, but I have no way to check. In any case, I can’t stay here just to provide living quarters, because I have to pick up the next load of workers. The housing at the mining sites is adequate for the short time you’ll be there. You’ll get to see why you’re here. But if anyone wants out, you can return with this ship and come back on a later one, assuming you’re not breaking your contract. That ticket will come out of your pay, of course, since Earth Authority is picking up one round trip tab per contract. I don’t need to remind you that a broken contract will mean an exorbitant fine.” She was trying to discourage us, but I could see she didn’t like it.

  Kik stood up and said, “You clearly don’t approve of leaving us on the surface.”

  “Yeah!” a male voice shouted. “The contractsaid living quarters off the surface.”

  Sure, I thought, but they didn’t saywhen those quarters would be available.

  “I have no choice,” Vinov said. “You can file a case for contract violation against Earth Authority, but you’ll probably have your quarters before it’s settled. Returning with me may cost you more than the fine, even if you win.” She looked around the deck, locking eyes with me for an instant, and I saw that she knew what this foul-up could mean. “Anyone coming back?”

  We’re stuck, I thought in the silence.

  “One of the engineers, Mr. Denny Studdy, will give you a brief orientation.” She nodded to us and made her way out, leaving us uneasy. The truth was being fed to us in small doses, I realized.

  A short, slightly overweight man stepped in front of the dark screen and gave us a strained smile.

  “I expect we’ll manage,” he said in a booming voice. “A few basics, so you’ll picture the place and it won’t all be news to you. Mercury rotates in about fifty-nine Earth days. The mining complex is on the equator. As the planet reaches its closest point to the Sun, the Sun comes up over the horizon and stays there for two Earth days, then sets again. It pops up again a few days later, by Earth clocks, and moves high into the sky. Mercury is now moving toward its farthest point from the Sun again, so the Sun seems to shrink and move faster in the sky.”

  I had the feeling that he was trying to distract us from the real problems ahead.

  “Forty-four days later along the orbit, the Sun is directly overhead. Then all this repeats itself, but backward.” Someone sighed heavily behind me. “The Sun grows larger, drops down toward the west, slowing, sets, rises, and sets again. A Merk day is eighty-eight Earth days, and so is the night, almost. Its day is the same length as its year.” Studdy was getting it across. Dull but accurate. I listened more closely. “It’s the shape of Mercury’s orbit, a flattened circle, that keeps the planet from complete tide lock with Sol, where one side would be light, the other dark. Tidal friction brakes by a factor of four, depending on where the planet is in its orbit, close in traveling fast or far out and moving slower. So it keeps one hemisphere facing the Sun when close in, but continues to rotate when far out, and the gravitational bonds grow more elastic, getting more and more out of lock with the Sun. Afternoons can reach over two hundred degrees Celsius, and it can drop to minus a hundred and thirty at night. What all this means is that miners go out on the surface and work like hell for most of the night, but when the Sun rises all labor is confined to below-surface operations. Staying out, even in a suit or protective vehicle, would be the same as sunbathing in the light of billions of hydrogen-bomb explosions.” He paused. “But they need the Sun to fill the solar-power collectors, to run the digging, smelting, and refining robots. There’s more power than they could ever use, in fact. The various refined metals are cut into huge blocks and launched on the mass driver toward Earth Orbit. Some of you may have seen similar catapults on the Moon.”

  “What about the quakes!” someone shouted.

  “Mercury’s surface is still elastic, and the core is still shrinking. Temperature changes between night and day help trigger quakes. It can’t be helped. Don’t look at me that way—I’ll be there too.”

  Linda stood up. “What about the underground quarters?”

  “They’re safe enough most of the time,” Studdy answered. “People have been hurt or killed, but most survive. The quakes vary in intensity, and many structures are in poor repair. These people have little time to improve their dwellings, or repair them. They also have to maintain the industrial equipment, much of which is old and obsolete. And there’s less power at night, when the solar collectors can’t work. Industry, not housing development, gets the energy.”

  “But you said there’s more than enough power,” the boy with the white hair said. “Why aren’t there power satellites beaming it in all the time?”

  “That’s one of the things the orbital habitat will make possible. High-orbit beamers require maintenance and relays. The present satellite collectors are low orbit and inefficient by today’s standards.”

  “There’s no reason a subsurface living complex couldn’t be made safe,” Linda said.

  Studdy shrugged. “Maybe—but they’ve seen what free space habitats are, and that’s what the agreement says they’ll get.”

  “You mean they put a gun to Earth’s head,” someone said bitterly. I turned too late to see who it was, but later I learned that six people were going back with theWells.

  “Look, it’s just as well. We’ll have metals, and if Merk is torn up completely for resources one day, as is likely, we won’t have to worry about evicting anyone. There are lots of reasons human beings shouldn’t live there.”

  “What about the solar research base?” Jake asked.

  “It’s well away from the mining sites, and from what I know they’ve never complained about their conditions. But the teams there are replaced fairly often.”

  I stood up. The matter-of-fact coldness of Studdy’s presentation was beginning to rub me the wrong way. “You don’t show much sympathy for these people, Mr. Studdy,” I said, and stood there in the sudden silence, waiting for an answer.

  “Listen, kid,” Studdy said after a moment, “I volunteered same as you—” He stopped short. “Sorry—you’re right—I have been cut-and-dried about it. We need to be reminded why we’re here. What have you to say?”

  I cleared my throat. “Only that we should think about how we’re going to get along with these people. We shouldn’t come on as their saviors. We’re here to give them what should have been theirs a long time ago. Fast ships and robotic industrial equipment made it economical to mine Mercury, so it should have been economical to give these people a better life by now.”

  “You’re right—we might get off on the wrong foot if we don’t think why we’re here. We have to get along with the miners. What’s your name?”

  “Joe Sorby.”

  “Thanks, Joe. But remember, there’s something in it for us also—skills, experience, good pay.”

  Someone snickered behind me. I turned and tried to spot the person. “Why did you bother to come?” I asked loudly, and sat down.

  Rosalie squeezed my hand. I felt a bit foolish, even though I knew I was right.

  Mercury seemed to be waiting for us as we crossed its path and decelerated into a wide ellipse around the cratered ball. Captain Vinov then dropped us into a tight orbit, only a hundred miles above the surface, so the landing shuttles could use the whole planet as a shield against solar radiation when they ferried us down. The small craft were not as well insulated as the big ship, which carried lots of water in its triple hull, and they were especially vulnerable to solar flares—those bursts of radiation from the Sun’s surface that could cook unprotected human flesh in seconds.

  We went down in groups of twenty-five. Everyone seemed a bit glum, knowing that things were going to be very different from what we had expected. I didn’t feel like a world builder at all. No one talked about the possible danger, but it was t
here, an undercurrent of fear in our minds.

  Bernie, Ro, and I strapped in.

  A fifty-foot tube of gray metal with a control cabin at one end, a cargo bay fitted with couches for passengers, the shuttle frightened me with its smallness, thin walls, and shaky-looking bulkheads; it had seen too many years of service and couldn’t be safe.

  Being next to a porthole didn’t make me feel any better; it was probably the weakest part of the vessel.

  But the view was breathtaking as we went down into Mercury’s night. The planet was mysterious in starlight. Looking carefully, I saw a faint string of diamonds leaving the surface: slugs of metal boosting toward Earth Orbit, to arrive many months later in a nearly endless train. The shuttle turned a bit, and I saw where the slugs were high enough to catch the sunlight, bursting into prominence one by one, like stars being born …

  What am I doing here? I wondered as the descent engine fired below me. I lay pinned to my couch, overcome by doubt and the sudden sense of distance from home, from my parents, from my lost friend Morey, and all the things I had known as a boy. I was here to help, but would it help me? Did anyone care? Would anyone remember? I reached out to the cold stars and felt saddened by their silence as the shuttle touched down.

  “What’s that?” Ro asked.

  “What?” I unstrapped and sat up. Everyone in the small hold was silent. The shuttle trembled, shuddered, and was still.

  “We’re just settling,” I said.

  “A quake maybe,” Ro added.

  “A small one,” Bernie piped. “Probably happens all the time.”

  “And so do the big ones.” I turned and saw it was Whitey with the big ears.

  There was a metallic thud against the side of the craft.

  “Loading tube,” Bernie said.

  We lined up in front of the airlock.

  “How you feeling, Joe?” Bernie asked, smiling.

  “Okay, I guess,” I answered. But suddenly I was overcome with feeling for him, and I was glad that he was here to share what he knew with us and with the miners. It made me feel safer.