The Sunspacers Trilogy

by George Zebrowski

  Rosalie went through the lock. I followed. The tube dropped at a thirty-degree angle, leading directly underground. We emerged into a large, ceramic-sealed chamber with rounded corners. Tunnels led off in four directions. The chamber filled quickly.

  “Your attention!” a male voice announced with some strain.

  I turned and saw a middle-sized man with black hair, combed back in the way I remembered from when I first saw him on the holo in Riverbend’s square.

  “I’m Robert Svoboda,” he said more softly, examining us with dark-blue eyes. “Please follow me single file.” He seemed a bit nervous and impatient. “There will have to be four of you to a room in many cases. We didn’t expect to have to house you. Try to allow for our simpler conditions.”

  He turned and led the way out through the tunnel behind him. I felt a trembling in my boots. Svoboda stopped and turned his head slightly, as if something invisible were following him. Then his bearlike shape marched forward again.

  I looked at the bare bulbs and heat-sealed walls as we followed him through the passage. We went through a half dozen round connecting areas. Locks slammed behind us, echoing ominously. The tunnels were always rough-hewn, sealed with heat, stained with humidity and mineral discoloration. We came to a row of doorways.

  “These crank open by hand,” Svoboda said. “Seven rooms. One rule. Keep your doors sealed when you’re inside. A quake can cause a loss of pressure in the tunnels, but you’ll still have air in the rooms.”

  “You’ll share with us, Bernie,” Ro said.

  “Okay by me.”

  I cranked open the first door and stepped into darkness.

  “Light’s overhead!” Svoboda shouted as the other doors were opened. I reached up and pulled a cord. A bulb went on over the door, throwing my shadow across a stony floor. I held on to the cord, shocked at the room’s simplicity.

  There were three bunks; a sink-toilet-shower combination was partly concealed by a plastic curtain. Everything was clean, but much used. No sheets or blankets on the bunks, only sleeping bags.

  “Well,” Rosalie said, “it’ll only be for a couple of weeks.” She smiled at me, but I didn’t react.

  “I’ve seen worse,” Bernie said.

  I had never seen anything as bad. “The designs are so old. Look at that bulb—you can see the filament glowing.”

  “We’ll get by,” Ro said decisively.

  Our shadows looked as if they had been painted on the floor. I felt another vibration in my boots. The bulb behind us flickered, filling the room with trembling shadows; the ventilator coughed, then resumed its steady whisper.

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  15

  Furnace in the Sky

  The Sun breathed against the surface of Mercury.

  Collectors drank only a small portion of the pulsing flow of energy, but it was more than enough to run the planet’s industry.

  Rivers of metal flowed into molds, cooling during the long nights and sliding onto the automated sleds that hurled the slugs into fast unpowered orbits.

  As we watched in the underground control center, slugs rose to become stars above the open-pit mines, a string reaching all the way to Earth Orbit, enough metals to refill the home planet’s empty mines a thousand times over.

  Any single chunk might take up to two years to reach the factories in Luna’s L positions, but the forward slugs in the perpetual train arrived constantly, so it didn’t matter; that’s why it was so important not to break the steady flow—months, years, might go by before it could be restored. I was here with 199 others of the first wave to make sure that didn’t happen, even if it meant helping people in the bargain!

  Robert Svoboda had no illusions about the economic and political pressures that had brought us here, even if many of us were sympathetic to his cause; sympathy alone would not have been enough. He had been here from the start. He knew the work that had gone into the solar-power plants, launch-sled tracks, and housing, and what it all cost to keep. His degrees, skills, and experience were adapted to a life here. His son and wife were here. Many of the miners had spent half their lives here, laboring like some Hephaestian horde to feed Earth’s needs.

  Svoboda’s aim was to improve the lives of the ten thousand people on Mercury. To them it seemed that the rest of the solar system was building paradises. There were certainly enough resources to build paradises, so why shouldn’t they have one too? They shipped enough metals for a thousand habitats, so they deserved an oasis in the sea of solar radiation, away from the rock, dust, and quakes. They were willing to work here, even raise families—I came to understand why later—if they could feel reasonably safe. One of the first things Svoboda showed us were the sealed tunnels that served as tombs for the miners trapped by the quake of ‘28.

  After only a few days, many of us began to pick up the miners’ attitudes. Rosalie and I began to hate the buried hovels. Who cared about the motives of Earth in sending us here! There was going to be something better before we were done.

  The real problem of building a large habitat in orbit around Mercury, once the political decision had been made, was not in the basic work. A large slug could have been blown up into an empty shell years ago, if the miners had diverted the work force and slowed up deliveries to Earth. Even the shielding was pretty routine engineering. The difficulty was in getting the skilled environmentalists to shape the ecology within the shell, the life-support systems that would be reliable and pleasing. It was an art to make an inner surface look like the out of doors. The number of specialists was limited, and they were expensive, even if they could be convinced to come to Mercury for the long time needed to do the job right. I understood the bitterness of the Mercurians, and why Earth Authority was now applying money and personal pressures to gather the talent. Not everyone could be expected to come here because they thought it was the right thing to do; the problem had to be blitzed before it got completely out of hand, whatever the dangers. Nothing else was possible at this late date.

  But a rushed approach to the interior work would risk repeating the failure of the first L-5 colony, which had become a barren cylinder of concrete townhouses—cramped, ugly, and inefficient. It was now an industrial warehouse. Only skilled workers could build an easily maintainable and improvable habitat, and these people were not to be had until the Asteroids had come to Mercury’s help. By providing the empty husk of the asteroid, and by forcing Earth to make good on an old promise, the Asteroids had confirmed a bond with Mercury. Building up the insides would still require a large force, but not as large as would have been needed to start from scratch. Ro and I belonged to the easily recruited, to those who would be trained on the job, not to the highly paid elite; only my association with Bernie gave me a bit of prestige.

  I wondered about myself. Events not of my making had been the occasion for decisions I might never have thought of making. But now that I was seeing the life of Mercury close up, and feeling my own life in danger, I knew that the anger I had felt on Bernal was justified. It was not enough to know and understand; one had to act, especially when given the chance.

  Svoboda surprised many of us. He could have left years ago, it seemed to us, and found a better position anywhere in Sunspace, but he was determined to make things better here. He made me feel the same way; after all, I was going to be here only a short time, so how could I do less? I think he noticed these feelings in many of us, despite the politics that had sent us here, and that helped.

  There wasn’t much to do while we waited for the asteroid. Svoboda gave us a tour of the underground town during the first few days.

  There were three underground villages, covering some thirty square miles. Each had a large central meeting chamber, where people gathered to dance, sing, or watch programs from Earth. Solar activity made watching programs difficult at times, despite the relay satellites, even when both planets were on the same side of the Sun. The tunnels ran for hundreds of miles, and more were being cut as space was needed. />
  “I want you all to be very careful,” Svoboda said toward the end of his tour. “If anyone is injured severely, or develops a major disease, we can’t put you in suspended animation—we just don’t have the equipment to hold life. If we can’t treat it, you die.”

  We were all a bit shocked at this. He might just as well have told us that there weren’t any first-aid kits, or that we could die of a simple infection.

  “How did your community grow?” I asked. “From what I know it wasn’t supposed to be permanent.”

  He smiled. “People married. Others sent for their loved ones, had kids. There was no plan. Earth Authority administrators ran us on a rotational basis, but in time that was left to us. It was too hard for ambitious career types, who came and left as soon as they could.”

  “So you run yourselves?”

  “Almost, but the strings are still there—long, but we feel them. How could all this happen? I can see the question in your faces. Well, toward the end of the last century people finally understood that to have a humane culture on Earth they would have to go out into space. But they began to take for granted those who went out to run their industry and get their resources for them. Not all problems are material; some are organizational, political, helping injustice exist in the midst of plenty.”

  “People never learn,” I said.

  “They do, individually, but societies forget. It was thought that Sunspacers would take care of themselves in everything. Until people live forever, each generation will have to learn things fresh.”

  “There’s tradition, institutions, history,” Ro said.

  “But reminders are needed.” He looked over his shoulder at the big screen, then back at our group. “Can you all find your own way? I have some work to do.”

  “I think we can,” I said.

  “Oh—here’s my son, Bob. He’ll go with you.”

  Robert Svoboda, Jr., looked like his father—thinner and slightly taller, but with the same black hair and dark blue eyes. He had come to the common area a few times, and I had liked him immediately, though he seemed to worship his father too much.

  We followed him out from the control center.

  The miners grew very busy as the Sun climbed to its noon position; this was the time of maximum energy reception, use, and storage.

  While the great robots ripped ore from the pits, while nuclear charges were set to open still more holes, while people struggled to repair aging equipment in the underground garages, and while the sluices ran rivers of liquid metals into molds, the support army prepared food, cleaned quarters, nursed the injured, kept records, and planned shifts. Children were being raised and educated at the same time. Many were about my age. Many seemed terrified that they would never finish school—that the next quake would stop them. The whole society was at war with time and the Sun, hurrying to mine and smelt as much metal as possible during the three months of light.

  I felt guilty eating, sleeping, and waiting nervously while all this work was going on. A few jokes were made about us; some of the people our age were openly hostile; but grudgingly the idea took hold that we were being saved for other work. Mercury’s gravity, only about thirty-nine percent of Earth’s, made us much stronger, though we had to keep up our muscles with daily exercise and take some care in how we moved around.

  People live longer on lower-g worlds like the Moon and Mars. Fighting Earth’s gravity wears out your muscles, deforms your stomach and gives you backaches. Your heart lifts tons of blood through endless miles.

  Here that strain was reduced by sixty-one percent, and a human being could clear a hundred even without medical help, if the quakes didn’t get him first.

  “They hope so much,” Ro said one day.

  We spent a lot of time in the common areas, playing cards and listening to music, or just talking, but it was only a way of waiting. I tried to study some of the required technical material, but the delay and the constant thought of danger were getting to me.

  Bernie tried to stay away from the room, to give Ro and me some privacy, and that was a relief; but both of us were beginning to feel oppressed, closed in. The miners felt this way all the time, I told myself, but it didn’t help.

  “It won’t be much longer,” Ro said one afternoon. “The asteroid has been in sight for days now.”

  I kissed her for a long time.

  “Miss zero-g?” she asked softly.

  “Sure.” I got out of bed and put on my coveralls and boots.

  “What is it, Joe?”

  “Nothing.” I was beginning to lose the sense of being myself again. “We may be here much longer than we expected. It’s beginning to sink in, I guess.”

  “We decided to come,” she said firmly.

  “If we could just get started—instead of all this waiting.” The light flickered as I zipped up my boots.

  “It won’t be long now.”

  I looked at her. “It’s dangerous here—some of us might never see home again. Did you see how many injured they treat in the hospital?” I had a sudden vision of Ro lying there with every bone in her body broken.

  “I’ve spent time with the patients too,” she answered. “Only a few were really bad, and not from quakes—not recently anyway.”

  “You heard, didn’t you?” I insisted. “They can’t freeze anyone. If it’s a bad injury you don’t have a chance. What if it were me? Or you? It’s ten days back to Earth, when you can get a ship!”

  “I know,” she said in a low voice. “I’m afraid, too.”

  I sat down on the bed, and we held hands, as if afraid to let go. I had the feeling that I was about to fall apart, and the pieces wouldn’t recognize each other. Ro was looking at me very carefully as she lay warm and soft in the sleeping bag. We were quiet for what seemed a long time.

  “There’s always a bit of you I can’t see,” she said finally. “I know that you love me, you’re helpful and caring about people, and you work when you think the job is worth doing. But there is always a part of you that you hold back. Oh, I don’t mind, but someday I hope you’ll tell me about it.”

  She was right. There was always a part of me that longed for the clean, cold beauty of the stars. I still wasn’t so sure that being a human being was so great. Maybe I wanted more than the universe had to give? That’s what Morey and I still had in common—he wanted to be more than a human being, and in my own way I still wanted the same thing, to be able to say that this wasn’t all I was, that there could be more, that there had to be more. I had learned one thing already—the miners were in a bad situation, but their response was superhuman. If they could do it, then so could I.

  There was a loud knock on the door. I tensed, fearing an emergency of some kind.

  “Who is it?” I asked loudly.

  “Bob Svoboda,” a muffled voice replied.

  I went to the door and cranked it open a crack. Bob smiled at me. “I came to invite the three of you to dinner at our place.”

  “Uh, sure,” I said clumsily.

  “At eight. My family would very much like to have you. Sorry to disturb you.” He smiled and moved away.

  “Why us?” Ro asked as I cranked the door shut.

  “Who knows. It’ll be a change.”

  “Maybe we were picked at random,” she said.

  The lights flickered a lot, leaving us in darkness three times as we made our way toward the Svoboda apartment. Finally, we came to a massive door at the end of a long tunnel in the north village.

  “Looks like the entrance to a leader’s lair,” Ro said.

  “Watch it.” Bernie pointed to a crack in the rock floor. We stepped over the break and stood before the door. The knocker was a chunk of ore on a chain. I struck twice. “Come in, come in,” Bob said as the door slid open.

  We filed past him into a large living area, onto a large green rug that covered the center of the red tile floor.

  “My parents will be out in a minute.”

  Ro and I sat down in the chairs fa
cing the sofa. Bernie lowered himself into the middle of the sofa and bobbed for a moment before settling. Moving around in low-g took some care until you got used to it, especially when dealing with air-filled furniture.

  “Dinner will be a bit late,” Bob said. “We all got home late.”

  The green plastic of the furniture, I noticed, did not match the rug. Cracks marred the ceiling and walls. There were some flat pictures on the end table by my chair—shots of a dark-haired girl of about seven, and an older, dark-haired boy.

  “My brother and sister,” Bob said. “Alexei and Lizaveta died three years ago in a quake. A wall in the day care caved in. Most of the kids survived. They found one of the babies under Liza. She’d protected him with her body.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Bernie swallowed hard. A sad look came into Ro’s eyes.

  Bob made a face. “So—when do you think we’ll move into the habitat?”

  “We’ll know better,” Bernie said, “when we get the full force working inside the rock shell.”

  Bob was looking at me. He seemed nervous about the way I was examining the room. “It’s all I’ve heard about since I was a kid.”

  “You were born here?” Ro asked.

  “In the hospital.”

  “And you’ve never been away?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Maybe I’ll go to college on Luna when the habitat is ready.” He gave me a panicky look. “I know that’s a bit late, but you’re taking time off to work here. As long as I get a chance to learn.”

  Robert and Eleanor Svoboda came into the room. The Mercurian leader looked straight at me, as if trying to learn more about me.

  Eleanor was a tall, thin woman with short, curly brown hair. She looked at us in turn and smiled. She seemed tired, but there was strength in her brown eyes.

  “I’ve wanted to meet as many of your group as possible,” Robert Svoboda said, “while you still have time.”

  There was an awkward silence.

  “Thank you for inviting us,” Ro said.

  We stood up and followed the Svobodas through an arch. As we sat down at the table, Bob appeared in the archway from the kitchen, wheeling in the soup. We took our bowls from the cart as he went around.