by Scott Rhine
Auckland wheezed a laugh. “Cheap bastard.”
****
“Test jump in three, two, one . . .”
Compared to the buildup, the moment of transition to subspace was anticlimactic for everyone but Mercy. When they submerged, she could see whorls and rivers of gravity behind the still-open hundred-meter-wide sunlight windows. “It looks like the original map of subspace but infinitely more detailed—swirls like a Julia set or a Van Gogh painting. It’s a nice change. The space windows can be only clear or, when shuttered, they become mirrors to reflect light from other windows. I get tired of the same tri-tone color scheme everywhere. Although, that would imply a third color we haven’t seen yet.”
“The rest of us can’t see by the light of philosophy. Luckily I brought a torch,” Lou said, clicking on a flashlight in the control room.
Soon after, Red closed the ship’s shutters to prevent possible heat leakage from the huge windows. Next, she ordered Snowflake to backlight a few control panels for visibility.
Over the radio, Zeiss said, “Campers, send up your first shift.”
No one answered. None of the ground crew responded to any of their queries.
Mercy’s first thought was, Did I mess up the gravity equations and kill them all?
Chapter 18 – A Matter of Gravity
Everyone but the Zeisses and the recovering doctor descended the spiral stairs to investigate. Mercy led the way because she didn’t need the flashlight to navigate. She knew where the domino steps were without her normal vision. Lou proceeded slowly, complaining that the light had a pinkish quality instead of its normal blue tint. “My peripheral vision is wonky, as well.”
Much like swimming underwater, it took the team a while to adapt to walking under Einstein’s rubber sheet. At 10 degrees latitude on the sphere interior, they were past the fog to the rice fields.
Lou called in. “It smells a little like fertilizer down here, over.”
Red didn’t reply. Instead, she leaned over the railing at the top and shouted, “No signal.”
He gave her a thumbs-up sign and draped the headset around his neck. “We’re going stone age.”
Mercy wrinkled her brow. “Do we need more power to broadcast the signal? Is the signal there but distorted? Does subspace preclude both frequency and amplitude modulation?”
Sojiro said, “Ooo. Maybe people in normal space can still hear what we’re saying.”
“Could be radiation interference,” Park suggested. “Hope it doesn’t kill us. I don’t want to be remembered in science history that way—like Madame Curie.”
Frustrated, Lou said, “Assume we’re being jammed because there’s a Russian attack underway. We’re going to shut up and run from here.”
****
Again, Mercy took the lead because of her ability to sense the gravitational fields. After the rice fields came the orchards. She couldn’t see the varieties, but some of the trees were flowering. The gentle scent from the plums was the only thing that kept this from feeling like the dark forest in Oz. She kept expecting the trees to reach down and grab her. When she cleared the last of the trees, no longer worried about falling branches and thrown fruit, Mercy increased her pace.
“Slow up,” Park panted. She was thirty meters ahead of the others.
“It’s only been two-and-a-half klicks,” she said. “Besides, wasn’t Lou just complaining that I ran like a girl?”
“An eight-minute mile is wimpy,” Lou asserted.
“For the first mile . . . after that, it’s called stamina,” Sojiro said, a little out of breath.
Lou held up his hand. “I’m willing to walk for a while, only because Yvette twisted her knee on this hill we’re approaching.”
“That hill’s probably there because the river needed to be redirected away from the space window on the ground,” Mercy theorized. “Why was Yvette climbing up there anyway?”
“Strawberries,” said a voice in the dark.
Mercy gripped her chest theatrically as Toby stepped into the glow of their flashlights. “You scared me.”
“Sorry. I was on my way to the steps and just popped into the field for a minute to pick some berries.” Toby held out a basket brimming with fresh strawberries and blackberries.
“I love pancakes with those,” Mercy said.
The nanobiologist pulled the basket back. “I was saving these to give to Yvette when she relieves me.”
After a hmph, Mercy said, “For a sample, I’ll tell you what would impress her more.” When he extended the basket warily, she added, “Change the name of this hill on the map to Strawberry Hill so people don’t make fun of her every time they give directions.”
“You’re pretty smart for a girl,” Toby said as she munched a handful of berries.
Sojiro laughed. “This girl has four patents.”
“And a higher GRE score than you, Butt-cheese,” Lou added, mispronouncing the biologist’s surname, Baatjies.
Mercy jumped to his defense. “No need to call him names.”
The pilot persisted. “He knew lights-out was coming. If he’s so bloody smart, what’s he doing stuck out here without a torch?”
Toby thumped something strapped to his forehead. “I brought a miner’s headlamp thingy, but it must not be charged. I haven’t been waiting that long.”
As she explained about the radio-blocking effect, Mercy reached up, grabbed a cord dangling beside his ear, and plugged it into the medical technician’s headset. Xenon light blazed from the lamp, and Lou gripped his sides to hold in the laughter. “Red should never have pulled your butt out of that crash simulator. Sometimes I don’t think you have what the Yanks call ‘the Right Stuff’ to be an astronaut.”
Narrowing his eyes and clenching his fists, Toby said, “Just stay away from you-know-who at the wedding celebration.”
“Yvette?” asked Lou, enjoying the needling. “She ordered me in for a private consultation. Since she outranks me, I can’t refuse.”
Mercy said, “It’s for grief. Lou’s having some acting-out issues because his girlfriends keep having accidents. Please cut him some slack.”
Toby nodded. “We’ll just have to change his call sign to Coyote Date. Women would rather chew off their own arm than stick around him.” The blow came so fast, no one could block it. Lou punched the other man in the mouth so hard that he fell onto the path, scattering the dark berries on the riverbank like a bloodstain.
Mercy stood between them while Sojiro grabbed Lou’s arms in a martial arts hold. “Stand down,” Sojiro whispered.
Toby wiped his mouth, and red clung to the back of his hand.
Park asked, “Do you wish to file a report?”
Shaking his head as Mercy helped him up, Toby said, “No. I fell down the hill in the dark.”
She righted the basket and began rinsing the fruit, but he walked away. “Don’t you want your berries?”
Toby kept walking. “I’m late for my duties, and the boss needs to know everyone’s okay. I don’t let people down who rely on me.”
Lou squirmed, but Sojiro held him firm.
“I’ll take the basket to Yvette and explain you picked them for her,” Mercy shouted as Toby vanished in the darkness.
“Freak!” Lou screamed after him.
“The sooner you let it go, the sooner I can,” Sojiro encouraged.
Park said, “I wanted to ask him how the biozone mapping was going, and how Nadia is doing.”
The Japanese interface specialist said, “I helped on the map. Major zones are the ones over three hectares in size. They identified thirty-six major nonaquatic zones, collecting samples from each in case we have to replant. There are fewer than a dozen micro-biomes like the Hollow itself. The trickiest one to analyze will be Mushroom Gorge up by the perma-fog.”
Mercy grinned at the name from the old computer game with the bouncing race car. Someone was a fan.
“Nadia’s probably helping Herk build a still for potato peelings,” Lou said,
mellowing slightly.
The Korean physicist smiled and nodded. “If the Hollow has a fireplace and a bear-skin rug, this might not be a bad winter.”
“We know what Nadia likes,” Lou said suggestively.
“Yes, I do,” Park confided. “Attentiveness, faithfulness, and focus of purpose.”
“I have that,” Lou grumbled.
As he released the pilot, Sojiro explained, “Lou, on your first date, you knocked Nadia over into the chip dip when your team scored.”
“I dated Nadia?”
“Manchester championship three years ago,” Park explained as they resumed walking.
“Oh, yeah. Play went into overtime. What happened on the date?”
Sojiro laughed. “Park helped wash her shirt out, apologized on your behalf, and walked her home.”
“This quiet, little mother rebounded one of my shots?” Lou asked with a grin. “I don’t know whether I should slap him or buy the sneaky bastard a pint.”
“He has a black belt.”
“A pint it is.”
Mercy trailed after them, shaking her head. “Boys—I’ll never understand them.”
****
They were in sight of the mountain when Park asked, “What are the Zeisses doing during the radio silence?”
Lou snickered. “Petting the bunny in zero g.”
“What?” Mercy asked, coloring slightly.
“It’s a tattoo,” Sojiro muttered.
“Joining the two-kilometer-high club.”
“Be cool,” Sojiro said. “They’re not animals.”
“You haven’t heard Taz through the walls, man—ouch.”
Sojiro bent Lou’s pinky finger enough to gain his attention. “There’s a lady present.”
They continued ambling along as the creek wound through a vast vegetable garden.
Suddenly, Sojiro’s head perked up, and he pointed toward some tiki torches planted at the edge of the vineyard on the other side of the creek. “I see Oleander’s aura pattern.” The artist waved in grand gestures and shouted, “Hi, Ole! Over here!”
Someone had rigged a bridge out of long, bamboo poles, and she clomped over the wooden contraption with heavy, magnetic boots. “You’re earlier than we expected,” Oleander said from a distance. “Why didn’t you call?”
“No radio under the sheet,” Lou explained.
“Good thing we didn’t have any problems down here. I saw your lights at the edge of the Green Giant’s Valley and came to escort you.”
“All these vegetables in the fields around us, waiting to be frozen,” Sojiro said. “Funny.”
“Never mind that. Why the escort?” asked Lou.
As Oleander approached, the tall, Nordic woman held a flaming torch in one hand and a sapling spear in the other. Dressed in a bear skin, she would’ve made a credible cavewoman.
“Herk put out snares.”
“Because?”
“The sustainability equations showed that with the pheasant population holding constant, there have to be predators somewhere.”
The male astronauts shifted stance to stand back-to-back. “And you figure they’ll come out at night?”
“Hadn’t considered that. I’ll ask Toby. We’ll need to set up IR sensors to monitor for heat signatures in case there are . . . things that go bump in the night.”
“What good will a warning do when all our weapons were confiscated?” Lou complained.
“I’m here for more than protection and guiding you through the traps in the vineyard. Navigating the rocks can be tricky in higher gravity, and you’d never find the cave entrances in the dark.”
Mercy decided the guardswoman was right, especially in the dark. The entrance to the cave complex was camouflaged behind a boulder, deep in a narrow crevasse. The steps down seemed completely natural; however, the tunnels were formed by three overlapping smooth-bored circles. Oleander had to duck her head as she led them inside. “The tunnels are a smidgeon shorter than I am, and sloped upward so they can’t flood or leak heat.”
The shortest of the newcomers, Mercy could stand upright as long as she didn’t try to run or leap.
Sojiro suggested, “You could make these wall ridges into a rail system to move crates easier.”
Oleander replied, “Risa already adapted a mechanic’s crawler by tilting the wheels against the curve of the wall. Herk rides it down like a luge sled.”
“We could have winter Olympics,” Lou joked.
“Do you have a fireplace?” asked Park.
“We have two vents in each room. We could use one for fresh-air intake and the other for smoke exhaust—they branch in different directions. So far, Risa has built an oven and a kiln. A communal fireplace is next on her list.”
Park nodded, his ultra-reserved version of pumping a fist and shouting, “Yes, score!”
The first room was ten meters across, round, and clogged with boxes and sheaves. People were cataloguing and storing food and wood as fast as possible. Lou laughed, “Sugar cane and coconuts! Is there anything you don’t have here?”
“If the cold kills things off, we need to replant. Then I’ll increase the amount of soy because women need more calcium. In the worst case, we’ll have to subsist off what we harvested until we can grow more.”
“What can we do to help?” Mercy asked.
“Nothing yet. You all need sleep. I’ll ghost to Olympus and let them know you arrived safely.”
“What about fetching Auckland?”
“Herk wants to wait for first daylight interval to lug him down the steps. Mercy, this is the single women’s bunkhouse.”
Smiling, Mercy pushed aside a blanket to see her new room, but it was dark. Holding out the basket, she whispered, “Where’s Yvette? These were a gift.”
“She’s making a house call. I’ll take those. All food is communal. We’ll use them in breakfast. Thanks,” said Oleander. “You can wash dishes whenever you wake up.”
“Sure. I need to cross-train, though. Since I can see okay in the subspace dark, maybe I could be security like you.” Mercy crawled into the nearest empty straw tick and used her jacket as a blanket. Between the depression and exhaustion, she fell asleep quickly.
Chapter 19 – Ecological Niche
Minutes later, Mercy woke up feeling as if her ears had just popped. Over her headset by her pillow, Red announced, “Reopening the shutters. Estimated sixteen days to the next jump. We have to swing back to the jump point at a new angle.”
Mercy groaned, muted the cheerful torture device, and tried to return to sleep.
Before she could manage this, she heard, “Mercy, time to get up.”
Cracking open an eyelid, she saw Oleander.
The tall woman whispered, “Your engine expertise is called upon. The hop only took us forty-five minutes relative. In subspace we travel half a light-year per day in the slipstreams.”
“Wow! Over 175 times the speed of light. That’s fast—about three light hours every minute. We could go from Earth to Pluto in about two minutes—not much room for error.”
“Whatever. Z needs someone to check the gravity generators before we start the deceleration and extreme turns. I can’t sleep until we’re done.”
Mercy sat up, and the makeshift blanket slid off. “Sure. Anything to help.”
“Um . . . I’ll loan you a brush. You have straw in your hair and a few bugs.”
Screaming at the scuttling sensation, Mercy swatted at her scalp, scrubbing her hair frantically with her fingertips.
Lou pushed aside the blanket door. “Is everything okay?”
“Bugs,” Oleander explained.
“Yeesh. Smith, your hair looks like Medusa.” His eyes travelled downward to her chest, as if noticing her gender for the first time. “Red was right; you have a nice rack.”
Mortified, Mercy pulled the jacket over her. “I’m half dressed.”
“I’m an optimist. I prefer to think of you as half naked.”
“Out!” Oleander or
dered.
“How demeaning,” Mercy grumbled.
“No, demeaning is when they don’t hold up a score card for you and still expect you to fetch them a drink. That happened to me when the pilots were rating all the women at moon base, and I was too old and flat. I think they were perfecting the five S scale that day: shape, strut, smile, sass, and stamina.”
“You’re beautiful. Lou’s a pig.”
Oleander smiled. “He didn’t call the next morning?”
“No, we never . . . He’s still getting over Yuki and Vanessa. He’s afraid he’s cursed.”
“The best thing is to mount that horse right away. The wedding will be a perfect chance.”
“Mount?”
Oleander waggled her eyebrows, and Mercy blushed.
“I’m not used to women being so . . . blunt,” the younger engineer admitted.
The older astronaut shrugged. “People who deal in life-or-death every day tend to get to the point quickly. We also don’t give a lot of chances. Space doesn’t grade on a curve.”
Mercy asked, “So you’re going to make a play for Lou?”
“No, but you might. He’s afraid of catching the Collective Unconscious page from me and somehow not being human anymore.”
“He’s sort of Yuki’s guy.”
“Please! No ring; no foul. They had a holiday weekend version of a one-night stand. If it makes you feel better, then wait for as long as their relationship lasted. . . Done! Just because she’s going to be frozen for years doesn’t mean you need to be.”
“No thanks. Red told me Lou is like a rollercoaster that flips upside down—good for a short-term thrill, but you tend to lose whatever’s in your pockets without meaning to. There’s usually screaming involved, too.”
After a throaty chuckle, Oleander said, “But some of that screaming is the good kind. Professor Z and Red promised your parents they’d take care of you, so they’re understandably protective. Some things a woman should decide for herself.”
“Why the push?”
“You’re depressed. A fling might cheer you up.”