Star Cops

by Chris Boucher

  “Did you know he plans to go floatabout?” Butler asked.

  Theroux was genuinely shocked. “Jesus,” he said.

  “Man claims to be fully cleared for EVAs.”

  “We are all cleared for Extra Vehicular Activity,” said Dieter.

  Butler ignored him pointedly and went on, “Insists on going outside. Calls it ‘The Last Great Adventure’.”

  “Dumb reason for putting on a spacesuit,” commented Theroux.

  Nathan was puzzled by the reaction. “How dangerous is it?” he asked.

  He had addressed the question to Theroux, but it was Butler who answered. “It’s difficult to say for certain these days, but we could be sitting in a major branch of Fuck-ups’R’Us.”

  “Oh, come on,” Theroux protested, “not even our losing streak could be that bad.”

  “Speaking personally, I wouldn’t want to bet my life on it,” said Butler. “Though, if I’m honest, I’ve got no fundamental objection to betting Hendvorrsen’s.”

  “Is there a particular problem at the moment?” asked Dieter.

  “Obviously there is,” said Sanchez. “What is the problem you have?”

  Butler sighed. “The backpacks. They’re the working bits of a spacesuit. They provide the air, control the temperature, waste elimination, mobility jets.”

  “Yes, we know that,” Sanchez cut in, impatiently.

  Butler turned from his screen to look at him, before turning back and continuing with his lecture. “If you think of the spacesuit as keeping you in and the vacuum out, the backpack does everything else.” He paused again, and this time glanced round at Theroux enquiringly. “How was that?” he asked. “Will I make a tour guide, do you think?”

  “What about the backpacks?” asked Nathan, with weary impatience.

  Theroux said, “We’ve been getting failures.”

  “And?”

  “And people die.”

  “That tends to happen out here,” said Butler wryly, “when equipment fails. In case you hadn’t noticed, it’s an unforgiving environment.”

  “So what is it you’re saying?” Nathan asked.

  Theroux shrugged. “I’m not saying anything.”

  “Are you saying it’s deliberate?” Nathan persisted.

  “I don’t know what it is.”

  “He thinks it’s a mystery, don’t you, Sherlock?” Butler said. “But it’s no mystery. I keep telling him it’s no mystery. Backpacks need regular servicing. There’s a Russian conglomerate that has the monopoly of the work.”

  “State run concern?” asked Dieter.

  “Just like the old days.”

  Sanchez was nodding. “It must be a big business,” he said, “and must be getting bigger all the time. Only their state sector could handle it.”

  “Wrong again, Geraldo,” Butler mocked.

  Again? thought Nathan, wondering suddenly whether Theroux’s comment that the police office lacked privacy was an understatement.

  “That’s exactly what they can’t do,” Butler continued. “They’re having trouble coping. Efficiency is not a word that you can render into Cyrillic script. End of mystery.”

  “You don’t think so,” Nathan said to Theroux.

  “I think there’s more to it. There’s something wrong with the way our computer’s responding to what’s happening,” Theroux said, and shrugged. “It’s just a feeling I have.”

  “Any evidence to back it up?”

  “Not yet, no.”

  “Are you looking?”

  “Yeah.”

  Nathan shook his head. “Something of a waste of resources. I thought the organisation was short of funds.”

  “Seems like there’s enough in the budget to pay a commander’s salary,” Theroux said coolly.

  “Be money well spent, by the sound of it,” said Nathan.

  Sanchez had finished examining the screens and could find nothing else to interest him. “What’s next on the itinerary?” he asked.

  “Repair bays and engineering section,” Theroux said.

  “Shall we go?” said Sanchez, pushing himself towards the hatch.

  Nathan yawned. “What’s the rush?”

  “I want to see everything. Representative Hendvorrsen asked for my views.”

  Dieter said, “He asked each of us for a report, or had you forgotten Nathan?”

  “It’s not part of the brief, Hans. And even if it was, I don’t think I’m up to making reasoned judgements just at the moment.” He was about to add that he had decided to call it a day and go and try to get some sleep.

  Sanchez said, “Maybe you should go back to the sleeping quarters and rest.”

  Irritated, Nathan said, “I paid for the ten cent tour. I wouldn’t want to miss any of it. Besides, there are probably bonus points for vomiting in the engineering section.”

  “Better there than in the sleeping quarters,” Theroux said, as he waited for Nathan to make his laboured way to the hatch.

  The newscaster, a strikingly beautiful black Australian, had an Earth-wide following and a slow news day. She smiled brightly into camera and said, “And finally, little green men from Mars are making a comeback, it seems. Some highly placed government sources are showing a marked reluctance to deny the rumours that something astounding has been discovered by the Mars Survey. No information is available about what this discovery might be. All anyone will say is, if it’s true it could, quote, change forever the way man sees himself, unquote. And women too, presumably, but leaving that aside, is this just another of those instant myths which are suddenly on everyone’s lips, and which are just as suddenly forgotten? This reporter is inclined to think there may be more to it. Stay tuned; this story could run and run. This is Worldwide News; my name is Susan Caxton.”

  “Christ on a bicycle,” Nathan muttered, cutting the table screen and concentrating on the coffee, which was passable even if you did have to drink it through a straw. “Talk about clutching at straws.”

  He was alone in the mess module. It was mid-shift, people were working or sleeping. Hans and Dieter were diligently writing up their reports for Hendvorrsen, who did not seem to sleep at all – or work, either, unless you counted antagonizing everyone he met as ‘work’.

  Nathan felt as though this was the first time he had been alone since he left his apartment on Earth. When he thought about it, he realized that apart from changing into station coveralls on arrival and evacuating his bowels, it was the first time he had been alone. Off-Earth living was communal; oppressively so, he was beginning to find.

  “Feeling better today?” Theroux asked from behind him.

  “Good morning, David,” Nathan said, without turning round. “What’s on offer for our amusement this time?”

  Theroux got himself a coffee pack and brought it over. “I get the feeling you don’t take any of this very seriously,” he said, as he settled into the seat on the other side of the table.

  “On the contrary, I never felt more serious in my life.”

  “Still no better, huh?”

  Nathan shrugged. “It comes and goes.”

  “Well, I have a rare treat for you, which may just help to take your mind off how you feel.”

  “Nothing to do with little green men from Mars is it?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Keeping groundsiders distracted takes imagination,” Nathan said, “so what have you got for us?”

  “The Last Great Adventure. The all-singing all-dancing Lars Hendvorrsen float-by. With full supporting cast including Geraldo ‘Where Hendvorrsen’s arse is, can my nose be far behind?’ Sanchez, and Hans ‘Ditto’ Dieter.”

  Nathan did not smile. “They’re both good coppers. And one of them will probably be your next boss.”

>   “Not you?”

  “Do I look as though I can function out here?”

  “Your Admiral Nelson did okay, and he suffered from seasickness, I was told.”

  Nathan rubbed his face, and said, “Yes, that’s what I was told too. And I don’t believe a bloody word of it.” And then what Theroux had said registered. “Full supporting cast? They’re going outside with him?”

  Theroux shrugged. “I tried to talk them out of it,” he said. Then, mimicking Dieter’s voice, he added, “We are all cleared for Extra Vehicular Activity.”

  “No-one’s suggesting I join them, are they?” Nathan made no attempt to disguise how little appeal the idea had.

  “Hell, no. I thought you might like to watch, is all.”

  * * *

  They were kitted up, their spacesuit checks complete, and the six of them were waiting at the airlock, when Françoise Lancine suddenly called for another RT drill.

  She wanted each of them in turn to make a panic squawk direct to base control.

  It was base control, Theroux explained to Nathan, who was responsible for recognizing if something was going wrong while they were outside, and it was he who called up the appropriate emergency procedures.

  Butler had been designated base control for Hendvorrsen’s party because by general consent he was the best available. He was also the most expensive. The EVA was not scheduled during his routine shift and the extra payment he demanded for the job included an element of what he described to Theroux as ‘punitive damages’. That may have been why Lancine had demanded the extra drill. Or it could simply have been that she was nervous.

  In the traffic control module, Butler left no-one in any doubt what he thought of the idea. “Stupid bitch!” he bitched as he checked the warning circuit lights. Then in the neutral, matter-of-fact tones of the professional controller he reported back to her, “Base control, all circuits confirm positive.”

  “Emergency tests will commence on my mark.” Lancine’s voice was small and flat, the distortion of her radio accentuated by the suit helmet, her own enclosed world.

  For no particular reason Theroux found himself remembering a long-dead friend from his student days: We all live in small worlds, knowing nothing – wanting to know nothing – about other people in other small worlds. Some people’s worlds shrink to the point where they are its only inhabitants and mostly they die. But that’s not the point I’m making. The point I’m making is that the worlds are separate and enclosed. It’s not unnatural then that the rich should occupy such an enclosed and separate world but it is unfortunate; they own and control the best of everything, the most of everything, and ownership and control remains locked up in their small world. This is unjust since no matter what others deserve or even need, the rich retain it all, whether they deserve it or not… Christ he could hear his voice, see his face almost, a sweet natured revolutionary, is it my fault he’s dead? What the fuck was his name…?

  “Listen, Françoise,” Butler interrupted before Lancine could give the signal, “there’s no point in doing this by numbers. They have to do it randomly, paying no attention to each other.”

  “Some will overlap.”

  “You mean they won’t panic in an orderly fashion?”

  “I mean you will ’ave more than one at a time to deal with.”

  “Isn’t that why you’re paying me the big bucks?”

  “Can we get on with it?” There was no sign of nervousness in Hendvorrsen’s voice, only impatience. “I am not impressed by these delaying tactics.”

  Nathan looked at Theroux and raised his eyebrows slightly. Theroux shrugged and shook his head.

  “Impressing you is not my concern, Mr. ’Endvorrsen, and kindly remember the training you are so proud of and do not interrupt communication with base control!”

  “Or as the technical jargon has it: shut the fuck up, you stupid prick,” said Butler smiling. Then flicking on the mic he intoned, “Base control standing by. Have you made a decision Françoise?”

  “Very well, base control. We will do it your way. In your own time gentlemen.”

  “There’s nothing like a good panic,” Butler said, as the alarms began triggering on the monitor, “to waste time and energy.”

  None of the alarms could be killed until Butler had identified the spacesuit and its wearer, and confirmed to the computer that this was an equipment test. Each alarm allowed twenty seconds: miss the time limit on any of them, or get some detail wrong, and the computer would take over. While it worked out what to do, the machine would put every safety system in the station on standby. With some needing manual override, it would take a minimum of two hours to reset them.

  “This is base control, safety check is complete all suit alarms confirmed functioning.”

  “Very well base control. Commencing airlock procedures.”

  Butler sat back and sighed. He had dealt with all the alarms without missing a detail or a beat, and he had made it look easy. “The bloody system will be on a hair trigger now of course,” he complained loudly.

  “Question,” said Nathan, who found as always that his admiration for talent was unaffected by his feeling, in this case his dislike, for the talented.

  “Yes? The sickly looking student at the back?” Butler pointed at him.

  “Asshole,” muttered Theroux. “Can you believe this guy is actually funny sometimes?”

  “Isn’t a hair trigger system a good idea under the circumstances?” asked Nathan.

  “Only if you want every safety door in the place slamming shut the first time someone farts within fifty feet of a detector.”

  “Sounds good to me,” said Vanhalsen, the duty traffic controller, from his position at the main mixer-screen console, “I’ve been around when you broke wind, Butler. I’d say it was a life-support hazard, definitely.”

  “I love witty Dutchmen,” said Butler. “They are such a novelty aren’t they?”

  “Base control? We are ready to leave the airlock.”

  “Base control standing by. Let’s be careful out there.” Butler glanced at Theroux. “Five is bid for the title, nothing more, just the title.”

  Theroux shook his head.

  “It wasn’t a movie,” Butler said. “That’s all I’m giving you.”

  “Concentrate for Chrissakes, Simon.”

  Lancine was the first out of the airlock. She was closely followed by Hendvorrsen, who was impatient, suspicious about the delays. Sanchez and Dieter were next and the two engineers, detailed to guide the visitors through the construction area, brought up the rear.

  Nathan watched fascinated as the group of figures, tiny and toy-like on the video monitor, drifted from the lock and moved very slowly up the side of the station. It seemed to him that it would have made sense to link them together in some physical way, light rope maybe.

  Theroux quickly disabused him of that idea. “This is the ultimate action-reaction environment. Link ’em together and you’d see Newton’s Cradle meet Chaos Theory.” Seeing Nathan’s blank look, he explained, “They’d all end up pulling every which way. It’d make for a very unstable chain.”

  The station’s exterior cameras were positioned to give wide fields of view. Being safety features they were low-bid, no frills, fixed-focus models designed to meet SAA regulations as cheaply as possible.

  There was no way of telling from the pictures which figure was which, but Nathan could see that the leader was moving too slowly for the next in line, and listening to the RT exchanges confirmed that Hendvorrsen was still not happy with the progress the group was making.

  “Please keep your place in the line, Monsieur ’Endvorrsen.”

  Butler said, “He’s really got the climbing frog hopping hasn’t he.”

  “We do not ’urry zees sings.”

&nbs
p; “Funny how her accent gets more marked when she’s agitated.” Butler was almost gloating now.

  “Happens to most people,” Nathan said, “when they’re frightened or angry.”

  “Yes well you’d be the one to know about frightened and angry people I suppose,” Butler murmured just loud enough to be heard.

  “Out here the quick and the dead are one and the same.” That was a new voice. Must be one of the engineers, Nathan thought. Why are Sanchez and Dieter so quiet I wonder?

  Hendvorrsen sounded to be breathing harder than before. “We have only a certain amount of life support, do we not? Time is limited.”

  “This is base control,” Butler announced. “You have thirty-four minutes remaining on the outward, maximum.”

  “Thank you base control.” Lancine sounded less than grateful.

  “Sanchez and Dieter aren’t saying much,” Nathan commented.

  “It’s their first time outside,” Butler said dismissively, as though the explanation should be obvious to anyone.

  “It can be sort of overwhelming,” Theroux explained.

  “Is that why you can’t look directly out of this place?”

  “Man wants windows,” chortled Butler.

  “The idea is not that stupid,” Vanhalsen said looking up from his work.

  Butler said, “If you’re a groundsider, possibly not.”

  “It was a false economy, in my view,” Vanhalsen continued. “Or rather, perhaps, in my lack of a view.”

  “Just cost, then,” said Nathan.

  Theroux nodded. “If you want more than depressing little slits to peer out of; and you want them safe.”

  “And curtain material’s an outrageous price these days,” said Butler.

  On the screen, the figures were beginning to drift out of line a little as they inched their way towards the edge of the picture.

  Butler flicked on his mic. “This is base control; you are approaching the limit of our vision. Monitoring will continue by suit telemetry for one hour. Do you copy?”