by Ginger Booth
If ever. Today was hectic enough. And Husna was truly abusive when first revived and weak as a kitten. Sass hadn’t mentioned the dead warp drive to the science types yet. She probably ought to before someone let it slip. “Corky! Got you an eager volunteer!”
“Oh, goody! We’ll get this wiped down in a jiffy, and then make some lunches together! Won’t that be fun!”
Joey, standing too close to her, clapped a hand over his ear in aural self-defense. He performed a comfort job for the moment. Bearing ruler and steel-bender, he stood around and moved the warping device around the wall under Remi’s direction. Between her two engineers, there was no question who was the better choice to straighten a pressure bulkhead. Remi was better at plumbing, too, but Darren could handle tear-down and manufacturing replacement parts for him.
Sass touched Joey’s shoulder kindly in passing, and reminded Remi they had another set of burns to perform soon. “Think Darren could make new doors?”
“Not caring,” Remi replied, absorbed in aiming a laser sight. Then he stood straight and shrugged. “No one sleeps in here tonight. Tomorrow maybe we sleep in the colony.”
“Let’s make friends first,” Sass hedged.
Then she had nothing more urgent to do than hide in her cabin for a few minutes. She cried hard but silently, perched on the bed, pillow curled to her gut.
I killed seven crew. No, the AI killed them, Shiva. But I was responsible for their safety.
I’ll do better, she vowed, then pulled herself together. She washed her face because it made her feel better. As for puffy red eyes, Sass’s nanites never let her tears show.
110
“All hands, secure for landing. Do not, repeat not, release your seat belts until we are on the surface. Mr. Rocha, please perform roll call and verify we are ready.”
Sass clicked off her public address channel on the bridge. She stood during the announcement, getting a few last stretches before showtime. Now she slipped into her pilot’s seat on the bridge and buckled in. Remi sat beside her at the gunner’s station.
The vast splotchy yellow bulk of Sanctuary filled the bottom two thirds of their view screen. They orbited into position before heading down. Not that the planet was actually in front of their seats. When braking, Thrive flew backwards. But they showed the planet-facing camera feeds on the display.
“Are we eager to meet new friends today?” Sass quipped.
“Hm. I feel shy,” Remi played along. “New faces. Strange customs. Maybe a lovely g– woman, seeking an exotic thrill from afar.” He waggled his eyebrows. “Is it smarmy if I don’t look at you when I say?”
“Yes. But I forgive you.” Sass took a deep calming breath and tried to relax. “Observation of the planet suggests low turbulence. You’ve never landed on a planet before. You’ve never even flown into atmosphere, have you?”
“No. I’m very excited,” Remi deadpanned. “Air pressure one eighth of Mahina, yes? With clouds. Does that feel woolly, when we fly through a cloud?”
“On Denali it’s a real thrill ride. Here, probably not.” Sass quit speaking as Clay reported everyone accounted for. “With luck, Mr. Roy, your job today is very boring. You are co-pilot.”
“If you are unable, I fly the ship.”
“Yes, so watch carefully now.” Sass extended her index finger in slow motion, in an attempt to bring drama to the fateful act.
“Time,” Remi noted.
Sass pressed the button. In response, a deeper throbbing note added to the ship’s subliminal vibration. The star drive gradually ramped up to power level 4.5 out of a theoretical 10. A few attitude thrusters fired to fine-adjust their angle of approach, the planet taking up more of their screen. Sass already laid in the programming for the landing. Her job now was to override if anything went wrong. Remi’s job, even worse, was to step in if the program and Sass both failed.
Or hand her a cup of tea.
“Captain, this is – Hello!”
Sass suspected he was about to say ‘boring,’ but slight ribbons of a brighter, burning yellow and white began to appear before them. A new and different higher-pitched keening joined the vibration of the ship. Remi placed a bare hand wonderingly on the hull beside him to feel it better. The ship’s inertial dampeners canceled out all their g-forces. Aside from the hull vibration, they still felt that the floor was ‘down’ at an Earth-normal 1-g. The banking motions of turns didn’t touch them.
“Boring is good, Mr. Roy,” she assured him. “On an ideal approach, we just kick back and watch the pretty –”
Scenery, she was about to say. But suddenly the view blurred and caromed in a most disconcerting fashion. Sass punched a button to blank the screen before it made her nauseous. She leaned forward to frantically page through displays hunting for an error explanation.
Remi found it first. “Right nozzle firing weak. Same power draw. Turbulence in the plasma again.”
Darren Markley was on their comms channel. “Chief, we are eager to hear from you regarding the right engine nozzle.” The captain didn’t like to jog an engineer’s elbow, so she left it at that.
Besides, she had bigger problems. She clicked off the autopilot and took manual control. If the right nozzle was weak, then… “How weak?” she asked Remi.
“Thrust 40% low.”
Sass tried a 45-degree veer, to see if that straightened them out any. At this point they were spinning out of control. The veer made them spin faster. Wrong direction. She jerked the lever the other way, and held it a few seconds.
“Roy!” Markley barked. “Take over containers!”
“Aye, chief!” Remi switched his dashboard from co-pilot to cargo-master presets. Sass barely spared a glance as he engaged the grav grapples on their cargo containers. As on the long Denali voyage, Thrive clutched 8 full-size containers below, the size a truck or train car used to carry, arrayed 2x2x2.
“Captain, I may eject second level,” Remi warned her.
“If you must,” Sass agreed. The helm was finally responding a little better. Thrive was still spinning, but slower. More of her braking thrust went in roughly the right direction. Now she tried to get finer control to halt the spin altogether, still aiming in the wrong direction to compensate for the nozzles not firing the way she ordered them to.
“Captain,” Markley reported, “I have an experiment. Higher power might blow out the obstruction, or smooth the turbulence.”
“What about lower power?” Sass countered. “Chief, we don’t have enough helm control to burn harder.”
“I don’t want to hit the planet, Sass!”
“We are braking, not falling, chief,” Sass told him calmly. “Would you feel better swapping jobs with Mr. Roy?” There. She got the spin down to barely one revolution per second. But by now they’d dropped enough that the atmosphere’s turbulence had teeth. Try as she might to find a false direction to point toward to lose that last rotation, she wasn’t finding one.
“Could we blow out for just a second, cap?” Markley pleaded.
Remi shook his head beside her. “I think not.”
Two against one. “Reducing power to level 4.” But instantly, her spin sped up with a vengeance. She still had no better ideas for how to correct it. She brought the power back to 4.5, and walked the spin back to 1.5 rps. “Alright, let’s try it your way, chief. Now trying power level…what?”
“Try 7.0, please,” Markley asked.
Sass ran a rapid calculation. “I can’t give you a full second of that without popping back out of the atmosphere.”
Remi, struggling with the cargo grapplers, suggested, “Not a bad idea.”
“Hold for one, Darren,” Sass said. “What do you mean, Remi?”
“Skip out of atmosphere and fix the engine. Return for landing with helm control.”
Sass thought this through instantly. She only used the main engines to brake out of orbital velocity, and to fight gravity. But at 0.4g, this planet wasn’t much of a challenge. All of her current vast power
was braking. Once they shed enough speed, she could simply fly the ship. The thrusters should steer fine, and were capable of countering this gravitational pull.
“High power, 7.0 for 0.5 seconds. Try that first,” Sass decided, and instantly matched action to words. She lost spin control again, of course, but was able to compensate by turning closer to straight. “Repeat.” The second time she managed to drop a net 0.2 rps in the spin department.
“Hold at 4.5, Sass,” Markley instructed. “Has helm control improved?”
“I can’t tell,” Sass decided. “But we dropped speed, and not too much altitude. Going again.” She tried the same trick three more times, each time gaining just a little more helm control. She had no idea if the engine outflow was improving, or if slowing down and greater atmospheric resistance did the trick. But at last she coaxed the ship to stop spinning altogether.
She flicked the display view back on, the planet and its clouds now much closer. She didn’t have hands or time to spend on calculation. She just flew by gut feel. She tipped the ship downward another tiny bit, to bite deeper into the atmospheric braking. And she goosed the engines just a bit more, by eye, never letting the spin resume.
Once she was down to 10,000 meters, she’d bled off as much velocity as she needed. She cut the main engine braking, and ever so slowly, brought the nose of the ship around to fly face-first.
“You did it!” Markley crowed. “Well done, cap!”
“Cargo secure,” Remi reported. “I am impressed. Would you like to know where we are?”
Sass took a deep breath, then began to laugh. Once she got that our of her system, she said, “I think I can handle the flight plan, Mr. Roy. We’re about to enter a cloud. Enjoy.”
They were about 1,200 km off course, and Sass didn’t mind a bit. At a sedate 450 kph, she’d have a nice few hours to calm down before she had to meet anyone. She and Remi could even take turns taking a shower. She sure needed one. She was sweating pure adrenaline from that entry.
“Sanctuary Ground,” she hailed. That’s what they were calling their channel to the human beings now. “Thrive Actual. We’re running behind schedule. See you soon.”
111
“It’s so good to meet you at last!” Sass assured the welcoming committee at the colony entrance vestibule from the Sanctuary spaceport. They offered to extend an umbilical to Thrive, but she made vague excuses to postpone that. She opted instead for a brief stroll across the hard-top in a pressure suit, and a small group for first greetings.
The home team entourage included the Loonie Major Petunia Ling, Martian Colonel Zeb Tharsis, but no Scholar Hugo Silva. Instead a middle-aged nut-brown bald woman called Commander Inge Lumpkin represented Ganymede Too. Sass introduced them to Clay, Darren Markley, and against her better judgment, Husna Zales and the two grad students. If she’d known Hugo wouldn’t be here, she would have left Husna muzzled on the ship for this first foray in tact.
“This is remarkable!” Sass assured them, casting an admiring gaze around their glassed entry hall. “Your entire facilities aren’t above ground, surely?”
“Oh, no! These are our playgrounds,” Tharsis assured her. “All three communities share the dome space on the surface. Yesterday Mars beat Ganymede at football! Ah, maybe you call it soccer.”
Sass peered over their shoulders. Indeed, the giant domed space beyond the entry was carpeted in something like summer-dead grass, with painted white lines for assorted games. The sports fields were huge.
“How fun!” she assured him. “We’re eager to see everything –”
“Ow!” cried Zelda Maier, the young atmospheric grad student. She jumped forward, nearly ramming into the stiff and elderly Petunia Ling. “It bit me!”
‘It’ was a pole-like robot on a circular rolling base. Tall as Sass’s shoulder, the machine featured a single articulated arm that reminded her of an adjustable desk lamp with claw, its maximum reach a couple meters. The grey head looked like a bowling ball, with a grid of camera eyes like sequins neatly spaced for an omni-directional view, plus three larger round speaker grills at ‘jaw’ level, distributed around the sphere. A utility belt hung from a spoked wheel at its ‘hips.’
Sass smiled harder at Tharsis, and snagged the robot by its ‘wrist.’ “I don’t understand.”
“Hm? Oh! Shiva is chipping you! That’s how you join our colony. Remember we spoke of this?”
Sass smiled thinly at the robot’s eyes. “This is Shiva?” My pal, my buddy! “The AI who shot at my ship? And murdered seven of my crew? Is that you, Shiva?”
The robot prudently attempted to reverse. Sass followed, not letting go of the damned thing’s arm.
Tharsis continued clueless. “Ah, no, captain. That’s a utility robot. Shiva directs all the robots.”
Clay assisted by casually stepping on the other side of the robot’s rolling base to block its escape. “Why did this thing attack our crewmate? Is the captain’s question.” The first mate’s face remained stone neutral as he studied the utility pole. He relieved it of the tool in its hand.
“An inoculation gun,” Darren advised quietly. He’d joined Sass and Clay, and poked at the ‘shoulder’ joint on the ambulatory pedestal. “They did mention that was how they’d persuade Shiva not to, um.”
Kill us, Sass easily completed his sentence. “Husna, please take Zelda and Porter back to the ship.” She grabbed the geologist’s elbow and herded her trio of scientists back through the airlock door. “I think we need our ship’s medic to look over this ‘chipping’ before we proceed further. I’m sure you understand, colonel.”
“Well, no, actually –” Tharsis began.
“Darren,” Clay interrupted, “would you like to take this robot for study?”
Darren pushed his glasses up. “Later. I’m eager to dissect it.”
“But where are our manners?” Sass cut in.
As though in reply, Darren drew out a heavy duty joint bolt. The robotic arm drooped from its wires, no longer with any leverage to extend. After a moment’s further reflection, he unlatched a 10-cm spring as well. Sass released the wrist and the arm dropped to the floor in a clank.
Sass turned to narrow her eyes at the machine. “Shiva, I understand you are protective of your people.” She leaned closer. “So am I.”
The robot deactivated, its previous motor hum spinning down with a sad moan. Husna and the grad students were still donning their pressure suits. Darren matter-of-factly clutched the robot by the throat and handed it in for them to bring back to Thrive. “Be sure to warn Remi it bites.”
Sass masked a grin behind a hand. No doubt Remi would appreciate the gesture. Feeling much better, she turned back to her hosts, who stood frozen, mouths slightly ajar. “A tour? We’re eager to see your facilities. We won’t, um, touch anything. Provided it doesn’t touch us first. You understand.”
Tharsis took an enormous gulp of air, as though preparing to object at volume. Sass would have understood that. But instead he simply deflated. “Yes, of course. We can’t show you the whole town in one visit. So today I’ll show you around New Hellas, where the majority of our people live.”
The other two dignitaries looked deflated.
Clay volunteered, “I’d love to see New Hellas. But I know that Mr. Markley was eager to tour Nova Tycho. And the captain was so looking forward to visiting Ganymede Too and Scholar Silva.”
Sass played along. “We could split up and compare notes later.” Only belatedly did she wonder if splitting up was smart. It would give them the lay of the land quickly, and she wasn’t too worried about Clay or her own ability to defend themselves. She was less confident of Darren Markley.
But the Loonie and Ganny women stood up straighter and beamed.
“Excellent! This way, Captain Collier!” Inge Lumpkin flourished an arm toward a cinder block mini building. Its yellow tint matched the landscape. Four of these structures stood near the verge of the broad low-slung dome over the ball fields, equally spaced like cardinal p
oints. Sass shrugged to Clay and followed Lumpkin.
The modest building proved to be a stairwell down into the town proper. Before she let the doorway close behind her, Sass took careful note of which staircases Darren and Clay descended into.
“What’s the fourth staircase?” she asked Lumpkin.
But her guide didn’t hear her. Sass let it go for now.
Sass found the corridors of Ganymede Too clean, hushed, and bright grey, with an occasional ankle-high robot busy sweeping. Commander Inge Lumpkin pointed out deserted halls at intersections, listing what facilities were located where, mostly private apartments.
Sass pounced when she mentioned their creche. Without enthusiasm, Lumpkin led her to the ‘recess room,’ currently occupied by the age 6-to-10 crowd. The floor featured the same dead-grass-shaded astro-turf as the sports fields above. The community leader proudly explained there were nearly 300 youth in Ganymede Too, including up to 20-year-olds. The Martians had 80% more, but the larger Loonie community 30% fewer.
“You separate your children?” Sass frowned. “Wouldn’t they have more fun together? Especially at the high school level.”
Lumpkin blinked several times. “We maintain separate communities. Ganymede Too is winning the child-rearing contest. We will soon outstrip Nova Tycho in population.”
Sass studied the kids, maybe 75 of them in the gym-sized room. Some fooled around with a ball or jump-ropes. Most stood talking. Several idled in a line staring at the wall. No running, no yelling or laughing or rough-housing. They appeared slightly stretched by the facility’s 0.9 g artificial gravity. But they were physically strong, well-groomed and fed, none skinny or fat, all wearing the same bright grey uniform as the commander.
Until one child broke pattern. His voice rose and he shoved a girl. She shoved back – and stopped. Both children froze, then quietly walked to the side to gaze at the wall.