Version Innocent

by Pete Molina

Chapter 42

  The Express finished its deceleration as it approached the small spaceport orbiting Europa at geosynchronous altitude. Terra was lying on the couch in the living quarters watching the docking on the screen. Sam was standing behind her and Jeff was still in the room he shared with Sam.

  “We’ll be docking shortly,” Ignus called down from the bridge.

  “Space travel is always so quiet,” Sam remarked.

  Terra had noticed that he’d become more withdrawn during the week they’d spent in transit. At first he had seemed to be pumped up, but as time went on he began to withdraw. Terra wasn’t sure what had been going on in his head. He was out of place; that much she could figure out, but something else was bothering him and she wished she knew what.

  “It is indeed,” Terra replied.

  The ship was coming up to the spaceport, which was tiny compared to the Phobos station they had departed from. It used a spine configuration, but the whole thing was just a long central shaft with smaller docking spines extending from it. It appeared that the spaceport here could manage as many ships as perhaps two of the large spines at Phobos. Terra had been out here before a few times on business, negotiating for the purchase of some smaller ice asteroids that could be redirected to Mars orbit.

  Below them Terra could see Europa’s blue ice surface reflecting the sun. Directly below the spaceport was Opstune, the main city on the surface. It had gotten the name because it was the location of the first manned craft several hundred years ago. It was called Outpost One, a name later abbreviated by the scientists and engineers who had inhabited the station until the real development of the city had begun.

  What always amazed Terra about Europa was that this one small moon had many times more water on it than Mars, all here for the taking. It even had a liquid ocean several kilometers below the surface. The first expedition here had hoped to find life in that ocean, which scientists had suspected existed even back in the twentieth century. They did find some bacteria where the ocean was warmer near hydrothermal vets that originated from the planet’s core. Kept warm by the geologic processes driven by Jupiter’s massive gravitational pull, the bacteria had provided some vindication, but there was no single or multicellular life as had been expected, and definitely no larger creatures.

  After a century or more of human contamination, however, some very hardy strains of life had been introduced and were getting along quite well. Perhaps in time something large would develop. Because Europa was on the port of call list for the major space liners, quite an tourist industry had developed. Visitors could take spacesuited walks over the surface and travel on transparent hulled submarines that toured some of the unique formations that occurred under the ice shell.

  The ship came to a graceful stop as it docked with the spaceport. Ignus was lowered from the cockpit to just next to the couch on which Terra was lying. “Well, we’re here. I hope I haven’t been too much of a nuisance. I’m still not really used to traveling with anyone else,” Ignus apologized.

  On day three of the trip an incident had occurred in which Ignus walked out of his private quarters wearing absolutely nothing, right in front of Terra and Jeff who had been lounging on the couch. He had gotten as red as a tomato, his hands quickly covering his exposed parts, barked a quick apology, and returned to his quarters for a robe. Terra and Jeff had just laughed at the whole thing.

  “Oh, Ignus, you’re not still worrying about your show, are you?” Terra teased, sitting up.

  Ignus got a little red again, but he had apparently recovered from the incident. “No, not really,” he said, then changed the subject. “So what will you three do now?”

  That question had preoccupied them for most of the trip. Sam’s trip to Hyatain station had given them some direction. They needed to find whoever had received the shipments of antimatter that had been stashed on the solar sail transport.

  “Well, first, I think I’ll wake Jeff,” Sam said, heading towards his room.

  Ignus was still ignorant of most of what the three were up to; for obvious reasons he’d had to be let in on some of the details, but he didn’t know about the antimatter. The knowledge of such a thing could get Ignus into serious trouble later.

  “Will you be needing my services after this?” Ignus asked curiously. He’d been paid very well for his efforts. No doubt he was thinking of paying off his ship even earlier than these first two trips were already helping to do.

  “I honestly don’t know, Ignus. We’d like for you to hold here until we know for sure. Then you can get back to business as usual, I’m sure that you can find some way to use your ship to turn a profit on your return to the inner system.”

  “Yeah, but none as good as this, I’m afraid. I do feel somewhat bad about what you’ve paid me for this expedition. It’s far more than I get even on a very good day,” Ignus admitted.

  “Don’t worry about it, Ignus. We were paying for more than just a quick ride, and the price won’t impact my bottom line that much anyway,” Terra reassured him.

  This trip had cost plenty but it was only petty cash to her. Her accounting system would probably have some harsh words for her about the amount of the expenditure, however. The accounting system was just a subroutine of Plato’s and so it tended to be a little more animated than the other characterless computer programs one interacted with in the datasphere.

  Jeff and Sam came back out of the room. “Ah, we’re here,” Jeff observed with a smile while looking at the screen on the wall. “I’ve never been this far out before. The planet looks beautiful in this light.”

  “Moon,” Terra corrected him.

  “What?” Jeff said still staring at the image. He had obviously not been listening that closely.

  “Europa is a moon, Jeff.” Terra clarified.

  “Of course it is. My mistake. So where to next?” Jeff asked.

  “The station. We’ll try to find out who was receiving those shipments we’re interested in,” Terra said.

  “I recommend that you three keep your spacesuits on underneath your clothing while you’re here...especially while you’re not in Opstune,” Ignus suggested. “I’ll wait for two days, but if I haven’t heard from you by then, I’ll just assume you don’t need me.”

  “Thanks, Ignus. I don’t know what we’d have done without you,” Terra said walking around the couch to give Ignus a quick embrace.

  “Oh, you’d have found a way here. Of that I’ve absolutely no doubt in my mind,” Ignus said, hugging her back with a smile.

  After he shook Jeff’s and Sam’s hands, they all changed quickly into their suits, complete with their recharged camouflage which was simulating clothing at the moment in a passive mode that didn’t require much power consumption. They floated through the tunnel into the station.

  Once they reached the end of the tube, they found themselves in a very long rectangular tunnel that stretched off into the distance at least a kilometer. The Express, or The Lady Sky as it was currently known, was docked at the very last docking spine.

  “Let’s try to find the port authority or someplace we can interface with the spaceport’s computers to find out about the solar sail,” Sam suggested, beginning to walk in the simulated gravity towards the other end of the spaceport where they could see some rectangular structures that looked like offices.

  They passed by spine four where there was a Fleet ship they had all noticed before they disembarked The Express. They had all been relieved to find that it was not The Powel; it was a much smaller scout class ship. There wasn’t any guard out front of the spine which was an additional welcome relief to all of them. As soon as The Express had been close enough to the spaceport to query its systems, they had discovered that the Powel was not here and there had been no flight plan that was going to bring them here. In fact, the news grids were broadcasting a story about the Powel rescuing a cargo ship at the belt several days before.

  Terra hoped that the new
s meant that they had lost the Powel, which she had suspected was following them, but now she wasn’t so sure that that had even been the case, perhaps she was just being paranoid. Terra was happy to see Sam perk up some once they arrived. She and Jeff were having a hard time keeping up his pace as he fast walked along the port’s length towards the buildings.

  Maybe he just needed something to do. He is young after all, she decided.

  They continued at their fast clip until they reached the buildings. Sam sat down on a bench outside one of the offices and became very quiet, focusing on the information his displays must have been showing him. Terra and Jeff sat down beside him and waited. They had decided that this part was Sam’s to play, as he was the best hack of them all.

  “I’ve interfaced with the local system, and I’m having Ralphie run a search for our vessels,” Sam informed them, still staring into space.

  Terra knew that when Sam said interfaced, he meant hacked, and she checked around them to see if they were being watched. Terra had never liked all this cloak and dagger stuff, but she had to admit it was necessary sometimes.

  After a few minutes of this Sam stopped his zombie like stare and turned to them. “It appears that a number of our solar sails were unloaded by Trans Jovian Receiving. All of the deliveries on our list were received by Quig Oberman.”

  “Quig. That name sounds familiar,” Jeff said, putting on his display glasses to consult with his companion.

  “Yes, Quig is a Newbie from Denver. He left about a hundred years ago. He was one of the Newbies who were involved in the Center Riot,” Jeff relayed the info his companion had provided.

  “That has to be our contact,” Terra commented.

  The Center Riot had occurred a hundred and two years ago when a small number of Newbies had started a riot at the Restoration Center during a peaceful demonstration against restoration technology being controlled solely by the US.

  “Was he convicted and stripped of restoration privileges?” Sam asked. “I can’t remember.”

  “No, but he knew that the instigators were up to something and failed to come forward with the information,” Jeff said. He knew his Newbie history better than Sam. Sam was never really interested in all the gritty details; he was a big picture man.

  “Where do you think we can find this guy?” Terra asked.

  “I’m checking now.” Sam looked back off into space.

  “He’s on the surface. There aren’t any scheduled deliveries for another three days. I think we can find him at his office at Trans Jovian,” Sam surmised.

  “Well, let’s find a transport to the surface,” Jeff suggested.

  Once again Sam interfaced. “There’s a transport leaving in thirty minutes from docking spine twenty two. I’m going to book us a flight on my own credit…sorry Terra, my name is a little less likely to draw attention at the moment,” Sam offered before Terra could get a word in. She just shrugged.

  “We should have used our camouflage,” Jeff said as they began to walk towards the docking spine.

  There were a number of people passing by them, but the place wasn’t really that busy at the moment. Apparently there weren’t any space liners in port at the moment. That was when things really got hopping around here with tourists expecting excursions to the surface and to the some of the other Jovian moons with human outposts, even if they were primarily tourist supported presences.

  The waiting area for the transports was about half full of people waiting for the next departure. The shuttle ran every half hour except when a cruise liner was here; then transports ran every ten minutes. They all dropped into the comfy couches that were provided and waited in silence for boarding to begin. Terra noticed two men on the couch across from them, staring at her with a look of recognition in their eyes. Apparently a broadcast of her unexpected return to politics on Mars had been widely distributed or else they just recognized her.

  Terra wished she had her camouflage on right now. She hoped that they didn’t stare at the others too long. Sam did resemble his older self pictured in mug shots that had been aired on the news channels, and Jeff had had his moment of fame too not long ago. The three of them together would be too much for coincidence. At least Terra and Jeff had disabled the broadcast that their companions made of their identification before they entered the station. If they hadn’t, they’d have popped up in any stranger’s displays. Sam, at least had his alternate identity to flash around.

  When the boarding announcement was finally made, the two men got up, not seeming to make any big deal of her presence. Terra decided that they must have figured that there was no way Terra Gates would be way out here already, especially with everything she would probably be busy with on Mars. Sam and Jeff had apparently escaped detection for now as well. Everyone lined up in an orderly fashion and made their way to the spine entrance.

  As Sam passed through the entry portal, he announced, “Gregory Hillman plus two.”

  He was answered by an automated ticket agent system. “Confirmed, plus two.”

  They all stepped through the portal into weightlessness and pushed their way along the tube walls until they floated through the airlock to the transport. The vehicle appeared to be the same model as the one Sam had taken to Phobos. They were mass produced, so it was probably the cheapest alternative to a custom designed craft that would be more efficent. And it was probably powered by liquid oxygen and hydrogen considering it was landing on a huge ball of water ice every hour.

  They made their way to the seats and got strapped into their restraint chairs. After a few minutes of preparation the transport dropped away from the spaceport. During the drop they had a spectacular view of the approach to the giant ice moon, all its eggshell-like cracks growing larger until they became huge ice canyons. Shortly after they set down gently and disembarked through a docking tube into the surface spaceport terminal.

  Europa had a surface gravity that was similar to the Moon’s, but a little greater. Every step they took sent them bounding a bit. Sam noticed that the ceilings were high for good reason as he neared it on a bound in which he’d used a little too much muscle. If it had been lower, he definitely would have struck his head. Jeff was having the same problem; it always took a little while to adapt to such low gravity. A third g like on Mars was nice, but a sixth was just annoying. Terra didn’t even seem to notice as she made her way to the terminal exit until she realized that the other two weren’t with her and she turned to wait.

  They made their way into the small spaceport terminal, which didn’t look like it was designed to handle much traffic at all, and headed to the transport tube that would take them to the city. The spaceport was situated a kilometer or two away for safety purposes.

  The transport tube was just a ten meter diameter tube that was very much like the ones on Earth utilizing fog to move people in both directions. Jeff was happy to see it, because the trains on Mars had seemed a little old-fashioned. Jeff almost commented, but he realized that Terra would just tell him that they were part of the Martian heritage and that they served their purpose well. The tube accelerated them, and they watched the landscape zoom by through the transparent tube shell as the city grew larger in front of them.

  Terra was the first to exit the tube, and she saw a man standing off away from the tube holding a small sign that had printed neatly in large lettering, “Quig Oberman’s Party.” As Sam and Jeff emerged, they came up behind Terra and stood as baffled as she. No one should have known that they were coming. Sam stepped forward, being the only one broadcasting his identity at the moment, and walked up to the man.