by Jerry
When Bridget got back, Steuby was standing in the open airlock. She backed the tractor in and he hooked up the tank. Marco lay face-up in the small equipment bed behind the tractor’s seats. The whole front of his suit was soaked in blood and caked in dust. Steuby climbed onto the tractor and Bridget drove them out to the rocket. “You connect the hose and I’ll carry him up,” Steuby said.
“This is Mars,” Bridget said. “He only weighs about sixty pounds. I’ll take him. You know more about the fuel system than I do.”
“Whatever,” Steuby said. He still had that teetering sensation that panic was right there waiting for him. He started the last fuel transfer and watched Bridget climb the gantry with Marco slung over her back. She pushed him in ahead of her and then climbed in. “Shut the hatch!” Steuby shouted. She couldn’t hear him. A few seconds later she came back out, shut the hatch, and climbed down.
They stared at the hose where it was connected to the NTO tank. “Think it’s enough?” Bridget asked.
The tank’s feeder valve clicked shut. “That’s all she’ll take,” Steuby said. “It’ll have to be enough.”
He disengaged the hose and backed the tractor away. “So how do we move the gantry?” Bridget asked.
“We don’t,” Steuby said. “The exhaust will do it for us.”
“Not ideal,” she commented.
“Neither was holding everything up to go collect a body.” Steuby looked around. “Anything else we need? Time is short.”
She was already at the base of the gantry ladder again. “Then let’s move.”
Steuby waited for her to get all the way in, then slid feet-first through the hatch. He turned and tried to push the gantry back, but it didn’t move. “Forget about it, Steuby,” Bridget said.
“I don’t want it to tip against the rocket and tear a hole in us while we’re lifting off,” he said.
She jammed herself into the hatch next to him and together they shoved at the gantry. It still didn’t move. “You think the exhaust will push it far enough away before it starts to tip?” she panted.
“If I thought that, I wouldn’t be trying to push it myself,” he said.
“I mean is it likely? Can we take the chance?”
“It’s the only chance we’ve got,” he said. He backed into the cockpit and Bridget closed the hatch.
They buckled themselves into the pilot’s and copilot’s seats, lying on their backs and looking at the sky. Old-fashioned, Steuby thought. Like we’re off to fight Ming the Merciless or something. By accident he ended up in the pilot’s chair. “You want to be the pilot?” he asked.
“There is nothing in the world I care about less,” Bridget said. She powered up the onboard flight-control systems and saw that their battery life read about four hours of full operation. Steuby saw it, too.
“Sure hope that freighter answers fast,” he said. “Where’s Marco?”
Bridget adjusted herself in her seat. “Down in the back. Get us out of here, Captain Steuby.”
“Blastoff,” Steuby said. He flipped the failsafes on the fuel-mixing system, took a deep breath, and pressed the rectangular button labeled IGNITION.
LIFTOFF WAS LIKE nothing Steuby had ever felt. He’d never actually been in an old-fashioned rocket before. Every time he’d gone from Earth to space he’d used the space elevators out of Quito or Kismaayo. This was multiple Gs, what the old astronauts had called eyeballs-in, sitting on top of a bomb and riding it into orbit. Steuby was terrified. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t see very well, he didn’t know if they were going in a straight line or curving off into a fatal parabola. . . he wanted to start screaming but he was afraid if he did he wouldn’t be able to get a breath again. As it was he could only gasp in little sips of air that felt like they weren’t making it all the way down into his lungs. Bridget wasn’t making any noise either, which on the one hand comforted Steuby because it meant she wasn’t giving him a hard time but on the other hand upset him because she was solid and reliable and he wanted to hear her say something reassuring.
At first the sound was loud, overwhelming, but as the atmosphere thinned out it modulated down into a rumble they felt more than heard. The rocket didn’t shake itself apart. It didn’t shred from a hole caused by the gantry. It went straight up like it had been made to do, and if Steuby had been able to speak he thought he might have cheered. They’d done it. If they managed to live long enough to rendezvous with the freighter, people would be telling this story for decades. Also they might end up in jail, but at the moment that was fine with Steuby. Jails had air and food and water.
The thruster cut out. Their velocity was five point seven kilometers per second, plenty for escape velocity. They were nine hundred and sixty-one kilometers from Phobos, which arced away from them toward the horizon. They rose through its orbital plane. The rocket started to tip sideways, aligning its long axis with the direction of Mars’ rotation. They were curving up and out of its gravity well, and now they could see the vast reddish emptiness of the southern highlands. Storms tore across the eastern limb, where it had been daylight the longest. Olympus Mons peeked over the horizon far to the northwest, its summit high above the weather.
“We did it,” Bridget said.
“We sure did. There’s a little fuel left,” Steuby said. “Trans-Earth burn, or do we park here and wait for help?”
Bridget leaned over and activated the rocket’s emergency beacon. “Park it here,” she said. “We don’t really have anywhere to go.”
Steuby slowed them a little, right down to the edge of escape velocity. He didn’t want to get into a parking orbit in case the freighter wanted them to do a rendezvous burn. He looked toward the Tharsis plateau, now visible as their silver museum piece of a rocket rose higher and arced west, following Number Nine Moon. They would be coming up on the freighter if they were lucky. They’d already had a lot of luck, and just needed a little more.
“Hope somebody comes back,” Bridget said. “It would be a shame to let all this go to waste.”
“Somebody will,” Steuby said.
But it wasn’t going to be him. No, sir. He was done with everything that didn’t obey the gravity of Planet Earth. I might go back to the Moon, Steuby thought.
“You were right,” he said to Bridget.
“About what?”
“Bringing Marco. I gave you a hard time about it.”
She shrugged in her harness. “Doesn’t matter.”
The ship’s comm crackled. “This is Captain Lucinda Nieto of the freighter Mary Godwin. We are responding to a distress call. Over.”
Steuby toggled his mic. “This is. . . well, I don’t know what the ship is called. But we sure are glad to hear from you.”
“We have a fix on your location. If you are able, stabilize your altitude and stand by for rendezvous. How many on board?”
“Two,” Steuby said.
“Three,” Bridget said at the same time.
He looked at her. Then he leaned into the mic. “Sorry, three,” he said.
“And what the hell are you doing out there, exactly?” Captain Nieto asked.
“Not quitting, Captain,” Steuby said. “We sure appreciate you giving us a lift.”
THE TREATY BREAKER
Brendan DuBois
I suppose it’s a tribute to my years off-world that I instantly knew something was wrong when I woke up in my personal tube and instantly felt something was off, even without any alarms screeching. There’re always background noises one gets used to in one’s personal tube and other open cubic in our home, 1820 Geographos, one of the scores of near-Earth objects now occupied by scientists, researchers, miners, settlers, and other wretched refuse from the teeming shores millions of miles away. These noises include the whir of fans and ventilation systems, the murmurs of pumps and other machinery, and the gentle thump-thump that comes from the vibration when maneuvering jets are lit off to keep us on a predictable path and rotation for the various experiments that outfits like MI
T and Brazil’s Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais pay us to maintain.
That’s what woke me up.
The maneuvering jets weren’t firing.
Something was very wrong.
I got dressed in shorts and an old U.S. ARMY black-and-gray T-shirt, not bothering to toss on a bra or sock up my leg stumps, and I cycled my hatch open and got out to Access Tube Bob. Using handholds riveted into the smooth rock of our little scrap of NEO paradise, I propelled myself along the tube until it deposited me into Control, where two of the night-shift staff were on duty. Art Langley was checking out the main displays while Pam Chang was rapidly working on a keyboard. Art looked over at me, his usual gray ponytail netted up while working in Control so it wouldn’t get in the way. Both had on standard black jumpsuits, which are great for hiding work-related stains.
“What do we have?” I asked. Pam ignored me, which was fine, for she was one of the best system operators we have on Geographos, and I didn’t want to joggle her elbow while she was trying to unscramble whatever the hell was going on.
Art’s face was troubled, and that scared the bleep out of me. “Chair,” he said. “We got company.”
I floated up to where he was secured, read the data coming in, and saw a display showing that some sort of object was eclipsing the star field, coming in our direction.
“Christ on a crutch, Art,” I said. “Why didn’t the guard radar warn us?”
Pam spoke up. “A number of our crit systems are offline, Chair. Even the parallel systems.”
I felt like I had suddenly gained standard Earth-G, and my guts had flowed to my stumps. “How the hell did that happen?”
Art said, “Our visitor. It switched them off.”
Poor Art. I didn’t want to believe him.
“Pam?”
“Oh, yes, Art’s quite correct,” she said.
“From what I can see, the approaching craft was able to communicate and override a number of our control systems.”
“How the hell did they do that?”
“How the hell did they do that?”
“Working on it, Chair.”
“Have you tried talking back to them?”
“Certainly.” Pam said. “Standard frequen cies. Laser. Even beacon lights. No reply.”
And to prove the point, she toggled a switch on her belted handheld and said, “Unknown craft, unknown craft, this is EighteenTwenty Geographos. Please identify yourself. Please halt your approach.”
Just the hiss of static came back. I looked back to the display, saw the changing numbers. “Who are they?”
Art said, “Don’t know.”
“Check again,” Pam said. “They keep up their speed and attitude, they’ll be up against our main dock in about a minute.”
Sixty seconds.
I told Art, “Sound collision alarm. Make sure we get the kids squared away in the main shelter and all adults, except those on duty. Pam . . . do whatever you can to get system control back under our thumbs.”
And then I flipped over and started pulling myself along in Access Tube Albert, pulling and pulling, breathing ratcheting right up, wondering what in hell was going on.
Then the collision alarm started screaming, and I was too busy to wonder any more.
At Main Dock, I slowed down and found Maria de los Santos, our lead engineer, floating in front of our docking area. By now the collision alarm had stopped its audio blare, but tell-tale lights up and down the access tubes were still broadcasting the message that something bad was happening. Maria had on gray overalls and was carrying a wrench in one hand.
“You expect to bop somebody on the head with that?”
“You be fucking right, Chair,” she said. “What else we gonna do?”
Good question, I thought, remembering where I had been, years ago, in the service of the U.S. Army, a grunt in the field but with the ability to call in almost any kind of firepower from the Navy to the Aerospace Force to help me and my mates achieve my mission, but in Geographos, we were damn isolated and with no weapons or other means of defense. Weapons! It’d like being at one of those Antarctic research stations and having M–4s and other firearms to repel . . . who? What? Mutant penguins? Rampaging walruses? Ice thieves?
Maria said, “I checked in before I got up here. I don’t think that ship can dock without permission, but still . . .”
“Yeah,” I said. “It’s already overridden some of our systems. Can they shut off our power?”
“No,” Maria said, “I’ve unlinked as much as I can, but who knows?”
A sudden thump made me gasp, much to my shame. Before us was the round access hatch leading to the short access tube heading out to our docking port, and then came the blam blam blam of the ship out there securing itself to us. It had been a while since we had a visitor—a tour group from Bigelow One three months ago—but that had been a happy occasion.
“Chair . . .”
“I know. They shouldn’t have been able to dock without our permission.”
“Shit.”
I waited.
Waited.
I toggled my handheld, strapped to my wrist. “Art? This is Chair. Any communications?”
“Nope.”
“Do we know who the hell it is?”
“Negative on that, but you . . . you’re close enough to do a visual. Down Access Tube Charlie, there’s a viewing blister. You’ll probably get a good look-see from there.”
“Roger that,” I said, and to Maria, “You’ve got the conn here. I’m going to see what I can snoop out through the blister.”
She said, “What do I do if somebody comes through?”
“Ask them for their passports,” I said, and I scooted down Charlie.
Just like Art had pointed out, there was a viewing blister about thirty meters down the tube. I raised myself up and tied myself off to another handhold. There aren’t many openings to the outside from the interior of Geographos, but it’s nice to have a place to observe the stars, or see other passing NEOs wander by, or just to poke your head up to see what’s what in the greater Universe.
Believe it or not, there’s a crank that’s used to open up the metal shutters protecting the thick glass, and I used that to figure out what in hell was out there.
Creak, creak, creak, and when a green light displayed telling me the shutters were open, I gently raised myself up to the dome.
And our visitor was damn near on top of me!
I took a breath, remembered my training, my discipline, not letting it overwhelm me. One breath and then another and then another.
Observe, I thought to myself. Just observe.
It was a craft, all right, but not one I could instantly recognize. Two round-shaped capsules with a center pylon, antennas, and probes sticking out. A big son-of-a-bitch. I stared and stared, and then I saw something else: a row of numbers. I recorded the numbers on my handheld, but there was also another object stenciled on the near hull.
The light blue emblem of the United Nations, complete with view of the globe and ivy wreath.
I closed up the shutter and got the hell out of there.
As I zipped along Charlie, going back to Dock, I toggled Art again and said, “Anything?”
“Not a thing, Chair. If there’s somebody there, they ain’t talking.”
“Pam?”
“They’re interrogating our systems, and damn it, our systems are answering.”
“The hell . . . what’s going on Pam?”
I could hear her fingers still tapped furiously away on her keyboard.
“Our OS is corrupt. There has to be a backdoor that’s letting that ship dive in and root around.”
“Pam . . .”
Her voice kicked up a notch, furious. “Anytime you want my resignation, Chair, you got it.”
“Pam, knock it off,” I shot back. “Don’t have the time. Do what you can to free us up from our visitor, just do your best. I don’t want them to switch off our lighting system just because
they can. Art.”
“Yo, Chair.”
I tapped on my handheld. “I’m sending numbers your way. It was stenciled on the near hull of our visitor. See if you can track it down.”
“Got it.”
I emerged back into the Main Dock area. Maria still gently floated, wrench in her hand.
“Well?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah, they came right in and went back into their craft,” she said. “Seems they’re lost, wanted to know where the Moon was.”
“What did you tell them?”
“Leave, take a left, and then stop at the first big-ass glowing thing you see,” she said. “Seriously, nothing’s going on since you left, Chair.”
I hooked myself up to a far stanchion, called Art again. “You get a read on who’s in the shelter?”
“All accounted for,” he said. “Except for Herb.”
“Herb. What the hell?”
“He didn’t want to leave the farm tube. Said he was in the middle of some cross-pollination, couldn’t possibly be disturbed. Then he clicked off on me.”
“Did you call him back?”
“Chair . . . you really want me to disturb Herb?” Art asked.
I thought of Herb, a U.S. Navy vet and farmer originally from California who lived in the farm tube nearly twenty four-seven, and who was scary-good in squeezing out every possible consumable calorie from the apparatus contained within—some of it handmade—and I said, “No, nobody should disturb Herb.” And I remembered other rumors and stories out there, about lead farmers who’ve lost it and held a NEO hostage, demanding luxury goods or other payoffs in exchange for keeping the farms alive. As long as I was Chair, nothing like that was ever going to happen here.
A singsong chime interrupted what I was going to say next. The red telltale lights above the airlock were cycling from red to green. “Art, off for now.”
Maria brought up her wrench. “What’s the play, Chair?”
“Beats the hell out of me.”
“Would rather beat the hell of whatever comes through that lock.”
