by Matt Thomas
Lind charged headlong, nearly blind, into the sea of white bubbles turned gray from the oil and charring. His feet slid on the chemicals, flailing forward. His hands slipped from under him, and he barely avoided cracking his skull. Scrambling back to his feet, he resumed his search. The siren became a near solid tone.
Steam gave it away, as hard as it was to distinguish from smoke. The rushing of air through the small ports in the corner of the hanger deafened him, keeping him from finding the offending device by sound. But the rising tendrils of white evaporation distinguished themselves just enough that Lind found the small cylinder, the still spewing flames keeping the retardant at bay. Whether it was the deck melting beneath the device, or merely water, he didn't have the time to find out. As much as he could while maintaining his precarious balance, Lind swept his foot backwards and kicked the device with such force he fought to remain upright. Throwing sparks and flames, the device tumbled and rolled across the deck towards the vent open to space.
It didn't make it.
Lind's lungs burned as they seized in the lack of oxygen. His skin burned with the cold of the vacuum inside. Using what little energy he could conjure, he took a running start. Like a player sliding into home base, he hit the deck, feet first, letting his momentum carry him along the floor until the sole of his boot made impact. The searing heat radiated through the sole of his boot, but, thankfully, the flames did not actually penetrate. His momentum pushed the device towards the still-open vent, and it rolled to a stop next to the metal grate designed to keep debris inside. The magnesium-fueled flames melted through the thin screen, and the device continued burning as it tumbled into open space.
As the edges of his vision collapsed, the vent slammed shut, and he listened as air hissed back inside, restoring equilibrium.
CHAPTER SIX
Sequestered from the boisterous multicultural commune of the station by walls of kiosks with signs written in Mandarin, Cantonese, and Russian, Lind hid behind his mixture of lo mein and wantons, alone at an unstable table covered in several years' worth of stains. He couldn't understand a word of the cacophony of dialects spoken around him, isolating him further. Each warm bite of dumpling countered the damp chill still on his skin over two hours since he regained consciousness in the maintenance hanger. He was only out for a few minutes before a technician shook him awake, but it was long enough. He needed another long, hot shower to wash away the filth from the explosion, fire, and cold vacuum. His initial instinct had been to run back to his ship and disappear into space, but practicality won out before he made it back to the Mako. He wanted some real food before he headed back out.
A paramedic examined him and determined that his wounds were superficial. They gave him some bandages and creams, which he shoved in his pocket to be forgotten about. The foreman, whatever his name was, would probably live despite the extensive burns. The acrid scent of burning flesh had lodged itself in Lind's nose. He hoped the Cantonese cuisine would help overcome it. His noodles slid down his throat rubbed raw by smoke inhalation and oxygen deprivation. The shakes returned, flopping his food around at the end of a pair of chopsticks. His mind again struggled with coherent thought. Hot green tea brought him back to basics, but the surrounding crowd kept him anchored in the world instead of collapsed in on himself. There had been a time, not too long before, when he had considered himself hardened. A dead body, a violent suspect, the aftermath of a vicious crime, a near-death experience, once they had all hit him only him only to bounce back off into space. He would turn to Kay who would make a macabre joke or shrug his shoulders with his customary devil-may-care attitude, and Lind would move on.
It occurred to him, while the emergency crew pulled him to his feet after air returned to the repair facility, that likely no one would care if he died. Absent a family, or even a partner, some notice would go back to Ceres Station. A Thirty-Two would make an entry in a file and post a requisition for a replacement. The medics would take care of his body, but on a facility this small there wouldn't be a crematorium. They'd shoot him towards the planet to be crushed in the pressure of the gas giant. Bodies weren't worth the expense of shipping. That sudden feeling of a complete lack of value dropped him into such severe depression he could only summon enough energy to eat.
That struggle between keeping himself functional and the familiarity of post-survival collapse kept Lind from noticing him approaching until it was too late. As the Hitchhiker dropped a backpack next to the table, Lind leaned back from his food for the first time and looked up.
"Do you mind if I join you?"
Lind wasted too much time developing a smart-ass response to stop the man from sitting down. Before he could utter an objection, the Hitchhiker dropped a plate on the table with some American perversion of Lind's favorite cuisine.
"Are you still heading to Io?" The Hitchhiker asked. "I can't get a ride there for another three days. I've spent the last few hours at the transit desk hunting for a flight out, but nothing is going anywhere near where I need to go. I could really use a ride." He spoke like they were old friends although Lind had no idea where the man got that impression. "Look, I'll take the same arrangement as last time. I'll stay in the cell, I'll pack my own food. You won't even know I'm there. I just want to feel like I'm going somewhere, you know? Nothing sucks more than sitting around one of these stations, waiting for something to come along to take you home."
Lind laughed once, a little too loud. The Hitchhiker failed at reading Lind's body language. He took the sound as acceptance and openness rather than the contempt Lind tried to express. Maybe the mouth full of lo mein distorted the message.
"Thanks so much, man. I really appreciate it." Lind couldn't figure out why he was being thanked, particularly since he wasn't close to saying yes. As much as he wanted to give a rationale for denying the request, he couldn't. The explosion, fire, and decompression stole too much energy from him to think quickly enough. The most he came up with was that he didn't want the company, but the pride and professionalism still buried somewhere kept him from rejecting a request for help on such personal and immaterial grounds. Besides, the man had done no harm on their short trip from Iapetus. And, if something happened to Lind, at least another person had a stake in whether Lind lived or died.
Lind must have nodded or given some other non-verbal cue of agreement. The Hitchhiker broke into a grin and thanked him repeatedly before diving in to his battered and fried meal.
"Did you hear about the fire in the maintenance bay?" The young man asked enthusiastically through a mouthful, gossiping about what would be juicy news for anyone who hadn't nearly died in the event.
"You could say that." He wasn't about to go into more detail about his experience.
The other man rambled for several minutes about various near disasters he knew only second-hand, not waiting for Lind to respond, which was fine because the investigator could barely form a thought, much less a conversation. Lind spent minutes staring at the tea leaves in the bottom of his cup, listening less than politely until his new companion stopped talking.
*****
Lind agreed to meet the Hitchhiker back at the ship after they each gathered their belongings at the transient lockers. Although he had hoped the man would have changed his mind in half an hour, he wasn't surprised that the man was waiting for him when he arrived at the airlock. The help he offered in prepping for takeoff mitigated the inconvenience, reading off a checklist while Lind prepared for a long-duration flight. The second set of eyes caught more than one of Lind's exhaustion-induced errors, although Lind would never admit he needed the help.
Once they completed their preflight preparations, the Hitchhiker carried his bag from the airlock to the cell on the lower deck. Lind watched him from the corridor. To his credit, the passenger made no comment about the indignity he had suffered on their last trip together.
"Don't worry about it." The investigator found himself calling down to the lower deck. The other turned his head. "It's goin
g to be a long trip. Just drop your shit in the cabin upstairs." Lind finished and ignored the thanks he received.
It was one thing for the kid to dump his bags in Kay's room, a room made unrecognizable from sterilization after the accident and only recently unsealed. But Lind had a vague recollection of reluctantly offering it to his guest in hopes the Hitchhiker would decline. It was another thing when the Hitchhiker, without invitation, fell into Kay's pilot seat. They had repaired the seat, of course, the one with the hole through it and all of Kay's blood soaked into the cushion, but Lind had been flying from the right seat out of habit. His partner, the control freak, always insisted on flying. Lind had grown accustomed to the view from the co-pilot's chair. He learned to fly the Mako, on the rare times Kay allowed it, from the right seat. He saw no need to switch just because Kay was dead. So, on one hand it seemed natural for a man to appear out of the corridor and sit to Lind's left. On the other, it felt like an affront, some great sin his guest didn't know he was committing.
He forced himself to remain calm as his visitor took Kay's place. Yelling at the Hitchhiker would gain him nothing, and he realized the irrationality of his response within seconds of experiencing it. Besides, there was nowhere else to sit in the cockpit.
Traffic congestion delayed their departure, and the two sat in silence until Lind received clearance. The investigator tossed the occasional glare at his passenger, which went either unnoticed or ignored. Finally, control let him release the docking clamps. He twisted the Mako and slammed the throttle forward with such force that his guest gripped the edge of his seat the view outside spun and then accelerated away. The arrogance of Lind's flying style erratically wove them between rows of freighters and shuttles buzzing about the orbital station. At one point, the controller tried to chastise the Mako, but Lind replied with a harsh "Thirty-Two" identifier that terminated the criticism. Gradually, the density of ships faded. Lind turned his back on the giant orange moon and the swirling marble of Saturn behind him, aimed towards the sun and the inner system, and punched the high-speed cruise. The engine whine and rattled. With no point of reference, it was impossible to sense the increasing velocity. Only a digital read-out scrolled higher until it hit almost three million kilometers per hour, a third of one percent of the speed of light.
"What's that, about ten days?" The Hitchhiker asked.
"About that, yeah."
"At least the orbits are getting better."
"No shit." Depending on the year, the distances between the planetary systems would nearly impossible to cover. The complex movements of bodies around the sun dictated the settlement of the system. Hundreds of settlers had waited decades for the proper arrangement of the system to minimize their time en route. During those isolation periods, an entire system of moons might remain effectively cut off. It also meant that shipping lanes constantly shifted, making each trip nearly unique. Interplanetary voyages became very lonely.
Lind wondered which would be worse, loneliness on a ship crossing the system, or being one of a hundred people crammed into a prefabricated settlement habitat knowing another two years could pass before the orbits made rescue or escape possible.
"Why are you guys called Thirty-Twos?" The question interrupted his train of thought.
"What?"
"It's kind of a random thing to call a detective."
"Title Thirty-Two of the Contract."
"The Contract?"
The man's ignorance astounded Lind. "Jesus Christ, don't you have any idea how any of this works out here?"
The Hitchhiker raised his hands. "I just answered a help-wanted ad. I know who pays me and when my contract is up."
Lind reminded himself that a way of life for him was just a lucrative temp job for most. Workers throughout the system, like his guest, traded a few years away from their families living on remote stations for a lifetime's worth of pay. Such people cared about what someone told them to do and how much they got paid, little more.
Lind leaned back in his chair, taking comfort in the story's familiarity. "Everything that happens out here, every station, every mining facility, every transport mission, all happens because of the Contract. All the big players, Lamb Langley Hughes, Ephemiris, Qinlin, all of them got together and decided how they were going to run all of their space operations. It was the only way they were ever going kickstart development. Article Thirty-Two of the Contract lays out all of the prohibited conduct, and says that all those companies have to pay for a neutral security force to police everybody. That's our authority for getting in everywhere." He'd explained his role to the ignorant so many times he barely paid attention to himself.
"Because there's no government." The Hitchhiker added.
"Basically. Instead of a constitution and a country, there's a bunch of businesses and the Contract. We enforce the Contract."
"What happens if someone breaks it?"
"It depends. For a company, it could be as small as a fine or they could get banned from all commerce, which would effectively strand them out here unless they can somehow get in touch with the half-a-dozen freelancers that are out there. For a person, they might get locked up while they're taken back to Earth."
"How can you possibly find some criminal across the entire system? I mean, there're millions of people floating around out here."
"Finding someone isn't terribly hard. Everyone gets scanned every time they enter or leave a station or facility somewhere." Lind pulled out a plastic card, the printed words nearly rubbed off, the image of his face terribly faded. One gold rectangle in the middle remained. "You got one of these?"
"An ID card? Sure."
"The card gets picked up and logged when you pass through a hanger or passenger terminal or whatever. I can go anywhere and get a printout of who was there at a particular time."
"What if someone stole my card? I mean, these things get lost all the time."
"Sure." Lind conceded. "How many times a day do you use it?"
"Every time I eat. Any time I want to buy anything."
"So multiple times every day, right?"
"Sure."
"So you're going to notice when it goes missing and get it replaced immediately."
"Oh. Okay." The Hitchhiker considered the implication that a stolen card would be identified before someone used the old identity. "Can't someone just not have a card?"
Lind shook his head. "Nope. Every single person leaving Earth has to go through the Hub. That's why every shuttle from the surface docks there. There's nowhere else for a ship to go. Ephemeris even designed the hatches so an atmospheric shuttle can't dock anywhere but the Hub. We control every person and every object that leaves Earth's atmosphere."
The Hitchhiker thought about how much he had been controlled without knowing it. "I can't wait to get back through that Hub again and get home." He said. "Don't get me wrong, this was an awesome experience, but I really need to get back to my family. This whole thing was to help buy a ranch to raise my kids in. They're getting old enough to take on some more responsibility. We've been living in Billings, Montana, for about five years, I guess seven now. I'm gonna start my own tractor repair place and spend my weekends riding around the ranch on a horse. For the last four months, I've probably spent more time searching around for ranches for sale than my actual job. After being cooped up in a station for so long, I could really use me some Big Sky."
Lind permitted his visitor to ramble about his background uninterrupted, mostly because it minimized his own involvement in the conversation.
"What about you, Mister Thirty-Two?" The moniker came out with a sing-song pronunciation like Lind was being mocked. "How long do you have to stay out here?"
"We're out here permanently."
"Seriously?"
"Yep."
"What about family?"
Lind shook his head. "I got this job after a divorce. I needed some money and a place to go, and an old army buddy told me about this gig."
"Were you a cop in the army?
Is that how you got here?"
"Nothing so interesting. I was a signal officer. I worked radios and things. Well, I managed people who worked radios and things."
"Don't you want to go back home?"
Lind scoffed. "I'm as close to being home now as I'm gonna get."
He turned to the navigation computer, putting his back towards the Hitchhiker, broadcasting that the conversation was over. His guest sat quietly for a few moments, staring at the stars that never seemed to move. Finally, he pulled himself out of Kay's chair.
"I guess I'm going to head back and try to get some sleep. I spent so much time trying to catch a flight I didn't get any shut-eye."
Lind grunted a response, trying not to glare at the man as he walked back towards Lind's partner's room and shut the door. Lind wondered if he'd be able to make it through the rest of the trip with such company without having to ask him for his name again.
The explosion in the hanger, the fire, the decompression, the watching a man's skin melt off in his hands, had all taken their toll. A bottle of cheap scotch hid under his mattress. Not matter how much Lind thirsted for something to burn away his state of mind, he couldn't bring himself to leave the cockpit. The unease brought by a stranger on his ship kept him in his seat. As foolish as it seemed, he worried that disappearing, even for a moment, could bring disaster if the Hitchhiker somehow made it back up to the controls.
Instead, he kicked off his boots, pulled a jacket over his chest, and leaned back as much as the seat would allow. Dimming the lights until only the glow of the instrument panel reflected off of the windshield, Lind tried to close his eyes. His awareness plummeted, collapsing onto the few inches around him. All he could feel were all the places where the seat contacted his body, each source of friction making him uncomfortable. The engine noise played a steady soundtrack he found strangely comforting. No matter how he shifted, he couldn't fall asleep. He lay there in a stupor that offered neither rest nor relaxation while his frustrations batted around his head.
