Solfleet: Beyond the Call

by Glenn Smith

  He rolled his head across the pillow to find Gillis lying there beside him, still naked and having kicked away the blankets. She appeared to be sound asleep. He felt kind of bad leaving her the way he was about to after she’d given herself to him, but he had no choice. There was far too much at stake for her feelings to be of any consequence—though he could at least do her the courtesy of thinking of her as ‘Nancy’ rather than ‘Gillis.’ He owed her that much, even if she would never know.

  Being very careful to jostle the bunk as little as possible, he climbed out of bed. As he got started getting dressed as quietly as he could, he began to wonder why he’d been so disoriented when he woke up. Except for the absence of pain and the presence of normal sensations, he’d felt almost as bad as he had when he arrived in Philly after falling through the Portal. Utterly lost and completely disoriented. Why now? Why had that happened to him now, almost two months after going through the Portal? Was he beginning to suffer from some kind of unforeseen side effects of traveling through the Portal or living out of time? Had Doctor Royer experienced any similar problems? If so, had long had they lasted? Was it just a onetime or an occasional thing or was it going to stay with him and maybe grow progressively worse?

  He wished he could stick around long enough to find him and ask him, but that simply wasn’t an option. There was simply far too much at stake on a universal scale for him to delay his mission for purely personal reasons.

  He pulled on his shoes and quietly left Gillis’ quarters. Nancy’s quarters.

  Enlisted and NCO security police quarters were all in the same general area, so he didn’t have far to walk to reach his own. In addition, not very many people were up and about at this hour, so he didn’t run into anyone on the way, which was the best scenario he could have hoped for. Hopefully, Major Hansen hadn’t assigned anyone to monitor the camera feeds and watch the corridor outside his quarters. Or worse, have someone standing by inside them waiting for him to return. He hesitated at his door for a moment with that in mind, but it wasn’t like he had any choice. He couldn’t leave without stopping in there first. If he didn’t take his handcomp and the recall device with him when he left, there wouldn’t be any point to his leaving in the first place.

  He pressed his hand to the scanner plate to open the door and stepped inside, glad to find the lights off. No lights meant no one waiting for him inside... probably. He closed and locked the door, then called up the lights and looked around. There was no one there, but Major Hansen had obviously been there for a while. He’d been courteous enough not to leave a mess behind, but he’d obviously searched the place thoroughly without trying to disguise the fact. Everything had been moved and then put back in its place, more or less, but no effort had been made to try to put everything back exactly how it had been. Dylan drew a deep breath and let it go. It was what it was. It didn’t matter that Major Hansen had searched his quarters. He didn’t care about that. All he truly cared about... all that truly mattered... was whether or not his handcomp and recall device were still where he’d hidden them.

  He walked over to the far corner of the room, dropped to his hands and knees, and pulled the carpet up out of the corner and folded it back on itself. Then, with no small amount of effort as the deck plates were not light, he flipped up the pull ring and pulled up the corner plate, and felt a great sense of relief when he found both items still sitting undisturbed in the shallow space below where he’d left them. He pulled them out and set them aside, then lowered the deck plate back into place and replaced the carpet.

  A quick shower and fresh clothes—blue jeans, a light blue cotton-denim shirt, his utility boots, and a rugged but lightweight jacket, inside which he sewed his recall device—and a quick bite to eat and a small crew bag with a few changes of clothes and some hygiene products and he was on his way to the docks, handcomp secured in a pouch on his belt.

  Once again he found the corridors virtually empty except for the occasional maintenance workers or passersby, none of whom paid him any mind, none of whom he even recognized. But he knew that was going change when he reached the docks. There would be security there—SPs from whatever fleet vessels might be moored there standing static posts by the entrances to the aerobridges leading aboard their ships, and possibly some of his colleagues from the facility’s own SP force, conducting routine security checks and roving patrols. As an SP himself, he had twenty-four hour unescorted access to all docks and berths, so he was going to be able to get in without setting off any alarms—the computer would record his entry, of course, but there was nothing he could do about that—but if someone saw him in there they would likely confront him and question him as to why he was there. That was something he wanted, and more importantly needed to avoid, so he was going to have to be very careful.

  He arrived at the entrance to the drop ships’ parking berths, paused only long enough to draw a deep breath and exhale slowly—if anyone saw him on camera, his standing there too long might make them suspicious—then slipped his identicard into the slot and pressed his right hand to the scanner.

  “Identify,” the computer directed.

  “Graves, Dylan E. Sergeant. Security Police, Mars Orbital Shipyards.”

  The scanner plate glowed white and a beam shot out from an emitter beside the door and scanned his eyes. Seconds later the door opened to admit him.

  He ducked inside, staying in the shadows as much as possible, and waited for the door to close behind him. Then he waited a little longer, until he felt reasonably sure that his entry had gone undetected by anyone inside. Finally, once more staying in the shadows which, thanks to the lights still being set at their lowest levels for safety were both deep and abundant, he started making his way toward the drop ships themselves.

  There were four or five dozen of them, all of them identical to one another in both design and finish—basically just a slightly smaller version of a intrasystem passenger shuttle—their hull numbers the only way to tell them apart. They were arranged in several column side-by-side as though standing in military formation, waiting patiently for their first flights of the morning to commence. The first to go would be those farthest from the door at the front of each column—lead ships first, like a line of taxis at an aerospaceport taxi stand. Those were the ships that would carry him away from the facility the soonest. Unfortunately, those were also the ships most likely to have ground crew personnel crawling all over them at the moment, preparing them for flight. Their first shift began at 0300.

  He glanced at his watch. It wasn’t quite 0300 yet. Maybe he’d get lucky.

  He made his way forward quickly but carefully, starting and stopping all the way to the ship at the front of the second column—the second column so that he could use those ships in the first to provide cover on his left side as he advanced. Luck was with him. He made it all the way without running into anyone. Come to think of it, he suspected it was something more than just good luck, but he decided he’d express his thanks later, after he got aboard and settled in for the flight, assuming he didn’t eventually get caught.

  The exterior hatch that served as a gangway leading up into the main engine compartment was already hanging open, its leading edge resting on the deck of the berth. No one assigned to ground crew would have left it that way overnight, and no one in flight crew would have been around when the ground crew finished its post-flight checks. That meant that someone had just opened it at some point in the last few minutes in preparation of conducting preflight checks, which in turn meant that someone was likely in there at that very moment... or at the very least nearby. Hopefully, they weren’t inside, because that was where he was going, occupied or not, and right away.

  He glanced around and then approached the ship and climbed the steps as quietly as he could, looking in and around the compartment as best he could as he ascended into it. He saw no sign of anyone. He heard nothing beyond all the background noise—the humming of the heavy duty lights in the hangar ceiling and the recycled air b
lowing through the ventilation system, etc. His ‘something more than just good luck’ was holding out... so far.

  He found himself an almost bunk-size personnel niche above the center engine’s housing in between the support braces—a workspace just large enough for him to slip into easily and lie down in, with handrails on both sides that he could hold onto during the flight if necessary. he tossed his crew bag up there and then climbed up and slid himself in. The fact that the engine’s shielded cowling and the rail mounts would shield him from view from everywhere else in the compartment unless someone actually tried to slide into the same space he was lying in was an added bonus... so long as no one actually did try to slide into the same space.

  He’d made it. Now all he had to do was wait.

  Chapter 49

  Dylan had dozed off while he waited, but the sound of the hatch closing had awakened him and he’d stayed awake and held onto the handrails the whole way. After what felt like an hour and a half to two hours but, in reality, was probably less than one, the drop ship finally touched down on the planet’s surface, taxied to a stop, and cut power. The ringing in Dylan’s ears, on the other hand, continued steadily. It was an intense and irritating noise, like that of an emergency alert klaxon that had reached its wailing crescendo and gotten stuck, and it was beginning to wear on his nerves. But at least he could hear it. Between the buffeting thunder of atmospheric reentry and the high pitched whine of the hard-deck maneuvering thrusters it was a wonder he hadn’t gone completely deaf. Fortunately for him, the ship’s main engines were only used during the return flight to the shipyard. Otherwise, he almost certainly would have suffered a substantial, if not total, loss of hearing.

  All that noise aside, the main engine compartment had proven to be the closest thing to a perfect place for a stowaway to hide. The flight deck and passenger cabin had both been out of the question for obvious reasons and flight crews usually didn’t pressurize the landing gear alcoves unless one of the crew had to go in there for an emergency. The cargo bay might have sufficed in a pinch, but if anything in there shifted in flight he might have been injured. And so, in addition to being the almost perfect place to hide, the main engine compartment had also been the only safe choice. It had been kept pressurized and oxygenated for the duration the flight per federal safety regulations, he’d been able to lie there stretched out rather than having to squeeze himself into a small storage locker or some cubbyhole somewhere, and the handrails had enabled him to hold himself steady and avoid floating around in the temporarily weightless environment.

  It would have been easier of course, not to mention a lot more comfortable, to just buy a seat on the flight like a normal passenger, but considering that such a purchase would have been logged into the system, and therefore traceable, and that he didn’t want anyone to know he was leaving the shipyard, it was better just to do it the way he’d done it. No record of passage and no one to see him board the ship.

  He stayed put to wait while the passengers disembarked, knowing that once they cleared the aerobridge it would be retracted and the crew would then move the ship into a maintenance hangar for routine ground checks prior to launching on the return trip to the yard. There would be far fewer people in the hangar than there would be around the passenger terminal, so his chances of sneaking off the ship undetected would be much greater...he hoped.

  The wait seemed a long one—he not only had to wait for the passengers to disembark, but also for their luggage to be unloaded from the cargo hold—but eventually he felt as much as he heard all of the hatches close and seal and the ship powered up and started moving again. His ears started ringing again as he rode to the hangar, but fortunately it was only a short ride and the ship landed and powered down again less than five minutes later. Then he had only to wait for someone to open the hatch, which happened almost as soon as the ship fell quiet.

  Unfortunately, whoever had opened the hatch walked up into the compartment right away and, from the sounds of it, started working. Dylan had no choice but to wait and hope for a chance to disembark without anyone seeing him.

  Seconds seemed like minutes and minutes seemed like hours as the person whistled while he worked...or while she worked...poorly. Whatever tune he or she was trying to whistle, he or she was missing the notes. After five minutes of it Dylan felt ready to surrender state secrets.

  “Mags!” someone outside shouted.

  “Yeah?” the person responded. A woman.

  “I need a hand with the thruster controls panel on the flight deck.”

  “Be right there.”

  Dylan heard her set something down, then listened, counting her boot-footed steps as she descended the gangway. He gave her a few more seconds to walk around to the side of the ship, then grabbed his crew bag, pulled himself out of the niche, and slid down off the engine housing, dropping quietly to the deck...and unusually lightly as well. He hoped that wasn’t going to cause him any problems. He hadn’t given it any thought—he’d been focused on getting away from of the shipyard—but he had known, of course, that the gravity on Mars was only about a third that of Earth. But Earth’s one-g had been the standard gravity force built in to all Solfleet vessels and facilities of sufficient size ever since artificial gravity had been developed, and Cirra’s gravity was exactly 1.035-g, so that was what he was used to. Earth-normal or very near Earth-normal gravity. The odd sensation of lightness he was feeling now, even after having been totally weightless during the first stage of the drop, was a bit awkward if not disorienting.

  He slung his bag over his shoulder and then hurried as quietly as possible to the top of the gangway, knelt down on the deck, and listened. Except for the incessant ringing, which was only just beginning to fade, he didn’t hear anything that sounded like people approaching or working nearby. But that didn’t necessarily mean there wasn’t anyone out there. After all, it was a hangar and the ship was in a maintenance dock. There was a lot of ambient background noise—ships taking off and landing outside, flying overhead, other ships moving around elsewhere in the hangar, maintenance machinery in use, the hangar’s HVAC system. There might have been a dozen people out there for all he could tell.

  He had no choice. If he waited too long the engine mechanic might come back and then close the hatch after she finished her work, and if he reopened the hatch to disembark after she closed it, he’d draw attention to himself that he did not want to draw. He had to go now.

  He started down the gangway, looking around in every direction. He didn’t see anyone, but he knew that ‘Mags’ and whoever had asked her for help were on the ship, working on the flight deck thruster control panel if he’d heard correctly. Others might have been working on it elsewhere as well. He had to hurry.

  He stepped down off the gangway and onto the floor and then hurried over to the nearest wall and ducked behind some portable shelving filled with spare parts, then drew a deep breath and exhaled slowly and quietly. So far, so good.

  He knew he had one thing on his side. The obliviousness of routine. The men and women working in the hangar did the same job the same way in the same place every day, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year. They likely knew every square inch of that hangar by heart. They likely could stroll from one end of it to the other with their eyes closed and not bump into a single thing or knock anything over. And they likely did almost exactly that each and every day. Chances were that he could step out from behind those shelves and walk across the hangar himself and no one would notice him or ever remember having seen him.

  Not that he intended to do that.

  He poked his head and looked around, then stepped partway out from behind the shelves and looked around some more. He saw a few people, but they were busy going about their work and paid him no mind...if they even saw him to begin with. Now or never.

  He stepped out from behind the shelves and walked calmly toward the exit as though he did it every day.

  No one seemed to notice.

>   * * *

  As Dylan cut across the center of Olympus Park, he admired the unearthly, man-made beauty that surrounded him. The distinctive orange-red tint to the leaves of the trees reminded him of a brisk autumn morning back home, but its slighter presence in the rest of the plant life, as well as in the predominantly deep green grass, served as a reminder that this was still, in the end, a very alien world. He wondered if the coloring was a natural result of seeding everything in a mixture of both Terran and Martian soils, or if teams of botanists had spent untold numbers of man-hours and suffered through one failed experiment after another before they finally came up with a method of artificial color manipulation that worked. Of course, it might have been as easy as soaking celery sticks in a mixture of food-coloring and water, the way he’d done in first grade science class. Or, it might have been completely unexpected. Whatever the cause, the end result was pleasing to the eye.

  Getting out of the hangar and past what passed for security had been a lot easier than he’d expected, but the walk from the aerospaceport into the center of town had been a long one. He was tired, though probably not nearly as tired as he would have been if he’d been forced to walk such a long way back home. Maybe the lighter gravity wasn’t such a bad thing after all. As he neared what from his perspective was the park perimeter’s far side, he switched his crew bag over to his other shoulder and continued walking toward the nearest street.

  Just like back at the shipyard, it was early Friday morning in Olympus City, the largest of what were, in this time period, the most modern and city-like of the Martian Colonies. The city had been named for the huge volcanic mountain that began its gentle upward slope roughly three hundred miles to the north and eventually reached three times as far into the sky as Earth’s own Mount Everest. The streets were all but deserted. Tall, majestic buildings, each with a unique architecture all its own, lined both sides of the streets as far as he could see in all directions. This could have been any of a thousand cities on Earth were it not for the domes—the transluminum double-layered domes that covered the entire city, sealing in its precisely controlled, recycled environment. The domes so huge that their structural integrity fields were required to run around the clock in order to prevent them from collapsing under their own enormous weight.