Higher Education

by Charles Sheffield

  He focused his attention on that middle area, and was finally rewarded by the sight of a central point of light that came and went at random. The sensitive detectors of the ship's imaging system must be picking up and displaying single photons. It was their first sight of the target mine.

  Rick settled again into a near-trance. He did not think that he slept, but he did close his eyes occasionally. Each time he opened them there was a little more to see. Over minutes and hours the vagrant point of light gradually steadied, to become a pale silver dot, and then a blurry round disk. Soon the ship's optics made an adjustment, trading magnification for contrast. It was possible to discern that the disk had a slight asymmetry, longer top to bottom than it was side to side.

  Fifteen minutes more, and there was no doubt. Rick was looking at an oblong shape, longer than it was wide. It must be the mining cylinder enclosing the ore body of CM-31. But it was not the smoothly spinning regular figure shown in the simulations. There was a definite slow wobble to its motion, and part of the curved surface seemed darker than the rest.

  "We have established contact with a maintenance module associated with CM-31." Tom Garcia's voice brought Rick's attention away from the growing image. "Signals indicate two survivors on board the module. We have no indication of survivors on the main mining habitat. The module is running very low on air. The Vantage will end deceleration and achieve rendezvous in fourteen minutes. Personnel stand ready for emergency stations."

  "You heard that." The distorted cylinder of CM-31 vanished and was replaced by Barney French's impassive face. "Over the next ten minutes I will assign an emergency station to each apprentice. Do not—repeat, do not go to those stations until I tell you to do so. In thirteen minutes we will change from our present deceleration to a near-freefall environment. Remain in your bunk until that time. Once we are in freefall, unstrap yourself, make sure that you are dressed in regulation fashion, and remain in your cabin. Be prepared to move at once when I tell you to do so. Do not worry if you hear nothing more from me for the next few minutes. I will be addressing each one of you individually."

  CM-31 appeared again, close enough for a clear image to fill the projection screen. Rick was looking at a distorted shell, wobbling slowly around an off-center axis. A long split ran almost from end to end, revealing a dark interior. It looked as though the cylinder had burst, buckling outward. Where were the billions of tons of metallic ores that had been inside it? Where was the maintenance module, with its survivors? He could see no sign of it—no sign of anything resembling a ship or a life-support habitat. What had happened to the rest of the miners on CM-31?

  "Luban," Barney's voice said suddenly over the intercom.

  "Yes, sir."

  "Do you know the location of Port A-3?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "You will go there when we move to freefall, without waiting for further instructions. Put on a suit, and take your subsequent orders from Tait or Styan. Understood?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Any questions?"

  "No, sir." Rick had a thousand, but this was no time to ask them.

  "Very good."

  The intercom fell silent, leaving Rick in a ferment of nervousness and speculation. He had been in a suit often enough, that was not a problem. Some other fear—of dying, of failure, of loss of nerve—was tying his guts into a knot.

  The image was still on the screen but he took little notice. He was mentally rehearsing, over and over—unstrapping himself, hurrying out of his cabin, swinging his way down to Port A-3. The module is running very low on air. That part of Tom Garcia's message didn't need explanation. The speed with which the crew of the Vantage acted could be the difference between life and death.

  Freefall—sooner than expected. Rick was off his bunk and out of his cabin in seconds. He realized at once that his mental rehearsal was totally useless. He had missed the obvious—that a score of other apprentices would be scrambling through the same narrow passageways, all heading for different destinations.

  He eased past Goggles Landau, past Skip Chung, past Lafe Eklund, all heading in the opposite direction. Chick Teazle, by some miracle, zipped past Rick going in the same direction. Deedee Mao and Alice Klein were standing together in the dining area, obviously waiting for somebody. Rick nodded at them and zoomed on, down to the lower ship level where Port A-3 was located. Vido Valdez was already there, working his way into a suit. Rick was oddly pleased to see him—he trusted Vido, maybe more than any other trainee. Rick put on his own suit, and they went through the thirty-six point sequence together, checking suit seals and functions.

  Before they were done, Jigger Tait arrived. He was already in his own vacuum suit, complete with mobility pack.

  "Radios on?" he said. And at their nods, "Good. I don't expect you'll be going outside, but if I need help I'll holler. Here." He handed each of them two squat oxygen cylinders. "Hang on to these, and stand by for cycling."

  They were clearly in emergency mode. The air pressure dropped three times as fast as usual, and even before vacuum was established the outer lock was opening. The remaining air puffed away. Rick, floating with the security of an anchor line, realized that he was at the very edge of open space. The deformed cylinder of CM-31 hung in front of him, huge and somehow ominous.

  "There they are," Jigger said. "Spitting distance. Hats off to Tom Garcia and Marlene Kotite. Be ready with the oxygen and wait here."

  Without another word he was away, jetting toward a small crab-shaped vessel poised in space no more than two hundred meters from the Vantage. Rick and Vido stood and stared. Five more suited figures were leaving the ship from some other exit lock. They all wore mobility packs. One of them was heading for the maintenance module, the other four were jetting off in the direction of CM-31's cylindrical hulk. It was impossible to make individual identification, but everyone moved in space with the confidence and economy of long space experience.

  Jigger and one other person had reached the crab-like maintenance module and were entering on its under side. Within seconds they had reappeared, each holding a suited figure. They jetted at once toward the Vantage. If they had said one word to each other, it was on a frequency not received by Rick and Vido.

  They reached the lock, and Rick saw that the other person was Gina Styan. Still without a word, she and Jigger grabbed oxygen cylinders. They attached them to the suits of the two new arrivals. Jigger peered in through the visors. The eyes of the occupants, both women, were flickering open.

  "All right," said Jigger. "We sure cut it fine. I'm going to cycle the lock so we can flush carbon dioxide, but there's no rush on that now."

  One of the women was giving him a weak thumbs-up sign.

  "I'd better get back out there and secure the module," Gina said. "Then I'll see if they need any help over at the main facility."

  Rick peered past her out of the open lock. He saw what he had expected to see, the little maintenance module and beyond it the massive cylinder of CM-31. But there was something else. Off to the left, small but steadily growing, was a feathery plume of brightness.

  Should he mention it, or would he seem like an idiot? He glanced at the others, and realized that Vido had seen it, too. They stared at each other, and said in unison, "What's that?"

  "It's a ship," added Vido. "Isn't it?"

  "Can't be," Jigger said. He was still busy with the two survivors of the accident. "Not for another thirty-six hours."

  "But it is." Gina had looked where Rick pointed. "It's not one of ours—it's an Avant Mining vessel."

  Rick told himself he ought to have realized that. He had seen such a feathery exhaust before, the result of the pulsed fusion drive used by Avant. But it was so unexpected, out here far from anywhere.

  And then he realized that it should not be unexpected at all. This was the very place where you might think to meet an Avant Mining ship—out in the broad region of the valuable metal-bearing asteroids.

  The other ship was closing steadily, heading
right for the Vantage. Rick heard a voice in his headset.

  "This is Morse Watanabe, captain of the Avant Mining vessel, Scarab. We happened to be in a compatible orbit, and we picked up a Mayday signal on a broad frequency band with these coordinates. Do you need assistance?"

  Jigger Tait and Gina Styan said nothing. It was Tom Garcia's voice that sounded in the headsets. "Thanks for the offer, Scarab. As you can see, we've had a major accident here, but everything seems to be under control."

  "Glad to hear it." There was a pause, then Watanabe continued, "Unless proprietary elements are involved, would you tell us what happened?"

  "We are still in the process of determining that. However, it seems certain that the integrity of the containment cylinder was breached, suddenly and violently. The melted ore spewed out into space in all directions. Unfortunately, the main crew habitat was impacted and destroyed."

  Rick heard a grunt in his headset. It came from one of the two women picked up by Jigger Tait and Gina Styan. This must be their first direct evidence that their friends and co-workers were dead.

  "I am truly sorry to hear that," Watanabe said. "Any idea what caused the rupture?"

  "Not yet. We are working on it. Our preliminary assumption is impact by another body."

  "That would have been my guess. Lots of material in this region. Something pretty big, that somehow got past the radar." Watanabe sighed. "Again, our regrets and sympathy. Since we can't help, we'll be on our way."

  The feathery plume of the Scarab's exhaust appeared again. The other ship slowly receded. Rick watched it until it was no more than a tiny spark of light, no different from one of the silent stars.

  The incident had changed his whole view of Avant Mining. It was a terrible shock to hear Jigger Tait, cycling the lock to fill it with air, mutter to himself, "That slimy bastard. 'Regrets and sympathy'—like hell."

  "They were just trying to help," protested Vido. "Weren't they?"

  "You can think that if you like." Jigger glared at him, and the two rescued women did the same.

  "If you hadn't come along in time," one of them said. "We'd have been dead in another hour or two. With no survivors, CM-31 would have been a derelict. The Scarab would have taken possession and filed for full or partial ownership."

  "And they'd have got it, too," growled Jigger. "That's space law. Watanabe can say he's glad that things are under control here as often as he likes, but I'll never believe it. He's been robbed of a big gain, and he knows it."

  "But the ore's all gone," Rick said. "It was thrown all over the place by the accident."

  "Not the ore. That's not what Watanabe wanted. He was after technology. "Jigger jerked his thumb at the hovering cylinder. "Avant Mining has nothing like that. They still mine using the old bore-and-scoop method. There's nothing they'd like better than a good look at the inside of CM-31. The general technique may sound simple, but the details aren't. Watanabe's out there now, gnashing his teeth—and wishing that the whole lot of us had died on CM-31."

  Chapter Fourteen

  THE two survivors quickly came back to normal health; the bodies of the dead, such as could be found scattered within ten thousand kilometers of CM-31, were given decent space burial; the Vantage continued on at a quarter gee to its original destination; and Rick thought that the whole awful episode was over. He was wrong. The worst was still to come. It began late on the second night, when someone slipped into his cabin without knocking. He was lying awake in his bunk, and he sat up pleased. Alice had told him that she had an evening session scheduled for a review of drive mechanisms with Tom Garcia, and would not be able to pay Rick a visit. Something must have changed.

  The person who entered was Deedee Mao. "I have to talk to you," she said.

  "If it's about—"

  "I was told not to talk about this to anyone. But I have to. It's eating me up inside."

  She sounded desolate and desperate, in a way that Rick had never heard before. He started to say something, decided that it was a bad idea, and made room for her beside him on the narrow bunk. "I'm listening, Deedee. But if you promised not to talk. . ."

  "It's a promise I can't keep." She drew in a deep breath. "Do you know what I did when we got to CM-31?"

  "I think so." They had all talked about their roles in the hours that followed. According to Barney French, they had performed better than anyone could have expected. Each of them would receive a note of praise in the record. "You went over near the main cylinder, didn't you? With Marlene Kotite."

  "That's right. We were really there to look for bodies. I was picked because I was once in a bad accident myself, and I've seen some pretty gruesome stuff."

  "I didn't know that."

  "There's a lot we don't know about each other, Rick. That's a pity." She tried to smile at him, and failed. "Anyway, we found one part of the work crew habitat, smashed to pieces by flying jets of molten metal. Seven bodies. They made me feel like throwing up, because they were in pieces. We had to hunt for arms and legs and heads and try to put them together. Two of them were so badly burned I couldn't tell if they were men or women."

  "That's terrible, Deedee." Rick put his arm around her shoulders. "I had it easy, but I didn't know it. I didn't have to deal with anything like that."

  "I haven't got to the bad part. We came to one bit of the habitat that had been smashed open by flying metal, and then somehow sealed itself back together. It was airtight, but molten iron had splashed all over the place. We found a man there. He was alive."

  She paused. Rick, sensing that it was not the time to speak, waited sympathetically.

  "He was alive," she went on at last, "but he had no right to be. The iron had burned him, head and body. He must have actually sat for a while in a pool of molten metal. When we found him he was conscious. I didn't know what to do, but Marlene crouched down beside him. 'You're safe now,' she said. 'I'm Marlene Kotite, pilot of the ship Vantage. We'll have to move you, so I'm going to give you a shot to knock you out first.'

  "He turned his head toward her. I can't say he looked at her, because his eyes had been burned out. They were just black pits in his head. He had no nose.

  "'Thanks, Marlene,' he said. I'm Trustrum Keck, chief mining engineer of CM-31.' He sounded absolutely calm and rational. They say that bad burns leave you like that, in shock but not in pain. 'Before you knock me out,' he said, 'how about a little damage assessment?'

  "She looked at me, as if she wished I wasn't there, then she said, 'We met once before, when I was piloting the Vanity. It's not good, Rusty. Your eyes have gone, and most of your face.'

  "'I guessed that,' he said. 'And there's more, isn't there.'

  "'Yes. You've lost the flesh of your legs, and your penis and testicles. And most of your right hand.'

  "'I noticed,' he said, 'when it happened. It doesn't feel so bad now.' He was quiet for about half a minute, then he said, 'No chance of real repairs. I don't like the look of the future, Marlene. I want to exercise my option.'

  "It was her turn to go quiet, but eventually she said, 'You're in deep shock, Rusty. This is no time to make that decision.'

  "But he just gave a sort of coughing laugh and said, 'Tell me a better time. You've seen me,' and after a minute she nodded.

  "'Hold on a little,' she said. Til give you a shot, but I've got a young apprentice with me. She happened to be on the Vantage when we picked up your Mayday.' Then she turned to me, and said, 'Step out for a few minutes. Into the corridor.'

  "I did. I was totally confused, but it was an order. After about ten minutes she came out again. She had taken off her suit helmet, and her face was dead white. She told me it was all right, I could come back in. I did. He was lying there. He was dead. When I asked what had happened she just shook her head. Rick, she killed him. I know she did. She murdered him."

  "No." Rick was suddenly very thankful for the conversation he had had with Jigger Tait, back in the shielded radiation chamber on CM-2. "You can't look at it that way, Deedee. W
ould you want to live with no eyes and legs? No genitals, no right hand."

  She flinched against his arm. "I couldn't bear to!"

  "Nor could I. And nor could he. You heard him say it, he wanted to exercise his option—his right to die."

  "But that's murder!"

  "Back on Earth it is. Out here, it's a fundamental right. Mine, yours, Barney French's. Nobody can take it away from us. And Marlene Kotite couldn't take it away from Rusty Keck. She just did what he wanted, and helped him along a little. Wouldn't you do as much for me, in the same situation?"

  "Oh, Rick, don't say that. Please, don't ever say that." Then Deedee was silent for a long time, so long that Rick thought she must be angry. Finally she patted the arm that he had placed around her, and said, "God rest his soul. Thanks, Rick. Thanks an awful lot. I owe you a big one. But I knew I could count on you. I always can."