One Way

by S. J. Morden

“Can we turn the comms off?” Frank felt his own chest, and the hard lump under his skin. “Dee said they were pretty much on automatic.”

  “The tracking is,” said Declan. “But I can trip the fuse to the dish controls so that it stops. Doesn’t mean that a satellite won’t pick up a signal as it goes overhead.”

  “Can we point the dish at the volcano first?”

  “I reckon. But why do we want to, Frank? Why do we want to cut ourselves off?”

  “Because we’ve got things to talk about. I’ve got things to talk about. I don’t want anyone outside this room hearing me.”

  “I’ll go and do it,” said Declan. “OK with you, Zero?”

  “Whatever. We can’t get into any more shit than we are, right?”

  Declan’s hand hovered over the screwdriver on the table. In the end, he picked it up and pocketed it before heading towards Comms/Control. “Back in a minute.”

  Frank and Zero sat there, impatiently tapping and scratching and shifting while they waited for Declan to return. It wasn’t long, but it felt like an age. He came back, sat in his chair, and put the screwdriver in front of him again.

  “We’re offline until we power up the dish again,” he said. “What did you want to say that you don’t want XO to know?”

  Frank pressed his hands together. They were slippery with sweat.

  “I went over to the ship. I wanted to talk to Brack—about you two. I know I didn’t kill Zeus, or Dee, or Marcy or Alice. I was certain it had to be one or both of you. Declan, you killed Zeus. Zero, you killed Dee. I was going to tell Brack he had to space both of you, to save the mission, save the base.”

  “Well fuck you, Frank. Fuck you very much.” Declan swept up his screwdriver and examined the point. Zero just stared, mouth open.

  “He wasn’t there. He’d taken a buggy, out on to the plain. To bring back a cylinder.”

  “What cylinder?” Zero rocked forward. “What are you talking about? We got all the cargo.”

  “Some of that shit falling from the sky was NASA stuff,” said Frank. “He’s storing three of them down at the bottom of the Heights. I opened one of them up. I also checked out the ship. It’s … he’s put all the bodies in the tanks. The floor’s covered with empty Oxycontin packs.” He took a moment’s pause and looked down at his lap. “Before we left Earth, we—me and Brack—had a conversation. He said …”

  A silence deepened.

  “What did he say, Frank?” asked Declan.

  “He said that if I watched his back for him, I’d get a seat on the NASA ship home. And if I told anyone about that, the deal was off.”

  “Shit.”

  “Fuck.”

  “I told him I’d find out who the killer was. Told him I’d find the evidence.”

  “Me too,” said Declan.

  Frank went cold. He could feel a knot tighten inside his guts and everything went very still.

  “What?”

  “Exactly what he told me. Watch his back, free trip home. And I’m guessing Zero’s the same. Am I right?”

  Zero gripped his knife hard and stabbed down at the tabletop. The curved point dug in and scored a line in the plastic.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” Declan spun the screwdriver, and watched it whirl around on the table. The blade rotated until it came to a rest, aiming back at him. He picked it up and pushed it back into his pocket. “So what have we got?”

  “What have we got? We’ve got jack,” said Zero. “He’s not going to get us all home, is he? He lied to us. And one of us is still a fucking murderer!”

  “Yeah. About that,” said Declan. “Anyone else joined the dots yet?”

  Frank stood up. “I’m going to suit up. I suggest everyone else does the same.”

  Zero stabbed at the table again. “Will someone tell me what the fuck is going on?”

  “It’s Brack,” said Frank. “He’s gone postal.”

  “You’re kidding me, right?”

  “No.”

  Declan headed towards the cross-hab. “Maybe the freezing process messed with his mind. Maybe it’s the drugs, the loneliness, the stress. Maybe he’s just fucking nuts. But I’m putting my spacesuit on, right now, before I do anything else.”

  Frank was left with Zero. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll think of something.”

  A muscle in Zero’s lean face was jumping, right along the jaw-line. “I’m never going to get home, am I?”

  “There’s three of us, and only one of him. Maybe we can put him back in his tank, refreeze him, until help gets here. The NASA astronauts can’t be far behind: all their kit’s turned up. We’ll be OK. Now, suit.”

  Zero looked at the curved edge of the gardening knife. “I trusted the Man. How else was this going to go down?”

  “We’ve got to play this cool. We’ll call up XO, we’ll tell them we’ve got a problem, and we’ll wait for instructions.”

  “We don’t even know for sure! How do I know anything any more? This could be you and Declan doing the dirty on me. And where’s Brack now?”

  “We can’t know: he’s off the grid. He’s always been off the grid.” Frank picked up the scalpel. “We’ve got to get into our suits, Zero. We’ll be at least a little bit safer in them than not.”

  Zero started to cry. “What are we going to do?”

  “We’re going to do what we’ve done for the last few months, and when we were in training. Look out for each other and stay together.” Frank was about to tell Zero to put the knife down, but he was holding his, and they might still need them after all. “You’re not going to get left behind. All right? I won’t let you. Forget what we promised Brack: we’ll stick together, make them take us all home.”

  “Does that mean he killed Marcy? Alice?”

  “I don’t know. Yes, maybe.”

  Declan’s voice cut through their conversation. “You are not leaving me to face Brack on my own. Get your goddamn asses in here and get your suits on.”

  Frank felt light, trembly, even inexplicably hungry. “He’s right. We’ll talk again in a minute. Now, come on.”

  He stood back when Zero walked by on his way to the door. The kid was still as twitchy as a cornered dog, and likely to lash out at anything. He was right—they didn’t know anything—but none of this felt right any more.

  This was their home: they’d built it, lived in it, died for it.

  The main lights abruptly failed.

  They were replaced a moment later by the emergency lighting, a hard blue wash over everything that left everything either black or glowing.

  “Jesus, give me a break,” he heard Declan say.

  Frank went to put his suit on.

  There was enough space for the three of them to dress simultaneously. Frank pulled his suit off the hanger, turned it around, grabbed a life support from the rack—no time to see whether it was full or still recharging—pushed it into place, turned it on, and without taking his overalls off, got his left leg in, his right leg in, hauled the suit up to his waist, pushed his left arm in, his right arm in, ducked down and squeezed his head through the neck seal. He worked his fingers into the gloves and checked that nothing was pinched or tight by bouncing up and down on the spot. He opened the suit controls, thumbed the back-hatch closed and felt the reassuring deadening of sound as it sealed and locked in place.

  The suit whispered air into his face, and he turned the suit lights on full. A blue-white glow diffused into the cross-hab. Declan was almost as fast as he was, but Zero wasn’t as practiced. It took him longer, and by the time his suit was sealed, he was breathing hard.

  Frank put his helmet against Zero’s.

  “In, and hold it. Hold, hold, hold. And out, nice and slow. In again. Hold, hold, hold. And out.”

  He looked inside, and Zero nodded.

  “I’m Ok. I’m fine.”

  Frank bent awkwardly down, and picked up the scalpel. As well as the tablet and nut runner attached to his suit’s utility belt, he still had the pouch of pat
ches. He eased the blade back in. “Let’s get the lights back on, and then phone home. We’ll be OK. Hang in there.”

  27

  [Transcript of private phone call between Bruno Tiller and (unidentified XO employee 1) 8/13/2047 1550MT.]

  BT: No, we collect their personal effects and we incinerate them at Gold Hill. Nothing leaves the facility.

  XO1: OK. Whatever works for you.

  BT: At eighty kilobucks (80000) a pound, I’ve not budgeted spending over a million (1000000) dollars on shipping their shit with them. They don’t need it, and won’t need it.

  XO1: Do I tell them that?

  BT: No, you don’t tell them that.

  [transcript ends]

  They got the power back on, and clustered around the comms console.

  “How far away is Earth now?” asked Frank.

  “I don’t actually know. Eight, ten minutes? It could be at least half an hour before we get a reply.” Declan typed in the commands for the dish to seek out the orbiting satellite and let it run. As ever, he kept an eye on the power meter, watching it crawl down. The sun was setting, and they were on batteries until dawn.

  “We could be dead by then,” said Zero.

  “No one is going to die. We’re staying together.”

  “Actual astronauts have something like five years’ training.” Declan watched the numbers. “We got barely six months. What the hell were we thinking?”

  “We got enough to do the job,” said Frank.

  “Just.”

  “Are we on yet?” Zero pushed forward. “What do we do when we are? What do we say? Is there anyone going to be listening to us?”

  “Just give it a few more seconds.” Declan eased Zero back. “It’s got to find the signal, lock on, then we can transmit.”

  “Why’s it taking so long?”

  “It always takes this long.” Declan pointed to the screen. “It’s doing it now.”

  A square on the screen went from red to green.

  Frank opened up his tablet, and looked again for the second buggy. Still nothing.

  “We have no idea where he is.” He turned it so that the others could see. “He could be miles away. He could be outside.”

  Zero turned and looked behind him. “He could be here. He could be here right now.”

  “Maybe,” said Frank. “But we don’t want to get into a fight with him. He’s sick: we need to find a way to make him better.”

  “Frank, he’s killed at least two people, and maybe four,” said Declan, “and you want to find a way to make him better? Good luck with that, because if he comes at me, I’m not going to be messing around. Anyway, if he thinks he can just disappear, we can all play at that game. Switch your transmitters off.”

  “Wait, we can do that?” said Frank. “I thought it was just the mics.”

  “Jesus, Frank, get up to speed. It’s always been the case. Just that we chose not to, so that XO wouldn’t know we were having private conversations.” Declan pushed the chair out of the way of the console. “Go and stand watch by the door. I’ll type out a message.”

  Frank and Zero tabbed through their suits’ menus and turned their suit comms off. When they’d done, Frank looked through the door that led into the yard, then went a little further and stood in the big, open space. There should have been gym equipment, but there’d been nothing in the supplies they’d got so far.

  Perhaps it was down in the new cylinders, ready to install when NASA got here. Frank walked a little further, towards the kitchen. He could see the table through the open doors, and something had caught his eye.

  “Where you going, man?” asked Zero.

  Frank waved him back. “Just … wait there.”

  He stood in the doorway, checked as best he could there was no one there, and came back carrying the blue glove. He held it out, and Zero took it from him.

  “Are we losing air?” He gave the glove a squeeze. It did seem plumper than before.

  Frank opened his suit controls and checked the external pressure. It should have been five psi. It was four point three.

  “We’re depressurizing.”

  “Fuck. He’s outside, isn’t he?”

  “And we’re inside, in our suits. We’re fine.”

  “But the greenhouse.”

  “The greenhouse is on a separate system. It’ll be fine, too. Brack, even crazy Brack, won’t touch that.”

  “I need to go check.”

  “No, you don’t. If you’re going to check, we all go and check.” Frank held Zero by the shoulders. “We don’t split up. Got that?”

  “What’s going on?” called Declan.

  “We’re losing pressure.”

  “Deliberately?”

  “What do you think?”

  “OK, give me a minute. Typing is hard in these gloves.”

  Zero tore himself away and leaned into Comms. “Just speak it. Use the mic.”

  “It’s not that easy. We got bandwidth and compression issues. Text is certain, like sending a phone message when you’ve got no data signal. Almost there. And … send.”

  Declan pushed Zero ahead of him.

  “So what did you say?”

  “Help, mostly. Explained we were four crew down, Brack chowing down on opioids like they’re popping candy, and that he’s working his way through the rest of us like virgin teens in a slasher movie. I don’t know what they’re going to suggest. We were, and are, always going to be on our own.” Declan looked up at Frank. “You know what it means.”

  Frank had tried. He’d tried everything. And now, for the second time in his life, he was going to have to solve his problems the hard way. “I know what it means. That we’re going to have to find him and stop him before he damages the base.”

  “Fuck no,” said Zero. “We’re not doing that. You said we weren’t going to have to fight.”

  “That was before he started depressurizing the habs. He could sabotage the water, the power, anything. He could just cut through the greenhouse wall and bang.” Frank pulled out his knife, and slid off the plastic guard. “It’s starve or suffocate. Declan’s right: Brack’s left us no choice.”

  “Just … stop, OK?” Zero backed away from them both, holding the sides of his helmet. “Brack said to all of us that we could go home with him. What if, what if, one of you is making that happen. That you know if you’re the last man, you get that ride.”

  “Who the hell is depressurizing the hab, Zero?” Declan pointed to the slowly inflating glove that Zero still held.

  “It could have been Frank, before he came in. It’s Frank. It’s you, isn’t it? You’re killing us off so that you get to go home.” Zero threw the glove on the floor. It bounced rather than flopped. He looked for his knife, but couldn’t remember what he’d done with it. He backed away further, then ran for the cross-hab. “Shit. Where’s my shank?”

  “It’s not me,” said Frank.

  “It’s what a killer would say,” said Declan. His voice was thinner now the air was leaking away. “Just kidding. We should go after him, make sure he’s OK.”

  “After you.”

  “Well, thanks.”

  But when they got to the cross-hab, Zero wasn’t there. And the gardening knife, if he’d dropped it, wasn’t there either.

  “Zero? Zero?”

  “Where did he go? Greenhouse?” Frank inspected the airlock, and tried to cycle it. “That’s … not working.” He tried it again, and peered at the telltales. “Inner door not closed. He’s chocked it open so we can’t get in.”

  Declan hammered his fist on the outer door. “Zero?” Then he turned to Frank. “The only way we’re getting in this lock is if I pull the fuses. Jesus, why does everything have to be so complicated?”

  “He’s just a kid. He’s scared.”

  “And now he’s scared and alone. At least, I hope he’s alone.”

  “He doesn’t trust us. Me.” Frank lent his own hand to pummeling the airlock door. “This isn’t working. And we can’t
vent this anyway without trashing the plants.”

  “No shit. It’s not like we can slide a note through, either. And we still have to find Brack.”

  “Inside or outside?”

  “I don’t know. It’s not like I’ve ever done this before.”

  Frank looked along the cross-hab at the medical bay. “Start down there, work our way back to here, I guess.”

  Everything that once looked used and familiar, now looked empty and strange: the stacked boxes, the rattling of the floor, the ladders down to the first floor, the bright overhead lights. They walked the length of the top floor, and back along underneath. It was growing gradually more and more silent.

  “Where’s the leak?” asked Declan.

  “It’ll be one of the airlocks. We should check them all.” Frank cycled the nearest, and checked inside. The manual vents were all shut.

  But when they went back down to the other, the controls had obviously been forced. Frank pushed the levers back up and stopped the flow. He nudged the last panel shut with his knee.

  “We still need to check the others,” said Declan.

  “Sure. How long’s it been since you sent the message?”

  “Five, ten minutes.”

  “How can we be so far away that it takes ten minutes just for a text to get there?”

  Declan stopped mid-stride. “Frank? You say some really stupid shit sometimes.”

  “We went to sleep on Earth. We woke up on Mars. If we’d actually traveled the distance, I might understand it better.” Frank checked the external pressure. “Three point nine. We might have stopped it in time.”

  “Crew hab?”

  They checked downstairs in the cross-hab, just a storage area, but congested with boxes. Upstairs, the airlock was fine, so they went back into the kitchen, and through to the crew quarters. The curtained-off rooms were still and silent.

  “I’ll do these, you do the cans,” said Frank.

  The toilets were at the far end. Declan brandished his screwdriver and moved swiftly down the corridor, leaving Frank to flick each curtain aside and peer around. Nothing, and no one.

  “Clear,” said Declan, and turned round to look at the airlock. “OK, this one’s been tampered with.” He moved the first lever, and pulled open the door to set the second.