Mission: Tomorrow - eARC

by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

  From within came a steady mutter. “Just let me die . . .just let me die . . .”

  “Tell him he’s likely to get his wish,” Ross murmured. “If I can’t manage to work out a blastoff orbit, we’re all going to fry right here.”

  “How come you’re doing it? What’s the matter with Brainerd?”

  “Choked up. Couldn’t make sense of his own figures. And come to think of it, I’m not doing so well myself.”

  Fingers of fog seemed to wrap around his mind. He glanced at the dial. Temperature 152° outside. That gave the boys in the crawler 123° to get back here . . .or was it 321°? He was confused, utterly bewildered.

  Doc Spangler looked peculiar too. The psych officer wore an odd frown. “I feel very lethargic suddenly,” Spangler declared. “I know I really should get back to Curtis, but—”

  The madman was keeping up a steady babble inside. The part of Ross’s mind that still could think clearly realized that if left unattended Curtis was capable of doing almost anything.

  Temperature 158°.

  The crawler seemed to be getting nearer. On the horizon the radar tower was melting into a crazy shambles.

  There was a shriek. “Curtis!” Ross yelled, his mind hurriedly returning to awareness. He ran aft, with Spangler close behind.

  Too late.

  Curtis lay on the floor in a bloody puddle. He had found a pair of shears somewhere.

  Spangler bent. “He’s dead.”

  “Dead. Of course.” Ross’s brain felt totally clear now. At the moment of Curtis’ death the fog had lifted. Leaving Spangler to attend to the body, he returned to the astrogation desk and glanced through the calculations he had been doing. Worthless. An idiotic mess.

  With icy clarity he started again, and this time succeeded in determining their location. They had come down better than three hundred miles sunward of where they had thought they were landing. The instruments hadn’t lied—but someone’s eyes had. The orbit that Brainerd had so solemnly assured him was a “safe” one was actually almost as deadly as the one Curtis had computed.

  He looked outside. The crawler had almost reached the ship. Temperature 167° out there. There was plenty of time. They would make it with a few minutes to spare, thanks to the warning they had received from the melting radar tower.

  But why had it happened? There was no answer to that.

  Gigantic in his heatsuit, Krinsky brought Llewellyn and Fallbridge aboard. They peeled out of their spacesuits and wobbled around unsteadily for a moment before they collapsed. They were as red as newly boiled lobsters.

  “Heat prostration,” Ross said. “Krinsky, get them into takeoff cradles. Dominic, you in your suit yet?”

  The spaceman appeared at the airlock entrance and nodded.

  “Good. Get down there and drive the crawler into the hold. We can’t afford to leave it here. Double-quick, and then we’re blasting off. Brainerd, that new orbit ready?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The thermometer grazed 200. The cooling system was beginning to suffer—but it would not have to endure much more agony. Within minutes the Leverrier was lifting from Mercury’s surface—minutes ahead of the relentless advance of the sun. The ship swung into a parking orbit not far above the planet’s surface.

  As they hung there, catching their breaths, just one thing occupied Ross’s mind: why? Why had Brainerd’s orbit brought them down in a danger zone instead of the safety strip? Why had both he and Brainerd been unable to compute a blasting pattern, the simplest of elementary astrogation techniques? And why had Spangler’s wits utterly failed him—just long enough to let the unhappy Curtis kill himself?

  Ross could see the same question reflected on everyone’s face: why?

  He felt an itchy feeling at the base of his skull. And suddenly an image forced its way across his mind and he had the answer.

  He saw a great pool of molten zinc, lying shimmering between two jagged crests somewhere on Sunside. It had been there thousands of years; it would be there thousands, perhaps millions, of years from now.

  Its surface quivered. The sun’s brightness upon the pool was intolerable even to the mind’s eye.

  Radiation beat down on the pool of zinc—the sun’s radiation, hard and unending. And then a new radiation, an electromagnetic emanation in a different part of the spectrum, carrying a meaningful message:

  I want to die.

  The pool of zinc stirred fretfully with sudden impulses of helpfulness.

  The vision passed as quickly as it came. Stunned, Ross looked up. The expressions on the six faces surrounding him confirmed what he could guess.

  “You all felt it too,” he said.

  Spangler nodded, then Krinsky and the rest of them.

  “Yes,” Krinsky said. “What the devil was it?”

  Brainerd turned to Spangler. “Are we all nuts, Doc?”

  The psych officer shrugged. “Mass hallucination . . .collective hypnosis . . .”

  “No, Doc.” Ross leaned forward. “You know it as well as I do. That thing was real. It’s down there, out on Sunside.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean that wasn’t any hallucination we had. That’s something alive down there—or as close to alive as anything on Mercury can be.” Ross’s hands were shaking. He forced them to subside. “We’ve stumbled over something very big,” he said.

  Spangler stirred uneasily. “Harry—”

  “No, I’m not out of my head! Don’t you see—that thing down there, whatever it is, is sensitive to our thoughts! It picked up Curtis’s godawful caterwauling the way a radar set grabs electromagnetic waves. His were the strongest thoughts coming through; so it acted on them and did its damnedest to help Curtis get what he wanted.”

  “You mean by fogging our minds and deluding us into thinking we were in safe territory, when actually we were right near sunrise territory?”

  “But why would it go to all that trouble?” Krinsky objected. “If it wanted to help poor Curtis kill himself, why didn’t it just fix things so we came down right in Sunside. We’d cook a lot quicker that way.”

  “Originally it did,” Ross said. “It helped Curtis set up a landing orbit that would have dumped us into the sun. But then it realized that the rest of us didn’t want to die. It picked up the conflicting mental emanations of Curtis and the rest of us, and arranged things so that he’d die and we wouldn’t.” He shivered. “Once Curtis was out of the way, it acted to help the surviving crew members reach safety. If you’ll remember, we were all thinking and moving a lot quicker the instant Curtis was dead.”

  “Damned if that’s not so,” Spangler said. “But—”

  “What I want to know is, do we go back down?” Krinsky asked. “If that thing is what you say it is, I’m not so sure I want to go within reach of it again. Who knows what it might make us do this time?”

  “It wants to help us,” Ross said stubbornly. “It’s not hostile. You aren’t afraid of it, are you, Krinsky? I was counting on you to go out in the heatsuit and try to find it.”

  “Not me!”

  Ross scowled. “But this is the first intelligent life-form man has ever found in the solar system. We can’t just run away and hide.” To Brainerd he said, “Set up an orbit that’ll take us back down again—and this time put us down where we won’t melt.”

  “I can’t do it, sir,” Brainerd said flatly.

  “Can’t?”

  “Won’t. I think the safest thing is for us to return to Earth at once.”

  “I’m ordering you.”

  “I’m sorry, sir.”

  Ross looked at Spangler. Llewellyn. Fallbridge. Right around the circle. Fear was evident on every face. He knew what each of the men was thinking.

  I don’t want to go back to Mercury.

  Six of them. One of him. And the helpful thing below.

  They had outnumbered Curtis seven to one—but Curtis’s mind had radiated an unmixed death wish. Ross knew he could never generate enough strengt
h of thought to counteract the fear-driven thoughts of the other six.

  Mutiny.

  Somehow he did not care to speak the word aloud. Sometimes there were cases where a superior officer might legitimately be removed from command for the common good, and this might be one of them, he knew. But yet—

  The thought of fleeing without even pausing to examine the creature below was intolerable to him. But there was only one ship, and either he or the six others would have to be denied.

  Yet the pool had contrived to satisfy both the man who wished to die and those who wished to stay alive. Now, six wanted to return—but must the voice of the seventh be ignored?

  You’re not being fair to me, Ross thought, directing his angry outburst towards the planet below. I want to see you. I want to study you. Don’t let them drag me back to Earth so soon.

  When the Leverrier returned to Earth a week later, the six survivors of the Second Mercury Expedition all were able to describe in detail how a fierce death wish had overtaken Second Astrogator Curtis and driven him to suicide. But not one of them could recall what had happened to Flight Commander Ross, or why the heatsuit had been left behind on Mercury.

  * * *

  Robert Silverberg is rightly considered by many as one of the greatest living Science Fiction writers. His career stretches back to the pulps and his output is amazing by any standards. He’s authored numerous novels, short stories and nonfiction books in various genres and categories. He’s also a frequent guest at Cons and a regular columnist for Asimov’s. His major works include Dying Inside, The Book of Skulls, The Alien Years, The World Inside, Nightfall with Isaac Asimov, Son of Man, A Time of Changes and the 7 Majipoor Cycle books. His first Majipoor trilogy, Lord Valentine’s Castle, Majipoor Chronicles and Valentine Pontifex, were reissued by ROC Books in May 2012, September 2012 and January 2013. Tales Of Majipoor, a new collection bringing together all the short Majipoor tales, followed in May 2013.

  Our next story takes us to Mars where a corporate troubleshooter has his hands full working to make peace amongst conflicting parties and investigating a murder . . .

  IN PANIC TOWN,

  ON THE BACKWARD MOON

  by Michael F. Flynn

  The man who slipped into the Second Dog that day was thin and pinch-faced and crossed the room with a half-scared, furtive look. Willy cut off in the middle of a sentence and said, “I wonder what that Gof wants?”

  The rest of us at the table turned to watch. An Authority cop at the next table, busy not noticing how strong the near beer was, slipped his hand into his pocket, and VJ loosened the knife in his ankle scabbard. Robbery was rare in Panic Town—making the getaway being a major hurdle—but it was not unknown.

  Hot Dog sucked the nipple of his beer bottle. “He has something.”

  “Something he values,” suggested Willy.

  VJ chuckled. “That a man values something is no assurance that the thing is valuable. It might be a picture of his sainted grandmother.” But he didn’t think so, and neither did anyone else in the Dog.

  All this happened a long time ago. Mars was the happening place back then. Magnetic sails had brought transit times down to one month, and costs had dropped with them, so the place was filling up with dreamers and scamps and dogs of all kinds, out to siphon a buck from the desert or from the pockets of those who did. There were zeppelin pilots and water miners, air squeezers and terraformers. Half the industry supported the parasol makers of course, but they needed construction, maintenance, teamsters, and rocket jocks, and throughout history whenever there was a man and a dollar there was another man willing to separate them.

  We were friends, the four of us dogs hooching that day; but the kind of friends who rarely saw one another except across a bottle. Hot Dog’s name was Rusty Johnson, but he eschewed that for a gonzo nickname. He flew ballistics for Iron Planet, taking passengers and cargo up to the Dogs or around to the antipodes. He had the glam, and women lined up and took numbers, even though he wasn’t much to look at and even less to listen to. Maybe it was the cute freckles.

  VJ’s name was Viktor Djeh and it was fairly easy to figure how he’d gotten his nickname. He did maintenance on PP&L’s converter out by Reldresel, where they pulled oxygen and other useful crap from the ilmenite. His job was not nearly as glamorous as Hot Dog’s, but he made it up in morphy-star good looks. He was a joker, and always ready with a favor. He had saved my ass once when I was on a job in Reldresel and the high-pressure line sprang a leak, so I always paid his freight when we crossed paths at the Dog.

  Willy’s name, to complete the trifecta, was actually Johann Sebastian Früh, but a childhood friend had given him the moniker from an old movie and it stuck. Willy clerked for the Authority, so he had neither good looks nor glamour, but he got by on a willingness to listen. His earnest expression invited confidences, a circumstance that provided him with a steady, if clandestine, income.

  Pinch-face crossed to the bar, where Pondo was serving. Dogs move in microgravity like they’re underwater—in slow, gliding steps and grip shoes. I once saw Jen Wuli chase Squint-Eye Terry M’Govern down the Shklovsky-Lagado tubeway and it was the funniest damn thing I ever did see.

  Pondo and the stranger traded whispers, then sidled into the office. Everyone relaxed, and the Authority cop took his hand out of his pocket. A few minutes later, they reemerged from the office with smiles all over their teeth.

  “Who was that muffer?” someone at another table asked when the stranger was gone.

  “I seen him around, down below. Works outta Port Rosario.”

  Willy smiled when he overheard this, and VJ gave a thoughtful nod.

  Hot Dog pulled his handi from his coverall pocket and checked his schedule. “I’m dropping down to chair a Guild meeting in a couple days,” he told us. “Pig Hanson has a run out to Marineris and I have to sub. I’ll ask around.”

  That’s how it started, though at the time we didn’t know it.

  The next day I called at Aurora Sails in Under-Gulliver, where they ran an assembly hangar. The superconductor loop sets up a magnetic field that acts as a sail and takes up momentum from the solar wind. It doesn’t harvest much acceleration, but the velocity keeps building, and you don’t have to carry fuel. By adjusting the loops you can change the size and shape of the field and sail damn near anywhere at respectable speeds. When you kick amps into a superloop, the current keeps going like a bunny with a drum until you quench it.

  The problem the client had at the time was that some of their sails wouldn’t kick amps. They thought there might be something wrong with the kicker, but they didn’t know how to prove it. So the Authority tasked me to settle matters because the bickering in Under-Gulliver was growing intense and nothing soothes internal squabbles like an external consultant.

  Technically, I work for the Ares Consortium, an alliance of corporations formed to run the Martian parasol business. Aurora strings the parasols and Pegasus ferries them to the target asteroid, where Sisyphus rigs the harnesses in place. My ultimate boss was actually old man Bryce van Huyten, but Phobos Port Authority coordinates the local action, so I carry an Authority troubleshooter’s badge.

  I told Aurora to set up two loops in the test beds: one that worked and one that didn’t. They balked because any loop that worked was immediately installed on a parasol and packaged for transit, while the defective ones were salvaged for parts. Parasols were urgent, high-priority work, and they couldn’t let loops sit around for me to play with, and blah-blah-blah. The usual. So I told them to call me back when they were ready to get serious and I cut the link.

  It took them two days while they pondered what the Authority would say if they blew me off. Then I got a call from Antonelli, the sail prep boss. He had two loops set aside, he told me, “but hustle your ass out here because Logistics is giving me the stink-eye.”

  Antonelli and his engineers managed to conceal their delight when my ass arrived. They floated at a respectable distance. Everybody wanted to be
close enough to the problem to count coup in case I succeeded, but not so close that they’d get cooties if I failed.

  I forgot their names as soon as they were introduced, except for one fellow from Logistics named Moynihan Truth, whom I remembered both because of his unusual name and because I saw him again later. He was ten years old, but that’s in dog years; double it for Earth-equivalent. He’d been born in Golden Flats on Mars, where they have the monument to the first Rover. You’ve probably seen images of Farzi Baroomand’s famous statue, the one that shows all the aliens lined up behind the Rover where the camera can’t see them, laughing themselves silly. Everyone there takes the last name Truth to honor the Rover. The Kid was the only one in the locker smiling and I remember wondering what the big joke was.

  Four test beds took up most of the horizontal space. Hobartium loops were tethered to beds A and B. I pointed to A and said, “This one’s not working?” Nods all around. The neon-yellow Hold tag was my clue. “And that one works?” More bobble-heads. It was green-tagged. “And you think it might be the kicker?” Grudging assents, but dissenters mentioned other components, assembly errors, you name it. Paralysis of analysis. Smart people with a dozen smart ideas, but not smart enough to try any for fear of being wrong.

  But the first rule of troubleshooting is: Start somewhere. When you don’t know crap, whatever you learn moves you ahead. “Take this kicker,” I pointed, “and install it on that loop; and take that kicker and install it on this loop.”

  When the switcheroo was finished I told them to kick amps, and the superconductor on A began to circularize from the hoop stress, while the one on B now remained flaccid. I nodded.

  “Yep. It’s the kicker, all right.”

  Antonelli swelled up. “For that, we pay Port Authority two ounces troy per diem? We could have done that ourselves!”