by Mark Anson
‘As far as I can tell, we lost all pressure in the propellant tanks, just after we went to manual control for landing. Without fuel pressure, the turbopumps stalled, and the engines flamed out. I re-engaged the autopilot and – it just all came back. The engines restarted, but we weren’t high enough to recover, and – we didn’t make it.’
She looked down, and shook her head slowly. ‘I don’t know why the tanks lost pressure. My first thought was that they’d ruptured, but it can’t have been that, or we’d never have got pressure back. It could have been the vent valves, but I’ve been through the landing checklist in my head a dozen times now, and I can’t think of anything that we did that could have caused them to open. Steve, any ideas?’ She looked across at Wilson.
‘It could be some kind of flight software malfunction, but it’s just not – possible.’ He shrugged, and stared back at her.
‘I don’t like to suggest this, but could it have been deliberate?’ Bergman said.
They all looked at him.
Bergman spread his hands, palms outward. ‘I mean, look at what we’ve found so far – doors that were meant to have been blown off standing wide open, and air in the mine when it’s supposed to be in vacuum. There are lots of things that aren’t right here, and – maybe someone didn’t want us finding out.’
‘What exactly are you suggesting, Rick?’ Abrams said, his voice serious.
Bergman paused before replying. There was complete silence in the hangar.
‘I’m saying that we should at least consider deliberate sabotage of the ship’s systems as a – possibility.’
Elliott shook his head, but Bergman carried on.
‘Look – think about it. What we’ve found so far makes all of the evidence given to the investigation board suspect. Just finding the outer doors open and undamaged is enough to warrant a major new investigation, and as for air in the mine—’ He raised his hands, and sat back. ‘PMI resisted any investigative mission to the mine until they were forced into it. I think they knew what we’d find here, and that what happened on landing was no accident.’
Several voices started up; suddenly everyone was talking at once.
‘Okay. Okay, guys, cool it.’ Clare’s voice couldn’t be heard above the confusion of voices, and the noise increased. Elliott stood up, red-faced with anger, and started to yell at Bergman.
‘Will you all shut up!’ Clare shouted.
In the sudden quiet, she motioned for Elliott to sit back down, and she waited for a moment, her head down. Her voice sounded weary as she spoke.
‘Look, we won’t solve anything by fighting over it. The ship’s toast, so we’ve no way of finding out what really happened. All I know is that for something like that to be programmed in deliberately would be nearly impossible to conceal; someone would have noticed that the flight control software had been updated and would have reported it.’
‘Yeah, but who to?’ Wilson said abruptly. ‘Helligan? Suppose he was in on it, and just told Maintenance to ignore it and get on with it? Everyone on the base knows he’s got it in for you, it would have been easy for him to have—’
‘All right!’ Clare snapped, glaring at her copilot. ‘This isn’t getting us anywhere. Whether it was sabotage or not, we crashed, and we’re stuck here for now. So once we’ve secured our position, we need to get a message back to Earth, let them know we’re here.’ Clare looked round at them all.
‘Right,’ Bergman agreed, ‘and when they hear what we’ve found, they’ll want to send a bigger team out here. They might even be able to—’
‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ Clare said flatly, shaking her head.
Bergman looked at her in astonishment.
‘What’s the matter? Don’t you want to get out of here?’
‘Look, I’m sorry. There’s no easy way to say this, but we’ve got to be realistic. We’re not on the Moon or Mars; we’re on Mercury. You know how long this mission took to plan, and how hard it is to get out here. It could take a year or more before a rescue mission could arrive.’
She paused, and her face looked sad.
‘We knew that if anything went wrong our rescue options were limited. We all signed the release forms, remember. They’re not going to spend another bzillion dollars to rescue our six sorry asses from this shithole, unless they’re sure we’ll be alive when they get here.’
Clare sat back, and there was a silence while they digested this.
‘What about the Baltimore?’ Elliott said suddenly, his voice hopeful. Surely they’ve got to come back for that? It’s just parked in orbit up there.’
Clare shook her head.
‘They can always command it to return home automatically. It’s happened before,’ she added, in a quiet voice.
‘She’s right, guys,’ Abrams said, ‘we need to be realistic about our situation. Right now, our priorities are to find food and water, like the captain says, and to get a message out, if we can. After that – we need to do our jobs and start investigating what we’ve found here.’
Clare nodded her agreement.
‘Okay, guys, we’ve spent enough time talking, let’s get ready to move out.’ She stood up.
‘Just a moment,’ Bergman’s voice cut in, and it had an edge to it. ‘There’s one thing we need to clear up before we start out. You were the mission commander until we reached our destination. We’re in the mine now, and I think that puts Abrams in charge.’
There was a taut silence. Clare stared back at Bergman for a moment before answering.
‘This isn’t a situation that the SAIB planned for,’ she began, ‘we’ve been lucky to survive a serious space accident, and I’m the best qualified person to lead the mission—’
‘You’re forgetting, we’re not in the spacecraft now, we’re on the mine property, and this is a SAIB investigation. This was agreed a long time ago.’ Bergman’s voice was firm. ‘This place is a space grave, and our primary goal for coming here was to report on what we found. Whatever happens, we’re going to be stuck here for months, and—’
‘All right, guys.’ Abrams stood up and put his hand on Bergman’s shoulder. ‘It’s okay, Rick. The captain’s right, this wasn’t foreseen.’ He held up his hand to stop Bergman’s protestations, and turned to Clare. ‘But, Captain Foster, we are no longer on a USAC vessel, and that does put me in charge.’ He looked round at the group before continuing.
‘Now, bearing in mind the exceptional situation we’re in, the first thing I’m going to do is ask Captain Foster to direct us on her plan, until we have secured our survival here, and made contact with Earth.
‘Rick will be responsible for safety, and for observing due process in a space grave. He will go first into any area that he feels he needs to check out first, or where there may be human remains. And if there’s any conflict because of this, I will decide who gets the final say. Can you both work with that?’
Bergman considered for a moment, then nodded.
‘Sure,’ Clare said, a wary note coming into her voice. She wasn’t entirely happy with it, but as long as Abrams was around to sort out any disagreements, she supposed it would be okay.
‘Good.’ Abrams gestured to the others. ‘Okay, come on people, you heard the captain, we’ve got a job to do.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
It took them longer than they expected before they were ready to move off into the mine.
In the end, it took four of them – Matt, Bergman, Elliott and Wilson – to replenish their water supplies by the slow process of scooping the frost off the girders and into the water bottles. The meltwater had an unpleasant, metallic taste, but it was clean enough to drink. They searched for more bottles to carry spare water in, but found nothing suitable.
While the others collected the water, Clare and Abrams interrogated the robot. It was getting low on power; the status LEDs for the power pack were blinking amber, and they needed some answers before it failed completely.
‘Bob Five, are there any survi
vors here?’
The hulking, steel form of the robot, over two-and-a-half metres high, looked down at Clare. Its orange paint was dirty and scuffed, and worn away in many places. Some faded letters and a large figure ‘5’ could be made out on its chest, under the dark stains of old hydraulic fluid leaks.
‘I DO NOT UNDERSTAND, MISTRESS.’ The robot’s deep voice echoed round the hangar.
‘Where are the miners? The people? The masters?’ Abrams ventured.
There was a pause while the robot’s slow brain searched for an answer.
‘I DO NOT KNOW, MASTER.’
Clare sighed in frustration at the robot’s limited mental faculties. She stared at the robot for a moment, then asked: ‘Bob Five, what happened in the accident?’
Another pause.
‘DANGER IN THE MINE,’ the robot said at last. ‘EMERGENCY IN THE REFINERY. EMERGENCY IN THE MINE. EMERGENCY IN THE CONTROL CENTRE. THE MASTERS HAD NO AIR. THE DOORS OPENED. I HAVE NO MORE DATA.’
‘It must have been deactivated shortly after the accident. It’s got no memory of anything after the doors opened,’ Abrams said.
‘Isn’t there anything else it can tell us?’ Clare asked.
‘I don’t know. It’s not been programmed for anything other than mining work and basic safety.’ Abrams considered the robot, which stood in front of them, waiting patiently for its next instruction. ‘You know, it might be useful to take it with us. It can move wreckage aside if we need to get through anywhere.’
‘Okay,’ Clare said, frowning. She couldn’t help feeling that the robot was telling them less than it knew, but Abrams was right; it could prove useful.
Matt and Wilson were back with the water.
‘Okay, let’s go, everyone. Bob Five, how much power do you have left?’
‘I HAVE POWER FOR LESS THAN ONE HOUR. MY POWER PACK IS FAILING.’
‘Okay, well we’ll see what we can do. Bob Five, follow us.’
‘YES, MISTRESS.’
It was still very cold, so they kept their spacesuits on, but abandoned the helmets and air cylinders; without any means to refill them, it seemed pointless.
They dismantled the lighting units from their helmets and took these with them as flashlights. As their only means of illumination in the darkness, they had to be sparing with their use, and Clare insisted that Wilson, Elliott and Abrams kept theirs switched off to save the batteries.
They approached the inner hangar doors, the robot clumping along behind them. Fifteen metres wide, in two sliding halves, the doors were fully retracted into the solid rock of the mountain. A steady draught of warmer air stirred their faces as they passed the threshold.
They remembered the layout of this part of the mine from the maps and briefings. Directly after the huge main hangar was the inner maintenance hangar. This hangar, about half the size of the first, could accommodate smaller items of mining equipment, or spacecraft components such as engines, removed for maintenance.
Treading carefully, the mission team ventured into the maintenance hangar. It was deathly quiet in the mine; the only sound was the whine of the robot’s power pack and its heavy, lumbering footfall. The rings of green LEDs round its eyes filled the area with a faint, ghostly radiance.
Clare played the beam from her light round the hangar. Overhead, more gantries were rock-bolted into the roof, and the ruins of a travelling crane dangled; severed electrical cables hung down like jungle creepers from the load head. Along one wall, spare rocket engines lay in their carrying cradles, their protective plastic coverings partly torn off by the gale that had passed through the hangar. One of the giant mining machines sat nearby, its tracks removed for repairs.
At the far side of the chamber, 25 metres away, a further set of doors gaped open in front of them, leading further into the mine.
Elliott looked at the doors, and then back at the doors they had just come through.
‘So, how did the atmosphere vent?’ he asked. ‘When we arrived here, the outer doors were open but the inner hangar doors were closed. The hangar would have been in vacuum, but the mine integrity would have been fine.’
‘Well, we know the mine vented through here,’ Abrams said, ‘we’ve seen the debris field for ourselves.’
Elliott looked at the doors again.
‘All three of these must have been open together – wide open – to cause that amount of air to be lost so quickly, with such a force. I guess that the middle doors were closed after the air vented, which would have resealed the mine, but …’ his voice trailed off.
‘But who closed them?’ Abrams finished the thought for him. ‘And where did the air come from?’
‘Uh, there would have been sufficient reserves in the liquid air reservoirs to recharge the mine, once it was resealed,’ Matt said.
‘Was that automatic – the recharging?’ Bergman asked.
‘No. No, it wasn’t.’
‘So somebody must have closed the doors and repressurised the mine, after the accident took place.’
‘But the mine personnel were all dead within thirty-six hours,’ Elliott said, ‘and they were all trapped in the accommodation block until they made some kind of mistake and lost air pressure.’
‘Well, yeah,’ Matt said, ‘if you’re stupid enough to believe they’d really do that.’
‘What exactly are you saying?’ Elliott said, his voice rising, ‘just because we find a set of closed doors, doesn’t mean that all the previous findings are automatic bullshit!’
‘This isn’t about previous findings,’ Matt said, with exaggerated patience, ‘it’s about what really happened.’
‘Cool it, guys!’ Abrams stepped between the two of them. ‘We’re here to do a job, and both your opinions are needed.’ He looked from Matt to Elliott, and back again, waited for them both to calm down.
‘Matt. Just take it slow and easy, and let’s hear what you’re saying.’
Matt took a deep breath.
‘Well, we know from the voice transmissions that the survivors were definitely in the accommodation block. Then, about a day after the accident, we lost contact with the survivors. The systems telemetry showed loss of pressure in the accommodation block. Then finally, all data transmissions stopped. You with me so far?’
They all nodded, except for Elliott, who just stared at Matt.
‘Okay. Well, there’ve been all sorts of theories on what happened, ranging from them committing suicide, to a secondary explosion. The original investigation board concluded that it was some kind of mistake – someone accidentally operated a door control, and they couldn’t close it again in time.
‘But, they knew they had to get the hangar doors closed to repressurise the mine. If you were trapped in the accommodation block, and you couldn’t close the doors from there, how would you go about it?’
‘Find a spacesuit and send someone to do it manually,’ Bergman said.
‘Right. But the living areas have no airlock, just emergency pressure doors. To let someone out, they would have had to have opened those doors. Suppose they moved everyone into one area, sealed that, and then opened the doors so that someone could get to the hangar?’
‘Are you saying the survivors might have closed the hangar doors themselves?’ Elliott said.
‘Yes. And they may have been unable to tell Earth what they were planning, before they lost all contact.’
There was a pause.
‘I don’t buy it,’ Elliott said, his voice careful. ‘It’s too much of a coincidence, losing contact at just the wrong time. But if your theory is right, they managed to seal and repressurise the mine. Why didn’t they re-establish contact? And, why aren’t they here?’
‘Maybe they are,’ Bergman said quietly.
They turned to look at him.
‘Look, I know it sounds insane, but look at the facts. The mine is full of air. Someone managed to seal the mine. They may not have been able to get comms going again. This is a big place; they may not know we’re here.’
Bergman’s words echoed in the silence that followed. They all thought of the huge, empty mine, with all its passages, rooms and shafts running deep under the mountain.
‘Okay.’ Clare was the first to speak. ‘This is an interesting theory, but until we find further evidence to support it, it’s a theory. It doesn’t change our immediate priorities. We continue the search.’
Matt turned away from the group. He felt frustrated and confused. None of this made any sense. He tried to clear his mind and concentrate on looking for food or water.
He headed towards the left wall of the hangar, and rummaged among the scattered debris for some minutes. The hangar had evidently been a swirl point for the huge volume of air that had gushed through it when the mine emptied; wreckage, rubbish and dust had blown wildly about the chamber, before falling and settling in the vacuum.
Most of the wreckage seemed to be objects that had been torn away, or blown over, by the air rushing through the hangar. Equipment lay scattered everywhere – tools, maintenance records, seats, cables, spacesuit helmets – all in a dust-covered jumble on the floor.
Matt picked up a large flashlight he found on the floor, blew the dust off it, and flicked it on. Its white LEDs glowed briefly, and then faded. No charge left. He dropped it back into the dust.
The others were picking their way through the debris, but nobody seemed to have found anything useful. Matt turned round, and looked at the open doors in the end wall, leading off into the mine.
‘You know, I think we’ll have more luck in the next chamber – that’s the stores area,’ he called across to Clare.
‘Okay, there’s no food or water here, let’s move on,’ Clare shouted. ‘Don’t leave anyone behind. Matt – lead the way with Rick.’
Matt swung his light beam over the edges of the opening as he passed through the rectangular doorway. There were no signs of damage; the two sliding halves of the door were fully open, retracted back into the rock.
He sniffed the air cautiously as he went further into the next chamber, but there was nothing in the darkness but the familiar mine-smell of blasted rock and chill air.
