Below Mercury

by Mark Anson

  Clare almost wished they would break through, and that the air would rush out, so that she could die in her misery. It would be so much easier than going back.

  She looked at her comlink for the hundredth time, to see if there were any messages. There were none, and she cast it aside. They were all dead, they were all dead an hour ago.

  She cast a listless eye over the flight deck. The shuttle was fully prepped for launch. She had been so proud of being able to get it flightworthy, to provide a way to get everyone home. The fuel gauges and stripped-out cabin mocked her now; with only two people, there was more than enough fuel to reach orbit.

  Wilson had been keen to salvage something from the mission, and she hadn’t stopped him from piling up some metal bars in the control room, ready to bring them aboard.

  ‘How long?’ She didn’t even turn her head to speak to him.

  ‘Launch window opens in twenty-six minutes. I’m going back to the control room to finish up.’

  Clare nodded, and Wilson pushed back his seat and got up. She wondered if the robots would break through before they could leave, and decided she didn’t even care.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  ‘Did you hear that?’

  Matt stopped and listened, and grimaced as another distant boom reverberated through the passage behind them.

  ‘Looks like they’re at the last pressure door,’ Bergman said. ‘We’d better decide what we’re going to do.’

  Matt and Bergman stood at the edge of a small maintenance refuge at the base of the return shaft. Above them, their flashlights illuminated the walls of the huge shaft as it disappeared upwards above their heads. It was wider than the intake shafts; as well as being the main air reservoir for the mine, it was also the route by which the mined ice and ore was raised up to the refinery and smelters on the surface.

  Below and to one side of the refuge, a skip loader hung by its wire ropes, waiting at the shaft station for the load that would never come. Its companion was at the shaft station high above them, and they operated as a pair; while this one was loading, the one up top would be emptying, and then the two skips would exchange positions. The two skips ran side by side in the larger shaft, and the shaft was filled with their guide ropes, suspension ropes, counterbalance guides, and balance ropes.

  There were no manriding cages in the shaft; the skips were only used for carrying loads of ice and ore, and the hoists were automated, and operated by the mine computer. There had no way of commanding the hoists to run, and in any case Matt and Bergman were wary of using any system that was under computer control.

  From somewhere high above, occasional droplets of water fell down the centre of the shaft, echoing as they plunged into the sump. The water surface far below them rippled with each drop.

  To one side of the refuge, a metal ladder led straight upwards, bolted to the vertical wall of the shaft. It disappeared into the darkness above their heads.

  ‘We don’t have a choice. We have to climb,’ Matt said. He fastened his flashlight to his belt, leaned round, grabbed a rung, and swung himself sideways onto the ladder. ‘At least robots can’t follow us up these.’

  ‘How far?’ Bergman asked from below, as Matt started to climb.

  ‘Five hundred metres,’ Matt’s voice floated back down.

  ‘Shit,’ Bergman muttered, as he swung onto the ladder and followed Matt upward.

  In the dark, by the swinging beams of their flashlights, it was difficult to appreciate the true size of the shaft; they could not see up its huge height, but the echoes of their footsteps on the ladder rungs rang around the chamber. Behind them, over their backs as they climbed, glistening specks of water raced downwards.

  Bergman grabbed Matt’s ankle and signed urgently downwards. There, in the maintenance refuge that they had only just left, a robot leaned out, its red eyes staring up at the two men.

  As they watched, it moved back in again, and disappeared.

  Matt looked down at Bergman’s face, three metres below him on the ladder.

  ‘Is there another entrance halfway up?’ Bergman asked.

  ‘No, this one goes straight up without stopping.’

  ‘Where’s the robot gone, then?’

  ‘I don’t know, but I’m not hanging around to find out.’ Matt turned back to the climb.

  The shaft rose up through the brecciated rock at the edge of Chao Meng-fu crater. Even though the gravity was only a third of Earth’s, the climb up the ladder was exhausting. Bend and raise a knee, push up, reach up, in a perpetual cycle, as they climbed higher and higher up the sides of the shaft. The ladder had no safety hoops round it; there was no room between the ladder and the passing skips, and they became increasingly aware of the long fall below them should they slip and fall off.

  About two hundred metres up, there was another maintenance refuge, and Matt and Bergman threw themselves up and onto it, grateful for the chance to rest their aching leg and arm muscles.

  They didn’t speak; there wasn’t anything to say, except to ask how much further it was, and neither of them wanted to know the answer.

  Matt was anxious to keep moving; he felt that time was ticking away, and after a short rest, they set off up the ladder again. Their tired muscles protested with pain, and Bergman grimaced as he forced his aching arms and legs to bend and straighten. He felt as if his world had shrunk to the size of a narrow tube, and they seemed to be inching their way up it like spiders crawling up a plughole. He focused on the pain, trying not to think of the enormous length of shaft still above them.

  Long minutes passed as they crawled steadily upwards. Bergman’s fingers ached from gripping on to the metal rungs. How far had they come now? He didn’t want to ask; he knew it would only be a few metres, and then he would have to steel himself to climb once more. Better just to keep going, mechanically moving arms and legs, keeping moving, steadily upwards.

  Matt’s foot slipped, and he fell downwards a rung. He clung on with his hands, his legs flailing until he found a foothold again.

  ‘You okay?’ Bergman called up.

  ‘Sure. Just slipped, that’s all. Let’s take a minute here.’

  They paused mid-climb, resting their tired limbs as best they could while clinging on to the ladder. They had covered just over half of the distance to the next refuge.

  ‘Okay,’ Matt said after a minute, ‘let’s keep going. Last push, then we’ll take a proper rest.’

  Suddenly in the shaft, a deep groan rang out, and a shriek of seized metal. It echoed down the hollow chamber, and the two men looked round in alarm.

  ‘Okay, what was that?’ Bergman asked. ‘It isn’t going to be good, whatever it is.’

  Matt said nothing. One of the wire ropes hanging in the shaft moved slightly.

  ‘I think this could be very bad, Rick’, he said softly.

  The wire rope started to move, downwards.

  ‘Rick, climb, as fast you can!’ Matt yelled down, and set off again, his arms and legs moving quickly.

  For a moment, Bergman didn’t understand, then he realised with a cold slide of fear that the skip loader high above them was heading down the shaft, straight for them. With hardly any clearance between the skip and the shaft ladder, it would slice them from the wall as it passed.

  Bergman raced up the ladder, his muscles screaming. How far was it to the refuge? How fast did the skip move? Faster than he could climb, he was certain. As he climbed, he wondered what would happen when the several tonnes of the skip struck him. It would wipe him off the ladder without even noticing, and then there would be the long fall, down the shaft, to be smashed against the girders and metalwork of the skip loading stations far below. He wondered if it would hurt, or if it would be over with quickly.

  A singing noise came from the four guide ropes, and the balance rope, hanging below the skip, hissed past. The skip was very close. In a few moments, it would be here.

  Bergman looked up, and he saw the skip approaching; a rapidly expanding sq
uare of darkness against the gloom of the shaft.

  Matt’s face appeared suddenly, looking down at him.

  ‘Grab the ledge, Rick!’

  Matt was already in the refuge, up and to Bergman’s left.

  Bergman couldn’t make it up the ladder and get into the refuge before the skip hit him. He reached up and to the left, gripped the ledge of the refuge with both hands, swung out and hung there, holding his body close to the shaft wall.

  With a deep whoosh of air that pummelled his chest, the skip tore past the refuge, grazing one of his heels. The sudden blow pulled one of his hands from the ledge, and he was left dangling from one hand. Bergman yelled in terror as the fingers started to slip; he knew he was going to fall.

  A hand grabbed his wrist, just as his last fingers slipped, and he hung there, terrified. The skip hissed away down the shaft.

  ‘Give me your free hand!’

  Bergman reached up and grabbed the outstretched hand, and Matt pulled him upwards and onto the refuge, where they both lay, panting from the exertion.

  ‘Thanks, Matt,’ Bergman whispered, ‘I thought I was going to fall.’

  ‘Don’t mention it.’

  They lay there in the refuge, getting their breath back, until Matt spoke again.

  ‘We can’t stay here. It’s only a hundred metres to the top of the shaft. We’ve got to keep moving.’

  Bergman nodded. He didn’t want to go out into the shaft again, but Matt was right. They were trapped here; they had to get clear of the shaft.

  Matt swung himself back onto the ladder. He flinched as a blur tore past close by, but it was just the counterweight, flying upwards in its guide ropes as the skip neared the bottom of the shaft.

  Bergman swung onto the ladder below Matt, and the two of them continued their climb. Their arms and legs ached with fatigue, but they moved upward with determination; they were too near the top of the shaft to give up now.

  Way below them, the skip hoist slowed and halted, sending long waves up and down the wire ropes. After a moment, the ropes started moving again, but in the opposite direction; the skip was coming back up the shaft towards them.

  The wire ropes picked up speed rapidly, and the counterweight fell past again on its journey down the shaft. Matt and Bergman pushed on grimly, forcing their aching limbs to haul them up the ladder. They were getting close now, though, and their spirits rose as they neared the top of the shaft.

  ‘Nearly there,’ Matt called down, and Bergman looked up hopefully. There above them, no more than twenty metres away, the guide rails of the upper shaft station could be made out in the light spilling in from the passage, and something else, too, silhouetted against the light.

  Two robot heads looked down at them, their eyes glowing red. Matt continued his climb as if he hadn’t seen them, and Bergman called out in warning: ‘Matt, hold on! There’s two robots—’

  Matt actually laughed, and swung sideways off the ladder to the right, into a large, unlit passage.

  ‘We’re not going that way,’ he said, as Bergman hauled himself up. The rectangular passage they were in sloped upwards, as steep as the roof of a house, and there was a set of narrow steps and a handrail in the near wall.

  ‘This is the bypass duct I was telling you about. It takes excess air past the refinery and into the main return airway.’

  ‘Well, that’s going to piss them off,’ Bergman said, ‘can they get in here?’

  ‘Not without crawling up here behind us. We’re safe from here on in. Come on.’ Now that the immediate danger was past, Matt was thinking again of the countdown clock, ticking away in the silo.

  They climbed up the steep stairway, hanging on to the rail on their left. The narrow steps, and the sides and floor of the duct, were thick with dust brought up from the mine over the years. The duct bored its way upwards and away from the shaft, and finally levelled off at a set of partly open pressure doors, also covered in dust; they were used to balance the bypass airflow. Light flooded through the gap into the darkness of the duct.

  They stepped through the doors, and found themselves at the confluence of two major passages. Behind them, to their left, the fresh air from the refinery joined up with the bypass duct, and ahead, a set of three giant fans turned sluggishly in the faint air current from below. Ducting and pipework ran across the walls and roof of the junction, carrying gases from the refinery for correcting the air blend.

  They were at the far end of the main return airway, and ahead of them, past the fans, the airway sloped gently upwards, past the silo complex and back under the crater floor to the mine.

  ‘Come on!’ Matt was jubilant now, and walked forward confidently. Through the walkway to one side of the fans, then a short way up the passage, and they would be at the silos.

  The two of them had just passed by a complex junction of gas ducting, when Matt heard the sudden whine of a power pack coming out of standby.

  He spun round, and a pair of red eyes flickered on in the shadows by the pipe fittings, and the huge bulk of a mining robot stepped out from where it had been standing, waiting for them.

  ‘Rick!’ Matt yelled at the top of his voice, but the robot had already reached Bergman, and grabbed him by the neck and body with its pincered hands. Bergman’s eyes bulged, and his legs thrashed as the robot lifted him off his feet and held him above the ground.

  Bergman turned his head to look at Matt, his mouth moving as if to say something, and then the robot’s pincer closed round his neck, severing the head from the body in a spray of blood that showered over the robot.

  With a whine of motors, it tossed Bergman’s body aside, blood still spurting from the severed neck, and moved towards Matt, its red eyes blazing. It covered the space between them with a terrible speed, and as Matt turned and ran, he felt the deadly swoop of air behind him as the robot just missed him with its claw.

  To the side of the fans, a single pressure door allowed access to the maintenance walkway, and Matt just made it inside as another blow from the robot smashed into the frame.

  Matt stumbled through the walkway, the robot pounding behind him, thudding off the narrow walls. Its motors whined in overdrive as it strove to catch him and tear him apart, but Matt was faster, and he emerged from the walkway through another pressure door, slamming the door close button behind him.

  The robot reached the door just as it was closing. It thrust one hand through the closing gap, then another, and slowly forced the door into reverse, pushing it aside. There was a loud bang and a flash as the door motors burned out, and the door flew back, letting the robot through.

  Twenty metres ahead, Matt was beginning to falter; the long climb, the low air pressure, and the shock of what had happened to Bergman, was taking its toll. His legs shook with each stride, as if they were made of rubber, but he knew he had to make it to the silo. He saw Bergman’s head falling from his body, he saw Bergman being tossed aside, and the robot was just behind him now. He was filled with a sudden rage that gave him the strength to keep moving, and open up the gap between him and the robot.

  ‘If I ever – get out of this alive,’ he hissed between breaths, ‘I will come after you bastards. He had a wife, and a kid – and you fucking killed him – if I get the slightest chance to destroy you – I fucking will, you cock sucking – mother fucking company!’

  Suddenly, a sharp left turn opened on the left; the entrance to the silo. The huge roof fall blocked the airway some way ahead, and rocks and boulders were scattered all down the passage.

  With his last strength, Matt staggered through the pressure doors in the silo entrance passage. Holding on to the door frame, he slammed the manual door close button, and fumbled for the isolation switch to lock the door against the following robot.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Inside the silo, a fresh rumble reverberated through the corridors; the robots would soon be through the rock fall in the passage outside.

  Wilson appeared in the entrance doorway of the shuttlecraft.


  ‘That’s it, we’re all ready to go. I’m going to load up the bars, then we’ll close the door and be on our way.’

  ‘We’re not taking them,’ Clare said in a flat voice.

  ‘What? I asked you earlier and you just said nothing!’ Wilson’s voice showed his anger.

  Clare turned round in her seat to face him.

  ‘I said, we’re not taking them. And before you start yelling at me, lieutenant, just think how it will look, if we come back loaded up with platinum, but with all the passengers dead. Leave them behind. For your career, if nothing else.’ She turned back to the controls. ‘I’m not going to talk about this again.’

  Wilson stood in the doorway, considering. For one moment, just one, he thought of what might happen if Foster had an accident. Then there would be no one to tell him what to do.

  As quickly as the thought occurred, it evaporated. She was right. If he came back alone, with a cargo of bullion and some story about how everyone else had been killed, he would be up in front of an investigation board before he left the base. No, she was right, he decided. He felt a tide of disappointment wash over him as he hit the button to close the door, and went to join Clare on the flight deck.

  ‘Pressurising tanks,’ Clare said, reaching out to the controls.

  A hiss and rush of helium gas sounded in the shuttle’s pipework, and it creaked beneath them as the gas flowed into the propellant tanks, building up the pressure.

  Clare knew she should do a takeoff briefing, but she couldn’t be bothered. Wilson had done the final checks; let him worry about it. Her gaze wandered across the silo to the control room opposite.

  Matt stood there, looking back at her.