Dark Secret (2016)

by Edward M. Lerner

  (“Fifteen minutes,” that long-ago instructor’s voice echoed in Blake’s mind.)

  A rock slab, leaning, protruded nearby from the snow. The slab might have served as an impromptu shovel.

  Instead, just beyond his reach, it looked to serve as a gravestone.

  With his bare hands—soaking wet, his teeth chattering—Blake began to dig.

  *

  His hands numb with cold, Blake finally dug himself free. He’d lost his wristwatch, too, but fifteen minutes must already have passed.

  He had left Rikki in the shelter of the rocks. Maybe her breather mask had stayed put.

  Part of the avalanche had crashed its way to the inland sea, but to the north of their camp. A good kilometer distant, through the diminishing blizzard, both shuttle and inflated shelter looked untouched.

  Half a kilometer in another direction was the boulder field in which—he was almost certain—he had left Rikki. He tugged the stone slab free of the snow, and set off. Gasping for air, slipping and falling, hands and feet like blocks of ice, he slogged through the snow.

  His suit heater wasn’t working. Controls smashed? Heating circuits broken? Battery knocked loose? He did not bother to look. Whatever the problem, without tools and spare parts he could do nothing about it. If he’d still had a knapsack, he couldn’t have afforded the time.

  A few meters downhill from that group of rocks, a silvery glint caught his eye. A rope clip!

  His hands had frozen to the rock slab; when he released it, it took skin with it. A sharp tug drew a few centimeters of red nylon line up out of the snow—and the frigid clip from his grasp. More palm skin went with the clip. Here, too, the snow was firmly packed.

  He stared for a while, stymied, at the brightly colored nylon line. Then he studied the raw, red, angry flesh of an injured hand. As painful as the wound looked, he couldn’t feel it. Of course he couldn’t feel anything in either hand. Now what was he doing here…?

  He was looking for Rikki! How could he have forgotten that?

  As through a fog, he did know: hypothermia from the cold. Hypoxia from the thin air, the altitude, and the exertion. Maybe shock from the pummeling of the avalanche.

  Clutching the rock slab with numb fingers, Blake pushed in among the boulders. Rikki would be at the base of the tallest rock. If the rush of snow hadn’t swept her down slope. He began digging frantically.

  Digging, digging, digging….

  Confusion overtook him again; he lost sight of what he was doing until—with a jolt—his improvised shovel hit something. Something that twitched.

  He threw aside the rock slab to burrow doglike with his hands. He found—a leg. Why had he dug so far from the boulder? “Rikki,” he called.

  If she had heard him, he couldn’t hear her answer.

  The bit of pant leg he’d exposed looked to be just below her knee. If she still leaned against the boulder, then her head would be…he struggled to puzzle it out…here.

  Minutes later, his hands—stiff and blue—rammed the hard plastic of a breather mask.

  And she moaned! She was alive! Ten interminable minutes later, he had uncovered her to the waist. He unclipped her from the safety line, meters of which remained buried deep in snow.

  Only then did he raid her knapsack for her spare mask, oxygen tank, and gloves. The oh-two jolt cleared his muddled thoughts enough to slam one of her spare battery packs into the empty, lid-torn-off compartment of his flight suit. Blessed warmth began to flow, except in one sleeve, in which the heating elements must have broken.

  “Blake?”

  Her eyes were open! He said, “I thought I’d lost you.”

  “I did, too.”

  “I’ll have you out of there soon,” he promised. With the folding shovel from her knapsack, finishing the job was a matter of minutes.

  An hour later, bone-weary, they stumbled into their snow-covered shelter.

  *

  They took off before nightfall for Endeavour.

  “For replacement equipment,” Blake radioed to Dana: a partial truth. The absolute truth, if hands counted as equipment. Under the gloves he hoped Rikki didn’t notice he continued to wear, knuckles screamed at every motion, and the skin was pale and blistered. He suspected severe frostbite on his feet, too.

  Soon enough, Li confirmed his fears—extending the diagnosis to nose, ears, and random patches on his legs. The thawed areas hurt like hell, sometimes also managing to itch, until Li pumped him full of painkillers.

  As nanite swarms labored to repair the damage, Blake focused on an ever-growing supplies list. They still needed to find a home for the colony.

  On his next flight to Dark, he would be better prepared.

  24

  Dana floated at the forward end of cargo hold three, beside a datasheet magneted to the bulkhead. The comp projected an orbital view of Dark. “Whenever they’re ready,” she told Marvin.

  “It should be only another few minutes,” the AI said.

  Three of the crew waited among the cold-sleep pods. Antonio poked at something on his own datasheet. Carlos whispered unintelligibly at Li, who silenced him with a hard stare. She looked…distracted? No, preoccupied.

  Please, God, Dana thought. Not more squabbling about names.

  “Blake says he and Rikki are ready,” Marvin announced.

  The orbital view vanished, displaced by a close-up of Blake and Rikki—both grinning from ear to ear. Behind them, seen through the clear wall of their shelter, extending to the horizon, was an inland sea.

  “You two look so disappointed,” Dana deadpanned.

  “Well, we didn’t find the Fountain of Youth,” Blake said. “Is everyone there?”

  “As you requested,” Dana said. “Okay, it’s your show.”

  Blake nodded. “Hi, everyone. We surveyed three candidate sites this trip. Any of them would meet our specs. This one is damn near optimal.”

  Rikki added, “We’re at landing zone three.”

  “Tell us about it,” Dana said.

  Rikki nodded. “It’s located at about twenty-five degrees north latitude, almost within the tropics. The seasons won’t be extreme. This near the equator cyclonic storms won’t be common and shouldn’t be severe. It’s local spring, so we can try farming without a long wait. Caves, sea, river delta, the works. Bottom line, it satisfies all our requirements.”

  “To provide an overview, we made a vid,” Blake said. “Marvin, if you’ll project it up there.”

  On the hold bulkhead, the display switched to a wide-angle, outdoor shot of the sea. The camera panned along the shoreline, paused to admire gentle waves lapping at a white sand beach, then swept up a rock-strewn and furrowed slope to a range of low, rounded hills. A crescent moon, daylight ghostly, hovered over the hills.

  Nowhere, apart from slimy green film on the undulating waters, did Dana see any color.

  Their perspective returned to the shore, where Rikki, her breathing mask dangling on her chest, mugged for the camera. The shuttle and an inflatable shelter stood nearby.

  “Pause,” Blake said. “Our campsite, of course. The sea offers more than ample water as a deuterium source, and something like algae mats as feedstock for our synth vats.”

  “If this is so perfect,” Carlos muttered, “why didn’t you land there first?”

  Antonio looked up from his datasheet. “The local caves run deep. I couldn’t determine the extent of this cave system…with ground-penetrating radar.”

  “Salt water or fresh?” Carlos asked.

  “The sea?” Blake said. “Brackish. Nothing we couldn’t purify, if needed. Any other questions?” He paused for a few seconds. “Moving on, then. The hike up to the caves takes forty-five minutes. Marvin, can you fast-forward, say fifty to one, and debounce the vid while you’re at it?”

  “Done,” the AI said.

  The vid zigzagged up the slope, dodging boulders and gullies. Every few seconds, at this accelerated pace, the camera turned to gaze back. From these higher elev
ations Dana saw that two rivers emptied into the sea. One river entered in a spectacular waterfall. The second river reached the sea through a sinuous gorge and a broad delta.

  They “arrived” in less than a minute at a high cliff face. In the vid, Rikki paused in a cave mouth that was more or less triangular. With her height as a reference the opening measured about four meters wide at ground level, and three meters high.

  “Marvin, resume real time,” Blake said.

  “The front door,” Rikki-in-the-vid narrated. “And a mere hundred or so meters away”—the camera following as she pointed—“once we clear away the boulders, a ready-made landing field for Endeavour.”

  Dana almost missed Carlos glancing at Li from the corner of his eye.

  What’s she up to? Dana wondered.

  At a walking pace, the vid went inside. Marvin adjusted the apparent illumination so smoothly that Dana almost didn’t notice the sputtering of one flare and the igniting of the next. They moved from one grotto to another. Twice, a soaring ceiling opened through a great shaft to the blue-green sky. Sinkholes, she guessed. One shaft looked at least a hundred meters deep!

  It all reminded her of…what? Mammoth Cave. Now there was an ancient memory: she had been eight or nine when her family passed through Kentucky on holiday in North America. And just as in Mammoth Cave, moving deeper and deeper underground brought them to a rushing subterranean river. Sub-Darkian. Whatever.

  “In-home running water,” Blake said. “Fresh, by the way.”

  “What’s the inside temperature?” Antonio asked.

  Blake said, “Away from the entrance and the air shafts? Call it twelve degrees Celsius. Often, that’ll be warmer than the surface.”

  Twelve? Balmy by Martian standards, too.

  “How about flooding?” Dana asked. “Any data?”

  Blake grimaced. “My guess is it won’t be a problem, but that’s so outside my area of expertise. Here’s what I can say. The terrain outside slopes away from the entrance. The cliff overhangs the cave mouth, so rain runoff and snowmelt should hit downhill and keep heading away. Inside the entrance—”

  “The one we’ve found thus far,” Rikki interrupted.

  “Fair enough,” Blake said. “Inside this entrance, the cave floor trends downward. Its slope should carry away whatever rain and snowmelt does get inside. Supposing the cave has other, flood-prone entrances, there is a huge volume to fill before water can reach the upper chambers. And because the caves are dry now, we know the river drains somewhere. That’s also encouraging.”

  As much as Dana wanted to believe, she wasn’t convinced. “How about rain coming through those sinkholes?”

  Rikki said, “There are big chambers upslope of where the sinkholes empty. I’d think we’d want to keep to those upper reaches, at least till we’ve experienced a couple rainstorms.”

  Antonio, his brow furrowed, was flipping holo frames on his datasheet.

  Dana asked, “Antonio? If you have something to add?”

  “I’ve been examining the vid up close. A violent torrent would sweep up big rocks and scar the cave walls. I haven’t seen grooves like…that. There aren’t many puddles. There’s little dried mud and none of it is high on the walls.”

  “Then there’s no flooding risk?” Dana asked.

  Antonio shrugged.

  “And seismically?” Carlos asked. “Is the area stable?”

  Blake said, “On our flyover, I didn’t notice any faults or indications of volcanism. And nothing inside these caves suggests otherwise.”

  “Is that definitive?” Carlos persisted.

  “You want definitive?” Blake glowered. “We don’t have seismometers. I doubt they’d be hard to build, but even on quake-prone territory they might give no indication for years. And minor shocks, if we did detect any, could be the norm everywhere on the planet.”

  “Look at these…stalactites.” Rikki glanced at Blake for confirmation of the word. “They’re old, aren’t they?”

  From what Dana remembered, stalactites grew maybe a few millimeters per year. Blake’s vid showed stalactites at least three meters long. A thousand years old, then, without a major temblor? In a few years, surely, they would learn to build here and would vacate the caves.

  She liked those odds.

  “That whole area must be old,” Antonio said. “Consider those sinkholes. There wasn’t much rubble beneath them. All that rock dissolved. Imagine how…long that process took.”

  “It’s a new world,” Carlos retorted. “Can we really know?”

  “But not new physics. I…think.”

  The longer they analyzed and weighed, mulled and debated, the more Dana wondered, why is Li so quiet?

  *

  Li would never forget the night Mei Yeo won her seat in the California state assembly. Campaign aides and well-wishers thronging the tiny apartment. Anxious chatter and too loud laughter. The sudden hush whenever some volunteer observer texted an update from a polling place. Excitement mounting as the early returns broke Mother’s way. Exuberant cheering—and Mother’s tears of joy—when, long after midnight, her opponent called to concede.

  Li had never seen her mother so happy.

  And never did again. Anyone electable from the People’s Republic of Berkeley was too extreme to advance her agenda in Sacramento.

  And so Li learned at a young age that the purpose of politics is power, not popularity. Mother never did get that lesson. She ran and won and was miserable, stymied, one dreary term after another, rather than admit to the futility of it all. Even after, in her bitterness, she drove Li’s father first to sluts and then to divorce.

  Li had goals for the colony soon to be. And unlike Mother, she would see them come to fruition.

  *

  Would Dana never come to the point? Li wondered.

  Finally, Dana did. “What do you say, folks? Have we found a home?”

  “I’m ready for elbow room,” Carlos said.

  “This site looks good,” Antonio said.

  “Rikki, Blake,” Dana said, “I think I know how you feel. How about—”

  Li cleared her throat, reminding everyone how unsubtle she was. And that something more than site selection was on her mind. “The caves seem adequate, Captain, and my compliments to our intrepid explorers. But I have a question.”

  “Of course.” Dana nodded agreeably, relieved to have consensus about a major decision. Clueless, Li hoped, about the issue at hand.

  Li said, “As I understand it, we’ll land near the beach, hike uphill and clear the boulder field on the flat expanse near the cave entrance, then hop Endeavour to its permanent landing spot. Right?”

  “Right,” Dana said. “Um, wait. What do you mean, permanent?”

  “That that’s where the ship will stay. Over a power cable, Endeavour is our power source. When something surprises us, she’s our emergency shelter and, worst case, our way to evacuate. She’s a secure place to stow some reserve portion of our cargo, for safekeeping.”

  “And the only place within light-years with a shower or a galley,” Carlos threw in.

  Dana frowned, uncertainly. “The DED as a power supply for six of us? That’s like swatting flies with tactical nukes.”

  “It won’t always be just the six of us,” Li said mildly. “The larger point is, we’re settling a barren wilderness. For that we need tech. Unless we conserve the little tech we have, it will wear out before we can replace it.”

  Dana’s eyes narrowed.

  Sensing deeper meanings, finally, are we? Li pressed on. “Without this vessel, we have nothing. No way to power the synth vats, maintain cooling for the embryos, or run the artificial wombs. No way ever to develop the tech to get us out of caves. No way—”

  “I take your point,” Dana said coldly.

  “Do you?” Li shot back. Get really pissed off, Captain. “Wear out this ship through unnecessary use, and to what energy source do we revert? Campfires of our dried shit?”

  “Ethanol dis
tilled…from algae mats. Maybe a hydroelectric…power plant.”

  As he spoke, Antonio squirmed. He did not fare well with conflict and, moreover, was an innocent bystander. Li regretted putting him through this, but it was for the greater good.

  She did everything for the greater good.

  “Alcohol lamps,” she sneered.

  With nostrils flaring, Dana said, “And after the settlement becomes dependent for power on Endeavour? She’s unavailable then for the unanticipated.”

  “So: alcohol lamps,” Li scoffed again.

  She heard Dana’s teeth grinding.

  Work it through, Captain. I’m defying you. Why? Is it because with the ship grounded your claim to any special authority over the rest of us is grounded with it?

  “If I may, Captain,” Blake said. “Li poses an engineering problem, and it has an engineering solution.”

  “Go on, Blake,” Dana said.

  “The second shuttle is still in crates. Run the colony off its reactor. Scavenge that shuttle, as needed, for high-tech parts.”

  “While you joyride around the solar system?” Li challenged. “Endeavour has served us well, but it’s old. Tired. When our one long-range ship breaks down far out in the solar system—and it will—then what?”

  “She’s my ship,” Dana forced the words between clenched jaws. “That hasn’t changed. She isn’t grounded till I say she’s grounded, and if that happens, it’ll be on an engineer’s recommendation, not a shrink’s.”

  “It’s all very well to—”

  “Enough, Li,” Dana growled. “We’ll offload the spare shuttle’s fusion reactor. It’ll give more than ample power to start our colony. We’ll offload most parts and supplies from this ship. Hell, we’ll disconnect and offload Marvin’s servers, so that no matter where Endeavour goes, if it goes, the colony always has the use of Marvin’s archives. All right?”

  “Yes, Captain,” Li said meekly.

  With a parting glower at Li, Dana turned the conversation to scheduling the landing.

  “That was brutal,” Carlos whispered to Li.

  No, she thought, that was reverse psychology. I have Dana just where I want her.