Mars Wars - Abyss of Elysium

by Abyss Of Elysium (Lit)

Ashley retired early. She, like everyone else, grew tired of the deteriorating conditions, constant conflicts and unbearable stresses building around them.

  Peter sat at the computer console in his office trying to coordinate several ideas that had been offered for rescue of the people in orbit. He had assigned different working groups to coordinate rationing and aspects of long term survival. Just before eleven o'clock in the evening, the ping of his C2 interrupted a calming baroque melody and startled him.

  "This is Peter, go ahead."

  "Peter, Francis. Get down to Lipton's quarters, and hurry up."

  "What's the problem now?" he asked, but the line was already dead.

  He ran through the dimly lit and convoluted passageways as quickly as he could to Lipton's apartment. As he approached, he could see several people standing around the open, brightly lit doorway. Francis met him outside.

  "Lipton's dead," he said flatly. "Suicide."

  "What?" Peter asked, still out of breath. "How?"

  "It's easier if you just come on in and see for yourself," Francis replied, his face lined with fatigue and stress. He turned and entered the brilliantly illuminated apartment. Peter hesitated, then followed.

  Lipton had not only turned on every light in his apartment, but had somehow gathered ten or so other dazzling florescent light banks and set them up all around the room. Peter squinted in the brilliance.

  "Why don't you turn some of these off?" he asked, raising his hand to his eyes.

  "Because I wanted you to see it exactly how we found it," Francis replied.

  Then Peter saw Lipton. The astonishing image unnerved him. Lipton’s body sat on a tall bar stool in front of a tiny sink attached to his illegal wet bar, his feet and ankles locked around the legs of the stool. He was dressed in a white bathrobe, his head slumped deeply into his shoulders and hanging down, chin on his chest, facing the sink. His skin was unnaturally ashen, but in typical Lipton style, his black hair was combed back neatly. His arms lay in the sink, palms upturned. The sink was full of blood, mingled with the warm water he had apparently run to deaden the sensations of death. The crimson water filled the sink to the top drain ports. Except for the bizarre pasty color of his skin, he could have been deep in meditation or sleeping. An empty bottle of Scotch lay overturned beside the sink.

  "He slit his wrists to the bone. Apparently he got drunk and killed himself, just as you see it," Francis said plainly.

  Peter looked back at Lipton. The image was pathetic. He felt an unexpected surge of sympathy for him. Peter suddenly saw him as another victim of a social structure that demanded too much of an individual trained to protect the status quo when survival on an alien world often demanded extreme and radical change.

  He tore his gaze away from Lipton to look at who was gathered about the room. To his embarrassment, all eyes were on him: Brinker, Hiraldo, Hernandez and Friedman, all there, looking at him.

  Ashley's words abruptly came back to him again, "...the best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity..."

  Friedman walked over to him. She looked at Lipton for long seconds, then back to Peter. "I have to accept much of the responsibility for this," she said, her voice weak and trembling. "I should have seen it coming this morning in the control center. I should have come here earlier..."

  "Then you found him...?" Peter asked quietly.

  "Yes. I came to check on him, saw the bright lights under the door, and when he didn't answer, I let myself in."

  "You knew Lipton's door-lock combination?" Peter asked, surprised, in an attempt to piece the events together. When he looked at her, she said nothing, but returned his stare, with harsh and gravely critical eyes. Then Peter realized he had invaded her own privacy at the worst possible moment, and he looked away. Where he felt mild compassion for a man who had been suffering enough to kill himself, it obviously went much deeper than that for Friedman.

  But it had been Lipton's decision to kill himself. Peter would be dammed if he would allow Lipton's decision to opt out worsen the chances they all had for survival by deepening a rapidly developing community despondency.

  "Julia, get over it," Peter said with more force than he would have liked. "Lassiter made his own personal choices which were not our business to try and change. By the same token, he should not pull us down with him. You're a psychiatrist, for God's sake. You should know that better than any of us."

  She slapped him hard. It was carefully aimed and executed. "Such rationality isn't so easy to come by for those of us who knew and respected him; for those of us who loved him."

  The reality of his own insensitivity stung him harder than Friedman's flat palm, still burning on his face.

  "I'm sorry, Julia, I truly am," Peter said.

  "May I offer you some advice, since you’ve been so quick to assume absolute control here?" she asked, her voice still sharp and caustic.

  Peter looked at her and said nothing.

  "When the rest find out about this, if those people in space die, as it looks like they will, and if we fail to contact earth, this may became a more common incident than you care to imagine," she said, pointing her finger at Lipton's corpse. "While you work on the engineering realities, keep the human realities in mind as well. It appears that we’re all facing some rather difficult tests. If we’re not prepared, fully prepared, for what faces us, this is the end result."

  "We’ll need your help, Julia. We'll need your knowledge and your compassion and your experience," Peter said softly. “I am sorry.”

  "Spoken like a politician. Lassiter would be proud," she said bluntly.

  Peter was sure he didn't know how to take such a compliment standing beside Lipton's lifeless body. But if Peter was turning out to be a politician, Friedman was craftily engineering her own web, created from her expertise as a psychiatrist.

  Francis had politely stepped aside to allow Peter and Friedman to discuss their business in private, but he had his ear tuned in, nonetheless, and could hear every word.

  "Francis, please ask the medical staff to remove the body," he said.

  "You'll want pictures, first, I presume?" Francis asked.

  "Why?"

  "I would say they would be required in the ensuing investigation."

  Peter bit his tongue. He wanted to ask "what investigation?" but realized Francis was leading him.

  "Dr. Friedman," Peter asked, "will you have one of the medical staff conduct the investigation?"

  "It would be limited to the obvious," she replied. "It wouldn't be productive to waste our resources or time on a detailed effort that would only end up upsetting the others. But Dr. Lynde is correct. Such a course is imperative for the historical record. It must be done."

  "Then I can count on you?" Peter asked.

  She nodded.

  "I'll leave these lights on till the pictures are taken," Francis offered.

  "Sure," Peter replied, looking with great interest at the brilliant banks of florescent tubes. "Why do you think he set these up?"

  "It’s common for some individuals who are deeply depressed to want light," Friedman began. "Light acts as a stimulus that makes depressed people feel better. Some heart attack victims who lose significant whole body circulation crave fans. It makes them feel like they are getting more oxygen. Light acts in much the same way to victims of depression. It makes them feel like they have more control over their environment. Oddly enough, it will also cause some significant physiological and psychological improvement."

  "That explains the lights, then," Peter said, and successfully avoided the temptation to look at her. "Francis, will you assist Dr. Friedman?"

  But Francis had begun to stare at the lights and it was obvious he had not heard. “I just don’t get this,” he finally said with vacant eyes, staring into the empty space before his eyes.

  “Don’t get what?” Peter replied, his eyes sweeping the room all about him.

  “This. All of this,” Francis replied wafting his hand in a
semi-circle all around. “None of this feels right. I just don’t get this.”

  Peter looked at him for a long second, but the stinging on his face and the urgency of the moment pushed him forward.

  “Francis, snap out of it, will you?” Peter demanded in a harsh tone totally out of character.

  Francis’ eyes refocused and he nodded. "How about that computer program?" he asked, pointing to Lipton's personal computer.

  "Is that the same program that Fabian mentioned awhile ago?" Peter asked, surprised.

  "One in the same. It's still running; still using the geology files."

  "Ask Toon to come down here as soon as possible and interrupt it. There's no telling what it's doing."

  On Lipton's computer, just a few feet from his dead body, the program continued on, faithfully following his last instructions, flashing the words: STILL COLLATING.

  artwright lied to his eight passengers. He told them that the ground was working on their situation and would have it solved by morning. Not one of the admin types knew the difference. They had spent the sol in space quietly reading; no one was interested in challenging the flight crew's plans or nerves after tending to Hicks' bruises. After such a harried sol, they all gladly declared lights out early.

  Cartwright aimed his line of sight antenna at Kerry in orbit and put in a PC2 call that could not be monitored from the ground.

  "Good evening, Lieutenant Kerry. Got any good news for us?"

  "No, guys, I'm sorry," Kerry replied, fighting back overwhelming fatigue and emotions. He had never worked a more exhausting mental day in his life. He had found nothing except the tragic inevitability of their plight.

  "Bob, we're going to pull the plug. We wanted you to know."

  "No, damn you, - no! Let me work it some more," Kerry screamed back at him. "Give me a chance, at least."

  "Bob, you know as well as I do there isn't a snowball's chance in hell. At least admit that and let us go."

  At once Kerry’s silence betrayed that he understood.

  “Let us go.”

  Yes, it was really that simple. He was just an uncomfortable hindrance in the inevitable. He had worked one miracle, but there could not be another. He had to let them go; to hold on any longer would not be fair.

  "Guys, I just want you to know something," Kerry said, his voice choking with emotion. There was a long period of silence while he attempted to recover his paralyzed voice. "I love you guys. I did everything I could."

  "Bob, we know that. You gave us these last hours. Thanks," Cartwright replied, his hand gently draped over Michner's shoulder. "Bob, Siggy and I want you to tell our families how much we loved them.

  "Ian, Siggy...I...," Kerry tried to begin.

  "We know, Bob. We know," Siggy replied. "Now get on about your business, spaceman," she said, then cut the link.

  erry had never felt so utterly alone and vulnerable. There was no glory left here in this dark, cold and empty hell. He could not bear to even look out of the window at the angry red planet below. He physically pushed himself away from the console and large windows. Sliding behind his seat, he gripped its back and sobbed openly.

  artwright looked over his shoulder at the eight sleeping passengers in the dim lights of the lander. With the multicolored instruments before them, it gently illuminated the cockpit and their faces. And with this image came the altogether surprising memories of childhood Christmas mornings. He then turned and looked to his pilot, Siggy. Her face was no longer strong and determined. It was softer somehow; more sensitive in the dim and multicolored light.

  She looked back to him and caught his eyes. The tears began to stream down her face. Cartwright reached up with his fingers and wiped them away. He said nothing.

  "Ian, please promise me something," she whispered. "Say something with me. Please say you will."

  He nodded.

  She gripped his fingers and pulled his hand toward her, squeezing them tightly in hers. "Now I lay me down to sleep...", she began in a whisper.

  He looked at her and with these words, he heard her sweet voice for the first time. They had worked together for years, but he was so determined to make things equal, that he blocked the fact that she was a woman from his mind. He had successfully removed her body and her voice as irrelevant from their professional lives. He suddenly realized that before he had heard only her words, never her voice. And now, as it came to him, he realized how desperately beautiful, how rich and full it really was. The image of her beauty hurried at him, flooding his vision; he could hardly block it away. She was no longer just a female; she was a stunning, vulnerable woman who needed whatever he could give her. He looked deeply into her eyes, surprised at what he found there. He smiled tenderly and with understanding, trying to fathom the full depth of the beauty he had ignored for so long; discovered here, at last, at the very end on the final voyage. And he said,

  "Now I lay me down to sleep..."

  The lander’s computers would record that all members were sound asleep before the computer ordered the first change in the atmosphere. The lander's windows were aimed away from Mars, pointing toward the stars. Siggy lay curled tightly in Cartwright's arms. By special order, the life support system slowly replaced all the cabin oxygen with nitrogen, gently reducing the pressure at the same time. The life support system shut down completely after that. None of the occupants awoke from their deep and final slumber.

  16

  ieutenant Robert Kerry was not stranded in space. Since the days of the International Space Station in the late 20th century, all permanently orbiting space platforms had been equipped with escape pods. The escape pod attached to the Goddard looked exactly like all its predecessors: a gumdrop shaped capsule whose sole purpose was to evacuate its inhabitants. The capsule fired a single solid rocket to slow down and then droped by parachute until retro rockets finalized its less than glorious landing. The pod's ancestry could be traced in a non-diverging, straight line to the Apollo moon capsule of the previous millennium. With almost no improvements or changes, these life boat pods had been duplicated by the hundreds and used successfully all over the solar system.

  Kerry did not necessarily have to use it. He had the clear option of continuing with the original plan, jettisoning the cargo pod into a stable orbit and leaving for earth by himself.

  He agonized over the options. He was now completely alone and if he left for earth, he would not see another human for 273 earth-days. He had spent so much time ridiculing the colonist's theory of a planet wide nuclear conflagration on earth, that he had not analyzed it carefully. Now he was not only physically alone, he was one of the few humans in this region of the solar system who clung to the optimistic belief that the earth was unaffected and would be calling at any minute. Yet time continued to slip by without word of any kind from his home planet.

  Soon after the life support systems failed on the lander, and it became obvious to everyone what had happened to the occupants, Kerry asked BC1 for a detailed assessment of the earthside communications anomaly. After a sober appraisal of the information, he began for the first time to entertain grave doubts about his own perilously optimistic hypothesis, but he had still not finally abandoned hope. There was not enough information to understand the full range of probabilities either way. He completed a detailed launch window assessment and figured he had at least four launch opportunities in the next 26 hours. With this assessment, he had time to wait a little longer. Once he decided on an option and pressed the firing button on either craft, it would be too late to turn back and reconsider.

  t BC1, Peter had more problems to deal with on the ground than the fate of Lieutenant Kerry. But it was high on his list. Since Kerry's decision would affect the outlook of all of them, he gave it some priority.

  Friedman's emotional caveat to consider the morale of the community as a leadership priority was heavy on his mind. Every human at BC1 knew of Lipton's suicide within an hour of its discovery. Not two hours after that, word came from the control
center that the life support systems in the lander had failed. Though they all had accepted the reality that the passengers were doomed, the news of their quiet death did not come easily.

  As the sun rose over them, the base was like a tomb. So many people had been up all night discussing and worrying about the death of Lipton and ten other fellow human beings that most were sleeping late. Peter himself caught precious few hours rest but was up early nonetheless. This would be a crucial sol.

  He poured himself a cup of steaming hot synthetic coffee in the dining hall and sat down alone at the end of a long table. When he had left his quarters, Ashley was still asleep.

  He felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to see who it was. The cook, Rat, stood beside him.

  "I take it you had a rough night, boss," he said.

  "Indeed I did," Peter replied with a weak smile.

  "May I offer you some advice?" Rat asked sincerely.

  "Please do."

  "No offense here, but cool down a little. Lower your blood pressure. You're taking this whole thing too seriously. I remember you before this whole mess started. You were a lot more enjoyable to be around. I mean, if we have you to look up to now, give us someone we can like and respect, no offense."

  "None taken," Peter replied and attempted a sincere smile. "Do you really think I'm taking survival too seriously?" he asked.

  "You’re damn right; excuse my French," Rat began. "You scientist types are either going to figure it all out or you're not. Either way, you're going to give it your best shot, am I right?"

  "Yes."

  "Then you can give it your best and be miserable and worry or you can go down the same road and let the chips fall where they may. If I'm not mistaken, you're worried about Lipton, worried about those poor dead souls in space, worried about the transients and colonists, worried about the other guy in space, worried about your wife, worried about the earth, worried about the Soviets… hey, look what worry did for Lipton."

  Peter smiled and slowly nodded his head. "You called it right on the money, Rat. And you're correct, of course." Then he lifted his cup to Rat. "I dedicate this sol to you. Thanks."