Outpost

by Allan Baillie

  ‘That’s it.’ Boss switched off her computer. ‘Lunch?’

  6.

  Lunch

  THEY ate fake fish – only Cap knew the taste of real fish. On the floating table before them was the panoramic seascape from Home.

  Dece looked at the rippling tide and thought, All right, it fits with the meal. But it should not be there. It’s not that the rest of them minded the water, really; maybe they would get a chance to see it for real one day. But Saphare had wanted to see Ord on that rock wall, hadn’t he? He had even stopped his bug hunt to find the perfect spot for the cameras. Because they were not on Home or on Dur, they were on the moon, Ord, orbiting mighty Cotal. And that should be something to watch.

  But on the day that Saphare was killed Cap changed the Ord panorama to his waterscape. He said Dece shouldn’t look at the Dreaming Sea anymore.

  Dece shrugged.

  Cap was looking at Dece with a peculiar expression.

  ‘What’s up?’ Boss said.

  ‘I don’t think Dece needs coddling anymore.’

  Dece blinked.

  Cap pressed a button on the table, and his warm sea dissolved into the rocky Saphare Mountains and the Dreaming Sea. ‘This is where our future is.’

  Dece glanced at Seps and saw his own astonishment echoed in her face. Boss turned to Dece.

  ‘Are you all right about this?’

  Dece nodded.

  He thought, Come on, Boss, you know how it is. Cap didn’t swap Ord for Home to protect me. He did it for himself, because he wanted to see the sea and pretend he could feel the wind, the tide moving, taste the salt. He hated everything about Saphare – the bugs, the camera, everything – and he hated Ord. Until now …

  Boss studied Dece’s face before nodding.

  Dece looked at the scene, found the spot where Saphare had died, and a quiet smile crept over his face. He thought, Welcome back! He remembered what Saphare had said: ‘Watch out for disasters, everywhere, but if something happens anyway, learn from it. Use it.’ So I am using your death as my alarm bell and trying to work out where I might get killed. Seps says there are monsters here, and there are. Everywhere.

  Boss frowned slowly at Cap. ‘You’re suddenly keen on this place? Our future?’

  ‘Well, we will see.’

  They ate the fake fish and watched the ice flakes scurry over the cobalt blue sea and black mountains.

  Cap grinned at Seps. ‘Are you wondering where Boss’s message is now? Still between here and the Peak? No, that would have taken a nano of a second. So where is it? The satellite around Ord, Cotal, the dead moon, Dur?’

  ‘It won’t be at the moon yet,’ Seps said.

  ‘No, I guess not.’ Cap sounded disappointed.

  The dead moon didn’t have a name because the only thing on it was a box for collecting and sending signals. Seps once worked out how many light-years they were from it, and when she did she was miserable for a full Ord orbit around Cotal.

  Messages didn’t move at the speed of light, they used energy particles in the black mass between the stars, which travelled even faster than light, even though they seemed slow. Everyone still used light-years as a measure because no solid, no ship or person, could move faster than light. Seps calculated that Cap was seven centuries, five decades and three years old – or he would be if he had travelled from Home to Dur and Ord without ‘sleeping’, being in a dormant state, like a seed in the desert waiting for the rain. But he had used the pods. Everyone had. They had got into the ship’s pods in Dur and slept all the way to Ord. It’s just the way things were, but their old friends on Dur would have aged ten years just in the time Dece and the others were asleep because their ship was moving so fast.

  Cap shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter how long it takes to get there – a day, a week, a month. This time they will listen to us.’

  ‘It won’t take a month,’ Boss said.

  ‘It feels like it will.’

  Seps looked at Dece, who shifted his eyes back to the Dreaming Sea.

  This place doesn’t belong to Cap or Boss, Dece thought. Ord is our place.

  He watched a low ridge in the sea hissing and waited a while for the eruption. When his attention returned to the room he realised there had been a long silence at the table.

  Finally Boss looked at Cap and spoke.

  ‘You’re thinking …’

  Cap nodded. ‘It’s there. You can’t ignore it.’

  Boss nodded back. ‘Wait for Control’s message.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, really.’

  Dece slowly worked out the meaning of Cap’s words, and he felt cold. Frightened.

  7.

  The Decision

  THREE days later, Ord was sliding along Cotal’s rings when Seps shouted, ‘There it is!’

  Dece didn’t want to look, but he turned to the screen anyway.

  Cap had zoomed in on the image and was aiming at the right place for the lump, but there were still hunks of dirty ice in the way and particles wafting across it.

  ‘Yes,’ Boss said dully.

  Dece was surprised by the dead tone in Boss’s voice. He had half wanted the lump to be gone by the time the ring turned, for it to have disintegrated in the ice, or left for a distant star. But he wanted to know what it was. He’d caught Saphare’s curiosity.

  Cap tilted his head and squinted at the lump. ‘It looks like a ship.’

  ‘Why haven’t Control told us there is a ship around here?’ Boss said.

  ‘Because Control has forgotten about us, like I said.’

  ‘And why hasn’t this “ship” contacted us?’

  ‘See if you can talk to them,’ Cap said.

  Boss clicked switches. ‘Hello, hello … This is Ord Base calling.’ She hesitated. ‘Calling the ship in the rings of Cotal.’

  Cotal cracked and boomed, but the lump was silent.

  ‘Are you in trouble?’

  Boss listened. She pressed a button to mute the sounds coming from Cotal, even from the roar of the stars. But there was total silence. She looked at Cap.

  Cap glared at the lump as it drifted slowly.

  ‘You think it is an asteroid.’

  Boss said nothing.

  ‘But it could be a ship. They could be repairing something. They may be picking up minerals from the rings.’

  ‘Yes,’ Boss said slowly.

  ‘All right, it is unlikely.’ Cap said. ‘Put the computers on it, since we are doing things which are unlikely.’

  Dece closed his eyes. Cap and Boss had investigated all the normal things the lump could be. That had ended. Now they were doing things like Saphare used to, with his probes into the geysers. He would have loved this.

  Most of the computers were set up so they could listen to thousands of stars in the hope that they would catch a planet talking. And they also threw out numbers, patterns, which no star could do, in the hope of someone listening. But now Boss was turning the disk at the Peak towards the lump.

  She slowly frowned.

  ‘What? Is something there?’ Cap said.

  ‘No, no. Look at the chunks of ice in the rings.’

  The boulders and rocks hit each other frequently, some breaking away and others clinging to one another.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That asteroid can’t have been long in the rings. The rings are like a chopping machine. There would be nothing to see after a few turns.’

  Cap nodded. ‘You may be right about an asteroid, but a ship with its hard hull would take longer to destroy.’

  ‘So you think we just missed seeing it?’

  ‘Until the boy looked.’

  Dece preened a little.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Boss. ‘There are better possibilities.’

  ‘If it’s a ship, it would be picking something up from the rings, right? And they can’t speak to us until this trouble they have …’ Cap glared at the lump. ‘Anything?’

  Boss fiddled with her computer and then shook her head. ‘J
ust a thought. Why don’t we ask this “ship” to flash a light? Any light. We would see it, wouldn’t we?’

  ‘Do it.’

  She had already tapped in the message before he spoke. Everyone stared at the lump for a long time, but there wasn’t a flicker.

  ‘Well, that’s it,’ Cap said.

  Cap may have been meaning, Let’s do nothing while the lump goes slowly around with the rings. But Dece knew that was not what he meant.

  Boss knew it too. ‘Why not wait for Control to tell us what they know?’

  ‘What’s the point? It’ll take too long and if that is a ship, waiting for Control could be disastrous to the crew. I have to see what I can do.’

  ‘And what if that ship is not ours?’

  Now it was out there. Dece watched Cap’s face.

  Cap shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter. If they are gathering minerals or something they will go away soon. All right, maybe their computers won’t talk to ours, but if we are sitting outside they can’t ignore us.’

  What does he mean when he says ‘us’? Dece thought.

  But he knew.

  ‘We are in a hurry.’ Cap glanced at him. ‘Dece, get your suit.’

  Boss looked at Dece. ‘They could destroy you.’

  Dece hesitated.

  ‘Like zap us?’ Cap laughed. ‘That stays in the old stories. If they don’t like the Tug they’ll just move away.’ He looked at Dece. ‘Go on!’

  ‘I want to go!’ Seps yelled.

  ‘No!’ Boss shouted.

  ‘You stay right here.’ Cap banged the table and moved towards the suits.

  ‘It’s not fair!’ Seps thumped to her room.

  Boss watched her leave and tried once more to get Dece out of going, but Cap shook his head and pushed Dece to the suits.

  Dece pulled on his suit and moved into the airlock. Cap hit the red button and as the other door opened, Dece stared at the immense bug, the Tug.

  ‘This is not fair,’ he muttered.

  8.

  The Tug

  DECE waddled after Cap. In the oily gleam of the hangar’s dim light, the Tug’s massive metal body seemed alive and hostile. The Tug’s escalator descended, looking like some huge creature’s long tongue reaching for him. Dece glared at it.

  Stop it, he said to himself. You’re being infected by Seps. She plays with nightmares.

  He clicked his tongue.

  ‘What?’ Cap said.

  ‘Nothing.’ Dece hurried onto the shivering escalator.

  When they reached the top, he and Cap stepped off and let the escalator slide up to be part of the wall. The airlock pumped air around them until the door opened. A green light washed over the interior, showing the machinery locked into the walls, an ugly drilling machine, and a winch on the floor. But everything looked soft in the green, as if swimming in a deep grotto. Cap said it was something the scientists had worked out, that green calms everyone, as if people were going back to a funny fish state.

  Dece had never swum and had never seen a real fish with his own eyes. He had never felt like a fish on the Tug. But the green was all right, he supposed.

  His helmet winked a yellow light at him and folded back. They didn’t need their helmets. The engines had started warming up the moment Cap had pressed the button for the escalator, and air was moving around the Tug. Cap moved to a wall and the wall obediently slipped sideways.

  Dece hurried after Cap. The Tug was waking up slowly, the fine lines of its veins pumping under them, the metal shivering as it expanded, the fuel bubbling, the millions of parts softly singing to each other. He moved past the sleeping pods and battery of computers.

  Cap frowned and turned towards the closed door. ‘What was that?’

  Dece had heard nothing but the Tug working. ‘I missed it.’

  ‘You would miss Cotal if it was right in front of you. Never mind.’

  They drifted past another sliding wall and stopped at the bridge deck.

  There were four seats, a few buttons on flat panels before the seats and a dull wall above the panel. And that was it. Thieves would never steal the Tug – they would never get the thing started.

  Dece and Cap settled down on the two centre seats and Cap waved his arm at the top left-hand corner of the panel in front of him. Some dim lights came on, and when he touched some of them the wall became a screen projecting an image of rocks and shadows.

  Cap wandered through the Tug via its computers. ‘I don’t know what that sound was, but it’s not there now. Maybe we picked up one of Saphare’s microbes.’

  Dece murmured.

  Cap looked at him. ‘All right, engine one?’

  ‘Um …’

  ‘Are you awake?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Engine one?’

  Dece waved his arm over the screen and read the numbers on the edge of it. ‘Engine one fine,’ he said dully. But there was a faint tremble in his voice.

  ‘Engine two?’

  ‘Engine two fine.’

  ‘Engine …’

  And so on. The check-up of the Tug was tedious and to Dece it was not necessary. The computers had already gone over everything. If anything was wrong they would be flashing lights and ringing bells.

  Cap stopped halfway through the check-up and looked at Dece with a tilt of his head. ‘Are you a little nervous?’

  Dece started to shake his head, but his eyes caught Cap’s. He said, ‘Yes, a little bit.’

  Cap nodded. ‘Good. That way you will keep your eyes open.’ And he went back to the list.

  Finally he was finished. ‘Right?’

  Dece sucked in a breath. ‘Right.’

  Cap adjusted the screen view from the top of the rock to the bottom, taking in the immense metal door. It felt like the Tug had become a bug that was desperately trying to get out. But Dece knew the screen was picking up images from the cameras planted all over the Tug.

  ‘Fine. Open up,’ Cap said.

  Cap could do everything from his panel, but Dece was happy to have something to do. He leaned across the seat next to him, flicked his arm over a purple square on the wall, and a door began to slide up. Particles of ice skidded under the door and whirled around inside. Dece sensed the Tug shivering, as if there was a wild wind in the hangar, but there was no air, no wind on Ord, and the Tug was anchored on a metal base. He was watching the screen as the Tug glided away from the rock.

  Cap touched his panel and the door slid away. The Tug moved towards the ice sea. The engines weren’t taking over yet though. The motorised metal slab on which the Tug was sitting was shifting it instead. The Tug came out of the hangar like a moon rising, slowly. There was ice on the rocky ground, rock and ice fissuring off from the slab, and then the screen view lifted from the rock to the ice sea.

  The sea was erupting.

  ‘There are a lot of geysers,’ Dece said.

  ‘The Tug can ignore them.’

  He could see five – six – geysers of ice thundering into Cotal from the sea, but they were distant. He licked his lips and nodded.

  ‘Engines,’ Cap said quietly to remind himself. He touched his panel and the engines began to fire.

  Cap said that once one of the connecters that had held an old shuttle hadn’t let go. The shuttle had tilted and crashed, exploding into a ball of fire. But that wouldn’t happen now. The Tug’s computers controlled the engines and the connectors and if something went wrong they would shut down everything.

  But Cap watched the numbers race past anyway, as if he could spot trouble before the computers did. ‘Good, good, we’re going.’

  Dece looked at the stern as the fuel ignited over the slab. He could feel the Tug shaking for about a moment and then it stopped. His throat closed in fright but he glanced at Cap, who was nodding.

  Stupid idiot, Dece thought. The engines had cut out because they were not needed anymore. The inertia of the Tug would keep it going. How many times had he gone through that now?

  ‘All right, not bad
,’ said Cap, sort of patting the Tug like a child.

  Dece looked back to the stern. The cloud over the slab was a bug, its head, its eyes. The geysers raced after the Tug, and in their wake the ice sea was shrinking and the mountains were shadows on the cracked blues of the moon. And Ord was alone with the stars. A soft white-blue ball with a faint crescent sun.

  Then Cap clicked on all the screens at the Tug’s bow.

  Dece jerked his head back and gasped.

  ‘Yes,’ Cap said.

  9.

  Idiot

  ALL the screens on the bridge were showing a full view of Cotal and its rings.

  Dece had seen images of Cotal on the small computer screens and the panorama on the wall of the Base, and he’d seen Cotal itself from the shelter at the Peak, but all these views were from Ord. They showed Ord’s mountains scraping the clouds of Cotal and Ord’s ice geysers tickling its storms. Somehow, that made Cotal seem a little tame. As if Ord’s mountains were telling Dece that massive thing out there was not real.

  But now there was only Cotal.

  Cotal’s rings were sliced by whirling clouds of gas. The atmosphere was grey, with thick belts of brown, bright azure and blue gas belching out and eddying around a huge red storm. Clouds of gas were spinning around each other, and the biggest was a mass of hot red around a yellow nucleus. The yellow nucleus could swallow a thousand Ords in one gulp and that was what the Tug was hurtling towards.

  But Cap was nodding happily. He even smiled at Dece and said, ‘Very good.’

  What do you mean? thought Dece. Look at the storm!

  But he didn’t say anything.

  Cap finally moved – slowly – and fiddled with his panel. Dece heard the little pieces of machinery clicking to alter the direction of the Tug. The image on screen drifted slowly away from the yellow hurricane.

  Come on, Dece thought. He could go to the pod and sleep for a century before the screen moved off the storm.

  But it did move, and the figures below the screen rattled down. The blue belches slid away, and a thick belt of brown spread over the screen. Then the rings appeared. Just a blur before Cotal for a few seconds, but then the Tug was heading towards them. Dece began to relax.