by J Battle
There they waited for everyone to leave.
Within minutes they had the world to themselves.
The habitat was spinning around its axis, giving them Earth normal gravity. Above them shone the sun, a long narrow tube of brightness stretching from one pole to the other, one and a half kilometres above the ground. The sun was programmed to dim to a faint glow for nine hours in each twenty-four hour cycle.
As they skipped out of the dell, the sun was at its brightest.
As it was so warm and they were so absolutely alone, Sarah slipped from her work clothes without a word. Max reached for her but he was too slow, she was away in a sprint across the meadow. He paused for a moment to enjoy the view then he leapt after her.
He would have caught up with her easily enough if they hadn’t both been brought to a shuddering halt as the alarm sounded. The claxons blared their fury across the empty habitat, echoing back and forward.
‘What is it?’ Sarah called back to him.
‘I don’t...’
He didn’t have to finish as a clear artificial voice broadcast its message across the habitat.
‘Alert. Alert. Acceleration is due to commence in eight minutes from now. The habitat must be evacuated before that time. Alert. Alert. Acceleration…’ The voice repeated itself over and over.
Max retraced his steps and grabbed Sarah’s discarded clothes, then he raced back to her.
‘Quick. Its only eight hundred metres but we’d better hurry. We don’t want to be caught here when the acceleration starts.’
‘Why…Oh, of course.’
‘Yes, we don’t know how great the G will be but it’s likely to be close to one full Earth value, and we don’t to be here then, because this ground will feel as if it is vertical.’
They reached the southern wall of the habitat with a couple of minutes to spare. Sarah took the time to get dressed.
‘What do you think’s happened?’ she grunted, as she struggled into her overalls.
‘I don’t know, but maybe that’s why there was the gap in the schedules, so this could happen. Is someone trying to steal the habitat? That doesn’t make any sense. Even if it accelerates as high as two G, it would take us ages to reach enough speed to have a chance of escaping recapture.’
The southern wall towered above them, a vertical disc three kilometres in diameter, ringed by the accommodation and storage facilities that would support the initial population of nearly twenty thousand young people during the proposed five year long drive phase. They would be a little cramped during that period until the drive stopped, and the habitat was spun back up to one G, then they would be able to fill the whole habitat and have plenty of room, to live their lives and raise their families.
‘Sit on the ground and lean your back against the wall,’ said Sarah.
‘Right,’ said Max, doing just as she did. ‘We don’t know how quickly the G’s will ramp up but, really, it should take hours to make a big difference.’
‘We’ll be OK though, won’t we?’
Max smiled. ‘Don’t worry we’ll soon be caught. Treat it as a trial run; we’ll probably be famous when we get back.’
The acceleration began slowly. At first there was a little pressure as the southern wall pushed against their backs. They felt a little queasy as their bodies became confused as to which way was down.
Max held his left hand out before him, his arm stretched. The centrifugal force was pulling his arm towards what he thought of as the ground. When he relaxed his arm it fell in an arch and thudded gently against the southern wall.
He tried again after five minutes and this time he noticed that it took slight more of an effort to push his hand out before him. When he relaxed the thud against the wall was no longer gentle.
He tried to do the maths, but he lacked the data. If it was accelerating this fast already, it wasn’t going to stop at one G.
Sarah was beside him, on her back against the southern wall, her bottom and legs on the ground. Or was she lay on her back on the noncrete ground with her bottom and legs leaning on the grass covered wall?
‘What shall we do? Do we just wait for it to stop?’ She reached her arm over to Max; it flopped against the southern wall.
‘I don’t know,’ said Max, then he flipped on to his stomach, pushing himself up the wall until his feet were on the ground.
‘This is weird. I can feel my weight against the ground; it feels normal, like I’m standing, but it also feels as if I’m lying on the ground.’ He did a press up, then a few more. It wasn’t too hard, but it wasn’t easy.
‘I think it’s about one G now.’
He twisted and ended up with his back against the grass. He pushed his legs straight and was upright, standing on the southern wall.
‘Can you walk?’ Sarah hadn’t moved; she just stared at him. Her face was screwed up in concentration.
Max tried to move, to take a step. But he couldn’t pull himself away from the ground. He turned to his left and was able to shuffle along, pushing both hands against the ground, his body twisted.
‘We can’t stay here,’ said Sarah. ’If the G gets any higher we won’t be able to move.’
She rolled over onto her front and aligned herself so that her feet were against the grass on what was now obviously the wall, and began to roll along the smooth noncrete of the ground.
Max tried to follow her, but her method was so much quicker than his. He lowered himself to the ground and copied her. He could see where she was going. Fifty metres from them was the first of the utility buildings and they were in luck; it was the medical centre.
If their luck held they might find that it contained emergency medical stasis chambers where they would be safe until this ridiculous situation was resolved.
If they were not lucky, he was beginning to think they were going to be in serious trouble.
It was less than thirty minutes since the drive had started and the G was already past one, maybe at one and a half.
He’d read the drive protocols and knew that the engine was set to reach one G over a period of six hours and it was programmed to go no higher without a manual over-ride .
So he rolled as fast as he could after Sarah.
Chapter 19
‘Why did you disable my ship? It couldn’t do you any harm.’
‘I’m not sure that is entirely true.’ Jack was only half listening to Debois; he was busy checking system readiness for flicker. Everything should be optimum, but it didn’t hurt to check.
Debois paused in his adjustment of the straps on his acceleration couch and looked at the dark back before him,
‘What do you mean?’
‘You mini-flicked here; you had to. You couldn’t have got here so quickly any other way. An in system flicker; even I couldn’t do that. Well, I could, but not without disastrous consequences. Unpredictable effects to the orbits of anything within 200 million kilometres.’
‘We could already have been out here, waiting for you. We always knew you’d come back, you know?’
‘You’d be extremely lucky to be in the right place at the right time, on the possible two billion kilometres circumference I could have arrived at.’
‘What if there were dozens of us, just waiting for you?’
‘There would have to be hundreds to make it statistically likely.’
‘OK. I give in. You’re right. We mini-flicked. It took us two days to launch and exceed the Moon’s orbit; then another five minutes and we were here.’
‘So, in answer to your original question, with that sort of technology, I couldn’t allow them to follow me. That was the plan, wasn’t it?’
‘Only so I’d have a change of clothes and access to a full range of hair and skin care products.’
Jack grunted and left the bridge.
Debois lay back in his acceleration couch. His hands shook as he fastened the buckles.
**********
Number Two rode the first ship to the planet’s only moon. A
small, rocky, pock-marked place that his fellow replicants would use up within the year
The other ships were going further of course. There were six rock worlds in this system; three were quite small, but the others were considerably larger than the first planet.
Quite enough to occupy Number Two and his replicants, in the medium term. After that, well, there were always the stars.
Chapter 20
Sarah reached the wall of the medical centre first. She groaned as she looked up at the door, four metres above her head as she lay on the ex-southern wall.
Without waiting for Max, she spread herself out against the wall/floor and began to crawl up towards the door. The one G centrifugal pull dragged at her, but the one and half G pressure from the wall gave her traction. She was already half way there when she heard Max grunting with effort just behind her. She didn’t stop to look, she kept on crawling.
The strike pad was on her side of the door, so she didn’t have to climb past the door. However, it was one and a half metres above her, at a right angle to the wall she clung to.
She couldn’t turn around for fear of falling to the ground four metres below. In exasperation she thumped the wall.
‘I can’t reach it!’ she gasped, as Max drew level with her. ’It’s too far.’
Max tried to work out what they should do. They didn’t have much time; they were already at one and three quarter G, he suspected.
‘Right, Sarah. This is what we’re going to do. I’m going to wrap an arm around you to hold you in place. Then you’re going to roll over on to your back and sit up. Then you’ll be able to reach the pad.’
‘No, I’ll fall,’ she protested.
‘No you won’t. Trust me, I won’t let you fall.’
She closed her eyes for a moment and pressed her forehead against the wall.
‘OK,’ she muttered, so quietly.
Max shuffled until his body was parallel to the one G ex ground with his legs spread and his right arm stretched out, splayed fingers gripping as best he could against the one and three quarters G current ground. He wrapped his left arm over Sarah’s narrow back.
‘Now,’ he whispered.
Without a word she twisted herself on to her back, yelping as she slipped a couple of centimetres.
‘I’ve got you.’ Max held her in place for a moment, then moved his arm down to the top of her thighs.
Sarah took a deep breath and began to sit up. She made it to nearly half way before she was dragged back by the unforgiving G’s.
On Earth, Sarah weighed just fifty kilos; around thirty of them would be above waist level. Sarah was quite good at sit-ups but, at one and three quarters G, she was trying to lift more than fifty kilos.
‘That was the trial run’ whispered Max. ‘You’ll do it this time.’
Sarah knew she could do it. She could jerk her back off the wall and her stomach muscles could do the rest. But would she jerk her whole body off the wall?
She arched her back slightly, testing the strength of the pull. Then she jerked herself away from the wall, screaming as she felt herself slipping.
She barely noticed that her hand slapped the strike pad as she began to fall forward.
Max lunged towards the now open doorway as they began to slide down; he only just made it, with his fingertips.
They clung together for a moment, gathering their strength. Then they began to climb through the doorway.
Chapter 21
Max half laughed, half groaned as he collapsed on his back beside Sarah. They’d climbed through the doorway and rolled a metre or so down to the bottom wall.
‘Where shall we look first?’ asked Sarah, after a moment.
Max looked around the room; then he noticed something in the corner. ‘Oh no,’ he whispered, half to himself.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I think this is just the reception area. We‘ll have to climb those stairs.’
Sarah lifted her heavy head and looked. They didn’t seem that steep. Under normal circumstances, she could have taken them three at a time. But now?
They were lucky that the stairs were against the wall they were leaning against. It would make the climb in two G a little easier.
‘You go first, I’ll catch you if you fall,’ said Max.
‘If I fall, I’ll flatten you. I must weigh over one hundred kilos now.’
‘That means I weigh one fifty then,’ said Max, as they both began to roll towards the stairs.
The stairs were easier than they expected, though the left handrail was uncomfortable as it dug into their sides.
They were able to lean against the wall and take careful heavy steps, pulling themselves along the handrail. It was hard slow work and every straightened leg was a victory, but at last they made it to the next floor.
They carefully lowered themselves to the floor for a moment’s rest before they continued, as always against the lower left hand wall.
‘It’s not going to stop is it?’
‘Well, it will when the fuel runs out,’ snapped Max, immediately regretting it. ’I mean we’ll soon be rescued. It’s been an hour now, there’ll be things in motion already.’
‘Even so, how bad can it get?’
‘We haven’t got time to be worrying about that. We need to find the stasis chambers while we can still move.’
They were in a long corridor with eight doorways on each side. At the end of the corridor was another stairway. Max didn’t want to even think about that.
The room they wanted was the third door on the right which meant they had to leave the safety of the wall and crawl up across the corridor, and drag themselves into the room.
Max gave a little cheer when he spotted the stasis chambers only a few metres away. But he’d already seen their next problem.
The chambers were two metres in length and, when closed, they were just a little over one and three quarter metres high. With the lid opened, they would still have to climb over the one point four high edge.
He guessed that they were close to three G now: he wasn’t sure he could even stand, never mind climb.
‘Come on,’ he said, and they began to crawl towards the chambers. They were slightly fortunate the chambers were aligned parallel to the bottom wall, which would help them when they tried to stand.
Sarah chuckled to herself.
‘What?’
‘I must weigh one fifty kilos now. I saw a picture of a girl once who weighed that much. How do I look?’
‘Great.’ Was all Max had the breath to say.
They were leaning against the base of the first chamber. For a moment they just sat there, their bodies bone weary from the relentless G’s.
Then, without a word, they turned and struggled to their knees.
Sarah leant her forehead against the cool side of the chamber.
‘Ready?’ asked Max, raising his heavy arms to grasp the open edge of the chamber. With a mighty heave he pushed and pulled himself to his feet. For a second his knees refused to straighten, but at last he was upright.
He looked down at Sarah. She was slumped against the chamber watching him; he could see there were tears in her eyes.
‘Come on, Girl,’ he said. ‘You’re fitter than me. You can do it.’
Slowly she lifted her arms and grabbed the edge of the chamber; she closed her eyes and he could see her knuckles whiten. With a groan she pulled against the three G weight pressing to the floor and began to rise, her face red and her hair lank and sweaty.
She was half way to her feet, fighting for support with her rubbery weak legs, when Max put an arm around her waist and pulled her upright.
Together they leaned against the chamber, gasping for breath.
‘We’re not going to make it, are we?’ whispered Sarah.
‘Of course we are. We’ve done the hard work just getting here. One more push, that’s all we need.’
‘One more push? I can’t even lift my leg!’
‘We can’t give
in now. And we have to move now, before the G’s get any higher. Come on.’
He leant his shoulder against the chamber and cupped his hands together at knee level.
‘Just put your foot here and we’ll get you in.’
Sarah put one hand on his shoulder. ‘What about you? Who is going to help you?’
‘I’ll be OK. I don’t feel too bad and I’m taller than you. It won’t be so hard.’
‘But...’
‘Come on Sarah! We don’t have time to argue. Do it now!’
Leaning her shoulder against the chamber, she used both hands to drag her leg up so that she could put her foot in Max’s hands.
‘On the count of three, right?’ Max braced himself.
‘One, two, three!’ With both hands pulling on the edge of the chamber Sarah pushed against Max’s hands with all her might and her other foot left the ground.
Max so much wanted to keep his grip, to get her up into the chamber. But as soon as her supporting foot left the ground he felt his fingers slipping as he tried to hold her one sixty plus kilo weight.
With one last effort he adjusted his grip so that his hands were gripping either side of her foot and heaved again. Then his foot slipped from under him and he heard something snap as he fell to the ground.
Sarah was left clinging to the chamber, her stomach over the edge, her heavy legs hanging down.
‘Max!’ she cried. ‘Are you OK?’
Max lay on the ground below her. He wasn’t sure what was broken yet, but he wasn’t going to wait for the pain.
‘I’m OK,’ he said. ‘Just a bit winded.’
He worked himself to a sitting position, his back against the chamber, Sarah’s feet a little ahead of him. When he moved he was informed of where the break was; in no uncertain terms. The pain threatened to overwhelm him. He was either going to be sick or pass out; or both.
‘Push against my hands,’ he said. ’Quick.’
He felt the weight against his hands and pushed. He almost cried in relief as he felt her feet rise and saw them disappear from view.
