The Silent War gt-11

by Ben Bova

  Coughing, he finally turned and sprinted heavily up the path toward the airlock hatch that they had come in through. The others were already there; Nodon was even standing on his own feet, although he looked pale, shaky.

  Fuchs was panting as he came up to them. “Hard … to breathe,” he gasped.

  Amarjagal wasted no time on the obvious. “The airlock is sealed. The emergency code doesn’t work.”

  Fuchs stared at her flat, normally emotionless face. Now she was staring back at him, cold accusation in her eyes.

  Sanja said, “The fire … it’s eating up the oxygen.”

  “Get the airlock open!” Fuchs commanded. “Nodon, try all the emergency codes.”

  “I have,” Nodon said, almost wailing. “No use … no use…”

  Fuchs leaned his back against the heavy steel hatch and slid down onto his rump, suddenly exhausted. Most of the garden was ablaze now, roaring with flames that crawled up the trees and spread across the flowering bushes, burning, destroying everything as they advanced. Gray smoke billowed up and slithered along the rough rock ceiling as if trying to find an opening, the slightest pore, a way to escape the inferno of this death trap.

  Humphries was coldly logical now. The closet in his bedroom was built to serve as an emergency airlock. There was even a space suit stashed in there, although Humphries had never put it on. The Earthbound architect who had designed the mansion had been rather amused that Humphries insisted on such precautions, but the knowing smirk on his face disappeared when Humphries bought out his firm, fired him, and sent him packing back to Earth.

  The mansion had been completed by others, and the emergency airlock built to the tightest possible specifications.

  Knowing that there were two extra tanks of breathable air in there, Humphries headed for his closet.

  “What are you doing?” Ferrer screamed at him. “We’ve got to get out!”

  “You get yourself out,” he said icily, remembering the slap she had given him. “I’ll stay here until this all blows over.”

  He slid open the door to his closet. All that Ferrer could see was a row of clothing neatly arrayed on hangers.

  “What’ve you got in there?” she demanded from the other side of the bedroom. She no longer looked smoothly sultry, enticing. Her dark hair was a disheveled tumble, her white robe rumpled, hanging half open. She seemed frightened, confused, far from alluring.

  “Enough air to last for a day or more,” he said, smiling at her.

  “Oh thank god!” she said, rushing toward the closet.

  Humphries touched the stud set in the closet’s interior door frame and an airtight panel slid quickly shut. He saw the shocked surprise on her face just before the panel shot home and closed her off from his view.

  He heard her banging on the steel panel. “Martin! Open the door! Let me in!”

  He walked back deeper into his closet, trying to shut out her yammering. Pushing a row of slacks aside he saw the space suit standing against the closet’s back wall like a medieval suit of armor.

  “Martin! Please! Let me in!”

  “So you can slap me again?” he muttered. “Go fry.”

  The chief of the emergency crew nearly dropped his handheld when he recognized who was coming up the corridor toward them.

  “Mr. Stavenger!”

  “Hello … Pete,” Stavenger said, after a quick glance at the crew chief’s nametag. “What’s the situation here?”

  Stavenger could see that a team of three men and four women were assembling a portable airlock and sealing it over the hatch that opened onto the grotto. The crew chief said as much.

  “How long will this take?” Stavenger asked.

  “Another ten minutes. Maybe twelve.”

  “Once it’s ready, how many people can you take through it at one time?”

  The crew chief shook his head. “It’s only big enough for two.”

  “There are at least thirty people in there,” Stavenger said. “They’re running out of oxygen pretty quickly.”

  “We got another crew working on the water lines. If we can get the sprinklers working we oughtta be able to put the fire out pretty quick.”

  “But those people need air to breathe.”

  “I know,” said the crew chief. “I know.”

  Fuchs saw dark-clad figures stumbling up the path, coughing, staggering. He scrambled to his feet and picked up one of the nearly spent pistols.

  “Stop where you are!” he shouted, coughing himself.

  The closest man tossed his pistol into the bushes. “Let us out!” he yelled. “The fire…”

  The others behind him also threw their guns away. They all lurched toward Fuchs, coughing, rubbing at their eyes. Behind them the flames inched across the flowers and grass, climbed nimbly up the trunk of a tree. Its crown of leaves burst into flame.

  “The hatch is locked,” Fuchs told them. “We’re all trapped in here.”

  The security guards didn’t believe him. Their leader rushed to the hatch, tapped frantically at the keyboard panel.

  “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” he growled. “Of all the sonofabitch fuck-ups…”

  “It’s automatic, I imagine,” said Fuchs, resignedly. “Nothing we can do about it.”

  The security guard stared at him. “But they should have emergency teams. Something—”

  At that moment a voice rumbled through the heavy hatch, “This is Selene emergency services. Is anybody there? Rap on the hatch.”

  Fuchs almost leaped with sudden joy and hope. He banged the butt of his pistol against the steel hatch.

  “Okay. We’re setting up an airlock. Once it’s ready we’ll be able to start taking you out. How many of you are there?”

  Fuchs counted swiftly and then rapped on the hatch eleven times, thinking, We might live through this after all. We might get out of this alive.

  FLIGHT PLANS

  Pancho knew she had to think swiftly, but the fog of fatigue and radiation sickness made her feel as if she were wrapped in heavy wet blankets.

  Propellant bingo, she said to herself. There’s still enough juice for an automated landing. But not enough to reach the base. Override the automatics and push this bird as far as she’ll go? Do that and you won’t land, you’ll crash on the landing pad—if you get that far. Let the bird coast and come down wherever it reaches? Do that and you’ll land in the middle of nowhere. No, you won’t land, you’ll crash on the rocks.

  “We have a good track on you, Ms. Lane, and we’re getting some satellite imagery, as well,” said the Malapert controller’s voice. “You’re not going to reach the base, I’m afraid. We’re gearing up a search and rescue team. If you can find a reasonably flat place to set down, we’ll come out and get you.”

  “Copy search and rescue operation,” Pancho said, her throat painfully dry. “I’ll set her down as close to the base as I can.”

  If I can stay on my feet long enough, she added silently.

  “Malapert?” she called, her voice little more than a croak now. “Malapert here, Ms. Lane.”

  “Better include some medics in the S R team. I got me a healthy dose of radiation.”

  The barest fraction of a second’s hesitation. Then, “Understood, Ms. Lane.”

  Okay, Pancho said to herself. Now all you gotta do is stay awake long enough to put this bird on the ground without breaking your neck. She wanted to smile. If I wasn’t so pooped-out tired, this would be kinda fun.

  Some half a billion kilometers away, Dorik Harbin decided to leave Samarkand’s bridge and inspect the ship personally. They were fully enveloped by the radiation storm now, and although all the ship’s systems were performing adequately, Harbin knew that the crew felt edgy about flying blind and deaf inside a vast cloud of high-energy particles that could kill an unshielded man in moments.

  The monitors on the control panels were all in the green, he saw, except for a few minor pieces of machinery that needed maintenance. I’ll get the crew working on them, Harbin th
ought as he got up from his command chair. It will be good for their morale to have something to do instead of just waiting for the radiation level to back down to normal.

  He gave the con to his pilot and stepped to the hatch. Turning back for a moment, he glanced once more at the radiation shielding monitors. All green. Good.

  Aboard Cromwell the skipper awoke minutes before his number one called on the intercom. He hauled himself out of his bunk, washed his face and pulled on a fresh set of coveralls. No need to brush his hair: It was shaved down to within a centimeter of his scalp.

  He entered the bridge and saw that all the ship’s systems were operating within nominal limits. And they were still sailing inside the cloud of ionized particles. Its radiation intensity had diminished, though, he noted. The cloud was thinning out as it drifted outward from the Sun.

  “Are we still shielded against radar?” he asked his communication technician.

  “Theoretically, sir,” the man answered with a nod.

  “I’m not interested in theory, mister,” snapped the skipper. “Can the radars on Vesta spot us or not?”

  The technician blinked once, then replied, “No, sir. Not unless they pump up their output power to two or three times their normal operational mode, sir.”

  Not unless, the captain grumbled to himself.

  “You holler out loud and clear if we get pinged,” he told the commtech.

  “Yes, sir. Loud and clear.”

  Pointing at the weapons technician, the skipper said, “Time for a skull session. In my quarters.”

  The weapons tech was actually a physicist from Astro Corporation’s nanotechnology department, so tall he was continually banging his head on the hatches as he stepped through them, so young he looked like a teenager, but without the usual teenaged pose of sullen indifference. Instead, he was bright, cheerful, enthusiastic.

  Yet he looked somber now as he ducked low enough to get through the hatch without thumping his straw-thatched head against the coaming.

  “We’ll be at the decision point in a few minutes,” the captain said as he sat on his bunk and gestured the younger man to the only chair in the compartment.

  “Eighteen minutes,” said the physicist, “and counting.”

  “Is there any reason why we shouldn’t release the missiles then?”

  The physicist’s pale blond brows rose questioningly. “The plan calls—”

  “I know what the plan calls for,” the captain interrupted impatiently. “What I’m asking is, are the missiles ready to be released?”

  “Yessir, they are. I checked them less than an hour ago.”

  The captain looked into the youngster’s cool blue eyes. I can fire off the missiles and get us the hell out of here, he told himself.

  “But if we wait until the final release point their chances of getting to Vesta without being detected or intercepted are a whole lot better,” said the younger man.

  “I understand that.”

  “There’s no reason I can see for releasing them early.”

  The captain said nothing, thinking that this kid was a typical scientist. As long as all the displays on the consoles were in the green he thought everything was fine. On the other hand, if I fire the missiles early and something goes wrong, he’ll tell his superiors that it was my fault.

  “Very well,” he said at last. “I want you to calculate interim release points—”

  “Interim?”

  “Give me three more points along our approach path to Vesta where I can release those birds.”

  “Three points short of the predetermined release point?”

  “That’s right.”

  The kid broke into a grin. “Oh, that’s easy. I can do that right here.” And he pulled his handheld from the breast pocket of his coveralls.

  SELENE: LEVEL SEVEN

  It’s getting warmer in here, Humphries thought. Then he told himself, No, it’s just your imagination. This space is insulated, fireproof. He pushed through a row of suits hanging neatly in the closet and touched one hand to the nearest of the three green tanks of oxygen standing in a row against the back wall. I’ve got everything I need. They can’t burn me out.

  Slowly he edged past the suits and slacks and jackets and shirts, all precisely arranged, all facing the same direction on their hangers, silent and waiting for him to decide on using them. He brushed their fabrics with his shoulder, was tempted to finger their sleeves, even rub them soothingly on his cheek. Like a baby with its blanket, he thought. Comforting.

  Instead he went to the door, still sealed with the cermet partition. Tentatively, he touched it with his fingertips. It wasn’t hot. Not even very warm. Maybe the fire’s out, he supposed. Ferrer wasn’t pounding on the door anymore. She gave up on that. I wonder if she made it out of the house? She’s tough and smart; could she survive this fire? He suddenly felt alarmed. If she lives through it, she’ll tell everybody I panicked! She’ll tell them I crawled into my emergency shelter and left her outside to die!

  Humphries felt his fists clenching so hard his fingernails were cutting painfully into his palms. No, the little bitch will threaten to tell everything and hang that threat over my head for the rest of her life. I’ll have to get rid of her. Permanently. Pretend to give her whatever she wants and then get Harbin or some other animal to put her away.

  His mind decided, Humphries paced the length of his clothes closet once more, wondering how he would know when it was safe to leave his airtight shelter.

  At least the flames aren’t advancing as fast as they were, Fuchs thought as he lay sprawled on the brick pathway in front of the airlock. The grotto was a mass of flames and smoke that seemed to get thicker every second. Their heat burned against his face. Nodon had lapsed into unconsciousness again; Amarjagal and Sanja lay on the grass beside him, unmoving, their dark almond-shaped eyes staring at the fire that was inching closer. The black-clad security guards sprawled everywhere, coughing, their guns thrown away, their responsibilities to Humphries forgotten.

  One of the women guards asked, “How long…” She broke into a racking cough.

  As if in answer to her unfinished question, the voice from the other side of the hatch boomed, “We’ve got the airlock set up. In thirty seconds we’ll open the hatch. We can take two people at a time. Get your first two ready.”

  Fuchs pawed at his burning eyes and said, “Amarjagal and Nodon.”

  The woman slung Nodon’s good arm around her bulky shoulders and struggled up to her feet, with Sanja helping her. Some of the security guards stirred, and Fuchs reached for the laser pistol on the ground next to him.

  “We’ll all get through,” he said sternly. “Two at a time.”

  The guards stared sullenly back at him.

  “Which of you is in charge?” Fuchs asked.

  A big-shouldered man with his gray hair cut flat and short rolled over to a sitting position. Fuchs noted that his belly hung over the waistband of his trousers.

  “I am,” he said, then coughed.

  “You will decide the order in which your people go through the hatch,” said Fuchs, in a tone that brooked no argument. “You and I will be the last two.”

  The man nodded once, as the heavy steel hatch clicked and slowly swung open.

  Stavenger stood out in the corridor beyond the emergency airlock and watched the survivors of the fire come out, two by two.

  Like Noah’s Ark, he thought.

  Most of them were Humphries security people, their faces smudged with soot as black as their uniforms. There were three Asians, one of them in the gray coveralls of Selene’s maintenance department.

  “The last two coming through,” said one of the emergency team.

  An odd couple, Stavenger thought. One tall and broad-shouldered, the other short and thickset. Both in black outfits. Then he recognized the dour face of the shorter man. Lars Fuchs! Stavenger realized. That’s Lars Fuchs!

  “Anybody else in there?” the emergency team’s chief asked.
/>   “Nobody alive,” said the Humphries’ security chief.

  “Okay,” the chief called to his team. “Seal the hatch and let the fire burn itself out.”

  Stavenger was already speaking into his handheld, calling for a security team to arrest Lars Fuchs. There’s only one reason for him to be here in Humphries’s private preserve, Stavenger knew. He’s killed Martin Humphries.

  If it weren’t so infuriating it would almost be funny, Humphries thought as he sat huddled in his closet.

  The idiotic architect who designed this for me never bothered to install a phone inside the shelter because everybody carries handhelds or even implants. I don’t have an implant and I hate those damned handhelds beeping at me. So now I’m sitting here with no goddamned way to let anybody know I’m alive. And I don’t dare go outside because the fire might still be burning. Even if it isn’t, it’s probably used up all the oxygen out there and I’d suffocate.

  Damn! Nothing to do but wait.

  Humphries detested waiting. For anything, even his own rescue.

  CRASH LANDING

  Ground’s coming up awful fast, Pancho said to herself. She had allowed the little hopper to follow its ballistic trajectory, knowing it was going to come down way short of the Astro base in the Malapert Mountains. How short she didn’t really care anymore. Her main concern—her only concern now—was to get this bird down without killing herself.

  Any landing you can walk away from is a good landing, she told herself as the bare, rock-strewn ground rushed up at her. Find a flat, open spot. Just like Armstrong in the old Apollo 11 Eagle. Find a flat, open spot.

  Easier said than done. The rolling, hilly ground sliding past her was pitted with craters of all sizes and covered so thickly with rocks and boulders that Pancho thought of a teenaged boy she had dated whose face was covered with acne.

  Funny what the mind dredges up, she thought.

  “Pay attention to the real world,” she muttered.

  She fought down a wave of nausea as the ground rushed up at her. It would be sooo good to just lay down and go to sleep. Her legs felt like rubber, her whole body ached. Without thinking of it consciously she ran her tongue across her teeth, testing for a taste of blood. Bad sign if your gums start bleeding, she knew. Symptom of radiation sickness, big time.