Cosmic Tales - Adventures in Sol System

by T. K. F. Weisskopf

  "He's on his way," Wallax replied.

  Moving mechanically, as if someone else had taken control, Kieran went down the steel steps to the access section, initiated the lock cycle, and donned his helmet while the lock was filling. When the indicator changed to green he entered, heard the inner door close behind, and waited for the chamber to exhaust, refill with Martian air, and for the pressures to balance. The outer door slid aside, and the conveyor step carried him down six feet to the surface. His dreamlike sensation enhanced by the thirty-eight percent Earth-normal gravity, he walked back toward the opened cargo door. Ursark was waiting at the bottom of the ramp. Farther back, the other two were maneuvering something down from its stowage space between the center-body frame and the propulsion module. Kieran saw that it was the vessel's "scooter"—an open, two-person electric runabout carried by most larger craft for extending the range of surface activities; on occasion, they had also proved their worth as lifeboats. While Roney and the other proceeded to strip the radio and emergency beacon from the scooter's electronics box, Ursark filled Kieran in.

  "Okay, so this is the deal. There's a Triple S on a bearing of two-forty degrees from here that you should be able to make in four to five hours. You've got extra air and water under the seat. We can't leave you with a live transmitter, but there's a homer that'll give you a fix when you get close enough. Just hope you don't hit problems. I know the chances aren't perfect, but they're the only ones you've got." Surface Survival Shelters, containing food, life-support gear, medical kits, and other essentials, usually located at radio navigation beacons, were dotted all over Mars for use in emergencies. Mars had no magnetic field; the electronic compasses worked off the satellite grid. Kieran opened his mouth behind his helmet visor to say something, but Ursark cut him off with a wave. "There's nothing to discuss. That's it. On your way, kid. Adios."

  Wa-it a minute! . . .

  Kieran had covered maybe three miles, when the subconscious processing going on in his brain suddenly delivered its conclusion that something wasn't right. He eased back the scooter's throttle, slowing the procession of sand and rocks through the scooter's headlight beam to a crawl to free up more of his attention to pondering what. . . . And then it came to him.

  This had shown every sign of being a professionally planned and executed operation. The people staging it might be crude in some ways, but they weren't dumb. Professionals would have made sure to leave the crawler and come away from the hijack with fresh air bottles—or at least, bottles full enough to get them where they wanted to go. So, the Mocha had never been heading for Quentas.

  Why, then, had Roney said it was? The only reason could be: for Kieran's benefit! The whole thing had been a setup to feed Kieran false information, which he was now supposed to take back and report, sending everyone who would be searching off on wrong trails all over Elysium. While the hijackers did . . . what?

  The scooter came to a halt as Kieran followed the thread through further. Already, his blood was rising again, this time not only from the humiliation of being disarmed and made a hostage, but from being taken for a fool and used as a dupe as well.

  If the Mocha wasn't going to Quentas, then in all probability the destination it had been heading for was right here—to do whatever was due to happen next, while Kieran was purring his way sedately on a jaunt across the desert. Why would the hijackers waste any of that time going somewhere else now? And he surely hadn't seen or heard any sign of the ship taking off since he'd set out, so something more was detaining them. His best guess was still that it was rendezvousing to transfer its cargo to some other craft.

  Kieran turned off the headlamp, eased the scooter into motion again, and U-turned between the dunes to set off back the way he had come. He could manage without the lamp now, anyway. Phobos was -rising—on a clear night it could appear three hundred times brighter than Venus seen from Earth—and even with the residual dust from the storm he was easily able to follow his own tracks. He wasn't sure what he intended doing—get access to a radio; disable the craft somehow; cause some kind of mischief. But he was mad and had a score to settle.

  The glow from lamps illuminating the area where the Mocha lay was visible before Kieran reached the last intervening ridge. He ditched the scooter on the reverse slope, and after taking a flashlamp, binoculars, and some tools that he thought might be useful from its utility compartment, continued from there on foot. The sight waiting for him when he reached the jumble of dusty rocks forming the crest and peered cautiously down was the one thing he hadn't thought of in all his conjecturing.

  The ship was standing with its tail end in a pool of arc light, its wings removed and lying a short distance away on either side. In their place, two orbital—injection boosters were in the process of being attached. And the plan became clear in all its ingenuity and deviousness. The searchers could waste as much time as they wanted scouring Elysium—or anywhere else on the surface they liked; it wouldn't do them any good. For the cargo wasn't being diverted or disposed of anywhere on Mars at all. The rendezvous with another, probably longer-range craft was going to take place in orbit. Which made perfect sense in terms of getting the load the farthest distance away in the least time; and it would fetch far higher prices, say, out among the Belt frontier worlds. The only problem Kieran could see was short-term: the risk of radar detection while in orbit.

  Fine. But what was he supposed to do about it? He tried tuning his suit's receiver to pick up the cross-talk between the hijackers but was unable to find the channel. To be expected, he supposed. They would be using some obscure frequency to minimize the risk of stray signals giving them away. Kieran found a hollow deep in shadow, where light wouldn't chance to reflect off his helmet or equipment, and propped himself back against a rock to contemplate the scene and wait for some inspiration.

  The two booster tubes were attached at their forward ends, just short of the front of the Mocha's center-body, but presumably loosely, since their tail ends were still resting on the ground before being lifted into line. That meant there was a fair bit of work to be done yet—and hence time. Three suited figures were working around the booster tails, in the center of the lighted area. On the far side of the Mocha, some kind of tractor vehicle mounting its own headlamp was moving out from the sheds outlined behind. As it came closer to the arc lights, Kieran saw the gleam from the twin silver cylinders angling upward like gun barrels but supporting a curved cradle, and identified it as the mobile hydraulic ram used to elevate a Mocha from horizontal to vertical attitude for booster launching. As he continued watching, another figure came down the steps from the crew module and went back to join the others. The doorway continued emitting orange internal light. Curious, Kieran checked with the binoculars and saw details of the interior cabin itself, not just the inside of the airlock chamber. It meant that both the inner and outer lock doors were open. To avoid repeatedly having to wait through the lock cycle to go back and forth to the flight deck, since they were working in suits anyway, the hijackers had tanked the cabin air and left the entrance permanently open until they were ready to depart. Kieran sat up as an excitement that he already knew somewhere deep down he wasn't going to be able to resist suddenly seized him.

  Three already out, one just having joined them, and one driving the ram unit. The five were all accounted for. And the way inside was right there, beckoning to him—at the front end, with the approach from that direction dead ground behind the ship's body. And even with Phobos in the sky, for anyone working under the arc lights, everything beyond their perimeter would be blackness anyway.

  But what did he think he was going to do? . . . Yet even as he asked himself the question, a plan was forming in his mind. All craft carried a radio distress beacon as standard equipment—independent of the main systems, easily accessible, and operated by simply removing a safety latch and pushing a button. He could be in and out in a minute. The Mocha would be a flying lighthouse, and he could raise the alert when he reached the Triple S. . .
. Or better still, at the cost of remaining in the Mocha a few minutes longer, he might even be able to radio from there and have the ship recovered before it got off the ground. Who'd be a "kid" soldier then, huh? He snorted to himself at the recollection. Checking through the plan revealed no flaw. Kieran pulled himself up onto his feet and began working his way around through the rocks and shadows toward the vessel's noseward side.

  The approach to the ship went smoothly, as he had hoped. The ram was in place underneath the stern by this time, manned but facing away from him, its stabilizing spades extended into the ground. The final stretch had been his greatest worry. But now that he was dead ahead of the ship, he saw that the door-side booster, still angling downward from just behind the crew module to the ground, in fact screened him from the working area—a bonus which hadn't been obvious from his original vantage point. He gained the steps without a hitch, and a matter of seconds later was through the open airlock chamber and inside the access section of the crew module. The distress beacon would be somewhere around the captain's station on the flight deck. Kieran had just started climbing the steps into the forward compartment, when the whole structure lurched suddenly, causing him to grab at a handrail. The floor in front of him continued rising like a drawbridge, making him stagger backward, until he lost his footing and had to cling to an edge on the rotating wall, while the way through to the flight deck transformed into an impossible trapdoor moving up over his head. Finally, to avoid being thrown to the bottom of what was becoming a well below the lock access door—now almost lying sideways—he clawed his way into the stowage bay alongside the lock chamber and fell among the spare suits and special-duty garb that were kept there. He lay like a layer in a sandwich between items that were taking on the role of being "under," and others pressing down on him from "over," until he was fully horizontal, at which point the motion ceased. His thoughts would need a moment to reorganize, but it was already obvious what had happened: The Mocha had been elevated before the tail ends of the boosters were secured, not after, as he had assumed. In fact, already he could hear clunking noises coming through the structure from the stern, which sounded like the fastenings being made. Of course! . . . He groaned inwardly as the obvious reason came to him—too late. Why bother lifting the boosters against gravity to align them in the horizontal position, when they would align themselves automatically once the ship was vertical? And that also meant that there probably wasn't as much time left as he had presumed, either. No sooner had he thought it, when more clunks sounded, this time much closer—as if the top ends of the boosters had snapped secure and fast under a spring loading as soon as the alignment was correct. Which meant that the operation was virtually completed!

  Kieran was still lying in the suiting bay, his mind a blank, waiting vainly for some continuation from there to suggest itself, when he became aware of a motor sound coming from outside the open lock now below him, getting nearer. Scuffling noises followed of somebody entering, and then a brief series of clacks sounded all the way up to the flight deck—a ladder being released from somewhere for forward access when the ship was vertical. A figure climbed from the chamber below and actually stopped at the suiting bay to slide shut the concertina-net that retained the contents—Kieran could see him through a chink in the suits and accessories burying him. A second figure followed from the lock, then a third, after which the motor noise came again, this time receding. Kieran could only conclude that the ram did double duty as a telescopic access-platform elevator—or maybe some other equipment was used. It didn't make much difference which. Either way, it seemed the crew were already boarding for departure. This was confirmed when the motor noise came again to deliver the final two hijackers. It receded once again, probably under remote control now, the two came through the lock, this time closing both doors, and followed the previous three up to the flight deck. The door up to the nose compartment slammed, and Kieran found himself left on his own.

  Several minutes passed, but the indicators on the arm panel of his suit showed no sign of normal air or cabin pressure being restored. For a while, anyway, it seemed the inside would remain at suit environment conditions. Kieran couldn't think why this should be—but at least he had a supply of fresh air bottles back here. Then the whirrs and whines came of pumps and other machinery starting up within the ship. Kieran had barely finished improvising the best he could manage for a g-couch, when the boosters and main engines fired.

  After the engines cut, the ship drifted in freefall for a little under an hour. Having nothing better to do, Kieran remained where he was, rearranging the contents of the bay for better concealment in case somebody decided to make a sudden excursion back. Then the engines started up again—but at low throttle, nothing like the power for liftoff from the Martian surface. Kieran's first thought was that they were maneuvering to match with another craft as he had guessed. But then came a gentle, barely perceptible jolt, followed by a short burst of scraping noises coming through the structure that sounded like the lightest of touchdowns, in the course of which Kieran felt himself sliding in the direction that had originally been "down" to make contact with his feet—barely; he felt as light as a snowflake—on what had started out being the floor when he first came aboard. Then the engines cut again.

  There was some kind of gravity or gravity—equivalent out there. Conceivably, they could have matched course with some kind of rotating structure and now be sharing its centrifugal force. But the scraping sound had sounded wrong—too much like a rock-and-dust landing—which could only mean that they were on one of Mars's tiny satellites. The flight time seemed about right. And yes, of course—that would answer Kieran's question of how the hijackers hoped to hide from radar detection until their rendezvous ship arrived. Neat! If so, it would almost certainly have to be Deimos, Mars's smaller, outer moon, often described as a scarred potato, measuring something like ten miles in the long direction and seven or so across the middle. The larger moon, Phobos, about twice the size in both dimensions, was being turned into a transfer port for connections between surface shuttles and long-range vessels, and had too much work going on about its surface and in excavations to provide a hiding place. Kieran could only hope now that the hijackers' plans here didn't call for clothing or other gear from the stowage bay that he was concealed in.

  He stood motionless, pressing himself against the rear wall while the earlier sequence was reversed, and the five hijackers came back from the flight deck to exit through the airlock, again leaving the doors open—it was clear now why they hadn't bothered filling the cabin for the short-duration flight. The déjà vu replay continued with jolts and internally transmitted vibrations coming through of work being done on the structure . . . and then all of a sudden it ceased, and the surroundings became uncannily still. After a while, Kieran's fears began rising that the hijackers might have departed by some other means and left him stranded here. His anxiety eventually forced him to come out and creep into the airlock chamber to risk a peek outside to see what was happening.

  He found himself looking out at a miniature version of Mars—a yellow-brown desolation of dust and rock, some boulders and impact ridges, but with a black, starry sky. The Sun was low, near the close, visibly curved horizon, shedding a weak light and casting long shadows. Oddments of constructions and abandoned materials from previous visitations littered an area to one side, but there was no sign of current human presence. Yes, this could only be Deimos.

  Moving to the outside of the lock chamber and edging his head past the doorway, Kieran saw now why the crew module he was in had suddenly gone quiet. The hijackers had decoupled it from the cargo frame, and two of them that Kieran could see were now working farther back, apparently preparing to disconnect the propulsion module. The intent was doubtless to ready the cargo module for pickup by a longer-range vessel—possibly, as Kieran had surmised, for onward transport to the Belt. The loading door of the cargo module was open again, and another figure glided out even as Kieran watched, making hi
m duck his head hastily back inside the airlock again. So he was alone in the crew module, and the crew module was detached.

  Hmm . . . Kieran's first plan for extracting come-uppances had failed. But the nature of the situation was already causing mischievous wheels in his head to begin turning again.

  The Mocha crew module did not possess a propulsion system of its own. However, it was fitted with low-power, directable thrusters for course correction and independent maneuvering when in orbit. If Kieran's memory served him right, surface gravity on Deimos was somewhere around a thousandth of Earth normal—and it certainly felt like it. Escape velocity was only twenty feet per second—less than thirteen miles per hour. You could get off this place on a bicycle! Now, Kieran wasn't about to attempt any detailed calculations in his head, but surely, he thought, without anything else attached to it, there had to be a good chance that the maneuvering thrusters would be sufficient to get the crew module away. At least, away from Deimos—there could be no contemplating a descent to the surface of Mars, of course. But once off Deimos he would share its orbit around Mars, and from there he could radio down for a relief ship and wait in comfort and at leisure to be picked up—hero of the day, with the five hijackers captives, marooned on their rock as securely as in any lockup. It was all so deliciously simple.

  With a plan of action now clear, delay could only decrease its chances. Using his arms more than his legs, Kieran hauled his way through to the flight deck, floated himself down into the pilot's station, and secured himself. Only then did the realization come that exactly what to do next wasn't as obvious as he had unwittingly assumed. Oh, like all recruits he had taken basic piloting skills during training, and as part of his self-education he had watched Bolen through the flight out from Zerolon and thought he had assimilated most of what was involved. . . . But the array of instruments and controls confronting him now seemed suddenly a lot more formidable than he remembered. And Bolen had never had reason to actually use the maneuvering thrusters.