by Scott Rhine
“Molten metal projectiles,” she blurted when she recognized the weapon’s profile.
“One shot of the finest, self-forging, massive penetrators around,” Crandall bragged. The weapon would be immune to Icarus field technology, thus possibly able to breach the alien hull or any hostile shuttles pursuing them.
“Did that sound unnecessarily phallic to anyone else?” Mercy asked.
The two armored men had a brief pissing contest about rank before Mercy interrupted. “If the enemy missiles detonate with that door open, we could all get sucked into space. If he doesn’t want to do his job, he can do mine, and I’ll take the other end of the poles. It makes sense for us to leave the recorder here. The satchel is designed to survive anything.”
She set down the toy camera and tried in vain to lift the rods. No such luck.
Crandall laughed at her efforts. “I’ll escort you to the door.”
Embarrassed, Mercy slunk through the entrance to join the others. In his armor, the mechanic lifted his burden with no difficulty.
Is there a level less than useless?
At the door, Red also argued with the mechanic, going so far as to order Herk to drag Crandall’s ass inside.
The mechanic shook his head as he backed away. “I read the Override page three days ago, Red. I’m as strong as Herk is and twice as mean. In a fight, you’d lose both of us.” Crandall strapped himself in behind the COIL device. “Besides, if the Chinese come in with their new space marines, you’ll need me to slow them down.”
“Thirty seconds till impact,” Herk said with a sigh.
Red waved an arm, and the golden door unfolded, shutting behind them. They didn’t hear or feel a thing from the explosions outside. The group noted that the large, gold door, like any good airlock, was soundproof.
****
To Mercy’s right was an empty, trapezoidal chamber, about four meters deep. To her left, the thirty-meter-diameter round room appeared to be filled with a forest of giant, artificial toadstools, each two meters across. They were arranged in a faerie ring—no, a spiral about four layers deep—surrounding a gray depression five meters across.
People were talking with their helmets off and breathing the alien atmosphere. They still wore the ear and throat gear for radio communication, though. Risking death for curiosity, she removed her helmet as well. The air here was sterile and free of cow pies.
Only Herkemer kept his suit on, constantly scanning the area for threats.
“They look like beanbag chairs,” said the Japanese interface specialist. She could finally read his name, ‘Sojiro,’ on the helmet he carried under his arm. Odd, that was the name of a comic her youngest sister read. He must be a fan, too.
Commander Zeiss noted, “Nine groups of nine chairs.”
“Eighty-one total, the same as the number of total paragraphs on the golden pages the aliens gave us,” Red added. Without a helmet, Mercy could see she’d stopped dyeing her hair, reverting to her natural honey blonde. Mercy was jealous because her own hair was a dull, mouse brown.
“I guess they wanted to be prepared for the maximum number of guests when they built this place,” said Sojiro. The team had each doubled, and in some cases tripled, up on talents to reach the minimum number of representatives required by the aliens, half the mission size the UN expected. “What are we supposed to do next?”
Red closed her eyes and communed with the alien no one else could hear while the sixteen other astronauts swarmed over the mysterious devices. Eventually, she opened her eyes and relayed, “Sensei said we all have to go through decontamination before getting into the control room. First, we take off our outer clothes. Underwear is fine. Then, each of us should climb under a bean bag. He’ll bubble us into the device and use a safe chemical to scrub us. He can’t risk infecting the galaxy with Earth viruses.”
Several people took a step back from the pods they were examining.
“Physical or philosophical?” asked Yvette, the therapist. “The alien manuscripts refer to certain behavior patterns, such as murder, as viruses.”
“Maybe both,” Red said with a shrug. “Does it matter?”
“I don’t want anyone scrubbing my brain, and we need certain bacteria to digest our food.”
A pale-faced man with a medical patch agreed. “Each person is a unique colony of micro-flora. How does decontamination work? I mean, our spacesuit keep out nearly anything.” His accent sounded Australian until ‘spacesuit,’ where he cut the plural ‘s’ and spit the ‘t’ at the end. Then she pegged him as an Afrikaner.
Mr. Bacteria had the nametag ‘Toby.’ He might be handsome if he spent more time in the sun and stopped scowling. Mercy recalled Yvette saying something about dating him once and calling him an odd duck. In this crowd, what would constitute odd?
“What about all our gear?” asked the Latina—Sonrisa, Herkemer’s wife.
“We check it at the baggage counter.” She pointed to the small, trapezoidal chamber. “Whatever we can fit inside that room goes with us after we close the door. I think there’s some sort of automation layer hidden between us and the main ship. He’ll spray the inanimate stuff separately and send it through. Everything has to be sterilized, or we don’t get the prize,” Red insisted.
“How long does the process take?” asked Zeiss.
Red wagged her hand in reply. “Time is a goofy concept with Sensei. Maybe six hours? It could be four. I don’t know if he means a quarter of our waking day or the whole day. It doesn’t really matter; the mushroom pods are the only thing that can carry us through the membrane to the next level.”
The pretty-boy pilot wiped a hand through his wavy, sandy hair and looked good enough to pose for a cologne ad. The scent could be called Confidence, and he reeked of it. Lou nudged Yuki forward. “I say we send the spy first as a test.”
Mercy didn’t like the man, in spite of the fact that all the girls swooned over him. According to Red, he might have failed math if not for Zeiss. Worse, Mercy couldn’t stand the thought of Lou using another person as a guinea pig. Without planning, she said, “I’ll do it.”
All sixteen other astronauts turned to stare at her. She explained, “I . . . um . . . have no skills you’re going to need for the rest of the mission. I even left my camera behind. I’m deadweight.” She gave a self-deprecating smile afterward.
Red’s jaw dropped open.
When Zeiss nodded, the group could smell bacon frying as Red’s emotions flared. “You can’t do that to my best friend’s sister.”
“She volunteered,” said Zeiss. “You were okay doing it to Yuki.”
“That’s different.”
“Every crew member is valuable and needed for the mission.”
While the couple argued, Mercy stood beside the first pod in the conga line and raised a trembling hand to her spacesuit’s neck collar. Sonrisa smiled and helped her. “You’re brave, Mercy.”
Yuki started to undress as well. Zeiss stopped arguing long enough to say, “Wait. You don’t have to.”
In a timid, Asian accent, Yuki said, “She was willing to give her life for mine. I will not let her go into the unknown alone. If there is some unexpected malfunction, you will send me next anyway. This way, I am not alone either.” The medical staff helped her out of her suit.
Subdued, Red said, “Leave your equipment out here, and we’ll check it at the baggage counter for you.”
The decontamination room was chilly, about fifteen degrees Celsius. Thankfully, Mercy had on gray, granny underwear developed by the Fortune space program to reduce the amount of coolant needed in EVA suits. Her only adornment was a single coin made into a necklace. With his back toward her, Herkemer blocked everyone’s view as she slid into the depression beneath the toadstool.
By contrast, Yuki wore black nanoweave engineered by J-wear for commercial space travel. They were smell- and stain-resistant for up to a month, as well as minimally sized, to reduce the amount of laundering needed. Several of the men stared a
t her thin, athletic form. Only Herk was chastised for it by his wife.
“Ready,” Yuki said from under her toadstool.
Zeiss said, “We’re going to keep in radio contact with you on band two. Someone will always be monitoring in case you need help or just an ear.”
Him, Mercy didn’t mind—tall, cute, and gentle. She sighed. Red had all the luck, damn her. Every time Zeiss touched Red, which he made frequent excuses to do, her childhood friend smiled.
Red said, “Each of you reach up and tap the frills three times to begin the process. If you need to get out in an emergency, do the same thing. But if you break the cycle, you have to start all over again.”
The aliens were crazy about the number three: three sections of the alien handbook, each with three pages. In turn, each page had three paragraphs. She’d read a thesis claiming the alien controls for the lens worked best when only three fingers were employed.
Mercy took a deep breath and tapped the soft underside of the toadstool. The device lowered, cutting off all light. Then the pod filled with fluid that matched her internal body temperature. At first, she just floated, like a sensory-deprivation experiment. Then, the fluid overflowed into her mouth. Spitting, she said over the radio, “It’s not (ptuh) stopping.” She tried to tap the frills, but the weight of the device held her hands down. “Won’t be able to (glub).”
She heard the others arguing in bursts through the radio link as she held her breath. Only Red remained calm. “Sensei says you should breathe in normally.”
As her pod filled, it lifted, and through the new transparent sides, she could see the others staring at her.
Forcing down every natural instinct she had, Mercy opened her mouth and let the warm fluid pour into her lungs. After a few reflexive spasms, the pod ceiling rose further, and she was floating in a fish bowl. The frills had attached to her bare wrists and ankles like leeches. ‘Weird’ wasn’t strong enough to describe how she felt. She gave a thumbs-up gesture and encouraged Yuki to take the plunge as well.
Mercy wasn’t able to speak while immersed in the goop. The only thing that came out was “oooguh.” Fortunately her hearing wasn’t affected, only her throat.
“Whoa, no way,” said the other physician, the Maori. Rather than his impossibly long surname, the nametag bore only his call sign—’Auckland,’ the place he was born. “Even I’ve seen those space-vampire movies.” The others made him change channels.
Mercy pointed to her helmet and activated her simulated keyboard interface by clicking her right thumbnail. Moving her fingers, each with a tracking dot embedded in the nail, she air-typed. She sometimes used this interface to get around her mother’s arbitrary, fifty-hour-work-week limit. Some of her best ideas occurred when she was supposed to be sleeping or in the shower. Everyone could read the letters appearing on her curved helmet screen. The few errors she made, people filtered out. ‘Why cuffs?’
Red replied, “Toby is our expert on nanomedicine. He says it looks like a filtration system. While the liquid scrubs your skin and lungs, the cuffs clean your blood.” The medic leaned over her pod wearing an unusual set of goggles. “The fabric on the other pod we checked had an array of straws with holes about fifteen nanometers wide. Viruses over twenty-five nanometers are retained by the pod.”
‘I’m a germ smoothie,’ Mercy joked.
After a minute, Zeiss gestured for her to keep talking, and Red asked, “How do you feel?”
‘Sleepy.’
“Blood loss can account for some of that.”
When Mercy’s eyes closed, Red said, “Yuki is already out, probably because she has lower bodyweight.”
‘M not fat,’ she objected. The pool was so warm.
“Not at all. I want you to stay awake for me while we set up a display for your heart monitor. Can you do that?”
‘Try.’
Red said, “Tell us about the coin you’re wearing.”
‘Susan B. Anthony,’ Mercy typed.
“How did you get it?” Red asked.
‘School zoo trip in first grade. Got separated by entrance.’
“My parents hammered me about kidnapping safety. Were you afraid?”
‘No. Spent all day watching coins spiral down a funnel for a charity. Models gravity well. Teachers called parents.’
“They must’ve been beside themselves with worry.”
‘Dad left work. Only time. Corp Security shut down zoo. Dad found me. Understood.’
“PJ Smith, the Chief Scientist,” Red explained to the others.
‘I could see the strings, the motion before it happened—energy. I broke open the coin box to send all of them down again and again.’
“What did PJ do when he arrived?”
‘Gave me the dollar coin and watched with me. He sees forces, too. Wasn’t alone anymore.’
“Susan B showed women were equals.”
‘Not many in engineering.’
“Your dad was telling you that you could do anything you put your mind to. I’d hold on to a memento like that, too.”
‘Tired.’ Her pod had moved toward the center, sinking into the floor. I am the coin.
“Toby says you’re safe now. Get some rest,” Red encouraged.
Zeiss added softly, “You’re very special, not useless at all.”
Mercy went to sleep thinking about what it would be like to find someone smart and strong to kiss her the way her parents kissed. She also asked herself why she had volunteered for such a blatantly suicidal mission.
Chapter 2 – Conspiracy
Mercy had made her critical decision three months before.
“That space mission I went on is going to ruin our project,” Mercy Smith said to her father on the boat ride from their beach-front mansion to the spaceport in Alcantara, Brazil.
Dad, seated opposite her at the yacht’s breakfast table, was the head of research at Fortune Aerospace. He referred to the task of managing engineers as ‘herding cats.’ Diplomatically, he ignored her complaint as he marked up a technical paper, trying to reduce it to thirty slides or less.
“What an odd choice of words, my dear,” said her mother, lowering the computer pad with Dad’s schedule for the day. She’d been an assistant to senators, and she always had her hair, makeup, and dress perfectly done.
By contrast, Mercy had her father’s fashion sense—straight, dark-brown hair, lab coats, baggy pants, and T-shirts. She frequently forgot and left her badge and protective, self-dimming goggles on outside work, causing her sisters to point and jeer, “Nerd alert.”
“That parade was only supposed to take a few hours. Nobody told me Carnival in Rio lasts four days. I’ll never get that time back.”
“Your younger sister Magdalene went to most of the parties for you, wearing your mask.” All of the sisters but Mary had brown eyes and could pass as wealthy locals. Everyone liked the extroverted Maggie. Being the prettiest in the family probably had something to do with that. “As the first Brazilian woman in space, you’re a hero to the local girls.”
“I was just born here because Dad was sending up probes to scan the artifact. I speak Portuguese like a three-year-old.”
“Keeping your dual citizenship has opened a lot of doors for us,” her mother insisted. “What’s really bothering you?”
“I had to work out an hour a day before I could qualify to show NASA how to install those new drive units, and afterward I’m still stuck exercising.”
“But dear, I thought you enjoyed our time together. You have to build up your bones. Swimming is a great stress reliever, not to mention great for toning your calves and behind.” Mom crossed her legs to demonstrate.
Dad lowered the paper to leer approvingly at Mom’s aforementioned attributes.
Mercy sighed, covering her eyes at the display of lust in fifty-year-olds. “It squeezes the rest of my schedule too much. The board wants a test flight for the new, four-engine prototype, Tetra-1, in three months, and there aren’t enough hours in the day. We’r
e launching components almost every week, but the parts already up there aren’t working yet.”
Dad shook his finger. “Oh, that reminds me, Mercy . . . a VIP from moon base is visiting today. I’d like you to show them all the new toys that R&D has come up with.”
“Why do I have to do the dog-and-pony show?”
“The price of fame, dear,” her mother said, clearing the uneaten eggs from the galley table. “People like hobnobbing with celebrities.”
“You have my math skills and your mother’s good looks,” her father said, circling a single sentence and crossing out the rest of the page.
“What about my real work?”
“Astronauts don’t whine, dear,” Mom said.
****
A chauffeur met them at the docks and dropped the ladies at the company pool. One of the bodyguards remained with them. Mercy wore a robe over her one-piece suit until she jumped in the water. She’d been attacked by a man late one night in the lobby of her campus apartment while picking up her mail. Her self-defense training had enabled her to escape, but the officer taking her report had pointed out that her pajamas might have been too revealing. Since then, she always wore several layers of clothing, even in the tropical sun.
That early on Monday morning, the deep water wasn’t fully heated yet. To make matters worse, the fifty-year-old woman kicked her bubble butt at laps.
Between the unusually cold water and the tension, Mercy had neck cramps by the end of the workout. In the changing room, her mother said, “Lie down in the relaxation room and let me get you a massage therapist. I’ll rearrange your meetings this morning.”
“You go ahead. I can . . . ouch.” When Mercy bent to pick up her sneaker, the young woman almost cried. “Okay. That . . . sounds good.” She soaked in the hot tub for twenty minutes, trying to loosen the muscles on her own.
When an athletic, blue-eyed, freckled woman entered the secluded management area, her light-brown tresses were tightly braided to look like a hair band. How cute. Mercy read her name off the medical-branch badge. “Yvette? Thank goodness you’re here. Can you do a neck massage?”
