Déjà Doomed

by Edward M. Lerner

  Nor was that alarm the only unexpected thing she saw. Nikolay, having departed the area midshift, was descending into the shallow crater near the lava-tube entrance.

  She texted Tyler an update and settled in to observe.

  * * *

  Near the center of the crater, standing among mounds taller than himself, Nikolay contemplated which scrap heap to eyeball first.

  Belatedly, he accessed one of the apps Yevgeny had installed in all the Russians’ helmets. As a timetable popped up on Nikolay’s HUD, he saw that, by pure dumb luck, he had borrowed the mass spec from the American robot when no one, not even the FSB, had a spysat overhead. He took that as a good omen.

  Pulling off a tarp for a good look would be easy enough. Replacing that tarp unassisted, arranging it into a straight-lines-free, pile-of-dirt shape that would pass from overhead for mine tailings? That seemed like a slower process. Likely too slow.

  Two pieces of scrap peeked out from beneath one of the tarps. With a boot tip, Nikolay nudged that debris back under the plasticized sheet. With a figurative shrug, he decided this was as good a place to start as any. He raised the sheet edge with both hands, keeping it out of his way by draping it over his helmet.

  It was hot under the tarp. So, anyway, suit sensors and sudden sweat told him. The fabric, gray to mimic the regolith, soaked up the unfiltered sunlight, reradiating that energy as infrared. Until faster circulation through water-cooled undergarments caught up, he would just have to cope. He made a mental note: let nothing from the pile touch any part of his suit except the well-insulated boots and gloves.

  By the focused beams of helmet lamps he considered several slender items of detritus projecting from the heaped rubble. He gave one slender protrusion an experimental, one-handed pull. That angle iron, the part visible to him scarcely bent, slid out by a good ten centimeters. Excellent. He shifted to a two-handed grip, braced himself—

  There was … a nudge? … a tug? … at his shoulder. That hardly registered as, at almost the same instant, something pierced his left leg just above the boot top. Scarier than the stab of pain in his calf were the warbling of a pressure alarm, the high-pitched whistle of escaping air, and the roar of fresh oh-two gushing, at an unsustainable rate, into his helmet. The … whatever continued cutting. Icy water ran down his leg. Alarm text scrolled down his visor.

  Reflexively he reached for the pouch of emergency patches that hung from his tool belt. And dropped the bunch he grabbed, biting off a scream, as something sharp bit into his hand. Through his hand. Detritus shifting, sliding from the pile, because he had moved his would-be pole?

  His jaw clenched against the pain, Nikolay jerked the hand free of the jointed metal whatever that had impaled it. Shreds of flesh came out with the metal. Blood boiled into the vacuum, even faster when he ripped off the punctured glove, each fresh spurt dispersing into an expanding cloud of purplish-red. He grabbed more patches, ripped off their backings, and slapped adhesive squares onto the back and palm of his suit hand. The whistle of escaping air abated.

  As he eased himself backward, his wounded leg gave way. Down he went like a sack of potatoes, turning as he fell. Whatever had cut into his leg pulled out—painfully—as he toppled. Ominously, the whistling scarcely increased. How low had suit pressure already dropped? The tarp, snagged on his backpack, fell with him, dragging along junk from the heap. Sunlight filtering through the tarp seemed incongruously soft.

  Nikolay went splat, wincing as the maimed hand struck the ground. His head snapped forward, forehead bouncing off his visor. At least the helmet had only smacked into the back of his remaining glove and not into the rocky ground. Somehow the patches on the other hand held.

  “Mayday, Mayday!” His voice, to his own ears, anyway, was reedy, almost ethereal. Leaks whistled and alarms shrieked even as he slapped patches along the bloody zigzag tear that half-circled his suit leg. If the pressure dropped low enough, in a matter of seconds he would pass out. And the blood loss from his wounds? That was a longer term problem, when it was unclear that he had a long term. “Multiple suit leaks. I’m in the crater southeast of the tube entrance. Request immediate assistance. Mayday!”

  No one answered!

  High in the list of alarms ablaze on his HUD, he noticed communications failure. How had that happened? When had that happened?

  Fixated on repairing his suit before it was too late, befuddled by oxygen deprivation, Nikolay did not at first see his assailant. Nor, when he did notice, could he understand ….

  CONSPIRACY

  Chapter 23

  Twenty minutes passed. Thirty-five. Forty. What, Valerie wondered, was Nikolay up to? By the hour mark, that curiosity had morphed into concern.

  Setting aside terrain ripples and the occasional ravine, the moonscape at which she continued to stare rose gently and steadily from the bot to the crater into which the Russian had descended. Through her distant camera she had an unobstructed view of the crater’s entire rim. She would have seen him climb back out. He hadn’t.

  Closing in on a second hour, she called Tyler and explained.

  Tyler sounded less than amused at her third interruption of the day. “Your geologist is in spitting distance of the base, right? And two of the guys are also outside, nearby, on call. If Nikolay wanted help, he’d have called for it. He hasn’t.”

  From inside a helmet, she thought, spitting distance isn’t far. Also, that she was getting punchy. Before too much longer—and it would be a relief!—she would hand off bot duties to Ethan. “Don’t you have a satellite yet that can peek into that crater?”

  Tyler shook his head. “Not for more than another hour.”

  “I’ve done modeling based on a NASA topo map. If I were to elevate the bot camera mast to its limit, I could take in almost the entire crater floor.” Unless Nikolay was behind a scrap heap from her perspective. She saw nothing to be gained by volunteering that. “No one’s nearby to notice the mast move, and after a quick peek, I’ll restore it to its current extension. Okay?”

  “Absolutely not,” Tyler barked. “I don’t have a satellite in range, but the FSB does.”

  Which did not mean the FSB had anyone watching the imagery in real time. “And if Nikolay is in trouble …?”

  “Then he’ll radio for help. Is that all?”

  Apparently. “Yeah. Sorry for bothering you.”

  “But there is one thing I can do ….”

  She perked up. “What’s that?”

  “Marcus is inside the base, right, and Brad is also suited up and topside?”

  “Right. Brad and Yevgeny are working together.”

  “Good. I’ll reach out over a secure link to Marcus. He can radio Brad and divert him on some errand that’ll allow for a peek into Nikolay’s crater. Happy?”

  Happier, anyway. “Thanks, Tyler.”

  Perhaps ten minutes later, to Valerie’s immense relief, a dark blue pressure suit kangaroo-hopped into view. Brad leapt straight into the crater from which Nikolay had yet to reappear.

  Minutes later, Brad bounded back out. A figure in orange, limbs and head dangling, was draped across his outstretched arms.

  * * *

  With its inner hatch still cycling open, Brad sidestepped out of the airlock. Nikolay hung from his arms, lifeless.

  Not lifeless, Marcus chided himself. Inert! That’s all he knew.

  But hope seemed futile. Both orange pressure-suit legs were dappled with patches. Telltales flashed red across the suit’s biometric panel. Somehow, the heavy-gauge signal cable from helmet to radio antenna had snapped. Nikolay couldn’t have called for help.

  “Donna’s waiting!” Marcus shouted, pointing toward a seldom-used side corridor. As Brad rushed down the hall—glass clinking, incongruously, in Nikolay’s dangling shoulder bags—Marcus caught a glimpse of the Russian’s face: waxen and more than a tinge blue. The eyes-wide expression
somehow combined surprise with confusion.

  Hot on Brad’s heels, everyone converged on the room—until that day unused—which Donna had begun configuring as their infirmary. Three of the sturdy alien platform-boxes, stacked, served as her examination table. Reclaimed alien shelves held their medical gear and supplies. An even dozen recently printed lighting panels, ceiling-mounted, made this the best-lit room in the place.

  None of which prepared them for a medical emergency.

  In the moments since Brad’s breathless radioed call-ahead, Marcus had scarcely retrieved Donna from the biology lab and managed, under her direction, to help stage the defibrillator, an oh-two tank and mask, and a few other items. Their colleagues had been left to worry. Well, it wasn’t as though anyone had answers.

  Nikolay was quickly splayed across the exam table, helmet and life-support pack detached and set aside, still in his pressure suit. Donna slipped an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. Grim-faced, she felt beside his Adam’s apple for a pulse.

  Ekatrina and Ilya sidled into the infirmary. Yevgeny, breathing hard and shed of his own vacuum gear, came to observe from behind with Marcus.

  Brad, shifting his weight from foot to foot, huddled beside Donna. She nudged him with an elbow. “Thanks, but now get out! You’re filthy! And shut the door. Someone not coated in regolith get in here. I might need the extra hands.”

  Yevgeny stepped forward. “That will be me.”

  Marcus called, “Brad, bring out Nikolay’s helmet with you.”

  Yevgeny pivoted. “Ekatrina, it’s better that you stay.”

  Marcus blinked. What might Nikolay’s camera have captured? Something Yevgeny thought might need explaining. Had Yevgeny—somehow—been altering Russian helmet vids before passing them along?

  The spy shit would have to wait. Their focus just then had to be on Nikolay and making sense of whatever had happened to him.

  As Ekatrina strode into the infirmary, Brad came out, still suited up. He held Nikolay’s helmet in one hand; with the other, he shut the door behind him.

  Yevgeny grabbed the helmet. “And Brad, we will also need your video.”

  Brad removed his own helmet. Pointedly, he handed it to Marcus. “Here you go, Boss. What more can I do?”

  “Nothing at the moment, but thanks. Get some rest.” As for Yevgeny, Marcus gestured toward a nearby storage room. There would be no photoshopping of Nikolay’s vid. Not if they watched it together before an opportunity arose. “Let’s go somewhere quiet and check out the video.”

  They transferred Nikolay’s helmet memory to a datasheet and fast-forwarded through much of the video. It offered glimpses of boots and gloves when he stooped to scrape regolith into a sample jar and mundane moonscape as he loped between samples. He had switched off his camera far from where he had collapsed—and, the time stamp revealed, more than two hours before Brad found him. (Also before Nikolay had vandalized the prospector bot. Marcus saw no way to mention that without getting into his own spy shit.)

  Brad’s vid, jittering and bouncing as he rushed, also failed to enlighten. He came upon Nikolay beside a debris pile. They saw Nikolay collapsed upon his side, mostly under a tarp, unmoving amid fallen debris. Scattered junk—more when Brad, of whom the camera caught only feet, forearms, and shadow, flipped back the tarp—was speckled in dark red. For all the patches Nikolay had at that point applied, yet more tears gaped on his suit legs. Brad slapped on a bunch more patches, reinflated the suit with oh-two from his spare tank, hoisted the Russian, and galloped to their base.

  Throughout, Nikolay was unresponsive.

  After their fourth viewing, Marcus sighed. “An accident, don’t you think? Loose scrap, pointy or with sharp edges, spilled over onto Nikolay. Anoxia got him before he could plug all the suit leaks.”

  “Very tidy.” The words came out sarcastic. “Why did he not call for help? When suit pressure dropped to dangerous levels, why did the suit itself not trigger an emergency beacon?”

  “You know why,” Marcus said gently. “The broken wire to his antenna. I suspect it snapped when he fell. Do you know why Nikolay was poking around in that junk pile?”

  “I wish I did.”

  Marcus tried again. “Do you know why he stopped recording?”

  Yevgeny shrugged.

  Nikolay’s death might have been, probably was, a tragic accident. But he had been up to something, whether or not Yevgeny knew what. A camera could get switched off by mistake. There was no way accidentally to vandalize a robot. “If we retrace Nikolay’s steps, reconstruct what he’d been doing, that might explain things. I’ll send out Brad.”

  “And I will have Ilya accompany him.”

  “Fair enough.” If both men investigated, there could be no denying the vandalism when they encountered the prospector bot, or who must have damaged it. “Fair enough.”

  * * *

  A firm knock rattled the storage-room door. “Marcus? Yevgeny? You in there?”

  “We are,” Marcus said. “Come in, Donna.”

  She entered, shoulders slumped, and closed the door behind her.

  Yevgeny asked, “Is Nikolay …?”

  She shook her head. “I’m so sorry. He wasn’t breathing. He had no pulse. I tried, but ….”

  Marcus gave her arm a gentle squeeze. No words would help.

  “Thank you for trying.” Yevgeny paused. “Do you know what happened to Nikolay? Or when?”

  She ran splayed fingers through hair dark with sweat. “Start with when. Ordinarily, I’d estimate time of death from the drop in core body temperature. That won’t work here. Brad found Nikolay lying mostly in the direct sun, with his chilled-water system compromised. Which is to say, he came inside above normal temperature. Making an educated guess from the punctures at how long water circulated before the cooling system ran dry, the math works out to two hours ago. Maybe a bit longer. Even if I’m way off, it was already too late when Brad found him.”

  It could not have been more than three hours, given when Val had seen Nikolay enter the crater, but Marcus knew not to volunteer that.

  Donna continued. “What is another matter. I’ve examined Nikolay as best I can. The cause of death, no surprise, is almost certainly decompression. The suit punctures ….”

  “Almost certainly decompression,” Yevgeny repeated. “Why almost?”

  “I’ll get there.” Again, she hesitated. “Let’s start with the straightforward accident scenario. Based on where Brad found Nikolay, he was doing something with one of our debris heaps. Do you know what?”

  “No,” Yevgeny answered curtly.

  Donna shrugged. “For medical purposes, it doesn’t matter. His suit has punctures through one hand and in both legs. Perhaps it started when something shifting in the pile pierced that glove. Why do I say that? Because he got the hand leaks, front and back, completely patched. After that, things become murky. He could’ve lost his balance, woozy from the drop in oh-two pressure, or for any reason have stumbled into the pile. Or while tugging himself free he also yanked on whatever had punched through his hand, and that set the debris sliding. However the collapse began, stuff tumbling from the pile did a number on his suit legs. He passed out before he could seal all the leaks.”

  “All consistent with what we’ve seen in Brad’s helmet vid.” Forestalling the obvious question, Marcus added, “Nikolay’s helmet had stopped recording awhile earlier.”

  “That’s unfortunate,” Donna said. “As for your last question, Yevgeny, assuming decompression is what killed Nikolay, that may not have been the root cause of the tragedy.”

  Yevgeny frowned. “Then what?”

  “Perhaps it was a fall. Did you notice the bluish-purple splotch on Nikolay’s forehead? That’s a fresh bruise, although not much of one. But even supposing Nikolay blacked out, he was not unconscious for longer than a few seconds, given that he had time to
start patching.” She canted her head thoughtfully. “I don’t suppose we’ll ever know whether a fall caused the junk-pile avalanche, or the other way round.”

  Yevgeny shook his head. “Nikolay was a very careful, very cautious man.”

  “He was,” Donna agreed. “And beyond respecting the big guy, I liked him. I’d hate to believe clumsiness or carelessness did this, but anyone can have a momentary lapse. Alone, in a vacuum? It can be fatal.

  “But a fall isn’t the only scenario nor, I believe, the most probable. I took blood samples. Those were less than definitive due to vacuum exposure and the associated dehydration, but I did note that his troponin levels are somewhat elevated.”

  Troponin? Marcus did not know the word. “Meaning?”

  “Perhaps not a thing,” Donna said. “It may be irrelevant. Or, and this is my best guess, it could indicate Nikolay had an MI.” At Marcus’s arching of an eyebrow, she translated, “Myocardial infarction.”

  Yevgeny said, “Excuse my poor English, please.”

  “Sorry, that was still in med-speak. Heart attack.”

  Yevgeny frowned. “And this troponin is a marker for a heart attack?”

  “Correct,” Donna said. “The complicating factor is that a troponin rise only begins after the MI, troponin being released into the bloodstream as cardiac muscle cells die. The levels continue rising for days.”

  “If the patient survives,” Marcus added softly.

  “Right.” Donna leaned against a wall. “The thing is, the slightly elevated level that I measured is far from conclusive. Yes, it might be indicative of a very recent heart attack. That might be why Nikolay fell, why he was unable to finish patching his suit. Having said that, the level can be elevated for other reasons. It happens, for example, in many instances of sepsis, which, oversimplifying a bit, is a generalized infection. And some people get a troponin spike from strenuous exercise, although that generally involves being triathlon-strenuous.”