Read Mission: Tomorrow - eARC Online
Authors: Bryan Thomas Schmidt
“I’ll do my best, Mr. Foggerty.”
The engineer said, “We can pop the airlock without depressurizing.”
The pilot pounded her armrest. “Damn it.”
Keyes said, “What does that mean?”
“We could open the airlock without depressurizing it. Let the air inside blow out into space. Wasting good air.”
“What are we waiting for? If we can rescue them and still complete our mission, let’s do it.”
“One more thing,” Aouda said. “We didn’t have time to camp out before suiting up.”
“Jeez!” the pilot shouted. “That tears it, then. Get up there with some oxygen. I’ll get us in position. Move!”
Felix knelt on the stiff Mylar surface of the ascender. He had expected to be buffeted by wind, but the black emptiness surrounding him was still as space. He looped his foot through the handhold—it was a long way down even if he couldn’t see the ground from up here—as he worked with the tether.
“What was that about camping out?” Foggerty said.
“Something I should have thought of earlier,” Felix said. “Our space suits feed us pure oxygen at low pressure. We’re supposed to take time to purge nitrogen from our bloodstream before an EVA.”
“I dialed back the air pressure aboard the ascender,” Aouda said. “It’ll help a little, but we’re still probably going to get the bends.”
“Bad luck, that.”
Felix finished clamping his harness to the tether. “Secured,” he said. “Better play the line out quickly. I’ll try to keep up.”
“Just be careful,” Aouda said.
Felix crawled along the handholds, feeling silly because the slope was so gentle. But the Mylar was smooth, and one slip could be disastrous.
He noticed slack in the line and hurried his pace. The hull’s curvature increased unexpectedly and his feet slipped beneath him. He clung to the handholds, his breath catching in his throat. As he rounded the edge of the ascender, the curved horizon appeared. His vision swirled around the dizzying landscape far below. He instinctively gripped the handholds tighter. “Jeez!”
“You okay?”
“I’m good. It’s just . . . jeez. It’s a long way down.”
The line began to slack again. “Be careful!”
“Roger that.”
Felix climbed down the side of the ascender, acutely aware of the tug of gravity toward the abyss below. His elbows and shoulders ached with the effort. He risked a quick look down and saw a Mylar mountain moving below him. The other ascender drifted cloudlike beneath his dangling feet, sliding into position below him.
He gasped at the realization that his feet were no longer in contact with the ascender. He clasped the last handhold with a death grip. The line hung loose above him.
With great force of will, he released his grip. He let out a brief yelp, but the tether arrested his fall with a quick jerk.
The ascender pilot said, “I have visual on you, detective. Hold your position while I bring the airlock around.”
“Roger that,” Aouda said.
The tether stopped descending, leaving Felix dangling above the drifting Mylar surface. The cramps in his arms worsened as he hung motionless. He bent his elbows to relieve the pain.
The bends! Damn it. “Better make it quick,” he said.
“Problem?” Aouda’s voice dripped with concern.
“Nothing a little pressurized O-2 won’t fix.”
“In position. Bring him down.”
The tether began descending with a jar, making Felix cling to it reflexively. He scanned the surface below. “Got a visual on the airlock. It’s already open.”
“Good show,” Foggerty said.
This close, the ascender surface looked like it was rushing up to meet Felix. Fast. He braced his legs, knees bent. Impact. A shock of pain jolted his knees, ankles, and hips.
“Contact,” he said.
He scrambled across the Mylar, ignoring the ache in his arms. The open airlock hatch wavered in the distance, spinning and moving away from him as he crawled toward it. He reached to rub his eyes and his glove bumped against his faceplate.
Focus
.
He squinted, centering the airlock in his swimming field of view. His arms and legs were throbbing agony, but he kept moving them. At last his hand closed on the rim of the airlock. He fumbled with the end of the tether. After a few tries, he managed to clamp it fast.
“Tether secured,” he said. He folded his arms and legs into fetal position, trying to alleviate the pain.
“Roger. Sending Foggerty down.”
“Better make it quick,” the pilot said. “Launch window closes in less than ten minutes.”
“Don’t you dare abort,” Foggerty said. He huffed, out of breath, but still managed to whoop. “Look at that view. Invigorating!”
Felix caught sight of him sliding down the tether fast. Too fast.
“Slow down.”
“I know what I’m—oof.”
The impact sent a tsunami across the Mylar surface and Foggerty collapsed in a heap.
“Careful,” the pilot said. “You’re damaging the solar film.”
Felix unfolded his limbs and gritted his teeth at the throbbing pain. “He’s down! Get a move on, Aouda.”
“Roger.”
He tugged Foggerty toward the airlock. “You okay, Mr. Foggerty?”
“Still in one piece. Little worse for the wear, I must confess.”
Felix wrestled him into the airlock and waited for Aouda.
The pilot’s voice broke in. “Time’s running out, guys.”
“Almost there,” Aouda said.
Her spacesuited form rounded the edge of the ascender at high speed. Felix held his breath, dreading the impact, but she braked hard at the last minute and landed next to the airlock with a whoosh and a long wavelength ripple.
“It’s now or never,” the pilot said.
Aouda crammed herself into the airlock, dinging her boot on Felix’s helmet. She yanked the hatch shut and turned the seal. “We’re in. Fire those engines!”
Thrust pushed Felix facefirst into the wall of the airlock. Someone slammed into his back, forcing the air out of his lungs. “Oof.”
“Everyone okay up there?” the pilot asked.
“We’ll live,” Felix said. For the first time in years, his smile was honest.
“Glad to hear it. We’re pressurizing the airlock now. It’ll take a half hour, so get comfy.”
Keyes yanked the hatch open as soon as the pressure indicator showed green. He helped the first spacesuited figure out of the airlock, handed him off to the flight engineer, and reached for the next. Thrust pushed him off balance, and he nearly tumbled down.
He helped the flight engineer remove the helmets from the spacesuits. As soon as Foggerty’s helmet was off, he said, “Are you okay, sir? Do you need oxygen?”
“I’m well enough, but the good detective could use some help. Got a bit of the bends, it seems.”
“Him!” Keyes said. “That man drugged me. And sabotaged you, made you miss—”
Foggerty put a hand on his shoulder. “I know. But he made up for it by getting me here, and saving my life to boot.”
“You’re a more forgiving man than I,” Keyes said, but he turned to Felix and strapped an oxygen mask to his face. “You have yet to earn my forgiveness.”
Felix nodded and gave him a feeble thumbs-up.
Aouda said, “Get a mask on Foggerty as soon as you can, then on me. We’ll both be symptomatic soon enough.”
“Bah,” Foggerty said, “I can take a little pain. Important thing is we’re on our way. I’m going to win that wager after all. To the NEO and back! In what, no more than eighty days, Stuart and his windbag friends will be eating crow.”
Keyes lowered an oxygen mask over Foggerty’s face. “You may get the last word with them, but at least for today, hush and get some rest. The journey has just begun.”
* * *
Jay Werkheiser
teaches chemistry and physics to high school students, where he often finds inspiration for stories in classroom discussions. Not surprisingly, his stories often deal with alien biochemistries, weird physics, and their effects on the people who interact with them. Many of his stories have appeared in
Analog
, with others scattered among several other science fiction magazines and anthologies. You can follow him on twitter @JayWerkheiser or read his (much neglected) blog at
http://jaywerkheiser.blogspot.com/
. The author wishes to thank John Powell from JP Aerospace for providing technical details of the ascenders and DSS used in this story.
In Brenda Cooper’s tale, a miner and her robot companion answer a distress call and wind up getting more than they bargained for, as they come face to face with a rogue robot in . . .
IRON PEGASUS
by Brenda Cooper
I sprawled across the big bed with my feet tangled in star-covered sheets. Harry stroked my foot, talking of inconsequential things, a comfort that had stood me well for hundreds of days. His voice caught and his hand stopped, resting on my heel. I opened my eyes to see that he had closed his and gone slack and still. Just for a moment, but when he reengaged, his voice had switched from soft to all business and his demeanor from mostly human to mostly robotic. “Cynthia?”
He only used the long form of my name when he judged a situation to be formal. “Yes?”
“There’s a mayday.”
“Where?” I sat up and started detangling my legs.
“The ship is called the
Belle Amis
. It’s a family mining op on a small M-type.”
The starry sheets puddled on the floor. “How far away?”
“About three days.”
“How old is the request?”
“Months. It’s updated daily. They still need help.”
Ugh. We were deep into the Belt. International law required ship-to-ship help whenever possible. Our ship’s signature was now recorded as having received the mayday, so our choices were help or fork out a fine bigger than my bank account. “Must be our lucky day. Emergency level?”
“Two.”
That meant a live human, not in immediate danger, but in need. Of course, anyone in immediate danger out here had a four nines’ chance of dying.
“I’ll get you coffee.” Harry strolled to the kitchen. Even though he was companion rather than servant, he did this for me every morning. I’d ordered him thin-hipped and wide-shouldered, with warm, pliable skin in a pale brown, dark eyes, and a shock of white hair. After I brushed my teeth, I sat at the table in my PJ’s, listening to the kitchen steam and rattle.
Harry brought coffee and waited patiently for me to drink.
I hadn’t had human company for two years. I had become okay with that, because of Harry. Singleton asteroid miners make a lot of money, and I was halfway to cashing out. Ships and stations need our products, but they don’t want to risk their citizens to get them. Fully automated systems are illegal. So it’s us and the rocks, and a thousand or so tiny robots stored in our holds to do the physical work.
In the ten years or so that it takes to earn enough for a permanent vacation for the rest of your life, about a quarter of us commit suicide. It’s the loneliness. Another quarter fall in love with their robots. I hadn’t done that, and didn’t use Harry for more than casual touch. In fact, I’d made sure he wasn’t designed for more. I didn’t want to jump the line and choose a machine lover.
Without Harry, I’d be loonier than the moon.
I finished the dregs while he massaged my shoulders, savoring the bitter last drop. “Tell me what you know.”
“Medical emergency. There’s solar power, which is why life support still works. There’s a companion and a little girl, and the girl can’t fly.”
“The robot can’t fly either?” I said.
He shook his head. “Her model number isn’t approved for flight. She’s a simple companion.”
Harry was more; I had wanted someone to take part of the load.
“Did you tell them we accepted the signal?”
“It’s your decision.”
He made so many choices I sometimes forgot some were reserved for me. “We have to. Copy me on your reply to them?”
“I will.” Harry flowed off to accept the mayday and explain the change to the nav system, and I headed for the shower.
Any ship certified for the Belt is by definition maneuverable, and my
Iron
Pegasus
slowed and turned as fast as anything out here among the rocks.
The enormity of the task sank in with the drops of hot, recycled water. I had never rescued anyone. It might be yet another way to die out here. There were already a million ways, at least according to the songs. I could be hit by rocks or get sick or make a single mistake and float off into space. Or have engine trouble, set up a mayday, and wait so long for anyone to get near me that I went stark, raving mad.
Maybe the caffeine was finally settling in and I was waking up and smelling the danger.
Two days later, Harry and I sat in companionable silence and examined the first clear visual. The asteroid was no more than five kilometers or so around, vaguely an elongated sphere. Nothing much to look at. The spin had been stopped, so clearly the mining setup had started when the emergency happened. The
Belle Amis
was maybe twice the size of the
Iron Pegasus
. Six legs splayed out from the center of the craft and held the ship firmly to the sunward side of the rock. “It looks like a spider,” I mused.
“We probably look more like one,” Harry replied. “After all, we have eight legs. We just never see ourselves from the air.”
“I suppose.” White solar fabric stretched between the ship’s dark legs, effectively obscuring much of anything else from view, but explaining why they had plenty of power. “Everything looks normal. Do you trust this?”
“No.”
So my instincts and Harry’s calculations were both yielding up worries. “What if they’re raiders?”
He shrugged, one of those too-human gestures that served to remind me that Harry wasn’t. “We have half a hold full of gold and other minerals.”
“They have a damned good claim,” I pointed out. “If we could transfer that, we’d have a full hold, and I’d be able to stop this nonsense.”
He didn’t answer. We both knew I’d probably sell him with the ship. I liked to pretend he cared.
I glanced at the display. “We can start hailing in about half an hour.”
“See a place to land?”
“Why don’t you run the calculations?” he suggested.
Practice would annoy me, but I’d encouraged his insistence on my own self-reliance. Another way to survive. “Okay.”
I hunkered down and ordered the computer to run analytics across our maps of the asteroid. The smaller the surface, the harder it was to land on it. Out here you measured four times and cut once. I sent my results to Harry for double-checking just as the
Belle Amis
chose to respond to us. “Thank you for answering our call.”
I looked over at Harry, confirming I’d take it with a nod of my head and clicking my mike on with my tongue. “You’re welcome. Can you tell me more about your emergency?”
“Yes. This is a family operation. A father and a daughter. The father died in a fall and the daughter is unable to fly.”
“Who am I speaking to?”
“I’m an automated companion named Audrey.”
I glanced at Harry, who looked completely unsurprised. But then he usually looked unsurprised. “How is the daughter?”
“She is . . . difficult.”
She had been alone with nothing but a robot for company for some time. Hard for me; harder for a child. “What’s wrong with her?”
“I’d like you to come see.”
I drummed my fingers on the table. Audrey must be as bright as Harry, or close. The girl could be sick, and must be traumatized after losing both parents. Nothing felt right. “Is there anything or anyone down there that will harm me or Harry?”
“It’s safe to come down. I’ll wait for you.”
Robots didn’t lie. “We’ll be there soon.”
Harry cut the communication link. “I finished reviewing your calculations. I’d pick your second choice.”
“Why? It’s further away from the
Belle
.”
“It’ll be easier to get away from there. Their thrusters won’t have any direction they can fire that will prevent us from an easy exit.”
He was thinking defensively.
Landing was the first way anything major could go wrong.
The
Pegasus’
s nav system managed the slow-motion process. Before we even touched the surface, all eight of our legs had crawled it, finding rocky protuberances to grip. Fine metallic dust obscured every camera, hanging in the air as if it were frozen in a photograph. Harry and I sat, strapped into chairs, watching the readouts and the dust.
Each leg settled itself in slow motion.
Next, the two ships used robots to string an ultra-light, thin ribbon of reflective line between them. It snaked under the canopy of solar film that fed the
Belle
. Waiting for dust to settle in microgravity took hours; we slept. Harry curled around me, his skin warm and soft like a human’s skin. He threw an arm over my waist. He didn’t breathe, but fluids coursed through him, creating the slightest ebb and flow to his skin, the barest illusion that what comforted me was alive.
I dreamed of lost little girls alone on asteroids.
When we woke, I drank my coffee and ate a light breakfast. “Harry?”
“Yes?”
“It doesn’t feel right to be here.”
He cocked his head at me, his expression between quizzical and a soft smile. A rare look for him. “This was forced on you.”
Smart robot. I convinced myself to stop worrying. After I suited up and checked everything twice, I turned off the light and stood in the lock, looking out. The largely metal surface of the asteroid was coated in dust from the inevitable and ever-present small collisions, dust gathered both from itself and from all of the things that it encountered. It would be a bitch to mine, and toxic. Rich, though.
Just above us, stars. The light from the faraway sun drove our shadows to our feet like frightened dogs. A few hundred meters from the doorway, solar fabric roofed the world. The supports and struts that held it in place created lines of shadow on the regolith. I took a deep breath, stepped slowly over the threshold and away from the magnetic floor and reached up to grab the line and attach it to the loops on my suit. From there, it was a matter of hand-over-handing my almost weightless self through the still dust of our arrival. Everything was coated to resist the dust, so it slid off of our faceplates and joints and the tips of our toes as if we were swimming through water instead of potentially toxic fines.
I led and Harry followed. His suit looked like layered cellophane. But then, life support for a robot was as simple as providing power and keeping dust from precise parts.
As I led us under the tent of material, my faceplate lightened to show the
Amis
in the center of the vast web, looking even more spiderlike from this angle. Funny how I never thought of our setup this way. The lock door opened as we neared it, and Audrey hung just outside, offering a hand to guide me from the line and into the lock. She looked more like a girl than me, with an improbably slender waist and rounded hips. Her designers had given her brunette hair, blue eyes, and a tiny mouth. When her hand took mine, it was done gently. Yet under the gentle touch, she had the same sense of strength as Harry.
Once we were through the other side of the lock, I could stand normally again. Or almost. The mag-grav in the
Amis
was slightly higher than we kept ours. In her current situation, the
Amis
had more power than she could possibly use, at least given that I’d seen no sign of active mining on the way in.
“Hello, Cynthia.” Audrey’s voice sounded like whiskey and honey. She led us to a kitchen table, laid out with a teacup and a plate of crackers. No fruit or anything from the garden, just tea and crackers. “Thank you for coming.”
“You’re welcome.” Surely she knew I hadn’t had a choice. The room looked neat and sterile, and smelled of tea and cleaning solution and nothing else, not even the stale ghost of cooking oil or rehydrated soup.
One cup of tea.
“Will you take me to see the daughter?”
“Of course. But she’s sleeping now.”
The tea water steamed. The feeling of not-right crawled deep in my nerves. “Can I see her? Just look in?”
“She might stir. Please drink.”
“I’m sure it will just take a moment.” After all, while the living quarters on the
Amis
were bigger than my
Pegasus
, it wasn’t by much. There couldn’t be more than ten or fifteen rooms.
“Very well.” Was it my imagination or had her voice warmed even more?
She turned on her heel and walked down the single hall that branched off of the big shared galley and meeting space. Four bright blue doors were the only thing of interest in the corridor itself; the walls and floor were bare and white, the roof full of pipes that gurgled with water or other fluids.
We passed a dark entertainment room. The next door hung open. Pale yellow light illuminated a dingy garden. Planters were either empty or full of scraggly plants with drooping, yellowed leaves. A tiny maintenance bot labored to keep dead leaves from the floor. It was probably responsible for whatever green remained in there, and I imagined it growing desperate in spite of its steady, industrious whirring.
Audrey stopped in front of a third door, the one almost at the end of the hall, and opened the door with exaggerated slowness and a crook of her little finger. I peered into the door.
An almost-empty room. One chair. A screen as dead and black as the space around us on one wall. Two beds, one with a small figure on it, covered up to her chin. “See?” Audrey whispered.
I pushed the door open a little further, stepping in.
Audrey’s hand clamped down on my arm. “Don’t wake her.”
That convinced me to cross the empty floor and kneel by the bed.
The girl was at most three or four years old. Her red-brown hair had been caught back in a ponytail, and she wore a blue jumpsuit that probably served as pajamas.
She wasn’t breathing.
I turned, full of concern and questions.
The door was closing behind me. I caught the briefest glimpse of Harry’s startled face just before the lock clicked.
I stared at the back of the door. After a while, my situation started to sink in, thoughts coming together coherently in spite of how betrayed I felt. And how stupid. I had, after all, known something was wrong.
I was on a strange ship, alone, and captive. An easy way to die out here, and a stupid one.
Crimes against humans meant certain destruction for robots. Not that we were near anyone with the authority to carry out a trial and issue a self-destruct order.