Chapter Nine: The Plague Ship | The Marsco Dissident
Author’s note: The Piazzi is a Marsco Asteroid Shuttle plying its trade between the Asteroid Belt and the moon. Rumors are circulating that Marsco might be covering up a plague outbreak on that shuttle. In the Marsco world, it is common to have colonies on asteroids. Most of these are Marsco colonies, although some rare ones are independent of Marsco.
Chapter Nine
Plague Ship
(On the asteroid Adams-Leverrier, 2095)
“It’s solely an accident that brings this ship to your colony,” Carlton Caruthers, the visiting Marsco liaison, assured the Independent colony’s administration. Caruthers was an imposingly tall, muscular man. But that and his lefter status didn’t hold sway over the six unwavering administrators seated around the conference table.
“This shuttle,” Misha Paton, the colony superintendent, slipped on a finger mouse thimble to check his mobile screen, “this VBC Gagarin–we have denied, and we will continue to deny her permission to dock—especially if an accident’s involved.” Not versed in Marsco lore, Paton had no way of knowing how significant this port-of-call visit actually was.
The associate didn’t blink. “She has every right to dock here,” he fired at first. Then with a conciliatory gulp, he added, “But perhaps I spoke inaccurately. It’s merely coincidence that brings this ship in to your spaceport.”
Eleni Romanidu, the only woman in the conference room, broke in, “And coincidence that your ship’s coming from the wrong side of the belt?” She tapped her fingernail—she was without disks—on a nicked-up and scored polymer table to emphasize her point. As the colony’s legal expert, she kept Adams-Leverrier totally and truly independent from Marsco.
Caruthers glanced about at the half dozen faces with set jaws and determined looks. While his hair and moustache were trimmed and neat, the six Indies had that Indie-look. Paton sported a ponytail and a gold earring. Romanidu wore not just glasses but ones with dark lenses. The others looked peculiar as well.
Not one of them sported a single finger disk.
The viewpanel behind the colonists looked in toward the sun; its glare, even at this distance, still made the unnumbered stars and the close-at-hand asteroids impossible to see. But, somewhere out there, an expedition ship steadily approached. And the Gagarin was heading in at max, setting a Herriff-Miller speed record.
“Look,” the liaison now continued with the expected tone of confrontation, “we don’t have to ask permission to dock.”
“Yes, yes,” Superintendent Paton nodded, “Twelve Thrusters gives Marsco all the authority it needs.”
The associate simply smirked. “And I don’t need to give you a lecture on the movement of asteroids. Colonies line up differently relative to in- and out-going shuttles all the time. It’s the nature of planetary orbits. Besides, as you’ve acknowledged, under Thrusters, ordinary traffic—”
“But,” the legal counsel countered, her dark glasses giving away nothing, “the shuttle in question can’t in any way be conceived as ordinary traffic. What’s it doing out that way?” She motioned behind, through the plexiglas. During the asteroid’s rapid rotation, the view right then was outbound, toward endless space beyond the belt.
“Her mission’s black.” Caruthers dismissed her, hiding the fact that he thought her a shrill harpy standing in Marsco’s way.
“I’ll say,” the legal wonk came back at him, her cynicism toward Marsco not disguised.
The superintendent thought it best to reenter this exchange before too much was said by the head of legal that should be left unsaid. Thimble-twitching his palm screen nervously, he brought up his chief concern. “The Von Braun Center has furnished us with a manifest of the crew but little else about this shuttle.”
“As is standard for any docking craft, even Marsco-to-Marsco.”
“But, the manifest lists six hibering crewmembers; lists them as—and I quote: ‘Under quarantine.’”
“Matter of semantics, Mr. Paton, merely semantics,” the associate stated. “You’ve known me for five years, as long as I’ve been this colony’s liaison. I’ve helped in every matter possible during this time. We know each other; I hope we trust each other. You know that to Marsco, safety in space is its paramount goal.”
The superintendent gave an obligatory nod, but the five other Indies saw that the associate was stalling, looking for a way out. The liaison himself knew this as well. And yet he stammered on, reassuring his hosts that Marsco expected cooperation even though it always respected legal Independents. Finally, mid-paragraph, he remembered the second associate present and immediately shifted his ramble onto him. “And Mr. Steerforth here, he’s just in from the VBC on Mars which is home port of this craft. He’s come out specifically to meet the Gagarin. He’ll be most obliging with his answers—all of them forthcoming.” The liaison responded with an unconvincing smile.
The visiting hibernation specialist, David Steerforth, looked from inflexible non-associate face to face in no hurry to respond. Much shorter and thinner than the lanky liaison, his looks betrayed no age because he had hibered a great deal. As typical with ice-tech drudges, he looked uneasy with live specimens, preferring to work with those already sleeping deeply. In a crowd of other men, he would easily be overlooked. Nonetheless, he came on with an all-too-familiar associate demeanor. “It’s black as previously stated. Marsco doesn’t need your permission to dock, and it refuses your permission to inspect!”
“Is that a threat?” the regulatory specialist, Romanidu, retorted.
“Does it need to threaten?”
“It often does.”
Both the superintendent and liaison were a flurry of arms and gestures trying to keep their respective subordinates and this visiting associate from escalating the discussion into open hostilities.
“Please, please,” the chief colonist insisted, “you have to understand my point of view. I’m responsible for over 35K residents. And we know of plague ships—historical ones, perhaps mostly mythical, but others real nonetheless.” He drew a measured breath, “And we know of the Piazzi some six months back.”
“Eight to be exact,” the recently-arrived hiber specialist fired, growing impatient and feeling this was a sniper shot. “But that was the Asteroid Fleet—not Von Braun. In Marsco, two distinct entities.”
“I realize that, but—” the legal specialist tried to retort.
“There is a vast difference.”
“Realize that, too, but—”
“The Gagarin’s on a scientific mission, the nature of which I cannot disclose. Obviously, every sensor on this asteroid tells you that she’s coming in from outside the belt. Can’t deny it. But what else’s going on within her hull—that’s classified.”
“But it’s within regs that my health team meet every crewmember,” the legal expert insisted, “whether they leave the shuttle or not.”
“Letting you on board’s totally out of the question,” Steerforth insisted. “The Gagarin’s to dock, take on fuel, some supplies. It’s been beyond the belt for over three years—”
Sounding more like a VBC rep than the VBC rep, the Marsco liaison interjected, “You’ve gotta admire the scientific marvel of that feat!”
“—but not all its crew will de-shuttle or deice, so no, you may not meet them. Dot!”
· · ·
As both an Indie and a colonist, Eleni Romanidu, the head of the Adams-Leverrier’s legal staff, was scrupulously cautious. The confrontation three days earlier hadn’t decreased her apprehension. Colonists needed ceaseless watchfulness lest space suck the life from their isolated pocket of frail existence amid this hostile, vacuous environment. On Earth or in space, Indies needed measured restraint rather than complacency when dealing with Marsco or else they would be crushed by its sheer size and might.
Her ancestors were Euros from the center of that continent, a location that always needed to balance the colliding extremes of East and West. Somewhat defeated, Eleni had felt like she was performing that same balancing act twenty-four hours ago when she watched the Gagarin glide up to a docking tether extended to greet her.
To read all the data the colony’s sensors had amassed on this suspicious ship—Marsco had provided none beyond the troubling and vague manifest—she needed to sit at her work table and twitch her way through screens of data.
To do so, she wore a set of finger mouse thimbles. The system was ancient, but the adamant administration wouldn’t let their tech specialists order anything Marsco. “We’re Indies, and must act it,” the superintendent argued convincingly. “As much as is feasible, we must support those few subsidiaries that have the moxie to stay out of Marsco’s sway.” A sign of his own stubbornness was the abject lack of finger disks throughout the colony and anything remotely approaching Marsco-standard finger mouse paraphernalia.
Eleni shrugged as she twitched her chip-embedded thimbles. Avoiding Marsco was an honorable but problematic sentiment to live by, especially considering that no one else made computers like it did. She looked at the trio of thimbles she had slipped onto her right hand. It was a wonder she was allowed to use even them.
The choice by these Independents to live free of Marsco rather than knuckle under had more repercussions than computer usage. The black hair framing her face was without luster or style. Bags hung under her eyes, but these were hard to notice because she wore dark glasses—another non-Marsco element—to protect her weakened sight and hide some of her strain. Our life here is ceaselessly precarious, she complained bitterly to no one in particular. Marsco on the threat horizon, arduous colony life, all this isolation to create their freedom—she was always just that close to jettisoning her independence for a modicum of an easier existence in some Earth-side Indie subsidiary.
· · ·
For an hour, she reviewed all the Colony’s reports on the mysterious shuttle. Partway through her examination, she needed to level the table she used as a desk, one as scratched as the colony’s conference table where the Indies first met the two arrogant associates. She wadded up a piece of paper to slip it under a leg then tested her work station’s stability. “Better,” she whispered, “better than the bullshit cover story Marsco’s manufactured.”
Their first intel was spotty. The Adams-Leverrier’s deep-space sensors had picked up an unusual bogie more than four months ago. After that, as the phantom came closer, the colony’s tracking volume went up, out of self-interest if nothing else. It hit fever pitch three weeks earlier when the craft sent her initial and routine request to dock. Every colony took a plague threat seriously. And this shuttle’s fatuous cover story, that she was coming in from Jupiter, only added to their tensions or suspicions. It ameliorated no one’s qualms on the colony’s admin staff. Not after the hushed-up Piazzi.
“Hell, why not claim that she’s returning from Mercury!” she snickered.
Thimble-twitching through several reports, knowing she had already lost the first pawn in her opening chess match with Marsco, she mentally fumed, Something isn’t right! And that damn ship’s tied to us right now! Nonetheless, she swore she would gain a better grasp of the facts about the imposing shuttle.
Rising from her desk, Eleni stood at a viewport bubble where she watched the tethered brute.
Adams-Leverrier spun so quickly that dim sunlight hit the ship, passed it into shadow, and then once more into light four times an hour. The sunlight cycle created a creeping shadow along the entire ship’s massive superstructure.
The craft was all wrong; even someone whose eyes were weakened by screens of regulatory minutia recognized that. The VBC ship had four propulsion units, all standard Herriff-Millers, but four thrusters, not the typical pair. And to supply the quartet of engine bells, she boasted extra fuel tanks plus extended crew mods. An extraordinary mule! A shuttle on steroids, dreamed up in the murky depths of the Valles Marineris. And anything anomalous, anything out of the norm, anything unexpected—and anything coming from Marsco—that was too much for any Indie.
“She’s almost frightening,” the colonist mumbled, knowing full well it was the mystery within the shuttle that was most frightening.
“I didn’t know anything frightened you,” someone whispered behind her.
She knew the voice before catching a man’s reflection in the viewport. She didn’t turn but slipped off her dark glasses.
“Zale, what if plague is?” She shrugged at the menace presently shrouded in shadow for the next several minutes. “This colony’s been free of Neo-Con for its entirety, since before the Wars.”
“You’re getting panicky over the Piazzi cock-up.” The man looked mixed-African. An adoption during the AIDS-ravaging times had brought one of his ancestors north from near the equator to a Central Continental Power earlier in the century. His looks might betray a mixed ancestry, but his speech and comportment were exclusively Euro. He spoke without a discernable accent. He stood behind her, gently resting his hands on her shoulders, and felt her relax into him without looking him in the face. After a dozen years together, his gesture was still cherished.
“Marsco gives me plenty of reasons—cover-ups, shifting regs, wallahs showing up, throwing their weight around.”
“Twelve Thrusters?”
“That goes without saying!”
“And the Piazzi.”
“Yes, especially her, dammit!”
“But today, you got permission—”
“Finally!”
“—for the main thing we need. You’ll go aboard with Anora, you’ll see all’s A-OK. That’ll be the end of it.”
“I’m not so sure it will be,” Eleni replied, leaning back into the strength of her husband. “Will you come too?”
He laughed gently at one of her seemingly absurd suggestions he knew so well. “Bringing the colony’s health officer, I’m sure Marsco’ll buy. But why should an asteroid geologist come aboard?”
“Show of force, bringing our head of mining ops. Besides, I want your muscle.”
“Don’t go paranoid on me, Eleni. And more to the point, how do we justify a miner boarding them?”
“We want to verify they aren’t illegally harvesting in this quadrant. We have a license from Marsco, a monopoly around here.”
“Elli,” Zale laughed at her predictable logic, “Elli, Elli, your legalistic mind.”
“It’s hiding something.” She drew an irritated breath. “All their bullshit about Jupiter! Jupiter! Like it’s just fuckin’ next door.” She pointed into the never-never just outside the plexiglas for emphasis.
With the present colony orientation, Jupiter was bright enough to be the only object visible against the blackness, an orange ball not obliterated in the reflected station lights.
“The Gagarin ventured beyond and back into the belt—but for a reason. Hardly to go to damn Jupiter—no matter what the MAS or the VBC says. Why go there? Everything there is here. No, Marsco must be hiding something on that shuttle.”
“No shit!” He feigned amazement at her bald-faced assertion. “It’s always hiding something.”
“I know, but I don’t like it hiding that something while tethered to us.”
“But what it has hidden isn’t important so long as it isn’t contagious. And Anora will know that by 1430 hours today.” Turning her, he looked directly into her dark, bloodshot eyes. “We’ll know. And I’m sure we’re safe. But, yes, I’ll go with, if that’ll help.”
· · ·
“So, we’ve worked out this sort of compromise,” David Steerforth explained to the hibernation specialist who had been on the expedition ship.
At this point in his career, Lieutenant Anthony “Zot” Grizotti of the Gagarin knew official bumf when confronted with it. Paton, the chief administrator from the Adams colony, Steerforth from the VBC. It made no difference. Both admins were generating self-importance, the iceman suspected. Although, he secretly admitted, he would believe Paton more than Steerforth any day.
Side by side the two made an odd pair. The VBC researcher stood shorter than the Gagarin iceman by more than a dozen centimeters. His frame was thin, lacking any muscle tone. Besides being taller, Zot seemed alert, engaged with his surroundings, attentive. His brown eyes were quick to focus and show immediate comprehension of any situation. His trimmed beard had a few gray strands as natural aging ran its course. He had grown it to full regulation size, which Steerforth, even at his age, couldn’t manage.
Standing there silently, the visitor secretly glanced at his fellow iceman. He had dark southern Euro features and a sense of confidence that the visitor lacked. Steerforth envied Zot for his easygoing manner, unless working. Then, he was intense. It wasn’t just his looks but his openness that the other man envied. People always liked Grizotti, even when he seemed to stand apart from the rest.
Although much older, Steerforth eagerly stretched his middle age out by hibering at every chance, his latest being the four-month crossing from Mars to the belt. Zot, on the other hand, had hibered reluctantly for short snatches during the years he had been onboard the Gagarin. Although the flight crew and all members of the science team had iced in relays across the void, Zot stayed awake as long as necessary to keep his experiment stable and safe. As a science team member, Zot nevertheless helped out all he could. When the two flight crew icemen went under for six months at a stretch (at Zot’s hands after the outward-bound ship left the belt nearly three and a half years ago) he made sure the hibering shuttle crew and his own cryo-frozen volunteers were all well tended.
“Do we know anything of their assessment team?” Zot asked at last.
As dangerous as trekking to Jupiter was, the hiberman was more concerned about this inspection. He wanted to know his foe—or friend—well before either approached. In the end, he never fully trusted Steerforth, but whatever info he shared on the colonists might prove helpful.
“Not much.” Steerforth had gleaned from the Marsco liaison that the whole colony was mostly Euro with a stubborn streak of autonomy although nothing approaching Ludd beliefs. “Unusual sort of place, however. Some religious connection or another, or so Caruthers says. They’re all thick-necked plus damned resilient.”
“Have to be out here.”
“Records acknowledge only a dozen or so residents have gone missing in the past five years—good retention, all things considered—living out next to nowhere.”
“Where do they go when they leave?”
“How do you mean?”
“Do these fleeing Indies end up in Security? Does it seem like they can’t wait to leave this place behind at any cost, thus they whore themselves in Security as legionnaires?”
“No, seems that most former colonists leave to join Earth-side sids.” The specialist from Von Braun paused then asked pointedly, “By the way—why are you here?”
“Ask our fearless commander; she’ll tell you.” The hiberman, like most in his guild, had little love for shuttle pilots. “Has something to do with the science team not having gathered all Marsco HQ wanted at the Trojans.” These asteroids, trailing the gigantic planet on an identical orbital plane, were the last locale explored by the Gagarin.
“Marsco HQ? Not Herriff and the VBC?” Like this colony, Herriff and his Von Braun Center on Mars enjoyed a large measure of autonomy from Marsco’s Seattle-based general headquarters.
“Affirmative. Seattle stuck its head into our program.”
“So, Seattle’s pulling the Center’s tail? Herriff’s not liking that. But that delayed your Jovan egression?”
“Some balls-up like that. Plus crew incompetence.”
“Incompetence? You are all hand-picked!”
“Well, all that and then Sparks sends the same sci-file twice. Put Seattle into a tizzy. We spent a week just asking ourselves what the hell was going on. By the time the flyboys and -girls sorted it all out enough to satisfy the Seattle wallahs, we egressed ten days later than we should. Thus, we didn’t align well with any belt colony—any Marsco colony.”
He paused to look down at the asteroid, scores of its domes lit against the ashen, pocked surface. It was a large settlement in a relatively colony-free sector of the belt. “Adams had been a friendly place for years, I understand,” the Gagarin iceman added at last.
“Yeah, the liaison reported that after each of his semiannual visits here.” Steerforth joined his subordinate at the viewport.
“What’s he like?”
“The usual ineffective drone: knows nothing but seems to know even less than that! Itinerant. He liaises with six or eight colonies but lives on Ceres—that’s the largest Marsco colony near here although it is really at quite a distance at present. His wife and kids are there, and he has three or four babes on other colonies. None here.”
Only Steerforth, Zot thought, would concern himself with counting another man’s women.
After watching a slice of dim sunlight reflect off the surface domes, Steerforth confided, “Yes, friendly here once, well, until the Piazzi. From what I can gather—rumors at the VBC and grumblings here—that incident changed everything on several colonies.”
Zot stated as dryly as possible, “What? Are sids and Indies beginning to doubt Big Red?”
“Cynicism doesn’t help the situation, Anthony.” Not knowing Zot well at all, Steerforth often used Grizotti’s first name; to those who knew him, he was always Zot, just Zot.
“What did happen? Any idea?”
“Nothing official. Accident of some sort. There’s to be an inquest. Or yet a second, or a third, or a continuing one, or God knows what else.”
“Some butt’s in it now. But, what did happen?” Zot asked insistently.
“Ask me about Von Braun and icing; no one will tell me squat even if they knew.”
“C’mon, explosions onboard shuttles just don’t happen.”
“Are you suggesting Ludds?”
“Or incredibly, poorly trained crews.” Zot paused then ventured, “I knew someone on board.”
“Know her well?”
“Him. No, just a friend. Classmate from my hiber-tech days. He was the iceman sucked into space—so far as we know.”
“Yeah, we really don’t know.” Had Steerforth been a closer coworker, he would have offered his sympathy but didn’t. “Look, it’s 1100. Give me your prelim report. They’ll be here at 1430.”
As much as he dreaded this exchange, the hands-on Gagarin researcher had everything ready. At a small conference table, he had two screens booted with identical material, a précis of his work. It was an unflattering account of the methodology that initially placed six volunteers in cryogenic stasis, a system wholly unlike routine hibernation. And the person who had so thoroughly botched that primary workup was waiting to hear Zot’s report.
When Grizotti initially came aboard the Gagarin, then in Mars orbit, the deep-iced guinea pigs had been in experimental cryo for half a year. Steerforth was quick to shift their responsibility over to Zot, to readily commit the subjects to his subordinate’s finger disks, and to hastily de-shuttle on the last lander back to the planet’s surface. At the start of the outward four-month crossing to the belt, the iceman needed to redo every aspect of the computer-assisted controls and monitors while still keeping everyone alive Steerforth had already frozen.
For his part, the VBC researcher had essentially copied Continental specs to freeze them but had dreamed up his own system for keeping them safe. Zot had to revise that system—in process—without endangering the frozen volunteers any more than they were and without ending the experiment prematurely by bringing them out of deep ice.
Grizotti was too kind to say outright, I saved your ass, David, so he spoke in generalities about the salvaged system, stressing more his alterations, his adjustments, his tweaks, as though he had added onto a working system, not redesigned an altogether failed one.
“All six were in yellow when I got them. I had them stable and safe within ten days.”
“Not an easy task,” Steerforth stated without emotion, even though his FD prints were all over those dysfunctional and bollixed fundamental protocols.
“They were all A-OK after eight weeks and are continuing so indefinitely.”
The concept originator readily saw that Zot had implemented a wholly new system under the most difficult of conditions, life and death conditions. But after the report’s conclusions, Steerforth played his part well and thanked the real designer for his forty-three months of ceaseless monitoring. “Excellent reconditioning of existing systems,” he stated more than once.
Zot modestly thanked him for the acknowledgement. “Everyone’s green-lining at present. They’ve been that way for the past forty-two months, one week.”
“Outstanding! Plus their six months before—so well beyond four years total. Y’know, all six have agreed to stay under even after returning to the Center.”
“We can then expect at least five years without problems—ten times hiber’s current max.”
“I’ve always maintained that twenty years is possible.”
“If twenty, then fifty, one hundred. They’re in stasis, after all, not hibernation. Just compare their body temps and vitals to green-lined hiber stats. And once safely in this stasis, eternity’s the limit.” Zot bit his tongue. If a hundred, why not two or three? Post-solar is possible. Certainly not in this end-of-her-limits research ship but in some other spaceship that can be automated to go beyond Pluto and then safely away.
But where?
· · ·
After talking with the ten members of the flight crew complement and the twenty of the science research team, the Indie inspectors, accompanied by Caruthers, made their way aft to the hiber-station where they found both Steerforth and Grizotti in full uniform waiting for them.
The first thought that ran through Zot’s mind was that the physician had an air about her like Tessa’s. It was only in her deliberate and energetic manners, not her looks. Her blond hair was longer, fixed into a practical, non-ornamental braid that was curled up at the back of her head. Plus she looked strained from the rigors of life on an asteroid. Nonetheless, Tessa crossed Zot’s mind until he mentally shook his head to clear himself of her memory.
Next to this no-nonsense inspector was an older woman with black bags under her anxious eyes, eyes partially hidden by dark glasses.
With them were two men, the superintendent and one other man obviously attached to the legal side of the inspection pair. He stood silently by, observing and noting everything without responding. Their names betrayed little: Zale and Eleni Romanidu, Misha Paton, and Anora Hauser.
The Gagarin cryo-researcher made no attempt to garner meaning from names, races, and backgrounds. This was a postwar world, a Marsco world; all had been mixed, rearranged, sorted by techno-prowess. Or by choice to get as far away from Marsco as possible. This sifting began with Divestiture and continued to this day. Only associate, sid, and PRIM remained as viable and discrete categories.
Unless you count these few Indies and the likes of Walter Miller as a fourth column. Once more, Zot mentally shook his head; he wasn’t going anywhere near Tessa by thinking about her father.
Introductions over, the Indies gravitated to Zot’s workstation in the midsection of the third personnel mod.
Usually, when a pair like these women entered to check up on logs and reports, one played soft, the other hard. This time, however, both came in as polished and resolute as asteroid nickel. The doctor asked pointed questions about the six crewmembers in medical isolation, while the other scrutinized the fragmentary records given to her. Believing their home colony in peril, they wanted to make sure every conceivable risk was avoided.
Through a bulkhead behind consoles and banks of monitors, the cryo-bay was closed off, its hatch sealed. Steerforth was determined to keep anyone from even so much as seeing the tech layout of his experimental system. Even so, it took only a moment and the doctor’s sharp eye to raise concerns.
“You’ve given med charts for those six in hiber,” Hauser stated with an accusatory voice. She motioned toward the locked-down bulkhead, “but they go back only four months.” She addressed her question to Zot because he appeared to be the most honest of the three associates.
“And the problem is?” Steerforth interjected. He had been fussing around, keeping the inspectors from probing too deeply about his protocols.
“Your info doesn’t match your hiber-logs,” replied the legalistic Romanidu.
“And,” the doctor interjected still to Zot, “just look at these readings—heart rate, body temp, whatever you select—your ‘iced’ crew are all dead!”
Defensively, the Gagarin iceman pulled up another screen. “Here’s their respiration. They’re very much alive, as you can see.” He briskly pointed to a sine wave graphic that demonstrated their breathing rates as retarded but with verifiable patterns. A second screen showed the oxygen content of their slowly pulsing blood. “I’m not housing cadavers in there.”
The doctor had never seen such hiber signs before. “You call hibernation ‘icing,’ but this really seems to be freezing someone,” she commented in an unguarded outburst.
Neither Grizotti nor Steerforth felt obligated to respond.
“More to the point, Superintendent Paton,” the liaison moved this confrontation back to its original purpose, “after examining for signs of Neo-Con, your med investigator here finds no evidence of plague, am I not correct?”
The accompanying physician nodded, still with an eye on Zot, an eye clearly pleased with his frank demeanor and kindness.
The inspection team murmured assent and prepared to leave when Zale, who had been a brooding presence thus far, brought out his own data file with a self-important flourish. “I haven’t seen the records of your asteroid harvest. Where are those records?”
The two hibernation researchers were stunned by the question. “Why ask us that,” Steerforth stammered. “Do I look like a sid astro-miner?”
Ignoring the slam, Zale stayed revved up, gunning for them. “The ship must have records.” This charade covered his being on the inspection team, and it gave the two women more time to survey the hiber terminals.
Another aspect of this ship to distrust, Eleni noted, this mega-bay. It’s five, six times larger than it needs to be. Nothing makes sense here! She didn’t need to be a hiber-techie to observe that this workstation was beyond anything approaching normal. For starters its instrumentation was at least one hundred times larger than any standard system needed.
“Those records?” Zale asked the icemen again.
Even though flustered, Caruthers managed to evade the real issue. He was a minor official caught in a major situation well over his head. The VBC hadn’t expected this trouble, or Herriff would have sent someone besides this inept Steerforth. The liaison drew a forceful breath. “These two are mere icemen—one wasn’t even a member of the crew—why ask them?”
“Why not?”
“They know nothing of asteroid harvesting–alleged harvesting.” He held up a disk-full hand, but that gesture held little sway with such Indies. “Besides none has taken place, I can assure you!”
“I don’t buy that for a nano,” the colonist spit his answer. “Why else is a ship going outside the belt and then looping back in? What else but for secretly harvesting our allotment and covering your tracks while doing such an odd loop?”
“These allegations are baseless, without substance,” the liaison retorted.
The three associates glanced around at their Indie visitors. They then shared a mental epiphany: they don’t believe the Gagarin has been to Jupiter!
Distrustful bastards, Grizotti thought. “What have we to hide? We’ve been on a scientific expedition.” So as not to compound his statement with a direct lie, he added vaguely, “beyond the belt!”
Caruthers finally put his finger disks down. “Inspection’s over. You see there’s nothing for you to worry about or bother with, health-wise. As you’ve noted, you find no evidence of any disease present. And so now I really must insist: you’re interfering with Marsco shuttle traffic! You’ve had your look-about, so please go. Now!”
Something was going on here, Romanidu knew; its nature she could only just imagine. Reflecting further, the Indie felt stiffening Marsco resolve. Knowing there was more here than met her eye but also convinced that the shuttle was truly plague-free, she concluded it was time to back off.
· · ·
A week later when clear of the asteroid belt, the Gagarin headed toward Mars. With the hypergolic fuel taken on at Adams-Leverrier flaming through the quad engine bells, the expedition ship gathered speed for her last homeward leg.
“That extra pair will kick us along nicely,” Steerforth commented to Zot as the latter prepared him for hibernation.
“You sure you want this? We’ll be in Mars orbit in a little over three months.”
“Three months of total blackness? What in solar for?”
Zot scoffed at the suggestion rather than reply. He had used his years beyond the belt to explore as best he could. He had augmented the ship’s dish antenna for an enhanced scope to look deeply into space—for the pure science of it, something Marsco wasn’t fond of lately. Even with that small-scale instrument, he had been able to gather files of substantial new data and gophered much more in cobweb sites long neglected by other associates. The whole universe beyond-solar waited for disks to explore it, yet it remained as unexamined as the far side of the moon in the middle of the last century.
“Let me ask you something else,” Steerforth began, breaking the silence.
The hiberman nodded without speaking.
“Any good ass on board?”
The busy iceman ignored his colleague.
“C’mon, either it was sensational or you got zilch.”
“How Marsco—so binary.”
“Look—why d’you take this mother-of-all-sorties anyway? To become a monk? Or for all those Marsco Units? Cha-ching!”
“Who said I was a monk?”
“Oh-ho!” Steerforth stressed by drawing out the comment, “mending a broken heart, then. Hey, best way for that—” he gestured rhythmically and crudely. “It’s like I’ve always said, ‘there’s always someone else to poke just down the hall.’”
Looking at the balding, short, unremarkable—and incompetent—middle-aged man, Zot tried not to laugh. “Chicks must cream in their thongs at just the mere thought of you.”
Missing the intent, Steerforth gave a knowing wink. “Bingo! Bingo-bingo!”
Zot worked on in silence then asked, “Tell me something. What’s this all for? I mean, this cryo? It’s well beyond anything needed at present. And from what I’ve seen of Jupiter—why return? More than ninety-five percent of the belt asteroids aren’t mined or inhabited. Marsco has no need—indeed, no desire—to go beyond the belt.”
“Yeah, this expedition was the closest it’s come to pure science in years.”
“I guess you could say that.”
“That’s loaded—what the hell do you mean?”
“Pure science? We orbited Jupiter. Examined several of its moons. We went to the trailing Trojan asteroids. But last century’s astronomers watching the Shoemaker-Levy comet collide with the surface learned more of Jupiter than we did. We looked for potential colony locales, for mining-worthy asteroids and moons. We looked for water-ice and frozen methane.”
“And that’s not science?”
“Not when you’re really only looking for future mining sites.”
Steerforth snidely countered, “Idealist.”
“And you’re the realist?”
“Damn straight.” The older man’s bloodshot eyes bore into Zot’s brown. “Listen,” he insisted, “learn this! You’re an associate. The world’s ours for the taking. We can have it all! Do whatever the hell we want. ‘Just do it!’ Quit all this sniveling about the past and about the future—live it up today! What did they say once, ‘Seize the day’?”
“They were Romans, and they said it carpe diem. And their empire fell with quite a large bang, as history reports it.”
“Well, better grab yours before—” He gave a gentle laugh, partly to signal his willingness to switch topics and partly out of his reluctant fondness for Grizotti. “Look, we didn’t create this world. All we did was inherit it.”
Zot wasn’t answerable to Steerforth. And he knew in an hour the irritating associate would be out of his hair for three months. Without comment, he picked up where he left off and continued prepping the VBC researcher.
“Hey,” Steerforth grinned, “no hard feelings.” He held out his hand, the gesture of shaking hands one not often shared in the Marsco world. The senior iceman knew enough never to tick off someone about to put you under. He would risk the FD-to-FD shock to avoid a horrid hiber. “Look, you asked sort of, so I’ll tell you sort of,” he finally confided. “Off the record, nothing official.” He paused, shrugged, and went on. “I don’t know what ol’ Herriff’s got planned. Martin and I aren’t exactly buds, if you catch? But I hear lots of rumors: a space ship—”
“Well, duh!”
“I mean one designed specifically for deep space.”
“So,” Zot concluded, “unlike the Gagarin.”
“Exactly.”
Zot gave a shrug and looked out a viewport. “She really is just standard pieces added on to make an old-fashioned shuttle into an enhanced platform. Nothing new or special at all. Extra fuel tanks, another pair of engines. But more to the point, all this cryo-crap isn’t just to make us obsolete?” They both laughed.
“No, far from it. We’ll still be needed. And Herriff’s aiming for a new engine concept.”
“New design? How?”
“Like I know the specs? I only heard things, y’see, only heard them. I never saw anything, not even a single peep at the schematics or concept models. Something propelled by ions, not chemicals. And then the boss, Doc Herriff, he just says one day out of the dusty red Martian sky, ‘David, push on with those cryo plans, stat!’ Like I can pull such designs out of the air.”
“Or out of a memory bank, a Continental memory bank.”
“Look, it’s all legit research, right? I checked their results and tests against mine, their data against my trials.”
“Got me there.”
“So, anyway, all I can confirm is that I heard that something’s going down. But Christ, it’ll be years, I tell you. I can see what’s under construction in the orbiting docks—and there’s nothing that seems remotely like it can do the impossible.”
“Like house a crew in deep hiber for fifty, one-hundred years.”
“One-fifty, two—I tell you, I’ve designed a system close to that.”
“Well, we have designed.”
Steerforth winked. “Got me there.”
Grizotti had the IV tubes ready to start bringing the necessary fluids to keep the man safely asleep for months, a system far simpler and far less complicated than the future-oriented cryogenic stasis in the farther bay.
Steerforth reached out and stopped him. “One last point, Anthony. Think about this one, for Christ’s sake. You’ll either go back to the MAS Fleet or you’ll stay with us at the VBC—I’d love to have you! Either way—not to Security, right? Y’know how many Academy grads end up as officers in the S & H mucking around patrolling hot zones?”
Zot shook his head.
“Lots, over forty percent this last grad year—well over. All that space-based bumf about shuttles and egress-my-ass those cadets had to learn and then, a few weeks past receiving their commissions, they’re in urban gray with an Enfield and squads of troopers in tow.”
“Something change while we were post-belt?”
“Not that on Mars I’d hear any more than you’d hear on board. But, rumors again, Anthony, rumors that something just ain’t right on Earth. Some zones, even some rundown subsidiaries, they’re all becoming IED-City. Christ, everyone carries an Enfield.”
“Everyone?”
“Every associate. But y’know what I mean. It’s hot down there on Old Blue these days, way hot, way too hot.”
“‘Needs no ghost.’”
“I know, I know, ‘rotten in Denmark.’ But seriously, watch your mouth, Anthony, Marsco-wise. It knows how to shut up those that open their yapper too much.” He chomped his three times for emphasis.
“Yeah,” Zot answered, “but don’t worry. I’ll be too busy saluting to complain.”
“Be careful it’s not you returning a salute from all your new troopers. When on patrol, you’re too busy to complain, so CYA, my friend, CYA.” Steerforth grinned one last time at his little witticism. “Y’know, you are as good as a monk, hearing my confession.”
“Shall I give you a penance?”
“Not on your life! But I’ll give you some free advice. Deice that blond in the fifth bay, the titty-luscious babe. If she’s not space-crazed, she’ll be willing. Types like her are always hornier than rabbits after hiber.”
“The words of a master.”
The senior specialist, winking before he drifted into hibernation, thought Grizotti’s last remark was serious.
· · ·
Most of the flight and science crews on the Gagarin went under hiber soon after the solitary passenger, Steerforth. The ship’s own specialists took over after belt egression, leaving Zot to tend his six in cryo and work on his own scientific projects as time permitted. As promised, he supervised Steerforth personally, the VBC specialist not trusting anyone else.
At the cryogenic workstation, Zot was always alone. As the days passed into the first month, he thought about leaving Marsco. Dozens of Independent shuttles moved between the Earth and the belt. But the hiberman knew many of these were smaller ships that relied little on hibernation.
Or perhaps, he thought, I’ll really go near-Luddite, resign my commission, join Father Cavanaugh’s SoAm PRIM school. Zot had met the priest through the Millers, been down to his run-on-a-shoestring campus in the worst zone of Rio. Perhaps that would be his next move.
In the following weeks, he looked over his files of data about the post-solar universe. “Even if there were a confirmed Earth-like planet out there somewhere,” he finally concluded half aloud, “even with a new deep-space craft and my cryo, who’d ever go? Ever want to go? Besides, what’s really, really out there?”
After the hiberman dimmed all the lights in his cabin, the viewport filled with countless stars: dots merging into clusters, individual ones brighter than the rest, the backdrop of the Milky Way, a few larger lights obviously the post-belt planets. “All those stars and solar systems still years and years away,” he confided hopelessly to himself. “Only Dante or Milton could conceive of a more vacuous hell.”
Standing at the plexiglass as if to get a closer view, he pondered infinity. He was nearly overwhelmed by its immense nothingness and its entire totality.
The only other thought that crossed his mind was Tessa. The Tessa he loved so deeply once, the Tessa lost to him completely. Only Dante or Milton could conceive of a more vacuous hell than life without her, he thought before busying himself to drive her from his mind.