Mars Nation 2 Page 10

  She walked back into the cabin the ship’s comp had made available to her. Her old spacesuit was lying in the corner, its stench unmistakable. A metal tag with ‘Kowalska’ written on it was pinned to its chest. Ewa unpinned the tag and stuck it in her pocket. She was grateful to the suit that it had brought her here. However, she was glad to never have to climb into it again.

  In farewell, she looked around one last time, but there weren’t any personal items sitting around. She didn’t have anything she couldn’t afford to leave behind, except perhaps the radio that Theo had given her. It was sitting in the drill’s cab. Ewa closed the door behind her and took the elevator down to the hangar.

  She had placed an exercise bike in one corner of the hangar. The new suit was skin-tight and saved her part of her training, but she would feel safer if she pedaled for a while and lowered her blood nitrogen content. It only took three minutes for the sweating to start. After another twenty minutes, she climbed off the bike. That should be enough.

  She got completely undressed and stood up straight. She cautiously ran her fingers across the tortured skin on her joints. Her injuries were almost healed. She pulled on her diaper and her thermal underwear over that. If she was lucky, she wouldn’t need all this since in a few minutes she would be sitting inside the warm cab in her fitness suit. But if everything headed south, the suit would keep her alive for a while. Ewa preferred to not dwell on what all could go wrong.

  Ewa packed the taser into her tool bag and sealed her suit, but she didn’t put her helmet on yet. She inspected the hangar one last time. She had removed all the covers from the vehicles. The loader was parked in front of the back wall that they were about to blast off. A light was burning in its cab even though no one was in there. She could steer the vehicle by remote from the drill. There were no technical obstacles to this. They hadn’t even needed to ask the ship’s comp about it. Nevertheless, Ewa wondered why the comp hadn’t asked even once about why she was making a mess down here. The computer’s intelligence was obviously confined within very narrow parameters. As long as she wasn’t trying to break into the command bridge or leave the ship, nothing would happen to her.

  She touched the loader’s huge front tire. The material was vibrating. That had to be the engine, which was already running. It really was a shame she had to leave it here. They could have made good use of the loader, but the drill was more critical. The other vehicles in the hangar were, for the most part, undrivable in their current conditions. These two giants were the only pieces of machinery the engineers hadn’t expected the astronauts to have to assemble once they reached their destination.

  Ewa took one last breath. She smelled oil and rubber, but she also picked up a hint of cold sweat—her own. She hoped they had correctly calculated the amount of blasting agent. If the blast was too weak, the hangar wouldn’t open. The ship’s comp wouldn’t give them a second chance. If the explosion was too strong, the loader could potentially be damaged—and without it, their crazy plan wouldn’t work.

  She shut her helmet. Ewa would stay on board the ship as long as possible. After a lengthy discussion, they had settled on this as the safest course of action. After all, the robotic drill might tip over as it exited the hangar, burying its glass cab beneath it.

  “It’s time,” she said aloud. Her voice sounded muffled. How quickly she had forgotten how the helmet changed the acoustics!

  ‘Detonation,’ Friday replied through her mouth.

  Ewa had positioned herself between the tires of a buggy that was parked against the hangar’s back wall. The vehicle should protect her from the resulting blast wave. She lifted the radio and switched it on. The display glowed. She used the dial to set the radio to the same frequency as the detonator.

  Ready. Now all she had to do was press the send button.

  Ewa inhaled deeply, exhaled slowly, and leaned against the hangar’s hard wall. She then pressed the button.

  A white flash streaked through the hangar, followed by a crash. The suit immediately lowered the sensitivity of the external microphone, but Ewa’s ears were still buzzing. The buggy was set instantly into motion. It was pushed in her direction, but the tires slowed it down as they collided against the wall on either side of Ewa. A siren started to blare. The suit lowered the external microphone’s sensitivity even more. This was followed by a tearing sound that made Ewa’s hair stand on end. It was as if someone were slowly ripping a sheet of paper right beside her ear.

  For about thirty seconds, this sound drowned out the siren. Then the hangar grew bright. It was a light that didn’t belong in here—the warm, brownish-yellow glow of the noontime Mars atmosphere, broken up by flashing red warning lights. All breathable air was sucked out of the hangar, sending a jolt of fear through Ewa despite the fact she was wearing her suit.

  She climbed over the buggy’s tire. The drill was standing in front of her. A short ladder was fastened to its side, which would provide her access to the cab. Ewa ran toward it. A powerful air draft pushed her to the side. What was that? Ewa whipped around. Who had opened the hangar door into the interior of the ship? Air was now escaping through the opening. But that wasn’t all. Ewa saw an outline of something move through the doorway. It had two legs, that much was certain. It was about twice as wide as a human. She had been afraid of this—the ship wasn’t going to simply let them leave. It must have activated a robot. What could the machine do? Ewa had no idea, and she decided she didn’t want to find out. She preferred to make a dash for the ladder. She climbed up it as quickly as she could, jumped through the open door of the cab, and shut the hatch.

  She took her seat on the driver’s side. The remote-control program for the loader was up on the screen in front of her. They had done dry runs for this next part, but they hadn’t moved the heavy vehicle from its spot. Ewa had to rotate it ninety degrees, and the vehicle responded with great precision. Ewa silently thanked the engineers who had designed it.

  Now she had to steer the loader backward through the outside opening. She checked the camera feed. The hatch wasn’t completely open. The right door was still hanging on its hinges, at least on the bottom ones. Ewa hoped the loader was powerful enough to push it aside. She was about to put the loader in reverse when something thumped on the cab. It was the robot’s arm. Ewa flinched. No, don’t let yourself be distracted, she thought. Make the loader roll backwards!

  It worked. The heavy vehicle rolled toward the outer hatch. It crashed into the right door, freeing the panel from its last mounting and sending it in seeming silence onto the ground. The loader was next in line. The scoop rose into the air as it tipped backward. Centimeter by centimeter, Ewa steered it into the chasm that was a good five meters deep. It plummeted. Like a shadow, it vanished from her line of sight.

  The robotic arm right over her now began to hammer on the cab of the still-parked drill. The ship’s comp had rightly identified Ewa as the cause of the disaster and was attempting to stop her. It couldn’t be allowed to do that. She wasn’t sure if the plan with the loader had worked. Had the vehicle crashed? She would have to play it by ear.

  Ewa switched the monitor to the drill in which she was sitting. How large might its turning radius be? The drill was parked in the hangar in such a way that she also needed to turn it ninety degrees. That had to be possible, as otherwise they couldn’t have gotten it on this ship in the first place! It had to work.

  Ewa pressed the accelerator gingerly. The comp reported an obstacle in her path, meaning the robot. She dismissed the warning and was about to celebrate her good fortune when the machine shifted to the side at the last second. Shit. That was probably a sign that she should speed things up.

  The robot started to flail at the cab like crazy. The cab’s material wouldn’t be able to take this for long. It was intended to provide its passengers a space with normal air pressure, and to possibly withstand the impact of a micro-meteor. It wasn’t, however, meant to stand up against a targeted attack. Ewa saw several cracks forming alread
y, but her rescue, the external hatch, was still a few meters away.

  The center section of the cab’s roof suddenly broke completely. Ewa watched as the robot’s fist smashed through it and nailed the passenger seat mounted right behind hers. The seat collapsed into its individual components. Three meters still! What could she do? The robot wasn’t going to stop, and she wasn’t any match for the metal giant. Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea, she thought. They would carve ‘She kept trying’ on her gravestone.

  She then felt herself stand up, like she was in a trance. It wasn’t Ewa who was in command. She wanted to fight back, since she could guess who was calling the shots right now. But maybe it was actually better like this, just this once. Her hand darted into her tool bag and pulled out the taser. Is this really the right moment for this? she wondered. But then she realized what that thing in her head was doing.

  Ewa shifted underneath the broken part of the cab’s dome, aimed the taser at the robot, and fired. She then jumped back into her seat. She was herself again. Ewa watched as the robot slid awkwardly onto the hangar floor. The threat seemed to be averted.

  She needed to concentrate on the hatch. At that very moment, the first pair of tires rolled off the hangar floor. The tires spun in the air before automatically stopping. However, the other nine axles continued to push from the rear. Ewa risked a glance downward. The loader was apparently where they had wanted it to be. It would function as a crude staircase they could use to rumble their way to the ground.

  The front part of the drill was still dangling in the air. When half of it was in the air, it began to tilt. The horizon suddenly shot upward. Ewa had to hold on. She was being rattled hard, like when the Santa Maria’s landing module had set down. But this time she only needed to survive a five-meter plunge. Ewa screamed as a way to release stress. Nobody was there, after all.

  She made it! The drill bounced up and down in Mars’s low gravitational field, as if its tires were made of solid rubber. It was spectacular.

  Ewa felt her fear fall away. She had almost snuffed it during this theft, but for the first time in many months, she was once again having something like a good time.

  6/19/2042, Spaceliner 1

  “The new administrator is making me worried.”

  Rick sat up. That was Jean Warren’s voice. What was the ship’s captain doing in that cabin? He looked up the cabin’s occupant on his personnel list. Chad Bader, 38, senior NASA astronaut, who had left the organization in disgrace. There were no laudatory comments from his former employer, which meant that his departure probably had something to do with disciplinary problems. They had likely urged him to leave. He had been hired to serve on Spaceliner 1 because of his excellent driving skills. On Mars, he would be in charge of organizing the transport system within the colony.

  “A big mouth,” Chad said, “with nothing behind it. I don’t understand why in the world the Senator put him in that position.”

  “Maybe they’re involved. They say the Senator’s gay.” A second man. Rick wondered where he had heard that voice. It sounded familiar to him, but he couldn’t place it.

  “Ballantine? Doesn’t he have a wife and kids?” Jean asked.

  “Those are just rumors. He sues the hell out of anyone who spreads them,” the stranger said. “His family is supposed to be very conservative. And it’s the family’s money, not his.”

  “To each his own. But promoting Summers, of all people...,” Chad said.

  “I have to admit that I fear the worst,” Jean said, “which is why I wanted to meet with the two of you. Our lives, our future, depend on this man. We have to initiate countermeasures right away. Isaac, what is the mood in the scientific division.”

  Isaac... McQuillen. That was the other guy. Rick pulled his file up on his screen while he listened to the conversation. McQuillen, another former NASA man who had supervised several robotic missions for NASA. Those former NASA folks stuck together through thick and thin. As a biologist, McQuillen was supposed to kick-start the food production on Mars.

  “Mixed,” Isaac replied. “Tetsu’s attitude is, ‘Do whatever the boss says.’ The majority of people stand behind him on this. Summers hasn’t made any major missteps yet. Most of them don’t care how he got to where he is.”

  “But they should be interested,” the captain said.

  “I agree,” Chad replied.

  “But at the moment, there’s really not much that we can do,” Isaac said.

  “That’s true. But if anything happens, can I count on you both?”

  “Of course,” Isaac answered.

  “Me, too,” Chad said.

  “Thanks, guys. I just wanted to hear that from you directly.”

  It grew quiet, and then Rick heard the sound of a shutting door. He stopped the playback. The conversation had occurred last night. Every morning, he chose a couple of random samples to listen to as a gauge of his subordinates’ mood. This was pay dirt. Jean Warren, the captain, was scheming against him. He could understand that on a personal level, since his appointment reduced her responsibilities and influence. She had taken an eminently sensible step in gathering loyal allies around her. It was just as clear that he had to do something about this.

  Rick looked at the clock. His first meeting was scheduled for nine o’clock. He had an hour. He already had an idea about how he could get Jean Warren out of the way. He called up the duty rosters first. As he expected, she had been on duty yesterday on the flight deck. That was a dull, lonely job because nothing ever happened. It could easily leave you wanting to devote your time to something else. As the administrator, Rick had access to Jane’s account. He logged in under her name, made a tiny change, logged back out, and then altered the logbook, all via his administrator privileges. To anyone without his access privileges, it would look like Jean had made the change herself while on duty.

  Satisfied, Rick closed the log again. His part of the plan was in place. The universe was in charge of the rest of it. Rick was really excited. He loved making plans like this one. He was sure that it would function as intended.

  He just didn’t know when that would be.

  After his nap, his assistant buzzed him. He still couldn’t remember her name, but didn’t want to annoy her by asking what it was. Was his plan already paying off? No, it would make a major splash when it hit home.

  “You have a message from Mars,” she said.

  Ah, the other plan. Rick was almost sure that he had received a positive response. “Who’s it from?”

  “Mars for Everyone.”

  “Ah, the crazies. Thank you.”

  He was a little disappointed. MfE was a mishmash of amateurs who didn’t have a chance against professionals like them or the four NASA people. But it wouldn’t hurt anything to have a mole there. After his computer confirmed the arrival of the message, he opened it.

  The message didn’t contain video, just audio footage. With growing excitement, Rick listened to the message—three times. He was stoked by his knowledge of human nature. Drizzling poison directly into their minds had worked perfectly. The woman who had contacted him wanted to apply for the position as his representative, his Number 1. Rick was sure that other applications would soon come in. He wouldn’t turn down any of them. After all, one could never have too many spies.

  Sol 81, Mars surface

  After the adventure yesterday, they had decided to spend the night close to the ship. Thirty minutes after the explosion, the ship’s alarms stopped blaring. The security robot hadn’t appeared again. Ewa ran a technical check on both the drill and the loader, and found that the drill’s cab couldn’t be repaired. However, the loader was undamaged—and was exactly the same size. Ewa had spent the night comfortably in it, but now she was ready to change her location.

  Ewa woke up as the sun rose, but she didn’t get up right away. Instead, she thought about Friday. That thing in her head had probably saved her life, considering that he had rendered the robot harmless. But he had also br
oken his promise to never take control without being asked. Could Ewa have stopped what had happened? She wasn’t sure. It wouldn’t have been a good idea at the time. Incidentally, Friday had also managed to reduce her supply of taser ammunition to one. The projectile she had loaded four days ago had been consumed when she fired it. What did Friday really want? Should she believe his claim that he had a survival instinct? Or was this ultimately about resuming his original mission to cause the entire project to fail?

  And who were his handlers? The thing in her head had made a few bizarre hints without providing concrete information. Ewa felt a little like a remote-controlled bomb that could go sky high at any moment. Who was holding the detonator? She reached for the taser, which had been returned to her tool bag. Was it perhaps the right moment to snuff out Friday’s life? She aimed her pointer finger at her chest and said “bang” loudly. No, it didn’t feel like the right thing to do. She didn’t know if it would ever feel right. Hadn’t she forfeited the right to make decisions about other people’s lives? If only she knew more about Friday. Was there something more to him than a well-developed killer algorithm?

  Ewa stood up from her cot and sat down in the driver’s seat. Most of the supplies were still in the drill. Her breakfast of rice cakes accompanied by orange juice out of a package was quite spartan. A deliciously fragrant, freshly brewed cup of coffee—that would be perfect right about now!

  She swallowed the last bite of rice cake and pulled on her clothes from yesterday. The spacesuit was up next. It no longer smelled quite so fresh. People are so easy to spoil! Yesterday, she had been thrilled that the suit had never been used, but today the faint smell already bothered her.