Spindrift (28 page)

Ramirez pushed himself up from his seat. “And the
Galileo
…?”

Emily dropped her helmet in Harker's seat, then reached down to pull out her water bottle. “When it comes over the horizon, I'll let them know we've arrived. Believe me, they're just as worried about us as you are.”

“Who said I was worried?” Ramirez asked. “Like the man said…I'm in the hands of the best the ESA has to offer.”

Emily had no idea whether he was being sarcastic or not, so she simply nodded and watched as he headed aft, Cruz behind him. Gazing out the windows at the barren landscape just beyond the range of the lights, a chill ran down her back.

She'd brought them to Spindrift. And now, for reasons she couldn't explain, she felt like a little girl being left alone in a cold and dark house.

 

The suit-up procedure took a little more than an hour. For the sake of their modesty, she didn't go aft to watch the men get ready for EVA, although she knew the process by heart. Strip off the flight suit, meant only to protect the wearer in the event of cabin decompression, and put on underwear that resembled a thong save for a unisex groin cup, which in turn was attached to a urine collection tube that dangled between the legs like an absurd penis. Next came the skinsuit, an elastic one-piece outfit that faintly resembled a wet suit except that it was made of multilayer polymers embedded with whisker-thin wires that would conduct heat to all parts of the body while pulling away perspiration and distributing it, along with urine, to the suit's closed-loop life-support system, where waste fluids would be broken down to oxygen, nitrogen, and coolant water. The suit also contained integrated electronics that monitored and automatically adjusted its internal temperature; once gloves, boots, and helmet were donned, and the chest yoke and rebreather pack were in place, the suit was virtually a one-man spacecraft, capable of keeping its wearer alive for eight hours at a stretch. All that was needed was the overgarment that would provide protection against dust and radiation, and the wearer was ready to enter the airlock.

Harker, Ramirez, and Cruz left the shuttle through the belly hatch, making their way down a narrow ramp lowered from the aft airlock. Although Emily heard every word they spoke through the comlink, she couldn't see the three men until they emerged from beneath the forward hull. With their skinsuits covered by the bulky white overgarments, they were indistinguishable from one another save for the colored stripes running across the tops of their ovoid helmets: gold for Harker, blue for Ramirez, red for Cruz. Caught within the bright circle cast by the spotlights, they trudged out from under the shuttle, each carrying two stainless-steel equipment cases, their boots kicking up dusty regolith that clung to their legs like dirty talcum powder.

Once they were within sight of the cockpit, Harker stopped and turned around to look up at her. “
Com check
,” he said. “
You're reading me, right?
”

Emily touched the wand of her headset. “Loud and clear. Got the fix on Larry?”

“
On my heads-up.
” He pointed to the right, northwest from the shuttle. “
About a half klick from where we are now, correct?
”

She looked up at a screen above the windows. Just as he said, the lander was located only 570 meters from their touchdown point. From there, it would be a simple matter of following Larry's tracks to the vent previously explored by the probe. “You got it. Set up the LRC once you've reached the vent.”

Within one of the equipment cases was a portable long-range communications system designed to amplify transmissions from their suit radios. The same hardware would allow them to communicate directly with
Galileo
once she linked the com channel from the shuttle. “
Roger that,
” Harker said. “
Not that it's necessary, really. We're only going a couple of kilometers
.”

“Do it anyway, please.” Emily became persistent. “You don't know what kind of mascon interference we may get down here.”

“
Ball and chain.
” Ramirez's voice came through her headset as a murmured aside, followed by a sound that might have been Cruz chuckling with amusement.

Emily reached up to the com panel and switched off his comlink. She waited a couple of seconds, enough time to cause Ramirez to turn around and look up at the shuttle. “Sorry about that,” she added, switching him back on again. “Loss of signal there. Want to repeat that last transmission, please?”

“
Ahh…negative on that.
” Ramirez's tone became contrite. “
Like you said…only some local interference.
”

“
Hope we don't have any more accidents like that.
” Irritation in Ted's voice.

“You won't.” Emily couldn't help but smile. “Just a small glitch in the system, that's all.”

“
Hey, how about making some coffee for when we get back?
” Harker said, as if to mitigate the situation. “
I don't care if these suits are supposed to keep us warm…it's cold out here.
”

Now that he mentioned it, that wasn't such a bad idea. The shuttle's galley was little more than a closet-size larder, but it did contain a coffeemaker with its own water tank, along with foam cups to be used when the craft was in a gravity environment. Someone at ESA had realized how important such small amenities would be during long sorties.

“Wilco.” Suddenly, Emily realized there was nothing more to be said. “Be careful out there,” she added, trying not to sound concerned. “Keep the channel on, all right?”

“
Will do.
” Ted raised his right arm as far as he could, to shoulder height, and bent his elbow in a clumsy salute.

She waved back to him, then watched as he and the others turned around and began to walk away. Their helmet lamps switched on before they left the field of illumination, but it wasn't long before they became three small blobs of light, gradually receding into the darkness.

Emily stood within the cockpit for a long time, watching them go. It wouldn't be long before she'd be able to regain contact with
Galileo
. A glance at the comp screen told her that the ship would soon reappear above the western horizon. For the time being, though, she was left to mind the home fires, so to speak.

Except for the crosstalk on the com channel, the shuttle was quiet. Too quiet for her nerves. And a little too warm, besides; might as well make herself more comfortable. Unzipping her flight suit, she peeled down to the drawstring trousers and T-shirt she wore underneath and opened a cabinet to retrieve the pair of felt moccasins she had stowed away. Then she bent down to the comp and punched up a music program she'd loaded into the system for just such an occasion. Some late-twentieth classical jazz, perhaps: Dexter Gordon,
Our Man In Paris
. She put it over the speakers; as a saxophone's mellow chords drifted through the cockpit, she went aft to open the galley. She'd need coffee; it would be a few hours before the guys returned.

She'd just loaded a cartridge labeled
MOCHA JAVA
into the filter slot when Arkady's voice came through her headset: “Galileo
to
Maria Celeste,
do you copy? Please respond.
”

About time. She touched the lobe of her headset. “This is
Maria Celeste
,” she said as she placed the ceramic carafe on the hot plate between the valve and pushed the
BREW
button. “Read you loud and clear,
Galileo
.”

“
Nice to hear you again,
Maria.
How's tricks?
”

Emily smiled as she headed forward to the cockpit. “We're down and safe,
Galileo
. Touchdown point about six hundred meters south of Larry, approximately two kilometers southeast from the crater. Survey team has left the craft, proceeding on foot to the primary target. You should be receiving the LRC signal once they've arrived.”

As she spoke, she bent low to peer upward through the cockpit windows. For a moment, she didn't see anything save for a black sky sprinkled with stars. Then she spotted a bright point of light, vaguely cruciform in shape, rising above the western horizon. The
Galileo
, following its equatorial orbit around Spindrift.

“
We copy,
Maria.
Looking good.
” A pause. Emily held her breath, waiting for more. “
Think you can send us a postcard? We'd love to get some pictures.
”

There it was: the code phrase she'd worked out with Arkady. “We'll try to do that,
Galileo
,” she said, hastily resuming her seat and reaching up to the com panel. “You'll need to send me your address, though. You're a long way from here.”

“
Oh, you know…the usual one will do.
” Arkady's voice was breezy, casual. Just a little chitchat among shipmates, so far as anyone else was concerned. As he spoke, though, Emily switched over to the secondary frequency normally used for backup telemetry. She patched the signal to a comp screen, then bent to peer more closely at it.

A concave view of
Galileo
's command center, as seen by a small video camera mounted within the com station. In the foreground, she could see the top of Arkady's head; behind him, a wraparound image of the flight deck, distorted by the camera's fish-eye lens. In middistance, she saw Lawrence, seated in his chair with his legs crossed, looking straight ahead. In front of him, she spotted Simone at the helm. Antonia was nowhere in sight…no, wait, there she was, walking past Arkady, heading from one side of the bridge to the other.

The camera was meant to be used for real-time video transmissions between
Galileo
and Earth, but hadn't been utilized since the shakedown cruise. With any luck, Captain Lawrence would've forgotten that it even existed. But Ted hadn't, and neither had Emily or Arkady; the com officer had surreptitiously activated the camera and slaved it to the secondary channel, allowing Emily to monitor what was going on within
Galileo
's command center while the shuttle was on Spindrift.

“I'll send you that card,” Emily said, and Arkady briefly raised his face to the camera to give her a wink. “Anything else you'd like?”

“
A perfect red rose…
”

Her eyes widened as she realized what he was saying—
stand by
—but before she could react, Lawrence glanced over his shoulder at Arkady. He said something Emily couldn't quite make out, but Arkady turned his head to look at him. “
Yes, sir
,” he said, then leaned forward.

An instant later, Lawrence's voice came over her headset: “
Ms. Collins, do I understand that Mr. Harker and his party have already left the ship?
”

It felt odd to be speaking with the captain while watching him from behind. “Yes, sir, he has. They're proceeding to Larry, and I expect…”

“
Very well. When you make contact with them again, please advise Mr. Harker that we're changing orbit with the intent of rendezvousing with the starbridge.
”

Stunned, Emily stared at the screen. “Do I understand you correctly, sir? You're planning to change the orbital parameters?”

“
You understand correctly.
” Lawrence uncrossed his legs, then turned his head to the right and made a small gesture to someone offscreen. “
I expect we'll be approaching our target within the next three orbits. Do you copy?
”

“I…yes, sir, we copy.”

“
Very good, Ms. Collins. Make sure Mr. Harker gets this message.
” As if she were little more than a London taxi driver, waiting at the curb while her passengers went shopping at Har-rods. “
Good luck with your mission.
Galileo
over.
”

His voice cut off, yet his image remained on the screen. Arkady looked up at the camera again; a discreet nod, then he briefly raised two fingers. The secondary com signal would remain active so long as
Galileo
was above them.

A perfect red rose, indeed…complete with thorns.

JANUARY 8, 2291—SPINDRIFT

T
he world was a cold and lightless plain, its horizon discernible only as a jagged line where the stars rose from the darkness. Caught within the beams of their helmet lamps, Larry's tracks ran straight ahead of the three men as a pair of shallow furrows through charcoal black dust, swerving every now and then to avoid a boulder too large for the probe to climb over. Shoulders bowed by the weight of the equipment cases, their boots scuffing up tufts of regolith, they followed the tracks through a land of perpetual night.

“
I don't care what my suit tells me
,” Ramirez grumbled. “
My feet are freezing. If I don't get warm pretty soon, I'm going to come down with frostbite.
” He hesitated. “
Maybe I've got a suit leak.
”

“Your suit's rated for-240° Celsius.” Harker didn't look back at him as they trudged along. “If there was a leak, you'd have worse problems than cold feet. It's all in your head.”

“
You sound like the prison shrink,
” Ramirez replied, and that evinced a dry chuckle from Cruz. “
Don't laugh until you've been there,
” he added. “
Five years of psychotherapy is no fun.
”

“Tell us about it another time.” As curious as he was about Ramirez, Harker didn't want to get distracted then. Most EVA accidents occurred when guys forgot where they were and what they were supposed to be doing. “Right now, I just want to reach the crater.”

Although he couldn't see it yet, a glance at the pedometer and the translucent map displayed on his visor's heads-up told him that the crater should be less than a hundred meters away. Once again, he paused to turn around and look back the way they had come. A couple of kilometers away, he could make out the lights of the
Maria Celeste
; it should have been a comforting sight, but for some reason it only added to a growing sense of foreboding. That lonesome shuttle was all that kept him and the others from being marooned on this rock for the rest of their lives. Which would be very short, indeed, once their suit batteries went down and the rebreather units failed…

Stop scaring yourself
, he thought.
You've got Ramirez to do that for you.
“Onward and forward,” he said, forcing himself to be cheerful as he turned around again. “‘Half a league, half a league, half a league onward…'”

His voice trailed off as he remembered the rest of the verse. Much too grim to be repeated, under the circumstances. But Ramirez had apparently read Tennyson as well.
“‘All in the valley of Death rode the six hundred,'”
he finished.

“
Thanks for those happy thoughts
,” Cruz said. “
Last time I go for a hike with you guys.
” Of the three of them, the geologist was the most upbeat. His curiosity insatiable, he'd already stopped a couple of times to collect rock samples, and when they'd located Larry he had taken a couple of minutes to download the probe's memory directly into his suit comp. So far as Jorge was concerned, everything about Spindrift was a source of wonder; if the relentless cold and dark of this castaway world dispirited him at all, he didn't show it.

“Sorry 'bout that,” Harker said. “I'll try not to…”

A double beep in his headset, then he heard Emily's voice: “Maria Celeste
to EVA team, you copy?
”

“Right here, Sister Maria,” Harker replied. “What's up?”

“
You should be close to the crater by now. Seen anything yet?
”

Harker had been caught up in the conversation; he'd failed to notice anything more than the rover tracks. Looking up, he caught sight of a moundlike bulge only a few dozen meters away. “Got it. Very close now…”

“
Whoa!
” Cruz stopped, tilted back his head so that his helmet faced upward. “
Switch to IR…you gotta see this!
”

Putting down the equipment cases, Harker raised his left hand to the side of his helmet and found the recessed stud that activated the visor's infrared filter. Immediately, the landscape became more visible, albeit tinged pale green; the mound was obviously the outer wall of a small crater, gently sloping upward about ten meters above the ground. Yet that wasn't what caught his attention, but rather a shaft of light, pale yellow and rippling like a desert mirage, that rose above the crater's center.

“
That's heat
,” Cruz said. “
Coming from the same place as the carbon-dioxide emissions.”

“Volcanic?” Harker stared at it in puzzlement.

“
I don't think so.
” Setting down his own equipment cases, Cruz opened one of them, pulled out a portable UV spectrometer. Aiming the gun-shaped instrument at the crater, he raised his visor so that he could study its luminescent readout. “
No. Not hot enough. Only sixteen-point-two degrees Celsius. Practically room temperature.
”

“Wonder why Larry didn't pick this up,” Harker murmured.

“
Perhaps because it wasn't there yesterday.
” Ramirez's voice was low. “
If it's some sort of radiator, it may open only periodically. To keep the interior from overheating.
”

That fit with Ramirez's theory, yet Harker still wasn't convinced. “Right,” he said dryly. “You getting all this, Emcee?”

“
Loud and clear.
” A brief pause. “
Ted, may I have a chat with you, please?
”

“Yes, of course.” Through Cruz's faceplate, he caught a glimpse of a wry grin before the geologist looked away; Ramirez said nothing. Harker raised his right hand, touched a stud on the suit's wrist control unit that switched the comlink to a private channel. “I'm here. Do you read?”

“
Copy.
” Emily's voice sounded distraught. “
Ted, I've made contact with
Galileo.
They're changing orbit.
”

“What the hell?” Harker was astonished. “Why?”

“
They're repositioning in order to rendezvous with the starbridge. Lawrence told me so himself.
”

“For the love of…” Harker bit back his words. “Doesn't that idiot know what he's…?”

“
You think I don't know that?
” Her voice rose sharply, taking on a scolding tone he'd seldom heard before. “
You realize how much more fuel we'll have to burn in order to get back to…?
”

“Calm down. I'm sure you'll be able to work out a new return trajectory.” He let out his breath. “What do you want to bet that this is why he wanted us off the ship?”

“
I'm not following you. So he could bring
Galileo
closer to the starbridge? He could have done that even while we…
”

“I don't know. But this isn't good.” Touching his helmet again, he reverted the visor back to visible light. A quick check of the direction finder on the heads-up display, then he turned away from the crater until he looked due west. Raising the visor, he peered up at the sky. For a few moments, he saw only familiar stars and constellations—Polaris, Vega, Ursa Majoris, Andromeda—but then he saw a bright spot of light falling toward the horizon.

“
Galileo
's still there. Hasn't changed orbit yet.” He paused. “Did you work things out with Arkady?”

“
Affirmative. He's put me on an audiovisual patch to the command center.
” A moment passed. “
Not that it will do us much good.
”

“Better to be forewarned. Keep on top of things, all right? Let me know if anything else comes up.”

“
Right
…”

“Look, when we've set up the LRC, I'll talk to Lawrence, find out what's going on up there. And once Arkady manages to realign the laser and we've reestablished contact with Mare Muscoviense, they'll get an earful about this.” Harker grinned. “I'm telling you, after I'm done with Little Lord Ian, he'll be spending the rest of his days riding the fox around the family estate.”

“
Wouldn't that be grand?
” A short laugh, then a nervous sigh. “
God, I wish you were back here…
”

“Want me to scrub the EVA?”

“
No, of course not. You're onto something out there.”
A moment passed. “
I'll keep working at it from my end, and let you know if something turns up.
”

“Sure. Do that.”

“
Please be careful. This place is too weird.
”

“Tell me about it.” He looked back at the nearby crater. “Have to run now. Keep on the primary channel, right?”

“
Sure. Over.
”

Harker switched off, then turned toward the two men. “Sorry, lads. Just a com check, that's all.”

“
With the girl he left behind. Of course.
” Cruz looked at Ramirez. “
When we get back, I think we're going to be slinging up our hammocks in the aft section.
”

Before Harker could manage a retort, Emily's voice came over the line. “
Keep that up, Jorge, and you'll be sleeping in the airlock. Copy?
”

“
Umm…well, if you…
”

“Enough.” Harker bent down to pick up his cases. “We've got a mystery on our hands. Let's get to it, shall we?”

 

They set up the LRC at the base of the crater, aligning its dish antenna so that it was oriented with the local ecliptic. There was no point in trying to establish contact with
Galileo
, though; checking his suit chronometer, Harker calculated that the ship was on the other side of Spindrift and therefore out of radio range.
Galileo
's new trajectory shouldn't put it beyond acquisition, or at least so he hoped.

Once they completed a quick systems check, the three men began their ascent of the crater rim. It was more difficult than they had expected; although the slope wasn't particularly steep, the powdery regolith and the burden of their equipment made the climb particularly treacherous; for every two or three steps they took, their boots slid back a step. They had to stop now and then to wipe dust from their faceplates, and their suits were filthy by the time they reached the top.

Below them lay the broad expanse of the crater. As they'd seen from Larry's cameras, its floor was covered by a thick blanket of particulate dry ice, resembling snow yet far colder. If Spindrift ever came close to the Sun, solar radiation would gradually evaporate its carbon-dioxide deposits, perhaps giving the asteroid a faint corona much like that of a comet. This far from the solar system, though, the snow remained undisturbed. Beautiful, but nonetheless a potential hazard.

They'd come prepared for it, though. Opening one of the cases Ramirez had lugged up the slope, Harker removed three fifty-meter coils of nylon rope and three half-meter titanium-alloy pitons. Using a rock hammer, he drove the pitons through the dust until they were securely planted within bedrock; once he fed the ends of each rope through the loopholes and knotted them, he tossed the coils down to the crater floor. Now they had a safe means of descent, and an easy way to get back out again.

Within one of Cruz's cases was something Jorge and Martin had cobbled together the night before: a battery-powered vacuum cleaner, the type normally used to collect detritus within the ship, only now with its fan reversed so that it would blow instead of suck. Coupled to the unit by a short length of airtight hose was a tank of compressed halon siphoned from
Galileo
's fire-control system; since the tank was good for only so long, a couple of spares had been included. Because no one knew how just well the improvised snow-blower would work, Cruz's other case contained a pair of collapsible shovels normally used to gather surface samples, yet Harker hoped that the dry-ice layer was as powdery as it appeared. If not, they'd have to dig their way through the crater.

Once the three men used elastic cords to lash the three remaining cases against their backs, they grasped the ropes and, carefully moving backward, rappelled down the crater's steep inner slope. Ramirez was more cautious than the other two, and Harker had to coax him along the first half of the way down, but it wasn't long before he joined him and Cruz at the bottom.

They set out for the crater's center, again following Larry's tracks. At first, it seemed as if the snow wouldn't be an obstacle; as expected, it lay only a few centimeters deep at the outer edge. Yet they were only thirty meters from where they'd left the ropes when they found themselves calf-deep in icy particles that, through the soles of their boots, made a dull crunching noise that sounded as if they were walking through rice kernels. Feeling his feet getting numb, Harker glanced at his heads-up display, saw his suit's thermostat was nearing the red line. Time to see whether the snow-blower would work.