The Best Alternate History Stories of the 20th Century (42 page)

“Look, Arraj—it is a meteor!” cried the younger Martian excitedly. “And there’s a ship guiding it!”

The two stared for a moment at the incredible spectacle. The expanding black spot was clearly a giant meteor, rushing now at tremendous speed toward Mars. And close beside the booming meteor rushed a dark spaceship, playing rays upon the great mass. The ship was propelling the meteor toward Mars.

—HAMILTON, Captain Future’s Challenge (1940)

Several hours later, the
Comet
rendezvoused with 2046-Barr.

The asteroid looked much the same as the holo tank had depicted it—an enormous rock the color of charcoal—but the
Fool’s Gold
itself was the largest spacecraft I had ever seen short of a Lagrange colony. It dwarfed the
Comet
like a yacht parked alongside an ocean liner, a humongous machine attached to one end of the asteroid’s mass.

A humongous machine, and apparently lifeless. We approached the mass-driver with great caution, being careful to avoid its stern lest we get nailed by the stream of debris being constantly ejected by its railgun. That was the only apparent sign of activity; although light gleamed from the portals of the rotating command sphere, we could detect no motion within the windows, and the radio remained as silent as it had been for the last eighteen hours.

“Look yonder.” I pointed through the window at the hangar bay, a wide berth within the barrel-shaped main hull just forward of the railgun. Its doors were open, and as the
Comet
slowly cruised past we could see the gig and service pods parked in their cradles. “Everything’s there. Even the lifeboats are still in place.”

Jeri angled the camera on the outrigger telemetry boom until it peered into the bay. Her wide eyes narrowed as she studied a close-up view on a flatscreen. “That’s weird,” she murmured. “Why would they depressurize the bay and open the doors if they didn’t...?”

“Knock it off, you two!”

McKinnon was strapped in his chair, on the other side of Jeri Lee’s duty station from mine. “It doesn’t matter why they did it. Just keep your eyes peeled for pirates... they could be lurking somewhere nearby.”

I chose to remain silent as I piloted the
Comet
past the mass-driver’s massive anchor-arms and over the top of the asteroid. Ever since McKinnon had returned to the bridge an hour ago—following the shower and leisurely breakfast I myself had been denied—he had been riding his favorite hobby horse: asteroid pirates had seized control of the
Fool’s Gold
and taken its crew hostage.

This despite the fact that we had not spotted any other spacecraft during our long journey and that none could now be seen in the vicinity of the asteroid. It could also be logically argued that the four-person crew of a prospector ship would have a hard time overcoming the twelve-person crew of a mass-driver, but logic meant little to Captain Future. His left hand rested on the console near the EMP controls, itching to launch a nuke at the pirate ship he was certain to find lurking in the asteroid’s shadow.

Yet, when we completed a fly-by of 2046-Barr, none were to be found. In fact, nothing moved at all, save for the asteroid itself....

A thought occurred to me. “Hey, Brain,” I said aloud, “have you got a fix on the mass-driver’s position and bearing?”

“Affirmative, Mr. Furland. It is X-ray one-seven-six, Yankee two...”

“Mr. Furland!” McKinnon snapped. “I didn’t give orders for you to...”

I ignored him. “Skip the numbers, Brain. Just tell me if it’s still on course for cislunar rendezvous.”

A momentary pause, then:
“Negative, Mr. Furland. The
Fool’s Gold
has altered its trajectory. According to my calculations, there is a seventy-two-point-one probability that it is now on collision course with the planet Mars.”

Jeri went pale as she sucked in her breath, and even McKinnon managed to shut up. “Show it to me on the tank,” I said as I turned my chair around to face the nav table.

The tank lit, displaying a holographic diagram of the
Fool’s Gold
’s present position in relationship with the Martian sidereal-hour. Mars still lay half an A.U. away, but as The Brain traced a shallow-curving orange line through the belt, we saw that it neatly intercepted the red planet as it advanced on its orbit around the Sun.

The Brain translated the math it had displayed in a box next to the three-dimensional grid.
“Assuming that its present delta-vee remains unchecked, in two hundred and thirty-six hours, twelve minutes, and twenty-four seconds, 2046-Barr will collide with Mars.”

I did some arithmetic in my head. “That’s about ten days from now.”

“Nine-point-eight-three Earth standard days, to be exact.”
The Brain expanded the image of Mars until it filled the tank; a bull’s-eye appeared at a point just above the equator.
“Estimated point of impact will be approximately twelve degrees North by sixty-three degrees West, near the edge of the Lunae Planum.”

“Just north of Valles Marineris,” Jeri said. “Oh God, Rohr, that’s near...”

“I know.” I didn’t need a refresher course in planetary geography. The impact point was in the low plains above Mariner Valley, only a few hundred klicks northeast of Arsia Station, not to mention closer to the smaller settlements scattered around the vast canyon system. For all I knew, there could now be a small mining town on the Lunae Planum itself; Mars was being colonized so quickly these days, it was hard to keep track of where a bunch of its one and a half million inhabitants decided to pitch claims and call themselves New Chattanooga or whatever.

“Sabotage!” McKinnon yelled. He unbuckled his harness and pushed himself closer to the nav table, where he stared at the holo. “Someone has sabotaged the mass-driver so that it’ll collide with Mars! Do you realize...?”

“Shut up, Captain.” I didn’t need his histrionics to tell me what would occur if...
when
... 2046-Barr came down in the middle of the Lunae Planum.

The Martian ecosystem wasn’t as fragile as Earth’s. Indeed, it was much more volatile, as the attempt in the ’50s to terraform the planet and make the climate more stable had ultimately proved. However, the Mars colonists who still remained after the boondoggle had come to depend upon its seasonal patterns in order to grow crops, maintain solar farms, continue mining operations and other activities which insured their basic survival.

It was a very tenuous sort of existence that relied upon conservative prediction of climatic changes. The impact of a three-kilometer asteroid in the equatorial region would throw all that straight into the compost toilet. Localized quakes and duststorms would only be the beginning; two or three hundred people might be killed outright, but the worst would be yet to come. The amount of dust that would be raised into the atmosphere by the collision would blot out the sky for months on end, causing global temperatures to drop from Olympus Mons to the Hellas Plantia. As a result, everything from agriculture to power supplies would be affected, to put it mildly, with starvation in the cold and dark awaiting most of the survivors.

It wasn’t quite doomsday. A few isolated settlements might get by with the aid of emergency relief efforts from Earth. But as the major colony world of humankind, Mars would cease to exist.

McKinnon was still transfixed upon the holo tank, jabbing his finger at Mars while raving about saboteurs and space pirates and God knows what else, when I turned back to Jeri. She had taken the helm in my absence, and as the
Comet
came up on the
Fool’s Gold
again, I closely studied the mass-driver on the flatscreens.

“Okay,” I said quietly. “The hangar bay is out... we can’t send the skiff in there while it’s depressurized and the cradles are full. Maybe if we.. .”

She was way ahead of me. “There’s an auxiliary docking collar here,” she said, pointing to a port on the spar leading to the command sphere. “It’ll be tight, but I think we can squeeze us in there.”

I looked at the screen. Tight indeed. Despite the fact that the
Comet
had a universal docking adapter, the freighter wasn’t designed for mating with a craft as large as
Fool’s Gold
. “That’s cutting it close,” I said. “If we can collapse the telemetry boom, though, we might be able to make it.”

She nodded. “We can do that, no problem... except it means losing contact with Ceres.”

“But if we don’t hard-dock,” I replied, “then someone’s got to go EVA and try entering a service airlock.”

Knowing that this someone would probably be me, I didn’t much relish the idea. An untethered spacewalk between two vessels under acceleration is an iffy business at best. On the other hand, cutting off our radio link with Ceres under these circumstances was probably not a good idea. If we fucked up in some major way, then no one at Ceres Station would be informed of the situation, and early warning from Ceres to Arsia Station might save a few lives, if evacuation of settlements near Lunae Planum was started soon enough.

I made up my mind. “We’ll hard-dock,” I said, turning in my seat toward the communications console, “but first we send a squib to Ceres, let them know what’s...”

“Hey! What are you two doing?”

Captain Future had finally decided to see what the Futuremen were doing behind his back. He kicked off the nav table and pushed over to us, grabbing the backs of our chairs with one hand each to hover over us. “I haven’t issued any orders, and nothing is done on my ship without my.. .”

“Bo, have you been listening to what we’ve been saying?” Jeri’s expression was carefully neutral as she stared up at him. “Have you heard a word either Rohr or I have said?”

“Of course I... !”

“Then you know that this is the only recourse,” she said, still speaking calmly. “If we don’t hard-dock with the
Gold
, then we won’t have a chance of shutting down the railgun or averting its course.”

“But the pirates. They might... !”

I sighed. “Look, get it through your head. There’s no...”

“Rohr,” she interrupted, casting me a stern look that shut me up. When I dummied up once more, she transfixed McKinnon again with her wide blue eyes. “If there are pirates aboard the
Gold
,” she said patiently, “we’ll find them. But right now, this isn’t something we can solve by firing missiles. Rohr’s right. First, we send a squib to Ceres, let them know what’s going on. Then...”

“I know that!”

“Then, we have to dock with...”

“I know that! I know that!” His greasy hair scattered in all directions as he shook his head in frustration. “But I didn’t... I didn’t give the orders and...”

He stopped, sullenly glaring at me with inchoate rage, and I suddenly realized the true reason for his anger. McKinnon’s subordinate second officer, whom he had harassed and chastised constantly for three weeks, had become uppity by reaching a solution that had evaded him. Worse yet, the second officer had done it with the cooperation of the Captain’s first officer, who had tacitly agreed with him on all previous occasions.

Yet this wasn’t a trifling matter such as checking the primary fuel pump or cleaning the galley. Countless lives were at stake, time was running out, and while he was spewing obvious nonsense about space pirates, Mister Furland was trying to take command of his ship.

Had I a taser conveniently tucked in my belt, I would have settled the argument by giving him a few volts and strapping his dead ass in his precious chair, thereby allowing Jeri Lee and me to continue our work unfettered. But since outright mutiny runs against my grain, compromise was my only weapon now.

“Begging your pardon, Captain,” I said. “You’re quite right. You haven’t issued orders, and I apologize.”

Then I turned around in my chair, folded my hands in my lap, and waited.

McKinnon sucked in his breath. He stared through the windows at the
Fool’s Gold
, looked over his shoulder once more at the holo tank, weighing the few options available against the mass of his ego. After too many wasted seconds, he finally reached a decision.

“Very well,” he said. He let go of our chairs and shoved himself back to his accustomed seat. “Ms. Bose, prepare to dock with the
Fool’s Gold
. Mr. Furland, ready the main airlock hatch and prepare to go EVA.”

“Aye, sir,” Jeri said.

“Um, yeah... aye, sir.”

“Meanwhile, I’ll send a message to Ceres Station and inform them of the situation before we lose contact.” Satisfied that he had reached a proper decision, he laid his hands on the armrest. “Good work, Futuremen,” he added. “You’ve done well.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Jeri said.

“Aye, sir. Thank you.” I unbuckled my seat harness and pushed off toward the bridge hatch, trying hard not to smile.

A little victory. Insignificant as it then seemed, I didn’t have any idea how much my life depended upon it.

He took the pilot chair and headed theComet across the zone toward the computed position of the invisible asteroid.

“They’ll surely see us approaching!” Ezra warned. “The Magician of Mars will be taking no chances, Cap’n Future!”

“We’re going to use a stratagem to get onto that asteroid without him suspecting,” Curt informed. “Watch.”

—HAMILTON, The Magician of Mars (1941)

I’m a creature of habit, at least when it comes to established safety procedures, and so it was out of habit that I donned an EVA suit before I cycled through the
Comet
’s airlock and entered the
Fool’s Gold
.

On one hand, wearing the bulky spacesuit within a pressurized spacecraft is stupidly redundant, and the panel within the airlock told me that there was positive pressure on the other side of the hatch. Yet it could be argued the airlock sensors might be out of whack and there was nothing but hard vacuum within the spar; this has been known to happen before, albeit rarely, and people have died as a result. In any case, the
Astronaut’s General Handbook
says that an EVA suit should be worn when boarding another craft under uncertain conditions, and so I followed the book.

Doing so saved my life.

I went alone, leaving Jeri and McKinnon behind inside the freighter. The hatch led past the
Gold
’s airlock into the spar’s access tunnel, all of which was vacant. Switching on the helmet’s external mike, I heard nothing but the customary background hum of the ventilation system, further evidence that the vessel crew compartments were still pressurized.

At that point, I could well have removed my helmet and hung it from a strap on my utility belt. In fact, the only reason I didn’t was that I didn’t want it banging around as I went through the carrousel, which lay at the end of the tunnel to my right. Besides, the stillness of the tunnel gave me the chills. Surely someone would have noticed the unscheduled docking of an Ares-class freighter, let alone one so far from Ceres. Why wasn’t there an officer waiting at the airlock to chew me out for risking collision with his precious ship?

The answer came after I rotated through the carrousel and entered the rotating command sphere. That’s when I found the first corpse.

A naked man hung upside down through an open manhole, his limp arms dangling above the wide pool of blood on the deck. It was difficult to see his face, because the blood that had dyed it crimson came from a scimitar-shaped gash in his neck. Looking up through the manhole, I saw that his feet had been neatly lashed together with a bungee cord, which in turn was tied to a conduit in the ceiling of the corridor directly above.

Since there were no bloodstains below his shoulders, it was obvious that his throat had been slit after he had been hung from the conduit. The blood was dry—most of it, anyway—and the body was stiff. He had been here for quite some time.

I reported what I found to Jeri and McKinnon, and then I gingerly pushed the body out of the way and continued down the corridor.

Please understand if everything I tell you sounds coldly methodical, even callous. First, if you’ve worked in space as long as I have—that is, all my life—then death, no matter how horrible it may be, is no stranger. The first time I saw a man die was when I was nine years old, when a one-in-a-million micrometeorite punched through the helmet faceplate of one of my school teachers while he was leading us on a field trip to the Apollo 17 landing site at Taurus Lithrow. Since then, I’ve seen the grisly results of explosive decompression, fatal radiation overexposure, freak mining accidents, careless suit-up procedures, hull fires and electrocutions, even someone who choked on his own vomit after consuming too much bathtub vodka during a birthday party. Death comes to us all, eventually; if you’re careful and wise, all you can do is make sure that it isn’t too painful and no one is stuck with a mess to clean up.

Second: if I attempted now to describe each and every body I discovered as I made my way through the
Fool’s Gold
, not only would the result be gratuitous pandering to those who wallow in such details, but I would never be able to complete this testimony.

To put it succinctly, the command sphere of the
Fool’s Gold
was a slaughterhouse.

I found ten more bodies, each more gruesome than the last. They were in crew cabins and passageways, in the galley and in the head, in the rec room and the quartermaster’s office.

Most were alone, but two of them were together, each apparently dead from wounds they had inflicted upon one another: a man and a woman, who had tried to carve each other up with knives they had taken from the nearby galley.

A couple of the bodies were nude, like the first, but most were fully or partially clothed. For the most part, they had died of stabbing or bludgeon wounds, by means of anything that could be used as a weapon, whether it be a ballpoint pen, a screwdriver, or a pipefitter’s wrench.

One woman was lucky. She had committed suicide by hanging herself by a coiled bedsheet she had cast over the top of a door. I hope that she had successfully strangled herself before whoever found her body seared off her right arm with the cutting torch cast nearby.

As I climbed up ladders, poked my helmet through hatches, and stepped over stiffening corpses, I kept up a running monologue, informing the
Comet
of where I exactly was within the vessel and what I had just found. I made no speculation as to why this massacre had taken place, only to note that the bodies seemed reasonably fresh and that most of the bloodstains were dry.

And blood lay everywhere. It was splattered across walls and soaked into carpets and dripping from wall fixtures, until it no longer resembled blood and just looked like spilled red paint. I was glad I had my helmet on, because the visor helped distance me from the carnage, and the rank odor would have made me even more sickened than I was now.

Although I heard an occasional gasp or exclamation from Jeri through my headset, after a while I couldn’t detect McKinnon’s voice any longer. I assumed that he had gone someplace private to vomit. This was understandable; the violence around me was mind shattering.

There were four decks in the command sphere, one above the other. By the time I reached the top deck, I had counted eleven corpses. Remembering that McKinnon had told me earlier that the crew complement of the
Fool’s Gold
was twelve, I had begun to wonder where the last body lay.

The hatch leading to the bridge was sealed shut; I used the laser welding torch from my belt to cut the lock. When I grasped the lockwheel and prized it open, it made a faint grinding noise, and it was at that moment that I heard a methodical, almost rhythmic thumping, as if something were being beaten against a bulkhead.

I first thought it was another background noise from the vessel itself, but when I pushed the hatch farther open, the noise it made interrupted the rhythm.

I stopped, holding the hatch ajar as I listened intently. I heard a faint giggle, then the thumping sound recommenced.

Someone was alive within the bridge.

The command center was dimly lit, the fluorescents switched off; the only light came from computer displays, flatscreens, and multicolored switches. The deck was in ruins, as if there had been a blowout, although the external pressure gauge told me it was still pressurized: upended chairs, ripped logbooks and manuals strewn across the floor, the remains of a bloody shirt.

The thumping continued. Seeking its unseen source, I switched on the helmet lamp and walked within its beam, my eyes darting back and forth as I searched for the sole survivor of the
Fool’s Gold
. I was halfway across the bridge when my eye caught something scrawled across a bulkhead. Two words, fingerpainted in blood across the gray surface:

PLAGUE

TITAN

It was then that I knew that wearing an EVA suit had saved my life.

Trembling within its insulated layers, I crossed the deserted bridge, looking for the last remaining crewmember of the
Fool’s Gold
.

I found him in the emergency airlock, huddled in a corner next to the hatch, his knees drawn up to his chin. The jumpsuit he wore was streaked with gore, but I could still make out the captain’s stars on its epaulets. His wary eyes winced from the glare of my lamp, and he giggled like a small child who had been caught exploring his mother’s dresser drawers.

And then he continued to beat at the deck with the severed human arm he grasped in his left hand.

I don’t know how long I stared at him. A few seconds, several minutes, perhaps longer. Jeri was saying something I couldn’t understand; I paid no attention, nor could I respond. It wasn’t until I heard another noise—from behind me, the faint sound of the hatch being shoved open—that I tore my eyes away from the mad captain of the
Fool’s Gold
.

Bo McKinnon.

He had followed me from the
Comet
.

And, like the idiot he was, he wasn’t wearing an EVA suit.