The side of the cruiser slams against a wall of ice. It scrapes along on momentum for a few more meters before it stops. I’ve got no idea what’s happening here. The forward sensors are still active.
Aft sensors are all down.
I suit up, half in a panic. I’ve got to get outside and see what’s wrong. It must have something to do with the lasers being visible. You can only see them when the atmosphere is dense enough. On
the surface you don’t see them at all.
This is just what I need, more delay. I switch on the air lock pump. The pressure starts falling. What conditions are like in the cavern I can only guess. I stand there with my hand on the hatch
release, watching the pressure fall.
What happens when I open the hatch comes as a total shock. A huge wall of flame shoots up in front of me and rushes outward. It’s gone in less than a second. I’m almost not sure if what I saw was real.
I shine my flashlight at the cruiser. The beam reflects off it in a kind of sparkling light, like fairy glow. The cruiser is bogged down in the ice. Behind it, the generator is buried under a mountain of milky crystals. Then it hits me. This is not ice. It’s too fluffy, like
it’s full of air.
“Hydra Ice Cavern? This isn’t ice, it’s methane clathrate!”
On Earth there are layers of methane clathrate under ocean sediments—basically waste from microbes eating organic matter. The methane molecules get trapped in cages of frozen H
2
O molecules. I’ve never run across this in a cavern on Earth. But I’m
not on Earth.
Methane clathrate is pretty volatile stuff. I must be standing in a pool of methane gas. The fire I saw was the little bit of oxygen
left in the air lock reacting with the methane.
What I can’t figure out is why the cavern wall came down. The clathrate isn’t all that strong structurally, but the cruiser moving past it shouldn’t have triggered a collapse. First I’ve got to check
the generator.
Methane gas and steam are rising from the mound of ice crystals. Now I know why there was a cave-in. Even in idling mode the generator radiates heat. That’s what brought down the clathrate. If I’m not careful, I could end up completely buried. My luck has
held so far, but I can’t rely on it. And I’m losing time.
I try to shut the generator down using my web, but I can’t access the interface. Apparently only the surveying team is able to control the generator remotely. Like it or not, I’ve got to get the console exposed so I can shut it down manually. I take a shovel from the cruiser and start scooping clathrate over my shoulder. You run into a lot offworld that you’d never see on Earth, but I never expected to find myself in an ice cavern wearing an Extravehicular Mobility Unit and shoveling away like some miner. And the stuff I’m shoveling is methane clathrate—softer than ice, but handle with care. Otherwise lots of things can happen, none of them good. I’ve got to get to the console ASAP. The clathrate is melting. This could bring the whole cavern down on me. For now, the mound around
the generator is containing the heat.
I don’t have much time. Five hours? Six?
That’s probably what I’m looking at to dig everything out. Then I’ve got to hit the road and get prepped. I’m barely going to make it. I keep digging, keep moving that shovel. Every minute, every
second, is precious.
It takes me an hour just to dig through to the console. I open the cover and depress two toggle switches simultaneously. The space around me takes on a greater stillness. I hadn’t noticed, but
the generator was emitting low-frequency vibrations.
It takes me exactly six hours to free the generator. The inside of the cruiser is freezing. There’s so much methane floating around I don’t even think about pressurizing the cab. Vigorous intercourse between methane and oxygen molecules is something I can pass
on right now.
I finally get moving again, still in my EMU. The EMU keeps me warm, but not warm enough to melt my icy mood. It’s all I can do to stay calm and collected on the way to the air lock. This ice is so damn slushy, not at all what I’d planned for. I’m all out of cushion now, timewise, but flooring it would not be a good idea. That might invite another cave-in. I practically cheer when the air
lock comes into view.
And that’s where I run into another snag. All this delay has put me at the air lock just as a swarm of microsatellites hovers overhead. You can hold these things in the palm of your hand. They move in separate orbits and come together at timed intervals over specific locations, using lasers to stay in formation and function as one big system. The sum of the data they collect yields very detailed, high-resolution images. If I poke my head outside now, the Guardians
will be able to read the cruiser’s tracks like a newspaper.
Most of these satellites have a period of about two hours. This lot should be out of sight in about half an hour if they keep to their schedule. I stop the engine so they don’t pick up any infrared hot spots. Just a few more klicks to the destination. Whether or not I can put up with another thirty minutes of delay will decide the success or failure of the mission. I start counting the seconds in my
head. When I get to eighteen hundred, I’ll be ready to roll.
Just as I reach 1,789, the timer sounds and I hit the ignition. The methane/oxygen power plant starts up. Even with a cold start, a femtosecond-burst laser keeps the environment inside the cylinder ready for combustion. As soon as I hit the switch, I can hear the
faint hum of the engine from the cabin.
Got to focus. There will be another swarm overhead half an hour from now, which means I have only that long to get where I need to go. I pass through the air lock. I’m on the surface again.
Minus 2 Hours 15 Minutes
“I’m sending you the specs for the generator, Professor. Take a
look.”
Shiran gave a low whistle as she reviewed the data from Samar. Most Martian power generators were fuel cells running on methane and oxygen. But this surveying unit was different. It produced power through the annihilation of protons and antiprotons. It was
powerful enough to provide electricity for a small arcology.
“My, oh my. All right, we know that everything up to this point was aimed at obtaining this power generator. And as far as we know, the target is Tetsu. Can’t we get anything from the satellites, Samar?”
“Unfortunately that’s a negative. We scanned in infrared, but she seems to have that covered. She timed the murder of the surveying team so the sun would rise fairly soon afterward. There were no IR traces left to scan; the sun’s heat obliterated them. As for vehicle tracks—well, if you want to wipe those as you go, it’s not
too challenging.”
“She hasn’t missed a trick. But we can at least calculate the max distance she could’ve traveled based on the vehicle’s specs. Have
any of the other teams in the area spotted a lone vehicle?”
“No. Even if she’s going flat out, with the generator she’s hauling she should’ve been spotted hours ago. On the surface, that is.”
“That settles it. She’s using the caverns.”
This was not good news for Shiran. The caverns were a restricted space; if she was so sure Rahmya was inside, she ought to be using that to her advantage. “All right, so our assassin was fortunate enough to get her hands on the generator. Given all the trouble she went through to steal it, that’s got to point to something. She can’t use the generator as a weapon. That itself should answer some of our questions. What’s the tie-in between her target, the caverns,
and a power generator?”
A three-dimensional projection of the generator hung suspended in front of them. Shiran rotated the projection in different directions, as if she might find the answer there. But all she saw was a
generator, nothing more and nothing less.
“I see two possibilities,” said Mikal. “One would be to use the generator to produce oxygen and methane for rocket fuel. The other would be to remove the antiproton capsule and convert it
into some sort of bomb. It fits her MO.”
“Sorry, but you’re wrong on both counts,” said Samar.
“You seem to have a problem with every idea I come up with.”
“I have a problem with ideas that are stupid. I won’t comment on the correlation between the stupidity of the ideas and the person
generating them.”
“Stop acting like children, you two. What are you thinking,
Samar?”
“Suppose Rahmya wants to generate fuel—how would she use it? She’d have to have a missile in place. Look at all the effort she’s already gone to—and that was just to get past our security. If she had some way to smuggle a missile in, why would she need to go to such elaborate lengths just to get fuel?”
“What about one of our discarded spacecraft?” said Mikal.
“You’ve got to be kidding. Our predecessors on this planet were hard up for anything that could be recycled. If they could’ve, they would’ve recycled the hair on their asses. They wouldn’t leave a spacecraft lying around. Go to Kobe’s Industrial Technology Museum and check it out. We’ve got titanium cooking pots made from the skin of rocket boosters. I ought to know, I’m on their
research team.”
“That doesn’t prove anything. There might still be a spacecraft
out there she could refuel, one we don’t know about.”
“Somewhere on the whole planet, maybe. Not around Rokko. The area’s swarming with surveying teams. And there’s a bigger difficulty. You’d need several days to fuel a spacecraft with this generator.”
“I see,” said Shiran. “What about the antiproton capsule?”
“Even harder to imagine. You’d need a specialist to access the capsule. It’s protected by multiple safety devices to prevent tampering. The only way to open it would be to take it to a specialized facility. And even if she had all the access codes, she couldn’t remove the capsule on her own. And even if she did and turned the capsule into some kind of warhead, she’d still need a launch vehicle—which
puts us back where we started.”
Shiran switched to an exploded-view image of the generator. She examined each component, turning casings transparent to see inside. Something about the generator was the key to Rahmya’s
plan. But what?
“I think what we have here is a power generator,” said Samar at length.
“What makes this one different from others?” said Shiran.
“Its use of antiprotons and its high output, basically,” said Mikal.
“Just what you’d expect.”
“So she needs electricity,” said Samar. “With this much power
you could practically get offworld—if you had a vehicle.”
“Is that what she’s going to do with it?” said Shiran.
“Professor, I was just joking.”
“That’s it—she needs electric power!”
“Could you please get a grip? What’s she going to do with electric
power in the middle of nowhere?”
“The first settlers on Mars recycled everything. But not these days. Now we do cost/benefit analyses. Like with old launchers.
Do you dismantle them or just leave them in place?”
“Professor, I’m sorry, but there are no launch vehicles in the
outback. And she can’t generate fuel overnight—”
“I’m talking about a
launcher,
not a launch vehicle. We haven’t used them since the elevator was built. The mass drivers that sent
ore into space—they used electricity to launch their payloads.”
Samar and Mikal were silent. Samar was inputting data to his web. At length he spoke. “I think we have a problem, Professor.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know what orbit she’d use, but if the target is Deimos she has a restricted launch window. She’ll also need to launch ahead of Tetsu’s arrival, to give whatever she’s using as a projectile enough time to reach Deimos. The next window is twelve hours
before Tetsu arrives.”
“But that means…”
“We’ve got two hours max.”
Minus 1 Hour 30 Minutes
The great thing about a mass driver is that it has no moving parts. Therefore it can’t malfunction. It took them seven years to build Tsutenkaku, and until 2122, when it was finished, mass drivers like the one I’m looking at were used all the time. Martian gravity is weak compared to Earth’s, the atmosphere is thin, and the high plateau around Mt. Rokko is close to the equator. It’s an ideal location for sending objects into orbit just by accelerating
them up a ramp.
My client put me onto this. I’m in one of the few mines on Mars that was originally developed by Terran investors. The Martians haven’t disclosed much about the technical specifications of their mass drivers. But for this driver the client had all the blueprints,
everything. It’s perfect for this mission.
I owe the Martians one for mapping and securing the access points to the Hydra Ice Caverns. At first I thought it was a bit much, going to all that work just to keep conditions underground nice and stable, but not anymore. Not after my run-in with the methane clathrate. I’d be nervous too if I were them. Still, even though I nearly bought it, the caverns got me here without being
spotted. As far as I know there are at least fifty access points.