“They’re safe enough most of the time,” Studdy answered. “People have been hurt or killed, but most survive. The quakes vary in intensity, and many structures are in poor repair. These people have little time to improve their dwellings, or repair them. They also have to maintain the industrial equipment, much of which is old and obsolete. And there’s less power at night, when the solar collectors can’t work. Industry, not housing development, gets the energy.”
“But you said there’s more than enough power,” the boy with the white hair said. “Why aren’t there power satellites beaming it in all the time?”
“That’s one of the things the orbital habitat will make possible. High-orbit beamers require maintenance and relays. The present satellite collectors are low orbit and inefficient by today’s standards.”
“There’s no reason a subsurface living complex couldn’t be made safe,” Linda said.
Studdy shrugged. “Maybe—but they’ve seen what free space habitats are, and that’s what the agreement says they’ll get.”
“You mean they put a gun to Earth’s head,” someone said bitterly. I turned too late to see who it was, but later I learned that six people were going back with the
Wells.
“Look, it’s just as well. We’ll have metals, and if Merk is torn up completely for resources one day, as is likely, we won’t have to worry about evicting anyone. There are lots of reasons human beings shouldn’t live there.”
“What about the solar research base?” Jake asked.
“It’s well away from the mining sites, and from what I know they’ve never complained about their conditions. But the teams there are replaced fairly often.”
I stood up. The matter-of-fact coldness of Studdy’s presentation was beginning to rub me the wrong way. “You don’t show much sympathy for these people, Mr. Studdy,” I said, and stood there in the sudden silence, waiting for an answer.
“Listen, kid,” Studdy said after a moment, “I volunteered same as you—” He stopped short. “Sorry—you’re right—I have been cut-and-dried about it. We need to be reminded why we’re here. What have you to say?”
I cleared my throat. “Only that we should think about how we’re going to get along with these people. We shouldn’t come on as their saviors. We’re here to give them what should have been theirs a long time ago. Fast ships and robotic industrial equipment made it economical to mine Mercury, so it should have been economical to give these people a better life by now.”
“You’re right—we might get off on the wrong foot if we don’t think why we’re here. We have to get along with the miners. What’s your name?”
“Joe Sorby.”
“Thanks, Joe. But remember, there’s something in it for us also—skills, experience, good pay.”
Someone snickered behind me. I turned and tried to spot the person. “Why did you bother to come?” I asked loudly, and sat down.
Rosalie squeezed my hand. I felt a bit foolish, even though I knew I was right.
Mercury seemed to be waiting for us as we crossed its path and decelerated into a wide ellipse around the cratered ball. Captain Vinov then dropped us into a tight orbit, only a hundred miles above the surface, so the landing shuttles could use the whole planet as a shield against solar radiation when they ferried us down. The small craft were not as well insulated as the big ship, which carried lots of water in its triple hull, and they were especially vulnerable to solar flares—those bursts of radiation from the Sun’s surface that could cook unprotected human flesh in seconds.
We went down in groups of twenty-five. Everyone seemed a bit glum, knowing that things were going to be very different from what we had expected. I didn’t feel like a world builder at all. No one talked about the possible danger, but it was there, an undercurrent of fear in our minds.
Bernie, Ro, and I strapped in.
A fifty-foot tube of gray metal with a control cabin at one end, a cargo bay fitted with couches for passengers, the shuttle frightened me with its smallness, thin walls, and shaky-looking bulkheads; it had seen too many years of service and couldn’t be safe.
Being next to a porthole didn’t make me feel any better; it was probably the weakest part of the vessel.
But the view was breathtaking as we went down into Mercury’s night. The planet was mysterious in starlight. Looking carefully, I saw a faint string of diamonds leaving the surface: slugs of metal boosting toward Earth Orbit, to arrive many months later in a nearly endless train. The shuttle turned a bit, and I saw where the slugs were high enough to catch the sunlight, bursting into prominence one by one, like stars being born …
What am I doing here? I wondered as the descent engine fired below me. I lay pinned to my couch, overcome by doubt and the sudden sense of distance from home, from my parents, from my lost friend Morey, and all the things I had known as a boy. I was here to help, but would it help me? Did anyone care? Would anyone remember? I reached out to the cold stars and felt saddened by their silence as the shuttle touched down.
“What’s that?” Ro asked.
“What?” I unstrapped and sat up. Everyone in the small hold was silent. The shuttle trembled, shuddered, and was still.
“We’re just settling,” I said.
“A quake maybe,” Ro added.
“A small one,” Bernie piped. “Probably happens all the time.”
“And so do the big ones.” I turned and saw it was Whitey with the big ears.
There was a metallic thud against the side of the craft.
“Loading tube,” Bernie said.
We lined up in front of the airlock.
“How you feeling, Joe?” Bernie asked, smiling.
“Okay, I guess,” I answered. But suddenly I was overcome with feeling for him, and I was glad that he was here to share what he knew with us and with the miners. It made me feel safer.
Rosalie went through the lock. I followed. The tube dropped at a thirty-degree angle, leading directly underground. We emerged into a large, ceramic-sealed chamber with rounded corners. Tunnels led off in four directions. The chamber filled quickly.
“Your attention!” a male voice announced with some strain.
I turned and saw a middle-sized man with black hair, combed back in the way I remembered from when I first saw him on the holo in Riverbend’s square.
“I’m Robert Svoboda,” he said more softly, examining us with dark-blue eyes. “Please follow me single file.” He seemed a bit nervous and impatient. “There will have to be four of you to a room in many cases. We didn’t expect to have to house you. Try to allow for our simpler conditions.”
He turned and led the way out through the tunnel behind him. I felt a trembling in my boots. Svoboda stopped and turned his head slightly, as if something invisible were following him. Then his bearlike shape marched forward again.
I looked at the bare bulbs and heat-sealed walls as we followed him through the passage. We went through a half dozen round connecting areas. Locks slammed behind us, echoing ominously. The tunnels were always rough-hewn, sealed with heat, stained with humidity and mineral discoloration. We came to a row of doorways.
“These crank open by hand,” Svoboda said. “Seven rooms. One rule. Keep your doors sealed when you’re inside. A quake can cause a loss of pressure in the tunnels, but you’ll still have air in the rooms.”
“You’ll share with us, Bernie,” Ro said.
“Okay by me.”
I cranked open the first door and stepped into darkness.
“Light’s overhead!” Svoboda shouted as the other doors were opened. I reached up and pulled a cord. A bulb went on over the door, throwing my shadow across a stony floor. I held on to the cord, shocked at the room’s simplicity.
There were three bunks; a sink-toilet-shower combination was partly concealed by a plastic curtain. Everything was clean, but much used. No sheets or blankets on the bunks, only sleeping bags.
“Well,” Rosalie said, “it’ll only be for a couple of weeks.” She smiled at me, but I didn’t react.
“I’ve seen worse,” Bernie said.
I had never seen anything as bad. “The designs are so old. Look at that bulb—you can see the filament glowing.”
“We’ll get by,” Ro said decisively.
Our shadows looked as if they had been painted on the floor. I felt another vibration in my boots. The bulb behind us flickered, filling the room with trembling shadows; the ventilator coughed, then resumed its steady whisper.
Furnace in the Sky
The Sun breathed against the surface of Mercury.
Collectors drank only a small portion of the pulsing flow of energy, but it was more than enough to run the planet’s industry.
Rivers of metal flowed into molds, cooling during the long nights and sliding onto the automated sleds that hurled the slugs into fast unpowered orbits.
As we watched in the underground control center, slugs rose to become stars above the open-pit mines, a string reaching all the way to Earth Orbit, enough metals to refill the home planet’s empty mines a thousand times over.
Any single chunk might take up to two years to reach the factories in Luna’s L positions, but the forward slugs in the perpetual train arrived constantly, so it didn’t matter; that’s why it was so important not to break the steady flow—months, years, might go by before it could be restored. I was here with 199 others of the first wave to make sure that didn’t happen, even if it meant helping people in the bargain!
Robert Svoboda had no illusions about the economic and political pressures that had brought us here, even if many of us were sympathetic to his cause; sympathy alone would not have been enough. He had been here from the start. He knew the work that had gone into the solar-power plants, launch-sled tracks, and housing, and what it all cost to keep. His degrees, skills, and experience were adapted to a life here. His son and wife were here. Many of the miners had spent half their lives here, laboring like some Hephaestian horde to feed Earth’s needs.
Svoboda’s aim was to improve the lives of the ten thousand people on Mercury. To them it seemed that the rest of the solar system was building paradises. There were certainly enough resources to build paradises, so why shouldn’t they have one too? They shipped enough metals for a thousand habitats, so they deserved an oasis in the sea of solar radiation, away from the rock, dust, and quakes. They were willing to work here, even raise families—I came to understand why later—if they could feel reasonably safe. One of the first things Svoboda showed us were the sealed tunnels that served as tombs for the miners trapped by the quake of ‘28.
After only a few days, many of us began to pick up the miners’ attitudes. Rosalie and I began to hate the buried hovels. Who cared about the motives of Earth in sending us here! There was going to be something better before we were done.
The real problem of building a large habitat in orbit around Mercury, once the political decision had been made, was not in the basic work. A large slug could have been blown up into an empty shell years ago, if the miners had diverted the work force and slowed up deliveries to Earth. Even the shielding was pretty routine engineering. The difficulty was in getting the skilled environmentalists to shape the ecology within the shell, the life-support systems that would be reliable and pleasing. It was an art to make an inner surface look like the out of doors. The number of specialists was limited, and they were expensive, even if they could be convinced to come to Mercury for the long time needed to do the job right. I understood the bitterness of the Mercurians, and why Earth Authority was now applying money and personal pressures to gather the talent. Not everyone could be expected to come here because they thought it was the right thing to do; the problem had to be blitzed before it got completely out of hand, whatever the dangers. Nothing else was possible at this late date.
But a rushed approach to the interior work would risk repeating the failure of the first L-5 colony, which had become a barren cylinder of concrete townhouses—cramped, ugly, and inefficient. It was now an industrial warehouse. Only skilled workers could build an easily maintainable and improvable habitat, and these people were not to be had until the Asteroids had come to Mercury’s help. By providing the empty husk of the asteroid, and by forcing Earth to make good on an old promise, the Asteroids had confirmed a bond with Mercury. Building up the insides would still require a large force, but not as large as would have been needed to start from scratch. Ro and I belonged to the easily recruited, to those who would be trained on the job, not to the highly paid elite; only my association with Bernie gave me a bit of prestige.
I wondered about myself. Events not of my making had been the occasion for decisions I might never have thought of making. But now that I was seeing the life of Mercury close up, and feeling my own life in danger, I knew that the anger I had felt on Bernal was justified. It was not enough to know and understand; one had to act, especially when given the chance.
Svoboda surprised many of us. He could have left years ago, it seemed to us, and found a better position anywhere in Sunspace, but he was determined to make things better here. He made me feel the same way; after all, I was going to be here only a short time, so how could I do less? I think he noticed these feelings in many of us, despite the politics that had sent us here, and that helped.
There wasn’t much to do while we waited for the asteroid. Svoboda gave us a tour of the underground town during the first few days.
There were three underground villages, covering some thirty square miles. Each had a large central meeting chamber, where people gathered to dance, sing, or watch programs from Earth. Solar activity made watching programs difficult at times, despite the relay satellites, even when both planets were on the same side of the Sun. The tunnels ran for hundreds of miles, and more were being cut as space was needed.
“I want you all to be very careful,” Svoboda said toward the end of his tour. “If anyone is injured severely, or develops a major disease, we can’t put you in suspended animation—we just don’t have the equipment to hold life. If we can’t treat it, you die.”
We were all a bit shocked at this. He might just as well have told us that there weren’t any first-aid kits, or that we could die of a simple infection.