In space, there is no definitive "up" or "down." This
lack of a reference state tends to have a disorienting
effect on untrained persons, as the first interplanetary
passenger transport operators quickly discovered. Within a
short time, most commercial spaceliners had adopted the
practice of constant acceleration, so some sense of gravity
would be maintained for the duration of the voyage, with the
exception of a few minutes' weightlessness at the turnover.
Even trained astronauts are usually only prepared to
deal with normal situations, which they have done by rote
hundreds of times over. The human mind was not built to
control muscles in the absence of gravity, where the
smallest motion is magnified by inertia; emigrants to the
Torus invariably spend several months adapting their
hereditary reflexes to the new environment. Most of the
injury accidents reported in outer space are the results of
misjudged or overpowered maneuvers.
So Leonard McBride was not surprised when Carolyn
Leefield seemed clumsy that night, trying to deliver a
passionate kiss while unbuttoning the front of his uniform.
She failed to notice her tendency to keep pushing him away,
and he decided to let her speculate as to his constant
groping at the small of her back. Her eyes glittered like
gems in the darkened cabin.
It was well past two in the morning, Skyscraper time,
when she stirred beside him, brushing a mass of brown hair
from her face. He watched quietly, having spent the last
hour pondering the conversation they were about to have.
Her eyelids fluttered cautiously, expecting sunlight, then
opened to reveal limpid blue circles around deep black
wells.
"Hi, handsome," she whispered, turning to face him.
"You tired?"
He smiled gently. "Nah."
"Good." Her arm snaked across his chest, and her cheek
glided up his shoulder.
"We should talk."
His urgent tone doused any ideas she might have had.
Sighing, she pulled herself up to his eye level, rustling
the sleeping bag. "You want to know about the incident this
afternoon."
"And you want to know about the aliens."
"You first." A yawn punctuated the request.
Leonard shrugged, buoying her upwards. She reached an
arm out to push herself away from the ceiling, then
conveniently wrapped it around him as she returned. "Jac
Quinn knew there was going to be trouble. He was thinking
about it on the way to Saturn, and we discussed it at
Japetus. He can't be head of Quintex and head of Project
Theory at the same time; the connections with UNIA could
make things even worse than they are now."
"He's not going to give up Quintex," breathed Carolyn,
intentionally tickling his ear.
He ignored it with herculean effort. "No, but he knows
I'm going to go with the Project. And in his absence, I
would be assigned to head up any and all field
investigations."
"You?" A grin opened her mouth, but his somber,
downcast eyes closed it again. "I didn't know you were so
well respected."
"I'm not." He tilted his head, smiled crookedly. "I
tend to annoy the hell out of people I don't immediately get
along with. Jac and I both know this thing will fall apart
if he's not there; the Project is his baby. It always has
been. If these people were Intel or Fleet, we'd be fine,
but they're not. We need Jac to hold it all together."
Carolyn snuggled against him, frowning. "Why aren't
UNIA and UNSF doing anything to help you? I thought they'd
be blanketing this mess."
"They're doing as much as they can. UN only has
seventy or eighty ships on active duty, and maybe thirty
more on reserve, half of which can actually be launched
right now. They believe the aliens are out there, but they
also have to deal with the Torie situation, which is much
more immediate, and that spreads the Fleet pretty thin."
"I didn't know it was that bad. It's just talk, isn't
it?" She cringed even as she asked, knowing that she
wouldn't like the answer.
He took a breath, then sighed. "Do you have Bravo
security clearance?"
"Bravo Three." The darkness obscured her squint. "You
can check--"
"I trust you. Remember that accident at Benfu colony
yesterday?"
"It wasn't an accident?"
He told her in a slow, even voice which belied his
horror.
David-Riordan Sanchez had never killed a man before.
He had considered the possibility while serving in the Army,
but he had always thought that it would be at a distance,
using a gun or a missile, and that he would never have to
face his enemy. Technology had even made killing easy.
But as he pulled his hands away from the guard's neck,
and blood fell with a dreamlike sluggishness to the floor,
and the man's dead eyes stared upward, shocked, almost as if
seeking some final absolution, David Sanchez began to cry.
The sound echoed off the metal walls of the airlock which
stood between the base entrance and the only spacecraft on
the asteroid which UNSF had named Benfu. It varied from a
wail to a low, sobbing moan in the minutes before somebody
ran into the doorway from the base.
"David! Jick, are you okay? Here, give me that knife,
take this, the safety's here, shoot anyone in a uniform,
we've got the last of these bastards cornered, it's almost
over!"
As quickly as the voice had appeared, it vanished
again, and David Sanchez found himself holding an automatic
weapon, its matte black finish now reddened where his hands
were, and he dropped it, trying but unable to scream. He
staggered around the small chamber, eyes scanning wildly,
searching for something familiar from his life, but there
was nothing. He had given up his life for this, and now...
They had killed his wife, and he had killed one of them in
anger; but whose fault had it been, really? Did anybody
know?
Mazursky, the tall Lunan who couldn't have massed more
than eighty kilos and was too proud to admit his failure at
prospecting, had started it all-- or had it been Yarbro, the
beady-eyed Major who had herded them off their shuttles and
onto Benfu, who had given them the scintillating propaganda
speech about the UN's colony program, the presentation which
had brought tears to Nancy's eyes? Or maybe it was Jannik,
the grey-bearded miner who danced through the air with
incredible grace, who shouted at everybody all the time,
angry at everything and violently intelligent. Or Kurt, or
Garamond, or Chun, or any of the dozens of others... or
maybe it had been all of them, afraid to admit their hatred
individually but made collectively stronger by their mutual
confinement.
Negotiations inevitably turned into arguments,
compromises were limited to the cafeteria menu, and the
suspicions raised by the alleged alien threat only worsened
things. Jannik had been the first to lash out, during a
particularly bad labor dispute, but the guards hadn't been
far behind. Before long, their nonlethal antipersonnel gear
had been traded for deadlier sidearms, and then the
colonists knew where to find the weapons, too.
Sanchez barely remembered the past few hours, except
for Nancy's death-- that he could still see all too clearly,
her last breath was still ringing in his ears, some of the
blood staining his shirt was hers, and that was strangely
comforting. Everything else was a confused muddle of
screams, shouted directions, killing and being killed, a
tense and uneasy peace which had finally collapsed when
neither side wanted to accommodate the other any longer.
And if one asteroid, comprised of thirty colonists from
various parts of the Torus and twenty UN soldiers and
administrators from Earth, could not hold itself together,
would the Torus at large fare any better in the end?
Perhaps it was just a matter of control, of freedom, as
Mazursky had always said-- or maybe it was economics, like
Chun tried to explain at the last appropriations council.
Sanchez never knew who to believe; it all sounded so
reasonable until the next argument came along...
He suddenly realized that he was hearing voices, words
intermingled with the gunfire and the unintelligible noises,
and the voices were not familiar. In a daze, his hands
found the rifle he had dropped a few minutes before, and
when he stood again, he saw its twin staring him in the
face. The sound reached his ears a fraction of a second
before the bullet sailed between them.
"Apparently one of the soldiers was still hiding out in
the command center," Leonard continued, painfully aware of
Carolyn's nails digging into his chest. "In a last burst of
heroism, he recognized that the colonists were heading for
the shuttle, and help would arrive too late. So he blew the
reactor nearest to the hangar, which also happened to be the
oldest one on Benfu, making for a very plausible story to
release publicly. A terrible tragedy. That's why UN's
pretty nervous about the Torus right now. Would you mind
letting go before you draw blood?"
Carolyn loosened her grip, blushing faintly. "Sorry.
Len-- you're talking about a cover-up. This is going to
make things even worse."
"They've only delayed it. Intel is treating this as a
military matter, which gives them a day or two before the
newsnets get restless. The distress signal was coded and
masked, so nobody else would have picked it up; and it's
still plausible that they would take a while to make any
sense out of that wreckage. The blast took nearly half of
the asteroid with it."
"It's dishonest, and if anyone ever finds out--"
"Do you think it would be better if they came right out
and said it?" he snapped. "`Oh, nothing big, the colonists
and guards just sort of killed each other'? How the hell is
that going to help?" He shook his head abruptly. "Drat,
listen to me. I was just lecturing Jac on this a couple
days ago, and now I take a totally contrary position."
"I assume that was a different situation," she offered
soothingly.
"Maybe. I talked him into getting Gandalf to
declassify Project Theory. Jac probably would have done it
anyway; he just needed a little push. This is--" He
frowned. "I'm not as willing to risk as much on this."
"Well," she said, rubbing his forearm, "it's out of
your hands anyway."
"Yeah."
"Go to hell."
I'm there already, he opened his mouth to say. But she
was gone, the door slamming shut behind her. He hadn't
realized how long it had taken him to form that thought--
how much time he'd spent contemplating what hell really was.
There were so many depictions to choose from, and none
of them was truly frightening. They were all either
preachings from the past, told by superstitious peoples to
spread the word of some god, or metaphorical ramblings made
up by philosophers to support some thesis. Not real. Not
like this.
Kyle touched his right armrest, feeling the cool
surface of the control pad, and slid his finger backward.
The wheelchair whirred beneath him, moving as he commanded;
a few more motions and it turned him slowly until he faced
the door, wondering where Delia had gone. Had she retreated
to the sunlit gardens, where tomato vines reached to the
transparent ceiling on the south side of the asteroid, or
was she simply walking down the hall, crying into her hands?
Some spiteful part of him said, What do I care about
her pain? I'm the one who should be crying my damned eyes
out. I'm the one who'll never walk again.
"Daddy?"
Oh, hell, not now. He turned to look at his daughter
and found that he didn't have to force a smile. "Hi, Mary."
She wasn't smiling, and he knew that was bad. Mary
Jemison, the girl who bounced down corridors and drove
teachers crazy with her hyperactive glee, in a somber mood?
Something terrible must have happened.
It did, Kyle thought. It happened to me. And now I'm
making everyone else suffer for it.
A sudden calm rippled over his mind, in that second
before Mary spoke again; he remembered why he had wanted to
marry Delia, why he had wanted a child. Because there were
so many things that he hated and feared, that he could do
nothing about, and at least a family would never be so far
away that he couldn't reach out and try to explain it all.
That was what he had wanted, and what he had worked so hard
to make, and he had nearly forgotten it.
"Where did Mommy go?"
"I don't know." He tapped at the controls beneath his
hand, bringing himself beside Mary and opening his arms.
She climbed up into his lap and laid her head on his
shoulder.
"Why were you shouting at each other?"
I hate this part. "It's my fault. I wasn't feeling
well."
"I thought your legs didn't hurt." Mary looked up at
him, puzzled.
Kyle smiled in spite of himself. "They don't. But it
hurts here--" he tapped at his chest-- "because I can't ever
move them again."
Mary frowned. "Chest pains? Shouldn't you see a doctor
for that?"
A sluggish laugh fought its way out of Kyle's throat.
"No, that's not what I meant. I mean I feel sad-- and angry--
because I'm paralyzed."
"Oh." Mary thought about it for a moment. "So you
didn't yell at Mommy on purpose."
"No." I'd never do that.
"I understand," proclaimed Mary with a nod.
Kyle grinned. "Let's go find her."
"What took you so long?" June Bergan turned as Larry
Dell entered the operations booth, and stiffened when she
saw the bruise on his face. "What happened?"
"All these questions," chuckled Larry as he sat down at
his console and logged in. "Everybody's got questions."
June pushed her chair across the small room, her mind
whirring. "Meek" could have been Larry's middle name; he
did little to offend anyone. She craned her neck to examine
his injury, and angrily placed a hand on his shoulder when
he turned away.
His reaction could not have been farther from her
expectations. He knocked her hand away, grabbed her collar
with both hands, and pulled her upward, nearly choking her.
A genuine fire blazed behind his eyes, but she could see
that the anger was not directed at her.
"I'm putting in for a transfer," he said, "and I think
you should, too."
He let go, pushing her away slightly. June remained
still for a moment, fearing that she might set him off
again. He went back to his console, stabbing at buttons and
sifting through radar records, and when he seemed calm again
June repeated her question: "What happened?"
He sighed. "Nobody knows what happened. That's the
problem."
"Goddammit, stop jicking around!"
Her outburst seemed to satisfy him. "A couple of Tories
in a service bay. They don't like us Earthers, you know."
"This is ridiculous."
"You expect too much," Larry snapped. "Most people
don't have time to worry about whether what they're doing is
right."
"Oh, hell." June stood, walked back to her console, and
started typing. "I don't have time for this. Give me a
window on your display."
Larry sighed as he pushed the buttons which would allow
June to send data to his screen. A few seconds later, a
graphic of the Solar System appeared, showing several
locations marked with dates and times.
"Very pretty. What am I supposed to get out of this?"
June glared at him. "I've been plotting those
unidentified sensor blips, and the pattern wasn't making any
sense until this afternoon. Did you hear about the incident
at Skyscraper?"
"The vanishing astronaut?"
"Channel Twenty-Seven ran it this morning, with a map
marking the location of Skyscraper. I've been using the
same type of graphic for this tracking project, but I
suddenly realized they were mapping along the same radius as
the Saturn disappearance. So I punched in the coordinates,
and the two points are in a plane almost perfectly parallel
to the ecliptic."
A frown creased Larry's brow, obviously a result of his
effort to guess June's point before she told him outright.
"You think the two events are connected?"
"Yes! It's a pickup ship, Larry!" Her eyes twinkled
hopefully, but he shook his head. "Did you read the reports
on the Saturn incident?"
"Summary only. I wasn't that interested."
"Remember how the alien ships accelerated out of the
ecliptic plane? Now, why didn't they cause a bigger
explosion and destroy the whole chase group? They were
putting themselves into position to rendezvous with this
other ship!" She began typing on his keyboard. "I plotted
all the points and ran the extrapolation again, with new
parameters. This new simulation actually makes more sense.
Colored lines appeared on the screen, connecting the
dots into an ellipse. June rotated the graphic to make the
shape more distinct. "It's orbiting perpendicular to the
ecliptic plane, with a very high eccentricity. The foci are
somewhere in the Oort Cloud. That's probably where it was
launched, and where it drops its cargo."
"So you're hypothesizing that this thing accidentally
picked up the astronaut at Skyscraper?" said Larry slowly,
studying the screen.
"It makes sense, doesn't it?"
"Why aren't you telling this to Price?"
"I will. But I don't trust anyone I didn't go to
college with."
Larry chuckled briefly. "I'm flattered."
"Do you believe me?" asked June, almost pleading with
him.
He shrugged. "Nobody saw anything at Saturn or at
Skyscraper. This ship would have to be moving pretty damned
fast. Anything it ran into would be pulverized."
"They must have some way of damping the impact."
"Like what? It's got to be moving at--" he scanned the
information dotting the screen, squinting as numbers rolled
around his head-- "Jick! Nothing could survive that
collision."
"Exactly. I have no idea what kind of technology they
have. Maybe gravity generators, maybe force fields. But it
must be something far beyond any human technology. Don't
you see? Larry, this is the proof we need!"
"Proof?"
"That the aliens are real!" June watched his face,
searching for some support, and Larry felt a rock in his
stomach. He knew he was going to disappoint her.
"There's no more trust out here, June. Your reasoning
is based on the premise that the information from Project
Theory and Ariane Odyssey is accurate. A lot of Tories have
no reason to believe any of it."
"Then we'll convince them." He could see she was angry,
but it only made her more determined. "We know where that
pickup ship is. All we have to do is intercept it and bring
it to Mars. They can't refuse to believe that."
Larry smiled, ignoring the soreness in his cheek. "I
hope you're right."
Copyright © 1996 Curtis C. Chen. All Rights Reserved.