Under Strange Suns (14 page)

When the
Yuschenkov
achieved a parking orbit around the moon, Captain Vance called a meeting in the auditorium. Aidan stood at the rear, watching the crew shuffle through the hatch. He’d tucked his pistol under his belt beneath a light, zippered jacket with “Vance Aerospace” embroidered on the breast and “Yuschenkov” printed in bold across the back. He didn’t know what Vance was about to announce, but felt he ought to be prepared. Being security officer and all.

“Listen up people,” she said. “We’ve got a light at the end of the tunnel, so let’s keep suicide pacts on hold for now. Okay?” She paused, but if she was waiting for laughter she was disappointed. “Right, then. Matamoros has been running every scan the science packages offer. And here comes that light I promised you: spectrographic data indicates the moon’s got a breathable atmosphere.

“Yeah, I thought you’d like that,” Vance said over the whoops and cheering that followed the announcement.

Michael Thorson’s voice broke in over the speakers–the ship’s intercom speakers, not the auditorium’s immersive surround sound system. “So we’ll have a chance to stretch our legs before we starve to death. That is a light at the end of the tunnel. Should delay the cannibalism.”

“Stow it, Thorson. That’s an order,” Captain Vance said, each word snapping crisply.

“Sorry, Captain. A joke in bad taste.”

However sincere the apology, the damage was done. The mood regained its gloomy aspect. Vance cleared her throat. “Right, a joke in bad taste. Let’s consider me the MC for the show and Thorson the warm-up comedian. So with him booed off the stage, allow me to introduce the star attraction. Sophia Matamoros, you’re on.” She made a beckoning gesture and stepped aside.

Matamoros took up the position before the vid screen, front and center.

“Uh, thanks, Captain.” Matamoros appeared flustered, her cheeks flushing pink. “And thank you, Michael. How about that Michael Thorson? Let’s give it up for him. Sorry, I can’t do this kind of thing.”

“Just go ahead and tell us,” Aidan said. “Leave the comedy to the professionals.”

“Okay. I found something other than air on the moon. About an hour ago as one of the continents on the northern hemisphere passed...”

“Continents?” Doctor Roberts asked.

“Yes. The moon has water. Oceans. Landmasses. So, like I was saying, about an hour ago I spotted something registering metallic on the spectrograph. I zoomed one of the ventral cameras on the area. And...Well, just look for yourselves.”

She tapped an icon on the entertainment center’s control panel. The big display screen bloomed into life behind her, showing a landscape of blue-green and gray. Aidan thought he could pick out rock formations and what might be vegetation, perhaps some sort of forest. But of more immediate interest was the fragmented stretch of regular, geometric shapes. Lengths of what looked like rectilinear scaffolding, curving segments of a massive wheel, tapering cylinders, all glinting metallically in the light of two suns, a faint reddish gleam reflecting at a different angle from the dominant whitish glare. A ruler-straight run of gray gouged the turquoise plain for a considerable distance, preceding the segmented jumble, like railroad tracks leading to a derailed train. It looked to Aidan like the wreckage of...

“A ship!” McAvoy said.

“It’s the
Eureka II
,” Burge said. “I don’t believe it.”

“This calls for a celebration,” McAvoy said.

“What the hell happened to it?” Thorson’s voice asked over the speakers. “Couldn’t have been orbital decay. More of it would have burned up on re-entry.”

“I sincerely doubt Uncle Brennan waited long enough for that,” Vance said. “The
Eureka II
did not carry a shuttle. It wasn’t intended as a pioneer ship. I can’t imagine it took him much time to decide their only chance was a crash-landing.”

“Fucking-A,” Foster said. Then he found something utterly fascinating to stare at between his shoes as everyone turned to look at him.

“That sums it up nicely, Foster,” Vance said. She straightened, arms akimbo. “If it was a controlled crash, there might be survivors. We need to start a detailed search in an expanding circle about the crash site, sharpest possible focus. Let’s look for signs of construction, geometric breaks in the growth. We also need to start monitoring radio frequencies. They might have activated a distress beacon, or might even be in contact with each other if they separated, foraging for food, or the like. Aidan, you need to get your gear in order, brief your team. Thorson, once I relieve you, you’ll need to prep the shuttle.

“Am I understood, people? Let’s get to work.”

Aidan detained McAvoy and Matamoros as the crew–gloom at least temporarily displaced by excitement–broke up in a chattering exodus.

“What do we know about the moon?” he asked them. “It’s got air, you say. Breathable? No respirator required?”

“The gaseous composition is almost entirely Earth standard,” Matamoros said. “O² a smidge higher, but nowhere near toxic levels.”

“The rock is roughly Mars-size,” McAvoy said. “But with a molten core, so she’s got a magnetic field, which keeps the atmosphere from drifting off into space. Gravity about .95, so you’ll feel a bit lighter than you’re accustomed to. And she’s got two lovely companions, fragments of an impact or captured asteroids. Irregular spindles, high metal content. My bet would be that they are remnants of a larger object that impacted on the moon. Probably explains why the moon isn’t tidally locked–the collision imparted spin, and the gravitational interplay with the new satellites has maintained it.” He shrugged. “Whatever the origin, I figure those satellites
could be worth some mining. Lead, some other heavy metals, maybe palladium, traces of gold.”

“Last bit doesn’t help me much,” Aidan said.

“Not much point in picking up a cargo if we’ll never get it back to paying customers,” said Matamoros. “Why bother mining?”

“I’m a miner,” McAvoy said. “It’s what I do. Besides, we can always use additional shielding packed about the cosmic ray shelter. And Park wouldn’t say no to more reaction mass.”

“Whatever,” Aidan said, dismissing the thought as above his pay grade. “I’ve got a breathable atmosphere and nearly Earth standard gravity. What about daylight? How long is a day?”

“Well, her rotational period is 26 hours,” Matamoros said, and Aidan noted that she’d adopted McAvoy’s use of the feminine article. “And she whips around that big bastard of a planet in a bit over 25 hours. You’ll find that some nights are darker than others. I haven’t run any simulations factoring in the two suns–“

“Let’s not forget reflections from her satellites,” McAvoy said.

“–and the two satellites, but don’t expect a typical day/night, light/dark cycle.”

“Good, I can cut back on flashlight batteries,” Aidan said. That earned a chuckle from the other two. Aidan figured they could use a tension breaker. They all could. The fact that he now had some concrete intel and a promise of some practical activity had eased his own tension, though fear of permanent exile remained a constant in the back of his mind. Matamoros and McAvoy could pour themselves into numbers, raw data, and science to help keep focus from the ugly reality. Aidan required something more hands-on.

* * *

Aidan joined Thorson and Burge at the shuttle. Thorson was already in the cockpit running through the pre-flight checklist. The shuttlecraft was larger than the military craft Aidan used to leap from, but not much. Given the bulk of gear stowed inside, it actually appeared smaller.

Med-kits slotted into storage racks above cases of rations. Boxes of extra ammo were shelved above tightly bundled pioneer kits, emergency beacons, spare batteries, and boxes of water purification tablets. Aidan had not stinted. What he intended to carry on his person–strapped to his combat harness, stuffed in the pockets of his smart-camo jacket–was itself likely overdoing it. Like a Boy Scout troop outfitted with the gear of a Marine expeditionary force. But the extra ammunition was comforting. He checked the pistol at his hip and the backup piece strapped to his boot. He patted at the magazines in his combat harness, feeling the familiar lumps. Better to carry too much than to go wanting.

Still, he might have gotten carried away. Were the Captain’s most ambitious hopes to be realized, if the entire crew of the
Eureka II
was found alive on the moon below, it hardly seemed plausible that they would require a dozen pairs of combat boots, or the case of fire-starters slotted just above. Ten inflatable shelters were probably no more necessary than the six inflatable rafts. Or the parachutes racked near the hatch. Or any of fifty other items he’d bought that Burge had wedged into every available space with the finesse of a cabinet maker.

More likely these supplies would end up as dwindling stockpiles, keeping the crew of the
Yuschenkov
alive a bit longer on the surface below.

So yes, the shuttle was unquestionably stuffed with gear that would prove absolutely useless. But in the absence of perfect information–hell, in the absence of any information whatsoever–he couldn’t know what would be needed. So he intended to come prepared. He would do his damndest for this crew.
And
, he realized,
for Vance. She’s worth overdoing things for.

“Get yourself kitted out,” Aidan said to Burge. Not waiting on the purser, he drifted headfirst through the hatch. Pushing off with his right hand from the far bulkhead, he floated down the long axis of the shuttle, reading labels. He was confident he was already squared away, but it couldn’t hurt to conduct one last inspection for an item he might have neglected to tuck away on his person.

He knew a sense of futility would reassert itself. This search was predestined to fail. But at the moment he was riding a cresting excitement. He was about to explore another world! He’d seen and done a lot in his life, but he’d yet to set foot on alien soil. He would have preferred other circumstances. For example, a circumstance in which after he’d trod alien soil, he would then step onto the soil of a human-occupied planet.

There, despondency fought back to the foreground.

He grabbed an equipment rack stanchion, killing his momentum. He popped open a box of rations and retrieved a few packets, stuffing them into the cargo pockets of his pants. Then with a gentle tug, he propelled himself forward again.

The hatch between cargo hold and cockpit was open. Aidan slid halfway through, gripping both sides of the hatchway to hold his position.

Thorson sat in the pilot’s seat, ticking off boxes on his wrist datapad. The shuttle’s control bank described a hyperbolic curve about him. Behind, to either side of the pilot’s seat were two more seats, at either end of the control bank. Those seats were designed to swivel, allowing the occupants to access certain panels on the control bank, but currently they were locked facing forward. They would remain so for the duration of the trip to the moon. Neither Aidan nor Quentin Burge possessed the requisite training to man either station.

“How’s it coming along, Thorson?” Aidan asked. “I’d like to get the briefing started.”

“Well, you’re just going to have to wait. No shuttle, no survey. And there’s no shuttle until I say it’s green across the board.”

“Right, then. I’ll see if Burge needs any help.” Aidan pulled himself back out through the hatch, applying a trifle more force with his left hand, causing him to pivot gently about and face aft. He kicked off, wafting toward Burge. The purser was hefting two different size flashlights, apparently in a quandary as to which to carry.

“Okay, green across board,” came Thorson’s voice from the cockpit.

“Asshole,” Aidan muttered. Then, “Come join us in the cockpit, Burge. Let’s get the briefing out of the way so we can launch. And take the big torch; it’s more versatile.”

The cockpit felt cramped with all three of them inside, like a full elevator. He dispensed with sitting–pointless in zero gravity for someone without any need to access the controls. Burge had assumed a quasi-seated position at the right-hand station. Aidan bobbed horizontally, clutching the headrest of the left-hand station chair to anchor himself, his legs sticking out into the cargo hold.

“Okay. It’s a briefing, so I’ll keep it short.” Aidan figured he’d open with a joke and he thought that almost qualified. From the lack of reaction his was a minority view. “The mission goal is to look for survivors from the wreck. The Captain is looking from up here. We’re going down for a close inspection.

“We’ll do a low altitude flyby of the crash. Look for smoke, an S.O.S. written in seashells. Longshot stuff. Then we land near the wreckage. We comb through the wreckage, look for bodies. Then, using the shuttle as the central point, we’ll conduct a search on foot.”

“We’re not trained in this ground-pounder shit,” said Thorson.

“No, but I am. So you’ll listen to me and do what I tell you. Each of us will walk an expanding spiral search pattern. Imagine a boat’s propeller. The shuttle is the hub, each of us is one of the blades. We’ll slave our datapads to the shuttle computer. Transponder signals will track our locations, keep us from getting lost, and indicate which direction to walk. With me so far?”

“How long do we search?” asked Burge.

“You got a hot date? We search until the Captain says stop. But if we don’t find anything within a couple of days, then we start looking for more than signs of survivors.”