Below Mercury (13 page)

It was a battle between two forces: the thrust of the ramjets, pushing the spaceplane forward, and the searing blast of the air, its very molecules torn apart by the hypersonic speed of the craft.

Through the slit-like windows of the visor, the colour of the sky, already a deep midnight blue, darkened towards black. They were passing into the highest reaches of the atmosphere. Occasional streaks of brilliant light zipped up and over the visor, as tiny flecks of heat resistant paint came off the spaceplane’s nose and flashed instantly to glowing vapour in the airstream.

‘Mach ten, reducing thrust,’ Wilson announced. The push in their backs dropped fractionally. The incoming air was so hot now that, even with precooling, the engines could not run at full power. The ramjet combustors and nozzles glowed red-hot as the craft tore upwards into the thinning air, guzzling liquid oxygen to maintain combustion. The roar of the engines altered, rising in pitch to a distant falsetto screech, as the air faded towards vacuum.

‘Mach eleven. Ramjet shutdown. Main engine ignition in five.’

The thrust and noise of the ramjets faded, and for a few seconds, the crew could breathe again. The spaceplane coasted upwards, rising out of the scorching hypersonic air. The glowing nozzles of the ramjets were cooling down, their job done, as the main rocket engines pressurised, ready for firing.

‘Ignition.’

For a moment, nothing seemed to happen, then the main valves to the four engines opened wide, and the whirling blades of the turbopumps forced 32 tonnes a minute of cryogenic propellants into the engines’ combustion chambers.

The crew were slammed back into their seats by the sudden onslaught of two million newtons of rocket thrust, and the spaceplane surged forward, accelerating into the fringes of the atmosphere on the edge of space. A deep-throated bass rumble came through the spaceplane’s structure, as the huge aerospike engines accelerated the spaceplane past Mach eleven, to Mach twelve, Mach thirteen and beyond; pushing it faster and faster as it climbed towards its orbital speed of nearly eight kilometres per second.

The navigation displays in front of Clare and Wilson changed, to show the spaceplane’s climb and acceleration against the curving magenta line of its planned orbital trajectory. The control surfaces had no effect, now that the craft was flying in vacuum, and the flight computer steered the spaceplane by tiny nudges to the engines, adjusting the angle of thrust to keep the craft in the correct attitude.

The spaceplane’s flight angle flattened out as it climbed, so that it was moving almost parallel to the ground far below, adding forward velocity to accelerate the craft into orbit.

The acceleration mounted as the propellant tanks emptied, rising through two gees, to three gees, and still it climbed. Matt could hardly raise his arm off the armrest of his seat, and it was an effort to breathe; his ribcage was being squeezed in by the mounting acceleration.

The noise of the engines was changing, sounding hollower as the huge tanks emptied. The last few tonnes of fuel and liquid oxygen quivered over the mouths of the feed lines.

The engines blasted on, the thrust unrelenting, forcing the rapidly lightening craft to dizzying speeds. The final few seconds of the climb carried the greatest acceleration of all, crushing them into their seats, turning the spaceplane from an earthbound object doomed to fall, into an orbiting spacecraft that would fall round the Earth and never land.

The navigation display showed the white path of their trajectory moving closer and closer to the magenta line, until the little arrowhead of the spaceplane grazed it, and the two lines became one.

The thunder of the engines stopped.

‘Main engine cutoff.’

Wilson’s voice sounded strange in the sudden quiet. A long, declining wail came faintly through the craft as the turbopumps ran down, followed by the brief roar of helium gas in the purge cycle.

The superb engines had done their job flawlessly, taking the spaceplane all the way from the runway on Guam, up to an altitude of 320 kilometres and an orbital speed of nearly eight kilometres per second. Clare locked the thrust levers in their cutoff position and disarmed the firing controls, and gave the console a short pat of appreciation.

The purging roar ceased, but nobody spoke; it felt as if they were falling forward, as indeed they were; falling round the curving surface of the world below. Matt gripped the arms of his seat, waiting for the feeling to pass, and hoped that the anti-nausea pills he had taken several hours previous would do their job.

Matt’s arm drifted up, and he realised he was weightless, floating in his seat, only held there by the pressure of his seat straps. As always, he grinned helplessly at the sensation; it truly had to be experienced. The vestibular disturbance was passing, and he looked around. Bergman was smiling as well, watching the ends of his seat straps float out in front of him.

Wilson inspected the navigation display, which had changed to show their orbital situation, and the location of the waiting tug, 200 kilometres above them in its higher orbit.

‘Confirm orbit established. We’re here to stay. Tug beacon locked on, MMS is ready for orbital transfer update. We’ll make rendezvous in – seventy-four minutes.’ He nodded in satisfaction; they were right on target with their orbit insertion.

‘Okay everyone, welcome to orbit. Hope you enjoyed the ride.’ Clare’s voice came over their headsets. ‘Very smooth climb up, no problems at all. We just need to run through some checks, and then we’ll start preparing for the rendezvous. You can take off your helmets now, but make sure you stow them properly – I don’t want any of them floating around while I’m docking.’

There was a brief hiss as Clare unsealed her faceplate and swung it upwards, then removed her helmet. The rest of them followed suit, and Matt sighed with relief as he struggled free of the confines of his helmet and stretched his aching neck muscles.

‘Right, let’s take a look at the view.’ Clare reached out to the centre console, and the protective visor, which had covered the windows throughout the orbital climb, unlocked and lowered slowly out of sight, opening up the view ahead.

The black sky of space expanded around them, and then the brilliant blue-and-white curve of the Earth flooded into the cockpit. The wide expanse of the Central American coastline straddled the centre windows, a mass of browns and greens against the blue of the Pacific.

The thin shell of the atmosphere could be seen clearly, a deep blue band along the curved horizon. Scattered clouds floated above the landmass as another day drew to its close; a band of deep shadow in the distance marked the terminator, the line of oncoming night.

The voice of the centre that controlled the crowded orbit levels round the Earth sounded in their headsets.

‘Mercury Two Zero Seven, Earth Orbit Control, we have you in a circular orbit at three two zero kilometres. Clear climb to five zero zero kilometres, maintain inclination at plus two three decimal five, insertion point India Three at zero two two six Zulu. Report when ready for final approach to Space Tug Two One.’

As Wilson read back the clearance, Matt could see the navigation display in front of the copilot, and the paths of the spaceplane and the unseen space tug moving in their respective orbits. Figures and angles, and a long, curved line between the two craft, popped us as Matt watched.

A hollow rushing sound came from outside the cockpit walls, and the view outside shifted slightly; Clare was turning the ship to line it up for the manoeuvring burn.

Matt looked up and out of the cockpit windows. The day below was ending; a wave of darkening could be seen to the right, spreading across the landmass towards them.

‘Coming up on terminator now,’ Wilson said, ‘nineteen minutes to orbital manoeuvring burn.’

The light in the cockpit faded as dusk fell across the world below, and in moments, they flew into the darkness of space behind the Earth.

The room was empty except for a single table and chair. The blinds were drawn, but the evening sunlight still leaked into the room from outside, casting lines of golden light across the floor.

A key turned in the lock, and Colonel Helligan entered the room, closing and locking the door behind him. He glanced around, as if checking that he was alone, then strode to the table and flung his cap down.

A sophisticated portable satellite phone, similar to those used by the intelligence services, sat on the table. Helligan sat down and switched the phone on, and began keying in a long sequence of characters. He typed without pause, from memory, glancing at his watch once to check the date.

He pressed the SEND key, and waited.

A series of LEDs blinked furiously in different colours as the secure connection was set up. Finally, all the LEDs glowed green, and a subdued hissing came from the speaker.

They were there.

‘Yes.’ The voice that came from the speaker was mechanical, distorted by filters and vocoders to render it unrecognisable. Over the last few months, however, Helligan had found that he could tell the difference between various speakers by the rhythm of their voices.

He leaned closer to speak, as if afraid that someone might overhear him.

‘This is Mainstay.’

‘Report.’ The distorted voice was clipped and abrupt.

Helligan licked his lips.

‘They’ve left orbit, and they’re on their way to Mercury. Everything’s on schedule.’

‘Has the code been inserted?’

‘Yes.’

‘Does anyone suspect that the flight software has been tampered with?’

‘No. It was hidden inside a routine update to the mission management software. I’ve seen the maintenance records. Nobody suspects a thing.’

There was a pause. A different voice, a slower one, joined the conversation.

‘We don’t share your assessment of the situation. The captain was seen talking to one of the maintenance technicians yesterday. She may know something.’

‘Pilots talk to maintenance all the time,’ Helligan said, moving uneasily in the chair. ‘If Foster suspected anything, she’d never have taken off. All she wants is to get back into space, and this is her ticket.’

There was a short silence, and the first speaker came back on the line.

‘Are you certain that this will work?’

‘Yes. They’ll be out of radio contact when it happens. There’s no chance of recovery.’

‘What if she can’t land, and returns to Earth?’

Helligan smiled.

‘You’ve seen her psych profile. She won’t dare not land, not with her record. She’ll put that ship down all right, and that’s when it’ll get her.’ Helligan’s eyes narrowed.

‘They must not get into the mine, colonel, do you understand? If they find out what happened there, the consequences for you would be – severe.’

Helligan swallowed, and a chill ran down his spine.

‘Don’t worry. It’s been taken care of. They’ll just disappear, and never make contact again. Without any evidence, and with Foster’s record, it’ll be blamed on her screwing up the landing. They’ll never send another mission after that.’

More silence.

‘I hope you are right, for your sake.’ Even through the distortion, the menace in the voice came across.

‘It’ll work.’ Helligan sounded confident, but he was hunched over in the chair, his expression tense.

‘This will be our last contact.’

Helligan scrambled to get closer to the phone.

‘Wait! When do I get my—’

‘Don’t worry, colonel.’ A strange sound came from the speaker; it might have been someone laughing. ‘You’ll get your payment when they’re gone. Goodbye.’

The other voice came back one last time before the contact was broken. It was quiet, but recognisable.

‘Sleep well, Colonel Helligan.’

The line went dead.

Helligan fell back in the chair. His face was covered with a thin sheen of sweat. They had never used his name before.

Sleep well? Why
shouldn’t
he sleep well?

He was doing the right thing. Without PMI and the other mining companies to charter spacecraft, there would be no operations in space. There would be no Astronautics Corps, and Andersen would just be another run-down Air Force base in the middle of the Pacific. What was good for PMI was good for the Corps.

He picked up his cap and stood up.

He thought of what he had achieved. It had been difficult to figure out how to keep the change undetected, and he had spent months poring over the problem, until he had spotted a way of doing it.

He hadn’t been able to try it out in the simulator, but there was no way the bitch could recover from it. She and the rest of the SAIB snoopers would disappear into the crater and be forgotten.

Helligan unlocked the door and stepped out into the deserted corridor, locking it behind him, and walked confidently down the corridor.

He imagined Foster’s panic, and her frantic efforts to save the ship, but it wouldn’t be any use. He wondered if she would scream before the end, and he savoured the thought for a moment. Then he saw the other faces on the flight deck, and the terror in their eyes as they saw their death approaching, and he didn’t want to think about that any more.