Below Mercury (2 page)

A grey light crept through the curtains as he lay there on the bed, getting his breathing and heart rate back under control. It had been the worst one yet; he had never been this far in the dream, never actually been in the control room when the mine vented its air into space. He had tried not to imagine what it had been like, but the dream had crawled out to ambush him, today of all days.

The day of the investigation board hearing into the disaster.

Matt tilted the alarm display towards him, and let it fall back. He lay there a few moments more, trying to put it off, but just like the dream, there was no getting away. He rolled out of bed and walked unsteadily towards the bathroom, and flicked the light on.

His dark green eyes, underlined by the shadows of a broken night’s sleep, looked back at him from the mirror. At 39 years of age, Matt looked older; his brown hair was greying at the temples, and there were lines of care and worry etched into his face.

He ran the faucet and slopped water over his face while he waited for it to run hot. He caught sight of his hands, and realised that they were shaking.

He took several deep breaths, and tried to focus, but the memory of the nightmare still echoed, and he had to go over it in his mind, to reassure himself that he was still alive, that he hadn’t been in the mine on that terrible day in November 2142, eight years ago.

Matt and twenty others were ten days out from Mercury, on board the deep space tug
Cleveland
. They were bound for Earth after their tour of duty at Erebus Mine, an ice extraction and refining facility on the South Pole of Mercury. It had been an uneventful, routine journey, and Matt was looking forward to getting back to Earth and enjoying the regulation six-month break before his next tour.

Then, in the middle of an afternoon watch, he heard a clamour of voices coming from the command deck.

He found the flight crew monitoring a series of distress calls from the mine; there had been some kind of explosion in the fuel refinery, out on the crater floor.

The
Cleveland’s
crew responded to the call, but in the middle of a transmission from the mine, the voices on the speaker were drowned out by the high-pitched shrieking of the pressure alarms, and an enormous roaring of air. The faint cries from the mine faded away into an empty, hissing silence that was terrifying in its finality.

As he shaved, Matt remembered the anxious faces on the command deck that day, the other passengers gathering round as they began to grasp the scale of the disaster that had struck the mine. Telemetry data streamed in for a time, telling their enigmatic story. It was agonising, knowing that they could not help; the
Cleveland
was beyond the point where it could alter its trajectory to return to Mercury. Instead, they could only listen to the faint transmissions from the survivors, and their fading hopes of rescue.

It had been heart wrenching, listening to their last messages to loved ones, until finally the transmissions stopped altogether. He remembered the feeling of relief when he didn’t have to listen to them any more, and the guilt at that thought had never gone away.

Matt rinsed the razor in hot water, and started on the other side of his face.

The accident at Erebus Mine had gone down as the worst space accident in history; 257 people had lost their lives, and the mine had been declared a Space Grave; permanently off limits to all landings. Erebus had been the last operating base on Mercury, and shortly afterwards the planet itself had been closed to further commercial development, and no ships had visited it since.

Matt splashed warm water over his face and washed off the stray lines of foam, and dried his face with a towel.

The original investigation into the accident, completed two years after the accident, had been rejected by the relatives as a whitewash. The report of the investigation board had been based on analysis of the systems telemetry data from the doomed mine, and placed the blame squarely on the mine personnel for failure to follow procedures.

The board had refused to sanction an investigative mission, citing the Federal Space Navigation Act of 2103, which made it clear that there had to be clear evidence of negligence or wrongdoing, before an operator or Government agency was obliged to recover physical evidence from a space accident.

In the years since the accident, however, the relatives’ various law firms had managed to persuade a Federal Court of Appeal to order the Federal Spaceflight and Aviation Administration to reopen their investigation. Their case centred on new evidence – 32 seconds of restored telemetry data that had previously been unreadable because of severe data corruption.

There had been other changes, too – the FSAA had been criticised severely over an investigation of another space accident, in which its objectivity had been in question. As a result, a separate and independent Space Accident Investigation Board had been created to investigate all future accidents, and reopen the investigation into the accident at Erebus Mine.

As he dressed in his shirt and grey business suit, Matt wondered if the new investigation would deliver the result that the relatives hoped for. He was doubtful himself; the new evidence was open to interpretation, and he suspected that the new investigation board might well come to the same conclusion as the original one.

But he had helped the relatives so far, and he was interested in the outcome, however it turned out. It could even help bring him nearer to personal closure, to have the events re-examined once again.

He checked his appearance in the wardrobe mirror, straightening his tie, and sighed as he saw how tired he looked. His eyes looked back at him with a strange mixture of sadness and understanding.

Nobody can release you but yourself.

You must forgive yourself for surviving.

He pulled on his coat, checked round that he had not left anything, and let himself out of the room, the door swinging closed behind him.

Matt glanced at the agenda sheet, lying open on the table in front of him, as the board chairman came towards the end of his opening address.

It was the first week in December, 2150, and Matt was seated in the audience in Committee Room A of the Federal Spaceflight and Aviation Administration, on Independence Avenue, in Washington, D.C. The grand old building, the larger of the two FSAA buildings on either side of Seventh Street, had been completely rebuilt nearly a hundred years ago in a more classical style. The high ceilings and skylights of the main committee room gave it the feeling of a courtroom, which was a suitable atmosphere for the business of the Erebus Mine Accident Investigation Board.

Dust motes swam in the rays of the low winter Sun that illuminated the rectangular chamber. The room was filled with over 300 people, sitting at tables facing the elevated stand at the front of the room.

Here, surrounded by microphones, display screens and recording equipment, Chairman Trent and the rest of the board sat looking out at the audience. Robert Trent was 62, overweight, but with a piercing gaze in his pale blue eyes, and an incisive mind that had led a dozen major investigations before this one. He took a long sip from the glass of water on the desk, before continuing his address.

‘Planetary Mining Inc., whom I will refer to from now on as “PMI”, are not in favour of any attempt to revisit the mine, as it is a designated space grave, and because of the distress this may cause to those relatives who are not disputing the findings of the original investigation. In this respect, PMI are supported by the FSAA, and by this investigation board. The Space Graves Commission, however, have indicated that they would allow the mine to be entered for investigative purposes, if there is sufficient weight of evidence that an entry is necessary.’

Matt cast his gaze around the room. He was seated at one of the tables in the third row, close to the lawyers for the class action. Most of the people in the room were lawyers, in fact; a disaster of this scale produced many grieving families. Matt wondered what each of them was seeking. For some, it would be closure; the need to know what had happened to their loved ones, so that they could try to move on after all these years. For others, it might be revenge, the desire to strike back at whoever had been responsible. For some, it would be the prospect of increased compensation for their loss, but there was no prospect of that unless there was a reversal of the previous finding that PMI were not negligent. And there was no chance of that unless the FSAA sanctioned an investigative mission.

Matt returned his attention to Trent.

‘This issue is what we will be presenting our findings on today. We have been directed by a Federal Court of Appeal to re-examine the available evidence, and new evidence recently brought to light, and reach one of three possible conclusions based on this, as follows. One, that the board do not make any change to the original findings, and the final report stands. Two, that the board consider changes are necessary to the findings, and submit a revised final report. Three, that the board cannot come to a decision without an investigative mission to the mine.

‘In order to do this, it is necessary to review the conclusion that the previous board came to, just over six years ago.’

Trent motioned to one of the assistants on the podium, and the room darkened. An animated diagram appeared on the main projection screens, and on the various smaller screens placed at intervals round the room.

The animation zoomed in to a large crater on Mercury’s surface, and dropped down to the crater floor, and a three-dimensional cutaway view of the mine.

‘The findings of the board were based on the extensive telemetry data obtained from the mine, and from the transmissions from the survivors of the original explosion and decompression. Using this evidence, the board pieced together a sequence of events that showed that an explosion in the fuel refinery caused an explosive pressure wave, which spread throughout the mine workings and burst the main pressure doors, resulting in the loss of all air from the mine.’

The animation showed a sudden flash of light, followed by a slow-motion explosion from the refinery, out on the crater floor. A red explosive shock wave spread out from the refinery, working its way through the passages and shafts of the mine, back to the accommodation levels. The animation zoomed in to the main portal of the mine, and an enlarged cutaway of the entrance hangar, as the explosive shock wave arrived. It filled the hangar, and the animation showed the main doors buckling under the load, and finally failing, bursting open in slow motion and venting the mine atmosphere into space.

Matt had seen the animation a dozen times, but it never failed to send a chill through him as he imagined what it must have been like for the mine personnel that day. He shivered, as he recalled the dream of the night before.

‘The FSAA investigation board determined that, had the emergency pressure doors in the main access ways been closed immediately, as the emergency procedures required, the explosion would have been contained, and the mine would not have been breached. Simulations conducted for the board showed that only six doors would have had to be closed, to completely contain the explosion.

‘For this reason, the board concluded that the probable cause of loss of life was the failure by mine personnel to follow standard emergency procedure and ensure that the emergency pressure doors were closed. In addition, the probable cause of the refinery explosion was the failure to follow standard maintenance procedures, resulting in the catastrophic failure of one of the gas turbocompressors.’

At this, a low murmur spread across the audience, like distant thunder. That part of the report had effectively halted any possibility of increased compensation for the victim’s families, until the case had reached the Court of Appeal.

Trent sat back, his eyes scanning the room. He waited for the noise to subside completely before he continued.

‘Certain new information has been presented recently, however, that could support alternative scenarios. It has been suggested that the additional data shows an attempt by the mine controllers to operate pressure doors to contain the explosion. Also, that the overpressure at the hangar doors due to the explosion was well within the design limits, and the doors should not have failed.’

The room was silent now; everyone was listening to Trent’s words.

‘This is the key issue that this board has been directed to focus on. At the time of the original enquiry, the evidence pointed overwhelmingly to the conclusion reached at that time. Does the new evidence make a compelling enough case for this board to change the original findings?

‘The sub-committees that are represented here today have thoroughly examined the original report against all the evidence now available, and you will be hearing their conclusions in turn shortly.’

Trent moved his hand to indicate the men and women ranked on either side of him at the elevated table. They were all experts in their field; mine design, ventilation systems, industrial plant design, airlock systems, human factor engineering, and other disciplines. Most of them had contributed to the original report, and Matt wondered how many careers were riding on the outcome of this review.

‘The review of the evidence is necessarily complex and involved, and we will be making available full copies of our revised report once this presentation is complete. I have asked each of the sub-committee team leads to make summary presentations in turn, to draw out the new information, and to help you all understand how we have come to our conclusion, which I will present at the end of the individual presentations.