Below Mercury (24 page)

‘YES, MISTRESS.’

It was still very cold, so they kept their spacesuits on, but abandoned the helmets and air cylinders; without any means to refill them, it seemed pointless.

They dismantled the lighting units from their helmets and took these with them as flashlights. As their only means of illumination in the darkness, they had to be sparing with their use, and Clare insisted that Wilson, Elliott and Abrams kept theirs switched off to save the batteries.

They approached the inner hangar doors, the robot clumping along behind them. Fifteen metres wide, in two sliding halves, the doors were fully retracted into the solid rock of the mountain. A steady draught of warmer air stirred their faces as they passed the threshold.

They remembered the layout of this part of the mine from the maps and briefings. Directly after the huge main hangar was the inner maintenance hangar. This hangar, about half the size of the first, could accommodate smaller items of mining equipment, or spacecraft components such as engines, removed for maintenance.

Treading carefully, the mission team ventured into the maintenance hangar. It was deathly quiet in the mine; the only sound was the whine of the robot’s power pack and its heavy, lumbering footfall. The rings of green LEDs round its eyes filled the area with a faint, ghostly radiance.

Clare played the beam from her light round the hangar. Overhead, more gantries were rock-bolted into the roof, and the ruins of a travelling crane dangled; severed electrical cables hung down like jungle creepers from the load head. Along one wall, spare rocket engines lay in their carrying cradles, their protective plastic coverings partly torn off by the gale that had passed through the hangar. One of the giant mining machines sat nearby, its tracks removed for repairs.

At the far side of the chamber, 25 metres away, a further set of doors gaped open in front of them, leading further into the mine.

Elliott looked at the doors, and then back at the doors they had just come through.

‘So, how did the atmosphere vent?’ he asked. ‘When we arrived here, the outer doors were open but the inner hangar doors were closed. The hangar would have been in vacuum, but the mine integrity would have been fine.’

‘Well, we know the mine vented through here,’ Abrams said, ‘we’ve seen the debris field for ourselves.’

Elliott looked at the doors again.

‘All
three
of these must have been open together – wide open – to cause that amount of air to be lost so quickly, with such a force. I guess that the middle doors were closed after the air vented, which would have resealed the mine, but …’ his voice trailed off.

‘But who closed them?’ Abrams finished the thought for him. ‘And where did the air come from?’

‘Uh, there would have been sufficient reserves in the liquid air reservoirs to recharge the mine, once it was resealed,’ Matt said.

‘Was that automatic – the recharging?’ Bergman asked.

‘No. No, it wasn’t.’

‘So somebody must have closed the doors
and
repressurised the mine, after the accident took place.’

‘But the mine personnel were all dead within thirty-six hours,’ Elliott said, ‘and they were all trapped in the accommodation block until they made some kind of mistake and lost air pressure.’

‘Well, yeah,’ Matt said, ‘if you’re stupid enough to believe they’d really do that.’

‘What exactly are you saying?’ Elliott said, his voice rising, ‘just because we find a set of closed doors, doesn’t mean that all the previous findings are automatic bullshit!’

‘This isn’t about previous findings,’ Matt said, with exaggerated patience, ‘it’s about what
really
happened.’

‘Cool it, guys!’ Abrams stepped between the two of them. ‘We’re here to do a job, and
both
your opinions are needed.’ He looked from Matt to Elliott, and back again, waited for them both to calm down.

‘Matt. Just take it slow and easy, and let’s hear what you’re saying.’

Matt took a deep breath.

‘Well, we know from the voice transmissions that the survivors were definitely in the accommodation block. Then, about a day after the accident, we lost contact with the survivors. The systems telemetry showed loss of pressure in the accommodation block. Then finally, all data transmissions stopped. You with me so far?’

They all nodded, except for Elliott, who just stared at Matt.

‘Okay. Well, there’ve been all sorts of theories on what happened, ranging from them committing suicide, to a secondary explosion. The original investigation board concluded that it was some kind of mistake – someone accidentally operated a door control, and they couldn’t close it again in time.

‘But, they knew they had to get the hangar doors closed to repressurise the mine. If you were trapped in the accommodation block, and you couldn’t close the doors from there, how would you go about it?’

‘Find a spacesuit and send someone to do it manually,’ Bergman said.

‘Right. But the living areas have no airlock, just emergency pressure doors. To let someone out, they would have
had
to have opened those doors. Suppose they moved everyone into one area, sealed that, and then opened the doors so that someone could get to the hangar?’

‘Are you saying the survivors might have closed the hangar doors themselves?’ Elliott said.

‘Yes. And they may have been unable to tell Earth what they were planning, before they lost all contact.’

There was a pause.

‘I don’t buy it,’ Elliott said, his voice careful. ‘It’s too much of a coincidence, losing contact at just the wrong time. But if your theory is right, they managed to seal and repressurise the mine. Why didn’t they re-establish contact? And, why aren’t they here?’

‘Maybe they are,’ Bergman said quietly.

They turned to look at him.

‘Look, I know it sounds insane, but look at the facts. The mine is full of air. Someone managed to seal the mine. They may not have been able to get comms going again. This is a big place; they may not know we’re here.’

Bergman’s words echoed in the silence that followed. They all thought of the huge, empty mine, with all its passages, rooms and shafts running deep under the mountain.

‘Okay.’ Clare was the first to speak. ‘This is an interesting theory, but until we find further evidence to support it, it’s a theory. It doesn’t change our immediate priorities. We continue the search.’

Matt turned away from the group. He felt frustrated and confused. None of this made any sense. He tried to clear his mind and concentrate on looking for food or water.

He headed towards the left wall of the hangar, and rummaged among the scattered debris for some minutes. The hangar had evidently been a swirl point for the huge volume of air that had gushed through it when the mine emptied; wreckage, rubbish and dust had blown wildly about the chamber, before falling and settling in the vacuum.

Most of the wreckage seemed to be objects that had been torn away, or blown over, by the air rushing through the hangar. Equipment lay scattered everywhere – tools, maintenance records, seats, cables, spacesuit helmets – all in a dust-covered jumble on the floor.

Matt picked up a large flashlight he found on the floor, blew the dust off it, and flicked it on. Its white LEDs glowed briefly, and then faded. No charge left. He dropped it back into the dust.

The others were picking their way through the debris, but nobody seemed to have found anything useful. Matt turned round, and looked at the open doors in the end wall, leading off into the mine.

‘You know, I think we’ll have more luck in the next chamber – that’s the stores area,’ he called across to Clare.

‘Okay, there’s no food or water here, let’s move on,’ Clare shouted. ‘Don’t leave anyone behind. Matt – lead the way with Rick.’

Matt swung his light beam over the edges of the opening as he passed through the rectangular doorway. There were no signs of damage; the two sliding halves of the door were fully open, retracted back into the rock.

He sniffed the air cautiously as he went further into the next chamber, but there was nothing in the darkness but the familiar mine-smell of blasted rock and chill air.

As he followed at the back of the group, Abrams saw Elliott standing by the control box for the doors. He had switched on his flashlight while he unfastened an access panel, and was about to remove it.

‘Hey,’ Abrams cautioned, ‘I think you should leave that how it is for now. We don’t want to disturb any evidence until we’ve got time to do it properly.’

‘Oh, uh, sure, I guess you’re right,’ Elliott said. He stared at the panel, then pushed it back into place and slowly refastened it. ‘I just wanted to take a look at the position of the control interlocks.’

‘You think something’s wrong with them?’

‘Well, all three doors can’t have opened together if the controls were working properly. Airlocks are fundamental to mine integrity; it’s just not – possible.’ Elliott’s voice showed a trace of frustration as he clicked off his flashlight, and followed Abrams into the third chamber.

The stores area was the same size as the maintenance hangar, about forty metres wide by twenty-five deep, and the beams of their lights showed a chamber filled from floor to ceiling with warehouse shelves, arranged in ordered rows with wide aisles between them. Equipment, engineering spares, and stores of all kinds filled the shelves, or sat on pallets on the floor. In most cases, the objects were too heavy to have been disturbed by the gale that had blown through here, but here and there were landslides of stores where a case had burst open and spilled its contents.

Some of the storage bays had heavy mesh cages and locked doors protecting their contents. Bergman pointed to one filled with air cylinders with a rueful smile. Matt walked further along the row, past a cage filled with spacesuits, and stopped at the next one.

‘Rescue equipment. This is what we’re after. Can I break this open?’ He looked at Abrams, who thought for a moment before responding.

‘I guess so. I don’t think any of this is implicated in the accident. Just try not to disturb anything you don’t need to.’
Matt called to the robot, which stood patiently near the doorway.

‘Bob Five! Come here!’

The robot’s armoured head swivelled round, and it started towards him, the floor thudding under its weight.

‘Here—’ Matt pointed to the hinges on the mesh door, ‘—and here.’ He indicated the lock. ‘Break, break!’ He smacked one fist into the palm of the other hand.

‘YES, MASTER,’ the robot responded. It shuffled forward, extended one of its arms, and its pincer-like hand laid hold of the top hinge. The pincer closed, shearing effortlessly through the metal, and the hinge parted with a snap. The robot moved on, cutting through the next hinge and the lock. The door fell loose with a rattle of metal, and the robot grasped it and swung it aside. Matt stepped into the enclosed area, followed by Bergman.

‘Okay, let’s pass these out.’ Matt grabbed heavy-duty flashlights, ration packs, medical kits, and a wire rope ladder, and handed them out to Bergman.

The spirits of the group rose as they shared out the haul. It seemed as if they would at least have enough food for the moment. The ration packs were bigger than the small survival packs that each of them had in their suits, and the high-energy bars and sealed packs of pastes and biscuits would keep them going for some time.

‘Is any other food kept in here?’ Clare asked, looking through the wire grille.

‘No, it’ll be in the kitchens, up in the accommodation levels – if it’s lasted,’ Matt said. He passed out some survival blankets and some spare batteries, and paused. ‘Have we got enough stuff for now? We can always come back here.’

‘Yeah, give us a few more flashlights, and can you pass out some of those rucksacks – we could do with something to carry all this stuff in.’

They stowed the food and equipment in the rucksacks, one to each person, and shouldered their loads. With more light to see by, they continued their exploration of the stores area.

Many of the aisles were filled with consumables for mining; roof props, drilling machinery and equipment, barrels of lubricating oil, rock bolts, and vast lengths of electrical cable and ventilation trunking.

There was also a vast stock of maintenance spares for the mining vehicles and visiting spacecraft. They walked past engine nozzles, landing gear struts, airlock hatches, and fuel pumps, all still sealed in their plastic coverings. A huge cutter head for a tunnel-boring machine sat in its support frame, next to a stack of giant tyres for the surface haulage trucks.

One section was devoted to spares for the army of mining robots that performed all the heavy and dangerous tasks in the mine. Matt swooped immediately on a pallet of replacement power packs, and enlisted Bergman’s help to shut Bob Five down and open the main access hatch in the robot’s body. They unlatched the depleted pack and let it crash heavily onto the floor. It took their combined efforts to lift the replacement power pack up and slide it into the robot’s body.

‘How long will that keep it going for?’ Bergman asked, as Matt closed the access hatch and restarted the robot.