Below Mercury (27 page)

‘That’s it,’ he said, ‘no more breakers.’

For several moments, there was no sound in the control centre.

‘Looks like it’s dead,’ Bergman said.

Matt help up his hand for silence.

In the red-lit scene, a fan whirred. Then, lights started to wink on control panels, and more fans spun up as the control centre systems restarted after their long shutdown.

There was a sharp crack from one of the wrecked cabinets, and they all jumped.

‘Easy,’ Matt said, ‘we might get some more of that. Keep an eye out for anything that looks like it’s burning.’

As he said these words, some of the display panels started to come back to life. Most showed either a blank screen, or a jagged riot of dancing colour, but one or two seemed to be coming up with a status display.

Clare and the others climbed up to take a look, and they gathered round one display, which was generating a list of items.

‘Main mine status display.’ Bergman said. ‘Seems the management systems computer is still working.’

‘Yeah, but look at what’s
not
working,’ Matt said, as the display reported item after item as NON-OPERATIONAL or OFFLINE.

‘Main reactor offline, solar power only thirty-five percent, refinery offline, navigation aids non-operational, primary ventilation offline – hey, how come we’ve got fresh air in here if there’s no ventilation?’ Clare asked, as the list scrolled up the screen.

‘Natural ventilation,’ Matt answered. ‘There’s enough difference in temperature between the deep workings and the surface to drive a slow convection current round the mine. It’s not much, but it’ll keep us alive.’

‘What’s on this second console?’ Clare bent over the other screen.

‘Uh, internal communications system,’ Matt said, moving to examine the display. ‘Might be useful. It controls the comlink network in the mine. If we can find some handsets, we might be able to use them to stay in touch.’

Clare nodded.

Matt bent closer to the screen. ‘The network’s out in several places – looks like coverage will be pretty patchy. Hey, what’s this?’ A location map of the mine had sprung up, and on one of the levels, there was a cluster of red dots.

‘Are they handsets?’ Clare asked.

‘Yeah. And they’re close together. Twenty-five hundred level. Right at the bottom of the mine.’

‘Are they working?’

‘No, it’s just showing the last location of the handsets, before the batteries expired.’ Matt looked up at Clare.

‘What do you think?’

Matt’s mind raced. The comlink handsets were carried by everyone working in the mine, and doubled as communications handset and location monitor. He couldn’t think of any reason why the mine personnel would retreat to the deepest parts of the mine, but it would certainly explain why the upper levels were deserted.

‘Well, we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. But it’s worth some of use going down to take a look.’

‘Captain, would you come here.’ Wilson’s voice was urgent.

Clare moved across to where Wilson and Bergman stood, hunched over the mine management system. Wilson stabbed a finger at the display:

CREW SHUTTLE 5, SILO 2

CONDITION: PRELAUNCH CHECKOUT

‘Holy shit,’ Clare breathed, ‘can we find out more?’

‘That’s all we can see from here,’ Wilson said, ‘it’s probably the last reported condition of the crew shuttle, but we’ve got to check it out. And it means there’s power to the silos, or we wouldn’t be getting a status indication.’

‘How many people can they carry?’ Bergman asked.

‘Twelve passengers, plus two crew. If it’s still fuelled after all this time, it’s got more than enough delta-vee to get us up to orbit and dock with the tug.’ Wilson looked round, and found himself facing the whole group; they were all standing behind him, staring at the screen.

They spent over an hour in the control centre, trying to figure out what was still working in the mine. The management computer was working well enough for them to query the status of most of the mine’s systems, but very little else.

With their immediate priorities – air, water and food – met for the moment, they turned their attention to how to get a message back to Earth. Clare hardly dared hope that the shuttlecraft in the silo could be used to make their escape, and played down the possibility, at least until she and Wilson had checked it out. Until then, they had to keep focused on getting a message out.

None of the communications systems worked; from what they had seen of the damage to the racks in the comms room, they had been deliberately sabotaged. One better piece of news was that there was still power to the transmitter units, on top of the mountain. Wilson thought that it might be possible to cannibalise parts from one of the field radios, hook it up to one of the transmitters, and use it to get a message to Earth, but it would need a trip up to the main antenna arrays to try it out.

With this in mind, they switched on the transmitter units. They couldn’t send or receive anything until they tried Wilson’s plan, but the beacon signal might be picked up from Earth.

Power was a different matter. The main reactor had shut down when the explosion occurred, and they couldn’t restart it; the computer wouldn’t let them anywhere near the startup sequence without the right access codes. All they had was the power provided by the solar power array, up in the permanent sunlight on the mountain peak.

The power levels were way down, however, and it didn’t take long to find out why; the array had jammed somehow and wasn’t following the Sun in its slow journey around the pole. The array would have to be freed somehow and repointed at the Sun, and that would mean a trip up the mountain.

In the meantime, the solar arrays were providing enough power for essential systems, including the hoist motors, but Matt and Bergman couldn’t get any of the main lighting working, as hard as they tried. The emergency lighting circuits seemed to be working, however, and their world shifted into monochrome as the lights came on, bathing the control centre with a nightmarish red glare and stark, black shadows.

Gradually, a plan emerged by consensus, to make best use of their skills, and the assets that they had.

Clare and Wilson were to investigate the shuttlecraft, and see if it could be made flightworthy. This involved a trip out under the crater floor, to the crew shuttle silos.

Elliott and Abrams would go up to the mountain peak and attempt to make contact with Earth using a modified radio. Matt and Bergman would go with them part of the way, to guide them to a service raise that would bring them out high on the mountainside. From there, a winding path led up to the peak. Clare drafted the text of the message to send back to Earth, which would get the attention they needed. After some debate, they decided to avoid mention of any mutiny, and stuck to a more basic distress call.

That left Matt and Bergman, and the task that nobody wanted: to investigate the last known location of the mine personnel, deep down in the mine. With the hoist motors operational, Matt was confident that they should be able to get down and back again. Nobody knew what to hope for, or to expect, but any chance of finding survivors, however remote, had to be investigated.

The possibility of a mutiny had grown more compelling with every step they had taken into the mine, but it was puzzling that they had not encountered any survivors, if this was the case. The accommodation levels were the logical place to set up a base after a mutiny, but the place was deserted.

Talk of survivors made them glance at the empty gun locker, and the scattered cartridge cases on the floor. If there were any mutineers left alive, they could be armed, and the mission team had no means of defending themselves.

It was after 22:00, and Clare ordered that they get something to eat and try to get a night’s rest, before going any further.

They set up their sleeping quarters on the first level of the accommodation block, above the galley level, and took six relatively undisturbed rooms off the main corridor to sleep in.

Although it went against their instincts to plunder the effects of the mine personnel, practicality won, and they swapped their bulky spacesuits for clothes that they raided from wardrobes in various rooms, until they each had a set that fitted them well enough. They were mostly the dark blue standard-issue mine overalls, with insulated jackets that they could put over the top, but Clare managed to find some jeans and a sheepskin-lined leather jacket that fitted her better.

To everyone’s surprise, Wilson and Bergman managed to cook a hot meal, using some pasta and containers of sauce that they found in the kitchen cupboards. The six of them sat down in the dishevelled galley and ate their first real meal, out of serving pans, by the red glow of the emergency lights. Afterwards, they sat and looked out over the spectacular view outside, and ate some of the chocolate bars from the emergency ration packs.

It seemed a feast, and when they were finished, the weariness descended. They hadn’t stopped moving since the crash, and it was nearly midnight on the same day they had fired the big nuclear engine on the space tug to brake them into an orbit round Mercury. It seemed an age ago, and in a different world.

As the adrenaline levels fell in their bloodstreams, the need for sleep became overpowering. Heads nodded.

Clare pushed back her chair, and stood up.

‘It’s time we all got back up to our rooms. I’ll take the first watch. Matt – are you up to the second? Steve’s beat.’ She inclined her head to where Wilson sat, eyes closed, head forward on his chest.

‘Sure.’ Matt nodded. He could have done with the extra sleep, but what the hell.

Clare led the way back upstairs to the living quarters, and set up a chair in the red-lit corridor outside the apartments, as the rest of them bedded down for the night. At Clare’s insistence, they kept all the doors open, in case they needed to be woken in a hurry.

It didn’t take long before they fell silent, and Clare was left alone. It was deathly quiet in the mine, and the loudest sound seemed to be the thump of the pulse in her ears.

In her imagination, the huge, empty mine began to crawl with unknown terrors, shapeless things that climbed slowly up the deep shafts, hungry for their blood. She could hear them, sliding stealthily over the rough-hewn floors of the mine workings, coming up the stairs to the living quarters.

She forced herself to calm down, to focus. The mine was deserted; it always had been. She couldn’t afford to lose it; none of them could.

She rubbed her knuckles into her eyes.

From the open doorway nearest her, she could just make out the faint sounds of Matt’s breathing.

A skull whispered at Clare’s ear, and she woke with a start, her silent scream of fear echoing around her mind.

Matt was standing over her, his hand on her arm. She was slumped in the seat, and her neck muscles ached.

‘Shit,’ she muttered, ‘what time is it?’

‘Nearly five a.m.’ He put his hand up to forestall Clare’s instinctive reaction. ‘Don’t worry, I slept right through the alarm as well. Nobody bad came to get us in the night. You go get some more sleep, I’ll finish the watch.’

Clare stood up, rubbing the stiff muscles at the side of her neck.

‘Don’t tell the others about this, okay? We can’t afford to get sloppy.’

‘It never happened,’ Matt said.

Clare went back to her room, and flung herself down on the bed. She closed her eyes, expecting sleep to come, but it didn’t; just a grey weariness in which every detail of the crash ran in front of her, again and again, and no matter what she did, the outcome was the same. The ship crashed into the dusty floor of the crater and exploded in silent flames, until, in her dreams, she just let go of the controls and watched the events unfold.

Matt woke everyone three hours later.

There was no heating for the showers in their bathrooms, and the water was icy cold, but none of them were prepared to go for another day without getting clean, and they were determined to make the best of their situation.

Matt puffed and shivered as he washed himself down, the cold water running over his skin. He reminded himself that the alternative could have been moist towels in the habitat modules, and he forced himself to stand under the spray of cold water, counting the seconds, until a full minute had gone by.

It could be worse – a lot worse, he thought, as he toweled himself down. He felt clean and refreshed, ready to tackle whatever the mine had to throw at them, as he went downstairs to the galley.

The search last night had found more dried ingredients, still fresh in their sealed packs, and a little later, all six of them sat down to an improvised breakfast of hot oatmeal and mugs of coffee.

Their spirits rose as they sipped the steaming liquid, and talk centred on whether the shuttlecraft could get them back up to the waiting space tug, and when they would be able to make contact with Earth. Clare let the talk flow; she didn’t voice her private concerns about what condition the shuttle would be in after nine years, or what the chances were of getting the transmitter to work.