Below Mercury (3 page)

‘I am going to hand over now to the first sub-committee, which has been dealing with the detailed investigation into the data record. It’s important that you give all of the presentations your full attention. Thank you. Dr Graice, you have the stand.’

Matt listened carefully to the first presentation, but as the heads of further sub-committees came and went from the stand, he found his attention wandering. Even though the presentations were summaries, they contained a great deal of procedural and background material, much of which he was familiar with.

As the presentations moved on to the sequence of events in the fuel refinery explosion and the subsequent breach, however, Matt couldn’t stop himself from reliving the terror of that day in his imagination. His palms started to sweat, and he felt dizzy as he listened to the events being recounted in cold, objective detail. He reached out to pour himself a glass of water, and saw that his hand was shaking.

Matt had faced the original investigation board, including some of the people on the sub-committees, in the long interview sessions that had followed the accident. They hadn’t been interested in Matt’s theories; they wanted facts, events they could corroborate against the data record.

It was one thing to sit in a lawyer’s office, and look at sheets of paper that grieving relatives put in front of him, and tell them that the data showed a systems malfunction, or components failing when they shouldn’t have. It was quite another thing to be in front of the investigation board, to put forward your opinions in the face of these people with their vast experience and calm, dispassionate minds.

Maybe they were right, Matt thought; perhaps it really had happened the way they had said. Maybe he had made a mistake to get so involved with the families, and had lost his objectivity – and career – in the process.

Matt had been one of the engineers supervising underground workings at Erebus Mine in the year of the accident; it was his second tour of duty there, and he had been doing well. They had been exceeding the productivity targets set for his section, and there had been talk of him being promoted to assistant manager on one of the smaller Martian glacier mines.

All that had changed after the accident.

He remembered reading the final report of the investigation board, and the conclusion that the personnel themselves had been to blame. After the initial shock, came the anger – how could they possibly have come to this conclusion?

It was inconceivable to Matt and anyone else who had worked there, that the mine personnel had not followed procedures. Safety in mines, and especially planetary mines, was paramount; it was a way of life that was drummed in from the first day. Along with several other PMI employees, Matt had gradually become involved as an expert witness for the various relatives’ action groups, in their long search for the truth, and for some kind of closure to their pain.

At first, PMI had been tolerant, warning Matt that he was treading a narrow line. The rumoured promotion had not materialised, however, and then when Matt had been caught accessing a confidential internal file on the accident, PMI wanted him out. Worse still, PMI attempted to use the incident to discredit him as an expert witness.

About nine months ago, however, PMI seemed to have had a slight change in attitude. Maybe the endless letters and reports that Matt and others had written over the past six years had had some effect; at any rate, PMI’s position had shifted from simply ignoring them, to detailed rebuttal. The lawyers for the relatives seemed to think this was significant; perhaps PMI were less certain of their position.

Matt heard his name mentioned, and he snapped back to the voice of one of the speakers addressing the audience, but his name was just being listed as the author of a report that the sub-committee had examined.

There was nothing in the chairman’s demeanour or body language that gave any clue as to which way the board was heading. Trent sat back in his chair at the centre of the table, listening to the presentations, occasionally glancing at the papers spread out in front of him. He seemed determined to make everyone there wait and listen to the full presentations of each of the expert groups, before giving any hint of the verdict of the board.

It was going to be a long session.

In the first recess of the day, Matt left the committee room to get some fresher air.

The doors of the committee room opened straight out onto the mezzanine level of the building, and he went over to stand by the marble balustrade that overlooked the main staircase. In the lobby below, a steady flow of people was coming in from the street to form lines at the security scanners, while others were heading down the stairs and through the revolving doors to the outside world.

All around him, on the walls of the atrium and on tall marble plinths, were displayed monuments to the history of the air and space ages.

Propeller blades from ancient B-17s, B-24s and B-29s lined the staircase, like swords in an armoury for giants.

A J-2 engine, from the second stage of a Saturn V booster, stood opposite a Space Shuttle Main Engine, on either side of the mezzanine floor. A thruster from one of the first Martian landers was displayed on the far wall, alongside the nose gear from a spaceplane.

As he looked around, Matt thought about the other exhibits, the bent and burned parts of aircraft, rockets and space vehicles that were kept locked away in warehouses scattered across the country. These were the exhibits that the public never saw, except in thousand-page accident reports – the careful reconstructions of broken wreckage, with black circles on them where people had died.

‘Improvements in safety have been made’ – Matt had heard this so many times during the last few years, but he could not see what had changed for the better following the accident at Erebus Mine. A few procedures had been altered, inspections had been tightened up, but nothing fundamental had changed.

Once
people
are blamed for an accident, responsibility becomes diffuse, he thought. It all dissolved into vague promises to tighten up on selection, training, inspection, procedures, but at the heart of it, in more than fifty mines across the Solar System, life went on as usual.

He came out of his thoughts, and realised someone was standing next to him.

‘Matt.’ A tall man in his forties, dressed in a dark suit and holding a sheaf of papers, extended a hand.

‘John! I’m sorry, I was miles away. Good to see you again,’ Matt said, shaking the proffered hand warmly. John Laker was the lead attorney for the second-largest group of relatives in the class action. ‘How do you think it’s going?’

Laker didn’t respond immediately, but instead steered Matt away from the busier area of the mezzanine, to a corner where a pillar screened them from view. Laker tucked his papers under one arm and took a brief drink from a cup of coffee before answering.

‘Sorry, really needed that. These investigation presentations are interminable.’ Laker spoke in short, clipped sentences, keeping a wary eye open for anyone wandering past that might overhear. ‘How is it going? It’s difficult to tell. Trent’s hard to read. On the outside, he’s presenting a very objective attitude, a very measured picture, but—’ Laker raised a finger, ‘we heard something this morning on the grapevine. Might be interesting.’ He took another sip of coffee.

‘Word is that PMI have done a deal to cooperate with this investigation, in return for the FSAA relaxing some of the restrictions on their mining permits on Mars. I’ve also heard that they might be getting back some of the space tug slots that they lost in the last antitrust hearings, if they don’t get in the way of any further investigations.’

Matt smiled ruefully.

‘And there I was, thinking that we’d pressured them into it.’

‘Right.’ Laker watched the entrance doors to the committee room for any signs that they needed to go back. ‘And let’s face reality. PMI knows that even if a mission goes back to Mercury, it could take years to review the evidence. Before any liability could be proved. My guess is that they’ve done their sums. They’ve figured out that those permits and tug slots are more valuable than the potential liability. That’s why I think—’

Laker broke off suddenly as he spotted someone at the top of the stairs. An older woman, dressed in a business suit and carrying a briefcase, was talking to one of the security guards, who appeared to be unwilling to let her through. She produced some document from her briefcase and held it out, but the guard was shaking his head.

‘Excuse me.’ Laker darted off to the stairs. There was some hand-waving and more talking, but eventually the guard nodded and indicated that she could go through. Matt watched as Laker led the woman up to meet him.

‘Matt, I wanted you to meet Rebecca Short. Rebecca, this is Matt Crawford. Rebecca represents one of the relative support groups.’

‘Mr Crawford.’ Short shook hands with Matt. Below the greying hair, her eyes were careful and assessing. ‘It’s good to meet you at last. Your work has been so valuable to us. We’d never had got this far without you.’

‘Yeah, and my former employers know that,’ Matt said with an ironic smile. ‘They haven’t exactly made it easy for me.’

‘Have you been able to find a new job?’

‘It’s not been easy.’ Matt looked down for a moment. Short seemed to realise that she had touched a raw nerve, and hesitated before continuing.

‘There have only been a few people who have helped us. The rest – people who could have made a real difference – they’ve just looked the other way, or threatened us with legal action. You don’t know how much difference you’ve made.’

‘I’d feel happier if I
had
made a difference. So far, we’ve got nowhere.’

Short shook her head emphatically.

‘If you’d seen as many families struggling to come to terms with this, you’d realise just what your help has done. It doesn’t matter that it’s been an unequal struggle; it’s having hope that’s important.’

The words helped, and Matt looked up and smiled, just as Laker touched his arm.

‘They’re opening the doors again. We’d better be getting in. Rebecca – see you in the lunch recess.’ Laker started walking to the committee chamber.

Matt started to say goodbye to Short, but she stopped him.

‘There’s something else. My clients gave me a message for you. They wanted me to say that, whatever happens today, they know you’ve done the very best you could for them. I was given a card—’

She opened her handbag and handed him a large envelope. Matt opened it and took out a plain white card with a child’s drawing on the front, showing a rocket flying to the stars. He opened it carefully, and inside were page after page of signatures and messages of support, some plainly from children. Matt slowly leafed through them all. There must have been hundreds of signatures in total.

Matt was completely unprepared, and as he stared at the pages filled with messages, he felt his eyes filling up and a lump coming in his throat. He looked back at Short and blinked to hide the tears, not trusting his voice to speak.

‘Matt, we need to go in now.’ Laker stood at the open doors.

Short put her hand on Matt’s arm and looked levelly at him.

‘Mr Crawford – all our hopes.’

‘Over the course of the day, you have heard experts from the Space Accident Investigation Board summarise a great deal of complex information on the investigation into the accident at Erebus Mine on November twenty-eighth, 2142.’

Chairman Trent faced the committee room, late in the afternoon.

‘I thank you for your patience in listening to these presentations. I also thank the parties to the investigation for their persistence and professionalism in investigating this accident, both at the time of the original enquiry and when assessing new data. Everything we learn about any accident makes a direct contribution towards improving safety for everyone working in space, and much has been done since then to improve safety in planetary mines.’

‘Like hell it has,’ Laker muttered near Matt’s ear. The attorney had changed his seat during the recess, and now sat next to Matt.

Trent continued: ‘It is important that everyone understands the basis of the overall conclusion that we have come to, in the light of the detailed reports you have all heard presented here today.

‘Reviewing a closed file is never an easy task, and even more so in this case, where we are dealing with an accident that claimed so many lives. Two hundred and fifty-seven men and women died as a result of the events of that day, eight years ago. Our thoughts, as always, are with the relatives at this time, who have had to face the pain of reliving those moments. Nonetheless, we are persuaded that reviewing the new evidence was the right thing to do. The intense public and media interest in the accident makes it essential that we demonstrate beyond all doubt, that every scrap of evidence has been properly reviewed.’

‘Yeah, like a Federal Court had nothing to do with it,’ Laker whispered.

‘With that in mind, and before I outline our findings, I draw your attention to the key findings from each of the sub-committees.

‘Firstly, the data record. The new telemetry data, recovered from the noise in the original transmissions, has been accepted as admissible and adopted as part of the factual data record. PMI should note that we are concerned that the huge effort put into recovering the data was largely borne by the relatives, and that PMI was less helpful than it could have been in facilitating this work. We will therefore be pursuing a separate review with PMI in that respect.’