Below Mercury (6 page)

‘Don’t get excited, Foster. You’re going to ferry some a team of accident investigators to Mercury. Seems they want to take another look into that big mining accident a few years ago, and they need someone who can be spared from more important duties to take them there. I thought you fitted the bill perfectly.’

He smiled, and waited for her reaction.

Clare’s heart, which had lifted slightly at the prospect of a space mission, sank further, and it hurt the more because she knew that Helligan wanted it, and she knew that it must be showing on her face.

Mercury. The hellhole of the Solar System. Nothing there but high levels of solar radiation, a tricky and dangerous orbit insertion manoeuvre, and some empty, abandoned mines. A damned ferry mission, taking her closer to her lifetime radiation limit, and all the time she was away, Helligan would be at work back here on Earth, making sure that she never returned to an interceptor squadron.

‘So, Foster, shall I say you’ll be taking it? If you’re not interested, I can offer it to someone else. Tyson’s been doing well in his assessments, and I know he wants a mission to command.’ Helligan’s smile disappeared, and he looked pointedly at his watch. Clare, who had been about to ask how much time she had to decide, saw that asking was pointless. Tyson was a schmuck – he would pilot a ship into the Sun if he thought it would get him promoted.

‘What are the pay terms?’ she asked.

Helligan’s composure faltered a tiny amount at the question. He had to look away, out of the cockpit windows onto the blue projection screens, as he replied.

‘You’d be on full captain’s space pay for the duration of the secondment.’

Full space pay? Clare scanned Helligan’s face for some sign of a catch, but she could see how much he hated telling her the good bit, so it must be true. That wouldn’t happen if there was a catch, she thought.

So, it was stay here and endure Helligan, or get a few months on space pay away from him. There wasn’t any decision to make.

‘Okay,’ she nodded slowly. ‘I’ll take it. When should I report to them?’

Helligan seemed to relax slightly at her response.

So. He had been worried she would refuse it. She couldn’t tell if that was good news for her, or bad.

‘You’ll get your orders. In the meantime, you’re to continue on instruction and tanker duties until your secondment comes through.’

Helligan heaved himself up and away from the copilot’s seat, and turned to go. At the cockpit door, he stopped for a moment with his back to her, and said over his shoulder: ‘Oh, and don’t crash the fucking ship into Mercury, Foster, because there’s no way they’d waste another mission on rescuing you. They left two hundred and fifty-seven bodies out there and declared it a space grave, rather than going to get any of them back.’

His last words were almost lost as he went down the access ladder.

‘A few more won’t make any difference to anybody.’

When the United States established the beginnings of a forward base for B-29 bombers on Guam in 1944, they could have had little idea that 200 years later, Andersen Base would be one of the principal launch sites for the spaceplanes of the US Astronautics Corps.

The island’s location, just over thirteen degrees north of the equator in the western Pacific, made it ideal for launches into low-inclination Earth orbit, and it had Apra Harbour – a deep-water port that could accommodate the largest of vessels with ease. Two long, military-grade runways at Andersen Air Force Base, and an almost unrestricted airspace, made the location particularly suited for the development and trials of the early spaceplanes. Ninety years ago, test squadrons operating from Andersen Base had pioneered the technique of in-flight refuelling of spaceplanes, and the base was still a major training centre for the Corps.

By the middle of the twenty-second century, Andersen Base had grown into a sprawling complex covering most of the accessible land at the northern end of the island. Separate control towers now managed the main runways and the maze of taxiways that connected the various parking aprons, loading bays, fuelling areas and maintenance hangars. Away from the base itself, a vast hinterland of industrial complexes, refineries, propellant storage farms, operations centres and easement areas covered over 175 square kilometres of land.

From here, the US Astronautics Corps ran its biggest spaceport operation outside the United States mainland. Up to four orbital flights each day carried personnel and light cargo to and from low Earth orbit, and the fleets of space tugs, fuel tankers, asteroid interceptors and survey vessels that waited there. From Guam, it was possible to board a spaceplane and, within a few hours, to be on board a space tug on the way to the Martian bases, or any of the other distant outposts scattered through the Solar System.

Supporting the spaceplanes were a fleet of airborne tankers, carrying hundreds of tonnes of cryogenic fuel through the skies. Two separate tankers – one for the fuel and one for the liquid oxygen – would typically take off first and circle at a rendezvous point, and then the spaceplane would take off, catch up with the tankers and refuel before the orbital climb.

Transferring large quantities of super-cold liquids in mid-air was a tricky task that required considerable experience and practice, but it was easier and safer than trying to take off from a runway with over 150 tonnes of fuel and liquid oxygen on board. If a fully loaded spaceplane were to crash on takeoff, the resultant explosion would level the entire base.

‘Captain, we’re down to the last twelve tonnes to transfer. Are we okay for another two minutes?’

Clare Foster glanced at the radar display before replying, but there was nothing out there but kilometres of empty sky in every direction.

‘Sure.’

It was the afternoon of the tenth day since Helligan had come to see her in the simulator. The tanker that Clare commanded was about five hundred kilometres southeast of Guam, heading out over the western Pacific Ocean towards the scattered atolls of the Caroline Islands and the equator. The large aircraft juddered slightly as it sliced through some light chop, and the roar of air around the cockpit wavered as the nose was buffeted by the unsteady air, before settling out again.

Below and a little behind the tanker, the sleek arrowhead shape of a spaceplane followed at a constant distance, hooked up to the long refuelling boom that trailed behind the tanker. The spaceplane had already filled up with liquid oxygen from another tanker; this was its final stop to top up on fuel before it started on the thunderous climb to orbit.

Clare’s eyes moved constantly in the unconscious, automatic rhythm of the skilled pilot, scanning the primary instruments every few seconds, then looking up to do a visual check outside. The clear air stretched away into the distance, with only a few scattered clouds towards the horizon. Below, at the bottom of seven kilometres of sky, the surface of the Pacific Ocean shimmered like blue glass. It was a perfect day, a perfect fuelling operation, and to anyone looking in at the life of Clare Foster, a captain on temporary suspension but still on flying duties, it appeared idyllic.

All Clare could feel, however, was a dull ache, a powerful sense of failure that she was here flying the tanker, instead of piloting the spaceplane behind her. In her mind’s eye, she was in the spaceplane’s cockpit, running through the pre-climb checklist, waiting for the last few tonnes of fuel to flow into the brimming tanks. Her hands rested on the thrust levers, ready to unleash the torrent of thrust that would hurl the spaceplane up and away, into the deep blue of the outer stratosphere.

She sighed. No. She was flying a tanker.

It had all started out so well, she thought, as she gazed into the blue haze where the sea met the sky, her mind wandering.

A year ago (was it a year
already?
) she had been on the way up the promotion ladder in the Astronautics Corps. She had been among the best of the best, a captain in an interceptor squadron, commanding huge vessels right at the limits of their performance, until her self-confidence was put into question on a difficult rendezvous with a carbonaceous asteroid out past Mars.

She had frozen with indecision at a critical point, aborted the manoeuvre too late, and very nearly crashed a spacecraft filled with several thousand tonnes of fuel into the rock. The review panel had investigated her actions and, while not finding her guilty of any wrongdoing, had criticised her for not taking prompter action.

She still woke up some nights, sweating at how close it had been, the collision alarms sounding, the ship responding too slowly, too slowly. Sometimes, in the worst dreams, she crashed into the asteroid, and the tanks split, and the cold ammonia fuel splashed out over the surface, bubbling and boiling in the vacuum.

Clare never told anyone about the dreams, not even the people she trusted. If any of that got back to the review panel, she would be out of the Corps, and to Clare, that was like being out of life. She lived and breathed her work as a pilot; it had been her driving ambition ever since she had been a young girl.

She had gone against the advice of her school and her parents when she entered the Corps, advice that said her talents would be wasted. She had endured the long, hard years of training, first in atmospheric flight and then in low Earth orbit, and spent all her spare time studying for the compulsory master’s degree in astronautics, to get the coveted astronaut’s badge over her name.

Yet, here she was, flying tankers and training rookie pilots, while others soared into orbit ahead of her. She thought she looked younger than her 34 years, but inside she felt much older. Decades older, coming to the end of her useful working life.

How she longed for something to
do
, for something that needed split-second decisions, on the edge of fuel margins, while a huge asteroid turned by above you, and alien mountains and valleys flashed past just above your head, billions of years old, waiting to claw you from the sky. How she longed for that again, the bonds she had forged with the crews, the times they had had, the risks they had run, how she longed for it, how she wanted it, wanted it,
wanted it
.

Now they had offered her something: a routine trip to Mercury, ferrying some engineers to some huge tomb of a mine and back again. It was getting back into space, she thought, but not the way she had envisaged. She had an uncomfortable feeling that, once she took this ‘temporary secondment’, it would become permanent, and she would be stuck in Transportation forever, on board space tugs, hauling the huge fuel tankers back and forth across the Solar System until she couldn’t take the boredom any longer.

She felt like she was being sidelined, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.

Helligan had said not to get excited, and to wait until she received her orders. Knowing Helligan, he probably wanted to make her endure as much waiting as he could contrive, so it could be weeks, or more likely months, before the SAIB would be in touch.

Before long, she would be desperate even to get the chance in Transportation, and that was probably just what Helligan had in mind. She just had to play the game and try to keep her options open.

Behind the tanker, the refuelling was complete.

‘Orbital Five Two Seven, tanks full, breaking contact. Report when clear of the launch area.’

‘Tanker Seven Four, roger,’ Clare’s copilot responded.

The tanker shuddered slightly as the spaceplane broke free of the refuelling boom, and dropped astern. Clare disengaged the autopilot with a flick of her left thumb, and banked the tanker to the left. Her other hand moved the thrust levers forward, to take the tanker quickly out and away, far away from the dwindling patch of sky where the spaceplane was preparing to leave on its climb into orbit.

Clare watched a full minute go past on the mission clock.

‘That should do it,’ she said, checking their distance from the spaceplane on the navigation display.

‘Yeah, we’re clear. Shall I let them know?’

‘No, I’ll do it.’ Clare thumbed the transmit button on her sidestick and spoke into the slender microphone of her headset. Her softer voice was a contrast to the clipped words of the copilot, and the crew of the spaceplane might have paused for a moment in their pre-climb checks, as they tried to place the familiar voice.

‘Tanker Seven Four, clear of launch area. Contact Guam Centre for orbital climb clearance. Goodbye – and Godspeed.’

The huge bulk of the tanker swayed from side to side as it mashed its way through the last few hundred metres of humid air towards the runway at Andersen Base. It tilted its nose slightly at the sky, and then sank onto the runway, spurts of smoke springing from its tyres.

The spoilers deployed, and Clare lowered the nose to the ground. She braked the tanker to a brisk roll and let the runway trundle past, as their allocated taxiway drew towards them.

Keeping a careful lookout, she steered the tanker off the runway, towards the domes and spheres of the fuel storage area. There was another launch tonight, and the fuel tanks needed to be chilled down and reloaded in preparation. The voice of Andersen Ground Control came and went in her headset, directing her through the maze of turns and taxiways towards the fuelling apron.

A ground handler on the tarmac ahead waited for her, and as the tanker approached he motioned with one bat, signalling her to turn. She turned the giant aircraft round and moved it forwards slowly into its assigned position, until the handler made the ‘stop’ sign, and finally signalled to cut the engines.