Edge of Infinity (11 page)

And the war! If distance is measured in time, Mars just got very, very close to Earth while Earth is still very distant from Mars. That kind of asymmetry changes everything. He wonders how they’ll negotiate that. What they’ll do. All the lithium and molybdenum and tungsten anyone could want is within reach of mining companies now. They can go to the asteroid belt and the moons of Saturn and Jupiter. The thing that kept Earth and Mars from ever reaching a lasting peace isn’t going to matter anymore.

The pain in his head and his spine are getting worse. It’s hard to remember to tense his legs and arms, to help his failing heart move the blood. He almost blacks out again, but he’s not sure if it’s the stroke or the thrust gravity. He’s pretty sure driving blood pressure higher while having a stroke is considered poor form.

The ship’s dirge shifts a little, and now it’s literally singing in his father’s voice, Hebrew syllables whose meaning Solomon has forgotten, if he ever knew. Aural hallucinations, then. That’s interesting.

He’s sorry that he won’t be able to see Caitlin one more time. To tell her goodbye and that he loves her. He’s sorry he won’t get to see the consequences of his drive. Even through the screaming pain, a calmness and euphoria start to wash over him. It’s always been like this, he thinks. From when Moses saw the promised land that he could never enter, people have been on their deathbeds just wanting to see what happens next. He wonders if that’s what makes the promised land holy: that you can see it but you can’t quite reach it. The grass is always greener on the other side of personal extinction. It sounds like something Malik would have said. Something Caitlin would laugh at.

The next few years – decades even – are going to be fascinating, and it will be because of him. He closes his eyes. He wishes he could be there to see it all happen.

Solomon relaxes, and the expanse folds itself around him like a lover.

THE ROAD TO NPS

Sandra McDonald
and
Stephen D. Covey

N
OT THAT HE
was paranoid, but in the forty-eight hours prior to departure, Rahiti Ochoa ate and drank only from the supplies he’d been stockpiling under his bunk. He compulsively checked the oxygen levels in his tiny quarters. He didn’t go near the crew bar on level four (someone might drug his beer), skipped working out in the gym (someone might rig the treadmill), and kept to himself on shift, glaring at anyone who got within ten or fifteen feet (because someone might just try the direct approach, a crowbar to the head). He warned Will Danton to keep the same precautions.

“Crazy Samoan,” Will muttered. “Relax, will you? You won the contract. Orbital’s not going to try and sabotage you.”

Better crazy than dead
, Jovinta might say, if she were talking to him.

Maybe Will didn’t take the threat seriously enough, or maybe he was distracted by someone on purpose, or maybe (just maybe) it was really an accident, but when the silver crate toppled over, smashing Will against a sled – when he began to scream, wild and raw, accompanied by the wail of the emergency siren – when all that happened, Rahiti’s first thought was:
Son of bitches found a way to stop me.

“Ra!” Will screamed.” Get it off me!”

The Orbital arena supervisor, Hal Carpenter, shouted over Rahiti’s headset.”I’m on it! Someone shut him up!”

Rahiti leaped twenty metres forward in two slow bounds. The arena was well lit, as always, the Europa sky dark and glittering far above. No sign yet of the sun breaking over the horizon, but already a sliver of Jupiter was sunlit and their scheduled departure was imminent. He could see how Will was pinned and could tell instantly there was no way to get him loose without a loader. The nearest driver, a new kid, was spinning his treads back and forth on the ice, panicking.

“Don’t cut off my arm,” Will wailed. “Ra! I need my arm.”

“No one’s cutting off anything,” Rahiti promised. Although it was useless, he threw himself against one of the hundred-ton crates.”Hold on, okay?”

A more experienced driver took over from the newbie and with a few deft manoeuvres got the crate shifted away. Will went limp. Rahiti pulled him free, ignored the twisted and flattened look of the arm, and wrapped his arm around Will’s waist. He jumped them toward the nearest hatch.

“Emergency crew’s on its way,” Carpenter said over the headset, the useless bastard.

“I’ve got him,” Rahiti bit out. “Open airlock six.”

By the time Rahiti got them both into the lock, Will was beginning to stir back to consciousness. His face was glassy under his mask. The skinsuit had sealed over any tears or breaches, but his arm was still hanging so gruesomely that Rahiti couldn’t look at it.

“Sorry, sorry,” Will mumbled as he came around. “Didn’t see it. Don’t cut it off.”

The airlock cycled up. Rahiti got his helmet off, then slid Will’s off too. “It’s okay. Not your fault.”

Will’s skin was sweaty-clammy, a ghastly shade of grey. “Messed up the plan.”

“I built in an extension,” Rahiti said. “We’re good.”

The inner hatch rolled open. A young med tech with bright red hair poked her head in. “How is he?”

“How would you be?” Rahiti snapped. “Where’s the stretcher?”

She blinked at Will. “They said minor accident.”

“Minor, my ass.” Rahiti hopped and pulled, using the handholds, and got Will into the passage. He’d never seen the tech before. Asterius Outpost wasn’t a huge place, three hundred people maybe, but it was the pass-through for any personnel heading up or back from North Pole Station and Conamara. “He’s in shock, his arm is crushed, you didn’t check the feeds?”

“My arm’s fine,” Will said, his voice slurring. He gave the tech a lopsided smile. “What’s your name?”

She was young and new, but at least trained enough to ignore his flirting and plant a round disk to Will’s neck. “Telemetry’s on, we’re on our way,” she said briskly into her own set, and only then did she answer. “I’m Anu.”

“Anu,” Will said. “Watcha doing later, Anu?”

Rahiti pulled him into the lift and said, “Shut up, Will.”

The infirmary waiting room was half-full, but the doctor on duty hustled them immediately into a cubicle. Rahiti didn’t think much of Dr. Desai – in his experience, she was as snooty as the rest of them – but she was both concerned and efficient as she slipped Will a painkiller.

“Mr. Ochoa, you can wait outside,” she said.

Will’s good hand came up and snagged Rahiti’s arm. “No. Stay with me.”

Desai said, “Only family or next of kin.”

“Who the fuck can afford to bring family here?” Rahiti asked hotly.

“Language, please,” she said. “Are you registered partners?”

Will’s grip grew only tighter. “Don’t let them cut off my arm.”

“I’m married. My wife’s in Hawaii,” Rahiti said. Half a billion miles away, maybe on a beach somewhere. Javinta liked beaches, but hated to swim; who wanted to bathe in tiny bits of seaweed and dead fish and ocean pollution? Maybe even now she was sitting in the sand, watching the waves, thinking about breaking the six months of silence that stretched all the way to Europa.

The scanner in Desai’s hand shed green light on Will’s crushed arm, piercing the skinsuit and displaying the injury overhead. Desai gave up on trying to eject Rahiti from the cubicle and instead spoke quickly into a transcriber. Rahiti didn’t understand all the words – distal radius, proximal something, perfusion? The med tech watched with frank interest from a corner.

Desai put a patch on Will’s shoulder. “Here’s the really good stuff. When it kicks in, you won’t feel anything below your shoulder for twelve hours or so. Surgery’s up next.”

“Surgery?” Rahiti asked, the word a rock in his throat. “How long?”

Will protested, “I can’t have surgery. We’re leaving in an hour. Driving to NPS.”

The med tech blurted out, “That’s you? The Crazy Samoan?”

Rahiti’s face flushed. “Yeah, that’s me.”

“Anumati!” Desai said sternly. The girl looked away. Desai said, “The surgery will take an hour or two, then we have to monitor the perfusion to make certain you don’t lose your arm. You’ll be in a splint for at least three weeks. No skinsuits.”

Will banged his head against the exam table. “I’m sorry, Ra. Damn.”

Rahiti didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t quite sure what he felt, either, except that it was a lot like free-fall, sickening and plunging with no end in sight.

“It’s okay,” he said, in a voice that sounded as distant as Javinta on her beach. “I’ll do it alone.”

“You better do it soon,” Desai said. Her gaze was focused solely on her patient. “An accident like this means an incident report. The safety team’s going to want to interview any witnesses. That could take all day.”

Rahiti’s free-fall came to a sudden slamming halt.

“If I were you,” she continued, “I might think about leaving here through the freight lift. Take a right over there, second hatch.”

Rahiti didn’t thank her. He didn’t even say goodbye to Will, or wish him luck. When he was inside the lift, black rage rose up and made him kick the bulkhead. Damn, damn, damn. Hundreds of hours of planning, thousands of hours of worrying, his tiny living cube overflowing with schedules, maps and supply lists, and he’d never considered what he would do if his co-driver got himself crushed by a crate.

Just before the doors closed, Anu slid her boot between them.

“I can help you,” she announced. “Take me.”

Rahiti didn’t even stop to think about his reply. “Absolutely not.”

She gave him a pleading look. “My boyfriend works at NPS. We’ve been z-mailing for months. I left college to come out here to see him, but I ran out of money. You need someone to help you on this trip, and I can do it.”

He kicked her foot free. “I don’t need you.”

The lift doors slid closed, blocking her unhappy face.

When he reached the interior docks, he saw two people in Asterius white-and-red safety suits talking to Hal Carpenter, that son of a bitch. Carpenter had a direct line-of-sight on the flex tunnel leading to his snowcat. But Rahiti still had his skinsuit on, still had his helmet. He could go out the aux lock, come up underneath the cat, board out of sight of the cameras. More precious time ticking on the clock. He backtracked, got his helmet on, and went downladder to the auxiliary locks. The minute he opened one, Carpenter would notice. He needed some kind of diversion –

A shrill alarm cut through his headset. Fire drill. Rahiti winced and slapped at the volume and thanked whoever had probably set the thing off by accident.

Outside, approaching the cat with two easy bounds, he eyed the extra tanks carrying hydrogen and oxygen for the fuel cells. The vehicle looked ungainly with all the added weight, but they were necessary for the trip up and back, and for extra mass to give more weight and traction. The dozen sleds lined up behind the cat were twice as many as Rahiti had ever hauled before. Without the extra weight, his treads would spin uselessly on the ice instead of pulling the load.

Crazy plan, yeah. But he’d done the math a dozen times, had convinced himself that the loaded cat could drag three thousand tons of payload, and had won the contract fair and square.

He had eighty-five hours – one Europa day – to either earn five years’ pay or put himself into horrible debt, probably forever.

Rahiti climbed into the cat’s cabin. The
thunk
of the airlock closing was like the last drop of a guillotine blade. As the fuel cells powered up, the triple beams of the headlights cut across Europa’s bleak landscape. He tapped Javinta’s picture, mounted below the radio. Her smile was sweet and shy, her dimples deep enough to fall into.

“Wish me luck,” he said. And then, over the radio, he said, “Snowcat 89-4A, checklist complete, I’m leaving for NPS.”

Carpenter’s voice was slow and lazy. “Oh, that’s a negative, 89-A. You’ve got some folks here from Safety who need to talk to you about your partner’s accident.”

“I already recorded my statement,” Rahiti said. “It’s in their z-box. Asterius regulation 1732.a, a video statement can suffice for personnel not in the immediate vicinity.”

A pause. “But you are in the immediate vicinity, Ochoa. I’m looking at you through my window.”

Rahiti resisted the urge to lift his hand and give Carpenter an obscene gesture.

“Asterius regulation 1732.a (3), no definition provided for ‘immediate,’” he said. “Wish us luck. 89 out.”

His contract was with Asterius, but he’d had to rent everything except the cargo from his own employer, Orbital. Part of the contract was that Orbital could distribute footage once the operation was completed. The bastards didn’t want him to succeed, but they’d certainly exploit him if he did. Rahiti ran the cells up to maximum, generating excess water that vented as steam through the top of the snowcat. Wasteful, but dramatic. On the cams it looked like an old-style steam locomotive chugging out of the station. He wished his job was as easy as a train driver; how damned convenient, following miles and miles of track someone else had already put down through the wilderness.

Slowly he engaged the motors. Too much power and the treads would slip; too little and the sleds wouldn’t move. The trick was to get each sled moving and sliding before the slack was taken up. Soon three thousand tons of mass payload were following the cat on the road to Conamara. The payload took its own sweet time, however. Even running the fuel cells at maximum, Rahiti barely achieved fifty kilometres an hour.

Still, he was on his way.

No partner, no back-up, no one to talk to for the next eighty-five hours, but he was on his way. Score one for the Crazy Samoan.

He settled into his chair, piped some island music in over the speakers, and downed more coffee. Six hours later, dawn arrived. A triangle of faint Zodiacal light pointed to the rising sun just before it peeked above the hills behind Conamara. The bright limb of the sun overwhelmed the glow from the full Jupiter behind him. Ten minutes later he passed Conamara’s buried domes, gave a status update, and turned onto Agave Linea. Now half of Jupiter painted the horizon. Europa’s shadow crawled below the Great Red Spot, and would for the next three hours.