SPACE IS A DEADLY SISTER: VI

by Gil James Bavel

Mission Day 722: 15:15 hours
Unknown Ganymede station
Second Shift

At the bottom of the shaft, I was in complete darkness, although my eyes were adjusting slowly. Just as I wondered how I was going to get out of the car, its doors opened up and lights flickered on in a hallway in front of me. I got to my feet—steady, I thought. The gravity down here felt different from both the installation, and topside. I was just getting my bearings when I saw that there was only one button in the elevator car. Up when you’re down and down when you’re up, and you’d better have your spacesuit on, I thought. I threw the tire tool into the hallway, where it gently bounced against the metal floor.

My own suit’s power supply now dead, I unscrewed my helmet hoping there was breathable air here. I still didn’t have much choice. I’d know momentarily if there was, or I’d suffer decompression so severe that it would make the bends that divers back home get look like a mild case of the hiccups. Phsst! My helmet came off and I smelled fresh, clean air. It was warm—a little cooler than the installation had been, but the air here was more pure somehow. It didn’t smell of people. Even with atmospheric reprocessors and C02 scrubbers, you could still smell the farts and the dead skin cells that had flaked off of your crew. Here, there was none of that. It was clean, cold, clinical. And yet, there had to be somebody here. Why else the atmosphere? The elevator?

I stripped off my suit and crawled out, leaving my boots and jumpsuit on. I grabbed the plasma torch and headed down the hallway. Let’s see what there is to see, I thought. As I rounded the corner carefully, my mind began spinning through the options. It’s a control station. A monitoring station. That’s it. That’s got to be it. Just a once-in-a-while, mostly unmanned pit stop to check levels on tidal forces and moonquakes. Like the one we got hit with. Too convenient. This was obviously a permanent station, not built out of a kit like our installation was; our mining stations; our terraforming units. This was first.

The long hallway came to an end with a big drop at a T-junction. This must have been built on a natural ice cave, blasted out of the methane before our installation. I had learned in school that Ganymede is almost 52% larger than the diameter of the Moon and has twice its mass. It is 77% the diameter of Mars—but comprised of mostly ice and ores, it has such low density that its gravity makes it easy pickings. But why keep this station a secret?

I went to the edge, and looked over. My head was spinning. Even at one seventh G, it was a long way down. It got dark about twenty feet from the rail, and I could only imagine how far down it went. If I could see the other side, there was a chance I could run, launch off the rail, and grab the other side—if there even was one.

Thinking better of it, I explored the hallway perpendicular to the one I’d entered from. The walls here were made from much sterner stuff than our old installation; it looked to me like high-grade prefabbed aluminum, almost certainly with old style, heavy-duty radiation shielding behind it. The kind with lead, concrete and Mylar sandwiched together. But the floor was made to exactly the same specifications as ours. This made me angry. Some kind of secret program built here, first, and none of us knew about it. This place could have saved everybody I worked with. It could have saved the woman I loved. This didn’t feel like the Space Corps to me—somebody would have breathed a word of it to Devon, and he would have told the rest of us. This had to be the Company’s doing.

Someone wanted us out of the way. That was no rogue comet. They probably knew it was coming for months. The Jovian Deep Space Array would have detected it. I was becoming furious just thinking about it. Somebody purposefully wanted us dead.

I reached the end of the left-hand portion of the hallway. A big door. With little slits through it at the top like a high-school gym locker. Dark. No doorknob, no keypad, just a panel to the left of the door with a ducted ceramic indentation. Looked like a high dielectric coupling device, probably piezoelectric-acoustical wave. I obviously didn’t have a spherical key for that, so I doubled back, boots CLICKing, and went down the hall the other way at the T-junction and tried the other door. Not surprisingly, it was exactly the same. Returning to the hallway, I noticed that there was a similar control for something in the middle, this one had an additional interface with an indentation in it. It seemed as if there were an extendable bridge leading over the chasm of ice. I could see the end of it jutting out from the edge of the floor.

I was at an impasse. Fat lot of good being a class I mechanical/maintenance technician did me without any tools. Well, I got in, I thought, now I just have to get in further. If I couldn’t get inside those doors, I’d have to bring somebody out. It was too clean in here, like the clean rooms back at Space Corps. Somehow, I would have to make a mess and see who came out to clean it up. But with what? I thought about lighting my suit on fire with the plasma torch, but if I were ever to escape from here and make the Friday Run shuttle, I would need it to get back to our damaged installation. First I’d have to figure out a way to power it up. One thing at a time.

I went back down the hallway to the door to the left of the junction. A sensor above the door peered down at me that I’d missed before. I could damage it, I thought, with the tire tool or the plasma torch. But that was a trick I could only play once. Then it hit me. The water supply inside my suit. Unless I got power back into it, it wouldn’t recycle for long enough to last until Friday. But there was enough there to maybe short out that control panel.

I made my way back to the elevator where I’d left my suit, and grabbed the tire tool and water bottle out of it. There were secondary and tertiary backups, so this wouldn’t be the absolute end of my supply. I checked the greywater containers but there wasn’t enough there to do much with. I took a last, long pull from the water bottle—who knew when I’d get another primary source.

I squirted the remainder of the water onto the electro- mechanical coupling device and the control panel next to it. The panel sparked, as if it had shorted out. Then, nothing. My hopes were dashed. I had nothing left to affect the door with short of burning my suit. I sat down, frustrated. My anger at being a patsy to whoever had built this station was combined with a growing sadness at my inability to work my way further into whatever it was.

Just then, the large metal door opened silently. A mechanized robot floated out into the hall, repelling off of the metal floor somehow. It wasn’t huge, but it was intimidating; gunmetal grey with a sort of flower pot head and two arms—one with a spherical end! It had no legs, but hovered a few feet above the floor, moving with slow determination.

Wasting no time, I rolled just under the robot and into the small room it had come out of–the closing doors nearly clipped me as I pulled my feet through, getting only a piece of the tire tool that I was still holding onto. Rising to my feet, I could hear faint whirring and mechanical noises from inside the walls of the maintenance closet. It sounded like electronic music, repetitious and eerie.

I looked around, and although many controls and devices adorned the room, I could see no openings or doors from here that I could fit through save the one I’d just entered. Screens atop a ledge displayed machine data; there were waste chutes and refills for cleaning supplies, but no other ways out. That robot would be coming back soon, I thought. As soon as it’s dried the panel and worked out the short, it would come back and I did not want to have to fight a metal man when it did. And another thing—that robot looked like it used a linear induction motor for propulsion, like the kind used in maglev trains. That means I don’t want to touch it—it’s operating under extremely high voltage. And any minute, it would be crammed in here with me and I wouldn’t have any choice but to touch it. I’d have to incapacitate it without touching it.

One last good look around. Nothing. Nothing I could use. I looked down at the tire tool in my right hand. Nothing had ever seemed so clunky and useless. I was stuck alone in a maintenance closet with nothing but faint, creepy mechanical music to keep me company.

Then it struck me. In my training toward my mechanical engineering degree with the Company, I remember learning that the acoustical wave devices used in electromechanical coupling controls like that were subsonic. 20 Khz at best. There’s no way a human being could hear them. But those connectors—that’s all they could hear. This type of control was infrasonic.

So all I had to do was disable the robot without touching it, take its arm off, and play the appropriate sounds for the controls on that extendable bridge’s panel while coupling the arm to the spherical ducting.

I might as well still be outside, frozen to the surface, staring up at the Great Red Spot. Keep your mind in the game, I thought. You’re running out of time. I had passed underneath the robot without any ill effects; what if I could use its high voltage against it? Somehow stop it in its tracks. Something to get in the way of its propulsion.

That’s why the tire tool had hit the door on my way in—it wasn’t that I was too slow—it was being pulled back by the linear induction motor’s magnetic field. I knew what to do now. I placed the tire tool directly in front of the doors and stepped onto the ledge in front of the screens that were streaming mostly machine data, and the occasional external shot of Ganymede. Now all I had to do was wait.

Within seconds, the doors opened again, and the robot began gliding into the room. As it passed over the tire tool, it spun wildly in an upward spiral and struck the robot on the bottom of its housing with a loud, hideous, CLANG! The robot wobbled, spun out of control and fell to the ground, and when it hit, it powered down—shorted out between its own high voltage and the floor.

The doors could not close because the robot was solidly wedged between them. I unclipped the plasma torch from my jumpsuit and tossed it at the robot to make sure that it was no longer electrified. It struck the robot and fell to the ground harmlessly. I picked up the plasma torch, clipped it back on and got to work. I assumed the other maintenance closet had an identical robot and that it would be here as soon as it figured out its companion was down to come take care of it.

I applied the plasma torch to the end of the robot’s arm, near the join to the sphere at the end. It didn’t take long before the metal gave way and the end dropped to the floor. Hurriedly, I crawled over the robot, and went out to grab my water bottle. There was a little left in it, which was lucky. I scrambled back over the robot onto the ledge and squirted the remainder onto the hot slag end of the robot’s limb and left it to cool. Hopping over the dead hulk again, I landed with a bounce onto the metal floor and a CLICK—and ran for my life. The gravity here was definitely somehow different. Running was hard. It took a concerted effort of will not to tumble end over end.

As fast as I was able, I sprinted down the hallway to the T-junction, and indeed, there was a robot identical to the one I had just disabled, just clearing the other corner. I raced to my suit, grabbed my helmet and made a break back for the maintenance closet. We never had this much room to run in our old installation. I was glad that I’d continued working out after being on the track team back home. It was crucial to life on Ganymede. As it was, I beat the second robot as it closed the gap at the T-junction with little time to spare.

I returned to the maintenance closet, making my way over to the first, defunct robot. Its dead limb was hot to the touch, but not hot enough to burn me. I had only one chance to make this work. Hopping back over the robot, I landed on the floor and met the second robot about halfway down the corridor. Staying clear of its outstretched arms, I laid the first robot’s appendage in the way of the second. I had to hope that they didn’t communicate with one another.

But this one seemed savvier. Maybe it was that the first one couldn’t see the tire tool in front of the doors—but this one didn’t approach any further than about five feet from its twin’s metal hand. It backed up, tried to make another approach, and then backed away again. It hovered there, menacingly, blocking my exit from this side of the hallway.

I didn’t know what else to do, so I put on my helmet, and made my way over the fallen robot back into the maintenance room. I could still hear the faint whirring and creepy musical sounds emanating from the room. I hoped that the infrasonic decoupler was still active and transmitting inside the door, which was still unable to close around its keeper.

Now, a bit more calmly, I removed the helmet and pointed its internal microphone at the control panel. Using the com recorder inside my helmet, I hoped I was recording the signal that would activate the extendable bridge at the T-junction—if I could just get past metal-head out there.

Click Here

for Part VII

SPACE IS A DEADLY SISTER: V

by Gil James Bavel

Mission Day 648: 06:51 hours
Ganymede Base mining station
First Shift

In the mess hall, the lights were on and Dr. Lisa Obermeyer and Will Jensen were already up and drinking coffee at the breakfast nook when Marquis Williams and Jim Stanton ambled in. Obermeyer and Jensen had been quietly cooing at each other and speaking in hushed tones. Obermeyer took her hand off of Jensen’s reflexively.

“Morning,” she said to the two. “Coffee?” She reached for the carafe.

“Look,” said Stanton, “You guys don’t have to pretend. Everybody knows you’re seeing each other out here. Hell, I don’t blame you. Just keep it professional and you won’t get in trouble. And yeah, some coffee sounds great.” The tall shuttle captain ducked his head by the drink station and poured himself a cup. In the main lab, the ceilings were just a little too short for his liking.

Obermeyer flushed. “Well, that’s awfully big of you, Jim.” She admitted.

Stanton sat down with them as Williams made his way to the coffee. “You’re the medical authority, Doctor. Sexual tension is bad for the mission. We’re all adults out here, and frankly, it’s a dangerous job. This is one thing the Space Corps and the Company see eye to eye on. You know what you’re doing. You can see a civvie if you want to.” Stanton smelled the coffee, it agreed with him, and he blew on the surface to cool it and took a tentative sip.

Jensen sat up a little straighter with a gleam in his eye. “So, Cap, what did you guys get up to last night?” he said sarcastically.

“Oh, I wish you guys would cut it out. You know I’m married,” Stanton responded, setting his mug down carefully. “Hand me a lid, Marquis, will you?”

Williams complied, poured himself a cup and joined the other three at the table. “Hey, yeah, didn’t your wife squeeze out another kid recently?” he asked.

Stanton nodded. “Yeah. Our first girl, Stacie.” He pulled out the pictures. He carried them old-style, in his ID pack. He handed them around the table as if they were party favors.

Obermeyer looked at them longingly. “Wow, she’s so beautiful.” Obermeyer was feeling her own biological clock ticking away.

“Thanks, I think so. Melissa had another smooth labor, just under three hours. I think we might call it quits now. Two boys and a girl is enough, even if we do retire to Mars.” Stanton took an honest gulp of his coffee, followed by a satisfied Ahh. “One thing’s for sure, you guys may be roughing it out here, but you sure have some damn good coffee. I’ve thought more than once about pilfering some from your delivery,” he said mischievously. “It’s getting harder to get the real stuff back home.”

Williams, comfortable in his medium build, was accustomed to the smaller spaces in the installation. He stretched out and tried his coffee. “You’d never even think about it. They’d kick your ass out of the Corps and you’d lose your pension.”

Jensen piped in, “Hey, let’s have a look and see if we took any damage last night from those MMs,” He deftly pulled a computer pad over to the table and set it on its armature. He called up the relevant damage reports and video camera angles. “Well, it’s a good thing we got you in when we did, but it looks like there’s no damage to the station. Your surveys are going to have to be redone, though,” he said looking at Obermeyer and Williams.

Obermeyer put her free hand back on Jensen’s, and sighed. “Well, we knew that was going to happen, anyway. She gave him a squeeze. “The important thing is that nobody got hurt and there’s no damage to any equipment.”

“Speaking of which,” Captain Stanton interjected, “let’s take some time while we have it and compile a list of what you guys need next week. Will?”

“Okay, well, let’s see,” he said, and wiped the computer pad with one hand, clearing the damage control data. Calling up the installation manifest, he entered in his maintenance code and began poring over a new screen. “Looks like we blew through four drill bits, and we’ve got four on hand, so let’s put in for another four. No, six.” He turned to Williams. “You guys decide whether you’re going to put in another drill station over on the North Forty?”

Williams shook his head. “That’s Devon’s call. But if I had to put money on it, I’d say no. The terrain is too rough and I think it’s too close to the other ones. But like I said, it’s up to him. He’s in command.” Williams got up to refill his coffee, and as he did, Berkshire’s head appeared at the entrance of the mess hall.

“That’s affirmative,” Dr. Berkshire agreed,” we really don’t need another drilling station that close. Hey, grab me a tea while you’re over there, will you, Marquis?” he asked, and sat down at the increasingly crowded table. It came out “Marky” in his dulled British accent. He ran one hand through his thinning black hair. “The company wants more terraforming equipment here, though. You’d better put us down for another blower and algae kit.” Berkshire’s beard stubble was already thick enough to see this early in the morning. Williams handed him a steaming cup of hot water with a lid and a bag of black tea in it, along with a toothpick.

Jensen nodded, and entered the data into the manifest. “Got it. Just need your signature here, Devon.” He handed the pad over to Berkshire. He set down his cup, looked over the pad, and pressed his thumb up against the screen. After a moment, he held it up to his eye and it scanned his retina.

“Okay,” Berkshire said, “Done and done. He handed the pad back to Jensen, picked up his tea and very slowly pulled the tab up and down on the toothpick and then let it steep.

A lull settled over the mess hall as they all paused, sipping their drinks.

Lawton and Biggs broke the peace, entering, much too perky for the rest of the crew.

“Hey guys, what did we miss?” Lawton asked, with a broad, playful smile. She entered the mess hall and took a seat at the table. She was still in her undershirt and shorts.

“Oh, good, the gang’s all here,” Berkshire said, getting up. “Have a seat, John.”

John Biggs sat down as if there were an ominous punishment coming his way. “Okay, Devon, what is it?”

Dr. Berkshire didn’t enjoy command, he was a planetary geologist first and foremost, and then a terraforming specialist second. The whole chain of command thing bugged him. “There’s a message from the Director that we’re all supposed to see. It’s not for the shuttle crew, but there’s no reason that you shouldn’t see it, too.” He dimmed the lights and turned on the telescreen, which normally showed a view of Ganymede’s surface.

“Received from Jovian Deep Space Array, 05:44:34 hours,” the computer voice emitted.

The Director’s image appeared on the screen. An older man, in his seventies, First Director Chenowith had been with the Company as long as any of the current crew could remember. Chenowith was a distinguished-looking man with white hair, and the smart grey coat of a bureaucrat. He sat in the foreground, in front of a telescreen camera, with a coterie of people behind him moving back and forth, all buzzing about on their own tasks. Several controllers and technicians sat behind computer stations in the background, going about their business. There was an audible buzz of activity behind him.

“Greetings, Ganymede Base,” he started, “I know you’re out there on your own, and you’re doing good work. Your reports have been coming in regularly and I especially want to thank Dr. Berkshire for his continuing level of excellence. There is good news and better news. The Space Corps have authorized you for a new rover for your expeditions to survey new mining and terraforming territory on Ganymede. I must tell you that the financial outlay for this was difficult to secure in the current monetary climate. It will come equipped with the full complement of surveying apparati and the latest in technology. The new transmitter for the lab is on its way as well.

“We’re also sending you an extra blower and algae pack kit. You’ll be building a new terraforming station on the North Forty, so scrap the plans for mining there. Also, we’ll be upgrading the capacity of the installation to accommodate more space for your crew. Unfortunately, we can’t spare the manpower, so you’ll have to make the upgrades yourselves. I know you’re not construction grunts, but you’ll have the benefit of knowing the job’s been done right and we’re doubling both your pay and your rations during the entire upgrade. There’ll be extra living quarters and more space in the lab.

“Additionally, the helium-3 output from your ore stations will be doubling. It’s a lot of extra work, but that’s why you’re there. Your accounts have already been credited this month; I wanted to be the first to tell you. Specifications and orders follow. Again, good work, Devon and crew, and we’re all behind you. First Director Chenowith out.”

The transmission ended and the telescreen resumed its view of Ganymede’s surface. The grumbling among the crew began immediately.

Berkshire put his hands up at once to quell the uproar. “All right, all right, it’s not like we didn’t know this was coming. We’ve had it relatively easy out here until now, it hasn’t been a picnic, but we knew the harder work was yet to come. That’s why they pay us the big bucks. So let’s look at the specifications and see what we’re in for. Hell, by the time we’re done with the upgrades, you guys will still be bitching about it.”

Captain Stanton raised a hand. “Look, we’ve got to haul the extra stuff, and I know it doesn’t make much difference to you guys, but we can help put in some extra time.”

Berkshire shook his head. “Thanks, Jim, but they’d throw a fit if anything happened to either of you. We can handle it. We’ve had secondary construction training from the Company. We’ll figure it out. For now, let’s just deal with what we have to do and get on with our lives.”

“Chenowith is an evil slave-driving bastard,” said Williams, looking over the pad with the specifications on it.

Berkshire tried to stifle a laugh, unsuccessfully. “Yeah, I suppose you’re right. If you don’t want the job, I can send you to Titan Station.”

“No you can’t,” answered Williams. “You need me here, and they’d send you with me if you tried.”

“Yeah, you’re right about that,” Berkshire answered. “But we’d see more of each other.” He smiled.

Both crews continued grumbling about the extra work, talked about their bonuses and went about preparing their mission work for the day. It would be a long couple of weeks.

Click Here

for Part VI

SPACE IS A DEADLY SISTER: IV

by Gil James Bavel

Mission Day 648: 02:40 hours
Ganymede Base mining station
First Shift

After loading in the cargo and putting it away, the crew refueled their shuttle from the hydrogen tanks and brought the waste out to the loading bay. Space Corps regulations were very strict: you leave nothing but footprints and shoot the waste into the sun on your way back to Earth. Space junk got so thick in the mid-22nd century that after an expensive and monumental effort to collect it from Earth orbit, it was decided that any waste that couldn’t be recycled in space would be added to the mass of the sun. All future missions observed this protocol on pain of discharge from the Corps. Even radioactive waste had been disposed of this way.

The station and shuttle crews had long since had dinner, and retired to their small but cozy quarters for the night. It was quiet in Ganymede station. The only thing the crew could hear was the sound of the ventilation fans breathing fresh, warm atmosphere into their quarters. The walls inside the installation were unfortunately stark white. There weren’t a lot of décor options due to weight and radiation shielding considerations.

John Biggs and Sondra Lawton were shacked up together in his quarters. They were spartan, as all company quarters were; clean, confined and boring. Biggs was an athletic mulatto, medium tall with close-cropped hair and young looking for his age of thirty-six. He was undressed save for his boxers and was playing with her hair while she kissed him. His rack was a plastic bunk bed, with an identical empty copy stacked on top.

They were in the bottom rack, which he’d outfitted against regulation with an extra mattress from the top bunk, even though in this gravity he didn’t need it. In fact, to have sexual congress in one-seventh G, straps had to be engaged, like any other form of physical exercise. But they weren’t quite there yet. The covers had been kicked off onto the plain white plastic floor.

Lawton was on top of Biggs, placing small, familiar kisses on his neck. “Hey, girl, we’ve got all night,” Biggs said, lifting her up to get a look at her. “You in some kind of hurry?”

She smiled and gave him a little slap. “I do want to get some sleep tonight. I just spent thirty-six hours dragging your damn radio here and taking out the trash! Twenty-four hours crammed in that shuttle with the Captain and another twelve powering down after unloading cargo. Now, are you going to do me, or do I have to beg?” Lawton’s long, brown legs nestled around Biggs, trying to find purchase.

Biggs felt playful. “So we’re getting serious now, huh?” he said, sitting up. He was going to make her work for it. “Talk about a long distance relationship!” He laughed.

“Ugh,” Lawton replied, falling on top of him. One hand on his chest, she grabbed his wrist and said “This is just casual sex. I’m dating a miner on Ganymede? Who I see once a week? Hey, it’s my job. You’re just a fringe benefit, and don’t you forget it, mister.”

Biggs pretended to be hurt. “What, you got some other beau now?” He twisted his wrist out of her hand and grabbed hers. “And I’m a mining engineer, not a miner, don’t forget.”

“No, I just like to keep my options open,” she said, falling on him again and breaking his hold. She moved her free hand down to his waist and presented him with a pouty look. “You’re not angry with me...are you, Doctor?”

“Oh, a lot of options for a gal that runs supplies in the outer system...” Biggs let her remove his boxers. He was evidently quite ready for her. She pressed him into her, slowly, and with both hands, grabbed his butt and locked him in for a very long moment. She sighed and closed her eyes.

Biggs made a small sound of satisfaction, then whispered into her ear. “Look, I’d get you transferred out here if you were qualified. You know I want to see you more than once a week”.

Lawton slowly began to twirl, up and down, back and forth. In between passionate kisses, she said, “John, I’d never work out here. It’s far too dangerous.”

“What dangerous? You mean the micrometeoroids? We’ve never suffered any casualties because of them. Pieces get damaged, you bring us new ones. That’s the job.” Biggs pulled straps out from under the bed with both hands and prepared to hook them around the small of Lawton’s back. “God, you’re beautiful.” He could smell the sweat coming off her body tinged with the light essential-oil scent she was wearing.

She arched her tummy toward him and allowed him to cinch them together. “Look, I’m a flygirl, I’m in the Corps. This is as good as it’s going to get for us right now. I’m on a forty-two month commitment and on track to make officer, if I stay in for the long haul. This is a good career for me.” She continued slowly screwing him, one hand on each side of the rack. “Besides, I love flying”.

John Biggs was evidently lost in her. He had stopped talking and was enjoying the feeling of her breasts moving up and down against his well-defined chest. “Lights” he whispered, and the computer dutifully dimmed them out. The two continued making love much longer into the night than either of them had expected.

Click Here

for Part V

SPACE IS A DEADLY SISTER: III

by Gil James Bavel

Mission Day 722: 15:05 hours
Ganymede Base mining station
Second Shift

I walked over to the shuttle bay and surveyed the damage. Everything was blown to bits and the bay was almost completely cleaned out. Debris from the drums, lights, repair dock and most of the tools littered the floor. The refueling tanks had blown out one entire wall of the bay and the back into the lab. The only tool that still seemed to be functioning was a welding plasma torch, which I nabbed and clipped to my suit.

Aside from that, the only other thing that was intact was the new rover, which had been secured and covered with a tarp—which was still there, but had some tears in it. I unscrewed the tarp from its moorings, and uncovered the rover to see if it was serviceable. Checking it over, I saw that it was still brand new from the factory. My space suit’s computer beeped at me that power levels were critical. “Power levels ten percent.”

The tires were clean, and had good, strong treads on them. A brand new rover. It had been intended for survey work, and we were not supposed to take it out until after Biggs and I had had a chance to initialize it. No one to stop me now. The initialization routine was simple enough, even in a spacesuit. I powered the rover up, and it responded to my commands as it should. It was ready to go.

With its fully charged nickel/hydride batteries, it had far more run time in it than my suit did. This gave me some initial hope, but when I realized there was no way to couple the power supply from the rover to my suit, I backed it out of the bay, and on my way out, I made sure that the toolkit and emergency medikit were on board. I also grabbed a piece of rebar debris as a weapon—although it didn’t make sense, it made me feel more secure. I was alone on this rock now.

There was a bright flash from Jupiter. That clinched it. The gas giant had vacuumed up another comet. I watched the astronomical oddity for a bit, and away I went. Driving the rover felt mischievous, as it was such a smooth ride and it was off limits. Because the micro-gravity on Ganymede—slightly less even than that of Luna, and due to the long stretches of flat plains on this side of the moon—I was able to go at much faster speeds than I expected. I flipped on the navigation system, just for the hell of it.

There were no satellites orbiting Ganymede, so no GPS, but there was a tracking system for detecting the survey stations that we were in the process of setting up when the accident occurred. Again, my suit reminded me that power levels were reaching critical. “Power levels seven percent.”

I thought about the environmental conditions on Ganymede as I drove the rover. My mind was wandering as I was. The Jovian year is about 12 Earth years…so the terminator moves, albeit slowly. And Ganymede has a magnetic field of its own, which protects it from some of the raw cosmic and solar radiation, but not completely from all the still poorly-understood fire that giant Jupiter spat out at us. How can a planet produce more energy than it receives from the sun? This question has still not been answered in centuries of research.

While Ganymede has no real atmosphere to speak of, its exosphere has moderate amounts of oxygen and ozone, which was among the reasons that it was selected for terraforming. It was easy to mine ice from its surface, which gave us abundant water to drink, cook, wash and water the hydroponic gardens with—and some to store. When the sunlight hits Ganymede’s surface, ozone is generated, which helps protect its surface from radiation. This is a continuous process. The blowers that we set up shot oxygen atoms into the ozone, where they combined to form more oxygen, which falls back down to the surface—albeit slowly.

The blowers mined hydrogen for fuel and oxygen out of the surface, and the drills produced helium-3 and other raw materials for our work. One of the few things we had to continually bring from Earth was topsoil, as we needed it. This far deep in the system, vegetarianism was a convention. There just wasn’t room to keep live animals, much less what they would need to survive. What little meat we got came in dried form, or in tubes as a paste.

Suddenly, a blip showed up on the navigation system that shouldn’t have been there. It showed a large installation due Ganymedean East of my present location! This had to be a mistake… or… was it? An alien base, monitoring our installation? Perhaps the Company had another terraforming station set up separate from ours? But why would they keep it a secret? It made no sense. Whatever this thing was, it was not only within the range of the rover, but less than half an hour away—which gave me a chance to lay eyes on it before I died. I was determined to see what the hell it was. “Power levels five percent”. Damn, it was getting cold in the suit.

A long, hell-bent-for-leather drive across the plains of a Jovian moon made my heart race. Steering around a few craters, I took some big bounces along the way that would have been death-defying on Earth. Catching 100 feet of air on an airless moon pumps you full of adrenaline when you realize that each bounce could be your last. The feeling of vertigo I was used to just looking up at Jupiter—which always seemed somehow like looking down—was intensified at the apex of these long, careening bounces. Presently I arrived at the location that the navigation system said should be there, but saw nothing. I drove around a bit, looking at the ground, and then I saw it. A dark, inconsistent obelisk jutted up from the surface. The heads-up display in my helmet dimmed, and went nearly dark. “Power levels critically low in suit,” the computer voice said. I ignored it, focused on the obelisk. I couldn’t believe my eyes.

No, wait, there was the top of an elevator shaft poking out of the ground, just big enough for a human to enter. It wasn’t supposed to be there. It couldn’t be there. I drove up to it and parked the rover. The shaft looked brand new, of gleaming metal. There was a keypad on the right side of two doors. And I didn’t know the code.

I grabbed the piece of rebar I’d brought, and banged on the doors—maybe someone would hear. I couldn’t believe my luck. There’s got to be somebody in there. I looked at the power gauge—down to 3%. I had to get in; it was now or never. I had five minutes or less before my suit’s power pack failed and then it would get real cold in here real fast.

Think. How to open secured mag-locked doors without a code? I remembered from the Space Corps training that Io's volcanoes give off particles of sulfur and sodium that are ionized by Jupiter's magnetic field, and the Io plasma torus around its orbit is so radioactive that any unprotected human there would almost immediately be exposed to a lethal dose of radiation. These particles make it over to Ganymede, not only through the natural migration of the Jovian system, but also clinging on to the ships that occasionally go back and forth. We had to scrub down in the airlocks before going in or out of a ship. Mostly these days, robots automatically handled the cargo.

So these doors must be radiation shielded as well as code-locked. Four minutes. Necessity really is the mother of invention. I wasn’t going to be using the rover again—not anytime soon, anyway—so I grabbed the repair kit and flung it open to see what I could use to get that damn keypad to open the doors. Tape, battery acid, various metals, lengths of wire… and then it hit me. Brute force.

I went to the keypad and put the rebar up against it. I couldn’t fit either end in, so I gave it a good whack and nothing happened. Whack. Whack. Each time, it lifted me off the surface a little, and I landed again. This was getting me nowhere. I wasn’t even making a scratch in the chrome of the keypad. Three minutes.

The jack. Even on Ganymede, the rover would occasionally need to have its tires changed. I flounced to the repair kit and pulled out the jack. It had a tire tool, much like the ones used on Earth, with a wedge end. I’d be able to fit it in between the control pad and its housing. I flounced back over to the elevator and tried the tire tool’s flat end inbetween the two. It fit as if it were made for the task. Gripping it near the bottom in case I struck my suit, I braced myself and smacked the rebar against the top end of the tire tool. It made no sound, but I could feel the tire tool give a bit. Two minutes.

Again. This time, the pad came off and floated away, spinning wildly like a playing card thrown at a wastebasket. Exposed, the inner control mechanism of the pad looked like a fishnet stocking made out of gold, platinum and extruded copper. Electronic leads were sticking out that looked like they might control the doors and the radiation shielding. One minute.

Assuming this radiation shielding was of the ALARP variety (As Low As Reasonably Practicable), I guessed that the doors were protected not only by sheet lead, various levels of Mylar mesh and other neutron-repelling materials, but also by a strong EMF, likely a plasma. I had to short out the system long enough to get in without damaging it, if at all possible. I’d have to drain the rover’s battery to get in. But it was life or death. It didn’t matter.

Using the tire tool, I unhooked the one of the rover’s batteries and pulled it away from the bracket. Using the lengths of wire from the repair kit, I wrapped them around the terminals and attached one pole to the longer of the two leads in the exposed keypad housing. I set the battery on the ground, being careful not to lose the connection, and wrapped another length of wire around the other pole’s terminal. I realized that what I was about to do could very well kill me—but I was a dead man anyway.

“Power levels in this suit have reached critical. Shutting down.” The rest of my suit’s lights dimmed out, and turned off. The whir of the heating fan slowed, and stopped. This was it. Body heat wouldn’t last long now. I had never been this cold. I grabbed the other length of wire and touched it to the only other obvious lead in the keypad’s exposed socket. A massive spark came not from the socket, but from the doors of the elevator, which opened a few inches. I could see the sputtering plasma field trying to kick in. I probably only had seconds to get inside, and I was already feeling arctic cold setting in.

Grabbing the tire tool, I flounced to the doors and wedged one foot between them. Using both hands, I pushed against the doors in an effort to get them to open wider. They were trying to close. I was in a panic. Turning, I put my back against one door and used the tire tool to push against the other as hard as I could. In one-seventh gravity, this is a tricky feat at best. With one last Herculean effort, I fell into the elevator, the plasma field sputtered back into life, the doors closed and I suddenly felt myself going down. I was enveloped in a new kind of darkness.

I could already feel it getting warmer. Someone was here. There would be power. Oxygen. Safety. I was going to live. Even without food, there was enough recyclable water in my suit to last until Friday. Surely I’d be able to survive until then. Down, in complete blackness, I rode the elevator car. I cracked a smile inside my suit. I was going to make it.

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SPACE IS A DEADLY SISTER: II

by Gil James Bavel

Mission Day 647: 19:22 hours
Ganymede Base mining station
Third Shift

Dr. Devon Berkshire was out on the plains of Ganymede, performing routine survey work with Dr. Marquis Williams and Dr. Lisa Obermeyer, when the Friday Run ship came into view. They looked up, and waved, as the shuttle came in toward the bay of the installation. A small mining base, the only social interaction that the miners and terraformmers got other than each other was when the Friday Run ships came to deliver replenishables and take away waste. The crew continued their work; they knew they’d be able to interact with the pilot and navigator from Earth when they got back from their shift. They’d be done in a couple of hours.

The ship kicked up very little in the way of grit coming into the landing bay. As the sleek, white shuttle cruised in and came to a smooth, skidding stop, the radio inside the cockpit came on.

“Hey, you guys, welcome back!” said John Biggs, the installation’s radio operator. “Gave me a heart attack; why didn’t you radio ahead?” he asked. “Over”.

Sondra Lawton, Navigator on board the Company shuttle came over the squelching radio in the control room. “We thought we’d surprise you today. Not like you didn’t know we were coming. Over.” Sondra looked over at her pilot and commanding officer, Jim Stanton, with a smile. “Think we should tell him about the new radio?”

Stanton eased out of the controls and shut the ship down, clicking off switches and making last minute checks. “Nah, he’ll find out about it soon enough. He’ll be like a kid on Christmas morning”. Back to work. Stanton queued up the mic. “Ganymede Base, this is shuttle Alpha, we’re in and down, hit the garage door and power up your life support so we can disembark this bird, willya? Over.”

“Already on top of it, Jim, over,” said Biggs, and indeed, the bay door began closing and the atmospheric distribution tanks powered up. Within thirty seconds, the door was down, the bay was filling up with atmosphere and the heaters had it warming to a balmy 75 degrees Fahrenheit. Sondra Lawton unstrapped from the safety harness and began her post-landing checks. Everything seemed to be in order.

Pilot Jim Stanton handed her a checklist, still on paper after a hundred and sixty years in human spaceflight. “Why don’t you tag ‘em and I’ll bag ‘em?” said the handsome, swarthy, fortysomething pilot, his helmet already off and flight suit unzipped to the waist.

“You got it, Cap’n,” the navigator replied, accepted the small pad from him, tossed it in her lap and removed her own helmet, letting down a long shock of brown hair. Co-pilot Second Class Sondra Lawton was about medium size, with bronzed skin and sharp features, which she downplayed. A few years in the Space Corps will teach a good-looking, twenty-six year-old girl to be as dowdy as possible. She wore no makeup and usually kept her shoulder-length hair in a regulation ponytail when she wasn’t in a spacesuit.

Lawton stowed her helmet at her feet, and took down the pertinent after-action data on the pad with a number two pencil.

“Pressure check,” Stanton said.

“Roger that,” Lawton came back, finished her checks and tossed the completed checklist into her helmet.

Checking a dial, the pilot cracked the seal on the shuttle’s door, and unlatched up the canopy, which raised up, looking like a huge metal bird yawning.

“Okay, we’ve got air, you ready?” Captain Stanton asked.

“Am I ever! Let’s ditch this bitch!” Lawton replied, putting one arm to the fuselage and getting ready to make the jump to the deck. It was a big drop, but in one-seventh gravity, they were used to it. Both of them hopped down, their magnetic boots making loud CLICKs on the metal floor, and stretched their legs. The flight from the Company Mars base took most of a solar day, and from Moonbase, an entire one if made in one shot. They were ready for some R and R. But first, the shuttle needed unloading and refueling.

The shuttle bay was nearly as long as it was wide, and housed fuel storage space for the shuttle’s return trip. The bay was a little greyer than the rest of the base, from the regolith of Ganymede’s surface that came in each time a shuttle did. Even with regular cleanings and electrostatics, small particles of grit managed to stick to the inside of the hangar. Repair tools, drums of hydrogen fuel and the base’s rover were stored inside.

The outer airlock door from opposite the bay door breathed out with an audible hiss and in popped John Biggs, the station’s primary engineer and radio operator, and Will Jensen, computer systems analyst and communications/mechanical engineer.

Biggs and Jensen wore white jumpsuits, flagged and stitched with smart-looking Company insignia. A well-built, M.I.T.-educated black man, Biggs was genuinely happy to see the shuttle crew. Jensen, of Danish extraction, was about the same age as John Biggs, in his late twenties, and was likewise enthused about seeing their friends.

“Long time no see, Kemosabee!” said Biggs, walking over to the pair. He gave Sondra Lawton a big hug, lifting her off the ground with a double CLICK. She squealed.

“Cap’n.” Jensen said with a smile, and offered a firm handshake to the pilot. “What have you got on the bird for us this week?”

Lawton turned from Biggs and gave Jensen a terse look. “You’ll have to wait like everyone else. But I will say this—you’re gonna be surprised!” She ended this by looking back and forth at both Biggs and Jensen, pointing at them with her mouth open, taunting them.

“Okay, kids, let’s get this show on the road. We’ve got to unload this cargo and get inside. While aerobraking through Jupiter, we discovered some micrometeoroids coming in about an hour out, and I want to get in and have a lie down for a while. And the Director wants Devon to send in his status report as soon as we’re done here.”

“Aw, the old man’s got a backache again,” said Biggs, and slapped “Big” Jim Stanton on the back. At over six feet, Captain Stanton was lucky to still be flying in the corps, even outer system missions. Although he wasn’t yet middle-aged, he was too tall to be a pilot but had enough influence back home to have had strings pulled. It was understandable that he’d be cramped in a cockpit made for shorter men.

“Okay, let’s git ‘er done,” he intoned with a false drawl. The crew proceeded to the cargo bays of the shuttle and began fetching the cargo containers from the ship. In one-seventh Earth gravity, hand trucks were hardly ever necessary. If you couldn’t lift 700 pounds on Ganymede, you couldn’t cut the muster.

“Be careful with this one,” Lawton said to Biggs, handing him a specially marked box. “This is your surprise this trip. Wouldn’t want you to drop that.”

John Biggs sized up the box he was holding. “Okay, Sondra, I’ll be careful.” He smiled, and moved over toward the airlock where he set the box down. “Kinda feels like a radio set,” he guessed.

“Dammit!” said Stanton, genuinely frustrated.

“Oh, cool,” said Will Jensen as he moved freight. “It’s the new backup, right?”

Lawton laughed at her commanding officer and shoved him. “Hey, I didn’t say anything”.

Captain Stanton wrinkled his nose at her. “No, you just gave it completely away.”

The crew of the shuttle and the two of the base moved the rest of the cargo inside, and sealed up.

Outside, on the icy, pebble-strewn surface, the survey crew flounced along to their new positions. Flouncing was what they called their movements outside, a cross between floating and bouncing. In the partial shadow of vast Jupiter, Drs. Berkshire, Williams and Obermeyer were now just beginning the final survey for the day. “Okay, give me a reading on this conditional line from the first station”, Berkshire called out.

Marquis Williams peered through his optical instrument at the designated merestone. “It’s off true, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Williams agreed, “by a declination of ten degrees, almost exactly.”

Obermeyer piped up. “Marquis, is it almost exactly ten degrees, or exactly ten degrees?”

“It’s exactly ten degrees off. Christ, you’d think it mattered. We’re not putting a drilling station here and you both know it.”

Dr. Devon Berkshire put his gloved hands on suited hips. “Actually, that’s my call, if you don’t mind, Marquis. But you’re probably right. Let’s—“

“Perimeter alarm sounding. Micrometeoroid storm approaching,” droned the automatic computer in their helmets. The Jovian Deep Space Array was never wrong.

“Okay, let’s wrap it up, people. It’s a moot point now. Time to get back.”

Lisa Obermeyer made for the beat-up rover nearby, flouncing over to it. “You’ll get no argument from me”, she said, stowing her gear in the rear compartment and sitting in the front passenger seat. The power gauge on her suit read 26%, and that was enough margin for error, but she’d rather not take any chances. If something should happen to the rover on the way back to the station, they could have problems. It wasn’t the first time the rover had served as cover during a micrometeor storm; it was evident from all the dings and pock marks on it.

Williams got into the shotgun backseat and Berkshire into the driver’s seat. They made good time on the way back, in relative quiet. Micrometeor Storms were serious business; a speck the size of a grain of sand could end your career out here, if it were traveling fast enough, and even your life if you weren’t careful. So far they’d been lucky.

The team of planetary geologist, mining specialist and medical doctor/planetary surveyor made tracks back to Ganymede Base station the rest of the way in nervous silence.

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