Pushing Ice Read online

  “No,” she said, after a moment’s reflection. “It’s probably nothing. Just as long as they’re careful.”

  She navigated to the area of ShipNet concerned with the basic technical functions of the engine. A few more taps of her finger brought up four graphics boxes, each of which contained a plot of pressure versus time for the fuel in each of the tanks, with the time axis along the bottom of each box. She zoomed in on the part of the plot that covered the last twenty-four hours.

  “When exactly did the accident happen?”

  Parry leaned over and stabbed a finger against the time axis. “Six hours ago. Round about here.”

  She zoomed in on the two hours spanning the accident. “See that line, Parry?”

  “Uh huh.”

  “Looks pretty flat to me.”

  Parry squinted at it. “As piss on a plate. Is that a problem?”

  “We shut down the engine within ten minutes of the accident,” Svetlana said, thinking aloud. “Fuel consumption should have flattened out to zero between then and now.”

  “Agreed. But you’d have a hard time seeing that kind of change in slope until a lot more time has passed.”

  “I know. I was just wondering if there’d be any sign of the event in the pressure data.”

  “If there’s a leak, it’s a hell of a slow one,” Parry said.

  “Or no leak at all.”

  He moved to take the flexy away from her. “And that’s good, isn’t it?”

  “I suppose so,” Svetlana said. But she held onto the flexy tenaciously. “I still want to look at these numbers a little more closely.”

  “If it keeps you from climbing out of bed,” Parry said. He rubbed his hands against the pockets of his trousers. “Well, no rest for the wicked.”

  “I thought you were done for the day.”

  “I just came inside to take a break. Suit needed topping up anyway.”

  “You’ve already been outside too long,” she said. “Here — let me see that dosimeter.”

  He snapped the bracelet from his wrist and passed it to her. She studied the coloured display, with its ominous red-tinged histogram.

  “Six hundred and twenty millisieverts, Parry. You keep this up and we’ll be able to light the ship with you.” She passed back the dosimeter, her fingers tingling as if the thing itself were a source of radiation. “Parry, please take some rest.”

  “I’ll take some rest when you do,” he said, reaching to drag the flexy away from her again. “How does that sound?”

  She tightened her hold on the flexy. “A lot like blackmail.”

  “I’ll be back inside in six hours,” Parry said. He kissed her and walked away. She stared at his back as he left the medical area, watching as he paused to talk to one of Ryan Axford’s three duty medics. She pushed her head back against the pillow, closed her eyes and allowed the flexy to slip from her hand. She lay like that until the light through her eyelids became darker, as if the sick bay lights had been dimmed. She waited five minutes, then opened her eyes again.

  FIVE

  Bella visited the sick. She stopped by Jim Chisholm’s bed, intending to talk to him about the accident, but found him asleep with headphones on. She moved on to the next partition, where Svetlana was just finishing off a foil-wrapped dinner spread out on a tray.

  “On the mend?”

  “Miles better,” Svetlana said unconvincingly. In Bella’s opinion she looked like someone who had been up all night cramming for an exam.

  “I thought you’d like to know that the clean-up work’s coming along nicely. We should be under way within six or seven hours.”

  “Parry told me they were going to reinforce the tanks.”

  “Not a bad idea while we’ve got people down there — right?”

  “Provided we can spare the time.”

  Thomas Shen, the duty medic, removed the tray from Svetlana’s lap. Beneath it, Bella noticed, was a flexy, its display window crammed with technical diagrams and graphs. Svetlana had scribbled comments and calculations all over the figures.

  “Spare the time?” Bella echoed.

  “Won’t this delay make our rendezvous with Janus even more tricky?”

  “Shorter, maybe, but we’d have heard from home if the mission was no longer feasible.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Something bothering you, Svieta?”

  She looked at Bella suspiciously. “Why? Why do you think something might be bothering me?”

  “Browsing through those graphs for fun, were you?” Bella quickly snatched the flexy from Svetlana’s lap and held it up to the light, studying the complex read-outs and scribbled annotations. ‘These are pressure readings,“ she observed.

  “I figured there might’ve been a leak in one or other of the fuel tanks.”

  “Was there?”

  “Looks like they came through all right.”

  “You’re still bothered about something. No point trying to hide it, Svieta.” Bella pulled up a chair and lowered herself into it the wrong way around, folding her shirt-sleeved arms across the chair’s back. “I need to know what’s on your mind.”

  It was a long while before Svetlana spoke. Thomas Shen came back again and fussed with one of the monitoring machines. Bella bit her lip and looked at the other woman, waiting.

  “It’s the pressure in the tanks,” Svetlana said, when Shen had moved away again.

  Bella looked at the displays on the flexy again. “So there is a leak?”

  “No. That’s what I was specifically looking for.”

  “But something else is bothering you.”

  Svetlana looked tormented. “I don’t know.”

  “Tell me.”

  “When the mass driver hit, it was like a liner hitting an iceberg.”

  “We all felt the bump,” Bella agreed.

  “Right. But where’s the evidence in this data?”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “When the driver hit, the jolt should have made the gas in the tanks slosh around.”

  “And it didn’t?”

  “Not according to these read-outs. It’s as if it didn’t happen.”

  “Wait.” Bella squinted, forcing her eyes to focus. “Those pressure readings: how are they taken?”

  “By pressure meters inside the tanks.”

  “How many per tank? I’m guessing more than one, for redundancy?”

  “Six,” Svetlana said.

  “Located in different places?”

  “Yes. Two at the tank poles, four around the mid-section.”

  “Well, there’s your answer.” Bella tried not to sound too confident or cocksure. “Each of those pressure curves must be a composite of data from six different gauges. More than likely there’s a lot of software crunching those numbers before you see them, suppressing any readings that look anomalous.”

  “I thought of that,” Svetlana said, “but I’ve dug through the source code and there’s nothing that should screen out a major pressure spike. You wouldn’t want to screen out something like that: it could mean you have serious problems. What if the tank integrity took a hit from all that gas moving around?”

  “All right, but I must still be on the right track. Do these curves reflect the true sampling rate in the tanks?”

  “I think so, yes.”

  “But you’re not absolutely sure.”

  “No,” she said, with a heavy sigh. “There’s a certain amount of stuff I can check out from this bed, but I can’t get at all the code between me and the tanks.”

  “Look,” Bella said, her tone conciliatory; “if it makes you happy, we can ask for a second opinion from home. But we’ll have to be moving before they answer.”

  “I’d still be happier if I could see the data,” Svetlana said. “I’d be even happier if I knew why I wasn’t seeing it.”

  “You’ll get your answer,” Bella said, pushing herself out of the seat. “I’ll send a message home immediately. If someone gets to work on it fast yo
u should have a response within half a day.”

  “And if I don’t like the response?” Svetlana said again.

  “Then you’ll have something to worry about. Now — please — get some rest. I’ll let you know as soon as we have any news.” Bella hugged the flexy to her chest. “I’ll take this, if you don’t mind.”

  Svetlana started to say something, but Bella was already on her way out of the room.

  * * *

  No death in a spacesuit is ever good, but Mike Takahashi’s was especially bad.

  Parry felt it coming. The metal lining of the tank quivered, then quivered again, and again, the vibration becoming stronger each time. Something was coming down to them: some piece of debris they hadn’t nailed during the clear-up work.

  Three of them — Parry, Frida Wolinksy and Takahashi — were laying down sprayrock. They were standing on the side of one of the tanks, attached to it by the soles of their boots with the crowns of their helmets brushing the spinal truss, their faces aimed towards the shield ten metres below. They were tethered to the work crew at the open end of the tank assembly. Rockhopper was under thrust again, accelerating at half a gee. The false gravity assisted the sprayrock application, bedding down the layers of the binary compound before they fused.

  Parry’s neck twitched as some instinct told him that the danger lay behind him, further up the ship. But his helmet blocked his view, and his tethered position prevented him from twisting around. No more than two seconds had passed since he had first become aware of the wrongness.

  His hand moved to shut the trigger of the sprayrock gun. It seemed to take too long. At the same time he intended to speak. He started to say: “Cut the flow,” but he had barely formed the first consonant when he saw a blur of movement in one of his helmet’s HUD windows.

  Mike Takahashi was gone.

  He had been ripped off the side of the tank. With some spiteful inevitability the debris had caught Takahashi, either bulldozing into him or snagging his tether on the way down. Geckoflex was strong, but its bonds were designed to fail before the seals in a pressure-suit.

  Parry’s hand finally closed the trigger on the nozzle and the jet of sprayrock halted abruptly. He reluctantly followed its trajectory, down to the base of the tanks. He could see it all now. There was the object that must have taken Takahashi: a lump of unrecognisable equipment the size of a beach ball, half-submerged in hardened sprayrock. And there, next to it, was Mike Takahashi, spread-eagled in the moment of impact. During his fall he had twisted through one hundred and eighty degrees: his face stared up towards Parry and Wolinsky. His head, shoulders and upper chest were free of the sprayrock. The rest of him lay buried under the blue-grey surface, except for part of one knee and the tip of one boot.

  Takahashi was still alive, still conscious — Parry could hear him groaning. Neither the initial collision nor the drop onto the bed of sprayrock had killed him. The sprayrock had probably saved his life, cushioning what would otherwise have been a fatal fall against the hard armour of the shield.

  Parry dropped the spray nozzle. Everyone else was talking on the common channel. They all knew something had happened, even if they couldn’t yet see the fallen man on the cams.

  “Quiet, everyone,” Parry said, raising his voice. “Quiet! Quiet, for fuck’s sake!” When they finally fell silent, he forced calm into his voice and said softly, “Hey, Mike — can you hear me, buddy?”

  Takahashi drew in a ragged breath. “Yes.”

  “You need to stay still. Keep calm, don’t be an airhog, and we’ll get you out of there.”

  “Okay.”

  “How are you feeling down there?”

  Takahashi’s voice became stronger. “My leg isn’t so good. Hurts pretty bad.”

  Probably broken, Parry thought: snapped or dislocated when Takahashi was wrenched off the side of the tank, or when he hit the bottom. The articulation of an Orlan nineteen lent itself to that kind of injury.

  Again, Parry strove to keep any note of panic from his voice. “We’re going to do something about that pain, Mike, but right now you need to listen to me.”

  Takahashi took another ragged breath. “I’m listening.”

  “You’re lying in sprayrock. Your head, arms and upper body are free. The rest of you is encased.”

  “Oh, great.”

  “But we’re going to get you out of this,” Parry said urgently. “That’s a promise: a cast-iron guarantee. You’re going to have to work with me, though. It’s important that you stay calm. That way we’ll have all the time we need to dig you out. Copy?”

  “Copy,” Takahashi said, with an unmistakable edge of panic in his voice.

  “I’m serious.”

  “Do something about my leg. Then we can talk.”

  “I can’t do anything about the leg right now, but I still need you to stay calm. I want you to boot up some music, Mike. Scroll down and find something relaxing.”

  “You’re kidding me, Parry.”

  “I’m not. If you don’t choose something yourself, I’ll make the selection and pump it through from my helmet. You were never really big on opera, were you?”

  “Nice joke, Parry.”

  “Who’s joking? Make the call, or I’ll make it for you.”

  “You have got to be —”

  “Make the call. And crank it loud so we can all listen in. If you don’t comply within twenty seconds, I’ll inflict some Puccini on you. Turandot, maybe. I know how much you love ‘Nessun Dorma’, Mike.”

  “You really are a bastard, Chief.”

  “Here it comes. Scrolling down now. Public Enemy… Puccini. I hope you’re ready for this, buddy. It’s going to hurt. It’s going to hurt like a bitch.”

  Takahashi wasn’t fast enough, or maybe his suit’s audio system was shot. Parry didn’t care. He was glad to inflict the Puccini on him. Even if he truly hated the music, it was something else to be thinking about.

  Parry called Bella.

  “Turn down the racket,” she said. “I can’t hear a thing!”

  “Sorry,” he said, raising his voice over Luciano Pavarotti, “but the racket’s part of the plan. I need engine shutdown, Bella. Mike doesn’t need any additional pressure on his leg, and we can’t risk another piece of debris hitting us down here.“

  “You have it,” she said, after the slightest hesitation. Thirty seconds later, Parry felt the tension in the tether line relax as he became weightless again.

  “What else?”

  “We’re going to need more people out here, and someone from medical.”

  “I’ve already paged Ryan.”

  Parry twisted around to the left until he could just make out Wolinsky at the edge of his faceplate’s field of vision. “Frida,” he said, “can you reach my tether lock from there?”

  “Think so, if they play out some more slack for me.”

  Wolinsky leaned towards him, out of view. He felt a tug as she took hold of his tether.

  “Release me,” Parry said, leaning back so that she could undo the snaplock fastener.

  For once in his life, Parry would have been happier on a tether, but the lines were nearly at their limit. He felt Wolinsky pat him on the back.

  “You’re free, big guy. Just be careful down there.”

  Parry allowed himself to fall forward towards the surface of the sprayrock. They’d put down a metre and a half when Takahashi fell; most of it would have reached full hardness by now. There might be enough resilience in sprayrock to cushion the impulse from a mass driver, but it wasn’t going to help them excavate the injured man.

  Parry had both hands on the sprayrock now. The geckoflex did not form a permanent bond with the sprayrock. Reassured, he touched a kneepad against the crust, and then a foot. He removed his other foot from the scarred metal of the tank and planted it on the crust. Now he was able to crawl across to the half-exposed form of the trapped man. He reached Taka-hashi’s upper body and raised himself to a kneeling position, keeping a three-point co
ntact with the crust. Behind the semi-reflective glass of his faceplate, Takahashi’s eyes were wide and scared.

  “Okay, that’s enough Puccini,” he said.

  “Luciano and me aren’t done yet.” Parry examined him, getting his first good look at the situation. It was worse than he had expected. Takahashi’s life-support backpack was completely immersed. There would be no way to top up the suit’s consumables unless the rear part of the backpack could be exposed.

  But consumables were not the main problem now. Parry cranked down the Puccini a notch. “I’m with Mike now, Bella.”

  “We have you on cam,” Bella said. “What’s your assessment?”

  “My assessment is —” But he couldn’t be truthful, not while Takahashi was listening in. “Mike’s in one piece. He’s conscious and lucid. But we’re going to have to stabilise him before we can look at getting him out.”

  “Stabilise him?”

  “We’ll need to expose his backpack.”

  “Copy,” Bella said, and he knew from her tone of voice, that slight falling inflection, that she had understood. Smothered in sprayrock, the backpack would not be able to dissipate its own waste heat. The suit would already be getting warm. Nothing had happened yet, though. Perhaps there was still time, if they moved quickly.

  “Bella,” he said, “how are those reinforcements coming along?”

  “I’ve got three people clearing the number-four lock. They have rescue equipment and cutting gear.”

  “What about someone from medical?”

  “Ryan’s already in five. He’ll be outside in a few minutes.”

  Parry racked his brain, trying to remember the last time he had even heard of Ryan Axford having to don a suit. Presumably during the last mass EVA training drill, which had to have been at least eighteen months ago.

  “Tell Ryan to take care. I have a feeling that this isn’t going to be the last time we need him.”

  “Ryan knows the drill, Parry, just like you. How’s the patient? Talk to me if you can hear me, Mike.”

  “I’m okay,” Takahashi said. “Head hurts like a bitch.”

  Hypercapnia, Parry thought. He was breathing too fast, too shallowly, allowing carbon dioxide to build up to dangerous levels.