Sarah Zettel
Sarah Zettel (born 1966) lives in Michigan with her husband Tim. She has published five SF novels to date, Reclamation (1996), Fools War (a New York Times Notable Book for 1997), Playing God (1998), The Quiet Invasion (2000), and Kingdom of Cages (2001). A Sorcerer’s Treason is the first of a fantasy trilogy, new in 2002. Most of her short fiction has appeared in Analog, as did this story. She sold her first story in 1986 to a small press magazine. “About six years and a billion and three rejection slips later,” she says, “Stan Schmidt at Analog bought my story ‘Driven by Moonlight’ (1991), and truly launched my professional career.”
She says on her Web site, “I’m mainly known as a hard science fiction author. I used to wonder how that happened. I used to say ‘I love science fiction, but I hate science. I know nothing about science.’ Then, the truth came to me. What I actually hate is physics, which bores me to tears. On the other hand, I love biology, sociology, psychology, sociobiology, anthropology, archeology and planetology, and will cheerfully delve into any and all of them for hours, if not days, at a time. And, as I’ve found, I will equally cheerfully write about them.”
And in a Locus interview, she says:
I wrote a lot of short fiction, did a bunch of stories for Stan Schmidt at Analog— now there’s a learning experience! One he sent back because I didn’t have the lunar calendar right. One he sent back because my engines were impossible—he said it was “an improbably neat trick. How would you do that?” And another he sent back because I didn’t have the right type of fish. One person is not allowed to know all this, but he does! And you have to keep writing and working to get the answers to the questions that your reader (as voiced by Stan) is going to have. And that is a tremendous way to learn your craft. I regard him as a really great teacher …
Analog isn’t part of the main SF dialog any more, but we still need what is being said in Analog. Maybe not the strong libertarian philosophy, but it’s a rarified atmosphere. It’s the people who are still in love with the technology and still believe technology holds all the answers. If we can get the hardware working properly, all will be good and right with the world. Newton and Schroedinger and Einstein will be at the controls, and we’ll have it all sorted out! We want to teach people to use the machines better, rather than taking into account humanity’s needs, rather than teaching the technology to fit human beings more.
We have to do both, which is why I think it’s a shame Analog’s not fully into the SF dialog anymore.
“Kinds of Strangers” is a problem-solving story in the Analog tradition, with a satisfyingly spectacular action climax, but it also deals with human issues often left out of
SF stories. Why shouldn’t a space crew marooned without hope of rescue experience depression?
Margot Rusch pulled open the hatch that led to the Forty-Niner’s sick bay. “Paul?” she asked around the tightness building in her throat. She pulled herself into the sterile, white module. She focused slowly on the center of the bay, not wanting to believe what she saw.
Paul’s body, wide-eyed, pale-skinned, limp and lifeless floated in mid-air. A syringe hovered near his hand, pointing its needle toward the corpse as if making an accusation.
“Oh, Christ.” Margot fumbled for a handhold.
The ventilation fans whirred to life. Their faint draft pushed against the corpse, sending it toward the far wall of the module. Margot caught the acrid scent of death’s final indignities. Hard-won control shredded inside her, but there was nowhere to turn, no one to blame. There was only herself, the corpse and the flat, blank screen of the artificial intelligence interface.
“Damn it, Reggie, why didn’t you do something!” she demanded, fully aware it was irrational to holler at the AI, but unable to help it.
“I did not know what to do,” said Reggie softly from its terminal. “There are no case scenarios for this.”
“No, there aren’t,” agreed Margot, wearily. “No, there sure as hell aren’t.”
The crew of the Forty-Niner had known for three months they were going to die. The seven of them were NASA’s pride, returning from the first crewed expedition to the asteroid belt. They had opened a new frontier for humanity, on schedule and under budget. Two and a half years of their four-year mission were a raving success, and now they were headed home.
There had been a few problems, a few red lights. Grit from the asteroid belt had wormed its way into the works on the comm antenna and the radio telescope. No problem. Ed MacEvoy and Jean Kramer replaced the damaged parts in no time. This was a NASA project. They had backups and to spare. Even if the reaction control module, which was traditional methane/oxygen rockets used for course corrections, somehow failed completely all that would mean was cutting the project a little short. The long-distance flight was handled by the magnetic sail; a gigantic loop of high-temperature superconducting ceramic cable with a continuous stream of charged particles running through it. No matter what else happened, that would get them home.
“Margot?” Jean’s voice came down the connector tube. “You OK?”
Margot tightened her grip on the handle and looked at the corpse as it turned lazily in the center of the bay. No, I am not OK.
The mag sail, however, had found a new way to fail. A combination of radiation and thermal insulation degradation raised the temperature too high and robbed hundreds of kilometers of ceramic cable of its superconductivity.
Once the mag sail had gone, the ship kept moving. Of course it kept moving. But it moved in a slow elliptical orbit going nowhere near its scheduled rendezvous with Earth. They could burn every atom of propellant they carried for the RCM and for the explorer boats, and they’d still be too far away for any of the Mars shuttles to reach by a factor of five. Frantic comm bursts to Houston brought no solutions. The Forty-Niner was stranded.
“Margot?” Jean again, calling down the connector.
“I’ll be right up,” Margot hoped Jean wouldn’t hear how strangled her voice was.
Margot looked at the empty syringe suspended in mid-air. Drunk all and left no friendly drop to help me after. She swallowed hard. Stop it, Margot. Do not even start going there.
“Is there another request?” asked Reggie.
Margot bit her lip. “No. No more requests.”
Margot pushed herself into the connector and dragged the hatch shut. She had the vague notion she should have done something for the body—closed its eyes or wrapped a sheet around it, or something, but she couldn’t make herself turn around.
Margot’s eyes burned. She’d flown four other missions with Paul. She’d sat up all night with him drinking espresso and swapping stories while the bigwigs debated the final crew roster for the Forty-Niner. They’d spent long hours on the flight out arguing politics and playing old jazz recordings. She’d thought she knew him, thought he would hang on with the rest of them.
Then again, she’d thought same of Ed and Tracy.
Tracy Costa, their chief mineralogist, had been the first to go. They hadn’t known a thing about it, until Nick had caught a glimpse of the frozen corpse outside one of the port windows. Then, Ed had suffocated himself, even after he’d sworn to Jean he’d never leave her alone in this mess. Now, Paul.
Margot pulled herself from handhold to handhold up the tubular connector, past its cabinets and access panels. One small, triangular window looked out onto the vacuum, the infinitely patient darkness that waited for the rest of them to give up.
Stop it, Margot. She tore her gaze away from the window and concentrated on pulling herself forward.
The Forty-Niner’s command module was a combination of ship’s bridge, comm center and central observatory. Right now, it held all of the remaining crew members. Their mission commander, Nicholas Deale, sandy-haired, dusky-skinned and dark-eyed, sat at one of Reggie’s compact terminals, brooding over what he saw on the flat screen. Tom Merritt, who had gone from a florid, pink man to a paper-white ghost during the last couple of weeks, tapped at the controls for the radio telescope. He was an astronomer and the mission communications specialist. He was the one who made sure they all got their messages from home. The last living crew member was Jean. A few wisps of hair had come loose from her tight brown braid and they floated around her head, making her look even more worried and vulnerable. She stood at another terminal, typing in a perfunctory and distracted cadence.
Margot paused in the threshold, trying to marshal her thoughts and nerves. Nick glanced up at her. Margot opened her mouth, but her throat clamped tight around her words. Tom and Jean both turned to look at her. The remaining blood drained out of Tom’s face.
“Paul?” he whispered.
Margot coughed. “Looks like he over-dosed himself.”
Jean turned her head away, but not before Margot saw the struggle against tears fill her face. Both Nick’s hands clenched into fists. Tom just looked at Nick with tired eyes and said, “Well, now what?”
Nick sighed. “OK, OK.” He ran both hands through his hair. “I’ll go take care of … the body. Tom, can you put a burst through to mission control? They’ll want to notify his family quietly. I’ll come up with the letter …”
This was pure Nick. Give everybody something to do, but oversee it all. When they’d reeled in the sail, he hadn’t slept for two days helping Ed and Jean go over the cable an inch at a time, trying to find out if any sections were salvageable from which
they could jury-rig a kind of stormsail. When that had proven hopeless, he’d still kept everybody as busy as possible. He milked every drop of encouraging news he could out of mission control. Plans were in the works. The whole world was praying for them. Comm bursts came in regularly from friends and family. A rescue attempt would be made. A way home would be found. All they had to do was hang on.
“In the meantime …” Nick went on
“In the meantime we wait for the radiation to eat our insides out,” said Tom bitterly. “It’s hopeless, Nick. We are all dead.”
Nick shifted uneasily, crunching Velcro underfoot. “I’m still breathing and I don’t plan to stop anytime soon.”
A spasm of pure anger crossed Tom’s features. “And what are you going to breathe when the scrubbers give out? Huh? What are you going to do when the water’s gone? How about when the tumors start up?”
Tom, don’t do this, thought Margot, but the words died in her throat, inadequate against the sudden red rage she saw in him. He was afraid of illness, of weakness. Well, weren’t they all?
Paul’s chief duty was keeping them all from getting cancer. One of the main hazards of lengthy space flight had always been long-term exposure to hard radiation. The mag sail, when it was functional, had created a shield from charged particles, which slowed the process down. Medical advancements had arisen to cover the damage that could be done by fast neutrons and gamma rays. Paul Luck maintained cultures of regenerative stem cells taken from each member of the crew. Every week, he measured pre-cancer indicators in key areas of the body. If the indicators were too high, he tracked down the “hot spots” and administered doses of the healthy cultured cells to remind bone, organ and skin how they were supposed to act and voilà! Healthy, cancer-free individual.
The Luck system was now, however, permanently down, and the only backup for that was the AI’s medical expert system and the remaining crew’s emergency training. Right now, that didn’t seem like anything close to enough.
“We have time,” Nick said evenly. “We do not have to give up. Come on, Tom. What would Carol say if she heard this?” Nick, Margot remembered, had been at Tom’s wedding. They were friends, or at least, they had been friends.
“She’d say whatever the NASA shrinks told her to,” snapped Tom. “And in the meantime,” he drawled the word, “I get to watch her aging ten years for every day we’re hanging up here. How much longer to I have to do this to her? How much longer are you going to make your family suffer?”
For the first time, Nick’s composure cracked. His face tightened into a mask of pent-up rage and frustration, but his voice stayed level. “My family is going to know I died trying.”
Tom looked smug. “At least you admit we’re going to die.”
“No …” began Jean.
“Help,” said a strange, soft voice.
The crew all turned. The voice came from the AI terminal. It was Reggie.
“Incoming signal. No origination. Can’t filter. Incoherent system flaw. Error three-six-five …”
A grind and clank reverberated through the hull. Reggie’s voice cut off.
“Systems check!” barked Nick.
Margot kicked off the wall and flew to navigation control, her station. “I got garbage,” said Tom from beside her. “Machine language, error babble. Reggie’s gone nuts.”
Margot shoved her velcro-bottomed boots into place and typed madly at her keyboard, bringing up the diagnostics. “All good here,” she reported. She turned her head and looked out the main window, searching for the stars and the slightly steadier dots that were the planets. “Confirmed. Positioning systems up and running.”
“Engineering looks OK,” said Jean. “I’ll go check the generators and report back.” Nick gave her a sharp nod. She pulled herself free of her station and launched herself down the connector.
“You getting anything coherent?” Nick pushed himself over to hover behind Tom’s shoulder.
“Nothing.” From her station, Margot could just make out the streams of random symbols flashing past on Tom’s terminal.
“Reggie, what’s happening?” she whispered.
“I don’t know,” said the voice from her terminal. Margot jerked. “Unable to access exterior communications system. Multiple errors on internal nodes. Code corruption. Error. three-four …” the computer voice cut out again in a pulse of static, then another, then silence, followed by another quick static burst.
“Margot, can you see the comm antenna?” asked Tom, his hands still flashing across the keyboard.
Margot pressed her cheek against the cool window, craned her neck and squinted, trying to see along the Forty-Niner’s hull. “Barely, yeah.”
“Can you make out its orientation?”
Margot squinted again. “Looks about ten degrees off-axis.”
“It’s moved,” said Tom between static bursts. “That was the noise.”
“All OK down in the power plant,” Jean pulled herself back through the hatch and attached herself to her station. “Well, at least there’s nothing new wrong …” she let the sentence trail off. “What is that?”
Margot and the others automatically paused to listen. Margot heard nothing but the steady hum of the ship and the bursts of static from Reggie. Quick pulses, one, one, two, one, two, one, one, one, two.
“A pattern?” said Nick.
“Mechanical failure,” said Tom. “Has to be. Reggie just crashed.”
One, one, two, one.
“You ever hear about anything crashing like this?” asked Margot.
One, two, one.
“Reggie? Level one diagnostic, report,” said Nick.
One, one, two.
“Maybe we can get a coherent diagnostic out of one of the other expert systems,” Margot suggested. Reggie wasn’t a single processor. It was a web-work of six interconnected expert systems, each with their own area of concentration, just like the members of the crew. Terminals in different modules of the ship gave default access to differing expert systems.
“Maybe,” said Nick. “Tom can try to track down the fault from here. You and Jean see if you can get an answer out of si … the power plant.” Margot was quietly grateful he remembered what else was in sick bay before she had to remind him.
One, one, one.
Jean and Margot pulled themselves down the connector to the engineering compartment. As Jean had reported, all the indicators that had remained functional after they’d lost the sail reported green and go.
“At least it’s a different crisis,” Jean muttered as she brought up Reggie’s terminal, the one she and Ed had spent hours behind when the mag sail went out.
“Remind me to tell you about my grandmother’s stint on the old Mir sometime,” said Margot. “Now there was an adventure.”
Jean actually smiled and Margot felt a wash of gratitude. Someone in here was still who she thought they were.
Jean spoke to the terminal. “Reggie, we’ve got a massive fault in the exterior communications system. Can you analyze from this system?” As she spoke, Margot hit the intercom button on the wall to carry the answer to the command center.
“Massive disruption and multiple error processing,” said Reggie, sounding even more mechanical than usual. “I will attempt to establish interface.”
“Nick, you hear that?” Margot said to the intercom grill. She could just hear the static pulses coming from the command center as whispering echoes against the walls of the connector.
“Roger,” came back Nick’s voice.
“I am … getting reports of an external signal,” said Reggie. “It is … there is … internal fault, internal fault, internal fault.”
Jean shut the terminal’s voice down. “What the hell?” she demanded of Margot. Margot just shook her head.
“External signal? How is that possible? This can’t be a comm burst from Houston.”
Margot’s gaze drifted to the black triangle of the window. The echoes whispered in ones and twos.
“What’s a language with only two components?” Margot asked.
Jean stared at her. “Binary.”
“What do we, in essence, transmit from here when we do our comm bursts? What might somebody who didn’t know any better try to send back to us?”
Jean’s face went nearly as white as Tom’s. “Margot, you’re crazy.”
Margot didn’t bother to reply. She just pushed herself back up the connector to the bridge.
“Tom? Did you hear that?”
Tom didn’t look up. He had a clip board and pen in his hands. As the static bursts rang out, he scribbled down a one for each single burst and a zero for each pair. He hung the board in mid-air, as if not caring where it went and his hands flew across the keyboard. “Oh yeah, I heard it.”
Nick was back at his station, typing at his own keyboard. “The engineering ex-systems seem to be intact. Maybe we can get an analysis …” He hit a new series of keys. Around them, the static bursts continued. Margot’s temples started to throb in time with the insistent pulses.
“There’s something,” Tom murmured to the terminal. His voice was tight, and there was an undercurrent in it Margot couldn’t identify. “It’ll take awhile to find out exactly what’s happened. I’ve got Reggie recording,” he looked straight at Nick. “As long as it doesn’t crash all the way …”
Margot and Jean also turned to Nick. Margot thought she saw relief shining behind his eyes. At least now he won’t have to find us make-work to do.
“All right,” said Nick. “Tom, you keep working on the analysis of this … whatever it is. Jean, we need you to do a breakdown on Reggie. What’s clean and what’s contaminated?” he turned his dark, relieved eyes to Margot. “I’ll take care of Paul. Margot …”
“I’ll make sure all the peripherals are at the ready,” said Margot. “We don’t know what’s happening next.”
Nick nodded. Margot extracted herself from her station and followed Nick down the connector. She tried not to look as he worked the wheel on the sick bay hatch. She just let herself float past and made her way down to the cargo bay.
The cargo bay was actually a combination cargo hold and staging area. Here was where they stored the carefully locked-down canisters holding the ore samples. But here was also where they suited up for all their extra-vehicular activities. Just outside the airlock, the explorer boats waited, clamped tightly to the hull. They were small, light ships that looked like ungainly box kites stripped of their fabric. The explorers were barely more than frames with straps to hang sample containers, or sample gatherers, or astronauts from. They’d been designed for asteroid rendezvous and landing. Margot remembered the sensation of childlike glee when she got to take them in. She loved her work, her mission, her life, but that had been sheer fun.
For a brief moment there, they thought they might be able to use the explorers to tow the Forty-Niner into an orbit that would allow one of the Martian stations to mount a rescue, but Reggie’s models had showed it to be impossible. The delta-vee just wasn’t there. So the explorers sat out there, and she sat in here, along with the core samplers, the drillers, the explosive charges, doing nothing much but waiting to find out what happened next.
Hang on, Margot. Margot. Stay alive one minute longer, and one minute after that. That’s the game now isn’t it? Forget how to play and you’ll be following Paul, Ed and Tracy.
She touched the intercom button so she could hear the static bursts and Tom’s soft murmuring. It reminded her that something really was happening. A little warmth crept into her heart. A little light stirred in her mind. It was something, Tom had said so. It might just be help. Any kind of help.
Small tasks had kept her busy during the two weeks since they lost the sail, and small tasks kept her busy now. She made sure the seals on the ore carriers maintained their integrity. She ran computer checks on the explorers and made sure the fuel cells on the rovers were all at full capacity, that their tanks were charged and the seals were tight. Given the state Reggie was in, she was tempted to put on one of the bright yellow hardsuits and go out to do a manual check. She squashed the idea. She might be needed for something in here.
She counted all the air bottles for the suits and checked their pressure. You never knew. With Reggie acting up, they might have to do an EVA to point the antenna back toward Earth. If this last, strange hope proved to be false, she still hadn’t said good-bye to her fiancé Jordan, and she wanted to. She didn’t want to just leave him in silence.
Reggie’s voice, coming from the intercom, startled her out of her thoughts. “Help,” said Reggie. “Me. Help. Me. We. Thee. Help.”
Margot flew up the connector. She was the last to reach the command module. She hung in the threshold, listening to Reggie blurt out words one at a time.
“There. Is. Help,” said Reggie, clipped and harsh. The words picked up pace. “There is help. Comet. Pull. Tow. Yourself. There is a comet approaching within reach. You can tow yourself toward your worlds using this comet. It is possible. There is help.”
Margot felt her jaw drop open.
Tom looked down at his clipboard. “What Reggie says, what we’ve got here is a binary transmission from an unknown source. Taking the single pulses as ones and the double pulses as zeroes gave us gibberish, but taking the single pulses as zero and the double pulses as one gave us some version of machine language. The engineering expert subsystem was able to decode it.”
He gripped his pen tightly, obviously resisting the urge to throw it in frustration. “This is impossible, this can’t be happening.”
Margot shrugged. “Well, it is.”
“It can’t be,” growled Tom. “Aliens who can create a machine language. Reggie can read inside of four hours? It couldn’t happen.”
“Unless they’ve been listening in on us for awhile,” Jean pointed out.
Tom tapped the pen against the clipboard. One, two, one. “But how …”
Margot cut him off. She didn’t want to hear it anymore. This was help, this was the possibility of life. Why was he trying to screw it up? “We’ve been beaming all kinds of junk out into space for over a hundred years. Maybe they’ve been listening that long.” She felt his doubt dribbling into the corners of her mind. She shut it out by sheer force of will.
Jean folded her arms tightly across her torso. “At this point, I wouldn’t care if it was demons from the seventh circle of Hell, just so long as it’s out here.”
“Jesus,” breathed Nick softly. Then, in a more normal voice he said, “OK, Margot, you and Jean are going to have to do an EVA to turn the antenna around so we can send a burst to Houston.”
“We can’t tell Houston about this,” said Jean sharply.
“What?” demanded Tom.
Jean hugged herself even tighter. “They’d think we’d all gone crazy up here.”
“What’s it matter what they think?” Nick spread his hands. “It’s not like they can do anything about it.”
“They can tell our families we’ve all taken the mental crash,” said Jean flatly. “I, for one, do not want to make this any worse on my parents.”
Nick nodded slowly. “OK,” he said. “We keep this our little secret. But if we do make it back, mission control is going to have a cow.”
Tom looked from Nick to Jean and Margot saw something hard and strange behind his eyes. He faced Margot. “This thing with the comet, could we really do something like this?”
Margot’s mouth opened and closed. A short-period comet, swinging around the sun. If they caught it on its way back in … if they could attach a line (hundreds of kilometers of unused cable coiled on its drum against the hull of the ship) … theoretically, theoretically, it could pull them into a tighter orbit. The stresses would be incredible. Several gs worth. Would they be too much? How to make the attachment? Couldn’t land on a comet, even if the explorers had the delta-vee. Comets were surrounded by dust and debris, they ejected gas jets, ice and rock. Asteroids were one thing. Asteroids were driftwood bobbing along through the void. Comets were alive and kicking.
But maybe … maybe …
“We’d need to find the thing,” she said finally. “We’d need course, distance, speed. We’d need to know if we can use the RCM to push us near enough to take a shot at it. We’d probably need the explorers to do the actual work of attaching the Forty-Niner to the comet …”
“We could use the mag sail,” said Jean. She gnawed slowly on her thumbnail. “All that cable, we could use it as a tow rope. But we’d need a harpoon, or something …”
“A harpoon?” said Tom incredulously.
Jean just nodded. “To attach the tether to the comet. Maybe we could use some of the explosives …”
Nick smiled, just a little. For the first time in days, Margot saw the muscles of his face relax. “Jean, let’s get down to engineering and see what we can work up. Tom, you and Margot find our comet.” His smile broadened. “And keep an ear out in case the neighbors have more to say.”
“No problem,” said Margot. She raised her arm and whistled. “Taxi!”
Jean, an old New Yorker, actually laughed at that, and Margot grinned at her.
Nick and Jean pulled themselves down the connector. Margot planted her feet on the velcro patch next to Tom.
“Let’s see if we can still get to the database,” she said, as she reached over his shoulder for the keys. “We should be able to narrow down …”
Tom did not lift his gaze from the screen. “It’s a fake, Margot,” he whispered.
Margot’s hand froze halfway to the keyboard. “What?”
“Little green men my ass,” he spat toward the console. “It’s a fake. It’s Nick. He’s doing this to try to keep us going.”
Margot felt the blood drain from her cheeks, and the hope from her heart. “How do you know?”
“I know.” For the first time Tom looked at her. “He’d do anything right now to keep us in line, to keep giving orders, just so it doesn’t look like he’s out of options like the rest of us mere mortals.”
Margot looked at his wide, angry blue eyes and saw the man she’d served with swallowed up by another stranger. “You got proof?”
Tom shook his head, but the certainty on his face did not waver. “I checked the logs for gaps, suspicious entries, virus tracks, extra encryptions. Nothing. Nobody on this ship could have made an invisible insertion, except me, or Nick.”
“Unless it’s not an insertion,” said Margot. “Unless it’s really a signal.”
Tom snorted and contempt filled his soft words. “Now you’re talking like Jean. She hasn’t been with it since Ed went. Be real, Margot. If E.T.’s out there, why isn’t he knocking on the door? Why’s he sending cryptic messages about comets instead of offering us a lift?”
“It’s aliens, I don’t know,” Margot spread her hands. “Maybe they’re methane breathers. Maybe they’re too far away. Space is big. Maybe they want to see if we can figure it out for our selves to see if we’re worthy for membership in the Galactic Federation.”
Tom’s face twitched and Margot got the feeling he was suppressing a sneer. “OK, if it’s aliens, how come I was able to figure out what they were saying so fast? They have a NASA Machine Language for Dummies book with them?”
Margot threw up her hands. “If Nick was faking this, why would he insist on a comm burst to mission control?”
Tom’s jaw worked back and forth. “Because it’d look funny if he didn’t and he knew Jean’d object and give him an out. She might even be in on it with him.”
Margot clenched her fists. “It’s a chance, Tom. It’s even a decent chance, if we work the simulations right. It doesn’t matter where the idea came from …”
“It does matter!” he whispered hoarsely. “It matters that we’re being used. It matters that he doesn’t trust us to hear him out so he’s got to invent alien overlords.”
“So, report him when we get home,” said Margot, exasperation filling her breathy exclamation.
“We’re not going to get home,” Tom slammed his fist against the console. “We’re going to die. This is all a stupid game to keep us from killing ourselves too soon. He’s determined we are not going to die until he’s good and ready.”
Margot leaned in close, until she could see every pore in Tom’s bloodless white cheeks.
“You listen to me,” she breathed. “You want to kill yourself? Hit the sick bay. I’m sure Paul left behind something you can O.D. on. Maybe you’re right, maybe how we go out is the only choice left. But I think we can use the delta-vee from the comet to tow us into a tighter orbit. I’m going to try, and I may die trying, but that’s
my choice. What are you going to do? Which part of that stubborn idiot head are you going to listen too? Huh?” She grabbed his collar. “If it is Nick doing this, I agree, it’s a stupid ploy. But so what? It’s the first good idea we’ve had in over a month. Are you going to let your pride kill you?”
Tom swatted her hand away. “I am not going to let him treat me like a fool or a child.”
Tom lifted up first one foot then the other. He twisted in the air and swam toward the connector. Margot hung her head and let him go.
Give him some time to stew and then go after him. She planted herself squarely in front of his station. “Reggie?”
“Functioning,” replied the AI.
“We need to do some speculation here,” she rubbed her forehead. “I need you to pull up any databases we’ve got on comets. Specifically I need any that are passing within a thousand kilometers of the Forty-Niner’s projected position anytime within the next several months.”
A static burst sounded from the speaker as if Reggie were coughing. “Several is not specific.”
“Six months then. Add in the possibility of a full or partial RCM burn for course correction to bring us within the cometary path. Can you do that?”
Two more quick bursts. “I can try,” said Reggie.
That’s all any of us can do right now.
“Searching.”
Margot sat back to wait. She listened to the hum of the ship and the sound of her own breathing. No other sounds. She couldn’t hear Nick and Jean down in engineering. She couldn’t hear Tom anywhere. Worry spiked in the back of her mind. What if he was taking the quick way out? What if he was angry enough to take Nick out instead?
No, she shook her head. Tom’s just on edge. They’re friends.
Were they? She remembered the stranger looking out of Tom’s eyes. Would that stranger recognize Nick? Would Nick recognize him? She glanced nervously over her shoulder. No one floated in the connector. She looked back at the screen. Reggie had a list up—names, orbital parameters, current locations, sizes, with an option to display orbital plots and position relative to the Forty-Niner. Highlighted at the top was Comet Kowalski-Rice.
Sounds like a breakfast cereal. Margot glanced over her shoulder again. The connector was still empty. The ship was still silent.
Kowalski-Rice was a periodic comet, with a nucleus estimated to be three kilometers long and between one and three kilometers wide. It had passed its aphelion and was headed back toward the Sun. Right now it was 2.9 million kilometers from the Forty-Niner, but it was getting closer. Margot brought up the orbital plot and did a quick calculation.
We burn fifty … OK say sixty to be on the safe side, percent of the remaining propellant we can bring our orbit within seven hundred-fifty kilometers of the comet. Take about … She ran the equations in her head. She could double check them with Reggie or Nick, whoever turned out to be more reliable. Bring us there in about a hundred and fifty-nine hours, with the comet going approximately two kilometers per second relative to the ship. This could work. This could work.
Silence, except for the steady hum of the ship and her own breathing.
Margot swore. This is no good. “Reggie? Do you know where Tom is?”
“Tom Merritt is in the sick bay.”
“No!” Margot yanked both feet up and kicked off the console. “Nick! Jean!” she shouted. “Sick bay! Now!”
She reached sick bay first. She wrenched the wheel around and threw the hatch open. A little red sphere drifted out toward her face. Margot swatted at it reflexively and it broke against her hand, scattering dark red motes in a dozen directions.
Tom had fastened himself to the examining table and sliced his throat. Clouds of burgundy bubbles rose from his neck, knocking against a pair of scissors and sending them spinning.
“Tom!” Margot dove forward and pressed her fingers against his wound. Panting, she tried to think back to her emergency medical training. Dark red, not bright, oozing, not spurting, missed the carotid artery, cut a bunch of veins … Tom, you idiot, you’re so far gone you can’t even kill yourself right.
Events blurred. It seemed like Nick, Jean and Reggie were all shouting at once. A pad got shoved into her hand to help staunch the blood. The table was tilted to elevate his head. Reggie droned on clear and concise directions for covering the long, thin wound with layered sealants. Nick’s and Jean’s hands shook as they worked. Blood and tears stung Margot’s eyes. When they were done, Tom was still strapped to the table, unconscious and dead white, but breathing. The medical ex-system was obviously still working. Reggie had no problem reading from the various pads and probes they had stuck to him. It was giving him good odds on survival, despite the blood loss.
“Let’s get out of here,” said Nick. “We can vacuum this up when we’ve had a chance to catch our breath.”
Jean didn’t argue, she just headed for the hatch. Margot had the distinct feeling she wanted to crawl into a corner and be quietly sick.
Margot followed Nick and Jean out and swung the hatch shut. She wanted to be able to talk without getting a mouthful of blood.
“God,” Nick ran both hands through his hair. “I cannot believe it, I cannot believe he did this.” Unfamiliar indecision showed on his face. Margot turned her gaze away. Another stranger. Just one more. Like Tom, like the others.
No! she wanted to scream. Not you. I know you! You recommended me for this mission. You have a great poker face and you sing country-western so loud in the shower the soundproofing can’t keep it in! You keep all the stats on your kids sports teams displayed as the default screen on your handheld! Your wife’s the only woman you’ve ever been with! I know Nicholas Alexander Deale!
But she did not know the person torn with weariness, anger and doubt who looked out of Nick’s eyes. The one who might be a liar on a scale she’d never imagined. How long before that stranger took Nick completely over?
Margot looked at Jean. Blood splotched her face, hands, hair and coveralls. Fear haunted her bruised-looking eyes. Fear brought the stranger. Jean would go next. The stranger would have them all. Tom was right. They were all dead. Only the strangers and Margot Rusch lived.
“What is it, Margot?” asked Nick.
What do I say? Which “it” do I pick? Who let the stranger into Tom? Me or you? She licked her lips. Well, it does not get me. It does not get me.
“Nothing.” Margot grabbed a handhold and pulled herself toward the command center. “I’m going to find that comet.”
After all, that was what the strangers wanted her to do. She had to do what they said. If she didn’t … look what they did to Tom. Who knew what they’d do to her?
They do not get me.
“Here it comes, Margot,” the voice that used to be Nick’s crackled through her helmet’s intercom.
Margot turned in her straps, and there it came. Actually, Kowalski-Rice had been visible to the naked eye for the past two days. The comet was ungainly and beautiful at the same time. A dirty snowball tumbling through the darkness surrounded by a sparkling well fit for an angel’s bride. It was huge—a living, shining island, coal black and ice white. Margot’s hands tightened on the twin joy sticks that were the directional control for the explorer.
They had planned the maneuver out so carefully and modeled it so thoroughly. She had to give the strangers who walked as Nick and Jean credit. They were very good at what they did.
Jean’s stranger had cobbled together the “harpoon” from drill shafts, explosives and hope. The grappling shaft had a timed explosive mounted on it and a solid propellant shell around it. When Margot pulled the pin, the propellant would ignite and burn for one minute to drive the harpoon to the comet. At one minute ten seconds the explosive would blow, driving the barbed head deep into the comet’s hide. It had taken all of them to unwind and detach the mag sail cable from the drum and then rewind it, as if they were reeling in a gigantic fishing line. The very end of that cable had been welded to the harpoon using all the vacuum glue and tape Jean’s stranger could lay her hands on. Jean’s stranger had spent hours out on the hull, readjusting the tension on the cable drum so the pay out would be smooth.
Margot would launch the harpoon into the comet. The cable would pay out. Once the harpoon struck, the friction of the cable unwinding against the barrel would accelerate the Forty-Niner, and Margot in the explorer, which was tethered to the Forty-Niner by the cables that used to be the shroud lines for the mag sail. The more the cable unwound, the faster the ships would accelerate. Finally, the cable would run out. The comet would shoot forward with its leash trailing behind it, and the Forty-Niner and the strangers would fly free toward an areobraking rendezvous with Mars, and a rescue by NASA.
At least, that’s what they said would happen. They might be lying. There was no way to tell. But if Margot refused to go along, they’d probably just kill her. She had to play. She had to act like she believed they were who they said they were. It was her only chance.
She tried to tell herself it didn’t matter. She tried to believe what she’d told Tom, who they still, miraculously, let live, that it didn’t matter who’d come up with the idea—aliens, the strangers, it didn’t matter. If Nick and Jean, and Tracy and Ed, and Paul and even Tom finally were overcome by the strangers, it didn’t really matter. What mattered was getting home. If she could get home, she could warn everyone.
But first she had to get home. She, Margot Rusch, had to get home.
“Better get ready, Margot,” said Nick’s stranger. “It’s all on you.”
So it is. And you hate that, don’t you? I could mess up all your plans and you know it, but you can’t get me. Not out here you can’t.
Margot squeezed the stick, goosing the engine. Silently, her little frame ship angled to starboard, sliding gingerly closer to the wandering mountain of coal black ice and stone. Behind her, the three shining silver tethers that attached the explorer to the Forty-Niner paid out into the darkness.
She gave the comet’s path a wide berth, but not so wide that she couldn’t see how it lumbered, turning and shuddering as sparkling jets shot off its pocked hide.
I can do this. How many asteroids did we skirt? They were all falling too.
But not like this. She imagined the comet hissing and rumbling as it dashed forward. They’re making me do this. They don’t care if I die.
Black specks dusted her visor. She wiped at them. She glanced behind to see that the tethers were moving smoothly. The comet was almost in front of her. Black ice, black stone and the sparkling white coma surmounted the darkness.
Suddenly, the rover shuddered and Margot jerked in her straps. A stone careened off the frame ship and shot past her head.
That was a warning shot. That was them … No, no, they can’t get me out here, but the comet can. Keep your mind on the comet, Margot. Don’t think about them.
The Forty-Niner was below and behind her now. The comet was receding. The coma filled the vacuum, shining like a snow blowing in the sunlight. Margot pitched the rover up and around, until the comet was flying away from her, but she was not in the thick of its tail.
For a moment, she was nothing but a pilot and she smiled.
Perfect deflection shot. Fire this baby right up its tailpipe.
The strangers had mounted the harpoon on the explorer’s fore starboard landing strut and attached the launch pin to the console. Margot fumbled for the thick, metal pin and its trailing wire.
Well, just call me Ishmael, she thought, suppressing a giggle. There she is, Captain Ahab! There be the great white whale!
“Margot …” began Nick’s stranger.
“Don’t push,” she snapped. Don’t push. I might decide not to do this.
I could. I could not do this. I could leave the strangers out here. Never have to bring them home. Never have to hurt my friends’ families by showing them what’s happened.
But I want to go home. Forgive me, Carol. Margot Rusch has to get home.
Margot grit her teeth. Ice crystals drifted past her. The comet retreated on its lumbering path, inanimate, or at least oblivious of their presence and their need.
Margot pulled the pin on the harpoon.
The recoil vibrated through the frame. The harpoon shot forward, hard, fast and straight. The tether vanished into the thick of the coma, lost in the shining veil of ice.
A jet of ice crystals exploded into the night. The comet rolled away as if wounded. The tethers on their reel played out into the void. Margot bit her lip. The tether was the key. If it released too fast, got tangled, or broke, it was over, all of it.
“Margot! Report!” demanded Nick’s stranger.
“Tether holding steady,” replied Margot reflexively. “Pay out looks good.”
You’ll get home. To Nick’s home. That’s what you care about.
The explorer shuddered. A sudden intense cold burned Margot’s shin. A red warning light flashed on her visor screen.
No!
A black gash cut across her gleaming yellow suit. The joints at knee and ankle sealed off automatically. Margot fumbled for the roll of sealant tape on her belt. As she did, the explorer began to slide backward, away from the comet, toward the Forty-Niner to the limit of the tether. The movement dragged her back against her straps. Her glove gripped the tape reel. Pain bit deep.
Hang on, hang on. Lose the tape and you’re gone. You’re all gone. The stranger’ll have you if you lose the tape.
The tug grew stronger. Margot felt her body shoved backward to the limits of its straps. A weight pressed hard against her ribs, her throat, her heart. After years of zero g, the acceleration gripped her hard and squeezed until her breath came fast and shallow.
Ahead of her, the Forty-Niner began to swing. A slow, sinuous movement that transmitted itself along the tether. It pulled the explorer to starboard, tilting her personal world, confusing her further, adding to the pain that screamed through every nerve.
Slowly, slowly she pulled the roll of tape from her belt. She grasped it in both clumsy, gloved hands. The explorer shimmied. Her body bounced up, then down, hard enough to jar her. The tape slipped. Margot screamed involuntarily and clung to it so hard she felt the flimsy reel crumple.
“Margot?” Jean’s stranger. “Margot? What’s happening?”
“Don’t unstrap!” came back Nick’s stranger. “Jean, stay where you are.”
Right, right. Why risk anything for me? I’m not a stranger.
She leaned forward as if leaning into a gale wind. Black spots danced in front of her vision. She saw red through the gash, as if her leg glowed with its pain. She jounced and shuddered. More hits. The explorer was taking more hits from cometary debris. She couldn’t steady her hands enough to lay down the tape.
Margot bit her lip until she tasted blood. She pressed the tape reel against the black gash, pushed the release button down and pulled, hard. A strip of clean white tape covered the black scoring.
The red light on her suit display turned green and the joints unsealed. Her suit was whole again.
Margot let herself fall backward, gasping for air, gasping for calm against the pain. Her left leg from ankle to knee would be one gigantic blood blister. But she was alive. The stranger hadn’t got her yet. She hugged the tape to her chest. The Forty-Niner started swinging slowly back to port. Gravity leaned hard against her. Her heart labored, as if trying to pump sideways. Her stomach heaved. Her whole body strained against the straps.
She closed her eyes and tried to reach outward with every nerve, trying to feel the clamps and catches as she could her fingers and toes, wishing she could hear something, anything, a straining, a snapping. All there was was silence and the unbearable pressure driving her ribs into her lungs.
“Forty-Niner to Explorer One.” Nick’s stranger. What did he want? To find out if her stranger had swallowed her yet?
Not yet, Sir. Not yet.
“Margot? Margot, it looks like you’re venting something. Report.”
Venting? Margot’s gaze jerked down to the monitor between her flight sticks. Red lights flashed. She didn’t need to read the message. The diagram showed everything. The methane tank had been hit and all her fuel was streaming out into the void, leaving nothing at all for her to use to guide the explorer back to Forty-Niner.
She was stuck. She would hang out here.until her air ran out. She was dead all over again.
All at once, the vibrations ceased. She was flying smooth and free, gliding like a bird on a sea wind with only the most gentle roll to perturb her flight.
“We have tether release!” cried Jean’s stranger.
Margot looked up. A silver line lashed through the clean, sparkling white of the coma.
Tether release. They’d done it. It had worked. The strangers were all on their way home. She looked again at her her own fountain of crystals streaming out behind her, a comet’s tail in miniature.
That roll’ll get worse. They’ll have to correct for it. They’ll have to fire the rockets and catch me in the blast and tell Jordan and mission control how sorry they were.
Nick’s stranger spoke to her again. “Margot, we gotta get you in here. If your fuel’s gone, can you haul on the tether? Margot?”
“She’s not receiving, Nick. The headset must be out. I gotta get down there.”
All gone. Nothing to do. Pain throbbed in her head, crowding out her thoughts.
“Margot, pull!”
She couldn’t move. Pain, bright and sharp, burned through her. All she could do was watch the crystal stream of her fuel drift away into the vacuum.
Margot Rusch is dead.
“Margot! Answer me! Pull, Margot!”
She’s been dead for weeks.
“Come on, Margot. I got a green on your headset. Now answer me, damnit!”
The stranger wins. She got Margot Rusch after all.
“She didn’t even get a chance to say good-by to Jordan. That’s the bad part,” she murmured.
“Margot?” came back the voice of Nick’s stranger. “Margot, this is Nick. We’re receiving you. Acknowledge.”
Why are they still calling her Margot? They must know the stranger had her by now. She would have liked to know the stranger’s name. Maybe she wouldn’t mind burning to ash when they fire the correction burst. Margot Rusch certainly wouldn’t mind. Margot Rusch was dead.
The explorer jerked. Mildly curious, Margot looked toward the Forty-Niner A figure in a bright yellow hard-suit leaned out of the ship’s airlock. Its hands hauled on the tethers, as if they were hauling on curtain cords. The Forty-Niner drew minutely closer and the pair of ships began to spin ever so gently around their common center. Margot felt herself leaning the straps.
“Margot Rusch!” Nick’s voice. Nick’s stranger? A quick burst fired from the Forty-Niner’s port nozzle. The spin slowed.
“Margot Rusch, wake up, you stupid fly-jock and pull!” Jean now. Jean’s stranger? Jean’s stranger trying to save Margot Rusch’s stranger?
Jean trying to save her? But she was dead, as dead as Ed and Paul and Tracy and Tom.
No, not Tom. Tom’s still alive.
What if I’m still alive?
Cold and pain inched up her leg and emptied into her knee, her thigh. Her head spun. Readings flashed in the corner of her helmet. The suit had sealed itself. Blood pressure was elevated, respiration fast, shallow, pulse elevated. Recommend termination of EVA.
“Margot Rusch, help her get your butt back in here!” shouted Nick.
Margot leaned as far forward as the straps would let her. Her gloved fingers grappled with the tether and snared some of the slack. Margot pulled. The Forty-Niner came a little closer. The suited figure became a little clearer.
“I knew you were still with us!” cried Jean, jubilantly. “Come on, Margot. Pull!”
Margot pulled. Her arms strained, her joints ached. Her suit flashed red warnings. The Forty-Niner moved closer. The spin tried to start, but another burst from the engines stalled it out again. Margot’s breath grew harsh and echoing in the con- . fining helmet. Her lungs burned. The cold pain reached her hip and started a new path down her fingers. The Forty-Niner filled her world now, its white skin, its instrumentation, its black stenciled letters and registry numbers.
And Jean. She could see Jean now, hauling on the tether as if it was her life depending on it. She could even see her eyes. Her eyes and herself, her soul, looking
out through them. Margot knew if she looked at Nick she would see him too. Not strangers, not anymore. Maybe not ever.
They had done what they had done. Maybe Nick had faked that message, maybe they’d had help from unknown friends. They’d sort it all out when they got home. What mattered now was that they would get home, all of them, as they were. Not strangers, just themselves.
Margot grabbed up another length of tether and pulled.