James Gardner - Space Inc (collection)

“How about a pillow over here, George?” asked the VIP, a handsome man in his late thirties wearing a fashionable high-collared smart-suit. His thin, sandy curls topped a generous forehead and lanternlike hazel eyes that inspired confidence and comfort. He lounged comfortably in a high-back, obviously aware he was the only customer on board. Peter had recognized him earlier as Haniel Elias, one of the new fast-track VPs with the Space-Rail Company. A real Rocket Scientist, as the Boomers called them. Elias specialized in traffic flow optimization and, according to rumor, had a true love for railroading that originated with an HO-scale model train set given to him as a child.

Elias had risen quickly through the ranks, unusually well-liked for management in a company that adhered to an inflexible and feudal hierarchical structure. It was widely recognized that Elias’ next stop on the Company line was likely to be a corner office with a view. The exec to one day rewrite The Book.

“One pillow, Mr. Elias, sir,” Peter responded, passing a hand across a hidden touch plate in the side of Elias’ lounger. A drawer broke free of the grain and slid out to offer a corpulent bleached cotton pillow nested atop a fluffy aquamarine blanket.

“I’ll get that, George,” Elias offered, reaching over for the pillow. He moved surprisingly quickly and easily in the zero G.

“Please, sir, it’s my duty and my pleasure.” Peter stayed Elias’ hand. He snapped the pillow up, flipped it through the air with a flourish, and landed it comfortably behind Elias’ head. The maneuver was Peter’s one guilty deviation from The Book, an innovation on his training that he found entertained most customers. On this occasion, however, and in the presence of a Company VIP, Peter regretted its use immediately.

“That’s a new one,” said Elias. “I don’t quite recall that trick from The Book.”

“Begging your pardon, sir, I hadn’t intended to—”

“No, no, don’t apologize, just keep it up. The Book calls for an enjoyable experience, and I quite enjoyed that. Don’t worry so much about The Book, George.”

“Thank you, sir, I—”

A high tone and vibration from his PDA-corn interrupted Peter’s relief. It was a priority from Kianga. Peter quickly excused himself from Elias and returned to the privacy of his porter’s cubicle to answer her.

“How may I be of assistance?” Peter spoke calmly, even though his heart raced. It was the first time he had received such a call from Kianga or any other engineer.

“We’ve got a serious problem here, George,” Kianga’s speech was short and pressured. “I need you face-to-face on this one.”

“I’ll come forward, then.”

“No, I’m coming back.”

“I’m moving forward.” The com transmits Peter’s heavy breathing to Kianga as well as any speech. He starts to hand-cross the gap between the Creemore and engine roofs.

“Watch out for the cowcatcher,” Kianga warns unnecessarily. Peter easily spots the cowcatcher retracted on the ’Six-Four’s roof ahead. Too dangerous to climb over, Peter reaches for a handhold down the engine’s side, then pivots his legs over. In zero G, a side is as good as a roof.

Peter can hear the PLS straining against the moist exertion of his breath—every desperate droplet trapped, extracted, and recycled by the sublimator, eliminated before escape, unable to mount even a fog against his visor.

Peter negotiates the length of the ’Six-Four’s engine car and corners its flattened nose surface. As untouchable as Kianga’s own.

“I can see you now; you’re doing fine,” Kianga says in an obvious and futile attempt to find conversation.

Grooves in the sides of the ’Six-Four’s nose form paths for the cowcatcher armatures and provide Peter with handholds. He pivots off one to spin into position, helmet down, over the track.

Rail ties whip silently past Peter, paint traveling in flashes of horizontal light down his visor, like a television out of tune. They are Peter’s only hint at true velocity. He reaches under the engine’s belly, careful not to drop into the guillotine-like ties.

Peter finds nothing until a recess allows his shelled fingers to curl around the locking ring on the brake box access panel. “I’m on the box,” he tells Kianga in a voice strange and distant even to himself. “The external shielding’s gone.”

“Damn it! We’re running out of track. We’ve got to stop her soon, or she’ll go crashing through the next workstation with or without her brakes.” Kianga’s voice seems to strain desperately to escape Peter’s helmet.

Peter’s head hovers centimeters over slicing track ties. He examines the brake box access panel—one half meter squared, surrounding the thick central locking ring. Peter rotates the ring counterclockwise in seeming slow motion.

Locking pins transmit retraction clacks to Peter’s glove and the door slides open. Inside, rows of status LEDs iterate wildly around a thickly shielded cable that snakes through a dense landscape of ICs and magneto-ceramic devices. Peter knows their condition without consulting Kianga: a fused EM circuit, brakes locked open.

A single button switch glows a failing amber heartbeat from the center of the board. Peter points a gloved finger in its direction.

“Sir,” Peter croaks hoarsely, “I’m going to degauss the magnetos now…”

Peter holds what little breath he has left and reaches for the switch.

“Damned cowcatcher’s fused the brake mags open. We’ve got a runaway,” Kianga’s voice remained even, but cracks blasted into the skin of her forehead.

“Sir?” Peter had never experienced a runaway outside of simulation before; he found himself hoping Kianga had.

“I knew we shouldn’t have skipped that checkout,” fumed Kianga. “Damn their orders. I should have held to The Book and told them to stoke their orders down their shafts.”

Unlike Kianga, the train betrayed no sign of distress and continued to coast happily at its virtually constant velocity.

“I’ve tried everything in The Book,” she continued. “A control system reboot, cutting power to the mags, even a manual interrupt from inside the floor panels.”

“What if we cut power to the drive wheels?” suggested Peter.

“Done, but the impact’s negligible since we’re effectively frictionless in zero G space. Worse, the drive wheels are nonreversible. We’ll need real brakes.”

Peter understood now. Kianga hadn’t come to him for advice or counsel, she had come in search of a body. She had come for a Brakeman.

“I’ll have to go out and screw the brakes down, then,” Peter said. The Book offered one solution only, in situations such as this: a manual degauss of the brake mags, a procedure requiring a crew member to engage in an extravehicular activity. A fatal extravehicular activity.

“I’ve explored every option in The Book,” said Kianga. Peter trusted that she had. The Book was her guide and personal Bible, as much as it was his own. Its rules were not only law, but a way of life.

“One of us will have to go,” Kianga went on, much to Peter’s surprise. By The Book, rank, capability, and expend-ability determined who would go. That generally meant the porter and clearly pointed to Peter in this case. What’s more, as a Defect, Peter was not only more expendable to the Company, he was more expendable as a human being. It had got Peter his job, and Kianga knew it. Why wasn’t she directly ordering him out on the EVA as she should have, as she normally would have? By The Book.

Peter’s finger-shell finds the surface of the degausser switch. Just a matter of force now. A little pressure and the switch will activate, the brakes will demagnetize and close, and the train will decelerate to a crushing stop. But Peter won’t. The force of the decel will tear Peter’s grip from the engine and send him into space as it tries to transfer its momentum.