Zach Hughes: Pressure Man

J.J. indicated a chair in front of his desk. Dom sat down, leaning his crutch on the chair. There was a hiss and a low rumble as a Wockshield closed down around the desk area, putting the two of them in an impenetrable shell.

“You have problems even here?” Dom asked.

“I’m often accused of being overcautious,” J.J. said, “but the last time I visited the White House the media had the details of the discussion before I was back at my hotel.”

“Name dropper,” Dom said. He wiggled, trying to ease the weight off his sore rear.

“Flash,” J.J. said, “you’re just in from Mars. What was your cargo?”

“Phosphates,” Dom said. He knew that J.J. was aware of his ship’s cargo, but J.J. had to work up to things. He’d always been methodical.

“Agricultural phosphates,” J.J. said.

“Right.”

“And the trip before this one?”

“The same.”

“Do you ever think about that?” J.J. asked.

“Not a helluva lot,” Dom said.

“Why not a cargo of carbocrystals?” J.J. asked. “Or refined platinum? Or gold, or radioactives, or even petroleum?”

“I don’t place orders for cargo,” Dom said. “If you’re trying to give me a lesson in the dynamics of supply and demand, I know why we carry water out to Mars and carry phosphates back. Mars doesn’t have enough water and you don’t have enough food. You’ve let the topsoil wash into the oceans and you’ve ruined what’s left by force farming.”

“I don’t like your choice of pronouns,” J.J. said. “You. You, yourself, had nothing to do with using up Earth’s resources?”

“I voted for forced family planning in ’90,” Dom said. “That was the first time I was old enough to vote. I had common sense even at such a tender age. The rest of you didn’t.”

“I won’t bother to claim kinship by telling you that I, too, voted for family planning,” J.J. said. “It’s enough to say that the rest of the world didn’t.” He looked at Dom thoughtfully. “The man who tried to burn you was a Publicrat, of course.”

“Worldsaver?”

“Party affiliation is public record. Membership in radical and terrorist organizations is not. I would guess either Worldsaver or Earthfirster. The latter, I suspect, since they’re becoming a bit more bloody lately.”

“Which party leader was he registered under?” Dom asked.

“Our own lovable senator. The gentleman from New Mexico.”

“Do you have any ideas yet why he selected me?”

“Not officially. There’s nothing on paper to connect you with me or any aspect of DOSE other than the Spacearm. However, in the eyes of the Earthfirsters, any man coming into DOSEWEX is a high-priority target. It’s likely that the DOSE vehicle was enough to make you a target. They’re getting less and less selective. Just being a spacer is enough to get you killed.”

“I know that. I’m used to spending my time in a guarded enclave while I’m on dear old mother Earth.”

“And all you want to do is get back into space,” J.J. said.

“You know it.”

“It’s going to take a while,” J.J. said. “You’re being pulled off Spacearm duty and assigned here.”

“Thanks for nothing,” Dom said.

Barnes unlocked a desk drawer and put a player on the top of the desk. “I guess it’s time,” he said. “We’ve edited out the time lapse between dialogue.” He pushed a button.

The sound of deep space filled the room. There was the familiar hiss and crackle of the big emptiness and a wave of homesickness hit Dom as he leaned forward. The voices were calm and professional, the voices of spacers, good at their work, a long way from home, linked to Earth only by fragile radio waves.

“ Houston Control, this is Callisto Explorer. Zero-nine-three-five hours CSET. Do you read ?”

“ Go ahead Callisto Explorer.”

“Houston, request check of vehicles in area 1-77-343. Repeat. Request check of all vehicles in area 1-77-343.”

“ Hold one , Callisto Explorer. Stand by , Callisto Explorer. V.K. ship Queen Anne is nearest you, beyond your instruments at 186 degrees relative reference point two-seven-Baker. V.S.S.R. exploration ship Khrushchev relative your position 313 degrees reference point two-nine-Baker .”

“ Houston , Callisto Explorer. Request check bearing relative our position zero-nine-seven, reference point three-three-Charlie. Do you copy ?”

“ Got you , Callisto. Hold one. Nothing there but empty space .”

“Houston, unless your computer is fouled up, there’s a bogie out there.”

“Callisto Explorer, repeat please .”

“Houston, we’ve got a bogie. Closing on the orbit of Jupiter. Estimated speed one hundred thousand miles per second. Repeat, estimated speed one hundred thousand miles per second. Mass estimated at three-zero-zero-zero tons. Repeat, three-zero-zero-zero tons. Houston, we are tracking. Bogie on collision course with planetary mass. E.T.A, outer atmosphere four hours twenty-three minutes.”

“Callisto Explorer, are you filming ?”

“ That is affirmative. We are filming. Is that you, Paul? Listen, this thing is really something. Hold it. Hold one. Yes, we now have visual. Whats that, Dell? Let me see. Jesus, that bastard is big. Houston? Put this baby on the ground and you could lay your football fields inside her length. Estimated length, four-zero-zero yards. Profile cylindrical, tapered at both ends. No visible blast. Possible thrusters at rear. She’s closing fast.”

“Callisto Explorer, where is your bogie now ?”

“She’s going to pass behind the planet relative to us in approximately five minutes, Houston. Hold it. Dell, did you see what I saw? Houston, there was some sort of activity aboard the bogie. A glow. It showed on our visual and on the heat scopes. Front and relative the planet. Possible braking activity. Yes, she’s slowed slightly. Houston, she slowed faster than is possible. She took off fifty percent of her speed in ten seconds. We’re losing her now, Houston. She’s getting fuzzy because of the atmosphere. She’s not going straight in, but is approaching in an orbital posture. She’s fading now and we’re getting nothing but the planet.”

Dom was sitting on the edge of his chair. He felt an atavistic crawling at the nape of his neck as his hair tried to stand up in an age-old response to the unknown. His pulse rate was up and he was breathing fast.

“Interesting?” J.J. asked, with a wry smile.

“What’s a bogie?” Dom asked, not familiar with the term but knowing without doubt that it had been used to refer to an unidentified ship of gargantuan proportions.

“It’s antique slang used by some of the exploration ships,” J.J. said. “It goes all the way back to the wars of the last century. I looked it up once. There was a fellow named Bogart who played bad men in filmed melodramas. They called him Bogie. In the air wars an enemy fighter was a bad guy, a bogie.”

“This ship out there, how do you know it’s a bogie, a bad guy?”

“We don’t. Later on in time the term came to be applied to any unidentified flying object.”

“And is this one still unidentified?” Dom asked.

“Yes.”

“It went into the atmosphere of Jupiter?”

“Yes. Two months ago Callisto Explorer was pulled off her mission and sent into Jupiter orbit, closer than we’ve been before. It was almost too close. They used too much fuel getting out of the gravity well and we had to send a rescue ship from Mars. We’ll get them, but they’re still in space.”

“The ship came from outside the system,” Dom said.