Филип Керр - The Second Angel

Inside his helmet Gates felt a bead of sweat roll down his face and onto his lips. It tasted of salt. But was the taste real, or synthetic?

‘Incoming transmission,’ said Lenina.

‘This is the First National Blood Bank at Descartes Crater,’ said the voice. ‘You are approaching a restricted area. Please turn left onto a heading of one-zero-zero, and increase your altitude to two thousand feet.’

‘Negative to that, Descartes,’ said Gates. ‘We have an ATL emergency here. Requesting permission to land.’

‘Permission denied. I repeat, this is a restricted area. Without proper authorization you cannot ATL here. Our landing area is laid with antispacecraft mines.’

The RLV shuddered as Gates tried to hold her steady.

‘I’m not talking about a flat tire, Descartes,’ he yelled. ‘We are venting air. Repeat, we are venting air. We’re coming down with or without your permission. Passing you by is not an option. We’ll have to take our chances with your mines.’

‘Pressure still building in those thruster tanks,’ Lenina said coolly.

‘If we close the valves, we won’t even make it as far as Descartes,’ Gates shouted back at her.

‘It’s that, or blow up,’ she told him.

‘Shunt some of the propellant into the main fuel tanks. Jesus Christ, do I have to think of everything?’

‘Shunting propellant.’

With his hands gripping the armrests of his seat, Dallas glanced out of the flight-deck window. He could see the main facility in front of them now — like a gold coin lost on a volcanic beach. ‘There it is,’ he said. ‘Dead ahead.’

‘Dead’s about right, unless we get permission to land,’ said Gates, as he swallowed deeply. This was proving to be much more realistic than he had ever bargained for. His heart was beating as if he’d run up several flights of stairs. Even if they did receive the Descartes computer’s permission to land, bringing the Mariner down wasn’t going to be easy. With each touch of the flight stick the RLV pitched from side to side.

‘Mariner, please transmit all flight data and CVRs for verification of your emergency situation.’

‘Now you’re talking,’ said Lenina. This was what they had been waiting to hear, and she immediately ordered the flight computers to comply. ‘Sending flight data and CVRs.’

‘Received,’ said Descartes. ‘And analyzing.’

‘Make it fast,’ said Gates as he wrestled to control the unwieldy craft. ‘We’re committed to an ATL whether you like it or not.’ He throttled back the main engines to less than 10 percent of power and dropped the undercarriage. They were losing altitude fast now. The landing area was less than a mile away. In just over a minute they would be down on the ground, whatever the computer decided.

‘Descartes, this is Mariner. What is our landing status?’

There was no reply on his headset. Less than half a mile now. He glimpsed the whole facility ahead, golden in the sunlight, like the lost city of El Dorado.

‘Thirty seconds to landing,’ said Lenina.

The Mariner shuddered again.

‘I wish I could control this damned roll,’ said Gates. ‘Damn it, Descartes, what is our status please?’

Still no reply. Gates was starting to wonder what it might feel like to be blown to pieces in a simulation. He knew you could experience great pleasure — he’d had enough Simsex in his time to know the truth of that — so why not great pain, too?

‘Hang on, everyone,’ he said into his mike. ‘We’re going down.’ The strain of the moment was in his voice for everyone, including the computer, to hear. A hundred yards to go and still no answer. ‘Is there anyone there? Please, someone.’

Even as he spoke, he recognized the futility of his words. The facility at the First National was unmanned. Descartes was all there was. It was just a computer between them and simulated oblivion.

‘Here we go...’

‘Mariner, you are clear to ATL. All mines have been disarmed.’

Gates did not reply. It was too late to say anything at all. The landing site rushed up at him and was obliterated by the RLV’s giant shadow. The next second they were down on the ground with a loud bang, like the sound of a fast-moving truck hitting an enormous bump in the road. Quickly, Gates hit the engine stop button and said, ‘Shutting down engines.’ Then he collapsed back in his seat, already exhausted.

Lenina started to go through the checklist that automatically followed any landing. Gates turned around to look at Dallas. The two men grinned at each other and exchanged a punched handshake in silence.

‘Descartes, this is Mariner,’ said Lenina. ‘We’re on the ground.’

‘Mariner, we copy you on the ground.’

‘Stand by, Descartes,’ she said, and switching off the open channel, she began to key their new status into the flight computer.

‘Jesus, that was close,’ said Gates. ‘For a moment there. Tell me we’re still alive.’

‘I think, therefore I am,’ said Dallas, as he unbuckled his seat harness and climbed almost weightlessly to his feet. ‘I’d say that was a pretty useful experience, wouldn’t you?’

‘Sure. It’s convinced me of two things. One is that I need some synthetic nerves. Mine are shot to pieces. And the other is that this plan of yours is crazy.’

‘It worked, didn’t it? Come on, there’s lots to do.’

‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’

Before leaving the flight deck, Dallas opened the payload bay doors and used the remote manipulator system to deploy what looked like the wingless fuselage of a smaller RLV. Entirely covered with the ceramic-hafnium tiles that protected only the nose, bottom, and wingtips of the Mariner, this was the space fridge, [116] Keeping things cool in space can be a problem, especially during Earth reentry, when outside temperatures can reach seven hundred four degrees Celsius. The answer is the space fridge, a combination of technologies that are several hundred years apart. Partly it is based on a mechanical cooler known as a Stirling cycle fridge, a device conceived in 1816 by Robert Stirling, a Scottish clergyman. This technology cools the contents to only 20 kelvins, still well above absolute zero. The final cooling stage, in which the temperature inside the fridge drops to 0.1 kelvins, operates using helium dilution, and was developed by Alain Benoit, in 1991. Without the space fridge, the transport of perishable materials in bulk, to and from the Earth, would be impossible. designed to carry perishable material back to Earth. Equipped with three primary thruster engines and two folding wings, it was the same model used by the blood banks themselves: the space fridge attached to the rear of the RLV, thereby doubling the available cargo capacity from two tons to four. Dallas had good reason for deploying the fridge immediately, as he would shortly explain to Rameses Gates.

But first there was a medical emergency to fabricate. Once Dallas was on mid-deck with the rest of the team, the hatch was closed and the crew quarters were repressurized so that Ronica could remove her pressure suit. As soon as she was wearing just her underwear, she lay down on a hammock and attached herself to a computerized transfusion machine so that she could carry out her own phlebotomy.

‘One medical emergency, coming up,’ she said.

As the venipuncture proceeded automatically, Ronica’s blood began to be drawn into a plastic tube. With no gravity to speak of, a pump in the machine was slowly sucking the life’s blood out of her body like a mechanical vampire. She was used to the usual autologous donation of 10 percent of her total blood volume. Weighing one hundred and forty pounds, she had a total volume of just under five thousand milliliters, and by her own estimate, any donation of more than 20 percent, twice as much as normal, would prompt her body to exhibit the hypovolemic reaction Dallas was after. The noise the pump made while performing this task was disconcertingly sibilant, and apparently quenchless. Rather more quietly, the same machine’s computer recorded the transfusion rate and all her vital signs. It was this medical data, conveying an apparent medical emergency, that Dallas planned to transmit to the Descartes computer.