S Morden - One Way

“I still feel it, sometimes. At night, mainly. Just a tightness. It’s not so bad.”

They lapsed into silence, broken eventually by Frank.

“Look. I’m not good at this. I never was. Much rather do something with my hands than say something with my mouth. But we’re not going to hurt each other, right? You seem like a nice lady, however it was you got here. That’s done. We’re astronauts now.”

“I killed twenty-six people,” she said. “You?”

“Just the one.”

Twenty-six seemed a lot. Perhaps his expression gave that away.

“It was an accident. I fucked up.” She clicked her tongue. “Seems so long ago now.”

“Which is what I’m saying. No one’s going to look out for us but us. These jokers don’t much care if we stay or crap out: some greener will be along to replace us soon enough. But we have to care, right?”

She pursed her lips and nodded. “Right.”

His earpiece buzzed. Hers too, by her quizzical look.

“ Every crew member is required to teach their task to another ,” he heard. “ Marcy Cole is lead driver. You will be her second. Acknowledge .”

“So who’s my second?” he asked.

“ Acknowledge ,” repeated the voice. No change of inflection, no emotion at all. Just cold.

Marcy said into the space, “Acknowledged.” She sighed. Her earpiece had been talking to her too.

Frank knew he had to follow suit. “Acknowledged.”

They looked at each other, properly, for the first time. She had a fine face, brown skin with a sowing of darker freckles across her cheekbones and nose. Her hair, like his, had been shaved short. His was a flattened mop of black, but hers was growing out in cotton-wool twists. Age? She had at least a couple of decades on him. And she was strong, otherwise she wouldn’t have got this far.

“We can do this,” he said. “I can learn.”

“Depends whether I can teach.” She looked up at the ceiling, addressing it directly. “So when do we start?”

“ Report outside immediately .”

Both of them were so used to obeying, they stood up.

“Remember those times you could just lie in your tray, listen to some music, read a magazine?” Frank put his hands into the small of his back and pushed, waiting for the click before he stopped.

“No. I don’t remember that at all.”

“Me neither.”

Outside, opposite Building Four, was a concrete pad the size of a football field. Probably some structure was going to go on it at some point, but, for now, there was a weird-ass looking vehicle sitting on it, and a stack of orange traffic cones.

And Brack.

“Ah, crap,” muttered Marcy.

“Let’s get this over with,” said Frank, and picked his way over the loose cinders towards the platform. He climbed up, and took a closer look at the thing they were presumably meant to drive around Mars on.

“You break it, you pay for it, Kittridge,” said Brack.

The chassis was rectangular, an open, almost lacy latticework of struts and crossbracing. The wheels were huge balloons, and the seat a simple plastic bucket bolted to the top of the frame. There was a roll bar over the top, which didn’t look particularly sturdy, and a set of controls mounted in front of the seat.

Frank had seen more sophisticated Radio Flyers.

“And this is what we’re taking to Mars?”

“You think you know better? ’cause it’s not bright yellow and there’s no backhoe? You want a ticket? You refusing an order? You want to get canned?” Brack cupped his hand around his ear. “What’s that? Kittridge is on his way to the Hole?” Frank bit down on his lip until he knew he wasn’t going to say anything.

“Don’t care if you don’t love me, Kittridge, as long you stay afraid of me. This is your Mars Rover, boy. You and it need to become intimately acquainted, and yes, if that means you have to take it up the tailpipe, you’ll do just that and hold it close afterwards. You got your fuel cell slung underneath, you got your four-wheel-drive electric motors on the hubs, you got your rear-facing cameras and your one-fifty-foot winch and tow on the trunk. That two-wheeled caboose is your trailer. Lights on the front that’ll turn night into day. Top speed of a mighty twenty miles an hour.” Brack kicked the nearest tire. “Only difference between here and there is that there you’ll be using adaptive metal wheels rather than pneumatics, as I am reliably informed they have the habit of exploding in a vacuum.”

Marcy shook the frame, and crawled underneath to inspect the connections between the fuel cell and the hubs. “What’s the range?”

“Well, that depends. You got one cell, and everything works off that. But under normal conditions, your suits will fail before this runs out of juice. So you’d better get it back to base before then.” He giggled, but it wasn’t funny. “You got your orders. You make this thing dance by the end of the week. By the week after, it’d better be turning backflips. The pair of you got that?”

“I got that,” said Marcy from behind one of the tires.

“Kittridge?”

“Acknowledged,” said Frank. He didn’t mean anything by it, just the bland acceptance of an instruction, but of course Brack had to take it the wrong way.

“You think I’m some kind of computer, boy? Hell, I’ll be the voice in your dreams, not just in your head.” He leaned forward and drilled his finger into Frank’s temple, and there was nothing that Frank could do but take it.

Brack stalked off, and Marcy pulled herself out from under the rover.

“What d’you think?”

“What do I think?” Frank scuffed the ground. “That the world would be a better place without him.”

“Forget about him. I meant the buggy.”

Frank dragged his attention back to the job in hand. “You’re the professional. What do you think?”

“Strong, lightweight. Center of gravity is low enough to add stability, but it’s got a decent enough ground clearance. Let’s take it for a spin and see.”

She climbed up. There wasn’t a ladder, so she just grabbed the lowest strut and hauled herself up. Frank could do that too. They were all now so lean and strong that it was barely an effort. Marcy settled into the seat and for the want of anywhere else to put her feet, braced them on the struts either side of the controls. Almost exactly like a Radio Flyer.

“It’s like a video game. Little steering wheel, gas on-off using triggers. Couple of buttons and a screen for stuff.” She grinned down at him. “Seriously, come on up. We don’t get many moments like this.”

She drove it slowly and conservatively around the pan, finding the buttons that’d put it in reverse, work the lights and the winches. Frank hung off the roll bars behind the seat, mildly disconcerted at the concrete scudding by under his feet.

They swapped over, and Frank drove it forwards, then in reverse. It looked like a toy. It felt like a toy. Somehow far less than something they’d be driving around on another planet.

Then the lessons began. Marcy hopped off, set out some traffic cones around the rear of the buggy, and watched Frank drive forward out of the cordon.

“It came out of that space,” she said. “All you have to do is back it in again.”

Frank crushed three cones. He didn’t hear them crumple, and Marcy let him keep on going until he thought he was back in the starting position. He climbed down and stood next to her to examine the debacle.

“Do I get to say it’s not bad for a first attempt?”

“I’ve seen worse.” She had her hands on her hips, judging him. “But I’m guessing if we’re on Mars, running over a cone probably means we’re all dead. What did you do, when you weren’t killing people, that is?”