S Morden - One Way

Someone was supposed to deal with this, and he couldn’t remember who it was. Alice? Did they really have the doctor on cleaning duty? Maybe they did, assuming that doctoring wasn’t going to take up too much time. They’d have to rota this unpopular chore between them. Did they even have any specific cleaning materials? They didn’t even have toothpaste. Perhaps they needed to root around in the unopened crates that were stacked on the lower level of the medical hab.

He went to use the can, always preferring to sit and think for a minute than use the collector in his suit. Wearing overalls made it more difficult, having to shrug out of the top half before pushing them down to his ankles. The air in the crew quarters was warm now, thanks to the plumbing, though the seat was still chilly on first contact.

“Frank?” It was Declan.

“Goddammit, Declan. A moment, OK?”

“Relax, I’m not coming in or anything. Just wanted to know something.”

“Can’t this wait? A couple of minutes maybe?” No, of course not. Declan was just being his usual dickish self.

“Straightforward yes or no: did you check the fuel cell level on the buggy before you took it for a drive?”

Frank sighed. “I checked that it had enough juice.”

“Did you check the actual gas levels and log them?”

“No.”

“Can you do that in future?”

“Seriously?”

“Completely seriously.” Then Declan lowered his voice and pressed his head up against the screen. “Someone’s been using it other than you.”

“Brack comes and goes.”

“Outside of that.”

“When?” Frank frowned. “At night?”

“Just log it for me, will you?”

“OK.”

Declan pulled back and Frank could hear his footsteps recede. There were always tire marks on the ground around the buggy park, but the buggies themselves were always pretty much where he’d left them. Or so he thought. Were there trackers on the buggies? He didn’t know. There were on the suits—or was it just the medical implants, working off… what? Some sort of Martian GPS? He hadn’t really given it much thought, and just assumed that it was a standard set-up, just like it was on Earth.

But driving around at night didn’t make much sense. Firstly, it was dark, and while the buggies had lights, it was still dangerous enough in the day with the potential for hitting something sub-surface. And secondly, going solo where no one knew where you were and no one was in Comms to take your emergency call?

Unless they weren’t going solo? That would mean two people keeping a secret, and that didn’t seem likely. If it wasn’t him, and it wasn’t Declan, then who? Brack had no need to sneak around. If he wanted a buggy, he’d just say so and take one. That left Dee, Zero or Zeus, and Zero didn’t seem to want to leave the greenhouse, let alone the base.

Was it actually a problem? Joyriding a buggy during the freezing night was pretty stupid, but as long as they brought it back in one piece, where was the harm? When he took a buggy up the Santa Clara, wasn’t he doing the same thing?

Yes and no. He was authorized. They weren’t.

And it was all assuming that Declan was right, and his over-zealous protection of their power consumption hadn’t got to him. Frank decided that it wasn’t up to him to call this one: he had enough on his plate as it was, doing two people’s jobs. He pulled the levers and pressed the buttons, washed up and zipped.

The expansion and contraction of the base’s exterior also translated inside. He had hundreds of bolts to check in each section, often, now they’d fitted out the habs with their floors and ceilings, involving accessing hatches and lifting panels. It was long and laborious and done on a strict schedule so that he didn’t miss any of them out from one inspection to the next.

No one was pretending it wasn’t monotonous work. It was, however, monotonous work on Mars. He worked his way along the top floor of the cross-hab, before climbing down the ladder to the first floor. No one but him went there now. The red dot on the three-sixty camera on the ceiling had been disabled by Declan (less than half a watt, but he wasn’t having it), but he could still be seen. He did his rounds: things inside did seem to be settling down now they had a more constant temperature. He could probably even scale his duties back and check less often.

And still his personal effects were nowhere to be found. None of their stuff had turned up. His books, his letters, were gone. He’d been through every inventory himself, and they weren’t listed. One possible explanation was that there was a missing cylinder, either burnt up on entry, or still spinning around in space. However, that was difficult to reconcile with the fact that they’d eventually located pretty much everything for the base.

He moved from the cross-hab to the med bay. He pressed his hand for a moment against the skin of the module. The light that seeped through turned his splayed fingers into silhouettes, and the coldness of outside stole in. The base needed better insulation. He could shovel dirt against the sides, building it up over the days and weeks until each section was half-buried. Not completely covered, though, because it was only the rings, not the plastic, that were weight-bearing. Even then he’d have to worry about sharp edges.

Use the cargo cylinders as formers? Something to ramp the soil against? He might suggest it, but to shovel that amount of soil, he’d require something like a bulldozer attachment to the buggy. He had a half-formed memory somewhere at the back of his mind, about turning soil into bricks, like adobe. That would be easier. More permanent, too.

He checked the fixings on the floor joists, lifting the panels and peering into the voids, working his way down through the yard to the far end, then as before, down the ladder to check the first floor. Nothing needed doing. Which was good. He was proud of the way the base had gone up, how they’d struggled and how they’d fixed things.

“Boredom is your enemy, Kittridge.”

Frank felt his heart rate spike and he involuntarily raised the nut runner, ready to lash out. Brack was just sitting there, among the unopened boxes that were… what? Lab equipment? Medical stuff?

Brack reached out and pushed Frank’s arm down. “Easy there, tiger.”

“I’m doing my work. I don’t want to miss anything off my itinerary.”

“I know you don’t. I keep an eye on all of you. That’s my work. Best you remember that.”

If he did, then either he already knew who was taking the buggy out, or he was lying about being able to keep an eye on them all, and he had no idea. Either way, he didn’t need Frank to tell him what was going on. The cons could sort this between themselves. This wasn’t so important that they needed to rat each other out to Brack.

“I’m not getting bored,” said Frank.

“You didn’t see me there because you were bored and you stopped paying attention. Let’s not go down the rest of that road. Each day’s going to throw different stuff at you. You got to be ready for that.”

Frank wasn’t sure what Brack meant. Unless this was a test? To see if Frank would inform on the others? “I’m ready,” he said.

“Well, I’m mighty glad to hear that. Because I don’t want to lose you.” Brack laughed, just the one little giggle.

Then he was gone, climbing back up the ladder.

Frank gritted his teeth, and waited until he was calm. Brack was right, and wrong. Yes, he hadn’t been paying attention, but no, he was certain that if he’d caught sight of something out of the ordinary, he’d have reacted to it. OK, so he was getting maybe a little sloppy with his daydreaming. What was it they said to each other? Stay frosty?