S Morden - One Way

He watched them spin in ever tighter circles, then vanish into the drain.

How to cook them? They had two options: microwave, or steam. Steam them, then. See what herbs they had, stuff them in the cavity and give them five minutes. Long enough to round everyone up and get them sitting down together. How long was it since they’d done that? Normally they just smashed and grabbed an evening meal when they felt like it. Why not make this an occasion?

Except he was already thinking about turning any conversation to his advantage, whether there were any off-guard comments that he might use to catch someone out. Everything from now on had to be about finding out who killed Zeus, and every opportunity had to be turned to that purpose.

[Internal memo: Project Sparta team to Bruno Tiller 6/4/2038 (transcribed from paper-only copy)]

Mr Tiller: we will be working through these various scenarios and producing SWOT analyses for each in the next two weeks. If you or other XO board members have comments, then please append.

1. Specifications as agreed. Timescale as agreed

2. Specifications as agreed. Timescale lengthened by 5–10 years

3. Renegotiate specifications. Timescale as agreed

4. Renegotiate specifications. Timescale lengthened by 5–10 years

5. Renegotiate entire contract

6. Cancel contract

It was different without Zeus. It had been different without Marcy and Alice, but they’d died at the beginning of the mission, when everything was new and nothing was routine. The base hadn’t been started, let alone completed, and the remaining five cons had spent difficult hours and days helping each other, shouting at each other, deliberately ignoring each other and ultimately deciding they still had to work together, whatever their feelings about each other. That cycle had gone on more times than any of them cared to remember.

Now there was a hole. Zeus was gone, and his duties had to be picked up by Zero, who really didn’t want them, but since the state of the plumbing was so intimately tied to that of the greenhouse, he didn’t have much choice.

That next morning, Frank went round with him to try and learn how all the pipes moved fresh water from the storage tank to the habs, and the waste back to the recycler. There were manuals for that. Not so for the hot water system which Zeus had more or less single-handedly cobbled together. The few scribbled drawings that he’d left on the computer system were simply inadequate. The notes he’d made for NASA did make more sense, but there were times when the two of them were reduced to chasing tubing through the underfloor panels, trying to work out where it went next.

But Frank still had his own jobs: maintain the fabric of the habs, and keep the buggies running. After a morning with Zero, he had to go outside to carry out his inspections. There was a feeling of unreality to everything. Zeus was dead, murdered. The list of suspects was tiny. And still he had to go round checking something as mundane as nuts and bolts, because someone deliberately spacing him wasn’t the only way he could die.

The habs were holding up well. The pressurized skin didn’t seem to be degrading at all. It had all the appearance of lasting for years.

The buggies—buggy, since Brack had taken one back to the ship, presumably to talk to XO about how their cheap convict crew had been worth every cent they’d spent on them—had fared less well. The fuel cells, save for a few dings in the bottom of the casing, were still operating at one hundred per cent capacity. The frames were scratched, but the damage was superficial. For ease of construction, the wheels came in a single piece, motor, actuators and tires, and damn but those things were heavy. The drive motors needed dismounting and opening up at some point, to see if the seals were still good or whether there was a build-up of dust.

The tires, though, were the most immediate worry. The metal plates that provided the grip were degrading, whether through the mechanical wear of driving over a surface that was littered with little rocks, or whether the perchlorate in the soil was actively eating away at the material: it didn’t much matter which. With less than a thousand miles on the clock, they could already do with a swap-over.

They had no spares. Frank wondered if he could make replacement plates out of drum material, or even cylinder casing, because there was no alternative. One broken tire would mean one buggy completely out of action. They’d start cannibalizing it, and the inevitable end was that they’d eventually run out of parts. Whereas if they could fabricate a good enough replacement, then it might be they’d never run out. Tires were consumables: he couldn’t quite believe he’d been reduced to this.

Today, the sky was particularly pink, high dust turning the weak sun even weaker—even a smudged entry trail angling down towards the surface looked pale. Declan was fretting about power regulation yet again. He was outside with Frank, cleaning the black glassy surfaces with a piece of parachute material. Actually, yes: Frank had noticed a build-up of dust on the buggy controls, and perhaps there was a big storm to the south that was pushing dirty air over the equator.

Rahe didn’t seem to generate the dust devils that happened out on the plain, but they still had weather all the same. The base didn’t have a meteorological station, which seemed odd. Perhaps it was in the same shipment that their personal effects had been in, now circling in deep space or smeared black against the red of Mars.

They didn’t get any weather reports either. They didn’t get anything at all. No news from Earth. No messages. Nothing. As if it had ceased to exist, and there were just the five of them left, hundreds of millions of miles away in a tiny, ignorant bubble.

But Brack was in communication with XO, and Dee was getting information from somewhere. Earth was still there, and Frank wanted to go back to it.

“What you doing, Frank?” Declan looked up from buffing the panels.

“Looking for the buggy manuals.” Frank poked around on his tablet, but his fat, gauntleted fingers kept on making mistakes, despite the software being configured for use with a spacesuit. “If we can’t repair the tires somehow, then we’re going to have to make some calls home. Our NASA guests won’t be happy having to walk everywhere.”

“We haven’t got the power for making anything. We haven’t even got the power to run all their experiments.” Declan shook the cloth out, and he gestured at the dust puffing away in ephemeral pink clouds. “We were down fifteen per cent at midday. Stuff’s going on standby if it doesn’t pick up.”

Of course it was. It always was. But somehow they managed the balancing act with watts to spare, and no one took him seriously any more. Declan complained, and the rest of them just got on with it.

“I guess I’ll just have to talk to Brack,” said Frank, and even though he couldn’t see Declan’s face clearly, he could tell his expression had soured. He didn’t like the idea of being overruled. None of them did, because it reminded them that they had responsibility without authority, and that they were still cons who had an overseer. But it really rankled with Declan.

“I’ll take a look at the figures. Work out a budget,” he said after a moment of dead air.

“Appreciate it.”

The Boy who cried Brownout had had his bluff called again.

“Dee, you there?”

“Hi, Frank. What’s up?”

“Have we got the buggy manuals on the downlink yet?”

“Probably. I’ll take a look. You got a part nu—”

The noise in Frank’s ears, before the headphones cut out through overload, made him temporarily deaf. He staggered against the buggy and braced himself on the chassis while he recovered. Declan, over by the panels, reeled away, ineffectually clutching the sides of his helmet.