S Morden - One Way

Frank pressed his hands together. They were slippery with sweat.

“I went over to the ship. I wanted to talk to Brack—about you two. I know I didn’t kill Zeus, or Dee, or Marcy or Alice. I was certain it had to be one or both of you. Declan, you killed Zeus. Zero, you killed Dee. I was going to tell Brack he had to space both of you, to save the mission, save the base.”

“Well fuck you, Frank. Fuck you very much.” Declan swept up his screwdriver and examined the point. Zero just stared, mouth open.

“He wasn’t there. He’d taken a buggy, out on to the plain. To bring back a cylinder.”

“What cylinder?” Zero rocked forward. “What are you talking about? We got all the cargo.”

“Some of that shit falling from the sky was NASA stuff,” said Frank. “He’s storing three of them down at the bottom of the Heights. I opened one of them up. I also checked out the ship. It’s… he’s put all the bodies in the tanks. The floor’s covered with empty Oxycontin packs.” He took a moment’s pause and looked down at his lap. “Before we left Earth, we—me and Brack—had a conversation. He said…”

A silence deepened.

“What did he say, Frank?” asked Declan.

“He said that if I watched his back for him, I’d get a seat on the NASA ship home. And if I told anyone about that, the deal was off.”

“Shit.”

“Fuck.”

“I told him I’d find out who the killer was. Told him I’d find the evidence.”

“Me too,” said Declan.

Frank went cold. He could feel a knot tighten inside his guts and everything went very still.

“What?”

“Exactly what he told me. Watch his back, free trip home. And I’m guessing Zero’s the same. Am I right?”

Zero gripped his knife hard and stabbed down at the tabletop. The curved point dug in and scored a line in the plastic.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” Declan spun the screwdriver, and watched it whirl around on the table. The blade rotated until it came to a rest, aiming back at him. He picked it up and pushed it back into his pocket. “So what have we got?”

“What have we got? We’ve got jack,” said Zero. “He’s not going to get us all home, is he? He lied to us. And one of us is still a fucking murderer!”

“Yeah. About that,” said Declan. “Anyone else joined the dots yet?”

Frank stood up. “I’m going to suit up. I suggest everyone else does the same.”

Zero stabbed at the table again. “Will someone tell me what the fuck is going on?”

“It’s Brack,” said Frank. “He’s gone postal.”

“You’re kidding me, right?”

“No.”

Declan headed towards the cross-hab. “Maybe the freezing process messed with his mind. Maybe it’s the drugs, the loneliness, the stress. Maybe he’s just fucking nuts. But I’m putting my spacesuit on, right now, before I do anything else.”

Frank was left with Zero. “Come on,” he said. “We’ll think of something.”

A muscle in Zero’s lean face was jumping, right along the jaw-line. “I’m never going to get home, am I?”

“There’s three of us, and only one of him. Maybe we can put him back in his tank, refreeze him, until help gets here. The NASA astronauts can’t be far behind: all their kit’s turned up. We’ll be OK. Now, suit.”

Zero looked at the curved edge of the gardening knife. “I trusted the Man. How else was this going to go down?”

“We’ve got to play this cool. We’ll call up XO, we’ll tell them we’ve got a problem, and we’ll wait for instructions.”

“We don’t even know for sure! How do I know anything any more? This could be you and Declan doing the dirty on me. And where’s Brack now?”

“We can’t know: he’s off the grid. He’s always been off the grid.” Frank picked up the scalpel. “We’ve got to get into our suits, Zero. We’ll be at least a little bit safer in them than not.”

Zero started to cry. “What are we going to do?”

“We’re going to do what we’ve done for the last few months, and when we were in training. Look out for each other and stay together.” Frank was about to tell Zero to put the knife down, but he was holding his, and they might still need them after all. “You’re not going to get left behind. All right? I won’t let you. Forget what we promised Brack: we’ll stick together, make them take us all home.”

“Does that mean he killed Marcy? Alice?”

“I don’t know. Yes, maybe.”

Declan’s voice cut through their conversation. “You are not leaving me to face Brack on my own. Get your goddamn asses in here and get your suits on.”

Frank felt light, trembly, even inexplicably hungry. “He’s right. We’ll talk again in a minute. Now, come on.”

He stood back when Zero walked by on his way to the door. The kid was still as twitchy as a cornered dog, and likely to lash out at anything. He was right—they didn’t know anything—but none of this felt right any more.

This was their home: they’d built it, lived in it, died for it.

The main lights abruptly failed.

They were replaced a moment later by the emergency lighting, a hard blue wash over everything that left everything either black or glowing.

“Jesus, give me a break,” he heard Declan say.

Frank went to put his suit on.

There was enough space for the three of them to dress simultaneously. Frank pulled his suit off the hanger, turned it around, grabbed a life support from the rack—no time to see whether it was full or still recharging—pushed it into place, turned it on, and without taking his overalls off, got his left leg in, his right leg in, hauled the suit up to his waist, pushed his left arm in, his right arm in, ducked down and squeezed his head through the neck seal. He worked his fingers into the gloves and checked that nothing was pinched or tight by bouncing up and down on the spot. He opened the suit controls, thumbed the back-hatch closed and felt the reassuring deadening of sound as it sealed and locked in place.

The suit whispered air into his face, and he turned the suit lights on full. A blue-white glow diffused into the cross-hab. Declan was almost as fast as he was, but Zero wasn’t as practiced. It took him longer, and by the time his suit was sealed, he was breathing hard.

Frank put his helmet against Zero’s.

“In, and hold it. Hold, hold, hold. And out, nice and slow. In again. Hold, hold, hold. And out.”

He looked inside, and Zero nodded.

“I’m Ok. I’m fine.”

Frank bent awkwardly down, and picked up the scalpel. As well as the tablet and nut runner attached to his suit’s utility belt, he still had the pouch of patches. He eased the blade back in. “Let’s get the lights back on, and then phone home. We’ll be OK. Hang in there.”

[Transcript of private phone call between Bruno Tiller and (unidentified XO employee 1) 8/13/2047 1550MT.]

BT: No, we collect their personal effects and we incinerate them at Gold Hill. Nothing leaves the facility.

XO1: OK. Whatever works for you.

BT: At eighty kilobucks (80000) a pound, I’ve not budgeted spending over a million (1000000) dollars on shipping their shit with them. They don’t need it, and won’t need it.

XO1: Do I tell them that?

BT: No, you don’t tell them that.

[transcript ends]

They got the power back on, and clustered around the comms console.

“How far away is Earth now?” asked Frank.

“I don’t actually know. Eight, ten minutes? It could be at least half an hour before we get a reply.” Declan typed in the commands for the dish to seek out the orbiting satellite and let it run. As ever, he kept an eye on the power meter, watching it crawl down. The sun was setting, and they were on batteries until dawn.