Scott Mackay - Phytosphere

“What do we do now?”

“We let the caterers get to work.”

An hour later, Gerry, Stephanie, and Ian stood by the railing above the Council Chamber. Dining tables had been moved in, and caterers in white shirts, black pants, and black bow ties scurried around arranging artificial gardenias as centerpieces. Ian stood apart from Gerry and Stephanie, but kept glancing at Stephanie, lifting his chin from time to time and clenching his jaw, peering at her as if she were the strangest woman he had ever seen.

“I hope this works,” said Gerry.

Stephanie put her hand on his shoulder. “They’ll be arriving in an hour. Why don’t we get dressed?”

Gerry went back to his hotel room, put on a white blazer, a purple T-shirt with the NCSU logo, and his pair of baggy corduroys, the most stylish clothes he had brought to the Moon. He then went back to the Council Chamber. Drinks were served. People and Tarsalans sat. Speeches were made. And one by one, over the next half hour, humans inconspicuously left the hall. Some brave souls, equipped with hidden breathers, stayed, as a complete disappearance of all humans would make the Tarsalans suspicious. But at last, the big pressure doors closed, and oxygen thinned gradually, and at first the Tarsalans were none the wiser. But when they finally figured out what was going on, it was too late; they couldn’t get out. They upbraided the humans who had remained inside the Council Chamber, but by this time those humans had strapped breathers to their faces and barricaded themselves behind some tables.

In any case, there was nothing the Tarsalans could do to harm the brave humans, because they were too oxygen-deprived to do much of anything. Gerry watched everything on a monitor. He felt guilty. He didn’t like to trick people. Or Tarsalans. At one point, Kafis loosened his collar, as if that would help.

Gerry found the gesture pathetic, and wanted to assist Kafis in some way.

When ninety percent of the Tarsalans were subdued, oxygen was slowly pumped back into the Council Chamber—but it was combined with halothane, an inhalational anesthetic brought over from the Aldrin Health Sciences Center. Those not yet knocked out were rendered unconscious in a matter of seconds.

Nectaris Security moved in, faces masked with breathers, and cuffed every member of the Tarsalan delegation, then began moving them to detention. Gerry sighed. As much as he hated lying, he was relieved by how smoothly the whole operation had gone.

Gerry lived in his Computer Assisted Pressure Suit for the next three days, cramming a month’s worth of training into the space of seventy-two hours, thanks to AviOrbit’s ingenious CAPS software.

He was out on the Moon’s surface with Ian and Mitch, and they were anchoring a singularity drive mock-up to the ground. His boots bit into the surface with bear trap–like crampons—what he would have to wear when he walked around in the negligible gravity of Gaspra.

He fired a T-bolt through a brace with his pneumatic drill, the gray dirt puffed beneath him. The T-bolt, easily the size of his arm, penetrated the surface and latched the mock-up to the Moon, even as his monitor told him his crampons had increased their pounds per square inch tenfold—what they would have to do if he wanted to stop his pneumatic drill from shooting him off the surface of Gaspra, where the escape velocity was no more than a few scant miles per hour.

“Anchor seven secure,” he said.

“Say it with more enthusiasm, buddy. We’re going to the asteroid belt.”

“I feel like a Roman senator on the Ides of March.”

“Why does he talk like that, Ian?” said Mitch, who was getting ready with anchor eight.

“Bud, they got what was coming to them,” said Ian.

“I don’t like how we had to lie to them. What are all these other worlds going to think of us once they find out what we did?”

“That Malcolm… he’s a Fast Eddie, isn’t he?” said Ian.

“I’m ready to secure anchor eight,” said Mitch.

“Go ahead, little guy.”

“They’re going to think we’re monsters,” said Gerry.

Another voice cut through their suit radios: Ira, speaking from control. “Could we cut the crap? We’re on a tight schedule.”

“Relax, Ira,” said Ian. “The CAPS will babysit us through the whole thing. You’ve taken the magic and

mystery out of suicide missions.”

“They walked right into it, didn’t they?” said Gerry.

“Hulke’s got a superb poker face,” admitted Ian.

“Yes, but the Tarsalans are supposed to be smart.”

“The Tarsalans were desperate. They wanted to believe what they wanted to believe.”

Gerry shook his head. “In other words, they still haven’t figured out that we’re willing to risk our own survival for the sake of our principles.”

“You think they would have learned that by now. It’s been nine years.”

“We should offer them a concession,” said Gerry.

Ira’s voice came over the radio: “Like you said, Ger, they walked right into it. It serves them right. And let’s remember who’s idea it was to depressurize the Council Chamber in the first place.”

“We don’t have any weapons on the Moon. What else was I supposed to do?”

“And the halothane was a nice touch,” Mitch piped in.

“And the way Kafis loosened his collar,” said Ira. “I haven’t had a good laugh like that in a long time.

You know what? I found it inspiring. To see a couple hundred Tarsalans all unconscious like that. It gave me… I don’t know… a secure feeling.”

“I feel sorry for them,” said Gerry. “They’re so far from home. They’re obviously terrified. And now we’ve locked them all away.”

“No one’s going to run interference on our damn mission,” said Ira.

A burst of dust came from Mitch’s area. “Anchor eight is secure,” he said. “Boy… that drill packs a punch, doesn’t it?”

“What’s the psi on your crampons?” asked Ira.

“Tenfold.”

“Then you have nothing to worry about.”

At the end of the seventy-two-hour training session—and with the CAPS it really wasn’t a training session so much as going along for the ride—they were ferried up to the AviOrbit launch platform fifty miles above the Moon and installed in the Prometheus .

AviOrbit and the Prometheus did a lot of the subsequent work by themselves. In fact, having a human crew was really nothing more than a fail-safe, though determining the exact placement of the five big FMC Transit Collective drives on the surface of Gaspra would require a human eye.

Gerry watched through the window as the Prometheus approached the five Federated Martian Colony drives. A strong titanium alloy frame locked the drives together, two at the front, three at the back, in a triangular boom. The Prometheus docked with the frame in a classic orbital rendezvous. At that point, AviOrbit Control asked the crew to make a complete systems check.

“I’m reading a glitch on the starboard number five thrust conduit,” said Ian. “Control, can you copy that?”

“We copy that, Prometheus . Please refer to Procedure 5-78a-11. It could be a misread.”

Ian referred to the procedure in question, then initiated the steps via the onboard diagnostics computer.

As Gerry watched his old friend, he felt a new admiration. Ian moved quickly and precisely, and looked right at home operating these complicated systems. After fifteen minutes, Ian finally had the system green-lighting him on the starboard number five thrust conduit. The pilot glanced at Gerry and gave him the thumbs-up sign. Ian’s head was now shorn—in fact, he had decided to go for the completely bald look, and his scalp was as pink as the skin of a freshly washed piglet, as if shaving his head was just another way he was reinventing himself. His handlebar mustache, however, was still thick and, for the most part, brown, but with some silver.