Gary Gibson - Final Days

‘This is it?’ Saul asked Lester. ‘I thought there’d be more to it.’

‘Technically speaking, we don’t even need this room,’ replied Lester. ‘We could run the whole thing through our contacts, if we wanted.’

‘Except you need at least a dozen people working together on something this complex,’ said one of the technicians, a narrow-faced woman with blonde hair. ‘And they need to talk to each other constantly. There’s too much that could go wrong, and just slip right by you, if you’re not careful. So run it from your contacts, my ass, Lester.’

‘Ginny,’ Lester retorted, in a tone of mocking disapproval.

She turned round in her seat to face Saul and Mitchell. ‘We’ll be here for the first part of your launch,’ she explained. ‘There are too many variables and things that need to be monitored for us not all to be keeping an eye on things. But as soon as you’re out of orbit and well on your way, we’re heading up ourselves.’

Saul stared up at the image of the Saturn. ‘And there’s really no room for us on one of the VASIMRs?’

Ginny just looked at him like he was crazy.

It took another hour for the launch technicians to run the final safety checks, before it was safe for them to board. Amy returned from her other duties looking hot and tired. She appeared to be even older than Lester, but it was clear they enjoyed tremendous loyalty from their staff. Saul thought he understood why, for there was something about them that seemed as permanent and unchanging as the desert outside. He watched as the Roses took turns in hugging each of their staff in turn, talking over their plans to reunite once they had all reached Copernicus.

He leaned in towards Mitchell, who sat next to him on a bench at the rear of the booth. ‘They know not to stop once they get to the Lunar Array, right?’ he asked, under his breath. ‘They can’t risk stopping until they reach one of the colonies.’

Mitchell shook his head. ‘Jeff told them not to stick around Copernicus, put it that way. Listen, while we’re on the subject, I’ve been thinking about your plan to shut down the Array. I’m not sure you’ve thought it through as thoroughly as you could have.’

‘How so?’

‘How many EDP codes did you get hold of?’

‘Just the one,’ Saul admitted.

‘Maybe you don’t know this, but you’ll need at least two people before you can trigger a wormhole collapse. It’s not something you can do without help.’

‘That depends. Why, are you going to help me?’

‘Of course I am,’ Mitchell replied. ‘but how the hell do you propose to do it with only one EDP code?’

‘I don’t need more than one EDP code, not if one end of the Florida–Copernicus gate falls out of contact with the other. When that happens, everything changes, and the system will accept just the one code for all the colony gates.’

A look of anger flickered across Mitchell’s face, just for a second, before he repressed it. ‘Are you sure of that?’ he asked.

‘t’s the one scrap of hope I have left to hang on to,’ Saul replied, remembering the things Olivia had said about Mitchell and knowing, in that moment, exactly what she had meant.

A little while later, Saul and Mitchell, accompanied by Lester, Amy and a couple of their technicians, boarded a small bus that carried them towards the Saturn rocket, standing tall and glorious in its gantry. The sky above was a perfect vivid blue, and Saul had the sudden terrible realization that this was the last time he would ever see it. He felt like a man on the way to his own execution.

The Saturn grew larger, the closer they approached, until Saul realized how immense the thing really was. He vaguely recalled archival footage of the earliest days of the space race: images of eerily similar gantries populated by hard-hatted technicians, and rooms filled with scientists and engineers working with impossibly primitive technology.

‘I’m not sure I really believe this thing is anywhere near as authentic as they say,’ Saul muttered quietly to Mitchell.

‘Gotta make some concessions,’ said Lester from up front, having obviously overheard everything he’d said. ‘Plus, nobody really wants to get blown up on the pad because of a valve that’s faulty simply because it doesn’t use up-to-date specifications.’

‘So . . .’

‘So the onboard computer systems are modern, all other appearances notwithstanding, and the whole thing’s built from similar composites to what they use in VASIMRs.’ He gazed over his shoulder at Saul, elbow resting on the back of a seat. ‘Plus, the original birds only carried three people, not five. The experience is the important thing. It just has to feel authentic, regardless of whether it really is authentic.’

And it’s the last of its kind , thought Saul. He wondered how the Roses managed to cope; the way they were acting you’d almost think it was any other day, but maybe that was just what they had to do to keep it all together.

Saul heard a rumble echoing from somewhere behind him, and turned to see one of the VASIMRs taking off at a terrifyingly steep angle. He craned his head to watch as it rose higher and higher, and caught sight of the Moon floating serenely above the top of the gantry.

As the bus came to a stop by the base of the gantry, they all climbed out, Lester and Amy leading them over to an open elevator platform. A cluster of UP-compatible icons appeared around the elevator as Saul approached, mostly tourist stuff offering him the chance to view interactive information about the launch. Saul decided he’d like that just fine, since pretty much anything that took his mind off what he was about to do seemed like a good thing. Tiny, primary-coloured animations demonstrated the flow of fuel within the tanks, and also their expected trajectory in the seconds and minutes following take-off.

The elevator swiftly carried the six of them up, before clanging to a halt near the gantry’s peak. Saul looked down through a window towards the ground and swayed slightly, one hand on the rail. It felt as if the land below pulling him back towards it with something more than mere gravity.

Grief overwhelmed him at that moment with a nearly physical force, as if he were understanding for the first time just how much they were losing. It was as if it fell out of the sky, unexpected as a lightning bolt on a calm spring day, before wrapping itself around his chest and squeezing until he could no longer breathe.

‘Easy there,’ he heard Mitchell say to him, as if from very far away.

‘I can’t . . .’ Saul gasped.

Mitchell leaned in close to him. ‘What’s happening out there,’ he whispered, casting his gaze around the bowl of the sky, ‘isn’t what you think it is.’

What the hell does that mean ? Saul wondered. But, before he had the chance to ask, Lester was beckoning him towards the open hatch in the side of the spacecraft, which was reached by a short bridge connecting the gantry to the rocket.

‘Get your helmet on and go first,’ said Lester, with a sympathetic expression. ‘Just take your time, and be careful as you go inside.’

Saul nodded and clicked his helmet into place, then waited a few moments while one of the two technicians, a young woman named Sandy, double-checked its seal. Then she and the other technician, an older man named Frank, guided him across the bridge, before helping him climb in through the hatch feet-first.

Saul carefully manoeuvred himself inside, and felt a surge of claustrophobia as he looked around the dark and cramped interior of the capsule. It looked considerably more primitive than he’d feared.

A great deal of shuffling and manoeuvring was required as Lester, then Amy, and lastly Mitchell took turns to climb through the hatch. Amy directed Saul to get into one of five reclining acceleration seats – two up front and three behind, each mounted on shock-absorbers. When Frank climbed inside as well, the capsule became almost comically crowded. After a bit more shuffling, Frank carefully strapped first Saul and then Mitchell into two of the three rear couches before hooking them each up to the air supply.