used those landers’ cameras to scope out suitable landing sites. When the manned landers put down, they had a cache of fuel waiting there for the return journey, so they could land relatively light, and still have plenty of margin. We’ve got to carry
They digested this for a few moments.
‘Why can’t we do the same thing, then?’ Elliott asked.
‘Money. We’d need a bigger tug, one that could carry two landing vehicles, and one of the landers would have to be abandoned. Plus there’s the complexity of managing a manned and unmanned landing in the same mission.’
Abrams asked Wilson another question, and gradually steered the conversation away. Clare watched the faces round the table as they talked. Their reactions were typical; they didn’t want to know, but they needed to know. Like moths drawn to a candle flame, they had to hear what would happen to them if it all went wrong, in the black skies over Mercury.
For her part, Clare wasn’t put off by the risks; she had accepted these the day she joined the Corps, but these guys had wives, families. Futures.
Did
The mission planners had thought the mission through all right; they had explored all the alternatives. If she was honest with herself, the landing on Mercury was no more challenging than some asteroid landings she had pulled off.
There was the publicity, too, which had come as a surprise to her; she hadn’t expected so much interest in the mission. A superior officer who had blanked her for months had stopped her in a corridor this afternoon, asked her how it was going. What she had thought would be a dull ferry job looked set to be a high-profile mission that could help relaunch her career. All she had to do was complete the mission, and bring them all back safely.
Her glance flickered over them as they sat there, leaning forward, listening to Wilson. Abrams was solid and experienced. Bergman seemed competent, if a little too sure of himself. Elliott was clearly a PMI stooge. As for Matt – she flicked a look at him, and was surprised to find him looking straight back at her.
Caught off guard, her eyes met his for a moment before she could look away.
Matt had faced a ruined career too, of course; he was despised by the organisation he once worked for. But he had taken his decision after careful thought, not in some split-second judgement call over an asteroid’s tumbled surface. Did that give her a greater right to feel sorry for herself? Probably not. Matt had every right to feel aggrieved at his treatment, but he had continued to direct his energies into helping the relatives. Perhaps she should think more about other people, about being part of this mission, and less about herself.
Despite her better judgement, she felt herself warming to Matt, and she risked a glance back at him when she was sure his attention was elsewhere. He looked tired after the long day, she thought, tired but happy.
Perhaps she was starting to understand why.
Later, and it was silent in Matt’s apartment on the base. Bergman and Matt had come back here after the meal, and they had stayed up talking for a while.
Bergman was sitting in an armchair, drinking coffee; Matt was laid back on the couch. Matt’s mug of coffee lay untouched on the table beside him. It had been a long time since anyone had spoken.
Bergman yawned, and glanced at his watch.
‘Well, my friend, I need to get back to my place.’ He stood up, and saw that Matt had fallen asleep where he lay.
Bergman found his jacket, and went to the door to go.
There was a pile of framed pictures on the hallway table. Evidently Matt was still in the process of unpacking. Bergman picked one up. A photograph of a younger Matt holding a roll of parchment, standing next to his parents, who were trying not to look too proud. An old building in red brick and stone was behind them.
Another one. A photograph of Matt holding a surveyor’s staff to the roof, in some dark underground passage. The flash was reflected in pools of inky black water. It wasn’t possible to tell if the mine was on Earth, or on one of the planetary mines.
Another photograph.
Matt in a spacesuit, grinning behind the faceplate, as he stood on the top step of some aluminium stairs, poised to enter the body of some landing craft. It looked like it was from one of Matt’s early assignments.
Another picture, and this one was grainier and poorer quality than the rest. It appeared to be a shot of a smooth, rectangular area set in a rough rock wall, but as Bergman peered closer, he saw that it was a set of gigantic pressure doors; there were some spacesuited figures at the base that revealed the true scale of the scene.
Bergman peered closer to read the lettering on the doors, and realised that he was looking at the main portal of Erebus Mine, on Mercury. He couldn’t tell if Matt was one of the spacesuited figures in front of the doors, or the person taking the photograph.
Bergman stared at the picture a long time, and then replaced it carefully on the table, before letting himself out into the cool night air.
Picture: Olympus-240 spaceplane
<missing picture>
CHAPTER TWELVE
May 4, 2151, and the rain fell from a grey morning sky over Andersen Base.
Drifting across the northern part of the island in great sheets, the clouds released their rain in a long, slow deluge that brought visibility down to a few hundred metres. It fell across the kilometres of grey concrete runways, the parking aprons and taxiways, collecting in great pools as it swirled down into the mouths of the overloaded storm drains.
Heavy rain was unusual for Guam in early May, but a distant typhoon out over the ocean had flung a belt of storms across Guam and the long curve of the Mariana Islands. Distant thunder still boomed over the mountains to the southwest, but the high winds and thunderstorms of the previous night were moving on now, trailing a band of rain behind them to drench the island.
It was three months after their initial meeting of the mission team, and if all went well, today would be the day they set off on their long journey to Mercury. The time between had been a continuous round of classroom lectures, training, simulations, physical fitness programmes and rigorous planning, so that every member of the team knew what they had to do to ensure the success of the mission.
They had flown in fast jets to experience the effects of high g-forces during the orbital ascent, practised parachute landings for an emergency ejection, even what they had to do if the spaceplane ditched over water. While nothing could ever be like the real thing, the mission team felt well prepared for the challenges that lay ahead.
In just a few short hours, the launch window would open for the space tug to set off on its long journey to Mercury. High above them, hundreds of kilometres above the clouds and weather of the Earth, the tug circled in its orbit, fully fuelled, waiting for the six-man mission team. Yet here they were, sat on the ground waiting for the weather to clear.
The spaceplane with the mission team aboard stood in a fuelling apron at the end of a taxiway, off to one side of the immense runways. A liquid oxygen tanker stood close by the left side of the spaceplane, cold white vapour swirling from its fuelling hoses as it completed the initial fill. On the other side, by the open cargo bay door,
