Below Mercury

‘Okay. Let’s get that one out of the way first.’ She paused a moment, collecting her thoughts, before continuing. All eyes were on her.

‘As far as I can tell, we lost all pressure in the propellant tanks, just after we went to manual control for landing. Without fuel pressure, the turbopumps stalled, and the engines flamed out. I re-engaged the autopilot and – it just all came back. The engines restarted, but we weren’t high enough to recover, and – we didn’t make it.’

She looked down, and shook her head slowly. ‘I don’t know why the tanks lost pressure. My first thought was that they’d ruptured, but it can’t have been that, or we’d never have got pressure back. It could have been the vent valves, but I’ve been through the landing checklist in my head a dozen times now, and I can’t think of anything that we did that could have caused them to open. Steve, any ideas?’ She looked across at Wilson.

‘It could be some kind of flight software malfunction, but it’s just not – possible.’ He shrugged, and stared back at her.

‘I don’t like to suggest this, but could it have been deliberate?’ Bergman said.

They all looked at him.

Bergman spread his hands, palms outward. ‘I mean, look at what we’ve found so far – doors that were meant to have been blown off standing wide open, and air in the mine when it’s supposed to be in vacuum. There are lots of things that aren’t right here, and – maybe someone didn’t want us finding out.’

‘What exactly are you suggesting, Rick?’ Abrams said, his voice serious.

Bergman paused before replying. There was complete silence in the hangar.

‘I’m saying that we should at least consider deliberate sabotage of the ship’s systems as a – possibility.’

Elliott shook his head, but Bergman carried on.

‘Look – think about it. What we’ve found so far makes all of the evidence given to the investigation board suspect. Just finding the outer doors open and undamaged is enough to warrant a major new investigation, and as for air in the mine—’ He raised his hands, and sat back. ‘PMI resisted any investigative mission to the mine until they were forced into it. I think they knew what we’d find here, and that what happened on landing was no accident.’

Several voices started up; suddenly everyone was talking at once.

‘Okay. Okay, guys, cool it.’ Clare’s voice couldn’t be heard above the confusion of voices, and the noise increased. Elliott stood up, red-faced with anger, and started to yell at Bergman.

‘Will you all shut up!’ Clare shouted.

In the sudden quiet, she motioned for Elliott to sit back down, and she waited for a moment, her head down. Her voice sounded weary as she spoke.

‘Look, we won’t solve anything by fighting over it. The ship’s toast, so we’ve no way of finding out what really happened. All I know is that for something like that to be programmed in deliberately would be nearly impossible to conceal; someone would have noticed that the flight control software had been updated and would have reported it.’

‘Yeah, but who to?’ Wilson said abruptly. ‘Helligan? Suppose he was in on it, and just told Maintenance to ignore it and get on with it? Everyone on the base knows he’s got it in for you, it would have been easy for him to have—’

‘All right!’ Clare snapped, glaring at her copilot. ‘This isn’t getting us anywhere. Whether it was sabotage or not, we crashed, and we’re stuck here for now. So once we’ve secured our position, we need to get a message back to Earth, let them know we’re here.’ Clare looked round at them all.

‘Right,’ Bergman agreed, ‘and when they hear what we’ve found, they’ll want to send a bigger team out here. They might even be able to—’

‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ Clare said flatly, shaking her head.

Bergman looked at her in astonishment.

‘What’s the matter? Don’t you want to get out of here?’

‘Look, I’m sorry. There’s no easy way to say this, but we’ve got to be realistic. We’re not on the Moon or Mars; we’re on Mercury. You know how long this mission took to plan, and how hard it is to get out here. It could take a year or more before a rescue mission could arrive.’

She paused, and her face looked sad.

‘We knew that if anything went wrong our rescue options were limited. We all signed the release forms, remember. They’re not going to spend another bzillion dollars to rescue our six sorry asses from this shithole, unless they’re sure we’ll be alive when they get here.’

Clare sat back, and there was a silence while they digested this.

‘What about the Baltimore?’ Elliott said suddenly, his voice hopeful. Surely they’ve got to come back for that? It’s just parked in orbit up there.’

Clare shook her head.

‘They can always command it to return home automatically. It’s happened before,’ she added, in a quiet voice.

‘She’s right, guys,’ Abrams said, ‘we need to be realistic about our situation. Right now, our priorities are to find food and water, like the captain says, and to get a message out, if we can. After that – we need to do our jobs and start investigating what we’ve found here.’

Clare nodded her agreement.

‘Okay, guys, we’ve spent enough time talking, let’s get ready to move out.’ She stood up.

‘Just a moment,’ Bergman’s voice cut in, and it had an edge to it. ‘There’s one thing we need to clear up before we start out. You were the mission commander until we reached our destination. We’re in the mine now, and I think that puts Abrams in charge.’

There was a taut silence. Clare stared back at Bergman for a moment before answering.

‘This isn’t a situation that the SAIB planned for,’ she began, ‘we’ve been lucky to survive a serious space accident, and I’m the best qualified person to lead the mission—’

‘You’re forgetting, we’re not in the spacecraft now, we’re on the mine property, and this is a SAIB investigation. This was agreed a long time ago.’ Bergman’s voice was firm. ‘This place is a space grave, and our primary goal for coming here was to report on what we found. Whatever happens, we’re going to be stuck here for months, and—’

‘All right, guys.’ Abrams stood up and put his hand on Bergman’s shoulder. ‘It’s okay, Rick. The captain’s right, this wasn’t foreseen.’ He held up his hand to stop Bergman’s protestations, and turned to Clare. ‘But, Captain Foster, we are no longer on a USAC vessel, and that does put me in charge.’ He looked round at the group before continuing.

‘Now, bearing in mind the exceptional situation we’re in, the first thing I’m going to do is ask Captain Foster to direct us on her plan, until we have secured our survival here, and made contact with Earth.

‘Rick will be responsible for safety, and for observing due process in a space grave. He will go first into any area that he feels he needs to check out first, or where there may be human remains. And if there’s any conflict because of this, I will decide who gets the final say. Can you both work with that?’

Bergman considered for a moment, then nodded.

‘Sure,’ Clare said, a wary note coming into her voice. She wasn’t entirely happy with it, but as long as Abrams was around to sort out any disagreements, she supposed it would be okay.

‘Good.’ Abrams gestured to the others. ‘Okay, come on people, you heard the captain, we’ve got a job to do.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

It took them longer than they expected before they were ready to move off into the mine.

In the end, it took four of them – Matt, Bergman, Elliott and Wilson – to replenish their water supplies by the slow process of scooping the frost off the girders and into the water bottles. The meltwater had an unpleasant, metallic taste, but it was clean enough to drink. They searched for more bottles to carry spare water in, but found