Below Mercury

nothing suitable.

While the others collected the water, Clare and Abrams interrogated the robot. It was getting low on power; the status LEDs for the power pack were blinking amber, and they needed some answers before it failed completely.

‘Bob Five, are there any survivors here?’

The hulking, steel form of the robot, over two-and-a-half metres high, looked down at Clare. Its orange paint was dirty and scuffed, and worn away in many places. Some faded letters and a large figure ‘5’ could be made out on its chest, under the dark stains of old hydraulic fluid leaks.

‘I DO NOT UNDERSTAND, MISTRESS.’ The robot’s deep voice echoed round the hangar.

‘Where are the miners? The people? The masters?’ Abrams ventured.

There was a pause while the robot’s slow brain searched for an answer.

‘I DO NOT KNOW, MASTER.’

Clare sighed in frustration at the robot’s limited mental faculties. She stared at the robot for a moment, then asked: ‘Bob Five, what happened in the accident?’

Another pause.

‘DANGER IN THE MINE,’ the robot said at last. ‘EMERGENCY IN THE REFINERY. EMERGENCY IN THE MINE. EMERGENCY IN THE CONTROL CENTRE. THE MASTERS HAD NO AIR. THE DOORS OPENED. I HAVE NO MORE DATA.’

‘It must have been deactivated shortly after the accident. It’s got no memory of anything after the doors opened,’ Abrams said.

‘Isn’t there anything else it can tell us?’ Clare asked.

‘I don’t know. It’s not been programmed for anything other than mining work and basic safety.’ Abrams considered the robot, which stood in front of them, waiting patiently for its next instruction. ‘You know, it might be useful to take it with us. It can move wreckage aside if we need to get through anywhere.’

‘Okay,’ Clare said, frowning. She couldn’t help feeling that the robot was telling them less than it knew, but Abrams was right; it could prove useful.

Matt and Wilson were back with the water.

‘Okay, let’s go, everyone. Bob Five, how much power do you have left?’

‘I HAVE POWER FOR LESS THAN ONE HOUR. MY POWER PACK IS FAILING.’

‘Okay, well we’ll see what we can do. Bob Five, follow us.’

‘YES, MISTRESS.’

It was still very cold, so they kept their spacesuits on, but abandoned the helmets and air cylinders; without any means to refill them, it seemed pointless.

They dismantled the lighting units from their helmets and took these with them as flashlights. As their only means of illumination in the darkness, they had to be sparing with their use, and Clare insisted that Wilson, Elliott and Abrams kept theirs switched off to save the batteries.

They approached the inner hangar doors, the robot clumping along behind them. Fifteen metres wide, in two sliding halves, the doors were fully retracted into the solid rock of the mountain. A steady draught of warmer air stirred their faces as they passed the threshold.

They remembered the layout of this part of the mine from the maps and briefings. Directly after the huge main hangar was the inner maintenance hangar. This hangar, about half the size of the first, could accommodate smaller items of mining equipment, or spacecraft components such as engines, removed for maintenance.

Treading carefully, the mission team ventured into the maintenance hangar. It was deathly quiet in the mine; the only sound was the whine of the robot’s power pack and its heavy, lumbering footfall. The rings of green LEDs round its eyes filled the area with a faint, ghostly radiance.

Clare played the beam from her light round the hangar. Overhead, more gantries were rock-bolted into the roof, and the ruins of a travelling crane dangled; severed electrical cables hung down like jungle creepers from the load head. Along one wall, spare rocket engines lay in their carrying cradles, their protective plastic coverings partly torn off by the gale that had passed through the hangar. One of the giant mining machines sat nearby, its tracks removed for repairs.

At the far side of the chamber, 25 metres away, a further set of doors gaped open in front of them, leading further into the mine.

Elliott looked at the doors, and then back at the doors they had just come through.

‘So, how did the atmosphere vent?’ he asked. ‘When we arrived here, the outer doors were open but the inner hangar doors were closed. The hangar would have been in vacuum, but the mine integrity would have been fine.’

‘Well, we know the mine vented through here,’ Abrams said, ‘we’ve seen the debris field for ourselves.’

Elliott looked at the doors again.

‘All three of these must have been open together – wide open – to cause that amount of air to be lost so quickly, with such a force. I guess that the middle doors were closed after the air vented, which would have resealed the mine, but …’ his voice trailed off.

‘But who closed them?’ Abrams finished the thought for him. ‘And where did the air come from?’

‘Uh, there would have been sufficient reserves in the liquid air reservoirs to recharge the mine, once it was resealed,’ Matt said.

‘Was that automatic – the recharging?’ Bergman asked.

‘No. No, it wasn’t.’

‘So somebody must have closed the doors and repressurised the mine, after the accident took place.’

‘But the mine personnel were all dead within thirty-six hours,’ Elliott said, ‘and they were all trapped in the accommodation block until they made some kind of mistake and lost air pressure.’

‘Well, yeah,’ Matt said, ‘if you’re stupid enough to believe they’d really do that.’

‘What exactly are you saying?’ Elliott said, his voice rising, ‘just because we find a set of closed doors, doesn’t mean that all the previous findings are automatic bullshit!’

‘This isn’t about previous findings,’ Matt said, with exaggerated patience, ‘it’s about what really happened.’

‘Cool it, guys!’ Abrams stepped between the two of them. ‘We’re here to do a job, and both your opinions are needed.’ He looked from Matt to Elliott, and back again, waited for them both to calm down.

‘Matt. Just take it slow and easy, and let’s hear what you’re saying.’

Matt took a deep breath.

‘Well, we know from the voice transmissions that the survivors were definitely in the accommodation block. Then, about a day after the accident, we lost contact with the survivors. The systems telemetry showed loss of pressure in the accommodation block. Then finally, all data transmissions stopped. You with me so far?’

They all nodded, except for Elliott, who just stared at Matt.

‘Okay. Well, there’ve been all sorts of theories on what happened, ranging from them committing suicide, to a secondary explosion. The original investigation board concluded that it was some kind of mistake – someone accidentally operated a door control, and they couldn’t close it again in time.

‘But, they knew they had to get the hangar doors closed to repressurise the mine. If you were trapped in the accommodation block, and you couldn’t close the doors from there, how would you go about it?’

‘Find a spacesuit and send someone to do it manually,’ Bergman said.

‘Right. But the living areas have no airlock, just emergency pressure doors. To let someone out, they would have had to have opened those doors. Suppose they moved everyone into one area, sealed that, and then opened the doors so that someone could get to the hangar?’

‘Are you saying the survivors might have closed the hangar doors themselves?’ Elliott said.

‘Yes. And they may have been unable to tell Earth what they were planning, before they lost all contact.’

There was a pause.

‘I don’t buy it,’ Elliott said, his voice careful. ‘It’s too much of a coincidence, losing contact at just the wrong time. But if your theory is right, they managed to seal and repressurise the mine. Why didn’t they re-establish