somehow and repointed at the Sun, and that would mean a trip up the mountain.
In the meantime, the solar arrays were providing enough power for essential systems, including the hoist motors, but Matt and Bergman couldn’t get any of the main lighting working, as hard as they tried. The emergency lighting circuits seemed to be working, however, and their world shifted into monochrome as the lights came on, bathing the control centre with a nightmarish red glare and stark, black shadows.
Gradually, a plan emerged by consensus, to make best use of their skills, and the assets that they had.
Clare and Wilson were to investigate the shuttlecraft, and see if it could be made flightworthy. This involved a trip out under the crater floor, to the crew shuttle silos.
Elliott and Abrams would go up to the mountain peak and attempt to make contact with Earth using a modified radio. Matt and Bergman would go with them part of the way, to guide them to a service raise that would bring them out high on the mountainside. From there, a winding path led up to the peak. Clare drafted the text of the message to send back to Earth, which would get the attention they needed. After some debate, they decided to avoid mention of any mutiny, and stuck to a more basic distress call.
That left Matt and Bergman, and the task that nobody wanted: to investigate the last known location of the mine personnel, deep down in the mine. With the hoist motors operational, Matt was confident that they should be able to get down and back again. Nobody knew what to hope for, or to expect, but any chance of finding survivors, however remote, had to be investigated.
The possibility of a mutiny had grown more compelling with every step they had taken into the mine, but it was puzzling that they had not encountered any survivors, if this was the case. The accommodation levels were the logical place to set up a base after a mutiny, but the place was deserted.
Talk of survivors made them glance at the empty gun locker, and the scattered cartridge cases on the floor. If there were any mutineers left alive, they could be armed, and the mission team had no means of defending themselves.
It was after 22:00, and Clare ordered that they get something to eat and try to get a night’s rest, before going any further.
They set up their sleeping quarters on the first level of the accommodation block, above the galley level, and took six relatively undisturbed rooms off the main corridor to sleep in.
Although it went against their instincts to plunder the effects of the mine personnel, practicality won, and they swapped their bulky spacesuits for clothes that they raided from wardrobes in various rooms, until they each had a set that fitted them well enough. They were mostly the dark blue standard-issue mine overalls, with insulated jackets that they could put over the top, but Clare managed to find some jeans and a sheepskin-lined leather jacket that fitted her better.
To everyone’s surprise, Wilson and Bergman managed to cook a hot meal, using some pasta and containers of sauce that they found in the kitchen cupboards. The six of them sat down in the dishevelled galley and ate their first real meal, out of serving pans, by the red glow of the emergency lights. Afterwards, they sat and looked out over the spectacular view outside, and ate some of the chocolate bars from the emergency ration packs.
It seemed a feast, and when they were finished, the weariness descended. They hadn’t stopped moving since the crash, and it was nearly midnight on the same day they had fired the big nuclear engine on the space tug to brake them into an orbit round Mercury. It seemed an age ago, and in a different world.
As the adrenaline levels fell in their bloodstreams, the need for sleep became overpowering. Heads nodded.
Clare pushed back her chair, and stood up.
‘It’s time we all got back up to our rooms. I’ll take the first watch. Matt – are you up to the second? Steve’s beat.’ She inclined her head to where Wilson sat, eyes closed, head forward on his chest.
‘Sure.’ Matt nodded. He could have done with the extra sleep, but what the hell.
Clare led the way back upstairs to the living quarters, and set up a chair in the red-lit corridor outside the apartments, as the rest of them bedded down for the night. At Clare’s insistence, they kept all the doors open, in case they needed to be woken in a hurry.
It didn’t take long before they fell silent, and Clare was left alone. It was deathly quiet in the mine, and the loudest sound seemed to be the thump of the pulse in her ears.
In her imagination, the huge, empty mine began to crawl with unknown terrors, shapeless things that climbed slowly up the deep shafts, hungry for their blood. She could hear them, sliding stealthily over the rough- hewn floors of the mine workings, coming up the stairs to the living quarters.
She forced herself to calm down, to focus. The mine was deserted; it always had been. She couldn’t afford to lose it; none of them could.
She rubbed her knuckles into her eyes.
From the open doorway nearest her, she could just make out the faint sounds of Matt’s breathing.
PART IV
The Haunted Mine
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
A skull whispered at Clare’s ear, and she woke with a start, her silent scream of fear echoing around her mind.
Matt was standing over her, his hand on her arm. She was slumped in the seat, and her neck muscles ached.
‘Shit,’ she muttered, ‘what time is it?’
‘Nearly five a.m.’ He put his hand up to forestall Clare’s instinctive reaction. ‘Don’t worry, I slept right through the alarm as well. Nobody bad came to get us in the night. You go get some more sleep, I’ll finish the watch.’
Clare stood up, rubbing the stiff muscles at the side of her neck.
‘Don’t tell the others about this, okay? We can’t afford to get sloppy.’
‘It never happened,’ Matt said.
Clare went back to her room, and flung herself down on the bed. She closed her eyes, expecting sleep to come, but it didn’t; just a grey weariness in which every detail of the crash ran in front of her, again and again, and no matter what she did, the outcome was the same. The ship crashed into the dusty floor of the crater and exploded in silent flames, until, in her dreams, she just let go of the controls and watched the events unfold.
Matt woke everyone three hours later.
There was no heating for the showers in their bathrooms, and the water was icy cold, but none of them were prepared to go for another day without getting clean, and they were determined to make the best of their situation.
Matt puffed and shivered as he washed himself down, the cold water running over his skin. He reminded himself that the alternative could have been moist towels in the habitat modules, and he forced himself to stand under the spray of cold water, counting the seconds, until a full minute had gone by.
It could be worse – a lot worse, he thought, as he toweled himself down. He felt clean and refreshed, ready to tackle whatever the mine had to throw at them, as he went downstairs to the galley.
The search last night had found more dried ingredients, still fresh in their sealed packs, and a little later, all six of them sat down to an improvised breakfast of hot oatmeal and mugs of coffee.
Their spirits rose as they sipped the steaming liquid, and talk centred on whether the shuttlecraft could get them back up to the waiting space tug, and when they would be able to make contact with Earth. Clare let the talk flow; she didn’t voice her private concerns about what condition the shuttle would be in after nine years, or what the chances were of getting the transmitter to work.
Eventually, however, during a gap in the conversation, Clare knocked her mug on the table for
