Doubt plagued me. It had never been like this before. It was the same with other miners. It was like someone had lowered the logical consistency sensitivity of some module in my brain. A huge blind spot had formed on our consciousness. None of us could see the gaps. For some unknown reason, my blind spot had been shrinking. Now, the problem was becoming exposed like a black reef emerging from the red tide.
Maybe from fear, maybe from the fading names, maybe from the skill tree in my head calculating the enormous threats, I could no longer use the old escape routes.
I had to do something.
Emerging from the shower bag, Baldy gave me a shock. His scarred body was like that of a striped leopard in the jungle, dark and glinting as vapor rose from his skin.
‘It’s you? I thought it was Hairbeast.’ He plucked an eyebrow. ‘We had arranged to meet, you understand. Anyway, get on with your exercise.’
‘Things aren’t supposed to be this way.’
‘What way? You don’t sound right. You done a self-scan?’
‘I’m fine. It’s you who’s got the problem. You don’t feel like this is all quite absurd? This Whale Mother? This work? This way of people constantly dying…’
‘Hey, Square Face. We’ve discussed this several times. This is our fate. To pay our debts we bear risks and pains normal people couldn’t bear. Death’s just the middleman.’
‘That what you really think? Or is that what they make you think?’ I pointed upward, though I knew there wasn’t really an up. After all, we were spinning in space.
‘You ask me, I’d say maybe you need a companion to release some pressure. Sometimes your module will develop cognitive errors due to accumulation of negative emotion. It’s like a kind of – what’s the word – allergy. Yes, like an allergy.’ He turned his back and began to towel himself dry.
‘I calculated the cost. Using the Hohmann transfer orbit, to keep people coming here from Earth makes zero economic sense. Imagine scrapping an airplane every time you fly with no return ticket. It makes for some ugly accounting, Baldy. No one would do this business at such a loss.’
He turned slowly, a severe expression on his face.
‘… So what are you thinking?’
‘We tell the company we’re not doing it anymore.’
‘Impossible. Our debt… It doesn’t matter. Only the company can contact us anyway. It’s one-way. Our calls go to an autoresponder, some message sorter.’
‘Then we shut down Mother Whale’s production line. We stop shipping and see what they do.’
‘Yeah, that’s one way to get their attention. You sure you want to do that?’ The expression on Baldy’s face shifted slightly, but I didn’t know what it meant.
‘If they don’t respond, I got a backup plan,’ I stopped, looked around. ‘We blow up the refining workshop.’
The refining workshop in the belly of Mother Whale was central to the second, third and fourth stage processing of all the ore brought back by Hermit Crab.
Second-stage processing began with the electrolysis of water into hydrogen and oxygen, which were then liquefied and stored as our primary propellants. Third-stage processing involved high-temperature ‘baking’ for the reduction of magnetite by carbon-containing polymers, resulting in the more complete release of water, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide and nitrogen. Fourth stage processing used released carbon monoxide as a reagent for the extraction, separation, purification and manufacture of iron and nickel products via the Mond gas process. The residue contained cobalt, rare platinum group metals, and semiconductors like gallium, germanium, selenium and tellurium. That residue might not look like much but it was worth more than the sum historical value of many of the largest companies in history.
‘You serious?’ His eyes narrowed.
‘Mix hydrogen and oxygen, add carbon-containing polymer, high temperatures… Boom.’ I snapped my fingers and mimed a vast explosion.
‘Alright, let me think on it. This requires a collective vote…’ Baldy bowed his head and flung the towel over his shoulder. He had up to that point been repeatedly wiping the same area for some time.
‘I don’t trust them,’ I said. ‘I only trust you.’
‘Alright.’ He dropped the towel and walked over, hand outstretched. ‘Thanks for your trust.’
Before I could shake his hand, Baldy knocked me cold to the ground with a single punch. Last thing I saw was his mutilated toes, stretching and contracting against the floor, producing a sound like the pincers of some insect scraping against metal.
*
I tried opening my eyes but couldn’t. I tried moving my body but couldn’t.
I felt hands lifting me, stuffing me into something. Voices washed over me intermittently. I tried my hardest to make out their words.
‘… Sorry, Square Face… We had the collective vote and this is the outcome… We can’t… You can’t disrupt our order…’
I could feel now I was in a spacesuit. I didn’t like that. Spacesuits meant you were about to enter some uncontrollable extreme environment with just one thin layer of protection.
‘… You always said… Minimize risk… Mathematically, this is the most reasonable way…’
Something switched on. Air pressure was changing rapidly, as well as temperature. I heard modules in the spacesuit waking up one by one, as if it were the living thing instead of me. My paralyzed consciousness seemed to grasp the terrible fact before my body was fully awake.
‘… Your oxygen can sustain… 124 minutes… Try to save…’
My eyelids flicked open and I saw the crew’s faces, hands on their foreheads as though in mourning. They stood in front of Baldy. Between their faces and mine were two layers of specialized glass. One layer on the isolation hatch door, the other on my helmet. A pitying voice spoke on the helmet’s communicator.
‘… Your debt… is cleared… Death is just… the middleman…’
I stretched out a numb hand to try to grab on to anything. I wanted to shout, beg them not to. But it was too late. I watched their faces float away, the light around them become uneven, their
