“This site looks good,” Antonio said.
“Rikki, Blake,” Dana said, “I think I know how you feel. How about—”
Li cleared her throat, reminding everyone how unsubtle she was. And that something more than site selection was on her mind. “The caves seem adequate, Captain, and my compliments to our intrepid explorers. But I have a question.”
“Of course.” Dana nodded agreeably, relieved to have consensus about a major decision. Clueless, Li hoped, about the issue at hand.
Li said, “As I understand it, we’ll land near the beach, hike uphill and clear the boulder field on the flat expanse near the cave entrance, then hop Endeavour to its permanent landing spot. Right?”
“Right,” Dana said. “Um, wait. What do you mean, permanent?”
“That that’s where the ship will stay. Over a power cable, Endeavour is our power source. When something surprises us, she’s our emergency shelter and, worst case, our way to evacuate. She’s a secure place to stow some reserve portion of our cargo, for safekeeping.”
“And the only place within light-years with a shower or a galley,” Carlos threw in.
Dana frowned, uncertainly. “The DED as a power supply for six of us? That’s like swatting flies with tactical nukes.”
“It won’t always be just the six of us,” Li said mildly. “The larger point is, we’re settling a barren wilderness. For that we need tech. Unless we conserve the little tech we have, it will wear out before we can replace it.”
Dana’s eyes narrowed.
Sensing deeper meanings, finally, are we? Li pressed on. “Without this vessel, we have nothing. No way to power the synth vats, maintain cooling for the embryos, or run the artificial wombs. No way ever to develop the tech to get us out of caves. No way—”
“I take your point,” Dana said coldly.
“Do you?” Li shot back. Get really pissed off, Captain. “Wear out this ship through unnecessary use, and to what energy source do we revert? Campfires of our dried shit?”
“Ethanol distilled…from algae mats. Maybe a hydroelectric…power plant.”
As he spoke, Antonio squirmed. He did not fare well with conflict and, moreover, was an innocent bystander. Li regretted putting him through this, but it was for the greater good.
She did everything for the greater good.
“Alcohol lamps,” she sneered.
With nostrils flaring, Dana said, “And after the settlement becomes dependent for power on Endeavour? She’s unavailable then for the unanticipated.”
“So: alcohol lamps,” Li scoffed again.
She heard Dana’s teeth grinding.
Work it through, Captain. I’m defying you. Why? Is it because with the ship grounded your claim to any special authority over the rest of us is grounded with it?
“If I may, Captain,” Blake said. “Li poses an engineering problem, and it has an engineering solution.”
“Go on, Blake,” Dana said.
“The second shuttle is still in crates. Run the colony off its reactor. Scavenge that shuttle, as needed, for high-tech parts.”
“While you joyride around the solar system?” Li challenged. “Endeavour has served us well, but it’s old. Tired. When our one long-range ship breaks down far out in the solar system—and it will—then what?”
“She’s my ship,” Dana forced the words between clenched jaws. “That hasn’t changed. She isn’t grounded till I say she’s grounded, and if that happens, it’ll be on an engineer’s recommendation, not a shrink’s.”
“It’s all very well to—”
“Enough, Li,” Dana growled. “We’ll offload the spare shuttle’s fusion reactor. It’ll give more than ample power to start our colony. We’ll offload most parts and supplies from this ship. Hell, we’ll disconnect and offload Marvin’s servers, so that no matter where Endeavour goes, if it goes, the colony always has the use of Marvin’s archives. All right?”
“Yes, Captain,” Li said meekly.
With a parting glower at Li, Dana turned the conversation to scheduling the landing.
“That was brutal,” Carlos whispered to Li.
No, she thought, that was reverse psychology. I have Dana just where I want her.
25
Dead tired, Dana swung her pickaxe up over her head. It came down, clang, on the unyielding ground. A few sparks flew, and bits of gravel.
From starship captain to manual laborer in one week and one easy lesson.
Despite morning chill and a stiff breeze off the newly dubbed Darwin Sea, sweat ran down her face and neck and plastered her shirt to her back. Knees, hips, shoulders…was any joint in her body not in agony from the extra weight hung on her by Dark’s gravity? Certainly the damned pickaxe weighed a tonne. Taking a rest break every ten minutes and whenever she felt lightheaded, she had managed, so far, to forgo a breather mask.
Headache, dizziness, insomnia, and lack of appetite: she could be the poster child for altitude sickness. Tough. She told herself they had higher oh-two pressure than any Tibetan.
Trying to forget that Tibetans were no more.
Once again, the world spun around her. Dana laid down her pickaxe, carefully, before she hurt anyone with it. She sat on a boulder to wait out the vertigo. The blue-green sky made her queasy, too. She wished she could remember how long Mars’s red sky had taken to come to seem normal. Years, she guessed.
Blake, nearby, wielded his own pickaxe. The result so far—as in her case—was more dimple than hole. But pickaxes were easier to fabricate than jackhammers.
Among untold gaps in Marvin’s knowledge, rock blasting was the first to bite them. How much explosive would they need? How deep should they plant the explosives? How far apart?
Dropping his pickaxe, Blake wiped his forehead with a sleeve. His beard (all three men had started one, for warmth) remained scruffy. “This is a lot of work on an empty stomach.”
“Nonsense,” she said, shuddering. “We had gruel.”
He stooped to reclaim his tool. “You always could motivate me.”
Dana wished he hadn’t reminded her of breakfast. Pond scum à là Carlos. According to every test Carlos and Li had devised, the reformulated slop was safe—
And with each mouthful Dana channeled old mystery novels. Arsenic poisoning was not how she wanted to go.
Dark’s biology, what there was of it, in many ways resembled Earth’s. So, anyway, her experts told her. Both biochemistries relied on DNA and
