Life is a powerful force, to create or destroy …
Chapter 1 Ties That Bind
Family is strength, and weakness. Persian proverb.
Vancouver Spaceport, Launch Complex #4
Sheina Marshall put away her phone at the boarding call for the Galaxy booster to Bazaar Station, with the pang she always felt at closing the wallpaper of her children. The picture was getting older, and so were her children. She would have to go cap in hand to get even a newer picture.
The electric cart awaited them at the boarding gate, and her phone was her boarding pass. The ride across the concrete let her savour the cool sea breeze and the warm sunlight. The spaceport itself lay between the sea and the foothills of the Rockies, well away from the city itself so that the thunder of around-the-clock rocket launches and landings should not disturb its dwellers. Still further off in the distance, another booster rose into the sky on a long trail of white flame. The muted thunder of the takeoff rolled across them.
The vast expanse made her feel like a mouse in a ballroom full of elephants. This is just another field trip. A little further than most, that’s all.
That the launch of a spacecraft to Near-Earth Orbit should be as ordinary and routine as taking a business flight across the country spoke to how much things had changed since the advent of the Portal. Space travel was no longer a daring adventure, just business. Sheina’s ticket had been a business expense paid by Risk Enterprises, and she sincerely hoped there would be no adventure involved, no matter some of the stories she had been told.
The glass-sided elevator taking them up the side of the huge rocket booster gave them a breathtaking view of the spaceport as they rose up the gantry. Other launch gantries, distant across the broad sweep of concrete, reached for the sky. Orderly but intense activity around the nearest booster told of it being fuelled and prepared for liftoff. Another, still farther out, had a white banner of cold gas drifting downwind, almost ready for launch. Behind them rose the great craggy wall of the Rocky Mountains, vast enough to dwarf even the greatest of human works to insignificance.
Sheina felt a little awestruck herself, at all the history that had been made, and being made, here. She was on her way to Snowball, the first human colony beyond the Solar System, the booty of the Contract Violation on the Snowball Contract.
For all its size, the passengers filled the elevator to capacity, and people milled around trying to get a better vantage point to enjoy the view. The elevator emptied quickly when it arrived at the passenger lock. The seats were further apart than on a commercial airliner, and rather than overhead bins there were lockers to serve each cluster of seats. Sheina stowed her carry-on luggage in the locker for her seat. She hoped she wouldn’t need the extras she had been advised to pack. The passenger cabin still had some new car smell to it.
All being well, the flight should last four hours. If, for one reason or another, they weren’t able to dock on the first pass, then they would have to wait a day or more for the next opportunity.
Her seat mates shared a comradrie, unlike most passengers on commercial aircraft. Alice Dunhill worked as a technical specialist at Farside Observatory on Luna, facing the first leg of a rather long trip. Bazaar Station to Nearside Luna took days, followed by the long trip in a cramped crawler to Farside.
Tom Locklin looked young and excited at his first trip outward bound, and said he was under a Non-Disclosure Agreement.
Sheina remained suitably modest about her own humble role in the Snowball Project. “Our Institute has a contract to provide plankton for seeding the oceans of Snowball, to increase the oxygen content of the air.”
His eyes glazed over very quickly, so she forbore to go into details. Half the oxygen you’re breathing right now comes from plankton, laddie.
It had been a tough professional challenge to select, from the myriad of organisms in Earth’s seas, the ones which would most efficiently produce oxygen and be hardy enough to survive and thrive in the turbulent seas of Snowball. It had been good for her, taking her mind off her children and what might befall them in the so-called care of her ex-husband and his rotating roster of girlfriends.
The prelaunch announcements brought her back to the present, and the roar of the engines thrust her firmly down into the seat cushions, taking her into an uncertain journey to a hostile world. No matter how far she might go, the ties to her heart would never fail.
GSS Magellan, Bazaar Station
Completely lost in the 3D maze of Bazaar Station, Sheina pulled herself along the zero-gee corridor looking for Docking Bay 4 and GSS Magellan. Clinging to the line with one hand and her luggage with the other, she checked again, trying to make sense of the signs. So far, she had wound up in dead ends twice, so she hoped the third time was the charm.
She sighed with relief as she rounded the corner to see the ship docked on, and the big electronic sign saying “GSS Magellan“, as welcome as home at the end of a long day. The woman waiting at the lock wore an expression of restrained impatience.
The woman took in her appearance, and inclined her head gravely. “Dr. Marshall. I am glad to see you. Please, come aboard. I am Asmaa Dragomirov, Executive Officer of Magellan.”
Compared to Asmaa’s composed manner and militarily neat flight suit, Sheina felt embarrassed, sweaty and rumpled. She gratefully accepted Asmaa’s help, envying her ability to move in zero gee like a salmon in a stream.
Once through the lock, Sheina looked around as Asmaa escorted her through the main passage of the ship, cluttered with wiring runs and boxes and fittings of all sorts. The air felt a little on the chilly side, smelling faintly of ozone and oil and other smells she couldn’t identify, with a subdued hum hinting at machines working.
Three close calls with knocking her head on something later, they arrived at what resembled a giant pipe fitting, with passages leading off to the left and right.
Asmaa pointed down each passage. “Hab A, and Hab B. You will be bunking in Hab B, in the female quarters. Forward is the bridge and Observation.”
Asmaa visibly restrained her impatience with Sheina’s slow progress down the centre of the hab, past the exercise room and the common room.
“It’s oriented down,” Sheina said, diffidently.
“Yes, we are normally under spin gravity for a half gee, which is enough to prevent bone deterioration and the other ills of microgravity. That said, you will be well advised to make good use of the exercise equipment. Snowball’s gravity is higher than Earth’s,” Asmaa replied. Her manner implied a mild rebuke at the obvious.
Sheina had a cabin to herself, small but adequate. Sheina, at Asmaa’s quiet but pointed hint, stowed her gear in lockers and secured the strong latches.
With that done, Asmaa opened the door of the cabin and looked behind at Sheina. “You will wish to ensure your cargo is secured properly, of course.”
The hint didn’t make a dent in the deck only because they were in microgravity, and Sheina made haste to take it. Sheina followed Asmaa back down the main passage past where they had docked on into a cluttered space with a sign, Engineering, in Gothic letters over a set of brass goggles.
Asmaa turned her over to the Engineer, a cheerful round-faced man named Bartholomew Cuttle. She wasn’t sure if he amplified his Bow Bells accent for her benefit. The conditioned locker holding her samples had a set of readouts for temperature, humidity, light levels and much else, so as to ensure that the plankton culture arrived alive and in good shape.
Sheina found herself vaguely irritated by the slow explanations and requirement to repeat back statements, as if they spoke to a dimwit who needed to have everything explained to her twice.
She shrugged it off. I can’t complain about them being careful with it. It’s the reason for this whole odyssey, after all.
When she pronounced herself satisfied, Cuttle detailed off one of the people working in Engineering, a woman, to see her back to her cabin, ignoring her protest that she could find her way there on her own.
Back in her cabin, Sheina occupied herself with unpacking her clothes and effects, hampered at each turn by her unfamiliarity with microgravity. She had barely finished when jolts and thumps reverberated through the ship. Undocking, already. They held a starship departure just for me. I’ll wager they aren’t best pleased with that.
The same woman who had escorted her up knocked at her cabin door, and spent five brusque minutes ensuring she had stowed her luggage properly, then ordered her to strap into her bunk in readiness for the main drive burn which would take them from Near Earth Orbit to the Portal.
Sheina lay in her bunk, faithful to her promise to not stir out of it for any reason until after the burn.
“Main Drive burn!” Abruptly, down in the cabin went from what her brain interpreted from the surroundings to sideways, with enough force to pull her out of her bunk if she hadn’t been strapped in.
It would have been nice if she’d explained it to me, instead of treating me like a dimwitted child.
The burn lasted about fifteen minutes, long enough for her to wish she’d hung on to her e-reader. The next announcement said they were spinning up the habs for spin gravity, so she elected to stay strapped in through that process, too.
Once they had stabilized, she unstrapped herself and explored the small space which would be home to her for the next couple of weeks. It didn’t take long. The cabin resembled a cramped version of a university dorm room, furnished with a small desk, a chair fixed to the deck, lockers and the bunk, which folded into the wall when not in use. The LEDs recessed into the ceiling made her feel like someone under a spotlight.
The designer had relentlessly wrung the most utility out of every cubic centimetre of space, but it had all the soul and humanity of a zombie.
Sheina ventured out to look around a little, locating the relentlessly efficient communal washroom and shower area. The common room had the first human touch she had seen so far. On one wall hung a large black pirate flag. The skull had crossed light sabres on it instead of bones, with a series of smaller embroidered patches on it.
The tea and coffee area had a rack of mugs, each with a name on them. There didn’t seem to be any spares.
Sheina turned to see Asmaa enter the common room. “Um, could I get a cup of tea?”
A momentary flash of annoyance crossed Asmaa’s face, but she pulled a spare mug out of a rack in one of the cupboards and pointed her at the rack of pods for the Keurig machine.
Teacup in hand, with the warmth of English Breakfast in her, she ventured to ask Asmaa a couple of questions. She didn’t understand the brusque reception she’d had, but didn’t want to come across as a whiner, either.
Asmaa gave her a level look over her tea cup, and visibly decided to be blunt. “I realize this not your fault, Dr. Marshall, but your presence on board is a decided headache. This is a Galactic Surveys starship. It is our business to explore the unknown and, at need, to go into harm’s way at no notice. Our crews are carefully selected and highly trained for that reason. Everyone on board, for example, has a vac suit and is trained and qualified for EVA operations – except you. This ship is not designed for passengers. You will be escorted everywhere except here in the hab area because you could easily get hurt out of simple ignorance. Do as you are told and make no trouble, and we will get along fine. Understood?”
Sheina’s shoulders slumped. An interloper and a nuisance. As if things couldn’t get any worse. “Understood. I will be as little of a problem as I can.”
“Good. Keep your phone on you at all times. You will take your meals here, in the common room, not in your cabin. Wash and secure your mug when you are done with it. Never leave anything sculling around loose. It would create a hazard if the ship had to manoeuvre suddenly.” The snap of command in Asmaa’s voice left no room for further questions.
Asmaa finished her tea, secured her mug and left, with the air of a busy person on to the next item in a crowded schedule. Sheina’s tea didn’t taste nearly so good. She dumped the dregs and rinsed it out, then spent a fumbling few minutes figuring how to lock the mug in the rack, and unlatch it again.
She went back to her cabin and figured out how to fit her laptop into the rack on her desk. Good news, I’ll have time to catch up on my reading. It will still be a very long couple of weeks.
Be First to Comment