If you are to change yourself, first you must see what you want to be …
SS Magellan, Snowball Orbit
Snowball Base did not run to anything as grand as a space station. They waited for one of the colony’s two RITA nuclear landers to dock with Magellan, to take Sheina, her plankton culture and some other odds and ends of cargo down to Hellmouth.
She passed the time keeping a careful eye on the readouts of her plankton culture, now on its own and disconnected from the ship’s systems, actually being let to do so unsupervised.
The brilliant Sheina Marshall, Ph.d Biochemistry, had managed to progress from being a SLOB, not a sloven but an acronym for Self Loading Oxygen Breather, to being a minimally tolerated outsider who could do a simple repetitive task without someone constantly looking over her shoulder.
Magellan’s crew hadn’t been actively rude, just indifferent, which if anything she found a relief. They didn’t pity poor Sheina for her tragic personal life, or smother her with well-meant kindness.
Her voyage had given her a look into a world of people who valued competence and ability above all, who might have to hold the fate of a world in their hands and were prepared to look that responsibility right in the eye.
Magellan’s crew was as tight-knit as a family, with Asmaa and Captain Song as parents who could be as stern as needed or laugh along with them. They had their pranks and quarrels, in-jokes and rivalries. She could never be part of such a family, but she did feel a wistful envy for its members.
The lander docked with a rippling CLANG of latches engaging, and the hatch opened. They eased the culture tank down the narrow central passage into the hold, and Sheina saw it secured down with nylon straps that would hold many times its weight under high gee. She took the seat right beside it, where she could see the readouts, stowing her personal luggage under her seat.
The hold had the worn Spartan look of hard use, smelling of oil and humanity and other odours she couldn’t identify. The cold made her huddle into her parka, the one part of her kit she had not stinted on. The lander’s co-pilot came by to double-check the straps on the culture tank and her, impartially. The noise level of pumps and motors discouraged conversation.
She braced for a rough ride, and she got it. Acceleration descended on her like a lead blanket to the roar of the nuclear rockets. It ceased as abruptly as it began, leaving them in free-fall. After a short respite the acceleration built again, to a vibration hard enough to make her vision blur. Rather than wonder if they would crash, she riveted her attention on the readouts, which thankfully remained in the green.
The engines roared to life again, the acceleration slammed down on her, then they cut off abruptly, followed by a jolt. “Landed!”
The big door groaned and scraped its way open, and a wave of icy air with a burnt smell swept into the hold. Sheina unstrapped, eager to leave this metal box, but the co-pilot slid down the ladder and told her she would have to wait for decontamination. Sheina shuddered at the thought of alien purple slime crawling all over everything.
With his assistance, she used the time to undo the straps on her culture tank. The co-pilot found her a dolly so they could move it. Asmaa’s warning certainly came true. Snowball’s higher gravity made it harder to keep her balance and lift or move things.
Decontamination of the landing area finished, they wheeled the tank down the ramp. Concentrating on the cargo she had brought so far, she didn’t look up until they reached the base of the ramp. When she did, her mouth fell open.
The continuous background of a crackling roar and the constant wind at her back came from a huge flame that reached up into the sky, like the Devil’s own cigarette lighter.
The co-pilot took in her expression and grinned. “Welcome to Hellmouth.”
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