One Way

19

That someone was using the buggies without telling Frank was such a little thing. The power consumption was low, and Declan had managed to cobble together another couple of panels from the broken pieces, which gave them most of a kilowatt extra. It wasn’t really an issue of balancing those needs any more.

He’d discovered that Declan had been right by logging the gas and water volumes in the fuel cell, and they’d shown slight differences more than once, indicating that the distances involved were small. He’d also drawn thin lines in the sand behind each wheel, which were impossible to spot in the utter darkness of the Martian night.

Each morning, the marks had been smudged, and were no longer in position under the buggy. He’d scuff them out, and think back to the night before, trying to work out if any of the noises aside from the creaks and groans of contracting metal could have meant anything. This had gone on for a week now.

The buggies had no keys, no locks. They were company property, just like the crew. No one had any need to sneak around, and yet they were.

He’d had a quiet word with everyone. None of them had felt the need to own up. Or stop, for that matter. There were a limited number of possibilities. Someone suiting up and driving around in their sleep was one he’d considered, and discounted.

Brack was another. And it was the one he kept on coming back to.

Because there was literally only one place to go to. The ship. There was nothing else for miles around, and as the numbers on the dials showed, the mileage wasn’t anything extraordinary. A couple of miles across the Heights and a couple of miles back would account for most of the consumption. The cold—he hadn’t tried it himself—might account for the rest.

He didn’t think there was anything in the ship that any of the cons needed. So, if it was Brack, what was it that he did there, secretly, that he needed most nights to do?

The drugs? That bothered him a whole lot more. There was a whole pharmacy just lying around that any one of them could help themselves to. To the best of his knowledge, no one had inventoried the medical supplies. Alice would have done it, if she hadn’t sampled some of the wares. Zeus was Alice’s second, but he hadn’t had the time, or the inclination, for such a tedious, persnickety task. So the pills had been just left there. And someone had, at the very least, opened up two of the sealed boxes. If they hadn’t then gone on to pocket some of the contents, then Frank would color himself surprised.

And Brack knew about that. He’d been clearly doing his own poking around. Did he know who it was? If he did, why hadn’t he done anything about it? Frank was having suspicions that Brack’s claim to be all-seeing and all-knowing was just a crock. But then again, Brack refusing to eat anything but shipped-out food was beginning to make more sense.

It made Frank uneasy. He hadn’t really considered Brack at all for weeks. He was like a ghost in the background—odd noises, shadows outside, things getting moved, that was just Brack doing stuff. Maybe there was more to it. Frank didn’t know what, though.

But on the assumption that it was Brack driving to and from the ship at night, he needed to warn Declan off from poking around further.

Frank arranged things so that both he and Declan were outside at the same time: checking the buggies and tilting the panels. He motioned to him that he was turning his microphone off, and waited for Declan to finish cleaning the array as it turned towards the midday sun.

They touched helmets.

“It’s Brack?”

“It’s none of us.”

“What is it that he’s hiding from us? And why?”

There was dust between them. It grated and crackled against the faceplates.

“We don’t need to know. And we probably don’t want to know, either.”

“Well, I want to know,” said Declan.

“You ask him, then. I’m sure as hell not.”

“Of course you won’t. Why not? Because it’s not part of your mindset. He’s the boss, the mighty whitey, and you’re not to question what he does. You’re still a prisoner.” He tapped Frank’s helmet with his index finger. “Up here. My guess is that he’s talking to XO.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. We’ve got the Comms center right there at the base.”

“So he’s talking to XO about stuff he doesn’t want us to overhear.”

Frank shrugged. “Why would that be unusual?”

“Don’t you want to know what it is he’s saying to them?”

“No. Not really. Because it hasn’t got anything to do with us.”

“Jesus, Frank. It’s going to be about us. Aren’t you curious? At all?”

“Maybe, on some level. But this is just causing trouble we can do without. Look, we’re doing fine. We’re doing what we came here to do. NASA’s going to turn up, and we get to hang out with astronauts. Let’s not rock the boat.”

“Frank, listen to yourself. You’re institutionalized. We need to know what Brack’s up to, in case it does rock that boat. I’ll talk to Dee. See what he can find out.”

“You’ve got to leave the kid out of this.”

“We can’t hear what Brack’s saying to XO, but maybe we can get the other half of the conversation as it’s beamed back.”

“I’m serious, don’t drag Dee into this. He doesn’t need it.”

“What he does is up to him. He’s an adult, Frank. And you’re not his father.”

That hurt. Hurt like a stab to the heart, even though Declan could have no idea why. Frank pulled back, almost reeling away, and Declan regarded him coolly. The electrician pressed the buttons on his suit control, and the conversation was over. Frank was left to walk away, to the other side of the base where the RTG sat, silently infusing the tank of water above it with life-giving, free, heat. He made a perfunctory pass of it, remembered Brack’s words about boredom, and decided to make a better job of checking it, in a minute or two.

He turned his microphone back on and stared out over the Heights, down over the tops of the Beverly Hills, towards the distant crater wall. It was always hazy, to some degree or other. There were days on Earth, just after it had rained, when the air was clear and the horizon pin-sharp. Mars didn’t do that: there were just shades of haze, from distant to near. In a dust-storm, visibility would be effectively zero, and they’d get no power from the solar farm at all, for days, possibly weeks.

That would be interesting.

He was still thinking in the long term. But this wouldn’t be for ever. Brack would take him home. Eventually.

What was he going to do? Was he going to tell Brack that they’d worked out that he was making nocturnal visits to the ship, and some of them—Declan, mainly—were more interested in that than they ought to be? He still had to live with the man, rely on the man, and work with the man.

What he was going to do was go back and check the water heater properly, all the pipework, and the fixtures into the rear airlock of the greenhouse.

He needed a new project. He’d overseen the building of the modules, done the majority of the driving: dangerous, difficult work. Now that was over, the constant living on the edge fading into memory, the one thing he missed was the sharp sense of feeling alive. Prison was dull, and he didn’t want to slip back into thinking the base was another prison. It wasn’t. Not to him.

So he would talk to Brack. Not about whatever the hell he was doing with the buggies, but about more building work. About soil ramparts and adobe bricks.

If Declan wanted to snoop… it was difficult to know how successful he’d be. And what Brack would do about it in return. The atmosphere on the base was OK. They were bumping along, mostly fine, with only the occasional source of friction. Mainly the power. Mainly Declan being Declan.

There was the drug thing—the possibility of the drug thing. There was a lockable room. Why not put them in there? Why hadn’t Brack put them in there as soon as he’d found the boxes had been tampered with?

Fuck them. Seriously, fuck them. If everyone was going to go all secret squirrel on him, let them. It wasn’t his job to keep anyone in line. Just as long as he kept his own nose clean, right?

He finished up by the RTG and went around the back to the workshop hab. It looked slightly different. Slightly wrong. Deflated.

He quickened his pace, pushed his hand against the end of the hab as soon as he could. There was normally much more resistance.

“Dee?”

“Frank. ’Sup?”

“I’m out by the workshop. You got any alarms from it?”

“I’ll check.”

Frank tried to peer through the plastic. The sun was overhead, and he couldn’t make out anything other than vague diffuse shapes.

“OK, I just remembered there’s a problem with the alarm: we turned it off.”

“And we did that because?”

“Because the telltale measures the amount of oxygen in the air, and the air in the workshop is pressurized regular Mars air, and it was doing nothing but triggering false positives.”

“Where’s Zeus?”

“Said he was going to the greenhouse to do something or other to the tilapia tanks.”

“I think we’ve got a leak. I’ll check it out. Can you dump some patches in the cross-hab airlock for me?”

“Sure.”

Frank climbed up the steps to the workshop airlock and cycled it through. He twisted the handle, and pushed, and found the door was stuck. He put his shoulder to it, wedging his hard external carapace against the dusty red of the airlock and bracing himself with his feet. If this didn’t work, he’d have to get some tools.

He shoved hard, and the door gave about six inches. Smoke started to peel around the opening, thick streamers of it, twisting away and vanishing in Mars’s hungry air.

“Fire,” said Frank. “Fire in the workshop.”

There was clamor in his ears, alarms sounding and Dee, then other people shouting. After a few seconds’ confusion, Brack shouted for everyone to shut the fuck up.

“There’s no fire because there’s nothing to burn, dipshit.”

“Then where the hell is this smoke coming from?” It was still boiling out, up and away, white braids dancing in the wind.

“It’s not smoke,” said Dee. “It’s not smoke, Frank.”

“Then what is it?”

“It’s Zeus.”

“Fuck no.” Frank hit the door hard with his shoulder, once, twice, three times. Zeus was a big man, heavy, dense, and he’d fallen behind the hinge. Because Frank was in his bulky suit, no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn’t reach the man. He slammed the door shut again. Too late. It was too late. He knew that. But he still had to try.

He needed to cut his way through the hab’s skin. He didn’t have a sharp edge. The plastic was thick and hard and he couldn’t tear it and he needed a knife, an actual knife or a saw blade or something and he didn’t have one and he couldn’t do anything.

He backed away down the steps. There were rocks. He could use rocks. He picked one up and started stabbing at the deflated side of the hab, and succeeded only in scoring the surface rather than cutting through. He kept on going, because Zeus deserved his effort, his perseverance, his sweat.

“Put it down, Kittridge. Put it down.”

Frank turned, rock still mashed into his fist. Brack was there, just standing, regarding him.

“We have to get in there.”

“It’s too late.”

“We don’t know that.”

“We do. He’s flatlined. No heartbeat. No resps.”

The implant. It didn’t lie.

Frank dropped the rock at his feet and looked up at the curved side of the hab.

“Get back inside, Kittridge.”

“I need to do… something.”

“That’s an order. Get back inside.”

“No.”

“Don’t you go sassing me, boy. I gave you an order, and I expect that you obey me instantly and without question. You are currently dangerous. You are out of control. You are not in your right mind and you will do what I tell you when I tell you to do it. Get your ass inside the base. Now.”

Frank listened to the sounds of his own breathing. The harshness of it as the air rattled past the knot in his throat. His heart was hammering, as if to make up for the fact that Zeus’s was now still.

From somewhere deep inside, a growl became a moan became a scream became a roar. It died the other side of his faceplate, stifled.

Brack was still there when Frank had finished.

“Get inside. I’ll deal with this.”

There wasn’t anything else to say. Frank trudged back to the main airlock, and pressed his helmet against the wall while the air cycled through.

Through the inner door, he dragged himself out of the top half of his suit, and just sat, legs splayed on the floor.

How had that happened? What possible sequence of events had led to Zeus being in the airlock, both doors closed, without his suit? What was he even doing there? He should have been with Zero, playing around with the fish. Which is what they all did sometimes, moving their bare arms through the tanks full of wriggling baby fry.

The workshop had sprung a leak. OK, but anyone working there had a tank of oxygen and a scuba mask to strap over their faces, so they wouldn’t have drifted off to sleep. There was also going to be their own spacesuit right there by the airlock door, so that even if they didn’t have time to put it on, they would have been able to drag it in with them. Close the door, open the valve on the oxygen tank to repressurize, use the suit comms to call for help, climb into the suit and seal it.

He shouldn’t have died. He shouldn’t have been in the lock without his suit.

Wait. There’d been no sign of Zeus through the little window in the outer door. Of course, Frank would have glanced at it, through it. They all did, unconsciously, as they got to the lock. Checking there was no one in there, or if someone had left the inner door open. He hadn’t seen Zeus, because he’d already been crushed up against the outer door, out of sight.

But if he’d still been alive, he might have been savable. Frank could have done something different if only he’d realized.

He looked up. Dee was standing at the hab door.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know what happened.”

“Is he…”

“Yes.” Frank wanted to throw something, anything, hard. He remembered he was in a pressurized balloon, and though there were lots of objects to hand, he held back. “Yes, he is.”

“I was hoping…”

“Well, don’t.”

Frank stared at the floor, and eventually Dee got the message and left. He wasn’t sure how long he’d sat there. Eventually Zero came out of the greenhouse. They looked at each other for a moment longer than was comfortable, and then both looked away.

“Sorry, man.”

Frank acknowledged the comment with a nod.

“You thought he was with me.”

Nod.

“He said he wanted to work on a pressure valve. Making it out of plastic pipe, or something. Left an hour ago.”

Nod.

“I had a kid brother. He was smart and stuff. Too smart to get caught up in my biz. Got shot. Stray bullet from some drive-by, on his way back from school. Hit him in the neck, right here.” Zero touched a place just behind his ear. “That’s what they all said: he didn’t suffer. Doctors, police, people coming to the house to see my mama: they all said he didn’t suffer. I don’t know, Frank. Is that a good thing? That he didn’t suffer?”

Frank’s head came up, and he tapped the back of his skull against one of the racks. “I depressurized him, Zero. I sucked out what was left of his air, and I opened the door to Mars on him. None of us have any idea whether he suffered or not. Stupid fuck would probably have wanted to suffer.”

He slammed his head back once, the panel making a boom that startled Zero.

“I thought we were over this.”

Zero stayed quiet, and eventually headed for the greenhouse airlock. While the pumps shuffled the air around, he stared at the door.

“If he’d been able to, he’d have let you know he was in there. He was already gone.”

“Maybe.”

“Don’t beat yourself up about this. He was gone. Like my brother. You just happened to be there first.”

Frank let his head fall forward, chin on his chest.

“Whatever.”

Then Zero had gone too. The pumps chugged again, and Frank could hear the greenhouse inner door open. He couldn’t just sit there all day. He needed to move.

He pulled off his shoes and shuffled out of the legs of his suit. He stowed the life support, hung up his suit, put on his overalls and ship slippers. Every action was exhausting, like he’d run a race just moments before. He was spent. Dammit, he was so tired.

He just happened to be there first, three times now. Marcy, Alice, and now Zeus. That struck him as being long odds. Though if he’d been born lucky, he would never have been on Mars at all.

He needed to know what had killed Zeus. He needed a shower. Pathetically, the shower won. The other thing was just going to have to wait.