Homesick

Ian sagged deep into his couch as his display became dotted with status bars flying from left to right, indicating data transfers. The sphere of the planet became transparent on his console, and through it he could see the thick white line representing the Kelthy. A curved line was drawn between them establishing their course.

“Well, thank God for that!”

“We’re not even very far off course,” Sally said. She then looked at Ian with new admiration. “Ian, that was probably the best flying I’ve ever heard of, let alone seen. The whole mission, there and back. That was quite remarkable!”

He turned to face her with a wry smile. “It was good enough, but the truth is we got lucky. We’ll make it back to the ship, but we’ll be bone dry. If my reckoning had been wrong or the computer really had been damaged, this may have been a much shorter trip. Or longer, depending on how you want to think about it.”

He indicated Anderson. “How is he?”

“I’m giving him another sedative, but that’s the best I can do until we dock.”

“That was a good idea of yours. The taser, I mean.”

Her face took on pain. “I hated doing it.”

“He’ll thank you for it soon enough, though, won’t he?”

“I’m not so sure. You saw how he reacted to us. I don’t know what the hell they did to him, but it doesn’t seem like something he’ll get over very easily.”

“Well, he’s alive at least,” Ian said, trying to be cheerful. “And so are we. How’s the arm, by the way?”

She touched her fingertips. “It hurts, but that’s probably a good sign. I can move it now. I don’t think there’s permanent damage. Hopefully it’ll be better by the time we dock.”

“You know, while we’re patting ourselves on the back, that was a splendid piece of acrobatics you performed back there! God bligh me, I didn’t even see that thing coming, much less have been able to duck! You saved my life, if I’m not mistaken. If that thing hit me head on, who knows what would have happened to us!”

“Well, that was probably the drugs,” Sally laughed. “Bottled courage as well as strength. By the way, if your hands start shaking that’ll mean you’re ready for a step-down shot.”

Ian flexed his hand experimentally. “I do feel a bit . . . hungry.”

“I’ll give you your dose with our meal.” Sally yawned. “Good thing your hands were steady back there. If you hadn’t been ready with the artillery . . .” She shuddered. “I’m sure glad you were the one with the gun!”

He started to say something in return but then took on a distant look. His smile melted. “I’m not entirely sure I am,” he admitted. “And, in any case, Vlad deserves your thanks for that.”

“Please don’t remind me!”

“Well, silly as it may sound, that gun was most probably the only thing we had on the ship that would have helped. To be frank, I’d much rather have been able to stun those blokes in armor, but I doubt we could have done, even if you still had the taser.”

“You think the armor would have stopped it?”

“That’s not what I mean.” He turned to face her again. “Whatever they were using to neutralize our equipment would probably have made your taser useless as well. It was probably some localized EM pulse or strong magnetic field. If it was powerful enough to knock out Scott’s biomonitor and all our portable equipment, I’d lay even money it would have scrambled the circuits in the taser, or at least dispersed the charge before it could do any good. Now, mind you, I can’t prove it, but I suspect that’s what their device was for. Not to use against communications, but electronic weapons. Even if those blokes were standing there naked as the day they were born, all you’d have been able to give them would be the equivalent of a bee sting.”

“The equipment they were wearing,” Sally said. “When you shot them, you must have shut it down. That’s when the door opened.”

“That seems to be the long and short of it,” he agreed. “Now, if we’d been armed with laser weapons, shock poles like that other bloke had, or something similar . . .” He drew his hand across his neck in a grave gesture.

“But, with something as simple as old fashioned gunpowder and bullets, we caught them with their pants down! And we weren’t even supposed to have the gun . . .” Her voice trailed off.

“Ironically, we owe the New Soviets a debt of gratitude. Or at least a little leeway with regard to contraband laws. If it weren’t for them, we’d probably still be down there.”

Sally could afford to shudder at that thought, but she didn’t want to. She hit the communications panel. “Vlad!”

“Here, Captain.”

“I don’t know what you did, but we’re good. Looks like we’ll be in position for retrieval in about two hours.”

“Good.”

“I’ll advise you on procedures when we get a little closer. Out.”

Ian watched the com light dim and he clucked his tongue. “I don’t know what he did either,” he said, puzzled. “Come to that, I’m starting to wonder if that field on the planet could have affected us enough to cause this kind of problem.”

“What if it magnetized the receiver coil?”

Ian laughed. “Then we’d have no communications at all and our navigational systems wouldn’t be worth a toss. Also, we never lost telemetry from the other pod even during the time Scott must have been captured. The field is strong, but not strong enough to knock out the ship’s internals. They’re too heavily shielded. Hand-held units yes, but not things onboard the ship.”

“Maybe Vlad was right about the antenna array. I suppose it could have drifted.”

“It’d have to drift pretty bloody far to knock out the navigation signal. Hell, I’m not even sure we’d lose it if he pointed it directly away from us!”

“You think it was deliberate?” she asked, not sounding as surprised at the idea as she wanted to.

“No, no, of course not. What would be the point in that? I mean, I don’t think Vlad . . . Of course he could have made some kind of mistake. . . . Well, I just don’t know.”

Sally thought about it, paging through various scenarios in her mind. “Ian, what do you really think? Completely off the record. About Vlad, I mean.”

He paused. “Well . . . I try to give a bloke as much leeway as I can, and he’s not technically under my command . . .”

“We’re not giving him a performance review. The fact is, we’re very far from Earth now and we’re not in friendly territory. We’re on the frontier and we may have to depend on each and every one of us for survival, including Vlad. I don’t think we can afford to be tactful just now.”

Ian nodded. “Well, since you put it that way, I can’t say I find him all that dependable. I’ve known New Soviets and they’re generally good, reliable fellows who pull their socks up and get the job done.”

“But not Vlad.”

Ian pursed his lips. “No, not Vlad. He’d have been no good down there, I’ll tell you that. He’s a coward. Not like most Russians. Most of those blokes’ll show us up every time. They eat concrete for breakfast!”

“I don’t like him either, Ian,” Sally admitted. “He’s never been a part of this crew.”

“Well, that’s not entirely his fault,” Ian defended. “I mean, you knew me, of course, and we both knew Scott here. Vlad, well, he was the odd man out. He was just put in to balance out the demographic.”

“It was a political move,” Sally agreed.

“Of course, he does his job,” Ian said, as if straining to sound positive. “He mapped out the landing site and I’m sure he’s a competent geologist __”

“But how did he miss the labor camp with the scanner? I didn’t see it on the map he made, but it must have been there. The place is huge, and I can’t imagine it was well camouflaged.”

“I missed it too,” Ian admitted. “Of course, I knew the original coordinates of the other pod and I was looking for a landing site that’d get us close but make us invisible to everything around __”

“That was your job, Ian. That’s what you were supposed to be doing. The topographic survey was his responsibility. And knowing we landed less than three miles from a population center might have been helpful. That printout he made wasn’t even high-rez. Couldn’t he have done better?”

Ian thought for a moment and then turned to her and nodded. “All he did was identify power signatures and look for lights. You or I could have done that in less than ten minutes. I suppose we all had our concerns __”

“But that was his job,” Sally repeated. “And he didn’t really do it. What was he doing all that time?”

Ian shrugged. “Eating.”

“And, whenever I press him about things like this, all I get is politics.”

“There’s one in every crew,” he said with a tentative smile. “But, aside from his performance reviews, there’s not a-lot you can really do about it. The New Soviets have influence in the UN and they funded a good chunk of the mission. They also provided their technology and training facilities. I don’t like it either and, all kidding aside, he was probably somebody’s nephew or something.”

Sally nodded slowly. “But he’s a weasel,” she said with masked contempt. “He’s always hiding something.”

“The gun.”

“What else could he be hiding?”

Ian shifted in his couch to face Sally more comfortably. “I don’t think the gun was his idea, but that doesn’t make him innocent. Russia’s a tense place right now and there are quite a few hard-liners pushing agendas that don’t make sense. Most likely, he was a plant. If all went as planned, he probably wouldn’t have been a star crewmember but he wouldn’t have done any harm. Then he’d report back to some bureaucrat in a dusty office in Moscow with any observations that might give him an edge.”

“Such as?”

“Technology they don’t have, for example. I’d expect him to lift schematics and other things that might not be all that important to us, but might not be freely available to them. More likely, he’d try to find something on the planet and keep it for himself. Evidence of precious metals, for example, or something else they could claim they’d discovered later. I’ve seen the game before. We used to deal with asteroid claims, remember? You’ve seen what people will do to get their hands on a good run of minerals. It practically comes to war over a few tons of rock! They snoop, they sneak, and they don’t play fair. The gun I wouldn’t have expected, though. That’s paranoia plain and simple. I mean, what kind of idiot would have expected a mutiny or political upheaval on a mission like this?”

“Agreed.”

“Vlad’s no mastermind. If he’s got more contraband, it’s stuff we wouldn’t care about. And, if he’s got something to hide, it certainly isn’t his idea. My personal assessment is he’s a pencil pusher playing the political game. They put him here to get rid of him and to keep an eye on our mission. But, now things have gone nuts, he finds himself in the middle of something he can’t handle and he’s trying not to look a fool to the folks back home.”

“And what do you think he was doing while we were away?”

Ian sighed. “I don’t know. But I don’t see why he’d want to monkey with the beacon. Cut and run, maybe, but not that. It could be a genuine malfunction.”

Sally nodded slowly. “I suppose we have to give him the benefit of the doubt. But I want you to keep a lookout. If you see anything suspicious . . .”

“Of course. I’m no snitch, but in the present circumstances . . .”

“Thank you,” Sally said. “And I want to be fair to him, too. Or at least as fair as he deserves.” She nodded to herself, sensing the matter was settled. “What’s the word on that early launch window? Can we still make it?”

Ian perked up. “Maybe,” he said, as if he’d forgotten about that possibility. “But we’d have to put our skates on.”

“That’s what I had in mind.”

“The trick is the extra speed we’d need to do it,” he said, working out calculations in his head. “We’d have to lighten the ship, I think. It’d be too close with our fuel supply being what it is.”

“That’s okay by me. Could we take extra fuel from Shuttlepod Three?”

He made a hesitant gesture with his hand. “It’s compatible, but it wasn’t designed to be transferred. It would also take long enough to set up that I doubt we could gain enough to make a difference before the window. I’d be thinking more in terms of jettisoning all the shuttlepods and most of the tools in the bays. Also, we could lose the surface vehicles and pre-fab shelter we never dropped. If we did that, we’d probably have no trouble making the window.” He paused in thought. “And, of course, we won’t be weighed down by the plant and rock samples we never collected either. Mind you, it won’t be an easy trip.”

“At this point I’d settle for arriving in our Solar System. If we wind up in trouble we could always call for interception.”

He nodded in agreement. “Of course, I’m pretty sure we’d be safe in orbit, at least until our official launch window. But, naturally, I concur with your recommendation.”

“We’re out of our league here,” she said. “I don’t know if Earth will want to send diplomats, strategists, or soldiers next, assuming we send anybody at all, but we’re not in a position to do much good ourselves. And, after what we saw down there, I don’t think I’ll be comfortable until we’re as far away from this planet as we can get.”

“Can’t argue there,” Ian said, turning back to his controls. “I’ll look into it the moment we get back.”

They both drifted into silence and Sally adjusted her position on the couch. She winced at the pain in her knees. The process of adjusting to weightlessness had taken longer than she’d expected. With the tension she felt and the abuse her joints had taken, the sudden relief was more confusing than comfortable. And, as the pain subsided and the drugs wore off, she began to realize just how tired she truly was. The chemical boost had caused her to draw heavily from her body’s reserves. Soon she would start paying for that privilege. But she knew she couldn’t sleep, not while Scott was lying next to her drifting in and out of awareness and Ian was flying the ship. She watched the monitors, observing their progress towards the tin can they called home.

But, as she stared at the console, she scowled in revulsion at the sight of gnats dancing over the displays. Of course, all three of them were filthy and would have to be decontaminated, but the thought of bringing unwanted insects back from the planet hadn’t originally entered her mind. The tiny creatures dotted the instrument panels, hopping on and off, apparently attracted by static electricity. She thought amusedly that they must be confused. How would a gnat fly with no gravity? But, when she actually started looking at them, she became concerned by how many there were. They were clinging to Ian’s hair, and probably hers as well, and Scott was covered with them. At long last she could afford to be disgusted.

At that moment, Ian noticed them too. He dabbed at his controls with a piece of his sleeve.

“Grody, aren’t they?”

“And this ship’s beginning to smell like an old latrine. I’ve got the air circulation on full.”

“It’s going to take more than that,” Sally said with a doctor’s tone. “This place will have to be quarantined along with us. God only knows what we’ve picked up down there, not to mention poor Scott.”

Ian turned to face her again, looking concerned. “You’re a doctor. Could this be some kind of disease? What happened to Scott and the others, I mean. Could it be . . . contagious?”

Sally reflected for a moment. “I doubt it. Although it’s possible there could be some biochemical agent involved, it just seems too well organized for that. And, besides, I never heard of a disease teaching foreign languages.”

“I’d forgotten about that!” Ian said, sighing with relief.

“Vlad!” Sally called. “We’re going to need a complete decontamination bath in the shuttle bay. I want you to go to the medical locker and get every anti-viral and anti-bacterial agent on the ship. Pump the large canisters into the sprinkler system for the pod and bring the small bottles into the bay for us. We’ll also need a complete change of clothes for each of us and about four quarantine disposal cans for our equipment and the clothes we have on. Be sure to bring some privacy partitions, too, and a bed for Anderson. We may be there a while.”

“I’m on it,” he said.

“And don’t forget some good old-fashioned soap and water. Seal off the departure deck once you’ve done this. Only enter if you’re wearing a quarantine suit. Let’s not take chances.”