Hellhole (20 page)

Vincent offered to drive on the first shift, while his friend busied himself at the navigation screen, calling up charts of the many unmapped grid squares. Not surprisingly, the grid squares around Michella Town, along with the outlying industrial camps and mining outposts, had already been adequately surveyed, but much of the landscape beyond that remained an enigma, covered by only large-scale satellite overflights.

Fernando scrolled the nav-screen to choose which place he wanted to explore first. “It’s all wide open. I’m not used to having so many lucrative possibilities.”

“We haven’t found anything yet.”

“We will. How could we not find anything in all that area?” Fernando increased the magnification, studied dry canyons, the sparkling smears of salty inland seas, river courses choked with odd alien vegetation. “What if we find monsters?”

“No monsters here. At least not big ones.” He was sure Fernando had heard that part of the briefing. “The asteroid impact killed all large indigenous life forms. Nothing bigger than small birds or rodents survived.”

“So the scientists say.” Fernando pouted at him. “Don’t spoil the mystery for me. This is an alien world, so there’s no guarantee what we might find. The local experts are rewriting their theories every day.”

While Vincent would have preferred to work their way methodically from one grid square to the next, Fernando selected a point at random, intrigued by the tortured, abandoned terrain. On reflection, one place seemed as good as another to Vincent, so they headed out to Fernando’s chosen coordinates.

Away from what passed for civilization, the rugged Trakmaster crossed hills covered with fibrous grasses. Vincent drove cautiously, ignoring his friend’s urging for greater speed and frequent side trips. He followed the procedure list from the exploration office. They stopped several times, and Vincent dutifully took images and botanical samples from knobby shrubs covered with plate-like lavender leaves. The heavy vehicle splashed through a stone-lined stream choked with rubbery algae.

The grid square that had intrigued Fernando was badlands terrain, ash and mud that had piled up in multicolored layers during the postimpact upheaval. Centuries of wind and rain had carved the mounds into fantastic shapes. From the vehicle’s high cab, Fernando used the built-in imagers to take plenty of panoramic images, along with several unnecessary ones of Vincent at work.

By early afternoon they ground the Trakmaster to a halt beside a sheer wall of exposed rock. Vincent thought it looked interesting. “The General wants hands-on samplings. Let’s see what’s out there.”

“Sure, I’m ready to stretch my legs.” Fernando opened the hatch and emerged, wandering around the vehicle, while Vincent pitched their self-erecting tent so they could spend the night. Ready to go, they took grid maps, imagers, and tools, activated the vehicle’s locator transponder, and then ventured into the widening arroyos, weaving their way through unusual hoodoos and rock formations.

Fernando turned around and smiled. “Look at that.” Vincent didn’t see what had captured his friend’s interest, but the other man pointed at the ground. “Your footprints and mine. This is an unexplored sector. We could be the first human beings ever to walk here. That isn’t something you can say anywhere in the Crown Jewels.”

They explored side canyons where the vertical walls had sloughed away to expose strata studded with clumps of bones, empty exoskeletons, preserved native insects each the size of a fist, remains of animals both large and small.

“I bet the General would pay for these fossils!” Fernando exclaimed.

Vincent used tools from his pack to chip out specimens for the xenobiologists back in Michella Town. “These creatures must have been buried in the eruptions and mudslides.” After recording exactly how the fossils were positioned in the rock wall, he extracted a bony lump that might have been something as delicate as a bird. Moving down the wall, he brushed away caked mud to expose a massive bone more than a meter in length, but he found no other parts of the animal. “Maybe it’s a trash heap. Could be the aliens ate those big creatures.”

“Or the big creatures ate them.”

After they finished gathering specimens, Vincent looked up to see an unusual display of dark helical clouds, like ribbons of rain twisted in spirals high overhead. “Do you remember any pattern like that from our briefing?”

Fernando took images of the clouds, but an uneasy Vincent activated the locater that would guide them back to the Trakmaster. “Maybe we should hurry. I’d rather be close to shelter if that turns into a storm.”

Geometrical-hail showers began to fall before they reached the vehicle. Sharp ice crystals pelted them, bouncing off the ground or sticking in the mud. Vincent and Fernando began running, yelling with good humor as they spotted their camp ahead. The hail picked up in intensity and size, and Fernando yelped as a particularly large shard struck him on the back of the head. They raced each other back to the tent and dove under the resilient overhang. Sputtering and gasping, they wiped their faces and hair, then sat inside the shelter, staring at the furor of the sparkling storm.

As the falling crystals drummed on the fabric, Vincent double-checked the seals; he hoped the tent would hold.

Fernando lay back, kicked up his feet, and drew a deep, satisfied breath. “Isn’t this a great job, all by ourselves, seeing amazing things? Much better than plucking weeds or dusting off vineyards. I’ve always dreamed about doing something like this.”

“That wasn’t what you told me aboard the passenger pod.”

“A man can have more than one dream, can’t he? I’ve proved that again and again.”

“So why did you come to Hellhole in the first place? Tell the truth this time.”

A dismissive shrug. “This seemed like the perfect place to go.”

“Hellhole is never ‘the perfect place to go.’ What’s your real story?”

“Oh, come now, there’s always a silver lining, even if it’s tarnished. My whole life I’ve rolled with the punches from one interest to the next, one dream to another. If you want lightning to strike, you put out a lot of lightning rods.”

“And
this
is where you came to seek your fortune? I take it Hellhole wasn’t your first choice.”

“Well, I started out on Vielinger, then moved to Marubi, then Sonjeera. My initial idea was to start a restaurant – everyone needs to eat, right? How could it fail?” Fernando described how he had convinced investors to help him establish the restaurant, but he didn’t know much about managing a business, and the place went bankrupt within a year. “I tried my best, but things like that happen. My investors lost all their money, but I lost all that hard work. It hurt me as much as it hurt them, so I don’t understand why the investors were so angry with me. That’s just the way it goes.”

On another planet, Fernando next decided to open a clothing store. “Everyone has to wear clothes, right? How could it fail?” He acquired a different group of investors, but he chose a poor location for the shop and carried the wrong selection for that area; though he greeted his customers with great aplomb and enthusiasm for each garment choice, he made very little profit. The store closed its doors within seven months, and Fernando had to leave quickly, fleeing from the furious investors.

Relaxing inside the tent with the hail shower continuing outside, Fernando made a disgusted sound. “I don’t understand what I was supposed to do about that. Weren’t we all partners? It was a team effort, and the team failed. I wasn’t the only one responsible. But they didn’t see it that way. They blamed
me
.” He shook his head. “Blame is just a festering sore for people who can’t move on.”

And so Fernando had moved on – several times – and finally reached a point where he had to leave the Crown Jewels far behind, and quickly. “But I look at this new stage in my life as uncovering possibilities. The Deep Zone worlds are wild, untamed, and unexplored. They need an ambitious person like me. I’ll do fine here.”

“But why Hellhole?” Vincent asked. “There are more pleasant DZ worlds to choose from.”

Fernando shook more glittering moisture from his wavy, brown hair. “Why should I go where all the other rainbow-chasers are? Give me a planet that’s full of opportunities. And this is just the place.”

“If you say so.”

An hour later, the storm abated. The two men emerged to see a pounded and washed landscape. Vincent drew a deep breath of the clean scent of ozone. Around them, the caked sedimentary ground appeared to be covered with diamonds, while mist rose from the evaporating hail.

As Fernando trudged off to relieve himself, the crystals crunched under his feet. Vincent pointed a thumb back toward the Trakmaster. “Why not use the reclamation closet?”

The other man just gave him a sour look. “You don’t understand the freedom of the outdoors.”

Fernando went around an outcropping and descended into an arroyo, while Vincent returned to the vehicle, tallied the images that had been taken that day, and used the satellite connection to upload them to the survey office in Michella Town. Although he didn’t have his friend’s enthusiasm, Vincent was reasonably content. He had come here under bad circumstances, but he could tolerate this after all. He’d make a new life for himself, exactly as Fernando said . . .

Just then, his friend came running back to the campsite, yelling and waving his hands. His fly was still open. “You won’t believe it! An alien creature. It was huge – the size of an ox, but it moved like a panther!”

Vincent frowned. “That’s not even a good joke. There’s nothing but fossils around here.” He waved a hand at the barren landscape. “Look at this place. Nothing that large could live out here.”

“It’s not a joke! I saw it with my own eyes. A big animal, just on top of the ridge back there. Could be a predator. What weapons do we have?”

“We don’t have any weapons. What would we shoot at? There
are
no indigenous predators. Nothing bigger than a rodent, remember.”

“Tell that to the monster I just saw. Unbelievable! We’re all alone out here in a wild environment, and the General gives us nothing to defend ourselves with? What was he thinking?”

“There’s nothing to defend ourselves
against
. Come on, Fernando, you know that. You probably saw shadows in the mist from the evaporating hail.”

“It was plain as day – and big!” Fernando stretched out his hands to indicate something extremely large.

“All right, then show me. Maybe it left footprints.” Vincent tried to brush aside his automatic uneasiness. If the thing truly existed, he knew such information would be valuable to the scientists. But he was sure Fernando was just pulling his leg.

“I’m not going back over there unless you give me a weapon! There might be more of those things. Let’s get back inside the Trakmaster.”

Knowing his friend’s penchant for exaggeration, Vincent was not convinced, but Fernando looked sincerely shaken.

T
he blistering, blue, giant star SVC-1185 was prominent in the skies of all twenty Crown Jewels, but its own planets were nothing more than lifeless rocks. Nevertheless, the uninhabited system was a perfect place for a substation along the stringline path to Ridgetop in the Deep Zone.

For years now, Turlo Urvancik and his wife Sunitha had run this route, monitoring the quantum lines that radiated outward from Sonjeera to the other planets in the Constellation. During their string-line-maintenance trips, they had traveled to countless waystation systems like this one.

As soon as their linerunner,
HDS Kerris
, arrived under the star’s electric sapphire glare, Sunitha disengaged the vessel from the iperion-marked quantum path. She noted their position with satisfaction as the telescoping external sensor whips took readings. “Exactly on point.”

“You are the master, my dear. The absolute master.”

“I’d rather be a master than a mistress,” she teased. “But don’t get any ideas about having a mistress.”

“Where would I find one out here? We’re the only human beings in a parsec or two.”

“More to the point, what other woman would have you? It’s taken
me
decades to learn how to tolerate your eccentricities.”

“Been a learning process for both of us.” Turlo leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. He loved her thick black hair, her dark skin, her almond eyes; he never got tired of looking at her. “In another thirty years, maybe we’ll figure it out.” He got up and stretched. “Since you drove, it’s my turn to suit up.”

“Make sure you have the codplate properly fastened this time. I’d rather not have to rub the cream on again, like after your last exposure.”

Turlo huffed;
he
had rather enjoyed the treatment. “Not as if I need the sperm anymore.” He quickly regretted the extra comment – they both knew they wouldn’t have children again. Even so, the photo-image of their lost son, Kerris, held a prominent place in the ship’s tiny living quarters. The young man had been dead ten years now, since the rebellion, but reminders still popped up like landmines.

In the uncomfortable silence, Turlo removed the appropriate suit from the his-and-hers closet. As he donned it, the suit’s multilayered protective fabric and life-support systems transformed his body into a blobby shapeless form. He always made a point of commenting on how nicely Sunitha’s suit fit her curves (even though it seemed to be getting a bit snug in the past year).

The uneventful life of a stringline maintenance technician could lead to ennui and physical decrepitude. Substation maintenance became a casual routine, though Turlo and Sunitha did not allow themselves to take any shortcuts. She helped him seal and link the suit systems, ran all the greens, ran them a second time, then slapped him on the back. “Ready to go.”

Listening to his own breathing echo in his helmet, Turlo cycled through the
Kerris’s
airlock and emerged into the emptiness. Outside, the substation was the only mark of human presence in the entire system. Its mirrorshine panels drank the constant outpouring of heavy solar radiation, which powered the station and kept the iperion path aligned and intact.