Acid Sky (5 page)

She sighed, and started to get ready.

CHAPTER THREE

The invitation was for 19:30, and she made sure she was punctual. She felt horribly conspicuous, clunking down the corridors in the dark blue cutaway jacket, tight breeches and black riding boots, the gold braid on the jacket catching the light, and everyone seemed to be looking at her.

Maybe it’s just some joke they always play on the new girl,
she thought as she made her way to the captain’s staterooms, which were towards the front of the ship, the deck below hers. When she got there, however, her worries evaporated; Captain Hartigan was standing by the door, equally conspicuous in what was also obviously a borrowed outfit. He had clearly visited the ship’s barber that afternoon; his thinning hair had been cut neatly, and even his moustache trimmed.

‘Evening, sir,’ Clare said amiably, wondering what required all the preparations. In all the time she had known Hartigan, she had never seen him look so smart.

‘Ah, Foster. All ready?’

‘Yes, sir. What’s the occasion?’

‘You are,’ he said, smiling, and knocked on the door while she was still registering what he’d said. The door was opened from the inside, and Hartigan guided her into a large room with at least ten other officers there, standing by a huge panoramic window looking out onto the sky. They were also in dress uniform, holding drinks as they admired the sunset. A long table, set for dinner, sat in the centre of the room.

‘Lieutenant Foster, welcome aboard.’ The
Langley’s
commanding officer, Colonel Donaldson, a tall, grey-haired man in his early fifties, stepped forward and shook her hand. ‘Now, you stand here, and Captain Hartigan just here please.’ He had positioned them by the flag in the corner of the room, and the other officers put their drinks down and moved up to stand in front of the captain. He waited until they were all assembled.

‘Good evening ladies and gentlemen. I’m pleased all of you could join me as we recognise one of our own, Second Lieutenant Foster, on the occasion of her promotion to First Lieutenant.’

Clare went white.

‘Captain Alan Hartigan, as her commanding officer, will officiate. Ladies and gentlemen, Captain Hartigan.’

Hartigan stood forward and thanked the colonel for the opportunity to promote ‘this deserving young officer’ who had shown ‘early promise’, ‘aptitude and common sense’ and other qualities that Clare barely recognised as applying to herself.

When Hartigan had finished, Donaldson continued: ‘Attention to orders: The President of the United States, acting upon the recommendations of the Secretary of the Astronautics Corps, has placed special trust and confidence in the courage, integrity and abilities of Second Lieutenant Foster. In view of these special qualities, and her demonstrated potential to serve in the higher grade, Second Lieutenant Foster is promoted to the grade of First Lieutenant, United States Astronautics Corps, effective this eleventh day of December, twenty-one thousand and forty-one, by order of the Secretary of the Astronautics Corps.

‘Captain Hartigan and First Lieutenant Coombes, would you please come forward and pin on First Lieutenant Foster’s new rank?’

Hartigan smiled at Clare, who was still wearing an expression of shocked surprise, as he and a young officer removed her gold insignia bars and pinned on the silver ones. The tradition of silver outranking gold had remained unchanged for over two hundred years. When they had finished, they stood back, leaving Clare on her own in front of the Colonel, who led a round of polite applause.

‘Captain Hartigan will now administer the oath of office.’

Hartigan faced Clare, and indicated that she should raise her right hand. At a nod from him, she read off the card that he held up in front of her: ‘I, Clare Judith Foster, having been appointed a First Lieutenant in the United States Astronautics Corps, do solemnly affirm …’ Clare’s voice sounded strange in her ears, as if someone else was saying the words. As she finished, Hartigan stepped back again, and Donaldson continued:

‘Ladies and gentlemen,
First
Lieutenant Foster.’ He indicated that she should say something. But what to say? They must know that she would have had no warning. She cleared her throat.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much. I am – honoured to receive this promotion, and – and to be here on board your wonderful aircraft this evening. Thank you.’ She came to an abrupt halt, and smiled as winningly as she could. It seemed to do the trick, because Donaldson started to clap, and as the others joined in, waved to his steward to bring the drinks round.

Clare turned at once to Hartigan, who held up his hands. ‘I know, I know,’ he said, smiling, forestalling her protests. ‘I submitted your assessment from the landing, and your promotion came back right away. I thought it would make a memorable start to your tour here. By the way –’ he handed her an envelope ‘– that’s your official notice of promotion. You can read that later.’

‘Congratulations, Lieutenant,’ Donaldson said, raising his glass, ‘not often we have something to celebrate. You’ve given us an excuse to open up the drinks locker.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ she said, uncertain of what to say. She took a glass of champagne from the steward’s tray, and gulped a mouthful.

Colonel Donaldson took a long sip of his own drink. He was taller than Clare, and imposing; his square shoulders and upright, confident posture marked him out as someone who was used to commanding other people, and enjoyed it. ‘Come and meet my officers,’ he said, and guided her over to the great sweep of the window, which spanned most of one wall. ‘We always try to watch the sunset here; it’s one of the few treats of being where we are.’

Clare gazed out across the clouds, to where the swollen Sun had started to slip below the horizon, a dark line of high clouds drifting across its face. The sky was ablaze with brilliant scarlet and orange. Above the sunset, a golden haze darkened to a deep blue, and violet, and finally the blackness of space above them. In the slanting light, the featureless cloud deck below the ship had been transformed into a tumbled landscape of red foam. Great mountain ranges of cloud rolled past beneath, with foothills, ramparts and huge winding valleys that emptied into lakes of darkness.

‘It’s beautiful,’ Clare said.

‘I’m glad you think so. I never tire of watching the sunsets here.’

The young lieutenant that had helped pin on Clare’s insignia came and stood next to her.

‘Of course, it’s not real; we’re making sunsets happen every day by flying faster than the planet’s rotation. Incredible that we can come to this planet and recreate our own world’s day and night, by the speed of our flight.’

Clare looked at him. He was about her age, somewhere in his twenties, with a narrow face and short-cut black hair, and pale blue eyes that you just couldn’t help but stare into. He was the sort of young officer that looked magnificent in a uniform, and Clare was suddenly conscious of her own borrowed outfit.

‘My weather officer, First Lieutenant Coombes. If there’s turbulent air on Venus, he can find it,’ Donaldson said dryly. Coombes grinned. ‘Don’t encourage him to talk about this planet, or else you’ll be here all evening.’

‘I could do with a reminder of how day and night works here, sir,’ Clare said. ‘I read up about it but it was some time ago.’

Donaldson smiled good-naturedly and waved his hand for Coombes to continue.

‘Well, the planet’s winds at this altitude are moving faster than the planet’s rotating, plus we’re adding our own airspeed to that. The net effect is that we’re moving westward over the planet’s surface at nearly nine hundred kilometres per hour, which is enough to go round the planet in one Earth day at these latitudes.’

There was a short pause while Clare tried to take all that in.

‘We’ve tried other diurnal cycles, but this one works best for the crew – you get a normal cycle of day and night, every twenty-four hours,’ a short and cheerful-looking female officer standing near the captain added helpfully.

‘Captain Donahue, medical officer,’ Donaldson said. Clare shook the offered hand, and was introduced in turn to the rest of the officers, who ran communications, logistics and catering, deck operations, maintenance and engineering. ‘And this is our flight operations officer, Captain Shaffer. He looks after everything on the flight deck and in the airspace around the ship.’

‘Pleased to meet you, sir.’ Clare offered her hand. The flight operations officer was powerfully built, with sandy hair clipped in a traditional Marine Corps style, and a penetrating gaze. He shook her hand in a strong, dry grip.

‘You’ll be reporting to Captain Shaffer while I’m away.’ Hartigan smiled apologetically at Clare. ‘The return flight to Earth has been brought forward, so I’m taking some passengers up to the
Indianapolis
first thing tomorrow.’

‘Yes sir.’ She nodded politely to Shaffer, acknowledging her new chain of command, before turning back to Hartigan. ‘Will you be away for long, sir?’

‘Well, they want me to stay up there at least until the
Denver
leaves for Mars, then there’s another two flights due in from Earth with passengers for the other carriers. Should be about ten days I guess.’

Clare felt slightly uneasy at the sudden change in plans; she had been expecting Hartigan to be here for at least the first few days of her training. Now she would be on her own on a strange ship, reporting to a new commanding officer.

‘Don’t worry, Foster, you’ll be well looked after.’ He smiled, as if he had read her mind. ‘And with Captain Shaffer’s permission, you might get to see a spaceplane launch from the carrier. It’s scheduled for dawn, so it should be quite a sight.’

‘Sure you can watch, Foster,’ Shaffer said. ‘Buzz at the tower door tomorrow at zero five thirty, say that I sent for you.’

‘Thank you sir, I’ll look forward to that.’

‘We don’t usually launch until it’s fully light,’ Donaldson added, ‘but this one’s a special case due to the launch window. We’ll be ending our night-time air mining operations early so that we can get up above the clouds before dawn.’

If there was ever a reminder of where they were, that was it, Clare thought, as the steward topped up her glass. The clouds below them were composed of droplets of sulphuric acid, not water. Yet those same clouds contained the raw materials that enabled the carrier to make oxygen, water, and all the other chemicals that it needed to sustain its operations.

The steward refilled the captain’s glass, then turned to Hartigan, who shook his head regretfully. ‘Flying tomorrow, I’m afraid.’

‘I’d heard that another of the Mercury mines was closing,’ Donaldson observed to Hartigan.

‘Yes, I’d heard the same – Chesterton, wasn’t it? I think in a couple of years there’ll only be Erebus left, at the South Pole. The price of helium-3 has fallen so much, the smaller mines just aren’t economic.’

‘What would that mean for us, sir? For the carriers I mean?’ Clare asked Donaldson.

‘Well, that’s a good question.’ The captain turned his glass in his hand, watching the rising lines of tiny bubbles. ‘We’d still need stopovers at Venus when there’s no direct launch window for Mars, but we’d certainly see less traffic through here. I suppose there’s a possibility that one of the carriers might not be replaced when it gets to the end of its service life, and we’d manage on two instead of three. Fortunately for us, that decision is a number of years away yet. You’re going on to Mercury next yourself, aren’t you?’

‘Yes, sir, in April, to Erebus Base – it’s a staging flight back to Earth.’

‘Yes. Well, if you get the chance to go round the mine there, I recommend you take it – it’s quite a sight. Massive place, in permanent darkness at the bottom of a crater. I know the mine manager there. Remind me when you’re going and I’ll ask him if he can organise a tour.’

‘Thank you sir.’ Clare did her best to sound enthusiastic, but the prospect of a dull tour round a mine at the bottom of a dark crater didn’t really interest her. Now, if it had been on
Mars
…

While they talked, the room had filled with the ruddy glow of the sunset outside. Donaldson turned towards the window, and indicated that Clare should do so too. ‘It’s nearly sunset. Keep watching as the Sun goes down.’

Clare focused on the disappearing arc of red fire that hovered on the world’s rim. It thinned, shrinking to a glowing ember on the horizon. Clare was about to turn away, but just before the Sun sank altogether, a sudden flash of green light stabbed upwards, briefly turning the high clouds a livid green, and was gone.

A
green flash
. She’d heard of them, but never seen one before. She stood there, transfixed by the sight, and the irony that her first sight of one had been on Venus, and not on her own world.

‘And I think that’s the signal for dinner,’ Colonel Donaldson said with satisfaction. He indicated to his steward to put the lights on, and they moved to sit down at the dining table in the centre of the room. Donaldson sat at the head of the table, and Clare noticed that his place had a small display and intercom set into the table surface next to him, for monitoring the ship’s progress. He inclined his head towards the intercom:

‘Helm, captain here. Take us down at your discretion.’

‘Descend at discretion, roger sir.’
The reply came from a small speaker set into the table.

‘And take it gently; I’ve got guests for dinner.’

‘Yes sir.’

There was no discernible movement, but Clare thought she detected a fractional reduction in the distant roar of the engines as the steward brought round the starters. She was seated to the right of the captain, opposite Hartigan, Donahue, and the engineering chief, Neale. On her right was Shaffer, and next to him Crabtree, in charge of deck operations. Several places away, among the more junior officers at the other end of the table, sat Lieutenant Coombes.

Conversation resumed, punctuated by the bright clinking of cutlery on plates. For Clare, having spent nearly three months on board a space tug eating ready-prepared meals, it was sheer luxury to sit at a table and have a nice meal, and she ate the starter of smoked salmon and potato salad slowly, savouring every mouthful.