Pushing Ice (7 page)

Bella stared into the cam. The moment dragged. The anchordoll kept looking at her with a lopsided smile of hopeful expectation. Somewhere in the aeroponics lab the aerator wheezed moisture into the air.

“No,” Bella said. “Nothing.” She reached for the cam and was about to tear it from the rack when something like surrender washed over her.

“Okay,” she said, knowing that CNN would morph out her hesitation, making her responses appear seamless. “I’ll say this. This is a hard job we’ve got to do, no question about it. The entire world is depending on us not to make a mistake. We’re embarking on one of the most critical expeditions in the history of space travel — maybe in the history of
travel
— and not one of us has been trained for it. Take my word: my crew are the best in the business. But the business is comet mining. We push ice, and we do it pretty well. Exploration of alien artefacts definitely wasn’t in the fine print when any of us signed up for this line of work. But we’re going to do our best. When we get to Janus, we’re not going to sleep until we’ve squeezed every last bit of data out of the thing. No matter what happens, we’re going to keep sending information home. That’s our promise to the world.”

Bella caught her breath before continuing. “I just want to say a word or two about my people. None of us got orders to go to Janus. We received an official request, one that we were free to disregard. I put it to the vote. Some of us wanted to do it, and some of us didn’t. It happened that the majority won the day, but since we took that decision, there hasn’t been a second when I haven’t thought about the others, the good people of my crew who didn’t vote for Janus. These are all people who have families and friends back home. And yet I haven’t heard one damned whisper of dissent from any of them. From the moment we lit the engine, they put themselves into this endeavour with absolute, unflinching commitment. It’s no more than I expected from my team, but that doesn’t mean I’m not proud of them. I couldn’t ask for a better crew. And we’re coming back in one piece. You can quote me on that.”

“Thank you,” the anchordoll said. “And now would you mind reading out this brief promotional statement?”

* * *

Bella poured a nip of Glenmorangie into Svetlana’s glass. They were sitting together in Bella’s office, as they often did at the end of a busy or stressful day. Bella had dimmed the lights, allowing the fish some rest. She’d also put on some music, a soothing cello piece that Svetlana didn’t recognise. It was nice just to have something washing over them quietly. This was one of the few places on the ship where music didn’t have to compete with pumps and generators.

Bella tipped up the bottle, coaxing out the last few drops. “That’s the end of our fun. Until the next rotation, at any rate.”

“You get whisky on the resupply?” Svetlana asked, startled. For some reason, it had never occurred to her to question Bella’s source for this rare treat.

“Not officially. If there’s a resupply tickbox for single malt, I haven’t found it yet.” She laughed. “But I do have my sources.”

“Like who?”

Bella lowered her voice, as if the two of them were sharing confidences in a playground. “Cargo-shuttle pilots, mostly. Usually guys with at least twenty years’ service under their wings, and most of them started on the Earth-Mars run — like Garrison, of course.”

Svetlana found herself glancing at the picture of Garrison Lind on Bella’s desk, even though she had seen it a thousand times. He was a startlingly handsome young man in a bright orange spacesuit, his helmet tucked under one arm, grinning broadly, backdropped by an enlarged emblem of one of the old multinational space agencies.

She looked back at Bella. “I guess they knew Garrison.”

“Knew him, or knew of him. Ever since, of course… well, it’s not been a problem for me if I need little favours doing. They could get into trouble if they’re ever found out, so I do my best not to abuse their kindness.” She shook the bottle one last time and returned it sadly to its shelf, next to another empty one. “However, it may be time to abuse it again.”

“I’m sure they love doing something for you.”

“They’re good guys.”

“They must have had a lot of respect for Garrison.”

“I guess they did.” Svetlana thought that Bella was about to change the subject, the matter concluded, but then she was off again. “He was popular with most of the people he worked with. Only had to walk into a room and people just clicked with him. I know there are a lot of people like that, but it wears off pretty quickly. But with Garrison, people never stopped liking him.”

They sat in silence for a long while.

Sometimes when Bella spoke of her husband, Svetlana judged that it was only because it was necessary to mention him at a particular point in a story. At other times, Svetlana was less sure. On more than one occasion she had left the room feeling as if Bella had been guardedly hoping they might continue talking about Garrison, but as strong as their friendship was, Svetlana had always backed off. She had never lost the fear that pursuing the subject might hurt Bella more than she realised.

Yet now, more than at any other time, she sensed that Bella was inviting her to talk about Garrison, to voice the unasked questions that always sat between them.

“How long has it been now?” she ventured, knowing that answer without being told. She could count as well as anyone.

“Twenty-one years,“ Bella said with a quick smile. ”I can tell you to the number of hours, if you want. I don’t know why, exactly, but I’ve been thinking about him a lot in the last few days.”

“I suspect Janus might have something to do with it.” Svetlana sniffed the amber liquid in her glass, sampling the peaty aroma.

“I suppose so. Garrison would have
loved
to have been part of this. He’d have killed to have made it aboard if he knew what we were going out to do.”

“He’d already have been proud of you.”

“That’s what I keep telling myself — as if I haven’t already lived up to enough imaginary expectations.” Bella looked carefully at Svetlana, seeming to wait until a lull in the music before continuing. “I’ve never told anyone this, okay?”

Svetlana nodded and said nothing, almost holding her breath in expectation.

“Ten or twelve years ago — maybe longer than that — I went through a bad patch.” Bella paused and lit a cigarette. “Garrison was always the more ambitious one. He was the one with the big ideas, the big dreams. I never saw myself sitting aboard a ship like
Rockhopper
, with a hundred and fifty people under me. Even Garrison would have considered that somewhat optimistic.”

“Times change,” Svetlana murmured. She didn’t want to interrupt the story.

“Not as much as all that.” Bella smoked unhurriedly before continuing, “After Garrison died, I kept on moving. Mostly it was sheer momentum, not looking back, making all the right career moves. Earth to near-Earth ops. Near-Earth to the Moon — I hated it. I can still feel that dust in my eyes.”

Svetlana smiled. “Everyone hates the dust.”

“So I skipped to Mars. Then skipped Big Red to deep system. And then this
thing
happened. All of a sudden I crashed and burnt. Couldn’t function for shit. They cycled me back to Earth and the tender mercies of the company shrinks — depression, they said. Trying to live up to Garrison’s lost potential, they said. Like I was trying to have
his
career since he couldn’t.”

“Were they right?”

“I think they were half-right. Another part of me thinks they just couldn’t deal with me. Little Bella Lind, daring to have a career in space.” She let out a self-deprecating laugh. “Okay, so I burnt out, but the men around me were burning out as well. You didn’t hear the shrinks telling
them
they were trying to live up to someone else’s potential.”

“It’s still a man’s world out here,” Svetlana. said. “Every now and then something happens to remind me of that. Like I’m on some kind of probation.
We’ll let you manage this expensive toy for now, but the moment you slip up
—”

“I know you work twice as hard as anyone else in your team.”

“Not because the work’s that difficult,” Svetlana said, though she knew there was no need to explain, “just because they won’t tolerate one single mistake.”

“I know. I know exactly how you feel.”

Svetlana sipped at the whisky, determined to make it last. “I get a bit defensive sometimes. Before this Janus thing happened, I snapped at Parry. He was on my case about the repairs taking too long.”

“Probably because
I
was on
his
case,” Bella said.

“We were both to blame, Parry for not
knowing
that I was already doing everything possible to get that work finished, and me for not understanding how much pressure he was under to get that driver tapped.”

“You squared things with him?”

“You know how it is with Parry and me. We’re pretty tight. Things like that don’t last long.”

“You’re a good couple,” Bella said. “Takes some doing, keeping a relationship together out here. Not many places you can sulk on a ship.”

“I guess if we were going to murder each other, we’d have done it by now.”

“That’s a good sign.”

“Parry wants to go home. Says he’s soaked up enough sieverts for one lifetime. He’s talking about putting in for transfer.”

“I heard,” Bella said quietly. “He’s flagged Mike Takahashi as a possible successor. I suppose he wants you to go with him?”

“That’s his plan: move back down to Earth, get married, have a kid or two. Parry says he can find work at one of the training centres. Failing that, he says we should open a dive school, dust off those PADI certifications.”

“Sounds pretty idyllic to me.”

Svetlana sighed. “The trouble is, I worked damned hard to get out here. I’m the chief of flight systems on a fucking nuclear-powered spaceship, Bella. It doesn’t get much better than that.”

“Except when someone’s squeezing you about repairs.” She smiled and Svetlana grinned back.

“Okay, so that part sucks. But the rest of it’s pretty good.”

Bella stubbed out her cigarette and lit another. Svetlana wondered if the cigarettes came up on the cargo shuttle with the Glenmorangie.

“So what’s the plan? Rotate or stay?”

“We keep putting off having a proper discussion about it — or rather, Parry does.”

“Maybe putting it off isn’t such a bad idea,” Bella said. “To a certain degree, we’re going to be famous when we get back. Not all of us, but certainly the senior crew… you’re going to need a damned good agent, put it like that. There’ll be book and film deals. Chat shows. Lecture circuits. Game development. A lot of possibilities are going to open up.”

“That’s what Parry keeps telling me.”

“I’ll be sorry to lose him from the team, if it comes to that, but my loss would be your gain.”

“I could do a lot worse than Parry.”

“You making it work gives me hope for the human species.”

After a moment, Svetlana said, “You could make it work too, if you wanted to.”

Bella smiled tightly. “I don’t think so.”

“Why not? You’ve got a good few years ahead of you.”

“Let’s not go there, all right?”

Svetlana persisted. “You still turn heads. I know you’ve had relationships since Garrison died: we’ve talked about them often enough. What would we do without
in vino veritas
?”

Bella shrugged philosophically. “Right now there isn’t time in my life for anything but this job.
Especially
now.”

“Okay, fair enough, but what about later, when this is all over? Like you just said: a lot’s going to change.”

“I worked hard to get here, Svieta, just like you did. I’m not sure I could give all of this up.”

“You’ve run this ship for four years without a hitch. If there was ever a point that needed making, I think you can consider it adequately made.”

“Time to move on, you mean?”

“Like Parry says, there are only so many sieverts you can soak up in a lifetime.”

Bella gazed at her fish, dark shapes patrolling the unlit gloom of the tank. “It’ll be good to get back home for a while, that’s for sure.”

“But sooner or later you’ll want to come back out here.”

“I want to see the things Garrison never got to see. Before it’s too late.”

“I understand,” Svetlana said. And she knew that whatever emotional ties still bound Bella to her dead husband, whatever matters of the heart remained as yet unresolved, they were too complex, too fraught, to be unknotted in a single conversation. Even between the closest of friends.

Bella’s tone lifted. “Before I forget — I wanted to thank you. You could have made life a lot more difficult for me with that tech input. Instead you came through and gave it to me straight. I appreciated that.”

“I guess we’re all in the same cattle boat.”

“All the same — it
was
appreciated.” Bella leaned over to pat the wall of her office, her hand dimpling the soft display surface. “And — barring the occasional tremor — she seems to be holding together pretty well, doesn’t she?”

“She’ll hold,” Svetlana said. “Lockheed-Krunichev build them good.”

* * *

Powell Cagan had attached a media file to his latest message: an image of the rival spacecraft, captured during engine startup tests by the long-range surveillance cameras of the UEE’s Replicating Technologies Inspectorate. The new ship looked recognisably Chinese; some lingering influence in its pale blue-green architecture spoke of dynasties and dragons.

“The unofficial word is that they’re calling it the
Shenzhou Five”
Cagan said. “It means ‘Sacred Vessel Number Five’, apparently, and that name has some historical significance for them.”

From time to time an irregular stutter of hot white light shone from the flared trumpet of the ship’s fusion drive. Chemical rockets, stationed around the hull, counteracted the impulse from the fusion motor. The
Shenzhou Five
was still encased in a cradle of support modules, with a mothlike shuttle docked at the largest habitat block. It looked tiny next to the looming new spacecraft.