The Freezer Page 8

  The ice was easy to maneuver over. The vehicle had great traction, and within seconds I discovered the possible turning radius before the rear started to slide. I poured on the power. Jupiter’s red spot was there, watching us silently, perhaps wondering what we were doing in this hostile place. The planet cast a bloody glow over the ice. Hard to believe that Francis Lefave had said that he was used to it. I wondered how one ever could be.

  But then again, I doubted the scientists came out here to enjoy this. Even Aoki Tali had said that only Dyson gathered the samples for them. The rest were always indoors, running experiments.

  The gravity was lower outside. Inside The Freezer it was a constant one gee, thanks to artificial generators in every module and tube. Out here though, it was closer to Earth’s moon: one-sixth Earth gravity. The icetrack bounced over hummocks and ridges and stayed in the air for longer than seemed possible, but I quickly adapted and had figured out its operation within minutes.

  Dyson sat on his vehicle in silence as he watched me practice. I could see his expression through his visor, but I didn’t care. His job was to follow orders without question and nothing else until I released him. In the past I’d simply punished and reprimanded. This time, however, I was going to teach the proper protocols, because clearly someone had not yet done so here successfully. Perhaps it wasn’t his fault at all.

  Behind the Crewman was the outer skin of Module D. It rose to a height of roughly five meters. Behind that I could see Module A. The ice ridge was on the other side of the station.

  I keyed the communit. “Take me to the drill sites now.”

  “Yes, sir,” his voice floated to me after a moment’s hesitation. At least he was following regs now. Perhaps staying in this isolated location and dealing with scientists who didn’t care much for military protocols had made him lax. It was something that needed to change, whatever the cause.

  I followed him toward the ice ridge south of the facility. The ice wasn’t smooth and the vehicle bounced along somewhat. Shock absorbers in the chassis kept my body from sustaining injury. In fact, I was actually starting to enjoy the ride. There was no noise from the engine except for a vibration that moved up my body and produced a low drone. Even in the pressurized vehicle berth I hadn’t heard much.

  The vacsuit Dyson had provided me was much more comfortable than my previous one. It was thicker and contained a much better heating system. I didn’t feel the cold at all. It was slightly more cumbersome, but still nothing compared to the original suits of four centuries ago.

  We traveled more than a kilometer. Behind me I could still see the station, although the curve of the moon was having more of an effect than I had anticipated. The horizon seemed abnormally close, and the bottom couple of meters of the station were soon lost to sight. On Earth one could see roughly twenty kilometers before a ship at sea disappeared due to the curvature. On this much smaller moon, it probably amounted to a distance of three kilometers before things fell below the horizon.

  I made a mental note of that. Don’t go farther than three kilometers from The Freezer, unless you know in exactly what direction it lies.

  Near the facility we had threaded past three large fractures in the ice. They were roughly fifty meters apart and ran more or less in a north-south direction toward Module D. Orange flags drilled into the ice marked the edges of each fracture. I wondered absently if one of these crevasses was the source of the crack I’d heard earlier.

  Soon Dyson stopped and pointed to the ice near his vehicle. I pulled up next to him and stared at the area. Sure enough, there were small areas of whiter ice around what looked like perfect two-inch drill cores. The water had probably surged upward once the drill penetrated the entire ice layer and frozen instantly upon hitting the surface.

  “How deep is the ice?” My question was more of a test than anything else. Was he familiar with the environment?

  “About ten kilometers, give or take.” He gestured toward the ridge, which was to our right. “It’s thinner closer to that ridge.”

  “And how deep is the sea?”

  “Fifty kilometers.”

  It made me shake my head in fascination. The entire surface of the moon was ice. It didn’t even connect to the solid core. The pull of Jupiter had locked Europa into orbit so that only one side faced the planet—much like Earth’s own moon—but I wondered what would happen if the moon were to rotate like a planet. Would the ice shift around the core? What kind of forces would that create in the sea below?

  I studied the area slowly. There were three drill holes clearly visible, now that I knew what to look for: slightly whiter ice in distorted circles.

  “Is this where you always drill?” I asked.

  “Yes. Same spot. I use a laser. The rig isn’t too large. It has tracks to move out here by itself.”

  And the laser could carve through ice quickly. I assumed the operator would punch through the ice layer and then slowly lower the beam’s intensity. The immense forces caused by Europa’s rapid three-and-a-half-day orbit around Jupiter churned the water below, and in fact tore the ice on the surface up as well, so the water would most likely rocket up the puncture.

  Still, something did seem off about it. Wouldn’t the beam damage any potential life in the samples?

  “Why here?”

  He shrugged. “Lefave just told me a kilometer south of the facility. That’s all.”

  I cringed again. Lefave. It was lieutenant commander. I paused as I gazed around us. “Why are there ten vehicles in the vehicle berth?”

  “One for each member of the team. Two extra in case of equipment malfunction.”

  Made sense. In case of disaster, they had to get out quickly and wait for a possible rescue mission.

  “Tell me about the scientists.”

  Dyson turned his visor to mine. He looked quizzical. “What do you mean?”

  “What’s it like here? How is it working with them? Anything odd going on?”

  He snorted, as if the fact that I wanted a pleasant conversation now offended him. Time to straighten him out.

  “This is part of my investigation,” I snapped. “Better answer truthfully. I’m not here to be your friend.”

  “That much is obvious.” But he nodded a second later. He paused for another long moment.

  “Why do you have to think?”

  “Wondering what to say.”

  “Why? Something you don’t want me to know?”

  “No, not that.” He sighed. “I’m just overworked, that’s all. Maintaining the place. And the environment is deadly.” A shrug. “Just puts a lot of pressure on you.”

  I frowned at that. It didn’t seem so bad. They must have really been working him. “Are you the chief engineer here?”

  He exhaled harshly. “There isn’t one.”

  “Is that the engineering module we just came from?”

  “No. Just a workspace and the vehicle berth. All the facility’s operations are controlled from level three of Module A. I’m just a guy who can handle a tool I guess. Everything falls to me when a repair is needed.” A pause, and then, “What about you, Tanner?”

  I flashed him a glare.

  “Sir, I mean,” he continued. “How long have you been doing this?”

  “Twelve years.”

  “How many cases?”

  “Eight hundred.”

  He blinked. “So many?”

  There’s a lot of crime in the system, I wanted to say. Unfortunately, the CCF wanted this kept quiet. They wanted everyone to think that people were happy. I knew different.

  “How many were guilty?”

  “All of them.”

  He snorted. “And what happens to them?”

  “The CCF executes the killers.” I paused. “Why?”

  “Just wondering, that
’s all.”

  I got off the icetrack and tested my footing. It was better than earlier, when I had worn the other vacsuit. I felt as though I had some traction.

  My eyes fell on the ice ridge, some hundred meters away. “Let’s go over there.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to see it, that’s why. And the correct response to me is ‘Aye, sir.’”

  He sighed. “Sorry, sir. Still getting the hang of this again.”

  I grunted in response. “By the way, how deep are those fractures back there near the station?”

  “Don’t know. Could be kilometers.”

  “Are they recent?”

  “They appeared eight months after the Engineering Corps built the station. Caused us a lot of worry, but they’ve stopped growing.”

  Good thing, I wanted to say. I got on the vehicle and accelerated quickly toward the ridge. The things could really move when you pressed them.

  * * *

  My communit beeped a minute later. “Go ahead,” I muttered.

  “It’s Aoki Tali,” a voice said in my helmet.

  It made me frown.

  “I wondered if we could talk later, Lieutenant.” She sounded hesitant, nervous.

  “I’m outside right now. What do you want to talk about?”

  “Later. Perhaps after dinner, when the others are occupied or sleeping.” There was another beep as the connection ended.

  Beside me, Dyson glanced my way. My comm had been on broadcast and he’d heard the whole conversation.

  * * *

  We stopped at the ridge and I looked up incredulously. Fifty-meter towering shards of ice, backdropped against pure black space. It was beautiful but also seemed incredibly dangerous. Similar to the views of solar prominences I’d witnessed dangerously close to the sun only eleven months before.

  Nearby was a mass of crumbled ice, with irregular blocks ranging from the size of jumpships down to crumbs. Around the area was a smooth, frozen pond, slightly lighter in color than its surroundings. I wondered if perhaps it was similar to a tectonic boundary on Earth, where crustal plates collided and magma from beneath could slip up through the fractured rock to the surface, creating arcs and ridges of fiery and destructive volcanoes. Could there be steam or water volcanoes on this moon where massive ice sheets ground into each other? Lefave had mentioned something about this earlier.

  I studied the icescape for long minutes, until Dyson began to grow impatient. I waited until he couldn’t take it any longer.

  “Ready to go back, sir?”

  I smiled to myself and made sure he couldn’t see. “When do you think this ice column came down?”

  He followed my gaze. “Probably more than a year ago. You can tell from the color of the ice.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Older ice is slightly darker.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged, a gesture difficult to notice in his suit. “Radiation from Jupiter maybe. Particles from meteor impacts settling on the surface. Something like that. I’m not a scientist.”

  I continued to look at my surroundings. Interesting.

  * * *

  He had mentioned radiation, which instantly worried me. I had forgotten about the intense levels Jupiter gave off. Back at The Freezer, however, I learned that the suits could handle it for short periods. There was also medication if I took too many rems.

  I had definitely been in that situation before.

  I found Sato back in the lab in the second level of Module A. He took me aside and we went for a cup of coffee in the galley. Dinova and Marius looked curious, but said nothing.

  “What did you find?” I asked him.

  “Nothing to do with microscopic machines other than the common medical nanos and nano programmers.”

  “So no one built the bombs here.” I sighed, resigned.

  “Not that I could see. However, I only searched the common areas—the labs, workplaces, and so on.” He was watching me closely. “Sorry, Tanner.”

  “It’s all right.” I pursed my lips. “What were the others doing?”

  “Lefave stayed in a lab on level one. Snow, Cray and Tali were in their respective labs on level two.” He shrugged. “I did find this, however. It intrigued me.”

  I looked at a scrap of paper he held under the table. I reached out and grabbed it, but made sure to keep it hidden in case there were any surveillance cameras in the area.

  Numbers scrawled in pen:

  80 11 112 55

  “Does it make sense to you?”

  It did, actually. “Where’d you find this?”

  “Pinned to a bulletin board in the lab area.”

  “Why did you grab it?”

  He shrugged. “Everything else seemed related to the station, their studies, to Europa. I didn’t understand those numbers though, so I...” He eyed me. “What are they?”

  “Coordinates.”

  He blinked. “For what?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s a location close to us.” I folded the scrap and put it in my pocket. “And I think we should go check it out.”

  A look of shock crossed his features. “You mean go outside?”

  “We’ll take two of the vehicles and find out what’s there. It might be important.”

  In fact, I had a hunch that it could be the big break in the case.

  Chapter Eight

  When the autopilot had brought us in that morning, I’d paid close attention to the latitude and longitude of the facility. I wasn’t sure why. I just wanted to know generally where we were on the moon. But when I saw the figures that Sato had cleverly grabbed because he thought they might be important, I’d clued into it immediately.

  The Freezer’s coordinates: 81º 51' 113º 15'

  Sato’s numbers: 80º 11' 112º 55'

  It was a mere one and a half degrees south of us and about a half degree east. Consulting my reader, I saw that it was a distance of nearly fifteen kilometers southeast of The Freezer.

  I exhaled when I saw the map. Fifteen kilometers. The facility would be lost from view.

  In the end I decided that it was necessary to go. As long as on the return leg we could get back to within a three-kilometer radius of the station. The vehicles left scrapes in the ice that would create a nice trail of sorts to return safely.

  Sato and I waited until late afternoon. Most of the scientists had retired to the living module to prepare for dinner. Dyson was no longer in the vehicle bay, which left it empty for us to prepare for our journey.

  Not that I needed their permission to go. I was just very aware that secrecy was important. I did not want someone following.

  I still wasn’t entirely sure what was at the end point of our journey, but it had piqued my curiosity, as well as Sato’s.

  My new vacsuit was still hanging in a locker in the module, and finding one for Sato was relatively easy. He was a small man—no more than five feet—and we located one in the module for a diminutive person, most likely a woman. The material bunched up at his legs and arms, but it would have to do.

  I showed him the icetrack’s controls, which were simple to operate and understand, especially for someone as intelligent as him. We entered the air lock, and within a minute were speeding away from The Freezer.

  * * *

  Forty-five minutes out from the station we stopped to consult the map. We’d traveled about ten kilometers in a southeasterly direction. Almost there, but still five more to go. And if we were off by a few degrees, it might still take a bit of searching. Then there was the fact that the coordinates gave no seconds notation. The target could still be within quite a large radius.

  The moon was locked in place with Jupiter constantly in view. Half the planet was currently
visible, the other half lit by strobing flashes. There was a ruddy glow over the polished ice, and with the rest of the sky black, it was an interesting contrast. A dull gloom settled over everything like a red, cold blanket. The sun was a mere speck with just a slight halo surrounding it. In some ways it made me long for Earth, a hot day and a blue sky. And then at other times—ever since SOLEX in fact—the sun made me shiver in fear.

  We couldn’t travel too quickly, I had realized as soon as we were away from the station. The headlights were bright, and the light that Jupiter reflected from the sun also illuminated the ice, but two factors limited how fast we could go. First was the albedo of the moon. It was so bright that I found it difficult at times to see exactly what was right in front of us. The surface wasn’t perfectly flat, and sometimes there was a segment of ice tilted just so, and the light would glint right into our visors. They polarized to compensate, but not enough to make the difference between cautious travel and outright speed. The second factor was the fissuring of the ice. The ones south of the facility were massive and gave me pause when I wondered how fast I could crank up the icetrack. What if we got moving so quickly that we couldn’t stop in time? What if we fell into one of those things and plunged hundreds of meters into a narrowing crevasse? It would be a terrible way to die.

  Eventually I decided that we needed to test the vehicles to see exactly what the braking distance was at full speed. I had Sato stay where he was, and I backtracked about five hundred meters. I knew the surface there was stable and safe—no cracks—and I increased power. Within ten seconds I was at full speed, nearly eighty kilometers per hour. When I was twenty meters from Sato, I pulled the brakes.

  The rear of the icetrack threatened to slide to the right so I steered in that direction to prevent skidding out. When the forward momentum of the icetrack finally ceased, I looked around for Sato.

  Ten meters behind me.

  So, at full speed, the braking distance on the ice was about thirty meters.

  “What about putting it in reverse?” he murmured.