The Freezer Page 9

  It was an idea. It might cut the distance in half, if I could maintain control.

  We started again on our way. Only five kilometers to go.

  * * *

  I still felt comfortable in the suit, though a cold was beginning to creep down my back. I hadn’t felt that earlier outside, but then I’d only been out for about a half hour. We were now at an hour and still had to explore the site and get back.

  My comm beeped. “Tanner.” It was Lefave, at the facility. His tone was flat.

  “Go ahead.” This would be interesting.

  “What exactly are you doing?”

  I considered what to say. Could they track the vehicles? Did he know in what direction I was headed?

  “Just out for a ride. Brought Sato with me.”

  A long pause ensued. Then, “Where are you going?”

  “Exploring.”

  “I was thinking that we would welcome you to the facility with a dinner.”

  “Nice of you. I’ll call you when we’re nearly back.” As the commander of the facility—and as someone who outranked me—he deserved to know where we were going. Because it was an investigation, however, I could not tell him.

  “You were already out earlier at the drill sites,” Lefave continued.

  “With Dyson. He showed me how to use these icetracks.” I ground my teeth now as the conversation continued. I could tell he was fishing, and I knew he didn’t want me here. His earlier comment had made that more than clear. However, I didn’t want to ruin relations with him just yet. Best not to alienate him or I could lose out on some important information later. “I’ll contact you soon. Tanner out.”

  * * *

  Ten more minutes of searching—we were at the coordinates now, and The Freezer had long ago disappeared from sight—and we were circling in an ever-widening pattern. Sato had commented that there was nothing around, just ice, when suddenly we stumbled onto it.

  A crater.

  Sort of.

  It was a shallow depression in the surface about fifty meters across. It was cracked in a pattern that radiated outward from the center, like angry veins in an eye that one might see in a child’s cartoon. The center, however, wasn’t bowl-shaped; rather, it was a pucker that had lifted by a few meters. It was like a dark scar on the moon that had later bulged upward where the initial impact had occurred.

  Sato muttered, “Do you think they found a nearby impact crater and just made a note of it?”

  I squinted as I stared at it. Something seemed off about it. “Let’s go see.”

  We slowly maneuvered the icetracks and stopped several meters from the center, hesitant to go any farther.

  A hole in the ice, with a puckered lip. The lip had concealed the pit, which was deep.

  “It’s as if something hit here, then melted downward.”

  Precisely what I was thinking.

  The icetrack’s seat folded up to reveal a storage area. Within were a few items for survival, such as crampons for our feet, an extra oxygen bottle, flashlights, an emergency power source for the suit’s communit and a bundle of rope.

  Perfect.

  While searching through the icetrack’s storage area, I realized that I had started to shiver. Glancing at the life support readout on my left wrist, I saw that the temperature in the vacsuit was down to ten degrees Celsius.

  “Sato...” I murmured.

  “Mine too.”

  “At ten now.”

  “Mine’s at eleven but falling as well. This moon is just too damned cold.”

  The suit’s computer had raised the heat to maximum, and still the internal temp was plunging.

  We had to get back soon.

  “What are you going to do with that?” he said, eyeing the rope.

  “Come with me.”

  We walked to the edge of the cavity in the ice and I lay with my helmet over the abyss. It was too dark; I couldn’t make anything out.

  Sato grabbed a flashlight from his icetrack and held it over the hole.

  “Something’s glinting back,” I grunted, “but I can’t make out what.”

  “A meteor? A rock? Something highly reflective? Or just more ice?”

  I slid backward and lay on the hard surface for a moment. There was a layer of crystals, almost like snow. I could run my fingers through them, even leaving impressions and lines.

  Snow on Europa?

  It wasn’t from precipitation. Perhaps from the collision that had caused the hole?

  Had Lefave and his people been out here researching this?

  “We have to go down there.” I turned to Sato. He stared at me silently, but instead of objecting, he reached for the rope.

  “We can secure it to one of the icetracks. You can bring me back up.”

  I shook my head. “I’ll go. I have to investigate—”

  “You’re better with the icetracks. You have good control and have had more time on them than I. You need to be able to pull me up in an emergency. It’s only logical.”

  “But I—”

  “If I find something down there, we can return later. It’s getting too cold to debate. Let’s do this now.”

  And with that he hurried back to my icetrack and began to tie the rope to the front.

  I had to admire the man.

  Even if he was a civilian.

  * * *

  We threw the end of the rope down the hole and looped it over Sato’s right shoulder, around his waist and then back between his legs. It was a quick and easy way to lower oneself and maintain enough friction to keep from plummeting to the bottom. A few extra knots at the icetrack for good measure, and within five minutes he was standing on the edge of the cavity, leaning backward. The icetrack was about ten meters away, and I had put it in reverse just in case and engaged the brake. I marched back to it and straddled the bench facing the man as he began his descent.

  He was skilled at this, I realized immediately. Short and wiry, yes, but also athletic. He had no fears about what he was doing; he simply leaned back and stepped downward—a perfect rappel.

  “Sato.”

  “Go ahead,” he said with a grunt. “I’m doing fine. This is helping me stay warm actually. The walls are smooth here. No worries about a rip in my suit.”

  “What do you think of the CCF?”

  A heartbeat. It had caught him off guard. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re a civilian. I’m in the military.”

  An even longer pause this time. “You think I’m anti-Council?”

  “No, no. Not that.”

  “Then why ask?” And then, “Hey! The rope slipped a bit! Careful!”

  I saw it and applied some power. The track under the vehicle skidded for a second before slowly bringing the machine backward a few meters.

  “Okay, good,” he said. “That’s good. Hold it there.”

  I had to keep the throttle up a bit in order to prevent a slide. “How much deeper is the hole?”

  “Can’t see. Why do you ask about the military?”

  The rope continued to sway back and forth on the edge by a few feet as he continued lowering himself. We had decided that to bring him back we would simply tie him off and reverse the icetrack, pulling him up. “I hear a lot of resentment for us.”

  “Most of it is warranted,” he said instantly. “I hope you don’t mind me saying.”

  I sighed. I understood, but at the same time, it was the system we lived in, and the human race had shown remarkable advancements in the last few hundred years. But as for human rights...

  “Why aren’t you in the CCF?”

  “I was actually born on a ship, out in space. Raised in space. Did all my education virtually. I was just never exposed to the CCF until I got a
job at a colony.” He snorted. “Then I quickly learned the way things are. You know, you guys could be a little more friendly. It would go a long way.”

  I frowned inwardly. I knew he was right. A lot of CCF personnel were simply callous and rude to civilians. The Council instilled a general belief in us that most people needed encouragement to obey us. I was not that way however, because of my position and the fact that I dealt with grieving families on a daily basis. I needed to be compassionate or the job would have killed me years before. I helped people. But others in the CCF, particularly Council reps...

  I knew exactly where Sato was coming from.

  “Hey!” he yelled. “I landed!”

  “On what? More ice?”

  “No.” A long, pregnant pause. I could hear him breathing heavily from exertion; he had held himself up while rappelling the entire distance, some thirty meters down. Even though it was only one-sixth his normal weight, it was still an achievement. His next words surprised me. “It’s a jumpship.”

  * * *

  A jumpship, at the bottom of a crater, in the middle of a frozen moon.

  It must have landed hard, causing the fractures, then melted the ice from its maneuvering thrusters. It had smoothed the ice around the edges of the cavity and then descended until it was as cold as the environment.

  As dead as the environment.

  “Tanner,” Sato’s voice came to me. “It’s a small ship, maybe a five-person craft. The hull seems...charred? And the hatch is open, though not all the way. The ramp won’t descend.” Another pause. “I’m going in.”

  “Be careful.”

  It was curious indeed. Why was it here? Obviously someone at The Freezer knew about it; Sato had discovered the coordinates stuck to a bulletin board.

  The cold was really beginning to set in. The ice was supercooling the thin atmosphere—which was only a whisper of gases—but it was also chilling the vehicle I sat on, and earlier while lying on the surface I had really felt it as I sublimated the ice beneath me.

  “I see now that the hole is angular, roughly in the shape of the jumpship,” Sato said. “I’m in the common seating area now. Nobody here, obviously. Everything is frozen and covered with ice fragments. The ship must have ruptured in the crash and the interior atmosphere immediately flash froze. Frost coats everything because of it. There is debris everywhere. It must have been a hard landing.”

  Five minutes passed without anything else from Sato, but I could hear his breathing as he investigated. Eventually I cleared my throat. “Sato. Best to come back. We’ve been outside now for ninety minutes. It’s cold and Lefave is wondering where we are.”

  “I assume you don’t want him to know we were here.”

  “Precisely.”

  “Okay.” I heard a grunt and he swore softly.

  “What is it?”

  “I removed a memory chip from the main console in the control cabin. It recorded all the information from the vessel’s last voyage. It’ll tell us what happened.”

  “Good idea. Now get out of there.”

  He did as I asked and tied the rope off around his armpits. The icetrack had been in reverse the whole time, with a little throttle already applied, and I released the brake and ramped it up a bit at a time.

  At first the rope didn’t move. Sato didn’t rise at all.

  And then, with a jerk, we started backward. My icetrack even skidded a bit at the sudden movement.

  “Hey!” he yelled. “Easy.”

  “I think the vehicle froze to the ice a bit there. Had to break free. Should go smoother now.”

  He got to the edge, and I stopped the vehicle again and made sure it didn’t slide forward. With a nimble movement, he put both gloved hands on the surface and hauled himself out easily.

  “Now let’s get out of here,” he said. “I’m freezing my ass off.”

  * * *

  We moved faster on the way back, following the tracks we’d made earlier. The mystery of the jumpship was on my mind the entire time. What had brought it down? How had someone at The Freezer known about it? And why hadn’t they reported it to the CCF? I had skimmed the official CCF report on the facility on the way in from Ceres, and no mention of an accident appeared anywhere.

  I paid close attention to the distance finder on the way back; I wanted to make sure we went no farther than fifteen kilometers in a northwest direction. Once we hit that, we could search the horizon until one of us saw the facility, or at least get the ice ridge in view. Then we could travel north until we arrived.

  But it was easier than I had thought.

  Smoke was rising on the horizon, and it was right on the path our tracks had made on the way out.

  As we neared the facility, we came to a sudden, skidding halt.

  The smoke was coming from the landing pad.

  Our jumpship from Ceres was in pieces and in flames, and melting slowly into the polished surface of the ice. A tall column of smoke rose into the thin atmosphere of Europa.

  There was no other way off the moon.

  Chapter Nine

  On the landing pad, Dyson was attempting to extinguish the inferno with a foam sprayed from a hose. It expanded in the low air pressure and blanketed the wreckage in just minutes. Soon the fire from the maneuvering-thruster fuel was out, but the ship was in pieces. Sections of hull lay everywhere, some tens of meters from the pad, along with wiring, tubing, pipes and even a chair from the control cabin, which lay on its side half imbedded in the surface from the force of the explosion.

  “When did this happen?” I asked.

  He looked up at us, startled. He had just noted our arrival. “Barely thirty minutes ago. Shook the entire facility. Don’t know what could have caused it.”

  Keying the communit on my wrist, I contacted Lefave. He would probably be—

  “Tanner!” he yelled. “Where the hell have you been? It’s been two hours now!”

  I suppressed a growl. “Exploring, as I—”

  “We’ve got problems here!”

  “I know, I’m at the pad now, with Dyson.”

  “That’s only one issue. Our off-moon communications are down as well.”

  That made me pause. Those controls were in the uppermost level of Module A. Did he mean that the console was malfunctioning, or was the problem the actual array that sent signals to nearby colonies?

  “Explain.”

  “I’m in the command center. Come here right now.”

  I glanced at Sato, who was watching Dyson deal with the jumpship. His expression was grim.

  * * *

  In the vehicle berth, we parked our icetracks and gingerly got to our feet. The cold had penetrated my suit and the internal temperature was down to five degrees. Not quite freezing, but it had been close. Next time I’d keep the sweater, which I had left on the bench near the lockers.

  Sato located the charging plugs and inserted them into the vehicles. He was stretching his back as I removed the vacsuit.

  “Hunching over the handlebars and bouncing over that terrain is challenging.”

  I grunted. “Thanks for your help out there.”

  “No problem. I just hope everything is all right here.” His features were tense as he said it.

  We marched from the vehicle berth toward Module A.

  * * *

  Lefave was standing in the center of level three with a baffled look on his face. The bulkheads curved toward the apex of the chamber, and the transparent ceiling provided that remarkable view of Jupiter. Even though it had hung overhead for our entire journey to the crashed jumpship, I still found it mesmerizing.

  The director was staring at the communications console. I moved toward it slowly; there was an acrid smell in the room—burned wires. I also noted the sound of the ventilat
ors, which seemed more pronounced than normal. Life support was purging smoke from the area.

  “Sabotage, obviously,” I muttered.

  He spun on me. “This is your fault, Tanner. Before you arrived nothing like this had ever happened. Now a jumpship is in ruins, the landing pad is melting, and the communications gear is gone!”

  I sighed and steeled myself for what was coming. It was obvious now that I had been correct all along. Something connected The Freezer to Bojdl’s and Shaheen’s deaths.

  “Get everyone together,” I murmured. “We’ll meet in the mess. I want them there in no less than two minutes, and that includes Dyson.”

  A look of rage. “He’s out there dealing with the jumpship!”

  I snorted. “There’s no saving that ship, trust me. Get him in here.” I turned to the console and studied it in silence. Behind me, Lefave simply stared. Sato glanced backward and watched the director.

  It was a test of wills, of whose authority would win out. He didn’t have a chance—they never did—but I had come to learn that they had to recognize this themselves. Otherwise I would not be able to investigate with their cooperation. I didn’t really need it, but it would be useful.

  His footsteps clanged away a moment later, and I shot a glance at Sato.

  “He’s furious.”

  I said, “I know. And I don’t care.” I gestured at the console. “He might be responsible for this.”

  Sato blinked. “Really? This is his station.”

  “That doesn’t matter. He could have orchestrated it all.” I didn’t yet know why though.

  The controls were a mess. Someone had yanked out wiring and started a small fire. I passed a hand over my chest and wondered absently if Sato could fix it, but then I realized I had been using too much of his time already. He had more important things to do.

  The actual communications equipment was located near the landing pad. It was a short dish that pointed toward relay stations orbiting Jupiter. Our entire system was a network, one receiver relaying to another until the message arrived at the destination. The farther the distance, the more powerful the transmitter. If I were out on the Europan surface and sent a message to Pluto, it would first go to the communications equipment at The Freezer, which would relay it to the dish. The signal would travel to the relay satellites in Jupiter orbit, which would boost them to the correct colony and elevate them to FTL—Faster Than Light—status.