A large anthology of sci.., p.816
A Large Anthology of Science Fiction, page 816
There were a thousand or so boulders. Maybe a hundred mountains. A dozen or two actual planetoids. And enough gravel and sand to fill a city-size hourglass. From this distance, they looked harmless enough. A tranquil cloud of snowflakes suspended aloft against the inky black night, gracefully tumbling to some unseen choreography.
The sun, some ninety-three million miles distant, painted their edges with yellow-orange highlights. Its rays shot out through the dust like a hot fiery breath; a furnace blasting over the stones; a beacon warning Stay off the rocks.
Their utility craft was a frail toothpick, covered with barbed appliances and headed by a module just large enough to be called Command. It veered into the swarm and the sand and small pebbles immediately began to pelt the outer hull like a hailstorm on a tin roof. The nearest asteroid towered above their puny ship by miles.
The kid fell back into his chair and tightened the shoulder harness. He started fingering the charm himself and the old man knew he was scared.
The kid shook his head. “You found this on an asteroid? This looks man-made!”
The old man grinned. His gold tooth sparkled—the one with the rocket cut-out. He knew he had him now. “That’s right, Kid. It is man-made!”
“You’re tellin’ me you found a man-made artifact on some stray boulder in the asteroid belt? C’mon!” The kid lowered the scope to eye-level and took hold of the yoke. His knuckles whitened.
The old man just smiled. He knew he had the kid right where he wanted him. “See this big rock here?” He thumbed at the nearest giant, rolling silently toward them.
“Yeah.” The kid was sweating.
“When it rolls around again, you’ll see, it’s got a peculiar curved surface on one side that doesn’t seem to line up with the rest of it.”
“So?”
The old man paused for dramatic effect. But he also had to marvel at it himself. Even after ten years, he was still awestruck by the floating mountains. He strained at the fuzzy little port to see the upper peak. One moment, he felt he could picture their diminutive speck of a vessel floating alongside the monstrous rock. Then, all of a sudden, maybe because he turned his head too quickly, his whole perspective changed. And he felt he was drifting, in orbit, over a rolling waste. Down below, the shadow of their craft kept pace, flowing smoothly over the foothills and valleys and pocked tawny plains.
Suddenly, they seemed to reach the horizon and fall off the edge. A whole new country opened up and, like the old man said, it had an entirely different shape. It looked like a fragment of a huge shattered shell.
“Some say, there used to be a planet here.” The old man cast an eye on the kid’s reaction. He seemed ready to take the bait. “And when you find a geography like this, what you’re actually seeing is a piece of the planet’s original crust.” The old man took control of the joystick and steered away, toward another asteroid, farther off. By this time, they were past the region of heaviest particle concentrations. The showers gave way to an eery silence.
“I found this” the old man explained, once more stroking the aged charm, “on a rock like that.”
“You think there was a planet here once, with intelligent life on it maybe?”
“A lot of miners believe it.”
“You think there’s still artifacts to be found down there?”
“Yeap.”
The kid stared out the window as the huge monolith fell softly away. “You mean, on rocks with curved surfaces like that there might still be the remains of some alien civilization?”
“That’s where I found this.”
“What do you suppose it was?”
The old man eyed the piece, staring down the length of his nose at it. He mocked a scholarly reflection as he adjusted it for best light. “I don’t know, maybe it was some kind of religious relic. A sacred utensil or something.” He squinted a little harder, as if to bring out more detail. “Probably third dynasty . . .”
“That’s incredible!” By now, the huge asteroid they just left had blended with the stars. “Well, what did we leave it for? I’d like to go down and have a look.”
“Don’t worry about it, kid, there’s lots of stuff like that around here!” The old man knew what the kid was thinking. He thought the same things when he was first told the tale. Visions of lost cities and forgotten cultures; weathered, sun-bleached columns jutting up through the endless stretches of sand; rich artifacts from a vanished civilization as far removed from our experience as these rocks are from the sun . . . It was incredible! But they had a mission to complete. It had to take priority. There’d be time for fossils later.
Satellite LTZ-112 had disappeared. It was one of many set adrift in the belt zone to meticulously map each and every rock for whatever possible value to Universal Hydrogen. Some months back, LTZ-112 stopped sending. They feared it crashed. A homing signal grew weak, but still beckoned from the depths of the region.
Usually, a wealth of high-speed digital information flooded through the belt. A network of satellites relayed it to Mars. But when the signals from LTZ-112 were reduced to a standby tone, everyone knew there was a problem.
Triangulation from two other ships on the periphery of the belt placed the source of the signal on or near an asteroid known as Metzler’s Folly. The corporation had never before landed a crew there. It was always exciting when your footprints were the first. The old man saw it as the human equivalent to a dog marking its turf.
From one angle, as it slowly rolled through the shadows, it looked like a large pie slice. Its base was a rounding plain. On the inside of the arc a mountainous wedge rose to a ragged peak. The peak remained sharply defined, while toward its base the features had been eroded under scores of impacts.
The old man immediately noticed the oddity of its curved face. Though the asteroid was clearly of a rocky composition, its curved side was covered by a frozen sea. Its smoothness, like a fragment from a polished marble ball, was in stark contrast to the rough-hewn nature of the wedge.
Several distinct flows had poured off the edges and solidified like drips of wax on a candle, forming complex river networks that climbed up the wedge. He assumed a large gravitational source had drawn the molten fluid toward the peak, then, broken free, left the rivers to freeze in place. They resembled jagged arteries pointing up toward a missing head.
Suddenly, Metzler’s Folly halted in its minuet and the background starfield took up a ballet. Their ship was now synchronized to the motions of the asteroid. They couldn’t match its occasional wobble, and so it still seemed to totter slightly beneath them.
The kid scratched at the monitor with his fingernail. A small greasy fleck of scum scraped loose. Underneath, the blip indicated where the signal was strongest. The probable location of LTZ-112, near the edge of the bowed plain, at the base of the wedge.
“The signal’s not moving . . .” The kid made an adjustment, fine tuning . . .
“So, it’s not ahhh, not in orbit?”
“No, it’s definitely downed!”
The old man rubbed his brow, squeezing out a thought. “Well . . .” Landing on odd-shaped rocks was never easy, but when they tumbled unpredictably it became all the more tricky. Still, he realized there was no better way. “Find me a smooth spot near the crash site.”
“You mean we’re going to land?”
“Yeap.”
“I don’t think there’s a smooth spot down there!” The kid pulled out a pair of binoculars and a food bar. He munched idly as he scanned the terrain through the port slit.
Crumbs began to fill the cabin, hovering around the old man’s nose like a swarm of malcontent gnats. He shooed them away, brushing the air, but they whooshed back in the wake of his palm. They began to form a miniature of the belt outside. And the old man began to realize that the kid was taking this all too casually.
“You want me to land it?” The kid seemed to have found a soft spot.
“Look, kid, a landing like this can be pretty hairy!”
The kid took another bite, this time more slowly, staring at the old man as if to say So, are you going to let me land?
They began their descent. Rumble from the engines knocked something loose in back of the ship. The kid unbuckled, glided out of his chair and backwards through the hatchway into the narrow corridor behind the cockpit that lead to the airlocks. While he was gone, checking on the noise, the old man pulled out his duffel bag. Inside a side pocket he kept his stash of “alien” artifacts. He glanced back to see the kid secure a locker, then he quickly stuffed a handful into the leg-pocket of his spacesuit.
He disguised a laugh, clearing his throat as the kid came back. Then he returned to the task of landing.
Out the starboard window, he watched a sea of frozen crests roll toward him and disappear under the ship. The depths of their troughs were buried in a shadow that blended with the color of space. The weathered hills were lowlands at the base of the wedge, leading toward the edge of the smooth rounding plain. Their ship was descending at a gradual angle. Already, even at an altitude of more than two miles, a few boulders were becoming visible.
Something like a beach appeared on the far bank of a frozen river. It led to a range of jagged peaks that knifed up suddenly. That quickly, they were headed right for the rock face. The old man pulled up hard . . .
A shuddering vibration was conveyed through the ship. The hot glow of the engines lit up the cabin through the triangular ports. Embers blew past in droves, apparently kicked up off the rock wall. If they missed, the old man realized, they would miss by inches!
Then suddenly, the cliffs gave way to a starfield. The engines seemed quieter now. The old man pressed up against the glass and saw a new horizon falling away beneath them. It was the huge curving plain, resembling the normal horizon of a planet. They were over the edge.
Signals from the satellite, vector feedback from sister craft outside the belt, all were suddenly lost in a wash of static. Like the sudden cataclysmic end that must have hit this planet, their radio links with the outside world just quit. The old man concluded that the cliffs blocked the signals when they quite literally fell off the side.
He quickly rotated the craft. Stars sped horizontally past both ports. Rocky spires spun into view and bounced to a halt like a fence at the end of a merry-go-round ride. “This is where we get off!” the old man warned. Hopping over the edge, they dropped like a faulty elevator. And they could once more see the river.
The old man deftly braked and the ship hovered down the rock face, toward the beach. The crumbs flew up and stuck to the ceiling.
Surface details were becoming clearer. Weathered dunes rippled in endless formation until they blurred together. A few craters, scattered here and there, were the only flaws to their perfect symmetry. A few airstreamed boulders stood awkwardly about like random game pieces, awaiting further moves. From so high, they were all children’s toys and mere playthings.
“We are one-zero-five miles from target and closing. One-zero-two-five miles from target. One mile . . .” The kid kept calling out fractions till the old man yelled Okay, okay!
The ground brightened and a violent blast of smoke and fiery debris was sucked off in every direction. A final shock wave rippled out across the gloomy vista, momentarily smearing the focus on an otherwise sharp horizon. The ship touched down with a mild thud and a hesitant quake as the landing gear settled into place. And the loud rumble fell instantly silent.
They busily switched off volatile systems and got ready. The kid made one last check of the telemetry before fastening his helmet in place. The fog from his breath obscured his face in the glassy bubble. It quickly cleared when he switched on the air supply. Telemetry showed the crashed satellite a short walk from the ship.
“Well, old man, bet I find it before you do!”
“I bet you do . . .” The old man could see his reflection in the starboard window. He could see that the glare on his helmet had covered his grin.
They clanged down, single-file, the metal grates in the narrow corridor behind the cockpit. Accumulated grease from years of use stained the walls and glistened in the muddy amber lighting that barely divided the shadows. Normal procedure involved sealing themselves in the airlock, then depressurizing before opening the outer hatch. But the outer hatch had never been fixed, so only the inner hatch could be sealed shut.
They gripped the handrails and the kid started cranking. It was a task made doubly difficult by the vacuum outside that tended to hold the door in place. But eventually, the hissing became a gust. And then gale force winds sucked out all the air. It condensed to a whitish haze as it dissolved away outside their craft.
The kid stepped out first. He seemed to have an idea where the wreck was lying and immediately began to search for it with his field glasses. That suited the old man just fine as he hopped off on his own course.
He felt around his leg-pocket. The cargo was still there. He figured he’d go out about a hundred yards or so, far enough to be adequately concealed by the dunes, then start spreading the stuff around. He’d make a slow circle around the kid’s position, seeding the whole area.
It was one of the oldest jokes in the business. Every new kid on the job, almost since the beginning of belt mining, had been hazed like this. You might say it was a tradition. In fact, that’s where the old man got his charm in the first place.
There was so little gravity on the rock, the old man feared the tiny objects wouldn’t settle to the ground fast enough to escape the kid’s quick gaze.
The old man couldn’t help but chuckle as he returned to the ship. The kid was still gone. Footprints led away to the northwest, finally disappearing in the wavy counterpoint of sand and shadow that itself disappeared in a larger movement of dunes. The old man figured he’d just have to be patient, and not give it away.
He reached around back, to a utility haversack that contained his scope. The eyepiece was contoured to fit around the curve of his helmet. Its rubbery gasket formed an occlusive seal with the surface of his visor.
He followed the footprints out and panned the horizon. Digital numbers rolled by feverishly as the scope tried to focus on fast-moving objects and calculate the distance. Readings were always short, maybe due to the proximity of the horizon.
Low-light enhancement rendered the world a cool blue-green, with darkest shadows a deep blue cobalt. He zoomed in until pronounced lines of resolution cut through the image like a horizontal grate. Interference occasionally scrambled the picture, turning it into a subliminally quick flash of knotted scan lines and static. Then it would roll back to normal.
Finally, the old man thought he saw something. Like broken glass, catching the sun. He zoomed in closer. Fuzzy chards of glistening metal, strewn across a dark distant field. He had found the satellite.
But where was the kid? He checked his clock. They’d both be out of air in another thirty minutes or so. He switched on his headset, “Hey kid, time to come in!” A burst of static responded. It reminded him of why he liked the radio turned off. “Hey kid!”
Again, a burst of static responded. This time, a muddled voice seemed hidden in the noise. Then silence. Could be echoes off the mountains, he thought. But then, another blast of static. Unprovoked. And a distinct voice rose for a moment above the noise floor.
“Kid, are you okay?”
He continued to scan. At a certain frequency, the kid’s incoming signal would jar the picture. It might work like a homing device! The greater the distortion, the closer to the kid’s position.
He checked his clock again. If the kid was in trouble, he’d have to find him soon.
Belt mining could be a very hazardous profession. The old man remembered landing on a snowball once. His partner’s suit was still warm from being on the ship. When he stepped off, he immediately sank through the melting methane. The gases closed up overtop and instantly refroze. The stuff got as hard as rock! They couldn’t get him out in time. In fact, they never found the body.
Picture distortion seemed most severe a few degrees to the west of the satellite debris. The old man started running. Actually, it was more of a hop and a skip. He didn’t have much time, and the pace was insufferable, like running through knee-deep water. The suit resisted each step. And the low gravity didn’t help much either.
The closer he got, the more distinct the static became. When he was nearly on top of the glittering fragments of the shattered satellite, a shadowy figure suddenly emerged over the roundness of a nearby dune. As soon as the figure’s distinctive bubble helmet and backpack cleared the sandy crest, the old man knew the kid was alright and the radio cleared.
“I found it!” The kid was excited, filled with an exuberance that seemed recklessly incapable of weighing the risks.
Well . . . he didn’t get himself killed and the old man resolved not to feel angry about it, at least I won’t have to file an accident report!
“I found an artifact! Look at this!” The kid waved around his treasure.
The old man had intended to play it straight until they got back to the station, but he couldn’t hold it. He knew the hysteria would be especially poignant if the laughs could erupt at once from the entire crew, but he couldn’t stop himself. It just came out.
“What are you laughing at, old man?” The kid was indignant. “Jealous I found a bigger one?”
The old man couldn’t breathe. Every time he did, his laughter intensified. His helmet was fogging up. He nearly fell over backwards, but caught himself in time. The oldest gag in the business, and the kid fell for it! The old man could now welcome him into the fraternity.
Generations had ventured forth into space, driven by the same quest. Each sought to vindicate their own strained place in the universe and find assurances for their continued existence in the discovery of other cultures that had survived there. And every Belt miner, in the end, came to the same great realization. When the laughter died down, and they were left holding their artifact, they knew that the universe was actually quite dead. It led to a certain pragmatism. Yet, in turn, they themselves would keep the gag going.
