Saturn Run (The Planetary Trilogy Book 1) Read online

  Dan took a seat. “You work here all the time?” he asked.

  “Yeah, couldn’t cope with Earth gravity now.” As he said this he slapped one skinny thigh.

  “Know what you mean. Can they keep you busy enough? I mean I’m only out here about every three months.”

  “Well, you’re not the only one who comes through here. And I do a bit of passenger work between times. It’s okay.”

  He didn’t seem inclined to say much more and the waiting was making Dan feel restless. “I think I’ll go see how the cargo loading’s getting on.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  One of the big freight skimmers was lined up near to the rear wall of the hangar. Automatic loaders were transferring containers through another airlock to the cargo shuttle docked outside. The driver of the freight skimmer was watching the process. Dan went up to him.

  “Hi,” he said. “Dan Larssen. I’m flying this stuff out of here. How’s it going?”

  “Okay, I guess. No problems.”

  “Did you have far to come with this lot?” He was only making conversation but the man shot him a quick look. “Not far,” he said, guardedly.

  Dan glanced at his watch. “How long’s it going to take, do you think?” he asked. “I need to get upstairs pretty soon.”

  “There’s another freight to unload yet. Another forty minutes should do it.”

  “But there’s three more skimmers out there in the airlock.”

  “They’ll wait for the next shuttle.”

  Dan nodded and strolled around, looking at what there was to see but staying well out of the way of the automatic handlers. He decided he might as well go back to the office. He didn’t make it.

  16

  They came out of nowhere, two men in dark suits. One of them put in him in a painful arm lock and they marched him to a room in a different part of the hangar. He noticed it was better furnished than the office where the shuttle pilot had been waiting but he wasn’t in any position to enjoy it. His escort released his arm and threw him into an armchair.

  “What this all about?” Dan shouted indignantly.

  “That’s what we’d like to know,” said the one who’d put the arm lock on him.

  Dan sized him up. The guy was very powerfully built. Even at the best of times there was no way he’d have wanted to tangle with someone like that and certainly not after weeks of exposure to microgravity.

  “Okay, buddy, who are you?” the man demanded.

  “What do you mean ‘who am I?’ I’m your pilot. Who do you think I am?”

  The man’s big open hand smashed across Dan’s face, jerking his head round with the force of the blow.

  “Don’t get smart with me!”

  Dan put his hand to his stinging cheek and felt blood oozing from a split in his lip. He looked from one to the other in astonishment. The second man, who was more slightly built, just stood in the background, leaning against a wall, contemplating Dan with detachment. There was something chilling about him. He scared Dan even more than his brutal friend.

  The big man gathered up the material of Dan’s tunic in one huge fist, almost lifting him from the chair. “Now, who do you work for?”

  Dan shook his head to clear it. He couldn’t make out what was going on.

  “I work for Mr Rostov.” He was tempted to add “same as you, dummy”, but that seemed very unwise.

  “Think I believe that? Try again.”

  “I don’t understand. What’s the problem?”

  “What’s the problem, he says! He’s snooping around, spying on everything and asking questions, and he asks me what the problem is.”

  Understanding began to dawn. Dan gave a half laugh, trying to sound casual. “Oh, that! I got bored with hanging about, is all. Loading shuttles isn’t that interesting. I was only being friendly.”

  The man threw him back in the armchair. “Listen, wise guy. There’s an airlock from this office area to the big outside. Why don’t we just put you in it and let the air out?”

  Dan’s mind worked furiously. He was in a tight spot and he knew it. Mentally he was cursing his naiveté. These people were supersensitive about this operation and he’d strayed too far from his allotted path.

  “Look,” he said. “Just listen a moment. I’m only a hack pilot, okay? I didn’t mean anything. I’m sorry. But we do have a problem here. If you whack me, that freightliner can’t leave. And if it doesn’t leave it’s going to put your schedule right out and Mr Rostov is not going to be best pleased.”

  The big man turned this over ponderously. Dan glanced at the other one. He was still watching the proceedings impassively; he hadn’t moved and his expression hadn’t changed. Dan went on:

  “Now I’ve got a suggestion. It’s only a suggestion, mind. I’ve done two of these runs before, and there’s never been a problem. But if you’ve got doubts about me why don’t you contact Mr Rostov and they can have a reception committee waiting for me at the other end. There’s no way I can get out of your hands between here and Earth orbit and that way at least your freightliner gets to its destination while we sort this thing out.”

  There was a pause. The big man said, “Maybe you’ll dock somewhere else.”

  “Come on now, you know I don’t have the documentation for that. There’s only one place I can dock at the end of this trip.” He glanced at his watch. “Now I’ve still got all my flight checks to do. If I don’t get up in that shuttle in the next few minutes we’re going to miss the departure slot altogether.”

  He moistened his lips and licked some blood from the swelling lip. It left a metallic taste in his mouth. All the time he was watching them warily. The big one turned to the other.

  “Whaddaya think?” he said.

  “Let him go,” the other one said. He lifted himself off the wall and strolled slowly over to Dan. “You’re not off the hook yet, sonny. You’ll have some questions to answer when you get to the other end. Now get out of here and try to mind your own business or you’ll be in the shit even worse than you are now. Understand?”

  Dan nodded and got up carefully. He would have preferred to leave the room unassisted but the big man escorted him, keeping an iron grip on his upper arm. They entered the office where the cargo shuttle pilot was still reading. He looked up.

  “Take this guy up to the liner. Don’t talk to him and make sure he don’t talk to no one else. Okay?”

  The shuttle pilot didn’t seem surprised. “Okay. We’re just about ready.”

  Once inside the freightliner Dan watched the shuttle undock and breathed a sigh of relief. Who’d brought those guys down on him? Was it the shuttle pilot in the office or the driver of the freight skimmer? Maybe it was neither one, the office could have been bugged. It didn’t make much difference. His face was still burning and his lip was painful. He felt shocked and humiliated. He immersed himself totally in the flight checks, trying to put everything else out of his mind. He’d just about finished when the Freight Operations Manager came through on the communicator.

  “Freightliner San Bernadino, you are go for departure.”

  He was so anxious to leave he almost anticipated his slot.

  The main thing now was to get back to Earth. The two hoods he’d left behind looked like they had a peremptory way of dealing with problems like him, and his priority had been to get out of their hands. He might still face a tough interrogation at the other end but at least he felt he’d have a better chance there, especially with three-and-a-half weeks for people to cool off and get things back into perspective.

  Sitting there on the flight deck, turning things over in his mind, he decided it was high time to admit something to himself, something he’d been trying to suppress ever since he’d taken this job. He’d been working for a criminal organization. There was no doubt about that and the sooner he could free himself from it the better. The question was, would they let him go? Maybe it was a risk they weren’t prepared to take. If they were as touchy as that about the operati
on maybe he knew too much already. How the hell could he extricate himself and stay alive?

  *

  He hadn’t answered the question by the time he entered Earth orbit. The way things turned out it was answered for him. As he approached the Orbital Docking Station he was surprised to see another large ship docked there. He hadn’t expected that. Nor had he expected to see armed Customs officers running through the airlock as soon as he opened it. Two of them placed him under guard while the rest conducted an inspection. When they found the access doors to the cargo hold locked they didn’t hesitate, they blew them open with a contained charge. This was no casual raid; they seemed to be working on good intelligence. Dan was uncomfortably aware that Rostov’s shuttles were already on the way up but there was nothing he could do.

  Presently they all came back into the Flight Deck, which by now was getting fairly crowded. One, sporting a bit more silverware on his epaulettes, began to bark orders.

  “Monroe, Jarvis, stay here. Illingworth, go to the Flight Control Room and stay there. I want to know the moment any ship approaches the Dock, big or small. You others, stand by in the Dock.” He turned to Dan. “You. I want to see your papers, your docking permit, and your cargo manifest.”

  Dan handed him a thick folder. He started flicking through it, snapping questions out at the same time.

  “Where are you out of?”

  “Mars, sir.”

  “What are you carrying?”

  “The cargo manifest says process control equipment.”

  “I know what the cargo manifest says. I’m asking you. What are you carrying?”

  “I don’t follow you, officer. I only know what’s on the cargo manifest.”

  “Well what you’ve got back there isn’t process control equipment. What is it?”

  Dan’s heart sank. “I don’t know, sir.”

  “What do you mean, you don’t know? You’re the pilot. You must know. It’s your job to know.”

  “Normally you’d be right, sir. But this company I work for is a bit tight-lipped about that sort of thing. I’m just a pilot. My job is to fly the freighter.”

  “You’re under arrest.”

  Two of the armed officers took Dan under close escort into the main living area of the Dock and locked him in one of the inner rooms. He sighed. No doubt there’d be plenty of action when Rostov’s troops arrived and found Customs in possession of their precious cargo. After a while he felt a series of shudders travelling through the Dock and he guessed the firefight was already in progress, although he could neither see nor hear anything from this room.

  He sat with his head in his hands. It didn’t make any difference who won, he was finished either way. If Rostov’s troops came out on top everyone would think he was the one who’d tipped off Customs, especially after the incident in the Mars hangar. He speculated idly about how long his body would orbit the Earth before it spiralled in and burned up on re-entry. What agonies might he have to endure before things even reached that stage? On the other hand if Customs won they’d put him in jail and throw away the key. The senior Customs Officer had told him what he was carrying.

  It couldn’t have been worse. The ship was absolutely stacked with Dramatoin.

  17

  “Excuse me, Mr President, everyone is here for the ad hoc meeting.”

  “Okay, Abby, show them in, would you?”

  First to come in was Vice-President Marie Spelios, followed closely by Secretary of Defense Bob Sheridan, Secretary of State Henry Wasserman and Secretary of Treasury Paul Gent. Behind them were the four Assistants to the President: the National Security Advisor, Anna Juarez, the Internal Security Advisor, Virgil Calloway, the Media Relations Advisor, Hugh Wainwright, and lastly the Science and Technology Advisor, James Buckley.

  Buckley had been in the Oval Office before but the feeling of privilege had never left him. He cast his eyes around the room, reinforcing his memories for future recall. This President, or more accurately the First Lady, had chosen a purple and silver theme. The heavy drapes on either side of the long windows were purple with vertical silver stripes and the furniture was upholstered in a matching fabric. The carpet, specially woven with the Presidential crest, had a purple background. Buckley would have liked to examine the Remington sculptures and the interesting long-case clock but the line in front of him was dispersing rapidly. He saw that the President had risen from behind the old Resolute desk and was greeting each of them in turn. Now it was his turn. He shook the President’s hand.

  “Welcome, Jimmy, have a seat over there.”

  He indicated two four-seat sofas, which were arranged in the centre of the Office on either side of a low table. The President then took an armchair at the end. Buckley’s first impression of the man had been that he wasn’t particularly imposing: short, bald with just a grey stubble above the ears, and pale blue eyes that looked permanently tired. He’d learned, however, that it wasn’t smart to underestimate him.

  “Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.”

  “Good morning, Mr President.”

  The President opened the folder that his PA had placed in front of him. “I asked Jimmy Buckley to join us for this ad hoc meeting this morning. I think you all know Jimmy, he briefs me on Science and Technology.”

  Jimmy Buckley looked round the table and they exchanged polite nods.

  “Right. This asteroid business. I thought it’d be useful if Jimmy kicked off. You’d better take it from the top, Jimmy. Try and keep it brief and simple, though.”

  Abby had warned Buckley that he’d probably have to open the discussion. “Thank you, sir. Two years ago we put a Deep Space Observatory in Mars orbit. One of the first things they pointed it at was the Kuiper belt.”

  “You mean the asteroid belt?” Paul Gent asked.

  “No, the asteroid belt lies between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The Kuiper belt is much further away, beyond Neptune. It turns out that this belt contains far more objects in the hundred-metres-plus size range than anyone suspected. It was published in the scientific literature but nobody paid it much attention at the time. Then another group used the raw data to look at the effects of the gravitational interaction with Neptune.” He noticed some blank expressions around the table and changed tack. “Imagine a skimmer truck moving through a snowstorm. Now multiply that up billions of times. What have you got? The snowflakes are now big lumps of rock and ice and the skimmer is Neptune, or more accurately Neptune’s gravitational field, sweeping by. The objects get stirred up. They interact with each other. Some collide. Inevitably some are thrown out into eccentric orbits. The group estimated the numbers of those rogue rocks and then they calculated the probability of one crashing into the Earth. It was higher than most people would dare to contemplate. It seems we’re well overdue for such an event. When they published the data the media ran with it. You know the rest.”

  “Okay, but why the sudden panic?” the President asked. “For Chrissake, there hasn’t been a major asteroid strike since the one that did for the dinosaurs!”

  “Well sir, it took an asteroid about ten kilometres across to cause a mass extinction event like that. We’re much more likely to get hit by a smaller one – say, between a hundred metres and one kilometre across. There’ve been quite a few of those since the dinosaurs and even one that size would cause tremendous devastation, wherever it landed.”

  “I still can’t see why people are so up in arms. Didn’t we put out some conflicting data rubbishing the claims? Virgil?” He looked at his Internal Security Advisor.

  “Yes, sir, we did.”

  “Well?”

  “It didn’t work, in fact it made matters worse. The Press said it was a cover-up.”

  “Of course it was a cover-up but who told them?”

  “The Academy of Space Science put out a statement. Their data supported the new figures, not ours.”

  The President slammed his fist down on the folder and the others winced. “The Academy of Space Science! You’
d think these people could cooperate a little, say something soothing, settle things down, but no. ’Course, they still expect me to throw money their way when it comes to things like the Orbiting Station. We turned it down once, but they keep coming back, whingeing and whining—"

  The Secretary of State interrupted. “Orbiting Station? I’m sorry, don’t they have one already?”

  “That’s in Mars orbit, Henry. Now they want one in orbit round Saturn.”

  “Saturn? Why?”

  “You tell him, Jimmy. I’ve had it up to here with this.”

  Buckley leaned forward. “Over the years we’ve sent a few unmanned probes out that way. The astrophysicists got really excited about the latest data to come back.”

  “From Saturn?”

  “No, not from Saturn itself but from the rings and from moons like Titan and Rhea. It seems the analyses contained some real surprises. They’re frustrated because they want more data, a lot more than you can get by putting the occasional probe through the system. So they’re asking for a manned station in orbit round Saturn. From there they could send more probes through the rings. And they could send expeditions to Titan and Rhea to take geological samples, that kind of thing.”

  The President re-entered the conversation. “Well, well, we’re digressing. What about this asteroid business? Is it flavour-of-the-month or do we have to do something about it?”

  The Media Relations Advisor raised a tentative hand. “Mr President?”

  “Yes, Hugh?”

  “I don’t think it’s going to go away, sir, and it could prove sticky on the campaign trail this fall. If Senator Derkx gets hold of it you know the kind of thing he’ll come out with: ‘The President is showing a cavalier disregard fo’ the safety and wellbeing of the ’merican peepul. Ah give you mah solemn word that if you elec’ me to be the next President of the United States Ah will take desarsive action to deal with this issue once and fo’ all’.”

  The others tittered but the President winced. Not only was it a convincing imitation of Senator Derkx’s Deep South accent, but Hugh was right. Derkx was the President’s chief rival in the forthcoming election and he could certainly make capital out of something like this.