One Way

5

[Transcript of private phone call between (unidentified XO employee 1) and (unidentified XO employee 2) 4/2/2047 0935MT. Note: one side of conversation redacted.]

In his never-ending stream of instructions, he didn’t think he’d ever had one for Building Five. Two, Four, Six, Three, and back again, sure. Five was new, and he wondered what they kept in there. Certainly, the foyer area appeared different—this was no suite of offices and conference rooms: it was clean, almost sterile, like a hospital ward, except that was more a Building Two thing.

White coats. He was in scientist country. Room Fourteen was somewhere on the ground floor, and he looked up at the signage to tell him which way to go. There were big double doors. He pressed his finger to the lock, and pushed with his other hand as the lock snicked back.

Bright. Very bright. There was something in the middle of the room that looked like a suspended, crucified, oversized mannequin which, on first sight, didn’t fill him with confidence. The detail of the rest of the room—straps and tubes and fixing points and harnesses and taps—made him stop, half in, half out the doorway.

His ear told him to strip. Slowly, shapes resolved in white, full clean-suits with head coverings and face masks. They were carrying bulky bags of equipment towards him. “Strip,” repeated the voice. “Acknowledge.”

“Acknowledged.” The door clicked shut behind him and he shucked his clothes. He’d been through this drill often enough in the Blood Bank, and it wasn’t like cavity searches weren’t a thing in the penitentiary. What embarrassment or shame he’d felt had long since dissipated.

He was handed a pair of gray long johns, top and bottom. They were a tight fit. Not too tight, because they knew exactly how big he was from all the previous measurements they’d taken from him. But tight enough that he had to sit on the cold floor and smooth the material up his legs until he could say he was wearing them, rather than the other way around.

He put on the thin, almost sheer, socks and gloves. He put on the bathing-cap beanie. They walked him over to the hanging sculpture. There was a hole in the back, a doorway, complete with a door, and it was open, and there was nothing but darkness inside.

He hesitated, and felt the firm pressure of a hand in the small of his back, pushing him on. Someone had placed a low step at the base of the mannequin, though now he could see that it was no mannequin.

He climbed up on the step, and peered over the top of the thing’s shoulder. He was looking down at a clear perspex bubble, and when he looked along the arm, he saw it terminated in a complex glove. It was a spacesuit.

He pointed at the hole in the back of the suit. “In here?”

The technician’s eyes—that was all Frank could see—moved in that direction.

Frank used the hard rim of the hatch to steady himself, and he eased his feet into the interior. He had to point his toes and push hard to get his feet into the boots. Left arm, right arm, then duck down and put his head through the neck ring.

He worked his fingers into the outer gloves. Behind him, the technician hooked something heavy to his back. He could feel the weight settle on him.

“Breathe normally,” said his ear. He hadn’t realized that he wasn’t. He took a breath, held it, and took another. The faceplate inches from his nose misted. It was like wearing a goldfish bowl.

“Look down.”

He could see the broad curve of his suit’s front. But not his feet.

“There’s a control unit on your chest. Open it.”

He found that his arms could move against the complex system of pulleys suspending him from the ceiling. He didn’t have to hold them rigidly in the outstretched position he’d first put them in. He reached down to the box hung just below his ribs. It was attached to a flap of material by the top, so that when he lifted it up, he could prop it in position with one hand. With the other, he flipped open the cover. His gloves were surprisingly dexterous, better than his usual rigger’s gloves.

Inside was a small screen, with a series of read-outs. The numbers didn’t mean anything to him, but all the telltales were green. That was a good sign. The three buttons let him scroll through each menu: up, down, select.

“Go to the top menu.”

He navigated to it, tapping the buttons with the very tip of his gloved finger. There were two options: Open, and Close.

“Select Close.”

A motor whirred, and the weight on his back shifted position. Something made a substantial, positive click behind him, and outside sounds became muffled and indistinct.

A faint breeze passed his face, blowing against the faceplate, clearing it.

He was in a spacesuit. An actual goddamn spacesuit.

“Close the controls, and walk slowly to the end of the room.”

He stood upright, testing his center of gravity, working out where his balance now was, and when he thought he was ready, he tentatively put his foot out. He felt his weight shift in unfamiliar ways, and he staggered slightly, locking his leg to brace himself. His upper body was enclosed in what was essentially inflexible armor, a breastplate and a backplate, with his helmet integrated into it as part of a seamless whole. If he wanted to look at something off to one side, he’d have to either turn at his hips, or just point his feet in that direction. That was going to take getting used to.

He walked slowly as instructed, and the pulleys and their cables followed him across the room. The fabric of his suit was stiff, despite the loose outer layer. It was OK, but going any distance would be tiring. Suddenly, running up and down the Mountain made a whole lot more sense.

He reached the wall.

“Turn around. Touch your head, your shoulders, your waist, your knees, your toes.”

He faced the white, bright room of technicians and equipment and lifted his arms. He tapped the top of his helmet, the shoulder joints, his armored waist, and then started to bend forward to touch his knees. The weight shifted again. It was high up on his back, and he realized he could easily tip over and face-plant on the floor. He couldn’t even be certain of getting his hands out in time to break his fall. As to whether he could get up again without help, that was unknown.

He bent from his knees instead, squatting down. He dabbed his kneecaps, then reached below his coiled legs and poked the toes of his boots. He straightened up, slowly, with difficulty, but he didn’t topple.

“Return to your starting position.”

Again, he took measured paces across the floor. There were cameras on stands around the room. He thought he was performing well, and he glanced at the nearest lens. He caught his reflection, and saw a strange, hunchbacked creature, more monster than human, staring eyelessly back.

He stopped and looked more closely, fascinated and repelled.

“Return to your starting position.”

The spell broke, and he remembered how to walk again. He parked himself once more with his heels against the short step.

“Open your control unit and select Open.”

He checked his chest-screen, and dabbed the lit-up command. The rear hatch opened, and the heavy thing behind him was taken away. He could feel the air in the lab as a different quality to that in the suit.

“Climb out and get dressed. That concludes the test.”

He complied. He stripped off the long johns and the gloves and the beanie and the socks. A technician bagged them in a labeled sack and shelved them, while Frank climbed back into his day clothes and knelt on the floor to lace up his boots. He was otherwise ignored. Not that the techs weren’t talking, they just weren’t talking to him, as if he was merely incidental to the rest of their work.

But this event, surely, was significant. They’d have had to have made the spacesuit to fit him, more or less exactly, unless they had a wide array of off-the-peg solutions, and he’d not seen these types of suits before, either in the movies or on the small screen. This was bespoke. That meant they were spending serious money on him.

It also meant that if he screwed up now, they’d be seriously pissed at him.

“Report to Building Ten.”

Goddammit, couldn’t they leave him alone, just for five minutes?

“Report to Building Ten. Acknowledge.”

Where the hell was Building Ten? If he asked nicely enough, he’d get the instructions in his ear. Don’t screw up. Say it. Say it now.

“Acknowledged.”

He navigated the paths around the mountain, and was directed to what looked like an aircraft hangar. Deep. Tall. Broad. Certainly as big as the area he was practicing driving on, and probably bigger. Xenosystems didn’t lack for green.

The usual trail of electric carts rattled along on the road behind him, but he ignored them. There was a little door set in the big doors, and the usual print lock glowing with one red light next to the handle. He walked across the concrete apron and fell into the cold shadow of the overhanging roof.

His thumb cracked the door, and he pushed the handle down and away. It was dark inside, and it smelled strange. Almost a new car smell. There was sand underfoot, deep enough and dry enough to sink into. The door snicked shut behind him, and the little daylight that had crept in with him was snuffed out.

He stood there and waited. Absolutely nothing happened.

“You have to walk around, so that the lights come on,” said a voice to his left.

Frank’s medical monitors would have noticed the spike in his heart rate, but not necessarily known the cause.

“Yeah, well. Fuck you for not doing that.”

Frank took a careful, sliding step forwards, didn’t bump into anything, and took another. The lights were very far away, up in the roof, and they came on in bands starting nearest the door. They ended a long way back.

“Big space,” said the voice.

“That’s what they tell me,” said Frank.

White cylinders, lying on their side like spilled Pringles tubes, took up the middle part of the broad sandy floor. Frank found it difficult to appreciate their scale, but with a squint and turn of the head they could easily have each been twenty or so feet in diameter, thirty-odd feet in length.

The sand scrunched next to him. Close. Too close. “Declan,” said the man. “I’m your second.”

Frank stepped away and looked this Declan up and down. He hadn’t seen him before, and he certainly hadn’t been at the group meeting. He didn’t have much hair on top. Nor much height or weight underneath it. Damp. Everything about him was just a little… moist. His eyes were red-rimmed, he sniffed, when he spoke he gurgled in his throat. He wiped the palms of his hands against his sides.

He could already tell the man wasn’t a Marcy. But neither of them were in charge of hiring, so they both had to make the best of it.

“You supposed to be part of our team now?”

“I guess,” said Declan. “They must have bumped one of your guys. I suppose I should be grateful but, sucks to be him.”

“Could be any one of us. Still could.” Frank nodded his head at the tubes. “You taken a look yet?” he asked.

“I was told to wait.” Declan tapped his ear. “I’m not getting into trouble. More trouble than I’m already in.”

“OK. Let’s see what they got.” Frank set out across the hangar, aiming for the nearest structure.

Declan scurried beside him. “So you build things like this?”

“Like this? No. But I do build things, and I’m guessing Xenosystems think that’s good enough. You in construction?”

“Kind of. Commercial electrician. Big power circuits. Wiring up whole buildings. That kind of thing.”

“We can work with that.”

Now they were closer, Frank could see that the cylinder sides were made of a stretched plastic, but that there was a metal ring at the end of each section, providing the skeleton to support it. Vertical external pylons with feet stopped it from rolling away.

Prefab. This was why they needed him. He was going to have to literally build a Mars base from a kit. The parts would get shipped to the site, and he—and Declan—would have to bolt it all together. Make the frames, get the plastic over it. Actually no: there were two rings, one inside and one outside that fitted together, forming an airtight seal.

He reached out to one of the pylons and gave it a shake. It was fixed to the ground with a screw-in rock anchor. The structure didn’t move. It was more solid than it looked. He walked around it, pushing and pulling at parts of it. He guessed that on Mars the plastic would be a lot more rigid, pressurized on the inside. That would help.

The far end was open, and they could walk in. Frank inspected the internal ring, and how it all fitted together. There was a cross beam, stretching horizontally from side to side. He reached up, and hung off it, lifting his boots clear of the floor with a grunt of effort. Yes, there was some flex, but barely any. Put one at the other end, and he could suspend joists between them. Two levels, then. Double the working space.

“You don’t say much,” said Declan.

“I have my moments.” Frank walked to the far end. The plastic membrane that was going to have to stand between them and actual Mars seemed thick and resilient. There was an additional rubber mat between the plastic and the ground, but the sand underneath was going to have to be graded for sharper rocks anyway.

So, in order. Prepare the foundation—whatever vehicle they had, just to drag a scoop in a line, then a manual clearing of the larger debris. Use the same machine to drag the base mat around until it was in position. Internal or external rings next? Probably easier to make one internal, then one external, and get it screwed together. They had wind on Mars, and they weren’t going to gain any kudos chasing their shelter across the red desert like it was a stray plastic bag.

Then the next ring. Working on the ground was so much easier than working at height. Would there be, at some point, a need for access to the higher points of the structure? A cherry picker or scaffolding would be preferable, ladders at a push.

They’d need ropes to haul with. Even with a lightweight metal, and this looked like aluminum, the weight wouldn’t be insignificant. They could still fix the outriggers while it was on the ground, and drag them into place, screw or fire in the rock bolts. There’d need to be an airlock to get in and out of. Maybe one of the other modules had one he could examine.

He walked back out onto the sand. “This’ll work,” he said.

Despite the dryness and cold, Declan still felt the need to wipe his hands again. “You reckon? Not going to be so easy doing it wearing a spacesuit.”

“Then we practice while wearing a spacesuit. They’ve color-coded the components. Inner ring’s green, outer ring’s yellow, bolts are all the same size so we never get to lose the one we need. A trained monkey could put one of these together.”

“They’re not sending monkeys. They’re sending us.” Declan didn’t sound thrilled at the idea.

“I’m saying that someone’s actually bothered to put some effort into the design, with the idea that none of us are exactly the Right Stuff. I don’t mind. The easier they make it for us not to screw up, the better.”

Frank toured the remaining modules, which were in various states of completion. He got it now: it was a physical version of one of those pictographic manuals from Legos, or flat-pack furniture. No words, just a stage-by-stage walkthrough.

At the far end of the hangar was a finished module. Open metalwork steps led up to the central airlock door, set in a pop-out standing proud from the end section. His footsteps rang as he climbed up. He was expecting an electronic lock, but this was determinedly low tech, just a lever on a bulkhead door.

He pushed it down and put his shoulder to it. The rubber seals were stiff, and broke with a sigh. There was a five-, maybe six-foot-long chamber before the inner door, and though he supposed that it would open even with the outer one also cracked, it might be an idea to get used to keeping one closed at all times.

Then he looked again. Both doors would only open inwards; positive pressure where it was supposed to be—inside—would prevent an accidental breach. He smiled to himself. OK, so this was well done. Someone had seen the problems they’d be facing, years ago, and had done their job. One professional to another, he silently saluted them.

He opened the inner door. The only illumination was that which filtered through the plastic walls; it was gloomy, almost dark. The ceiling was lower than he’d like, around seven and a half, eight feet, when suspended ceiling and sub-floor voids were taken into account. The curve of the roof made the available head-space less than it otherwise would have been. If the neo-Nazi man-mountain was coming with them, he’d find it difficult.

The floor—tiles made from hard honeycomb sheet with a continuous top layer, like corrugated packing—was pierced by a ladder, which led down to the lower level. To complete the tour, he lay on the tiles and looked through the hole at the floor below. He was guessing that level was mainly for storage. It wasn’t supposed to be a hotel, but there was a damn sight more room than a prison. Which it both was, and wasn’t. He’d need to spend some time poring over the plans, but his confidence to both do the job and win a place on the mission had grown.

He turned to look behind him, and Declan was standing there, poking around, sizing up the space, seeming to be working out where to put the cable runs and string up the internal lighting, but he was also watching Frank.

Frank raised himself up, and Declan made a show of concentrating on the floor, lifting out the square tiles and running his finger along the length of the floor trusses.

“We’re going to be working together, you and me,” said Frank. “Working together a lot. We need to make sure we can do that, right?” He didn’t know how much Xenosystems could see or hear of what he and the other cons did, but it was safer to assume that it was everything.

“I can do… that,” said Declan. “I don’t have a problem with you, if that’s what you’re asking. Do you have a problem with me?”

Given who else might be listening, he took a moment to come up with a reply. “We’re good here. Let’s see if they’ve left us some tools and we can try and take one of these things apart. Surprising how much you learn when you do that.”