Traveler in the Dark

2

"Earth's flaming mantle! Does anything work in this ancient rust pile anymore?" Andrei Titov smacked the side of the food printer and it splattered tan liquid over the counter top.

"Hitting it isn't going to help. Get Emery to look at it. Her dad's in maintenance." Gang Liu calmly wiped up the mess.

"Maybe she'll actually be useful for something on this mission then. She can fix the coffee maker while we do the real work," Beatrice Martham tapped through her media feed as she talked. "That is, if she doesn't wash out before then."

Liu frowned. "That was unkind, Martham. Emery's worked harder than anyone else during training. She's got as much right to be here as anyone else."

Martham sighed and turned toward him. "It's not Emery. It's that they're considering sending an anthropologist on an exploratory mission. Her spot could go to someone more useful. An engineer or a meteorologist. What's an anthropologist going to accomplish?"

Titov shrugged. "Maybe the uppers found evidence of some sort of civilization. Can't hurt to have someone who knows how to interpret things— especially when we don't know the language."

"Oh, please. You don't really think we're going to find little gray men down there, do you? If there were an advanced civilization down there, we'd have seen signs, even with the interference. Lights, telecommunication signals, structures or roads. Something."

"And if there is civilization down there, but it isn't advanced, it's what? Not worth the bother?" Rebecca Emery emerged from the hallway and wandered over to the food printer. "We can just conquer the indigenous societies right? No need to come to a peaceful arrangement or attempt to understand them—"

"That's not what I meant, but now that you bring it up, yeah, why shouldn't we just conquer them? The Keseburg's not a ship just out of the dockyard. We're strung together with spit and good wishes at this point. Both the planet and the moon are large. If we find someone, we move, or they do. We're past 'playing nice' or didn't you get last month's health census? Half the younger gen is Spindling—"

"Damn it!" yelled Titov, "I just want a cup of coffee, not a philosophy debate." He smacked the side of the printer again. Emery crouched down to inspect the extruder. Martham shrugged and turned back to her console.

"Bad news?" asked Rebecca. She kept her voice low, fiddling with the printer's supply lines.

"Peter is probably going to need a mobility suit before we get back. Celia and I— we've tried everything. He does more than the recommended exercise regimens every day, wears his Spindling suit constantly, we even moved to Reed ring a few years ago because the rotation slow-down wasn't as bad. We knew we couldn't beat it, but I thought he'd at least make it to fifteen before needing the suit." Titov handed Rebecca his cup when she reached for it.

Liu squeezed Titov's shoulder. "This time's going to be the one, Andrei. I know it. I've got a good feeling about these missions. The captains are too worked up for it to be just another resource dive."

Rebecca switched the printer back on and black liquid poured smoothly into the cup, followed by a spurt of sweetener. She handed the cup back to Titov.

"Thanks," he said, turning red.

She smiled. "What can I say? I work well with spit and good wishes." Titov made a face and Rebecca realized what she'd said. "Oh, I didn't mean that. Not that I don't wish you well, I do—" she stammered and then sighed. "There's no spit in your coffee, Titov." Idiot, she told herself, you're supposed to be making friends.

But Martham snorted a laugh and Titov swallowed a gulp of coffee with a grin and the tension eased. The others slowly filtered in, some yawning, others bouncing knees or tapping fingers. It was a big day. Mission assignment day. Nearly fifty had completed the training but only twenty-four slots were open. Two missions, the first in two hundred years, to make an initial survey of the nearby exomoon and planet. Twenty-four people out of thirty thousand would have the chance to set foot on actual soil and stone for the first time in generations.