Quicksilver

by

Mij Thawnton

Sure, considered in isolation, Doc's suicide was a mystery, but it also marked the start of something far weirder. I'm talking about the crisis which nearly shut down the mining operation on Omega 90 forever.

I'd been reluctantly posted to the Delamancha minebase, which had a reputation for bizarre happenings stretching right back to the early days of its discovery. The whole crew assumed that the psychologist's death more than filled the disaster quota for our stint. None of us realised how overly optimistic we were being by figuring nothing else would go wrong.

Our unaccountable relief manifested itself at the service, when crewman Cardenio muttered ironically:

"Needed his head examined."

Being the senior scientist on site, I guess a few words of parting were his prerogative. Even so, his joke sounded thin on the helmet radio link and I saw him shudder in his suit as the body cask floated up and up.

Due to Delamancha's reputation, Corporation policy dictated the minimal staffing necessary to keep things ticking over, meaning that every crewman was an expert in his own field, with no overlap. So, Doc's death left a vacancy on the crew roster. They described us as a skeleton crew, and as I watched the cask float off, I reckoned it was the Corporation's private joke.

If I'd used a little foresight, I would have guessed what was coming next, but I was sealed with private thoughts inside my pressure suit and it needed Cardenio to drop the bombshell:

"Panza, you'll take over of course. After all, it's three months till the relief ship makes the window."

"Me? Hey, no way!"

I looked to the surface crew for back-up, but that was stupid because they never questioned Cardenio's edicts. And if I hadn't been a replacement for the original paramed who'd stressed out during the last stages of training I probably wouldn't have done either.

"Come on!" I argued. "I deal with bodies, not brains. Doc was the mind man. And besides, conditions at this dig are special."

All the crewmen tensed threateningly, and before I could continue, one of their voices scratched menacingly in my ear:

"You don't got to tell us. Not every shrink redecorates his cabin in grey cell. So don't tell us it's special. We know."

As I headed back to the minebase it sunk in how I'd landed a new job. I was about to discover I'd landed in big trouble, too.

When I reached the airlock I looked back one more time at the starless sector of sky, watching with morbid fascination as the body cask finally disappeared from view -- just a white speck obliterated by the ever-winding solar mills above.

I shuddered too, like Cardenio before me. No one could have denied it was eerie up there, but the place held a special horror for me. Scan the sky one-eighty degrees and the stars thinned out till suddenly there weren't any. Just blackness like a deep pit or the pupil of a massive eye staring down. Nowhere to hide from that infinite glare. Many nights I'd woken from terrible dreams and screamed my private fear. That's how thoughts of deep space got me: kind of celestial agoraphobia.

With that featureless sector always present I figured it wasn't surprising Doc went crazy. When you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you. I remembered hearing it somewhere. I supposed that's why they called this sector of space the Edge.

*

Returning from the service, I'd just snapped off my helmet in the minebase's metal air. Coming round a corner I met crewman Keysada leaning over the oxygen recycling units. Okay, so there's nothing shocking about that -- it was his job. But in full combats?

"What's with the gun, Keysada?" I blurted in surprise as I registered the blaster at his side.

He straightened and glared at me. Then he turned on his heel and made briskly down the corridor towards quarters.

"Hey!"

Before I could speak again he'd vanished into a side tunnel.

It was pretty weird and I guess I should have followed him, but confrontation's not my scene. And there were two other reasons. They were his size and his blaster. No, no, not my scene at all.

So I made my first big mistake, and, deciding on the software option instead, I hit the files in the ex-Doc's room. By checking the crew profiles, maybe I'd learn something. Like why the hell heads there seemed to get twisted up so often.

*

I didn't expect instant answers and I wasn't disappointed. But just when I'd found Doc's personal journal taped to the underside of his desk the emergency bell started its sick rattling. I dismissed it as an inconvenience, until the shock of blaster recoils reverbing in the corridor brought me round to realities.

"Hell!"

As I neared the source of the commotion I had this real bad sense of foreboding in the pit of my stomach. From the direction I was heading in I guessed I'd miscalculated earlier...

Then I rounded the corner where I'd ran into Keysada.

Cardenio was standing by the sealed hatch into the recycling section. He was shouting about blast damage. Some of the crew had armed themselves and gathered in a twitchy group nearby. When he saw me coming he shut up and tipped his head at me -- as if I was meant to be the cavalry or something. The rest of the men turned in a way that suggested they were all tied together with invisible strings.

Cardenio spoke for the crew:

"It's Keysada, Doc. You got to get him out your way, or we'll get him out ours."

So I was "Doc" all of a sudden. But Cardenio was still giving the orders. Oh, very clever. So, Paramed Panza was both hammer and nail. Timid as a mouse, but cat amongst the pigeons.

Without thinking I said: "No good shooting him out, he's wearing battle armour."

Then I cursed my big mouth. Eyes narrowed all around. My palms soaked with sweat and heat rushed to my head as I realised my slip.

Cardenio's eyes widened for a second, then he uttered an exasperated whisper:

"You knew? Oh great. You knew!"

The invisible string tensed in all the crew. I imagined them letting off steam by pushing me into one of those body casks and setting me adrift. I wondered how long it took before one of those things got really uncomfortable. And all the while they looked at me with those same dark dangerous eyes...

Another blast from behind the hatch made me realise that the rest of the crew were the least of my worries. If I still had my head on my shoulders when I got back from its far side, then I'd have plenty of time to worry about them.

*

Inside the recycling room the air was blast-hot against my skin and black with smoke. Noise and light suddenly exploded nearby. Something shattered above my head, raining smouldering splinters.

"Keysada! Don't shoot! Will you just leave off for a second? Hey, listen, why not tell me exactly what's up, huh?"

The silence that followed was so unnerving I nearly told him to start shooting again. But eventually his voice found its way to me through the smoke. That's when things started getting farcical. Like someone was enjoying one heck of a sick joke.

"Not Keysada. No. Quicksilver. Yeah. That's me. Got it?"

I ticked it over in my head. Then I wondered how the Doc would have played it and I guessed it was humouring time.

"Quicksilver, huh?"

"That's right."

"Okay. You know who I am Quicksilver?"

"Sure I do! You think I'm crazy or something?"

"Crazy? Hah! Of course not." I lied. "Not at all. So then, er -- Quicksilver, what you doing here? I mean, with your blaster and all."

"Why, you should know that!"

"I should?"

"Sure. I mean you are my squire, aren't you? You are, aren't you? I mean, my faithful squire."

"Squire..? Aha. That's right. Of course I am."

I could see his outline through the clearing smoke. The hard line of his armour contradicting the small boy in his voice.

"Okay!" He shouted. "So let's drop this smalltalk and get to work."

Metal splintered too close for comfort and smoke billowed again. A lump in my throat had grown so big it even seemed to be interfering with my breathing. But when I noticed the insidious hiss of depressurisation I realised it wasn't psychosomatic at all.

"Say! Hey, hey! Quicksilver," I croaked, "will you hold off blasting? As a special favour -- to your faithful... squire?"

Another pause, then in crystal clear tones:

"Yeah. Okay. But not for long. Got to wipe those guys out."

I strained again through the smoke and asked cautiously:

"Say, er, what guys?"

"You mean you can't see those angel guys?"

That lump in my throat started throbbing in time with my heart. The hissing grew ominously louder.

"Well, no. No, I can't see them."

He went silent all of a sudden. My ears popped as I waited. When he spoke again he was hesitant:

"It's weird you can't see them." A fresh note of suspicion.

"Yeah, mighty weird. You sure you can't see them?"

"It's smoky in here." I suggested. I was sweating a nightmare-cold sweat. I added:

"After all I can't see you either. Whereabouts are you?"

Something loomed at me out of the fog. "Hell, I'm right over here!" It said.

I was reassured briefly by the way it was grinning. But then the grin vanished, it narrowed its eyes and placed the blaster's warm nuzzle against my temple. Keysada was angry as he said:

"Hey! You're not..."

But his voice had grown thin like elastic stretched out tight, and suddenly a loud whump! drowned it out completely. There was a rush of freezing air and my ears popped again, more painfully than before.

I panicked. A warm object smacked my clenched fist and then I was dragging something heavy across the floor. The rush of air grew louder and colder so that my head started to throb. Disembodied voices seemed to be shouting all around and -- strange as it sounds -- I suddenly thought of angels, too.

I heard a slam and felt cold steel against my face. Then there was this terrible blackness all around me, like the terrifying blackness of a starless sky, and I thought maybe I was dead.

*

The next thing I heard was Cardenio's voice:

"You're a hero. Nearly."

It all came flooding back. Knocking him flat. Pulling him through the hatch. The cold fingers of space reaching through the ceiling, and me dodging between them like a spider.

Something in Cardenio's words unnerved me:

"How come nearly?"

I sat up on the sickbay bed and put an exploratory hand to something hard on my face. It turned out to be a blood clot around my nose.

"No one off-base will hear about it. The recycling units are literally shot to bits, while the specialist..."

"Oh: Keysada stroke Quicksilver. He didn't make it then?"

I had this idea that he'd burst like pressed grapes. But that wasn't how it was.

"Oh, he's alive. But in a holding pen. Raving."

I whistled a low whistle and asked: "How long we got to straighten him out?"

"Maybe twelve hours. Then we start the landed fish routine."

"And no one else can fix it?"

"Restricted work. If a novice starts tinkering with the equipment -- well, one slip and it's gasping time. That's this crew's big problem."

"Specialisation."

"Uh-huh. No overlap."

Skeleton crew I thought again. And here they all were hoping I could pull their fat. Me! Who'd never dealt with schizos in my life! We didn't stand a chance. Out loud I said:

"We'll try the subtle approach. Reasoning. Take me to Keysada."

*

The interview was brief and centred mainly on angels.

As we left to search Keysada's room for clues, the holding pen guard went all glassy-eyed and said: "This lunatic's killed us."

I didn't admit it, but I thought he was probably right.

*

Clues, of sorts, turned up under a pile of contaminated overalls. Underneath the fabric, glowing gently with omegite ore, was a pile of disks marked PRIVATE. Booted up, they revealed an unexpected taste. Literature. Filmdisks too. With titles like Knights of Moonflight. "Boy!" I muttered. "A real dreamer, this one."

But still something didn't add up. The Doc's profile showed him to be class A-1 in the stability ratings. The kind of guy who wouldn't flinch at a supernova. So why the sudden flipout? Guys don't just freak because they like to read fantasy... Or do they?

There were other considerations. Like how to talk our "Quicksilver" into fixing up the recycling units -- pronto. And was it my imagination or did the air taste musty already? Condensation on the walls sparkled like the cold sweat on my brow.

Things looked bad. I thought how whenever I'd been low before I'd always gone to the Doc, and that reminded me what I'd been doing before the alarm bell sounded.

*

Back in the Doc's quarters, I suppose the reason I didn't hear the ominous rumble of shuttle lift-off was my surprise at what I read in his journal. Amongst all the data about ore extraction, radiation properties and hints about uses in a classified weapon, something else showed through. Seems that for some time Doc had been living through his own private hell. Literally.

There wasn't any time to ingest it though, because pretty soon Cardenio poked an anguished face round the door. I guessed what the problem was straight away. I mean, you don't have to be a subnucleonic physicist to know that a nutter in body armour is one dangerous particle in need of some extreme renormalisation. I think I make myself clear.

So, when I got into the Comm Lounge all the seventeen remaining crew were in a blind funk, gazing up through the observation windows. Somehow they all managed to pull rank on me and beg me to help them at the same time. That was a typical Cardenio-style manoeuvre, so I knew who they'd been having lessons from. For himself, he actually said nothing -- just let it happen like he knew it would. A character you can't pin down, that one. One of those pass the buck boys -- a red hot poker player.

"So, er, we'll talk him down." I said, replying to the crew's insistences whilst watching the shuttle's plasma trail arc across the sky.

Then I sat heavily at the console and grabbed the vocommunic, wondering what they thought I was capable of.

"Hi, er, Delamancha minebase to Keysada, do you read me?"

All eyes skyward. Disturbingly erratic manoeuvres up there.

Plenty of looping and wheeling, but no reply. Only static crackled through the vocommunic. I started to sweat.

"Delamancha to Quicksilver, are you receiving me?"

Another pause. The air had caught in the crew's throats.

You hold your breaths, I thought. Yes, it'll give us more time.

We only breathed again when the reply finally came through:

"That's better. You remembered my name!"

The friendly tone I forced into my voice rang out tight from my larynx in the way a garrotte might sound if it was strung on a guitar:

"Hey buddy, why don't you come down for a chat, eh?"

Hopeless. I thought. Frigging hopeless.

"No, no. I couldn't do that. No, no, no."

"Why's that, Quicksilver?"

"These feather-backed guys, you know? You let the next wave land and then what have you got? Eh?"

"Why don't you tell me."

"All right: Chaos. That's what you got!"

"Aha." Boy! "So how's about I come up and see you?"

"How?"

"In the backup shuttle. You wouldn't mind that, would you Quicksilver?"

There was a loaded pause. Loaded with what? With meaning? With doubts? With foreboding? That last quality proved nearest the mark when he guiltily replied:

"Oh dear. Sorry, I kind of messed up the other shuttle."

Great! The atmosphere was electric.

"Get him down here." Cardenio hissed in my ear. "Now."

Well what did he think..? And the crew weren't exactly the most inspiring bunch.

Still, I tried again: "Listen Quicksilver, we've got a problem down here. Seems like angels have zapped our oxygen recycling plant. How's about you come down and save the day?"

"Nice one." Cardenio whispered in my ear.

He was obviously chewing it over anyway. That is, judging from the unendurable pause.

"You know, I'd sure like to..."

Everyone around me relaxed a little.

"...but I can't let these guys slip through. Gotta protect the rest of humanity -- no matter what the local cost in human lives."

We were speechless. This was pure melodrama turned into the most dangerous farce. But none of us were laughing when Quicksilver started shouting:

"Say! They're coming in for the attack! Don't contact me again, okay?"

The vocommunic crackled out. We watched in uncomprehending silence as the dot in the sky performed a startling series of twists and dives.

I wished I'd taken his head off when I hit him.

*

After maybe fifteen minutes of some of the flashest flying I've ever seen, the jinking died away and the shuttle hung above us like an ill-fated star. A frenetic voice spluttered on the vocommunic:

"That was one heck of a dogfight! Wow! But I shook them! That last one -- phew! -- real close!" Then he went on more subdued so that we heard our breaths catch again like hooks in our throats. That's how he had us -- dangling on the lines he spoke. We didn't dare hope when he said:

"That's me nearly finished." (There was a glint in all our eyes which was suddenly extinguished by his next words.) "Hey! See those battleships coming? I'll get a posthumous medal if I take one of those out! 'My name liveth forever more.'" He quoted.

I thought: What the hell is he talking about? Then I tried not to think at all as he continued his fantasy, blissfully ignorant of the anguish he was inflicting below.

"You mightn't know it, but I've got a great Disklibrary. I guess you guys can share it out once I'm gone... Here they come now! I can't get all four of them, but if I ram one, you can deal with the other three. G'bye guys."

The air froze in the Comm Lounge. I swear it really did.

Four?

It was a shared thought. Omegite processing was performed off planet to reduce radiation contamination. And he was in that quadrant: where the solar fins turned slowly in the starlight! If any of the four mills were damaged... Boy.

Suddenly everything seemed to slip into slow motion. The way it does when they show crashes on video disks and all the gory bits are stretched out so you don't miss a drop. There was a time I used to think that was artistic licence, but believe me, it's not. Reality honestly starts playing at third speed -- like you've watched something shift into the supergravity of a black hole and chronometry's gone haywire.

Slowly -- so painfully slowly that it seemed I had time to count every star in the sky -- the distance between projectile and target was swallowed up. It was subtly represented. The silent blink of a star behind the shuttle, or the faintly perceptible plasma trail flickering gently in the sky, like old style pyrotechnics. I waited for the bang. I didn't know much about that ore, but it was volatile and I knew there were other reasons for the relief ship relaying it off planet for refinement...

Then...

We caught the flash of metal against solar fins even from down below. Something went spinning off at a tangent and after two long minutes of gentle descent it slowly disappeared below the horizon -- I thought: the non-event horizon, because nothing else had happened.

*

After two more minutes, one of the crew started to cry. Everyone except Cardenio joined in. He was frowning a lot and biting his lip. He gave the sobbing a little longer and then spoke gently in my ear.

"Any minute now he'll be coming up on the other side..."

Our eyes met as his words were drowned out by the reanimated vocommunic.

"Mayday... Mayday. Can any of you guys hear me down there? I need your help!"

I laughed a bitter laugh. That was rich! He wanted our help!

Now he'd finally screwed up, he wanted down. At that point I'd have been happy just to let him orbit till he broke up. Sure, that'd be justice. But justice was a luxury none of us could afford. No, not if there was even the slightest chance...

I coaxed a brief status report out of him. Seemed that somehow the bounce off the solar sails had blown the circuitry in the shuttle's drive unit. Yeah, sure, he said he could fix that -- if he had the parts -- but then he was bleeding from somewhere so maybe he was a goner anyway.

So it was understood that we needed to get someone up to him pretty quick. And it was also understood, as we watched the white speck rise up again against the sky, that the standby shuttle was wrecked. In the light of this information, Cardenio came up with his big idea.

Of course I refused to have anything to do with it. I refused real loud and repeatedly, but somehow things went against me. And then, how could I? I was the only one able to treat Keysada once I was up. And if there was the slimmest chance of survival then I had to agree. I ask again: how could I have refused?

Even so I still did, but ineffectually, as it turned out.

Cardenio's big idea was simple and centred on the body casks: A fifteen second blast of conventional rocket fuel and I'd be out of the planet's low 'g' and free-drifting in the great nothingness above. If he worked it out right, then cask and shuttle would rendezvous. When I asked him what if he got it wrong, he said I'd just keep on going...

I told him no. I told him it was the one thing I couldn't abide. And it really was, too. It was the one thing I'd been freaked by the thought of all the time, and suddenly I was being asked to face it. But he argued it was all or nothing, that there wasn't only me to think about, and I didn't have an answer for that.

*

"You sure you've done your sums, Cardenio?" I blurted before I climbed into my astral coffin.

Skeleton crew. Boy!

"No problems. You sit tight and you'll come in parallel to the shuttle's orbit. Then you've got to grab hold and you're away. You'll be fine. Now, how much did you say you weigh?"

Even then I could still have declined. So I would have died a coward. Great way to go. I thought. Yellow.

Cardenio sorted out the final calculation and tapped in the cask's firing instructions. He briefly checked his timing and before I could say anything my body pressed downwards. I started to panic.

In my numbed mind I thought of a phrase I'd read in the dead Doc's journal. It seemed right to think of him, considering I was following fast on his trail. Anything went wrong and --

"Still, at least I'm heading back home." I said to no one in particular.

Yeah, that phrase. Part of the notes which answered a lot of questions about Keysada's behaviour. About the Doc's too. Not only the phrase, but the whole passage which it started came back:

There will come a time, Doc had written in his lucid style, when we are forced to meet our personal demons. This is the legacy of our work with omegite ore extraction. Radiation screening can never be 100% effective. The data I have amassed from observing the crew and from restricted files points unerringly in one direction. A destabilisation of the unconscious will manifest itself in the individual who is exposed to this substance for any prolonged period.

The Mining Corporation's self assurance in its decision to pick the most rational and psychologically stable crew members can only be described as myopic. Even these individuals cannot maintain a psychological equilibrium over the time scales which the logistics of economics dictate for this operation...

A later, unheaded note summed up the earlier report:

Already I have noticed anomalous manifestations in my quarters!

So, even the Doc had been susceptible. It answered a lot of questions about his death.

Frighteningly, a fresh thought nagged me. It said:

"And Cardenio..? Surely he's equally liable! Equally fallible..?"

I blinked through the small inspection window with a terrible shock of realisation as I saw that Omega 90 had shrunk beneath me. But I couldn't see the shuttle, and hang it, it should have been near by then.

I opened the lid to get a wider view of the heavens into which I was gradually rising. I had this nagging feeling at the back of my head that he'd forgotten something. That down below Cardenio had overlooked...

"How much did you say you weigh?" I considered the off-hand enquiry.

He hadn't actually weighed me, or the suit I was wearing, or the spare shuttle parts I was carrying. No, he'd just taken me at my word. I tried to shrug off my doubts reasoning that, besides the Doc, Cardenio was the most rational and psychologically stable crew member... Besides the Doc? Boy!

I realised too late that the madness had got him too. In a couple of hours the cask would catch in the local sun's field and I would go out in the most impressive style. Eventually, after a thousand years or so, a blaze of glory to dispose of my mortal remains. Just like the Doc before me...

I told myself that panicking wouldn't help me. There was only one way to prove Cardenio's reliability. I just had to wait.

*

As soon as I caught the movement out the corner of my eyes, I knew something was wrong. Sure, the crippled shuttle was coming round on its orbit, but the cask was already starting to move away.

I suppose my life had started to do the old flash you hear about so often. You know: the one before the eyes. Yeah, I'd allowed myself to panic by then. The shuttle was definitely receding, whilst the cask continued on its own impersonal trajectory.

"Cardenio!" I cursed the name. The temperature in my pressure suit rose by fifteen degrees.

The life-flash suddenly came right up to date. I remembered Doc's notes again: There will come a time when we are forced to meet our personal demons, and I remembered the whump! of atmosphere escaping from the pump room. So, I had willingly delivered myself right back into the same cruel hand I'd narrowly avoided before.

Demons! I thought. Hah, who needs them?

Then I swore real loud and jumped.

*

The unresisting mass of the kicked cask tumbled away and I was right out there. Just hanging without straps or propulsion. Nothing to guide me. Omega 90, silver like the Earth's moon, spinning slowly, slowly below me. Like a moon right out there on the edge of the universe; only blackness stretching away far beyond it.

I was small and I was alone. I was in its grasp -- whatever it was. I shut my eyes and wished and hoped so hard that I thought I'd die just from the effort.

Time was playing its old trick again, and my weightlessness made me think maybe nothing existed any more. Like I was somehow insubstantial. Just a thought in my own head. The only sound was the hiss of my pressure suit.

I screwed my eyes real tight. It was either that or face the infinite blackness on the other side of those eyelids.

*

"There will come a time," Doc had written in his lucid prose, "When we are forced to meet our personal demons."

*

And then...

Maybe at the back of my mind I sensed something out there. Like the Doc had come back to help.

I couldn't do anything, so I just waited. Floating. Like an idea...

*

The squat shape of the Delamancha mine base was low on the horizon against a backdrop of stars. I'd had to get out for fear of taking off Cardenio's head. And to create myself some thinking space.

Both Quicksilver and I were heroes -- in our own ways. Him, in his own mind, for being ready to meet the invader. Me for getting him back. All he'd been interested in was the recognition.

"Sure you'll get a medal." I'd told him after I climbed through the airlock. "Saving the lives of the crew."

I can still see the little balls of coagulated blood floating in the cabin. A spar had gone through his leg so by that time he was ready to fly down.

To be on the safe side, I calmed him with some anaesthetic. His eyes filled slowly with dreams -- just like his head was already. Then he started speaking in a far-away voice:

"Say. As I gaze down at Omega 90, it looks like a flat disc. Like it's not luminescent but light's flooding through from behind it. A porthole, say. Or like a window in the night. Looking on to another world."

"Oh yeah?" I wasn't so interested then, but when we got back down and he was fixing up the oxygen units, then I finally had a chance to reflect. To reflect on what he'd said. I stopped walking and gazed up into the night.

There it was. The empty sector of sky where the known universe just came to a dead stop. The blackness out there a kind of infinite nothingness. Like a velvet glove clasping us in. No one ever been out that far. No one interested in nothing.

But here, right on the edge of where we stopped and that started, things were going kind of crazy. Like the rules were broken. Heck, what were the possibilities of me making that jump? Those cruel fingers I feared so much -- maybe they relented for a while -- maybe even helped. On an astral physicist's terms what were the odds against me? I mean, against me drifting through infinite space before feeling the reassuring brush of hull? One in infinity, maybe?

Sure, things were pretty weird up there on the Edge, with the ore breaking down barriers between the real world and whatever lay beyond... Call it what you like: Subconscious. Psyche. Demons!

Hah!

I shook my head and started my trudge back to the Delamancha across that inhospitable, insane terrain. Three months till the relief ship came, and all the crew members equally likely to flip, throw a circuit, blow a fuse.

Yeah. All the crew.

Me included.

*

The End

*

1999 Copyright: Mij Thawnton, UK. E-mail the author at: mij@virtualbooksonline.co.uk