The woman pointed at the screen, which had now changed to show the surface of the moon with the human-made infrastructure clearly marked. The base showed as a collection of interlinked circles in the bottom right of the screen.

  "The signal was coming from here." She pointed to a red dot in the middle of the screen.

  Clearly not “just outside the base” at all.

  "That's out in the restricted zone," her colleague said. "What were those artists doing out there?”

  Gaby said, “We met those people in the canteen. Are they all out there?”

  The operator showed her the screen.

  The group consisted of five people, two women and three men.

  “This is not right,” Jonathan said. “The group we met included someone called Christopher. This group doesn’t have a Christopher, but it has a Felix.”

  The operator frowned. “I don’t see anyone under the name Christopher.”

  “Not all of them were going out,“ said the second operator.

  While Jonathan spoke to the operator, Gaby stared at the list of names on the screen. Jonathan knew that she had seen something, or remembered something.

  The connection returned.

  The operator asked, “Can you state your name and describe clearly what has happened?”

  “… I’m sorry… Can’t hear you very well… We need help immediately. Two people… missing.”

  “Please state you name. Who is missing and where and how did you last see them?”

  “I’m sorry… can’t hear you. Please… send… help.”

  Then the sound of his voice was replaced by loud crackling.

  The operator tried to re-establish connection. “Hello? Hello?”

  But there was no reply.

  “What is the problem?” A man had come into the control room.

  Jonathan recognised the satellite dish emblem on his chest; he was their superior: the base chief communication officer. His name tag said E. Farrer.

  While the operator explained what had gone on, his expression darkened.

  Then he burst out, “They shouldn’t be where they are. It’s a contaminated area. They’re at risk of infecting the entire base. They’re making up nonsense about poor connectivity. They’re not answering our questions. It’s always the same tricks. We never asked for these artists to come here. They’re somebody’s way of getting back at us. Why don’t they all just start singing and dancing out there? At least then we’d be clear about those lunatics having returned. And now I’m supposed to risk people and material to find out what’s going on? They can all rot in hell as far as I’m concerned. Send in a patrol to arrest them. Then their boss can beg us to release them.”

  Chapter Seven

  But of course it wasn’t as simple as that. The base personnel was obliged to render assistance to people in need.

  Jonathan thought quickly.

  “Would you consider letting us go out to investigate if we can resolve this without conflict?” he asked.

  Farrer frowned at him. “You’re Jonathan Bartell? What is your connection with these people?” That question sounded suspicious.

  Gaby said, “These people are artists. We met them the day before yesterday and spoke to them briefly. They would only have received basic survival training. Obviously something has blown up on them. They’re stressed out. I’m a doctor with special interest in mental health in stressful situations.”

  Farrer thought for a while. Jonathan could see conflicting emotions in his face.

  Then he said, ”I will need to ask the base commander."

  "Understood."

  So they sat and waited. Jonathan contacted Bernard Vika, explaining that they were slightly delayed. He had no doubt that in a base this small, the officer would know soon enough anyway.

  The base commander surprised Jonathan by coming into the traffic control centre himself. He was a thin man, his height betraying the fact that he had grown up in space, and his tanned skin and muscular physique evidence to the fact that he took his health seriously. His manner and dress were impeccable. His tag said S. Boone.

  "So you know these art people?" he asked Gaby, saying the word “art” as if it was dirty. Jonathan could just about imagine his reaction when he’d first had this Lighten Up program foisted upon him by someone in high command.

  "I wouldn't say I know them personally,” Gaby said. "But we met them the day before yesterday. Also I’ve worked as doctor on ships and stations and have dealt with artists as a part of those consignments. Most of the very large ships have artists in residence, and not infrequently, they get subjected to a lot of ridicule. It tends to wear on you after a few months.”

  “They go funny in the head.” It was not a question. Jonathan couldn’t remember if Boone had been mentioned in the report about Katie Walker, but he guessed he’d been present at that time.

  Gaby shrugged off the pointy remark. “If that’s what you want to call it. It’s unrelated to the emergency, though. I’m offering to help resolve a tense situation, as outsider.”

  Boone looked her up and down. “Hmph. You say were trained as medical officer? I have you down in the visitor’s log as researcher.“ Jonathan didn't like the way the man questioned her, but Gaby always handled this sort of treatment much better than he would.

  "I am, but I went through civilian medical training."

  Boone looked from her to Jonathan and back, and then said, “I’ve heard some stories about you two, Bartell and Larsen. You’ve become quite the problem-solving duo. Well then. Let’s see what you can do. I have no appetite for further skirmishes with commercial leeches.”

  “They’re artists. I don’t think they are associated with a company,” Gaby said.

  Boone snorted. “That’s what they all say. But out here, you work for the Force or you’re a company leech. The Force pays you, the leeches may pay more. You find excuses to go where you need to get what they’re paying you for. Artists indeed. It’s how it is. You may be right, but just in case I’m right and leeches is what they are, there will be a backup team waiting and ready for action. I want them gone. It takes less than twenty minutes to drive to their location. If you can’t establish what’s going on, we’ll come in after an hour and remove them forcefully. They will be charged and we’ll begin legal proceedings against their company.”

  Gaby met Jonathan’s eyes. She seemed to share his feeling that the command wasn’t particularly happy with their presence on the base either. Not that this type of situation was new to Jonathan, but usually, it happened only after he had made comments that the commanders didn’t like hearing.

  But this job had been a game from the moment they’d left Lotus III, and neither he nor Gaby had seen it.

  This emergency wasn’t following the script that the base had planned out for their visit.

  It suited him. The best discoveries didn’t happen when you followed paths set out by other people.

  Rescuing some artists was just in a day’s work.

  Boone ordered that Jonathan and Gaby were given access to a truck.

  The control room staff explained how to operate the local communications systems. Because the gravity was so low, supply ships would get so close that sometimes their communication interfered with the local system, so they used a close range radio system on the surface.

  "Because the pilots don't need to know about what we're having for dinner," she said with a wry smile, as if apologetic for Boone’s terse manner.

  She took Jonathan and Gaby to the suiting room and provided them with vacuum suits, both with the base patch on the chest and shoulders. When they connected their pads, the patches lit up and their names appeared underneath.

  Another officer walked them to the vehicle bay, which contained a number of personnel carriers, an ice harvesting truck and a couple of general purpose vehicles. A half-open sliding door provided a glimpse of a second vehicle bay, shrouded in darkness. A person in environment suit walked through the door, and a light came on. Jonathan spotted what he thought was a surface-to-orbit rocker launcher on the back of a truck. The door to the cabin stood open.

  And then they were off, just Jonathan and Gaby in a truck that would hold eight people, and a bunch of supplies including tanks and space suits, ropes, harnesses and flares.

  They were warned not to venture off the marked trails, because the terrain changed constantly, the ice shards were sharp, the surface unstable and likely to cause damage to the vehicle.

  The control room officer explained basic hygiene for when they needed to leave the vehicle, but nothing out of the ordinary. Not what you’d expect for a place where microbial contamination was a major issue.

  Once they were out the air lock, and their eyes became accustomed to the low light, it didn’t appear to be as dark as it had seemed from the inside of a well-lit shuttle. Miranda rotated at 1.43 times Earth rotation. It was morning now, although during the night there tended to be a lot of light reflected from nearby Uranus, jokingly called “buttshine” by the locals.

  The landscape was as beautiful as it was alien. The surface consisted mainly of ice, coated with billions of years’ worth of black space dust. The jagged peaks of ice pushed up through the movement of cracks in the ice were lighter in colour, sometimes even blue. The path cleared by the settlement’s bulldozer was bright white, and turnoffs clearly marked in the navigation system, with ample warnings not to stray onto the black surface.

  Because the gravity was so low, they wore seatbelts, and chunks of ice flying off the caterpillar wheels described graceful arcs before coming down to the surface.

  For a while, they travelled in silence, taking in the desolate landscape. The drive was easy and offered Jonathan plenty of opportunity to look around and photograph surface features.

  Then Gaby said, “You know those names she showed?”

  “They’re the artists we met yesterday.”

  “Yes, but I’m talking about the fifth one. He is not an artist.”

  “That Felix guy? Do you know him?”

  “Felix Estvan. He owns a technology company. He is a multimillionaire."

  “Shit.” Jonathan frowned at her. The much-maligned companies that everyone here had such a hangup about. “Are you sure?”

  “There was a picture. I know him. He was at university with me.”

  “As a medical student?”

  “Yup, except he was crap at medicine. He was much more interested in how all the equipment worked.”

  “Is that what his company does?”

  “Yup.”

  “Why would he come here disguised as artist?”

  “That’s a good question, isn’t it?”

  “One that you have a theory about, I’m guessing?”

  “Actually, I don’t.”

  Jonathan laughed.

  Gaby continued, “I have no idea. According to Young, companies are clamouring to come here. Why is everyone so interested in this area on this particular ice ball? I mean—it’s really boring.”

  And it was, typical plateau scenery, mostly flat with small outcrops of ice. Millions of years of being exposed to space had turned the ice black. Small meteorites and other debris lay scattered across the plain.

  Where vehicles had crossed, tracks showed up in lighter colours, but many were already turning dark, evidence of their age.

  “I’d really like to stop here and take some samples,” Gaby said.

  “Yeah, but we can’t.”

  “I know, but I’d still like to do it.”

  ”Me, too. We’ll find a way to get the samples, after we’ve checked out our wayward artists.” He paused for a while. Then he said, “Did you see those rockets in the other hall?”

  “Yes.”

  “I assumed that when I read they used the range for weapons testing, they were testing biological weapons.”

  “Same.”

  “I guess rockets need to be tested, too.”

  But he felt uneasy. The hostility against “companies” was all too evident. And why? It couldn’t really be because Miranda was the only surface-based military-only base in the solar system?

  They fell silent and stared out the window.

  The road was straight and featureless. Two rows of posts marked the road edges, with little lights on top that came on when the vehicle approached.

  Other than that, the landscape was utterly desolate.

  Chapter Eight

  The navigation program estimated only a twenty-minute ride from the dome to the spot where the artists were supposed to be. They were still close to the base, but the dome had long since disappeared over the horizon.

  They now traversed a part where the terrain was slightly less flat. The road zig-zagged a little around smooth hillocks dotted with outcrops of sharp ice spikes. The sun—a distant speck in the grey sky—hung low over the horizon, casting ink-dark shadows over the landscape, and making the ice crystals glitter.

  It was beautiful in a hostile, eerie way.

  “So this is where Katie Walker came?” Jonathan asked.

  “From what I gather, yes. But I don’t know that we’ll get to see any of her ice structures.”

  “They’ve probably been destroyed.” Because that was a very military thing to do.

  “Yeah.”

  “Did they ever find out what this creature was that they were worshiping?”

  Gaby shrugged. “I’m guessing it was mostly in her head. I’ve read her medical report and she really was a special case, even before she came to Miranda. But she was also very helpful, a hard worker and very friendly to people, especially those with few friends.”

  “So she lured them into a religion that she had made up?”

  “Basically, although I’m sure she believed what she said—whoa!”

  They’d come over a rise in the landscape. Ahead of them lay a valley in the shadow of the ridge beyond. The deepest point was in ink blackness. But little bursts of light bloomed under the ice, mostly in blue, but the occasional one in pink or green.

  Jonathan stopped the truck.

  “What the hell is that?”

  “No idea. Some kind of fluorescent reaction.”

  They watched for a bit while the effect faded, but when the truck advanced again, the number of blooms under the ice increased.

  They stopped and the light flashes faded. Then they advanced and they started again.

  “It reacts to our movement,” Gaby said.

  Jonathan drove the truck slowly through the valley, while flashes of light bloomed around them. The colours changed from blue to green to pink when the truck was closer.

  “Do you think this is part of what they believed to be a creature?” Gaby asked.

  “I don’t know. This type of thing is usually caused by bacteria. The way the light comes up when we change the pressure on the ice makes me think they react to proximity. This is a known feature in fluorescent bacteria.”

  “It’s beautiful.”

  The blue glow lit Gaby’s face. She was looking around with eyes wide in wonder. He loved her so much like this. She could be so completely absorbed in the beauty of nature.

  The truck emerged from the valley into the wan sunlight on the ridge. Here, the light effect disappeared.

  "I can see them," Gaby said.

  She was right. A couple of bright yellow dots stood out on the next ridge.

  Jonathan consulted the map. “It looks like they're camped on the top of a really big cliff."

  Gaby busied herself contacting the camp.

  A male voice answered her call, possibly the same who had raised the alarm. She asked his name and he said it was Mohammed. He sounded awfully young.

  Gaby asked him if it was safe to come to the camp.

  He said it was.

  The camp consisted of three tents, which seemed quite a lot for a small group. Conserving resources was important out here. It cost a lot of energy to heat and pressurise those tents.

  When the truck came closer, two people came out of the closest tent.

  Gaby shook her head. “I can't believe it. They only got a buggy."

  It stood to the side of the tent, with the logo of Miranda Base on the door.

  These vehicles were used for small distance travel and maintenance immediately around permanent bases. They weren't suitable to travel as far as they had come.

  Which aligned with the fact that these people only had a permit to do something outside the main base’s dome.

  It also looked like the thing had run out of charge. Normally there would be a light or two blinking at the controls.

  “Do we need to assume they have any weapons?" Jonathan asked.

  Gaby was peering at the screen while Jonathan had to watch the track. They were in the shadow of the hill, going up to the elevated spot where the camp was located.

  Gaby said, ”I can't tell. I but if they’re civilians and artists my bet is that they don't."

  "If they were smart enough to misappropriate some of the tents and other equipment, and come all the way out here for an unclear reason, I wouldn't be surprised if they do."

  "True."

  Jonathan slowed the vehicle.

  One of the figures approached, both hands held up. The visor of the suit reflected the surrounding landscape and made it impossible to see the occupant’s face.

  The figure slowly walked backwards and Jonathan followed with the truck until they were at the tents. Jonathan stopped the vehicle, he and Gaby put on their tanks and helmets and went outside.

  The silence was immediate, even though he could feel the ice creaking underneath his shoes. There were no light effects here.

  “Whoa, look at that,” came Gaby’s voice in his helmet’s loudspeaker.

  They stood atop a dropoff of indescribable depth. The bottom and opposite side lay in the ink-dark shadow, but wan sunlight hit the near side of the cliff, showing its sheer rock faces and sharp ridges.

  From the top of the cliff, they had a view across a huge area of the surrounding landscape of undulating ridges and valleys.

  Gaby said, “This is Verona Rupes, isn’t it? The tallest cliff in all of the solar system.”

 

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