Chapter Thirteen - Deadlines
'I thought you were dead.'
'And whatever gave you that idea, Mr Fenton?' said Darvad Paize, sitting down and reclining back into a wide, plushly upholstered black chair, his dark form dissolving into its contours. His uniform was identical to Julia's except there was no coloured flash, or rather it was black; black on black.
Fenton rubbed his aching temples. He too was slumped in a similar comfortable chair. Julia was seated nearby, her pistol lolling in her hand. They were in a dim pool of light. Beyond it everything was dark, dark and cold. Darren Brozmam was standing, still dressed in the spacesuit underwebbing. He looked nervous, ill at ease, a gun clamped tightly in his fist, a tiny device in his other hand.
'Oh, I overheard someone. He seemed concerned about you.' He really didn't care what they knew anymore. He was hungry and wanted to sleep.
'What did you overhear, Mr Fenton?' The tone was curious rather than intimidating.
He tried to sit up. Pain racked his body, he was aching all over. He was wearing just the blue undergarment and the hairnet. He peeled it from his head and ran his fingers through his long sweat-matted hair, brushing it back.
'How did I get here? What happened?'
'Your suit was locked,' explained Julia, standing. With a kind smile she handed him a concentrated food bar. He gratefully tore it open and ate. 'There's an emergency release system,' she continued, 'all the retention bolts fire simultaneously and the suit disintegrates, explosively,' she added wryly. 'It's an extreme measure but short of a grenade it was all we could do to get you out.' She passed him a cup of water. 'I'm sorry about your head.' The apology sounded sincere. She sat back down. 'You were out so we carried you here.'
'Here? And where exactly is here?' His eyes were adjusting to the gloom. He was in a vast, barely illuminated chamber. Banks and banks of instruments, screens and high tech equipment disappearing into the blackness. All dark, vacant, dead.
'Is this Graeme's lair? Where is he?'
'Mr Fenton, Dr Skawry answered your question, it's your turn to answer mine. Who was so touchingly concerned about my welfare?' Why were the SSD so keen on playing these bloody pointless games?
'He said he monitored the main room of his apartment via his wrist-strap when we took a message from Central, Darvad. They said they'd lost contact with you and we speculated that…' Brozmam's voice tailed off. He didn't need to say anymore. His interjection had been surprisingly blunt, abruptly terminating Paize's gentle probing. Maybe Brozmam was getting impatient with these SSD mind games too. But then he'd never quite had the practiced air of superficial nonchalance Paize and Javer seemed to have developed into a fine art.
His wrist-strap; it must still be locked in the pocket of the suit, wherever that was.
'How very inventive.' If Paize was irritated by the interruption he hid it well. The tips of the fingers of each hand met their opposite number forming a bridge, his tone that of an experienced professor pleased a bright student had spotted something new; new to the student but very, very obvious to the professor. 'Paul must have forgotten to block it, rather careless really.' There was a critical edge to his voice but then he caught himself. 'Poor Paul,' he added in a tone of valedictory sadness. A flicker of emotion passed across Julia's face. The moment passed. Javer had been blamed for the omission, not Brozmam. It fitted. Perhaps, despite appearances, Javer had outranked Brozmam all the time.
'And what else did our friends at Central have to say for themselves, Darren?'
'Results checked out on both counts.'
'As we expected,' said Paize. Both counts. That related to him, Mark Fenton. He opened his mouth to speak but Paize held up his hand. Brozmam hadn't finished yet.
'Pandemonium has been declared a Security Hazard Area. Investigation Period Class One.'
Paize leaned forward. Alert.
'When?'
'Seventeen-fifty. Standard time.'
'All clocks are out here, Darren. How long ago?'
Instinctively Brozmam looked down at his wrist before realising his strap too was missing. He paused for thought. 'Between eight and nine hours ago. Say eight and three quarters.'
'Say nine for safety,' Paize smiled, the word safety clearly ironic. 'That gives us about twenty-seven hours.'
'Twenty-seven hours for what?' Fenton demanded.
'Mr Fenton, our masters in the Central Authority are not as liberal or understanding as the denizens of the SSD,' replied Paize. Fenton started to smirk at the idea of any organisation being less liberal than the Division. But then he stopped. It wasn't funny. It was terrifying.
'Our response to anything we don't understand is to investigate it, thoroughly, in fact it's our remit, our whole raison d'être. Unfortunately our political masters tend to get nervous when they're confronted by something they don't understand and their instincts are to eliminate it, especially when it's something as bizarre and threatening to the status quo as this.'
'As what?' But there was something far more pressing. 'What exactly do you mean by ''eliminate''?'
'Mr Fenton, you know the continued existence of this station is extremely precarious, it's only your friend Dr Dezlin's equations and enormous computing power that enables it to perpetually defy the forces out there. It would require only a relatively modest disturbance in the fabric of Hell to confuse the guidance systems temporarily. Pandemonium would be crushed before the computers could work out how to compensate.'
'What sort of ''disturbance''?'
'Oh, a small explosive device would do the trick. It could be easily deployed by missile, launched quite safely by a ship outside of Hell. The exact trajectory wouldn't be important, so long as it was fired in the right direction it would get pulled in by the gravitational forces. Once in Hell it really wouldn't matter where it detonated, the fact it had exploded would be sufficient to ensure the total destruction of this installation.'
'And that's what's going to happen?'
'Yes, Mr Fenton. In approximately twenty-seven hours that is precisely what's going to happen, unless we can restore communications with Central and alleviate their concerns.'
'Darvad, are we certain the systems couldn't cope with such a disturbance?' asked Brozmam.
'Dr Dezlin was. It was him who suggested it to Central as a strategy to deal with any…' Paize hesitated for a moment, searching for the right word, '….problems,' he concluded.
So Graeme had been anticipating problems. What sort? Paize's voice was still perfectly measured, there was no immediate sign of concern about him. He remained relaxed and urbane reclining in the bat winged chair. Fenton almost expected him to crack open a bottle of sherry. There must be a reason for his serenity. Of course.
'Presumably we could just leave.'
'Oh, no, Mr Fenton, both our ship and the station's transporter are affected by total power loss.'
Panic. Fear.
'But there must be spacesuits on board. We could get back to our ship, Sprite.' He didn't want to get back into one of those spacesuits. He didn't want to cross Hell again. But he didn't want to die here.
'The suits, I suspect, will be affected by the power loss, just like yours were,' said Julia, 'we won't be able to use them.'
'''Suspect'', so you've not checked?'
'No, I've not checked because it's an academic issue. If we could use the suits we couldn't make it to Sprite. We can't access Pandemonium's computer for the navigational information we'd need for the crossing. It's locked off. Dr Dezlin, or someone, has overridden Central's access privilege. The system's on automatic. It's providing sufficient information to the motive units to maintain Pandemonium's structural integrity and that's it.'
'But I interrogated Pandemonium's guidance computer when we got here,' argued Brozmam. 'I used information from it to get us into Hell and into orbit round Pandemonium. I used data from it to programme the flight path for the suits.'
'Oh, it gave us the information to get in alright,' stated Paize, 'we jus
t can't get the data to let us out again.'
'I thought there wasn't a computer in The System that Peerman couldn't hack into,' Brozmam sarcastically commented.
'Jemmie's dead,' Julia said softly, 'he was crossing the main core shaft. It seems he lost his footing and fell.'
'Seems?' snapped Brozmam, casting a sudden glance at Fenton. 'You think someone pushed him?'
'We've no evidence but it doesn't feel right. Jemmie would have taken care; he had a fear of heights, unless, of course, it was the fear that got him.' She paused. 'Jemmie wasn't convinced he could override the lock anyway, there was something very odd about it. Do you want to have a look at it?' she challenged.
'Yes. But it's probably irrelevant,' said Brozmam. 'I'm not convinced Sprite is still out there. We lost contact shortly after we left. I think it's been destroyed.'
He was glad he hadn't known that during the spacewalk.
'Must have been data corruption,' Julia observed, 'I'm amazed you managed to get any useful information out of Pandemonium, the communication's interference is severe.'
'I'm not convinced. Pandemonium gave Sprite just enough data to get all of you here safely, including our friend Mr Fenton.'
'Darvad, you think the computer withdrew the information?' Julia breathed anxiously. 'It deliberately decided to destroy Sprite?'
'Not the computer. As Jemmie would have said, computers don't make decisions, the decisions are made by whoever controls them. But if Sprite has been crushed it was destroyed just after they left. And then there's the power loss to the suits. The energy drained away just after they'd got safely inside Pandemonium's pressurised zone. I don't believe in coincidences.'
'You're saying the power loss to the suits was timed, Darvad? Somebody caused it.'
'Somebody, or something.'
'Something?'
'Dezlin thought it was sentient.'
A cold silence. Julia looked incredulous.
'They're just theories,' said Paize coolly, 'but they're all we've got. If we're going to stay alive beyond the next twenty-seven hours we're going to have to find out what's happening here. And Mr Fenton is going to have to help us.'