Oxygen Depleted
11 Aug 2017Andrew Linton
I approach Jaques' Bar – everyone's go-to drinking den on Jaques Station. Tonight the place is packed and the din coming from the joint grows to a crescendo as I reach the entrance. The bar buzzes with loud conversation and even louder music. The music is an oddity; normally the bar is a place for quiet drinks and the exchange of stories and I honestly haven't seen before now the speakers dotted around the walls that are pumping out a thumping synthetic beat with a fair attempt at an ethereal melody above it. Not my kind of music, though.I hesitate, reluctant to join the frenzy of chatter, debate, and...dancing. Dancing, for the love of everything astral. Who dances in the thirty-fourth century? This kind of atmosphere is about as far outside my comfort zone as Hutton Orbital is distant from Alpha Centauri. And why is everyone dressed up? Sparkly flight-suits, extravagantly coiffed hair, freshly applied makeup – and that's only the men. The women are more scantily dressed, grateful no doubt to escape the constraints of space garb.
Like I say, not my scene. Crowds comprise people, and people always want something from you – to screw you over or create some kind of obligation in their favour. That's why I prefer exploration to the other possible careers – just me, my ship, and the galaxy.
I'm here to meet Jeeves, the cyborg manager of the bar. Transactions with him are always perfectly straightforward – no edge or personal agenda. I scan the sea of faces and eventually find that he's helping behind the counter. The staff are obviously struggling to keep up with the demand for beer and spirits.
I enter the bar and get jostled as I push across the dance floor. More than once a stiletto heel jabs ineffectually at the reinforced toe-caps of my mag-boots and rainbow hair whips me in the face as part of some energetic gyration; then I start to mix with the rabble trying to get close to the bar. I must smell or something – I admit, it's a while since I took a shower – either that or the smart people are worried some of my space-dirt will rub off on their outfits; anyway, a path opens up to let me through.
I catch Jeeves' eye and he smiles in that way of his and he flicks his head to indicate that I should go to the office. Again I push through the throng of revellers and reach the relative calm of the room marked 'private'. I don't have to wait long.
"Good evening, Commander Kit."
There's no hint of weariness or annoyance in his voice to suggest he knows why I'm here and am about to ask him the same question I've been asking him for months – every time I'm back in Colonia, in fact.
"Any news?" I ask eagerly, as though it's the first time.
Jeeves somehow has access to everyone's whereabouts; nobody is sure how he does it, but he's always ready to tell you the location of another commander. His eyes close slightly, like he's concentrating, and after a few seconds he delivers the information.
"Lyra Capra was last seen in the Maia system flying an Anaconda."
Jeeves must see the disappointment in my face. I've been waiting for Lyra to make the journey from the bubble to Colonia so I can tell her the story of how her father died in an escape pod while it was in the cargo hold of my Sidewinder.
"Be patient, Kit; she will come to Colonia eventually. But why don't you go to her?"
I shudder at the thought of making the journey back to the bubble. It's not the distance; that's not the issue at all; it's the memories that will surface when I'm there; memories that I'm managing to suppress out here.
"I'm not going there," I say defensively, "not even to grind for a level five long-range scanner."
"Then you must wait," Jeeves says in his simple, matter-of-fact, voice. "More positively, you must structure your time until she arrives. As you know, I will tell her when she gets here that you want to meet her, so you might as well get out and do some of the exploration that you so love."
"As usual you are absolutely right," I say after seeing the sense of his words and wishing I had a tiny fraction of his artificial intelligence.
"Very good. What will you do?"
I grin, for the first time today.
"You might not believe it, but I actually have a to-do list. When I first started exploring I just wanted to visit every kind of star and see every kind of planet, moon, and ring."
"And now?" Jeeves says, keen to encourage and divert me, I suppose.
"Well, there are loads of systems that I've only partly scanned, and I've been meaning to go back to them and finish the job."
Jeeves goes quiet again and I just know he's looking, somehow, at my flight logs.
"Oh yes," he says, "and some of them are quite close by. For instance, Eol Prou GA-A d25 is only 350 light-years distant. You only scanned the primary neutron star."
I shake my head and smile. "Some day you'll have to tell me how you do that; but you're right, in those days I was so close to becoming an elite explorer I became obsessed with earning credits. Scanning neutrons, black holes, and white dwarfs was a quick way to make the money."
"Tut, tut, Kit, that can scarcely be described as exploration. But rest assured, I won't report you to the Pilots' Federation," Jeeves smiles broadly, knowing he's made a joke.
"Best get to it," I say, standing up and heading for the door. That's the good thing about Jeeves; he isn't upset by my abruptness. When I open the door the noise of the party intrudes. "What's going on, anyway?"
"It's New Year's Eve, Kit" Jeeves says without a hint of condescension. "Tomorrow it will be 3303. A strange convention, I know, but it helps in all manner of ways to set our clocks to the time that Sol crosses the meridian at Greenwich on Earth. As an explorer, you should visit the site one day."
"I refer you to my previous answer," I say, and as a parting gesture I give Jeeves the HAHA salute: palms open and facing ahead, outstretched thumbs touching to make a letter H; then rotate the hands so the index fingers touch, making a letter A. Rinse and repeat.
Jeeves returns the salute. "You are human, I am android; together we are stronger."
Once out of the bar I breathe freely and relax again. Twenty minutes later I'm in the cockpit of my Asp Explorer and plotting a course to GA-A d25 in the Eol Prou sector. It's only fifteen jumps away, so I decide to go straight there. Stopping to scan the intervening systems will probably just add to my to-do list.
I realised long ago that you can't scan all four hundred billion stars in the Milky Way so you need a plan. For a time I jumped about scanning only class O stars, marvelling at their brilliant heat, and then sought out earth-like worlds, water worlds, and candidates for terraforming. I would always cruise any distance to see a beautiful ammonia world. At other times, I would look for small moons with significant volcanism and spend hours exploring their canyons and craters in search of their elusive geysers.
Today, I am going for completeness – the satisfaction of knowing the task of scanning every object in a system is done.
*
I arrive at GA-A d25 and check in the system map that it's my name as first discoverer. There are five high metal content planets orbiting the neutron star, one of them landable, and a class M star 41,000 light-seconds away. It looks like the M has a gas giant with ammonia-based life. Time to get busy.
But first I'm drawn to the beauty of the neutron star itself; the swirling cones of radiation from the poles are mesmerising and I sit, nodding my head in time with the pulses; they're like a heartbeat.
It's a while since I visited a neutron star, though I've seen plenty. I helped Erimus Kamzel survey the neutron highway between Polo Harbour and Colonia, and there were dozens on the route I took to Altum Sagittarii.
While I'm daydreaming and reminiscing, four things happen in quick succession.
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