Traces Stephen Baxter

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seemed paranoid to Bado, generations of them, with their bomb shelters and their iodine pills. It
was like being stuck in the late 1950s.
And that damn war in Indochina just dragged on, almost forgotten back home, sucking up lives
and money like a bloody sponge.
Around 1986, he felt a sharp tug of wistfulness. Right now, he figured, on the other side of that
heat-haze barrier, someone would be taking the first steps on Mars. Maybe it would be his old
buddy, Slade, or someone like John Young. Bado might have made it himself.
Bado missed the live sports on TV.
In free fall, Taine gives them spare cotton coveralls to wear, which are comfortable but don't quite fit; the
name stitched to Bado's is LEDUC, and on Williams's, HASSELL.
Bado, with relief, peels off the three layers of his pressure suit: the outer micrometeorite garment, the
pressure assembly and the inner cooling garment. The other passengers look on curiously at Bado's
cooling garment, with its network of tubes. Bado tucks his discarded suit layers into a big net bag and
sticks it behind his couch.
They are served food: stodgy stew, lukewarm and glued to the plate with gravy, and then some kind of
dessert, like bread with currants stuck inside it. Spotted dick, Taine calls it.
There is a persistent whine of fans and pumps, a subdued murmur of conversation, and the noise of
children crying. Once a five-year-old, all of six feet tall, comes bouncing around the curving cabin in a
spidery tangle of attenuated arms and legs, pursued by a fat, panting, queasy-looking parent.
Taine comes floating down to them, smiling. 'Captain Richards would like to speak to you. He's intrigued
to have you on board. We've picked up quite a few alternate-colonists, but not many alternate-pioneers,
like you. Would you come forward to the cockpit? Perhaps you'd like to watch the show from there.'
Williams and Bado exchange glances. 'What show?'
'The impact, of course. Come. Your German friend is welcome too, of course,' Taine adds dubiously.
The cosmonaut has his head stuck inside a sick bag.
'I think he's better off where he is,' Bado says.
'You go,' Williams says. 'I want to try to sleep.' Her face looks worn to Bado, her expression brittle, as if
she is struggling to keep control. Maybe the shock of the transitions is getting to her at last, he thinks.
The cockpit is cone-shaped, wadded right in the nose of the craft. Taine leads Bado in through a big oval
door. Charts and mathematical tables have been stuck to the walls, alongside pictures and photographs.
Some of these show powerful-looking aircraft, of designs unfamiliar to Bado, but others show what must
be family members. Pet dogs. Tools and personal articles are secured to the walls with elastic straps.
Three spacesuits, flaccid and empty, are fixed to the wall with loose ties. They are of the type Taine wore
in the airlock: thick and flexible, with inlaid metal hoops, and hinged helmets at the top.
Three seats are positioned before instrument consoles. Right now the seats face forward, towards the
nose of the craft, but Bado can see they are hinged so they will tip up when the craft is landing vertically.
Bado spots a big, chunky periscope sticking out from the nose, evidently there to provide a view out
during a landing.
There are big picture windows set in the walls. The windows frame slabs of jet-black, star-sprinkled sky.
A man is sitting in the central pilot's chair. He is wearing a leather flight jacket, a peaked cap, and Bado
can't believe it he is smoking a pipe, for God's sake. The guy sticks out a hand. 'Mr Bado. I'm glad to
meet you. Jim Richards, RAF.'
'That's Colonel Bado.' Bado shakes the hand. 'US Air Force. Lately of NASA.'
'NASA?'
'National Aeronautics and Space Administration...'
Richards nods. 'American. Interesting. Not many of the alternates are American. I'm sorry we didn't get a
chance to see more of your ship. Looked a little cramped for the three of you.'
'It wasn't our ship. It was a Russian, a one-man lander.'
'Really,' Richards murmurs, not very interested. 'Take a seat.' He waves Bado at one of the two seats
beside him; Taine takes the other, sipping tea through a straw. Richards asks, 'Have you ever seen a ship
like this before, Colonel Bado?'
Bado glances around. The main controls are a conventional stick-and-rudder design, adapted for
spaceflight; the supplementary controls are big, clunky switches, wheels, and levers. The fascia of the
control panel is made of wood. And in one place, where a maintenance panel has been removed, Bado
sees the soft glow of vacuum tubes.
'No,' he says. 'Not outside the comic books.'
Richards and Taine laugh.
'It must take a hell of a launch system.'
'Oh,' says Richards, 'we have good old Beta to help us with that.'
'Beta?'
'This lunar ship is called Alpha,' Taine says. 'Beta gives us a piggyback out of Earth's gravity. We launch
from Woomera, in South Australia. Beta is a hypersonic athodyd '
Richards winks at Bado. 'These double-domes, eh? He means Beta is an atomic ramjet.'
Bado boggles. 'You launch an atomic rocket from the middle of Australia? How do you manage
containment of the exhaust?'
Taine looks puzzled. 'What containment?'
'You must tell me all about your spacecraft,' Richards says.
Bado, haltingly, starts to describe the Apollo system.
Richards listens politely enough, but after a while Bado can see his eyes drifting to his instruments, and he
begins to fiddle with his pipe, knocking out the dottle into a big enclosed ashtray.
Richards becomes aware of Bado watching him. 'Oh, you must forgive me, Colonel Bado. It's just that
one encounters so many alternates.'
'You do, huh.'
'The Massolite, you know. That damn quantum-mechanical leakage. Plessey just can't get the thing tuned
correctly. Such a pity. Anyhow, don't you worry; the boffins on the ground will put you to rights, I'm
sure.'
Bado is deciding he doesn't like these British. They are smug, patronizing, icy. He can't tell what they are
thinking.
Taine leans forward. 'Almost time, Jim.'
'Aha!' Richards gets hold of his joystick. The main event.' He twists the stick, and Bado hears what
sounds like the whir of flywheels, deep in the guts of the ship. Stars slide past the windows. 'A bit of
showmanship, Colonel Bado. I want to line us up to give the passengers the best possible view. And us,
of course. After all, this is a grandstand seat, for the most dramatic astronomical event of the
century what?'
The Moon, fat and grey and more than half-full, slides into the frame of the windows.
The Moon Moon Five, Bado assumes it to be looks like a ball of glass, its surface cracked and
complex, as if starred by buckshot. Tinged pale white, the Moon's centre looms out at Bado, given
three-dimensional substance by the Earthlight's shading.
The Moon looks different. He tries to figure out why.
There, close to the central meridian, are the bright pinpricks of Tycho, to the south, and Copernicus, in
the north. He makes out the familiar pattern of the seas of the eastern hemisphere: Serenitatis, Crisium, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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