The strange taste of met.., p.1
The Strange Taste of Metal: John Spark, #1, page 1
The Strange Taste of Metal
By K A Burgess
Copyright 2023 Karlee Burgess
License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your enjoyment only, then please return it to your favorite retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1: Happy Gaspers
Chapter 2: Jack-Of-All-Trades
Chapter 3: Out Of The Red, Into The Black
Chapter 4: JWST1264
Chapter 5: Green Light
Chapter 6: Hard Yards
Chapter 7: Launch
Chapter 8: What’s In A Name?
Chapter 9: Enceladus
Chapter 10: Proximity
Chapter 11: Dark Satellite
Chapter 12: Colton Base
Chapter 13: The River
Chapter 14: Misadventures
Chapter 15: Oxygen
Chapter 16: Strange Lights
Chapter 17: Plan B
Chapter 18: MacGyver
Chapter 19: DNA
Chapter 20: Nerves And Blood
Chapter 21: Good News, Bad News
Chapter 22: St. Elmo And The Pole Dancer
Chapter 23: Beaten Hollow
Chapter 24: Gone
Chapter 25: Plastic Fantastic
Chapter 26: Light And Darkness
Chapter 27: Revelations
Chapter 28: Hanging In The Balance
Chapter 29: Nightfall
Chapter 30: “Gimme Shelter”
Chapter 31: Strange Metallic Tastes
Chapter 32: The Von Neumann Factory
Chapter 33: Running The Gauntlet
Chapter 34: Lockdown
Chapter 35: Evasion
Chapter 36: Light A Candle
Chapter 37: Dust To Rust
Chapter 38: The Refinery
Chapter 39: The Mountain Moves
Epilogue
About The Author
Acknowledgements
My heartfelt thanks to Gary, Gae and April, for their patience, willingness to read my work and their honest feedback. Gary, your sharing of ideas and your extensive sci-fi readership has been especially valuable to me. In large part, your support made this book possible.
Dad, thank you for encouraging me to read, and to write.
To the authors who’ve inspired science fiction readers everywhere including myself and who have created universes where we can lose and find ourselves: James S A Corey, Becky Chambers, Martha Wells, Andy Weir, thank you for your vision.
I have quoted a passage of Anglicized lyrics from the Okinawan song, Shima Uta by The Boom and interpreted by various artists in different versions and translations. The lyrics here are taken from the version by Natsukawa Rimi.
I thank all of those dedicated scientists, researchers, teachers, explorers and librarians who share their knowledge, to take us beyond our horizons to glimpse new worlds.
And finally, thank you to all who read, wonder and dream.
1: Happy Gaspers
John Spark watched closely as the kid got off the bus, landing in a puff of red dust. There was something wrong, just a little bit off about him. How John knew, since the guy was dressed in an EVA suit, he couldn’t say. Perhaps it was the way he stood with his helmeted head bent forward like it weighed too much. He seemed to be staring at his boots as though his feet were new prostheses.
John cleared his throat, checked the manifest and selected the kid’s private comm channel. “How are you doing, Boyd?”
There was the sound of fumbling channel selection and a breathy reply. “Amazing! Just...wow!”
“Yeah, it never gets old,” John said. “Could I get you to move away from the airlock a bit? There’s a woman with mobility issues coming out behind you. Maybe just check your gauges again while we’re waiting.”
“Oh! Yeah, sure.” Boyd stumped his way to where the other tourists were standing and joined his buddy, another young guy, Tom. No, Tim. They were both clearly unaccustomed to low gravity, so probably from Earth, rather than Luna. Despite his nebulous take on Boyd, John considered himself good at vac suit body language. Boyd and Tim weren’t a couple. More acquaintances than friends? He wasn’t sure why he cared.
Maybe he did know. He just really hoped, on the last day of what had been a great season, that he didn’t have a ‘happy gasper’ on his hands. Back on Earth he’d met newbie scuba divers, poorly equipped, who were still giving the ‘Okay’ signal as they swallowed the sea. ‘Happy drowners.’ Back at John’s tour office, Boyd had his sweater on inside out. Never a good sign.
The rest of the tour group were unwinding after the long drive, gazing at the majesty of Olympus Mons, its cliffs reaching to the horizon and up into the hazy sky. After the last passenger had disembarked and seated herself in a hover chair, John switched to the open comms channel. “How is everyone?”
There was a happy chorus in reply. Even the sulky teen girl had perked up.
“Okay!” he said. “We’re going to do another quick comm check and then it’s about a twenty minute walk to the caves. Stay with your buddy at all times, watch your feet and if you do have a comms problem, use your slate and see me. You all have your name written on there, right? Flashlights working?”
The group checked their gear and sounded off as he called their names. He shouldered his pack and led them into the shadow of the mountain.
After a long scramble down into the ditch that surrounded the volcano, they climbed a stretch of regolith-strewn incline, and arrived at the opening of the vast underground system the early colony had originally made home. Beyond the site of the former habitat, lay the caves John regarded it as the most amazing place he’d ever seen, even beating the ice canyons of Europa.
He led them through the Colony Village Museum, pacing himself, trying to show interest in the artifacts, the early rovers and habitats, clunky suits and the hydroponic display with its fake plants. All the while, his attention stayed on Boyd and his buddy.
On the outskirts of the Village, John led them through a labyrinth of short tunnels. Now for the part he liked.
“This particular lava tube was first discovered around thirty Arian years ago – March 12, 2066 Earth time, by a person with the unlikely name of Jane Doe. Crawler bots have done extensive mapping, but we still haven’t found where some of the branch tunnels end. More than one hundred of these tunnels have so far been mapped. Human explorers have hardly begun looking - it’s more than two day’s worth of air walking that way,” he said, pointing into the dark.
“Have any of you been caving, back home?”
Mini, the woman using the hover chair, raised her hand. “Yes, when I was younger. Rock climbing, cave diving, too. Loved it.”
“How does this compare to places you’ve explored?”
She shook her head. “Totally different. This looks like it was dug by machine – the walls are so regular. And this floor is pretty amazing.” She spoke with confidence in a North American accent.
Grunts of agreement came over the comms. The ground was patterned with fans and swirls of black basalt under the thin, red dust.
“We don’t know exactly when this tunnel was formed, only that it was relatively recent, geologically. We do know the eruption must have been extremely fast, hot and high in pressure. Apparently there are physical similarities here with the volcanoes of Hawaii. Except that Olympus Mons dwarfs every mountain on Earth. In the whole solar system, in fact.”
“How come we don’t know when it happened?” Boyd asked.
“Short answer is we still find it hard to date some things very accurately on Mars, because we lack points of reference. Sometimes we find a rock layer, or an Earthly meteorite that gives us a time context. Sometimes we can use rate of radioactive decay. There’s a lack of geologists working outside of the mines, since ours is still a relatively small colony. I’ll give you a fact sheet after the tour.
“OK, if you take this passage to the left, please.”
They walked through a low tunnel for several minutes, the tour members touching the roof and remarking on the absence of stalagmites, and how they couldn’t hear their own footfalls let alone anyone else’s in the thin air. No echoes.
Abruptly, the roof disappeared into blackness.
“You are now standing in ‘Moria’,” John said.
“Fitting name,” older guy Cameron, father of the sulky teen, said.
“I think so, too. Have you read The Lord of the Rings?”
“I have. Saw the old movies, too. Classics.”
John nodded and shone his spotlight up into the vault. The beam illuminated the basalt walls, bright with flecks of pyrite and studded with green seams of olivine and peridot, but the ceiling remained lost in the darkness. He heard the usual intake of breath, and smiled. He loved showing people this place. Next week he’d probably be sitting alone, looking at the inside of an office. Or, busting his ass on the docks.
“Look over here,” he said, running the light up a wall. In a cave on Mars, the massive polished stele was so incongruous many people’s first reaction was to laugh. And then go quiet.
“Local artist Lara Cho carved this image: ‘the Doors of Durin’, back in 2078, before the area was declared a national park. It’s approximately six meters high, three wide. In the Lord of the Rings...” He heard something and stopped. “Is everyone okay, back there?”
“Shit, it’s the Balrog!” Sulky-teen Piper said, her tone as dry as Mars.
There were polite titters – the parents in the group keeping the kid happy for the suffering dad. It might save them from having to endure another tantrum on the way back.
John shut them down. “Sorry, can we have quiet, please? Check in with your buddies.”
“Oh shit!” he heard. Sweat broke across his lip.
“What’s wrong...Boyd?”
“I don’t know. Tim can’t breathe.”
John moved quickly, gently pushing bodies out of the way. He swung his pack off his shoulder and knelt beside Tim, who sat, gesturing wildly. The pen for his slate was gone. His body arched with the effort to draw air.
“Boyd,” he said pointing at the gauge on Tim’s left arm. “How much oxygen has he got?”
“62%, same as me.”
John tilted up Tim’s helmet and looked at the young face, an ugly mélange of red acne spots on bluish skin. His eyes were wild. “Tim, can you hear me?”
Tim nodded.
“Can you talk?”
Tim shook his head and thumped his chest plate.
“Asthma?” Boyd shouted into his comm.
Tim shrugged, then nodded.
“Hang on, Tim, I have some reliever in my bag.” He reached in and removed a canister from the front pocket.
Tim looked at him, like he was an idiot and tapped the glass of his helmet with his fist.
“Yeah, obviously,” Boyd said to Tim. “But you have a port in your suit for emergency air refills.”
John looked at Boyd with rather more assurance than he’d felt before. He vaguely remembered the guy was a doctor of something, though not medicine. “He’s right. This also fits that port. Bend your head forward.”
They waited a few minutes after the first infusion into Tim’s air, then administered a second dose. Tim’s color improved, but he was far from alright. John didn’t like the prospect of walking him out. Though the gravity on Mars was less than half of Earth’s, EVA suits weren’t designed for piggybacking.
Mini apparently read his mind. “I can dink him on my chair,” she said to John. “I won’t speed or do wheelies.”
Tim smiled as he wheezed and gave a hearty thumbs up. John saw it for what it was. Bravado. He had a happy gasper, it just wasn’t Boyd.
“So everyone else, take five to look around, but please stay within visual range in the roped off areas and don’t take any souvenirs. You won’t get any gems through Customs, I promise.” He switched to Tim’s private channel. “Do you get many attacks like this?” There hadn’t been any mention of health problems on his med declaration. Not that that necessarily meant anything.
Tim shook his head. “Never,” he mouthed. John believed him. That was also when he realized Tim’s spots weren’t acne, they were hives.
“Right. Have you eaten anything, drunk anything you might be allergic to? Take any new meds or drugs?”
Tim frowned. There was a pause, and then he nodded lowering his eyes. He uncapped the pen John put in his hand and wrote: “Spice,” then immediately erased it with his sleeve.
John cursed under his breath. Oh joy. The kid was a gasper and a Dune freak. For some, the wonders of an alien planet weren’t enough without giant hallucinatory sand worms. The Mars Worm, Loch Ness monster of Proctor Crater, which was actually nowhere near here. That Dune was science fiction, not even set on Mars, was irrelevant. There were worm t-shirts and people wearing blue contact lenses all over town now. Vendors made a killing on the merch, especially the dealers that rebranded synth hallucinogens as ‘spice’.
The balling out Tim deserved would have to wait for someone else to do it. Not his circus.
John pulled open the pack and took out a sat phone and handed it to Boyd. “Call emergency and give them the coordinates on your GPS.” He reached back into the bag and took out an auto-injector. He looked at Tim squarely. “I think you’re having an anaphylactic reaction and this is the treatment. Luckily, these suits have another medport on your thigh. Are you okay with me injecting you?”
Tim eyed the injector like it was a ten-inch nail, which it did resemble, but nodded.
“Good. Unfortunately, as you’ve noticed, it’s a large gauge needle and yes, it will hurt. Quite a lot,” he said with plenty of schadenfreude. “These gloves are clumsy, so hold still. Don’t want to bugger up the one-way valve and wind up with an air leak, okay? Here we go.”
Tim took it without complaint. His shame was palpable enough to make John soften and remember some of the crazy trips he’d made between his own ears, a couple of decades ago. Nothing as dumb as this, though. He checked his gauge and Tim’s. Ideally, they should wait and monitor Tim’s vitals, but time was air. Panic and adrenaline had cost Tim. His O² was down to fifty-three percent.
“The paramedics are all ramped at the hospital,” Boyd said. “They said to bring him in and contact them on the way.”
John wasn’t surprised. Ramping happened a lot, particularly in tourist season. Boyd helped load Tim onto the pillion seat behind Mini. They tied his legs to the pegs with a shoulder strap taken off John’s pack. Mini reached around, patted Tim’s arm and moved his hand to her waist.
John switched comms back to the group channel. “I’m sorry everyone, we need to head back early. We’ll be issuing everyone with a complimentary meal voucher you can use in the food pavilion, and a box of Red’s Chocolate Regolith. Thanks for your understanding.”
They clapped him for a long time, and although it was virtually silent, it was heart felt.
2: Jack-Of-All-Trades
He woke tired, from a short, rough sleep. Tim had remained stable on the ride back to town, thankfully. No ambulance had come to meet them; all of the small fleet were still ramped at the hospital when John drove the bus in.
The bulldog masquerading as a Registrar wanted ID and insurance and a medical history file transfer that Tim had to manage while fighting to stay conscious. By the time John got the tour group back to his office and out of their suits, it was after seven o’clock. Then there were incident reports to write and send to his insurer. He’d set himself up for disquieting dreams when he eventually crawled in to his cabin with a belly full of leftover Red’s Regolith in lieu of dinner. Too tired to shower, he fell on the bed with the chlorinated pool whiff of Martian soil in his pores. How the stink got into a hermetically sealed suit, he could never work out.
No time for rest today, either. He yawned, rolled over and opened the blind on a pale morning. Across Olympus Town, a ship was rising into the still dark dome of the sky, making a silver contrail. Tourists were leaving en mass, the passenger ships taking advantage of the short transit back to Earth while the planets were aligned. The road toward the port was already busy with pods and buses snaking through the hotel district, around Lake Musk and the park, then out to Great Dome Airlock.
John thought he’d done pretty well financially this tourist season, but it would be a long while before the crowds were back. Astrology could accurately predict your fortunes on Mars. When the planets were out of alignment, you’d be poor. Only the uber-rich in their high-speed yachts came in the offseason. They seldom slummed it on low budget tours, like his.
He needed enough work to be able to afford rent, but enough time to write his blog and magazine articles, his other bread and butter. Good networks in the industry helped. He had an interview at ten am, Olympus time, with a mining prospector who wanted an expert on habs and vehicles, but didn’t mention where they were exploring or for how long. Unfortunately, thanks to yesterday’s debacle, he hadn’t had time to properly do his homework about the company.
First things first, he needed coffee and food.
Bed to galley was three steps across the heated stone floor. He rehydrated some scrambled tofu, scattered it with dukkah and sprouts, plating it up with a side of ridiculously expensive tomato that would probably taste like the rubber ball it resembled, but ward off scurvy. End of season, it was his tradition to make a plunger of real coffee. Next week it could be generic brand algopops with rehydrated synthmilk and the misnamed ‘Like Coffee’.
