The Pegasus Pulp Sampler

III. Touchdown-1

III. Touchdown

* * * *

The hyperspace alarm roused Brian Mayhew from an uneasy slumber on the small couch in his office. He supposed he could have gone to his quarters to crash instead, but he didn’t want to give the impression that he was sleeping during a mission, especially not one as harrowing as this. Besides, the way to the bridge was shorter.

And so Mayhew arrived on the bridge, still buttoning up the coat of his uniform, just as the Fearless Explorer emerged from hyperspace.

“We’ve arrived at Jagellowsk, sir,” the pilot, Lieutenant Haruto Masuhiro, announced quite unnecessarily. As always, his black hair flopped into his face in defiance of fleet regulations.

Mayhew settled in the captain’s seat, just as Natalya Shepkova vacated it.

“Put the planet on the viewscreen, will you?” he ordered.

What struck Mayhew most was how ordinary it all looked. The oceans were blue, the land green. The stalk of a space elevator rose from one of the two continents, a flotilla of satellites was orbiting the planet and nothing, absolutely nothing suggested that this world of two billion people would cease to exist within the next few hours.

Only the amount of travel out of the system was uncommon. Every functional ship on the planet was blasting off, probably crammed to the rafters with refugees. And it still wouldn’t be enough.

Mayhew cast a sideways glance at Natalya, who was standing beside him as always, when they were both on the bridge at the same time. Her face was pale, she was trembling and a single tear she probably wasn’t even aware of was running down her cheek.

“If you’d rather retire to your quarters…” Mayhew said to her, keeping his voice so low that the rest of the bridge crew wouldn’t overhear.

Natalya shook her head. “No, I can manage. I have to manage.”

Mayhew turned to the sensor console

“Ensign Hoogeveen, give me the seismic readings for planetary coordinates 40�09’14” North, 76�43’29” West,” Mayhew ordered.

“Seismic shocks from 5.9 up to 8.5 at intervals of under an hour,” Ensign Willem Hoogeveen reported, cheeks glowing rosy and blonde hair neatly slicked back.

Mayhew exchanged a glance with Natalya. In the end, they didn’t even have to lie. If the scientists at the Kosiolkovsky Lab were still alive, they wouldn’t be for very much longer.

“I declare the location too dangerous to land,” Mayhew said. He turned to the comm officer, a dark-skinned woman with cornrows. “Lieutenant Elewa, please inform the Admiralty that landing at the designated coordinates is impossible. We will instead assist with the civilian evacuation efforts.”

Mayhew turned back to Hoogeveen. “Ensign, please give me the seismic readings for…”

He broke off, when he realised that he did not have the coordinates of the city Natalya had suggested, a city whose name he had already forgotten.

“Coordinates 51�24’17” North, 30�03’25” East,” Natalya supplied.

“Seismic shocks between 3.8 and 5.1 at intervals of about thirty minutes to an hour,” Hoogeveen reported.

Mayhew and Natalya exchanged another glance and a nod.

“All right.” Mayhew turned to the navigator, a striking young woman with light brown skin and black hair pulled back into a tight braid. “Lieutenant Farahani, set course for Struga…” Damn, he’d forgotten the name again.

Once more, Natalya came to his rescue. “Strugatsky, planetary coordinates 51�24’17” North, 30�03’25” East.”

“Lieutenant Elewa, please contact the local authorities in Strugatsky…” At last, he’d gotten the name right this time. “…inform them that we’re here to assist with evacuation procedures and request landing coordinates.”

Lieutenant Safiri Elewa made the call and Mayhew settled back in his chair, as the Fearless Explorer began her descent towards the doomed planet below.

“Sir…” Lieutenant Elewa turned to him, eyes wide in her dark face. “…I’m in contact with the emergency department of Strugatsky. They say that all their landing pads are full at the moment and ask us to divert to someplace called Solonitsyn instead, where they have a large number of refugees but no evacuation craft.”

Mayhew turned to Natalya. “What do you think?”

“Solonitsyn is a smaller city, maybe fifty thousand people, directly in the middle of the rich agrarian lands of the East Continent,” Natalya said, her voice as emotionless as if she were rattling off an entry in the Encyclopaedia Galactica. Maybe, Mayhew reflected, this was her way of coping with the horror of it all.

Three hundred thousand or fifty thousand people, it made no difference. They could never evacuate that many.

“Solontyn…”

“Solonitsyn,” Natalya corrected.

“…it is then,” Mayhew said, “Lieutenant Elewa, please contact the respective authorities and request landing coordinates for Solonitsyn. Lieutenant Farahani, alter the course accordingly. Lieutenant Masuhiro, get us there as quickly as possible.”

The Solonitsyn authorities directed them to an agrarian shuttleport outside the city limits, since it turned out that the city did not even have a spaceport.

The shuttleport had clearly never been intended to handle spacecraft, let alone a craft of the size of the Fearless Explorer, and so Masuhiro, Farahani and Hoogeveen had exercise all their combined skills to safely bring down the vessel.

But in the end, the Fearless Explorer did touch down. The landing was a little bumpy, but that might just have been due to the steadily increasing quakes that were shaking the planet, until it would finally break apart.

“Ensign Hoogeveen, keep an eye on the seismic readings.” Mayhew turned to his pilot ad navigator. “Lieutenant Masuhiro, Lieutenant Farahani, stand by for immediate take-off, if necessary.”

Haruto Masuhiro and Shirin Farahani saluted as one. “Yes, sir.”

“Masuhiro, you have the bridge.”

Mayhew activated the ship-com. “Crew, this is the captain speaking. Stand by to commence evacuation procedures. You all know the drill, so let’s do this. Let’s save some lives.”

But not enough. Never enough.