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= NEBULA EXPRESS =

a DarkSF novel

by John Argo

Page 17.

Lantz shook her head. "I think it's all just the way we see it. Why would the lights turn on-you mean, like someone is turning them on?"

Ridge shook his head. "No, more like it's automatic. Like there was no reason for them to be on until we came."

"Because there was nobody here until we came," Tomson added with a sardonic tone. "I'm becoming a pessimist. Someone please help me." One or two persons laughed, and Lantz punched him lightly on the arm.

The platform followed its track along the curving, increasingly bright, but still barren walls, into a dark tunnel that led into the bow area. The platform slowed as it entered a long, dark area that resembled an outdoor trolley stop complete with benches, overhead lights (now dim), and billboard schedules and announcements. The platform made several lurching motions and stopped. "We're here," Tomson said simply, and Ridge echoed: "That's as far as we go." He turned to the others and said: "Stay close together. The bow section is smaller, but it's full of small quarters and narrow passages. If we keep making our way forward, we are bound to reach the CP. If our luck holds, we could be safely in the CP with Captain Venable in just an hour or two."

"Yes!" several persons exclaimed. A few high-fived. The group stepped onto the more solid steel platform. They had mixed looks of relief and apprehension. Ridge understood their feelings. It was a relief to be out of the cargo holds and to have gotten this far. It was a feeling of apprehension to think of what new and unpleasant surprises might await them here, because it was quiet and there was no sign of life. They waited a minute or two on the platform, listening to the hum of air circulators, the soft crackle of fluorescent lights, the muted banging of metal as the platform they'd arrived on cooled and settled in its berth. Each time a relay slammed shut, a metallic clang traveled through the shimmering corridors with their highly polished floors. Each time a thermocouple closed or a sensor triggered some change of state, like time to turn on or off an air vent or a climate control duct, Ridge and his companions jumped. When Neptune Express docked, she brought with her an entire industrial capability including factories, hangars, offices, and an internal trolley system that seamlessly linked with the local one. On a busy day in port, thousands of workers might stream through here. The ship would dock in the external secondary moons of Luna or L-5, and an army of workers and officials would get her ready for her next journey-hence the trolley station. A smaller but no less excited flurry of motion and bustling humanity would erupt when Neptune Express docked at Triton, which hopefully would be soon.

"This way," Ridge said, pointing to the widest corridor leading forward. The group gladly followed him. "Look!" Jerez exclaimed, pointing to a huge image in a wall between two pillars. The image glowed with a lovely blue light against the black backdrop of space. The image looked much like any of the live action shots they'd become accustomed to seeing during their earlier days of passage. Neptune had a light, almost happy blue glow. As the legend inscribed digitally on the glowing signboards related, Neptune was slightly over 30 times as far from the sun as Earth, averaging nearly five billion kilometers or nearly 2.8 billion miles from the sun. Neptune measured roughly 156,000 km around its equator, or almost 97,000 miles. As a gas giant, it had a mass roughly one third that of Earth. It had about 58 times the volume of Earth, and just under 15 times the surface area if one could call the outer edge of its gaseous, wispy atmosphere a surface. An astronaut floating there would appear to weigh about one and one sixth as much as he or she would on Earth. If that sounded hospitable, the next fact quickly shot down any hope of comfort: the hydrogen, helium, and methane based atmosphere stayed at a chilly minus 214 degrees Centigrade or minus 353 degrees Fahrenheit.

"Those pictures are so beautiful," Jerez said with a tear in one eye.

"Aren't they though," Tomson said shaking his head.

"Almost feels like we're halfway back to normal," Ridge said with a grin. He recalled the warmth and comfort of WorkPod01 as he remembered it. He remembered how good it had felt to crawl into his warm bunk and snuggle up in the privacy of his dreams in his down sleeping bag. It occurred to him that he wasn't tired at all yet, though they'd been on the go for hours now, and stressed to their utmost with several horrid deaths. He should be mentally, physically, and spiritually exhausted, but he wasn't.

"Look, there is Triton," Brenna said, pointing. Ridge noticed that she had the faintest lisp, for there was a tiny gap between her upper front teeth. The more he saw of her, the more he longed to be with her. The feeling was so strong that he wasn't fighting it anymore. His wife Dorothy was a distant condition right now, a possibility rather than a factor. If they ever got back home alive, he might tell her about Brenna, or he might not. Maybe when the world got back to normal, he'd wonder what he had ever seen in his soft-faced young woman with her wine-dark hair and eyes a darker blue than the dangerous atmosphere of Neptune. Ridge shook these thoughts away. His gaze followed her pale, pointing finger toward an image of Triton rising over the cusp of the eighth planet. Both worlds glowed with distant sunlight, and the faint rings of Neptune curved like a veil uniting them. Triton's diameter was 2,705 kilometers (1,623 miles), compared with Luna's approximately 3,476 kilometers or 2,086 miles. Triton's thin nitrogen atmosphere glowed grayish-white above the Sea God's blue atmosphere. Neptune looked deceptively Earth-like in these images, but Triton's surface temperature at minutes 391 Fahrenheit made it the coldest spot in the solar system.

"I don't like it in there," Yu said. Ridge looked in the direction Yu was looking. "The corridors are too empty, too quiet," Yu said.

"Yeah, it's scary," Jerez said. Her teeth audibly chattered. Her eyes were large and scared.

"We'll wait here," Yu said. "I have the gun."

"We shouldn't split up," Tomson said.

"Let's all go together," Ridge said. He felt sorry for Jerez, but Yu was beginning to really irritate him and he almost welcomed the idea of parking the bio-engineer someplace until he could sort out what was going on.

"We'll stay here and guard our retreat," Jerez said with false cheer.

"What retreat?" Tomson said. "There is no way back out there that I can see."

"Back to WorkPod01," Yu said seriously. "That's the only place we know."

"That's home," Jerez said vehemently. "We're staying here."

Ridge and Tomson exchanged looks. Tomson shrugged, seeming to say 'let's get on with it.' Ridge rolled it around in his head. He had no real authority, just a thankless position as Senior Engineer. "Okay," Ridge said. "You call your own shots. We'll keep in touch on the collar mikes."

Jerez touched the large black button clipped to the edge of her collar by her throat. "We'll hold the fort over here. If you find the Captain, give us a holler and we'll come running."

Reluctantly, Ridge gathered his diminished team together. Tomson, Brenna, and Lantz. "Anyone else want to stay?" he asked halfheartedly. They shook their heads. "We're sticking with you," Lantz said. Together, they marched off down the wide central corridor. The corridor itself curved, so that they had limited visibility under its constantly low ceiling, but they could see through strategically placed windows. In the distance, they made out a trolley station on the opposite hull. Part of a white tubular object protruded-the nose end of a high-speed rail car. This must be the internal, working rail line, Ridge thought, and that the commercial, fancy one for docking purposes. Once they were away from their station of egress, there were no more ceiling panels to look through, and Ridge became nervous about the limited visibility.

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