Keystone

 “Lieutenant, is everything OK?” he said.

Up to this part, Martín had always been able to hear everything. The section that he had not been able to decipher was about to begin. He leant forward in his chair, as if being closer to the screen would help.  Neither person’s lips could be seen, so even if he had been able to lip-read, it would have been useless. Pressing the headphones hard against his ears, he listened intently.

The sound was terrible, but he still managed to get several syllables.  He stopped the video and played the section back, writing down the bits he could hear on a piece of paper in front of him.  Stopping the video again, he looked down at what he had written:

“I…it…is…an…shoe…Sir….wood…ree…with…thing…less.. was…tain.”

It didn’t make any sense, but he circled the word ‘Sir’, as the only whole word he was sure of; the Chinese Lieutenant was by far the most polite of all the crew members, and always used formal forms of communication.

He was about to play the video again when there was a light tap on his shoulder.

“Still nothing?” Jacqueline asked sympathetically.

He removed the headphones and turned to face her. “Not yet, I’m afraid, but I am getting there, I have half a sentence.”

He passed her the piece of paper with the scribbled, fragmented sentence and she took it with interest, reading through it several times before passing it back to him. “My English is not very good, but I’m pretty sure that means nothing at all,” she smiled at him. “You look tired, Martín, take a break and let me show you something.”

It was raining in the darkness outside, the day’s clear skies long forgotten. He checked his watch and saw that he had been sitting at his desk watching various feeds from the Clarke for over eight hours. It was ten o’clock in the evening, and it had already been a long night.

“OK,” he said standing up reluctantly. “What have you found?”

Chapter 17

Montreaux sat in the Command Module and looked at the closed hatch that led to the pod that would take them to the surface of Mars. Stencilled across the hatch in military font were the letters “M.L.P.”: Mars Lander Pod. A plan was forming in his mind, but he knew it wasn’t a very good one.

Wait until we land on Mars, he thought to himself, and the nanostations will be left behind. The little flying stations only functioned in zero gravity, and would therefore not follow the crew down.  On-board the MLP there were fixed monitoring stations, dotted around the pod and its exterior, that would send streams of data back to the Clarke and Earth, but he could already imagine a situation where he would be alone with the Lieutenant and be able to have a conversation in private; it depended on them both leaving the landing site in protective suits, a normal part of the mission plan, and travelling far enough to be out of range of the MLP’s shortwave ante

As he listed all of the problems facing such a scenario, the thought that the plan was not very good grew, until he was ready to scrap the idea completely.

And what if it’s too late? The look on Su Ning’s face the previous night had been with him ever since. What if whatever is worrying her is too big to be left another six weeks?

His mind was reeling. He had never usually been impressed by conspiracy theories, but the pieces were begi

And then, as if that cryptic message wasn’t enough, the inexplicable behaviour of Mission Control. Surely if Su Ning has a problem it is as important to them as it is to us?

He needed space. Space to think, and the Command Module simply wasn’t giving it to him; he knew that at that moment, as many as twenty nanostations could be watching his every move, every blink, every bead of sweat. He looked in the air around him and fancied he could make out the movement of a couple of them, like twenty first century mosquitoes, except that they didn’t bite. Or did they? He laughed to himself, now he felt crazy, and probably looked it too.

He shifted in his seat, ru

In the dark! Nightmode! With the majority of the nanostations inactive, he only had one per module to avoid.

He unclipped himself and carefully made for the exit.  The short tu

On the opposite side of the room, Lieutenant Su Ning was sitting on the sofa, playing cards with Captain Marchenko.  She looked over her cards at him as he entered the room, her eyes showing candour that he had never before seen.

“I see your twenty and raise you fifty!” Marchenko told her.

The brief moment of understanding between the Chinese woman and Montreaux dissipated instantly as she returned to her game with the Russian.

“I see you for fifty, Captain Marchenko,” she said flatly, laying three sixes and two aces on the table.

“Full House? No way!” he complained, before showing his hand. “It’s a good thing I had four of these, isn’t it?” He laughed at the look of dismay on Su Ning’s face as he placed the set of kings on the table carefully. “Do I win?” he asked cheekily.

Su Ning pushed her chips across to him, catching one that had left the table’s surface and was now spi

Montreaux pushed across to the sofa and clipped himself in between the Russian and Su Ning.

“Mind if I play?”

Chapter 18

Martín gripped the Styrofoam coffee cup in his hand and looked down into the dark swirl of liquid that the machine had given him. It smelt like coffee, but he knew from experience that it carried a bitter metallic aftertaste.

Sitting down in front of him, Jacqueline had been typing and clicking at her computer for five minutes now, in silence. He barely understood half of the functions she was using, and the other half may as well have been in Hebrew for all he knew. Her work was punctuated by short sighs and clicks of the tongue when what she was trying to achieve didn’t work. She would then try another method, still without saying a word.

Eventually, she pushed her chair away from the desk and looked up at Martín, who was standing behind her.

“There. What do you think?” she said triumphantly.

He looked up from the depths of his drink and squinted at the screen. He took a step towards her desk. The display was split into two sections, left and right. Ru