"And I'm taking away a zero..." Marlon hovered his finger over the key dramatically.
"No! Hell. Fine. Look, the reason the X1 and X2 crashed wasn't because of the pilots, not really. They lived through the mission. But the speed, it wrecked them at the end. They couldn't land on their own. They could take off, take a little Luna trip just fine, even at those speeds. I've...I've done it myself. Part of the X2 testing."
I knew it. I knew it! "So it's possible."
"Yeah, but even a short Luna trip did things. It screws with your perception, with your thinking." I knew exactly what he was talking about. The rubber band feeling, when your brain said you should, by all rights, be in one place and your eyes were saying that you were somehow in another. Nothing would make sense. It would be like when the Condor would jump or tunnel, only worse. Alone. Like jumping through the fah'ti.
Marlon pushed a button. "One zero added. Now tell us how he does it and lives and I'll add another."
"You can't get past the gas anywhere in the passenger compartments, but it will be much less in the cockpit. Law mandates we have two jump seats in the pit for humans in case intervention is necessary."
"Has it ever been?"
"No. Not on the X3. Sixty two reliable flights with no problems."
"Won't the bots notice him?"
"They're drones. They fly. They can't talk, can't hear. They have environ sensors, of course, but only set to mark critical changes."
"Is it breathable in there?"
"Yes. It's unnecessarily expensive and pointless to seal it off. Plus, like I said, it has to be inhabitable by humans by law, just in case. It'll be cold, though. No point in heating it. And some gas will get through."
"How much?"
He gave an almost manic little laugh. "How should I know? Like I said, it hasn't been done. It's not a vac in there. It would stand to reason that some gas..." he waved a hand in a helpless little gesture as his voice trailed off.
"Are there masks?"
His eyes went a little wider, as if he never thought of that. "Yes! Emergency ones. In the passenger compartment they only release in emergencies, but the pit has two secured to the walls."
"Does the gas flow the whole trip?" Marlon asked. It was an excellent question.
"No. That would kill a man. The sprayers start two minutes after take off. The gas only sprays through the system for three minutes, but I'd give it a good ten minutes with the mask on to make sure the gas has been cleared from the filters. It'll go off again ten hours and fifty eight minutes after it stops spraying."
Marlon snorted. "That seems really specific."
"It has to be. It's a fine line between too little and too much. We've been using the gas on the three day transports for years. Completely different set up, since it has human pilots and a sealed pit, but same idea. If you're really hellbent on this plan, then you gotta remember that. Ten hours and fifty eight minutes after it stops the first time, you get juiced again."
"So if I breathe in the mask for, say, twenty minutes at the beginning, then set my holo to warn me..."
"Unless you're being tortured." He put his hand on my arm. "I'm giving this warning to you man to man. If something goes wrong, or if you can't take it, or if you're just blitzed out of your mind by then...that second gas, just let it happen. Let it take you away." I could see it meant a lot for him to think I had that back up plan. He didn't look like a man getting paid for secret info in that moment. He looked like a friend, or a father. "Will you at least promise me you'll use it if you need it?" Then he swore before I could answer. "I shouldn't be doing this!" He looked like he was in legitimate pain.
"Keep your eyes on the prize," Marlon said coldly.
I shot him a frown. "Bert, I promise you this is absolutely necessary. It's a matter of life and death." He quirked an eyebrow. "There is someone on the end of the line that needs me." Or I need her. "And I have to get to her quick and quiet and if I don't...well I can't even think about what's going to happen if I don't. I'm not paying you to help me die. I'm paying you to help her live."
A look of understanding crossed his face. "She worth dying for, then, is she?"
Yes. "No, it's not...it's complicated. I'm not going to die," I insisted quickly. "I promise, if I can't hack it, I'll keep the mask on for the second gassing."
He looked at me for a minute. Marlon went to hit the button to add another zero to the long line of credits we added to Bert's account, but he held his hand up. "That's enough. I'm not a greedy man, Mr. Cosworth."
I shrugged. "It's just money."
He gave a snort. Marlon added some anyway. "Nah, the space monkey means it," he assured Bert. "You should see what he's paying me!"
"Are you going, too?"
Marlon nodded, putting his holo away.
"So you're both insane?"
Marlon put his hands up. "No way. I'm getting good and gassed. I want to make sure to be around to spend all his credits."
Bert pointed at him. "You should listen to your friend."
Two and a half hours later, after we took off, strapped in the emergency seat in the cold cockpit with my panicked mind trying hard to ignore the enormous physical and mental pressure, his words drifted through my head over and over. I should have listened to my friend.
No! I needed to get there, and I needed to get there sane. The constant pressure on my body was just that. It was just the g-force of traveling so quickly. It wasn't enough to kill me. My mind only thought so because of the feeling of leaving something, leaving part of myself behind. It wasn't real. It was a trick, and one I knew. My brain just had to remember.
Concentrate, I told myself. Concentrate on one thing, one small thing. A piece of me. I just needed to picture myself. I was in a ship. I was traveling from point A to point B. I was moving very quickly. It was real. It was happening. I left nothing behind. It was all there, all with me.
Time blurred, as it will at those speeds. Everything blurred, as it will at those speeds. The clicking sounds of the drone bots going about their endless list of flight checks and course corrections and accelerations and decelerations around the known and unknown asteroids sounded slow and hollow. Their movements seemed to be suspended, or sped up according to the accelerations and decelerations the ship made. I looked out the window. Or what they called a window. Of course in a craft this fast it couldn't be a real window made of glass, or plastic, or one of the newer translucent alloys. It was solid, as solid as the rest of the fuselage. What we saw was the live feed of minute cameras on the ship. A movie, only a real one. I focused on that. There was a dot in the center that slowly grew. So slowly. Almost too slowly to notice unless some debris or asteroid or random illuminated dust mote flashed by. Then the very stillness of the dot contrasted and made it seem bigger.
Mars. Utopia. Her.
I willed myself to focus on it. I convinced myself the sounds I was hearing were on the Condor. I told myself I was strapped in my jump seat with Dad at my side and Mother strapped in the labs to make sure her experiments lived. Not that she could have done a thing about them if something went wrong. Even if she could have unstrapped, the g-force alone would keep her riveted in place. But I suppose it made her jumps through the holes and chutes easier. The knowledge of Dad being right beside me, that's what eased mine.
He was there with me on the X3. In my mind, at least. Isn't that all that really matters?
I could even hear his voice. "This one's a baddy, eh kiddo?" He'd joke. He'd laugh. His voice would reach me in distorted waves that were more silly than scary as a kid. "Hang on. I mean, it can't last forever, right? Or maybe it can. Do you suppose we'll be in this flushing toilet for the rest of our lives? Boy, wouldn't that be something!" Dad has a weird sense of humor. It must have rubbed off on me because I always laughed at his odd and usually inappropriate jokes.