Rescue Mission

Harrison dropped his kit bag down, carefully lowered his bulky frame into his makeshift deckchair, held his breath and listened apprehensively as the frame creaked under the strain. Satisfied it was not going to collapse he sat back until he lay outstretched facing up into the star littered night sky. Feeling along the ground with his hand he lifted up his bi-oculars, his recycled water drum and placed them on his stomach. Then he let out a long sigh of relief. 

Scanning the sky through his bi-ocular he picked out the stars he was so familiar with and murmured to himself.  

'Night after night, night after night 

We stuck, not breath or motion 

As idle as a painted ship 

Upon a painted ocean'

Wearily he dropped the bi-ocular from the sky onto the mountains, focused for a moment on shattered frame of the Ranger ship and finally, thrown into his vision, unnaturally large, the rock piled mound of Stilgoe's grave.  

Poor Stilgoe. How long had it been? Ten years? Must have been. Ten years since Stilgoe had gone. Ten years since he'd stumbled and fallen, the rock he was carrying going down with him with a dull thud snapping the bones of his rib cage as it went. He lay there blindly staring up at the night sky while his body spasmed up big blots of blood across his pale face. It took Harrison so long to get to him that by the time he'd reached down and picked up his hand he was dead. 

He'd laboriously dragged Stilgoe's body as far from where the Ranger had come down as possible. The ground was too hard to dig, it took him two days to cover him in rocks. When it was done Harrison didn't say anything, he wasn't a religious man. He'd set Stilgoe's bible at the grave's head like a miniature tombstone. Stilgoe had his name written in it, if anyone ever came to look. Harrison doubted that would ever happen. Afterward he was so exhausted he'd lain in his bunk in the wreck of the Ranger for a week before he could return to work on the landing pad.  

Stilgoe should have been more careful. 

Stilgoe wasn't a stayer. Not like him. When they'd first gone down Stilgoe had taken it hard. Never thought the Company would send a rescue ship. 'That little tin pot outfit,' he'd raged at Harrison. 'What do you think? They won't send anyone to find us. They'll pay our families off and then just write the cost off in the books. It'll be a dam sight cheaper than sending a ship out to search for us.'  

Harrison agreed about the Company but didn't say so. 'One day Stilgoe someone will come and when they do we'll be ready for them. Maybe not a Company ship, but someone. They'll not end up like we did, all smashed up on the rocks. We'll have it all ready for them. You'll see. When they come we'll be ready.' 

They'd started that day. Clearing the rocks for a landing circle. Big enough to get a decent sized rocket ship down on safely. 'We don't want them rolling up and deciding it's too dangerous for them to land Stilgoe. They'll come and look and see it's all flat and smooth and you and I will be ready. All set to go home.' 

For years they'd laboured under the eternal star lit sky. It was hard working under two and half G. Bit by bit clearing the rocks from the centre of the circle they'd marked out on the unyielding surface and piling them up in a ring round the edge. They'd made a wooden sledge and like pack animals they'd harnessed themselves up and pulled the rock laden sledge over the uneven surface. Hard, back-breaking work under the unyielding blackness of the night.  

Mind you both he and Stilgoe were built for the job. Both from good miner stock. Coming from the Outreaches they both knew a day's work when they saw it. They'd inherited the miner's features of the sort you'd see in the untamed mining towns of the Outreach planets. Short thick legs, wide shouldered and deep chested. Built to work.  

They moved in slow motion. Here you didn't run. The bones couldn't take it, especially at their age. 'Slow and steady, let's be ready,' they sang as they sweated and strained and lugged their rocks. 

They'd make it through. When a ship eventually came they'd find Harrison and Stilgoe sitting there in their circle, in their makeshift chairs. Kit bags all packed and ready to go.  

Then when Stilgoe had died he'd pushed on alone. At night he'd wake up imagining a ship hanging overhead and then seeing it wasn't safe to land turning away until all was left was a little needle point of fire receding into the night sky.  

He'd pushed on even harder. When they came he'd be ready. 

And when he'd finished he'd placed lamps around the outside and carefully marked a big white cross in the centre. Just to make sure.  

Couldn't afford to be missed. 

Whenever he woke he'd come to the circle, check the lamps and sit in his deckchair in the middle and stare at the night sky. Sipping his foul tasting recycled water he'd watch and wait. Watch and wait. 

They'd come. He knew they would. Eventually. 

He raised his bi-ocular to the night sky again. A moving light far off on the horizon. He pulled himself up in his chair. A meteor? There were plenty of meteor showers this time of year - the Saviour Showers Stilgoe had called them when they first saw them, and they'd laughed. Ten years later, tenth time round the joke was wearing a little thin. But this one was different, crawling across the night sky like a Chinese lantern caught in a cool evening's breeze. 

He sat up and adjusted the electric magnification, the light jumped into focus then out again as he jiggled the focus with his clumsy figures. The fire trail was burnt orange, too orange to be a meteor, too slow to be a meteor. 

He struggled up out of the chair his drink falling discarded on the ground. Then he picked the light out again. His pulse increased, his breath shortened. The light flickered in the haze of the atmosphere, then its trail kinked. It had changed course! Wide eyed he watched as it turned and began to move toward him. He dropped the bi-oculars and began to wave his arms in the air. Then slowly he sunk to his knees, covered his face and wept. 

He was going home.

    **** 

'Harrison and Stilgoe it said,' the flight engineer recalled the information he'd checked earlier. 'They were employees of some amateur mining exploration outfit. Listed as killed in an accident twenty years ago. They claimed on the insurance the bastards. Didn't even send anyone out to look for them.' He tapped one of the dials with his knuckles. 'Some little kid bought their records at a garage sale last year and the micros showed they didn't crash and die they were just lost while off on an exploration jaunt.'  

'Hey, we're coming down a lot quicker than I thought. It's this dam gravity. Give it a sixty second blast, will you.' The captain hauled himself off his seat and slumped back. 'Can you feel that? I can hardly get out of my seat. Those two must be tough little buggers to have survived this long.' 

'Right, sixty seconds,' the engineer flipped the switch and turned his head and watched through the porthole. The mountains glowed amber in the blast, the broken mining ship flickered an eerie red. 

'There's the ship.' The Captain yelled over the noise of the after burners. 'Looks like it took one on landing. That's probably why they got stuck here!' 

The engineer flipped the switch off. The cabin was suddenly quiet. 'Well I guess that's why they sorted the landing pad out for us.' 

'I'll say one thing for these guys, they're not stupid. They've planned for this. That's one hell of a job in these conditions.'  

The engineer edged warily down the steps of the ladder, it wasn't far but a fall could be life threatening. Stepping onto the surface he paused and rested against the ladder. The weight of his body pulled his shoulders down contracting his chest making it hard to breath. Carefully he turned and shuffled forward across the pad. Around him the rock still smouldered black from the rocket burn.  

Seeing something on the ground he knelt down and lifted it up, his legs trembling under the strain. It was an old bi-ocular, still hot, its frame twisted and burnt. He flung it back onto the ground. 

'Well?' The captain yelled from the cabin.  

'Funny thing is. That life sign signal I had earlier on.'  

'Yes.'  

'Well it seems to have disappeared.'

The rhyme Harrison sings at the beginning is adapted from 'The Rime of the Ancient Mariner' where all the crew of a cursed ship die except one who is dammed to wonder the world forever.