Too Bright the Sun

Part 4

As I left the mess for my cabin with a grin on my face, some of the officers were still arguing over something but again I ignored them. Closing my door I put the ruby ring, a present from Jena, on my second finger on my left hand and yawned before putting on the headband and saying, “Download.” I skipped the message from Jena but played again the message from my mother:

“A peculiar thing happened the other day. I was in the main terminal, collecting your cousin, when this army type, tall, dark-haired and good-looking, tapped me on the shoulder and asked for directions to Frisco South. Well, it is really obvious to anybody with a modicum of intelligence, it's right there on the board, so I was suspicious. I thought, forgive your old mother for being vain but I thought that maybe he was chatting me up so I humoured him. We chatted for a few minutes actually. He asked me what it was like living on J5 and then he asked if I knew any other army types. I thought perhaps I should say that I didn’t know any at all but he seemed so charming so I mentioned you. He asked about you and I really felt quite uncomfortable at this point. He seemed far too interested in you so I cut it short. He was polite enough and I didn’t think too much of it. The funny thing though was that he was unshaven and looked as if he had been sitting there for days. He had shiny glasses on so I couldn’t see his eyes but there seemed to be something familiar about him. I couldn’t place him though. Perhaps I have seen him in a paper or something. Anyway I wouldn’t have thought any more about it but two days later, I could swear I saw him again loitering on a street corner while I was doing the shopping. I could be wrong. Do take care. Love Mum x”

I lay on the bed and closed my eyes.

***

The Ionian day is 42.5 hours so the next time I woke up it was still the same Ionian ‘day.’ We marked time in Earth hours and dates followed those of Earth but we divided the Ionian ‘day’ into two 21.25 hour ‘working’ days, too short for the human clock to endure for long periods. This time when I awoke, it would have been dusk outside if I had put the monitor on and left it on ‘Real Time.’ Final arrangements had to be made with Stone before I left for the USAC Station 5, in orbit around Jupiter, not far from the orbit of Io, where I had been invited by Roanald to take part in the planning meeting for the operation at Ruwa.

“Stone. I am leaving for S.5 within the hour. I want you to prepare the MCS for exit tomorrow morning. Something has come up and I am not sure we will leave tomorrow but best be ready.”

“Yes sir!” He swiped a salute at me, grinning. I guessed he had some idea it was something to do with the intel from Smith.

The shuttle was prepared for me and as the rockets fired, lifting the shuttle against Io’s weak gravity, I looked down at the grey MCS, settled on the only plateau in a flat sea of sulphur, which stretched for hundreds of miles. I looked at Jupiter, orange bands around a creamy sphere filling half of the view from the port with my face pressed close, and looked for S.5 but I couldn’t make it out from this distance.

As the little craft drew away from the little moon I became aware of the Io Flux Tube, a glowing torus of green, blue and orange light wrapped around the orbit of Io. A field of highly charged particles, it made radio-silence a necessity while escaping the little moons weak atmosphere.

After four hours strapped into the tight space of the shuttle, I saw the lights of Station 5, twinkling in the night.

“Major. What is your opinion?” asked a bald colonel with a salt-and-pepper moustache, on the opposite side of the large black granite table in the lavish Ops Room. The convention seemed to be to stand up when speaking, more I felt to assert one’s self in this room of giant egos than for auditory reasons, so I stood up.