《White Map Of Mars》


 Chapter 1

    Chapter 1.


    The small sun, slightly more than half the size of the Earth''s, was sinking toward the horizon. However, it still hung in that part of the sky that was blue-black even at midday. This was the so-called daytime circumzenith. Part of the glazing of the dome, which was not a dome at all, but a rectangular hangar in plan, faced the western part of the horizon, which was beginning to turn red. The reflections of this nascent sunset fell on faces, painting them copper-colored. On earth, such combinations of sky colors and sunlight were not to be found, except perhaps in the inaccessible mountains. Here, however, this was how the third quarter of each day looked.


    The crowd roared approvingly once again - this was a practiced reaction to Doctor Heller expressing his next thought.


    - What a herd! - Somerset thought angrily and casually glanced to the left, where this Radcliffe, the "leader", stood, in the previous life of the settlement an ordinary Senior Specialist, now turned into a rabid activist.


    - We are not leaving after the meeting! - the "leader", who liked to make such unnecessary reminders of the vanity, shouted through the noise, noticing Somerset''s glance.


    - Yes, I remember, - Somerset responded, barely managing to fit into the pause in Doctor Heller''s speech, once again telling about his circle of history, or rather, a turn of the spiral.


    The nearest door, one of several leading from the dome to the perimeter gallery, was located a couple of dozen meters away. There was a screen hanging approximately there, in the corner of which there was a line with a digital clock. We should have waited another ten minutes and then...


    - It''s not the first time I''ve said that we are the ones who have found ourselves in the face of what illuminated humanity several thousand years ago, - Heller started up again, - The time has come for a new antiquity. We are the ones who have had the chance to build a true democracy. The history of humanity has described a circle of incredible proportions. Or rather, it has made a turn in the spiral of development. In ancient cities, which gave rise to the very concept of "democracy", the socio-political process was determined by a very small group of city citizens. They literally knew each other by sight. Well, or through one handshake. If there was inequality between them, it was dictated exclusively by merit. Any wicked person, be it a swindler or another criminal, was simply expelled. Yes, they did not exist on self-sufficiency - that society was slave-owning. But no matter how cynical it may sound now, slaves were not included in that picture - they were simply not considered people. Of course, it was terrible. But what remained in the memory of descendants was not that society as such, but an image. An image that they wanted to be equal to, but could not jump to that height. And so, humanity described a turn in its historical orbit and now we are here, armed with an unimaginable fleet of machinery. I am convinced that we can easily equal those titans of the ancient past. With an image. In the minds of generations of descendants, this was a society where an ordinary citizen was often able to immortalize his name for centuries. And in fact, this was true in reality.


    everyone is excited about the idea of participating in these exploits of yours? - Somerset answered mentally.


    - If some miracle had torn those ancient heroes from the shackles of their primitive existence and given them our machinery in exchange for slaves, then we would have emerged, - Heller continued.


    - I need a miracle too. A miracle that will tear my ass out of the shackles of your fucking idea. Minutes on the screen replaced each other. The door located under the screen led to just such a miracle, to escape. To its, escape''s, starting point.


    - This Civil War would be better, but on Earth, with trees, earthly air and even dirt after the rain. And if you love your hardware so much, then love it without me. And each other in all sorts of combinations ... - Somerset continued the aimless mental discussion, - Be everything you want.


    - Humanity, remaining on Earth, has long been mired in vices that were inevitable on the path to formation, - Doctor Heller continued, - With the course of development, it could get rid of them much more effectively, but we see a different result. Nevertheless, we should be grateful to him in a historical sense, and we do not intend to break with him under any circumstances. We will simply leave. We will not leave forever. Despite all this, we will ascend and have already ascended to a truly new level. We are forming our own habitat outside the Earth and are capable of providing for our own existence completely. Each of us is given such a fleet of machinery and such energy resources that are unthinkable for any inhabitant of the Earth, except perhaps for representatives of top business, but they also manage these capacities indirectly, through chains of countless intermediary managers. With us, every second, then third person is capable of designing and building a new production facility. We are a new stage of evolution. If not in the biological sense, then in the social and simply mental sense.


    As for production, that was true. As a result, directives came from above, from the leaders of the rebellion, to set up production of their own military equipment. On Earth, the military-industrial complex has always been something elite, closed, but here the matter was entrusted to the first comers. Fortunately, everyone was a high-class engineer, with the exception of doctors - their task was to treat others, and not to build or extract. As for the rest, even for rations, for the most part, no cooks were responsible, but appointed duty officers.


    As for the newly-minted weapons, the competence of those making decisions made mixed impressions. If anti-missiles, which had not yet been developed, were something rational, then wheeled armored vehicles seemed like a complete relic. Nevertheless, such a decision was made.


    The unit of activist Radcliffe, which included Somerset, the same Senior Specialist as this newly-minted leader, was busy with armored vehicles. More precisely, it would have been the very beginning - the design and construction of production buildings. The very design of armored vehicles was a completely stupid copying of the templates of the Earth army, which had long ago turned into a global police force, capable only of suppressing an incomparably weak enemy. Suppressing an enemy like the dictatorships of the "yellow map" that had risen up for another rebellion or demarche, that is, that part of the planet''s map that was populated by penniless people who had not emerged from the pre-industrial twentieth or twenty-first centuries. That was the life of Earth. The life of the settlement, which developed from the first landing site in 2275 and then for forty-five years, was, in general, something worthy. Everyone knew why they had flown here and upon returning, they received what they had earned. But that was before the rebellion. The new, rebellious organization of the labor resource, when people were recruited for various types of work in their free time, copied certain practices that had taken place in those unfavorable centuries. This is what the Bolsheviks did - a radical faction of communists who turned the entire history of the twentieth century upside down. This was told by, if not a friend, then a good buddy of Somerset, Dolbin, an Engineer-Lieutenant. He was a great connoisseur of such historical details, although at the same time he was also a fan of adding his own version. The latter did not cancel out the fact that he showed himself to be much more reasonable than most. Like Somerset, this reasonable man also had no desire to end his days here, in this world alien to human nature. Heller continued his chatter, which was occasionally joined by a barely audible buzzing - a pair of drones with large-format cameras were dangling under the glass dome. In general, the goal of this latest gathering was not only and not so much to process the brains of the two or three hundred people present, but to shoot another video version, which was to be distributed to all almost fifty thousand people. That was the population of the colony object, including about a thousand personnel who were in orbital space. There were some of those too - there was something to mine in orbit - Phobos was being gutted, taking out osmium, hafnium and ytterbium, which made up a significant portion of the meteorites that had once flown into it. Several hundred people were working on orbital construction - the smaller Deimos was now flying with a multi-kilometer openwork farm seemingly stuck into it - the celestial body was being used as a stabilizing load for the station under construction for growing large single crystals.


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    Finally, the time Somerset was aiming for had come. Slowly turning around, he moved to the right, towards the door. People began to slowly part one after another.


    "Where are you going?" Jennifer''s voice was heard behind her as she entered the unit. She was no less a fanatical activist than Radcliffe himself. - Toilet, - Somerset said quietly, turning around.


    - Oh, okay, - she answered, seeming embarrassed, or rather feigning embarrassment.


    - Thank you for allowing me, - Somerset thought angrily, continuing his movement toward the treasured door.


    When a couple of doors of this standard airlock closed, Somerset finally breathed a sigh of relief. Now he was standing in the middle of a deserted corridor of the perimeter gallery. Along the way, Somerset had a rather extravagant thought that something like this had already happened in his life. Indeed, he had the same feeling, one must think, with adrenaline, in his distant childhood, when he had also made rather unsuccessful attempts to sneak out of classes. Or rather, from additional classes, and lessons too. Instead of Dr. Heller, there was a not quite normal teacher who intended, and most importantly, somehow received permission to conduct classes on all that Indian devilry. World ancient culture, damn it. The teacher, judging by the later, adult analysis of memories, was inclined to smoke, which she should not. It was noteworthy that there was also an analogue of these activists back then, in childhood. Moreover, those very same, as Dolbin, who had a virtuoso skill of expression, would have put it, "horned devils", just like young Somerset, did not show much desire to stay at school longer than required. And at the same time they prevented his escapes. Such was apparently human nature. On the other hand, who would have thought that this was a real training session, which very young Somerset had invented and arranged for himself. Now, much more was at stake than the prospect of choosing to leave or lose an extra hour and a half. Now, we were talking about long years of vegetating for no one knows what, if not about the whole life spent here. When Somerset signed the contract, he clearly understood why he needed it, and this ... A person can go to great lengths and endure a lot if he knows what it is all for. But if thoughtlessly, but in cahoots with the rest, if for the sake of some beautiful words - this is real madness. Less than a couple of minutes after the airlock doors closed behind him, Somerset was already walking along the gallery, with the plus fifty mark. Such construction markings were everywhere here. Now he needed to catch his breath - the caution that had become paranoid suggested that he should not rely on the elevator when he could get there on his own feet. The mark meant that the floor was at a height of fifty meters above the surface, and this was decent even in the conditions of reduced Martian gravity. The gallery had glazing and, if desired, if you pressed your face to the window, you could see a fragment of an abandoned dome, like all similar domes, which had the shape of a semi-cylinder, that is, as has already been said, a hangar. Somewhere to the side, about half a kilometer away, a train with ore was stretching. There was no such transport on earth - the track was five meters and each car was the size and load capacity of a small earth barge. Each sleeper of the track is a steel structure with its own device, with dampers and compensators of deformations. And this was the simplest and crudest.


    When erecting building structures, it was common practice to use beams made of porous high-alloy steel, which were made not by casting, but by powder laser printing with the drawing of each half-open cavity. In the conditions of a lifeless planet, all that was needed for such delights was material and energy, and all this was there. On Earth, the transition to such an exorbitant quality in relation to the needs of the entire population would inevitably ruin the entire biosphere - one way or another, all production processes produced waste. Here, this did not change anything - in any case, these were all the same lifeless rocks and an atmosphere unsuitable for breathing with its dust.


    It was not surprising that for people who were, in a good sense, fanatics of technology and space, Mars was a very tempting place. Somerset himself was like that. There was a second, no less, and in Somerset''s case even more significant, component of motivation. A minimum contract of two Earth years allowed him to retire at thirty upon his return - this was the lower limit at which this entire contract cycle could end, consisting of the said two years and a year and a half of training on Earth, near-Earth orbit and the Moon. After two years, the contract could be extended for a year, and so on. But that was before. The zealous wave of early settlers, extending their contracts and stretching them out to ten years, had trodden an unfavorable path to the fact that the minimum contract became three and a half years - this was Somerset''s. Two years would have been enough for him - the payment would have been enough to buy a decent mansion in the suburbs of any of the most prestigious cities of the "blue card" - numerous spots scattered across the "green card" and making up about twenty percent of it. The ¡°green card¡± itself occupied approximately sixty percent of the entire land mass, but this area was gained, among other things, at the expense of sparsely populated Russia and Canada.


    Somerset''s native South American continent had yellow, green and blue areas. Brazil was on the "green map", while the superfederal district of "Sao Paulo Plus" was on the "blue map". Different taxes, different prices, different level. The inhabitants of Mars jokingly called their new territory differently: some called it the "red map", according to the traditional color of the planet, some called it the "white map", apparently implying it as a filmed, but still unknown "land". Once upon a time, there were white spots on the globe of the Earth.


    As for the Earth itself, this whole system of different maps, of course, may have been far from any ideals of justice, especially from the point of view of the inhabitants of the "yellow map". And yet, how did they, that is, all the Earthlings, manage to stand before the abyss of civil war? Moreover, the actors were not the "yellow cards" at all, but Old America and Russia on one side and Europe and Asia on the other. Somerset glanced toward the reddening west, on the horizon of which the iceberg of the enrichment plant loomed, black and lit. Even further, beyond the horizon, there was a rocket launch site with shuttles. That was where he needed to go. Somerset had switched off his phone back there, in the perimeter gallery. If anything happened, he could tell those blockheads who remained in the dome that he had dropped his phone in the toilet, or better yet, in the sink, and switched it off. He wanted to think that he wouldn¡¯t have to say that. Good people were waiting there, in the transport hub, a kind of train station. That was where Somerset was heading. The overpass gallery ended at an elevator and an exit to the landing. Ignoring the elevator, Somerset rushed to the stairs and further down. The descent led to the minus twenty mark, where there was a spacious main tunnel with a roadway and a pedestrian strip. There were people here. Somerset took out a portable radio with direct communication, which was not visible on the network. He turned it on, made sure that it was receiving the signal of another similar one, and put it away. That other one was with Dolbin.

 Chapter 2

    Chapter 2.


    It was a ten-minute walk to the meeting place, no more. The transport tunnel had its own characteristic atmosphere. Not in terms of some air composition, but in general - such tunnel-streets were distinguished by their own characteristic sounds, echoes and air currents.


    The pedestrian part, fenced off by a barrier, was level with the roadway, along which the platform cars drove one after another. They were mainly transporting equipment units, but there were also some loaded with unpacked ingots - the stuff that was mainly sent to Earth. Now they were transporting the largest ones - these were meter-long beams made of some kind of gray metal. Possibly tungsten.


    The smallest of the typical series were only twenty centimeters long. As a rule, these were not cheap even with the current mining of yttrium, niobium or some lanthanum. Some of this was taken from asteroids, to which unmanned devices, immune to solar activity and radiation, flew. Some was enriched in orbit, some here. They also made large single crystals, but this was mainly for their own needs.


    After all the processing and cleaning, the raw materials were awaited by a whole complex of transfer points and a road to Earth. A long flight, about a year, on a leisurely unmanned ship, just like the asteroid hunters, did not need any bio-protection.


    Somerset still could not get his head around how this entire flow of raw materials was supposed to exist in the new conditions of separatism. One flow to Earth was not enough, there was another no less important one in the opposite direction - organic matter was dragged from Earth. It could be anything, from sawdust to the shit of various animals. Some of this stuff was transported with bio-protection. Huge and expensive to operate passenger transport could carry shit.


    Providing the settlement with food was something much more complicated than growing natural plants in greenhouses and tissues of individual fruits in columns. There was also a well-known issue with meat - the matrices from which the tissues were grown had to be changed, taking new biopsies from chickens or other livestock running around the farms. It had long been known to everyone that if you ate for years what was grown from one individual chicken or pig, you could get a whole range of all sorts of diseases. And this was in the home conditions of Earth. Raising your own livestock here was considered a troublesome business, so the matrices were brought from there.


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    Biosecurity in such cases could be simpler - a container the size of a suitcase could be lined with lead and boron and transported for at least a year or two. As for plants, they could not just grow on rocks, water and sunlight or artificial light alone. They could germinate and grow, for that there was hydroponics with a solution of mineral components. But for many, many generations, an external influx of organic matter was needed. We needed domestic, Earth organics - at least black soil, at least sawdust, at least shit. Thus, green biomass, plant consolidant, as it was called, although it was grown and increased by local resources, but it became full-fledged only thanks to the import of organics from the Earth. From the plant consolidant, among other things, they received what was needed for the columns of replication synthesis that grew animal cells. The food chain.


    This was only the tip of the iceberg. During the initial construction of the station-settlement, scientists came to the conclusion that it was contraindicated for a person to live in an atmosphere of sterility, that it was necessary to form their own, albeit not fully calculated, biosphere. Some microorganisms were inevitably brought in by people themselves, but some came from organics, including shit through plants and further into the biosphere cycle. And how to conduct this import, which needed constant scientific calculation and correction, in conditions of confrontation?


    Ahead appeared a sign and a side corridor. Passing by and glancing into the branch, Somerset managed to notice a nondescript sign written in white on blue: ¡°Paramedic station¡±. Below was the note ¡°Neuropalatine¡±. The second should be read as nothing other than ¡°drug cafe¡±. At least, Somerset adhered to the radical views that all these treatment rooms were essentially real dens, it was just that the public was not from the bottom of society, and everything was controlled by a doctor. Well, and all the drugs were licensed, had their own medical purposes, and were not something from the basements of mafia chemists. Still, this did not change the essence. Somehow it resembled immersion in simplified anabiosis, but the anabiotic procedure during flights was a necessity and did not bring any relief, if we were talking about fatigue, or even more so pleasure. Accordingly, the possibility of any psychological addiction was excluded. And here, in essence, was the same thing that had always been condemned. Somerset had always gotten by with good old booze, and he had no intention of changing this line of behavior, which limited his choice of means. A hundred meters after the branch, the tunnel made a turn and another exit appeared - this one led to the transport hub.

 Chapter 3

    Chapter 3.


    The central space of the node was a very elongated hall, more reminiscent of a huge corridor twenty meters high. Black granite and stainless steel. There was no practical need for such a large space and pretentious decoration - it was simply a public place for some kind of pastime. And yet the hall did have its functionality - on both sides there were ascents and descents to transport tunnels and a rail metro - there was one of those here, with a one and a half meter track, more traditional than industrial. Heller was right in some ways - if we simplify it a lot, then for each person, for each of the fifty thousand, there really were a lot of both cars and buildings. On Earth, here, in this networked city, or rather in its habitable volumes, they would have easily stuffed a million residents, arranging floor slabs and partitions of individual dwellings inside all these halls. Here, for each person, there were at least seven hundred cubic meters of individual housing. Plus, public apartments in close proximity to the factories - so as not to waste time on the road there and back. However, could all this replace the Earth? Those for whom it could replace, in the understanding of Somerset and other like-minded people, were damaged in mind. The result of unstudied cosmic radiation, no other way. Having walked half the length of the hall, he finally came to the entrance to the snack bar hidden under the ceiling of the second side tier - such places, with tables for eating standing up, were at every step. Dolbin was there - Somerset recognized him from behind. Leita was standing next to him - she had been with Dolbin for about a month and a half, about. Red-haired, with a pleasant face, but too lanky for Somerset''s taste. In general, Somerset preferred miniature Asians. At home, in Brazil, they were not uncommon. Some were simply correcting their faces - it was a rather ordinary procedure. Here on Mars, for some reason, they, both genuine and dressed up, were an extreme rarity. This was another reason not to linger here, although in the "main principle" the customs in the settlement were quite relaxed, unnecessary ceremonies were seen here as something like a dense relic. For many, this style of relationships was seen as a big plus.


    - The radio was not needed! - Somerset said with a somewhat feigned sense of relief after the greetings.


    - Wait, it''s too early to get rid of it, - answered Leita, who, as far as Somerset knew, was an Engineer - Lieutenant for communications.


    - I wasn''t going to, - admitted Blankenberg.


    - Do you have a phone with you?


    - Well, yes. Why?


    - Just like that. Did you at least turn it off?


    - Oh, stop it, - Dolbin intervened.


    - There were rallies in a number of European capitals, - came from the TV, - In Paris, it all ended in riots and damage to property. It''s no secret that this is a long-standing tradition of temperamental French citizens, accustomed if not to getting what they want, then to expressively demonstrate their discontent, - on one of the hanging TV screens, the news of the American F§·@TV was on.


    - Your gathering, that is, Heller''s speech was shown, - Dolbin interjected, - On our television, of course.


    - As if I would have thought that from Earth! - Somerset grinned.


    - Such crap can''t be! - Leita muttered rather emotionally, looking at the screen the whole time.


    On the screen was the well-known tower of London''s Big Ben, blackened on one side by soot. It looked as if it had been hit by artillery or drones had been sent, which was more likely. As far as Somerset knew, Leitha was from the British Republic.


    - The residents of Berlin decided not to lag behind their neighbors and, having filled up on beer, organized an extraordinary Oktoberfest. As a result of a number of acts of civil sabotage, the capital''s power supply facilities were damaged and put out of action. This is how tourists from Russia, who by an unfortunate coincidence found themselves in the very epicenter of this European celebration, describe it...


    - One of those two, it seems, was from there, from Germany, - Somerset said.


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    They were talking about Captain-Engineer Walter, a chemist-metallurgist, who literally the day before had entered their standard five, which had been shuffled around for the coordination of the underground not for the first time.


    - That doesn''t mean anything, - Dolbin said, - I''m talking about the TV show. A couple of hours ago we saw the European news. ENN-dog-TV. Judging by it, there''s militaristic hysteria in America, just like in Russia. And in Europe, there''s complete order, calm streets. We have marches that our local activist comrades never dreamed of, and fistfights for everyone else. I flew away four and a half years ago. We didn''t have anything close to that. Maybe in past centuries, but now...


    - Judging by what they''re showing, Bob and I are now enemies. We''re about to be on opposite sides of the front, - Leita said with a sad smile.


    - Well, yeah, - Somerset, chewing a sandwich that had fallen out of his serve, continued the conversation, - And I''m on the neutral side. I''m serious. Brazil is outside the events, after all.


    - So it''s a draw, - Dolbin grinned.


    - No, when Walter comes... he''s from Europe. And Ericsson is from Australia. Also neutral. Two against one. In general, seriously, I''m surprised that the constellations don''t interfere in this matter.


    - Yes, that''s true, - answered Leita, - More than fifty years ago they privatized Central Europe. Maybe you know? The governments went bankrupt, politically bankrupt, and were ready to start an open war. European Germany against European Poland. The AEA superholding privatized both states and set up a multi-republic in both. Maybe you know? They taught us at school, I even watched a video once.


    - Now the scale is completely different, - answered Dolbin. It''s unlikely that all three constellations will be able to get out of here. And there''s also a default. And screw them. We''ll at least go to Africa, right? - he turned to Leita, - We can go to African France. There''s still a lot of things...


    - As for me, all this is better than hanging around here, - Somerset summed up for everyone.


    No one argued.


    The sad conversation was interrupted by the appearance of the energetic, fat and round-faced Walter, who immediately headed for the transport terminal - on the ubiquitous screens built into the walls, you could do a lot of things, including find the nearest free car. Eriksson, who was elderly by the standards of the settlement, and in contrast to Walter, was as thin as a stick, and arrived a couple of minutes later than Walter. All five of them headed down - the necessary tunnel was at minus thirty.


    Somerset hastily finished the sausages he ordered from the snack bar on the go - leaving unfinished food here, in the conditions of space and an alien planet, was considered something if not shameful, then rather indecent. Eating on the go in comparison seemed like a completely understandable necessity that a working man faced every now and then. A man accustomed to living, being involved in the tough pace of the general process.


    When the team loaded into one of the orange cars, Dolbin, who took the driver''s seat, began to look for the rocket launch site on the display. Having plotted the route, for some reason he switched to manual control and began to independently drive out onto the highway. Having settled in behind a heavy platform dragging a spent ceramic crucible, the car moved to the West. The speed was about fifty kilometers per hour - they did not go faster here.


    Here, on Mars, they could rush around in shuttles in violation of all route regulations. For more practical, respectable purposes, here, as in the cities of Earth, people could simply go by metro, accelerating to three hundred kilometers per hour on the stretches. But with motor transport here it was complete despondency. There were no personal cars in the earthly sense of the word "car" here at all. Neither driving, nor, especially, flying. The cars that were generally available and in abundance did not develop a speed of more than sixty kilometers per hour. They did not even have a closed top - only metal arcs. And even that sixty-kilometer speed was in most cases optionally limited by directives of the general computer network to fifty, and in some places even more strictly. All sorts of single crystals, pressure vessels and precision units were constantly transported along the highways - there was no place for lovers of fast driving here.


    An hour or so later, the car drove into exactly the same parking lot at its destination. Dolbin, who was tired of steering about halfway, transferred control to the computer, which steered the car in the flow as if on a conveyor belt.


    Somerset turned around, taking one last look at the parking lot, the tunnel and generally everything that caught his eye. If only everything worked out, and these views would remain only memories. The checkpoint facility was located a kilometer from the launch pad. It was already directly related to the rocket launch site. On the way from the parking lot to this mini-dome, two posts were passed: one had a duty officer, the second was automated. Unlike Earth, the local organization of production and everyday life could not waste personnel resources on all kinds of security. As for the fugitives, the sabotage previously organized by the underground worked flawlessly, both with a person and with a machine. All that was left was to rejoice and thank fate that the rebel separatists had not yet built their own security system. A new system, built according to all those odious models and developments of Earth, which was

 Chapter 4

    Chapter 4.


    The gates of the airlock swung open, behind which was another tunnel - this one was pedestrian. There was a smell of rubber. The tunnel with a black floor and rows of transverse copper strips led upward, to another glass door, behind which was the lower loading airlock. It was a shuttle!


    Overwhelmed with emotion, with a gaze scattered as if in some dream, Somerset, along with the others, stepped onto the resonant metal of the free machine, capable of carrying away from here. His hands habitually grabbed the rubberized steps. Someone used the lift. The main thing now was to quickly take their seats. The passenger compartment of the vertically standing shuttle was also located vertically, so it took a certain amount of dexterity to take a seat. However, the retractable platforms helped out. Several people remained below, on the airlock floor. This was a blatant violation of all instructions and rules, but it had long been verified that this was possible. Over the years of the settlement''s history, all sorts of things had happened.


    When the fuss died down, the pilot gave a warning signal without further ado. Somerset pressed the green button on the personal console display - this was how he announced his readiness. The others did the same, after which everyone traditionally raised their hands with their thumbs out. All this should have been more than enough for the pilot - the control post had an output terminal for the video system, which allowed, among other things, to monitor the airlock and the cargo bay.


    Less than a minute after the first signal, a second one sounded, supplemented by a notification on the personal console display.


    A few seconds after the notification appeared, a shudder ran through the shuttle''s hull. The units began to howl even before all the passengers reported their readiness.


    The small side windows turned into rectangles shining with a blinding white light - this was the engines of the reversing units, located on both sides in the front part of the hull, turning on, testing their strength. Now the task of these small engines was to slightly lift the ship so that the activation of the cruise engines occurred not at the surface of the platform, but at some distance from it. About three hulls.


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    Here the discord of howling equipment slightly changed its tone and at the same time the ship began to move. The glow in the windows changed color. In fact, it became incomparably brighter, but the light filters worked. The ship went up.


    After fifteen seconds, a wave of overload hit the back. The cruise engines started working. The glow from the reversing unit disappeared, as if a lamp had been turned off. The light filters immediately reacted, opening the opportunity to observe the familiar red horizon.


    A puzzled voice was heard in the earpiece. It was the dispatcher on duty at one of the rocket launch site posts. The pilot switched the external communication channel to internal communication, making listening to radio traffic available to everyone sitting in the passenger seats. - Takeoff according to the work card, number... - the pilot answered without a shadow of embarrassment, having spoken the code of the technological card.


    - Repeat the card number, - the Dispatcher asked.


    The pilot repeated it.


    The Dispatcher asked to stay in touch. The pilot responded with a reasonable smile, saying that he was not going anywhere and that the communication line was working constantly.


    A minute later, the Dispatcher reported that there was no such card in his system. The pilot responded with bewilderment, asking whether he should land back and suggested that when the shuttle arrived at Phobos, everything would become clear.


    A couple of minutes later, a joyful cry was heard. It was the pilot again. This time he reported, but he had already informed the passengers that all the shuttles had left their pads. The compartment was filled with enthusiastic cries.


    - Maybe we should send him? - someone shouted, meaning the Dispatcher.


    - Better wait.


    - The further we go, the better it will be, - several people answered at once. Some woman began to sing. Somerset threw his head back as far as he could, clenched his teeth, and hissed.


    They were gone. They were free.

 Chapter 5

    Chapter 5.


    The transport hung in a circular orbit more than a thousand kilometers above the surface. Outwardly, it resembled a huge openwork tower that had somehow miraculously flown into the sky together with a massive concrete foundation. In fact, what looked like a foundation was the main complex with a power unit - with thermonuclear reactors and ejectors, that is, engines. There were also transit docks - those docks where shuttles were docked that were supposed to travel together with the transport.


    Another complex module, located in the first third of the mast, had a group of docks capable of accepting shuttles in a static state, but not capable of dragging this load along with them - when the cruise engines were turned on, a certain overload appeared and the tower began to perceive loads in the same way as if it were standing on Earth. Well, of course, much smaller. On the Moon or thereabouts.


    In the core of the tower structure there was a series of light-colored pipelines - these were habitable galleries and pipelines with heat and gas exchange communications and much more.


    In height, that is, in length, the tower was one and a half kilometers. It was a Rutherford-class transport. This was not the largest - it had an advanced heat-removal system that required smaller dimensions. The first transorbital transports - Oppenheimer-class ships were more than two and a half kilometers long and they were still flying. But once upon a time, the first expeditions got here, flying on ships that were much smaller and simpler than the shuttle - this is essentially a bus.


    Those who remained to endure the takeoff in the airlock now floated into the compartment. There were ten of them. The shuttle thus took out sixty passengers plus two pilots, one of whom simply took a free seat behind the pilot''s station panel.


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    The airlock went as usual - everything was done automatically. This time, the transition was to be made without making an extra journey - through a pair of airlocks located in the front part of the passenger compartment. They, these chambers, were an integral part of the space, if one could say so, of the "salon", forming with their blocks a kind of corridor, to a certain extent separating the control post and the main space.


    The entrance chamber of the ship greeted us with soft white light and light tones - that''s how it was painted. In the shuttle compartment, everything was painted in a dark color, everything was dotted with lights that were constantly on. In fairness, it should be said that there, the care for comfort was supposed to be entrusted to the glasses for light correction of the image, but who would carry them around. Here, however, there was the atmosphere of a classic, if you like, aristocratic interplanetary ship.


    Then there was a tunnel and a passage to the compartment, where we were to meet the beginning of the acceleration stage and conduct a kind of pre-flight briefing. The compartment was outside the block - the "foundation" and was located in the secondary, the one removed from the main one by a third of the mast. The maximum overload during standard acceleration or braking barely reached one tenth of the Earth''s gravity, but weightlessness disappeared. Thus, all longitudinal tunnels turned into vertical shafts, but under the conditions of those insignificant accelerations it was easy to push off from the side and grab one of the handrails. There were also safety diaphragms made of mesh that did not allow acceleration, even having lost all contact with the surface of the tunnel.


    The next compartment was a cylindrical room with perforated steel ceilings that formed three tiers. Along the perimeter and in the central part there were seats that could be transformed into semi-recumbent ones.


    About an hour after Somerset moved from the shuttle to the transport, the main engines turned on. A joyful hum rolled through the compartment.

 Chapter 6

    Chapter 6.


    Time passed quickly - it always did when the mood was higher than usual. Just like in the shuttle, like in everything that flew, each seat here was equipped with a personal terminal with a video interface, allowing communication with the onboard computer, its public part. Someone had managed to send verbal messages there, to Mars. Most of these messages were full of curses, often the most obnoxious - Russian. Sooner or later, everyone mastered them.


    Another familiar engineer who settled nearby, who had joined the underground almost last year, from the very beginning of all the Martian events, pointed to a group of three people dressed in characteristic flight suits. Judging by his words, they were the main organizers of this remarkable escape, and they were not pilots - they were from the security service. All three were not young, especially by the standards of the settlement - they were all about fifty, maybe a little older. One had a short-cropped beard, making him look like some kind of purely earthly intellectual.


    There was still no connection with Earth. No open connection. This was the subject of constant butthurt. The small parabolic antennas of the first expeditions were an archaic past. Progress made one thing accessible, but could also close access to the previously ordinary. The appearance of communications and communications demonstrated this in full. It was not a question of the capabilities of technology, but a question of security, if not to say police brutality.


    There were more than enough one-way broadcasts from the same TV channels, flowing in a wide stream from Earth to Mars. There was also a technological two-way connection, which had a certain delay. It was necessary for organizing any kind of flights to Mars and back. Technological communication was something that was known to most of the inhabitants, the personnel, only by its name - it was handled by a very few inter-communicationists, closely guarded by the security service. These special people, the Inter-Communication Service, ICS, were like a secret service themselves. The same Leita, who worked on general communications, had nothing to do with them.


    As for the usual two-way communication, carried out, albeit with a delay, by the first unmanned vehicles in the distant twentieth century, it did not exist. It was prohibited. It was called unauthorized communication and was regarded as a threat to commercial secrets. And a threat to security in general. Once, at the dawn of the settlement''s history, a nuclear reactor was blown up. The fact that it exploded was a fact, but why... It was claimed that it was due to outside interference. Commercial secrets, the second component of motivation for secrecy besides security, have always been an integral companion of private activity.


    Everyone had long since taken it for granted, had gotten used to the fact that the entire Martian colony project was not governmental, was not state-owned. Although, even if you think about it impartially now, it couldn''t help but surprise you - how the Big Government allowed itself to pass by or let pass by a project of the century, if not the millennium, comparable only to the discovery of the American continent. It was a private project of the Superholding, constellation, VFV.


    On the other hand, in the last century, the project of the millennium was undoubtedly the exploration of the Moon, which was completely supervised by the already formed in its current form Government of the Confederation.


    And as for the Moon, there was complete order with communication and the Internet. A delay of one second, of course, was noticeable during online communication and online work, but all data and files were downloaded without problems. It was impossible to establish an unauthorized Internet connection between Mars and Earth, even a specific one - all orbital repeaters of the Earth were configured to discriminate against delays. In other words, they constantly sent a small piece of data, which was a cipher. If the corresponding decoded response did not arrive within a set time interval, the data flow was interrupted.


    This was the agreement that the VFV had achieved, which extended to the entire Earth communications system. There was, however, one exception, but it was also controlled by the "Big Artificial Intelligence" that belonged to the constellation.


    Of course, it was also possible to make a transceiver station yourself, having previously agreed with a similar techno-geek on Earth. Knowing the available communications equipment, it was possible to hack a ready-made transmitter, prohibiting it from notifying the network of its activity. All these attempts were made, but each time the signal, this radio beam from Mars, being detected by radio telescopes on Earth itself, put the search systems located on Mars on their ears. In most cases, they managed without terrestrial radio telescopes - a radio beam sent from Earth towards Mars, which vice versa, was easily detected by the radar network of Mars itself. A network, in theory, designed to coordinate orbital activity and track the passage of all sorts of asteroids. If a Martian designer was caught, he would face a showdown with the security service and disciplinary action. There were few who wanted to deal with all this nonsense. There was no television broadcasting on the ship now - that stream was transmitted via an optical channel, and the ship had long since left the laser beam line. Here, on board, Somerset did not even have a personal disk - that piece of the Internet that the Earth network, guided by the user''s interests known to it, copied to his, Somerset''s, personal storage, and he, in turn, transferred all this to a physical medium and took it to Mars. This was allowed. From this, although not only from this, the local Internet was formed, slowly but surely replenished with new arrivals from Earth. What to order and receive was determined by the "Big Artificial Intelligence", which had a certain message with a similar artificial intelligence there, on Earth. This was the exception.


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    - We need to decide, - a voice sounded from somewhere on the lower tier, - Who will go into suspended animation and who will not. What are the considerations? The speaker''s name was Dupare - this was visible on the individual console. - That''s right, - responded one of the three organizers, the one with the beard, - I suggest we stop shouting and switch to communication, - he continued.


    The transport ship was loaded with provisions for one hundred and fifty people - this was the standard option, prescribed by the regulations - there had to be a supply of everything necessary for a flight organized on an emergency basis on board. For once, all these regulations turned out to be in the hands of the underground. The coincidence was amusing, but it was logical.


    Now there were two hundred and sixty people on board. Two compartments, one of which Somerset and the others were sitting in, made it possible to accommodate five hundred - the transport could deliver personnel to the nearby Moon. Here, the flight took much longer. In the current configuration, it was supposed to take sixteen days, during which the transport''s power plant, operating in different modes, mercilessly burned the resources of its unique engines. The technology for building such installations was not available to VFV. Constellation purchased engines from AEA, which was deeply involved in Earth affairs. If the first expeditions, consisting of three to five people, got by with a couple of shuttles, then the industrial process had other requirements. But even the pioneers could not do without a magnetic curtain placed on the second unmanned ship, which deflected particles of the solar wind. It was a flight full of risk and heroism. Routine transportation of hundreds of people who did not claim heroism on a planetary scale, if only because their task was to subsequently work on exploration, extraction and construction, required a completely different organization. Transportation of personnel, as in the case of the first expeditions, required food, medicine, anti-ionizing and anti-X-ray bioprotection casing, a magnetic curtain and, most importantly, an increased reliability factor compared to the expeditionary one. Or rather, several different factors, by which the efficiency parameters of all the above measures and protection systems were multiplied. It turned out that, figuratively speaking, more and more sacks of grain, barrels of water, canisters of Coca-Cola, suitcases, and even outright junk were thrown onto the ship of the Vikings sailing to the new continent. The sagging ship of the brave Vikings was removed and a huge steel barge was built in its place. But the barge in its natural form was not suitable - it was too slow - it was necessary to quickly slip through, getting into those periods when the weather on the route was calm. Well, and if you get into a storm, then in one, no more. For this, several aircraft turbines were attached to the barge and a reactor was installed. This is how the process of the birth of these passenger transports could be described.


    Now, even with two hundred and sixty people on board, the ship, equipped according to the minimum regulations, could cope with the task. Even without any anabiosis, the flight did not threaten to turn into a dystopian hunger tournament for survival.


    Nevertheless, the option with anabiosis seemed logical beyond any doubt. This is how they were used to it, and this was how it was supposed to be. Theoretically, if there were problems with the reactor, the ship could skip the Earth and go on further orbits. And then it would only be necessary to wait for the rescue expedition. And then the food supplies would become precious.


    On board, or rather inside this mast, several specially protected blocks were separately secured, which were medical compartments for anabiosis. This was the so-called small anabiosis - the least traumatic of all such procedures. During it, a person pumped with drugs simply slept for most of the day, about twenty-two hours out of twenty-four. Waking up after another "long night", he didn''t feel exactly well - weak, as if after a good poisoning. It was muscle atony, which made it very difficult even to eat independently. There was a tube with broth and water for that. The toilet systems had also long been worked out and brought to a kind of perfection. Nevertheless, no one was eager to relax like that. They decided to draw lots, but there was a purely organizational hitch - what to draw. Someone already had options for everyone to dive for half the flight time. For some reason, the doctors did not like the idea. A hubbub began. Someone, by definition, was not supposed to dive into suspended animation, since the functionality of the ship''s systems was maintained by at least three dozen people. It was also difficult with the doctors - they seemed to need a dozen of them, but, as far as it became known, there were only three. In the end, they came to the conclusion that everyone had to split into groups of several people and these groups would draw the lot, which were metal threaded pins. Some marked them with a marker, others did not. Somerset, without much fuss, entered the group of six people sitting right there, in the neighborhood. Dolbin, Leyta and all the rest of that glorious five that were there, on Mars, were now somewhere on another tier. Luck was not on the side of Somerset and his new unit - they got a pin, quite clearly painted with a red marker. However, considering all the circumstances, this was a mere trifle. In his life, Somerset had already dived twice and this was in real conditions, in the absence of gravity. The first time was during an internship, in lunar orbit. Then he was and worked at the orbital logistics station and this was a kind of certification test. The second time was on the way to Mars. There was also, if one could put it that way, a zero test cycle, which lasted a week - that was carried out back on Earth.

 Chapter 7

    Chapter 7.


    The anabiotic compartment was a cylindrical, or more accurately, octagonal space. A huge, very tall can, on four sides of which were rows of docks - these beds were called exactly that.


    In the center, along the axis of the "can" there was a power element - a pipe with a diameter of a meter. It seemed that some kind of emergency tunnel was arranged there. On both sides of the pipe there were metal ladders attached, which could be grabbed in zero gravity, and even under the gravity typical for acceleration and braking. Also, from edge to edge, from bottom to top, if you orient yourself in gravity conditions, three lattice platforms moved, which had a number of cutouts that served as ordinary openings in zero gravity, and in non-zero gravity conditions they became unsafe, constantly open hatches. However, with accelerations of less than half a meter per second per second, any fall from a conditional height of twenty meters was no more dangerous than a jump from a height of human growth. Besides, there would have been plenty of time to regroup. Unlike the entire medical section, the bay was painted a deep olive green, which, according to the designers, was supposed to have a beneficial effect on visual perception.


    The platforms, parked one under the other at intervals of two meters, began to receive people once again. There were only fifteen of them - the computer, of course, determined the order and made a schedule for who and when to lie down and, accordingly, wake up. Somerset waited his turn for six hours and managed to take a nap without any suspended animation.


    In fact, all this, at first glance, sluggishness in the organization was logical - even a dozen doctors would have found it much easier to service the docks with an even distribution during the day, rather than in the barracks mode, when everyone would wake up and fall asleep at once.


    People dispersed across the platforms. Some had to make their way through one tier, some through two. In conditions of twelve percent gravity of the Earth, which is how the engines were working now, it was more like exercising in a pool. Only unlike swimming, you could breathe freely here. The platforms, each resting on its end stops, began to crawl away from each other. Somewhere, someone was laughing in response to another stupid, dirty joke. Someone was talking loudly to someone about what they would do in conditions of the Earth being at war on part of its territory, where they would find a quiet place. It was like the usual, almost street bustle. After the platform stopped again, Somerset found a dock on which was written the number assigned to him by the computer back there, in the previous compartment, where that briefing with the draw had taken place. Right there, next to the number, his name was displayed. Now all the docks were deployed in such a way that they formed a kind of multi-level, multi-tiered bed - one bed was located under another. The docks were mobile - in zero gravity, the drives deployed them and a continuous row of beds was obtained. Four such rows stretched along the entire compartment. So in zero gravity conditions it was easier for doctors to monitor passengers, flying from one place to another. There was no division into male and female sections - people simply dispersed closer to the edges, leaving the middle empty. Of course, when fully loaded, this empty neutral strip did not exist - after all, this was a space flight, and not a cruise with all the amenities and whims. And there was nothing special - the docks were closed with folding covers on movable frames, and there was no need to take off all your clothes. There were also picky couples who wanted to be placed in neighboring docks. As if that changed anything. They were being met. They were being placed right in the middle section, whether empty or filled to a hundred percent.


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    Somerset began to settle in. In the section above the waist, the dock bed, shining with steel, was padded with silicone cushions. They were soft, like the usual fabric ones. But unlike the usual ones, these did not require any washing - they were treated with an aerosol hydrosystem built right there.


    Below, that is, closer to the feet, there was a molded surface of perforated stainless steel, and it looked creepy. In fact, air flowed through the perforation. That was the decent explanation. The indecent one was that the doctors should have as little trouble as possible in case someone did shit themselves. Air outflow again.


    Somerset settled in. His feet rested on the silicone - there were cushions in the very bottom part too. Having reported the readiness of the next personal terminal to the camera, Somerset began to look around the compartment in search of a doctor. However, the results of such a search would not have affected anything - all that was left was to wait. He also needed to secure himself with fairly light straps. A yellow warning signal began to blink on the frame located on the foot side and it began to move forward, stretching the folded fabric cover.


    It was possible to take off his pants and stretch out something like a blanket - it was a towel or a blanket packed in an attached package. It was possible to put the same under his bottom. Warm air blew from below, supplied through a perforated surface.


    The doctor, an elderly woman with some kind of haughty face, appeared fifteen minutes later, without further ado, unzipped Somerset''s corresponding sleeve and inserted an IV into his vein. Then she took him, Somerset''s head, clasped it with her fingers, and brought an instrument to her mouth, which without unnecessary fantasy was called a gun. The device, it must be said, quite deftly inserted a tube into the esophagus and then into the stomach. The matter was, however, made easier by the anesthetic that Somerset had managed to take - it was supplied through a tube, one of the ones sticking out of the so-called port - a block attached to the side. Then the doctor pulled an elastic bandage over his head, containing sensors, and reminded him about the orange lever - this simple device blocked unauthorized changes in the position of the docks. Although the automation and the computer were much more reliable than even several duty officers, the designers still provided for a manual blocking of the possibility when all the docks would suddenly turn, and the unfastened ones, if any, would fly down, well, to the rear, if you count in the direction of movement of the surface of the compartment. Another ten minutes later, the bright, almost sharp, light was replaced by a muted bluish, twilight. A wave of somewhat pleasant fatigue rolled over his body. The only thing that was depressing was that after this he had to move away and this was not at all pleasant. A couple of minutes later, Somerset fell asleep.

 Chapter 8

    Chapter 8.


    Waking up was easy enough, if not to say refreshing. Opening his eyes, Somerset felt ready to stretch and in a few minutes, if not leave the dock, then rise. However, it was not so - after several attempts to change position, it became clear that the body was stuck in a feeling of heavy weakness. A miracle did not happen. Damn suspended animation. It was necessary to give credit, the soft twilight light did not hurt the eyes even from the first seconds.


    Judging by the data on the terminal console, the engines were still working, but now the acceleration was zero point five tenths of a meter per second squared, which meant that the gravity was only one twentieth of the Earth''s. The nearest platform was ten meters below. There should have been a doctor on duty there - a place was provided for him, equipped there, on the platform - a metal chair, a semblance of a folding table and a cabinet, more fitting the definition of a folding suitcase. The terminal signaled that he could start the eating procedure if he wanted. Somerset silently said into the camera that he had no objections. The computer, as usual, could read lips, and immediately notified him that the procedure had begun.


    - Refueling, and that''s all! - Somerset thought.


    He needed to occupy himself somehow, watch something. The terminal did not show movies - for that there was a retractable hanging console that took the necessary position depending on the turn of the head - you could watch with your head on the side. The audio system was represented by headphones inserted in advance - this was done not so much for the purpose of providing leisure, but for the purpose of notifications and listening to individual messages from the terminal.


    Choosing a movie turned out to be quite a task. There was a science fiction movie about an alien invasion, but Somerset had already seen this movie more than once.


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    The choice fell on fantasy. Somerset was not particularly fond of this genre, but sometimes you could watch it. He ordered the movie to start. The film turned out to be rather dull - there were no firearms or flights on some rocket misunderstanding that in reality would have crashed on the first maneuver. True, they did fly here too, but on dragons. It was the most correct, "hard" fantasy. Somerset yawned - this was probably the only thing he did without difficulty. Some princess with a sad face flashed on the screen. All in white and with an invariable crown.


    Then Somerset remembered that all those twenty-odd hours of immersion he did not lie in complete unconsciousness - he dreamed something, although now he could not remember what exactly. Nevertheless, he could say with complete confidence that in that unconscious state he went somewhere or talked to someone. With some woman, similar to this sad-looking princess. Under normal circumstances, this did not deserve the slightest effort to remember anything. In a painful fever, for example, in extreme heat, the after-impressions of sleep could be noticeably brighter and then it was really possible to marvel at the intricacies of the human brain and all that. Now, however, the desire to grasp the thread of memories literally grew into some kind of awl in the ass. There seemed to be only one logical way out - to get up and stretch, but this was suspended animation, albeit small, partial. Somerset ordered the computer to turn on something dumber and funnier. Computer, don''t look, the machine chose not without knowledge of the matter. The title of the film was "What does at Puop - Is it Repuop" - meaningless gibberish, sounding like something from a toilet theme. According to the plot, a gang of motorcyclists found a road leading to a portal, through which, in turn, they could get into the past, although each time they rode out of the portal naked. Abracadabra was some kind of password, with the help of which the rascals masterfully deceived one ruler of the past after another - they wrote it in secluded places or passed it on to people. Somerset never saw how it all ended - he fell asleep, and he even remembered how it happened - first the sound began to disappear and then appear, then one leg twitched several times, then an arm.

 Chapter 9

    Chapter 9.


    Somerset found himself walking in the middle of a street covered in spring ice that hadn''t melted. This had to be Russia - he''d been there once. The snow turned winter into a fairy tale, although Dolbin said that in past centuries it was a real curse that made life unbearable.


    Looking around the houses, Somerset realized that this wasn''t Russia at all, but some European asshole. He remembered how he''d wandered in here - now he had to make no mistakes and get back to the bay. There seemed to be a rotten pier there, to which something was approaching. A couple of streets passed led to the disappointing conclusion that he was lost. However, this was much better than wandering... He''d miraculously escaped just recently... Oh well, that was in the past.


    Now he needed to get on some public transport - there was sure to be a terminal there. For some reason, the phone was showing some kind of crap - not a single inscription was legible. The setting sun was hiding under a purple, almost black cloud. At the same time, it was still shining quite brightly, illuminating the facades of the houses with its yellow rays. It was the earthly sun...


    But the city was no joy. A foreign place, no matter what you say. Still, he had to look for that damn pier. Of course, he had sailed here on a ship.


    - We''ll be back soon, a voice was heard.


    Where it came from was not particularly important. It happened. This time the voice was female.


    - Next time I''ll have to take more money and a spare phone with me, - Somerset thought.


    - You were coming from there, - the voice sounded again.


    Somerset turned his head to the left, not really thinking about why, after which he really saw some special street going into the greenery. - Oh, right, how could I forget - that, - he thought to himself, - And what are you doing here? - he mentally addressed the voice.


    - I just want to keep an eye on you, - she answered.


    - Some nonsense. Better tell me how the film about those naked men on motorcycles ended. I didn¡¯t watch it to the end.


    - And this man is going to tell me nonsense?


    - Well, I have to have some kind of entertainment. From you... You¡¯re from Mars, right?


    - Well, yes.


    - Look what you¡¯ve turned yourselves into. You drink, work until you¡¯re half-fainting. I¡¯d sign a two-year contract - that would be enough for me. How do you hang around there for five years? A man who has the level, - Somerset thought for a second, but quickly found his words, - has the level of aesthetic ideas... In general, such a company is not at all interesting. And in general, giving speeches is not my thing. And now, all the best to you, I''m going.


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    - Do you think you hurt me?


    - I don''t want to hurt anyone. I just don''t have time. I have butthurt. I''m lost in this fucking city.


    - That''s all.


    - Yes, exactly as I said.


    - So why don''t you fly? Jump, you did that.


    - I did it in my dream. By the way, it turned out like zero gravity. You jump and hang neither here nor there.


    - Well, try it.


    - No problem.


    Somerset jumped, trying to catch that feeling when you managed to cling to the air. He did it.


    - Well, I did it, - he thought, no longer addressing anyone. - Now the wind will carry me where I don''t need to go.


    - Now, - said the voice.


    Then someone''s hands grabbed him from behind. He began to turn. In front of him, hanging in the air, was that very princess. Not the one from the film, but the one from the forgotten dream, which the movie one simply resembled.


    - Have you forgotten me?


    - Yes... for some reason it always happens like this... - Somerset answered, embarrassed, not understanding why.


    - That''s even good, I''ll tell you later why this happens, - she answered.


    If she had a fashionable Asian face, and if she were a little shorter than Somerset himself...


    - What can you tell me about your intentions, what will you do on Earth? - as if guessing Somerset''s train of thought, the "princess" asked.


    - What can I tell you? What is your name, by the way? - Somerset found, having introduced himself before. - You forgot that too, - she answered, somehow happy, - Call me what will be easier, Ferengelia.


    - What a beautiful name, - Somerset answered.


    - It''s not a full name. I am a disease...


    - How can it be that you are... Somerset did not finish - everything was shrouded in darkness and some kind of oblivion.


    Somewhere in the distance someone was talking. The fan of the internal air exchange of the dock was noisy. Somerset opened his eyes. Another twenty-two hours had passed - the new biorhythm was controlled and maintained from the outside - there were sensors on the head for that, telling the computer when to administer the appropriate complex of drugs so as to get into these waves of vital activity of the body.


    The engines were not working now - there was zero gravity in the ship. The docks were turned to face the central axis, to the pillar. This time the platform was almost level with the tier, or rather now with the transverse row, in which Somerset''s dock was located. The duty officer was a strong-looking man with a shaved head, about forty years old. He sat, strapped into his steel chair, and enthusiastically poked his fingers at the tablet. He was playing computer crap, like some kind of security guard. Nearby, in the inventory net, a beer bag was visible.


    But on Earth, he was a high-class medic, possibly saving lives - after all, the best in their field were selected for Mars. And then they became disqualified. Not in everything, but in something.


    - Doctor, can I have something so that I don''t feel like a wreck, - said Somerset, - Like caffeine, only stronger.


    - Of course not! - the doctor answered with a grin, - What are you taking?


    - I don''t take anything. I just feel really lousy. And I dream about something all the time. What does that mean? That my sleep is shallow?


    - That doesn''t mean anything. You have sensors and they measure everything they need to. The monitor shows a green light. Lie down.


    Somerset creaked with displeasure and turned his head to the side. It was useless to continue talking. Apparently, the doctor''s job now was to answer such questions while not letting the "patients" lead him, the doctor and themselves into more detailed chatter. In any case, he was polite and did not advise shutting up outright.


    These were the second knocks. There was no desire to watch movies. Having taken another portion of the nutritional composition, Somerset began to watch the doctor. It must be said that he absolutely did not give a damn that more than one pair of eyes were staring at him. Professionalism definitely implied strong nerves. The computer suggested watching the film to the end. Somerset did not even object - he did not care.

 Chapter 10

    Chapter 10.


    Somerset ran down a path that passed through some bushes and jumped out onto a street with a wooden pavement. This was something new. He had never seen such sidewalks. Again he found himself in this unfamiliar city, full of seedy and not so seedy places and normal women. There was more than enough money, but there was no access to it, to the money.


    - What the hell! - Somerset thought angrily, - Why can''t one thing go with the other?!


    He needed to go home and finally get a phone with all the necessary accounts or unlock the biometrics.


    - But this is somehow similar to a dream, - the thought flashed through his head, - I''ve been here more than once before... Although to hell with it, is it worth occupying your head with thoughts about some dreams.


    A transport slowly floated in the sky. It was a transorbital ship of the Rutherford class. Who would have thought that they could fly like this...


    - This thing is not without reason, - the inner mind made a businesslike conclusion, - Although what do I care.


    Somerset walked away from the sun rising in the east. Or setting. What the hell difference does it make whether it is morning or evening.


    - You forgot everything again! - a voice was heard behind him.


    Somerset turned around.


    - Of course I forgot. I always forget everything, - he began to jump.


    A pretentious-looking tall woman in white and with a crown on her head stood with her hands behind her back, and not without some malice watched Somerset''s actions.


    Somerset hung in the air.


    - So you see how it happens! - he said triumphantly, - No one can do that.


    - Do you remember me?


    - I see you for the first time, - Somerset answered, remembering that the question was not asked without reason.


    - What''s wrong with you! - the woman suddenly screamed, - Are you doing this on purpose?


    Hysteria was at its best. If there was one thing I needed in my life, it was this...


    - Why, when you''re hanging like this, can''t you fly where you need to? - Somerset thought with irritation. - Imagine that I have a rocket engine. No, I''m a bird.


    He glanced toward the roof of one of the houses. By a lucky coincidence, he was being blown there.


    The woman continued to yell something. It was funny. It would be even funnier when he stabilized his flight and then landed on the roof. And then he''d fly to the next one.


    The hysterical "Snow White", in turn, turned out to be not as simple as it seemed. Suddenly stopping howling, she crouched down a little, and then quickly jumped straight at him.


    She covered the distance of fifteen meters at a height of five meters too energetically - with reduced gravity, people simply float around the compartments, and here... Somerset was not in the mood for such games - he needed to get to his home and his payments, and then...


    Judging by the speed of the flight, the gravity was comparable to that of Earth. There was a small hope that "Snow White", as it was most logical to call her, would fly past. But she was going exactly.


    Clutching Somerset, she pulled him further along the trajectory, now descending. They crashed somewhere, either on the lawn or just in the bushes. Somerset lay with his back on the ground and could not move a single finger.


    - Wow! - he muttered, trying with his last strength to demonstrate the remnants of his spirit.


    The offensive woman knelt down, staring into his face. She pressed one hand with her palm spread against his chest and, oddly enough, it was enough to prevent Somerset from even fluttering a little.


    - I am a disease, I am viruses. Is it so hard for you to understand? - she said in a characteristically dejected tone, as if trying to convey something.


    - I remembered, - the thought burned, - I have heard that before.


    - Yes, it is hard for me to understand, - Somerset admitted quite honestly, this time out loud.


    - You people always think very primitively, - Snow White answered in a calmer tone.


    - Yes, I know, - Somerset answered, - We are like that.


    - Now you are giving in, - she answered with another capricious note in her voice, - Don''t you really want to know?


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    - Know what?


    - Okay, I won''t try to convince you again... Listen, I''ll just tell you this. Your brain consists of nerve cells. They are connected, and this is how your brain works, continuously self-organizing. All thanks to the fact that the cells are connected.


    - How informative, - Somerset thought casually, but said nothing.


    - And imagine that instead of cells there are other formations. Also connected, but more physically independent. Cells need nutrition and they are protected, at rest. But what if instead of cells there is something else. There are bacteria, there are even better ones - viruses. They live independently. You think that nature created you as the only carriers of reason, but this is not so. Viruses can be connected to each other. They have complex molecules, where there are molecules - there is atomic mechanics, and where there is atomic mechanics - there is quantum physics. That''s the mechanism of communication. It is not necessary for there to be nerve cells and for these lines to stretch from cell to cell.


    - I didn''t think that science was capable of this. And I have never heard such an expression as "atomic mechanics," - Somerset answered in a rather tactful voice.


    - What does your science have to do with it? - Snow White grimaced. - It would be easier for you to think that I am from another planet. From another star system. And it would not be a lie. So do you understand?


    - Okay, okay, I understand.


    - If you ask me now if I am made up of viruses that can assemble into a person, then you know what I will do? This!


    She bent down, froze, as if peering into his face, and then bit his nose.


    The compartment was still in artificial twilight. The fan hummed. Someone was chatting with someone. Both voices were weak, like those of patients. Instead of the doctor on duty, there was some blockhead in the uniform of a Junior Specialist. Or rather, there were two of them. The second was no better. Now they were having some kind of sporting fun, invented for the occasion - throwing a ball made of something incomprehensible, climbing back and forth on the ladders on the central column, laughing, imitating each other. They were speaking in their native English, adding popular and understandable Russian swear words. They were definitely having fun. In general, in zero gravity conditions, any such sporting nonsense was only beneficial, but there was a separate space for this. Apparently, the least thing that interested the new duty officers was the condition of those lying there. There were only three doctors on the ship, and now a replacement had been found. Excellent.


    One of the neighbors also woke up. He was excessively energetic - bent over, raising himself above the bed. Barely moving his tongue, Somerset only asked if he had had dreams. He answered that he had not.


    - And I have a whole series here, Somerset thought, but kept silent. After watching the monkey-like competitions, Somerset fell asleep. His last thought was that he had forgotten to do something.


    Again the evening sun was breaking through a small gap in the purple clouds. Again the city. Somerset had already gotten used to this. The trouble was that, almost realizing that this was a dream, he could not remember what was really happening. The princess in white was right there. Without expressing any particular emotion, she energetically walked up to him and slapped him. A light slap, but a slap nonetheless.


    - That''s because you thought that I only came to you on the condition that you watch that stupid movie about motorcyclists. How did you have the brains to come up with that?!


    - Exactly, I forgot, - Somerset admitted innocently. - I was just thinking about it. I had to turn on the movie. Where he was when he wanted to watch the film again, he still couldn''t remember.


    After his words, Somerset received a second slap, but it was even a little lighter than the first.


    - You''re not thinking straight, - Snow White said in a businesslike tone, clearly without any intention of teasing, - That''s why I can''t talk to you in a normal modus.


    - What words, - thought Somerset


    - Nevertheless, it''s already getting better.


    - I remember that you, Madam, are made up of viruses, - Somerset answered, portraying what seemed to him to be the most intelligent and businesslike tone.


    - Yes and no. It would be wrong to say that you, a human, are made up of nerve cells. You are, but not only of them. We, like me, are made up of both physically material objects, that is, microorganisms, and of another component. There is another world, it is around everything that is endowed with life. Now we are not in it. To be in it, you need to be on Earth, but around the ship there is the same space. Well, or almost the same.


    - And where are we now? What kind of ship is it anyway?


    - Listen, - she continued, ignoring the question about the ship, - When you people communicate with each other, for example, with words or even text, you transmit information to each other, and each one of them builds in his own consciousness, if not a world, then a fragment of some picture. Pictures on a given topic.


    - It''s somehow philosophical, to be honest. I''m a technical specialist. I probably said...


    - Yes, I have, and more than once. But do you understand what I said?


    - Yes, I understand.


    - Well then. At the suggestion of the interlocutor, you create a fragment of a picture in your consciousness. Since I can do a little more, then at my suggestion you create all this in your head. This is a little more than at the suggestion of...


    - So that''s how it is, - Somerset turned his head to the side, wanting to better examine the insides of his consciousness. For some reason, the very thought occurred to him that these were the insides of his consciousness.


    The buildings and trees began to be shrouded in some kind of blue fog. It was a night fog in everything. Then his head was grasped by two spread palms. The head turned towards the purple sunset with lights scattered across the horizon.


    - That''s always the case, - a voice sounded behind him, - It''s okay, I''ll hold you back.


    The grip was just right.


    - Can you tell me something outside of this... - Somerset stammered.


    - Outside of what? I know what you mean. Can you say it in your own words? I''ll talk to you outside of this too...


    Who he was talking to. Somerset didn''t remember. Then he noticed a row of trash cans. To hell with them, but one of them had rhodium ingots neatly stacked. Somerset, not believing his luck, walked calmly towards the place so as not to attract attention. Judging by the markings, these were full of impurities - such were obtained as a by-product during purification. They were sent for a new cycle, but for some reason they decided to throw them out! Despite all the impurities, it was still the most valuable rhodium. Having stuffed the wealth into the sagging pockets of his jacket, Somerset went behind a row of containers and was stunned - there was a descent into the lowland. The entire slope was strewn with platinum bars, twenty kilograms each. How many times had one or another of his acquaintances entertained fantasies about how nice it would be to grab a couple of bars, which were being carried around on carts like bricks, and here it was! He needed to call an old friend to come here in his car. Or rather, to fly, and he would have to go on the way back. If only no one showed up here...

 Chapter 11

    Chapter 11.


    Again the hum of the fan emerged from the darkness. The doctor was hanging around on the opposite side, fiddling with one of the docks.


    - Yes, that would be something, - thought Somerset, remembering the ingots, - I wonder if there could be such a place somewhere on Earth, purely theoretically... At least in the closed territory of some factory... Of course not.


    Noticing that Somerset had woken up - which was what the sensors were for, the doctor first turned around, then pushed off from the handrails and headed towards his dock, bypassing the central structure.


    In response to a question about his health, Somerset said, not for the first time, that unlike previous anabiosis, from previous flights, now he has a variety of dreams every time. This dream, with the ingots, was perhaps the only decent one, but he did not focus on the content of this and previous dreams.


    - It''s all a magnetic storm, - the doctor answered, - Our own magnetic storm. The solar flare began two days ago. The magnetic system is working at full capacity. Plus, the ship sent a probe for the external curtain. That''s why the engines are turned off.


    - Is that it? A strong flare? And I thought... - Somerset said, looking somewhere towards the opposite side.


    The boring compartment was separated from the outer space penetrated by all kinds of radiation by one and a half meters of multi-layered plating - there were polyethylene sheets with boron and plastic containing barium. There was also plating that protected the plastic layers themselves. Everything was enveloped in an external thermal control system, which was something like sheet hydroradiators. There were also countless layers of all kinds of foil made of heavy metals and mineral fabrics of varying density. On top of everything was a white Kevlar blanket with sewn-on bars of aerogel. The outer surface of the near side was a couple of meters from Somerset itself. This surface was now being irradiated with X-rays of such strength that if this radiation had passed through unhindered, the flight would have ended long ago for him. However, one and a half meters of all these covers and the rigid hull were not the only protection - there was also a magnetic field that deflected charged particles. Just like Earth, only on a different scale, but as compensation, the strength of the local magnetosphere was greater. The field, interacting with non-uniform particle flows, was not something stationary - it was constantly changing its parameters, which was that very magnetic storm. This was partly shielded by the hull of the compartment, but only partly. Somerset decided to review everything that came in the form of news programs from Earth - hanging out in the orbit of Mars, the onboard computer loaded all the received TV programs into its archive and now it was possible to study the outrages that engulfed the Confederate Earth. His eyes began to close, not even an hour had passed since he woke up.


    Now it was a night alley. Yes, it was an alley, not some wasteland. A huge cliff on one side, on the left, went down into the darkness, colored by even rows of street lights. On the right, there were either groves or forests going up into the sky. Somerset wanted to go up to the fence, admire the picture of the night valley, but immediately recoiled - the abyss, going into the darkness, was eerie.


    Then something white flew out from somewhere below. Somerset already guessed what it was. Having described a trajectory unthinkable in earthly conditions with a top point of about twenty meters, it, as if nothing had happened, stood up on its feet. It did not land, but rather ran onto the surface, which is why, it seemed, Somerset felt a tremor under his feet. - You move roughly, - said Somerset.


    - Just right, - answered "Snow White", - Still, you people are such fragile creatures...


    - What is, is. By the way, about this... - he began to choose his words


    - Worried that I''m a virus? I know what you mean, - as always, she got ahead of me, - It''s not at all as it may seem. I don''t cause all these mass epidemics with extinctions, with fatalities. I can spread, but about... Learn the principle that when a large number of people or other carriers start to get sick, when an epidemic occurs, then the disease gets sick too. This is not normal, this should not happen. The normal state is when we are not noticed.


    - So that''s it? So maybe it''s better to stay away from people? Not get sick from each other?


    - No, not at all. Not all viruses are like us, like me. There are a huge number of viruses that are not connected to any structures. With them, it is exactly as you imagine it. As you have studied it. And there are people like me. There are several of us on Earth, and there are countless numbers of us outside the Earth. I am a virus of one species. Someone else is different. We are an intelligent species, and at the same time, we can say that we are different species. You, people, are looking for and at the same time afraid to find others like you in the depths of space, and with us it turns out like in your fantasies, where several space races are gathered in one place. Someone is similar to someone else, someone is not. This can be compared to this picture. We have our own science and society. Only it, the society, is more detached or something... We are kind of far from each other, as if we only communicate through rare correspondence. Not always, but most of the time. Can you imagine that?


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    - No. I can''t imagine how that is possible.


    - Well, we are not people.


    - And you look like a human.


    - Because you are a part of me.


    - Honestly, I can''t understand anything. Who is a part of whom and how?


    - Okay, imagine that a ghost is flying over the earth and the ghost can cover if not all people, then entire cities. Penetrate minds. Very superficially, but with a large population coverage, this is enough. This is such an invisible big angel that can sow... Sow unconscious imperatives directly: hostility, madness, fears or, on the contrary, peace and inspiration. I do not want to embellish and say only what will please. Well, is the example with the ghost clear? Is that clear?


    - That''s clear, only a little strange for an angel. In general, I understand, yes, I understand... Can I ask a question?


    - I can. By the way, you speak more coherently and behave more sanely. This is due to a kind of training all these nights. And what kind of question?


    - What are you going to do with us?


    - Ah, I see... Don''t worry. I lived on your Earth until the twentieth century. Before it began. There are several of us on your Earth. I also live on another Earth at the same time, but I had to leave yours. Leaving doesn''t mean flying away. It''s just that on your Earth the viruses have become the way you know them. And there are many parallel Earths like yours. About one and a half hundred.


    - And why did you have to leave?


    - And so, we''ve come to this, - "Snow White" pressed her lips together. Somerset even thought that some kind of anger ran across her face, - This is already a reason, - she continued, - As you can see, we are a form of life completely different from what you expect to meet sooner or later outside of Earth. If you think that this is enough, then no. There is a real monster that, just like us, coexists with you, people. She also imagines that she can... - "Snow White" began to portray an even more expressive mixture of anger, contempt and indignation with her whole appearance.


    - She? - Somerset asked.


    - Yes. It is... Horrible... A real monster from outer space... And yet she allows herself to do such...


    - What exactly?


    - Walks among people, as if... As if nothing had happened... Look over there, - "Snow White" pointed somewhere up. Instead of the moon, a bluish ring gaped in the sky, intercepted by a belt of the same bluish glow.


    - And how is it here...


    - He did not have time to finish, because "Snow White" grabbed his head with her hands and covered his mouth.


    - And what, you can''t even say the name? - Somerset asked when she loosened her grip.


    - No, you can. It''s something else. I''m training you now so that at the right moment you block part of your consciousness. She might come for you.


    - That''s all I need! - Somerset replied, - I mean both that she''ll come and the brainwashing. How do I block part of my consciousness?


    - Don''t worry about that. Everything will work itself out. Like a machine. Imagine all these mechanisms, when a person temporarily forgets something. Then, when needed, he remembers. Like a computer in your head. Like in the movies.


    - It''s called brainwashing and you can go crazy that way. In past centuries, the military experimented. I saw it in the movies. You probably know, it was when we, people, seriously fought among ourselves. Although we can clash even now... In general, I don''t like your idea. I don''t need to change anything in my head.


    - Don''t worry about that. Where are your technologies and where am I. Your technologies are a stick in the hands of a monkey. But for me it''s natural. I would have done all this even in those times when I didn''t know normal science... When I was like your ancient people. Well, you know, ancient Greece, their symbol is Mount Olympus... Your culture should be familiar with this.


    Holy shit... - Somerset muttered, - I''ve heard about ancient stupid Greece once before. We had Doctor Heller on Mars. And the rest of the top brass. The Fuhrers of the rebellion. You should have talked to them... Or...


    - If you think that yours, that their rebellion is my doing, then no. This is exclusively an intrigue of your human rulers. They want to build a new society and move there. So that their descendants can move. And the rest of humanity, therefore, is a thing of the past. This is very naive.


    - It''s not that it''s naive, it''s inhumane, - Somerset objected, - Can you somehow stop them?


    - So their plan will fail anyway.


    - And will it fail?


    - You will remember everything in due time and you will remember it quickly. I will come to you when you are already close. Although I cannot see the future, I can easily guess how events will develop. These are not your legendary predictions, this is more accurate. It¡¯s just analysis. At least taking into account my experience of communicating with people. Nevertheless, you will have to be patient. For the time being, you will have to play hide and seek - there are government agents among you, and these are the kind of people to whom it is better not to show anything that does not fit into the framework of their understanding. Primitive understanding. The time will come and everything will become clear to you. Your DNA is something special. We have a rule that when someone is forced to leave, he returns, has every right to return, if one of the people calls his name. You called.


    - Did I call your name? Just said "Ferengelia"? And that''s it?


    - No, it''s a name for conversation. And then "Snow White". Although this is even more correct. That, a real name is a long chain of DNA fragments. All these countless cellular replications, in addition to the main function, collect it, the name, fragment by fragment. This takes years, sometimes a person''s life is not enough. The case is continued by another, usually a direct descendant. Or a relative on another branch, because the process is parallel in the branches. Whoever is faster. And now, when the name is called, I can return. This is not a vital necessity, it is a rule. All societies have rules. Well, here is one of them. There are few people on Mars, and then we were not talking about Mars. Now you will return to Earth, and this will be the final assurance. I will return to your Earth. And she will not object to anything.


    - Do I have genetically modified DNA?


    Viruses can leave markers on DNA. It is like a program. And it is harmless ...


    Then Somerset realized that he remembered that he was on a ship. However, the joy was short-lived. He fell into darkness, as before.

 Chapter 12

    Chapter 12.


    Somerset opened his eyes. His head was heavy, and the light unbearable. The doctor, who had probably initiated his awakening, was standing on the platform, holding onto the handrail of his "trough."


    - Earth soon? - Somerset said with a tongue that was hard to hear.


    - Thirty-five hours left, - the doctor said, pulling the tube out of his nose, - You''ll have plenty of time to get yourself together, cowboy.


    - Cowboy, - Somerset mimicked, grinning, - Actually, I''m not a cowboy. I''m Brazilian.


    - You''ll tell me later. Now lie down for ten minutes, - she pointed to the console-terminal screen, - If the green sign lights up earlier, take the package and fly to be processed.


    - Yes, I know, I''ve been on flights.


    - I never know, maybe you forgot. Okay, breathe evenly.


    It is unlikely that the last phrase was said because Somerset had to maintain a certain breathing rate - the unceremonious doctor threw out a meaningless phrase just like that. Pushing off the handrails, she moved to the next "patient". Meanwhile, the muscles began to thaw - one drug was now replaced by a completely different one - Somerset asked that doctor about it on the first day. About half an hour later, Somerset, who had taken an unceremonious shower, more like a car wash, arranged in the chamber that was called "processing", was already making his way along the tunnel to a compartment that fit the definition of a wardroom. Now it was necessary to climb the ladder that ran along the wall of a fifty-meter vertical shaft. In zero gravity it was just a tunnel, but now it was a mine. Fortunately, the gravity was twelve percent of the earth''s. Having completed exercises in climbing and going around safety nets, Somerset reached the internal airlock. - Good morning! - the first to notice Somerset appearing said cheerfully, slightly mockingly, implying a joke, and having become familiar with Dupare.


    - The same to you! - Somerset answered, slightly frowning, - What''s up with you? You must have had a good time, didn''t you? - he turned to the others, - While we were lying there half-dead, you were eating our food and drinking beer?


    - That''s why they put you to bed, - another voice responded, - And it will also reduce the load on the toilet.


    Everyone laughed.


    - Why? - Somerset answered coldly, - You will work out these norms for everyone. This was a typical manner of speaking for representatives of the vanguard of humanity abandoned on Mars. Sometimes this allowed everyone to feel cooler in comparison with the rest of the wimps who never left Earth. Now, however, everyone had the opposite task - to integrate back into the society of those same wimps. There were enough adventures.


    - Okay, seriously now, - Somerset changed his tone, - What and how?


    - Thirty-five hours to the ground. Most of the speed has long been lost. On the way, we got into a storm. It was a real butthurt. It was probably even easier for you.


    - Of course, Somerset answered, - That''s what you need. - I came to the conclusion that you need to fly in a storm. I even had dreams. Like I found a mountain of rhodium ingots in a garbage dump on Earth. Someone laughed approvingly.


    - They report from the control room that the computer has entered their, the Earth network, but there is no voice or video communication, - Dupare said. It must be because of martial law.


    - Really? And why is there no civilian communication? Some illegal one? We are already close.


    - Maybe there already is, - answered a rather young communications engineer, whom Somerset barely knew.


    - Then let''s fly to the pilots'' compartment and find out what''s going on? There aren''t many people now, everyone''s still asleep. There''s nothing else to do.


    - No, it''s not worth it, - answered Dupare.


    He answered in a not very pleasant tone, seemingly softer than usual, and at the same time not tolerating objections.


    - Why is that? - Somerset still objected, - They are the same pilots as... I could have been there, or any of us. I was once given the chance to fly a shuttle. I flew. The computer, after all...


    - So why weren''t you there now, in the pilots'' compartment, in their place?


    - Well, I don''t know... There were others.


    - So stay here and don''t bother them, - Dupare concluded, slightly cheered up by the victory he had won.


    - Okay, whatever you say, - Somerset gave in and began to fasten himself to one of the seats.


    Then Dolbin flew into the side hatch of the compartment.


    - There you are! Are you awake? - he turned to Somerset.


    - As you can see.


    - Let''s play, nobody here knows how to?


    - He''s had enough of everyone, - someone''s voice sounded good-naturedly. It was Leita - she, like Dolbin, and their entire group, were lucky enough to draw a lot that freed them from the need to fall into suspended animation.


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    - A wide gaming phone with a game running immediately appeared in front of Somerset.


    - Why not play. There''s nothing else to do anyway, - Somerset agreed and reached for his own.


    The rest of those present were bored, looking at the screen in front of them with some half-century-old film.


    Somerset, almost without looking, made the usual movements on the screen and soon was ready to drive old cars along the streets of Paris with Dolbin on various gangster cases.


    In a small window made of thick lead glass, one of several arranged in a less protected compartment, a small Earth with a very tiny Moon was visible. They were approaching.


    The ship was racing along its previously elongated orbit somewhere in the vicinity of the trajectory along which the Earth was floating. The moment of the start of the corrective braking cycle was approaching, when the ship would begin to drop its speed by one and a half meters per second every second. Such a maneuver created a feeling of gravity of about a sixth of the Earth''s and this was a rather intense load on the entire ship - a rare case when the acceleration exceeded one meter per second squared. This was supposed to continue for five hours. This was docking to orbit. When the corridor was in a favorable configuration, such a maneuver was reduced to a minimum. This was not the case - no one wanted to tie the escape to navigation conditions with excessive scrupulousness.


    - "This is not clean," - a message appeared in the corner of the display, in the place that was reserved for the internal chat.


    - What are you talking about? - Somerset said, spoke silently, only moving his lips. The phrase read by the camera immediately appeared below.


    - Keep your tongue out, - said the answer.


    Somerset tore his gaze away from the screen and glanced at Dolbin. He was watching him. Seeing that Somerset finally saw him, he glanced around the compartment and nodded. Considering that such a simple correspondence could fit into the context of a toy about gangster adventures, Dolbin''s ingenuity had to be given credit. - Let''s go get a bite to eat, - was another message.


    Somerset sent "OK" and began to unbuckle himself. Meanwhile, Dolbin demonstratively took out his tobacco inhaler.


    - What''s the matter? - asked Somerset, when they both flew up to the sliding plastic door, behind which was a compartment of one of the galleys.


    - Let''s talk now, - answered Dolbin, grabbing the handles of the doors.


    Both flew into the galley - a nook slightly larger than an ordinary elevator, with a row of doors from which the selected briquettes were served - simple dishes wrapped in edible film. Eating had to be done behind a closed door, and then it was necessary to "clean up after yourself" - turn on the system of the supply and exhaust, removing all the crumbs and drops. This way you could afford not a jumble in tubes, but something closer to the usual form.


    - Did you know anyone who tried to contact Earth? - Dolbin asked, running his finger along the display, where a list of available dishes was displayed. - Well, someone, sometime, maybe. The optics are blocked, for the radio you need a person with a receiving station.


    - Have you ever wondered why? Three hundred years ago, the Soviets sent probes and photographed the surface. Then American toy cars sent videos to Earth, and we¡­


    - No one has time to mess around. And there is no complete information isolation. What''s the matter?


    - That''s how the staff is selected - no one should have time, and in general they don''t want to deal with non-core technology. That guy, well, the lanky one, the communications engineer¡­


    - John Walter, - Somerset remembered.


    - Yes, him. So, he managed to get on the Earth''s Internet. A couple of hours ago.


    - What a great guy. And what did he hack?


    - He didn''t hack anything. Of course he hacked, but only a communications satellite. It doesn''t really count. He would have been blocked as a subscriber with an unknown identifier. He got around it. As a result, he somehow contacted some woman of his through a regular social network.


    - Well done. I''m happy for him.


    - Well, the thing is that no one on Earth knows about our rebellion.


    - Did she write to him?


    - Well, yes.


    - And where does she live? In the city? Or in a village of three houses?


    - Yes, everything has already been confirmed. He contacted someone else later. And she did too. And they don''t have martial law, or default. Or any of that crisis at all.


    - And what does all this mean?


    - Who the hell knows.


    - And you don''t want us to call him, - Somerset said.


    - Oh, I see. Do you think I''ve gone crazy or something?


    The training program also included a medical course. In addition to all these methods of providing first and not only first aid, there was such a rather controversial thing as an introduction to the basics of psychiatry. It was a very odious science and they warned that you shouldn''t look for all these disorders in yourself. However, further developments showed that it was not useless. In the conditions of space and Mars, moving a little was not something extraordinary. Such people could usually become a little detached, carry all this entertaining nonsense about world conspiracies. At the same time, they performed their work duties exactly the same as before the breakdown, and after a simple therapy of several injections of sleeping pills, they usually returned to normal. The whole point was that these were healthy people. If they were real psychos, there would be no such easy solution to the problem. Although voluntarily staying in that world of the red planet - that was also a kind of madness. Not medical, but some kind of social.


    - I''m just interested in what this Walter will say, - Somerset answered the clearly nervous Dolbin, - Maybe he would let us contact someone. I still have friends. Do you have relatives?


    - Here! One more thing! - Dolbin answered, - I only have a second cousin and an aunt. Have you ever wondered why they started choosing those who had no one? It''s a rare combination. Very rare, an advanced specialist and no relatives. There was nothing like that in the first waves, and then...


    - Well, that''s a well-known fact. You know it yourself.


    It was all really simple and logical - despite all the high-tech, working in a space mining complex was dangerous. So there were lawsuits with payments, and there was just damage to the image. Of course, there would be millions and millions of penniless people all over the Earth who would be ready to fly even on coal traction, but they, the penniless people, in turn, did not fit the necessary criteria.


    Here Dolbin began to outline his plan. Or rather, the plan, according to him, was thought out by three - Him, Leita and this Walter. The idea was to raise as much noise as possible so that on Earth they would find out as early as possible that that separatist rebellion had already taken place on Mars. It was necessary to cling to Earth as tightly as possible in terms of information. It all came down to the former security service representatives present on the ship. They were a problem. They could not be trusted.


    While Dolbin was laying out his plan, Somerset wanted nothing more than to hear something about all this from someone else, from Leita or Walter. While Somerset was lying in the dock and dreaming about the wealth found near the dumpster and some other porn, those who did not fall into suspended animation were apparently subjected to strong and unusual physiological stress - after all, the dashing orbit lay quite close to the Sun, almost comparable to the Venusian one at perihelion.


    With each new point of the plan, Dolbin caused Somerset new and increasing concerns. A radical version of the idea involved hijacking the Shuttle as it was landing and landing it in some relatively crowded place. That way, the secret services would have no way of hiding, as Dolbin put it, an awl in a sack. And in the ass - he added that too.

 Chapter 13

    Chapter 13.


    A barely noticeable small tremor ran through the hull - the dock''s grip drives started working, holding the shuttle for the entire flight. Like the anabiotic beds, the device was also called the dock. Somerset glanced out the window. In the rounded rectangle of glazing, the structures of the transport ship and the neighboring shuttle, which was also about to undock, were visible.


    Somewhere behind, a very muffled hum was heard, sounding in time with the new vibration - the chemical maneuvering engines started working, capable of only taking the shuttle away from the main ship to a distance where the main engines could safely turn on. Take it away at a walking speed or so - the supply of chemical fuel was meager.


    The picture in the window came to life - a farm and some block, shrouded in a white blanket fried by all sorts of radiation, began to move away.


    Somerset turned his head and looked ahead, into the compartment. Ahead, the displays of the pilots'' instrument post were visible. It was sys.258 - another shuttle, not the one they took off on. The hijacked shuttles were not identical. However, the layout of the compartment with the airlocks and the visible post in this slightly heavier ship was very similar.


    - How much time until entry into the atmosphere? - Somerset said, looking into the peephole of the individual console.


    - Fifty minutes until the start of the entry maneuver, - sounded in the earpiece.


    Then his own seat began to press on his back, and the compartment filled with a low hum that made any conversation impossible - the main engines started working - two pairs of ejectors, drawing their energy from as many as two "tubes" - that''s what they called small-sized thermonuclear reactors. The shuttle was thus a two-tube one.


    The shuttle "revved up" for about a minute and a half at most - no more was needed. The orbital mechanics had to finish everything further - the shuttles, like the main ship, were already firmly seated in Earth orbit. It was possible to simply stand in a circle and wait for evacuation teams.


    Now all that was left was to sympathize with those who remained in the second line - waiting out the landing on Earth, being in the lower gateway was too much even for the reckless "Martians". Although it was necessary to sympathize in one thing and envy in another: Dolbin, Walter and Leita were here, on the same board. Whether to be happy about this or not, Somerset did not know.


    Dolbin''s plan was not a figment of his imagination, but the idea of establishing strong and numerous connections with Earth failed. Not only did they manage to involve only a dozen more people in the conspiracy, but the new illegal information flow from Earth, judging by the statements of Walter and Leita, who understood this matter, turned into solid fakes. It was an old and proven method of counteraction - amateur designers of Martian transceivers had encountered exactly the same problem. It must be that some powerful artificial intelligence had gotten involved.


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    Several of the people newly involved in the conspiracy showed ingenuity and made some efforts, as a result of which all four "ringleaders" ended up on the same board. Somerset would not have been particularly upset if this had failed and he had flown on another ship, but considering the efforts made by the people, he could not afford to act weak and refuse. Now they had to put into action the radical option - the very same, desperate one, with the seizure of control.


    - What''s with the connection, commander? - Dolbin shouted.


    By that time, the engines had already stopped working, and silence reigned in the compartment. Silence, of course, compared to the period of active maneuver, since all these auxiliary units from ventilation to the idle systems of the reactor tubes worked not silently at all.


    - Communications are in order, we will be met, - a cry was heard from the pilot''s post.


    In general, according to all the instructions, the shuttle was controlled by two crew members, but this was constantly neglected. Another good form, or rather, a kind of sign of daring, was not to fasten the seatbelts completely, but to fix only the legs with the appropriate belts. This was wrong, but they did it all the time in orbit. Now, however, a rather tough maneuver of entering the dense earth''s atmosphere was ahead, so such showing off was completely unnecessary. That is why even before the "dedoking" began, someone called out to the pilot, reminding him about the belts. On Mars, unlike the prim pilots and other crews of Earth, they were not used to being affected and communicated quite simply. There was one large enterprise there. It was a pity that it had gone down a dubious path. Somerset wasn''t thinking about the strange behavior of the Earthlings at the moment.


    Their whole confrontation and crisis were also strange, causing a depressing impression, so fundamentally nothing changed here.


    - Where are we landing? - Dolbin did not calm down.


    - Kennedy Rocket Field. Nevada.


    - Did Earth tell you or did you choose it yourself?


    - Of course, Earth. This is Earth. Have you gotten out of the habit? They don''t land just anywhere here.


    - Really? And I thought you''d take us straight to our cities, - Dolbin laughed.


    - The pilot didn''t answer.


    Somerset glanced towards Dolbin. He was sitting on the right, next to Walter, who was holding his computer in his hands. Leyta was sitting in his, Somerset''s left row, closer to the control post.


    - Well, guys, if you succeed, I''ll be surprised for a long time, - thought Somerset, however, at that moment he was already completely convinced of their arguments. Along the starboard side of the compartment, spots of bright sunlight slowly floated. The sunlight was inspiring - although it was transatmospheric, it was already terrestrial sunlight - on Mars the light was noticeably dimmer.

 Chapter 14

    Chapter 14.


    At some point, the ship''s main engines came to life, pushed the ship forward somewhere, and then fell silent again - the shuttle was correcting its trajectory. The drives of the reversing units immediately came into action, deploying these small power plants attached to the sides of the ship. These plants were perhaps the most precise devices on the entire ship. Engineering marvels that included plasma feeders - a kind of electrical wiring that was plasma bundles held by a magnetic field. This is how energy and the primary working fluid were transferred from the reactors to the ejectors and the chambers preceding them, mixing the secondary working fluid with the high-energy plasma. In addition, the turning mechanisms themselves required structures of extraordinary endurance, for which they used, among other things, all those expensive metals.


    Ahead, in the windshield, the Earth appeared. It slowly floated from left to right. The glowing networks of cities immersed in the darkness of night were already discernible. All this could not but please.


    Suddenly, on the display of the individual panel, the one in which the on-board computer camera was built in, a window appeared that contrasted greatly with the previous picture, notifying about an incoming message. Dolbin''s voice was immediately heard. It became clear what kind of message it was - Walter had finally gotten into the on-board network. He had gotten into it, one must think, from his clamshell computer.


    - Attention everyone! - Dolbin announced in the meantime. - I inform you that we managed to penetrate the Earth''s Internet several hours ago. We found out that the overwhelming majority of Earthlings have no idea about the events on Mars. We could not tell you earlier, because we ourselves were not sure of this discovery. We rely on personal contacts.


    A puzzled noise ran through the compartment, but everyone was listening.


    - Real TV programs are now displayed on your displays. It''s online. Try to find at least one word about us. There, on Mars, they lied to us. They lied to us all these years. There was no default and no crisis. We came to the conclusion that it was simply cheaper for the company to leave everyone until the end. Obviously, the connection was blocked with these goals.


    - Who are we? - the American Buzz, a rather elderly engineer, said with distrust in his voice.


    - Walter and I, - Dolbin answered calmly.


    - Okay, let''s assume that this is so, - Dupare''s voice was heard, - Right now your investigation does not change anything. In half an hour we will land and see everything for ourselves. Your investigation, frankly, intrigued me, as well as everyone else. We will see soon...


    - That''s the whole point, - Dolbin answered, - We will find out nothing. We will find out, but not that. We need to choose a launch site at our own discretion. Or better yet, just some random site near the city. If we land in Nevada, they''ll take us in and shut the hell up forever. Is that so hard to understand?


    - Mr. Dolbin, It¡¯s not serious, - Dupare answered rather casually. He answered as if the conversation was not taking place on board the shuttle preparing to enter the atmosphere, but in some bar.


    - What''s the problem? The shuttle is designed for this. Both on Mars and on Earth. Now we''ll enter the disaster system, choose a place and send out a warning for everyone to get out. So as not to burn anyone. It will work. We just need to choose a site. We decided that it will be New York.


    - Are you crazy? - Dupare roared unexpectedly.


    - What are you shouting about? - Dolbin answered calmly. - What will the others say?


    - I was thinking, - Buzz suddenly began, - That they pumped us full of some kind of crap there on Mars. Judge for yourself: all of Mars is making a friendly demarche towards Earth. We, in turn, are going into confrontation with these separatists and running away. And now we are starting to cause trouble in a separate shuttle. These are nothing but psychological tricks... Why don''t we land in some quiet and deserted place. And where we can be seen from afar or from cars. Land ten miles from some city. Well, we''ll miss Kennedy. Is that a crime?


    - Everyone stay where you are! - Dupare suddenly commanded, - We are on board the shuttle, not on a fucking bus! This is the last thing we need!


    - Why are you giving orders! - one bearded thug shouted angrily, - Your security service stayed there, on Mars - so go there.


    - Security service, - several voices muttered at once. Obviously, not all of the two hundred and fifty people knew who was who.


    - Can''t you see the habits? - the thug who had managed to unbuckle himself shouted, standing up straight. - Let''s land in Kennedy, as planned. At least it''s safe. This is Earth and its atmosphere, not Mars. When we land, I''ll beat his face in. I have my own scores to settle with them. But I''m not going to land in the desert.


    - Didn''t you listen to me? - Dolbin shouted.


    - You two can go to hell. Everything was calm before you. If it was such a conspiracy as you say, we would have been shot down on the approach.


    - They wouldn''t shoot us down, - Buzz shouted, - The ship costs money. And now they''ll just put us all in cars and that''s it. Now everything''s worked out. Guys, I''m on your side. If there''s no other way, then let''s land right on someone''s head!


    - It''s still good that they managed without me for now, - thought Somerset, meanwhile warming up his hands, preparing for his part in the general plan.


    - What a hell are you doing there?! - the pilot finally chimed in, shouting through the intercom.


    To be convincing, the pilot tilted this way and that, as if wanting to shake the restless passengers.


    - Gentlemen, - Dupare began unexpectedly measuredly, - on behalf of the Confederate Government, I guarantee you that everything will be fine. You will receive what you earned within the framework of your contracts. In addition, you are entitled to certain compensation for the fact that you were involved in these events against your will. And yes, you will have to agree to remain silent, but I think that should not be a problem for you.


    - And what about those who remained? - Somerset thought. After all, this really is some kind of GULAG that Dolbin was talking about. And those who are destined to hang out there all their lives will be born and have already been born there. And all because the ships with their bio-shields and their quickly burning out engines are very expensive and the constellation cannot afford such expenses. And another constellation usurped the technology of these very engines.


    I think it was called that, "usurpation of technology." Lawsuits happened because of this. And the whole Martian mess, in fact, was because of this.


    Dupare had something in his hand. It was a pistol with a rather impressive magazine. Somerset had once seen such ones on the Internet. It was a plastic pistol intended for special services. Plastic bullets were not capable of critically damaging the skin of a shuttle or an airplane, but their stopping power was sufficient. It, this power was demonstrated to a certain extent now - Everyone shut up.


    - Mr. Dupare, can I ask a question? - Somerset asked rather calmly in contrast to the others.


    - Yes? - Dupare responded in the same calm tone.


    - Are you represent something? The security service is one thing, but I mean the government. It¡¯s just not that hard to pretend to be a government agent... Well, we¡¯re only used to believing IDs and badges...


    - On the whole, it¡¯s constructive, - Dupare answered, - I advise the rest to follow this example, - he chuckled coldly, - I recommend looking at your screens...


    At once on Somerset¡¯s display, and, one would think, on the others, an image of some document appeared with the familiar inscription CSSS - Confederation State Security Service. There was also a photograph of Colonel Reinhardt Dupare. The shuttle''s onboard computer noted that, apart from the pilot, Dupare was the senior officer on board at the time the document was shown. Apparently, for the computer, even though Walter had hacked it, Dupare was still a critical person. This was as convincing as the document itself.


    - Sir, am I right in understanding, - Somerset continued, - If we were allowed to get away from Mars, then we don''t have to worry about what happens next?


    - Of course, Mr. Somerset, - Dupare replied, - Did the rest of you hear? Stop this mess and take your places as expected. We''re coming in soon.


    - He''s lying to you! - Somerset heard in head, - You''ll be removed. He and a few others like him just needed to get away. Now they just need to get to Earth!


    - This crap again! - Somerset thought angrily.


    He had no intention of engaging in any mental dialogue with the voice - any person more or less prepared for the vicissitudes of space knew this. He had been instructed about this before the training anabiosis, and in general during the course on psychiatric disorders taught during the internship.


    - The thug who wanted to beat him up is actually with him. He''s also a CSSS officer.


    The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.


    Somerset gritted his teeth a little, checked the straps that were already properly secured, and looked around. The ever-approaching Earth was now on the starboard side - a fragment of the horizon was visible through one of the windows.


    - There, I''ll have to ask for something from this... what is this crap called? - Somerset thought slowly.


    Actually, once, on the final day of the past suspended animation, Somerset encountered something similar. There was a feeling that someone was telling him something, although there was no actual sound sensation. It was like they were talking into his head. Most likely, they would have rejected him for something like that, but only if it had happened during a test dive. When you''re flying to Mars, then, of course, no longer. And especially not on the way back. The doctor said that the mechanism of the hallucinations was similar to what creates the impression that you are playing some game after playing hard all day. Only here, against the background of the effect of the drugs, fragments of someone''s random phrases were recorded. Now the voice was much clearer, although the difference between this conversation and the sound sensation was still noticeable.


    - You must land in a random place. Answer! I know that you hear!


    - I wonder if this goes away on its own, or do I really need to take something? - Somerset thought angrily. And I also wonder if it can be recorded word for word if someone blurts it out while I am asleep and unconscious?


    Here, his vision began to double slightly. Somerset blinked, then shook his head. Some other picture began to emerge through the picture visible to his eyes. This was too much. A view of some town appeared, strongly reminiscent of the streets of his hometown, but still it was something else.


    - Computer, I''m dizzy! - Somerset growled angrily into the camera.


    Immediately on the display, which had been displaying Dupare''s document until then, a medical menu appeared.


    - Your condition is normal, Mr. Somerset, - a voice sounded in the earpiece, at the same time confirming the difference between the real auditory sensation and this...


    - What''s wrong with my head, you idiot?


    - Neuroactivity is normal. Additional peripheral equipment is needed for more accurate diagnostics.


    The standard suit, this space overalls, was, among other things, stuffed with all sorts of sensors. They were also in the condom-hat, but these were rather primitive - a completely different headdress would have been needed for normal sensors.


    The second, hallucinatory image appeared more strongly and even seemed to gain color - as if it were some kind of night and greenery around. In general, in the shuttle compartment, everything visible to the eye was also closer to night, only with bright lights - sun glare and lighting that never turned off. There was no greenery, though. Except for some indication, rather a combination of blue, black and pure white light.


    Then some woman appeared before my eyes. She was all in white and with a silver crown. Just a princess.


    - Do you see me? - sounded in head again.


    Somerset closed his eyes, but this did not make the fucking "Snow White", as he for some reason called her, give up. The picture was not right before his eyes - it, like the voice, was somewhere in his head.


    - You need to land somewhere other than where you were told. Then you will stay alive.


    Somerset glanced at the display, where in addition to the lines with the parameters, a green silhouette of a man was displayed - the color, as it was easy to guess, indicated that everything was in perfect order.


    - You don''t want to answer? - The voice sounded already with some displeasure.


    - No, I don''t want to. This is a hallucination. You are a hallucination, - Somerset finally burst out, having finally addressed the voice. Addressed also mentally.


    - Then look, - she answered.


    A few moments later, Somerset''s gaze caught sight of Dupare''s figure, which began to rise above his chair. Before that, he had obviously already managed to unfasten his belts.


    Having flown up to the ceiling of the compartment, he suddenly began to tear at his collar. His eyes were wild.


    - Is it his heart? - someone''s voice sounded, - Inject him with something from the first aid kit, - another shouted.


    Someone started to unfasten their belts.


    - Five minutes to the entrance - shouted the pilot, who had managed to react to what had happened.


    Dupare, who had nevertheless been conscious the whole time, managed to make one sharp movement - he threw his pistol somewhere towards the left row, where Somerset was sitting. The weapon, which had tumbled for a couple of seconds, was caught by someone''s hand. It turned out to be the same big guy who wanted to punch Dupare in the face.


    - Remain calm! - the big guy growled, - You, - he nodded somewhere behind him, - Since you got loose, then fly here. What''s on his monitor? - the thug turned to the one sitting behind Dupare.


    - Heart is normal. Some kind of cramp, - the man managed to shout before exactly the same thing happened to the big guy as to Dupare. The pistol, released from his hand, hit the ceiling and flew somewhere to the side.


    - Now do you see? - a voice rang out in his head.


    - What is it? - Somerset answered mentally, no longer seeing any reason to ignore the voice, or the image.


    - I told you... There are no bloodhounds on board now. Shout out to everyone that there are no more agents. Let yours hurry.


    Somerset obeyed.


    - What, was the second one with him too? - Buzz said. - He was the one who threw the gun to him. And they both passed out. Do they have neurochips or something?


    Somerset also had a thought at first, reminding him of the existence of these devices, but, firstly, if applied to him, this would be pure conspiracy theory of a psychopath, and secondly, neurochips did not create images. And they did not turn you off - that only happened in movies.


    - Where are we landing? - Somerset shouted without any prompts from this deadly "Snow White".       - We''ll figure it out now, - Dolbin shouted, having come to life, immediately starting to unfasten Walter, who a few seconds later was already being dragged forward, to the pilot''s seat.


    - What''s up with you? - the pilot to whom Leita rushed, shouted over the radio.


    - We''ll land somewhere else! - Dolbin shouted into the compartment.


    - Are you nuts? Three minutes to the entrance!


    - Then we press up.


    Somerset didn''t see what kind of fuss was going on there, in front, but less than a minute later his back felt very light, and the belts tightened - the engines gave an impulse. Someone was yelling at someone. Blinding spots of sunlight ran around the compartment every now and then - the ship began to maneuver along all three axes. Somerset''s participation was not required - the shuttle was captured.


    Now, contrary to his previous line of behavior, he wanted to catch the elusive picture of that inner vision, and closed his eyes. It worked - a few seconds later the night panorama with trees and some lanterns appeared in his head again. "Snow White", as it turned out, capable of if not killing, then knocking out a person, was right there. Somerset even managed to make out that silver thing on her head. It was something like a crown.


    - And what are you going to do? First these two, and then...


    - You''re starting again. You people very often reason within the limits of your mentality. Everything will be fine.


    - And if we now...


    - Nothing if, - Snow White interrupted, - You are not one of those who are capable of this. And there is no need. And even if you could decide to do something with the shuttle, you would not move, - she smiled.


    It was unpleasant. It was unpleasant to feel so powerless.


    Then Somerset felt another push and a slight heaviness - the shuttle was once again performing some kind of maneuver.


    - I lived here for centuries. Here and in other places. Then this Ha.L-t appeared. Actually, she has been here for a long time, but she didn''t behave so brazenly. I had to leave you. Now I''m coming back. It will only be better for everyone.


    - What will be better?


    - Nothing special. You won''t notice anything. And no one will. Now I won''t chatter, and you''ll see how the thing you argued about works.


    Somerset said nothing. The vision began to dissipate, apparently she decided that she had said enough. And then his memory opened up. The dream about the ingots was not the only one - it was just a trifle, designed to distract his consciousness like food thrown to an animal. He remembered how he walked around the city, and how from time to time he learned to think in his sleep, having learned to read. Of course, he remembered this Ferengelia in detail, all these stories about viruses united by quantum communication. About the peculiarity of the Earth and the entire solar system in general, about this region of space containing parallel worlds with the same Earths. Human science with shuttles, Mars and everything else was just a backwater, and people were just people. The only thing that remained not entirely clear was about that black hole. As if someone lived there, some evil... Well, if there was "Snow White", then there was a sorceress. She had a name. Not consisting of countless fragments of organic molecules, but an ordinary one. And it was, in a sense, dangerous to name. If Snow White, like the rest of her kind, wove her webs and blanketed her brains with the threads of all this DNA, then the sorceress, judging by the stories, acted much more primitively. Living among people, she let her claws into society and owned all the keys to networks, communications and other codes. If someone on the ship foolishly typed her name in a search, then somewhere there, with her, the fact of this event would come to light. Of course, this "someone" could be him, Somerset. What this would threaten, "Snow White" did not say, but clearly nothing good. She called her "Halt". "Snow White" spoke of her with unchanging contempt. In general, it gave the strong impression of a woman''s showdown, but Somerset, of course, could not verify the seriousness of the matter.


    Somerset opened his eyes. The shuttle was moving, its muzzle raised, pointing somewhere away from the Earth, the horizon of which was now on the left side, from Somerset''s side. Two people were sitting at the pilot''s panel. Most likely, one of the controllers was the restless Dolbin, who had finally achieved his goal.


    Dupare''s place was not empty - he was dangling, fastened with all the belts. It was difficult to say what condition he was in, whether he was even alive.


    Suddenly, the compartment was filled with a series of abrupt sound signals. At the same time, something flared in the windows. There was a yellow glow ahead, behind the windshield on course - the ion screens turned on, protecting the shuttle''s skin from the effects of atomic bombardment from the super-rarefied atmosphere. They were turned on long before entry.


    The shuttle began to maneuver once again, leveling its nose. Immediately, the engines of the reverse units started working, giving a test impulse. A slight weight appeared, first slightly pressing the butt into the seat, then, on the contrary, tightening the belts - the ship began to turn over, like an airplane performing a loop. The glow outside the window trembled and thickened. This was not interaction with the atmosphere - it was its own ion cloud, held by a magnetic field. The cruise engines started, gradually increasing their power. In half a minute, the overload reached three units - the shuttle was dropping speed. Then it began to turn over again to plunge into the atmosphere like an airplane. The reverse units came into the landing position. It was a rather abrupt landing - it was possible to smoothly and slowly drop speed, using only the reverse engines. The glow of the ion screen and the ionized atmosphere became so dense that the windows began to resemble faulty monitors, displaying a solid yellow background. Maneuvering with the engines had long since ended, but the gravity did not disappear. The orbital velocity was spent and it was mostly Earth''s gravity! Somerset did not think that it was something to be so happy about. Finally, the yellow glow faded and dissipated, replaced by a smooth background of purple sky. Stars were still visible in the sky. Nevertheless, it was brightening before our eyes, turning into something like morning. Earth''s morning. A shudder ran through the hull - the shuttle broke into the lower layers of the atmosphere. The reverse engines turned on again, apparently now lifting the nose of the ship. Then it flared up on both sides - it was landing mode. The butt was mercilessly pressed into the transformed chair. In this landing mode cycle, the cruise engines were also involved. Finally, the next overload weakened, and the cruise engines died down. The descent began with the participation of only the reverse engines, which were working almost at full power, blocking the glass light filters with their radiation. The shuttle landed on the surface. Then the reverse engines also died down. This was Earth.

 Chapter 15

    Chapter 15.


    - Where are we? - Somerset said.


    - Europe. The city of Rome, can''t you see your terminal? - someone''s voice rang out.


    - Landed safely! - Dolbin''s shout was heard, - Absolutely safe! We''re standing in the square! - he began to happily curse in Russian.


    - No one''s going anywhere! - Dupare suddenly muttered, having come to his senses.


    - Fuu you! - someone answered.


    - Find his gun! - another voice rang out.


    - They''ve already found it!


    There was a hum of drives sticking out metal platforms, previously laid on the floor like huge scales. People began to leave their places, making their way to the stairs - after all, the shuttle was not an airliner and getting out of it in gravity conditions was quite an attraction.


    Finally, Somerset, having waited for his turn, grabbed the metal steps and climbed down. Halfway there, it became clear that the lower airlock was already open - not only was it illuminated by daylight, but a breeze was blowing. A real breeze! Somerset once again bitterly remembered those who had remained there, on Mars.


    Less than a minute after leaving his place, Somerset was already standing on the floor of the sunlit airlock with the ramp thrown back. Ahead, the corner of some ancient stone building or palace was visible. There was a smell of smoke, wood smoke - the shuttle had probably burned something. It would be good if only trees.


    It turned out that the ship had stopped in the middle of a square and across a wide street. Trees were planted along the edges of the latter. They were the ones burning. Somerset turned his head and caught his breath. A little to the side of the towering triangular colossus of the shuttle, an ancient building he had seen many times was spread out. It was the Roman Colosseum. The symbol of ancient humanity now bore a very fresh mark. The computer had no trouble squeezing the shuttle into the landing space, but the ejectors of the reverse units each produced two streams spaced at an angle. One of these streams passed over the granite of the ancient building, leaving a thin layer of white plaque - this is how most rocks reacted to the exhaust plasma. The event was immortalized.


    From all sides, cars and some heavy copters flew toward the landing site. Onlookers ran. Archaic combat aircraft of the Confederate armed forces thundered in the sky. Several of them began to slow down, sharply raising their noses and spreading out perpendicular to the direction of flight. Less than a minute later, they were already hanging over the shuttle, shaking the area with the roar of their engines. Why they did this was not entirely clear, maybe they just wanted to show off. Or feel a fleeting superiority over a truly powerful machine.


    - Is all this about Mars really true? - shouted the first of those who ran up, a black, burly man in a suit and a simple cap. It was so earthly. They sorely needed such simple people there! Overwhelmed by emotions, Somerset, staggering, walked away from the ship.


    - As you can see, - one of the arrivals answered the earthling''s question, - Do you think we just decided to land in the middle of your city? It''s a very serious matter. There are two more shuttles. We don''t know where they flew to.


    - Yes, we do! - Dolbin, who had managed to get out, joined in. Somerset unmistakably recognized him by his voice.


    - Australia, the ¡°Herschel¡± rocket site and Russia, the ¡°Ural¡± rocket site, - announced this main instigator.


    A copter-minibus with the inscription TV appeared. As far as Somerset understood, Dolbin and Walter were mainly trying to achieve this.


    The crowd was growing. Judging by the fact that no one was freaking out, the landing really was clean and no one was hurt. What Dolbin, Leyta and Walter had conjured up with the warning system worked. It seemed that Dupare, who had come to his senses, was here too. Big guy followed him. Both of them did not show themselves in any way.


    Without listening to the conversations of those around him, Somerset headed for one of the ambulances that had landed nearby. Closing his eyes for a few moments, Somerset saw nothing. The vision never returned. Back in the shuttle, "Snow White" had said that he could do as he pleased. And she had disappeared. Oh well. Is it worth loading your head with some otherworldly ghosts that are incapable of anything but chatter? Although why disappear so abruptly and unceremoniously...


    He felt lousy. Actually, there was nothing surprising about it. At least in view of the returned earthly gravity. The others were also unlikely to be ready to play sports in the open air right now.


    This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.


    The ambulance was parked in the middle of the lawn. The door was wide open. Very soon he would have a ton of money and without any real bullion.


    Having complained about feeling unwell and hallucinating after the anabiosis, Somerset was settled on the couch, there, in the car. Despite all the assurances of the disappeared "Snow White" that all this was harmless, Somerset decided to act in his own way and now he was lying in the car. The suit''s interface should have been compatible with their equipment, but who would have doubted it, it didn''t fit - software or something else.


    Less than a minute later, an elastic mesh thing with sensors was placed on Somerset''s head. The doctor sat down in front of the screen and began to study something.


    At that moment, some woman entered the salon, whom he had noticed when he was walking to the medical transport. She appeared quite characteristically - she climbed out of a black car that had fallen from somewhere above and parked no less dashingly than the shuttle. Slamming the door, she rushed somewhere to the ship, as if there was something valuable there, something she really needed. Well, for some reason, that was exactly the comparison that came to Somerset''s mind. She herself was also all in black, or rather, in black and blue. Even her black hair, gathered in a ponytail at the back, was tied with a blue ribbon. This is how agents of the same CSSS could look, but only in the movies, and not in life.


    - Do you have an astronaut? - the woman asked the doctor without any introductions or greetings.


    - A Martian, - the doctor answered sullenly.


    - Oh, well, of course... How are you feeling? - She turned to Somerset, putting on a smile.


    - Excellent, - Somerset replied, having managed to feel the inner wariness.


    - That''s great, but if it really was excellent, you wouldn''t be lying here? Right?


    - I meant my mental state. Mood...


    - Mental state... Ah, - she said, as if thinking and smiling unkindly.


    - Mister Doctor, - she turned to the doctor, - I have a small favor to ask of you. Well, I don''t like to say "assignment", so let''s say that the favor... In general, we need a DNA test of this brave man.


    Judging by some awkwardness of the phrases, English was not her native language.


    - DNA sample? - the doctor asked again.


    - Well, yes. It will take a minute, if not less. Please do it and give it to me. I mean the test. By the way, how is the man''s condition?


    - All right, Madam. And about the test... I can''t do it right away...


    - What do you mean, you can''t? It''s... Well, they should be everywhere... Don''t you have one or something?


    - It happens sometimes.


    - Listen, Mr. Doctor, don''t be shy, I don''t represent your ministry, right? Could you call your colleagues who are here and ask for one or more?


    - Okay, as you say, - the doctor agreed without much enthusiasm, - Perhaps I''ll just go out. I''ll be here for a minute. Will you stay here?


    - Of course! - she responded much warmer, - You''ll excuse the inconvenience.


    The doctor stood up and headed for the exit door, which had been wide open all this time.


    - How are things on Mars? - the stranger turned to Somerset.


    - So-so, - Somerset answered.


    - Who would doubt it, Mr. Somerset. You will have something to remember, - she headed towards his place, and now she was standing over him, slightly bent over.


    - Don''t look at her, close your eyes! - a voice sounded in his head. The voice, if it did not break into a scream, was quite emotional.


    Meanwhile, the stranger leaned even lower and put her hand on his forehead, as if she wanted to check his fever - given all the equipment involved, the action was completely pointless. Most likely, she wanted to show some kind of friendliness. I wonder if she was very worried about her colleagues - Dupare and that thug.


    At some point, Somerset''s gaze caught the badge dangling from the stranger''s chest. An ordinary one, worn by various government agents when they were in full dress. Like now. This badge, in all likelihood, made the doctor so accommodating.


    The first and last names were long and not English. Somerset only managed to make out that the name began with Ha..., then the last name La... and at the end ht. Either his eyes were seeing double, or the bright sunlight was interfering. In general, the usually observant Somerset did not notice the badge itself right away.


    - What a nasty thing, - the stranger suddenly said, spreading her fingers on Somerset''s head, - You didn''t like it here, there on Mars, huh? Creature... Isn''t so much land enough for you? - she said precisely "here there".


    - Don''t listen to her, she''s crazy! - sounded in his head.


    - Mister Somerset, - she continued, suddenly changing her tone completely, - I''m going to ask you a very banal question. I''m even embarrassed to ask such a thing...


    - Ask your question, - Somerset muttered, as if tired.


    - Did you notice anything strange during the flight?


    Without waiting for an answer, she began to laugh quietly, rather restrainedly. Both of them understood what was going on. Or all three of them.


    - My name is Haldoris Landskricht, - she suddenly announced. - So you know...


    Then the footsteps of a man stepping onto the metal stairs were heard. It was the doctor.


    - Found it? - Landskricht asked.


    - Of course, Madam.


    - Then proceed.


    The doctor unpacked the silicone bag and took out an instrument that resembled an ordinary syringe.


    - It''s just a formality, - Landskricht said, looking good-naturedly into Somerset''s face, - A formality, - she repeated quietly, but in a completely different, cold voice and with a different expression on her face.


    - The transcript will be... - the doctor began.


    - No, you don''t have to worry about that. Give it here. We''ll do everything ourselves. According to our standards.


    Having received the package with the sample, Landskricht said goodbye and headed for the exit.


    - She''s not a real agent, - sounded in her head, - Have you seen how furious she is? She can''t do anything - people do everything for her. She''s not capable of anything without machines. - The assumption that the basis of this was the most ordinary women''s squabble was confirmed.


    Smiling to himself, Somerset began to hurry the doctor so that he would literally deliver his ass to where it would be put in order.