11. BEING FOLLOWED

THE CASE OF MERCURY RISING, 11

It must have been the specially filtered air with its almost sweet flavoured bouquet, but both Angelina and myself slept again when I’d had other, far more interesting, things on my mind when we’d mounted the stairs to the tiny bedroom. Remember, Angelina and I already shared a home and a bed back home and it was, I suppose, only natural that something inside my head felt the need to continue the close relationship we had already forged.

But I was to find this tendency to fall asleep when lying in our bunk a factor during our mission towards Mercury. Yet despite this ability to fall asleep at the drop of a hat we did have our moments as well, though precious brief they usually were…

We were awoken again, I don’t know how much time had elapsed while we snored, by Mercury Rising alerting us. This time it used a monotonous mind-warping hum to draw attention to a need for it to communicate with us, and when it detected we were awake it voiced its message.

“Morning campers,” it said, infusing its mechanical voice with a kind of jollity that I guess was supposed to make us feel better about being woken up.

“We’re not camping and this isn’t a Carry On film,” I grunted in a somewhat cheesy reply.

“Then be alert,” the voice said, a mechanical male voice that was probably meant to sound a bit like a TV weather forecaster with bad news he was trying to cover up with false jollity and which grated on my wakening ears.

“I am,” I retorted.

“And so am I,” yawned Angelina.

“Then I have an update for you. You will recall the metal cylinder that I described as possibly being of non-terrestrial origin,” the computer (for that computer was the mind of Mercury Rising, just a few silicon chips and some software) said.

“Okay,” I replied, “shoot!”

“Shoot what?”

“Never mind. What is the update. And can’t you adjust your voice? It sounds sort of … unfriendly.”

“Apologies,” came a reply, but in an altered voice, one probably based on the television cook Nigella Lawson, with all her nudge-nudge, wink-wink intonations.

“That’s better,” I grunted.

“What was it you wanted?” asked Angelina, sounding irritable.

“The metal cylinder I described as being possibly of non-terrestrial origin was after all probably designed and constructed on Earth,” cooed the computer. “My original idea was based on a type of drive that I believe to be unknown on Earth, but there are elements of construction that are distinctly of human origin, like the screws in its hatch. Whitworth thread. Distinctive and unlikely to be hit on accidentally when you bear in mind the billions of different possibilities there are based on the even more billions of different systems for measurement.”

“Oh, shut up!” I groaned.

“And go back to your old voice,” added Angelina. “You mean you woke us up to tell us something that has no immediate bearing on our journey.”

“It might have. It’s following us.” replied the now male mechanical voice.

“Oh cripes,” I grumbled.

“Are you sure?” asked Angelina.

The computer turned somewhat petulant. “I don’t deal in uncertainties!” it snapped, forgetting that it had originally used the word possible when drawing our attention to the metal object in orbit. Then it spoke in a calmer tone as if something buried in its silicon interior was afraid it might have overstepped the mark, “We are either being followed by the object or it just happens to be going in the same direction and at the same speed as us, which may be stretching coincidence a bit too far,” it said.

“And where might it be thinking we’re going?” asked Angelina, “that is, if it can think!”

“Oh, I have ascertained that it has a considerable amount of processing power,” replied Mercury Rising in a tone of voice that implied the very correctness of its words. “Almost as much as mine,” it added, “though not quite.”

“So what do we do now that you’ve told us that?” asked Angelina.

“It might be after the contents of your handbag,” suggested the voice almost dispassionately, “and if it is, that would void any point in us continuing further.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, it appears to be equipped with devices I have been unable to identify, and if they are weapons then it may well be able to commandeer this vessel and remove whatever it is you’re carrying in that purse,” it said quite glibly.

“I thought you didn’t deal in uncertainties,” I told it, “to quote your own words back at you, that is. But may I suggest we wait and see if it has any military or pirate-like intentions? May I also suggest we don’t actually jump to too many conclusions based on incomplete evidence?”

The computer sulked when I said that.

There could be no other possible interpretation of the silence that followed a dull clunking sound that it must have invented to annoy us, and then a most obvious period of silence.

“Mercury Rising, what is your reply?” asked Angelina impatiently.

“I am amassing evidence,” it said shortly, and shut up again.

“Come on, sweetheart, let’s have breakfast while the machine has a strop. Or lunch. Or dinner. Or supper, or whatever it is. I’ll see what’s what in the galley.

She smiled at me, and that smile guaranteed one thing: from now on until the next time she smiled at me I was her slave, and that would be repeated ad infinitum. That was a given.

We trooped (one behind the other, with me in the lead) down to the minuscule area devoted to toilet and kitchen.

There was a locker containing a huge amount of dehydrated food as well as powdered flavouring for tea and coffee and the like. I selected one marked ‘omelette’ and read the brief instructions, which involved a tiny quantity of water. I couldn’t tell where the water tanks were but I could guess from the shape of the vessel: they were under our feet in what must be quite a large tank, and also probably at the other end, above our heads in the uppermost pointed end of the rugby ball when we were in bed. After all, even though Igor had boasted about the water recycling capabilities aboard Mercury Rising, a couple of months away from home would use up one heck of a lot of water. And air. There must be tanks of oxygen somewhere as well, or we’d both suffocate, and that would be the end of Igor’s mission towards the sun.

The omelette, when it was cooked (in the inevitable microwave oven), was adequate and actually didn’t taste too bad.

“I’m surprised,” grinned Angelina, “you make a half decent chef!”

“The instructions were very Igor-ish,” I replied, “and whilst I was slaving away over a hot stove I was wondering about that strange thing that’s troubling our on-board computer genius. What is it? Where is it from? And why is it interested in us?”

“Or does it just happen to be going the same way as us?” she asked.

“Unlikely, when you consider the vastness of the solar system let alone the bit of it near us,” I mused, “and it might not be a bad idea if we think long and hard about it, and ask ourselves loads of questions that we can’t answer.”

“Which sounds like typical Curmudgeon gobbledegook to me,” she smiled, “come on, eat up and I feel like forty winks!”

“What? Again?” I grinned.

“So what? We’ve got all the time in the world, and might as well snore through some of it. And anyway, I’ve got one or two things I want you to look at and maybe examine rather closely...”

“What sort of things?” I asked, knowing the answer.

“Body things,” was her simple reply.

© Peter Rogerson 23.02.20