Inner-system records

Earth sends distress calls through long stretches of silence. From the Moon come pleas for repair instructions; Mars sends workshop drawings and asks for news. The belt’s listening rooms keep whatever reaches them beside the testimony of people who escaped.

Earth

Earth is starving. A few barricaded enclaves still send distress calls while cannibal gangs hunt the survivors.

The old government kept a vast, dependent slave caste fed while a small technical class ran the machinery. After the arks left, people who understood those systems were hunted and eaten. Scattered defenders hold out with the equipment they can still use, facing enemies who overwhelm them by numbers. The signals reaching the belt are sparse: pleas for help, warnings and accounts of what waits outside.

What we left below

They dragged the maintenance crew out of the pump station. I knew one of them. He kept trying to explain that the water would stop if they killed him. They laughed. By the time we reached the launch road, people were cutting meat from a human corpse beside the empty ration hall. We stayed behind the barricade until the transport came. I could hear someone on the other side asking us to open it.

Mara Venn, evacuation survivor; recorded testimony in the belt

Stay away from the shelter

If you can hear the recording promising food, stay away. It is the old evacuation message. They leave it playing to draw people into the shelter. I watched them bar the doors behind a group from the road. The screaming went on for hours. There are cooking fires in the yard. The people are the food. I am speaking from somewhere else. Please do not ask me to say where.

Unidentified Earth survivor; damaged recording received in the belt

Behind the barricade

We still have people who can use the old weapons. They keep the approaches covered and make every round count. There are too many outside. They search the buildings and follow any light after dark. We have watched them drag people out of hiding places we thought were safe. If there is anyone beyond Earth who can hear this, we need help. I do not know how long this transmitter will work.

Besieged Earth enclave; distress recording copied by lunar listeners

Earth transmissions

Excerpts from the relay archive.

Please, if anybody can hear us, we need help. We keep the door braced from inside. They come back and hit it until the hinges bend.

Earth distress signal; speaker unidentified

Stay away from the shelter playing the food announcement. I saw what they carried out of it. There are human bones by the fires.

Unidentified survivor on Earth

Cover the windows. They follow lights after dark. You can hear them going from building to building, dragging people down the stairs.

Fragment of an Earth warning

There is water behind the wall. We can hear it. None of us knows how to make the pump work. We cannot go outside. Please send someone.

Earth distress signal; speaker unidentified

Keep off the main road. They stretch wire between the wrecks and wait behind the doors. Anyone walking alone gets dragged inside.

Unidentified survivor on Earth

They ate the man who kept the water running. He offered to fix it for them. They tied him to the gate anyway. I cannot get his voice out of my head.

Damaged Earth survivor recording

The red button says distress. I keep pressing it. I do not understand the other controls. If this is reaching anyone, please answer.

Earth distress signal; speaker unidentified

Our people still know how to use the old weapons. They keep the approaches covered, but there are too many outside. We need help before the ammunition runs out.

Distress call from an Earth holdout

They look for vents and loose roof panels. Watch above you. We can hear footsteps over the room where we sleep.

Fragment of an Earth warning

We hide in the cellar and eat in the dark. They search the houses for food. If they find us here, they will eat us too. Is there anybody who can come?

Earth distress signal; speaker unidentified

They make the captives call to people hiding inside. You hear someone begging at the door and the others wait beside it. Keep it shut. Please keep it shut.

Unidentified survivor on Earth

If anyone is still up there, please come for us. There is nobody left to ask here. We are hiding. I am afraid to speak any louder.

Earth distress signal; speaker unidentified

Moon

Sealed lunar shelters remain inhabited. Their radios reach farther than their evacuation craft.

Survivors patch seals, ration power and keep worn-out scrubbers running. The evacuation halls overlook empty cradles and dismantled craft. There are too few working hulls, too few berths and too little propellant to carry them away.

The departure hall

The evacuation board still has destinations on it. Behind the glass are empty service cradles and craft stripped to keep the shelters breathing. Even together, the remaining hulls, berths and propellant cannot carry the people waiting here. We seal the hall off when its joints leak and keep the departure board in the maintenance inventory. Its wiring is useful. Its promises are not.

Lunar shelter maintenance collective; evacuation infrastructure record

Earth through the shielding

Earth filled the inspection window while we listened. A voice begged someone to come before the barricade failed. Another warned us about a shelter where people were being eaten. Some transmissions were just screaming. We could see the clouds moving over the continents. We could not tell which patch of ground the voices came from.

Nearside listening room; watchkeeper oral history

Keep a listening watch

The shelters are inhabited, sealed and stranded. Scrubber beds wear out, seals harden and power must be rationed between equipment that cannot all be spared. We ask belt technicians for repair advice because instructions fit through a radio link. People do not. We keep a listening watch for Earth and a narrow uplink for Mars without pretending either channel is an escape route.

Lunar radio and life-support watch; standing account

Moon transmissions

Excerpts from the relay archive.

Requesting the scrubber regeneration chart with the temperature scale intact. Our copy has a crease across the warning.

Lunar scrubber watch

Can a belt workshop describe its test for a hardened hatch seal? We need the rejection criteria as well as the procedure.

Lunar pressure-room technicians

Please mark the standby draw on the controller diagram. The power ration has to cover the equipment between cycles.

Lunar power watch

Asking for repair advice on a pressure gauge that sticks near zero. A remote suggestion needs its limits written beside it.

Lunar pressure-room technicians

Scrubber watch requesting bearing dimensions for the old circulation fan. Please do not omit the units.

Lunar scrubber watch

We need the joint-preparation page from the shelter seal manual. The page number survived more clearly than the instructions.

Lunar pressure-room technicians

Power watch asking how to read the load table when a heater is on a separate circuit. A sketch would help.

Lunar power watch

Please repeat the storage cautions for scrubber media. Knowing a substitute exists is not the same as having it here.

Lunar scrubber watch

Requesting advice for measuring hatch alignment with hand tools. The seal and the hinge need separate checks.

Lunar pressure-room technicians

Power watch requesting the lamp-ballast wiring sheet. Keep the isolation warnings in the transmission.

Lunar power watch

Scrubber watch asking for a sensor calibration reference. A steady reading is not enough if the reference is wrong.

Lunar scrubber watch

Please describe the connector pins by number rather than wire colour. The shelter manual and the harness disagree.

Lunar repair desk

Mars

A surviving Martian colony answers intermittently over the radio.

Martian workshops trade repair drawings with the belt and ask for news between technical exchanges. Replies can take a long time. Pressure vessels, drive parts and water propellant are scarce. The colony remains stranded on Mars.

An answer with corrections

The Martian voice asked us to repeat a dimension, caught a mistake in our drawing and argued about the units. Then came questions no old recording could answer. These were living operators, with a workshop to keep running and questions of their own. We left the next drawing on the relay and waited for a reply.

Belt receiver cooperative; confirmation transcript commentary

Drawings across the gap

Our workshop exchanges maintenance diagrams with the belt and routes copies through lunar listeners when the direct channel is poor. A pump drawing can be useful in a hollow asteroid or a Martian pressure room. We annotate the tolerances and ask what tools the other end has. A clever repair cannot manufacture the missing stock; we send the cautions with the drawing.

Martian colony workshop; technical correspondence preface

Stranded on Mars

Pressure vessels, drive assemblies and water propellant are all short. What remains goes into keeping the colony running. We cannot equip a ship for passage to the belt. The radio is working, so we send drawings, ask for news and wait for the carrier to clear.

Martian colony stores office; transport limitations memorandum

Mars transmissions

Excerpts from the relay archive.

The pump drawing needs a tolerance beside the shaft diameter. Please return that detail with the revision number.

Martian colony workshop

If this answers an old question, keep its original reference attached. Our reply queue does not travel as quickly as the radio waves.

Martian correspondence desk

Can the belt repeat its public bulletin headings? We would like to hear what you choose to put on the noticeboard.

Martian listening watch

Workshop requesting the thread pitch in writing. It is too easy to confuse two numbers spoken through this much noise.

Martian colony workshop

Please send the checksum for the maintenance packet again. A delayed reply is easier to use when we know which copy it belongs to.

Martian correspondence desk

Listening watch asking what music the belt puts on the shared band. A title and a few words about it will fit in the reply.

Martian listening watch

The valve sketch is offered for comparison. Check the material specification before treating the dimensions as useful.

Martian colony workshop

Please preserve duplicate labels on repeated packets. Silence between copies does not tell us whether the first one reached you.

Martian correspondence desk

Listening watch requesting a copy of the public Earth relay. Please keep warnings and unanswered inquiries attached to their sources.

Martian listening watch

Workshop asking which measuring tools your bearing notes assume. A method can be out of reach even when the drawing is clear.

Martian colony workshop

Please quote the section title with the page number in your reply. The repair manuals circulating here do not all have the same binding.

Martian correspondence desk

Listening watch asking for the lunar service-channel notes. Leave uncertain words marked instead of filling them in for us.

Martian listening watch