The Precipice gt-8 Page 31

  “Exiting the airlock,” Fuchs said, his voice trembling slightly.

  “Come on, Lars,” Dan called. “Isn’t she a beauty?”

  Fuchs jetted toward him. Dan saw that his suit was bristling with hammers and drills and all sorts of equipment.

  “It’s enormous!” He sounded awestruck.

  “She’s just an average-sized chunk of metal,” Dan said. “And as soon as you chip a piece off her, we can claim her.”

  Fuchs showed no hesitation at all, although he seemed a bit clumsy working the controls of his maneuvering thrusters. For a moment Dan thought he was going to ram into the asteroid, but at the last instant Fuchs fired a braking blast and hovered a scant few meters above its pitted, pebbly surface.

  Dan jetted toward him, and with a bare touch of the handgrip controls lowered himself to the surface of the asteroid. He felt his boots make contact and then recoil slightly. Not much gravity, he thought, as he puffed down again and finally stood on the surface of Bonanza. Clouds of dust rose where his boots made contact with the surface; they just hung there, barely moving in the minuscule gravity. It took Fuchs three tries to get firmly onto the surface; he kept coming down too hard and bouncing off. In the end, Dan had to reach out and yank him down. “Don’t try to walk,” he told Fuchs. “The gravity’s so light you’ll float up and away.”

  “Then how—”

  “Slide your boots along.” Dan demonstrated a couple of steps, shuffling up even more dust. “Like you’re dancing.”

  “I don’t dance very well,” Fuchs said.

  “This isn’t the smoothest dance floor in the solar system, either.” The asteroid’s surface was rough and uneven, covered with a powdery coating of dust, much like the surface of the Moon. Dan thought it was more like standing on the deck of a boat, though, than on solid ground. There wasn’t really a horizon; the rock just ended. Pinhole craters peppered the surface, pebbles and fist-sized rocks littered it, and out along its far end, Dan could see a more sizeable crater, a big depression with a raised rim all around it.

  “How much iron do you think we’ve got here?” Dan asked. “We’ll have a good measure of its mass by the time we return to the ship,” Fuchs said. “With the ship orbiting the asteroid we have a classic two-body system. It’s simple Newtonian physics.”

  Dan thought to himself, He’s a scientist, all right. Ask him a simple question and you get a dissertation. Without the answer to your question. “Lars,” he said patiently, “can’t you give me some idea of this lump’s mass?” Fuchs spread his hands. In the spacesuit, he looked like a bubble-topped fireplug with arms.

  “A back-of-the-envelope guesstimate?” Dan coaxed.

  “Oh… considering its dimensions… nickel-iron asteroids are typically no more than ten percent nickel… it must be somewhere in the neighborhood of seven or eight billion tons of iron and eighty million tons or so of nickel.” Dan’s eyes went wide. “That’s five or six times the world’s steel production in its best year! Before the floods and all!”

  “There are impurities, of course,” Fuchs warned. “Platinum, gold and silver, other heavy metals.”

  “Impurities, right,” Dan agreed, cackling. His mind was spinning. One asteroid is enough to supply the world’s steel industry for years and years! And there are thousands of these chunks out here! It’s all true! Everything I hoped for, all those wild promises I made — they’re all going to come true! Fuchs seemed oblivious to it all. “I want to look at those striations,” he said, turning toward the far end of the asteroid. His effort made him rise off the surface and Dan had to yank him down again.

  “Take a sample here, first,” Dan said. “Then we can claim it.” The light was so dim that Dan could see Fuchs’s head outlined inside his bubble helmet. He nodded and slowly, very slowly, got down into a kneeling position. Then he pulled a rock hammer from his equipment belt and chipped off a bit of the asteroid. The effort raised more dust and lifted him off the surface again, but this time he clawed at the ground with one gloved hand and pulled himself back down. “Anchor yourself, Lars,” Dan said. “Hammer a piton in and tether it to your belt.”

  “Yes, of course,” Fuchs answered, fumbling with the equipment clipped to his waist.

  Dan said, “Record this, Amanda, and mark the time. Starpower Limited has begun taking samples of asteroid 41-014 Fuchs. Under the terms of the International Astronautical Authority protocol of 2021, Star-power Limited, claims exclusive use of the resources of this asteroid.”

  “I’ve got it,” Amanda’s voice replied. “Your statement is being beamed to IAA headquarters on Earth.”

  “Good,” Dan said, satisfied. He recalled from his school days the story of the Spanish explorer Balboa first sighting the Pacific Ocean. From what he remembered of the tale, Balboa waded out into the surf and claimed the whole bloody ocean and all the lands bordering on it for Spain. They thought big in those days, Dan said to himself. No pissant IAA to worry about. Fuchs got the knack of shuffling along the surface of the asteroid, and started chipping out samples and making stereo videos. Dan worried about the dust they were kicking up. It could get into the joints of our suits, he thought. Damned stuff just hangs there; must take a year for it to settle back again. He saw a bulge off to his right, like a small knoll or a rounded hill. That must be the tail end of this rock, Dan told himself. Looking back at Fuchs, he saw that the scientist had finally anchored himself to the ground and was busily chipping away, raising lingering clouds of dust.

  “I’m going to go up to that ridge,” he told Fuchs, pointing, “and see what’s on the other side.”

  “Very well,” said Fuchs, still bent over his sampling.

  Dan shuffled carefully along, worrying about the dust. On the Moon, dust raised from the ground was electrostatically charged; it clung stubbornly to the suits and helmet visors. Probably the same thing here.

  He started up the slight rise. Something didn’t feel right. Suddenly his boots slid out from under him and he tumbled, in dreamlike slow motion, face forward. His fall was so gentle that he could put out his hands and stop himself, but he bounced off the dusty ground and found himself floating up the rise like a hot-air balloon gliding up the side of a mountain.

  Dan’s old astronaut training took over his reflexes. In his mind he saw clearly what was happening. The gravity on this double-damned rock is so low that I’m floating off it! He saw the bulbous end of the asteroid sliding slowly beneath him and, beyond it, the star-strewn infinity of space.

  Twisting his body so that he pointed himself back toward the asteroid’s bulk, Dan squirted his maneuvering jets and lurched back to the asteroid. Gently, tenderly, he touched down again on its surface. Fuchs was still tapping away with his sampling hammer, rising off the ground with every blow, his anchored tether pulling him back again for another crack.

  Dan was breathing hard, but otherwise no worse the wear for his little excursion. With even greater care than before he shuffled back to stand beside Fuchs and help bag the samples he’d chipped out.

  At last Pancho said sternly, “Time to come in, guys.”

  “Just one more sample,” Fuchs replied.

  “Now,” Pancho commanded.

  “Aye-aye, cap’n,” said Dan. He rapped his gloved knuckles on Fuchs’s helmet. “Come on, Lars. You’ve done enough for one day. This rock isn’t going to go away; you can come back another time.”

  Amanda was at the airlock to help them take off their backpacks and dustspattered spacesuits. Dan caught a strange, pungent smell once he removed his helmet. Not like the sharp firecracker odor of the lunar dust; this was something new, different.

  Before he had time to puzzle out the dust’s odor, Pancho came down to the airlock area, looking so somber that Dan asked her what was the matter. While Fuchs chattered happily with Amanda, Pancho said, “Bad news, boss. Another section of the superconductor is heating up. If it goes critical it could blow out the whole magnetic shield.”

  Dan felt his jaw drop open. W
ithout the shield they’d be cooked by the next solar radiation storm.

  “We’ve gotta get back to Selene pronto,” Pancho said. “Before another flare breaks out.”

  “What’re our chances?” Dan asked, his throat dry.

  She waggled a hand. “Fifty-fifty… if we’re lucky.”

  TEMPO 9

  We won’t have to go outside, will we?” Cardenas asked nervously. She was following George through the maze of pumps and generators up on the topmost level of Selene. Color-coded pipes and electrical conduits lined the ceiling; Cardenas wondered how anyone could keep track of which was which. The air hummed with the subdued sounds of electrical equipment and hydraulic machinery. On the other side of the ceiling, she knew, was the grassy expanse of the Grand Plaza — or the bare dusty regolith of the Moon’s airless surface. “Outside?” George echoed. “Naw, there’s a shaft connectin’ the tempo to the tunnel… if I can find th’ fookin’ tunn — ah, there it is!”

  He pulled a small hatch open and stepped over its coaming, then reached a hand back to help Cardenas. The tunnel was dark, lit only by the hand-torch George carried. Cardenas expected to see the evil red eyes of rats in the darkness, or hear the slithering of roaches. Nothing. Selene is clean of vermin, she thought. Even the farmlands have to be pollinated artificially because there aren’t any insects here. Not yet, she thought. Sooner or later, though. Once we start allowing larger numbers of people up here, they’ll bring their filth and their pests with them. “Here we are,” George said.

  In the circle of light cast by his torch, she saw the metal rungs of a ladder leading up along the wall of the tunnel.

  “How much farther does the tunnel go?” she asked in a whisper, even though she knew there was no one else there.

  “Another klick or so,” George answered. “Yamagata people wanted to drill all the way through the ringwall and out to Mare Nubium. Got too expensive. The cable car over the top was cheaper.”

  He scampered up the ladder, light and lithe despite his size. Cardenas started to follow him.

  “Wait a bit,” George called down to her. “Got to get this hatch unstuck.”

  She heard metal groan. Then George said, “Okay, up with you, now.” The ladder ended in an enclosed area about the size of her apartment unit down inside Selene. It was a cylindrical shape, like a spacecraft module. “We’re on the surface?” Cardenas asked, trying to keep her voice from shaking. “Buried under a meter of dirt from the regolith,” George said happily. “Safe as in church.”

  “But we’re outside.”

  “On the slope of the ringwall. Just below the cable-line. The original idea was, if there’s an emergency with the cable-trolley, people could stay in here till help arrives.”

  She looked around the shelter warily. A pair of double-decker bunks stood at the far end, the hatch of an airlock at the other. Inbetween was a small galley with a freezer, microwave oven, and sink; some other equipment she didn’t recognize; two padded chairs; a desk with a computer atop it and a smaller chair in front of it…

  And a big metal cylinder sitting in the middle of the floor, crowding the alreadycramped quarters. One end of the cylinder was attached to a large pair of tanks and a miniaturized cryostat.

  “Is that a dewar?” Cardenas asked.

  George nodded. “Had to hide the woman inside it from Humphries.”

  “She’s dead?”

  “Preserved cryonically,” George said. “There’s hopes of reviving her.”

  “She won’t be much company.”

  “’Fraid not. But I’ll pop back here every few days, see that you’re okay.” Stepping toward the desk, trying to hide her anxiety, Cardenas asked, “How long will I have to stay here?”

  “Dunno. I’ll have a chat with Dan, see what we should do.”

  “Call Doug Stavenger,” she said. “He’ll protect me.”

  “I thought you didn’t want to put him in the middle of this scrape.” She wrapped her arms around herself, trembling with cold fear. “That’s before I knew you were going to put me out here.”

  “Hey, this isn’t so bad,” George said, trying to sound reassuring. “I useta live in tempos like this for months at a time.”

  “You did?”

  “Yup. Me and my mates. This is like home-sweet-home to me.”

  She looked around the place again. It seemed smaller than her first view of it. Closing in on her. Nothing between her and the deadly vacuum outside except the thin metal of the shelter’s cylinder and a heaping of dirt over it. And a corpse in the middle of the floor, taking up most of the room.

  “Call Stavenger,” she pleaded. “I don’t want to stay here any longer than I have to.”

  “Sure,” said George. “Lemme talk to Dan first.”

  “Make it quick.”

  “The magnetic shield is going to blow up?” Dan asked, for the thirtieth time. Pancho sat across the table from him in Starpower 1’s wardroom. Amanda was on the bridge as the ship raced at top acceleration back toward Selene. Fuchs was in the sensor bay, assaying the samples he’d chipped from Bonanza. “You know how superconductors work,” Pancho said, grimly. “They have to stay cooled down below their critical temperature. If they go above that temperature all the energy in the coil gets dumped into the hot spot.”

  “It’ll explode,” Dan muttered.

  “Like a bomb. Lots of energy in the superconductor, boss. It’s a dangerous situation.”

  “There’s more than one hot spot?”

  “Four of ’em so far. Wouldn’t be surprised if more of ’em crop up. Whoever bugged this ship didn’t want us to get back home.”

  Dan drummed his fingers on the table top. “I can’t believe Kris Cardenas would do this to me.”

  “It’s Humphries, pure and simple,” said Pancho. “He could kill you with a smile, any day.”

  “But he’d need Kris to do this.”

  “Look,” Pancho said, hunching forward in her chair. “Doesn’t matter who spit in whose eye. We got troubles and we’ve gotta figger out how to save our necks before that magnetic coil goes up like a bomb.”

  Dan had never seen her look so earnest. “Okay, right. What do you recommend?”

  “We shut down the magnetic field.”

  “Shut it down? But then we’d have no radiation shield.”

  “Don’t need it unless there’s a flare, and we can prob’ly get back to Selene before the Sun burps another one out.”

  “Probably,” Dan growled.

  “That’s the chance we take. I like those odds better’n letting the coil’s hot spots build up to an explosion that’d rupture the ship’s skin.”

  “Yeah, you’re right,” Dan said, reluctantly.

  “Okay, then.” Pancho got up from the table. “I’m gonna shut it down now.”

  “Wait a minute,” said Dan, reaching for her wrist. “What about the MHD channel?”

  Pancho shrugged. “No problems so far. Prob’ly hasn’t been bugged.”

  “If it goes, we’re dead, right?”

  “Well…” She drew the word out. “We could dump the coil’s energy in a controlled shutdown. That wouldn’t affect the thrusters.”

  “But we’d lose our electrical power.”

  “We could run on the fuel cells and batteries — for a while.”

  “Long enough?”

  Pancho laughed and headed for the hatch. “Long as they last, boss,” she said over her shoulder.

  “Murphy’s Law,” Dan growled after her.

  If anything can go wrong, it will: that was Murphy’s Law. Now I can add Randolph’s corollary to it, he thought: If you turn off your radiation shield, you’re certain to be hit by a solar flare.

  MESSAGES

  George shooed everyone out of the mission control center, except for the chief who insisted hotly that the center must have at least one human controller on duty at all times.

  If he’d been a man, George would have simply picked him I up and heaved him through the door out int
o the corridor. Instead, the chief on this shift was a rail-thin, pasty-faced, lank-haired woman with the personality of an Arkansas mule. She would not leave the center.

  Restraining the urge to lift her off her feet and carry her out to the corridor, George pleaded, “I’ve got to send a private message to Dan Randolph. I can’t have anybody listenin’ in on it.”

  “And why not?” she demanded, hands on hips, narrow nostrils flaring angrily. “None of your fookin’ business,” George snarled. “That’s why not.” For long moments they glared at each other, George towering over her, but the woman totally unfazed by him.

  “It’s Dan’s own orders,” George said at last, stretching the truth a little. “This is ultra-sensitive stuff.”

  The woman seemed to think that over for a second, then said more reasonably, “You take the console over there, on the end. I’ll set you up with a private channel. Nobody else in here but you and me, and I won’t eavesdrop. Okay?” George started to say no, but realized that this was the best he could accomplish, short of physical mayhem.

  Before he could agree, though, Frank Blyleven pushed through the double doors, his normally smiling face wrinkled into a puzzled frown. “What’s going on here?” the security chief demanded, walking up the aisle between the consoles. “I got a report that you’re throwing controllers out of the center.” Heaving an impatient sigh, George explained all over again that he had to get a message through to Dan. “In private,” he said. “Nobody listenin’ in.” Blyleven crossed his arms over his chest and tried to look authoritative. It didn’t work. To George he looked like a red-faced shopping mall Santa in mufti. “Very well,” he said. “Send your message. I’ll sit by the corridor door and make certain nobody disturbs you.”