The Precipice Page 33

  Dan sagged back into the chair.

  Pancho tried to smile. “You called it, boss: Murphy’s Law.”

  STORM SHELTER

  Four worried people clustered around the table in Star-power 1’s wardroom. The wallscreen showed a chart of the solar system, with the radiation cloud that the solar flare had belched out appearing as a shapeless gray blob twisted by the interplanetary magnetic field. It was approaching Earth and the Moon rapidly. Deep in the Asteroid Belt a single pulsating yellow dot showed where their ship was.

  Dan said to the computer, “Show the projections for the next two days.”

  The cloud grew and thinned, but surged out past the orbit of Mars and then engulfed the inner Belt and overran the blinking dot that marked Starpower 1’s position.

  Pancho made a sound halfway between a sigh and a snort. “No way around it. We’re gonna get hosed.”

  Amanda looked up from her palmcomp. “If we could pump all our remaining fuel into one tank, it could serve as a shelter… of sorts.”

  “I thought the secondaries would get us,” Dan muttered.

  “They’d be high,” Amanda admitted, “but if we could pressurize the fuel it might absorb most of the secondary particles before they reached us.”

  “If we’re plumb in the middle of the tank,” Pancho said.

  “Yes. Inside our suits, of course.”

  “Can the suits handle the temperature? We’re talking about liquid hydrogen and helium; damned close to absolute zero.”

  “The suits are insulated well enough,” Pancho said. Then she added, “But nobody’s ever tried a dunk in liquid hydrogen with ‘em.”

  “And we’d have to be dunked for god knows how many hours,” Dan muttered.

  Fuchs had not said a word. His head was bent over his own palmcomp.

  “How much protection would the fuel give us?” Dan asked glumly.

  Amanda hesitated, looked down at her handheld screen, then said, “We’d all need hospitalization. We’d have to set the flight controls to put us into lunar orbit on automatic.”

  “We’d all be that sick?” Pancho asked.

  Amanda nodded solemnly.

  And I’d be dead, Dan thought. I can’t take another radiation dose like that. It would kill me.

  Aloud, he tried to sound reasonably hopeful. “Well, it’s better than sitting here with our thumbs jammed. Pancho, start transferring the fuel.”

  “How high can we pressurize one of the tanks?” Amanda wondered.

  “I’ll check the specs,” said Pancho. “Come on, we’ve got to—”

  “Wait,” Fuchs said, looking up at them. “There is a better way.”

  Dan looked hard at him. Fuchs’s eyes were set so deep that it was difficult to see any expression in them. Certainly he was not smiling. His thin slash of a mouth looked tight, hard.

  “Computer,” Fuchs called, “display position of asteroid 32-114.”

  A yellow dot began blinking near the inner edge of the Belt.

  “That’s where we must go,” Fuchs said flatly.

  “It’s half a day off our course home,” Pancho objected.

  “Why there, Lars?” Amanda asked.

  “We can use it for a storm shelter.”

  Dan shook his head. “Once the cloud runs over us, the radiation is isotropic. It comes from all directions. You can’t hide behind a rock from it.”

  “Not behind the rock,” Fuchs said, with growing excitement. “Inside it!”

  “Inside the asteroid?”

  “Yes! We burrow into it. The body of the asteroid will shield us from the radiation!”

  “That would be great,” Dan said, “if we had some deep drilling equipment aboard and a few days to dig. We don’t have either.”

  “We don’t need them!”

  “The hell we don’t,” Dan shot back. “You think we’re going to tunnel into that rock with your little core sampler?”

  “No, no, no,” Fuchs said. “You don’t understand. That rock is a chondritic asteroid!”

  “So what?” Pancho snapped.

  “It’s porous! It isn’t a rock, not like Bonanza. It’s an aggregate of chondrites—little stones, held together by gravity.”

  “How do you know that?” Dan demanded. “We haven’t gotten close enough to—”

  “Look at the data!” Fuchs urged, waving a thick-fingered hand at the wallscreen.

  “What data?” The screen still showed the chart with the radiation cloud.

  Fuchs pointed his palmcomp at the screen like a pistol and the wall display suddenly showed a long table of alphanu-merics.

  “Look at the data for its density,” Fuchs said urgently. He jumped up from his chair and bounded to the screen. “Look! Its density isn’t much more than that of water! It can’t be a solid object! Not with such a density. It’s porous! An aggregation of stones! Like a…” he searched for a word, “… like a pile of rubble… a beanbag chair!”

  Dan stared at the numbers, then looked back at Fuchs. The man was clearly excited now.

  “You’re sure of this?” he asked.

  “The numbers don’t lie,” Fuchs said. “They can’t.”

  Pancho gave out a soft whistle. “Shore wish we had some-thin’ more’n numbers to go on.”

  “But we do!” Fuchs said. “Mathilde in the Main Belt, and Eugenia—several C-class bodies among the Near-Earth Asteroids—they are all aggregates, not solid at all. Micro-probes have examined them, even gone inside them!”

  “Porous,” Dan muttered.

  “Yes!”

  “We can dig into them without drilling equipment?”

  “They are probably highly-tunneled by nature.”

  Dan stroked his chin, trying to think, trying to decide. If he’s right, it’d be better than dunking ourselves in a pool of liquid hydrogen for hours on end. If Fuchs is right. If we can burrow into the asteroid and use it for a storm shelter. If he’s wrong, we’re all dead.

  Pancho spoke up. “I say we go for the asteroid, boss.”

  Dan looked into her steady light brown eyes. Is she saying this because she knows I won’t make it otherwise? Is she willing to take the chance with her own life because it’s the only chance we’ve got to save mine?

  “I agree,” Amanda said. “The asteroid is the better choice.”

  He turned back to Fuchs. “Lars, are you absolutely certain of all this?”

  “Absolutely,” Fuchs replied, without an instant’s hesitation.

  “Okay,” Dan said, feeling uneasy about it. “Change course for—which one is it?”

  “Asteroid 32-114,” Fuchs and Amanda answered in unison.

  “Point and shoot,” Dan said.

  Dan tried to sleep while Starpower 1 raced to the chondritic asteroid, but his dreams were troubled with faces and visions from the past and a vague, looming sense of dread. He awoke feeling more tired than when he’d crawled into his bunk.

  He felt stiff and sore, as if every muscle in his body were strained. Tension, he told himself. But that sardonic voice in his mind retorted, Age. You’re getting to be an old man.

  He nodded to his image in the lav mirror. If I live through this I’m going to start rejuve therapy.

  Then he realized what he’d said: if I live through this.

  He put on a fresh set of coveralls and grabbed a mug of coffee on his way to the bridge. Amanda was in the command chair, with Fuchs sitting at her right.

  “Pancho’s sleeping,” Amanda said before Dan could ask. “We’ll be making rendezvous with 114 in…” she glanced at one of the screens, “… seventy-three minutes. I’ll wake her in half an hour.”

  “Can we see the rock yet?” Dan asked, peering into the black emptiness beyond the windows.

  “Telescopic view,” said Amanda, touching a viewscreen.

  A lumpy, roundish shape appeared on the screen. To Dan it looked like a partially-deflated beach ball, dark gray, almost black.

  “We’re getting excellent data on it,” Fuchs sai
d. “Mass and density are confirmed.”

  “It’s porous, as you thought?”

  “Yes, it has to be.”

  “It’s certainly no beauty,” Amanda said.

  “I don’t know about that,” replied Dan. “It looks pretty good to me. In fact, I think I’ll call it Haven.”

  “Haven,” she echoed.

  Dan nodded. “Our haven from the storm.” Silently he added, If those numbers for its density mean what Fuchs says they do.

  SELENE

  The worst part of being alone in the temporary shelter was the waiting. There was nothing to do in the tempo except pace its length—an even dozen strides for Kris Cardenas—or watch the commercial video broadcasts that the shelter’s antenna pulled in from the relay satellites.

  Maddening. And there was the high-tech sarcophagus in the middle of the floor with the frozen woman inside its gleaming stainless steel cylinder. Not much company.

  When the hatch in the floor suddenly squeaked open, Cardenas jumped with surprise so hard she nearly banged her head on the shelter’s curving roof. For an instant she didn’t care who was coming through the hatch; even an assassin would be a welcome relief from the boredom of the past night and day.

  But she puffed out a big sigh of relief when she saw George Ambrose’s brick-red mane rising through the open hatch. George climbed through and grinned at her.

  “Dan says I should take you to Stavenger.”

  Cardenas nodded. “Yes. Fine.”

  Doug Stavenger was not happy to see her. He sat behind his desk and eyed her with raw disappointment showing in his expression. Cardenas sat in the cushioned chair before the desk like an accused criminal being interrogated. George stood by the office door, beefy arms folded across his chest.

  “You seeded Randolph’s ship with gobblers?” he said, his voice hollow with shocked disbelief.

  “Specifically tailored to take apart copper compounds,” Cardenas admitted, feeling shaky inside. “Nothing more.”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  “It was meant to cripple the ship’s radiation shield,” she said defensively. “Once they found out about it they’d abort their mission and return here.”

  “But they didn’t find out about it until they were deep in the Belt,” Stavenger said.

  George added, “And now they’re sailing into a fookin’ radiation storm without a shield.”

  “This could become a murder,” Stavenger said. “Four murders.”

  Cardenas bit her lip and nodded.

  “And Humphries was behind this scheme,” Stavenger said. It was a statement, not a question.

  “He wanted Randolph’s mission to fail.”

  “Why?”

  “Ask him.”

  “He’s a major investor in the project. Why would he want it to fail?”

  “Ask him,” she repeated.

  “I intend to,” said Stavenger. “He’s already on his way here.”

  As if on cue, Stavenger’s phone chimed. “Mr. Humphries here to see you,” said the phone’s synthesized voice.

  “Send him in,” Stavenger said, touching the stud on the rim of his desk that opened the door.

  George stood aside, clearly glowering through his beard as Humphries walked in. Humphries looked at Cardenas, half turned in her chair, then at Stavenger. With a slight shrug he took the other chair in front of the desk.

  “What’s this all about?” he asked casually as he sat down. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s about attempted murder,” Stavenger said.

  “Murder?”

  “Four people are caught in a solar storm out in the Belt without a working radiation shield.”

  “Dan Randolph, you mean.” Humphries almost smiled. “That’s just like him, barging ahead like a bull in a china shop.”

  Stavenger bristled. “You didn’t get Dr. Cardenas here to seed Randolph’s ship with gobblers?”

  “Gobblers?”

  “Nanomachines. Disassemblers.”

  Humphries glanced at Cardenas, then said to Stavenger, “I asked Dr. Cardenas if there was any way that Randolph’s ship could be… er, disabled slightly. Just enough to get him to turn back and abort his flight to the Belt.”

  Cardenas started to reply, but Stavenger said heatedly, “If they die—if any one of them dies—I’ll have you arraigned for premeditated murder.”

  Humphries actually smiled at Stavenger. ‘That’s so farfetched it’s ludicrous.”

  “Is it?”

  “I had Randolph’s ship sabotaged so he would abort his flight and come back to Selene. I admit to that Any sane man would have turned around and headed for home as soon as he found the sabotage. But not Randolph! He pushed on anyway, knowing that his radiation shield was damaged. That’s his decision, not mine. If there’s a crime in this, it’s Randolph committing suicide and taking his crew with him.”

  Stavenger barely held on to his composure. His fists clenched, he asked through gritted teeth, “And just why did you want to sabotage his ship?”

  “So the stock in Astro Corporation would drop, why else? It was a business decision.”

  “Business.”

  “Yes, business. I want Astro; the lower its stock, the easier for me to buy it up. Dr. Cardenas here wanted her grandchildren. I offered to get her together with them in exchange for a pinch of nanomachines.”

  “Gobblers,” Stavenger said.

  “They weren’t programmed to harm anyone,” Cardenas protested. “They were specifically set to attack the copper compound of the superconductor, nothing more.”

  “My father was killed by gobblers,” Stavenger said, his voice as cold and sharp as an icepick. “Murdered.”

  “That’s ancient history,” Humphries scoffed. “Please don’t bring your family baggage into this.”

  Visibly restraining himself, Stavenger stared at Humphries for a long, silent moment. Electricity crackled through the office. George decided that if Stavenger came around the desk and started beating up on Humphries, he would keep the door closed and prevent anyone from coming to the bastard’s aid.

  At last Stavenger seemed to win his inner struggle. He took a shuddering breath, then said in a low, seething voice, “I’m turning this matter over to Selene’s legal department. Neither of you will be allowed to leave Selene until their investigation is finished.”

  “You’re going to put us on trial?” Cardenas asked.

  “If it were up to me,” Stavenger said, “I’d put the two of you into leaky spacesuits and drive you out into the middle of Mare Nubium and leave you there.”

  Humphries laughed. “I’m glad you’re not a judge. And, by the way, Selene has no capital punishment, does it?”

  “Not yet,” Stavenger growled. “But if we get a few more people like you here, we’ll probably change our laws on that point.”

  Humphries got to his feet. “You can threaten all you like, but I don’t think your courts will take this as personally as you are.”

  With that, he strode to the door. George stepped aside and let him open it for himself. He noticed that there was a thin sheen of perspiration on Humphries’s upper lip as he left the office.

  The instant the door closed again, Cardenas broke into sobs. Half doubled over in her chair, she buried her face in her hands.

  Stavenger’s icy composure melted. “Kris… how could you do it? How could you let him…” He stopped and shook his head.

  Without looking up at him, Cardenas said in a tear-choked voice, “I was angry, Doug. Angrier than you can know. Angrier than I myself knew.”

  “Angry? At Randolph?”

  “No. At them. The crazies who let this greenhouse cliff ruin the world. The fanatics who’ve exiled us, who won’t let me come to Earth to see my children, my grandchildren. And they won’t come here, not even for a visit I wanted to punish them, get even with them.”

  “By killing Randolph?”

  “Dan’s trying to help them,” she said, looking up at him at last,
her face streaked with tears. “I don’t want them helped! They made this mess. They shut me out of their lives. Let them stew in their own juices! They deserve whatever they get”

  Stavenger shook his head, bewildered. He handed Cardenas a tissue and she dabbed at her reddened eyes.

  “I’m going to recommend that you be placed under house arrest, Kris. You’ll be able to go anywhere in Selene except the nanotech lab.”

  She nodded wordlessly.

  “And Humphries?” George asked, still standing by the door.

  “Same thing, I suppose. But he’s right, the smug slime-bag. We don’t have capital punishment; we don’t even have a jail here in Selene.”

  “House arrest for him would be a lark,” George said.

  Stavenger looked disgusted. But then his chin came up and his eyes brightened. “Unless we take it out on his wallet.”

  “Huh?”

  With a slow smile spreading across his youthful face, Stavenger said, “If he’s found guilty of murder, or even attempted murder, maybe the court can divest him of his share of Starpower and keep him from taking over Astro Corporation.”

  George huffed. “I’d rather punch his ribs in.”

  “So would I,” Stavenger admitted. “But I think he’d rather have his ribs punched in than to have to give up Astro and Starpower.”

  HAVEN

  “There it is,” Pancho sang out. “How’s that for navigation?”

  Dan crouched slightly behind the command chair and peered through the window. The asteroid was visible to their naked eyes now against the distant glow of the Sun’s zodiacal light, a dumbbell-shaped dark mass tumbling slowly end over end.

  Fuchs stood beside Dan, his hands on the back of Amanda’s chair.

  “It’s two bodies in contact,” he said. “Like Castallia and several others.”

  “Looks like a peanut,” said Dan.

  “A peanut made of rock,” Pancho said.

  “No, no,” Fuchs corrected, “a peanut made up of thousands of little stones, chondrules, that are barely holding together in their very weak mutual gravitational attraction.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Look, you can see craters on the surface.”

  Dan strained his eyes. How in hell can he see craters on that black slug in this dim lighting?