Asimov's SF, January 2010

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “How extensive is the damage?” Domingo held his breath, waiting for the response.

  “It's bad. We're definitely off-line. Some people got flung into orbit. We're trying to organize chase parties to get them before they hit the atmosphere. Listen, can we chat later? There's a lot going on here, and we don't have time to waste. Information should be coming your way over the datanet. I just thought you ought to hear about this as soon as possible.”

  “Roger,” he said

  “Traffic out.”

  May was already at the copilot's station, reading through the datastream that was coming in. Domingo scrolled down through menu screens to bring up the external sensors. They were closing in on final approach now, well inside the moon's orbit, close enough that the external cameras should be able to make out the hundred-kilometer whip.

  It wasn't there.

  He looked harder, brightening the image until the disk of the Earth was almost completely washed out, and zeroed in on the little asteroid that served as the counterweight to the whip. By enhancing gamma factor and the contrast, he could see a tiny stub protruding out of it.

  The whip was gone.

  Around the asteroid and the little stub of the whip, there was a fog of white speckles. Debris, he realized. Something pretty bad had happened there. Some of those specks were space-suited figures—at least, he hoped they were suited—flung off into eccentric orbits by the disaster.

  This was going to be a problem.

  He jerked his head up, suddenly worried that that he'd let his attention drift. He saw that May was scrolling through trajectory documents with a frown.

  She looked up at him. “We're intercepting atmosphere.”

  “What?”

  “My ship. My cargo. We need that catch. We're on a trajectory that takes us into atmosphere.”

  It took him a moment to think what she was talking about. He hadn't yet extrapolated their path past the whip. He pictured it in his head. She was right. He'd made some trajectory modifications to position him for a later maneuver. Small adjustments, well within the error bands, but now, without the catch, the trajectory would intercept the Earth.

  “The whip is down,” he said. “We're not getting the catch. We'll need a main-engine burn to avoid entry.”

  She looked at him, her eyes cold. “Not possible,” she said.

  “I know, not enough delta-V. We'll have to vent cargo, to lower our mass. Sorry about the cargo, girl, but we don't have a lot of choices here.”

  “We don't have any choices here. We have no main engine.”

  “Of course you have a main engine,” he said. “I know this model.”

  “We don't need a main engine for Hohmann transfers; the whips and the tugs do all the heavy delta-V. All we need is the trajectory control.”

  “You're flying a Hohmann trajectory without an engine?”

  “Why not?” she said. “You checked everything else. Twice. It never occurred to you to check the main engine?”

  “You don't have an engine?” he repeated. “Why don't you have an engine?”

  In a very small voice, she said, “I can't afford the fuel. I can't afford the overhaul. I can't even afford this trip, really, except that it's all done with borrowed money.”

  “You've got to be crazy—I mean, Hayes mining has to be crazy. You can't fly without a main engine. That's a single-point failure mode.”

  She answered him very slowly. “We're flat broke. We're deep in debt just mining this cargo in the first place. And this was supposed to be a simple toss-and-catch. How the hell could I know that the whip was going to be down?”

  “Girl, you have to plan for problems. That's how you survive.” He looked at her. “I think I want to look at those trajectories again.”

  They both examined the trajectories. They were now so deep into the Earth's gravity well that it was going to take some significant delta-V to make any noticeable change in their path. Their trajectory would just miss the planet, but the heating from entering the atmosphere at a speed of twelve kilometers per second would be catastrophic.

  In just nine hours, the ship would make a spectacular fireball.

  They were going to need help. Domingo picked up the microphone to broadcast a distress call, and then hesitated. Any rescue would put him in a rather tricky situation—his whole plan had assumed he would flee to the out and out, to the region of space where the near-Earth laws didn't reach. But he didn't seem to have much choice about it. He'd have to deal with the situation as it played out. He keyed the mike.

  “This is Cargo Hayes VE-seven,” Domingo said. “We are declaring a spacecraft emergency. This is Hayes VE-seven, en route from Venus to the Hohmann whip, we have an emergency. We are,” he paused, and then said, “out of fuel. We are requesting help. Repeat, Hayes VE-seven requesting help. Anybody out there?”

  Over the next half hour, responses trickled in, first from traffic control, a curt acknowledgment of the distress call with no promises of aid, and then from other cis-lunar ships and habitats. But, no matter how desperate the situation, there were simply no ships near enough in orbital space that even a full burn could get to them before they hit atmosphere.

  Their speed was increasing, slowly but mathematically, as they approached the Earth.

  “Okay,” May said. “Suppose we drill a hole in the side of the cargo. The water will come spraying out. Not much thrust, I know, but maybe enough to avoid hitting the atmosphere?”

  Domingo shook his head. “Not enough pressure,” he said. “You won't get significant thrust.” He paused, and then said, “But don't rely on me. Check it out, see if I'm not wrong.”

  In ten minutes of checking calculations and looking up values for the thermal constants of water, May said, “Damn. Any way I do it, looks like you're right. Adiabatic expansion cools the water too much.” Domingo looked up. “At best we might get a few meters a second, but that's not nearly enough. But, wait, what if we cut away the thermal blanket? Let the cargo heat up in the sun, and build up pressure?

  Domingo shook his head. “Too much thermal mass. It won't heat enough in the time we have. Not even close, I'm afraid.”

  “Damn.”

  They looked at each other. “We're in bad trouble,” May said. “What do we do?”

  Domingo had only one asset left, the pod. It only had a tiny amount of delta-V. Not enough to save them both, but if there were only one person in it, it might be just enough to let him get away. But he would have to leave quickly; the sooner he left, the more of a chance he'd have.

  He had no reason to stay. It was her bad luck, not his.

  He looked at her. She was looking back at him, her face open and vulnerable. “We have nine hours,” he said, and smiled. “We'd better enjoy them.”

  She looked at him, her stare intense and direct, and ran her eyes along his body, from his head to his toes. “You have the gun,” she said, “and I gave you my word that I'd do whatever you asked me. Well, looks like I lied to you. I'm not,” she said, “going to go to bed with a man who's holding a gun on me. You can damn well shoot me first.”

  He glanced down to where the gun was still velcroed to his thigh. He had never forgotten it was there, of course, but he hadn't really thought about it much; it was just part of his clothing. He pulled it free, looked at it, and opened his hand and pushed it away from him. They both watched it. It drifted slowly across the cabin, bounced gently off an air-circulation diffuser on the opposite bulkhead, and then floated in place, spinning slightly.

  She raised one hand to the back of her head, rubbing her neck and fanning her hair out in all directions, and then she pushed off from the deck, coasting across the few meters between them, and braked her motion with a hand on his chest.

  It was the first time she'd touched him. She stabilized herself in place with one hand grasping the cloth on the front of his jumpsuit, rotated herself until she was oriented with her head pointing the same direction as his head, her toes the same direction as his toes,
and looked him directly in the eyes.

  With the other hand, she slapped him, hard.

  “That's for wrecking my ship,” she said. “And stealing my cargo.”

  He released his hold on the railing, and brought up one hand to rub his cheek. The motion set them drifting slightly, away from the piloting console and toward the center of the plenum. She could have shoved away from him, but she remained holding his jumpsuit, breathing hard, staring at him as if daring him to hit her back.

  “Sorry,” he said.

  “And you didn't have to glue me into the spacesuit at night, either,” she said. “That was demeaning.”

  “Sorry,” he said again, unable to think of anything else to say.

  “That was mean.” She reached out to grab his hair with her free hand, and pulled herself up to bring her face right up against his, nose to nose, staring unblinkingly into his eyes. “And you treat me like a kid.”

  Her eyes were hazel, he noticed, almost green.

  “I'm not a kid,” she said.

  “I know,” he said. He could feel the puffs of her shallow breaths on his face.

  “Well, you shouldn't treat me like one,” she said.

  They were floating freely in the center of the plenum now, and he could feel the electrical tension of her body. Her face was inches away from his. Very slowly, not sure how she was going to react, he reached his arms out and wrapped them around her. The muscles of her shoulders were tense.

  She pulled his face to her and kissed him. Her kiss was as unexpected and as forceful as her slap had been.

  “Nine hours?” she said.

  “More like eight, now,” he said.

  He took his time undressing her. Her body was as he remembered it, but this time he did not pretend to look away. Her pubic hair was a delicate light brown, the color of Martian quartz.

  He led her into the sleeping cubby, so they could use the mesh hammock to hold them together, to counter the tendency for any action to push them apart. The first time he entered her, he was rough and rather hasty. She held him tightly to her, matching each of his motions, matching his urgency with an urgency of her own.

  When he was done, she explored his body with her fingertips, running her hands over a set of scars from an old mining accident, another set of scars that marked where he'd been shot with a railgun.

  The second time he went slowly, taking his time.

  * * * *

  Somewhat later, he was floating languidly in the sleeping hammock, mulling the properties of water in microgravity. He opened his eyes when she disentangled herself from the sleeping hammock, and from him. She didn't bother to put on clothes, but kicked off across the cabin.

  He watched her, admiring the play of her muscles as her nude form coasted across the empty space, flipped over and expertly checked her motion, and watched her as she retrieved his gun from where it was floating. He wondered what she was thinking.

  “You might want to check it,” he said, “before you make any threats.”

  She looked at the gun, and in a moment found the release that opened the chamber holding the wireloop projectiles. It was empty. So was the gun's battery compartment. “I don't believe it,” she said. “All this time, you've been carrying an empty gun?”

  “I took the ammunition and the battery out after the first day, when I decided to trust you.” He looked at her. “Was I wrong?”

  She looked at him steadily, and then sighed. “No. I was just checking it.”

  “Then, get ready to suit up,” he said.

  “Put on clothes?” she said. “Why? I think you've seen what there is to see already.”

  “No,” he said. “Not clothes. Suits. We had our fun, and now, I regret, it's time we get serious. We have work to do. We have seven hours. Just enough time left to save our lives.”

  * * * *

  When they exited the hatch, the Earth was a blue half-sphere, looming in the sky. It seemed to be growing even as he watched, but he knew that this had to be an optical illusion. Around it he could see a cloud of glittering specks of dust—Earth's coterie of orbital habitats and captive asteroids. Only the largest and the closest of these showed as more than pinpricks of light; most of them were too small to resolve. The asteroid with the stub of the broken whip was out of sight, well around the edge of the planet.

  But they had no time to sightsee. He tore his gaze away and brought it down to the cargo.

  “We need to find the pressure release valve,” he said. “We need to direct the spray directly onto the habitat module.”

  It was a delicate operation. When they opened the pressure valve, the water in the cargo sphere burst out in a exuberant spray, instantly flashing into vapor, an expanding cloud of glittering white. It was hard to collimate the stream and direct it onto the habitat. The water boiled, cooling as it released energy, and froze as it boiled and cooled. They played the stream of boiling ice onto the habitat's surface. At first nothing would stick; the walls of the habitat module were warmed by the sun, and the ice sublimated away as fast as they could spray it on. They worked in a transient fog of vapor, the habitat module visible only as a dim shape. But after a minute, the exterior walls began to cool down, and a thin layer of ice started to form. It was tedious work. The ice fog tended to blow some of the ice toward their helmets, and they had to clear the ice from their own suit visors every few minutes.

  Ever so slowly, the shell of ice built up over the habitat, at first only millimeters thick, and then centimeters, and then so thick that the habitat itself seemed to vanish inside a dirty snowball.

  By the time the full cargo of water was exhausted, they had painstakingly built up a shell of ice several meters thick.

  “You sure this will work?” May said.

  “It's crude, but it will have to do,” Domingo said.

  The ship now had a long cometary tail, stretching out into space away from the sun, ionized to a faintly blue glow. Right now they must be the brightest thing in the sky of Earth, an unexpected comet.

  The Earth was huge now, filling almost half the sky. It had narrowed to a crescent, and even as he watched, the crescent shrank as they slid across into the night. Below them, the darkness crackled with the flashes of equatorial lightning. Domingo almost imagined that he could feel the first brushes of atmosphere.

  “Inside,” he said. “We don't have much time.”

  Once they had gotten inside, May began to remove her suit. He stopped her.

  “We'd better stay in our suits,” he said. “Just in case.”

  “If the entry heat burns through the ice, suits won't do us much good,” she said.

  “Nevertheless,” he said.

  They could hear it now, a thin shriek, almost ultrasonic. Very slowly, things drifting in the cabin started to fall to one side. As they entered the thin outer wisps of atmosphere, they were beginning to decelerate.

  Rapidly, it got worse. In a few minutes the deceleration reached a standard gee. They were spread-eagled against the bulkhead. May reached out one gloved hand to hold his. The acceleration kept on increasing. They were pinned to the wall, unable to move, as the ship was buffeted around. Domingo wished that spacesuits incorporated a bit more padding. He imagined pieces of ice breaking off. They must be leaving a trail a hundred miles long.

  “Domingo,” May said.

  “Yeah?”

  “I want to say, it was good to know you,” she said. “I thought I'd say that.”

  “You're not angry that I hijacked your ship?”

  “I am. But I've had other things on my mind lately. You've moved way down on the list.”

  “Thanks,” he said, and then, “It was good to know you, too.”

  The acceleration kept building, and the world narrowed down to a tunnel, bordered in purple, as Domingo began to black out. Maybe he did. It was almost a surprise when the acceleration began to let up. “I think that the worst is over,” he said, and just then, as if to spite him, a huge piece of ice broke away, and they j
erked and tumbled. He could hear the aluminum of the walls groan as it twisted under unexpected strain. “Shit,” he said. “Hold together, baby. Just for a minute. Just a minute more. Hold together, god damn it!”

  It held together.

  Now the worst definitely was over. There was a leak somewhere; even through his helmet, he could hear the sound of escaping atmosphere. But the ship had held up.

  “God damn,” he said. “I don't believe it. I don't believe it.”

  “We're alive,” May said.

  * * * *

  When they exited the atmosphere, and checked systems, they verified their orbit. Braking through the atmosphere had captured the ship into a long, highly elliptical orbit.

  Most of the exterior cameras had failed, but from the few that were left, Domingo could see—somewhat to his surprise—that his little pod was still attached to the ship, still glued to its docking position next to the hatch. The hatch had been on the wake side, the side that had experienced the least heating in the turbulent entry, and as far as he could tell from a remote inspection, it seemed undamaged.

  “I don't know what it felt like in there,” traffic control told them, “but you sure put on an impressive show from here.”

  The leak in the cabin came from a longitudinal weld seam that had separated as aerodynamic stresses attempted to flatten the sphere. The icy coating had held up, though. It was impossible to repair the seam from inside, and they would have to stay in their suits until rescue came.

  Fortunately, though, according to traffic control, rescue would be quick enough. Now that they were captured into Earth orbit, a ship could get to them well before their long trajectory hit atmosphere again. “The tug Mississippi Constitution is on its way,” the guy at traffic control said. “You should see them in about an hour.”

  “We're glad to hear it,” Domingo said. “Don't want to go through that again.”

  Rescue, though, posed a bit of a problem for him. Even in the dubious case that May stayed silent about his hijacking the cargo, his face was too well known, and he was wanted for piracy in too many places. Near Earth orbit was a tangle of overlapping legal jurisdictions, and who he would be turned over to would depend on what flag Mississippi Constitution flew under, and what habitat they docked out of. It could be as severe as Libyan space code, which would mean the death penalty for hijacking, or as comparatively lenient as Ecuador, which would consider hijacking a civil offense, and would impose only civil penalties that would result in exile to Earth. But no matter who showed up to rescue them, for him, a rescue would mean the end of freedom.