Analog SFF, July-August 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  “Yeah, of course.” Dagger dove for a panel in the floor. “Can you pass me the tool kit?"

  I found it and gave it to him. He squeezed himself under the floor. In a few minutes, punctuated by groans and expletives, he bellowed, “Hold on to something!"

  I grabbed a seat. “Holding."

  There was a kind of boom and we jerked up. I almost fell.

  “I think I've found the plus-Z peroxide feed. Now, what you'll need to do is look straight up and tell me when the edge of the habitat is overhead."

  “What part?” I asked.

  “Any part!” he yelled back.

  “Aye, I hear you.” I looked up. It seemed to take forever, but eventually our slow rotation precessed to the point where the unfinished edge of the habitat was overhead.

  “I've got an edge overhead now,” I said.

  “Hang on."

  I did so, and this time there was a sustained push for maybe two seconds.

  “What's happening?” he asked.

  It was hard to tell how much movement we got from it by eye; but I did notice something. “We're spinning faster, and it's getting a bit cooler,” I said. “I'd say we're off dead center, so to speak."

  Dagger groaned.

  “Well, I dinna think it was that bad."

  “No, damn it, not you. I've lost the wrench."

  “Och! Well, at least we are moving."

  “How close are we to the habitat wall?"

  We had moved noticeably. It was hard to judge by eye, but it seemed as though we were twice as close to the side toward which we were moving as to the other side. “Maybe seven hundred meters and closing,” I responded.

  Dagger emerged from the hole in the floor. “Can't find it. How are we doing?"

  “Maybe six hundred meters, now—that done in about a minute,” I said. “About twenty meters a second or so. We should be there in about six minutes."

  Dagger and I watched the habitat get closer and drift slightly off to the right. “I don't think we're going to hit it, Doc,” he said.

  “Well, a bit of good news!"

  “That's not good news. Without power, this runabout is a death trap. If someone doesn't rescue us, we've gotta get some mass between us and that particle storm before it gets here.” He pointed at the habitat. “That mass."

  Epsilon Eridani rotated into view. It was covered with ominous spots. The runabout's air was beginning to smell sweaty and stale—the canopy was large, but would contain only so much oxygen. I thought about all the years I'd spent at Broadford and the inexplicable humor of a cosmos that might end me so far from the Isle of Skye.

  “How are we bloody going to get there?"

  Dagger looked at me like a man possessed. “We'll have to jump for it. Grab your helmet."

  It looked a bit chancy, but it was clearly the only choice, and one that was fast approaching. We got our helmets on and began to check each other, as the manual called for.

  “Bet this is as fast as you've ever had to do this,” Dagger said as I inspected the neck seal behind his head.

  “Easily, but that would be unfair."

  “How so?"

  “Well, laddie, this would have to be the fastest time for reason of it being the only time."

  Dagger sounded for a moment like he was choking, so much so that my eyes went to his air hoses with concern.

  “Doc, there's no orange showing on the seal, is there?"

  “None at all. I did read the manual."

  “That's a good thing ... a good thing. Well, Doc, do you happen to remember where the manual canopy bleed is?"

  I thought for a moment, calling forth a fuzzy image of the schematics in my mind; but I could not see it so clearly. My memory of text has always been far superior to my memory of images.

  “Sorry, I cannot. Why don't we just go out the lock?"

  “It needs power, Bruce."

  “Oh.” Of course it did. “Uh, how are we going to get out?"

  “There's a canopy door for use inside the habitat. It opens in, so we've gotta let the air out first, otherwise we'll never be able to pull it open against the pressure."

  “Oh."

  Our rotation brought us around to a close-up view of the habitat's edge.

  “Jeez, we're almost there.” Dagger flipped upside down and started working on the base of one of the runabout's chairs.

  “Dagger...” I had no idea of what he was doing, and we had to get out of here in a couple of minutes or be fried by the particle storm. Some anxiety must have slipped into my voice.

  “Stifle it, Bruce, and grab this chair so it doesn't float away."

  Having no idea what he intended, I did so. Then the chair came free and he flipped back, feet to the floor.

  “Now hold on to me. Use my backpack harness."

  I grabbed it with one hand and a still-attached chair with the other.

  Holding the backrest of the chair with both hands, with a mighty heave, Dagger swung its titanium legs into the canopy. There was a satisfying crack. He did this again, and a small crater appeared in the transparent cover. Two more swings and there was a slight pop and a noise like a balloon deflating. Necessity is indeed the mother of invention.

  We were almost even with the girders of the habitat.

  “Come on, give me a hand with the door,” Dagger said, his voice noticeably fainter.

  We both pulled the hatch in as hard as we could. Finally it moved. Air rushed out past me. We pulled harder and it swung open. The remaining air blew out with a ghastly whoosh as I hung on for dear life.

  Our emergency suits had kits with dispensers of what looked like brilliant orange cloth measuring tape. Dagger pulled a tape from his suit and attached it to mine.

  “If one of us catches on, we both do. Get ready."

  Our rotation brought the habitat's bare frame in front of the hatch.

  Dagger pointed to a girder. He mouthed, “Jump!” I braced my feet on the doorjamb and leaped at the girder. Dagger jumped a bit later, before the tether between us went taut.

  Terrified, all I could do was reach out and hope to find a grab-hold. It took forever—we were farther away and the structure was bigger than it had first seemed. I closed in on the girder, finally saw a crosspiece come within reach. I grabbed it like a monkey and held as my feet swung to the frame. I gasped with relief, then looked back.

  Dagger floated toward me, arms stretched out waiting for a girder, but none came within reach. Then the tether between us pulled taut, and he swung onto the girder feet first like he'd been born to it.

  He tethered us both to the girder, then pointed at our runabout tumbling away into space. The escaping air and our jumps had propelled it away from the habitat at right angles to its original motion, slanting away off to our right. There, save for some very good luck, went I! We allowed ourselves a minute to catch a breath.

  Dagger touched his helmet to mine. “Radios don't work. Life support's on a body-powered fluidic backup—it's limited, so take it easy. First time EVA?"

  “Aye."

  “Well, better us rather than the girls. Kinda hard to imagine them coping, isn't it?"

  “Oh, I dinna know, Dagger. Wreck the boat and get themselves stranded on a bunch of bare girders waiting to be fried by a particle storm? Och, that they might have done."

  Dagger guffawed so hard his helmet came away from mine, and I was treated to what looked like a silent movie of a man in convulsions. Finally he calmed down and looked around.

  I did as well. Our only immediate protection was the junction of two girders—maybe a square meter of shadow space. The silence was deafening, and through it came a fast beating of my heart. At least I'm alive, I thought.

  But for how long? We'd had two hours until the particle storm was due to hit, but no telling how much of that was gone with the chron on my wrist inside the suit and the suit's electronics out.

  We were probably going to die anyway. I was going to miss out on half of the biggest adventure of my life. An
d then where would I be? The chronicle would never be finished. It was the one thing I'd wanted—a book of my own about something really important. With a bit of time to think, I'd quickly gone from relief to profound regret.

  Dagger touched helmets again.

  “Gotta get in the shadow ... should be able to see the starship ... only a couple of kilometers."

  “How?"

  “Leap-frog. I'll skim on ahead and out on the tether. You stop me and I should swing down to the surface. I'll tie down there, then you release and jump out. The line will swing you back in an arc and you'll land ahead of me—be sure to land feet first. Then you tie down and I'll do the same thing."

  “Aye, I understand. Any idea of the time?"

  “Thirty minutes to the particle storm arrival, maybe. Didn't think to take my watch off before I put the gloves on. Well, I'm off. I'll pull on the line a couple of times when I'm ready for you."

  I watched carefully as he jumped over the unfinished habitat latticework toward the portion that was solid and might provide more protection. After some time, the line went taut and he swung down to the surface.

  Then the line jerked twice. My turn. I found I could grab an edge of the beam with each hand and assume a kind of squatting position. Then I just let go and stood up; that got me going as fast as I wanted. The tether pulled taut in a second or two, and I swung forward over Dagger and down toward the habitat. With some doing, I was able to get my feet “under” me again.

  As I descended, I realized I would miss anything solid and “land” in a gap between the beams. Judging the matter as best as I could, I pulled on the tether tape to bring me down a little closer to Dagger, where there was a solid girder. I missed with my feet, but was able to grab it with my hand as it went by. Whew!

  I tied down, pulled the line twice. Dagger made his jump, with much the same results as the first, except that he vanished near the end of his swing—we'd reached the shadow of the habitat.

  I took another jump, swung down, and went blind as I entered the shadow before my eyes had adapted. I bounced in the dark and floated out, helpless. Dagger reeled me in.

  We touched helmets. “Gotta absorb the impact with your legs. Shit, pull the protective covers off the geckro patches on your boots!” Dagger said, showing me the gray circles on the bottom of his space boots. Normally the geckro patches—areas of artificial nanofibers that cling to things in space like the microscopic hairs on gecko feet—are protected by special plastic covers so the boots don't stick to everything.

  “Och. I dinna think of it.” I quickly reached down and pulled them off. Memory is a tricky thing. There's a fine difference between knowing something, and thinking of it under pressure in unusual circumstances.

  “Yeah. We're on the completed part of the habitat shell now. There should be a line of handholds every ten meters,” Dagger said. “Latitude and longitude—it's a standard safety feature on the outsides of these things."

  Latitude and longitude, I realized, referred to the habitat's outer surface. The “north pole” would be the completed end of the half-egg shape, with longitude lines running from it, and latitude circles at right angels to those. I looked around but was unable to spot anything.

  “Bloody hard to spot. They should have lights."

  “They do.” Dagger said. “But there's no power yet. Where the devil...” he complained. “Bruce, move your foot."

  I did so, and there, right under it, was a hand-sized depression with a small bar running across its diameter.

  Using the handholds as tether attach points, we were able to continue our journey. Soon we saw the starship rise over our tiny horizon. As the rising was due to our motion and not its, this event was not that much of a comfort.

  “I'm exhausted,” Dagger said. “Need to rest."

  “Right.” When exercising, the CO2 built up faster than our body-powered back-up life support systems could handle.

  After a couple of minutes, Dagger said, “Look, I got an idea. We take a Mylar blanket from the emergency kit, jump out into the sunlight, and use the shiny side to reflect a bright spot down on the habitat. The Admiral should see it moving around and tell someone."

  “If it's still functioning.” I was in a gloomy mood. “And if the someone doing the reflecting doesn't get fried when the particle storm gets here."

  “Hell, Bruce. Sometimes you gotta take a chance."

  “Aye.” I fumbled the kit open, pulled out the blanket, and flattened it. I could see stars in the reflection of the shiny side. We touched helmets again.

  “It should work,” Dagger said.

  We gave it a try. It seemed to go well enough; we didn't feel like we got fried and a bright spot of light danced around on the shadow side of the habitat. Then we pulled ourselves back down to wait.

  The conversation, as such things are wont to do, worked its way around to the women. “Let me see if I understand,” Dagger said after I tried to explain my unconsummated friendship with Emma. “It's never got that far with Emma, or with anyone?"

  “Look, it's not as if I'm gay or anything like that. I'd be quite willing under the proper circumstances, I assure you. It's just that every woman I met was a student or a married professor or a colleague with whom I would not want to embarrass myself, or too dull to interest me, or ... och, I don't know. Look, Emma may need a little more effort than I'm ready for. Anyway, there is no hurry, these days."

  “She's a bit of a cold fish at times—just needs some leadership. But Davra now. She takes charge, more than even I can handle sometimes. Of course, maybe that's her real purpose."

  I winced at his rough assessment. “Aye, with the robots and AIs taking care of themselves, she wouldn't really have that much else to do."

  “You should give her a try."

  I winced again, this time for Davra. “I'd not be her type, I assure you—sophisticated things are beyond my imaginings.” I could adore her from afar, but actually having to contend with her experience might be an exercise in humiliation.

  “I have some video files,” Dagger offered. “Training material. I dated this girl once who starred in..."

  “I'll pass, thank you. Look at these stars, now. I've never quite seen a sky like this.” My eyes had fully adapted to the dark, and the Milky Way was right across my field of view, but much brighter than I'd ever seen on Earth. And it was repeatedly crossed by comet tails every bit as bright as it was. Some were long and thin, some double, some fans of gold light.

  “Yeah, you're right. Even wall screens don't do it justice. Not enough field of view. God, look at all the comets. And all the space junk; half the stars in the sky look like they're moving, like we're near some kind of airport."

  I shuddered and broke contact. Those weren't airplanes moving at a few hundred meters per second; each slowly moving point of light was the size of a mountain or larger and moving hundreds of times as fast. And one of the stars seemed to be getting bigger, or brighter. I bumped Dagger's elbow and pointed at it. We touched helmets again.

  “I see. It's not moving. Just getting closer,” he said.

  “That means it's going to hit us, doesn't it?"

  “Yeah. It's coming right for us. Too bad about the habitat. Too bad about everything."

  “We could jump."

  He shook his head. “Hang onto something big and solid. Half the chance of getting hit by shrapnel after the break-up."

  I grabbed a handhold and watched in silence as the oncoming object suddenly vanished into the shadow of the habitat. My eyes adjusted and I thought I could make out its black shadow against a comet's tail. Is this how it would end? I thought bitterly. Would our hopes be dashed by a futile spot in the sky?

  A brilliant light suddenly exploded around us. I braced for the shock.

  Dagger's helmet bumped mine. “Hang on, Doc, it's another runabout with a searchlight!"

  “They've come for us then?” My eyes adjusted and I could see the dark shape of the space vehicle with Davra's lovely face lit
by light from the controls. In that moment, life seemed wonderful and Davra particularly so.

  Positioning jets spit from the side of the little craft as it slowed, swung around, and gently drifted down to us.

  Dagger bumped my helmet, laughing. “Our limo has arrived."

  We stood up just as the airlock in the bottom of the little runabout opened up. Emma, bless her, motioned us to jump in and we did. Never had a wee bit of ship's noise sounded so good.

  Topside, we pulled our helmets off. Emma's face could have been the model for the Mona Lisa. She motioned us toward the seats.

  “You have the most beautiful face I seen in the last three hours!” Dagger said, grabbing her for a big kiss. “I can't believe we're alive!"

  “Emma, Davra, what the bloody hell happened?” I asked.

  Davra turned around and shook her head. “We got a major electromagnetic pulse when the coronal filament loops collapsed just before the flare. The half-finished habitat acted like a parabolic mirror. Every wavelength over a centimeter came right back at you, several million times stronger."

  “But we weren't in the exact center!"

  “Neither was the pulse in the center of Epsilon Eridani's disk! Probably ten thousand kilometers above the left limb. We'll go over it all later, but first we've got to hurry back to the ship before the particle radiation storm hits."

  “Buckle up,” Davra said. "Admiral, get us out of here!"

  The shuttle reacted as if an unseen hand grabbed us and threw us at the starship. The Admiral began to grow larger ahead of us.

  “Uh, Davra, Emma, thanks,” I said.

  Davra turned and gave me a smile that would take the mist off a moor, but there was a bit of cat-that-caught-the-canary to it. “Sure, Bruce. A piece of cake! You guys gave us a bit of excitement out there!"

  “The particle flux has arrived and is increasing,” the Admiral told us. “Ten millisieverts a second now, lethal levels predicted in approximately seven minutes."

  “Is this as fast as she can go?” Dagger muttered. “Where's a fast woman when I need one?"

  No one laughed or said anything. We kept looking at our wrist comps as the Admiral grew from a toy to a full-sized spaceship.

  A hundred millisieverts a second. Somewhere I remembered that a prompt dose of fifty millisieverts was fatal—I could take about a hundred seconds of this. But the ship filled the sky. About six hundred meters from the ship's center, the Admiral announced, “Two millisieverts a second."