Boundary b-1

by Eric Flint

  "That's… a hell of a window," Helen said finally. She realized she wasn't as familiar with this part of the ship's design. "Isn't that a weak point in the structure? At least for radiation shielding?"

  "Not really. It looks like clear glass, but that's actually transparent composite. It's coated with artificial diamond, and insulated with a foot and a half of optical aerogel with a high radiation shielding coefficient. The back section is similar but coated with an active-crystal matrix which can black it out-makes it reflective on the outside. And of course can be used to enhance anything you see through the port, or override it as a display, like a viewscreen. You actually have similar windows in your cabins; they just aren't open right now, so to speak. Because of the heating effects and the potential danger of people blinding themselves looking at the sun, we're keeping the window controls mostly to ourselves. We'll leave them open in the cabins whenever it's safe, once we're under way. You can always shut them off, though."

  Helen waved her hand around the spacious bridge. "Let me guess. More political and publicity design compromises."

  Hathaway nodded. "Not so much compromises as just overkill again. You could really run Nike from a single enclosed room, if you had to, with nobody at the controls. We don't really need a crew to fly this ship, although having one certainly acts as a failsafe. But… well, it just looks better this way. The public feels like they're getting their money's worth, and they ponied up a lot of it.

  "The design is completely functional, too. You could in fact fly this ship on manual from the bridge, not that I'd ever want to see anyone try it. A.J., your station is right there." He pointed to a console area in the front and to the right.

  As A.J. floated himself over to the indicated area, Hathaway added: "The equipment isn't a waste, either. Like almost everything else in the ship, it can either be used right where it sits or unshipped and brought down to Phobos."

  "Hey, this thing already ties right in with my VRD!"

  "Of course it does, A.J. They took the coding straight from your personal station at NASA."

  "Neat! I don't even have to tweak it!"

  Helen took another slow, admiring turn to examine the whole bridge. "I agree with you, Ken. It might be silly theatrical overkill in some ways-but this really is a ship. You can feel it."

  "Yes, you can." Hathaway's gaze was focused out the huge viewport. "And she's about ready to fly."

  Eric Flint Ryk E. Spoor

  Boundary

  Chapter 29

  Nicholas Glendale stood out on the landing field where, almost two years earlier, Chinook had crashed while trying to land. He wasn't here for a landing, however. He was gazing upward to see a launch.

  It was chilly on the flat desert plain, now that the sun had gone down. All the more so because they were well into autumn. Glendale pulled his coat a bit tighter. The garment was cut thin and sharply angled, which was nice from a cosmetic viewpoint, since it emphasized his slender figure. But he missed the reassuring puffy bulk of the coats he remembered from his younger years, even if the aerogel insulation of his current one made it just as warm.

  Back at NASA Control, the countdown had begun. He could hear the murmur of traffic between the ground and Nike in his ear, and if he wished, his VRD would display any of a dozen views of the great ship or the control center. But for now he looked only with eyes. At an altitude of about two hundred miles, the fourteen-hundred-foot- long Nike stretched over 4.5 arc minutes-nearly a sixth of the width of the full moon. It was easy to spot coming over the horizon, if you knew where to look. Once it was up in the sky, of course, nobody could miss it.

  Glendale knew where to look. He came out here often to watch her fly overhead.

  He had never been interested in space travel, particularly. His own field fascinated him, and had since he was a teenager-the interaction of its personalities as much as the unearthing of ancient biological history. For whatever reason, paleontology had always seemed to attract some of the most colorful personalities ever to populate the halls of academia. Still did, for that matter.

  Perhaps that very fact-having had no youthful fascination with space-had led to his current obsession.

  "I was never inoculated against this," Glendale heard himself murmur. When a connection had finally been shown between Helen Sutter's problematica, Bemmius secordii, and Phobos, Glendale had been forced to really look at this utterly different field… and the space bug had bitten, hard.

  It had not been easy, especially in the first few months after he'd realized he really was interested-intensely, passionately interested-in following the mystery of Bemmius to Phobos. For the first time in his life, Nicholas Glendale had found himself suffering-violently-from the hideous throes of professional jealousy.

  Helen Sutter was, as he himself had said, the only correct choice for the mission. Not only did she already know far more about Bemmius than anyone else on Earth, but she was considerably younger than he was, at least as photogenic, and more athletic. Add to that the sudden romantic tie between her and the handsome young genius who had discovered the Phobos base-the tabloids had picked that up almost immediately-and only a complete idiot would try to bar her from the mission. The publicity alone would be worth millions in justifying the program to the public.

  The fact had remained that Nicholas Glendale wasn't that old, he was well-known, respected, trusted-and, somewhat to his own surprise, he'd even passed the physical and psychological exams for space travel. Not with nearly as good a score as Helen or many of the other candidates, true, with regard to the physical tests. After all, he was sixty years old.

  Still, physically, there was nothing to prevent him from going. Indeed, one of the members of the crew-the linguist, Rich Skibow- was sixty-three years old. Glendale had been astounded, and more than a little repelled, to find that he was actually entertaining thoughts of using his reputation and public leverage to force his way onto the crew. He had always detested scientists who tried to advance their personal goals over the needs of science, or over the metaphorical bodies of others. It was one of the reasons he had taken immense pleasure in dissecting that self-centered ass Pinchuk. Yet there he had been, thinking very similar selfish thoughts which would have, if indulged, resulted in shoving aside an undoubtedly more needed somebody off Nike just so he could joyride around the Solar System.

  Coming up on visibility…

  He glanced to the west, where Nike would soon appear, her orbital direction giving her an apparent retrograde motion against the stars.

  Not quite yet. A few more moments.

  He had managed to get his new obsession under control, finally, and he didn't think anyone else had really noticed anything. Once he had forced himself to accept that he would not be going, at least on this first mission, he had thrown his new fascination some bones. Reading voluminously on space travel-he realized suddenly that he hadn't even glanced at a paleontological journal in three months- and slightly abusing his position and reputation to get himself some actual orbital time and a visit to Nike.

  NASA had given themselves, and Glendale, one other special treat, however.

  There she was! A glimmer, growing into a brighter light, as Nike continued her orbit. The countdown was now nearing its end. If all went well-if nothing happened to delay or stop the countdown, now in its last seconds-Nike would begin her departure from Earth by firing her engines just about precisely above Glendale's head.

  She would not, of course, be driving straight towards Mars. Instead, she would be using multiple short burns to take a more economical route by exploiting the power of the Earth's gravity well, firing subsequently as she approached perigee and building velocity in a slingshot maneuver before heading on a transfer orbit to where Mars would be in about three months. She was going to be showing off what she could do upon arrival, however. The current plans were for her to do what amounted to a brute-force braking maneuver that would park her near Phobos with a single long burn.

  Nicholas Glendale
would not be on board Nike. But he would watch her leave.

  "I see you, Helen!"

  Near orbit and increased bandwidth allowed some personal channels. "All go so far," Helen responded. "Jesus, Nicholas, I'm nervous."

  "No reason to be nervous. Excited, though, that's just fine."

  "That, too. I wish you were coming with us, you know."

  "Not as much as I do. Perhaps next trip."

  "Goodbye, Nicholas."

  "Goodbye-and good luck, Helen."

  The voice of Ground Control echoed on another channel. "Thirty seconds to ignition."

  "Main engines all show green. We are go for launch."

  "Ignition in twenty seconds from… mark."

  Glendale blinked hard and stared upward. The sparkling not-quite-dot was almost directly overhead now.

  "Ten seconds. Nine. Eight. Seven. Six. Five. Four. Three. Two. One

  …"

  Nike suddenly blazed brighter, six NERVA engines hurling superheated gases outward at a rate of tons per second. Nicholas knew that human eyes couldn't possibly see the effect of less than a quarter-g of acceleration on something already at orbital speeds, but his hindbrain insisted that the distant spacecraft had lunged forward eagerly and was already heading towards the horizon at an ever-increasing pace. He kept his eyes fixed on Nike as she silently accelerated on her journey to another world.

  He couldn't say exactly at what point he could no longer quite see her. But when he finally admitted to himself that she was truly gone, he became aware of the tears streaming down his face.

  Some of them were from keeping his eyes open too long.

  Eric Flint Ryk E. Spoor

  Boundary

  Chapter 30

  "Gee," A.J. said, fighting to keep his face straight. "That's tough."

  "I appreciate your attempt at diplomacy, A.J." Dr. Wu took another deep breath. The paleness of his skin didn't decrease, but the sheen of sweat seemed to be fading. "Even though the attempt is feeble and ineffective."

  "It is kinda funny, though. After everything we went through, and now we're on our way and you-the doctor-are getting spacesick?"

  Wen Hsien Wu grimaced, holding down his lunch apparently by force of pride. "I suppose if I were in your position I might find it amusing. As it is, I have a very hard time taking it that way."

  "Seriously, anything I can do for you? I mean, this is really just a scratch, I'll take care of it myself."

  "A bit more than a scratch, judging by the bleeding. Yes, get me one of the blue pills from the container on the top right, marked 'Stabilese.'"

  A.J. glanced in the indicated direction and floated himself over to the cabinet. "That's the antinausea drug?"

  "One of them. This one works after the fact, unlike most. If I can keep it down for a few minutes."

  A.J. got one of the pills out and handed it to the doctor. "Here you go. Look on the bright side. In a few more hours we'll be going to rotation mode. After that, we'll have about one-third gravity to work with."

  "Yes." Wu swallowed the pill, seemed to turn slightly paler. Sweat broke out across his face again. Grimly he closed his eyes, then opened them quickly again to stare into the distance. A.J. said nothing, but handed the doctor one of the catcher bags in case his stomach won out.

  Several more minutes went by. Slowly, color crept back into Wu's face, and he sighed with relief. "Well, I believe it is working. I still feel terrible, but not as badly as I did." He reached out. "Let me see that cut. Good lord, A.J., how did you manage to do that?"

  "My reflexes are still on Earth. I was moving some of the equipment around in micrograv, got distracted, realized something was getting away from me, grabbed it, and lever action sorta whipped me around. Caught my arm on a bracket."

  Wu shook his head. His hands shook slightly, too, but the instrument they held was still steady. "I think I can glue it together. I'd rather not have to go with stitches."

  "Okay by me, Doc. I don't like needles myself."

  A.J. noticed something about Wu as he carefully cleaned the wound and prepared to glue it together. To check on what he noticed, he flipped a bit of Fairy Dust onto the Nike's doctor.

  "There we go. Yes, that will do."

  "You know the old saying, 'Physician, heal thyself'?" A.J. asked.

  "Yes, of course. Why?"

  "You'd better practice it. You aren't spacesick, or at least that's not all of your problems. You're running three degrees of fever."

  Wu stared at him, then put his hand against A.J.'s forehead. "Yes, you feel cold. How stupid of me. I felt exactly the same as I had in the earlier training flights, so I just assumed… Well, stupid, as I said."

  He frowned. "This isn't good, at all. We have a very confined population here. If a large proportion of us gets sick, operations will be severely curtailed."

  "It's probably just a cold or a touch of flu, Doc. What's the big deal?"

  "Flu still kills people on occasion, A.J. And when you have only fifty people and relatively little redundancy, even minor illnesses can have a major effect. I will have to issue an immediate warning." Wu shook his head. "At the very least, unless we're so fortunate as to have this be a strain that only I am vulnerable to, there will be an awful lot of miserable people here, for a while. And you don't even want to contemplate what could happen to someone who suddenly becomes sick while on EVA."

  Picturing what would happen to someone who vomited while inside a spacesuit, A.J. was no longer amused.

  Jackie stared, bleary-eyed, at the screen. She really didn't feel up to this, but Dr. Gupta was worse off. The deep voice was barely a whisper, and Dr. Wu-still looking rather dragged out from his own experience-had Gupta on IVs.

  He wasn't the only one, either; by now over sixty percent of Nike's crew had come down with the flu, and a few were in very bad shape. A.J. was the worst off. The infection had a respiratory phase as well as a gastrointestinal one, and the respiratory irritation had caused a violent sympathetic reaction from his already damaged lungs. The sensor specialist was in the small medical bay under constant observation. Wu thought A.J. was out of the woods, but it would be weeks before he'd be back to full strength. He barely had the energy to smile and exchange a few words with Helen when she visited.

  Enough musing. Edwards was waiting for Jackie's instructions. "Okay. You'll have to unbolt the cover plate in front of you. It's held by four locking bolts with latches. The latches you can pop off with your screwdriver. Use a fifteen millimeter socket on the bolt heads."

  "Understood. Fifteen millimeter. They all secured on the shaft?"

  "Yes. Once you loosen them enough, you can swing all four out of the way. And they'll stay out of the way-there's a spring-loaded mechanism to keep them from flopping around."

  "Roger that."

  She closed her eyes and tried to convince herself the room wasn't really spinning. As the room really was spinning, at about two revolutions per minute, that was easier said than done. Tim Edwards was a good guy with a toolkit, but he wasn't an engineer. She'd have felt better about doing this job herself, if she'd been able to. But she still didn't dare get into a suit; and, unfortunately, all the other people who might have tried doing maintenance on the nuclear rocket engines were laid up.

  Number Five engine had started having problems. The diagnostics pinpointed one of the valves involved in feeding reaction mass to the chamber. Fortunately, it was in a well-shielded area, because both she and Gupta wanted to replace the valve immediately and examine the old one to see what had gone wrong. If it was simply a defective part, fine. What they didn't want was to discover at the end of the trip that there was some underlying problem that had caused it to malfunction. By then, it might be too late to fix-and they'd need that engine for the braking maneuver.

  "All bolts off, Jackie."

  "Good." She forced her eyes to focus on the scene in front of her. "Okay, that panel was designed to swing up and out. It's on hinges, and there's a clip on the wall behind it which sh
ould keep it out of the way. Open her up."

  Tim complied, slowly opening the access panel and locking it to the clip on the wall. "Got it."

  "You should be seeing…" She trailed off, fighting to focus her memory. "There'll be three pipes in there. One has a bright red stripe on it, one a bright yellow, and one bright white."

  "Yeah, you got it. Red, yellow, white."

  "There should be two shutoff valve handles on each pipe. In between these shutoff valves are the control valve units."

  "The shutoff valve handles are sort of like door handles, not like round spigot things, right?"

  "Yes, that's right. They're open if they're in line with the pipe and closed if they're at right angles to the pipe. All of them should be open right now."

  "They are," Tim verified, after a short pause. "You want me to close them?"

  "Just the ones for the feeder line. That's the white-painted pipe."

  "Gotcha." A few seconds went by. "Damn, this bugger is- whoa!"

  Tim Edwards flailed a bit on the screen and started floating away from Nike. Jackie reflexively gasped before common sense caught up with her reaction. Just at that point, Edwards' safety line brought him to a mostly-cushioned halt and he began a very slow drift back.

  "I'm okay, I'm okay! Don't worry. The one valve was sticky and I had to push pretty hard. When it gave I overcompensated."

  Jackie's heart was pounding and her stomach roiled. "Ugh. Don't do that again, please. When I worry I get sicker."

  "I'll try. Okay, both of these are now at right angles to the pipe. You're sure I'm not going to end up glowing in the dark?"

  "You've got a rad meter on you now. Your major danger is from space radiation, not from our engines. The quicker we get this done, the better off we'll be."

  "Roger that. I have the valves shut off on the white-painted pipe. What do I do next?"