On to the Asteroid

by Travis S. Taylor

  “Yes, I have you. You are much distracted, Hui. Are you okay?”

  “I am. But, I am worried about Paul,” she said. “I’m not so sure how he is doing.”

  “I think he is fine. We all must make our peace with what is ahead of us in our own way.” Rykov sounded like a life coach rather than the burly Russian engineer and astronaut that he was.

  “I get that. But, you don’t think he is closing off to us and isolating himself up front too often now?”

  “No. I don’t. Or, I don’t think it really matters anymore. Face it, Hui my dear, we are not long for this world. That countdown clock on the top of every screen in the ship and on that touchpad is our life expectancy. Three days seven hours thirty-two minutes and some seconds that just keep on ticking by very fast.” Rykov frowned and then reset the game on the touchpad to single player. “Why don’t you go talk to him? I think I want to retire to my cube for a bit.”

  “All right then,” Hui told him. She oriented herself headfirst toward the front of the ship and kicked off the wall pushing herself along. As she passed by the window she rolled over and looked at the edge of Sutter’s Mill B. It was jagged, like the wall of the Grand Canyon and stretched out to the left and right across her horizon. The horizon was filled with familiar stars. In the distance she could see Mars glowing red.

  “Sure wish we would have just been going to Mars.”

  CHAPTER 63

  “…and be advised that the latest models show that if a significant amount of micro-debris is released during the fly-by that most of LEO will be filled from pole to pole for several days. It turns out that evacuation of the ISS was probably a really good idea. This is going to give NORAD and the Space Command folks a helluva headache trying to track all this stuff. Orbital maintenance recommends a fifteen hundred kilometer perigee minimum and they also suggest circularization. We are uploading the burn package now. With that you should be fine; though you can come on home, if you’d prefer.”

  “No change of that, Houston. Remember our first goal was to be out here. Your rescue was added to the plan later. What about Sutter’s Mill A?” Bill asked.

  “Looks like A will be approaching closest at about twenty-three hundred kilometers and we’ll get phasing burn calculations as soon as we can so that you can put it on the opposite side of the planet from you.”

  “Roger that, Houston. Fifteen hundred kilometer circular orbit sounds great to me. Anything else?”

  “Not at this time, Bill.”

  “All right then. Dreamscape out.”

  Bill let out a long exhale and stretched his arms above his head. He had the cockpit to himself for a while as Gary was in the back having dinner and drinks with the paying customers. As far as Bill knew he was probably back there cooking up his next big business venture. Bill hoped it didn’t have anything to do with damned asteroids.

  Bill tapped at his console touchscreen and found the file for the asteroid trajectories. He ran the simulations and watched them. The newest data was fairly accurate now that the asteroids were close, there was radar and telescope data from Earth, and there was star tracker and navigation data from the Tamaroa. After several days of watching the rocks, the models were getting more and more accurate. As long as B could hold itself together, the Earth would be spared any problems bigger than it had already seen.

  But Paul and crew on the other hand, well, there was still no solution for them. Bill watched the model over and over looking for some loophole in the situation. He did a few calculations to see if the Dreamscape could fly to the asteroid and get them, but they’d need a much larger engine to create that type of delta-vee. While they could fly to the Moon if they wanted to, that only required about a fourth of the thrust that would be needed to catch up with the asteroid and then slow back down again. Rescuing them with the Dreamscape was not a viable option.

  “Dammit. There has to be a way,” Bill said to himself. “It’s like jumping off a damned falling elevator.”

  CHAPTER 64

  “It’s just like jumping off a falling elevator!” Paul sounded excited. “We’re gonna jump off this rock as hard as we can right as it hits the bottom.”

  “What good will that do us, Paul? We’d have to jump with a relative velocity of over four kilometers per second,” Hui interrupted him.

  “Perhaps you need to rest, comrade,” Rykov said.

  “No no. I’m not nuts. Of course we don’t have conventional propulsion to do it. But we do have the superconducting magnets!” Paul explained. He pointed to the 3D touchscreen display and started waving his hands rapidly. “I’ll need to remagnetize the rock. The magnetometer shows we are down to a thousandth of a tesla. Not sure why it lost its magnetization the way it has. But no matter. We wait till we get right at the bottom and we do a magnetic push just like we did with the asteroid chunks. We should be able to slow down just enough to get caught in an extremely elliptical orbit.”

  “Of course, Paul. Why have we not all already thought of this?” Rykov slapped him on the shoulder hard. “You’ve done it, my friend.”

  “Not so fast, comrade.” Paul held up his hand. “Look at the countdown clock.”

  The three of them looked at the clocks all around them on every screen in the ship. There were twenty-one hours and five minutes until closest approach. It had taken them more than eight hours to tie down the ship and several more to adjust the magnets for their last push. And Paul would need several hours to remagnetize the asteroid as best he could. They were just about to go on a sleep cycle so they had been up a long time already. Paul knew they could do it. He now had faith that they could get home. If only there was time to figure it all out.

  “There is time, Paul. What first?” Hui asked.

  “First, Mikhail get out there and get those tie downs off this ship.” He looked at the Russian who was becoming one of his close friends. “Make it fast.”

  “I’m on it,” Rykov said.

  “Hui, take me out in the CTV. We have to contact NASA now and get them on the calculations and timing. If I don’t have to do this myself I’d rather not,” he said.

  “Great, Paul. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  “I knew Paul would come through for us!” Gary almost shouted as NASA relayed the news to them.

  “He hasn’t come through yet, Gary. There is a lot that has to be done in the interim.” Bill did his best to stay calm himself.

  “Now who is the glass-half-empty person?” Gary replied.

  “Right, I just don’t want us putting our cart before our horse. Let’s do the work we need to do to help them,” Bill warned.

  “What do you mean, Bill?”

  “Gary, that spaceship was not designed to use an asteroid as an aerobrake, fling itself madly off of it with superconducting magnets, and then manage itself into a sustainable orbit. Also, they are going to be so low when they approach the Earth that if they do survive the first go-round it will be because they have that big rock as a heat shield. On their second orbit as they scream back down into the atmosphere they’ll burn up and fall apart.”

  “Jesus, Bill. What do we do?”

  “Well, we’re going to catch them. If we can.” Bill thought about that for a moment. “And if we can we’ll push their perigee up out of the atmosphere. If we can’t, we’ll just grab the crew and run.”

  “What is the advantage of saving that ship?” Gary asked.

  “I’ve been thinking about that also. There is no way NASA would ever reuse it. I’m sure it is banged up all to hell and gone.” Bill rubbed at the stubble on his chin. He hated shaving in microgravity. “There is the issue of the nuclear reactor on it. We don’t want it falling back to Earth in the wrong place. It could spread radioactive material into a populated area and that wouldn’t be very good for the people or the future of space travel.”

  “So what do you suggest? What would NASA normally do?”

  “Gary, honestly, I’m not sure. I suspect that in a normal situation NASA w
ould be able to control the reentry and put the craft right where they wanted it. Perhaps Paul and crew could put the reactor in a ‘safe mode.’ I am pretty sure the control rods can be lowered to shut the reactor off, but it still has fissile material in it that we don’t want to fall just anywhere uncontrollably.”

  Bill pulled up a simulation on the main screen and pointed out to Gary the details of his plan. The Earth was rotating in the center and as the asteroid approached he pointed out the closest approach point.

  “The perigee will be here somewhere between fifty and a hundred kilometers. Thick atmosphere to a vehicle moving at that speed. It’ll be a helluva fireworks show for people on the ground. Right here Paul will have to jump off and do it carefully. If they accelerate too fast they’ll pull so many gees it will kill them. I’m guessing they’ll have to accelerate for almost a minute at about eight or nine gees for this to work. That ship was not designed for those types of fighter-planelike forces.” Bill paused to see if Gary was understanding him.

  “I’m following you. The ship will be scrap if it holds together at all,” Gary acknowledged. “And eight or nine gees for a minute will be brutal. Can they survive that?”

  “They will survive it, but they will most likely black out for moment or two. They better hope nothing needs their attention on board the spaceship while this is going on.”

  “Bill, I get it. We have to rescue them and we need to somehow push the ship into a safe junkyard orbit,” Gary said. “Can you do it?”

  “Do we have a choice? We must do it, Gary. We must.”

  CHAPTER 65

  “Those booms are going to rip right off after about three gees,” Rykov explained. “We have to take the magnets off the booms or retract the booms and override the interlocks so we can run them when they are not deployed.”

  “Which is quickest?” Paul asked. “We do whatever is quickest.”

  “I think we unbolt the booms here at the base and just lay them over on the structure and bolt them down, strap them down, duct tape them, and anything else we can think of,” Rykov said.

  “Figure it out. As soon as the magnetization run is complete you go.” Paul thought about it briefly. “How long, Mikhail?”

  “Four or five hours, probably.”

  All three of them looked at the clock. There was less than ten hours to go. Paul tapped at the magnetometer icon and opened the readings on the asteroid.

  “Zero point one tesla. This isn’t going to work in time.” Paul rubbed at his head and grunted. “Dammit! We are so close.”

  “We have to do another run over the asteroid,” Hui said. “We just have to hurry.”

  “It’s not going fast enough, Hui. We need to rethink this for a moment.” Paul took a deep breath. “The problem is we are having to not only remagnetize but change where the north pole is. So, we’re working against the previous magnetic field. Can’t be helped.”

  “Maybe we could magnetize the CTV and leave the ship behind,” Hui suggested.

  “Not enough iron in the CTV to do that,” Rykov pointed out. “And there is not enough power to run even one of the electromagnets on the CTV.”

  “No, we just have to stick with our plan and just move faster,” Paul said. “We don’t stop no matter what.”

  Paul brought the Tamaroa closer to the asteroid and pinged the ground-penetrating radar to get an updated map of the iron ore deposits. He brought the ship so close that a few times he was certain he was going to drag one of the habitat modules off the ship. He looked for the largest vein of iron he could find and focused on magnetizing the hell out of that spot.

  “Here, we’ll launch the ship from this location. It should give us the biggest push,” Paul said, marking a spot on the video image so he could find it again.

  It took three more hours, but finally Sutter’s Mill B was a permanent magnet with a field strength on the order of one tesla—in places. As soon as he turned off the magnets it was time for Rykov and Hui to get to work. Paul still had to work on loading the algorithm into the computer to drive the magnets. If he drove them too hard too fast it would produce enough gees that it would turn their internal organs to soup. He didn’t want to do that. But if he didn’t drive it fast enough they would be too far away from the asteroid’s magnetic field to get enough push. He also had to keep in mind how many gee forces the Tamaroa could take. It was a fine balancing act.

  Paul hoped he could manage a profile that would allow them to stay conscious for the maneuvers, but the best he and NASA had been able to work out was about eight gees for right at forty-three seconds. That was really not going to be pleasant. But compared to the alternative of dying on an asteroid in deep space, Paul decided he’d take it.

  CHAPTER 66

  “Three hours, Mikhail! We have to move it.” Paul was looking at the clock and getting concerned that they were not going to have the booms lowered in time. Rykov and Hui were working as fast as they could but they only had two of the four booms moved.

  “We’re working as fast as we can, Paul.”

  “I know you are. I’m just saying.” Paul really didn’t know what to say. They were working as hard as they could.

  They had already moved two of them before the last push on the two asteroid parts. There were six total magnets but they had lost one pushing Sutter’s Mill away from the Earth. Five were functioning. Presently, they had hard-mounted three of them to the ship and there were two to go. Paul ran through the numbers in his head and he wasn’t quite sure if three or even four of the magnets would be enough. They needed all five of them.

  Earth was large enough now that he could see it peeking out over the limb of the asteroid. He was getting nervous and he had hoped to get to call Carolyn and speak to her real time once they had gotten this close. But there was just no time now to speak with anybody but his crew. They had to focus on the task at hand if they had any chance of survival. And of course, everything depended on Sutter’s Mill B not exploding when it smacked into the atmosphere at fifteen kilometers per second.

  While they had mapped the asteroid with the ground penetrating radar and made as many measurements as they could it was difficult to determine how well the rock’s internal structure would hold together. Just from sunlight heating the thing had already broken into two different pieces. Paul hoped that what really had broken the asteroid was some larger impact with something else years ago.

  * * *

  “Completing phasing burn number three now.” Bill said over the radio to Houston Control. “How does it look, Houston?”

  “If the orbital mechanics down here did their math right, Bill, you should be perfectly lined up to see Sutter’s Mill B on its final approach.”

  “Great. Have you got the burn package calculated yet for matching orbits with the Tamaroa?” he asked.

  “We’re working on it and constantly updating it. We will not have it complete until we see which orbit they actually make it into.”

  “Uh, roger that, Houston.” Bill looked out the window and expected to see two bright spots in the sky headed toward them, but he could see no such thing. “Are we good for now?”

  “Affirmative, Bill. There’s nothing to do right now but sit tight and watch the countdown clock.”

  “Alright then. Houston, Dreamscape out.” Bill toggled the microphone off and looked over at his anxious copilot. “Well, Gary, nothing we can do now but relax. Maybe we should go hang out with the passengers.”

  “I’ll do that. Unless you just want to get up, I think you should stay right here and keep an eye on things,” Gary told him. “But, of course, since you’re the captain, all that is your call.”

  “I appreciate that, Gary. I do. But, honestly, I think I’ll relieve my bladder before we start chasing a dragon’s tail.” Bill winked at Gary and unbuckled himself. “Probably wouldn’t hurt business either to do a last-minute brief.”

  CHAPTER 67

  “Tell me now, Mikhail. Are we going to make it on number six?” Paul looked
at the countdown clock. They were at twenty-one minutes and counting. They had entered deep into Earth’s gravity well and before long would start feeling the atmosphere.

  “Seven more minutes, Paul!” Rykov said nervously. “Six if you’ll shut up.”

  “In seven minutes you are coming inside one way or another.” Paul did some quick timelining in his head. In seven minutes they would only be fourteen minutes from perigee. They would pass through Earth’s atmosphere for about three minutes. Paul had planned to get as much aerobraking out of the atmosphere as he could before he jumped off the asteroid. So, they really had twenty-four minutes before firing the engines. But he imagined that the ride through the atmosphere would be quite bumpy and he wanted the crew safely buckled into their seats long before any of the fun started.

  He watched the clock tick and tick and tick down. There was nothing he could do but sit and wait and pray. Paul thought of Carolyn and wished he could tell her what was going on. He wanted to at least tell her goodbye if it didn’t work out right. There was just no time.

  “Fifteen-minute mark!” Paul said. “You have two more minutes out there and that is all!”

  “Almost there, Paul,” Hui said. “We just have three more bolts to go.”

  “Move fast.” Paul bit at his lip and fidgeted against the restraints on his seat. For a brief moment he thought he felt something pulling him into his seat. “We are about fifteen thousand kilometers from perigee. I’m feeling some acceleration I think. You two need to get in here now before it is too late.”

  “Two more bolts, Paul,” Hui said.

  “Hui. I have this, comrade,” Rykov told her. “Get inside. It will be quicker for me to cycle through the airlock if you have already gone through.”

  “Are you sure?” Hui asked.

  “Go.”

  “You heard him, Hui,” Paul agreed. “Now get in here. I’ll meet you at the door!”