On to the Asteroid

by Travis S. Taylor

* * *

  Mikhail could see the Earth looming at the edge of the asteroid to his right and could see that Hui had made it to the airlock. She would be fine. He placed the large centimeter diameter bolt into the hole on the superconductor magnet’s mounting bracket and pushed it through. At first the bolt hung on the mounting hole in the Tamaroa’s external scaffolding structure.

  “Bozhe moi! The bloody damned holes aren’t lining up!” he said to himself. He pounded it with the butt of the cordless screwdriver as best he could in the microgravity and EVA suit. But each move was difficult and each blow bounced him away from the ship.

  Rykov held tight with one hand and worked the bolt with the other. Finally, it managed to push through the hole. He grabbed the “nut gun” as they called it from the tool clip at his waist and slid the socket onto the back side of the bolt with his left hand. Once he was sure the nut was lined up with the threads on the bolt he slid the socket from the cordless in his right hand onto the head of the bolt. Gently he depressed the button and the bolt started threading. Once he was sure it wasn’t cross-threaded he squeezed at the trigger harder. He could feel the bolt pull tight against the bracket.

  “That one’s in. One more to go.”

  “One minute, Mikhail.” He could hear Paul’s voice. He also knew that it had taken him over three minutes with the last bolt and that the bolt had to be put in place. While the three bolts holding it right now might hold it, they might not. His calculations showed that all four bolts were needed in order to have a good safety margin. He was going to put the last bolt in. There was time.

  “There’s time,” he almost whispered to himself.

  He worked himself into position around the structure so he could line up the nut and bolt driver guns just right. He felt himself gently falling onto the boom structure. He realized they must be starting to brake slowly against the extreme upper atmosphere of the Earth. He put it out of his mind and started working the bolt into position through the superconductor magnet’s mounting bracket. While the last bolt had been difficult to force into place this one popped right in. In fact, it slipped in so easily that it took Rykov off guard and his hand slipped off the head of the bolt.

  Newton’s third law got him. For every action, the bolt slamming into the bracket, there is an equal but opposite reaction, the bolt bouncing out of the bracket and flying through the space in front of him.

  Mikhail saw the bolt as though time had slowed down. He reached for it and grabbed at it with his gauntleted hands but the spacesuit was just not flexible enough. The bolt drifted past him slowly and out of his reach.

  Thinking quickly, Rykov disconnected the carabiner on his tether and kicked out in front of the bolt. He used the thrusters on his suit to turn himself such that he was facing the ship. He tracked across the space between him and the ship as best he could and there it was glinting in the light.

  “Mikhail, I want you inside now!” Paul told him. “That’s an order.”

  “Uh, not now, Paul.” He fired his thrusters and moved toward the bolt, grabbing it with both hands. He carefully placed it in his left hand and held onto it with all his might. He used his right hand to drive himself back to the rigging. He was moving a bit fast and hit the ship with a thud. It wasn’t fast enough to hurt. He grabbed the edge of the magnet and pulled himself back to the ship. He found his tether and snapped it in.

  “Mikhail! We are at ten minutes and counting. Get your ass in here!”

  “Almost there.” He quickly slid the bolt in the hole, but this time made certain to keep a gloved finger on top of it. He reached to his tool belt and pulled the “nut gun” around to the backside of the bolt and threaded the socket over the end. He held his finger against it tightly and spun it as best he could to make certain it bit against the nut. He didn’t want to lose it again.

  “Nine minutes, Mikhail!”

  He grabbed the cordless driver with his right hand and dropped it in place over the bolt’s head and started it up. It zipped in tight and he was done.

  “Finished, Paul!” he shouted. “I’m on my way.”

  Mikhail unsnapped his tether and kicked aftward toward the airlock. He used his thrusters several times to correct his path. He was coming in hot but he was also in a hurry. He hit the edge of the airlock door and grabbed the handholds with both hands. His arms yanked tight with his momentum and he could feel a bit of a tweak in one of his biceps, but he’d live.

  Rykov cycled the door and pulled himself in. He turned and pulled it shut behind him and sealed it off. The lights on the panel flashed red, then yellow, then green. The door opened and Hui reached in and grabbed him.

  “We must hurry,” she told him, like he didn’t already know that. Mikhail did his best to shed the thruster pack on the EVA suit. With Hui’s help it took almost a full minute to get out of it.

  “Eight minutes!” Paul shouted. “You two move it.”

  Rykov turned and dogged the door down to the airlock and then secured the EVA jet pack to the wall. He disconnected the hasp for the tool kit and then snapped it to the EVA pack. There was no time to put things in their proper places.

  “Go, Hui. Let’s go,” he said.

  CHAPTER 68

  “There it is!” Maya Press shouted from somewhere in the back. Bill could recognize the only female voice out of the group.

  “Yes. I see it!” one of the NASA astronauts shouted.

  “Holy Christ, it is bigger than I expected.”

  Bill used the external spotting scope on the Dreamscape to find it and then he set the center of the asteroid in the center of the field of view of the camera and turned on the autotrack function in the software.

  “While there is nothing like seeing it with your own eyes, I’m tracking it with the ship’s external telescope and you can see the video on your monitors if you like,” Bill announced over the intercom. “Now, I need all of you to do me a favor and buckle into your seats. We are going to be firing the engines soon in order to rescue the brave astronauts that are currently riding that monster.”

  “This is scary, Bill,” Gary told him.

  “You think it’s scary for us. Imagine what it must be like for Paul, Hui, and Mikhail,” he replied as he fiddled with the controls on his touchscreen. “Now get buckled in. We’ve got work to do.”

  Bill turned on the FASTEN SEAT BELTS sign and there was a ding throughout the cabin. That was a feature Gary had insisted on early on so that it would make the occupants feel as safe as on a commercial airline. Bill almost chuckled out loud every single time he heard it.

  “Okay, Gary, we’re on.” He nodded to his copilot and then toggled the radio. “Houston Control, this is Dreamscape.”

  “Go ahead, Dreamscape.”

  “We’ve got visual on Sutter’s Mill B and I’m relaying video now,” he said.

  “Roger that, Dreamscape. Appreciate the video. We’ve got several large ground scopes tracking it, but nobody is as close as you are.” There was a brief pause. And Bill thought that there were three people much closer than they were but he didn’t say anything. “Be advised that NORAD is tracking and as soon as we have the burn package calculated for you; we’ll get it up there.”

  “Roger that, Houston. Dreamscape is standing by.”

  CHAPTER 69

  “Is everyone buckled in?” Paul shouted. “Hui?”

  “Affirmative!” Hui replied.

  “Mikhail?”

  “I’m in. I’m in.”

  “Three minutes!” Paul had the planned trajectory overlaid on their screens and their actual path was plotting along on top of it as they went. “Should start feeling the aerobrake acceleration anytime now. I’m expecting about two-thirds of a gee.”

  “Paul, will the attitude thrusters be able to orient us against two-thirds of a gee?” Hui asked.

  “Jesus! Why are you just now thinking of that? I hadn’t even considered that.” Paul thought briefly about flipping through the manuals on his pad to see if he could figure it out but
there was really no time.

  “Either it will or it will not, comrades. It is too late to worry about things now.” Rykov grunted.

  “I’m feeling the gees,” Hui said.

  “G-meter at zero point two seven gee and moving,” Paul announced. Then something shook the ship with a violent jerk that ended with a dampening vibration. The ship rang like a bell.

  “What was that?” Hui asked over the noise.

  “I don’t know. Maybe there are parts of the asteroid popping loose,” Paul guessed. He looked at the clock and the trajectory map. “One minute to perigee! G-meter at zero point six one gee.”

  “Any idea what our relative velocity is with Earth?” Rykov asked.

  “Only what the sims say. The star trackers are offline while we’re in the aerobraking blackout.” Paul looked at the sim. The screen seemed to be bouncing back and forth in front of him and his teeth were chattering. While the overall gee load was very weak, the quick jerks and vibrations were unnerving and they made it difficult to focus on a single object.

  “We’re at perigee!” Paul said. “Starting the countdown clock for the magnets. We are at T-minus two minutes and counting.”

  The ship continued to vibrate and ring. Occasionally there would be external pings against the hull of the ship. Paul assumed that debris was shaking free from the surface and they were flying into it. He wasn’t sure.

  “Okay, initiating attitude control thrusters.” Paul brought the thrusters online and started flying the ship.

  In two-thirds gravity the hundred-meter-long ship was very sluggish. It flew almost as if it was swimming in water. Paul kept an eye on the fuel for the thrusters. There would be enough. There had to be.

  “Forty-five seconds to push!” Hui told him. “Come on, Paul.”

  “She’s fighting me!” he said as he worked the thruster controls. As the ship pitched up he finally had a good view behind them at the asteroid’s path. There was a bright orange and blue glowing ionization trail stretched out for kilometers behind them. Paul used that as a focal point and worked the stick to tilt the ship upward and hold it in place.

  “Fifteen seconds! Come on, Paul, you are still off by ten degrees,” Hui shouted.

  “You can do it comrade!”

  Paul fired the aft port thrusters to kick the bottom in and then slightly overcompensated with the nose thrusters. He cursed under his breath a bit as he watched the attitude readouts and the countdown clock.

  “Ten seconds, Paul!”

  “Count it from five!” he said as he continued to fight for the correct attitude of the ship. Paul knew that if it wasn’t pointed upright enough that when he turned on the magnets the opposing fields would align the ship upright. But if the angle was too steep the generated off axis forces would be more than the system was designed for and it could rip the magnets right off the ship. Or worse, rip the ship.

  “Five,” started Hui.

  “Go Paul!” Rykov cheered him on. “You got this.”

  “Four.”

  “Come on, baby!”

  “Three, two, one. Now!” Hui shouted.

  Paul slapped the icon to fire the magnets. The algorithm kicked on and stated driving power from the reactor to the superconductors. The current ramped up and almost instantly they went from two thirds of a gee to eight gee.

  Paul felt like he’d been hit by a train as he was slammed into his seat. He squeezed his thighs and stomach muscles as best he could. Breathing was extremely difficult.

  “Hang on!” he shouted through guttural grunts. He could barely focus on the clock at all. He breathed like a woman in labor.

  Paul wasn’t sure, but for a second he thought his mind was playing tricks on him, but then he realized the Command Capsule walls were flexing out and the nose was moving toward them. It was as if the capsule was a can and a giant were stepping on it. Paul had been through this before. He knew what to expect.

  “Visors down everyone!” He lifted his arm to his face. It took all his strength since his arm weighed about fifty kilograms. He tapped the visor lever and it slammed shut. It was just in time too. A bolt popped free from the front of the capsule and shot across the cabin, glancing off the side of his faceplate.

  “Fifteen seconds in! Hang on!” he said.

  The ship creaked and groaned against the force load on it. The flexible walls of the capsule squished inward popping loose any of the riggings that Paul hadn’t torn loose previously when he’d pushed the asteroid with the main engines.

  “Warning. Warning. Reduction in cabin pressure.” An alarm started sounding throughout the ship. “Warning. Warning. Cabin pressure rapidly falling.”

  “Aaahhhrrrgghh! That’s uggg”—he grunted against the gee load—“why we’re in the suits!” His stomach hurt and his back ached and his limbs felt like they were being ripped off at the joints.

  “Warning. Warning. Reactor thermal exchange malfunction.”

  An icon popped up on all of their screens showing a red spot on one of the large radiators. The temperature of the cooling liquid was rising, but was still in the safe region.

  “Rykov?”

  “It will not blow with just one radiator out!” How he managed to speak without grunting amazed Paul. But Rykov was an old-school Russian astronaut. Paul guessed that the Russians had him up in MiG fighters doing high gee maneuvers for training not unlike his own while in the Navy. They just probably weren’t as safety conscious in their training as the American military.

  “Thirty-three seconds!” Hui said as best she could.

  “Almost there! Five, four, three, two, one!” And then instantly the gee load dropped to zero. They were in microgravity again. Paul heaved twice and almost vomited in his suit, but he somehow managed to keep it down. He took several deep breaths until he could regain his composure.

  “Did it work, Paul?” Rykov asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Tamaroa, Tamaroa, do you copy?” The radio nearly caused Paul to jump out of his suit. He looked up and the Earth was right there in plain sight. The radio antennas had line of sight and they could talk to NASA now.

  “Tamaroa, Tamaroa, this is Dreamscape. Do you copy?”

  “Bill!” Paul was too excited for protocol. “Bill is that you?”

  “Roger that, Paul. Listen. It looks like you did it. You managed to bleed off enough velocity that you’re in an Earth orbit. But you ain’t out of the woods yet.”

  “Warning. Warning. Reactor thermal system failure imminent.”

  CHAPTER 70

  “Paul, all three radiators have stopped functioning!” Rykov was tapping wildly at his console. “We’re venting coolant fast.”

  “How long, Mikhail?”

  “Warning. Warning. Reactor overheating imminent.”

  “Five minutes at best,” Rykov replied. “And, I don’t think we can stop it. It is going to overheat and explode.”

  “Then we need get the hell out of here and fast,” Paul said. “Alright, everyone in the CTV now!”

  Paul unbuckled and waited until Rykov and Hui had made it through the hatch before he left the Command Capsule.

  “You did us proud, girl.” He patted his captain’s chair and then kicked off.

  The three of them floated, swam, kicked, and bounced to the aft docking hatch as fast as they could. Rykov in first, then Hui in the pilot’s seat, and then Paul at the hatch.

  “Hatch is sealed,” Paul said as soon as the light turned green.

  “Internal lights, on,” Hui said. “Master switches on, Check.”

  “No time for checklists, Hui,” Paul said. “We’ve got to go now!”

  “Right.” Hui flipped the breakers and switches from memory as fast as she could and then grabbed the stick. “Okay, hold on.”

  She pushed the docking ring release mechanism and they popped free of the Tamaroa for the last time. Hui masterfully fired the attitude thrusters, spun the CTV around, and fired the main thrusters full throttle. The three astronauts w
ere pushed gently into their seats by about a half a gee of acceleration.

  “How long, Mikhail?”

  “About two minutes,” he said after looking at his touchpad.

  “Dreamscape. Dreamscape, do you copy?”

  “Roger that, Tamaroa?”

  “Bill, the reactor on the Tamaroa is going to blow. We’re in the CTV and making distance from it as fast as we can,” Paul explained.

  “Roger that, Paul. I see you. How long do we have?”

  “A minute and a half or so.” Paul looked back as the CTV was slowly pulling away from the Tamaroa. “Are we going to get enough distance?”

  “It is not a nuclear bomb, but it will be a sizeable thermal overpressure bomb,” Rykov said. “I just have no idea what a safe distance in space will be.”

  “Right. You heard the man, Hui. Keep the pedal to the metal.”

  The CTV continued to thrust at its very modest top acceleration. The main thrust for the vehicle was measured in the upper hundreds of newtons. The ship was never designed to provide more than a few tens of meters per second of delta-vee. Hopefully, it would be enough.

  “Ten seconds!”

  The three of them sat quietly for the next fifteen seconds, and then thirty seconds, but there was no explosion. Paul knew that the warning system could only estimate the explosion time. He was just about to ask Rykov a question when he saw the aft section of the Tamaroa fly apart into multiple pieces.

  The ship spun as the reactor components exploded and coolant fluids and gases escaped. There was no ball of fire or blast wave. The Tamaroa just looked as if it were flying apart.

  “Brace for impact in case we get hit.”

  They waited for several minutes but there was no impact.

  “Paul, this is Bill. You copy?”

  “Roger that, Bill. We’re all good here.” Paul looked at his crew and they all nodded in agreement. He breathed a sigh of relief.

  “Paul. Y’all ready to go home?”

  “You bet we are.”

  EPILOGUE

  “…and the governor of Tennessee today has issued a warrant for the arrest of Anacleto Rosalez for three-hundred-ninety-four counts of unlawful death, destruction of property, and wrongful endangerment. It is expected that the governors of Ohio and California will follow suit. These actions create an interesting diplomatic problem for the State Department as Rosalez is not an American citizen nor was he ever on American soil to commit these crimes. In other related news, the president of the United States, the president of Russia, and the president of China are presenting the brave crew of the Tamaroa with each country’s equivalent of the Presidential Medal of Freedom. The medal is the highest honor given to civilian…”