by Homer Hickam
“Yes. Retrieve our future queen.”
FORTY
We’re in L5,” Petro said.
“I didn’t feel anything,” Crater said.
“Nothing to feel. Unless we slow down, we’ll pass right through it. Crescent, come forward, please. Bring your binoculars.”
“On my way, Petro.”
Petro said, “I’ll need Crescent in your seat. She’s our best eyes until we can turn on the pulsdar.”
Crater pushed out of his seat and headed aft to the battle station, passing Crescent as she pulled in on the handrails. She did a somersault and landed in the copilot’s seat. When she looked out, all she saw were stars and galaxies. It was beautiful, glorious, and she wished that she might stay alive along enough to enjoy it in a time of peace. She thought about the secret she held so close and that made her wish for more time all the harder. But would her genes give it to her? Or would she self-destruct this year, as her programming told her to do?
“Puter,” Petro said, “stabilize along the z axis, nose-first, same heading. Don’t wait for my mark.”
Affirmative. Computing. Ready. Mark.
A series of puffs from the directional jets swung the fuser over and then stabilized it. “Look at that,” Petro breathed.
That was the horde of rocks in L5. Crescent studied them. “They’ve got some big ones in there and a lot of little ones too. Scan about thirty degrees to port. I see a clear space there. Once we get inside, we should be able to work our way through.”
“Going in,” Petro said. “Puter, manual control, please.”
Manual control confirmed.
The gillie on Crescent’s shoulder vibrated. “What is it, Gillie?”
I can hear the L5 station bridge.
“My gillie’s saying the same thing,” Crater reported from the battle station.
Crescent’s gillie seemed to be listening, then said, They are communicating with a warpod that has been sent out to look at us. I can configure the puter to receive these communications.
“Do it.”
Immediately they heard a woman’s voice: “. . . as soon as there is a visual.”
The next voice was the gravelly male voice associated with crowhoppers: “Nothing can be seen but rocks.”
The woman’s voice: “Get closer, then.”
“We will crash into the horde.”
“You will have to slow down so you don’t crash.”
“That will require maneuvering. We are low on fuel. What if we get stuck in the horde? No one will come and get us.”
“We will get you out. What is your name, Captain?”
“My name is Valence.”
“Valence, get in there and find that thing. If it is anything other than an asteroid, destroy it. Those are my orders. I am a Trainer. What I tell you, you must do.”
“It is so ordered.”
Radio silence ensued.
“What do you make of that?” Petro asked.
Crescent frowned. “The woman’s voice is that of a Trainer. She sounded familiar, but I can’t place her.”
“How about the captain of the warpod?”
“Valence not only doesn’t like his mission, he’s afraid. But he will carry out his orders. He also doesn’t like the Trainer, not that it’s unusual. Most of us didn’t like the Trainers.”
“He has a bead on us,” Crater said, “else he wouldn’t be able to track us. What kind of signal are we transmitting?”
“None that I know of,” Petro said, “except a little heat signature from our stabilization burn. If he’d seen that, I think he would have said something. Maybe they’re just working from where the station saw us last and calculating where we’d have bumped into the horde. Whoops!”
The “whoops” was an asteroid half the size of the fuser, which loomed in front of them. “Puter, use the nitrogen system for course corrections.”
Nitrogen system RCS ready.
Petro explained. “Fusers have a cold nitrogen system to use for fine maneuvering. No heat signature from it.”
Petro steered around the big boulder, then around three smaller rocks. “It looks like they’ve stacked them in here by size,” he said as he maneuvered. “But along the edge, there’s been some mixing. Probably given time, all the rocks would mix. Probably organized this way so they can come in here and snare one a certain size.”
“How do they snare them?” Crescent asked.
“Most likely they have small tugs with baskets or grapples. They send them in to push the rocks out.”
“Is that a tug?” Crescent asked, touching the viewscreen.
Petro looked and saw a crumpled robotic spacecraft with a net attached between two prongs. “It used to be,” he said. “Looks like it got caught between a rock and a hard place.”
The voice of the crowhopper captain Valence crackled over the speaker. “It is dangerous in here. There are many small rocks we can’t see until it’s too late and we hit them.”
“You’re doing fine, Valence.” The woman’s voice again.
“I’m sure I know that voice,” Crescent said. “But she wasn’t one of our regular Trainers.”
Valence spoke again. “If we are hitting rocks, then surely that asteroid did too. It’s probably destroyed.”
The woman again: “It isn’t destroyed. It will bounce from rock to rock until it stabilizes.”
“I am not sure how to recognize it.”
“If it hits other asteroids, you should see them moving. Follow that trail, Captain Valence, and stop complaining.”
“I have an idea,” Crater said after the warpod captain and the Trainer on the station went silent. “If we could find an asteroid about our size and give it a shove, we might get this warpod to follow it, especially if we shove it toward the station. The crowhopper captain is afraid that he’s going to run out of fuel, so I think he’ll like going in that direction. Then we follow him through.”
“How can we shove anything?” Petro asked. “Fusers aren’t made to be tugs.”
“How about the remote manipulator system? We could use the arm to do the shoving.”
“I don’t know much about that arm,” Petro admitted. “We only used it a few times in the war. A lot of fuser skippers didn’t even carry one along. If I’d had time, I would’ve taken this one off, just to get rid of the mass.”
“But you didn’t,” Crater said, “so let’s put it to good use.”
The remote arm control station, a small cupola for the operator to look through, was just behind the cockpit. Crater came forward to operate the arm and, after a quick inspection, could understand why it wasn’t of much use to fuser captains. It looked fragile, its purpose apparently for loading light cargo in space. Bigger cargos were placed aboard fusers by the tugs and their much heftier arms.
“Crescent, help me with this thing,” he said. “And please call up the manual.”
Crescent was amused. “An engineer who deigns to read a manual?”
“Just help, OK?”
Crescent fitted her feet into the foot restraints beside Crater and called up a puter screen. “RMS operations manual,” she said to the puter, and it instantly appeared. She studied the diagrams and instructions that loaded on the screen, and said, “Step one. Switch to on.”
“It’s already on,” Crater said irritably. “Skip down. I already get there’s two joysticks, one for the arm and shoulder, the other for the wrist. They’re marked. “
Crescent shot back, “Then why do you need me or the manual? It sounds like you already know how to do everything.”
Crater realized he was pushing her too hard. “Sorry,” he whispered, and saw her nod back.
Petro interrupted. “You folks about done with your little spat? I’ve got a bead on a rock that’s about the right size.”
Crater checked the asteroid from the cupola viewport and whistled. “The arm’s too fragile to move something that big. The fuser’s going to have to do it.”
“I already tol
d you. Fusers aren’t built to be tugs. If we push against that thing, it’s liable to stave in our frame.”
“How about if the arm was folded between the fuser and the rock like a bumper on a fastbug?”
Petro gave that some thought. “Might work,” he concluded.
“Move up so I can touch it with the arm,” Crater said.
Crater could hear the little puffs of nitrogen as Petro gently steered the fuser. “Once Petro gets up to speed,” he said to Crescent, “I want to shove the rock away from us and put a little rotation on it at the same time. That should make the rock look just like the crowhopper captain would expect it to look. To do that, I’ll need to translate the arm forward at the same time the wrist gives it a tumble.”
“I think the arm is too slow for that,” Crescent said. “According to the manual, the maximum travel velocity is only one foot per second. “
“Do you see any way to increase the translation rate?”
Crescent flashed through the instruction screens. “Nothing here.”
“How about you, Gillie?” Crater asked. “Any ideas?”
I do not see any recommendations to increase translation velocities in the specifications, the gillie reported.
“Coming up on our rock,” Petro said. “If you’re going to do something, you’d better do it.”
“We’d be wasting our time with the arm this slow,” Crater said. He thought for a moment, then said, “This is a hydraulic system, correct? Gillie, how does it work?”
The usual way for any hydraulic system.
“What are the hydraulic lines rated for and what do they use?”
The RMS lines are made of braided steel and are rated at eight thousand pounds per square inch. They are normally subjected to four thousand PSI.
“Typically conservative engineering. What would happen if we increased the pressure to a full eight thousand?”
The RMS would either move much faster or the seals would burst. No data on the latter.
“How do we increase the pressure?”
Disable the pressure relief valves. Close off the downstream maintenance valve until pressure is reached, then open the maintenance valve and . . . I am not sure what will happen after that except the arm is going to essentially spring open if it holds together.
“We’re about a yard from our rock,” Petro reported.
“Put me about ten feet above what you think the center of gravity is.”
“Roger. By guess and by golly. There you are.”
“The shoulder and elbow joints are fully folded,” Crater said to Crescent. “Let me turn the wrist pitch up to full . . . There it is . . . And then ease the arm open at the elbow until the side of the end effector just touches . . . Easy does it . . . There, just touching.”
“Well done,” Crescent breathed.
Crater moved his head around in the cupola to get a better look at the rock. It appeared to be a big solid hunk of basalt. “Crescent, I’m going to need you to operate the wrist joystick. When the gillie sends the pressure downstream, I’ll shove the x-y joystick forward. That should make the shoulder rotate and the elbow unfold. Just before it reaches its full stretch, pitch the wrist down. That should tumble the rock.”
“Got it,” Crescent said, putting her hand on the wrist joystick.
“Petro, get us up to velocity. When I say ‘Back off!’ do it in a hurry. If that rock is tumbling, we don’t want it to come up from below and smack us.”
“Roger,” Petro said. “You sure you want to do this?”
“You want to play hide-and-seek with that warpod and have it put a missile up our tail a second after it spots us?”
“I’ll have to use hot fire. Cold nitrogen doesn’t have enough thrust.”
“We’ll have to chance it. Go ahead when you’re ready.”
Crater heard the growl and felt the thump of the belly jets. The arm pushed against the rock, which began to move. “Gillie, increase the RMS hydraulic system to seventy-nine hundred PSI.”
Increasing. Upstream pressure seals holding. 5000, 6000, 7000, 7500, 7900 PSI and holding.
“Ready, Crescent?”
“Ready.”
“Waiting for your call, Petro.”
“We’re approaching one hundred miles per hour.”
“Go for five. We want this thing to knock a big path.”
“Two-three-four-five. Holding at five hundred!”
“Gillie, on my mark, release the maintenance valve. Five-four-three-two-one-mark!”
Crater shoved the joystick forward. The shoulder rotated and the elbow straightened with a bang. Just at the end of the arm’s reach, Crescent shoved the wrist down.
“Back off!” Crater yelled.
Instantly the jets on the fuser spewed and the fuser was pushed backward. Crater pushed his head so hard into the cupola, he thought he might bust through it, but he saw the giant rock slowly tumbling away. “Stop, Petro! Stabilize!”
Directional jets thundered in all directions and the Linda Terry came to a halt while the rock continued on. When it slammed into smaller rocks, they were knocked away like ragged, gray billiard balls.
The comm speakers came alive. “Talley ho, we’ve got it!” It was Valence the crowhopper captain. “It’s knocking a big hole right through the horde. We’re on its tail. Looks like a big asteroid.”
“Show it to us when you can.” It was a male voice, another crowhopper.
“Will do, Letticus,” Valence said, “but give us a minute. We’re having to dodge around to keep from being hit. The good news is that big thing’s giving us a nice path through the horde.”
“I’ll report your success to Truvia, although she will not be pleased to have her rows and columns disturbed.”
Crescent tugged at Crater’s sleeve. “I knew a Trainer named Truvia! She’s a lab rat, not a field Trainer. She studied me for over a month. She never told me why, but she seemed to be interested in the Phoenix Legionnaires.”
“It sounds like she’s in charge of this lash-up.”
A worried look passed over Crescent’s face.
“What?” Crater asked.
“All the Legionnaires I knew who went into her lab for study had the same opinion of Truvia.”
“What was that?”
“That she is completely, utterly, irredeemably, batscrag crazy.”
FORTY-ONE
We’re ready to try long-distance comm, Colonel,” Riley said.
The Colonel had taken to one of the bunks in the aft section of the fuser, but at Riley’s call he came instantly awake. He swung out of the bunk and followed Riley to the battle station console. The Colonel swung into the chair and strapped himself in. “L5 station, L5 station,” the Colonel said into the mike. “This is the Medaris Enterprises fuser Jan Davis. How do you read me?”
It took several more calls before a woman answered. “Jan Davis, this is Station L5. Go ahead.”
“This is Colonel John High Eagle Medaris. Who is this?”
There was a long pause before the woman replied. “My name is Truvia Collette Flaubert Serenia. Are you aboard the fuser approximately twelve thousand miles from L5 and closing?”
“I am. I would like to speak to my son.”
“He is indisposed. What you have to say to him, you may say to me.”
“You are a Trainer. I can tell by your accent.”
“That is correct. I am one of the last of my kind, thanks to you.”
“I must speak to Junior.”
“Colonel, please turn your fuser around and go back to the moon. Junior has assumed control over Medaris Enterprises and will soon go to the moon to begin his leadership. We would prefer that you retire to your tubes in Moontown. If you do, no harm will come to you and you will be allowed to live out your days in peace.”
“Live out my days in . . . See here, you stupid creature, I will blast you and your ilk from space before I retire anywhere. Now get me my son!”
Riley put her hand over the microphone.
“Excuse me, Colonel. Maybe you’d best take it a little easy there.”
“What is your purpose in coming here?” Truvia demanded. “Please be specific, or I will not hesitate to order your destruction.”
The Colonel nodded to Riley and willed himself to calm down. “Sorry,” he said into the microphone. “I don’t like to be told what to do. An old habit from too many years in command.”
“Turn around or you will die,” Truvia calmly replied. “That is your choice.”
“Truvia,” the Colonel said, willing patience, “I need to talk to Junior. My fuser will therefore come on without deviation. If you destroy it, I will die and you and he will never hear what I have to say. If, however, you let me come, I assure you it will be in peace and it will be to your advantage.”
“I don’t believe you. Turn around, Colonel. Go home. Your day is past. If you continue, you will be attacked. Further talk between us is pointless. I am signing off.”
“Wait! How about Maria? How is my granddaughter?”
“Still alive,” Truvia responded. “And if you want to keep her that way, you’ll turn around and go back to the moon.”
“Let me talk to her.”
Although there was no further response, the Colonel kept making demands and threats until Riley went up to the cockpit and switched off the transmitter. Then she pulled back to the battle station and told him what she’d done. “Your idea didn’t work, Colonel. They’re not going to let us in there without a fight.”
The Colonel’s eyes were a little wild. “Then we’ll fight. Tiger’s a good pilot. He can fly rings around the warpods. You take the kinetic cannon. I’ll handle the missiles.”
“Look, sir,” Riley said. “That other fuser—I’m certain that’s Crater. What we need to do is to keep the warpods distracted and let him make his bid to save Maria.”
The Colonel glared at her. “No, Riley. That’s not what we’re going to do. We are going to blow up the station.”
Riley was incredulous. “You’re going to kill your own granddaughter when there’s a chance to save her!”
The Colonel’s mouth twitched. “Tiger, where’s the other fuser?”
“I was just going to tell you about it, sir. It disappeared into the horde, and then a warpod showed up and went in after it.”
