I took a deep breath, gathered my strength, and heaved.
The pry bar made it through the gap, caught, and began levering the hatch upward. The jet of air turned into a hard wind, then a wash like a waterfall as the press of the hatch on my shoulder lessened and then evaporated. The hatch swung back with a clang, revealing Kabir's smiling face.
I clung, shivering, to the ladder rungs. It was all I could do to just stay in one place as the air rushed past me. Soon everyone would be safe.
The flow slowed . . . slowed . . . and then, with a whump, it sped up again.
I looked down.
The weather balloon was gone. Only a few scraps of torn plastic fluttered in the gap where the air was rapidly escaping. The sharp edges of the hole had punctured the balloon.
I looked up. There were Kabir and Lynne Ann, hair whipping around their heads as they moved to close the hatch again.
If that hatch closed it would shut off all hope. I didn't have the strength to push it open again.
But I had one last weather balloon in my pocket.
I pulled the tab and, as the package began to inflate, lobbed it underhand toward the hole in the wall.
The growing wad of plastic and gas struck the hole and stuck. It inflated for a moment, like a kid blowing bubble gum . . . then suddenly deflated. It had been punctured.
But this time it was only half-inflated. The plastic was not stretched taut under pressure. It didn't tear.
The punctured balloon caught in the hole . . . and stuck like a glob of gum. It bellied out, away from me, growing more and more taut as the air from the upper deck filled the lower deck.
But it held. For now.
“Come on!” I shouted, clambering down the ladder, waving my arm to reinforce the words they probably couldn't hear through my helmet. “Get in your suits! Hurry!”
Down the ladder they came, Kabir and Lynne Ann and all the rest. I counted them as they passed me, joining the mob scrambling to find and don all the pieces of their suits in the crowded space. Four. Five. Six.
Only six. “Where's Dae-jung?” I asked Kabir over radio as soon as he sealed his helmet.
“Still upstairs,” he gasped. “Fell down the ladder when the lights went out. Broke his leg.”
We made a bucket brigade, passing Dae-jung's helmet and torso and boots and all the rest up onto Deck 2. It wasn't easy getting him into the suit with a broken leg, and it must have hurt like hell, but though his eyes clenched tight shut and his skin was pale and sweaty he didn't make a sound.
I dogged down his helmet and turned on his backpack for him. As soon as the suit's cool air hit his face his eyes opened.
“Thank you,” he said.
* * * *
It took nearly three days to get the hole repaired and the pressure restored and the power back on. When we finally contacted Mission Control they tried to maintain their usual bureaucratic detachment but, reading between the lines, you could tell how frantic they'd been during the days of silence.
There were a lot of lessons to be learned. One, re-route the power systems to avoid a single point of failure. Two, store emergency suits on all decks. Three, deploy analog radios as a backup. Digital radios were great, but the hab's metal structure had blocked enough of the signal that they'd refused to communicate at all; the more primitive analog radios would provide at least some communication in situations of weak signal.
We buried our dead. We worked hard, eighteen and twenty hours a day, getting the hab functioning and stable. And we started to think about what we were going to do next.
Our launch window for return would open in ten days. We'd lost two people, including our most experienced engineer, and a lot of air and water and other resources. Even worse, public confidence in the whole mission had been shaken by the incident. Mission Control strongly recommended we use both landers to abandon the station and return all eight of us home. They'd try again soon with a more robust hab.
But we knew that “soon” for UNSA almost certainly meant “next decade” and might mean “never.”
Defying Mission Control's recommendation, we decided we'd stay on Mars until the next crew arrived in six months, then reassess the hab's status. Mission Control didn't like it, but there was nothing they could do about it.
We knew we were taking a risk, but Kasei 19 was already on the launch pad, its crew trained and ready. If we managed to fix the hab and do good science under these circumstances, it would be a public relations triumph. Mission Control would have no choice but to continue the program.
But we couldn't all stay. Dae-jung's leg was too badly broken for him to work at all. He'd need surgery to walk again, the sooner the better. And getting the population of the hab down would make our narrowed resource margins a lot more comfortable.
In the end my own decision wasn't as hard as you might think.
“I'm staying,” I blogged, “because I can't leave now. There's a lot of work to be done to get the hab back in full working order . . . more than Kabir could possibly do alone. I'm not a professional engineer, but I know I can do the work. And humanity needs this program to succeed. We've made some amazing discoveries already, but there's far more to be learned from Mars. That's why Lynne Ann and Huang are staying as well—to keep the science going. Two engineers and two scientists isn't a full crew, but it's enough to keep the dream alive.”
After that post my ratings shot through the roof.
Which was nice, but it wasn't really important any more.
* * * *
The four of us stood and saluted as the lander rose silently into the salmon-colored sky. But we returned to the hab before its vapor trail had cleared.
We had a lot to do.
Copyright © 2011 David D. Levine
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* * *
Department: THE ALTERNATE VIEW: THE GREAT MISSILE MYSTERY OF 2010
by Jeffery D. Kooistra
You remember the mystery missile launched off the coast of California, don't you? It happened back last November, offshore of Los Angeles, and it left this spectacular contrail in the sky that everyone could see. And yet no one knew who launched it, let alone why.
Or so we were led to believe.
The initial reports came from KCBS in Los Angeles and it sounded like ordinary straightforward reporting. When was the missile launched? Around sunset on Monday, November 8, 2010. Who saw it? A news helicopter spotted it and had the launch on video, and you could watch it online. Where was the launch? “. . . 35 miles out to sea, west of L.A. and north of Catalina Island.”
But who launched it? This is where the real mystery lay since “officials” were being “tight-lipped” about the whole thing. But that didn't stop rampant speculation on the part of people whom one might expect were either “in the know” or, at minimum, knowledgeable about missiles. For instance, CBS8 in San Diego showed the video to former U.S. Ambassador to NATO (also a former Deputy Secretary of Defense) Robert Ellsworth. He suggested it might be a test-firing of a submarine launched ICBM (one of ours), just to remind some folks over in Asia (read that as North Korea) that we can do things like that.
Now if you're me, the images in your mind that appear upon learning of this missile launch, but without having seen the video, are of an SLBM breaking through the surface of the water, firing the rocket engine, and swiftly arcing away into the sky, contrail billowing out behind. So it was more than a little bit disappointing to actually see the video and find out that there is no launch shown at all. There is a contrail, and there is an object at the front end of the emerging smoke that could be a missile, and there is a bright light flickering at the tail end of the contrail creator that might be from a rocket motor. But there isn't any actual connection of the contrail to a specific spot on the ocean from which the supposed missile was supposedly launched. But the contrail does connect with the horizon so it wasn't unreasonable to assert that the missile emerged from the sea at the spot where the ocean meets the sky.
It wasn't long after the story appeared that it became clear that either the military really had no idea who launched this alleged missile, or that they were selectively disavowing knowledge of specific aspects of said alleged missile in alleged sky. You know how this goes—the Navy says it isn't one of theirs but neglects to say they actually do know who it belongs to. Or Vandenberg AFB (which is northwest of L.A. and launches lots of stuff) says it hasn't launched any missiles in the area, but doesn't volunteer information about who actually did.
If the military really does know all about the missile but isn't talking, and is pushing off the questions with a not-so-subtle nudge nudge and wink wink, that's all well and good. We can just wonder why they launched a missile they can't talk about out in the open where everyone can see it. But suppose the military is telling the truth and they really don't have any idea who this missile belongs to? That's pretty scary. NORAD is supposed to keep track of stuff like this. If the scenario is as presented, of a missile launch 35 miles off the coast of the US, and no one in the US military knows who did it, well, you do the math. On the other hand, it might also be the case that, although they don't know what it is, they are really confident that they know what it is not. In other words, that the public is suddenly going gaga over a viral video of a supposed missile launch is not a big deal to people who know for sure that if it really was a missile, that they would have seen.
It wasn't long after the reports appeared about the missile that an alternate view of the event arrived. Some claimed this wasn't a missile at all and that what the video showed was just an ordinary jet flying in from the west, viewed at a fortuitous angle. The contrail was just an airplane contrail, and the bright spot that looked like a burning rocket engine was just light from the setting sun reflecting off the aircraft. As hoots of derision went up from newsrooms across the nation and vitriol erupted from outraged occupants of Internet chat rooms, I couldn't help but sympathize with those backing this unpopular explanation, being no stranger to derision myself.
Twenty-four hours into the mystery, the set of explanations settled down to three possibilities. The first was that it was, indeed, a missile or rocket of some kind. The second was that it was, indeed, just an airplane contrail seen from just the right angle and at just the right time to look like a rocket launch. The third was that it was, indeed, a secret military test; among other things a craft known as the Boeing X-51 “WaveRider” was implicated as the culprit. Under each explanation were a number of sub-possibilities. For example, if it was a rocket, was it foreign or domestic, accidental or intentional, secretly known by the military or a genuine mystery to all except those who launched it? Part of me really rather wished it was a rocket launch by a gang of amateur rocketeers—some of those guys launch birds that would put the sounding rockets of the ‘50s to shame. But why would they build such a big bird and then drag it (or float it) out someplace where they'd never launched before? Why would they risk the inevitable Federal prosecution that would come from failing to secure the proper permissions? It seemed to me that a bunch of rocket scientists wouldn't be stupid enough to launch a rocket there.
Also by this time, anyone who was at all interested in the mystery had seen the video on the Internet, and excerpts of it were still being shown on every news outlet in the country. Along with the video, numerous experts were called in to offer their cogent comments on the true nature of the mystery missile. On one network I heard Michio Kaku, physicist and science explainer extraordinaire, expound very convincingly that, appearances to the contrary, this really was just an airplane contrail seen from such an angle that it looked like a missile launch. One fact he brought out that I personally hadn't heard from others was that the so-called missile wasn't accelerating, as freshly launched missiles are prone to do. But then later that day I heard on another network from a general whose opinions I had come to trust over the years from his analyses of assorted military issues. He said he'd seen hundreds of missile launches, was absolutely sure this was a missile, and pointed to a “kink” in the contrail and said it was the obvious telltale of a course correction.
There was also much discussion about the missile amongst my fellow SIGMAns. (Learn about SIGMA at /www.sigmaforum.org/.) I, having grown up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, never having seen a missile or rocket launch not framed by the sides of a TV screen, stayed in my cyber-corner with my cyber-mouth shut and just listened. Some of those folks have spent their lives in and around aerospace, military and civilian, and seen lots of missile and rocket launches. All of them are accomplished, none of them are stupid, and all of them understand both logical and critical thinking. Yet even this esteemed group of deep, creative thinkers failed to arrive at a consensus about what the missile was. Some were absolutely certain it was a missile, basing this on their real life experiences with real missiles launched from where they could see them. Others with the same experience were just as convinced that it must be an airplane contrail. A few thought it was likely a secret test that the military (for assorted reasons) didn't want to admit to.
But other experiences also played a part in the analyses. A writer living in the Los Angeles area pointed out that apparently none of the millions of potential eyewitnesses reported seeing anything strange. Catalina Island is populated and no one reported seeing a nearby missile launch. It was rush hour in L.A., yet nobody on the highways saw a contrail enough out of the ordinary to report it. This led another writer to chime in that his experience with L.A. rush hour traffic was such that looking at the sky was precluded. But my experience with that traffic is that it often isn't actually moving, during which time looking around is exactly what I did.
Such point and counter-pointing could go on forever. Who do you trust when the people you are used to trusting disagree with each other?
* * * *
Is there a fair witness in the house?
I assume most Analog readers know what a fair witness is, but if you don't, Heinlein described a fair witness in Stranger in a Strange Land. Heinlein had his character Jubal Harshaw ask his secretary (and fair witness) Anne, “That new house on the far hilltop—can you see what color they've painted it?” To which she replied, “It's white on this side.” Most people would look at that house and say it was a white house, even though the basis for that assertion exists in their own minds and not necessarily in reality. But a fair witness is trained to not infer from the observation, but to report reliably exactly what she observed.
Returning to the mystery missile, the real problem in identifying it was not a lack of people with great experience observing missile launches, but that none of them had actually observed a missile launch. What they observed was a video of a contrail, still in the process of being created, purported to be a missile launch. Relevant questions about lighting conditions, where the sun was, the angle of the camera, the specs of the specific camera used, and so on, were not asked nor answered prior to the headline being written and the video shown. Most of the on-air experts proceeded on the assumption that the video and the words surrounding it faithfully presented the reality they would have encountered had they been there in person to witness the event.
And that is an assumption as yet invalidated.
Personally, I was rather quickly won over to the airplane contrail explanation. Some airplane contrails do look like a missile made them, and you can find lots of nice contrail images at contrailscience.com/, and even a discussion about the mystery missile. Kaku's pointing out that the supposed rocket wasn't accelerating, and the dearth of eyewitness accounts, cinched that explanation for me.
The old adage is right; when you hear of something alarming or controversial, you must always “consider the source.” But frequently, you must also consider the source's sources.
Copyright © 2011 Jeffrey D. Kooistra
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* * *
Department: BIOLOG: DAVID LEVINE
by Richard A. Lovett
* * * *
Photo by Kathryn Cramer
* * * *
David Levine has been toastmaster of the Nebulas and spent two weeks on Mars. He's also won a Hugo, been nominated for a Nebula, and won the Endeavor Award for best Pacific Northwest science fiction book of 2008. Not to mention a smorgasbord of other honors.
Okay, so the Mars visit was in a simulated Mars station in the Utah desert. But the others are real.
If someone was ever born to write science fiction, it has to be Levine. “My father was an avid science fiction reader,” he says, “and the stories he told me growing up turned out to be the plots of Hal Clement's Mission of Gravity and A Fall of Moondust by Arthur C. Clarke.”
As the son of a physicist turned computer professor, Levine was also exposed early to science and computers. “My father gave me calculus lessons when I was a little kid,” he says. “I didn't know it was calculus, but I recognized it when I was in college.”
In college, he initially majored in theater then switched to architecture—though he also took a science-fiction writing class where Algis Budrys was a guest lecturer. Graduating during a recession, however, he found few opportunities in architecture, so he took a job as a technical writer. For the first fifteen years, he wrote computer documentation, not fiction. “Writing fiction was too much like my day job,” he says.
Then in 2000 his employer offered a seven-week sabbatical . . . which he took at the Clarion West writing workshop. A year later, he sold his first story. Since then, he's averaged about four a year.
“The thing that makes an Analog story,” he says, “is that somewhere buried in it is an equation. It doesn't necessarily appear on the page, but there is that sense that, as with nature itself, deep down underneath are equations that explain how it works. The universe is logical and comprehensible, and the fact of that is an important part of the story.”
Analog SFF, June 2011 Page 14
