Man's Hope

by Zellmann, William

  Their success also gave a big boost to the Kliper/Parom program. After all, Man's Hope had done something similar to planned operation of Kliper/Parom. They had launched a cargo canister, followed by the ship, which had met up with the canister and brought it aboard.

  Kliper/Parom was smaller, of course, and instead of bringing the cargo canister aboard, it would simply add it to its own hull. But the principle was the same, and it was now proven to be workable. Besides, its small size meant that the old air launch idea might be practical, in which case it would not be necessary to throw away expensive boosters. Russia was no longer begging for investors in Kliper/Parom. In fact, a secondary market in shares had appeared. Had Frank so desired, he could have sold his shares at a huge profit, so, on paper at least, Frank was once again a billionaire. Rumor, active again, now had Gorneliev as heir apparent to head Roscomos, when that position became available.

  The supply launch went smoothly, but it only carried five metric tons of cargo. As Frank had mentioned, the cargo canister would be chasing the comet now, and it was essential that it be traveling much faster if it was to catch up within a reasonable time.

  On board the ship, time returned to its normal dragging pace, though the fact that they could once again receive radio and TV signals from Earth helped alleviate the boredom and drudgery.

  Dolf, of course, was not quite as bored as the others. He was scanning the asteroid belt, looking for a suitable target. Many of the asteroids had been previously catalogued, of course, but Dolf needed to verify orbital and size data, estimate the asteroid's position relative to Earth when they finally arrived, and the ease of changing its orbit. David, in the pilot's compartment above, was also scanning, but he was analyzing composition. They were looking specifically for an asteroid high in nickel and iron. Nickel/iron asteroids are fairly common, but they could afford to be selective. They were looking for a nickel/iron asteroid at least ten kilometers in one dimension. So both David and Dolf had to agree on a target, though Dolf's opinion would prevail, and when they weren't mining ice, the two men could be found engrossed in their sensors.

  There were a few welcome breaks in their routine. The first was when the supply canister caught up with them.

  Alcântara Control had done an admirable job of sending the canister on an intercept course with the comet, and the drive engine had been used only very sparingly. The ship's instruments had been detecting the canister since shortly after it passed the moon's orbit, but it was only about a thousand miles out when Dolf's instruments showed it responding to his activation signal.

  When the green light on Dolf's panel flared, it was greeted with cheers from the entire crew. That light meant that Dolf had control of the canister's attitude jets. When queried, the canister's computer reported what David called "adequate" fuel supplies for the steering jets, and nearly full fuel supplies for the rocket drive engine.

  Dolf flipped a switch on his panel. "It's all yours, Captain," he called up to David.

  "I have control," David replied. He spent several minutes studying the orbital data of the cargo canister. "Turnover in approximately one hour," he reported. As the clock ticked down, the entire crew crossed fingers and hoped. David activated his controls, and after a moment, released a huge sigh. "Canister has responded to controls," he reported, to more cheers from his crewmates.

  A few minutes later, David activated the canister's drive engine, to begin slowing its approach to the comet. "Intercept is now in twelve hours," he reported crisply.

  It was a long twelve hours. Everyone but David tried to get some sleep, but it was nearly hopeless. Every man aboard spent the time worrying about whether they would be able to easily capture their supply shipment, or whether they would have to watch helplessly as it blew past them and headed for interstellar space, dooming them to a slow death.

  David spent the twelve hours ceaselessly monitoring the canister's approach. Twice he made tiny adjustments to its course or speed.

  Finally David told Yuri to suit up and go up to the surface. He would make the actual capture of the canister. The others hovered over the surface cameras as Yuri appeared, tether and rocket piton in hand. For a long time, nothing seemed to happen.

  Then, suddenly, the dark cylinder appeared in the cameras. It looked as though it would overshoot, but David applied a momentary shot from the canister's drive motor, and it slowed. Now it appeared to be drifting slowly past them, some two meters out.

  David touched the aft steering jets, and the canister slowed even more. Suddenly, Yuri raised his arm, and there was a flash as he fired the rocket piton.

  The piton was designed to drive into ice or rock to secure something. But Yuri had realized that it also made an admirable grapple. The momentary drive pulled the tether line up to the canister. For a moment, it seemed it would miss, but they soon realized that Yuri had been aiming for a steering jet projection. Inertia caused the line to wrap around the steering jet, and suddenly Yuri was lifted from the surface of the comet.

  But his tether held, and for a few moments, he hung suspended between the canister and the comet. He gave a very gentle tug on the tether, and slowly, slowly began descending to the surface.

  The others had been scrambling to don their helmets and head for the personnel lock. David's voice stopped them. "Raoul, Dolf, you go help Yuri. Ron, you decompress the cargo hold and open the cargo doors. We're going to want to bring it inside. We have room, now."

  As they started for the cargo hold, David shouted, "And don't forget that damned thing masses five tonnes. Everything in slow motion!"

  "Should we use the arm to bring it in, Captain?" Ron asked.

  There was silence for a few moments as David thought about it. "Yes, I suppose that would be the safest way to go. Unlimber the arm, and get it ready to use. Yuri, Dolf, Raoul, be very careful. We want to get it within reach of the arm, but we don't want it moving so fast it damages the arm." He was answered by a chorus of "yes, sirs."

  "Yuri," he continued, "Do you think you have it under control?"

  "Yes, sir," replied the laconic Russian.

  "Good. Then I'm going out the hatch. I'm going to monitor the ice plug. When Ron starts using the arm, it's going to cause vibrations. I want to make sure we don't lose the ice plug. I'm also going to take Yoshi a suit. So, Ron, don't start moving the arm until I tell you."

  Ron cursed. "I never even thought about that," he admitted. "I'll wait for your permission, Captain."

  With everyone suited, David gave Ron permission to operate the arm. He prowled around and around the ice-bound ship, looking for spreading cracks.

  Some fine cracks did appear, and David watched them carefully for signs of spreading or enlarging.

  But finally Ron reported, "I have the canister, sir."

  This was followed by Yuri's voice. "Releasing tether line, sir."

  But David didn't breathe until he heard, "Canister aboard, sir. Stowing the arm," and a few seconds later, "Arm stowed aboard, sir, Cargo doors closing."

  David's breath exploded from his lungs. "Good job, guys. Yuri, we do have a some small cracks, I can't tell whether they're leaking. I'd like you and Raoul to check them and seal them, if necessary. Dolf, please report to Alcântara Control that we have the cargo canister."

  The cargo canister fit easily into the nearly empty cargo hold, but there was not a lot of room to move around it. Fortunately, someone on Earth had foreseen this; one end of the cylindrical canister was removable, giving easy access to the contents.

  The crew was delighted to receive the new supplies, but David was almost as happy with the canister itself. It was a great improvement on the one that had preceded them to the comet. The whole thing was designed to be easily disassembled, and the steering jets and main engine seemed to be in perfect condition for reuse.

  The crew threw another party that "night." They knew they could stay alive for months on the contents of the shipment.

  Another party was prompted by Dolf's report that t
hey were crossing the orbit of Mars, and officially approaching the asteroid belt.

  Their duties changed somewhat, too. They began affixing the six small rocket engines to the comet, and began stabilizing the comet as Dolf had long ago suggested, stopping the rotation and spin that had characterized it. It was Dolf's responsibility to calculate the comet's center of mass, and determine where the engines should be located to truly turn the comet into an "ice space ship."

  This was the first time the team had ventured more than a few minutes' distance from their "base." The risk of being caught by the eruption of an ice vent had been considered too high to risk it.

  Now, though, each of the six motors had to be placed precisely into position. David dispatched them in pairs, with orders to remain tethered together. If one of the pair were to be blown off the comet by a vent, the other would instantly fire a rocket piton into the ice, anchoring them both. Besides, it took two of them to handle the bulky, massy rocket engines and the even bulkier and massier fuel tanks.

  Eventually, though, Dolf pronounced himself satisfied with the placement of the engines, and David began using them and Man's Hope's own steering jets to stabilize the comet. David and Dolf each scrutinized their own set of instruments until they agreed that the comet was stabilized, and the engines were properly aligned. Comet Carter IV was now spaceship Carter IV, and David was confident that he could maneuver it using combinations of the six restartable engines. All that remained was to select a destination.

  The closer to the asteroid belt they approached, the better the information they received from their sensors. Dolf and David spent many hours discussing and arguing over this asteroid or that one.

  Finally, David threw up his hands. "I give up. You're the asteroid expert, Dolf. You pick one, and if I think we can get it home, I'll go along. But you're the one that'll have to explain to Frank if it's a dud!"

  Dolf smiled. "That's a deal, Captain. I think we wasted a lot of time. I think our best bet is 433 Eros."

  David's eyebrows lifted. "Eros? That damned thing's over 34 kilometers long!"

  Dof nodded. "Yes, but it's rather potato-shaped. It would be easy to mount rockets along the center of mass. Also, we wouldn't have to modify the orbit too much. It's already a near-Earth orbiter. And it's S-type."

  "I thought we'd want an M-type. More metal."

  Dolf shook his head. "We don't know that. That idea was based strictly on the albedo. Density studies have pretty much debunked that theory. No, I think our best bet is an S-type. Eros has been extensively studied; we'd have a pretty good idea what we're getting."

  Abruptly, David smiled. "And we wouldn't have to go as far for it."

  Dolf nodded. "That's another factor. There's also the fact that we know it's solid, not just a rockpile held together by a weak gravity."

  David slammed his hand on the table, which lifted him several feet into the air. "Okay," he said. "Eros it is. Lets' do it!"

  Before David had even drifted within reach of the floor, Dolf was computing orbital changes and delta-Vee requirements

  Due to Dolf's careful selection, they would not have to spend extra months in the asteroid belt searching for a prospect. 433 Eros is a near-Earth asteroid, and its orbit does not take it deep into the asteroid belt. Interestingly, Eros had just passed its apahelion, and was already beginning its long orbit inward. They would actually have to chase and catch it.

  Dolf computed the delta-vee required to put Carter IV into the proper orbit for interception, and submitted his data to Alcântara for verification. The lightspeed lag was very apparent now, and two-way conversations now required patience.

  As their distance from Earth had increased, their communications ability had suffered. First, radio waves travel at the speed of light, and the farther they got from Earth, the more the "lag" between the transmission and receipt of a message. This meant that Frank would say something. His message would take several minutes to reach Man's Hope. By that time, Dolf might have replied to a totally different message, or Frank may have thought of something to add to his original message. Then Dolf would respond to Frank's message. But Frank would have received another message in the interim, and might try to respond to that. The result, of course, was confusion.

  A second problem was that as their distance increased; broadcasting to Earth required more and more power. Ron had cobbled together a huge amplifier, but it required much of the capacity of their reactor, and Frank still had to put a signal amplifier into orbit to boost the signal enough for Dolf to reach his audience.

  A much more serious problem was the Sun. The Sun is a giant radio transmitter. Man's Hope's antenna was tuned to Earth, of course, and that meant it was pointed directly at the Sun. The solar static had once again increased relative to the power of man's puny transmitters. As they approached the asteroid belt, it was quite difficult to pick the programming out of the pervasive static.

  But dolf seemed to have infinite patience. He transmitted and retransmitted his data until he received a faint acknowledgment from Alcântara.

  Finally, Alcântara Control agreed with Dolf's figures, and David began triggering the rockets to modify the comet's orbit as necessary.

  Though they were calling it such, a comet is not a space ship. It was several hours before their modifications to the comet's orbit became apparent, and three weeks before Dolf could confirm that they were on course to intercept 433 Eros in about a month.

  There was much discussion about whether they should free Man's Hope and even the core stage, for safety reasons.

  "If something happens, if one of the rocket engines fails, we could end up slamming into Eros much too hard," Yuri said. "If both our ship and the core stage with our long-range engines are buried in the ice, they could be damaged or destroyed. We should dig them out and lift off the comet before the impact."

  "But we have stuff spread all over around here," Raoul protested. "We'd have to gather it all up, and move back aboard. That could take a couple of weeks!"

  Ron grinned. "You need the exercise anyway, Raoul. Yuri is right. We are in no position to take any chance, when any chance is a life and death chance."

  In the end, even Raoul saw the necessity of evacuating their caves and returning to Man's Hope for the interception. The huge, clumsy comet was difficult to maneuver, and there was a good chance that it would actually hit the asteroid, instead of creeping up alongside it as they hoped. The only safe place for the crew would be observing from Man's Hope, preferably with the core stage drifting alongside them.

  Dolf had even computed their orbit in such a way that they would approach it from behind, at an angle. If the comet did slam into the asteroid, they could at least hope the impact would actually help knock Eros toward the orbit they wanted it to assume.

  In the event, Yuri was piloting Man's Hope, while David remotely controlled the rocket engines mounted on the comet.

  433 Eros looked like a huge bean, rotating and spinning rapidly. They spent several days creeping up on it at a relative speed of a few feet per hour, and then a few inches per hour. They had millions of tons of inertia to deal with, in the asteroid as well as the comet.

  Due to the irregular shapes of both "vessels," they actually did bump. The comet was rebounded at several feet per second, and Eros' rotation actually slowed slightly. David adjusted the comet's course with the rockets, and soon the two celestial bodies were traveling side by side less than ten meters apart. "Keep an eye on them," Dolf told Yuri. "Both of them do have gravity fields. They're weak ones, of course, but over the course of several days they may be drawn together."

  Yuri brought Man's Hope to orbiting Eros while they discussed how to "land" on the rapidly rotating and spinning body.

  Finally, they decided to approach it from "behind" in the direction of rotation, on the side away from the comet. They would "land" on the "back side," or trailing side of one end of the asteroid. This would be tricky, due to Eros' rapid rotation and spin. Once tethered to Eros, they
would begin the effort to counteract the rotation, using Man's Hope's drive engines, and perhaps two of the rockets still stored in the cargo hold.

  They crept up alongside the spinning asteroid, and Yuri used the steering jets to match the asteroid's rotation. Then he very slowly moved the ship "sideways" over the asteroid, until Eros seemed stationary above them. This time David had the honor of being the first man to actually walk on an asteroid – if "walk" was the word. Eros' gravity was much too weak to permit any such movement.

  Like Yuri, David solemnly claimed the asteroid in the name of Man's Hope International, and erected one of the small flags.

  He tethered Man's Hope to a rocket piton, and the others filed out of the personnel lock with additional tethers. Yuri cautiously rotated the ship so that its engines would be facing forward, in the direction of rotation. The crew secured six tethers with rocket pitons specifically designed to penetrate rock. David inspected the pitons' placement, and then they all returned to the ship. David reassumed command, and slowly opened the throttles of the ship's ion engines. All the tethers tightened, but none pulled loose. David kept opening the throttles until the engines were producing maximum thrust.

  It took three weeks, but finally their efforts proved successful. Eros' rotation had been cancelled, and it was "stationary" relative to the Earth, one end of the bean shape now pointing toward home.

  Then the real work began. The core stage was brought in and anchored down on the side opposite the depression in the "bean." The depression was actually the site of an ancient impact crater more than five kilometers in diameter.

  Then using the rockets installed on it, the comet was very slowly maneuvered into position above the crater, and carefully, slowly, winched toward the asteroid until a gentle bump told them the comet and the asteroid were joined, and were now one celestial body. Yuri spent several days freezing it into position using melt water.