Exile-and Glory

by Jerry Pournelle

  "Hear me all right?" a voice asked.

  "Yes." They both answered at once, speaking a little too loudly, a little too confidently. Kevin turned toward Ellen to see that she was looking at him. They grinned faintly at each other.

  "Fine. Now you wait a while," the tech's voice said. "Then you go. There's nothing tricky about any of this. You're hooked into the capsule air supply. When you make orbit you wait until a crewman comes and opens the can. Then—and not before—you pull that big lever above you. It disconnects you from the capsule system and you'll be on your own air tanks. You got two hours of air in the capsule and another hour in your tanks. Okay, I'm closin' you in. Bon voyage."

  The capsule door closed. They watched the inside wheel turn as it was dogged shut. It already seemed close and cramped in the pod. Like a big steel coffin built for two, Kevin thought. He pushed the thought aside.

  "We're moving," Ellen said.

  There wasn't much sense of motion, but she was right. The capsule was moving along the track. Kevin tried to visualize its progress as it went inexorably toward the launch area. "Wonder how the kids will make out?"

  "Better than us, I expect. At least we don't have to do anything—"

  "I wish we did," Kevin said. "Better than just waiting for them."

  "Sure—"

  The warning tones sounded, then gravity seized them.

  They were pressed hard into the seat webbing.

  Three gravities isn't all that bad; a little like being on a water bed with another mattress on top of you and two people piled onto that. It was possible to breathe, but not to talk. The acceleration went on and on.

  I'm really going, Kevin thought. I've left Earth, and I won't be back for a long time.

  Eventually the weight diminished, then was gone entirely. There was a sensation of falling, endless falling.

  "I wonder if we made it," Ellen said. Her voice was artificially calm.

  "Well, this is free fall—"

  "Which we would feel whether or not we have enough velocity to make orbit," Ellen said. "And we won't know for about half an hour."

  "By then the crew people will be here." I hope, Kevin thought.

  There was nothing to do. There ought to be some kind of instrument to tell them they were in orbit. Kevin thought about that. How could you design one? No air, of course; couldn't measure velocity by air speed. An accelerometer hooked into the capsule; add up all the accelerations and you'd have velocity. A micro-computer to decide whether that was the proper velocity for the job. Sure, it could be done. Why hadn't they done it? Another expense for an already expensive business.

  "I'd think someone would have spoken to us by now," Ellen said. She moved her arm up so that she could see her watch. "Only five minutes. Seems longer."

  "Sure does. Uh—by the way, my name is Kevin."

  "I know. I saw it on your paper. In the chamber. You read mine, too. We were pretty silly, weren't we?"

  "Yeah. What outfit are you with?"

  "None. I'm paying my own way," she said.

  Good Lord. She had to be fabulously wealthy. He looked at her suit and other gear. First class, but no frills.

  "How come you're taking the hard way up instead of the shuttle?"

  "I couldn't afford a shuttle ticket."

  That didn't make sense. "But you can afford a ticket to Ceres. Why are you going there?"

  "It seemed like a good idea at the time," she said. Then she giggled. "I'm not too bad at engineering, Kevin, even if you don't approve of women in your business—"

  "I never said—"

  "And I didn't like the offers I got from the orbital factories. Or the Luna companies either. So I took what I could scrape up and bought a ticket. There wasn't much to spare."

  "Out to make your fortune pioneering," Kevin said.

  "That's right. There'll be good jobs for me. For anyone who can do the work. I see you don't approve."

  "Sure I approve. It just seems like a long way to go—"

  "You're going," she pointed out. "Why can't I?"

  Kevin didn't answer. It just didn't seem right. And you're a male chauvinist pig, he told himself. You hate to see a pretty girl working at something besides being a pretty girl.

  Only that's not true. Dammit it's going to be rough out there, and—And, he thought, I've got about three million years of evolution that says women and children shouldn't get into tough situations. The world is no longer a place where we live in caves and go hunt tigers, and our instincts are all fouled up, but we've got them.

  Of course it was pretty rough for unmarried women in the United States anyway. The feminist movement had gotten legal equality for women—for a while. But then came the Equity scandals, and the Great Recession, and rising unemployment. Women's rights weren't as thoroughly abandoned as were those with disabilities, but there were fundamental changes.

  The unions put on the pressure, and Congress came up with the "One Job Per Family" law. The courts threw it out, but Congress passed it again, and its status was still undecided. And women weren't welcome in most unions whatever the courts said, not with so many men out of work.

  And maybe, Kevin thought, maybe the whole idea is wrong, but there are plenty of women—married women—who approve the job restrictions and reserved occupations. For two thousand years "women's liberation" had meant that women with children didn't have to work outside the home. For a few years toward the end of the Twentieth Century that trend had been reversed, but now the pendulum was swinging back as everyone realized that raising children was a full-time—and difficult—job.

  "It seemed a long time from when they launched the cargo to when they sent us up," Kevin said. "How can both batches get to the same satellite?"

  "They can't. The cargo went directly to Wayfarer. We go to the orbital station," Ellen said. She frowned. "I make it twenty minutes since we were launched. Doesn't that seem like an excessively long time? We ought to have heard from someone."

  "It does seem a while. Let's try calling out." He reached up to the radio panel above. There was a small card of instruction attached on its face. The first said, "FOR EMERGENCY USE ONLY" in five languages. "Is this an emergency?"

  Ellen looked thoughtful. "I don't know—I'd hate to cause trouble, but I am getting a bit worried."

  "Me too. To hell with them." He switched on the radio. Then he cursed. "There's no pilot light," he said. "Burned out—or does the set work?" There was only one way to find out. There was a jack on the face of the panel, and he plugged his mike into it. "Hey out there—anybody listening? This is Capsule—uh—nine-eight-four, hopefully in orbit. Anyone? Over."

  "There isn't even static," Ellen said. "The receiver's not working. I doubt if the transmitter is working either."

  Kevin looked at her with curiosity. She didn't seem scared. Or surprised, either. "What do we do?"

  "You can try the transmitter again."

  "Sure. Mayday. Mayday. This is Capsule nine-eight-four, Mayday, mayday. Over." Again he heard nothing. How long would it take for one of the crewmen to get to them, if the transmitter worked but the receiver didn't? "Mayday, Mayday, Mayday. This is Capsule nine-eight-four. Our receiver is not working. We cannot hear your reply. Please come help us. Mayday."

  Ellen began unfastening her seat straps. Kevin watched with a frown. They'd been told not to do that. Of course they'd also been told someone would come get them. He felt a knot of fear in his stomach. Trapped in an orbiting steel coffin. The sensation of falling was overwhelming now. In a moment he'd panic if he couldn't do something constructive. But what? "MAYDAY. MAYDAY. SOMEBODY COME HELP US!"

  "I don't think that's going to do much good," Ellen said. She inspected the emergency set. "I don't see anything obviously wrong. Should we take the cover off and look?"

  Kevin doubted that would be any use. Integrated circuit chips all look alike; how could you tell if something was wrong with one of them? He began unfastening his own straps. When they were loose, he floated away from
the acceleration couch. It was a strange sensation. He'd seen people in free fall on TV often enough, and had looked forward to experiencing it, to being able to swim in the air, but now all he wanted was to get back to having weight again.

  "We have suit radios," Ellen said. "Is yours powered?"

  "Yes. Fresh batteries, and it was checked out yesterday—Hey! If we get outside this thing, we might be able to raise somebody with it."

  "We'll have to disconnect from the capsule air supply before we can open the hatch," Ellen said. "If the hatch will open at all—"

  "Why shouldn't it?"

  She shrugged. The motion set her twisting slightly, and she caromed into him in the confined space. They both grabbed handholds.

  "We have to do something," Kevin said. "Let's open the hatch." He reached for the big emergency disconnect handle.

  "Wait. Fasten your safety line to something."

  "Oh. Right." He clipped the line to one of the couch pipe-frames. "Ready?"

  "As I'll ever be. Go ahead."

  He turned the red handle. It didn't turn; he did. Kevin cursed and got his feet planted against the couch, braced, and turned the handle again. It moved, slowly at first, then swung over. The ship's air hoses popped loose from their connections on their backpacks. They were now living on their air tanks.

  "There's still pressure in here," Ellen said.

  "Damn." She was right. The emergency disconnect was supposed to vent all the air from the capsule. The capsule hatch wouldn't open until the air was gone. There'd be no point in pulling on it; at seven pounds a square inch, hundreds of tons of air pressure held that hatch closed.

  They couldn't open the hatch, and they had less than an hour of air.

  Chapter Six

  "I never thought they'd do it this way," Ellen said.

  "Huh? Who'd do what this way?" Kevin asked.

  "Nothing. We've got to bleed the pressure out of this capsule. Try to find the relief valve." She began searching her side of the capsule.

  "This looks like it," Kevin said. There was a valve with a large handle. Remembering what happened the last time he'd tried to turn something in free fall, he braced himself before he twisted the handle.

  It spun without effort. The handle wasn't splined to the valve stem. "Jesus Christ," he muttered. Ellen pulled herself over to watch as he futilely turned the handle. "No go," he announced. He was surprised at how calm he sounded.

  "Your tool kit," Ellen said. "What's in it?"

  Kevin didn't really know. He'd taken some of the items out to look them over, but that was something else he was supposed to learn about on the way out to the Belt, and there'd been so little time to prepare. He took the leather tool pack off his belt and opened it.

  "There's a power head," he said. "I remember that. And drill bits. But is it enough to get through the capsule walls?"

  "You won't know until you try," Ellen said.

  He took out the power head and inspected it. Then he searched through the loops of the tool pack until he found the drill chuck. It wasn't obvious how that attached to the power unit, but he worked carefully to be sure he didn't bend or break anything, and eventually it snapped into place. He pulled the trigger experimentally. The whine of the motor was delightful music.

  "Now for the bit. About six millimeters? Looks about right." He squinted in the dim capsule light, trying to read the tiny words on the shank of the bit. He couldn't make them out. He hoped all the bits were intended for drilling metal. At least they were sharp and new.

  He put the bit in the chuck and tightened it, then looked for a place to drill, choosing a spot between two braces. "I wonder how thick these things are."

  "No thicker than they have to be," Ellen said.

  "True." The less structural weight, the more payload. "Here goes." He pressed the bit against the metal surface and turned on the drill. It whirred reassuringly, and the bit threw up tiny bright chips that floated in the compartment, dancing about when stirred by air currents kicked up by Kevin's movements.

  "It's working," Ellen said. For the first time there was excitement in her voice. "It really is."

  He continued to drill, trying not to think about why he was drilling and where he was. That was no good, so he tried to think about something else. Why was Ellen so calm? And why hadn't she been surprised?

  The bit seemed to have gone awfully deep. Wouldn't it ever get through? But, even as he wondered, it jerked and pushed all the way to the chuck. Air whistled out past it. Kevin reversed the drill and withdrew it.

  "Might take a long time to empty the capsule through that hole," Kevin said. "I'll do another hole, this time with a larger bit."

  The second hole seemed to go easier. Now they could definitely feel the pressure dropping. He felt the familiar push of the neck seal as his air tanks pressurized his helmet in compensation. Then he glanced at his watch.

  Fifteen minutes. They'd used a quarter of their air time in drilling the holes, and there was nothing they could do but wait.

  "I have it," Ellen said. She turned the steel dogging wheel on the hatch. It seemed to turn easily, and the hatch opened inward.

  Sunlight poured into the capsule. Kevin wondered how long that would last. They had to be in orbit, a very low orbit at that; it wouldn't be long before they were on Earth's night side. After making sure his safety line was still attached he slipped the pawl on the reel and worked his way out of the capsule. The sight was so glorious that for a moment he didn't move.

  Earth was below, an enormous disc shrouded in wispy white clouds. They were above the Atlantic, and could see islands, and far at the horizon the west coast of Africa. It looked rather like an enormous circular map—they weren't high enough to see Earth as a sphere.

  All around him—there was no "above" or "below"—there were capsules very close by. In the distance he saw what seemed to be a much larger structure that looked like a floating junk pile, without shape or form: a series of wheels and cylinders and shapes of no description at all held together by girders and cables. It had bright flashing lights. Kevin estimated it at about a mile away, although he found it was very hard to judge either its size or distance.

  One of the channels of his suit radio was marked in red letters, for emergencies. Kevin turned to it, tongued the mike. "Mayday. Mayday, Mayday, this is Capsule—dammit!"

  Ellen came beside him and put her helmet next to his. "Nine-eight-four."

  "Mayday. This is Capsule nine-eight-four. Mayday! Dammit, where are you?"

  "Maybe they aren't listening," Ellen said.

  Her voice was the only thing he heard in his phones, and given that she was right next to him it didn't sound very loud at all; Kevin wondered if the batteries in his set were getting weak. But they couldn't be! They were new, the whole rig was new.

  "Kevin, look! This is the only personnel capsule in this area. The others are all cargo."

  She was right. There were plenty of capsules around, some only a few yards away, but the others were stubbier than theirs, and in contrast to the red-white checkerboard pattern on their own pod, these were yellow. Somehow they'd been launched into the cargo-pod recovery area. "Where are the others who came up with us?" Kevin demanded.

  "Probably on the other side of the base station," Ellen said. "Where the crewmen are. No one will come over here until they have all the other passengers inside."

  "But they damned well ought to know they're one pod and two people short," Kevin said angrily. "Now what? Mayday, dammit." They were conversing on the emergency channel. They shouldn't be doing that. Kevin laughed.

  "What?"

  "Hoping some communications monitor overhears us and comes out to slap us with a violation ticket." The joke seemed a little flat. He glanced at his watch. A little over half an hour of air. This was absurd! They were no more than a mile from the station—well, maybe two, Kevin thought; distances were hard to judge—and there wasn't any way they could get over there. Neither of them had a reaction pistol or a backpack
jet. You can't swim in space: no air—nothing to push against! Kevin thought, sternly repressing an impulse to laugh hysterically. So what do we do? Have to do something!

  "There are a lot of those capsules around here," Ellen said. "They seem to get pretty close to the station—"

  Yes! Certainly they could get closer to the station. The nearest capsule in the right direction wasn't more than fifty meters off, possibly closer. It should be easy to jump that in free fall.

  But if they missed, they'd drift forever.

  He looked down at the reel on his safety line. Ninety meters. More than enough. "Look," he said. "I'm going to stay hooked on here and jump for that other capsule. If I hit, connect yourself to my line and I'll pull you over. Then we'll see about going on to the next one." He released the brake on his safety line reel.