Rock Killer

by S. Evan Townsend

  Naguchi was having trouble fitting her lean frame into the one-size-fits-none suit. Banda pulled his suit on and helped Chun.

  It allowed them to talk.

  “What was the message from Mitchel?” he asked.

  Chun waited to seal his suit and flicked on the radio control on his arm. “A warning we may be attacked.”

  Banda smiled and shook his head in the bubble helmet. “We need to tell them.”

  “It takes about 20 minutes,” Chun said. “I think we should radio Ceres first for help. They’re closer.”

  Banda shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know what they can do for us. They have trouble keeping enough air themselves.”

  “I know, but it’s worth a shot. How about Mars?”

  “Farther than Earth now.”

  “Well, I didn’t want to pay the Russians’ price anyway.”

  Both smiled grimly. “Get on those messages,” Chun ordered. “I’m going to life support. Find out how bad it really is.”

  The director of life support, Taylor, shook her head. “It’s really bad. We have some reserve air but I won’t release that until the second emergency door is in place.” Standard procedure was to place two emergency doors between the inside and any irreparable breech.

  “Then what?”

  “Eight hours at most.”

  Alex stared in disbelief. “What about the air recycler?”

  Taylor shook her head again. “Look,” she said pointing.

  Alex saw a group of people working on the device, which took up one wall in the cavern.

  “The second missile hit blew it off its supports,” Taylor said. “The third bounced it around. I don’t know if we can fix it. It wasn’t designed for combat.”

  “I know,” Alex said. He looked at the device. They didn’t carry a spare. The added weight and expense was deemed superfluous. It was triple redundant inside. The odds of all three of its systems, any one of which could keep the crew alive, failing simultaneously were considered as remote as, well, someone lobbing missiles at them.

  “I was thinking,” Taylor said, “what if we found some ice?”

  “That would help. But M-type asteroids don’t have much, if any, water. Our chances of finding ice in this rock are slim. And the exertion of mining will use our air faster.”

  “I meant, maybe there’s a carbonaceous chondrite nearby. They have a high percentage of water.”

  Alex shook his head. “Even if there were, we couldn’t maneuver to it.”

  “I understand,” Taylor said as if she didn’t want to. Understanding meant knowing how desperate their situation was.

  “What are our options?” Alex asked.

  “Stop all activity that’s not absolutely necessary and try to rendezvous with a ship that can supply us with air or pull us off.”

  “That’s my plan. I just don’t think there’s anyone that can get to us in eight hours.” He’d have to ask Bente. The nearest ship was probably the Kyushu. He doubted it could get to them in eight hours. Alex involuntarily thought of Kirsten. No, he thought, I have to keep my mind here.

  Thorne’s voice over Chun’s suit radio shook him out of his thoughts. “We’ve got the leak stopped. The miners say they broke the record for emergency door installation. In three minutes they’ll have a second, back-up door installed.”

  “Thanks,” Chun said.

  “And,” Thorne continued, “I went out. I didn’t see anything but that doesn’t mean much.”

  “Understood. We need to find out if we can repair the mass driver and the Masuka drive.”

  “I already looked. I don’t know about the mass driver. It looks repairable to me. A tech could tell you better.”

  Damn, Alex thought. The off duty techs should be down there looking at it right now. Why hadn’t I thought of that? “Okay, I’ll send some down. What about the Masuka drive?”

  “Useless. Four of the six drives are gone. The two left are right next to each other, off the center of mass. If we used them, we’d tumble.”

  And moving them would take much longer than eight hours. “Understood. Good job.”

  “Thanks,” Thorne said.

  “And, Taylor.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Eight hours is unacceptable. Think of something, anything.”

  ***

  Charlie opened her eyes to see green. Green, like her eyes. I thought I was supposed to see a tunnel first, she thought.

  Then she heard talking, and something beeping. Something stabbed her arm just above the wrist.

  “Okay, the IV’s in,” a woman’s voice said.

  Charlie smiled. She was alive and lying prostrate with her head turned to the side. A nurse’s uniform had been blocking her vision. She looked around without moving her head to see more green-suited figures orbiting her prone figure. Her vision looked like her father’s attempt to use a manual camera: out of focus.

  “Where am I?” she asked. Her voice was thick. Drugs, she decided. She should be in extreme pain.

  “You’re okay,” a man said and Charlie realized it was the nurse. “You’re at a hospital. Now be still and rest.”

  “Call the FBI,” Charlie breathed. “My life is in danger.”

  A swatch of blue came into her vision. “It’s okay. I’m a police officer.”

  “Call the FBI.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Charlie felt herself going to sleep. She fought it; damned drugs. “FBI, Freeman, Washington, please.” Consciousness slipped away like a wet bar of soap on the shower floor.

  ***

  Noon prayers were over and Faruq walked with the president as they headed back to their offices. The president’s loyal guards followed at a discrete distance behind.

  “There are those,” the president said, “that say we are not doing enough against the occupiers of Palestine and the West that supports them.”

  “I have heard that,” Faruq answered.

  “There are those,” the president went on, “that say if one man showed leadership against the West he could take my place.”

  “I don’t think that is possible, Mr. President.”

  “You don’t?”

  “No, aquid.”

  “Good,” the president said. “Because your dealings with that eco-terrorist group could be construed as leadership against the West, and word of it is spreading in the party.”

  “Everything I’ve done has been in your name and for the Baath Revolution.”

  “Did you catch,” the president said, “before going to pray, that the environmentalists you supported had attacked an asteroid.”

  “No,” Faruq lied. The president was fishing. Did he see his support failing? Did he know Faruq had labored hard to erode it?

  “Hum,” the president huffed. “Do you think it is right to be involved in this adventure?”

  “What hurts SRI hurts the West,” Faruq said.

  “Yes,” the president intoned, “you’ve said that.” The president stopped walking and faced Faruq. “But who else could it hurt?”

  Faruq tried to look confused. Inwardly he smiled. If the president was making threats he must feel threatened. Faruq’s plans were coming to fruition.

  “Habibi,” Faruq said, “there is no one who can threaten you. No one.”

  The president walked away and his guards followed. “I wish I could believe you, Faruq,” he called back.

  ***

  Alex looked at his computer on his wrist, then, realizing it was under his pressure suit, looked at the nearest computer screen. Nakata should have gotten our message by now, he thought. He doubted the asteroid chief could help them. It seemed they were on their own like no persons had ever been, millions of kilometers from the nearest other humans.

  “Director?” Taylor’s voice came over the intercom, interrupting Alex’s thoughts.

  “Yes?”

  “I’ve got a solution. Can you come down here?”

  “On my way.”

  “I’ve got som
e good news and some bad news,” she said when Alex arrived.

  “Good news can wait. What’s the bad news?”

  “A pipe burst in the drive section. We didn’t realize it because we were all rattled by the attack. By the time we cut off the water supply we were down to about a hundred and ten liters in the main tank.”

  Normally, Alex would have been livid about the loss. Down to a hundred and ten liters, or about 27 gallons, would have been an inconceivable loss. But it seemed trivial, now.

  Alex shrugged. “So what. That’ll last us eight hours. What’s the good news?”

  “Water,” Taylor replied. “My ice question made me realize that we could split our water into hydrogen and oxygen. The amount you get out in any period is proportional to the voltage

  applied. I’ve talked to the reactor section. They said we have plenty of power since the main drive is out.”

  Alex considered. “Is excess CO2 a problem?”

  “No,” Taylor said. “We have emergency scrubbers.”

  “Good. How are you going to do it?”

  “We’ll drill into the top of the main water tank and put in the electrodes. Then the oxygen will just bubble out. We can feed the main tank from the rest of the water system if we need more water.”

  “How long will that last us?”

  “That’s the problem. Normally we’d have more than enough water. But that damn leak. We can feed the main tank from the rest of the water system and run the sewage recycler at maximum and that should give us around 130 liters, total, of water. Too bad we can recycle it so well. We’d have to carry more and what we lost wouldn’t be so significant.”

  “So, how long?”

  Taylor drew in a long breath. “Let me see,” she said, “a person breaths about 20 grams oh-two per hour. A liter of water holds, uhm,” Taylor looked at the rock ceiling, “about 880 grams oxygen. Times a hundred and thirty liters of water is—” she pushed to her desk and started punching on a calculator. “Is 114,400 grams oxygen. Divided by 20 grams an hour per person is 5,720 person-hours. Divide that by the 130 on board—”

  “Hundred and twenty-five,” Alex corrected. “Five were killed in the drive section.”

  “Oh,” Taylor said, shaking her head. “Well, that leaves us about 45 and three quarters hours. Plus the seven we have left of the reserves is 53 hours, about.”

  “That might be enough,” Alex said. “Navigator Naguchi told me that, unless one of the Rock Skipper-class ships is close and ready to go, the closest ship is the Kyushu. It can reach us in about fifty-two hours.”

  “I would guess I could be ten percent off in either direction,” Taylor added. “If we don’t do much, we could extend that time. If we’re too active we’ll shorten it. Also, I’m not positive how much water we have all together.

  “Plus, I need to keep the partial pressure of oxygen above a tenth of an atmosphere. I could go as low as 0.07 atmospheres for survival mode but you can’t expect people to do much physical or mental exertion. I can use voltage to control how much oh-two I put out, but the less space I have to fill, the better.”

  Okay,” Alex said, “we’ll keep everyone strapped down and move everyone close to life support and shut off all other areas with emergency doors. Good enough?”

  Taylor nodded.

  “One thing though,” Alex continued, “aren’t bubbles floating to the surface a function of gravity? Without some acceleration you’d just get a bubble around each electrode and then it’d shut down.”

  Taylor shook her head. “I didn’t think of that. Do we have any acceleration?”

  Alex shook his head, hitting the inside of his plastic helmet. “No, none at all.”

  “Then it’s not going to work,” Taylor said dejectedly.

  “Could you put the electrodes on the surface of the water?”

  “Maybe, but we have no way to contain it. If it does produce a gas, in free fall the escaping gas will push the water away from the electrodes.”

  “Can’t you contain it somehow?”

  “If I had a small enough container–but then the gas couldn’t escape without water escaping.”

  Alex could feel a knot forming in his stomach. This electrolysis scheme seemed to be falling apart on him, and taking his crew’s lives with it.

  “If only we had some gravity,” Taylor sighed.

  Gravity! Alex realized. They didn’t need acceleration, they needed gravity. And, outside of neutron star material, there’s one sure way to produce artificial gravity in space. “Spin.”

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “We’ll spin the asteroid. We’ll spin it fast enough to give you enough gravity at the water tank to confine the water and make the bubbles float out. The asteroid has roll controls. I’ll have Naguchi roll the ship until we have the gravity we need.”

  Taylor looked at him for a second, then smiled. “That’ll work.” She suddenly frowned. “But...”

  “But what?”

  “Everything on the asteroid is supported for acceleration along the axis. If we spin the asteroid, everything will be accelerated outward.”

  “True,” Alex said. “The tokomak, the water tank, anything massive and off the center line very far. We’ll contact dirt-side engineering for help on how to do it with minimal materials and effort. It’ll work, Taylor. It’ll work.”

  She still looked skeptical. “I’m gonna need some help in here.”

  “Whatever you need,” Alex assured her. “What are you going to do about the hydrogen?”

  Taylor looked blank for a moment. Then said, “Oh, yeah, we’ll have to vent that.”

  “Get on it,” Chun ordered.

  ***

  The computer beeped. Freeman sat up and looked at the screen. It displayed “incoming call.” Since he’d put the no-video switch on when he went to bed, he said, “Yes?”

  A female police officer appeared on the screen. “Is this Special Agent Gordon Freeman?” she asked.

  “Yes,” he said reaching over and turning on his video.

  “This is Sergeant Amy Knight of the Los Angeles Police Department,” the woman said, visibly reacting to seeing Freeman sitting bare-chested in bed. “I got your home number from the FBI. We have a Jane Doe in the hospital who asked us to call you.”

  “Is she black with long brown-black hair and green eyes?”

  “Yes,” Knight said. “Do you know her?”

  “Yes, what happened?” Freeman asked urgently.

  “She was assaulted by men with automatic weapons. We captured all but one. She’s in police protection but we’d like to know what this is all about. You should have seen what we found in that house.”

  “I’ll bet,” Freeman said. “Listen, she is very important to an ongoing investigation, Sergeant. Her name is Charlene Jones. I’m flying out as soon as I can. Keep her safe. What hospital is she in?”

  The sergeant told him.

  “Good, thanks,” he said and closed the connection. He called his boss.

  ***

  The conference room at SRI headquarters was full at 1:30 in the morning. The members of SRI executive board had come from their homes in response to the crisis. Each wore suits despite the hour and aides had also come in and were hovering around. The water pitchers had been filled and the coffee was brewing. If the city below hadn’t been a tapestry of lights, one wouldn’t have known it was the middle of the night.

  Mitchel, the first, and still only, Occidental to sit on this board, looked around at the executives encircling the large, mahogany table. Everyone was agitated. Nakata was working over calculations on his computer, perhaps hoping he’d made a mistake and the inevitable wasn’t going to happen.

  Mr. Kijoto seemed visibly shaken. His features paled as the message from Director Chun was read by the Director of Space Operations, Mr. Yamada, to the assembled department heads of SRI.

  When Yamada had finished Kijoto spoke. “Eight hours?”

  “Yes, sir. And that report is just about an hour o
ld.”

  “What can we get to 1961 in that time?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mitchel turned to Yamada. “What about the other Rock Skipper-class ships?”

  Yamada shook his head. “We have been very unfortunate. The Star Hopper just arrived on the Moon; turnaround time is three days. The Comet Chaser is in the belt but on the other side of the solar system scouting asteroids; it would take about five days to reach the asteroid. The Cloud Skimmer developed a problem with its gyros and is being worked on at Ceres. Estimated repair time is at least a week as the Star Hopper will have to take repair parts to it when it’s ready to leave the Moon.”

  Kijoto leaned forward onto the table. “What is the nearest ship of any type?”

  Nakata looked up from his computer and sighed. “The asteroid tender Kyushu’s about 2.9 million kilometers behind. She only has one-tenth of a gee boost but is the only ship that can reach them in a reasonable amount of time. Nineteen sixty-one is traveling at about 150 kps relative to solar system. It would take the Kyushu 52 hours to match velocities and position.

  “According to Director Chun’s message,” Nakata continued, “the main Masuka drive is destroyed but the mass driver may be repairable. That would give them one tenth of a gee acceleration. If, starting now, Chun accelerates antiparallel to the Kyushu’s acceleration vector, effectively adding his acceleration to the asteroid tender’s relative acceleration, it would shorten the time to rendezvous considerably, to 31 hours. That is, however, still much more than the seven hours they now have left.”

  “Damn,” Mitchel spat, ignoring the protocol of the conference room. No one seemed to mind.

  Then the printer in the table ejected a paper like a rude tongue. Mitchel took it. He smiled as he read it.

  “What is it?” Kijoto asked.

  “It’s from Director Chun. ‘Life support reports that power normally used for destroyed Masuka drive can be used to split water reserves into hydrogen and oxygen. Will spin asteroid at a rate of four one-hundredths of a revolution per second to produce one tenth of a gee at the water tank. Calculations indicate that will give oxygen for 46 to 53 hours. Our navigator reports the Kyushu can rendezvous in 52 hours. Currently attempting to repair mass driver but doesn’t look hopeful. Need engineering to calculate minimum support needed on heavy equipment that will be accelerated outward by spin.’ There follows data for engineering.” Mitchel handed the paper to Kijoto.