Saturn gt-12

by Ben Bova

  “Get going, chump.”

  Gaeta felt hungry, tired, sweaty, and generally dismal as he waited for the technicians to open the airlock’s inner hatch. Looking down on them from inside the armored suit, he wondered what was taking the idiotas tarugas so long to simply tap the right numbers on the airlock’s wall-mounted keyboard.

  Fritz pressed one hand to his earplug and muttered something into the pin mike at his lips.

  “What’s the holdup?” Gaeta demanded.

  “Safety director,” said Fritz. “They have a team of people EVA and they want to make certain they’re nowhere near this airlock when we open it.”

  “Maldito.I’m not going outside, I’m just going to stand in the open airlock. Haven’t you told them that?”

  “They know—” Fritz tilted his head and pressed at the earplug again. “Say again?” He listened, nodded, then looked up at Gaeta. “Five more minutes. Then we can cycle the airlock.”

  “Five minutes,” Gaeta grumbled.

  Holly stepped in front of him, looking almost like a little elf as she peered up toward the visor of his helmet.

  “Is there any way I can get some of this chili to you?” she asked with a smile. “You must be starved in there.”

  He grinned back at her, wondering how much of his face she could see through the heavily tinted visor. Silently he thanked her for her unwitting beneficence to him. Gaeta had tried for more than a year to hitch a ride on the Saturn-bound habitat. Then Wendell had called from the Astro corporate headquarters and in less than two weeks everything had been arranged. All he had to do was keep an eye on this skinny kid, which was no hardship at all. In fact, as Gaeta looked down on Holly, he realized that she wasn’t skinny; she was slim, trim, and altogether pretty damned attractive. Una guapa chiquita.

  “I’m starving, all right,” he said to Holly, “but there’s no way to open this tin can without ruining the test we want to make.”

  She nodded, a little glumly.

  Fritz abruptly waved her away from Gaeta as he said to the technicians, “Open the inner hatch.”

  “I thought you said five minutes,” Gaeta snapped, surprised.

  As one of the techs tapped out the hatch’s code, Fritz said tightly, “Five minutes until we can open the outer hatch. We can get ready for that now. I haven’t had any supper, either.”

  Gaeta laughed as the heavy hatch popped slightly ajar. Two of the techs swung it all the way open. Massive though it was, his suit could only fit through the outsized airlock hatches designed to receive cargo. The suit was not built to bend at the waist or to flex in any way except at the arms and legs. Inside it, Gaeta felt as if he were driving an army tank.

  He caught a glimpse of Holly standing to one side, watching intently, as he thumped across the coaming of the hatch and planted both his booted feet inside the airlock.

  “Closing the inner hatch,” came Fritz’s brittle voice in the earphones built into his helmet.

  “Copy you’re closing inner hatch,” Gaeta said.

  They were all behind him now, outside his field of view. He could see the airlock’s control panel on the bulkhead to his left, red and green displays. The light dimmed as the inner hatch closed and one of the red telltales flicked through amber to green. Gaeta was sealed alone inside the blank-walled chamber, like an oversized robot in a metal womb. He felt a need to urinate, but that always happened when he was nervous. It would go away. It better, he thought; we didn’t bother to connect the relief tube.

  “Pumping down,” said Fritz.

  “Pump away,” he replied.

  He couldn’t hear the pumps that sucked the air out of the chamber; couldn’t even feel their vibrations through the thick soles of the suit’s boots. How many times have I been in this suit? Gaeta asked himself. The first time was the trek across Mare Imbrium. Then the Venus plunge. And skimming Jupiter. About ten, twelve test runs for each stunt. Close to fifty times. Feels like home, almost.

  “Opening outer hatch in thirty seconds,” Fritz said.

  “Open in thirty.”

  “No foolishness, remember.”

  Gaeta shook his head inside the helmet. The perfect worry-wart, Fritz was. “I’ll just stand here like a statue,” he promised. “No tricks.”

  “Ten … nine…”

  Still, Gaeta thought, it would be fun to just step out and jet around a little. Maybe do a loop around the habitat. We’ve got to test the suit’s propulsion unit sooner or later.

  “Three … two…”

  Fritz would shit a brick, Gaeta chuckled to himself.

  “Zero.”

  The outer hatch slid slowly open. At first Gaeta saw nothing but empty blackness, but then the polarization of his visor adjusted and the stars came into view. Thousands of stars. Millions of them. Hard little points of light spangling the emptiness out there like brilliant diamonds strewn across a black velvet backdrop. And off to one side slanted the gleaming river of the Milky Way, a sinuous path glowing across the sky, mysterious and beckoning.

  Gaeta was not a religious man, but every time he saw the grandeur of the real world his eyes misted and he muttered the same hymn of praise: “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof, the world and those who dwell therein.”

  RENDEZVOUS PROBLEM

  Like a lobster crawling across the sea bottom, Tavalera inched weightlessly hand over hand along the rigid Buckyfiber cable connecting Graham to the fuel pod. Once he reached the tank, he clambered slowly from one handhold to another across the huge metal sphere. As soon as he reached the balky connector, he snapped a tether to the nearest clamp built into the tank’s curving surface. It frightened him to work in empty space without a safety line, but the suit tethers were too short to span the distance between Graham’s airlock and the jammed connector on the fuel tank. Once safely connected, he leaned forward as far as he could in the spacesuit, trying to play his helmet light on the connector that refused to unlock.

  Every time he had to do an EVA he expected to feel cold, numbed by the frigid vacuum of deep space. And every time he was surprised that he got so hot inside the suit. Five minutes out here and I’m boiling like a guy in a soup pot, he grumbled to himself. He blinked perspiration out of his eyes and cursed himself for forgetting to wear a sweat-band.

  “Well?” The skipper’s voice sounded nastier than usual in his helmet earphones.

  “I’m trying to see what the hangup is,” Tavalera said. “Gimme a couple minutes.”

  “Put the camera on it, let me take a look.”

  I’d like to shove the camera up your skinny ass, Tavalera growled silently. He dutifully unhooked the minicam from his equipment belt and clicked it into its slot on the left shoulder of his suit. Its light added to the light of his helmet lamp.

  Shaking his head, Tavalera said, “I can’t see why it won’t unlock. Everything looks normal to me.”

  The skipper muttered something too low for him to make out. Then she said, “Check the receiver.”

  Tavalera instead checked his tether. He had no intention of drifting off the fuel tank and wafting off into interplanetary space. Sure, there were plenty of people from the habitat outside, but how could he be certain they’d be able to grab him? Or even try to?

  “Well?” Even testier than before.

  “I’m workin’ on it,” he grumbled.

  The receiver checked out: Its battery was almost fully charged and it was receiving the command signal from the ship.

  “Must be a mechanical problem,” Tavalera said.

  “Try the override.”

  “That won’t do any good if the problem’s mechanical.”

  “Try the override,” the skipper repeated.

  Huffing impatiently, wondering how much radiation he was absorbing by the second, Tavalera punched out the override commands on the receiver’s miniature keypad, not an easy thing to accomplish in a spacesuit’s gloves.

  “No joy,” he reported.

  “I can see that,” said the skipp
er. “It must be mechanical.”

  “Right.” That’s what I told you, fartbrain, he added silently.

  “If we don’t get it loose in fourteen minutes we’re going to miss the rendezvous. The habitat will be too far away from us.”

  And then we can go home, Tavalera thought. Let somebody else fly the frigging fuel tank out to those dipshits. Who the hell told them to go out to Saturn in the first place?

  “You’ll have to disconnect it manually,” the skipper said.

  “Great.”

  “Get to it!”

  There was no way to open the metal latch with his hands, he saw. It was made of heavy asteroidal aluminum, thick and sturdy, designed to stay closed until it received the proper electronic command. If it opened easily it could release the tank prematurely, or even cause a collision.

  “Cut it off,” said the skipper. “Use the laser.”

  Tavalera looked up at the Graham, hanging a hundred meters or so away from the spherical tank. To him, it looked more like a thousand kilometers. Through the transparent bubble of the crew module he could see the skipper sitting in her command chair, although he couldn’t make out the features of her face. Just as well, he thought. She makes a hatchet look lovable.

  “Come on,” the skipper urged, “the clock’s ticking.”

  He pulled the hand laser from his equipment belt, wondering if it was powerful enough to saw through the aluminum latch. Probably drain my suit batteries and I’ll asphyxiate out here. A lot she cares.

  “Move it!”

  “I’m movin’ it,” he yelled back, clicking the safety off the laser and holding its stubby snout a bare centimeter from the obstinate latch.

  Grimacing, he pressed the firing stud. Harsh bright sparks leaped from the stubborn latch.

  Gaeta stood in the airlock, looking out at the universe, resisting the urge to go sailing out there.

  “All systems in the green,” Fritz told him. “Four more minutes until termination of the test.”

  Four minutes, Gaeta thought. I bet I could swoop all the way around the habitat in four minutes.

  As he looked out, though, he saw two huge spherical tanks swing into view, and several spacesuited figures clambering on them. The fuel tanks, he realized. Better not get snarled up with those guys. Men at work. And women.

  Jupiter came into view as the habitat rotated, a distant fat sphere streaked with faint colors, flattened at the poles like a beach ball that some kid was sitting on. And then another sphere, farther away than the others. Or maybe just smaller.

  Another fuel tank? Gaeta remembered somebody saying there were three of them. A small spacecraft hovered near the tank. Probably the ferry ship, he thought. Then he saw sparks flashing from the tank. What the hell are they doing to it?

  “Three minutes,” came Fritz’s flat voice. He sounded bored.

  Gaeta grinned. I’ve got enough juice in the propulsion tank to jet all the way around this sewer pipe, he told himself. Fritz wouldn’t be bored then!

  “What are you laughing about?”

  Gaeta realized he must have chuckled and Fritz picked it up. “Laughing? Who, me?”

  Fritz replied, “No, the Man in the Moon. What were you laughing about?”

  “Nothing,” Gaeta said, still thinking what fun it would be to take off and do a spin around the habitat.

  “Well?” the skipper demanded, testier than ever.

  Tavalera clicked off the laser and peered at the latch. The beam had cut halfway through it.

  “Gimme another couple minutes,” he said.

  “Get with it, then. Our window closes in less than ten minutes.”

  Nodding inside his fishbowl helmet, Tavalera turned on the laser again. Sparks flashed blindingly.

  “What’s the holdup?” demanded a new voice in his earphones.

  Probably the boss of the habitat crew waiting for the third fuel tank, Tavalera realized.

  “We have a malfunction on the tank’s release mechanism,” the skipper answered. “We’re on it. We’ll have it on its way to you in a matter of minutes.” Her tone was a half-million times sweeter than when she spoke to Tavalera, he thought.

  “The attachment point is rotating out of position,” came the other voice, male, deep, irritated. “And my crew is running out of time. We weren’t scheduled to be out here this long.”

  “I’ll adjust the capture angle,” the skipper said, a little tenser. “It should be no problem.”

  “Time’s burning.”

  “Yes, yes, just be a little patient. We’re working it.”

  We, Tavalera grumbled silently.

  “Tavalera,” the skipper yelled at him loudly enough to make him wince. “Get it done!”

  “It’s almost there,” he said, angling his shoulder so she could see that the latch was nearly burned through.

  Then the laser winked out.

  “What’s happening?” she bellowed.

  “Dunno,” Tavalera muttered, shaking the stupid little gun. “Capacitor needs to recycle, I think.”

  “Bend it back!”

  “Huh?”

  “The latch, you stupid slug! It’s almost sawn through. Bend it back with your hands! Now!”

  Without thinking, Tavalera let the laser float off on its tether and grabbed the metal latch with both gloved hands. It wouldn’t budge.

  “Break it off!” the skipper screamed at him. “Get it!”

  Desperate, Tavalera grabbed the laser with one hand while he still gripped the latch with the other. Maybe the capacitor’s got one more squirt, he thought, pulling the trigger.

  It all happened so suddenly that he had no chance to stop it. The laser fired a set of picosecond pulses and the latch came loose in Tavalera’s hand, throwing him badly off balance. He went sprawling and dropped the laser, which went spinning out to the end of its tether, then snapped back toward Tavalera and fired off another set of pulses that hit the leg of his suit.

  He screamed in sudden pain as the fuel tank jerked loose of its connection with Graham and began drifting out into space.

  “It’s heading away from us!” the habitat’s crew chief roared.

  “I can’t stop it,” the skipper yelled back.

  Tavalera didn’t care. The pain searing through his leg was enough to make him giddy, almost delirious. He knew he was going to die, the only question in his mind was whether it would be from loss of blood or from asphyxiation as the air leaked out of his suit.

  RESCUE

  With nothing else to do but stand in the airlock and wait for Fritz to tell him the test was finished, Gaeta tapped at the keypad on the wrist of his suit to listen in on the chatter from the crew that was attaching the fuel pods to the habitat. Something was obviously wrong with the third tank, it was still out by the ferry ship and somebody was using a welding laser on it. More likely the laser was cutting, not welding, Gaeta thought.

  “…stupid piece of crap,” he heard a woman’s sharp-edged voice, “how the hell did you puncture your suit?”

  “I need help!” came another voice, scared. “I’m bleeding.”

  Bleeding? Gaeta wondered. Punctured suit?

  Then a third voice, male, angry and aggravated, “The tank’s off course! We can’t reach it!”

  “There’s nothing I can do,” the woman whined. “He knocked it out of line.”

  “Help me.” The bleeder’s voice.

  “We can’t fucking reach you!” the angry male bellowed. “You’re going off in the wrong direction and you’re already too far for us to get to you.”

  “I’m dying…”

  “It’s your own stupid fault,” the woman screeched.

  Switching back to his intercom frequency, Gaeta said into his helmet microphone, “Turn on all the cameras, Fritz.”

  “What? What do you mean?”

  “Turn on all the cameras, dammit!” Gaeta snapped, launching himself out of the airlock. To himself he added silently, This looks like a job for Superman.

  The suit
’s propulsion jets ignited smoothly and Gaeta felt himself hurtling toward the errant fuel pod in the utter silence of empty space. But his earphones were far from silent.

  “Come back!” Fritz yelled. “You can’t—”

  Gaeta simply turned off the intercom frequency and tapped into the others’ frantic chatter.

  “… not a damned frigging thing we can do,” the crew chief was yammering.

  “He’ll die out there!” the woman pleaded.

  Nothing from the guy who was hurt.

  “Hang on,” Gaeta said into his mike. “I’ll get him.”

  “Who the hell is that?”

  “Manuel Gaeta,” he told them. “I’m on my way to the injured man. Can you see me?”

  “Yes!” said the crew chief and the woman simultaneously.

  The fuel pod was getting bigger. Jesoo, Gaeta realized, it’s huge! Despite everything, he laughed. Huevos tremendos.

  “What’s his name?” Gaeta asked as he rocketed toward the fuel tank.

  “What?”

  “Who said that?”

  “His name, the guy who’s hurt. What’s his name?”

  “Tavalera,” the woman replied. “Raoul Tavalera.”

  A chicano, Gaeta thought. He called, “Hey Raoul, habla español?”

  No answer.

  “Raoul!” Gaeta shouted. “Raoul Tavalera! You there? You okay?”

  “I’m… here.” His voice sounded very weak. “Not for long, though.”

  “Hang in there, man,” Gaeta said. The fuel tank was blotting out most of his vision now, a tremendous curving world of metal rushing up to meet him. “Your suit’s prob’ly sealed itself, maybe cut off the bleeding, too.”

  Nothing.

  “Where you hurt, man?” Gaeta asked as he slowed his approach and got ready to touch down on the massive sphere.

  “Leg…”

  “Ah, that’s not so bad. You’ll be okay.”