Baen Books Free Stories 2017

by Baen Books

  "You could build a reverse coil gun, maybe—a series of fission-powered coils that would magnetically decelerate the tube as it fell through their center," Amos continues, "but the thing would have to be massive. It'd take more raw material and power than you have on that station. It'd take a year to build.

  "Unless you're planning to change the entire atmosphere and put snow on Olympus Mons in the next six months, I think the Koreans are just going to have to hope for the best."

  Wouldn't that be nice? It'd be another revenue stream for Mars2050: skiing the double black diamond down Olympus Mons for R&R.

  I pull out a stylus and start writing on the wall. Though it will remain blank to anyone else, my auggles note the movements and record them as black text on the wall's surface. It's time to brainstorm.

  1. Snow works on Earth for sustained deceleration. Can I make snow without abundant liquid water?

  2. Mars has a lot of atmospheric CO2. Could I make a dry ice slush? How fast would it sublimate?

  3. I don't have a lot of water. What do I have a lot of, and how can I use it to slow down a projectile?

  I stare at the augmented wall for several minutes, but nothing else comes to me. I put my finger to the auggles's frame.

  "Save," I whisper. "Encrypt. Send to Amos."

  The next day, Faith's Saloon is full of astronauts from all of the habs.

  "Business is booming," I say.

  "Dust storm," Faith says. "Nobody's going out. The Americans took off just in time. They even took their potato farmer with them."

  I sit at the bar, away from the others. Faith sneaks away from her customers, knowing my propensity for conspiracy.

  "If I could get emergency medical supplies here faster," I ask, "how much help could you give that kid in a ten kilogram package?"

  Faith pulls a bar towel from her shoulder, and wipes out the coffee cup she just finished washing. She chews the inside of her lower lip, as I've seen her do countless times.

  "If I sent corporate a DNA sequence," she says, "they could synthesize a CRISPR vial in a day or two. Personalized gene therapy's 97% effective with cancer. On Earth, this would be a non-issue. How fast are you talking?"

  "A month—ish."

  Faith laughs, but it's not derisive.

  "With what, a teleporter?" she asks. "This isn't science fiction."

  "A rail gun."

  She cocks her head at me, wondering if I'm serious. She turns away and starts chewing her lower lip again.

  "Inigo could sequence the fetal DNA," she says finally. "He's got a kit with his forensic gear. We could email it once it's digital."

  Inigo, in addition to being our horticulturalist, is charged with keeping peace inside the hub.

  "I mean, I know you're good with guidance systems," she says. "Your rail gun would probably work against a meteorite, but how on Earth would you stop the projectile if you weren't trying to destroy something? Even if you had a system to catch it, you'd need precision like—"

  Can I trust her?

  Does it matter?

  She's the key to getting Inigo on board, and all the platinum on Mars won't help me sleep at night if I don't give this my best shot.

  "I don't have all the bugs worked out on this end," I say, "but I absolutely have the precision to pull it off."

  She raises her eyebrows.

  I put my auggles on the bar, and nudge them toward her with my fingertips.

  Five minutes later, she pulls them from her eyes. In those eyes is an unfathomable mix of contempt and awe.

  "You can judge me," I say, "or we can save the first Martian baby. I can't do it on my own."

  4. Dust. You have a lot of very fine dust on Mars. Dust can be the condensation nuclei for water droplets in snow, rain, or clouds to form around. If you could hold a dense dust cloud in place somehow, the combined mass could be used to slow a projectile.

  Amos has updated our shared augmented-reality brainstorming session. Given that I'm literally inside a dust storm, I'm a tad embarrassed that I didn't think of this first, even though it isn't a full solution.

  One of the main problems with using a fluid of any sort is the huge temperature variance between the day and night. We're close to the equator, in the lava tubes at the base of Olympus Mons. In the summer, it's about 70 degrees Fahrenheit (21° C) during the day, and minus 100 (-73° C) at night. That means that if we make a slush or snow out of any fluid that would freeze during the night, it will melt or sublimate during the day.

  5. A slush like snow may not be ideal, since the fluid's state would be so temperature-dependent. There must be air bubbles or gaps integrated throughout the structure so that it can be crushed without damaging the projectile. Think about stunt men who fall into a pile of cardboard boxes. Something like soap bubbles, with strong surface tension, and adhesion to dust particles . . .

  And then I have it. At least, I think I do. I don't want to jump for joy until I run some tests.

  "Hey Trish," I say.

  "Hey yourself," she says. "You look chipper."

  "I want to buy a case of your surplus VapoResin."

  Patricia's eyes widen.

  "Is there a leak somewhere?"

  "No," I say, "it's for a personal project."

  "Sure," she says. "You want two? I can justify a buy one, get one discount to free up inventory space."

  "If this works," I say, "I'm going to need everything you have."

  I run my test. Then I build another, larger cloud.

  I go back into the hab and email Amos.

  "Tell me it's invested," I say.

  "It's invested," Amos says an hour later. "Even if they come after you, you were prospecting in international 'waters' and not working for any government. I looked over your contract. Corporate wouldn't have any sort of claim just because you were working for them or used their parts to build the rail gun. I'd say you're good to go public."

  "Bubble wrap," Mars2050's CEO says. He's looking into the camera, with the video I sent him playing on a loop in the background. Our CFO is sitting next to him in the board room. "Just so I understand what you're trying to do: you want us to launch a vial of prokaryotic DNA from a rail gun, eighty million kilometers, into a bubble wrap cloud you made from glue and Martian dust. Is that right? Please confirm that this is your plan when you reply."

  Behind him, on the replaying video, I poke my finger into the squishy amber glue-cloud I made to test the principle. They don't seem to be as impressed as I was.

  "Additionally, since Inigo briefed us on your 'proof-of-concept,' I'll say this: reimburse us for the rail gun—of which we will retain control, pay for the CRISPR work-up, and buy all but one case of the VapoResin we've sent so far."

  I thought they'd be more understanding. It's what Amos expected, though.

  Inigo laughs.

  "Sounds like saving the day is going to be expensive," he says. "For what it's worth, I think you're doing the right thing. Faith does too. She just took you for more of an altruist before you started smuggling platinum ore."

  "You didn't?"

  "I was a cop for eight years before I went back to school," he says. "People don't surprise me. Altruism's a phase some folks go through, but hardly anyone stays there for long."

  "Even with what the platinum's worth, I can't afford what they're asking."

  "Korea might subsidize it," he says. "I wouldn't bank on it, though."

  "Why's that?"

  "Some folks believe that saving any life is worth any amount of money, because they don't understand what money does," he says. "Would you spend the entire GDP of the United States to rescue a downed pilot?"

  "No. Everyone else would starve."

  "Exactly," he says. "At some point you have to put a dollar value on human life. The question becomes: how much does Korea value a fetus with cancer? I'm guessing they'll tell her to abort."

  "I can do this, dammit."

  "Not on the company dime, apparently."

  Li talks to Korea
n Mission Control. She explains the plan, and shows them my spongy glue cloud.

  They tell her to abort.

  Inigo sends a video to a contact at NASA, asking for help from one American to another.

  His contact tells us to abort to prevent "serious psychological trauma" when the child dies slowly in the hub.

  "Who's the father, Li?" Faith asks. "Is he part of your crew, or another? That baby would have dual citizenship."

  I hadn't thought of that. It takes two to tango, unless this is the Martian messiah.

  "Yulian," Li says finally. "Yulian Zaytsev."

  "The Russians have been first at a lot of things in the space race," I offer. "Maybe they'd place more stock on claiming the first alien birth than Korea does."

  Li nods slowly.

  "I will talk to him," she says.

  The next day, Li, Yulian, Inigo, Faith, and I huddle around a video screen.

  "These are the conditions," a man says. Yulian identifies him as Leonid Grekov, the operations chief at Roscosmos. "They are nonnegotiable."

  This doesn't sound good.

  "First," Grekov says, "the mother will become a Russian citizen, and this child will be raised on Russian soil with allowances made to visit extended family in Korea twice a year."

  Li's eyes widen, but she says nothing.

  "Second," he continues, "the rail gun architect—Mister Vincent—will provide schematics of his guidance system, and detailed coordinates of his platinum mine. He will sign a nondisclosure agreement regarding this mine so that Roscosmos can further explore its potential."

  Not as bad as I thought. I figured they'd at least want a kidney.

  "Last," Grekov says, "all involved parties will participate in a press conference promoting the Russian space program and our role in saving the first child born on another world. We will await your response by midnight, Moscow time."

  The video ends with Grekov giving the camera his best look of steely resolve.

  All eyes go to Li. She has the most skin in the game.

  Li looks to Yulian. He nods, urging her to accept.

  Maybe this wasn't a fling after all.

  "Okay," Li says, then looks to me. "That is, if you're—"

  "It's not like I'm selling a state secret," I say. "I never worked for DARPA. The guidance is my design. As for the platinum, I took all I can spend in one lifetime. I'm not that creative when it comes to profligacy."

  Yulian smiles, and claps me on the back a bit harder than I'd like.

  "You're a good man, Vincent," he says in a heavy Russian accent. "We won't forget this."

  "Don't thank me yet," I say. "We've got economics and politics on our side finally, but physics and biology are far less forgiving. There's more math and less BS."

  After we waste half a sol driving a Russian dozer near the base of the mountain, I toss the last can from a case of VapoResin into the empty bag. My plan to fan dust from the surface and spray it while it's in the air only works on the small scale I used to make the model. When I try to make bigger shapes, they turn into a tangled mess and fall flat.

  Nothing. We accomplished nothing.

  Yulian notes my downcast expression, and smiles.

  "I think maybe your snow-chute idea is more appropriate for Earth, and for snow," he says. "Perhaps we need to do something a little different here."

  "Yeah, no kidding."

  "The VapoResin molecules," he says, "they only expand and stick when atmospheric pressure drops below 5 psi, right?"

  "Yeah."

  "What if we mix the dust into the aerosol, and spray them together?"

  "How would that help?"

  "The expansion would happen with the dust mixed in. If you sprayed the mixture through fine jets over a wide area, it would solidify in the air a short distance from the nozzles. You wouldn't have to fan anything. You're not getting a stable structure because the condensation nuclei aren't mixed thoroughly. The glue is sticking in sheets, and falling apart."

  "Interesting thought," I say.

  "Perhaps," Yulian says, "we could also make it stronger by spraying it into something, rather than on the surface?"

  "You mean like a crater?"

  "I mean like a small, vertical-shaft lava tube with a horizontal access. We could walk in and cut through the glue to get the canister at the bottom."

  For once, I'm not the crazy one.

  "The trajectory would have to take it straight down the tube," I say. "If it hit the sides on the way down, it could destroy the canister. Getting more dust is no problem, but to have enough glue to fill a vertical shaft—"

  "It would have to be fairly narrow, yes," Yulian says. "I have faith in your guidance system, though."

  "Why?"

  "I don't have many other options," he says. "This is my child's life, yet you're the one who didn't give up at the prognosis. God works through whomever He chooses."

  "In that case, let's find a lava tube."

  We take the rover back to the hub, and spend the rest of the sol poring over maps of known tubes. Our Goldilocks list of vertical shafts with access tunnels at the bottom is discouragingly short. Most of the ones that have been explored were studied for habitat sites, so they're massive—far too big to fill with glue and dust.

  Inigo brings paper charts to supplement the auggle data sets, since not all of the hard copies were transcribed to digital.

  "We could . . ." I start to say. I visualize what I'm thinking, though, and don't finish the thought.

  "We could what?" Faith asks.

  "Do we really need a horizontal access at the bottom? The tube's going to cut a narrow shaft through the cloud. Couldn't we just crawl in after it and grab it?"

  "That shaft would be barely big enough for an adult in an EVA suit," Faith says, "and that's assuming that the friction from the canister burns a hole wider than its diameter."

  "Trish has solvent in the supply room too," Inigo says. "VapoResin is meant to be temporary, so the hub doesn't turn into a block of glue after a decade of quick fixes."

  His wife fixes him with a wilting gaze.

  "You want to send someone down a near-vertical shaft," she says, "—half a kilometer to a kilometer deep depending on glue density—with a little spray bottle of solvent to make it wide enough?"

  At least no one's laughing at the glue-cloud idea anymore.

  "I will do this," Yulian says, "and if we have a little girl, we will name her after you, Faith. If I do not come out, spray more glue over me and place a marker."

  Faith laughs, shakes her head, and walks away.

  "You're going to be a great dad," Inigo says. "It's going to cost you enough to be one."

  He holds up a paper chart with several red grease-pencil circles on it. I pull my auggles off and place them on the bar as Inigo outlines some of the first shafts the rovers explored when they were looking for liquid water.

  An hour later, we've selected six that are far enough away from the hub to avoid turning it into a crater if the guidance system fails, but close enough that we don't have to set up a second camp when the canister flies in.

  "This one, I think," Yulian says.

  We've mounted a massive spotlight and a laser range-finder on a boom at the rim of a vertical shaft, and he's watching a readout on a tablet computer.

  "How deep is it?" I ask.

  "I'm getting some variance from the dust cloud at the bottom," he says, "but it's over 1,300 meters."

  "That should work. We won't have enough VapoResin to fill it to the surface, but it's narrow enough to give us the depth we need. Help me load the probe onto the cable."

  Over the next hour, we lower a laser-mapping probe into the shaft to make a virtual image for Amos. We've officially abandoned Mars2050's help on the project, and my brother is assisting Roscosmos with technical details at the cosmodrome in Amur Oblast.

  6. Next time, big brother, let's use something other than glue on the Martian end. It defeats the purpose of free energy for a launch when you'
re using a ton of expendables on the other end. Magnetic particles, maybe? Nano machines? Yeast bubbles?

  The next day, Yulian sits on a platform at the end of the cable with the new, improved spraying rig. We've dumped all the VapoResin into one tank on the surface, built an intake for the giant dust pile we shoveled together, and connected every bit of hose we had at the hub so that we wouldn't have to raise and lower him every fifteen minutes. Even so, it's going to take us a full week to fill the lava shaft.

  "This is madness, isn't it?" Yulian says.

  "No," I say, as I pull the lever to lower him into the shaft. "This is Sparta."

  His helmet radio is voice activated, so I hear muted laughter as he disappears into the abyss.

  Laughter wards off the Grim Reaper.

  Since the kid's lung development isn't getting better with wasted time, Roscosmos accepts the risk and launches while we're still building the landing site.

  Don't screw this up, Vinny.

  The month ticks by, half of it spent under a dust storm.

  Everyone at the hub follows the bullet-tracker that Faith posts above the bar.

  As the tube hurtles closer, Li talks less and less as she visualizes the best and worst outcomes.

  Yulian jokes, but I can tell he's just as worried.

  The dust storm clears the day before the bullet arrives. Half the station puts on EVA suits to watch the thing as it flashes like lightning into the lava shaft.

  Then the hard work begins again.

  "I can't see anything at all," Yulian says. He's on a closed-circuit air supply instead of MOXIE since there won't be enough CO2 to harvest inside the shaft. "Even with my lights on, it's just amber bubbles in front of my face. It's so—squishy."