Spindrift

by Allen Steele

  “Couldn’t be better.” By contrast, Ramirez sounded no more concerned than if he was enjoying a rickshaw ride through Tranquility Centre. “Just glad I took your advice about skipping breakfast.”

  “Helps prevent motion sickness,” Harker said. “Besides, until we get back, we’re on a liquid diet. You don’t want to be pinching a loaf when you’re on EVA for eight hours.”

  “Thank you for that image.” Ramirez sighed. “Just what I need to take with me where no man has gone before.”

  “No pun intended, of course,” Emily murmured.

  “An obscure cultural allusion, my dear.” Turning back around, Harker typed a command into the comp. Side-looking radar painted a wire-frame image of Spindrift across the screen; midway up the northern half of the central meridian, a tiny red spot blinked amid a maze of hills, craters, and crevices. “There’s Larry. Want me to lock on?”

  “Be my guest.” Emily engaged the autopilot, then reached between her knees to withdraw a squeeze bottle from its sling. Pulling out its straw, she had a sip of water. A double beep from her console told her that Maria’s navigation subsystem was locked on to the probe’s transponder. If she cared to do so, she could program the shuttle to land on its own, without any manual guidance on her part. Not that she’d ever do that, of course. What fun was it to be a pilot if you left everything to the comp?

  “How long till we get there?” Cruz asked.

  “About an hour, more or less.” Emily recapped the bottle, placed it back within the sling. She hesitated, wondering whether she should reiterate what had already been said during the mission briefing. A little repetition couldn’t hurt. “I know you’ve heard this before, but let’s go at it again. This is my ship, so while we’re in the air, I’m in charge. Once we’re on the ground, though, and the three of you have gone EVA, it’s Ted’s mission. That means you listen to everything he says. If he tells you to do something…”

  “Then we do it.” Ramirez’s voice affected a tone of boredom. “Got it. Understood.”

  “Jared…” Emily loosened her harness, then half turned in her seat so that she could look him in the eye. “Look, you’ve received…what, ten hours of suit training at Tycho Centre? If you got in a fix back there, there were a dozen people to come to the rescue.”

  “None of us had any mishaps during training.” Cruz became defensive. “And may I remind you that I’ve been EVA before? Twenty-six hours logged on Mars…”

  “This is different. As Ramirez said, we’re going where no one has gone before. If you run into any problems, you won’t have anyone to count on but each other.”

  “Except you, of course,” Ramirez added.

  “Wrong,” Harker said. “Her job is stay put in the shuttle. Under no circumstance is she to leave the ship. Even in the most dire emergency.” He reached over to pat her arm. “Emily here is our lifeline. Without her, none of us go home.”

  “Which means that, once you set foot on Spindrift, you’re under Ted’s supervision.” Emily looked at Cruz. “Don’t assume that this is like Mars, because it isn’t.” Then she glanced at Ramirez. “And, as I told you, we don’t have the luxury of having a second shuttle able to come to our rescue. Once we’re on the ground…”

  “We’re on our own.” Sobered, Ramirez nodded. “All right, I understand.”

  “Yeah, sure…same here.” Cruz paused. “But, look…if there’s nothing down there, then why…?”

  “C’mon, Jorge.” Ramirez shook his head. “If you really think that, then why are you with us?”

  Cruz didn’t respond. Emily turned back around in her seat. A glance at the comp screen told her that her first chance to touch down at the landing site was coming up in less than a minute. “Right,” she murmured. “Glad we got that settled.” Tightening her harness again, she reached forward to switch off the autopilot. “Fasten your seat belts, gentlemen. We’re going in.”

  Landing on Spindrift presented its own special challenges. With no atmosphere and an escape velocity of only .6 kilometers per second, it was much like landing on the Moon, only in a slightly higher gravity. Emily locked down the wing ailerons, useless in the airless environment, and made the final approach relying almost entirely upon the RCS and the vertical landing thrusters.

  What precious little light the asteroid received from the Sun was no help to her. Even after she switched on the floodlights, all she could see was a dark, rock-strewn landscape, with little sense of height or dimension. Keeping a sharp eye on the eight ball, she had Harker call out altimeter readings and didn’t lower the landing gear until they were only sixty meters above the ground, when she was sure that she wouldn’t have to abort the descent.

  “Fifteen meters,” Harker said. “Ten meters…nine…eight…seven…”

  The thrusters kicked up a cloud of fine grey powder that swirled within the floodlights and clung to the panes of the cockpit windows. Emily gently inched back the thruster bars; a bead of sweat rolled down her forehead and stung her left eye, but she didn’t dare take her hands from the controls. C’mon, Marie …we can do it, baby…

  “Six…five…four…three…”

  She pulled the bars to horizontal position, then grasped the yoke with both hands and, with one last nudge, hauled it to neutral. A half-second sensation of falling, then a gentle bump beneath her feet as the skids made contact with hard surface.

  “Goal,” Harker said. “And the crowd goes wild at Wembly.”

  “Score one for the English team.” Emily killed the engines, then quickly checked the cabin instruments. No loss of internal pressure, no indications of fire or short circuits. “All safe and secure. We’re down, gents.”

  “Nice. Very nice.” Behind them, Ramirez slowly let out his breath. “I had only one cardiac event…well, no, make that two…”

  “Cynic. I’ll have you know that you’ve just met the best pilot in the European Space Agency.” Harker grinned, then formally offered his hand. “Congratulations. This may have established some sort of record.”

  “Call Guinness when we get home.” Emily let out her breath, then shook his hand. “At least it’ll give the lads at the pub something new to argue about.”

  Now that they’d landed in one piece, she didn’t have to worry about regulations; she grasped her helmet with both hands, moved it counterclockwise until it snapped loose from the collar ring of her flight suit, then dragged it off her head. Despite the warmth supplied by the cabin heaters, she felt cool air touch her forehead and the nape of her neck. She pushed a strand of damp hair away from her face as she looked at Harker. “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “What do you mean, what?” She nodded toward the cockpit windows. “We’re here, aren’t we? I got you where you wanted to go. What do you think we were going to do, have a picnic?”

  “She can’t be serious.” Cruz was about to remove his own helmet; he stopped short of unlocking it.

  “She’s serious.” Harker unsnapped his harness and stood up, ducking his head to avoid the instrument panel. “Our itinerary calls for sixteen hours EVA, max, in two walk-outs. That may sound like a lot of time, but it isn’t. Don’t count on taking any naps.”

  “I wasn’t, but…” Ramirez fumbled with the clasp of his harness. “Pardon me, but do you have any idea where we’re going?”

  Emily reached down to the keyboard, punched in a couple of commands. A lidar map of the landing site appeared on the screen, with two red markers distanced about two centimeters from each other. “There’s Larry,” she said, pointing to the one at the top, “and here’s us. All you have to do is find Larry, then follow his tracks to the vent. I’ll feed the coordinates to your suits’ direction finders once you’ve put ’em on.”

  “See? Piece of cake.” Stepping between Cruz and Ramirez, Harker made his way toward the aft deck. “Time to put on the long johns. Gentlemen, if you please…?”

  Ramirez pushed himself up from his seat. “And the Galileo…?”

  Emily dropped
her helmet in Harker’s seat, then reached down to pull out her water bottle. “When it comes over the horizon, I’ll let them know we’ve arrived. Believe me, they’re just as worried about us as you are.”

  “Who said I was worried?” Ramirez asked. “Like the man said…I’m in the hands of the best the ESA has to offer.”

  Emily had no idea whether he was being sarcastic or not, so she simply nodded and watched as he headed aft, Cruz behind him. Gazing out the windows at the barren landscape just beyond the range of the lights, a chill ran down her back.

  She’d brought them to Spindrift. And now, for reasons she couldn’t explain, she felt like a little girl being left alone in a cold and dark house.

  The suit-up procedure took a little more than an hour. For the sake of their modesty, she didn’t go aft to watch the men get ready for EVA, although she knew the process by heart. Strip off the flight suit, meant only to protect the wearer in the event of cabin decompression, and put on underwear that resembled a thong save for a unisex groin cup, which in turn was attached to a urine collection tube that dangled between the legs like an absurd penis. Next came the skinsuit, an elastic one-piece outfit that faintly resembled a wet suit except that it was made of multilayer polymers embedded with whisker-thin wires that would conduct heat to all parts of the body while pulling away perspiration and distributing it, along with urine, to the suit’s closed-loop life-support system, where waste fluids would be broken down to oxygen, nitrogen, and coolant water. The suit also contained integrated electronics that monitored and automatically adjusted its internal temperature; once gloves, boots, and helmet were donned, and the chest yoke and rebreather pack were in place, the suit was virtually a one-man spacecraft, capable of keeping its wearer alive for eight hours at a stretch. All that was needed was the overgarment that would provide protection against dust and radiation, and the wearer was ready to enter the airlock.

  Harker, Ramirez, and Cruz left the shuttle through the belly hatch, making their way down a narrow ramp lowered from the aft airlock. Although Emily heard every word they spoke through the comlink, she couldn’t see the three men until they emerged from beneath the forward hull. With their skinsuits covered by the bulky white overgarments, they were indistinguishable from one another save for the colored stripes running across the tops of their ovoid helmets: gold for Harker, blue for Ramirez, red for Cruz. Caught within the bright circle cast by the spotlights, they trudged out from under the shuttle, each carrying two stainless-steel equipment cases, their boots kicking up dusty regolith that clung to their legs like dirty talcum powder.

  Once they were within sight of the cockpit, Harker stopped and turned around to look up at her. “Com check,” he said. “You’re reading me, right?”

  Emily touched the wand of her headset. “Loud and clear. Got the fix on Larry?”

  “On my heads-up.” He pointed to the right, northwest from the shuttle. “About a half klick from where we are now, correct?”

  She looked up at a screen above the windows. Just as he said, the lander was located only 570 meters from their touchdown point. From there, it would be a simple matter of following Larry’s tracks to the vent previously explored by the probe. “You got it. Set up the LRC once you’ve reached the vent.”

  Within one of the equipment cases was a portable long-range communications system designed to amplify transmissions from their suit radios. The same hardware would allow them to communicate directly with Galileo once she linked the com channel from the shuttle. “Roger that,” Harker said. “Not that it’s necessary, really. We’re only going a couple of kilometers.”

  “Do it anyway, please.” Emily became persistent. “You don’t know what kind of mascon interference we may get down here.”

  “Ball and chain.” Ramirez’s voice came through her headset as a murmured aside, followed by a sound that might have been Cruz chuckling with amusement.

  Emily reached up to the com panel and switched off his comlink. She waited a couple of seconds, enough time to cause Ramirez to turn around and look up at the shuttle. “Sorry about that,” she added, switching him back on again. “Loss of signal there. Want to repeat that last transmission, please?”

  “Ahh…negative on that.” Ramirez’s tone became contrite. “Like you said…only some local interference.”

  “Hope we don’t have any more accidents like that.” Irritation in Ted’s voice.

  “You won’t.” Emily couldn’t help but smile. “Just a small glitch in the system, that’s all.”

  “Hey, how about making some coffee for when we get back?” Harker said, as if to mitigate the situation. “I don’t care if these suits are supposed to keep us warm…it’s cold out here.”

  Now that he mentioned it, that wasn’t such a bad idea. The shuttle’s galley was little more than a closet-size larder, but it did contain a coffeemaker with its own water tank, along with foam cups to be used when the craft was in a gravity environment. Someone at ESA had realized how important such small amenities would be during long sorties.

  “Wilco.” Suddenly, Emily realized there was nothing more to be said. “Be careful out there,” she added, trying not to sound concerned. “Keep the channel on, all right?”

  “Will do.” Ted raised his right arm as far as he could, to shoulder height, and bent his elbow in a clumsy salute.

  She waved back to him, then watched as he and the others turned around and began to walk away. Their helmet lamps switched on before they left the field of illumination, but it wasn’t long before they became three small blobs of light, gradually receding into the darkness.

  Emily stood within the cockpit for a long time, watching them go. It wouldn’t be long before she’d be able to regain contact with Galileo. A glance at the comp screen told her that the ship would soon reappear above the western horizon. For the time being, though, she was left to mind the home fires, so to speak.

  Except for the crosstalk on the com channel, the shuttle was quiet. Too quiet for her nerves. And a little too warm, besides; might as well make herself more comfortable. Unzipping her flight suit, she peeled down to the drawstring trousers and T-shirt she wore underneath and opened a cabinet to retrieve the pair of felt moccasins she had stowed away. Then she bent down to the comp and punched up a music program she’d loaded into the system for just such an occasion. Some late-twentieth classical jazz, perhaps: Dexter Gordon, Our Man In Paris. She put it over the speakers; as a saxophone’s mellow chords drifted through the cockpit, she went aft to open the galley. She’d need coffee; it would be a few hours before the guys returned.

  She’d just loaded a cartridge labeled MOCHA JAVA into the filter slot when Arkady’s voice came through her headset: “Galileo to Maria Celeste, do you copy? Please respond.”

  About time. She touched the lobe of her headset. “This is Maria Celeste,” she said as she placed the ceramic carafe on the hot plate between the valve and pushed the BREW button. “Read you loud and clear, Galileo.”

  “Nice to hear you again, Maria. How’s tricks?”

  Emily smiled as she headed forward to the cockpit. “We’re down and safe, Galileo. Touchdown point about six hundred meters south of Larry, approximately two kilometers southeast from the crater. Survey team has left the craft, proceeding on foot to the primary target. You should be receiving the LRC signal once they’ve arrived.”

  As she spoke, she bent low to peer upward through the cockpit windows. For a moment, she didn’t see anything save for a black sky sprinkled with stars. Then she spotted a bright point of light, vaguely cruciform in shape, rising above the western horizon. The Galileo, following its equatorial orbit around Spindrift.

  “We copy, Maria. Looking good.” A pause. Emily held her breath, waiting for more. “Think you can send us a postcard? We’d love to get some pictures.”

  There it was: the code phrase she’d worked out with Arkady. “We’ll try to do that, Galileo,” she said, hastily resuming her seat and reaching up to the com panel. “You’l
l need to send me your address, though. You’re a long way from here.”

  “Oh, you know…the usual one will do.” Arkady’s voice was breezy, casual. Just a little chitchat among shipmates, so far as anyone else was concerned. As he spoke, though, Emily switched over to the secondary frequency normally used for backup telemetry. She patched the signal to a comp screen, then bent to peer more closely at it.

  A concave view of Galileo’s command center, as seen by a small video camera mounted within the com station. In the foreground, she could see the top of Arkady’s head; behind him, a wraparound image of the flight deck, distorted by the camera’s fish-eye lens. In middistance, she saw Lawrence, seated in his chair with his legs crossed, looking straight ahead. In front of him, she spotted Simone at the helm. Antonia was nowhere in sight…no, wait, there she was, walking past Arkady, heading from one side of the bridge to the other.

  The camera was meant to be used for real-time video transmissions between Galileo and Earth, but hadn’t been utilized since the shakedown cruise. With any luck, Captain Lawrence would’ve forgotten that it even existed. But Ted hadn’t, and neither had Emily or Arkady; the com officer had surreptitiously activated the camera and slaved it to the secondary channel, allowing Emily to monitor what was going on within Galileo’s command center while the shuttle was on Spindrift.

  “I’ll send you that card,” Emily said, and Arkady briefly raised his face to the camera to give her a wink. “Anything else you’d like?”

  “A perfect red rose…”

  Her eyes widened as she realized what he was saying—stand by—but before she could react, Lawrence glanced over his shoulder at Arkady. He said something Emily couldn’t quite make out, but Arkady turned his head to look at him. “Yes, sir,” he said, then leaned forward.

  An instant later, Lawrence’s voice came over her headset: “Ms. Collins, do I understand that Mr. Harker and his party have already left the ship?”

  It felt odd to be speaking with the captain while watching him from behind. “Yes, sir, he has. They’re proceeding to Larry, and I expect…”