by T I WADE
VIN grabbed a decent-sized rock, as did Maggie and Jonesy, and walked over to the MMA. The analysis excited Martha and made VIN smile. The result was 93% molybdenum, and 4% gold or nickel. The machine was having trouble discerning the breakdown; maybe it was a mix of both. Gold was important for certain tasks but certainly not as valuable as it was on Earth, and they were not going there.
“Molybdenum is the silvery metal,” Martha explained over the intercom. “It has the sixth highest melting point of any element. It readily forms hard, stable carbides in alloys, and for this reason most of the world production of the element (about 80%) is in making many types of high-strength steel, including high-strength alloys and super alloys. It is not as strong as our Nano-Silicone, but it could be added to it to strengthen certain building parts. Herr Noble, I want at least six canisters of the molybdenum.”
Feeling like a nagged husband with a shopping list, VIN grabbed an empty canister out of Astermine Two and returned to the vein. Jonesy and Maggie did the same.
Over the course of the next two days, the vein was chipped out and six canisters were filled. VIN estimated that they had about two tons of the stuff. It was very heavy. The dozen or so canisters remaining were filled with the ice or crystals. Within a week of landing they filled all of the canisters.
It would be three more days before they would catch up with America One, only 35,000 miles ahead of them. At this range they had good 24/7 communications with the mother ship and Ryan suggested they come home. It would take them a day to catch up, the same amount of time for the build crew to unload the canisters, and a day to transfer empty canisters for a second round.
Three days later, the asteroid caught up with the ship. Captain Pete had increased the ship’s speed by 450 miles an hour to equal the speed of the approaching rock, now only several miles behind them. It would pass by within a mile of the ship. They wanted to get in front of it before Jonesy attacked it with his laser.
SB-III detached herself from a non-rotating mother ship when the asteroid passed by. As it sped in front of them, Jonesy, with VIN in the second seat, went after it.
America One slowed down to its cruise speed, and the two shapes ahead disappeared into the nothingness of space.
“One thousand miles in front of you,” Jonesy reported three hours later.
“I think we are at a safe distance for you to fire,” Ryan replied. “Try to dig a hole, not pepper the rock with machine gun fire. If we find something, we can take in one of our new mining spiders and let it dig out rocks.”
Jonesy set his sights on the landing zone he had previously used and coordinated the shuttle with the rotation of the rock, turning as the rock did. He finalized the aiming device onto a specific point from 500 yards out. At this height he was in a ballet with the asteroid.
He fired a three-second burst and nothing much happened, so he fired a five-second burst in exactly the same place and saw what looked like a black hole on the surface. Then, he fired a seven-second burst at full power and the area literally exploded, showering shrapnel everywhere; some glanced gently off his forward protection shield. He blasted another three times at full power and shrapnel exploded out. There was, in fact, a hole developing on the flat surface, especially visible when the sun shone on that particular area.
With Ryan’s permission he fired several more times. Each time bits and pieces spewed out to float in space around his ship. He mentioned this to Ryan who asked Captain Pete to head a few degrees off course and to speed up slightly, as at an equal speed any small pieces wouldn’t hurt the outer walls.
Jonesy decided to hit the rock one more time and this decision was the death blow of the asteroid. After recharging the laser, Jonesy blasted it with all the power possible. The asteroid broke apart into hundreds of pieces, all slowly radiating out in different directions. Jonesy immediately reported this outcome to Ryan who ordered Captain Pete to take evasive action. He quickly activated their thrusters to speed the ship away from the spreading pieces. With full thrusters on reverse the mother ship slowed 1,800 miles behind the explosion as Jonesy also sped away from the debris.
Captain Pete maneuvered the ship through the debris. It was vastly spread out and not in any danger of hurting the ship. Hundreds of smaller shards of ice or crystal bounced off the forward areas of the ship, but did not have enough momentum to do any damage.
Jonesy docked a couple of hours later. He had enjoyed the firing practice. Back on board he dutifully sought Martha out to tell her the bad news, her new asteroid was gone. She wasn’t very happy about that.
The excitement was over. The Bridge got the ship back onto course for Mars, and the scientists began their research on the rocks and crystals after allowing the radioactivity to decay over a week.
Chapter 18
Is that a round asteroid or a baby planet?
A month later and halfway to Mars, Jonesy was sitting in the Bridge one morning chatting with Ryan and VIN when Martha Von Zimmer and Petra Bloem arrived with cups and a carafe of water.
The men drank the water which tasted like water always tasted aboard ship, clean but with a slight metallic tinge.
“Don’t tell me, the ice from the asteroid?” Ryan asked enjoying the water.
“Correct, Commander Richmond,” Martha replied to her boss. “Pure water. We collected 1,300 gallons of it for drinking, and we are splitting the other 1,300 gallons into oxygen and hydrogen. The oxygen we can breathe and the hydrogen will replace the fuel used to collect the ice. That is self-sufficiency for you.”
Thirteen hundred gallons, that would be at least two launch loads if we hauled it up from Earth,” Ryan observed.
“Well, Martha,” replied Jonesy, “at the next asteroid supermarket, we could see if there are any potatoes and we could turn the water into something more powerful.”
“What is that, Herr Jones?” asked Martha.
“Vodka, or schnapps, in your language, Martha,” replied Jonesy, smiling sweetly.
“Dom kopf!” replied Martha. “You men are all alike,” and she looked at Jonesy stone-faced.
“Commander, I have the report on the rest of what we found in the asteroid supermarket, as Herr Jones thinks of it,” she continued. Ryan tried hard to look serious. “We have cleaned and purified all the metals for reuse. We have 91 kilos of pure rhodium. Gentlemen, I do not work in the America method of weights and measures, multiply it by 2.2 to get pounds. Palladium, 74 kilos; ruthenium, something we really need, 18 kilos; platinum, 202 kilos; nickel, 195 kilos; cobalt, 92 kilos; pure gold, 13 kilos; erbium—a great find and the most valuable rare-Earth metal for our future laser mining needs—11 kilos. I will not give you a lecture right now, Herr Jones, but I will say that erbium is a valuable resource to continue our laser research. Amounts of erbium are already in the laser you used to destroy my asteroid. Let me continue: gadolinium for magnet production, 7 kilos; holmium, also for laser production, 6 kilos; scandium, 5 kilos. Scandium mixed with aluminum is already in our ship walls as an alloy. This valuable rare-earth metal also helps produce mercury-vapor lamps, a system of easy accessible lighting for our future underground caverns on Mars. The last really valuable rare-earth metal pulled out of the ice is ytterbium, extremely valuable in our future infrared laser research and production. We now have three kilos of this metal.”
“It sounds like we achieved a lot,” replied Ryan. “The first locally-grown, asteroid-mined produce, just for us.”
“All free. Potatoes would have cost more,” added Jonesy.
“And then Herr Jones goes and blasts apart my valuable asteroid,” she admonished angrily. She handed Ryan his copy of the list, turned around and with her always-quiet accomplice, strode off to continue her work. Ryan then realized that this now disintegrated asteroid had been far more valuable to research than DX2014 ever was.
By this time Earth was just another distant star, millions of miles behind them, and even the sun had shrunk slightly. At the halfway mark Earth and Mars were 61 million
miles apart. By the time America One reached the red planet, because of where Mars would be in its orbit around the sun, the distance would have grown by 12 million miles, so in theory they weren’t half way.
Construction inside the ship was complete. Three cylinders on the mid-level consisted of more than 20 small offices for the team of scientists who worked on all the projects needed for space travel, and they were finally available to move into them. The heads of departments, five of them, were all in one cylinder on the upper level; these offices had been complete for some time.
Suzi’s department of biological growth, just one office, was inside the cubes, to allow Suzi access to lesser gravity to float around. Mr. Rose also had his own office at this low-gravity level. He was happy to either float around or use magnetic shoes.
VIN often helped in Suzi’s area. Little Mars was now four months old and enjoyed floating around chained to his mother or father. However, to ensure bone growth, the doctors only allowed the babies to be in low gravity conditions for a maximum of four hours per day.
Life aboard was now very routine and slow for the astronauts. The scientists and others had full workloads. Jonesy spent a lot of time working out, swimming, or sleeping; he was at the stage where if an asteroid or the Chinese Space Force didn’t appear pretty quickly, he was going to go out and find something.
With the weakening sun the area around the spaceship seemed to get darker and darker. Many noticed the subtle change in light when in the Bridge with the lights on low, and when peering outside at the stars that never changed.
From the bridge, which did not rotate, the stars never moved, disconcerting for humans on Earth used to watching the night skies constantly change. On Earth, some days there was no moon, some days a full or half moon. The moon never stayed in the same position to other stars, and the stars moved around the night sky as well. On America One’s bridge nothing ever moved outside the windows. It was as if they were looking at murals of the night sky through the windows.
Time began to stand still for many, especially the non-scientists. Jamie Saunders gave birth to a fine baby girl, the third baby girl in a row. Once again the solar system was the reference for choosing a name, and the newest crew member was named Pluto Jane Saunders.
Over beers, Allen and Jonesy often played chess and chatted. Jonesy said that Pluto was a boy’s name and Allen and Jamie should call their baby, if it was a girl, Mercury, or plain Moon. Jamie didn’t like either, so Pluto, a boy’s name in Jonesy’s mind, was given to the baby girl.
“Your boy Mars, and Martha’s boy Jacob are going to have a field day with all these chicks up here, whichever planet we are on,” Jonesy said to VIN over Saturday night beers a few weeks after the birth. The two partners had a free night; no security detail, no chores, and they decided to reenact life on the Seychelles island beaches while relaxing at the pool. The sun lamp was on full power, the room warm and two pitchers of ice-cold space beer were at their side. It was the closest the men could get to heaven, while actually being up there, in heaven, wherever it was.
“I wonder if it’s in the water,” VIN replied, talking to himself.
“What’s in the water?” Jonesy asked, his eyes closed to bring the imaginary island beach scenes closer and make them more realistic.
“We used to say that in Iraq,” VIN replied, also in a bathing suit and lying back, eyes closed. “We used to walk through small desolate villages, around an oasis, or around a well in the shadow of a mountain range. Sometimes, all the kids we met were boys, and in other villages, there seemed to be a mass of girls. We always assumed that all these different villages got together once or twice to marry the kids off.”
“So you think we could have the same problem up here?” Jonesy suggested.
“I spoke to Suzi. Mars, our boy was actually conceived on Earth; your Saturn, too, so that’s the average gender distribution for babies conceived on Earth. On this ship we have two baby boys and now seven girls, and three more couples are pregnant. Suzi thinks that if all three of these babies are girls, not only will Mars and little Jacob have romantic days ahead, but it will prove her theory that the lack of gravity is changing our reproductive averages for some reason.”
“We need a war or something to get our minds off all this science,” Jonesy replied.
“Your beer was made with science, General Jones,” remarked VIN as he helped himself to another pint. And they argued that important topic until the sound system squawked out a message around the ship.
“All astronauts to the Bridge, astronauts to the bridge in ten minutes. Out.”
Jonesy and VIN were not entirely in sound mind and body when they arrived, and the door opened to “swish” them onto the bridge. “A real night off, and I can’t fly for eight hours, because I’ve been drinking,” admitted a smiling Jonesy, taking a seat.
“I would expect no less than that, Mr. Jones,” smiled Ryan. The “General” Jones thing had sort of stayed on Earth. “OK, we have found another fish for you guys to hook. She is a big baby, an asteroid about 100,000 miles to our starboard and about 90,000 miles ahead of us. She came on radar a little over an hour ago and Captain Pete and I estimate that she is about 2,000 times bigger than Martha’s asteroid that you blew up,” smiled Ryan at Jonesy. “This piece of space rock is about 50 times the size of DX2014, and is travelling in the same direction we are, albeit slower and one degree off our course. We will cross the asteroid’s bow in about seven days travelling starboard to port, and will pass about 1,500 miles ahead of us. She is so big that we will be able to see her from that distance.”
“I believe we have a nice window to visit this asteroid and check out her mining attributes,” added Captain Pete. “If the mining craft leave with SB-III, just like the last time, it will take you three days to get to her. A nice six-day window opens up and you guys mine what you can, depart the asteroid at the latest 100,000 miles out on our port side, and take the same amount of time and fuel to return.”
“I want the same crew, but don’t blow it up this time, Mr. Jones,” smiled Ryan. “It pisses Martha off, and I haven’t heard anything else from her, except that you blew up her rock.”
Twelve hours later, both men still feeling the effects of their space-beer binge drinking, the four craft left America One, this time with double the number of empty canisters to fill. There was still no storage room anywhere on the mother ship, and any samples they returned with would have to stay in the cargo bays of the smaller craft themselves.
The ride was soft and silent. Jonesy’s computers were locked onto the asteroid. Chess, movies, and sleep was the routine for the 60 hours it took to approach it. This large asteroid was coming towards America One’s direction of travel at an angle, and Jonesy set up the same turning maneuver they had done approaching DX2014: coming in on a long 170-degree curve to position themselves behind the asteroid, and then catch up to it.
This asteroid looked like a small planet, or a moon; it was not shaped like an extended sausage, or a peanut like the previous two had been. This unnamed asteroid was round, as round as earth, shiny, and rotating slowly.
VIN was happy seeing this, because on this mission, they had two newly developed mining spiders on board. Armed with mini lasers and a tenth of a pound of plutonium-238 for each, these guys could melt holes in anything. This planet looked like it needed some melting. VIN thought it looked like a ball of steel when the weak sunlight shone on it 200 miles ahead of them.
“Probably very little gravity,” Jonesy said over the radio.
“I don’t know; she’s at least sixty miles wide, and the computer is showing that she rotates once every seven hours. She must have some decent gravity,” VIN replied.
“I checked her direction, and ours, and her relationship to Mars,” chimed in Ryan, speaking from the Bridge while listening to the conversation. “She is travelling 8,000 miles an hour slower than we are. By the time she reaches Mars, with her angle, she will pass by Mars within 10,000 miles, about six
months after we get there. On her current trajectory, this asteroid has an extra 39 million miles to travel to approach Mars’ current orbit. If you guys find anything of interest, we can leave a couple of mining spiders on the asteroid to build a cavern for us. If we find nothing on Mars within six months, we could leave and hitch a ride on this vehicle. The computers show that if America One stations herself in a low orbit around the asteroid, we would become her moon, and travel across the solar system for free.”
“I also got the computers to look at her orbital trajectory,” added Captain Pete. “This asteroid completes the same long, oval loop. The computers have been following her for four days now. She has an elongated orbit around the sun, and believe it or not, she bypasses Mars every 9.1 years, Jupiter every 11 years or so, Saturn every third orbit, and Earth every 13.3 years or so. We only have a semi-accurate reading of her orbit so far.”
“A bit of a long wait for her to come around Earth to drop us off,” suggested Jonesy.
“We could look at this asteroid—which the computers are telling me is an M-type asteroid with heavy amounts of iron and nickel—as a free bus ride, or a vacation RV to spend weekend getaways on,” laughed Ryan in return.
The crews began work to land the four craft. As they neared it they saw pockmarks depicting strikes from other asteroids. They weren’t as deep as those they had seen on the moon or on the first two asteroids, and it showed that the rock was comprised of sturdy materials. It sure look liked a grayish-blue cannon ball blasted out from gigantic cannon somewhere in the universe.
“Let me tell you what this M-type asteroid can offer us,” came Martha Von Zimmer’s voice with the beginning a new lesson; Jonesy rolled his eyes in SB-III. He was glad that his wife and Martha got on so well together, but he wouldn’t allow Martha to crew on his ship.
“There are good biological uses for iron,” continued Martha smiling happily; she knew that she was riling the poor pilot. “Iron is necessary for plant and animal life. It is present in the hemoglobin molecule and assists plants in the manufacture of chlorophyll. Iron sulfate is used in the treatment of anemia. If you mix iron oxide with aluminum powder, you can ignite it to make a thermite reaction.”
