“That is a stroke of luck. We're due, you know,” said Standish. “What does that do for us, flight wise?”
“We better get Eighty-two moving within three months. After that, we'll have to go looking for another target,” said Benjamin.
***
The crew of twelve, six per ship, was an ideal number. The awake crew had been chosen out of literally millions of applicants to have maximum compatibility with each other, a broad spectrum of knowledge, and the ability to work and live in the enclosed environment of the life section of the ships.
UNSOC didn't particularly select for comfort around nuclear fuel. They didn't have to—the reactors were sealed at Earth, and internal maintenance of the core was never contemplated.
“You want me to what?” asked Duane. “You've got to be kidding me.”
“Not at all,” said Mike. “How else are we going to be able to move Eighty-two? Hope it changes on its own? No, we're going to have to shove it, and the engines on board the ships just aren't up to the task. We've always known that we'd have to use nuclear methods of pushing. Look, let me go over it again.
“Eighty-two is mostly water ice, with some contaminants, primarily ammonia, and frozen simple binary gasses like carbon dioxide. Hell, Duane, you already know this, you ran the analysis yourself. We use the comm laser on 'drill', and use the energy on selective parts of the comet. The offgassing will slow down the tumbling a little bit, but the real magic is when we get a crew over there with three RTGs, big suckers, pre-mounted inside a big tank with a heating coil. Throw ice into the tank, it turns into steam, which we blast out the exhaust pipe. If we had a few engine bells, it would be a lot more efficient.
“They use those like attitude control thrusters, stopping the rotation of Eighty-two. Then the real fun begins.”
“Right. I don't have a problem with the first part. RTGs are easy. Got plenty of hot rad waste we can use. It's this second part that worries me,” said Duane.
“I understand your concern, Duane, but it's got to be done. We are essentially making a huge open pile, with some water moderation. We just don't have the fluorine to make the thorium into a nice, safe liquid salt.”
“Maybe if I did a more thorough examination of the comet.”
“You know that's not going to happen,” said Standish. “Not in the short run. Right now, you're going to have to run the most dangerous nuclear pile since the one they set up under the squash courts.”
Duane sighed. “I'm going to glow in the dark.”
“Yeah. We're going to have to make sure you and all the workers are extra safe. Who do you need from the sleep cells?”
“I'll have to get back to you on that. I want to look over the roster again. It's been a long time since I thought of the rest of our guys.”
“You've got forty-eight hours. We need to get moving on this, we have a deadline.”
“I'll get on it. The RTGs will be ready in three days, but fueling will take another day—I want to be careful with them.”
“So do I. Let me know how it goes.”
Worker Bees
Vicinity of Comet C/2082 D4 (PanSTARRS), October 2 2083, 1900 GMT
Harlan Slaught, metallurgist, opened his eyes and immediately felt the unsettling sensations of microgravity. Something's wrong. I was supposed to wake up on the surface of Mars. He opened his eyes slowly and was obscurely pleased to find himself in a dimly lit room with other patients. I always thought I'd wake up in that clichéd white room. He was sensibly strapped onto a bed. He felt around with his hands to find a plastic bag nearby. That puzzled him. His mind seemed curiously slow, as if it was waking up at a slower rate than his body.
He suddenly felt an overwhelming nausea, and his left hand clenched on the plastic bag, fitting it over his mouth before he retched into it. There was nothing for his stomach to expel, just some saliva and such. Funny, they didn't mention barfing as a side effect of hibernation.
***
Niall Wärtner, one of three physicists on the journey, heard the horrible sounds from the bed beside him, and readied his plastic bag. He had been feeling a disquieting sense of wrongness to his body. His nausea had been creeping up on him, little by little. He was one of those unfortunate ones who could not stand being around people who were vomiting without joining in. Even the thought of throwing up, if he allowed it to run around the cage of his mind long enough, would send him into the bathroom.
He fitted the bag over his mouth, and added to the gut-churning duet.
In the intervals between spasms, he thought about his physical reaction. I was feeling nauseous before I heard whoever that is next to me. So it couldn't be a sympathetic reaction. What else would cause this? I read up on hibernation—this is not a side effect of it. It has to be something else.
He reached up and touched his head. No, that wasn't going to work—they were all shaved bald for hygienic reasons, so there was no hair to fall out. His mouth was burning more than seemed warranted by its brief bath in stomach acid. A sense of dread came over him. I've got radiation sickness.
***
Lima Donnelly, a machinist on the Chaffee on an earlier mission, and was sorely puzzled. Microgravity was never a problem for him. In fact, his first thoughts upon awakening was joy at finding himself in freefall again. He was happy and relaxed in the dim room. He could tell, just from the breathing patterns, that there were other people about, but if they were all secured in their beds like he was, there was nothing to worry about. Remote diagnostics told the medical folks that they were awake, it was merely a matter of time before someone checked in on them.
He was able to clamp down on the sudden burst of nausea in time, but was confused. He had never been prone to space sickness before, why should he be now? His left hand found a plastic bag nearby. He had just managed to fit it over his mouth before he, too, was just as incapacitated as any newbie.
***
Ivan Peltyn was a Reactor Operator, and a historian of nuclear reactors. But he, too, was struck with the intense regurgitation that was the hallmark of radiation sickness. The four of them were straining to put their stomachs into the little plastic bags they held in front of their mouths.
Doctor Aaron Gulotta, the Expedition's physician, tapped perfunctorily on the thin partition that served as a door and floated in to the cubic. He had ensured previously that the beds were all aligned so that the heads of the patients all faced in the same direction. He approached them so that he seemed to be walking, although his feet were about one meter off of the floor.
“Who are you?” asked one of the patients, more in control of his innards than the others.
“I am Doctor Gulotta, but you can call me Ron. Let me get right to it. All of you have been exposed to a significant amount of radiation.”
“Do tell,” murmured Wartner, in between cramping heaves into the bag.
“Yeah,” said Ron, “I should have known you'd all have this figured out. I know you expected some kind of exposure, but there's been an Event.”
Niall removed the bag from his face. “I hear a capital letter in there.”
“Right,” said Ron. “There was some kind of massive explosion on the Moon. It was so huge that the folks on the Chaffee got between one and two Grays of radiation.”
A surprised muttering arose around the doctor. “Yes, it was that much. Earth, of course, got nothing because of its atmosphere, but Mars got pretty cooked.
“So did we. Our best estimates were that we got about a tenth Grey. Of course, we had been in space already for about three months, so our immune and DNA repair systems were already working at top speed. You guys were snoozing, so your systems weren't ready to rumble when the big blast came along.
“I'm sure you remember the discussion back at UNSOC, when they were telling you that your systems were going to take a bit to recover from hibernation. The chicken-shit bureaucrats didn't tell you why. It was the accumulated radiation damage, even without the big wavefront from The Event. So, just so
you know, when you were warming up from doing the backstroke in liquid nitrogen, we held you at about thirty-five Celsius for a couple of days while we pumped you full of antioxidants and other DNA repair factors. Of course, this couldn't do a thing for the cells that were too destroyed to make use of them, so you have residual nausea, some hair follicles might die, even if you don't notice it, and of course, you're going to have a bad case of the trots until your intestinal flora reestablishes itself and the villi in your small intestines regrow.
“I'm sorry about your current unpleasantness, but it's only going to last a few days. Any questions?”
“How many others have you woken up, and where are we?” asked Ivan. “Why are we in freefall?”
“I'm just the doctor. You're going to have to wait for a Commander to brief you. I think he's going to wait until you can keep something down, first.”
***
The four new awake crewmen were slowly drifting around the galley. The Commander was going to meet up with them in that space to give them a briefing about their predicament. So far, the other crew were rigidly restricted from talking with the new members until Doctor Gulotta released them from sick bay.
“After all, guys, your immune systems have taken a beating. I know you've been inoculated against everything possible, but there have been a bunch of us who are just as germy as we were when we blasted out of Chaffee's orbit. Your germs died during hibernation, so you're safe from them, but not us. I'm keeping you here until your white counts come back up to where they should be, and the number of damaged chromosomes in them goes down to zero.”
Niall groused. “Any chance we can get something to keep us entertained? We've got nothing in here. The computer won't talk to us, the ent-comp is turned off, we don't even have a ten-year-old copy of Sports Illustrated to keep us company.”
“Hang on,” the doctor said. He took out his commpad and punched up a channel. “Sir. Yes, just like I warned you. I recommend the flight log. It's going to be a whole lot easier...Yes...I understand.” Ron closed the commpad slowly, as if he needed time to organize the thoughts in his head.
“Well?” asked Niall.
“Commander Smithson has agreed to my suggestion, with a stipulation. He has authorized the release of the flight logs up until one month after The Event. He wants to tell you the rest himself. Why? Not sure. But he's in charge, and I just hand out the pills around here.”
He punched a couple of buttons on his commpad, and looked up. “The computer will replay the flight logs only. Anything else? No? See you in another four hours.”
***
“How are they taking it, Doc?” asked Commander Smithson.
“I'd say they are info-starved, sir. That's all right now. I could, but won't, try to extrapolate further. Consider, they've been yanked back from the rim of frozen death, had their systems held at just about alive temperatures for a few days in order to slow the accumulated radiation damage until their anabolic systems got the upper hand. Then they're awake and blowing chow for the last three days. Their responses are shaped by all of that. I say, you should give them the rest of the story within the next six to twelve hours, then let them stew for another day before I'll release them.”
“How are they doing, health wise?”
“They've stopped chunking up their dinner, but they're still rebuilding their blood cells and things like intestinal linings and such. They're no good for work, but there's also no reason for them to keep hanging around Sick Bay. I'd like to kick them out in the next forty-eight hours, if I can.”
Roger Smithson rubbed his chin with a thumb and forefinger. “All right. Any special precautions before I go in to speak with them? Do I need to disinfect or anything like that?”
“Nope. Their gross immune systems are up and running. I'm a bit worried about their gut bacteria, but chatting with you won't affect that. I'd, ah, recommend that you wear a pair of exam gloves and a face mask, just to reinforce the idea that they still need to stay segregated. The precautions won't do a damned thing if they were vulnerable, of course, but the theater is valuable.”
“Why, Doc, I'm surprised at you. Lie to your patients?”
“Nice try, you'd do the same thing in a split second, and you know it. Better practice your Q and A—these guys are about at the limit of their patience.”
“Oh, I'm taking Jeff Gatson with me. Any problem?”
“None. Just mask and gloves, please.”
“Will do. Wish me luck.”
***
“And there you have it,” said Commander Smithson. “We're keeping station with a tumbling comet, and we need you four to help us start wrangling it into a form that we can use. That's why you're awake and in freefall, instead of safely on the surface of Mars. I wanted to tell you personally, instead of having you read dry facts from the flight log. All of the awake crew agreed that this was our single best option for survival. So, here we are. I'll ask for your questions now, and I am sure you'll have more in the days to come. Feel free to buttonhole any of the awake crew, unless they're on a mission.”
“I'd like to know, Commander,” said Lima, “how many of us are eventually going to be woken up?”
“All of you. Eventually. But we can only wake up as many as we can feed. Right now, it looks like twenty is our top end. So, there are four more we can safely support. And that's it for a bit.”
“When can we wake up the others?” asked Ivan
“When we get to the iron-nickel asteroid, Ivan. Until then, I'd rather keep them where they are.”
“They're not all that safe,” said Ivan, rubbing his stomach. “Every day adds to their radiation burden.”
“We know that. But from my position, we'd have a lot more casualties if we try to rotate people into and out of hibernation. I suspect it was pure hell on you and will be worse the longer we keep them asleep, but we can't really do much else until we have the life system infrastructure to keep them alive. Anyone else?”
“I'd rather reserve my questions until I've had time to digest, ugh, this news,” said Harlan, with a slight belch. “Excuse me. Still a bit queasy. I don't know enough yet to ask an intelligent question.”
“Same here,” said Niall.
“Sure? Okay. Please understand that my time is somewhat limited in the future, but I do want to honor my commitment to be available to you four. I want to reintroduce you to Jeff Gatson, who is our Chief Engineer. He'll describe why he asked for you, and describe what he's looking for you to do.”
The Commander floated out of the galley, pulling off his gloves and mask as he did so.
Jeff watched him go, then turned to face the four when the hatch closed.
“All right, guys, call me Jeff. I wonder just how much you hate me at this moment. Because we're all going to be working our asses off, and it's going to be hot, dirty, dangerous work, in atmosphere and in vacuum. But it all must work, and work the first time, or we will all die out here. So let me describe what I'm looking for.
“We're at this big-assed comet. I mean, it's big compared to this ship, but it's not all that big compared to, say, Halley's Comet. Still, nobody's ever moved masses like this. But we have to. You've seen the videos and stills. You know what the comet looks like. Here's what I propose to do.
“Ivan, I want you to work with Duane Bebeau with the ship reactors. We need a good, high-activity, radioactive package to make into RTGs. I'm not going to lie—this is dangerous, tricky work. The thorium reactors are custom-designed to burn up the normal hi-rad waste, so we're kinda beat if we were on a planet. But we're not. We're in space. I challenged Duane to figure out how to make a huge mass spectrometer using what we've got around here. Trust me, we're going to need it later.”
“Can do, Jeff. Used to work one when I was in the Ukraine, working on isolating medical isotopes,” Ivan said.
“Excellent. Now, Niall, I need you to design these RTGs with what we've actually got on board. I want you to go look through all the shipment docs that McCrary
sent to us—it's a complete list of all the packages the Moon sent us over the past several months when you were snoozing. We need a way to convert ice into nice, hot steam, continuously. Make it as big as you can without going critical. Make the RTG so that it can run dry without melting. Use Harlan and Lima for help. We need these yesterday.”
“I’d like to know what you’re going to use them for, although I think I can guess.”
“What's your guess?” asked Jeff.
“You're going to make attitude jets to stop the tumbling of the comet.”
“Right the first time! We can't do a damned thing with it in its current state,” said Jeff.
“Does the awake crew know?” asked Niall.
“Absolutely. They're doing a ton of other things, such as making an enormous mylar bag for the journey, and working the internal pile. Oh, that reminds me. Ivan, you've done work on the history of nuclear reactors. Did you ever look over the design for the NERVA rocket from the 1960s?”
“NERVA...NERVA...you have to forgive me, Jeff. My memory is still fuzzy. Can you give me a hint?”
“NERVA meant a lot of things to different people. What we're looking to do is build a uranium pile inside that comet with once-through cooling.”
“Jesus!” said Ivan. “You out of your mind or something?”
“I second the motion!” said Niall. “There's no way I'll have anything to do with something like that! Spread nuclear pollution throughout the solar system just to save our hides?”
“Scott.” Since the ships were not connected, Jeff wasn't really looking for his deputy to put in an appearance but to call on the intercom.
Dead Men Flying Page 11
