Frontier

by Patrick Chiles

  “We can see that. Moving around on a body that small must be challenging. Are you afraid of falling off?”

  Jasmine: “It feels as if we could fall off with every turn. Whichever direction you look, you’re seeing the edge of Malati. It’s not like a horizon in the sense you would think of it on Earth, or even the Moon. Here, we could fly out into space if we pushed hard enough. We have to keep ourselves tethered to pitons we drove into the surface in the same way one might use them mountain climbing.” [Pauses] “But mountains are more of my husband’s area of expertise.”

  “And what about your experiment package? Does it need to be lashed to the surface as well?”

  Max: “The In Situ Resource Unit is on a maneuvering sled with pneumatic bolts that secure it to the surface. Once it begins drilling, the shaft will be more than enough to keep it anchored.”

  “What do you expect to find there?”

  Max: “King Solomon’s Gold. Maybe D. B. Cooper’s money.” [Laughs] “Seriously, that’s an interesting question. Malati is an interesting place. It has characteristics of both Class-C and Class-M asteroids. We have already detected water ice below the surface, as we’re finding is more common on carbonaceous Class-C bodies. But there is a large area that appears to have been cleaved off in the past, which may have exposed a number of Class-M rare-earth minerals.”

  “Does that make Malati a good candidate for an asteroid-capture mission? Somehow bring it to Earth?”

  Max: [Laughs] “Not in our lifetimes, it’s far too big. It’s ten miles across at its widest point. By the time we’ve developed the technology to do something like that, we probably wouldn’t need it.”

  “I don’t know how you do it, love,” Jasmine said back aboard Prospector. They had just finished watching the replay of their interview after stowing their suits and cleaning up. “I don’t have the patience for those inane questions. I have an easier time talking to grade schoolers.”

  “You are, in a sense,” Max said as he hovered over the ISRU display. “They’ll probably rebroadcast that to classrooms. And you were splendid demonstrating the low gravity, by the way.”

  “I didn’t feel splendid,” she said. “I’m not good at aiming for the lowest common denominator. Its awkward.”

  “Yet that’s precisely the right tactic. Remember, statistically half the population is by definition of below-average intelligence.”

  She closed her eyes and smiled. “How can such a cynic be so good at handling interviews?”

  “Precisely because I am a cynic, dear. Now, look at these preliminaries.” He moved aside to let her see the returns from Malati’s surface.

  She slipped on a pair of reading glasses that had been pushed back on her head. “That’s—amazing. Is that what I think it is?”

  “Hydrogen and oxygen,” he said, triumphantly folding his arms. “Water ice extracted from just beneath the surface and electrolyzed into its component elements.”

  “How much already?” she said, squinting at the figures. They looked impossibly good.

  “It’s already filled one O2 bottle,” he said. “The hydrogen is taking longer. Haven’t really solved the boiloff problem but we can see the process works.”

  “Still, that’s an excellent start.” She beamed at her husband. “It makes the trip worth it.”

  “It wasn’t already?”

  She was about to level him with a cutting rejoinder when the master alarm began blaring. “What was that?”

  13

  Long before Borman had registered on their docking radar, they spotted it by the cherry-red glow of dual nuclear engines pointed directly at them as it decelerated into their orbit. The plasma exhaust itself was invisible, but their white heat shone like beacons in the distance. Marshall understood the chemistry but was still disappointed—that much power deserved a mile-long incandescent pillar of flame.

  “This is the tricky part,” Wylie explained as the glowing cluster turned away. The ship was rotating about its vertical axis to finish its approach nose first. “They have to brake to match orbits, but they can’t keep pointing the main engines at us. We’d be staring down the mouths of open reactors.” When Marshall first arrived for duty, Borman had been in a parking orbit with idle engines. They were still a radiation hazard, but nothing compared to when the control rods were removed and burning hydrogen.

  Borman’s slender alloy truss and stark white propellant tanks glistened as it turned beneath silent bursts of maneuvering jets. One final cloud of gas erupted from its nose as it faced them head-on.

  “Specter, this is home plate. We’re stable on approach, closing at five meters per second. What’s your status?”

  “We have one medevac aboard, three casualties in the logistics pod. Evac patient is stable, being treated for dehydration and mild radiation exposure.” Marshall looked over his shoulder to confirm everyone was buckled into their seats and gave Wylie a thumbs up. “Evac team is secure aboard. RCS is pressurized and we are ready to maneuver.”

  “Specter, you’re in the bubble. Cleared to approach.”

  “Copy. Underway.” Wylie looked to Marshall expectantly. “Well?”

  “You want me to fly us in?”

  “Got to learn some time,” Wylie said, motioning for him to take the controls.

  Marshall kept a light touch, needing to feel how the spacecraft responded to his inputs. He gave the sidestick a gentle tap and Earth slipped silently out of view. After having it fill their windows for so long, its abrupt disappearance was unsettling. It underscored the emptiness facing them.

  “Now, give us one second retrograde,” Wylie said. When Marshall pushed the translation controller, there was a burst of vapor outside and they momentarily rose against the shoulder straps. They were flying backward, approaching tail first. Borman’s forward node appeared on screen, steadily growing larger as the two ships closed.

  “Flies easier from up here, even when we’re tail first,” Wylie said. “Right?”

  “Feels more natural,” Marshall said. “Didn’t expect that.”

  Wylie watched the docking target dance in their crosshairs. “Watch your closing rate,” he cautioned. “Use smaller inputs the closer we get. Resist the urge to overcorrect, otherwise you’ll scratch paint.”

  Marshall suspected “scratch paint” meant something much worse, as nothing that innocuous happened out here.

  Poole was waiting for them at the far end of the docking tunnel. “Report.”

  Wylie spoke for them. “Evac team healthy and accounted for, sir. One live evacuee and three casualties. Survivor is named Nicholas Lesko. Chief Riley’s team started treatment protocols for dehydration and low-level radiation exposure.”

  “What about their vehicle?”

  Wylie turned to Marshall, as he’d been the officer on site. Marshall cleared his throat. “I don’t know that I’d call it a derelict yet but it’s in bad shape, sir. Loose debris all over the cabin. Mr. Lesko was safe in their shelter, stayed in his suit and plugged in to the ship’s supply tanks. Most of their E and E systems were offline, most of the breakers were popped. We don’t have enough information to know if they can be safely reset, so I wouldn’t recommend maneuvering it under its own power.”

  “Yeah, that’s not happening.” Poole crossed his arms. “There’s no safe approach vector for us to grab it being so close to another dead satellite. We’ll leave it in place and declare it a navigational hazard. Ops will record its position and put out a notice to operators. NTSB will throw a fit but they can get up here themselves if they want it bad enough.”

  A voice piped up from behind them. “You’re leaving it alone up here? Not taking it back to Earth?”

  Poole looked over their shoulders. “Mr. Lesko, I presume?”

  Marshall and Wylie moved aside. “Yeah, that’s me.” He seemed unsure of what to say next.

  Poole prompted him. “Were you in charge of this expedition?”

  “I guess,” he said warily. “You could say I was the
prime contractor.”

  “Somebody else hired you, then?”

  “Yeah. I recruited the others.”

  “Then your crew wasn’t working directly for one of the satellite operators?”

  His eyes darted about. “What do you mean?”

  Poole smiled disarmingly. “I meant that your mission up here was very unusual. I don’t think we’ve ever seen a crewed repair mission in geosynch.”

  “I wouldn’t know nothing about that. They give me jobs where things need fixing, and I fix them. If I can’t do it myself, I find people who can. They trust me like that.”

  “So are you an engineer, then? A&P technician?”

  “Sort of. Like I said, I fix things.”

  Poole decided that line of questioning was going nowhere. “What can you tell us about the event?”

  Lesko looked away. When he turned back, his words came slowly. “I had the overnight watch and a problem showed up with one of the servos we’d installed on that satellite. I couldn’t do nothin’ remotely, so I knew that meant one more spacewalk. It was supposed to be our last day up here so I got in a hurry planning repairs before the others woke up.”

  “That’s a lot to figure out on your own.”

  “Yeah, it was,” he said with some pride. “And the damn constant chatter from the ground was just too much, so I shut the radios off.”

  Poole’s eyebrows jumped. “You shut off your uplink?”

  Lesko shrugged his shoulders.

  Poole was flummoxed. “And your crewmates didn’t have a problem with that?”

  “I think they were all too busy to notice. And once I got my head into the repair plan, I just—forgot, I guess.”

  That’s why we have checklists, Poole thought. He wondered what the scene must have been like inside that thing, especially when it became obvious they’d neglected basic space survival skills: if the Sun burps, shelter in place. Period. End of story. With a dismayed shake of his head, he gestured for Marshall to escort their survivor down to the med module. “Mr. Hunter, secure our passenger. Get him some chow and a fresh set of clothes. We’re getting back underway as soon as your team’s aboard. There’s still a lot of fried satellites for us to deal with.”

  “Getting tired yet, sir?”

  Marshall looked down from the satellite frame he had been hanging on to for the last half hour while Rosie worked on a stuck fitting. “Tired? Not me.” Marshall wasn’t sure that “tired” was the best choice of words: drained, maybe. Exasperated. They’d been back aboard for barely a day and were already outside again.

  To the untrained and uninitiated, spacewalks looked as effortless as floating in a swimming pool—after all, that was how they trained for them. What could be easier?

  A lot, he’d decided. Like running a marathon or playing football without a helmet. Maybe dentistry without anesthesia. He hadn’t noticed on his first walk, being overwhelmed by the newness of it, and most recently by their haste to secure Lesko’s spacecraft. It had only been well afterward that he’d noticed how sore and drenched in perspiration he’d been. The regular EVA crew looked like they’d had a workout too, but had still managed to carry on like champions.

  Weightless or not, objects like this satellite still had mass, which meant they still had the same momentum as if sitting on the ground—it was just all very apparent now that it was up to his own body to counteract it instead of relying on gravity. He could easily push a large object in any direction, but it became much harder if he needed to stop said object. Here, stuck in a footrest at the end of Borman’s manipulator arm, he was essentially working as a human shock absorber.

  When every single movement creates a countermovement, simply unsealing a sticky panel or moving a piece of equipment means you have to brace and absorb it yourself. Every single movement, every time. It was easy to overcorrect, which created more work. Rosie and her spacers seemed to breeze through their tasks like professional dancers with an economy of motion that he was still learning to adopt.

  Details like suit fit mattered a lot—they were one size fits all, which really meant one size fit none. Legs and arms could be adjusted so joints were mostly in the right spots, but the gloves were what gave him fits. If he’d been a permanent spacer instead of “just” their officer in charge, the quartermaster might have taken the time and expense to outfit him with a custom set.

  He wondered how much of a difference it made, as his hands burned from the exertion of movement compounding upon movement. For every torqueing moment Rosie imparted on the satellite, he had to counteract it using only his fingers and forearms. Just moving around outside was more of the same—the combined mass of his body and spacesuit was ultimately controlled by his fingertips, which had by now gone numb. That probably wasn’t a good thing, but at least they didn’t hurt anymore. He hoped the view would help take his mind off his discomfort, though it only worked for a short while between Rosie’s occasional curses.

  “Shit. Another one cold welded in place. It’s almost like they didn’t plan on anyone coming up here to work on this thing.”

  “You’re being sarcastic, right?”

  “You’ve known me long enough to understand that’s kind of my default setting, sir.”

  “I’ve known you for all of two weeks, Rosie.”

  “Yes sir. That ought to be just about long enough.”

  “I like to think you’re more complex than that.” He felt the surveillance sat move as Rosie tugged at a locking lever.

  “Our business is complicated enough on its own, sir. I like to keep everything else simple.”

  “So what do you do when you’re not out here working?” He changed his grip for what felt like the hundredth time to keep the bird in place and blood flowing through his fingers.

  “I’m inside working,” she said with a grunt. “Suit maintenance, mostly, but the skipper uses us for a lot of the environmental systems work. Suit and ship life support kind of go hand in hand.”

  The satellite tried to turn away from him as it reacted to her movement. He considered the amount of force she was having to impart and realized he needed to spend more time on the resistance machine. No wonder there was always a wait for it. “Not a lot of time off up here,” he said absentmindedly.

  “Don’t know what I’d do with it if there were. Not like we’re making port calls anywhere.”

  “Ever wish we could?” Even if they could, where would they go? He looked in the direction of the ecliptic, the plane on which all of the Sun’s planets orbited. Jupiter was over his right shoulder, which right now meant Mars was . . . there. In another couple of months they’d be in conjunction. Venus was behind him, hidden in the Sun’s brilliance. To his left was Saturn. It intrigued him how the solar system had been arranged, almost geometrically. Jupiter was roughly twice as far from Earth as Mars, Saturn in turn was almost twice as far again. Thinking about it in those terms made the gas giant seem a lot closer than it really was, like it was the gateway to the outer system.

  “Nowhere I’d want to go, sir. At least not for long.”

  “Not even Mars? Moons of Jupiter?”

  She gave another tug and the satellite jerked in response. “I guess if all we’re doing is looking, I can do that from here.”

  Marshall was about to press her on what would be fantastic vistas if they were ever to get up the gumption to do it—the thought of seeing Jupiter and its moons up close, in a sense its own miniature solar system, was an idea he was becoming more obsessed with. Patrol ships like theirs were a necessary step, which they’d just demonstrated with the Stardust rescue. He thought about a point Garver had made on his first day here: The more the civilian economy expanded outward, the more people would inevitably get themselves into trouble and need help getting out of it. Such had always been the case in seafaring, and spacefaring was just starting to catch up.

  What he really wanted to see was something along the lines of an exploration corps, which is maybe what NASA should’ve been doing all alon
g before it metastasized into one more self-preserving bureaucracy—the post office with rockets, he’d heard more than once.

  His radio crackled. “Repeat, EVA One acknowledge.”

  Someone was calling—had been calling—over the command net. How badly had he just spaced out? He chinned the frequency selector inside his helmet. “This is EVA One. Go ahead.”

  “Hunter, this is the XO. The skipper is terminating your activity for an all-hands call. You and Rosie get back in the barn ASAP. Buster.”

  The XO’s “Buster” call was shorthand for “get inside, get out of your suits, and grab the PBE masks.” Normally they’d stay in the airlock, using it like a dive chamber to bring their bodies into equilibrium after being in the suit’s pure oxygen environment. Marshall and Rosie stood out like sore thumbs in the makeshift ready room, each wearing a portable breathing mask as they readjusted their oxygen levels.

  They were the last ones to make it in, just ahead of Poole. He sailed in behind them and pulled himself upright, slipping his feet into a pair of foot restraints at the head of the table. He wiped his bald head once with his cap and crossed his arms, a common position in zero g which nevertheless made him look perpetually displeased. Marshall wondered if that was intentional today.

  Poole looked them over. “Hunter. Rosado. Glad to see you’re not dying of the bends.”

  The day is young, Marshall thought to himself. “She’s keeping me out of trouble, sir.”

  Poole nodded and carried on as if their exchange had never occurred. “We have new orders,” he announced, and turned to a widescreen monitor on the bulkhead above him. A news program was frozen in midbroadcast. He tapped a remote to restart the feed.

  The announcer appeared grim. “There has been no contact with the Prospector spacecraft since last night,” he intoned over an illustration of the spacecraft. “The expedition’s ground control director confirmed they have two-way signals with the vehicle, but there has been no response from either Max or Jasmine Jiang.”