Frontier

by Patrick Chiles

  Wylie backed them in slowly and brought them to a stop within a meter of each other. When Marshall opened their outer door, Prospector was almost in arm’s reach. He gestured for Rosie to take the lead and she jumped into action, reaching for their safety tether.

  “Nice work, Lieutenant. I barely have to go outside.”

  “Just don’t ding my spacecraft, Rosie. I can’t afford the insurance.”

  Rosie smirked beneath her visor and answered Wylie with a quick double-click of her mic. She checked her connection then reached out to test Marshall’s and Harper’s, tugging at their waists. Without a word, she clipped the opposite end to a ring beneath Prospector’s hatch. “Excursion team is secure. I’m going to give us some distance, sir.”

  “Copy.”

  She went through the opening feet first, keeping her arms against the rim and pushing against the other craft with her legs. The two spacecraft began to separate, falling away from each other slowly. She slipped her arms back outside and pushed away, the coils of her tether following behind. Harper floated out soon after. “You’re next, sir.”

  Marshall pivoted into the opening and let himself be pulled through as his own line played out behind him. When it grew taut, the tension naturally turned him to face her. “Nice move, Rosie. Separates us without him having to use the RCS.”

  “Something we came up with on our own,” she said, and pointed at Prospector’s closed hatch. “It’ll also protect Specter when we open this tin can up. Who knows what’ll come out of it?”

  “Good point.”

  She called back to Wylie. “We’re secure, sir. You can hail them again.”

  Two mic clicks, then Wylie’s voice over the universal emergency frequency: “Prospector, Prospector, this is the USSF shuttle Specter. Comm check.” He repeated it twice more, each time answered by hissing static. “No joy, Rosie.”

  “Understood. Thank you, sir.” Rosie returned to their suit intercom. “Didn’t think there would be, but we had to try,” she explained. She banged on the hull and set her faceplate against it, listening for any vibrations transmitted up through it. She looked up at Marshall. “Could you head up to the hab and try the same thing, sir?”

  “Got it.” He pushed off, aiming for a handrail around the rim of the big logistics module overhead. After a minute of trying the same thing, he shook his head before realizing she couldn’t see him. “Same here. Nobody’s answering.”

  “Can you see anything through the portholes? Because I’ve got nothin’ here.”

  Compared to the command module’s big oval windows, the hab’s small portholes were like trying to inspect the inside of a barrel looking through a garden hose. There was power but no obvious movement. “Lights are on but nobody’s home. No movement, no signs of loose gear or debris either.” Better than the last spacecraft I boarded, he thought.

  “Crew cabin’s dark,” Harper said, shining her helmet lamp through one of the windows. “No movement, no response. That doesn’t leave us many options.”

  He pulled against his tether to begin heading back to them. “Breach entry?”

  “Afraid so, sir.” Rosie removed a long-handled tool from her utility harness. “If you’ll pull up their quick-reference guide, I’ll do the dirty work.”

  “Got it.” He tapped at a small display on his wrist where he’d already loaded Prospector’s emergency checklists. “First open the manual pressure equalization valve, staying clear of the adjacent purge vent. One-half clockwise turn.”

  She set the tool inside the valve fitting. “Opening the MPEV, one-half clockwise.” She braced against a nearby handrail and pulled on the handle. Expecting a geyser of ice crystals to erupt from the purge vent beneath it, instead they saw nothing.

  Marshall had been eyeing the cabin through a nearby window. There were no signs of venting atmosphere. “It opened, right?”

  “Yes sir. No resistance. Just no air either.”

  “So they were already in vacuum.”

  “If they weren’t, then venting the cabin into space sure would’ve gotten their attention,” Rosie said. “What’s that tell you, sir?”

  “That the hab’s either sealed off or also in vacuum. Otherwise there’d have been a lot more to vent.”

  “Bingo.” They weren’t giving up yet. She folded up the tool and slipped it back in her harness, then reached for the ratchet handle centered beneath the viewport. “That’s funny—it’s unlocked.”

  “That might explain things. Cabin must have vented when they got hit.”

  “Opening the spacecraft,” she announced over their common frequency and waved for Marshall to stay put. “Clear?”

  He kept his grip on the opposite railing. “Clear.”

  The hatch swung out easily. No random loose equipment spilled out into space. “Entering the vehicle.”

  “Copy that,” Simon answered. “Keep me posted.”

  Rosie let go of the handrail and pulled herself in headfirst with Harper in trail. From outside, Marshall could see their helmet lamps light up the cabin. “We’re in, sir. You’re clear to enter.”

  “Right behind you,” Marshall said, following them inside. He shut the hatch behind him.

  In sharp contrast to the Stardust capsule, Prospector’s command module was spotless. Everything was in its place: flight couches stowed, equipment bays latched shut, a single blinking blue light signaled the touchscreen control panel was waiting on standby and ready to be reactivated.

  “Okay, this is weird,” Rosie admitted. She floated down the docking tunnel, following a stream of light from the viewport on its far end. There was a small status panel nearby. “You were right, sir. Logistics and hab are under pressure, but I still can’t see much.”

  “We need to get in there.” Marshall held down the blinking standby button until the control screen blinked into life. “Here we go. Equalizing now.” He soon found the pressure controls and air began flowing back into the cabin.

  The small compartment pressurized quickly. Harper heaved its forward hatch open and Marshall watched her and Rosado disappear into the big logistics module. He moved into the docking tunnel to follow, waiting for their all clear to move ahead.

  He was used to not hearing muck from Harper, but Rosie was uncharacteristically quiet. That didn’t portend pleasant news. He took a deep breath, preparing himself for a gruesome scene and trying to clear his head of all the stories he’d read about the Jiang’s expedition, all of the interviews he’d seen. He stared down the length of the tunnel, expecting to find the famous couple dead on the other side. He pushed ahead.

  The hab and logistics module was easily eight meters deep and half as wide. The near end had been set up as their extended living space: pictures and small personal effects cluttered one wall in a similar manner as he’d seen aboard the Borman, with sleeping bags against the opposite wall, a widescreen monitor mounted to the overhead, and a folding table with seat restraints for a dining area.

  The far end held their supplies: a tightly packed jumble of soft containers, mostly food, wedged behind an octagonal cargo netting that resembled a giant spiderweb. They’d looked to have gone through roughly half of their load, which would be right about on schedule.

  Floating in front of that web was Rosie’s spacesuited form, her back turned to him, staring into the half-empty logistics section. Harper continued inside, searching the nooks and crannies.

  “Rosie?”

  She turned silently, eyes wide and mouth agape in shock.

  “Where are they?”

  She blinked hard. “I don’t know.”

  Marshall grabbed a nearby handhold, turning about to look for himself. “Where are they?” he repeated, more to himself than her.

  “EVA Team,” Simon cut in over their headsets with concern in his voice. “Report.”

  His eyes searched Rosie’s. She simply shook her head in disbelief, again mouthing, “I don’t know.”

  Marshall answered for them. “They’re not here, sir.”
He said the words, but it felt as if it were coming from someone else.

  “Say again, EVA One?”

  Marshall collected himself and cleared his throat. “Actual, this is EVA One. Spacecraft is abandoned. I repeat, spacecraft is abandoned.”

  20

  “What the hell?” Garver uncharacteristically blurted out. “How are they not there?”

  Simon rubbed at his forehead. “You got me, Chief,” he muttered. “This is a first.”

  Garver dug at his eyes with the heels of his hands. “Sorry for the outburst, skipper.”

  Simon waved it away and floated up into the cupola, staring at the abandoned spacecraft and wishing he had gravity just so he could indulge the feeling of collapsing into a chair. How did they just up and disappear? If they’d been holed by a meteoroid, where would they go? Why would they go anywhere?

  They must have gone outside in hopes of repairing the damage and become separated from the spacecraft, he decided. That was the only thing that made sense. He keyed his mic. “Give me a bow-to-stern visual inside then inspect the exterior. I want to see that entry wound on their service module.”

  Simon took his binoculars from their mount and began searching Prospector for more clues. It had to be a repair gone wrong. Had to be. They must have taken a hit and decided to try and do something about it. He’d have done the same, but he’d also been at this for years with a crew of trained specialists who could work miracles under just about every rotten condition space could throw at them. He studied the debris field and imagined two rookies trying to effect repairs in that mess.

  “Skipper?”

  He shuddered at the idea and tried not to think about how that must have gone down.

  “Captain Poole?”

  Had one of them gotten tangled up in debris or ruptured their suit, and the other gone after them? Had something struck them both at once? There was a lot of jagged crap floating around out there. He decided to tell Marshall and Rosie to stay on the clear side of the ship—no sense risking them, especially with a skeleton crew . . .

  “Captain!”

  How long had he been lost in thought that Garver had raised his voice to get his attention? He tucked his legs and flipped, sticking his head down through the cupola opening. “What’s up, Chief?”

  “We may have something, sir. There’s some electromagnetic energy coming from near RQ39. Infrared, occasionally into the microwave bands—UHF and EHF.”

  He turned back topside, instinctively swinging his binoculars over to the asteroid now several kilometers distant. That couldn’t be . . . “Any chance its them?”

  “Not unless they’re carrying high-gain transmitters with them, sir.”

  Another spacecraft? He keyed the mic again. “EVA Team, Actual.”

  Marshall answered. “Go ahead, sir.”

  “Refresh my memory—weren’t the Jiangs carrying some survey equipment or experiment packages to deploy here?”

  “Affirmative, sir. They were going to place a remote-operated drill and an in situ resource unit, see what kind of raw materials they could harvest from it.”

  “Is that equipment still onboard?”

  “Those packages were mounted to an external sled on the far end of the hab. They’re both gone, sir.”

  That conformed to what Poole had seen through his binoculars. “Specter, Actual. Are you listening?”

  “Aye, sir.”

  “What’s your fuel state?”

  “Bonus, sir. Ninety-two percent.”

  “How much delta-v do you need to go inspect RQ39?”

  “Say again?”

  “I need you to get eyes on that asteroid. We’ve detected some thermal and radio energy. Weak and intermittent, but it’s there. Could be activity on the far side.”

  “You think our missing persons might be over there?”

  “Only thing that makes sense,” Poole said.

  There was a delay while Wylie calculated their fuel. “Looks like five meters per second each way, figure another half-meter for station keeping. We’ve got plenty in the tanks for that, sir.”

  “Very well. Hunter, you hear that?”

  “Aye, sir,” Marshall answered for his team, already motioning Rosie and Harper to begin heading for the exit. “We’re on our way back to Specter now.”

  With a quick tap against the translation controller, Wylie began pulling them away from Prospector as soon as Marshall closed the airlock. The abandoned spacecraft fell away quickly, spinning out of view as Wylie pitched around to align them for a short OMS burn. The little ship kicked for few seconds, adding velocity along its new vector. He motioned for the three to come forward, and pointed Marshall to the open copilot seat.

  “We’re not set up to scan the microwave or IR bands,” he explained. “Rosie, I need you to manually frequency-hop the VHF and UHF radios. Listen for anything weird.” He noticed the look she gave him. “Yeah, I know. Everything sounds weird out here. Listen up for anything that doesn’t sound like cosmic background noise.” He turned to Harper. “Nikki, maintain a listening watch on the emergency frequency. If they’re out here then I don’t want to miss them because we were chasing shadows.”

  They each plugged in spare headsets. “Sounds like a good plan, sir,” Rosie said.

  “Don’t know if it’s good, but it’s the only plan we have right now.”

  The asteroid soon began to fill the windows.

  “Nothing,” Marshall said. “If they’re out there, the mass is blocking their signal.”

  “Makes sense,” Wylie said, frustrated with himself. “Should’ve held back, kept our distance while we flew around the back side.”

  “Spiral search pattern?” Marshall wondered. “If it’s really them, we’re just picking up random EM energy. We’ve already got an idea of where it’s coming from. I think we’d have to get close no matter what.”

  “Grid search,” Rosie said. “Pick apart this rock one square at a time until we home in on them. Now all we need’s a map.”

  “Not like I have any clue what I’m doing,” Marshall said, “but Rosie’s right. We need a map, anything we can use to track our search pattern.”

  Harper pulled up an image of the asteroid. “We can at least start with quadrants and subdivide from there.” She pointed out prominent shapes and features. “We identify some landmarks to set our boundaries and get after it.”

  The radio tuned to Borman’s frequency crackled once before going quiet as they passed into the asteroid’s shadow.

  “Radio blackout,” Garver reported. “They’re in shadow, sir.”

  Simon put down his binoculars. “Yeah, I just lost sight of them.” He turned to Garver. “Then what’s that tell us?”

  Garver pulled at his chin, thinking. “That whatever we’re looking for has to be on this side of the ’roid. Or it’s a lot more energetic than just a drill and ISRU complex.”

  Simon pulled up his file on Prospector. “Any chance there’s some components not accounted for?” he asked. “Did we miss a drone or remote-sensing satellite?”

  Garver shook his head. “No sir. They deployed a couple of CubeSats to image it, simple cameras and magnetometers. Both have low IR signatures and their operating freqs are accounted for. This is different. Lots of EM radiation from that direction, sir. Like something just turned itself—”

  Before he could finish, the master alarm began blaring and the caution and warning panel suddenly lit up like a Christmas tree. “Propellant alarm! Temperature and pressure warnings from tank two,” Garver shouted from the control station.

  “Any warnings from the coolant loops?”

  “Negative, sir. Throughput’s normal but the ducts alongside two are heating up.”

  “Purge valves?”

  “Opened automatically, but delta-p is in the black band.” The valves, meant to keep internal pressure from reaching dangerous levels, couldn’t vent fast enough.

  Simon unsnapped a covered switch to jettison the tank. “Number two is—�
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  Their world swirled around them as the big hydrogen tank exploded.

  * * *

  “I got nothing, sir.” Rosie pulled off the headset and rubbed at her ear, her free hand cupped over the other. “Just background noise.”

  “No better here, sir,” Harper said. “It’s all static all across the spectrum. Nothing visual either.”

  “Wouldn’t expect much different this far out,” Wylie said, “not unless they have a signal beacon. Even if they did . . .” He trailed off, letting go of the thought.

  Marshall had not been able to let go as easily. “It’s been almost two weeks. If they’ve been out here that whole time, they’re long dead. But if that radio noise wasn’t them, where’d it come from?”

  “Everything’s in motion out here,” Wylie reminded him as the darkened asteroid drifted past outside. “It was worth a look. We’ll have line of sight back in a minute. I’m sure they had better luck.”

  “Report!” Simon shouted as he flew back down from the cupola.

  “Engineering present and accounted for,” a crewman called from his station. “We’re both here on the command deck, sir.”

  Simon turned to look behind, finding two wide-eyed petty officers hanging on to their seats and struggling to make sense of the situation. “Can you give me powerplant status?”

  One of the men held tightly to a pair of nearby handrails, fighting to read off figures and trends while the ship bucked like an angry bull beneath them. “Reactors went to safe mode, sir. Control rods fully engaged. Containment shells are intact.”

  He flew back up into the dome for a better look outside. They were rapidly becoming enveloped in a cloud of escaping gas. The Sun and RQ39 spun around them as their ship, knocked askew by the explosion, stumbled its way through a drunken spiral. The side-mounted hydrogen tank was split by a jagged wound that had opened up along its length, still venting propellant. Maneuvering thrusters pulsed wildly, automatically trying to compensate and right the ship.

  “Shut down the RCS!” he shouted down into the flight deck. “Before we run out of gas!”