Grantville Gazette Volume 93

by Bjorn Hasseler

  The nearer they drifted, the more detail resolved. Scorches. Melts, congealed in ripples and shallow craters. Whole expanses, especially to stern, eroded.

  "I take it back," Liam said.

  "You take what back?" Mia asked.

  "Past uncharitable thoughts."

  Because contact with Greater Good would be nothing like docking with Nugget. For the latter, they carried harpoons and inflatable bumpers. Anchored from afar by steel-wire cables, electric motors would reel first the detached cargo module, then Andy itself, to the asteroid.

  Except to call their projectiles harpoons was like describing the Pacific Ocean as damp. Nugget was, well, a solid metal nugget. Their "harpoons" were, in all but name, high-speed, armor-piercing, explosive-tipped munitions. Not any way to contact the wreck.

  With the stricken behemoth looming before him, the image in Liam's rearview camera seemed ever punier. An habitual mental model of Andy as an éclair tucked inside a doughnut shrank to a cinnamon stick within a Lifesaver. In either case, fragile.

  "Uncharitable thoughts," Mia repeated. "Care to be more specific?"

  "About you declining to attempt docking without a cradle." His food-track mind now reimagined such an encounter as shoving a pimento into a very large olive. And if that abused hull were sturdier than it appeared? Then the encounter might go more like a moth splatting on a car windshield. "Good call. Which isn't to say I'm finding this jaunt any fun."

  The range dropped to seven meters. As, with the merest puffs from a gas pistol, he edged from behind to alongside the reactor, the reported range dropped further.

  This close, Greater Good seemed . . . enormous. The reactor they brought could crank out twenty kilowatts; in many a single-family home, an electrical furnace drew that much power. It seemed about as adequate to the task as harnessing Hammy. Well, if there had been gravity to keep Hammy put on a hamster wheel.

  Nearing four meters, Bud took aim. "Time to tap the brakes."

  Liam raised his gas gun. Bud did the same. "On my mark. Three . . . two . . . one . . . mark." Together, they let loose blasts of compressed nitrogen. Their approach slowed. "Stopping in three . . . two . . . one . . . mark."

  Bud was an instant too slow in releasing his trigger. Liam's first remedial puffs just reversed rather than halted their spin. Finally, and without entangling themselves in their safety tethers, they straightened out.

  Whereupon Mia demanded, "How's your gas supply holding up?"

  Because if their maneuvering reserves dipped too low she'd haul them back for refills. Delaying relief to the aliens.

  Liam pretended glancing down to the handle's gauge. "My first gun is down about a third, boss." A fraction that, in the greater scheme of things, might be said to describe the half-used-up he remembered. Besides, why carry spares if not to use them? "We won't need as much propellant coming back, not lugging the reactor."

  Bud just grunted.

  "Uh-huh," Mia said. "Do you remember I'm watching through your helmet cams?"

  Making it Liam's turn to grunt.

  They drifted still closer. Quick spritzes undid some residual spin. As two spacesuited aliens stepped aside from the yawning hatch, more gas blasts all but arrested the men's approach.

  Through the open hatch, Liam studied the aliens.

  Both were Doltan. If formfitting spacesuits accentuated certain insectile aspects—three thoracic segments and six limbs—helmet visors silvered against the Sun's glare hid their huge, glittering, compound eyes. But unlike any familiar bug, these bent upright between front and middle segments, freeing a pair of extremities as hands. In videos when the aliens had had the power to broadcast, that stance had always struck Liam as centaur-like. But in shadow and with their faces obscured, they gave off a different vibe: from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the famous John Tenniel illustration of a caterpillar seated on a mushroom. But in the present circumstance, sans hookah.

  Coasting through the open hatch, tapping the brakes yet again, Bud's pistol expired with a sputter. They stopped, centimeters above the deck. Remagnetized boots pulled Liam, clang!, and a moment later, Bud, to the deck. They released their tethers to Andy.

  Sunlight streaming obliquely through the open hatchway left much of the hold in darkness. The men flipped up reflective sun shields and lit helmet interior peanut bulbs, revealing themselves.

  The Doltans raised their visors. Liam shivered: at fist-sized fly eyes on chitinous dome-heads. At side by side, serrated mandibles fit to crack the alien equivalents to coconuts and clams. He was just as happy their helmets didn't have interior lighting. The shadowy view was jarring enough.

  "Switch to the public channel, gentlemen," Mia reminded. "I've been keeping our new friends apprised on that band. Remember, you're also speaking to posterity."

  Before leaving Andy, Bud had won the virtual (just not the same) coin toss. He monotoned, "On behalf of Humankind, we bid you greeting."

  The taller alien stepped closer, soundlessly striking and rubbing mandibles. Seconds later Liam's radio offered, in a synthesized voice, "Welcome aboard Greater Good."

  ****

  Larrok had seen humans often enough—in Station's broadcast archive. She had imagined herself prepared. But observed in person? Or, anyway, what little their helmets revealed? They looked . . . odd. Delicate. Just as, receding to a safer distance, their ship looked delicate.

  Only theirs was not the vessel about to expire.

  "I am Larrok, captain of this vessel." Ship would translate and broadcast her words. She gestured. "This is Wanduk."

  The shorter human, lips moving, stepped closer. "Liam," reported Ship.

  "Bud," apparently said the other. The AI rendered this second voice in a different timbre.

  Larrok had chosen the cold-sleep bay, no matter the appalling memories it evoked—of so many deaths in their first accident, of so many bodies abandoned at the remote monitoring station—for its ample room to install and wire up the alien device. That this happened to be near the engine room was a bonus. But as Bud's head swiveled (a half circle's range! How very alien that motion!), she recognized the subconscious element to her decision. Of every entrance to Greater Good, only this vacated hold revealed none of her ship's proscribed technologies.

  She hoped.

  Liam, all the while, was studying her.

  Larrok knew their names from radioed exchanges during the human ship's approach. Neither was the name she had most expected. "What of your captain?"

  "This is she," Mia called. Ship assigned this voice a third timbre. "I'm also the pilot. It seemed most prudent for me to remain on my bridge until we can safely dock."

  "I understand." Larrok backed into the shadowed depths of the hold. "I would like to install the reactor here."

  "Can do," Liam said. "But first, any chance of turning on some lights?"

  "Sorry, but no," she said. "Compressed hydrogen to supply our emergency fuel cells is all but gone."

  "Headlights it is then." As Liam spoke, helmet-mounted lamps—bright, but directional—came on. His head tipped down, the better to illuminate the way forward.

  Bud's headlights also lit. "Larrok, your helmet lamps don't even seem to be on. Or do you see in longer wavelengths than us and your helmet has only far-red helmet lamps?"

  Larrok had narrowed the wavelength range of her and Wanduk's helmet lamps. She had taken it upon herself to contact Earth. That decision could yet save the surviving passengers and crew. It might also prove a catastrophic error. Keeping her visitors in (what was for them) the literal dark was for their own protection. Any species with fusion weapons ought not to be carelessly exposed to antimatter technology.

  Bud's head paused in that uncanny swiveling. "So, I'm guessing you guys come from a world with a red or orange star. Which is it?"

  Demonstrating, as though she needed any reminder, that every interaction, every moment together, risked revealing something. However crude their technology, humans were not stupid.

  Wanduk
finally spoke. "Perhaps we can focus on getting the power flowing?"

  Thank you, Larrok thought.

  "Then let's get to work." Bud resumed scanning the hold, that examination now coming across as practical rather than prying. He pointed toward the bulkhead to the left of the still open hatch. "Larrok, we should put the reactor there."

  Liam added, "The reactor is optimized for simplicity and reliability, meant to deliver power unattended for years. The tradeoff was with efficiency. Lots of energy is dissipated as heat. Contact with the hull makes it easier to dump that heat."

  "No need," she said. The waste was appalling, since heat could be efficiently turned to electrical power. As long as there had been deuterium for fusion, the ship had obtained its electrical power that way. Efficient thermionic conversion had to be unfamiliar to the humans. Also, one more technology she felt duty-bound to disguise.

  And yet, reduced to risking lives on primitive fission, she could appreciate simplicity and reliability. Excerpts from Station's broadcast archives—of disasters called Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima—showed she dare not take safety for granted. A core meltdown aboard would be the end of them.

  "No need," she repeated.

  "Wherever this goes," Liam said, "you'll need heavy-duty cable run to whatever distributes power around the ship. Do you have enough? We can bring a spool from Andy."

  "I have ample." Larrok stomp-clanked a hindboot where she stood at mid-deck. "Here, please. As for any waste heat, right now everyone aboard will welcome it."

  "It's your ship," Bud said.

  (Ship rendered his remark in disapproving tones. Had the AI interpreted correctly?)

  Liam said, "We can't see well in here with just our headlamps. The reactor is massive, and I'd prefer not to bash it into anything critical. Could you and Wanduk carry it?"

  "I understand," Larrok said. "But after much deprivation, we are not at our strongest. It would be better if you moved it."

  "Bud, lead on. We brought this across the Solar System. What's another few steps?"

  As the humans proceeded, Ship, in its normal voice, reported, "Bud has reverted to a private channel." The encryption for which was laughably rudimentary.

  ****

  With headlight spots cast into every recess of the cargo bay, Bud continued peering about. "Have you noticed? Not a single handhold. This ship was never intended for micro-gee occupancy. That's gotta mean any exercise equipment aboard isn't designed, as ours is, for use in micro-gee. No wonder they're feeble. They must have, or anyway have had—"

  "Ixnay," Mia interrupted.

  Liam had the same intuition: artificial gravity. Ditto, that they'd be foolish to believe starfaring aliens couldn't tap Andy's private comm channel. It wasn't as if mere helmet electronics could support serious encryption. But Mia, beyond sharing Liam's concern, had been inspired. Pig Latin wasn't a "language" the alien monitoring station would have encountered eavesdropping on old Earth broadcasts. Not that cracking the code was apt to take long.

  A few awkward, clomping paces into the cargo hold, they set down their load. Gingerly, they removed its protective padding. With Bud and the Doltans holding the reactor immobile, Liam spot-welded its pedestal mount to the deck.

  From his satchel he extracted a short cable. One end bore a standard plug; two inner wires, stripped of their insulation, protruded from the opposite end. "I need some power cable with your kind of connector. Copper would be best."

  "As you had requested." Larrok offered her own two-wire cable stub, one end showing a quite different plug. "Also copper. It will connect"—she gestured at a dark corner—"to a voltage converter and test load."

  In a hard-shell suit no task ever went easily. Any task demanding fine-motor control—soldering cable stubs, for example—was worse. Struggling to wind electrical tape around the joint in the kludged power wire, Liam lowered his expectations further. Also, fumed a lot.

  "So," Bud opined, his helmet headlights once more sweeping about, "this entire deck has what looks like bunches of electrical sockets and plumbing connections. What are those for?"

  "Ixnay!" Liam and Mia reminded in near unison. Because her predeparture directive had been Keep your eyes open, and not Snoop.

  Larrok, intent on configuring her voltage converter, test load, and instrumentation, disregarded question and interjections.

  Wanduk cheerfully (presuming the translator conveyed emotion as well as speech) replied, "Something too sophisticated for me. I do, however, know quite a bit about advances in water-wheel technology during the Late Middle Interregnum period."

  If prudence demanded Larrok have a spacesuited companion, it likewise recommended someone savvy. Wanduk, or so Liam mused, might have been selected for an absence of savvy.

  Eventually, Mia called. "Guys, I've been monitoring your vitals. You're overheated, low on water, and, I'd guess, exhausted. How much longer?"

  Bud raised his hands, fingers splayed.

  Working without armor-like gauntlets? Maybe. "Twenty or so minutes till the smoke test," Liam guesstimated. "If that goes well, we can head back five or ten minutes after."

  "That's pushing it," Mia said. "I don't need you guys getting dehydrated. In a half hour, if your fat fingers remain a problem"—because, of course, she still watched through their helmet cameras—"I'm pulling you out. Ms. Skinny Fingers here can finish."

  Aboard Andy, Ms. Skinny Fingers snorted.

  "Acknowledged." A response that Liam, never one to quit mid-task, assured himself differed from agreement. Taping the solder joint in the cable's ground wire went a little faster. Winding duct tape around the wire pair went faster still. Securing the fat, doubly-wrapped splice in a glob of quick-set insulating foam didn't resist past spewing annoying spatter. "I'm ready."

  "I, as well," Larrok declared.

  Liam connected the electrical generator to the voltage converter—managing to leave unsaid just how much the jury-rigged cable resembled a snake digesting a rabbit. "Once the reactor side is on, it self-regulates. Power output rises with demand till the reactor reaches its capacity. Output decreases as demand drops. The moderator rod"—he pointed—"is the single control. All the way in, the reactor is off. Withdraw the rod, and the reactor starts up."

  "I understand," Larrok said.

  Liam pulled a hardcopy sheet from his satchel. "If your translator learned to read from closed-captioned or educational broadcasts, here's all you'll need to operate the reactor."

  "It can read." She accepted the paper. "Thank you. Shall we turn it on?"

  Liam nodded. "Be my guest."

  Larrok did—and her meter jumped. On her test load, LEDs glowed dimly. (Dim to Liam's eyes. For all he knew, those LEDs were blazing infrared beacons.)

  "Successful power transfer to the test load," Liam announced. "No smoke. And the crowd goes wild."

  Mia whistled her approval. "Well done, gentlemen, and none too soon. It's past time for you to stroll home. Larrok, do you require further assistance at this time?"

  "I do not," Larrok said.

  Both Doltan had lowered their helmet visors. Even in startup, the reactor put out a fair amount of heat. If Liam didn't yet sense radiant energy, he felt the amped-up whoosh of chilled air as his suit compensated. In infrared wavelengths, the reactor must already have been glowing. And once it reached the operating temperature of 800o Celsius?

  He shrugged—not that, in the hard-shell suit, anyone could see. Larrok seemed capable. If glare or heat buildup meant they had to relocate the reactor? Then they would. They'd be back soon enough regardless, because a docking cradle wasn't going to assemble and attach itself.

  Liam began stuffing tools back into his satchel. "On our way, boss."

  ****

  Larrok tromped on all sixes toward the exterior hatch. "Liam, Bud, I thank you for your timely help."

  Bud glanced up from packing his share of tools. "How about a quick tour before we go?"

  "Not today," Larrok said. Not until she coul
d spare more thought to hiding advanced technology from prying eyes.

  Nor was that even her immediate priority. She had studied the reactor's design, in radioed conversation and as images transmitted during the human ship's approach. The generator was an absurd device, converting less than a third of the reactor's heat into useful electrical power. If that trickle sufficed to keep them in oxygen and food, this was barely the case. Alas. She had so anticipated the indulgence of a hot meal. Everyone had.

  "Much work remains," she continued. For those few words, at least, she was entirely candid. "To begin, I must block this blinding far-red glare." And within innocuous screening, she was eager to deploy an array of thermionic converters. Those would more than double the available electrical power. "Also, of course, run cable to the main power-distribution frame."

  "Till next time, then." Liam, whether taking a hint or obeying his own captain, gave Bud a shove. "C'mon, big guy. Time to go."

  She permitted herself a wordless chitter of relief as the humans leapt toward their compact vessel, within whose open airlock another suited figure stood waiting to assist them.

  ****

  After seeming eons—had he ever been this exhausted?—Liam was finally settled, with Snickers and a bulb of hot coffee, in familiar surroundings. After his return leap. (After Carlotta—standing by in Andy's air lock just in case—made her own jump to retrieve Bud. He was as klutzy unburdened as when shepherding a reactor.) After wrestling pallets from the dayroom back into the cargo module. After, having cleared elbowroom, extracting himself from his hard-shell suit. After stowing that hard-shell suit. After a quick, much-needed sponge bath.

  Having backed off Andy to a safe distance and transferring watch duty to Carlotta, Mia joined the men in the dayroom. The women, one after the other, had used the tiny bridge to wriggle out of their counterpressure suits.

  Mia said, "Well done, guys. While you were busy at your ablutions, Larrok radioed. She has power flowing to their critical systems. They've begun generating oxygen, reserving the hydrogen to replenish their emergency fuel cells, resumed scrubbing carbon dioxide, and turned up the heat. She thanks us, you two in particular."