But soon enough, Bud deployed from his satchel the first of the several bright, battery-powered lanterns. The gloom receded.
At mid-room, heavy cloth tarps wrapped several . . . things. Big things. The secret to interstellar travel?
"Ah, the Prime Directive." A moment too late, Liam noticed Mia's Mute was off.
"I've covered certain equipment," Larrok explained (was that an edge to her translated and synthesized voice?), "for everyone's safety. You wouldn't want to stumble into it."
Mia cupped her mic with a hand. "Except little is under power. So much for subtlety."
Bud's surveying seemed less frenetic than on his first trip aboard . . . maybe. Camera and headlights methodically explored the engine room. Examining:
—Enigmatic apparatuses along the great, curving arc of the hull (these devices left unmasked lest a tarp complicate isolating and plugging a leak?)
—Assorted vats, some as reflective as mirrors, some peeking out from within big electromagnets, some both. (Fuel? Propellant? Refrigerant? For a purpose he hadn't imagined?)
—A power-distribution frame, from which cable ran to a bulkhead-mounted outlet. (Did cable on the opposite side of that bulkhead run to the borrowed reactor?)
—A chute with a large patch connecting one of the larger tanks with outside. (For loading? For unloading?)
—Probable control consoles, their surface dark. (Aglow in infrared?)
—The towering, tarp-draped objects at mid-room.
—Overhead, a maze of ducts, pipes, cable trays, and catwalks.
—An arc of storage: cabinets, shelves, and drawers.
As Bud's viewpoint idly roamed, Carlotta probed here and there with ultrasound. Returning to one of her earliest test sites, a wad of adhesive-backed patches handy in a tool-belt pocket, she must have settled upon a specific worrisome vulnerability. "Larrok, ready when you are."
"Releasing nitrogen . . . now."
****
Faintly at first, but soon unmistakable, gas whooshed.
Larrok maintained a grip on the valve. "I'll take us quickly to standard shipboard pressure. When we had air to spare, the hull held at that pressure."
Carlotta's gaze flicked from her pressure gauge to a nearby, rippled expanse on the curved interior of the hull. "Understood."
Bud began another slow circuit of the engine room. As he set boot on the first rung of a ladder up to a catwalk, someone (Mia?) double-tapped a mic. Another sort of code? So it appeared, because Bud backed up and resumed his pacing.
Slowly, the gas pressure built.
Bud stopped near the chute and a silvery tank, headlamps illuminating a tangle of pipes. "There's a ruptured pipe here. I think I see corrosion."
"We know," Bolbon said. "That pipe burst in the accident. There must have been a trace contaminant in the fluid. That tank is for a system unused and unusable since then."
"Cryogenics, it would appear." Bud's voice was oh, so casual, even as he ignored repeated double-tapping. "Liquid helium, I imagine. For the big superconducting magnets in your antimatter containment."
"Very perceptive of—"
"Ship, mute. Bolbon, stop!"
"Sorry," he said.
"Unmute." For the humans, Larrok continued, "We will soon reach our standard pressure." However much soon exaggerated the rate of progress, it might cover for cutting off Bolbon. As she gradually closed the gas valve, the whooshing receded to a whistle, and then a whisper, before trailing off to silence. "We are now at standard."
"I read about eighty percent of Earth sea-level standard," Carlotta noted. "Call it Denver."
"A city on Earth at a somewhat high elevation," Ship explained.
And then . . . nothing. However anticlimactic: a good thing.
"Increasing pressure, slowly, as of"—Larrok reopened the valve, just a little—"now."
Round and round Bud went, his plodding circuit interrupted only once. Nearly falling, he went down on a knee, arms spread. She might have suspected pretense, if his stumble had offered a closeup view of anything more interesting than latched parts cabinets.
"Pick up your big, dumb feet," Liam said.
The pressure crept up—
Until, with an abrupt tearing sound, a keening alarm, and the flapping of tarps, a chunk of the hull the size of her head blew out.
****
Among the very many odd human expressions, one especially spoke to Larrok: to be asleep on one's feet.
Of course, a human had only the two feet. Forelimbs busy (when weren't they?), she wondered if she could be twice as tired. Whether, pausing her endless labors to settle horizontally on all six limbs, she could achieve three times as fatigued.
To rest, for even a moment, all but guaranteed she would sleep. So, somehow, she plodded on, mindful of yet another turn of phrase Wanduk had gleaned from his deep sampling of human broadcasts: there would be time for rest when she was dead.
And it wasn't as if only she were toiling to beyond exhaustion.
Teljod helped her reinforce the engine room with sturdy metal braces. Not yet ready to trust the newest patches, they remained in vacuum gear.
Carlotta and Liam were outside, welding onto the hull another segment of the improvised docking cradle.
Bud labored two decks forward, in a long corridor pressurized and illuminated for humans, assembling cradle segments from Andy's collection of metal bars, beams, and struts. Each segment in Carlotta's design was unique, whether to avoid, or to plate over, particular weak areas. Which, no longer in question, the hull had. In abundance.
That Wanduk—staying close to Bud to "lend a hand"—could not be trusted with a torch? It didn't matter. The old historian could be relied upon to keep a skeptical eye on this most intrusive of humans.
And in its cage in its private cabin just off the bridge, Hammy peacefully thrived.
Apart from Mia (bracing the bow of her little ship) and Bolbon (monitoring everything, including Hammy's breathing, from the bridge), no one could contribute. At least, Larrok saw no way a gol'g'roth solo, light-sculpture demonstration, or fitness routine would cobble together the docking structure any sooner. No matter how accomplished those three were at their respective interests, how esteemed back in civilization, in their present circumstances all were useless.
Each of them her responsibility nonetheless.
"We're returning . . . bay," Carlotta radioed. Helmet-camera views, hers and Liam's, showed them moving toward the open hatch. "We'll get a . . . and . . . out."
"Please repeat." As Larrok steadied another strut, limbs trembling with exhaustion, Teljod clambered up a ladder to weld the support at its top. With so much else to worry about, of course an intermittent static problem had arisen. Bolbon had yet to isolate its source. "I missed that."
"We're coming inside for the next cradle segment."
"Acknowledged." Plodding across the engine room, Larrok unbolted and turned a cabinet, opening a gap for positioning her next brace. Quicker than drilling new holes, she anchored the cabinet to the raised floor with weak magnets.
From between cabinets, something floated out.
A human computer. Compactly folded, with an apparent camera lens along an edge. Molded to the former cranny between cabinets. Where it had had an excellent view of the engine room. Also where Bud, during the pressure test, had "happened" to stumble.
Ground beneath Larrok's boot, the human device sparked. Its lens popped off. "Bolbon, I've solved the static problem."
"Can you join me?" Bolbon said. "As our new friends might say, we have a more important fish to fry."
****
Click-click-click.
Liam scarcely noticed the noise, intent on his welding. That join finished and his torch extinguished for safety, he edged to the left, puzzling over spray-painted markers. He'd hoped the stern's measured roll into sunlight would simplify his work, but the shifting shadows of a growing thicket of struts only made the viewing worse.
He had lost track how long
he'd been out here. How many welds he had done. How many welds remained to be done. Beyond: too long and too many. With a sigh, he relit his torch.
Click-click-click.
The recall signal? Fixated on locating the next weld site, he said, "You're kidding."
Click-click-click, Mia repeated. Because it had to be she. Only Mia had a handheld mic to be toggled like that. Click-click-click.
"Larrok," he announced on the common channel, "Andy's got a comm glitch. Carlotta and I need to check it out."
Bud chimed in, "Give me a minute. I'll come, too."
Carlotta's welding torch winked out. "Ready."
"Acknowledged," Larrok said. "Please keep me informed."
After waiting for Bud to suit up, Liam was the last one aboard Andy. He popped the helmet of his hard-shell suit. Energy-bar wrappers and a pizza crust floated in the dayroom. Mia stress-eating? Her news must be bad.
He was pretty sure he knew what it was.
Carlotta, aside from her helmet also still suited up, was in the corridor leading back to the cargo module. Mia was in the dayroom. Forward, Bud's mop of black hair peeked over the back of the pilot's seat. Struts newly installed on the bridge constricted him more than ever.
Mia looked . . . defeated. "I'm fine, and so is the ship. My apologies for worrying you, though I'm worried, too. I'm angry. And, well, I don't have the words."
Carlotta cleared her throat. "Just tell us what's going on."
Mia gestured forward. (At the bridge? Beyond, toward Greater Good?) "Nothing I didn't already know. For that matter, nothing you don't already know. But the message from Patel"—Gina Patel, CEO of IPMCo—"makes it official. We've got a day. After that, not all our remaining delta-vee can put the two ships into a reach-us-in-time orbit."
"There must be something we can do," Carlotta insisted.
"You suppose I haven't looked?" Mia's voice cracked. "I even ran the numbers for if we jettisoned all the mining gear. You know what that buys us? A few hours. Our cargo scarcely registers compared to the other ship's mass." She gave Liam a wan smile. "It'd take longer to manhandle it all off our ship."
"So, a day," Carlotta said.
"A day," Mia repeated.
However much they wished otherwise, an impossible deadline. Maybe with four days.
Someone had to say it, so Liam stepped up. "We're expected to cut and run. Putting ourselves into a better orbit, while leaving our friends out there to . . . die?"
"Yes, to us leaving," Mia said. "The boss doesn't want us to die. I don't want us to die. I certainly don't want us to throw our lives away in a futile gesture of solidarity. For what it's worth, the reactor we've provided gives them some time. Maybe—and I have to believe this—even long enough for someone to come up with a plan that saves them."
Uh-huh. Or to drag out their deaths.
"Why the cryptic recall?" Carlotta asked. "Are we just bugging out? No explanation given?"
"It was a judgment call." Mia grimaced. "Don't believe for a second I'm happy about it. I had to allow for the possibility they'd take hostages. Why wouldn't they work down to the wire? Or past the wire, because what would they have to lose? And why wouldn't Larrok believe the best way to inspire humans to some new, heroic, rescue effort is keeping our lives on the line?"
"Mia," Bud shouted from the bridge. "Larrok is hailing."
"Answer that our comms are restored, and we'll get back to her."
"I doubt she ever bought our comms being down. She says she has a proposal."
****
After a brief delay, the humans opened a video channel with two windows. One window showed Bud, seated on Andy's bridge; the other showed a tiny room with the remaining three.
Mia asked, "What is this about a proposal?"
Larrok began, "An admission first. Just as you are curious about us, we have monitored your communications. We know you plan to leave soon, and we understand the reasons."
"In your position," Mia said, "I'd have listened, too. I don't suppose our encryption represented much of a challenge." (Off-camera, across the bridge, Bolbon bobbed agreement.) "So, again, what's the proposal?"
Extremities nervously flexing, Larrok said, "Almost since we began, I have worried that a docking cradle could not be built on the required schedule. In our spare time"—and she wondered what translation Ship would offer for her self-deprecating chitter—"we, mostly Bolbon, have been developing a contingency plan."
"We're listening," Mia said. (In its own voice, Ship added, "She is skeptical.")
Why wouldn't Mia be? "Bolbon?"
"Until the accident," Bolbon said, "my sole duty was navigation. I set out to determine what, other than your planned maneuver, our joined ships could accomplish. There is something. For another eleven Earth days, with a docking cradle, we have an option."
"How conven—" Bud began.
"Sorry," Mia said. "A momentary technical difficulty. Please explain."
Which Bolbon did: of an asteroid orbiting somewhat deeper in this asteroid belt. That it and the ships in their common orbit were converging. Docking with it would keep them from receding yet farther from Earth. And compared to the planned maneuver for which time had all but run out, Andy should have fuel to spare for such a rendezvous.
" ‘Should,' " Mia echoed.
"There is ambiguity," Bolbon admitted. "I found a candidate asteroid just two days ago. That's too soon to characterize an orbit. I hope your astronomers will know."
"I'll be good," Larrok heard faintly. Louder (Mia having reactivated his mic?), Bud said, "Send me everything you have about this asteroid."
Bolbon blinked inner eyelids inquiringly at Larrok. Concerned the file would reveal something about advanced sensor technology?
"Do as he requested," she said.
****
The mood aboard Andy was . . . what? Somber. Anxious. Twitchy. And more than anything? Doubtful.
For whole minutes no one had asked when astronomers on Earth might answer Bolbon. Leaving Liam to worry, even as he struggled out of his hard-shell suit, about other things.
"Eureka!" came the shout from Bud's coffin-like berth. He emerged moments later. "Mia, we need to get Larrok and Bolbon back on the line."
She did.
"Larrok," Bud said, "I'm a planetary geologist. My specialty is asteroids, and it's why I'm here. It's also why I have an extensive database on my datasheet about asteroids. And in that database I found one asteroid, survey identification (887906) 2033 DZ, consistent with your sightings. Decent-sized, call it one klick by two by two and a half. I'm sending Bolbon everything I have on it."
"Thank you," Larrok said.
"Forward it to me, too." Not waiting for Bolbon, Liam calculated. "I believe we can get both ships there. But"—he swallowed hard—"that doesn't address the larger problem. We'll be farther out, and more so by the day, than where a relief mission can reach before we're out of consumables."
"By how much?" Carlotta asked. "Which consumables? Maybe we can ration."
Liam double-checked the inventory. "All of them."
And it wasn't like they could ration oh-two.
Larrok said, "For so few of us, Greater Good's water reserves are sufficient for many years. We are happy to share it. We can generate oxygen for you from the water, just as we generate oxygen for ourselves."
"Food can be stretched," Carlotta said—only it came out a question.
"To an extent," Mia agreed. "What's the inventory say?"
Liam looked again. "On a lean diet, maybe nine months. Twelve on half rations." Longer only if they went all Donner Party, and caught the big guy unawares. Bud wasn't one to find it amusing.
Hell, he didn't even find it amusing. Circumstances were that dire.
"How soon could Earth get a relief mission out there?" Carlotta asked. "Realistically?"
To where no human, boldly or otherwise, had gone before. Bringing along . . . what would a rescue yet deeper into the Belt entail? Liam shrugged. How could he answer? How
could any of them?
"Larrok, we have to do some serious thinking." Mia dropped the connection. "None of that thinking being allowed to interrupt us prepping Andy for departure in"—she glanced at a timer running on the bridge—"nineteen hours."
****
With eight hours to go, a vid reached them from Earth. Mia streamed Gina Patel's message to the dayroom display.
"Every genius in the company has looked at this. Every genius, hell, anywhere, has. The fastest anyone predicts to mount a relief mission and get it to Bolbon's asteroid is fifteen months. That's if everything goes right." She sighed. "Which never happens. Planning alone for the Nugget mission took six months. Customizing and provisioning Andrew Carnegie took another year. No matter how much money is thrown at the problem, only so much parallelism is possible. Only so many corners can be cut.
"You four have been through a lot, and I know this isn't what you want to hear. It's nothing anyone on the planet wants to hear. But we're out of time. We need to get you guys to where we can retrieve you."
"That's it, then," Mia said. She opened a channel to Greater Good. "I expect you've heard what we just did. Sorry."
"I have." Larrok's mandibles slithered in the unnerving manner that always reminded Liam of an old Predator movie. "That said, since our last conversation I have refined the contingency plan."
Slowly, sadly, Mia shook her head. "There's no way, Larrok. Water and oxygen aren't enough. Our food cannot last long enough. Not even close. Within eight hours, however reluctantly, we must leave. We will leave."
"What if," Larrok asked, "we also feed you?"
Liam blinked. "Can't happen. I mean, I can't imagine our biochemistries are compatible."
"They're not," Larrok agreed. "My specialty, before this responsibility was thrust upon me, was life support. Analyzing packaged human meals left behind and a few of Hammy's food pellets, I found many biochemical incompatibilities. But none of these differences presents a problem. I can, and have, duplicated those pellets from our basic hydrocarbon feedstock. Better than passing every comparison I made, Hammy ate synthesized pellets without hesitation or consequence."
"We're not hamsters," Carlotta said.
Grantville Gazette Volume 93 Page 19