by Zach Hughes
“John F. Kennedy, this is Moon Control.”
“Moon Control, this is J.F.K.”
“J.F.K., Admiral Pinkerton speaking. Please alert your crew. We have received a bomb threat. Repeat, there is a bomb threat directed against the Kennedy.”
“I am now going live to Moon Control,” J.J. said. “Moon Control, this is Kennedy. Details, please.”
“J.F.K., a team of Earthfirsters have seized control station eight-five with its communications intact. We estimate the number of terrorists at five. We are in contact with them. They have made two demands. One, the Kennedy returns moonside. Two, we broadcast, and I quote, ‘our guilt,’ unquote, to the world.”
J.J. shook his head impatiently. “Details on bomb threat, please.”
“Stand by, J.F.K. The following is a recording of our communications with the terrorist in control of station eight-five.”
There was a click and then an excited young voice. “Moon Control, Moon Control, this is the voice of freedom. Listen carefully. We are in control of station eight-five. We are heavily armed. We can resist any attack. Listen carefully. The folly of imperialism, the spaceship you call the John F. Kennedy, will be destroyed unless you meet the following requirements. One, you will order the Kennedy to return to Moon Base immediately. Two, you will broadcast to the world an abject apology for your wastefulness in allowing such a crime to be perpetrated on the people of the Earth, for using materials and money which should have gone to feed our starving millions. Three, you will provide a ship of the Explorer class to transport this group of freedom fighters to a free port Earthside.”
The voice of Admiral Pinkerton was back. “We had them repeat it. He repeated it word for word as if he were reading.”
“Moon Control, did you ask for details about a possible bomb on board the Kennedy.”
“That is affirmative. They merely read the message again.”
Dom cut into the communications. “Admiral, this is Dominic Gordon. Can you patch me into direct contact with the terrorists?”
“That is affirmative, Captain Gordon. In fact, they have the facilities to monitor this channel in station eight-five.”
Dom tended to forget his new rank.
“I want to speak with them direct, admiral,” he said.
“Hold one. You will be notified when we’ve established contact.”
As Dom waited, the others were already in action. The Kennedy was the most instrumented ship ever built, and it was possible to check every inch of her with instruments. Signals were sent. Servos probed and measured. Every gram of material aboard the ship was recorded carefully in Doris’ computer. She worked rapidly. She had the computer check everything aboard, clothing, personal effect, supplies. Every gram aboard was recorded, and two checks did not find even a tiny additional amount of mass. The check was complete before the radio patch was made.
“Dom,” Doris said. “There’s nothing aboard this ship we don’t know about.”
“Unless it was integrated into a structural piece during construction,” Dom said. “Then it would show as a portion of the original mass.”
“My guess is that they’re bluffing,” J. J. said.
“It’s a good possibility, but can we gamble on it?” Dom asked.
“If we give in and take her back, she’ll never leave the moon again. If we make that broadcast to the world it will have the same effect as blowing her up in space,” J.J. said.
“With a small difference,” Neil said. “If we take her back we’ll be alive.”
“Do you think you’d enjoy life as a groundling, Neil?” J.J. asked.
“You’ve got a point,” Neil said.
“Jensen,” Dom said into the communications system, “I want you to go over the engineroom with everything you’ve got, including your fingertips. The rest of us will use portable sniffers. Tune the sniffers to plastique. That’s the material most used by the Firsters. Ellen, you take the food supplies. If there’s a bomb aboard, my best guess is in supplies. If it was built into the ship, then I’d say they’d aim for the engineroom, where it would do the most damage. Doris, run me this problem. Give me a reading on what it would take to make it seem that the Kennedy is decelerating and then turning back to the moon. They might be measuring the strength of our radio transmissions. We want them to think we’re following their orders, at least for a while. Unless they carried it in with them, and it’s unlikely, they don’t have visual equipment in station eight-five.”
It took Doris three minutes. “I’ve set up an automatic power curve into the radio. The signals will grow slightly weaker at a decelerating ratio and then grow stronger.”
“J.F.K., this is Moon Control. Ready on your radio patch. Go ahead station eight-five.”
“Gordon,” said the young and tense voice, “this is the voice of freedom.”
“The voice of a punk, you mean,” Dom said. “I want you to listen and listen carefully. We’re calling your bluff. We’ve checked every atom of weight aboard this ship, and you’re lying. There is no bomb aboard. We’re heading out and we’ll continue to accelerate. I just wanted the personal satisfaction of telling you, because in about one minute I’m going to order Moon Security to blast station eight-five with one small newk. Burn happily, punk.”
He waited, eyes troubled.
The young voice seemed to be just short of hysteria.
“You’re the punk, Gordon. You’re the one who is robbing the people. You’re the one who’s going to die, you and all the other parasites aboard. We can detonate the bomb from here, or if you use your newk on us it will go off with its own timer. Either way you’re dead. This is your last chance to turn back. You’ll be given a fair trial before a tribunal of the people.”
“Punk,” Dom said, “you have about one minute to live. You don’t seem to understand that we’re wise to you. You’re all mouth. There’s no way you punks could get a bomb aboard. No way. Goodbye, punk. Moon Control, this is Captain Gordon. I order that in exactly one minute you send one small nuclear warhead right down the gut of station eight-five. J.F.K. over and out.”
The next voice was different, low, smooth, unexcited. “Good try, Captain Gordon,” the man’s voice said. “We who love freedom don’t believe in needless shedding of blood, nor in the waste of resources. If we did, I would push the button myself. However, we would like to salvage the Kennedy for scrap to build factories for production of consumer goods for the people.”
“Anyone recognize the voice?” Dom asked, over the intership circuits.
“I assure you, Captain Gordon, that there is a bomb and that it will go off at a time of our choosing. I can guarantee that the Kennedy will be destroyed totally. I can promise you that she’ll burst open like a melon and that all of you will die with her.”
“I’ve got him,” Art said into Dom’s earphones. “He’s service, in charge of loading the water. His name is Bensen.”
“The damned water,” Dom said, throwing aside the phones. “It’s in the damned water. He said we’d burst open like a melon. One small charge wouldn’t burst this ship open unless the force were compressed by a large volume of water. Let’s go.”
“Captain Gordon?” the smooth, calm voice said.
Dom went back to the radio. “Go ahead.”
“I am pleased to note that in spite of your brave talk you are presently decelerating.”
“You have radio scanners, then,” Dom said.
“We do. We estimate full stop and turnaround at 2130 Zulu.”
“Hold one,” Dom said. Then, leaving the communicator open, “Please give me an estimate of turnaround time.”
“2134 Zulu,” Doris said.
“Station eight-five,” Dom said, “turnaround time is 2134 Zulu.”
“Noted,” Bensen said. “And now Admiral Pinkerton will make his broadcast to Earth.”
Dom said, “The broadcast will be made at 2134 Zulu, our turnaround time.”
There was a silence. He could imagine the terrori
sts consulting among themselves, trying to figure out why he insisted on waiting two hours and forty minutes before making the broadcast. Evidently they decided that the delay could do their cause no harm, since the Kennedy was obeying orders.
“That is agreeable,” Bensen said. “It will give us time to pass the text of the statement to be broadcast to the people of Earth to Moon Control.”
“J.J., take communications,” Dom said. He grinned. Hell, command was not so difficult after all. “Neil, it’s you and me. We have two hours and thirty-nine minutes to find that bomb.”
“I’m with you,” Neil said.
Neil was into his suit before Dom. He had more practice. He checked Dom’s life-support gear and turned to allow Dom to check his backpack. Less than five minutes had elapsed when they entered a lock chamber offering access to the hold, that vast space which made up the main volume of the ship and which was filled with thousands of tons of pure water from Earthside purification plants.
“Any idea where to start?” Dom asked, his internal suit radio on open channel to be broadcast throughout the ship.
“I have estimated that it would take a minimum of five kilos of plastique to blow her,” Doris said. Her voice was cool, professional. “However, with the masses I’m dealing with in the hold I can’t distinguish so small a weight. The problem is compounded by a minor difference in temperature in various hold sections, enough to vary weight per unit of water.”
“Make a note of that,” Dom said. “In future well want to be able to scan the interior of the hold. Right now we have to figure on combing every inch of the hold, right?”
“I’m afraid so,” Doris said.
“Maximum effect would be obtained by placing the charge near the geometric center,” Neil said.
“Good thinking,” Dom said. “Well start from the center bulkheads and work toward bow and stern. I’ll go sternward, Neil. I’d say check the hogging girders and bulkhead supports first. Bensen must be sharp enough to realize that convection currents will be set up in this mass of water, so if he wanted to keep his blast near the center of mass, he’d secure it so that it wouldn’t float around on the currents.”
“That’s a roger,” Neil said.
The lock filled and opened into the hold. Dom could feel the psychological weight of tons of water on him as he moved out into the vastness. The blackness was total. Their lights made lances of brightness into the pit ahead of them. They swam side by side through huge bays of the hold and reached the center after what seemed to Dom to be miles of swimming. They were back to back for a moment, light beams pointing in different directions. Dom moved off, moving his head to direct the light. Reaching the first system of supports, he began a swift but careful search. He noted the time required to completely examine the bulkhead and did a calculation in his head. At that rate the bomb would explode, estimating that the terrorists would act when the turnaround time came and went and no broadcast went out to Earth, before they could cover half of the hold area.
He had never liked being underwater. He was a creature of the openness of space. He wanted space around him, the reach of interplanetary distance, not the oppressive weight of a liquid. He fought the urge to swim upward, although there was no up, to reach for the surface and for air. Even in the smallest ships he had never felt so confined as he did by the dark weight of the water in the hold. He forced himself to breathe evenly, for he tended to pant. He swam onward toward the next set of girders.
“I spent too much time at that first bulkhead,” he said.
“Roger,” Neil answered. “And ditto.”
“And if we just hit the most likely places we could miss the mother,” Dom said. “There’s no choice. We just have to search carefully and hope that he put it near the center so that well find it before turnaround time.”
“Captain Gordon,” Ellen Overman said, “I am qualified for life-support-system work.”
“Do you remember from your indoctrination how the internal supports are constructed?” Dom asked.
“Roger,” Ellen said.
“Suit up, then,” Dom said. “Come in through lock four and move toward the bow. If you see anything don’t try to handle it yourself.”
“I am also qualified to handle explosives,” Ellen said.
“Dom,” Art said, “I can suit up, too.”
“Not a chance,” Dom said. “Not with your lungs.”
“I can handle it,” Art said.
“Stay where you are, and that’s an order,” Dom said.
“You’ve been down fifteen minutes,” Doris said. “Two hours and twenty-four minutes to turnaround.”
“They might give us a few extra minutes,” Dom said.
“Don’t count on it,” J.J. said. “We’d better figure them to panic when we don’t start that broadcast on time. By that time that bomb had better be in free space a long way from the hull. If Bensen and his nuts get the idea we’re trying to be tricky they’ll push the button without a moment’s hesitation.”
“I can’t figure why they want the Kennedy to return to the moon anyhow,” Paul Jensen said. “It would be to their advantage to blow her up in space. Then they could be sure she’d never fly again.”
“That’s the way I had it figured,” Dom said, “when I told them we wouldn’t broadcast until we were turned. I figured they’d blow the bomb the minute the broadcast was over. I just didn’t want to worry anyone with my private fears.”
“You two are little rays of sunshine,” Neil said.
Dom was swimming around and through a maze of hogging girders. His light picked up dozens of little angles which would offer excellent spots to plant a bomb.
“I think we can figure it that way,” J.J. said. “The minute the broadcast is finished, they bust the button.”
“My God,” Ellen Overman said, as she emerged from the lock into the hold. “It’s big.”
“There are no sharks,” Dom said. “That’s in our favor. Move forward. You’ll make visual contact with a girder system.”
“Got it,” Ellen said, “Don’t worry about me. I just felt lonely there for a second.”
“Twenty-five minutes,” Doris said.
The pattern was set and would continue with mounting tension for the next two hours. Doris called out the time used at five-minute intervals, and Dom began to match his movements to five-minute units.
By turnaround time just over half of the hull supports would have been examined.
At the end of the first hour Dom began to fear that he had bet the lives of his crew and the existence of the ship on a snap judgment that the terrorists would have tried for maximum force by placing the charge near the center of mass. Doubts made him sweat inside his suit, and the fluid reclamation system had to work hard. He and Neil continued to work away from each other, moving away from the center. Ellen was forward, working in the same direction as Neil. At the end of one and a half hours, Neil reached bulkhead seven-three, where Ellen had begun her search. He resisted an urge to check behind her. If she missed it, she missed it. It was all a guessing game anyhow. There was always the chance that the charge was not even in the hold, but elsewhere in the ship. He swam rapidly and caught up to Ellen within a few minutes.
“Nice to have company,” she said.
“We’ll try it together and see if we get in each other’s way,” Neil said. “You go port on the next bulkhead.”
They moved faster than Dom, who was still working alone. J.J. announced the passage of one hour and fifteen minutes. The huge central area of the ship seemed endlessly long.
“I have a very interesting phenomenon,” Doris said. “Your movements send energy impulses against the hull. I got faint readings when all of you were swimming alone, and now with Neil and Ellen close together the force generated by their movements is strong enough to register well.”
“So?” Dom asked.
“Nothing, really,” Doris said. “But based on the readings I’d say that the hull could take an explosion of just u
nder one and a half kilos of Dupont XP without rupture.”
“That might be encouraging if we knew that the explosive is merely Dupont XP and not more than one and a half kilos,” J.J. said.
“They had the new German stuff in the Gulfport raid last month,” Art said. “It’s twenty-five percent more potent.”
“Yeah, leave it to the Germans,” Dom said.
“Dupont XP is the standard explosive used on the moon,” Doris said.
“Let’s not clutch at straws,” Dom said. “I think our only chance is to find the charge and get it off the ship.”
“What if time runs out?” J. J. asked.
“Evacuate the ship,” Dom said. “J.J. and Doris in capsule one. Art and Ellen in the pilot’s capsule with Neil. I’ll go with Paul in the stern capsule, but I’m going to ask you to be prepared to stay longer than the others, Paul, to give me all the possible time down here.”
“Allowing two minutes for emergency capsule launch and enough time to allow the capsule to clear, you’ll have to start out the locks no later than fifteen minutes to zero,” Doris said.
“I can pop out the stern lock,” Dom said. “Well be launching away from the direction of thrust, so we’ll cover distance faster with the ship pulling away. I can take an extra five minutes.”
“That’s cutting it too close,” Doris said.
“No heroes on this trip, Flash,” J.J. said. “I want you in that capsule at no less than zero minus twelve minutes.”
“Roger,” Dom said.
“Well start a countdown at zero minus forty,” J.J. said. “At zero minus fifteen, all aboard the capsule except Dom and Paul. At zero minus twelve, Dom and Paul board and launch. We rendezvous in the capsules on my signal on band seven-oh-three.”
“This may be a stupid question,” Paul said, “but how about opening the hold and letting the water out into space? We could search it in a fraction of the time.”
“Good thinking,” Dom said. “But if we vented through all loading hatches it would take five and a half hours.”
“Sorry,” Jensen said. “I’ll stick to the powerplant.”
“As a matter of fact, Paul,” Dom said. “I want you to leave the powerplant now and run a visual and manual on the compartment bulkheads. If we have to abandon ship there’s a chance she’ll survive a small explosion. Be sure they’re all closed.”