KR_IME

by Andrew Broderick

  “Yeah, he was headed to match his apoapsis with us, and then he’d have done a circularization burn to rendezvous with us,” Christopher said. “His mission planners and his computer knew what they were doing.”

  “Computer, display glass wall,” Aleksandr said. The hub interior melted away to show space.

  “It doesn’t even look like we’ve moved,” Emile said. “Phobos is still right there.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Will we able to see him with the unaided eye?” Kinuko asked.

  “For just a few minutes, before we pass over the night side of Mars, when he will be sunlit against a dark background. Christ! That reminds me – we’re going to be in the dark in a couple of hours! That will last for four hours. We’ll also lose radio contact with Earth during that time.”

  “Damn,” said Aleksandr. “That comes at a most inopportune time.” The others nodded, with frustration etched on their faces.

  The team sat for several minutes, having drifted to the floor due to acceleration. They just looked around, principally to see if Phobos seemed to be getting more distant. The computer announced: “Incoming message for Emile Ouvrard.”

  “I'll take it in my cabin,” he said. “I'll be back.”

  At length, Alessia said: “You know, there is one other option for rescuing him more quickly.” The others looked at her in surprise. “We could fly down there in an SEV.”

  There were both nods and looks of puzzlement. “Three problems immediately spring to mind,” Christopher said. Clearly, he had clearly already thought it through. “One, they only get about half a kilometer a second on one pack of fuel. Second, they have no onboard radar or navigation capabilities. Third, even if you get there, the ship is spinning at ninety degrees every eight seconds or so. How are you going to get in?”

  Aleksandr spoke up. “For one, we could take extra fuel packs with us. They were specially made to be easily changeable in zero gravity. Two, the IME's radar could project its trajectory, and then we just tell the pilot what direction and for how long to do an engine burn. We do have a heading lock capability on the SEVs. So, with the appropriate engine burn for long enough, we can actually match his orbit. The third one is the most difficult, though: how to arrest the spin of the ship.”

  “Especially since we don't know how much it weighs,” Christopher said. “It's got to be five tons, at least. It's going to take some serious thrust to stop it spinning. And that's assuming you could even hook the SEV to it somehow.”

  “How about a few more solutions, instead of just problems, Mr. Rockstar Engineer? A guy's life is at stake,” Martin said, clearly irritated.

  “Yeah,” Christopher said with a sigh. “Okay, let's think about this. We could either push or pull at one end of it. I'd say pushing is out – I sure wouldn't want to be in the way when it comes around and smacks the SEV. That leaves pulling.”

  “What about grappling some part of it with a rope? The other end would be tied to the front of the SEV,” Alessia said.

  “Yes. You would then just have to avoid having the rope snap tight, or tangle, as the ship rotates.” Aleksandr said. “It would take some fancy piloting.” He salivated at the thought of the challenge it would present.

  Emile came back through the hatch from his cabin. His face was as white as a sheet. “Oh my god! Guess what?”

  “What?” they asked as one, fearing the worst about his father.

  “He's going to get treatment from the Masters of Life!”

  “Oh my goodness, that's amazing!” Alessia said. She jumped up and hugged and kissed him.

  “How did you pull that one off, bro?” Martin asked.

  “I think somebody high up at the IDSA pulled some strings for me!” he answered, excitedly. “He's leaving for the Cayman Islands tomorrow! Oh my God, I can't believe this!”

  “I am so, so happy for you,” Christopher said. “I did a little research on MOL too, after they were on the news, and it really looks like they've just about nailed the cure for cancer.”

  “Wow,” Kinuko said, in awe. “I am so happy for you! I think a celebration is in order, as soon as this crisis is over.”

  “Hear, hear!” said Martin.

  “I will do a victory lap around Phobos for you in an SEV if you like,” Aleksandr joked.

  “You just can't help yourself, can you?” Christopher asked.

  “You know me too well.”

  “A victory lap... that's got me thinking,” Christopher said. “Grapple the rope onto the other ship, and then fly outwards in a gentle spiral until the rope gets tight. Then start pulling!”

  “Of course!” Martin said. “It makes total sense.”

  “I'd love to do that piloting,” Aleksandr said. “I'm going to run it by Mission Control now.” He related the details of their plan to Earth, including the part about himself doing the honors. While they waited for an answer, they rejoiced with Emile about his good news.

  “I wonder who pulled the strings for you?” Christopher asked.

  “No idea,” Emile answered. “But in the scientific community, people know people. I may never know who it was, but I’ll be eternally grateful to them.”

  Kinuko’s eyes teared up with joy. They talked for a while longer. Presently, the computer announced, “Incoming call from Mission Control.”

  “Accept.”

  “It’s been deemed too dangerous to attempt a rescue using an SEV,” said the CAPCOM. “They were built only for use close to the IME, and given the distance and high delta-V required to reach the Fire, we have decided to wait until the IME is within twenty kilometers of the other ship. Aleksandr, in particular, should not attempt this flight, even when in range, as he is too critical to the safety and success of the mission.”

  “Dammit!” Aleksandr said. “There’s no chance he’ll be alive when we’re within twenty kilometers of his ship. That’ll be at least twenty-three hours from now.”

  “Yeah,” Martin sighed. “I do kind of agree with them that you shouldn’t be the one to go, though. You’re indispensable.”

  Aleksandr pursed his lips and frowned. “My great-grandfather never worried about whether he was indispensable,” he grumbled.

  The others nodded. The mood on board had become decidedly dour. The idea, however, refused to die.

  “If you didn’t go, who would?” Emile asked. “The pilot would have, in my estimation, less than a fifty percent chance of making it back alive given the dangers involved. Plus, we’re forgetting that it will all have to be done in the dark. They’d need one of those flying inspection light/camera bots.”

  They contemplated all this for a while. Then Kinuko simply said, “I’ll go.”

  “What?” the others asked, simultaneously.

  “I’ll go. Guide me by radar, and I’ll go and get him. I’m the smallest one here, so that’s less mass the SEV has to move. Plus, I can fit through the cabin door most easily.”

  “You would actually fly off into the dark, thousands of kilometers from the IME?” Christopher asked, incredulously.

  “Yes.”

  “Why would it be thousands of kilometers?” Alessia asked.

  “By the time she was able to rendezvous with him, two or three hours will have passed, and he’ll be near periapsis. That’s over 1,800 kilometers lower than us. That’s a pretty darned awful long way to go from the mothership on a little SEV,” Nikita said.

  “Why would you even contemplate it?” Martin asked.

  “Because it’s the right thing to do,” Kinuko replied. “Plus, the Japanese people owe the Chinese people big time, after committing atrocities against them in the early part of the last century.”

  “You don’t think you have to atone for the rape of Nanking, surely?” Alessia asked, in surprise.

  “No. I’m going because I must. The blood of my ancestors runs in me, and they didn’t back down from anything.” Her face was resolute. Her eyes met Martin’s. He didn’t want her to risk her life like this, but he also knew s
he wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she didn’t try.

  Aleksandr sighed loudly. “If I let you do this, I am disobeying a direct command from Earth and risking another crewmember’s life. It’s bad enough that we have to go home with one less than we came here with. I’d really rather it weren’t two.”

  The others nodded sympathetically. They knew the magnitude of the decision that was on his shoulders.

  “Alex, we have the technology. We can do this,” said Christopher. “If executed properly, the risk can be contained. We’ll use the light from a camera bot to illuminate the scene. She’ll never be out of line-of-sight communications range with the Explorer. We can get it done before Earth ever finds out – we’ll be in Mars’ shadow until she’s well on her way back.”

  Aleksandr nodded, in deep thought and contemplation. “I need a few minutes,” he said, and left the hub. The others looked at each other.

  “This is an unfair burden to put on him,” Alessia said, having just drifted in from the laboratory, and quickly caught up on the conversation.

  “The whole damned thing is unfair,” Christopher replied. “If only the Chinese hadn’t chosen to have their man jump overboard and create a stressful and dangerous situation for the whole crew.” The others nodded in agreement.

  “He did sign up to be commander, though,” Martin replied. “It’s gonna entail some ‘decisions from hell’ at some point, where you have to make your mind up with incomplete information and not enough time. It goes with the territory.” The others nodded as they pondered this. Alessia prayed under her breath, but did a poor job of hiding it.

  The minutes dragged on. “He’ll be at closest approach in a few minutes,” said Nikita, to break the silence. The telescope’s view of the stricken ship was indeed much clearer.

  Presently, Aleksandr returned. “I have decided,” he announced. The intensity of the moment could have been cut with a knife. “In the very beginning, we said that we would live or die as one. The worst case scenario here is that Kinuko doesn’t return from this. If that happens, I won’t risk a third person’s life. I will, however, take full responsibility for the rescue attempt, and answer to the authorities on Earth for whatever the outcome will be. On my head be it. The rescue will go ahead.” The others cheered wildly.

  “Right, let’s get this shit done,” said Christopher. “Martin, you and I will suit up and go outside with her. I’ll service the SEV, whichever one she takes. But first, let’s make a checklist of what she’s going to need. Everyone, let’s brainstorm it, and walk through the entire scenario from beginning to end. If you think of anything at all, call it out. It might just be the thing that makes the difference between success and failure.”

  They huddled together and hashed out a plan. It was pretty much as Kinuko had originally described it. She would rendezvous with the crippled ship under radar guidance, in the dark. She would then attempt to snare it with a rope and grapple, to arrest its spin. Lastly, she would extract Tung-chi, strap him into the back seat of the SEV, and head back to the Explorer, also by radar guidance from above.

  69

  A checklist was made, comprehensive as it could be without including unnecessary items. All of it represented mass that would use up more fuel, as the thrusters would have to burn longer to achieve the same orbit change.

  “We’re going to have to take two camera bots,” Christopher said, as the list was nearing completion. “That way, we can illuminate things better, and have two points of view.” The others agreed. Something clicked in Alessia’s mind. It was the dream from the night before.

  “Take all three,” she said.

  “Why?” Christopher asked. “They’re about fifteen kilos each, which is a fair bit of mass, and besides, we only have three. If we lose them all, we don’t have any backups.”

  “Just trust me,” she said. “We're going to need them all.”

  “Okay...” Christopher said, reluctantly. He didn't understand the female mind, but the look in her eyes was dead serious and he trusted her implicitly.

  “Better go to the bathroom now, Kinuko,” Emile teased. “You'll be outside for at least five hours.”

  “That’s nothing we didn't train for, anyway,” Martin interjected. “A circumnavigation of Phobos would be eight hours. Speaking of which, look up!”

  “It's smaller!” Alessia exclaimed. “We're starting to move!”

  “We'll be in the dark in thirty minutes,” Martin said, as they opened the outer airlock door and made their way to the SEV bay.

  “SEV 2 has the fewest miles on it,” Christopher said. “Let's take that one. I'm still going to fully fuel it anyway, of course.” He took a fuel pack, which was about the size of a ten-gallon bucket, and replaced the one in the SEV. They fuel packs were inserted into a port behind the rear passenger seat so that they were flush with the surface. They were designed to be changed out easily – they contained liquid propellants, which produced high thrust, but the closed packs allowed safer refueling than handling the liquids directly would have.

  “Each one of these is good for 500 meters a second with a normal load,” Christopher said. “We should get 550 or so with only one rider.” Per the checklist, five fuel packs were loaded into the storage lockers under the SEV’s seats.

  “There really isn't a good place for these ropes and such, with the lockers being full, so you know what? I'm just going to duct-tape them onto the sides back here,” Martin said.

  “Ah, yes, duct tape,” Christopher said. “It holds most things on Earth together, so why should it be any different here?” This gave a little much-needed comic relief.

  “I could use all the laughs we can get right now,” Nikita said.

  “Da,” Aleksandr replied.

  Soon, all the needed items had been fastened and stowed. Kinuko was now outside with them. There wasn’t much left for her to do, except depart. As the others turned to head back towards the airlock, Martin let Christopher go first. Once Christopher’s back was turned, he put two fingers to his lips – as close as his helmet visor would allow – and then placed them on Kinuko’s helmeted cheek. She smiled back. The men then made a hasty retreat to the airlock.

  “You’re number one on the runway, Kinuko,” Nikita said from the hub. “I will be your copilot for today’s short trip. Everything is going to be fine. Go ahead and undock, and move out fifty meters from the ship.” With these reassuring words, she parted contact with the Explorer.

  “MPS check,” Nikita said.

  “Locked,” Kinuko replied. “On station to start burn.”

  She looked up at the gleaming, white, slender form of the Explorer. Below her, Mars was already mostly dark. The sun was about to set over the eastern horizon. She didn’t have time to admire the scenery.

  “Activate heading lock mode. Since you have no way to set your heading, we’ve aligned the ship with the direction you need to go. Just use us like a compass needle, and then we’ll do course corrections as needed on the way down,” Nikita said.

  “Aligned, and heading lock activated.”

  “Okay, you’re going to do a braking burn until your fuel’s all used – most likely 110 seconds, or thereabouts. Burn when ready.”

  Here goes, she thought. She activated the thrusters that would push the little craft backwards, decreasing its orbital velocity. She was surprised at the deceleration it produced at full throttle – about half a gravity. It pushed her forward in her seat. She looked up. The Explorer started to get smaller in her field of view. She was not slipping behind it, but falling away from it toward Mars. Near the end of her engine burn, the ship started to look very small, indeed.

  “You’re about twenty-one kilometers below us now; 100 seconds burn time,” Nikita announced from above. The red fuel warning light came on. Right on cue, ten seconds later, the thrust ceased. “Delta-V: 574 meters per second, periapsis lowered by 841 kilometers,” Nikita announced. The last rays of sunlight disappeared behind Mars, and left a rapidly-shrinking gl
ow across the horizon. She felt alone and afraid, as the darkness engulfed her. The ship, above, was like a comforting guiding star, but night would enshroud it, too, in less than a minute.

  She switched on her helmet light. Now she had to change the fuel pack in near-darkness. She reached under her seat, opened the locker, and pulled out the fuel pack. That was the easy part. Now, she had to get to the very back of the SEV and change out the empty one. She was tethered to the rear handhold of the craft, so drifting off into space was not a danger. She unfastened her seatbelt and clambered, with difficulty, to the back seat. She sat on it backwards, hooking her feet under the rear footholds to lock herself in place, and reached back to change the fuel packs. The red fuel warning light went off. “Refueled,” she announced.

  “Okay,” Nikita replied. “Lock onto your previous heading, and resume engine burn. You’re going to burn for eighty-seven seconds this time.”

  She clambered back to the front, strapped in, and applied more braking thrust. The discarded spent fuel pack that had been drifting nearby shot off ahead of her into the darkness.

  On board the IME, Nikita watched carefully as the red line showing her trajectory moved closer to Tung-chi’s trajectory (shown in green). Both represented arcs over two thousand kilometers long, until they met. “Left five and a half degrees,” he said. “I know you have no compass, or absolute way to judge it, but do the best you can. We’d best get the trajectory as close as we can now, because changing it when you’re closer will require a lot more fuel.”

  The seconds ticked by, as Kinuko continued her orbit-lowering burn, and the two arcs converged. “Okay, three… two… one… stop,” Nikita said. She shut off the thrust. The rest of the crew watched the proceedings anxiously.

  “Okay… I hope you know what you’re doing up there. I’m on a ballistic trajectory taking me closer to Mars than I ever expected to go,” Kinuko said.