Tears of Selene

by Bill Patterson

  Jeff was a severe taskmaster, ensuring that each lifting body slipped into the airlock with maximum clearance on all sides. Any damage meant the removal of the enormous items and possible return to the surface for repair. There would be none of that, if he had anything to say about it.

  It was vaguely eerie to watch, the large mass of the fuselage just floating in midair. For the crew of the Mars Expedition, it was almost normal—they had built Perseus in microgravity and rode it home the same way, only spinning the ship towards the end of its insertion into Earth orbit.

  On everyone's mind was the fact that their breathing air, and the life of the entire crew, rested on the single door of the airlock leading into the aft chamber. Some of the more nervous took to wearing their skintights for the entire two days. Others, more fatalistic, wore coveralls. Jeff wore skintights only because he was shuttling back and forth between pressure and vacuum.

  In the aft chamber, workers swarmed the fuselages as soon as they emerged from the airlock. Matched crews carefully pulled the cylindrical sections out of the airlock chamber, towed them to their fitting-out docks, and clamped them into ready-made cradles. There, the hard work of attaching the aerodynamic surfaces commenced. The crews attached nose sections, installed tail surfaces, and installed and tested kilometers of wiring, some of it ripped out of the Mars Expedition vehicles.

  Jeff and Horst worked alternating shifts, eight hours apiece, in order to speed the construction. They had considered a third shift headed by McCrary, but rejected the notion. The number of skilled workers was limited, and McCrary deemed that a breakfast meeting between both shifts was the best way to ensure that the work proceeded with the fewest problems.

  McCrary was in overall charge of all engineering spaces. Scott Acevedo and Jimmy Fields supervised a small crew that took the Tank and clamped it out of the way on the side of the septum wall. It was just barely possible that the crew willing to remain behind would want to return to the Moon, so there was no reason to get rid of the Tank.

  If there was one object lesson from both the renaissance of the Collins and the survival of the Mars Expedition, it was this: throw nothing away unless it was actively dangerous. Even nuclear waste could be repurposed to provide heat and electricity by making them the fuel source inside radio thermionic generators. Tank was safe inside the Perseus.

  ###

  “Ready?” called Scott.

  “Let's do this thang!” replied Jimmy Fields.

  Scott turned to Peter Brinkley. “Engineering reports ready.”

  “Noted,” said Peter. “Attention, all personnel,” he said into his microphone. His voice repeated through every radio, commpad, helmet speaker, and loudspeaker in the Perseus. “Initial test of the Flinger system, ten percent power. All personnel in the aft chamber will vacate the chamber at this time. We are in a ten minute hold. Hustle, folks.”

  He looked at Scott. “What are you throwing and where?”

  “We're doing a straight shot of a bunch of rubble to hit in the Southern Pacific. The rubble has been worked so that it will fragment early in the reentry, burning up completely.”

  “Let's hope so. I understand McCrary gently inquired about this to Lisa Daniels, and she told him to be absolutely quiet about it. Earth is really sensitive about re-entering anything.”

  “What about us?” asked Scott.

  “I guess I should have said 'uncontrolled reentry.'“ How are you going to measure the success of your test?”

  “We'll get some radar returns of the shot. We know what it masses. Power in accelerates known mass to predicted speed. Piece of cake.” Scott polished his fingernails on his worn coverall.

  “Let's hope so. Any idea what Astrogation has been working out for our reentry ships?” Peter tapped a control on his panel, then leaned in towards the microphone. “Five minutes before the expiration of the planned hold.”

  “They're all over the map,” said Scott. “One of them wants us to blast out of the Flinger at maximum speed, then kill off the speed by skipping off the top of the atmosphere about five times, then completing reentry.”

  Peter shook his head. “Insanity. Get a bad bounce, and you're hosed for your final trajectory.”

  “Exactly the argument that shot it down. Another one is to launch and pray we make it the six hundred kilometers to Entry Interface without a hit.”

  “Russian Roulette,” said Peter. “That kinda covers everything, doesn't it? Launch as fast as you can, minimum exposure to debris, then worry about the landing when it comes…or launch optimally—which means slowly—and hope you don't get holed.”

  “Not very palatable, is it?” asked Scott.

  Peter's monitor focused on one of the lifting bodies. “You know, I remember something about the Chaffee.”

  “Yeah?” asked Scott, scrolling through a checklist on his commpad.

  “About a year or so before the Event, we sent up several panels of really thick sheet steel. John Hodges had requested them. Like everything else at the time, it was hush-hush. We had to speak in code. We never wanted Subby to catch wind of what we were doing.”

  Scott shrugged. “We never had that problem, but that was because we were a pure science expedition, and mostly out of Subby's hands. I do remember most of the commercial crews hating his guts.”

  “I wonder what he's doing right now. Most of the planet is after him for the reward, you know.” Peter smiled. “He deserves every bit of hassle he's getting. Anyway, come to find out later, the panels were tack welded onto the ERVs from Chaffee, primarily to protect them from micrometeor impacts while they were in storage outside. I wonder if we could apply the same design concept here.”

  Scott tapped his commpad. “I should pound you, you know. Never distract an engineer with a new, unrelated problem while he working on the solution to the current problem! OK, I've got it saved into my 'pad. Let's get this test on the road.”

  Peter leaned into his microphone, then adjusted some controls. “Aft chamber, status?”

  ###

  The test was flawless. After all, this was the same linear accelerator that the Mars Expedition had used to capture momentum slugs during their flight to Mars, and later, to the Asteroid Belt. It was a little ragged, but with four final flings, it should last until the last ship was warped down the track and tossed towards Earth.

  The next test served two purposes, one was to ensure that the system could take a full power shot, and the second was to alter the arrangement of the hoops and increase the spin of the Perseus.

  “How much?” asked McCrary.

  “Almost imperceptible for humans,” said Scott. “But we'll be able to detect it on our instruments.”

  “Where's the load going to end up?”

  “Back into Earth's atmosphere. Same place as the last one,” said Scott. “Get any complaints?”

  “None. In fact, it doesn't seem like anyone even noticed it.”

  Scott just smiled.

  The test was also flawless. But it did raise an interesting argument.

  “No. I will not sanction this as long as I am in command,” said Commander Smithson. “I can't bind whoever assumes command, but I highly recommend that they don't do it, either.”

  McCrary entered the conference late. “Did I miss something?”

  “Scott Acevedo is recommending that we use hyperkinetic shots from the Flinger in the aft chamber to pound large debris chunks into smaller ones to make it easier to laser them. I have rejected the proposal.”

  McCrary looked at Scott. “Why didn't you pass this through me?”

  Scott looked hurt. “It just came to me, boss. I was talking to Peter Brinkley during the power tests on Baby Flinger, and it just showed up in my brain. Peter passed it up to Commander Smithson here, and he called a meeting.”

  “We'll talk later,” said McCrary. “What are the parameters? If you're going after the mountains, I can see how that can be rather futile, but for some of the pieces, shattering them first might reduce the ov
erall time needed to vaporize them.”

  Commander Smithson grimaced. “Look, I know that you got shotgunned on the Moon—hell, Angus Turley was killed by a meteor—that's how you ended up there, McCrary. Still, the Event kept you stuck inside until your laser field started cleaning out the local neighborhood of debris.

  “We had to go all the way out into the Asteroid Belt to get this suit of armor,” he said, stomping on the ground, “to keep us safe. I looked at the logs of the Tank passages. Have you seen the sides of that craft? I mean, close up? It looks like the surface of the Moon—steel pitted with craters. Perseus cooled down and had a nice, smooth finish to it. Have you looked at it recently? The small hits we never notice, but every hour or so, something big, and I mean ten centimeters or so, comes hammering in.

  “I will not permit anything whose main purpose is to produce more fragmentation up here, even if that would eventually reduce the overall debris count. When a single block of debris gets hit by laser light, it melts and evaporates. Smash it first, and you cannot guarantee that you get every shred of debris. And a ten millimeter chunk of Moon coming in at a klick per second will punch right through the fuselage of our landing craft like it was made of paper.”

  “Fair enough,” said McCrary. He turned to Scott. “Commander has a valid point. No wrecking balls.”

  Scott nodded in agreement. “But there was something else we came up with that's a lot more interesting.” He quickly sketched out the idea of a protective shell around the lifting bodies. “We make them a box or lozenge or whatever makes sense. We don't even need to do full-penetration welds—tack welding is all they need. Put in some mooring clamps to lock down the craft, load the entire box in Baby Flinger, and you're all set! When you get near enough to Entry Interface, we have a release mechanism, the front wall falls away, and you shove out on MoonCan rockets. Six hundred kilometers, and none of the debris gets you or the tiles.”

  McCrary rubbed his chin. “Don't know that we have anything explosive left,” he said.

  Scott chuckled. “We do. The Mars Expedition was loaded for bear with Penta-Seven. 'A little dab will do ya.' Put it right behind the welds, stick a nichrome wire in it, and bang, scratch one weld.”

  Commander Smithson looked at McCrary. “This is something you two should discuss. I have other things to work on, if that's all.”

  McCrary suddenly remembered Brinkley's request. “In a minute. Scott, could you please look up how much Penta-Seven you've got in stores? I'll meet you at the main airlock on the septum wall.”

  Scott nodded towards Commander Smithson. “Have a good day, sir. I won't mention the wrecking ball idea again.” He left the room.

  “McCrary, you have the floor.”

  “I, ah, sir, have a delicate favor to ask of you. It won't take long, and I'd prefer if you would not inquire too closely about why I want it. Plus, if you could just forget who asked you for this favor, I would appreciate it.”

  “Mysterious. Go ahead.”

  “I would like the following personnel to be seated in the same landing craft: Ashley and Tyler Boardman, Lori and Eva Minelli, and Peter Brinkley.”

  Commander Smithson looked at McCrary with his eyes hooded. “I suppose they'd like to be seated together, too.”

  “The mothers and children, yes. Mr. Brinkley can be seated nearby, but not too close.”

  “You know that a whole lot of scientists want the mothers and children on different landing craft?”

  “I also understand the mothers are ready to tell them off.”

  “Not Brinkley?” said Smithson. McCrary tried hard not to glare at him.

  “Not to inquire too deeply,” said Smithson.

  “As a favor to me, sir,” said McCrary. At Smithson's continued silence, he added, “Plus, if you could bury the coincidence in the official manifests.”

  “Your secret is safe with me,” said Smithson. “Is that all?”

  “Yes, sir. I'll see myself out.”

  After McCrary left, Commander Smithson chuckled. “It must have been crazy up there on the Moon,” he muttered before diving back into all the tasks that had to be done before most of the crew could leave the Perseus.

  ###

  As the landing craft construction neared its conclusion, so did the huge agricultural efforts inside the Perseus. The same Mars Expedition workers who were stuck planting the fields in the beginning were harvesting most of the food plants and planting grass for oxygen replenishment. The number of idle hands increased as the backbreaking labor of hand-cultivation came to an end.

  It wasn't enough to gather the harvest into bins, though. The same workers separated the seeds from the food plants and flash-froze them by dunking them in liquid nitrogen. Everyone knew that the left-behind crew would eventually want to return to Earth, and Earth would never be able to send anyone back up as replacements for the foreseeable future, so they preserved what they could to make those future occupants' job of restarting Perseus as easy as possible.

  McCrary and other engineers designed the landing craft for one hundred people. Testing with live, spacesuited volunteers showed that they could actually carry one hundred and ten people each, including flight crew, for a total of three hundred and thirty on three of the four landing craft. All two hundred of the Mars Expedition crew made it back to Earth orbit with the Perseus, and one hundred and seventy-five Collins crew made it to Perseus on Tank.

  Fortunately, fifty crew from both the Mars Expedition and the Collins volunteered to remain behind, performing science, blasting debris with lasers, and generally enjoying a special break in their lives in one of the safest places in the sky: a hollow asteroid. Thus, everyone who wanted to head back to Earth had a seat on a returning landing craft.

  The commanders and crew had been planning to leave Perseus for the Earth ever since they first warped into orbit from the Collins and snagged the Tank. Now was the time to put those plans into motion.

  Entry Interface

  Aboard Perseus, High Earth Orbit, September 12 2087, 1342 GMT

  “I wonder how long they'll last before they pack it in?” asked Commander Smithson. They stood off to the side from the rest of the people milling around at the septum wall. The time for loading the ships was upon them.

  Tyler and Eva were walking down the line of the stay-behinds, shaking hands or hugging, and sometimes both. Ashley and Lori followed them, also hugging the stay-behinds.

  McCrary harrumphed. “It all depends on what's waiting back home. I looked at some of the personnel records of the ones staying up, and most of them have nothing waiting back on Earth. No girlfriends, parents dead, or a specialty that is no longer relevant. They've got nothing down there, so why go back?”

  “Green grass, sunshine, girls, shall I go on?” replied Smithson. “Little kids like those two. I don't doubt that the stay-behinds are going to love doing science on their terms, without the hassles of getting grants, bosses looking over their shoulders, or all the other nonsense of the modern academy. But will it be publishable?”

  “They've got a huge lab up there. Want to tease out gene expression in zero gee? No place else to do it. In many ways, they have a virtual monopoly on certain aspects of science that nobody on Earth can touch.”

  “Well, good luck to them. I'm betting they don't last two years,” said Smithson.

  “Five, and I'll bet you a case of Scotch, too,” said McCrary.

  “Done. I imagine there's betting pools being set up all over these craft.”

  “How are we doing in there?” The voice of Scott Acevedo sounded in the waiting area.

  “Fine. We just need to christen the landing craft, load them with all these grumpy people, and go!”

  “That's why I am calling. Who's going to do the honors?”

  Commander Smithson picked out Commander Standish and made a 'come-here' motion.

  “The two Commanders, and McCrary is doing the honors for Commander Lee.”

  “Perfect. We have very delicate glass bottle
s, filled with some sparkling beer from the stills. Will that do?”

  Smithson chuckled. “It's supposed to be wine, preferably champagne, but we'll do what we must.”

  “All right then. Head on up to the axis, you three, and we'll meet you inside.”

  ###

  After the three got through the airlock, Scott handed each one of them a fragile glass bottle.

  “Careful, they really are thin-walled. After all, we can't have you pounding on the hulls like big hammers, now, can we? Now, take your places.”

  The two commanders and one previous commander lined up at the prows of their craft.

  “Since the dawn of time,” Scott said loudly, commanding everyone’s attention, “ships have been christened as a formal way of naming them and granting them good luck on their journeys. Today, we christen three of the four landing craft bound for Earth. Commander Smithson, you have the honor of going first.”

  “When mankind first explored the Moon, there was a mission that ran into serious trouble. No landing was possible. The astronauts flew past the Moon, a little over one hundred kilometers above it, to watch as their chance to walk on it slipped forever past.

  “We honor those astronauts today be naming these three craft after them. Like the men in our Mars Expedition, who could only watch as Mars slipped forever from their grasp, the three men of Apollo 13 missed their chance at one kind of history, only to be forever enshrined as heroes for 'working the problem' and getting back home.

  “We, too, worked our problems, both the crew of the Collins and the crew of the Mars Expedition, and are now ready to fly back home.