The Dig

by Alan Dean Foster

  She nodded wordlessly. A moment later the words "Well done" reached them from the ground, accompanied by the flutter of muted applause.

  Low slid back into his seat. He knew he should be exhausted, but he was only anxious to finish the flight. "Everyone stabilize themselves, please. Ms. Rob ... Maggie ... I suggest you return to your seat and fasten your harness."

  Miles assisted the journalist and then positioned herself. Borden initiated the shuttle's thrusters, and they dropped away from the asteroid. Soon it was once again no more than a dot in the distance, another unrecognizable point of light.

  Technically it wasn't part of the flight program, but Low found himself unable to resist the temptation. Burning a little extra thruster fuel, he pivoted the shuttle on its axis so that they were racing backward around the planet. The attitude adjustment also left them facing the object of their recent attention.

  Not even Borden was inclined to joke as the countdown crackled up to them from the ground. They had moved to what was considered a more than safe distance, but still... what they were about to witness had never been tried before.

  There came a distant flash, disappointingly subdued. Low fancied he saw two distinct flares even though he knew both charges were designed to go off simultaneously. They faded rapidly. There was of course no noise.

  "That's it?" Robbins strained for a better view.

  "We're a long ways off," Low told her.

  "A long ways," Miles added.

  "What happens next?"

  "We wait." Borden nudged a control. "We wait for several orbits until we find out if our little kick in the rockside did the trick. Find yourself something to do."

  It was during the interminable period that followed that Maggie Robbins proved herself an asset to the flight instead of simply another piece of cargo. While the others strove not to speculate on whether or not the mission had been a success or failure, and largely failed, Robbins was everywhere: shooting video, asking questions, experimenting with her weightless condition, and generally doing her utmost to keep her companions occupied. In such a tense environment even silly questions had the value of diversion.

  Her persistent intrusions into shipboard routine were welcomed. Anything to keep from contemplating the consequences of failure.

  Suppose the explosives had been inadequate? Or improperly positioned? What if a critical calculation had been wrong just enough, and even now the asteroid was dropping dangerously low into the atmosphere? What if...?

  "Excuse me, Boston, but what does this do?"

  He found himself trying to concentrate on her question, his depressing reverie broken. "That? There are multiple controls for operating the shuttle's thrusters, but it's still necessary for ground control to be able to override shipboard commands."

  "Why?" she inquired innocently. And while he patiently explained, images of disaster could not form in his mind.

  She wanted to know how everything worked, what everything was for. When she finished with the instrumentation, she started in on their personal histories. What was it like growing up? Did they always want to he astronauts? What did their parents think of their youthful aspirations? Their friends, their lovers, their spouses? On and on, hour after hour, orbit after orbit, the questions coming so swiftly and exuberantly that the recipients did not have time to think about anything else. Did not have time to contemplate catastrophe.

  It was only much later that Low was able to reflect on the insistent interrogation and realize that many of the queries were nothing more than rephrasings of questions already asked. Only then did it dawn on him that she'd known exactly what she was doing, using her interviewing skills to keep them from dwelling on the consequences of possible failure. It wasn't journalism she had been practicing then; it was therapy.

  The efficacy of a bug in the ear.

  Borden was looking at him expectantly. "Houston calling, Commander." Ken Borden hadn't called Low "Commander" in years.

  Low acknowledged. Within the cabin all was silence.

  "Don't recognize the voice." He frowned, adjusted a control. "There's a lot of interference."

  "Boston steps up to the plate," the voice announced excitedly from the speaker. "Here's the pitch ... it's a curve down the middle. Boston swings... it's a hit! ... a long drive, to deep left field! Kowalski's going back, back, to the wall. He jumps ... it's over, it's over! A home run for Boston! The fans are going wild!"

  Laughter could be heard in the background. By now everyone onboard was smiling. Some wit at ground control had prepared for this moment by lining up a tape of an old Red Sox broadcast, substituting the name of the team for the name of the anonymous batter. Low was forced to grin in spite of himself. The implication of ground control's little game was obvious enough.

  Devoid of static, a more familiar voice came on-line. "Congratulations, Commander Low, Copilot Borden. Congratulations, all of you."

  Low leaned toward the pickup. "What took you so long?"

  "We decided to wait an extra orbit," the voice responded.

  "We didn't just want to be sure. Everyone wanted to be more than sure."

  "Hell." Borden drifted lazily in harness. "I thought they were taking their time."

  "According to the preliminaries, everything went exactly as planned." Even over the radio and the distances involved, the speaker succeeded in conveying his excitement. "All objectives attained and well within accepted parameters. The mission appears to be a complete success."

  "Naturally," Brink murmured into the silence. "There was no reason for it to have gone otherwise."

  Mission Control continued. "The Earth has a new moon. They're working on a name for it right now."

  Miles kept her voice down. "Wanted to make sure it'd stay put before they named it. Politically expedient."

  "Hey, what about us?" Borden groused at the pickup. "Don't we get any input, or what? As the first people to make contact with it, I think we're the ones who have the right to name it. Now, I propose—"

  "Never mind, Borden," interrupted the voice from Houston. "There's no telling what you'd say." The quiet chuckle was clearly audible over the speaker. "Anyhow, you didn't make contact. That honor falls to Commander Low and Mission Specialist Brink.

  "Which doesn't matter anyway. The final decision will be up to the President acting in consultation with the United Nations Council on Space."

  "It does not matter." Brink shifted in his chair. "I would hope that my name would be remembered in a more constructive fashion."

  Knowing that everything had gone as planned allowed Low to relax, insofar as he was capable of relaxing. He would not truly experience that condition again until he was back on the ground and back by his beloved bay.

  The main objective of the mission had been accomplished. Now there was time, not much, but some, to carry out those subsidiary assignments on which the scientific community had insisted. Behind him, Robbins was scattering questions at Brink. The scientist did his best to answer, in simple sentences devoid of all but the most inescapable technical terms. Miles was uncharacteristically quiet, perhaps mentally tallying votes for the forthcoming congressional election, in which she expected to play a dominant part.

  Then Robbins was in his face. Or rather, over it, hovering near the ceiling and clearly comfortable in zero-g. He raised his eyes to meet hers.

  "Is there something I can do for you, Maggie?"

  "Yeah. What is it with you, Boston? Doesn't anything rattle your cage? Don't you ever get excited? What you just accomplished was the equivalent of performing brain surgery with a forklift. You probably just saved millions of lives and you don't let out so much as a whoop. It's not natural."

  He smiled thinly. "I never claimed to be natural. Only competent."

  She refused to be put off so facilely. "Don't you feel anything? Don't you want to set off firecrackers, whistle like crazy, pop a bunch of balloons?"

  "I'm not the crazy-whistling, balloon-popper type, Maggie. As for firecrackers, didn't we
just do that?"

  "Stop badgering the Commander, Maggie." Brink's admonishment surprised both interviewer and interviewee. "Those of us who stand in awe at the wonders of nature tend to celebrate our little triumphs internally. Not everyone feels the need to share his emotions with a worldwide television audience, no matter how many potential commercial endorsements may be at stake." Releasing himself from his harness, he pulled himself toward the nearest port.

  "As for myself, I will celebrate when we return to our domesticated subject and I am able to study instead of coerce."

  Robbins didn't miss a beat, switching her attention from Low to Brink. Nothing fazed her, Low had to admit admiringly.

  "Are we sure that's safe?" she was asking. "I know a survey was in the overall mission plan, provided everything went well, but it seems awfully soon to be going back."

  "The rock won't be hot, if that's what you're wondering." Miles looked over from her station. "The Russians insist their explosives are clean. Environmentally friendly, even. I don't know if I'd go that far, but if the charts I've seen are correct, the residual radiation shouldn't be anything our suits can't handle. Most of it will have been blasted out into space."

  "In any event, we will not be lingering long in the vicinity. More's the pity, as the English say." Floating near Low's right shoulder, Brink pointed. "People are so paranoid about radiation. Out there is the biggest, dirtiest nuclear bomb imaginable. It's exploding all the time, right over everybody's head. Every time you step outside your house, you are being bathed in 'radiation.'" He shook his head sadly. "People grow frantic when discussing the output of cellular telephones and microwave ovens and big-screen television sets. Then they go outside and lie in the sun."

  "Hey, no need to be sarcastic, Herr Professor Brink. I'm not ignorant."

  "I did not mean to suggest that you were, Maggie. I merely chose to emphasize my point. A brief visit to the asteroid will place us in no danger."

  "Well," she murmured, "so long as everybody's sure."

  Low and Borden paid no attention to the discussion. They were too busy computing trajectories, velocities, orbits, and a thousand and one other necessities.

  Low didn't even dwell on Robbins's planned participation in the EVA. When it had first been proposed to him, he'd naturally been dead set against it. But the agency had been adamant. The publicity was too promising to pass up. Besides, with Low and Brink to watch her every move, what could possibly go wrong? Spacewalking was old hat by now, the suits were idiot-proof and it wasn't as if they had to perform some complex engineering procedure during the EVA.

  As it had been explained to him, it would be more in the nature of a stroll in the park. Brink would be carrying out the actual research. The Commander could spend most of his time keeping an eye on their resident journalist. If necessary, all of her suit functions could be operated remotely from the shuttle.

  Nevertheless it was not an assignment that filled him with much glee.

  Aware that he was arguing with a bureaucracy whose density approximated that of lead, Low had eventually given in. That did not mean that in the interim he had developed any enthusiasm for the proposal. If it had been left up to him, he would have voted for an immediate return to the Cape as soon as their main objective was accomplished. He did not propose the notion, knowing that Brink would sooner maroon himself on the object than surrender the opportunity to be the first scientist actually to do fieldwork on an asteroid. The scientist would freely have walked through the fires of any religion's hell for the chance.

  Brink's urgency he could at least understand. For that matter, a small part of him he tried hard not to acknowledge was also looking forward to the encounter.

  A compromise was reached. There would be an EVA, but it would be kept conservatively short. They would make one drop, do some basic surveying, take some surface samples, let Robbins gush breathlessly for the benefit of watching millions, and return to the shuttle.

  "We have concluded the engineering stage of this mission," Brink was observing. "Now the work of science can begin."

  "Not until we catch up to it again, Ludger." Borden glanced over at the hovering scientist. "Tell me, what did the biologist say when he saw something moving in the Black Forest?" When Brink did not reply, the copilot responded with a deliberately heavy accent, "Gee! Gnomes!"

  Miles laughed, Low conceded a grin and a smiling Brink nodded approvingly. Robbins looked completely at a loss. Trying to puzzle it out, she drifted into the rear of Low's seat. One elbow nudged his arm.

  "Give me some room, please, Maggie."

  "Sorry." Using one finger, she pushed off the back of his flight chair. "Nobody's going to explain it to me, right? Right?"

  "Hang on to something," Borden advised her cheerily.

  Once more the shuttle's thrusters were fired, raising her orbit and slowing her down. Before long they were closing on their target for the second time.

  "There it is!" Robbins pointed excitedly toward the one increasingly bright dot in the heavens, steadying herself with a handhold. "I can see it."

  No one else commented. Low murmured a command to Borden, who executed the required function as fluidly and efficiently as a third hand. Complex operations continued to be carried out at the rate of approximately six per casual joke.

  Soon the lambent disk they were closing on resolved itself into a crusted spheroid, becoming real instead of theoretical.

  "I can see where one of the bombs went off," Robbins announced.

  "Not bombs." Brink corrected her firmly. "Attitude-adjustment devices. All three space agencies involved will be most distressed if in your continuing reports you refer to the devices as bombs."

  "Whatever," she snapped impatiently. "Look over there."

  A deep gouge where none had been before was clearly visible in the surface of the asteroid. Since the rays of the sun struck the object at an angle, they were unable to see very far into the newly created chasm. A second, matching fissure lay somewhere farther to the relative west of the one they were hovering above.

  Not only was Brink not displeased by this apparent desecration of the specimen, he was delighted. The cleft would provide access to the asteroid's interior, something never before examined. He fully intended to explore it as deeply as their suits would allow.

  Low and Borden continued the delicate task of maneuvering the shuttle still closer to the object, until they were racing along in orbit no more than thirty meters apart.

  "Looks clean." Miles played the shuttle's powerful external light over the heavily impacted surface. It illuminated a portion of the recently created crevasse, leaving the ultimate depths inviolate. "Not much debris floating around."

  "The force of the explosions would have blown most fragments clear," Brink declared. "Pity."

  "Compliments to the engineers who built the devices." Low turned toward the rear of the cockpit. "You ready for your stroll in the park, Ludger?" But the scientist was already pulling himself toward the rear of the cabin and the row of waiting suits.

  "Level of residual radioactivity is high, but within acceptable limits." Miles eyed the Commander. "I wouldn't recommend more than the one EVA, though."

  Low slid out of his chair. "That's all right, Cora. That's what we've scheduled, and that's all we're going to do."

  "You're sure this is perfectly safe?" Robbins followed Low.

  "A little late to be wondering, isn't it, Maggie?" He looked over at her. "You can back out anytime."

  She flushed angrily. "I didn't say that. Did I say anything like that?"

  "No, you didn't. And to answer your question, no, it's not perfectly safe. Very little in science is perfect. But it's pretty damn reasonably safe, or I wouldn't be going out there myself."

  She nodded thoughtfully as she digested this. Behind her, Borden called out cheerfully. "See you guys in about an hour. If you happen to find a Circle-K down there, I'd like a cold six-pack and a giant bag of chips. Cajun-style."

  "Anything el
se?" Low asked dryly as he helped Brink with the first suit.

  "Nothing that I'd request in mixed company." Borden looked around the back of his chair and grinned. "I'll keep the motor running."

  As expected, Robbins needed a lot of help donning her suit. How much instruction and practice had she been given ground-side, Low wondered? This was crazy, taking a complete novice for an EVA. At least her suit controls could be overridden by commands from the shuttle. He reassured himself that once sealed inside, there was little she could do to hurt herself. Her suit purposely did not include a thruster pack, so she couldn't go shooting off toward the sun by accidentally hitting the wrong buttons.

  Wickedly, he found himself speculating on what a spectacular final report that would make. On the other hand, it wouldn't exactly enhance his record. He would have preferred to spend the time inspecting the asteroid and assisting Brink instead of wet-nursing a talkative journalist.

  While they suited up, Miles continued to call out the radiation readings and other stats pertinent to their incipient EVA. The levels continued to fall, albeit slowly, as helmets were donned. Checkout proceeded to intersuit communications.

  He could hear Robbins breathing hard. If she kept using air at that rate, she'd shorten the excursion by twenty minutes.

  "Take it easy, Maggie. Remember what they told you in Houston. Just breathe normally, as if you were on scuba. The suit's respiration system will supply as much air as you need. The more you hyperventilate, the faster you'll exhaust your supply."

  She smiled back at him. Wanly, but gamely, he decided. Her breathing slowed.

  "That's better. You'll be tethered to me at all times, so you won't have to worry about which way to go or how to get there. Just relax and enjoy the sights." A single nod and a slightly bigger smile this time. "Good. Don't touch anything unless you ask first. Try to act like a passenger."

  "I'm good at that." Her voice arrived undistorted through his helmet speakers. "I'm not going to touch anything except my recorder, and it's pretty much automatic." She indicated the special camera that had been integrated into the left sleeve of her suit.