“Installing solar panels.”
Callis moved two long panels outside. Heather had seen them. They had been designed to latch on to the hull automatically, and would supply emergency current once they relocated the solar shield after the EVA had been completed.
“It works,” Alain confirmed. “I have an electrical connection.”
That was one problem solved. Life support would now work beyond the depletion of the emergency batteries. If only all of their difficulties could be as easily solved as this one.
“You can come back in now,” she radioed lightly.
Callis laughed. “Nice try, but the second task is waiting.”
“A pity,” she answered.
“Activating tent.”
Callis moved the tent outside through the hatch. It was a self-building metal construction that snapped into place with the help of springs. Because it was dark outside it was hard to see if it had connected to the hull as intended.
“Reducing pressure now.”
The pumps of the airlock pulled residual pressure with the goal of reaching one percent of ambient pressure. Even if the tent began heating up, there would be nothing to transfer the temperature to Callis on the inside, ‘nothing’ being relative, of course, since the tent was moving with its tenant, making a perfect insulation from the outside impossible.
“Tent at nominal pressure, exiting lock now.” The display showed the occasional sweep of the helmet light across the tent and parts of the hull.
“Closing hatch.” The hatch had to be closed or it would get too hot inside. The automatic closing mechanism did its work.
“Moving toward the motor.”
Heather switched to an outside view of Solar Explorer. She was able to track Callis’ progress on the hull with the positional data his suit kept transmitting. All she saw was a blinking green dot. Temperature was in line with expectations. So far everything was going according to the plan.
“I’m getting pretty cold out here—I will need to activate the heating.”
Callis was right, the inside of his suit showed 15 degrees. Heather noticed that Alain reduced the nitrogen flow a bit to compensate.
“On site now. Working on it.”
Callis had practiced opening the motor and changing the coil about twenty times before going on the actual mission. He had been adamant that he needed to be able to do things in the dark, if need be. Now the display showed the flickering light of his helmet lamp. Callis was breathing hard.
“The tent is getting pretty hot,” Alain noticed.
“The coil is totally fried—it melted into the motor casing,” reported Callis. “It will take a bit longer to do this.”
Heather heard the banging of metal on metal that was being transmitted through the suit as body noise. She imagined Callis chipping away at the remnants of the coil.
“You should hurry up, your suit is warming now,” updated Alain.
“Can’t you bump the nitrogen?”
“It is at maximum already. The tube is not wide enough. And it doesn’t seem to reach you as a liquid due to the tube lying out in the open before it gets to you.”
“Just a sec, nearly done.”
The hammering went faster. Heather watched Callis’ vital statistics. His heart was going crazy. He must not go unconscious or he would die. The oxygen saturation was getting dangerously low.
“Not so fast, Callis,” she cautioned. “You risk blacking out.”
“Crap,” he said, “this is hanging by a thread, but it must be a special alloy or my chisel is going blunt.”
Heather checked the exterior temperature of his suit. “That is the heat. Your tool went soft,” she concluded.
“Just a little bit more, I’ll get there,” said Callis.
“I don’t know,” said Alain.
“No, it must be done!” Callis retorted with rising desperation in his voice—he was clearly driven to succeed.
“Amy here. Callis, you come back now. That is an order.”
“I am just about finished.”
“The nitrogen pipe is blocked. Probably fused through the diameter somewhere,” Alain called out. “You must stop now.”
“Give me a minute.”
“You don’t have a minute, Callis. You come in now or else I throw Heather out of the airlock in a jumpsuit, and I’ll do that personally.”
Heather swallowed hard. The commander had been quiet until she’d given the order. Amy had made this statement so clearly and coldly that she fully believed it.
“Shit,” said Callis, “you are right. I am on my way.”
It had worked. Heather collapsed into her seat. The headstrong guy had obeyed. He was on the way.
“You should hurry up. Leave the tent where it is. It is just as hot inside as outside now. Only speed helps now.” Alain said crisply.
“I’m on my way,” she heard Callis say. He didn’t sound well. His stats were showing a blackout in the making.
“Airlock open now!” called Alain.
“I…” Callis didn’t say more. His stats stopped transmitting, too. Heather held her chest, feeling stabs of anxiety. But the green dot was still moving. It was near the airlock and had just moved inside now.
“Airlock shut,” said Alain. “Flooding with nitrogen.”
“Excellent timing, Alain,” said Amy.
Heather was on her way to the airlock. “Open the door!” she shouted, and rattled the handle.
“Wait a moment, it is still too hot,” responded Alain. “We also need to get air into the airlock.”
Why is it taking so long? She could handle that bit of heat all right. She felt as though she was standing in front of an oven, unable to do anything, while the best person in the universe was being baked on the other side.
“Watch the door—opening now,” warned Alain.
The hatch swung open quickly, surprisingly her. She cried out as the hard metal hit her shin. A bulky spacesuit leaned on the inside and slowly slid toward her. She eased it—him—to a seat against the wall. The material of the external cooling layer had partially fused onto the metal below. The helmet visor had formed bubbles and was misty from condensing water. She cleaned the glass that had been cooled by the nitrogen and could make out Callis’s face. Was he alive? Yes! He blinked his eyes and formed a word. Two words, then three words, with his lips. Heather understood him, although she couldn’t hear a thing.
Alain made a formal announcement while they sat together for dinner.
“I wanted to wait with this until our return, but one must celebrate when there is an occasion,” he explained. Then he floated away and returned with a dark bottle.
“Calvados,” he said, a wide grin on his face. “Karl Freitag helped me to smuggle it on board.”
“The head of security?” exclaimed Callis in surprise. His face didn’t show any wear, but some of his joints had burns. Heather had taken care of them personally, not letting anyone else near her patient.
“There is only one Karl Freitag,” answered Alain. “He is not like you think. You shouldn’t let yourselves be guided by your prejudice. Germans are really nice. I have met several of them. Most of them even have a sense of humor. And nobody ever had any objections to a good Calvados.”
Alain rose. Then he remembered that zero gravity might interfere with sharing the bottle.
“We probably should drink directly from the bottle. Remember that gravity won’t move the liquid into your mouth,” Callis explained. “Who goes first?”
Amy put a hand up and Alain threw the bottle in her direction. Amy let the contents calm down. Then she opened the bottle and gave it a tiny push toward the opening, then a very quick little pull back, and just as quickly closed it again. The escaped liquid was nearly spherical and Amy picked it out of the air with her open mouth—much like a dog jumping for a treat.
“That’s our pro right there,” said Heather with a laugh.
Alain imitated her. He wasn’t quick enough to close the lid so h
is bubble was larger. Callis went next and ended with a larger swig, too.
“We’ll share that,” he told Heather. They moved simultaneously toward the bubble, but Heather hadn’t factored any deceleration into her motion. Alain and Amy laughed as the two collided with their noses. The Calvados liquid flowed out to cover Callis like a mask.
“You need to lick that off now,” he challenged Heather with a laugh.
Suddenly Heather turned serious. She had remembered that Callis’s EVA only had accomplished half the projects. They had lost the drive and would be dying. Soon. Heather rose and floated down to the lab module. It would not do to let the others see her cry.
June 2, 2074, Solar Orbit
Something was wrong with the NASA ship. Artem checked its position hourly. It was evident that the ship was sinking. That was normal because plasma was quite dense at this altitude. It was like a ship sinking into Earth’s atmosphere. Colliding particles would slow it down and it would lose altitude. Further down the plasma was denser, so the vicious cycle would draw the ship in faster and faster. An Earth satellite prevents premature demise by firing its drives at regular intervals to retain its prescribed altitude.
Why wasn’t this ship doing anything like that? He should be capturing regular energy signatures of drive activity. He had only heard good things about the DFD technology NASA had access to. But even modern technology tended to fail. According to his thinking, that happened more frequently than with Stone Age technology like the drive of his yacht
The late yacht, he reminded himself. His existence in this interim world here felt so very real. Sometimes he forgot that he had been torn apart by an explosion, and his yacht along with him. Since then he had managed to control this world, within limits. And he wasn’t quite sure if it was his achievement. Sometimes it felt as if he was in the middle of an elaborate tutorial that would unlock his full potential. After all, elevating a dumb visitor to a relevant status might be standard procedure on a high-tech station like this one. Either way he needed Watson less and less for hints and clues. He had wanted to send that particular AI to hell for some time now. Yet he had to admit that without Watson he probably wouldn’t have reached the station. However, attacking the NASA ship was unforgivable.
But was it Watson’s fault? Wasn’t the AI little more than malleable clay in the hands of its creator, the RB Group? He looked at Sobachka, who moved her legs in an apparent dream. Free will, an unwanted side effect of Watson-style AIs, had been summarily castrated. It was a machine—highly intelligent—but nevertheless, just a machine. It was pointless to be mad at a machine. And there was no reason for remorse if he destroyed it, which was his new goal.
The NASA ship came first, though. The total lack of activity was somewhat reassuring, as there was nothing that might provoke Watson to attack again. The poor people over there probably didn’t have the faintest idea that they had been attacked by their competition. That was just how people on Earth would experience things if RB ever decided to use the station as a weapon against third parties. The creators of the station clearly wouldn’t care. They had their far-flung plans. Perhaps humanity had outlived its purpose in their scheme of things and was seen as a self-destructing species. Or their focus was not on the intelligent beings on Earth, but more abstract, on life itself. Mankind was the opposite of a poster child in many ways.
Second-guessing the creators’ motivations wouldn’t help. They were too remote. His current issues were far more pressing. He needed to help the NASA ship and get rid of the AI for good. Artem suspected that both issues were related. Watson would not idly sit by and watch him help their opponents. Artem recapped the trajectory of the spaceship. If it kept sinking like now—and the sink speed seemed to be rising—the ship would disappear under the photosphere in three to four days, lost beneath the visible surface of the sun. How powerful would NASA technology be? No matter, he could not imagine that the crew would survive that. So he had to act today, or tomorrow at the latest.
June 3, 2074, Solar Explorer
It is not easy to look death in the eye. She hadn’t received any preparation for that. Her death had always seemed something remote, far in the future, something one could consider some other time. The weather is simply too good for that today. Well, that was an excuse she would never be able to use again. It would be sunny—very sunny—for every single day of the rest of her life. Heather gave a dark chuckle.
Earth was sending worried messages. Nobody was able to provide any solutions. All things had been tried. The DFD would not restart. Callis had calculated that they had three days until an uncontrolled sink rate set in. Solar Explorer would fall into the sun. Nobody could tell when it was their moment. But it was clear, and that was consoling and frightening at the same time, that they would be already dead during the final descent.
They probably could push back the uncontrolled descent by releasing the shield. The voluminous structure was slowing them down considerably more than they would slow on their own. But then they would be without its protection, and the sun would roast them.
Things are what they are, Heather told herself. She had better stop complaining about her destiny. She could read her daughter Mariela’s letter again, and once more after that. It was time to respond. And she would love to spend a night with Callis before dying, if only once. She wanted to know how that pathway in life could have worked out, now that it had become a real possibility. It was an odd desire in the face of death. Should she bring it up? She didn’t want to make Amy or Alain feel uncomfortable, either. How did one prepare for one’s own death, the right way? What was permitted? What consideration did one have to give to equally death-bound companions?
Headquarters had offered consultations with ministers of any religion. Due to signal delay, it wouldn’t be real conversations, of course. They all had refused, except for Alain. She hadn’t expected religious feelings from him. But he was from a different generation. She had asked Callis about his religion and he had described himself as kind of Muslim, although he had never practiced it. She wondered if he would be circumcised. Heather hadn’t dared to ask him about it. She would notice, all right, if… if she could be brave enough to move things that direction. Unfortunately he was giving her more room than she felt comfortable with. Why would that be? Was he busy with his own demons, or did he just not want to get in her way?
Heather reached for her pocket and pulled out a tissue. Her vision had gone blurry once again—tears didn’t flow away from one’s eyes without gravity.
“Do you adhere to any religion, Amy?”
Heather had decided to join the others in the command module.
“I am a Buddhist of some kind,” answered Amy. “And sometimes a Shintoist or a Christian. That is a habit from Japan.”
“You have lived there for a very long time.”
“Yes, in the house of my in-laws. I couldn’t move away. They loved their grandson so much. Religion is something practical for Japanese. They take what they need: A Christian marriage, a Shinto ceremony for the forefathers, it all fits wonderfully. One God, the many gods of Nature, and even Buddhism that is without any gods—they aren’t mutually exclusive, they enhance each other.”
“That sounds harmonic.”
“Harmony is important there, a bit too important at times. I am afraid I shamed my mother-in-law once in a while when I was too upfront about things. But she always forgave me since I was a foreigner.”
“Do you regret anything in your life?” Heather asked curiously.
“Regret is a big word. But I had to make a difficult decision to go back into space and leave my son for a very long time. He was fine, his father and his grandparents gave him loving care, but things never were the same between the two of us after that. I can’t even describe what changed.”
“You felt it.”
“Yes, I did. But I probably would do the same thing again. The decision was necessary.”
“People are odd. Even if one lets them rethink their
decisions, they are inclined to repeat them. Even the mistakes.”
“I wanted to thank you for sending me the data,” Alain said.
Heather nodded. And sending you to your death by doing that, she thought.
“I was afraid you might have regrets,” Alain continued “but that would be completely inappropriate.”
She noticed how he was looking for words in this language that was unfamiliar to him.
“In fact you did me the biggest favor in my life. Well, the second-biggest, right after my wife accepting my proposal.”
“A favor?” Heather asked incredulously.
“Yes! I hadn’t realized how boring and meaningless my life had become since my wife died. I was just vegetating, basically waiting to follow her. With your help I noticed that life could continue to be interesting.”
“At least until you burn up in a spaceship crashing into the sun,” she added cynically.
“Hey, we will write history! Who would have remembered a sewage engineer from Paris? Now I will be famous posthumously!” Alain actually managed to laugh heartily. How can he do that? And then his laughter was infectious. She envied his wife for the time they had spent together.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” he answered.
Heather looked up and down and all around. They were alone. Callis spread his arms and came closer. He smelled good. They embraced. Heather felt warm. It was reassuring warmth, like a thick sweater in winter, or crackling flames in the fireplace. She closed her eyes. Her hands explored his body. Callis held her tight. Neither said a word. Only the fabric rustled as he pulled the T-shirt over her head. She noticed how it fluttered away like a wounded bird. Then she closed her eyes again. Callis hugged her. His hands and lips were everywhere. She lost her sense for up and down and it wasn’t for lack of gravity. Heather had imagined it all different. But it was better the way it was, incredibly better.
Silent Sun: Hard Science Fiction Page 21