Iron mw-1

by Poul Anderson

  “Now. The kzinti mine the asteroid belt for metals, mainly iron. They do that by shifting the bodies into eccentric orbits osculating Secunda’s, then wangling them into planetary orbit at the far end. Kam heard as how an asteroid is about due in, and the tug was taking station to meet it and nudge it into place. To my mind, ’asteroid’ implies a fair-sized object, not just a rock.

  “But the tug was prospecting, Kam heard, when she was ordered to Prima. Afterward she didn’t go back to prospecting, because the time before she’d be needed at Secunda had gotten too short to make that worthwhile. However, since she was in fact called from the sun, my guess is that the asteroid’s not in need of attention right away. In other words, the tug’s waiting.

  “Again, if I were in charge, I wouldn’t keep a crew idle aboard. I’d just leave her in Secunda orbit till Al ’s wanted. That needs to be a safe orbit, though, one and inner space isn’t for an empty vessel. So the tug’s circling wide around the planet, or maybe the moon. Unless she sits on the moon, too.”

  “She isn’t able to land anywhere,” Ryan reminded. “Those cooling fins, if nothing else. I suppose the kzinti put Rover down, on the planet-facing side, the easier to keep an eye on her. She’s a lure for us, after all.”

  Saxtorph nodded. “Thanks,” he said. “Given that the asteroid was diverted from close-in solar orbit, and is approaching Secunda, we can make a pretty good estimate of where it is and what the vectors are. How ’bout it, Laurinda?”

  “The Kzinti are expecting the asteroid. Their instruments will register it. They’ll say, ’Ah, yes,’ and go on about their business, which includes hunting for us and never suppose that we’ve glided to it and are trailing along behind.”

  Dorcas let out a war-whoop.

  The thing was still molten. That much mass would remain so for a long while in space, unless the kzinti had ways to speed its cooling. Doubtless they did. Instead of venting enormous quantities of water to maintain herself near the sun, the tug could spray them forth. “What a show!” Saxtorph had said. “Pity we’ll miss it.”

  The asteroid glowed white, streaked with slag, like a lesser sun trundling between planets. Its diameter was ample to conceal Shep. Secunda gleamed ahead, a perceptible tawny disc. From time to time the humans had ventured to slip their boat past her shield for a quick instrumental peek. They knew approximately the rounds which Vengeful Slasher and Sun Defter paced. Soon the tug must come to make rendezvous and steer the iron into its destination path. Gigantic though her strength was, she could shift millions of tonnes, moving at kilometers per second, only slowly. Before this began, the raiders must raid. Saxtorph made a final despairing effort: “Damn it to chaos, darling, I can’t let you go. I can’t.”

  “Hush,” Dorcas said low, and laid her hand across his mouth. They floated weightless in semi-darkness, the bunk which they shared curtained off. Their shipmates had, unspokenly, gone forward from the cubbyhole where everyone slept by turns, to leave them alone.

  “One of us has to go, one stay,” she whispered redundantly, but into his ear. “Nobody else would have a prayer of conning the tug, and Kam and Laurinda could scarcely bring Rover home, which is the object of the game. So you and I have to divide the labor, and for this part I’m better qualified.”

  “Brains, not brawn, huh?” he growled half resentfully.

  “Well, I did work on translation during the war. I can read kzin a little, which is what’s going to count. Put down your machismo.” She drew him close and fluttered eyelids against his. “As for brawn, fellow, you do have qualifications I lack, and this may be our last chance… for a spell.”

  “Oh, love—you, you—”

  Thus their dispute was resolved. They had been through it more than once. Afterward there wasn’t time to continue it. Dorcas had to prepare herself.

  Spacesuited, loaded like a Christmas tree with equipment, she couldn’t properly embrace her husband at the airlock. She settled for an awkward kiss and a wave at the others, then closed her faceplate and cycled through.

  Outside, she streaked off, around the asteroid. Its warmth beat briefly at her. She left the lump behind and deployed her diriscope, got a fix on the planet ahead, compared the reading with the computed coordinates that gleamed on a databoard, worked the calculator strapped to her left wrist, made certain of what the displays on her drive unit meters said right forearm—and set the thrust controls for maximum. Acceleration tugged. She was on her way.

  It would be a long haul. You couldn’t eat distance in a spacesuit at anything like the rate you could in a boat. Its motor lacked the capacity—not to speak of the protections and cushionings possible within a hull. In fact, a large part of her load was energy boxes. To accomplish her mission in time, she must drain them beyond rechargeability, discard and replace them. That hurt; they could have been ferried down to Prima for the saving of Carita and Juan. Now too few would be left, back aboard Shep. But under present conditions rescue would be meaningless anyway.

  She settled down for the hours. Her insignificant size and radiation meant she would scarcely show on kzin detectors. Occasionally she sipped from the water tube or pushed a foodbar through the chowlock. Her suit took care of additional needs. As for comfort, she had the stars, Milky Way, nebulae, sister galaxies, glory upon glory.

  Often she rechecked her bearings and adjusted her vectors. Eventually, decelerating, she activated a miniature radar such as asteroid miners employ and got a lock on her objective. By then Secunda had swollen larger in her eyes than Luna over Earth. From her angle of view it was a scarred dun crescent against a circle of darkness faintly rimmed with light diffused through dusty air. The moon, where Rover lay, was not visible to her.

  Saxtorph’s guess had been right. Well, it was an informed guess. The warship orbited the planet at about 100,000 klicks. The supertug circled beyond the moon, twice as far out. She registered dark and cool on what instruments Dorcas carried; nobody aboard. Terminating deceleration, the woman approached.

  What a sight! A vast, brilliant spheroid with flanges like convulsed meridians; drive units projecting within a shielding sheath—no ports, but receptors from which visuals were transmitted inboard; recesses for instruments; circular hatches which must cover steam vents; larger doors to receive crushed ice—How did you get in? Dorcas flitted in search. She could do it almost as smoothly as if she were flying a manwing through atmosphere.

  There—an unmistakable airlock. She was prepared to cut her way in, but when she had identified the controls, the valves opened and shut for her. Who worries about burglars in space? To the kzinti, Rover was the bait that might draw humans.

  The interior was dark. Diffusion of her flashbeam, as well as a gauge on her left knee, showed full pressure was maintained. Hers wasn’t quite identical; she equalized before shoving back her faceplate. The air was cold and smelled musty. Pumps muttered.

  Afloat in weightlessness, she began her exploration. She’d never been in a kzin ship before. But she had studied descriptions; and the laws of nature are the same everywhere, and man and kzin aren’t terribly unlike—they can actually eat each other; and she could decipher most labels; so she could piecemeal trace things out, figure how they worked, even in a vessel as unusual as this.

  She denied herself haste. If the crew arrived before she was done, she’d try ambushing them. There was no point in this job unless it was done right. As need arose she ate, rested, napped, adrift amidst machinery, Once she began to get a solid idea of the layout, she stripped it. Supplies, motors, black boxes, whatever she didn’t think she would require, she unpacked, unbolted, torched loose, and carried outside. There the grapnel field, the same force that hauled on cosmic stones, low-power now, clasped them behind the hull.

  Alone though she was, the ransacking didn’t actually take long. She was efficient. A hundred hours sufficed for everything. “Very well,” she said at last; and she took a pill and accepted ten hours of REM sleep, dreams which had been deferred. Awake again, refreshed
, she nourished herself sparingly, exercised, scribbled a cross in the air and murmured, “Into Your hands—” for unlike her husband, she believed the universe was more than an accident.

  Next came the really tricky part. Of course Bob had wanted to handle it himself. Poor dear, he must be in absolute torment, knowing everything that could go wrong. She was luckier, Dorcas thought: too busy to be afraid. Shep’s flickering radar peeks had gotten fair-to-middling readings on an object that must be the kzin warship. Its orbit was only approximately known, and subject both to perturbation and deliberate change. Dorcas needed exact knowledge. She must operate indicators and computers of nonhuman workmanship so delicately that Hraou-Captain had no idea he was under surveillance. Thereafter she must guess what her best tactics might be, calculate the maneuvers, and follow through.

  When the results were in: “Here goes,” she said into the hollowness around. “For you, Arthur—” and thought briefly that if the astronomer could have roused in his grave on Tertia, he would have reproved her, in his gentle fashion, for being melodramatic.

  Sun Defter plunged.

  Unburdened by tonnes of water, she made nothing of ten 9’s, 20, 30, you name it. Her kzin crew must often have used the polarizer to keep from being crushed, as Dorcas did. “Hai-ai-ai!” she screamed, and rode her comet past the moon, amidst the stars, to battle.

  She never knew whether the beings aboard the warship saw her coming. Things happened so fast. If the kzinti did become aware of what was bearing down on them, they had scant time to react. Their computers surely told them that Sun Defter was no threat, would pass close by but not collide. Some malfunction? The kzinti would not gladly annihilate their iron gatherer. When the pre-calculated instant flashed onto a screen before her, Dorcas punched for a sidewise thrust as great as the hull could survive. It shuddered and groaned around her. An instant later, the program that she had written cut off the grapnel field.

  Those masses she had painstakingly lugged outside—they now had interception vectors, and at a distance too small for evasion. Sun Defter passed within 50 kilometers while objects sleeted through Vengeful Slasher. The warship burst. Armor peeled back, white-hot, from holes punched by monstrous velocity. Missiles floated out of shattered bays. Briefly, a frost-cloud betokened air rushing forth into vacuum. The wreck tumbled among fragments of itself. Starlight glinted off the ruins. Doubtless crew remained alive in this or that sealed compartment; but Vengeful Slasher wasn’t going anywhere out of orbit, ever again.

  Sun Defter swooped past Secunda. Dorcas commenced braking operations, for eventual rendezvous with her fellow humans.

  The moon was a waste of rock, low hills, boulderfields, empty plains, here and there a crater not quite eroded away. Darkling in this light, under Sol it would have been brighter than Luna, powdered with yellow which at the bottoms of slopes had collected to form streaks or blotches. The sun threw long shadows from the west.

  Against them, Rover shone like a beacon. Saxtorph cheered. As expected, the kzinti had left her on the hemisphere that always faced Secunda. The location was, however, not central but close to the north pole and the western edge. He wondered why. He’d spotted many locations that looked as good or better, when you had to bring down undamaged a vessel not really meant to land on anything this size.

  He couldn’t afford the time to worry about it. By now the warboats had surely learned of the disaster to their mother ship and were headed back at top boost. Kzinti might or might not suspect what the cause had been of their supertug running amok, but they would know when Rover took off—in fact, would probably know when he reached the ship. Their shuttles, designed for strictly orbital work, were no threat. Their gunboats were. If Rover didn’t get to hyperspacing distance before those overtook her, she and her crew would be ganz kaput.

  Saxtorph passed low overhead, ascended, and played back the pictures his scanners had taken in passing. As large as she was, the ship had no landing jacks. She lay sidelong on her lateral docking grapples. That stressed her, but not too badly in a gravity less than Luna’s. To compound the trickiness of descent, she had been placed just under a particularly high and steep hill. He could only set down on the opposite side. Beyond the narrow strip of flat ground on which she lay, a blotch extended several meters across the valley floor. Otherwise that floor was strewn with rocks and somewhat downward sloping toward the hill. Maybe the kzinti had chosen this site precisely because it was a bitch for him to settle on.

  “I can do it, though,” Saxtorph decided. He pointed at the screen. “See, a reasonably clear area about 500 meters off.”

  Laurinda nodded. With the boat falling free again, the white hair rippled around her delicate features, Saxtorph applied retrothrust. For thrumming minutes he backed toward his goal. Sweat studded his face and darkened his tunic under the arms. Smell like a billy goat, I do, he thought fleetingly. When we come home, I’m going to spend a week in a Japanese hot bath. Dorcas can bring me sushi. She prefers showers, cold—He gave himself entirely back to his work. Contact shivered. The deck tilted. Saxtorph adjusted the jacks to level Shep. When he cut the engine, silence fell like a thunderclap. He drew a long breath, unharnessed, and rose. “I can suit up faster if you help me,” he told the Crashlander.

  “Of course,” she replied. “Not that I have much experience.” Never mind modesty. It had been impossible to maintain without occasional failures, by four people crammed inside this little hull. Laurinda had blushed all over, charmingly, when she happened to emerge from the shower cubicle as Saxtorph and Ryan came by. The quartermaster had only a pair of shorts on, which didn’t hide the gallant reflex. Yet nobody ever did or said anything improper, and the girl overcame her shyness. Now a part of Saxtorph enjoyed the touch of her spidery fingers, but most of him stayed focused on the business at hand.

  “Forgive me for repeating what you’ve heard a dozen times,” he said. “You are new to this kind of IRON situation, and could forget the necessity of abiding by orders. Your job is to bring this boat back to Dorcas and Kam. That’s it. Nothing else whatsoever. When I tell you to, you throw the main switch, and the program we’ve put in the autopilot will take over. I’d’ve automated that bit also, except rigging it would’ve taken time we can ill afford, and anyway, we do want some flexibility, some judgment in the control loop.” Sternly: “If anything goes wrong for me, or you think anything has, whether or not I’ve called in, you go. The three of you must have Shep. The tug is fast but clumsy, impossible to make planetfall with, and only barely provisioned. Your duty is to Shep. Understood?”

  “Yes,” she said mutedly, her gaze on the task she was doing. “Besides, we have to have the boat to rescue Juan and Carita.”

  A sigh wrenched from Saxtorph. “I told you—” After Dorcas’ flight, too few energy boxes remained to lift either of them into orbit. Shep could hover on her drive at low altitude while they flitted up, but she wasn’t built for planetary rescue work, the thrusters weren’t heavily enough shielded externally, at such a boost their radiation would be lethal. Neither meek nor defiant, Laurinda replied, “I know. But after we’ve taken Rover to the right distance, why can’t she wait, ready to flee, till the boat comes back from Prima?”

  “Because the boat never would.”

  “The kzinti can land safely.”

  “More or less safely. They don’t like to, remember. Sure, I can tell you how they do it. Obvious. They put detachable footpads on their jacks. The stickum may or may not be able to grab hold of, say, fluorosilicone, but if it does, it’ll take a while to cut its way through. When the boat’s ready to leave, she sheds those footpads.”

  “Of course. I’ve been racking my brain to comprehend why we can’t do the same for Shep.”

  The pain in her voice and in himself brought anger into his. “God damn it, we’re spacers, not sorcerers! Groundsiders think a spacecraft is a hunk of metal you can cobble anything onto, like a car. She isn’t. She’s about as complex and interconnected as your body is. A few milli
grams of blood clot or of the wrong chemical will bring your body to a permanent halt. A spacecraft’s equally vulnerable. I am not going to tinker with ours, light-years from any proper workshop. I am not. That’s final!” Her face bent downward from his. He beard her breath quiver. “I’m sorry, dear,” he added, softly once more. “I’m sorrier than you believe, maybe sorrier than you can imagine. Those are my crewfolk down and doomed. Oh, if we had time to plan and experiment and carefully test, sure, I’d try it. What should the footpads be made of? What size? How closely machined? How—detached-explosive bolts, maybe? We’d have to wire those and—Laurinda, we won’t have the time. If I lift Rover off within the next hour or two, we can pick up Dorcas and Kam, boost, and fly dark. If we’re lucky, the kzin warboats won’t detect us. But our margin is razor thin. We don’t have the days or weeks your idea needs. Fido’s people don’t either; their own time has gotten short. I’m sorry, dear.”

  She looked up. He saw tears in the ruby eyes, down the snowy cheeks. But she spoke still more quietly than he, with the briefest of little smiles. “No harm in asking, was there? I understand. You’ve told me what I was trying to deny I knew. You are a good man, Robert.”

  “Aw,” he mumbled, and reached to rumple her hair.

  The suiting completed, he took her hands between his gloves for a moment, secured a toolpack between his shoulders where the drive unit usually was, and cycled out.

  The land gloomed silent around him. Nearing the horizon, the red sun looked bigger than it was. So did the planet, low to the southeast, waxing close to half phase. He could make out a dust storm as a deeper-brown blot on the fulvous crescent. Away from either luminous body, stars were visible-and yonder brilliancy must be Quarta. How joyously they had sailed past it.