by Peter Riva
Abadine adapted a handcart to carry a 100-kilo magnet that, we were confident enough, would work through Angie’s thin ship skin. Testing her huge magnet and the rolling pin—clunk—and we could not get them apart. It took a while, but we managed it with three people pulling on each side. Seeing that, I was doubly sure the magnets would work and keep us safe.
Cramer added a refinement, he’d tow and belay a graphene rope for us to use if we failed to get from the lower flight deck platform to the beginning of the orange path on the spinning hull. And he also made Abadine make up a second magnet and “glue it to the beginning of the orange path so that I can leave the spool in place. We can’t take it with us or it’ll wrap around the hull at a wide point. But at the beginning of the orange path, the narrow end, it will unwind and hopefully it should be usable when we get back.” Should be? That had me worried already.
The schematics for dome wire attachments were done with Doc Sing’s help, trying to determine a possible configuration based on neuron, ganglia, and plexus designs from various species. The hydra jellyfish brain pattern was the one Sing felt had the best chance. “If you get out there and attach to anything, start with this one but be careful to do it one wire at a time …”
“I can’t do that Doc, I cannot connect, go into a system with only one wire. Okay, the harness I used in System was only eight primary wires. I only needed eight if all else failed, but this dome is for total retrieval of brain function and memory and has more than forty wires. Eight are critical, the primary ones like before, so maybe we should only do those?”
Sing was shaking his head, “I think you should hook up the eight first, I agree, and turn them all on at one time, but then Cramer can continue to add more and more according to the schematic. At some point, you should get a reading, hear something as you put it. By the time you get all forty connected, the pattern should look like this …” He clicked on our portable projector light onto the wall, and it showed what looked like a one-meter wide snowflake, each point with a number.
“Okay, we’ll do one EVA starting with the hydra pattern and see how it goes, hell, if we can even get hooked up.”
The next day we were ready. The crew sent vid messages of good luck as Cramer and I were suited up in the Zero-G environment of the lower flight deck. Utility belts were festooned with all sorts of tethers and lights, as well as clips and pouches (mine had the blue Loc). Cramer had an extra bag, but I didn’t know what was in it. Floating before the hatch, we watched as Sam finished putting on his suit. We all had enough oxygen for three hours now via a hard plastic backpack the maintenance people and I had designed, containing little graphene-wrapped canisters super-pressurized to three thousand kilos per square centimeter as well as a backup VHF radio in case the primary ones in the helmets failed. Communication was critical for our survival out there.
In my helmet, I heard, “Ready to go?” Cramer taking command. I replied with an okay hand signal and we entered the hatch together. Cramer had to guide me because I could not see anything except straight ahead. The hatch closed behind us and I heard a slight hissing and then silence. When he opened the outer hatch, we were staring down at the asteroid, sunny side facing us, we were in the shadow of the very faint sunlight from Alpha Centauri B. I could see the puffs of mist coming off the surface and recognized the tell-tale signs of a rough hunk of rock, without atmospheric protection, that had taken meteor and cousin-asteroid collision-beatings for a few billion years. There were dust bowls and a few craters but mostly glistening rock faces where something had cleaved clean shards to shine in the sun.
If anything looked uninviting, asteroids are it. We both switched on one helmet light of the four we each had.
Weightless, the roller pin magnet was quickly tethered to both Cramer’s belt and mine. I felt him attach it and tap my helmet, as I could not look down. Cramer carried a thin spool of graphene rope attached to his belt, maybe millimeters thick, that he ran through the cleat near the hatch, a cleat I remembered well, and then back to his belt. So, I was attached to Cramer and he was attached to the ship, the graphene was belaying automatically off the spool attached to his belt. I focused on that security, not the abyss before me.
Holding on below the flight deck, Cramer motioned that we had to make the jump from our non-rotating platform, across over fifty meters of space to the junction with the hull. We had discussed moving slowly down the non-rotating swivel tube junction to the start of the ship proper and inching out from there. I wanted to go slowly. Cramer insisted that the tether was our security and, besides, he had engineering make a small gas pistol to propel him if we veered off course. The planned jet packs weren’t ready and didn’t seem likely to be. They used too many consumables. All we had was Cramer’s little gas gun that would propel us to the hull. He waved it in front of my visor, trying to reassure me.
I knew he wasn’t wrong or foolhardy, of course. The non-rotating cylinder attaching the ship to the lower flight deck coupled with a swiveling bearing to the ship. But inside the ship, the distance from the opening of the cylinder to the beginning of the orange path was more than seventy meters along the slope of the ship. In order to get from our platform to the beginning of the orange path, we had to travel fifty meters across open space and hope to hit the orange path point on the curved outside of the hull and hook up the magnets. Miss and we’d bounce off with nothing to grab onto. We’d have to tow ourselves, hand over hand, back to the platform using Cramer’s thin rope.
The trick was to make the jump with the rolling-pin magnet held out front and to time the jump so that we would land on that orange path target where Abadine would have the huge magnet waiting. Then hold on for dear life as the rotating hull would snap us around quickly.
Inside the suits, we were talking back and forth. Inside, I had agreed to try Cramer’s leap, but now that I was out here, I wanted no part of it. He was insistent and pointing, “How the hell are we going to lock the magnets if we don’t get over there?”
“Sure, get there, miss the target, and we’ll bounce off into space or down toward the surface.”
“I have the spool of graphene, we’re not going anywhere.”
“Yeah, but we can’t use it when we process down the hull because the hull is spinning and it’ll wind up the whole spool in no time.” The graphene would wrap around the spinning hull quickly.
“Look, Bank,” he was back to Bank again, probably frustrated at my indecision, “We have been through all this. Stop being so afraid. We will get over there, and the magnets will lock on, I’ll retrieve the graphene,” he showed me, assuring me it was all okay, that one end was attached to his belt, the graphene running through a karabiner attached to the cleat by the airlock hatch and on to the spool. I knew all this. He was still trying to calm my nerves, “And I’ll leave the whole thing there with this magnet,” he pointed to the top of the spool where Abadine had blue Loc’ed a magnet. “Remember the magnet Abadine has Loc’ed to the beginning of the orange path? That way it’ll be there for our return and will tell us where to go. I’ll latch the spool safely, don’t worry. It’s okay, really. We’ll just allow the rolling magnet to grab hold, swap one security for the other. Get it? It’ll work, come on, we planned this!”
I was scared, so I vented some anger, “Why the hell didn’t they leave handholds along the hull? Damn stupid design anyway.”
“You should know, didn’t you do an original design with Apollo? Come on Simon, let’s give it a try.” He was brave, I knew that, but he also did have a point, the graphene spool would work to save us if we missed.
The porthole in the hatch was beneath us now as we moved up the flight deck collar so we could have a clean line of sight to the start of the hull. Cramer was waiting for the flickering of a red light Sam would flash in the porthole that would tell him when the orange path was in line with the porthole. Inside I knew Abadine and Aten were relaying cues to Sam, “Almost, here it comes, now!”
Cramer started timing the inter
vals, the ship rotated, and suddenly he warned me, “twelve seconds to jump, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one—jump.” And we did.
And missed three times.
Each time he caught our freefall with the tether, slender as it was, and he hauled us back in, re-spooling the graphene. The disorientation, flailing about in the empty space, was horrible. That’s the only thing I felt, terror, trying to catch a glimpse of his hands on the tether, hoping he had not let go.
With my limited mobility and vision, I was getting really disoriented and progressively more scared. The last time we bounced off the hull—when the magnet seemed to grab and then slipped off and we spun wildly further than before into space. I was worried Cramer had hit his helmet that time on the ship.
He had but told me it was fine. “No cracks yet Simon. Relax.” He wasn’t allowing time for more cold feet. “Simon, you okay for one more try? Here it comes, this time with ten—eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, jump!” And we did and when the magnet hit the hull, it twisted ninety degrees and spun us along with it, crashing into one another, and then we were flattened against the hull as it too whipped us about as centrifugal force tried to throw us off.
But the magnet held. That’s all I cared about as I tried to catch my breath.
Cramer called down to the ship, “Abadine, we’re attached. I will re-spool and am about to let go of the graphene, attaching the spool to the deck magnet, everything is okay. Tell me when you are ready to roll, but let us catch our breath please, one minute.” Cramer being so polite had me worried. Either he wasn’t stressed at all or he was trying to make believe he wasn’t scared. Then I figured it out—it was Aten, he didn’t want to worry her.
Cramer got busy letting the graphene end attached to his belt free, and I saw it snake away following the slope of the hull and then reappear and shoot off into the dark back toward the flight deck. Seconds later, it came shooting back to Cramer as he finished re-spooling, winding it up. When he had retrieved the free end, he pushed the spool toward the hull, moving it around until it seemed to snap into position. Cramer gave it a few tugs and gave me a thumbs-up. I heard him tell Abadine we were ready. I wasn’t, but, oh hell …
Suddenly, the magnet spun ninety degrees again and that caused us to whip about once more.
People have this idea that space is like being under water. It isn’t. Sure, you can train for Zero-G underwater, but the lack of any resistance in Zero-G and no atmosphere is completely alien to a gravity-bred creature once you step into the void. I had lived with Angie inside in Zero-G long enough to be accustomed to the up, down, side to side, orientation. What I could not get used to out in open space was the concept of nothing—and I mean nothing—to attest your fall, jump, movement—nothing at all. Move your arm and your legs started moving in the opposite direction. Turn your head and it moved halfway, and your torso moved a little the other way. Everything is exaggerated, everything throws you seriously off-kilter. And there is nothing you can grab, touch, or use to steady your movements. And a spacesuit makes you even more clumsy at that.
Back in the old days, astronauts had to be foot-locked onto a work platform, or wear a jetpack to maintain control outside the ship. Stay inside for a year or more? Sure, easy, grab on to something. But try staying free of any hold outside in space for a few hours. The Russians found it messed with the Cosmonauts’ heads, so they made them wear strong, bulky tethers, more for psychological impact than need.
We only had this stupid, thin, graphene string. That’s what it was really. Calling it a tether seemed, to me, kind of a sick joke. Okay, I knew it had more than a 4,000-kilo tensile strength, but it was only this tiny, teeny, string for heaven’s sake. And Cramer had let it go. Oh, great …
Suddenly, the magnet started up the slope of the hull. Even though the strap to the end of the rolling-pin magnet was only a meter long, the play in that coupled with our momentum and moment of force, well, we were banging about like feathers in the wind. There wasn’t any wind, of course, but the thought occurred just the same—if there was a wind we’d be blown away.
The ship’s hull was spinning us around. First, there was the asteroid beneath us, then it disappeared from view and there was only black sky, and then the sun filled my visor like a distant light bulb. As the magnet progressed rolling along the outside of the hull, with Cramer and Abadine in constant communication, I drifted mentally, trying to hear anything, anything at all.
Nothing. So far.
As the ship passed behind the asteroid in orbit, we reached the mid-ship point, Abadine confirmed. Cramer steadied himself like a water-skier, feet on the hull, one hand holding the magnet tether watching me and beyond me nothing but blackness all around. “Feels like standing on your head.” The centrifugal force was pushing the blood to his head. He reached up and turned on the rest of his helmet lights. The sight of Angie’s hull skin was frightening. Pockmarked, scratched, dented in places, scorched (or at least it looked scorched with black sooty streaks that I could scuff with my gloved hand), Angie’s hull had held for over 100 years. Bless it. Bless her.
It was time to get going. I illuminated the graphic portable projector Aten had rigged with Doc Sing and handed it to Cramer. He shone it down onto the hull off to one side of the magnet, and it clearly projected snowflake schematic one, labeled “Hydra.” Coiled on my belt, I unfastened the extension to the dome wire harness and drifting against only the waist tether because I needed both hands, I reached into the pouch for the blue Loc. Placing the first wire onto the deck meant wiping off the dust or soot, whatever that was, dropping some blue Loc onto the ship’s skin, putting the blue Loc away safely, putting the wire end into the blue Loc drop, reaching for the UV flashlight with my other hand, turning it on, and solidifying the blue Loc.
I had practiced. I was good at this. But that was irrelevant. Nothing would hold. Nothing would glue. The blue Loc drifted off the skin with the centrifugal force. If I hit it with the UV light, it solidified all right, but not attached to the hull. I twisted my body to look up at Cramer. He touched his helmet to mine, no radio, “Let’s get back in and rethink this.” As he was beginning to radio Aten and Abadine, I cut him off.
“I have something I want to try, now that we’re out here.” Cramer started to say that I should not improvise, but I silenced him with a flat palm in front of his visor. “Look, we’re going to ask Abadine to roll another ten centimeters, just a minute.” I spread the primary eight wires, slender gold wires no thicker than a piece of paper, in a neat row in back of the rolling pin and keyed my radio. “Abadine, I need an exact roll, no more, no less please, just ten centimeters backward, easy and slow. Now please.”
The rolling pin moved and mounted the slender wire ends. And held. Held us, held the wires in place. With my limited vision floating close to the wire ends, I could only watch the wires. I didn’t see Cramer above me, but I heard him, “Simon, the crazy damn fool he’s using the magnet as a clamp. Let’s hope that works. If the magnet comes off, we’re sunk.”
Aten was yelling in desperation. I turned off the radio, reached for the extension connector with my suit helmet dome wires sticking out of the Ferrofluidic seal, and snapped the connection in place.
And turned on a whole new existence.
20
HELLO?
It wasn’t as if I had not expected the plunge, the descent into a matrix of programming and structure delineated only by electrical pathways. That didn’t surprise me. Apollo, in talking with Ra and Gaia had uncovered that Gaia was working in octal, not binary. I had prepared myself for this. That wasn’t a surprise. What did surprise me was the simplicity, the purity all around me. There seemed to be no function, no purpose to what I saw. What I saw, I could easily interact with, study, even manipulate if I wanted to, one if for a what if, one octal code for another. Sure, octal was more complicated to construct than binary, but it was so compact, so pure in comparison to binary that it seemed almost, well, superior. And
yet, what function I could determine, what purpose these codings had, seemed to be nothing, no purpose, no function. They simply were.
I mentally sent a command to travel deeper, just to the next code junction, and was stopped. There was nothing physically holding me, of course, but my “go to” command seemed limited to what I first saw, everything I could see before me, not anything beyond that vision. It was like being in a crowd, knowing there are people and objects out of view, but you cannot go there. And what was before me was pure, yes, but ultimately unrevealing.
I had learned, working in System all those years ago, that I could make a mirror image of myself with one of my little programs. I did so. It vanished. I thought that perhaps the problem was that I was not able to access the FAT table, if there was one, to tell it the mirror image belonged. Sort of like telling the library card system there’s an extra book on a shelf, relax. I tried again and as it appeared, it disappeared.