Mission: Tomorrow - eARC

by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

  The People’s Republic of China was expanding into space in those days. While the Americans and Europeans restricted their efforts to space stations in low orbits, China built its base on the Moon. When the Russians sent an automated probe to scout the near-Earth asteroids, the great ones in Beijing decided to send taikonauts to claim some of them for China.

  One of the taikonauts they sent was me: Song-li Chunxi.

  My mission was to reach asteroid 94-12, an undistinguished chunk of rock that was hardly more than three kilometers long, at its greatest axis.

  Romantics dreamed of finding gold and silver among the asteroids, platinum and high-quality nickel-iron. I was sent to asteroid 94-12 because spectroscopic studies of the rock showed it contained many tons of rare-earth elements.

  You seem puzzled. Rare-earth elements such as neodymium, lanthanum, cerium and the others were very important in the manufacture of computer memories, rechargeable batteries, cell phones, magnets and the whole panoply of modern electronics devices. What copper was to Morse’s telegraph and Bell’s telephone, rare-earth elements are to today’s digital world.

  The American capitalists had formed several private companies to mine the asteroids. So China led the movement in the United Nations to require that a human being personally claim an asteroid for his (or her) nation’s utilization. Otherwise the greedy capitalists could have sent out fleets of robotic vehicles and claimed the rights to everything in sight!

  International law was quite specific. No nation may claim sovereignty over any natural object in space. No nation may claim the Moon, for example, or any asteroid, as part of its national territory. But a nation—or even a private corporation—may claim use of the natural resources of a body in space, so long as the claim is made by a human being actually present on that body.

  So China sent me to asteroid 94-12. It was one of the near-Earth asteroids: hundreds of them orbited within a few million miles of Earth. The so-called Asteroid Belt was much farther away, of course; millions of asteroids were in that region, out beyond the orbit of Mars, too far for economically profitable mining operations.

  My mission was a simple one: fly from our launch center in Sinkiang to asteroid 94-12, claim it for the PRC, and then fly home. I would be alone for the three months it would take to reach the asteroid, claim it, and then fly home again.

  That was before Sam Gunn entered the picture.

  Even as a little girl, long before I entered taikonaut training, I had heard of Sam Gunn, of course. He was a legend: a scheming, devilishly clever entrepreneur who had made several fortunes on various space endeavors, and then managed to lose everything and had to start all over again.

  He was known as a conniver, a fast-talking pitchman who would bend or even break any rules that stood in his way. And also an oversexed libertine who pursued women—any and all women—relentlessly. Although no one would admit it officially, I had heard several times that the great ones in Beijing would not mind at all if Sam Gunn got himself killed while pursuing one of his wild schemes.

  For more than six weeks I coasted through space toward a rendezvous with 94-12. To the scientists I was living in microgravity, but it was effectively zero-gee. It might have been enjoyable, if only I’d had enough room in my tiny cabin to actually float free. But I didn’t. My spacecraft was officially described as “compact.” After the first week of my mission I thought of it as cramped, confined.

  And it was lonely, with no one even to talk with except the disembodied voices from mission control, back in Sinkiang. After two weeks I began to take EVA jaunts outside merely to relieve the feelings of claustrophobia that were pressing in on me.

  After all, I was expected to work, eat, sleep, attend to my hygiene, all in a compartment little larger than a coffin. My world was no bigger than two meters across: everything from the panel displaying my spacecraft’s systems’ status to the zero-gravity toilet I had to strap myself onto was within arm’s reach.

  Even with the regular messages from the mission controllers in Sinkiang, I felt alone, abandoned, so very far from home, far from warmth and the touch of another person.

  So I would suit up and go outside. The huge, vast universe was all around me out there: the distant blue sphere of Earth and myriads of bright unbinking stars, the endless infinity of eternity. It soothed me, it kept me sane. I would float at the end of my safety tether and stare at the star-flecked darkness for hours. Somehow the loneliness I felt inside my cabin was dispelled by the grandeur of the universe. I even composed poetry in my head out there in the emptiness.

  At last I approached the asteroid and made ready for the rendezvous maneuver. The spacecraft’s automated guidance and propulsion systems were programmed for the landing, of course, but I sat in my contour chair with both hands hovering above the control yokes, ready to take command of the ship if the automated systems faltered.

  The mission controllers in Sinkiang were of no help: I was nearly three light-minutes away from Earth; it would take them six minutes or more to respond to my requests. I was on my own.

  The automated systems worked flawlessly, almost. The asteroid grew bigger and bigger in my observation port, until it blotted out everything else and all I could see was its lumpy, pitted surface rushing up to meet me.

  And a spacecraft sitting in the middle of an irregular, lopsided crater!

  A spacecraft? How could that be? There was no record of another spacecraft mission to 94-12, no communications from such a spacecraft.

  Glancing at my panel readouts, I saw that I would be touching down on the asteroid in less than four minutes. No time to ask Sinkiang for orders. I had to make my own decision.

  Feeling excited, happy even, I grasped the control yokes firmly and jinked my spacecraft with a spurt from the attitude control jets to land softly in the same crater beside the unexpected craft already there.

  I touched down feather light, but still kicked up a cloud of dust. As I waited for it to dissipate, I realized that the other craft was much bigger than my own. Very much bigger. It was huge, actually: a trio of bulbous spherical shapes studded with antennas, thruster jets, solar panels and what looked like airlock hatches, with a quartet of rocket nozzles at its far end. My spacecraft looked like a pitiful child’s model beside it.

  As I shut down my propulsion systems, I felt a sudden wave of anxiety. The stranger had obviously landed on 94-12 before I had. He had probably already sent his claim to the asteroid back to whoever had sent him here. My mission was ruined and I was a failure.

  But when I tried to send a message back to Sinkiang, I found that all the communications wavelengths were being jammed.

  Jammed? By whom? Why?

  For several long minutes I sat in my contour chair wondering what I should do. The other spacecraft loomed in my observation port, silent, seemingly inert. Perhaps it was uncrewed, I thought. No, that couldn’t be. A robotic vehicle would not need to be so big.

  Could it be an alien spacecraft? A visitor from another star?

  I fought down the thrill of excitement that surged through me. Occam’s razor, I told myself. The simplest explanation is usually the correct one. Don’t go inventing extraterrestrial visitors; that’s the wildest possible explanation.

  And yet . . .

  My spacecraft had a pair of telescopes mounted outside on its skin, for visual observation of the asteroid during my approach phase. I could feel my heart throbbing excitedly beneath my ribs as I worked the control panel and turned the smaller of the telescopes onto one of the hatches along the other craft’s hull. Focusing it, I saw that there were operating instructions printed next to the hatch—in English.

  No extraterrestrials.

  I tried the radio again, this time attempting to contact that spacecraft. No go. The signals were still being jammed, up and down the frequency range.

  Well, I thought, if I can’t get a signal through to it, it can’t get a signal through to me. Whoever it is might not even know I’ve landed alongside him.
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  Then a new thought struck me. Perhaps whoever is in that craft is dead. Obviously the ship is too big for just one person. Maybe the entire crew has died.

  Of what? The craft did not appear to be damaged. Some malfunction of their life support system? Some virus or a leaking gas line that poisoned them all?

  There was only one way to find out, I finally decided. So I suited up and prepared to leave my spacecraft. The space suit should protect me from any virus or poisonous agent inside the other ship, I reasoned. The suit is a self-contained little ecology. If I can get inside their ship, I can see what’s happened to them. If it’s some sort of disease I can skip out quickly and get back to my own ship. Any disease organisms that might attach themselves to the outside of my suit will be quickly killed by exposure to vacuum and the high-intensity radiation out in the open between our two ships.

  Wishing I could contact Sinkiang for approval of my decision or even advice, I wriggled into my space suit and touched the control stud that pumped the air out of my compartment. When the panel light showed the compartment was in vacuum, I opened the hatch then floated halfway out. The asteroid’s gravity was so minuscule that I was just about weightless.

  The other ship was too far away for my EVA tether to reach, so I strapped the maneuvering jet pack to my shoulders before pushing myself completely out of my cabin.

  Slowly, carefully, I picked my way between the rocks strewing the dusty ground. With each cautious step I floated almost a meter above the ground. It wouldn’t have taken much effort to jump completely free of the asteroid and go into orbit around it.

  Once I got to the airlock hatch I read the instructions printed alongside it, then pressed the stud beneath the printing. The hatch popped open a few centimeters. I pulled it all the way open and hauled myself inside.

  The airlock chamber was lit by a single red light on its control panel. Using my helmet lamp I peered at the instructions and worked the keypads in the proper sequence. The outer hatch closed and locked, the airlock filled with air, and the panel light turned from red to green. I stepped to the inner hatch and opened it.

  On the other side of the hatch a passageway stretched in either direction, fully lighted. Which way should I go?

  Then I heard a voice shouting in the distance. At least someone was alive in the ship!

  I cracked open the visor of my helmet and took a quick, testing sniff of air. Perfectly good. Sliding the visor all the way up, I heard the voice much better. A man’s voice. Swearing with profound, profane, infuriated vehemence. In English. American English.

  Tingling with a mixture of apprehension and excitement, I made my way slowly along the passageway.

  “. . .no good, mother-humping, brain-dead, backstabbing pustule of a control circuit . . .” the male voice was raging in a sharp, slightly nasal tenor.

  The passageway ended at an open hatch. On the other side of it was a small compartment bearing dials and viewscreens and gauges on its walls, with a command chair in their midst, its arms studded with switches and pushbuttons. The man doing all the yelling was in that chair, his back to me.

  “Hello,” I said. In English, since that was the language he was using so fluently.

  No response. He simply kept on yowling and banging his fists on the armrest controls, like an infuriated little child.

  “Hello,” I repeated, louder.

  He whirled his chair around. “Yipes!” His eyes went round and he bounded out of the chair. In the low gravity he soared across the compartment and banged into me. We staggered backwards, arms and legs entangled, and toppled to the deck.

  “Who the hell are you?” he demanded, his face bare centimeters above my own.

  A little breathless from the fall, I replied, “Song-li Chunxi.”

  “You’re Chinese,” he said, scrambling off me and to his feet.

  “Yes.” I started to get up from the deck. He grabbed my arms and hauled me erect.

  And he stared at me. “Lord, you’re beautiful!”

  I knew that I was very plain and ordinary. But he was gaping at me as if I were a goddess.

  I asked, “And you are?”

  He made a little bow. “Sam Gunn, at your service.”

  That’s how I met Sam Gunn.

  He was not much taller than I: not more than a hundred sixty centimeters, I judged. Wiry as an elf, with a thatch of rust red hair and freckles sprinkling his stub of a nose. His eyes were greenish blue, or perhaps bluish green. His round face was far from handsome, but somehow when he broke into his lopsided gap-toothed smile he seemed almost attractive.

  “What are you doing here?” Sam demanded. “How’d you get here? Where’d you come from?”

  “The People’s Republic of China has sent me to claim this asteroid,” I replied. “But apparently you have already done so.”

  “I would’ve if I could’ve.”

  I felt my brows knit in puzzlement. “You mean you haven’t registered a claim?”

  “Not yet. All my comm systems are down.”

  “You’re being jammed, too?”

  Sam shook his head. “It’s not jamming. It’s the lousy, overpriced, underperforming fusion propulsion system on this ship.”

  “Fusion?” I gasped. “Your ship is propelled by a nuclear fusion system?”

  “When it works,” he said, his words dripping with disgust.

  Before I could ask another question, Sam explained that he had bought a prototype fusion rocket from the university professors who had invented it, with the intent of prospecting for valuable asteroids among the near-Earth objects.

  “A prototype,” I echoed.

  “Yep. Far as they were concerned, they thought they had hired me to test the system on a run to the Moon and back. I made them go through the legalities of selling the crate to my company, Sam Gunn, Unlimited. Told them it would relieve them of any legal responsibilities if something went wrong. They signed on the dotted line.” Sam grinned evilly. “Academics.”

  “And your test flight?”

  “I never intended to just waltz out to the Moon. Been there, done that. I figured a fusion-powered ship could get me to the NEAs in a jiffy. I’d claim a nice, fat asteroid, and that would pay for the damned fusion bucket plus making me a sizeable profit.”

  I was stunned by his audacity. “You took their ship out here.”

  “My ship,” Sam corrected. “I own this bucket. Not that it’s worth much.”

  “Your crew—”

  “What crew? I couldn’t ask anybody to risk their butts on this flight. It’s one thing to put my own ass on the line, it’s something else altogether to drag others along with me.”

  “You came out here alone?”

  “Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide, wide sea,” Sam quoted. I knew it was from some old British poem, but I couldn’t remember which one.

  Before I could say anything, Sam added, “Besides, if I brought some crew with me and anything happened to them, the goddamned lawyers would be all over me.”

  “But you didn’t register your flight with the International Astronautical Authority. You kept radio silence all the way out here.”

  He grinned again. “What they don’t know can’t hurt me.”

  “And now you’re marooned here on this asteroid.”

  With a nod, Sam admitted, “Looks that way, unless and until I can get the fusion reactor working again. All it’s doing now is putting out a loud squawk up and down the radio spectrum.”

  “The jamming.”

  “Yeah. Sorry it’s screwed up your communications.”

  “Can’t be helped, I suppose.”

  Spreading his arms in a gesture that might have indicated welcome, or helplessness, Sam said, “Long as you’re here, why don’t you stay for dinner? I’ve got a fully stocked wardroom, complete with a small but select wine list.”

  I realized that, like many capitalists, Sam was a hedonist. Imagine bringing wines along on a mission to the asteroids! On the other hand, tho
ugh, I hadn’t eaten anything but prepackaged frozen meals since launching from Sinkiang. Nourishing but hardly a treat for my taste buds.

  Sam coaxed, “Just take off that suit of armor you’re wearing and come on down to the galley with me.”

  Something in those blue-green (or green-blue) eyes of his sent a warning spark along my nerves. Yet I reasoned that I was fully dressed beneath my space suit. But would it give Sam lecherous ideas if I disrobed, even partially? From what I had heard of Sam Gunn, he most likely already had lecherous ideas in mind.

  Then he said, “I’ll go up to the galley and get dinner started. You can go to the lavatory, get out of your suit, and wash up.”

  I allowed him to lead me to the lavatory, which turned out to be bigger than the entire compartment in my spacecraft. I locked the door, though, before I began to clamber out of my space suit. And looked around for hidden cameras.

  Dinner was spectacular: ham and melon for appetizer, then roast duck, rice, a salad and real strawberries for dessert. Sam talked nonstop through the whole meal.

  “. . .so I figured that if I could claim a couple of asteroids rich enough to mine profitably, I could recoup what I’d lost on the orbital hotel deal and go on to bigger and better things.”

  He told me about his magnetic “garbage remover” device for clearing orbiting debris from low Earth orbits, his zero-gravity “honeymoon hotel,” his hopes for building a tourist entertainment center on the Moon.

  “There’s plenty of money to be made in space,” he said as he scooped up the last of the strawberries. “Mucho dinero.”

  I finally managed to get in a word. “I suppose so.”

  Then he said, “So I guess you’re going to have to rescue me. I mean, with my ship crippled I can’t get off this rock. I might have enough supplies to last another month or so, but I really need to be rescued.”

  I actually blushed with shame. “I . . .I can’t, Sam. My spacecraft isn’t big enough to carry two people.”