by Ben Bova
I jumped to my feet so hard that my magnetic soles couldn’t hold me and I went skyrocketing straight up to the top of the dome.
“YAHOO!” I yelled. My seven partners gaped up at me. To say they were startled would be a very large understatement.
I turned in midair and glided down onto Lowell Hubble’s shoulders. “The nukes!” I yelled, tapping out a jazz rhythm on his head. “Instead of using them to generate electricity we can explode the mothers!”
It took a while for me to calm down enough to explain it to them. There was enough energy in the nuclear piles of our two generators to blast out a sizeable portion of Pittsburgh—enough to propel us back toward the inner solar system.
“Like atomic bombs?” Bo Williams actually shuddered. “You’ve got to be crazy, Sam.”
But Hubble was pecking away at his wrist computer. I could tell he was almost as excited as I was: he had even dropped his pipe.
“You can’t set off nuclear explosions here,” Grace said, looking kind of scared. “You’ll get us all killed.”
I gave her a grin and a shrug. “Might as well go down fighting. You want to wait until we put long pig on the menu?”
She didn’t answer.
But Jean did. “Interplanetary law forbids using nuclear explosives in space unless specifically permitted by the IAA and under the supervision of their inspectors.”
“So sue me,” I told her. “Better yet, call the friggin’ IAA and have them come out here and arrest me!”
Hubble had a different kind of objection. “Sam, I don’t know if you can get those power piles to explode. They have all sorts of safeguards built into them. They’re designed to fail-safe, you know.”
“Then we’ll have to pull ‘em out of the generators and disengage all their safety systems.”
“But the radiation!”
“That’s what robots are for,” I said grandly.
I SHOULD’VE KNOWN that those friggin’ simpleminded robots we have for working the mining and smelting equipment couldn’t handle the task of disassembling the nuclear reactors. Three of our five stupid tin cans can’t even move across the goddamned surface of Pittsburgh; it’s too rough for their delicate goddamned wheels. They’re stranded where they sit. The two that can move aren’t strong enough to pry the power piles out of the generators. Sure, everything here is in micro-g, but those piles are imbedded inside deep shielding, and friction makes it tough to slide them out.
I won’t bore you with all the details. I had to ask for volunteers. I knew I’d have to go out there myself, but I’d need more than my two hands to get the job done.
I didn’t expect any of my brave little partners to volunteer. They never had before, and what I was asking them to do now was really risky, maybe fatal.
To my surprise, Lowell Hubble raised his hand. “I’m too old to start a family,” he said quietly, glancing at Sheena sideways.
We were standing in a little circle inside the dome. I had outlined what needed to be done and what the dangers were. I had also told them very firmly that I would accept only male volunteers.
“Nonsense!” Jean snapped. “That’s male chauvinist twaddle.”
As soon as Hubble put his hand up, Jean raised hers. “I’m too old to want to start a family,” she said firmly.
The others glanced around at one another uneasily. Slowly, very slowly, each of them raised their hands. Even Sheena, although her hand was trembling. I felt kind of proud of them.
We did it by lottery. Almost. I wouldn’t let Hubble out of the dome. I needed him for all the calculations we had to do, and maybe later for navigation, if all went well. Bo Williams hated that, I could tell, but he didn’t complain. He could see that there’s no use risking the one guy who can handle the scientific end of this madness. It’s not just the radiation. What’ll we do if Hubble trips out there and one end of the power pile mashes his head?
Chauvinist or not, I just took Bo and Darling out with me. Darling looked so scared I thought he was going to crap in his space suit, but he didn’t dare complain a peep. We got the first pile out from behind its shielding okay, and then skeedaddled back inside the dome and let the robots finish the work. The dosimeters built into our suits screeched a little and flashed their yellow warning lights. Once we got back into the dome they went back to green, though.
A good day’s work. Maybe we’ll make it after all.
ACCORDING TO HUBBLE’S calculation, if we can make just one of the power piles explode it’ll provide enough impetus to push Pittsburgh out of its orbit and send it zooming toward the inner solar system.
“You’re sure?” I asked him.
He nodded like a college professor, the pipe back between his teeth. “If you can get it to explode.”
“It’ll explode, don’t worry. Even if I have to beat it with a baseball bat.”
He gave me a slightly amused look. “And where are you going to find a baseball bat?”
“Never mind that,” I said. “Will we be safe? I don’t really want to kill us if I can avoid it.”
“Oh, safe enough, if you place the pile on the far end of Pittsburgh and set it off there. I’ve worked out the precise location for you.” “We won’t get a fatal dose of radiation or anything?” “No, the mass of the asteroid will protect us from radiation. Since there’s no air outside the dome there will be no aerodynamic shock wave. No heat pulse or fallout, either, if the pile is properly sited in a crater.” “Then we’ll be okay.”
“We should be. The only thing to worry about is the seismic shock. The explosion will send quite a jolt through the body of the asteroid, of course.”
“I was wondering about that? How many gs?”
He frowned slightly. “That’s right, you astronauts think in terms of g-forces.” “Don’t you?”
“No. I was more concerned with Pittsburgh’s modulus of elasticity.” “It’s what?”
He gave me a faraway look. “The explosion will send a shock wave through the solid body of the asteroid.” “You already said that.”
“Yes. The question is: will that shock wave break up the asteroid?”
“Break it up? Break up Pittsburgh?”
“Yes.”
“Well, will it? Will it?”
“I don’t think so. But I simply don’t have enough data to be certain.” “Thanks,” I said.
So our choice is to sit on this rock until we starve to death or maybe blow it to smithereens with a jury-rigged atomic bomb. I’m going with the bomb. And keeping my fingers crossed.
0KAY, WE’RE ALL in our pressure suits, inside the dome, lying flat inside our pitiful little inflated sleeping bags. When I press the button on the remote control unit in my hand the feebleminded robot out there on the other end of Pittsburgh will pull the control rods out of the power pile and it’ll go critical in a matter of seconds. Here we go.
Soon’s I work up the nerve.
GOOD NEWS AND bad news.
The pile exploded all right, and jolted Pittsburgh out of its orbit. The
asteroid didn’t break up. None of us got killed. No significant radiation here in the dome, either.
That’s the good news.
There’s plenty of bad. First off, the explosion slammed us pretty damned hard. Like being kicked in the ribs by a big bruiser in army boots. We all slid and tumbled in our air bags and went sailing splat into the wall of the dome. Damned near tore it open before we untangled ourselves. Arms, legs, yelling, bitching. Good thing we were in the space suits; they cushioned some of the shock. The sleeping bags just added to the confusion.
Even so, Bo Williams snapped a shin bone when he slammed into a food crate. The rest of us are banged up, bruised, but Bo is crippled and in a lot of pain. Jean, of all people, pulled the leg straight and set the bone as well as anybody could without x-ray equipment.
“The last time I had to do anything like this was on a walking tour of Antarctica,” she calmly told us.
We tore the offending food crate apar
t to make a splint for Bo’s leg. A walking tour of Antarctica?
But the really bad news came from Lowell Hubble. He took a few observations of the stars, made a couple of calculations on his wrist computer, and told me—privately, very quietly—that the blast didn’t do enough.
“Whaddaya mean, not enough?” I wanted to yell, but I whispered, just like he did. The rest of the gang was clustered around Bo, who was manfully trying to bear his pain without flinching. The undivided attention of the four women helped.
“The explosion just didn’t have enough energy in it to push our orbit toward the Earth,” Hubble whispered. Drawing circles in the air with the stem of his pipe, he explained, “We’re moving inward, toward the Sun, all right. We’ll cross the orbit of Mars, eventually. But we won’t get much closer to Earth than that.”
“Eventually? How soon’s that?”
He stuck the pipe back in his mouth. “Three and a half years.”
I let out a weak little whistle. “That won’t do us a helluva lot of good, will it?”
“None at all,” he said, scratching at his scruffy chin.
I felt itchy, too. In another week or two my beard will be long enough to be silky. Right now it just irritates the hell out of me.
“We’ve got the other nuke,” I said.
“We’re going to need it.”
“I hate to have to go through the whole damned exercise again— pulling the pile out of its shielding, dismantling the control systems. We’re down to one usable robot.”
“I’ll volunteer, Sam.”
I turned and there was Rick Darling standing two meters away, a kind of little-boy look of mixed fear and anticipation on his fuzzless face.
“You’ll volunteer?” My voice squeaked with surprise.
“To work with you on the nuclear pile,” he said. “You tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”
“You’re sure you want to?”
His lower lip was trembling. “Sam, I’ve been completely wrong about you. You are the bravest and strongest man I’ve ever met. I realize now that everything you’ve done has been for our own good. I’m willing to follow you wherever you choose to lead.”
I was too shocked to do much more than mumble, “Okay. Good.” Darling smiled happily at me and went back to his food crate.
Saints in heaven! I think Rick Darling is in love with me.
WELL, WE BOTH took enough radiation out there to make our suit dosimeters screech. They went all the way into the red. Lethal dose, unless we get medical attention pretty damned quick. Fat chance.
We got the pile out of the generator, ripped out most of the safety rods, and put it where Hubble told us it has to be in order to push us closer to Earth. It took hours. The goddamned tin shit-can of a robot broke down on us halfway through the job and Darling and I had to manhandle the load by ourselves.
We didn’t do much talking out there, just a lot of grunting and swearing. Don’t let anybody tell you that working in microgravity is easy. Sure, things have no weight, but they still have mass and inertia. You try traipsing across the surface of an asteroid with the core of a nuclear reactor practically on your back, see how much fun you get out of it.
Anyway, we’re back in the dome. Hubble’s gone outside to check the position of the pile and to rig a line so we can yank out the last of the control rods manually. Marj and Grace are out there helping him. Sheena and Jean are here in the dome, hovering over Bo Williams. He’s got a fever and he doesn’t look too damned good.
While we were taking off our space suits Darling said to me, “You don’t have to be afraid of me, Sam. I know you don’t like me.”
“I never saw anything to like,” the words popped out of my mouth before I knew it, “until today.”
“I just want your respect,” he said.
“You’ve got it.”
“Would—would you stop calling me names, then? Please? They really hurt.”
There were tears in his eyes. “I’m sorry... Rick. I did it without thinking.”
He said, “I know you’re hetero. I’m not trying to seduce you, Sam. I just want to be your friend.”
I felt about an inch tall. “Yeah. That’s fine. You’ve earned it.”
He put out his fleshy hand. I took it in mine. We didn’t really shake; we just grasped each other’s hand for a long moment until I was too embarrassed to look at him any longer. I had to pull away.
IT’S BOOM TIME AGAIN.
We’re all back in our suits, lying on the floor, wedged against the food cartons which are now up against the dome wall. Hubble’s calculated which way the blast will push us, and I’ve tried to arrange us so we won’t go sliding and slamming the way we did last time.
It took hours to get Bo Williams into his space suit, with his leg in Jean’s makeshift cast. He’s hot as a microwaved burger, face red, half unconscious and muttering deliriously. Doesn’t look good.
I’ve got the control box in my hand again. If this blast doesn’t do the job we’re finished. Probably finished anyway. I’ve picked up enough radiation to light a small city. No symptoms yet, but that’ll come, sure enough.
Okay. Time to press the button. Wonder if this rock’ll stand up to another blast?
WHAT A RIDE!
The seismic shock lifted us all off our backs and bounced us around a bit, but no real damage. Bo Williams must’ve been unconscious when the bomb went off, or else the belt knocked him out.
A few new bruises, that’s all. Otherwise we’re okay. Hubble went outside and took some sightings. We’re definitely going to cross Mars’s orbit, but it’s still going to take a couple-three months. Then it’s just a matter of time before the IAA notices us.
If we don’t starve first.
DISK’S MEMORY SPACE is running low.
Bo Williams died today, probably from infection that we didn’t have the medicine to deal with. We sealed him inside his space suit. Erik’s legally a murderer now. I guess Lonz and Will are, too. Or accessories, at least.
Been fourteen days since we lit off the second nuke. Hubble says we’ll cross Mars’s orbit in ten weeks. Definitely. He thinks.
Dome’s starting to smell bad. I think the air recycler’s breaking down. Food’s holding out okay; nobody has much of an appetite.
THE AIR RECYCLER’S definitely on the fritz. All of us are dopey, sluggish. And irritable! Even sweet-tempered me is—am?—snapping at the others.
There’s nothing to do. Terminal boredom. We just lay around and try to avoid each other. Munch on a crapburger now and then. And wait.
Disk’s almost full. I won’t say anything else until it’s the end.
THE AIR IN here’s as bad as Los Angeles before they went to electric cars. Grace is coughing all the time. My eyes burn and I feel as slow and stupid as a brain-damaged cow on downers.
Most of the others sleep almost all the time. Like babies. They only get up to eat and use the toilet. And snarl at each other.
Hubble’s looking grim. We’re nowhere near the orbit of Mars yet and he knows as well as I do that the air’s giving out.
DARLING POPPED THE question. Said it was his dying wish. I gave him a backhand smack across the chops and told him to get lost. He burst into tears and skittered away. Should’ve been kinder to him, I guess. We are dying. Not much farther to go.
THE LORD HELPS those who help themselves!
I am sitting in a private cubicle aboard the bridge ship Bosporus. A friggin’ luxury yacht, compared even to the good old Argo.
You know the IAA intends to place five bridge ships in constant transit between Earth and Mars. Like trains running on a regular schedule. They’ll be loaded up in the Earth-Moon region and then ply their way out to Mars with all the supplies and personnel that the scientists need for their ongoing exploration of the Red Planet.
And the bridge ships will make it safer and a lot cheaper for settlers to move out past the Earth-Moon system. I had thought that they’d help a lot with the eventual spread of the f
rontier into the Asteroid Belt and even beyond.
Well, anyway, Bosporus is the first of the bridge ships, and she’s on her shakedown cruise. The IAA diverted her to come out and take a look at Pittsburgh.
Why? Because the old automated surveillance satellites still orbiting the Earth detected our two nuclear blasts, that’s why! Three cheers for bureaucracy!
Way back in the middle of the last century, when there was something called a Cold War simmering between the U.S. of A. and what used to be the Soviet Union, both sides were worried sick about the other guy testing nuclear weapons. So they each put satellites into orbit to spot nuke tests anywhere on Earth—or even in space.
Well, the Cold War ended but the surveillance satellites kept being replaced and even upgraded. The bureaucracy just kept rolling along, building new and better satellites and putting them on station regular as clockwork. Oh, they gave a lot of excuses for doing it: making sure that small nations didn’t develop nuclear weapons, using the satellites to make astronomical observations, that kind of garbage. I think the satellites are now tied into the IAA’s overall surveillance net: you know, the sensors that look for meteoroids that might hit the Earth or endanger habitats in the Earth-Moon region.
Whatever—our two nuclear blasts rang alarm bells all over the IAA’s sensor net. Then they saw good old Pittsburgh all of a sudden trucking toward the inner solar system. The Argo was on its preplanned trajectory, cruising back toward lunar orbit with its cargo of metals, water, and volatiles. Erik, bless him, had already reported a fatal accident that had killed the eight of us.
Somebody pretty high up in the IAA decided to send the Bosporus out for a look at Pittsburgh. We got saved. It wasn’t just in the nick of time; we could have probably lasted another few days, maybe a week.
But good enough for government work.
YOU NEVER SAW such a commotion. I’m not only rich, I’m a friggin’ hero!
The media swarmed all over us. They didn’t wait for the Bosporus to make its way back to the Earth-Moon area. They bombarded us electronically; interviews, book contracts, video deals. And right behind them came the lawyers: IAA red-tape types wanting to know how dare I set off unauthorized nuclear explosions in space. Litigation sharpies trying to get their slice of the profits that both Rockledge and S. Gunn Enterprises, Unlimited, are now claiming. Criminal prosecutors, too, once they learned about Bo Williams’s death and heard me screaming about piracy.