“‘We’, what are we going to do. And no, we only need a few holes. Now we need one of the charcoal filter canisters. There should be a used one.”
“From the life support system?”
“Yeah. I’ll also need something to carry liquid oxygen. A dewar if the biology lab has one, or just any kind of well-insulated bucket or container. It won’t need to stay cold very long.”
“Charcoal and LOX? You’re going to dig a latrine with explosives?”
“A time-honored tradition in the military. The seismic charges would be easier but I want to hold onto those. The little bit of LOX left in the fuel tanks will evaporate in a couple of weeks anyway, so we might as well get some use out of it.”
“Very well then. You’re getting to quite like that stuff, aren’t you.”
“It’s the only reason we’re not stranded on Kakuloa, after that landslide caused our landing area to flood. And you just sitting in orbit twiddling your thumbs.”
“Hey, we did warn you the storm was coming. There wasn’t much else we could do.”
“No worries, I know that.”
They’d moved through the ship as they talked, collecting the gear they needed.
“Okay. I’ll get Sawyer to help me tap off some LOX, you take the gear out to the site I’ve picked.” Finley gestured towards a clear area about seventy-five meters from the ship, away from any vegetation but some short stubby growth.
“That’s a bit exposed, isn’t it?”
“You shy? No, don’t worry, after the pit is dug we’ll put up a privacy screen.”
“Oh, of course.”
Twenty minutes later Finley was leaning into the drill, digging out another borehole in the line he’d scratched for the latrine.
They finished drilling out the blast holes and began placing the charges.
“Okay, watch this stuff. After the LOX and charcoal are mixed it’s sensitive. Be gentle with it.”
“Like a mother with a baby,” Dejois said. “Are you sure we’re not too close to the ship? I would hate for a rock to hit it, we may yet need it to get out of here.”
Finley looked up, surprised. He looked down at the drill holes then back to the ship. Was it far enough? He shook his head. “We should be good, I doubt we’ll get debris more than a third of the way there. Halfway, tops.” At least, he hoped not. “What was that about needing it to get out of here? You don’t think they’d send another lander?”
“The quickest way to retrieve us would be to load up the Heinlein with another propellant synthesis unit and send it back here, then land that and we refuel, non?. If the Anderson is damaged that wouldn’t do us any good.”
“That’s a good point. I was just assuming we were stuck until they sent another lander. Stupid of me.” He looked at how he’d laid out the charges. If the ones furthest from the ship detonated a few milliseconds before the nearer ones, then the later ones to blow would have solid rock on one side and fractured rock on the other, and the blast would tend to push the fractured rock away from the ship. But this charcoal and LOX explosive was improvised, not calibrated the way their seismic charges and detonators were.
“Let’s change this around a little bit. We’ll just run the det cord to the far side blast holes. The shock-wave will detonate the nearside explosives.”
“Are you certain of that?”
Finley thought back on the emergency demolition they’d done to dig a trench in the landslide which had blocked the river valley downstream of the Chandra’s landing site. The rising water in the torrential rain had threatened to flood out the Chandra’s engines and clog the injectors with silt. They’d used a mix of seismic charges and charcoal there, but it had worked fine, cutting a nice channel across the dam to let the water begin draining. But yes, they had relied on the shock-waves from the seismic charges to detonate the charcoal.
“Yes,” he said, “it’ll work. No problem.”
They unreeled the detonator wires to a good safe distance—in fact back almost to the Anderson. Finley checked in with Sawyer.
“Is everybody clear of the area?”
“Yes, everyone’s accounted for, go for it.”
Finley cupped his hands and yelled at the empty field. “Warning, blasting! Warning!” There was no response, nor had she expected any. This was just a standard precaution.
He gripped the detonator and thumbed off the safety switch. “Fire in the hole! In three! Two! One!” Finley pressed the fire button. He felt the shock through the ground almost at the same time the plume of rock and dirt geysered into the air, and a split second later he heard the BANG! of the detonation. He watched as the dust and rock soared up and then started to settle out, mostly away from the ship. Then his gaze caught one rock that had climbed almost straight up and was just reaching apogee, and if anything was curving back towards them. Oh, crap! Finley watched, horrified, as it turned lazily while plummeting towards them. It would fall short, good. The rock slammed into the ground forty meters from the ship and then bounced, leaping back up at about a forty degree angle, still towards the ship. There wasn’t anything Finley or anyone else could do as they watched the boulder hit the ground and bounce again, like a slow motion train wreck, heading towards the Anderson. Finally, after what seemed like hours, it stopped bouncing and rolled to a stop less than a meter from one of the landing pads. Finley exhaled a held breath. “And that,” he said, referring to the small boulder near the foot of the lander, “is what we geologists call an erratic.”
“‘Halfway, tops’ I think you said?” Dejois looked at him with a raised eyebrow.
Finley looked out to where the dust was settling out around the pit. “You saw it. It hit the ground no more than halfway from here to there. It took a bad bounce. I didn’t say anything about bounces.”
Sawyer, who had been observing all this from nearby, said: “Finley, no more bad bounces, okay? Or I’ll bounce you.”
“Uh, right,” Finley replied, chagrined. He turned back to Dejois. “Let’s go check out the pit. If we’re lucky most of the debris blew out of the hole and we just need to do a bit of cleanup.”
It had. There was still loose rubble in the bottom of the trench they’d blasted, but a half-hour with a shovel cleaned most of that out. They used some of the larger boulders to build a low wall around the pit. To the west was a small stand of trees. They’d rig up some kind of privacy screen on poles, and cut and trim some trunks or thick branches to serve as a seat. Excavating the trench had been the easy part, now came the hard work.
∞ ∞ ∞
The story continues in Alpha Centauri: Sawyer’s World coming in early 2017.
About the Author
Alastair Mayer's articles have been published in Byte, Final Frontier, and other magazines, and he has had technical papers published on several subjects in computer science and in space development. He is an accomplished scuba diver and a private pilot, who has also sky-dived and was briefly a candidate for the Canadian Astronaut Program. He currently lives in Colorado, where he works for a satellite network company.
His short stories have been published in several anthologies and his work has appeared often enough in Analog Science Fiction magazine to gain him entry to the “Analog MAFIA” (Members Appear Frequently In Analog). Many of his short works can be found in e-book format for Amazon Kindle, as well as other digital formats.
Alpha Centauri: First Landing is his third novel, the first of a two-part prequel to The Chara Talisman and the other T-Space stories. He is currently working on both Alpha Centauri: Sawyer’s World and The Eridani Convergence, a sequel to The Chara Talisman and The Reticuli Deception.
Visit his web site at www.alastairmayer.org, and his author page at www.mabashbooks.com.
Alpha Centauri: First Landing
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.
Copyright �
� 2016 by Alastair Mayer
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed, electronic, or other form without permission. E-book editions of this book are available wherever fine e-books are sold.
Cover © 2016 by Mabash Books
Image credits:
High altitude view of the Earth in space. © marcel - Fotolia.com
Lunar Lander Vintage. © Luca Oleastri - Fotolia.com
Images used by permission.
T-Space is a trademark of Alastair Mayer
A Mabash Books original.
First printing, October 2016
Amazon Kindle edition
Mabash Books, Centennial, Colorado
Alpha Centauri: First Landing (T-Space: Alpha Centauri Book 1) Page 24