The Resolute

by G. Weldon Tucker

  But to do this, they had to first remove all the huge shards of titanium feathers that either stuck into Resolute on the inward side, or far out from Resolute on the outbound side. Much cutting and grinding, but they were moving quickly, as they had the powerful equipment and the experience to handle this sort of thing easily.

  They were in zero atmosphere, and no magnetic deck, mostly hanging inside, but essentially in space, so, able to apply huge sheets of titanium film across the openings. This miracle fabric was, for all intents and purposes, unbreakable. So thin it could fold three times, from one hundred feet wide, some of it nearly a quarter mile wide to just twelve wide. Then, the quarter mile long patches were rolled into easily handled sections no bigger than a standard room’s carpet roll. When in the approximate area of need, they simply unrolled it in space, then it literally unfolded itself.

  Once fully expanded, it was tugged and pushed into place. There was no movement of air, no suction, no weight, not even difficult mass to contend with. The film was treated along the edges with a kind of contact cement. The edges that would come in contact were painted on the fly with spray adhesive.

  As soon as they were in contact, in the right position, they were rolled with what might seem like wall paper rollers, and that process held it firmly in place. Section by section, the hole slowly shrunk in size.

  This entire damaged section had been completely opened to space, all air gone instantly. The people caught inside had simply boiled out from the inside in nearly a flash. Space always seeks chaos out of order. Nothing was left of any one of them but splashes of bright pink color, as even the cells of blood disintegrated quickly. A cleanup crew would come in after the atmosphere was stabilized.

  So, first, they would have to seal against space. Once that was completed, but not yet pressurized, they would add the between hull replacement lightweight aluminum frames at roughly fifty foot intervals to separate the inner from the outer layers.

  These were a light blend of aluminum and titanium steel, keeping weight more in mind than strength, but still, one did not want the least tap of a wayward rock to take out the hull. More than strong enough, but with minimal mass.

  Then the tedious part. They had to add the heavier sheets of one eighth inch titanium in fifty by fifty foot sections. These were not rolled. They had to be taken out of the manufacturing warehouse through long doorways into space, pulled up along the ship, and put into place over the film, providing that needed a tough skin.

  Most of this positioning work would be done by drones, controlled by engineers in comfortable chairs, inside the warehouse, where atmosphere was kept at normal. The warehouses themselves would be open to space along a wide door of two hundred feet, one deck high. As soon as the atmosphere was pumped out, space would be allowed in, and the robots put to work.

  Then, once in place, rivets and welds would hold those big sheets in place. This part had to be done from the outside by human crews, a true spacewalk on the skin of the big ship.

  The tricky process would be in getting them in perfect place. The harder part was getting them to bend in a light curve to fit the shape of the girders. Like anything long enough or wide enough, even glass, small steps developed the needed, but slight curving. As this was completed, they could move to the final step, inside. The inner film would be double layered, finally, providing a safe, sturdy barrier against space, as it should be.

  It was learned many years ago that hydrogen was a great shield from space radiation, and since they had no idea what or where they were actually going through now, or later, it paid to be prepared. So, once sealed, inside and out, the inner space of the hulls would be pumped full of hydrogen.

  -----

  While Captain Washington slept that night, exhausted, but comfortable in her oversized bed, the engineers, taking turns in the inner spacewalk, had the inner seals finished. A mammoth undertaking driven by the desire to survive space, which was waiting cruelly just outside of the ship. Despite all wishes to the contrary, it was not going to go away. It waited like feral dog for any sign of weakness.

  Later that same night, several others in space costume would start the longer, time consuming walk on the outer skin with magnetic shoes, rivet to rivet, and finish the hull repairs. The titanium was alloyed with aluminum, a stronger blend than the girders, hence both were non-magnetic, but the rivets were titanium and iron alloy, and provided a serviceable contact point to stay on the spacecraft, still traveling near the speed of light. Rivets were only eight inches apart, the titanium sealed with thick glue, then drilled and riveted. Short of another collision, it was not going to move after it was established.

  With no air resistance, and minimal dust out here in the middle of nowhere, the engineers were free to work. Rivets and welds were used effusively, and little by little, day by day they would begin covering an area almost forty times the size of a football field. It seems huge, but it is hard for the human mind to realize that zero gravity makes everything so much easier…

  CHAPTER 9

  The following morning, 0700 hours, the appropriate announcements were made, unnecessary, since the rumor mill had been running for hours, but the truth had to be told. Captain Washington gave the whistle for attention, then the particulars. Mostly ho-hum stuff, a report of what, where, and who.

  Finally, she announced the part everyone was worried about. “We find we are approaching an unknown asteroid belt, and could be passing through it for several days. However, we are not going to go straight through, as these things are orbiting something we cannot see. That is most likely a black hole. It is in an odd place, almost a light year above the Milky Way, but surprises happen.”

  She paused to let them come to terms with the approaching danger, then gave them the solution, “We will adjust first to parallel the asteroids, in the same direction, slow to match the fastest one we can find, then pop out of orbit on the far side. It may get bumpy. As much as possible, all personnel, military or civilian must stay near the center length of the Resolute. Too, unless absolutely necessary, stay in restraints, wherever you must be. We will advise when the danger is passed.”

  In the meantime, Captain Washington suggested to the Council that they triple the spacewalk teams and move this repair completion to as short as possible. Dr. Rollander agreed. He felt the pressure, too.

  Something as mammoth as the Resolute does not turn in a short radius, not at any speed. They could be a third of the way through the belt by the time they got turned with it, and they were also attempting to rise above it, above being relative to the bridge and the keel.

  On top of that, they were slowing, all thruster rockets pointed forward, trying to bring them down to a more reasonable twenty thousand miles per hour. It was a long, long way down.

  The belt appeared to be about two point six billion miles across, outer ring to inner clearance, and somewhere north of sixty-five hundred billion miles in diameter. It was also almost three billion miles thick. They were not even two million miles from the upper edge, and that was the breakout target.

  Like most planetary and debris orbits, it was disc shaped, but made up of billions upon billions of asteroids, some mix of ice and rock. Some of them were the size of dust and marbles. Too many were simply huge, dwarfing the Resolute.

  Not a soul that was not paying attention even noticed the slight change in direction. Steering was provided by relatively small thrusters mounted in various points on the ship.

  Relative meaning nearly the diameter of the back end of a bus. It was a big, big ship. They would turn it around fairly quickly, so that it was going ass end first, usually only in an hour or so, but it would still be doing better than a hundred and seventy thousand miles a second… just backward.

  They completed the swap under Angela’s careful eye, and applied all thrusters out behind them, which now pointed at the asteroid field. In ten hours, they were down to a mere forty-five thousand miles per hour. This, in the wake of all that speed, seemed like a crawl in th
e vids. Most people on the ship had no idea, locked in the vault where motion was pretty much eliminated, once change is speed was accomplished.

  Every worker on the titanium skin wore a heavy safety cord. Slowing this quickly would have given any one of them a one-way ticket to the black hole like being shot out of a super powerful cannon.

  In any case, they were still going something on the order of twelve and a half miles a second. The turn completed, the speed controlled, they could merge easily with the fast moving asteroids. Fifty thousand miles an hour is quick, but in the theory of spatial relativity, most of the asteroids, when they lined up with them in the orbit, would seem to be crawling along.

  As they nestled in among the rocks and ice, a few million miles inside the belt, they added lower thrusters to guide them slightly up. This would lift them, eventually, above the belt.

  “Ahead one third,” called Angela.

  They began to add the thrusters pointed out the aft to the ever running isotope engines, and slowly, agonizingly slowly, the big ship began to move within the same orbit as the asteroids.

  It would be two full days, better than a forty-eight hours to fully match the fastest asteroids, and they remained in danger the entire time. But the plan was laid, the computer programmed, and it was out of anyone’s hands, except in an emergency.

  Of course, the engineers and techies had been working their butts off to complete the outer skin. Nearly finished, a mere touch by one of these little asteroids all around them would wipe out all the work. However, nothing hit them, a point of either cautious steering or good planning.

  In that first day inside the belt, the outside of the ship was sound. It had been inspected, passed, and now was being supplied atmosphere to the damaged decks. Now they could work properly to rebuild those rooms, shops, quarters… whatever.

  Interestingly, the new Council elected to take big quarters, multi room homes, this time in the near center of the big ship. Basically all around the hospital, which held the center point.

  Angela was still a bit pissed at blind luck, which, of course, she knew to be a waste of time. What should have been another four year run at near light speed would now be more like five and a half to six, or worse, just to bring the speed back up, once out of this unexpected orbit. A fault of all isotope engines.

  The isotope engine was not meant for heavy acceleration. All it was designed to do, and did very well, was spit electrons out the back of the ship, and as every high school science student knows, every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

  Slowly, very slowly, the isotope engines, each of four spitting billions of electrons, would be used to push the ship up faster and faster. It had taken almost a year to get to just short of light speed on launch. Since the electrons left the ship at light speed, the ship could not exceed that push. The Resolute might make it… in another fifty years, if that was the goal.

  But the main engines, the fuel gobblers, were much better at acceleration. So, it would be, at minimum, only an additional year to regain the speed.

  Fortunately, with three hundred plus thousand people, not to mention more than a hundred thousand animals of all kinds, garbage and waste mounds were huge. Methane gas could be synthesized out before the stuff was converted to some other useful product. And the thrusters fed on methane, unlike the big hydrogen engines mounted on the far end of stanchions at the rear section of the ship.

  Captain Washington did not breathe one sigh of relief until the system announced the new bearing and the relative velocity of some mighty big rocks, some of them hanging not that far from her suddenly tiny ship.

  The repairs, supposed to take fifteen days, had finished in five and a half. That was a credit to Engineering and courage, and apparently, Angela had some very good people with those capabilities. Relatively safe, the same as almost, at last. She had not left the bridge for two full days, except to use the head.

  She could not do this forever, she knew, Exhausted, time for sleep.

  CHAPTER 10

  Back almost twenty years, Angela Washington raised her hand, catching the teacher’s attention. Classes were huge, sometimes hundreds of students, and Angela made it a point to sit center front or as close as possible.

  “Yes, Angela?” Space instructor, scientist and engineer, James Brackett, PhD, liked thirteen year old Angela a lot. She was by far the brightest student in the mixed age class. Once in a while, a really bright one shows up, a natural, not an enhanced child.

  “Sir, if we are orbiting a black hole, why do we not get sucked in to it? Didn’t you tell us that a black hole eventually gets… everything?”

  “A very good question, Angela. And, as yet, we are not certain, but it seems that black holes are very voracious, and eat anything that comes close. But like a whirlpool in the ocean, they have an event horizon.”

  “How big are they? How far out is… safe?”

  They might be millions, even billions of miles across, but as long as you stay at least a hundred million miles out from that edge, that horizon, in the right orbital speed, you are safe. Like planets and asteroids do that form our galaxy, and many others!”

  The little minx had known that, of course, but she just could not help being the teacher’s pet. It kept the stupid boys at bay.

  -----

  Remembering how that teacher had taken them to the observatory under the bridge, and now excited they had all been, Angela now took some of the off duty crew down to the wide, almost triangular shaped room.

  It had huge, thick quality glass portholes at regular intervals behind the bow. Here, they observed asteroids moving right alongside them for several hours. Not all were in perfect relationships, though, for they occasionally bumped and banged off of one another, and once in a while, even struck the ship with a resounding clang, but, with nowhere near enough force to tear more holes. In fact, none even left a dent.

  This little lesson was now ingrained in every mind working their way up the chain of command. There was a way to defeat an asteroid belt, and with it, a way to avoid a black hole.

  So far.

  -----

  “Steady, Commander,” Angela stated from the Captain’s cubicle, back at the rear of the bridge. Everything done on the bridge showed up on her battle screen or some other part of her walls, and she could read the status of the ship like a book.

  They had settled in at forty-eight thousand, three hundred and six miles per hour, matching the fastest of the asteroids, but putting them in an overtaking maneuver for all the rest. Better to see what they were overtaking than to be hit in the ass by a blind asteroid. This way, the controlled the closing speed and it was nearly miniscule compared to a perpendicular approach, or worse, head on.

  They had not yet climbed out of the disc, and the bigger asteroids required look ahead navigation to avoid collision as the Resolute caught up to them. This next one was big enough to fill the viewer up front. Easily a hundred and fifty miles across, and peanut shaped, they were not even certain of the length of the thing. Most of it was hidden from view. They were attempting to negotiate around the inner side, as that appeared to be thinner at that point.

  “Range fourteen hundred, mark,” called out the Pilot, under the supervision of the Commander. “Closing speed less than one hundred miles per hour, Sir!”

  The asteroid was tumbling, slowly, but deliberately, probably at the same rate it had for several million years. And thus, predictable. Resolute would slide by in the narrow valley in a shade over fourteen hours.

  “Bring us starboard two degrees, Pilot,” Commander Willits said, softly. He was buying a little breathing room. Even moving the behemoth Resolute two degrees off line would be another ten minutes. The bearing would not change, simply the port side thrusters would push the big ship sideways so the target point, beyond the asteroid, had shifted two degrees. Wider berth, safer transition.

  Because Angela was sensitive to anything about the ship, she felt the thrusters light up, the sense coming through
her bottom on the Captain’s chair. This was from the port side nose, to start the push. To avoid spinning, the port side aft would also come on, shortly, less thrust, and help stabilize Resolute.

  “Are we clear aft, Commander?” Angela asked, already knowing the answer. If he had to look, that was a bad sign.

  “Status aft, Pilot?”

  He looked. Damn. He should be able to read the screens as easily as the pilot. As easily as she did. Nothing out here required an instant life or death decision… at least at this time. But if he did not pay attention, well, then it could happen. Just because they thought they had identified the fastest asteroid had nothing to do with the rogues that come hurtling through on their way from or to oblivion.

  “Status clear, ten thousand, Commander.”

  “Steady the course when settled, Pilot. Captain, Pilot reports clear aft.”

  “Thank you, Commander. Keep abreast of it, please.” A gentle reminder that he screwed up. All Commanders were under watch.

  “Yes, ma’am!” He saluted and turned back to the viewer. “Slow the turn, Pilot, one half, all thrusters.”

  “Yes, Sir! One half all thrusters.”

  The big asteroid, of which only the starboard side showed as a near vertical wall, had seemingly swung slightly to the side, and the Resolute now had better clearance. An optical illusion, for they, themselves, had turned slightly, yet continued in exactly the same bearing. Now they had to use all port thrusters to push Resolute farther to starboard and add acceleration to get her to line up on the new bearing. Meanwhile the optics were now pointed slightly off the target. Not a lot different than a talented Captain threading a cruise ship into the docks from between the buoys.

  They were still many hours from passing through, and the ‘valley’ would come clearer just before entry. This would be similar to passing through the crook of an elbow, inside, with the forearm raised about thirty to forty degrees.

  All was in readiness; it was simply a matter of time. Angela had no intention of sitting on her butt for another twelve or fourteen hours. She excused herself, returned the appropriate salutes and headed for her quarters. Time for a workout, dinner and a nice soak before bed.