Man's Hope

by Zellmann, William

  Dolf picked up the commentary. "And now, ladies and gentlemen, it is time for the rest of us to visit our remarkable space ship of ice. Ronald Mbele has given my suit an additional frequency, so I can continue this briefing for at least a few more minutes, and the Commander has agreed to leave the camera running in the cockpit, so you may be able to see us some of the time."

  Dolf and the others donned their helmets and filed through the personnel lock, simply pushing through the personnel airlock and onto the comet. Each carried a supply of the rocket-powered pitons, and soon the ship was anchored to the comet by a dozen lines.

  "I am sorry, ladies and gentlemen," Dolf said sadly, "but the Commander has just instructed me to switch to the ship frequency, for safety reasons. So, I am afraid that this will conclude this briefing. We all have much to do. The camera will remain running until we return to the ship, which may be a few hours. Thank you for listening, and good day." He signed off with his now traditional, "Every day is a good day in space!"

  David had been using a tether line to pace off a large circle in the craggy ice, and he was nearly caught when a geyser of gases erupted almost beneath his feet.

  He gasped. "Damn! Okay, everybody make sure you're anchored to a tether at all times! I don't know if a space rescue is even possible, but I know I don't want to find out."

  A chorus of "yes sirs" answered him. He completed his circle, some forty feet in diameter.

  "All right, guys. Our first job is to dig a big hole in the ice. Yoshi was the one who trained with the explosives, but he's out. Ron has the most experience with explosives, so Ron, you're in charge. We need the hole about ten meters in diameter and ten meters deep. Deeper if possible. And it would be nice if we didn't blow up the Hope or ourselves."

  "In fact," Raoul added, "It would be great if we could just crack the ice and lift it out, instead of blowing it all into space. We're going to need a lot of ice to electrolyze down into oxygen and hydrogen and distill into drinking water, and I'd rather not have to dig more big holes."

  Ron's wide grin was invisible behind his darkened visor, but he replied, "Ah, but Raoul! You're the one who needs the most exercise. Nevertheless, I will see what I can do."

  It was Ron and Yuri together who came up with the idea of the tarp.

  They used power drills to dig meter-deep holes in the ice, and Ron put a small amount of explosive into each one. Unduly small, in David's opinion. He said so.

  "No sir," Ron replied. "As Raoul said, we don't want to blast a hole. We just want to crack the ice so we can lift it out and pile it somewhere."

  Once they had placed the charges, Ron and Yuri stretched a nylon tarp over the area outlined by the charges. They anchored the tarp with rocket pitons. Everyone returned to the ship.

  David climbed to the cockpit and shut off the camera. "If we blow ourselves up," he said, "I damned sure don't want to do it on live TV. Besides, it'll raise the suspense for Dolf's show tomorrow."

  Everyone stayed suited, and Yoshi was put in his suit as well. Ron looked at David, who nodded. Ron touched the detonator.

  There was no sound, but outside the tarp suddenly humped up, and a white cloud of ice particles outlined the tarp. After a few minutes, the tarp very slowly began to settle again. Ron and Yuri hurried through the airlock and released the tarp. The ice beneath it, and for a good distance around, had been shattered, but little of it drifted off into space. Most of it had been retained more or less in place by the tarp

  "You know," Raoul said, "We should use a tarp as kind of a tent, to keep the ice from drifting away once we dig it out."

  David nodded. "Good idea. Ron, do we have any more of those tarps?"

  Yuri answered. "Four. They are used to keep smaller cargo from drifting around the cargo bay."

  David paused, thoughtful. "Okay. Yuri, you see if we can grab another one without endangering the ship. If so, we'll anchor it down outside the digging circle, and pile as much ice as we can in it. For the rest, well, I guess we'll just have to let it go become part of the tail.

  Just before they returned outside to begin moving ice, Raoul posted a hand-lettered sign next to the personnel airlock: "Weight is what a scale on Earth says. Mass is what kills you here!" They would be handling large masses of ice, and though they would be easy to start moving, they would be very difficult to stop.

  They actually lost quite a few large chunks of ice at first, due to the mass vs. weight issue. Soon, though, they became acclimated to handling large masses in weightlessness. The hole quickly became larger and deeper. Within three days, they had the cavern David had ordered, some ten meters in diameter, and over ten meters deep. Two tarps concealed large piles of ice chunks on its edge.

  Dolf had been describing the hole as the place that would become their living quarters. They had a long trip to go during the comet's passage to perihelion behind the Sun. But they hadn't moved in, yet. They had another job to do first.

  "We have to get that damned big core stage tank off our belly," David said. "And we have to do that before we can get comfortable."

  "Now, it's empty, so it probably doesn't mass much more than the Hope. But we have to detach it from the ship, and then set up a cracking plant and still before we start approaching perihelion. We're going to want to spend that time filling as much of that tank as we can. The hardest part of this mission is coming up, and we want all the maneuvering ability we can get.

  "I figure we're going to need another hole in the ice, but we won't know how big a hole for awhile. So, we need to detach the tank, and tether it to the comet in such a way that we'll be able to move it around later.

  Then, David told them about his plan for their living spaces for the long months they would be riding their ice spaceship.

  "We're going to push the Hope's nose into that hole, as far as the main bulkhead between the crew compartment and the cargo bay. Then, we'll use melt water to seal it into place, with a nice, thick plug of ice. Pressurize the cave, and we have everything we need. We can access the Hope through the boarding hatch, and both the personnel airlock and the cargo doors will be outside. So, we'll be able to move in and out easily. Then, once we start cracking ice, we'll have plenty of atmosphere, and we can each dig ourselves a nice, cozy room."

  "We'll lose communications unless we put antennas out on the ice," Dolf mentioned.

  David nodded. "And that's just what we'll do. Gentlemen," he continued, "We're going to be living on this ice cube, or in it, for a damned year. We can't spend that entire time cooped up in a tin can. We'd be killing each other."

  Raoul nodded. "A very good point. Yoshi is exhibit 'A'. I think it's a terrific idea."

  Yuri nodded. "I agree, though I am concerned about the pressure on the ship's hull."

  David grinned. "Me, too. That's why we're going to put pressure monitors on all sides of the ship, with alarms. I think we can do it."

  "I do, too," Ron put in. "And I'm certain we can handle the pressure problem. Perhaps by drilling relief holes when and where necessary."

  Dolf was grinning. "Boy, is this going to make some news on Earth!"

  First, though, they had to detach the tank, and that was not an easy task. The tank was attached to the Hope with bolts that were designed to explode, so there would be no chance of the core stage getting hung up and dragging the Hope back to Earth, to burn up on reentry.

  There was no special 'arming' switch that could be deactivated, only the single switch in David's hand to fire the bolts. Ron had carefully removed the batteries from the remote-control switch, but still, each of the bolts attaching the tank to the ship contained about an ounce of powerful explosive.

  The first task was to carefully examine the tank. None of them had bothered to do that on Earth, since they really expected the tank to be jettisoned. The examination took three of them nearly a day, as they had to remain tethered at all times, and were only able to move from attachment to attachment.

  They were relieved to find that there were a large
number of attachment points on the tank, apparently used to move the huge tank around on Earth. This gave them attachment points to tie down the big tank, but exposed another problem.

  "We simply don't have enough tether rope," said Ron. "No one ever considered we'd have to tie down something this big."

  By raiding the cargo hold, they were able to amass six of the six-meter reeled tether ropes. Dolf questioned whether they would be enough, and Yuri shrugged. "They'll have to be. I think we'll be all right, as long as we don't overstress them. That means we move the tank very slowly and carefully. Once it's in place, it'll be like a balloon; one tether could probably hold it."

  Finally, of course, the time came. Ron and Yuri suited up and swarmed over the Hope's hull to her belly. Using channel-joint pliers that had been Yoshi's only nonmetallic tool, Ron gently and carefully struggled to remove bolts that had never been intended to be removed.

  One by one, they yielded to Ron's gentle but persistent ministrations. He loosened them all, and then he and Yuri attached tethers to the tank and the ship before he went back and cautiously removed them. Yuri carried each of them individually away from the ship before finding small crevices into which he could put them, marking them so the bolts could be found again in an emergency. Finally, he breathed a large sigh of relief, as did his crewmates.

  Their work was just starting, though. Each crewmember grabbed a tether. Yuri gave a slight tug, and the huge tank began to creep away from the Hope. Time dragged as the tank inched past the ship. There was an almost overwhelming urge to hurry things along; to give a long, steady pull.

  But they knew better. They would eventually have to stop over a hundred tons of slowly moving tank, preferably without killing anyone.

  As the tank cleared Hope's wing, David and Yuri each took a turn of their tether around an ice crag. Then the entire crew began pulling against the massive inertia of the moving tank, trying to bring the huge thing to a stop. By the time they succeeded, the core stage tank was hanging in space some fifty feet from the Hope and two meters above the comet's surface. The six tethers restrained it, and the five crewmembers were bathed in sweat. They anchored the tethers to pitons, and returned to their now-much-smaller ship.

  Before they moved the Hope, they decided that all the large equipment that would be needed should be brought into the cavern before moving the ship. Once in place, the only access to the ship would be through the small boarding hatch, and they would be unable to bring the large equipment into the cave.

  So, Yuri depressurized the cargo hold, and Ron got to open the big cargo doors and unlimber the handling arm the Russians had copied from the American Shuttle for a second time. Crate after crate flowed into the cave, until the cargo bay was nearly empty. Again, the crew was exhausted and sweaty.

  They waited until the next day to begin moving the Hope. Once again, the four crewmembers manned tether ropes, nervously removed from the core stage tank. But this time, they had the assistance of the steering jets, operated by David. He gently nudged the jets until the ship was nose-on to the hole in the comet, the four rope men forming a square encircling the hole.

  David did not dare use the steering jets to start the ship into the hole. It would be far too easy to overpower the men on the ropes, and smash Hope's nose into the ice. At a signal, the four men gently tugged on the ropes, and then began coaching David. Using quick, feather touches of the steering jets, and occasional pulls on ropes, the ship slowly descended into her nest. At last, Yuri told him that the bulkhead was about to enter the cave, and David fired the jets to bring Hope to a stop. A few very gentle tugs on ropes, and she was properly located. It was vital that the ice wall be directly opposite the main interior bulkhead, in order for the bulkhead to provide bracing and support for the hull.

  Experimentation showed that if the reactor was used to actually boil it, and they used an insulated hose, the water wouldn't freeze quite immediately, and an icy slush would make it a few inches to Hope's hull before freezing solid. The slush was easy to build up, of course. It quickly grew to two meters thick.

  While Ron and Yuri attended to the ice wall, David, Dolf and Raoul mounted antennas on the ice of the comet and connected them to the comm panel aboard Hope.

  With the wall in place, there was a circular space some ten meters in diameter, and some five meters deep in front of Hope's nose. This space was jammed with crates and loose equipment.

  Ron immediately began setting up the equipment for electrolyzing the water ice into its constituent oxygen and hydrogen. Men can live for weeks without food, and days without water, but without air to breathe, they are dead in minutes.

  There was a sizable tank on Man's Hope that contained highly compressed gases that could be added to oxygen to make a breathing mixture. Besides scrubbing and recycling their air, the men had been making air that way for weeks. Added to a small percentage of oxygen, the gases created a breathing mixture similar to those of a skin diver. Slowly, the air pressure in the cave began to climb. Ron raised it to two Earth atmospheres of pressure, and then shut down the machine. They would wait, making certain the ice could take the pressure, and that there were few or no leaks.

  There were some leaks, which Yuri plugged with his water hose. But soon their cave was airtight, and held a steady one atmosphere of pressure.

  Chapter 10

  The first two 'rooms' to be cut out of the ice, of course, were a space for the atmosphere equipment, and a cell for Yoshi.

  Yoshi had been confined to an acceleration couch for nearly ten days, except for brief periods of exercise, food, and sanitation needs. All of the crew felt guilty about this, so there was no dissent when David ordered it.

  A two-meter roughly square room three meters deep was quickly dug out. Twenty, one-inch aluminum bars, each ten feet long, were piled nearby, as were two five feet long. Once the room was complete, and a light plastic chair and table, cot, and ship's toilet were installed, Yuri began heating the short bars. When the end of the bar became hot enough, Yuri pushed it into the ice. It took several heatings for each end of the long bars, but finally, they had a cell, with each bar frozen into place on each end. Yoshi was brought out and placed into the cell before each end of the last two bars were frozen more than a foot and a half into the ice. There was no door. No one was in a mood to take chances with Yoshi.

  The others were free to use their imaginations. For instance, there was no need for conventional doors, as walking didn't work in the gravity-free environment. Raoul's "cave" was more of a bubble, roughly round, with a flattened "bottom," and almost three meters high. The entrance was a two-meter circle.

  Ron built a rather conventional room, but its entrance was a small, round tunnel. Ron had an ice plug in his room, a foot thick, and slightly larger than his tunnel in diameter. He said it was a "safety precaution."

  Dolf's cave was more of an office. He got Ron to run connections to the main computer on the ship, and to the comm center. His cot was tucked absent-mindedly in one corner.

  Similar connections ran to David's room. His was also rather conventional, but featured a roughly rectangular doorway.

  Yuri claimed not to care. He simply hollowed out a roughly rectangular two-by-three meter space, with no enclosure at all to separate it from the main "room."

  The lightweight plastic boxes and crates were quickly appropriated and converted into rough furniture. Actually, though, the 'furniture' was not really needed. If one wanted to sit, he could just "sit" on the air in the near-weightlessness. It would take hours for him to drift to the "floor." And if one wanted to sleep, one simply reclined in the air, tethered to keep from drifting about in the air currents. But furniture or no, within a week, the cave had begun to feel like 'home'.

  The day the last of the 'rooms' was complete, Dolf sought out David. "Commander, I need to talk to you. Privately."

  David raised an eyebrow. The first time he'd had that request, they'd almost been killed. "Sure, Dolf. Let's go aboard. There's no one ther
e now."

  David dropped casually into his acceleration couch. "What's on your mind, Dolf?"

  "Commander, I think we can shorten this voyage by months." Dolf said quietly.

  David straightened abruptly. "What? How?"

  Dolf frowned. "We are carrying eight small oxy-hydrogen rockets."

  David shrugged. "Of course. But what . . ."

  "Sir!" Dolf interrupted. "Those rockets are intended for use on the asteroid. But what if we used them now?"

  "Now? Wouldn't that screw up our orbit?"

  Dolf nodded. "Yes, sir, it would. That's what I'm suggesting. But instead of just adding a boost to our present course, suppose we changed the comet's orbit? Moved perihelion even closer to the Sun?"

  David shook his head. "I don't see it Dolf. Why would you want to do that?"

  Don't you see, sir? The slingshot effect! The closer we come at perihelion, the faster we'll be propelled away. Add some boost from the rockets, and we could cut months off the travel time."

  David frowned. "But that would skew our orbit . . ."

  Dolf raised his hands in frustration. "To hell with our orbit! With those engines, we can change it back, or leave it changed, whatever we want! We have all the oxy and hydrogen we can use. Hell, we could practically use the rockets for constant boost!"

  David smiled sourly. "Have you ever seen the nozzles on a used rocket? They're not like ion engines that can go on for years."

  Dolf shook his head in irritation. "Then let's dismount the ion engines and use those. I don't think you realize how big a difference it would make."

  "And I don't think you realize what a job that would be. The ion engines aren't designed to be easily or quickly removed." He paused, thinking. "I'm sorry, Dolf, but I don't think your ideas will work. But suppose we could rotate the comet so that Hope's ion engines could push directly against its center of mass? It would mean that we'd be on the far side of the comet from the Sun."

  Dolf's annoyed expression faded to thoughtfulness. "Perhaps. . . The comet is roughly spherical, and we dug the hole toward its center. But how . . . Excuse me, Commander. I must think about this. It may just be possible!" He scrambled down the ladder and grabbed his tablet, sliding it into the docking station. Within seconds, David was able to come down the ladder, squeeze past Dolf, and exit the boarding hatch without Dolf even being aware of it.