Zero Limit

by Jeremy K. Brown

  “Travel pass and destination, please.”

  Inside Caitlin’s mind everything suddenly turned to static, white noise hissing insistently. The trooper didn’t seem pleased with her lack of response and repeated the question with greater insistence.

  “Travel pass and destination, please. Now, ma’am.”

  Caitlin realized now that some form of a response would have to be forthcoming, so she opened her mouth, prepared to bluff.

  “Hold up! Hold up!” A voice came from behind. Caitlin turned to see Tony running up to meet them, waving a plastic card for the trooper to see.

  “Crew pass,” he said. “The Tamarisk. Work tug out of bay 815.”

  The trooper took the pass and scanned it, eyeing Tony with suspicion.

  “Destination?”

  “Crisium Sea,” Tony said. “Scanning survey of Dorsa Tetyaev.”

  Another inspection of the card, then the trooper’s masked face turned from Tony to Caitlin and back again. Finally, he passed the card back.

  “Proceed.”

  “Thank you, sir,” said Tony, giving a two-finger salute. They began walking away, and he tipped Caitlin a wink.

  “Helps to have friends in high places,” he said. “You ready to see the old girl?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Am I going to be happy?”

  “Try not to think about it in terms like ‘happy’ or ‘sad,’” Tony responded. “Instead, I want you to try to find a place that’s a little more in between.”

  Caitlin turned the corner to the docking bay and set her eyes on what Tony was attempting to prepare her for. Little more than a set of connected cylinders with a pair of solar panels poking out from the bow section at awkward angles, the Tamarisk looked old, ungainly, and obviously repurposed. As Ross had noted, the craft was obviously designed for a much more mundane function—a cargo tug or even satellite repair—and was now reaching well beyond its station in life. Caitlin couldn’t help but think about one of her dad’s favorite classic movies and the main character’s reaction when he first laid eyes on the Millennium Falcon. Almost reflexively, she echoed the words of the character.

  “What a piece of junk!”

  “She is an ugly one, I’ll give you that,” Tony agreed. “But we’ve been working her over all night, and we think she’ll get the job done.”

  “What are the solar panels for?” Caitlin asked. “Solar-electric propulsion?”

  “I wish,” said Tony. “Sensors, heating, and telemetry are all solar powered. The propulsion system? Old-school hypergolic. Nitric acid and hydrazine.”

  “Devil’s Venom?” Caitlin asked, concerned. “I thought no one even used that stuff anymore.”

  “There are a few things on board that people don’t use anymore. That’s part of her charm.”

  “Wonderful,” Caitlin said. “So we’re riding out to an asteroid on a mission that no one has yet to successfully attempt, let alone complete. And we’re doing it on something that Wile E. Coyote himself might have second thoughts about boarding. What could possibly go wrong?”

  “I learned a long time ago never to ask that question,” Tony said.

  “Why is that?”

  He draped an arm around Caitlin’s shoulder and gave her a wry look as they prepared to go aboard the ship.

  “Because God might be listening,” he said. “And he just might decide to answer.”

  As Tony and Caitlin walked over to the Tamarisk, they saw the rest of the crew milling around, attending to various chores. Diaz was clambering up and over the hull, looking for cracks and imperfections and chattering madly. Vee was in the cockpit, making final adjustments, and Shaw was stowing equipment in the cargo hold. He seemed detached, almost robotic, as he went about his work. Caitlin contemplated going over to him and then, somewhat selfishly, decided to move on instead. She was concerned and felt guilty over his involvement in the mission, but she had her own drama playing out in her mind and wasn’t ready to get sucked into someone else’s narrative.

  Caitlin slowly made her way on board the Tamarisk and into the cockpit, where Vee was busy flipping switches and running last-minute checks.

  “How are we looking?” she asked. “Good?”

  “Oh yeah,” said Vee. “She’s an old bucket, but she’ll fly true enough.”

  “Good,” Caitlin said. “Then let’s get moving. I don’t want to give ICC the chance to ask any more questions.”

  “Let’s do it,” Vee said.

  Caitlin headed aft and marshaled the remaining crew on board, diffusing another argument between Tony and Diaz over stowing exosuits in the escape lander, the Alley Oop. The suits were fitted with an internal reaction-control system that would enable them to stay grounded on the asteroid—in theory, at least. She fervently hoped they wouldn’t have to find out until they’d towed the asteroid safely into orbit above the Moon.

  “Take care of those,” she told them. “Gravity on the asteroid is a tricky thing. You jump high enough, and you can reach escape velocity. When we’re on the surface, those suits are going to be the only thing keeping us grounded.”

  “Tell this guy,” said Diaz. “He’s tossing them around like golf clubs.”

  “You keep it up,” Tony said, brandishing his fist, “and you’re going to reach escape velocity right now.”

  “Please, ladies,” Caitlin said, “we haven’t even left the dock yet. What’s that?”

  She pointed to the small, ungainly-looking thing on wheels folded up in the corner of the hold of the Alley Oop.

  “Looks like a rover of some kind,” said Diaz.

  “Yeah, that’s exactly what she is,” said Tony. “She’s what they call a lunar truck. Six wheels, each one with two tires that can be steered independently in a three-hundred-sixty-degree rotation. She can go forward, backward, side to side. Just about any way you need to go. Electric motors, two-speed transmission, lifting force of up to four thousand pounds. And, the best part, she’s fully customizable. She can be fitted with a scoop, a backhoe, crane, whatever you want.”

  He motioned to the side of the rover, noting the name: Noser. He grinned at Caitlin.

  “Cute, huh?” he said.

  “Adorable,” she told him. “It’s not going to affect the weight, is it?”

  “Nah,” said Tony. “It’s light. Ferrous aluminum, same as the Invader. Might come in handy if we end up on the surface.”

  “I don’t want to think about that,” Caitlin said.

  “What about these babies?” asked Diaz.

  He jerked his thumb over to a rack of smaller, more compact suits and wiggled his eyebrows.

  “Are those . . . ?”

  “Drop suits!” said Diaz, almost unable to contain his excitement. “Designed to bail out in the atmosphere. Four-layer pressure suit, heated sun visor, onboard pressure control system, HD cameras on all four limbs. Man, I’d risk a trip back to Earth just to try out this baby!”

  “You’re welcome to it,” said Caitlin. “As for me, I will pass. In fact, all this stuff . . .”

  She gestured to everything in the hold related to landing on the asteroid. The suits, the rover, even the lander itself.

  “All of this stuff can go in a little box marked, ‘Things Caitlin Doesn’t Want to Talk About on This Trip.’”

  “You got it,” said Diaz.

  “All right then, as you were.”

  Walking back to the cockpit, she passed Shaw, who was securing gear in the hold.

  “How are you holding up?” she asked him.

  “Right as rain,” he said, not taking his eyes off his work. “Don’t worry about me.”

  “If I did that, I wouldn’t be much of a crew chief, would I?”

  Shaw managed a small grin and Caitlin returned it, giving him a pat on the back as she continued to the cockpit.

  “Get that gear stowed,” she said over her shoulder. “And then let’s get moving!”

  “Yes ma’am,” said Shaw, returning to his task with slightly re
newed vigor.

  After twenty more minutes and a lot more bickering, they were all strapped in and ready to depart. Vee fired up the thrusters and gently steered the craft out of its moorings. Caitlin felt weird being on a spaceship again. The sense of motion was completely different from being on the surface, with the feeling of standing on a wooden dock in the middle of slightly choppy water. She closed her eyes and tried to adjust, but it wasn’t helping.

  “Lost your space legs?” Vee asked.

  “Might be losing a lot more than that if we keep going like this.”

  “Don’t worry, girl,” said Vee. “You leave the driving to me. At least until we get out of the docks.”

  Caitlin managed a nod and put her head between her knees.

  The Tamarisk drifted upward above the docks and the mood became tense. Ross had promised that the clearance code he supplied would allow them to leave lunar space without issue. But the cowboy also struck Caitlin as a guy who was good at making promises but tended to come up short when time to deliver. According to their work permit, they were supposed to be headed for the Crisium Sea. But in order to reach the Thresher, they would have to break orbit. And once they deviated from their course, everyone on board knew that ICC traffic control was going to be all over them.

  The potential dilemma quickly became reality.

  “Unidentified transport, you are off course,” a stern voice crackled over the comm.

  Here we go, Caitlin thought.

  “That didn’t take long,” said Tony.

  “Nope. Not at all,” Caitlin said before speaking into the comm. “ICC tower, this is the Tamarisk. We’ve received new orders and are acting in accordance.”

  A pause as Caitlin’s transmission was processed. Then, after a long wait, a response.

  “Clearance code?”

  The crew all looked at each other, their eyes darting back and forth, before Caitlin took a breath and answered.

  “Clearance code AEV-WJ 083177,” she said, hoping that the nerves in her voice were inaudible.

  Silence. Everyone froze, awaiting either clearance to leave or a swarm of patrol skiffs to surround them and force the vessel back down to the surface. Caitlin had a dreadful flash of Emily and what would happen to her if they were caught. A coal burned in her stomach as she realized that she might have made a terrible, irrevocable mistake, and in doing so had jeopardized everyone on this ship.

  The tower came back on the line.

  “Tamarisk, you are cleared for transit.”

  The crew exhaled collectively as Caitlin acknowledged receipt of the message, and Vee began to move the ship up and out of orbit.

  “We made it!” said Diaz.

  “I’d prefer you say that when we’re on our way back,” Tony said.

  “You know what this means,” Caitlin said to Diaz.

  “No,” said Diaz. “Please. Don’t do it.”

  “I’ve got to,” Caitlin told him. “It’s tradition.”

  A few pushes of assorted buttons and music filled the cabin. Montrose, “Space Station #5.” Diaz looked defeated.

  “This is going to be a long-ass mission,” he said.

  The music rising, they moved up and out over the Moon, headed on an intercept course with the asteroid. Diaz’s mood changed as he looked out the starboard portal, his eyes wide like a child. He looked back at Caitlin.

  “It’s the Moon,” he said. “I’ve never seen it from space before.”

  Caitlin and Diaz peered out the window together, marveling at the mottled gray surface, its ridges and rills rising like currents on a dark and lonely ocean. They could make out the Hive to the east, splayed haphazardly across the landscape and, far to the west, the lights of Aldrin City, standing out against the dark like Oz’s emerald counterpart. Diaz looked as if his eyes couldn’t drink it all in. Caitlin patted him on the shoulder.

  “Doesn’t seem so bad from up here,” she said.

  Caitlin sat back in the copilot’s seat as a beaming Tony looked over at Vee.

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?” she asked, unable to hold back her own joyful expression.

  “Oh yeah,” Tony said.

  “What is it?” Caitlin asked.

  “We just had a funny thought,” Vee said. “This is the first time Tony and I have been anywhere since our honeymoon.”

  Tony slid his arm around Vee’s shoulder.

  “Remember that place we stayed in?” he asked. “On Lake Armstrong?”

  “I do indeed,” said Vee. “And I remember how you had the whole trip planned with an itinerary and everything. Morning massage, diving, solar sailing . . .”

  “But we didn’t get to any of them, did we?” Tony said with a sly look.

  Vee elbowed him in the ribs. “Stop it,” she said. “You’re so nasty.”

  “Is it wrong for a man to say he enjoyed his honeymoon with his new bride?”

  Vee just shook her head. “So if this job pays out,” she asked him, “are you finally going to take me on another vacation?”

  “Babe,” said Tony, “why else do you think I took this job?”

  They broke free of lunar orbit with relative ease, slingshotting around the far side and using the Moon’s gravity to direct themselves onto the path toward the asteroid. As the ship made its way away from the Moon, Earth loomed ahead through the window, a blue-and-white thumbtack stuck in the dark curtain of space. As they had when departing the Moon, the crew stopped what they were doing and enjoyed the view.

  “Think we should just keep going?” said Vee, looking at Earth and no doubt feeling its pull.

  “Sure, why not?” Caitlin said. “We’ll just tell them we got lost.”

  “Works for me,” Tony said. “Almost feels like the truth, doesn’t it?”

  Given the asteroid’s current location, the crew deduced it would take several days to reach it. While en route they spent time getting acquainted with the Thresher. According to the file Ross had supplied, it was an M-type. Asteroids were classified based on their composition. C-type asteroids, the most common, were more carbonaceous in their makeup and primarily rich in water, metals, and various organic compounds. Those who had their eye on mining C-types saw them as potential sources for rocket propellants or rubber and plastics for living in space. The second most common asteroids after C-types were the S-types, so named for their stony composition. These bodies had a relatively low metal content, but some had been found to be high in platinum. Prospective miners could potentially sell their metals on the terrestrial market to fund future mining missions. Then came the M-types, the category into which the Thresher fell. Originally the “M” was for “metallic,” although that had since been in dispute, as many supposedly metallic asteroids were found to contain silicate deposits. The Thresher seemed to have a stony surface but a solid platinum core, which was what had Ross’s ears pricked up.

  The Thresher also had an unusually slow rotation, taking almost a full eighteen days to turn fully on its axis. This would prove advantageous should the Tamarisk crew be forced to land on the surface. Since the asteroid lacked a magnetic field, there would be very little protection from the Sun. Having eighteen days of continuous dark in which to think of a way out of their predicament would be very welcome indeed.

  “Contact!” Shaw said suddenly, looking intently at the infrared scanner.

  “You see her?” asked Diaz, floating over to look down at the readout.

  “Oh yeah,” Shaw said, nodding quickly. “She’s reading loud and clear.”

  Caitlin scanned the windows, looking for any sign of the asteroid, but saw nothing. This wasn’t surprising, as asteroids tended to reflect only about a tenth of the sunlight that fell on them. That was why they were generally hard to spot, even with advanced telescopes. However, the volume of sunlight they absorbed heated them up and made them positively glow with infrared radiation. As a result, it fell to Shaw to spot her on the scanner.

  “Let me know when anyone’s got a visual,” Caitlin
said.

  After a moment where the crew scanned the stars and onboard displays, Tony called out.

  “Got her!” he said.

  Everyone looked at once to where Tony’s eyes were fixed. Caitlin spotted the Thresher, pitch-black and reflecting only a fraction of the Sun’s light. It hung suspended in the blackness, floating in a slow and steady orbit. Looking at the asteroid, Caitlin felt fear wash through her. To her, the Thresher looked dark and unwelcoming. A cold, dead thing lurking on the outskirts of space, seeming to regard them with something akin to menace. After a moment, she turned away and focused on the instrument panel. Even though she couldn’t look at the asteroid anymore, Caitlin still felt as though it continued to hold her in its gaze.

  CHAPTER SIX

  With the Thresher now hulking just outside the Tamarisk’s windows, time was running short. They had to get moving.

  “All right,” she said. “This should be pretty easy. First, we need to move close to the rock so we can tag it on the first pass. That means a five-minute burn to put us in orbit. After that, we’re going to circle around a second time and then use the ship’s capture unit to stabilize the asteroid. Once it’s stable, we’ll be able to deploy the robots. If all goes according to plan, they’ll attach themselves to the Thresher and simply steer this thing into lunar orbit or wherever the hell Ross wants it to go.”

  “Walk in the park,” said Diaz, clapping his hands and rubbing them together.

  “Walk in the park, huh?” said Tony. “Like that time in the Sea of Serenity?”

  “The boulder again?” said Diaz. “You’re not going to let that go, are you?”

  “You know, when someone decides to blow a seismic charge in a spot way off the grid and then sends a boulder rolling right in your direction, that’s the kind of thing that’s hard to let go.”