The Hole
Hard Science Fiction
Brandon Q. Morris
Contents
The Hole
Author’s Note
Black Holes – A Guided Tour
Glossary of Acronyms
Metric to English Conversions
Copyright
The Hole
January 1, 2072, Asteroid 2003 EH1
Doug was shivering. He glanced at the display on his right arm. The heater was working at full speed, so it wasn’t faulty technology, and that was reassuring. He always felt cold right after getting up—so why had he insisted upon watching the sunrise? A moment ago he had heard Sebastiano clattering around. The Italian must be in the warm kitchen, preparing the New Year’s meal he had been raving about for days. Maria would be standing in the shower, with hot water splashing all over her body. He should be keeping her company, instead of walking around out here in the dark.
But why wait? thought Doug. Instead he decided to take a few steps toward the sun, and his helmet lamp showed him the way. While he knew almost every square meter of his temporary home, an asteroid can change, just like a living being. The fissure now in front of him had been just a narrow crack when they arrived two years ago. Now it was seven or eight meters across and comparably deep. Doug pushed off, slightly more forcefully than normal, into a forward jump-step, and floated to the other side. 2003 EH1 was not heavy enough to pull him in with its gravity. A badly planned jump—upward and too forceful—would turn Doug from an astronaut into a small interplanetary object. The large, bottle-shaped container on his back not only provided him with breathable air, but also served as an emergency jet. If he drifted into space, he could use its second gas nozzle as a miniature jet to maneuver himself back to safety.
Another ten meters or so, Doug estimated. The black rock in front of him seemed to be acquiring a golden edge. He stopped. It will happen soon. A whitish-yellow point of light rose above the ridge. Within seconds it became a semicircle, then a circle. The first sunrise of the New Year! Doug held his breath. He wished he could experience it in the majestic stillness of space, but his spacesuit inevitably created noise, even while he held his breath. His ears still heard humming, hissing, and creaking, while the sun was slowly rising in the black firmament.
Without the sun’s radiation he and his crew could not survive, evidenced by the solar power modules next to the ship. They were just now being hit by the first energy-providing rays. But out here the faraway star did not look anything like the life-giving mother Doug remembered from Earth. No, it was more like an accidental visitor who did not care much about the inhabitants of asteroid 2003 EH1. This was probably due to the intense blackness of space that seemed to suck up all light. The sun painted Earth’s sky in warm hues, but space remained utterly black. Doug raised a gloved finger and covered the sun’s disk with it. If he weren’t still seeing the long, sharp-edged shadows on the surface, it might as well be night. There was only glaring brightness and absolute darkness. He had been flying into space for over 30 years, but he had never gotten used to this extreme contrast, or to the blackness of the dark. The five-times-larger sun disk he knew from Earth had probably become embedded in humanity’s collective memory.
Doug looked around. Now that the sun was visible, Earth couldn’t be far from it. He looked for it and found a few white dots that were possible candidates, but he couldn’t decide on a specific one. He should have downloaded the current star chart before going out, but he had not been that mentally organized so soon after waking up. The second-brightest spot out there must be Jupiter. ‘As the crow flies,’ the giant planet must be roughly as far away from him as was Earth.
Doug barked a laugh at himself, noting the strange expression he had used. A bird certainly could not fly between himself and Jupiter, as there was no more air than what was contained in his pressure tank. Biologically speaking, the asteroid on which they were traveling was completely dead. At some point it had been a comet, but during its lifetime the solar radiation had stripped it of most of its volatile materials.
Doug sat down and moved his glove over the thin layer of dust that covered the brittle rock. He lifted a few crumbs and rubbed them between his fingers. They would sink slowly to the ground, taking several days—or maybe even weeks—as the gravity of the asteroid was so low. These particles contained carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and silicon, but also valuable metals and rare-earth elements, and all of these in considerably higher concentrations than on Earth. Hence their reason for being here: They were traveling through space on a flying treasure chest. Doug was counting the days. The equivalent of another 1,110 Earth days and they would all be rich.
“Will the gentlemen please come to breakfast?” Maria’s voice over the helmet radio sounded annoyed, but he knew she was not really irritated. That was just part of the daily ritual. They normally had breakfast in the module they called their ‘living room,’ as Sebastiano worked almost all morning in the kitchen and wouldn’t let anyone else come in. Today, by chance, sunrise and the beginning of their day coincided. They still patterned their life rhythm after Earth, while 2003 EH1 rotated once around its axis every 756 minutes—12.6 Earth hours.
“On my way,” Doug replied as he stood up and turned his back to the sun. His shadow was so long it almost reached the ship. Kiska consisted of a round command module and the cylindrical drive. It held on to the asteroid by means of four landing struts. Originally, the spaceship had only been designated by a really long identification code. Doug tried to recall it, but could only get as far as K76M4. Shortly after launch, Maria had named it Kiska, the Russian word for kitten.
“Are you almost here? Don’t forget to wipe your boots!”
“Yes, Masha,” he replied, using his pet name for her. “Just a moment.”
Doug pushed himself into forward motion, aiming toward the spaceship. Their quarters were behind it, in a deep cylindrical trough they had dug for that specific purpose soon after arriving. That way, the asteroid gave them optimal protection against meteorites and cosmic radiation. The computer calculated their risk of being hit at below one-tenth of one percent—for the entire duration of their time here.
Doug looked around while slowly drifting across the rough surface of the asteroid. Ahead he could see for several hundred meters, but looking right or left, the horizon was only 50 meters away. If he were to turn 90 degrees and circle the asteroid at his current pace, he would return to his current position in no more than half an hour. In essence, he was float-walking over the porous, reddish-brown and gray surface of an enormous cigar-shaped rock that was racing through the universe at many kilometers per second. Nevertheless, the world around him seemed to stand still.
The spaceship seemed to grow larger as he approached it. Doug grabbed one of the landing struts and brought himself to a halt. Kiska loomed above him like an eight-story high-rise. The landing struts anchored it to the asteroid, but even without their aid the ship would be standing solid as a rock, simply due to its large mass. This gave Doug a feeling of security. Despite the near-zero gravity, he could not simply push Kiska to the side—just like a flying insect hitting a bicyclist could not knock the rider off his bike.
The steel strut of the ship looked like new. Doug stroked an area with his gloved hand and realized how deceptive the appearance was. While the metal did not rust, he could feel the tiny impact-pits made by micrometeorites. This was not the first voyage of Kiska, but it very well might be its last, depending on 2075 Earth-prices for the raw materials they were harvesting here. If all three of them had enough money in their accounts by then, they would be able to retire. Doug sighed. Just like the ship, they weren’t getting any younger.
He let go of Kiska’s landing strut, and of his thoughts. Then he sl
owly moved around the ship. Five meters behind it, a few stairsteps led downward. He used the handrail to descend them, a biomechanical necessity due to the lack of assistance from gravity. The railing was equally essential for going up the stairs, preventing a push-off from sending one into space instead of to the next-upward step.
The roofline of their quarters was marked by LEDs that were blinking in a soothing rhythm. Four colored lines led from the edge to the center, where the airlock was located. The hatch stood open. Doug had not bothered to close it when he had gone outside. If Maria knew, she would scold him, even though he saw no reason to shut it, as neither weather nor other humans existed here. The three crew members were the only known living beings within at least 600 million kilometers, four times the distance between the Earth and the sun.
Doug stopped for a moment before climbing into the dark hole. Kiska cast a long shadow that fell directly on their greenhouses. The green lights at their entrances signaled that the technology was working correctly. If it were not so, Maria would already be inside the repair exoskeleton, fixing the problem.
Doug placed one foot inside the hatch, as he had done thousands of times before. Nonetheless, the automated voice startled him.
“Welcome to the Kiska airlock. Please close the hatch so the pressure can be equalized.”
After the landing, Maria had copied Kiska’s automatic software. They could not afford a real AI. Except for the fact that the program could not learn where it was located, so far it had fulfilled its tasks well. This also included activating the red lighting strips at the edges of the roughly-square chamber. These did not generate enough light to see all the latches and buttons of the spacesuit, but that was intentional, as the room had not yet been filled with air. Doug pushed off and floated toward the ceiling to close the hatch.
“Hatch closed,” the automated voice confirmed. “Establishing air pressure.”
Doug was humming a melody that had suddenly popped into his head. He recalled neither the name of the song nor its lyrics. The tune felt like it might have been a country song. He smiled, since he had never liked country music. The radiation exposure during his long career as an astronaut must be gradually affecting his ‘little gray cells.’
“Air pressure established,” he heard. At the same moment the lighting switched to white. Doug began taking off his spacesuit. He started with the helmet, followed by the upper part, called Hard Upper Torso or HUT, and finally the lower part, which was made of a flexible material. He kept on the LCVG, or Liquid Cooling and Ventilation Garment, a kind of temperature-regulating underwear. Maria liked cool temperatures inside the station—perhaps she was used to them from the long period she had spent living in Siberia. Sebastiano spent most of his time in the overheated kitchen, which left Doug as the only one who had to dress warmly. And what would be more suitable for that than the LCVG? It could even handle the coldness of space. He was used to Maria sometimes teasing him about it.
“Did you remember the boots?” Her voice sounded duller than earlier, coming from the headphones in the helmet he had placed on the floor.
Doug shook his head—no, he hadn’t—and said, “Sure, of course.”
A bucket and rag stood in a corner of the room, and Doug bent over it. “Shit,” he said quietly. Here was the answer to why he should have closed the hatch. The bucket had been half-full of water, but the continual vacuum had caused it to evaporate. However, the rag inside it still seemed to be wet. Doug put on his right glove again, picked up the rag, and wiped off both boots. Maria claimed he would otherwise track a lot of dirt into the living quarters after his excursions. He could not imagine a few specks of dust posing a real problem, but if it made her happy he would clean his boots. ‘Live and let live.’ That was the only way for three people to survive more than five years crammed together into sixty square meters.
Well, they needed a few other things, too—for instance good food, which Sebastiano seemed to live for. Doug had noted that fact when he had looked through the Italian’s application file. Shostakovich had given him access while Doug was initially trying to assemble the crew. He still referred to Sebastiano as ‘the boy,’ although at 49 years old, the Italian was only seven years younger than himself. At age 20 Sebastiano had been a fighter pilot, at 26 he had flown his first space mission for ESA, and then he had suddenly become a pizza baker in his family’s restaurant. Doug had asked no further questions. How often do you find a cook with space experience who knows more than opening tubes and placing plastic pouches in hot water?
“Guys, will you kindly go to the living room? I am hungry!” Now Maria sounded genuinely annoyed, and he had to hurry. A green light was already blinking on the airlock door. Doug turned the wheel several revolutions to the left and then pushed the heavy metal door outward. It opened with a squeak. On this level, the topmost one, there were only storage rooms, due to safety concerns. The way down led through a round hole in the floor, with a pole attached to its edge. The pole was supposed to help them move up or down more quickly, but for Doug it was mostly a source of numerous bruises. The others made fun of him because he was so clumsy in zero gravity, in spite of his long spaceflight experience.
In order to avoid the next bruise, Doug slowly pulled himself downward. There were four doors at the four quadrants of the second level. The door to the bathroom was open, and a little bit of steam was billowing out of it. Maria had obviously just recently finished her hot shower. To the right of the bathroom was Maria’s room, his own room to the left, and the one behind him belonged to Sebastiano. However, Sebastiano sometimes preferred to sleep in the kitchen. Despite all the annoying effects of zero gravity, it at least had the advantage that you did not absolutely require a bed to sleep in.
The entirety of the third level consisted of the ‘living room.’ Maria had come up with the name. It was actually an all-purpose room for functions that did not generate moisture or dirt. It was here that the exercise equipment stood, on which they had to suffer for almost a third of each day. Also in this room Maria had her TV corner, where she spent hours watching television shows transmitted from Earth, and where Sebastiano liked to play chess against himself, when he was not busy cooking.
The Italian and Maria were already sitting around the large table on the right side of the room. Doug hurried, but then slowed his momentum at the backrest of his chair and pulled himself onto his seat. Maria smiled at him. Then he knew—she had only been pretending to be annoyed. She began to pour the coffee. To do so, she stood up slightly. A tearing sound could be heard, caused by a Velcro strip separating. This had been another of her ideas, in order to simulate a relatively normal everyday life. In lieu of gravity, tiny elastic hooks held them to their chairs. Doug had grown used to it surprisingly fast, and by now Maria had attached Velcro strips to almost all of their clothing.
“Could you hold your cup for me, please?”
Doug held up his cup. Maria tilted the covered coffee pot until the spout was aimed directly at the opening in his cup. Then she gave it a slight push and its hinged cap swung open to allow coffee to exit.
“Perfect, as always,” Doug said, and Maria smiled. Exactly the right quantity of coffee moved in a straight line through the air from the pot to the cup. Doug tilted his cup a little, and the hot coffee hit the opening and followed the curvature of the vessel. If Doug were holding a normal cup the coffee would leave it again, but the rim of this particular cup was rolled inward. Like the surf on a beach back on Earth, the stream of coffee slowed down as if it were a returning wave that in turn decelerated the newly-arriving waves rolling toward the shore. So far, only three times had a drink been spilled, and each spill had been his fault.
“Thanks,” he said.
Maria also poured for the Italian, and then she sat down again.
Sebastiano never ate breakfast. “And how was the sunrise?” he asked.
“Great dawn,” Doug said with a grin. He wondered how often he had given this same answer. A hundred times? A hu
ndred and fifty? In spite of it, his smile was genuine and Sebastiano’s question are him happy. He really and truly had been damned lucky to be at the right place at the right time, meeting the perfect crew. He of all people! He certainly did not deserve this much luck because he had mistreated so many—some by accident or because he could not help it, like his first wife, whom he had cheated on with her best friend. He had mistreated others intentionally, some because he was either envious or jealous, and in other cases because Shostakovich had paid him well to do so.
Can this last? he asked himself. Things had been going along well for more than two years, and that scared him. At some point the payback moment would come. He simply could not shake the feeling.
Maria placed her hand on his. He looked at her.
“Your kasha is getting cold,” she said, pushing his hand toward the spoon. In front of him stood a bowl of buckwheat porridge. It was the only thing Maria knew how to cook. He could not stand the taste of kasha. Sebastiano probably chose not to have any food at breakfast because he felt the same way. But, like a good boy, Doug always ate all of the kasha in his bowl—for Maria.
She had fallen in love with him, she once admitted, because he had eaten a whole dish of buckwheat porridge just because of her. This was shortly after he had hired her as his ‘Girl Friday,’ as he called her, for the five and a half years on 2003 EH1. He had brought her from her ‘home’ back in deepest Siberia, the brothel in Tsiolkovsky, where Shostakovich operated his spaceport. Maria had agreed, even though she barely knew him and was quite aware of what her job was supposed to involve. She also explained things to him later in more practical terms: At the age of 42, her remaining years in ‘the profession’ were limited, and a pension fund of three-quarters of a million dollars—based on the ore prices of that time—was just what she needed. Neither of them had expected she would fall in love with him.
The Hole Page 1