Rock Killer

by S. Evan Townsend

  When he was alone once, Charlie walked up to Beatty.

  “Yes, Shari?” he asked.

  “I know I’m new around here,” she said. “But I’ve been pulling weeds and cleaning and pulling more weeds and cooking and pulling weeds some more for three weeks.”

  “Yes?” Beatty prompted.

  “I feel like you don’t trust me. I don’t know anything about what’s going on. Like when Whaltham was here—”

  Beatty cut her off viciously. “Listen. You don’t know because it’s for your protection. The less you know the better off you are. We’ll decide what you need to know. Understand?”

  Charlie nodded silently, acting subdued by Beatty’s rebuke.

  She wanted to physically attack him, but she went back to the garden. She couldn’t believe how fast those damn weeds grew. They just got through with one end of the vegetable rows and the other end needed weeding again.

  She needed a different tack. She decided to break in somehow.

  ***

  Trudeau was bent over his radio computer. He scanned the spectrum up and down with the RF gain on maximum. He’d heard some Russian (Mars? he wondered), a lot of static, but nothing that sounded like SRI transmissions. He wasn’t too worried. He had a week, at least. It was just that Griffin was breathing down his neck to find the asteroid’s transmissions.

  He scanned down the spectrum watching the signal analyzer’s display. There was a small peak, just barely distinguishable from the background noise. It disappeared and reappeared. Trudeau set the radio frequency to that of the peak.

  “Kyushu, this is Elara,” he heard.

  “Go ahead, Elara.”

  “We have completed transfer of the water and oh-two to the rock. We will be unhooking the umbilical and maneuvering away.”

  “Understood, Elara. Have a good trip back.”

  “Roger that, Kyushu. Give our regards to Director Chun and his crew and our hopes for a safe trip home.”

  “Will do.”

  “Elara, out.”

  Trudeau smiled and stored the frequency into the computer.

  “Griffin,” he called.

  “Yeah?” he replied, pushing over.

  “I’ve got them.”

  Griffin slapped him on the back so hard Griffin sailed halfway across the room. “Good job,” he said, laughing while he tried to stop his flight.

  He collided with Knecht. He turned to apologize but she wrapped her arms around him in celebration.

  “Now we’ll show SRI they can’t fuck with the sanctity of space,” she said.

  “Damn right,” Griffin said. They held each other for a second then clumsily let go.

  Cole watched and then pushed herself into the galley.

  ***

  Alex pulled himself over to the asteroid by one of the many ropes between it and the Kyushu. Captain Takashara had maneuvered the combination so that the long axis of the ship and asteroid was pointed toward the sun and perpendicular to the vector of velocity of the asteroid’s orbit. Tidal forces were just enough to keep the ship and asteroid apart, bound by a network of taut cables. But the effect was too small to be noticed by Alex as he climbed toward the asteroid.

  As he reached the stone surface, he turned back to look at the Kyushu. The roughly bullet-shaped vessel filled most of his vision but was dwarfed by the mass driver still attached to the ship’s exterior. The driver looked like a kilometer-long radio tower laid on its side. Attaching the base of the mass driver to the asteroid was the last operation that would be performed before the rock was a fully functioning ship.

  He cycled through the huge temporary airlock in the opening for the mass driver’s mass feeder. Through this airlock the internal equipment was transferred.

  Tsuji met him there, hanging onto a handle. Alex pulled off his helmet and grabbed his own handhold. She handed him a dust mask. Everyone wore them as the asteroid was being carved open to accept the equipment. Dust from the carving, with no gravity to settle it, floated freely throughout the interior of the rock. The air was passed through electrostatic precipitators but they couldn’t keep up with the volume of dust particles. Before the conversion was finished, every interior surface would have to be wiped down to eliminate the dust. Since water was more precious than gold, rags were treated with an electrostatic attractant.

  Alex and Tsuji were in a large cavern carved from the asteroid. Once, a long time ago, Alex had joined Kirsten in an expedition to a cave in the Rocky Mountains. The damp smells and dripping water surprised Alex. He had expected it to be like the bone-dry interior of an asteroid. The man-made chamber’s walls were varying shades of gray and black. The monotony could drive one crazy, Alex thought as he looked around.

  In this room, the interior components of the mass driver would be installed. This was with equipment that ground the tailings to a powder so fine it almost moved like a liquid. The dust was ionized as the conduit passed between two massive, charged plates and then fed outside to the tower that would trail behind the asteroid. The tower accelerated the mass to just a little slower than the average photon. The grinding machines were already working on what the miners had dug out. This part is always so wasteful, Alex thought. None of the valuable metals were separated at this stage; it would take too much time and the lost ore cost less than the time to separate it.

  “Greetings Director,” Tsuji said, her voice muffled by her dust mask.

  “Hello, Chief,” Alex replied. “How’s it going over here?”

  “Great. We’ve had no problems.”

  Alex pulled along a rope heading deeper into the rock. “How long before equipment can start coming in?”

  “Tomorrow we’ll start bringing in the big items for the far end and work our way back,” Tsuji said, following on another rope.

  “So about three days until the mass driver’s installed?” Alex asked from experience.

  “Yes, barring unforeseen circumstances,” Tsuji said as they reached the far end of the chamber and started climbing up the two-meter wide tunnel the miners had dug from the pilot hole drilled by the laser. A small tube ran the length of the pipe-like passage carrying rock to the grinders.

  They passed a room with three miners cutting rock and shoving it into a branch of the tube.

  “The tokamak room?” Alex asked.

  “Yes,” Tsuji said. “It’ll be finished in time.”

  Alex looked at Tsuji. He realized that she thought this was an inspection. “I’m sure it will, Chief. You’re doing a good job. I just want a look around.”

  Tsuji seemed to relax, Alex thought. “Fine,” she said. “Do you need me?”

  “No,” Alex said. “Go do what you need to do.”

  “Okay, Director. If you need me—”

  “I won’t. I’ll just look around.”

  “Okay,” she said and pulled herself up the rope.

  Alex watched the miners work. It was hard, dusty work, not without its element of danger. One saw Alex but acted as if he hadn’t. Miners were a clique and few, not even the director, were worthy of their notice.

  Alex moved on. In a large room he assumed would be life support in a few days, miners were installing bracing for when the rock would be accelerating.

  He found a side passage and followed it. There was a small room and outside the opening where the door would go was a passage just wide enough for a man. A ladder would be installed so he could climb the tube when the rock was under acceleration.

  Alex knew the small room would be his quarters and office. He moved up the tube to the control room. On a ship it would be called the bridge, but control room was another misnomer left over from the days when the asteroids couldn’t maneuver without chemical rockets.

  Already conduits were protruding from the rock surfaces and some had fiber optics and wires spilling out. Alex marveled at the work being done. His, or rather Chief Tsuji’s miners, and technicians from the Kyushu were working around the clock to turn asteroid SRI-1961 into ship SRI-1961. When fini
shed, the center of the asteroid would be a three dimensional maze of corridors and rooms. The chambers would have walls of virgin rock. Conduits would bring power for lights and equipment would snake along the rock surfaces. It looked primitive but it worked. The luxury of metal walls was too expensive for the asteroid’s temporary status as a ship. Once the asteroid reached Earth orbit, it would be stripped of all useful material and then merely be an oversized ore ingot.

  The work to convert the asteroid had to be done quickly; keeping the Kyushu in space cost SRI one to two million dollars a day. And having the billions of dollars worth of equipment that comprised the mass drive, Masuka drives, tokomak and MHD–and all the other equipment for the asteroid–idle probably cost another couple million a day. Then the billions of dollars of ore in the asteroid weren’t making any money out here. The demand for the iron, nickel, gold and platinum on Earth was growing almost as fast as the population. And SRI, NESA, and the Russian Federation’s ambitious space programs required huge amounts of the metals. Mining asteroids meant less mining on Earth was necessary and less damage was done to the environment. And the demand was still met for the raw materials that supported the standard of living almost everyone but those in the poorest nations enjoyed. Manufacture in orbit, also made economically feasible by asteroid mining, threw pollution to space on the solar wind. To Alex, SRI and NESA were the real environmentalists while the GA simply used the environment as an excuse to grab power for themselves.

  And that reminded him of the Rock Skipper. He felt his stomach knot and bile seeped into his mouth. Was he nervous, or space sick? he wondered.

  ***

  The Rock Killer accelerated to a stop.

  “Okay,” Knecht reported, “We’re about a hundred kilometers closer to the asteroid.”

  “Good,” Trudeau said. He called up the frequency on the computer that controlled the radio.

  The spike on the signals analyzer was larger.

  “Kyushu, this is 1961.”

  “Go ahead, sixty-one.”

  Trudeau transferred the broadcast to the ship’s intercom so all could hear.

  “We are powered up and self-sufficient. We will commence acceleration within 15 minutes.”

  “Roger, 61. We’re heading home. Safe trip, sixty-one.”

  “Safe trip, Kyushu.”

  Trudeau looked at Griffin, who was smiling.

  “We’ve got them,” Griffin cried happily. “Knecht, it’s your show.”

  She replied, “Okay,” and bent over her computer. “Trudeau, stay on them. They’ll announce to the asteroid tender when they start acceleration. Then I can plot an intercept course.”

  “And then,” Griffin said, “we’ll kill a rock.”

  Chapter Eleven

  “Tell the miners it’s time to earn their pay.”

  To the rest of the solar system it was SRI-1961. But to Director Alexander Chun it, or she, was the USS Enterprise, the Long Shot, the Skylark, and “Gay Deceiver” all rolled into one.

  And although those ships had capabilities that were still, and may always be, science fiction, Chun wouldn’t trade SRI-1961, his rock, his command, for the lot of them. Well, he thought, strapped down in his chair in the control room, I wouldn’t mind the “Star Trek” artificial gravity.

  “Reactor on line,” the voice of the reactor chief came over the intercom.

  “Roger,” Chun barked. He tasted acid in the back of his throat. Fifteen years making a living in space and he still got sick in free fall as his guts desperately searched for “up.”

  “Mass driver powered up,” Diane reported over the intercom.

  “Roger,” Chun repeated. Soon, he thought. “Masuka drives?”

  “On line, sir,” Diane replied. “Ready for acceleration.”

  Chun looked at Navigator Naguchi. She was curled up in front of her computer console, her long legs bent up so her shoulders were resting on her knees.

  “Ready, Bente?” Chun asked her.

  “Anytime, Director,” she replied. “Computer reads positive control of yaw, pitch, and roll.”

  Chun looked at his beautiful navigator and wondered briefly why she was so reticent and seemed so lonely. If he wasn’t married, he’d have been on her like self-righteousness on an eco-politician.

  Chun hit the intercom button. “Everyone prepare for acceleration in one minute. Report by section to the AD.”

  “Mass driver and Masuka drive section ready,” Diane informed Assistant Director Banda.

  “Reactor ready.”

  “Miners ready,” Tsuji said.

  “Life support ready,” Taylor reported.

  “Security ready,” Thorne said.

  “Navigation ready,” Naguchi said.

  “Communications ready,” said Hikiru Manna, Communications Chief for the asteroid.

  “All ready,” Assistant Director Banda reported in his resonant voice.

  Chun smiled. “Roger. Acceleration, now. Communications, inform the Kyushu.”

  “Yes, sir,” Manna replied.

  A few hundred meters away, six Masuka drives started to release a steady stream of ions. In conjunction, the kilometer long mass driver started throwing rock, ground so finely it ran like a liquid, out behind the asteroid at velocities just under that of light. Acceleration slowly built up to 0.16G. The asteroid shrugged off the last of the minuscule layer of dust that was left behind like a cloud of confused gnats.

  Chun unstrapped himself and stood. He took in a deep breath of the air, composed of oxygen from Europa and nitrogen bought from the Russians on Mars–for their price but still cheaper than lifting it from Earth. His stomach stopped protesting as up and down became realities again.

  “Ah, that feels better. Bente, how’s the course?”

  Nuguchi studied her computer and then turned to Chun with a broad smile. “Right down the pipe, Director.”

  “Good work. AD?”

  “Yes, Alex?”

  “I’ll be in my office. Tell the miners it’s time to earn their pay.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  ***

  Ceres, if it was in orbit about a planet, would be a respectable moon. At 1,000 kilometers in diameter, and somewhat centrally located in the asteroid belt, this smallest of minor planets (some still insisted on calling it the largest asteroid) was the logical place for SRI’s asteroid facility. Made more of ice and carbonates and clay, the SRI facility was built on the surface using technology developed building the company’s facility on Europa.

  The mass of the asteroid provided about one fiftieth of a gee gravity so that everything eventually floated to the floor.

  Independent miners came to Ceres for supplies, to sample the “entertainment,” and to sell their finds. A person could make a few million euros in the span of half a decade, if they didn’t get themselves killed. Some returned to Earth or the Moon. Most stayed in the belt, too damn independent for even NESA’s lose control.

  At the public spaceport, Caroline Zalesky waited at the airlock leading to the independent mining ship, the Ginney Mae.

  Zalesky waited patiently, knowing the owner would eventually return. She thought about her husband, David, who was right then on the asteroid SRI-1961. They’d met and fallen in love on the Moon last year. But he was a mass driver tech and she had committed herself to working on Ceres. She hoped to get an asteroid assignment soon so they could work together.

  Since Head of Security Mitchel had sent his order to her boss, Sue McKenna, about checking on independent miners, Zalesky had checked the computer records on every miner that returned to the asteroid.

  From the interior of the facility, a fat man floated into the staging area. Zalesky mused to herself that he should have “Goodyear” painted on his side. She noticed a bandage on his neck.

  “Mr. Mouret?” she said before he could pass by.

  It took him a long time to stop his considerable mass.

  “Yes?” he asked, eying her security uniform.

  “Are you th
e owner-operator of the Ginney Mae?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you mind answering a few questions?”

  Mouret looked at her. On Ceres, when an SRI Security person asked politely, it usually paid to be cooperative lest they become impolite. SRI had a monopoly on independent miner support. No one dared risk raising the ire of Space Resources.

  “No problem,” he said.

  “You were here just a little over a month ago. Records show you bought large quantities of supplies, enough for six or so months, and paid cash.”

  “Yes.”

  “And, yesterday you bought more supplies for about four months in space and had to use credit.”

  “Does SRI doubt I can pay my bill?” Mouret asked.

  “No,” Zalesky replied. “But it is curious that you should return so soon and with nothing to sell.”

  Mouret’s eyes shifted as if he were looking for an escape.

  “I sold my supplies. Or actually, I was ripped off.”

  “By whom?”

  “I don’t know who they were,” he said almost whining.

  Zalesky didn’t know if he was lying or not–and didn’t care.

  “Would you come with me, please?”

  He nodded. “Fine,” he said noncommittally.

  ***

  Faruq heard a scuffle outside the thick oak door of his office. He pulled open the middle drawer and removed a Makarov nine-millimeter pistol.

  The door flew open and General Sa’ud bounded into the room. Faruq could see through the door where two armed soldiers held Faruq’s private bodyguard.

  Faruq let the general see his weapon. “Marhaban sadiqi,” he said calmly as if nothing were out of the ordinary.

  Sa’ud stood erect and straightened his uniform in a slow, dignified ritual. Finally he spoke with a deliberate casual air. “Someone is trying to erode the support for the president in the Party.”

  “I don’t think so, aquid.”

  “But delegates are openly speaking seditiously against the president. Some say you, Faruq, would be a good replacement,” Sa’ud said, as if retelling a little joke.