* * * * *
The water reclamation system is a refrigerator-sized rack of tanks, tubes, filters, and instrumentation located in the utility area, aft of the docking chamber. It collects water drained from all over the ship: sinks, urine from piss-pots, and sweat from the air conditioning system. The system purifies it. No crew traveling more than a few days can survive without a system like this. But it needs to be cleaned out every so often. And it stinks to high heaven.
“Put your face into it Yuuta,” says Nastez. “Get down into the drum and scrub.”
The smell is hard to describe; it’s like the sweatiest locker room you’ve ever been in, located next to the nastiest restroom you’ve ever seen, inside a hazardous chemical plant, and you’re standing in the doorway between the two rooms in the chemical plant taking a big wiff. Except it’s worse than that. . Louis had disassembled the whole system and strapped the parts down onto the floor. Nastez, nice person that he is, figured it was time for me to take over from Louis.
I plant my boots, breathe through my mouth and jam my gloved arm down into a drum, scrubbing with the plastic brush as hard as I can. Flakes of disgusting organic junk flake off, but they don’t come easy. “I’m going to be back in 30 minutes Yuuta,” declares Nastez, floating above me with a self-righteous scowl on his face, “You need to finish this drum and the other drum, change the filters and clean out the tubing. Don’t put it back together. I want to inspect it first. I don’t trust you to put it back correctly. Now get to it!” With a single pull of his arm, Nastez, in his spotless jumpsuit, glides off towards the docking portal.
So here I am, stuck with the vilest job on the ship, the sleeve of my jumpsuit getting slimed with filth, cursing under my breath as I scrub this stupid tank. It seems like I need a better tool: the flimsy plastic bristles of this brush are no match for the sweat-pee gunk that lines the inside. I scrub and scrub, then dump the gooey flakes into a little plastic bag, then scrub some more. I still have a long way to go when Katya floats in, a large blue plastic bag in tow. She immediately coughs from the odor and covers her mouth and nose with the sleeve of her forearm. “Oh, Straker, that really stinks!” she says, her voice muffled by her arm.
“Oh really?” I say, “I hadn’t noticed.”
“Aagh. I don’t know how you stand it. Here, put this on your face. It’ll help.” She hands me a surgical mask that’s been dripped with eucalyptus. It smells wonderful compared to the piss stink; I strap it on. It’s an instant relief.
“Thanks,” I say. “That helps a lot.”
“Nastez should have given you one already. Nobody does this job without one.”
I shake my head. “He’s got it in for me.”
“Well…yea, I think he does. But he’s a good officer, really—today has been a bad day for him. I think he’s worried about his family back home.”
“Why what’s the problem back home?” I ask, as I dig in to the slimy drum with renewed vigor, now that I’m being watched.
“It’s all financial stuff that’s going on,” she replies. “It could hurt everybody in Shacktown.”
“What financial stuff?” I ask.
“Haven’t you been paying attention? All the newsblogs get refreshed on the servers, you should read them. Shacktown is in real trouble. They defaulted on their bonds.”
No, I ain’t been reading any newsblogs from Shacktown. I don’t give a trench-rat’s patooty about Shacktown. “Sounds like a problem,” I say, pulling on a particularly stubborn wafer of crusty goo with my gloved hand.
“They’re going into bankruptcy,” she continues. “And Malapert is demanding full payment. It’s bad, really bad.”
I act like I care for Katya’s sake. “So what’s going to happen?” I ask, using my concerned face.
“It’s all in the courts. Provisional Government will make some kind of ruling in a few weeks and there’s going to be an auction. Shacktown could lose the Big Scope, and that would pretty much shut down the whole city.” I look up at her. She’s floating above me. Her dark ponytail flutters above her head like a fan, reminding me of peacock pictures I’ve seen. She’s got one arm wrapped around the big plastic bag. Her other sleeve covers her face, but her dark eyebrows are scrunched together in concern. As for me, Shacktown can go hang for all I care. They deserve to suffer. “But we’ll fix it Straker,” she continues. “We’ll come back with our holds full of good solid ore! Then Shacktown can pay its debts!”
I smile behind my mask. She’s lived in Tycho all these years, an environment at least as harsh as Shacktown, but has remained a sweet person in spite of it. I can’t help but like her. But I like Louis too. Somehow, those two need to get together. “If you say so,” I reply. I give her a thumbs up.
“Oh by the way,” she says, strapping the plastic bag to the bulkhead, “here are the replacement filters. The captain is going to have an all-hands meeting in about an hour, so you need to be done by then.”
“Aye, aye,” I say. “Officer Nastez has already told me I need to be done in a hurry. I’ll be there.”
“OK. See ya.” Katya waves with her free arm, then pulls herself out of the chamber just as Nastez pulls himself in.
“Are you done yet, Yuuta?” he asks. He looks over my work, squinting down the feeder tube, checking for deposits.
“Almost done. Just need to rinse the filter chamber and screw it back in.”
“About time. Buzz me when you’re all done. You’re going to clean the backup system too. It hasn’t been refreshed for a year, so this unit was a good warm up for you.”
Jeez. “Clean the backup, aye,” I say.
“Until then, I’m leaving. It stinks in here. And hurry up—there’s an all-hands in an hour.” He turns to leave and my brush thinks it might like to fling out of my hand accidently and pop Nastez on the back of the head with a satisfying pop. Or is it me thinking that. I sigh and just try to accommodate myself to the smell of eucalyptus and stink. Might as well; my whole body will smell like this for who knows how long.
As I’m rinsing the last chamber, I reflect on what Katya had said. Shacktown is depending on us to save the day. Now that’s funny.
* * * * *
The captain clears her throat. She’s planted in front of the largest display film, holding a pad in her hand. The rest of us are her audience, on the mess deck, gripping hand holds or seated on saddles. “All right everyone,” she announces, “here’s what we are going to do.”
Katya moves up close to the display, looking intently at the image of the asteroid. Louis is back by me, looking positively dejected, only halfway paying attention, probably because of Katya’s dismissive peck on the cheek earlier. The film shows a virtual, three-dimensional model of Hrothgar. The captain holds a remote control that turns the model any way she directs it, finally settling on an angle to highlight the flattened side of the asteroid and zooming in.
“Reconnaissance confirms that Hrothgar is the richest body we have ever encountered, by far,” says the captain, beaming. Katya responds with a little clap of her hands, and looks around at the rest of us with a smile. “The surface is incredibly dense with good ore,” continues the captain, “primarily iron and nickel, but also including platinum-group metals just as we thought. Low in silicates, which we will reduce even further when we put it through beneficiation. There is even some frozen water if we decide to go after it. But the plan right now is to fill our holds with feedstock ore and not go after the water.”
Nastez pipes up. “I’m sure you’ll all want to know what the reddish mineral is—it’s covering the mountainous side of the asteroid,” he says. “Honestly, I’m not sure what it is right now. The drone took a sample of it but the mechanism seems to have dropped it somehow, so we were unable to analyze it. Once we land, I want to take an expedition out to recover some of it…”
“Hold on, Alonso,” interrupts the captain. “We talked about this. We explore only after our holds are full and if we have time within the return launch window.
No guarantees. This is not a scientific mission.”
Nastez nods reluctantly. “Aye, Captain, understood.”
Louis perks up. “I got a question…”
Nastez nods at him. “Sure Louis, what is it?”
“What the heck is that red stuff?”
Awkward silence. Nastez’s eyes narrow into a squint. “We’ve been covering that. Aren’t you paying attention Louis?”
“Uh, sorry…my mind wandered.” Louis’s gaze sinks even lower.
Nastez moves on. “The mineral—whatever it is—is intriguing because given the mass density and angular velocity of the asteroid, it should just fly apart. My hypothesis is that the reddish mass is somehow holding Hrothgar together. So it’s interesting from that standpoint.” He points up at the film. “But to continue, the body is rotating about its primary axis at about once every 45 minutes. That’s slow enough that we should have no trouble docking to it. The flat side is quite cohesive and stable, and it has the richest content.”
He takes the remote from the captain and zooms in on a portion of the flat side. “We have established a coordinate system, thus.” Nastez presses a button on the remote and a curved grid graphic overlays the image of Hrothgar. “We will first fasten the beneficiation equipment here,” he says, pointing with his hand, “anchor the CM here, and lay out tracks for the mining drones in a standard interlocked spiral configuration.”
“Where will the tailings go?” asks Katya.
“Good question,” replies Nastez. “We will direct the mining waste towards this area,” he says, pointing the area out on the model with a sweep of his hand. “We believe this location will minimize interference with ore uptake, as well as take advantage of Hrothgar’s rotation to mitigate the dust that operations will inevitably produce.”
“What’s on the other side of the asteroid?” asks Katya
Nastez turns the model to show the other side. Its tall jagged boulders are apparent right away; Hrothgar reminds me of a porcupine with a spiked back and soft, smooth belly. “As you can see, it would not be desirable to land on the other side. In addition, reconnaissance indicates that this area is a loose rock-pile. Not cohesive enough to hold our anchors.”
Just like Sophia said. I wonder if Nastez even remembers when I told him how it was going to be. Anyways, that’s the meat of the briefing. Louis has already slinked out of the room, looking like he lost his best friend. Katya continues to ask questions—I think she’s working a little too hard to stay there and away from Louis—but I tune out. Nastez keeps droning on and on.
With all the excitement today and the drama between Louis and Katya, I can’t keep my eyes open. It’s been a long, nasty day for me and I’m looking forward to it being done. I’m off watch and we’re due for a long retro burn in a few minutes. I sneak back to my bunk to catch some sleep. Won’t be long now.
PART II: HROTHGAR
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning.” –Fredrick Douglass
“I think men, growing up, you have to go through some form of hardship. You've got to harden the metal.” –Ice T
We are here. Hrothgar is below us. It dominates the view from the portholes and the front windows, because, like Louis said, it’s pretty big for a stroid; over 25 kilometers on its longest side. Its color is a lighter gray than Luna, but of course the sunlight is dimmer out this far, so I don’t have to shield my eyes as I gaze at it from the galley portholes. And then there’s that crazy red part. Nastez and Louis are in the galley with me, pointing and remarking at the unfamiliar features of this strange little world.
We’re oriented ‘upside down’, with our topside facing the surface of the stroid, our solar wings deployed from the bottom side and pointing towards the distant sun. Hrothgar is rounded and cratered, with a big smooth spot right where we would want it to be. From here it appears that there’s a patchwork of ditches or rilles off the periphery of the big smooth spot and some dark spots that look like the mouths of caves. Who knows what could be in those caves? Probably nothing but more rocks. But maybe not. I feel goosebumps on my shoulders and an anxious feeling in my chest. It’s an alien world. We’re about to land on it. Let’s get this show on the road, that’s what I’m thinking.
“Hold on to something,” says Louis. “The prop drone is about to attach.”
I grab onto handholds with both my right and left hands. The thing about stroids is, they ain’t really zero-G, but the gravity is so weak that they’re mighty close to zero-G. Any vigorous motion, like walking or digging, will send you flying off into space with no hope of getting back unless you got a jet pack or something. We’ll be using special boots to hold us down, with a jet pack for emergencies.
I jerk involuntarily as a metallic thud reverberates in the room; the propulsion drone has attached to the CM. There are other sharp noises as the big robot completes its iron grip but none of them startle me like the first one. Katya is controlling the drone from the flight deck; we can hear the calm back-and-forth between her and the captain over the speakers in the galley.
Nastez, Louis and I go into the airlock and close off its outer door. From now on we’ll have no access to our gravity bunks in the carousels, or anything else aft of the airlock. All that will be left in space, to wait for us until we’re done with the stroid and re-mate. The CM is our lander and our home for the next couple weeks. Once the airlock is sealed, we undog the CM from the cargo section by pulling down big mechanical levers under Nastez’s direction. We coordinate our turning of the last two levers, and once they’re down, I can feel the floor move under my boots as the whole CM floats free.
“All right now strap in,” says Nastez.
“This part gets a little hairy,” Louis mentions to me, as he mounts his usual saddle in the galley and pulls the strap across his lap. He wears a little grin, which is nice to see because he ain’t hardly spoken to nobody since getting kissed on the cheek by Katya.
“Remember to keep your spine straight and your head up high,” barks Nastez. “You’re going to feel a few G’s, and we don’t need to nursemaid your sprained back.” He heads back to his co-pilot’s seat.
I’m against the wall next to Louis, strapped to my saddle. I feel my stomach drop and the whoosh of the thrusters as the prop drone pulls the entire CM away from the rest of the Allgood. Then I feel a spinning, as the room literally rotates end over end to match the orientation of Hrothgar’s landing zone. We can only see the surface of Hrothgar in the films now since it’s below us. The captains voice is as calm as ever, as she and Katya guide us over the pockmarked surface, lowering the ship to a carefully calculated altitude as we wait for the landing zone to rotate to a point beneath us.
All I can see through the ceiling portholes now are the big trusses and robotic arms of the prop drone and the darkness of space through the haze of its thrusters. Hrothgar hangs below us, looming bigger and bigger in the display films. Soon all I can see are rocks and dust. We wait in anticipation for the final plunge. The time comes soon enough. “Land now Katya,” says the captain.
“Land now aye. Max thrust.”
First my stomach pushes up into my throat, then falls down to my lap as the drone slams us onto the surface of the stroid. We hit and bounce once, then hit again and the big shock absorbers settle us down. The CM is planted on the surface but vibrating strongly from the roaring thrust of the drone’s main engine, keeping us on the surface by pushing down.
“Harpoons, Katya.”
“Harpoons aye. Pyro sequence initiated.”
Bang! A barbed harpoon of hardened steel is fired into the stroid. My saddle rocks with the aftershock; for a moment my mind goes to rodeo movies I’ve watched in idle moments. I really feel like I’m riding a horse, if this is what riding a horse feels like. I’ve never seen a horse. Five more pyros fire in quick succession.
&n
bsp; “Captain, the CM is secure,” says Katya’s voice over the speaker.
“Roger Katya. Release the prop drone.”
“Release prop drone aye. Drone exit sequence initiated. Drone away.”
And just like that, the thundering stops. There is a brief silence, then a few more screeching metallic noises, some hissing from small thrusters, and I see the big structure flying away from the portholes above me. I feel the floor rise a little under my feet as the CM’s shock absorbers react, then steady out.
Everything gets totally quiet. Quietest quiet I believe I’ve ever heard. Nastez looks at Louis, Louis turns and looks at me. Without a word, Nastez is up first, followed by Louis, as I fiddle with my straps. All of us are grinning, even Nastez. Once I’m free, I follow them onto the flight deck. We’re walking now, not floating. It all feels very strange and different. It’s real gravity again. Less than Luna, of course, and less than a carousel even, but it feels good.
The five of us are looking, silently fascinated, in the same direction—towards the windows. Outside, there’s a horizon that no one has ever seen before. The dim sunshine beaming from the starry sky casts bright glints and dark shadows over a silvery, uneven ground. A moving haze of mustard-yellow dust raised by the landing swims outside the window in amorphous tufts that reflect the sun and drift lazily through one another like a gathering of ghosts.
“Lady and gentlemen,” announces the captain, turning towards the rest of us. “Welcome to Hrothgar. We’re on a new world.”
* * * * *
We’ve all been clapping and standing and sitting in awe for several minutes, shaking hands and congratulating each other. “What do you think?” asks Louis. He’s looking at me with a knowing smile, not a trace of his usual moodiness.
“Pretty intense,” I reply, “This is amazing!”
“You’re an adrenalin junkie like me,” he says. We both laugh a little. Nastez is the one who breaks out the champagne—believe it or not—which is actual French champagne brought up from France on the Marble. I ain’t never had it before, can’t say I care for it, but it sure goes down a whole lot easier than the whiskey the captain drinks. We all toast and gab until the captain decides we’re done.
Love and Other Metals Page 17