Fang-Castro took a sip of tea and said, “That’s all by the book. It’s how I would do it if I were commanding their ship. Come in steep and make your burn as close to Saturn as possible to get the most benefit from the delta-vee. Does that fit with your briefings?”
“Yes. Except my guys don’t think they have enough reaction mass to achieve orbit. At least, not any kind of an orbit that would leave them in a position to resupply their tanks, let alone rendezvous with the aliens’ depot. They’ll be stuck, powerless, in orbit around Saturn. That’s one case. The other is that they don’t achieve Saturn orbit at all, in which case they’ve got a very long trip back to the inner solar system, and they’re still powerless.”
“Okay. What do we do about it?” She cradled her cup and looked at him patiently.
Crow sipped tea, said, “You gotta give me a list of your teas when we get back.”
“It’s a short list, but a good one. Of course, if Darlington has his way, it’ll all be traded away. Enjoy it while you can.”
“I will. Santeros and her group haven’t made decisions yet, about the Chinese. Or, at least, not any she has communicated to me. I think it will depend upon the circumstances and whether the Chinese request our assistance. Then she’ll weigh the options and tell us what actions to take. If any.”
“It’s coming down to what we talked about, David,” she said. “If the Chinese government privately requests assistance as one government to another, that’s for Santeros to work out. If the Celestial Odyssey directly issues a distress call or a request for aid and assistance, it’s my decision, and it isn’t even a hard one. We assist. To whatever extent is necessary to assure the safety of their crew, if not their ship.”
“The President might order otherwise.”
“The President doesn’t get to decide. The Law of Space is clear on this point. When not in time of war, if a space vessel or establishment issues a distress call, any other vessels or establishments that can render assistance must do so, as long as it does not put them in danger. It’s like maritime law but it’s got much bigger teeth. If an oceangoing vessel is in bad trouble, people are likely to die. In space, it’s a certainty. Failure to render assistance is classed as contributory homicide under international law,” Fang-Castro said. “If I render assistance against the President’s orders, she will have me court-martialed when we return to Earth. If I fail to render assistance in accordance with her orders, the International Court of Justice will try me for homicide and they will convict me, with a sentence of life in prison.”
Crow said, “It is this president’s policy not to allow U.S. military officers to be subject to trial by the International Court.”
“That does not reassure me, David. My predecessor on the space station had to deal with the mess created the last time the U.S. flouted international space law, back in the early fifties. Look it up. ‘U.S. Interops Space Litter Fine’ will get you there. That president stood tough, until he discovered how powerful passive-aggressive disapproval can be in space. The U.S. cannot afford to be a pariah among the spacefaring players. Santeros will turn me over, when it sinks in just how much protecting me will cost the U.S.”
“You’re sort of skipping over an important point, Naomi,” Crow said. “We’re required to render assistance if it doesn’t put us in danger. But what if it does? Who decides what constitutes danger? What happens if Santeros and her intel people decide that taking Chinese troops into an unarmed vessel is automatically dangerous, and they communicate that to you?”
Fang-Castro looked up at the ceiling, thought about it, then looked back at Crow and smiled. “You know what? If they did that, and I ordered a rescue anyway, then it would all come down to what the Chinese did. If we rescued them, and that was it—we simply hauled them back to Earth on friendly terms—then Santeros wouldn’t do anything. I might not get another star, but that would be the end of it. On the other hand, if the Chinese did try to take our ship, and I survived, then I’d probably be court-martialed and convicted.”
“Yes.” Crow put his fingertips together. “It ain’t pretty. So what are we going to do?”
“Well, I think you should get word of this conversation back to Santeros, so we don’t wind up putting ourselves in a mutually untenable situation. Convince her to leave the decision to me, and I’ll take full responsibility for whatever happens. She can find reasons to do that—for example, our comm lag is now so bad that she would be unable to provide me with minute-by-minute orders, and blah-blah-blah. Her PR people can handle it.”
“I don’t know if they’ll go for that, but I can try,” Crow said. “They may try to download about a thousand different scenarios on us, everything they can think of, with specific orders for each one.”
“Tell them not to do that. If I tried to follow their scenarios, something inevitably would get screwed up, and they’d get blamed,” Fang-Castro said. “No. You tell them if something goes wrong, I’ll take the blame.”
“I’m not sure they’re so worried about who to blame—it’d be you, no matter what happens—as they are genuinely worried about what would happen if the Chinese got all this tech, and we didn’t. If they grabbed our ship, and, you know, took it and kept it.”
“I worry about that, too. Which brings me to something else I need from you. I need you to analyze the security situation should we be required to take an indeterminate number of crew members from the Celestial Odyssey on board.”
“We’re working on that.”
“David, I’ve never asked you this, but it’s time to put a few more cards on the table. How many trained military personnel do we have on board the Nixon?” She held up a hand to stop him before he began to answer. “In total. Not just the official complement, but including the ones you had placed undercover among the regular crew members. Like Sandy Darlington. No, you don’t have to give me names. Not yet. I just want the head count.”
Crow didn’t hesitate. “We have fifteen. Including the official eight, you, and First Officer Francisco.”
“Mmm,” Fang-Castro said. “I’d hoped for a few more. What’s the latest guess on how large the Chinese crew is?”
Crow shook his head. “No change there. It can’t be fewer than twenty-five. We can’t imagine any way, technically, to run that ship with fewer people. Fifty might be a plausible guess. But it could be larger than our complement, maybe over a hundred.”
“David, that really doesn’t help at all,” Fang-Castro said. “You better start grinding out your own scenarios. And we better hope that the Chinese have their situation under control, and this doesn’t come up.”
Crow said, “We’ll get those memory things from Wurly, those quantum devices, the next time over. Supposedly, that’s everything they’ve got—science, tech, everything. We could simply say that we didn’t want to get in an untenable position here, given the lack of cooperation from the Chinese government . . . and then leave.”
“What would Santeros say to that?”
“Listen, what Santeros wants is every bit of information we can squeeze out of the alien station, and she doesn’t want the Chinese to get any of it,” Crow said. “She knows that’s probably not possible, but that’s the baseline of what she wants.”
“I don’t see any way that could happen.”
“There’s one way. We get everything, and decide to leave. The Chinese know that if we leave without them, they’re all dead. So they have to come with us, and we agree to take them, but we don’t give them time to download everything themselves. Then we’ve got it, and they don’t.”
“That’s a dangerous game,” Fang-Castro said. “If we’ve got it, but they don’t, then our ship is in real danger. The Chinese could decide that it’s better to destroy us than let us get back to Earth with the alien tech. Or they could decide that they’ve got to take our ship, and take the tech.”
“Yes.”
“Or
they could launch a very small conventional warhead that we’d never see—if they haven’t already done it—and simply steer it into us, while we’re on the way back. The Nixon goes up in smoke, and who knows what caused it?”
“Yes.”
After a moment, she asked, “What do you think, realistically, is the best possible outcome, other than we get it all, and they don’t get any?”
“Ohhh . . . you know, the Odyssey started out as a colony ship, set up for a very long mission. What they could do, simply, is wait us out. When we leave, they go into the station and do just what we did. Get it all. Then the competition moves back to Earth. And that’s fine. The Chinese have some great scientists, but so do we. The competition would be pretty even. Could even become cooperative.”
“Would Santeros go for that? Or do we come back to the idea that she wants all of it, and she doesn’t want the Chinese to get any of it?”
“I don’t know. I think she’d go for it if she had no choice. I really think she’s waiting to see what’s going to happen with the Chinese ship. If it makes a good orbit tomorrow, and doesn’t need help, maybe that’s where she’ll leave it. But that woman is always looking for an advantage. This game is nowhere near over.”
44.
The Celestial Odyssey’s trajectory was very tight and its speed was way too fast. The Chinese ship would hit closest approach at over fifty kilometers per second. The Chinese would have to kill more than half of that velocity to get into a circular orbit. Plus, their trajectory was still inclined fifteen degrees to the ring plane, and even if they achieved orbit, they’d need yet more delta-vee to turn their orbit into one that brought them into reasonable proximity with the alien depot.
The Nixon’s nav crew said the Celestial Odyssey’s approach would bring them through the ring system out of view of the Nixon on the first pivotal pass. At the Chinese ship’s velocity, the most critical part of the encounter was going to be over in less than an hour. The Nixon wouldn’t be able to see the ship again until well after it passed periapsis.
Joe Martinez had a fix for that. He and Sandy modified two recon shells, fabbing lens extenders for the standard camera lenses. Martinez launched his do-it-yourself reconnaissance satellites into polar orbits, a half an orbit out of phase. That way, at any moment, one satellite had a view above the ring plane and the other below. The solution wasn’t perfect: the two cameras gave them only ninety-five percent coverage, but it would have to do.
By that “night”—ship’s time—the Chinese ship was still in free fall, closing in on Saturn faster and faster when it should have been decelerating. The nuclear thermal engines, monstrous as they were, still only provided a fraction of a gee. With dozens of kilometers per second to shed, the Chinese ship’s burn should have started hours before.
“They don’t have the reaction mass,” Fang-Castro told Crow.
“I don’t think so. They’re not going to make orbit.”
The Celestial Odyssey finally began its retro burn. They were as far from Saturn as the moon from Earth, but at their velocity, that was nothing.
Navigation: “Admiral? They’re not correcting their trajectory. Periapsis is dropping. They’re barely going to clear Saturn’s atmosphere.”
“Mr. Crow,” asked Fang-Castro, “do you have any reports of trouble aboard the Celestial Odyssey?”
“No.” Crow amended himself. “At least, not as of two hours ago.”
“Comm, keep monitoring for a distress call,” Fang-Castro said.
Nav was losing her voice: “They’re still not correcting their periapsis! They’re going to hit the upper atmosphere!”
Martinez: “Oh hell. I’ve got it.” He looked bemused. “They’re crazy. They’re going to try aerobraking.”
Crow: “What?”
“They’re going to try to skim through the atmosphere deep enough that they can shed some velocity through friction. It’s been considered standard operating procedure on any Mars mission. But they’re nuts. Mars is one thing. Saturn’s another. Different atmosphere, different gravity profile, and, uh, three or four times the velocity? It’s nuts.”
Twenty minutes before close encounter, the Celestial Odyssey cut its main engines. Everyone looked at Martinez.
“Oh, yeah, that’s right. They’ve got to get the orientation and angle of attack absolutely perfect. Can’t come in tail-first, they’ll burn off their engines. Even if they get their attitude right, they can’t come in too shallow or they’ll skip along the top of the atmosphere like a stone on a lake. There wouldn’t be enough friction, and they won’t kill enough velocity. On the other hand, if they come in too steep, they’ll just be another meteor.”
The Chinese ship’s image on recon shell’s camera’s IR channel, a bare handful of pixels, had dimmed sharply when the engines cut out and dimmed even more as the engines cooled. Now it began to brighten again.
“Hope they tied down everything good. Aerobraking’s a bumpy ride,” Martinez said. “These boys have got some major balls, I can tell you that.”
Nav: “They are definitely slowing down. They’re shedding significant velocity.”
Fang-Castro: “Enough to put them in a closed orbit?”
“Nowhere near, but probably more than enough, before they’re done, to shed the excess velocity they piled on with that midcourse burn.”
Fang-Castro looked over at Crow, an unvoiced message going between them: Maybe we dodged a bullet.
“Uh-oh, that’s bad,” Martinez said. Fang-Castro and Crow looked back at the display. Trailing the IR blip of the Celestial Odyssey, there were sparkles. Bright pixels that quickly winked out.
“Something’s burned off. Nothing should be burning off,” Martinez said. “They wouldn’t have an expendable heat shield. They figured something wrong. They broke something.”
“Comm, any messages?”
“Nothing, ma’am.”
“Hope they didn’t burn off their comm antennas,” Martinez said.
A minute or so later, the IR image of the Celestial Odyssey started to dim, as it left Saturn’s atmosphere. “Navigation, what’s their trajectory?”
“Still open, ma’am. They don’t have orbit, yet.”
Fifteen minutes passed, then twenty. No call. Nothing. Fang-Castro waited for the Mayday call. Nothing.
The image of the Celestial Odyssey suddenly brightened; simultaneously, Martinez called out, “They’ve started retro burn, again!”
Cheers broke across the bridge.
“Let’s keep the discipline, people,” Fang-Castro said, though she felt like cheering herself. It was space: it made a family of everybody. The President doesn’t get that, she thought. She probably never would.
45.
Zhang Ming-Hoa glanced at the date readout in the corner of his view screen: Tuesday, April 3, 2068. They were a billion, three hundred million kilometers from Earth and orbiting Saturn. That was the good news.
“Mr. Cui, cut those alarms off. They’re not telling me anything I don’t know and they’re making it hard to concentrate,” he said.
The captain of the Celestial Odyssey was a large, stocky man, with a reputation for being imperturbable, bordering on the impassive. He also had a reputation for being something of an irresistible force in the elite Chinese Yuhangyuan Corps. It went with his bulk.
The culture of the Corps favored yuhangyuan—astronauts—who were slight of build. In the early days of Chinese space travel, when each additional kilogram put into orbit greatly increased the cost and difficulty of a mission, this tradition had meant something. Small spacefarers made for smaller, lighter weight spacecraft. The Chinese space program could not have advanced as rapidly as it did with average or larger-than-average yuhangyuan.
That was decades in the past, but tradition changed slowly. The only group that put more of a premium on small size and weight were racing jockeys. Zhang
’s imperturbability, merged with single-mindedness, had carried him through the training academy without any disciplinary incidents, despite the hazing of his classmates. The nicest nickname he’d ever had there was “big ox.”
His instructors, despite their skepticism over his physical suitability, knew officer material when they saw it. Faced with difficulty and even outright hostility, Zhang remained calm, quiet, and thoughtful. Very little fazed him.
For that reason, the bridge crew began to worry when he repeatedly muttered the obscenity ta ma de to himself. That was more what they expected of First Officer Cui. Cui Zhuo better fit the image of the stereotypical yuhanguan: she was small and wiry, even by Corps standards, and entirely perturbable. Where Captain Zhang carefully pondered a course of action, First Officer Cui responded instantly and instinctively.
Her quick reactions were also what stood between her and a captaincy. Within hours of entering the academy, an upperclassman, noting her unusually slight build and reddish brown hair, dubbed her “Mouse.” Within a day that had changed to “Ferret,” and freshman Cui had the classes’ first disciplinary mark.
Her instructors noted her ability to command respect, but felt she needed thorough tempering before she’d be ready for command of her own. She wasn’t there, yet.
The alarms died, and Zhang said to Cui, “Well, we’re alive, anyway. For now. Is there any other good news?” He looked to Navigation. “Mr. Sun, what do you have for me?”
Sun checked her console. “We are in orbit about Saturn, sir. The aerobraking maneuver and retro burn were . . . successful.”
“You don’t look very happy, Lieutenant. I take that to mean it’s not a very good orbit.”
“I’m afraid not, sir. It’s very eccentric—we’re barely captured. Apoapsis will be, umm, about half a million kilometers. It’ll be about two days before we make a close pass by Saturn again and can do another retro burn to circularize our orbit.”
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