by Garon Whited
Life support would be touch and go if we had a full complement of two hundred people aboard. Captain Carl was willing to burn a whole tank of gas for this one trip, just to get everyone out in one swoop; that was even before I clued him that we could use an alternative fuel. He may not like having guests, but he knows it’s part of his job to rescue anybody he can, and not just for genetic reasons.
I’m glad he’s in the hot seat instead of me. I get the shivering willies just thinking about being responsible for an unruly bunch of civilians. But I’m glad he sent us to rescue them anyway.
* * *
We pulled up to the Liwei Orbital Habitat and took a good look at it. The thing is shaped like a short, fat cigar. If you took a dozen ring-shaped, rotating stations, lined them all up on a single axle, and then welded them together into a big, rotating rolling pin, you’d get something like the L.O.H.
Essentially, that’s what they did. It’s a little more complicated than that; the rings were specially designed to be joined together, but that’s the fundamental structure. The whole thing stays pointed in one direction due to gyroscopic action and keeps broadside on to the Sun; the solar panels and farms appreciate that.
The outer skin of the habitat is the “lowest” deck and has enough centrifugal force to simulate a full gravity. As one climbs “upward” toward the center of the cylinder, the decks have progressively lower gravity until the core is reached. But the outer skin—the Main Deck, or Deck One—is the only one with windows. They are in the floor, which is disconcerting to visitors. It has to; it’s a farming deck, providing both food and life support. The outer skin is divided into dozens of stripes, each running the length of the cylinder. Half of them are standard plating, covered in solar panels. The other half are triple-paned polycarbonate to let in light and some heat.
They also go by at a steady clip; we didn’t get a good look inside. We could see it was dark where the Sun didn’t illuminate it and it looked frosty in there.
After a few small nudges, we approached the “forward” end of the cylinder. There really isn’t a forward or aft to the thing—it never goes anywhere—but it’s handy to differentiate one end from the other. The aft end has a counter-rotating docking cluster; it holds still relative to ships that want to dock. Ships can lock on to a nice, stable passage tube and exchange crew and cargo. But Kathy didn’t trust it, not with the condition of the station. One good seizure in the bearings could send the Luna spinning off into space with the airlock door wrenched off.
I spent enough time and effort putting the blasted thing back on the first time. We went to the forward end.
The airlock at the forward end was a docking bay. It rotated with the station, but was large enough that the Luna could slip right in and watch the bulkheads slowly rotate around her. Normally, the pilot would put the ship into a roll to match the station, and then landing arms would extend to hold the ship in place. Once the two were locked together, a passage tube could be connected, or the docking bay sealed and pressurized. It’s the VIP method for boarding a major space station.
Kathy got us centered in the bay and gave the Luna a slight roll to match it; it looked as though the bay stopped rotating around us—a visual trick based on our point of view. Of course, the landing arms didn’t come out to secure us; the whole bay was dark. So guess who got to suit up and go see about fixing them? Three guesses. First two don’t count.
Actually, I didn’t mind. I like fixing things, and I like microgravity. No problem.
“Max, radio check.”
“Roger that,” I replied, stepping into the Luna’s airlock.
“And don’t call me ‘Roger,’” Kathy replied. I could hear her smiling at me. I cycled the lock and chuckled back at her.
The docking bay was large, but the centrifugal force caused by standing on the “floor” was just barely enough to keep me on the metal. I was glad I had magnetic boots—and a handlight. I don’t know who designed the helmet worklight, but he needs to try working with that wimpy little LED as his sole source of illumination. Worse, there’s no way to aim it; it’s a fixed mount, part of the helmet. It throws light too high and far, more like a car’s headlight than a worklight. The handlight was much brighter, but didn’t blind me the way the Luna’s lights would have.
I walked to the landing arms and got out a test kit. The wiring seemed okay and the motors had good circuit paths, so the main problem was to find power for them. Which meant we could either run cables from the Luna to the station’s power grid, or I could jigger a way to juice them from the station’s own power. I said as much to Kathy and Galena.
“Is solar powered, nyet?” Galena asked. “Is not to be damaged by electromagnetic pulse.”
“I’ll bet the panels are okay,” I agreed, and looked up. Now that I was standing on the deck and looking at the Luna, it seemed as though the ship was hovering above me. Just a trick of perspective, really, but a nice one. “They can’t be seriously hurt by EMP this far out. Some of the connectors might be shot, though. But for my money, I’d say it’s the distribution grid that’s probably fried. The computer controlling the power regulation probably puked up all its ones and zeros and shut everything down. But that’s just a guess.”
“A good guess, though,” Kathy answered. “Can you get to the wiring runs from there in the bay?”
I shone my handlight down and looked around on the deck. Since the whole bay rotated around the central axis of the station, almost everything was deck. Given that the magnets in my boots were stronger than the microgravity—not by much; they were only rated at a breakaway of half a kilo—I could even walk up the bulkhead to the main docking tube.
“I see some access panels,” I reported. “I’m checking them out.”
Softsuits are built for flexibility for a reason. It isn’t easy to get down on one knee in a spacesuit, especially when you have to keep one foot flat against the deck to keep from coming loose from it. Doing it in a hardsuit would have been possible, but I wouldn’t have been able to bend down to look at the deck. A softsuit has some give to it, along with a much larger field of view. I looked down, opened the access panel in the deck, and shone my handlight inside. I grumbled at the wiring for a while.
Finally, I said, “Not from here. Whoever decided to do maintenance on this place should be taken out and paper-cut to death with a manual. All the wires are color-coded, but there’s no color key—just a place for it on the inside of the panel cover. I don’t know what goes where.”
“Okay, Max. Going to go inside?”
“Yeah. If all else fails, I can probably find the main connects by tracing the control circuits.”
“Keep me posted.”
“You got it. Oh, and about that alien embryo thing I mentioned last time? This is a dark-and-spooky space station again, and this one’s bigger. Could be a lot of hostile life forms lurking in the shadows.”
“Roger and wilco, you goof,” she said, suppressing laughter.
I smiled to myself and walked up to the main passenger lock. Of course, it wasn’t powered. So I tried to open it with the manual release—no soap. The airlock was pressurized. With a half-kilo of pressure on every square centimeter of a door that measured around twenty, twenty-five thousand square centimeters, there was no way to force it.
I read the instructions on the manual entry panel. Some moron hadn’t provided an emergency dump valve; instead, if I wanted in, I had to pump the air in the airlock back into the station. Cheap commercial cost-savers! One airlock’s worth of air was cheap in an emergency. What if the guy trying to get in only had a few minutes of air left?
I read the instructions aloud, bitterly, and Kathy chuckled at me.
Still, it was either start pumping air or go home. I grabbed the lever, set my toes under the leverage rail, and started working on it. I finally realized how big a four-person airlock was. At least, after I had to pump most of the air out of it by hand. I was at it for four hours, and it was a lot of heavy work. It ke
pt getting easier, but also less productive—there was lower pressure in the lock with each throw, so that much less air got pumped out each time. But it counted as my exercise for the day and then some.
The air pressure in the lock was way down and I was getting pretty tired when my suit indicator started flashing at me. Thirty minutes of air left. I called it quits and headed back to the Luna.
“Welcome back,” Kathy mouthed. It’s hard to hear anything in a space suit. She helped me off with my helmet. “How’s it going?”
I made a face. “I need a shower, a meal, and some sleep. Then I’ll get back to that blasted air pump.”
Galena stuck her head down from the bridge. “Is not complicated. I can lower pressure and open outer lock while you sleep.”
“Works for me,” I answered. “Be prepared to be at it a while; you get less bang for the buck with every throw of the lever.”
“Da. But you have done most of it?”
“Yeah, I think so.” I was squirming out of my suit while Kathy hooked up my suit for air recycling. I wasn’t at all happy with the penny-pinching idiocy of private enterprise on this score. Air might be expensive, but you’re more likely to be able to bill survivors! “Just let me clean up a little, eat a bit, and rest until my air’s ready to go.”
Galena nodded and swam down through the hatch to start suiting up. Kathy swam back up to take over on the bridge. Normally, someone should always be on the bridge, but we were practically docked; I guess a few seconds of unmonitored, motionless floating relative to a stable environment wasn’t too dangerous.
Kathy looked a little peeved about it, though. I’m glad she didn’t hang around to chew on Galena for it. Galena’s nice, but she’s a station crewmember, not a pilot. Stations aren’t ships; things are very different shipboard. I had no doubt they’d have that discussion once I was out tracing wires.
So we went with Galena’s plan. I sucked down a liter of water and ate something that tasted a lot like chicken. I also floated in the scrubber for a bit before my nap. Galena woke me after she unsuited. She looked pretty tired, but pleased with herself.
“The airlock is open, Max, and suit is ready. Feel better?”
“Much. Thanks.” I stretched and twisted a little; I was a little stiff from the exertion. Galena helped me back into my work clothes and cycled the lock for me. I noticed that Kathy didn’t abandon the bridge while all this went on. I wondered if Galena noticed it.
Sure enough, the lock was open. The interior was spotless and looked perfectly intact. I shut the outer door and turned the spill valve. In two minutes, the pressure equalized again, undoing six hours of solid work.
“How’s it looking, Max?”
“Pressure’s nominal and steady at six hundred millibars,” I replied. I consulted the air test unit, reflecting that I would have liked one when we first entered Luna base. The canary method is dangerous. “A little low, maybe, but it’s holding steady. The oxygen partial pressure is also a little low. The carbon dioxide count is up, about seven percent, but everything’s within tolerances. I’ll keep my suit sealed, anyway. I’m popping the inner hatch.” The hatch swung in with a slight squeal. My handlight showed a debarkation lounge. Nobody in sight. “Looks empty so far. I’ll see if I can find the control room.”
“What’s the temperature like?”
“Twelve degrees. Warmer than estimated, isn’t it?”
“Maybe they have a couple of power leads and some heaters,” Kathy suggested.
“Perhaps is body heat,” Galena added. “Is much carbon dioxide. Perhaps there was burning things for to keep warm?”
“Nobody could be that stupid,” Kathy countered. “This is a space station.”
“And third world war is less stupid?” Galena countered, sweetly. Kathy sniffed in reply.
“You’re being careful… right, Max?” she asked, changing the subject.
“Yes, Mommy.” I closed the inner door and worked my way around the lounge with care; the deck was covered in a velcro material. My boot magnets still stuck to the deck—the material wasn’t that thick—but it was substantially different from walking on bare metal. I wondered if the whole station had steel decking? Probably not. The steel made sense in the central, microgravity core, but the outer layers would almost have to be aluminum structures or composite materials.
Finding the docking bay control room wasn’t hard; it had “Docking Bay Control” stenciled on the door. The place was intact, but powerless. I grumbled a little but started hunting for the control circuits and power leads while I radioed the Luna.
“What do you think, Kathy? Rig up a feed to the arms to dock the ship, or hunt down the power switching problem and light up the whole bay?”
“Can you rig it so I can control the station docking arms from the Luna’s bridge?”
“If we can get the docking bay powered up, the umbilical ought to let you access the release, yes.”
“Let’s do it that way,” she decided. “I don’t like the idea of anchors I can’t blow in an emergency.”
“Fair enough. I’m checking some wiring runs and looking for the power room. I don’t suppose you know where they keep their batteries on this can?”
“Sorry, Max. Galena?”
“Nyet. Is civilian enterprise, not regulated by nationalities.”
“Fair enough,” I said, heading down along a ladderway into heavier gravity. “I’m headed down to full gee; if I can find a main trunk from a panel array, it should lead straight to the powerhouse. It’s pretty dark in here, though.”
A minute or two later, Kathy radioed again. “Max, I updated base on our mission. Kiska says that she was aboard this station once. She thinks the powerhouse would have to be in the central cylinder; most of the off-limits areas were near the core of the station.”
“Good to know. Give her a big ‘thank you’ and see if she knows anything else useful about the place!” I considered going back to the core and searching it first… but a power lead would be foolproof. I went on down, through hatch after hatch, deck after deck, gradually increasing in weight. My external indicators told me it was already twenty below freezing and I was only in half-gee. It must be hideously cold on the main deck.
“I’m reading a sharp temperature drop in your area, Max. How are things going?”
“Cold in here,” I replied, opening a hatch in the next deck. “There’s frost on the bulkheads and the rungs are starting to get slippery. And yes, I’m being careful. About to go down another deck now.”
By the time I was at the main deck, I remembered how heavy a space suit could be. It’s been a long time since I wandered around in full gravity and I felt like a tired bear. But the view was fantastic. I shut off the handlight to better appreciate the show.
Standing on a window, I had the entire firmament wheeling slowly under my feet. Earth swung into view and slowly crept across the window, backed by stars of all colors. Then the Sun dawned around the curve of the station; Earth faded to a shadow of its former self as the window polarized into a reflector.
I shook myself as the Earth faded. Enough goofing off on the job. I headed across the frozen rows of a narrow cornfield to hunt for a power conduit. As I trudged, I noted that the overhead of the main deck was mirrored. I think that was to give the plants more light; I didn’t need the handlight. Which made me wonder—why have windows that polarize if you want more light? To keep from blinding people? Or is it possible to get too much light on a plant? Or does the direction of the light matter? I don’t know; I’m not a space farmer; I’m just a space janitor. My green thumb is black with oil and grease.
“Good news, Luna. I have a major power trunk running alongside a structural member. Even better, it’s near enough to an access ladder that I won’t have to walk far to keep track of it from deck to deck.”
Kathy’s reply crackled a bit more than usual. “Roger that, Max. Can you tell if it’s live?”
I got out my test kit and checked. “Yep. The panels ar
e working fine—hold one.” I checked again. The power conduit was working fine, all right. And the power was flowing. “Kathy, I’ve got a live conduit here. It’s connected to something and it’s got current flow. Maybe it’s a short somewhere, or a battery that’s being charged. But we may have signs of life.”
“That’s good news!”
“Yeah. I thought so. See if Svetlana can get another look at this bucket, will you? If she can spot a warm place, that’s probably where I ought to go.”
“Roger that, Max. Go ahead and trace that conduit; I’ll get back to you.”
“On my way.” I was six decks up and feeling much lighter when Kathy called again.
“Max, Svetlana says the infrared scope is detecting a higher-temperature area in the core. She doesn’t know exactly where it is, but from her description, it’s near the middle, probably between frames one-fifty and two-fifty.”
“Sounds good to me,” I answered. The static was lessened, now; interference from all that metal between us diminished as I climbed, I guess. “I’m headed that way with this power conduit anyway. I’ll keep you posted.”
I climbed. And climbed. It got easier as I got higher, of course, but it still took a while to go through a pressure hatch at each deck. They couldn’t have cranked up the heat while I was still up there, no. They had to make me go and climb all over the place to hunt them down. I can’t say I was really grouchy, but I was definitely feeling that I’d wasted a perfectly good hour. In a suit.
As I headed down the central core again, magboots clicking as I went, I came to a door marked “Restricted Access – Authorized Personnel Only!” The darn thing was locked. I pounded on it for a minute and hoped someone would hear it. If they did, they didn’t answer, or I didn’t hear them through a space suit. The door didn’t open, anyway.
“Got a door here that’s locked,” I radioed. “Think the locals have their section sealed off?”
“Is probably small place for living,” Galena replied. “Much power needed to heat whole station. Easier to make one small part livable and reclaim the rest with warm fingers and good air.”