by Bob Blanton
After they had finished restowing everything, they gathered everyone together for a lesson. “Okay, it’s important that we communicate precisely what we mean, so we’re going to learn some words that sailors and astronauts use to tell direction,” Natalia explained.
The twins nodded seriously.
“First, we’re going to learn about directions. When someone says abaft, they mean toward the rear of the ship,” Natalia pointed to the back of the Lynx. “When they say abow, they mean to the front of the ship. Aport< means to the left of the ship when you’re standing on the deck and facing toward the front, think of it as the side with the hatch on it.”
Natalia pointed to the front, “Which direction is that?”
“Abow,” the twins said.
“That’s correct. Now astarboard means to the right when facing the bow, the opposite of aport, so the side without a hatch. Akeel means toward the bottom of the ship, and atop means toward the top of the ship. Got it?”
The twins nodded their heads.
“You have to always know how you’re positioned in the ship, so if someone tells you to move abaft, you know which way to go,” Catie explained. She got more head bobs from the twins.
“Good thinking,” Samantha said.
“Natalia is going to call out directions at different times during the day. When she says point abaft, everyone points in that direction, and then we can correct each other until we don’t make any more mistakes,” Catie said.
“Now the next set is easy,” Natalia continued. “If I say right, left, up, down, forward or back, it is always your right, your left, etc. Does that make sense?”
“Yes,” everyone agreed.
“Okay, we’ll do those for today; tomorrow,” Natalia said. “I’ll teach you some more.”
The next day Natalia added three commands, “Avast: stop doing what you’re doing (typically with your hands) but you don’t have to stop your body’s motion; Freeze: stop doing anything and stop your motion; Halt: stop your motion, but not necessarily what you’re doing with your hands.” The twins turned out to be quick learners, Catie and Liz learned fast but not as fast as the twins, Samantha struggled a bit. She claimed it was because lawyers weren’t used to taking orders from anyone.
Day 3
Samantha was cleaning up after lunch, getting not very useful help from the twins. “Girls, why don’t you two go to the bathroom before we start accelerating,” she suggested.
“Sure,” the twins headed aft.
“I saw that,” Natalia said. “You’re just getting rid of them.”
“They are getting better, but they’re so easily distracted. Unless Catie is ordering them around, they act like butterflies, going from one thing to the other.”
Natalia laughed. “I think they’re a kick. They are very clever, don’t you think?”
“Nobody’s disputing their intelligence, just their ability to focus,” Samantha said.
Natalia helped Samantha continue to clean up.
“Hi Nattie,” the twins said as they glided by, tagged the front of the cabin, and pushed off toward the rear again.
“They couldn’t have gone to the bathroom yet,” Samantha said.
“Why not?”
“They didn’t have time. It takes me two minutes just to get my suit down and back up.”
“I don’t think they’re taking their suits off,” Natalia said.
Samantha’s eyes went wide in recognition, “You mean after all that ‘eww’ and ‘how gross’ about having to go in their suits during EVA, they can’t even bother to take them down when they’re in the ship?”
“You have to admit, it’s a lot more efficient that way.”
“Not you too,” Samantha said as she flicked her dishtowel at Natalia.
“Just saying, it’s efficient,” Natalia laughed as she pushed off and headed back to her seat.
“Everyone, strap in please,” Catie commanded. She actually checked that the twins were strapped in before strapping herself in.
“Why do we have to strap in?” the twins asked.
“Because we’re going to flip the ship,” Catie explained.
“Why?”
“Because we’re halfway now. We’ve been accelerating all this way, going faster and faster, but now that we’re halfway, we need to start slowing down, so we don’t just go blasting past all the asteroids.”
“Why do you have to flip the ship?”
“Because we don’t have any brakes. That means we have to use the engines, and they’re on the back of the ship. When we flip the ship, they’re pointed in the direction we’re going, so when we run them, they slow us down.”
“You’re going to fly the ship backward,” the twins giggled. “How can you do that?”
“We’re in space, so there isn’t any air. If there’s no air, it doesn’t matter how your ship is pointed, it just goes along the same line, vector, that you’re already traveling in.”
“Oh,” the twins said as they thought deeply about what they’d heard.
Day 5
“Okay, that’s it for deceleration,” Catie announced. “We’re in microgravity or low-G until we find the asteroids we want. We’ll be maneuvering around, so you’ll want to make sure you’re holding onto something, or you’re strapped in. ADI will make an announcement just before she engages the thrusters. She’ll say, ‘maneuvering in five,’ which means you have five seconds to grab onto something if you’re not strapped in. Then she’ll say, ‘maneuver complete,’ when she’s done, and you can go on doing whatever you were doing before the maneuver.
“We’re looking for an ice asteroid, but to find one this close to the sun, the ice has to be buried. ADI says they saw some like we want when the Paraxeans came through the belt on their way to Earth. We just have to find one like it.”
“Why does the ice have to be buried?” Liz asked.
“This close to the sun, there is enough energy that it would have evaporated all the ice by now,” Catie said. “Most of the ice asteroids are outside of Jupiter’s orbit where the sun isn’t strong enough to evaporate it, so the ice actually sublimates, going from solid directly to vapor.”
“If the ice is buried, how will we know it’s ice?” Natalia asked.
“It will have a low density,” Catie said. “ADI can measure the density for us and tell us which ones fit.”
“Okay, so what are we supposed to look for?” Samantha asked.
“We’re looking for asteroids with diameters of between two thousand and five thousand meters,” Catie pointed to the display in the main cabin that was showing the asteroid field they were coasting next to. Catie had brought them in above the asteroid belt, so they were looking down on the asteroids as they passed them. “ADI, please highlight ice asteroids within those parameters and with a density that indicates they have large amounts of ice.”
The cabin display changed; it now had a few pulsing green spots. “The brighter the spot, the bigger the diameter,” ADI informed them.
“Hey ADI, you’re exceeding expectations, I like that,” Catie said.
“I try, Captain,” ADI said.
“Please add conformity to a sphere as a parameter, spherical being a positive attribute,” Catie ordered.
The display changed with most of the bright green dots fading.
“There’s one!” the twins yelled.
“Good,” Catie said. “We’ll keep track of that one. Now, let’s see if we can find one on the edge close to us.”
Everyone watched the display while the Lynx continued to coast along above the belt, traveling just a little bit faster than the asteroids in the belt. Every few minutes, ADI announced maneuvers as she adjusted their orbit to approach a promising group of asteroids.
Samantha excused herself to go to the restroom. When she came back in less than a minute, Natalia leaned over to her, “Being efficient are we?”
“When in Rome,” Samantha said with a laugh.
“How about that one?�
� the twins asked. They’d quickly figured out to concentrate on the front of the display where new asteroids were coming into view.
“I like that one. ADI zoom in on this one,” Catie said, pointing out the asteroid the twins had identified. “Put its parameters in the corner of the screen… forty-two hundred meters, pretty spherical, and no other asteroids around it. That gives us a clean way in and back out. ADI put us next to it. Liz and Nattie, let’s suit up, we’ve got an asteroid to wrangle.”
“Can we come?” the twins asked.
“We’re going to watch them from here,” Samantha said. “That way, if they need something, we can get it for them.”
“Okay,” the twins moaned. They had quickly adjusted to not arguing, recognizing that they had to follow orders, even if they didn’t like them.
Catie, Liz, and Natalia cycled through the airlock and into the cargo hold. They had their kit bags with them and quickly donned their exosuits and helmets. “Nattie, you’re in charge,” Catie announced. “You’ve got the most experience moving this kind of stuff around. I’ll let you know where we want the engines and reactor, you tell us how to put them in place.”
“Copy,” Natalia said. “Everybody, check your air and thruster supply.”
“I’m good.”
“I think we should do a buddy check like when you dive,” Catie suggested.
“I like that,” Natalia said. “You check mine; Liz, you check Catie’s; and I’ll check yours when I’m clear.”
Catie carefully checked Natalia’s suit, verifying that the seam between her helmet and suit was completely sealed, and then checking that the thrusters and auxiliary O2 tanks were full. She patted Natalia on her helmet, “You’re good, except no tool belt yet.”
“Oh, that would be embarrassing,” Natalia said as she grabbed her tool belt and put it on before going behind Liz to check her suit out.
“We’re ready,” Liz said as Natalia patted her helmet.
“Okay, let’s get this show on the road. As you’ll remember, we have tools here at the front. Engines, reactors, cables, and anchors are staged from front to back. One full set for each asteroid together.”
“I didn’t realize we stacked them that way,” Liz said.
“That’s because we didn’t stack them, Nattie did,” Catie said. “We just lifted them into the hold for her.”
“Oh well, that was smart of you, Nattie.”
“Not my first rodeo,” Natalia said. “Now we’ll just take the plasma blaster for digging and leveling the sites. Four flags to identify which sites we want, and anchors for anchoring things well to keep them from floating off, and a driver to screw the anchors in. Liz, you grab the driver and anchors, I’ll get the blaster, Catie, you grab the flags and some more anchors.”
“Are we going to try to cycle all this stuff through the airlock?” Liz asked.
“Uh,” Natalia looked at the gear they were carrying, “Can we open the cargo hatch?”
“Sure,” Catie said. “ADI, please pull the air out of the cargo bay. When you’re finished, open the cargo hatch.”
“I guess it kind of is my first space rodeo,” Natalia said.
“I wasn’t going to say anything,” Liz laughed.
“We’ll all make a few mistakes,” Catie said. “Let’s just try not to kill each other.”
A few minutes later, ADI announced that the cargo hold was evacuated, and she opened the cargo door.
“I think our captain should have the honors,” Natalia said as she stepped back and motioned to Catie to be the first to exit the hold.
The Lynx was floating about two meters above the asteroid, with her wings parallel to the surface but upside down. Catie perched on the edge of the doorframe and looked up from the Lynx’s perspective, down toward the asteroid.
“Remember slow and easy,” Natalia said.
Catie nodded her head and stepped out of the hold. She used the cowling around the door to pull herself down below the Lynx’s floor. Then she just let go, and her momentum carried her on down to the asteroid. As she contacted the asteroid, she bent her knees to absorb as much of her momentum as she could. She used her thrusters to counter the slight recoil, turned, and waved at Natalia and Liz. “Neal Armstrong, eat your heart out.”
Catie moved out of the way as Liz made the same maneuver and landed much the same way. She moved over next to Catie, and they both watched Natalia float down. Natalia barely recoiled and only needed a short burst from her thruster to counter it.
“Any reason not to put the reactor here?” Natalia asked.
“Not that I can think of,” Catie said. “ADI?”
“It is a good site, Captain. That’s why I parked next to it.”
“Of course,” Catie laughed.
“Mark it,” Natalia said.
Catie tried to push a flag into the surface and only succeeded in making herself bounce up about two feet. After she used her thruster to get herself back to the surface, she looked at Natalia, “Maybe a little blaster help?”
Natalia set the plasma blaster to its lowest setting and fired a short burst into the surface. Catie immediately stuck the flag into the spot jamming it down until its tapered edges grabbed onto the sides of the hole. It was a bit of a struggle moving around; as soon as one of them tried to move, they floated up and had to use the thruster to set themselves back down again.
“Let’s face it. There’s no gravity here, so trying to walk around on this thing is a waste of air,” Natalia said. “So let’s go full EVA and treat it like a spacewalk. We want this area level?”
“Yes,” Catie said. “Once it’s mostly level, we can set anchors for the reactor then bolt it down.”
“Okay, here goes nothing,” Natalia said as she lay down just inches above the surface and started blasting. The blast immediately pushed her backward. She used her thruster to bring herself back and about one meter up. “I’ll need an anchor right here,” she pointed with the blaster, then dialing the setting back down, drilled a hole.
Catie glided over and set an anchor into the hole, then she used the wrench she had on her belt to twist it until it was tight. “Wow, it’s hard to twist this thing when you can’t set your feet,” Catie said.
“Now that you have one anchor, you tie to it to give you some leverage,” Natalia said. “I need another one here,” she said as she pointed at the spot.
“Okay, give me a pilot hole first,” Catie said.
Natalia fired her plasma cannon to make the pilot hole, while Liz ran a line from the last anchor to Catie.
They repeated the process until Natalia had three anchors set, then she anchored a line from her belt to two of the anchors and hooked her feet under the third. She lay back down and started blasting again. The force from the blast pushed her against the anchors, but the lines held her in position, forming a vee, with her body the point and the blast area between the two anchors connected to her belt. She just managed to keep her body level with the surface. It only took a couple of minutes, and she had a nice, flat-looking surface.
“Okay, next?”
“ADI, do you have the location picked out for the first engine?”
“Of course, Captain,” ADI said. “I will need to guide you to it. I’ll mark a point, and when you get there, I’ll mark the next one, and then I’ll need to do it one more time before you reach it.”
“Will the others be able to see my flag when I get there?” Catie asked.
“Yes, Captain. It is just the laser reflection that is so minor and close to the surface that you cannot see it over fifty meters away.”
“So, should I go first?” Catie asked Natalia.
“Yes, when you get there, wave the flag, then we’ll follow,” Natalia said. “No reason for more than one of us to zigzag around trying to keep track of that beam.”
“Okay, ADI, I’m ready,” Catie said.
“Captain, I’m lighting up your way-point with a laser now. It is at thirty degrees to your right.”
Catie turned her head to the right and could just make out where the laser was reflecting off of the surface of the asteroid. “I’m off.”
Catie used her thrusters to maneuver toward the spot that the beam was marking. She managed a pretty straight line, and when she got there, she waited for ADI to mark the next waypoint. When she reached that one, she looked back at her friends. They were standing there watching her. She waved and turned to find the last waypoint. After reaching it, she raised her flag and waved it to Natalia and Liz, who made short work of reaching her since they didn’t have to worry too much about which direction they were going.
“Okay, same process, but more efficient this time,” Natalia said. “Flag here,” she pointed the blaster and pulsed it. Catie drove the flag into place. “Anchor here, … here, … and here.” With the anchors in place, Natalia made quick work of securing herself to them using the lines she’d kept from her previous effort. She lay down next to the surface and blasted another level spot. “We’ll be able to use the anchors to secure the engines until we get everything lined up to embed them.”
“I like that idea,” Catie said. “So much better than letting them float around while we figure out how to install them.”
“There’s always one in every group,” Natalia laughed at Catie’s job-site humor. “Next location?”
“ADI?”
“It will be four marks this time,” ADI said. “First one, directly to your right.”
It took them two hours to level the last two engine locations. By then they were all tired and running low on thruster air. “Back to the Lynx,” Natalia ordered. “We’ll have lunch and decide if we’re up to installing the reactor today.”
“You’re lead,” Catie said as she gathered her tools. Ten minutes later, they were in the cargo hold, closing the door.
“Do we pressurize it or use the airlock?” Natalia asked.
“I think we leave it unpressurized for lunch, but pressurize it overnight,” Catie said. “It won’t hurt to have an extra layer of safety while we sleep.”
“Good idea, Captain,” Natalia said.
They cycled into the main cabin one at a time.