The Fourth Way
Mars Expedition, Enroute to Mars, January 11 2083, 2019 EDT
The radio antenna was always pointed towards Earth, but at their current distance, the reception included the entire Earth-Moon system. Donovan wasn’t expecting communications during his shift, so he wasn't really paying attention to it. Ragesh was off-shift, and the Earth and Moon were tiny twin crescents on the monitor. A second flare lit up the screen several hours prior, but JPL wasn't saying anything. He assumed it was just another Lunar impact.
An alteration in the static as the side lobe of a radio call barely stirred the electrons in the antenna elements. The disturbance was minute. Even amplified, the garbled words merely modulated the ever-present white noise of cosmic static.
“Moonbase Collins calling United Nations Space Operations Command. Moonbase Collins calling UNSOC. McCrary here. Come in, UNSOC.”
Donovan shook his head as if he were dreaming. “What the hell was that?” he muttered. He looked at the audio trace, but could find nothing definitive. He fiddled around with it for a couple of minutes, unsure whether his ears were playing tricks on him or not. He shrugged and went back to the technical report on transceiver electronics that he had been reading. He had left the gain on high, so the next call blasted from the overhead speakers.
“Burroughs, this is Moonbase Collins, do you read?”
Donovan looked at the audio trace. No, he wasn't imagining the call.
Donovan keyed the microphone. “Collins?” he asked tentatively. “Is this some kind of hoax?” He waited out the speed of light delay in an agony of indecision. Everyone else was asleep, and he hated to wake them if some kid had hacked onto their beam.
“McCrary here. You must be Donovan. You still have that damned rubber Twinkie?” After seven months, finally a new voice!
“Holy cow, McCrary! We thought you were all...I mean, I saw the shock wave!”
“Dead, I know. Some of us did die, but most of us are alive and well. We can't seem to raise UNSOC.”
“Oh, the whole New York operation is shut down. Everyone's on indefinite 'hold' status at the moment. Earth is a mess,” Donovan said. “We're working with JPL out of Pasadena. Should I spread the word that you're alive?”
“I suspect that anyone monitoring your frequency knows already. But yes, please break the news to them and ask them to contact us. We've got a beacon running. Comms here will give you the specifics.”
Donovan called JPL and gave them the good news, including the specific communications parameters that he received from the Collins.
“Earth is replying, McCrary. We're passing along the comms' parameters. Better get ready for a flood of communications.”
“Thank you, Donovan. Feel free to listen in.”
“Oh, I will, but I probably won't get anything from them, only your signal. I'm also taping this for the other shifts. They're not going to believe me otherwise.”
“Donovan? Godspeed. We'll talk about your predicament as soon as I get encryption running on this beast. McCrary out.”
***
“Jeff! Wake up! You're never going to guess who's calling us,” said Mickey, shaking the blanket-covered form. “It's the Collins! McCrary survived, along with most of the station. They're on the horn with the Commanders right now.”
Jeff Gatson sat up too quickly and rose completely off the thin mattress of his cot in the three-tenths gravity. He flailed for a second before his mind woke up and he waited to drop back down onto the mattress. He thrashed for a moment before he was clear of the bedding, and stood up, dressed in just a pair of shorts.
“You better not be screwing with me, Mickey, or I'm going to make you do pinhole patrol on the ships.”
“No lie, guy! It was McCrary. He called me by name, and remembered the time I swapped out a Twinkie on his lunch tray with a rubber one. He's talking with the Commanders now.”
Jeff beat his own personal best time in getting dressed and up to the Command Deck.
***
As the senior radioman, Mickey was in charge of securing communications between the Moon and the Expedition. Although simple radio was the primary means of communication, McCrary insisted on using the photophone—a thin line of laser light, modulated precisely to carry enormous streams of data in either direction. It was the same system that Commander Jeng Wo Lee of the Collins used to communicate with the Chaffee before the explosion and shock wave laid waste to the Lunar colony.
“I read you loud and clear, McCrary,” said Donovan after the automatic seek circuits found the light beam and coaxed it into alignment over three long hours.
“Five by five, Donovan. Begin the encryption process.”
“Remember the name of that woman who accused you of being gay?” asked Donovan.
“Thank you for bringing that up,” said McCrary. “I had almost forgotten that incident. The fact that I did not want to make out with her had a lot to do with my being married for fifteen years and about zero to do with her alleged 'assets'. Besides, I find a woman's intelligence her most appealing characteristic, and that woman was sorely lacking.”
“Yes, well, do you remember her name? Don't say it! Just put in her real name as the encryption seed. Signing off this channel, going to encrypted stream.”
McCrary punched in the woman's name, and the voice channel came alive again. “Now,” said Donovan, “ask me something obscure that only both of us, and nobody else, will know.”
McCrary thought. “What was inside that rubber Twinkie of yours?”
“Perfect! Signing out now.”
McCrary typed Spanish Fly into his console.
“Testing, testing,” McCrary called into his microphone.
“Okay, now that we've embarrassed each other enough, let's do some business,” said Donovan. “I'll alert the Commanders.”
***
“This is Roger Smithson, head of the Mars Expedition. I should be speaking to Commander Lee and Commander McCrary. Am I correct?”
“Roger, you old soak,” said Lee quietly. “Jeng here. I've got McCrary, and he swears that the line is encrypted all the way up to the little module that's sitting at the end of my bed. We're on headphones, so you can speak freely. How are you?”
“Scared shitless, of course,” said Roger. “Although I'd never tell the crew that. We're in deep trouble, Jeng. We're headed out to a mission that we can never successfully complete.”
“Coming home, you mean,” said McCrary.
“Right the first time,” said Roger. “None of my awake guys have the faintest idea how to survive that shooting gallery between the Earth and the Moon. But, we must get through that to get home.”
“Maybe you can make a go of it on Mars,” said McCrary. “There's oxygen in the sands, you've got a reactor with you. You've even got a full seed catalog, so you won't get scurvy.”
“Sure, for a couple of years. Don't kid us, McCrary, we know what a horror show Mars is. Stay on the surface for two years, and you're dead of radiation poisoning. No magnetosphere, remember? One good solar flare, and you'll see everyone's bones in the daytime.
“Sunlight's like Earth only dimmer—we'll be lucky if we get half the energy out of our solar panels that the dumbest lug gets on Earth. You might hate the lunar night, but you get a full fourteen days of non-stop sunshine where you are. On Mars, we've got to struggle with weeks-long sandstorms. Don't jolly us along.”
“Roger, Jeng here. What do you plan to do?”
“We can't do anything with what we have. One thing I can't do, though, is wake up the crew. There's nowhere to put everyone, plus, without hydroponics, I'm not quite sure how we're going to make enough food for a couple of hundred folks.”
“Um, can we help?” asked McCrary.
McCrary felt the smile of Roger Smithson from millions of miles away. “Absolutely.”
***
McCrary would later relate how annoying it was how everyone seemed to think he had an endless supply of hats and rabbits
. He wasn't a super genius by any stretch of the imagination. What he did have, though, was a rare combination of insatiable curiosity, voracious and omnivorous reading habits, and an intuitive memory. He was quite aware of his gifts, but what puzzled him and kept him apart from most normal people was his complete inability to fathom why other people couldn't do the same things he could.
“How could you not remember the thorium fuel cycle?” he remarked to Commander Standish in the days that followed. “Thorium won't do fission on its own, but it will readily suck up a neutron and become protactinium, which, after about a month, decays to uranium-233, which does do chain-reaction fissioning.” He recited that, right out of memory, whereas Commander Standish had to look up the entire fuel cycle. Even so, the both of them met during an UNSOC training seminar that featured the thorium reactors that both men supervised in their respective operations.
“Not everyone has a computer upstairs, McCrary,” replied Standish. “But we're glad you do. Now, let's hear that part of the process again.”
McCrary went on to discuss the particular rabbit of the day.
***
“We're not like you, McCrary, with perfect recall,” said Roger Smithson. “So, let us describe what you've got in mind, just so we know. Then we'll present it to the crew. Mike Standish and I will make the final decision, but we're going to need the enthusiastic support of our awake crew to pull this off. So, here goes.
“You and your engineer crews have built a new Flinger, and it has greater capacity than the old one. You are going to be able to launch packages out to us immediately. You propose that we not land on Mars, that we not go into orbit around it at all, but that we head out into the asteroid belt. There, we should rendezvous first with a comet, and you have a good candidate for us already. Using some of the things you're going to send us, we then pilot the comet to another rendezvous with a nickel-iron asteroid, though you don't have one for us quite yet. Once there, we convert it into a massive suit of armor, fill it with the comet, and fly it back to Earth. Under your, admittedly optimistic, scenario, we should get back to Earth in about four years. Did we get it right?”
“Yes. Something you need to remember is that for about fifteen months, you're going to be living inside that asteroid, so you will be able to gradually increase the apparent gravity of the inside surface in order to acclimate yourselves from freefall back to full Earth gravity.”
“You're out of your mind, you know that, McCrary?” said Mike Standish.
“Don't mind Mike, McCrary. Right now, this offers us the best chance of living past the next three years. Okay, we'll present it to the crew. Tell me again, why do you want to keep this from the Earth? You would think the adventure would be welcome—keep them from thinking of the constant threat above their heads.”
The voice from the Moon took a long time in replying. Part of that was simple speed-of-light delay, the rest was from McCrary ordering his thoughts.
“You realize, both of you, that if you head back to Earth, even with whatever you could loft from the surface of Mars, that you're going to be holed by lunar debris before you can ever attempt reentry? We're clocking some of it at over five kilometers per second. Escape velocity from Earth is seventeen, and typical orbital is around eleven. So, even something the size of a small screw will blow a hole through ten-centimeter steel.”
“We're not worried. Mars is nothing but iron oxide.”
“But without carbon, you have nothing but wrought iron, and unless you pound out all the slag, it's very brittle, believe me. The Flinger's rings were made of wrought iron, and they were the first things we replaced when we found a carbon source. Big enough chunk of crap hits you, and those wrought iron plates will shatter like a pane of glass. Then where will you be?”
“Damn you, McCrary.”
“You forget, I've got a vested interest in your success.”
The lag was a bit longer back from the Expedition, as if the two commanders were conferring.
“Riiight—that terminal maneuver. Got to see that one to believe it.”
McCrary gave a short laugh. “You're not the only one. Okay, time's a wasting. You've got a pitch to make to your crew. Make it a good one. McCrary, listening, out.”
***
Since Roger Smithson had the last crew speech, Michael Standish gave this one. This was a good thing, since Mike did a far better job explaining science than Roger did.
The crew gathered again, on each spaceship, every shift awake and speculating about which of the three ways the Commanders had decided on.
“Gentlemen,” said Mike. “The time has come to make a choice. I know some kind of betting pool exists, and I am afraid that everyone in the pool loses.
“Commander Smithson and I are in complete accord. This solution is totally within mission parameters. The outcome, assuming all goes well, is complete success, to include reentry to the Earth.”
Mike took his time, looking at each crew member on the Bradbury in the eye, but the Burrough's crew were all but climbing down the speaker grilles trying to find out the answer.
“We're changing course. We're going to cross behind Mars, and use the gravity assist to fling us out into the asteroid belt. There, we will rendezvous with two asteroids. The first is really a comet, C/2082 D4 (PanSTARRS), and the second will be an iron-nickel asteroid. We will use the first, plus a lot of packages that the Collins will be sending us, to form the iron-nickel one into a rather large suit of armor, and fly back to Earth’s orbit inside her. From there, we're going to reenter the Earth's atmosphere.
“I know you will have a lot of questions about the plan, and the Collins and Commander Smithson and I are working around the clock, trying to nail down the ones we think are most pertinent to making a decision.
“We must make our first course change in approximately ten weeks, when we are about three months out from Mars. We will need this time to figure out where the jokers are. For right now, save your questions, enter them into the computer, and we'll squirt them down to the Collins, who has a lot more brainpower and a reduced signal delay with Earth to get them answered.
“Commander Smithson and I are not absolutely wedded to this course of action. We're willing to entertain alternatives, but they will have to be less risky than this plan, and include the near certainty of getting us to the surface of the Earth, safe and sound.
“Commander Smithson?”
“Gentlemen,” said Roger. “We are your commanders, not your dictators. However, we must make a decision. If we go into Martian orbit, this fourth way is lost forever. We all must examine this closely, and implement the final decision without looking back. Commander Standish and I are requesting opinions and solutions, but we will not be deciding based on a vote. All clear?”
The crew on board the Burroughs nodded their agreement and Commander Standish indicated the same attitude on the Bradbury.
“That is all. Remember men, we have ten weeks until we must implement the decision, but we must decide earlier than that, just so we can figure out all the ways things can go wrong. Plus, the Collins needs to fill the pipeline with the appropriate packages as soon as possible. Dismissed.”
Aim, Fire, Ready?
31st Rocket Army, Rostoshi, Orenburg, Russia, March 4 2083, 0934 GMT
“We have a target, Comrade Bucharev. Inclination 40.493, altitude ninety kilometers and falling. Impact point estimated at just West of Moscow.”
“Size?”
The controller consulted a table, looking back and forth from his scope. “Albedo gives us two hundred meters as a low end, four hundred as a top end.”
“Hmm. Time to decision?”
“Sir, you have a ninety-minute window. Launch parameters are earliest four point three minutes, maximum ninety-seven point six. After that, reentry effects give a suboptimal solution.”
“Hold.” Bucharev, the Comrade-General of the 31st Rocket Army turned to the red-colored phone at the corner of his desk. A year ago, he never thought he woul
d ever have to use the phone for other than the occasional test. Now, though, it was in use on a weekly basis. He lifted the receiver and held it to his ear. There was no keypad on the phone, there was only one place it would ring.
“Da,” said a voice on the other end. That phone, too, had no keypad, for there was only one place that would be calling.
“Bucharev here. Another target. Two to four hundred meters, impact west of Moscow, but not by much. Priority double A.”
“Hold.”
There was no doubt that the Kremlin would authorize a launch. All the Russian Rocket Service would have to do was ensure that the rocket and the nuclear bomb at its tip would perform as per specifications, and all would be well.
“Comrade Bucharev,” said the voice in the phone. “Stand down. We will handle this one.”
“But,” began Bucharev.
“Your orders are to stand down. Do so.” The click was loud in his ear.
He turned to the waiting controller. “We are to stand down. Resume monitoring. Shift your target to my screen only and forget about it.” The controller's eyes went wide, but Comrade Bucharev shook his head minutely. The controller shrugged and toggled some switches. The display came up on Bucharev's monitor.
Bucharev started a recording program and centered its screen grab to just the display of the target. He watched, wondering what the Kremlin had in mind.
Dead Men Flying Page 4