“It's going to be a pure bitch, lassoing that thing,” said Jeff. “We better get started.”
***
The awake crew was well familiar with this drill, having performed the same task on Eighty-two. This asteroid, which Roger Smithson—with a fine sense of irony—dubbed the Perseus, was different. An RTG just didn't have the energy density to convert the iron of the Perseus into vapor to be thrown overboard. So, the attitude thrusters had to have reaction mass tanks emplaced before they could fire. On the other hand, there was no question of structural stability—the Perseus was the strongest thing around.
It took them three long, weary weeks, to wrestle the Perseus into their desired state: pitch (head over heels spinning) was zero, and yaw (the flat spin of a helicopter rotor) was also zero. However, the axial spin of the asteroid was a respectable one rotation per minute.
“Why so fast?” asked Duane, the reactor operator. “You'd think they would want everything dead in space.”
“Not really,” said Mickey. “Think of it, a spin adds stability. And we'll need that stability for the next piece.”
“This thing they call the Foundry?” said Duane. “Why so cheerful? The next few months are going to be horrible.”
“Right. Sorry,” said Mickey. “But I get a bit giddy just thinking about it.”
“I bet you do. Dangerous as hell, though.”
“True, that. Still, dream big, right?”
“You go do that, Mickey. I'll sit here and make sure you get your power.”
***
The first thing they had to do was stretch out the plastic sheeting the Collins had sent them. It was a huge, bulky, awkward package. All available hands were required to move it out and away from Eighty-two by nearly a kilometer, but angled above both the comet and the asteroid. There, the men unrolled the sheeting until it was nearly straight. The sheeting tried to move on its own as the rays of the sun hit it, a much smaller version of how the dust in the debris cloud moved under the fanning laser. At one end, the sheeting was attached to a tank of liquid oxygen, with a heater there to boil the liquid before it entered the sheeting.
“You sure there aren't any leaks?” asked Ragesh. “I don't want to go flying off into the dark, powered by the largest balloon ever made.”
“Pretty sure,” joked Jeff. “We'll find out, of course.”
“You're just full of reassurance,” said Ragesh. He swallowed his fear of the vastness of space, and gave another tug on his tether to reassure himself that it still was attached. It was the fifty-seventh time he had done this since they left the airlock three hours before.
“Ready for inflation!” called Jeff into his helmet radio. “Let go of the balloon, and start pulling on your tethers to return.”
Ragesh resisted the urge to grab great handfuls of the aluminum cable, but reeled the tether in gradually. Slow and steady was the watchword in space. He wanted nothing more than to be inside, with solid walls around him.
Scott flipped a few switches, and the first shots of pure oxygen began roaring into the five-kilometer-long balloon.
“It's going to take about three hours to do this. Why don't we take turns?” he said to Jeff. “Take everyone in, and we'll spell each other.”
After the three hours, the plastic sheeting had transformed into what resembled an enormous hot dog, three kilometers long and two wide. Mike Standish arrived with a four-man broomstick, towing a large tank and two astronauts with what looked like firehoses.
They started at the far end of the hotdog and slowly, carefully, drifted back to where the LOX tanks were. As they drifted precisely fifty meters above the surface of the balloon, the firehoses directed a stream of what looked like water onto the balloon. In reality, it was a foaming plastic activated by the meltwater from Eighty-two. When it hit the balloon, it spread out as it effervesced. When it stopped bubbling, it solidified into a kind of structural foam.
Every five hundred meters or so, Mike had to bring the broomstick in to fill the tanks with cometary water and plastic.
“You've really got to hand it to those Collins folks. They've thought of everything, and sent it all to us,” said Mickey from the back of the broomstick.
“What are you doing out here?” asked Jeff. “I thought you were monitoring the radio, and Ragesh was the radioman to be out here.”
“Don't hold it against him,” said Mickey. “He must be feeling under the weather. When he came in, I told him to have a seat behind my monitor and I'd come out. Don't worry, sir, we'll jiggle the schedules until we're back on track.”
“Okay,” said Jeff before the thought hit him. Everyone was as thoroughly disinfected before launch from Earth. “There are no germs out here, or viruses or anything. How could Ragesh be sick?” he wondered aloud.
Mickey said, “Maybe Collins sent us something. I'll give you a full report when we finish the foam. Sir.”
“Right,” said Jeff. “Do that.”
The spraying of foam continued.
***
“Jeff, drop it, please,” said Mickey. He was touching helmets with Jeff and they both had their radio microphones off. “I've known Ragesh for a few years. He's never said anything, but I think being in open space scares the absolute crap out of him. You make a big deal about it, and the other men will start riding him about it, and that's how you end up with dead people. Either he'll kill himself, he'll go punching the critics, or he'll do something insanely dangerous during EVA just to prove his bravery. We lose no matter what.”
“I can't have a man I can't trust out here in space,” said Jeff.
“Then don't bring him out here,” said Jeff.
“He did all right when we had to climb on Eighty-two, that first time.”
“You didn't see him cleaning out his suit afterwards,” said Mickey. “I went into the changeout room to tell him something, and the smell was like an explosion in the toilet. I said nothing then and never brought it up to him afterwards.”
“How did he pass the tests?” thought Jeff. “They're designed to weed out those who couldn't perform in space.”
Mickey grabbed Jeff's shoulders to give his words emphasis. “I'm not talking about performance in space—Ragesh will do that if he has to, no problem. I'm talking about the aftereffects. You keep taking him out here unnecessarily, and we'll end up with someone who will never be able to perform again.
“Look, Jeff, think about it this way. You're an engineer. Every time you take Ragesh out here, it's like bending a paperclip. There's only so many times you can do that before it will break, right? So, you don't bend paperclips unless you have to. All I am saying is don't bring Ragesh out here unless it's absolutely required. I'll be happy to sub for him. I like space. Lots of room.”
Mickey could see Jeff's eyes as he stared at him. Then he dropped them. “All right. But you guys have to figure out your schedules ahead of time. When you come out here, I want you rested. I won't have you pulling a radio shift then coming out here all stumbley. That gets people killed, and I won't have it. Capeesh?”
“You've got it.”
“Good. Now, let's go cut this thing before the sun's ultraviolet ruins the plastic.”
***
“Status?” asked Jeff.
“Oxygen scavenged, and the balloon is empty,” said Scott.
“All right. Cut the end off and get the aluminum pots in there. Then I want you to go back inside. For all we know, the toilets are all running backwards, the airco's broken, and everyone's hammered on ketones.”
Scott waved Lima, the machinist, forward. Lima drifted up against the hemispherical near end of the balloon, aimed a hand laser against the foamed plastic, and drew a careful line through the balloon. The cut was nearly completed when the end suddenly popped outward, propelled by the slight irreducible pressure of the residual oxygen remaining in the balloon. It hit Lima Donnelly in the chest, throwing off the aim of his hand laser, which slashed through his tether. He spun off into space.
“Mi
ke!” shouted Scott. “Man overboard!”
Lima, after giving one yelp of surprise, started a calm Mayday call.
“Where are you, Mike?” called Scott. “He's out of hand thruster range.”
“Dammit, I'm stowing the plastic sprayer,” Mike said. “One more minute.”
“Hang on, Lima,” called Scott. “Turn on your flashers, color them full green—that's an uncommon color in space. Then give me a readout of your consumables.” Got to keep him busy, keep him from panicking.
“Lima here. Flashers on green. O2, fifty-seven percent, water, seventy-eight percent, battery is at thirty-seven percent, spare is full. Reducing airco since I'm not working—that will stretch the battery. CO2—uh-oh. Looks like I have twenty-one percent left on the rebreather cartridge. Guess I was working harder than I thought. Going to stop talking and relax here.”
“Come on, Mike, he's got about thirty minutes before his lith can stops scrubbing out the CO2.”
“Fuck it!” said Mike. “Someone else snag the sprayer, I can't dick around with it anymore.” Mike lifted the broomstick in a smooth curve over the foam-encased balloon until he spied Scott. “Which way did he go?”
“I thought you had him pegged,” said Scott.
***
“Uh. Lima?” called Scott.
“Let me guess, you lost me.”
“Let's call it a check on navigation.”
Lima laughed. “You both owe me dessert for a week. When my tether broke, I saw the comet about ten degrees above the balloon, the angle remained constant, and I was at the very far end of the balloon.”
“I can work with that,” said Mike. “Thrusting now. Tell me when you can see me—I've got the front LEDs on.”
Ten minutes never passed so slowly.
“Got him,” called Mike Standish, off to the side on his broomstick. He quickly rendezvoused with the machinist and got him seated on the free-flying vehicle. “Gave him my spare rebreather cartridge so he's not smelling his own socks.”
“I'm okay,” Lima reported. “I also feel quite stupid.”
“Relax,” said Jeff. “No harm, no foul. Besides, you've got to go to the far end and cut off that end, so why don't you go ahead and do that. We've even got a spare tether for you.”
Lima gave acknowledgment and Mike goosed the broomstick towards the far end. After Lima cut off that hemisphere, they carefully flew down the center of the hot dog, towing a red-hot tank with a fitting that looked like a lawn sprinkler. From it, a fine mist of silvery metal sprayed onto the concave plastic. The droplet size was so small that when the liquid metal hit, it spread slightly before cooling, resulting in a smooth, polished mirror surface.
“Pardon me for asking, sir, but why are you piloting the 'stick? Not that I'm ungrateful for you rescuing me and all, but I would think you have more, I dunno, commander things to do.”
Mike laughed aloud. “I do, but this is one of them. I am the best-rated broomstick pilot awake. This task here requires some fine precision flying. One wrong move, and all this can be wasted.”
“Okay,” said Lima. “We still have to get a nice, smooth cut. Are we going to do that by broomstick, too?”
“Absolutely. But first, we've got to adjust that hand laser of yours.”
They got off the broomstick after it completed silvering the three-kilometer tube, and removed the spray apparatus. Lima exchanged his hand laser for a pre-adjusted one, and Commander Standish ensured that there was nobody at the far end of the hot dog. Lima fitted the hand laser into a special clamp that held it perfectly vertical in the broomstick and directly down the centerline. The laser was canted forward approximately five degrees.
Commander Standish and Lima resumed their places on board the broomstick.
“Make sure we traverse about ten meters of the tube before you begin firing. This will give me a chance to ensure I am lined up properly, and it will act as a piece of material keeping the tube in one piece. We don't want the tube to open up before we're ready, do we?”
“No sir. Just let me know when to fire.”
“Will do.” Mike again drifted down the exterior of the foam-mylar-aluminum construction, and Lima began his cut.
“Hey, what did you do to the laser?” asked Lima. “The spot looks really tiny now.”
“We changed the focusing on the final lens,” said Mike. “This way, when you fire, the beam is at its most concentrated right at the plastic and metal layer. After that, the beam spreads out, so when it burns through, it doesn't damage the surface at the far side, nor bounce right back and cut us in two.”
“I can see that. But why tilt it forward in the clamp?”
“I am aligning the burn mark with my 'stick so the cut is absolutely straight,” said Mike. “Also, if the reflections inside ever do get back together, then the laser burn will emerge ahead of us and not at us.”
“You guys think of everything,” Lima said.
“We've had plenty of time to worry about all the angles,” said Mike.
The cut continued to the end of the tube. They reached the end, leaving a tab there as well, then proceeded to cut a line exactly opposite the first one, leaving them with two cylindrical mirrors, currently held together with two opposing tabs of some ten meters in length. When they completed the maneuver, the hot dog was in four pieces: two hemispherical domes and two mirrored hemi-cylinders.
“Bring on the real hot dog!” called Lima.
***
“All right, gentlemen, let me have your attention,” said Commander Smithson in the galley in front of his seven crewmen. His words were piped into the galley on board the Bradbury, with their complete crew assembled.
“I've called you in here to give you a bit of a status check as to where we are at the moment, and a look ahead for what we're going to have to perform in the very near future.
“We've lassoed Eighty-two and powered it here to where the Perseus is floating around in its own orbit. We've constructed a large mirror out of plastic and foam and aluminum. Now what we're going to do is use that mirror and our sun to melt this asteroid and inflate it with the ice from Eighty-two. Then we wait for it to cool off, probably with some more ice, and use it to get back to Earth.
“It's obviously never been done before. But if anyone's going to do it, it's going to be sixteen men who are damned anxious to get home.”
***
“Sixteen. Huh,” said Ivan. “I say, thaw out some of those lazy bastards in the sleep cocoons and tell them to get moving.”
Niall looked up from where he was working on some calculations. “You know we can't do that. The life support system can't handle that kind of waste load.”
Ivan growled. “I know. Damn them. Why us, though? Duane is doing fine handling the reactors. What do they need you and me for?”
“There's always the reactor on Eighty-two,” said Niall.
“Pfuh. Duane could have handled that, too. Design in a negative void coefficient, and whenever the water boils too much, the nuclear reaction stops, the thing cools down, and they're back in business.” Ivan was tossing a small rubber ball at the wall.
The thonk-thonk-thonk had been going on for fifteen minutes, but seemed like it had been much longer to Niall. “Dammit, stop bouncing that ball!” he finally shouted.
Ivan caught the ball and squeezed it repeatedly. “Sorry, Niall. I'm bored, but I don't want to admit it, or they're going to send me outside to do something exhausting.
“This stuff is a bit ticklish, and I can't seem to concentrate.” Niall blinked a bit. “Your secret is safe with me—I don't want to go out there either unless I have to.”
“What are you working on?” asked Ivan. “I don't see why they had to wake you up. So far, everything's been pretty simple.”
“So far is right. I’m working on a design for a reactor to apply massive amounts of power without being so huge. The problem I’m having is how microgravity conditions will affect the internal cycles. Tell me, what happens when water heats
up?”
“It rises to the top of the reaction chamber,” said Ivan. “Unless you're in freefall, in which case, it just stays there, passing along the heat by conduction.”
“Which is way slow. So the water gets hotter and hotter, until it boils and the steam shoves the liquid water out of contact with the fuel.”
“Right,” said Ivan. “So you have to force pump the water, otherwise, you'll have ice-cold water and half an inch away, the water can be eighty Celsius.”
Niall nodded approval. “Force pumping the water takes a lot of energy, which means less for the rest of the users, depending on the power setting.
“I don't see an answer, though,” said Ivan.
Niall sighed and sat up. “Neither do I. Damn, I was hoping I could gain some kind of insight by talking out my problems. Ah, well.”
Ivan got up to go. “This is the part where I make some kind of parting remark which makes you jump straight up and yell, Eureka! And then we're running into bathtubs with golden crowns or something.” He walked to the door. “Anything?”
“Not this time, Ivan,” said Niall.
“It was worth a try,” said Ivan, disappearing into the passageway beyond the galley.
Niall waited for sixty seconds just to make sure he was gone before he dug out the books again. “Sure, that actually is a design problem with space-borne nuclear reactors. But that's not the problem I’m working on, dammit.”
***
The crew towed the mirrors to the asteroid, which Benjamin oriented to direct the distant light of the sun onto the asteroid.
“Aren't we supposed to do something like drill out the center?” asked Harlan, who was watching the operation from a monitor in the galley of the Bradbury. “I remember reading about this years ago. Science fiction author wanted to inflate asteroids using ice from comets. Drill a hole in the asteroid, fill it with ice, weld the end back on, barbecue it like we're doing, except the ice turns to steam and inflates the asteroid for you.”
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