Dead Men Flying

by Bill Patterson

  Jeff felt his mouth go dry and his heart racing madly, but was powerless in the grip of his worst nightmare, haunting him at the worst possible time.

  Seconds later, before anyone can stop it, another bomb is automatically fed into the cup and detonated in a fresh bath of water. Without effective dampers, the enhanced force from the water plasma is transferred to the walls of the Perseus, and the full force of the detonation is felt as a five-g shock wave.

  In the cryogenic chambers where the rest of the crew sleep in liquid nitrogen, internal structures of their bodies are riven with differential stresses. Cracks appear where bodies are not fully supported, such as the arch of the neck. The cracks elongate as the shock wave reverberates through the ship, until their heads roll off the rest of their bodies.

  ***

  “Jeff, are we ready?” called Michael. “Everyone else checks out Okay. How's the water bath going?”

  “Two centimeters, only,” said Jeff.

  Michael growled into the circuit.

  “You didn't specify what you wanted, other than 'a few centimeters'. I am frankly scared shitless about all the things that can go wrong.”

  “That's not like you,” said Michael. “You didn't blink at melting a four-kilometer asteroid, but you're scared of a ten-kiloton bomb.”

  “It's not the bomb, it's the shock wave. We've got a whole lot of untested stuff here, and I don't want to overstress it right at the beginning. I'm not going above two centimeters, and if you want more, you're welcome to come down and operate the spray valves yourself.”

  Michael's voice came through his headphones after a moment. “Fine. Hell, you've taken us this far. We'll just have to blast longer, I guess. Two centimeters. You know I'm going to ask for more, so make sure you measure everything you need to.”

  “You bet I will,” said Jeff. “I've got the sprayer circuit set up to fire the water in five seconds before detonation. Any earlier than that, and the layer won't be uniform, it will be a bunch of water drops floating around.”

  “All right, I'll let Ivan know. Ready on your end?”

  “Yes, Commander. Engineering out.”

  ***

  The two-centimeter water layer improved blast coupling significantly, as did the four-centimeter layer blast right after that. The stress in the ullage tank skins was well within the dynamic limits, and Jeff felt cautiously optimistic. Course projections indicated that a skin of water approximately five centimeters thick over the bottom plate of the cup was the optimal safe blast coupler.

  At a bomb detonation rate of six per minute, the four-kilometer length of the Perseus shook itself out of its eon-old orbit and began a long plunge towards the Sun.

  Green Acres

  Aboard Perseus, June 23 2085, 1500 GMT

  “So, how's the greenery?” asked Roger. He stood on the balcony outside the airlock of the Burroughs. The ship was permanently moored on an aluminum truss stretching down the exact center of rotation of the Perseus. A long platform stretched from that ship to the Bradbury, also moored on the truss. In between the two ships, a battery of blazing LED lights bathed the entire interior of the fore chamber with a strong white light.

  “We're going better,” said Harel, waving all around him. “The soil project is moving along. The virtuous cycle is starting to bear fruit.”

  “Sorry, the what?”

  Harel laughed in the thin air of the central axis. “The virtuous cycle. The men have a lot more greens in their meals, less concentrates, right?”

  “Yeeees,” said Roger.

  “So they are far more regular, right?”

  “I can't speak for anyone else, but I find I'm getting a lot more reading done.”

  Harel looked at Roger oddly.

  “Oh, bad habit. I read on the can. If I don't, I can't go.”

  “Ah. Well, all that waste would normally be loading up on the sewage works. Now, we just run it past the sterilizer and load it with good bacteria, then mix it in with a combination of the cometary debris and lunar regolith. Voila, instant farmland.”

  Roger frowned. “Intellectually, we all know that we're eating our own waste, filtered through another living system. I just don't like to think about it. So, how is this a cycle?”

  Harel pointed to a field at the ten o'clock position. “See that field, just about overhead? It's getting near harvest time. It's planted in baby spinach and other greens. Comes up quick, easily propagated, good for humans, and runs right through our innards. We're going to be eating that in the next few days. Twenty-four hours later, it's going to be mixed in with dirt and another field will be planted. More greens for the table, more fertilizer shortly thereafter. A virtuous cycle.”

  “There's something missing on this, I think,” said Roger. “Doesn't the nitrogen get used up or something? Even with alfalfa or whatever legume you're planting?”

  “Beans and peanuts can't fertilize all of this,” said Harel. “But they help. There's the phosphorus from the KREEP terrane material that McCrary sent, but we're very lucky that old Eighty-two had so much ammonia left. We've been converting that into fertilizer as well.”

  “Do you need anything else? You've got water, a ton of dirt, all the poop you need, and fertilizer. What else?”

  “How about some field workers? I don't think we're going to have any problem supporting more folks.”

  Roger tugged at his chin. “You sure?”

  Harlan waved his arm around. “Yes, I'm sure. Look, I've only got about fifteen hectares under cultivation right now, but I think waking up more people is going to be another virtuous cycle. More people, more poop, more hands, more land under cultivation, more food, more people, etc. Besides, when we get to Earth orbit, we're not just going to trash Perseus, are we?”

  “I haven't thought beyond just getting to orbit.”

  “Better start, Commander. It's only a twenty months away.”

  ***

  Roger had, in fact, thought far beyond their arrival in Earth orbit. He and Michael spent plenty of time down on the ground, walking and talking about the next steps. The blasts from the nuclear bombs came less frequently, and were mostly mid-course corrections.

  “We've still got to make it around the Sun, Roger,” said Michael. “You can't joke about the heat. Sure, we're going to point prow-first at the sun, but the heat will percolate inside here for a few weeks afterwards.”

  “I wonder,” said Roger. “Do we still have some of those aluminum ingots left over from the batch McCrary sent us?”

  “You mean the ones we used to silver the balloons? I'm pretty sure we do. Oh, I see, mirror the prow and deflect some of the heat? Good idea.”

  Roger nodded, bending down to stroke the leaf of a small spinach plant. “It's still hard to believe that we're traveling inside fifty meters of iron, riding through space using nuclear bombs, and growing these little guys. Imagine what JPL's going to say when we show up in orbit. They're going to have a cow.”

  “You're still dead set on the orbital path, right?” asked Michael. “It makes sense to me, but man, I really don't know about how precisely we can hit it. Propulsion by nuclear bombs is really imprecise.”

  “Is it really? Think about it. We can vary the thrust pretty easily, just be adjusting the amount of water in the cup. From zero to five centimeters, that gives us a range of impulses we can pick from.” Roger's voice sped up as he warmed to the topic. “Not only that, we can delay detonation of the bomb so that it goes off closer or further away, also giving us a range of impulses. Those two factors give us a crude form of thrust control. Sure, I'd like the last blast to be pretty far from the planet and use the plasma thrusters to give us final vernier control, but I think we're fine.”

  “We're in agreement, though, about approaching from behind,” said Michael. “I never want to be on a collision course with Earth.”

  “We won't be. I went over the calculations and orbital approach path with Benjamin five separate times. By hand, by computer, and by star sights, we'r
e going to be whipping around the back side of the sun, sliding up on Earth from behind while under thrust, with everything set so that if thrust fails, we fall away from the Earth.”

  “All right. Then what? We're in Earth orbit. We've got a nice, radioactive cup on the back side, a hold with a whole bunch of nukes, and lasers galore. What did you have in mind?”

  “The awake crew has the absolute right to go to Earth. We've been up for years. I don't know about you, but I'd really like to get groundside. The newly woken folks, well, we'll just have to see what we can work out with them.”

  Michael frowned. “They've been away from Earth just as long. Friends and family have aged. They have the same reasons to get back as we do. Why can't we all go back?”

  Roger started strolling away. “Come with me.” He turned towards the aft wall of the cavern. “Some of the guys won't be happy with this.” They made their way over the bridge that crossed the ring lake.

  Michael followed Roger in wonderment. “What's going on?”

  “Who do you know in the freezers right now?”

  “Well, most everybody. So do you.”

  Roger looked from side to side. “Good, nobody can read our lips from above, and nobody's around.” He walked a minute in silence. “Everyone on the awake crew knows people in the freezer. Ever think that we'll have to order some of them to remain inside the Perseus when the rest of us head back to Earth?”

  “The hell you say,” said Michael, stopping dead in the path between rows of growing plants.

  “See, that's exactly what's going to happen,” said Roger. “Nobody wants to be left behind, and worse, nobody wants to leave someone they know behind, either. Yet it must be done. Think about it.”

  Michael walked along the path with Roger, who kept his silence. Overhead, the lights from the central truss blazed down on the fields, flooding the plants with light.

  “The lasers. The bombs. We're going to have to really trust whoever we leave back,” said Michael.

  “Lasers are safe. We made sure they are in a wavelength that can't get through the atmosphere of Earth. Bombs are another matter.”

  “We could always decommission them. Melt the bomb parts,” said Michael. He shook his head. “No, that's not going to help. All they have to do is lathe the parts back out of the ingots. You only need a few to lob into Earth, and hint that you've got a lot more, to scare the hell out of the whole damn planet.”

  “Worse,” said Roger. “Nuke missiles don't mean a thing to Perseus. Sure, the ship would get pushed around, but it's fifty freaking thick meters of iron. Nothing's going to blast through that.”

  “We'll have to talk to Niall and come up with something.”

  “I think we should shut down the production line now, and remove all traces of the fabrication line. There's got to be something we can do to prevent more bombs from being made,” said Roger.

  “I agree with you on that. Do we have enough to make rendezvous?”

  “Yes. With a few hundred left over. I recommend we throw them at the really huge chunks of rock floating around Earth space. Gets rid of the bombs, and clears space at the same time. It's all good.” Their stroll left the cultivated fields and they were soon striding on the naked iron inner surface of the asteroid.

  “We're going to have to turn around soon,” said Michael.

  “In a second. Think about this, Mike. Once we get to Earth, what's going to happen?”

  “We're going to want to get downstairs,” he said. “The ground-pounders are going to go nuts with a giant asteroid in the sky.”

  “Agreed. What are the cooler heads going to say?”

  Michael twisted his mouth around. “They're going to say 'Here's a giant rock in the sky, filled with lasers and men. Let's have them clean up space for us.'“

  “Exactly. A hollow invulnerable shell filled with men, lasers, bombs, and enough thorium to power them for decades. We're loaded to the gills with volatiles, have energy to burn, and all of the colonization equipment we never used on Mars. If they don't ask us to clean up space, I'd wonder about their sanity.”

  “They can't do a thing to us,” said Michael. “If we all want to head downstairs, they can't stop us.”

  “Right. What about after we land?”

  “Oh.”

  Roger nodded grimly. “Exactly. Oh. I've got to make the men see that, too. And ask some to stay behind to run the lasers, farm the fields, and keep everything running. In a decade or two, space should be clear enough for us to run a launch up here to relieve the poor bastards.”

  Michael looked at Roger with a mixed expression. “Are you staying? Or am I?”

  Roger slumped. “I haven't the faintest idea. It all depends on how the rest of the men feel. Maybe there's a third Commander in the sleepers, and we can turn over the Perseus to him. Okay, we can head back now. I'd rather we keep this between the two of us until we get around the Sun.”

  “You can count on me for that.”

  ***

  Mickey floated down the five-hundred-meter platform that separated the Burroughs from the Bradbury. He looked up Ragesh in the communications section of the Command Deck and parked himself in the air next to the compact man. “Hey, old buddy.”

  “Yo, Mickey. What drags you down here?” Aft was down, but oddly, the outer shell of the asteroid was also 'down', at least to the crew.

  “We're going to be waking up some of the sleepers tomorrow. Gonna be nice to have some new faces around. I'm worried, though. Most of them have a lot invested on being on Mars, instead of stuck in the middle of a suit of iron, headed back to Earth.”

  Ragesh scanned his board. “Can't be helped, Mickey. It will be interesting to watch Rog and Mike trying to get them oriented, though. Can't wait to see Kada, though. Don't get me wrong, Mickey,” he paused at Mickey's upraised hand.

  “Stop right there, Ragesh. We all probably have some buddies we've had frozen for years, just waiting to chat with them again. I get it. I need to get plotzed with Dravin as soon as he's medically cleared. I've got stories for him.”

  Ragesh blew out his breath. “I just hope they're as happy to see us as we are to see them.” A light showed on his board.

  “McCrary calling in again?”

  “Yeah. Encrypted, too.”

  “So? Decrypt it. Man-in-the-middle.”

  Ragesh shook his head. “No can do. True end-to-end, decrypted at the endpoint only. I wish I knew what they were talking about.”

  “Bastards,” said Mickey with mock anger. “We're on our way, we're headed for Earth, I've even helped Benjamin with the trajectory.” He straightened from his spaceman's crouch so quickly that he had to put up his hands to avoid hitting the ceiling.

  “What,” said Ragesh as he routed the call into Roger's commpad.

  “What happens after we get to Earth orbit? How do we get down to the surface? I know we're not working on any kind of reentry craft.”

  Their conversation bore an eerie similarity to the ones between the two commanders.

  “We'll just have to fabricate something and ride it down,” said Ragesh.

  “Naw,” said Mickey. “I'll betcha they're going to keep us in orbit until we laser enough debris so that they can send up a ferry to drag us home.”

  Back and forth they batted the problem without coming to a conclusion. Theirs was the first in several such conversations between the awake crew.

  As the sleepers revived and suffered through bouts of radiation sickness, the Commanders slowly introduced them to the Great Problem, but they had nothing of any value to add.

  ***

  “How much longer?” asked Roger in the intercom. Benjamin, at the other end of the call, consulted his board.

  “We're passing orbit of Mercury now. The temperature at the inner surface of the prow is nearly fifty Celsius, whereas the point of the prow is at least nine hundred. We must cool it somehow, otherwise the protective coat of aluminum is going to vaporize away. I believe it's time to activate the he
at exchangers.”

  “I agree. But first, how long are we going to be in the roaster?”

  “We should be around the back of the sun relative to Earth and back out to this distance in three weeks. Then we slow the Perseus down, bend around Venus, and creep up on Earth.”

  “Time to get Jeff and Scott on the line,” said Roger. “We can't let the aluminum boil off.”

  Duane and Ivan brought the heat exchangers online. During outfitting, five-centimeter borings pierced the long prow of the Perseus, valves fitted, and piping laid. Now, with the heat of the Sun raising the temperature of the block of iron dangerously high, Scott orchestrated the careful addition of water to the borings. Soon, liquid water was coursing through a network of empty channels in the prow.

  The superheated water, under great pressure, flowed down to the ullage dampers, as well as the giant tanks filled with water that had once been a comet. There, the six-hundred-degree superheated steam under high pressure met frozen water just barely above one degree, and collapsed into liquid water. The rapid drop of pressure from the condensing water pulled the rest of the superheated steam into the cooling tanks. Since the main water holding tanks shared a wall with the aft chamber, the heat eventually radiated into space.

  The prow slowly cooled down to four hundred degrees, despite coming quite close to the sun. The men inside the living bubble of air at the fore end of the asteroid noticed that the temperature went up to about twenty-five, but otherwise ignored their proximity to the sun.

  ***

  The spin of the Perseus slowly increased as the journey progressed, until it was nearly three-quarters of Earth gravity at the inner shell of the flying asteroid. After the last sleepers awakened, the Commanders called an all-hands meeting. It was held, of course, on the 'ground', the common name for the inner shell. The entire expedition, some two hundred men, gathered under the bright lights of the central truss in one of the areas that was not planted in greenery.