Interplanetary Thrive

by Ginger Booth

  But there were tall crates stowed toward the inner side. “I bet it’s on the floor in the aisle. White box, red cross on all sides.” He demonstrated the dimensions with his hands, about a half meter square and a bit less in height. Ben could see for himself on the schematic that the recharge supplies started out about 3-4 meters back from the door. Copeland highlighted the fuel pallets in front. “You weren’t with us through most of this. Any empty barrel or pallet can be jettisoned to get it out of your way.”

  Ben nodded and returned the tablet to his webbing. He was pressure suited. Copeland really was dopey if he hadn’t noticed that before. “Sergeant Wilder, I want you in the bridge with Copeland. Your job is to keep each other awake. Cope, you might need to do some burns while we’re out there –”

  “No. No way, Ben.”

  Ben squeezed his thigh in reassurance, then rose. “We close up, take refuge in the trapdoor, you burn, we resume work. It’s fine, Cope. I’m still in charge, even on EVA. You’ll follow my orders. Wilder, help him up to the bridge.”

  “You be careful,” Cope breathed, trying not to make a spectacle of himself. His feelings were stupid. Everyone went out today. And he could barely walk a straight line anymore himself. Still… “Ben, you’re scared of the stars.”

  “Yes, Mr. Copeland. And today that limitation is no longer acceptable to me. Time I got over it.”

  22

  Ben’s usual strategy on EVA was not to look. That wouldn’t work. Their target container was open to the stars, the second layer down with nothing facing it but infinity. He gulped, and murmured. “You’re more experienced. You take the lead.”

  Kassidy agreed, “I’ve got lead. That means I go behind you. You’re latched on. Step out. Remember gravity reverses out here. So this is home plane, Mahina normal gravity, and this trapdoor is down.”

  As if the skyscape wasn’t vertiginous enough, Ben groused to himself. But he managed the gravity flip to the outside of the ship. A few seconds of careful breathing managed to keep the contents of his stomach down. “Ready.”

  Kassidy walked him through all the steps to get to the right box – he headed for the wrong one first, much to his chagrin. With absolutely nothing else in front of the container for oh, 30 light years or so, they were stuck holding onto the doors themselves as they swung open. But there was an anchor point just inside on the ‘floor.’ And they were in gravity, not freefall.

  It was impossible to step inside the container. No room. “OK, step one is to make enough room to work, I guess,” Ben said, swallowing saliva.

  Kassidy was way ahead of him. She looped her second safety line over the open door for leverage and tugged it tight. Their first safety lines remained clamped inside the trap door for the whole trip. She rocked a barrel to prove it was empty, then tugged it out.

  “How do we kick these away from the ship under gravity?”

  Ben considered that. “Maybe we don’t care.” He pulled out another, lost his balance, and barely grabbed the door for safety. Then he sheepishly arranged his leverage line to match Kassidy’s. “Just slip them down the long aisle for now?”

  Kassidy scowled at him. That meant clambering out on a hanging door, carrying a barrel, under gravity but with no surface to walk on. “Toss them on the roof,” she countered, and tried it. But athletic as Kassidy was, she was also vertically challenged.

  “I’ll climb up,” Ben suggested. “You pass them up to me?” He couldn’t blame her for the skeptical expression. He wasn’t confident in his ability to pull this off either.

  But Ben was a child of Mahina, used to 1/6 g. He could clamber a mere 3-meter height with no trouble, provided he didn’t think about the surroundings. He got up there and lay on the box top, held there securely by gravity. She lifted a barrel to him awkwardly. Those did weigh a few kilos, even empty, and they were big.

  Once he grabbed hold of it, Ben started to simply set it down and push it backward. But then he asked, “How far does this gravity field extend?” Kassidy didn’t know, so he asked Copeland.

  “About your height,” was his response. “Ben, it doesn’t matter. Abel and I can tidy those up no sweat. They won’t hurt anything bouncing around. Just get them out of your way.”

  So advised, Ben simply dropped the barrel down the long side of the box. It bounced slightly when it hit the bottom of the ship, but seemed to cause no harm. Working this way, he and Kassidy rapidly cleared enough space inside the box that they could work standing instead of hanging cantilevered off a door hinge.

  His computer nag timer went off. “Back to the trapdoor,” he ordered Kassidy. “Close up.”

  Once they were snug inside the trap door again, he told Copeland to perform the next deceleration sequence. The bridge crew had rehearsed this with their weekend watch-standers, and made them observe while the officers performed every burn before, including on their days off.

  Ben was glad he had Copeland instead of Eli on the bridge. He and Copeland understood each other. Well, with notable exceptions in their private life, such as it was. But when it came to work and engineering, they were perfectly simpatico. The tossed barrels rolled past the trap door a few times. They appeared to lose a couple.

  “Great job, buddy,” he encouraged Cope as the acceleration completed. “Hopefully that’s all you’ll be doing.”

  “What if the computer decides to jerk for gunnery? You turned that off, right?” Copeland inquired.

  Ben had considered it. But on the whole, without him sitting in the bridge, he preferred to give the AI full range of motion. “Don’t worry about that.”

  “Ben, you can’t have it both ways,” Copeland complained. “If I’m on the bridge, it’s my job to worry about stuff.”

  “Strictly speaking,” Ben corrected him, “I did not relinquish the watch. I’m still in charge of the bridge. You’re my eyes and ears up there.”

  “Hands.”

  “Whatever. Back to work for me.”

  On this second round, with a few square meters of floor cleared out to stand on, he and Kassidy made much swifter progress restoring the container to order. Naturally everything had shifted together, leaving no aisle down the middle. Lighter items had traveled. They didn’t worry about matching the manifest, just getting things tidy back against the walls. They shoved, they piled, they teased.

  “So how come you can manage to clean a cargo container, when your room is a pigpen?” he inquired of Kassidy.

  “Har, har,” she replied. “I just express myself by tossing things. And I don’t like order in my room. It feels cold and unfriendly. I prefer it womb-like.”

  “Your mother was a neat freak,” Ben guessed.

  “Both parents. So militant,” she agreed. “Ow! What’s in this?” She’d tried to lift a modest-sized crate at low gravity to tuck it onto the top of her current pile.

  “One of the boxes that crushed Cortez,” Ben murmured. “Massive stuff stays low.”

  She grunted trying to slide it out of their new aisle. “I can’t budge it.”

  “OK, leave it there. Makes a handy step stool.” She laughed as he promptly stomped on it to help tip his current large crate of light-but-bulky protein stock onto the top of the left wall stack. His arms were fully extended when the ship made a sudden violent maneuver.

  His inner gunner calmly noted the ship’s gyration was a roll to shoot past the awkward containers – a threat headed at where their side used to be. No more than 60 degrees plus that annoying wobble, plus three sharp jolts from the heavy-duty aft laser as it came to bear. Ben had performed that roll-and-blast at least 20 times on this trip. But the inertial compensation on the cargo wasn’t nearly as good as on the bridge.

  With no handhold and only one foot on the metals crate, he cartwheeled past Kassidy through the flapping doors and into the stars. His line flapped him hither and yon. He felt a tug from behind.

  “I’m reeling you in!” Kassidy cried.

  “Don’t. Just hold on,” Ben ordered. As he expected,
the ship made no further moves. He gazed into the stars as his line dangled him gently side to side, an arc of a couple meters suspended from an open door. No big deal. In fact, his boots reached down between the first layer containers.

  He breathed deep and contemplated the view of the galaxy. He wasn’t scared anymore. But he did have work to do. “Huh.”

  He turned, grabbed his line, and clambered back into his box.

  “Copeland, Wilder, I think you fell asleep up there,” he laughingly accused.

  “Uh, yeah,” Cope replied sheepishly. “You alright? Did I do that?”

  “It’s all good, buddy.”

  The ship didn’t jerk them around again. They collected a couple bruises, but nothing that wouldn’t heal. Within another half hour, they extracted the auto-doc box, only slightly crushed on one corner. They closed up, and headed in.

  He watched briefly in med bay as Kassidy opened up the supplies and the auto-doc, and figured out which whatsit to pour into which aperture. A few minutes was enough to convince Ben that she could read the gibberish medical labels. She knew what she was doing.

  He proceeded to the bridge, where Cope and Wilder were both sound asleep. Waking Wilder was easy. Groggy as he was, his guilt at imagined past failings as Cortez’s lover and confidant propelled the sergeant downstairs to med-bay. He’d probably sleep draped on the machine, like Ben did when Cope was an inmate.

  Alone, he kissed Copeland’s forehead in secret, then roused him just enough to draw him back toward their cabin. There, he stripped his sleepwalking room-mate and got him into bed. Ben figured he was out for at least 12 hours.

  He hummed his way to the galley to resume his usual watch over a safe and slumbering ship. The scary was over. Ben was actually pretty pleased with himself. Too wired and tired to settle down to study, he recorded a video call. Bless the Saggy pirates and their repeater satellite!

  “Hey, Dad! We’ve had too much excitement the past few days. Just wanted to let you know I’m OK. A couple casualties, but they should recover.” He prattled away, describing the adventure.

  Oops. He should have known better. Dr. Acosta, in jammies and bed-head, leapt to answer comms from his son at any hour. By the time Ben saw it, that happened 3 minutes ago, 6 minutes since he began sending.

  “Ben! Thank the Lord!” As usual, they both talked simultaneously through the delays, cheerfully pursuing two parallel conversations. After he hadn’t heard from Ben and Cope on Saturday as usual, the dentist made inquiries at Schuyler Dispatch, where he received the bald facts from Sass and Abel’s terse updates.

  “We’re fine, Dad. Really sorry to miss our play date with Nico.” He and Cope made toys and recorded themselves playing with them. The step-granddad, ish, never missed a trick. He bought or made the same toys, and brought them to the creche so he and Nico could play ‘alongside’ his daddies so far away. At first, Cope didn’t buy it, that the baby actually cared. But the pediatrician assured him that Nico chose to turn on that video for himself. He would play alongside it after naps, even when Dr. Acosta wasn’t there.

  Ben shared how proud he was of doing a successful EVA while all the real spacemen were passed out.

  “– We’re a bit low on fuel,” Ben mentioned in passing, advancing thread 1 of the parallel conversations.

  His dad prattled on about exploring the city’s ‘ocean’ biome with Nico, paused, then, “Good Lord, is your Cope alright?”

  “He’s not my Cope, Dad. He’s my room-mate.” Ben wished he was more. But no meant no. They were just friends. Right? Best friend he’d ever had.

  “How low on fuel?” Dr. Acosta demanded, alarmed. “Son, I’m…confused by your relationship to Copeland.”

  “We’re fake-married to raise Nico together. Cope isn’t gay. He says I’m not either. We’ll make it to Denali, Dad. No worries.”

  Ben waited through the next minutes-long time delay. Dad surprised him. “Son, is Cope uninterested in you? Or in everybody? The man’s on the rebound from a tragic end to his first marriage. A shallow man might sleep around. But a more serious type like Cope might swear off romance for a while. If you’re falling in love with him, you should tell him.”

  “Or give him space.” Ben chuckled at his own pun. “Lots and lots. Interplanetary scale.” He waited through the round trip again as his radio waves reached for his dad. He had nothing better to do than watch his face.

  Dr. Acosta grinned. “With that, I shall butt out. None of my business. I love you no matter what. Whoever you choose to love is family to me. Provided you don’t bring them home to live with me. That costs extra. I should call Schuyler Dispatch with further details.”

  “Thanks. Love you, Dad. Make sure Nico gives you a hug and kiss for us!”

  He signed off feeling better. And no doubt graveyard shift at Schuyler Dispatch would adore his interplanetary gossip.

  Schuyler Dispatch. Oh, crap. The graveyard shift would have monitored the whole call. That group was in Josiah’s back pocket, Cope’s mob associates back home. Ben frantically reviewed what he’d said to his Dad during the call, face burning. Oops...

  23

  Abel jerked awake, sitting bolt upright in bed. His heart pounded, and he was covered in a thin sheen of sweat. An alarm was blaring, but that wasn’t what woke him.

  He’d been caught in a nightmare. He was counting gold doubloons on a sailing ship of old. They were sinking, the water up to his ankles. His mate, who looked like Copeland in an eye patch, tried to drag him away, get him to save the ship. But he shrugged off the interruption, too intent on his stack of coins.

  Sweet Jules beside him yanked the covers and rolled over.

  Just how much did we lose in those containers? This riveting question suddenly roused him wide awake.

  He told the niggling alarm to shut up with his pocket comm, which informed him that it was already 08:00. His shift was supposed to start 4 hours ago. The beeping was a reminder for a deceleration burn.

  When he reached the bridge, he found Ben sound asleep on his arms. Horrified, Abel checked how many burns he’d missed since midnight. None. Abel blew out in relief, performed the pre-burn checks, and approved the deceleration. One burn, just a few minutes late, made no difference in the grand scheme of things.

  That accomplished, he woke Ben. The junior officer, sheepish as hell, filled Abel in on his exciting EVA, followed by his interminable morning. Abel couldn’t very well chew Ben out for letting him sleep – Abel needed it. And obviously now it was past time for Ben’s turn.

  “Oh,” Ben added between yawns, “here.” He adjusted the display and pointed to a bright dot, then turned to Abel with a proud smile. “Pretty planet.”

  “Is that really Denali?” This whole trip, they couldn’t see their destination with the naked eye. When they set out, Denali was on the far side of the star Aloha. Now it gleamed a pretty blue-green, a tiny pinhead in space. “Is Pono still bigger?”

  “Pono is 400 times bigger.” Ben panned the display to the rear view for illustration. “But yeah. Today they nearly match. Huh.” A yawn overcame him. “We’ll be chasing Denali at the end though. Lost time. I did a first pass recalculating the trajectory. Running 10 days behind.”

  “That’s a lot.” Abel hadn’t realized the holdup with the containers would cost them that much.

  Ben requested, “Could you check it too, before you look at my numbers?”

  “Yeah, will do.”

  With that, Ben stumbled off to bed. Abel glanced in on the captain – 08:00 was her shift, not his. But Sass was dead to the world, in Clay’s cabin, not her own. The injured man, or his corpse, remained on his bedspread unmoving. No need to wake her.

  No need to wake anyone. By their normal schedule, everyone was piling into breakfast by this hour, himself among them. A quick gut check told him to let them sleep.

  He went into his office and jotted a note to remind himself to re-run Ben’s query. But first, his burning question. What did they have left, after losing 3 conta
iners? He’d lost a lot of excruciatingly expensive Saggy merchandise. He knew that much. And roughly a quarter of their cargo and supplies overall. But which quarter exactly?

  He got out his manifests and calculated it out, wincing at the losses. And he found…

  That can’t be right. But it was. They’d lost not a quarter, but nearly half of their remaining fuel. And the same on the protein stocks. They’d stowed their provisions for the return trip in the back of the bottom containers, and lost half of them.

  Really sweating now, he found Copeland’s old spreadsheet from when they planned this trip. What reserve margin had they settled on? Abel had argued so furiously against the engineer for demanding it so high. Sass had taken Cope’s side against his in the debate. But so intent on showing a profit, Abel had argued them down.

  To within a hair’s breadth of being able to return to Pono orbit. Maybe not all the way to Mahina. But if they could just make it to the rings, surely they could get the pirate Lavelle to come out and –

  His eye fell on the note reminding him to recalculate their new trajectory. And Ben’s words. “We’ll be chasing Denali at the end.’ Another 10 days added to the trip.

  They didn’t even have the margin to get home dry. Sass would never agree to leave Denali without enough fuel to reach home. And Abel’s children would be born without parents 4 months from now.

  “What have I done?”

  Facts, Abel! He got down to work and ran the trajectories from scratch, not reusing Ben’s work. He meticulously double-checked all the parameters, neither optimistic nor pessimistic. His estimated time of arrival came in about 10 hours earlier than Ben’s, having chosen a slightly different schedule of burns. He might shave off another half day if he kept at it. Not enough to make a difference in the verdict.