by Bob Blanton
Chapter 19
Asteroid Surgery
Jimmy Gaines took a small crew and an Oryx and headed out to the fringe to examine the Paraxean asteroid. He wasn’t looking forward to this assignment. The trip out under a high-G profile would be uncomfortable; then they wouldn’t have any gravity for the week or so it would take to survey the asteroid. “I’m getting too old for this,” he thought. He spent the trip out studying the notes that Catie had made and the specs the Paraxeans had given him.
“Your asteroid is in sight,” Hassam, the pilot, informed Gaines.
“Alright, boys, time to suit up,” Jimmy said to roust the crew from their naps or video watching. Everyone was wearing a shipsuit, but now it was time to put on their exosuits and prepare for the EVA to the asteroid.
“We’re all going?” Jacko asked.
“No, but we’re going to decompress the cargo bay, so you’ll want to be suited up for safety. Billy and I will make the first survey.”
Jacko reached over and grabbed his exosuit body piece and his helmet. “I’ll put them on when you start decompressing,” he said, then he went back to watching his video.
Jimmy and Billy suited up and exited the crew area of the Oryx and then entered the cargo bay. The bay was filled with the survey equipment they would use to analyze the asteroid. There were kits with small explosives so they could take seismic readings to find any fissures, as well as x-ray equipment to examine those fissures in more detail.
“What are we taking with us?” Billy asked.
“Nothing, we’re going to just make a visual inspection, get the lay of the land.”
“You mean the lay of the asteroid.”
“Billy, don’t be a smart ass or you won’t be coming back from this survey mission.”
“Sorry,” Billy gulped.
“Don’t be, I’m just a bit frustrated. This is a long way to come to look at a damn asteroid.”
“The bay is decompressed,” Billy announced.
“Alright, open the big doors and let’s see what this thing looks like.”
When the doors opened, they saw the asteroid floating next to the Oryx, or one should say the Oryx floating next to the asteroid since the asteroid was hundreds of times bigger than the Oryx.
Jimmy knew the asteroid was over one thousand meters in length and about five hundred meters across and one hundred fifty meters deep, but floating next to it, it seemed even bigger.
“That is a big asteroid,” Billy said.
“Damn, it sure is. And apparently it’s too big,” Jimmy said as he continued to gaze out at the rocky surface. “Hey Hassam, I thought there were supposed to be a bunch of stasis pods on this thing. Did you bring us to the right position?”
“Jimmy, are you trying to tell me how to fly this thing?”
“No, but I don’t see no stasis pods.”
“They’re in a big trench in the middle of the asteroid. We’re not allowed to get too close to them. I guess they’re afraid some idiot might fly into them. Anyway, look out about one hundred meters, you should just be able to see the edge of the trench.”
“Oh, I guess I see it. Well, Billy, looks like we have to take a walk. Let’s go.”
Jimmy walked to the edge of the cargo door, turned off the magnetic couplings in his boots, leaned forward and rotating his feet around the lip of the door, pushed off. He allowed himself to fly just above the surface of the asteroid for about fifty meters before he engaged his thrusters and brought himself down to the asteroid’s surface.
When he touched down, he engaged the magnetic couplings in his boots, thinking, “Hey, might as well try.” But he got no joy, as there wasn’t enough metal in the asteroid for the magnetic coupling to grab. Turning the coupling back off, he hopped and skipped over to the edge of the trench. All this time he had been keeping an eye on Billy, who had been copying Jimmy’s moves as best as he could. Billy had only been mining asteroids for a few months, so he wasn’t as graceful as Jimmy, but he did manage to catch up to Jimmy about the time Jimmy got to the edge of the trench.
“What the hell,” Billy said. “I never seen anything like that before.”
“Well, Pohawk isn’t known for having anything but a coal mine,” Jimmy said. “But this does take the blue ribbon over anything I’ve ever seen.”
They were looking down on a maze of metal. The gaps between the towering walls was three meters which seemed like it should feel spacious, but when Jimmy’s sonar meter came back with twenty-five meters for the wall height, it clarified why the space looked so tight.
“My gawd, what is that?” Billy gasped.
“Those are stasis pods stacked to hell and back,” Jimmy said.
“How many are there?”
“There’s supposed to be 1.2 million pods down there, less the twenty thousand or so that they’ve pulled out.”
“And what are we supposed to do again?”
“The damn asteroid is too big. It’s over five hundred meters wide and they want it to be three hundred meters wide.”
“How wide is this channel?”
“That’s going to be a problem. It’s four hundred meters wide,” Jimmy said. “Comm, call Catie.”
“Hi, Jimmy.”
“Can you talk?”
“Sure, I’ve got a few minutes,” Catie said. She was using her avatar to talk for her while she messaged her answers.
“You do realize that the channel with those stasis pods in it is over four hundred meters wide?”
“Yes, that’s what I remember.”
“And you also know that four hundred is bigger than three hundred?”
“Yes.”
“So you’re expecting us to remove a bunch of these pods?”
“Yeah, I guess that’s right. Will that be a problem?”
“I’m sure it will be. It’ll definitely be a pain in the ass,” Jimmy said.
“Sorry.”
“How are these pods connected?”
“Their wiring is below the floor level. It’s only power, each pod has its own control module.”
“If we disconnect power, what happens to the stasis pod?”
“You have to provide another source of power, or wake the person up first. You do know that ADI can answer all these questions?”
“Yeah, I know, but she gives me weird answers, so . . .”
“I beg your pardon,” ADI interjected.
“Sorry, ADI,” Jimmy said. “But you know I never understand your answers.”
“It’s not my problem that you do not phrase your questions correctly so are unhappy that I didn’t answer the question you wanted to ask instead of the one you did,” ADI said.
“Yeah, I know, but Catie knows what I want to ask, so it’s easier this way.”
“It’s okay, Jimmy,” Catie said. “ADI, don’t pick on him.”
“Humph,” ADI said as she closed her channel. Of course she continued to listen in.
“So how have they been getting the colonists out of these things?” Jimmy asked.
“They’ve been pulling the stasis pod. They take a battery system, connect it up, then pull the pod. They take it to the Oryx where they collect them until they have a full load. Then they wake the colonists up while they’re ferrying the pods to one of the carriers.”
“That sounds like a lot of work. Why don’t they just wake them up here and leave the pods in place?”
“Because it would be a lot of work to put a pressure bubble over each pod so you could bring the colonist out of stasis, and they’ve been picking people out that are all over the place, not in nice groupings that would make it easy.”
“Well, we’re going to have to yank out like twenty rows of these pods to slim this thing down. I’m thinking we’ll just put a big tarp over this thing, and seal it, pressurize the whole area, then start pulling colonists out of the pods in the area that we need to cut off.”
“Governor Paratar was asking us to move the pods around so he could still select the colonists
he wants,” Catie said.
“You can tell that governor where he can put that idea,” Jimmy said. “We won’t be having time to do that kind of work. He’ll just have to take them as they come. We’re going to have to remove something like 120 thousand pods.”
“That many?”
“Yes. I’m, having a hard time imagining how we’re going to do that.”
“Yes, and where are we going to put all those colonists?”
“You’re asking me?”
“No, just wondering,” Catie said. “Is there any way you can slice off the sections without having to wake the colonists?”
“I’ll look into it,” Jimmy said. “Thanks for your help, I think.”
“Bye, Jimmy.”
“Well, Billy, I don’t think there’s anything to do but jump down there and look around,” Jimmy said.
“I’ll be right behind you.”
“You would, wouldn’t you?” Jimmy jumped and then used his thrusters to push himself down the two meters until he landed on the first stack of stasis pods. “Your boots will grab onto these things,” he shouted up at Billy.
Billy nodded his head and jumped, maneuvering himself to land next to Jimmy. “After you,” he said motioning for Jimmy to go ahead and jump the twenty-five meters to the floor of the maze.
Jimmy moved to the edge and used his thrusters to move downward. He slowly floated until he hit the floor, where his boots grabbed on. He turned and waved Billy down.
Billy followed, landing next to him. He looked around at the enormous wall of stasis pods. “How did they move all these things?” he asked.
“I have no idea,” Jimmy said. Then giving himself a mental push, he Commed ADI. “ADI, do we have any data on how the Paraxeans moved the pods onto this asteroid?”
“Jimmy, there is no data on that. Neither DI from the Paraxean carriers has any record showing how they moved the pods. Did I answer the correct question?”
“Yes you did, sorry for complaining about you. Are there any records from the colony ship?”
“No, they did not preserve anything from the colony ship DI. I have to assume it was damaged or destroyed during the attack.”
“Thanks, ADI.”
“You’re welcome.”
“You know, Jimmy, I’m looking at these walls, and I’d swear that they were built like this, not assembled later after they moved them.”
“You think so?”
“Yeah. Look at how tight these seams between the pods are. The frame looks like it’s monolithic.”
“I think you’re right.”
Billy lay down on the floor, “And look here, the seam to the floor is perfect. I don’t see how they would have done such a nice job if they were working in microgravity after an attack on their ship.”
“Are you suggesting that this is part of the colony ship, and they just stuck it into this asteroid?”
“Yeah. They could have cut out this big room, it’s kind of like a cargo bay. Anyway, they could have cut it out of the colony ship, then found this asteroid and dug out the channel and then slipped it into it.”
“How do you think they cut this channel out?”
“They could have used the plasma cannons on one of those carriers. Used that to do the big work, then come down with hand-held cannons and trimmed it up. It looks like there’s some kind of foam between the walls and the asteroid.”
“You know, Billy, you’re not as dumb as you look,” Jimmy said.
“Hey, I look pretty much like you do, we’re cousins after all.”
“Like I said. You’re not as dumb as you look. So if we slice off the sides, we could trim this down to the three hundred meters they want, and the two sides would only be one hundred meters each.”
“If we’re going to do all that work, why don’t we just cut the thing in half. Then we’d have two pieces, two hundred fifty meters each. They could even glue it back together after they jump it. That’d keep the pods protected.”
“Billy, now you’re just showing off. Let’s go find the reactor so we can figure out where to cut this thing up.”
◆ ◆ ◆
They found the reactor, actually a pair of them at the head of the asteroid. There was a small room built behind the main wall.
“Hey, it’s looks like they anticipated our needs,” Jimmy joked. “There’s a backup reactor here. We can rewire it so that each reactor supplies half the pods, then split it all in half.”
“How do we split this room in half?”
“We don’t, we move over ten meters and cut out a second room, move the backup reactor, then split the feeds.”
“That seems safer,” Billy said. “The power runs under the floor?”
“That’s right. Start pulling up some of these floor panels and map out the wiring. It looks like it just goes to each row, from the power room then down the row. So we shouldn’t have too much of a problem doing the rewiring, but we don’t want to be cutting into any power lines when we cut through this floor.”
“Alright.”
Billy spent the next hour mapping out the wiring, and recording it in his HUD, while Jimmy drew up the plans for the new reactor room they needed. He also drew a line down the center of the aisle where he was planning to cut the floor.
“You ready to head back and get some chow and rest up?” Jimmy asked.
“Yep, I’ll be right behind you,” Billy said.
“You know, one of these days I’m going to make you lead.”
“Yep, but until then, I’ll be right behind you. Don’t want to get in your way.”
◆ ◆ ◆
“Call Catie,” Jimmy instructed his Comm.
“Hey, Jimmy, what did you figure out?”
“Actually it was Billy that figured it out. But it looks like we can cut the asteroid right down the middle. Make two halves that will fit through your wormhole. Then after they’re through, we can kind of glue them back together.”
“Really, that would save a lot.”
“Do you want us to go ahead and do it now?”
“Are you sure you can?”
“Pretty damn sure.”
“ADI, get me Uncle Blake.”
“He’ll be with you in a minute,” ADI reported.
“What’s up?” Blake asked when he finally came on the line.
“Jimmy says he can cut the asteroid in half, and he thinks he can start the job now.”
“Jimmy, I’ll buy you a case of scotch if you can pull that off,” Blake said. “How long would it take you?”
“I figure two weeks,” Jimmy said. “We have to go kind of slow so we don’t fracture the asteroid. I also need to come up with a big plasma cannon.”
“Why don’t you just use one of the Foxes? They’ve got a big cannon, and we’ve got a whole squadron of them out there on the Enterprise,” Blake suggested.
“You think they’re powerful enough to cut this asteroid in half?”
“You’ll have to cut a shallow channel and keep making it deeper, but they’ll cut it.”
“Okay, why don’t you arrange for the Foxes and pilots, and I’ll get these boys started with rewiring the reactors and getting ready to cut that big room in half.”
“I’ll get right on it,” Blake said.
“Uncle Blake,” Catie interrupted.
“Catie, I can guess, you’re going to suggest that we tell Governor Paratar that we’ll bring the asteroid soon, so we can stop the mods on the Galileo.”
“It would make Daddy happy.”
“I plan on telling the governor that’s what we’re going to do. Giving him a choice is just inviting the wrong answer.”
◆ ◆ ◆
After lunch and a bit of a rest, Jimmy took Jocko out and did the survey of the backside of the asteroid. They placed a few marker beacons on the asteroid and digitally marked the line where he wanted the Foxes to cut away the rock so they could split the asteroid. He also found the three gravity drives and the fusion reactor which had been used t
o drive the asteroid.
“Hey, Billy, I’ve marked the gravity drives and the reactor they were using to fly this asteroid. Grab a couple of guys and come out here and remove them.”
“Sure,” Billy replied. “It’s going to be a late dinner, huh.”
“Maybe, but it should be faster removing them than it is to put them in, so you’ve still got a shot at making dinner on time.”
“You might be right. We’ll be out in just a minute.”
◆ ◆ ◆
By the time Billy finished removing the reactor and drives, Jimmy had finished his survey. He’d set off a couple of small explosions to map all the fissures in the asteroid. They were eating dinner when the Fox pilot called.
“Hey, I hear you guys want a portable plasma cannon,” the pilot said.
“I do,” Jimmy said. “But can you come tomorrow? We’re calling it a day now.”
“I can, but it’s day time to me. You want me to go ahead and start?”
“Nope, I don’t want anybody blasting away at that asteroid lessen I’m there to keep an eye on it. Don’t want any accidents.”
“Got it. It’ll be someone else tomorrow, what time you want them to fly over?”
“Six o’clock.”
“Is that Delphi Standard time?”
“Yep.”
◆ ◆ ◆
The next day, Jimmy met the Fox pilot out on the asteroid; well he was on the asteroid, the pilot was in his Fox hovering two meters over Jimmy’s head.
“You ready to do some work?” Jimmy asked.
“Sure, what do you want me to do?”
“Well, just for grins, let’s see what that laser of yours will do. We want to cut a narrow slot all the way across this asteroid.”
“We can try, but I’m pretty sure it won’t do anything,” the pilot said.
“Can’t hurt to try. Give it a go.”
The pilot moved the Fox over to the edge of the asteroid and fired the laser along the line that Jimmy had mapped.
“I’m not seeing anything from my end,” the pilot said.
“You’re right, the rock is dissipating the heat; okay, switch over to the plasma cannon, use the narrowest beam you can.”
“Okay, here goes.”
A plume of debris started shooting into space as the plasma cannon started to eat away at the asteroid.