90_Minutes_to_Live (23 page)

“Look.”

He glanced down and blinked in surprise. The floor was transparent. The whole of the city, its flaming towers and lava-filled streets stretched out below, growing ever smaller until disappearing completely as the room rose into a black, chemical cloud.

Lightning flashed and fire spread across the floor but there was no heat.

Colton put his arm around Lina as they rose through the fire into a world of startling blue.

“We made it,” she looked up, as if trying to gaze beyond the golden ceiling. “What do you suppose it’s like up there? Do you think it’s safe?”

“I’m not sure,” he answered. He doubted anything could be as terrible as the city of fire. But what did he know? He’d spent his entire life in a hole. “I suppose we’ll find out.”

She snuggled into him and closed her eyes. “I suppose we will.”

Colton held the young skyper as she drifted to sleep but his gaze never strayed from the flaming clouds below.

The sky above the city was burning.

THE END

Roque’s Requiem

(Science Fiction)

By

Bill Patterson

Milky Way, 2078 AD

The silvery globe had been traveling the void for thousands of years. Hurtling through space at just under the speed of light, wrapped in a time-stopping stasis field, the meter-wide sphere sheltered a core of neutronium massing ten billion metric tons. A leftover projectile from a forgotten interstellar war, the shell was plucked this way and that by the gravitational fields of various stars it passed near. Interstellar magnetic fields induced gradual turns in its path, until it became quite impossible to deduce its original launch point. Like thousands of its brethren, this fired and forgotten projectile would have travelled unchanged, until the heat-death of the universe. Unlike them however, a yellow star seemed to be in the way.

*   *   *

UNSOC Space Station Roger Chaffee, March 3rd 2082, 0930 EDT

Roque Maximiano Zacarías scowled at the message appearing on his screen. He wanted to see just how long he could make the perfect crystal up here in the microgravity of space. So what if the crystal was the same kind used in solid-state lasers? Yttrium-aluminum garnet, ten centimeters across, drawn slowly out of the crucible. Ah, what a beautiful sight. Two meters long, ten centimeters across and doped with some neodymium. The perfect laser, made entirely from Lunar materials. The fact it could shoot out a bar of infrared light like a sword really didn’t matter to him.

Roque was once a fine, able-bodied space hand, all around ladies’ man and the top material scientist in the UN Space program. It was he who took common moon soil and developed the processes to break it down into aluminum, iron, oxygen and common sand. When the core of a carbonaceous chrondite meteor was found just under the lunar surface, he assisted McCrary in adding just the right amount of carbon from it to molten iron to form lunar steel. And it was the carbonaceous material, under his magic touch, that formed the budding lunar plastics industry.

The discovery of lunar KREEP material, consisting of potassium (K), rare earth elements and phosphorous, gave Roque all the materials needed to form the neodymium doped yttrium-aluminum-garnet (Nd:YAG) laser. He was now trying to see just how large a crystal could be grown.

"Oh, I suppose that if I really wanted to, we could make a few dozen and terrify the world with an orbital weapons system," he explained to Lisa Daniels, the station commander. "But that would earn us a missile or a hundred. I just want to see if it can be done, that's all."

Lisa smiled as she patted his hand. "Roque, you know that's not the issue at all. The UN Space Operations Command has a mandate to maximize the income generated from the Chaffee. If you take over a manufacturing space just to see how big a crystal you can make, it better be a hunk of diamond."

Roque smiled back. "Even if I did make a diamond, old Subby would saw off a tenth of it for his own piggy bank."

Lisa darted a quick glance towards the hatch. "Now, Roque," she admonished him, "Better watch it. Some of this crew just might report you to UNSOC Director-General Herr Doctor Subraman Venderchanergee for the horrible crime of lèse-majesté. And he’s petty enough to order you shipped home."

Roque had been resident in the
Chaffee
for the past twenty years. Normally Roque would never have been allowed to stay aboard the
Chaffee
for so long. But around the halfway point of his first tour, a piece of space junk the size of a rice grain plowed into the back of his spacesuit at a few miles a second. Hot metal droplets sprayed into his spine, paralyzing him from the waist down.

As he once put it, "My legs might be useless but my brain is unhurt.” He petitioned for permanent residence on the
Chaffee
and his request was granted. Commanders come and go, UNSOC veterans said, but Roque will stay in space forever.

"Actually," Roque mused, "I have always been of the opinion I will stay here until I die. The Chaffee has become my home."

When the United States abandoned manned space after the closing of the Space Shuttle program, the International Space Station was in limbo. Although it continued to be manned and supplied, no improvements were planned for the station. It represented the only large, habitable volume in Low Earth Orbit, though was woefully underutilized from both a space manufacturing and scientific research point of view.

By the early 2020s, the United States was deep in its own economic troubles. An ardently internationalist president recommended the United States transfer the station to the UN in return for a
paid in full
stamp on their long overdue UN contributions. The press touted the plan as a win-win for both the United States and the United Nations. Congress reluctantly went along. The US Astronaut Corps was completely demoralized.

By then though, the Corps began referring to the ISS as Space Station Roger B. Chaffee, honoring one of their own who had perished at the dawn of the Space Age. Ignoring orders completely, they called it the
Chaffee
relentlessly, ensuring the name would endure no matter what. The name stuck.

Companies wanting to operate a space manufacturing facility realized that it would be far easier to rent space on the
Chaffee
than attempt to launch and operate their own orbital factories. The UN Space Operations Command found itself in the enviable position of picking from a large pool of applicants for a small number of spots. It did what any organization in a similar position does. It took bribes.

It
meant—in practice—Subraman Venderchanergee. He was the director-general and absolute despot of the UNSOC. He ensured his
special service fees
were laundered up the chain of command, ensuring zero interference in his fief from without, as well as within. And his serfs knew it. Including Roque.

"Yes Lisa, I will be a good boy," he said sadly. "I remember when space was somewhat pure and unsullied, before the bureaucrats and their fees began encroaching on it."

"You will never lose that romantic streak in you Roque. That’s why you’re such a pleasure to work with.” She straightened up from her floating astronaut crouch and spoke with all the authority of her office.

"Roque, as your commander, I would ask you to limit your crystal growth experiments to just this compartment. Maximum crystal diameter will be three centimeters. And no weapons!"

Roque levered his body upright. "Understood Commander Daniels."

She leaned forward and hugged him briefly, then left the lab, leaving Roque with a lingering smile and a pencil-sized Nd:YAG crystal floating in the air.

*   *   *

UNSOC Space Station Roger Chaffee, May 23rd 2082, 1400 EDT

Lisa Daniels was performing one of her unannounced station float-arounds. The old ISS structure had been augmented over the years, especially when the Moon Colony
Michael Collins
began mining and shipping up resources from the moon. Aluminum, iron and magnesium, in alloys and pure metal, were flown down from lunar orbit to rendezvous with the
Chaffee
. There, they were molded into new modules, manufacturing spaces, living quarters.

To simplify the engineering, the new spaces were built-out in a linear fashion, similar to the ISS. These two “spikes” as they became known, were connected together by several cross-corridors.

As she moved past a hatch in the cross corridor between the old and new, she met John Hodges, the chief engineer. Nearby, a sign pointing to the Solar Shelters triggered a dormant action item in her memory.

Lisa turned to John as she cleared the hatch combing. "Good morning, John. That sign reminds me—we should conduct a solar shelter drill again. It's been a few months since the last one. Pass the word."

"Good morning Lisa. Gonna cram everyone in the sleds for an hour? We’ll have to move some stores out of them to make room. We’ve had to keep some
Collins
cargo in them."

"Well, I wish you wouldn’t. We’re never going to get enough warning about a solar storm and I’d hate to have folks out in the halls getting zapped while cases of jock straps get tossed out the hatch."

"Tell the OTVs to speed it up then. Earth is shipping stuff up here faster than we can ship it to the moon." Orbital Transfer Vehicles or OTVs, made the runs between the moon and the
Chaffee
, transferring everything from jock straps to people between the
Collins
and the station. Next generation shuttles made the Chaffee-Earth runs.

"Don’t I know it. What about cramming the stuff into MoonCans and storing it outside?"

"Some of those cans aren't airtight apart from the LOX tank. Cargo would get damaged. And we don't have any handy rubber or vinyl to make seals with either."

"Talk to Roque. Remember that tarry stuff the Moon sent down last November? Roque made nylon out of it—maybe he can make you some vinyl."

"Not a bad idea. Hey, I wanted to show you something." John towed her over to the porthole, looking out on the sleds. "Notice anything?"

"You’ve got something over the sleds."

"Yup! Behold the shields. I took a MoonCan and rolled it flat. Got a couple of sheets of aluminum out of it. I attached it on the top and bottom of the sleds."

"For what purpose?" she asked, intrigued.

"Increased solar shielding. Before, big ions from the Sun would smack into the hull of the sleds, generating a shower of secondary particles, zapping us inside. Now, they hit the aluminum and the secondaries don’t get through the hull."

"What about if we have to use them for reentry?"

"I’ve rigged a jettison switch to the main pilot board. Pop them free at Entry Interface and they fly outward and away. "

"That’s wonderful John! What a nice surprise. Speaking of, I better head over to Astronomy. I hear they’ve got something special for me."

With a wave of her hand, Lisa bounced off the side of the corridor and changed her flight path to head down the new spike to Astronomy. John continued his trek to Engineering.

*   *   *

Orbit of Mars, Solar System, June 17 2082, 0934 EDT

The projectile flew through the dark. A strange-looking universe surrounded it. Radiation drastically blue-shifted up the spectrum burned into the forward-facing force field. Behind it, the stars guttered a sullen red. All around it stars were colored every shade of the rainbow.

It mattered not to the shell. The occasional bit of dust or speck of gravel would impact the front, in an unseen flare of incandescent plasma. The fuse that would have detected impact with a target from the long-forgotten war was unaffected by these comparatively small pats.

Since solid matter was the exception in space, the odds were literally astronomical against it hitting anything.

But, infinity is a funny thing. In an infinite universe, given enough time, everything will eventually happen. For projectile nine-three-two, having missed its target all those thousands of years ago, that one-in-a-zillion chance came up.

To an observer near the lunar South Pole, a new mote, shining blue-white by reflected sunlight, appeared in the sky. For the next twenty-six minutes, it grew from a speck to a meter-wide sphere just before impact.

Instantly the soil around the impact point was plowed aside by the huge momentum of the object. To the structure of the rock underneath, the impact was an irresistible event, as the force fields broke atomic bonds and forced the shattered debris aside, punching a hole through the rock in its path. The energy of the shell’s momentum transferred rapidly to the energy of the motion of the soil and rock. In other words, heat.

Phenomenal, amazing, seemingly unlimited heat. Rock flashed to vapor and vapor to plasma. Ahead of the projectile, the plasma was compressed to a fantastic degree as the shell drilled through kilometers of rock. Eventually the pillar of million-degree, highly compressed plasma began resisting the force of the shell. Its speed slowed as energy bled into the plasma and vaporizing rock. With pressure and heat near the point where atomic reactions were possible, the worst possible event occurred.

The shell’s fuse activated.

Designed to detect impact with ship shields, the fuse triggered the collapse of the stasis field keeping the neutronium stable. Ten trillion tons of highly energetic neutrons were sprayed into the million-degree plasma. The impact event, already catastrophic, was transformed into truly horrific proportions as the plasma triggered nuclear fusion.

*   *   *

UNSOC Space Station Roger Chaffee, June 17 2082, 1000 EDT

Roque was floating effortlessly in the middle of his materials lab, near the manufacturing area of the original spike. He was putting the finishing touches on his latest ND:Yag laser. He patted it fondly.

"Give me a dozen of you and we’ll be able to blast space junk, instead of hoping it avoids us."