Solar Express (15 page)

After several minutes, her faceplate was clearer, and she again addressed the packed dust. She had almost cleared another thirty centimeters when the suit's warning system beeped.

Then Marcel pulsed her. “Dr. Wong-Grant, you are bending over too much and compressing the ventilation and heating lines.”

Alayna straightened.

The beeping stopped.

She tried the door again. The upper half seemed as though it might be free enough to open, but the bottom section remained stuck.

She bent over again, but she couldn't reach any lower with the screwdriver. The suit beeped even louder. She straightened up, and the beeping stopped.

“What the frig am I supposed to do now?” Alayna immediately added, “Don't answer that, Marcel. I know I still have to replace the damned controller.”

She tried kneeling, but the suit wouldn't let her bend her knees and legs enough to get into a kneeling position.

She looked at the bottom of the door. If she couldn't bend over … In the end, after an awkward struggle, she managed to lie down on the regolith, mostly on her stomach. She began to scrape away the hardened dust, almost frantically, hoping that her faceplate wouldn't fog up too much.

Five minutes passed, then more than ten. The lower she got, the harder the dust became and the longer it took to clear each centimeter. She still had several centimeters of the hardened dust to remove when Marcel announced, “Your suit temperature is dropping below advisable levels.”

“Tell me when it gets dangerous. I'm almost done.”
You think.

She kept scraping.

“The abdominal sensor indicates a dangerously low temperature level, Dr. Wong-Grant.”

“I'm almost done.”

“You said that before, Dr. Wong-Grant.”

Alayna jabbed at the last section of the stubborn dust, once, twice, and again. Abruptly, the last segment gave way, and the screwdriver skidded downward. Alayna's gauntlets hit the regolith next to the metal wall so hard that a sharp pain ran through her hand and arm, and she lost her grip on the screwdriver. It didn't go anywhere, except into the regolith. She was tempted to leave it sticking up there, but worried that retrieving it would just require even more acrobatics. It didn't, but she did have to pry it out of the lunar surface, and then half roll on her side to start to get up. By the time she was standing, she could feel that the surface of her stomach was like ice, even while sweat oozed into the corners of her eyes.

When she reached for the handle of the door, she murmured, “Please.”

It did move as she tugged on it, if slowly, and she swung it completely open. Before she went to retrieve the controller, she used the screwdriver to scrape away the remaining hardened dust, at least the section that she could reach without excessive bending and contortions.

Then she climbed back onto the roller, leaving the screwdriver on the floor where she could easily reach it, if necessary, and then picked up the controller, still wrapped in the insulating blanket, which she loosened slightly, before descending and then climbing the ladder up to the catwalk.

Although she worried about whether the malfunctioning control would also be stuck or jammed, the slip brackets moved easily, and she eased the old controller out and the new one in place without difficulty. A mist rose from the new controller, and Alayna just hoped that was normal vacuum off-gassing. She repositioned the brackets, and pulsed Marcel. “The new controller is in position.”

“The system indicates proper positioning. It has commenced a recycle.”

Alayna waited. She didn't want to move until she knew whether the replacement had been successful. At least a minute passed before she asked, “What does the system indicate?”

“The recycle is not complete, Dr. Wong-Grant.”

Alayna continued to wait. At least her abdomen felt warmer, and she'd stopped sweating.

Finally, after what seemed another ten minutes, but was only two, Marcel announced, “The electrostatic dust prevention system is operating as designed, Dr. Wong-Grant.”

“Good. I'm going to seal up here and return.”

Marcel did not reply, predictably, since she had not asked a question or implied one.

With the old controller in hand, Alayna climbed back down from the catwalk, then laid the old controller next to the screwdriver before turning back to the access door and slowly but firmly pushing it shut and returning the handle to the secured position. Then she twisted the upper brackets into their secured position. There were no lower brackets, for reasons she had just learned.

She climbed back onto the roller and placed the old controller and the screwdriver in the tool bin. As she settled behind the controls and eased the roller back and away from the main mirror structure, she realized what she should have done. All she would have had to do was go back to the station and attach the screwdriver to a length of something so that she could scrape away that crap while standing up.
Hindsight is so much more accurate than foresight.
She almost snorted.

Almost another hour passed while she dealt with cleaning the roller, unsuiting, cleaning up and changing out of her totally soaked undersuit, and then taking the controller to the maintenance shop.

She hadn't been back before the controls more than five minutes, sipping a mug of what passed for hot coffee, when a faint chime alerted her to an incoming message. She called up the sender, then stiffened as she saw it was from the IAU. She immediately accessed the complete message and read through it. The point of the message was contained in less than a sentence:

 … has determined that the object previously classified as C/X/2114 FT2 COFAR-SMOA is in fact a minor body under IAU definitions and has been reclassified as 2114 FQ5.

“Comet COFAR is no more,” she murmured. “Just another minor planet or small body in an eccentric orbit.” She couldn't say that she was surprised. She paused, then asked Marcel, “Can you calculate the orbit of our anomaly, once known as Comet C/X/2114 FT2?”

“From the COFAR observations, the calculations won't be completely accurate, Dr. Wong-Grant.”

“Do the best you can, and then put a system and orbit plot on the screen—just from the orbit of Jupiter inward.”

Almost immediately, an image appeared.

Alayna frowned. “That's definitely a cometary orbit. It's even a sun-grazing orbit. I don't see why the IAU reclassified it as a minor planet or system small body. Its aphelion is well out into the Kuiper Belt. They just could have kept the old designation and added a prefix, the way they've done for comets that have stopped off-gassing. It's definitely a cometary orbit.” She paused. “Is there any way you can check whether they've reclassified comets as small bodies recently?”

“No, Dr. Wong-Grant. I do not have access to IAU databases.”

“Do you have any other resources that might refer to that?”

“Such a search would exceed communications bandwidth restrictions, Dr. Wong-Grant.”

“Thank you.” That was a hurdle Alayna should have realized.

For several moments, she just sat before the displays. Then she added, “As much as the contract work allows, keep a running track on our former comet, now known as…” She had to pause and look at the message again, “2114 FQ5.”

“Command accepted.”

Alayna had suspected from early on that “her” comet wasn't one, or not a typical one. She'd even told Chris that, but the matter-of-fact reclassification still depressed her. She also couldn't shake the feeling that there was something strange about that reclassification, but from Farside, she had no way to check that.

She forced a shrug.
No relatively easy flicker of notice for you, Alayna. Back to mini-granulations and multi-fractal patterns.
Except, by definition, fractals weren't patterns.

 

20

D
ONOVAN
B
ASE

13 O
CTOBER
2114

Tavoian walked past Spacer3 Riske's console into the colonel's office, felt the pressure door shut behind him, and then took the seat opposite the senior officer.

“This will serve as your briefing for your mission, Captain.”

“Yes, sir.” The colonel didn't have to ask if Tavoian understood why he was being briefed personally, rather than receiving it through a console. Tavoian knew. The ostensible reason was for security purposes. The secondary reason was doubtless for deniability. Even the Space Service was subject to the Noram IG, as a result of rather sordid events not quite a century before involving the old American military, but the IG would have trouble finding documentary or electronic evidence if it didn't exist.

“Officially, you will be making a reconnaissance flight from here to a point slightly orbit-inferior to the Sinese elevator orbit station. Once in position, you will activate all long-range sensors in all wavelengths at full sensitivity. You will remain there for as long as possible, gathering information, but not to exceed two standard hours. You are then to move to a position slightly in advance of the Indian space facility, where you will again activate all sensors and remain for up to one hour. You will then travel to ONeill Station, where you will refuel as necessary, and wait ten hours before commencing a return to LLOS, with passengers. Once approaching LLOS, you will be redirected to L1. That's the official profile. These orders, with the precise coordinates, have already been transferred to your ship's AI. The unofficial profile is that as you depart you will release a cubesat array at both the Sinese and Indian installations. If you follow the mission profile exactly, which we will go over in detail shortly, the thermal effect of your drive thrust should conceal the dispersion of the array, which will move slowly toward the target station.” The colonel paused.

“If the cubesats are moving, sir…”

“They should be effective for a sufficient time. I'm not about to define sufficient, Captain.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Now … let's get to the technical details, Captain.”

Tavoian leaned forward slightly and listened.

Close to a half hour later, he left the colonel's office, effectively a classified briefing room, a pleasant expression on his face that belied some of what he felt as he mused over what he had learned, and what he had not. He'd understood what the colonel had said—the mission had been planned for execution close to the time of lunar perigee with Earth. That way the distance between Donovan Base and the counterweight of the Sinese space elevator—which not incidentally also contained a Sinese space force installation—would be close to a minimum. That would reduce the window of Sinese observation as well as the amount of Hel3 required, although Tavoian doubted the second was anywhere close to a major factor in anyone's mind.

The ostensible reason for the mission was to obtain detailed information about the Sinese and Indian installations, although the secondary rationale was to establish that space installations only had a ten-kay sphere of “restricted territorial rights.” Theoretically, under the provisions of various treaties, some more than a century old, militarization of any facility or body in space was prohibited, but Tavoian knew that was a provision quietly flouted, although if the Sinese or the Indians used force against his “recon mission,” that would bring the issue into the light. Since such light-bringing might well result in significant damage to the burner he'd be piloting, Tavoian preferred that the issue remain in the darkness of space.

In less than ten minutes, he was seated, or more accurately weightless and strapped into the control couch of Recon two, linking to the AI and beginning the pre-release checklist. Unlike on transport flights, he was wearing a skintight pressure suit, with his helmet secured under the couch. He had his doubts about the usefulness of the suit. While it would allow him to survive decompression and would provide insulation for several hours, and oxygen for roughly the same time, its usefulness was limited to instants where damage to the burner did not affect the drives, since if he could not return somewhere quickly, he doubted that anyone could rescue him in that time—or would be terribly interested in doing so.

Before long, the checklist complete, he link-transmitted, “OpsCon, Recon two, ready for release.”

“Cleared to release, two. Thrusters only. Report when ready for ignition.”

“Releasing this time. Will report ready for ignition.” Tavoian waited until the sensors confirmed that the lock grapples had released before he pulsed the thrusters. As the burner eased away from the lock ring, he continued to monitor the separation until he had a full kay of clearance. Then he turned the ship over to the AI for orientation.

Several minutes later, he pulsed, “OpsCon, Recon two, ready for ignition.”

“Two, cleared for ignition.”

“Understand cleared for ignition. Commencing ignition this time.” As the burner ignited and the ship began to accelerate, Tavoian was pressed down in the couch.

While he had to monitor the screens just in case he saw something that the AI did not perceive as a danger, but might be, and to make certain that the AI wasn't malfunctioning, there wasn't much to do for the hour and a quarter that the burner accelerated before turnover, and his thoughts turned to the situation in which he was figuratively a pawn, where the major powers were all jockeying for control of space, without ever really admitting it, at least publicly.

India had established a geostationary station, with an associated installation having an enormous solar power capability, not to mention an armored asteroid manufacturing facility, or worse, at L5. The UAAS was allied with India and likely providing funding for the completion of the Indian space elevator, and as a stepping stone to something. The Sinese had a huge MTF vessel now somewhere around Jupiter, most probably in orbit around Europa, trying to corner a huge deuterium supply. At the same time, India and the Sinese Federation were trading increasing threats. Although the Noram government had said little, the Space Service was arming vessels and training pilots to operate them in a combat mode.