Riddled Space Read online

  “It looks like an explosion on the Moon. It's nowhere near where we’re operating. In fact, it's about halfway around the Moon from the Collins, so there's no danger yet. Collins has ordered their crew into the emergency shelters. That's all I have right now. I'll keep you informed.” Gus toggled her to a corner of his screen.

  Fred's voice sounded in his headset. “Gus, call Gayatri and get her back in here. It's going to be a long one.”

  Gus acknowledged and keyed in the sequence that would retrieve Gayatri and her crew, using crash priority. Shortly afterwards, her acknowledgement popped up in his message board. On impulse, he also sounded recall on his crew. It was going to be one full house in here shortly.

  He walked over to Fred. “Word?” he asked.

  “None. Collins is diving into their ShelterCans, and Chaffee is in relay mode. They don't appear to be in any danger. I am worried about the radiation they absorbed. I wonder if we should start gathering anti-radiation treatments for launch.”

  “How much did they get?”

  Fred tapped a channel to one of the assistant controllers. “Gary, any word on radiation dose yet?”

  “CAPCOM, best I can integrate from the decay curve on their meters, they got something between one and two Grays of absorbed radiation.”

  “English, Gary.”

  “It means about half of them will be out with the space whoops in the next six hours, and we might see one in twenty die.”

  “Crap. Thanks, Gary.” Fred closed the channel.

  “We'll have to run a rescue mission for sure.”

  “And replace the crew up there. We're talking a couple hundred folks, might be up to a dozen deaths. Blood transfusion, chelation. Jeez. This is a case for Super Sub.”

  “Yeah, better call him out of his lair.” Gus looked unhappy at the thought of the oily martinet second-guessing them with every decision.

  “First thing I did. He hasn't stirred.” Fred looked disgusted.

  “Bet he's trying to work an angle on this. Never let a crisis go to waste.” Gus smacked one hand into the other

  “Second thing I did, of course, is alert Tom.” Fred's eyes twinkled.

  “What's he doing now?” wondered Gus aloud.

  “I have no idea,” said Fred. On a scrap piece of paper, he wrote, Ask Tom.

  “I better get back to my desk,” said Gus. Turning back, he marveled that the children were still there. The display on the Moon had changed. The Collins' position was centered in ranging circles, with the incoming shock wave at the four-minute circle.

  Gus put on his headphones and listened in on the last minute instructions from McCrary. Sensible, level-headed, that McCrary, thought Gus. Single-minded SOB, too, he remembered from his dealings with the man. Still, if he hadn't been transferred to Collins when Angus Turley got killed, they would have had to close the place by now. A flashing light caught his eye. Public Affairs again. He keyed it, and was once again looking into the delightful face of Moira Litwizniak. She was wearing her professional mask of concern and impending sorrow.

  “Anything further?” she asked.

  “They are coming up on four minutes.”

  “The nets want a live feed. Can we accommodate them?”

  “That's a decision for Subramanyan Venderchanergee to make.”

  “I've been trying to get him for the last five minutes. Is he there?” asked Moira plaintively.

  Gus thought for a minute. If he admitted that Subramanyan was there but refused a request from PAO, it would be his word against Subby's. On the other hand, the men and women on the Collins deserved to have what were probably their final minutes broadcast to the world, not bottled up in the UNSOC memory hole.

  “Can you arrange a ten second delay? We don't want any screaming to go out, you know.”

  Moira smiled slightly. “We'd do that anyway, Gus.”

  “Channel 24 has the Chaffee-Collins link. I didn't tell you that.”

  “Of course not. I found it by accident. Good luck down there, Gus.” Her face disappeared from the display.

  Gus punched up the audio on the Control Room speakers. What was good for the world was good enough for everyone here.

  “Two minutes, McCrary,” the voice of Lisa Daniels echoed through the Control Room. “Better get inside.”

  Fred and Gus listened with amazement as McCrary quoted Revelations. “Never would have tagged him for a Bible thumper,” muttered Gus.

  “People return to their roots during times of stress,” replied Fred.

  “And now, our Moon is red, and we go to hide in our caves. Let this be our final transmission for now: From the crew of the Lunar Colony Collins, we close with good night, good luck, and God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.

  “I bid you farewell.” The sounds of nearby impacts were loud in the Control Room.

  “All telemetry from the Moon has stopped.” On the relayed image of the Moon, the shock wave swept over the small X that marked the position of Moonbase Collins. Fred made the sign of the cross. After a moment, and without a trace of guilt, so did Gus.

  Evac

  UNSOC Space Station Roger B. Chaffee, June 17 2082, 1015 EDT

  Lisa bowed her head for a moment. She asked Celine for the all-hands channel, keyed the microphone, and spoke over the intercom.

  “This is Commander Daniels. A large explosion occurred on the Moon approximately fifteen minutes ago. We have lost contact with the Collins Lunar Colony. Casualties are unknown. The explosion has thrown a large amount of Lunar debris into space.

  “We are presently attempting to determine if we are in danger. I believe we are. The debris will likely fill orbital space, making the Chaffee uninhabitable. All personnel are to prepare to abandon ship. You will be allowed one standard backpack for personal belongings. Pack now.

  “Department heads, meet on channel seven in fifteen minutes. I will want personal status updates at that time. Manufacturers' reps will also join. MOVE! Daniels out.”

  She turned to the staring people on the bridge. “That goes for all of you, too. Git! Even you, Celine. I'll handle the board for the moment.” Lisa stared at the background image on her screen. Would she ever see her family again?

  ***

  Celine raced to her bunk and locker, grabbing her backpack. What did she value from this temporary home? Not much, she realized. There were no mementoes or keepsakes valuable enough for her to pack. No photographs, nothing physical. She packed a couple of changes of clothes, in case they ended up somewhere away from civilization, but that was it. On impulse, she grabbed a chunk of Moonrock and a nearly perfect sphere of Lunar aluminum, both gifts from John. Hurriedly stuffing them at the top of the pack, she detoured to the sled bay and stuffed it in the cockpit of one of the sleds. She returned to the Main Deck.

  “Packed and stowed,” she informed Commander Daniels. She resumed her position at the board. The entire process had taken less than the fifteen minutes that Lisa had specified.

  ***

  The general quarters alarm sounded almost immediately after that strange feeling of heat passed.

  “Again?!?” shouted Eddie Zanger. He shut off the water, ran the suction hose over his chest and legs, then dove into his flight suit. Commander Daniels was not one to pull emergency drills just for the hell of it.

  The intercom came to life. “All hands. Remain at General Quarters. All medical personnel to the aid station.” Eddie swam into a corridor crowded with floating, shouting people. He pushed his way past the raucous mob and headed for the docking collar where his beloved Betsy lay.

  “Commander's looking for you, Zanger,” called the spacehand on duty there. “Channel six.” Eddie punched up the Commander.

  “Pilot Zanger,” said Lisa. Eddie's eyes widened in surprise. Lisa had always called him Eddie. This sudden change by his long-time friend brought home the seriousness of the situation more than anything else. “When was the last time you piloted a reentry?”

  Eddie thought rapid
ly. Every time he went down, he offered to pilot the reentry, just to keep his rating. “Four months ago, ma'am. A General Dynamics XRV-230 into New Mexico.”

  “Get down to the solar shelters and start prepping them for reentry,” she ordered. “It's probably abandon ship time. Out.” The line clicked off.

  ***

  Roque clicked to channel seven. He floated over to his personal locker. Although he had been originally assigned a spot in the barracks module, he babysat so many lab experiments over the years that his personal gear migrated to the lab. A ghost of a smile flitted over his face as he opened the locker, withdrawing a small white box. He floated back to his console and donned a seat restraint. He held the box above the table, and watched as the microscopic tidal gravity gently dropped the box to the surface. He lifted the top off, withdrew a clear plastic bag with a lock of auburn hair tied in a ribbon, kissed it gently, and replaced it.

  “Soon, Lynn. I will be with you all too soon,” he whispered.

  ***

  Lisa brought up channel seven, looked at the sidebar, and found all department heads were already in place.

  “I will be brief, we haven't much time. I've been avoiding UNSOC for the past ten minutes or so, since I believe we have to reach a decision here. For those who haven't been online yet, we're in deep trouble. Whatever happened on the Moon, we're already taking damage from it. First, all radiation alarms went offscale high. Medical, any idea of our radiation dose?”

  The young man on the monitor seemed overwhelmed at all the attention. 'Medical' was a physician's assistant, since the population of the station did not rate a full-time doctor.

  “It's a little out of my league, Commander, but here's what I've got. The situation is serious, but not immediately fatal. Everyone on board has received between one to two Grays of radiation. Say, ten thousand chest x-rays. Untreated, there's a good chance about five percent of the folks will die. It's guaranteed that about half will be down with nausea and diarrhea in four to six hours. One thing is for sure, we have to get everyone into a hospital for observation and treatment. Fortunately, nobody was outside when the burst went by, or they would be in far worse shape.”

  “Four to six hours?”

  “Yes, Ma'am”.

  “Astrogation, what's the word on the debris cloud?”

  “As things stand now, Commander, we will receive our first debris hits as soon as we round the Earth, ten minutes from now.” A gasp greeted Celine’s words. “But it should be the smallest stuff, dust only. The acceleration needed to move something from the Lunar surface to Earth orbit in thirty minutes reduces it to a fine powder or less. So we're in for a hypersonic sandblasting. The only real short-term danger is when we cross the plane of the Moon's rotation. We'll get four to five orbits, say six to nine hours, before our position becomes actively dangerous.”

  “Engineering, can anything be done to salvage our mission?”

  John looked unhappy. “No, Ma'am. The debris cloud has masses twenty meters in size moving faster than Lunar escape velocity. Big mountains like that would crush us like a bug. Worse, the smaller stuff will be flying along three or four kilometers per second, relative to us. Doesn't take too many golf-ball sized rocks flying at three times the speed of a bullet to kill everyone on board. We're going to have to evacuate.”

  “Anyone else? I want everyone to have their say. Roque?”

  “I vote to evacuate. We are sitting ducks up here.”

  “This is preposterous!” broke in George Cranston, the representative of ZGCFabricam. “I have a major silicon melt going. We've got a large order for the high-Q silicon crystals for the Valley. We can't evacuate now!”

  “How much longer do you need?” asked John, leaning forward.

  “36 hours at the earliest.”

  The thumbnail image of Celine was shaking her head mournfully.

  “In 36 hours, the chance of one or more collisions with a ten-centimeter object rises to 87 percent.”

  “Overruled, George.”

  “I'll sue the pants off UNSOC!” George shouted.

  “I'd rather be alive and sued on Earth than unsued and dead up here,” said Lisa. “Everyone evacuates.”

  “I've got another four hours until our final production run is finished,” said Alice Webber of ElectroPore. “We're running an anti-diabetes drug now. Any chance we can wait until then?”

  Celine frowned, and said, “We'll be taking hits, but it will be from submillimeter-sized impactors. Risky, but doable. The manufacturing space for ElectroPore will be behind the rest of the station when we cross the Moon's orbital plane. That’s a lot of shielding.”

  “Celine, to clear the air, at what time does the impact threat for a centimeter-sized object rise to one in a thousand?”

  “Six hours.”

  “Funny how that works out. Right about that time, we'll be woofing up our cookies.”

  Lisa scanned the images of all the conferees. “Anyone else? Okay, here's what I've decided. We evacuate in four hours. We eat now. I want the mess hall closed as soon as everyone is through or in one hour, whichever comes first. No exceptions. No hoarding. No apple in the pocket. A lot of us are going to vomit, but I want it as content free as possible.” She looked around the edges of her conference screen, collecting nods.

  “ElectoPore gets their run, but all manufacturers will be limited in the product they can ship down.

  “Celine and I will set the undock time. Everyone will be in the sleds, strapped down, no less than ten minutes before then. Nobody gets left behind. Medical, be prepared. We might have to sedate a couple to get them on board.”

  Kalau Matumbe, head of ExoMat, interrupted. “Excuse me, Commander. Ship down in what? There's no shuttle in dock at this time.” A chuckle ran around the conference. “What am I missing? George? Alice? You guys know anything?”

  “Ah, sorry, Kalau, I forgot you’re new up here. Remember those 'solar shelters' we drilled on a few weeks ago? They are really emergency reentry vehicles. We call them 'sleds'. We're going home in them.”

  “I never saw anything about these 'sleds' in the UNSOC literature.” Kalau looked a little indignant.

  “That's because UNSOC doesn't know about them.” The rest of the department heads muttered and stirred. “It's time to let the secret out, everyone.”

  Lisa addressed herself to Kalau. “We've been petitioning UNSOC for the sleds for the past thirty-five years. There was no way to abandon ship, and the UNSOC Astronaut Corps thought one was needed badly. We've always been told no by upper management. Once the Collins colony...” Her voice caught, and she had to clear her throat to continue. “The colony was able to ship us aluminum, so we decided to build our own reentry craft. The upper echelon never knew about it.”

  Kalau looked around his screen. “Are you guys buying this? Risk our lives to some hand-built, untested rattletrap?”

  George and Alice nodded.

  “Kalau, I know you haven't been up here long, but there's one thing you have to realize. UNSOC's administrators might be a bunch of corrupt clowns, but the folks that have been up here and live here are some of the most professional, careful, and dedicated people I know. I would absolutely trust my life to them. In fact, we're doing so every day we're in orbit.”

  Kalau subsided, troubled.

  “Anybody else? No? Let's move.”

  ***

  Roque toggled away from channel seven. The off-white box with Lynn's hair caught his eye. He sighed and grasped the box carefully.

  “Sorry to disappoint you, Commander Daniels,” he murmured to himself. “But I won't be aboard.”

  Game Plan

  UNSOC Control Room, New York City, June 17 2082, 1045 hrs

  Fred answered the phone on the first ring.

  “Gayatri? Good. Hold.” The phone rang again. Fred stabbed at the 'conference' number, and all three CAPCOMs were tied in together. They all looked like they were doing their assigned duties—Fred was in the center, Gayatri and her shift wer
e on the left, ready for the switchover in fifteen minutes. Gus was riding herd on the diplokids who, for once in their lives were shocked by the horror happening right in front of them.

  “I'm going to be quick. Switchover is in fifteen, and you can bet Subby's going to make an appearance. Gayatri, you take over. It's going to be a regular shift for you. Not normal, but regular. Tell your people.

  “Gus, you and I are going to bring our friends and peers home. Gus's shift has had a little sleep, so they're not going to be too bad. My shift is all jacked up and will stay that way for a bit. This is going to run for another six hours at the very least.”

  “I'm not going to have a full shift, Fred,” said Gus. “Some of my guys turn off their phones when they get home.”

  “Bring in whoever you can, Gus. We're going to need every swinging dick we can get. Sorry, Gayatri. So, how do we bring the Chaffee crew home?”

  Gus cleared his throat. “We've got theoretical performance data for the sleds, and we have the data from Mooncan reentries, which are just a miniaturized version of the sleds. I can set up the Reentry Management Computers to use sled data for some of the roll-reversal movements.”

  “Good, Gus, get your propulsion folks on it when they get in. My guys are a little shot.”

  Gayatri cleared her throat. “Uh, my folks are well rested and could do it.”

  Fred snorted slightly. “No, Gayatri. You're going to do a very important mission. You're going to be our Patton at Normandy.”

  Gayatri hemmed. “Uh, I'm not sure what you mean.”

  “When the Allies stormed the beaches at Normandy, there weren't as many Germans there, because a lot of them were guarding another beach entirely. They had intel, fake intel, that Patton was going to be leading the invasion from the other beach.”

  “So, I'm going to lie to Subby?” It was hard to tell if Gayatri was amused, horrified, or contemptuous. The throat mikes didn't transmit nuance well.

  Fred reiterated. “Your job, Gayatri, is to work your shift like everything is normal. It is to lull Subby into not getting in our way. It's as vital as the work Gus and I are doing. We cannot have him shut us down.”