Analog SFF, June 2011 (18 page)

But still . . . it wasn't far to walk. In fact, it wasn't a very large space at all.

If I could force open the hatch, air would flood down from the upper deck. Shared between the upper and lower decks it would thin out dramatically, but might still support life, at least long enough to get to the suits and don them.

The claustrophobic tightness of the hab might save us all.

I scanned my headlamp around the space, considering my plan . . . but no, damn it, it wouldn't work. There was still a huge hole in the wall behind the damaged power panel.

I climbed down the ladder and examined the hole. It was about one and a half square meters all told, with ragged edges of torn metal and plastic. Heavy power cables and conduits crossed the gap, blocking easy access. Some of them might still be live.

How to seal it? Even temporarily?

We had expanding foam for small holes. This was far beyond what that could cover.

But we also had something else that expanded. . . .

I let myself out through the engineering airlock and ran to the rover. The box still held six weather balloons. I grabbed three, just in case, put them in my thigh pockets, and ran back inside.

I put one of the folded packages on the floor about two meters from the damaged power panel and pulled the inflation tab. It inflated rapidly, and in less than a minute it had nearly filled the space, bulging out tautly between floor and ceiling.

It wasn't a clean seal by any means. The taut plastic film was tough, but far from immune to punctures. The balloon was full of potentially explosive hydrogen.

It would have to do.

I went to the EVA prep room and hauled all eight suits to the base of the ladder.

There was just one more thing to do.

I went back outside and flung a few rocks at the windows, then inflated another weather balloon. As it rose gently into the black sky I played a flashlight beam across it, hoping someone inside would notice.

It worked. A flashlight from one of the Deck 2 windows caught me in the eyes. Behind it I saw a waving hand. Still nothing on the radio, though. At least they knew I was here.

I ran back inside. I checked that the balloon was still in place. I made absolutely sure that every airtight door on the lower deck was closed and sealed. I climbed the ladder.

And then I put my shoulder against the hatch and pushed.

A hundred kilopascals of air pressure pushed back. It was like lifting a car. It was impossible. It didn't budge at all.

I pushed harder.

The plastic and metal of my suit's hard torso creaked as I put every bit of my strength into the effort. The edge of the neck ring bit painfully into my shoulder. I found myself grunting “Nnnnngh . . .” through gritted teeth.

I kept pushing.

A jet of air hissed across my helmet, letting me know I'd managed to open the hatch by just a crack. I was elated, but the pressure didn't let up at all. I kept pushing.

And then, just as I feared my trembling legs and back would give out altogether, I heard/felt a scraping noise in the hatch. I looked up and saw the scratched metal tip of a pry bar probing at the gap.

I took a deep breath, gathered my strength, and
heaved
.

The pry bar made it through the gap, caught, and began levering the hatch upward. The jet of air turned into a hard wind, then a wash like a waterfall as the press of the hatch on my shoulder lessened and then evaporated. The hatch swung back with a clang, revealing Kabir's smiling face.

I clung, shivering, to the ladder rungs. It was all I could do to just stay in one place as the air rushed past me. Soon everyone would be safe.

The flow slowed . . . slowed . . . and then, with a
whump
, it sped up again.

I looked down.

The weather balloon was gone. Only a few scraps of torn plastic fluttered in the gap where the air was rapidly escaping. The sharp edges of the hole had punctured the balloon.

I looked up. There were Kabir and Lynne Ann, hair whipping around their heads as they moved to close the hatch again.

If that hatch closed it would shut off all hope. I didn't have the strength to push it open again.

But I had one last weather balloon in my pocket.

I pulled the tab and, as the package began to inflate, lobbed it underhand toward the hole in the wall.

The growing wad of plastic and gas struck the hole and stuck. It inflated for a moment, like a kid blowing bubble gum . . . then suddenly deflated. It had been punctured.

But this time it was only half-inflated. The plastic was not stretched taut under pressure. It didn't tear.

The punctured balloon caught in the hole . . . and stuck like a glob of gum. It bellied out, away from me, growing more and more taut as the air from the upper deck filled the lower deck.

But it held. For now.

"Come on!” I shouted, clambering down the ladder, waving my arm to reinforce the words they probably couldn't hear through my helmet. “Get in your suits! Hurry!"

Down the ladder they came, Kabir and Lynne Ann and all the rest. I counted them as they passed me, joining the mob scrambling to find and don all the pieces of their suits in the crowded space. Four. Five. Six.

Only six. “Where's Dae-jung?” I asked Kabir over radio as soon as he sealed his helmet.

"Still upstairs,” he gasped. “Fell down the ladder when the lights went out. Broke his leg."

We made a bucket brigade, passing Dae-jung's helmet and torso and boots and all the rest up onto Deck 2. It wasn't easy getting him into the suit with a broken leg, and it must have hurt like hell, but though his eyes clenched tight shut and his skin was pale and sweaty he didn't make a sound.

I dogged down his helmet and turned on his backpack for him. As soon as the suit's cool air hit his face his eyes opened.

"Thank you,” he said.

It took nearly three days to get the hole repaired and the pressure restored and the power back on. When we finally contacted Mission Control they tried to maintain their usual bureaucratic detachment but, reading between the lines, you could tell how frantic they'd been during the days of silence.

There were a lot of lessons to be learned. One, re-route the power systems to avoid a single point of failure. Two, store emergency suits on all decks. Three, deploy analog radios as a backup. Digital radios were great, but the hab's metal structure had blocked enough of the signal that they'd refused to communicate at all; the more primitive analog radios would provide at least some communication in situations of weak signal.

We buried our dead. We worked hard, eighteen and twenty hours a day, getting the hab functioning and stable. And we started to think about what we were going to do next.

Our launch window for return would open in ten days. We'd lost two people, including our most experienced engineer, and a lot of air and water and other resources. Even worse, public confidence in the whole mission had been shaken by the incident. Mission Control strongly recommended we use both landers to abandon the station and return all eight of us home. They'd try again soon with a more robust hab.

But we knew that “soon” for UNSA almost certainly meant “next decade” and might mean “never."

Defying Mission Control's recommendation, we decided we'd stay on Mars until the next crew arrived in six months, then reassess the hab's status. Mission Control didn't like it, but there was nothing they could do about it.

We knew we were taking a risk, but Kasei 19 was already on the launch pad, its crew trained and ready. If we managed to fix the hab and do good science under these circumstances, it would be a public relations triumph. Mission Control would have no choice but to continue the program.

But we couldn't all stay. Dae-jung's leg was too badly broken for him to work at all. He'd need surgery to walk again, the sooner the better. And getting the population of the hab down would make our narrowed resource margins a lot more comfortable.

In the end my own decision wasn't as hard as you might think.

"I'm staying,” I blogged, “because I can't leave now. There's a lot of work to be done to get the hab back in full working order . . . more than Kabir could possibly do alone. I'm not a professional engineer, but I know I can do the work. And humanity
needs
this program to succeed. We've made some amazing discoveries already, but there's far more to be learned from Mars. That's why Lynne Ann and Huang are staying as well—to keep the science going. Two engineers and two scientists isn't a full crew, but it's enough to keep the dream alive."

After that post my ratings shot through the roof.

Which was nice, but it wasn't really important any more.

The four of us stood and saluted as the lander rose silently into the salmon-colored sky. But we returned to the hab before its vapor trail had cleared.

We had a lot to do.

Copyright © 2011 David D. Levine

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You remember the mystery missile launched off the coast of California, don't you? It happened back last November, offshore of Los Angeles, and it left this spectacular contrail in the sky that everyone could see. And yet no one knew who launched it, let alone why.

Or so we were led to believe.

The initial reports came from KCBS in Los Angeles and it sounded like ordinary straightforward reporting. When was the missile launched? Around sunset on Monday, November 8, 2010. Who saw it? A news helicopter spotted it and had the launch on video, and you could watch it online. Where was the launch? “. . . 35 miles out to sea, west of L.A. and north of Catalina Island."

But who launched it? This is where the real mystery lay since “officials” were being “tight-lipped” about the whole thing. But that didn't stop rampant speculation on the part of people whom one might expect were either “in the know” or, at minimum, knowledgeable about missiles. For instance, CBS8 in San Diego showed the video to former U.S. Ambassador to NATO (also a former Deputy Secretary of Defense) Robert Ellsworth. He suggested it might be a test-firing of a submarine launched ICBM (one of ours), just to remind some folks over in Asia (read that as North Korea) that we can do things like that.

Now if you're me, the images in your mind that appear upon learning of this missile launch, but without having seen the video, are of an SLBM breaking through the surface of the water, firing the rocket engine, and swiftly arcing away into the sky, contrail billowing out behind. So it was more than a little bit disappointing to actually see the video and find out that there is no launch shown at all. There is a contrail, and there is an object at the front end of the emerging smoke that could be a missile, and there is a bright light flickering at the tail end of the contrail creator that might be from a rocket motor. But there isn't any actual connection of the contrail to a specific spot on the ocean from which the supposed missile was supposedly launched. But the contrail does connect with the horizon so it wasn't unreasonable to assert that the missile emerged from the sea at the spot where the ocean meets the sky.

It wasn't long after the story appeared that it became clear that either the military really had no idea who launched this alleged missile, or that they were selectively disavowing knowledge of specific aspects of said alleged missile in alleged sky. You know how this goes—the Navy says it isn't one of theirs but neglects to say they actually do know who it belongs to. Or Vandenberg AFB (which is northwest of L.A. and launches lots of stuff) says it hasn't launched any missiles in the area, but doesn't volunteer information about who actually did.

If the military really does know all about the missile but isn't talking, and is pushing off the questions with a not-so-subtle
nudge nudge
and
wink wink
, that's all well and good. We can just wonder why they launched a missile they can't talk about out in the open where everyone can see it. But suppose the military is telling the truth and they really don't have any idea who this missile belongs to? That's pretty scary. NORAD is supposed to keep track of stuff like this. If the scenario is as presented, of a missile launch 35 miles off the coast of the US, and no one in the US military knows who did it, well, you do the math. On the other hand, it might also be the case that, although they don't know what it is, they are really confident that they know what it is
not
. In other words, that the public is suddenly going gaga over a viral video of a supposed missile launch is not a big deal to people who know for sure that if it really was a missile,
that
they would have seen.

It wasn't long after the reports appeared about the missile that an alternate view of the event arrived. Some claimed this wasn't a missile at all and that what the video showed was just an ordinary jet flying in from the west, viewed at a fortuitous angle. The contrail was just an airplane contrail, and the bright spot that looked like a burning rocket engine was just light from the setting sun reflecting off the aircraft. As hoots of derision went up from newsrooms across the nation and vitriol erupted from outraged occupants of Internet chat rooms, I couldn't help but sympathize with those backing this unpopular explanation, being no stranger to derision myself.

Twenty-four hours into the mystery, the set of explanations settled down to three possibilities. The first was that it was, indeed, a missile or rocket of some kind. The second was that it was, indeed, just an airplane contrail seen from just the right angle and at just the right time to look like a rocket launch. The third was that it was, indeed, a secret military test; among other things a craft known as the Boeing X-51 “WaveRider” was implicated as the culprit. Under each explanation were a number of sub-possibilities. For example, if it was a rocket, was it foreign or domestic, accidental or intentional, secretly known by the military or a genuine mystery to all except those who launched it? Part of me really rather wished it was a rocket launch by a gang of amateur rocketeers—some of those guys launch birds that would put the sounding rockets of the ‘50s to shame. But why would they build such a big bird and then drag it (or float it) out someplace where they'd never launched before? Why would they risk the inevitable Federal prosecution that would come from failing to secure the proper permissions? It seemed to me that a bunch of rocket scientists wouldn't be stupid enough to launch a rocket there.