Rock Killer (27 page)

“Hum,” the president huffed. “Do you think it is right to be involved in this adventure?”

“What hurts SRI hurts the West,” Faruq said.

“Yes,” the president intoned, “you’ve said that.” The president stopped walking and faced Faruq. “But who else could it hurt?”

Faruq tried to look confused. Inwardly he smiled. If the president was making threats he must feel threatened. Faruq’s plans were coming to fruition.

“
Habibi
,” Faruq said, “there is no one who can threaten you. No one.”

The president walked away and his guards followed. “I wish I could believe you, Faruq,” he called back.

***

Alex looked at his computer on his wrist, then, realizing it was under his pressure suit, looked at the nearest computer screen. N
akata should have gotten our message by now
, he thought. He doubted the asteroid chief could help them. It seemed they were on their own like no persons had ever been, millions of kilometers from the nearest other humans.

“Director?” Taylor’s voice came over the intercom, interrupting Alex’s thoughts.

“Yes?”

“I’ve got a solution. Can you come down here?”

“On my way.”

“I’ve got some good news and some bad news,” she said when Alex arrived.

“Good news can wait. What’s the bad news?”

“A pipe burst in the drive section. We didn’t realize it because we were all rattled by the attack. By the time we cut off the water supply we were down to about a hundred and ten liters in the main tank.”

Normally, Alex would have been livid about the loss. Down to a hundred and ten liters, or about 27 gallons, would have been an inconceivable loss. But it seemed trivial, now.

Alex shrugged. “So what. That’ll last us eight hours. What’s the good news?”

“Water,” Taylor replied. “My ice question made me realize that we could split our water into hydrogen and oxygen. The amount you get out in any period is proportional to the voltage

applied. I’ve talked to the reactor section. They said we have plenty of power since the main drive is out.”

Alex considered. “Is excess CO
₂
a problem?”

“No,” Taylor said. “We have emergency scrubbers.”

“Good. How are you going to do it?”

“We’ll drill into the top of the main water tank and put in the electrodes. Then the oxygen will just bubble out. We can feed the main tank from the rest of the water system if we need more water.”

“How long will that last us?”

“That’s the problem. Normally we’d have more than enough water. But that damn leak. We can feed the main tank from the rest of the water system and run the sewage recycler at maximum and that should give us around 130 liters, total, of water. Too bad we can recycle it so well. We’d have to carry more and what we lost wouldn’t be so significant.”

“So, how long?”

Taylor drew in a long breath. “Let me see,” she said, “a person breaths about 20 grams oh-two per hour. A liter of water holds, uhm,” Taylor looked at the rock ceiling, “about 880 grams oxygen. Times a hundred and thirty liters of water is—” she pushed to her desk and started punching on a calculator. “Is 114,400 grams oxygen. Divided by 20 grams an hour per person is 5,720 person-hours. Divide that by the 130 on board—”

“Hundred and twenty-five,” Alex corrected. “Five were killed in the drive section.”

“Oh,” Taylor said, shaking her head. “Well, that leaves us about 45 and three quarters hours. Plus the seven we have left of the reserves is 53 hours, about.”

“That might be enough,” Alex said. “Navigator Naguchi told me that, unless one of the
Rock Skipper
-class ships is close and ready to go, the closest ship is the
Kyushu
. It can reach us in about fifty-two hours.”

“I would guess I could be ten percent off in either direction,” Taylor added. “If we don’t do much, we could extend that time. If we’re too active we’ll shorten it. Also, I’m not positive how much water we have all together.

“Plus, I need to keep the partial pressure of oxygen above a tenth of an atmosphere. I could go as low as 0.07 atmospheres for survival mode but you can’t expect people to do much physical or mental exertion. I can use voltage to control how much oh-two I put out, but the less space I have to fill, the better.”

Okay,” Alex said, “we’ll keep everyone strapped down and move everyone close to life support and shut off all other areas with emergency doors. Good enough?”

Taylor nodded.

“One thing though,” Alex continued, “aren’t bubbles floating to the surface a function of gravity? Without some acceleration you’d just get a bubble around each electrode and then it’d shut down.”

Taylor shook her head. “I didn’t think of that. Do we have any acceleration?”

Alex shook his head, hitting the inside of his plastic helmet. “No, none at all.”

“Then it’s not going to work,” Taylor said dejectedly.

“Could you put the electrodes on the surface of the water?”

“Maybe, but we have no way to contain it. If it does produce a gas, in free fall the escaping gas will push the water away from the electrodes.”

“Can’t you contain it somehow?”

“If I had a small enough container–but then the gas couldn’t escape without water escaping.”

Alex could feel a knot forming in his stomach. This electrolysis scheme seemed to be falling apart on him, and taking his crew’s lives with it.

“If only we had some gravity,” Taylor sighed.

Gravity
! Alex realized. They didn’t need acceleration, they needed gravity. And, outside of neutron star material, there’s one sure way to produce artificial gravity in space. “Spin.”

“Excuse me, sir?”

“We’ll spin the asteroid. We’ll spin it fast enough to give you enough gravity at the water tank to confine the water and make the bubbles float out. The asteroid has roll controls. I’ll have Naguchi roll the ship until we have the gravity we need.”

Taylor looked at him for a second, then smiled. “That’ll work.” She suddenly frowned. “But...”

“But what?”

“Everything on the asteroid is supported for acceleration along the axis. If we spin the asteroid, everything will be accelerated outward.”

“True,” Alex said. “The tokomak, the water tank, anything massive and off the center line very far. We’ll contact dirt-side engineering for help on how to do it with minimal materials and effort. It’ll work, Taylor. It’ll work.”

She still looked skeptical. “I’m gonna need some help in here.”

“Whatever you need,” Alex assured her. “What are you going to do about the hydrogen?”

Taylor looked blank for a moment. Then said, “Oh, yeah, we’ll have to vent that.”

“Get on it,” Chun ordered.

***

The computer beeped. Freeman sat up and looked at the screen. It displayed “incoming call.” Since he’d put the no-video switch on when he went to bed, he said, “Yes?”

A female police officer appeared on the screen. “Is this Special Agent Gordon Freeman?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said reaching over and turning on his video.

“This is Sergeant Amy Knight of the Los Angeles Police Department,” the woman said, visibly reacting to seeing Freeman sitting bare-chested in bed. “I got your home number from the FBI. We have a Jane Doe in the hospital who asked us to call you.”

“Is she black with long brown-black hair and green eyes?”

“Yes,” Knight said. “Do you know her?”

“Yes, what happened?” Freeman asked urgently.

“She was assaulted by men with automatic weapons. We captured all but one. She’s in police protection but we’d like to know what this is all about. You should have seen what we found in that house.”

“I’ll bet,” Freeman said. “Listen, she is very important to an ongoing investigation, Sergeant. Her name is Charlene Jones. I’m flying out as soon as I can. Keep her safe. What hospital is she in?”

The sergeant told him.

“Good, thanks,” he said and closed the connection. He called his boss.

***

The conference room at SRI headquarters was full at 1:30 in the morning. The members of SRI executive board had come from their homes in response to the crisis. Each wore suits despite the hour and aides had also come in and were hovering around. The water pitchers had been filled and the coffee was brewing. If the city below hadn’t been a tapestry of lights, one wouldn’t have known it was the middle of the night.

Mitchel, the first, and still only, Occidental to sit on this board, looked around at the executives encircling the large, mahogany table. Everyone was agitated. Nakata was working over calculations on his computer, perhaps hoping he’d made a mistake and the inevitable wasn’t going to happen.

Mr. Kijoto seemed visibly shaken. His features paled as the message from Director Chun was read by the Director of Space Operations, Mr. Yamada, to the assembled department heads of SRI.

When Yamada had finished Kijoto spoke. “Eight hours?”

“Yes, sir. And that report is just about an hour old.”

“What can we get to 1961 in that time?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“Yes, sir.”

Mitchel turned to Yamada. “What about the other
Rock Skipper
-class ships?”

Yamada shook his head. “We have been very unfortunate. The
Star Hopper
just arrived on the Moon; turnaround time is three days. The
Comet Chaser
is in the belt but on the other side of the solar system scouting asteroids; it would take about five days to reach the asteroid. The
Cloud Skimmer
developed a problem with its gyros and is being worked on at Ceres. Estimated repair time is at least a week as the
Star Hopper
will have to take repair parts to it when it’s ready to leave the Moon.”

Kijoto leaned forward onto the table. “What is the nearest ship of any type?”

Nakata looked up from his computer and sighed. “The asteroid tender
Kyushu
’s about 2.9 million kilometers behind. She only has one-tenth of a gee boost but is the only ship that can reach them in a reasonable amount of time. Nineteen sixty-one is traveling at about 150 kps relative to solar system. It would take the
Kyushu
52 hours to match velocities and position.

“According to Director Chun’s message,” Nakata continued, “the main Masuka drive is destroyed but the mass driver may be repairable. That would give them one tenth of a gee acceleration. If, starting now, Chun accelerates antiparallel to the
Kyushu
’s acceleration vector, effectively adding his acceleration to the asteroid tender’s relative acceleration, it would shorten the time to rendezvous considerably, to 31 hours. That is, however, still much more than the seven hours they now have left.”

“Damn,” Mitchel spat, ignoring the protocol of the conference room. No one seemed to mind.

Then the printer in the table ejected a paper like a rude tongue. Mitchel took it. He smiled as he read it.

“What is it?” Kijoto asked.

“It’s from Director Chun. ‘Life support reports that power normally used for destroyed Masuka drive can be used to split water reserves into hydrogen and oxygen. Will spin asteroid at a rate of four one-hundredths of a revolution per second to produce one tenth of a gee at the water tank. Calculations indicate that will give oxygen for 46 to 53 hours. Our navigator reports the
Kyushu
can rendezvous in 52 hours. Currently attempting to repair mass driver but doesn’t look hopeful. Need engineering to calculate minimum support needed on heavy equipment that will be accelerated outward by spin.’ There follows data for engineering.” Mitchel handed the paper to Kijoto.

The old man looked it over. “We can save them.” As if trying to get used to the new territory, a smile slowly settled on his face.

***

“Captain,” a communications tech said over the intercom.

“Yes?” Takashara asked after reaching to punch the appropriate button on her computer. She was in her quarters doing paperwork.

“We just received a message from Yamada.”

Takashara frowned. When the Director of Space Operations calls, it’s rarely good news. “What is it?”

“Messages is as follows: ‘Asteroid SRI-1961 has been attacked by
Rock Skipper
. It was able to stop the attack but is heavily damaged and in short supply of oxygen. You are to rendezvous with 1961 as soon as possible. 1961 has no acceleration capabilities and is currently moving at 147 kps relative.’ Ma’am, there’s a lot of technical information on the asteroid’s position and velocity vector. Do you want to hear it?”

“No, send it to navigation.”

“Yes, ma’am. Then it goes on to say, ‘Evacuate personnel from 1961 and return to lunar orbit.’“

“Okay,” Takashara said, stalling while she thought. “Confirm message, then establish link with 1961.” She thought a second. “Does the message say about how far 1961 is away from us?”

“Yes, ma’am. Uhm, about three million klicks.”

“Okay, fine,” Takashara said. At three million kilometers the light-speed delay would only be ten seconds. “Establish a voice link with the asteroid,” she continued, “and tell the bridge I’m on my way.”

She left her quarters and climbed to the bridge, one deck above. “Navigator,” she said, walking through the hatch, “calculate an intercept course for the asteroid.”

“Already have. Take about 52 hours unless the asteroid can accelerate.”

“I wouldn’t count on that. XO.”

“Ma’am?” he first officer said.

“Get the damage control teams and drill them on their jobs. DC is number one priority.”