Trajectory Book 1 (New Providence) (2 page)

Doctor Maude Richardson walked around the front of her podium talking about metallic composition in asteroids.

“The M-type is the third most-common type of asteroid, usually composed primarily of what type of metal?” A meaty hand went up on the left side of the small classroom. “Yes, Derek?”

“Iron.”

“That’s right. Mostly iron. Any other common types of metal available? Hm? Someone else?” Another hand went up lazily from the back of the room, a couple more joined it. Doctor Richardson picked the far hand and the other students lowered theirs.

“Nickel?”

Richardson nodded and advanced the frame on her slide, a number of rocks super-imposed over a periodic table appeared on the screen behind her, the metals lit up in yellow on the dark background. “Very good. Indeed, the belt contains concentrations of nearly every type of metal we’d find elsewhere in the solar system in similar distributions. One nice feature of the asteroid belt is that these metals are frequently very near the surface. The rocky shells having already been knocked away by collisions with other bodies. Or they themselves are the metal cores of larger planetoids. It makes them ideal sources of material if you can just get out there.”

Emma wasn’t listening. She’d read all this before. The justification for asteroid mining had gone back as far as Buckminster Fuller and kept cropping up through modern history. Instead, she was writing a message to Jerem gone for nearly a month now, deep in the asteroid belt between Mars’ and Jupiter’s orbits. They’d been in constant contact, exchanging messages over the system’s network, but there was always delay. She thought of him as being twelve light minutes away. It made him feel closer than the one hundred and fifty million kilometers of an astronomical unit. He’d be coming home now and the delay would get shorter and shorter until his return. He’d have more time for writing to her too.

I’m sitting in class. Richardson’s droning on about rocks or something. Space rocks. Are you going to bring me a piece of one this time? I’m going to bring it to class and hope they’ll let me just skip the rest of the term. It’s so boring!

I can’t wait for you to get back. I have some really exciting news.

Emma frowned, deleted the last sentence. She didn’t want to give anything away and what she had was valuable. The kind of thing people would be very interested in if she was right. She was pretty sure she was.

“Ms. Franklin?”

Emma blinked, looked up. Dr. Richardson watching her with lidded eyes under her glasses, resting low on her nose.

“Er, sorry. What was the question?” Emma hurriedly closed the message she was writing and flipped back to class space on her tablet. The transcript still running, she skimmed back to catch up.

“If you’re just going to waste all our time here, you might as well stay home.”

Emma felt her face burning. Some of the other students giggled childishly, the professor of geology getting more annoyed.

“The question I shall repeat is: What are some of the signs of a metallic deposit in a rocky terrain?”

Emma paused for a second, and smiled. “Look for the shiny.”

More giggling around her. Doctor Richardson smiled despite her annoyance. “Can you elaborate, please?”

“Increased reflectivity can indicate the presence of metallic deposits on or beneath the surface of a body.”

“And what types of metals would those typically be, Emma?”

She smiled. “Precious.”
 

003

Making Time.

“Mars Control, this is MSS27. Commencing Mars burn in thirty minutes. Over.” Hal clicked off the transmit button.

“CO2 scrubbers… check. Battery power… check. Cargo module connectors…” some switch flicking. “Check. Moving onto engineering…”

Jerem had been through the checklist hundreds of times, in simulation and on their actual ship. He knew the routine by heart but still tracked through it on his console so they’d have it all logged. Captain Hal Wheeler, wanted everything by the book. Hal might have inherited Making Time from her previous captain but she belonged to him now.

“Engineering. Aye.” Hal began his pre-flight routine.

“Fuel module… check. Fuel delivery…” more switches “Fuel delivery… I’ve got a fault in line 4… no wait it’s green… check. Main booster… check. Reaction control thrusters…” the list went on until they’d covered all of their engines and controls. Jerem drawled through the items with sleepy dedication. The ship showing him schematics and control diagrams as he clicked through the routine.

Jerem’s muscles ached as he hunched over his console. His arm sore from fighting against the torque generated by the feeder. It was tough work, but at least it kept him in some semblance of physical shape out here in the gravity-free asteroid belt. He cinched down his belts, securing himself in his seat. Waiting out the clock as they checked and rechecked the ship’s engine and fuel systems.

Making Time was one of the first ships built for Mars after the colony was created. All of the initial materials for the colony’s space station came from the asteroid belt. It just wasn’t practical to send metal up from Earth – too expensive – and they needed everything they could get from Mars down in the city. So they’d build these machines to extract iron and gold from the rocks orbiting between Mars and Jupiter. There’d been a brief spate of robotic mining machines, but they had a high failure rate and the Colony Commission successfully lobbied for human-piloted space craft.

She was a big ship. Sixty tonnes of metal and machine built to carry another forty in her hold. Jerem ran through the schematics again, tracing the lines from the side-mounted fuel pods that ran back into the hab’s cylindrical support structure aft. The shiny metal fuel lines ran into a circular aperture in the massive engine shield mounted behind the hab section separating them from the engine module itself. The engine drew liquid heavy hydrogen from the fuel modules into its core and compressed it down to metallic pellets using a spherical array of super conducting magnets.

“Core is primed. Ready for compression.”

Hal flipped some switches on his board. “Power systems charged. Ready and waiting. Cooling system on standby.”

On cue, a message indicator lit up on Hal’s board and he played it. “MSS27 this is Mars Control. Godspeed, Hal. Control out.” Mancuso’s voice from Lighthouse. The station. Twenty four minutes to acknowledge their previous transmission informing them of their burn.

“Control, this is Making Time. Going quiet, switching to low-bandwidth. See you in two weeks, over and out.” They wouldn’t bother waiting for another acknowledgement. Hal pulled in the last blob of data from the network before shutting down the ship’s radios. They’d be transmitting and receiving only text and telemetry from here out. The gigantic ship engine’s interference severely degraded their ability to stay connected to the network while under power. They’d learned early on that analog voice transmissions over radio frequency were little more than a garbled mess when exposed to the emissions of a burning fusion reactor and the low-bandwidth didn’t give them enough data to encode the transmissions in anything but very crude digital sound. So they used text.

“Looks like we’re good to go, Dad.”

“That’s captain to you, Ensign.” Hal smirked and straightened the photograph taped to the console of his wife and the two kids. The smirk faded. He still couldn’t get used to his wife being gone. He missed her so much. Sometimes he wished he could stay out here in space forever. It was peaceful. The work was important. Their ship was more of a home to him than his empty apartment. If it wasn’t for his daughter… Be home soon, Tam. He put his finger on the picture for just a moment, one more time. “Ignition start for Mars burn in 10… 9…”

“Board is green. Priming.” Another flurry of switches as Jerem sent power to the fuel compression system. The lights flickered as the core drew every available watt of power from the ship. He tightened his straps again and his father did the same. They exchanged a look as they waited for the engine to signal its readiness.

The cabin lights dimmed as power was transferred to the batteries, disconnected from the fuel cells that diverted all their energy to the super capacitors used to ignite the reactor that would power their trip across a hundred million kilometers of space. A low thrumming filled the cockpit as the engine crushed the fuel into fusible metal hydrogen.

“… 2… 1… Main engine burn.” Hal hit the switch and a tiny star ignited in the asteroid belt and began its slow fall through darkness.
 

004

New Providence: Nicola Tesla University.

“There it is!”

Emma and Tamra were both staring at the screen, watching what appeared to be a field of stars. The screen on Emma’s tablet was showing the output from the ten meter telescope facility on Olympus Mons.

Emma started the counter. “Next flash should be in about 22 minutes, and point-two arc seconds west.” She sat back on the couch in the corner of the science wing library.

Tamra was losing interest now that the object seemed to be predictable. She slid down to the floor and pulled out her own tablet from her bag, scanned for messages from Greg. He was quiet again and still not going to class. When she found no messages waiting, she looked back up at Emma. “We’re going to have to report it.” Tam didn’t like the idea of keeping something in space a secret. They’d always been told in astronomy class to share findings as soon as possible to get more eyes on whatever it might be.

“Just a little longer. I want to make sure I’ve got the orbit right.” Emma twirled a strand of curly hair while tapping numbers into the pad’s calculator. New discoveries were rare things these days. Most of the asteroid belt had been well-mapped since the late twentieth century and onward. Every once in awhile a comet or stray object looped back into the system from further out. If this was in a stable orbit inside the belt, it would be unusual.

“But what if it’s not an asteroid? It could be … something else. People might need to know about it.”

Emma ignored her for a second trying to make the numbers fit. It seemed to be moving too fast. “Sure, it could be a comet.” No it couldn’t. They don’t flash and there’s no fuzz around the edges, though it might still be out past the Snow Line. She couldn’t get a good fix on its distance from here. She rewound the recording, checking the time and increasing the magnification. Nothing new. Just a pixel point of light for a couple of frames.

Tam squinted at the screen. “Whatever it is, it’s small.”

“Not necessarily.” It might just be a small point on a larger object rotating in space. Her tablet beeped with an incoming message and she saw the notification from her mother. “Shoot. Are you coming over for dinner tonight? I think mom’s making tofu and kale stew.” She tried to say it without making a face, failed.

“I think I’ll pass. I’ve been over there every day this week.” Tamra fidgeted with her pack, stuffing her tablet into it after one last glance for messages.

Emma squeezed Tamra’s shoulder, “Come on, you’re practically family. You might as well eat something that isn’t a ration pack and we can run some more simulations.”

“Gee, that’s sounds super fun and all, but I think I’ll pass.” Tam smiled at her friend. “Thanks for the offer though, but I’m not really hungry anyway.”

Emma frowned. “OK. I’m gonna pack up. I’ll see you tomorrow.” She stood up to leave.

Tamra felt a twinge of guilt passing on dinner, but forced a lame smile. She stood up. “OK. Can at least walk back with you.” She picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder for the walk home.

Back in her apartment, Tamra tossed her jacket onto the floor and flopped onto the couch with her tablet. She cued up some music and dimmed the lights. She had the place to herself so she could listen to as much twentieth century pop music as she wanted to without being told to shut it off. Jerem hated it. Greg didn’t like it much better but she liked the manufactured boy bands in a way she couldn’t put her finger on. There was nothing like that being made anymore. It made her long for lost simpler times.

She danced into the kitchen and grabbed a package of ramen, kale chips and a bowl, tossed them in dry and started crunching on a clump of noodles. She poured herself some water and went back to the couch singing along with the music.

Tamra> hey. what are you doing?

Greg> not much. just checking my feeds. you?

Tamra> i donno… hi!

She flipped over to Em’s channel.
hey

Emma> hey u. You’re missing some good stew.

Tamra> not as good as these kale chips.

She crunched on a chip and switched back to Greg’s channel.

Tamra> we found a thing…

Pause.
what kinda thing?

Tamra> I’m not supposed to tell anybody about it. It’s a secret, ok?

Another pause.
OK… you should come over.

She waited a second, smirking at her screen.
Maybe I’d rather stay here by myself. I have some work to do for ag class.

Greg> that sounds boooring.