Back | Next
Contents

Chapter Thirteen

“That’s it?” Bowden asked. Having finally learned how to do orbital rendezvous, they’d moved on to the next stage in his training syllabus.

“Yes,” Kamara confirmed, “that is Outpost.”

“Shit,” Bowden muttered. Game time.

Outpost was an oblong asteroid, just like the habitats. However, where the spins revolved around their long axes, like logs rolling in a pond, the eight-hundred-meter-long Outpost rotated end over end, tumbling along in its orbit. Located thirty million kilometers behind the cluster of rocks in R’Bak’s spinward Lagrange point, the asteroid tumbled in a very “clean” spin—there was no roll or yaw to upset the centripetally generated gees that existed at the ends of the rock.

“I will take it in the first time,” Kamara said after they had spoken with the station and gotten clearance to approach, “so watch and learn.”

I learned so much watching him rendezvous with the pod, Bowden thought with a small sigh. Hopefully, I can do better this time.

“Okay,” Kamara said. “What do we know about inertia?”

“Objects travel in a straight line unless a force acts on them to make them stop or change.”

“And why do we care?”

“Because any force that I impart to the craft will require a nulling force. I won’t automatically start slowing once I let off the throttles, like I do in atmosphere.”

Kamara nodded. “It is far better to go slowly and be patient. If you hit the thrusters hard like you did when we were first at the pod, you had better be using them to break away from Outpost, rather than trying to recover from a shitty approach. If it looks like the rendezvous is going badly, break it off. As you said before—”

“Easy does it,” Bowden chorused with him.

“And what’s the most important thing about flying near Outpost?”

“Don’t fly through the railgun launcher’s firing path.”

“Not just ‘don’t fly through its launch path,’ but understand—and be aware of—where it is at all times. Other ships will be maneuvering to avoid it, and you need to watch for their movements, too.”

Kamara’s words proved prescient; as they approached Outpost, the railgun mounted in the center of the asteroid fired, launching a payload tub in the direction of Spin One. Bowden had shaken his head when the launcher had been explained to him; it was a massive railgun that was used for launching very small craft and drones from the station, as well as to send material—and, rarely, people—between Outpost and the habitats. The tubs weren’t much larger than a person and required the receiving end to capture and bring the tub aboard the habitat. If they missed or forgot—or a thousand other failures—the person went flying past the habitat, heading out-system. It was a transfer method that wasn’t used for people very often due to the dangers involved and the fact that they’d have to endure a five-second acceleration at over ten gees. Or thereabouts.

And one I am never getting in, Bowden thought as the tub flew past their craft.

Bowden watched as Kamara flew the packet past the launch path and then around to land on the asteroid; Bowden kept his hands above the controls, going through the motions as if landing the craft himself. He’d gotten better at rendezvousing with objects in space in the four weeks since he’d ripped the rangefinder off the nose of the craft. They’d gone back for the pod the next day and had actually found the device; it was imbedded in the pod. Unfortunately, it was smashed beyond use and had been turned in at Spin One as scrap/salvage, along with the rest of the salvage they’d obtained from the pod.

Kamara refused to use the craft’s navigation system to assist with the approach, even though Kamara had told Bowden he was satisfied the Lost Soldier could perform a rendezvous manually. The nav system might have been helpful with this approach—Bowden had no way to know, since he hadn’t used it—because the big asteroid was tumbling along at a rate of seventy seconds per revolution, so they needed to arrive at the precise location at exactly the instant necessary to capture the asteroid’s docking collar. And at the matching radial velocity.

Bowden risked a quick glance over to his instructor. Although Kamara had said the approach was “no big thing,” Bowden could see the intense concentration in the RockHound’s eyes and the faint sheen of sweat on his forehead. It was obviously a much more difficult evolution than Kamara had let on.

Unlike chasing objects in orbit, there were some obvious parallels between this approach and landing an aircraft on the aircraft carrier. You were trying to meet an object at a certain point on its surface while it moved through three dimensions. There were plenty of differences, but the approach itself was straightforward in nature.

The one thing he noticed as Kamara flew the craft inbound was the way the RockHound kept a light touch on the thrusters. When landing on the aircraft carrier, the pilot flew a specific glideslope, which he referenced by keeping “the ball” centered between two reference datums. When the ball went high, you reduced power to bring your glideslope down; you added power when you were below glideslope to get back on it. The trick was to smoothly intercept the desired position and not go from a low to a high back to a low again. That was called “chasing the ball,” and ended up with the pilot using increasingly larger throttle adjustments as he got in close. Bad juju.

Kamara, by keeping the thruster adjustments small, was able to keep the craft at the right velocity to arrive when the docking collar was in position to receive them.

Not sure I’m ready for this, Bowden thought as the locks clicked and the motion of the packet changed drastically as it took on the spin of the asteroid, with all the subtlety of a medium-velocity car crash. While he understood getting the right velocity to arrive when needed, there was also the side-to-side thrusters he needed to manage, as well as the up-and-down velocity needed to drop into the docking cradle in that incredibly short interval where you were in position to do so.

“Nothing to it,” Kamara said, sitting back in his chair. Judging from his reaction, though, it was obviously not something even the experienced RockHound found “easy.”

“Yeah, right,” Bowden muttered.

“Do you need a break before you try it?”

“No,” Bowden replied. “And there is no try.”

“What?”

Bowden’s voice took on an ominous tone. “Try not. Do, or do not. There is no try.”

He looked over at Kamara, whose brows were knitting. “What are you talking about?” the RockHound asked.

“It’s from…never mind. Too hard to explain. Yes, I’m ready.” He took a deep breath and let it out heavily. “Let’s do this.”

Kamara touched the controls then made a show of taking his hands off them. “Your controls.”

Bowden nodded. “I have the controls.”

“As soon as you release from the docking collar, give the thrusters a boost away from the asteroid before you do anything else,” Kamara instructed. “There are some bulges on it that stick out a little farther than where the collar is, and we don’t want to have them hit us.”

“No we don’t,” Bowden replied. He went over his new mantra as he thought through what he needed to do. No more midairs. No more midairs. No more midairs.

“Okay,” Bowden said. “I’m ready.”

“Very well, take us out a hundred meters from the asteroid.”

Bowden nodded, then realized the motion was probably lost inside his helmet. “Got it.” He released the docking collar clamps then gave a gentle boost away from the asteroid. The ship slid away from Outpost, its orbital motion different from the centripetal force it had imparted to the packet as Bowden let go of the clamps. He then took the craft away from the asteroid, careful to avoid the railgun launch path. There were no more launches scheduled, but, as Kamara had taught him, if you never flew through the launch path, you’d never get hit by something being shot out of the tube.

Kind of like walking beneath bombs hanging from the wings of aircraft on the flight deck—they will never fall on you if you don’t walk under them.

He pushed that thought aside as he stabilized the craft in a position one hundred meters out from the asteroid and concentrated on finding the rhythm of the big rock’s tumble. After a couple of revolutions, he realized it was like trying to time the waves in the ocean when you were about to run out into the water. Except you could always dive into a wave if you miscalculated.

“Any time you’re ready,” Kamara said as the rock began its third revolution.

“Next time around,” Bowden muttered. He thought—but didn’t add—you asshole.

As the docking collar reached the “bottom” of its tumble, Bowden nudged the craft forward. As the asteroid rotated, though, he realized his boost was going to get him to the asteroid before the collar was at the “top” where he could latch onto it. He gave the thrusters a little tap to slow the craft, careful not to “chase the ball.” Small adjustments over a longer time period are better than big power variations you have to null out.

“Shit,” he muttered as the craft started to drift to the left. He tapped the appropriate thruster, then tapped the opposite one to null the thrust. The craft still had a little velocity in the correct direction to bring them back into alignment, but he’d null that before capture.

In the Hornet, his scan on approach was “meatball, lineup, angle of attack,” and he tried to work out something similar. After a few seconds, he settled on checking the arrival position of the asteroid and his lineup out the cockpit window, then checking the craft’s velocities inside on the gauges.

As the ship reached the correct lineup, he nulled the drift, with another glance at the cockpit instruments. They showed him overcorrecting. He put in a correction for it. His eyes went outside the craft. Damn that thing is big and close! He fought the urge to shy away from it as the close end of the asteroid rose toward him. It looked like it was going to slam into his craft, but it was the same sight picture as when Kamara had done it—he wasn’t screaming about their impending crash, either, which was a good sign—and Bowden knew he had to be close enough to grab the collar. If he shied away, he wouldn’t be able to get back into position in time.

The ship slid to the left and he gave it a boost back to the right. Too hard. He tried to catch the momentum, but it overshot the collar as it rotated into alignment. He tried to boost the ship back into position for a second dive at it but clanked off the side of the collar as he went past. Kamara slapped the thrusters, hard, to boost away from the asteroid.

“What the hell?” Bowden asked.

“You were about to crash into the asteroid. I boosted us up and away from it.” He paused and then added, “Get away from it and look at the tapes.”

Bowden sighed and flew the craft back to the pre-approach position, then watched the tapes of the approach while Kamara piloted the craft. Everything was good until he got in close, then he overcorrected several times and made a big play to capture the docking collar. He winced. Kamara was right. He probably would have hit the asteroid if the RockHound hadn’t boosted them away.

“You’re right,” Bowden said with a sigh. “As always.”

“Of course I am,” Kamara acknowledged with a smile. “What I want to know is, what happened? You had a nice approach going, then lost it—badly—at the end.”

“I thought I saw a drift on the range-finding system. I overcorrected a couple of times, then made a play to grab the collar.”

“When you saw the drift on the system, did you see the same thing visually?”

“Well, no. The lineup looked good.”

Kamara shrugged. “Sometimes the rangefinder gets spurious inputs in close due to vagaries of the asteroid’s surface and its spin. You know what doesn’t get bogus inputs?”

“No, what?”

“Your eyes. If you look out and you’re not drifting, then you’re not drifting. There is a science to flying in space, but there is also an art to doing it well, too. You have to use your feelings and believe in what you know to be true.”

“Go with your gut?”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I have to use my instincts.”

Kamara nodded. “Exactly so.” He shrugged. “Besides, you can’t count on technology. If you become reliant on it, you are crippled when it doesn’t work.”

“Which is why you had me learn to rendezvous with objects in orbit without using the system.”

Kamara nodded.

“So, why didn’t you have me do this without using any of the technology, too?”

“This is different. There are more variables, and the chances of smashing the craft—as you showed—are a lot higher. I didn’t want to destroy the ship and get stranded here.”

Bowden thought about what Kamara said for a few seconds, then shook his head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t see how this is any different. We’re rendezvousing with an object, same as we were in orbit, but, this time, we don’t have to fight the orbital mechanics as much. Sure, they’re still there, but the effects are smaller. And if I hadn’t fallen for an erroneous system indication—”

“You did fall for it, though,” Kamara interrupted.

“I did, but I shouldn’t have,” Bowden said. “It’s just a matter of learning the right things to watch and when to watch them.” He shrugged. “There’s also a different set of flight controls I’m still getting used to, too, which complicates things a little, but the better I get with the controls, the better I’ll be able to rendezvous with things. Not having to actively search for where the controls are would give me more time to watch what I need to watch.”

“That is true.”

Bowden took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’m ready for another try.”

“Very well.” Kamara lifted his hands from the controls. “You’ve got the ship.”

“I’ve got it.” This is going to be really smart, or the dumbest thing I’ve done since I woke up here. Bowden reached forward and turned off the nav system.

What are you doing?” Kamara exclaimed. “It will take ten minutes to realign the gyros!”

“I’m going to show you how we do things at the boat,” Bowden said absently as he stared at the tumbling asteroid in front of him.

“The boat? I thought you said aircraft crashed on the boat!”

“They do, sometimes,” Bowden acknowledged. He turned and looked at Kamara, whose eyes were huge. Bowden smiled. “But this isn’t one of those times.”

Kamara’s jaw dropped, but he didn’t say anything.

“Hold that thought, and keep your mouth shut,” Bowden said with a wink. “I’ll show you how we do things the Navy way.”

A thought that perhaps his mouth was writing checks his body couldn’t cash went through his mind, but he pushed it away as he refocused on the asteroid. There! The asteroid reached the right part of its revolution, and he boosted forward. Not having to look at the nav system simplified his scan. Revolution, altitude, closure, lineup. Just like landing on the carrier. Sort of.

He looked beyond the asteroid and visualized where he needed to be. Not only did he need to meet it at a certain spot, he needed to be going the right speed to minimize the shock of capture and then give it a pulse to minimize the torque of chasing the arc of rotation as he latched on. He started to drift a little to the left and put in a gentle correction. He fought the urge to flee as the end of the asteroid rotated up toward him like Thor’s hammer, ready to smite his ship. Having already seen the sight picture once, though, he was sure he was high enough for it to pass underneath him.

Pretty sure, anyway.

He nulled the drift as he reached the “centerline” position of the “runway” in his mind. The fact that the asteroid didn’t spin around its long axis cut down on one of the variables. He’d landed a Hornet on the boat in the North Sea in February, with the ship gyrating in all three axes…this was easier. He forced himself to keep breathing.

The end passed underneath him, and he did a gentle dive as he goosed the ship forward slightly to match the rotation. Lower…a touch faster, then he slapped the CAPTURE button as it illuminated. The magnetic locks grabbed hold, and Bowden had that “car crash” feeling again as the ship took on the rotation of the asteroid.

They were down.

Bowden turned to Kamara. “See? Nothing to it.”

Sweat ran up Kamara’s face due to centripetal force. It should have brought additional blood flow to his head, too, but the man was strangely white. After a couple of seconds, Kamara shook his head, scattering the beads of sweat, and released his safety belt. “Let’s go get a drink,” he said. “I need it.”

Bowden looked at the starscape rotating in front of him, and the enormity of what he’d just done rushed in on him as the adrenaline left his system. That wasn’t the dumbest thing I’ve done since I got here; that was the dumbest thing I’ve ever done. “Yeah,” he said after a moment, a small tremor in his voice. “I need one, too.”

Bowden cocked his head. “Here’s what I don’t understand, though. Why didn’t you build a port at the axis of rotation—in the middle of the long dimension? That way, you’d only have to match rotation, and not chase an intercept vector with a constant curve built in.”

Kamara grinned. “Who told you we do not have one there? In fact, that is the location of the primary bay.”

“What? Then why are we—”

“To make sure you are the best possible pilot, of course.”


Back | Next
Framed