Chapter Fifteen
And…now.
Bowden gave the thrusters a gentle tap and started forward slowly as the nucleus rotated into position. With the body’s weird shape, it seemed to wobble slightly as it rotated, and it had taken Bowden a couple of minutes to get the right sight picture on how to approach it.
He nodded his head as the other ship came into view. It was another RockHound packet, although it had a couple of different modules strapped on. Probably gas and prospecting gear, Kamara had said. What it didn’t have was right-side thrusters, which had obviously been ripped off when the jet had erupted from underneath it. The right wing was a tangled mass of pulverized metal, and the starboard side of the craft showed impacts along its length. It also tilted down on that side.
Bowden gave it no more than a glance as he searched for the spot he’d seen on the previous rotation that was clear of ice. He lined up just to the left of the craft, and there it was—a little in-trail of the ship. He gave the thrusters another bump to match the spin of the nucleus and then a nudge to the left to make sure he was clear of the other craft. Within a foot or two of where he wanted to be, he didn’t risk over-controlling the craft; he just gave it a tap “down” toward the nucleus.
“Now!” he exclaimed in a tense whisper, almost as if afraid his voice would cause the ship to go off target or open up a jet underneath him—anything to spoil what he’d done to get the craft where it needed to be.
“Standby,” Kamara said in a harsh whisper back. “One’s locked. Two’s locked. Firing!”
He pressed the two buttons and the harpoons lanced out into the rock below them as the craft touched town on the nucleus. The lines retracted as the craft rebounded from the gentle impact and then gently snugged them into place.
“Fuck,” Bowden said as he let out the breath he’d been unconsciously holding. “That’s an approach I hope to never have to repeat.”
“You need to fly with us RockHounds more,” Kamara said with a half smile. “We do all the fun flying.”
“You can keep it.” Bowden’s visor had been starting to fog, but now that he was breathing a bit more normally, it cleared quickly. “What now?”
“I talked to the woman on the radio while you ran the approach. Her name is Malanye Raptis. She landed on the nucleus without any problems, but a jet opened up next to her and destroyed her craft. She had just about given up when I called her.
“I don’t want to stay here any longer than we have to; it’s too unstable. Unfortunately, though, our trip here is going to necessitate some repairs, and we’re going to need more fuel to get back. On the good side, I have a repair kit and Raptis has plenty of fuel she isn’t going to be needing anymore. While I fix our ship, why don’t you go to her ship and help her bring the fuel over? She said she would meet you at the boarding ladder.”
“Sure thing.” Bowden stood up slowly to keep from bouncing off the ceiling. There was indeed gravity on the nucleus, but, as Kamara had warned, it was extremely light. What Kamara hadn’t mentioned was that “down” wasn’t actually straight down. Due to the comet’s shape, gravity actually pulled him down and to the side slightly. The pull wasn’t strong, but it was enough to be a little disconcerting and disorienting.
Having gotten used to operating in zero-gee conditions over the last several weeks, though, having a little gravity made things marginally easier as there was a little “down” to help with momentum control. You didn’t lose your mass with weightlessness, so stopping in zero-gee was difficult. On the ground, you used friction to stop, but if you tried to stop against the floor in space, you just bounced off it—there was nothing to hold you to it. He quickly found that the only way you stopped was by grabbing onto something, and he understood why the astronauts always seemed to move slowly on the space shuttle. Pushing off hard meant you had a significantly greater impact with whatever you were aiming at, and you ran the risk of breaking bones and dislocating joints when you tried to stop yourself.
Operating in heavy suits only increased your mass and made the resulting impact even more brutal. You had to move carefully or you ran the risk of killing yourself.
Bowden exited through the airlock and climbed carefully down the ladder to the surface. Heeding Kamara’s warning, he moved cautiously across the intervening fifty meters to the other ship. His eyes wanted to focus on the erupting matter pouring from the comet and follow it up and away from the surface, until it was lost in the fog above them, and he had to focus his vision on the craft to keep from getting overwhelmed by the display.
The initial eruption had started next to her craft, but it had wandered down the seam and was now about twenty meters on the far side of the packet. He kept telling himself that, while the jet was close enough to be a distraction—and a real danger if the jet should move back closer again—it was not something he had to worry about. Be aware of, yes, but not worry about. Somehow simply knowing the distinction existed didn’t make it believable in his mind.
He made it to the ship and climbed the ladder to find a space-suited woman waiting for him. She was dark-haired and considerably shorter than Bowden. After a couple of seconds staring at her, not knowing what to do, she tapped the side of her head and held up three fingers. Bowden turned his suit radio to channel three. “Hi,” he said, unsure of how to continue. When she looked at him strangely, he smiled and added in the local SpinDog lingo, “I’m Kevin Bowden.”
“Thank you for coming,” the woman replied in SpinDog. “I’m Malanye Raptis.” She cocked her head at him. “Wait. You are one of the…Terrans? What are you doing out here?” She craned her head to the side to look around him. “And what are you doing with a RockHound ship?”
“I was training with Kamara when we heard your distress call, and we came to help. He’s fixing our ship—we took some damage on the way in here—and he sent me to see if you had fuel you could spare.”
The woman laughed. “I do, and it isn’t doing me much good here. We can run hoses over to your ship. I will attach them. Meet me underneath the port wing.”
“Okay,” Bowden said, and he went back down the ladder and stood under the wing. Most of the area was ice, and he moved to the single rocky spot visible. Then he realized the rock might be like the cork in a pressurized bottle, just waiting to blow off, and he stepped back to the ice…which he realized was even more likely to blow off. He stepped back onto the rock and sighed, saying a quick prayer that the whole area would remain stable for a few minutes longer.
Waiting gave him a moment to study his surroundings, and he shook his head as the enormity was almost enough to overwhelm him. He was the first human to stand on a comet. Well, the first he knew of, anyway. No telling what the people on Earth had done in the couple of centuries since he’d been abducted.
Without warning, a ten-centimeter-diameter hose drifted down from above. He started to reach out and catch it, but then caught himself. Having no idea what it was made of—and therefore its mass—he let it drift to the ground. It made a big cloud of ice crystals when it hit; it had massed more than he’d originally thought.
After another minute, a second hose came down, followed by Raptis. Her suit gave a small braking jet just before she touched down, then she dropped the last few centimeters gracefully.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” she asked. “Grab a hose. We need to get the fuel out of my ship before the jet decides to come back over here and finish what it started.” She picked up one of the hose ends and began trudging toward Kamara’s ship.
Bowden grabbed the other one after a couple of seconds and followed in her footsteps, trying to mimic her flowing, slightly bouncing steps that allowed her to go a lot faster than Bowden’s earlier cautious pace.
Kamara was on the starboard wing when they arrived. He tapped the side of his head and held his arms out to the side, palms up. Raptis held up three fingers, and Kamara joined them on the frequency. “Just finishing up here. What took you so long?”
“Your student is about as useful—and as space-acclimated—as a newborn,” Raptis replied.
“You might want to speak a little nicer about him,” Kamara replied. “He’s the one who said we needed to come get you, and the one who piloted my ship to get us here.”
“He did?” A new note of appreciation tempered her tone.
“Yes.”
The woman sighed over the connection. “Well, it was a nice landing,” she admitted.
“Ready,” Kamara said. He stood at the wing’s edge, holding out his hands.
Raptis coiled up some extra hose and then tossed up the end she was holding. Five meters above her, Kamara braced himself and caught the end. The hose snaked upward as he went to attach it to the fuselage. He returned a minute later and held out his hands again. “Ready for the other.”
Knowing it was coming, Bowden had coiled it like Raptis had done, but his toss wasn’t as accurate, and the slightly different gravity pulled it away from the craft. Kamara leaned out but wasn’t able to reach it.
“Want me to do it?” Raptis asked.
“No,” Bowden replied, unwilling to admit he wasn’t up to the task. He coiled it again, looked up to see that Kamara was in position, and tossed it up again. This time, he adjusted for the altered gravity by aiming at the tip of the wing. It drifted away—missing it by a centimeter or two—and rose to where Kamara could grab it. He went to attach it to the craft.
Bowden turned to Raptis, satisfaction in his eyes, only to receive a vision of her backside as she walk-bounced back toward her ship. Bowden shook his head then chuckled. Leave it to an aviator to turn hose tossing into a macho competition.
“What else do you need me to do?” Bowden asked.
“Get back to the cockpit and be ready to flip the switches when I tell you to.”
“You got it.” Bowden went back through the airlock and sat in the pilot’s seat. He’d never done a refueling before—normally, the station’s ground crew handled it—but he was able to follow along and flip the switches for Kamara when he called for them. Fifteen minutes later, they were almost finished. Raptis had brought extra fuel with her, expecting to return from much farther away, and it was enough to completely fill Kamara’s ship. During that time, Raptis had made two trips between the ships.
“Emergency breakaway!” Kamara yelled. “Emergency breakaway. Turn off all switches!”
Bowden’s hand flew across the panel. “They’re off!” he called back.
“Disconnecting!” he shouted.
Bowden hurried to the starboard window and looked back. His eyes widened, and his mouth dropped open in horror. The ejecta jet had returned to Raptis’s craft and blown it upward off the comet. Kamara had disconnected one hose, and it snaked back toward the ship while Kamara wrestled with the other, held taut as Raptis’s ship pulled away from them.
Kamara’s ship shifted, and it creaked as the wires held it in place. Bowden stared, unable to figure out anything he could do to help. Which would break first? The wires holding Kamara’s ship? The hose? Something in Kamara’s ship? Bowden had no idea.
Finally, Kamara succeeded in detaching the hose, but it snapped up, smashed into his faceplate, and hurled him up off the wing. Motion from the ground caught his eye as Raptis launched herself up after the cartwheeling Kamara.
“Kamara, come in!” Bowden called. No response. “Kamara, are you okay?” Still no response.
“I’m tracking him,” Raptis said, “but I don’t have much fuel in my suit. I can get him, but you’re going to have to come get us. I don’t have enough to return.”
“Shit,” Bowden said. “Shit, shit, shit.” Kamara gone; maybe dead. Raptis gone Dutchman in space after him. What do I do?
“First things first,” he muttered. “Gotta go after them. Start ship.”
He ran through the ship’s start-up sequence, once again wishing for a checklist to ensure he didn’t forget anything. He got two steps reversed and had to go back and redo them. If I get out of this, I am by God putting together a checklist.
Bowden finally got the motors going but the ship wouldn’t lift off. Damn it, the harpoons! He shuffled over to the other seat and looked at the harpoon panel. The button with the cover caught his eye. Emergency Release. Perfect. He flipped up the cage over it and mashed the button. He felt two pops!, then the ship started drifting away from the comet…heading toward the eruption that had already claimed Raptis’s ship. He pushed off toward the other side of the cockpit, harder than he’d intended, and crashed into the port window, bruising his left forearm. As he rebounded, he snagged his seat and pulled himself into it.
He tried to attach his straps, but his left arm burned like fire every time he moved it. He settled for only latching the lap belt, which would at least hold him in place, and concentrated on flying.