A Tight Fit
by Marie Vibbert
The Lunar Orbit Gravity Interferometer Assembly (LOGIA) was nearing completion and Stephanie Kovacic hated it. She hated racking in a zero-g bunk in a tiny tin can that smelled like everyone’s farts, and she really hated being grunt labor on the project. LOGIA was the kind of thing she’d always dreamed of building; not literally, one screw at a time, but sitting at a design station. That was why she’d signed up with the Space Force. To make great things, not lug a wrench. Still, a successful tour as a tech, with all the logged space time, and hopefully an honorable discharge, meant she could score her pick of engineering programs dirtside. For now, she braced herself against the wall of Lateral Tube A, drilling insulation into place.
It was a dark and featureless workspace, like a mine shaft barely wider than the length of her body. When they finished assembling the interferometer equipment, this area would no longer be pressurized and heated, and would have barely enough room for a rat’s ass to squeeze through around the calibrated mounts and wiring for the tube in the center of the tube, all to make the perfectly protected space for a laser to pass unmolested by anything other than gravity.
Her team member, Christa, gestured excitedly down the long, empty tube. “Did you read the brief? The first mirror assembly arrives next week. The reflecting surface is going to be liquid. I can’t wait to see the magnetic suspension. We’re going to be able to say we hung a liquid mirror on nothingness. It’ll be able to record a fly walking on Proxima Centauri.”
“On the star? That would be one dead fly.” Stephanie finished her panel and kicked off the wall to float to the other side of Christa. “We’re building a tube. A fancy, sciency tube. And there’re two more just like it.” She gestured vaguely toward Lateral Tube B. Unlike terrestrial interferometers, this bad boy was going to have three axes of measurement, which Stephanie refused to admit out loud was awesome.
Oblivious, Christa gestured. “That’s the point. By comparing the photons in perpendicular—”
“You already gave that lecture,” Stephanie cut her off, lifting the next section of insulation into place. And she knew how interferometers worked, thanks.
“Excuse me for loving engineering,” Christa said, which made Stephanie more annoyed, because she loved engineering more than Christa could imagine, and she should have picked up on that by now. Christa shifted the panel she was attaching and sighed, frowning at it. “Sorry. That came out wrong. Truth is, I’m worried about the Cryptons and I’m trying to keep my mind off of it.”
Stephanie snorted. The Crypton Colony on Mars, stupid of name and stupid of mission, had been making threats for almost a year now. “Angry Martians aren’t going to come all this way to attack three big, empty tubes.” Stephanie grabbed a support strut so she could bop Christa on the head without flying away.
Christa had to catch herself on the outer wall of the tube. Instead of laughing the roughhousing off like usual, she gave Stephanie a murderous look. “I can’t just forget about the danger. I’ve got two boys at home.”
“Aw, I’ll tell Ralph you called him a boy.”
“Hell with you. Ralph and two boys. The Cryptons are building rockets and we’re one of the nearest military-controlled sites.”
Stephanie bent to pat her friend on the shoulder. Christa was highly strung. It came from being a mom. “You know any information we get is months out of date. Why worry?”
Christa shook her head. “Can you think of something more likely to be flagged ‘bad for morale—censor’ than working rockets?”
When she wasn’t waxing poetic about physics, Christa loved to make herself more on edge. Stephanie blew a raspberry. “The Cryptons are just a bunch of whiny rich dudes who discovered they couldn’t breathe market research and eat ad revenue.”
“You should be more empathetic. There was supposed to be a government base on Mars before the Moon Base ended up taking all the resources. They planned on regular supply shipments they could buy into. What else could they do? They swore to attack military targets if they don’t get a base. Military targets like us.”
“How do you even know they said that?”
“Petrov plays back his briefings on echo shift because he thinks we’re all asleep. The brass aren’t going to send anyone to Mars. They don’t care how hungry and desperate the Cryptons get.”
Stephanie fitted the next panel. “I don’t, either. They’re one hundred million miles away. I’m more scared of garden—”
The steady light overhead flashed, and Communications Officer Tim Perez’s voice intoned, “General quarters. General quarters. All hands to battle stations.”
Christa gave her a cold look—“Gnomes?”ð—before kicking off down the tube toward the command module. Stephanie quickly strapped down her tools to follow.
Commander Petrov was floating over the communications station, which was already staffed, so Stephanie strapped in at tactical. She’d trained on all of the stations, but Stephanie felt itchy sitting down at her secondary station when it wasn’t a drill. The USSF had to make do with fewer people than stations because of the expense of flying bodies into orbit. At least it wasn’t her tertiary station.
Christa strapped in at engineering, calmly taking in the displays. “Operations nominal, Commander.”
“Confirmed, we have authority to fire on incoming object,” Tim said from the communications station.
“Kovacic,” Petrov called to Stephanie.
There it was on her display: A projectile heading straight for them, a massive rock. How had this not been seen days ago?
She had a blank moment of fear, then shoved it down. The target was far enough away, they had minutes. The telemetry was coming from a ballistic mount on the lunar surface dark side. And Christa wasn’t the sort to say, “I told you so.”
Stephanie tapped confirmation as the computer honed in. “I have a lock.”
“Luna confirms telemetry,” Tim said.
“Someone stuck a signal scrambler on that rock,” Commander Petrov said, answering Stephanie’s silent question. “Keep an eye out. There may be others.”
Stephanie’s fingers wanted to shake. How many times had she sat in this chair? Twice? Just like training, she told herself. Pretend it’s a training run. She clicked through different simulated strikes, the International Moon Base and the nearest artificial satellites outlined in bright yellow. “Computer says all debris from explosion will miss civilian targets. Ready to fire.”
Petrov said, “Take the shot.”
She held her breath and fired. There was no sound, of course, no feedback from outside the screens, but Stephanie felt the thrill of it, actually firing, the video feedback, the radar menace vanishing, replaced by many scattered inert objects.
“Neutralized!” Tim cheered.
Stephanie felt her shoulders drop. She smirked at Christa. “Told you those Cryptons were punks.”
Then her alerts for Luna habitats blinked out one by one, and an alert flashed in the corner of her screen. “Wait . . . . . . . . . what?”
Tim snapped, “Debris from the explosion hit International Moon Base.”
“But I ran the simulations . . .” Stephanie’s world slowed down. She’d had to guess the composition of the rock, and had gone with the default all-stone, because it was a rock, right? She reran the simulation for half ice. There it was, her mistake, clear as piss. “It . . . . . . . . . it was a combination of rock and ice. The debris scattered wide . . . . . . . . . I’m reading hits.” Sterile text and plain lines drew out the damage, helpfully bringing up the Moon Base schematic and coloring sections red. “Debris hit the power plant, a greenhouse, and the battery depot.” That wasn’t so bad, was it? Not the living quarters.
All eyes turned to Tim, who was the only one moving frantically now. “No on-site damage reports yet. Not getting a distress . . . . . . . . . comms down . . . . . . . . . trying to contact Lunar Control.” Tim looked up. “They’re completely dark.”
Power plant and batteries. “They’ll be okay, right?” Stephanie didn’t believe it as she said it. She’d goofed. Catastrophically. Tragically. She’d saved her own life and three “science tubes” at the cost of however many people were down there. “They’ll get the power back online?”
Commander Petrov hung from a handhold over their external view monitor, staring at the stark gray lunar surface. “They’ve got twelve hours before they’re in the lunar night. They’ll freeze to death.”
Tim said, “Contacting Pentagon. Nearest other station is Array Alpha. Hailing them.”
Petrov turned to Christa. “Chun, confirm our transport pod is operational.”
“On it.” Christa unsnapped her harness.
“Perez, find a place to take the evacuees.”
Tim shook his head helplessly. “Array Alpha communications down—they were targeted.”
Stephanie unhooked her harness. “I’ll help Christa.”
Commander Petrov held up one finger. “Stay there, Technician. We don’t know what else is coming our way.”
Stephanie itched to leave, to do something other than stare at her screen and rerun the simulations, finding eighty different ways she could have done her job without taking out the International Moon Base and dooming everyone there to a slow freezing death.
Tim reported in a flat tone, only the speed of his words showing his stress, “Array Alpha neutralized two bogies, lost some solar panels in the debris, now operating on emergency power. Contacting Solar Observation. After them, there’s just James Webb Station at L2 close enough to help out.”
“We can bring the evacuees here.” Stephanie turned to face Petrov. “We can get down and back in time. Everyone else is at least ten hours out.”
“We only have six racks. There are fifty colonists.”
Fifty. That was the cost she’d incurred by not slowing down one fucking step. “We have the tubes. They’re heated and pressurized.”
“I know you want to help, Technician, but that’s scientific equipment.”
“Not yet, now it’s just insulation and mounting brackets.”
Petrov’s fists twisted on the handhold over the comms station. “It’s not approved for civilian habitation.”
“Sir,” Tim said, “Solar Observation has no transport currently, also no interior space for more than five people. James Webb is scrambling to assist, but they only have a two-man capsule, and their ETA would be thirteen hours to our six.”
“This is Chun,” Christa’s voice came. “Transport pod’s powered up.”
Petrov let go with one hand to wipe his face. “Good, turns out we need it. Looks like we’re putting them in the tubes.”
Thirteen hours was considered their closest neighbors. Because space. Imagine if their station had been at one of the Lagrange points, like it should have been if they hadn’t all been taken.
Petrov asked, “Comms, trajectory?”
“Already computed. Looks like we have a window for deorbit burn to IMB in ninety-two minutes.”
“Not bad. Chun, are you go to launch in ninety-two minutes?”
“Should be. I’d like a hand pulling the seats to make more room.”
Their space station—really just the command module, the hab module, and the docking module linked together off the crux of the science tubes—was so dinky Stephanie could hear Christa grunting and the bangs of the torn-out seat assemblies floating into walls as she chucked them out of the pod. It felt mean, selfish, listening to the grunts of effort, her only struggle to stare as hard as she could at the screen.
“I can help,” Stephanie said.
Petrov shook his head. “Maintain your post.”
A few more bangs and Christa radioed, breathless, “That’s gotta be enough. Don’t want to take too long. I’m starting the preflight checks.”
Stephanie twisted in her harness, lifting to face Petrov. “Let me go with her, sir. It’s my fault. I should help evacuate the colonists.”
Tim said, “I can signal Morse code toward the colony using our safety lights, let them know we’re coming.”
Petrov said, “Do that,” to Tim, and to Stephanie, “Stay where you are, Kovacic.”
“But I screwed up.”
“Not a reason to send you out there, Technician.” He let go of the ceiling hold and his hand landed heavily on her shoulder, squeezing briefly. “This is where I need you. Every seat we fill on that craft is a colonist not saved.”
Stephanie turned back to her display, feeling like a wet bag of failure.
For the next three hours, Stephanie manned tactical while listening to updates from Tim. With only his words to know what had happened elsewhere, everyone froze in place every time he inhaled to start speaking. “Array Alpha back online. Lost four crew, two are in their lifeboat heading earthward. Confirmed hit was a rock, not seen until too close. Webb crew still on their way, ETA too late but they wish to continue.” Then, with a relieved sigh, “Another target was neutralized en route to ISS. Confirmed—similar rock composition, stealth module recovered.” He pushed back, looking up at Petrov, “That’s six rocks now accounted for. Pentagon suspects two to three more, but it’s unlikely they’d have enough resources to launch more.”
Petrov frowned thoughtfully a long time, then let go of his handhold. “Keep me updated. I’m going to the hab to report in.”
“Yes, sir.”
Stephanie felt stillness descend in Petrov’s wake, just she and Tim strapped into chairs. None of the various displays she could call up said anything different than they had two hours ago. She’d rerun the simulation for every combination of rock and ice and crystal the system knew how to model. Christa was in the pod on her way to the Moon, three hours out and three more to arrive.
“Okay, Kovacic, hit the rack.” The next shift technician poked her arm with a foot.
“Just a minute.” She flicked through all the screens again. She was exhausted, and she hated sitting there, knew she wasn’t accomplishing anything, but going to rest felt like giving up.
“I’d take your break if I could, drama queen,” the tech said, poking her again.
So she unhooked herself and pulled her way slowly to the hab. Stephanie drew her sleeping sack around herself, tying herself in, thinking about Christa, how she could be earnest, honest, love the science without feeling like a faker. How she had two kids at home. Stephanie had never done anything so big as bring a whole human into existence.
“You joke all the time because you’re afraid,” Christa had said, three days into their tour together, looking at her with that flat, calm sureness, so infuriatingly knowing, so infuriatingly right.
They were assembling their living pod, the head, specifically. Stephanie had made the vacuum poop hose “kiss” Christa, and then had mimed making out with it when that didn’t get a rise out of her.
“I’m not afraid,” Stephanie said, after too long a pause and with the wrong inflection. Christa swam down to the floor, screwing the hose in place.
“I’m not afraid to be here,” Stephanie clarified, louder and surer.
“I know.” Christa nodded at the hose in her hands, twisting hard. “You’re afraid to be seen.”
“Uh . . . . . . . . . you’ve all seen me naked because I do not go without washing everything.”
“You know what I mean.”
Seen. All the stuff inside that she covered up with humor and crassness. Something about that moment, this competence and calm from this slightly older woman, made Stephanie drop the act and confess. “I wanted to get into engineer training. The recruiter said I could . . . . . . . . . but I didn’t make the cut. I was always good with tools, with math. That was what I was, in high school. Now . . . . . . . . . I’m worried I’m not anything.”
And Christa looked up at her, a long, hard-to-read look, and then snorted. “Dude. Recruiters LIE.”
“Thanks. If they lied, it’s not that I wasn’t as good as they hoped, I was never good enough.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Christa frowned, giving her this serious look like she was about to impart the secret of the universe. “I mean they had a number of techs to fill and were never going to look at your scores. You don’t have to tell dumb jokes around me unless you really want to.”
To her own surprise, Stephanie felt . . . . . . . . . relieved. Let off the hook. It wasn’t the end of Stephanie making dumb jokes, of course it wasn’t, but later that week, when she figured out a way to get the microwave mounted when they’d been shipped three fewer screws than needed, Christa had said, rather pointedly, “Good with tools and math,” and patted her arm.
Stephanie was good with machines. She could do everything that comms station allowed and a few it didn’t. She could screw a bolt flush anywhere on Earth or in orbit. She’d turned seven screws into ten with two improvised braces.
So why did she feel like a waste of space?
The duty officer’s voice came over the general address, “Engineering crew to docking.”
Stephanie wriggled out of her sleeping sack. No way she was missing this.
She caught a handhold outside the docking airlock. “What’s going on?”
Commander Petrov was there, and the first engineer. “Chun got over half the colonists in the first run by stripping the secondary fuel tank and landing couches, but the change in weight and configuration made it list on docking. We’re not getting a seal.”
Stephanie stared at the comms station. How useless she would be there right now. The chatter in the room continued, going nowhere.
“Shuttle firing steering thruster four . . . . . . . . . no change.”
“Any other ideas?”
Stephanie thought about bending braces, turning two screws into nine. “Sir, I can go EVA.”
Petrov gave her a narrowed-eye look. “We’re not sure how to solve this.”
“Sir, I am confident I can get the lock to join.”
Stephanie held her breath. Was she? Did she really believe she could do this?
Petrov slowly nodded. “Okay, Technician. Move. We can’t keep them in there all night. They’re on stored oxygen, and it’s calibrated for a crew of sixteen maximum.”
Stephanie called Christa as soon as she had checked her radio and fastened her helmet liner. “How’s it going in there?”
“I never wanted to know how a sardine felt.”
Stephanie took the helmet from the crewman helping her dress and ducked into it. “Ah, I wish I was there. I’d unleash a long fart straight from the sulfurous pits of hell.”
From the aft airlock, Stephanie had to hand-over-hand along the top of the habitat module to get to the shuttle, which was itself a module. It was what they had lived in while building the habitat. It should have joined up the same way. She could see already that the shuttle was listing port.
She got around the top and saw that the joining assembly was smashed, having hit at an angle, too hard. “Jeez, Chun. What did this dock say to piss you off?”
“My elbow is in someone else’s spleen. Less joke; more get me out of here.”
Stephanie stared at the damage and felt, suddenly, stupid and alone. She hadn’t brought enough tools. She hadn’t considered not having the full ring at all. She lowered herself next to the damage and felt herself beginning to hyperventilate.
Christa’s voice crackled in her ear. “Hey, sorry for making you save the stupid science tube.”
Stephanie closed her eyes and gripped the ring through one thick glove. “I fucking love this stupid science tube.”
She pictured the parts and miscellaneous leftover junk in the assembly prep area. The bits that hadn’t fit and waited. Then she opened her eyes. “Command, I need some parts moved into the service airlock.”
“Standing by,” Tim said.
Stephanie clipped her tether closer and floated even with the crumpled side of the dock. She slid her glove between the capsule, measuring the width in glove breadths, the point at which it got wider. She had to do this perfectly, or at least perfectly enough the shuttle could undock again and go get the last twenty colonists. So mashing the metal to fit wasn’t an option.
Christa spoke, her voice strained, “You’re good with tools and math. You can do this.”
Stephanie counted handspans and did some quick calculations. About two and a half spare struts should do it. Her lip curled into a grin. “Girl, I can make this dock stand on its ear and bark.”
Exhausted, it took longer to get out of the EVA suit than it had to get into it, and Stephanie only heard the bustle of settling the evacuees temporarily in the laser tunnels. She then had to go over the improvised rigging she’d done with the chief engineer, and participate in a long, annoyingly time-lagged, discussion with mission control about what materials would be needed to make proper repairs once the rescue ship came.
So, it was hours before she got a chance to check on the evacuees herself. Tim was already on his way back with the second group.
The evacuees were rolled up in silver heat blankets which they’d torn and tied to the wall support struts to keep themselves in place as they slept along the Vertical Tube, which was an empty cylinder, lacking the minimal run of equipment they’d started in Lateral Tubes A and B.
And then there was a plaintive howl, and Stephanie rushed to find a guilty-looking man holding a little orange kitten.
“That’s not allowed,” Stephanie said.
Christa floated over from distributing tubes of food. “Could you have told him to leave it?”
“I would have. Death to kitten.”
“Right,” Christa said, and bumped her shoulder.
They both knew she was lying. “Can I hold him?” The man curled the kitten tighter to him, glaring at her.
“The death thing was a joke. I was joking. I joke too much. It’s an insecurity thing.”
Slowly, he nodded, and Stephanie gently helped unhook the catching little claws. She lifted the kitten and stroked the soft little throat, feeling a purr that went right through her. She cleared her throat. “I don’t know if anyone told you all about the place you’re sheltering. When gravity waves hit this structure, they’ll stretch or compress it, and we’ll measure the difference in the distance with light beams.” Stephanie smiled and met Christa’s eyes. She was smiling too. They were united, in love for their science tube. “We’ll be able to detect subtle, tiny things. Like a kitten’s purr near Alpha Centauri.”
***
2023 Nebula Award Nominee Marie Vibbert has sold over seventy short stories to top magazines including Analog, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Nature, and Clarkesworld. Her debut novel, Galactic Hellcats, was long-listed for the British Science Fiction Award. By day she is a computer programmer in Cleveland, Ohio.