Saturn Rukh (37 page)

“Doc!” interrupted Rod with an annoyed bark. “To
hell
with our long-term health. It’s our short-term health I’m worried about. The first Russian cosmonauts stayed in free fall more than a year without gee-stress exercises. Sure ...their bones shrank and their muscles got so weak they couldn’t stand up when they came back to Earth, but they recovered after a few months. We can do the same.”

While Dan took Jeeves through the ship’s mass budget, item by item, the others picked at their dinners. Finally, Dan turned from the console. His face was not happy.

“We can strip two tons of spares and nonessential equipment from the storage and engineering sectors. By reducing the water and air reserves to two tons each, we can cut another seven tons. Cleaning out the waste tanks and reducing the food supply to the minimum required for the one-year journey back will result in another three-and-a-half-ton saving. Then, assuming that we dump the habitats, saturnsuits, and spacesuits, we can shave off another ton. The stripped mass is thirty-six tons.”

“That doesn’t sound like enough,” said Rod. “What did Jeeves say?”

“The required fuel at takeoff is sixty-nine tons.”

“We only have sixty,” said Rod, pausing before he put another bite of his dinner in his mouth. “Not good enough.” He finished his bite and started to chew mechanically at his food, his flickering eyes showing that his brain was still in high gear. “Got to do something about that burn at apogee. It’s costing us four klecs.” He swallowed and turned to Chastity. “Think you can harpoon one of those ice blocks at the Trojan point and brake us to a halt, Chass?”

Chastity, who had been uncharacteristically silent for a long time, brought herself back from her own self-induced problem-solving trance.

“Already looked at that earlier,” she said. “Even assuming that I hit my target, the penetrator doesn’t pull out under the strain, and the tether doesn’t snap under the four-gee stress, to get rid of the four-klec velocity difference before we run out of tether requires getting rid of over two-and-a-half gigawatts of heat. The radiators would melt almost instantly. Can’t stop that way.”

“If we can’t use the tether, then why take it along?” asked Pete. “I don’t remember you mentioning that in your list of cuts, Doc.”

“I didn’t!” said Dan, his face brightening up. “There must be tons of mass available there. Jeeves and I didn’t include it in the first round of cuts because the tether is being used to hold the reactor.” He headed back to the console inside the engineering sector door.

“If we leave the tether behind, then that means we leave Peregrine stuck with the burden of the reactor,” said Sandra, a disturbed frown on her face.

“I’m sure if you were to ask Peregrine, she would be glad to bear that burden rather than have her good friend Sandra die of starvation,” said Rod in an irritatingly patronizing tone, made all the worse by the fact that the speech was delivered with Rod’s eyes not looking amicably at Sandra, but instead focused firmly on Dan’s back, seemingly trying to pull a solution to their predicament out of Dan by sheer willpower.

When Dan finally turned back from the console, Rod instantly knew the answer. “Got four more tons off,” said Dan.
“Sexdent
is down to thirty-two tons total mass.”

“How much did we miss by?” asked Rod.

“To get our required burn of thirty-two klecs, we need sixty-one tons of meta,” replied Dan.

“And we have sixty …” said Rod in a resigned tone. He looked around at his crew, taking command with his personality. “You can’t fight the cold reality of the rocket equations. It looks like we’re not going home anytime soon. We’ll just have to wait for the rescue ship to get here, then use the last of our fuel to go up to meet them.”

There was a long silence as the crew faced the seriousness of their situation.

“It sure doesn’t look good,” Dan finally said. “Even if the tether and reactor survive the two years it will take for the rescue ship to arrive, we’ll be close to death from malnutrition. The chemsyns can make simple carbohydrates, but they can’t make all the vitamins we need.”

“And every liter of carbohydrate costs us about three liters of meta,” Pete reminded them.

“We have to meet the rescue ship at least halfway,” Rod reminded them. “If we have to start using meta to keep us alive, then we’re as good as dead.”

“When the time comes to die,” said Sandra, “I hope we can be brave enough to end our lives properly.”

“Wha’dya mean?” said Pete. “I’m going to fight on to the bitter end.”

“Before we die, we should relieve our host of the burden we placed on it. We should cut the lines that hold
Sexdent
on Peregrine’s back, have Peregrine roll us off, and use the last of the meta in the ship to unwind the Hoytether from around Peregrine’s body,” said Sandra.

“You’re right,” said Dan. “If we don’t, then we’ll be condemning the poor creature to carry us around for the rest of its life—-like the albatross around the neck of the Ancient Mariner.”

Sandra rose, a determined look on her face. “But until that time comes,” she said, “I’m going to make myself useful by learning as much as I can about the rukhs and the other life-forms on Saturn and send it back to Earth so the follow-on mission gets off to a good start in their relationship with the lifeforms on this planet.”

Rod also rose, his face even more somber than Sandra’s. “Things don’t look good. I would recommend that each of you make sure your affairs back on Earth are arranged properly to take into account the possibility of your death.” He then smiled grimly at them as he headed up the ladder to his habitat. “But we’re not dead
yet!
Carry on ...”

The Sun set. The partially eaten dinners were carefully put away, to be finished another day. They now couldn’t allow a single calorie to go to waste. Chastity, scheduled for night watch, cycled Pete out the airlock. There, Pete explained to a waiting Uppereye that she would have to educate herself by talking with Jeeves through the portable console, since Sandra wasn’t coming out for language lessons this night. Pete then ducked in between two of the engines at the base of
Sexdent
and squirmed into the meta factory airlock.

After resetting the airlock so it was ready for Pete’s return, Chastity dropped by the ladies’ before she started her night watch duties. She opened her private locker, and after touching up her makeup, she slid the cluster of jangling bracelets off her left wrist and replaced them with the solid-silver-hinged bangle from the locker. The bangle was her private “fat” detector. When the two heavy half-circles of solid metal closed neatly around her wrist, and the heavy catch clicked solidly shut like a handcuff, then she was at just the right weight. This time, however, she had to squeeze hard on the two halves before the clasp caught.

“Half rations for you for a while, Chastity Blaze,” she chided herself. She left the bangle on her wrist to remind herself to avoid eating any snacks during her night-shift coffee breaks.

~ * ~

Five hours later, Rod rose with the Sun, brain full of ideas that might possibly be a solution to their problem. As he climbed out of his habitat, he saw Chastity busy at the scottyboard console, working some tether trajectory problems. She too had obviously been coming up with new ideas all night, and was busily working on them, her silver bangle occasionally clicking on the console edge as she manipulated icons on the screen. Rod went to the toilet on the deck below. When he came back up the ladder, Chastity was still engrossed in working with the calculations and diagrams that covered the scottyboard screen.

“Time for me to take over,” Rod said as he sat down at the pilot console with his squeezer of coffee. “Why don’t you take a break?” Chastity broke from her concentration, looked around the control deck, then out the window at the dawn.

“Where has the time gone?” she remarked, violet eyes blinking tiredly. “Think I’ll get some coffee and reheat my dinner from last night for breakfast—can’t afford to waste a calorie now.”

Chastity was halfway through breakfast when a call came through the emergency speakers on the control deck.

“HELP!”

“It’s
Pete!”
yelled Chastity, suddenly springing alive and dashing toward the ladder. “He never came back in from closing down the meta factory.” In her haste, her foot slipped halfway up the ladder and she fell heavily back down onto the facilities deck, breaking her fall with her left arm. She picked herself up and climbed the ladder again, more carefully this time. As she climbed, she favored her left wrist, which was turning black and blue under the bangle.

“HELP!” came the call again.

“Jeeves!” commanded Rod. “What’s wrong with Pete?”

“I do not know the cause of his cry,” replied Jeeves. “Until a few moments ago he was walking through the feather forest. Suddenly he called ‘Help!’ and I switched his cry to the emergency channel.”

“I thought he was in the meta factory, closing it down,” said Chastity angrily. “What the hell is he doing wandering around in the forest at night?”

“Help!” came the cry again. “Sh’ave me!”

“He’s drunk!” snarled Chastity in disgust.

“The important thing is to get to him as soon as possible,” said Rod. “Where is he, Jeeves?”

“I can get a position location by analyzing his radio link signals,” replied Jeeves. “But there must be some problem with either the signal reception or the position-finding algorithm, because his indicated position is illogical.”

“Illogical or not, show it to me!”

The screen in front of Rod filled with a schematic drawing of Peregrine. There was a flashing red spot at a point above the leading edge of the wing.

“This is the point where the first cry for help came from,” said Jeeves. “That position is logical. It is at a position on the surface of the wing.” A second flashing light appeared below the first one—at a point in empty space below the leading edge of the wing.

“This is the point the position-finding algorithm finds for the present location of the cries. That position is illogical.”

“He’s slipped off the front edge of the wing and is hanging below it on something,” said Chastity. “I guess he wasn’t too drunk to realize he should be using a safety line. Jeeves! Wake Mouser and have it meet us at the airlock door exit with all the climbing lines and hardware we used during the reactor expedition.” She turned to look at Rod. “This is going to be like a mountain rescue attempt. I’m going to need all the help I can get.”

“Right,” said Rod, activating the icon that broadcast announcements inside the habitats.

“Sandra! Dan! Up and at ‘em!”

With Sandra staying behind on command watch, Dan, Rod, and Chastity—backs to each other in the airlock—rapidly dressed in their saturnsuits. Chastity found that the catch on her silver bangle had been damaged in her fall off the ladder. Try as she might, she couldn’t get the clasp to open and the bangle was much too tight to slip off over her hand. With Pete’s life literally hanging by a thread, she quit trying to get it off and just pulled her elastic jacket on over the bangle and folded the cuff back out of the way.

Once out of the airlock door, Chastity checked out her climbing team. Each of them was loaded with as much line as he could carry, plus pockets full of belaying rings and anchor lines designed to encircle featherroots. Chastity had brought along a pocket full of some of her thicker bracelets and finger rings in case she needed to improvise something. They then set off in a bouncing lope across Peregrine’s taut balloon-like skin, Jeeves guiding them to the leading edge just above Pete’s location.

A half hour later, Chastity found herself rappelling down a large black feather tree right at the edge of Peregrine’s wing. Her helmet light on high, she looked over and down.

“I see him,” said Chastity.

“You don’t sound very pleased,” remarked Dan.

“I’m not,” said Chastity. “He’s hanging on to the tip of a feather tree and it’s blowing like crazy in the wind. What’s worse, it looks as though he wasn’t using a safety line. The minute he loses his grip on the feather, he’s a goner.” She raised her voice. “Pete! Can you hear me?”

“Yesh ...” came the strained response. “Hurry ... I can’d hold on much longer.”

“Still drunk!” Rod swore loudly. “You’d think by now he’d be scared sober.”

“Really great!” complained Chastity. “He’s going to be no help at all in that state. I’ll have to rescue him as if he were unconscious.” She started to fashion a crude sit harness from the free end of a spare line, laboriously cutting off lengths of tough macropolyhextube line with the less-than-razor-sharp blade of her Swiss Army knife, then tying them together into leg loops, belt loops, and connecting harness. As she was working, she became aware that something was moving toward her over the top of the feather canopy. It was Uppereye, crawling over to see what Chastity was doing. For a second, Chastity thought their problems were over. When they first met, Uppereye had picked her up and Chastity had been forced to hold on to a climbing rung to keep from being hauled off. Although Pete weighed more than she did, perhaps Uppereye could just reach down and pluck Pete from his precarious perch. She instantly rejected the idea. She wasn’t sure that Uppereye had the strength needed, and besides, with Pete drunk and scared, it was highly likely he would fight off his alien rescuer and end up dropping to his death. She then had another thought and stopped what she was doing to unhook another spare line from her backpack.