Saturn Rukh (6 page)

Rod spoke up to break the strained silence that followed, his voice surprising him with its loudness in the reverberating confines of the capsule. “It’s time to set up the habitats!” he said, giving the aluminum tube beside him a bang with his knuckles. The cylinder rang like a bell at the blow. “Seichi! Get out the checklist and take us through the procedure.” Seichi exited the airlock, and avoiding Chastity’s eye, went over to the engineering compartment and opened a hatch. He took out a checklist, a three-pronged holding fixture, and a tube of lubraseal.

“Remove grating between upper and lower compartments and store in the airlock ...” he started, reading the first item on the checklist. The red square on the plastic sheet turned green as he pressed it. Dan, being above them, loosened the grating segments and passed them down to Rod and Pete, who passed them to Sandra and Chastity, who stored them in the back of the airlock.

“Remove console seats and store in the airlock ...” continued Seichi. Soon the three console seats and their swivel arms had been removed from in front of the consoles and also placed in the airlock. Rod, having been through this routine many times before, took the three-pronged holding fixture from Seichi, and floated up to the upper deck to join Dan. With the console chairs gone, there was now a surprisingly large amount of room.

“Insert holding fixture inside inner habitat tube and turn central knob on fixture until it is firmly grasping the inner tube wall ...” read Seichi. Reaching down from the upper deck, Rod inserted the fixture inside the aluminum tube on the lower deck and turned the knob. He was slowly lifting the massive tube as Seichi read the next instruction.

“Slowly remove the inner habitat tube...”

“The smallest one goes under the pilot console,” Chastity reminded Rod, as she had gone through this routine many times too. Dan reached under the pilot console and removed a cover ring around the viewport window there and passed it down to Chastity to add to the stuff stored in the airlock.

“I see,” said Sandra, watching things from inside the airlock. “The six habitat tubes are stacked one inside another.”

“This is one time we discriminate among crewmembers,” said Chastity. “The big ones get the big-diameter habitat tubes and the little ones get the smaller tubes. You’re the shortest, Sandra, so that’ll be your tube.”

“Shitsurei shimasu ...
excuse me, Ms. Blaze,” said Seichi, speaking directly to Chastity for the first time since their unfortunate initial meeting. His face was controlled and devoid of emotion as he explained his objection. “The smallest habitat tube is properly mine, for it is sufficient for my purposes, and I am sure that Ms. Green would appreciate more room.”

“You are a true gentleman, Seichi,” replied Chastity with a bright smile, seeing her chance to open up dialogue with him again. There was a flicker of response in Seichi’s eyes, but then the curtain fell and he turned back to the task at hand.

“Easy does it,” said Rod, as Dan moved to help him extract the smallest inner tube from the stack. “Don’t nick the seals. That tube masses eighty-five kilos and with that much inertia, it can get out of control if you let it build up too much speed.” The two got the cylinder out—it reached almost to the top of the control deck. Chastity pulled herself up the ladder, and locking herself in place on the rungs of the ladder with her knees and ankles, added her muscular strength to the task of moving the tube horizontal so one end was pointing toward the viewport window underneath the pilot console. While the three held the massive but weightless habitat tube in place and rotated it, Seichi applied lubraseal to the elastomer seals at both ends of the tube and the ring seal around the viewport window.

“Insert inner tube into sealing ring around smallest viewport window…” continued Seichi. With Seichi, Pete, and Chastity making sure the tube didn’t tilt, Rod and Dan braced their feet against the opposite wall and pushed the tube into the ring seal. There was a series of loud clicks as latches grasped the ends of the habitat tube, connecting the tube firmly to the viewport window frame.

“Check seals for gas leaks ...” said Seichi. He raised his voice slightly and changed to a command tone. “Jeeves. Have Kitty and Puss check seals for leaks.” The computer’s inside mechbot, Puss, scurried over the ceiling, around and down under the console and around the ring seal, then returned to its nest in one of the electronics compartments. The outside mechbot, Kitty, could be heard clicking its way along the outer hull, carrying out a similar check.

“No leaks observed in viewport seal,” reported Jeeves.

“Push habitat into seal ring until fully seated ...” read Seichi. Rod and Dan pushed harder, and slowly the habitat tube slid into place until the end seal was flush with the holding bracket. Where there had once been a window, there was now a two-meter-long, ninety-centimeter-diameter bedroom, with a window at the outer space-facing end and a soundproof hatch-door at the inside end, ready to be “furnished” by its owner.

Soon the second habitat tube was in place. It was five centimeters larger than the smallest habitat, and Sandra could hardly wait to try it out.

“I’ll pop into mine and get out of the way,” she said, leaving the hatchdoor open so she could look out and see the activity as the rest of the habitat tubes were put into place.

“Say ... this is roomy,” she reported hollowly, some time later. “I can even sit up in here. That’ll make it easy getting dressed.”

“I’ve heard these habitats can hold three in a pinch,” said Pete.

“That’s about all you can do in them with three,” said Rod. “I’ve heard two is more fun.”

“Don’t listen to them, Sandra,” said Chastity. “Once you get the bedding in there, one is enough.”

Soon all six habitats were installed, and despite Chastity’s protests, she was given the largest one, 115 centimeters in diameter. The smooth outlines of the conically shaped crew capsule now bristled with six cylinders jutting out parallel to the base of the cone, the six “teeth” in
Sexdent.
Since the viewport that now formed the outside end of the habitat tube had once been set in the side of the conical spacecraft, it was set at a thirty-degree angle to the tube and was elliptical in shape. The fixture that held the viewport window to the end of the habitat tube could be rotated by a powered worm gear, so the occupant could not only look out, but look forward, aft, or to the side by merely activating the window control. Most of the crew went to sleep with their heads under the viewport, looking up at the stars. Rod and Chastity, having seen those views many times before, would sleep with their heads inward. In an emergency, they could be out the hatchdoor and into action instantly. Dan, however, turned his viewport down, so he could watch the Earth roll by underneath, watching the lights of Houston pass under, trying to determine which of those pinpricks of light was from the security floodlights illuminating the lawn of his home—with Pamela and the kids asleep inside. He even looked for his new vacation home on the Riviera, but he realized that he didn’t know where the Riviera was, and by the time Jeeves had given him directions on how to find the location, it had passed over the horizon. He was asleep when it came by the next time—dreaming about winning the Solar Lottery.
Finally,
he would have enough money to satisfy Pamela....

Chastity was the last one to use the bathrooms. She had taken advantage of the freedom of free fall and the luxury of unrushed time with no one waiting, and had given herself a complete spray-sponge scrubdown and pedicure. Glowing pink, she exited in her blue nightgown with the elastic band that kept the hem primly at her ankles. Springing lightly from her toes, she floated slowly up the ladder—guiding her way with her fingertips—to the top deck. Everyone was in their habitats, hatchdoors closed for the night.

“Dim the lights, please, Jeeves,” she said, and the control deck turned dark except for the emergency alarm switch at the pilot’s console. The ship passed over the terminator into the Earth’s shadow and the stars came out. Chastity drifted over to the engineering console to look out for a while at the stars before going to bed. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, so she could see fainter and fainter stars, her mind wandered back to the idyllic summer vacation evenings she had enjoyed when she was a young girl. She would climb out of her ground-floor bedroom window and leave the manse to wander next door into the cemetery of the country Baptist church that her father served. There she would lie on one of the wooden benches beside the path so she could look up at the stars and search for the planets.

She had dreamed, then, of somehow getting away from the tiny stultifying Idaho town she had been born in and going out in the world to see new and strange places, perhaps even going to the stars. Although she hadn’t made it to the stars—yet—she had certainly seen new and strange places. Soon she would visit an even stranger place.

As she mused in the darkness and silence, eyes taking in the splendor of the night sky, she heard the faint sound of music. It was majestic in tone and matched the majestic beauty outside the viewport. At first, she thought that her brain was just recalling some music that she had heard in the past. But as she moved her head back and forth, she realized that it was her
ears
that were picking up the sound. It was coming from below. She pulled herself down to the grating floor, and grasping the slots in the grate with her fingers, slowly turned herself around in a circle until she located the source. It was coming from one of the habitats. In the darkness, she wasn’t quite sure who it belonged to. She pulled herself over and put her ear to the habitat hatch. The music was definitely coming from this compartment. Then she finally recognized the melody. It was the “Saturn” movement from Holst’s
The Planets.

She tapped softly on the hatchdoor. The music stopped and the hatchdoor swung up. Inside was Seichi, lying on his back, bed strap over his chest. He turned on his side to look at her better, and his face grew solemn and distant as he recognized who it was. .

“That was beautiful!” exclaimed Chastity softly. She looked past his head to see that he had an electronic keyboard up against his knees. “You were playing it! It sounded like an orchestra. You’re wonderful!”

“Not so wonderful,” said Seichi, and despite his attempts to remain distant, he began to blush at the compliment. “I only placed eighth in the Yamaha Keyboard International Competition, so I went into engineering. I’m sorry my music disturbed you. I will turn down the volume.” He reached for the hatchdoor, but Chastity didn’t pull her head back.

“But I want to hear more! Will you play for me?” she asked.

Seichi hesitated.

“Please?”
she pleaded, reaching in her bejeweled hand to stroke his cheek with her star-spangled nails.

“I might disturb the others.”

Chastity turned herself around above the grating floor, and slid feet-first into Seichi’s habitat tube.

“I’ll come inside then,” she said, snuggling down next to him and pulling the hatchdoor closed behind her.

~ * ~

A few weeks later, it was time to leave. The crew had stacked away the habitats in the lower deck, and had rearranged their bedframes and cushions in a circle on the control deck floor where they would act as cushioned acceleration couches for the takeoff. Rod, Chastity, and Seichi, separated by 120 degrees around the circle, were each lying on their respective couches, looking up at one of the three holoviewports. Since they would be controlling and monitoring the ship during the takeoff, they had touchscreen consoles suspended above them by pantograph arms that came out of the side of the conical walls of the command deck. The three “passengers,” Sandra, Dan, and Pete, were strapped into their acceleration couches between the other three. The six now looked upward at the three large holoviewports, each of which contained an image of Art Dooley and the crew at Space Unlimited’s Mission Control Center who would be providing technical support for them up on their long journey to Saturn and back again. There were only three continuously staffed consoles at Mission Control Center for this mission: crew communications, vehicle telemetry, and science data handling. A large group of backup people were present today in the Control Center to witness the takeoff; some were at consoles, ready to monitor the takeoff itself, while the rest, who would be standing shift during the mission or who would be called in during the Saturn phase, were standing in the background to say good-bye. Even the observing gallery, normally empty, was crammed with newstapers and inquisitive members of the public.

“I wish I were going with you,” started Art. “I’ve always wanted to go into space, ever since I was a little kid. The closest I’ve gotten is getting to say good-bye to people like you, whom I’ve arranged to send into space.”

“Why?” asked Sandra, a little puzzled. “Certainly you could have
sometime
afforded to take a weekend trip to one of the Earth orbit hotels.”

“Claustrophobia,” replied Art, grimly. “My brother rolled me up in a rug when we were kids and wouldn’t let me out. Now, even the passenger modules on the Mars liner have walls that are too close for comfort. If you six can show that we can convert Saturn helium into meta, and cut the cost of meta fuel in space to a fraction of its present cost, then it would finally be economically feasible to build passenger spacecraft to Luna and Mars with large staterooms in them.
They
would be big enough so I too could go into space.”

The head of the science group standing in the background spoke to Sandra. “We know there’s life on Saturn. The last few reentry probes NASA sent into Saturn returned distant pictures of a number of different creatures living in the upper atmosphere; we only have good pictures of one of them, a bubble-shaped floater, Latin name
Bulla volitare,
hundreds of meters in diameter. Being that large, it
must
be on the top of the food chain, feeding on the smaller species. Do your best to find them. Every bit we learn about the different types of lifeforms that exist on Saturn will help us in understanding our lifeforms here on Earth.”