The Sam Gunn Omnibus (72 page)

I
won’t bore you
with all the details. I had to ask for volunteers. I knew I’d have to go out
there myself, but I’d need more than my two hands to get the job done.

I
didn’t expect any
of my brave little partners to volunteer. They never had before, and what I was
asking them to do now was really risky, maybe fatal.

To my surprise, Lowell Hubble
raised his hand. “I’m too old to start a family,” he said quietly, glancing at
Sheena sideways.

We were standing in a little circle
inside the dome. I had outlined what needed to be done and what the dangers
were. I had also told them very firmly that I would accept only male
volunteers.

“Nonsense!” Jean snapped. “That’s male
chauvinist twaddle.”

As soon as Hubble put his hand up,
Jean raised hers. “I’m too old to
want
to start a family,” she
said firmly.

The others glanced around at one
another uneasily. Slowly, very slowly, each of them raised their hands. Even
Sheena, although her hand was trembling. I felt kind of proud of them.

We did it by lottery. Almost. I wouldn’t
let Hubble out of the dome. I needed him for all the calculations we had to do,
and maybe later for navigation, if all went well. Bo Williams hated that, I could
tell, but he didn’t complain. He could see that there’s no use risking the one
guy who can handle the scientific end of this madness. It’s not just the
radiation. What’ll we do if Hubble trips out there and one end of the power
pile mashes his head?

Chauvinist or not, I just took Bo
and Darling out with me. Darling looked so scared I thought he was going to
crap in his space suit, but he didn’t dare complain a peep. We got the first
pile out from behind its shielding okay, and then skeedaddled back inside the
dome and let the robots finish the work. The dosimeters built into our suits
screeched a little and flashed their yellow warning lights. Once we got back
into the dome they went back to green, though.

A good day’s work. Maybe we’ll make
it after all.

ACCORDING TO HUBBLE’S
calculation, if we can make just
one of the power piles explode it’ll provide enough impetus to push Pittsburgh
out of its orbit and send it zooming toward the inner solar system.

“You’re sure?” I asked him.

He nodded like a college professor,
the pipe back between his teeth. “If you can get it to explode.”

“It’ll explode, don’t worry. Even
if I have to beat it with a baseball bat.”

He gave me a slightly amused look. “And
where are you going to find a baseball bat?”

“Never mind that,” I said. “Will we
be safe? I don’t really want to kill us if I can avoid it.”

“Oh,
safe enough, if you place the pile on the far end of Pittsburgh and set it off there.
I’ve worked out the precise location for you.” “We won’t get a fatal dose of
radiation or anything?” “No, the mass of the asteroid will protect us from
radiation. Since there’s no air outside the dome there will be no aerodynamic
shock wave. No heat pulse or fallout, either, if the pile is properly sited in
a crater.” “Then we’ll be okay.”

“We
should be. The only thing to worry about is the seismic shock. The explosion
will send quite a jolt through the body of the asteroid, of course.”

“I
was wondering about that? How many gs?”

He
frowned slightly. “That’s right, you astronauts think in terms of g-forces.” “Don’t
you?”

“No.
I was more concerned with Pittsburgh’s modulus of elasticity.” “It’s what?”

He
gave me a faraway look. “The explosion will send a shock wave through the solid
body of the asteroid.” “You already said that.”

“Yes.
The question is: will that shock wave break up the asteroid?”

“Break
it up? Break up Pittsburgh?”

“Yes.”

“Well,
will it? Will it?”

“I
don’t think so. But I simply don’t have enough data to be certain.” “Thanks,” I
said.

So
our choice is to sit on this rock until we starve to death or maybe blow it to
smithereens with a jury-rigged atomic bomb. I’m going with the bomb. And
keeping my fingers crossed.

0KAY, WE’RE
ALL
in our pressure suits, inside the dome, lying flat inside
our pitiful little inflated sleeping bags. When I press the button on the
remote control unit in my hand the feebleminded robot out there on the other
end of Pittsburgh will pull the control rods out of the power pile and it’ll go
critical in a matter of seconds. Here we go.

Soon’s
I work up the nerve.

GOOD NEWS AND b
ad news.

The
pile exploded all right, and jolted Pittsburgh out of its orbit. The

asteroid
didn’t break up. None of us got killed. No significant radiation here in the
dome, either.

That’s the good news.

There’s plenty of bad. First off,
the explosion slammed us pretty damned hard. Like being kicked in the ribs by a
big bruiser in army boots. We all slid and tumbled in our air bags and went
sailing splat into the wall of the dome. Damned near tore it open before we
untangled ourselves. Arms, legs, yelling, bitching. Good thing we were in the
space suits; they cushioned some of the shock. The sleeping bags just added to
the confusion.

Even so, Bo Williams snapped a shin
bone when he slammed into a food crate. The rest of us are banged up, bruised,
but Bo is crippled and in a lot of pain. Jean, of all people, pulled the leg
straight and set the bone as well as anybody could without x-ray equipment.

“The last time I had to do anything
like this was on a walking tour of Antarctica,” she calmly told us.

We tore the offending food crate
apart to make a splint for Bo’s leg. A walking tour of Antarctica?

But the really bad news came from
Lowell Hubble. He took a few observations of the stars, made a couple of
calculations on his wrist computer, and told me—privately, very quietly—that
the blast didn’t do enough.

“Whaddaya mean, not enough?” I wanted
to yell, but I whispered, just like he did. The rest of the gang was clustered
around Bo, who was manfully trying to bear his pain without flinching. The
undivided attention of the four women helped.

“The explosion just didn’t have
enough energy in it to push our orbit toward the Earth,” Hubble whispered.
Drawing circles in the air with the stem of his pipe, he explained, “We’re moving
inward, toward the Sun, all right. We’ll cross the orbit of Mars, eventually.
But we won’t get much closer to Earth than that.”

“Eventually? How soon’s that?”

He stuck the pipe back in his mouth.
“Three and a half years.”

I
let out a weak
little whistle. “That won’t do us a helluva lot of good, will it?”

“None at all,” he said, scratching
at his scruffy chin.

I
felt itchy, too.
In another week or two my beard will be long enough to be silky. Right now it
just irritates the hell out of me.

“We’ve got the other nuke,” I said.

“We’re going to need it.”

“I hate to have to go through the
whole damned exercise again— pulling the pile out of its shielding, dismantling
the control systems. We’re down to one usable robot.”

“I’ll volunteer, Sam.”

I
turned and there
was Rick Darling standing two meters away, a kind of little-boy look of mixed
fear and anticipation on his fuzzless face.

“You’ll volunteer?” My voice
squeaked with surprise.

“To work with you on the nuclear
pile,” he said. “You tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

“You’re sure you want to?”

His lower lip was trembling. “Sam,
I’ve been completely wrong about you. You are the bravest and strongest man I’ve
ever met. I realize now that everything you’ve done has been for our own good.
I’m willing to follow you wherever you choose to lead.”

I
was too shocked
to do much more than mumble, “Okay. Good.” Darling smiled happily at me and
went back to his food crate.

Saints in heaven! I think Rick
Darling is in love with me.

WELL, WE BOTH
took enough radiation out there to
make our suit dosimeters screech. They went all the way into the red. Lethal
dose, unless we get medical attention pretty damned quick. Fat chance.

We got the pile out of the
generator, ripped out most of the safety rods, and put it where Hubble told us
it has to be in order to push us closer to Earth. It took hours. The goddamned
tin shit-can of a robot broke down on us halfway through the job and Darling
and I had to manhandle the load by ourselves.

We didn’t do much talking out
there, just a lot of grunting and swearing. Don’t let anybody tell you that
working in microgravity is easy. Sure, things have no weight, but they still
have mass and inertia. You try traipsing across the surface of an asteroid with
the core of a nuclear reactor practically on your back, see how much fun you
get out of it.

Anyway, we’re back in the dome.
Hubble’s gone outside to check the position of the pile and to rig a line so we
can yank out the last of the control rods manually. Marj and Grace are out
there helping him. Sheena and Jean are here in the dome, hovering over Bo
Williams. He’s got a fever and he doesn’t look too damned good.

While we were taking off our space
suits Darling said to me, “You don’t have to be afraid of me, Sam. I know you
don’t like me.”

“I
never saw anything to like,” the words popped out of my mouth before I knew it,
“until today.”

“I
just want your respect,” he said.

“You’ve
got it.”

“Would—would
you stop calling me names, then? Please? They really hurt.”

There
were tears in his eyes. “I’m
sorry...
Rick. I did it without thinking.”

He
said, “I know you’re hetero. I’m not trying to seduce you, Sam. I just want to
be your friend.”

I
felt about an inch tall. “Yeah. That’s fine. You’ve
earned it.”

He
put out his fleshy hand. I took it in mine. We didn’t really shake; we just
grasped each other’s hand for a long moment until I was too embarrassed to look
at him any longer. I had to pull away.

IT’S
BOOM TIME AGAIN
.

We’re
all back in our suits, lying on the floor, wedged against the food cartons
which are now up against the dome wall. Hubb
l
e’s
calculated which way the blast will push us, and I’ve tried to arrange us so we
won’t go sliding and slamming the way we did last time.

It
took hours to get Bo Williams into his space suit, with his leg in Jean’s makeshift
cast. He’s hot as a microwaved burger, face red, half unconscious and muttering
deliriously. Doesn’t look good.

I’ve
got the control box in my hand again. If this blast doesn’t do the job we’re
finished. Probably finished anyway. I’ve picked up enough radiation to light a
small city. No symptoms yet, but that’ll come, sure enough.

Okay.
Time to press the button. Wonder if this rock’ll stand up to another blast?

WHAT
A RIDE!

The
seismic shock lifted us all off our backs and bounced us around a bit, but no
real damage. Bo Williams must’ve been unconscious when the bomb went off, or
else the belt knocked him out.

A
few new bruises, that’s all. Otherwise we’re okay. Hubble went outside and took
some sightings. We’re definitely going to cross Mars’s orbit, but it’s still
going to take a couple-three months. Then it’s just a matter of time before the
IAA notices us.

If
we don’t starve first.

DISK’S MEMORY
SPACE is
running low.

Bo Williams died today, probably
from infection that we didn’t have the medicine to deal with. We sealed him
inside his space suit. Erik’s legally a murderer now. I guess Lonz and Will
are, too. Or accessories, at least.