because first it could be the guidelight, then it could be the crampons, and then they could fall off the edge of Mount Gaspra.
“What do we do?”
Ian’s breathing came over his radio—uneven, stopping at times—and it took him a full fifteen seconds to answer. “Wait for daybreak.” This immediately seemed reasonable, because daybreak wasn’t too far away, only three and a half hours, and they had worked so hard that they were considerably ahead of schedule anyway. Neither of them said anything for several minutes. The whole episode had a dreamlike aspect, especially when Gerry started thinking of the physical particulars: two human beings on an asteroid, desperately isolated from every other human being in the solar system, both of them gripping the last drive, neither moving nor saying anything. Because it was so dark, Gerry began to feel disembodied after a while. But then Ian, a man who always had to talk, gave way to that particular impulse, and the first words out his mouth had to do with Neil, and how Neil was going to have to eat crow when they got back.
“I’m not even thinking of that, Ian,” said Gerry. “I’m just hoping it all works out.”
“Whatever happened to Neil?”
“I guess he started believing in his own propaganda.”
“I just want you to know, I admire the hell out of you, Gerry. I used to admire Neil, but now I admire you. Not only for this mission, but for the…the way you’ve turned your life around. Giving up drinking and all. It’s really helped me.”
“You should thank Glenda. Glenda’s the one who made me see sense.”
“It’s seven weeks for me.”
“Congratulations.”
“I guess I didn’t mention—I started going to A.A. meetings before we left.”
“That’s great, Ian.”
“And I want to meet someone when I get back.”
“I thought you had Stephanie. That night we went for a walk around the lake… I got the impression—”
“Stephanie doesn’t know what she wants.” He said this abruptly, with evident hurt in his voice. Gerry waited for him to elucidate, but he steered clear of Stephanie. “All I’m saying is… I believe in the future.
That might sound funny, considering we’re up here, and we have one system failing after the other.
But… you know what it’s like. The drinking. Especially when you start doing the heavyweight rounds.
And I was doing a lot of heavyweight rounds before you came up. I was a miserable human being, Gerry. I didn’t believe in the future. And now I do. And I just want you to know that… even if things don’t work out… all this has made a big difference to me.”
Sunrise ripped over the opposite horizon of Gaspra like a wild bushfire at the end of the asteroid’s short night.
They found their way back to the sled.
The sled wouldn’t start at first, and when Ian checked the diagnostics monitor, he saw that the number- three relay in the ion pump was misfiring, turning back on itself so that it was in danger of shorting out.
The pilot shut the number-three relay down, keying in the off-line sequence with a quick and practiced hand, and while this resulted in a lessening of drive power, and a concomitant reduction in speed, they still covered the ten miles from the end of the asteroid to the Primary Command Vehicle in under twenty-five minutes. They maneuvered through the critical plane and, looking down at the pitted gray-brown surface with its little freckles of shadow here and there, Gerry got the sense that they were not flying above a planetoid but passing a gigantic transport truck, this illusion created by the way the horizon sloped drastically in all directions.
The PCV came into view a short while later, its clean, angular planes, panoramic freighter windows, and fluorescent green anchoring supports a comforting sight to both of them. They were thankful to at last
land the sled, untether themselves from each other, make the final risky walk to the air lock, and get inside the
Telemetry and orbital dynamics called for the ignition sequence three hours and twenty-two minutes later— in other words, Gaspra had reached that precise point in its age-old journey around the sun when it could most effectively be targeted toward the Moon. As Ian went through the sequence Gerry felt, like a presence inside him, the death of Mitch Bennett. The pain was no longer acute, but it was still there, a chronic ache. Through the freighter windows he saw the sun, a bright star, something that could easily be transplanted to a Christmas card as a stand-in for the Star of Bethlehem. Ian had his gloves off and his long fingers danced over the keyboard with virtuoso intensity. With the command patterns now encoded, he went to the engage sequence, something he had to do with a special key made of orange-tinted titanium. But when he turned the key the red warning light went on, and they learned that the spreading Tarsalan virus had hamstrung the ignition cascade.
“The PCV’s main computer was supposed to fire engines one, three, and four but instead asked me to fire two, four, and five,” said Ian. “I’m going to have to bypass the computer and make myself the interface.”
Ian took out tools and fiddled with the key box, and got to the guts of the thing. There were some sparks and smoke, and finally a smooth hum. The position of the sun shifted as they began heading homeward in a steadily collapsing orbit.
But the ignition sequence was just the start of their troubles.
Three days later, communications with AviOrbit Control became intermittent. They sat together by the console, and while Gerry saw that the bits of information were coming in—they could be seen in a representative sawtooth pattern on the Vox interpretive software screen—the virus jumbled those sound packets so that the vocal result was the equivalent of a spilled jigsaw puzzle. They glanced at each other.
It sounded like a bunch of ducks settling down for the night. Ian went into the background language and made adjustments, typing furiously, and they finally got Ira.
“What the hell is happening?” asked the AviOrbit boss.
“We’re having further degradation,” said Ian. “Maintain an open channel at all times.”
Navigation blinked out for up to thirty minutes at a time and then would come back on, and Ian would scramble to recalibrate their fall sunward. Four days in, they sat by the navigational unit and Ian had his wristwatch up close to his eyes. They were both sweating because life support was making the temperature warm. Ian’s face had gone red in the heat, and a small droplet of perspiration hung from the point of his nose.
“I hope my watch is right,” he said, and fired another braking burn, having to use his own wristwatch for the timing because the navigational counter was currently off-line due to the virus.
The solar-activity warning system failed, and they were forced to use one of the backup radiation monitors to alert them to any possible anomalous radiation from the sun. Gerry climbed into the helm area to hold the wand in the air, and the little speaker crackled and the needle jumped into the red. They were forced into the radiation bunker for the next eighteen hours, having to strip down to their thermals, as the magnetized protection of the bunker allowed no metal of any kind. It was like sitting in the scoop of a
backhoe shovel, the ceiling sloped and cramped, and the only light coming from a nonmagnetic phosphorescent strip that put out such a pathetic number of weak green lumens that only the edge of Ian’s face was outlined with an ill-defined edge of olive murk. They were like two men in a dark steam bath, only there wasn’t any steam, just the steady hiss of the monitor telling them that solar activity raged outside. At last the radiation passed and they came back out to take their posts at the command console.
Because the five FMC Transit Collective drives were the most advanced AviOrbit had ever built, and were able to accelerate, in theory, indefinitely, the trip sunward was quick, and after six days Gerry and Ian were halfway back to Earth.
But in that six days, a lot happened.
At one point, their life support began to behave erratically. They both huddled around the monitors and watched the temperature plummet, the little blue bar sinking and sinking. Ian went into the background language and tried to write some corrective code, but even as Gerry watched, new Tarsalan-generated code appeared, as if antiphonally answering whatever Ian might try. So at last they got into their CAPS.
Gerry cranked up the heat and heard the little crackling noises of the conduction coils, and merciful warmth caressed his shivering body. But eight hours later he watched the blue bar on the life-support readout rise, and he got so hot, and his ventilation was by this time so riddled with virus, that he took off his CAPS and pressed himself against the polycarbonate pressure windows to keep cool. Ian came up and joined him.
“Remember the time we went to Mexico? That heat wave they were having?”
