'No way! Anson, there's a better solution.' Tabitha cried.
'Tabitha. It is the only way. You have a daughter back home. There's no choice to be made here.' Heinlein always said (through his character Lazarus Long) that he wasn't afraid of death and that he knew it was part of the deal. I can't say that I'm that philosophical about it. Maybe I'm just not the superman he was. Death scares the living hell out of me. But I had to make sure Tabitha made it home alive. If I didn't do that, what kind of husband would I be?
'Stuff that, Anson. No way, period. End of that. You're the smart one—figure it out!'
'Houston, how long until I have to stop using my oxygen in order to give Tabitha time to wait for the CRV plus a few minutes of extra air?'
'Just a second on that, Anson,' Hal replied solemnly.
'We'll see how long we have to work other solutions.' I told Tabitha.
'Guys, this is Hal. Flight surgeon says that one of you would have to stop breathing in sixty-one minutes for the other to make it long enough for the CRV to get there.'
'Okay, Hal. We have an hour to work this out. Get Jim at the HOSC on the circuit now. He might can help.'
'Roger, Anson. It's already done.' Hal replied.
'Jim, here, buddy. I heard it all so far. This bites. What do you need from me?' Jim asked.
'I don't know yet, Jim. I do have one question for you though.'
'Yeah, what is it?'
'Will you be my best man at my wedding? Tabitha said yes!'
'You got it, Anson! Congratulations. Let's get you home first.' Jim said.
No brilliant ideas hit any of us. The one idea I had was to use the large electromagnets in the warp coil to generate a magnetic sail from the material in the upper atmosphere at LEO. The sail would then surf along the Earth's magnetic field. The idea would be to set up a mini-magnetospheric plasma propulsion (M2P2) system. The probe was far too massive and the coils would have to be reconfigured. Another task that couldn't be accomplished from an EMU. I decided then that if I survived this I was going to invent a better damn spacesuit or better yet some sort of magical warp bubble that would wrap around you like Spandex. But, first things first!
'There is no way to adjust the coils to set up the magnetic sail at all? We can't get any thrust that way?' I asked Jim after we'd been through the math a few times. I looked at my DCM. I only had about ten minutes left before the big decision. Tabitha remained quiet most of the time.
'Sorry, Anson. I don't see how you could get in there and redirect the field. Zephram was designed to warp space not build plasma balls. Too bad you can't just warp to the station. Damnit! What are we going to do?'
'What did you say!?'
'I said too bad—' Jim began again.
'Skip it, Jim. I know what you said. That's the answer.
'Anson, you know as well as I do that you can't warp around the Earth. The rotation causes to much frame dragging for you to know where you would end up. You can't warp around the Earth to the ISS or the CRV. Our calculations just aren't sophisticated enough for that,' Jim concluded sadly.
'Jim, who said anything about the ISS. I said
'What?' Jim exclaimed.
'The warp can be radially outward from the Earth so why can't it be radially inward to the Earth? We just never thought of that. Start running the numbers. Tabitha and I will start preflight on the probe.'
'Anson, are you serious? This could be risky. You might miscalculate and come out of warp too high or too low and
'Jim don't forget that the warp position errors will be along the Earth's surface due to its rotation; the frame dragging problem will cause angular errors in our calculations by maybe as much as a kilometer or two. The radial position errors should only be a few meters or so. Theoretically at least,' I responded.
I adjusted my visor and looked at Tabitha. 'Tabitha, I can't make this decision by myself. You can still make it to the CRV. My way is very risky. We could come out of warp too high above the ground and fall to our deaths or we could warp into the ground and who knows what that would cause?'
'Then why not warp out over the ocean?' Jim interrupted.
'Warping out over the ocean would have pretty much the same effect. Falling more than fifty feet into the ocean might not kill us, but we have no flotation gear so we will sink right to the bottom in these SAFER MMUs attached and the spacesuits at such a low inflation pressure we would be boat anchors. Also, if we ended up too deep we would be crushed by the pressure or just plain drown. Don't forget, we're out of air and these suits are heavy; the boat anchor thing is still the main problem! This spacecraft was only designed to fly in space so there aren't any flotation devices, landing gears, lifelines, or you name it; we're just going to have to do a controlled fall close enough to the ground. And one more thing, I would much rather try to walk home with a broken leg or something similar than swim home with one. Face it, anyway you look at it we're screwed, but it is the only way I can think of to get us both home. Tabitha, what do you think?'
Tabitha pulled her visor up and looked me deep in the eyes. She didn't take her eyes off me as she spoke. 'Jim, this is Tabitha. Not only that, I'm not sure the Navy could deploy to rescue us in time, we can't wait here without air and we can't wait in the water in these suits and no air to inflate them, Anson's right, we'll sink! I agree with Anson, I had rather take my chance walking home than swimming home. Get to work on those numbers Anson asked for. Houston you might as well call back the CRV. We won't be here when it arrives.' Tabitha looked at me and said, 'What the hell. Lets get this preflight started. You aren't getting out of marrying me that easy.'
