Blue Remembered Earth

‘We’re ten kilometres from Lionheart,’ Geoffrey said. ‘It’s insane to think of crossing that kind of distance. Even if we had the suits.’

‘We do,’ Hector replied. ‘I saw them when I was scouting for bomb sites. There are also clip-on manoeuvring units for EVA operations. I’ve used them before – they’re fairly intuitive.’

‘It’s still insane.’

Hector swallowed. ‘And the alternative is . . . what? Trusting that this ship will hold up all the way in?’

‘You do have the aerobrake,’ Eunice said. ‘It’s built for punching through atmospheres at Mach fifty. It can take some serious crap.’

‘It’s taken crap already, when we broke out of the habitat,’ Geoffrey said.

‘Line it up between Lionheart and the ship, it should still provide some protection,’ Eunice replied.

‘And there’s no risk at all that it’ll look like a battering ram?’ Hector asked.

‘One you’ll have to accept. If you come in laterally, you’re wide open to a broadside attack. I’ll walk you through the turnaround. Do as I say, and then initiate a slow approach.’

‘We’re taking orders from a proxy now?’ Hector asked.

‘Looks that way,’Jumai said.

Geoffrey shook his head. ‘We’re not taking orders. We’re just running a piece of tactical-analysis software and listening to what it tells us.’

‘I’ll remind you that I’m still in the room,’ Eunice said.

‘We know.’ Geoffrey glanced at his cousin, seeing in his eyes that Hector was willing to accept the proxy’s intervention, for now.

Hector’s hands moved to the manual steering controls. ‘Thruster authority is ours. We’ll begin vehicle translation under Eunice’s guidance. Jumai – this could get messy.’

‘I can take messy.’

‘I mean, it might be an idea for all of us to get into suits at this point. Go down to the locker, fix yourself up with one of the units, then slave the other two to yours and bring all three back here.’

‘How do I slave suits?’

‘You ask them nicely,’ Hector said.

CHAPTER THIRTY- SEVEN

They really needed a name for the ship, Geoffrey thought. He was sick of calling it ‘the ship’, but didn’t feel comfortable about reverting to the name Winter Queen when it was so demonstrably not the same vessel Eunice had taken to the edge of the system. Given the affection he felt for it, Bitch or Murderess were looming as distinct possibilities. Perhaps they’d have time to debate the matter when they had docked with Lionheart.

They were turning. It was slow, agonisingly so. Spacecraft were not like aeroplanes, made for hairpin turns and acrobatics. They were more like skyscrapers or transmission masts, with a very narrow range of permissible stress loads. Apply too much torque and a ship as big as this one would snap like a stick of candy.

‘Two kilonewtons and hold,’ Eunice said. ‘Dorsal three, one kilonewton, five seconds.’ She was doling out commands like a stern instructress at a dance class. ‘Damn those centrifuge arms – they’re throwing off my calculations, too much angular momentum along our long axis. Why didn’t we stow them first?’

‘You didn’t suggest it,’ Hector said.

‘Dorsals four and six, one kilonewton each, three seconds. Aft: half a kilonewton, one second.’ She paused, studying the results. As in an aircraft, there was a deceptive lag between input and response. ‘That seems to be doing it.’

Eunice might have had the experience, but only Hector and Geoffrey were able to make the inputs. They were sitting next to each other, waiting on Eunice’s commands. Geoffrey could sense Hector’s tension, boiling off him like vapour. He’d spent half his life in space and had flown many different classes of commercial space vehicle. But nothing this big, this unfamiliar, or under such taxing circumstances.

By the time the ship had reorientated itself, Jumai was back from the suit locker. She was wearing everything but the helmet, her arm scooped through the open visor, and two other suits were shadowing her like zombies. She told them to stay put outside the command deck while she squeezed back into her seat.

‘They’re as modern as the hibernation units,’ Hector observed. ‘Give you credit, Eunice – you didn’t skimp on the essentials. Geoffrey – get into your suit. We’d best be ready for the worst.’

‘Anything from the iceteroid yet?’ Jumai asked.

‘Not a squeak,’ Geoffrey said. He eased out of his seat, selected one of the two remaining suits and spread his arms and legs wide, like a man waiting to be measured by a tailor. ‘Dress me,’ he told it, and the suit obeyed, clamming itself around his body until only his head remained uncovered. Grimacing – the suit had pinched a fold of skin around his thigh – he scooped up the helmet and returned to his seat, leaving Hector to repeat the process with the other suit.

‘Aerobrake is aligned,’ Eunice declared, when everyone was secured. ‘We’ll initiate the approach now. Laterals one, three, six: two kilonewtons, ten-second burst.’

Geoffrey felt the push of acceleration. Almost as soon as he’d counted to ten in his head, it was over. They were weightless again, drifting towards Lionheart.

‘Package launches continuing on schedule,’ Jumai said. ‘That’s a good sign, isn’t it?’

‘As long as they keep away from us,’ Hector said.

For all the countless billions of tonnes of ice still to be mined out of the iceteroid, its gravitational field was puny. They would not be landing on Lionheart, in any strict sense of the term; rather they would be docking with it. There was a part of Geoffrey’s mind that couldn’t really accept that, though. As the iceteroid swelled to dominate