‘Nothing. It’s going to be fine.’
A silence fell between them. Matt wished he hadn’t raised the subject, and searched for something else to say.
‘Um, Abrams noticed something earlier, on the external scan. We think it might be a small leak in one of the coolant lines to the cryo tanks. It’s on camera twenty-six.’
Clare looked up at one of the consoles and clicked through the external camera displays. Her previous demeanour was gone, and she was cool and professional again, focused on the ship and its mission.
‘Twenty-six?’
‘Yeah. Take a closer look at the gaseous ammonia pipe at the top.’
Clare magnified the image. An encrustation of frost was visible where the pipe entered a coupling.
‘Oh … yeah, that looks like a leak all right. We do get the occasional one after major manoeuvres. Does it show up on any of the leakage monitors?’
‘No. We think it’s too small to show, or maybe it’s plugged itself with ice.’
Clare stared at the image on the screen for several seconds.
‘Well, it’s certainly not serious. It needs sorting, though. I’ll schedule Wilson to go take a look at it in the next day or so. He’ll be keen to get some EVA time on his log. Thanks.’ She reached across to a keyboard and started to tap out a note.
Matt looked around the cockpit.
The view through the forward windows was spectacular. The length of the
As Matt’s eyes got used to the sight, he saw that the ship was surrounded by tiny, glinting stars, which didn’t wheel with the real ones. Small fragments of paint and reflective coatings, which had flaked off the ship during its journey, followed the tug in its tumbling.
Clare continued her typing.
‘Guess I’d better be getting back,’ Matt said.
‘Uh-huh. Catch you later.’
Matt looked at her, at the dark circles under her eyes, the long lashes, and the gentle, in-and-out movement of her chest as she breathed.
She finished her note, and picked up her book again. The moment had gone, and she was the commander again, reading to get to sleep. Her hand moved to find her page, and Matt saw that her fingernails were bitten close, on both hands.
Matt clambered out of the seat and climbed back down the cabin, back to the entrance to the access tube and the way out.
He moved quietly, however, so as not to disturb her.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Sometimes, First Lieutenant Steve Wilson thought, there was no substitute for human intervention, and the good old Mark I eyeball.
Wilson floated weightless outside the tug’s crew module, close to the docking adapter, held in place by safety lines and rigid braces fastened to attachment points on the hull.
The tug’s rotation had been halted for the spacewalk, and the crew module was in the cool darkness behind the sunshade. Lit up in stark relief by Wilson’s helmet lights, a complex maze of pipework ran in all directions, taking fuel, oxygen, helium, and ammonia to where they were needed around the tug.
The stainless steel pipe right in front of him was about four centimetres in diameter, and carried gas from the ammonia boilers, where the liquid took in heat, back to the cooling circuit. Wilson could see the build up of frost over the leaking coupling; it seemed to be thicker than it had appeared on the cameras.
Wilson touched the frost with a gloved finger. A piece broke off the pipe and drifted away. Underneath it, the stainless steel of the pipe glistened. He wiped away the remainder of the frost with his finger.
‘No damage to the pipe itself,’ he reported, ‘seems like the leak’s coming from the coupling. Can you pressurise the system again – I’m going to check the coupling for leaks.’
On the tug’s command deck, Clare, Elliott and Bergman clustered round the monitor, watching the view from Wilson’s helmet-mounted camera.
‘Coolant circuit’s coming back up to pressure now,’ Clare said. ‘See anything?’
Wilson watched the pipe coupling for nearly a minute before responding.
‘There’s a faint – and I mean faint – line of frost building up in the rim of the coupling, where the pipe enters. I reckon that’s it. Shall I just leave it or put a patch on?
Clare considered. There were many arguments for just leaving it alone. It was a known problem, the leakage was small, and they could do more harm trying to fix it.
She decided.
‘I’d like you to apply a small amount of sealant just where you think the leak is. I’d rather be able to see it and keep it monitored than cover it with a patch.’
‘Okay.’
There was a pause while Wilson found the sealant gun in his tool pouch. The sound of his breathing came over the speakers on the command deck. He moved slowly, taking his time.
Wilson held the gun up to where the pipe entered the coupling, and pressed the nozzle of the gun into the join. He checked that he was still securely anchored to the ship, and squeezed the trigger gently. A thin bead of transparent gel oozed from the nozzle and spread along the join. He withdrew the gun, and then sprayed the gel with a short burst of setting compound from a pressurised canister.
The gel set solid in moments, and Wilson stayed there, watching the join carefully. After a couple of minutes, he was satisfied that he’d sealed the leak, and he stuck a red arrow close by, pointing at the join, so that they could find it again.
Wilson stowed his tools back in the tool pouch and unfastened the rigid braces holding him in place. He clipped his safety line onto a ladder that led back to the tug’s EVA airlock.
He moved back to the airlock, moving only one hand or foot at a time as he passed along the ladder, keeping his feet placed on the rungs to stop his body from drifting away. Working in zero gravity needed slow, careful movements, always against a firm purchase, and Wilson resisted the temptation to rush things.
He manoeuvred himself carefully round the main antenna mount, and swung his legs and lower body through the open outer hatch of the airlock. He paused there for a moment, his head and shoulders looking out of the hatch, and took in the scene around him.
Directly in front of him, behind the black disc of the sunshade, the Sun blazed, its titanic light held at bay, and the stars shone out clear and unwavering in the blackness of space. To his left, in the constellation of Gemini, Wilson could see the brilliant crescent of Venus, and over his left shoulder, between Cancer and Leo, the small, pink dot of Mars.
He looked sunward again, wondering if he could glimpse their destination, but checked himself. Mercury was invisible, hidden behind the Sun. The small planet was flying past its furnace-like perihelion, racing round the Sun on its penultimate orbit before their meeting in three month’s time.
Instead, he turned to the right, scanning the stars, until he found the brilliant, creamy-coloured point of light that was Jupiter.
He took a long look at the distant planet. Jupiter’s giant moons, worlds in their own right, were invisible to the naked eye, but he could imagine that they were there, circling their massive primary. Volcanic Io, closest to the planet, its interior kept molten by competing tidal forces.. Then the blue-white moon of Europa, its hidden oceans covered with a thick crust of ice. Giant Ganymede – a world even bigger than Mercury – and then the cold, pock- marked ball of Callisto circling beyond the radiation belts.
