Free Stories 2016 Page 2

  A brilliant star flared to life in front of him. The torpor and isolation evaporated as he recognized it. The SPS! He could even make out the X shape of the structure. Then he gasped. Good God, he must be kilometers away! How the hell had he gotten here?

  And more to the point: How on earth—or above it—was he going to get back?

  #

  "They got him!" Shay cried out, staring at the data on her console.

  Gage was by her side in an instant. "Where is he?"

  "They're still filtering the data," she said. "We were lucky; NORAD was able to task a Navy tracking ship. Otherwise it would have taken another—" She stopped, staring in horror at the solution as it converged.

  "What is it?" Gage asked.

  Shay's fingers flew over her touchpad. A wireframe view of the station appeared. She zoomed out, and out—and out. Another red dot appeared on the screen.

  "There," she whispered. "That's him, Luke."

  "Way out there?"

  "Yeah. There's a ground tracking station coming up. We'll get another radar solution after that pass, then we'll know his orbit a lot better. But that's him."

  "Okay, people," Gage said, over an open comm loop. "We've found Cole. He's adrift, about thirty kilometers ahead of us. I want everyone in from EVA, right now. The clock is running and we need a solution, fast! I want Red and Blue teams to C&C, ASAP. Everyone else, back to your stations or bunks, unless you've got something that helps."

  Shay felt Gage lean closer to her. In a quiet voice, he asked, "What do you suggest?"

  Me? Shay thought, then nodded. Yeah, me. She was the orbit specialist, the person responsible for propellant budgets, rendezvous support for uploading vehicles, everything related to orbital flight. Including, she realized, hopelessly lost EVA workers. She wiped her palms on her thighs.

  "I'll need time," she said, already knowing time wouldn't help. At a glance, she knew that whether or not Dan Colton was still breathing, he was already dead.

  "Work on it, Shay. I want your recommendation by the time Red Team is assembled. Make it twenty minutes."

  Twenty minutes or twenty years, Shay thought, I can't change the laws of gravity.

  #

  "Okay, what have we got?" Gage asked the assembled team.

  Everyone turned to Shay. She cleared her throat, her face warming. She hated being the center of attention at the best of times; now, when someone's life depended on her, she wished she could crawl into her sleeping bag and let someone else handle it.

  But Dan Colton's life depended on her. Even though the situation was hopeless, she had to try.

  Clearing her throat, she said, "Well, we know where Mr. Colton, er, Cole is. Right now he's about one hundred twenty kilometers ahead of us."

  After a shocked moment of silence, everyone protested at once. Gage quieted them with a gesture. "You heard her—a hundred twenty klicks."

  "We'll have a more accurate orbit for him once NORAD and NASA get more skin-track data."

  "What do you mean? Isn't he in our orbit?" a stocky, dark featured man asked. Smitty, Red Two. He intimidated Shay. Broad shouldered, heavy browed, gregarious and well-liked. Everything Shay wasn't.

  "Uh, no. Not any more. I've run an analysis using the data we have. The only way he could have gotten out that far is if he fired all his thrusters and ran through an entire propellant load more-or-less against track." She squirmed under Smitty's blank stare. "Er, the opposite direction we're moving."

  "So that put him a lower orbit, right?" a handsome blond kid asked. Chris Brody. Shay had expected the construction workers all to be big burly people, like Smitty. Yet Chris was nearly as small as she, one of the reasons she noticed him—but not the only one. Until now, though, she'd never had the courage to talk to him off the comm loops.

  "Yeah, a lower, faster orbit," she explained. "In the thirty-some minutes since it happened, he's moved over a hundred kilometers ahead of us. After a whole orbit, he'll be over six hundred kilometers away."

  Gage raised a hand against the murmurs of disbelief. "Shay, any idea how this happened?"

  This was one of the two questions she'd feared. There were only a couple of answers: one improbable, one unthinkable. "Um, no, not for sure. It might be a malfunction, but he's got overrides. Plus, I don't see how a single malfunction could also kill his transponder and comm."

  "Then what?"

  Everyone stared at her. She felt sweat beading above her eyes. "I guess, I mean, has he been depressed or anything?"

  She expected an avalanche of protest, but silence swept the room. Some people stared at the floor, some at her. Lucas Gage scowled but considered her words. "Well, Smitty, what do you think? You know him best."

  Smitty shook his head. "No way, Luke. He loves this job. He's got a new kid, for Christ's sake! No way he did this intentionally. Hell, this guy's saved more people's asses than I've kissed! Not Cole, Luke. Not Cole."

  Gage nodded. "Then we'll assume it's an accident. He can't transmit, can't maneuver. That means he's on his own, and we have to get to him. Somehow."

  "Can't we just go after him?" asked a tall blond woman. "Legs" Stanworth, Red Three. She also intimidated Shay—but so did everyone. "How about a double EMU? It has more prop."

  Shay shook her head. "No." She paused. For her, orbital mechanics was second nature. Trying to explain it, however . . . "To catch up to him, you'll need a lot more delta-v than he burned, which you could get with a double EMU. But then you have to stop once you get there. That’s twice the prop. Then you need still more to stop the separation and come back, carrying his additional mass as well, then more to stop once you’re here. On top of that, the more prop you add, the lower your performance and the more you need. When you figure out how much all that takes . . . I've worked the numbers; it's just isn't possible." Her voice broke and she stopped to clear her throat. "It’s not even close."

  Gage must have noticed the doubtful looks cast at her. "Shay's the expert. If that's her analysis, that's the way it is. Wishing it won't get Cole back. We need another solution. Legs, you checked the logs. How much O2 does he have?"

  The tall blond said, "He didn't top off his breathing tanks when he refueled, so he's got maybe five hours left."

  "This is unbelievable!" Smitty said. "We can freaking see him! You're saying we can't do anything?"

  Since they had passed into daylight, they could, indeed, see Dan Colton—a bright speck below and ahead of them. But to Shay, he might as well have been on Mars.

  "Don't panic, people," Gage said, taking a moment to fix each of them in his gaze. "Keep on task. We'll move heaven and hell if we have to, but we're getting Cole back. Shay, what can we do?"

  That was the second question she dreaded. Shay stared out the viewing port beside her. From that window she couldn’t see Colton, alone, adrift. If it was an accident of some kind, he was probably already dead. Which was probably better.

  Six months ago she had been finishing her Masters thesis. Now she had the most exotic job in the world. Danger. Excitement. Everything her life had lacked. Plus, a chance to forge real friendships among the twenty workers she'd be spending half a year with. Now, only two weeks later, she wanted nothing more than to be home, away from slow deaths she could do nothing about. Friendships? She still spent all her time working or studying. She had hardly even met Dan Colton—and he was already dead.

  Tears welled in Shay's eyes. Her parents died in a car accident when she was young. Her grandma had raised her, and Shay wished she could call her now, take comfort in the old woman’s wisdom as she had so many times. Grandma wouldn’t know what to do, of course, but she’d know what to say.

  Something moved outside. Shay wiped her tears away to clear her vision. Everyone was supposed to be inside. Could it be . . . her heart skipped before she realized it was just the crawler heading up the tether on its assigned run up to Cache Two at the counterbalance. Disappointed, Shay's thoughts returned to her grandma. Something nagged at her. What had Luke sa
id, about moving Heaven? It reminded her of something her grandma used to say, about a mountain . . . and Mohammad.

  She felt her instincts kicking in, her almost subconscious analytical gift. The answer flashed into her mind, fully formed. She turned to the others, grinning. "We don't have to move Heaven, just a piece of it!"

  They all stared at her. She stared right back—and her face didn't feel warm at all.

  Gage asked eagerly, "You have a way of getting him back?"

  Shay shook her head. "No, like I said, there's no way to bring him back to the station."

  He scowled. "Then what?"

  She smiled. "We take the station to him!"

  #

  "It's some kind of magic, I tell you!" Brody said from the back of the room.

  Shay sighed. He was cute, but kind of dense. "No, it's science. Let me try again."

  With a gesture, she cleared the diagrams and equations on the wall's databoard and started over, her fingertip scribing glowing lines on the surface. Behind her, she sensed a dozen pair of eyes following her every movement. She hoped they couldn't see her fingers trembling.

  "Here's our current configuration: our station in low Earth orbit, Cache One tethered to us from below, the counterbalance overhead. We're at the center of mass, which by the way is what prevents you workers from getting thrown off when you go EVA. Orbital dynamics keeps the tethers vertical. This means Cache One, down below, is actually moving too slow for its orbital altitude, and the counterbalance is moving too fast."

  Gage said, "Right, that's what keeps the tension in the tethers."

  Shay nodded. The rugged-looking supervisor always impressed her with his sharp mind. He probably knew some of this as well as she, but was allowing her to take the lead. Whether she wanted to or not.

  Shay turned back to the board. "Now, if we separate the upper tether, the counterbalance flies off into higher orbit, like an Olympic hammer throw. By conservation of angular momentum, we and Cache One drop into a lower, elliptical orbit like this. In about one rev, we catch up to Mr. Colton."

  "Magic," Brody repeated. "I mean, I understand how things move in orbit—relative motion and all. We work with it every day. But this . . ."

  "If she says it will work, it'll work," Gage said. Shay felt her face flush with pleasure. "But it does seem awfully simple," he added.

  "Well, it is and it isn't," she admitted. "The timing has to be right. And I'm working with analysts at Corporate to lock down the induced libration. We're not sure exactly what effect the extended LEO exposure might have had on the Young's Modulus of the—"

  "We don't need the details, Shay." Gage said. "Have you heard the term, 'pearls before swine'?"

  She smiled. She had indeed: her grandma often used it when Shay tried to describe her career. "But there is one problem. It's a one-shot deal; we have no control over it. If we did it now, we'd move too far ahead of where he is. So . . . we need to wait for him to get farther away from us."

  "Wait?" Gage asked. "How long?"

  Shay hesitated. "Um, it'll be another two revs. Three hours—a bit more, actually. Then about two more for the maneuver and retrieval."

  Gage's disappointment darkened his face. "Five hours. He'll be out of oxygen before that."

  Shay grinned. "Actually, I think I have an answer for that, too. But Mr. Brody won't like it."

  #

  Another orbit. Another sunrise, sunset, and now another thirty minute ordeal through darkness that would feel like hours. Cold seeped into Cole’s body and he wished again that he could clutch his arms around his chest for warmth.

  A meteoroid, Cole had decided. Or, more likely, some run-of-the-mill chunk of space debris. He remembered the impact now, something slamming into his EMU. No telling the damage it did: the impact, the shock wave, the static field it must have generated. Probably shorted everything back there, frozen the +X translation valves open, God knows what else. All-in-all, Cole was lucky to be alive.

  He snorted. Lucky? An instantaneous death versus this? he thought, teeth chattering. During daylight, he faced the sun to warm up as much as he could stand. It kept him from freezing quite to death on the night passes. He had never appreciated the work his suit’s environmental systems did every orbit, just keeping him warm and alive.

  He had to be running low on oxygen, he figured. An hour left, maybe two. How would it happen? Would he just get sleepy, gradually drifting off and never waking up? Or would he die squirming and thrashing, gasping for another gulp of air?

  Another sunrise was approaching. He had loved the sunrises on his first tour. The gleaming arc of the Earth's limb, the reds, then yellows, then the explosion of light as the sun burst into being. This would be his last, he decided. The station was many hundreds, maybe thousands of klicks back by now, nothing but another star among the multitude.

  Teeth chattering with the cold, he faced his final sunrise. He would warm up one more time, then face the end with dignity, on his own terms. Dan Colton wasn't going to die struggling and gasping like an animal.

  He thought again of Jenny. Had they told her what happened? Probably not; why wake her in the middle of the night just to terrify her for a couple of hours. Cole hoped they hadn't. After all, he couldn't even talk to her, would never have a chance say goodbye to her and little Merry. Even his suit recorder was out.

  Cole remembered a story he had read as a child, about a stowaway on a spaceship who then had to die to save the ship. At least she had gotten to talk to her loved one before the end. Cole would give anything to hear Jen's voice, or Merry's cooing, one last time.

  Anything? Dan Colton had nothing to give.

  The sun was beginning to warm him. His chattering stopped. A melancholy peace enveloped him. The time had come. He couldn't open his faceplate while it was under pressure, but there were other ways. He turned his EMU to look at the distant speck that was the station, his home-away-from-home, one more time and reached for his helmet release.

  #

  Magic, no doubt about it, Chris Brody thought as the sled took him down the tether toward Cache One. He sat strapped in a double EMU facing the tether, loaded to the max with an extra propulsive pack and oxygen tanks. He had seen the doughnut-shaped sleds scurrying up and down the tethers, of course, bringing construction materials from the cache to the SPS proper. He had often thought it would be fun to ride one, but he was re-evaluating that opinion now.

  "Almost there, Red Five," Shay's voice said in his helmet. "We'll be stopping and starting you a bit until you're at exactly the right spot. Don't look up; we're using a handheld laser."

  "Copy," he acknowledged. His EMU was clinging to the sled by its two grappling claws. People occasionally rode the sleds for maintenance, and they had all come back fine, he told himself. Of course, their EMUs had safety lines attached to the sled. And none of them had ever attempted a crazy stunt like this.

  He watched the triplex, triple-braided tether slide by, its cross-members a blur as he streaked Earthward. But even at fifty klicks an hour, it was taking him too damned long to get where he needed to be. Finally, he felt the sled slowing.

  "Stand by," Shay said. She had a nice voice, he thought. And she was pretty cute, too. Funny he hadn’t noticed it until he saw her eyes light up with her magic solution.

  The sled stopped, then crept down a few more meters, then slowed to another stop.

  "Okay, you're there. You remember what to do?"

  "Wait for your command, then detach. I think I can handle that. Are you sure you don't need me to thrust away a bit?"

  "No!" The strength of her voice surprised him. The slender girl had some juice, he was beginning to realize. "Just release, that's all. Remember what I told you: you're now moving too slowly for the altitude you're at. The tether is all that's keeping you there. Once you release, you'll start dropping and picking up speed. Do not, repeat not, use your translation thrusters until you're closing on Mr. Colton. Use only your attitude gyros if you need to reorient."

&nb
sp; "Whatever you say, Shay," Brody said. It was kind of nice talking to her this way. Much less formal than during work shifts, when there was an entire crew listening on the comm loops.

  Gage came on the loop. "Let's go over it one last time."

  Yes, please, thought Brody, but was glad not to have to say it aloud.

  "Okay," Shay began, "I've loaded a two-maneuver sequence into your EMU's autopilot, based on our latest tracking data. After release, you'll be in a lower orbit that will help you catch up to Mr. Colton. About a half orbit after release, your EMU will execute the first burn, putting you on an intercept course. Less than a half-rev later, it'll perform the braking maneuver." She paused, and he sensed the worry in her voice when she continued. "That'll be the tricky part. Our tracking data isn't perfect; you'll have to use the targeting pip on your HUD and adjust the timing once you're close enough. Watch your prop; we don't have a lot of margin."

  We?

  "Don't worry about it, Chris," Gage said. "It's just like maneuvering around the station, except you'll be going a helluva lot faster."

  Yeah, and I'm such a good pilot, Brody thought, frowning. But they had needed someone small and light so they could pack as much propellant as possible. And "small and light" meant Chris Brody.

  "You'll do fine, don’t worry," Gage said.

  Brody shook his head; that man could read minds. But he appreciated the comment, even if he didn't believe it. "C-copy," he said, and cursed his voice for breaking.

  "One minute to release," Shay said. "Hey, Chris, where are you from?"

  "Uh, California," he said, taken aback by the question.

  "I'm from New Orleans. Since you're so interested in magic, I should take you to meet my grandma, sometime. She knows all about voodoo and stuff." She paused. "That's where I learned it."

  "You what?" Brody began, then heard Shay giggling to herself. "Very funny," he said, then realized he was smiling as well.

  She called me "Chris," he thought, his grin widening. Then it occurred to him that maybe she just didn't expect to see him again.