SurvivalA Story by JayG Working in space is dangerous. A single mistake all too often brings death. So those who work there are careful. But care doesn't help when the impossible happens. Then you need more...a lot more. Survival is a complete short story, written for a brand new sci-fi magazine that was seeking action stories set in space. Happily, they offered a contract, so I focused on additional stories in the same setting for a series of follow-on stories. Unfortunately, though the magazine issued contracts for and published two more in the series they lasted less than a year. But by then, that series of linked short stories had taken on a life of their own, centered on a character in the first story, one who presented a problem I simply had to explore. The result was the novel I titled, Monkey Feet. The first section, though, Survival, is, of all the shorts I’ve created, my favorite. And since it is stand-alone, I decided to post it here for what reading pleasure it might give.
Enjoy - - - - - - - - - Survival
The com-link muttered curses, as it always did when Mark Porter was doing battle with things mechanical. Cal Shaefer focused on his magazine, comforted by the grumbling, which signified that all was right with the universe. If it became too quiet, then he would worry. Around him the ship, too, muttered, as it went about its business of keeping him safe and warm. Dropping his index finger, he tapped the screen for the next page, then reached for his coffee globe, to sip as he read.
“That’s it, Buddy,” Mark said, interrupting his reading. “I’ve got the engine bolted down and ready to go. Give it a wakeup ping and let’s get this show on the road.” “On it, now,” Cal said, as he switched screens and called up the drive-unit’s program. He parked the coffee on a sticky pad at the edge of the console where it wouldn’t drift away. “Hang on a second…. Are you clear of the engine? If so I’ll run the mass-check as soon as it comes online.” He initiated the command sequence to wake the engine’s control module, then readied the system for the task of shoving the ice boulder they had constructed--pushing it away from the asteroid belt, and hopefully, into a collision with Mars. “I’m clear, Cal, but I’ll wait until you check this turkey out before I drop my suit tether and cycle in. I’d hate to be stuck out here with no engine.” “Roger.” He hesitated a beat, as he studied the status display, then added, “Okay, the beast’s awake, so cut loose the mooring.” There was no acknowledgment, but Mark would do the right thing. Experience and training said that his partner would do nothing unexpected--which in space is another way of saying “death.” After a moment, the contact sensor chirped a disconnect warning, indicating that Mark had released the cable connecting the ship and the ice-mass. The two were still touching, though no longer tethered. The ship’s computer knew precisely where they and the ice were in relation to Mars, and it must arrive at Mars at the right speed and trajectory, within a time window that would place the impact point within the shallow but growing sea that was transforming Mars into a living world. Each meter of deviation per day, on the three year long fall sunward, would add up to an impact position error of over 1000 meters. And though an error that threatened a colonized area could be taken care of by a laser blast--one that would cause the ice to enter the atmosphere as harmless pellets--too much of an error would cause the ice to miss the planet, entirely. Besides, accuracy was both a bragging point and a source of bonus cash. The number one position on the Ice-Jockey list, again this quarter, would make three in a row, something never done before. As he waited, Cal had a good feeling about this one. Venting gases roared as the airlock cycled, bringing the chamber up to cabin-normal pressure. A moment of silence, then the airlock door clicked free. Before it was fully opened, though, Mark called, “So where do we stand?” “I’m firing the calibration burst now.” “Good,” Mark said, as he lifted his helmet clear. “I want to get this guy on its way, hook the engine back in place, here, and get my a*s back to town. Three months is enough time for anyone to spend looking at your ugly face.” That rated an obscene hand gesture in return, accompanied by a smile to take the sting out of it, before he initiated the launch test-sequence. “First burst went okay,” he announced when the sequence terminated. “The ice is on the move.” He studied the instruments. The first burst was no more than a mass check. A measured amount of force was applied--that generated by firing one single micro-pellet of fuel. The resulting velocity change in the ice-ball, though tiny, told the computer what its mass was, so the fuel burn profile could be generated. Once started on its way with the ion engine, power would be cut and the ice would fall free. The engine would uncouple and home in on the ten meter diameter ball that was their ship, where it would be fitted into its cradle to power them in the direction of home--if a collection of worn out ships strapped together as a way-station and tethered to a hollowed rock ball could be thought of as home. “Well?” Mark’s voice carried its usual impatience with things mechanical. “Well Dinah’s thinking about it. Give her a few seconds.” “Dumb computer,” he muttered. “Slow as s**t and just as useful.” He turned away, headed for the kitchen area and a container of the ice-tea he favored. Cal shook his head, bemused. Mark’s remark was as predictable a ritual as his endless complaints about equipment that insisted on doing what he asked of it rather than what he wanted it to do. The display changed and an alert chirped, so he said, “Test burn number two about to start, Mark. Then all we have to do is wait for Mars tracking to report that they’ve acquired the beacon so we can light the fuse and get rid of this snowball.” No answer, so he called, “What’s so important that after three Earth months you need to get back to the cluster instantly?” Mark drifted back through the doorway, bringing himself to a stop in mid air-with a heel-catch on the doorframe. “The thing that has me in such a hurry is Stacey Manus. I expected this job to take seven sols more than it has, and to get home after she leaves for Sunward Station. But now, if we don’t waste more than ten hours on this crap, she and I will have three standard sols of overlap.” Cal made a sexual gesture, laughing, as he asked, “Thirty-six hours of that kind of overlap?” “Cut the crap, Cal. I’m serious.” “Ah-ha! So all the garbage you’ve been feeding me about her being no more than a friend was just that, garbage.” For the first time in a long time a blush colored his friend’s cheeks. Cal had no time for further comment, because the ice ball, which had drifted about seven meters from the ship, jerked into motion, headed in their direction. The collision alarm shrieked a warning, but Cal already knew they would be struck. Instinctively, he slammed his fist against the emergency burn button. But the engine was latched to the ice, not the ship. Ionic fire would not be their salvation. The mass began to fragment, gaining speed as it did. “Mark. Grab something and brace for collision!” “Collision? What’s--” “Do it now!” Cal braced himself, hands clamped on the framework of the data console, eyes on approaching death. The collision was gentle, surprisingly so. But that didn’t last. A crunching, grinding noise seemed to come from all around. Then came the sensation of an elevator lurching into motion--with the acceleration rising to nearly intolerable levels. But unlike the elevator, this went on and on. The sounds of collision grew in volume as the outer hull buckled and insulation thinned through compression. Death lay moments away, certainly, but with not the slightest control of the situation there was no panic--no goal or source of salvation to work toward. There was only death, demanding submission. But if this particular bullet had his name written on it, and it probably did, he wasn’t going down without a fight. F**k you, Mr. Death! He had time for that. Then, time only to do what had to be done. The collision point was across the hull. And like a head-on collision in a car the force of it threw him toward the instrument panel. Unable to do more than brace himself against the console mounts, he fought to protect the equipment against his weight. Any hope of survival depended on the computer and the sub-systems it controlled. But then, as if a giant hand had batted at the spacecraft, the ship lurched to the left, then begin to rotate, jerkily, still under acceleration. Unable to retain his grip as the direction of acceleration changed, he was swept away from the console and thrown against the #3 storage locker, a fall of no more than four feet. Under acceleration greater than twice Earth’s gravity the impact might well have killed him. But Dame Fortune was smiling this day, and the face of the locker buckled, absorbing part of the blow. He lived. But amid the rolling thunder of collision came the sickening snap of bone failing under stress. Through it all; though he had not the slightest control of what was happening; though fighting desperately to stay alive, his mind--detached from the struggle--was hyper-aware of everything: the smell of burning wiring mixed with the fetid odor of the ruptured waste-disposal tank assaulted his senses. Overhead, something was throwing off a shower of sparks. His mouth tasted of blood, and his hearing overloaded, as the hull flexed toward the breaking point. Death was an occupational hazard in his line of work. But to die helplessly, without being able to even send a message of alarm, brought a surge of anger that pulled him from the strange mind-state the collision had triggered. It also brought the realization that he’d screwed up. They were in collision with a rogue mass--something not charted and tracked. The ice they were working with contained a high concentration of metallic dust, and that apparently served to shield the approaching intruder--which must be a small asteroid--from the ship’s sensors. He should have been alert; should have checked; should not have ignored the possibility. But what were the odds that something would come at them from precisely the direction of the ice-ball? And further, that it would be large enough not to be stopped by the mass of the ice? Were he to calculate the odds against such a strike they would be astronomical. But that gave no comfort. The strike had occurred, was still occurring, and only the ice-ball crumbling under impact and absorbing the brunt of the forces saved them from instant death. Screw up and you die, was the mantra drummed into every ice-jockey from the time they began their training. But he’d gotten complacent and screwed up. Damn! The tumbling continued, with random changes in direction, as the ship settled through crumbling ice, rolling along the side of the invading mass as it did. It seemed to go on forever. In actuality, it was over in seconds. With a thud, and a shock that drove the wind from his lungs, the ship finally struck something solid, bounced away, and stopped moving--at least as far as the senses were concerned. The sound of debris sliding over the hull continued for a few more seconds, then nothing but the wailing of alarms. One of them, the most strident, warned of a hull breach. Somewhere, a hole was venting breathing air to space. Maybe a lot of holes, but he tried not to think of that. Whatever hit the ship no longer plastered him in place with acceleration, so he was once more in control of his life--even had a surge of hope that life might not be over.
“Cal?” More croak than voice, Mark’s words carried a heavy freight of pain within them. “I hear you, buddy. We have a leak, but the skin monitors are down. Are you near it? Can you see or hear anything?” Vision was of little help in the dim light from the monitor screens. No cabin lighting remained, and the instrument cluster, the only source of light, was probably on battery power. The backup lighting hadn’t come on, so something had failed or shorted. That the hull, itself, had not split like a clamshell was a miracle. “Can’t hear hissing, but I’m drifting toward the skin, so it must be a big one and I must be pretty close…. If I can find it I’ll wad something into the opening until you can get a patch over here.” The pain in Mark’s voice gave little assurance that the situation would soon be under control. The pain that erupted in his own arm when he tried to move it brought a gasp and a hurried tucking of the arm under his belt, so he wouldn’t be tempted to move it again. Then, he dragged himself back to the ruined storage locker and searched for the container of patch sheets. He finally located it, and was tearing the seal on the pack with his teeth when Mark shouted that he’d located the hole--or at least the major hole. There were probably more. Hopefully, few enough that they could be sealed before the environmental system ran out of replenishment air. He pushed off across the compartment, aiming the emergency flashlight--pulled from the storage locker along with the patch kit--in Mark’s direction, to make a fast check of his condition. The news wasn’t good. In better times Mark’s skin tone matched the creamed coffee brown of his unitard. Now his face was gray and pasty looking, his eyes full of pain. Mark’s open hand pressed flat against his chest, on the left side, with globules of blood gathered around it where they’d leaked between his fingers. Not good news at all. “How bad is it, Mark?” he asked, as he halted his motion against a bulkhead. “Bad enough. I’m guessing the lung’s punctured.” I can breathe, though, so it’s not collapsed…yet.” Cal grunted, but before he could reply, Mark waved his free hand in the direction of the hull, near his head. His words were wrapped in pain, as he said, “Forget me, I can hold out. Just get the hull sealed and see to the life-support or we’ll both be dead before you can start on me.” Mark’s evaluation matched his own. But a few seconds spent keeping his partner alive till he finished with the ship made sense. Leaving the lamp parked in the air in front of him, he held the patches in his restrained hand, peeled one from the bundle with the other, and held it where Mark could take it. The patch was designed to stop an air leak--which also happened to be Mark’s problem. Certainly, it would work better than the palm of Mark’s hand. And if the lung wasn’t collapsed the patch just might keep it functioning. A collapsed lung was something he wasn’t equipped to handle, even with Dinah’s extensive medical database. Without further conversation, he turned his attention to the bulkhead. Readying another patch from the kit he pulled aside the blanket Mark used to block the opening and turned the light on the area. Bad, but not as bad as he feared. A ragged tear in the inner hull, coin sized, deformed it inward like the petals of a flower, starpoints of light gleaming through it. Thankfully, enough atmosphere remained to maintain life, and as the internal pressure dropped, the rate of loss would decline. Using teeth and his good hand, he peeled the backing from a patch and spread it over the hole. The cabin’s internal air pressure, low as it now was, pressed the soft material of the patch against the cut edges, enveloping the pointed shards and forming a drumhead over the hole. He ran a smoothing hand around the tear, sealing the tough but flexible plastic to the hull. With the patch secure, he used his teeth to flip open the protective cap on the catalyst rod, then touched it to one corner of the patch. A wave of darkness made its way across the patch as the self-catalyzing plastic became rigid, eliminating the possibility that it would be cut by the sharp edges of the ripped plastic. That taken care of, he turned back to Mark. The good news was that he’d been able to peel back the top of his unitard and cover the injury with the patch, sealing the wound. Because Mark needed the patch to remain flexible so he could breathe, Cal sealed the catalyzing rod and slipped it into a pocket, lest it come in contact with the patch. “How are you holding out, Buddy?” Mark, wrapped around his pain and drifting, just waved him away. He thought about tethering him, or pressing him against one of the sticky patches scattered around the ship, but Mark was beyond caring where he was.
For the next ten minutes he hurried through the ship, ignoring the crazily-canted bulkheads, checking every inch of the hull. Once, Ice-Ship 1320W was a nearly perfect ten meter sphere, like a giant Ping-Pong ball spanned by a spiderweb of structural piping and wireways, all meeting in the center, at the control consoles. With no up and down to worry about, and only gentle acceleration forces applied when they were on a mission, the ship was divided into functional areas by cloth bulkheads. Special functions, those that needed large scale re-supply, like the kitchen and the fuel tanks, were attached like leeches to the outer surface of the ball, and accessed via safety ports, closed now due to the pressure loss within the ship. But the ship was no longer round, and as he moved around the ship he tried to ignore the gaps and buckles in the structural members that indicated just how far the ship now was from being a sphere. Nothing he could do would bring it back into shape--even had he been in condition to do so. Even trying might cause the hull to fail. Small cracks by the dozens needed a dab of sealant, but thankfully, that was it. Why there were no more leaks he couldn’t begin to say, but he breathed a thank-you to the nameless engineer who had designed a more robust hull than called for. The pounding the ship received was, assuredly, no part of the ship’s design specification. Another half-hour passed while he unbolted and rounded up the emergency lighting fixtures, and then cobbled up a wire-harness of sorts to power them. When he finished the ship was alight again, powered by the main reactor--a rugged beast to which the ride they had just been through was no more than a minor shake. The life-support system, too, functioned, happily extracting oxygen from ice they’d collected, releasing it into the cabin to restore a comfortable air pressure. The nitrogen storage gauge showed no pressure, so he reset the environmental system to supply oxygen only, but at lower than normal cabin pressure, to reduce the possibility of a fire and lessen stress on the hull. The immediate emergency taken care of, he turned to his own welfare. First came an analgesic from the med kit. The bone was almost certainly cracked, probably both the radius and the ulna. But the good news was that they had not slipped out of line, and could be casted. To that end he wrapped the arm in a layer of soft cloth, then one of patch sheeting, forming a tube that would act as a cast when catalyzed. Hopefully that would do, but the arm was the least of his problems. The odds of living long enough for it to heal weren’t very promising.
“Okay,” Cal said, as he turned his attention to Mark once more. “Lets get a look at you.” Sometime during his hurried trip around the ship he’d taken a moment to inject his partner with a dose of happy-juice and push him toward a sticky patch. Now, Mark hung with eyes closed, limbs floating loosely around him, breathing shallowly. He weighed the idea of taking a shot, himself, because pain throbbed with his heartbeat and the arm felt twice normal size. But the shot that reduced pain would also lessen mental acuity, so he gritted his teeth and went on with what had to be done. He anchored himself to a stanchion with his legs and peeled the patch from Mark’s chest--then hissed through his teeth as he smoothed it into place once more. Something had, indeed, punctured Mark’s chest wall, and the bubbles forming at the site of the wound each time he breathed proved that the lung, itself, was punctured and in danger of collapse. “It could be worse,” he told himself as he headed toward the control console. “It could damn well have been better,” came, as a silent answer from the ship around him. “Okay, Dinah,” he muttered, as he raised the cabin pressure a bit more. “Tell me about chest wounds.” The increased oxygen pressure would reduce Mark’s respiration rate and make correcting the problem easier. At least he hoped it would, and until he knew more about repairing the injury more oxygen density was something that--like the proverbial chicken soup--couldn’t hurt. He forced himself to ignore the possibility that the added stress, caused by the higher pressure, might cause a catastrophic failure of the weakened hull. Like all ships that spend their time away from those who might provide help, a lot of thought had been given to emergency conditions and what might be necessary to correct them. Thus the ship’s computer not only had an extensive database on medicine, the medical assistant program operated at nearly an artificial intelligence level. For all practical purposes, he would be performing corrective surgery under the direction of a fully competent surgeon. Unfortunately, that surgeon was unable to do more than offer advice. If Mark was to survive, how well he implemented that advice mattered a great deal--a frightening idea. For a long moment the idea of what he was about to do, and the responsibility that rested in his hands, was overwhelming. But worry was lost time, and he had none to spare, so he opened the medical emergency kit, prepared Mark as well as he was able, breathed a small prayer, and got to work.
For a time, Cal hung, just watching Mark breathe. The wound was sealed and the space between the lung and chest wall had been aspirated to remove any air that had leaked into that space. The med-program claimed that his friend would live. Unfortunately, that program also listed everything that might interfere with recovery. But little could be done about that other than to wait, watch and worry. Stable and tethered within a bednet, Mark slept. Time then, to address the next problem. The major leaks and his partner’s wound taken care of, he turned to matters of long term survival--things that couldn’t be put off. For the next ten hours he drove himself to the point of exhaustion. First, he made a hurried inspection of the interior of the ship in an attempt to catalog their resources. The bad news was that none of the hatches leading to the external storage pods would open--not one. That meant the pods were no longer airtight, and would have to be sealed from the outside before he could inspect them and inventory their contents. Satisfied that Mark still slept peacefully, he donned a suit and hurried out to check the damage--hurry being a relative term. Just getting into the suit, with an elbow that could no longer bend, extracted a cost measured in both time and frustration. Then, because the outer door was jammed, he had to remove the door, along with its mounting plate, in order to leave the ship. That task, alone--the removal and later reattachment of the plate--chewed up eight of the ten hours, because he had to, first, hammer and pry the metal of the door back into near flatness to remove the stress jamming the mounting studs. The ship still tumbled, but slowly, in the midst of a cloud of fragmented ice, the broken surfaces sparkling in the distant sun’s light. Whatever had hit them wasn’t to be seen. The rotation was minor and the ice posed no threat, so he focused on the hull. That now had more in common with a naturally formed object than a working ice-ship. Under normal circumstances the tough plastic was almost impossible to dent or tear. But these were not normal circumstances, and the inspection of the outer hull took only minutes, because there was nothing to inspect. The ship resembled a rough surfaced meteor, pitted and streaked with age. The ice, as it was driven against the ship, gouged and bent it, grinding the heat-absorptive overcoat and changing it from charcoal black to dirty gray. Of more importance, the external equipment pods had been sheared off at their attachment points, so the access ports, had he been foolish enough to force one open, would show only a view of the uncaring stars. He breathed a thank you to whoever designed the pods with breakaway couplings that prevented even worse damage. Still, without the food and fuel those pods held, there were damn few options. But bitching resolved nothing, so he turned to resealing the airlock and things over which he did have control.
“What’s up, Buddy? Are we dead or do I have to go stir-crazy waiting for a pickup?” Hearing Mark’s voice should have been a plus, because it indicated that he was both awake and alert. Now, though, it came as a distraction, drawing him from his latest attempt to broadcast a distress call that might reach the way station. With a sigh, he pushed himself away from the board and headed to where Mark was secured into the sleep net. “Hi, Mark,” he said, forcing a smile. “You look like s**t so I assume you’re okay. Any problems breathing?” “Hurts like hell, but I’m okay,” Mark growled. “Or at least I will be. How bad is it?” He took a deep breath and let the smile slip. Mark was never one to accept bullshit. “It’s bad, Mark. Really bad. We’ve got hull integrity, and I’ve rigged up power, but the pods are gone, and so is the com-link connection. The external amplifiers and antennas have all been swept away. I rigged an antenna, of sorts, and made a connection to it from the computer, through a suit’s radio, but there’s not enough power available from that little radio.” Mark said nothing for a long time, then made a shrugging motion of hands, as though accepting what must be. There would be no search, other than by radar, when they failed to call in on time. With their reflectors torn away they were now no more than another unidentified lump, drifting endlessly through the void. “What about the engine?” Mark finally asked. “Can you call it in? There’s fuel in its on-board tank. It never did shove the ice, and that radio you rigged should reach that far.” “Damn…you’re right. I’ve been thinking in terms of rescue, and using our own engine was something I just….” He waved his good arm in frustration. “Just stupidity, I guess.” “So what else is new? Don’t I always have to think for the two of us?” “You think? With what?” Mark’s spirits were up, in spite of the injury. A good sign. And his remark on the engine was valid. Sure the engine attachment cradle on the ship was bent beyond repair. But the engine had been attached to the ice-mass, and that was all around them, drifting in the same general direction. The engine was still attached to the cradle they’d sunk into the ice mass. With a little creativity, some ice, and a torch, the engine could be attached to the ship. He began to pull himself toward the control console, calling. “You’re a pain in the a*s, Mark, but right now I damn near like you.” “De nada. Just get us home in time for me to spend some time with Stacey, before she ships out.” He smiled at the idea of Mark going out with Stacey in his current condition, then shrugged. She might even find the idea attractive. Certainly, when the pain-killers wore off, he would need comforting.
“So?” Cal turned his head to find Mark floating by his ear. One of the benefits of zero-gravity was that as injured as he was, he could still move through the ship. “So I got it to answer, and I’m trying to convince the thing to head in our direction. It didn’t want to, initially, because the latches are jammed and its sensors are still reporting contact with the cradle on the ice-mass. I think I’m past that, though.” “You can’t just tell it to head back here, as it normally would?” He threw up his hands in disgust, wincing as his hurt arm reminded him of the stupidity of that action. “Tell it to head back here? Mark, the homing reflector is gone, so it has nothing to aim for. I’ll have to guide it in close enough that I can stand on the hull to snag it, and I have to bring it in by guess, alone, because I have no camera to show me if I’m sending the damn thing towards us or toward the sun.” In reality, the data displays and the guidance aids built into the engine’s control system allowed him to be fairly sure he was guiding it correctly, but at this point he’d been awake for thirty hours, in spite of forcing himself to stretch out in his bednetting for a time. Thinking was becoming more and more difficult, as was staying awake. The look Mark gave him showed that he was aware of his state, but rather than saying anything, directly, he asked, “Is the engine stable in relation to us? We won’t lose it if we don’t haul it in right away, will we?” “Well, no.” “So take a break and have something to eat…maybe take a nap. You look like I feel.” He’d been dreading this moment--the time when he had to tell his friend that they had literally nothing left on-board to eat. The kitchen unit, with all its supplies, was gone. Hours spent on the hull, squinting into blackness and hoping for a miracle, proved that. When he told Mark about the loss, however, he seemed unperturbed. “Okay, so break out that bottle of brandy you carry to celebrate with. Get yourself stinking drunk and then sleep it off. It’ll do you good, and sure won’t change anything for the worse.” He shrugged, then added, “And I sure wouldn’t turn down a swig or two, myself, right now.”
Cal woke to the sound of cursing. He lay still for a time, disoriented and trying to place the words into some meaningful context. His partner was the obvious source, but something was very wrong with both the rhythm and content of this particular stream of invective. Half awake as he was, it took a moment or two for it to become clear that there was a lack of imagination and little emotion to the words. Mark Porter could be creatively foul in a half-dozen languages, but this was an unfocused stream of words that happened to be of the four-letter variety. Something was very wrong, in a situation that was, itself, far beyond being called wrong. He reached for the sleep netting’s release tab, but stopped, as pain erupted all over his body. The arm he’d broken shouted its displeasure at being moved, while the rest of his body sang chorus to the complaint. Battered by the collision, his body had suffered innumerable strains, which he ignored in the race to save the ship. Now, demanding time to repair the injuries, stiffened joints and swollen bruises made their displeasure known. For nearly a minute he lay, unmoving, while he gathered strength. During that time Mark’s monotonous stream of complaint rolled on, unabated. Finally, moving as gently as possible, he left the webbing and rotated his body to face the console, where the noise came from. “Uhh, Mark?” The cursing stopped. “… I hear you.” Mark’s voice was dull, lifeless and he continued to stare at the screen. “Is there something I should know?” “I suppose.” “Well?” A soft sigh, then, “Well we’re dead. It’s a stinking shame, but we are.” Mark’s voice had the same beaten-down quality in making that statement as when it had been droning the string of curses at the control console. “How dead.” Mark’s face, which had been nearly expressionless until then, curled into lines of disgust and anger as he looked up and met his eyes. “Fucked dead, buddy, that’s how dead. We’ve been run over by a goddamned ball of cosmic s**t and then left to starve. We’re dead, because we can’t get there from here.” The passion left his voice and he slumped as he added, “Not in time, anyhow.” Cal digested that for a moment, then, deciding he needed more data, pushed the pain, and the first twinges of hunger, into the background. He gingerly tucked himself into the second control station where he could access the display panels, and slaved his display to Mark’s. “So let me in on it, at least. Where are we?” Mark touched a control and the display changed to a schematic of their area of the cosmos, with the familiar triangular pip that represented their ship at the center. A dotted line representing their current path through space curved off to the left, while to the right the icon representing the station glowed near the edge of the screen. “I figure we could pull in ice and wield it into a tie point for the engine cradle.” A trace of life crept back into Mark’s voice. “It’s still attached to the engine.” “You pulled it in closer?” “A bit, but I left the fine work for you.” He studied the parameters Mark had entered. “The problem,” Mark said, while Cal absorbed the situation, “Is that the crap-pile that whacked us gave us a hell of a delta-vee in the wrong direction, and everything we would need to fix that is scattered to hell and gone.” “Have you searched for the tank module?” “With what? The cameras? They’re gone, too, remember?” Mark was kind enough to forgo mentioning the fact that even were they to find the tank, the fuel connections were gone, ripped away from the hull in the collision. Satisfied that Mark had missed nothing important, he assumed control and keyed a request for animation, then waited as the computer hunted for the best solution to the problem, that of getting them home. In the end they had two options. They could boost for home, using the fuel remaining in the engine’s small onboard tank--the fuel that should have started the ice mass in the direction of Mars--and either brake at the other end or try for a near collision course with the station and hope someone noticed them and sent help. In the first case, that of braking at the end of the flight, they could use only a bit more than half their fuel to start them on the trip. The rest would bring them to a halt at the end. The predicted time of travel for that method was 113 days, which meant they starved well before they arrived. With the second method they would use all their fuel to boost in the direction of home hoping someone would match velocity and take them out of the ship as it sped by the station. Unfortunately, they no longer had the radar signature of a ship. So either the station’s protective devices would send a whacker out to intercept and kill them, or they’d be ignored as they passed. And dead is dead, either way. So boosting for home wasn’t an option. He took a deep breath, then turned his attention back on his partner. “You’ve checked on reaching Delto Station?” “It’s the other way.” “Mars?” He waved that away before Mark had a chance to laugh. Mars was a year away, even if they had not been driven out-system by the asteroid. “S**t,” was all he could come up with. “My point, exactly.” Mark hesitated a beat before adding, “So who eats who? Do we fight it out or draw straws?” The words were light, but the subject wasn’t. If one of them were to sacrifice his life so the other could survive, the trip was do-able. “Let’s look around, first,” he said, delaying any decision. “If we can find the fuel pod we can reload the engine’s onboard tank manually and do a series of small burns.” “Uh-huh…. I hear you, but don’t take too long, because every day here is another day added to the trip home.”
° ° °
“So…you’ll tell Stacey I thought about her?” “What?” Cal looked up from the rough draft of a letter to his wife--a last letter. Mark floated a few feet to his right. “You’ll tell Stacey I thought about her before I died?” Reluctantly, he brought his mind back to the present situation. “Why does it have to be you?” “Because you have family on Earth. Your kids need a daddy. I’ve got….” He took a slow breath then shrugged. “I’ve got nothing.” “There’s Stacey. Or there could be someone else. You might--” “Look Cal, we’ve both done the numbers, and they say someone has to die. I sure as hell don’t want it to be me, but I don’t want it to be you, either.” He looked away, seeming embarrassed, as he added, “Besides, there’s no way in hell I could…could kill you. And as for eating you…well I don’t think I could do that, either.” “Mark, you’re an idiot! What makes you so sure I would be able to--” “You won’t have to. I’ll go out and pop my suit open. I know I can do that. And once you do that sort of thing it’s hard to change your mind.” Cal shook his head. “No. It’s not fair, and I--” Mark reached toward him, taking his shoulders in rough hands, squeezing hard to make his point. “Not fair? Listen to me, buddy. F**k your goddamned ‘not fair.’ I’ve made up my mind, and you’re not going to change it. Understand?” Placed in the terrible position of having to argue for his own death, Cal hesitated, then nodded. Mark, who had Cal’s gaze locked with his own, eased his grip to one that just maintained human contact as he shifted his gaze downward, seeming unable to meet his eyes. “Just…just leave my head alone, okay?” He looked up again. I mean don’t….” He took a breath. “Well, you know…eat it.” His voice took on a forced lightness as he said, “And keep it frozen. Who knows, if they can grow new fingers and other s**t, maybe they’ll someday be able to grow a new body. So if….” He trailed off as Cal began to laugh. Mark released his grip, mouth open in surprise, face filled with confusion, as he began to drift away. “What? What did I say?” Cal grinned. “What did you say? You just told me how to get us both home, that’s what you said.” Mark just stared.
° ° °
Forwarded Mail from: Macon Trier
To: Anna Trier Subject: My First Day
Hi Mom: Well, as expected, today was my first shift in station-ops with no guardian watching over my shoulder and breathing down my neck. I was finally out of my gray trainee unitard and wearing the official Ops uniform for the first time. It felt good, and I think I did a pretty decent job. I had a really weird day, though. The shift started pretty quietly, but about midway through, the debris sensor noticed a ship-sized mass on a twenty-minute collision course with the station and started to chirp for help. The mass wasn’t moving very fast, but we can’t let anything bigger than a pebble hit us, even moving slowly. Jerry Snyder, the shift leader, put me at the number two station, so I could watch, and powered up a whacker, which is what we call a big chunk of rock with a simple hydro-oxy engine and sensor package bolted onto it. You just aim the thing in the direction required and point out what it is you don’t like. The whacker roars off and shoves whatever it’s aimed at out of the way by running into it--which is why we call it a whacker. Jerry also gave the incoming rock a visual inspection, just in case some moron forgot to file a flight plan. But it was just a ball of stone. At least it looked like one on my screen. Then, just as he was about to light off the whacker, the thing on the screen started to spin on its axis, which surprised the hell out of both of us, as you can imagine. Rocks are not supposed to do that. Anyway, the thing rolled until an engine appeared. Then, it started a deceleration burn, one that put it at rest about four feet from the station (which is some pretty nice piloting, by the way). I was on suit-ready duty, which means suited up, with the helmet open, just in case of an emergency. So I went out to snag the thing and reel it in, which wasn’t any big deal, because the pilot already had his ship’s port aligned with the connection ring of the shiplock. All I had to do was guide the ring into place on the ship, power up the flex-seals, and bleed air into our lock. I later found the pilot had done it all blind, using just the mass sensor built into the instrument panel and the inertial data from the computer’s sensor package, which makes it real nice piloting. After I got the docking ring in place it got a little complicated. The airlock seal we use is kind of like the one you see around the doors of a refrigerator: soft, but tight fitting. The seal can handle dents and irregularities on the ship’s hull and still hold air, but that ship was dinged up pretty bad--so bad that I had to use a wet-gasket inside the docking ring to make the thing airtight. It’s part of the standard lock package but they said I was the first one to actually use it. After that we had a long wait. I could talk to the guys in the ship, but I had to shout pretty loud to be heard, so I didn’t. We couldn’t get them out right away because their airlock’s hatch was jammed, and they couldn’t open it except by unbolting the mounting plate from the inside. But that gave everyone on station who was awake a chance to jam their way into the Ops compartment. Finally, they released the last bolt and things got really interesting. First, when the doorplate drifted away by enough to allow ship’s air to mingle with station air, a wave of unbelievably foul stench came from the ship. The stink was so bad that I slammed my faceplate shut after one single whiff and purged my breathing system, something the other two guys on duty with me, and the people who had dropped by, couldn’t do. They looked, and sounded, really unhappy. “Sorry about the stink,” a voice from the ship said. “The waste tank ruptured. We tried to gather it up and dump it overboard, but there’s still a lot of it soaked into pads and stuff.” The man got the doorframe clear and we got our first look at him. He wore the standard Ice Fleet unitard, a snug fitting one-piece body suit, coffee brown, with the fleet’s icicle logo on the chest. On him though, the suit was way oversized, and the excess material waved like wash on the line because there’s no gravity to pull it down and still the motion. The man looked like a concentration camp victim from the historical films, and I wouldn’t have believed someone could be that thin and still be alive. One of the ice-jockeys who had come down to watch must have known him, because he said, “Cal Shaefer, you son-of-a-b***h! I thought it must be you. Where the hell have you been? I went to your funeral a couple of months ago.” At that, the man, who couldn’t have massed seventy pounds Earth-weight, laughed and said, “You don’t want to know, Sam.” He’d left the ship, proper, but stayed in the connecting tunnel, as though waiting for someone else to emerge. The jock nodded in the direction of the ship. “Mark in there? The man flicked a look back toward the ship, and laughter filled his voice as he said, “Oh, he’s in there, all right. He’s getting ready for a big date.” In response, someone still inside the ship called, “I am ready, you a*****e. Just get the hell out of my way.” The second man, who looked worse than the first, if possible, wormed his way past the airlock plate and through the tunnel. Both of them emerged and latched on to a handy grab-handle. That was when I noticed that neither man had legs. That made no sense. And the sound of whispered conversation throughout the compartment said everyone else felt the same. But then, the ice-jockey who’d spoken before pointed in the direction of their lower bodies and said, “Well I’ll be damned, so that’s how you son of b*****s did it; you gnawed each other’s legs off…from toes on up to the end.” There had been the sound of respect in his voice when he said that, but then he laughed and added. “It’s a sight I’m glad I didn’t get to witness, though, and I sure hope you stopped before you got to anything important.” “Gnawed, my a*s,” the man named Mark said, pointing a finger at the one who had asked the question. “We did a first class job of it--chopped the damn things off, dressed them out proper, cut everything into nice bite-sized portions, and then wrapped and froze them so they’d keep. Hell, Cal even managed to rig us an oven.” Silence followed, until someone asked the question that probably came to everyone’s mind: “So…how did he….I mean how did it…taste?” Cal laughed. “I’m pretty good, but Mark’s sort of gamey.” “Gamey my a*s. I’m a better man than you are,” the other man growled. He extended a hand toward the other ice-jockey. “So, Sam, is Stacey on-station?” For someone who had been through whatever had wrecked their ship, and who had been forced to literally eat their own flesh to survive, the men were in high spirits--though I guess making it home alive might have caused that. “She’s still sunward, and from what I hear, will be for another forty Earth-sols.” “Good,” the man said, nodding. I’ve probably got that much time in deep regeneration growing a new pair of legs, anyway.” With that he punched the man next to him and said, “Race you to sick-bay?” With a shrug, the other man turned in the direction of Jerry Snyder, who was still at the command station. “Message my wife and tell her I made it, will you? I don’t want her to see me like this, so just say I’m fine and that I’ll call her the second I’m awake again.” Jerry nodded, and the man waved a hand that sort of included everyone as he added, “Ship’s yours guys. I’d trash it were I you, though. You’ll never get the stink out, and I sure as hell don’t want it again.” With that he grabbed a stanchion, heaved himself toward the compartment door, and was gone, trailed by his partner.
A really strange day, Mom. But strangest of all are those ice-jockeys. They’re all crazy.
° ° °
Macon punched the send button on his com, then switched it off and slipped into his sleep net, still thinking about the events of the day. Certainly a shift to remember, and rumor had it that saving yourself the way those ice-jockeys did would forever after be known as the Shaefer procedure. He thought about the ice-jockeys, and the work they did, spending long times away from all possible assistance. Would he have been as resourceful, placed in the same position? He wasn’t crazy enough to try, but still, would he have been able to save himself, by thinking of that, or some other method? He closed his eyes. “Not me, though,” he muttered. “In a million years I wouldn’t become an ice-jockey. You’d have to be crazy to do something like that.” But just before sleep claimed him he wondered if there was a training slot open in the ice-jockey fleet.
- - - - - - - If you'd like to read more, I've made the novel "Pay what you like" on Smashwords (and it's okay of you pay $00.00). https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/664382
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JayGElkins Park, PAAboutI've been actively writing fiction for about 40 years and have been offered, and signed, 7 publishing contracts. I have a total of 30 novels available at booksellers at the moment. I've taught wri.. more..Writing
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