Delta-v, page 43
Tighe felt relief flood over him. He laughed as the entire crew hugged and turned back to the screen.
“We have managed to hijack L5 laser transmitter from new owners to send this message. There are people who wish to speak with you.” Yakovlev moved aside to reveal the core of Catalyst Corporation’s original mission control team. At the front was Gabriel Lacroix. The engineers cheered and waved to the camera.
Yak moved back into place. “Took very long time to take over laser transmitter, and lock out new owners. After all this inconvenience, we hope you receive this message. The window for your return to Earth approaches, and we have idea how to save you.” Yak grew serious. “Amy, my kotyonok. Even if you have fallen in love with some vyperdysch, I wish to see you safe.” He held up his fingers in pantomime. “Call us.”
With that the message ended.
Tighe unclenched from a stress he did not consciously realize he was under. Chindarkar hugged him and Jin gripped his shoulder.
“I knew they wouldn’t forget us.”
“Yak, you magnificent bastard.”
Tighe noticed that Adisa was not smiling. The reminder about losing Tsukada appeared to have hit him hard.
Adisa asked, “Do we believe him?”
Everyone regarded Adisa with surprise.
He continued. “Yak and the others may have been kidnapped and threatened with death if they did not convince us to turn on the real transmitter.”
Tighe paused. “I didn’t see Eike.”
Adisa nodded and said, “Her absence concerns me.”
Chindarkar frowned. “We must reply.” She pointed at Adisa’s disconnected server. “If you don’t trust them, reply through this virtual machine of yours.”
Adisa brooded for a moment, then nodded.
Not long afterward, the five remaining crew of the Konstantin floated in front of a surveillance camera and recorded a message.
Abarca spoke first, smiling. “You have no idea how glad we are to see your faces.” Her expression turned serious. She glanced to either side. “There are still five of us. Sevastian, it saddens me to tell you this, but Amy died back in November. From a fall.” Abarca gripped Adisa’s hand. “We placed her next to David and Nicole. Aside from radiation, meteor strikes, and assholes back on Earth trying to kill us, we are all well. But we’d like to hear more about this idea for returning us to Earth. We’ve done a big job out here, and it’d be nice to come home.”
Just over eighteen minutes later, they received a reply from Gabriel Lacroix. He looked pleased but also emotionally restrained. Behind him the mission control staff likewise looked subdued. Lacroix leaned in to say, “We are glad to see you five. Sevastian needed a moment.”
Lacroix gestured to the crude mission control room behind him—a collection of cheap desks in what appeared to be a warehouse. “Our budget has shrunk, but we have gathered most of the original mission control team. Unfortunately, we have no funds to produce or launch the ship that was originally planned to bring you home. . . .”
Tighe’s hopes fell—along with those of the rest of the crew.
“However, we have another idea.” Lacroix stepped aside as a hologram of a streamlined spacecraft glowed nearby. “We think you can build the return ship yourselves—from the design that Catalyst originally developed. We’re sending you the CAD plans—just over 62 tons dry mass—a seamless cobalt-steel lifting body with a ceramic ablative heat shield, loosely based on NASA’s canceled X-33 VentureStar.”
Lacroix rotated the hologram. The ship was sleek and had no windows, with vestigial wings near the rear and twin, stubby tail fins. It had no rocket engine. It was just a glider.
“With this lifting body you can achieve Earth aerocapture. We estimate that you’ll be approaching the Earth at a minimum of 18 kilometers per second. By using Earth’s atmosphere to aerobrake, you won’t need rockets to slow down—those would require a massive ship with systems capable of cooling hundreds of tons of liquid oxygen and methane en route. Instead, with this design you can depart Ryugu in a much smaller vessel that is far easier to build.”
Abarca narrowed her eyes. “He’s not seriously expecting us to build our own spaceship, is he?”
Lacroix’s message continued. “This return ship was designed years ago by the same team that designed the Konstantin. We’ve got a complete parts listing, and we’ll guide you. Likewise, we’ve written software to assist your return craft with astrogation, propulsion, life support.”
Abarca threw up her hands. “Does he really think we can build a hypersonic lifting body?”
Adisa was already studying the digital plans they’d received. He nodded to himself. “We’re not going to build it, Isabel.” He looked up. “We’re going to grow it. Just like Amy taught us.”
* * *
—
Tighe, Adisa, and Chindarkar reviewed Amy Tsukada’s tutorials on chemical vapor deposition repeatedly in the following days. The mission control engineers sent additional CAD plans, and the entire crew got busy reviewing them.
The engineers also sent a VR flight simulator so the crew could learn how to fly their theoretical return ship. The aerobraking maneuver had such tight tolerances that it would be handled entirely by flight control software. However, just getting into the vicinity of Earth was going to require a lot of skill.
Jin was already poring through the return ship’s two thousand pages of technical documentation. “I flew fighter jets, and I have a hundred hours on capsule reentry simulators. I believe I can fly this.”
Tighe slapped him on the back. “I think we have our pilot.”
After several days reviewing CAD plans, manifests, tech manuals, and software, all five crew members sat around a worktable in the Fab Hab. A holographic blueprint floated between them of the aerobraking craft mated to a booster stage. The much larger booster consisted of a scaffolding framework holding six spherical fuel tanks in two rows of three with twin rocket engines between. Forward of these was a cylindrical crew quarters.
Chindarkar rubbed her tired eyes. “A thousand tons of fuel, turbopumps, piping, rocket motors, thrusters, crew module, life support—and it all needs to be integrated with control systems. But to tell you the truth, my biggest concern is the lifting body. I think it would be easier to remain in space and fire rocket engines to slow down. Then we could just go into orbit around Earth.”
Jin shook his head. “We have less than a year to build this. Adding refrigeration systems to store fuel for a month-long journey is complex. Then there is the mass of extra fuel, extra tanks, plumbing—and what if we cannot reignite the engines? We have no ullage motors.” Jin pointed at the aerobraking stage. “This way, we only need to burn once—on departure.”
Adisa sighed. “I agree with Han. Aerobraking is not our biggest concern. Astrogation is.”
Everyone looked his way.
“At the velocity we are proposing, our trajectory will need to be incredibly precise. If we are even a micro–arc second off course, we will miss the Earth—and be lost forever.”
Jin nodded. “This all needs to be constructed, tested, and ready for departure”—he looked up at his crystal—“by February 10 of next year.”
Tighe whistled. “Eleven months.”
The crew exchanged grim looks.
Adisa said, “Then it is best we get started.”
CHAPTER 45
Lifeboat
AUGUST 15, 2037
James Tighe and Jin Han floated on tethers near the Konstantin’s refinery in well-worn EVA suits. Bolted to the lower spine of the Konstantin was a polymer latticework scaffolding that contained a vessel under construction—a vessel that itself mostly resembled scaffolding.
Tighe watched a mule coast slowly past him. It held a 2-meter bladder tank in its robotic arms. Remotely piloted by Chindarkar, the mule soon popped thrusters and came to a stop near Jin. The robotic arms placed the bladder tank inside a frame, between two identical tanks.
Jin moved to secure the tank to the frame with stays, hooking them to eyebolts on the tank’s surface. “Bring over the last hose, J.T.”
“Coming . . .” Tighe climbed from girder to girder in microgravity, pulling a polymer hose behind him. He joined it to a valve at the base of the bladder tank.
The hose floated behind Tighe, as did two others, leading to a 20-meter-long, 10-meter-wide, and 5-meter-high white polymer mold inflated within latticework scaffolding. Shaped vaguely like a wedge, it resembled a captive Thanksgiving Day parade balloon. The interior of the mold, Tighe knew, was far more intricate than its exterior suggested.
Chindarkar’s voice came in over the comm link. “What happens if we screw this up?”
Tighe clipped the hose in. “Then we’ve got ourselves a 62-ton paperweight.” He tightened the hose collar, then checked that it was secure. “Locked.”
Jin gazed up at the Konstantin’s z-axis, rising 80 meters over them, the ship’s radial arms rotating like a colossal ceiling fan. “We’re ready, Ade.”
Adisa’s voice said, “Powering the pumps.”
Chindarkar’s voice: “Pressure’s good. Heating elements good.”
Tighe scanned the three hose lines for leaks. The hoses, he knew, were slowly pumping 60,000 liters of cobalt-steel-carbonyl into the inflated mold.
Adisa’s voice again: “Timer set to eight hours, fourteen minutes.”
Jin checked the voltages on the electrical wires.
The mold was a large chemical vapor deposition chamber—much bigger than the one Tsukada had used to make machine parts inside the Konstantin’s refinery. It would form the hull of a 20-meter-long aerodynamic lifting body all in one piece—seamlessly—out of metal so pure and heat resistant it should help withstand aerocapture through the Earth’s atmosphere at 20-plus kilometers per second.
Mission control’s use of the word should was what gave Tighe pause.
This CVD session would be the first of many. They’d depose the interior of the ship in a series of layers—structural supports, inner walls, conduits, hatches and a heat shield. Their to-do list was seemingly endless.
Adisa’s voice: “It will be hours until this completes. Come in and get some rest.”
Chindarkar brought the mule alongside. Jin and Tighe floated wearily onto the running boards and clipped in. Holding on as they moved beyond the sweep of the radial arms, Tighe gazed out at the cosmos.
The majesty all around them no longer inspired Tighe. The universe now seemed cold, uncaring, and incomprehensibly remote. The Earth was just a white dot in an endless void. And yet it was home.
More than anything, he yearned for home.
* * *
—
His body aching, Tighe lay on the worn sofa in Hab 2, listening to a classic rock station out of Berlin. He found the music soothing. Jin dozed in a nearby reading chair, also exhausted from another long EVA—their eighth in six days.
Tighe gazed up at the dozens of world’s firsts scrawled in black ink on the aluminum core wall, but it was their deadline written in larger, underlined characters that was impossible to ignore: February 10, 2038. The date loomed over every waking moment. It was the departure window for return to Earth, roughly six months from now.
For the first time in his life, Tighe fell asleep dreaming of rocket trajectories.
DECEMBER 8, 2037
Tighe, Jin, Abarca, and Adisa stood on the running boards of two mules. Only Chindarkar remained on the Konstantin.
The mules floated a hundred meters away from the largest robot tug they’d built yet. The name “Amy Tsukada” was emblazoned in meter-high letters on the spacecraft’s solar shield. The vessel was identical in form to the previous two tugs, but longer, and composed of half a dozen rows of bladder tanks—6,000 tons of water ice, nitrogen, ammonia, and carbonyls in all—and powered by eight small rocket engines cannibalized from CRC mining robots.
The tug was already almost completed before Yakovlev and mission control contacted them with plans to build a crewed return spacecraft, and while that construction project continued, it was Abarca who insisted they complete the robot tug, too.
“It’s why we came out here,” she said. “If we don’t return these resources, the last year will have been for nothing. And it’s the biggest shipment yet.”
And so Tighe and Jin worked all hours, mounting and connecting the CRC engines, working with mission control to integrate them into guidance software, even as the deadline to return to Earth loomed.
Now that the robot tug was ready to launch, everyone turned to Adisa, who stared at the 40-meter-long spacecraft.
Adisa spoke softly. “Amy was a special human being. She taught us how to draw the building blocks of life from this dust. She kept us alive—and does still. I hope the cargo on her ship makes life possible for many more.”
With that, Adisa tapped a virtual button that ignited the 6,000-ton behemoth’s eight rocket engines.
The engines all silently ignited, but the vessel did not move—at least at first. Tighe and Jin exchanged nervous looks. However, the tug finally began to move, almost imperceptibly, and then noticeably, propelling the craft away from Ryugu and into deep space.
The launch was for safekeeping. The ideal return window to cislunar space for a craft this massive would not arrive until March 17, 2039—well over a year after the crew of the Konstantin would have departed.
It was being moved to a position a few hundred kilometers from Ryugu, where it would lie dormant until the time was right. Then it would fire its engines, accelerating 551 meters per second to send it on a two-and-three-quarter-year trajectory back toward cislunar space—arriving near Earth’s moon on December 3, 2041.
They watched the receding engine-glow for several minutes.
This was the last of three robot tugs sent toward Earth on long, low-delta-v trajectories. The human crew of the Konstantin would beat all but two shipments back—if they ever managed to depart Ryugu, that is.
Watching the glow of the rockets fade into the distance, Abarca said, “No matter what happens to us now, we’ve fulfilled our purpose here. We’ve returned 11,000 tons of resources. That’s more than Nathan hoped. More than enough to jump-start humanity’s leap into space. Now it’s time to rescue ourselves.”
* * *
—
A few days later Tighe was on another EVA, moving around the scaffolding to install fuel pipes on the return ship.
He glanced down to see welding flashes emanating from within the hull of a sleek, dark-gray spacecraft, whose hatchways had not yet been installed. The vessel was seamless—with no opening for a front windscreen, only smooth cobalt steel dotted with integral housings for plenoptic camera sensors. The ship resembled a jet fighter, and Tighe had to admit it gave him confidence.
That they could build such a thing seemed miraculous. And yet, here it was. Tsukada had taught them well.
Then he noticed Adisa on an EVA, moving along the hull near the tail fins. He seemed to be applying a mask of lettering to the ship’s surface with black Kapton tape.
Tighe secured his tools and floated down to the scaffolding just above Adisa. He craned his neck and read the name aloud, “James Caird.”
Surprised, Adisa looked up with difficulty within the stiffness of the EVA suit. “All ships must have a name. I elected to give ours one—in tape, should anyone have objections.”
“All right, I give up, who’s James Caird?”
“He was a prosperous textile manufacturer in 1870s Scotland.”
“Okay . . . I’m as big a fan of nineteenth-century textile manufacturers as the next guy, but why are we naming our return spacecraft after one?”
“Mr. Caird had another small vessel named after him—it was a lifeboat. Ernest Shackleton piloted that lifeboat across 800 miles of Antarctic sea, amid terrible storms, to find a tiny dot of land: South Georgia Island. The journey of the James Caird was considered one of the greatest feats of small-boat navigation in all human history.”
Tighe nodded to himself. “That sounds about right, Ade. You’ve got my vote.”
It wound up being unanimous.
CHAPTER 46
Reason
FEBRUARY 10, 2038
James Tighe performed CPR on Adedayo Adisa, who lay unconscious on the medical table in Hab 2.
Isabel Abarca inserted a needle into Adisa’s neck. “C’mon, Ade. Stay with me!”
Jin Han stood nearby holding up an IV bag.
Chindarkar’s voice came through the comm link. “How is he doing?”
Jin answered, “Give us a second, Priya.”
Still unconscious, Adisa vomited onto his chest, then sucked for air between coughs.
Abarca cleared Adisa’s airway and then affixed an oxygen mask. The heart monitor beeped fast but steadily. She nodded to Tighe. “He’s breathing.”
Jin spoke into the comm link. “He’s breathing. Stabilized.”
“Thank you.”
Tighe wiped sweat away from his face. “We can’t keep using amphetamines.”
The entire group looked exhausted and gaunt. Their jumpsuits were patched and faded.
Abarca shined a light into Adisa’s pupils. “Ade, can you hear me?”
Adisa’s eyes focused, then glanced around the bed. “What happened?”
“You overdosed.”
“I apologize, Isabel.”
Abarca’s eyes teared up. She wiped the tears away and studied his vital signs. “Why would you exceed the dosage I prescribed?”
“Because I must not sleep. We need to finish the ship.”
