Planetary: Mercury, page 20
Now able to use both hands, she pulled Marsh toward her until she could see his face. He was gasping, wide eyed, like a fish out of water. She pawed at the plants holding the halves of his helmet open with her gloved hands until it finally snapped shut. She could see his breathing immediately improve. His eyes finally found hers, and he smiled, despite the obvious pain he was in. She pulled him toward her so that their helmet touched. “You’re going to be fine!” she shouted. He gave her a nod. She released one hand from his suit to reach up near his collar, externally activating his helmet’s radio so they could speak.
Unfortunately, it was in that instance that Marsh’s hand finally pulled loose from beneath the cryo-door. The sudden unexpected jerk snatched him from Sarah’s one-handed grip. She screamed as he flew up toward the jagged hole in the ring’s wall. His suit spewed moisture laden atmosphere as it was torn by the metal framework when he passed feet-first half-way through the wall. He spread his arms wide and caught himself for a moment. His eyes sought hers and she heard him say with a gasping breath, “Sar, I love you.” Then the force of impacting debris forced him through the rent and out into the void of space.
Sarah screamed again and began wrenching her foot free of the garden bed. Behind her, the final bulkhead door slammed down. She let go and sailed toward the opening, intent on one last attempt to save her husband’s life. However, the last of the air being spent in this portion of the chamber meant that she no longer had any propulsion, so she simply fell toward the ring’s floor. She screamed one last time, a mix of rage, frustration and despair. She fell toward the floor, and instinctually threw her arms across her face.
She was in that position when she was shaken awake. Her eyes popped open and she was looking up into Marshalls’ face. “You were moaning and crying in your sleep. Nightmare?” he asked.
She shuddered and sat up from the med lab’s bed. She grabbed him and pulled him into a tight hug. “Arrh, hey, watch the ribs!” he grunted.
“Oh, shut up, you big baby,” she sniffed.
He put his arms around her, and let the embrace continue for as long as she needed it. “Big baby? Who’s the one crying about a bad dream, huh?” he teased. She squeezed him again slightly in retaliation. “Oww…” He grumbled with a chuckle, disengaging himself from her. “What are you doing in here instead of your cabin, anyway?”
He was referring to the fact that she was on the other bed in the med lab adjacent to the one where he had been recuperating.
“Making sure I’m here if you get some stupid idea to overdo things and fall on the floor again.” She straightened slid from the bed. “How are you feeling?”
“Still a bit of a headache, but the dizziness is gone. Ribs still hurt like a mother though. Can you help me with this?” He lifted his shirt up helplessly.
Sarah chuckled and jumped down from the bed. “Hold your arms out straight.” He did so, and she pushed both sleeves of the shirt over them all the way to his chest. “Now raise your right arm over your head.” He complied and she drew the neck hole up and over his head. He put his arms down and she tugged it the rest of the way on.
She wrinkled her nose and said, “On second thought, maybe you should try a shower before you get dressed.” She waved her hand in front of her.
“You don’t exactly smell like rose petals yourself, you know,” he chided. “Besides, I’m starving. Help me to the mess hall first. After that, we can share a shower stall and I’ll help you forget all about those bad dreams.” He gave her a sly grin and bent to kiss her neck.
She squirmed as the scruff of his two day old beard tickled her. “I think that’s against regulations, Doctor.”
“Hmmm… not if it’s therapy.” His muffled voice said as he continued his attention, moving up her cheek toward her mouth. “You are technically my physician after all.” He nuzzled her nose with his. “What if I need a sponge bath?” He stopped, smiling at her with their noses touching end to end and staring into her eyes.
She placed both arms around his neck, his slight height advantage making her stretch upward just a bit. “You are a horrible patient, and you should be ashamed of yourself for trying to seduce the first officer into breaking regulations!” she grinned back at him, then moved in for a full-fledged kiss. They held it for a long moment, then Marshall broke it off.
“Hmm… maybe you’re right. There could be a conflict of interest here. We should call Ozi and ask him if it’s OK for you to give me a sponge bath.” He reached for the comm panel button, but Sarah grabbed his hand and wrestled with him playfully.
“Don’t you dare!” she chuckled. They kissed once more, then Sarah smacked him on his butt and said, “Come on Doctor Sponge Bath, let’s go eat!”
He chuckled then turned and began cautiously and slowly climbing the ladder out of the Med Bay into the main ring. She followed close behind, shepherding his movements upward.
Once they reached the Mess Module, they found Ozi already there eating a meal. “Good Morning, Captain.” Marshall said as they stepped off the ladder onto the upper section of the pod.
“Afternoon, you mean,” Ozi said around mouthful of food. He swallowed and continued “How are you feeling?”
“Sore,” Marsh answered. “But I’m much better than yesterday. I should be fine in a day or two.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Sarah said as she stepped off the ladder. Marsh just rolled his eyes, causing Ozi to snicker. The two prepared their meals, sending them down in the small dumbwaiter. Then they descended the second ladder that was offset to the side of the pod and joined Zanwe at the main dining table.
“Richard said he would be here in a few minutes. We can have our staff meeting in OQ2 after we eat.” Ozi said as he resumed his own meal. “Are you feeling up to sitting in, Marshall?” Ozi glanced at Sarah, “With the attending physician’s permission, of course.”
She waved a fork in assent, and Marsh nodded. “Sure, Ozi, I think I can work you into my busy and oh so exciting napping schedule. Although, a shower first would be nice.” He smiled wryly at Sarah, and continued his meal.
“That’s fine. We’ll meet at the top of the hour then.”
They ate in companionable silence for a while before Ozi excused himself. As soon as he was out of sight, Marsh and Sarah both looked at each other. “We’ve still got thirty-five minutes,” he said. They grinned and began racing each other to finish their meal then rushed out of the Commissary Pod.
All four members of the crew sat in an arc around the main console on OQ2 facing each other as best they could.
“Did the diagnostics find anything?” Sarah asked.
“Not anything definitive.” Ozi replied. “Richard is working on some theories of his own, but we think we have ruled out the upgrade coding as a culprit.”
“Really? Hmm… so what does Con-Cent have to say about it?” Sarah asked.
Richard answered by throwing a projection onto the holo-screen. “They want us to do a few trial boosts before we go to full beam again. We’ll do a field startup without the drive for thirty minutes, then slowly ramp up to full thrust for an hour.” He explained as he showed their course on the holo-screen. “They’ll shut the beam down at that point. If we don’t see any fluctuations, we confirm and the beam will start back up again after the comm delay cycle.”
“Does that mean we’re going to have to go through orientation shift twice?” Marsh asked.
“No, we’ll just stay strapped in during the phases.” Ozi answered. “We’ll also burn some of our reserve power to keep thrusting part of the time. Con-Cent is going to increase the beam power to make that up.”
“Hmmm… I hate to think what these jerks and starts are doing to the plant stems in the greensward. They’re still not as strong as I’d like, even with the adjustment to the nutrient mix,” Marshall stated. The lower gravity in the greensward allowed the plants to grow faster, but also much thinner. Thus the shifts in gravity could cause damage. He knew that they needed a full walkthrough and check, but as the Chief Botanist as well as Head Physician, his accident had left a growing to-do list that his crewmates couldn’t possibly complete in addition to their own tasks. His recovery time meant a backlogged task schedule that would take many more hours to catch up on than it took to get behind.
“Right,” Ozi said. “That’s a very good point. In fact, after we’re settled on course again, I’m putting everyone on a couple extra hours per shift in the garden. Marshall will supervise.” Ozi pointed an admonishing finger at him “Light duty only, understood?”
“Aye, sir, understood.” Marshall touched his sore ribs to emphasize. Considering his current state, it had been a ‘strenuous’ shower, and he was feeling it.
“Alright, so we man the OQ’s in two hours.” Ozi said and rose to his feet. “Dismissed.”
“Activate all sensor packages.” Ozi ordered.
“All sensors, aye,” Sarah replied.
“Commencing plasma shield restart,” Rick’s calm voice spoke over their earpieces. The holographic representation of the Helios shimmered as the shield slowly began to form. Its parabolic cone shape slowly coalesced into a subtle blue-green hued skirt. It continued to extend from the main drive cylinder to spread past the center ring of the greensward and downward past the ship itself until it was beyond the coherent range of its emitters. “Restart complete. No anomalies detected so far.”
“Initiating ring orientation shift. T minus two minutes,” the Captain informed his crew. “Commence visual quadrant sweep.”
A chorus of ‘ayes’ reached Zanwe’s ears as he began his on visual sweep of the pods. It was perfunctory, as he’d already had them do manual sweeps ahead of time, but it was protocol, so they did it anyway. After receiving all-clears from each quadrant, there was nothing else to do but monitor and wait for the countdown to complete.
“All personnel prepare for ring orientation shift.” The E.I. announced this, repeating it twice more as the lights blinked their associated pattern once again. Soon the pods began to shift downward into their full thrust configuration. Since the drive was not yet activated, the end result was that the crew were now pushed forward in their chair harnesses. This was soon to change however.
Rick spoke once more, saying “Still no fluctuations in the field. All functions nominal. I recommend drive startup as scheduled, Captain.”
“XO concurs, Captain.” Sarah said.
“Very well, initiate drive startup sequence as we planned it.”
“Aye, Captain.” Rick confirmed. “Startup for main drive at twenty-five percent thrust will commence in… five… four… three… two… commencing.”
The familiar but muted vibrating hum of the main plasma drive once again began to reverberate throughout the ship. The slant of their seats shifted slightly.
“Field is still nominal.” Rick asserted. No one else spoke as they waited the ten minutes until the next phase of acceleration. “Increasing to fifty percent thrust.”
Another slight shift and another waiting period passed with no untoward field fluctuations. They were less than a minute away from full thrust when a small ripple appeared on the upper section of the drive’s plasma shield.
“There it is again, Captain!” Sarah said urgently.
“Monitor it. Make sure all sensors are focused on that point if possible. Tell me what that is.” Zanwe ordered. “Marshall, notify Con-Cent that beam shutdown may be required, and to stand by.”
“I’m not seeing the same oscillation in the field this time. It’s distorted near the anomaly, but that’s it.” Rick commented.
“Shall we discontinue the thrust sequence, Captain?” Sarah asked.
“Yes, put it on hold, but maintain three-quarter for now.” Ozi watched the display as the anomaly point slowly edged down the shield. “Richard, is the rate of movement of that thing constant?”
“Ahhh… it would appear so, Captain,” he replied.
“Sarah, drop us to seventy percent thrust,” Ozi ordered.
“Seventy percent thrust, aye,” Sarah repeated as she initiated the command on her controls. The ships drive dimmed a bit. “Thrust at seven zero percent. We have lost contact with the beam from Earth.”
“Understood.” Ozi watched as the anomaly continued to move upward, but had it behaved as he expected? “Richard, did the speed of the anomaly’s transition change?”
“Yes, it slowed! Good on you, Captain! We must be pushing into its path,” Rick said, then mumbled to himself, “But what the hell is the bloody thing?” He thought for a second then asked, “Captain, can we drop another five percent to see if the change is linear? Still no oscillation, by the way.”
“Do it, Sarah.” Ozi responded.
“Aye, Cap, setting thrust to six five percent,” Sarah replied.
The resulting change in acceleration provided enough data for Rick to plot a correlation in speed with the anomaly that was just slightly off of linear. Encouraged by their results, the Captain decided to proceed with the thrust ramp up, but a bit earlier than originally scheduled so that they could catch back up to the beam from Earth. He wanted to know what this phenomenon was that was causing his ship so much grief.
“Sarah, take us to full thrust. Marshall, notify Con-Cent of our trajectory changes, and my intent to catch us back up to the beam.”
“Aye, Captain,” said Marshall.
“Full Thrust, aye.” Sarah adjusted settings and after a moment continued. “Max thrust achieved. Current power reserves at seventy-nine percent and falling.” She threw up an additional information window that showed percent reserves as well as a projected reserve usage for the maneuver he planned.
“Thank you, XO. Engineering, any change in the anomaly or the field?”
“It’s transitioning the field faster of course,” Richard answered, “but nothing other than… wait… there’s another anomaly developing. It’s opposite and up-thrust to the first… transitioning at the same rate. The positions in the field are different than before, but that’s probably due to orientation and trajectory changes in the ship.”
“Oscillations detected!” Sarah’s stressed voice interjected. “It’s the same as before. It started right after the second one fully formed.”
“Damn it!” Ozi thumped his chair arm. “Any progress on determining what they are? What are our sensors telling us?”
“Nothing immediately comes to mind. I’m getting some data that’s just… strange. It will take some time to analyze what it means. Assuming we can, that is,” Rick said.
“How long until shield failure this time?” Ozi asked.
“About twenty minutes,” Sarah said as she threw up another countdown timer for shield failure on the holo interface. “Although, I have a hunch that if we drop thrust and let that second anomaly slide back off the shield, it might just stop altogether.”
“True. We could set our thrust lower and get the transition rate to zero. It will be somewhere less than fifty percent though.” Rick added.
“At fifty percent thrust, we’re going to be a long time catching Mercury and our parking orbit. And that will make our beam reception sub-optimal and continuing to degrade just when we need it most.”
“I think that would put us at early to mid-winter in the northern hemisphere, too. Power usage will skyrocket on Earth.” Rick said. “The cost overrun will be bloody awful, assuming they’ll even allow it.
Ozi was silent for a few seconds, deep in thought, until finally he said, “Let’s adjust your hunch, Sarah, and do the opposite. Let’s send anomaly one off the bottom edge of our field. If we exceed max thrust to catch back up to the beam, how long will it take, and where will that put the anomalies?”
Rick and Sarah went to work on calculations immediately to find the answer to Ozi’s question. As they did, Marshall spoke.
“Ozi, don’t forget about the radiation spikes. You’ll possibly be exposing the greensward to them if you keep us in a position where the field is oscillating like that much longer. We got lucky last time.”
“Yes, Marshall, your concern is noted… and shared. But if it is a choice between the potential for a few lost plants versus missing our planetary insertion point, I’m going to have to take the risk.”
“We can just make it.” Sarah announced. “About three minutes twenty seconds to spare if we burn at one hundred fifteen percent thrust.”
“Do it. Get me my beam back. Richard, I want to know if those oscillations stop the instant that first anomaly clears the field. If they don’t we’ll have to initiate full drive shutdown immediately.”
“Aye, Captain, I’ll be glued to it.” Rick confirmed.
“Increasing thrust to one one five percent,” Sarah said. The increase slowly tilted them all backward in their seats as if they were now in recliners.
“Marshall, inform Comm-Cent of the plan, please.” Ozi ordered.
“Aye, Captain,” Marshall agreed.
About that time, the drive began to ratchet up a few octaves as it pushed with a force it had only previously been tested at in laboratory conditions on the moon. Its theoretical critical maximum was one hundred twenty-five percent of recommended max thrust, but it had only been tested to one twenty. The prototype it was based on had made it all the way to one hundred twenty-six percent before it created a new crater on the moon’s surface that was visible on Earth with the naked eye. Rick’s knowledge of the engine and his engineering background told him that there should be no problem at this speed. However, having physically walked that crater with its fused glass floor, still caused his suit to increase the airflow to account for some additional moisture content.
Rick watched carefully as both anomalies began to move more rapidly along the parabolic flare of the drive’s shield. It would take several minutes before they reacquired the energy beam from earth, but the first anomaly should be well past the bottom of the field at that point.
