AMERICA ONE (46 page)

The next day, they placed the heavier canisters in rows away from the craft, and then both men took an empty canister over to the other side of the crater and half filled it with the shiny silver marbles. VIN used the sweeper machine for the first time. It moved over the stones sweeping up the marble-sized rocks and placing them in a bag behind the sweeper. Every few minutes VIN would detach the bag and empty it into the canister. The sweeper was far faster than they could collect the small stones.

An hour later they carried the half-full container back to the ship. It was far lighter than the other canisters and they filled two more before their three-hour spacewalk came to an end.

They did the same for the next three days, filling all twelve empty canisters more than half full. Since they had no way of weighing the thousands and thousands of small rocks, they picked up one of the heavier canisters to get a sense of what 500 pounds felt like, and then judged each one they filled to be about 450 pounds, easier to carry and hopefully easier to get lift off.

On the fourth day, they received their fifth coded message from
Astermine Two
; they were now only twenty-four hours away, the rescue craft was on schedule, and the bath bags needed modification for cleanliness!

The next day, VIN looked up as earth passed by overhead and realized that they were actually closer; the planet had grown to look the size of a quarter again. He could even see the moon off to the left side of earth, and the distance between the earth and the moon had grown slightly. He worked the space-welding torch on the heavy batteries and Jonesy controlled the torch heat from inside the craft. VIN was careful not to get the torch near the outside wall of the craft, the half-inch flame was bright white.

It took VIN two hours, and he needed Jonesy’s help to lift out three separated pieces of heavy magnet, which on earth would have weighed less than three pounds. On this weird asteroid, each lump weighed nearly as much as a heavy canister due to its magnetic attraction to the ground below it; and now they could fill this compartment with the lighter canisters.

“Astermine Two to Astermine One, do you copy? Over
,” stated the radio which woke both men up with a jerk. They hadn’t heard another voice for weeks.

“Maggie, is that you?” asked a sleepy Jonesy.

“No, it’s Santa Claus, you oaf!”
Maggie replied.

“Well it’s the sweetest Santa Claus voice I have ever heard in my life,” Jonesy replied happily.

“Heard many?”
Maggie asked in a questioning tone.
“Now, I know your mental capabilities needed to be checked out before they allowed you in the Air Force, Mr. Jones.”

“I hear you are coming to rescue us. You didn’t by chance pick up one of those nearly empty bottles from the “beer can” on your way through, did you?”

“No, but I do have a gift from the boss for you. He told me to tell you that our having to recue you is costing him two extra flights at twenty million apiece; but, he has no hard feelings, and supplied a bottle from his Russian friends back at base.”

“Well, send him a message that it is his damn spacecraft, and it’s totally underpowered. The most underpowered piece of junk I have ever flown. We could have got here faster in the C-5 Galaxy.”

“Now that’s the Mr. Jones I came to rescue,”
laughed Maggie
. “You should have us on radar. We are sweeping in behind the path of the asteroid. Your rock is 50,000 miles ahead of us and I’m coming in at 15,000 miles an hour, 12,000 faster than the asteroid. These new thrusters are great for acceleration and braking, and we will be with you in seven hours.”

“You had better use some reverse thrust Maggie, or you will go shooting past. How powerful are your new engines?”

“Three times more powerful than the old ones, and don’t be a backseat driver,”
she laughed.
“Remember, I was certified on three different choppers in the Air Force.”

Maggie proceeded to tell Jonesy how she was to help them off while VIN headed out to begin work. Jonesy followed him after taking down the notes from Maggie and sending off the daily report to Ryan. He didn’t tell the boss that the canisters weren’t full. He and his team could figure that one out.

Three hours later, and after cutting out the several pieces of magnet from the third compartment, which again felt like nearly a ton, they managed to load and tie down eight of the 450-pound canisters in the middle compartment; then they entered the spacecraft to wait for Maggie and Kathy. Jonesy’s math had worked out that liftoff with this weight aboard was possible at 100 percent thrust.

They had marked out a landing zone for the second craft, carrying out six full canisters to make a rectangular landing pad about 400 feet from
Astermine One
and closer to the lighter silver rocks. Jonesy didn’t know if debris would be thrown up from her downward thrust as she came in to land. Also, it was always easier for a pilot to concentrate on a fixed object on the ground while coming in; he had learned that flying helicopters. Jonesy had also been a certified Air Force chopper pilot.

Maggie told them that they had thirty empty canisters on board that Ryan wanted filled. Jonesy then explained to Maggie the different canister weights. They would now only pack the lighter rocks into
Astermine One
, pack the platinum into
Astermine Two
and see how much power she would need for liftoff. Ryan had told him that Maggie carried extra cylinders of hydrogen fuel on board for them.

They watched the radar as the second craft rapidly closed the distance. She slowly came into eyesight a couple of miles behind them and Jonesy could see the strobe light above the cockpit of the dark craft just over the crater wall. Jonesy watched as Maggie used the thrusters intermittently to slow the craft down, and waited to see her scream by them at a high speed. She didn’t. Maggie powerfully brought Astermine to the left of them, and both Jonesy and VIN could now see the white light of the thrusters as she slowed her forward speed, and began flying in formation on their left side several hundred feet away.

Jonesy helped her by describing the continuous roll of the asteroid. Slowly Maggie got the side and forward roll movements right and she closed in. She saw the landing zone the two men had designated for her and she brought
Astermine Two
in, telling Jonesy her thrust usage as she came in.

“Two hundred feet, thrusters at 5 percent….150 feet, 10 percent power….100 feet, 20 percent power…50 feet 30 percent power…10 feet 40 percent…5 feet, wow! Suddenly 50 percent power… we are down Astermine One. Wow! That was some pull! It seems that the magnetic pull is most severe at 100 feet and below and less severe above where the wall of the crater starts.”

“It seems so, Maggie. I was so busy working out my thrusters that I didn’t check the altitude so much on my way down. That was a lot of needed information. Thanks Maggie, It seems that if we can get
Astermine One
100 feet up and out of the crater walls, we will be away.”

“You know, I think it is only this crater that has this magnetic pull. I bet it is less on other parts of this asteroid,”
suggested Maggie.

“Maybe that’s because of this valuable rock?” suggested VIN.

“Well, tomorrow you can lift
Astermine Two
out of the crater. VIN and I can get a load of these heavier rocks into your craft and see what happens. VIN says we have about eight tons of platinum ready to load. We can record your thrust usage and see how much eight tons of rock holds you down on the ground. That should tell us your maximum thrust needs with a full load. Ryan said that your maximum liftoff thrust should not be more than 66 percent. You used more half of that just getting down.”

“So what do we do now?”
asked Maggie
. “Ryan told us not to leave the craft, and guess what, Mr. Jones? We have an extra bedroom on our craft. The rear supply compartment has been modified into a second room and Kathy and I picked pink as its theme color.”

“Sound really exciting, the pink design,” mumbled Jonesy shaking his head. “We have used up our allocated space time today, so we have to just sit here and blow kisses to each other and wait another 20 hours.”

“Maybe we could play intercom chess, or I Spy?”
suggested Maggie and both men again rolled their eyes.

Twenty hours later VIN and Jonesy carried the heavy canisters, one by one, across the 400 long feet to the other craft; they had made space for them by removing the empty canisters from
Astermine Two
and placing them near after the bright silver area. They managed to get only ten canisters tied down in the third, center compartment in their three-hour time limit, and Maggie sealed the side compartment door as they headed back to their craft.

“The load is not as much as we anticipated,” said Jonesy, still semi-breathless, back in
Astermine One
’s cockpit as he helped VIN remove his helmet. “Your cargo is about five tons. We could see the difference in thrust needed and then figured out what you could actually haul out of here with us on the end of a couple of ropes.
Astermine One
weighs four tons plus our supplies and us, say five tons without added cargo, the same weight you have in your hold right now. If you can’t get off as is,
Astermine One
might be staying here forever.”

VIN’s helmet was removed, and since their work was done for the day, they got out of the unnecessary parts of their suits, had a pouch of food and then got back to work.

“Maggie, what do your hydrogen fuel gauges show?” Jonesy asked.

“Half,”
she responded.

“OK, my tanks also show half. I want to see how much fuel is needed for liftoff. Then I want you to hover out of the crater and find a landing zone on a flat surface and not inside any craters this time. It is important to see if this excessive gravity-pull decreases outside our crater. How much extra fuel do you have?”

“Enough to refill my tanks from empty, and two 100 pound cylinders for you, about a quarter of a tank,”
Maggie responded.

“I also have two full cylinders, but these craft hovering low over this powerful pull will use up a lot of our fuel.”

Maggie powered up the spacecraft. It took twenty minutes to get her ready for liftoff. There were hundreds of checks to do, but finally she was ready. Both men watched as she spewed out several small stones for fifty yards from underneath her as the thrusters tried to get her off.

“Forty percent power!”
Maggie reported
“forty-five percent power….50 percent power, 55 percent power.”
Jonesy watched as nothing happened to
Astermine Two
, for maybe thirty seconds, except more rocks were being thrown out from around the craft. The two thrusters faced downwards and several feet above the shiny surface where white blasts were pushing hard.
“She’s coming off…69 percent power…we are away….10 feet,75 percent power, 30 feet…70 feet… she is beginning to accelerate rapidly…reducing power to 50 percent….40 percent…25 percent. Jonesy we are out of the crater. We are at 300 feet and at ten percent power…I’m heading forward to find a new place to put her down.”

Jonesy was shocked at how much power Maggie needed just to get out with a quarter of the cargo. They were never going to get out.

“I found a place. It looks clean, about 300 yards in front of your crater. Jonesy you put her down in the only crater I can see.”

“Maggie check your craft rolls, the back of the asteroid comes at you fast if you don’t watch it.”

“I have the roll perfect, Mr. Jones….200 feet, 10 percent power….150 feet, 11 percent power, 100 feet, 12 percent power….50 feet, 18 percent power….here we go…20 feet, 25 percent power, 10 feet, 28 percent power….we are down. It is sure more dirty up here, we are spewing dust in every direction.”

“Well done, Maggie. Ask Kathy to view how far the stuff spews out from you on liftoff.

“
OK, taking off. Wow! She just jumped off at 30 percent power.”

“OK, Maggie, put her down again and close her down,” said Jonesy. He just had a great idea, computing the thrust numbers in his head. “I think the time has arrived to see if VIN and I can get this underpowered firefly out of this crater.”

They heard Maggie land the craft back onto the asteroid.
“Thrust 30 percent this time!”
added Maggie.

“Jonesy, the spew out of small rocks and grains is about two hundred feet. It is actually quite dusty up here, but it is falling rapidly back to the surface,”
added Kathy.

“OK, we have about a ton and a half on board, plus we dissected that magnet as ordered. We are leaving all the equipment behind and coming out to join you ladies. I have an idea.”

It took Jonesy the same amount of time to ready
Astermine One
for liftoff. VIN cleared up the cockpit and put everything away. Outside, all the equipment was far enough away not to get damaged.

“I have the thrusters at 50 percent power,” stated Jonesy, “sixty percent….70…80….90 percent power. The two thrusters were vibrating the interior and still the craft didn’t move. I’m up to 99 percent power, she’s feeling light. The crater wall is pulling us towards it…100 percent power…. Wow! 105 percent power, I never knew she had more than 100 percent. We are off terra firma but not rising, we are floating towards the crater wall… putting her down again… she won’t lift…she’s down, no damage… that was sure interesting.”

“Shall we return?”
Maggie asked.

“Negative,” replied Jonesy. “We will unload some of our weight on our next walk; that should help us get out of here.”

Jonesy told them about his plan and worked out thrust equations for several hours after that. The two newcomers on the asteroids surface above them were enjoying a far better view of the universe around them.

****

Back in Nevada, the shuttle was being refueled for its next flight. Now they were a load of panels behind and Ryan was thinking about asking the crews on DX2014 to stay out an extra ten days so that he could have the panels up to complete the first cube for Suzi. The robotic spiders could be stopped and left dormant on the panels at any time, but with time being so tight and now most of his pilot crew away, he was short and still wanted to stay ahead.