Torchship (31 page)

“What the heck is that?”

“Ice hook. Watch.” Bing swung the three-tined hook around on
a half meter of line until it blurred, then let go of it mostly up. The coils
vanished from her arm until all the slack was gone. Then she yanked on the line
as it went taut. The hook pivoted straight down and stuck into the surface. A
few tugs proved it was firmly set. “See you later.” Bing kicked off hard. Her
line stayed taut, pulling her in a semicircle around the hook. She landed a
hundred meters away, startling the hell out of Guo.

“Where did you come from? How did you do that?” complained
the mechanic.

“Ice hook,” said Bing with a chuckle. She started shaking
the line back and forth, setting up a standing wave to vibrate the hook out of
its hold.

“That thing can’t be safe.”

“Well, no, but it’s cheap, it’s fast, and it doesn’t use any
fuel. It’s a trick I picked up in my mining days.”

“Did you need something from me?”

“Yep, but you already answered it.” She wound up the line as
the hook drifted toward her, not wanting to hurry it.

“BINGO!” Billy’s voice rang out on the all-hands frequency. “I
found it! Follow the orange line.”

Alexi arrived first. “I don’t see the pointer. There’s
supposed to be a Y-shape pointing at the containers.”

“Nope, I don’t see it either. But look. There’s a mound here
that could hold a couple of containers, and trenches to either side. It looks
like they dug out material and then piled it on top of them.” Billy bounced
from one side to the other, pointing out the trenches.

“That could be anything,” said Alexi.

“It might be the boxes,” said Captain Schwartzenberger. “Let’s
dig into this end a bit and see if we find anything.”

After a few minutes of flailing and everyone being hit with
shovelfuls of ice this became “Billy and Alexi dig in.” The rest of the crew
stood back from the backswings as the hole became deeper. “Metal!” yelled
Billy.

Alexi shone his light into the hole. “Yep, I see rivets.
This is it!”

“Good!” said the captain. “Everyone spread out over the
mound. We’ll have to clear it all off before we try to take it on board.” After
an hour it was clear they’d take days to get all the material off this way.

Guo suggested an alternate approach. “We’ve got a crust over
a lot of crumbly ice. If we break the crust in a loop we could dig in under it,
try to lever out most of this as one piece.”

“What lever?” asked Alexi, still digging.

“The crane,” said Billy. “We’ve got to bring the ship over
here for loading anyway.”

“We’ll try it,” said Schwartzenberger. “Pilot and mate,
please reposition the ship.” He switched from trying to deepen his hole to
connecting it to Guo’s.

They had to stop digging well before the ship “landed.” Bing
wanted plenty of safety margin. The base plate was cold from the day of
drifting but still warm enough to blast some of the ice into steam as the
attitude thrusters pressed it against the comet.

Billy wedged the crane hook into the most solid-looking
chunk of ice by the ship. Retracting it at the lowest torque broke off a five-meter
chunk, revealing the ends of two containers. The next three tries just dug
scratches in the face of the ice. Alexi started shoveling ice away from the
containers again.

“Well, that saved us some time,” said the captain. “Any
other ideas, or is it back to the shovels?”

“What we need is a bigger shovel,” said Guo. “Billy, come
give me a hand with the welding rig.” The two disappeared into the ship.

“Captain?” said Mitchie.

“Yes?”

“Sir, I’m picking up a ship on radar, coming from Eden. Don’t
have a good speed on it yet. Looks like it’ll be here in twenty or thirty
hours.”

“Lovely. Let me know when you’ve got a solid ETA.”

The Pilgrims had used sturdy containers for their supplies.
Guo and Billy sliced a side off one and cut a small hole in one end. They
jabbed the thirteen meter long panel into the ice mound. Warming it with a
welding torch helped it slide in a bit farther. Once they had it well stuck in they
hooked the crane up to the end. Soon another chunk of ice sailed off. The
captain assigned Abdul to tracking them in case one managed to do a full loop
of the comet.

Mitchie reported the stranger would arrive in nineteen
hours. Then she put her suit back on to help wrestle the shovel while Bing kept
the bridge watch.

“Push with your feet, not your hands,” instructed Guo. “The
boots are insulated.”

In three hours the top of the mound had been cleared off.
Schwartzenberger had vetoed using the welding torch to clear ice directly—too
much danger of a bursting crystal sending fragments through someone’s suit. They
dug around the containers with the big shovel in the hope they could be pulled
up as one block.

The crew brushed off Alexi’s demand that they dig under the
containers to take them out gently until he stood in the way as Billy tried to
attach the hook to the underside of one container. “Get out of the way, dammit!”
snarled the deckhand.

“I didn’t come all this way to see my inheritance scattered
all over this snowball by you ripping the container in half. We need to dig
under it.”

“We’ve got a time limit, you idiot.”

Guo tried a gentler approach. “The containers are
top-quality. They’re strong. We can pull at low torque and cut the crane the
moment we see any flexing or cracking. We won’t lose anything.”

“They’ve been frozen for decades. They’re probably brittle
as hell by now. And so are the contents. We could ruin everything inside with
rough handling.”

“Everybody calm down.” The captain pulled himself along the
top of the container to get between Alexi and Billy. He waved Billy away with a
thumb pointed at the other container. “Alexi, we all want to succeed at this.
But if that ship arrives while we’re still working we’re going to lose it all.
Maybe get killed into the deal. We’ve taken a lot of risks to get to this
point, this is just one more.”

“It won’t take that long,” said Alexi. “If we all dig we can
separate them from the comet in a few hours.”

“We don’t have a few hours. We need to get them on ship and
then get out of here before that AI ship arrives. I want a head start running
away from it too.”

“Hauling slack!” said Billy. He’d secured the hook on the
base of the other container. The cable reeled in slowly.

Schwartzenberger blocked Alexi. The two bounced off each
other as the Edenite tried to get past. “Enough, Alexi! We’re doing it. Now
settle down.” The captain moved away to be clear of the cable.

Guo had stationed himself at the middle of the container. “No
sign of trouble yet. Not moving.”

Mitchie was at the pivot end, pressed against the ice. “I
can hear crunching, the ice is feeling the pressure.”

Billy pressed his helmet against the ice. “I can hear some
too. More like snapping.” He looked up at the stationary cable. “Still holding
still. Whoa!” He hit the emergency stop button on the crane remote. Both
containers had moved up together a couple of meters at the hook end.

The captain looked at the ice between the containers. “This
looks pretty solid. I bet there was still some residual heat in the containers
when they were laid down, so it melted the ice between them. It refroze hard.
Give it another tug.”

Billy pressed the “Low” button again. The containers
shivered and moved up. Guo reported, “It’s still straight. No cracks.”

The two-container block was out of the hole for most of its
length when the hook slipped off. Billy hit the stop again and the crew
scattered to stay clear of the swinging cable. The deckhand looped a length of
his safety line and caught the hook, stopping the wild pendulum. “Sir, I’m
going to pay out some slack and loop it around the end, if you’re okay with
that?”

“Do it.”

“That was a hell of a gamble you just got away with,” said
Alexi.

Schwartzenberger considered chasing Alexi down to make this
reprimand private and decided he was too tired. “Mr. Frankovitch, we have all
been gambling our lives repeatedly to get this far. We’re gambling now that we
can get this on board before that ship arrives. We’re going to have some
gambles between here and home. Stop pretending you’re the only one with
anything to lose here. Keep a civil tongue in your head. Is that clear?”

Alexi gave back a grudging “Yes, sir.”

“Okay, ready to pull again,” said Billy. “Stand clear of the
base.” The next pull got it almost upright. Guo and Mitchie connected their
safety lines to put a loop around the base end of the block.

“Ready to belay,” said Guo. Mitchie echoed him from the
other side.

“Pulling,” said Billy. The block came free of the comet.
Loose bits of ice bounced all over. The crane boom projected eight meters out
from the hull. It hauled up the block. Mitchie and Guo pulled on their lines to
damp out dangerous swings.

When the cable was fully reeled in the containers hung
parallel to the ship’s hull. The outside crew hadn’t noticed Bing firing the
opposite thruster to keep the ship from toppling during the operation. Billy
said, “Sir, I don’t know how we’re going to get it in. The end’s too long for
us to pivot it into the hold.”

“Just retract the boom and haul it in,” said
Schwartzenberger.

“That’s going to drag it along the lip of the cargo hatch.
We’ll probably ruin the door track!”

“Yes. And we can fix that when we get back to Demeter.
Taking time to do it right will get us killed.” Billy pressed the ‘Retract’
button. The captain went to help Mitchie with her line. Fortunately most of the
force was handled by looping the line around a staple into the ice, or she
would have already been yanked off the comet. Ice shards pelted them as the
block scraped its way into the hold.

When it was clear of the hatch Alexi asked, “Do we want to
look for another container?”

“If there’s a third container here the Eden AI can have it
with my blessing,” said Schwartzenberger. “Everyone aboard and rig for
acceleration.”

“What about the mass processor?” asked Guo. It had been left
at the original touchdown spot when the ship was shifted.

“The AI can have that too. Let’s go.”

“I can’t wait to see what’s inside them,” said Mitchie as
she bounced to the airlock.

“You’ll have to,” said Guo. “It’ll probably be days before
we can open them.”

“I know. I just hate waiting.”

Journey Day 160. Eden System. Acceleration: 30 m/s
²

“Drop us down to ten gravs. Let’s take a look at our bogey.”
Captain Schwartzenberger took a deep breath as the two men lying on top of him
got off.

Mitchie scribbled on a scratch pad as she integrated her
sextant sights with radar readings. “It’s still heading for the comet, Skipper,”
she said.

“Good.” The captain pressed the PA button. “All hands, it’s
not chasing us. We’re going to stay at ten gravs and work back to our planned
course. Once we’ve completed maneuvers you can unsecure. Guo, Billy, Alexi,
suit up and get the cargo hatch closed.” A few “ayes” came back through the
intercom.

***

“That’s going to take some cutting,” said Billy. The two sides
of the cargo hatch almost met. The ledge they fit into had buckled under the
ice block. Schwartzenberger had declared it “close enough” for lift-off.

Guo shone a light under an up-thrust panel. “Not as bad as
it looks. The structure’s fine. It’s just the shell over it for the airtight
that’s busted.”

“If we can’t seal the hold it’s pretty bad,” groused Alexi.

“Relax. Once the doors close we can put a patch in. Heck, we
could just seal it with vacctape. You two go get the welding rig while I take
some measurements.” They were still gone when he’d finished marking where to
cut.

He studied the containers. The heat of the deck had already
softened the ice. The rough block was pockmarked where methane and ammonia had
melted first. Guo heard Billy on the intercom, sweet-talking Mitchie into
dropping acceleration while they took the rig up the ladder. He walked around
the ice slick surrounding it. It looked like chunks had fallen off, melted on
the deck, and refrozen in the vacuum.

Some escaping ammonia had fractured one part of the block.
Several pieces looked ready to fall off. Guo tugged on one.

“Trying to break in early?”

Guo whirled. Alexi had left Billy with the rig to confront
him. “I’m not breaking in,” said the mechanic. “I’m just seeing if I can take
some ice off.”

“Uh-huh. I think we need a rule about no one being alone in
here,” said Alexi.

“What the hell is your problem?”

“I’ve got the rig hooked up, guys,” said Billy. “Let’s get
back to work.”

It’s pretty bad when Billy winds up as the peacemaker
,
thought Guo.

Making the cuts took less time than setting up the rig and
safety gear. The doors stuttered the rest of the way closed. The latches locked
smoothly. Guo tack-welded scrap over the obvious gaps then reported in. “Hatch
closed. Probably still have some leaks. Ready to go to tenth-atmosphere for
leak checks.”

“Negative,” said the captain. “I don’t want any oxygen in
there until all the nasty ice has cleared out. Can you tell if it’s just down
to water?”

There’d been the occasional pop while they worked. Methane
and ammonia both boiled before water melted so gas pockets had formed and
cracked the ice. “Not yet, sir. There’s still some of the burnables in there.”

“That’s all right. We’re not in a hurry. I want that stuff
to warm up slow so we don’t crack anything. Billy, you’re on converter room
duty. The rest of you are off shift.”

Twelve hours later it seemed to be down to water ice. Billy
cleaned up the scattered chunks and dumped them out the airlock. Alexi was
supposed to help but spent the time staring at the containers.