Sort of long, but beginning harsh edits...
30: A Change of Plan
Outside Endurance, leaving Mars-
There was nothing to do but work, so work they did. Against a backdrop of deepest black and vivid Martian orange (Princeton colors, almost), the robot loading arm made its cautious, step-wise delivery.
Linda had triggered a patterned firing of the ship's thrusters, rolling Endurance so that the bulk of her mass lay between the spacewalking astronauts and a ferocious sun. Suddenly, they were cast frombrilliant glare into freezing shadow, with a jack o' lantern Mars directly below. When the maneuver was complete, and it was once more safe to move, John and Pete released their handholds, raised their sunshields and resumed the 'walk'.
Now a dusky hull slid past beneath them, glittering with LED running lights. From behind, through the cargo bay window crept a bit of chilly illumination. Roger's silhouette was smoky-dark within, hunched over invisible controls.
McCord had given the man a brief wave before leading the way aft. John simply followed, concentrating on the 2,000 things that had to go precisely right if they were to pull this off. He floated weightless within the suit, supported by the second best technology his world had to offer, and trying not to fog his damn faceplate.
Quick, light puffs of gas from the thruster packs brought them to the work site, shooting over Endurance like a pair of human satellites.
The damage was extensive; the pitting and 'rustsicles' even more worrisome seen from close up. Put bluntly, the ship appeared to be rotting.
Amidst all this, the aft hatch lay like an old manhole cover, pocked and disintegrating; beyond repair, maybe, though no-one said so. Instead, they examined and imaged the affected area, then set to work, guided by checklists and Dr. Bennett's faint transmissions.
Leverage was required, so, using foot restraints and portable handholds, McCord and Tracy fastened themselves to the hull. Like the head and neck of a questing serpent, the robot arm hung poised above them, its cargo of hull plates at the ready.
"We'll start with 24J," Pete decided, interrupting Dr. Bennett. "I'll unlock the plate. Tracy, clamp and remove. Understood?"
Almost, John responded with 'FAB', catching himself only just in time to mutter,
"Copy that," and prepare the clamps.
Like an oak parquet floor, or well-constructed piece of furniture, Endurance's plate edges were beveled into smoothly fitting, L-shaped joints. Between the polished surfaces lay a micro-thin adhesive layer. Pete used a special 'un-zipping' tool to trace around the edges of the damaged plate, deactivating its adhesive. Bonds were canceled on the molecular level, releasing little crackles of energy and the plate, itself. So much for the easy part.
(In fact, their stiff, bulky space suits turned even this much activity into heart-thudding, marathon exertion. Moving your arms, bending the fingers of a heavy glove, de-clamping and refastening the foot restraints, all while weightless and irradiated, soon left you wrung-out and gasping. Sick, too. But enough of that. You did what you had to, whatever the job required.)
24J was curved and roughly rectangular, like an 8 x 12 section snipped out of a giant coffee can. It was about an inch thick, and rippled on the underside. Basically a sandwich of paint, heat shielding and exotic titanium steel, it was also as riddled as moldy cheese. Faced with little more than grainy, burnt metal, John had a hard time finding a stable place to fasten the handling clamps.
His first attempt produced long, laminar flakes of decayingtitanium that drifted above the wounded hull and powdered explosively when brushed aside. Nice.
He repositioned the magnetic clamps and tried again. Only one tore free this time, and that one he was able to move without having to shift his bolted-in foot restraints; a good thing, too, as speed was very much of the essence.
In the meantime, Pete had secured the fresh hull plates to a nearby tether ring, and signaled the robot arm. Roger brought it carefully lower, just pasttheir heads. Using the arm's camera attachment to guide his path, Thorpe kept the clamps in his on-screen cross-hairs. Though hampered somewhat by missing limbs and poor reception, he got the arm correctly attached on the first try, locking its mechanical jaws to the repositioned handles.
This time, John did have to move. Freeing himself of the foot restraints, he used his thruster pack to jet away from the arm's calculated operating range, then signaled Roger with a voiced comment and wave (just in case).
Aboard Endurance, Roger keyed in a clumsy series of force commands, then pulled back on his joystick. The arm responded by retracting, hauling the damaged hull plate up and off the underlying plastic; most of it, anyhow. A jagged sliver by the airlock snapped free and began spinning like a slow fan blade, some three feet above the open hull.
For some reason, his thinking felt a little fuzzy… the headache, maybe… but after a moment John propelled himself toward the shard's near edge, and caught hold. It stopped spinning, pushing him further aft in the process. As he keyed an answering thruster burst, John examined the shard. Underneath, in what seemed to be permanent marker, someone had printed:
Brian Liddell, team 3, 07 Feb 62, "God speed!"
The pilot felt his headache and nausea lighten just a bit, then. At a time like this, from four years and many tens of millions of miles away, a Lockheed-Martin employee's good wishes were most welcome. First showing it to Pete (who smiled in response), John disposed of the shattered plate. He pushed the fragment out and away from their ship, cancelling his own reaction drift with another touch to the thruster controls. Maybe it would settle into a stable orbit around Mars, or come to rest on one of the moons.
Whatever; it was time to return to work, while they still could. He and Pete unfastened the correct replacement plate from its tether, then wrestled the thing into position with a maximum of grunting and swearing. It was nearly impossible to get any leverage without clamping themselves to the hull, which devoured time and severely reduced their range of motion. Also, John was beginning to feel pretty light headed. Not because of zero-g, because of the, um… the streaky things. The cosmic rays. But that's what the checklist was for. Just follow the plan, one step at a time, and get the job done.
To give McCord a little breather, John took the zipping tool and used it to realign the molecules of the plates' adhesive layers, bonding them as tightly as a solid piece of metal. One down…
Next, he propelled himself up to the waiting robot arm, deactivated the clamps, and released the damaged hull segment. A nudge from the arm sent it spinning off, giving Mars another brand new satellite.
About forty minutes of hellish-hard labor followed, with John picking up the slack for an increasingly wobbly Pete. All the while he heard Linda, Roger and very occasionally Kim Cho, speaking to him in fragmented, hissing bursts. They sounded like ghosts.
John realized he'd lost something more of mental acumen when he found himself hovering blankly above a hull plate… 24M… with the zipping tool in hand, trying to recall whether he was supposed to fasten, or remove, the section.
…Nothing.
…Really, not a clue.
And closing his eyes to think only displayed more of those damned brain-frying fireworks.
Well… the plate didn't look damaged. No spots or… whatever. Probably meant he'd just set it down, John reasoned awkwardly. He heard Linda (and she sounded mad).
"…and Pete…inside, now."
Worried, John looked over, saw that McCord was just sort of hanging there beside the thruster bell, with a badly smeared face plate and jerking limbs. Must have thrown up, or something.
Well… but the plate. Wasn't he supposed to fix it? He'd promised Linda he'd come back when called, though. And he was getting pretty tired…
"Hey, Pete... C'mon. Time to head… um, head back. Let's go."
The mission commander seemed not to hear him. In fact, John doubted Pete was even paying attention. He hoped they hadn't figured this out back at MCC, or the flight surgeons might permanently ground his mission commander. Okay... quietly, then.
He found the right thruster controls after a brief, puzzled search, and sent himself jetting across the hull toward Pete. Too fast, as it turned out. He bumped McCord, sending him tumbling away from the ship.
Damn. Now they'd both be investigated.
Hurriedly, he went after Pete, who looked like a big, overstuffed rag doll cart-wheeling through space. Caught him, too, just before they slipped out of Endurance's night-dark shadow. Lots of thruster work, then, to cancel all that unwanted momentum.
Once, when he was very young, he'd won a staggeringly large stuffed animal at a fair, by throwing a poorly balanced ball through a ring, ten times in a row. This felt kind of the same. Except, it was Pete he'd won, not a giant purple dog.
And there was Linda, yelling again. Did all wives do that?
"C'mon, old man," he told his unconscious prize. "Let's get back, before she starts throwing things."
Hard to work the thruster controls and hang on to Pete at the same time, which…
Yeah, that was why he was out here, right? To fetch McCord? Couldn't really turn him loose, then.
For some reason, the thrusters didn't thrust; not very well, anyhow. The two astronauts were moving along in the right direction, but slowly, pelted all the while by sizzling, radioactive 'rain'. Then, he saw the unfolded robot arm swinging past, and Thorpe said something about a ride, which sounded good to John. He shifted McCord a little and stretched a hand out, but his stiffly-gloved fingers slipped down the bone-white cargo arm like it was coated with ice. Hell of a long way to the forward hatch, and even longer to Earth.
Five feet, ten… And there was one of those tether rings. You had to love those guys at JPL… damn near thought of everything. His hand closed around the steel ring, and their long slide halted.
"Hang on," he told McCord. "Going for a ride."
The arm began to lift, silent and graceful as a swan curving its white neck. He thought… he had the idea to lower his own sunshield, and fumbled as well at Pete's. Just in time.
The sun rose over Endurance like a blazing white thermonuclear blast. Dazzled, John looked away. He pretty well seemed to be drunk, but couldn't figure out where he'd gotten hold of a 12-pack, nor what the hell had possessed him to slam down a gallon of beer before venturing into space. No wonder Linda kept nagging (explained the headache and nausea, too). Grounded, hell; the flight surgeon was going to have him shot.
Maybe he could hide it? Just… not talk, and nod a lot? It had worked a time or two, before.
Endurance grew larger as the retracting arm pulled them close, and their spacewalkended at last in the darkness of the cargo bay. Overhead, twin doors closed, shutting out space and disaster.
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Tracy Island-
Behind a different set of doors, her vision blurred by stinging tears, Penny halted. Her fingers dug at the carved wood behind her back and her breath came in pained, ragged gasps as she leaned against the doors for support.
She refused to cry. Damn it, she bloody well would not!
Nothing need have changed. That a grubby little working class nobody had succeeded in arranging a pregnancy was regrettable, to be sure… but such things happened, in the best of circles. Her paramour had been careless, but there; that was a man, for you. Tomcat about, and then profess shock when his latest unsuitable liaison popped up fertile.
Her breathing began to calm. All need not be lost, nor seriously disturbed. England, frequently invaded, always absorbed her conquerors. Saxons, Vikings, Normans… they'd come ashore waving bloodied swords, and end out reading the cricket scores and pottering about in their gardens.
Britain took the long view, and so would Penny. She was discreet and sophisticated enough to glance aside whilst a gentleman disposed of his latest conquest and provided for their unexpected brat.
She knew John Tracy quite well. Knew that beneath all the ice lay a core of naïve loyalty that would bring him back round, given time and the appropriate 'emergency'.
Like Parker and Elspeth, he'd always stood ready to pull her up from the latest morass; wipe away the mud, blood and makeup, and put it all right again. Naturally, he'd had his fleeting affairs. So had she. Part of the job, really, and nothing that a clear-headed, worldly aristocrat couldn't come to terms with.
For a moment, still tearing at carved wooden florettes with her manicured nails, hearing the bass murmur of Jeff Tracy's voice, Penny faltered.
And, if not…? If John was utterly lost to her? If his own brand of colonial mawkishness led him to remain with this pregnant, calculating adventuress?
Put simply, no. It was not to be borne. Too many missions, too many passionate encounters (that day at the manor, she'd been lifted, slammed against a tapestried stone wall, clawing at his back as…) too many private jests (she'd introduced him that night to Baron Westmoreland as 'Mr. Mellors, her new gamekeeper') bound them together.
…And, no. Lady Penelope Creighton-Ward did not intend to lay down her arms or hang up her shield. She intended to fight with every weapon nature and technology had given her, to the uttermost, bitterest end.
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Somewhat later, Washington D.C., the United States Senate-
After the sudden blackout, as news feeds of chaos and disaster began flooding the world's power centers, President Rand convened the Senate and House of Representatives, intending to appear before her political minions via comm screen.
Glorying in the havoc and confusion, eyeing his influence-peddling colleagues with well concealed distaste, Lamar Stennis circulated. A whisper here, a subtle insinuation there…
"Damn, don't them scientists and engineers make a mess of things when they slip their leashes?"
And…
"Wonder how much them Tracy Aerospace boys stand to make sellin' that new LOIS system of theirs? Guess the blackout worked out all right for them, and WorldGov."
Or…
"With all this weather trouble in the States, you'd think International Rescue'd be interested, huh? Guess them foreign types just pay more, or sumthin'."
Bit by bit, one cynical suggestion at a time, Stennis turned the milling crowd. He was most satisfied with his progress, about to approach the vice president, in fact, when he felt the lightest of confiding touches upon his right arm.
Smile at the ready, lines prepared, Stennis pivoted. It was Vargas, his aide-de-camp and trusted lieutenant.
"Senor," Vargas said quietly, bowing his hawk-nosed head, "the situation has altered."
Smiling fixedly, Stennis signaled his man to follow, and then left the crowded Senate floor. Up the low steps, past many rows of amphitheater seating Stennis bounded, pausing occasionally to shake hands or comment. Then, out through a pillared marble doorway and into the hushed peace of a blue-carpeted antechamber. And there, in privacy, the smile finally dropped. A minor bit of portable technology disabled the room's microphones and cameras, freeing Stennis to speak.
"Altered, how?" The senator demanded, his voice a low whisper. Like Vicente Vargas, he was dark-haired and slim, though taller by nearly a head.
"The hawk returns early to hand, Senor," Vargas informed him.
As 'the hawk' was a Red Path code word for Endurance, this was serious news, indeed.
"I see. Well…" Stennis pursed thin lips, jerking slightly at his narrow silk tie. "We'll need to move a few pieces around the board, then, and push the schedule forward."
Vargas listened intently ashis masterwent on.
"According to recent intelligence, our 'friends' are already responding to some of the bigger emergencies. So, why don't we set them up a few welcoming committees? Here's what I want you to do…"