Zero Limit Page 14

  “That’s fair, Dr. Sutter,” said Caitlin. “But my father always thought it was bad form to shoot down someone else’s idea without presenting a better one. So . . . I’m all ears.”

  Alex fell silent in response to Caitlin’s challenge. Then he sighed in resignation.

  “OK,” he said. “The people on your crew who will actually be working on the sail itself are going to need to be very careful out there. There’s no magnetic field on an asteroid, as you know. So they’re at the mercy of the Sun. If there’s suddenly a solar flare or a coronal mass ejection, the consequences could be very grave.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up, Dr. Sutter,” said Caitlin. “We’ve been talking over the risks up here and have an idea of what we’re up against. But I’ll be sure to remind them again to watch their backs.”

  “Great, that’s great,” Alex said. “How far out do you think you’ll need to go to place the sail where it will be effective?”

  “Shaw thinks we’ll have our best shot placing it somewhere on the asteroid’s terminator,” said Caitlin. “As it rotates, the sail will begin to catch the Sun’s light and hopefully make a difference. Should take us about an hour to get out there and another hour back.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” said Alex. “Um, I’m going to run some numbers on this and see what we can do for you back here. In the meantime, I’ll, uh, hand you back to Sara now. You, you watch your back too.”

  “Will do,” Caitlin said. A moment later Sara came back on the mic.

  “You there?” she asked.

  “Well, you may have been on a date,” said Caitlin, “but it doesn’t sound like it was very hot.”

  “Ha ha,” said Sara drily. “The man you’re insulting just might be responsible for saving your life, you know.”

  “OK, OK,” said Caitlin. “Just trying to keep it light.”

  A silence passed between them as though they were each trying to think of what to say next.

  “Look,” the two women said at once before laughing.

  “You first,” Caitlin said.

  “No, you go ahead.”

  “OK,” said Caitlin. “If this doesn’t work . . . even if it does, we both know that getting off of this thing is kind of a long shot. God knows I’m going to give it everything I’ve got, but I also have to accept that this might not go my way.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Trust me, Sara,” said Caitlin. “A few years in combat and you learn to read the field. But I knew the risks. I knew there was a chance this could happen. Well, maybe not this, but I knew I was flirting with disaster. But I also knew why I was taking that risk. And why it was worth it.”

  “Your daughter,” Sara said.

  “Exactly,” Caitlin said. “Which is what I wanted to bring up. I want you to get her. I’ll give you all the information. I want you to get her and bring her to DC.”

  “Caitlin,” Sara said, “I don’t know if I can keep her from going into the system. Under the circumstances—”

  “I know,” said Caitlin. “I know. But maybe, if she’s there . . . if she’s with you, then I can at least talk to her. Tell her what happened. And why I did it.”

  “Caitlin . . .”

  “Please,” she said, and she heard her own voice break. Dammit, she chided herself. She had been trying to keep it together.

  “All right,” Sara promised. “You’ve got my word that I’ll do what I can.”

  Caitlin took a second to compose herself. “Thank you,” she said. “Really. And up here, I can only promise that we’ll do the same.”

  The four surviving crew members headed out to the surface of the Thresher and started meticulously taking off the Alley Oop’s multilayer insulation blankets piece by piece, salvaging as much Mylar as they possibly could to use with the solar sail. Working in near-zero gravity was a bear. The bulk of the suits and their onboard RCS helped to keep the team relatively grounded, but the process was a constant battle. No matter how secure they actually were, they felt as though one strong sneeze would send them tumbling into deep space.

  “You do realize,” said Shaw as he worked, “that if we strip this thing of all its MLI, and then we do end up having to take off, there’s nothing to keep the instrumentation cool? The Sun could fry the ship’s innards before we can even think about doing something about it.”

  “Have a look at where we are and what we’re up against,” Caitlin told him. “You think I’m worried about what the Sun’s going to do to our instruments if we happen to make it off this rock?”

  “Just giving you a heads-up, Boss,” he said.

  “Noted,” said Caitlin. “And don’t get me wrong; I appreciate it. Now, here’s my question: Once we get this sail fashioned, how are we going to actually use it?”

  “Well,” said Diaz, “I’ve given this some thought . . .”

  “And what have you come up with?”

  “In a perfect world,” he said, “we’d be able to take the Noser and drive the sail out to the horizon to a point on the asteroid that gets the most sunlight. Then we’d bolt it down somehow, head back to the Alley Oop, and let Mr. Golden Sun do his work.”

  “You’re saying we can’t do that here?” Caitlin asked.

  Diaz looked doubtful. “It’s possible, but I’ve got concerns,” he said. “The core of this thing is platinum, sure, but the surface is so granular, I can’t be a hundred percent sure you’ll be able to hold it down.”

  “We were able to grip it with the ARM on the Tamarisk,” said Vee.

  “The strength of that thing versus anything we might have back on the ship is a night-and-day difference. Down here on the surface, there’s no guarantee that anything we use to anchor the sail will hold.”

  “So it’s like trying to pitch a tent on the beach,” Caitlin said.

  “I wouldn’t know,” said Diaz. “I’ve never been to the beach.”

  “Right. Sorry.” Caitlin sighed. “I forgot. So what are you proposing?”

  “Once we get the sail fashioned,” he said, “someone’s going to have be the one to bolt it into the rock. Then they’re going to have to stay out there to make sure that, once the thing is down, it stays down.”

  “Sounds like a dangerous job,” Vee said. “Maybe even a suicide mission.”

  “Maybe,” Caitlin replied. “But the consequences of not doing anything are going to be much worse.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  With the Mylar gathered, the crew began assembling the sail. As the resident science expert, Shaw took the lead, checking and rechecking everyone’s work as though he were back in the classroom.

  The sail was a three-axis design that almost looked like a giant kite reinforced by carbon nanotubes they had harvested from the ship’s instrument panel. Assembling the sail was laborious and difficult, but they worked diligently. As they did, Shaw watched and shook his head.

  “I have to say, I’m impressed,” he said. “I still have my doubts that it’ll work, but seeing the thing put together has made me more optimistic.”

  “Someone please note the time,” Diaz said. “Shaw said something positive!”

  “That said,” Shaw continued, “I’m still not convinced that, even if we get this thing to work, there’s any guarantee the Sun will push the asteroid in the right direction.”

  “And there he is again . . . ,” said Diaz, punching Shaw in the arm affectionately.

  They went back to work and Diaz looked at the sail.

  “You know, Boss,” he said to Caitlin, “you were talking about people using these things to race on Lake Armstrong? I saw them once when I was a kid. Sun riders, they called them. Small little boats with these big reflective sails. They could move too. Faster than you’d think. They were all different colors. Red, blue, gold. They even had this crazy shiny green color. I’d never seen anything like it before. Later on I found out it was called ‘drake’s neck,’ because the color looked like a male duck’s head. What did I know? I’d never seen a duck
before. But the boats, man. They looked like little pencils just shooting across the water. Everyone was betting on the races, of course, but I was too young. So my grandmother let me bet her. I chose the blue one and she chose the red one, and we bet on every race. At the end of the day, my guy had won more races. So, I’m thinking it’s just a bet for fun, you know. And then, all of a sudden, my grandmother hands me something. It’s hard and rough and it kind of feels cool in my hands, kind of like a rock that’s been in the shade, you know. I’d never seen anything like it before.”

  “What was it?” asked Vee.

  In answer to Vee’s question, Diaz reached into one of the pockets in his suit and extracted something small and round. He held it up so that it was illuminated in the lights of the ship’s cabin.

  “An acorn,” he said, grinning. “She must have brought it to the Moon when she left Earth. I have no idea how she got it through quarantine.”

  Caitlin looked at the small, ovoid object in Diaz’s hand. Instinctively, almost unconsciously, she reached out her own hand.

  “Can I . . . ?” she asked.

  Without a word, Diaz turned his wrist and placed the acorn into Caitlin’s palm. When the seed touched her skin, she felt something electric. It was the first natural object from Earth she’d touched since leaving its surface so long ago. She turned the small nut over in her hand, feeling the leathery shell under her fingertips and wondering about the suns that had warmed it, the snows that had covered it.

  “Nice, right?” said Diaz. “I’ve kept it with me from that day since. It’s always brought me luck, and I think it’s going to today as well.”

  “Lake Armstrong, huh?” Caitlin said. “I’ve known you for a year, and somehow I didn’t know you grew up in the city. Shame on me.”

  “How very un–Mama Bear of you,” said Diaz. “Oh yeah, I was real high society back in the day.”

  “Must have been nice,” said Vee.

  “It was,” Diaz said, then looked down at his work. “For a while.”

  “Something changed?” asked Caitlin.

  “Something always does,” said Diaz. “I was living with my grandmother in the city, and then when she died, I got shipped out here to live with my uncle Santiago.”

  “Doesn’t sound like you enjoyed that much,” said Vee.

  “What gave me away?”

  “I had an uncle Santiago in my life,” said Vee. “Only I called him Dad.”

  “You’re right,” said Diaz. “He was a thief and a fool. He and his cronies had me and some of the other kids running all around the Hive, stealing whatever they could. Wasn’t too long before he got caught, us along with him.”

  “What happened then?” Shaw asked, his face uncharacteristically inquisitive.

  “Uncle Santiago was a lost cause,” said Diaz. “They shipped him off to Roosa Penitentiary on the far side. But me and the other runners were given a choice. Go to juvie or work off our sentences. So I took a job in the motor pool at Guanghang. Not too many years later, here I am riding a rig with you fine people.”

  “And now here you are,” said Shaw, “about to die on an asteroid in the middle of space with these fine people. Ain’t life grand?”

  “Maybe I am going to die,” Diaz mused, “but I’d still rather be with you people.”

  “Why?” asked Vee.

  “Because with all of you, I finally found what I was looking for,” said Diaz. “Family.”

  “You ready for this, Diaz?” Caitlin asked. After endless and tedious hours building the sail, the two of them were finally on board the Noser, the ungainly lunar truck from the cargo hold of the Alley Oop, ponderously making their way across the surface of the asteroid. The ride was surprisingly smooth but incredibly slow. Due to the microgravity, they could only travel at about one mile per hour or risk losing contact with the surface. The good news was, should they flip over, the rover’s onboard solar panels, placed all around the vehicle, would power tiny motors that would flip the vehicle back onto its wheels.

  As the Noser carried the sail, Caitlin wondered if, instead of Diaz, she should be asking herself how ready she was.

  “Oh yeah,” said Diaz, looking around at the alien landscape. “This is my moment!”

  Diaz had spent the last hour stubbornly insisting that he go out on the asteroid alone, but Caitlin had very gently made it clear to him that there was no way in hell that she was going to sit back in the Alley Oop while one of her crew risked themselves for the rest of them. In the campaign, she had always tried to lead by example and would never ask anyone under her command to do something she wasn’t willing to do herself. Besides, she reasoned, this was her idea, and if it was going to blow up in anyone’s face, it was going to be hers.

  All three of the crew, and Diaz in particular, took care to remind Caitlin that this wasn’t the military and that no one was under anyone’s command, at which point she simply informed them exactly what they could do with their logic and said that she was going anyway.

  It was a compulsion, she knew, the need to take control of a situation, even if it meant putting herself in harm’s way. For Caitlin, control was a comfort. She had been in too many situations in life where she had been unable to have power over circumstance, and she was determined to no longer let that happen. And so, here they were now, trudging their way across the asteroid, en route to either salvation or doom.

  “Well you should know that our friends on Earth are listening in,” Caitlin told Diaz. “So if you screw up, we’re not the only ones who’ll know about it.”

  “Great,” he responded. “Good to know. Because I wasn’t really feeling any pressure about all this. So that helps a lot.”

  After a laborious drive, the rover came up over the asteroid’s horizon, and the duo saw the sunlight flaring above the landscape of stone and ice. The rays filtered through the particulates and ice crystals floating around them, creating a kaleidoscope of colors and refracted light. For a moment, Caitlin could almost forget where she was and what she was up against and simply took in the sight.

  “OK, you two,” Shaw said, his voice popping in their ears. “You’re just about there. A few more steps and you should be in a good spot. Remember, you’re not going to have much time. There’s no protection from the Sun, so at worst, you’ll be incinerated where you stand. At best, your organs will get microwaved and sometime in the next five years you’ll sprout tumors the size of star fruits.”

  “That’s beautiful, Shaw,” said Diaz. “Really, thank you for that. You’re a poet.”

  “All right,” Caitlin said, bringing the rover a few more feet. “Are we good?”

  “Yes,” Shaw said. “Looks like you’ve got a perfect spot there. Tie ’er down.”

  They unfolded the sail, and Diaz unlatched the pistol-grip rock drill from his belt.

  “Good thing we thought to bring this baby with us,” he said.

  “Prepare and prevent, don’t repair and repent,” said Caitlin.

  “What’s that?”

  “Just something my dad used to say. Kind of sounded silly at the time, but it obviously stuck with me. Anyway, let’s fire up the drill, shall we? Maximum torque, sixty revolutions per minute.”

  Diaz nodded and began drilling into the rock and securing the solar sail to the asteroid. Caitlin held up her hands as he did.

  “Watch it now,” she said. “You’re going to start kicking up rocks. And in this gravity, or lack thereof, they could potentially tear through our suits.”

  “I’m being careful, Boss,” Diaz said, not taking his eyes off his work. “Besides, these suits are self-healing. You know that.”

  “I know,” said Caitlin. “But those are for small nicks or tears. I don’t know about you, but I’m not prepared to test their limits.”

  They worked carefully and methodically, Diaz cutting into the asteroid with a surgeon’s precision and Caitlin securing the sail. It was hard work, and the asteroid fought them at every step, the RCS on their suits getting a worko
ut. Eventually, they were able to get the sail completely unfurled and totally bolted down.

  “All right!” Diaz said, pumping his fist as well as he could in the low gravity. “Team Space Invader represent!”

  Caitlin gave him an exhausted smile as she took a moment to admire their work.

  “Freddy Diaz,” she told him, “we may have just saved the people of Earth.”

  Diaz beamed at her and all the cockiness that usually masked his true feelings was gone. In that instant, Caitlin could see something in him that she thought he rarely showed to anyone: the desire to make someone proud. To have someone recognize his accomplishments and validate him, even just for a second.

  “Now let’s call Earth and see if all this was worth it,” said Caitlin, switching on the comm. “You reading us?”

  “Loud and clear,” Alex Sutter’s voice came over the comm. Caitlin and Diaz could hear the excitement in his tone.

  “How are we looking down there, Boss?” Diaz asked. “Bien?”

  “Uh, well, I might not go so far as bien,” Alex said, “but would you be OK with así? Solar sail pushes are relatively tiny, so it’s going to take some time before we have any numbers to crow about. But you’ve definitely given it your best shot possible for now.”

  Caitlin looked over at Diaz and gave him an approving nod.

  “You did good,” she said to him. “Real good.”

  And just then, it all went horribly wrong. An alarm suddenly went off inside Caitlin’s suit, and she frantically searched for the source, scanning her heads-up display for any sign of depressurization. Then, after a few seconds of searching, she realized that the alarm wasn’t for her suit, but Diaz’s. Because they were designed to work in such dangerous, high-pressure circumstances, the suits were linked so that every team member was aware if someone else had a problem. “Boss?” Diaz said suddenly. Caitlin could see the fear slowly spreading on his face. “Something’s wrong.”

  Caitlin quickly looked at her HUD, which was flashing on the inside of her helmet’s faceplate. She swiped through until she could locate the problem with Diaz’s suit. After a second, she saw what was happening.