The Precipice (43 page)

“She wants t'see Stavenger,” George concluded. “I told her I'd talk to you first. She'll be perfectly okay in the tempo for
a coupla weeks, if we need to keep her stashed there. So… what d'you want me to do, Dan?”

George's image on the screen froze. Dan could see that he must have been at the mission control center when he'd sent the
message. Good. He must've cleared out the place to make sure nobody could eavesdrop.

Now I've got to send him a reply that just about anybody can listen to, Dan thought. This is going to be like an old-time
mafioso speaking into a tapped telephone.

“George, I think she's right. Do as she asks… as carefully as you can. She's important to us; there's a lot she and I have
to talk about when I get back. We've got some problems here on the ship and we're heading back home. If all goes well, we
should be back in lunar orbit in less than four days. I'll keep you informed, and you let me know how things are going there.”

Dan reviewed his own message, decided there was nothing he needed to add to it, then touched the
SEND
button on the comm panel.

He started to get up from the co-pilot's seat when the comm unit pinged.

“'Nother message comin' in,” Pancho said needlessly.

A young man's face appeared on the screen. He looked annoyed. “General notice to all spacecraft and surface vehicles. A class-four
solar flare has been observed by the early-warning sensors in Mercury orbit Preliminary calculations of the interplanetary
field indicate the resulting radiation storm has a ninety percent chance of reaching the Earth-Moon system within the next
twelve hours. All spacecraft in cislunar space are advised to return to the nearest safe docking facility. All activities
on the lunar surface will
be suspended in six hours. Anyone on the surface is advised to seek shelter within six hours.”

Dan sagged back into the chair.

Pancho tried to smile. “You called it, boss: Murphy's Law.”

F
our worried people clustered around the table in
Star-power
1's wardroom. The wallscreen showed a chart of the solar system, with the radiation cloud that the solar flare had belched
out appearing as a shapeless gray blob twisted by the interplanetary magnetic field. It was approaching Earth and the Moon
rapidly. Deep in the Asteroid Belt a single pulsating yellow dot showed where their ship was.

Dan said to the computer, “Show the projections for the next two days.”

The cloud grew and thinned, but surged out past the orbit of Mars and then engulfed the inner Belt and overran the blinking
dot that marked
Starpower
1's position.

Pancho made a sound halfway between a sigh and a snort. “No way around it. We're gonna get hosed.”

Amanda looked up from her palmcomp. “If we could pump all our remaining fuel into one tank, it could serve as a shelter… of
sorts.”

“I thought the secondaries would get us,” Dan muttered.

“They'd be high,” Amanda admitted, “but if we could pressurize the fuel it might absorb most of the secondary particles before
they reached us.”

“If we're plumb in the middle of the tank,” Pancho said.

“Yes. Inside our suits, of course.”

“Can the suits handle the temperature? We're talking about liquid hydrogen and helium; damned close to absolute zero.”

“The suits are insulated well enough,” Pancho said. Then she added, “But nobody's ever tried a dunk in liquid hydrogen with
‘em.”

“And we'd have to be dunked for god knows how many hours,” Dan muttered.

Fuchs had not said a word. His head was bent over his own palmcomp.

“How much protection would the fuel give us?” Dan asked glumly.

Amanda hesitated, looked down at her handheld screen, then said, “We'd all need hospitalization. We'd have to set the flight
controls to put us into lunar orbit on automatic.”

“We'd all be that sick?” Pancho asked.

Amanda nodded solemnly.

And I'd be dead, Dan thought. I can't take another radiation dose like that. It would kill me.

Aloud, he tried to sound reasonably hopeful. “Well, it's better than sitting here with our thumbs jammed. Pancho, start transferring
the fuel.”

“How high can we pressurize one of the tanks?” Amanda wondered.

“I'll check the specs,” said Pancho. “Come on, we've got to—”

“Wait,” Fuchs said, looking up at them. “There is a better way.”

Dan looked hard at him. Fuchs's eyes were set so deep that it was difficult to see any expression in them. Certainly he was
not smiling. His thin slash of a mouth looked tight, hard.

“Computer,” Fuchs called, “display position of asteroid 32-114.”

A yellow dot began blinking near the inner edge of the Belt.

“That's where we must go,” Fuchs said flatly.

“It's half a day off our course home,” Pancho objected.

“Why there, Lars?” Amanda asked.

“We can use it for a storm shelter.”

Dan shook his head. “Once the cloud runs over us, the radiation is isotropic. It comes from all directions. You can't hide
behind a rock from it.”

“Not behind the rock,” Fuchs said, with growing excitement. “Inside it!”

“Inside the asteroid?”

“Yes! We burrow into it. The body of the asteroid will shield us from the radiation!”

“That would be great,” Dan said, “if we had some deep drilling equipment aboard and a few days to dig. We don't have either.”

“We don't need them!”

“The hell we don't,” Dan shot back. “You think we're going to tunnel into that rock with your little core sampler?”

“No, no, no,” Fuchs said. “You don't understand. That rock is a chondritic asteroid!”

“So what?” Pancho snapped.

“It's porous! It isn't a rock, not like Bonanza. It's an aggregate of chondrites—little stones, held together by gravity.”

“How do you know that?” Dan demanded. “We haven't gotten close enough to—”

“Look at the data!” Fuchs urged, waving a thick-fingered hand at the wallscreen.

“What data?” The screen still showed the chart with the radiation cloud.

Fuchs pointed his palmcomp at the screen like a pistol and the wall display suddenly showed a long table of alphanu-merics.

“Look at the data for its density,” Fuchs said urgently. He jumped up from his chair and bounded to the screen. “Look! Its
density isn't much more than that of water! It
can't
be a solid object! Not with such a density. It's porous! An aggregation of stones! Like a…” he searched for a word, “… like
a pile of rubble… a beanbag chair!”

Dan stared at the numbers, then looked back at Fuchs. The man was clearly excited now.

“You're sure of this?” he asked.

“The numbers don't lie,” Fuchs said. “They can't.”

Pancho gave out a soft whistle. “Shore wish we had some-thin' more'n numbers to go on.”

“But we do!” Fuchs said. “Mathilde in the Main Belt, and Eugenia—several C-class bodies among the Near-Earth Asteroids—they
are all aggregates, not solid at all. Micro-probes have examined them, even gone inside them!”

“Porous,” Dan muttered.

“Yes!”

“We can dig into them without drilling equipment?”

“They are probably highly-tunneled by nature.”

Dan stroked his chin, trying to think, trying to decide. If he's right, it'd be better than dunking ourselves in a pool of
liquid hydrogen for hours on end. If Fuchs is right. If we can burrow into the asteroid and use it for a storm shelter. If
he's wrong, we're all dead.

Pancho spoke up. “I say we go for the asteroid, boss.”

Dan looked into her steady light brown eyes. Is she saying this because she knows I won't make it otherwise? Is she willing
to take the chance with her own life because it's the only chance we've got to save mine?

“I agree,” Amanda said. “The asteroid is the better choice.”

He turned back to Fuchs. “Lars, are you absolutely certain of all this?”

“Absolutely,” Fuchs replied, without an instant's hesitation.

“Okay,” Dan said, feeling uneasy about it. “Change course for—which one is it?”

“Asteroid 32-114,” Fuchs and Amanda answered in unison.

“Point and shoot,” Dan said.

Dan tried to sleep while
Starpower 1
raced to the chondritic asteroid, but his dreams were troubled with faces and visions from the past and a vague, looming
sense of dread. He awoke feeling more tired than when he'd crawled into his bunk.

He felt stiff and sore, as if every muscle in his body were strained. Tension, he told himself. But that sardonic voice in
his mind retorted, Age. You're getting to be an old man.

He nodded to his image in the lav mirror. If I live through this I'm going to start rejuve therapy.

Then he realized what he'd said:
if
I live through this.

He put on a fresh set of coveralls and grabbed a mug of coffee on his way to the bridge. Amanda was in the command chair,
with Fuchs sitting at her right.

“Pancho's sleeping,” Amanda said before Dan could ask. “We'll be making rendezvous with 114 in…” she glanced at one of the
screens, “… seventy-three minutes. I'll wake her in half an hour.”

“Can we see the rock yet?” Dan asked, peering into the black emptiness beyond the windows.

“Telescopic view,” said Amanda, touching a viewscreen.

A lumpy, roundish shape appeared on the screen. To Dan it looked like a partially-deflated beach ball, dark gray, almost black.

“We're getting excellent data on it,” Fuchs said. “Mass and density are confirmed.”

“It's porous, as you thought?”

“Yes, it has to be.”

“It's certainly no beauty,” Amanda said.

“I don't know about that,” replied Dan. “It looks pretty good to me. In fact, I think I'll call it Haven.”

“Haven,” she echoed.

Dan nodded. “Our haven from the storm.” Silently he added, If those numbers for its density mean what Fuchs says they do.

T
he worst part of being alone in the temporary shelter was the waiting. There was nothing to do in the tempo except pace its
length—an even dozen strides for Kris Cardenas—or watch the commercial video broadcasts that the shelter's antenna pulled
in from the relay satellites.

Maddening. And there was the high-tech sarcophagus in the middle of the floor with the frozen woman inside its gleaming stainless
steel cylinder. Not much company.

When the hatch in the floor suddenly squeaked open, Cardenas jumped with surprise so hard she nearly banged her head on the
shelter's curving roof. For an instant she didn't care who was coming through the hatch; even an assassin would be a welcome
relief from the boredom of the past night and day.

But she puffed out a big sigh of relief when she saw George Ambrose's brick-red mane rising through the open hatch. George
climbed through and grinned at her.

“Dan says I should take you to Stavenger.”

Cardenas nodded. “Yes. Fine.”

Doug Stavenger was not happy to see her. He sat behind his desk and eyed her with raw disappointment showing in his expression.
Cardenas sat in the cushioned chair before the desk like an accused criminal being interrogated. George stood by the office
door, beefy arms folded across his chest.

“You seeded Randolph's ship with gobblers?” he said, his voice hollow with shocked disbelief.

“Specifically tailored to take apart copper compounds,” Cardenas admitted, feeling shaky inside. “Nothing more.”

“Isn't that enough?”

“It was meant to cripple the ship's radiation shield,” she said defensively. “Once they found out about it they'd abort their
mission and return here.”

“But they didn't find out about it until they were deep in the Belt,” Stavenger said.

George added, “And now they're sailing into a fookin' radiation storm without a shield.”

“This could become a murder,” Stavenger said. “Four murders.”

Cardenas bit her lip and nodded.

“And Humphries was behind this scheme,” Stavenger said. It was a statement, not a question.

“He wanted Randolph's mission to fail.”

“Why?”

“Ask him.”

“He's a major investor in the project. Why would he want it to fail?”

“Ask him,” she repeated.

“I intend to,” said Stavenger. “He's already on his way here.”

As if on cue, Stavenger's phone chimed. “Mr. Humphries here to see you,” said the phone's synthesized voice.

“Send him in,” Stavenger said, touching the stud on the rim of his desk that opened the door.

George stood aside, clearly glowering through his beard as Humphries walked in. Humphries looked at Cardenas, half turned
in her chair, then at Stavenger. With a slight shrug he took the other chair in front of the desk.

“What's this all about?” he asked casually as he sat down. “What's going on?”

“It's about attempted murder,” Stavenger said.

“Murder?”

“Four people are caught in a solar storm out in the Belt without a working radiation shield.”

“Dan Randolph, you mean.” Humphries almost smiled. “That's just like him, barging ahead like a bull in a china shop.”

Stavenger bristled. “You didn't get Dr. Cardenas here to seed Randolph's ship with gobblers?”

“Gobblers?”

“Nanomachines. Disassemblers.”

Humphries glanced at Cardenas, then said to Stavenger, “I asked Dr. Cardenas if there was any way that Randolph's ship could
be… er, disabled slightly. Just enough to get him to turn back and abort his flight to the Belt.”