The World Game (16 page)

CHAPTER 45

Aboard X6 Transport.

Martin had the manual override clamped down in a death hold. His knuckles were white with the strain of defying the enormous thrust of the engines. Every body on board was flattened back into the seat and every little imperfection in clothing or seat fabric became a stabbing pain. All faces pulled back in a rictus showing bared teeth and bowels and bladders voided, fouling the cabin. A few passengers with physically weak hearts or brain aneurisms just died without anyone noticing. Each person was too absorbed in countering the terrible force that made breathing almost impossible and sight completely unfocused. No one noticed the bodies vanish as life left them.

Martin exuded terror of the condemned as his youniform partially defeated the overwhelming forces. He could still see the fragment approaching and the landing proximity reading was now registering the distance and relative velocity.

“Corcoran,” he struggled to say, “we’re not gonna make it. By about half a second. Only chance is to do a forced jettison of some mass.”

“Do it! Do it!”

Martin hit the emergency reaction mass dump and saw a stream of fluid globules stretch behind like a comet tail. They impacted the fragment surface with a fireworks display. But more importantly, the proximity counter was now winding the other way. They were leaving the fragment behind.

“How much mass did we dump? asked Corcoran.

Martin waved a finger and the reaction mass reading came up. “Ninety percent gone. We have enough to run at this rate for another four minutes then we are stranded.”

“We’re already outrunning the fragments. Cut the acceleration now. We’re safe for the moment.”

Martin cut the engines and the crushing force suddenly ceased. The moaning and cries from the cabin were pitiful. The two pilots looked back and saw the shambles and mess. The people looked like they had all been in a street brawl, with bloodied noses and burst eardrums. The stench was unbelievable as the gore and waste pooled at the end of cabin.

“I think I better say something to them,” said Corcoran.

“Ladies and gents, you have all been through a terrible ordeal and we need to clean up the ship. We are safe now and running ahead of the fragments. We have a plan but we need you to get things shipshape on your own. Tend to the injured as best you can.” Corcoran paused and looked hard into the cabin. He muted his communicator and said to Martin, “I’m sure there were no empty seats when we left. We lost the four trouble makers, but I count at least ten vacancies. Where are the people?” The two looked at each other and then at the pool of gore and feces at the end of the cabin.

“No way!” shuddered Corcoran. “We would see bones if they had been liquefied. There’s something weird going on here. Come to think of it, I didn’t see the impact of the bodies on the fragment earlier and put that down to that I just missed it. Nah! Something is going on here. Don’t ask me what. God only knows.”

“So what is this plan we have that I know nothing about?” Martin asked.

“Oh? That. I just said it to shut them up. Without that reaction mass we can’t do much of anything. The little we have left won’t let us get behind the moon but we may just squeak it in for Space City. It will be a very close call again. As long as we maintain our present escape vector we can add angled thrust to put us crossing behind the city just ahead of the fragment strike. The other transports were headed there when all this started because they didn’t have enough reaction mass to get to the moon, same as us. Maybe if we can get there and ride out the fragment storm we could hook up with one of them and try for the moon at a slower rate.”

“What about the laser Morse Code idea. We could still do that. Try and let the others know that we will be flashing past like a jack rabbit and hope they can snare us.”

“You should do that anyway Martin, and hope, because once we burn for the Space City attempt we have nothing left. We can’t even slow down. I have to work these vectors and thrust so that the fragment swarm passes us by while we are crossing behind Space City. We come out the other side unless someone gets the message and they have some way of plucking us out of trajectory.”

“Regardless, we need to jettison every non-essential item on board to increase the effectiveness of our reaction mass. Hmm?”

“What Corcoran?”

“All that vile bilge down there could be reaction mass. It is ninety five percent water. We can’t afford to waste anything now. What else is there that we can use Martin?”

“Technically? Anything liquid or gel. If this doesn’t work we’re all dead anyway and won’t need it, so we may as well take the advantage. But it’s gonna be fun getting this mob to go along with the idea. They are not going to get it that there is no choice. I think we will have to bang some more heads together unfortunately.”

Corcoran shook his head. “This is like the Israelites coming out of Egypt all over again. Army to the back, sea to the front and nowhere to run. God we could do with a miracle right now!”

The Galactic network screamed and clamored. “Deity Clause! Deity Clause! They get a pass! Free pass and automatic to the semi finals!” The hubbub was almost unintelligible as the viewers all hit their comment button. Peepers was signalling down the Game Compere, Nickle Gannon, to restore order. Gannon hit the mute control and blocked all the comments. The silence on the network was absolute. This had never happened before.

“Thank you Nickle.” Peepers responded and then consulted with Charonelle and Howley until the muted uproar had subsided. “Viewers, it is clear to me that this act has captured your imaginations and your very existence. There IS a Deity Clause rule in the World Game, but it generally only applies until the finals commence and we are well into the finals at this time.

However. There is always room for flexibility. I have had a fast meeting with the other judges and we have unanimously agreed that these two, Corcoran and Martin, deserve the Deity Clause and yes, they will be automatically brought in to the semi finals. Provided they survive of course.”

There was a more controlled cheering from the network that Peepers was able to stop. “Let me finish please. Let me do my job. The issue remains, that Martin and Corcoran do not need the others on board and they certainly do not deserve to go on to the semi finals, so we have decided to lift them out into stasis, but there will be NO mind wipe of Corcoran or Martin. They invoked the Deity Clause so we will allow them to think along those lines. We believe that you, the viewers, will gain much more from these two acting alone, and with the Deity Clause in play, you will all be able to absorb and enjoy some very new and original emotions and faith emanations from these two, the like of which has not been seen since the incident mentioned by Martin, about the Israelites. Be truly entertained by this act as it goes forward. We will now go back to the Fuller and Carver troupe.”

The applause down the network was wild, a galactic ovation for a wonderful decision by the judges. Aboard the X6 Alex Corcoran and Jeff Martin were moving into the now passenger devoid cabin area to start gathering jettison items. Every single passenger had vanished.

CHAPTER 46

Aboard Carver’s Transport.

“Are you ready John?”

“As I’ll ever be. Let’s do it!”

They had spent several hours plotting the exact motion of the fragment and detected a repetitive pattern running on a three hundred and five second frequency. By plotting the spatial position of the tunnel mouth, they now had a real time wire model of the relative motion of their landing zone. It was not the best position on the fragment, but because it was the only easily visible reference point and Janine was flying by the seat of her pants, it was the best compromise.

Their plan was two fold. The major axis of spin was in the same plane as the forward motion of the fragment, as expected from the frontal explosion. The Transport was not designed for hard planetary surface landings, but it did have the rail undercarriage which was like a series of claws that gripped the Skyhook rail. Janine was hoping to plant these claws into the fragment surface to act as a braking anchor while she applied “upward” thrust to drive the claws into the rock face. This would result in an effect like an ancient ground car skidding on an icy road out of control until the snow chains took bite. Except here the forces were a mite larger.

They would follow the rotation of the fragment by going in to a tight fragment synchronous orbit in the same main rotational plane. Once they held that orbit, which would really be chewing up reaction mass at a gluttonous rate, they would see the tunnel mouth oscillating from side to side below them with the same period but varying amplitude of oscillation and drawing a flower petal shaped path.

They knew the exact count and pattern of the movement and would attempt the docking at the smallest oscillation, when the motion vector was comprised of north west components, rather than the one huge west directed wobble. Conservation of energy and good old Pythagorus to the rescue.

Janine sat tight with concentration and tension as she manipulated the thrusters to rotate the craft. The fragment was now “above” the transport so that the centripetal forces of the orbit would keep the “down” vector as pressure into the seat. The inner ear was going to play a big part along with the seat of the pants. Keeping it “normal” would enhance Janine’s judgement calls.

She activated the main reaction mass engines at five percent thrust and used the docking jets to apply constant orbital acceleration. Even though the relative speed over the fragment surface was matched, the circular orbit required a polar acceleration thrust.

“Got it!” she muttered to herself. “No, just a little more torque. Not going to drift away. Ummm. On target.”

Fuller sat silent, ready to do whatever Janine asked of him but not breaking her concentration.

She had her couch tilted back as far as it would go and was looking “up” at the fragment surface. Her head moved from side to side in time with the motion of the tunnel entrance dot that waltzed across the view port. Her next maneuver was the easy part, bringing the transport down to just above the surface in a region that did not have undulations greater than around one meter in height. This landing was going to be like skiing over moguls sideways with a blindfold on.

As the surface came closer and the angle of view lessened, the now black gaping maw of the tunnel raced in and out of the view port, sometimes from side to side and often diagonally. Janine thought back to her experience as child, swinging in an old car tire tied to a tree branch, spinning and swinging at the same time while she reached out and tried to grab the candy from gramps hand as he stood teasing her.

This wasn’t so hard. The tunnel mouth was the candy. She just had to grab it. That was the easy part. Before she could grab it she had to flip the transport over one eighty degrees so it could land claws down.

She had to perform this trick in a matter of five seconds, starting the turn before the edge of the level area located below the ship and completing the controlled crash landing before the heavily roughened region encroached. There was no going around again. No second chance.

The finale to the performance was to apply sufficient thrust upwards to pin the transport in place until it could be physically fixed to and adopt the fragment’s sickening motion. It was going to be a time of motion sickness like never before until they stabilized the fragment’s spin to one plane.

Like an Olympic ski jumper at the edge of the ramp, Janine synchronized her breathing and her body motion with the movement of the tunnel as it swung in and out of view. She counted down to the sequence that was do or die.

“Three.... Two.... One..... NOW!” She shouted and worked the controls with an uncanny precision that could only be described as a symphony in frenzy.

The transport lurched into an accelerated ninety degree axial spin and just as rapidly decelerated. That was Janine’s left hand control. Her right hand lowered the transport to a meter and a half above the surface and rotated it “upside down” so that centripetal forces would be like artificial gravity inside the ship. She was counting the seconds.

“Three... Four... NOW!” She slammed the transport straight down into the fragment and held the thruster jets on full blast while the sound of grinding rock and screeching of metal on metal vibrated and shook the transport until her teeth felt like they were falling out.

“You did it Janine! You did it!” John moved fast. “Hold it now while we get this thing tethered.”

He drifted to the air lock where Shaw, Hannaford and the President waited, all carrying coils of nanocarbon rope, the same stuff as the Skyhook, along with titanium shell repair staples that had been destined for Space City, and mallets.

The first task was to tack the transport down, even temporarily, to conserve reaction mass. The idea was a simple tether at each end, anchored in the bed rock by the staples and slung over the top of the transport. The four exited the air lock and split into two teams.

They had to use belt thrusters to stay in place until they could get at least one staple down and secure. Holding the staple while their legs swam around in crazy patterns, they secured a rope end with several staples. The rope looked insubstantial and flimsy, but it was the anchoring that was the weakest point.

With one end of the rope secure, Fuller and Shaw propelled themselves to the opposite side of the transport, each pounding in a staple as a hand hold, and signalled Hannaford and the President that they were ready. Metal nuts had been attached to the other end of the rope to give it momentum. Now the pitching team of the President and Felicity stepped up to the plate in no gravity looking for a perfect tangential pitch over the transport. The pitch had to have just enough angle to it that when the nut extended the rope to its full length, it would begin to wrap around the transport and swing down towards Fuller or Shaw before the rebound brought the nut crashing back towards its point of origin. A delicate pitch indeed.

“OK Felicity,” came Fuller’s voice across the buddy empathic system, “you go first. Tell me when you release and not to hard a throw.”

“I have my feet locked under a staple and I am sitting down, holding with my left. Ready to throw on three count. One... Two... Three.... uhhh!” She sat back watching the rope slither away as it followed the metal nut into space. “Hitting end.... NOW!”

The rope went taut for a split second and then slackened as the nut rebounded, but the small vector added by the encounter at the top belly of the transport was swinging the nut and the rope downwards as if there was slight gravity. Fuller could see the rope snaking around but couldn’t locate the flying nut.

THWACK!!! It hit him in the head a glancing blow that tumbled him over and fortunately tangled around his outflung arm. He drifted, stunned, into the side of the transport.

Shaw was the only witness to John’s distress. “John? Col. Fuller? Are you injured?”

John was for the moment, spread eagled against the side of the transport by coriolis forces. He gingerly touched his head where the nut had impacted. “Phew,” they all heard, “bruised but not broken. Youniform does it again.”

The buddy was already at work repairing the bruised area on John’s cranium. He recovered his equilibrium and quickly reoriented himself to the task of tieing down the transport. “Shaw, Tom, go ahead and do your end and don’t make my mistake.”

He went to the staple he had set and slid the rope under it and looped it around the staple twice more. Shaw had captured his rope without mishap and followed suit.

“Janine, you copy?”

“Loud and clear John.”

“OK give it a blast!”

Janine upped the thrusters to max for a moment, driving the transport down hard on its upper fuselage and allowing the ropes to slip through the staples as Fuller and shaw took up the slack. By now Felicity and the President had joined them and were pounding in more staples to lock the ropes in place. John twanged the iron hard rope and called Janine. “Cut the thrust now!”

“Roger.”

The transport seemed to start getting up like a huge whale growing legs, as the former undercarriage claws reversed themselves and pressed down on the fragment surface. Then all movement stopped as the furniture cord thin ropes took up the strain. They were locked and down.

Four hours later the transport was securely tethered, looking like Gulliver tied down by the Lilliputians with gossamer strings. Many of the cadets had succumbed to motion sickness that even the buddies could not counter. It was imperative that the fragmentary motion be stabilized, or at least limited to two dimensional rotation.

A six person council of Fuller, Carver, Shaw, Hannaford, the President and Hayes sat harnessed in the first two rows of passenger seats, the front seats turned around and a tray table extended as a work desk.

Janine started. “I am calling this meeting as the Commander of this vessel under Clause 95a of the Articles of War of the United States of America. The proceedings of this meeting will be recorded for the sake of future generations and for continuity in the present circumstances if any one or number of us should become incapacitated or deceased. These ongoing records and instructions will enable our successors to take up the task of survival with full knowledge of prior acts. I link this first record of actions to the remaining knowledge base of human history and its contained philosophies, technologies and arts as a foundation for future generations. Our meeting today is as momentous, if not more so, than the creation of the Constitution of the United States of America by our founding fathers. We are more than the United States. We are the People of Planet Earth. This fragment is our Earth.” She paused for a breath and to gather her thoughts. The others remained silent.

“Our first task, as mundane as it may seem and as complicated as it appears in the undertaking, is to stabilize the motion of Fragment Earth and place the Dinkshif engines. These engines are our hope for survival of our species somewhere else in this galaxy or maybe in another. It will be our imperative task to guard and maintain these engines for all time until a destination and new home for humanity can be found. Under the Articles of War previously stated, it is my sole duty to ensure the preservation of this vessel and the safety of all aboard her, to take the conflict to the enemy and to defend our territory at all cost. The plan I have outlined is an amalgamation of the salient points I have collected from discussion with you my fellow councillors and with the young people on board.

I further place on this record that my directives are not absolute and are subject to amendment my a majority vote of this council. I further propose that when Ms Beauvais is well and able, she join this council of seven to ensure a decisive vote at all times. As Commander, I will always cast the deciding vote in a hung decision. The meeting is now open to discussion which should be primarily directed at the question of motion stabilization.

Yes Mr Shaw.”

“Commander, councillors,” the concept of calling each other councillors took root then and there and stuck, “I have been studying the path and movement cycle of this fragment and with our extensive topographical mapping we now have a volume measure. While we were outside tethering I collected several samples of the rock that forms this fragment. From the average density of these samples I was able to extrapolate the expected mass of the fragment. I then took an estimate of the explosive energy of our fuel bomb based on the calorific output of the thermal reaction. This very rough calculation gave me an estimate of how much the fragment should have slowed down relative to our velocity.