“If you pilots will fly this course,” Nelly said, “it will keep us together, and we should be able to fill the tank. We computers will do our best to adjust the cable so that it isn’t too long or too short, no matter where you are.”
Kris eyed her flight path. It showed as a crosshair in the middle of a wide red circle. “I assume if we get too rowdy and fall out of the red, we lose the connection?”
“That is correct, Kris.”
“Does this assume that we’re only using the Smart MetalTM we have on each boat?” Kris asked. “Have you made any arrangements for robbing Peter to stretch out Paul’s line?”
That brought a pause. A longer one than Kris would have expected.
“You are correct, Kris, we should be able to move some metal around the collar from one line to another one. We had not made allowances for that option. Please wait while we adjust our subroutines.”
Kris and the rest of the boats waited.
While she waited, Kris eyed the triangular arrangement. “Nelly, did you consider flying the mission with only two boats? Two seem sufficient to hold the balloot between them.”
“We did consider that, Kris,” sounded kind of dry for a computer. “Our simulations showed a good chance that without the pull from below, the mouth of the balloot would close up. It wasn’t absolute, but the probability was there. Kris, we’re using just about the last drop of the Wasp’s reaction mass. There was no guarantee that we could try the mission with two boats, then redo it with three if we had to.”
“Thank you very much, Nelly. We’ll do it with three just fine.”
KRIS, YOU KNOW THE ODDS ON US PULLING THIS OFF STILL AREN’T BETTER THAN FIFTY-FIFTY.
NELLY, I FIGURED THEY WERE WORSE. IF YOU AND YOUR KIDS HADN’T DONE ALL YOUR WORK ON THIS, I EXPECT IT WOULD BE WORSE.
THANK YOU, KRIS, FROM ALL OF US. I KNOW YOU HAD TO SAY THOSE ENCOURAGING WORDS FOR THE HUMANS, BUT WE COMPUTERS KNOW THIS COULD BE OUR LAST FEW MINUTES OF EXISTENCE. I WANT YOU TO KNOW, WE THANK YOU FOR ALL YOU’VE GIVEN US.
AND I THANK YOU FOR ALL YOU’VE GIVEN ME, NELLY.
On net, Kris took in a deep breath. “All hands, and that includes you computers. It has been an honor serving with you. You know how much the rest are counting on us. Let’s go bring home the bacon.”
Some Marines sent back an Ooo-Rah to Kris. Cara said, “Oh, let’s,” and others answered, “We’re with you,” or the like.
The screen in front of Kris showed a five-second countdown to a retro burn. Kris followed the countdown to zero and kicked in the engines.
Live or die, they were committed.
56
As Kris guided the boat through its entry to the ice giant’s atmosphere, the thought crossed her mind. “Nelly, did you consider you computers flying this mission on your own?”
“This is one hell of a time to think about that,” Jack muttered,
“Yes, Kris, I considered that option, but rough weather flying is as much an art as a science. You can fly by the seat of your pants. I don’t have any seat for my pants.”
“Good point, Nelly. Now you do your job, and I’ll do mine.”
And Nelly had cut out a job for her and her kids that left plenty to do. Once the entry burns were done, the boats needed to turn around to face the coming atmosphere. Kris did it carefully enough while Nelly and her team rearranged the Smart MetalTM cables so nothing got fouled in the process.
Kris had had some experience with the programmable matter that Grampa Al had patented as Smart MetalTM. She knew that each molecule of matter could be designed specifically to meet a particular need. However, unlike a normal molecule that was attached to its neighbor by a chemical bond, the programmable matter held on to the next molecule as if it were an atomic bond at the electron level. That made for one tight handhold.
Of course when you split an atom, you got a serious boom.
NELLY, HAS ANYONE SPLIT THE BOND BETWEEN TWO SMART METALTM ATOMS?
I DON’T THINK SO, KRIS. ARE YOU THINKING WHAT I’M NOW THINKING?
COULD WE END UP WITH A MAJOR EXPLOSION HERE?
I DON’T THINK SO, KRIS, BUT IT’S NEVER HAPPENED BEFORE. WE WILL DO OUR BEST TO SEE THAT IT DOESN’T HAPPEN HERE.
GOOD IDEA, NELLY.
Kris went back to worrying about keeping her boat’s course right down the middle of the path Nelly wanted.
It was getting seriously difficult to do.
The upper atmosphere of a gas giant promised only light hydrogen and helium. They had gotten lucky; this was an ice giant, not a bigger gas giant. It held heavier water, ammonia, and methane for them to collect. That didn’t mean things were any easier.
Kris had been warned to expect winds of as much as nine hundred kilometers an hour and a lot of bounce. It looked like this ice giant was at a point in its orbit that put it closest to its sun. That meant much of the solids were liquid or gas for the moment . . . and available to be gathered into the balloot.
They were also rather rambunctious in those states.
The ride got rough.
Then it got worse.
Kris found her target pipper jumping all over the place, though she managed, just barely several times, to keep it inside the circle.
Inside her head, she could almost hear Nelly shouting orders to her kids.
That couldn’t be true; it had to be her imagination.
Kris had always considered Nelly an adjunct to her own thinking. Now she realized that Nelly was using her in a manner that Kris had no idea of, or control over, to help her communicate, or organize, or do something.
Kris struggled to keep her hands and feet working the controls as her mind merged with the boat. She felt more than experienced each jump, each knock, each bounce up and down. Around her, the boat’s structure complained as it was twisted and pulled. She could feel each complaint, each scream as composite and metal were pushed to their limits, then left to fall back as the air they swam through forgot about the intruder for a moment and did something else instead.
Kris felt her brain settle into a trance. She and the boat were one and the same, going through this together, no break between where one ended and the other began.
Behind her, someone lost their lunch. She doubted it was Jack, but she had no time to check. Her eyes were on the instruments, taking their feed in, passing it though her brain and out to her feet and hands with nothing more than a hint of direct processing.
She lived, therefore she flew.
“Balloot is half-full,” the copilot said. “We’ve almost completed our orbit. We’ll have to go around again to fill it up.”
“Let’s see if we can avoid that. Nelly, is the balloot’s mouth fully open?”
“No, Kris, it’s only about a third open.”
“Open it more.”
“That wasn’t in our plan,” Nelly said.
“My reading of this boat’s stress says it won’t take another orbit. What do you say?”
“The boat is still together,” Nelly said. “But I can’t feel it the way you do. If you say go for it, I’ll do it, Kris.”
“Do it. Folks, the balloot is going to get more lively in a second. Get ready to ride herd on it,” Kris said on net.
A moment later, Kris felt the extra drag on the boat even before the instrumentation recorded it.
“We need to strengthen the cable,” Nelly said. “We need to shorten it.”
And the red circle Kris had to stay in got smaller even as the pipper bounced wildly about inside it.
It was hard to say what it was, a storm, an updraft, whatever it was, one moment Kris had the boat right side up, the next moment, it was upside down.