Miles been piloting superluminals for almost four years, the last three for Universal News. It paid well, and equally important at this stage of his life, the job took him to places where something was usually happening. He had, for example, hauled a news team out to Nok, the only world known to have a living native civilization, just in time to see the first shots fired in the latest round of an early-twentieth-century-style war. He'd accompanied the investigators to Kruger 60 when the Aquilar returned from the first probe across the Orion rift without its crew. He'd been the pilot when Universal did its award-winning special on the antique alien station orbiting Beta Pac III.
Now he was helping orchestrate the rescue off Deepsix. Not bad for a kid from a Baltimore row house.
He arrived within minutes after receiving the news that Alpha was on course, and no additional course changes would be needed. That meant Phil's team could begin its phase of the mission.
To release the asteroid, Drummond had cut the net almost three-quarters of the way around its circumference. The net now drifted glittering in the sunlight, two halves, partially entwined, a kind of bright tattered banner trailing from a very long post.
Their first objective was to finish what Drummond had begun: complete the cut. Get rid of one of the two halves.
Drummond's shuttle inserted itself within the drifting folds. One of his Outsiders exited the airlock and tied a cable to the half designated for disposal. He then returned inside the shuttle, which began to move away, straightening that portion of the net to prepare it for a laser cut.
Miles approached in the second vehicle and sliced through it until it was cleanly separated. Now Drummond's pilot dragged the severed portion away and released it to find its own orbit.
He returned and secured the remaining half to the shuttle. Then he gradually braked, drawing it out. When he was satisfied, he released it.
Miles moved in again.
The idea was to convert the remaining section into a sack. The part of the net attached to the plate would, when it was lowered into the atmosphere, constitute the top of the sack; the opposite end, the former south pole, would become the bottom. The task facing Miles's team was to join the severed sides near the bottom and bind them together, forming an area which would hang down toward the planetary surface, and into which, in just over six hours, the lander could de- scend. Or crash-land, if need be.
The shuttles took up positions on either side of the net, approximately one hundred meters up from the "bottom." Miles and three of the Outsiders climbed onto it and used the shuttles to help draw the lower sections together.
The rest of the Outsider team, which totaled eight in all, joined the effort. They'd been drilled specifically for this operation, but Miles never stopped worrying. They'd practiced on the Star's tennis nets, but that hadn't been the most realistic simulation.
He watched his people move out across the narrow space between the net and the airlock onto the metal links floating nearby. They connected their tethers as they'd been instructed, removed from their packs the clips which Marcia Keel had manufactured from chairs and coffee machines and cargo shelving, and began the process of binding the lower section of the net back together.
One advantage, at least: no lasers were in use. He'd hated putting lasers in the hands of the people along the assembly, and would have flat out refused to do it on the net, had he been asked. Fortunately, it wasn't necessary.
He was the only person out there with a go-pack. It was his responsibility to navigate along the edges, and to draw them close enough together that the Outsiders could connect them permanently. Only one drifted off during this phase of the operation, and Miles was quick to retrieve him.
He was uncomfortable about this aspect of the strategy. "This sack is three-quarters of a kilometer in diameter, Marcel," he said over a private channel. "It wouldn't take much for it to get tangled up. Then you'd have nothing."
"What's your suggestion?"
"I'd prefer to cut the thing down to a manageable size. Say 150 meters. Certainly no more than that."
"How long would it take you to do it?"
He looked across the hundreds of square meters of drifting net. They'd have to go back inside, do some complicated maneuvering, do the cutting, come back out, splice it together. "Twelve hours," he said.
"So that shoots it, no?" He could hear Marcel's impatience. "Do it as planned."
The Outsiders finished, and the bottom one hundred meters were stitched together into a sack. When they'd finished, Miles's shuttle picked them up.
Now it became the Phil Zossimov Show. Phil had brought along some tubing, cut and shaped like a ring. Miles admired the young Russian. He'd made it clear an hour earlier that the thought of going outside onto the net terrified him. But he showed no sign of reluctance as he stood in front of the volunteers and activated his e-suit.
The tubing constituted most of the life-support system taken from Wildside. The various pieces were marked to enable the assemblers to put them together with a minimum of confusion. Under Phil's direction, they went back outside.
Above the sack they had just made, the netting was open all the way to the plate. They cut sideways across the net just above the sack, opening a large space, and secured its edges to the tubing. When the tubing was in place, Zossimov connected a pump and a sensor.
He pumped air in until it became a rigid ring-shaped collar, forming a mouth about twenty-five meters wide. This collar would hold the net open, providing entry for the lander. The sensor, made from a hatch closer on Wildside, would activate a valve as soon as Hutch's lander passed through. The valve would open and release the air, the collar would collapse, and the danger of the spacecraft falling back out would be all but eliminated.
The next task was to ensure that the rear of the net would not drift forward and close the sack or block the entrance.
To accomplish that they brought out a load of bars that had been manufactured from the metal taken from Wildside's cargo bay, and designed with links so they could be connected to each other, end to end. There was also a supply of braces and supports.
Each bar was five meters long. (That had been the maximum length possible to get them in and out of the shuttles.) Altogether there were forty-six.
The Outsiders used them to assemble two rails, braced with supports. They connected the rails in parallel above and on either side of the ring, front to rear in the sack. When that had been accomplished, they had a container into which the lander should be able to maneuver.
All but Phil and Miles withdrew into the shuttles. Phil set the sensor.
"You sure it'll work?" asked Miles.
"Absolutely."
"How long will it take to close after the lander's inside?"
"It activates as soon as they pass through. I'm no physicist, so I can't tell you how fast the collar will deflate. But it shouldn't be longer than a few seconds. Especially at that altitude."
Miles inspected the collar. "I think we have ourselves a decent scoop."
At about the time Miles's people were climbing onto the net, the welding teams were spreading out across the hulls of the four super-luminals. Tom Scolari, Cleo, Jack Kingsbury, and an elderly man whom Scolari knew only as Chop, had responsibility for Zwick. The task should now be easy, because Jack and Chop had performed much the same assignment working alone earlier when they'd attached the star-ship to the Alpha shaft.
Scolari had been invited by Universal News to participate in an interview. Emma had found jumpsuits for him and Cleo, and the plan called for them to go on a live hookup when the job on the hull was finished. He was unnerved by the prospect, more frightened than he could ever have been about going outside.