Greg’s respect for Uther engineering went up a couple of notches. He’d known, intellectually, that they’d achieved space flight without electronic control systems, but he’d never appreciated just how clever they’d been to do that.
All the more reason, he realized, to keep the starbase away from the Fay D-flat Seege.
By squirming so his back fit between the rounded domes, he pulled himself forward a few centimeters at a time. The tanks protested loudly, but he made progress.
When he got to the hatch, he could see that it opened up, into the cabin—as a pressure hatch should, of course. He twisted his head to look down—there was a clear passage some twenty meters down to the ground, which was, by now, quite light. He would have to cantilever himself over this shaft, somehow, to get into the hatch. If he could open it.
“Kanti,” he whispered, hoping his voice would carry, but not too well. “I’ve reached the door.”
“Greg? Greg, hurry! Bach’s getting very nervous. The sun’s rising!”
“I’m trying,” he replied. He grabbed a cable lever with his left hand, hoping fervently that his weight wouldn’t damage it. His right hand could reach the door this way for as long as he could hang on. But there were no external controls, locks, or anything. More in frustration than as a considered act, he simply pushed on the door.
It rose, a little, but felt very heavy. It seemed hopeless to lift it by main strength from this position, but he pushed again—and, out of the corner of his eye, caught one of the nearby cables moving. He grabbed it and pulled experimentally.
The hatch swung up slowly and smoothly with relatively little force. Of course—anything heavy needed in the cabin probably came up this way, and provision had been made for ground crew access.
But they would have had ladders. Hanging onto a cable rod with the left hand, he was able to grasp the hatch rim with his right. With his foot pressing gently on the dome of the nearest tank, he eased himself through the opening, got his elbows on the inside of the hatch rim, got his legs free of the crawl space, and pulled his rear end in. Then he hit his head on something swinging over the hatch opening. As his eyes adapted to the illumination level, he recognized a lightweight block and tackle.
Light trickled in from his left—a shaded port in bright sunlight. The inner door of the airlock was open! In a minute he was able to find the cable reel for the block and tackle and drop the hook through the central shaft down to Kanti and Bach. There was a moment of song while they discussed the logic of who would go up first—but finally Kanti began pulling herself up. He helped as he could, and soon she squirmed in beside him.
They looked at each other, thinking escape. Was Bach taking a chance? No. They would never have time to figure out how to fly this thing if it gave the alarm now Their only hope was to have the Uther with them—and it knew that.
The cabin was roughly conical on the inside, with the airlock a flat, low cylinder set in the floor. The top of this was apparently configured as the control deck, with an Uther couch and a set of levers within easy reach of it. There were also small black boxes fixed to the deck next to the levers with what looked like push rods running to the levers.
“Kanti, this ship was designed to be flown manually, without electronics. The electromechanical control system is clearly an afterthought. Ask Bach if it can read the labels.”
In short order they had identified: “boost liquid little doors this thing opens-adjusts,” “artificial updraft direction this thing modifies,” “burning slick stuff little doors this thing opens-adjusts,” and “wing-level this thing tilts.”
On one side of the cabin was what was clearly an electronics rack, with infrared connect windows. There was a battery powered Uther radio—without batteries now, of course. Then he found what was clearly a manual of some kind.
Kanti gave that to Bach, who issued a stream of notes.
“It says it doesn’t even know how most of these words are pronounced, let alone what they mean. It sounded out a couple of them, and I don’t know what those motes mean either.” Bach issued another stream of notes, flowed up into dominant stature and brought up its gun.
Kanti translated in a trembling voice. “It said ‘This vehicle, other guards’—the next mote means ‘ranging’ I think. Then, ‘Up we three fly now or dead you two must be. Killing it regrets, but otherwise dead all three of us will be.’ ”
Greg was, by now, beyond fear and into deep fatalism. Either he could fly it or not. “Tell him not to panic. I’ll think of something, just hold on.”
Right, Greg thought. Think of something. Opening the propellant valves manually might just fire the rockets—there had been, he recalled, a similar arrangement on the first human-carrying spacecraft to land on the Moon, for emergencies only, of course. The directional controls, if that’s what they were, might let him steer. One of them had two degrees of freedom—pitch and yaw? He thought about the gimbals he had seen, but there wasn’t time to trace the levers and cables now.
How much delta-V did they have? The tanks easily occupied 80 percent of the volume of the ship, and hydrogen peroxide was a very dense fuel, though low on exhaust velocity. The cured organic membranes and fiberglass rod framing of the ship was obviously very light. Did it have a mass ratio of as much as thirty? That would get them, he thought, beyond escape velocity.
This was designed to attack a space base at Epona’s L5 point—it should be capable of escape velocity and then some. If so, it didn’t really matter what trajectory they went, as long as he kept it going in the same direction until he’d used all the fuel, or nearly all. East. He’d go east at die rising sun to pick up some of the planet’s spin velocity too, just to be sure.
“Shut the airlock door, and brace yourselves. This will be a little rough.” If it didn’t blow them up immediately. Greg climbed up on the Uther acceleration couch, and lay on it face down. He could reach what he thought was the direction control. He moved it experimentally, worried that the rods in the blade boxes might be frozen without power—but no, it moved smoothly. Greg smiled in thanks to the Uther engineer who had anticipated failure of the newfangled electronics.
But he couldn’t reach the presumed valve control levers from the couch.
“Kanti, I’ll need you and Bach up here to work the propellant valves. It seems clear that all that has to be done, initially anyway, is to push them forward as far as they’ll go.”
There was an exchange of song.
“Bach says no, humans fly. Greg, I think it’s scared crazy.”
Great, just great, Greg thought. OK, two valve controls. One for “burning slick stuff” which was probably the hydrocarbon fuel. By itself, that wouldn’t move the ship, whereas the peroxide decomposing might.
“OK, we’ll turn the hydrocarbon on full first, then add peroxide.”
A sudden thud shook the ship. Bach warbled crazily—no translation was necessary.
Greg ignored it and thought. Once they started acceleration, the only way he’d know what real “down” was would be through an external reference. The window had to be open. If he could see both the sun and the horizon and keep them there… His best chance for control would be to accelerate up as fast as possible, giving him a little time to find balance. He moved what he hoped was the gimbal control to what he hoped was dead center.