“Stop,” the CO said, grinning. “You’re giving me the warm and fuzzies!”
“Then there’s the fact that at the far end of the mission things like M-class stars are going to be questionable for detection,” Weaver continued. “There could be undetected dwarfs, in other words. In this area we’ve got all these stars like Groombridge 34 mapped out. They’re dim, a fraction of Sol’s magnitude, and pretty small. But they’re going to have grav bubbles around them. Not as big as Sol’s, but they’ll be there. And when you get out towards places like HD 36951 they’re not on the charts. Nobody in the regular astronomical community has ever considered anybody would care. And mapping them now would require a rather specific tasking of one of the newer space telescopes.”
“And the solution is… ?” Spectre asked, sucking in to let an overburdened crewman by. The sigh when he relaxed had nothing to do with Astro’s explanation. Absolutely nothing.
“When we get out to about two hundred light-years we need to stop and do a forward survey, sir,” Bill said. “That may take a couple of days. Our time going out is going to be increased. Coming back should be easier. The survey will be done.”
“We’re in a rush to get there, Commander,” the CO said.
“I’m aware of that, sir,” Bill said. “But my job is to get us there. Alive, sir. I cannot guarantee the last bit unless we have some clue what we’re driving into. Think of it as uncharted waters, sir. You go slow. Going a light-year an hour into the mess we’re headed into is like going at flank speed into a reef, sir. We’re back in the days of Captain Cook, sir. We need to throw some sounding lines.”
“I accept and comprehend your metaphor, Astro,” Spectre said, wincing. “Watch the rocks and shoals.”
“Yes, sir,” Bill said. “And there are going to be some.”
“I can’t believe the CO wants us to turn in all our space tape,” Corwin said, handing over a partial roll to Gunny Juda. His tone was one of deepest sadness. “What are we going to do without it?”
“Use rigger-tape like any normal Marine,” the gunnery sergeant growled.
“Gunny Juda, with all due respect,” Berg said, holding out his own spare, “we’re not regular Marines.”
“It don’t mean we have to use this stuff,” Gunny Juda said, waving one of the many partials he’d collected in the air. “You got any idea how expensive this stuff is?”
“One hundred thousand dollars per thirty-foot roll,” Berg replied.
“No shit?” Himes gasped. “That’s grapping insane!”
“Gunny,” Berg said, ignoring Himes, “let me be clear. I consider this an order right on the edge of madness. May I make my salient points?”
“You earned your say, Two-Gun,” the gunnery sergeant admitted. “But an order is an order.”
“Roger that, Gunny,” Berg said. “Here, however, are my salient points. When you get a minor breach in a Wyvern, say from a micrometorite, how do you patch it?”
“What’s wrong with rigger-tape?” Gunny Juda said. “And there’s a patch kit.”
“The patch kit takes up to ten minutes to set, Gunny,” Berg replied. “It’s a minor little footnote in the training documents I don’t think you noticed. Meanwhile, your air is goin’ out the hole. And you don’t have all that much of it. Rigger-tape is not impermeable to air, simply resistant. It will not hold in vacuum and fails under high pressures. Not to mention the fact that the base woven material is subject to thermal cracking in space cold and melting in space heat. Space tape holds. You got any rigger-tape holding stuff down on your carrying vest, Gunny?”
“Sure,” the gunnery sergeant replied, looking thoughtful. “Gotta keep stuff from moving around. Otherwise you sound like a tinker.”
“The load-bearing equipment we’ve been issued has been rated for space work,” Berg said. “It’s designed to go over our suits. And in space, you really don’t want stuff floating around. Forget the noise, it’s going to hook on something and probably end up killing you. So we’ve all secured any loose bits. If you’ve used rigger-tape, however, as soon as you enter a death pressure environment, much less have to go EVA, it becomes exactly as useful as so much toilet paper. Now, contrary to the CO’s desires, my gear is secured with space tape, Gunny. It’s fully reusable. Care to pull it all off?”
“I’m beginning to get your point, Two-Gun,” Gunny Juda said sourly. “So why’d Top just take the order?”
“Well, Gunny, I have hereby turned in my one officially reported roll of space tape,” Berg said. “I’ll leave the rest to your professional consideration.”
“Gotcha,” the gunny said, nodding. “For somebody who’s not much more than a wet behind the ears recruit, you seem to be fitting right in to the Corps, Two-Gun.”
“I do try, Gunnery Sergeant,” Berg said. “I do try.”
“Hey, Sergeant Bergstresser, do we know anything about this planet we’re going to?” Corporal Vote asked as soon as the gunny, who had become much less insistent on securing “every last roll,” left the compartment.
The teams were assembling their gear for shipment and the activity slowed minutely as the other Marines listened in. Not only was Two-Gun Berg one of the “old hands” he was one of the unit instructors on astronomy and physics. If anyone was going to know, it was going to be Two-Gun.
“I barely got a chance to glance at the data,” Berg said, stuffing another skinsuit in his bag. It had been one of his suggestions in the after-action review from the last mission that more than one of the suits be assigned to each Marine. They’d ended up spending a lot of time in the Wyvern Armored Combat Systems, which required wearing the skin-tight black suits. After a couple of hours of heavy use they got a bit rank. Since they were often in and out of the suits too fast to get the suits washed, the rankness had pretty much permeated the Marine compartment on the last mission. This time they’d each been issued four, which was probably too many. There was only so much room for personal gear on the ship.
“The sun is an A3V,” Berg continued. “What’s that tell you, Corporal?”
“Blue?” Vote said unsurely. “Blue and hot if I remember correctly, Sergeant.”
“That would be the description,” Eric said. “A very hot blue giant. The planet, however, is well out at the outside edge of the life zone. In fact, it’s over four AU from the sun. Nearly as far as the asteroid belt is from Sol. Lance Corporal Himes, that means what?”
“It’s cold,” Himes replied. “Life zone is defined as the orbit region around a star in which the ambient temperature of a planet is between zero and one hundred degrees, Celsius, meaning that water is neither constantly frozen solid nor boiled off. Being on the outside it’s going to be damned near frozen solid. Sort of like Mars. Atmo?”
“Barely,” Berg said. “Low O2, high CO2. Technically, it’s outside the life zone. Why is it still considered habitable… Lance Corporal Uribe?”
“Probably the CO2 gives it a greenhouse effect,” Mario Uribe said. The rifleman from Charlie First was short, slender and dark.
“On target,” Berg said. “It’s Wyverns all the way on this one. The scientists working there used respirators and cold-weather gear, but we’ll be using Wyverns. Light levels are below Earth standard, meaning it’s going to be relatively dark even with the sun at zenith. It’s a bright sun but it’s a long way away. So it’s going to look more like a planet that you can see at midday. The planet has ruins that are at least twenty million years old located near the Looking Glass. Probably it was warmer back then. Nothing is known about the previous residents that I’m aware of. And since they’ve been gone for twenty million years, they’re probably not the problem.”