“Aye, aye, sir!” the XO said. “Officer of the Watch! Update the log!”
“And put a further note,” Spectre said, walking towards his quarters and pointedly not looking over his shoulder at the astrogator. “ ’And this time I mean it!’ ”
11
“CO, chill complete,” The XO reported. He had the daily duty to bring a report on consumables and conditions to the CO and had stopped by the conn to determine the condition of chill.
“Roger,” Spectre said. “And?”
“We’re at twenty percent on water stores,” the XO continued. “Forty on air, but we’re reaching break-point on the scrubbers without a way to blow off the CO2.”
“Roger that, XO,” the CO said, bringing up the repeater on the main scope. They were currently parked in deep space just outside the gravitational bubble of HD 37301. The F5 star was about three quarters of the way to the mission zone and a good point to pick up supplies. The Vorpal Blade was more than three hundred and seventy-six light-years from Earth and only one really weird thing had happened to them. Spectre liked it, the mission was boring so far. Well, compared to the other missions.
“Astro, CO,” Spectre continued, hitting the comm to the conn.
“Astro.”
“We need to replenish,” the CO said. “What do we have in this system?”
“Sir, I’ve had the telescopes looking for Jovians and have found two,” Weaver replied. “Or, we could use the comet water extraction gear. I’ve had two of the scopes looking for comets also. Found a few of them out at about seventy AUs on highly elliptical orbits. That’s par for the course in case you’re wondering.”
“Well, the last time we did the Jovian thing you flooded the ship with squeaky gases.”
“Uh, yes, sir.”
“Then why don’t we try the comet thing. Besides, we haven’t done that before and I’m not in the mood for a hundred or more Donald Duck voices on my ship,” Spectre said with a raised eyebrow.
“Aye, aye, sir,” Lieutenant Commander Weaver responded. “But I’m not sure all the bugs are worked out of that system.”
“So your recommendation is…”
“Jovian extraction, sir,” Weaver replied.
“Right,” Spectre said. “XO, prepare for comet rendezvous and water extraction. Astro, get us up side a good wet one.”
“Aye sir,” Weaver replied. “But you’d probably prefer a good frozen one. And I’ll bet you a dollar you end up longing for the days of Donald Duck.”
“I’ll take that bet, Astro.”
Two-Gun, Lurch, Himes, and Command Master Chief Miller were Wyverned up and preparing to do an EVA onto the comet via the underbelly elevator. The elevator was made of aliglass, a substance also called “transparent aluminum” which was, in fact, more like synthetic sapphire. The elevator was a cube roughly three meters on a side — just big enough that three Wyverns could fit in it or four men in spacesuits. Four Wyverns at a stretch if they weren’t anticipating being eaten or shot on exit.
“Conn, EVA,” Miller said. The chief adjusted the weight on his footing and prepared for the gravity to drop out from under him. “We’re in the elevator and ready to drop onto the comet.”
“Roger that. I wish I could be there with y’all,” Weaver said from the EVA control. His accent always got thicker when he got excited. “Y’all will be the first humans to ever walk on a comet. But somebody has to make sure we don’t bump into this thing too hard.”
“Chief,” Spectre interrupted. “Good luck.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Team,” Berg said. “Remember, comets can have a lot of dust and gasses floating around it in close to the sun. Especially if they have a lot of water ices.”
“Yeah, so?”
“Well, way out here it should just be a frozen ball with no clouds or atmosphere,” Berg said. “But that’s only theory.”
“So…” Lurch replied. “It should be… Holy maulk! It’s like a blizzard out there!”
The elevator had exited the underbelly of the ship and it was apparent, whatever the theory, that the comet was surrounded in some sort of fog. Since a water fog was impossible in space, what it was composed of was anyone’s guess.
“Thought you said it’d be clear, Two-Gun!” Himes said.
“The-or-et-i-cal-ly,” Berg enunciated very slowly.
“Well, that theory’s out the window,” Lurch said, chuckling.
“Still doesn’t make sense,” Eric said. There shouldn’t have been that much ice and dust particulate matter floating around them.
“Two-Gun,” Miller said over a private channel. “We’re whited out here. Suggestions?”
“Damn thing’s down there somewhere, Chief,” Berg said, looking at the all-enveloping fog, then extending a camera to look down. “Based on the briefing, the radar has to have it close. No more than six meters from the underside. The microgravity of the comet’s much higher than the ship’s. Exit forward, give a short burst relative ‘down’ then watch our laser range-finders. They’re probably going to cut through this better than visual. And it’s not like we’re going to take any damage if we hit hard.”
“Right,” Miller said, nodding inside his suit. “Team, one safety line to the elevator, one to your buddy. Exit forward, get a relative position stopped by the opening and then one hit of jet relative down. The damned thing’s got to be down there somewhere.”
To Berg it reminded him a good bit of SCUBA school. Entering the fog immediately cut off all light from the elevators, and even the helmet lights barely penetrated, reflecting back a brilliant white that was so annoying he just turned them off. So he was working in absolute darkness and zero-gravity. It was disorienting as hell, but then so was doing the same thing underwater.
They’d kept relative position on the ship while they were still in view. Going down was when they’d lost track of everything.
But just as he was starting to wonder if there really was a comet under his feet his laser range-finder started to report a solid hit.
“Chief Milller?” Berg said, looking at the range dropping, fast.
“Team,” Miller snapped. “Prepare for landing in three… two… Contact!” It felt a bit like landing in very grainy snow. At least, what it might have felt like if it was grainy snow with no really noticeable gravity.
“Miller? Chief? What’d you see?” Weaver asked over the com.
“Not a thing, sir,” Miller replied irritably. “We’re totally zero vis down here. Wait one.” He took the harpoon gun from his belt and fired it into the comet surface. The reaction force of the harpoon pushed him upward off the surface but as soon as the harpoon bit it started to automatically reel in. All he had to do was hold on and work to get his feet in line with the harpoon. He managed to get one knee under him as he hit, then knelt down using the harpoon rope to pull against and picked up a handful of the cometary surface debris.
“Looks like ice,” Miller said, holding the material up to his camera. “Dirty ice.”
“Standard cometary ice,” Two-Gun added. “Spectrometer shows it to be water ice with about twice the amount of deuterium in it as ocean water. Just like you expected, Commander Weaver. But…”
“Good. Well, start laying out the cables and we’ll send down the chipper. What is the but, Two-Gun?”
“Uh, sir? Why all the fog? We’re so far out from the star that this thing should be frozen hard as a rock.”