“I can move out with the doors open. Let me know as soon as you are all secure.”
The long arm moved slowly, ponderously, bending in the middle now like the great limb of some giant insect. Turning, carrying its human cargo towards the waiting acceleration couches, slowing, slower, stopped. The instant Decosta locked the mechanism he kicked off towards the others.
“One of you can see, I can't tell which, sorry, lash yourself in. I'll secure the other two,” he said.
Coretta groped for the couch and as soon as she moved, Decosta grabbed one of the others, prying at the gloved fingers. “I have someone's hand, let go, I'll take care of you.” He could see the blind, bandaged eyes through the faceplate. The hand opened and he pushed the space-suited figure against the couch, held it there, locked the belt into place. Then the other one. There was still one empty couch.
“I'm getting the arm stowed now so the doors can close,” he said.
“Can you take any acceleration? We've reached zero. Any time now…” Cooke's voice was strained, tight.
“Negative. A few more seconds. Manipulator stored. Doors closing, controls locked in that position, I'm in the lock, door closed.. now!”
Gregor heard their words clearly, broadcast to Prometheus's radio and repeated on the intercom-radio circuit. He had the plate aside at last and he turned his head for a brief instant to look. Flames sprang from the Orbiter's engines, long tongues of it in space. The winged spacecraft began to move.
“Goodbye,” he said, pushing himself inside the shielding, the light before him. If they answered he did not know, because his suit radio did not work in this area. The light moved over the rows of plastic tubing.
“Just as described,” he said aloud. He had read the HOOPSNAKE program many times, had memorized it. “Sever the tubing. With this fine knife supplied by the Shuttle.” He took the knife and sawed through the resistant plastic, cut into it and saw the poisonous granules of uranium isotope inside. “U-235, very deadly.” He smiled when he realized that he was no longer afraid at all. “A remarkable discovery,” he said. “I wish I could tell Colonel Kuznekov about it. Well perhaps I shall, if the Church is right and the Communist Party is wrong. I would like to tell the Colonel that courage is not a unique property of his generation.”
The plastic tubing pulled free easily now. He pulled off the required length as instructed by the program, making sure that the loose end was going through the gap in the shielding. Then he went out after it, pushing it ahead of him, towing it behind as he worked his way around the base of the engine towards the torn-away thrust cone. Droplets of gas, freezing as they emerged, shot out in a steady stream, making a comet's tail behind the ship.
“This could be dangerous now,” he said, working his way around the stream. “It has to be done right, absolutely right the first time.”
As he reached the right spot he looked up, startled, as burning fragments of the ship tore by.
They were into the atmosphere. Just moments left.
Gregor took one second to snap his safety line to the ship. He must be steady now, and would need both hands. The plastic tubing was stiff but bent as he applied pressure, rolling it upon itself, compacting it into a ball he could clasp between his hands, heavy, twenty-five kilos or more. He was aware that he was dead now in more ways than one, that the radiation of the U-235 increased as the mass of metal was brought closer and closer. But not to critical mass, there wasn't enough of it for that. The hydrogen would have to moderate the reaction for that, slow down and trap the particles so that it went critical, became an atomic bomb.
“Yes,” he said, “now is the time.”
Holding the heavy sphere of uranium before him he moved to the engine, looked in. The sun was behind him now, shining into the chamber.
It was breathtaking. The hydrogen had been pumped in steadily for some minutes now. At first it had turned to gas, but in doing so it had chilled down the quartz chamber walls. As more and more hydrogen had poured in it had stopped vaporizing. The chamber was now filled and brimming over with the pale, transparent fluid, two hundred and fifty degrees below zero. As still more was pumped in globules formed at the open end and drifted away, touching Gregor's faceplate and puffing away as gas.
For a long instant he stared into that cold pool — then plunged in the uranium ball. It was heavy and he had to push to accelerate it and it moved firmly from his hand, down the length of the engine. Surrounded by a constantly renewed cloud of gas as the hydrogen boiled when it came near the warm metal. A gas cloud that prevented the liquid hydrogen from coming close enough to moderate the fast particles emerging from the uranium, prevented the chain reaction from starting.
This did not last very long. The metal cooled and the liquid collapsed onto it and touched it.
Strapped down, her body pressing out against the restraint, Coretta saw the shining form of Prometheus grow smaller, shrinking, framed between the gap of the closing doors, visible for one last instant. Then vanished as the doors slammed shut.
“We are at least forty miles from Prometheus,” Cooke said, his voice sounding in all their helmets. “Lifting up and — God…” He was silent for a moment. Then he spoke. “We're facing away. Thank God. You all right back there? A light, an explosion, I have never seen a light like that. It went up. It did. It's not going to impact after all. They're safe back on Earth.”
It was black inside the unlit cargo bay, as dark for Coretta as it was for the blinded pilots.
“Goodbye, Gregor,” she said softly, into the darkness.
44
“Air speed three hundred knots,” Decosta said.
“Looks good,” Cooke said. “I'm making the last turn into the glide path now. Drop the landing gear.”
Decosta threw the switch and watched silently until the green light flicked on. “Gear down and locked.”
There had been clouds over the entire East coast, with Florida socked in solid. They had watched it from space, seen the clouds grow closer and closer as they were dropped back into the atmosphere, until they were in them and flying blind. It made no difference to their flight plan since that was controlled by the computer. There was an invisible highway in the sky they had to follow, a trace on the screen that told them just what to do, just where to be. When the Orbiter broke through the low-hanging clouds the rain-washed length of the runway stretched out before them. Cooke handled the wheel with a light touch, squinting through the tendrils of steam above the nose as the rain vaporized when it struck the silica tiles that covered the hull. Tiles still radiant hot after the 2,400 degree temperatures they had withstood during reentry.
“Down,” Cooke said as the heavy tires impacted the wet concrete. Decosta took off his belt and stood up.
“I'm going to look after our passengers,” he said.
“Give me a report, soonest.”
Decosta climbed down through the access hatch to the mid deck below and opened the inner hatch of the airlock, leaving it open as he opened the other hatch into the blackness of the cargo bay. One of the pressure-suited figures was sitting up, looking in his direction, hands on helmet.
Coretta twisted, pulled at the helmet, tore it off and took in breath after breath of the damp air.
“I can smell the sea,” she said, then raised her hand. “And you can take that damn light out of my eyes.”
“Sorry. Everything all right?”
“It will be when we get their helmets off. Give me a hand.”
The Orbiter slowed, rocked as its brakes were applied, then eased to a stop. As soon as his helmet was off Patrick pressed his hands to the bandages over his eyes, then sat up and turned in Nadya's direction. But he was silent; there seemed to be nothing for any of them to say.