We wouldn’t need pinpoint navigation. All I’d need was to get us moving at a good clip toward the Earth-Moon system. Once we crossed the orbit of Mars the automated meteor-watch radars’d’ pick us up. Hell, Pittsburgh’s big enough to scare the bejeezuz out of the IAA. An asteroid this big, heading for the Earth-Moon system? They’d at least send a robot probe to check us out; maybe a manned spacecraft with enough extra propulsion aboard to nudge us away from the inhabited region. Either way, there’d be a radio aboard and we could yell for help.
Damn! Hubble’s done some calculations on his wrist computer and given me the bad news. Oh, my scheme will work all right, but it’ll take seventy or eighty years before Pittsburgh gets past the orbit of Mars.
“She’s just too massive,” Hubble said. “If we want to accelerate this asteroid that quickly we need a lot more energy than we can get by burning off mass at the rate the smelting facility can produce.”
Gloom. All seven of them became even more morose than ever. I felt down, too. For a while. Then Sheena saved the day.
(Not that we can tell day from night on Pittsburgh. The only way we can keep track of time is by the clocks built into our wrist computers. Even though the asteroid’s slowly tumbling as it swings through space, inside the dome we get no sensation of daylight or nighttime. The sky’s always dark, even when the Sun is visible outside. Our mood matched our environment: cold, dark, dreary.)
Sheena came up to me while I was trying to decide whether I’d make dinner out of a green briquette or a red one. They both looked kind of brown to me, but that may have been just the lighting inside the dome, which was pretty low and murky.
“Sam,” she said. “Can I ask you a favor?”
We were all so glum and melancholy that I had forgotten how beautiful Sheena was. Whether it was natural or surgically enhanced, even in the shabby unwashed blouse and slacks she’d been wearing for days on end she looked incredibly lovely. I forgot about food, temporarily.
“A favor?” I said. “Sure. What is it?”
“Well…” she hesitated, as if she had to put her thoughts together. “Since we won’t be using the mining equipment and all that other stuff, can’t we toss those ugly old nuclear generators out? I mean, they can’t be doing us any good sitting out there making radiation….”
I jumped to my feet so hard that my magnetic soles couldn’t hold me and I went skyrocketing straight up to the top of the dome.
“YAHOO!” I yelled. My seven partners gaped up at me. To say they were startled would be a very large understatement.
I turned in midair and glided down onto Lowell Hubble’s shoulders. “The nukes!” I yelled, tapping out a jazz rhythm on his head. “Instead of using them to generate electricity we can explode the mothers!”
It took a while for me to calm down enough to explain it to them. There was enough energy in the nuclear piles of our two generators to blast out a sizeable portion of Pittsburgh—enough to propel us back toward the inner solar system.
“Like atomic bombs?” Bo Williams actually shuddered. “You’ve got to be crazy, Sam.”
But Hubble was pecking away at his wrist computer. I could tell he was almost as excited as I was: he had even dropped his pipe.
“You can’t set off nuclear explosions here,” Grace said, looking kind of scared. “You’ll get us all killed.”
I gave her a grin and a shrug. “Might as well go down fighting. You want to wait until we put long pig on the menu?”
She didn’t answer.
But Jean did. “Interplanetary law forbids using nuclear explosives in space unless specifically permitted by the IAA and under the supervision of their inspectors.”
“So sue me,” I told her. “Better yet, call the friggin’ IAA and have them come out here and arrest me!”
Hubble had a different kind of objection. “Sam, I don’t know if you can get those power piles to explode. They have all sorts of safeguards built into them. They’re designed to fail-safe, you know.”
“Then we’ll have to pull ’em out of the generators and disengage all their safety systems.”
“But the radiation!”
“That’s what robots are for,” I said grandly.
I should’ve known that those friggin’ simpleminded robots we have for working the mining and smelting equipment couldn’t handle the task of disassembling the nuclear reactors. Three of our five stupid tin cans can’t even move across the goddamned surface of Pittsburgh; it’s too rough for their delicate goddamned wheels. They’re stranded where they sit. The two that can move aren’t strong enough to pry the power piles out of the generators. Sure, everything here is in micro-g, but those piles are imbedded inside deep shielding, and friction makes it tough to slide them out.
I won’t bore you with all the details. I had to ask for volunteers. I knew I’d have to go out there myself, but I’d need more than my two hands to get the job done.
I didn’t expect any of my brave little partners to volunteer. They never had before, and what I was asking them to do now was really risky, maybe fatal.
To my surprise, Lowell Hubble raised his hand. “I’m too old to start a family,” he said quietly, glancing at Sheena sideways.
We were standing in a little circle inside the dome. I had outlined what needed to be done and what the dangers were. I had also told them very firmly that I would accept only male volunteers.
“Nonsense!” Jean snapped. “That’s male chauvinist twaddle.”
As soon as Hubble put his hand up, Jean raised hers. “I’m too old to want to start a family,” she said firmly.
The others glanced around at one another uneasily. Slowly, very slowly, each of them raised their hands. Even Sheena, although her hand was trembling. I felt kind of proud of them.
We did it by lottery. Almost. I wouldn’t let Hubble out of the dome. I needed him for all the calculations we had to do, and maybe later for navigation, if all went well. Bo Williams hated that, I could tell, but he didn’t complain. He could see that there’s no use risking the one guy who can handle the scientific end of this madness. It’s not just the radiation. What’ll we do if Hubble trips out there and one end of the power pile mashes his head?
Chauvinist or not, I just took Bo and Darling out with me. Darling looked so scared I thought he was going to crap in his space suit, but he didn’t dare complain a peep. We got the first pile out from behind its shielding okay, and then skeedaddled back inside the dome and let the robots finish the work. The dosimeters built into our suits screeched a little and flashed their yellow warning lights. Once we got back into the dome they went back to green, though.
A good day’s work. Maybe we’ll make it after all.
According to Hubble’s calculation, if we can make just one of the power piles explode it’ll provide enough impetus to push Pittsburgh out of its orbit and send it zooming toward the inner solar system.
“You’re sure?” I asked him.
He nodded like a college professor, the pipe back between his teeth. “If you can get it to explode.”
“It’ll explode, don’t worry. Even if I have to beat it with a baseball bat.”
He gave me a slightly amused look. “And where are you going to find a baseball bat?”
“Never mind that,” I said. “Will we be safe? I don’t really want to kill us if I can avoid it.”