The Web Between the Worlds

CHAPTER 3: “Go and catch a falling star…”

As soon as they had entered the Space Tug and were comfortably in their seats, Cornelia Plessey pressed the door control that separated them from the crew section and looked questioningly at Rob.

“Where to?”

Rob, fiddling with the unfamiliar straps of the seat, paused in his efforts. “Give me ten minutes and I could give you a decent design for these things,” he said. “Are you implying that we have a choice?”

“Sure. I told you before we came up here, when you work for Darius Regulo there are advantages. I can give directions to have us set down anywhere, provided it’s not too far from the equator. I think that latitude twenty-five is about the limit for this Tug.”

“That presents new possibilities.” Rob thought for a moment. “I’m not sure yet. The first thing that I need is a nap — we’ve been going pretty hard since we left Earth and I’m beginning to wilt. How long will the flight down be?”

“About four hours.”

“That’s more than I need.” He hesitated. “I don’t know what your plans are, but if you have the time to do it I’d like to talk some more about Regulo. You told me a fair amount on the way up here, but now that I’ve met him I have a whole new set of questions.”

“We’ll talk as much as you like. That’s part of my job, and you’re my first priority.” She rubbed a thin brown hand at her tanned forehead, then closed her eyes for a moment. “If you don’t mind, though, let’s sleep before we talk. I’ve been up and about for almost twenty-four hours now. How about this for a plan of action: you decide where you’d like to go with the Tug, and we’ll wait until we get there before we eat? The food that they could give us on the Tug isn’t very good, and I don’t know how well your stomach will manage in free fall.”

“Badly. I’ll wait. I think I know where I want to go, but I have to make a call down to the surface before I’m sure of it.”

“There’s a cubicle in the back with a full scrambler on it, if you need real privacy.”

She watched him get up from his seat, cursing again at the straps, and make his way aft. His secrecy was intriguing. When he came back a couple of minutes later he was looking pleased with himself.

“It’s all settled. I’d like to have the crew take us to the southern part of the Yucatan, near the Guatemalan border. I’d estimate that as about latitude fifteen, so they’ll have no problem getting us there. Then we’ll go on from the spaceport and eat at Way Down.”

He looked at her, expecting a positive reaction, but her face was unreadable and her bright eyes downcast. Rob had a sudden concern that Corrie might find it less of a luxury than most people. How wealthy was she, with her expensive clothes and air-car? He had been assuming that the latter belonged to Regulo, but maybe he was wrong.

Her reaction seemed to confirm his view. “All right,” she said, but there was no enthusiasm in her voice.

“What’s wrong? Have you been there before?”

“No, I never have.” She looked up at him, and after a moment seemed to reach some decision. She smiled and nodded her head. “Let’s do it. I’ll go and tell the crew where we want to go, so they can work out an approach orbit and decide on the nearest port that can land us. You can just settle yourself here. There should be no need for you to be awake until we land — though I know I can’t sleep at all at two or three gees, and we’ll be getting that on parts of the way down to the surface. I’ll ask them to keep the ride as smooth as possible.”

Rob was thoughtful as she left the compartment and he settled down into his berth. No doubt about it, Corrie had something on her mind, and it concerned Way Down. Maybe she thought it wouldn’t live up to its reputation. Well, even if that were true of most of the attractions, he’d have something special to show her that ought to make a difference. He closed his eyes.

Sleep did not come quickly. His mind was too full of random ideas. Last night, tethered to the bare face of the mountain; now, in free fall up in synchronous orbit — and a wild day between those two nights. As Rob began to drift toward unconsciousness he saw before him the knobbed, grey face of Darius Regulo, with its cap of white hair and piercing blue eyes. What was it? The toad, ugly and venomous, wears yet a precious jewel in his head. But ugly Regulo seemed anything except venomous. Kindly, shrewd, vastly experienced — and the very devil of an engineer. In some ways, that fact was more important than all the others.

“So how did you sleep?” Corrie appeared from nowhere a few seconds after they touched down.

“Not too well.” Rob looked at her admiringly. She had changed into a two-piece leisure suit, with a pale-cream blouse to show off her figure and her smooth arms and shoulders. “I was all right when we were under acceleration,” he went on. “I guess I’m the opposite of you — two gee was fine, but as soon as we went into zero gee I kept waking up and grabbing at the walls. Don’t forget I spent the past week on the side of a mountain. In that situation free fall is bad news.”

He rubbed at his eyes, sat up and looked out of the port. “That doesn’t look much like Belize Spaceport to me.”

“Quite right. It isn’t.” Corrie gave a little shrug of her left shoulder. “The crew told me they couldn’t get an arrival approved there for another twenty-four hours. Rather than wait a day I told them to go ahead and get us a landing at Panama. We’ll have to go the rest of the way by air flier. I arranged to have one ready for us as soon as we want it. If we leave now we can be at Way Down in a couple of hours.”

“Fine.” Rob unstrapped himself and stood up. It was oddly reassuring to be in a one-gee environment again. “I’m glad to see that Regulo’s money can’t buy quite everything — though it does seem to buy an awful lot.”

“We don’t control the spaceport schedules, if that’s what you mean — the USF keep those under close control.” Corrie opened the sliding door and looked out at the tropical evening. The sun was not far from setting, and the air was full of dry, spicy scents. “Some day, I expect that Regulo will seek permission to build his own private spaceport — though it’s no use to him personally, because he can’t ever come here to Earth.”

Rob recalled his last thoughts, before he had sunk into sleep. “Maybe you can clear one thing up for me,” he said, “while we’re on our way over to the Yucatan. When we first went into Regulo’s office, I couldn’t see much because the lighting level was so low. My assumption was that he doesn’t want people to have a close look at his face. But after talking with him for a while, I find I can’t believe that. He doesn’t seem like the type to be worried about the way he looks. Am I reading him wrong?”

“Regulo? You thought he was vain?” Corrie burst out laughing, while Rob looked at her with irritation. “I’m sorry, but that idea’s so ludicrous if you know Regulo at all. He doesn’t give a damn what he looks like — not in the slightest. Don’t you know how he first made his money?”

“Well, I have a rough idea.” Rob was puzzled by the apparent change of subject. “He started out shipping materials into Earth orbit from the Asteroid Belt, didn’t he? What’s that got to do with his preference for the dark?”

They were outside the Tug and clearing Immigration. Rob saw more evidence of Regulo’s long arm of influence. The usual time-consuming formalities with Customs and Entry were completed in seconds, with no more than a perfunctory look at IDs and a rapid data entry through the terminal. The sun was descending rapidly as they walked through the early twilight to their waiting aircraft and climbed aboard.

“It has everything to do with it,” Corrie said at last, as she checked the controls and keyed in their destination. “It explains a number of things about Regulo. You’ll hear it sooner or later, so you may as well hear it right the first time. There are enough rumors about him without us adding to them. What you said was true enough. He and a couple of senior partners started out in the transportation business, more than fifty years ago. The development of the Belt was just getting started and there were four or five groups who handled the haulage work, moving materials around the Inner System. I gather it was pretty competitive, and cut-throat too. Regulo’s team was one of the first to get into real trouble…”

It was the big asteroids that got the publicity but the little ones that had the value. The “Big Three” of the Inner Belt, Ceres, Pallas and Vesta, were already suitable for permanent colonies. A little farther out was a good handful of others, above three hundred kilometers in diameter and all likely candidates for long-term development: Hygeia, Euphrosyne, Cybele, Davida, Interamnia. The crew of the Alberich had tracked and ignored all these, along with anything else that was more than a kilometer or two across. Finding metal-rich planetoids was one thing; moving and mining them was a different and more difficult proposition.

Darius Regulo, as junior member of the team, had been given the long and tedious job of first analysis and evaluation. He took all the observations: spectroscopic, active and passive microwave, thermal infra-red, and laser. That permitted the estimate of probable composition. Add in the data on size and orbital elements, and he had all he needed for the first recommendation. Nita Lubin and Alexis Galley would take his work, throw in Galley’s encyclopedic knowledge of metal prices F.O.B. Earth orbit, and make the final decisions.

Now Galley, grey-haired and bushy eye-browed, was sitting at the console. He looked like an old-fashioned bookkeeper, squinting his deep-set eyes at the output displays and muttering numbers beneath his breath. Every few seconds he would gaze up at the ceiling, as though reading invisible figures printed there.

“It’s the right size,” he said at last. “Not bad elements either. I wish we could get a better idea of iridium content — that and the percentage of volatiles, they’ll be the swing factors. What’s the assay look like for lead and zinc, Darius? I don’t see those anywhere.”

“They’re negligible. I decided we might as well call them zero, for estimating purposes.”

“Did you now?” Alexis Galley sniffed. “I’ll thank you to leave that decision to me, until you get a few more years on your shoulders. Now, let’s have another look at those mass figures.”

Darius Regulo stood behind Galley, watching over his shoulder as the older man worked. If a twenty-four-year-old could pick up the results of twenty years of space mining experience just by watching and listening, he would do it. Already he had learned that the actual value of the metals was no more than a small part of the final decision. It was outweighed by the availability of the volatiles used to make the orbital shift, by the asteroid position in the System, and by final mining costs.

Galley was nodding slowly. “I’m inclined to give it a try,” he conceded. “You’ve done a fair job here, Darius.” He swivelled in his chair. “What do you think, Nita? Shall we give this one a go?”

The third member of the crew stood by the far wall of the ship, looking through the port at the irregular pitted mass of rock that was looming gradually closer to the Alberich. She was rubbing at the back of her head, thinking hard. “I don’t know, Alexis. There’s an ample margin on the volatiles, we can get it there easily enough. But can we do it quickly enough? The Probit group is offering a ten percent bonus for the next hundred million tons of nickel-iron in Earth orbit.”

Galley nodded. “They’re fighting deadlines.”

“As usual,” said Lubin. “And so are we. I’m afraid that Pincus and his team will beat us to it. I’ve been listening to their radio broadcasts and they’ll be starting to move their choice in another day or two. Even if we decide this minute, we won’t have the drives on this rock for close to a week, and we won’t pick up any time on them in the transfer orbit. If anything, they’re better placed for transfer than we are.”

“Then we’re in trouble.” Alexis Galley peered vacantly at the screen. “Getting there second would halve our profit. Maybe we should look some more, try and find one with a better composition.”

“We shouldn’t do that.” Regulo had been listening intently to the exchange. Alexis Galley was always too conservative, and Regulo needed that bonus far more than either Galley or Nita Lubin. “We’ve taken weeks to find one as good as this. How about trying a hyperbolic?”

There was a silence from the other two.

“There should be plenty of reaction mass for it,” Regulo went on. “You said yourself that there were ample volatiles, Nita — and we’d pick up at least four weeks on total transit time.”

Galley looked up at Regulo’s thin face and pale, bright eyes. “I think you know my views on hyperbolic transfers,” he said. “Do I have to say them again? You’ll boil off some of the volatiles and lose reaction mass on solar swing-by. If you’re unlucky you’ll find that you have to ask for help when you’re past perihelion, just to get yourself slowed down into Earth orbit. You can spend twice your profits on tugs to help you in. Still” — he shrugged — “I don’t like to close my mind to things, just because I’m getting older. How close in would we have to go?”

“Three million kilometers, at perihelion.”

“From the center of the Sun, or from the surface?”

“From the center.”

“Hell. We’d only be two and a quarter million from the solar surface. That’s close, too close.”

“But we won’t be there for long,” Nita Lubin broke in. She came forward and stood by the screen. “I think we should do it. We’ve talked about it before, and we always find a reason not to. Let’s try it. We don’t have to stay with the rock, you know. We can separate ourselves on board the Alberich once we get in as far as Mercury, fly on an orbit with a bigger perihelion distance, and re-connect with the rock later.”

“But then we’ll be too late to meet it,” protested Galley. “If we fly past further out, we’ll take longer.”

“Not if we take the Alberich on a powered fly-by. Alexis, you’re just making up reasons to avoid trying.” Nita Lubin seemed to have made up her mind. She turned to their junior crew member. “How long will it take you to work out a decent power trajectory for the Alberich? We’ll need to have a few choices.”

Regulo did not speak. He reached into his pocket, produced an output sheet and held it out to her.

“What’s this?” Nita Lubin glanced quickly over the sheet, grinned, and placed it in front of Galley. “Orbits for the Alberich. He’s really hungry, isn’t he? Well, there’s nothing wrong with that — it’s what we’re all here for. What do you think, Alexis? We’d have a twelve-million-kilometer perihelion for the ship. That’s not too bad, though I suppose I’d better check it for myself. You two might as well get to work putting the drives out on the rock. We should have plenty of time for that if we can really pick up four weeks on the transfer, the way this analysis shows.”

Alexis Galley stood up slowly from the console and looked for a long moment at the other two. “I still don’t like it, but I’ll go along with it. You put up most of the money, Nita, and it’s only right that we try and protect your investment. Remember one thing, though. Neither of you has ever done any work close in to the Sun. I have. We’re going to find that timing is tighter there — you don’t have as much margin for error as we have out here. If you don’t mind, Nita, I’ll check those calculations when you’ve done with them.”

He left the cabin and went forward towards the drive supplies and installation facility. Nita Lubin looked after him thoughtfully. “You know, he’s only going along with this for me, Darius. I’m wondering if we ought to go through with it. Alexis has more experience than the two of us put together.”

Regulo stared at her, his head cocked to one side. “What do you mean, Nita? I thought it was all settled. Look, I don’t know about you but I certainly don’t want to lose to the Pincus group. That’s what will happen if we settle for the usual elliptic orbit transfer. We’ll lose, there’s no question of it.”

His face had gone pale, and his eyes blazed. Nita Lubin looked at him shrewdly. “You are hungry, Darius — more than I ever realized. Well, I still say that’s no bad thing. I’m in this for profit myself, and so is Alexis. You go up front and help him, and let me check your calculations.”

“They’ll be right,” said Regulo. He turned quickly and left the cabin, before Nita Lubin could speak further.

The first stages of the orbit transfer were following the classical pattern that Alexis Galley had pioneered more than twenty years earlier. First the shape of the asteroid was mapped and recorded from multiple angle images. Next came the detailed mass distribution calculated from analysis of seismic data. That determined the place where powerful explosive pellets would be sited in bore holes drilled deep into the rock. Even with these they would gain only an approximate distribution of the internal densities, but that was still their best source of information on the amounts of ammonia, solid carbon dioxide, water and methane ice inside the asteroid — the source of the reaction mass that would power the transfer of the fragment to Earth orbit.

Galley and Regulo were at the computer, working together on the computation of the drive placings. As volatiles were consumed and expelled in flight, the center of mass and moments of inertia of the remaining rock would change. The drive thrust had to remain exactly through the changing center of mass, or the whole planetoid would begin to rotate under the applied torque.

“See now why I’m against your damned hyperbolic fly-by?” grumbled Galley. “When you send anything that close to the Sun, the boil-off rate goes crazy. You lose a good fraction of your volatiles in just a few hours if you go in near enough. That’s going to ruin the center-of-mass calculation. We never run into that sort of problem with an elliptic transfer, but now we have to think about it.”

“We can allow for it,” said Regulo. His voice was confident. “It’s just a matter of a little more calculation. I’ll work out the solar flux as a function of our time in orbit, and that will give us all the boil-off information that we need.”

“Oh, I’m not saying we can’t do it.” Alexis Galley shook his head. “Only that it’s a pain, and we’ll lose another day while we’re at it.”

“Look, I’m not asking you to do it. I’ll be quite happy to handle all the computation.”

The older man looked at Regulo calmly. “Now then, Darius, just cool off. I’m not saying you don’t take your share of the work, and more. I’m just saying that I still don’t care for this whole thing. I’ve only flown one hyperbolic in my whole life, and that was in an emergency medical ship with unlimited thrust. We weren’t trying to steer a billion tons of rock along with us, either. This is a tricky business, one you don’t jump into without a decent amount of thought. If you’re going to work on the calculations, I’ll go out on the rock and take another look at the position of the drive placings.”

“I’d like to help on that, too. I’ve never seen it done before, and I want to learn how. Don’t worry about the boil-off calculations,” Regulo added quickly, seeing Galley’s doubtful look. “I’ll work those up as soon as we come back into the ship.”

“All right.” Galley paused for a second, then nodded his head approvingly. “I’ll say this for you, Darius, I’ve never had a junior man as keen to learn every single thing about this business. Come on, let’s get our suits on. Time’s a-running.”

The Alberich was moored on a short cable, a few meters from the asteroid. The difference in the natural orbits of the two bodies was infinitesimal, barely enough to hold the tether taut. The two men drifted slowly across to the rock and Galley began his careful examination of its surface.

“Here’s a good example,” he said after a few moments, his voice loud over the suit phone. “When you first look at this location you think it’s perfect. There’s solid rock to secure a drive to, and you can see the volatiles right on the surface. But take a look at the mass distribution.” Galley flashed part of the computed interior structure of the planetoid onto the suit video. “See that? The volatiles peter out just a few meters below the surface. Now, compare it with that position over to sunward. There’s a real vein of volatiles there, and the mooring is just as good.” Galley peered closely at the cratered surface, lit by the harsh, slanting rays of the distant Sun. “This looks like a fine one. There’s enough reaction mass in that vein to do us some real good.”

Regulo was studying the video display. “I thought you told me that this mass distribution was just an approximation.”

“It is.” Galley gave a brief bark of a laugh. “Sometimes you get a surprise, no matter how much thinking you do ahead of time. But the approximation is still the best information we have, so there’s no sense in ignoring it unless we actually see something on the surface to tell us more. That’s one reason we came out here.” Galley switched in the ship’s circuit. “Nita? Give us that composition read-out, would you?”

He bent forward while the signal was being read through to the suits, and tapped the rock close to their feet. “Here’s an example of what I was saying. I know there’s a good amount of ferromagnetics under us, just from the strength of the magnetic clamps in the suit. You couldn’t see that from the data we have on the ship, right? I don’t know what else we’ve got here, either. I’d hate to throw away a lump of platinum, just to make a hole setting for a drive.”

The two men moved slowly across the surface of the rock, examining each possible site carefully while Galley offered a running commentary on his selection logic. It took a long time, and almost four hours passed before Alexis Galley picked the last of the seven places that he wanted. He patiently answered Regulo’s continuous stream of questions.

“We don’t usually need to be this careful,” he said. “But this one’s an awkward shape — too long and thin.”

“You’re afraid it might start to tumble?”

“It has that tendency. The closer the shape of the rock to spherical, the less we have to worry about rotational instabilities. This one is almost twice as long as it is wide. We’ll be all right, though. With those drive placings, we’ll have no problem unless you find really big values for the boil-off mass. I’ll be interested to see what the temperatures run out here during perihelion fly-by. Up near the thousand mark, for my guess.”

The two men had begun to drift slowly back towards the Alberich. Regulo noted the easy control of small body movements and the tiny, almost unconscious use of the suit jets as Alexis Galley controlled his position and attitude. He did his best to mimic the older man’s actions.

“Fly-by will go really fast,” he said. “I don’t think we’ll spend more than two weeks inside the orbit of Mercury, in-bound and out-bound. The rock will get hot, but there’s no harm in that — and it won’t be for long.”

He turned his head and stared through the faceplate of the suit at the distant Sun. Still two hundred and fifty million miles away, it seemed small and strange, a dazzling, golden ornament in the black sky. Galley had stopped and was following his look.

“Come on, Darius,” he grunted. “You’ll be getting your belly-full of that in another month or two. Let’s get those calculations done and see to the drives. After that, you’ll have all the time in the world for Sun-watching. But I have to say, the sooner we get through with this whole thing and are in Earth orbit, the better I’ll be pleased.”