Limits (10 page)

“Me too,” Dot added. She glared at me, the enemy.

I made one more try. They’d had more time to think about it than I did, but the thrust figures were right there, scrawled in an upper corner of the diagram. “Now pay attention. You can’t possibly use the attitude jets on the solar panels for that long. They work by squirting dust through a magnetic field, throwing it backward so the reaction pushes you forward. Okay, you’ve got free solar power, and you can get the acceleration. But where can you possibly get enough dust?” I saw Jack’s guilty grin, and finished, “Holy shit!”

Jack nodded happily.

“Why not?”
Jill asked. “We won’t need solar flare shielding around Ceres. On the way we can keep what we do have between us and the Sun, while we grind up the surplus.”

They meant it. They were going to make dust out of the radiation shields and use that.

In theory it would work. The panel engines didn’t care what was put through them; they merely charged the stuff up with electricity gathered from the solar cells and let the static charge provide the push. A rocket is nothing more than a way to squirt mass overboard; any mass will do. The faster you can throw mass away, the better your rocket.

At its simplest a rocket could be a man sitting in a bucket throwing rocks out behind him. Since a man can’t throw very fast that wouldn’t be a very good rocket, but it would work.

But you have to have rocks, and they were planning on using just about all of ours.

It was a one-way mission. They’d have to find an asteroid, and fast, when they got to the Belt; by the time they arrived they’d be grinding up structure, literally taking the Shack apart, and all that would have to be replaced.

It would have to be a special rock, one that had lots of metal, and also had ice. This wasn’t impossible, but it wasn’t any sure thing either. We knew from Pioneer probes that some of the asteroids had strata of water ice, and various organics as well; but we couldn’t tell which ones. We knew one more thing from the later probes, and The Plan was geared to take advantage of that.

The Skylark—newly named by McLeve, and I’ve never known why he called it that—would head for Ceres. There were at least three small-hill-sized objects orbiting that biggest of the asteroids.

A big solar flare while they were out that far would probably kill the lot of them. Oh, they had a safety hole designed: a small area of the Shack to huddle
inside,
crowded together like sardines, and if the flare didn’t last too long they’d be all right—Except that it would kill many of the plants needed for the air supply.

I didn’t think the air recycling system would last any three years either, but Jill insisted it was all right.

It didn’t matter, I wasn’t going, and neither was Jack; it was just som
e
thing to keep Jill happy until the shuttle came.

There was more to The Plan. All the nonessential personnel would go to Moonbase, where there was a better chance. Solar flares weren’t dangerous to them. Moonbase was buried under twenty feet of lunar rock and dust. They had lots of mass. There’s oxygen chemically bound in lunar rock, and if you have enough power and some hydrogen you can bake it out. They had power: big solar mirrors, not as big as ours, but big. They had rocks. The hydrogen recycles if
it’s
air you want. If you want water, the hydrogen has to stay in the water.

We figured they could hang on for five years.

Our problem was different. If Moonbase put all its effort into survival, they wouldn’t have the resources to keep sending us rocks and metal and hydrogen. Hydrogen is the most abundant element in the universe; but it’s
rare on the Moon. Without hydrogen you don’t have water. Without water you don’t have life.

I had to admit things were close. We were down to a shuttle load a month from Earth; but we needed those. They brought hydrogen, vitamins,
high
-protein foods. We could grow crops; but that took water, and our r
e
cycling systems were nowhere near 100% efficient.

Now the hydrogen shipments had stopped. At a cost of fifty million dollars a flight before the dollar collapsed, the USA would soon stop sending us ships!

Another thing about those ships.
They had stopped bringing us r
e
placement crew long ago. Jack was the last. Now they were taking people home. If they stopped coming, we’d be marooned.

A few more years and we could be self-sufficient. A few more years and we could have colonists, people who never intended to go home. They were aboard now, some of them.
Jill and Ty, before Ty was killed.
Dot Hoffman was permanent. So was McLeve, of course. Of the seventy-five still aboard—we’d lost a few to the shuttles—twenty-five or so, including all the married couples, thought of themselves as colonists.

The rest of us wanted to go home.

Canaveral gave us fifty days to wind up our affairs. The shuttles would come up empty but for the pilots, with a kind of sardine-can-with-seats fitted in the hold.

I could understand why McLeve kept working on The Plan. Earth would kill him. And Jill: Ty’s death had no meaning if the Shack wasn’t finished.
Dot?
Sure. She was valuable, here.

But would you believe that I worked myself stupid mounting mirrors and solar panel motors? It wasn’t just for something to do before the shuttle a
r
rived, either: I had a nightmare living in my mind.

McLeve was counting on about twenty crew: the Big
Four,
and six of the eight married couples, and up to half a dozen additional men, all held by their faith in The Plan.

The history books have one thing right. The Plan was Jack Halfey’s. Sure, Jill and McLeve and Dot worked on it, but without him it couldn’t be brought off. Half of The Plan was no more than a series of contingency o
p
erations, half-finished schemes that relied on Halfey’s ingenuity to work. McLeve and Halfey were the only people aboard who really knew the
Shack—knew all its parts and vulnerabilities, what might go wrong and how to fix it; and McLeve couldn’t do much physical work. He wouldn’t be ou
t
side working when something buckled under the stress.

And there would be stress. A hundredth of
a gravity
doesn’t sound heavy, but much of our solar panel area and all our mirrors were flimsy as tissue p
a
per.

Without Halfey it wouldn’t, couldn’t work. When Halfey announced that he was going home on that final shuttle, the rest would quit too. They’d beg the downers for one more shuttle, and they’d get it, of course, and they’d hold the Shack until it came.

But McLeve couldn’t quit, and Dot wouldn’t, and I just couldn’t be sure about Jill. If Halfey told her he wasn’t really going, would she see reason? The son of a bitch was trading her life for a couple of hours sleep. When Skylark broke from orbit, would she be aboard? She and Dot and the A
d
miral, all alone in that vast landscaped bubble with a growing horde of chickens, going out to the asteroids to die. The life support system might last a long time with only three humans to support: they might live for years.

So I worked. When they finally died, it wouldn’t be because Cornelius Riggs bobbled a weld.

The first shuttle came and picked up all nonessential personnel. They’d land at Moonbase, which was the final staging area for taking everyone home. If The Plan went off as McLeve expected, many of them would be staying on the Moon, but they didn’t have to decide that yet.

I was classed as essential, though I’d made my intentions clear. The Plan needed me: not so much on the trip out, but when they reached the Belt. They’d have to do a lot of mining and refining, assuming they could find the right rock to mine and refine.

I let them talk me into waiting for the last shuttle. I wouldn’t have stayed if I hadn’t known Halfey’s intentions, and I confess to a squirmy feeling in my guts when I watched that shuttle go off without me.

The next one would be for keeps.

When you have a moral dilemma, get drunk. It’s not the world’s best rule, but it is an old one: the Persians used the technique in classical times. I tried it.

Presently I found myself at McLeve’s home. He was alone. I invited myself in.

“Murdering bastard,” I said.

“How?”

“Jill. That crazy plan won’t work. Halfey isn’t even going. You know it and I know it. He’s putting Jill on so she won’t cut him off. And without him there’s not even a prayer.”

“Your second part’s true,” McLeve said.
“But not the first.
Halfey is going.”

“Why would he?”

McLeve smirked. “He’s going.”

“What happens if he doesn’t?” I demanded. “What then?”

“I stay,” McLeve said. “I’d rather die here than in a ship.”

“Alone?”

He nodded. “Without Halfey it is a mad scheme. I wouldn’t sacrifice the others for my heart condition. But Halfey isn’t leaving, Corky. He’s with us all the way. I wish you’d give it a try too. We need you.”

“Not me.”

How was Halfey convincing them? Not Jill: she wanted to believe in him. But McLeve, and Dot—Dot had to know. She had to calculate the shuttle flight plan, and for that she had to know the masses, and the total payload mass for that shuttle had to equal all the personnel except McLeve but including the others.

Something didn’t make any sense.

I waited until I saw eagle wings and blue wool stockings fly away from the administration area, and went into her computer room. It took a while to bring up the system, but the files directory was self-explanatory. I tried to find the shuttle flight plan, but I couldn’t. What I got, through sheer fu
m
bling, was the updated flight plan for the Skylark.

Even with my hangover I could see what she’d done: it was figured for thirty-one people, plus a mass that had to be the shuttle. Skylark would be carrying a captain’s gig…

The shuttle was coming in five days.

Halfey had to know that shuttle wouldn’t be taking anyone back. If he wasn’t doing anything about it, there was only one conclusion. He was going to the Belt.

A mad scheme.
It doomed all of us. Jill, myself, Halfey, myself—

But if Halfey didn’t go, no one would. We’d all go home in that shuttle. Jill would be saved. So would I.

There was only one conclusion to that. I had to kill Jack Halfey.

How? I couldn’t just shoot him. There wasn’t anything to shoot him with. I thought of ways. Put a projectile into a reaction pistol.
But what then?
Space murder would delight the lawyers, and I might even get off; but I’d lose Jill forever, and without Halfey…

Gimmick his suit. He went outside regularly. Accidents happen. Ty wasn’t the only one whose ashes we’d scattered into the soil of the colony.

Stethoscope and wrench: stethoscope to listen outside the walls of Halfey’s bed chamber, a thoroughly frustrating and demeaning experience; but presently I knew they’d both be asleep for an hour or more.

It took ten minutes to disassemble Jack’s hose connector and substitute a new one I’d made up. My replacement looked just like the old one, but it wouldn’t hold much pressure.
Defective part.
Metal fatigue.
I’d be the one they’d have examine the connector if there was any inquiry at all. And I had no obvious motive for killing Jack; just the opposite, except for Jill and McLeve I was regarded as Jack’s only friend.

Once that was done I had only to wait.

The shuttle arrived empty. Halfey went outside, all right, but in a sealed cherry picker; he wasn’t exposed to vacuum for more than a few moments, and apparently I’d made my substitute just strong enough to hold.

They docked the shuttle, but not in the usual place, and they braced it in.

It was time for a mutiny. I wasn’t the only one being
Shanghaied
on this trip. I went looking for Halfey. First, though, I’d need a reaction pistol.
And a projectile.
A ball-point pen ought to do nicely. Any court in the world would call it self-defense.

“I’m a public benefactor, I am,” I muttered to myself.

Jill’s quarters were near the store room. When I came out with the pistol, she saw me. “Hi,” she said.

“Hi.” I started to go on.

“You never talk to me anymore.”

“Let’s say I got your message.”

“That was a long time ago. I was upset. So were you. It’s different
now…”

“Different. Sure.” I was bitter and I sounded it. “Different. You’ve got that lying bastard Halfey to console you, that’s how it’s different.” That hurt her, and I was glad of it.

“We need him, Corky. We all need him, and we always did. We wouldn’t have got much done without him.”