Parker's Folly (15 page)

“Yes, of course, Houston. We know you did all that could be done.” The code of cool continued to hold.

“ISS, we have some ideas that might make the next 12 hours more survivable. Donning spacesuits and moving some of the equipment around you to form shielding could help diminish the radiation levels.”

“We have been over this before, Houston,” Dr. Tropsha interrupted. “The storm is going to be too strong and last too long for such measures to make any difference. We would simply be postponing the inevitable. I for one, would rather spend my last few hours comfortably, not locked inside a spacesuit.”

“Of course, Dr. Tropsha. Wait one.” There was a short pause before Mission Control resumed talking. “There are a few things we would like you to do to the ISS systems prior to the storm's arrival, if you don't mind. As you know, most of the station's electronics are probably going to be damaged and that could adversely impact some of the major onboard systems.”

“What is it you want us to do?” asked Ivan. Being the ranking cosmonaut, he was now acting mission commander.

“We'd like you to shut down the tracking on the solar panel arrays, and the stabilization system. Also the main heat exchanger.”

“Very well, we will do as you ask.”
Like that will change anything,
thought Ivan.
The station, like its crew, is as good as dead. Maybe they are just trying to keep us busy, to take our minds off what is about to happen.

“Thank you, ISS. We will probably lose communication contact at some point but we are going to stay with you—there are a lot of people down here praying for a miracle.”

“Thank you, Houston. We will sign off now and start shutting down systems.”

“Roger ISS. Godspeed, Houston out.”

The unwounded members of Folly's crew had returned to their duties—Billy Ray was back on the bridge while able spaceman Hitch and Freddy Adams from engineering were busy squaring away the cargo hold. Mat Jacobs' flesh wound and Melissa Hamilton's broken arm had been treated and they were sent forward to the mess to recuperate.

The three stunned but otherwise unharmed Marines had been handcuffed with plastic zip cuffs and secured in the crew dayroom on the lower deck, under the watchful eye of Lt. Bear. The remaining Marines were now resting in sickbay beds under restraint. Most seriously injured was Lt Merryweather, whose broken limbs had been splinted and was now  under heavy sedation.

Next on the list was LCpl Reagan, whose badly lacerated arm had been cleaned and bound. He too, was under sedation and Doc had started a plasma drip. That left Davis, Kwan and Feldman with various fractures, dislocations and sprains in need of setting. After giving them all something to dull the pain, Corpsman White was working her way down the patient list with the assistance of Lt. Curtis. Before ministering to the remaining squad members, the medical team turned to the squad's injured leader, GySgt Rodriguez.

The Gunny regained consciousness as Doc White moved to set her shoulder. “Lieutenant, could you please hold the Gunny steady. Gunny, this is going to hurt.”

“Get on with it, Doc.” Then, as the Corpsman pulled the Sergeant's arm back into its socket, “Arrgh! Damn that hurt!  Thanks Betty, where the hell are we?”

“We are in the ship's sickbay, Gunny.”

“I take it since she seems to be in charge,” the Gunny said, jerking her head in the direction of Lt. Curtis, “we lost.”

“Yes, Gunny. Reagan got cut up pretty bad but nobody died and all the wounded are being treated.”

“And might I ask who you are, Ma'am?” Rodriguez asked Lt. Curtis, noticing the officer's insignia on her jumpsuit collar.

“I'm the ship's First Officer, Lieutenant Curtis, Gunnery Sergeant.”

“What about my people, and how's the LT?”

“Your Lieutenant is pretty busted up, Sergeant. We have stabilized him as best we can but we have no doctor on board and your medic says he needs a surgeon. As for your other Marines, the ones without any broken bones or lacerations, they are being held below under armed guard. The rest are here in the sickbay.”

“I take it that those blue ray gun things don't kill people?”

“No, Sergeant, they're stun guns—like a taser without wires—we call them stunners. It was never our intention to harm you. By the way, you don't have any 40mm grenades, I checked. It was your threat to use grenades that forced the Captain to order the attack.”

“Yeah, well sorry about that, Lieutenant. It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“Well its over now,” said the First Officer. “The Captain will be along to speak with you now that you've regained consciousness. If I leave you in the corpsman's care will you promise not to do something stupid?”

“Since Doc is the only one fully mobile, I don't think we'll be trying anything too John Wayneish, Lieutenant. Particularly with no weapons and that attack bear of yours wandering around. That was a polar bear, wasn't it?”

“Yes, Sergeant, that was most definitely a polar bear.”

“I could swear that, just before I passed out, the bear spoke to me. That polar bear really can't talk, can he?”

“Of course not, Gunnery Sergeant,” the tall Lieutenant said with a mischievous glint in her eye. “He was just showing off.”

The Captain reclaimed the bridge and proceeded to finish the post launch checklist. A number of critical systems had not been fully online when the ship took off. Included among them were the suite of external sensors—radar, LIDAR, radiation detectors, video and others—which he was now activating. As he brought the charged particle detectors online he noticed that exterior levels were significantly higher than the display indicated as normal.

“Mr. Medina, could you cross check the particle radiation readings please?”

“Yes, Captain. It looks about twice normal levels and rising.”

“Are we expecting a solar storm? Did anyone think to check before we took off? I certainly didn't.”

“Sir, I'm accessing the Internet through a comsat and NASA has issued a solar flair warning. Wow! If what they are saying is true, there has been a massive eruption on the Sun. Earth is about to be hit with a monster wave of charged particles in about three hours.”

“Are the interior levels OK?”

“Yes, Sir. But I suggest we boost the repulsor shields just to make sure things stay that way.”

“Very well, Mr. Medina.” When Jack had taken over as the ship's captain he had promised that he would never utter the words “make it so.” He didn't ever wish to be confused with any fictional spaceship captain. “Also, Mr. Medina. My board is showing that the deck gravity grid has checked out and is ready to power up.”

“Yes, Sir. Should I engage the deck gravity?”

The Captain cringed at the use of “engage” for the same reason he eschewed the use of “make it so.” Instead he spoke to the engineer, saying “Let's not tempt fate with a possibly damage causing gravity level. Set up for a tenth of a G in all habitable spaces but don't activate the grid. I'll sound the warning and then we will give everyone time to prepare.”

The klaxon sounded its three warning blasts and the Captain announced over the PA “Attention! All habitable spaces will be placed under a one tenth G gravity in five minutes. Secure yourselves and all equipment for cabin gravity in five minutes.”

“Captain?” helmsman Vincent inquired. “There's something you should see on the TV. They're showing pictures of the space station and acting real upset.”

“What are they saying, Mr. Vincent?”

“I can't tell, it's a Russian station, Sir.” With that, Billy Ray turned the sound up until it was audible.

“They are saying,” said Lt. Curtis, just arriving on the bridge. “That there are two heroic Russian cosmonauts trapped on the ISS, along with a Japanese scientist.”

“Very good, Lieutenant,” the Captain noted. “I believe your command of Russian is better than mine. The question is, what the hell are they doing in orbit with a potentially lethal solar storm about to hit?” The ISS orbital inclination of 51
°
was a compromise with the Russians to accommodate launch geometries from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. It also increased normal radiation exposure. Crew members on both the space station and the American space shuttle reported seeing bright flashes of light that were actually caused by energetic particles passing through their eyeballs. Even so, the ISS in LEO was normally safe from solar flares. Evidently, the impending flood of radiation from the massive solar eruption was something else again.

“Mr. Danner, Mr. Vincent. Please locate the space station and plot a course that will intersect its path while matching its orbit.”

“Yes, Captain.” the two helmsmen replied in unison.

Normally, when pursuing another object in orbit, the spacecraft doing the chasing must decelerate, in effect slow down, to overtake its quarry. This seeming contradiction is a result of Newton's laws of motion combined with the inverse square law governing gravitational attraction. Examples are easier to understand than the equations.

For a spacecraft to achieve Earth orbit, it must be launched to an elevation above Earth's atmosphere and accelerated to orbital velocity. As previously mentioned, the ISS is in an orbit averaging 350 km in height above Earth's surface traveling at 27,500 km/hr. In this orbit it takes about 94 minutes to complete a single trip around the planet.

Many communications satellites are in orbit 35,785 km above the planet, in what is called a geosynchronous orbit. In geosynchronous orbit a satellite circles Earth once a day. If that orbit is a circular one in the plane of the equator, the satellite will appear to hang motionless in the sky. This is because it is making a full revolution at the same rate the planet below is turning—once every 24 hours. The orbital velocity in geosynchronous orbit is 11,066 km/hr. Even farther out, the Moon has an altitude of about 384,400 km, a velocity of about 3,700 km/hr and its orbit takes 27.322 days.

The space station orbits the planet many times faster in terms of revolutions per hour than a geosynchronous communications satellite or the Moon because it is in a lower orbit. The salient point is that to catch up with something in orbit,
orbital mechanics
requires
a spacecraft drop to a lower orbit. In that lower orbit the ship is circling the planet faster than the object in the higher orbit. Then, at the appropriate point, the pursuing ship transfers back to the higher orbit, hopefully arriving alongside its target.

The confusing part is that, when transferring from a higher orbit to a lower one, the change of velocity is opposite to the direction of motion—in other words, the ship must slowdown. Yet, when the lower orbit is achieved, its orbital velocity will be higher and it will complete more orbits in a set amount of time.

When transferring from a lower orbit to a higher orbit, the change in velocity is applied in the direction of motion—in other words, forward acceleration. When the higher orbit is attained, its orbital velocity will be less than the velocity in the lower orbit and it will take longer to complete a full circle around the globe.

Ordinarily, when changing orbits it is desirable to use the smallest possible amount of energy, which usually leads to using a
Hohmann transfer orbit
. Such a transfer trajectory describes an ellipse that is tangent to both the initial and final orbits. However, if a spacecraft needs to change orbits more quickly, a faster transfer called a
One-Tangent Burn
can be used. What type of transfer is used depends on how much energy a spacecraft is able to expend.

In this case, Parker's Folly needed to not only dip down lower than its current altitude and then back up, it also had to change its orbital inclination, the plane it was orbiting in, to match that of the ISS. To do this quickly would require a great deal of energy. Fortunately, the ship possessed a surfeit of energy—as much as a large nuclear power plant. The ship's computer was programed to solve such orbital problems and the appropriate maneuvers were quickly plotted.

“Mr. Medina, now would be a good time for that gravity. We shall see if the cabin gravity system can compensate for the ship's acceleration as advertised.”

“Aye, Captain, one tenth of a G coming right up.”

“Helm, let's pay the International Space Station a call.”

Ludmilla Tropsha was startled to hear a voice through the crackling static on the station's radio. Perhaps her mind was starting to play tricks on her. No, there it was again, a man's voice speaking English.

“ISS, this is Parker's Folly, do you read me?”

She must be hallucinating, they had lost contact with mission control half an hour ago.

“ISS, ISS, this is Parker's Folly, is there anyone on board? Please respond.”

Feeling as though she was in a dream, Luda moved to the radio console and answered. “Party calling ISS, this is Lt. Col. Ludmilla Tropsha. Please state your name and the purpose of this call.”

“Colonel Tropsha, this is Captain Jack Sutton on board the spaceship Parker's Folly, we were afraid that you were already gone.”

Ludmilla felt her anger rising,
what kind of cruel, twisted man  would play such a trick?
“Is this some kind of sick joke? We will all be gone soon enough!”

“I assure you this is not a joke, Colonel. Please look out of your observation port and you will see my ship.”

The Destiny lab module has a single Earth-facing window, made of optically pure, telescope-quality glass, located in an open rack bay. Cursing herself for a fool, Ludmilla moved over to the 20 inch circular window. Despite herself, Luda felt hope rising in her breast. She was almost too afraid to look out the window, afraid to have that spark of hope dashed. She looked out and... there was a ship hanging in space next to the space station.

And what a ship it was! A long gleaming silver cigar of a ship with a nose like Baccarat crystal. Where did it come from? How could such a thing exist? The ISS was supposed to be the biggest thing mankind had ever sent into space—the habitable assembly 51 meters long, the truss 109 meters wide, weighing 370 metric tons. The silver vision floating outside the window easily dwarfed the station. Plus, the strange ship was solid, all of one piece, while the ISS looked like some cobbled together collection of space junk.