The Krone Experiment (8 page)

Finally, Wahlquist dropped his arms and
turned again in his seat to look toward the man in the rear.

“Well,” he demanded, “what’s going on?!”

Without lowering his own arms, Newman could
sense that Wahlquist had dropped his guard.

“No!” he cried. “Cover—”

But it was too late.

The beam seared out of the rotating
satellite, sweeping rapidly but uniformly across the reflective
face of the mirror, most of the power bouncing harmlessly off into
space. The joint at the center where the mirror segments all came
together reflected too little. It rapidly heated red then white
hot. The laser pulse lasted only a moment, but as it died away a
tiny hole was burned open, and the fading radiation passed through,
racing to the shuttle beyond. There was insufficient energy to
damage anything but fragile human tissue, but enough for that.
Wahlquist had averted his gaze when the beam struck, but it did him
little good. Wahlquist neither heard nor felt the impact on his
face nor deep in the base of his retinas. He saw the flash, the
last thing he would ever see. He knew that immediately and screamed
his bitterness.

“AAAGH! I’m blind!”

Jupp lowered his arms and tried to turn to
his companion.

“It may be temporary.”

“No, goddamn it! I know it! I’m blind!”

The cold voice cut in.

“Major, we must move quickly. If he’s
disabled, you must help me into my EVA pack. I’ve got to get out
there now!”

“But he’s injured!”

“We can’t help him! We’ve got a job to do.
And precious little time to do it in. Another shot like that and
we’re all fried. Help me with that pack. That’s an order!”

Jupp unbuckled and pushed out of his seat
with his left hand, keeping a grip on a handle in the armrest on
his right so that he pivoted, floating toward his copilot. He
steadied himself by grabbing the armrest on the other chair and
stared into Wahlquist’s sightless eyes.

“Larry,” he said firmly into his helmet’s
radio, “you’ll be in shock, take a pill and sit quietly. I’ll be
back in a few minutes.”

Jupp gripped his friend’s padded shoulder
with gloved hand and then worked his way to the rear of the cabin
using convenient holds in the deck. He dropped down through the
hatch in the floor that led from the flight deck to the mid-deck.
Newman was already disappearing into the airlock that gave access
to the cargo bay. Jupp waited for him to clear the airlock then
passed through himself. Newman worked his feet into special braces
in the deck that would hold him as they fitted the pack, then he
twisted sideways to reach the extra-vehicular activity packs
fastened to the bulkhead. He unbuckled one pack and lifted it from
the rack, passing it around behind him. Jupp moved in and adjusted
the pack into the special braces at the rear of the man’s suit and
fastened the clamps. Over his headphone he could hear Wahlquist
reporting his condition to mission control.

“Okay, Major,” the Colonel growled when he
was satisfied. “There’ll be some changes in the plans. Their
rotating craft complicates my work, but gives us an advantage. You
get back into the cabin. The laser fires out the side, in the plane
of rotation. As soon as you can make out the orientation, you move
us to just below it. That way they can’t take a shot at the shuttle
without changing the plane of rotation. That’s harder for them to
do than shooting at a target anywhere in the plane of rotation, so
you’ll be out of the line of fire, and I’ll be able to go straight
up out of the bay. You got that, Major?”

“Yes, sir. I’ve got it,” Jupp replied,
striving to contain his resentment at taking orders on the ship he
piloted.

“Okay. You holler when you’re in position.
I’ll go in along the rotation axis; anywhere else, I’d get swatted
away like a fly. I’ll have to go without the umbilical. It’d get
twisted like a spring as soon as I latched on.”

“Without the umbilical?” Jupp’s voice
betrayed his shock. “If you lose your grip, get flung off, you’re
gone!”

“I know my job, Major. If I lose my grip,
we’re all gone.”

Jupp looked at the stern face, barely visible
behind the darkened faceplate, and then yanked himself into the
airlock. He floated up through the hatch to the flight deck and
worked his way to the seat and buckled in. A glance at the clock
showed that four minutes had passed since the blast that had
blinded Wahlquist. Perhaps twenty more until the laser
recharged.

Jupp took a few seconds to orient himself and
then let out an exasperated sigh. All he could see out the window
was the back of the mirror. He had to move it, but the controls for
the boom to which the mirror was attached were twelve feet away at
the rear of the flight deck. You weren’t supposed to have to fly
and handle the boom all by yourself, he thought.

Wahlquist sensed his presence and reached out
an arm, grabbing Jupp for reassurance.

“What’s happening?”

“I’ve got to move the mirror and then do a
little flying. With them spinning we can duck down under and hide
from the laser.”

“Listen, I’m okay now,” Wahlquist said.
“Talking with control calmed me down. I’ve got a good feel for that
boom, and you can fly better if you’re not jumpin’ up and down. Why
don’t you tell me what you want done with the mirror, and I’ll
handle that part?”

It made sense; the mirror only had to be
lifted out of the line of sight.

“Okay, buddy. You’ve got it.”

Jupp unbuckled Wahlquist and floated him
around the passenger seat and over the open hatch in the floor to
the control panel at the rear of the flight deck. The rear facing
windows that opened to the cargo bay were now an unnecessary luxury
for his friend, Jupp mused as he planted Wahlquist’s feet on the
anchoring velcro pads.

“Can you get your hands on those
controls?”

Jupp watched as Wahlquist felt around the
control console in front of him. He fought the instinct to grab the
sightless hands and guide them to the controls. Wahlquist found the
recess after only a long moment and settled his hands around the
reassuring familiarity of the controls. Jupp regained his seat.

“All right,” he said, “lift the boom straight
up ninety degrees.”

He watched as the mirror lifted methodically
from his line of sight. They were still upside down and as the view
from the windows was cleared he could see the spectacular spread of
Earth out the tops of the windows.

“Okay, that’s good,” he said when the boom
was overhead, pointed directly at the Earth below. Straight out the
nose was the blackness of space.

A clutch of panic seized him. Where was the
Cosmos? It was supposed to be right there! Had the computers
screwed up? Could they find it before it unleashed another hellish
blast? He forced himself to think calmly. He triggered a thruster
and put the shuttle into a slow roll. They had done ninety degrees
when, thank god, there it was, out the corner of the window about
three hundred yards away, a little above them. He continued the
roll until they were “right side up” and the Cosmos was in clear
view out the window.

“Now what,” demanded Wahlquist.

“I’ve got the Cosmos in sight. We’re about a
hundred yards below it and a few hundred yards away. We’re at
twelve o’clock now,” Jupp twisted around to smile toward his
sightless colleague, “right side up, if that makes you feel any
better.”

Wahlquist appreciated the black humor.
“Right,” he replied with heavy cynicism. “Blind and weightless, it
makes a shitload of difference to me.”

“I’m going in.” Jupp eased the thrusters
again and the shuttle drifted forward. As he flew, he narrated to
keep Wahlquist at ease.

“It’s much like the sketches they showed us.
Impressive looking brute. Big cylinder, just the upper end of the
SS-18 booster. What did they say? Four meters in diameter, ten
meters long? That looks about right. There’s a booster rocket
nozzle on one end, some sort of antennae on the other. That’s the
end pointed Earthward now. It’s got these four weird stubby wings.
They stick out about two meters, and run the length of the
cylinder, equally spaced around the circumference. I guess they’re
what we’re supposed to lop off to get the thing in the cargo bay.
The whole thing is rotating once about every, oh, ten seconds. I
can make out thruster nozzles. There are four pairs of them at each
end, midway between the wings. Each of the pair points in opposite
directions along the circumference of the hull. There are a number
of small ports and one big one, maybe a meter across, halfway along
the cylinder between two of the wings.”

Jupp was silent for a moment, watching the
dark maw swing across his field of view. “I guess that must be the
laser.”

When Jupp saw the Cosmos disappear above the
cockpit window, he hit reverse thrust and stopped, hovering just
beneath it. He spoke into the microphone.

“Colonel, there it is. Good luck.”

“I’m sorry, Major.” The voice was ice. “I
can’t see it. You’ve got the mirror in the way.”

“Christ!” thought Jupp. “Larry, can you move
that boom on toward the tail?”

Wahlquist had not released his grip on the
controls. Jupp strained to look through the overhead cockpit
windows.

“Good, that’s it,” he said crisply when the
boom was pointed at a forty-five degree angle toward the tail. He
leaned over and worked the controls of the camera on the boom until
he could see the Cosmos clearly on the monitor. They were drifting
just slightly. He brushed a thruster to give a small opposing
acceleration. Eleven minutes since the last shot from Cosmos.

A small figure appeared on the monitor,
heading slowly but directly toward the antenna on the lower spin
axis. A white plume shot briefly from the top of the backpack, then
a shorter blast. The figure hovered next to the projecting antenna
just below the spinning base of the Cosmos. An arm reached back and
unsnapped a tool from the side of the pack. In a moment a torch
flared brightly and was applied to the base of the antenna. The
antenna fell free and drifted off.

“That should prevent any control commands,”
came the voice over the radio.

“He just cut the radio antenna off the
bottom,” Jupp informed Wahlquist.

“Now what’s he doing?” Wahlquist’s voice
betrayed his fear and frustration.

“He’s got the torch on again. He’s holding it
up to the bottom about eighteen inches from the center. I’ll be
damned. He’s using the rotation as if the thing were on a lathe.
Cutting a circle as slick as can be. I guess he’ll try to cut a
hole and then get inside to disable it.”

“Wait a minute!” The pattern shifted,
drifting. The torch went out.

“What is it!” shouted Wahlquist.

“Major!” came the curt command. “This thing
is still alive. Must be an internal antenna. It’s changing its
pitch. Get your craft the hell out of the way!”

Jupp hit a thruster and backed the shuttle
away and down. When it was in his line of sight again he could see
the rhythmic puffs from its thrusters and see that the laser portal
had already been slightly tilted down toward him. He began a
frenzied game with the control thrusters, monitoring the Cosmos and
keeping the shuttle out of the rotating, sweeping aim of the laser.
He was not too busy to marvel at the actions of the diminutive
figure that hovered around the massive contraption.

He watched the figure maneuver to the
perimeter of the base of the Cosmos. An arm snaked out.

“What’s he doing?” Jupp narrated to
Wahlquist. “Slapping at it? My god, no! He grabbed it! He grabbed
the nozzle of the thruster!” The figure was suddenly whipping
around with the Cosmos, feet flung outward by the centrifugal
force.

“He’s got a hand on it, but I don’t now if he
can hold on. If he loses his grip and it slings him off, we may not
get him back.” A burst of white exhaust came from the thruster.
“Damn! There it goes again! Wow! He’s still got his grip! I guess
the suit gives him enough protection from the peroxide jet.” Jupp
watched intently. “Oh, oh,” he said. “They’ve slowed it down and
it’s tilted toward us again. They’re still trying to draw a
bead!”

Jupp concentrated on the controls again,
moving the shuttle out of reach. When he could look again, Jupp saw
that the Colonel had once more fired up the torch.

“He’s hanging onto the thruster with one hand
and using the torch on the sidewall about a foot above the
thruster. I don’t know how he’s holding on, but that should be thin
skin he’s cutting there. Why’s he doing that? Yep, there it
goes.”

A thin piece of the metal wall fell away
leaving a hole about a foot across. The torch was released,
dangling on its short cord.

“Now let’s see, he’s got a hole big enough
for his hand. Yeah, he’s reaching inside. Those edges will be
sharp. He better not rip his suit! Okay, he’s got a grip on
something inside, a brace or something. He’s hauling himself up.
He’s got a foot up, now the other. Oh, I see. He’s standing on the
wing.”

“He’s standing?” inquired Wahlquist,
perplexed. “What the hell do you mean?”

“Well, he’s got himself wrapped along the
side with his head pointed in the direction of the rotation. That
puts the flat surface of the wing under his feet, giving sort of an
artificial gravity. There must still be quite a centrifugal force,
but he’s got some support.

“I can only see him about once every, oh,
about every twenty seconds now, the thing has slowed its rotation
as it’s maneuvered here. From our vantage, he’s moving from left to
right, clockwise if you look up from below. He’s got the torch back
and is poking it into the thruster nozzle. Ah, yeah, that’ll fry
the nozzle and the works inside. Now he’s doing the opposite nozzle
of the pair. He’s cutting another hand hold. He’s near the bottom
end of the cylinder. There’s another thruster at the top; he’s
going for that.”