Lifeline

Jonathan J. Schlosser

         Caleb pulled the throttle back long before they reached their point of entry, cutting thrust and reducing the miner to little more than a projectile, freefalling toward the surface on a wave of inertia. Beside him, Dave grunted. Caleb gritted his teeth and ignored the obvious implication that he'd done something wrong. Unorthodox, perhaps, but not wrong.

         The miner was a small craft, not able to house much more than the two men in their bulky vacuum suits. A large, cone-shaped drill protruded from its nose like the spikes rumored to end lives so effectively; the drill was, in fact, probably the most predominant feature the ship boasted. The rest was little more than a fibersteel box with a pair of fusion-burst engines bolted to its aft.

         The asteroid reached out to pull them in like the undertow around a child's feet. The light from the sun, originating much too far away but still present and accounted for, lit up the surface, exposing and illuminating the jagged crevices and sharp ridges that marred the planetoid's surface. Caleb smiled. He'd been waiting for the mission for nearly two months, and he was as giddy as a kindergartener on Christmas Eve. He tightened his grip on the control yoke and shot a glance at his partner.

         Dave, his salt-and-pepper hair hidden by his helmet, was as intent and focused as ever. He looked over when he felt Caleb's eyes on him. "You cut that burst a bit early, kid."

         Caleb shrugged and pushed down the surge of frustration that clawed its way up his throat. "Better to have more fuel for the return."

         "Not if we miss our entry."

         "We won't."

         They closed the distance slowly, though it felt impossibly fast to Caleb. His work in the simulators had been no match for the real thing, just as he'd suspected. The gauges and dials before him, all glowing a soft green or blue, counted down the kilometers to target. Caleb flexed his fingers. When the dial hit point-one-oh, if they weren't on course, he'd have about three seconds to make the necessary correction before they hit the surface and exploded like a piñata packed with gunpowder.

         Fortunately, such a fireworks display wouldn't be on the agenda for the crewman of the orbiting bulk carrier, the Griffin. They plunged nose-first into the mining shaft without so much as scraping a fleck of paint from the hull. Caleb breathed a sigh of relief as complete darkness engulfed them—despite his assurances, he hadn't been positive they would make it. One more thing to check off his list.

         "Lights," Dave said.

         Caleb flipped them on, the powerful beams cutting into the shroud of blackness for what seemed like a miniscule five hundred meters. The walls of the shaft, hardly wider than the miner itself, flew by like a tunnel in the most insane of amusement park rides. Caleb gulped; this time, unlike the park, they could collide with the stone and be torn into so many pieces to be scraped up by the recovery team. It had happened once already; another incident wasn't out of the question.

         The nice part about piloting the miner was that, once inside the shaft, Caleb had relatively little to do. The tunnel had been bored out in a perfectly straight path to the heart of the asteroid. As long as he hit the mouth at the correct angle, he wouldn't have to worry about any deadly accidents. Until, of course, they had to leave. Then it was all on his shoulders again.

         The shaft ended, dumping them like a missile into an immense cavern. The miner's lights weren't strong enough to reach the far wall. Caleb immediately kicked in the reverse thrusters, slowing their velocity to zero and leaving the ship hovering like an insect over a flower, searching for the pollen that had called it to that point. Now the fun could begin.

         "Fifty-two-three northwest?" Caleb asked. He was reciting the coordinates from memory, and was fairly certain he'd gotten them right, but it never hurt to ask for confirmation. Dave just nodded.

         Caleb shot off a few small bursts to starboard, brought the nose around, and then quickly evened things back out when he was sure they were facing in the proper direction. He goosed the throttle carefully, starting them forward. At such slow speeds, it would take awhile to reach the far wall, but once they got there they wouldn't just slam into it and obliterate the miner.

         Dave reached over and flipped a pair of switches over Caleb's head, starting the drill's rotation. His eyes were hard; clearly he thought Caleb should already have done so. Caleb focused as intently as he could on piloting.

         The impact with the massive sheet of stone sent a shudder through the miner. The drill bit into the rock almost instantly and began grinding away. The rumble of the engines working at full capacity spread through every inch of the craft, a reverberating sound that was more felt than heard.

         "Anything I forgot?" Caleb asked with a grin.

         Dave fixed him with a stare that reflected exactly none of Caleb's good cheer. "If I think of anything, I'll let you know."

         Forty-five minutes later, Caleb decided that mining itself wasn't hard. In fact, save for the excitement he felt at finally doing something, it was rather boring. As the distance gauge hit twenty meters, he pulled back on the stick and carefully maneuvered the ship out of the hole he had dug, which was as deep as two of the miners. It was empty. Switching the power over to the rear jets, Caleb set the ship back on its forward course, just to the side of his last venture and in a perfect line with the two before that. The miner began cutting a new tunnel with impressive efficiency; soon they were again surrounded by thick walls of stone.

         Dave returned from manually checking the engine temperature and slid back into the copilot's chair. "Anything yet?"

         "I don't think so," Caleb answered.

         "You don't know?"

         "The scanners haven't picked anything up."

         "Then the answer is no."

         Caleb grimaced. "Yes, sir."

         The words were hardly past Caleb's lips when everything fell apart. There was a loud crack, as if some galactic lifeform had just taken a healthy bite out of the miner. The ship rocked forward and then back violently. Caleb's head slammed into the controls; red and white flashes shot through his vision. He grabbed frantically for the reverse thrusters, but couldn't find them. There was a loud hissing noise filling his ears. His breathing sharpened—quick, rapid jolts of oxygen from the vacuum suit's mask.

         Dave reached out and threw the ship into reverse. The vibration, however, had stopped of its own accord. The engines were all but silent, powering neither the drill nor the thrusters. The miner remained stationary.

         "What happened?" Caleb choked out. The hissing sound was still there, steady and demanding.

         "I don't know yet. Give me a second."

         It actually took about thirty before Dave sat back, defeated. "We've lost all power from the engines, and I can't restore it from here." He glanced behind them. "We also seem to be venting our air supply."

         Caleb felt ice-cold fingers of panic begin to latch around his chest. The miner carried their main air reserves. The vacuum suits, while equipped to use portable tanks of oxygen, were connected to the ship by thin tubes that usually served that purpose. If they were venting, as Dave had summarized, they were in a serious amount of trouble. Especially if they couldn't get out.

          "What now?" Caleb asked.

         "We get outside and find out what happened." Dave's voice was determined, though there was a certain bleak quality to it that set off alarms in Caleb's head. "First we try to stop the leak. Then we see what we can do about the thrusters."

         Caleb disconnected the tube attaching him to the diminishing air supply. He screwed a small cylindrical canister into the port on the back of his suit. There were two inputs, he noted, but only one canister for each pilot. Someone had done a poor job in the planning stages of this particular operation. Probably some government puke back on Earth who was safe and cozy in his third-story apartment, drinking coffee and watching reruns.

         "Ready?" Dave asked as he finished attaching his own canister. Caleb nodded.

         There was a hatch on the aft end of the ship, just below the engines. Dave unlatched it and pushed it open. He connected a thin wire to a hook on his waist—in case he floated away from the miner, he would have a way to pull himself back. He had the propulsion unit that was a part of his suit as well, its controls built into the chest plate, but the old rules declared that fuel conservation was more important than anything else. The lifeline in place, he climbed through the opening feet-first and disappeared from sight.

         Caleb followed him, tugging on his wire a few times to make sure it was properly secured. It didn't budge.

         The tunnel was dark, with just a thin ring of light spilling back over the lip of the miner. Caleb swung himself to the left, bouncing off the ship's hull like he was rappelling down a mountain back home in Colorado. He couldn't hear the impact of his boots on the metal, and was confused for a second. Then he remembered that they were in vacuum—there was no atmosphere to carry the sound waves.

         Dave's voice sounded in his ear with a slap of irony—coming, of course, over the suit-to-suit com. "Where are you?"

         Caleb swallowed. "Next to the engines. To port."

         "Get to the other side."

         "Yes, sir."

         Caleb did as he was told, careful not to actually touch the engines. They were as hot as pavement in the desert; if they melted through his suit, he'd be dead before Dave even found the problem. Of course, he thought, Dave would probably be happy. Then he could use twice as much air.

         Dave was standing on the small metal overhang that separated the engines from the rest of the ship. Caleb pulled himself up, an easy task in zero gravity, and used his wire to control himself as he moved alongside the other pilot.

         The problem was as obvious as the emergency lights that were still flashing red bursts off the interior of the cockpit. There was a tear in the fibersteel—thin, and as long as Caleb's arm. Its edges were jagged but straight, as if the metal had been ripped apart.

         "What happened?" Caleb asked, bending over for a closer look.

         "We tore up the drill on something," Dave answered, holding up a piece of dark gray material that could only be part of the monstrous awl. "This managed to find its way over the top of the miner, glance off the wall, and hit us. The hull never stood a chance."

         Caleb's eyes widened at that. The drill was composed of grafnium alloy, supposedly the single hardest substance in existence. The bits rarely went dull, let alone broke. That a piece could have been ripped off with a force savage enough to throw it over the ship was somewhere on the far side of amazing.

         "It also cut through the main power cable," Dave said, pointing. "Which is why we can't fire the jets in either forward or reverse." With the generator that powered the reverse thrusters housed in the rear section of the miner, all power fore and aft was routed through a mess of wires as thick as three inches at its widest point. The severed ends now floated in their supports.

         They clambered back inside the disabled craft. Dave shut off the alarms; they knew something was wrong—they certainly didn't need the ship's computer to inform them eighty times a minute. Caleb went to the storage compartment and pulled out the repair kit, which looked hopelessly small. He carried it back to the cockpit.

         Dave barely glanced at the kit before shaking his head. "They never anticipated a breach in the hull being so large. This is impossible."

         Caleb nodded in despairing agreement. They didn't even have any fibersteel, just a white putty that was apparently supposed to harden after five minutes to a consistency that could—for the most part—hold in atmosphere. However, the tube was far too small to do the patch job that was being put before it. Without some sort of miracle, their oxygen supply would keep depleting until it was entirely gone, lost to the unforgiving cold of space.

         On the bright side, there were a decent amount of cables and other electronic gear. By splicing a few together, Dave was able to make something that was roughly the same size as the power line. It wouldn't hold up for long, but it might be enough to get them started in the right direction. If they could get clear of the asteroid, where its mass wouldn't block their ship's com transmissions, they could communicate with the Griffin and arrange to be picked up.

         Dave slipped back outside to install the jerry-rigged cable. Caleb offered, but was shot down just as quickly. Instead, he sat in the rear compartment, glaring at the floor and waiting impatiently for the other man to reemerge through the hatch.

          Dave did so after an excruciating couple of minutes, minus the cable. "Here goes nothing," he said as he stepped past Caleb and into the cockpit. They both strapped themselves in. Caleb crossed his fingers inside his gloves.

         The warning lights were replaced by about half as many "ready" lights as there should have been. Dave typed in the restart code, paused for a moment, and then punched the ignition. There was a low rumble as the jets kicked in. Caleb opened his mouth to let out a victory cheer, but it was cut short before it even came into being. There was a flash of sparks from the rear of the ship. Electricity played briefly over the viewport; the hairs on Caleb's arms stood on end like rows of soldiers gathered in a rigid formation.

         "We blew the cable again," Dave said.

         Caleb tried to cut the fear from his voice. "What now?"

         "How much air does the ship have left?"

         He checked. "Ten minutes and twenty-seven seconds." The numbers were counting down in a regular fashion, approaching the inevitable zero that meant only one thing: death.

         "Not enough," Dave said. "How about the suits?"

         "I've got a few minutes."

         "It'll take more than that to get to the surface." Dave paused slightly. "About twice that."

         The vacuum suits could survive in exactly what their name implied—cold, hard void. Theoretically, a person wearing one of the suits would be able to stay alive for as long as his air held out, granted he didn't starve to death or encounter some other unlucky instance—like a meteor shower—that ended his life. The personal com system itself was not strong enough to contact a third party like the Griffin, but the homing beacon built into the suit's internal wiring was. If the freighter's radar technician was doing his job properly, he would see a signal coming from outside of the asteroid and know that things had gone south in a hurry.

         But without enough air, that idea was as useless as an icebox in the winter. The radar officer would see the signal alright, but the suit's occupant would be dead long before help arrived. Probably before he cleared the shaft's mouth.

         Dave stood. "I have an idea. Come on."

         Caleb followed him to the back hatch, eyeing what was left of the repair kit with dismay. There was nothing there that would help. Whatever plan Dave had cobbled together, it would have to be Herculean if they were going to pull it off.

         "You first," Dave said, stepping aside.

         Caleb stopped short. "But I don't even—"

         Dave spun, catching Caleb in the chest with an open palm and pinning him against the wall. "Look, kid, we don't have the time to argue about this. Every breath you take is that much less oxygen in your tank. If you want to live through this, do as I say. You can ask questions later."

         "Yes, sir," Caleb stammered. Dave released him. Shaken, Caleb pulled himself through the hatch and back into the cavern.

         "Turn around."

         Caleb obeyed instantly, not thinking. Dave grabbed him a stranglehold, his arm around Caleb's neck. Caleb's legs were useless, floating, with no leverage whatsoever. He cried out and tried to punch the controls for his self-propulsion unit, but Dave had covered them with his hand.

         Metal grated on metal, chilling Caleb to the bone. He knew that sound. It was the noise of an air tank being unscrewed, detached from the suit. Panic seized him. Dave was stealing his air. With both canisters, Dave would have enough oxygen to make it to the surface and be picked up by the Griffin's rescue shuttle. Caleb began inhaling in large gulps, waiting for the sickening feeling when there was no longer anything there to breathe.

         It never came. Instead, Dave released him, giving him a slight push away from the trapped miner. Caleb began spinning as he floated away, confusion running through his mind like a storm of heat lightning.

         Behind him, Dave reconnected the in-ship air tube to his suit. "Get out of here, kid."

         Caleb's anger drained away. "What are you doing?"

         "There's only enough air for one of use to make it to the surface. That one is going to be you."

         Slapping his chest, Caleb fired the miniature jets built into his suit. "No! I'm coming back for you. We'll do this together."

         "Stop! If you do that, we're both dead. You're wasting time as it is; that air won't last forever."

         "I'm not leaving you here."

         Dave slowly pushed the hatch shut. "I don't recall giving you a choice. If you try to break in, I'll seal off the door with repair adhesive. I can hold you out for five minutes."

         Caleb stopped, letting the jets bring him to a hover. He stared at the miner for a second, a thousand thoughts running through his mind. The darkness seemed to close in on him like a cloud—heavy, oppressive, and inescapable. Finally, swallowing the lump in his throat, he turned and headed for the mouth of the tunnel.

 

Copyright 2008, Jonathan J. Schlosser

Cover: "The Gatherers"