17
Boarding Party
Even in the best of circumstances, it is not easy to board a derelict and uncooperative spaceship. Indeed, it can be positively dangerous.
Walter Curnow knew that as an abstract principle; but he did not really feel it in his bones until he saw the entire hundred-metre length of Discovery turning end-over-end, while Leonov kept at a safe distance. Years ago, friction had braked the spin of Discovery's carousel, thus transferring its angular momentum to the rest of the structure. Now, like a drum-majorette's baton at the height of its trajectory, the abandoned ship was slowly tumbling along its orbit.
The first problem was to stop that spin, which made Discovery not only uncontrollable but almost unapproachable. As he suited up in the airlock with Max Brailovsky, Curnow had a very rare sensation of incompetence, even inferiority; it was not his line of business. He had already explained gloomily, 'I'm a space engineer, not a space monkey'; but the job had to be done. He alone possessed the skills that could save Discovery from Io's grasp. Max and his colleagues, working with unfamiliar circuit diagrams and equipment, would take far too long. By the time they had restored power to the ship and mastered its controls, it would have plunged into the sulphurous firepits below.
"You're not scared, are you?" asked Max, when they were about to put on their helmets.
"Not enough to make a mess in my suit. Otherwise, yes." Max chuckled. "I'd say that's about right for this job. But don't worry - I'll get you there in one piece, with my - what do you call it?"
"Broomstick. Because witches are supposed to ride them."
"Oh yes. Have you ever used one?"
"I tried once, but mine got away from me. Everyone else thought it was very funny."
There are some professions which have evolved unique and characteristic tools - the longshoreman's hook, the potter's wheel, the bricklayer's trowel, the geologist's hammer. The men who had to spend much of their time on zero-gravity construction projects had developed the broomstick.
It was very simple - a hollow tube just a metre long, with a footpad at one end and a retaining loop at the other. At the touch of a button, it could telescope out to five or six times its normal length, and the internal shock-absorbing system allowed a skilled operator to perform the most amazing manoeuvres. The footpad could also become a claw or hook if necessary; there were many other refinements, but that was the basic design. It looked deceptively easy to use; it wasn't.
The airlock pumps finished recycling; the EXIT sign came on; the outer doors opened, and they drifted slowly into the void.
Discovery was windmilling about two hundred metres away, following them in orbit around Io, which filled half the sky. Jupiter was invisible, on the other side of the satellite. This was a matter of deliberate choice; they were using Io as a shield to protect them from the energies raging back and forth in the flux-tube that linked the two worlds. Even so, the radiation level was dangerously high; they had less than fifteen minutes before they must get back to shelter.
Almost immediately, Curnow had a problem with his suit. "It fitted me when I left Earth," he complained. "But now I'm rattling around inside like a pea in a pod."
"That's perfectly normal, Walter," said Surgeon-Commander Rudenko, breaking into the radio circuit. "You lost ten kilos in hibernation, which you could very well afford to miss. And you've already put three of them back."
Before Curnow had time to think of a suitable retort, he found himself gently but firmly jerked away from Leonov.
"Just relax, Walter," said Brailovsky. "Don't use your thrusters, even if you start tumbling. Let me do all the work."
Curnow could see the faint puffs from the younger man's backpack, as its tiny jets drove them toward Discovery. With each little cloud of vapour there came a gentle tug on the towline, and he would start moving toward Brailovsky; but he never caught up with him before the next puff came. He felt rather like a yo-yo - now making one of its periodic comebacks on Earth - bouncing up and down on its string.
There was only one safe way to approach the derelict, and that was along the axis around which it was slowly revolving. Discovery's centre of rotation was approximately amidships, near the main antenna complex, and Brailovsky was heading directly toward this area, with his anxious partner in tow. How will he stop both of us in time? Curnow asked himself.
Discovery was now a huge, slender dumbbell slowly flailing the entire sky ahead of them. Though it took several minutes to complete one revolution, the far ends were moving at an impressive speed. Curnow tried to ignore them, and concentrated on the approaching - and immobile - centre.
"I'm aiming for that," said Brailovsky. "Don't try to help, and don't be surprised at anything that happens."
Now, what does he mean by that? Curnow asked himself, while preparing to be as unsurprised as possible.
Everything happened in about five seconds. Brailovsky triggered his broomstick, so that it telescoped out to its full length of four metres and made contact with the approaching ship. The broomstick started to collapse, its internal spring absorbing Brailovsky's considerable momentum; but it did not, as Curnow had fully expected, bring him to rest beside the antenna mount. It immediately expanded again, reversing the Russian's velocity so that he was, in effect, reflected away from Discovery just as rapidly as he had approached. He flashed past Curnow, heading out into space again, only a few centimetres away. The startled American just had time to glimpse a large grin before Brailovsky shot past him.
A second later, there was a jerk on the line connecting them, and a quick surge of deceleration as they shared momentum. Their opposing velocities had been neatly cancelled; they were virtually at rest with respect to Discovery. Curnow had merely to reach out to the nearest handhold, and drag them both in.
"Have you ever tried Russian roulette?" he asked, when he had got his breath back.
"No - what is it?"
"I must teach you sometime. It's almost as good as this for curing boredom."
"I hope you're not suggesting, Walter, that Max would do anything dangerous?"
Dr Rudenko sounded as if she was genuinely shocked, and Curnow decided it was best not to answer; sometimes the Russians did not understand his peculiar sense of humour. "You could have fooled me," he muttered under his breath, not loud enough for her to hear.
Now that they were firmly attached to the hub of the windmilling ship, he was no longer conscious of its rotation - especially when he fixed his gaze upon the metal plates immediately before his eyes. The ladder stretching away into the distance, running along the slender cylinder that was Discovery's main structure, was his next objective. The spherical command module at its far end seemed several light-years away, though he knew perfectly well that the distance was only fifty metres.
"I'll go first," said Brailovsky, reeling in the slack on the line linking them together. "Remember - it's downhill all the way from here. But that's no problem - you can hold on with one hand. Even at the bottom, gravity's only about a tenth gee. And that's - what do you say? - chickenshit."
"I think you mean chickenfeed. And if it's all the same to you, I'm going feet first. I never liked crawling down ladders the wrong way up - even in fractional gravity."
It was essential, Curnow was very well aware, to keep up this gently bantering tone; otherwise he would be simply overwhelmed by the mystery and danger of the situation. There he was, almost a billion kilometres from home, about to enter the most famous derelict in the entire history of space exploration; a media reporter had once called Discovery the Marie Celeste of space, and that was not a bad analogy. But there was also much that made his situation unique; even if he tried to ignore the nightmare moonscape filling half the sky, there was a constant reminder of its presence at hand. Every time he touched the rungs of the ladder, his glove dislodged a thin mist of sulphur dust.
Brailovsky, of course, was quite correct; the rotational gravity caused by the ship's end-over-end tumbling was easily countered. As he
grew used to it, Curnow even welcomed the sense of direction it gave him.
And then, quite suddenly, they had reached the big, discoloured sphere of Discovery's control and life-support module. Only a few metres away was an emergency hatch - the very one, Curnow realized, that Bowman had entered for his final confrontation with Hal.
"Hope we can get in," muttered Brailovsky. "Pity to come all this way and find the door locked."
He scraped away the sulphur obscuring the AIRLOCK STATUS display panel.
"Dead, of course. Shall I try the controls?"
"Won't do any harm - but nothing will happen."
"You're right. Well, here goes with manual...
It was fascinating to watch the narrow hairline open in the curved wall, and to note the little puff of vapour dispersing into space, carrying with it a scrap of paper. Was that some vital message? They would never know; it spun away, tumbling end over end without losing any of its initial spin as it disappeared against the stars.
Brailovsky kept turning the manual control for what seemed a very long time, before the dark, uninviting cave of the airlock was completely open. Curnow had hoped that the emergency lights, at least, might still be operating. No such luck.
"You're boss now, Walter. Welcome to US territory."
It certainly did not look very welcoming as he clambered inside, flashing the beam of his helmet light around the interior. As far as Curnow could tell, everything was in good order. What else had he expected? he asked himself, half angrily.
Closing the door manually took even longer than opening it, but there was no alternative until the ship was powered up again. Just before the hatch was sealed, Curnow risked a glance at the insane panorama outside.
A flickering blue lake had opened up near the equator; he was sure it had not been there a few hours earlier. Brilliant yellow flares, the characteristic colour of glowing sodium, were dancing along its edges; and the whole of the nightland was veiled in the ghostly plasma discharge of one of Io's almost continuous auroras.
It was the stuff of future nightmares - and as if that was not sufficient, there was one further touch worthy of a mad surrealist artist. Stabbing up into the black sky, apparently emerging directly from the firepits of the burning moon, was an immense, curving horn, such as a doomed bullfighter might have glimpsed in the final moment of truth.
The crescent of Jupiter was rising to greet Discovery and Leonov as they swept toward it along their common orbit.
18
Salvage
The moment that the outer hatch had closed behind them, there had been a subtle reversal of roles. Curnow was at home now, while Brailovsky was out of his element, feeling ill at ease in the labyrinth of pitch-black corridors and tunnels that was Discovery's interior. In theory, Max knew his way round the ship, but that knowledge was based only on a study of its design drawings. Curnow, on the other hand, had spent months working in Discovery's still uncompleted identical twin; he could, quite literally, find his way around blindfolded.
Progress was made difficult because that part of the ship was designed for zero gee; now the uncontrolled spin provided an artificial gravity, which, slight though it was, always seemed to be in the most inconvenient direction.
"First thing we've got to do," muttered Curnow, after sliding several metres down a corridor before he could grab a handhold, "is to stop this damned spin. And we can't do that until we have power. I only hope that Dave Bowman safeguarded all systems before he abandoned ship."
"Are you sure he did abandon the ship? He may have intended to come back."
"You may be right; I don't suppose we'll ever know. If he even knew himself."
They had now entered the Pod Bay - Discovery's 'space garage', which normally contained three of the spherical one-man modules used for activities outside the ship. Only Pod Number 3 remained; Number 1 had been lost in the mysterious accident that had killed Frank Poole - and Number 2 was with Dave Bowman, wherever he might be.
The Pod Bay also contained two spacesuits, looking uncomfortably like decapitated corpses as they hung helmet-less in their racks. It needed very little effort of the imagination - and Brailovsky's was now working overtime - to fill them with a whole menagerie of sinister occupants.
It was unfortunate, but not altogether surprising, that Curnow's sometimes irresponsible sense of humour got the better of him at this very moment.
"Max," he said, in a tone of deadly seriousness, "whatever happens - please don't go chasing off after the ship's cat."
For a few milliseconds, Brailovsky was thrown off guard; he almost answered: 'I do wish you hadn't said that, Walter', but checked himself in time. That would have been too damning an admission of weakness; instead he replied, "I'd like to meet the idiot who put that movie in our library."
"Katerina probably did it, to test everyone's psychological balance. Anyway, you laughed your head off when we screened it last week."
Brailovsky was silent; Curnow's remark was perfectly true. But that had been back in the familiar warmth and light of Leonov, among his friends - not in a pitch-black, freezing derelict, haunted by ghosts. No matter how rational one was, it was all too easy to imagine some implacable alien beast prowling these corridors, seeking whom it might devour.
It's all your fault, Grandma (may the Siberian tundra lie lightly on your beloved bones) - I wish you hadn't filled my mind with so many of those gruesome legends. If I close my eyes, I can still see the hut of the Baba Yaga, standing in that forest clearing on its scrawny chicken legs...
Enough of this nonsense. I'm a brilliant young engineer faced with the biggest technical challenge of his life, and I mustn't let my American friend know that I'm sometimes a frightened little boy.
The noises did not help. There were too many of them, though they were so faint that only an experienced astronaut would have detected them against the sounds of his own suit. But to Max Brailovsky, accustomed to working in an environment of utter silence, they were distinctly unnerving, even though he knew that the occasional cracklings and creakings were almost certainly caused by thermal expansion as the ship turned like a roast on a spit. Feeble though the sun was out here, there was still an appreciable temperature change between light and shade.
Even his familiar spacesuit felt wrong, now that there was pressure outside as well as in. All the forces acting on its joints were subtly altered, and he could no longer judge his movements accurately. I'm a beginner, starting my training all over again, he told himself angrily. Time to break the mood by some decisive action.
"Walter - I'd like to test the atmosphere."
"Pressure's okay; temperature - phew - it's one hundred five below zero."
"A nice bracing Russian winter. Anyway, the air in my suit will keep out the worst of the cold."
"Well, go ahead. But let me shine my light on your face, so I can see if you start to turn blue. And keep talking."
Brailovsky unsealed his visor and swung the faceplate upward. He flinched momentarily as icy fingers seemed to caress his cheeks, then took a cautious sniff, followed by a deeper breath.
"Chilly - but my lungs aren't freezing. There's a funny smell, though. Stale, rotten - as if something's - oh no!"
Looking suddenly pale, Brailovsky quickly snapped the faceplate shut.
"What's the trouble, Max?" Curnow asked with sudden and now perfectly genuine anxiety. Brailovsky did not reply; he looked as if he was still trying to regain control of himself. Indeed, he seemed in real danger of that always horrible and sometimes fatal disaster - vomiting in a spacesuit.
There was a long silence; then Curnow said reassuringly:
"I get it. But I'm sure you're wrong. We know that Poole was lost in space. Bowman reported that he... ejected the others after they died in hibernation - and we can be sure that he did. There can't be anyone here. Besides, it's so cold." He almost added 'like a morgue' but checked himself in time.
"But suppose," whispered Brailovsky, "just suppose Bowman managed to ge
t back to the ship - and died here."
There was an even longer silence before Curnow deliberately and slowly opened his own faceplate. He winced as the freezing air bit into his lungs, then wrinkled his nose in disgust.
"I see what you mean. But you're letting your imagination run away with you. I'll bet you ten to one that smell comes from the galley. Probably some meat went bad, before the ship froze up. And Bowman must have been too busy to be a good housekeeper. I've known bachelor apartments that smelled as bad as this."
"Maybe you're right. I hope you are."
"Of course I am. And even if I'm not - dammit, what difference does it make? We've got a job to do, Max. If Dave Bowman's still here, that's not our department - is it, Katerina?"
There was no reply from the Surgeon-Commander; they had gone too far inside the ship for radio to penetrate. They were indeed on their own, but Max's spirits were rapidly reviving. It was a privilege, he decided, to work with Walter. The American engineer sometimes appeared soft and easygoing. But he was totally competent - and, when necessary, as hard as nails.
Together, they would bring Discovery back to life; and, perhaps, back to Earth.
19
Operation WINDMILL
When Discovery suddenly lit up like the proverbial Christmas tree, navigation and interior lights blazing from end to end, the cheer aboard Leonov might almost have been heard across the vacuum between the two ships. It turned into an ironic groan when the lights promptly went out again.
Nothing else happened for half an hour; then the observation windows of Discovery's flight deck began to glow with the soft crimson of the emergency lights. A few minutes later, Curnow and Brailovsky could be seen moving around inside, their figures blurred by the film of sulphur dust.
"Hello, Max - Walter - can you hear us?" called Tanya Orlova. Both the figures waved instantly, but made no other reply. Obviously, they were too busy to engage in casual conversation; the watchers on Leonov had to wait patiently while various lights flashed on and off, one of the three Pod Bay doors slowly opened and quickly closed, and the main antenna slewed around a modest ten degrees.