Mendez trained the scope on the rubble and rock cloud that had once been 23998 Hicks-Newman. Irregular pieces drifted away from Galileo, some from impulse motor firing triggered by Gateway, some from the usual bump and grind of a disintegrating asteroid. The larger chunks spat streams of pellets formed by the impulse arrays, looking for all the world like spider webs in the bright sunshine.
Backdropping the asteroid’s breakup was the cloudy blue and white face of Earth itself, now less than a day away.
To Mendez, it was problematic whether the larger pieces, now slowly being nudged off course, would develop enough delta-vee to miss the Earth.
Whatever happens, we’ll have a ringside seat, he thought to himself.
Mendez folded up the nav scope and began his part of the power-down procedure. Kamler was with him on the command deck, paralleling Mendez’ work. The two of them had several pages of checklists to go through to safe the ship before they departed.
A moment later, Johnny Winger’s face floated up on deck between the flight stations.
Mendez carefully finished his procedure. “Lieutenant, we’ve done all we can do up here. Get your people moving…all hands lay aft to the mess compartment. I want to go through the abandon-ship procedure and divvy up the lifeboat and scoutship assignments, make sure we don’t leave anybody behind. “ He gazed out the forward windscreen at the approaching Earth. “I’m afraid Galileo’s not long for this world now.”
Winger understood. “We’ll be assembled by 0630 hours. Full suits?”
“The works. And keep all that extra gear to a minimum…it’s going to be a tight enough squeeze as it is.”
“Acknowledged.” Winger ducked out of the command deck and drifted aft to the transfer tunnel. He got on the crewnet.
“Detachment…this is Winger, listen up. It’s time to load up. Leave all your gear behind but get into your tin cans and button up. Briefing in the mess hall in half an hour. Winger, OUT.”
Then he maneuvered his way further aft to the crew deck and went up to his own bunk space. Time to clean house, he told himself. Galileo would be diving into the Earth’s atmosphere in less than a day. The ship and everything in it would be incinerated and destroyed. Whatever he didn’t take would soon be atom fluff; he knew he had some hard decisions to make.
At least, I’ve still got what’s left of ANAD in my shoulder capsule.
Against his better judgment, Winger activated his coupler and tried linking in with the assembler.
“Hey, ANAD…it’s me…can you hear me? I want to talk to you.”
There was a brief staticky fritz over the link, then: