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How Things Fall |
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By Sean Monaghan © 2008 Sean Monaghan studied writing at Victoria University (New Zealand) and the University of Queensland. Sean now tutors in creative writing, reviews books and works in a busy public library in New Zealand. Sean also keeps busy with music and art — more information at his website <www.venusvulture.com>.
"Remember Willis?" Bayliss said, hair spreading like an anenome as she drifted into the cockpit. "Sure," I said. "Crazy guy trying to spin up that asteroid moon to build a centrifugal habitat inside." We'd passed by a week back. "How far away are we?" "Dunno. Ten hours?" We were chipping nickel out of another asteroid near the Ida-Dactyl pair. "Remember the opposing rockets?" Grant's shell-iguana drifted across in front of her and she swiped at it, knocking it into the viewport. It fired out some monofilaments, anchoring itself to the quartz. "Sure," I said. "On the surface to start the rotation." "One of the rockets ripped out of its mounting, but the other one kept firing …" "Off-centre," I finished for her. "Dactyl's spiralling in towards Ida." I knew what she was going to suggest. Rescues out this way carry big paychecks. "Timeframe?" I said, I began settling back, slipping the rig over my shoulders. "Impact in twenty-four minutes." I relaxed again. "Grant!" Bayliss called, but he was already pulling himself into the cockpit with us. "Couch," he said. The shell-iguana flipped itself off the screen and scuttled up his shoulder, tossing filaments as it went. "Gotcha." Bayliss kicked out to the companionway. "We can't do it," I said. "Look for a structure," Bayliss shouted up from the gravity room. "The scuttlers built an emergency escape tower." Grant punched numbers on the console. "We're too far out," I said to him. "Twenty," he said. He tossed me a miniscreen. "It's two hundred metres high," Bayliss hollered, her voice muffled by the gravity room"s webbing. "He's going to hang from it on a cable." I looked at Grant"s screen. "Jesus, guy, you want to burn us in at eight-gees at both ends?" "Five," he said. "What?" "Four." His finger on the burn contact. "Bayliss!" I shouted. "Tower. Cable!" "Two," Grant said. "One." He whacked the toggle and I was blasted into my couch, eyes popping, black periphery, then stars, and a tonne of nickel lying on my chest. The med feed kept me conscious, but I knew I was experiencing subjective time dilation. Grant was lucky, the shell-iguana did half his thinking, so heavy burns didn't bother him. Eventually, a moment of light and weightlessness, and feeling the ship rotate around me before Grant opened the throttle again, and we began crushing deceleration. Floating again, my vision cleared, as we turned to a fabulous view of Dactyl spinning, with Ida looming behind. Magnifying with Grant's miniscreen I saw Willis on the end of a tether, disappearing around behind Dactyl. "Can you see the tower?" Bayliss yelled. I could hear her scrambling out of the webbing. "Yes," Grant said. He was already positioning us. Bayliss slipped into the cockpit, hair splaying. "What's our velocity?" she asked "Simple three-fifty," I said, from the readout on the miniscreen. Ida filled the viewport. "We'll overshoot." "Perfect," Grant said. I got the feed from the opening payload bay, watched as Willis came up. He let go of the tether and smacked into the bulkhead. The doors slammed shut and Grant thumped the burn, skimming us across the surface of Ida, back into free space.
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