The Ceres Solution

Chapter Six

Phil Barren was almost certain that he was being punished.

There was an unwritten rule that external maintenance work on the end-cap of Aristotle, unless of an urgent nature, was carried out when the space colony was at its monthly maximum distance from the sun. At that time, an engineer venturing out on to the circular platform of the base found that both the Earth and the Moon were below the horizon which was formed by the platform’s rim. There remained some distraction due to the habitat’s rotation apparently causing the stars to sweep “horizontally” around the sky at the dizzy rate of two revolutions a minute, but the overall illumination remained constant, making it possible to work efficiently and without vertigo. Barren, as an hydraulics specialist, had been outside under those conditions on several occasions, carrying out routine maintenance on the mirror rams, and had found the experience bearable, if not enjoyable.

But circumstances were very different this time—a fact which was forcibly impressed on him as soon as the outer door of the axial airlock swung open. Earth was nearly “overhead”, describing lazy but noticeable circles in the manner of a balloon tethered by a cord; and not far above the edge of the 200-metre platform the Moon was zooming at neck-twisting speed, briefly silhouetting various structures and attachments. Its gyrations were so unnatural, so difficult for the instincts to accept, that Barron kept seeing it as a huge white floodlight whirling crazily a short distance out from the colony’s longitudinal axis. The disparity between the visual and intellectual realities produced an uneasy upward surge in his stomach as he attached a safety line and began moving out towards primary mirror ram No.3.

Barren’s suspicion that he was being punished stemmed from the knowledge that the hydraulics leak on No.3’s ancillaries had been reported some ten days earlier without any action being taken, and therefore could not have been considered serious. Bo Hardicker had been distinctly cool with him since Barron had organised a protest against a new duty roster, and the section manager was a man who was quite capable of delaying an external end-cap job until the worst possible moment. Shadows moved all around Barron, shrinking and stretching, making it difficult to judge depths and distances, and it occurred to him that he ought to put Hardicker out of his mind and concentrate on the task in hand. One serious mistake at this point would give the section manager all the excuse he needed to transfer him back to Earth.

Although greatly modified since its conception, Aristotle retained one feature of a classical O’Neill space habitat—the three huge longitudinal mirrors which could be splayed out to reflect sunlight into the interior. The opening and closing of the mirrors were the equivalents of sunrise and sunset to Aristotle’s inhabitants. According to the original schematic the colony should have consisted of a pair of habitats linked together in centra-rotation, an arrangement which was designed to prevent gyroscopic precession, but the need to cut costs had brought drastic revisions. The single tapering habitat that had reached hardware stage was allowed to precess within certain limits, and—so that its inhabitants would not be presented with the spectacle of an apparently wobbling sun—the angles of the big mirrors were continuously adjusted to compensate.

Cost-effective though the system was, it had added to the complexity of the machinery controlling the mirrors, and as a result unscheduled maintenance work was not uncommon. Phil Barron, deciding to complete the current chore as quickly as possible in spite of astronomical distractions, resolutely kept his eyes down as he worked his way out from the zero-G conditions at the airlock. The base of the mirror ram was roughly seventy metres away from the lock, and as he neared it he felt the gently growing insistence with which the rotating end-cap was trying to flick him off into space.

On reaching the machinery cluster surrounding the No.3 attachment, he anchored himself securely to the alloy grid which served as a perch for repair workers. The light from his suit’s helmet added to the confusing interplay of shadow, and perhaps a minute had gone by before he located the pipe run in which he was interested. He examined its most likely trouble spot, a coupling where it entered an intensifier, and was gratified to see some telltale staining of the metal. It looked as though the job would be straightforward and quick.

He used his radio to request the duty engineer in Systems Control to switch operation of No.3 mirror to the back-up ram, then selected a suitable wrench from the array on his belt. While he worked the Moon kept flitting into and out of his vision, continuously circling, but he refused to acknowledge the messages it was sending to the ancient part of his brain. So determined was he to shut off all extraneous data that the new object which appeared in his sky had completed several revolutions before he raised his head to look directly at it.

The object was a man in a gold-and-silver spacesuit of unfamiliar design. He was poised in space, a few degrees to one side of the Moon, and the fact that he was stationary with respect to the satellite had one implication which disturbed Barren. It almost certainly meant that the newcomer had approached the colony from a separate inertial system—and Barren knew that no arrivals had been scheduled.

He narrowed his eyes and tried to pick out more detail, but seeing was difficult. The colony’s rotation was sweeping the figure around the sky, and—as it was some distance beyond the shadow of the end-cap—the metallic suit was blurred by merging haloes of reflected sunlight. While Barren strove to keep the figure in his field of vision it drew nearer, smoothly propelled, and he saw that it was holding an object which could have been a tool or a weapon. He was about to activate his radio when all doubts concerning the nature of the artifact were resolved.

It emitted a nova-bright ray of energy which raked across the end-cap machinery in a hellish three-second burst of destruction, exploding metal into incandescence, shearing through rams, beams, gantries, antennae, pipes, cables and mirror attachments. Clouds of vapour seeded with glowing droplets of metal spiralled outwards into space, obscuring Barren’s view of the attacker. He clung desperately to the nearest handrail as he scanned the sky in the plane of the Moon, waiting for a second blaze of radiation, the one that was bound to flare him into oblivion.

The burnished figure appeared above the fast-disappearing rack, but closer now, almost at the rim of the platform. Behind it a huge tumbling rectangle of silver dwindled into the starry background. Barren knew at once that one of Aristotle’s main mirrors had been completely severed, but he was totally indifferent to its loss. There was no room for anything in his mind but the shrieking fear of annihilation. He had no expectation of mercy, yet was unable to control a blind reaction as he saw the attacker’s weapon being levelled again.

“Don’t do it,” he bellowed, straightening up and waving with both arms. “Don’t kill me!”

Incredibly the lustrous mannikin seemed to see or hear him, seemed to hesitate.

“Please don’t kill me,” Barren whimpered hopelessly, now positive that showing himself had made his death all the more certain.

There was a protracted moment of delay, a time outside of time, before the enigmatic figure performed a final enigmatic act. It raised its right hand as if in benediction and traced a complex mathematical curve—then it simply ceased to exist.