Surely not. The fatal Gotcha! was the one that you never expected; no one had expected this.
Celine recorded the other two names also, and forced herself to keep going. The control room had its own share of horrors. Seven more corpses. Three people, all women, sat in chairs before the control board, where not a warning light glowed or a single display was active. The interior temperature of the chamber, according to Celine’s suit sensors, was hundreds of degrees below freezing. ISS-2 was dead. Unlike its doomed personnel, the station might one day be brought back to life. But that resurrection would require the replacement of thousands, perhaps millions, of electronic components. Celine had no hope that she and her companions could perform such a task with the limited resources available on the Schiaparelli. So far as the Mars expedition was concerned, ISS-2 was a derelict hulk and would remain so.
She made a final inspection of the seven bodies in the control room, again noting from the uniforms the name of every dead individual. She did not know why she was doing it. Earth records would certainly contain identification of everyone on ISS-2.
She did it anyway, a bizarre gesture of final respect. Then with the presentiment of death inside her she drifted back along the corridor to the airlock.
There was no sign of the other two. Zoe must still be inside, while Ludwig was presumably in one of the two orbiters. Celine headed for the nearer, noting as she approached how small it seemed. She had been to orbit and returned from it many times, but always in vehicles ten times the size of this one. It looked like a toy, a single-person reentry pod. And this little bug was supposed to hold three or four of them?
Celine made a determined effort to avoid negative -thinking. This orbiter would take them home, because it had to. She had seen ISS-2, and she knew there was no chance of waiting on the station for a possible rescue from Earth.
Ludwig was inside the orbiter. He had pulled the front off the control board, and was studying what lay behind it using the light of his suit. He turned when Celine’s light added to his in illuminating the panel. “Well? What did you find?”
“What we expected.” She did not want to go into details. “We will have to use these orbiters. Maybe we can scavenge materials from the station, and fuel. But no working electronics.”
He scowled at her. “Marvelous. But not surprising. And not good, because the electronics are shot in both orbiters. The other one is a bit bigger inside than this one, but they have identical computers and identical control systems. We won’t need fuel, because both orbiters have full tanks. But we do need control systems, and that’s going to be a problem. Zoe’s one of the best, but even she can’t fly a reentry without controls.”
“She’s going to if she has to.” It was Zoe’s voice, thin over the radio link. “We all do what we have to do. You two stay where you are, I’m outside the station now and on my way. I’m afraid it’s all bad news inside ISS-2.”
“I don’t think we’ll be forced to a seat-of-the-pants reentry attempt.” Ludwig did not press Zoe for details on what she had found inside the station, any more than he had asked Celine. “These single-stagers, thank God, are built simple. Most of the control surfaces don’t use computers, they’re self-adjusting on reentry to external conditions. And where they do need computers, they’re designed so you can pull and replace the whole box.”
“You mean we can use what we have on the Schiaparelli?” It was the first good news of Celine’s day. “Suppose we need it there?”
“We won’t.” Zoe had reached the hatch and was trying to squeeze inside. “We can take anything from there, because we won’t be needing the Mars ship at all. We’re going home.”
Celine, trying to move to let Zoe in, became even more aware of the cramped interior space of the single-stage orbiters. There was no way that she and Ludwig could admit Zoe. The padded seats would have to come out before a third person could get in. And what would a reentry be like, without cushioning against deceleration forces?
Stop thinking negative. Whatever it’s like, it’s better than the alternative.
Celine turned to Ludwig, who had removed the little cube of the control computer. He was staring at it dubiously. “This sucker is dead. I can replace it with a good one from our ship, but that’s not the hard part. The tricky bit is going to be software. We need the right program routines.”
“Routines which we don’t have.” Even Zoe sounded discouraged for a moment. “The Schiaparelli never expected to need a program for Earth orbit reentry.”
“Routines which we might have,” said a new and unexpected voice. It was Jenny Kopal. She, like the rest of the crew on the Mars ship, had been silently listening in on the discussion.
“How so?” Zoe, like everyone else, deferred to Jenny on all questions related to computer software.
“Back when we were setting up the Schiaparelli data bases, I was given a free hand as to what programs I could load. So I decided it was best to be generous—”
“Thank God for a program pack rat,” Zoe said. “Jenny, I’ve seen you gloating over your master files like a mother hen. I never dreamed it would pay off this way.”
“I thought it best to be generous,” Jenny said calmly. “I loaded every routine in the data base that had a ’space use’ descriptor. They didn’t take up much storage. Even if—”
“I don’t care how much storage they took.” Zoe interrupted again. “The question is, do you have the programs to control reentry of these particular single-stage orbiters?”
“I don’t know. I downloaded many thousands of programs. I’ll have to establish a search with the appropriate parameters.”
“Do that. How long will it take?”
“I can set it up in half an hour. The search will take longer — a lot of the files are on DNA backup storage. Very high packing density, but it has long access times. Maybe three hours.”
“Do it. Ludwig, I want these orbiters ready to receive new hardware as soon as possible. Replace chips wherever we have substitutes on the Schiaparelli. Patch around them if we don’t. And mark the places where the pilot has to take over control of the orbiters and fly them directly.”
“Yeah. Right.” Ludwig stared quizzically at Zoe, then turned back to the dismantled control panel. “Like me to make ’em go faster than light while I’m at it?”
“Save that for next time. Can you finish this in twenty-four hours?”
“Naturally. I’m Superman, remember?”
“Get this ship ready to fly in less than twenty-four hours, and I’ll buy you a new cape.”
Zoe backed out of the hatch. When Celine joined her she was hovering motionless, staring at the great bulk of Earth hanging overhead. Since entering the station, ISS-2 and the Schiaparelli had moved together in their ninety-minute orbit of Earth, and now they faced the nightside of the planet. Ship and station were in an orbit with an inclination of thirty degrees, and at the moment they were close to their northern limit. Celine knew that North America lay beneath them. No lights were visible. The great cities were in darkness, or obscured by heavy cloud. She wanted to believe the second explanation.
“Two days.” Zoe pointed up toward Earth. “Two days at the outside, and we will be there.”
She spoke with total conviction. Celine felt her own surge of confidence. She knew that Zoe as expedition leader and chief pilot might speak optimistically to boost the spirits of the rest of them. But it wasn’t that. This was straight-from-the-heart Zoe Nash, Zoe sure that she could do it, Zoe knowing that nothing could stop her; Zoe able to make things happen so that nothing did stop her. That was why she was the expedition leader.