The Brain translated the math it had displayed in a box next to the three-dimensional grid. “Assuming that its present delta-vee remains unchecked, in two hundred and thirty-six hours, twelve minutes, and twenty-four seconds, 2046-Barr will collide with Mars.”
I did some arithmetic in my head. “That’s about ten days from now.”
“Nine-point-eight-three Earth standard days, to be exact.” The Brain expanded the image of Mars until it filled the tank; a bull’s-eye appeared at a point just above the equator. “Estimated point of impact will be approximately twelve degrees North by sixty-three degrees West, near the edge of the Lunae Planum.”
“Just north of Valles Marineris,” Jeri said. “Oh God, Rohr, that’s near…”
“I know.” I didn’t need a refresher course in planetary geography. The impact point was in the low plains above Mariner Valley, only a few hundred klicks northeast of Arsia Station, not to mention closer to the smaller settlements scattered around the vast canyon system. For all I knew, there could now be a small mining town on the Lunae Planum itself; Mars was being colonized so quickly these days, it was hard to keep track of where a bunch of its one and a half million inhabitants decided to pitch claims and call themselves New Chattanooga or whatever.
“Sabotage!” McKinnon yelled. He unbuckled his harness and pushed himself closer to the nav table, where he stared at the holo. “Someone has sabotaged the mass-driver so that it’ll collide with Mars! Do you realize…?”
“Shut up, Captain.” I didn’t need his histrionics to tell me what would occur if… when… 2046-Barr came down in the middle of the Lunae Planum.
The Martian ecosystem wasn’t as fragile as Earth’s. Indeed, it was much more volatile, as the attempt in the ’50s to terraform the planet and make the climate more stable had ultimately proved. However, the Mars colonists who still remained after the boondoggle had come to depend upon its seasonal patterns in order to grow crops, maintain solar farms, continue mining operations and other activities which insured their basic survival.
It was a very tenuous sort of existence that relied upon conservative prediction of climatic changes. The impact of a three-kilometer asteroid in the equatorial region would throw all that straight into the compost toilet. Localized quakes and duststorms would only be the beginning; two or three hundred people might be killed outright, but the worst would be yet to come. The amount of dust that would be raised into the atmosphere by the collision would blot out the sky for months on end, causing global temperatures to drop from Olympus Mons to the Hellas Plantia. As a result, everything from agriculture to power supplies would be affected, to put it mildly, with starvation in the cold and dark awaiting most of the survivors.
It wasn’t quite doomsday. A few isolated settlements might get by with the aid of emergency relief efforts from Earth. But as the major colony world of humankind, Mars would cease to exist.
McKinnon was still transfixed upon the holo tank, jabbing his finger at Mars while raving about saboteurs and space pirates and God knows what else, when I turned back to Jeri. She had taken the helm in my absence, and as the Comet came up on the Fool’s Gold again, I closely studied the mass-driver on the flatscreens.
“Okay,” I said quietly. “The hangar bay is out… we can’t send the skiff in there while it’s depressurized and the cradles are full. Maybe if we…”
She was way ahead of me. “There’s an auxiliary docking collar here,” she said, pointing to a port on the spar leading to the command sphere. “It’ll be tight, but I think we can squeeze us in there.”
I looked at the screen. Tight indeed. Despite the fact that the Comet had a universal docking adapter, the freighter wasn’t designed for mating with a craft as large as Fool’s Gold. “That’s cutting it close,” I said. “If we can collapse the telemetry boom, though, we might be able to make it.”
She nodded. “We can do that, no problem… except it means losing contact with Ceres.”
“But if we don’t hard-dock,” I replied, “then someone’s got to go EVA and try entering a service airlock.”
Knowing that this someone would probably be me, I didn’t much relish the idea. An untethered spacewalk between two vessels under acceleration is an iffy business at best. On the other hand, cutting off our radio link with Ceres under these circumstances was probably not a good idea. If we fucked up in some major way, then no one at Ceres Station would be informed of the situation, and early warning from Ceres to Arsia Station might save a few lives, if evacuation of settlements near Lunae Planum was started soon enough.
I made up my mind. “We’ll hard-dock,” I said, turning in my seat toward the communications console, “but first we send a squib to Ceres, let them know what’s…”
“Hey! What are you two doing?”
Captain Future had finally decided to see what the Futuremen were doing behind his back. He kicked off the nav table and pushed over to us, grabbing the backs of our chairs with one hand each to hover over us. “I haven’t issued any orders, and nothing is done on my ship without my…”
“Bo, have you been listening to what we’ve been saying?” Jeri’s expression was carefully neutral as she stared up at him. “Have you heard a word either Rohr or I have said?”
“Of course I… !”
“Then you know that this is the only recourse,” she said, still speaking calmly. “If we don’t hard-dock with the Gold, then we won’t have a chance of shutting down the railgun or averting its course.”
“But the pirates. They might… !”
I sighed. “Look, get it through your head. There’s no…”
“Rohr,” she interrupted, casting me a stern look that shut me up. When I dummied up once more, she transfixed McKinnon again with her wide blue eyes. “If there are pirates aboard the Gold,” she said patiently, “we’ll find them. But right now, this isn’t something we can solve by firing missiles. Rohr’s right. First, we send a squib to Ceres, let them know what’s going on. Then…”
“I know that!”
“Then, we have to dock with…”
“I know that! I know that!” His greasy hair scattered in all directions as he shook his head in frustration. “But I didn’t… I didn’t give the orders and…”
He stopped, sullenly glaring at me with inchoate rage, and I suddenly realized the true reason for his anger. McKinnon’s subordinate second officer, whom he had harassed and chastised constantly for three weeks, had become uppity by reaching a solution that had evaded him. Worse yet, the second officer had done it with the cooperation of the Captain’s first officer, who had tacitly agreed with him on all previous occasions.
Yet this wasn’t a trifling matter such as checking the primary fuel pump or cleaning the galley. Countless lives were at stake, time was running out, and while he was spewing obvious nonsense about space pirates, Mister Furland was trying to take command of his ship.
Had I a taser conveniently tucked in my belt, I would have settled the argument by giving him a few volts and strapping his dead ass in his precious chair, thereby allowing Jeri Lee and me to continue our work unfettered. But since outright mutiny runs against my grain, compromise was my only weapon now.
“Begging your pardon, Captain,” I said. “You’re quite right. You haven’t issued orders, and I apologize.”