"They need me to hold their hand," he told Cynthia a few minutes later. "But I want you available. Stay here. Sleep in your office if you have to, but stay near the action."
A military escort had a helicopter waiting to take him to Atlanta. Cynthia Murray was therefore directing operations at the AstroLab when POSIM-38 reached its apogee, a little more than an hour later, and began to fall back toward Earth. Percival Lowell Flight Deck. 5:42 A.M.
Rachel Quinn moved into a parallel trajectory with POSIM-38. They circled the object and began mapping its surface. They made extensive and detailed images, concentrating on areas suggested by Feinberg, who was in communication from a military transport flying over Pennsylvania.
The chaplain had asked what he could do to help, and Rachel showed him how to operate the imaging equipment. It was really quite simple. When Feinberg, watching on his notebook, asked that the image be shifted, or rotated, or that they simply move on, the chaplain pushed the appropriate button.
When they were satisfied they had enough, Rachel laid in alongside the Possum and matched its tumbling motion, so that its rocky walls stabilized in Lowell's viewports while the stars and the Earth began to tumble. Feinberg had suggested a number of touchdown sites, and she began now to ease toward the first of these. The ship rotated and corrected.
In the right-hand seat, Charlie watched the cliff wall approach, tilt, move up past the window, become a plain. His stomach began to feel queasy. The chaplain smiled and told him it'd be over in a minute. "Try to think about something else," he said.
Charlie was looking out over a stretch of unearthly terrain. Not a moonscape; this was rather a profusion of rolling hills and flowing valleys, a spectral panorama possessing a dormant liquidity. This section of the Possum reminded him of the Dakota Black Hills, which he'd visited as a boy on one of his family's sight-seeing vacations. It had, like that bleak place, erupted and quickly cooled. This was the Back Country, the spheric area that made up three-quarters of the Possum's surface. It was dark, probably seared in the fireball. In the distance he saw Solitary Ridge, a long, ramrod-vertical cliff, distinctive by its angularity in this relatively uniform area.
Morley was once again equipped with a microcam, delivered at his request by Rachel. Now he used it to send close-ups back to his television audience while he described the mission. Samples, he explained, would be drawn and analyzed to provide data on density and to allow the analysts to estimate the Possum's mass. They were starting here because it was smooth and they could gain some experience before tackling the rougher sections.
But even Morley couldn't make the preparations for taking rock samples look exciting, so he signed off after ten minutes, promising to return if anything happened. There was a breathlessness in his tone, as if he thought something would happen, had to happen.
Getting the samples was Cochran's job, and when he announced the equipment was almost ready, the other two members of the "rock team"-Saber and Evelyn-retreated below and began changing into their gear.
Charlie had argued that Evelyn's EVA experience didn't compensate for her lack of strength, and that he should be the third member of the party, but Rachel was adamant that she wasn't going to risk a president. She was captain and she'd damned well make the call. Charlie saw that she was uncomfortable, and backed off. She was right anyway, he realized. The last thing the country needed just now would be to lose another chief executive.
Rachel laid the Lowell gently on the surface. Since there was no gravity to speak of, she had to use her thrusters to keep it in place. The flight deck was high enough to see over most of the mounds, and Charlie studied the horizon, which looked about as far away as the other end of a football field. It was horizontal rather than curved, and he had the sense of being atop a plateau.
When Rachel suggested, with considerable reluctance, that they could use his help with the laser drill, he readily complied. She added that she'd look forward to telling her grandchildren she'd once given direction to a U.S. president.
The drill was about the size of a large farm tractor. A spherical reflector was mounted on its hood, from which the laser beam would be transmitted. A pair of flex-jointed extractor rods, of different diameters, rose on either side.
The operator, seated on a saddle, could raise, lower, or extend the reflector in its manual mode, or he could turn the entire operation over to onboard computers. The semiconductor heart of the system was located inside a black box forward of the operator's position.
The unit normally traveled on six independently suspended wheels, which were obviously not going to be of much use in the Possum's zero-g environment. Wrestling it around wasn't going to be easy.
The drill was big and awkward and tended to want to stay where it was. When they got it moving, it was difficult to steer or stop. Cochran warned that, once outside, they'd have to be careful not to lose it.
Charlie's physics weren't good, but he could visualize the situation: The Possum was turning at a pretty fast clip and it would try to throw the laser drill into space, along with the three astronauts. Consequently, once clear of the ship, they'd have to bolt the unit to the ground. The situation was complicated by the fact that the Lowell's p-suits weren't equipped with grab shoes, so the astronauts would have to anchor themselves first. They'd cannibalized the modules that were to have served as living quarters on Mars to find cables and spikes from which to fashion anchors. In all, it was going to be a clumsy operation. Charlie suited up so he'd be ready to go outside in the event of trouble.
Morley came down and caught everything live as they loaded the unit into the airlock. Then they followed it in, closed the hatch, and minutes later emerged on the surface of the Possum.
Charlie listened on a headset and watched the action through cameras mounted on the hull.
The rock team, tethers attached, pulled the drill out onto the surface.
"Over there looks good," said Cochran. "Lift easy. No sudden jerks, okay?"
"I got it," said Evelyn. Then: "Look out; it's drifting."
"Hell, Evelyn, you're the one's drifting. Take in some of the tether."
"It's like trying to stop an elephant."
"You guys need help out there?" asked Rachel. "Want me to send the president?"
"Negative."
They tugged the unit into place and secured it with cables.
When that was done, Cochran swung a leg over the saddle. "Set for one meter. Power up."
Moments later the black box produced a ruby beam that bounced off a mirror, penetrated a lens, and was turned ninety degrees toward the ground by the reflector. After a wait of several seconds, the ground began to bubble. A wisp of smoke rose, and at Cochran's direction, one of the mantis arms telescoped into the rock, rotating at high speed. When he was satisfied, he withdrew it and deposited its contents into a gleaming plastic case. Then he reset for four meters, and they repeated the process.
They took samples down to depths of twelve meters. Then they came back inside, turned them over to Charlie, and Rachel made for a new location.
Charlie labeled the samples and delivered them to Morley. Morley and Doc Elkhart had received a quick course in using Lowell's geological lab. They ran the rocks through a series of simple procedures while Cynthia Murray monitored the results from the AstroLab and passed the data on to Feinberg.
The chaplain wondered aloud whether they might be taking another risk in attempting to lift the Possum to a more stable orbit. "Once the space planes start to work on that rock," he told Charlie, "I would think they'd have to succeed. Because if they don't, they'll change the impact point, won't they? Nobody'll know where it's coming down."