Chapter 6

Will still has the Narrative:

“What’s happened, Thorn?” Mare asked after sliding open the door. Thorn was floating in the hall with a couple of the other rock miners.

“It would be better if we moved to the main bay. There is more room there and we are going to need the help of a lot of us if we are going to get out of this alive,” Thorn told her in a quiet controlled voice which was the opposite of his message.

“Fine, let’s go,” Mare agreed, and we all used the hand grips and ropes to move to the main bay in the center of the ship. There were more handholds there plus chairs that we could strap ourselves into. None of the rock miners showed off by sailing down the corridor and catching the rope or a hand hold at the last minute, as they had done previously during the trip, which made me believe that the trouble were serious.

“Now,” Mare asked once we were all settled, “Tell me what is wrong.”

“Basically, this bucket of bolts is falling apart,” Thorn told her. “We have been worried at every stop that it wouldn’t be able to continue the trip. Things have finally reached the point where the ship isn’t operational,” he finished.

“Not operational?” Mare asked in a confused voice, as she looked around at the lights which still worked, and we could just detect a flow of air from the air system. Several other rock miners joined us then, and they didn’t look happy.

“How bad is it?” Thorn asked them.

“Worse than we thought,” One of them, Bill, told him. “The navigation computer is down, the air renewal system is working at about twenty percent of capacity. Two of the thrusters on the port side are just gone. The ones on the starboard side are okay and should be able to move us back to Terra or at least to Luna where we can get help,” he finished.

“Except,” the second man, George, began, “With all of the thrust on one side and no navigation computer, we won’t be able to hold a course with the uneven thrust,” he finished.

“But that won’t make a lot of difference as we also won’t have anything to breath shortly,” the third man, Steve, added.

“How did this piece of shit ever get clearance to take off?” a very upset Thorn demanded in an angry voice.

I had also noticed that the Captain and his crew were missing and wondered where they were.

“Shouldn’t the Captain be here for this?” I asked.

“The Captain,” Thorn said in a derisive voice, ‘is drunk as a skunk in his cabin, and the crew has locked themselves in their quarters, so none of them will be of any help. It’s going to be up to us to get this bucket of crap back to at least Luna,” he finished.

Naturally, this was the point when everyone else arrived over the next few minutes. They all had questions and worries. The lack of gravity didn’t help either. The professors tried to calm them down, but it wasn’t working. Finally, Thorn lost his temper.

“Shut up!” he screamed out at them in a rage. All of the noise and movement suddenly stopped.

“Shut up and settle down,” he continued a bit quieter. They all settled down over the next minute or so, and our Geology Professor had a question.

“Can you tell us what happened?” he asked.

“Yes, but the news isn’t good. This bucket of bolts should have never been allowed to take off. It is literately falling apart. The navigation computer is down, several of the thrusters are dead, and the air replenishment system is failing. The Captain is drunk, and the crew has locked themselves in their quarters. We rock miners will be trying to repair things and get us as far as Luna in a few minutes.

“What we need all of you to do while we work is to return to your cabins, and lie down. Do not pace or move around. All of that uses more oxygen which we are short of.

“If we can get things repaired, we’ll be able to get underway again. We will not be able to cruise as fast as we did on the way out, so we will be late returning to either Luna or Terra, but we hope to get everyone back safely. Please return to your cabins now. We will be leaving Will Rugelery in charge while the rest of us work on repairing the ship. If you have any questions, ask him, but keep moving around to an absolute minimum,” Thorn finished calmly, surprising me greatly.

There was some grumbling, but they all realized that we were in trouble, and they didn’t have the skills needed to make the repairs to the ship. The professors helped get everyone back to their cabins. When everyone was gone, Thorn took up the repair of the ship again.

“Bill take Felise and start on the navigation computer. She’s good with computers,” was his first assignment.

“George take Andrew and see what can be done with the air replacement system.

“Steve take Henry to the power room and make sure the thrusters are all off line and see what else may need repair there.

“I’ll take Ralph and Marianne with me to work on removing the burned out thrusters and moving some of the working ones over to replace them,” Thorn finished.

“What should I do?” I asked dreading the answer. Thorn just smiled at me.

“Will, you have the unenviable task of keeping the others calm and in their cabins while we work on getting this hunk of junk moving again,” Thorn told me, but there was no smile this time.

“Okay,” I told him, but wasn’t sure how successful I would be, as I didn’t have Thorn’s aggressive personality.

“Let’s get to work, people,” Thorn said, and they all left for their assigned tasks.

Marianne takes over the Narrative for a time:

I followed Thorn and Ralph to the hallway where they stopped.

“Get into your space suit and meet us at the airlock,” Thorn told me.

“What is it that you expect me to do? I’m not a rock miner and have no idea what you are doing,” I told him, unsure of why he had chosen me to accompany him and Ralph.

“We are going to cut away the broken thrusters and move working thrusters to replace part of them, so there is an even thrust on the ship. With all of the thrust on one side of the ship, we wouldn’t be able to follow a straight course, and with the navigation computer not working or only working part of the time, we would have trouble reaching where Terra will be when we arrive there,” he told me.

“But why do you need ‘ME’?” I asked.

“To help us move the thrusters.”

“But they are weightless,” I protested.

“Weightless, yes, but they still have mass and inertia. It requires energy to start them moving and more energy to stop them once they are moving. Since we don’t have the equipment that they do at repair facilities, we will need to do everything using our muscles, and you have the strongest muscles of anyone on the ship,” he finished.

“Oh! I hadn’t considered that,” I said in embarrassment before leaving to get into my space suit.

When I arrived at the airlock, I found Steve and Henry there with Ralph and Thorn. Steve and Henry were in radiation suits, which are similar to space suits but heavier. There was also some equipment there that I hadn’t seen previously.

“Don’t take any chances,” Thorn was telling Steve when I arrived. He and Ralph had their space suits on just as I did.

“Don’t worry, we’ll be careful. This bucket is as old as many of our ships, so we know what to expect. My Uncle Harvey had to replace thrusters about five years ago, so I know what to look for,” Steve assured Thorn before he and Henry left for the power room. Thorn turned to me then.

“These are maneuvering units,” he told me, pointing to the new equipment. Well, it was new to me, but from their appearance, they had been used a lot. However, Thorn was still speaking.

“Ralph and I have checked all of them out, and these three are the best of the lot. We’ll need to check then again once we are outside. They will allow us to move around, but they aren’t strong enough to start, or especially to stop those thrusters that we need to move.

“We’ll all be using lines to secure us to the ship while we work, and especially when we are moving the thrusters, both while starting them to move and while we are stopping them,” Thorn told me.

“Have you ever done any welding or cutting with a torch?” he asked next.

“I’ve done some arc welding, but I’m only a fair welder,” I told him.

“That’s okay. Ralph and I will take care of cutting the dead thrusters away and the heating that will be necessary. You can help launch them away from the ship. We’ll also disconnect the good thrusters that we need to move. You may be able to help with that,” he told me. I noticed then that two of the maneuvering units had tanks for welding and all of them had tools attached to them.

“Are you ready to do this?” he asked following that.

“I’m as ready as I’ll ever be,” I told him and both of them helped me get the maneuvering unit on and the air supply hooked up. I in turn helped them with theirs. While they were weightless, I saw what Thorn had meant about mass and inertia, as the units were obviously quite heavy, and it would be hard to move in them under gravity or acceleration, but it was fairly easy in space.

Once we were all ready and had checked out our units, Thorn closed the inner airlock door, and pumped out all of the air before opening the outer airlock door. Thorn and Ralph demonstrated how to move out of the ship. They each backed up to the airlock, attached their safety line to the rail running down the exterior length of the ship, let out a little more line and pushed off out of the airlock. Their safety lines were just long enough that their magnetic boots touched the hull of the ship, and they began walking up the exterior side of the hull. They both made it look so easy, of course they had been doing this for years.

My own exit was less graceful, as I had released too much line, and I needed to pull myself down to the hull so my magnetic boots could grip it. Once outside and on the hull, the view was both amazing and terrifying. The amazing part was all of the stars visible in every direction, and the terrifying part was the sheer immensity of that same view. It just went on and on in every direction with no sign of an end anywhere. Thorn quickly called me back to reality.

“Awesome isn’t it, but we need to get to work,” he said over my radio.

We carefully moved down the length of the hull to the rear of the ship where the thrusters were. I was sure that the other two moved slower than they normally would because of me. Me, I was getting used to moving outside with the maneuvering unit on. Our magnetic boots also made moving a slower than normal operation as each foot needed to be placed carefully before the other one was moved to avoid floating away from the hull of the ship.

On reaching the rear of the ship, it was easy to see that some of the thrusters were not just broken but destroyed. Thorn called me on the suit radio with instructions.

“Mare, you wait here while Ralph and I survey the extent of the damage and determine how many thrusters we’ll need to move and which ones, to keep the ship on course. It may take us a while to do that. Just relax while we’re busy,” he told me. He also checked with Steve in the power room before they launched off the back of the ship to do the inspection

“Yes, relax,” I told him when he was finished. I was more than a little tense, and I realized that could be a problem as I was using more oxygen than necessary, so I tried to relax and not think about being out here in all of this emptiness. It was hard, but after a time when nothing happened, I did manage to relax ... a little anyway.

Thorn and Ralph were using their maneuvering units to move among the thrusters to inspect them, though their safety lines were still attached to the hull. I heard them talking to each other, but it was technical shorthand jargon, and didn’t mean anything to me.

“Okay,” Thorn said after a time over the radio, “We’re ready to start work. Ralph is going to cut away most of the three damaged thrusters, while you and I start disconnecting the two that we are going to move. You can help with that Mare, if you are up to it.”

“Yes, I can help with that,” I told him.

“Release the brake on your safety line and use just a tiny bit of thrust to join us out here,” Thorn told me. I was very nervous about doing this, but released the brake and applied just the tiniest amount of thrust from the maneuvering unit, and slowly, very slowly, moved past the rear of the ship and out to where Thorn and Ralph were. Ralph was already busy cutting the connectors and the bodies of the ruined thrusters away. I joined Thorn on the other side of the ship.

“This is the first unit that we are going to move,” he told me pointing to one of the thrusters. “You can start by removing the nuts holding it to the hull. I’ll heat each nut before you start on it to make it easier to turn. Use the power tool on the arm of the unit to remove the nuts. Keep the nuts in the bin under the tool,” he told me.