Taking Joy for a Spin
by Rado Dyne
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Table of Contents, Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 |
Chapter 2: When the Math Is Bad
”What the hell just happened?!” I screamed into the microphone just after I watched Trish slam into the ice wall only 30 meters from me. She hit with so much force that I knew there was no point in going to help her.
“You tell me, Joy!” Cap was furiously working her line, trying to control herself without the aid of the grav harness.
I was checking the panel on my arm. I had nothing, no motion control, no lock on any mass. The G-field was dead. The gravity part of the harness was gone. Electronics were all fine. I kicked off a diagnostic then swiveled my head to check my own situation.
Mercifully, I had been moving slowly and in the direction of the pocket we had been working in. It would be no problem for me to catch some of the line Cap had made us lay around it and secure myself. Cap had been working the line, so was safely tethered and was now drifting only slightly.
Erik had been moving away, out of the depression we were working in, back toward the winch we were using to drag the extracted material up out of the depression and over the lip of the massive ice overhang to our base camp. That was all I could see, and I couldn’t pick up anyone else on radio now. I had heard some shouting and a scream before I lost them all and fixated on Trish, who had been moving too fast when the harnesses failed.
That must have been it. Somehow they all failed at the same time. That should be impossible. G-field dynamics were well understood, and there were redundancies in the harnesses themselves. Plus I had checked them all. One harness had shown signs of fatigue, and I had pulled it for maintenance. God, what had I missed? This is my fault! My breathing was getting erratic, but then I heard Cap over the radio.
“You better grab that line when you impact! Joy. Joy!”
I thought to hit my suit’s cold gas jet just in time to rotate myself so I’d hit feet first. I’d been unthinkingly trying to manipulate the grav harness to do the same thing, wasting precious time. I came in hard but took most of the impact to my legs, and scrabbled wildly for the line with both hands.
I got my hand around it and did a quick circle to loop it around my arm so I wouldn’t bounce away into the sky. I rebounded a bit and watched the slack in the line disappear as it became taut against the ice screws that held it on either side.
I was suddenly very happy that Cap had insisted on all this protection set around our work zone, but then reality came crashing in on me. “Oh God, I killed Trish! I might have killed Erik! What did I miss? I might have killed everybody!”
“Joy! Joy! Lor! Loraine! I need your help right now, Loraine! Calm down! I need my engineer, who knows more about G-fields than anyone else. Calm down, breathe normally, and tell me what you think is going on!” Cap’s voice slowed as she spoke.
I tried to slow as well. It took a minute, but I got my breathing under control. I spoke shakily, “Th- the best I can tell we lost all the harnesses at once. I have no idea how or why, I checked them thoroughly, I—”
“All right, there is no reason yet to assume you did anything wrong. Is there any natural phenomenon that can cause G-fields to fail? Any known problems in the design of the harness?”
“No, I mean nothing I’ve ever heard of. They are actually amazingly robust. I mean, even if the equipment is showing signs of fatigue, it should fail gradually. That’s why they are so safe.”
“Then we have to assume we ran into something unknown, which caused at least four of our harnesses to fail. We were the last ones down here. The others might well have made it back to the Lariat. I trust you; you’re as competent an engineer as I’ve ever seen. I don’t think you failed here.”
I glanced in the direction of Trish’s remains. I couldn’t help myself.
“I can’t raise anyone else on radio, can you?” Cap asked.
“No,” I said.
We both tried several more times to no avail.
“Erik was our comms relay. When he went floating shipward, presumably out of control, I think we lost the ability to reach the Lariat or anyone else. He should be fine. He can radio the ship, and he wasn’t moving fast.”
“He never does, not in a harness,” I said.
I heard the start of a snicker from Cap. Then we both burst out laughing. It was the only thing to do right now. It felt good, and it felt hopeful.
Once we both recovered, Cap stated, “We really need to get back up to the other side of that overhang. It’s blocking our signals. That’s why we had Erik on relay duty. We need to signal the ship so they can come pick us up.”
“Before we run out of oxygen.”
“Yes, before. Can you think of any more pressing need for our survival right now?”
After considering for a moment, I said, “No. I’m not injured. You don’t appear to be. We will run out of breathable oxygen within a couple of hours.” I was checking the gauge on my arm panel, so was Cap.
“Erik told me you had him bring a shit-ton of oxygen bottles, but I think most of them are at base camp on the other side of that massive precipice, er... overhang.”
I saw Cap’s shoulder sink for the first time.
“Dammit! I tried to be so careful. You would think I’d have brought more of the bottles down here with us. I brought plenty of the lines and anchors, and we each had a couple bottles on us, but we’ve used ’em up. I’m on my last one.”
“Me too.” I glanced over at where Trish was. “I’ll go check her.”
Cap and I set up a tether between us, and I bounced over to where Trish lay. Struggling not to vomit as I searched the remains, I attempted to be respectful. Amazingly, one half-empty oxy bottle had survived the impact. It was dented, it must have been perfectly cushioned somehow.
I did some quick calculations. With our own final bottles and Trish’s half empty one, I gave us just under two hours to climb several kilometers of overhang and make our way from the edge to where base camp and a pile of oxy bottles awaited us. It’s not often that math makes me heartsick.
Copyright © 2022 by Rado Dyne
