Asteroid KL-1643
"Grabbing!" Turtle swung the tongs in and grabbed the loose end of the next length of steel drill pipe. His movements were smooth and controlled, despite the microgravity and vacuum environment work-suit. He gave a thumbs-up to the man in the top of the drilling rig.
"Swinging," said Billy from more than fifty feet above, and maneuvered the pipe over the center of the work floor, above the pressure collar. Turtle carefully shuffled his mag-boots so they didn’t break contact as he steadied the pipe. Despite having little weight in micro-gravity, the unwieldy mass of the length of drill pipe was still there. With Boomer's help, he got it threaded to the drill stem. He stowed the tongs while Boomer glided to the drill controls.
"Hey, ya'll white boys, guess what time it is?" Turtle was a full-blood Cherokee from Georgia, and never let them forget it.
"Time for Injuns to shut-up?" retorted Boomer.
“Nope. This here's the last shift we get paid for, that’s what time it is.”
Nobody bothered to answer. They'd already lost the early completion bonus, and now it was certain the completion date would be missed. To them, that meant working for free. Still, they kept drilling; driller, tool pusher, crew chief, and a handful of roughnecks putting a line of exploratory holes in an asteroid with a century-old drilling rig.
"I bet we'd of made it if we hadn't lost Chuck and Tina," said Billy as he let microgravity gently pull him down a line.
"Chuck weren't no loss." Boomer looked up. "Quit dickin' around, Billy. We need to hang some more pipe before next shift."
"But Tina," Billy answered, "she was a good hand, right?" He started a hand-over-hand descent. "She shoulda stayed, I bet she'd of snapped out of it." An out-of-control drill pipe had knocked her mag-boots loose and launched her into a low orbit around the near-gravity-less asteroid. She hadn’t been badly hurt, but she’d refused to speak after that.
"No," said Turtle, "her spirit was broken. Four hours as an independent body of the solar system changed her"
"What the hell you talkin about, Injun?" groused Boomer. "You some kinda medicine man now?"
"Ya'll seen her eyes, white boy, just like me," Turtle answered sadly. "She won't ever look up to the stars again."
Gloomy and sullen, the men returned silently to their tasks.
Abrupt curvature of the asteroid made the rig look much taller than seventy-two feet, a skeletal tower of metal struts and cables. On the surface beside the rig was the bunkhouse, which housed and supplied necessary comforts for the roughnecks. Attached to the rig's steel work floor twenty feet above the surface was the doghouse; it was control center, office, and break room. Both were armored and pressurized for deep space, fitted with cranky mid-century Russian Mars Colony environmental recycler units.
The old drilling rig vibrated a constant, living rhythm from the generators, spinning drill stem, men working the floor, and the mud pumps. Luke 'Mac' McCool, geologist and driller, sat in the doghouse entering his handwritten notes into computer reports and listening to the rig. Every time the rhythm changed he unconsciously checked the control repeater board above the airlock, a habit he was no longer aware of. Mac was tall and gangly, 'built Texas' he liked to say, with dark hair and darker eyes.
The airlock pinged dully as someone started the entry cycle from the floor. Mac quickly saved his data and closed the workstation back into the metal dining table. He didn't want anyone to see the data and jump to conclusions. The 'lock cycled open, and Lester backed out, towing his welding rig with him, cursing steadily under his breath, an incomprehensible monologue.
"Problems?" Mac always thought Lester sounded like Fred Flintstone when he did that, though he more resembled a balding Barney Rubble.
"Was. Not now. Welder's broke. Can't fix it. No prob."
"What did you need to weld, anything important?"
"Support strut. Swing arm." He jerked his head upwards, toward the top of the rig.
Mac nodded. "Right, it'll wait. So why did you bring the welder in here?"
"Circuit board. Power supply." Lester was the rig supervisor or tool pusher, and mechanic, welder, and head cook too. His Cajun roots made his turn in the galley something everyone looked forward to, but his genius was in doing most with the least. Nothing was wasted in his capable hands.
"Well, can you give me a few minutes before tearing that thing up?" Mac motioned him to the opposite seat.
"Sure. Coffee?"
"Yup, that's a good idea. So, how do you think the guys are holding up?"
Lester tapped hot water into both coffee zero-g packs before he answered.
"Tired. Pissed off."
He swung down one of the seats, sat down and handed Mac his coffee. They both savored a careful sip before going on; only the best was worth shipping this far out in the Belt.
"Yeah, that's how I see it, too. They sure ain't going to like what I think is coming"
Lester squinted at Mac.
"Hey, don't look at me like that, I'm just passing along bad news, not causing it."
"Give."
"Ok. Here's how I see it: the deeper we go, the more back pressure we're gettin', more than gravity compression accounts for, a lot more." He paused to sip.
"So?"
"So, we're talkin' blowout."
"Bullshit!"
Mac shrugged and leaned closer to Lester. "It doesn't make sense, I know, but that's what I think. You know drilling rigs, but I know mud and holes, and I'm feelin' something wrong here. We don't have much gravity on our side to keep the mud in the hole, so we depend on the pumps for pressure, and I'm tellin' you we're just a few hours from exceeding the pumps' capacity, and when that happens . . . " His hands shaped a fountain.
"Why?"
"Hell, I don't know." He scrubbed his hair into further disarray with both hands. "I wish I could really test the mud, and we're not taking cores, so I got no idea what’s goin’ on down there." The heavy mixture of water, oils, and chemicals called 'mud' plugged the hole around the pipe, lubricated the drill bit, and forced the debris of drilling to the surface. Without the usual continuous supply of water, closed-system pumps recycled the mud under pressure.
"As it is, the company has screwed us, this old rig has screwed us, and I think the hole is gonna blow us off this rock if we don't stop drillin' soon.” Mac shook his head grimly.
"Got numbers?"
"Sure." Both men flipped open a work station, quietly going over the data together. Lester pulled up records for the other holes, and pointed out the trend of higher pressures for each successive hole. After ten minutes, they folded their screens. Lester spoke first.
"Damn."
The two men sat with their coffee, not-listening to the rig. Lester solemnly lit a twisted, dark cigar, waved it at Mac.
"Call it."
"One hour. If the pressure follows the curve I've predicted, we pull the drill string, cap it, move the rig, try again."
"Contract?"
"Screw the contract! I'm finishing this job if I gotta flap my arms to fly home!"
Lester cackled and the two men shook hands, then Mac rose to don a floor-suit. Lester still wore his and smoked until Mac was ready to cycle onto the floor. Unsaid but understood, they had to present a united front to the crew.
An hour later, pressure still rising, the crew grumpily started to remove drill pipe from the hole in preparation to moving the rig. 'Pulling the string' was a repetitive and time-consuming operation, and everyone was on the floor to lend a hand. The usual chatter over the suit radios was missing as everyone contemplated more days on the job without pay.
The first team on break did not notice the blinking call light. Turtle noticed on his break, but decided the company would have to wait. Seven hours and twenty-two minutes after the contracted pickup time, thirty-one minutes into the moving job, Mac noted the call, logged the time, punched in the security code, and answered. The call did not last long, but Mac sat slumped at the console for a few more minutes before reaching out and turning the communicator to the floor channel.
Impact minus 15 hours 12 minutes
"So now we gonna die," drawled Turtle in the silence, "and I wants all ya'll to know how damn special it's been, but I can't say ya'll are the folks I was countin' on dying with."
The crew sat in various postures of despair throughout the doghouse. The crippled relief ship had sent them a chilling message: another asteroid was on a collision course with the work rock. The relief ship had suffered a reactor fault, and was not going to be there soon enough to pull the crew off before impact. There seemed no way out of the oncoming catastrophe.
"Go to hell, Injun," Boomer said with no conviction.
Billy stood, careful not to launch himself headfirst into the ceiling; he'd done that a dozen times the first week.
"Mac, what do you think our best chances are? I mean, there has to be something we can try, even if it's crazy, cause I can't just wait here to die, I need to DO something . . . "
The others nodded and muttered agreement, turning their attention to Mac. They'd teased him, called him 'College Boy', and 'Boy Genius', but now they were hoping for a miracle from him. The recycler gurgled and knocked in the silence. He looked up and met their gazes one by one.
"I ain't lying to ya, guys," he started, "this is more of a fix than I've ever been in." Then he smiled, a dangerous smile. "But I just had a thought, and I think we got a chance."
The crew broke into laughter and whoops, which he quickly waved down.
"What I need from you right now is for you all to get out there, and resume drilling, okay?"
Scared and unsure, but glad to have someone tell them what to do, the crew cycled in pairs back onto the rig, and soon the rhythm of drilling returned. After the crew was settled into the routine, Lester cycled back into the doghouse.
"Liar."
The crazy smile was gone, but the fear in Mac's face was under control, and he even managed a little grin. "No, not really. I said a chance – not a good chance, but a chance."
"How?"
"We're going to ride the blowout."
Impact minus 9:07
Six hours later everyone was in the doghouse again, this time eating a quick meal while the rig took care of itself and Mac talked.
"Ok. Here's the deal. There's a lot of pressure in this hole, and it's getting worse every foot we drill. In about four and a half hours we're gonna see a blowout. Now hold your horses," he held up his hand at the stir, "that's what we're TRYING to do. We're gonna over-rev the mud pumps the last connection or two, cut the rig hold-downs, then turn off the pumps and get back in here fast as we can, and hold on tight, because when the mud and pipe and gas come out of that hole, we are going for one hell of a ride."
Everyone but Turtle seemed to have forgotten their meal-packs as they tried to grasp the idea of using one disaster to avoid another.
"Now finish your chow, get out on the floor and drill me a hole!"
Impact minus 7:26
"Not enough, dammit, not enough!" growled Mac to himself. He was no math genius, but his best calculations of forces and accelerations showed that the blowout by itself would probably not get them off the asteroid, much less out of danger. Being too close when the two asteroids collided would be just as deadly as impact zero. The doghouse was their only lifeboat, and certainly couldn't take a direct impact; even a near miss would probably be lethal due to massive debris impacts. His stomach twisted as he realized that he really might have lied to the crew. There seemed no chance of miraculous escape.
The repeater board rang like an old phone. Mac jumped to the board, bouncing twice off the ceiling on the way. Mud pump two status showed overheating. With a curse he shut it down, and increased the throughput of pump one to save the pressure. Both pumps were necessary for any chance of success, and he was the only spare hand.
Twenty minutes later, Mac was at the table again staring at a black, gritty mass on the table. It had blocked the screens in pump two, caused the overheat, but everything was running fine now.
It was crude tar. He wouldn't have been more surprised if it was a dinosaur fossil, or Jimmy Hoffa's driver's license. On a sudden hunch he stepped to the rear of the doghouse and dug the last few days of tailing samples out of his locker.
The only thing Mac regularly saw from the hole was tailings -- gravel, sand, and other debris screened from the mud pumps and dumped. Three times a day he suited up (cursing the company, thanking the low gravity), clambered under the steel work floor of the rig, and bagged a handful of tailings to add to his collection for later study.
He always sealed the little collection bags before coming in the shack, fearing exposure to atmosphere would ruin the research value of the samples. Now the vacuum sealed bags on the table were obscured inside with condensation and caked mud.
Mac only hesitated a second before pulling his pocket knife and slashing a bag open. He reached for the magnifying glass to check for more tar in the tailings, stopped and sniffed. A puzzled frown came to his face. He carefully, slowly, lowered his face to the sample and sniffed again -- and again, a deeper inhalation. He sat there, motionless except for the expressions crossing his face; wonder, fear, anger, and finally, that dangerous smile. He straightened and glided to the com, thumbed the floor channel.
"Lester, need you in here, now."
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