J. Wheeler - The Krone Experiment

A clutch of panic seized him. Where was the Cosmos? It was supposed to be right there! Had the computers screwed up? Could they find it before it unleashed another hellish blast? He forced himself to think calmly. He triggered a thruster and put the shuttle into a slow roll. They had done ninety degrees when, thank god, there it was, out the corner of the window about three hundred yards away, a little above them. He continued the roll until they were “right side up” and the Cosmos was in clear view out the window.

“Now what,” demanded Wahlquist.

“I’ve got the Cosmos in sight. We’re about a hundred yards below it and a few hundred yards away. We’re at twelve o’clock now,” Jupp twisted around to smile toward his sightless colleague, “right side up, if that makes you feel any better.”

Wahlquist appreciated the black humor. “Right,” he replied with heavy cynicism. “Blind and weightless, it makes a shitload of difference to me.”

“I’m going in.” Jupp eased the thrusters again and the shuttle drifted forward. As he flew, he narrated to keep Wahlquist at ease.

“It’s much like the sketches they showed us. Impressive looking brute. Big cylinder, just the upper end of the SS-18 booster. What did they say? Four meters in diameter, ten meters long? That looks about right. There’s a booster rocket nozzle on one end, some sort of antennae on the other. That’s the end pointed Earthward now. It’s got these four weird stubby wings. They stick out about two meters, and run the length of the cylinder, equally spaced around the circumference. I guess they’re what we’re supposed to lop off to get the thing in the cargo bay. The whole thing is rotating once about every, oh, ten seconds. I can make out thruster nozzles. There are four pairs of them at each end, midway between the wings. Each of the pair points in opposite directions along the circumference of the hull. There are a number of small ports and one big one, maybe a meter across, halfway along the cylinder between two of the wings.”

Jupp was silent for a moment, watching the dark maw swing across his field of view. “I guess that must be the laser.”

When Jupp saw the Cosmos disappear above the cockpit window, he hit reverse thrust and stopped, hovering just beneath it. He spoke into the microphone.

“Colonel, there it is. Good luck.”

“I’m sorry, Major.” The voice was ice. “I can’t see it. You’ve got the mirror in the way.”

“Christ!” thought Jupp. “Larry, can you move that boom on toward the tail?”

Wahlquist had not released his grip on the controls. Jupp strained to look through the overhead cockpit windows.

“Good, that’s it,” he said crisply when the boom was pointed at a forty-five degree angle toward the tail. He leaned over and worked the controls of the camera on the boom until he could see the Cosmos clearly on the monitor. They were drifting just slightly. He brushed a thruster to give a small opposing acceleration. Eleven minutes since the last shot from Cosmos.

A small figure appeared on the monitor, heading slowly but directly toward the antenna on the lower spin axis. A white plume shot briefly from the top of the backpack, then a shorter blast. The figure hovered next to the projecting antenna just below the spinning base of the Cosmos. An arm reached back and unsnapped a tool from the side of the pack. In a moment a torch flared brightly and was applied to the base of the antenna. The antenna fell free and drifted off.

“That should prevent any control commands,” came the voice over the radio.

“He just cut the radio antenna off the bottom,” Jupp informed Wahlquist.

“Now what’s he doing?” Wahlquist’s voice betrayed his fear and frustration.

“He’s got the torch on again. He’s holding it up to the bottom about eighteen inches from the center. I’ll be damned. He’s using the rotation as if the thing were on a lathe. Cutting a circle as slick as can be. I guess he’ll try to cut a hole and then get inside to disable it.”

“Wait a minute!” The pattern shifted, drifting. The torch went out.

“What is it!” shouted Wahlquist.

“Major!” came the curt command. “This thing is still alive. Must be an internal antenna. It’s changing its pitch. Get your craft the hell out of the way!”

Jupp hit a thruster and backed the shuttle away and down. When it was in his line of sight again he could see the rhythmic puffs from its thrusters and see that the laser portal had already been slightly tilted down toward him. He began a frenzied game with the control thrusters, monitoring the Cosmos and keeping the shuttle out of the rotating, sweeping aim of the laser. He was not too busy to marvel at the actions of the diminutive figure that hovered around the massive contraption.

He watched the figure maneuver to the perimeter of the base of the Cosmos. An arm snaked out.

“What’s he doing?” Jupp narrated to Wahlquist. “Slapping at it? My god, no! He grabbed it! He grabbed the nozzle of the thruster!” The figure was suddenly whipping around with the Cosmos, feet flung outward by the centrifugal force.

“He’s got a hand on it, but I don’t now if he can hold on. If he loses his grip and it slings him off, we may not get him back.” A burst of white exhaust came from the thruster. “Damn! There it goes again! Wow! He’s still got his grip! I guess the suit gives him enough protection from the peroxide jet.” Jupp watched intently. “Oh, oh,” he said. “They’ve slowed it down and it’s tilted toward us again. They’re still trying to draw a bead!”

Jupp concentrated on the controls again, moving the shuttle out of reach. When he could look again, Jupp saw that the Colonel had once more fired up the torch.

“He’s hanging onto the thruster with one hand and using the torch on the sidewall about a foot above the thruster. I don’t know how he’s holding on, but that should be thin skin he’s cutting there. Why’s he doing that? Yep, there it goes.”

A thin piece of the metal wall fell away leaving a hole about a foot across. The torch was released, dangling on its short cord.

“Now let’s see, he’s got a hole big enough for his hand. Yeah, he’s reaching inside. Those edges will be sharp. He better not rip his suit! Okay, he’s got a grip on something inside, a brace or something. He’s hauling himself up. He’s got a foot up, now the other. Oh, I see. He’s standing on the wing.”

“He’s standing?” inquired Wahlquist, perplexed. “What the hell do you mean?”

“Well, he’s got himself wrapped along the side with his head pointed in the direction of the rotation. That puts the flat surface of the wing under his feet, giving sort of an artificial gravity. There must still be quite a centrifugal force, but he’s got some support.

“I can only see him about once every, oh, about every twenty seconds now, the thing has slowed its rotation as it’s maneuvered here. From our vantage, he’s moving from left to right, clockwise if you look up from below. He’s got the torch back and is poking it into the thruster nozzle. Ah, yeah, that’ll fry the nozzle and the works inside. Now he’s doing the opposite nozzle of the pair. He’s cutting another hand hold. He’s near the bottom end of the cylinder. There’s another thruster at the top; he’s going for that.”

Jupp watched as the man held on with his left hand and reached over as far as he could with the torch in his right hand to cut another hole. There was an awkward moment as the torch was released, and the change of handholds was managed, right hand into the old hole, left into the new one. That maneuver was repeated again so that the figure was holding on only with his right hand and had moved to the left. After a brief fumble the torch was retrieved from where it spun outward at the end of its tether, and yet another hole was cut. Repeating this pattern, Newman made his laborious way along the side of the Cosmos, pausing a couple of times to direct the torch into small ports that could be easily reached. Whatever sensors had peered out from within were now blind. Electronic eyes in exchange for the human pair in the shuttle. Newman was almost at the other end, at the second pair of thrusters, when his cold voice came again.