James Gardner - Space Inc (collection)

“Then we just lightly stretch the material over the sail to make sure it will fit; smooth that little corner over there.” Cap pointed to the errant material. Harley ran his gauntlet over the spot. Cap nodded the upper half of his suit. “Yeah. That’s good. Now we glue it down.” The “glue” was a tube of sealer. He rolled the material back, smeared the glue over the joint area, then replaced the patch material and pressed it down into the glue. The operation was completed when he took out a small electronic tool and slowly passed it over the joint, fusing the materials together much like a welder fuses metal. Then he stood up on me ring. “Now we put the material and tools away except for the cords and clamps that are in use, and wait. It takes approximately an hour for the sealant to achieve maximum strength.” Cap looked at his wrist chrono. “Tie yourself down if you’re going to take a nap,” he warned. “Keep in mind that although your safety tether will stop you from flying off into space, it won’t make you lighter. If you fall off, when you reach the end of your tether centrifugal force will make you weigh an apparent 1.5 to 1.75 times your Earth normal weight. Then a shuttle will have to go after you, as you won’t be able to climb the rope—especially in a suit that weighs as much as you do. All the tether really does is make you easy to find and hard to catch. Any questions?”

Harley was looking closely at the shiny sail material. “How do you see the edge of this stuff? It just kind of disappears into nothing.”

“With a microscope. We don’t worry about the actual edge too much. We just grab it where we can see it and go with it.”

Harley looked out over the sails. “So the sunlight hits the sails and pushes us along. Pretty simple, huh?”

Cap agreed. “Yeah. When a photon hits the sail, it bounces off and gives us a teensy push. The part I don’t get is they tell me that when it does that it gives up twice the momentum it had coming in. It’s like getting something for free. At least that’s what the physicists claim.”

Harley went on. “I don’t know how it does it either, but I know about the bouncing thing. When I was a kid, I had one of those solar cookers. You know, the ones where you stab a hot dog on a spike and the little curved dish focuses the sunlight on the dog and burns a hole in one spot while leaving the rest of it raw?”

Cap laughed, “I had one of those, too!”

They sat down on the ring to wait for the patch to set and watched the stars for a while without speaking. Then Harley broke the silence. “Are we there yet?”

They both laughed again and Gap looked at the kid. “Ace, you know? You’re all right. I think we’re going to get along.”

Harley looked out at the stars again and said, “I don’t know. I was looking for a rich wife. I don’t think you qualify.”

They both laughed as the stars wheeled overhead and they waited.

The radio instruments aboard the Inner Space first detected the CME as a slowly drifting type II radio emission, which was indicative of a CME heading their way. The onboard weather staff was rousted and sent to their computers and instruments to determine the severity and probable threat level and duration to the ship and its crew. Within fifteen minutes of the radio detection, the first highly-energized particles arrived. The weather section supervisor called the bridge on the intercom and suggested protective measures be taken just in case it turned out to be a bad storm. The watch officer called the Captain, who verbally approved the standard potential CME measures. The watch officer, after logging the series of orders, stuck his finger on the button for the external radiation storm warning light and then activated the GEMS unit, the Generated Magnetic Shield that mimicked the Earth’s own geomagnetic field and captured the ionized particles to keep them form getting to the main body of the ship.

Cap was thinking about his family dirtside when the radio intruded.

“C3, scratch skurtchh.”

Cap was puzzled. He keyed his radio. “Bridge, C3. You need something?”

The only answer he received was more noise. “Something wrong?” Harley asked.

“Don’t know. I think the bridge just tried to call me, but they were eaten by static. Maybe if I stand up I’ll get a better signal.”

The second Cap’s head cleared the thickness of the inner rings he knew they had trouble. A red strobe light was blinking on the top of the factory. “Ace, I want you to do just exactly as I say, no response, no argument, no bullshit. Got it? Now stand up and follow your tether to me.”

Harley did as he was told. As he was moving toward Cap, Cap raised his arm and pointed to the blinking red light. “Do you know what that is?”

Harley knew. They’d talked a lot about it in the classes. It was the radiation storm warning light.

Cap said, “That is a bucket full of shit and we are squarely in it.” Cap was afraid. He had never been outside when the red light was on. He could already see the auroral glow as the ship’s GEMS unit intercepted charged particles and protected the main ship. Out here on the sails, though, there was no GEMS.

As he began to lead Harley toward the creeper, he started to feel lighter on his feet. “They’re slowing the spin rate. That means they are going to take in the sails.” As he said it, he felt the direction that was “down” begin to change. “They’re precessing the wheel, too, turning it sideways so the peak of the radiation storm will hit the ship’s edge.”

Cap looked around as he moved, figuring angles. Then to Harley over the radio static he said, “We’re heading for the creeper. We gotta get behind it. That’s where we’ll have the most passive shielding.” Halfway to the creeper, they heard the high-pitched squeal of their active dosimeters. When they got to the shadowed side of the creeper, Cap squatted up against it and told Harley, “Hunker down. Smaller cross section gets you less total whole-body exposure.

“Bridge, C3 at D20. Mayday. Mayday.” Cap glanced toward the ship and saw the high-speed shuttle already on its way. Someone had remembered they were out here. He’d have to thank the officer of the watch.

The whole situation was unreal to Harley. He hadn’t enough experience or knowledge to be properly scared. So far it seemed like an adventure that he could write home about! “Funny,” Harley said. “I believe the fact that there is a ton of radiation zipping by me, but I don’t see a thing. A person should be able to see what might kill him.”

Cap nodded his helmet in agreement and pointed to the main ship. “You can, and that’s the worst view of it you’ll ever have… from outside the GEMS field.” They waited until the shuttle matched trajectories down light from the creeper. When the hatch opened, they scrambled inside and floated to the far side of the cargo area. The shuttle pilot in a full radiation protection suit looked at them to make sure they were clear of the hatch, then closed it and spun his craft around to streak for the ship’s hangar bay, bouncing them off of the aft bulkhead.

The fully suited hazard control crew met them in the hangar bay. They were escorted to a nearby decontamination area before their EVA suits were stripped off of them, then their Anti-Cs. The material was all put in a large foil bag with radiation symbols and the words “Danger! Radioactive Material” on it in case they had picked up charged particles. The radiation hazard evaluation team collected their dosimeter sets, the active dosimeters’ alarms screaming their electronic heads off at the indignity of being exposed to so much radiation. Then the riggers were scanned for discrete particles, issued new dosimeters, and escorted to sick bay. The medical team was waiting for them.