Gregory Benford - Jupiter Project

We assembled near the axis of the Can, already suited up. All Laboratory vehicles, from the small one-man shuttles Jenny and Ishi used, to the ion cruiser used on the Ganymede run, are kept in the center of the Can.

As I said before, the Can is a big rotating drum. Most of that drum is empty. The middle of the Can, except for the axial cylinder and the connecting spokes, is open to free space. Our cruiser was parked there and we had to go out and board her.

Captain Vandez stood at the air lock, checking over each of us to be sure we had all our suit vents closed, hadn’t put our helmets on backwards, or something equally stupid. It’s in the regs; he has to do it. A technician who never goes outside can forget a lot in the nine months between mandatory “vacations” on Ganymede. Anything overlooked in free space can be fatal.

“Sing out when I call your name.” the Captain shouted. “Williams! Kandisi! Bohles!”

I answered and turned to look at the rest of the party. Zak waved from the other side of the tube, where he was holding onto an inset ladder. We were in very light gravity, almost at the axis. Orange signs reading ANCHOR YOUR LIFELINE—ALWAYS! jumped out at you from the white walls.

“Sagdaeff!”

Yuri answered “Yo!” I twisted around; he was ten meters behind me. I had a funny empty feeling.

In a moment Captain Vandez said. “You have all been on this milk run before, so I will not make a big speech about being careful. Remember, the Sagan is an ordinary cruiser. She’s adequately shielded against high energy particles but we can’t carry the mass to stop big chunks of rock, or even little ones. That means everybody stays in their suits, with helmets in place and ready to seal, always. Anybody violating the rules will have to deal directly with me, and that can be unpleasant. All right, into the lock!”

We filed in. We were exiting through one of the personnel locks and there were handholds everywhere. I felt a thrumming vibration through the soles of my suit as the pumps sucked the air out of the crowded lock. My suit limbered up and my arms and legs became easier to move. I read the meters and colored displays set below the edge of my viewplate, to be sure my suit was feeding air properly, balancing my temperature and perspiration, etc. The air tasted a little oily, but then, it always does. There are some things engineering never does get around to solving.

The vibration stopped, a red light winked over to green above the big door, and the outer hatch came free. Captain Vandez pushed it open himself. He gestured at a silvery thread fastened to the edge of the lock. It snaked away beyond view. The fellow in front of me leaned forward and snagged it. He climbed along it, hand over hand.

I was next. I clamped a sliding fastener to the line and cast off gently from the lock with a kick.

Every time you go out, it hits you hard. I was coasting along toward the “top” of the Can. The “lid” was pulled aside, to let the Sagan out. It looked like I was gliding toward an ocean of stars, down a bright metal tube. The safety line ended by a lock in the side of a spiderlike fusion cruiser, the Sagan. She was moored near the very top of the Can, against that awesome backdrop of stars.

The thing I tike best about open space is the feeling of complete, utter freedom. It’s as if I was a bird, able to fly straight and true.

Part of all this poetry comes from the feeling of weightlessness. Zero-g is pleasant enough inside the Can, but out here there’s a sensation of freewheeling liberty. It’s like having a weight lifted from your shoulders that you hadn’t even known you were carrying. I felt great.

The man ahead of me had reached the cruiser. I watched as the Sagan grew, and I tumbled over just in time to brake my impact. I felt a touch proud of the maneuver; it proved that freefall squash had kept my zero-g reflexes in shape.

I slipped carefully into the Sagan ’s lock. The inner hatch was open. I pulled myself through and found myself in a long room with passenger seating arranged completely around the walls. A man in a ship’s officer’s suit gestured to a seat and I sat down. I clipped my thigh fasteners to the seat and waited.

The cylinder was filling rapidly. Our luggage had been brought aboard earlier—they didn’t want people trying to carry cases while they negotiated their way across to the Sagan.

Zak came aboard and clipped in next to me. I noticed he was already eating some of the food rations recessed in his helmet. I hoped I never felt that hungry: the rations are balanced for nutrition and high protein, but they come out of squeeze tubes and I’ve never been able to get over the feeling that I’m eating toothpaste.

After a while everyone was in and the lock closed. I felt a tug of acceleration as the Sagan nosed out of its mooring point and drifted free of the Can. There wasn’t any way to see this, of course: the passenger cabin was just a concession to us poor cattle and doesn’t have any viewing screens.

There wasn’t any cheerful speech by Captain Vandez, either, about our destination and flying time and how soon we could expect to be touching down on Ganymede. This isn’t a commercial airline. Instead, after some nudging back and forth by the attitude jets. I felt a sudden kick in the stomach. At least, that’s what it feels like when you aren’t ready for it. The Sagan was accelerating away from Jupiter at about one g. For the first minute or so it felt decidedly uncomfortable. Then my body remembered where it was born and accepted one g as normal; my muscles relaxed a little and my breathing leveled out.

The odd thing about the Sagan —or any fusion rocket craft—is the silence. I guess I’ve watched too many old-time movies about the adventures of Captain Daring, Space Explorer. In those the rockets always take off with a roar like a lion with a hotfoot. The ship throws flame and sparks everywhere. Captain Daring clenches his teeth as the vibration shakes him, and you would swear that a hydrogen bomb couldn’t make more of a racket.

Maybe it was like that, once. Now, out in free space, chemical rockets are as outdated as the horse. We use them to brake atmospheric probes as they fall into Jupiter, but that’s because they’re a one-time-only item. Those little one-way jobs are the only ones I know that we use chemical rockets for nowadays. The days of Captain Daring and his thundering jets are gone.

Still, they might be an improvement over the dead quiet way the Sagan takes off. There’s something kind of creepy about smoothly gliding away from the Can, with no sendoff at all.

Zak tells me I’m a romantic. Maybe so. Or maybe I just watch more old movies than he does.

After the acceleration leveled off I leaned my helmet against Zak’s. “Want to see the view?”

He nodded. I got up and pushed off toward the front of the passengers’ compartment. Captain Vandez hadn’t started spinup or pressurized the ship yet. I met an officer just coming in the hatch and touched helmets with him.

“Okay if we go forward and watch over a 3D?”

“Well, Ah suppose so. How many a you? Jest two? Go on, then. Grab a handhold, mind, don’t jest float around. Nevah know when somethin’ might up an’ happen.”

I waved to Zak and wriggled through the hatch. The next compartment was half-filled with baggage secured in netting. We were in the inner tube that ran down the axis of the Sagan. Around us on all sides were storage tanks. At the moment the tanks were empty; the Sagan was returning to Ganymede for more water.

Against the walls were several 3D screens. These were the only concessions to the passengers, aside from seats, that the Sagan made. The screens gave front, rear, and several side views. In color.