Lucifer's Hammer - Larry Niven [92]
"I will go out and work on it," Jakov said.
"No." Baker's answer was abrupt; the commander speaking. "We haven't lost anyone in space yet, and why start now?"
"Shouldn't we ask ground control?" Leonilla asked.
"They put me in charge," Johnny Baker said. "And I've said no."
Pieter Jakov said nothing. Rick Delanty remembered that the Soviets had lost men in space: the three Soyuz pilots on reentry that the world knew about, and a number of others, known only by rumors and tales told at night over vodka. He wondered (not for the first time) if NASA had been too cautious. With fewer safety precautions the United States could have reached the Moon a little sooner, done a good deal more exploring, learned more—and, yes, created a martyr or two. The Moon had been too expensive in money, but too cheap in lives to gain the popularity it needed. By the time Apollo XI reached it, it was dull. Routine.
Maybe that's what we ought to do. The picture of Johnny Baker crawling out on the broken Spacelab wing, of a man out in that hostile environment risking the loneliest death ever—that had given the space program almost as big a boost as Neil Armstrong's giant leap.
There was a ping. Then another, and red warning lights flared on the monitor board.
Rick Delanty didn't think. He leaped for the nearest red-painted box. A square box, duplicate of others that were put at various places in Hammerlab. He opened it and took out several flat metal plates with goop on one side, then some larger, rubberlike patches. He looked to Baker for instructions.
"Not holed," Johnny was saying. "Sand. We're being sandblasted." He frowned at the status board. "And we're losing efficiency in the solar cells. Pieter, cap all the optical instruments! We'll have to save 'em for closest approach."
"Rojj," Jakov said. He moved to the instruments.
Delanty stood by with the meteor patches. Just in case.
"It depends on just how large that nucleus is," Pieter Jakov called from the far end of the space capsule. "And we have yet to get firm estimates of how widely the solid matter extends. I think it highly likely that the Earth—and we—will be hit by high-velocity gravel if nothing worse."
"Yeah. That's what I was thinking," Johnny Baker said. "We've been looking for sideways drift. Well, we found it, but is it enough? Maybe we ought to terminate this mission."
There was a moment of silence.
"Please, no," Leonilla said.
"I second that," Rick added. "You don't want to either. Who does?"
"Not me," Jakov said.
"Unanimous. But it's hardly a democracy," Baker said. "We've lost a lot of power. It's going to get warm in here."
"You stood it in Spacelab until you got the wing fixed," Delanty said. "If you could take it before, you can take it now. And so can we."
"Right," Baker said. "But you will stand by those meteor patches."
"Yes, sir."
Minutes later Hamner-Brown's nucleus dropped behind the Earth. The Moon rose in its ghostly net of shock waves. Leonilla passed out breakfast.
Dawn found Harvey Randall in an easy chair on the lawn, with a table to hold his cigarettes and coffee and another to hold the portable television. Dawn washed out the once-in-a-lifetime sky show and left him a little depressed, a little drunk, and not really ready to start a working day. Loretta found him in the same state two hours later.
"I've gone to work in worse shape," he told her. "It was worth it."
"I'm glad. Are you sure you can drive?"
"Of course I can." That was an old argument.
"Where are you going to be today?"
He didn't notice the worry in her voice. "I had a hell of a time deciding that. I really want to be everywhere at once. But hell, the regular network science team will be at JPL, and they've got a good crew in Houston. I think I'll start at City Hall. Bentley Allen and staff calmly taking care of the city while half the populace runs for the hills."
"But that's all the way downtown."
Now he heard it. "So?"
"But what if it hits? You'll be miles away. How can you get back?"
"Loretta, it's not going