“Full anti-mass!” Ilika yelled.
By the time Mati moved her hand, the ship had plunged far down into the dark crack in the icy core of the planet. Boulders of frozen hydrogen rapidly filled the opening above, and the ship only quivered when the pilot pushed the anti-mass drive to its maximum power. “Oh, no, not again!” she wailed.
Ilika frowned. “This is different — and worse. Atmospheric engines, full power!”
Boro worked with shaking fingers. “Ready!”
“Inertia straps!” Ilika commanded. “Quickly, Mati.”
Mati got her straps on, saw that everyone else was secure, and grabbed her flight control. The ship at first vibrated, then shook, and finally bucked and lurched, but went nowhere.
“Damn!” Ilika cursed, popping his straps and stepping to the engineer’s station. “Anti-mass seven, thrusters seven,” he muttered to himself, looking over Boro’s settings. “Damn!”
“Continue thrust?” Mati asked, looking over her shoulder at her captain, a tinge of fear growing in her eyes.
“Yeah,” he replied, stepping to her station. “Try rocking the ship, spinning, anything you can think of.”
Mati tried every trick from Sonmatia Two, and a few she made up on the spot. Seconds ticked by. Sata, Rini, and Kibi barely breathed.
“Thrusters are going red!” Boro yelled.
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“Any progress, Sata?” Ilika demanded.
“At first we were going up and down a fraction of a meter, but now . . .
almost nothing.”
“One thruster just went purple,” Boro reported with despair.
“Cut thrusters,” the captain commanded. “Ice is starting to choke them.
How’s the ice above, Rini?”
“It’s starting to form between the boulders.”
“Boro, space thrusters, all of them, full power.”
The engineer looked at his captain, saw desperation in his eyes, and turned to his console. “You’ve got it all. At that level, we’ve got fuel for about . . . four minutes.”
“Mati, go,” Ilika said, taking his seat and strapping himself in. “Cut-off at two minutes, Boro.”
Blue flames quickly ate away the ice around the bottom of the ship, and worked their way up the sides.
“One minute,” Boro announced, fingers poised as he watched the clock.
The heat soon reached the top of the ship, and the Manessa Kwi slowly began to move upward.
“Maintain full anti-mass,” Ilika ordered.
“I am,” Mati muttered.
“Eight seconds to cut-off,” Boro announced.
“Progress,
Sata?”
“About three meters.”
“Thrusters
off.”
Boro sighed. “Space thrusters off.”
“Damn!” Ilika spat out.
In the silence that followed, Kibi knew she had to be more than a steward.
She popped her inertia straps, stepped down to the bridge, and stood beside her captain.
Their eyes met and she could see moisture in his eyes. She suddenly knew, deep in her heart, that this was no test or training exercise.
“Rini,” she began, “we need to know how thick the ice is above us.”
He turned to his console and looked over the sonar options. “Ah!”
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“Boro, how long can we keep the anti-mass drive running?” she asked.
“Months, but there’s no point once the liquid under us solidifies again.”
“It already has,” Rini said, “and I just found out the ice above us is about a hundred and twenty meters thick, and now completely frozen to the walls of the crack.”
Kibi took Ilika’s hand. “With your permission, I think we should let Boro shut down the engines. We all need to rest and eat something before we can think.”
Ilika scrunched his face several directions as the first tear rolled down his cheek. “Yeah. We gained three meters. We could gain another three with the other half of our space thruster fuel. No point.”
“Engines off, Mati and Boro,” Kibi commanded.
The ship fell silent, and no one said a word.
The mood, as the crew gathered at the large table in the passenger area, had only been experienced by this group once before. When the high priest and guards moved to arrest them outside Doko’s Inn, about a year before, they knew it was no test. Every situation since had been an exercise of some sort, or a problem with a solution.
Rini wasn’t smiling, but he had enough presence of mind to successfully make tea. The others received their cups with shaking hands.
“I’m in command for a while,” Kibi said. “Nothing’s getting any worse, so Rini and I are going to cook something. Everyone else, relax, especially Ilika and Mati.”
Those not in the galley moped around while soup was reheated and crackers broken. They ate in silence, glancing at Ilika often to see if he had thought of anything.
Ilika finally broke the silence. “Kibi remains in command, but I’m going to work with Manessa to make sure I understand our situation fully. We should all get some sleep before we try anything else.”
Ilika spent most of the next hour at the watch station, using every possible tool to peer into the strange ice on all sides of the ship. While he worked, most of the others wandered down to their cabins.
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Next Ilika moved to the engineer’s console, and after checking all the engines and fuel levels, he looked long at the star drive at the top of the display board. Even though he touched several symbols, it remained dark and silent.
After a few minutes at the navigator’s console, he returned to the passenger area and took Kibi’s hand. Last of all the crew members, they disappeared into their cabin.
She could tell by his eyes and his slumped shoulders that he had not yet found any reason to hope. Once the lights were out, she wrapped her arms around him and let him cry himself to sleep.
During the next fourteen hours, different crew members wandered up to the silent bridge at different times. They sat at their consoles, ran diagnostics, asked Manessa questions, then dragged themselves back to bed.
Sometime the following day, Ilika cooked a hearty breakfast. Rini appeared next, anxious to help with trays, but had to wait for the aromas to circulate throughout the ship before he had anyone to serve.
Everyone kept to light and happy topics during the meal. Once dishes were done, Ilika cleared his throat and sat back down at the table.
“You are not children. I’m not going to lie to you or sugarcoat the situation. We’re in big trouble, and this is nothing contrived by me or Manessa. Sata, please activate the Nebador distress beacon.”
With big, round eyes, Sata walked to her station, made the selection she had only simulated before, and returned to the table. “Manessa says only a tiny fraction of the signal is getting through the ice.”
“Yes,” Ilika confirmed. “That means another ship will have to be very close to hear us. We can’t count on that happening, so we probably have to find our own way out.”
“Can’t we melt our way through,” Boro asked, “like we did at the north pole of our planet?”
“We’ll try, but I’ve done some calculations, and I’m worried. One piece of information we need, which I think you guys can figure out better than me, is how long we can live on the food and water we have, at absolute minimum
NEBADOR Book Five: Back to the Stars 161
usage.”
Kibi tapped Boro, he grabbed a knowledge pad, and they went to work pawing through every cabinet in the galley.
Back at the table, Mati put into words what several people were wondering. “Did we . . . do anything wrong?”
“Not that I can see,” Ilika answered. “And . . . as much as I wish I could take the blame . . .” He paused to take a deep breath. “Ships visit the liquid-solid boundary on gas giants all the time.”
Kibi looked over the galley counter, then ducked back down to continue her counting and estimating.
“I’ve never heard of this happening,” Ilika continued, “and neither has Manessa. It’s just one of those rare geological events that can’t be predicted.”
After hearing those words, everyone breathed a little easier, but no one was ready to smile.
“One month, max,” Kibi announced. “That’s using every scrap and every drop.”
Ilika cringed. “Any way to stretch that?”
“Food . . . a little,” Boro replied. “Water, no way. I know what people can get by on. We’ll be dying in a month, dead in a month and a half, no matter how careful we are.”
Ilika blinked a few times, then nodded. “We’ll try melting our way out with Manessa’s radiant hull. Sometimes simulations are wrong. Stations.”
Happy to be trying something, anything, the crew was soon ready. Ilika worked with Rini for a few minutes, as precise measurements of the ship’s movement were necessary. Boro and Mati had the simple task of making the hull glow with infra-red radiation, and applying all the anti-mass they could muster.
The experiment lasted half an hour. Rini reported three centimeters of movement. Ilika did a quick calculation. “It would take two and a half, maybe three months, to get up to the solid-liquid boundary. We don’t have the food and water . . . or the fuel.”
Sata burst into tears and ran off the bridge. Boro was half out of his seat before he stopped and looked at Ilika. The captain nodded. “Shut down your
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stations, everyone.”
“Why was it so much easier on our planet?” Mati asked, standing up with the help of her crutch.
“That was barely-frozen water ice,” Ilika explained. “This is far colder, and part of the massive core of the planet, which acts like a sink for any heat we apply.”
Mati nodded and sniffed, then hobbled up to the table where Rini swiveled a chair for her, leaving Ilika alone on the bridge.
Deep Learning Notes
Although our bodies would be severely weakened and possibly suffer permanent harm, healthy people can live 2-4 weeks without food. But if we have no water, one week is about the limit.
Solid hydrogen ice is about 14°K (-259°C, -434°F) or colder. Water ice on Earth is quite hot by comparison (193°K or higher).