part0008

Margherita reached forward with one gloved hand and curled the stiff oversize fingers into a partial fist, and then she brought it down hard on the dashboard of her ship’s skiff. She barely felt the impact through the thick glove, and in the vacuum the blow made no sound.

It didn’t help: the red warning lights continued to blink, blink, blink annoyingly across the controls. She tried to ignore them, but she could not help but take the warnings all in with a glance: the door seals were not matching right when it closed, the pressure gauges on the fuel cells were intermittently failing, the seal integrity on the fuel tanks was bad, and she had long ago spent the skiff’s back-up oxygen. All items that meant the skiff should be grounded.

“Come on,” she complained. “It’s no big deal, skiff. Quit blinking and whining.” But the skiff, without a bit of AI in it, did not answer her. The lights kept nagging at her, telling her she should not be out here, alone in space.

It wasn’t really a skiff. She just called it that. The narrow craft had been designed as a single-passenger emergency re-entry vehicle for a near-atmosphere abandonment of its mothership. It was more a torpedo than spacecraft: all engines, clad beneath with a thick reentry shield formed into a lifting body. The narrow coffin-like cockpit required the pilot to lay on her stomach, and ride like a surfer laying on her board. There was no life support and very little onboard computer power. It had to be maneuvered near her targets, aimed at them, and sent on its way. The designers meant for this to happen once. But Margherita used the lifeboat now continually, to move around the asteroid belt. Each time she used it, she carefully forced fuel back into tanks that had been designed for one-shot burns.

She drifted now at high speed in what seemed, to the naked eye, space empty of anything but distant stars and a single, black rock: asteroid seven-ten-seven-nine-eleven, her target. She shifted around in her too-large suit, trying to get more comfortable as she waited while the asteroid grew before her. Beyond that, the stars shone dimly through a dense haze across the black sky. She studied them a few moments, feeling suddenly that giddy feeling she got when she almost realized, almost felt in her bones, the immensity of the universe, of their galaxy. In all of it, a human girl, millions of miles from Earth, shrank until she disappeared. She meant nothing, could stand for nothing.

And what about her parents? Wouldn’t they be lost forever in all that space?

“No,” she said. “Focus.” She hit the controls again. They continued to blink red. “Focus focus focus.” A mantra her mother used to say, when she piloted in tight maneuvers. Margherita checked again the trajectory. Not long now. Focus on the task at hand.

Old Nine-Four-Rock-Cutter had been eager to get started. After their meeting, Margherita had slept a few hours back on her ship, and when she woke the message light over the computer console had blinked impatiently at her. Nine-Four had prepared the claim for the asteroid, and wanted to start immediately. Once he filed the claim, their rival could file a counter-claim. Then it would be a race: whoever landed on the asteroid first would win the stake. So Nine-Four was going to wait until Margherita was near the target asteroid before filing, hopefully when she had closed to within a minute or so of landing.

Nine-Four had used his own ship to move Margherita’s skiff close to the asteroid, and fling her at high speed toward the rock. She was on her own now. She switched the cameras to a rear view, and there retreated Nine-Four’s ship, with its hull of golden foil.

“What a stupid ship,” she said, shaking her head. She couldn’t understand the Rinneret ships. They were ultralights, as weak as paper. Rinneret preferred this for its cheaper fuel costs, but this struck Margherita as crazy dangerous. “An elephant could walk right through that thing,” she said to herself, as Nine-Four-Rock-Cutter’s ship pulled away from her. “On Earth, it would collapse under its own weight. On the beach, it’d wash away. My Dad could have picked it up and thrown it. I bet even I could beat it in a fight.” The Rinneret cowered before every danger but this one: in space, they floated around in these tissue ships.

Margherita wished she could say all this to her ship’s AI, but she had to maintain radio silence. Well, no loss. Her ship would just have answered, “Excuse me?”

The Rinneret’s ship diminished to a twinkling point, and then disappeared. Margherita shifted the camera view to forward. She touched her visor, absent-mindedly reaching to rub her scar, having forgot she wore the helmet. She touched her breast pocket, feeling the hyperradio underneath. She wanted to turn it on and listen for a signal, but she couldn’t turn the switch through the thick suit fabric.

The nearby sun was off to her right, small from distance. It glowed green, a dot as cold and small as a match flame. She had passed near that sun once, above its zenith, and looked down at it with her father. A yellow star, like Earth’s sun, her father had said. It shone green now because a halo of green asteroids surrounded and occluded it. This system was the second of only two known systems of its kind. That was why her parents had come here, to study the green asteroids of the inner system, where a strange symbiosis of tiny machines and microscopic life forms together colonized the dense band of planetoids around the sun. But the asteroids out here, far from the sun, were dead metal, interesting only to the Rinneret miners.

She drifted, listening to her own breath. Before her, the skiff’s timer clicked down the seconds. 508 to go. She had to delay deacceleration until the last moment. She had to time it so she got close, still moving fast, and then kick on her engines at the last moment. Her engine signature would be visible, if nasty little Eleven-Ten were looking. Old Nine-Four had checked Margherita’s calculations, and together they had set the trajectory and timer. Then, waiting in the skiff, Margherita had re-checked the calculations herself, and made a few changes. She knew how hard she could hit the asteroid—much harder than old Nine-Four would have dared. And she knew the engines could burn harder than the Rinneret believed. She waited.

The asteroid swelled in her view, a black gnarl of metallic stone. It was going to be a tough insertion. “Nothing that Alan Shephard couldn’t do,” she said. “Or Buzz Aldrin.” Human astronauts. Tough, like her Mom and Dad. Not like the Rinneret.

200 seconds. She could not see the stars before her now. Only rock. It was frightening. But she would stick with the plan. The less engine time the better. Fast glide, hard deacceleration, and a contact landing just short of crashing.

100 seconds. The skiff accelerated slightly, feeling now the pull of the asteroid. This is the way Neil Armstrong would’ve done it. Or Alexi Gregarin. By the seat of his pants.

When the timer hit zero, she held her hand over the firing control, but did not depress the ignition. She stared out the skiff’s window at the hulking rock. A trick of perspective made it suddenly seem not beneath, but above her. She swallowed and clenched her jaw, fighting the fear that this gargantuan rock fell toward her now, and would land on her head and crush her, a boulder smashing an insect.

Old Nine-Four would have just filed his claim at 0 seconds. Her rival Eleven-Ten would be warned by some software agent or other when this happened. The young Rinneret who had scarred her in school, and conned her out of her daily allowance most days, would be scurrying around his foil-hulled ship now. He’d be frantically trying to figure out who made the claim, and frantically looking for someone he could offer a sweet deal on the rights to the asteroid, in exchange for the money to file a counter-claim. Rinneret were good at doing that kind of thing—quick wheeling and dealing, settling terms very fast. And, while doing all this, nasty little Eleven-Ten would make furtive glances at space with his huge black eyes, to see if his rivals were on their way to the asteroid he’d hoped to claim for himself. That meant he’d be looking for engine signature. If he were far, then he wouldn’t have a chance to beat her. But if he were near, it would be a race. And she was not going to lose this race. She was going to earn her way back to freedom, starting right now.

The timer’s numbers ran negative. -10, -11, -12, -13....

Margherita waited, holding her breath. -20, -21, -22.

She tapped a yaw control engine, and flipped the skiff, rocket tail downward. She hit the ignition. The engines roared behind her, slowing her crash course for the asteroid. She shifted from floating to feeling that she stood in the skiff. She adjusted the skiff’s view screens, and set them to show the rear view. The asteroid loomed in the shimmering blast of the engine flame.

The skiff’s radio chimed. She thumbed it on. A Rinneret voice chattered, the tone rising quickly up and out of her hearing range. She backed up the radio’s cache of the message, and turned on her translationware.

“This asteroid is claimed by Eleven-Ten-Rock-Cutter.”

The skiff’s computer triangulated off a signal bounce reflected off the asteroid. Bad news: Eleven-Ten’s ship lay near, in orbit around the asteroid, just out of the minimum distance for claim filing. “Damn!” she cursed. The ship lay closer to the asteroid than her skiff.

“I can do it, I can do it,” she said. “I can still do it. He’ll be afraid to land hard. He’s a Rinneret. Wimps.”

Margherita told the skiff’s little computer to track Eleven-Ten’s ship. The Rinneret ship started to move, matching the slight spin of the asteroid to come in for a landing.

She flipped on the radio. “Hey, Eleven-Ten, remember me?” she said, speaking Rinneret. Eleven-Ten would recognize her voice, too deep for a Rinneret, and slurring the hard clicks and stops. “Guess what? I’m taking this asteroid! You hear me? I’m taking it.”

She had a visual of his ship now, its engines puffing. It had a good trajectory for a gentle touchdown. Eleven-Ten must have staked the counter-claim, probably on credit. Maybe he’d had some quick promises already lined up. Now they really were racing, and Eleven-Ten had the lead.

“What can I do what can I do what can I do?” she blurted out. If Eleven-Ten beat her to the asteroid, she didn’t know how she could pay old Nine-Four for the food she needed. She’d have to sell another share. She’d be a slave.

But it was more than that. This was nasty little Eleven-Ten she raced now. Eleven-Ten had scarred her, after her ship had been salvaged by the Rinneret. He’d cut her face. Eleven-Ten was her rival. He was her enemy.

She would have to come in faster, land harder, than any Rinneret dared. She cut her engines.

She magnified her view of his ship. It glinted in the dim reflected light of the sun and its own engines, a frail box of golden foil, an ultralight ship like the one Nine-Four had used to bring her here. In a few seconds it would be only a kilometer out of her path, but moving more directly in for a landing. She would almost hit it, if it weren’t descending. It looked like that kite she’d seen the night before, on the ship’s movie of Cape Cod: a box of tissue paper floating on Earth’s wind. Only there was no wind here.

“Wait a minute,” she said. She tapped a steering jet, pitching her skiff slightly, till the engine pointed slightly below the Rinneret ship, aiming exhaust where the ship would be in a few seconds.

She turned the engine back on. Fusion flame blasted a stream of plasma moving at thousands of kilometers a second. She watched as the Rinneret ship dipped into her plasma flame. The ship spun, and a layer of the foil wrapping ripped free and flapped. The ship tumbled away, pushed by her engine’s particle wind.

“Emergency!” Eleven-Ten signaled. “Emergency!” The ship took over the cry, repeating it on broadcast.

Margherita thumbed on the skiff’s radio. “Sorry. You were in the way.” She turned off the radio. Other Rinneret would answer Eleven-Ten’s call for help with the usual Rinneret answer, “Why should I help you?” He would buy a rescue.

But now she had to handle her own landing. She nudged her pitch back onto the proper course, and throttled the engines over their maximum safe rating. The skiff began to shake, a perilous vibration running the length of the short cabin. Her helmet rattled against the low ceiling. The asteroid shot up toward her. It came too fast. She knew she should change course, aim to circle around, but that would give Eleven-Ten a chance to sell his claim to someone else who might be near. She pushed the engine another ten percent past safety. An engine temperature warning began to buzz, followed by the shriek of the proximity alarm. Four other warning lights turned red on the board. The whole narrow cabin glowed red now.

The asteroid loomed in her view, artificially illuminated by the computer to a pale gray. Craggy, knife-sharp ridges thrust up out of its surface.

The skiff had a single-shot chemical landing rocket. Margherita had not wanted to use it. A dry fuel engine, she could not replace it. It was the only backup the skiff had, and out here alone in the asteroid belt, she needed every tool and every emergency back-up in order to survive. But she had no choice. She reached for the green button, lifted its safety cover, and pressed down with a bending glove finger.

Foam exploded into the small cabin, bracing her for the three e-gee deacceleration. It swallowed her view as it curled over and around her helmet, filling every cubic centimeter of the cabin. The uneven, rattling roar of the solid rocket booster penetrated her suit, deafening her. She slipped far back in the loose spacesuit, till it jammed hard against her crotch. The helmet slipped away and she could see nothing but the dark fabric of the suit’s chest. She screamed till the acceleration eased. Slowly, her weight decreased. Then, abruptly, it eased till she weighed about Earth normal. She managed to shimmy back up till her head was in the helmet. The view was little better: a white dome of crash foam against the visor. She patched her suit into the skiff’s computer, calling up a downward view projected on her helmet. A gray vista flashed around her face. The asteroid consumed her field of vision now. Engine exhaust flared across the black stone. She would be pushing the asteroid away, as she approached, her two engines hammering at the surface. But not pushing it away much.

She couldn’t tell how far away it was. The link with the skiff was just visuals, and she stared transfixed, paralyzed a moment in fear, unwilling to turn her attention away long enough to call up all the operational information. Exhaust streamed off the hard surface in sharp lines of white and black gas. A black outcropping of stone grew in her view. It looked to be a mountain, slowly approaching. Landing sideways on it could cause a tumble, grinding her skiff apart as it rolled. Involuntarily she cringed away from the approaching metal surface.

The roar abruptly stopped. She held her breath. And then she hit the asteroid.

It felt like failing off her bed: a sudden impact, but not a hard one.

She lay there a long while, expecting a second impact, a bounce and then a crash. It did not come. Instead, the back of the skiff folded open, an automatic action following the emergency landing. The crash foam dissipated into the vacuum, a retreating white fog. She got to her knees, brushing foam from her visor.

The mountain she’d seen approaching lay next to the skiff: an outcrop of stone shorter than her. She laughed at it. “You’re not so tough,” she told it.

She stood very slowly, testing her feet. She didn’t trust the hard stone to hold her. She could jump into orbit if she weren’t careful. But, by moving very slowly, she found she could maintain the illusion of walking on the metal surface.

She told the skiff to send a blast of radar through the asteroid. From this close, it could analyze the pulse, and tell her how much nickel really lay in the rock. She would learn now if enough nickel threaded through this rock to make old Nine-Four satisfied with its investment in her. She had lied to him: she had made no estimates of her own. She’d just gambled that Eleven-Ten wouldn’t want the rock if it weren’t worth something.

The analysis came back. Three million tons.

She held her breath a long moment. Then she hissed, “Stupid stupid stupid!” Three million tons. A huge stake. If she had kept her percentage, she would have more than enough to buy back all her shares in herself. She would have been free!

“I’m so stupid! Stupid! Stupid!” She kicked the little mountain three times, punctuating her point.

She sighed, and closed her eyes. She floated in absolute silence. Even the suit’s usual hisses and clinks were quiet. The only sound, a dim surging throb, was her own heart. She listened to it slow. Then she opened her eyes and looked around again, at the black mountains of metal, at the horizon that she could walk over, and at her black skiff, resting on the stone beside her. She was lightyears from everything, on an asteroid as dead and old as space itself. Alone, a thirteen-year-old girl. Citizen of Earth. Citizen of the Galaxy. But alone.

The skiff’s radio pinged her. Her suit identified the sender: nasty little Eleven-Ten, no doubt wanting to ask for a deal.

She smiled. She’d won. She beat Eleven-Ten, that disgusting worm. And she’d done what she’d told old Nine-Four she was going to do: she got a stake. A big stake. It didn’t matter that she had no share in the rock. She’d proved she could mine asteroids. She could do it again. And she would.

Margherita Calvino looked up at the strange stars and shook her fists at them.

“You see that!” she yelled. “I was like Amelia Earhart! I was like Chuck Yaeger! Buzz Aldrin! You hear me? I landed it! A human! An Earthling! A kid! And you know what? I’ll find another good metal asteroid. And another. And more! Asteroids better than this one. I’ll buy myself back. I can do anything you can, you Rinneret, and better! Just try me! Just try! Because I’m from Earth!”