Dragons and Stars, Chapter 11: Journey to Ceres

“Why so early?” mumbled Neal.

“It’s Shipment Day!” said Uncle John cheerfully. “Don’t you remember?”

Neal began to ease into consciousness. Yes, now he did remember that it was the Monday of the month when they took a shipment of ore for processing to Ceres. He generally looked forward to the chance to get away and see the sights, but the past few days he’d been distracted by all the other excitement on the asteroid.

Neal sighed and rolled out of bed, stubbing his toe as he went to the wallcloset to choose his space suit. It wasn’t much of a choice, since Neal only owned three: two of them the standard gray mining worksuits and a bright blue dress suit for better occasions. Neal grabbed the blue one and hurriedly pulling it on, checking his hair in the mirror. It was a terrible mess, like a haystack gone insane. He groaned and went to the sink, putting his head under the faucet to soak his hair, then drying it off with a towel. That generally did the trick of making it hang down uniformly, and as it dried it had a purposeful tousled look that he thought looked just fine. Anyway, much better than a haystack. Neal joined Uncle John for a brief breakfast of artifically synthesized oatmeal.

Afterwards Uncle John read a chapter from 1 Kings. Neal listened as King Ahab tried to take Naboth’s vineyard, and pouted when he couldn’t. His wife Jezebel falsely accused Naboth and had him stoned do death. Then she gave his vineyard to her husband. God was angry at that and promised Ahab his line would be cut off and dogs would lick his blood. To Neal’s surprise, Ahab tore his clothes and went around mourning for several days. Apparently it surprised God too, who promised Ahab the disasters would not come during his lifetime. “Was God surprised?” Neal asked Uncle John. “God is never surprised,” said Uncle John. “Wasn’t Jesus surprised?” asked Neal. “Yes,” said Uncle John thoughtfully. “But he limited himself.” He looked at the clock. “Well, let’s go!”

They stood up and grabbed their helmets. Neal followed Uncle John up out the hatch and into the living cylinder shaft. Other miners were clambering out of their hatches and working their way up the shaft, murmuring good mornings to each other, running their fingers through their hair or checking their compad watches behind their left wrists.

Floating out the living shaft, Neal adjusted his magboots and walked after his uncle down a large tunnel for several minutes, past lamp after lamp on the tunnel wall. They reached a waiting room where four miners stood shuffling their gear and waiting. Dr. Brut and Mirk were also standing there. Neal looked away and put on his texaglass helmet and pushed the safety button sealing it in place. The others did the same as Uncle John slid a key into a keypad on the wall and typed a few numbers. After a moment a large door trundled open and Neal walked through with the others into an airlock chamber. The door behind them closed, a warning sounded, and the outer door ground open. Outside the vast underground hanger came into view. It was a giant cavern, perhaps a quarter mile long and nearly as wide, with a ceiling three or four hundred feet overhead. Early explorers had discovered this cavern when digging for ore. The cavern was one reasons Providence Base was located here on the asteroid. That, and the cleft valley helped protect it from the occasional meteorite strike. Neal and the others trudged toward the largest ship in the hangar, the S.S. Samson. This freighter carried the metal ores they mined to the nearest trade point. That point was the space station attached to Ceres, the largest asteroid.

The ship had been loaded on Saturday by some of the miners, but Sunday was a day of rest Uncle John insisted upon. Neal yawned inside his helmet and started up the ramp onto the ship.

“Hi sleepy!” came a voice crackling over his headset. Neal looked back over his shoulder to see Hanna and Grummel making their way out of the airlock towards him. Neal leaned against the railing and waited for them to arrive.

“Is our friend sourpuss on this flight?” Hanna asked. Neal nodded glumly. She examined his face more closely. “Your eyes are not quite as black as they were Saturday,” she said. Neal brightened. “They are more like a…a dark blue or green, wouldn’t you say, Grummel?” She laughed, and Neal sighed and joined them as they climbed the ramp at the back of the ship.

The back of the giant ship was full of large steel boxes, fastened to the sides of the hold. The three of them walked the aisle between the crates for two or three minutes until at last they came to a sealed airlock door. Through this airlock was the crew area, consisting of a cozy crew room with several sofas. As they stepped into this room, each took off their helmet and stored it on a shelf by the door. On the left and right walls of the lounge area were doors into the bunk rooms where crew could sleep, and in one corner of the lounge was a small kitchenette area. At the end of the lounge room was another door forward into the bridge control room. That door was open at the moment and Uncle John was standing in it, talking to one of the pilots.

“Prepare for liftoff!” he said, turning his head to Neal, Hanna and Grummel as they came in. Taking seats on the forward-facing sofas, they pulled straps down across them and buckled themselves in. The others on the ship had already strapped themselves into various seats. As a rumble started beneath them, images flashed up on two monitors on the walls. One image was from a base camera, showing the S.S. Samson floating off its magnedock station. The other was from a forward camera on the ship, showing a large hangar door in front of them pulling open to reveal the stars outside. The ship passed through this door, and the first image switched to an outside rear view of the ship pulling away from the asteroid. The asteroid filled the screen behind them, its little craters and hills a familiar home to Neal. The rumbling increased and they felt the force push them farther back into the sofas. The asteroid grew smaller behind them. Coming up over the edge of the asteroid they could see the sun suddenly glint out and shine at the camera, casting the asteroid in front of it into shadow. The sun was small, about the side of a pea, but still too bright to look at directly. Neal sighed and pulled his Book from his coat. A Book looked like an old-fashioned book with pages that turned, but each page had electronic ink that could change at the push of a button. Neal open the front cover and scanned the titles down to his science textbook. His Book beeped, and all the pages were immediately reformatted into his textbook. He turned to page 176 and began reading. “The mitochondria in the cell…” Several minutes passed. He yawned again and looked left at Hanna. Her eyes were drifting shut and her head bobbing. To her left Grummel had his head knocked back on the sofa. He was snoring. Neal had thought it was part of the rumbling of the ship’s engines. Grummel’s lips pursed and opened as he sucked in vast quantities of air with a rumbling snort and exhaled them with a whistle.

“Grummel!” said MacHardy. He came out of the pilot’s bridge just then into the lounge area. “Grummel! You’d best attend to yor’ schoolin’ or i’m going to learn your backside some education!” Grummel’s eyes popped open and he jerked forward, dropping his book onto the floor with a loud bang. He hurriedly picked it up and began reading. Neal noticed the book was upside down.

Just then one of the side doors on the lounge opened and Mrs. Silver stepped out. Her hair was tousled cutely around face, and her eyes were sleepy.

“Is there something wrong?” she asked, looking a little alarmed.

“Oh, my!” said MacHardy. He gave a clumsy bow. “I’m vera’ sorry ma’am, I didn’t know as thet you was on the ship!”

“Captain John invited me along,” she said, “And I decided to come. I was just enjoying a little nap in one of these cute bunks.” She waved her hand at the door.

MacHardy looked ready to eat his shirt. “I’m vera’ vera’ sorry,” he said. “I’ll try to be more quiet. I have a mighty big mouth Miz Silver and I don’t even’ know the nummer o’ times it’s gotten me in trouble.”

Grummel let out a loud guffaw which ended suddenly at a look from MacHardy.

“Oh, please, don’t worry about it!” said Mrs. Silver. “I don’t want to sleep through this trip anyway.”

MacHardy stood rooted for a minute then turned and stumped back into the bridge.

Mrs. Silver walked over to them.

“Is that a kitchenette over there?” she asked, pointing.

“Yes,” said Neal. Hanna’s eyes were open now, but she didn’t seem completely there and stared dully at Mrs. Silver.

“Could I bring you anything?” she asked the three of them.

“I’d lek some hot chocolate, ma’am,” said Grummel, “If it weren’t be no trouble.”

“None at all!” she said, delighted. Hanna shook her head, and Neal said, “Some coffee, please.”

A minute later she brought them over. Grummel accepted his cuptube with grateful paws. “Thenk you ever’ so much, ma’am,” he said. Hanna scootched away from Grummel. In spite of the hot chocolate being in a sealed cuptube, she had faith in Grummel’s ability to spill it on her. Their magboots still helped them walk across the floor of the metal ship, but cups and liquids and other objects were free to float. The only gravity was a gentle force backwards as the engines continued to gradually increase speed. Nothing was as hard to clean up as a liquid spill in low gravity. It floated in every direction.

Mrs. Silver went around to the others in the lounge, bringing them drinks or snacks as they liked. Dr. Brut accepted a cup of hot tea, but Mirk refused anything. Then Mrs. Silver came back and to Neal’s delight, settled down by him, her short red hair curling slightly around her wrinkled, glowing face. She stared at the two monitors in obvious delight. “Where are we headed?” she asked.

“To Ceres,” said Neal. “It’s the largest asteroid. It’s like a small moon [ content ]. A trade space station orbits Ceres, connected to it by a long transit tube. We dock at the space station and off-load there in zero gravity, but usually we take the tube down to Ceres to visit my uncle’s sister and her family.”

“There’s a tube connecting the space station down to the asteroid!?” Mrs. Silver exclaimed.

Hanna’s eyes bobbed open for a moment and sank again. Grummel’s head had sunk back into the sofa, and his nose was pointed up. He wasn’t quite snoring yet though.

“Yes,” said Neal, trying to speak quietly and give Mrs. Silver the hint. “Even though Ceres is a [hundred times ]larger than Eros, it’s still just small marble next to even earth’s moon. It’s gravity isn’t very strong at all, about 1/200th of an Earth Gravity. With the space station far enough out orbiting Ceres, it’s perfectly balanced. The tube is only fifteen miles long from the station down to Ceres. You’ll have to see it!” he said excitedly and realized he’d spoken louder as well. He glanced over at Mirk, but Mirk was sitting with his back in a corner staring at his book. Neal cynically wondered if Mirk was staring at indecent pictures instead of doing his homework. It wouldn’t be the first time. Not that Neal had a perfect track record there either.

Mrs. Silver brought him back by putting her hand on his arm. “And what are you reading?”

Neal looked down at his Book. “Oh yeah, I’m reading about cells in my biology book.”

“Cells!” she said, excitedly. “Aren’t they beautiful! Aren’t they fascinating! Whole worlds in a tiny speck! Have you learned how they have whole factories, and let some molecules in, and communicate with each other, and defend themselves, and…!” she stopped and caught her breath. She had lifted her hands in the air.

“Oh, praise God for his great wisdom and goodness!” she exclaimed.

For the hundredth time Neal felt a little embarrassed, felt like crawling under the sofa in front of him. Several miners looked over at Mrs. Silver who didn’t seem to notice in the least. She closed her eyes and bowed her head and murmured quietly for a few moments. Then she turned back to Neal with sparkling eyes.
“Aren’t you so blessed to be able to study all about it!” she said.

Neal felt himself smiling in spite of himself. “Sure,” he said.

The trip would take almost two days. Over the first day, Neal and the others napped, ate light meals, played cards and told tall tales. Neal did finish his assignments in his science book and had even done most of his reading for literature, several chapters from the old novel “The Two Towers,” the second in an epic trilogy from the 20th century. He enjoyed it quite well and found himself truly lost in the strange wild place and its cultures and dangers. He read late into the night hours (night being a traditional measure of time leftover from the ancestors who lived on earth). Finally, yawning, he quietly opened one of the doors in the left wall and snuck in. Grummel’s giant form was curled up on a bottom bunk, and MacHardy asleep on the top bunk, which hung down dangerously under his weight. Neal turned to the other bunkbed. His uncle slept on the bottom, though he was on duty in the bridge currently. Neal climbed to the top, slid under the blanket, and immediately dropped into a deep sleep.

* * *

Clangings and flashing red lights woke Neal with a start. He sat up suddenly, banging his head on the low ceiling. “Ow!” he said, squinting his eyes at the throbbing red light on the bunk room wall. Below him he saw Grummel sleeping soundly. Across from him, MacHardy swung down from his bunk and hurried out of the room. Neal rolled over and slid off the bunk, padding out into the lounge in his socks.

Several miners were coming out of their bunk rooms, sleepily staring around. Hanna came out of her bunk room, followed by Mrs. Silver.

“What’s goin’ on here?” asked MacHardy, tersely.

He went to the bridge door and knocked on it.

Uncle John opened the sealed door a moment later and stepped out.

“We’ve got a problem,” he said.