Amir had started obsessing over the fuel reserve levels. It was only a few days until it would be time for him to go back into stasis and turn the duty shift over to a different officer. It was not something he was looking forward to. If the fuel reserves did turn out to be insufficient, it would be a sleep that he would never wake up from.
The fuel was needed in order to slow the fleet down enough to enter orbit around the Alpha Centauri planet. If they hit the atmosphere too fast, they would either burn up or bounce right off the atmosphere. One of the things Koeh had been talking about was using the gas giant in the Alpha Centauri system for aerobraking to conserve fuel. All they would need to do it adjust their course slightly in order to pass through the atmosphere of the gas giant. If they did it right, it would lower their velocity enough that they could use their remaining fuel to complete their descent to the planet.
Her idea was sound and would have worked if not for the problems they had found aboard the Armstrong and the Fadlan. They found microfractures in some of the hull strutting. Normally it would not have been a big deal, but the stresses the hulls would see doing an aerobraking maneuver could lead to failure.
Amir had been spending almost every waking moment rerunning the calculations, taking into account different attack angles, different lengths of burn before and after the aerobraking, anything to bring the stress on the hulls down to within a margin of safety everyone would be able to live with. He had even considered shuttling some extra fuel to the Armstrong and Fadlan so that they might be able to slow sufficiently without the risky aerobraking procedure.
The more he thought about stasis, the harder he pushed himself doing the calculations. More and more the stasis pods were looking like coffins and he wasn’t eager to put his life in the hands of those scheduled to take his place on the duty shift while he waited in his coffin. There was the chance that in the future mankind would be able to travel fast enough to catch up with what would be his funeral barge and recover him. That is if the life support operated that long. He almost envied his friend Vontae. He did not have weeks to think about his demise or laying down in a stasis pod while the hatch was closed and drifting off to a sleep that he may never wake up from.
Suah entered the bridge where Amir was running through his latest simulation. “You figure that thing out yet?”
Amir was not usually one to back down from a debate, but anything that distracted him from his calculations he was starting to hate. “I still can’t find the proper parameters that will get us all there in one piece.”
“Ever consider there are no parameters that will get us all there?” Suah asked.
“I’ll leave those considerations to the next shift. While I’m here I’m going to find a way for us to all make it.”
Suah pulled himself into the seat next to Amir. “You usually have everything figured out don’t you. You are the guy with all the answers. Now you’re stuck on something that has no answers. Sure you may discover a way to do it with just enough fuel, but then another propulsion cooler goes out and we have to make an unexpected maint-ship run to fix it. Now you’re back to square one.”
Amir just shook his head without looking at him.
“Don’t just shake your head at me, you’ve got to be a realist here. Look, we’ve already had three of those things go down in the past week. Every time we have one of those unexpected maintenance items, our reserve gets lower,” Suah said.
“Are you just here to distract me with your pessimism?” Amir asked.
“It’s not pessimism, I’m trying to do you a favor,” Suah said. “You have what? Three days until you go in the sleep tank? I’m trying to get you to use your time wisely. You’ve been cooped up in here for almost a week straight.”
Before Amir could respond, they both saw the comm board light up. It was an all hands broadcast. Suah reached over and toggled the speaker on. “Attention! Casualty on the Drake. Repeat, causalty on the Drake. There is a cascade failure of the propulsion discharge manifold. Amundsen and Tenzing launch maint-ships to assist. Koeh out.”
For the next several hours Amir and Suah listened to the updates. They did not speak to one another, each lost in his own thoughts. Even the calculations had been abandoned. Amir was starting to see that at the rate they were going through the reserves, there would be no chance of all of them making it to their destination.
Eventually Amir dozed off. He slept fitfully, but his dreams were vivid. Every time he half awoke to hear the latest progress, he would fall asleep back into the same dream. In the dream he was with Vontae. They were in a canoe and they were towing what seemed to Amir to be tiny stasis pods. They kept coming upon logs in the water and whenever Vontae would steer the canoe around them, they would turn into crocodiles and eat one of the stasis pods. The logs would come closer and closer together so that the loss of stasis pods was increasing almost logarithmically. But no matter how many were taken, the number didn’t really seem to diminish; there were always more than Amir could count.
Finally, in Amir’s dream, Vontae stood up in the nose of the canoe, put his two fingers in his mouth and whistled. There was a sudden rustling as with reeds at the side of the river and suddenly the water ahead of them was filled with hippos. They were snatching the logs up in their jaws and shattering them into kindling. Soon the top of the water was floating with so many match-sized pieces that the hippos looked like fruits sitting in wicker baskets. As the canoe they were riding in came even with the hippos, Amir realized that they actually were fruits. Vontae reached out with his hand and snatched up a handful and grapes and offered them to Amir.
Then Amir awoke. Suah was no longer on the bridge with him and he saw a blinking light on his console. The light signified that someone was calling the Battuta directly. At first he was thinking that Captain Koeh wanted his assistance in the casualty recovery, but then he remembered that they were missing their maint-ship. Hey toggled the switch. “Amir.”
“Amir, this is Vontae,” the voice said.
Amir was startled so much that he launched himself out of his chair in zero gees and hit his head on the overhead console. He immediately thought that he must still be dreaming, but them realized his head wouldn’t hurt as much as it did if that were the case. He checked his sensors and discovered something about two light seconds ahead of the Colony Two formation. “Say again,” he said.
“Amir, It’s me. I’m alive,” the voice said. “I was rescued by people from the Tau Ceti star system. I’m on their ship now.”
Amir yelled out in exultation. “I can’t believe it man, you’re alive!”
“Amir, I need you to get the duty officers in on a conference call. I also…”
“Wait, now is not a very good time for that,” Amir cut him off. “We’ve got a casualty situation on the Drake. A third of the fleet is busy trying to get it resolved.”
“Wow, okay,” Vontae said. “Well, I need to dock the Tau Cetian ship into the Battuta launch bay. Can you arrange that?”
Before Amir could answer, Suah came onto the bridge. “Everything all right? I heard you yell.”
“I’ve got Vontae on the line, he was rescued by aliens from Tau Ceti,” Amir jumbled through the words.
“No kidding? Hey Vontae, are you out there or has Amir finally cracked?” he said to the air.
“I’m here and I need to land in your launch bay, am I a go?” Vontae’s voice asked.
“You sure are,” Suah said. “I’ll get the bay ready.” With that he left the bridge and headed to the launch bay.
“Amir, I’ve got a few new friends I want you to meet. I’ve been to their world and it’s amazing. I can’t wait to fill you in on what I’ve been doing,” Vontae’ voice said.
It took a few moments for that to register with Amir. “Wait, you’re telling me that I’ll be the second man to ever really meet an alien face to face?” An idea started forming in Amir’s head that he was safe now. The casualty on the Drake had seemed to all but seal their fate. With the Drake’s engines inoperable and the reserve fuel of the fleet spent in trying to repair them, there was no way they were going to be able to make it to their destination. Now with Vontae miraculously appearing with help, his worries had vanished. It was as if a great, grinding weight was lifted off his soul and a dark cloth lifted from his mind. All would be well.
