24 Billion and counting

Chapter 19 The first manned landing on a comet

Chapter 19

The comet now filled a quarter of our sky. We were due to rendezvous with it next day. There were five separate bodies in the head, the leading one roughly a seven by five by five kilometer rhomboidal shape, with a fissure or deep valley in it, and the remaining four progressing in roughly thirty percent steps smaller, strung out over a thousand kilometres. I would have expected the head to be one major item or cluster held together with ice, but the comet had been disrupted by some encounter.

It was a magnificent object. The solid bodies reflected blue white and green from jumbled facets of the ammonia methane and water ices that formed their surfaces, and glittered in the sunlight as they slowly tumbled. As the surfaces on the day side heated, bursts of gas and vapour and solid particles would join the halo around the comet and then stream to the million mile long curved faintly orange hued tails that the sunlight illuminated, pointing away from the sun in a fading haze. The sun's radiation also ionised gases which formed a violet tinged white straight tail from each body.

It was going to be difficult to ensure that the casket stayed on the leading body. The gravity was so low I could visualise it bouncing off the rotating body back into space.

"It's a beautiful awesome thing isn't it," said Becky.

"Yes and frightening, because I'm going to have to land on it to place the casket, and somehow anchor it. Any ideas?"

"It's back to bed again, use a bunk frame. I'd put it in the valley, nearest the centre of rotation. And if you're going to land I'm coming with you."

"No, Becky it's senseless exposing both of us. Besides we'll take a quarter of an hour longer to get away if we both have to change suits."

"If you're going to make a manned landing on a comet for the first time ever, then there's going to be a woman as well, and I'm going to get it on camera. Let me have no arguments Lewis. That's final."

I dismantled a bedframe and made some pointed stakes with holes in the blunt end, and together with coils of rope, and an inertia hammer secured them in the tender.

Mitch announced, " I am going to turn the ship around using the attitude jets to orient it for the deceleration burn. It will take 11 hours 37 minutes."

It was now the last night before comet-fall. Becky and Mitch had been exchanging information and thinking about our questions regarding the mission, and Becky and I were together at the desk.

Mitch said, "I need to calculate another probability run, but you now have brought into the picture so many variables and institutions and societal and human influences that a run takes a few hours to complete, so I cannot tell you until tomorrow. On another matter I detect from my body a faint radio signal from Mars, but it does not seem to be accessible to the transceiver. I have tried tuning it with no success. I would be grateful if one of you would take out the cards and put them through my diagnostic system in case there is a fault."

"You do that my love," said Becky, "It's my turn to cook."

I removed the cover of the transceiver cubicle, and one by one I put the cards into Mitch's reader. When we reached the frequency oscillator he said, "No wonder we could not receive Mars. This is so far out of alignment that it is set for a frequency above any used by the expedition. How could that happen?"

"Was it your manipulation of the magnetic fields in the ship?"

"I fear that is possible. I am so sorry Lewis."

"Apologies are no longer necessary - that's old ground. Have we a spare card or can we repair it or re-trim it?"

"The inventory shows one spare card, but it is held in spare position 46, in the same cubicle. To forestall disappointment it may have suffered the same damage. But we can test it."