Chapter 1
Evan laughed bitterly. "The harder we work on this thing, the more water it produces, if you count the sweat recycled by our space-suits."
"This thing" was an unlikely contraption designed to separate water from serpentine. Most of it used to be the spare fusion reactor, but they needed to produce hydrogen, not consume it.
They had survived on recycled water and personal stores for a week, then another on recycled water alone. This last week saw life support re-imagined as a means to milk every last drop of moisture from the air. All hands were confined to their space suits -- except for their hands. Fortunately space suits were designed for that contingency.
Specialist Evan Taylor, junior engineer of the AFS Nimbus, continued scraping bits of olivine from the reaction chamber of the machine as he groused at the Chief. "You sure made a mess in here. Wish we had a real chemist."
"The Chief", Chief Engineer Kalvin Bakke, was optimistic. "We got water, didn't we? Now it's no longer a chemistry problem -- it's an engineering problem."
He was wrong.
Captain Rainier was taking his turn at the "signal lamp", a makeshift array of salvaged ship's running lights, comm lasers, and a few weak intercom radios proudly dressed in improvised parabolic reflectors, focused toward where the navigator reckoned was the nearest gate. "S. O. S. Ship in distress on unknown asteroid requests assistance. S. O. S."
The act was perfunctory, as the "signal" for all its resourceful pretensions had almost no chance of getting through to anyone, but the Captain was giddy: "The radar transmitter," he thought to himself, "By God, the radar transmitter. Tomorrow the whole sector will hear us!"
As he worked the code key, each crude pulse a capacitance discharge rammed through overdriven amplifiers, spaceflies clustered 'round the flashing emissions. When they had first appeared, a few hours after one of the many modifications of the signal lamp, the crew feared the stupid creatures might dash themselves against it, their explosive bodies knocking it to pieces, but the spaceflies seemed more interested in the light itself than its source and eventually came to be taken as a good omen.
"Looks like our friends have sent another rescue party! Maybe we could train them, like those messenger-birds from Earth." His exec, Lieutenant Mabry, was always in high spirits, God bless him.
Captain Rainier chuckled. "If only."
Evan's fingers were raw as he completed reassembly of the water-machine. Finally he set about loading the bricks of serpentine, still not entirely believing they were full of water, and wondering whether another explosion would see him picking out bits of peridot embedded in the reactor walls. "At least this time it won't launch across the room when its insides explode."
The Chief had seen to that. The reactor chamber's array of pipe-fixtures that had rocketted it into the cargo bay wall were aimed at the ceiling this time -- the inevitable explosion would only push the reactor toward the floor, deeper into its cleverly-improvised cradle.
"Damn I wish we knew why it was doing that. We're supposed to get water, not explosive pockets of hydrogen and oxygen. If that's what's causing the explosions, I mean."
Evan shrugged. "As long as we're getting water in the end. I think we're ready here, boss."
The Chief called the captain. "Cap'n, we're ready down here."
Mabry and Rainier exchanged a quiet look before Mabry took over at the telegraph key.
Chapter 2
"We are ... We are ... We are scanned by ... We are scan ... We are scan ... We are scanned by ... We are ... We are ... We are scanned by Unknown Object"
There it was again. "Stupid computer." Some weird radio source was fooling it into thinking the ship was being scanned. Solar flares? A quasar? Oh, of course, it could only be a supernova! One thing it couldn't be was a ship. There wasn't another ship within 100 klicks. "Stupid computer."
The cargo pilot's computer dutifully noted the "scans" in its log. If it had parsed the timestamps in a particular way it might have recognized 3 dots, 3 dashes, and 3 dots, a call for help more ancient than known history, but computers don't use that particular kind of binary. It would be months before a maintenance tech would review the logs, curious about the unusual scans, gasp at the realization of what he was seeing, and connect the log entries with recent news of certain astounding events concerning the AFS Nimbus. A few months earlier and he might have been famous.
Chapter 3
The new beacon was lighting up the sky. The spaceflies danced in wild abandon, giddy from all the megawatts of radiation on a smorgasbord of frequencies. The crew was in similar spirits as the quantum tube beneath the dish flashed and hummed and, thanks to the spaceflies, they could see every pulse of the old Morse code echoed in the flashing of the strange creatures. They were proof that the signal was there, proof the signal was a strong one, proof the signal could register even upon the implacable Universe itself. If a bunch of bugs could appreciate it, surely people couldn't be far behind!
The fusion reactor was running reliably as ever and had plenty of deuterium.
The water machine was pumping out water as fast as the crew could supply it with hydrous silicanates mined from the 'roid. People were actually showering, and the hated space suits were back on the rack where they belonged.
Even the venerable Morse Code Key had been re-usurped by something closer to modern. The Chief had managed to breadboard a repeater circuit -- nothing fancy, just "S.O.S." -- and an alarm rigged to the radio receiver, so that the Captain would know of an incoming signal and not spend his time hovering over the radioes.
All that was really left was to tend to morale and wait to be rescued.
Life support was gobbling up way too much power, but without the ship's computer there was no easy way to know that. The CO2 condenser in particular ran constantly, but all the overworked Spc Taylor could know was that it was running. "CO2 condenser. Check." He had perhaps two thousand items on his checklist, as all the ship's engineers save himself and Chief Bakke were dead.
The Voyage of a Lifetime
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The Voyage of a Lifetime
Last edited by Aye Capn on Sat, 18. Jun 05, 23:41, edited 2 times in total.
Good grief! Now I know why sci fi writers avoid survival stories: they can't help but devolve into technobabble.
Real survival stories of course evolve through real technological resourcefulness. The pilot steers with the engine throttles. The ship's carpenter builds a new rudder out of a spar and some planking. Gasoline from the fuel tanks is used as a signal flare.
It just doesn't encode easily into believable science fiction.
Ahh, well. The foci of this story are 2 primary man-versus-nature conflicts, one a race against time and the other a lever for a gimmicky denoumont, and since I know the ending I don't actually need to write it down, and doing so would be a major pain ... but ... if any of you wants to know what happens tell me and I'll finish the story. Eventually.
Real survival stories of course evolve through real technological resourcefulness. The pilot steers with the engine throttles. The ship's carpenter builds a new rudder out of a spar and some planking. Gasoline from the fuel tanks is used as a signal flare.
It just doesn't encode easily into believable science fiction.
Ahh, well. The foci of this story are 2 primary man-versus-nature conflicts, one a race against time and the other a lever for a gimmicky denoumont, and since I know the ending I don't actually need to write it down, and doing so would be a major pain ... but ... if any of you wants to know what happens tell me and I'll finish the story. Eventually.
Good read! Reads kinda 'tidy'. Though, they must be absolute geniuses to get crystal water from Serpentine, even though it is considered 'wet mineral' by geologists. Unless you are referring to water inbetween the sheets of aggregates, which would raise the question of where water comes from on the asteroid 
Looking forward to the next part.
Looking forward to the next part.
Dealing with the question, "Where does hydrogen come from on a low-gravity body?" (which is really the crux of the water problem) was indeed a doozy, and the only thing I could find was serpentine. Apparently there are at least some asteroids that contain it, and as far as I can tell that's the only place you're ever going to get either hydrogen or water.
(Incidentally, the deuterium supply represents a water source, but what bunch of idiots would drink up the reactor fuel?)
Getting the water out of the silicon is the easy part. I'm taking the position that a fusion reaction vessel is nigh indestructible and could withstand the geological forces necessary to squeeze water from hydrous silicanates as easily as a scuba tank might contain the air pressure of a birthday party balloon.
How the Chief rigged the device to produce the requisite heat and pressure is classified, but he's almost certainly generating the considerable power necessary to drive it from the working fusion reactor.
The biggest hole in the plot is fusion power itself. In a universe where it costs a thousand energy cells to grill a few steaks, why would they not use fusion power if they knew how to harness it?
On the other hand, space ships maintain life support and propulsion over vast distances without any noticeable fuel consumption.
For the sake of my story I'm going to assume those must be some awfully well-cooked steaks.
(Incidentally, the deuterium supply represents a water source, but what bunch of idiots would drink up the reactor fuel?)
Getting the water out of the silicon is the easy part. I'm taking the position that a fusion reaction vessel is nigh indestructible and could withstand the geological forces necessary to squeeze water from hydrous silicanates as easily as a scuba tank might contain the air pressure of a birthday party balloon.
How the Chief rigged the device to produce the requisite heat and pressure is classified, but he's almost certainly generating the considerable power necessary to drive it from the working fusion reactor.
The biggest hole in the plot is fusion power itself. In a universe where it costs a thousand energy cells to grill a few steaks, why would they not use fusion power if they knew how to harness it?
On the other hand, space ships maintain life support and propulsion over vast distances without any noticeable fuel consumption.
For the sake of my story I'm going to assume those must be some awfully well-cooked steaks.
What I was on about wasn.t actually how to get hydrogen out of the minerals, which will be difficult enough. It was more that even such a hydrous mineral contains hydrogen only in so tiny amounts that you'd probably have to extract it from the entire asteroid and still only get half a glass That is the geologist in me speaking. Still, don't worry about it too much, it is a clever thought!
That is the geologist in me speaking. Still, don't worry about it too much, it is a clever thought!
interesting story, must admit I skipped most of the comments and replies as i dont even have a clue what serpentine is! 
Dont fret about being overly accurate with science as most everyone is as ignorant as I about such things. Fiction is more concerned about how the people deal with the circumstances, how they interact with each other, whether they all suffer cabin fever etc. THats where you will find the interest. People love triumph/failure against adversity rather than perhaps the technical means, though adding the sciency bits willl make you look clever!
Dont fret about being overly accurate with science as most everyone is as ignorant as I about such things. Fiction is more concerned about how the people deal with the circumstances, how they interact with each other, whether they all suffer cabin fever etc. THats where you will find the interest. People love triumph/failure against adversity rather than perhaps the technical means, though adding the sciency bits willl make you look clever!
The glowering Split screamed, "You die now!" and unlimbered a giant weapon, a cross between an AIRE and a bayonet.
"You first," quipped Ferret as he squeezed the trigger on his own blaster, hidden in his sleeve for just such emergencies.
(Yeah, I can see why we stay away from advanced science topics in science fiction. The above took about 15 seconds and zero research. Still, I started a survival story, that's what I'll have to finish.)
"You first," quipped Ferret as he squeezed the trigger on his own blaster, hidden in his sleeve for just such emergencies.
(Yeah, I can see why we stay away from advanced science topics in science fiction. The above took about 15 seconds and zero research. Still, I started a survival story, that's what I'll have to finish.)