weapon.”
“I believe I have an idea of what you mean,” the General said after a moment.”But you may only have me for a short time.”
“What?” Maddie looked concerned. “Don’t tell me the Odin is headed for a crash?”
“ Nein , nothing so dramatic, I am afraid.” General Hohenheim gestured to the ship around him. “The Odin is too damaged to work forever. In particular…she is leaking. In a few weeks—maybe a few months—there will be no air left on her that I can breathe.”
Chapter 7.
“We have to rescue the General.” Horst Eberhart said the words emphatically, ending with a challenging glance at A.J.
“Damn right we rescue him,” A.J. responded. At Horst’s raised eyebrow, he continued, “Yeah, I raised the necessary question about the funeral, but that was about people we couldn’t help any more. If it weren’t for the General, none of you people would’ve gotten off Odin —or if you did, Fitzgerald would’ve been on board. I can’t see any way that could’ve worked out well.” And that’s an understatement. That guy was someone who worried Madeline Fathom , and he damn near got everyone on both ships killed. “So we all owe him big, since we’d never have landed alive without you people. We can’t just let him drift out there and die if there’s anything we can do about it.”
“But… is there anything we can do about it?” Joe Buckley asked, reluctantly. “We’re just starting to figure out how to save ourselves.”
“I think there is,” Larry Conley answered. He brought up a diagram of the inner Jovian system. “Here’s big daddy Jupiter and his big kids Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Odin was originally scheduled for a grand finale hard landing on Io, but the General pulled off a genuine miracle and managed to shift his orbit to avoid that. The combination of his shift and the encounter with Io put him into this orbit.”
A.J. watched as the dot representing Odin cycled through an obviously elongated orbit while the Galilean moons performed their effectively circular orbits around Jupiter. “He’s orbiting between Io and Europa!”
“Exactly, and that’s what gives us an excellent chance, if we can get everything working soon enough.” Larry paused the animation. “Here, he’s at maximum distance from Jupiter, and just a tiny bit outside Europa’s own orbit. Here, he’s at his closest, almost exactly on Io’s orbit. Relative to us, he’ll go through periods where he’s really going quite slow, comparatively speaking. If we can rendezvous with Odin at those times, we can transfer people or equipment pretty easily without crowding Munin ’s safety margin.”
“Right,” Dr. Masters said, “but I think the earlier bit there is the sticky one. If we can get everything working soon enough. Can we? The General said that he could be out of air in a few weeks.”
A.J. opened his mouth but it was Mia Svendsen who spoke first. “General Hohenheim’s managed some miracles so far, but he isn’t an engineer. I would be very surprised if the engineers we have here can’t give him some better guidance to stretch out his survival. Dr. Baker—”
“Call me A.J., please,” he said reflexively. I’m not quite as bothered by the title I haven’t really earned as I used to be. But habit stays with you.
“A.J., then. A.J., would any of your Faerie Dust still be operative on Odin ?”
“Yes,” he answered promptly. “I was going to say something about that just a minute ago. I’d concentrated a lot of the Dust into the control systems of the neo-NERVA drive and the drive spines—as you know. Some of it got lost in the disaster, but once we started talking to Odin I was able to focus some comm lasers on it and then use both Munin and Nebula Storm ’s RF antennas to pick up some pings back from the Dust. Problem is that in all the hash of interference Jupiter likes to throw out, it’s really hard to get anything decent out of the things at this
“I believe I have an idea of what you mean,” the General said after a moment.”But you may only have me for a short time.”
“What?” Maddie looked concerned. “Don’t tell me the Odin is headed for a crash?”
“ Nein , nothing so dramatic, I am afraid.” General Hohenheim gestured to the ship around him. “The Odin is too damaged to work forever. In particular…she is leaking. In a few weeks—maybe a few months—there will be no air left on her that I can breathe.”
Chapter 7.
“We have to rescue the General.” Horst Eberhart said the words emphatically, ending with a challenging glance at A.J.
“Damn right we rescue him,” A.J. responded. At Horst’s raised eyebrow, he continued, “Yeah, I raised the necessary question about the funeral, but that was about people we couldn’t help any more. If it weren’t for the General, none of you people would’ve gotten off Odin —or if you did, Fitzgerald would’ve been on board. I can’t see any way that could’ve worked out well.” And that’s an understatement. That guy was someone who worried Madeline Fathom , and he damn near got everyone on both ships killed. “So we all owe him big, since we’d never have landed alive without you people. We can’t just let him drift out there and die if there’s anything we can do about it.”
“But… is there anything we can do about it?” Joe Buckley asked, reluctantly. “We’re just starting to figure out how to save ourselves.”
“I think there is,” Larry Conley answered. He brought up a diagram of the inner Jovian system. “Here’s big daddy Jupiter and his big kids Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Odin was originally scheduled for a grand finale hard landing on Io, but the General pulled off a genuine miracle and managed to shift his orbit to avoid that. The combination of his shift and the encounter with Io put him into this orbit.”
A.J. watched as the dot representing Odin cycled through an obviously elongated orbit while the Galilean moons performed their effectively circular orbits around Jupiter. “He’s orbiting between Io and Europa!”
“Exactly, and that’s what gives us an excellent chance, if we can get everything working soon enough.” Larry paused the animation. “Here, he’s at maximum distance from Jupiter, and just a tiny bit outside Europa’s own orbit. Here, he’s at his closest, almost exactly on Io’s orbit. Relative to us, he’ll go through periods where he’s really going quite slow, comparatively speaking. If we can rendezvous with Odin at those times, we can transfer people or equipment pretty easily without crowding Munin ’s safety margin.”
“Right,” Dr. Masters said, “but I think the earlier bit there is the sticky one. If we can get everything working soon enough. Can we? The General said that he could be out of air in a few weeks.”
A.J. opened his mouth but it was Mia Svendsen who spoke first. “General Hohenheim’s managed some miracles so far, but he isn’t an engineer. I would be very surprised if the engineers we have here can’t give him some better guidance to stretch out his survival. Dr. Baker—”
“Call me A.J., please,” he said reflexively. I’m not quite as bothered by the title I haven’t really earned as I used to be. But habit stays with you.
“A.J., then. A.J., would any of your Faerie Dust still be operative on Odin ?”
“Yes,” he answered promptly. “I was going to say something about that just a minute ago. I’d concentrated a lot of the Dust into the control systems of the neo-NERVA drive and the drive spines—as you know. Some of it got lost in the disaster, but once we started talking to Odin I was able to focus some comm lasers on it and then use both Munin and Nebula Storm ’s RF antennas to pick up some pings back from the Dust. Problem is that in all the hash of interference Jupiter likes to throw out, it’s really hard to get anything decent out of the things at this
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