Adventures In Human Space: The Grand Tour and Beyond, Vol. 2

By Sandy Sandfort

The Belt is not Utopia, far from it. Like any frontier, there are good people, bad people and people that make mistakes. It happens. Formal and informal justice are emergent qualities in every societies, even different flavors of anarchy. In this collection, you will see that the Belt is no different. Come with us to visit Mars, Venus and Mercury to see how different societies use different means to achieve the similar end. Be prepared to experience the Eden that is... Mercury. Finally, see how Belters deal with war and rumors of war. you will be surprised.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Sandy Sandfort
• Release date: Mar 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310743450

Sandy Sandfort

I was conceived in Liberty... really, Liberty, Missouri, that is. For better or worse, I spent my formative years in that sleepy suburb of Kansas City. My parents were iconoclasts and took pride in being different from the common herd, an attitude I adopted and maintain to this day. My father's inquisitive and thoughtful nature were enormously influential in my life.Early on, I loved my TV western heroes--Roy Rogers, Hopalong Cassidy, Cisco and Poncho. Then I discovered Tom Corbett--Space Cadet, Space Patrol, Rocky Jones--Space Ranger, et alia. And at age 7, I was radicalized by Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. So, I turned in my six-guns, strapped on a blaster and cavorted around the neighborhood with my brother in the spacesuits that my mother and father had crafted for us. During my teenage years, I survived on books by such authors as Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Poul Anderson and especially Robert A. Heinlein who was also reared in the Kansas City area. It has been science fiction ever since.Went to school, got a BA, then returned to school and got my JD. I worked as a lawyer, discovered I really did not care for the law and went to California to work on a magazine called, FREEDOM TODAY. That is where I did my first serious non-fiction writing. Later that was followed by writing for such publications as MONDO 2000, WIRED, REASON, SOLDIER OF FORTUNE, MALAYSIA TATLER and the LA TIMES.In 2007, I attended the ROBERT A. HEINLEIN CENTENNIAL in Kansas City, where my short story "World Ceres" was one of the winners in the Centennial short story contest. Later, Big Head Press (http://www.bigheadpress.com/) ran a highly rated webcomic adapted from a series of short stories I wrote that were derived from "Ceres." That series of short stories, ADVENTURES IN HUMAN SPACE are available right here on Smashwords. See below. More stories in this series are in the works, as are other fiction and non-fiction stories and books. To get on my email notification list, please send an email to [e-mail] with "List" in the subject line.Sandy Sandfort

Book preview

Adventures In Human Space

The Grand Tour and Beyond

Vol. 2

Sandy Sandfort

Copyright Sandy Sandfort 2014

This entire work is copyright and released under a Creative Commons U.S. Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/us/). Some Rights Reserved.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. Please do not resell or give away copies. If you have friends whom you think would enjoy this book, please suggest they download a free preview before they buy. Thank You!

Foreword

You may be reading this book because you are a fan of Escape From Terra, (EFT) my very popular webcomic featured on the Big Head Press website. If you are not familiar with Big Head, check it out.

EFT was adapted from the stories in the Adventures in Human Space (AHS) series. Instead, others of you may have read Adventures in Human Space: The Belt and Beyond Vol. 1 (AHS-1).

Each medium—prose and graphic—has its own special ability to tell a story. If you like the stories in this volume, I suggest you see how they look as a graphic interpretation.

The history of AHS/EFT goes back to the summer of 2007, when I attended the Robert A. Heinlein Centennial celebration. One of the events was a short story writing contest. I didn't win or place, but I did show with my short story, World Ceres. The second story in AHS-I was a slightly different version of that original short story. Big Head Press liked World Ceres and asked me if I could make it into a series. I did and the rest is history. Enjoy!

Sandy Sandfort

Contents

Foreword

Leap of Faith

Trial and Error

The King and I: Ceres

The Christmas War

The King and I: Mars

The King and I: Venus

The King and I: Mercury

Error and Trial

Code Duello

Campout

Afterword

About Sandy Sandfort

Other Books by Sandy Sandfort

Leap of Faith

Bert, tell me again; why are we out here on this stupid rock? Ernie asked.

Bert stopped working and forced himself to be patient. Because, Ernie, Reggie is paying us good money to check out this mascon he identified when he recently surveyed this planetoid; AKA, 243 Ida; AKA, 'this stupid rock.'. We're here to do the heavy lifting. This is a great gig, Ernie. If it turns out to be anything valuable, our third plus what he is already paying us amounts to quite a pretty penny. We have no downside and some amazing upsides.

How amazing?

Well let's do the math. The scans tell us the mascon weighs in at about 200 kilos. Its specific gravity is at least 18. This means it must be a fairly pure chunk of, Bert ticked off each item on his fingers, osmium, iridium, platinum, plutonium, gold or tungsten. If it is gold or platinum, we'll make way more money than we have ever have. Osmium or iridium would yield 20-33 percent of that, but still a really nice haul. If it turns out to be plutonium though, Katie bar the door! We could buy our own moon.

What if it's tungsten? What's that do for us?

Well, Bert paused a moment, in that case, Reggie takes a financial bath, but we will come out ahead enough fix up some things around office and buy a few rounds at Callahan's.

That's quite a gap between tungsten and plutonium. How likely are we to find each of the possible metals?

Sorry Ernie, most plutonium today is a byproduct of nuclear reactions in old fashioned fission reactors. Only trace amounts are found in nature. It's possible, but really, really unlikely. Tungsten isn't all that common, but it's cheap. There isn't much chance of gold, either. So it's most likely osmium, iridium or platinum. So we are probably going to do pretty well or maybe really well. I like the odds. Anyway, this shaft isn't going to dig itself. Help me reset the bore head and reposition the mass driver.

Do we really need the mass driver?

You tell me, Bert challenged. We have to dig through 50 to 100 meters of regolith. The material from the shaft has to go somewhere. The bore will throw it out of the shaft, but unless it is traveling faster than Ida's 17.76 meter per beat escape velocity, it's going to fall back eventually and bean us. The mass driver tosses the rubble away at over 30 meters per beat. It won't be coming back.

Well Bert, I say let's reset the bore tomorrow. I want to call it a day and fly back to Dactyl. I'm bushed and I'm feeling homesick for cave, sweet cave.

* * *

Dactyl, a small moon, orbits the much larger planetoid, 243 Ida. Dactyl is rotationally locked to its orbital period around Ida, So one side always faces Ida. The cave-like structure facing Ida, proved to be an ideal place to park Reggie's ship, Little Toot. The cave was excellent protection from radiation and the occasional meteor impact. The dramatic and ever-changing view of Ida was a welcome aesthetic bonus.

* * *

Bert nodded agreement and he and Ernie boarded their ship's utility shuttle and started on their 86 kilometer flight to Dactyl. While working on Ida, the boys communicated via radio. The reason was simple, radio can be triangulated, tanglenet cannot. Standard environment suits feature multi-directional antennas, which imitate the way we naturally determine direction. So Bert could know, without looking, that Ernie was behind him and slightly to the left, without looking. Even a rough idea of Ernie's distance could be determined by the loudness of his signal from his low power radio. Great for teamwork coordination, not great for privacy. Unknown to them, Bert and Ernie's every word about the potential value of the mascon was heard by unfriendly third-parties.

* * *

In the Belt, day and night are arbitrary concepts. Bert and Ernie synched to Martian VMT (Valles Marineris Time), which is pretty much universal throughout the Belt. So 33 centimes (a little over eight Terran hours) later, the brothers were back again on final approach to the mine site.

Hole, sweet hole, muttered Ernie.

Don't be cynical, Ernie. Either that 'hole' is going to make us a little money or more likely, a lot of money. We can't lose. What could go wrong?

Yeah, the sooner we dig out that mascon, the sooner we find out just how rich we are... and the sooner we can go home.

Bert replied with a very bad imitation of John Wayne, Yup, let's get going. We're burning daylight, pilgrim.

Ernie groaned and pointed out the obvious, Uh Bert, I think we have more than enough daylight to burn. Bert nodded and they set to work.

* * *

Okay, Bert, we've been at this for over 40 centimes. I'm bushed. According to the scan, we still have a coupla-three meters to go, before we become rich beyond our wildest dreams...

Bert interrupted, I don't know Ernie. My wildest dreams are very wild.

Anyway I was saying, let's knock off, get a good night's sleep and get fabulously rich tomorrow.

Okay, suits me.

With that the brothers jetpacked their way out of the mascon's crater and around the curvature of planetoid to where their shuttle was parked... Only, it wasn't parked there now. It was gone.

Son-of-a-... Bert started.

... bitch, Ernie finished.

Before Bert could start grilling him about the quality of his tie-down, Ernie quickly defended himself. I drove in the tie-down stakes and attached the lines. He reached and picked up one of the blue lines and examined it. Bert, the stakes are solid and this line was not broken. Somebody cut it.

Bert also looked around the surface for a moment, then pointed. Check this boot print, Ernie. It looks like the straight tread pattern on those crappy, cheap environment suits they rent and sell to the Beanies.

* * *

The derogatory slang term Beanie was used for both tyros and tourists. It was a reference to the Official Belter Beanies sold in tourist shops in every community in the Belt. It's an ongoing source of amusement for Belters, who never, of course, would wear them. However, everyone plays along with the gag, until the buyer figures out he is the butt of a belt-wide practical joke.

* * *

Anger quickly gave way to thoughtful, focused concern. Okay Ernie, this was not a simple crime of opportunity. Space is too big. We were followed.

Ernie jumped in, You know, a newbie Belter I didn't recognize, asked me if we were going on a 'treasure hunt.' I said, 'No, where did you hear that?' He just said, 'Around' and wouldn't elaborate. I think somewhere between our renting the mining equipment and gossipy speculation, somebody decided to follow us here and jump our claim.

And, oh yeah, kill us in the process, Bert added sarcastically. Okay, so what have we got going for us? For starters, they didn't kill us outright, but they might as well have. Our suit recyclers can keep us alive for several days before we run out of power. Then we freeze to death right here in the sunlight.

Yes, then they just mosey on back, step over our frozen corpses and proceed to drill out the mascon and abscond. Hell, if they play their cards right, they can sell Reggie's ship to someone who doesn't ask too many questions.

Right, Bert said, but as interesting as this speculation is, I think we need to return to my question. What have we got going for us? I guess we could tanglenet a distress call and hope someone can get to us before...

Uh, Bert? You left your comm in the shuttle's console...

Oh yeah, that's right. Okay, so where's yours?

A sheepish look pass over Ernie's face before he answered, Right here, he patted his environment suit, in my vest pocket inside my suit. It might as well be on Pluto.

Tell me you have your blue tooth on?

Nope, it's right here too, again Ernie patted his suit over the pocket. Brother, if we get out of this alive, I guarantee am going to upgrade my ock with a built-in tanglenet comm. He was referring to his occipital computer, a rudimentary AI within the occipital bone at the back of his skull.

Alright then, is the shuttle set to respond to voice commands? Maybe our suit radios can still reach her.

She is, answered Ernie, but I just tried to ping her. Nada. Either she is out of range or the bad guys have closed the channel. Geez, talk about being fucked and far from home.

Burt seemed to stare inwardly for a minute. "So, we are, stranded on Ida, millions of kilometers from home, we can't call for help and the shuttle has already left the station. Little Toot could be half way to Vesta by now."

No, she's not, Ernie interjected.

She's not what?

"Little Toot is still right there, Bert. I can see it with my optical enhancements. I have them set to telescopic magnification. I can also see our shuttle, another shuttle and a piece of junk prospector ship. You know, Bert, you really have to get yourself more enhanced. At least get an ock. It'll be a lot smarter. No, those guys aren't leaving anytime soon. They are going to sit in our little cave, breath our air and eat our lunch. In a few days, they'll be back to grab the mascon. Now if we could just..."

Get to Dactyl? Bert finished Ernie's thought. So how could we do that...

Our jetpacks?

Nope, too slow, not enough fuel to stop at the other end...

Even if just one of us used both packs? Ernie was grasping at straws.

"Sorry Ernie, 'too slow' means that even if there were enough fuel—which there isn't—the packs have such a measly delta-v, it would take a decaday or more to get there and that's less time than we have. So what are we missing?"

Both men fell silent, inwardly searching for some shred of hope. It was not looking good.

Hey Bert! How about you shoot me to Dactyl with the mass driver?

Bert sighed, then explained, "One, the delta-v needed to launch you all the way would crush you. Two, your center of gravity would probably change under acceleration, which would throw you off course, even it were possible to plot a trajectory. Three..."

I can compute the trajectory.

Cannot!

Can so! Listen Bert, my ock and optical enhancements can measure all parameters and give us a ballistic solution, no sweat. No kidding Bert, you really have to get enhanced.

Three, Burt plowed on, Same as the jetpack. How are you going to stop at the other end?

Very rapidly, I guess. Ernie paused for a second. "If I live through the initial impact, the autodoc on board Little Toot could probably fix me up."

So you crawl your shattered body—that's assuming you don't just fly right past Dactyl—so you crawl to the ship, beat up the bad guys and jump in the doc. Is that the idea? Great plan, Ernie.

Unless you can come up with a better one, Ernie said seriously, it's the best play we have. So have you got a better plan?

Not yet, Bert admitted.

Both men fell silent. Bert was all but motionless, while Ernie was fidgeting. These had been their characteristic ways of responding to stress since childhood. Bert sighed again and Ernie picked up a sizable chunk of regolith tossed it slowly hand to hand.

Without warning, Ernie's temper flared. Damn it, Bert. How can Belters do this to other Belters? That is not the way we do things out here.

There are bad people everywhere, Ernie, even in the Belt. But what can we do about that?

I know what I'd do, if I had those bastards here right now. I would bash their brains out with this rock. At which point he hurled the stone at a nearby pile of rubble, with all his might. The pile was knocked away by the impact.

Bert looked at what had happened to the rock pile. Then he saw what had happened to Ernie. The reaction from throwing the stone set Ernie sailing backwards and spinning. Ernie immediately used his jet back to kill his rotation and slowly glided back toward back. He found