The Sweeper

By

Roy Marshall

 

 

The alarm was irritating, not shrill nor deafening. Just bothersome. A fine dream, gone now, about the only human interaction in his life. Certainly not real in any way, but a necessary part of the lone existence he chose.

Beep… Beep… Beeeeeep. The proximity alarm. So named because it was an alert for nearby work, not danger.

Where would he be if it weren’t for dreams? One can stare into space for only so long, the stars are always in the same place. The planets move just barely perceptively, yet predictably. It’s only asteroids that shatter the will of physics, changing positions, becoming threats. Of late, such alteration of defined orbits coming about from the stupidity of man.

He got out of bed and moved toward the control console shutting the alarm off. Once done, he walked up the glass front, moved along the jutting post in the center, then sat in his chair. The chair. As the cylinder of his prison capsule rotated to provide the illusion of gravity, it was the chair staying in a constant position allowing some semblance of, well, sanity. That is, once one learned to ignore the rotating shell about him. His home moving in a dizzying constant rotation, as though his existence in effect, was the center of this little private universe.

Well, semi-private. There were interruptions. Once seated, the stars ceased their rotation and he could work on getting his bearings. A small screen popped out the side of the chair and displayed his position within the solar system. Earth over there, the sun, dominated life still. Jupiter behind him and the lesser planets here and there. Space is a big place.

Not big enough, the message waiting for him showed a class M1c object not that far from him. Hmmm, iron nickel, mineable. Valuable. That’s why he was here. These toilet paper roll shaped sailcraft were refuges from the overcrowded blistering heat racked existence back on mother planet. Most sweepers traveled in pairs. Lovers, friends. By the end of the five year commitment, enemies. Often battle scarred.

For some three hundred years now, they were necessities. Man’s stupidity again, the cause of so much woe throughout the ages. The first asteroid to be mined was Ceres. Stupidity, early miners wanted to remove two kilometers of ice and gravel from the surface to get to the aggregate iron core. Setting a major nuclear explosion caused the large rock to become many many smaller rocks. It was afterall, an aggregate, not solid as they believed. Rocks now, trajectories not quite so predictable, havoc became the asteroid belt normal for some time. Bouncing around causing older rocks to take paths toward or just crashing into Mother Earth, often with quite a large bang. Thankfully, nothing large enough to end all life. Mankind did have spaceships as well as a semblance of intellect on how to use such.

So here he was, out cruising the solar system in his solar cell covered tube of plants, equipment, heartaches and most important for him, solitude. Checking the positional data sent to him from home base, he could see putting out maximum solar sail he could approach the errant rock in about sixteen Earth days. Easy peasy. He had plenty of sails stashed in the back half of his ship, just aft the plant growth area. Ready and waiting to be attached to another rock. A means to move such from the trajectory taking it inside the orbit of Mars where he spent time. Such rocks often would head toward Earth itself. It would be easy to attach a sail and move it toward one of the up and running mining and refining colonies spaced about the inside edge of the asteroid belt. 

Rocks are valuable. Iron refined in space, was cheap to make, even cheaper to transport back home. Steel was a necessary part of industrial growth. There was a lot out here, just waiting to be taken. Or as often happens, needing a shove to save the home world.

Setting new sails is just a matter of pushing buttons. The winding sound of the winch playing out Kevlar lines reverberates within the steel walls. Then the slight jerk as the new sail collects solar wind and the pressure tightens the slack. His home in the stars picks up speed and moves toward the target. Mostly pretty much transparent to him.

Sleep, dreams, pleasures, time passes.

WAIT! He awoke from a semi-interesting dream with a start. There was something amiss. It was wrong, it was off. It was dangerously differently uniquely out of sync with what should be.

Moving to the console, he activated the screen. Staring at the proposed trajectory, he discovered what had woken him from sleep. Sure, the dream was ordinary, but the consequences of his upcoming task became apparent as the dream state allowed lucid deductive reasoning.

There it was, his directive was to alter the orbit of a valuable M1c iron rich rock to fly into the planet Jupiter. It would be completely destroyed. Jupiter would suffer little from the plan, the mighty giant probably got whacked by rocks in the multiple kilometer size quite often. Just a pebble in the ocean to the mighty ruler of the kingdom of the gods from the past.

This was a perplexing turn of events however. Why waste this opportunity? Sure, he himself was responsible for some fifteen of the rocks tethered to the refining base on Vesta this past year. Plus he was but one of over thirty ships like his out in the dark. It was however, common knowledge that three billion or more tons of steel were being used back on Earth every year.

They needed a lot of rocks to keep up that kind of production.

Strange how many rocks have been deflected out of the asteroid belt and into a new trajectory that would put them into the path of good old Mother Earth. Thousands. Over the past three hundred some years, quite literally, thousands. That’s been a lot of iron, a lot of nickel, and a lot of profit.

Enh, mistakes happen. Sure, a lot of icy rocks were moved, but they were generally toward the outside of the belt. They held little value. Bringing up his outgoing message program, he typed in the questions needing answers. Sending was but a button, and he pushed such. Verification of target, trajectory settings, sail amount and any other pertinent data would return within an hour or so. Not really enough time for a dream. Not a great one anyway.

Tending the plants, feeding the rats, took up time and thoughts. One of the rats was nearly big enough to slaughter and it’d been a month or so since he had meat. An idea to pursue further. The alarm sounded. Beep… beeeeep. The message. Glancing away from his upcoming meal, he looked at one of the screens. Seemed like a sound answer, high radioactive isotopes detected, locate, send out for destruction.

Made sense.

Fourteen days of dreaming, eating, and staring at the stars. Rat tastes like chicken, or so he’s been told. He never had chicken. His life began on Vesta and although he had passed close enough to Earth to see the brown air and the ruddy bluish waters, there was never a chance to visit. He wouldn’t know what to do anyway. His musculature wouldn’t let him stand on his own. Vesta had very little gravity. A couple thousand people lived on vesta. Never heard of anyone with chickens. There were a lot of rats though.

Once his ship neared the point of confluence with the path of the rock, he needed to adjust his sails to slow his speed to match his objective. Once his orbital velocity matched such, he would furl his sails and use his maneuvering jets to get close enough to harpoon the sail package into one of the two axis points on the rock. Tricky if the rock spun fast, most he had dealt with in his nineteen years in the dark, had virtually nonexistent to slow spins. Most. From here it would be routine. Probably not even any need to get outside for fine tuning and adjustments of the package.

Actually, if there was a lot of radiation, that wouldn’t be advisable. Best to make the first shot stick to avoid such. After fifteen days, the rock came into view. A busy time for him as he worked to stow his sails, align his ship with the rock and observe the rotation to determine the axis points. Little time to dream.

Seated in his non-rotating chair gave him comfort. The rotation of his ship had been slowed to a minimum as having little ability to deal with standard Earth gravity. Doing best with very little was easy on his bones, and sitting in the chair where there was none, being the most comforting of all. Watching the rock slowly roll end over end fascinated him.

It was a big rock. Nearly four hundred fifty meters long, and basically cylindrical, around two hundred meters in diameter. It was spinning lengthwise, slowly, about four Earth hours per complete revolution. There seemed to be a single axis thus an easy target to attach the sail. Although big rocks sometimes tumble, it’s still possible to attach a sail. Deploying the sail is a lot more dangerous and the ship has to be way out of range so as to not get entangled in the lines. Once tethered, the gentle pull of the solar wind would stop the erratic motion of the rock and the sails pull the thing to where the mining colonies use huge solar reflectors to cut up the rocks to be melted into cores of iron.

Profits are the reason he was out here. Well, and to save the Earth as well.

Calculations completed, an hour was needed to load the sail package into the launcher. A finely tuned delivery system would shoot the device into the axis point, and there three harpoons would blast out and with luck penetrate the iron and anchor itself. Then the sails would deploy, after he made a hasty retreat out of the way of course.

The ship did have to get pretty close in order to launch. With a predictable and steady spin, there was little danger. Pssst, psst, psssssst. The directional control jets let out odd little sounds reverberating through the hollow steel tube. The atmosphere inside gave a ghostly softness to the simple expulsion of gases through a directed nozzle.

Care was needed, one didn’t approach too fast as a large rock would in fact have some attractive gravitational force to it. He didn’t want to get pulled in and bounce, perhaps cracking his window out to the dark. Yeah, could be a sticky situation. With care, the small ship moved towards the determined axis and then, the beams of light from his ship illuminated the blackness of the iron, revealing a man.

Well, at least a human space suit. Sort of stuck to the rock with one leg and the torso and arms sort of limply and slowly waving around. As though empty, or the occupant, dead. That’s an odd thing indeed. But then, wait, his ship’s radioactivity alarm should have been blasting away in a programmed need to keep him safe from deadly harm.

It wasn’t. Not a peep from the thing. An error, about an error.

All that was needed, a simple message stating that he found the rock, no visible radiation. It would be easy to calculate a new trajectory to send the thing over to be processed. A simple message. No need to include anything about a possible dead guy. Would such news even be believed. Dead guys in space are few and far between. They need ships to get out and about. Plus suits don’t come cheap. He did in fact work for a private company that was geared toward making a profit. Rats are a luxury on a ship like his, he had to provide his own. A space suit left dangling on a rock was unthinkable.

Unless, there was a reason. And that reason needed to be set on a course that in two years would crash into Jupiter and be obliterated completely. Tagged as highly radioactive would keep others from visiting. Granted a dead guy is creepy, but most living in the dark could care less. People die. Accidents happen. And the big one, people are stupid. But they don’t leave expensive suits out for destruction.

Pssst, psst, pssssst. Moving in closer for a better and brighter look. Lights on maximum, small scope mounted, ready, waiting. Sixty meters became thirty, then ten. Close enough. Looking through the lens, a man’s face was visible through the cracked shield. Easily replaced. Was it worth the attempt to retrieve the suit. When humans croak, they let loose with whatever is in their bladder and bowels. Plus there’s a fair amount of putrefying bacteria that would live until the batteries died on the suit and the contents froze. Cleaning the thing would be best performed outside. A suit with limited damage could fetch a fair amount on Vesta or one of the other mining rocks. Perhaps he would splurge on a woman or two, think of the dreams possible in the future after spending his new found largesse.

Without sending the message, he considered the powers that be had given him orders to send the thing to Jupiter. Too much was unknown, perhaps the best course was to do as told. Intrigue out in the dark was not unheard of. A murder here, a murder there. An illegitimate kid here, another murder there. Granted all those things happened on the mining bases, but people are people. If someone somewhere did something not exactly within the laws recognized by Earth standards, then who was he to try to apply such laws to the dark against someone who didn’t want such a thing discovered. With power to alter data about rocks, such a person could be trouble

There were no such orders however, to prohibit retrieval of what he decided was, an artifact. A valuable space suit, slightly damaged, a bit stinky perhaps, but viable. No, his instructions had no such mention of him not stepping out for a breath of empty vacuum and coast around a bit checking out the local flora and fauna. Dead or alive. Well, hopefully not still alive in any way. Should he happen upon something valuable, and seized such, how could that be construed as impeding the execution of his order to sail the errant rock out toward the gas giant?

There were no negative answers he could think of. Time to suit up himself, nine minutes. Removing a suit off a dead guy in space, probably a bit longer. Evacuating the air from the tiny airlock took more time than getting ready. Once the door opens, that inky blackness penetrates your being. With the sun off to the side, there was no real light, no atmosphere to diffuse the life giving rays of the sun. Blackness about him, with pinpricks of starlight like diamond dust everywhere. Should one look toward the sun, it was then that the light was blinding. The rock reflected little light, a black shadow blocking the stars behind it. Yet, this rock, was a bit different. A lighter swath of reddish hue passed midway through it as he moved his head about. Here, it was there, there, it was gone. Inky black on black. A play on light’s ever changing ability to allow man’s mind to see different things at differing times.

Pretty he supposed, but deadly for the careless or to anyone getting lost in staring out into the dark. There was money to be made, dreams to make, orders to be followed. The handheld thruster pack vibrated in his grasp, moving him toward the dead guy.

Hovering slightly above the body, the pick axe affixed to his leg held him curiously to the rock. That itself would have deflated the suit and allowed death to come to the man. Looking about, he found the tether attached to the man and off a meter or so, his personal thruster as well. Ah, another valuable find. Money is what dreams are made of.

Simple, grasp the axe and yank with all his might. A bit of rocking back and forth and it came out. Not really needing the axe, his hands were full already so it was easy to swing it into the rock to stick it again. Moving to clutch the leg for his journey back to his ship, he noticed a specimen bag firmly attached to the dead guy’s belt. It came along for the ride, not sure what was in it, could be electronics or even the skulls of his enemies.

Shortening his own tether to his ship, he began the task of removing the suit from the dead guy. Helmet is easy, clip it onto his own belt, move the specimen bag as well. Boots and gloves next. Unfasten all the hooks stays zippers and such releasing it. Easier to just turn it inside out and peel it off. Careful to avoid floating dried blood, feces and frozen urine balls. Once the suit was inside out, he pushed the dead guy away from his ship, back toward the rock. There he would gently land and once the sail got attached, he would ride along the journey toward Jupiter. Naked as he was born, naked will he leave his existence. Thoughts given, the dead are dead and life is for the living.

Once the suit was tethered to the ship, a couple weeks out in the solar wind would clean it up a bit. He returned to the airlock and entered, went through the pressurization process and waited. Once inside, he left his treasures to ride on the inside of the ship as he stripped his own suit off. Returning to his chair he went through the process. Shoot the package, visually insure a lock. Use his own maneuvering thrusters to back away to a safe distance.

Once out of range, he remotely triggered the sail. Popping out was normal, the wind slowly, ever so slowly caught the thing and it slowly inflated to its nearly kilometer fullness. Ever so gently, the rock moved outwardly, away from the sun. A naked dead guy sprawled against the black rock, now just a passenger for the trip.

Setting his own sails, he tacked against the rotation of all objects and headed closer toward Vesta for a little break. From where he was now, with no interruptions, about seven weeks travel time. A message to be sent first, acknowledgement of a fulfilled task, frequency of the package. Home base would take on the task of adjusting sails from then on. Once done, he moved over to look at his treasure. A nice decent hand thruster. Very nice. Still has fuel and the batteries were only half discharged.

Then the specimen bag. Unzipping the thing, inside were three rocks. Setting them down on the table, he sat in the gravity area for examination. They weren’t black, instead that ruddy reddish tint was more predominate in the light of his ship. The stuff sort of fractured easily and was sandy between his fingers. And there in the larger piece, was a seashell. A fossilized shell imbedded in the sandy rock. Looking closer, there were dozens more tinier ones. Like a piece of an ancient seabed.

Such was not possible. A rock such as this, in this solar system could not have come from Earth. It had to have part of a system that long long since had its own sun explode in a Supernova and this chunk of the planet orbiting it was part of the debris that formed this new system. The system in which he lived. And was given orders to destroy the evidence that life had existed elsewhere in the Universe.

No wonder they didn’t want the thing around.

The end