The High Five

Plans B through Z

"Any questions?" Milo addressed the crew gathered around the table after he had finished explaining the situation.

"What did Paranor Station have to say?" Vivian asked.

Bobby opened his mouth, but Milo spoke first. "The station has its own emergency to plan."

"And Jake?" Tayen said. If there was one expression she had mastered, it was the scowl. "Did you ask the captain?"

"There isn't time to bring him up to speed. He left me in charge, and I've given you my best assessment of the situation."

"Your assessment based on what? On his disaster theories." She motioned at Bobby. "Are you sure this isn't just another of his games? You know he plays loose with the protocols. I bet he had something to do with that sensor malfunction yesterday."

"You think I'm faking this?" Bobby referred to his scabby face. "Maybe I thought it would be funny to put on zombie makeup?"

Milo put up a hand to silence him but looked at Tayen. "This is not a false alarm. Have you seen the latest numbers on this thing? It's the granddaddy of CMEs. It's possible we can ride it out in the bunker and everything will be okay. Maybe it's not as bad as they're saying. But the odds don't look good. We're talking long term health effects, probable sterilization, and a chance of early death. What Bobby's going through is just the start. If there's any way we can get out of its path, I think we have to try. If it doesn't work, we bunker down and ride it out just like we planned. Bobby's worked out the new trajectory, but we need the vector 4 thruster to make this work."

Tayen blew out air as if deflating. "What do you have in mind?"

Milo explained the spacewalk. "It's twice the distance of any we've done in training. Thrusters are usually only worked on in port. They were triple checked, but it looks like the cleaning bots came through afterward, and one of them left a souvenir." He projected an image from his phlex. "A piece of cleaning pad is stuck in the rotational groove."

"How do we even know we can get it out?" Vivian asked.

"We don't," Milo said. "Ideas?"

A minute passed in heavy silence as the crew absorbed the situation. Until a few minutes ago, the extent of their worries had been about how they would pass the time in the bunker.

"We could hook it," Tayen broke the ice. "Slip a hook into the groove and yank it out."

"Bad idea," Bobby said. "There could be wires or other delicate components in there. If you start rooting around with a hook, you might sever something."

"Why not just grab the exposed part and pull it out?" Vivian asked.

"That could tear it," Tayen explained. "And then the remaining part would be even harder to get out."

"Burn it off," offered Jess.

Even Bobby was surprised by this suggestion. "Where'd you come up with that?"

"It's in the maintenance logs. The scrubber pads are incinerated after their reuse quota."

"Won't that damage the rotator?"

"The vector engine is made of titanium composite capable of withstanding freezing temperatures up to thousands of degrees," Bobby pointed out. "For obvious reasons, engines have to be very heat tolerant."

"In the exhaust cone maybe, but not on the interior of the rotator cuff," Tayen disagreed.

Bobby let the discussion continue for another ten minutes before he blew the whistle. "We have just over an hour left before it's too late. We need to make a decision." He wrote out the options on a holo-board. "Two votes per person. The top-voted option wins."