The last five days have been like I was a seven year old waiting for Christmas to come. The main probe has fully recorded the surface. We even found some swirly patterns that were visible from the outside. The little probe has fuel, but it still can’t go exploring inside very far before the radio link is lost. The spin axis comes out in a relatively solid spot on the other side, there was no place to go in there. No new news from the inner solar system or the probe, and I have been killing time with Higuchi and Suzanne while waiting to arrive. Once we arrive, I’m going in. Gosh I can’t wait!
<<<*>>>
Now I’m here. This Honeycomb meteor is bigger than my ship. I can see it through my screens, a huge, white, pocked, frozen piece of bubble. It might be the comet, but now that I see it up close, my hunch is that it’s still just a fragment of something bigger. I don’t think I’ve found my comet, yet.
For the last couple days I’ve been out in the cargo bay unlimbering the space walker and loading it up with analyzing equipment. The honeycomb meteors we’ve found before are mostly silicate. The probe spectrometer confirms this piece is, too, so I optimize the equipment for navigating and analyzing rock. I’ve also unlimbered gyros, a thruster, and some fuel tanks. I will send this piece of Honeycomb towards the inner solar system and pick it up later. It’s big enough to make a ship, so selling it will offset some of the trip costs, and what I make selling this will not be easy for any planet-based mole to find.
“All set, Honey?” I say.
“You’re sure you want to go this early? We can set the gyros and stop the meteor spin in ten days. Then you can go anywhere you want safely.”
“Each day I’m here I risk my Earthly fortune. Let’s get on with it.”
“In that case, be careful not to wander further than 50 meters from the spin axis, that’s 0.1G. If you “launch” from further out than that, I can’t catch you before you air runs out.”
“Got it.”
I launch the walker from the spaceship to the meteor. Honey has done a good job, it takes only ten minutes to get there. I grab to the pocked surface only three meters from the probe. It’s an easy grab. I feel less nervous when I pick my way into the pock/tunnel I picked out from the surveys I’d already done, and I get some rock between me and outer space. If I stumble and launch here, I just hit another tunnel wall, I don’t spin out into space.
The tunnel is a pure white. Now that I’m here in person I can see that the larger holes off the tunnel are not random, there is some pattern, and these are more tunnels, not pocks. I continue.
“We’ll lose communication in about two meters,” Announces Honey.
“Got it,” I say. The walker’s onboard inertial system will always know where I am, and there’s no one who can come after me, but I have a spray paint can and squirting mechanism mounted on one leg. I don’t know why, but it makes me feel better knowing that there’s a dotted line behind me.
The corridor I’m on is veering away from the spin axis. I’m gaining weight and a sense of up and down. I see some large rock fragments on the “floor.” These are the first loose pieces I’ve seen. Why didn’t the probe surveys detected any? Aha! That’s why this meteor looks so tidy. All we’ve seen so far in probe views is the “ceilings”, and the zero G surfaces. Vibrations from impacts would float loose fragments out of the zero G area.
“Honey?” No answer, I can speak into the log, but not to Honey.
I stay near the spin axis. I abandon my entering tunnel for a new tunnel that comes in from the ceiling. This little tunnel quickly heads into another tunnel which is larger, filled with swirlies, and stays closer to the spin axis.
I climb up through the floor, and around me is rubble. This area is “inside” enough that vibrations haven’t cleared the floor of broken off rocks and chips. The tunnel I came in through is apparently a “drain” for this tunnel. I clamor up on the rubble and look around. This new tunnel is really cylinder-shaped, it’s not an elongated bubble, it’s constant diameter for as far as my lights show.
The ceiling is full of swirly patterns. They are artful: Not completely regular, not completely random. I can’t imagine a physical crystallizing process that can do this. I’m reminded of coral as much as anything. Could this meteor have been part of a world that had life?
I start moving down the middle of the tunnel floor toward what appears to be a big room. The rubble is hard to walk on, it’s loose, so my walker feet keep stumbling and shifting it around. I’m raising clouds of thin dust as I travel--sprays really, there’s no air to soften the particle trajectories and make the rounded, swirling dust clouds of an air world. I turn for the edge of the tunnel looking for a easier travel line.
I spot it.
I see it, but I don’t believe it.
Underneath one of the rocks is a piece of net. The rock is a boulder fifteen feet across, but as porous as the rest of the honeycomb. I try to roll it off. The walker shakes with the strain, but it doesn’t budge. I walk around the boulder, it’s not on the tunnel floor. I may be able to pull rocks from under it, and roll it partly away. It’ll be tricky, how far will it roll?
I pull loose rocks from the far side, away from the piece of net I see. Finally, there are just three left holding up the boulder. I try to wrap a cable around one of the rocks. The walker howls at the unnatural contortions. I can’t. Well, if you want something done right. ... There are still some things these old monkey bodies of ours can do that machines can’t. I hop out of the walker and thread the cable behind one of the rocks.
I’m sweating, let me tell you! Being out of my walker while on a meteor feels like walking through Central Park naked, too many things can happen. There’s one more thing I have to do while I’m out here. I tie the other end of the cable to a small piece of rock that's just lying free on ground, but something I can wrap the cable around securely. Then I get back in.
I move the walker well away from the boulder. I position myself out of the way of the cable, and the path the little rock should take ... I use the walker arm to swing the small rock I tied the cable to around like a goddamn cowboy with a lariat. It takes some practice but I finally get it really wound up. This is airless, so there’s no air resistance sucking up the energy I’m adding to this spinning system. When I get this wound up to about five cycles a second the walker starts shaking, and I let loose! The small rock is flying directly away from the big rock under the boulder, when that cable goes taut, it should snap that big rock right out from under the boulder.
Shit! The walker is flying towards the rock. I forgot the reaction: When I let go of the small rock and cable, I went flying the opposite way!
Whew! the leg shocks pick up most of the reaction, and as the dust settles I’m upside down in my walker. I’m lucky: The boulder has tipped over, and I’m staring at the bottom of it out of my floor window, but it’s not on top of me.
Damn! This is how people die in space! They get cocky. They don’t think things through. I’ve got to be more careful!
The top hatch is lying on the ground. I can’t get out that way and tip the walker over. I gingerly clamp a couple legs on the boulder and see if I can shake it. The walker shakes instead. Good. I clamp another leg on the boulder and start climbing the boulder. The walker body lifts, and I’m mobile again, a fly on big rock.
I walk around to the other side. The net is partly exposed, but not free. It is really net, not something that just looks like net. Well, I’m not going to move that boulder anymore. Once more I get out of the walker, and I cut off what net I can reach. It’s not as tough to cut as I expected. But then again, how old is it?
My first trophy, and what a trophy! Could this be anything but a civilized artifact?
I check my time. I’ve used about half of what is safe. I’m not going to have time for another engineering project such as this, but I have time to scout more. I continue on towards the big room.
The big room is huge. It towers 100 meters over my head. There are spherical sub rooms extending out from the walls which partly fill this big room. The floor is deep in rubble. As I walk, I find more pieces of small civilized detritus. I see what looks like a hand covering here, a piece of rope there. The magnetometer is showing tiny pieces of metal buried in the rubble. The more I see, the more I’m convinced this was a civilized room of some sort, and something has picked this place over, and left behind what it considered worthless.
After seeing this I find I wasted a lot of time and effort for nothing getting that first piece of net. Had I walked another hundred feet, I could just pick up a piece of civilization, not use ingenuity or risk my neck. <sigh> Such is life.
Life! I have found signs of life, civilized life!
It’s time to head back. There’s a lot for me to think about.