Chapter 26 #3
“Are you back in yet, Vogel?” Lewis asked.
“I am just reentering now, Commander.”
“Beck,” Lewis said to her headset. “I’ll need you back in, too. But don’t take your suit off.”
“Okay,” Beck said. “Why?”
“We’re going to have to literally blow up one of the doors,” Lewis explained. “I’d rather we kill the inner one. I want the outer door unharmed, so we keep our smooth aerobraking shape.”
“Makes sense,” Beck responded as he floated back into the ship.
“One problem,” Lewis said. “I want the outer door locked in the fully open position with the mechanical stopper in place to keep it from being trashed by the decompress.”
“You have to have someone in the airlock to do that,” Beck said. “And you can’t open the inner door if the outer door is locked open.”
“Right,” Lewis said. “So I need you to come back inside, depressurize the VAL, and lock the outer door open. Then you’ll need to crawl along the hull to get back to Airlock 2.”
“Copy, Commander,” Beck said. “There are latch points all over the hull. I’ll move my tether along, mountain climber style.”
“Get to it,” Lewis said. “And Vogel, you’re in a hurry. You have to make the bomb, set it up, get back to Airlock 2, suit up, depressurize it, and open the outer door, so Beck can get back in when he’s done.”
“He’s taking his suit off right now and can’t reply,” Beck reported, “but he heard the order.”
“Watney, how you doing?” Lewis’s voice said in his ear.
“Fine so far, Commander,” Watney replied. “You mentioned a plan?”
“Affirmative,” she said. “We’re going to vent atmosphere to get thrust.”
“How?”
“We’re going to blow a hole in the VAL.”
“What!?” Watney said. “How!?”
“Vogel’s making a bomb.”
“I knew that guy was a mad scientist!” Watney said. “I think we should just go with my Iron Man idea.”
“That’s too risky, and you know it,” she replied.
“Thing is,” Watney said, “I’m selfish. I want the memorials back home to be just for me. I don’t want the rest of you losers in them. I can’t let you guys blow the VAL.”
“Oh,” Lewis said, “well if you won’t let us then— Wait…wait a minute….I’m looking at my shoulder patch and it turns out I’m the commander. Sit tight. We’re coming to get you.”
“Smart-ass.”
■■■
As a chemist, Vogel knew how to make a bomb. In fact, much of his training was to avoid making them by mistake.
The ship had few flammables aboard, due to the fatal danger of fire. But food, by its very nature, contained flammable hydrocarbons. Lacking time to sit down and do the math, he estimated.
Sugar has 4000 food-calories per kilogram.
One food-calorie is 4184 joules. Sugar in zero-g will float and the grains will separate, maximizing surface area.
In a pure-oxygen environment, 16.7 million joules will be released for every kilogram of sugar used, releasing the explosive force of eight sticks of dynamite.
Such is the nature of combustion in pure oxygen.
Vogel measured the sugar carefully. He poured it into the strongest container he could find, a thick glass beaker.
The strength of the container was as important as the explosive.
A weak container would simply cause a fireball without much concussive force.
A strong container, however, would contain the pressure until it reached true destructive potential.
He quickly drilled a hole in the beaker’s stopper, then stripped a section of wire. He ran the wire through the hole.
“ Sehr gef?hrlich, ” he mumbled as he poured liquid oxygen from the ship’s supply into the container, then quickly screwed the stopper on. In just a few minutes, he had made a rudimentary pipe bomb.
“Sehr, sehr , gef?hrlich.”
He floated out of the lab and made his way toward the nose of the ship.
■■■
Johanssen worked on the lighting panel as Beck floated toward theVAL.
She grabbed his arm. “Be careful crawling along the hull.”
He turned to face her. “Be careful setting up the bomb.”
She kissed his faceplate then looked away, embarrassed. “That was stupid. Don’t tell anyone I did that.”
“Don’t tell anyone I liked it.” Beck smiled.
He entered the airlock and sealed the inner door. After depressurizing, he opened the outer door and locked it in place. Grabbing a handrail on the hull, he pulled himself out.
Johanssen watched until he was no longer in view, then returned to the lighting panel. She had deactivated it earlier from her workstation. After pulling a length of the cable out and stripping the ends, she fiddled with a roll of electrical tape until Vogel arrived.
He showed up just a minute later, carefully floating down the hall with the bomb held in both hands.
“I have used a single wire for igniting,” he explained. “I did not want to risk two wires for a spark. It would be dangerous to us if we had static while setting up.”
“How do we set it off?” Johanssen said.
“The wire must reach a high temperature. If you short power through it, that will be sufficient.”
“I’ll have to pin the breaker,” Johanssen said, “but it’ll work.”
She twisted the lighting wires onto the bomb’s and taped themoff.
“Excuse me,” Vogel said. “I have to return to Airlock 2 to let Dr. Beck back in.”
“Mm,” Johanssen said.
■■■
Martinez floated back into the bridge. “I had a few minutes, so I ran through the aerobrake lockdown checklist for the reactor room. Everything’s ready for acceleration and the compartment’s sealed off.”
“Good thinking,” Lewis said. “Prep the attitude correction.”
“Roger, Commander,” Martinez said, drifting to his station.
“The VAL’s propped open,” Beck’s voice said over the comm. “Starting my traverse across the hull.”
“Copy,” Lewis said.
“This calculation is tricky,” Martinez said. “I need to do everything backward. The VAL’s in front, so the source of thrust will be exactly opposite to our engines. Our software wasn’t expecting us to have an engine there. I just need to tell it we plan to thrust toward Mark.”
“Take your time and get it right,” Lewis said. “And don’t execute till I give you the word. We’re not spinning the ship around while Beck’s out on the hull.”
“Roger,” he said. After a moment, he added “Okay, the adjustment’s ready to execute.”
“Stand by,” Lewis said.
■■■
Vogel, back in his suit, depressurized Airlock 2 and opened the outer door.
“?’Bout time,” Beck said, climbing in.
“Sorry for the delay,” Vogel said. “I was required to make a bomb.”
“This has been kind of a weird day,” Beck said. “Commander, Vogel and I are in position.”
“Copy” was Lewis’s response. “Get up against the fore wall of the airlock. It’s going to be about one g for four seconds. Make sure you’re both tethered in.”
“Copy,” Beck said as he attached his tether. The two men pressed themselves against the wall.
■■■
“Okay, Martinez,” Lewis said, “point us the right direction.”
“Copy,” said Martinez, executing the attitude adjustment.
Johanssen floated into the bridge as the adjustment was performed. The room rotated around her as she reached for a handhold. “The bomb’s ready, and the breaker’s jammed closed,” she said. “I can set it off by remotely turning on Lighting Panel 41.”
“Seal the bridge and get to your station,” Lewis said.
“Copy,” Johanssen said. Unstowing the emergency seal, she plugged the entrance to the bridge. With a few turns of the crank, the job was done. She returned to her station and ran a quick test. “Increasing bridge pressure to 1.03 atmospheres….Pressure is steady. We have a good seal.”
“Copy,” Lewis said. “Time to intercept?”
“Twenty-eight seconds,” Johanssen said.
“Wow,” Martinez said. “We cut that pretty close.”
“You ready, Johanssen?” Lewis asked.
“Yes,” Johanssen said. “All I have to do is hit enter.”
“Martinez, how’s our angle?”
“Dead-on, Commander,” Martinez reported.
“Strap in,” Lewis said.
The three of them tightened the restraints of their chairs.
“Twenty seconds,” Johanssen said.
■■■
Teddy took his seat in the VIP room. “What’s the status?”
“Fifteen seconds till they blow the VAL,” Venkat said. “Where have you been?”
“On the phone with the President,” Teddy said. “Do you think this will work?”
“I have no idea,” Venkat said. “I’ve never felt this helpless in my life.”
“If it’s any consolation,” Teddy said, “pretty much everyone in the world feels the same way.”
On the other side of the glass, Mitch paced to and fro.
■■■
“… five …four…three…,” Johanssen said.
“Brace for acceleration,” Lewis said.
“…two…one…,” Johanssen continued. “Activating Lighting Panel 41.”
She pressed enter.
Inside Vogel’s bomb, the full current of the ship’s internal lighting system flowed through a thin, exposed wire.
It quickly reached the ignition temperature of the sugar.
What would have been a minor fizzle in Earth’s atmosphere became an uncontrolled conflagration in the container’s pure oxygen environment.
In under one hundred milliseconds, the massive combustion pressure burst the container, and the resulting explosion ripped the airlock door to shreds.
The internal air of Hermes rushed through the open VAL, blasting Hermes in the other direction.
Vogel and Beck were pressed against the wall of Airlock 2. Lewis, Martinez, and Johanssen endured the acceleration in their seats. It was not a dangerous amount of force. In fact it was less than the force of Earth’s surface gravity. But it was inconsistent and jerky.
After four seconds, the shaking died down and the ship returned to weightlessness.
“Reactor room still pressurized,” Martinez reported.
“Bridge seal holding,” Johanssen said. “Obviously.”
“Damage?” Martinez said.
“Not sure yet,” Johanssen said. “I have External Camera 4 pointed along the nose. I don’t see any problems with the hull near the VAL.”
“Worry about that later,” Lewis said. “What’s our relative velocity and distance to MAV?”
Johanssen typed quickly. “We’ll get within twenty-two meters and we’re at twelve meters per second. We actually got better than expected thrust.”
“Watney,” Lewis said, “it worked. Beck’s on his way.”