ORB

Inside the station, up and down were subjective. Outside, they were meaningless. As she emerged into space, she found herself gazing out across the hub. It felt as though she were standing on a gently-sloping metal hill. It was dark; she was floating through the shadows of the mirrors. The nearest set lay to her right. That was her target.

The twin wheels of OutReach 1 spun silently in space, simulating gravity for the station’s one million inhabitants. The wheels spun about either end of a long tube, the hub, over which she was drifting. Within each wheel, sunlight nurtured a slice of Earth: an artificial river valley, with forests and cities following the curve of the wheel’s outer ring. Each wheel was a staggering twenty kilometers in diameter. From her perspective, she was a lonely white speck, an ant on a bicycle axle.

“Control, this is Shimizu,” she reported through her comms. “I’ve cleared the airlock, and am in free flight.”

“Copy, Shimizu,” a dispatcher acknowledged from inside the hub. “How’s the air out there?”

She grinned. “Thinner than I’d like, but I’m five-by-five out here,” she replied. “So where’s the problem?”

“Mirror forty-six Alpha,” he replied. A reticle popped up on her HUD. She turned to her right, following the arrow until it became a circle, identifying the malfunctioning servo. To maintain habitable temperature, the station’s wheels relied on sets of solar focusing mirrors. Each wheel was fed by an array of fifty four, ringing the hub in groups of nine. While the wheel was spinning, the mirrors were fixed. Due to the rate of spin, the mirrors were articulated, capable of adjusting solar output to maintain the inhabitants’ circadian rhythms.

“I see it,” she replied. She checked her fuel levels, then trained her eyes on the upper left corner of her visor. At her gaze, a projected control labeled “RCS” was enlarged, moving into the center of her visor. She stared at it for a moment, and it evaporated as her suit thrusters kicked on. A brief lurch, and she was flying through space, bound for the damaged mirror.

Akemi Shimizu was a systems engineer. When something went wrong, she was one of a hundred individuals who might be called upon to perform an EVA and address the problem. And on a station as large and complex as OutReach, something was always going wrong. Orbiting a subgiant star nearly fifty light-years from Earth, the station relied on its team of engineers to keep everything running. Any support lay a lifetime away.

The mirrors didn’t appear far away to her, given their size. It took nearly ten minutes to reach the base of 46A. In the stillness of space, all she could hear was her breathing. Beyond the bank of mirrors, one of the six massive spokes holding the wheel passed quietly by. Each mirror was held to the hub by a pair of enormous control arms. Each servo was twice as wide as she was tall. As she approached the mirror, she looked over the control arms, scanning for damage.

Closing to within five meters, she noticed activity around the mirror. Several spherical objects flitted around it, scanning as she was. One of the orbs pulled away and flew towards her. She pulsed her thrusters, slowing to a halt. The orb stopped in front of her face.

“What seems to be the problem, buddy?” she asked it. Observation and Repair Bots were simple service drones: spherical, possessing no tools save a highly-sophisticated sensor, appearing as though a single, unblinking eye. Akemi had always found them cute, like characters from the old cartoons her great-grandmother had shown her.

The orb rotated slightly, as though cocking its head. A moment later, her HUD displayed a new reticle, identifying the servo at the base of the control arm to her right. Akemi nodded to the orb, then the two maneuvered in for a better look.

As she closed to within two meters, her suit’s sensors identified the problem: the servo’s housing was cracked. Under normal operation, the mirror’s actuators used liquid helium hydraulics to adjust its angle.

“Control, Shimizu,” she began over her comms, studying the servo, “actuator on control arm beta is toast.”

“Great,” the dispatcher rasped. “That’s the third one this week. Any idea what happened?”

She peered closely, reaching out to pass her gloved hands over the damaged joint. “Hard to say. If I had to guess, I’d say stress failure. The joint’s come undone; looks like the helium is gone.”

“Don’t suppose you brought a spare tank of liquid He out there with you?”

She smirked. “Believe it or not, I don’t go around carrying them.”

“Well, then all we can do is collapse the mirror to minimize further damage until we can get a repair bot out there. Can you handle that?”

“No problem,” she replied. “Commencing retraction now.”

One of the benefits of having fifty-four mirrors per wheel was that just one wouldn’t be missed, at least not for a while. Akemi pulsed her thrusters, moving in close. Using her HUD, she quickly located the emergency release trigger. She maneuvered in slowly, lying prone against the hub, her gloved hands groping for the lever that would collapse the mirror. Eventually, she managed to wrap her fingers around it, and pulled. It barely budged. 

Pulsing her thrusters again, she wedged herself in beneath the control arms, flu alongside the control arms. Finally, she managed to wrap both hands around the lever, and yanked as hard as she could. To her surprise, it gave readily. The sudden change in momentum pushed her tighter against the mirror, wedging her beneath the controls arms as the mirror began to collapse.

“Shit!” she hissed. She pulsed her thrusters, attempting to free herself. It was no use; her left foot was caught beneath the alpha arm. She grabbed the beta arm, pulling desperately. Her left boot remained wedged beneath the servo. As she writhed, she barely noticed the orb moving closer to her. She looked up, and found it directly in front of her face. It seemed to stare at her, then look over at the servo. Without hesitation, it floated in beneath the control arm, pressing itself against the servo.

As the mirror retracted, she watched as the orb became wedged beneath the servo. Its single eye stared at her as its body buckled and cracked under the strain. Encountering resistance, the mirror stopped moving, then slowly righted itself. As it redeployed, she felt her foot slip out from under the alpha servo. Suddenly she was free. She remained motionless; any sudden movement could send her freewheeling off into space.

Safe at last, she looked back at the beta arm. The orb had been smashed, its indicators dead. All that remained was its sensor eye, still staring back at her.

She looked down at the ruined drone with regret. “Thanks, buddy,” she whispered.

END