All-Patron Reward: Castaway Resolution, Early Draft Chapters 50-51

In Castaway Resolution (originally titled Castaway Peril), the two groups of castaways on Lincoln find themselves facing a terrible final danger: surviving the impact of a dinosaur-killer asteroid on their new homeworld, long enough for an approaching spaceship to effect a rescue. 

This is an event that is, quite literally, earthshakingly huge, beyond easy grasping in any reasonable sense. I work hard in the Castaway and Boundary series to get the science right, but it's HARD to do when you're pushing the edges of what we actually know. I had what I thought were reasonably good estimates of what such an impact would be like, and of what the threats were that it would pose, but it turned out later on that my sources simply hadn't been able to HANDLE the calculations of an event of that size. This led to me overestimating certain threats (especially the resulting waves) and underestimating others. 

Fortunately, my beta readers include people with more familiarity with this kind of science than I have, and were able to assist me in addressing these deficiencies. The published version is, I think, much closer to the reality of such an event, and the rewriting and reconsidering produced what I think are overall better chapters in any case.

But still, for the next couple of months, we'll take a look at a slightly alternate universe in which the impact produces somewhat different results... and where Whips has to address one problem in a very different way.

----

Chapter 50.

The door slid open, and immediately a thin wash of water spread out into the cabin area. Sakura could hear the splash and swish of the sea through the open door.

"Damnation! I'm gonna need muscles in here! Tav, Whips, Xander, get in here now!" came Campbell's sharp command.

Tavana began unstrapping. "Sakura, you've got the board!"

"Got it!" she said, feeling her pulse rising again. Once more I'm the pilot in an emergency.

She grasped the controls, tested them. "We're already getting rear-heavy, Sergeant! I'm going to have to accelerate forward, try to dump some of the water!"

"Understood, Saki. Do what you gotta do. Gents, make sure you've got a good anchor somewhere in reach, 'cause she ain't gonna be able to warn us every time."

Sakura accelerated as slowly as she could. The idea was to push as much of the water back as she could by, effectively, driving out from under it. "Sergeant, I can't do this for too long. When I say NOW, you've got to close the cabin door."

"That'll stick the four of us back here, you know," Xander said. His tone wasn't reproving, just a reminder of an uncomfortable fact, but she still felt a pang of guilt.

"I know, but we don't want water up here too. I've got to have confidence you'll get it cut off somehow… or at least be able to tell me when you're sure you can't and then I can let you in quick."

"We'll get it done," Whips said. "Like the Sergeant said, you do what you have to."

Emerald Maui began to bump a bit as its speed increased over the increasingly choppy waves, and there were still occasional ting and whanggg noises as small pieces of ejecta rapped her. She saw a huge plume of water spout up where another large piece had hit, a mile or more away, and shuddered. One more hit on us and we've probably had it.

Now the movement was really getting rough, and Sakura had to remember that the unstrapped people back there couldn't hold on like the rest of them. "Now, Sergeant!"

Instantly the door slid shut and locked; there was effectively no water in the cabin. "Door shut successfully, Sergeant. You still hear us back there?"

"Loud and clear, Saki. Looks like the cargo door here twisted out of its track, that's where the water's coming in."

She slowed their motion until it was as smooth as feasible; Emerald Maui's size did allow it to steamroller the smaller waves pretty well.

But the control for diving and steering's bad now. About the only good thing you can say about losing the side wing is that it made her more symmetrical, but in these conditions that's not so good; the outrigger helped a lot in stability.

"I say we drop the ramp," Whips' voice said. "Give me a chance to look and see what the damage is inside the track and lock, and the rest of you can start dumping the big cargo. We don't need the earthmovers any more, and that'll gain us a lot."

"You think the ramp'll survive that? It'll be bouncing along in the ocean and then we throw tons of machinery down it?"

"It ought to. They built these things tough. And if we're going to try to fix it, I needto see if the internal seal's damaged, and if it is, whether it can be fixed."

"Right. Saki, you hear? We're opening the rear door. Try to keep us going smooth and straight."

"I hear." She looked around at the others. "Mom, I think someone should get the rescue boats out, ready to deploy and inflate."

"Good idea, Sakura. Caroline, Maddox, Mel, would you get on that?"

"Yes, Mom," Caroline and Melody chorused, and Maddox said "Yes, Dr. Kimei."

"I'll help," Akira said. Pearce also unstrapped and went to assist with the check-out of the rafts.

Sakura watched the camera views closely. The ship jolted and she suddenly felt a shift in the drag and motion of Emerald Maui. A second, turbulent wake was now visible to the rear, within the broader wake left by the former LS-88; the ramp was now dragging its way through the ocean.

She adjusted speed, tried to slow as much as feasible, but that was going to require balancing, given the waves.

Waves reminded her of the next problem. "Mel, how long before the tsunami gets here?"

"Now? About forty minutes."

That's not long. "Sergeant, to be safe, you've got to get finished in about half an hour so you can get back and strap in."

"I hear you, Saki. But that's gonna be… tight."

"Melody," Caroline said, as they began checking the two inflatable, carbonan-fabric lifeboats, "I thought you said that in a sea this deep, waves would get damped out over a fairly short distance – that if we'd been only ten or twenty kilometers farther from the first impact we wouldn't have been bothered by the wave. We're twenty-eight hundred kilometers from this one – is the wave really going to be that bad?"

"Short answer: yes," Mel said. The quick, clipped answer told Sakura just how scared her little sister was. Mel really understands stuff through numbers, I think. "Longer answer… this impact is… just not even comparable with the first. We couldn't measure the first one, but it was probably something like ten million times smaller, maybe less."

Sakura saw Mel run her fingers nervously through her hair. "Normal tsunamis can be caused by a few cubic kilometers moving fairly fast. This … thing hit the ocean and probably blew a hole in the ocean two hundred kilometersin diameter, down to maybe sixty kilometers. I don't know the exact geometry of that hole, but if I guesstimate it to be equal to a cylinder half that diameter, that's close to half a million cubic kilometers of water that just got shoved aside, then there's the explosion and the collapse back of all that water… Anyway, what it means is that this shockwave didn't just come from what amounts to one point on the ocean floor, it's top-to-bottom of the water column and moving almost as fast as the speed of sound in water – about one and a half kilometers per second."

There was silence in the cabin, broken only by the occasional ping of another piece of debris and heavier thudsfrom behind the sealed cargo door.

"Then what will it look like when it gets here?" Laura asked quietly.

"Best guess?" Melody was trying to sound detached, but her lighter voice vibrated with fear. "Four hundred meters high. Could if we're reallucky be as little as forty." She swallowed, a sound audible in the cabin. "Or… or as big as a thousand."

Sakura felt her hands twitch on the controls, and a coldness spread out from her chest, gooseflesh rising on her arms. She tried to imagine a wave a thousand meters high, found her brain balking at the concept. Even the smallest – a forty-meter wave – would be bad, a wave as high or higher than Emerald Maui was long – probably more than one wave, given her vague memory about the transmission of energy and how such waves might separate into several sets based on the frequency of vibration within them.

"Any… advice on how we deal with the wave?" Sakura asked finally.

"Don't take it side-on," Campbell's voice answered. "Honestly, something like this wasn't in the cards even in all the places I've ever been to, but generally speaking, with really massive waves best you can do is steer into them or just a hair off, an' try to be goin' as slow as you can so you don't do a jump off the backside. But if this thing's as huge as Mel thinks it might be… dunno if any conventional wisdom holds." His voice lightened. "Ha! Clamp let go! All right, everyone clear the door!"

There was a huge, confused splash, and Sakura felt Emerald Maui waver, then continue – but this time, she thought, a hair higher up in the water. "Excavator?"

"First one down. Second one in a minute. Whips?"

"Once you dump the second one, we can try to re-seat the door. It twisted a little, but dropping it and letting it bang might actually have evened it just a bit. I can also drive the motors higher for a couple seconds, like slamming a balky door hard."

"Hear that, Saki?"

"I do." She glanced at the clock. "You've got fourteen minutes."

"I know."

She saw motion out of the corner of her eye, looked over to see Caroline, Mel, and the others strapping in. The two lifeboats were in pre-launch positions, still secured but now easily released to be tossed out through the airlock or the rear door. "All set?"

"Seems to be," her father answered. "All of the indicators check out fine, and – after all – this is actually quite a new vessel, despite how badly we've been abusing her, so these lifeboats are about factory-new."

"And a good model – used one of the same design myself 'bout ten years back," Campbell said.

"Was that in the story you told me about using one as a toboggan?"

"The very same," Campbell answered with a chuckle. "Come on, you damn stubborn bas… bugger, release!"

"You will have to tell us that story sometime, Sergeant," said Tavana.

"I definitely want to hear it," Whips chimed in. "Here, let me try… got it!"

"Clear the door again!"

Another wobble-and-splash, and Emerald Maui was definitely riding higher in the water. "All right! Whips, let's slam this door!"

A moment later there was a huge clanging thud from the rear. "That's… dang. Almost but not quite. Still a gap."

"Can't we lever it shut?" That was Xander's voice. "It's just jamming along this line…"

"Can't," Tavana said after a moment. "The door, it needs to move inward. If we pry and it works, the door will drop right down on our prybars, and then we will be really stuck. Might not even be able to open the door again."

"So," Whips said, "it needs to have someone pry on it from the outside."

"But that's not…" There was silence.

Sakura heard the rear door open and shut, saw Whips sliding purposefully across the floor. "No, Whips, you can't."

One eye swiveled at her, even as his top arm grasped the door lever. "Saki, I'm the only one who can. I can swim faster than Emerald Maui is going right now. If you stay steady and on course, I can do this."

He pulled downwards, prybar clenched in two branches of his lower arms. "I'm counting on you."

The airlock opened, and the Bemmie – her best friend – disappeared through it.

Chapter 51.

Whips dragged himself atop Emerald Maui, and then sat there, judging the motion of wave and ship for a few seconds. Then he slid his way down to the rear of the ship.

There were handholds that let him slowly lower himself down until he could get a look at the cargo door, tucked under the tail. The uneven seal was obvious, and worst down where it dipped in and out of the water. The sea below swirled and splashed with the steady motion of Emerald Maui, and Whips was even more convinced that he was the only one who could do this. Anyone else whose grip slipped or who fell into the sea would find themselves left behind; even the fastest human swimmer could never catch up. But from the point of view of a Bemmie – even one still not quite recovered from injuries like Whips – Emerald Mauiwas only going at maybe a brisk walk. Even a human with a tether would be in trouble – perhaps more trouble. Not a Bemmie.

With those thoughts, Whips dropped into the sea of Lincoln.

Reflexively he began pinging with his built-in sonar. Somewhat to his surprise, he detected nothing in range. It was the deep ocean, true, which would tend to be relatively sparsely populated, but still, he would have expected some kind of fish or other creatures. Perhaps the rain of stone from above had scared them out of Whips' range.

Still, that was a good thing. He wanted to concentrate on fixing Emerald Maui, not worry about being attacked. He glided easily behind the ship and waved quickly to the rear camera before accelerating and jetting right up to the cargo door. "I'm here, everyone. Doesn't seem to be anything in the water nearby, either."

"That is a good thing," Tavana said. "But you keep a watch out."

"Oh, I will, believe me. Too many things in this ocean that could eat me without a blink." He hooked a lifeline onto the lowest attachment he could find, studied the gap. It's in the track here, then just comes out there, gets farther away, but goes back in at the top. Fits with what I saw inside. This should be possible. I have to lever it into the track starting at the bottom and moving up. He floated in the water and noted the handholds and attachment points he'd need to use on the way up. Seeing how their spacing was more appropriate for human than Bemmie needs, he sighed. There would be points he'd have to practically bend one arm double and sit on it.

Some of this was going to be a real pain.

Still, no point wasting time. "Keep the motors pulling on it regularly. As I get farther up it's going to get harder to force it in, and if there's any tendency for the door to open, it might all just pop right back out as soon as it gets a chance. And I don't have much time for this."

"Seven, eight minutes. A bit more, depending on how close we want to cut this."

"Got it." Whips placed the prybar into the slot, levered; the first section of the door slid into place with gratifying ease, but Whips wasn't fooled; it would be a lot harder as he went up.

He did have to pull and twist just a hair harder with the next section – and then had to pull himself out of the water, relocate his safety clip, keep a grip with one arm while the others pulled, twisted, bent the tough carbonan-backed metallic door into its track.

"Anything else we can do to help?"

"Honestly? No. Even if you could stand here safely, you can't pull on this as hard as I can."

"Guess that's a fact," Campbell said with a contemplative tone. "Outweigh any of us by two to one, at least, and strength to match. Plus you get better leverage with that longer prybar, since you're just that big."

"You'd better hurry," Sakura said, her voice just a touch higher with worry. "Time's getting short."

"I know."

Whips gritted his tripartite mouth as he pulled hard on the next section. For a moment he didn't think it was going in, then it snapped into place. Unfortunately, the bend was being emphasized as he went up.

At the same time, he knew this door had to be properly sealed. Until they were rescued, they couldn't afford to lose Emerald Maui. The others would protest that it wasn't that bad, but who knew what the wave or the airblast would bring? They couldn't dive like this. Maybe couldn't risk diving even if he couldfix it. But this door had to be sealed.

He took a deep breath and shut off the comm on his omni. He didn't want to hear reminders of approaching doom.

Then he moved up, feeling the strain in his arms. Healed they might have been but they remembered their prior injuries, and pain – dull and pulsing, sharper and burning – was beginning to spread from the center of his support plates. Whips ignored it and set the edge of the prybar carefully, pulled. It wouldn't move, so he pulled again. A third pull, this time swinging hard so that most of his weight came down on the end of the crowbar – and it popped in.

Now it was approaching the tightest possible fit; this part of the door was visibly warped, the distortion basically having been pushed from the bottom up, now a clear wrinkle in the fit of the door. Ifhe could manage to force this part inward, the whole door should "pop" into alignment, hopefully with most of the seals intact. If he couldn't, the seal might just pop free on one side or the other of the part he was trying to seal, and he'd be … what was that phrase Sakura had used once, from some ancient game… oh, yes, playing whack-a-mole on the disjointed sections, shoving one down to see another pop up.

There was a slight ding near the apex of the warped part of the door; that decided Whips as to where he'd rest the prybar. Even that minor imperfection would provide a bit more stability, help prevent it from sliding to one side or the other and allowing him to exert as much force as possible on the deformation.

That part worked; the prybar showed less tendency to slide. But he pulled and wriggled and pushed to little avail. He could feel it flexing, knew that he was almost to the point where that wrinkle would either pop in or just move sideways, but he couldn't quite get it to do so.

Whips felt the ship shift slightly – the wind had also shifted, and so the waves, that tiny bit – and as he waited for it to steady as much as possible, he looked up. There were a couple of handholds above the door. Higher than a human, but…

Holding the prybar with one arm, his second arm holding himin place, he stretched out, got justenough tendrils around the first handhold to pull him up a quarter of a meter, which let him get a few more on the handhold next to it, and pull up higher. "This could work. Or it could be a really stupid idea." If it went wrong, he might be basically punching himself as hard as possible with a prybar. On the other hand, he didn't see any alternatives.

He got his second arm up so part of it was also holding him up from the handholds above. Then he very carefully renewed his grip on the prybar, now gripping it only with the very tips of the longest, thinnest fingers of his left arm, edged his body sideways so that it was suspended over the very end of the prybar…

… and then used the rest of his second arm, a convulsive push from his rear push-arms, and a twisting motion of his whole body to send him swinging up, up, and out, like a human gymnast swinging out on the high bar, and then jackknifed, bringing his rear in hard.

The tough pad of his underbelly smashed into the end of the prybar with most of his mass and all his speed behind it. The stiff metal dug sharply in, sending a spear of pain lancing through him –

-- but then it flattened and sprang away as, with a sharp ringing pop the door sprang into its track, smooth and true.

"YES!" Whips shouted, swinging back and forth on the handholds in jubilation, ignoring the residual stinging in his body. "Yes, yes, YES!It's sealed!"

He switched the comm back on. "Got it! It should –"

"WHIPS!" screamed Sakura's voice. "It's coming!"

He yanked himself up, spun around.

In the distance… the lowering cloud rippled. Then he realized that the horizon… the horizon was rising. The sea was flattening, flattening not as though the water was becoming calm but as though it were rolling out, and out, and out like some liquid carpet, and with it the horizon was climbing higher, higher…

For a few precious seconds – seconds which brought the onrushing horror kilometers closer – Whips froze, unable to grasp what he saw, not even hearing Sakura shouting his name. It was a wall, a mountain range of water, whipped white and foaming green with the sheer velocity of its approach, and towering higher and higher as it came, a monstrous precipice of mobile ocean, stretching from one side of the world to the other, vast and high and wide, moving with such awful velocity that its very passage buckled the clouds above, and its crest hidden in screaming spume that might have mingled with the clouds themselves. It moved with incomprehensible speed, so swift that it was outracing sound itself, its approach deathly silent because it overtook the very warning of its presence.

There was no time. He could not possibly, even with his greatest effort, reach the airlock in time, let alone get inside and strap down. And if he couldn't strap down… well, his aches and pains from the past told him what that would be like. Emerald Maui was already slewing around, turning to meet this Brobdingnagian threat.

 Then, to his utter surprise, Emerald Maui spun about, turning away from the wave, and he was hurled into space, as the entire ocean rose to meet him.