Leaving Club Leo - 1. Chapter 1

Fifteen hours... a long, tiring shift, but Jeff had grown used to it. It was just one of the many hardships that he had to accept, in order to work at Club Leo.

Exhausted from his day of dealing with the tourists, Jeff pulled himself down the hallway, daydreaming, and as a result nearly passing the door to his room.

Smiling with anticipation at the thought of looking out the window, Jeff slipped his keycard into the reader slot and waited a moment until the lock indicator changed from red to green.

The door hissed open and Jeff entered his tiny room. To call it a room was actually a stretch, he thought; it was not a great deal larger than an office cubicle. It was roughly triangular, barely ten feet on a side, with a seven-foot ceiling. Light tones, beige and white, had been used to minimize the claustrophobic effect. The color scheme helped somewhat, but not quite enough.

The entry door was located at the apex of the triangle, and the wall to the left of the entryway held three flip-down bunk beds. The wall to the right contained a small workstation with a computer and stereo. The bathroom, shared by over a dozen hotel employees, was the same size as Jeff’s room and located across the hall.

The accommodations were far from luxurious by conventional standards, but Jeff’s room was in fact almost identical to what the hotel euphemistically called guest suites; the fifteen rooms devoted to paying customers.

Jeff settled lazily into the workstations’ foot restraints, fighting off his need for sleep as he brought the workstation computer out of hibernation and began writing a letter. He knew that if he tried to sleep right after a shift, he’d have a restless night, made worse when one of his roommates arrived. The room, tiny though it was, was not his alone; he shared it with two other hotel workers. The only difference was that the paying guests were lodged one or two per room, instead of three. Jeff, like the other staff, worked as much as ninety hours a week, with a single day off every two weeks. Their shifts were staggered, which helped, but one of Jeff’s roommates snored, which did not.

It took Jeff five minutes to write the letter to his mother, just a quick recount of his experiences at the hotel in recent days. He took care to minimize the long hours he spent changing bedclothes, cleaning, and generally tending to the guests and their needs. His mother had been vehemently opposed when he’d announced his intention to apply at Club Leo, and he saw no reason to give her more ammunition. He had to admit, she did have a point; he’d spent years earning his engineering degree, and he’d turned down high paying jobs in order to work at Club Leo for free. His only income was from tips, and though some of the guests tipped well, many did not. His mother had called him an adventuresome fool, and longed for the day when her son would begin a more down-to-earth job. His letter, which highlighted the adventure of his post, was one of Jeff’s ongoing attempts to mollify her. He had little choice; he’d signed on for eight months, which was both the minimum and maximum tenure at Club Leo.

Jeff sent the letter on its way and smiled again, glancing around the tiny room, beginning to relax, his eyes falling on the one wall that was unadorned; the base of the triangular layout, it was curved outwards instead of straight. Jeff glanced at the six-foot in diameter sheet of triple glass that dominated the center of the curved wall, and grinning in anticipation, he dimmed the lights and thumbed a single button on the workstation desk.

A soft hum filled the room as the aluminum iris on the far side of the glass slowly opened. Jeff stared out into the darkness, as his eyes adjusted, reveling in a view that was his reason for enduring so much to work at the hotel.

The view was at once sublime and exquisite, a myriad of untwinkling stars shining in utter blackness. Jeff floated towards the window, watching in an awe that never faded; a curving arch of purest blue and white, moving with slow and stately grandeur, drew his gaze below. Jeff steadied himself with the handholds, gazing out as the hotel, a hundred and fifty miles above the Earth, sped along at over seventeen thousand miles per hour, circling the Earth every ninety minutes.

The hotel’s orbital motion slowly changed the viewing perspective, and fifteen seconds later, Jeff was staring at that the familiar outline of the Hawaiian Islands, the eastern end of the chain fading into darkness, broken by splashes of yellow light marking the cities and towns of the Big Island.

Jeff glanced to his left, westward, as Club Leo passed from day to night, watching the spectacular display of orbital sunset – the tenth so far that day – seeing the brilliant colors playing across the thin layer of air that separated Earth from space. The neon glow faded as the hotel plunged onward, out of the sun’s rays, and the stars shone brighter yet.

Turning off the room’s remaining light, staring out into the velvety, star-studded blackness of space, Jeff pulled himself even closer to the window, letting his eyes adjust. He waited until he saw, faintly at first, then more pronounced, a band of diffuse milky white across the entire arc of the sky; Zodiacal light. On Earth, it can only be discerned on the darkest, clearest nights, far away from light pollution. In space, it could be seen whenever the viewer’s line of sight was in darkness. It was the reflected light of minute particles of dust in the solar system’s ecliptic plane. On Earth, it is the source of more than half the light coming from the sky on a moonless night, but Earth’s atmosphere, combined with light pollution, makes it hard to discern. Not so in space, and it was but one of the things Jeff so loved.

For ten minutes, Jeff let the view absorb him, losing himself in its wonder. Then he reluctantly, almost painfully, closed the protective iris, knowing all too well that he could never sleep with that cosmic vista to watch from his bed.

With casual ease, Jeff glided through the air, pulling himself into the elastic webbing that would secure him in his bunk, ensuring that he did not float away in Club Leo’s zero-G.

 * * *

The bunk’s vibrating alarm woke Jeff from a sound sleep, bringing him back to consciousness to the sound of his roommate's raucous snoring.

Twenty minutes later, clean-shaven and washed, Jeff made his way to the hotel’s main control center. As soon as the door dilated, he glided in, ready to face the frantic pace of transfer day: the arrival of the weekly transit shuttle.

“You’re too early, you should have checked the status screen,” said a gruff, familiar voice from Jeff’s side as he entered the control center.

Turning to face the source of the voice, Jeff nodded. “Sorry commander, sir, I didn’t check...”

Commander Blair’s stern, cherubic face broke into a rare smile. “Quite a few of the guests forgot to check as well; they’ve been milling around the main nexus for over an hour. Groundside ordered the transit shuttle to delay and dock with us while we’re over Earth’s night side. That solar flare yesterday had the charged particle count on the dayside above nominal for the docking radars, so they belatedly decided to have the shuttle hold three miles behind us until we’re on the dark side. They’ll be docking in half an hour.”

“I’ll go see if I can help with the guests,” Jeff said, turning for the door.

“Leave ‘em, you’ll have plenty to do once the shuttle docks, so let the rest of the staff worry about the guests. Go watch the docking from the secondary docking control; you’ve never seen it from there and it’s worth it.”

Jeff nodded eagerly, his face breaking into a broad grin. “Thanks, sir!” he said, already on his way out the door. The window in his room faced the wrong way to allow a view of a docking.

Club Leo’s layout was simple; nine cylindrical modules, each twenty feet in diameter and sixty feet long, rounded at the ends like the giant pressure tanks they really were. Linked end to end, their central shaft formed an access corridor, over five hundred feet in length, which had come to be known as the hallway. Three of the nine cylinders were laid out for guest and crew quarters; the triangular rooms arrayed around the hallway. The cylinders – called modules – were inflatable; based on the original Transhab inflatable module designed and built for the first international space station, but never flown. Their walls were multi-layered carbon fiber and Kevlar cloth, with insulating voids in between. They were light, took up a space for launch far smaller than their deployed form , and the multi-layered walls provided excellent insulation, as well as being more resistant to puncture from high-velocity debris – colloquially known as space junk – and micrometeoroids than a steel and aluminum unit.

The chain of modules was orientated so that one end faced the Earth, allowing the minute gravity gradient along its length to aid in maintaining orientation without the need of constant correction by gyros or thrusters. It also allowed the hotel to have a direction to designate as down: the end that faced Earth. Massive solar panels sprouted from the upper end, tracking the sun and providing the hotel’s power.

The modules were numbered one through nine, starting from the module closest to Earth. The first four modules were the resort units – guest country. Module One contained a large open area – perfect for zero-G acrobatics. At the top end of Module One was the dining room and galley. The next two modules were the guest rooms, and Module Four contained a lounge, an exercise room, and the guest’s bathrooms.

Module Five, also known as the nexus, held the docking ports and the station’s reaction-control system. It was also home to the hotel’s two docking control stations and. It, and the higher-numbered modules, contained the crew quarters, engineering spaces, storage for consumables, and the hotel’s main control center. They were ‘crew country’ and off-limits to guests except for a once-weekly tour.

Due to orbital mechanics, a shuttle had to approach along the same orbital vector, slightly below the hotel’s altitude in order to overtake, and then rise up until it reached the level of the hotel’s docking ports in Module Five. Then, the shuttle would pirouette in space, turning so that its cargo bay – which in this case held a passenger compartment – and docking port faced the station. Docking was a complex maneuver, a slow-motion ballet in space, which Jeff had never seen.

The docking control stations were half-spheres of thick glass, protruding from each side of the docking port like blisters. A crewmember was always on duty in one when a shuttle was docking or undocking, to keep en eye on the largely automated procedure. There were two control stations, though only one was needed, to ensure that such a critical point had a backup. Watching from the unused one was a rare treat that the Club Leo’s commander only gave rarely, and never without reason.

Lost in the thrill of the moment, Jeff never paused to consider why he’d been given such a privilege. Commander Blair had, in the past, given such permission for one of two reasons; either he was rewarding a staff member for exceptional service, or he was about to assign them some particularly onerous task.

Jeff raced towards his destination, at home in zero-G due to his four months aboard. He reached the nexus, and when the door hissed open, he floated in, nodding in greeting to the guests clustered in mid-air nearby, and used the handholds with practiced ease to pull himself along to the secondary docking control access hatch. He used his keycard to release it, and pulled himself inside the small control room, which was only large enough for a single occupant.

Once inside, he settled in, staring out into space through the bubble of glass. His eyes picked out a single point of light, the only one moving against the starry background; the shuttle on final approach. Jeff floated, mesmerized, as it drew ever closer, the tiny speck gradually appearing to sprout stubby wings which protruded from its stout fuselage.

As it closed to three hundred yards, Jeff studied the transit shuttle; it was the first time he’d ever seen one up close, other than from the inside. It was a purely functional design, similar in form and size to the first space shuttles, which had flown for thirty years in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The similarity ended with appearance; the transit shuttles had no main engines, only reaction control thrusters and a small orbital maneuvering engine. They were launched atop a two-stage reusable booster, and their development had lowered the launch price per pound of payload enough, barely, to make the founding of Astral Hotels, Inc, feasible. The first orbital hotel, just two small inflatable units, had been launched in segments and assembled in orbit, and had proved a financial success, catering to wealthy tourists eager to have a literally out-of-this-world vacation, one that only the very rich could afford.

When the time had come to build its new and larger replacement, they had named it, with great fanfare, Resort Astronautica. However, the name had not caught on, and much to Astral Hotel’s chagrin, the nickname ‘Club Leo’ had become the hotel’s unofficial but most common name, harking back to the old ‘Club Med’ resorts, with Leo, or more properly LEO – Low Earth Orbit – replacing the abbreviation for Mediterranean. The crew used it primarily amongst themselves, so long as Commander Blair was not within earshot. Blair had often yelled that he despised the nickname, claiming it to be flippant and demeaning.

Jeff was so enthralled by the spectacle of docking that the sudden thud of the docking probe made him jump, which in zero-G resulted in bumping his head against a bulkhead.

Rubbing the rising bump on his head, Jeff hurled himself out of the docking control station, and floated against a wall while another crewmember opened the docking hatch.

The arriving guests clumsily and cautiously emerged, one by one, to be greeted by a hearty “Welcome to Resort Astronautica,” from one of the waiting crew, who would guide them to their rooms.

The current guests, their week aboard at an end, waited for their fiery ride home, some with more than a little trepidation. Their wait would be a short one; once the arriving guests were out, a few cargo containers were offloaded, and then they were allowed to board. Luggage was not a problem; Club Leo provided clothing in the form of jumpsuits, and each guest was only allowed ten pounds for personal items, contained in a single small bag. The shuttle also delivered fuel and oxygen, but those were transferred via supply pipes in the docking assembly.

Moving with slow caution, an older, balding man emerged from the airlock, wincing slightly as the continued sensation of falling played hell with his inner ear. Closing his eyes as he’d been instructed, he waited for the slight wave of nausea to pass.

Jeff glided to the guest’s side, and recognizing the signs, said in a quiet, sympathetic tone, “Keep your eyes closed, and I’ll get you to your room.” He surreptitiously scanned the guest’s luggage tag to determine where he had to go.

The guest nodded, and instantly regretted it. “Thanks. I was issued a motion-sickness patch, but...”

Jeff chuckled. “I know sir, same here. They don’t work for everybody, and they didn’t for me,” he said, taking the guest by the arm and gently tugging him down the long hallway. “You’ll get used to it, sir. I’m Jeff, by the way.”

Once the guest was situated in his room, Jeff excused himself and returned to the main control room, where he found Commander Blair waiting, with a predatory smile on his face.

“Did you enjoy the docking?” the commander asked, in too pleasant a tone. Only then did Jeff realize that there would be a price for his recent privilege.

“Yes sir... I’m scheduled to work in the galley–”

Commander Blair shook his head. “That’ll wait. First, the air scrubbers need changing, and then the guest bathrooms need cleaning.”

The guest bathrooms were the most dreaded task on Club Leo. Zero-G toilets were complicated and awkward, and the guests, with their minimal groundside training, often misused them. The results were often disgusting, and the toilets were in constant need of cleaning and servicing. The crew, other than the commander, took turns doing most of the hotel’s various guest-related work – there were too few to easily specialize – but, Jeff was very sure, it was not his turn to do the bathrooms.

The commander saw Jeff’s crestfallen expression, and added, in a firm but sympathetic tone, “I know it’s not your turn, but I need Simmons today for his skill with electronics. The sunspot region that caused the recent flare is coming into close alignment with Earth, and there’s a possibility that a new flare would send a Coronal Mass Ejection our way, along with a radiation storm. Every possible system has to be isolated and readied to power down. Those charged particles would play hell with us, so I want to be as ready as we can be. We’d only have a few hours of warning.”

There was little Jeff could do but agree. Simmons was the electronics specialist, so that meant Jeff got bathroom duty. “Yes, sir,” was the only response that he could give, and both men knew it.

Five hours later, the filters changed and the bathrooms spotless, Jeff reported for duty in the galley, setting to work helping heat the prepackaged food. Eating in zero-G was far from easy, and Jeff had come to dread the arriving guests’ first meal, which most often caused him several hours of cleanup work.

 * * *

Commander Blair had many issues to worry about. His job included giving the guests their full tour of the hotel, but that would need to wait. All he had to do was glance around his control center to see the reason why: several indicator lights that were normally green were showing yellow. The one that concerned him the most was the radiation monitor; the solar storm’s effects were still being felt.

Although he was not alone in the command center – a crewman manned one of the consoles, observing the shuttle’s departure – Commander Blair activated the communications link to ground control himself. Once the link was established, he got right to the point. “Groundside, any updates on the spaceweather forecast?”

The ground controller had been about to make the call himself. “Affirmative... Magnetic flux levels are increasing near the sunspot cluster; a new flare is deemed possible. The orientation of the cluster would not place Earth in the path of any Coronal Mass Ejection, but the soft X-ray pulse and proton storm would be an issue. We’re unlikely to know more until something happens, but the solar observatory at Lagrange One has high confidence that they can give three hours of warning of the flare.”

Solar flares are not unusual events. Many occur every year, including two or three large enough to be of serious concern in space. A massive flare, on any part of the sun visible from Earth, sent a high-energy blast, spanning the entire electromagnetic spectrum, traveling at the speed of light, followed by a proton stream at half that velocity or less. The X-rays could play havoc with exposed circuits such as the solar arrays, but they were easily blocked by the module walls, or the upper reaches of Earth’s atmosphere. Some other emissions, particularly the proton stream, were another matter; the high-energy radiation and particles could penetrate all but very massive shielding in space, and on Earth would ignite massive geomagnetic storms, triggering aurora displays over the mid-latitudes and creating massive power surges in electrical grids.

If a flare occurred, the commander knew he’d have as little as fifteen minutes to get his passengers and crew into the shelter, but the crew was well-drilled for a solar storm alarm, and had to execute them for a real event about once a year. The guests, within hours of their arrival, were scheduled to be given instructions on what to do in case of a flare or evacuation.

Commander Blair felt that the situation was cause for concern, but not greatly so; with a three-hour warning, he felt confident that he could avoid any damage to the hotel. That feeling of confidence lasted but thirty seconds more.

“Urgent; Lagrange One reports a flare event is underway... High X-class... repeat, flare underway, stand by.” The words, crackling through the speaker system, were ones no space traveler welcomed.

“Isolate all systems, power down everything on the flare list,” Commander Blair ordered. It was a pre-planned procedure, made easier by the preparatory work he’d initiated. It did not however solve his main problem. “Groundside, I need an estimate on the proton storm strength and arrival time.” The higher the energy of a flare, the faster the proton storm traveled.

“Lagrange One reports X-ray pulse near record levels, still rising... This is a bad one, sir.”

“Isolation and power down complete,” added the crewman on the engineering console.

For the next five minutes, Commander Blair peppered groundside with demands for the timing and amplitude of the coming radiation storm.

Groundside replied as best they could, until an update came down from Lagrange One. The ground controller blinked at his screen, and then, in a professional tone, he said, “Take shelter now. Repeat, initiate emergency shelter now. X-ray flux level indicates the flare is at X60 and still rising.”

Commander Blair's blood ran cold. The largest flare on the instrumental record was an X55 monster nearly half a century before. What groundside was reporting, if true, meant a flare larger than any other on record, and still increasing. Nothing like it had been seen since the Carrington Event of 1859, a massive flare whose scale could only be estimated.

There was no time to waste; reacting to the commander’s hurried orders, Club Leo’s attitude-control thrusters fired; the first step in changing the hotel’s orientation in space. The hotel began to rotate at a glacial pace, rolling away from vertical relative to Earth, so that the outermost end was orientated towards the sun, and the thrusters fired again, fixing Club Leo in place, with its long axis aimed directly at the sun. The orientation change was their primary defense against a radiation storm, achieved by placing the entire thickness of the hotel, lengthwise, between the sun and Module One. Using the maneuver in case of a flare had been one of many ways that Astral Hotels, Inc, had shaved weight – and thus money – from the hotel’s literally astronomical construction cost; it had avoided the need for heavy shielding.

 * * *

Jeff was beginning to serve the guests their first zero-G meal when he felt the distinctive chatter of the reaction control rockets firing, accompanied by the faint motion of the hotel. He’d been through a solar storm once before, so he knew what to expect when, a second later, the hotel’s master alarm began to blare, and a recorded voice, inappropriately pleasant, commanded, “All guests and crew, please move immediately to Module One: solar event in progress.”

The message repeated as Jeff and his fellow crew herded the confused guests to safety. Time and again, the crew had to assure nervous guests that there was no danger; it was only a precaution.

 * * *

“Groundside, what the hell happened to that three-hour warning?” Commander Blair demanded.

The ground controller, though on an audio-only link, shrugged. “Unsure, sir. All I have to go on is what Lagrange One sends down. I guess it’s like weather forecasting; sometimes they’re wrong and make a bad forecast.”

“I’m not facing a rainstorm up here; I’m looking at radiation counts in the red zone, and we’re already in shelter orientation. I’ve got to get to Module One; when I get there, I want whatever you’ve got on this flare.”

Commander Blair raced to join his passengers and crew in module one. When he arrived, he brushed off a cascade of question, shouldering his way through to Simmons, who had opened a wall panel to reveal and activate the instrument panel that served as the hotel’s auxiliary control center. Blair had used it during a prior flare, and hated it; for economy, it had been scaled down to include only the instruments and controls deemed critical, and had been located in the sheltered zone shared by crew and guests. One of the drawbacks of this arrangement was that the nervous guests could see and hear everything. A small headset, to enable the commander to receive private communications from groundside, had been installed, but Blair had discovered that this made the guests even more nervous.

“Groundside, report,” Blair commanded, and near silence fell on the module.

“Sir, it’s a big one... the largest seen in fifty years or more, at a minimum... the X-ray level is still rising, and we’re already seeing ionospheric effects. The proton storm is estimated to arrive in ten minutes, but they won’t know for sure until it reaches Lagrange One. Sir, I’m the only controller on duty here, but I’ve sent for the vice president of Astral Hotels; he’ll be here within the hour.”

Blair swore under his breath. The last thing he needed was upper management weighing in. He consoled himself with the fact that, if the forecast arrival was correct, the worst would be over before the VP’s arrival. “Just keep sending up all the data you have. The ionosphere data most of all; we need to know when to do a reboost, and how many feet per second, to clear the expansion effect.”

Blair had chosen his words with care, to avoid stressing the passengers. The hotel’s orbit was unusually low. The LEO research stations orbited far higher, by over a hundred miles, in order to avoid the higher drag effects felt in lower orbits. The hotel’s designers, however, had made the tradeoff in orbital altitude to allow the transit shuttles to carry larger payloads, and also to improve the spectacular views of Earth. As a result, the hotel’s orbit tended to decay by a dozen miles a week, an issue usually solved by a static reboost – near-continuous thrust from a small ion thruster. The thrust was tiny, only a few grams, but over time equaled the chemical-propellant main reboost thrusters while using a fraction of their reaction mass. To raise the orbit, the chemical thrusters would be the only ones powerful enough to do so quickly.

The reboost would be even more critical in this case. One effect of the X-ray blast from a large flare was to heat the outer fringes of Earth’s ionosphere, causing it to expand out into space, massively increasing drag on low-orbiting satellites. Club Leo handled such an event by using most of its reserve fuel to boost higher, raising its orbit by as much as eighty miles.

“Lagrange One reports the flare is subsiding... It’s massive, now estimated as class X67.” That report, given in a casual tone, had a chilling effect on every member of the crew.

“So it’s over?” One of the guests asked.

Jeff fielded the response. “No sir, not quite. Flares send some high-energy particles our way, so we have to remain here, in the safest part of the hotel, until they pass. It won’t be long, sir.”

Commander Blair glanced at the instruments, seeing the graph display for the proton count soaring. “The particles are passing now, but we’re safe here,” he said, wondering if it was true. The entire mass of the hotel, including the water tanks in Module Nine, protected them, but the flare’s energy level had placed them squarely in uncharted territory.

One of the other guests began opening and closing her eyes. “I can see flashes, like streaks of light, with my eyes closed.” Her voice revealed that she was on the edge of panic.

Commander Blair nodded and smiled. “That’s just a few protons that manage to slip past the mass of the hotel.” The commander omitted any mention of the accompanying fact; seeing as many flashes as they now all were indicated a heavy radiation dose was underway, and each flash was the result of the destruction of a very tiny area of the retina. If it continued, they would be blind within hours, and destined to die within days of radiation poisoning.

The speeding cloud of high-energy protons streamed through Club Leo, the hotel’s mass blocking some but not all of the massive cascade of radiation sleeting through its structure.

“We’ll be passing into Earth’s shadow in two minutes; that’ll put us out of the worst of it, and it’ll be over by the time we reemerge in forty-five minutes. Once we’re in darkness, look out the view ports: this solar storm should trigger a massive aurora display, well into the mid-latitudes. You’re about to see a display like no one has ever seen from orbit before. This is history,” Commander Blair announced, trying to calm the guests by distracting them.

Jeff, like most of the crewmen, stayed close to one of the modules’ many fire extinguishers, without being obvious. That was the drill, because fire was one of the greatest dangers in space, and the radiation storms sometimes caused electrical shorts, a prime cause of fire.

The aurora displays proved spectacular, keeping the guests mesmerized by the vast luminous twists of glowing gas below, as Club Leo passed over the southern United States and headed out over the Atlantic.

Commander Blair held his breath, his eyes fixed to the radiation graph, as Club Leo passed over the terminator and into the glare of the sun. The reading spiked higher, but then tapered off, well above nominal but below the danger range. “We’re in the green,” he announced, exaggerating a little. “The radiation storm is over. The crew and I will need to do some standard maintenance maneuvers, but we’re safe, and all guests should feel free to make full use of any guest area aboard. Thank you for your cooperation.”

A few claps developed into a ragged ovation, as the relieved guests began to disperse. Several moved towards the main viewing window, where a shaft of brilliant sunlight began inching its way across the adjoining wall. Simmons spotted it first, and whispered to Commander Blair, “Sir, our orientation is changing.”

The commander looked towards the splash of sunlight, and then spun to check the instrument panel, knowing that the hotel’s guidance computer should be keeping the hotel aligned with the sun. The limited panel only showed that the computer was online and functioning, a fact belied by the shaft of sunlight.

Realizing that he needed to be back in his control room immediately, Commander Blair said quietly, “Control crew, with me,” and hurried up the hallway, as fast as he could, as the hotel’s master alarm began sounding.

Simmons, younger and fitter, was the first to reach the control room, to be greeted by an array of flashing red lights. “Fire! Fire in primary electronics bay,” he yelled, grabbing an extinguisher and racing for the source of the alarm.

Commander Blair’s blood turned to ice – fire in space was always an emergency of the first order. “Shut off all air circulation systems in the electronics bay.” It was standard procedure; there is no convection without gravity, and in still air, the fire would begin to smother itself. Keying his microphone, he said, “Groundside, we have a mayday: instruments show a fire in the electronics bay. Repeat: we have a mayday.”

The ground controller replied with an abrupt “Acknowledged. Standing by.” It was all he could do, except for the calls he then placed, first to the company’s transit shuttle launch facility in Texas, and then to NASA, alerting them both to the problem.

Simmons checked the internal temperature, and then opened the electronics bay, to be greeted by a shower of sparks. He fired his extinguisher at it, the thrust shoving him against a wall as he played the jet of CO2 around the small conflagration. When he was sure it had been extinguished, he hit the intercom button, only to find it dead. Handing the extinguisher to another crewman and telling him to keep watch, Simmons raced for the control room.

“Sir, the fire is out but we have some system failures,” Simmons reported.

It took ten minutes of frantic checking and rerouting to discern the extent of the problem. The fire, caused by the radiation, had destroyed several critical circuit boards. They had spares aboard and quickly replaced the damaged units, restoring functionality to all but one critical system; the one they most needed. “I’m not sure why it happened, sir,” Simmons said, in the voice of a man delivering a sentence of death, “but the motion we saw was due to the emergency fuel jettison system dumping our fuels. I think it was a rogue command caused by the radiation. The tanks are dry, sir. The gyros can handle orientation, but we can’t reboost.”

As groundside had pointed out during their systems checks, they had to reboost, to raise their orbit by at least thirty miles in order to mitigate the worst effects of the expansion of the upper atmosphere. Remaining at their present altitude would result in a lowering orbit, and then, within hours, re-entry and burn-up. Club Leo was doomed, unless...

“Groundside, we need a shuttle or anything else that can reboost us up here. What can get here fastest?”

The ground controller had been dreading that question. “According to NASA, nothing currently in orbit has the capability to match orbits with you in time. Our transit shuttle, the one scheduled to go up to you in a week, can be advanced. They can launch in two days, but at your current decay rate, they won’t reach you in time. The CEO told me to tell you that he recommends evacuating the guests, and he’ll make that an order unless you can reboost in three hours.”

“Nice of him to include the crew in that,” Commander Blair said dryly. “Keep working NASA; see if they can come up with anything. In the meantime, we’ll prepare to evac, all of us.”

Evacuation was a relatively simple procedure. A group of five-man capsules was located at the docking complex of Module Five. They were simple, cheap designs; conical, with minimal life support, a bare-bones attitude control system, and a parachute. They were designed to do only one thing; automated return to Earth in case of emergency. They were sufficient to allow the passengers and crew to escape, and Club Leo had been equipped with the minimum necessary.

Five minutes later, groundside called. “We have multiple confirmations of atmospheric expansion, and your orbital decay rate has increased. Many other satellites, both manned and unmanned, are in difficulty due to the radiation effects on their electronics, and our communications may be sporadic. The best estimate we have is you’ll reenter in sixteen hours if you trim for lower drag. The CEO wants the passengers and crew off. Your present orbit has a re-entry window for the Gulf of Mexico in thirty minutes.” The automatic capsules had to land on water, and the Gulf was a good choice for a helicopter rescue, but it didn’t leave much time.

“Acknowledged. We’ll keep you posted,” Commander Blair replied.

At a frantic pace, the escape capsules were loaded, four passengers and a single crewman in each. They were loaded in sequence, and released when ready. Most major engineering disasters result from a series of small failures, each compounding the next. In this case, the next failure to occur was in capsule five. Simmons, whose job it was to power them up and bring them online, found the problem immediately, and said through the capsule access hatch,. “Sir, capsule five has a dead computer and main electrical bus... probably from the radiation surge. The bus is shorted out, sir, with signs of multiple heavy arcing. I can’t fix it, not in the time we have.”

“Hold capsule four!” Commander Blair yelled, just a moment too late. It had already released. There was no way to retrieve the previously launched capsules; they were fully automatic, and were without a docking rendezvous system or manual controls.

The math was as simple as it was deadly, and Commander Blair knew it in an instant. “We can squeeze in one additional person in each of the remaining capsules. Any more and we’d overload their guidance system. All crew now remaining will draw straws. The unlucky winner will remain with me to fix capsule five.”

A set of toothpicks served as the straws, and Jeff, the third to draw, ended the hurried contest by holding up the single half toothpick in his sweaty hand, as his heart began to pound.

There was no time for words; the crew carried on, loading and releasing the remaining capsules.

As the last capsule glided away into the void, Blair turned to Jeff. “I know you didn’t sign on for this... but I had no choice.”

The commander’s words confirmed Jeff’s worst fears. “I know, sir... and I also know there’s no hope of fixing capsule five. If there were any chance of that, you’d have asked Simmons to stay instead of having us draw for it. Any chance we can use capsule five as-is? No need for a retro burn; we’re going to reenter anyway.”

Commander Blair shook his head. “No chance. Without attitude control, the capsule would most likely stabilize point-forward during re-entry, and only the base of the capsule has a heat shield. There’s also no way to deploy the parachute manually.”

Face to face with an imminent, fiery death, Jeff tried to steel his nerve, and asked, with a forced calmness he did not feel, “Do we have any chance at all, sir?”

Commander Blair decided that there was no point in deceiving his young crewman. “It’s not looking good, but we have a chance. I’m hoping that groundside has some good news for us, but if not, I think I can buy us a few more hours. Come on.”

Groundside was to the point. “Sir, our best estimate is you’re six to eight hours from re-entry. The Air Force has rerouted a space plane returning from their geosynchronous station, but they have to aerobrake and then match your orbit for rendezvous. Their best ETA is nineteen hours. Nothing can reach you sooner. The NASA engineering team is working on this, and they think they can buy you some time; use the gyros to orient the hotel’s long axis into your direction of travel, and then jettison the solar arrays. That will reduce drag, and they think it’ll buy you a few more hours.”

“How many, exactly,” Commander Blair asked, already configuring the gyro control system.

“Unknown, sir. Anything from one to five hours. They’ll know more after a couple of orbits.”

“It might not be enough, and it’ll be damn close at best,” Commander Blair said, as he armed and activated the jettison system for the hotel’s massive solar arrays. He depressed the firing button, steadying himself for a jolt, which never came. The system status light was the only change, as it shifted from green to red. “Negative on the jettison. Looks like we have a system failure there, too.” With that malfunction, he knew that the space plane would not be arriving in time.

Commander Blair discussed options with groundside for a few moments, while tapping at a computer console. “Groundside, keep that space plane coming. We’re going to suit up, and then I’ll explain once we’re outside.”

Turning to Jeff, he said, “Follow me. Do you have EVA training?”

“No, sir.”

As they arrived at the EVA airlock, the commander began preparing two space suits, powering them up as he said, “You’re about to learn. I think I can buy us a few hours, enough to give us a shot of still being around when the space plane arrives. It’ll take me half an hour to prep these suits. What I need you to do is go to the Module Nine electrical supply locker and bring me as much heavy electrical cable as we have. That stuff is used for the solar arrays and emergency wiring so there should be a lot of it, and it’s strong as hell. Go, I’ll explain later, there’s not much time... and bring two drills, with long quarter-inch bits and an extender. Make sure they’re over a foot once the extenders are on, or they’re no use. Get the wire cutters too.”

Jeff darted off, sailing down the empty hallway. He had no idea what the commander planned, but to Jeff, it was the most precious gift of all; hope.

When Jeff returned with a thick spool of wire and the drills, the commander glanced at the spool and said, “Two hundred feet... I hope that’s enough. Have you ever been rock climbing?”

Jeff nodded in confusion. “Yes sir, a few times–”

“Good, then you’re better prepared for part of this than I am. I’ll explain while I suit you up.”

Commander Blair eased Jeff into the bottom half of a two-piece space suit, and then as he fixed the torso into place, said, “We’re in a high drag zone which is causing our orbit to decay even more rapidly than normal, and every mile we descend makes it worse, so every minute counts. You and I are going to do an extra vehicular activity, and this EVA will be like nothing ever done before. It’s basic orbital mechanics; we’re going to fling ourselves from a circular orbit to an elliptical one, and that’ll reduce our time in the higher drag regions to only near perigee. That should give us a few more hours, but right now, every minute counts. When you were a kid, did you ever tie a rock to a string, whirl it around, and let it go?”

Beginning to understand, Jeff nodded, as the commander latched Jeff’s helmet into place. “We’re going to be that rock. We’ll put the hotel into a spin; make it tumble end over end. Then, we attach the wire to the tip of Module One and push away. As the hotel spins faster, we’ll be subject to a little G, but more importantly for us, it means angular momentum – speed – relative to the hotel, which translates to added orbital speed if we release at the right time. At this altitude, it takes about one and a half feet per second of velocity increase to raise your orbital apogee – the point in an orbit farthest from Earth – by a mile. So, if we’re on the end of a long tether, about five hundred feet from the center of rotation, and the hotel is rotating at one rotation per minute, we’d have an angular velocity of about fifty feet per second. If we cut loose parallel to our orbital direction of motion, that fifty feet per second would give us an apogee about twenty miles higher. The drag at perigee – closest approach to Earth – will just reduce our apogee on each orbit. It’ll buy us some time. We can run the suit maneuvering thrusters until they’re dry at our first apogee, which will raise our perigee by a few miles. It’ll be close, but I think it’ll give us long enough to avoid reentry until the space plane arrives.”

The commander performed a final check of Jeff’s suit, and then raced to struggle into his own, leaving Jeff to consider what he’d been told. It sounded crazy, but with the alternative being a certain fiery death aboard Club Leo, Jeff had no objection to trying. With nothing to do for a few moments, Jeff’s mind wandered, his eyes falling on the bright red form of a fire extinguisher. It took him a few seconds to realize that he was looking at a lifeline. “Sir, what if we had some more thrust at apogee?”

Commander Blair glanced up at Jeff, about to tell him that there was nothing aboard that could give them that. He followed Jeff’s gaze, realizing instantly what he was seeing. “Good thinking. Get four... no, make it eight. We’ll latch them onto our suit tool webbing. It’ll be awkward, but if it works, we’ll be sure to be around when that rescue space plane arrives.” The one thing the commander decided not to mention was that though they would still be in orbit, they might be dead; the space plane’s earliest arrival window was right at the maximum endurance limit for their space suits.

Encumbered by the awkward suit, Jeff headed for the hallway and began snatching fire extinguishers from their holders.

By the time he returned, the commander had himself and the supplies already in the airlock. Jeff joined him, and after attaching the fire extinguishers, they lowered their visors and performed a radio check, and then closed the airlock.

As the airlock slowly vented itself to space prior to opening the outer door, Jeff and the commander felt their suits become stiffer, and Jeff asked, “Sir, how do we spin the hotel?”

“That’s what the drills are for,” the commander replied, with a wink.

Outside, Jeff felt his gut clench as he eased out, using a handhold for guidance, feeling a wave of vertigo and the sensation of infinite falling. He glanced at the Earth, seeing it for the first time as a deadly peril, reaching out to drag them down in flames.

They latched their safety lines onto EVA guide wires, making their way down the length of the hotel, to Module One, while the commander informed groundside of their intent, and asked them to track their trajectory carefully in order to adjust the approaching space plane’s rendezvous maneuvers.

They felt nothing of the increasing drag. It was merely a slight trace of atmosphere, still an almost perfect vacuum, but just enough to impede Club Leo’s seventeen thousand mile per hour speed slightly; a few feet per second per hour.

At the end of Module One, they secured one end of the wire to a sturdy handhold, and the other end to the safety-line attach point on the commander’s suit. They left the remainder of the wire on the spool, ready to be uncoiled.

Commander Blair pointed at the side of the module. “Clip your safety line to mine. We’ll both grab a handhold and drill into the module shell here; the axis of rotation has to be ninety degrees from our orbital motion. Don’t place your body over the hole or it’ll blow you free, and reeling yourself in with your safety line would take time we don’t have.”

The drill bits made easy work of the layers of carbon fabric, and the blast of air became stronger as they pierced each successive layer. The final layer yielded, and the air, at fifteen pounds per square inch, blasted out, making the surface of the module vibrate.

“We need a few more, as fast as you can,” the commander ordered, struggling against the drill’s torque as he bored through the module’s skins as fast as he dared.

As his third hole punched through, Jeff’s drill kicked back, torn from his hand by the force of escaping air, sending it flying out into space.

“Don’t worry about it, we’re already starting to rotate, I think that’ll do it,” the commander said, before letting go of his own drill. The thrust from the escaping air had already overcome the feeble abilities of the gyros.

With as much haste as they could manage, they readied the wire and pushed away from the module as Club Leo completed its first quarter of a rotation. At first, it was easy; they uncoiled the wire as they drifted away, but as Club Leo’s rate of rotation increased, centripetal force imparted a few pounds of weight, forcing them to hold onto the wire in order to slow themselves.

Struggling and breathing hard, they reached the end of the wire. After resting for a few minutes, Commander Blair said, “Feels like we’re creeping up on a tenth of a G and we’re still increasing spin, getting close to one rotation per minute. We can’t wait too long; the wire will hold our mass at about half a G, maybe less, and if it parts while we’re heading in the wrong direction relative to our orbit, we’re dead. One rotation per minute should do it, that’s over fifty feet per second. I’ll cut us free when we’re moving parallel to our orbital path.”

The commander looked at the Earth below, seeing nothing but empty ocean. He glanced around, towards the sun, marking it in his mind as a landmark relative to their orbital ground track.

Jeff fought a wave of nausea as the Earth and stars alternated between his feet in a stately, terrifying dance, the rate slowly increasing as he felt himself pushed into his space suit. Even a fraction of a G felt strange, after four months in free fall.

“Cutting free now,” the commander yelled, more for groundside’s benefit than Jeff’s, straining as he squeezed the cutters to sever the wire.

The sensation of weight vanished in an instant as the wire parted, sending them hurling ahead of Club Leo, parallel to its ground track. “I think we did it,” the commander said, breathing hard. “Looks like we’re pulling ahead at about thirty miles per hour, and that’s forty four feet per second.”

“Forty-eight feet per second, according to our radar track,” groundside announced. “Apogee in forty-seven minutes.”

They watched as Club Leo receded into the distance, and Jeff noticed it moving below the horizon, from their perspective. “It really worked, we’re climbing,” he said.

“Higher orbits are slower, so the resort will pass under us in a few minutes,” the commander said, looking wistfully at his doomed command before asking, “Groundside, what’s the status on our escape capsules?”

“Recovery operations are underway now... the last one splashed down a few minutes ago.”

One last task remained... upon reaching apogee, they lashed themselves more firmly together. The commander took the first fire extinguisher, pulled its pin, and took careful aim backwards along their ground track. He squeezed the trigger, feeling the slight thrust, struggling slightly to keep it aimed out from their center of mass.

When the first fire extinguisher was exhausted, Commander Blair sent it tumbling away with a light shove. He repeated the process with the remaining fire extinguishers, and as he discarded the final one, he said, “We’ll use your suit thrusters first. Just stay still; I’ll work the control pad. I’m only going to use ninety percent in each suit; we might need some when the space plane gets here.”

Jeff felt them turning in space, and then, as the commander tapped a few buttons on the sleeve of Jeff’s space suit, he heard the hiss of the tiny gas jets activating.

Commander Blair fired his own suit thrusters, and then released Jeff to float freely, their suits held together by a few feet of safety line.

It had been an awkward, improvised procedure, and they waited with trepidation for the tracking results. At last, their headphones crackled as groundside announced that they’d attained a boost of twenty feet per second, more than enough.

Commander Blair checked the suit status gauges, mentally extrapolating the suits’ remaining endurance time and then comparing it to the space plane’s earliest possible arrival. “Groundside, we used up a little more air and power than I’d hoped. I’m putting the suit radios on standby, to save as much power as we can.” He clicked a switch on his sleeve, and then on Jeff’s, to power down their radios. Pulling himself close to Jeff, so that their helmets touched, the commander said, “We need to stay calm and make our air and power last as long as possible. If we do, we should make it. The transmitters use the most power, so with the radios on standby, we can still hear groundside; they just can’t hear us. Just remember to touch our helmets together when we talk, so the sound will carry. Otherwise, we can’t hear each other.”

“I’ll do the best I can sir... I’m scared, but it’s one hell of a view,” Jeff replied, trying his best to calm down.

The commander chuckled. “The best thing about an EVA is the view. I’m just glad the guests on Club Leo never knew that, or we’d have had to suit them up and take them outside.”

“You called the hotel ‘Club Leo’, sir... I thought you hated that name?” Jeff remarked in surprise.

Commander hesitated for a moment, making up his mind before replying, “The company hates the nickname, so I had to act as if I did too. I don’t give a damn anymore though, because I’m going to resign when we land... I might as well, I’ll never see space again; I’m close to retirement age and that solar storm maxed me out on my lifetime allowed radiation dosage; I was already close before... Not that it matters anyway; the company won’t want me, not after a hotel that cost as much as a small city is destroyed on my watch.”

Jeff was trying hard to chase the dread from his mind, to avoid wondering what it was like to suffocate to death in a space suit, which he knew would be his fate if the space plane did not arrive before their air or power ran out. He forced himself to think about the future he hoped he still had, and in so doing, made his own career decision. “I’m going back to college. Lagrange One sounds like the place to be; big science station, a million miles from Earth, out past the moon... better than catering to space sick tourists in LEO, plus they’d pay me a salary, a good one.”

“Yeah, no chance of any tips from our current guests; they’ll be screaming for a refund as soon as they’re safe,” the commander commented, with a soft laugh, and then added in a quiet, serious tone, “That sounds like a good plan you’ve got there. Don’t worry, we’re going to make it.”

For the next few hours, Jeff and Commander Blair watched the glory of Earth, rolling by beneath their feet, a sight the commander knew he’d never see again.

Five hours later, groundside announced, “The Air Force space plane will be rendezvousing with you in three hours and seven minutes. The hotel is reentering now, over the central Atlantic. I’m watching a live camera shot; she’s leaving a trail of fire four hundred miles long... the modules are separating now, spinning off and flying in formation, trailing fire...” Groundside’s running commentary continued, and the commander noted a tone of mixed awe and horror, making him glad that he could not see the hotel’s destruction.

Club Leo was no more.

The commander checked the suits’ status gauges. There was no way to precisely predict the time they’d last, it could only be estimated. The story the gauges told was not comforting; when the space plane arrived, they’d be at their limit, or perhaps past it and already dead.

Silence returned, punctuated only by the hum of their space suits’ air circulation fans, as they passed once again to the night side of Earth, seeing the golden lights of cities far below.

Day followed night, every forty-five minutes, as their air and power dwindled.

A few moments after an orbital sunrise, Commander Blair spotted something moving against the star field, and studied it for a moment, until he was certain that salvation was at hand. He clicked on the suit transmitters, finding that there was insufficient power remaining to operate the radios. He nudged Jeff to get his attention, and grinning with relief, free from worry at last, the commander pointed at an approaching point of light, as it appeared to spout stubby wings. He touched their helmets together and announced, “Our ride’s here,” as the Air Force space plane completed its rendezvous approach.

Jeff looked towards the approaching space plane, watching as it drew nearer, and an astronaut, carrying emergency air and power packs, emerged from the airlock. As the astronaut approached, Jeff said, “I guess we’re going to live, sir. I sure had my doubts, until now.”

Commander Blair laughed, and as he reached out to take hold of the arriving Air Force astronaut and attach the air and power connections, he replied, “Me too, and you don’t have to call me ‘sir’ anymore, Jeff. I’m resigning, remember? Just call me by my first name.”

Jeff blinked in surprise, and as his suit returned to full power, said, “I don’t know what it is?”

With a hearty laugh, Commander Blair replied, “Take a wild guess as to one of the reasons why the company hated for the hotel to be called ‘Club Leo’. They didn’t want the hotel to be associated, in the minds of the public or the customers, with one man, so when I came along, they decided to crack down on the nickname, even though it had been around for awhile."

As they neared the space plane’s airlock, the realization hit Jeff, and he began to laugh. “It’s been an honor to serve under your command, Leo Blair.”