When Bull woke, his body was still bruised, but his mind was clear. As he breakfasted, he went over it one more time.
He was in the Kuiper Belt now, and there was really nothing to keep him from staying here for years and years. Boredom would likely strike before supplies ran out.
The choice was whether he would come back to the inhabited Solar System penniless or rich. He’d come back rich enough times to know how great the pleasures of Solar System life could be, and he’d seen enough down-and-out deep spacers to know what coming back penniless meant.
The Honeycomb might contain deep secrets, if he found it, but would those secrets be immediately profitable ones, or profitable at all? Probably not, so he wouldn’t be making a choice to risk his modest Earthly and Martian fortunes on finding fabulous wealth, but on finding an interesting scientific phenomenon and a modest mine of construction material—on pursuing an expensive hobby.
It was no choice, really. His life, his fortune, were in the inner Solar System. The secrets of the Kuiper Belt would have to be unlocked by someone madder than he. He would turn back … and blackly curse the social system that was robbing him of his hard-earned chance to pursue a dream.
As he finished breakfast he announced, “Honey, turn the ship around, we’re headed home.”
“Excuse me, sir, what about the probe? It makes contact with the meteor tomorrow, and if we turn back now, it will be lost. We’ll lose the probe and have no meteor sample either.”
“How long must we wait?”
“It will depend on the mass of the meteor. It appears to be a large one, but if it’s average density for a honeycomb, we can turn back tomorrow. The probe will catch up.”
“Is it honeycomb?”
“It’s now 90% probable to be honeycomb.”
“How large is it?”
“Probe radar indicates it’s about 200 meters long and irregular.”
“That’s big, by far the biggest yet. Have you sent its trajectory into TC?”
“Not yet, I was waiting for confirmation that it was honeycomb and not snowflake.”
“Send it today, and we’ll turn back tomorrow.”
“That’s a lot of money for something we’ll never use.”
“Do it!”
Bull decided to take some more abuse from Higuchi. It was exercise, and if he was returning to a planet surface, he was going to need all he could get.
* * *
The next day Bull watched as the probe made visual contact. As soon as the meteor was on video, it was definitely honeycomb. “It’s like a piece of eggshell!” commented Bull.
First off, it was huge, ten times as long as the ship. Second, it was a slightly curved plate with many dainty pocked ridges and craters on an otherwise essentially smooth outer surface. The inner concave surface looked like a sponge with part of it ripped away. The meteor was spinning rapidly, about once a minute.
“How does it hold together?” Bull wondered aloud.
“Given its spin, I suspect it’s as large as it can be without coming apart,” said Honey. “The centrifugal force on the outer edges would pull apart unreinforced concrete.”
Bull zoomed in on the spin axis. There the meteor was fairly thick and just as heavily pocked.
“Those craters look deep, Honey,” said Bull.
“Radar confirms that, sir. They seem to lead into intersecting tunnels.”
“That much spin, it’s going to be tricky to tow.”
“Very tricky. There isn’t much to get a purchase on; the whole thing may fragment if we add any stress. We can put a bearing in the tow line, but should that bearing fail, the probe will be wrapped into the meteor very quickly.
“In fact, Bull, this meteor may not be stable. It’s not spinning on its long axis, it’s wobbling. It’s surely in the process of changing its spin axis, and it may be shedding pieces as it does.”
“Then this thing is very new.”
“We may be better off putting gyros and a thruster on this,” Honey continued, “although that will slow down the retrieval.
“And yes, that spin means it’s probable this is a new fragment.”
“Determine how old.”
The probe moved to orient itself on the spin axis of the meteor. As it moved within 50 kilometers, the acquired data increased exponentially and Bull scanned the highlights. When the probe stopped 500 meters away, a small sub-probe was released to make actual contact. With that much spin, the contact would have to be at an axial point, and the sub-probe would be under power most of the time. The mission could only last 20 minutes or so.
“Send it in, Honey, start dead-on axial, let’s feel what we’ve got.”
The sub-probe made contact, latched on, acquired the meteor’s spin, and took a sample.
“What color is that, Honey?”
“The video is calibrated; it’s as white as it looks.”
“As white as eggshell, light and porous—can this be from a natural process?”
“Answering that will take consultation. Should I send out the data now?”
“Wait ’til we’ve finished exploring. Can we get in one of those holes?”
There was a pause. “Yes, in fact, it should not be hard. There are lots of gripping points. Would you care to guide?”
“Yes, thank you.” Bull gripped the twin joysticks.
The image of porous rock on the screen showed deep roundish pocks, large and small, and pocks within pocks. There were sharp sheared-off edges, suggesting a piece spun off from a larger structure.
As best he could through the probe sensors, Bull felt those edges. They seemed as sharp as they looked. Light color and sharp edges are not common in objects that endure eons of space vacuum while circling the sun. Micrometeorites dull edges and protons in the solar wind dull color to a Moon gray, although more slowly in the Kuiper Belt than in the Inner System. Was this really a rapidly spinning piece of something that broke up recently—recently in geologic time, that is?
Bull maneuvered the probe into the nearest pock big enough that it would fit comfortably. The search lights showed a tube leading deep into the meteor. Bull oriented the probe so that its legs were generally pointing away from the center of spin and it could walk. As it maneuvered in, the signal strength began oscillating in time with the meteor’s spin.
“How far in can I go, Honey?”
“Not too far. The porous rock is absorbing the signal.”
For a while, the tube remained constant in width with no interesting features. Then, just as Honey announced, “You’re as far as you can go,” Bull saw a swirl pattern in the wall, barely visible in the searchlight, but very different from the bubble pattern he’d been seeing.
“This looks hot! We won’t be turning back today, Honey. I want to touch this personally as soon as possible. Send in the stats on this fragment right now, and keep an eye out for other pieces.”