Saturn Rukh by Robert L. Forward Page B

fuel that would take them back to Earth. The autopilot on the rendezvous stage was set to maintain station on the opposite side of the return fuel tank from the iceberg. The two large masses would provide shielding for the return stage from incoming space debris objects.
     
    “Okay,” said Rod, turning from the pilot console to look at the watching crewmembers in back of him. “Time for a complete system check before we commit.”
     
    For the next few days, the crew was busy checking every system and item of equipment on the ship—for their lives would depend upon everything functioning properly.
     
    Pete spent most of his time in the meta-manufacturing facility nestled under the spacecraft proper. Since the thirty-five-ton factory would be cut loose and left behind when the spacecraft lifted off from Saturn at the end of their mission, no provision had been made to access the factory from inside the crew compartment. It would have added mass and decreased their chances of completing the mission, so Pete got lots of practice putting on and taking off his spacesuit as he moved back and forth from the factory and the crew compartment.
     
    Mass was at such a premium that “plumber” Dan even emptied out the solid waste storage tank on Sexdent. The frozen vacuum-dried brown material was put into storage bags and sent out into space.
     
    “Aren’t you going to at least burn them up by deorbiting them?” asked Chastity primly as she saw the collection of bags growing outside one of the viewports.
     
    “Nope,” said Dan, as he prepared to exit the airlock with another odoriferous reminder of the excellent meals they had enjoyed in the past year. “When they set up a permanent manned station here at Titan to monitor the meta factories down on Saturn, this will be just the stuff to fertilize the hydroponics gardens.” Chastity reminded herself not to visit the monitoring station.
     
    After checking all the equipment inside the capsule, Rod, Chastity, and Seichi went outside to check everything there. Seichi examined the heat shield that covered the bottom of the ship. The heat shield had ports that swung aside to allow passage of the exhaust flames during their deceleration bum, then swung back to protect the nozzle bells as the ship entered the upper atmosphere. He activated the doors on each one of the twelve ports, checking to make sure that they seated tightly, then checked the release mechanism that would drop the five tons of heatshield after it did its job. He then checked out all the engine bells and magnoshielded nozzles. Each one took a number of hours, so he too was in and out of his spacesuit many times during the days of the checkout period.
     
    Rod and Chastity helped Seichi with the engine checkout, activating the magnoshield from inside, while Seichi reached up into the nozzle bell with a magnetometer to check the field configuration. The two also examined the parachute, balloon, and shrouds that would bring them to a halt in the clouds and float them there during their six-month stay on the giant planet.
     
    “That’s the trouble,” said Rod with a resigned shake of his head as he and Chastity looked at the neatly laid-out shrouds on top of fold after fold of tough fabric. “The only way to really check out a parachute is to jump with it.”
     
    ~ * ~
     
    Finally, they were ready. At dinner that night, Rod announced, “Mission Control says they are set up and ready to have us climb down the rings. As soon as Rhea is in the right position, we’ll do a burn at Titan and drop down to our first ‘rung’ on the ladder.”
     
    Sandra, puzzled, asked Rod a question. “What I don’t understand is how come if Sexdent is able to climb up out of Saturn’s gravity well using its rockets, why can’t it use its rockets to climb down?”
     
    “ ‘Cause of the extra mass we have to carry down,” said Rod. “If all we had to carry was the fifty-ton main capsule, the hundred and twenty tons of