The Krone Experiment by J. Craig Wheeler

Wow! He’s still got his grip! I guess
the suit gives him enough protection from the peroxide jet.” Jupp
watched intently. “Oh, oh,” he said. “They’ve slowed it down and
it’s tilted toward us again. They’re still trying to draw a
bead!”
    Jupp concentrated on the controls again,
moving the shuttle out of reach. When he could look again, Jupp saw
that the Colonel had once more fired up the torch.
    “He’s hanging onto the thruster with one hand
and using the torch on the sidewall about a foot above the
thruster. I don’t know how he’s holding on, but that should be thin
skin he’s cutting there. Why’s he doing that? Yep, there it
goes.”
    A thin piece of the metal wall fell away
leaving a hole about a foot across. The torch was released,
dangling on its short cord.
    “Now let’s see, he’s got a hole big enough
for his hand. Yeah, he’s reaching inside. Those edges will be
sharp. He better not rip his suit! Okay, he’s got a grip on
something inside, a brace or something. He’s hauling himself up.
He’s got a foot up, now the other. Oh, I see. He’s standing on the
wing.”
    “He’s standing?” inquired Wahlquist,
perplexed. “What the hell do you mean?”
    “Well, he’s got himself wrapped along the
side with his head pointed in the direction of the rotation. That
puts the flat surface of the wing under his feet, giving sort of an
artificial gravity. There must still be quite a centrifugal force,
but he’s got some support.
    “I can only see him about once every, oh,
about every twenty seconds now, the thing has slowed its rotation
as it’s maneuvered here. From our vantage, he’s moving from left to
right, clockwise if you look up from below. He’s got the torch back
and is poking it into the thruster nozzle. Ah, yeah, that’ll fry
the nozzle and the works inside. Now he’s doing the opposite nozzle
of the pair. He’s cutting another hand hold. He’s near the bottom
end of the cylinder. There’s another thruster at the top; he’s
going for that.”
    Jupp watched as the man held on with his left
hand and reached over as far as he could with the torch in his
right hand to cut another hole. There was an awkward moment as the
torch was released, and the change of handholds was managed, right
hand into the old hole, left into the new one. That maneuver was
repeated again so that the figure was holding on only with his
right hand and had moved to the left. After a brief fumble the
torch was retrieved from where it spun outward at the end of its
tether, and yet another hole was cut. Repeating this pattern,
Newman made his laborious way along the side of the Cosmos, pausing
a couple of times to direct the torch into small ports that could
be easily reached. Whatever sensors had peered out from within were
now blind. Electronic eyes in exchange for the human pair in the
shuttle. Newman was almost at the other end, at the second pair of
thrusters, when his cold voice came again.
    “Major, are you out of the line of fire?”
    “Yes, sir—”
    “Then make sure your eyes are goddamned
covered!”
    The laser! Jupp had not been watching the
clock in his fascination with the laborious climb up the face of
the Cosmos. He barely had time to throw his arms up over his
faceplate. The laser port was between the protuberance Newman stood
on and the one that followed in the sense of rotation. The timing
was immaculate. The laser flared as the rotation swept it in the
direction of the shuttle, the vast surge of energy passing several
hundred feet above the shuttle. Jupp slowly lowered his arms and
looked at the clock. About twenty-four minutes between shots, just
as before. The remaining thrusters flared on the Cosmos, and it
slowed and slewed again, a little erratically Jupp thought, the
effect of the destroyed thruster pair. Hurriedly, Jupp eased the
shuttle into a new safe position.
    “Everything all right?” Wahlquist wanted to
know.
    “Yeah,” replied Jupp, “we were out of the
line of