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The Cold Solution
by Don Sakers
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Science Fiction

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www.Fictionwise.com

Copyright ©1991 by Don Sakers

First published in Analog, April 1991

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She wasn't alone.

There was a stowaway aboard.

She'd read a story like this once, a story so old that the original had been on paper, not wafer. All Space Force Cadets read the story—it had even been viddied a few times, but nothing could compare with the starkness of words on a bare screen. In her Academy days, they'd all stayed up late marvelling at the prescience of that pre-spaceflight author, who had described it all so well.

Now it wasn't a story.

“All right, you can come out now,” she said in the direction of the supply locker. “Your free ride is over.” At the same time she fingered her laser knife, holding it ready in case the stowaway gave her trouble. She'd never faced one before, not in all her eleven years in the Force ... but you heard stories from other pilots. Some stowaways fought, some threatened, some pleaded, some even tried to bribe you—but in the end, according to the inexorable laws of physics, all of them died.

It was sad, she supposed, in some abstract way. But Space didn't care about simple human concerns like life and death. Space was cold, and all it knew was the bottom line of its cold equations.

Self-defense, she thought. The minute her unwanted guest decided to stow away, he had sealed his fate. It was him or her. And she wasn't going to let it be her.

“Show yourself right now,” she said through clenched teeth, “Or I swear, I'll shoot."

The locker door opened, and a timid voice said, “Don't shoot. I'm coming out.” Then the stowaway stepped into view.

It was a boy.

* * * *

The pilot closed her eyes, and for an instant she prayed, prayed to whatever gods lived out here on the edges of the explored galaxy. When I open my eyes, she thought, It won't be a boy standing there, it'll be a thirty-year-old fugitive. That was how it was supposed to happen.

But out here there were no gods but Space itself, and when she looked she saw only sandy hair, and freckles, and a lopsided grin flanked by a single dimple. He couldn't have been more than ten.

And no matter what she did, no matter that she wanted desperately to be anywhere in the universe but here—the boy was already dead. Despite his cheery smile and his bright eyes and his fidgeting hands, he was dead, dead as Space itself.

She lowered the laser knife and closed her jaw. “What are you doing here?"

“I'm a stowaway. I want to go to Lethe with you. My uncle Matt works there.” The boy said it so simply, as if it were a self-evident geometrical axiom. “I know I wasn't supposed to, but I haven't seen him for a long time."

“How old are you?"

“Nine."

“Do your parents—” She stopped herself, knowing only too late what his answer must be.

The boy shook his head. “They don't know I'm here.” He glanced at his watch. “They're probably still asleep, back on the ship.” Cocking his head at Diane, he asked, “How come you launched in the middle of the night?"

He knew nothing, she realized, of the inexorable mathematics of celestial mechanics—the mathematics which had already killed him. “Th-the launch window was just twenty minutes wide,” she said, not caring whether her words meant anything to him. “There's only one optimal trajectory to Lethe tangent to the ship's flight path.” And now, she thought, the ship was back in hyperspace ... beyond contact until it reached its destination. The lad's parents wouldn't hear the news of their son's fate until two weeks from now, when the ship burst out of translight in the Gondwana system. Two weeks too late....

“How did you know I was going to Lethe? What made you think of stowing away?"

The boy thrust out his chest and beamed. “Technician Godwin told me. We're good friends."

“Do you know why I'm headed there?"

Another nod. “Medicine. For the plague. We were worried when we heard about it on the news. With Uncle Matt there, and everything.” Incredibly, he was still smiling. “But now everything's going to be all right, isn't it?"

“Wait. Don't move.” Diane closed her eyes, leaned her head back on the command chair, and concentrated. From the million tiny pinpricks of the nerve inducers, she felt the computer's cool, quiet presence in the intricate neural lattices that filled the whole structure of the boat. Without a pilot's living brain in the circuit, it was no more intelligent than a wrist chronometer. But when joined to the implants in Diane's brain tissue, the computer could easily handle the millions of picosecond calculations of close approach, effortlessly direct the boat's thrusters to ensure a safe entry and touchdown.

Pilot and computer, each incomplete without the other—and together, more powerful than both.

But not powerful enough.

In answer to her unasked question, Diane felt the numbers within her mind. The boat was 31.62 kilograms over-massed, and therefore using an extra six grams of fuel per second, each second of deceleration. It might as well have been sixty grams a second, or six thousand ... the boat would arrive at Lethe some seventy kilograms of fuel short. And then it would burn up, a splendid meteor trail in Lethe's nighttime sky.

Damned if it will, Diane thought.

The kid twitched. “Look, I know I wasn't supposed to stow away. I'm sorry, and I'll take whatever punishment I've got coming."

“Do you know what's going to happen to you?"

“I'll have to stay on Lethe until the next ship comes. And that'll be months. I know. I'll stay with Uncle Mark. Do you know him? Mark Sadako, he works in the Colony Survey office."

Diane shrugged. “I don't think so. This is only my third trip to Lethe.” And probably my last, she finished to herself. The regulations say this kid has to die—but I'm still going to get buried for it.

“He's a nice man. Look, if there's any kind of fine or something, Uncle Mark will take care of it. Or my Dad. He has lots of money."

There's not enough money in the universe, kid, to change the laws of physics.

Why couldn't it have been a fugitive, or transportee, or even some terrorist on a mission from God? Gods of all heaven, why did it have to be an innocent little boy?

She turned to the control board, at the same time framing a command in her mind. The computer obediently opened a hyperwave comm channel. “Lethe Port here.” The voice filled the tiny cabin. “Identification, please."

“DelMinna, Boat 378H7. Get me the Base Commander."

“Why—"

“This is an emergency. I want your commander on the line, and I want him now."

“Hold on.” Diane had to give Lethe Port credit; in less than a minute another voice, this one deeper and more controlled, said, “Commander Barker here. What's your situation?"

Diane took a breath. “Commander, I'm about seven hours out from Lethe..."

“Is the medicine all right?"

“Yes. It's not that.” She took a breath. “The problem is, Commander, I've discovered a stowaway."

“Is that all?” A patronizing tone crept into the Commander's voice. “Let me look at your telemetry ... hmm, pretty tight on that fuel reserve. You're thirty-two kilos over. You'd better jettison within the hour, or you'll be short for landing."

“That's the thing, Commander. This isn't an ordinary stowaway."

“I don't care who it is, Pilot, that medicine has got to get here safely. I want you to—"

“Commander, he's a little boy."

“What?!"

Carefully, slowly, Diane replied, “Commander, my stowaway is a nine-year-old boy. He didn't know what he was doing.” She bit the words off savagely. “One of your ColSurv people is the boy's uncle. The kid just wanted to see him."

All trace of patronizing was gone from the Commander's voice. “Stand by, Pilot. We'll get our people to work on it."

“Commander ... the kid is right here, watching me. What should I tell him."

There was a long pause, then in a tone laced with infinite regret, the Commander replied, “Tell him the truth."

* * * *

“What's your name, kid?"

“Tony.” The boy hung his head like a puppy caught making a mess in the house.

Diane's brain had gone on vacation, leaving her vocal chords to figure out what to say all on their own. What was there to say? No perfect words had ever been invented for this situation. “Tony, you have to understand something.” Why was it important that he understand? Why couldn't she just slug the kid, knock him unconscious, throw him in the airlock and be done with it?

Because she had to live with herself afterward.

“Tony, the payload of an emergency boat like this has to be carefully figured. Every gram counts. That's why emergency boat pilots are usually women. But when they fueled the boat, they didn't figure on your extra mass. Do you understand that?"

Tony nodded, but kept his eyes down. “I guess we're using more fuel than you planned. I'm sorry about that."

Sorry isn't enough. “That's the thing, Tony. The people on Lethe have their big computers working on this, but right now ... well, it looks like we're going to run out of fuel before we get there. We won't have enough to land safely."

Tony raised his head, and his eyes were dry. Diane wondered how long they'd stay that way. “Why didn't they give you more fuel?"

“Everything is calculated. The ship doesn't have much fuel to spare—and every extra gram of fuel meant at least one less gram of medicine for Lethe.” She wanted to turn away from his accusing stare, wanted to shout, “It's not my fault!” Instead, she forced herself to meet his eyes.

“S-so I guess you have to jettison something. That's what the Commander said, isn't it? You'll have to throw something overboard, to make up for my mass. Geez, I'm sorry."

“Tony, we—” The chime of the hyperwave interrupted her.

“Boat 378H7, this is Commander Barker. Look, DelMinna, our computers have looked at the problem, and they have some recommendations for you. Number one: you'll approach Lethe on an orbit that's a bit more shallow, so you can pick up some extra delta-vee by skimming off the atmosphere. Number two: Your landing site will be changed to a splashdown in the inland sea; one of our helicopters will pick up you and the medicine."

“And what does that get me?"

“You're still twenty-five kilos overmass. And your approach will hit five gees. But you won't have to do a jettison until seventy-three minutes before splashdown."

An hour and a quarter short.

Might as well be a year.

Hey kid, Diane thought, can you hold your breath for seventy-three minutes? Can you flap like a bird and make atmosphere entry safely?

She swallowed. “Is that all you can do for me?"

“That's all the computers can come up with. What did you have in mind?"

“I don't know.” Refueling? Don't be stupid, Diane. You're falling toward Lethe at better than two hundred kilometers a second. What are you going to do when a fuel rocket goes past—reach out and grab it with a butterfly net? “Jettison at seventy-three minutes before touchdown, eh?"

“That's the best we can do for you, Pilot."

“Thanks. Out.” Bitterly, she commanded the computer to cut the link. As it did, the machine signaled seven hours until touchdown.

Tony had five and three-quarter hours to live.

Diane opened her mouth, then closed it. The words wouldn't come—she doubted that there were words.

Tony looked around the small cabin. A single glance sufficed. Control chair and board, airlock, cargo cupboard with its load of medicine, broom-closet supply locker ... that was all. “When it comes time, what are we going to throw out?"

Diane couldn't make herself be cruel enough to do the kind thing, and tell the kid right away. She stalled. “There isn't much here to get rid of.” Please, gods, let him at least figure it out for himself, so she could be spared pronouncing the sentence of death.

“It doesn't look like there's anything. I guess you'll toss out food and water—"

“There isn't any food aboard, Tony. Only a couple of liters of water."

“And you can't throw out the medicine.” He looked again, more carefully, and his eyes grew wider. “The locker doors are welded on, so is that couch you're sitting in."

“The control couch is part of the navigation system. Even if I could rip it out, the ship can't land without it."

“Your pressure suit?"

“There isn't one aboard.” She waved at her jumpsuit. “All I have is what you see."

“Then what are you going to jettison?"

She couldn't delay the awful moment any longer. “Tony ... the regulations say that any stowaway must be jettisoned.” She noticed that her knuckles were white on the grip of her knife, and forced her hand to relax.

For a moment, Tony's expression was unchanged—then all too quickly, the lad of ten grew up, and cold terror entered his eyes. “I-If I leave the ship, I'll die."

“Tony, there's no other way."

“You can't do that.” Tony backed up a step, found himself pressed against the airlock's inner door, and moved sideways to the supply locker. “I haven't done anything to die for."

“I know. I'm sorry.” Her heart thudded, and each breath was agony. “I-I wish I could take your place. But don't you see, you couldn't pilot the ship. The computer needs a trained pilot in the couch. I'd just be killing both of us—and all the people on Lethe who need the serum."

“There's got to be something we can do."

She shook her head. “You heard Lethe Port. Even using our full fuel reserve, we're twenty-five kilos overmass."

“I weigh thirty-one.” The boy plucked at his shirt, garish red and orange synthetic. “If we get rid of our clothes, and our shoes, and the couple of liters of water ... and if we could cut these doors loose..."

Diane shook her head. “Five kilos, maybe. Not enough."

“Can't we go into orbit, and wait for another ship to come get us?"

“Tony, Lethe's a new colony. They don't have any ships. That's why we have to send an emergency boat."

“Isn't there anything that anybody can do for me?"

She closed her eyes. “No. Nothing."

“Do you want me to die?"

The question was so innocent, asked in such a gentle tone, that it finally broke Diane's reserve. Her eyes filled as she reached out her arms to the helpless little boy. “Of course not. I don't want it to happen.” He fell into her arms and she squeezed him tightly. His sobs shook both their bodies. “Nobody wants it. But space doesn't have any feeling, Tony. Physics doesn't care what we want."

Tony was silent, then, quaking with quiet sobs. Diane held on, and sobbed along with him.

* * * *

The boy asked to use the control keyboard to write a letter to his parents. Diane gave him the control couch and busied herself counting the vials of serum in the cargo compartment. When that palled, she leaned against the wall and stared at the airlock, thinking.

Clothes and water, five kilos. They could each shield some vials with their bodies, throwing out some packing material—another kilo or two. If they both emptied their bladders...

No good. She sniffed, noticing that the air was already a little stale. The recycler was calibrated for one occupant only.

Air! Trying not to show any eagerness—for to give Tony any false hope at this stage would be viciously cruel—she calculated mentally. The airlock had a volume of about three cubic meters, if she disabled the pumps and dumped an airlock-full at a time into space, reduced the pressure by a quarter, maybe a third—

In spite of herself, she sighed. At most, dumping the air would only get her a kilo or two. Still nowhere near enough.

Diane put her head back against the wall and closed her eyes. There was nothing to do, nothing at all. Tony's fate was sealed, sealed by the cold equations of nature, and nothing human had any power to stop it. Maybe, she thought, we don't belong out here at all. Maybe we should have stayed on Earth and minded our own business. Then there wouldn't be any colonies, no ships, no emergency boats.

And no little boys would have to die.

But little boys died all the time, even on Earth, died in accidents, died of horrible diseases that wasted them away to nothing, died of hunger and neglect, were murdered ... little boys had always died, as long as there were little boys, and nothing was ever going to change that fact. Wishing, no matter how desperately, would not change the universe's cold equations one bit.

The gentle buzz of the computer's alert signal pulled Diane to full consciousness. Had she slept? Apparently, for when she glanced at the chronometer she saw that they were two hours away from landing.

Tony was awake, too, his eyes intent upon her as he gave up the command couch and allowed her to settle her head within the computer's contacts. She didn't know if he, too, had slept ... and she realized it was not her business how he'd spent his last hours.

“Is it time?"

“Almost,” Diane said. “Just over 45 minutes left."

“You're going to have a hard landing, aren't you? Because of me."

“It's nothing worse than what I went through at the Academy,” she lied.

“But the medicine will be all right, won't it?” He glanced back at the cargo compartment. “It's important to me, that the medicine gets there okay. I'd hate ... I'd hate to die for nothing."

Diane nodded. “I'll make sure it gets there safely."

Tony lowered his eyes. “I-If I go now, you'll have a little extra fuel. Just in case something happens."

She didn't know how to answer him.

“I ... I want to say thank you. You've been good to me. I know that there's no other way, and I know you'd do something to help me if you could.” He raised his chin and stepped toward the airlock. “I'd like to do it now, please."

“Tony.” He kept his back to her, didn't see her outstretched hand. He faced the airlock, and the cold bitterness of space beyond, with his head high and his shoulders square.

And the gods of space, she thought, would have one more sacrificial victim, one more life to prove that their word was law. They weren't cruel or vindictive, they weren't even gods at all—just impassionate Nature, her will expressed in the frozen lattice of her cold equations.

Damn it, Diane thought, It isn't Mankind's way to give up and yield to impossibilities. There was something within the human animal, something which wanted to fight back. She'd known that ever since she'd read that oh-so-prophetic story, had known it when her heart protested, there has to be a way.

“Will you open the door, please?"

“Tony,” she repeated, “I want you to know that I wish I could do something to save you. I don't like this any more than you do.” Except you won't have to live with the guilt for the rest of your life. “I'd give anything to stop this from happening. I'd give ... anything."

In that moment, her mind was made up, and she knew what she must do. Just as good that he had his back to her, for if she saw his eyes, she would never be able to act.

Quickly, silently, she raised her laser knife, dialed the beam to maximum, and thumbed the button home. A ruby-red beam lanced forth, filling the cabin with an eerie, bloody light.

* * * *

“Pilot DelMinna? Pilot, can you hear me?"

Diane opened her eyes on a hospital room. She was in bed, wired to a dozen instruments, and a bearded face was looking down at her. She'd seen him before ... yes, the Lethe Base Commander. “Are you awake?"

“Yes,” she croaked. “But I wish I wasn't."

“I can understand. You've been under sedation ... and hypnotherapy ... for six days.” He touched her shoulder. “The Space Force top brass want to speak to you on the hyperwave. There are commendations to be given and medals to be awarded, and I'm sure they want to put you through the worst debriefing in history. I told them they can't have you until you feel up to it."

“Thank you.” Something rumbled in her gut, and she turned her head away. When the feeling passed, she looked back at the Commander. “The serum...?"

“The serum survived your landing beautifully, and it's been distributed throughout the colony. MedCorps says the plague is under control. You're a hero, DelMinna. In more ways than one."

“Yeah.” She sighed. “What about Tony?"

“The boy is safe and sound, not three doors down from here.” He smiled. “You can see him, if you wish."

“I don't know. He might not want to see me."

“He's asked for you."

Diane shivered. “How will he be?"

“I should let his doctor answer that—but I can give you an outline. They say that he's young enough for regeneration treatments to take. In another year or two, he'll grow back that arm, and both legs. In two years, they swear he'll never even know they were gone."

Before her mind's eye flashed the memory of that horrible instant when the laser beam connected, the awful smell and Tony's scream.

“You did the right thing, Pilot.” The Commander gripped her shoulder firmly. “Your laser cauterized the wound instantly. The computer records that you started approach to Lethe a good two kilos under maximum mass. Good thinking."

She was afraid to lift her sheet, afraid to look ... but she had to know. “And me...?"

The Commander's face clouded. “Regeneration isn't an exact science. After a certain age, the cells lose their ability to ... that is, the medical team tried everything they could think of..."

She covered his hand with her own. “Don't worry,” she said, nodding. “I'm not sorry for what I did. I can live with it.” She forced a smile. “After all, it's not like I live and work under gravity.” She shrugged. “What does a Pilot need legs for, after all?” If she said it enough times, she thought, she'd even start to believe it.

“In your case, they came in handy,” he grunted. Then, under the pretense of covering a nervous cough, he took his hand away from hers. “DelMinna, you're going to be the talk of the Space Force for this little trick. You're the only Pilot who's ever figured out how to beat the Cold Equations scenario. What made you think of it?"

“Something I almost said to Tony, at the last minute.” In imagination, she was back in the cabin, and she knew that a part of her would always be there. “I told him that I'd give anything to avoid throwing him out the airlock.” She gave a chuckle that wasn't entirely forced. “I almost said: I'd give my right arm to stop this from happening.” She shrugged. “After that, it was simple."

Simple. So why would it haunt her for the rest of her life?

Because Nature doesn't suffer her defeats gladly, she thought. And there's always a price to be paid.

“Would you like to see the lad now?” The Commander stepped back. “Orderlies are ready to help you."

Diane closed her eyes, and looked again on her moment of truth. I'll pay the price, she thought, And gladly. That's part of being human.

She opened her eyes and nodded. “I'd like that very much."

End

—

Author's Note:

Like everyone else, I cried at the end of Tom Godwin's story “The Cold Equations.” Godwin's story is deservedly a classic, and the unforgettable point it makes—that natural laws have no respect for emotion, and that sometimes the little girl has to go out the airlock—was well-needed as a counter to the school of SF that said it was always possible to come up with a new force, ray, or vibration that could save the day. (Kipling was probably making a similar point when he wrote “The Gods of the Copybook Headings,” but that's a discussion for another day.)

Godwin's point was also quite consistent with the mechanistic, male-based, rigorous-logic science of the day. Ultimately, the universe was a cold and heartless place, and unless you obeyed its rules, it would kill you as soon as look at you.

While I grasped the point, I didn't buy it for a second.

By the time I was writing, the world was a different place. Newtonian mechanics was replaced by quantum mechanics. The Uncertainty Principle was well-understood. And male engineers no longer dominated the field of SF.

The old logic said that there was no escape from the Cold Equations scenario. There were only two choices: either the girl died, or the colonists perished. Either way, someone was dead. All that remained was to do the math and pick the option with the fewest corpses.

That's one way to look at the world. It's a hierarchical, rules-based, binary-logic way ... without getting into too many labels, a stereotypically-male way.

Another way of looking at the world is a networked, exceptions-based, fuzzy-logic way ... if you will, a stereotypically-female way. And that way said that there had to be a solution that saved everyone.

[I don't really believe that all women think that way, nor that all men think the other way. But as a fiction writer I deal in symbolism, and here the symbolism is vital. Let's say that there's the M way and the F way, and each of us has some degree of M and F inside, and leave discussions of gender to another venue.]

After that, it was just a matter of finding a solution—in this case, remembering that you didn't have to put the whole stowaway out the airlock, just the same mass in body parts. There are other solutions to the Cold Equations scenario. I leave it as an exercise to the student to find them (although if anyone wants to do an anthology of such stories, let me know!)

Once I started on the story, I realized that I had to make the pilot a woman. Look, I was saying to the SF world, when you make the pilot a woman, it changes everything. I considered leaving the stowaway a little girl, but decided to make him a boy in the interest of symmetry.

The important point is not any given solution to this particular scenario ... it's something larger, just as Godwin's point was something larger. Just as SF once needed to hear that there were times when the girl had to go out of the airlock, in 1991 SF needed to hear that the girl didn't always have to go out the airlock. That there are two ways of looking at the world, and both of them are valid and necessary.

This story was a favorite of the Analog readership. It won the award for Best Short Story in the year it was published.

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