Luna base was all raucous activity refitting ships, cannibalizing parts, training pilots and astro-gators.  Shipping equipment to Mars and to Charon.  Eight thousand five hundred souls labored there in three round the clock shifts.  Commercial sector donated one third of its resources to clothing, ships and armament for the service.  Armament was the UW’s weak point not having had wars in living memory few arms existed.  The stun guns the UWMP’s carried were designed as humane deterrents, not lethal weaponry.  Technicians and specialists struggled to adapt energy tools for digging, cutting, or heating to military functions.  Mass drivers were made to order for planetary defense, but there was not much choice of ammunition for them.  Rock, frozen gases, or some scarce explosives were all that was available.  The digging beams modified to the green band worked well enough on nickle iron asteroids and targets but they couldn’t duplicate the sphere’s ability to re-fuse itself when damaged.  Carlin had no idea how long finding the hoppers inside would take so he developed three desperate schemes.  The first was assuming his deductions about the green spectrum band were correct.  If his green ship went undetected until close to the sphere, he planned to cut two holes simultaneously and enter through one.  Locate and attach the hoppers to his vessel and cut his way out the same basic way, cut two holes and exit through one.  Dr. Hopewell had come through for Russ in more than one way.  Russell’s ship would have two dozen ‘drones’ small single rocket engines with remote guidance, able to anchor themselves to the sections he cut away and ferry them into space quickly.  Hopewell reasoned that if the material were removed wholesale the sphere wouldn’t be able to repeat its healing trick so easily.


    Inside hopper number three the attitude of one woman had changed severely.  Debra Hilds had despaired at first, then turned to denial, but knew that soon it wouldn’t matter.  Hopper number two, visible by its windows, (glowing a feeble red from emergency lights within) was dying.  Of the two craft it had preformed much more of the work getting into the sphere and life support was close to critical.  Unable to move either ship Hilds had kept radio contact only but now knew desperate measures had to be taken.  The hopper’s equipment included towing cables and a pair of twenty inch drum winches but power to operate them was gone.  Hilds seized on the idea of carrying one end of each cable to hopper number two and using the cable as a ‘shuttle line’ to pass number two’s rations, charges, and batteries over to number three’s crew compartment without cramping and most of number two’s salvage would be stored in the boxes of the lower section.  Hilds hoped linking both sets of batteries in parallel would give enough current to extend life support by three to four days even with two more occupants.  The six air capsules on number two’s hull would not be wasted either.  Hilds had figured a possible way out of their metal ball prison.  With much less data to draw on Hilds had made one of Russell’s conclusions also.  The columns were hollow except for the dish’s stalk.  Hilds and her team had nothing but time to hammer it out together.  They would salvage number two, cut with oxygen and acetylene into a column, use the gas in number two’s cylinders to push number three inside, weld it shut, and cut the outer end and pop out of the shell with explosive charges.  They prayed that the blast would help distance them from the sphere quickly and allow the complete inventory of seismic charges (less the six used to pop the roof) to detonate at the bottom of the column creating a second ‘push’ to carry them outward faster.  All this depended on a lot of outside work in pressure suits, about twelve hours.  For the four of them, they calculated, maybe two to three more.  Debra called for a show of hands “four for and none against” she said.  Debra and Sam began running the cables that evening, as Tony and Greg converted the hand held oxygen and acetylene torches into hose-fed units, discarding their cartridge tanks.  It was eerie working outside the ship in total darkness.  Hilds and her team had decided not to use the suits work lights because it would take four hours off the operating time.  As well as to draw no unwanted attention to themselves, after all the sphere had done nothing until it was ‘poked at’ down here.  Guided from number three to number two by radio Hilds met San Kohn halfway and they locked the cables together.  One hour and twenty minutes had passed.  Joining Sam as he returned to hopper two Debra followed the cable blindly, unable to see the man she occasionally bumped into.  It had almost seemed easier joining the cabled; take a few steps, call for Sam to talk, watch the indicator of signal strength and pan your helmet until it was strongest, step off again and repeat the process.  But floating weightless along behind Sam, hearing nothing and seeing only the low level display across the inside of the helmet visor was somehow more chilling.  Just as she was about to say something, anything in fact the dim red triangles of number two’s windows came into view.  They shuttled the equipment from number two to number three for ten hours.  This novel is published on a different platform. Support the original author by finding the official source.