unstable expedition 3

start https://pastebin.com/j81r9nCF
pt. 2 https://pastebin.com/L1YTv9DV

Marty was awake, but by no means enjoying himself. His face was stuffed in a dermal regenerator bandage, and his arms and legs were in a Presto-Osteo cast. Carol was sitting by his side, holding his hand, and telling him about what was done at the base while the expedition was gone.

"And so Morgan runs up to me and says, 'Carol, Carol! Ray's stuck in the ventilation shaft!' And then I have to go and see what happened. And those little monsters, do you know what they did?" Carol heard a muffled 'Mmmn mmmn,' and she continued. "So I follow Morgan up to where he said Ray was stuck, and as I'm looking up into the ventilation grate, a lot of algae soup pours out of it all over my face. I was hopping mad!" Carol could hear muffled laughter from beneath the bandages.

"Don't get him too riled up, the Ingestible still hasn't set the ribs back together," Kevin said.

"Sure thing, doc," Carol said. She looked at her tablet. There was a new message from Bob: Meeting in the conference room. "Sorry Marty, I have to go to a meeting. I'll be back as soon as I can." Carol heard a muffled sigh, and she kissed his hand and left.

In the conference room, Carol sat down. Everyone except for Kevin, Marty, and the twins were there. Carol sat down next to her daughter. "What are you doing here?" Carol asked.

"Janet said I was old enough to attend the important meetings, now that I'm 14," Sara said.

"Now that we're all here, I have some more bad news," Bob said. He pointed to the display at the front of the room. It showed a globe of the planet, and the orbits of several satellites. "The periastron pass affected the upper atmosphere of Lyapunov more than we expected. I'm still not sure why, but the result is that every satellite in low orbit has had its orbit decay significantly. I'm projecting that the weather satellites will decay in roughly two weeks. The low orbit dock is much less predictable, since the aerodynamics of the rocket docked to it will significantly affect how much drag the ship experiences. Could be anywhere from one week to a month."

"Could we raise the orbit of the satellites?" Janet said.

"Trivially," Scott said, "if we could talk to them."

"Emily and I have been observing the satellites with the unaided eye, since we don't have any other way of getting orbital data from them," Bob said, nodding his head in the direction of Emily.

"We'll be continuing to observe the satellites during any clear nights we get," Emily said.

"Is the starship safe?" Janet asked.

"The starship is parked in something like a stationary orbit, but it's drifted to the other side of Lyapunov. But there's no reason to expect that its orbit should decay any time soon," Scott said.

Bob nodded and said, "The timescales of decay in this case would be greater than what Lyapunov probably has left."

"If we drove one of the rovers beneath the starship, could we contact it? Send for help?" Sara piped up.

"Need I remind you, Sara, that the nearest possible help is 340 years away from our perspective?" Emily said. Sara didn't quite understand how she could have grown up on the starship during the 13 year long trip when light took 170 years to make that same trip, but she took the adult's word that this was true.

"So what? We'll still be alive then, won't we?" Sara asked, quite sincerely.

"Well," Bob said, "We don't know how long Lyapunov has left. That's why we called it Lyapunov."

"Lyapunov was a mathematician who studied how well you can predict orbits. And because of this planet's weird orbit, it's not very predictable. That's why we're here to study it," Emily said.

"Well I know that," Sara said, "but our habitat keeps us safe, doesn't it?"

"It won't keep us safe if Lyapunov plunges into one of the suns," Carol said. The others nodded, and Sara slumped into her seat.

"Still," Janet said, "we do need to send what we've learnt so far to the starship so we can tell home about it, no matter what happens."

"Unfortunately the main antenna on Rover One was damaged by the explosion, and Rover Two is lying in a ditch halfway across the planet. The only other antenna we have powerful enough to talk to the satellites is busted to smithereens outside. We have just a few weeks to build or repair a new antenna to talk to the satellites before they burn up. Maybe less if we want any chance of getting that second launch vehicle down here," Scott said.

"How long would it take to make a new antenna?" Bob asked.

"Not in a week," Scott said, "The storm damaged the matter printers too, so it'll take me a month to rebuild those before we can even think about building an antenna from scratch."

"Why didn't we have more than one high gain antenna?" Janet asked, sternly glaring at Scott.

"It was on my to-do list!" Scott said.

"For 13 months?" Janet said.

"Excuse me for single-handedly building a replacement rover for the one you lot lost in a ditch," Scott said, "I have been very busy with all the building and furnishing, and I mean, between the rover, the lighthouse radio mast, and the launch vehicle that was three high gain antennas right there!"

"We'll have to try to repair the existing transmitters," Bob said.

"It won't be easy without the matter printers, but the rest of the shop tools were undamaged. As long as the electronics are salvageable, we should be able to do it," Scott said.

"Well that's our new goal. I want us working around the clock to establish communications with the starship," Janet said, "And the orbital dock if we can. Is there anything else?"

Bob pulled up another graphic on the screen: a map of the local region of the planet with simulations of cloud and weather patterns overlaid on it. "As we move away from Periastron, temperatures will start to drop. We can look forward to increasingly cold rain storms as the air loses its heat. It'll probably become snow."

Sara's eyes lit up. "Snow!"

Emily spoke up, "I also have something to report. The observatory dome was destroyed, but I went to look at the wreckage. The telescope is actually salvageable, surprisingly enough. It's mounted to that great concrete block after all. I'll need to fabricate some new eyepieces, since those were destroyed, blown away by the blast along with the dome roof. But the optics of the telescope are mostly fine. There's a big crack in the primary mirror, but that will just show up as a weird diffraction feature, we can remove it in software if it becomes an annoyance. Worst case we can manufacture another primary mirror with the matter printer when that's fixed."

"That's fantastic," Bob said.

"It'll have to wait until after we have an antenna," Janet said.

"Of course," Emily said.

"How is Marty?" Janet asked.

"He's not having a great time," Carol said, "Kevin has him wrapped up like a mummy. But he's awake and stable, and Kevin says he'll recover fully."

"That's good to hear," Janet said. "Is there anything else?"

When no one said anything, they all agreed to dismiss, and Carol went back to Marty to tell him about the meeting.

pt. 4: https://pastebin.com/JXgJ1Zqr