Back | Next

15

 

The coverage that the San Saucillo launch received, and the distances over which throngs came to join in the protest, suggested coordination on a national scale. By early morning, the site was already besieged by crowds disgorged from cars, trucks, and campers that had been arriving all night. Tents and sunshades had been set up, several bands were in action, and the atmosphere would have approached that of a rock festival were it not for the angry undertones and the cordon of state and county police and vehicles maintaining a perimeter. Amspace security reported that the approach by road was problematical, and the sheriff was calling on the company to act with minimum provocation. Accordingly, Keene and Vicki were directed to the Kingsville plant to join the rest of the flight complement who were not already at the launch site, and lifted out by helicopter.

Keene looked down somber-faced as the administration and assembly buildings of the San Saucillo site came into view ahead. The launch area itself was situated two miles farther west, at the far end of the landing field with its two vehicle transporter tracks running along one side. Although some problems had been reported with groups trying to breach the security fence marking the two-mile safety zone south, west, and north of the pad area, the crowds were mainly concentrated around the east end of the complex and its approach road. As the helicopter descended, a ripple of hand-waving and gesturing followed it among the upturned faces below. In some places, signs that were being displayed were turned to point upward, although it was impossible to make out what they said. The pilot commenced a pattern of evasive weaving.

"What's happening?" Vicki asked tensely from her seat next to Keene.

"Just a routine precaution. It isn't always like this, you know. You just picked a bad day for your first space hop."

"The story of my life. It never fails."

They landed among an assortment of helicopters and small aircraft on the concrete apron in front of the control building at the end of the landing field. A raucous cadence of several thousand voices chanting in unison reached them from the far side of the main gate and the perimeter fence as they boarded the bus waiting to take them to the assembly and flight preparation area. There was a little under three hours to go before the scheduled launch time.

In one of the admin buildings they met the others who would be going. There were twelve in all: the regular test crew of three, expanded to include Wally Lomack and another engineer from the design team named Tim; Keene and Vicki; and the five winners of the Amspace lottery. They were: Milton Clowes, the financial vice president; Alice Myers from one of the secretarial offices, already uncontrollably jittery—she said the only reason she was doing it was to keep face with her three teenage children; Les Urkin's assistant, Jenny Grewe—much to the chagrin of Les, who had missed by one number; Phil Forely from marketing; and a new hire to the Navigation Systems Group, Sid Vance, who was barely out of college and had been with the firm less than a month. All of the five, like Vicki, would be making their first trip into space.

After changing from regular clothes into flight suits and taking time for a snack, they met with representatives from the mission management team for a final briefing and update. Weather conditions were good at the downrange emergency abort sites in Florida and Algeria, and a "Go" was expected. Demonstrators on the north side of the pads had attempted to compromise the launch by crossing the boundary river in boats, but were being contained by police landed from choppers. The group went back out to the bus and left the main complex to be driven along the edge of the airfield, beside the tracks that carried the heavy vehicle-transporter platforms to the pad area.

For the most part they were quiet as the spires of silver and white ahead loomed closer and taller. By the time they arrived and climbed out from the bus, service trucks and other vehicles were beginning to pick up and withdraw. Ground crew conducted them to the access elevator and across the entry bridge when they emerged a hundred feet above the ground. Minutes later, they were securing themselves into harnesses to settle down for what Keene knew from previous experiences could be the Long Wait—although the latest update was that they were still on schedule. The ground crew who had come aboard to make final checks left the cabin, and the lock was closed. TV shots from outside showed the last vehicles filling up and departing.

In the forward stations, the captain and flight engineer exchanged prelaunch jargon and offhand remarks with ground control. Farther back and below, in the passenger section of the cabin, the first-timers cracked nervous inanities to show they weren't nervous. Beside Keene, Vicki looked around the cramped surroundings of bulkheads, control panels, equipment racks, and cabling. A whirr of machinery sounded through the structure, followed by the clunk of a hatch closing somewhere. "We need your seven-dee markoff," a voice said from a speaker up front.

"Roger," the captain replied. "We have, ah, seven-oh-ten, nineteen-zero-four, and . . . four-six showing on two and five-one on ten."

"Okay, gotcha."

"And how's it going with the Oilers and the Bears? Any news?"

"Let's see . . . last we had was Oilers ahead by six points."

"Yeah, right-on!"

"Guys!" Vicki breathed.

Keene grinned. "Life's great once you weaken."

"I think some of it must be rubbing off. I mean, what am I doing here, Lan? You let them strap you to the top of a ten-story bomb that nobody who knows what's going on will stay within two miles of. . . . Is that the kind of behavior that would normally qualify as sane?"

"Women!" Keene threw back. He made an appealing gesture to Wally, strapped in farther across, who had heard and was smiling. "For years she gives me a hard time about wanting to come on a mission. Now I'm getting one for bringing her. What does a guy do?"

The captain's voice came over the internal address speaker. "Attention, folks. We've had a slight hold because of the trouble on the north perimeter, but things seem to be under control there now. We're looking at a little over fifteen minutes. The skies are pretty clear across most of North Africa and Asia. We should get some good views."

Places halfway around the world, Keene reflected as he lay back in the harness, waiting. He had expected he might get used to the thought, but he never had. It hadn't been so long ago when people had spent years of their lives traveling distances like that; now they were talking as nonchalantly as if it were a bus ride. In a way it would be little more than just that. The boost into orbit would be measured in minutes; then there would follow nine circuits around Earth for testing the hybrid engine and putting the shuttle through its paces; a day's visit to the Osiris; and then back down in time for dinner tomorrow. The Kronians were already talking about going anywhere in the Solar System in ninety days.

Vicki seemed to be thinking along similar lines. "You know, we've worked together all this time," she said to Keene. "I think I'm only starting to realize how frustrating it must be to believe in something as much as you do and have so much of the world not understanding it. Especially when they all stand to gain in the long run."

"Hm. . . . Yes, I think Christ and Giordano Bruno probably knew the feeling," Keene said.

"When I was at Harvard, we had the same kind of thing. It was practically impossible to convince people that low radiation levels are not only harmless but essential for health. We used to call it Vitamin R."

"Should I look for it in the health food store?" Clowes asked from the far side behind Wally.

Anxieties rose as the countdown entered its final phase, and the cabin fell silent. The crew recited their final check dialogue with control. And then the voice from the speaker up front was sounding off the final seconds.

Liftoff came with an all-enveloping roar and sudden force squashing the occupants back in the seat moldings. Vicki's hand groped over the armrest instinctively to find Keene's, and squeezed. A screen in front showed the craft sliding up past the gantry amid clouds of red and white smoke, while another gave a more distant view of it emerging on top of a column of light, with demonstrators on their feet, waving and gesticulating in the foreground. The force intensified, stretching flesh back over face bones. Ground fell away and was replaced by ocean. And already—Keene never ceased to be amazed at how rapidly the perspective changed—the outline of the Gulf was taking shape, glimpsed in parts below an immense whirl of banded cloud. Up front, the exchange between dispassionate voices and ground control continued. The boosters detached and fell away to deploy extendable wings for remote-piloting down to a recovery field in Cuba, while the orbiter engine continued driving the main vessel faster and higher. Florida and the Caribbean passed by below, followed by the huge, unfolding, speckled expanse of the Atlantic. . . .

Suddenly, the sound inside the cabin cut and was replaced by stillness and quiet. It was if they had been transported from the world of humans and machines to some different, ethereal realm. The shuttle was no longer a creature of violence fighting its way free from gravity, but floated serenely now—content, seemingly; at ease in the element it was meant for. The pressure that had pinned everyone immobile was no more. Gradually, the hum of unseen machinery and the subdued hiss of air being drawn into the extraction filters impressed themselves as the only sound breaking the silence. Then the captain's voice came again over the internal circuit:

"That's it, folks. Welcome to orbit."

The faces in the passenger compartment looked about them wonderingly. Milton Clowes let his arms hang weightless in the air in front of him. "Well, I'll be darned," he told the others. "Look at that."

Alice finally let go of her armrests, which she had gripped, white-faced throughout the launch. "I don't believe we're still here," was all she could manage.

"How many times is this for you, Wally?" Tim, the engineer who was with Lomack, asked.

"I don't know. I've lost count. I thought I'd retired from any more of this kind of nonsense."

The captain spoke again: "Yes, I know the first thing you're all dying to try is the zero-g. Anyone who feels inclined to experiment now, go right ahead. Take it easy, though. It works better than you think. People who turn into missiles inside here don't make themselves too popular." It was just a reminder. They had been through it all in the preflight briefings.

The passengers exchanged glances. None of them really wanted to be the first to risk being a spectacle. Finally, Vicki felt for the buckle securing her harness, then hesitated and gave Keene a questioning look. He nodded encouragingly. "Nobody here's gonna laugh," he told her.

She released the catch and eased herself cautiously out of the harness to float above the gee-couch, turning slowly. A touch on the cabin wall stopped her and sent her turning the other way; a push on the wall made her drift toward Wally. Clowes gave her some handclaps by way of applause, and a couple of the others followed.

"This is fantastic!" Vicki told them as she started to get the feel of it. "It's like being a whale with a whole ocean to frolic in. I want to leap and dive."

"Doesn't it make all that business back at the complex seem kind of unimportant now?" Jenny Grewe mused distantly. Vicki drifted down the center of the cabin, turning in a slow cartwheel.

"Hey, that looks cool," Phil Forely said. "I have to try it too."

One of the flight crew had unhitched and was moving back. "Okay, but let me give you a few tips first," he told them. "Just a couple of you at a time, guys. You'll all get a turn, don't worry."

Keene had seen it enough times to leave them to it for a while. He turned his eyes back toward the screen in front and watched the image of the deserts of northeast Africa and the Middle East passing by below. So much had been written about the proliferation of life on Earth. But the planet's real potential for life had never been really grasped because in recent times there had been nothing to give a measure of it. Earth was still only recovering from its devastation.

He remembered how, years ago, when he first started making regular airline flights eastward from the West Coast, it had amazed him that after leaving the oases of human habitation around San Diego, Los Angeles, or the San Francisco Bay Area, there would be nothing for a thousand miles to the Mississippi valley—just parched mountains, deserts, and canyons; everywhere, the dryness. It was only later, when he began grasping the true scale of the planet by seeing it from orbit, that he realized that had been just a small part of the picture. The vastness of the wildernesses extending from Mauritania on the Atlantic side of Africa to Afghanistan, then onward through Mongolia, and in the southern hemisphere, those of southwestern Africa and virtually all of Australia, staggered the imagination.

It hadn't always been that way. There had been times when the Sahara was green, Arabia and Iran fertile; what were now the deserts of northwest India and Afghanistan had supported flourishing civilizations. The Sphinx was older than the great pyramids and showed water damage and erosion that couldn't be accounted for by the conditions that had existed through recorded history.

What it all pointed to was that Earth's climatic bands had been different then, with narrower tropics and broader temperate zones that had brought rain where there are now deserts and caused grasslands and forests to extend into what is today the Arctic. Such conditions were consistent with the Earth's axis being more perpendicular to its orbital plane around the Sun. Something, then, had caused it to shift and increased the planet's tilt, creating the northern and southern desert belts and extending the polar regions.

* * *

The flight crew got busy commencing the engine trials that had been the original purpose of the mission. Wally and Tim spent much of the time forward, following events, and Keene got involved in the technical proceeding, too. Vicki made the best of the opportunity to get to know more Amspace people. She seemed to get along especially well with Jenny, Les Urkin's assistant in public relations, Alice, and Phil from Marketing. Sid, the new hire straight out of college, was still too mesmerized by the torrent of events that had overtaken him to be capable of much coherent thought.

"Are things always like this here?" he asked when the group was struggling to master their first peel-wrappered, squeeze-bottle lunch. "I mean, after the way things were at Berkeley, I expected life in the commercial world to be kind of dull. They haven't found me a permanent desk yet, and I'm in orbit already."

Later, he got to talking with Vicki, and then her and Keene, about the Kronian theories and Keene's work with Amspace. Sid was enthusiastic about space development, which was why he had sought a position with Amspace in the first place, but he'd had no inkling of the deeper implications of what was at stake. It all came as a revelation, which he devoured avidly. A solid recruit to the cause, Keene decided.

However, as hours passed by and the novelty wore thinner, weariness akin to that of a long airline flight set in. While at the forward end of the compartment the voice exchanges with ground control at San Saucillo and other stations monitoring the flight continued against a background of electronic beeps and bursts of static, conversation in the rear section lapsed. Some of the passengers dozed or tried to read. About halfway through the mission the Osiris made contact to get confirmation that the Amspace vessel would be on schedule; also, there was a message for Keene from Sariena letting him know that she would be one of the Kronians up resting from terrestrial gravity while his party was visiting. Soon after, he found himself with Vicki and Sid, watching yet another turn of the globe sliding by on the cabin screen.

"Did I tell you that Robin got an e-mail from Salio?" Vicki asked. "My eternally curious fourteen-year-old son," she added for Sid's benefit. They had told Sid about Salio briefly when talking about the Kronians' planetary theories.

"I don't think so. He said he would," Keene said.

"Robin was thrilled to bits. Salio knocked a few holes in his dinosaur theory, but it was nice of him to find the time to respond." She explained to Sid, "Robin came up with this idea that the dinosaurs were on the body that impacted Earth, since he doesn't think they could have existed in Earth's gravity."

Sid pulled a face. "A bit farfetched, isn't it?"

"Give him a break. He's fourteen."

"David Salio's an okay guy," Keene said. "He's going to be dynamite on the shows . . . which reminds me, I was supposed to call him." He thought for a moment about calling Salio right there, from orbit, but then decided that the topic wasn't appropriate for an audience. "You never did tell me this business about Robin and the mammoths, either," he told Vicki instead.

"Oh, that's right. I never did, did I?"

"He's not saying that they came from someplace else too, surely?" Sid said.

Vicki shook her head. "Oh no. It's just that in following his inquisitiveness, he stumbled on a lot of controversy that's been going on for years—that even I didn't know about—about when they died out."

Keene made an inviting gesture. "Well, we're listening. I always thought it was supposed to have had something to do with over-hunting."

"Somewhere around ten or eleven thousand years ago, wasn't it?" Sid said.

"That's the conventional line," Vicki agreed. "That date was thought to have been soon after the arrival of people. But now it seems pretty certain that humans were in the Americas much earlier. So they and the mammoths had coexisted for a long time. That theory doesn't really hold up."

"I never thought it made much sense, anyway," Keene said. "Elephants are notoriously dangerous and difficult to bring down even by hunters equipped with iron and horses. But they were never hunted to extinction. Yet a sparse population armed with stone-tipped spears was supposed to have done it? All those millions of mammoths, mastodons, giant deer, you name it . . . piled up in thousands in some places? They'd have needed nuclear weapons."

Vicki looked at him dubiously. "So why are you asking me about them? It sounds like you pretty much know the problem already."

"It was something I came across when I got interested in evidence for catastrophes," Keene said. "I was curious to hear Robin's take on it. What else did he come up with?"

"Do you know about varves?"

"No. What are varves?"

"Layers of sediment that are deposited in lakes and so on, which change color from summer to winter and can be counted like tree rings. They contain pollen grains, which tell you what vegetation grew in the area over the years. And in the Arctic during the Ice Age, which is when standard thinking says the mammoths and all those other animals were supposed to have been around, there simply wasn't anything growing there that they could have lived on. It was all just frozen desert."

Keene nodded, at the same time looking puzzled. "Well . . . okay. What else would anyone expect to find in the Arctic in an Ice Age? Am I missing something?"

"I sometimes wonder if I am," Vicki said. "Do they really make people professors for coming up with ideas that it could have been different?"

Sid looked from one of them to the other. "So what it sounds like you're saying is, when the mammoths and all those other animals did live there, it couldn't have been an Ice Age."

Vicki nodded. "Exactly.

"So when was that? Do we know?"

"It has to have been during a much warmer period that came later," Vicki said. "They couldn't have been buried eleven thousand years ago under Arctic conditions. The soil below a few feet down is permanently frozen. So how could all those bodies and bones and trunks of trees have been buried under it? A few might have been caught by things like slides and collapsing crevasses, maybe, but nothing on the scale that's found. And even if they did, nonfossilized bones and body tissue would never have survived degradation through thousands of years when the warming occurred. So they must have been wiped out and quick-frozen much more recently, in some event that marked the end of that warm period."

Keene and Sid looked as if each was waiting for the other to fault it. It seemed that neither of them readily could. "What about carbon-14 dating?" Sid asked finally. "I thought that supports the Ice-Age extinction theory."

"The data that have been published over the years do," Vicki conceded. "But now it's beginning to look as if maybe the indicated dates were too high."

"How's that?" Keene asked.

"The Arctic has huge natural carbon reservoirs—permafrost soil, peat deposits, methane hydrate in the oceans—that would release lots of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere if a mild warming occurred for any reason. We're talking about billions of tons a year. . . . And that `old' carbon would be breathed and ingested and find its way into plant and animal tissues, making all the dates too high if today's levels with a cooler climate are assumed as the reference."

"How do you know the climate's cooler today?" Keene challenged.

"We don't have big herds of large animals inhabiting the Arctic today."

Keene stared at her. There it was again. If the conventionally accepted dates were high by a significant factor, then once again they were led to the conclusion of tremendous and destructive happenings worldwide around that same mysterious time, several thousand years ago.

* * *

Sid drifted away across the cabin to listen to Clowes telling Alice and Jenny some anecdotes from Amspace's history. Keene and Vicki remained buckled into the restraint harnesses in one of the corners, watching the screen. They talked about the time when she had left Harvard after he and Fey split up, and the support they'd found in each other that had led her to follow him south when he set up the consulting deal that had grown into Protonix. They talked about Karen's succession of cowboy boyfriends, Judith's odd mix of talents and even odder-seeming engagement, about David Salio and his case for Venus, and Celia's cat. Keene was glad to have a chance for once to ramble on with Vicki about whatever took their fancy, free from the pressures that never seemed to let up when they were in or anywhere near the firm. The loyalty that she had always shown to everything he did and the things he believed in had played a big part in enabling him to keep going through the rough parts, but he had never found a way of expressing adequately how much it had meant. Hence, it was gratifying that he had been able to keep his word to get her up on one of the missions one day, even if whenever he mentioned it he had made it sound like a joke. Flippancy came naturally as part of his armor for dealing with the world, and sometimes, he feared, brought the risk of having things like promises not taken seriously. It was nice, even if over so small a thing, to be able to feel that it wasn't so.

 

Back | Next
Framed


Title: Cradle of Saturn
Author: James P. Hogan
ISBN: 0-671-57813-8 0-671-57866-9
Copyright: © 1999 by James P. Hogan
Publisher: Baen Books