-----------------------------------
Analog SFF, October 2011
by Dell Magazine Authors
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Science Fiction

Dell Magazines
www.analogsf.com

Copyright ©2011 by Dell Magazines

NOTICE: This work is copyrighted. It is licensed only for use by the original purchaser. Making copies of this work or distributing it to any unauthorized person by any means, including without limit email, floppy disk, file transfer, paper print out, or any other method constitutes a violation of International copyright law and subjects the violator to severe fines or imprisonment.

Cover Art by Mark Garlick

Cover design by Victoria Green

CONTENTS

Reader's Department: EDITORIAL: THE NEW WAY IN by Stanley Schmidt

Novelette: OF NIGHT by Janet Catherine Johnston

Reader's Department: IN TIMES TO COME

Science Fact: LOST IN SPACE? FOLLOW THE MONEY by Edward M. Lerner

Novelette: THE LAST OF LUST by Jerry Oltion

Novelette: THE BULLFROG RADIO ASTRONOMY PROJECT by Brad R. Torgersen

Probability Zero: THE SOCK PROBLEM by Alastair Mayer

Department: THE ALTERNATE VIEW: “NEW PHYSICS” BUMP FERMILAB? by John G. Cramer

Novelette: THE LYCANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE by Carl Frederick

Novella: ENERGIZED: CONCLUSION: PART IV OF IV by Edward M. Lerner

Reader's Department: THE REFERENCE LIBRARY by Don Sakers

Reader's Department: BRASS TACKS

Reader's Department: UPCOMING EVENTS by Anthony Lewis

* * * *

Vol. CXXXI No. 10 October 2011

Stanley Schmidt, Editor

Trevor Quachri, Managing Editor

Peter Kanter: Publisher

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Editorial Correspondence Only: analog@dellmagazines.com

Published since 1930

First issue of Astounding January 1930 (c)

* * * *

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Reader's Department: EDITORIAL: THE NEW WAY IN
by Stanley Schmidt

Until recently, this magazine, like most others, required manuscripts submitted for possible publication to be typed or computer-printed in a standard format on one side only of white paper—even though in recent years we've also encouraged, and more recently required, authors to provide an electronic copy after we bought a story or article. Not surpris ingly, for some time we've been hearing a gradually growing muttering from writers that they'd rather submit their manuscripts electronically, and it was self-evident (to them) that we should happily accept them that way. As many of you by now know, we now do accept—and prefer—them that way. So some of you may be asking: Why are we doing it now? And why didn't we do it sooner?

I'll answer those questions, but they alone don't warrant a whole editorial. I'm writing one partly because it's to our mutual advantage for any potential submitters among you—and I know there are many—to understand what the new system is and what it implies in practice. But I'm also doing it in part because our reasons for doing what we're doing now, and not doing them earlier—and people's guesses and assumptions about them—shed light on much bigger questions than how to submit a story to a particular magazine.

One reader on our website forum, for instance, wrote, “In my mind's eye I see Stan glaring and saying, ‘What part of ‘Analog’ do you not understand?'” As if I had a deep attachment to all things analog in preference to digital! Since I have a pretty good idea who wrote this, I'm pretty confident it was meant as a joke. On the off chance that it wasn't, I can't resist pointing out the irony of the fact that it was posted on our website—a platform that depends for its very existence on digital media.

Another wrote, “Yea! One more denizen of the mid-50s hauled kicking and screaming into the late-90s. Sorry, Dr. Schmidt, I love you and Analog, but there has to be a time when one steps up and starts using a microwave rather than waiting for the water in the pan to boil.”

I hate to disappoint the creator of such ringing witticisms, but there was no kicking or screaming involved. We're doing this because we think it's a good idea—for us as well as you. On the other hand, one does not have to start doing things in a new way simply because it's a certain time or because “everyone else is doing it.” The idea that one does is something that I've long seen as a widespread affliction of our culture, in which many people seem to live their entire lives by following a succession of fads. Boiling water is a particularly feeble example to support the notion that things have to be done in a particular way because “it's time,” because that's a purely individual decision affecting no one but the person doing it; I would advise that person to use whatever method he or she prefers. (Yes, I do use a microwave—but not for everything. In general, I see new technologies as a way to expand my toolbox, not a reason to throw it away without critically examining its contents.)

Adopting a new methodology makes sense only when it enables you to do better, by your own standards, what you want to do anyway. Adopting it merely because somebody else prefers it makes no sense unless you prefer it, too. (Of course, when other people are involved, you may be driven to prefer something because others’ attitudes make alternatives disadvantageous, or even impossible. A century ago people who wanted to be professional writers started having to use typewriters, because once they were available, editors became unwilling to read handwriting, which is frequently difficult. Now they have to use computers, because publishers no longer maintain the staff to retype manuscripts for typesetting. But it turns out that most writers prefer using computers anyway; among other things, they greatly reduce the likelihood of errors creeping in during production.)

As a writer myself, I have long fully understood the advantages and appeal of electronic submissions for writers. Indeed, I have always welcomed the convenience and simplicity, for me as a writer, offered by publishers who accepted electronic submissions.

So why didn't I, as an editor, offer it to other writers? Since most writers have spent little if any time on this side of the editorial desk, they didn't realize that, with the options available until recently, accepting electronic submissions would have made life a little simpler for them, but a lot harder for us. It would have meant reading huge numbers of submissions on a computer—either online or downloaded—or printing them out (at our expense). Since at least 98% of those would be things we could never use (remember, we only have room for 1-2% of what we get), neither of these options was acceptable, especially for a magazine getting as many submissions as we do. Some editors, who had a higher tolerance for being tethered to a computer or who had fewer submissions and were desperate for more, may have found them tolerable. But we weren't (and aren't) desperate. We get plenty of submissions from writers who understand what we want, and making things a little easier for writers did not warrant the hardships it would create for us.

Besides, there are disadvantages to making things too easy for writers. I believe it was John Scalzi who observed that a postage stamp makes a pretty good “bozo filter": if it costs a writer time and money to submit a manuscript, that will discourage frivolous submissions by writers who haven't made a serious effort to learn their craft and do some market research.

So what changed my mind? Nothing. I haven't changed it. I'm just as unwilling to read everything on a computer, or to waste my employer's time and money printing vast quantities of material we can't use, as I ever was.

What has changed is the technological landscape. E-readers, together with a software system for handling large numbers of submissions with them, made it unnecessary to do either of the things I object to. At that point it began to appear that there was finally an advantage in going to such a system, for both writers and editors.

E-readers you know about: Amazon's Kindle, Barnes & Noble's Nook, and a rapidly proliferating array of other gadgets making it possible to carry around a huge quantity of written material, in a package as compact and light as a modest-sized book, and read it virtually anywhere.* Those who developed them saw them primarily as an alternate way of selling published books and periodicals, but other kinds of material can be stored and accessed on them, too. Neil Clarke developed a system for handling large numbers of electronic submissions, including transferring them to e-readers, for his own e-magazine Clarkesworld—and he has been very generous about sharing his system with other publishers and helping them adapt it to their own peculiar needs and wants. Such generosity is not uncommon in the science fiction field (and often baffles outsiders who see different people doing similar work only as competitors), but Neil's contributions have been outstanding even by SF standards, and we are immensely grateful to him for his expertise and magnanimity.

Once we saw the potential for combining e-readers and Neil's electronic submission system, all the fiction editors at Dell became interested in adapting it to our own operations. All, not just Asimov's or Analog. One reader guessed (and had the good grace to acknowledge explicitly that it was just a guess) that I was going to an electronic submission system because of Sheila Williams's success with it at Asimov's. In fact the plan from the start was for all four magazines—the two science fiction, plus Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine and Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine—to make the transition. But since we knew there would be problems and growing pains, and even a slight possibility that we'd decide it didn't really work for us after all—it seemed prudent to try it first with one magazine, so the others could learn from that one's experience. Sheila volunteered to go first, as our beta tester—which was not only noble, but reasonable because she was instrumental in putting us in touch with Neil.

That experiment went well, mostly, so now the rest of us are doing it too. No two of us are using the system in exactly the same way, so it's inevitable that we, too, will have some growing pains, and we ask submitters to be patient as we work out the initial kinks. So far, on the whole, it seems to be going well, with big advantages for both writers and editors.

Of course, as with any big change in methodology, there are trade-offs; hardly anything is ever all pluses and no minuses. As an editor, I can read a lot more manuscripts while handling a lot less mass, and some parts of the processing go faster. On the other hand, some of the techniques I had developed for dealing with interesting manuscripts as I read them don't carry over well to the new system, so I won't be doing them as much. I'm getting more manuscripts than ever, which gives me a bigger selection to choose from—but also makes it more necessary than ever to rely on (electronic) form letters for a large percentage of responses. As a submitting author, you can submit more easily, and it costs you almost nothing—but you're less likely to get personal comments than before, unless what you submit is quite close to our needs. Occasionally, at least until everybody here gets thoroughly used to the new system, you may even get an obviously inappropriate form letter, simply because the person sending out the responses accidentally clicked the wrong choice on a menu. If you ever think that's happened to you, just stay calm and ask.

Only time will tell whether the new system is really as good for all parties as we think it is, but our current impression is that, on the whole, it really will be a significant improvement for everybody. If we find weaknesses at this end, we'll try to fix them. And if you, as a writer, want to maximize your chances of standing out from the larger-than-ever field of competitors, you must consider it at least as important as ever to be careful about the basics. Be conscientious about manuscript format; we need it to meet certain requirements, and there's no excuse for not knowing them because there are links to them right on the submission website (analog.magazinesubmissions.com). Include the approximate word count on your manuscript; we need to know what it is, and it's not quite as easy to estimate quickly on a Kindle as on paper.

And do some market research. One of the first things I saw in the sudden flood of e-manuscripts that began pouring in when we opened the gates was a big increase in stories so clearly inappropriate to Analog that it was painfully obvious that the authors had little or no idea what we do. (We don't follow fads, and we don't do zombies.) I've often said publicly that if you think there's the slightest possibility that your work might fit in Analog, I'd very much like you to let me decide. But there are some things that clearly don't belong here—pure fairy tales, mainstream “slice-of-life” ramblings, etc.—and I'd rather you not waste my time (and yours) with those, even if you no longer have to pay for a postage stamp. If you really want to sell to any magazine, there's no substitute for carefully reading its guidelines and at least a few issues, to get a feel for what it is and is not interested in.

But if you're willing to do that, I'm very interested in “meeting” you on my Kindle.

Good luck!

Copyright © 2011 Stanley Schmidt

* A concept anticipated by Ben Bova in his novel Cyberbooks, published by Tor in 1989.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Novelette: OF NIGHT
by Janet Catherine Johnston

The trouble with exploring the unknown is that it is. . . .

"My name is Frances. May I sit at your campfire? I can tell you a ghost story."

* * * *

Low-throated growls from the golden lab preceded her silent emergence from the darkness. The words of the bedraggled, twenty-something, dark-haired woman startled the Jackman family and their friends. The two fathers looked to their wives for approval. Len Jackman said, “Sure, miss. Come have a seat. We're just telling stories. Want a beer?"

"Or a hot chocolate?” one of the wives added.

"No, thank you.” The waif silently slipped into a seat facing the fire. “You're very kind."

"Not at all. We come up to New Hampshire every year on Columbus Day weekend,” Dan, the younger father, said.

Despite the late hour, many campfires could be seen in the distance through the trees throughout the popular campground. But it was very quiet save for the crackling of their campfire.

"How about you?” his wife, Melinda, asked.

"Me?"

"Yes, have you been in Tamworth before?"

"Oh, I used to go camping often with my father, when I was a child.” Frances stared blankly into the fire. A gusty, October-in-New-Hampshire wind rustled the invisible tops of the tall pines. Although the fire was roaring, the tree tops were cloaked in blackness. The firelight reached only a small radius: to the creek bank, ten feet up the trees, just to the first tent. Beyond that perimeter anything could be lurking,watching.

One of the kids tried to hand Frances a stick with a marshmallow pierced through the end, but she didn't take it from him and it fell to the ground.

"This is our ghost-story telling night,” Dan said. “I was just gonna hit Len up for one, but, since you say you got a good one, why don't you start?”

The stranger leaned toward the fire without creaking the aluminum-frame camp chair. She neither lifted her gaze from the fire nor animated her monotone,but some quality in her speech held them.

* * * *

My name is Frances.

I decided when I was a kid that I wanted to make a lot of money quick when I grew up, not work as hard as my parents did. By the time I was in high school, the first of the Star Merchant Marine missions was in space en route to the Kuiper Belt and beyond. They had just started to discover objects larger in size than the standard, small, icy residents found throughout the 35-A.U.-wide belt, and they suspected there could be some exotic minerals with information on the formation of the solar system. So I planned to go to college and major in something the SMM would hire me to do. You could go for a five-year or ten-year stint. A ten-year tour paid enough to set you up for life, but I didn't want to trade too much of my life for the paycheck, so I planned on applying for five. That would buy me a nice house outright with a bit left over. They wouldn't let you go until you were twenty-five—something about psych profiles stabilizing—so I figured I'd get a master's degree while waiting and boost my pay even more.

My sister thought I was nuts, but I went ahead and got a bachelor's degree in planetary geology and a master's in outer solar system chemistry. A couple of the five-year probes returned while I was in college. A couple didn't, but I figured they'd fix the problems by the time I was twenty-five. It would take almost two years just to get to the outer areas, and that was with the fancy new propulsion physics. My physics major roommate in college had tried explaining it—something about spiraling up Cauchy-Riemann sheets where distances between conjugate points were shorter and then spiraling back down again to the plane you started at. To qualify for duty I just had to know the cookbook procedure to run the drive in an emergency; I didn't need to explain it. There had been rumors about the “strange space” in tabloids. We used to sit around and laugh at them at mess call. I mentally filed it under the same category as “Bigfoot on Mars.”

When I turned twenty-five, I was accepted into the Star Merchant Marine. Of course, I was not going near another star, nor was I going to sea—but they like their traditions. Training took a full year. We only briefly got to speak with “veterans"—those recruits who had actually completed their missions. And those sessions weren't allowed to be one-on-one. This should have set off warning alarms in my head, but I was too young to have any. By then, the first of the ten-year missions were starting to return too.

The day finally came. I said good-bye to everyone, took a quick, really unpleasant hop to the Earth's space station, then a longer trip to the bustling Luna Space Station. I was joined there with my crew. Probably, by now, we were the most compatible set of twenty people in the Solar System. Our mission was to pick up some mined minerals left behind on a planetoid—they had been prepped by a ship that had no cargo space. We were to install several automated communications stations on various barren ice and rock bodies, and generally explore, catalog, and chart anything we'd have time to that looks noteworthy. Not only would this be profitable, but it was going to be interesting too.

When we left on our new ship, the Zvezda Nochi, we were two geophysicists, one geologist (me), two medical officers (one, Robyn, had psychological training), a pilot, Jim Skarrett, two copilots (one, Joan, was married to the pilot; the other was Josh), a mission commander called Mac, who was the oldest at around forty, Dale, our systems engineer and life support chief, and ten engineers and technicians. The latter were needed because a mission like this had so many different systems to operate and keep running—sanitary, life support, comm, deep drilling equipment, extra-vehicle excursions, analysis tools and so forth. It was mind-boggling what it took to keep twenty humans safe in deep space for a few years.

* * * *

The marshmallow on the ground went up in flames with a flick of the fire in the wind. The golden lab smelled it burning and watched, but wasn't inclined to get up and stick his snoot into the fire. One of the young kids shifted uncomfortably in his camp chair, but no one spoke. The toddler, Jennie, was asleep in her stroller.

* * * *

Even with the drive, it took a long time to get out to where our activities were to start. I remember the first in our step-shifting series. All the observation windows on the ship went on auto-shield to protect us. The pilots and the MC had experienced step-shifts before, but we hadn't. We held our breaths and braced ourselves. And—we didn't feel anything. Which, of course is what they told us would happen, but still, it was a bit of a let-down. From then on we ignored the step-shifts, left it to the pilots. You could tell when we were shifting because the hatches would batten down, but that's all.

* * * *

Frances lifted her gaze from the fire and panned across the faces of the other campers. “I'll skip ahead now, to our return leg.”

"What did you see out there? Where'd you go?” one of the younger boys interrupted.

"Benjamin, it's just a story,” his mother chided. “Don't interrupt."

"Oh, sorry. I forgot you're just making it up,” he said.

* * * *

We accomplished most of the delineated mission—the specific stuff we were told to do. We lost one of the crew, George Preston. We were working on a barren rock and he left. His tracker stopped working and we never found him. Could have fallen into a crevasse; that's what Mac said, anyway. It got logged as a probable accident, but Robyn, the psych-trained medical officer, hinted at suicide. That rock wasn't that big, so it was odd we never found him.

We all got along pretty well under the confined circumstances. Cliques formed and reformed, couples formed, broke up, and re-formed. We even met up with another ship once and that was glorious! Spent five whole days together with fourteen people we'd never met before. People who you couldn't guess what they were going to say before they said it, people whose life story you'd never heard, not even once. I think by then I could have written a biography of everyone on board the Nochi.

* * * *

A breeze shifted the leaves that remained on the trees and the pine branches at height. The campers could hear it, but no one felt it. The fire burned steady. Frances continued her yarn:

* * * *

The beginning of it started, I think—I'm sure, although Mac, our Mission Commander, disagrees ... disagreed—when we came across an undesignated Kuiper Belt Object. Josh yelped when it appeared on our scopes in between jumps. Everyone rallied around the consoles. We were on the beginning leg of the trip home and we were really stir-crazy. Four months since any off-ship activity. That, I think, contributed to our really bad decision to all go down to explore.

“Mac, can we send a party down?” I asked.

“Hell, we can all go down!” he said.

The crew scrambled off to get their gear. “Well, I think we should do it in at least two shifts, don't you?” I suggested.

“You volunteering to stay behind and mind the store, Frances?”

“No,” I said. I couldn't stand to not get off the ship when there was actually someplace to go.

“All right,” Mac said. “Let's see if we can squeeze all nineteen of us into the Explorer.” He gave me an order with his eyes: Go with the flow, Frances.

* * * *

So we all went and had a good time hopping around Zvezda Nochi Kuiper Belt Object 3043. We lit it up—only light out here was the stars, all too familiar after more than three years of looking at them, our own sun cold and far away—took a few samples and ran a couple of profiles to justify the landing deployment in the ship's log book. 3043 was completely unremarkable in every aspect, except for one. It was unusual to find these objects isolated; usually the orbit that captured them caught a swarm of objects. 3043 was just out there alone. But we had found a few other outliers on our long mission, so even this wasn't unique.

* * * *

Mac told us when it was time to go. Our cleanup was indicative of our get-home-itis. Now I have sympathy for those crews we cursed out for leaving their crap behind all over some of our stops. We walked up the plank and, as usual, a couple of the crew turned to look up at the Nochi. Josh panicked and shouted, “It's gone!”

After a couple of heartbeats, while we tried to digest this, Skarrett said, “Don't get excited. We forgot to turn on the runners, that's all. She's up there.”

I was thinking to myself that it didn't matter that we were on the way home—if we let ourselves get sloppy, we're gonna get in trouble out here. But there was something. Taking off and not seeing the Nochi was somehow disconcerting, like heading out to an empty sea from a small island you might not find your way back to.

* * * *

"Was the ship there?” Benjamin asked.

Frances continued as if he hadn't spoken to her.

* * * *

We should have been relieved when the Explorer's powerful headlights illuminated the Nochi's hull. But there was something disconcerting about it. I hadn't gotten a look at the outside for the last couple of years; usually the running lights blinded us and made the actual hull recede into the blackness of space. But now, seeing the scraped-up, faded, cracked paint, it looked ancient, and somehow it was like something we weren't meant to see, like the underside of a ship, meant always to be hidden in the depths of the dark ocean. I was creeped out.

As we got closer I wanted to run, but despite the lack of gravity on the Ex, we were packed in like sardines. I inched back, only half a foot. I wanted only to retreat from the advancing image of the ship; I started to breathe fast but couldn't get air, and I was sweating, a cold sweat. Robyn was two crewmen away from me and asked me if I was okay. This shook me out of what I later thought must have been a panic attack.

But I still didn't like it. Filing out of the Ex, I still couldn't shake the alien feel of the ship. I watched Jim. He was craning his neck, looking around. His eyes caught me looking and he flushed slightly and then went eyes-front on me.

Once into the “mud” room, Mac told us to clean off, file our individual area reports, and then relax. He nonchalantly walked over to me, helping me get out of the suit body, but whispered, “Meet me upstairs when you can, Frances.” I nodded at him and he walked off.

I'd have to say Mac and Josh were my best buds on the ship. I never slept with them. Came close with Mac once, when we were both drunk, but I reserved that behavior for crew I knew I could keep at a distance. Must sound odd, but otherwise it gets too tight on board. And Mac had a family back on Earth. He talked about them some, but the rumor was they were estranged.

* * * *

Melinda cleared her throat and looked to Dan. He made a motion to say it was all right and not to interrupt their ghostly guest. The younger kids, except for Benjamin, were snoozing in their camp chairs.

* * * *

I didn't know if it had been an order from the boss or a request from a friend. Either way I didn't waste time going up to his office. No crew were headed that way and the gray corridor felt odd somehow. Sound damping was poor on the Nochi. You could track anybody in a fifty-foot radius by sound, so I knew nobody was going upstairs, but it felt like somebody was there, just behind or ahead, just out of sight. Watching. Waiting.

I'd never been afraid on this ship. Well, except for that moment, three and a half years earlier, the butterflies when the Nochi disembarked from Luna Station, when the commitment became real and thinking about not seeing home for five years—but butterflies aren't the same thing as fear. And this was outright fear. The kind a woman feels when she's walking down a deserted street at night in an unfamiliar neighborhood and thinks something is stalking her, just keeping out of sight. I ran up the stairs, pounding my feet to drown out the silence.

Mac was sitting at his desk with a bottle of Scotch and a glass that it looked like he was draining for at least the second time already.

“Sit down, Frances.” He slurred a slight amount. “What did you think of our little excursion?”

“Frankly, I think it was a waste and damn sloppy. It scared me, Mac,” I said.

“Yeah, I'm sorry. Won't happen again.” Mac looked around for another glass. “Have a drink with me, Frances.”

“Okay, a small one.”

He handed me the glass and then gestured his in a toast, “I promise you this won't happen again.”

“We're all tired, Mac. Things will look better tomorrow,” I said and before he could stop me I pushed back the chair and got up to leave. I didn't relish walking though those corridors again, and the phantoms were still there. The weirdness permeated the inside of my quarters, but the drink and the exhaustion and the soft mattress won out. I collapsed onto the bed.

* * * *

Melinda and her friend Ann interrupted and said they were putting the two younger children to bed in the tent and the camper. It had been past their bedtime already when Frances had appeared out of the woods. The toddlers had been snoozing the last twenty minutes. Melinda told the guys to carry on listening without them. The fathers asked Frances to continue.

* * * *

When I woke up in the designated morning hours, my quarters still felt weird. I felt lonely. No, not lonely—alone. On my screen log I saw we had shifted during the night, a short one, only about two hours, and that breakfast was ready. I think I pulled a muscle hopping around in the KBO's low G.

There were a few people in on the first breakfast shift. Mac really looked worse for wear with his hangover. Unusual behavior for Mac. As mission commander he was always laid back, but remained professional at the same time. SMM knew heavy hands didn't work well with a crew of mostly scientists.

Nobody looked particularly good. Jim was there, kind of eating, and then he left for his pilot shift. Second breakfast was starting and we noticed that Joan hadn't come in yet. Mac raised Jim on the comm and asked if Joan was okay. Jim said she wasn't feeling well this morning and was probably sleeping in. Josh appeared, looking real tired. He must have handled the C-R step-shift singlehandedly during the night while we all slept. That's not supposed to happen either, but I guess we broke a pile of rules that night.

I went to the office cubicle area and worked on geological reports. Mac was composing a report at the table when we heard Jim on the ship-wide intercom. His voice was panicked and he was calling for his wife. Mac bounded up and rushed toward pilot central, and I assumed Robyn would be headed there, too, after the manic sound of his voice. I decided to stay out of the way, and I told several of the crew passing through the offices to stand by as well.

After a while, Mac, the other medical officer, Manny, and a couple of crew marched through the office area.

I asked what was going on, and Mac said, “Joan's not answering the comm. We're looking for her.”

* * * *

The Nochi's not that big, but after a long mission like ours she's full of crap. Lots of boxes, containers. And she has lots of duct-work and plumbing. Thermal sensors won't pick up something stashed back there.

It was four hours before Mac was satisfied that she wasn't passed out somewhere. He called an all-hands meeting. All but Josh, that is. He was in pilot central watching on intercom. Jim was sitting in the corner with Robyn next to him. “All right,” Mac said. “You all did a good job searching. The only way Joan Skarrett's still on this ship is if she's hiding for some reason.”

Skarrett went ballistic and shouted, “Why the Hell would my wife be hiding?”

Mac said, “I don't know, Jim. But we can't pull the skeleton of the Nochi apart to find her.” To the intercom he said, “Josh, is there any way a crew member could have left this ship last night? Without our knowing it?”

“I don't think so, Mac,” Josh answered. “Not even ... dead.”

Jim shouted, “You think Joan killed herself!”

“No, no, I don't,” Mac said. “There is another possibility.” And Mac looked at each of the faces of the crew.

I spoke up then: “You think one of us killed her, Mac?”

A heavy, dead silence filled the room. Mac broke it, “Look, she hasn't slipped, fallen, or passed out. The search we did would have found her if that was the case.”

“Mac, what are you saying?” one of the crew said. It wasn't a question. The rest of us were speechless.

“All right, forget I said that,” Mac responded. “We'll just keep on alert and see what develops.”

“See what develops! Are you insane? Joan's out there, hurt, and that's all you can say!” Skarrett's voice was half an octave higher; he was on his feet and looking like he could do harm to Mac. A couple of crew grabbed him by the arms and he struggled violently.

Mac told them to confine him to the infirmary and directed Robyn to stay with him.

* * * *

We never found Joan. Her husband was still confined three days later. I went to see him a few times. Despite sedation, he had murder in his eyes and something else, a kind of desperate panic.

I started sleeping with one of the crew, Chis. He was a technician. I didn't even like him, I just didn't want to be alone in my quarters at night. Alone in those quarters, it was as if the Nochi was itself a presence, no longer an inanimate thing under our control. Sex didn't seem to have the kick to it—I was looking for the distraction factor—but sex with Chis seemed to be happening far away. It was only marginally better than being alone.

After a few days Mac called me to his office. He was drinking again. This is not good, I thought. I'd only seen him have a drink maybe once or twice every couple of months.

“What is it, Mac?” I asked.

“Two people.” He paced across the room.

“What?” I said.

“I lost two people. Really lost them. Can't even find the damn bodies.”

“Somebody else is missing?” I said.

“No, you forgot already?” He poured another glass. I was getting alarmed at his increase in drinking. Certainly not a good way for our MC to react to the situation. I sighed. “Oh, you couldn't help that. George probably did fall into a crevasse.”

“That rock wasn't that heavy, even with all his gear load.”

“Then maybe he launched himself into space. I don't know, Mac. I don't have an answer for that one. Exploration means surprises. ‘Expect them.’ You've told us that often enough,” I said.

Mac looked at me, “I'd have gone to your quarters, but I didn't want to interrupt you and your boyfriend.”

I said nothing. Mac wasn't usually unkind to me. He must have been really frustrated with the situation.

“Sorry,” he said. He got up and leaned on two hands on an empty desk, facing away from me as if he were staring out a porthole, but there wasn't one in that office. After a few seconds he said, “Jim's unfit for duty.”

“You're getting a little slim for pilots, aren't you?” I said. Jim was the chief pilot and his wife was a co-. That only left Josh, the other co-. I poured myself a drink. My hand jerked at the sound of the porthole shields slamming closed, and I spilled the Scotch on the table. It was followed by a—I don't know—a whoosh coincident with the step-shift. I was probably imagining this. There didn't used to be anything perceptible with the steps. I shuddered.

Mac narrowed his eyes at me, examining. “Yeah, I've noticed that. And you're not gonna like what I have to do about it.”

At first I thought he was going to say he'd noticed the sensation while stepping, but that wasn't it.

Mac walked over to the ship intercom switch and said, “This is the Mission Commander. As of 0600 tomorrow, Josh is appointed chief pilot, and Frances will start Star Merchant Marine pilot training from Josh as co-pilot. That is all.”

“Oh, no, Mac,” I protested.

“No choice here, Frances. I know you two have spent time together in the pilot shack. He's already shown you the basics. You two get along; you know more about the job than anyone else in the crew.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “It will make the trip home go faster for you.”

“I almost flunked physics, you know. I have lots of prelim analyses to run on our samples. And I'm not looking forward to twelve-hour shifts,” I said.

“Josh has to sleep sometime.” Mac was leaning closer to me. “I really need another competent pilot. Maybe once you have experience under your belt we'll recruit someone else, but I don't want to dilute the process right now.”

“Are you expecting trouble?” I asked.

“Frances, we already have trouble.”

He backed away from me. “We have a chief pilot who is nuts and may have murdered his wife, who was one of our co-pilots.” Mac blew out his breath, “I may have a confidence problem with the crew. Lost two people I'm responsible for.”

“You really think Jim could have hurt Joan?”

“Yeah, and so does Robyn,” Mac said. “I studied the psych profiles of every one of you before I took command. Jim shouldn't have lost it with Joan's disappearance. Some other stressor had to push him over the edge.”

“What? Like guilt for her murder?”

“You don't think so?” he asked.

“No, I don't,” I shouted. “Don't blame the crew just because you—” Then, more quietly, I said, “Oh, Mac, something's been wrong ever since we went to KBO 3043.”

The color drained from Mac's face. “What do you mean?” he asked. “Did something happen on that rock I don't know about?”

“No. I ... it was when we came back to ship,” I said.

“Spill it, Frances.”

I didn't know what to say. Didn't want Mac to think I'd gone off the deep end too. “Mac, I've always been straight with you, even, when, well, it was stuff you didn't want to hear.”

“I know that. Why do you think I always ask your opinion? That, and you're good to look at too.” He smiled.

“Okay, you asked for it. It wasn't on the rock; it was on the trip back. The ship.”

“What about it?” he said.

“I don't think ... I don't think it was the same ship. It's different. It's wrong, somehow.”

“Oh, Frances! Don't you go space-sick on me too.”

I sighed. “I don't know. You remember I really objected to all of us going down at once?”

“Oh, please! My fault again for breaching regs.” Mac slammed down his glass. “We all got back from the excursion. So what was the harm?”

“It was more than that. This ship hasn't felt right—to me, anyway—since we got back. Has it to you?”

“Too subjective, Frances. Facts, evidence. Everything looks the same to me. How could it be different?”

“It's not shifting the same. And you knowit. I saw your eyes during that last shift. You felt something, too, didn't you?” I said.

“The Nochi's getting old. It's bound to get a little rough around the edges.”

“Oh, so that's what you've been telling yourself.”

“I've got Josh running some tests,” Mac admitted.

We both started as the portholes’ shutters snapped back up. There was some noise in the corridor. I went toward the door to see what it was, but then two crew, Polly and Robert, burst into the room just as there was a call on the intercom for Mac. They were both out of breath.

Mac ignored the call and sprang to his feet. “What is it?” he demanded.

“Manny and Chis are missing,” Robert said. Losing one of the med officers was bad.

Mac looked at me with a question in his eyes.

I steeled myself and said I hadn't seen Chis since last night.

Polly said, “Manny walked out of sight just a few minutes ago and he seems to have disappeared!”

Mac rubbed his face. “Search the ship,” was all he said. He looked back at me with desperation and a sinking resignation. “We're done, Frances. Go help them search.”

I got as far as the door, then hesitated.

“What, Frances?” Mac asked.

“Has there ... Did, did Joan go missing during a step?” I asked.

“No telling exactly when she left,” Mac said. “Why?”

“There was a step last night and one twenty minutes ago, just before they said Manny left or whatever is happening.”

“Coincidence?” Mac offered.

“Maybe. Manny's the only one we have a tight time-last-seen on, assuming he doesn't turn up.” I walked over to a console and pulled up the step log.

“Well, what do you see?” Mac asked.

“Not conclusive. Don't know exactly when the two went missing. We've done some steps without crew disappearing, but it's possible that there was always a step when the disappearances occurred.”

“This is crazy, Frances.” Mac sat back down.

I leaned against the table and had a thought. “Mac, how has comm been lately?”

“I thought you'd get around to that.”

“What do you mean?”

“We've got nothing since we left that damn KBO.”

“What?”

“You heard me. It's not that peculiar. We're homebound: dead zone, no markers out here. Solar storms could screw up comm from Earth. We've had blackouts before. Comm officer says we should pick up a faint outer planet beacon any day now. It's no emergency. We nav by star maps anyway.” Mac avoided looking directly into my eyes.

“You sound like you're trying to convince yourself nothing's wrong.”

“What do you want me to do? Tie everybody together in the mess hall every time we step-shift to see who disappears?”

“Well, do our exploration transponders work on board?”

“They could with a little modification.”

I just looked at him.

Mac went to the intercom and told everybody to take the transponders out of their suits, get a battery pack, and wear them. To me he said, “Next step is the buddy system.” Mac went to the console.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Looking at the upcoming step schedule.” He scrolled down. “Next step-shift is in six hours.”

According to Josh, Jim had confided to him that there was no mechanical reason to put down the shades when we stepped. I, of course, had wanted to see what was out there ever since Josh told me this.

* * * *

Ben perked up and asked, “Why not just stop shifting, and that way everybody would be safe?"

Frances smiled without looking at Ben and answered, “That's a good question, but it's not as simple as that. It takes a long time to calculate the shifting sequence and once you decide on a series to get you somewhere—you look at power consumption profiles, number of steps, accuracy, risk—if you interrupt it you have to start all over again, and sometimes you have to backtrack from where you are to get started. Some of the shifts can be delayed a few hours—there are different size windows—but we were on the home phase and we couldn't afford to re-path it. Not enough food, for one thing. And fuel, energy for the simulated gravity, other supplies. The sequence Jim had chosen required an average of a step-shift every eighteen hours over the next year with varying times in the Cauchy-Riemann space, and a few shifts very close together.”

"Oh,” said Ben. “You had artificial gravity? How does that work?"

His older sister excused herself and went off to her tent to sleep. That left three people awake, listening to her story.

"Well, it works kinda like light switches and sensors. It can sense you coming into a room and turn on automatically or you can flip a switch. All our cargo areas and stuff have everything stuck on or secured, ‘cause we don't need to have them sit in AG when we aren't working in those areas. Common rooms have the whole floor on most of the time. Our quarters could have hot spots—like the bed, while you're asleep, which you want on all night—but the rest of the room can be off until you get up, although partial grav in a room can make it drafty."

“But, how does it work?” Ben asked.

"Stop interrupting our visitor,” his father said.

Frances smiled a bit, but her voice still had the droning quality to it. “It's okay. I don't mind. The child would have had physics by now. Some, anyway. You know that gravity is the weakest force because it leaks into the other universes through small-scale dimensions?"

"Yeah, kinda."

"Well, we just plug up the leaks—selectively, and for finite amounts of time. So it's real gravity, just harvested before it leeches out."

"Frances,” said Dan, “what happened next in your story?"

* * * *

I saw Robyn in the corridor. She said Jim howled like a banshee when we were stepping. She had to sedate him again. I went up to the pilots’ shack to practice running the ship. Mac came with me and hovered over some space maps with Josh, questioning him on the ship's nav status, the peculiar stepping sensation, and the feasibility of delaying the next shift. I heard him ask when we could expect to pick up that beacon, and I heard Josh's answer. He said we should have it by now.

“Okay, you two, I know you've discussed this,” Mac said to us. “Josh, in your opinion, is this the same ship we left to explore 3043?”

Josh looked over to me. He knew my theory. “I think it's the same ship, but I'm not sure it's the same space, sir.”

“What are you talking about?” Mac asked. I was interested. Hadn't thought about the inverse possibilities.

“There still hasn't been any—I stress any—comm since 3043. It's just natural background, a little shifted from the norm. Nothing man-made.”

“Well, we don't need a beacon,” Mac said. “The stars are still there.”

“Are they?” Josh said.

“What do you mean?” Mac said. I think he was worried that Josh was losing it. I could see the stars in my instruments and through the portholes.

Josh ignored me and pointed to some graphics he had. “Look, we got an error report after the first step-shift when we returned from the KBO. Jim didn't worry about it. It was only a little off, and he said we'd check our cals if it keeps up.”

“What's wrong with it?” Mac asked.

I got up and looked between the shoulders of the two men.

“It's the colors,” Josh said. “In all the upheaval with Joan missing, I forgot about it, but here . . .” Josh pointed to a chart with five stars selected and a little graph of frequency next to each. There were two curves on each, colored green and red. “The green represents the calibrated star color from the star maps. We use primarily the charted positions, and we use a thousand stars, but color matching is an extra check.”

“So, the red curves are what?” Mac said.

“That's what we saw after the last step. The color's shifted.”

“And,” I said, “it's not even a consistent shift to the blue or to red.”

“Yeah, Frances, and the magnitude of the color frequency offsets gets bigger after each step-shift. Soon some of these visible stars are gonna be right out of our perception!”

“That's crazy!” I said. “I'm no physicist, but I know that star color is a function of composition, their relative speed to or from us, and absorption media between us and them ... how could all this be changing?”

“Frances is right, Josh. It's got to be your instruments.” Mac rubbed his forehead.

“I don't think so, Mac,” Josh said. “Just take a look out the porthole.”

“Huh?” said Mac.

Josh had a crazy look in his eyes, “Look at Betelgeuse. It's not red anymore. Hell, it's freakin’ green!”

I pulled a star view up from my console. “He's right, Mac,” I said.

Mac blew out his breath. “Next step's in five hours. Can we delay it, Josh?”

“Only for about an hour,” Josh answered.

“Well, the stars are still in the right place—that's right, isn't it, Josh?” Mac asked.

Josh nodded, “So far.”

“Proceed with the planned sequence.” Mac's eyes locked on to mine.

I said, “See you later,” as casually as I could.

* * * *

Josh and I kept the intercom on low, monitoring the action. The crew was panicked. Mac was doing his best to reassure them, but there were chores that had to be done to keep the Nochi flying. No one wanted to be alone. It was a sense that you couldn't have an anomaly if one of us witnessed it. Like it would break the rules or something. I didn't think I wanted to see what was happening to us at the time of disappearance. So Mac created a buddy system, for what that was worth. A couple of crew insisted on continuing the search for the missing, and Mac gave in, but we could tell by his voice that he thought it was futile.

* * * *

Nine hours later, we lost Robert. Robert's “buddy,” Polly, had gone to the head for a few minutes during a step-shift and we never saw Robert again. Transponder just stopped transmitting. I met Mac for some coffee, but I wasn't thirsty. A few of the crew were leaving with orders to run some tests on the ship.

“Commander School teach you to keep the crew busy, did they?” I asked.

“As a matter of fact.” Mac slumped in his desk chair.

“What are we gonna do, Mac?”

“I'm calling a meeting. I want you, Josh, Dale,” he sighed. Dale was the ship's systems engineer and had the talent to identify the core problem embedded in a complex situation. “Who else has a decent physics background?”

“Well, not me, for one,” I said.

“Francie, you studied hard to get on this mission and join this crew. You planned everything, and you knew just what you wanted from life. You've got your head on straighter than any of the crew, including me!”

“Okay. Leah repairs the step engines. She should know how they work in principle, and I've seen her figure out some complicated math problems,” I said, pouring some black coffee into my cup. I leaned forward and asked, “Why not just include everyone?”

“Nah, that stuff's really creepy when you get into it. Better to not involve them in the details.”

“Was that official advice from Star Marine too?” I asked.

“Yeah.” He reached across the desk with both hands and gestured for me to put my hands in his. I did and looked him in the eyes. He looked back intensely. “Are you really this cool?” he said.

I tightened my grip on his hands, “Josh said it's not necessary to lock down the portholes when we shift.” I whispered: “You know what happened to the early crews who saw ‘outside.’ What'd they see, Mac? What happened to them?”

A shiver passed through his body.

A half hour later, after a very short step-shift, a small group assembled behind a closed door in the conference room. It was me, Josh, Mac, our ship's engineer Leah, and Dale, our systems engineering and life-support head. Dale had a minor in physics. I don't remember a lot of the conversation. It rambled along. But the important part was this:

“The Nochi's engine is built for our space. We could be moving in directions the engineers on Earth never dreamt of. We may never get back, because we don't know how,” Josh said.

“Can't we just reverse our tracks? Go back to where we started?” suggested Mac.

I said, “Reversing doesn't work in these dimensions. It's not, you know, commutative, or something. Right, Josh?”

“Yeah.”

Leah said, “Josh, what happened to the people who saw the shifts? What did they see?”

“I don't know. They wouldn't tell us, but Mac has the clearance. He'd have been briefed.”

Everybody stared at Mac.

“They all went mad.”

It took the group a while to recover from that bit of information. Leah questioned Mac extensively. That's why we weren't allowed to speak to more than the few veterans that came to our training facility. I asked if we should consider some sort of mass hysteria. Dale suggested we bring Robyn into the discussion.

Mac shook his head and said, “Her transponder's been dark since the last shift.”

Robyn wasn't someone we all liked—she was a bit on the intrusive side—but I think she was close to a lot of us because of it. Drew us out, as it were, whether we liked it or not. And I knew I'd miss her. But how long would I be around to miss her?

“All right,” Mac said. “Frances thinks the ship's different. Josh thinks the space is different. But with step-shifting, the Nochi is entangled with the space. So maybe it's both.” Mac looked to his crew. “Josh, or anybody, can you summarize what happens when the Nochi steps?”

“Yes, sir,” Josh began. “Remember your complex numbers?”

“Regular numbers and imaginary,” Mac said.

“Yes, let's take two dimensions, an X and Y axis, to simplify it. A simple periodic function, like sines and cosines. If you just look at it in 2-D, the value of sine of oh, say, 30 degrees, repeats every time you circle around the origin of the axis, so the value is the same for 30 plus 360, 30 plus 2 times 360 if you circle around again, and so forth. Consider a third axis, perpendicular to this plane: the Z, or imaginary axis. But when you consider another axis, that holds your original X and Y plane, every time you circle through a whole revolution of 360 degrees you are not still on the flat X-Y space but have climbed up a level—or down if you're going around in the other direction.”

“To an imaginary plane,” I said.

“Yeah, you sorta spiral up or down,” Josh continued. “These are called Cauchy-Riemann sheets in mathematics.”

Mac looked perplexed.

Dale chimed in with an analogy. “Look at it another way: take a twenty-four-hour old-fashioned clock face with hands on it. Say you start in the present at six a.m. You cycle around once and you're back to six a.m. Cycle again, back to six am. The clock face and hands look the same, but you're not at the same time at all! Each time around the face you advanced by a day, and if the hands could cycle counterclockwise, you've gone backwards in time. On the clock face it looks the same, but you have to wind up or wind down to get back to today. The clock face, and our ‘normal’ space, are the simple projections of the bigger picture.”

Josh added, “Course, we're dealing with space, not time—I think that's true, anyway. When we step-shift, our engine drives take us up to these planes where we found empirically—trial and error with probes—that the distance between conjugate points—”

“Slow down, Josh,” Mac said.

“Sorry. The places we shift from to the locations we shift to—in the X-Y space. That's our natural home space. Anyway, these distances are smaller the higher level sheets you step up to.”

“So we cheat the universal speed limit,” Dale said.

Leah chimed in, “We travel in the funny space at speeds the Nochi can achieve and then drop back into our space faster than the speed of light, although we never actually went faster than light. We basically trade the energy needed to step for speed.”

“And it costs us more the higher we go, but the distances are shorter the higher the sheet too. Or our home-space energy goes a longer way—no one's sure which it is,” Josh finished. “And we have never gone faster than light, for the record. Otherwise the SMM would be sending us God-knows-where, to other star systems, and it wouldn't take us over a year to go home. But we can do multiples of our top speed.”

“So, take a KBO that's a million kilometers away,” Mac summarized. “We step-shift up to a sheet where it's only half a million kilometers away. Head toward the object, get close, wind our way back to normal space, and we're there in half the time.”

We all nodded in agreement. I could sense Mac feeling our eyes on him.

“Question: If we run out of fuel in one of the higher energy sheets, do we pop back out in home space?” Mac asked. I could sense the mental gears working.

“No,” Josh answered. “It takes us energy to climb and to go back home. As I've said, in this many dimensions it's not a simple reversing of operations. Multi-layered dimensional travel is not commutative or conservative.”

“I'm not even gonna go there.”

“Means you can't backup, for one thing,” Josh said.

“Josh, when's the next step-shift?” Mac asked.

“In two hours, duration one hour and fifteen minutes.”

“Josh and Frances, you stay here. The rest of you are dismissed,” Mac said.

Leah looked as though she was going to say something, but the look in Mac's face silenced her.

“Josh, is the ship okay without either of you in pilot central for a while?” Mac asked.

“Yeah, I need to go up fifteen minutes before we shift,” he said.

“I'm going to tell you two some classified information now.” Before he did that he went to the intercom to get a status report. He was told no one had disappeared since Robyn. Then he switched to shipwide and announced that I was second in command. Then to us he said, “Sorry, Josh. You have enough on your plate handling the ship.”

“No problem, Mac,” Josh said. I'm sure Josh was happy his link in the command chain would be skipped over.

I spoke up. “Mac, what happened to the ships that didn't return?”

“The ones we found were abandoned.”

“Really?” Josh was surprised. “What did their logs say?”

“Nothing. Well, there were normal entries, up to a certain point, and then—just nothing.”

“Mac,” I asked, “have you been making Commander's entries?”

“Of course I have, Frances. And I'm going to launch a buoy. I've been hesitating to do that because of the message it will send to the crew. But I don't think anyone we know is gonna hear its message.” He had a kind of sick, lopsided smile. “Do you?”

“I don't,” Josh said.

“Why not?” I said.

“Josh has figured it out, haven't you, Josh?” Mac's smile was scaring me.

“Not all. But there's nobody in this space to hear it. I don't know how, but Frances is right. I think it was wrong before we shifted, when we came back to the Nochi. We started from the wrong place, so every shift we took since then has gotten us more out of whack.”

“I don't understand,” I said. “You think ourNochi is still sitting in orbit around KBO 3043, with the last log entry from just before we boarded the Explorer to go down?”

A crash of some metallic thing sounded down the corridor outside the office. Mac went outside and a crewman yelled that Jim had broken out of the infirmary. In his command voice Mac said, “Find him, sedate him, and report to me when it's under control.” He came back in the office. “Try to ignore the upheaval and concentrate on the problem,” he said to both of us. “What was wrong when we went back to the ship?”

“I know everything looks the same, but it felt different to me since we all came back from that KBO,” I said.

“Mac, we've ... I mean, people have only had direct experience with, measurements in, a minuscule portion of space, especially way out here.” Josh seemed to be thinking on his feet. “Suppose there are waves of, or bubbles of, I don't know, anomalous space, where our physics hasn't been developed.”

Dale appeared at the door, reported that what was left of the crew was taking care of Jim, and asked if he could rejoin our discussion.

Mac agreed and told Josh to go on, but I jumped in: “Like in geology class. The professor would tell us to hypothetically drop a probe in three random spots on Earth and using just the data there describe the whole planet. Then they'd tell us to draw conclusions from the probes we've sent elsewhere.”

“And the point is, Frances?” Mac said.

“The point is you can't do it. Earth comes back looking like it's all under water. Usually you don't even log a human. There aren't enough samples to say you have characterized the planet. Not enough points to get the big picture.”

“So we haven't got this space-travel thing figured out yet. I get it,” Mac said. Looking to Josh, he said, “So what do we do about it?”

“There's something,” I said. “No one has seen—witnessed, I mean—a crewman disappearing, have they?” I asked

They both said they didn't think so.

“I think that there would be a different outcome if we had left someone on the Nochi—our Nochi—when we'd gone down to 3043. It's like there's an anti-paradox rule or something. Anomalies can happen as long as we don't witness them.”

“Your point, Frances?” Mac sounded impatient.

“My point? Humanity is going to have to rethink physics if they're going to continue space exploration. They're going to have to include things like perception and thought, and I don't know what else.”

Dale jumped in, “It could be ... If you told people who only observed forces in a Newtonian world about quantum mechanics, no one would believe it. Heck, Einstein didn't believe in quantum mechanics, and he had access to all the observations it explained. Our probes only sampled and mapped a small sample of space out here. And the area around the Sun is astronomically small compared to the Universe.”

“Your point?” Mac said.

“It wasn't until we got observations in the microscale of QM that we opened our minds to believe something that was very counterintuitive.” Dale was quiet for a moment. There was a lot of noise from the ship. The crew were very nervous. “Mac, we may have the space-travel thing figured out for the inner planets, but out here, and traversing all this funny space ... you gotta use your imagination.”

“Well you three can lecture the academies when we get back. Frances, Josh, what can we do about it?”

Josh said, “Proceeding on the assumption that we started from the wrong place from the first time we stepped after returning from 3043 and so we've been diverging from a correct final destination with every step since then, I can set the calculators to try to get a solution to get us back to the inner solar system. I'll ask Leah to help me with that. If we don't anchor our initial point at the KBO 3043 and let it float, we might be able to calculate a series of steps-shifts to get us back to normal space.”

“All right. If that doesn't work, what's next?” Mac asked Josh.

“I don't know,” he said.

“We could put all our energy into a high step-shift to get as close to home as possible,” Dale suggested.

Josh looked appalled. “No safety factor there,” he said.

“Well, carry on with your plan,” Mac ordered, “We'll see what happens and reevaluate.”

I watched Dale leave and wondered if I'd see him again. There was another shift coming up. “You coming, Frances? We have work to do upstairs.” Josh wanted me in the pilots’ shack for the next shift.

“In a few minutes,” I said.

Mac slumped in his chair. “I should be out there.” He nodded toward the corridor. “Comfort the troops.”

“I think there's not much you can do at this point,” I said.

“That damn KBO. How many shifts since then? Every one of them took us farther off. We lost our home space. How many shifts to get us back?”

“We've made twelve step-shifts since then, Mac,” I said.

“And lost half the crew. What did he say? This imaginary space isn't commutative?”

I massaged my face, trying to rub out the fatigue. I'd lost track of when I slept last. And, come to think of it, I wasn't even sure when I'd last eaten. “Yeah, there's no ‘reverse course’ command here,” I said.

“I'd like an ‘undo’ key right now. Call me old fashioned, Francie, but I'd like to die in my own space. How about you?”

“Me, too, Mac. Although I'd prefer to live in it for a while longer.” I got up from the chair. “I gotta go support this shift. You know Mac, technically, we don't know any of the crew have died.”

* * * *

On my way to pilot central to help Josh, I passed several crew hurrying to and fro with desperate looks on their faces. I could hear some low-level alarms sounding; these were adding to the crew's level of upset. I reached Josh; Leah was with him, and he looked pretty frazzled. I asked what was wrong, a question that seems ridiculous in retrospect.

“The ship's computer is trying to converge on a solution, but the math isn't linear. And the constants are unknown.” He pointed to the external viewer. The stars looked even stranger, the colors vivid and odd. “That's why the stars aren't right here, we've never been back to home space, since we returned to the Nochi, or whatever we're on.”

“The solution looks like it's converging for a while and then goes astray,” Leah said. “And there's some real funny stuff dropping out of the calculations.”

“Do you understand it? Is it physical?” I asked.

“Yes and no,” she answered. “The closest I can describe it is as a time monopole.” As she bent over a console her long, brown, braided hair kept falling in front of her face. She finally repositioned a hairpin to anchor the braid around her head.

“What's a time monopole? And what would a time dipole or multipole be for that matter?” I asked.

“Well, remember your wave equation. There's always a forward-in-time solution and a backward-in-time solution to the equation, but the profs always say to throw out the backward-propagating solution; it's unphysical.”

“I always thought that was a bad idea,” I said.

“I agree. It looks like the time monopole is the superposition of both these solutions,” Leah said.

“Don't say it. They cancel each other out if they overlay?” I said, nearly shouting over the noise.

Josh said, “Time moves neither forward nor backward at the monopole?”

“Or in both directions at once. I don't know, this isn't my field,” Leah said.

We didn't talk for about half a minute.

“What are all these alarms? Can't we shut them off?” I asked.

“We're so far off, the ship probably thinks the pilots are dead, and it's trying to alert the rest of the crew,” Josh said.

“I'll see if Dale can override them after we step-shift.” I looked at the time, wondering who would be left after this one. “Mac thinks we might try one last-ditch all-out shift to get close to Earth, but for now we'll carry on with the incremental plan and see if we can get convergence.”

Josh hit the intercom. “Prepare to shift in four, three, two, one.” I felt a whoosh pass through my body, like a gravity wave or something. Then it reminded me of something I had felt down on 3043, although not as intensely. I hadn't mentioned it to anyone; vertigo was a common thing when you go to a low-gravity environment. I wondered if anyone else felt it.

* * * *

This step-shift only lasted for an hour and fifteen minutes. Leah'd gone off somewhere during the shift. When we dropped out into what should have been our normal home space, more alarms came on. I went to the corridor, to the intercom, and called for Dale. After a few seconds there was still nothing. I tried for Leah. Nothing.

I looked over to Josh and said, “I don't want to look at the transponder grid.”

“Me neither,” Josh shouted over the racket.

“Maybe they're sleeping,” I said, not believing it.

“Frances, you seen anybody sleep lately?”

“You noticed that too?” I said.

* * * *

I hung out in pilot central for an hour with music headphones over my ears to drown out the alarms. I finally got the courage to push the ship-wide intercom. I said, “Mac?” Josh was watching my eyes as I waited those seconds, not breathing.

“Yeah, Frances? I'm still here.”

Josh saw my relief. “We shift again in half an hour, but I can handle it alone. You go. You can explain to Mac that this isn't going to work, the calculations won't converge on a solution. Ask him what he wants me to do next.”

“Thanks,” I shouted and ran to Mac.

He was in the main corridor directing one of the techs to figure out how much life support was in our Explorers’ supplies. God knows what he was thinking. When he saw me he dismissed the tech, put his arm around my shoulders, and whisked me off to one of the offices with better sound insulation. I explained to him why all the alarms were sounding and that we were lost, probably hopelessly lost in funny space. I explained that it looked like some shifts were taking us back toward Earth, but then another shift would put us farther away, and that even if we got back to a planet where Earth should be, it wouldn't likely be our Earth. We hadn't been in our home space since we left that KBO.

“Mac,” I said, “when we were on 3043 did you experience any kind of disorientation, vertigo?”

“Yes, I did. That's why I wrapped up the expedition early. Why?”

“I felt it too. Like a weak version of the sensation when we shift now.”

“I thought it was only me,” he said.

“That's probably when it happened,” I said. “Just slightly off kilter.”

Mac was speaking fast, thinking, I'm sure, that one or both of us might not survive the next shift. “Keep going with the solutions. Maybe an imaginary Earth is better than nothing. Or try the all-in-one step we discussed. Leave enough juice to survive long enough to get picked up. I entered you into all the Mission-Commander-only locks. Forget what I said before!”

“This is Josh.” The intercom was barely audible over the noise coming from all over the ship. “Shift-step in four, three, two—”

I saw the viewing porthole shutter slide down.

Mac looked into my eyes, he made a gesture with his arms, opening them, in an offer or a plea, I couldn't tell which. No hesitation, I threw my arms around him. Mac and I held on to each other—the idiom is, I think—"for dear life.”

“—one. This shift lasts ten minutes,” Josh concluded.

We held each other tightly. I felt a sickening wave pass through my body with the shift, much stronger than before. My whole body broke out in the sweats.

“Stay alive, Frances!” Mac shouted as he buried his face in my hair. The klaxons were amplifying our mutual panic. We were both still standing up, Mac's back against a bulkhead, and we were clinging tight to each other. In my peripheral vision two crew ran past the open door like dogs trying to hide from thunder and lightning. I wanted to forget where I was, this dreadful space we were in, a dimension that was trying to pull us into a vast aloneness, unimaginable to humans before this, but I couldn't forget. After the adrenaline left me, I felt the strength in my thighs giving out, my legs wobbly, and I stepped out of Mac's arms to lean up against the wall. It was cool on my back against my sweat-soaked shirt. Mac said nothing. The alarms sounded even louder. I looked at him and smiled. He smiled back, a bit apologetically. I looked over at the open door. I turned my head back to speak. And Mac was gone. The viewing porthole shutter slid open.

* * * *

I walked back slowly to pilot central. To Josh. He was still there.

“Glad to see you,” he said.

“Mac's gone,” I said.

“I know,” he said and gestured to the transponder screen. There were only five blips, counting the two of us. I looked over to the external viewer.

“God, what's this?” I said. The odd-colored stars seemed to have sprouted delicate tendrils.

“Yeah. Weirder and weirder,” Josh said.

“Mac said, ‘Try to get to Earth on any plane, even if it isn't ours. Or try using all the energy in one giant hop.’ I think he wanted to see how much life support we could get out of the Explorers to tide us over till help comes. Whatever.”

“Whatever,” Josh echoed.

I slouched in a pilot's seat. “I'll tell you one thing, Josh. I don't want to disappear without seeing what's out there when we shift. We got anybody left who can prop open a porthole?”

“I could figure it out, but check with the crew. Once they're opened, we can't close ‘em again, you know. Next shift's in nine hours.”

* * * *

There were two techs and an engineer left who accomplished the task of setting the portholes shutters permanently open in under seven hours. This fudge set off another set of alarms, adding to the nerve-racking cacophony on board.

Josh and I spent the time calculating the parameters for what we dubbed the “LDE"—the last ditch effort that would use all our fuel to spiral up to the highest plane we could reach and still have life support for a month after dropping down to a plane as close as possible to the computers’ best guess at normal space. As we approached the regular scheduled shift, I realized I was in command now. I punched the shipwide intercom and told what was left of the crew that we were about to shift and warned them that the portholes were staying open. “There's no increased danger from this, but you are advised to avoid looking outside. That is all.”

They were highly educated techies. I knew they'd all look. They had curiosity in the genes.

* * * *

“Ten-minute-duration step-shift commences in four, three, two, one,” Josh announced.

I held on to the armrests of the console chair, expecting the shift to somehow be rougher because we'd be able to see out.

As he initiated the shift Josh said, “If you make it, Frances, tell my family—”

“Ditto from my end, okay?” I said, then felt the unsettling shifting sensation.

I wasn't facing a porthole and my mind raced, deciding whether to look outside.

“Oh, God!” gasped Josh.

My head whipped around. Outside the portal, it was something out of a nightmare. There were huge suns all around us. They shone in sickening, wrong colors. Living tentacles of plasma streaming from decrepit greens, black-blood reds and chocolate hobgoblin brown. Giant stars looped around each other, powerful, conversing among themselves, alive and somehow looking at us. Yes! They saw us! Unnatural, like an alien, off-kilter version of Van Gogh's starry night. I was reduced to a human grain of sand under a microscope.

I wedged myself behind some equipment racks in a corner. "How long? How much more time? Josh, turn around!” I screamed over the alarms.

He was just standing there, staring at the porthole.

I craned my neck and saw the clock readout—eight more minutes! I think I will die! Their powerful scrutiny was stripping away my life's significance. Pain—pain!

* * * *

After the ship returned to—well, whatever space it erroneously thinks is normal—I was crumpled in the corner, sobbing and on my knees. Josh—thank God he was still there—with wide, glassy eyes walked over to help extricate me from the cramped corner. The stars still looked as funny as before we shifted—a little worse even—but now the delicate tendrils served to remind me of their expression on the higher planes. I shuddered and turned my body to avoid the porthole view.

“Thanks,” I said. I sat down. “Josh, is that what's always out there when we shift? And we don't feel it because we can't see it?”

“I don't think so.” Josh plopped into his console seat. “We're shifting into space we've never been to before. Ever since that first shift after 3043, we've been off in a direction nobody's ever mapped. That's probably why we can't get a solution.”

I got up, knees barely able to support me.

“Where are you going?” Josh asked.

“I better check on the crew. This was horrible.” I kept thinking to myself that technically we were the unnatural element in this plane.

With an uneasy smile, Josh said, “No need, Frances,” and he pointed at the transponder screen.

I sat down again and rubbed my forehead. “Josh, how's our fuel?”

“Hah!” he said. “We haven't used up any since we left that KBO.”

“What? How could we miss that?” I said.

“Ship tells you if there's a problem. Having enough fuel is not a problem. Or ... I don't know. Maybe it was using it before and it replenished during shifts. I don't trust my perception in this crazy space.”

“I vote we try the LDE then,” I said.

* * * *

The fire had burnt low and the chill October air caused the campers, although asleep, to burrow into their fleece jackets and the hooded recesses of their parkas.They occasionally stirred in the camp chairs, Frances’ droning voice lifting their subconsciouses to somewhere just below waking. Their sleeping minds would absorb her story and call upon the images to color their future dreams and nightmares.

* * * *

“You don't have to vote,” Josh said. “You're the Mission Commander.”

I sat down. “What do you think, Josh?”

“Three choices. First: Do nothing. Stop shifting and sit here forever. No one will find us and we'll run out of food and life support and die. Second: continue shifting. I think the fuel supply is somehow getting reset each time, so we could do this for a long time and hope it converges on—something. Some place we can exist. Or our third: our LDE. See if it gets us close to Earth or a planet we can live on. But we don't have a vehicle that can land on a big planet, so that would be an engineering challenge if Luna Station's not there. And doing that big of a step-shift is very tricky, very low accuracy. That's why we do so many smaller steps.” Josh laced his fingers together over his head and said, “At this point they're all the same to me. We can't shutter the portholes again so we're going to have to endure that again next shift.”

I winced at that.

“Why not?” I asked.

“I think we had to actually break a coil to get them to open out of cycle. I mean, eventually we could crank them closed, but it involves taking off wall panels. It's not a trivial job. They really didn't want them open during a shift.”

“They're not structural, right?” I asked.

“No. It shouldn't affect performance or safety.”

I decided to take a walk through the ship. We had two hours till the next shift. I told Josh I'd make up my mind before then.

The corridors seemed cold, but not quite so scary now that I knew it wasn't the same ship that left Luna Station almost four years ago. I walked all the way to the stern, past all the crates of core samples and supplies. I noted that we had discovered life; those hideous stars were alive, there was no doubt, but there was no way to claim that discovery. I wondered if Mac had launched that buoy. I couldn't remember. I went to the closest intercom and raised Josh. I told him to record a note on what happened to us and launch it with a full download of official ship's data. “I'm coming back. Prepare for the LDE.”

Walking back, I remembered conversations with Josh up in pilot central, killing time on our long tour. I remembered him telling me that they drill into you that the starting point is your anchor in higher-dimensional space travel. Once you're off, you can't get back.

Every one of our shifts since 3043 took us farther off; we had lost our home space. How many shifts would it take to get us back? Where did the rest of the crew go? And that wild space! I dreaded being observed by those unnatural, alien stars again. My loved ones, the house I would buy on my return from the mission, starting my own family ... I'd take my children camping with my dad.

* * * *

“Okay, let's go for it,” I said to Josh on my entry into pilot central, “before I lose my nerve.”

“We're putting the maximum into what could get us there and back down a few planes to an analog—in energy, anyway—to our normal space. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” I said. “You haven't acquired that beacon from Earth, by any chance?”

“Not a chance, Frances,” Josh said, smiling at me.

I braced myself, mentally and physically.

“It should only last three minutes. Four, three, two, one!”

The onslaught of the stepping was a billion times worse than before, like knives splitting the cells of my body, my stomach turning inside out. The alarms went barreling on, klaxons, high-pitched sirens, synthetic voice warnings. I was screaming. I looked over at Josh; he was screaming too. The view, oh God the view, was wild beyond imagining! Why hadn't I just taped over that porthole? How long can three minutes be!

I caught myself screaming “how long?” when the step ended. I looked out the porthole. It didn't work. I sat back in my chair, closed my eyes, and sighed. “What are we going to—”

Josh was gone.

The horrible stars, sinewy and tentacled, with slimy plasma clouds and dark wriggling spots, close enough to interact with each other now, watched me as I engaged the ship's calculators to search for a solution to find home space. Sometimes it looks as if it's converging, but then it veers off in another direction and the errors balloon. I've boarded up that porthole in pilot central; my last look showed the plasma tentacles twining around the stars, pouring their unnatural colors into each other, making sickening hues of oily slime. And why am I still here through these countless steps-shifts? Or is each of my crewmates on their own, lonely mission now? Did each of us return to a different ship from KBO 3043?

* * * *

Only soft breathing and light snores answered her from the campsite. She was alone as the dawn approached.

* * * *

But I keep trying for home. It must be months by now, maybe even longer: I, alone in this shadow version of the Nochi, manning the pilot's chair, one step-shift after another, interminable. Klaxons screaming. Hoping the next shift will take me home. The food must be long gone by now, but I am still alive. I don't eat. The stars are no longer in any way familiar; haven't been able to identify Sol, or its proxy in this Hell, for a long time. The Nochi and I have no real idea of where we are. The stars—you have no idea of what lurks in the midst of the Solar System! Beware the stars of the night.

I don't sleep, but I dream. I dream of home, of camping with my father in Tamworth. I daydream of visiting our favorite campsite by the Swift River and being invited by some family to sit by the fire and tell ghost stories.

The night is giving over to dawn, but I have to manage the next step-shift now, time to wake up, time to wake . . .

* * * *

“What? Huh?” The fire cracked and some dead cinders blew onto Melinda's sleepy face. Through stinging eyes in barely morning light, she squinted across to the tendrils of smoke rising from the remains of the fire. She was chilled to the bone from sleeping out in the open all night with just her parka wrapped around her.

"Melinda, wake up,” said Dan.

"Is she gone?” Melinda asked.

Len started, stared, grabbed the hand rests of his outdoor recliner and looked toward the tents. “Better check on the kids,” he told her. He looked around. “All of them, okay?"

"Yeah,” she said.

After a few minutes, Melinda came back with coffee makings. “They're okay,” she said. “Benjamin was already up and walking around with the dog.” She clanged a few pots together making the coffee and starting the bacon frying on the camp stove. “What a strange woman."

Ann woke up. “Wow! Did I sleep outside all night?” She looked around and stretched. In a low voice she asked, “She gone?"

"Apparently,” said Len. “You know the old SMM deep space missions were discontinued forty years ago. Stopped being profitable after so many were casualties. All hands presumed dead. She couldn't possibly have been on one. Too young."

"Maybe she lost her mother on one?” Melinda said from the camp kitchen area.

"Poor girl,” Ann said. “It was weird the way she stayed in character, at least through the part of the story I stayed awake for."

"We could look up her ship if I could remember the name,” Melinda said.

"It was the Zvezda Nochi,” Benjamin said, bounding toward the smoldering fire with the lab.

"Very good, Ben!” Dan said. “Go to the truck and look it up."

Ben fired up the truck's data center and found a site with Star Merchant Marine history. “Found it, Dad!” he yelled and brought the remote station back with him to the picnic table.

"What does it say?” Dan asked.

“Nochi is literally ‘Of Night.’ Says it translates to ‘Star of the Night.’”

"Does it say whether it came back?"

"Um ... it says in the notes it was found abandoned. Of the crew of twenty, one was missing on an asteroid. Of the nineteen remaining, all hands assumed lost."

"That was some bedtime story,” Len said to Ann.

"Ben,” she asked, “do they list the crew by name?"

"Yeah."

"Is there a Frances somebody?"

"There's a Donald MacKensie, mission commander. James Skarrett, Joan Skarrett, and Joshua Zenon, pilot ensemble. And yeah, here's Frances Sheen, geologist. Think that's her?"

"No, Benjamin,” Melinda jumped in, “it was just a story. That woman couldn't possibly have been on one of those ships. It was forty years ago."

"Yeah, Mom, I keep forgetting. It sounded so real."

"She was a good storyteller, I'll grant you that.” Melissa walked over to Dan and said, “Do you think we should tell the camp owners at the store about her? It's really creepy, her just appearing out of the dark like that."

Ben overheard. “I think they already know about her, Mom."

"Why do you think that?"

Dan said, "Tell your Mom what they said when you asked if we'd see any bears out here?"

"Oh yeah,” Ben said. “The man said there were no bears, but there was a ghost."

Copyright © 2011 Janet Catherine Johnston

[Back to Table of Contents]

Reader's Department: IN TIMES TO COME

Andrea Cort, Adam-Troy Castro's prickly but effective troubleshooter, returns to lead off our November issue in “With Unclean Hands,” wherein she faces a particularly thorny interspecies problem for which her own past is uniquely relevant. But being especially well qualified does not mean a person will find a task easy. . . .

Our science fact article comes from Richard B. Robinson, a researcher on the frontiers of a field that was new to me: “Repairing a Broken Heart: Beyond Electronic Pacemakers.” We all know that heart disease is one of our biggest causes of death, and that the electronic pacemaker has been a big help in dealing with it. But those devices, ingenious as they are, carry their own risks and problems. Can we get their advantages without those problems, by using the body's own capabilities?

And, of course, we'll have a variety of other short fiction, including a couple of stories that might be construed as seasonal (in quite different ways) by authors including Paul Levinson, Alec Nevala-Lee, Bill Johnson, Don D'Ammassa, and Jack McDevitt.

[Back to Table of Contents]

Science Fact: LOST IN SPACE? FOLLOW THE MONEY
by Edward M. Lerner

Explorer and Vanguard. Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo. Space shuttle and International Space Station. Every one an American Space Age accomplishment—and, moreover, a government accomplishment.[1]

That last part is all about to change.

As I write this, in October 2010, Congress has just passed a bill reauthorizing NASA for three more fiscal years. Per that reauthorization, NASA's shuttle fleet will retire in 2011, after only three more flights. Thereafter, for several years, NASA will pay the Russian space agency to deliver American astronauts to the International Space Station (ISS). NASA will pay Russia and other spacefaring countries to deliver cargo to the ISS.

Constellation, NASA's post-shuttle crewed spaceflight program—conceived of to return humans to the moon and, eventually, to send humans to Mars—is in a wind-down stage.[2] NASA's long-term thinking will turn to possible explorations beyond the moon. To that end, in 2015 NASA is to begin development of a heavy-lift vehicle, with an eye toward an asteroid rendezvous mission by 2025 and a Mars mission in the 2030s.[3]

Grand ambitions—at a leisurely pace, without near-term goals—while, for several years, at least, NASA will lack any crewed spaceflight capability.

Has the United States charted a bold new course? Or have we lost our way in space?

NASA's latest roadmap begins a transition to a new reliance on commercial services for near-Earth space operations. NASA's newly approved budget allots $1.3 billion over three years to encourage development of commercial spacecraft (versus $3.3 billion in the Obama administration's original budget request). The space agency's new approach won't succeed unless its new, commercial partners do. And so, we need to understand the status and prospects of the commercial-space business.[4], [5]

* * * *

The Redirection of NASA: Good Idea or Bad?

Surprise: Opinions differ.

Charles F. Bolden, Jr., NASA's current administrator, naturally supports his organization's current plan. His immediate predecessor, Michael Griffin, has staked out—to put it mildly—an opposing position. “One day it will be like commercial airline travel, just not yet,” Griffin said. “It's like 1920. Lindbergh hasn't flown the Atlantic, and they're trying to sell 747s to Pan Am."[6]

Nor does the astronaut corps agree whether NASA's new concept is for good or ill. Twenty-four astronauts sent a letter to Congress backing NASA's new direction.[7] Other astronauts hold the opposite opinion, including Apollo veterans Neil Armstrong, James Lovell, and Eugene Cernan. Their open letter to President Obama warns that under current plans, “The USA is far too likely to be on a long downhill slide to mediocrity."[8]

At issue are very basic questions. First, will the American space program suffer a devastating loss of purpose and expertise while, for several years, NASA is an agency with neither an operational human spaceflight capability nor one under active development?

Second, after the Constellation program ends in favor of some ill-defined better future technology, will an unfortunate precedent have been set? That is, might NASA's next proposed flagship program (whatever it ends up being) in turn be made to defer to enticing possibilities even further out? What about the program after that? And the one after that? (As an old boss once advised me, “The best is the enemy of the good enough.")

These questions are, at their core, political and sociological, and I won't attempt to answer them. This article focuses on the root question about NASA's new direction: Can industry step up to an expanded role in space? Because if not, the new approach will certainly fail.

Short of waiting years to see how things wind up, how do we decide if a more heavily commercialized space program is a good or a bad idea? In futurism as in detective fiction, a good rule is: Follow the money.

* * * *

A Brief History of Commercialized Space[9]

At one level, American spaceflight has always been commercial. From Day One, NASA obtained the services of such aerospace contractors as:

McDonnell (Mercury and Gemini capsules),

Grumman (the Apollo Lunar Module),

North American Aviation (the Apollo Command/Service Module),

Boeing, North American Aviation, and Douglas (the first, second, and third stages, respectively, of the Saturn V launcher),

Hughes Aircraft Company (the Galileo Jupiter probe).

Although each of these projects succeeded technically, only Boeing—on the strength of its aircraft business—has survived as an independent business. To pursue the largest space opportunities, even giant companies have seen the value of partnerships. We thus have the United Launch Alliance, a joint venture of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, to provide launch services to the U.S. government. The United Space Alliance—same partners, different mission, better acronym—operates the space-shuttle fleet.

Bidding for government space contracts is not without its risks. As we will see, chasing government contracts is not the only space-business model.

In the more than half century since Sputnik, something quite remarkable has happened to commercialize space business: privately owned satellites, especially communications satellites. Indeed, the first privately sponsored space launch, way back in 1962, was to orbit a comsat: Telstar, funded by AT&T (with government partners, of course).[10]

Modern commercial comsats support telephony, radio, and television. Service providers reliant on comsats include Iridium Communications LLC (satellite-based, global mobile phone service), Sirius XM Radio (satellite-based radio distribution to cars and trucks), DirecTV (direct-to-home video distribution), and Intelsat (fixed-point communications services, such as distribution to local broadcasters and cable companies of network-television feeds).[11]

After decades of experience, hundreds of comsats, and millions of customers, providing space-based communications services remains a tricky business. Iridium, the comsat-based global telephone company, went from a darling of Wall Street to a multi-billion-dollar blunder to a niche company resurrected out of bankruptcy.[12] Merely launching comsats can be problematical too. Take Sea Launch, the international consortium led by Boeing and Energia (the Russian rocket company) to launch satellites primarily for the comsat market. As I write, Sea Launch is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy.[13]

There is more to commercialized space than comm. Global positioning (and related applications, like truck-fleet management) is a huge space-based application. Glossing over the mathematical complexities, a GPS receiver calculates its three-dimensional location by comparing the arrival times of very precise clock readouts broadcast by a set of satellites. Knowing an exact position at all times is handy—especially for soldiers in the desert or when piloting unmanned aerial vehicles. Not surprisingly, the original GPS satellite constellation is owned and operated by the U.S. Department of Defense.[14] Had tax dollars not paid for the design, construction, and launching of global positioning satellites, that handy geolocation device in your car—and the geo-aware cell phone in your pocket—would be much less affordable.

Then there's remote sensing. The NASA activity initially known as the Earth Resources Observation Satellites Program launched the first Landsat (we're up to number seven) in 1972. Remotely sensed Earth data has commercial applications ranging from cartography to weather forecasting, agriculture to futures trading, mineral exploration to surveillance. Landsat 7, launched in 1999, was the last of the program—but not the latest source of remote-sensed data. Data can now be bought from commercial remote-sensing-satellite operators like GeoEye, DigitalGlobe, and the French company Spot Image.

By one tabulation,[15] global space business exceeded $260 billion in 2009—growing 7% in a tough, recessionary year. In approximate thirds, that spending sorts into:

* $90.6 billion in commercial satellite services,

* $86.2 billion in global government space spending ($64.4 billion of that spent by the U.S. government), and

* $83.6 billion in infrastructure (e.g., launch services, spacecraft manufacture, and ground equipment).

* * * *

To Orbit or Bust

Given that corporate giants like Boeing and Lockheed Martin found it expedient to partner to operate the NASA space shuttles, can NASA realistically expect industry to step up to developing a new generation of launchers and capsules to deliver cargo or crew to orbit?

Apparently, because new players were already rushing into the field.

Take Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (or SpaceX, as it is more commonly known), started by PayPal cofounder Elon Musk. In 2006, SpaceX won one of the competed slots in NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program.[16] COTS makes milestone payments for progress toward private spacecraft able to deliver cargo to the ISS. In 2008, SpaceX won an award under NASA's related Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) program[17] for twelve deliveries, each of at least twenty metric tons, to the ISS. In 2010, SpaceX successfully orbited a dummy payload on the first test of its Falcon 9 launcher. Pretty impressive for a company established in 2002.

The COTS program is not for the faint of heart. Program participant Rocketplane-Kistler went out of business in 2010, and NASA transferred the R-K contract to Orbital Sciences Corporation. In 2008, Orbital was also awarded a CRS contract (in this case, for eight flights to the ISS). Together, the SpaceX and Orbital resupply contracts are valued at $3.5 billion, with potential to grow to $6 billion.

NASA's third commercialization activity, still at the conceptual stage, is the Commercial Crew Development program.[18] CCdev envisions privately operated human-rated flights to the ISS.

There is precedent for the U.S. government financially backing development of an innovative private transportation system. A century ago the Postal Service, contracting with private carriers to establish airmail service, was a major early backer of commercial aviation.[19] Here's hoping NASA's new policy is as successful.[20]

* * * *

Coffee, Tea, or Space-sick Bag?

The big near-term commercial opportunity in delivering people to space won't be the occasional NASA-chartered trip to the ISS—it'll be passengers on private business. Rather than “space tourist,” some prefer the term “citizen astronauts.” Fair enough: As we'll see, reasons abound for starting a space line. Transporting sightseers is merely one.

That said, space tourism is the person-in-space business model closest to getting a serious test.

The age of space tourism has already begun—for the (extremely) well-to-do. Space Adventures, Ltd., contracting with the Russian space agency, has sent seven private astronauts aboard Russian Soyuz capsules to the ISS. Dennis Tito, the first private astronaut, reportedly paid $20 million for his trip.[21]

Are you a few million short? For less than $5,000, you can still experience weightlessness—if only for less than a minute at a time—flying maneuvers on a Zero G Corporation aircraft.[22] Zero G clients have included Stephen Hawking and Martha Stewart.

Today, there's nothing between. But that's about to change.

* * * *

Space Tourism—the Shape of Things to Come

Perhaps the most visible next-generation space-tourism company is Virgin Galactic. Backed by flamboyant billionaire entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson, a certain cachet is not surprising. Nor does it hurt that Virgin Galactic has partnered with Scaled Composites, whose team won the $10 million Ansari X Prize, in 2004, for private suborbital spaceflight.[23] (I'll have more to say below about space-related prizes.) Better even than credentials, Virgin Galactic has customers: 300 reservations and $40 million in deposits. Forecasted start of operations: early 2012.[24] A ticket currently costs $200,000; for a mere $20,000 deposit, you can hold a place in line.

What will you get for your money? A trip that soars above the Karman line,[25] roughly six minutes of weightlessness,[26] and one heck of a view.

Nor is Virgin Galactic the only company pursuing the space tourist trade. Other contenders include Blue Origins (backed by Jeff Bezos, founder of Amazon), Armadillo Aerospace (founded by John Carmack, a co-founder of gaming company id Software), and XCOR Aerospace.

The big aerospace companies are getting interested too. There's the EADS Astrium Space Tourism Project, backed by the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company (best know for its Airbus division).[27] And Boeing recently announced a partnership with Space Adventures to offer a “space taxi” service to the ISS by 2016.[28]

* * * *

Spaceports

When space tourism really takes off (no, I'm not really sorry), where do you begin? It appears that there will be several departure points from the U.S. to include:

* Spaceport America, in the New Mexico desert, billed as “the world's first purpose-built commercial spaceport."[29]

* Mojave Air and Space Port, in California, billed as “the first civilian spaceport,” and from which SpaceShipOne made its X Prize-winning flight.[30]

* For those of you nearer the East Coast, there's the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS, get it?), built on land leased from NASA's Wallops Island (Virginia) facility.[31]

* * * *

All Suited Up, and No Place To Go

Suborbital flights are inherently short duration. What about flights to Earth orbit?

The ISS has a design capacity of six people. If every berth aboard were to be offered to tourists (hardly practical, since the ISS requires ongoing maintenance), that still wouldn't support much business. We need more facilities in space—and it appears that we're going to have them.

Bigelow Aerospace has already launched two generations of prototype orbital habitats. Founder and president Robert T. Bigelow knows something about building lodgings—he owns hotel chain Budget Suites of America. Bigelow Aerospace forecasts that their first operational space station will open for commercial use in 2015. That first space station is aimed at government and corporate customers, not tourists.[32]

Russian aerospace firms Orbital Technologies and Energia have announced plans to open a commercial space station by sometime in 2016.[33] Targeted customers for this facility include “private citizens.” I read that as “space tourists.”

And a dropout along the way? In 1999, Hilton International announced its Space Islands program, an orbital facility to be constructed from and within spent space-shuttle external tanks.[34] Of which none exist in orbit: NASA intentionally splashes the tanks into the ocean rather than clutter near-Earth space with them. Space Islands was a nonstarter.

* * * *

Be Prepared

Space is an unforgiving environment, not someplace to visit unprepared. Also, losing customers makes for bad PR. So your trip to space—even a suborbital daytrip—will likely include a preflight physical exam, a stint in a centrifuge to confirm your ability to withstand the forces of takeoff and reentry, and zero-gee training.[35]

For longer flights and orbital sleepovers, more intensive training will be in order. Pioneering space tourist Dennis Tito reports of his preflight preparations that, “The comprehensive training program I completed closely mirrored that of any Russian cosmonaut engineer.” Tito trained at Star City, the Russian astronautics facility near Moscow. Space Adventures offers a variety of related opportunities at Star City, whether or not you intend to leave the ground, including Soyuz spacecraft and ISS training simulators, spacesuit training, and (for the scuba-certified) spacewalk training in a neutral buoyancy tank.

Nor need you travel to Russia or book a spaceflight to get astronaut training experience. Aurora Aerospace, in Florida, offers what one reporter called “space camp on steroids."[36]

* * * *

Prizes

Conventional wisdom has it that prizes spurred progress in early aviation. Perhaps the most famous aviation contest was for the $25,000 Orteig Prize, offered in 1919 by hotelier Raymond Orteig, for the first solo trans-Atlantic airplane crossing. Charles Lindbergh won the Orteig Prize in 1927.

The X Prize Foundation was established in 1996, expressly citing the Orteig Prize as their inspiration, to extend award incentives to the development of nongovernmental spaceflight. A dollar doesn't go as far as it did in 1919 or 1927; the minimum X Prize is for $10 million.

I've already mentioned the Ansari X Prize, awarded in 2004 for demonstrating a reusable, privately funded, crewed, suborbital spacecraft. This wasn't the foundation's only challenge. Their biggest contest is (no points for guessing the identity of its chief corporate sponsor) the Google Lunar X Prize. To collect $30 million, all you need to do—before the end of 2015, and using only private funds—is land a mobile robot on the moon, send it 500 meters across the lunar surface, and transmit back video, images, and data.

And do it before anyone else. Twenty-two teams have registered.

NASA has its own space-centric, prize-paying challenges aimed at inspiring/obtaining new technologies.[37] To name a few:

* The night-rover challenge, for $1.5 million, deals with solar-powered robots able to store energy for nighttime explorations.

* The power-beaming challenge (partially awarded, $1.1 million remaining) seeks technology for wireless power transmission. Merely use beamed power to drive your robot one kilometer up a vertical cable.

* The sample-return challenge, also for $1.5 million, to demonstrate the ability to locate and return samples from varied terrain.

* * * *

Climbing Out On A Limb

That's the past, present, and very near future of space commercialization.

What else might we expect? The pages of Analog are no place to be shy about prediction: Science fiction has long anticipated commercial activities in space. (A classic example: Robert Heinlein's 1950 novella “The Man Who Sold the Moon.") And who among SF authors has not at least once contacted Central Casting for a doughty, stubbornly independent Asteroid Belt prospector?

For the remainder of this article, we'll look at longer-term and more speculative possibilities than tourism and cargo delivery.

* * * *

Powersats

Sooner or later—whether because oil becomes too costly or too difficult to extract, or to reduce humanity's carbon footprint—mass transportation will switch from internal combustion engines to all-electric cars. That switchover can't proceed to any meaningful degree absent a major expansion in electrical power generation.[38],[39] Solar energy, renewable and pollution free, is expected to drive a large part of the expanded power generation capacity.

Alas, sunlight gathered on the ground is less than ideal as an energy source. The Sun isn't helpful at night, and even by day clouds and precipitation impede collection. Atmosphere scatters sunlight—as in, why is the sky blue?—before much sunlight can even reach ground-based solar cells. The most effective sites for solar farms (e.g., southwestern deserts) aren't the places that need power (e.g., New England). Collection, overnight storage, and distribution of solar energy will require a lot of land—so-called energy sprawl.

In contrast, solar cells in geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) collect sunlight effectively 24/7,[40] undiminished by any atmosphere. That solar energy, converted to microwaves or laser beams, can be sent to the ground at frequencies to which the atmosphere is effectively transparent. If the downlink beam is steerable, power can be sent directly to the region where it is most valuable—perhaps Miami on summer afternoons and Boston on winter nights. The downlink beam would be more intense than incident sunlight, so collection stations can be smaller than a terrestrial solar farm of equivalent capacity.

Why has no one built a powersat? In a word: mass. As one possible implementation, consider the powersat reference model defined by the International Union for Radio Science.[41] To feed a gigawatt of power[42] into a terrestrial electrical grid the model begins with a ten-square-kilometer satellite that masses over a million kilograms (a thousand metric tons). For reference, that's three times the mass of the ISS—which has taken more than a decade to assemble. Merely delivering the components of the structure to orbit would cost billions of dollars.[43]

All that mass (delivery cost) is a challenging problem, but perhaps not insurmountable. California power utility Pacific Gas & Electric has announced plans to buy space solar power from Solaren Corporation starting in 2016.[44]

* * * *

The Moon

We now know the Moon holds vast amounts of water ice.[45] Ice means water to drink, oxygen to breathe, and hydrogen to fuel rockets. Lunar colonization suddenly seems possible, and some of the organizations interested in commercial operations near Earth have also expressed interest in lunar projects.[46]

NASA has shelved plans for a return to the Moon, but Japan, China, and India are in something of a second Moon race.[47] And why, other than for prestige and out of scientific curiosity, might anyone care to revisit the Moon? Perhaps, for energy. The lunar surface has for eons absorbed helium-3—both a fusion byproduct and a prospective fusion fuel—from the solar wind. Apollo astronaut and geologist (and former U.S. senator) Harrison Schmitt estimates that lunar He-3 collected as fuel for terrestrial fusion power plants could be competitive with oil at $30 per barrel (vs. about $80 per barrel around the time I write this).[48] If only we had controlled fusion. . . .

And perhaps the Moon is for tourism too. Space Adventures—without providing much in the way of specifics—is shopping for customers for a flight around the Moon.[49]

* * * *

Asteroids, Near and Far

Asteroid mining is a science-fictional staple for good reason: Lots of valuable metals are locked up in asteroids. Studies on the subject bandy about dollar figures in the billions and trillions. As in, from a BBC report on the asteroid Eros, “The most detailed study of an asteroid shows that it contains precious metals worth at least $20,000bn."[50] That's on a single asteroid! Other asteroids and comets offer materials far more mundane—yet essential to human life—like oxygen, water, and various carbon compounds. Those are valuable, too, eliminating the need/expense to haul them out of Earth's gravity well.

“All” we need is improved spacecraft to take us to/from the asteroids. Might we get such craft? Relieved of LEO cargo duties, NASA's next big effort (according to its recent budget blueprint), will be a crewed asteroid mission by 2025.[51]

The Asteroid Belt lies well beyond Mars, but sometimes asteroids and comets come to us. When a Near Earth Object smacks Earth, that's a bad thing. Ask any dinosaur. (Oh, wait.) But if an asteroid does head our way—and thousands come close regularly—we could capture it into Earth orbit.[52] Capture a NEO or two, and (as in Energized, concluded in this issue), the onsite building material will make powersats much more affordable.

Whether into orbit or far away, humanity needs to be prepared to deflect an oncoming space rock.

* * * *

Helping “Hands” and Armchair Tourism

Companies use robots for tasks that are repetitive, dangerous, or take place in environments that are inhospitable or inaccessible. Space is certainly an inhospitable environment, and many operations in space—such as prospecting, mining, and manufacturing—may prove both dangerous and repetitive. Forecasting robot workers in space doesn't seem like a big leap.

But I don't mean thinking, self-aware electromechanical colleagues, because artificial intelligence remains A Very Hard Problem. That's okay. Much can be accomplished with today's robotic technology. Remotely operated vehicles routinely service underwater oilfields and further demonstrated their utility after the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil-well blowout. With appropriate means of locomotion, remotely operated robots will serve humanity in space too.

Rather than AI, the key technology is telepresence: the combination of remote control and immersive sensing (aka, virtual reality). Telepresence technologies being developed for remote surgery, to make scarce specialists more widely accessible, will also facilitate remote mining. At first such robots’ human controllers may be nearby, as in NASA's trial of a robot worker aboard the ISS.[53] But, like deep-marine ROVs, some space bots will be operated long-distance. JAXA, the Japanese space agency, plans a robotic lunar base built by robots, for robots.[54]

Care to try telepresence today? Start-up firm Anybot is taking orders, and beta-test units have already been seen in the (terrestrial) workplace.[55] While the first bot on the ISS is humanoid, the Anybot QB robot looks more like a floor lamp on wheels. As for “hands” in the section heading, a robot's grippers may differ from human hands as greatly as wheels differ from feet. Snakebots, anyone? [56]

It'll be a short step from telepresence via space robots to armchair space tourism. This once, I can't find a company preparing to offer the service, but that's okay—I'm a card- carrying SF author and futurist. I'm confident that within twenty years I'll be able to rent telepresence by the hour on lunar or NEO robots. And it'll be a lot cheaper than flying to the Moon.

Robots might also do the monotonous and, perhaps, dangerous work of fabricating structural elements and electronics (say, solar cells and microwave transmitters) from the on-orbit resources of a captured NEO. Robots can assemble such components into complex orbital structures. Powersats are looking better and better.

Telepresence has its limits—at least for impatient armchair tourists. The round-trip radio delay between my armchair and the Moon is about 2.5 seconds, a bit longer if the signal is relayed through comsats orbiting the Earth or Moon. Building in an execution delay of, say, 10 seconds between receipt of command and start of movement would provide the opportunity to override many ill-chosen commands. I wouldn't want to send my rent-a-bot tumbling off a lunar cliff (at least, I wouldn't want to forfeit my deposit). Alas, building in safety delays becomes cumbersome for other places I might like to visit telepresently (to coin a phrase). For example, Mars—at its closest approach—remains a bit over four light-minutes from Earth.

* * * *

Enter the Lawyers

Plucky bands of asteroid prospectors presuppose property rights (repeat that quickly ten times) to whatever treasure might be found in the Belt. Can an individual or a company have property rights in space?

It's not clear.

What is clear is that the Outer Space Treaty (officially, the Treaty on Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies) declares that celestial bodies are the common heritage of all mankind.[57] A country can't legally claim a celestial body. You or I certainly can't own one.[58]

Still, as everyone knows who has ever rented an apartment or leased a car, one can separate the right to use property from ownership of that property. Humanity, as the self-appointed collective owner of celestial bodies, can assign property rights—like the right to mine an asteroid for metal, or the moon for He-3—to a country, company, or even an individual.

Will humanity, presumably through the aegis of the United Nations, find a way to sell, lease, or grant valuable off-world property rights? As an encouraging precedent, consider the International Telecommunications Union, the United Nations agency best known for overseeing allocation of radio spectrum worldwide. The ITU also allocates scarce GEO slots, primarily used by comsats. The allocation process is often slow and cumbersome—but it works. Countries do obtain the rights to use GEO slots, and some countries in turn have delegated their rights to commercial entities. And so, DirecTV's many million subscribers get their television shows.

Other precedents are less encouraging with respect to utilizing “common heritage” assets. Many ocean resources—like all space resources—are in an inhospitable, hard-to-reach, expensive-to-exploit international environment. The international Law of the Sea Treaty (of which the United States is not presently a signatory) governs the oceans—and rules for mining in international waters have yet to emerge. In another example, consider Antarctica, over which sovereignty claims are few, conflicting, not universally recognized, and constrained by other international treaties. The Madrid Protocol to the international Antarctica Treaty bars mining on the south-polar continent until 2041.[59]

The time-honored anarchy of the frontier suggests another possibility. If you illegally obtain a “common heritage” resource out in the lunar hinterlands or deep in the Asteroid Belt, who (besides, extending the Wild West analogy, rustlers and claim jumpers) can stop you?

Will anyone even know? Gold and platinum are routinely valued above $1,000 per ounce. And as we've discussed, any useful material—say, lunar ice—delivered to LEO inherits the value of foregone boosting-from-Earth costs. Refine precious metals from an asteroid or purify lunar-polar ice, and who is to say where the stuff came from?

Suppose property rights in celestial objects become established. Who will have jurisdiction and authority to enforce them? That's also less than clear. Until 1989, when the U.S. Marshals established an office, Antarctica had no law-enforcement presence.[60] Legal jurisdiction in the American-administered section of the continent seems straightforward—but what jurisdiction can the marshals exercise in parts of the continent administered by another country?

When will exploitation rights to bodies in space, and law-enforcement mechanisms to safeguard those rights, begin to be clarified? I predict: not until humanity's “common heritage” begins to experience serious pilferage.

* * * *

Wrapping Up

Will the private sector take up the torch that NASA hopes to pass? Will a private-public partnership reinvigorate American space exploration? Will space become the new frontier of commerce and industry?

It could all happen. The hopeful portent is that companies—often with billionaire private backers—are, as we've seen, investing serious money to chase opportunities in space.

While the future of space exploration sorts itself out, my advice remains: Follow the money.

* * * *

Time Flies (Like a Rocket)

Between completing this article (October 2010) and receiving galleys to review (May 2011), commercial spaceflight continued to make progress. A few news items:

* December 2010: SpaceX orbited and recovered a large cargo capsule—the first demonstration flight under NASA's COTS program.

* February 2011: Southwest Research Institute executed contracts with Virgin Galactic and XCOR Aerospace for scientists to do research aboard both companies’ suborbital spacecraft.

* April 2011: SpaceX announced plans for a heavy-lift booster with twice the payload capacity of the retiring NASA space shuttle. Targeted first flight: 2012.

* * * *

To read further

* Space news, including commercial space ventures:

www.space.com/

www.spacedaily.com/

* Space tourism:

www.spacefuture.com/tourism/ tourism.shtml

* Using near Earth asteroids and lunar material:

www.permanent.com/a-index.htm

www.permanent.com/l-index.htm

* Powersats:

www.permanent.com/p-sps-li.htm

www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/ library/index.htm

* * * *

About the author

A physicist and computer scientist, Edward M. Lerner toiled in the vineyards of aerospace and high tech for thirty years. Then, suitably intoxicated, he began writing SF full time. When not prospecting beneath his sofa cushions for small change for his first spaceflight, he writes technothrillers like Small Miracles (medical nanotech), the InterstellarNet sagas of First and Second Contact and, with Larry Niven, the Fleet of Worlds space operas. Ed's website is www.sfwa.org/members/lerner/.

Copyright © 2011 Edward M. Lerner

1 Yes, I know: it's the International Space Station. That said, NASA conceived, led, and largely paid for the project. As much as other nations contributed, the essential partner was the U.S.

2 The Obama administration originally called for Constellation's complete cancellation; Congress and the administration continue to negotiate the details of program termination. Some elements (e.g., the Orion crew capsule, repurposed as an ISS emergency escape capsule), seem likely to survive. Stay tuned for the annual budget appropriation process.

3 For more about NASA's long-range plans as embodied in its latest authorization bill, see “NASA in Transition as Congress OKs New Direction,” Clara Moskowitz, September 30, 2010, Space.com (www.space.com/news/nasa-transition-congress-new-direction-100930.html) and “Mars, Here We Come! Congress Approves $19 Billion NASA Budget,” Tariq Malik, September 30, 2010, Space.com (syndicated at www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/09/30/mars-asteroid-congress-

4 A few article-wide disclaimers: When a space-pioneering company you expected to find herein goes unnamed, it's likely because, for brevity, I've had to limit myself to examples. Similarly, companies may only be mentioned for some of their activities. Finally, the aerospace sector is very dynamic; the hot new company I write about today may, by the time this article sees print, have gone the way of, say, Eastern Air Lines (defunct) or Douglas Aircraft (folded into a successor company).

5 Energized, the serialized novel that concludes in this issue of Analog, envisions a significantly privatized space industry. This article builds upon my research for the novel. While the article does not contain overt spoilers, it can't avoid giving a few hints to my thinking. You have been warned.

6 “NASA budget for 2011 eliminates funds for manned lunar missions,” Joel Achenbach, February 1, 2010, Washington Post,www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/31/AR2010013101058.html

7 www.dailygalaxy.com/myweblog/2010/09/-nasa-should-use-private-spaceships-say astronauts.html

8 www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36470363

9 Emphasis on brief. This article surveys a broad and dynamic topic—metaphorically the view from low Earth orbit. When the view leaves you wanting to see more, try Google. (It'll only be fair: Google

10 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telstar

11 Intelsat began life as an intergovernmental consortium. It became a privately held company in 2007.

12 When Iridium filed for bankruptcy in 1999, it was among the twenty largest bankruptcy filings in U.S. history. See “Learning from Corporate Mistakes: The Rise and Fall of Iridium,” Sydney Finkelstein and Shade H. Sanford. See the full article at mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pages/faculty/ syd.finkelstein/articles/Iridium.pdf.

13 www.spacenews.com/launch/100312-sea-launch-preparing-bankruptcy-exit.html

14 Again not surprisingly, the GPS satellite broadcasts that make possible unclassified GPS applications are degraded to reduce their accuracy. The military can even suppress the civilian-accessible signals.

15 www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE63B40C20100412

16 www.nasa.gov/exploration/news/COTSselection.html

17 www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2008/dec/HQC08-069ISSResupply.html

18 www.spacenews.com/civil/101001-nasa-bids-new-round-ccdev.html

19 inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blmailus3.htm#AIR

20 Whereas we wouldn't want to emulate the experiment called Missile Mail. See inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blmailus4a.htm.

21 www.spacetoday.org/Astronauts/SpaceTourists.html

22 Space Adventures acquired Zero G Corporation in 2008. Parent and subsidiary are both U.S.-

23 space.xprize.org/ansari-x-prize

24 www.crunchgear.com/2010/09/27/virgins-richard-branson-commits-to-space-tourism-within-next-18-months/

25 The Karman line (after physicist Theodore von Karman): one definition of the border between space and Earth's atmosphere. This conceptual boundary occurs at an altitude of about 100 kilometers, where the air is so thin that the speed needed to achieve aerodynamic lift exceeds orbital velocity. Cross the Karman line and voila, you are (by NASA standards) an astronaut. Hence the 100 kilometer (about 62 miles) altitude threshold set for the Ansari X prize.

26 Six minutes spent weightless in a flight of about two and a half hours duration. The trip begins as a plane ride, with the spacecraft (SpaceShipTwo) tucked beneath the wing of a mother (air)ship (WhiteKnightTwo). The spacecraft drops free at an altitude of about fifteen kilometers, soars for a while on rocket power, coasts to its peak altitude, then glides back to Earth. And those vehicle names? One wonders why a space venture can't afford a few more spaces.

27 www.space-tourism.ws/EADS-Astrium.html

28 www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/15/AR2010091506375.html

29 www.spaceportamerica.com/

30 www.mojaveairport.com/

31 www.marsspaceport.com/

32 Early reports about Bigelow's venture—and ongoing rumor—say otherwise, as in this 2005 article: www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2005-03/five-billion-star-hotel.

33 www.space.com/businesstechnology/russia-space-tourism-commercial-space-station-100929.html

34 news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/sci/tech/293366.stm

35 Virgin Galactic specifies a three-day program of “preparation, bonding, and training” for passengers of its upcoming suborbital flights. See www.virgingalactic.com/overview/training/.

36 www.space.com/businesstechnology/090602-astro-training.html

38 Plunkett Research estimates the worldwide car and truck population at a billion vehicles, about one-fourth of them in the United States. See www.plunkettresearch.com/Industries/AutomobilesTrucks/ AutomobileTrends/tabid/89/Default.aspx.

39 Beyond a scaled-up electrical power grid, the switchover to all-electric cars faces many challenges. Those other factors—like improved battery designs and the scarcity of materials like lithium to manufacture those batteries—are beyond the scope of this article.

40 The brief exceptions occur at night, around the equinoxes. These are times when power demands are comparatively low. See article about geosynchronous orbits at webphysics.iupui.edu/ gpnew/gp1sup2b.htm.

41 Officially, the Union Radio-Scientifique Internationale (URSI). See “URSI White Paper on Solar Power Satellite (SPS) Systems,” at ursi.ca/SPS-2006sept.pdf.

42 A gigawatt (billion watts) only sounds like a lot. By 2008, the U.S. capacity for electrical power generation exceeded a terawatt (trillion watts). In 2006, worldwide generating capacity was about 2.75 terawatts. (See details from the U.S. Energy Information Administration at www.eia.doe.gov/cneaf/ electricity/epa/epat1p2.html and www.eia.doe.gov/pub/international/iea2006/table64.xls.)

43 The CRS program's derivable cost per metric ton includes (some) recovery of R&D and launch

43 (continued) There's another wrinkle: The proposed space-taxi services are meant to make deliveries to LEO (a few hundred miles above the Earth), not GEO (about twenty-two thousand miles above). It's often assumed (as I have in Energized) that powersats would be assembled in LEO and slowly boosted to their final orbits. After all, powersats generate lots of electrical power that can power onboard ion thrusters.

44 “Space-Based Solar Power Coming to California in 2016,” Physorg.com, April 15, 2009, www.physorg.com/news159020477.html.

45 www.universetoday.com/58410/water-ice-found-on-moons-north-pole

46 www.space.com/businesstechnology/moonconference000724.html

47 www.atimes.com/atimes/SouthAsia/IH29Df01.html

48 Ibid.

49 www.spaceadventures.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Lunar.Details

50 “Gold Rush in Space,” BBC News Online Science Editor Dr. David Whitehouse, July 22, 1999, newsimg.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/401227.stm.

51 “NASA in Transition as Congress OKs New Direction,” op. cit.

52 See “Rock! Bye-bye, Baby,” Edward M. Lerner, Analog, November 2009.

53 “NASA Ready to Send Humanoid Robot to Space,” by Courtney Boyd Myers, IEEE Spectrum, September 3, 2010, spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/nasa-ready-to-send-humanoid-robot-to-space.

54 www.techngadgets.com/japan-plans-a-moon-base-by-2020-built-by-robots-for-robots.html

55 “When My Avatar Went to Work,” Erico Guizzo, IEEE Spectrum, September 2010, spectrum.ieee.org/ robotics/industrial-robots/when-my-avatar-went-to-work/.

56 www.techngadgets.com/the-army%E2%80%99s-new-robotic-tentacle-manipulator-uses-teams-of-snakebots-to-manipulate-objects.html.

58 “Space junkies ask: ‘who owns the moon?',” Stefanie Olsen, CNET, August 23, 2008, news.cnet.com/ 8301-113863-10024047-76.html.

59 The case can be made that some places should be preserved or protected rather than developed. I won't make that case here, because nature conservancy is outside the province of this article's focus: commercial development.

* * * *

If you are able to state a problem, it can be solved.

—Edwin H. Land

* * * *

Good instincts usually tell you what to do long before your head has figured it out.

—Michael Burke

[Back to Table of Contents]

Novelette: THE LAST OF LUST
by Jerry Oltion

Beware of people with simple solutions. . . .

It was the purest of ironies that Martin was working with Laura, his fellow lab assistant, when he discovered how to switch off the lust center in the brain. She was a hottie by anyone's standards: tall, curvaceous, wide eyed and full lipped, with a generous smile that she flashed at Martin several times a day. She'd been activating his lust center for the last six months, ever since they'd begun working together for Dr. Langford in the cognitive science lab at the University of Oregon.

Today they were both smiling because the patient in the MRI scanner had not only exhibited the telltale mental activity of lust when he'd been shown the test photos from the Sports Illustrated swimsuit calendar; he'd immediately lost interest when Martin had activated the low-power microwave beam that disrupted sugar uptake in one of the tiny brain areas involved.

“Whoa,” said the subject, an undergrad football player named Dennis, when Martin pushed the button. His voice came in over the data link from the MRI unit. “Whatever you did just now switched her off like a light.”

Indeed, the color-coded map of Dennis's brain on the monitor was losing its intensity, the entire network of interacting cortical regions associated with lust damping down to basal metabolic levels.

“Yes!” Martin whispered to Laura. “We've found the trigger.”

“Which area?” She leaned in close to look at the monitor, giving him a heady swirl of pheromones.

“Uh ... ventral basolateral nucleus seventeen.”

The brain was a complex organ, with thousands of activity centers constantly interacting to create the emergent property of consciousness. They'd been systematically examining each one that showed activity during their test runs, developing maps of regions associated with easy-to-detect emotions like fear and disgust and lust. Only in the last few weeks had they learned how to suppress individual areas. And today's was by far the clearest response they'd received yet.

“Try another photo,” Laura said.

Martin tapped the key that advanced the test subject's display to the next image: Cintia Dicker, a freckled strawberry blonde practically falling out of a bikini that didn't hide much in the first place. Even her name seemed designed to elicit lust.

“This is weird,” reported Dennis. “I know I should be all over this one, but I get nothin'.”

Laura gave Martin a thoughtful look, then went around the Plexiglas barrier separating the control station from the MRI unit itself. She was unbuttoning her lab coat as she went.

“Let me check your equipment,” she said to Dennis. “I mean . . .” She laughed and blushed prettily, bending down to give him a good look at her cleavage while she pretended to adjust something on the side of the cylindrical magnet encircling his head.

Martin watched the signal bounce wildly as Dennis moved his head to watch her, and the MRI scan washed out for a second until the computer got a lock on the patterns again, but the lust centers never changed.

Laura came back into the control room. “Anything?”

“Dead as the Moon,” Martin reported. He wished he could say the same for himself. Watching her vamp it up, even in the interest of science—hell, especially in the interest of science—had given him the old-fashioned, easily detectable sign of lust. He kept his legs under the desk to hide it.

“We're definitely on to something, then,” said Laura, with a bit less enthusiasm than Martin had expected. Then his own brain caught up with what he'd just witnessed.

“Wait a minute. You know the effect you have on men. More to the point, you know the effect you have on me. And you're doing it on purpose.”

She blushed again. “Not always,” she said. “But yeah, sometimes.”

He hadn't failed to notice that she'd left her lab coat unbuttoned.

“Like now?”

“Well, duh.”

She looked at him frankly, expectantly.

“Okay, then. Well. Um. Would you like to, um, go out with me then?”

“I thought you'd never ask.”

From the MRI unit, Dennis said, “Uh, guys? If you're all done in there, could you switch this off? This is gettin’ too strange.”

* * * *

Dr. Langford was pleased. Martin was pleased. Laura was a mystery to Martin, but she seemed pleased most times, and she went out with him on a second date, and a third. He thought he might be falling in love rather than simply feeling lust for her, but he was woefully inexperienced with that emotion. He could point to it in a test subject's MRI, but subjectively he was as lost as anyone in a new relationship.

Dennis, it turned out, wasn't quite so happy to have his emotions turned off like a light, even though they came right back when Martin switched off the microwave beam. He overcompensated with a cheerleader, then, because he was religious, he talked to his pastor about it. And when his pastor learned of the discovery in the brain lab, he talked to some of his colleagues about it, and before long the religious community was abuzz with discussion.

The center for lust had been identified! Satan's summer palace, or one of the seven, at any rate, for wasn't lust one of the seven deadly sins? And Dr. Langford and his assistants had learned how to switch it off, albeit temporarily. If someone could figure out how to do it permanently, the kingdom of God would be one step closer to reality.

The mainstream religious people knew better, of course. Lust was part of being human, and dealing with it was one of the skills people had to learn during their time on Earth. Unfortunately there were plenty of people on the fringes who didn't see it that way. To them, lust was evil, period.

Martin didn't give them much thought. He was too busy thinking about Laura. Hers was turning out to be the most complex brain he'd ever tried to map, and with her he didn't have an MRI or even an EEG to go by. He had to figure her out the old-fashioned way, and the deeper he dug, the more mysterious she became.

She liked cats. That in itself wasn't much of a mystery. He liked cats too. But she really liked cats. She would ooh and aah at every stray they came across on their walks, and at home, when she surfed the net, she kept showing him photos of cats on top of things, as if the mere act of climbing onto a car hood or a fencepost made one cute.

She also talked a lot. At first, Martin was glad for that because it gave him more data to work with. Her favorite color was blue: check. She liked artichoke hearts: check. But what in the world was he supposed to do with the blow-by-blow recounting of an entire conversation she had with one of her friends about hair ties?

Fortunately there was sex. Fabulous sex, although to Martin pretty much any sex would have been fabulous. Laura was his ideal, however, the unattainable pinnacle who had somehow miraculously become not only obtainable, but his. To be having sex with her, of all people, was so incredible that he would endure any amount of discussion about cats or hair ties just for the chance to do it again.

The semester drew to a close, and he invited her home to meet his parents. His father took an immediate shine to her and drew Martin aside one evening after dinner and said, “She's a keeper, son. Hang on to that one.”

The idea that he could do anything at all to please his father was shock enough, but the idea that he might, in fact, be able to keep someone like Laura in his life forever was a lie-awake-at-night stunner. He considered buying her a ring.

Then the Hand of God struck. At least that's what the religious wackos who released the tailored viral plague called it, even after their lab had been raided and their genetic sequencing equipment had been revealed on news programs worldwide.

It was a masterful piece of engineering, Martin had to grant them that. And it certainly felt like the hand of God reaching into everyone's life and mucking it around.

Its effect was simple enough: It destroyed the part of the brain that triggered lust.

Martin didn't catch it right away. He and Laura had nearly a month to watch in horror as it swept around the world, an airborne virus with a crystalline capsule that kept it viable for days between hosts. There was no time to create a vaccine for it. No amount of isolation would protect a person, short of a completely sealed environment. Rumors of congressmen holed up in bomb shelters led to a string of crude jokes about the qualifications for office, but even congressmen had to come up for air sometime, and they succumbed to the plague like everyone else.

Martin and Laura made love like wild otter pups. As news of the condition's complete annihilation of lust spread, they tried every variation they could think of, and some that they found by accident. Even though Martin was in physical pain by day four, and Laura not long after, they pushed themselves to greater and greater heights, or new lows as far as the religious zealots were concerned.

An incredible number of those were perfectly happy with the new turn of events. Eliminating lust gave people a chance to come together for all the right reasons, they said, rather than simply following their sinful impulses. It would stop rape in its tracks, they said, even in the face of evidence that rape was about power, not sex. It would free people to contemplate the Word of God without distraction. Yada yada yada.

Governments fell. Churches burned. Sales of Viagra went through the roof until word spread that nobody afflicted with the virus even tried taking the pills. When lust died, there was no rigor mortis involved.

Breathing masks became the new symbol of availability. It wasn't uncommon to see two masked strangers meet on the street, rip off each other's clothing, and go at it right there on the spot, consequences be damned. As the virus spread, such sights became less common, even rare.

Martin and Laura and Dr. Langford and Dennis worked round the clock in the lab, trying to find a way to repair the damaged area of the brain, or failing that, to try stimulating the areas that the trigger region affected. They had some positive results with the simple mechanics of sex, but they could find nothing that brought about the cascade of associated neural activity that led to actual desire.

Martin knew he'd contracted the disease one evening when Laura suggested they take a break from their constant study and “reinforce their conditioning"—her code phrase for making like mink. Normally he was inside her lab coat within seconds of her offer, but this time he just looked up from the computer monitor and said, “You know what I'd really like to do? Go see a movie.”

“Oh my god,” Laura said, backing away from him. “You've got it.” She fled the room, crying. Martin heard her sobs echoing down the long corridor to the front doors.

He wanted to go after her, to comfort her and tell her that it wasn't true, that he really was just getting tired of having sex all the time, but he knew he was fooling himself. He had the plague. He didn't feel any different, other than not lusting after Laura anymore, but there was no other explanation.

Just to be sure, he brought up the photos they used to confirm the diagnosis in their test subjects. Marilyn Monroe, Taylor Swift, Pamela Anderson, Salma Hayek, porn stars in various poses; even male models just in case his orientation had somehow been changed. Nothing. He felt not the slightest twinge of interest in any of them.

He flipped open his phone and speed- dialed Laura. “Are you all right?” he asked when she answered.

“No, I'm not all right!” she screamed into the phone. “My boyfriend just turned into a zombie! It's only a matter of time before it gets me too!”

He couldn't dispute that. So he said the only thing he could say: “I still love you.”

“You do?”

“Yes. The virus kills lust, not love. I still love you.”

“But our love is built on lust. It's all about lust. Without lust, what do we have?”

“Caring,” Martin said. “Compassion. Conversation.” He sounded like a religious nut trying to justify the plague, but what else could he say?

She was quiet for a moment, then said, “You'll understand if I wait until I've got it too before I come over and get some of that.”

“Of course,” he said, surprised that he didn't feel a hint of jealousy even though he knew what she would be spending her last few days doing, provided she could find a partner to do it with. Apparently jealousy was tied to lust. More data for the ongoing study.

He wished her well and promised to be there for her when she needed him, then rang off and wrote a note that he left on the keyboard for Dr. Langford: “I've got the bug. I'll stay away until you've got it too.” Then he went home and watched a football game, but halfway through he shut it off and looked for a good book. Football, apparently, was more about lust than he had thought.

So were novels. He wound up reading a Popular Science magazine instead.

Laura showed up three days later. “I'm numb as a neutron,” she said when he opened the door. “Can I get some of that comfort you promised?”

“Of course.” He gave her a big hug, waiting for the familiar rush of pleasure it had always given him, but this time it was pretty much like hugging his dad. She must have felt the same way, because she lowered her arms as quickly as he did and stepped past him into his apartment. She looked around at the clutter of clothing and pizza boxes and said, “Have you trashed the place out, or has it always been like this?”

It looked pretty much the same as always to Martin. He felt a mild shot of annoyance that that would be the first thing she would pick up on after the longest separation of their entire relationship, but he let it slide and got her a glass of wine, then a glass of water when she said she wasn't in the mood for wine.

She told him about a cat she had seen on the way over. He told her about the article he'd been reading on the mechanics of jet engines. That reminded her of a story about her first flight to Paris, during which she and her sister had apparently done nothing but shop and eat. The mention of food reminded Martin that it was dinnertime, so he suggested they order in a pizza, but she said she wasn't interested in pizza; how about dinner out? Where? How about Thai? No, how about a hamburger?

They settled on Mexican. The restaurant was surprisingly quiet. Everyone in it was infected, of course. Nobody else would risk exposure. None of the couples there were talking much, though. They were just going through the motions. Two guys at a table together were busy getting drunk on a pitcher of margaritas, but even they were being quiet about it.

Martin and Laura tried keeping a conversation going, talking about work, the wars, the faltering economy, the alarming divorce rate, including Martin's parents; cars, cats, even hair ties, but nothing clicked. They were both happy when their food came and they had an excuse to stop trying.

Laura went home to her apartment. Martin went home to his. “I'll see you at work,” he said, and they did, but the spark was definitely gone.

The brain lab kept working on the problem. Martin and Laura went back to the way they were before the whole lust thing had begun, with a few wistful moments but no attempt to rekindle anything. After a year, Dr. Langford decided that they were making no headway and shifted the lab's focus to the identification of greed. Martin quit in protest, somewhat surprised that he still cared enough about anything to get upset by it.

Then he started hanging out with Dennis. Dennis had remained a test subject in the lab during the last year, and they had gotten to know one another fairly well. When Martin quit, Dennis quit in solidarity with him—and out of fear that Dr. Langford might use his brain scans to kill yet another portion of the collective consciousness.

They had a lot in common. Dennis had decided to go for a Ph.D. in biochemistry after leaving the football team. He liked fishing, woodworking, and tinkering on cars. They had both grown up in Montana, had the same politics, liked the same beer, and even, they discovered one night after a little more beer and a lot more talk than usual, liked holding on to someone warm while they slept. There was absolutely no lust involved, although they agreed that there might be something like love going on.

A lot of other people seemed to think the same thing. When Martin and Dennis went out to dinner, they saw more and more men with men at tables. And women with women, too, talking about cats and hair ties and relationships. Martin and Dennis even saw Laura out one evening with her girlfriend, and the four of them took a table together and had a great time talking about the old days and their newfound loves.

“We've got so much in common,” Laura's girlfriend, Elise, said.

“Ditto,” Dennis and Martin said in unison, and everyone laughed.

Conversation in the restaurant dwindled to a stop around them, and Dennis thought maybe they had said something wrong until he looked up to see a man and a woman in their mid-thirties following the hostess to their table. Holding hands.

“Could they possibly be unaffected by the plague?” Laura whispered when they were out of earshot.

Martin shook his head. “It's been months since the last case was seen, but there've been no reports anywhere of immunity. They've had it.”

Elise said, “More likely they're just a hetero couple staying together for the sake of the children.” There was a lot of that going on, although there had also been a lot of spouse swapping once people realized they preferred the company of their own gender.

“They're holding hands,” Dennis pointed out.

“Maybe they're gay,” Martin said.

He meant it as a joke, and Dennis and Elise laughed, but Laura nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, I bet that's exactly what it is. A certain percentage of people are probably just wired differently than the rest, lust or no.”

“Wouldn't it be funny,” Dennis said, “if it's the same percentage that were gay beforehand?”

Funny? Martin didn't think he would have used that word. Intellectually, he would argue to the death their right to follow whatever lifestyle they chose, but personally he just couldn't get it. What did they see in one another? What did they talk about?

“You know what I think died in the plague,” he said, looking at Laura. “It wasn't lust. It was interest in the other. Opposites don't attract anymore.”

“Good thing,” said Elise, and she hugged Laura. Dennis laughed and punched Martin in the shoulder. The waitress came with their pork chops and potatoes and macaroni and cheese and they dug in with profound satisfaction, if not an immense amount of gusto.

Copyright © 2011 Jerry Oltion

[Back to Table of Contents]

Novelette: THE BULLFROG RADIO ASTRONOMY PROJECT
by Brad R. Torgersen

One man's milestone is another's nuisance. . . .

There were four of them when they came, driving a nondescript government-white minivan. The moon was full and there wasn't a cloud in the late August night sky, so I could see them perfectly through the slant-paned windows of the broadcast booth: two men and two women in suits, and wearing sunglasses.

Sunglasses? At two in the morning?

I'd had visits from the FCC before, but never at this hour.

Something was very wrong.

When they knocked, I put my headphones on the mic boom and potted down the monitor. Standing, I stretched—my sixty-something-year-old bones making a series of complaining sounds—and shuffled to the trailer's front door. Opening it, I saw one of the women directly in front of me, her hands clasped at her narrow waist.

“What?” I said. No need to be cordial. The FCC didn't like me and I didn't like them.

“Mister Kelly?”

“Yah.”

“Would you step outside please?”

“Look, I'm on the air. Is this about Andy? Shit, that bastard told me the lawyers took care of it. Shouldn't you be talking to them?”

“No.”

“Station's not automated, so I can't leave the booth unattended, Miss ... ?”

“Spingath.”

“Spingath. Right. Got an ID to prove to me you're you?”

“Not exactly.”

“What do you mean, ‘not exactly'? FCC always carries. It's in the regs.”

“Maybe it'd easier if I showed you.”

I waited expectantly, flicking my eyes to the other three who were arrayed in a formation at the bottom of the trailer's steps. They hadn't moved or said a word.

I looked back to Spingath's pallid, generically Caucasian face. She reached up and took off the glasses.

It took a second or two for the horror to register in my brain.

Then I screamed.

* * * *

K-Powell originally broadcast on FM at just eight hundred watts. We ran straight out of an air-conditioned double-wide set on a half-acre lot just off the shoulder of Utah Highway 276, en route to the Glen Canyon Reservoir. That trailer was also my home, with a partition running down the middle separating the studios from my personal residence. Most days the door in that partition hung wide open, the line between my private and professional lives having long since blurred. On the air people know me as Red Sands, the Voice of the Lake, but all my friends just call me Ron.

The antenna tower is still anchored into the concrete pad I poured for the trailer, and shoots six stories into the scorching desert sun. Back in the late ‘90s it took a PBS grant and all my early retirement to pay for the land, trailer, pad, tower, second-hand equipment, and government fees. Since K-Powell was a community station, I had to rely on whatever meager donations I could scrape off the locals, and for the first few years it was just enough dough to keep the transmitter warm and my cupboards from going bare.

Times were hard, even for an ascetic like me.

Which is why I couldn't turn down Andy Chang when he ultimately came knocking.

An avid Powell boater, Andrew Chang was a precocious Californian from the Bay Area who had made a lot of money on stocks, being one of the prescient few who cashed out before the crash. After the crash he had been seen on and around Powell in one of his many expensive cabin cruisers or his lavish houseboat—a somewhat flamboyant but still welcome lake denizen with a bulging wallet and an itch to spend.

Before Andy built the dish, he lived exclusively on the water, only occasionally pulling in to gas up, stock up, or check on his finances. While most in his class opted for more traditional haunts, Andy liked the stark natural contrasts of blue water and red desert down at the bottom of Utah. I would eventually find out he loved Powell for its night skies most of all, a view undiluted by man-made light pollution and stretching a gorgeous 360 degrees from horizon to horizon.

One summer evening, presumably while gazing at the faint sparkle-scatter of the Milky Way from the top of his houseboat, Andy had been struck by an idea. No science lover by any means, he had simply wondered if somewhere out there, around one of those other suns, maybe some other being was resting on top of its houseboat on its lake, staring up at its night sky. What would such a creature have to say to Andy? Moreover, what might Andy have to say to it?

Perhaps the hearty Green River bud—rolled with a helping of Four Corners peyote and clipped to Andy's ashtray—had something to do with it. Perhaps he had merely been like a lot of American rich: possessed of great wealth yet lacking a Great Dream to go along with it. In any case, on that fateful night, an idea got itself firmly lodged in Andy's soul, eventually launching the craziest Glen Canyon project since the Robert Stanton gold dredge.

Within a week Chang motored into Bullfrog and made some phone calls. By the following week he was entertaining the necessary contractors and technicians on his houseboat, plus two professors Andy had flown in from the University of Utah. He spent the next month finding appropriate land and haggling with the government for it, then bought a hundred-acre parcel not far from my trailer and set his contractors to work. By the end of the year the dish was complete: a concave metal circle set into a natural bowl in the sandstone, and stretching in diameter almost the length of a football field. Four three-story steel masts sat at opposite edges of the disc and suspended a square cage over the dish's center, using steel cables. The cage was festooned with a variety of odd-looking gear the likes of which few of us—even an old radio hack like me—had ever seen before.

One of the marina shop owners who volunteered at K-Powell and had spent some time in Puerto Rico in the late ‘70s commented that Chang's pet project looked not just a little like the famous Aricebo radio telescope, only at quarter scale. Soon afterward the term Minicebo was coined and circulated widely around the lake.

Though Andy never officially said so, we all pretty much assumed that Minicebo had one and only one purpose: to listen for signals from outer space.

None of us locals dared to wonder how much it had cost to build the thing. Nobody really cared. The extra business and money brought by the contractors kept us all happy.

And it got better. Pretty soon word got out around the rest of the western United States. By the next summer almost as many people were coming to see Minicebo as were coming for the lake itself, and we were enjoying double the regular number of tourist dollars, at least until Andy set up the barbed-wire fences and threatening signs.

The Bullfrog Radio Astronomy Project would be off-limits to unauthorized personnel until further notice.

Crap. Even I was reluctant to see all those extra faces go away. What was good for Bullfrog was good for K-Powell, and with the faddish tourism surrounding the dish officially ended, we on the outside were left to ponder what sort of wealthy insanity was being perpetrated behind the fences and the signs at Andy's place.

Along with construction of the dish itself, Andy had put up a few auxiliary buildings on his new property, including a cement-and-glass residential with attached garages for his boats. He started spending more and more time at his new home and less time on the water. There was still no official word as to what the dish was being used for or why, and the fences and signs were understandably intimidating. Some teenagers who once drove up from Arizona to see the dish actually jumped the fences one night, bent on a sophomoric adventure. By morning they and their car were gone, and nobody ever knew exactly what happened to them.

A few of the desert cranks predictably talked UFO jargon and circulated crude flyers about black helicopters. One guy even tried to get on the K-Powell staff, offering to volunteer his life away if only I'd let him use some airtime to push his paranoid ideas. The public has a right to know, man!

But I wasn't having any of that. I've let a lot of interesting characters volunteer for board time over the years, but I stop short of supermarket checkout shit. Andy might have been rich and weird, but he had become a local, and that accorded him respect in my mind. Certainly I'd been called a weirdo plenty of times when I'd first shown up and poured all I had into the construction and launching of the station.

I had my dreams. Andy had his. I figured I owed it to him to stay out of his business.

It was many months before Andy showed up at my door.

* * * *

“Mister Kelly,” said one of the men who sat with me in the back of the van. I could smell the stench of my own sweat and fear as they watched me, heads unmoving.

“This is very serious,” said the other woman, who, now that I could get a look at her in the van's dome light, was a near twin of the one who'd surprised me on my steps.

“What are you?” I said.

“That's not as important as who we are, Mister Kelly.”

The woman who had identified herself as Spingath had replaced her sunglasses, but once you've seen something you can't very easily unsee it. Where a normal person would have eyes, Spingath had ... things. Clusters. I don't know what to call them. They'd been bizarre and grotesque, and I'd known the second she showed them to me that I'd be seeing them in my nightmares for the rest of my life.

None of the four had produced a gun or a badge, but I'd gotten the strongest sense that not doing what they told me to was going to be a Bad Thing.

So now I sat in their van, a best-of Van Morrison spinning back in the K-Powell trailer.

Had I pushed the disc repeat button? I couldn't remember.

“NSA?” I said, swallowing hard. “DHS?”

“None of the above. We've got some dealings with NASA, but we can't really talk about that. Mister Kelly, what we really want to know is, how involved are you with Mister Chang?”

“This is obviously about the dish?”

“Yes. Mister Chang is operating in violation of several articles. We need to know how much you're involved with him.”

I didn't have the foggiest what they were talking about, but I still had the sense that not doing what they asked would be poor judgment on my part, so I told them what had happened.

* * * *

When Chang came clomping up the wooden steps to the trailer's main entrance, I feared that perhaps my transmitter was causing Minicebo some grief. I'm no astronomer, but ever since its completion I'd suspected that a dish like that would be able to detect even the slightest cosmic flatulence from enormously far away. That meant even at a puny 800 watts, my nearby FM transmitter had to be screaming loud in Andy's electronic ear.

Andy surprised me when he said the station was not causing him any trouble, but instead he wanted to purchase the services of K-Powell. I sighed with relief and took this to mean he wanted to exchange dollars for publicity. I gave him the obligatory rundown on how community stations differed from commercial stations.

Clad in floppy boater's shoes, olive-drab shorts, a Giants ballcap, and a crisp, white short-sleeved shirt, Andy listened attentively with his head bent forward.

The crux of the matter was that I couldn't actually do any paid publicity for him, save for in the form of a bland “friendship” thank you if he were to donate some dough. I was about to show him one of the custom-screened K-Powell t-shirts I'd bartered from buddies in Bullfrog—Andy's gift for becoming a listening contributor—when he waved me off.

“That's not it,” Andy said with a sheepish grin. “What I really want is your airtime.”

“You want to do a show?” I said.

“In a manner of speaking.”

“You don't have to pay me for that,” I replied with a grin. “Just become a volunteer like everybody else. Got a good music collection?”

“Enough discs to fill this trailer.”

“I'll bet.”

“Yes. And there's more to it than just me becoming a volunteer. I want to tie K-Powell in with the Bullfrog Radio Astronomy Project. Your station will play a vital part in my SETI program.”

SETI? I frowned. Oh, great.

“I hate to say this, Andy. As much as I'd love to have you get involved as a music programmer, I'm not interested in any talk shows about space aliens. I get too many of those kinds of offers as it is, ever since you built the dish.”

Personally I have nothing against the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. But I'd put in thirty years bouncing around the professional broadcast business and had had a hard enough time finding intelligent life on Earth, much less finding it out among the stars. I think it's safe to say I'm with Clarke in that I don't believe there are any advanced aliens within listening distance of humanity—otherwise they'd have been here already and exterminated us on account of the noise.

I started to explain myself further.

Andy waved me off once again.

“I have no intention of using K-Powell as a crazy man's pulpit. Sure I'd like to get on the air. But not in the way you are assuming. Instead, how would you like to get on my air? I'd be willing to compensate you accordingly. Seems K-Powell could use the funding.”

Andy's head nodded in the direction of the master mixer behind me: the station's elderly control board was a rebuilt ‘70s-era workhorse, the windows for its VU meters badly cracked and the needles waving crazily over a landscape of switches, knobs, duct tape, permanent marker, and torn and faded file-folder labels. I had purchased the vintage beast on the cheap from another public station after they'd upgraded to a digital mixer with sliders.

I got the impression Andy regarded my board with a degree of pity. I might have been offended if I myself did not also regard the board with a mixture of nostalgia and loathing. Keeping it functional was an increasingly frustrating exercise. The company that built it no longer existed, making spare parts scarce, and it had become permanently infested with nagging malfunctions that introduced a nightmare of hums and buzzes into the output.

Still, I didn't yet understand what the hell he was talking about, so I looked Andy in the eyes and said, “Explain.”

“I want to run a digital relay between your place and mine, something with enough bandwidth to maintain a clean stereo signal all the way to the dish control house. I've spent enough time behind my own microphones at home to realize that I can't do this all by myself.”

“And what exactly is it that you're trying to do? SETI involves nothing save for a hell of a lot of listening.”

“The Bullfrog Radio Astronomy Project is not a normal SETI effort, my friend. Other people across the globe with bigger and better brains than mine are already involved in traditional SETI. Maybe at first I wanted to use the dish in this fashion, but before long I realized that the biggest problem is that everyone is standing around waiting for somebody else to speak. I mean, is it any wonder that we haven't heard from them yet? What if at the same time we're spending all day long listening for them, they're spending all day long listening for us?”

The studio had started to turn uncomfortably hot. I invited Andy inside and closed the trailer door behind him. My in-window A/C was chugging painfully as it battled the waves of hot air rapidly filling the doublewide.

Still standing with his hands in his shorts, Andy elaborated further. He actually wanted to use his dish to beam a steady twenty-four-hour broadcast into the sky, with enough juice behind it to send the signal halfway across the galaxy. We want to let the aliens know that we are here!

Much of the technical stuff Andy threw at me must have been cribbed from information the U of U faculty had provided to him. He spoke not so much as an authority on the matter, but rather like a salesman trying to pitch an idea using someone else's data. He was animated and persuasive. I started to understand how he had managed to make his fortune while still in his thirties. He oozed tycoon. And he apparently was not distracted by the fact that it would take years for his dish-powered broadcasts to reach even the nearest stars.

“Why not just prerecord some stuff and then endlessly loop it?” I said, shuffling through my rack of worn 8-track carts. I pulled a recently played tape from Cart Machine 1 and wrote its title in the government-mandated program log before cueing up a public service announcement and a promo for the next break.

“I had that idea early on,” Andy said, now sitting across from me in the guest's mic seat. “But what if somebody does pick us up? I don't know about you, but if I tuned in to a channel and they repeated the same stuff every five minutes, day after day, week after week, month after month, I'd get bored fast and tune out.”

Good point. But if Andy wanted a varied broadcast, and he wanted my signal, why not just copy it off the air and then feed it into his own transmitter? The signal was free to be had by anyone with an FM antenna.

Chang made a face. “K-Powell sounds clean and clear on a car stereo, perhaps. But I'm going to be hurling you into the Universe as far as I can make you go, and I'd be extending my coherent range by light-years if I can start off with the cleanest possible sound. Plus, that would seem like bad manners to copy your signal without asking.”

“Thank you for the courtesy,” I said honestly, suddenly feeling vindicated in my earlier decision to not let the cranks have at Andy while using my airwaves. “Really, thanks, from one radioman to another. But Andy, why me? I'm proud of K-Powell, but I'd hardly call it the best available option. Why not just hire a team of folks to build your own live broadcasts? If you're gonna do this you may as well assemble an appropriate cast. You could have armies of rockers, speakers, maestros, singers, all lining up to do their thing for you. Hell, you could have President Obama! This is historic, sort of like those gold LPs they flew out on the Voyagers in the seventies. You don't even need to bring the artists out here to Powell. Set it up somewhere on the West Coast and satellite-feed it. You obviously have the money. It would make a unique publicity stunt, the kind of stuff that turns Hollywood heads.”

“That's exactly what I don't want,” Andy said, suddenly frustrated. He stood up from his chair and began to pace the small space between the cart carousel and the CD shelves.

“It's been bad enough with all the trashy press going on and on about the dish being built. If I go public with what I want to do now I'd be a laughing stock. No way. I need someone I can trust, who can keep this relatively under his hat. That someone ought to be close by and ready to deliver a unique product every day of the year. That's why I want you. K-Powell may be small-time radio, but that's exactly what will make this work. If I took your suggestion and built my own tailor-made broadcasts, I'd lose all the authenticity of the thing. It would wind up being too ... too . . .”

“Corporate?”

“Exactly,” Andy said, snapping his fingers.

Including myself, there was a small and ever-evolving list of local volunteer radio enthusiasts who populated the weekly broadcast schedule. Like its sister community stations in Moab and Salt Lake, K-Powell's program grid was a crazy pastiche of musical and spoken word weirdness that borrowed heavily from the collections and eccentricities of the staff. On any given day you were never sure what you'd get, which was as it should be. It wouldn't be community radio otherwise.

Andy smiled. He was hooking me, and he could tell he'd piqued my interest. Maybe he was filthy rich and I was a radio pauper, but in some ways we thought more alike than I'd ever suspected. Andy could have paid for any kind of professional broadcast he wanted, and instead he was choosing us.

There were still certain problems, though. Where Andy feared Hollywood, I feared would-be volunteer nutcases. And the FCC. If I'd been forced to turn down the occasional weirdo in the past, I'd almost certainly be beating them off with a baseball bat if news spread that I had a pipeline into the Milky Way. My cozy little incognito radio existence would be shattered by a pilgrimage of UFO freaks. I might wind up on the front pages of the very supermarket tabloids I despised. Assuming the government didn't pull my license first.

Dear God.

“If we do this, you better make damned sure it's low-profile,” I said, turning very serious. “Does the Federal Communications Commission even know about this?”

“I secured broadcast clearance from the government at the same time I got the land rights to build the dish.”

“Yeah, but did they know you'd be piggybacking my signal?”

“Not specifically, but it won't matter. Trust me, if the FCC wants to shove its big smelly toe into our business I have a pack of lawyers at my disposal that I can whistle up. The government won't be any problem. And we can be as discreet as we need to be—nobody who doesn't need to know won't have to find out. I haven't lived my life on this lake, being who I am, without learning something about keeping things on the down-low.”

“Okay, Sounds like a grand and original idea. I'm almost tempted to do it for free. Almost. But you came in here ready to make a purchase, so I'll be frank. What's in it for the station?”

“A generous yearly donation, plus some bonus cash up front for you personally.”

“And what about putting you on the air?”

“I'm flexible. Wherever and whenever you can think to fit me.”

I considered at length, swapping music discs in and out of the CD players and doing a live-mic station identification. The stuffy pragmatist in me said this was a truly bad proposition, not to be trusted. I had given up a good career to escape men with money always telling me what I could and could not do on the airwaves. But the wild artistic part—my side that had ditched commercial radio and broken my piggy bank in order to found K-Powell—salivated. K-Powell had always been something of an outpost on the fringe of civilization. Now it looked like K-Powell would be an outpost on the fringe of the Universe itself.

Poetic.

I potted up some Beatles.

“I get a hammerlock on creative control, Andy. If you start trying to stick your fingers into the programming beyond your designated time slot, the deal is off. I want that in writing. I don't work for you in any way, shape, or form. I'm lending you my signal in return for donated funds. I can quit the arrangement at any time if I don't like what's happening. I also don't take chances with the Feds. Triple-check this with the FCC so that we're not putting my license at risk. Clear?”

“Okay,” Andy replied. “I can have my people draw up the paperwork today if you want.”

Chang kept smiling while I spent a moment daydreaming about what I could do with even a little extra cash. Having Andy as a sugar daddy would work miracles for my little station. I could replace all the old equipment, scrap the carts for minidisc or a Digital Audio Workstation, maybe even expand the facilities. On the other hand, I'd spent my last honest dollar getting away from guys not too different from Chang—to a place where I owed allegiance to no one but myself.

Taking Chang up on his offer, regardless of whatever paper I might sign, smacked somewhat of surrender.

“Have your paperwork drawn up, but don't rush it. Give me a day or so to think about all of this.”

“Fine. Call me when you make up your mind.”

With that Andy dropped his card onto the top of the main mixer, opened the door to the outside world, and vanished back the way he had come. I peered out the partially closed blinds and watched as he donned sunglasses and climbed into his Escalade. Sighing heavily, I slumped back into the chair in front of the main mic, battered headphones patched with electrician's tape dangling around my neck. The Escalade audibly ground gravel as it motored back onto the highway, and for the longest time I just glared at the door, listening to the A/C chug and my discs spin.

I then slipped on my headphones and sat there for the rest of the day, thinking hard. I tracked through my old favorites, seeking some kind of musical wisdom that might point me toward a yes or a no. I wanted to feel better about saying yes, or at the very least I wanted to not feel like an idiot for saying no. Hendrix, Tull, Credence, Zep, a little touch of the ‘80s in the form of Rush, later Yes, The Police, Journey, then back to basics with Pink Floyd. Floyd: Roger Waters wailing about the sins of big money and capitalism.

Perhaps not coincidentally, that was when the left speaker on my headphones started to cut out. I had soldered and patched the connection three times, and yet the damn thing was going south on me. Again. I yanked and fiddled at the wire with my fingers, until both speakers were cutting out, then I ripped the phones off and hurled them to the floor in disgust.

“Fuck you, Waters,” I rasped with irritation. “You can afford to be angst ridden.”

“So,” said Spingath, “you're a business partner.”

“More like a contracted provider of content,” I said testily.

“A quibble, under the articles,” one of the men said off-hand.

“Articles of what?” I asked.

“Interstellar Articles,” Spingath replied. “Andrew Chang's pirate broadcasts are unlicensed and unauthorized.”

“According to whom?” I said. “Andy swore to me he had this thing locked, with the FCC.”

“Your quaint Federal Communications Commission doesn't even govern the broadcast envelope of your whole planet. You can pollute the band all you want if you do it locally. Andrew Chang has been more ambitious than that.”

I was quiet, looking from face to generic face. A sinking surety had settled into my gut.

“You're not human, are you?”

“No.”

“Jesus. Look, all I do is feed Andy content. What he does with it is his business and his problem. I don't know what you guys are or what you want me for, but I'm telling you, Andy is the one you need to talk to.”

“Perhaps,” said one of the men. “But first, tell us more about your arrangement with Mister Chang. Give us all the details you can.”

* * * *

Andy got my yes by phone. The next morning he drove back over and we signed a few pages worth of faxed stuff. By the weekend two professional microwave technicians were poking around at my equipment and rigging a line-of-sight microwave sender partway up the main broadcast antenna. It was aimed at a similar microwave device a few miles away, at Andy's place. Once the microwave link was up and running Andy complained loudly about how crappy my output was, what with the humming and background buzz. Not to mention the A/C chugging away.

I presented Andy with a wish list of equipment that would clear it all up.

Andy wrote me a check.

It was a very big check.

I got online and did some shopping.

During the weeks it took for the new equipment to be shipped to Bullfrog, I trained Andy in the use of the nearly identical production and on-air studios. Then I set him up with his own show slot on the grid. He wanted to do some New Agey stuff, late night, which suited me just fine. His library of the genre was bottomless. Like all fledgling radio programmers he ummed and erred his way through the first few shows, speaking way too much and making the usual rookie mistakes. But he eventually settled into a groove and by the fifth show he was genuinely enjoying himself.

They put the centralized A/C in first. Beautiful piece of equipment, that. New vents in the trailer ceiling didn't make hardly a whisper.

When the new mixer boards arrived for both production and on-air use, I had to retrain Andy and the rest of the staff all over again—the modern slide-pot boards and Digital Audio Workstations were that different from the ‘70s-era dinosaurs we'd used before. I was probably in such glorious joy to be working on brand new broadcast equipment that I overlooked how exhausted I was becoming with the constant work. But it was worth it. Or so I'd thought at the time.

* * * *

We were in silence the whole way out to Andy's place.

They'd seemed satisfied with what I'd told them, but they didn't let me go either.

Again, I'd not seen any of them show a gun. But I suspected they didn't need to.

When we got to the fences surrounding Minicebo, we didn't even slow down as one of the men driving the van reached an arm out the window and held a black box aloft. The automated gate barring Andy's main drive withdrew rapidly, and we rolled right through as if we owned the place.

I wanted to warn Andy. In a very bad way. But I hadn't gotten my cell phone before leaving the trailer and doubted they'd have let me use it anyway.

We arrived at the circular drive in front of Andy's residence, and the four people with the hideous eyes and the generic looks quickly piled out and began circling.

“You stay here and don't move,” Spingath ordered as I began to move out of my seat toward the door.

“I've been sitting in here for hours,” I complained. “I've got to stand up.”

Spingath seemed to consider, then nodded her consent.

I climbed out and began working the kinks out of my aged spine.

Motion lights had sprung on all around Andy's compound. The full moon was almost hidden beyond the horizon now, and pretty soon the eastern sky would begin to grow light. If I'd been tired when they'd gotten me at the station, I didn't feel it. Adrenaline still surged through me as I watched the four suited figures move across Andy's property with frightening speed, the aircraft warning lights blinking on the tips of Minicebo's masts in the distance.

I went to the front seat of the van and tried the radio. Yup. I'd pushed the CD repeat. Thank goodness, no dead air. Hopefully Sheri wouldn't be too weirded out when she got in at six and found the door wide open and a CD cycling endlessly.

Now what?

There have been few times in my life when I've felt as if my destiny was utterly and totally beyond my control.

One of them was when I first set foot on Fort Benning for basic training.

The other was while I stood there in the quiet night, watching the outside of Andy's house in the floodlights.

How the hell could this be happening to me?

There was a yell. Then another yell. Both from inside the house.

The chattering rip of a modified AR15 cut through the night like a chainsaw.

Andy came sprinting out the front door of his house, the automatic rifle in one hand and a hastily donned combat vest over his shoulders. He wore nothing save for his boxer briefs and leather sandals.

“Ron!”

“Andy,” I said, not moving, “what the fuck is going on?”

“Get to the garage!”

I looked behind Andy to see a headless shape shambling through the door. Sickly green stains spread across the torso from where the .223 had pierced the body.

I ran for the garage, which was already opening. Andy's Escalade—along with several other expensive vehicles—was waiting.

I heard the AR15 rip again. Something hit the ground, wet and heavy.

I turned and Andy pressed the weapon into my hands.

“You were Army, Ron. You know how to use this.”

“Christ, Andy, that was forty years ago.”

“Just take it. And the Camaro. Keys are in the ignition.”

“Andy, would you tell me for a second what the hell I'm supposed to do?”

“Get out of here. There's water, some food, and full magazines in the trunk. Ron, whatever you do, don't let them catch you!”

"Mister Chang."

We both turned to see Spingath approaching. Her sunglasses were off and her eye-socket cluster thingies were wiggling obscenely. One of her arms was missing.

“Don't come any closer,” Andy warned, taking a .45-caliber M1911 from a vest holster.

“You are in violation of Interstellar Articles Sixty-Three and Seventy-Eight, as they pertain to the proper regulation of the Hydrogen Band—”

Andy worked the slide and took aim with the pistol.

“Back off! I have full operating authority from the United States Government!”

“—under the authority of the Grand Council. Your rights as a sentient being have been suspended until you can be brought to trial before a panel of—”

Andy's index finger twitched once. The bullet was a little wide, but it took away most of Spingath's neck. Oddly green gore sprayed across the driveway, and Spingath's head flopped hideously across her left shoulder as she continued to walk toward us.

Andy fired again. Then again. Then he emptied the clip.

Spingath lay in a growing pool of goo, twitching.

In the distance, lights began silently moving. Lights in the sky.

“Ron,” Andy said to me as he turned and pointed at the dark blue Camaro, “I'm sorry I ever got you into this. If only I'd known . . .”

“Yeah, tell me about it,” I said. “What are you going to do?”

“The only thing I can do,” he said, looking resigned.

I nodded to him, putting a hand on his shoulder, then went to the Camaro and climbed into the luxurious leather bucket seat. I'd owned one of the car's ancestors in the early ‘80s, gold like in the Rockford Files.

“What should I tell people?” I said out the window as I fired up the Camaro's throaty engine.

“I sent an emergency e-mail to the proper agencies,” Andy replied. “Just get your ass out of sight for a few days until this can be resolved.”

The lights appeared to be growing closer.

“More of them?” I said, moving my head in the direction of the lights.

“Probably. They're coming for the dish now. Ron, if you don't leave soon, you might not be able to.”

He holstered the empty pistol and extended me his hand.

I shook it, then gripped the shifter and depressed the clutch, putting the Camaro into first.

The doors on the government van hung open forlornly as I sped past and back down the main drive. An opener on the visor cleared me through the gate, and I was out into the blackness of the desert.

The lights seemed to ignore me as I hit the highway and never looked back, the V8 getting me up to speed and my heart hammering my ribs as I headed for home. There was something I had to take care of.

It took a few minutes to get the cabling for the microwave sender unplugged. I'd have climbed the tower and thrown down the dish, if I hadn't feared falling. My hands were shaking from post-adrenaline shock, I was tired, and I was old.

Sun would be up soon. Sky was already turning blue in the east and I knew I had to be gone before Sheri got there. I swapped Van Morrison for some Tears For Fears and hit the disc repeat again, scribbling some notes to the volunteers on the front of the station log.

Hopefully they'd figure out what to do until I got back.

If I got back.

Those lights, they'd vanished over the hill toward Andy's.

And all was strangely quiet.

The Camaro rolled crunchingly across the gravel as I left the station, wondering if I'd ever see my baby again. The AR15 was in the passenger seat, chamber cleared but magazine loaded and ready. Andy hadn't lied: there were at least five hundred rounds of standard ball in the trunk, with several gallons of water and some MREs. I didn't have a license for the rifle and hoped to hell I didn't get pulled over by the Utah Highway Patrol, or there'd be some questions that would need answering.

As to where I'd go, that seemed pretty obvious. Andy'd had the foresight to put a hitch ball on the back of the Camaro, and I'd stuck my trailer on it.

It was time to hit the lake. Lose myself up one of the canyons, out of sight and out of the way.

My boat was a far cry from one of Andy's deluxe cabin cruisers: an abused aluminum hull that normally sat under a tarp out in back of the double-wide. When I first came to Powell I bought the thing secondhand, believing that only a fool would live so close to the water and never need a boat.

In the boat I'd put a tent, a sleeping bag, a rod with reel, my tackle box, a cooler full of perishables, two milk crates filled with dry goods, and utensils for cooking and eating.

I was in the water before seven, and headed south. With a little luck I'd be turning up the San Juan before lunch. It would be a week or more before I'd have to put in at Dangling Rope or Wahweap.

And so I fished and ate and relaxed, pulling into the shore as mood, the call of nature, and the onset of evening dictated. My skin burnt badly the first day, then burnt again the second, peeled for three days, and by the sixth I had a nice brown tan for the first time in ages. I swam whenever the boat was on the bank, enjoying the cool water and marveling at the assortment of crappies and bluegills and other fish that swarmed the shallows. When I got tired of the prepackaged stuff, I caught a big striper and filleted it, roasting slabs of juicy bass meat on a grill over an open fire.

And at night, I watched the stars.

The undisturbed, pure blackness of the southern Utah sky really is a sight for which there are no words. Surrounded by modern civilization, one forgets that, for most of human history, men were privy to that view.

Little did we know it did not belong to us alone.

Copyright © 2011 Brad R. Torgersen

[Back to Table of Contents]

Probability Zero: THE SOCK PROBLEM
by Alastair Mayer

“Honey, when are you going to fix the dryer?” my wife called from the laundry area.

I didn't answer right away. The clothes dryer had been acting up lately, emitting a god-awful buzzing when the start button was pushed and grudgingly coming up to speed if it started at all. The dryer was old, so perhaps the bearings were worn.

“Honey? Did you hear me?”

“Yes sweetheart, I heard. I'll get started on it today.” Appliance repair isn't rocket surgery. Open it up, figure out which part or parts are broken, and replace them. I even had the manual for this old Kenmore. The thing is, appliances are designed for easy assembly, not disassembly. Between hard-to-reach clips and ossified bolts, there are always skinned knuckles involved.

“While you're at it,” my wife called again, “clean out the lint. Maybe you'll find some lost socks.”

“Yes dear.” Lint buildup was inevitable, and could be a fire hazard. It might even be causing the motor to overheat. The socks, though . . .

Everyone jokes about socks disappearing from a dryer to leave unmatched singles. I only buy two kinds of socks, white athletic socks and black dress socks, in sufficient quantity that I never have a problem finding a match. I didn't know how often socks really disappeared from our dryer. Come to think of it, though, I bought more replacements than I discarded worn socks. Maybe they metamorphosed into wire coat hangers. No, that was paperclips.

* * * *

Disassembling the dryer cabinet proved easier than I'd expected. A couple of plastic clips held the lid down, and with the bolts undone the lid slid forward and up just fine. Aside from the control panel, no doubt redesigned every year to accommodate fashion and the latest five-cents-cheaper microcontroller, the innards of the dryer were surprisingly simple: a large steel drum to tumble the clothes, a heater for the intake air, a vent assembly, and a large motor with a pulley for the drum's belt drive. The air blower had its own motor, inefficient but unavoidable given the geometry.

I extracted the drum and cleaned out the felt-like layer of lint in the bottom of the cabinet. The drum motor was tucked away in the back corner.

It looked like a standard induction motor, with a labyrinth of wire coils that would have looked at home in a fusion reactor. Alternating current in the stator windings creates a moving magnetic field that induces a current in the rotor windings, and the changing electromagnetic fields turn the rotor. A starter coil helps overcome starting friction and inertia to get the motor up to speed.

Not in this case, though. My ohmmeter showed the starter switch was within spec, but I got intermittent readings on the resistance of the motor coils.

I plugged the dryer back in and, against all the warnings in the manual, tested it with the cabinet open so I could watch the motor. Sure enough, sometimes it would start almost immediately, but often it would emit a raucous buzz while the rotor crept around like a clock's second hand.

Rewinding a motor with that coil geometry wasn't something I wanted to tackle. I'd have to replace it. There was a Sears repair and parts center only a few miles away.

* * * *

“I'm going to the parts place to pick up a new motor,” I called to my wife.

“Can I come?” That was my son Isaac, always eager to go somewhere new.

In the car, he was as talkative as only a preteen can be. “So the dryer needs a motor? Is it broken? Did you find out where the socks went?”

“Whoa, slow down. In order: yes; mostly yes; and what socks?”

“You know, how we're always losing single socks from a pair in the dryer. Do they get sucked out the vent?”

“No, there's a grille. Nothing bigger than a pea is going out the vent.”

“So maybe the socks shrink really tiny.” Isaac has quite an imagination.

“No, I think they go through a space warp.” This was a game we sometimes played, coming up with outlandish explanations.

“Why not a time warp?”

“Okay, a spacetime warp. It's formed by the interaction of the complicated magnetic field from the motor, and the rotation of the drum. The metal drum picks up an induced field and right in the center, a spacetime vortex forms. Any sock falling through it disappears.” I was proud of that one—it almost made sense.

“So why don't other clothes disappear?” Isaac asked.

“Um, they're too big. They fall off the baffles too soon so they don't get close enough to the vortex.”

“Underwear is small.”

I had to think about that one for a bit. Then I had it. “Maybe it's the topology of the—”

“Topology? You mean like how a donut is like a coffee mug? How they both have one hole that goes all the way through?” Isaac reads a lot for middle school.

“Exactly. Most clothing, except socks, has arm holes or leg holes. Maybe that creates a weak circuit that interferes with the vortex. Socks don't.”

“That explains why I never lose a sock that has a hole in it!” He paused. “Hey! Maybe the missing socks splat like bugs on the window of Dr. Who's TARDIS!”

I laughed out loud at that one.

* * * *

Back at home with a new motor I began to reassemble everything. I pulled the pulley from the old motor and attached it to the new. Replacing the motor in its housing, I only skinned my knuckles once. A couple of quick tests confirmed that it started almost instantly, a vast improvement. I put the rest of it back together.

Before closing the lid I did one more test to make sure everything was seated properly. I pushed the button, the motor started up, and the drum started turning happily ... the wrong way.

Damn, I must have installed the new motor backwards. It had a different starter switch and wiring harness, and I hadn't realized. I inspected the drum mounting, the belt, and the idler wheels, and confirmed that the airflow, thanks to the separate motor, was still correct. The dryer should still work as a dryer.

I ran a load of laundry. Even with the motor swapped end for end and the drum turning in reverse, the dryer worked fine.

Only now, more and more, we keep finding extra socks.

Copyright © 2011 Alastair Mayer

[Back to Table of Contents]

Department: THE ALTERNATE VIEW: “NEW PHYSICS” BUMP FERMILAB?
by John G. Cramer

The Tevatron accelerator at Fermilab near Chicago has had a distinguished history. It began operation in 1972 as a large national synchrotron facility, a circular tunnel 3.9 miles in circumference containing a ring of “warm” conventional magnets used to accelerate protons to energies up to 400 GeV. Because of the relativistic mass-increase effect, if a 400-GeV proton is directed at a proton target at rest in the laboratory, the effective proton+proton collision energy is only 27.4 GeV. The rest of the available energy ends up in simply moving the entire center of mass of the colliding system forward and does not contribute to the dynamics of the collision itself. This is the disadvantage of fixed-target experiments and a strong argument for moving to colliders.

In the 1980s the first Fermilab Director, the late Robert R. Wilson, somehow found enough funds in the Fermilab operating budget to develop and construct in the synchrotron tunnel a parallel ring of superconducting magnets with about twice the magnetic fields of the original magnets. Protons were accelerated first in the warm magnets and then in the superconducting magnets. This increased the maximum proton energy of the machine to 800 GeV, leading to effective fixed-target proton+proton center-of-mass collision energies of 38.8 GeV.

In 1985, after the Isobel Collider construction at Brookhaven National Laboratory was cancelled, the U.S. Department of Energy allowed Fermilab, following the lead of CERN, to develop a sub-facility for producing, storing, cooling, and injecting antiprotons into the magnet ring. These negatively charged antimatter particles were accelerated in the opposite direction in the magnet rings to produce proton-antiproton collisions at selected locations and to raise the effective center-of-mass collision energies to 1,600 GeV. In other words, operating the synchrotron in collider mode increased the collision energy by a factor of about 41. Later superconducting magnet improvements raised the proton/antiproton beam energies 980 GeV and raised the collision energies to 1,960 GeV, the present collision energy of the machine. This facility at Fermilab is now called the Tevatron because the collisions are in the TeV (1,000 GeV) energy region.

The large CDF and D0 collider detectors operating at the Tevatron have maintained very active physics programs over the past twenty-five years, producing many important results including the discovery of the top quark, and publishing many hundreds of papers (each with many hundreds of authors) in the major physics journals. However, the holy grail of particle physics, the discovery of a new result that would “break” quantum chromodynamics, the standard model of particle physics, and lead to new physics beyond the standard model, has never been achieved. Essentially all results coming out of the Tevatron up to the end of 2010 have been consistent with the standard model.

But now, the Tevatron, as all large particle accelerators must eventually do, has reached the end of its active life. These are difficult economic times for funding large and expensive physics projects, and recently the U.S. Department of Energy has decreed that by the end of September 2011, the Tevatron will cease operation permanently.

There is some irony in this decision. In April 2011, the CDF (Collider Detector at Fermilab) Collaboration submitted a paper to the “fast” and prestigious physics journal Physical Review Letters announcing a new 3.2 standard deviation result, the observation of a “bump” of mass-energy around 144 GeV. (For reference, the mass-energy [E = mc2] of a proton is 0.938 GeV and the mass-energy of a W boson is 80.4 GeV.) This new mass-bump was found in proton-antiproton collisions involving Z-meson production. Its presence is inconsistent with the standard model and seems to suggest new physics. This announcement is reminiscent of the discovery in 1974 of the J/psi particle, mass 3.1 GeV, that became the key observation in the development of quantum chromodynamics, the present standard model of particle physics. However, it is also reminiscent of “observations” made in past decades, e.g., the penta-quark at several laboratories, the leptoquark at DESY, and quark substructure at Fermilab, that have turned out to be incorrect in the light of closer scrutiny.

One of the characteristic decay processes expected from the long-sought Higgs boson, the so-called “God-particle” that gives mass to other particles, is its decay into a W boson. The W boson, one of the fundamental mediating particles of the weak interaction, may in turn decay (1) in a “leptonic” mode into an electron or muon and a neutrino, which happens about 1/3 of the time or (2) in a “hadronic” mode into pairs of energetic quarks, which happens about 2/3 of the time. Decay mode (1) shows up in the detectors as an energetic electron or muon with missing energy (because the neutrinos are not detected), while decay mode (2) shows up as two energetic “jets” of strongly interacting particles. A number of groups have studied “di-boson” processes involving twin instances of decay mode (1).

A sub-group of the CDF Collaboration had chosen the somewhat more difficult path of focusing on di-boson events containing evidence of decay mode (1) combined with decay mode (2). This process is interesting because the Higgs boson is expected to have a decay mode as a W and a pair of heavy quarks, but this di-boson channel has more problems with background. Nevertheless, it offers certain technical experimental advantages and could be a path to Higgs discovery.

In their analysis, the CDF group attempted to pull from the many millions of 1,960-GeV proton-antiproton collision events recorded by the CDF detector that subset that might be characteristic of di-boson processes. They focused on events showing one leptonic decay characteristic of a W meson, accompanied by two hadronic jets. Using the tracking data of the particle constituents of the jets, they calculated the rest-mass of some hypothetical initial particle that might produce the pair of jets. As expected, they observed a mass peak around 80-90 GeV that is characteristic of a W or Z boson decaying into two quarks. But the surprise came in looking at the data on the high side of that peak. There they found an excess of events in the mass region between 120 and 160 GeV. Simulation of all of the known process predicted by the QCD Standard Model to participate in this decay process provided a “background” that could be subtracted from the data to highlight the observed excess. This background-subtracted plot showed a “bump” centered at 144 (plus or equal to) 5 GeV, with a width that was just that expected for the di-baryon channel's mass resolution. The implication of the latter observation is that the hypothetical particle producing the bump is “narrow” and long-lived, with a decay width that does not significantly modify the mass resolution of the di-baryon channel. There is no known particle with a mass in this region that might be expected to produce such a bump. In particular, a 144-GeV Higgs boson decaying in this channel with the observed strength, which is about 300 times the expected Higgs strength, would have long ago been observed in di-leptonic W+W decays studied at CERN's LEP facility and at the Tevatron itself. Further, a Higgs decaying to produce a W boson and two quarks should preferentially produce heavy bottom quarks, and this preference is inconsistent with the channel in which the mass bump is observed, which contains few bottom-quark jets.

The new bump has a statistical significance of 3.2 standard deviations. That means that, assuming that all systematic errors have been correctly dealt with, there is about a 0.1% chance that the observation could be a product of random chance. That sounds pretty solid, but experience with other 3-standard-deviation effects indicates that a bogus one shows up to titillate the physics community about once per decade. The result cannot be taken seriously, at the level of recording it in that Particle Data Book and using it as the basis for a new standard model, until we have a 5-standard-deviation effect that has been confirmed by its observation from another experiment, either the D0 experiment at the Tevatron or one of the collider detectors, ATLAS or CMS, at CERN's LHC. We note that the CDF Collaboration has analyzed only about half of the available 1,960-GeV Tevatron collision data, so their statistical precision is likely to improve.

Not unexpectedly, within a few days of the appearance on the ArXiv preprint server of the CDF paper describing the bump, theoretical explanations of the observation began to appear like April dandelions. At this writing, about ten weeks after the preprint appeared, there are thirty-five such theoretical papers involving a spectrum of mutually exclusive extensions beyond the standard model. One of the papers, by Estai Eichten, Kenneth Lane, and Adam Martin, is of particular interest. It involves the invocation of “technicolor,” a previously hypothesized fifth force of nature to be added to the strong, weak, electromagnetic, and gravitational interactions, that bears some resemblance to the color-charge structure of the strong interaction. According to the model, technicolor is responsible for the breaking of symmetry between the weak and electromagnetic interactions and generates the masses of the Z and W bosons through a new dynamic interaction. If technicolor is a valid extension of the standard model, the ongoing searches for the Higgs boson will come up dry, and instead, new particles characteristic of technicolor will be discovered, the CDF bump perhaps representing the first of these. In particular, the technicolor model asserts that the Tevatron collisions are producing a technicolor-flavored rho meson with a mass of about 290 GeV that decays into a W boson and a technicolor-flavored pi meson with a mass around 160 GeV. The authors are able to fit the CDF data with this model, and they suggest several other possible experimental observations that the model would predict. Other theory papers focused on the CDF bump use string theory, or supersymmetry, or new “dark” forces, or “leptophobic” W bosons, or even the Higgs boson itself to explain the observations.

But how real is this result? How likely is it to withstand the scrutiny of the physics community? How likely is it to be confirmed by other ongoing particle physics experiments, particularly the D0 experiment at Fermilab and the new collider detectors, ATLAS or CMS, at CERN's LHC? I would not venture a guess, but I look forward to seeing how the saga of the CDF bump unfolds. This could be the “crack in the wall” that allows us to go beyond the standard model and develop a new theory of fundamental interactions with more insights into what is really going on in the universe.

Watch this column for further results.

* * * *

AV Columns Online: Electronic reprints of over 150 “The Alternate View” columns by John G. Cramer, previously published in Analog, are available online at: www.npl.washington.edu/av.

* * * *

References:

“Invariant Mass Distribution of Jet Pairs Produced in Association with a W boson in p-p-bar Collisions at -s = 196 TeV,” The CDF Collaboration, submitted to Physical Review Letters, preprint ArXiv: 1104.0699v2 [hep-ex], 2 May 2011.

“Technicolor at the Tevatron,” submitted to Physical Review Letters; preprint ArXiv: 1104.0976v1 [hep-ph], 6 Apr 2011.

Copyright © 2011 John G. Cramer

[Back to Table of Contents]

Novelette: THE LYCANTHROPIC PRINCIPLE
by Carl Frederick

There are many ways to adapt to changing times. . . .

Professor Paul Campbell had just barely turned on his computer when his colleague, Roger Robinson, stormed into his office.

“Damned plagiarist,” Roger blurted out. “On the Net. Our paper. ‘Language as a Filter for Reality.'” Roger threw himself down into a chair. “Dombrowski, whoever the hell he is. He's taking credit for everything in the paper.”

Paul, pushing against the edge of his desk, rolled his office chair back toward the wall. “Ivan Dombrowski.” He scowled. “I discovered his ‘work’ last night.”

“I'm worried about our academic reputations,” said Roger. “We've got to do something.”

Paul nodded. “I e-mailed the site's webmaster and e-screamed at him.”

“Any answer?” Roger didn't look hopeful.

“Not as of yet.” Paul sighed. “I feel ... powerless.” He scootered his chair forward again. “How do you fight the web?” He moved his hands to the keyboard. “But let's see what the dawn has brought.” He called up his e-mail client. “Uh-oh.” There were seventy-two messages in his inbox.

The first was an offer of free money from Nigeria that had somehow evaded his spam-trap. “Lucky me.”

Roger leaned in to look at the preview pane. “From no less than the president's wife.”

“No less.” Paul hit delete.

The message vanished. In its place on the preview pane appeared, in lurid color, a photograph showing bestiality that left nothing to the imagination.

Roger sucked in a breath.

Again, Paul hit delete. The next message had a pornographic close-up that filled the pane. Delete Then it was child pornography. Paul, pounding delete worried he could be arrested for merely having such images on his computer. Then a swastika-filled flyer for the Aryan Nazi Empire filled the pane.

“I have to go now,” said Roger, standing and heading for the door.

“This ... .I have no idea why I'm getting this junk,” Paul stammered, all the while hitting delete. “I'm innocent.”

“Yes. Of course.” Roger, appearing scandalized, opened the door and darted through.

Paul was sure his colleague believed him—but perhaps not one hundred percent.

Finally, managing to delete his inbox to zero, he breathed a breath of relief and sat back in his chair. But a moment later, another message appeared, and then another, and yet more. Paul closed his e-mail client and wondered what to do. He couldn't go around with his computer infected with scum. And he couldn't live without e-mail. He was beyond his depth and realized he needed help—geek help. And there was only one person he knew that was geeky enough. Alf Larsen. Paul scrunched his nose. Alf was maybe too geeky. Paul looked out the window to the parking lot, hunting for Alf's car. It was embarrassing: Here he was, a professor of sociolinguistics, and he and Alf never seemed to be speaking quite the same language. He spotted the car in the parking lot—easy to do because of its bumper sticker:

Lycanthropy: Change You Can Believe In

Paul left the office and headed down toward Alf's subterranean domain. Even though Alf Larsen was just a work-study student, he had his own private workshop—well deserved, as the kid kept all the department's computers working, designed professors’ webpages, squashed viruses and spyware, and maintained the servers. Yet again Paul wondered how his department would cope once Alf graduated.

* * * *

Werewolves: Howl and enter.

All others: Please knock and wait for admittance.

A. Lycanthrope

* * * *

Paul stared at the sign on Alf's door. A. Lycanthrope? Paul gave a slow shake of his head. Alf Larsen. Paul continued shaking his head. He'd often wondered if he should recommend the kid for counseling—to try to get him back into the real world. But that might lead to the loss of the best software talent the university had ever known. Paul sighed. If only the kid didn't believe he was a werewolf.

The door opened and there stood Alf, in his signature black T-shirt, black pants, and white sneakers. “Hi, Professor Campbell,” he said.

“Alf,” said Paul, standing at the threshold. “You've got to help me. Horrible stuff is appearing in my inbox.”

“What kind of horrible?”

“I ... I can't even begin to describe it.”

“Then show me.”

* * * *

Back in his office, Paul hesitated with his hands on the keyboard.

“Well?” said Alf, looking over Paul's shoulder at the monitor.

Paul gritted his teeth and called up his e-mail client.

“Oh my gosh!” Alf stared wide-eyed. “They never should have brought back the preview pane,” he added under his breath.

Paul hit delete and another obscene image appeared.

“Turn it off, please,” said Alf.

“You see what I mean?” said Paul as he closed his e-mail. He indicated a chair for Alf.

“Yeah.” Alf slouched into the chair.

Paul thought he detected a touch of suspicion in Alf's voice. “I'm innocent,” Paul pleaded. “Really innocent.”

“But ... But the Net thinks you're guilty.”

“I had nothing to do with this,” Paul insisted. For some reason, he couldn't help feeling a touch guilty.

“But the Net thinks you're ... “ Alf repeated in a soft voice, as to himself. He bit his lip for a moment. “I think you've been q-slapped,” he went on in a firm voice.

“Q-slapped?” Paul wrinkled his nose in puzzlement.

“Quiddity-slapped.”

Paul's nose remained wrinkled.

“Your quiddity, your essence, your ... Internet profile.”

“I still don't understand,” said Paul.

“Whenever you do a web search, a record of your search is held somewhere in cyberspace.” Alf spoke slowly, as if explaining life to a child. “And whenever you visit a social-networking site or post to a newsgroup, the Net remembers it. The Net knows all, and builds your quiddity. You are that profile.”

“Really?” said Paul. “All the sites are connected?”

“Yeah. And if someone hacks your passwords or spoofs your computer's MAC address, he can search for disgusting stuff in your name, or post obscenity. And then the Net thinks you're a pervert or something.” Alf threw a glance to the monitor, which now just showed the desktop. “And so, you get adverts for nasty things in your e-mail.” Alf shuddered. “And that's just the beginning.”

Paul was aghast. “That's horrible! Why would anyone do such a thing?”

Alf shrugged.

“I'd like to kill him,” said Paul, only half in jest.

“Oh, q-slapping's not so bad, not in general,” said Alf, casually. “It's a good way to deal with a grudge.”

Glancing around his book-lined office, Paul remembered he was a professor—a pillar of social responsibility. “Wouldn't the law be a better way?”

Alf laughed. “The law is hopelessly behind the times.”

“Then ... then Congress should make new laws.”

“Congress?” Alf laughed again. “We'd never get the right laws from Congress. They're all wuggies—paleowuggies.”

“Wuggies?” said Paul, his nose again wrinkled. “What's a wuggy?”

“Wuggy-bip?” said Alf.

Paul shook his head.

“Buggy-whip.” After a few seconds, Alf added, “A backward techdummy.”

“Ah.” As a sociolinguist, Paul found the new term interesting. “And what's the opposite of wuggy?”

“Geek, maybe.” Alf paused. “But it's a continuum—a scale. And wuggy's just a point on it. It's like asking what's the opposite of forty-two.”

Paul had the distinct notion that he himself was a wuggy. And he didn't like it. He glanced at his computer—definitely not a wuggy-friendly device. “Can this ... q-slapping be undone?”

“Yeah. Sure.” Alf gave an exaggerated shrug. “But whoever did it would just do it again. The answer is to find out who did it.”

Paul felt like a foreign visitor to the online world. “And just that would make him stop?”

“Yeah,” said Alf with an expression that added “of course.” “Otherwise he'd be afraid he'd be q-slapped. And then he'd be a pervert.”

Paul, recalling Roger's suspicious expression, nodded his head sadly. “I'm afraid that even if people know I'm not a pervert, they'll still think maybe I am.”

“What the internet thinks you are, you are.” Alf sounded as if he were reciting gospel.

“That's ridiculous,” said Paul with a grunt of a laugh. “The internet isn't reality.”

“But it is—for all practical purposes.”

Paul forced a full-throated laugh. “It's about as real as you being a werewolf.”

“I am a werewolf.” Alf seemed offended.

“Um . . .” Paul decided, for expedience's sake, he'd defer the discussion of reality. “Can you help me?”

Alf nodded. “Do you know anyone who might have a super-sized grudge against you?”

“Well ... maybe the e-plagiarist I've been bugging. Name's Ivan Dombrowski.” Paul described the plagiarism.

Alf said he thought the plagiarism and the q-slapping had to be connected. “I'll check him out.” He gave a toothy smile. “I've got some ... tools in my lair.”

Lair?

“Send me an e-mail with his name and the plagiarism site.” Alf checked his watch. “Got to go. I've got a class. I'll come back after lunch.”

* * * *

When Alf arrived at Paul's office early that afternoon, he seemed chagrined.

“Problem?” Paul asked, with a sinking feeling.

“It's not this Dombrowski dude doing the q-slapping,” said Alf, with downcast eyes. “I searched him. He wouldn't know how to do it. He's a zoom-wuggy.”

“Zoom-wuggy?” Paul gave a low moan.

“A zoom-wuggy is someone who thinks he's a geek, but is really a wuggy.”

Paul mentally filed away the new term.

Alf pawed the carpet. “Anyone else you can think of who doesn't like you?”

“No.” Paul gazed thoughtfully out the window. “Unless it's maybe a student I've flunked.”

“Might be.” Alf bit his lip. “Give me a list and I'll check it out.”

“Well ... I'm not sure I—”

“Cancel,” said Alf. “I'll snarf them from the university computer. That way you won't have to violate their privacy.”

“I thought the university computer's files were secure.”

“You thought that, did you?” said Alf lightly, with the clear implication that nobody could possibly think that these days.

“But . . .” Paul wasn't quite sure Alf's solution absolved him of moral responsibility. “Maybe there's another way.”

“Look.” Alf glared at Paul's computer monitor, which merely displayed the desktop. “Whoever it is, he's turned you into a pervert.”

“I am not a pervert.”

“The Net thinks you are. That's why you're getting all those e-mails.”

“All right. Fine. Can you help turn me back into a decent human being?”

“Sure.” Alf didn't seem to detect the humor in Paul's statement. “I need to use your computer.”

Paul stood and Alf replaced him at the computer. Alf's hands flew over the keyboard. “I think,” he said distractedly, “that I'll probably be able to find which kid is behind this.”

Looking over Alf's shoulder, Paul felt envy and desire. He realized that, in order not to be in a kind of underclass, he must strive to become whatever really was the opposite of wuggy. He watched what Alf did at the keyboard but understood little.

At length, Alf blew out a breath and sat back in the chair. “Sorry. Not enough data.”

“You mean you can't find who's behind this?” said Paul, sinking into melancholy.

Alf, his eyes still on the monitor, gave a sad shake of his head. “Not yet.” He stood.

Paul slumped back into his desk chair. “I just can't survive without e-mail.”

“Well, for now, better inhibit displaying the preview pane.” Alf avoided Paul's eyes. “And then just keep trying to delete the junk.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Paul brought up his e-mail client and disabled the preview pane—killing the loathsome image displayed on it.

“I'll keep working on it,” said Alf in a voice suggesting it would be futile.

“Yeah,” said Paul, scanning the e-mail subject lines and repeatedly hitting the delete key.

After a few seconds, Alf headed for the door.

“Hey, wait a second.” Paul, his eyes on the monitor, spoke as much rhetorically as to Alf. “What's this about?”

“What?” Alf started back to Paul's computer.

“A lot of e-mails, all with the same subject line. Says, ‘Restore your Quiddity.'”

“Who's it from?” Again, Alf looked over Paul's shoulder. “Pristine Associates. Never heard of them.”

Paul opened a message and the two of them read it:

!!!Limited Time Special Offer!!!

Don't let the Net think you are scum.

Restore your good name.

For just $250, we will clean your Internet Profile.

Guaranteed!

E-mail us at once.

Alf's placid features morphed to anger. His face reddened and his eyes blazed with rage. Paul could almost believe the kid was a werewolf.

“Q-slapping for cause,” Alf spat out, “no big deal. But asking for money to fix it. That's sick, skuzzy, puke-rotten.” He glanced again at the Message From line. “What a low-life.” Then a slow, mirthless smile slid across his lips. “But now I have something to work with—real data.” He all but pushed Paul from his desk chair.

“I'll do a degrees of separation search,” said Alf, his eyes locked on the screen. “Mind if I download some tools?”

“No,” said Paul weakly. “But ... but maybe I should just pay it.”

“And let the bad guys win?” Alf's hands glided over the keyboard. “Do you really want to do that?”

“No!” Paul straightened to his full height, and his backbone stiffened. “No, I don't!”

“Excellent!”

Over the next few minutes, Paul watched in silence, and in almost complete incomprehension, as Alf worked.

“No luck with the Fs.” Alf's words cut into the eerie near-silence, which was broken only by key clicks. “I'll try the Ds and Cs.”

Again, Alf worked with a quiet intensity. And again, Paul understood little of what Alf did.

After another ten minutes or so, Alf shouted, “Got him!” Paul jumped at the sound.

“Thomas Edward Remington, the Third.” Alf glanced sideways at Paul. “You gave him a C.”

“It was a gift. He should have gotten a D minus. But he demanded the C, so he could get into medical school.” Paul had a qualm, a feeling he'd revealed information protected by the student-teacher relationship. “You're sure he's behind this?”

“Only one degree of separation between him and Pristine. Maybe even zero degrees. It's him, all right.” Alf returned his attention to the computer. He chortled as his fingers glided over the keys. Then, with a flourish, he raised his hands from the keyboard. “I've lowered his grade point average by half a grade. No way he'll ever get into med school.”

Paul silently sucked in a breath, scandalized by the easy violation of the sanctity of the university's computer and the very idea of altering a student's grades. “I know the kid. He'll make a royal stink about it.”

“If he ever finds out.” Alf, his eyes on the monitor, looked pleased with himself. “Anyway, no one keeps hard copy records anymore. He won't be able to prove a thing.” He turned to Paul. “We werewolves do good work, don't we?”

“You do.” Paul concealed his bemusement. “Are all werewolves geeks?”

“Yeah. Of course. That's what makes us werewolves.”

Paul thought he was beginning to understand. Werewolf must just be another name for geek.

Alf, with the air of a boxer returning to the ring, attacked the keyboard. “Now let's see if we can find some dirt on Pristine Associates.”

Paul watched as Alf entered a string of numbers. “What are you doing?”

“I'm doing a Ghoul search.” Alf spoke in a distant voice indicating extreme multitasking.

“Ah, yes. Wait. Did you say Ghoul search?”

“Ghoul is the search engine for the dark side,” said Alf as the site came up. “The good dark side, of course.” He began typing furiously. “It doesn't have a URL. Only an address—to keep out the wuggies.”

“Didn't know you could do that,” said Paul softly, as much to himself as to Alf.

“Simple.” Alf spoke hesitatingly, apparently at the limit of his multitasking. “Our werewolf site doesn't have a URL either.” He leaned into the screen. “Interesting!” He keyed more numbers and while a page loaded, said, “And some highly secret sites don't even have a static URL.” He leaned back. “No. Not interesting.”

“Could you recommend some books where I could learn about all this? I want to graduate from wuggyhood.”

“Books?” Alf laughed. “By the time the information appears in dead-treeware, it's already obsolete.” He turned to Paul. “But the NOW website has some up-to-date articles.”

“Now?”

“Nocturnal Order of Werewolves. After I'm done Ghouling, I'll bring up the site for you.”

“Will I be able to understand the articles?” said Paul with a forced smile.

“Probably not.”

“Thanks a lot.”

“But,” Alf went on, “just go to the ‘For Cubs’ section of the site. There's elementary stuff there.”

“Cub Section. Oh, great.”

Alf turned serious. “I'm doing this as a favor. To help you turn geek.” His voice held a tinge of menace. “So don't let anyone else see the site. Okay?”

The computer beeped and Alf jerked his head to face the screen. “Verrry interesting. Pristine is some kind of an outgrowth of Blackdata Corp.”

“Blackdata? Never heard of them.”

“Bad, bad, bad.” Alf scanned through several screens of small print. “The president of Pristine is a Dwayne Blodgett.” Alf kept reading. “And he's very, very bad stuff.” His eyes widened. “Hey. Pristine Associates is right here in the city.”

“Is this Blodgett a wuggy?”

“No. I think he is a geek—no credit to geek-kind.” Alf appeared thoughtful. “But of course he could be just a script-kiddie.”

Paul, already on new-jargon overload, didn't even ask.

“To work, to work,” said Alf with a lupine smile. He pulled up Paul's e-mail client and wrote a message. Then, with an exaggeratedly pointed forefinger, he hit send.

“What have you done?” said Paul, with a feeling of unease.

“I've arranged a meeting with Dwayne Blodgett at four this afternoon.”

“What?” Paul felt things were going much too fast and were getting out of control. “Where? At Pristine Associates?”

“He'll be at Pristine Associates. We'll be here.”

“A virtual meeting?”

“Yeah,” said Alf, as if in answer to an unnecessary question. “Your computer's webcam works, I assume.”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“And the computer has gesture recognition software?”

“What?” It was yet another term Paul had never heard before.

“Jeesh!” Again, Alf's hands played over the keyboard. “I'll load it now.” He gave an all-but-imperceptible shake of the head. “You're a real . . .” he said just above a whisper.

Alf had let the sentence tail off, but Paul, to his shame, had no doubt of the missing final word: wuggy.

“Do you have a preferred avatar?” Alf asked as he downloaded and installed the software.

Paul shook his head but then, since Alf's eyes were still on his work, said, “I don't.”

“Mine's a werewolf, of course.” Alf sounded more relaxed now, and his hands were calm, with fingertips resting softly on the keyboard.

“For online use, I imagine,” said Paul lightly, noting that Alf's relaxed state had spread to him.

“Yeah?”

“So,” said Paul, “I don't have to keep dog biscuits in the office for you to snack on?”

“No,” said Alf with no trace of humor. “I have plenty in my lair.”

“I'm not surprised.” Paul smiled, surprised at the realization that indeed, he wasn't surprised.

Alf leaned forward, his eyes filled with innocent enthusiasm. “You could be a werewolf, too, if you want—after you learn how, that is.”

“I'm more of a cat person,” said Paul with a chuckle.

Alf's eyes widened. “You want to be a werecat then?”

“That's not exactly what I meant.”

“Why not? If you want, you could be a werecat, or a werelion.” Alf lifted his hands from the keyboard and spread them wide “Or a werehyeana, or a werebat, or a—”

“Werebat?” said Paul. “You mean a vampire.”

“No. That term now only belongs to giggly adolescent girls.”

Paul, succumbing to the relaxed mood, thought back to his own adolescence. “You know,” he said shyly. “when I was a kid I did imagine myself as a sort of werecat—a super-hero. The Sabertooth Avenger.” Paul drifted into fond reverie: righting wrongs, tearing the throats out of bullies, receiving the accolades of his schoolmates.

“Fine,” said Alf, snapping Paul back to the present, and to reality. “You're the Sabertooth Avenger, then.”

“A dream,” said Paul, feeling a small sense of loss. “A boyhood dream.”

“You said to live our dreams.”

Paul gave a bark of a laugh. “I don't think I meant it that way.”

Alf persisted. “But to the community, you can really be the Avenger.”

“What community?”

“What community?” Alf repeated in a distant voice. He pursed his lips. “If we don't name it, then it can't be searched. So as far as the Net is concerned, there is no it.” He smiled. “But we can call it the Werewolf Community.”

By now, Paul had quite enough of werewolves. “But it's not real,” he said impatiently, wanting to put an end to it.

“Neither is a ... a newspaper.”

“What?” Paul knew he had a logical rebuttal to that argument, and tried to think of it.

“The map is not the territory,” Alf went on. “Real, not-real. That's so ... binary.” Alf stood. “There are degrees of reality, and many different reality scales. Anyway, for our Pristine meeting, I'll build you a generic avatar. You can change it to the Avenger later.” He started for the door. “See you at ... three-thirty.” He took another step, then spun around. “Oh, wait! The werewolf site.” He darted to the computer and, leaning over it, brought up a website. “Click on the eye of the wolf to enter the site.” He stood erect, stretched, and again went to the door.

As Alf put his hand on the doorknob, Paul asked, “By the way ... werewolf is just another word for geek, right?”

Alf spun around. “No!” He seemed mortally offended. “Not right. Not even wrong.” He turned again, and left the office.

“Sorry,” said Paul to a closing door.

* * * *

Paul gazed at his computer monitor. The screen was devoid of any text. In the center of a completely white screen lay a black, heraldic crest on which was a stylized wolf's head, also in white.

Paul reached for the mouse, but pulled back. He knew that once he clicked on the wolf's eye, he'd be in for an afternoon of geek study. A long afternoon. But he'd probably learn what could be a whole new language to him. And, after all, that was his specialty—languages as applied to reality. He smiled. Perhaps his new knowledge would be sufficient to enable him to understand Alf. He considered running off to get a cup of coffee to brace himself for what was to come. Again, he smiled. No. The Sabertooth Avenger wouldn't procrastinate. Paul clicked on the eye.

Blindingly fast, a new page came up.

* * * *

The Nocturnal Order of Werewolves

The Preeminent Social-networking Site for Lycanthropes.

Community News

Resources

For Cubs

The Forum

Events

Wolf Gear

The Lair

* * * *

Werewolves in a World of Wuggies.

Join NOW for peace of mind.

(We are invisible)

* * * *

Paul stared at the surprisingly simple webpage—especially surprising, considering Alf was somehow affiliated with this site. And Alf had, almost singlehandedly, created the very advanced departmental website. Maybe it's just that they have nothing to prove. Or maybe it's just some big joke. “Or maybe,” he said aloud, “they just want people to think it's a joke.” People just don't go around believing they're werewolves. Paul sat back in his chair “Unless they really are werewolves.” He chuckled. “Yeah. Right.”

* * * *

Startled by a knock at the door, Paul jerked back from his computer. “Come in,” he called out while, almost instinctively, glancing at his watch. My god. Three-thirty already?

Alf walked in and waved a greeting.

“I've been ... studying.” Paul felt strangely guilty, for he'd learned many secrets, some of which he felt it might not even be legal to know.

“On the ‘For Cubs’ section?” said Alf with a tiny hint of condescension in his smile.

Paul nodded. “You know. I sort of wish my avatar was the Sabertooth Avenger.”

Alf's smile turned into a pleasant chuckle. “Next time, maybe.” He leaned around so he could see the monitor. “Oh. Learning how to execute virus scripts, are you?”

Paul felt himself blush, for that indeed was one of those possibly illegal secrets.

“I've been thinking,” said Alf. “It might be better if we had the meeting with Pristine in my lair.”

“Oh?”

“I have a lot of computers there—just in case I need to do some Ghouling or something during the meeting. And I have transparent muting—so we can talk while our avatars seem to be paying attention to this Dwayne dude.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Paul hibernated his computer and stood.

“I'm sorry,” said Alf as he retreated toward the door, “but you'll have to use a generic avatar.” While waiting for Paul to catch up, he added, “Tonight though, I'll whip up some avatar prototypes you might like to use. Sabertoothy things and all that.”

* * * *

Paul jerked his head to stare as Alf, standing in front of the door to his lair, howled. Then he swiveled to look at the door as, on its own, it clicked and swung open.

“Howl recognition software,” said Alf as he ushered Paul inside and followed behind.

Paul saw, first, a bumper sticker slapped onto the front of a desk.

Contemplating Werewolves: It Gives One Paws

Paul gave a smile of recognition. He'd seen the sticker for sale on the Wolf Gear section of the NOW site. The desk itself, more like a small conference table, held two computers, the larger of which was connected to a triptych of monitors. Paul felt a sense of sterility, for the desk and indeed the entire office was devoid of the jumbles of papers that graced every surface of Paul's office. Instead, the lair was a veritable rat's nest of electrical cables emanating mainly from a rack of what Paul assumed was departmental servers. A little plush toy penguin stared down from the top of the rack. The desk also held, in addition to a few candy bar wrappers, the largest pair of computer speakers Paul had ever seen. It's good that Alf's lair is in the sub-basement.

Alf strode to his desk and barked—a single, low, formidable bark.

The three monitors on the larger computer came to life, each displaying a wolf. Silent though the lair was, Paul could almost hear the snarling.

“Bark recognition software?” said Paul.

“Yeah.”

As he watched, Paul saw the outside monitors replace the wolf images with an e-mail and instant-messaging client.

Alf switched on the second computer. “This one's for you.” Standing, he worked the keyboard. “I'm bringing up the meeting software—and your avatar.” He chuckled. “A generic avatar, but I think it's appropriate. You can watch it mimic your actions in the screen-insert.” He gestured to Paul. “Sit down and try it.”

Paul sat and looked at the computer monitor. The screen was a uniform blue, except for the lower left-hand corner where a black-outlined square displayed a section of a rough-hewn table issuant from the left side of the square. The table stood in what looked like an audience chamber of a medieval castle. Flickering light from wall-mounted torches illuminated solid brickwork and tapestries displaying fabulous beasts. At the table sat a man in chain mail, his hands resting on a computer keyboard. Paul had to look close to see that it was a computer-generated image. As he bent in to look, he froze, for the image moved in as well—and also froze.

Experimenting, Paul found that the armored man, his avatar, did indeed mimic his motions. This is fantastic!

Hearing a click, Paul glanced to his left. Alf's central monitor was in the process of deforming from flat to curved.

“The new active displays,” said Alf. “More immersive for virtual meetings. Neat, isn't it?”

“Very,” said Paul, feeling a touch of tech-envy. He observed that the monitor also had an insert showing the room and the table, this time coming from the right side of the square. Sitting at that end of the table glowered Alf's avatar, a very convincing werewolf, even though it wore a white shirt and blood-red tie. Its paws also rested on a computer keyboard. The paws began typing and Paul looked to his side—to the real Alf.

“I'm messaging Dwayne Blodgett,” said Alf, “to tell him we're ready.”

Less than a minute later, Dwayne responded. Alf's and Paul's monitors’ blue backgrounds were replaced by an image of a posh conference room. A large reproduction of a Turner landscape covered a side wall, while the other two visible walls were of glass, looking out and down onto a great city. At a mirror-smooth oak desk sat a man of about thirty, attired in a three-piece gray suit and what looked like a university tie. He was smiling pleasantly. This Dwayne character doesn't look so bad. Paul smiled back. Dwayne—or rather—his avatar, as Paul had to remind himself, looked very personable and friendly, like a Unitarian minister, or maybe like a car salesman at an upscale showroom. At the gut level, Paul felt predisposed to like him. Maybe, despite Alf's assurance, Dwayne wasn't the source of the q-slapping. Maybe he was just a small-time entrepreneur providing a much-needed service.

The Dwayne avatar shifted his glance to Paul's left, apparently to the Alf werewolf. Paul noted that Dwayne looked worried. Damn good, this gesture recognition software. Paul, wondering why, canted his head. Why should Dwayne be scared of a werewolf? It's only an avatar, after all.

As Paul and Dwayne made introductions, Paul got the sudden notion that werewolf meant not geek but some kind of an ultra-geek. And Dwayne was doubtlessly afraid of what Alf could do to him, or to his Net presence at least. So that's what “Werewolves in a World of Wuggies” means.

Paul tuned back in to hear Alf say, “I hear you're asking two hundred and fifty dollars to un-q-slap my friend.”

Dwayne maintained his smile. “I think it's a fair price.”

“It might be,” said Alf in a soft voice filled with menace, “if you weren't the one who did the q-slapping.”

“Me?” said Dwayne innocently. “Why would you say that?”

“I know damned well it was you.” Alf slapped the table and Paul heard the retort and an instant later its echo through the computer speakers.

Dwayne's smile vanished for a couple of seconds, to be replaced by a worried expression. Then the smile returned. “That's neither here nor there,” said Dwayne in a cheerful voice. “But as a courtesy, I'll lower our price to a hundred and fifty dollars.” He gestured expansively. “I think you'll agree I'm being very reasonable”

Alf fisted both paws on his keyboard. “Look, skuzz-bag,” came Alf's voice. “No way you'll get even a dime from us.”

Paul glanced sideways, and started. It's funny. It seems sort of strange now to see Alf as a human. But he was clearly a very enraged human. I guess werewolves aren't known for their calm. Paul looked back at the still smiling Dwayne. Or their tact.

“When you calm down,” said Dwayne, the avatar showing annoyed disdain, “you'll realize I'm being very reasonable, indeed.” He smiled again, this time an unpleasant smile suggesting a cat chowing down on a prized canary.

“Fuck you!” Alf jumped to his feet and, with a slap of his hand, broke the connection. Dwayne and his office instantly vanished from both monitors, leaving blue voids in their place.

Paul looked to his left and upward. Alf, standing stiffly yet at the same time shaking, growled softly.

“Calm!” Paul was worried for his young colleague. “Relax. Sit down and take deep breaths.”

“Yeah.” Alf dropped down onto his chair. “I thought that once he saw I was a werewolf, he'd back off.” He stared at the central monitor where the square insert showed his avatar panting like a dog.

Gradually, over the minute or so, Alf's breathing slowed to near normal. A flickering on Alf's left monitor drew his and Paul's attention. The e-mail client showed messages arriving about every two seconds. Idly, Alf opened the first message.

Paul and Alf both gasped as a full-color obscenity filled the screen. Alf hit delete and the image was replaced by an even more despicable display. Alf, as if by reflex, slammed down his hand and closed the e-mail client. “I've been q-slapped,” he said in a voice suggesting he could scarcely believe it.

He jumped to his feet and glowered at the blue central monitor. “Slime-worm!” He jerked his head to look with wild eyes at Paul. “Boy, has he ever picked the wrong werewolf to q-slap.” He looked to the ceiling, as if he could see right through it. “And tonight,” he said in a low, growling voice, “is a full moon.”

Paul simply nodded, not feeling comfortable inserting any words into Alf's rage.

Alf glanced back at the blue screen and blew out a scornful breath. “That slimy hyper-creep must think his powers are greater than mine.” He turned to confront Paul. “I can take care of this.” He flexed his fingers with a clawing motion. “You'd better go now. I'll see you early tomorrow.”

Paul suppressed a wayward laugh. “You mean about noon.”

“Yeah. That's what I said.” Alf turned and threw himself down at his keyboard.

Quietly, Paul left Alf's lair and returned to his office, picking up a cup of coffee from a vending machine on the way.

* * * *

Paul inhaled the rich, albeit somewhat synthetic, aroma of his coffee. Then, with resolve, he set the cup down next to his keyboard. He envisioned a long night of study at the For Cubs pages. He had a lot still to learn.

He fired up his browser, found the NOW site in his Recent Pages folder, and clicked on it. But he got an Address Not Found error. Puzzled for a moment, Paul speculated that the site had changed its bottom-level domain name, or maybe didn't even have a static IP address. He visualized the NOW homepage. That's what “We Are Invisible” meant: Invisible to search engines. He felt proud of himself that his recent study had made it possible for him even to make such deductions. That's why Alf had to Ghoul-search the NOW site. They must automatically inform Ghoul when they change their URL. Paul pulled Ghoul from his history file, Ghouled NOW, returned to For Cubs and continued his education. Now that he was already seeing some results of his study, he looked forward to it.

* * * *

When Paul found he could hardly keep his eyes open anymore, he checked the time. Late. Very late. But worth it, now that he felt he was well on the path to geek-hood. He felt elated at the thought.

By habit, he called up his e-mail client—and the elation popped and vanished. With a heavy sigh, he began the task of deleting the highly obnoxious e-mails. I'll soup up my spam filter in the morning. He felt disheartened by not having found a more geek-intensive method of solving the problem. Maybe when I graduate from For Cubs.

Having finished the task, he shut down his computer, tossed the long-empty coffee cup, and headed for the door. He wondered just how Alf intended to handle things. As he trudged wearily to his car in the dead of night, he smiled with the thought that he had probably left his office even later than Alf had left his.

* * * *

Slightly before noon the following day, cup of hot vending-machine coffee in hand, Paul walked zombie-like into his office. Painfully aware he couldn't pull all-nighters anymore—at least not without aftereffects—he slumped down into his office chair. Mechanically, he powered up his computer and, by habit, brought up an e-mail client. As it loaded, Paul remembered the q-slapping. He gritted his teeth, preparing to do battle with evil e-mails.

But, in surprise, Paul saw that there were only four messages in his inbox and, from their subject lines, none of them looked poisonous. All non-toxic. No spam-except for another missive from the Nigerian President's wife. He wondered how Alf had managed to pull it off. When he gets in, I'll ask him.

Relaxed now and basking in the assurance of a clean-minded computer, Paul leaned back in his chair, reached for his coffee, and brought up the online edition of The Daily Sponge, his preferred local paper.

He took a sip of the coffee. Then, his eyes taking in the headline, he gasped, snapping his seat forward and splattering coffee droplets over the keyboard.

* * * *

Developing Story:

Police, responding to a call from a neighbor early this morning, discovered the body of Dwayne Blodgett lying at the open door of his apartment. His throat had been ripped out, seemingly by a wild animal. Neighbors have told police that Mr. Blodgett owned a dog, a springer spaniel. A spokesman for the SPCA suggested that this might be a case of “springer rage,” where a previously mild, friendly dog suddenly goes wild. This is a very rare but known condition of springer spaniels. The dog is missing. The police have issued a warning to residents not to try to apprehend the animal, but to instead phone the police or the SPCA.

* * * *

“Springer rage, hell!” Paul sputtered, all trace of his exhaustion gone. “It was werewolf rage.”

Paul's mind went free-wheeling, overwhelmed with thoughts and fears, struggling to take in the enormity of the situation. Alf was the perp. No doubt about that. What to do? Paul reached for the phone, then slammed it back in its cradle. He couldn't turn Alf in to the police. I mean, Dwayne Blodgett sort of had it coming—and anyway, good software geeks are hard to find. “Damn it,” he said aloud. “What if he signs up for my course on Ethics and Society?” Paul blew out a breath. He felt he himself should be signing up for the course.

The phone rang and Paul started. Reflexively, he picked up the handset. “Ha ... hello.”

“You can erase your inbox now, Professor Campbell.” It was Alf and his voice sounded deathly serious. “I've repaired your quiddity. You shouldn't be getting any more junk—at least not because of Dwayne Blodgett.”

Paul jumped at the mention of the victim's name. “Look, Alf,” he said, trying to keep his voice steady. “Better come up to my office, so we can ... so we can talk over things.”

“Yeah, sure.” Alf sounded tentative. “Is something wrong?”

“Is something. ... Look. Just come up to my office.”

“Okay. Fine.” Alf hung up and Paul sat staring at the handset. Why did I do that? Do I really want to talk to a murderer who thinks he's a werewolf? Slowly, Paul replaced the handset in its cradle, then, in the throes of indecision, picked it up again—and again slammed it back down. He stared down at the phone, for how long he couldn't tell.

A knock came at the door and Alf walked in. Paul, startled, slid his chair backwards against the wall.

Alf looked puzzled. “Is something wrong?”

Paul, finding himself unable to speak, pointed to the headline on the monitor. He all but cowered in his desk chair as Alf came over to read it.

Peering at the monitor, Alf laughed.

Paul's fear turned to anger. How could the taking of a human life provoke laughter? Werewolf or not, this guy is certainly a monster.

Turning to face Paul after he'd finished reading, Alf's expression morphed from one of triumph to puzzlement and then to amusement. “Yes, I killed Blodgett,” he said evenly, “on ... the ... Net.”

“What?” said Paul dumbly.

“His slimy physical manifestation has been unaffected.”

“Are you saying he's not really dead?”

Alf shrugged. “Depends on what you mean by dead ... and by really. Which reality.” Again he laughed. “He's dead where it matters.”

“But . . .” Paul struggled to come to grips with the situation. “But the newspaper said—”

“A map,” said Alf in high humor. “It's not necessarily the territory.”

“You ... you planted that story?”

“Grew nicely, didn't it? Other papers picked it up.” Alf made a slurping sound. “Lots of blood, virtual blood.”

“Virtual?” Paul struggled to come to grips with the new reality.

“Yeah, of course,” said Alf dismissively. “The newspaper was the easy part.” Alf radiated a smile. “I've made it so that even his bank thinks he's dead. And I got his credit and ID cards canceled. He doesn't even have a library card anymore.” Alf spoke with exuberance. “In fact, as far as the Net is concerned, he is dead.” He chuckled. “And resurrection is non-trivial.” Alf's smile took on a savage aspect. “Dwayne is dead. Dwayne has gone dark.” He bared his teeth.

Paul sensed the submerged savagery—the virtual savagery. If the internet thinks he's a werewolf ... then for most practical purposes, he probably is. And who am I to argue with the Net? Paul felt a return of a childhood yearning—to be special, a superhero, perhaps. “You know,” he said, tentatively. “I think I'd really like to be a geek, myself—a werewolf.”

Alf, looking startled, froze for an instant. “Sure. Why not?” He spread his hands. “It's the Lycanthropic Principle.”

“Which is?”

“On the Net, nobody knows you're not a werewolf.”

Paul suppressed a laugh, acutely aware of the surrealism of the situation. “Reality is complicated, isn't it?”

Alf shook his head vigorously. “No.”

At the sound of an angry knock, Paul and Alf turned their heads toward the door.

Roger Robinson burst in. “This Dombrowski. The bastard's done it again!” Then, seeing Alf, he said. “Sorry. Didn't know there was a meeting going on.”

“No problem,” said Paul, waving him in.

“It's just that Dombrowski's plagiarized another of my papers.” Roger rubbed a hand across his forehead. “And there seems to be no damned thing I can do about it.”

Still giddy with relief and surrealism, Paul snapped to his feet, sending his office chair rolling back, hitting the wall with a soft thud. “This is a job,” he said, finger in the air, “for the Sabertooth Avenger!”

“What?” said Roger, his eyes bug-wide.

“Yes!” Alf raised a fist in victory. Then he howled.

Roger backed toward the door. “Plagiarism is serious,” he said in an uncertain voice.

“Yes, it is,” said Paul. He turned to Alf and answered the howl with a deep leonine growl.

Roger looked wildly from face to face. “What have you guys been smoking?” He backed up, pushing the door open with his butt. “I'll ... I'll come back later.” Giving a final baffled look to Paul, he backed up farther, leaving the office.

Secure in his new sacred knowledge, Paul smiled. “Wuggy,” he said under his breath, facing the now-closed door.

Copyright © 2011 Carl Frederick

[Back to Table of Contents]

Novella: ENERGIZED: CONCLUSION: PART IV OF IV
by Edward M. Lerner

* * * *

llustrated by Vincent Di Fate

* * * *

If something is potentially very dangerous, should it be banned?

Synopsis

Earth's newly captured second moon—a dangerously aimed rock-and-ice mass that had come hurtling out of the Asteroid Belt—is a treacherous rubble pile. Robots surveying Phoebe's surface regularly get stuck. When that happens, astronauts must find and free the trapped bot.

THADDEUS Stankiewicz, intent on a clandestine project in the Phoebe Base machine shop, is startled by fellow explorer GABE CAMPBELL. Once again a bot needs rescue, and the two men are on call. Thad hurriedly sweeps up his mess of pipes, metal rods, and wire coils, and the men suit up. As they cross Phoebe on their way to the trapped bot, Gabe shows too much interest in what Thad had been making. Thad kills Gabe and makes the death appear to be suicide.

Three years pass. . . .

The year is 2023, and the Great Stagflation grips the world. Nine years earlier, a geopolitical miscalculation had sufficed to taint several Middle Eastern oil fields with radioactivity and plunge the region into chaos. The oil that remains usable is more prized than ever. But the Crudetastrophe had not touched Russia's vast oil and gas reserves. Russia emerged from the crisis as a petro-superpower, controlling unprecedented wealth, snapping up American treasury bonds at fire-sale prices, and vying for global economic hegemony.

Solar power satellites beaming power (as microwaves) to the ground offer America its last best chance to avoid servitude and economic ruin. And so, NASA's interest in Phoebe is less scientific than practical: Phoebe is a vast reservoir of oxygen, water, and raw materials already in orbit. As though constructing miles-across structures in space isn't a sufficient challenge, special interests—everyone from technophobes to eco-extremists to radio astronomers—want to stop the project. The “Reset” movement opposes new energy infrastructure, however eco-friendly, as only repeating past environmental insults.

NASA contractor MARCUS JUDSON supports the Powersat One (PS-1) demonstration project. He finds it harder and harder not to despair at opposition he finds so misguided. His cynicism takes a hit when ELLEN TANAKA (program manager for PS-1 and Marcus's boss) sends him to the National Radio Astronomy Observatory in Green Bank, West Virginia. The astronomers make a strong case that microwave transmitters on PS-1 (and the many powersats perhaps to follow) can disrupt their research.

Marcus starts dating radio astronomer VALERIE CLAYBURN. They live hours apart and end up seeing more of one another online—often remotely controlling rental bots in a tourist preserve on Phoebe—than in person. On one visit, Marcus meets Valerie's friend and coworker PATRICK BURKHALTER, disgraced former principal investigator of the Jules Verne asteroid probe. Patrick trains visiting astronomers to use the observatory's telescopes, and his coworkers are certain he uses class exercises as a way to hunt for the lost-in-space probe. Patrick claims interest in SETI (search for extraterrestrial intelligence), but everyone presumes the high-powered transmitter he has built for retrofitting into the Green Bank telescope is just in case—against all odds—he ever does locate the missing probe.

Venture capitalist DILLON RUSSO backs innovative alternate-energy start-ups—to subtly sabotage them. Among his investments is Jorgenson Power Systems, which operates a prototype OTEC (ocean thermal energy conversion) power plant on an idle oil platform in the Santa Barbara Channel. Besides gullible investors cowed by his reputation, Dillon counts among his backers a Russian diplomat.

The State Department knows Yakov Nikolayevich Brodsky as the Deputy Trade Representative. (His longtime assistant, Irina Ivanovna Chesnokova, is an expert programmer. Irina was born deaf and has cochlear implants.) But trade rep is only diplomatic cover for Yakov's true role: spy and agent provocateur for the Federal Security Service.

No one at the State Department suspects that Yakov made it possible for the Restored Caliphate to obtain old Soviet atomic bombs. Or that he planted the suggestion that the bombs be lowered deep into desert oil reservoirs to deter aggression by the Caliphate's enemies. Or that Yakov's ally, the Russian hacker PSYCHO CYBORG, had rendered the bomb controls subtly unstable. Not even Yakov's neighbor, CIA analyst TYLER POPE, suspects Yakov is the mastermind behind the Crudetastrophe.

At Yakov's connivance, Dillon sneaks three saboteurs onto the OTEC platform in the middle of the night. The platform delivers its power by beaming microwaves, and the saboteurs redirect a beam at a pleasure boat at anchor off Santa Cruz Island. Two people die horribly. Resetters use the incident to discredit PS-1 and its far more powerful microwave beams.

To salvage the PS-1 program, NASA orders an independent safety inspection of the power satellite. Ellen assigns Marcus as her liaison to the inspection team. He trains for space at the Cosmic Adventures facility that was once the Johnson Space Center, with inspectors Savannah Morgan (an Air Force civilian cyber-security specialist), Olivia FINCH (a quality-assurance expert from Caltech), and Reuben Swenson (an engineer from the DOE).

Since a religious experience on a desert retreat, Dillon knows himself as a servant of Gaia and sees resisting affronts to the Earth as his calling. But to slaughter innocents, like the young girl and her grandfather on his boat? That, too, was an affront to Gaia. Dillon angrily tells Yakov that their marriage of convenience is over—and Yakov shows otherwise. Yakov has a video of Dillon letting the saboteurs onto the OTEC platform. To avoid exposure for his role in the Santa Cruz Island deaths, Dillon must keep helping Yakov. In the guise of a company bonus, Dillon will travel with Yakov's saboteurs to the orbital playground of plutocrats, The Space Place. Their first step: the Cosmic Adventures training facility, where Dillon and Marcus briefly meet.

Still working on Phoebe, Thad lives with the secret shame of being a murderer. His little sister's sordid past, should it become known, would destroy Robin and her family. As the price of Yakov's silence, Thad does Yakov's bidding. Yakov sends a coded message: Men are coming for the devices Thad once killed to hide. Success of the mission is paramount, but Thad is ordered not to reveal himself unnecessarily.

Under very different circumstances, on separate commercial flights, two teams leave Earth mere days apart. Marcus and three inspectors go to Phoebe. Dillon and the men posing as his employees go to The Space Place. Everyone ends up scarcely a few hundred miles apart: PS-1 and The Space Place co-orbit with Phoebe, both facilities tapping the moonlet for supplies. Dillon—having gotten Jonas Walker (software engineer), Lincoln Roberts (electrical engineer), and Felipe Torres (communications engineer) aboard The Space Place—believes his work for Yakov is done.

Thad, Marcus, and the inspectors are at work aboard PS-1 when a solar coronal mass ejection (CME) is detected—almost upon Earth. The radiation will be deadly, and the construction crew hastily evacuates to Phoebe. So do the tourists and staff of The Space Place, where the electromagnetic shield has failed (or, as Dillon infers, been sabotaged).

Thad surreptitiously destroys the base radio and gives his long-hidden homemade devices—electromagnetic coil guns—to the newly arrived saboteurs. Jonas shoots station chief IRV WEINGART, ending resistance to the base takeover. With the CME arrival imminent, Jonas, Felipe, Lincoln, and Dillon leave everyone else huddling in Phoebe Base's overcrowded underground radiation shelter.

Where Thad, the deputy commander, now commands. . . .

Valerie's husband had died in Afghanistan, and she struggled with Marcus's dangerous assignment even before the CME alert. Obsessively monitoring space-weather news, she spots an anomaly. A CME streaming past Earth should produce dramatic aurorae borealis. This CME isn't.

Dillon and Felipe hurl into space the utility craft The Space Place evacuees had flown to imagined safety. Disposing of the hoppers is a precaution lest “the rodents” come out. Once Jonas and Lincoln complete an errand at Phoebe's automated infrared observatory, the terrorists take the remaining hoppers to PS -1.

Valerie's questions lead to a disturbing discovery: the Space Weather Prediction Center has been hacked. The CME is a fake! Russian hacker Psycho Cyborg is implicated in the penetration of the weather center. Tyler choppers into Green Bank, recruiting Valerie for the crisis team gathering in the federal emergency operations center at Mount Weather, Virginia.

As oxygen supplies dwindle, Marcus defies the terrorist order to stay inside the radiation shelter—only the hatch won't open. They're trapped.

With modifications that could only be made locally, the terrorists convert PS-1's gigawatt microwave beam into a weapon. They methodically destroy alternative energy sources (like tidal power generators, solar farms, and wind farms) and the export terminal of a cartel member selling oil beyond its quota. Dillon, in an initial rush of adrenaline, takes his turn blasting things. Once he had contented himself with subtly impeding “progress.” Here and now, he can stop the madness cold.

PS-1 orbits Earth four times daily, and its inclined orbit puts the entire planet within reach of the deadly microwave beam. The terrorists do not target Russia or America, in the latter case to raise suspicions and foment resentment. Yakov exults: In a single operation, he is increasing world dependence on the Russian cartel, driving up the price of oil, disgracing the U.S., and discrediting powersats.

Comsats (taken offline for the CME alert) resume broadcasting, and aboard PS-1 Dillon listens to the news. Thousands have died and the insults to Gaia seem unending. Surely the four of them have made their point. For voicing his qualms Dillon is deemed “insufficiently committed."

Governments are close-mouthed about the nature of the terrorist strikes, but Patrick sees the attacks are always in line of sight of PS-1. “What have I done?” he agonizes. He dashes to the Green Bank Observatory, desperate to make things right.

With sensors taken from the Phoebe infrared observatory, PS-1 can lock onto mobile heat sources. When the U.S. launches a Special Ops team, the powersat targets the shuttle's exhaust—and blows the spacecraft out of the sky. Airplanes are grounded lest they, too, become targets.

PS-1's metamorphosis into a weapon of mass destruction becomes public. Russia and her allies condemn the United States for building an illegal space-based WMD. They denounce the U.S. for losing control of PS-1. They start a whispering campaign that America has only pretended to lose control. International pressure mounts on the U.S. to stop the mayhem. . . .

Ellen has been brought to Mount Weather as a PS-1 expert. She and Valerie become the red team: surrogates for the bad guys. The women struggle to deduce how PS-1 has been altered, what the terrorists might try next, and how they might repel attacks from the ground.

The red team's analysis is daunting.

PS-1 is two miles square and implements a fault-tolerant, decentralized design. It's generously stocked with spare parts and autonomous repair bots. Only an overwhelming missile salvo—or nuclear warheads, banned by treaty from use in space—can defeat the powersat. A strike devastating enough to stop the attacks will shatter PS-1 into two million pounds of orbiting shrapnel. No one can prove it, but denying the U.S. access to Phoebe and its resources must have been Russia's ultimate goal.

All that debris will also preclude rescue of the people trapped on Phoebe. But is anyone left to rescue? Since the fake CME, neither spysats nor NASA ground stations have detected signals from Phoebe. Nor has Patrick, listening with a radio telescope.

Valerie won't accept that everyone on Phoebe is dead. She marches tourist bots across Phoebe to NASA's base. She finds the hopper garage empty and the habitat open to vacuum.

Patrick phones in a bomb threat to evacuate the Green Bank Observatory. With his “SETI” transmitter, he turns the world's largest fully steerable radio telescope into a microwave source. He wields only a megawatt to PS-1's gigawatt, but his focused beam suffices to knock PS-1 offline.

Knowing only that PS-1 can be disrupted, the military delays its missile salvo.

The terrorists disengage a PS-1 fault-detection subsystem that the incoming microwaves had confused. With PS-1 again functional, the terrorists use Patrick's beam as a beacon to strike back.

With bots sent through the gaping air lock into Phoebe Base, Valerie finds the radiation-shelter hatch jammed shut with a pry bar.

As the air turns foul, Marcus imagines he hears tapping at the long-jammed shelter hatch. They're all but out of oxygen. Why not try the door again? He leans on the latch—

And the hatch flies open into vacuum. . . .

* * * *

CONQUEST (2023)

Saturday, early afternoon, September 30

The gale blew Marcus from the shelter.

People screamed. Papers, datasheets, emergency-ration wrappers, and drink bulbs pelted Marcus, then whipped past him up the access shaft. As the wind lifted him, too, but more slowly, the hatch rebounded from the shaft wall to slam into his side and send him spinning.

Someone shoved him aside to clamber up the ladder into the station. Someone in a blue counterpressure suit and helmet.

Suddenly air gushed the other way: down the shaft. Toward the shelter.

Marcus crashed into a wall. Debris swirled about. As did an eight-legged something. A silvery tourist bot.

“I knew you would hear me,” he told Valerie. And passed out.

* * * *

“So what shall it be, hmm?” Jonas floated above a terminal, hands poised. “I see beacons lit for a solar farm in Cuba, a garbage-fueled municipal power plant on Aruba, and a tidal power plant in the Azores. What's your pleasure?”

Dillon shivered. Pleasure? “You know how I feel.”

“I'll take that as a vote for something dramatic, something to get this over quickly.” Jonas studied his terminal. “More than cigars will be smoking in Cuba.”

“You really think that's necessary?”

“I do indeed, boss.” Something changed in Jonas's voice, and his customary mocking tone vanished. “Because if we don't get a response soon we'll have to up the ante. None of us want that.”

“Up the ante?”

“Uh-huh,” Jonas said flatly. “Population centers.”

* * * *

“Shit, shit, shit!”

Abandoning a systematic search, Tyler Pope dashed toward the sudden, heartfelt curse. Valerie Clayburn did not seem like the cussing kind, but these were not ordinary times, and the pissed-off voice sure sounded like hers. He found Valerie and Ellen Tanaka in an out-of-the-way meeting room.

“There you are,” he began. Then he noticed—in grayscale, the shading somehow offending his sense of nature—a holo of what must be Phoebe and its base. At the heart of the image, an air-lock hatch ajar. And obstructing much of his view, a white-on-red blinking banner that shouted: Bots lost. User account frozen pending investigation. “What's going on?”

The women exchanged anguished glances. Ellen nodded.

“First things first,” Valerie said. She opened another holo to show a hatch in an interior room or shaft, the door latch jammed with a pry bar. “People were trapped inside the Phoebe radiation shelter. Ellen and I had marched tourist bots across Phoebe to see what we could learn. This image was taken a few minutes ago.”

“Were trapped?” Tyler echoed.

Frowning, Valerie opened a third image: a blurry, canted, still shot of someone emerging from the hatch. “This is from maybe a minute before you joined us. I think the bot that took the picture is spinning in midair, knocked off the hatch latch from which it had removed the pry bar. But thin air, because we found the station in vacuum and the shelter hatch exploded open.”

“And what's happening now?” he asked. “How are the people doing? What can they tell us about events on PS-1?”

“I don't know,” Valerie said. She gestured at the original holo and its flashing disconnect banner. “Closing the air lock broke the radio connection to the bots inside the base. I've gotten myself blacklisted for seeming to have lost rentals.”

“This I can fix,” Tyler said, squinting at the logo in a corner of the images. “Out of Body Tours.”

As he reached into a coat pocket for his cell, it rang. “Pope.”

“It's hitting the fan again,” Charmaine Powell said. By dashing off in search of Valerie, he had left his protégée doing the honors for the CIA in the war room. “General Rodgers wants you back, pronto.”

“Meeting still flailing?” he guessed.

“The attacks have resumed.”

“Okay, keep me informed. I'll be back when I can.” He hung up, surfed to Out of Body Tours, and rang the tech-support number.

“Out of Body—”

“National emergency,” Tyler interrupted. “Your CEO, now.”

“What's the nature of your prob—” the tech-support guy began, squirming in his seat.

“Forget your script. The CEO, now. Homeland Security authorization code . . .” Tyler needed a moment to recall the string of digits. “You do know what's happening in the world?”

“A ... a moment, sir. I need to put you on hold.” Click.

“Homeland Security?” Ellen asked.

Pope shrugged. “I get fewer questions and more cooperation that way.” Because cooperating with homeland security might mean saving your own hide.

The frozen image on the phone dissolved into a puzzled-looking blond woman. “Regina Foster. What's this about, Mister ... ?”

Whether it was playing the national-emergency card or his government expense account, in three minutes Tyler had the CEO's promise to transfer the entire bot operation on Phoebe to Valerie's control. Everyone on tech support would be at her disposal.

“But I don't know for how long we can keep it up,” Foster said. “I want to help, not that I understand what's going on, but our Phoebe facility is running off backup batteries. We buy power from NASA, and their nuke hasn't returned to service since the CME.”

Tyler's phone gave a call-waiting chirp, and the name on his caller ID should not have been coming up. It wouldn't unless yet more shit had hit the fan—and it was that kind of day.

He said, “All the more reason to make things happen now. Work it out with Dr. Clayburn. I'm transferring the—”

“I don't have a cell,” Valerie interrupted.

He transferred the bot lady to Ellen's phone and took his incoming call.

“Sorry to interrupt, sir,” said a soldier in combat gear: the leader of the squad left to watch over Valerie's family.

Valerie must have recognized the sergeant too. “Simon! My parents! Patrick! Are they all right?”

“Your family are fine, ma'am,” the soldier said. “I left them at your house, with half my squad. Dr. Burkhalter left this morning.”

Valerie stared, her heart pounding in her chest, hearing disaster in the young man's carefully flat and expressionless voice. “Why aren't you with my family?”

“Mr. Pope, sir?”

“Go ahead, Sergeant,” Pope said. “What's going on?”

“Yes, sir. While watching the doctor's house, I monitored the police bands. The county sheriff received a bomb threat. . . .”

Methodically, dispassionately, the soldier reported. Then he said, “Sir? I can't begin to describe this next part. May I show you?”

“Go ahead,” Pope said.

The sergeant disappeared, replaced by sky and woods. The image swung crazily, then zoomed. But at what?

“Where was this vid taken, Sergeant?” Pope asked.

“From the top of the NRAO water tower, sir.”

Valerie squinted at the jumble of white arcs, lines, and crumpled white ... paper? The heap had no meaning to her without some indication of scale. Only as she stared, a squat white something, peeking out from beneath the rubble, caught her eye. Tiny, like a shoebox. And she saw something black, even smaller, in a trough of the rubble pile. The black whatever-it-was reminded her of something.

The cab of one of Simon's many toy trucks, likewise squashed.

The scale clicked in.

“The Green Bank Telescope has collapsed,” she said in awe and horror.

“Yes, ma'am,” the soldier said.

“The bomb?” she asked. Why would anyone ... ?

“No, ma'am.”

Pope helped her to a chair. “I came looking for you because someone was beaming microwaves from the quiet zone. Somehow, the beam stopped the PS-1 attacks ... for a time.”

Valerie shivered. “Until, this.”

“So it appears,” Pope said.

That “shoebox” was the onsite trailer for maintenance control of the GBT. She knew that trailer very well. And she knew someone who drove a black pickup. Who, her heart told her, would be found inside that crushed trailer. Beneath many tons of wreckage.

“Oh, Patrick,” she whispered. “What have you done now?”

* * * *

Saturday, late afternoon, September 30

Those assholes, Thad thought every few seconds. The curse, unbidden and unhelpful, returned no matter how urgent the matter to which he attended. To restart the base was complicated under any circumstances, and he was pretty damned sure no one had ever had to try a restart after a blowout. Or with dozens of tourists underfoot. Or with the station chief in the infirmary, doped up to his eyeballs.

Assholes. Jonas and his buddies had left almost eighty people to smother in their own fumes. It hadn't been enough to strand everyone by taking away every last hopper?

“Hey, Thad,” someone radioed.

With his head still throbbing from a hypoxia-induced migraine, Thad needed a few seconds to place the voice. “Go ahead, Chuck.”

“The power plant restarted without a hitch. I'm ready to send some juice.”

“Excellent,” said Dino Agnelli. He was flat on the floor, his head inside the main comm console. “Then we can get some heat in this place.”

“Let's not take any chances,” Thad radioed Chuck. “Start at ten percent.”

“Ten percent. You got it.”

And Thad's status board said they did. “Good job, Chuck. Stay there for a bit, in case there are any snags.”

Because there would be snags. The assholes.

Thad routed power to central heating, then shut down the emergency fuel cells with which he had restarted the base.

Dino inched out of the console. “Main comm is a total loss, Thad. They did a real number on it. Sorry.”

What if anyone found out they was me? Thad shivered, and it had nothing to do with the station's chill. “Can you fix it?”

“I'll have to assemble a new transceiver from scratch. In theory, we have spares of everything.” Dino stood. “With luck nothing that I need blew out the air lock.”

“Assholes,” Thad answered.

“You got that right. We're damned lucky not to have lost anyone. You want the good news?”

“Absolutely.”

Dino settled into the command center's second chair and did something at its console. “ ... continue to rage out of control. Spacecraft and, with few exceptions, aircraft remain grounded worldwide. Meanwhile, in breaking news, powersat attacks have resumed after an unexplained brief hiatus. Joining us live from Havana, BBC correspondent—”

“Turn that off,” Thad ordered. “How the hell is that good news?” Or even news? From the moment crew had stepped outside after their escape, people had been tuning into the radio and 3-V reports streaming down from broadcast satellites in higher orbits.

“I wired a spare helmet radio to the main antenna,” Dino said, clicking off the newscast. “By good news, I meant only that now everyone inside can know what's going on. If they want to know.” A long pause. “So are we going to live through this?”

“Yeah.” Thad even half-believed what he said. “With the nuke running, we have power for years. That means we have oh-two and water for years.”

“Not food for years, though. Especially not with so many guests.”

Because no one would be coming to get them. Not while PS-1 . . .

Assholes.

Thad checked the work board. Five crew and Marcus remained outside. What, exactly, Marcus did, Thad did not know. But had Marcus not heard, or hallucinated, the tapping at the hatch, they would all have died in the shelter. If the man intuited that his girlfriend would have left something useful on the surface—even though he had no idea what that might be—it was worth taking a look. Meanwhile, every moment of spacesuit chatter told folks listening groundside that people remained alive on Phoebe.

But who was listening, using a hefty enough dish to hear them? NASA, of course. But Yakov—in any event, some part of Russian intelligence—would be too. Yakov, whose last-minute message had ordered: Do not reveal yourself unnecessarily, but the success of the mission comes first.

And Robin and her family remained forfeit.

Everyone working topside had been directed to limit their conversation to getting stuff up and running. Whatever they transmitted might be intercepted, and helmet “private” channels lacked military- or intel-grade encryption. Thad and Savannah Morgan had argued (doubtless, for very different reasons) that they leave it to NASA—and to someone they knew at NASA—to ask for any report. NASA and military comsats could reach Phoebe as readily as had the commercial broadcast satellites.

Do not reveal yourself unnecessarily, but the success of the mission comes first.

The mission. Thad now knew what it was. And that he had made the mission possible. How many thousand deaths were on his conscience?

And how many deaths were yet to come?

* * * *

Marcus stood near the base's main air lock, tethered to guide cables, looking about. But looking for what? Valerie, give me a sign.

He saw the brilliant star that was The Space Place—without hoppers, unreachable. He saw base workers reactivating gear from the CME shutdown. All around the air lock and leading off to mines, distilleries, and factories, he saw the endlessly scuffed, scraped, and scarred surface. He saw work bots scuttling about on chores of their own.

And one bot, well out toward the too-close horizon, gamboling.

Transferring tethers to a guide cable that led toward the strange bot, he set off for a closer look. Halfway there, he could tell the bot was a tourist model. As if the bot saw him, too, it ceased its odd behavior. When he reached it, the bot was motionless.

He muted his helmet mike. “Val?” he asked, feeling foolish. “Valerie?”

The bot extended a limb to scratch at the surface. Ice glittered where it scraped away the asphalt-dark coating. A circle. Two dots.

A smiley face!

Because via the bot, through his visor, she had recognized his face? Read his lips? It could be.

The bot resumed drawing ... no, writing.

He mouthed, “What do you want me to do?”

The bot continued its scratching. As it wrote, Marcus captured pictures with his helmet camera. He thought he understood what she had in mind. No way did he have the computer skills to implement what she proposed.

Very methodically, he obliterated the message with his boot tip.

* * * *

With four people inside and its hatch closed, the base command center was full, if still nothing like the erstwhile crowding in the radiation shelter. With only a blinking cursor on the main screen, Marcus found the wait unbearable. And then—

Letter by letter, a message formed: We have visual. Test audio.

“This is Stankiewicz,” Thad said. He had taken one of the room's two chairs. Marcus and the rest stood behind him.

Loud and clear. Pause. This is Valerie Clayburn, radio astronomer and designated keyboarder. With me are Ellen Tanaka, NASA, and TLAs.

Thad said, “With me on this end are Marcus Judson and Dino Agnelli, both NASA contractors, and Savannah Morgan, civilian with the Air Force.”

“TLAs?” Marcus whispered.

Savvy whispered back, “Three-letter agencies. CIA and NSA, most likely. I suspect NSA wizards helped implement your friend's clever idea.”

A clever idea Dino and Savvy had had to implement unaided at this end. Comm protocols were hardly Marcus's forte. He gathered that the link involved tunneling a covert connection through the Out of Body Tours wireless network, then bot by bot across Phoebe to the base. With the nuclear plant once again feeding power to the bot corral, they had bots to spare.

Whatever privacy they had on the link came of subtlety, not security. It was a Catch-22 situation. Without mathematically robust, NSA-blessed encryption software on Phoebe, anyone on the ground had no acceptable way to send such software to Phoebe. All that Savvy hoped to achieve with standard Internet encryption was to deter curious employees at Out of Body Networks.

The uplink from Earth had to hide inside the bot command stream. To indicate, for example, “Turn twenty degrees clockwise and walk forward,” entailed very few bits. Only text messaging, painfully slow, fit within the low-bandwidth uplink channel.

The downlink to Earth, however, got to hide in the high-bandwidth streaming video from bot “eyes.” Bots normally streamed video with thirty-two bits of grayscale depth. Val's improvisation took grayscale video of the surface and overwrote the three least significant bits. Three bits sufficed for audio and a grainy, slow frame-rate video of the command center. Only a very discerning eye—and a suspicious mind—would notice anything amiss in the composite image.

A picture might or might not be worth a thousand words. What was not open for debate was that a decent picture took thousands of times more bits than words required.

Letter by letter, text crept across the command-center display. WHERE'S THE STATION CHIEF?

Thad said, “Irv is in the infirmary, but he's stable. Shot by the bad guys.”

WHO *ARE* THE BAD GUYS?

“Dillon Russo,” Marcus said. “I met him at the Cosmic Adventures training center in Houston, and I'm almost certain he's a Resetter. And the three guys who trained with him. Russo said they all worked for him.”

THANKS. TLA SAYS THAT FOR OTHER REASONS, WE THOUGHT THOSE FOUR WERE THE CULPRITS.

NEW TOPIC: NORAD IS TRACKING A FEW DOZEN NEW OBJECTS IN EARTH ORBIT, NOT LAUNCHED FROM THE GROUND. BIG THINGS: ABOUT TEN FEET LONG. PRELIMINARY ANALYSIS SHOWS THEIR ORBITS BUZZING PHOEBE. ANY IDEAS?

“My guess?” Thad said. “The hoppers the bad guys didn't need for themselves. We know the hoppers were missing from their garage, just not where they had gone.”

The groups brought each other up to date. When matters reached the attacks from and on the Green Bank Telescope, Val's typing went to hell: missing letters, extra letters, transpositions.

No one commented on the glitches, but Marcus worried. In weeks of texting with Valerie, he had never seen typos like this.

* * * *

Thad had little to say, reticent less as a matter of strategy than in dread of what, in his fear and guilt, he might blurt out.

He answered direct questions but volunteered nothing. Asked about the IR observatory, he radioed for someone on the surface to check it out. The pillaging of the observatory seemed only to verify existing TLA suspicions. He confirmed the base no longer had hoppers. No one admitted to knowing how the terrorists got guns to Phoebe, so his pleading ignorance fit right in.

We doon't know why the GBT attaked..

“This spy-versus-spy shit is fascinating,” Thad snapped, “but suppose we get real.”

The typing stopped. Marcus glared.

“Let's get to the basics,” Thad continued. “You can't send a relief ship with supplies or to get poor Irv to a hospital. You can't stop the attacks from PS-1. Nor, even if someone here is crazy enough to go up against armed terrorists, can we. Without hoppers, we can't get to PS-1.

“So while you TLAs think your grand thoughts, here is what's on my mind. With Irv out of commission, I'm responsible for the sixteen people stationed here and the four inspectors. It's not official, but I also feel responsible for fifty-six evacuees from The Space Place. And while I could fret about how soon we'll run out of food, what really scares me is getting stranded. Once you blow PS-1 to hell—and for all our yacking, I don't see what choice anyone has—ships won't come up here, maybe ever.”

That had to be, ultimately, Yakov's plan: the destruction of PS-1. It would sell Russian oil. It would set back American attempts to use less oil. And yet . . .

Yakov's goal and Thad's had converged. Once PS-1 was gone, the killing stopped. Once orbital debris rendered Phoebe unusable, he became of no value to Yakov.

What do you suggest?

“Evacuate! Get away while we have the chance!” he snapped back.

“We don't have enough escape pods,” Dino said. “We have five four-passenger pods for the staff, plus a spare unit. That's nowhere near what we'd need.”

No one suggested leaving anyone behind. Not yet.

Thad said, “That's four people per pod in deceleration couches. How many people can we shoehorn in"—or stack, like cordwood, in layers—"if we remove the couches? And maybe there is more nonessential equipment we can rip out.”

“Without couches, people would get mashed,” Dino said.

“You'd prefer starving to death?” Thad countered.

Oxyggn for extra people?

“We have counterpressure suits,” Thad said. “If needed, we'll bring aboard oh-two tanks. Ellen, NASA has the pod specs. Can you research that for us? And any tweaking the reentry software might need to correct for unplanned mass in the pods?”

SHe saidd yes.

Marcus cleared his throat. “While you're looking, Ellen ... I know it's a long shot, but see if we can modify the pods to use locally.”

Solid fule. Can't starrt and stop.

“Right,” Marcus said. “Sorry. It's been a long few days.”

Herre too.

“Back to practicality,” Thad said. “Pretty damn soon, someone will launch missiles. Don't bother denying it—we're not stupid. We're fifty miles from what's about to become a two-million-pound shit storm of shrapnel. How many escape pods will we lose if we wait till then to evacuate?

“I'm going to get people started stripping out the couches. Can you give me twenty-four hours? Or a few minutes warning?”

If poxsible.

That meant no. The TLAs would not trust this kludged comm channel enough to transmit a warning. And almost certainly, a launch was imminent.

“Then let's get to work,” Thad said.

* * * *

Stankiewicz had it right, Tyler decided. The acting station chief should be focused on saving seventy-six innocent bystanders. Taking back PS-1 by a sneak attack from Phoebe was counterproductive daydreaming.

Tyler said, “Does anyone see a reason not to let these people get to work on getting down?”

No one did.

Ellen shoved back her chair and stood. “I've got my assignment. Keep the link open for when I have something to report.”

Meeting's ovrr, Valerie typed. Someone stay pn the line.

“I'll hang around,” Marcus Judson volunteered from Phoebe base. “Val, would you stick around, too?”

Sure.

“Everyone else, take five,” Tyler announced. “Then we talk strategy.”

People filed from the room, here and—according to the big display—on Phoebe. Valerie had not budged; she looked too drained to move.

Tyler felt the same but did not dare give in to it. From the first empty office he found, he called his partner. She had choppered to Langley to call in favors among Agency data-mining gnomes. It was a short flight, and PS-1 was below the horizon for a few hours. “Give me something I can use.”

Like maybe a magic carpet. At this point, nothing less than magic would avoid stranding a bunch of good folks in space. Or more hours of presidential dithering.

From his cell phone, Charmaine Powell grinned. “Oh, I have something. Are you sitting?”

“I'm tough. What have you got?”

“E-Zpass records. Care to guess the when and where of Dillon Russo's last road trip?”

“This isn't the best day for playing twenty questions, Char.”

“Be that way. On August twelfth, that's a Saturday, if you wondered, Dillon Russo's BMW jaunted from New York to McLean and back.”

“McLean, as in Virginia?” McLean, as in just down the road from CIA Headquarters? Because if Russo was another CIA source who, in fact, was a double agent, Tyler might scream.

“The very same. And there's more.”

Something about that date nagged at him. Seven weeks ago. “Hold on for a moment.” He paged through the calendar on his phone. For August twelfth he found a neighborhood barbeque—and a reminder to write up a contact report.

He returned to the call. “Russo came to see Yakov Brodsky, didn't he?”

“I can't prove it, but yeah. E-Zpass brings the car to the outskirts of your neighborhood. From the exit ramp, traffic cameras show him entering and leaving the neighborhood. Late afternoon.”

Right after the party, for chrissakes. “And soon after, Russo buys four tickets to The Space Place and gads off to Houston for training.”

“I thought you would find that trip interesting. As for Brodsky himself, he has only been back and forth between home and the embassy since Russo and friends ran amok.”

Tyler said, “Let's put surveillance on Yakov. But obvious tails.” Because if the NSA could listen in at Yakov's house or the embassy, they would be doing it anyway. “Maybe we'll rattle him. And have your data gnomes dig up what they can about his diplomatic and FSB career.”

“You don't much care for your neighbor, do you?”

“I'm from Texas. How could I possibly like someone who burns my burgers and refuses to distinguish between barbecue and grilling?”

* * * *

Valerie had the conference room to herself. Oh, how she wanted to talk to Marcus—but not like this.

On the big display, Marcus had settled into a chair. He said, “Val, are you still there? And are you all right?”

I'm finne, she typed. Why add to his worries?

“No, you're not,” Marcus said.

I'm fine, she typed, this time getting it right.

“I know you better than that.”

Typing slowly and deliberately, proofreading and correcting before she hit return, she managed to get out, Okay. You caught me. I'm worried about you.

He ran splayed fingers through his hair. (She knew him pretty well, too, and that was one of his nervous mannerisms.) “When the GBT collapse came up, you began typing as if with ten left thumbs. What aren't you telling me?”

I'm just tirred. The typo went out before she noticed it. Come down and we'll discuss it.

A troubled look flashed across his face. Questioning whether he would survive to make it down? “Is your family okay?”

It was all she could do to send yes. If the microwave beam directed at the GBT had veered only a couple of miles, it could have hit the town. It could have hit—

What had Patrick been thinking?

“You know and I know something is on your mind,” Marcus said.

He had too much going on already, and this could wait, but somehow she was typing again. Patrick is dead.

“The attack on the observatory? I'm so sorry, Val.” He frowned. “His ‘SETI’ transmitter, wasn't it?”

I assume so. And again, her fingers ignored her better judgment. He left me a message.

“I'm so sorry, Val. I truly am.” Pause. “If it will help, tell me about it.”

Repeating foolishness could not help. But her hands were once again moving, and no longer making mistakes. He wrote, “I'm doing my best to undo my last big mistake. It's the best way I know to honor my promise to look after your family.”

It made no sense. No sense at all.

“Patrick's last big mistake,” Marcus said. “Losing the Verne probe? I don't understand what he meant. Do you?”

Get down here and we'll figure it out together. Or, at least, get down here.

* * * *

Saturday evening, September 30

The least popular spot in Phoebe base, no doubt for the awful memories it evoked, was the radiation shelter. Marcus shared those memories, but he could not sleep and he needed an empty area to pace.

Why even try to sleep? In two hours, he would be back in an escape pod, taking another turn at dismembering deceleration couches with a cutting torch. The couches were not designed to come out.

And so, his thoughts churning, Marcus trudged back and forth along a Velcro floor strip. It seemed impossible that a week ago he and Val had been together. Or that within that week, PS-1 had changed from his life's work to a WMD, and that thousands had died. Or that among the dead, his final words an enigma, was a close friend of Valerie's.

I'm doing my best to undo my last big mistake. It's the best way I know to honor my promise to look after your family.

Marcus stopped, turned, and began pacing in the opposite direction. He had not done well by his promises, either. He had promised roomfuls, thousands, of people that powersats were safe and good. He had promised Valerie that he would be safe going to Phoebe and PS-1, that he would be home before she knew it.

So much for good intentions.

Was that how Patrick felt? That his good intentions had all gone bad?

From everything Marcus knew, Patrick had spent years trying to find the Verne probe. Whether noble or nuts, what did Patrick's quixotic attack on PS-1 have to do with undoing his last big mistake?

Marcus skidded to a halt—or tried to. The abrupt motion tore him free of the Velcro floor strip and sent him airborne. He scarcely noticed. Suppose the Verne probe was not Patrick's big mistake.

Suppose Verne was never lost at all.

“What about Phoebe drives everyone nuts?” Marcus asked. As far as he knew, he spoke to an empty room. Minutes earlier he had awakened someone left to babysit the Mount Weather end of the jury-rigged comm link. Their parting shot: getting your people. “Totally crazy.”

Marcus, it's me. Ellen's here, too. What's crazy?

“Sorry to wake you,” he said. At least he hoped he had. By Phoebe and Eastern time alike, it was closing in on midnight.

As if.

* * * *

“What about Phoebe drives you nuts, Val? Professionally.”

That it gets in my way. A pause. You wouldn't have tracked me down me to ask that. A longer pause. Where it came from.

“That's the one. If it had always been in the orbit where NASA discovered it, it should have sublimated long before people knew to look for it.” Before there were people to look.

Until recently, what became Phoebe must have orbited out past the ice line. Something perturbed its orbit.

“Just as something perturbed its Earth-threatening new orbit so that we could capture it?”

Another long pause. He wished he could see them: talking it over. Yawning. Just for who they were, and how important they both were to him.

Not the same. My money is on Jupiter.

“Why not the same?” Marcus persisted.

Ellen here. A gravity tractor is a spacecraft. It hovers over an asteroid, or whatever. Gravity pulls the rock and the probe toward each other. As the spacecraft moves, that attraction tows the rock. The force between the two is tiny. To shift a rock's orbit noticeably can take years and a spacecraft carrying fuel for years.

“Who is to say it didn't?”

The gravity tractor wasn't launched until Phoebe was discovered by NASA.

“Understood. But the Verne probe was.”

* * * *

In a remote corner of the twenty-four-hour cafeteria, over desperately needed coffee, Valerie explained things as clearly as she could. This was important, damn it.

No matter that the implications terrified her.

Either she was too fried to explain or Pope was not buying, because he said, “This is not the time to commit astronomy. Everyone on Phoebe needs to focus on getting down. Before . . .”

Before the missiles launch. No one would tell her how soon that would happen. Neither she nor Ellen had any security clearance, let alone clearances at that level. Her impression was that once some international coordination finished—a missile salvo could so easily be misconstrued—the missiles would launch.

“It's not astronomy, damn it,” Valerie said. “It's ... an option.”

Pope sighed. “Okay, try it again. With fewer, smaller words, please.”

“Forget astronomy and think history,” Ellen said. “2014, the Crudetastrophe. 2018, Phoebe is captured, a permanent base established, and the PS-1 project begins. A busy four years, no?

“Back to October 2014 and the Crudetastrophe. All we knew at first was, we're screwed. But a year later, an ongoing NASA survey, watching for space rocks that could endanger Earth, spots something that ought not to exist, not in that orbit. However tough things have become, suddenly there's hope.

“Then, in round numbers: a year, at crash priority, to build a gravity tractor; a year to fly the intercept mission; and a year of infinitesimally weak gravitational nudging. End to end, from the Crudetastrophe to the reconfiguring of Phoebe's orbit, four years.”

“I still don't see—”

Valerie cut him off. “In October 2014, Verne had just reached the outer asteroid belt. Right where objects like Phoebe belong. A month after the Crudetastrophe, Verne went missing. A year before NASA spotted Phoebe on its inexplicable Earth-threatening orbit. Do the math, Tyler.”

Pope rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “Long enough—by analogy, anyway—for Verne to have changed Phoebe's orbit. You're saying that Burkhalter threw Phoebe at Earth?”

Valerie's eyes misted up. “I'm saying Patrick threw us a lifeline.”

“Give me a second.” Pope's eyes narrowed with concentration. “Burkhalter's note referred to his ‘last mistake.’ You're guessing that mistake was bringing Phoebe, and so the construction of PS-1, and so making possible the attacks from PS-1. That whatever he was doing with the Green Bank Telescope was trying to somehow make things right.”

“It fits, doesn't it?” Ellen said.

Pope said, “When he spotted Phoebe, why didn't he just tell JPL or NASA—”

While Verne continued on its planned course deeper into the asteroid belt. While Phoebe and Earth diverged on their very different orbits. While an energy-starved civilization fell into pieces, and committees—and nations?—debated.

While the laws of physics dictated now or never.

Patrick would not have waited. Marcus wouldn't, either.

But Pope wanted it short. Valerie said, “Patrick saw the opportunity and he took it, because that was who he was. After that, would you want anyone to know?”

“I suppose not.” Pope glanced at his wristwatch. “But how can this matter now?”

“I'm getting to that.” Valerie swallowed hard. “This part is so sensitive none of us dared speak openly on the link. Suppose we're right. Then the big question becomes, where is the Verne probe now?”

“Why would I care?” Pope asked. He glanced again at his watch.

Valerie said, “Because there is a good chance Verne is on Phoebe. Able—if we can find it, if it's in decent condition—to ferry a few people to PS-1. If, by then, there is still a PS-1 to reach.”

Pope grabbed for his phone.

* * * *

Sunday, predawn, October 1

A synthesized representation of Phoebe, slowly spinning, floated above the base command center's main console.

If Marcus squinted hard enough to perceive Phoebe as a sphere, its radius was little more than a half mile. A true sphere of that radius had a surface area approaching five square miles. Double the area to account for hills and valleys? Ten square miles seemed far beyond what he could search in a few hours. But did the entire area require searching? This little moon had been inhabited continuously for five years.

If Verne was on Phoebe, why hadn't someone, or some bot, spotted it?

He pondered the globe. He added overlays highlighting the little world's mines, factories, and various surveys. Any terrain NASA and its contractors and their bots had not crossed a million times, tourist bots must have explored.

What about beneath the surface? He retrieved surveys done with ground-penetrating radar. They only reminded him that Phoebe was not a world so much as a rubble pile, a loosely bound community of rocks, agglomerations of dust and hydrocarbons, seams of ice, and vacuum gaps. The Grand Chasm was impossible to ignore, but nothing else leaped out at him.

Three possibilities, Marcus enumerated, yawning, struggling to organize his thoughts. One: Verne is nowhere on Phoebe. It can't be found. Two: Verne is here, but Patrick hid it. Or three: It's here because Patrick lost control and it crashed.

Only Patrick could not have lost control. He didn't have direct control at the end, lacking access to a big radio transmitter. Presumably, Patrick had uploaded new commands to Verne via the Deep Space Network while he retained access as Verne's principal investigator. He erased the upload from the comm buffers to cover his tracks, not because he panicked. After that, the Verne probe, repurposed, had to watch out for itself.

“What did you do, Patrick?” Marcus asked a holo.

The holo volunteered no more than Patrick ever had.

Marcus leaned back in his seat, hands behind his head, fingers interlaced. Patrick had no control. The spacecraft was on its own.

Verne pulled Phoebe, just as Phoebe pulled Verne, the gravitational attraction between two bodies simple to calculate. By maintaining a constant separation, Verne transferred the minuscule force of its thrusters to moving Phoebe. No impact or hard shoving to risk scattering the rubble. No landing to hazard.

Marcus stared at the most recent deep-radar survey. It stared back, hinting at something he was too tired or obtuse to see. Taunting him. A not-round, not-at-all-uniform rubble pile.

A nasty suspicion struck him. “Savannah Morgan,” he paged on the base intercom. “Come to the command center.”

Savvy showed up after a couple of minutes. She had dark bags under her eyes and darker smudges on her jumpsuit. “What's up?”

“I need a software engineer's insight.” He gestured at the Phoebe holo. “Autopilot for a gravity tractor. Easy or hard to program?”

“Balancing act, right?”

“Yeah. Thrusters offsetting gravitational attraction between the two bodies.”

“So the closer to Phoebe's surface the tractor hovers, the stronger the attraction. You would want to keep the probe in close.”

“As I understand it.”

Tipping her head this way and that, she examined the holo. “That being one of the bodies?”

“Yeah.”

“Tumbling?”

Like its much bigger sister moon, Phoebe had one face tidally locked to Earth. But in the depths of space, remote from any large mass, why wouldn't Phoebe have tumbled? “I assume so.”

She said, “Then, yes, a big deal. Because Phoebe was tumbling and is irregularly shaped, the force of gravity between it and the tractor would have varied continuously. Ditto because Phoebe's mass distribution is far from uniform. Obvious example: whether the Grand Chasm is near or far from the tractor.”

“So how—?”

“How would I program such an autopilot? Adaptively. Using lidar or radar—Verne has one of those, right?—to monitor real-time separation. Constantly fine-tuning thrust to maintain separation within a narrow range. And if I want the tractor to hover just over the surface to maximize attraction? That means very little time to react when some inhomogeneity pulls in the probe.

“Or maybe I'd put the tractor into orbit around Phoebe. Any thrust from the spacecraft insufficient to break orbit would nudge the bound system of both objects. I figure a close orbit in that case, rather than a close hover, so I could apply more thrust. The probe's orbit would be changing constantly, both from the engine thrusting and Phoebe's inhomogeneity. Again, very little time to react whenever real life trumps maneuver calculations.”

She took a deep breath. “For many reasons, that's far from the type of software I would care to write on the fly, let alone have to sneak into an unauthorized upload and splice into code designed for another purpose.”

“A complex balancing act, then. And yet, it worked.”

“Yeah.” Savvy examined the holo some more. “Dollars to doughnuts, at some point it ended like most balancing acts.”

“In a crash?”

She nodded. “Just don't ask me where.”

It took two hours for another mystery to insinuate its way into Marcus's conscious ruminations.

“Someone awake down there?” he called over the surreptitious downlink.

Define awake.

“I need someone to dig through the rental records for tourist bots.”

I'll get Dr. Clayburn. One minute.

“Sure,” Marcus said.

Valerie here. (There was a pause Marcus read as, “You look terrible, but it won't help for me to point that out.”

What do you need?

“Suppose Patrick didn't just happen to develop a hobby driving Phoebe robots?”

Why would I suppose that?

“If Verne is on Phoebe, Patrick wouldn't want anyone to find the wreckage. Not after he had kept its hijacking secret all these years. He would want to hide Verne. Physically bury it.”

Yeah. I had wondered about that. Out of Body rental files show check-in and check-out times. Nothing about where a bot happens to wander.

“It was a thought.” He drummed fingers on the console counter. “Say, Val? Could you check the files for lost and stranded bots?” Because if you failed to return your bot to the corral before its batteries ran dry, you paid for its retrieval.

Just a sec. After a minute, she wrote, Good call. Patrick got billed to replace several bots. But the records don't indicate locations.

“Replace, not retrieve?”

Yeah. Why?

“Remember seeing any lost bots? On a very unorthodox first date?”

In landslides. In the Grand Chasm. A long pause. Could it be?

“Well, we know that something hit Phoebe.”

* * * *

Sunday morning, October 1

Finding Verne, knowing where to look, could have been easy. Peer into the Grand Chasm with a high-sensitivity IR sensor: The spacecraft's radioisotope thermoelectric generator, powered by the slow and steady radioactive decay of plutonium, would still be warm. Or survey the chasm from above, towing a metal detector behind a hopper.

If only the terrorists had left them with IR sensors or hoppers. Or if there had been some reason to stock metal detectors on a world devoid of metal.

Instead Marcus made do with the nine volunteers game to join him in the chasm—and twenty less adventuresome types willing to man safety tethers to pull people out as they got stuck. Everyone entering the chasm carried a quick-and-dirty homemade metal detector, little more than an ac oscillator, a couple of wire coils, and a voltmeter. Each volunteer had a stretch of canyon about two hundred feet long to search.

Straightened out, the chasm would have run about a third of a mile—beyond grand for a world not quite four miles in circumference. The rift varied in spots from a few feet in width to almost a hundred feet.

Marcus stepped into the abyss, his rate of descent at first scarcely perceptible. Weighing less than a pound, he easily arrested his fall with his gas pistol. Lateral motion was trickier; practicing, he almost crashed twice. The second time, his boot scraped a furrow along a shallow slope, setting off a slow-motion avalanche.

Verne's arrival might have been like that: a slow, glancing, bouncing blow. He pictured rock and dust collapsing into subsurface voids. And he pictured something his boot could not imitate: plasma exhaust from Verne's thrusters flashing ice to steam. Newly coaxed sunward, much of Phoebe's subsurface ice would have been primed, cometlike, to explode.

Maybe the spacecraft had cartwheeled from one end to the other of what would become the Grand Chasm, triggering steam eruptions and setting off majestic collapses. A blast of steam might have blown Verne away. Or Verne might lie buried deep beneath the chasm floor, crushed and inaccessible. Or the long-lost spacecraft might be just below the surface, unharmed by the slow-motion rain of dust.

And in just such a shallow hiding place, one of the volunteers found it.

* * * *

Six men carried the Verne spacecraft into the abandoned hopper garage. Three men on a side. Like pallbearers. The remainder of the work party, like mourners, lagged behind.

“We're looking at history,” Marcus said. But was the probe any more than a relic?

The probe's big dish antenna, once twenty feet across, had crumpled on impact like a paper cocktail umbrella. And like bumper and fenders collapsing on a car, the antenna had absorbed much of the kinetic energy of the crash, protecting what was behind. Once they removed the crushed ruin of a dish, the rest of the spacecraft looked more or less intact.

True, the sensor cluster was battered. Behind it, the flight-computer canister was dented. But at the rear of the spacecraft, the thruster, similar in operation and configuration to the thrusters on PS-1, appeared intact. And between . . .

PS-1 generated enormous amounts of electrical power from sunlight, but Verne relied for its power on a radioisotope thermoelectric generator. A spacecraft-scaled solar panel could not begin to drive a magnetoplasmadynamic thruster—not in Earth orbit, let alone in the outer belt, where the sunlight was much weaker. Marcus was relieved, but not surprised, to find Verne's RTG intact. NASA built every RTG to stay together—and contain its load of plutonium—even if the rocket that carried it exploded on the launch pad.

“Digging out this probe may have been the last mining anyone ever does on this world,” someone lamented.

“None of that,” Savvy said. “Let's check it over.”

“I think I'll see how efforts are faring on the escape pods,” someone else offered.

Others agreed, and the funeral processional became a recessional. Soon Marcus, Savvy, and a base mechanic named Jarred Finnegan had the garage to themselves. They switched off their radio transmitters and jacked their helmets together with fiber-optic cables.

The RTG still provided electrical power. Three argon tanks had split—but that left one fuel tank intact. The main thruster worked, magnetic fields accelerating ionized argon to very high velocities. Most of the little compressed-gas attitude jets worked too. Power, engine, attitude control, and fuel: They had the basics.

At full thrust, had they not strapped Verne to a bolted-down workbench, their testing would have blasted the old probe into a garage wall. On Earth, the low-thrust, long-duration engine could not have lifted one-tenth the probe's weight. The exhaust of ionized argon glowed faintly, an eerie white-pink.

“But can you steer this thing?” Finnegan asked.

Savvy patted the dented electronics canister at the spacecraft's midsection. “With this? I won't even try. But to navigate the short hop to PS-1? If I can't code that on a datasheet in twenty minutes, I deserve to get lost.”

“You mean you're volunteering?” Marcus asked.

“I was sent to look after PS-1 security, wasn't I?”

* * * *

The same damned command center. The same four people crammed in. The same insecure link to the ground. But a whole new level of insanity, Thad thought.

“We have to do this,” Marcus said.

Cn you trrust it? the ground asked.

To judge from the typing, Thad guessed Marcus's girlfriend again had the groundside keyboard. And that she was no fan of Marcus's proposed adventure.

Not that anyone on Phoebe had shared with anyone on the ground what Marcus proposed, lest someone else overhear. What if, Thad considered, I “accidentally” blurt out some details? But that could expose me with no guarantee Yakov and company would get the message. So, no.

“A walk in the park,” Marcus said.

With lionns and tigrs and berrs.

“Some parks are more interesting than others,” Marcus conceded.

“As I recall this park, the bears are armed,” Thad said. And I provided the guns. He wanted to curl up and die, but that was not an option.

“The idea is to avoid and outwit the bears, not confront them,” Savvy said.

“With luck,” Dino added, “they won't see us coming. Or see us there: It's a big park.”

Because Dino had also volunteered. Best guess, four people could hang onto what remained of the probe for its final flight. Marcus's plan called for four people.

What if, against all odds, they made it to PS-1? Everything Thad knew about the powersat said they had a chance to disable it.

“Another two hours, and we'll be ready to bail,” Thad said. “All of us. That's been the plan, remember?”

Still is.

“For most people,” Marcus countered, stubbornly.

TLA sort-of agrees, Marcus. Do you have a fourth?

Doubtless, someone among the base crew would volunteer. And if they succeeded? Then he would remain Yakov's puppet. Or “Cousin Jonas” and the others might be taken alive and expose Thad's role in this catastrophe. This insane attempt had to fail. Whatever it took.

For Robin.

Thad took a deep breath. “Station chief's prerogative. If we're doing this, then I'm number four.”

* * * *

It came down, Tyler decided, to trust. Did he trust Marcus Judson, a man he had never met, to execute a plan that he dare not describe? If yes, the crisis might yet end without blowing up PS-1, without denying America access to Phoebe and its resources. If yes, Tyler should do whatever it took to get the White House to postpone the missile strike for a little longer.

Even as the slaughter and the destruction continued.

Maybe nothing could convince the White House. The pressure to act must be enormous. PS-1's latest strike on the Trans-Mediterranean Power Coop distribution system (the fourth such attack? The fifth? Tyler had lost count) had just severed Spain from the vast North African solar farms. A hundred gigawatts lost in an instant ... it had blacked out Spain and Portugal and sent brownouts rolling across France and into Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany.

Did he trust Judson?

“What's your opinion?” Tyler asked Ellen Tanaka.

“Hardly anyone knows PS-1 as well as Marcus. It's clear that he believes there's a vulnerability he can exploit. If he believes it, I believe him.” Ellen smiled sadly. “I'm proud of him and terrified for him at the same time.”

“And what do you think?” Tyler asked Valerie.

“Beyond wanting everyone on Phoebe safely on the ground?” She brushed back a tear. “That people don't come more tenacious than Marcus. And that if we don't tell them to try, we'll wonder for the rest of our lives: What if?”

“What about you?” Tyler asked General Rodgers.

The general fixed him with a hard stare. “Think about what? We have no idea what they intend to try. I'm just waiting for a launch order.”

On the room's main display, Marcus asked, “Hello? Are we still online?”

“Tell him, yes,” Tyler said.

“Yes, we're still here?” Valerie asked.

“Yes, go for it,” Tyler said. “And then I have to go.” Because he was almost certain no one would order a launch within two hours of evacuating Phoebe base. In thirty minutes by chopper, he could be at Langley. Where he would learn if the director would trust the opinion of an intel analyst he scarcely knew to trust the unknown plan of an engineer Tyler did not know.

And whether he had just sent four brave people to ground zero.

* * * *

Sunday, early afternoon, October 1

Thad, Marcus, Dino, and Savvy emerged from the hopper garage, each tethered to a ground-staked guide cable and to Verne. With one hand grasping the spacecraft and another on the cable, they dragged themselves away from the base.

All the while, Thad's mind churned. It would be so simple to drop his end of the probe—but it would not help. Objects on Phoebe fell so glacially that the others would catch it. And after raging against this mission, wouldn't it raise suspicions if he were the one to drop it? Just as he could not “accidentally” break their little group's radio silence without raising suspicions.

Bright light spilled from the garage entrance and an array of post lamps on the surface. To his right the last few people queued up for the escape pods. On the common radio channel, people spoke in hushed tones, nervous, relieved, and afraid all at once. Their misery—after a harrowing ride—might soon end.

Grunting with effort, dragging their boot tips, the four of them managed to stop just before the cable's first piton. Like them, Verne weighed next to nothing. Unlike them, it massed six thousand pounds; with the corresponding inertia, it resisted starting and stopping. One by one, very carefully, they got to their feet, settled into a crouch, and unclipped their carabiners from the guide cable.

Thad and Dino held Verne's aft end, Marcus and Savannah the front. Thad watched Marcus and Savannah touch helmets. They talked about something for a good thirty seconds, but unable to see their faces, Thad had no idea what. They finished their tete-a-tete and turned toward Thad and Dino.

“Ready?” Marcus mouthed.

Or, for all Thad knew, he had shouted it. Their mikes were off lest they be overheard. Later, when they were in position, they would jack their helmets together with fiber-optic cables.

“Ready,” Thad mouthed back.

The other two nodded.

About fifty feet away, four people scooted along another guide cable, two to the side. They held aloft, rather than a spaceflight relic, a fifth person. Thad did not want to think about forcing Irv's wounded leg into his counterpressure suit. Or about the gee forces of reentry squashing that leg. There were not enough drugs in the world.

Mostly, Thad wanted not to think about the gun that had shot Irv. Or who had built it.

Minutes later, the final escape-pod hatch closed.

“Talk about a ringside seat,” Marcus said. And then—

An unseen ejector flung the first escape pod into space. Even as the pod receded from the surface lights, unseen puffs of gas from its attitude jets were orienting it. Within seconds it had traveled too far to be seen by the base lighting. And then—

The retrorocket blazed.

One after another, escape pods set off. Three. Four. Five.

Light erupted from Phoebe's surface. “Mother of God,” Dino whispered.

Anyone observing Phoebe would have seen five pods launch and one explode. But the blast came from mining explosives, not the sixth and final escape pod. A bit of misdirection. And, just possibly, disguising a way down to Earth if the four of them survived the next couple of hours. Not that Thad foresaw that happening.

“On zero,” Marcus mouthed. “Three, two . . .”

On zero, they leapt.

* * * *

As Marcus jumped—once again fighting Verne's inertia—every muscle and joint screamed in protest. Still, spacecraft, crew, and their bit of gear together weighed almost nothing. They sailed into space.

And, floating, he turned his head to watch Phoebe recede.

Verne's thruster had more than enough oomph to have lifted them from the tiny moon, only there had been no safe way to stand the probe upright to climb aboard. And if they had had the time to build some kind of launch stand, what might the backsplash of plasma from the surface have done to the passengers? No matter that his back ached, jumping free had been the safe choice.

Setting aside how ridiculous an adjective safe was for any aspect of this joyride.

Jostling one another, they reoriented themselves parallel to the long axis of the probe. Marcus jammed his boots into two of the cloth loops, improvised stirrups, they had attached.

After getting into position, they unfolded and wrapped a dark gray blanket around themselves, covering their brightly colored counterpressure suits. While they drifted, any unwelcome observers might mistake them for a chunk of the exploded “escape pod.”

Marcus turned toward a tap on his left arm. Thad offered him a fiber-optic cable. Marcus nodded, took the end of the cable and jacked it into his helmet. “Thanks,” he said. He and Savvy repeated the process, and so on, until a fiber-optic ring around Verne connected everyone.

“Everybody comfy?” Dino asked.

“Just fine,” Thad said.

Savvy muttered something unintelligible.

“What's that?” Marcus asked.

“Just fat fingers,” she said. She poked at the datasheet with which she had replaced Verne's crunched flight computer. “Okay. Everything's good.”

“So, Savannah,” Thad said, “what were you and Marcus whispering about just before we jumped?”

“Just two friends wishing each other luck,” she said.

True as far as it went, Marcus thought. He did not add anything, just watched Earth as they continued to drift.

“Ready, gentlemen?” Savvy asked.

Even as they agreed, Marcus felt the probe shifting, felt faint vibrations from the attitude jets. The stars seemed to swing. The lights of Phoebe base fell from sight. With renewed trembling, the attitude jets arrested the spacecraft's turn.

“And, go,” Savvy said.

* * * *

Were they accelerating? Maybe. The sensation of weight was so subtle Marcus had to convince himself. Even at full throttle, they would accelerate at less than one percent of a standard gravity. But that acceleration would go on, and on, and on. . . .

The faint glow of the thruster exhaust was unconvincing. But in dimness lay safety: If someone on PS-1 did not know to look, and precisely where to look, Verne should be invisible.

A timer, a simulated speedometer, and a simulated odometer shone in separate corners of his HUD. In a few minutes, they had reached a brisk walking pace. PS-1 glittered ahead, larger than when they had set out. Even with his visor in image-enhancement mode, he could not yet make out the details.

Just four days ago, he had flown a skeletal, compressed-gas-propelled hopper from Phoebe to PS-1. That had been exhilarating. That had been fun. Now, his heart pounded. His hands shook. Because this time he rode a hastily salvaged wreck?

Or because murderers with guns were at the other end?

“How are we doing?” Dino asked Savvy, sounding as edgy as Marcus felt.

“You mean, are we lost? No.”

Marcus kept his eye on the virtual instruments. Sixteen minutes. At around seventeen minutes, they reached fifteen miles per hour. They had come almost eighteen miles. Well, they had come thousands of miles—they, and Phoebe, and PS-1 all whipping around Earth at miles per second—but only the rate at which they closed on PS-1 mattered.

“Engine shutdown coming,” Savvy announced. “In ten, nine . . .”

At zero, the elusive sensation of weight vanished. The faint glow of the thruster exhaust vanished.

“Swinging us around,” she announced.

They had allowed not quite seven minutes, thruster turned off, to flip the spacecraft end for end. In that time, they would coast another fourteen miles.

This time, as the stars swung, it was PS-1 that disappeared from sight. Marcus fixed his eyes on the Earth, seeming near enough to touch. And yet Valerie felt so very far away. . . .

Their trembling, slewing motion abruptly became a tumble.

“Oh, crap,” Savvy said. “Lost an attitude jet. I can compensate with some of the others. Only . . .”

“Only what?” Thad asked. He hadn't said anything the whole ride.

“Only it may take a little longer than we budgeted to complete the flip.”

Meaning, Marcus translated, not enough time to decelerate once the flip was complete. Meaning they would come hurtling into PS-1.

* * * *

As soon as he was airborne, Tyler radioed Langley.

“Powell,” Charmaine answered.

“It's me, inbound. Help me out? Get me onto the director's schedule, stat.”

“He's not here,” she said. “He was called into the White House.”

“Good. They'll both want to hear this.”

* * * *

A Sunday afternoon summons to the embassy was out of the ordinary, but these were far from ordinary times. Still, as Yakov drove into the district, he wondered what this was about. When he arrived, he found he must speculate a while longer. The ambassador had been called away.

A secretary brought Yakov to the private office. He found his boss, the FSB station chief, there ahead of him.

“Good day, Dmitrii Federovich,” Yakov said. Were you also summoned?

“I am unconvinced of the day's goodness, Yakov Nikolayevich.”

Not a very confident attitude, Yakov thought. “If I may ask, where is the ambassador?”

“Called to the White House.”

“That could be good or bad,” Yakov said.

“As may this.” His boss tapped an open but dormant datasheet. A holo popped open: five sparks in a shallow arc. “Titov"—the military's Chief Center for Testing and Control of Space Assets—"saw escape pods launching from Phoebe. Five successful launches and one explosion.”

Of six pods, total. “Evacuations before a launch against PS-1, perhaps,” Yakov said.

Because people had been ordered to leave, via some comm channel yet to be identified? Or because the people on Phoebe had intercepted news broadcasts and had had the sense to bail out while they could? It did not matter which.

Dmitrii Federovich said, “But also repatriating those who witnessed the seizure of the station. Witnesses to the identity of your agents.”

“Soon to be sacrifices,” Yakov corrected. “Silent sacrifices.”

The door opened. The ambassador, his expression giving away nothing, crossed the room to take the seat behind his desk. “It is good that you have both arrived.”

“Ambassador,” Yakov answered cautiously, although something about Sokolov's stiffness seemed off. As much as Yakov wanted to hear about the White House meeting, he did not presume to ask.

“I asked you here to express my growing concern,” the ambassador said. “Yesterday's interruption of activity from PS-1 was most disturbing. So was the attack thereafter on West Virginia. It risked a touch of world sympathy for the Americans.”

Whose plan had it been to further anger the world by leaving American territory unmolested? Yakov answered only, “Our experts surmise it was necessary, for the powersat to continue in its task, that the West Virginia transmissions be disabled.”

Our, meaning FSB experts. Our as a reminder to Dimitrii that they were in this together.

But Dimitrii said nothing.

Yakov assured himself that he had taken every variable into account. The meddlesome radio observatory had delayed the endgame, but success must come, and would come ... soon.

The most difficult variable to control was the nerve of his superiors.

“That brings us to another concern,” the ambassador said. “At some point, the powersat's operations become counterproductive. Economies too weakened will buy less oil. You had assured us, Yakov Nikolayevich, that before we reached that juncture, PS-1 would cease operations—by ceasing to be.”

Suddenly, the ambassador grinned. “But all those misgivings were before, my friends.” He opened his disguised freezer and removed a bottle of vodka.

“Before?” Yakov echoed.

“Before a summons to the White House, so that President Gibson could warn me in person of the imminent missile launches.”

* * * *

Four days in vacuum gear, with only short stints in the closet-sized shelters for respite. Four days with only emergency rations to eat. Four days without weight, and with precious little sleep. Four days of murder and mayhem. Four days of revulsion at the insults to Gaia, and shame for one's own contribution.

Four days waiting to die.

Dillon had imagined things could not get worse. Once more he had been wrong.

“. . . NASA confirms reports of escape pods sighted leaving Phoebe. Transmissions from the pods indicate a complete evacuation, including the tourists and staff evacuated from The Space Place earlier in the week. At this time, no more is kno—”

He could switch off the broadcast but not his mind. The last shred of hope keeping him going was for Crystal. And what a sad, forlorn hope: that when he died, his part in this waking nightmare would remain uncertain, unknowable. That Crystal would not suffer for his failures.

Even that last, pitiful hope had now abandoned him. Among the evacuees on their way back to Earth, many knew who had left them to die.

* * * *

“One hour,” Charmaine Powell said. “For your grand gesture, in-person plea, you got an entire hour's delay.”

“And maybe early retirement.” Out the chopper window, Tyler watched the White House recede. He tried not to dwell on the death toll an hour's postponement would cost. If he was misguided in his trust, it was not the type of mistake a person could easily live with. “'Only they know the plan, but they're smart and resourceful,’ is a tough sell.”

“I imagine so,” she said. “Where to next?”

“Home, if I still remember my way.” Also, just minutes from CIA Langley. “How about you? Any update about my neighbor?”

“Tails are in place. And here's something interesting. When the nukes went off, your friend was posted to the Russian embassy in the Restored Caliphate. He was expelled, persona non grata, right after. Several Russian nationals, in the meanwhile, were torn apart by mobs, blamed for the mess. People he knew, but no one definitively linked with him.”

People loosely linked to Yakov. Sort of like Dillon Russo? “What else you got?”

“A Russian hacker, famous in certain geeky circles. The Guard was looking for Psycho Cyborg at the same time as your future neighbor got himself ejected.”

Psycho Cyborg, who was behind the space-weather-center hack. Hmm. He said, “None of that is evidence, Char, but I admit it's very suggestive. Do you think our guy was involved with the Crudetastrophe?”

“I'm pretty sure the Guard thinks he was involved.” She sighed. “I'll keep digging. It's something to do for the next hour.”

* * * *

Traffic on the George Washington Parkway was light. Part Sunday afternoon, part overcast with steady drizzle, part ongoing crisis, Yakov thought. For whichever of those reasons, people were staying home, not driving.

It would have been difficult under the circumstances not to notice the boxy gray sedan that stayed a couple of hundred feet behind him, slowing when he slowed, alternating lanes but seldom passing. Despite the overcast, the driver and passenger both had sun visors down. As though hiding their faces.

When Yakov invented an errand and exited the parkway early, a white van that had stayed two vehicles behind the sedan sped up to exit too.

He shook the tail, wondering who the amateurs were and what they wanted, then continued home.

* * * *

Sunday, mid-afternoon, October 1

As Verne emerged from shadow, Earth transformed in an instant from a dim presence glimmering by moonlight into a brilliant arc of light. Earth's crescent, from tip to tip, dwarfed the full moon. Seconds later, the powersat emerged from Earth's shadow. The expanse of PS-1, less than a mile away, seemed larger even than the Earth.

We couldn't miss PS-1 now if we tried, Thad thought. And diving out of the sun, no way can Jonas or his people see us coming. If they somehow do see us, we're barreling straight at the solar cells; the side from which they can't beam microwaves. The timing could not be better for this mad scheme.

The four of them had shed their blanket, removed their boots from the stirrups, and untethered themselves from the spacecraft. Each held a gas pistol in one hand and gripped Verne with the other.

“Here's a vote for dumb luck,” Savannah said cheerily. “I hope our trusty ship hits someone.”

“Amen,” Marcus said. “On zero, gently. In three. Two. One.”

At zero, as they separated, the fiber-optic cables tugged free of helmet jacks.

And Thad, rather than shove off gently, thrust as hard as he could.

* * * *

Dillon blinked in the sudden glare as PS-1 emerged into sunlight. His visor darkened.

“Back to work,” Jonas said. His voice sounded ragged. “When will those lame-assed, incompetent, indecisive chickenshits on the ground do something about us?”

What would be their next target? Dillon wondered. A power plant? A transmission line? It hardly mattered.

“Target locked,” Jonas said. “And beaming ... begins.”

Would this horror never end? Dillon stared into the distance, across the plain of PS-1—

At a walking pace—missing Jonas and the computer console near which he floated by no more than twenty feet—a slowly turning something crashed through the powersat.

* * * *

Marcus's gas pistol was fully engaged, and squeezing its trigger harder only hurt his hand. Hurtling straight at PS-1, he couldn't not squeeze for all he was worth.

He was slowing. When, obsessively, he turned his head every few seconds to check on Verne, it was nearer than he to the powersat. But one of the four of them must have dismounted clumsily, because the old spacecraft had drifted off course and gone into a slow tumble. It was going to miss the aim point.

It doesn't matter, Marcus told himself. PS-1 had three other main computing complexes. The crash was a diversion, no more. When Verne crashed through PS-1, maybe the bad guys would think that was the attack.

When the old probe almost brained a terrorist, Marcus cheered himself hoarse.

“What the hell?” Jonas screamed.

Dillon did not answer. It was part shock, part the ripple racing from the impact point. Before it reached him, he had to make sure his tethers were secure! By the time the ripple reached him, bots already swarmed to survey the damage.

Something hopper-sized had hit them. Maybe it was one of the hoppers he and Felipe had flung off Phoebe. The notion vaguely cheered Dillon. Still, it had not looked like a hopper.

“Everyone up!” Jonas shouted. “Lincoln. Felipe. We're under attack. And the beam is down.”

* * * *

Marcus glided to a stop no more than fifty feet from a corner of PS-1. That was way too close for comfort. With the briefest of puffs from his gas pistol, he inched across the remaining distance. Someone was chattering on the radio. It was all encrypted, alas.

He was clipping his second safety tether when a faint surface ripple reached him. The wave swept past him, reflected from the powersat's edges, then returned, bound inward. PS-1 greatly outmassed Verne, but their encounter was not like a fly meeting a windshield. More like a rock hitting a two-mile-square, very thin window. Until the powersat's anti-trembling system damped out the vibrations, the microwave transmitters would cut themselves off. He had bought Earth a respite, no matter what happened next.

He pulled himself along a guide cable, low to the surface. Glancing across the plain, he saw scattered parts and supply depots, hoppers at docking poles, other guide cables, and bots. Toward the center, two spacesuited figures emerged from shelters.

Had Savvy, Thad, and Dino landed safely? If they hugged the surface as Marcus did, he didn't think he could spot them from miles away. He crept along the cable to a junction and switched tethers to the intersecting cable, this one heading to his destination.

To shape and steer the power beam entailed very specific interactions among the powersat's transmitters. There must be constructive interference among some transmissions and destructive interference among others—and the solution changed continuously as PS-1 sped along its orbit and Earth spun beneath. To calculate the required signal phase for every transmission required knowing precisely the relative positions in three dimensions of all the many thousand microwave transmitters. That took real-time control to detect and counteract every twitch and tremor anywhere within the enormous structure. Any of four atomic clocks, one at each corner of the powersat, could synchronize the real-time sensing and controls.

Four visitors, unsuspected, one at each corner, would disable the four clocks. When the last clock failed, the powersat would lose its ability to maintain rigidity—and so, to form beams. And once PS-1 lost its ability to sense and control wobbles and flexures, the accelerometers integral to each transmitter would keep it from emitting.

Flexing would be most pronounced near the edges. Marcus defied the little repair bots to maintain their grips—much less repair or replace broken clock modules—under those conditions. Trained specialists would have to make those repairs.

Marcus bargained with the Universe: let us knock out the clocks. After that, it doesn't matter how clever the bad guys are. After that, the military can launch a shuttle of troops to retake the powersat.

Let us knock out the clocks and it's game over.

* * * *

Hand over hand, Thad sped along a guide cable toward the powersat's center. He could have saved precious minutes by landing closer to the middle—but one of the others disembarked from Verne might have noticed. Avoiding suspicion was hard.

When a spacesuited figure ahead seemed to turn Thad's way, Thad pushed away from the powersat, floating to the end of his tethers and waving his arms. As the stranger approached, Thad reeled himself back to the guide cable and set off to intercept.

As the gap closed, the stranger took out a coil gun. In the direct glare of the Sun, his visor, like Thad's, was all but opaque. The label on the red counterpressure suit read Walker.

Squeezing the cable, Thad brought himself to a stop. He tapped his own nametag, his helmet antenna, shrugged, then lobbed a fiber-optic cable, one end already jacked into his own helmet.

Keeping the coil gun centered on Thad, the man came forward. He connected the free end of the cable. “And why are you here?” he asked.

Thad knew no one named Walker, but he recognized the voice. It was Cousin Jonas.

“I came with three others,” Thad said quickly. “We're each to disable one of the atomic clocks. If that happens—”

“I know,” Jonas said. “Where are the others?”

Thad pointed back the way he had come. “That was my corner, and I didn't touch its clock. So every other corner. But we all planned to make the circuit in case someone had a problem.”

* * * *

Dillon goggled as Jonas returned from an unexplained errand—with a newcomer. From Phoebe, to judge from the stranger's blue counterpressure suit. Another of Yakov's agents, somehow.

As reluctant an agent as me? Dillon wondered. Not that it mattered.

Then Jonas had his coil gun in hand. “Sorry, boss,” he said. “Too busy to chance mixed loyalties. Handgrip first, give our visitor your gun.”

Gingerly, Dillon complied.

Jonas gestured with his gun. “Now into a shelter.”

They were all going to die here. Why not die in the open, with Earth resplendent? Dillon considered refusing.

But to die by gunshot and explosive decompression? Dillon was not prepared for that. He grabbed a guide cable and pulled himself to the nearest cluster of shelters.

Felipe, just emerging from one unit, shut Dillon inside.

* * * *

“Unexplained,” the one-word text on Yakov's cell read.

The single word, out of context, would mean nothing to anyone intercepting it.

But he could guess the context from the moments-ago news bulletin on the car radio. The abrupt halt, before damaging its target, of PS-1's latest attack.

No explanation for the cessation. So, no radio waves scattering from PS-1, as in the radio-observatory incident. Military satellites would have seen that. No break-up of the powersat—that, too, would have been seen.

Hence, a second unanticipated move in two days by the adversary.

Ambassador Sokolov had been warned of an imminent launch. Had the American president lied?

Something fluttered in Yakov's gut. He needed a moment, and some unwonted introspection, to put a name to the odd feeling.

The stirrings of doubt.

* * * *

“Ride with me, Thad,” Jonas said as the four of them went for the hoppers.

“Okay.” Thad pulled back from reaching for the fourth hopper, and swung himself into the saddle behind Jonas. They had three raiders to handle; taking three hoppers was not unreasonable. Jonas had given him a gun and uploaded encryption software for his helmet computer. That would not have happened if there had been any trust issues.

As opposed to control issues. Thad had far more experience flying hoppers than any of these men possibly could. He should be piloting.

Jonas pointed over the front of their hopper. “We'll take this corner. Felipe, the corner to my left. Lincoln, my right. Keep me posted.”

With an unsteady takeoff, Jonas lifted the hopper off the powersat. Squads of maintenance bots, carrying solar panels and maser arrays, already scuttled toward the hole punched by Verne.

With some altitude, Thad quickly spotted the raiders, one each at every corner but the one assigned to him. No one yet had headed for that corner.

Jonas had spotted them too. Opening the throttle, he called, “Tally-ho.”

* * * *

With a grunt, Marcus ripped the atomic clock from its housing and flung it into space. The recoil sent him flying backward over PS-1. Tethers pulled him up short.

He reeled himself in, clipped his tethers to a guide cable running in a useful direction, then set out for the next corner clockwise just in case Dino had had a problem. As Dino, hopefully, was already on his way to another corner, to backstop Thad. As Thad should be on his way to backstop Savvy, and she on her way to check on Marcus's assigned clock.

Motion above PS-1 caught his eye. A hopper! Racing straight toward him. He had been spotted; almost certainly, the others had been too.

He tapped his forearm keypad, reactivating his mike. “Company coming. Mine's done. Be quick.” He unclipped his tethers and his gas pistol, hoping to avoid capture for a little while.

The hopper kept accelerating. Planning to ram him? Knock him into space? With a squirt from the gas pistol, he dodged.

The pistol barely sputtered enough to waft Marcus off the powersat. Hurling away the empty, useless gas pistol reversed his drift, sending him slowly back toward PS-1. He raised his hands in surrender.

* * * *

“Company coming. Mine's done. Be quick.”

“Damn,” Savannah Morgan muttered at Marcus's warning. She had destroyed her assigned atomic clock by snapping its circuit boards in half, but scarcely started toward the nearest main computing complex. Just possibly, she had had a bright idea.

Speeding hand over hand along a guide cable, she glanced up. A hopper was heading her way, tiny with distance, bearing two colorful dots. Red counterpressure suit in front, piloting. Behind—a blue suit.

Thad or Dino? That either man helped the terrorists made her ill. And whichever had betrayed them would not have disabled his assigned atomic clock.

She had to get to the computer.

From the hopper's vantage point, they could not miss seeing her bright green suit. A tarantula on a dinner plate would have had a better chance of hiding. Her only hope was speed.

Unclipping her tethers, she jetted ahead. Thad or Dino, whoever was on that hopper, had had enough propellant to land. With her massing less than either man, her gas pistol should have propellant left. Ideally enough for her to start and stop.

The hopper veered: They had spotted her.

She slammed on the brakes with a long blast of gas. As she drifted over the computer complex's access hatch, she managed to grab the handle.

Her body kept going. Damn momentum. She screamed as her entire mass wrenched her arm and shoulder—but she did not let go.

The hopper was perhaps a quarter mile away and closing fast.

She popped the access panel, clipped tethers to the metal rings inside, and reeled her lines tight. The upright hatch seemed a flimsy shield. Back on Phoebe the bad guys had guns!

Did they suspect she had a sysadmin login? Some among the Phoebe crew had to know the inspection team had gotten privileged access. Thad definitely knew.

“Be careful. We don't know who we can trust,” Marcus had whispered to her, radios off, helmet touching helmet, just before the four of them leapt off Phoebe. “Someone from the base may have armed the terrorists.”

“After I clobber my clock, I have an idea,” was all she had dared to say. If someone on Phoebe had helped the terrorists, that someone might be ... anyone. Even one of the men watching, wondering what she and Marcus were discussing in private.

As, it turned out, it was.

Peeking over the hatch, the hopper was maybe a tenth of a mile away. It was not slowing down, either. Planning to run her over? To shoot her as they passed? She had a minute, maybe, to do what needed doing. On an open radio channel she hoped still linked back to Phoebe, she shouted, “Look sharp.” She did not dare to hint any more clearly. If the bad guys understood, they would undo what she was attempting. “Either Thad or Dino is helping the terrorists.”

She logged on, found the screen she needed—

Sparks from the top edge of the panel. They were shooting at her!

Hunkering down, she typed frantically.

* * * *

“What's he doing?” Jonas asked.

“She,” Thad said. That would be Savannah, if everyone had landed at their assigned corners. “And I don't know.”

A fine time to remember he had given the inspectors sysadmin access. Thad wracked his brain, trying to imagine what she might do.

Seconds later, she was shouting on the Phoebe-and-powersat common channel, in the clear, denouncing him for the entire world to hear. Spysats would be listening. . . .

“Look sharp,” Jonas repeated. “What's that about?”

“Haven't a clue.”

Jonas fired a couple of rounds. One must have struck near her, because she scrunched lower behind the hatch. “I can't run her down without plowing through the surface and setting off more waves, or without slowing way down,” he muttered.

“Do you have a full gas pistol?” Thad asked.

“Yeah. Why?”

“No time,” Thad said. “Hand it over.”

“If you can reach it, take it.”

Leaning forward, Thad managed to unclip it. “Brace yourself.”

As they shot past the open hatch Thad reached backward to pull on the hopper; with his other hand, he shoved off against one of Jonas's oh-two tanks.

The push/pull somersaulted Thad down the back of the hopper, into the hopper's rear gas jets. The spewing jets kicked him in the chest, killing most of his momentum. With a short blast from the gas pistol, he brought himself to a halt.

Savannah worked too close to the screen for him to see what she was doing. She might not even have seen him dismount. He clipped the gas pistol and took out his coil gun.

On the common channel, he said, “Hands off the keyboard. Move away from the computer.”

Her helmet, like his, was opaque, but he felt her eyes burning into his name tag. “Why, Stankiewicz? Why betray your country?”

For family: the purest of reasons. And yet at the end of the day, he had just made things incomparably worse. For Robin, too, now that Savannah had exposed him. “Get away, now.”

“Give me a minute to finish, Thad, and this nightmare will be over.”

Only the nightmare would never be over. Trying to hate Savannah, but only hating himself, he said, “Hands off the keyboard this second or I shoot.”

Moving slowly, she unreeled tether and pushed off.

The screen listed PS-1 computer accounts and their authorization levels—and very few names still showed sysadmin access. Working down the list alphabetically, she had not yet reached Stankiewicz—the account Jonas and his cronies used.

Keeping an eye on her as she drifted at the end of her tethers, Thad revoked sysadmin privileges for both her and Marcus. Dino had never had sysadmin access.

Thad closed the access panel, waiting for Jonas to come back.

* * * *

As much as Valerie had come to hate the Mount Weather war room, she could not bring herself to leave. Not while everything hung in the balance. Not while Marcus and the others attempted—

She had no idea what they imagined they could do.

PS-1 filled one of the wall screens, the image crisp. Adaptive optics, she thought, inanely. Real-time adjustment for atmospheric distortions. She could not tear her eyes away. Here and there people talked in hushed, purposeful tones.

Valerie had cheered with everyone else when something—the Verne probe?—burst through the powersat, and louder when Maj. Garcia announced, “Beaming has stopped.”

If the beam stays off, the White House would have to abort the missile strike. Wouldn't they?

She would feel more confident of that if Pope were here.

Ellen gave Valerie's hand a comforting squeeze. Valerie squeezed back, too choked up to speak. Be safe, Marcus, she thought.

Minutes later, in a far more sober voice, Garcia announced, “Beaming has resumed.”

Be safe, Marcus. With every passing moment, her hope seemed more futile. Until, relayed from an NSA satellite—

“Company coming. Mine's done. Be quick.”

Valerie shivered at Marcus's calm but hurried warning. So much for a walk in the park. So much for the notion he had found someplace vulnerable to crash through, and was already on his way to The Space Place and its escape pods. PS-1 might have had a design flaw, a failure of replication, something that everyone else had overlooked.

From his warning, it did not sound that way.

But Marcus had finished his task—of whatever it was that the four of them intended. If he could finish his part, maybe they all would. Maybe the beam would stop for good. Maybe—

“Look sharp.” That was Savannah Morgan's voice. “Either Thad or Dino is helping the terrorists.”

While others listened on, Valerie had to turn away.

“Look sharp?” Ellen whispered. “Do you understand that?”

If only they could look more closely at things happening up there! Valerie froze. “He told Savannah to move away from the computer. What would she be doing on PS-1 at a computer?”

“I wonder. . . ?” Ellen tapped at her datasheet, and a close-up video of the powersat popped up. “Look at this!” she shouted.

“Where is that feed coming from?” General Rodgers demanded.

“PS-1's onboard safety system.” The view cycled from one panning camera to another to another, as Ellen kept keying. “To give me access, my PS-1 account has been upgraded to sysadmin privileges, and the code restricting sysadmin access to onboard terminals has been bypassed. It has to be Savannah Morgan's doing.”

“As sysadmin, can you kill the beam?” Rodgers asked.

“Sure, but they'll see. They'll just restore the beam, and they'll know to look for whoever gained access. They'll revoke my authorization.”

“Not if you revoke their authorizations first,” Valerie said. “Cancel everyone's privileges but your own. Can you do that?”

“Yes!” Ellen grimaced. “No, damn it. Not to make it stick. Stankiewicz can reboot from an onsite backup, with his sysadmin logon still valid.”

“Why bother giving us access?” someone snapped. “Just so we can watch?”

And as they did watch, three people in green suits were herded toward the center of the powersat and relieved of toolkits, gas pistols, everything.

“I don't know why,” Ellen admitted.

“Revoke their privileges and shut down PS-1,” Rodgers ordered. “For as long as it remains offline, someone on the ground isn't getting cooked.”

“No,” Valerie insisted. “There's a better way to use our access.”

* * * *

Sunday, late afternoon, October 1

Turning off Chain Bridge Road, nearly home, Yakov saw another gray sedan in his rearview mirror. No, the same gray sedan. The driver and passenger had traded seats.

Coming up to a yellow traffic light, Yakov floored it; the sedan came through the intersection on red.

Running red lights was not unusual in the city, even without diplomatic license plates. But drivers and passenger did not usually exchange worried looks.

Persistent, Yakov thought. And inept. He wondered who they were.

The sedan did not follow him into his neighborhood—as though his tails knew the neighborhood had only two entrances, and a white van waited near the other. Likely, then, this was not the first time he had been followed, and he had been too preoccupied to notice.

Yakov arrived home to find Valentina's car gone from the garage. He had just found her fussily neat note, gone shopping, when his cell rang.

An embassy number. “Brodsky,” he answered.

“Good afternoon, Yakov Nikolayevich,” the ambassador said jovially.

Never mind unexplained. Something had changed again. Something must have gone right this time.

“Anatoly Vladimirovich, you honor me by your call. How may I be of service?”

“I called to pass along kind words about your recent wheat purchase. President Khristenko himself is very pleased.”

“The president is too kind,” Yakov said. “I hope sometime to have the opportunity to thank him.”

“Oh, I believe that is quite likely, Yakov Nikolayevich. Until tomorrow, then.”

“Until tomorrow.”

Kind words about wheat meant nothing of the sort. Not as soon as Yakov would have expected, to be sure, but the Americans had launched.

* * * *

Marcus floated at the end of his tether. At the end of his rope. Savvy floated nearby. Dino, apparently, had not made it. Damn it.

Three men hung nearby, all holding guns. The fourth was at a computer console. Visors darkened against the sun rendered all of them faceless.

“Sorry I got you into this,” Marcus radioed.

“We had to try,” Savvy said.

“You failed,” a terrorist declared. “PS-1 remains operational, and while it does, we will continue to use it. Sooner or later, someone will cram missiles down our throats, but until then, we're too busy to watch you.

“So choose how you want to die. You can simply unclip and float away. Who knows? That might be very peaceful. Or go quietly into one of the radiation shelters, and we'll lock you inside. You'll survive just as long as we do.”

“I don't care for either choice,” Savvy said.

“Or I can shoot you,” the talkative terrorist said. “Honestly, I'd rather not.”

Behind the three terrorists, along the plane of the powersat, something stirred. Something? Or many somethings? It was as though the surfac ... writhed. Facing into the glare of Earth swollen to quarter phase, Marcus could not decide what he was seeing.

But he had a guess . . .

“Or you could surrender to us,” Marcus said, “and maybe we can all forego getting killed.”

“Funny man,” the talkative terrorist said.

* * * *

You can do this, Valerie lectured herself.

Too bad she could not believe herself. Engineering was the contact sport, not astronomy. But if not she, then who?

Then three terrorists raised their guns.

“Die, damn you!” Valerie screamed.

* * * *

A soft gasp. From Savannah?

That was all Thad heard, but it made him glance over his shoulder.

Hundreds—no, thousands!—of bots, charging out of the earthlight. They sparkled, the light glittering not only from silvery carapaces, but from the tools in their grasps. As he stared, hundreds of bots swarmed Jonas at the computer console.

“Behind us,” Thad shouted.

But Jonas shrieked louder. Tentacles built to grip guide cables now clutched arms and legs and helmet instead. The bots pounded. And tore. And stabbed.

Suddenly, over the radio: air whistling. From Jonas's helmet?

“Behind us,” Thad screamed once more. He fired his coil gun again and again. The bots kept coming, too numerous to stop. Maimed bots, too, trailing shattered limbs.

Now Felipe and Lincoln were firing too.

Bots swarmed up Felipe's legs. He screamed.

Dillon—ironically safe, for the moment, in the latched shelter—shouted to be released, to be told what was happening, and, finally, in inarticulate fear and rage.

Jonas's scream morphed into a burbling, choking death rattle.

The coil gun twitched impotently in Thad's grasp, its ammo spent.

Not only his: Lincoln, cursing, hurled his gun at the bots teeming at his feet. Too late, Lincoln jumped. Tens of bots already crawled all over him, their limbs and tools flashing. Red fog spurted from tiny rips and punctures in his suit.

Thad leapt from the powersat.

From twenty feet above the powersat, he saw that bots had avoided Marcus's and Savvy's tethers. To protect the two? Maybe he was safe here too.

It was a nice thought for the few seconds it lasted.

Whoever controlled the swarming bots had evidently designated only those specific tethers off limits. Bots clambered up Thad's tether. He brushed them off with the barrel of the coil gun. More bots rushed up the tether, and he brushed them off too—until one grabbed the gun.

He flung gun and bot away as forcefully as he could, as more bots started up the tether.

Throwing the gun had sent him into a rapid spin. There were bots all around, still inrushing from the farthest reaches of the powersat.

Detouring for a good three feet around Marcus's and Savannah's tethers.

Thad cast off the reels of both his tethers, to drift away from the bot hordes. With a gas pistol, he started jetting to the docking posts. He could take a hopper to PS-1, grab the remaining escape pod there. Maybe he would be gone before the missiles hit, or the debris would take a while to disperse.

To do what? To go where? He had nothing to live for.

“I'm sorry,” he broadcast on the common channel. “For all the deaths. For the shame I've brought my family. For everything.”

Then he turned off his radio and his heater.

As the cold became all, as his thoughts, like his blood, thickened to syrup, he welcomed blissful oblivion.

* * * *

“Are you okay?” a tremulous voice asked. It was the last voice Marcus expected to hear just then. Valerie's voice.

“Just shaken up,” Marcus radioed back. And still shaking. He kept that to himself. “Do you control the—”

“You look okay.” She had hardly paused, not waiting for his answer. The Earth/comsat/PS-1 latency being, well, whatever it was at this moment, she might not yet have heard him. “I need you to jack into the main computer. It will be a secure link. Oh, and yes. I control the bots. I've sent them the order to stop swarming.”

“On my way,” Marcus said.

He reeled himself in, and saw Savvy doing the same. The bot army dispersed as he and Savvy made their way to the console. On nearby posts, cameras turned to follow their progress.

A body, tethered into place, floated just above the access panel. The helmet visor had cracked. Pain and fear had twisted the dead man's face, and his eyeballs bulged.

An unfamiliar voice, a woman, said, “Keep the bodies.”

Gingerly, Marcus and Savvy moved aside the body, still tethered so it would not float off. They used fiber-optic cables to jack in.

“Is this secure?” Marcus asked.

“As secure as is anything up here,” Savvy said. “When I was testing, that seemed secure. Of course four days ago, none of us trusted the network security enough to allow sysadmin access from the ground.”

“We're glad you took the chance,” Valerie said.

“This is General Rodgers, Air Force,” the other woman introduced herself. “We don't have much time. Is the powersat secured?”

How could they be sure? Marcus wondered. “Four terrorists shut us into the shelter on Phoebe. All from The Space Place, and we have three bodies. We saw Stankiewicz jump off; we can just barely still see his suit, drifting. I'm not eager to go check him out.”

“Our sensors say the body is cold.” Rodgers paused. “And we see another body floating a little farther away.”

“Poor Dino,” Savvy said.

“That leaves one unaccounted for, possibly armed, and just the two of you,” Rodgers said.

“General, you've got to call off the missile strike,” Valerie said.

“It's not my call,” Rodgers answered softly, “but I can't recommend it. Not with a terrorist unaccounted for.”

Savvy said, “General, we control the beam. And we control the bots.”

“We've suspended the beam,” Rodgers said.

“If the last terrorist shows up,” Savvy said, “we still have the bots.”

“Maybe there is no fourth guy,” Valerie said. “Wherever he is, he's not visible to the surveillance cameras.”

“About those missiles?” Marcus asked. “Any second now Savvy and I will hopper back to Phoebe for the last escape pod.” Because any chance is better than no chance. “We've saved the powersat, General. Dino Agnelli died to save it. Do not waste that sacrifice. Do not surrender the potential to build hundreds more like PS-1.”

The silence stretched awkwardly.

“General, we're leaving,” Marcus said.

“Wait,” Rodgers said. “If I'm not back in two minutes, run for it.”

And for almost two minutes, no one said a word. Marcus scarcely breathed.

“Stay put,” Rodgers said. “If you watch very closely, you may see payloads zipping past. They'll arc by you, then splash down harmlessly in the South Pacific. That said, can you two hold out for a day? Where you are, not going to Phoebe or The Space Place?”

Marcus remembered checking onboard supply depots, killing time while the others inspected. Four days ago, Savvy had said. It felt like a lifetime. Any one depot held more than enough oh-two, water, and batteries. “Yes, General, we can do that.”

“Agreed,” Savvy said.

“Good,” Rodgers said, “Within twenty-four hours, expect company: a shuttle of Special Ops folks. They'll secure the powersat and Phoebe. Their shuttle will bring you down.”

“Thank you, General,” Marcus said.

“No,” Rodgers corrected. “Thank you.”

* * * *

Sunday evening, October 1

“This is a very rushed op,” Charmaine said. “You sure about this?”

“Concur, and yes,” Tyler said.

He could almost appreciate how delicately she hinted that his last field op had been twenty-three years and two heart attacks ago. The action would be all of a five-minute walk from his own front door—and he would be driving to the op.

None of which mattered. To succeed, the op demanded his personal connection, and he damn well meant it to succeed. Anyway, Yakov would be far more rushed than he.

Tyler said, “And not that I'm superstitious or anything"—she snorted—"but things, finally, seem to be breaking our way.”

“That they are.”

Agency phones were as secure as cell phones could be, but that did not keep them both from speaking in circumlocutions. He said of the recaptured powersat, “Still behaving?”

“And still functional.”

“Excellent,” he said.

Not secured, though. To secure PS-1 required putting troops up there and, until less than an hour ago, it had been impossible to safely prep a shuttle launch.

Even if the Russians had failed to decrypt the latest radio links to PS-1, they knew—the world knew—the U.S. had launched a missile salvo. Anyone with a decent pair of binocs could see that PS-1 remained intact. Any country with a decent early-warning system knew the missile payloads had been allowed to soar past PS-1.

So, hurried American announcements aside, the Russians knew who, however tenuously, controlled the powersat. They could not be happy about the reversal. The next few hours, until the U.S. could scramble a shuttle, were crucial. Until then, what was to stop the Russians from launching their own shuttle to heroically secure—and take occupation of?—the powersat?

The heat-targeting capability their agents had demonstrated against a Cosmic Adventures shuttle just two days earlier.

“Okay,” Charmaine said. “If I don't hear from you within the hour, I'll come looking. Good luck.”

“Thanks.” Tyler hung up, hoping matters did not come down to luck.

* * * *

Yakov grimaced in concentration, trying to digest the latest setback—and the ambassador's fury. Yakov drummed his fingers on his desk. He rocked in his chair. Vodka was not helping his mood any more than the Shostakovich symphony that pounded from the stereo. How had his operatives lost control of—

The doorbell rang.

Through an exterior security camera, Yakov saw a pizza van parked at his curb. A guy in a baseball cap and garish red company vest stood at the front door holding an insulated pizza carrier.

Yakov had not ordered anything; the man had to have the wrong house. As Yakov pressed the intercom button, the pizza guy tugged on the pizza carrier, lifting its flap to reveal a note: Look at me. The driver removed his cap, ostensibly to scratch the top of his head.

The “pizza guy” was Tyler Pope.

“Be right there,” Yakov said. He hurried to the door. “Come in while I get my wallet.”

The moment the door closed, Pope removed the hat and vest. He said, “We don't have much time, Yakov.”

“I don't understand—”

“Playing charades has been fun, but not today. You are FSB. I'm CIA. Okay?”

“Okay,” Yakov conceded.

“I don't know what the Restored Caliphate has against you, but I do know that the Caliph's Guard has a team in-country set for a snatch. In-town, actually. Yesterday and today the chatter ramped way up. My bosses are very unhappy with you, with very good cause, and I've been told to look the other way.

“But scumbag that you are, I can't get past that you have diplomatic immunity. So get the hell out of Dodge. The tower at Reagan National is primed to clear a diplomatic flight. You keep your plane prepped, right?”

“But Valentina—”

“Has three Agency people keeping an eye on her. Your wife will be fine.” Pope set down the pizza carrier. “Have you noticed any new surveillance recently? You must have, because these guys are more enthusiastic than skilled.”

The gray sedan. The white van. And if the Caliph's Guard had come for him . . .

“What do you propose?” Yakov asked.

Tyler offered the cap and vest. “Put these on. Take the pizza van. Get to the airport.”

Yakov's antennae tingled. “And leave you—”

“Yeah, yeah, you keep secret papers or whatever here.” Pope took plastic wrist ties out of his pocket. “The clock's ticking, damn it. Bind me to a chair or whatever. Valentina, when she finds me, can call the cops or your embassy.”

“Right.” He bound Pope's wrists behind him, arms around one of the sturdy floor-to-ceiling decorative columns that separated the foyer from the dining room. “I owe you one, Tyler.”

“Then owe me two. Consider it my final neighborly favor. Is your Psycho friend local?” Pope laughed. “I know you won't tell me. But the chatter involved Psycho Cyborg too. Who, I imagine, has no immunity. Because what the Caliph's Guard will do . . .”

Yakov shuddered. “Point taken.” He slipped on the vest and cap.

“Don't forget the pizza carrier. Keys for the van are in the vest.”

“I won't forget this,” Yakov said.

“Good to know,” Pope answered.

Yakov sauntered to the van, warning himself not to look too casual. Turning out of the subdivision, he spotted the gray sedan by the side of the road. Two people still sat inside.

He phoned ahead to the airport. And using the must-flee code phrase, he texted Irinushka to meet him at the general-aviation terminal.

Psycho Cyborg deserved the same warning Pope had given him.

* * * *

Dillon's universe had shrunk to a small closet. It would have been crowded for one. With ghosts too. . . .

If only the end would get here already. Instead the awful screaming echoed and reechoed in his brain.

And the dreadful hissing when Jonas's helmet had—well, Dillon was not sure quite what. He wasn't sure of anything, except the awful screams, then death rattles, and then, eeriest of all, the silence.

He had screamed too. He had pounded on the shelter door. No one could hear it, but he couldn't not pound.

What had happened? What could have happened?

After he had screamed and moaned and bemoaned his fate, a fragile clarity returned. Maybe the stranger who had shown up with Jonas was not who Jonas expected. Maybe the stranger had turned on Jonas. And if one stranger had arrived on the powersat, why not more? Was that not, in fact, likely?

Dillon switched from the mission frequency to the common, unencrypted channel. And people were chattering! A man and a woman. Another woman, her responses so delayed that she must be on Earth.

To have been trapped in this shelter proclaimed, if not Dillon's complete innocence, at least his reticence. Especially if Jonas and the rest were no longer around to contradict him.

“Hello? Anyone?” Dillon called. “Anyone here on PS-1?”

“Who is this?” the man asked. “Where are you?”

“My name's Dillon. The ... terrorists made me come with them. They shut me in a radiation shelter.”

“Hold on a second.”

The newcomers must have switched to a private channel for a while. A long while. Dillon wondered if they meant to leave him in his closet. If they did, he could not blame them.

“I know who you are, Dillon. And I saw you holding a gun on Phoebe.”

“I was blackmailed to bring those men to The Space Place. At that point, I think they decided I knew too much about them. That's why they gave me the gun. I couldn't stay on Phoebe once everyone there believed I was one of the terrorists.”

Skeptically, “Hold on.”

“Wait! I'm low on oh-two.”

Another pause. “Okay. I see a shelter with its latch jammed. I'm guessing that's you. Hit the door.”

Dillon pounded, the door flexing beneath his fist. “Here! See me?”

“Yeah. Did you hear what happened to your cronies?”

He shuddered. “Yes.”

“Remember that. When I give you the word, come out very carefully.” The inside latch wiggled. “Very slowly.”

Dillon opened the door just enough to show his hands, empty, then grabbed an exterior handhold to swing himself out. Two people in green counterpressure suits—Morgan and Judson, their suit labels read—watched as Dillon tethered himself to the nearest guide cable. Judson inspected Dillon head to toe, front and back and took his toolkit before Morgan offered an oh-two tank.

Hundreds of bots all but surrounded them. If Dillon's eyes did not deceive him, some of the bots were flecked with red.

He shuddered. “Thank you.”

“Don't thank anyone yet,” a new voice answered. “I'm Pope, by the way. You and I are going to have a chat. As soon as you're jacked in.”

Dillon's new captors gave him a long roll of fiber-optic cable. Long enough to hang himself, he thought. A deranged cackle escaped him.

“You find this situation funny?” Pope demanded.

“No!” Because Dillon had to wonder: Why question him here? Why not wait a few hours till he could be properly—interrogated—on Earth? Unless they had not yet decided whether to bring him. “No,” he repeated, detesting the quaver in his voice.

“Good. Now tell me about your cronies.”

And Dillon babbled. About how he met Yakov. About their arrangement, and the brilliant engineers Yakov had provided. About the OTEC platform.

That he could discuss the Santa Cruz incident, and that little girl, without so much as a catch in his throat made Dillon ill. The last few days had made him ... callous? No, numb. How could he mourn one child and her grandfather with the blood of hundreds, maybe thousands, on his hands?

“And Yakov is getting away, scot-free,” Pope said. “Skipping the country. Flying away. Not that we could touch him anyway. Diplomatic immunity.”

Diplomatic immunity. Pope made the words sound obscene. Like some horrible miscarriage of justice. Or maybe, Dillon thought, that's how I feel.

Through the viewport at Dillon's feet, beautiful Earth was just past full phase. Only Earth was not everywhere beautiful: The inky smudge of the Venezuelan disaster tore at his heart. By daylight, the spill and smoke were the only damage he could see. Not like the night-visible rolling blackouts that had surged back and forth across Europe. . . .

And then it hit him: Pope had volunteered information. Why?

“Skipping the country,” Dillon said. “How?”

“On his private jet, speeding across the Atlantic. The only plane in the air for thousands of miles. Doubtless laughing his ass off at us.”

At that instant, Dillon understood what Pope wanted. What could not be put into words. The price of Dillon's ticket to the ground.

He braced his feet against a guide cable. Even as he yanked great lengths of tether free from his reel, he leapt. He soared over the bot hordes, and then the tether pulled him up short. He began arcing down.

Toward the nearest main computer complex.

* * * *

Yakov had flown many times across the Atlantic. He had never before seen the radar screen empty. It was uncanny.

Irina Ivanovna sat in the copilot's seat, noise-canceling earphones shielding her cochlear implants from the drone of the engines. “Where will we go?”

“Moscow.” Where else? “As disappointed as I am that the Americans did not destroy PS-1, the operation remains a tactical success. American extremists used an illegal American weapons platform to terrorize most of the world. In the process, we made everyone more dependent than ever on Russian oil.”

“Will everyone see things as you do?”

“In Moscow we will make our case,” he assured her.

“Then why are you nervous?”

He was not nervous, he told himself. But then why was he sweating? He wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “Contemplation of the Caliph's Guard will do that to a person.”

Irina was sweating too. “Does the Guard know? I mean know, not just suspect?”

They could not know. No one in the FSB could have been so stupid as to reveal what he had done. But secrets escaped for reasons beyond stupidity.

Yakov's mind spun off into wheels within wheels, and paranoid fantasies, about who might have been coerced, or corrupted, or a double agent, or . . .

“Why is it so hot?” she demanded. “Can you turn down the heat?”

“Of course.” He reached for the console—

The metal panel burned like fire. As he stared, incredulous, at seared fingertips, the console erupted in sparks. His instruments went blank.

Irina screamed. Her face twisting with pain, she threw aside her earphones, also sparking, to slap at the smoke spewing from behind her ears.

“We won't be going to Moscow,” Yakov said. Because the Universe had, if not a sense of poetic justice, then a dark sense of humor.

Not that Irinushka could hear him anymore.

The Learjet's left engine burst into flame, and then the right. The plane went into a sickening plunge. Black smoke filled the cockpit. He felt himself charring, blistering, roasting. He felt he must explode into a bloody cloud of steam.

Well played, Tyler.

The instant of immolation when the fireball erupted was a sweet release.

* * * *

EPILOGUE (2023)

Wednesday, November 1

“This is about Dad, isn't it?” Clarissa asked, tugging and twisting a lock of hair.

“I don't know, hon. I just don't know.” Anna Burkhalter put an arm around her daughter and gave a hopefully reassuring squeeze. They sat side by side on their living-room sofa.

“What exactly did they say?” Rob asked from his college dorm room.

As Rob kept asking, with only the slightest variations in wording, as though some secret truth waited to be teased and coaxed out of the cryptic request. Summons. Command.

Anna looked around the room with embarrassment. She had been on the verge of replacing the battered tables, the worn-shiny fabric of the sofa, the dated carpet, the cat- tattered curtains. She had been on the verge for years. More urgent uses for the money had always intruded, even before the divorce.

“Only that we make ourselves available for this call. Just the three of us. You are alone, aren't you, Rob?”

“Yes, Mom.”

“I think we have to prepare for the worst,” Anna said.

Because they had not heard from Patrick for a month. No one had. He would never go this long without calling or e-mailing the kids—if he could.

Because whatever else Anna had to say about Patrick, he was a good father. As good, in any event, as the kids let him be—and that they did not always allow him was probably her fault.

Forget probably. She vented about him too much, complained too much, and the memory made her feel like dirt. Because when rescuers got to the bottom of that mountain of wreckage, she just knew they were going to find Patrick's body.

“I know,” Rob said softly.

A message-waiting icon began to blink. “Hold on, guys,” Anna said.

“This is the White House,” a stern-faced woman announced. “Mrs. Anna Burkhalter?”

“This is she,” Anna managed. “And my son and daughter.”

“Please hold.” The woman was replaced by the presidential seal. And then—

“Thank you for taking my call,” President Gibson said. His voice was firm and resonant, his manner grave. The massive wooden desk was familiar from a dozen presidential addresses. To one side, a flagpole stood. Behind him, the window wall had a pronounced curve.

“Mr. President,” Anna stammered. She had not believed, not really, not until she saw him, saw the Oval Office, that this was not all some huge mix-up or cosmic irony.

“Mrs. Burkhalter, Mr. and Ms. Burkhalter, I have sad news to deliver.”

“We understand.” Only Anna understood none of this. Presidents did not make condolence calls.

“The rescue team in Green Bank completed its work this morning. As we all feared, Dr. Burkhalter is dead.” The president paused. “You knew him as a father and former husband. You knew of him as a scientist. I want you to know that Patrick Burkhalter was also a great patriot. More than once, with great personal heroism and at a great personal cost, he performed deeds of critical importance to the nation. He was not at liberty to discuss his actions; his personal life—and yours—doubtless suffered for it. On the slight chance it will ease your loss, I wanted to tell you myself about his sacrifice.”

“I ... I don't know what to say,” Anna said.

Because she did not understand any of this, except—with deep shame—the part about great personal cost. After that accursed spacecraft went missing, after Patrick had thrown away his career, he had told her that things happened for a reason. He had promised her that things would be all right. But rather than follow her husband, rather than trust him, she had spurned him. Taken the kids away from him.

She fought back the tears for a more private moment, even as Clarissa wept beside her.

“There is no need to say anything,” the president replied. “But if mere words ever have the power to comfort, I offer these: We honor Patrick and recognize our debt to his memory.

“Beyond words, know that a place of honor is being held for Dr. Burkhalter at Arlington Cemetery. A suitable memorial in his name will be forthcoming.”

“Sir?” Rob asked, his voice quavering.

“Yes, son?”

“My dad ... he did okay?”

The president smiled. “Son, you cannot begin to imagine how well your dad did.”

* * * *

Isaac Kelly could neither hammer nails without bending them nor saw straight. Offered an electric nail gun, he became a hazard to himself and others. Even his measurement skills were suspect. For a supposedly brilliant and educated man, he had found he had rather limited talents.

Still, he could carry lumber and shingles around a worksite, clear away the scraps, run errands to the hardware store. He could see to it that the men and women with real abilities ate and remained hydrated. And so, one house at a time, for as long as the Habitat people would have him, he meant to do what he could. To do his penance.

Not his only penance, of course. Every morning, under the tutelage of experts, he searched his memory for the smallest details about his past life. The subconscious was an amazing thing, and he had noticed more, about many things, than he could have imagined. Even when his interrogators badgered and berated him, as they challenged the smallest gap or inconsistency in his answers, Isaac wanted to thank them.

There was much to be gleaned from what could be reconstructed about past associates whom the CIA experts could never question. They obviously drew conclusions from Isaac's recollections, conclusions they did not share with him.

And the former associate dead by his own hand? That death Isaac did not regret.

Isaac started up a ladder, carrying cold sodas for the men busily shingling. From the top rung he could see a bit more of the town, even catch a glimpse of the High Plains desert beyond. Vantage point was everything. Like the view from—

Earth all but filling the sky. The spreading stain of oil in the Caribbean. Invisible death lancing downward—

With a shudder he banished the mental images. The daily debriefings were more than often enough to relive those memories. Not to mention every night in his dreams. . . .

As he handed out cans of cold soda, the man who had been Dillon Russo—a man the world, and Crystal, must (happily?) believe dead—could not help but wonder.

What did the CIA do with the information he provided?

* * * *

Friday, November 3

White House briefings were scary. In the course of his career, Tyler Pope had gotten himself hauled in front of the National Security Council often enough to know. But briefing the president? One on one? That had been gut wrenching.

Now Tyler hung around to debrief the president, and the wait was even worse. Observing the telecon would have made the debriefing far easier—but mere analysts do not sit in on calls between heads of state. Not even volunteering to translate.

It's merely the fate of the world, Tyler told himself. Nothing to concern myself over.

He had the West Wing first-floor reception area to himself. He had not expected to come alone, but the Director of Central Intelligence had been preempted at the last minute by business he had deemed “less Earth-shattering, but more time-sensitive.” Not that the suspense would have been any easier to bear while sitting with the DCI.

So Tyler could also look forward to updating the DCI on his impression of how things had gone.

Finally, the president's personal secretary appeared. “He'll see you now, Mr. Pope,” she said. She saw Tyler into the Oval Office and closed the door on her way out.

President Gibson waited on one of the two facing couches, a highball glass of ice and amber liquid in hand. Scotch, if reports of the president's tastes were to be believed. Gibson rose as Tyler entered. “Care for a drink, son?”

“No, thank you, sir,” Tyler said. He wanted his head clear. And he wondered if the president's drink was celebratory or boded ill.

“Sit, please.”

They sat.

“Pavel wasn't very happy,” Gibson offered.

Pavel, as in Pavel Borisovich Khristenko, president of the Russian Federation. The knot loosened in Tyler's gut. If all had gone well, Khristenko should be unhappy. Tyler asked, “Could you tell me how it went, Mr. President? From the beginning?”

“We started with the usual platitudes. Wives, families, we should talk more often.” Gibson paused for a sip. “Then he allowed as how we had matters to discuss.”

An acknowledgement of the obvious, Tyler thought. Nonetheless, an acknowledgment.

“Pavel commented on the recent terrible events, and the many economic disruptions.” Gibson chuckled. “He seemed loath to move past that.”

“To admitting Russia's role?” Tyler asked.

Gibson shook his head. “That's not how these things work. Our conversation was about what Pavel will do to avoid being forced into such an admission.”

More than enough evidence existed to force the confession. Because the moment the hostages on Phoebe reestablished communication with Earth, Yakov's whole—brilliant—scheme began to unravel.

There was Dillon Russo's ongoing debrief, of course. Analysts digging into the backgrounds of Jonas Walker, Lincoln Roberts, Felipe Torres, Thaddeus Stankiewicz—and Russo, too, who Tyler trusted about as far as he could throw—had uncovered plenty of links to Yakov. There were the days of helmet-to-helmet chatter and the occasional downlink from a Russian intel satellite, all intercepted by the NSA and all so much gibberish. With encryption software and security keys recovered on PS-1, the NSA had decrypted everything. And the most damning of all: things Yakov had nervously or carelessly said as he fled. Tyler had bugged the “pizza van,” the pizza vest, and Yakov's plane.

“What does Khristenko have to say about my former neighbor?” Tyler asked.

“Oh, that's an interesting point,” the president said. “I believe Pavel's biggest worry is that Yakov Brodsky and Psycho Cyborg aren't dead.”

“Khristenko actually believes we kidnapped an accredited diplomat, albeit an FSB agent?”

“Is that harder to believe than that we might allow an accredited diplomat to be killed?” Gibson looked straight at Tyler.

Tyler said, “Our witnesses on PS-1 both saw Russo turn the microwave beam on Yakov's plane. And we have Russo's confession.”

There you have it, Mr. President. Plausible deniability.

Never mind that we could have killed the beam from the ground.

What if Russo had not taken the hint? Tyler wondered. Would I have ordered the shoot-down?

“Understood,” Gibson finally said. “Regardless, the nagging doubt that we might have splashed a decoy and been so ill-mannered as to snatch and interrogate two of their prized assets has made Pavel uncharacteristically ... flexible.”

Tyler relaxed, if only a bit. “Just how ‘flexible’ is he, sir? In any tangible way?”

Gibson set down his highball glass, empty but for some ice. “Russian oil spigots will be fully opened. And Russia will ‘suggest’ to its fellow cartel members that they do the same.”

Expanded supply to meet the increased demand. If the spigots truly came wide open, perhaps even a touch of price relief. In the short run, the cartel might rake in more money than ever.

“Respectfully, Mr. President, that's not enough,” Tyler said. “Not after the havoc the Russians caused.”

“Patience,” Gibson said pointedly. “I observed that after the recent wanton destruction, every resource for generating electricity is, and will be, required. I proposed to Pavel that he very publicly embrace new technologies, anticipating the day the oil runs out. And in regard to powersats, in particular, I ‘advised’ that certain unfounded accusations, expressed in the heat of a terrorist incident, would best be retracted.”

Take that, Pavel Borisovich. “I'll bet it felt good to twist the knife.”

“You have no idea,” Gibson said. “That brings me to our final topic. I told Pavel what I will soon declare to the world. That the military relief mission on Phoebe is the vanguard of a permanent American military garrison. That our outpost will have the resources to quickly deploy to and defend PS-1 and our many powersats to come. Further, that we will be putting Phoebe under the jurisdiction of American law.

“Should any international treaty seem incompatible with these actions, we will work vigorously to amend it. If necessary, we will withdraw from any such treaty. Anarchy on the high frontier is demonstrably too dangerous.”

With PS-1 as recently modified standing ready to defend the outpost. Tyler supposed that nuance would have gone unarticulated.

“How did that go over, sir?”

“At the beginning of the Space Age, the nations of the world somehow convinced each other that we would leave behind our earthly interests, our earthly natures, when we sought to use the vast resources of space. It was wishful thinking, pure and simple. We ended up reproducing the lawlessness of the Wild West—that was your analogy, son, and I thank you for it—and relearning, the hard way, that peace and safety on the frontier require a sheriff.”

“And?” Tyler prompted.

Gibson frowned; prompting apparently crossed some line. “Pavel had a number of objections. To which I observed that a few years ago lawlessness had led to ... undesirable outcomes in the Restored Caliphate.”

“And if he believes we hold Yakov, and Yakov is talking . . .”

“Let's just say that Pavel, having become very stoical, suggested that perhaps bygones should be bygones, and something about not waking up trouble while it sleeps quietly.”

“That's the Russian version of letting sleeping dogs lie.”

“In this case,” Gibson said, smiling, “it was Pavel's version of surrender.”

Quid pro quo. Dirty secrets kept secret, and acts of war buried, because open conflict with Russia would be a terrible thing. Hostilities between Russia and the Restored Caliphate, although they would likely avoid American casualties, would still starve the world of oil.

Tyler had imagined himself subtle and saw how naive he had been. Heads of state elevated subtlety to a very rarefied plane.

Too bad, he thought, he could never share with Marcus and Valerie the extent of what they had accomplished. But even if he could, Tyler gathered the two of them had other matters on their minds.

* * * *

Saturday, November 4

Valerie paced and prowled her living room. When that palled, she straightened compulsively. Then she prowled some more.

She spoke with Marcus every night, texted with him several times daily, loved him without reservation. She had only actually seen him, been with him, twice in the month since he had been back on Earth. The first time had been more CIA debrief than reunion. The short while they had had alone together, they had spent in the moment, without any thought to the future. The second time was Patrick's funeral.

Marcus had had to stay in the district; she got that. Coordinating the repair of PS-1 and expediting the many powersats to follow had to come first. New responsibilities thrown at him, support contractor no longer, reporting directly to the NASA Administrator. She had gone home to Simon and Green Bank, to a shattered observatory, traumatized colleagues, and an uncertain future.

And so, the necessary, crucial, life-altering conversation had yet to happen. Did Marcus even know what they had to discuss?

But the delay was almost over, Marcus due any minute. So that they could talk, Simon was at a friend's house for a sleepover.

And then headlights turned into her driveway. They were in each other's arms, once more lost in a passionate now, the moment not yet arrived for words.

But eventually . . .

They had dressed and had a snack and settled onto the living-room sofa. Valerie cuddled at Marcus's side, his arm around her. Now was bliss.

And ephemeral. “We need to talk,” she said.

“Four words that never go anywhere good.”

She shrugged off his arm, edged away so that she could see his face. “The thing is . . .”

“What is it, Val? Straight out.”

“The observatory. My job. With the big dish destroyed, many of us have been given notice.”

“That's awful.” He reached for her hand. “And?”

And? Men could be so obtuse.

She would move in with him in a minute. In other circumstances, she would (she told herself) propose it herself. But not these circumstances. Not unemployed. Not appearing desperate rather than committed.

Would Marcus ask? Did he even want to ask?

“NRAO runs several observatories, not only Green Bank. I was offered a position at one of them, the Very Large Array, in New Mexico.” She hesitated, having, and hating, to justify herself. Somehow she held her voice steady. “I need to take care of Simon.”

Over to you, Marcus.

* * * *

New Mexico?

Something had been on her mind for weeks, but Marcus had not known what. Okay, maybe he had been too busy, too preoccupied to ask. In his defense, he was not preoccupied solely with powersats.

New Mexico? Not if I have anything to say about it.

He said, “It seems like ages ago, but I remember promising I would always come back to you. Do you remember?”

“All too well.”

“I couldn't have kept that promise without you.”

“What are you saying?”

That we make a hell of a team. He would get to that. “Will you always come back?”

She began to cry. “I'm not talking about a trip, Marcus. It's a move. Cross-country. Maybe forever.”

“You and Simon should come live with me. Or I'll go with you—if you'll have me, that is. Only maybe there is someplace you'll be traveling. I'll want you to promise to come back.”

“Of course I'll, we'll, come live with you.” With the sudden sunny smile, her tears were a lot easier to take. “But what are you talking about? What travel?”

“Remember the day we met? That little surprise you sprang on me? Simon wasn't feeling well. You had to leave early to pick him up from school.”

“I remember.” She sighed. “I was awful to you that day. I'll never understand why you came back for more.”

“After you left, one of your colleagues, I forget who, said something like, ‘powersats will mean the end of astronomy until there's an observatory on the far side of the moon.'”

“A bit dramatic,” she said.

“Patrick thought so too. He told the guy, basically, to get a life.”

“Poor Patrick.” She began sniffling.

Marcus handed her the box of tissues from the coffee table. “You don't see where I'm going with this? Truly?”

She wiped her face and blew her nose. “You asked me to move in with you. Where but Virginia would I be going?”

“The country is claiming the high ground,” he said. “And it won't be only Phoebe. Think lunar resources.”

“A farside observatory? Really?”

He answered her question with a question. “Why rebuild the big dish in what's going to become a noisier and noisier neighborhood?”

“And you're saying that I ... ?”

“That we have the president's gratitude. And, as it happens, also his promise. Who better than you and I to be the chief scientist and the chief engineer of the Patrick Burkhalter Lunar Far-Side Observatory? The president will announce the program next week.”

“I can't be going to the moon. Simon is only—”

“Not to worry.” Marcus had seen this one coming. “After the previous big dish collapsed in 1988, it took, what, twelve years to construct a new one? I think you can count on Simon being in college or out on his own before any big dish on Far Side is ready to use.”

Valerie stared at him, looking ... what? Sad, maybe. Confused. Conflicted. What the hell?

“What's wrong now?” he asked.

“I forced you into asking me to move in. While you were getting me a wonderful opportunity and even thinking ahead about Simon.”

“You feel like you forced my hand. You can't be sure that I truly want us to live together.”

“Uh-huh.” Sniffle. “It's all so messed up.”

Women could be so obtuse.

Marcus went to the hall closet to retrieve the little box from his coat pocket. He had carried around that box for two weeks, in the so far vain hope that proximity would inspire the right words.

The contents could speak for themselves.

“Well,” Valerie said, on finding the diamond engagement ring, “I might be mistaken.”

Copyright © 2011 Edward M. Lerner

[Back to Table of Contents]

Reader's Department: THE REFERENCE LIBRARY
by Don Sakers

Sometimes the really big thing in science fiction is a Really Big Thing. Here I'm talking about construction projects that make the Great Wall of China look like a Lego starter set. Never mind being visible from orbit; any halfway-decent Really Big Thing can easily perturb other objects in orbit—and most fill up their own orbits.

There's a whole subgenre of SF that deals with Really Big Things. We call this subgenre “Bigger Than Worlds,” after the title of an essay by Larry Niven that appeared in the March 1974 issue of Analog.

Some trace Bigger Than Worlds stories to the early 1300s and Dante's Divine Comedy. Isaac Asimov in particular argued that Dante's elaborate Hell, Purgatory, and Heaven were constructed worlds. In standard science fiction, though, the honor of first on the scene goes to Olaf Stapledon, whose 1937 novel Star Maker featured artificial planets and even what we today call Dyson spheres (immense structures enclosing entire stars). In 1962, Hothouse by Brian Aldiss described a far-future Earth linked to the Moon by enormous spiderwebs, and Robert Silverberg explored a Dyson sphere in Across a Billion Years (1969).

It wasn't until 1970 that the subgenre really came into its own, with the publication of Larry Niven's Ringworld. This story of a literal ring around a star, with a million times the habitable surface area of the Earth, took the field by storm. It wasn't long before tales of other Really Big Things were all the fashion. Huge artificial worlds showed up in the work of Arthur C. Clarke (Rendezvous with Rama, 1973, and later sequels), Jack Chalker (Midnight at the Well of Souls, 1977, and sequels), and John Varley (Titan, 1979, and sequels). G. David Nordley took Analog readers to a big construct called Cubeworld in the serial “To Climb a Flat Mountain” (November and December 2009). And need I mention the moon-sized Death Star from Star Wars (1977)?

Dyson spheres featured prominently in Frederik Pohl & Jack Williamson's Farthest Star (1975) and Wall Around a Star (1983) as well as Bob Shaw's Orbitsville (1975) and sequels. A smaller sphere built around a black hole appeared in Tony Rothman's The World is Round (1978). In his Cageworld series (starting in 1982), Colin Kapp gave us a whole series of nested Dyson spheres. Gene Wolfe used the Dyson sphere concept as the basis for his Book of the Long Sun series (1993 and after). In 1992, Star Trek: The Next Generation's starship Enterprise visited an alien-built Dyson sphere.

Ringworlds also proved popular. As early as 1973 Harry Harrison used one to great effect in his satire Star Smashers of the Galaxy Rangers. Several Iain M. Banks novels have featured multiple ringworlds (and Dyson spheres), notably Consider Phlebas (1987) and Matter (2008). Banks invented what he calls “Orbitals,” which are sort of junior ringworlds with diameters only about the size of planets. In 2001, the mega-popular video game Halo took that idea and ran with it ... all the way to the bank.

Surely the grandest ring-shaped structure in SF (so far) is Stephen Baxter's Ring (1994), which is built of cosmic string and stretches across millions of lightyears.

Many different types of Really Big Things have appeared in science fiction. Thin structures looped around stars like spaghetti featured in Timothy Zahn's Spinneret (1985), White Light (1998) by William Barton and Michael Capobianco, and Helix by Eric Brown (2007). In his 1981 pre-Discworld SF novel Strata, Terry Pratchett used the concept of the Alderson Disk, a huge disc-shaped platter with a star nestled in a hole in the center. My own Weaving the Web of Days (2004) involved a semi-living network stretching between stars in the Tarantula Nebula. Karl Schroeder's Virga series (starting with Sun of Suns in 2006) presented a giant inhabited balloon the size of several planets.

* * * *

Hex

Allen Steele

Ace, 352 pages, $26.95 (hardcover)

iBooks, Kindle, Nook: $12.99 (ebook)

ISBN: 978-0-441-02036-2

Series: Coyote 6

Genre: Bigger Than Worlds

* * * *

Allen Steele's Coyote (as I argued in the September 2010 issue) has become one of SF's beloved other worlds. Now Steele takes the Coyote series into Bigger Than Worlds territory, and forges new links between the Coyote novels and two associated works in the same universe, The River Horse (2007) and Galaxy Blues (2008).

Since Earth has become all but uninhabitable, Coyote (a moon of a gas giant orbiting 47 Ursae Majoris) is the main home of Humanity. Through centuries, the Coyote Federation has risen to become an established member of the galactic league called the Talus. Military and merchant ships, moving through stargate-like starbridges, have explored other planetary systems and established trade relationships with a number of alien races.

In all their exploration, though, Coyote's people have never found another habitable world for Humanity to settle. The leaders of the Federation, acutely aware of how fragile a single planet can be, are desperate to find another potential home for the species.

Andromeda Carson, merchant captain, is bored with her job. Until, that is, a man from the government comes with interesting news. A reclusive alien race, the arachnoid danui, makes a strange proposal. They claim to know the location of an unoccupied world perfectly suited to human habitation, and they are offering that information for trade.

Andromeda and her crew take on a company of scientists and head off for HD 76700, the star system at the danui-provided coordinates. HD 76700 is something of a mystery; the star is surrounded by a dust cloud or nebula, and there is no sign of an Earth-sized planet.

As the human crew comes closer, they realize the true nature of the cloud, along with the reason for the lack of planets. The danui have used most of the planets in their system as raw materials to construct a sort of Dyson sphere surrounding HD 76700 at a distance of about 1 astronomical unit.

The conventional Dyson sphere, as presented in SF, is a solid shell around a star. HD 76700's sphere is composed of an open network of billions of hexagons, each as far across as a small moon. As you'd expect, the filaments forming the hexes are biological habitats, each kilometers across. Different habitats are bio-engineered to support different races.

There is enough habitable space to house multiple trillions of beings; all of the races belonging to the Talus could easily move in. And in fact, many races are already represented—some have been there so long that their civilizations have collapsed, leaving their descendants wild and dangerous.

The trick of a successful Bigger Than Worlds story is giving readers a sufficient amount of time to explore the Really Big Thing, while not allowing it to overshadow the plot or characters. At the same time, the plot can't be too complex or the characters and their difficulties too captivating, lest they distract from the exploration.

This is a difficult balancing act, and Steele pulls it off beautifully. The two primary mysteries—why the danui would build Hex to begin with, and why they invited the humans—both get satisfactory answers. Andromeda and her crewmates are compelling (Andromeda's fractured relationship with her scientist son in particular). Meanwhile the exploration of Hex (the star of the show) is interesting and well thought out; the reward is worth the trip.

Steele leaves plenty of room (no pun intended) for a sequel.

* * * *

Embassytown

China Miéville

Dl Rey, 368 pages, $26.00 (hardcover)

iBooks, Kindle, Nook: $12.99 (ebook)

ISBN: 978-0-345-52449-2

Genre: Alien Beings, Other Worlds

* * * *

China Miéville has been making quite a name for himself in fantasy. In the last decade he's won multiple awards, including multiple Arthur C. Clarke, Locus, and British Fantasy Awards, the World Fantasy Award, and a Hugo. His work has been nominated for just about every award in the field. Miéville specializes in something called “The New Weird,” an urban-flavored blend of fantasy, science fiction, literary fiction, and horror.

Now Miéville turns his not-inconsiderable talent to pure science fiction, and turns out an enthralling tale of alien contact, set in an enchanting city and told in truly magical language.

Avice Benner Cho grew up in the streets of Embassytown, a far-future city on an alien world that's not habitable to humans. There are many intelligent alien races in Embassytown, including humans, and different parts of the city are set aside for different species. Humans are guests of the native Ariekei, an enigmatic race with an unusual language that few can speak. The relationship between humans and Ariekei is peaceful but tense, as neither race really understands the other.

As a child, Avice became involved in an incident with the Ariekei. She grew up and—in part because of the incident—left the planet for offworld adventure.

Now, decades later, Avice returns to Embassytown. She doesn't speak the Ariekei tongue, yet she is now part of the language ... the same childhood incident has become sort of half-living figure of speech. One of the few humans thus honored, Avice is bound to the aliens in a way that she doesn't completely understand.

She soon learns that new humans are arriving in Embassytown, humans who don't appreciate the delicate relationship between the two races. There is a new and unfamiliar ambassador, and things in Embassytown are beginning to spiral out of control. Avice knows that if it comes to war, the humans will be easily defeated. Yet she's torn between supporting her people and doing honor to the Ariekei.

Embassytown is a well-crafted novel full of many wonders; it's the sort of SF book that keeps teetering on the edge, as if ready to tumble into incomprehensibility—but it never makes that fall. Instead, it playfully stretches the reader's perceptions just enough.

Definitely a book to enjoy. Don't be surprised if you find yourself reading parts aloud, just for the pleasure of feeling the words on your lips.

* * * *

Kea's Flight

Erika Hammerschmidt and John C. Ricker

Lulu.com, 569 pages, $26.99

(trade paperback)

Kindle, Nook: $3.89 (ebook)

ISBN: 978-1-4583-9679-2

Genre: Psychological/Sociological SF

* * * *

Kea was an unwanted mistake.

On twenty-fifth century Earth, genetic technology has made it possible for every parent to choose the exact characteristics desired in every child. In the process, however, many surplus embryos are formed. It's illegal to discard them, so they're frozen, packed on robot-controlled spaceships, and sent off into the universe.

Kea was a discarded embryo, one rejected for having genes linked to autism. She was never meant to be born—but then again, neither were any of the embryos on her ship. But mistakes happen, and Kea is just one of many unwanted children raised on a speeding starship.

None of it was every supposed to happen ... and when the government finds out that it has happened, the result is predictable and inevitable: it becomes necessary to eliminate the embarrassment.

But this ship of talented, misfit kids has another idea. . . .

What makes this book so fascinating is Kea, her fellow autistic children (they range from those with severe autism to high-functioning types with Asperger's Syndrome), and the society they've built in their ship. It's long been observed that many SF heroes and other characters display characteristics similar to folks with Asperger's—here's a book that makes the connection explicit. You'll see echoes of Heinlein's Peewee Reisfeld, Asimov's Arkady Darrell, and Panshin's Mia Havero.

Is this self-published novel worth $26.99 for a trade paperback? That's a question I could wrestle with. But at $3.89 for an ebook, it's well worth the price of admission.

* * * *

A Beautiful Friendship

David Weber

Baen, 376 pages, $18.99 (hardcover)

ISBN: 978-1451637472

Series: Stephanie Harrington 1

Genres: Adventure SF, Animal Companions, Teen SF

* * * *

It could have been awful.

The latest gimmick in mundane fiction, particularly adventure/suspense, is to have bestselling adult writers produce tie-in books aimed at teenagers. James Patterson does it, Dean Koontz does it, Sherrilyn Kenyon, F. Paul Wilson, and John Grisham do it—can Danielle Steele and Nora Roberts be far behind?

If an SF publisher wanted to play this game, they'd go for the biggest name they have. They'd tie the new teen series into that author's most successful adult series. They'd take an independent, beautiful teen girl and bond her telepathically to a sympathetic-yet-deadly alien animal ... heck, why not go all the way and make it an alien cat? And they'd pit this girl and her cat-companion against an evil corporation in the defense of their bucolic and ecologically-balanced home world. Then they'd commit to spending $100,000 in a marketing campaign aimed at every hard-hitter in the teen book industry.

Awful? It could have stunk on ice!

Fortunately, David Weber is a good storyteller, and his teen heroine Stephanie Harrington is every bit as fun as her remote descendant Honor. I don't know if teenagers will respond to marketing and buy this book like they're supposed to, but Weber's many adult fans will certainly enjoy the story.

* * * *

Time Travel

Paul J. Nahin

Johns Hopkins University Press, 200 pages, $24.95 (trade paperback)

Kindle: $9.99 (ebook)

ISBN: 978-1-4214-0082-2

Genre: Popular Nonfiction

* * * *

Someone at the Johns Hopkins University Press likes science fiction.

First it was The Science of Doctor Who by Paul Parsons, now Paul J. Nahin's Time Travel: A Writer's Guide to the Real Science of Plausible Time Travel. This is a new expanded edition of Nahin's 1998 book Time Machines, brought up to date with current speculation in physics and cosmology. After an introductory history of time travel in the pulps, Nahin examines ten approaches to time travel, from hyperspace and wormholes to quantum gravity and parallel universes. He ends up with a helpful chapter called “Reading the Physics Literature for Story Ideas.”

For a book dealing with some heavy-duty concepts, Nahin's tone is light and playful, a pleasure to read. Whether you're a writer who wants to find a new time travel gimmick, or a reader who wants to appreciate what authors are talking about, you'll find this book both fun and educational.

Don Sakers is the author of Dance for the Ivory Madonna and A Voice in Every Wind. For more information, visit www.scatteredworlds.com.

Copyright © 2011 Don Sakers

[Back to Table of Contents]

Reader's Department: BRASS TACKS

Dear Dr. Schmidt,

I was surprised by the description of the death in the first part of the serial “Engergized” in the June 2011 issue.

A man is in space in a tight fitting pressure suit, and his heater batteries are taken from him. Within a minute “the cold seeped into him, body and thoughts turning sluggish.” He becomes unable to reach his attacker, and dies within minutes.

He's in space. There's no significant atmosphere, so he can only really lose heat through radiation. Even giving the most pessimistic numbers (no incoming heat radiation, he's a perfect black body, no insulating effect of the suit, perfect internal conduction), he radiates no more than a kilowatt (Power = sigma x Area x Temperature4: Area = 1.9m2, T=310, sigma = 5.7x10-8, Power = 1000W).

Heat produced by a human body at rest is about 100W. Significant exertion can increase this by a factor of ten or more.

But let's take worst case—100W. Then the victim is losing at most 900W. His mass is, say, 80kg. Human body heat capacity is about 3500J/kg/C, so to reduce body temperature by one degree would require a loss of 280kJ, which would take a little over five minutes. Hypothermia doesn't seriously affect performance until core body temperature drops at least two degrees, giving the victim at least ten minutes of action time.

These numbers are all worst case. Since temperature loss is a problem requiring heating circuits in the suit, the chances of the suit surface being a black body are nil. I'd expect it to be far from a black body. Let's suppose it's 0.5, which is still rather high. And then I assumed that he was only generating 100W. He's actively moving, and in a highly emotional state. I don't see how he could fail to be generating 300W.

Finally, I assumed his suit provided no insulation, and that he was perfectly conductive. This is, of course, not so. The temperature of the outside of his suit is not going to be 310K. Given that even normal skin temperature is less than that, I think we can safely assume that the outside of his suit is no more than 300K.

Plugging these more realistic figures in, we find heat loss to be a mere 440W, offset by 300W heat generation, giving overall loss of 140W. Which would mean it would take about half an hour for him to lose one degree in body temperature. To die from hypothermia, he'd need to lose at least seven degrees of body temperature. His death would take hours.

Or I've made a silly error in my calculations, assumptions, or interpretation of the story. But I can't spot my mistake if I have made one. This very implausible death has distracted me while reading this otherwise interesting story.

Regards,

Paul Durrant

* * * *

The author replies . . .

* * * *

Mr. Durrant raises an interesting point. I agree with his characterization of a black-body radiator, but the human body is far more complex—and is prey to many more failure modes—than is a homogeneous mass. That complexity is, I believe, the factor Mr. Durrant suspected might be missing from his calculations.

So: I asked cardiologist and fellow Analog contributor Henry G. Stratmann, MD, to comment. He responded:

“Human skin acts almost as a black body, with an emissive factor of about 0.98 in the Stefan-Boltzmann law cited by the writer. How close the character actually approximates a black body radiating heat into space would also depend on the insulation his thin spacesuit and helmet (his head would radiate a disproportionately large amount of heat compared to the skin over other parts of his body) provide.

However, body heat would also be lost through biological processes. Energy is lost by evaporation when water vapor is created in the lungs during respiration. Loss of electric power in the spacesuit would also prevent the temperature of his oxygen supply from being regulated. With no way to warm it, inhaling increasingly cold oxygen would also reduce his core (internal) temperature from an initially normal level of 37o C. Some heat from internal organs would also be transferred by conduction through intermediate tissues to the colder skin.

Exposure to cold makes the body attempt to retain heat and increase its production. Blood vessels in the limbs constrict so internal organs like the brain selectively receive warmer blood. Shivering adds a bit over 100 watts to the basal metabolic rate of about 100 watts that an 80-kilogram individual sitting quietly generates. The character's initial agitation at his predicament will also mildly increase energy production. However, this increased energy and heat generation can be maintained for only a limited time before the body's primary “fuel supply"—glucose or its storage form, glycogen—becomes depleted and dehydration occurs.

Thus, despite his body's countermeasures, the character might develop hypothermia (a core temperature [ 35o C) within minutes due to combined heat loss from radiation to space and biological causes. He'd start becoming confused at a core temperature just below 35o C; be at least apathetic at 30o C; then become unresponsive and soon either look dead or die at lower temperatures.

Moreover, he might become mentally impaired almost immediately due to psychological and physiological reactions to his suddenly life-threatening situation before hypothermia itself develops. He could have a panic response, thinking his fingers are numb or that he's about to die well before those things happen. Or he might have a vasovagal reaction—roughly the opposite of the “fight-or-flight” variety—with a sudden drop in heart rate and/or blood pressure sufficient to make him lightheaded or even lose consciousness. In addition, loss of electric power in his spacesuit would also impair circulation of oxygen and removal of carbon dioxide in his spacesuit, potentially leading to hypoxia and hypercarbia—both of which impair brain function.

The story also describes the murderer replacing the space suit batteries after he thinks his victim is dead so that its heater comes back on. If the latter's core temperature was around 30o C or less he might actually have only looked dead—but this action could've been the coup de grace. Rapid external rewarming makes constricted blood vessels in the limbs dilate quickly. The cold, oxygen-poor blood in them is suddenly released into the central circulation where it mixes with the warmer blood supplying the heart and other internal organs, thereby temporarily reducing their temperature further. This “afterdrop” in core temperature can be severe enough to tip the victim over to the point where a fatal arrhythmia (abnormal heart rhythm) such as ventricular fibrillation occurs.

I agree that it'd take longer than a few minutes after removing the character's heater batteries for him to die. However, for the scene to be plausible it's only necessary that it could “possibly” rather than “probably” cause mental impairment and death within the timeframe described in the story. Given the right conditions and a reasonable delay before the murderer seeks “help” for his victim, what happens in the story is indeed plausible.

See my article “Suspended Animation: The Cold Facts” in the April 2000 Analog for more about the symptoms and treatment of hypothermia.”

* * * *

Dear Dr. Schmidt,

It's been an enjoyable two days of cruising through the current issue of Analog. The closest comparison I can draw at the moment is from the time I mounted what became a major expedition for the purpose of writing a travel piece for the Acorn Press's “100 Things To Do” back in 1993 ... the point being, it took two attempts, two vehicles, and two weekends to accomplish the deed. Reading Analog is considerably simpler.

(PS then I'll move on to the salient points ... The piece itself required a total of four re-writes before the editor would accept it. I wanted to throw in the kitchen sink, she wanted the daisies on the window sill.)

“Citizen-Astronaut” was a believable story, a very human story. I found myself entirely understanding the protagonist's attitude and his approach to his problems. Some years back (2005), I was privileged to be part of The Orme School of Arizona's annual “Vaqueros de Farmacia Ride.” I was ostensibly “The Ride's” photographer; but in fact I was also driver; kitchen staff, camp set-up/strike, and bar keep. One morning, as the “vaqueros” headed out for their day's ride, one pulled up alongside and asked me to fasten the cheek strap on his horse's bridle. The horse, naturally, had other plans, including keeping up with the rest of the herd. Gamely, I jumped into the task juggling my loaner camera, and avoiding the horse's hooves and getting run over by the herd. Piece of cake. Mostly one-handed, I managed to get the strap buckled.

Next? “Take One For The Road” was bittersweet. “Energized” smacked a bit of a soap opera, and was just as addictive. I look forward to the next installment. Finishing the issue will require another day. I can't wait for the kitchen sink.

Best regards,

EW “Whit” Knight, H.D.D.

* * * *

Dr. Schmidt,

Regarding your July/August 2011 editorial ("Division of Labor"):

The term “multitasking” far predates the Mac Plus and MultiFinder. It's a core concept underlying computer operating systems. I first heard the term in freshman class in 1971, and it, along with the related concept “multiprogramming” dates back to the 1950s in some form, and was a driving feature of operating systems from the early 1960s on (CTSS, Multics, IBM 360 Time Shared Option, various operating systems for the DEC PDP-1, Unix from its Bell Labs origins, etc.). Arguably, the whole point of an operating system is to enable multitasking. The term was in common use (in computing circles) by the late 1960s.

Wikipedia has a reasonably good discussion, with citations: en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Computermultitasking, and Googling “preemptive multiprocessing” is a good entry into the literature.

Regards,

Miles Fidelman

* * * *

Dr. Schmidt,

I enjoyed your observations in “Division of Labor” and I share your concerns.

I see at least part of the split-attention chaos as a predictably slow cultural adjustment to all the new technological devices. However, in addition to decrying all the specious anecdotes about productivity, I worry about the ethical sensibilities of persons using these technologies.

Someone's smart phone might be socially isolating or distracting, but why does that person feel justified texting while driving a car, even after all the media campaigns? How did we create people that justify selling ruinous financial instruments with “caveat emptor” or some blather about market forces? How did the entire company of Enron feel like heroes manipulating the energy markets of the West and nearly bankrupting California?

A lot of them used very similar diction along the lines of: it was legal.

We have a culture that has taken the separation of church and state to an extreme, pruning all ethical or moral instruction from the curricula of our schools, leaving us with the US constitution as some kind of ersatz moral epistemology. This from an agnostic.

Keep up the good work,

Ben Spillers

[Back to Table of Contents]

Reader's Department: UPCOMING EVENTS
by Anthony Lewis

27-30 October 2011

WORLD FANTASY CONVENTION at Town and Country Resort Hotel, San Diego, CA. Guests of Honor: Jo Fletcher, Neil Gaiman, Parke Godwin, Shawna McCarthy; TM: Connie Willis. NOTE: The convention has reached the attendee cap and started a wait list. If you wish to be put on the list, please complete the wait list request form at www.wfc2011.org/members/waitlistrequestform.html

11-13 November 2011

TUSCON 38 (Arizona SF conference) at Hotel Tucson City Center, Tucson, AZ. Guest of Honor: Patricia Briggs; Fan Guest of Honor: Dr. David A. Williams; TM: Ed Bryant. Membership: $45 until 31 October, $50 thereafter and at the door; children 3-12 one-half price. Info: home.earthlink.net/~basfa/t38main.html; basfa@earthlink.net; fax +1.520.571.7180; PO Box 2528, Tucson, AZ 85702-2528.

18-20 November 2011

PHILCON 75 (Philadelphia area SF conference) at The Crowne Plaza Hotel, Cherry Hill, NJ. Principal Speaker: Cory Doctorow; Artist Guests of Honor: Boris Vallejo & Julie Bell; Musical Guest: S. J. Tucker. Membership (as of publication date): $40; student & active military $25; expect rates to increase. Info: www.philcon.org; PO Box 8303, Philadelphia, PA 19101.

25-27November 2011

CHAMBANACON 41 (Midwest relaxacon, gaming, art, etc. conference) at Holiday Inn Hotel and Convention Center, Urbana, IL. Guests of Honor: Geoffrey Landis and Mary Turzillo; Fan Guest of Honor: Van Tilberg; TM: Tim Smith. Membership: $50 until 12 November 2011, $55 at the door; ages 6-11 half price; under 6 free. Info: www.chambanacon.org/; Brenda@chambanacon.org; 368 W. Main Street, Danville, IL 46122-1622.

25-27 November 2011

LOSCON 38 (Los Angeles science fiction conference) at LAX Marriott, Los Angeles, CA. Writer Guest of Honor: John DeChancie; Science Guest of Honor: Rick Searfoss, Colonel, USAF ret; Artist Guest of Honor: Aldo Spadoni; Fan Guest of Honor: John Hertz. Membership: $45 until 31 October 2011, $50 until 24 November 2011, $55 at the door. Info www. loscon.org, chairloscon38@yahoo.com, Loscon Chair, 11513 Burbank Blvd., North Hollywood, CA 91602

30 August-3 September 2012

CHICON 7 (70th World Science Fiction Convention) at Hyatt Regency Chicago, IL. Writer Guest of Honor: Mike Resnick; Artist Guest of Honor: Rowena Morrill; Astronaut Guest of Honor: Story Musgrave; Fan Guest of Honor: Peggy Rae Sapienza; Agent Guest of Honor: Jane Frank; TM: John Scalzi. Membership from 1 October 2010 until some later date (see website for latest details): Attending through Spring 2011: Adult (22+): $125; Young Adult (17-21): $100; Child (5-16): $75; Kid-in-tow (0-4): FREE; Supporting: $50. [Ages as of 30 August 2012]. This is the SF universe's annual get-together. Professionals and readers from all over the world will be in attendance. Talks, panels, films, fancy dress competition—the works. Nominate and vote for the Hugos. Info: chicon7.org/; info@chicon.org; Post Office Box 13, Skokie, IL 60076.

Copyright © 2011 Anthony Lewis

Visit www.analogsf.com for information on additional titles by this and other authors.