Oberth Maneuver, n: a method of drastically changing a spacecraft's velocity by performing a rocket burn within a gravity well near perigee. The spacecraft gains or loses velocity according to the equation: ?Vtotal^2 = (Vesc+?Vburn)^2 -Vesc^2 Where?Vtotalis the total change in velocity, Vescis the escape velocity from the gravity well at perigee, and?Vburnis the change in velocity resulting directly from the rocket burn. The Oberth Maneuver can thus be used to greatly increase or decrease the velocity of a spacecraft.
Chapter 8 "I don't know about you blokes," Bruce said, a subdued tone in his voice, "but 'asteroid' don't seem to do this bastard justice." The vast gray bulk of Ceres covered most of the forward viewing area, a titanic object that showed none of the fuzziness of living planets like Earth and Mars, but also none of the human-scale, comprehensible irregularity of Phobos. Instead, it had the cold, crater-scarred sphericity of the Moon, and with nothing else around to compare it to, seemed to be at least as large, especially in the light of the clearly-shrunken Sun, more than two hundred and fifty million miles away. Helen thought it looked less hostile than Phobos had on first approach, but a lot more lonely. Jake Ivey, the mission archaeologist, shrugged. "It's still nothing even compared to the Moon, let alone any decent planet." This was a typically Jake comment; he had a focus on his specialty that was like A.J.'s with respect to sensors. Rumor had it that absolutely nothing impressed him unless it was in a properly labeled dig site, which Ceres obviously was not, at least not yet. "Poor Ceres," Larry Conley said. "Always the little guy. Every debate on what should and shouldn't be a planet has always kept just on this side of letting Ceres into the club. He's a little shy of a thousand kilometers wide, so people always proposed that as the cutoff." "Right now I wouldn't be inclined to argue with Ceres,"
Jackie said. "It's got an actual gravity well that we're going to feel, not like Phobos, where we could shuttle back and forth without hardly noticing the cost." Jake brightened. "But that'sgood. Phobos had so little that you couldn't rely on anything having remained in place for you to study properly. Ceres will have kept things where they belong. Hopefully they had disposal areas, and there will be remnants of their entire range of activity." Helen nodded. Even more in some ways than her own paleontology, archaeology relied on the forensic approach of examining objects in context; said context was hard to verify in microgravity. "Good in some ways, bad in others, Jake. As you probably know." She glanced over at the others. "What's escape velocity from Ceres?" She knew she'd heard the answer before, but it hadn't really registered. A.J., predictably, answered first.
"About half a kilometer per second. Not much compared to Earth or Mars, but definitely not irrelevant like Phobos. Unless and until we can get things set up down there to produce us extra fuel-probably from the water, if there is any-we'll have to be very, very careful about how many trips we make." "I could try to land 'er," Bruce said, grinning. A.J. shuddered. "No, thanks. I know you and I set up that sim, just to see what would happen, but there's many things that could go wrong. Anddid go wrong in the sims, early on." "Are you serious?"
Larry demanded, staring across the bridge ofNobel at A.J. and Bruce.
The bridge, unlikeNike' s photo-op-ready installation, was just a control room with viewscreens, safely buried in the middle ofNobel' s blocky central body. "You could landNobel on Ceres?" The Australian captain ofNobel flashed Larry a devilish grin. "Well, like A.J. says, mate, too many things could go wrong to risk it if we don't have to, but the sims show that this old girl could take the strain. She's built for accel up to a quarter-g under the right conditions, remember, and Ceresian-" "Cererian or Cererine, if you please," the astrophysicist corrected pedantically. "Cerelian, whatever, mate, gravity is only about a ninth of that-about one thirty-sixth Earth's.
But the landing would be dicey, I admit, so I'm not quite so keen to try it as I might have sounded. Nice to know we could if we had to, though." "I suppose," Helen agreed. The idea that the fourteen-hundred-foot ship could land and take off from the miniature planet below was, indeed, oddly comforting, despite the obvious risks in ever actually trying it. "So are we go for scouting the target area?" Helen asked. "By remote at first, as usual," A.J. said breezily. "Once more, you will all be hanging on my every word, awaiting my blessing on your perilous enterprises." "Hey, Mr. Ego, we're not a whole A.U. away this time," Larry pointed out. "At this distance I can do an awful lot with the sensors onNobel." "Which I designed, programmed, tested, and helped install. OW!" The "OW" came as a result of Helen kicking A.J.'s shin. "You are getting too old to act theenfant terrible, A.J., and try to one-up everyone. And that wouldn't have hurt if you'd been wearing your suit." A.J. tried to look loftily defiant and only succeeded in looking like a three-year-old being scolded. He opened his mouth to say something but reconsidered under Helen's watchful eye. "We'll still want A.J.'s remotes to pave the way," Jackie said finally. "I'm sure we'll be able to pinpoint good target locations from up here, but the fact is that there's only a few of us, and so we're going to be pretty dependent on remotes and robots to keep things running." "At least we've finally got a power source with a density that makes it really feasible, thanks to Bemmie and Barb Meyer, bless her stubborn heart."
"Powercarrier, A.J., not source," Jackie corrected automatically.
"But it is nice to not be worrying so much about how we can cram enough power into one of your gadgets to let it pull off its tricks, and instead spend a lot of the space on more gadget." What A.J. and Jackie were referring to, Helen knew, was one of the first major fruits of the Bemmius explorations. The material Barbara Meyer and her colleagues had discovered-and whose attempted transmission had revealed Madeline Fathom's covert mission-had indeed turned out to be the holy grail of electrical work, a room-temperature superconductor.
The existence of such a material had sent both physicists and chemists running back to their theories to try to find a way to explain the stuff; the engineers had turned instead to discovering how to manufacture it. It had taken a few years, because it appeared that the stuff's unique properties depended both on its odd composition (carbon, boron, silicon, gold, and a smattering of rare-earth elements) and its microstructure. For energy storage, a room-temperature superconductor with high current capacity offered a near-perfect battery; in essence, one shoved electrical energy in and it stayed there, chasing its tail near the speed of light, until you took it out, with minimal losses in either direction. There were some issues with magnetic fields and so on, but after the engineering was done, the result was a battery with an energy density a couple of orders of magnitude greater than even the best chemical fuel cells or batteries. These super-batteries weren't generally available quite yet, but the Institute and Ares had managed to get a cooperative contract with the manufacturers in exchange for a small custom run. So far, Jackie had been ecstatic over the results. The other major advance from the Phobos/Mars expeditions was in the area of nanodesign. A.J.'s conjecture about the noteplaques had turned out to be correct, and analysis of the plaques, the precise structural design of the superconductor material, and other unusual features of Bemmie design had given nanodesigners (including Dust-Storm Technology) a major leg up in that area. Helen knew A.J. had a large batch of the latest "smart dust" with him; from some of his comments, she suspected that he'd have married these sensor motes if they came with more attractive exterior construction. A.J. was agreeing with Jackie.
"Ceres is actually going to be a major pain in some ways. It's not small enough to treat as basically a weightless spinning rock, like Phobos, and it's got none of the good stuff of a planet like Earth or even Mars. I can't walk normally there, but I also can't float along without worrying about maintaining altitude." He leaned back, wiggling his fingers in that rippling motion that showed he was controlling something through his VRD. "So instead of Faeries, this time I had to make Locusts." Having seen the squat, squarish-bodied drones with their spidery legs, Helen still thought "Toads" would have been a better name for the Cerean… no, Cererine exploration vehicles.
But like any parent, A.J. had the right to name his creations. "So they'll bounce over the surface, right?" "Sort of. That sounds like something bounding along going real fast. I really want them to use the legs mostly as altitude maintenance. They can do a pretty good jump if they have to, of course, but an even glide is more what I like to see for surveying places. At least this time I can also scatter Faerie Dust in appropriate locations, now that we've licked the vacuum issues. And with the power storage capabilities on the Locusts, we've got more direct physical options for exploring recalcitrant alien installations." "You mean we can bust open doors if we have to."
"Within limits, and 'bust open' sounds awfully crude. I would prefer to use more subtle means for many reasons, not the least of which being that we might break something worthwhile." "We will most definitely be using more subtle means," Jake declared darkly. "No more of this Indiana Jones breaking and entering." "Yeah, yeah, Jake, we know, you already got your changes logged into the procedure book. And I still might have to use force in some cases. You guys have been known to use bulldozers." A.J. was studying readouts in the thin air before him. "No immediate signs of the base. It was, I suppose, too much to hope for that there'd be a clear landing area with markings.
We know the general location of the base from the Bemmie data, but on the scale of Ceres that's still a lot of territory to search." "How much, mate? I saw your maps-looked like you'd got her fairly well locked down." Larry gave a slight laugh. "Yeah, that little circle-cross does look pretty small. But on a thousand-kilometer sphere, we're still looking at a search area about twenty kilometers across. That's about as far across as Phobos-over three hundred square kilometers of surface." "Well, A.J. found Bemmie's base on Phobos his first time out. Why not again?" "If only it was so easy," A.J. said.
"We were lucky as hell that time. Phobos was leaking water vapor, which of course turned out to be coming from Bemmie's combination mud bath, sauna, swimming pool, and water supply. So all I did was follow the water. I'm picking up hints of water vapor around Ceres, but it's pretty damn thin, and it looks like it's all over the place. So probably what's happening is that if there are cracks that go down far enough to reach the water ice Larry and the others think is there, they'reall subliming into vacuum. Meaning, of course, no trail of breadcrumbs leading to the target." "Still, that's a pretty small area to search with modern tech." Larry, Helen, Jake, and A.J. winced.
"Small? Look, Bruce, what you're trying to find is about the size of a house, probably, on the surface. But there are alot of holes, canyons, valleys, crags, and so on that are in that size range. First, of course, I'm going to try to spot it from up here. I've deployed a couple of Beholders already." The Beholders, named for some many-eyed creature in one of the many games A.J. played, were compact multispectral sensor and communications satellites, allowingNobel to maintain both constant radio contact and constant visual surveillance over Ceres. "But if that doesn't work out-and I'm not seeing an encouraging trend here-then it'll be down to probe search on the ground, which will be at around walking speed. I've got quite a few Locusts, but still… Why don't you do the math? How long will it take to search an area three hundred kilometers square for probably one entrance no more than twenty meters wide? When there's going to be a bunch of holesjust like it all over the place that I have to poke into, maybe quite a ways, before I can tell for sure whether I've got the right one?" Helen didn't need A.J.'s lecture, unlike some of the others. She'd done fieldwork where she might be looking for something smaller than that. She caught Jake's frown, saw that he was thinking along the same lines. Even with the almost supernatural capabilities of some of A.J.'s technology, the thought of trying to find something the size of a single T. Rex skeleton in the middle of a hundred square miles of poorly lit, pockmarked rocky badlands gave her a headache. It wasn't made easier by the fact that the Bemmies appeared to prefer to keep the entrances looking "natural"-something which, given the war they'd obviously fought, might have been done for more than aesthetic reasons. She looked down at A.J.; his face was shadowed with uncertainty. She gave his shoulder a squeeze. "You'll find it." A.J.'s face lit up at her touch, something only visible from her angle since he was currently facing his console. She restrained a grin; there was, indeed, something childlike about the man which she found irresistible, and that quick flash of simple joy was part of it. "Find it? Of course I'll find it," the blond sensor expert said, the momentary drop into negativism over. "I didn't say I couldn't find it, just that it's not going to be easy. Unless I get lucky. Which, since Helen's here, I just might." She gave him an affectionate poke at the mild double-entendre. "You know, A.J., you actually discovered Phobos Base before the Faeries ever went inside," Jackie pointed out. "The internal-structure map showed a lot of the tunnels. You-and the rest of us-just would never have thought of what they really were beforehand. That's not true now, though. So why not just do the same internal mapping for Ceres?" "Because Ceres is big. Big.
Big-biiiig-big. Big-BIIIIIG!" A.J. did a Warner Brothers' set of caricature gestures showing how BIIIIIG he meant while he voiced the sentiment. "I could, with a lot of pulses and overpowered emissions and processing, manage to map out a lot of the interior of Phobos, yeah. Using all the Faeries and several hours. On a chunk of rock about one-fiftieth as far across. Even with the better power and sensor capacity I've got here, there's noway I'm getting a signal through Ceres." He looked momentarily abstracted. "Well, not a wireless one. If I put some sensors down and start doing impact events on the other side I could get seismographic and vibration data… but that'd require having a lot of spare stuff to throw, or a lot of explosives-a lot more than we have. Anyway, I'm going to do my best-GPR data and all that might help, depending on what stuff they made their installation out of here. Remember that some of their stuff was practically invisible to me, and other parts blocked everything.
But we might come down to a remote foot-survey. Still, no point wasting time. I'm already on it." A.J. turned back to his console;
Helen could see him getting ready to settle in for one of his legendary marathon sessions. "I'll bring you something for dinner later," she said, glancing at the others. They all clearly recognized the symptoms. "That good?" "Yeah, that'd be great. Haven't done this for a while. Time to get really down to business." Thin screens rose up around his station, blocking him from view. "Why does he stay there?" Jackie mused as they climbed to the hab ring. "I mean, he could control all that stuff from your cabin, or even one of these connecting shafts, just as easily as he could on the bridge." "Because he's A.J. Baker, certified genius at work," Helen answered with a laugh. "No, really. Partly he does it because he finds it too easy to be distracted in more comfortable surroundings. But…" Jackie smiled in understanding. "But he's also a show-off, and no one will see how hard and dedicated his work is unless he's somewhere public."
Her tone was more amused than critical; Jackie liked A.J., no matter what his faults. "You've known him as long as I have. Never thought about dating him?" Helen asked suddenly, curious. "Date A.J.? God, no offense, Helen, I'm glad you're happy and all, but Jesus Christ, no.
It'd be like dating my hyperactive little brother. Aside from being admittedly very cute, I can't understand what you see in him-romantically, that is. Joe was much more my speed, but it never really jelled." "And once Madeline showed up, that was it." Jackie grinned. "Oh, I wasn't possessive over him. Like I said, it never jelled. But I admit that trying to compete with Maddie would be a lost cause anyway." "So… no one serious in your life?" The younger woman shook her head, dark hair restrained in a tight ponytail. "Not really. Well…" She looked slightly embarrassed. "I did have a crush on Dr. Gupta for a while." "No need to be embarrassed about that. The man has presence." Helen stepped off the central ladder and made room for Jackie. "I admit to having had some rather nonprofessional thoughts about my mentor, too, from time to time."
"Dr. Glendale? Can't fault your tastethere, even if you seem to have gone downhill since." Helen snorted. "But…" Jackie looked pensive. "What?" "Oh, I don't know. I suppose I'm still looking for that perfect guy, as silly as it sounds." She looked dubious. Helen tried not to look dubious herself. "I'm sure there's just such a guy out there, waiting for you." "Well, he'd better not wait too long,"
Jackie said emphatically. "Or I'll end up marrying this ship, andNobel just nevertalks to me."
Chapter 9 "You found something, A.J.?" Bruce asked, floating quickly up. "Bloody hell, mate, you look awful." "Huh? Oh, just a little tired, I guess." The blond sensor expert's eyes had dark circles, visible even behind the VRD glasses, and he spoke with the heavy tones of someone almost asleep on his feet. "Found something, yeah. Larry made the suggestion, after I hadn't found anything in the past couple of days, to look for really deep straight holes." "You haven't been up for five days straight, have you?" "No, no, I slept a full eight hours last night." "The hell you did," Helen said, concern in her voice. "A.J., it's Tuesday evening." "Uh? Oh." A.J. gave a jaw-cracking yawn. "Um, yeah, that'd mean I slept, umm, two and a half days ago. No problem…" He turned back to the console. "Anyway, Larry gets credit. I was wrong. They did get creamed, just not with a big rock. Something hit hard with a lot of smaller things, made holes that looked"-he yawned again-"um, looked like a lot of the other craters, so it didn't stand out. Punched straight down. Found 'em because they were all in a pretty close group, and so they made parallel holes right around the target area." "And can you show us where that is, exactly?" "Oh, yeah, stupid of me… right here."
The larger image of Ceres on the main screen suddenly ballooned upward as thoughNobel were plummeting straight toward the surface of the miniature planet, then halted. A pattern of little circles in bright green suddenly appeared in the center of the screen, with a brilliant red X to the left and below the middle of the pattern. "X marks the spot I think you'd best land at… Looks to have slightly higher, um… what the hell is it, I can't think… Oh, higher water readings." He's practically dead on his feet, Jackie thought, and moved forward. "That's it, A.J., you're going to bed. Jesus, you're going to make yourself sick. You're not twenty anymore. In fact, you've seen the other side of thirty already." "Not thirty, refuse to believe it." Helen helped A.J., still mumbling in a disjointed way, out of the control room, while the others watched. "Right," said Bruce as the doors closed. "Time to plan the landing." Jackie nodded. The reason that they hadn't landed anyone on Ceres yet was simple: they wanted there to be absolutely no chance of any creative interpretation of the Buckley Addendum that would remove the Cererian Bemmie base from the control of the joint IRI-Ares mission. Unless the Addendum was interpreted very broadly, they wouldn't be awarded the leasehold on the entire miniature planet, any more than Ares had gotten all, or even a majority, of Mars. The Addendum and its current interpretation, of course, was very clear: the claim would be based on the location of the firstperson to "set foot"-i.e., land and leave the landing vehicle-on the object in question. Thus, they had to wait until they could determine exactly where the Bemmie base was, and landdirectly above it. If another ship, likeNike, Amaterasu, orOdin had gotten close, the crew ofNobel might have had to just go for it anyway. But now, fortunately, it wouldn't be necessary. "A.J. won't be available for a while, obviously," Bruce said. "Still, I don't see it should be a problem. I'll be flyin', of course, so me, you, Larry, Jane, and Jake are doing the landing." "You sure you want to send both the top pilot and chief engineer down?" Jackie asked, startled. She'd already resigned herself to waiting until later. "Sure am, luv. Let's face it, this old wheel of tuna cans and duct tape is doing just fine, and if they have to coast home without us, well, that doesn't take fancy flying, and they're none of them stupid, so if they have to fix something they'll figure it out. LandingFeynman on a new rockball, that's not quite so simple. And A.J., Helen, and Rich all got their chance to land on a brand-new world, so I think they can wait for trip two." She hadn't realized how much she'd wanted to be "in" on that first landing until she found she was giving Bruce an emphatic hug.
"Thankyou, Bruce!" She kissed him on the cheek. "Hold on with that stuff, mate-Tammy might not approve," Bruce said, grinning. "Not that I mind, mind." "How does she put up with it?" "Knowing me, wouldn't you wonder how she'd put up with me if I was there all the time?"
Bruce answered lightly. "No, really. How can you both stay married and so far apart?" Bruce grimaced, seeing she was serious. "It's been a fair dinkum problem, or was. See, she knew I was a pilot and I'd be going off for weeks at a time, but months-that was pushin' it.
Speakin' honestly, we damn near didn't stay married. But Tammy, she's the practical sort, too. My pay's good, an' being out here I don't spend much of it, and little Stevie loves seein' her daddy on TV. Very proud of me, she is." Jackie could hear the affection in his voice, the rough edge that was like a tiny hint of tears. "Stevie was sorta an accident, but the best kind." "Still… how? I mean, I know you send them long letters, video, things like that, but…" "Oh, no doubt it's tough. But that's why we've made the decision that it ain't going to be that way anymore-thanks to Nick." This was something new.
"Director Glendale?" "Yeah. You remember he called me aside a little before we left? We had a long talk. Well, actually, he did a lot of talking, and I did a lot of listening. If the IRI were a regular military or government agency, things'd be different. But Nick basically told me that there was a better way to do things. He's authorized it all. Tammy and Stevie are coming to stay." "Here? You mean, on boardNobel?" Jackie demanded incredulously. "Well, not right this minute. But yeah, after we get back to Phobos Station, from then on they stay with me when they want to. And if I'm taking a long trip, like something to the outer part of the system might need, they get to come with me." Jackie knew her face reflected her astonishment. It wasn't the idea that Nicholas Glendale might have thought that far ahead for the welfare of his most important employees; that was characteristic of the charismatic and razor-sharp former paleontologist. The real issue was expense. On Earth, it was much easier to give the family of critical employees appropriate living quarters; but in space, where every ton of food, water, or air cost someonesomething… and that issue was ten times more important on an interplanetary ship. And there were other problems, too. "Bruce, you know that at least some people can't take weightlessness at all, even for short periods." "Right, which is why ol' Nicky didn't even call me over until the family'd passed preliminaries. Tammy kept the whole thing a secret from me, too. Coulda knocked me over with a feather when I found out. Tammy wasn't too keen on it to start, but after these years seein' each other for a couple weeks at a time, and knowing how there just ain't going to beany jobs like this anywhere, ever again, she changed her mind. Because, funny thing, I still love her-more'n I did when I married her, strewth!-and hard as it is to believe, she loves me." "Not hard at all." Jackie said, smiling wistfully. "She's a lucky girl." "I'm the lucky one." He saw her half-sad smile. "Don't you fret, Jackie. There's plenty of guys out there for you." "Yeah," she said, turning to the console to start making up the manifest for the landing. "That's the problem. They're outthere, while I'm outhere. "
"… and that is why, Director Glendale, I want to assure you that the European Union is not only going to back Ares' claim along with you, but also, asOdin is now fully operational and tested, we would be happy to assist you in maintaining supply lines for both the Martian and Ceres operations." After he completed the sentence, Vice-President Bitteschell studied the impeccably dressed yet exhausted-looking figure across from him carefully. Bitteschell was one of the twenty-seven commissioners who made up the European Union's executive body, the European Commission. In addition to his largely formal post as one of the vice-presidents of the Commission, Bitteschell also held the portfolio of Commissioner for Enterprise and Industry. Since the European Space Agency had been absorbed by the E.U. some years earlier, that made him the effective head of Europe's space program. He could see Glendale's face relax slightly as he gave his famously brilliant smile. "Commissioner, I won't conceal from you that this is a considerable relief. The current American administration is… somewhat less happy with the situation." How very unsurprising, he thought to himself. Aloud, he said "I would be less than honest, Director, if I were to say that everyone in the Union is preciselyhappy. Naturally there is some jealousy. But if we were to push in a manner that might limit your rights, we simply make it less likely that we could benefit from any discoveries we might make in the future. And there are few enough vessels in space that I believe that we should all be helping one another. In return, I would hope that we might be able to arrange some cooperation in the dissemination of research results?" Glendale's nod and smile were slightly… off. Too heavy, Bitteschell decided. The director had spent most of his time in the past year in one-third gravity. He'd clearly kept up on his exercise, but still there was a major difference between spending an hour or three in a centrifuge each day or two, and spending days in a gravity field three times greater than you'd become accustomed to. "I am sure something can be arranged.
Certainly we would like to encourage cooperation rather than competition at this stage." "Excellent. If you like, Odin can begin by transferring a full load of supplies from Earth to Moon orbit, whereNobel is allowed to approach. We can then take another load inOdin, assuring that instead of falling behind, you will be somewhat ahead of your support schedule." "We would like that very much indeed, Commissioner. I am sure that Ares, as well as the Institute, would be very grateful for this." The gratification on Glendale's face was clear. Unsurprising, in that one of the major distinguishing facts ofOdin was that the E.U. vessel was nearly twice the size ofNike in terms of cargo capacity. While there had been considerable debate as to the wisdom of modifying the design that extensively, in this case there was no doubt of the advantages. "Then consider it done." He shook hands with Glendale, who had risen from his chair with some momentary difficulty. "I can see you are tired, Director. The rest of the arrangements can be done at a later time. I mostly wished to assure you that not all of us are either shortsighted or petty." "In that case, I thank you again, Commissioner. I admit that my homeworld's gravity appears considerably heavier now than I used to find it." The difficulty was evident in Glendale's almost cautious walk out the door. After a few minutes, Bitteschell said, "Send in the general." His desk pinged, acknowledging the command and that the appropriate individual had been alerted. The door opened a short while later, admitting General Hohenheim. The general was an imposing figure, tall and square-shouldered, with a neatly trimmed blond beard and blond hair that seemed to always be justthis side of being too long for regulations. However, he was also well-known for getting results, even under the most difficult circumstances, which made his tonsorial preferences irrelevant. Bitteschell nodded and gestured for Hohenheim to sit down. "General, thank you for waiting. I had to be sure that everything would work out as we expected." "Then…?"
"The Institute will be more than glad of our assistance. This will give us significant access to their information. I want that access maximized for our benefit. We need to get our own source of extraterrestrial knowledge, and this appears to be by far the best opportunity we have." "Can you explain that, sir?" the general asked.
"I have my own ideas on the subject, of course, but why can we not proceed independently, as America, China, and Japan are doing?" The commissioner gave a very undignified snort. "America, independently?
Despite their very shortsighted fits of pique, the American government is in a much better position. It is beyond belief that none of the former governmental personnel now working with the IRI and Ares would be passing at least some information back to their government.
Moreover, as America had a stranglehold on the last mission, the major profits from it are clearly already going to American companies. Look at Tayler, Ares, and, of course, the Maelstrom Power Systems startup that is exploiting the superconductor technology. As far as China and Japan"-he grimaced-"China is undoubtedly looking for similar opportunities, as is Japan, but the Japanese have already started building to construct a colony in orbit. They've also contracted with India for materials shipments now thatMeru actually is completed. The Japanese plan appears to be to offer space residency and tourism, and comfortable research-and-development locations near microgravity facilities. "So. The Americans are currently doing well by secondary means, the fact that the majority of the important individuals involved are American helping to compensate for the fact that America itself doesn't control the alien installations. India has chosen to attempt to become the heavy-shipping focus of this new space age, and from all indications this project will succeed. Japan has its own niche that would be difficult to compete with. Only we and China have no clear 'direction,' so to speak. We are really in competition only with China in this matter, and-fortunately for us-they are still having problems with their own interplanetary vessel." Hohenheim nodded. "Understood. What of the IRI and Ares?" "The IRI and Ares have forged an alliance of convenience and necessity which, unfortunately for us, appears to be founded actually on direct personal understandings as well as business sense. This means that I do not foresee a likelihood that we might be able to separate the two."
Bitteschell frowned. "In addition, I am reasonably certain that, barring sheer good fortune, no one will discover additional alien artifact sources without their assistance." "Why is that, sir?" The commissioner gave a slight laugh. "There is an old expression, General, which I'm sure you're familiar with. 'Once is happenstance, twice coincidence, but three times is enemy action.' The people currently working with Ares and the IRI discovered the alien base on Phobos. They then discovered the alien base on Mars. And they have now, apparently, located another on Ceres, an asteroid hundreds of millions of miles away. Despite the IRI's status as a supposedly independent and disinterested organization, they have had to arrange various business interests to ensure that they are not dependent on the whims of the American-or any other-government. This would seem to have included making arrangements that permit cooperative research and discovery with Ares. This was undoubtedly a result of Ares' own strategies, and cleverly done. The simple fact is this, General-all the new discoveries on the aliens are being done by members of those two groups, who are mostly friends, and who undoubtedly are doing their best to ensure that both organizations benefit first from their discoveries. Not illegally so, though possibly skirting the edge of the law in places, but still more than enough to make it virtually certain that any new alien finds will only be made through them." The general nodded. "I agree. So, to summarize, sir, you want us to cooperate with them so as to get access to their data and find another alien installation-'get the jump on them,' as they might say it-which we will then proceed directly to and claim for the E.U.?" "Precisely.
Undoubtedly they will be expecting something of the sort. I want you to select the right crew-engineers, scientists, and security-to ensure that anything they do, we can counter, all while maintaining civil relations." "If we take their information-especially on the location of some other installation-and use it to beat them to the site, civility may not be possible." The commissioner shrugged. "At that point, civility is not the issue. It would of course be nice if everyone could remain happy, but I am sure that harsh words will be said. Once you have a clear target, however, you may disregard the need for civility, as long as the indications are clear that the target will be avaluable one. We do not want a crater with a few traces of old ruins, as I am sure you understand." "I understand perfectly, Commissioner. I also understand that I did not hear such instructions from you." Bitteschell grinned. "Always a pleasure to work with such thoughtful men as yourself, General Hohenheim. As you are commandingOdin, everything you need is easily authorized under that budget." The big man rubbed his beard thoughtfully. "Given the nature of this mission, I hope that we might be able to authorize additional, hmm, research equipment?" "Oh, undoubtedly. Our scientists and engineers should not be completely dependent upon our prospective partners. I would recommend you allocate significant cargo to whatever additional equipment you, or your selected personnel, think might be helpful. I will authorize all reasonable expenditures." "Then,"
General Hohenheim said, standing, "I will begin at once. If we are to leave for Mars soon, I have little time to waste." They shook hands.
"Good luck, General." After Hohenheim left, Bitteschell resumed his seat behind the desk and stared out the window at the city vista beyond. Which was that of Brussels, unfortunately. While the capital of the E.U. was an interesting city from a professional standpoint-even an exciting one, at times-there was no denying it lacked much in the way of scenic splendor. That was especially true for someone like Helmut Bitteschell, who'd been born and raised in the very picturesque Bavarian town of Bamberg. But the commissioner had never regretted his decision. He hadn't come to Brussels many years ago for the scenery, after all. He was today one of the most powerful and influential figures in the European Union; which, if it still lacked the political cohesion of the United States and had only a small portion of its military power, had a larger population, the largest gross domestic product in the world, and a currency which rivaled the dollar and occasionally surpassed it. Good luck.
Bitteschell had no great faith in luck, actually. But he was a strong adherent to the old saw that one creates one's own luck, with the proper preparations. Should he employ Fitzgerald or not on this expedition? True, there were potential risks. Judging from the extensive files that the commissioner had studied, Fitzgerald was prone to… Well, not recklessness, exactly. That would be too strong a term. But there was no question that the mercenary from Belfast tended to take an expansive attitude toward his instructions.
On the other hand, that might very well be what was needed. There would be no way to micromanage-even to manage at all, really-an expedition such as this one, from such a great distance. And Hohenheim's weakness was the opposite. The man was undoubtedly capable, but prone to… Well, not timidity, precisely. That would be a rather silly term to use with regard to one of the most experienced and accomplished members of Europe's Astronaut Corps.
Still, in Bitteschell's opinion, Hohenheim was not the man to place in charge ofOdin. He'd have preferred Joachim Blucher, or even the Frenchman Duvalier. However, there was no point in fretting over the matter. Hohenheim was popular with the public-always a major concern when dealing with an expensive project-had strong support in the German government, and unlike Blucher had not aggravated the French and the Italians. Even the British thought well of him. Bitteschell's decision, in the end, came down to the need to keep Europe's powerful industrial corporations satisfied. That was always a major political concern also. One of those corporations, the European Space Development Company, had strongly recommended Fitzgerald. The ESDC was centrally involved in Europe's space program, one of its few truly critical players, and their recommendation had come with the support of several other important corporations as well. He pressed the button which communicated with his personal assistant. "Francesca, please get in touch with Richard Fitzgerald and ask him to come for an interview tomorrow." Best to err on the side of caution. Bitteschell didn't think the risks were that great, anyway.
Chapter 10 "Whatisthat, Helen?"A.J.'s disembodied voice asked over the suit radio. "I'm not quite sure," she answered, staring at the objects in front of them. Ceres Base was big-probably as large as Phobos Base-and undoubtedly they'd be finding new weird stuff in both of them for years. A.J.'s Locusts were demonstrating the advantages of a few years of design improvements plus Maelstrom's superconducting batteries, gaining them access to the interior of the base and opening even severely stuck doors with levering components similar to the old "Jaws of Life" design; even so, it would be a long time before all of the base was mapped. There had been signs that parts of this base had been evacuated in a more orderly fashion than Phobos, which appeared to have been "evacuated" mostly in the sense of "suddenly exposed to vacuum." While the areas where the house-sized holes had been punched through had clearly lost their atmosphere instantly, other areas had apparently maintained pressure. But Ceres Base hadn't been cleaned out, like the Mars Base. It appeared that the conjectures were correct: whoever ran the Mars installation had won, and their opponents kicked out with barely the clothes on their backs or whatever they could drag out in a few minutes. Why the winners hadn't felt it worthwhile to rebuild or loot these bases, however, remained a mystery. The tubes in front of Helen were another mystery. They were behind walls of glass, or a glassy substance, which had gone rather milkily translucent over the years; the tubes seemed to be made of the same stuff, so that all they could make out were tantalizing hints of shapes inside the tubes. Helen shivered as she suddenly remembered an old sci-fi movie with similar tubes. A.J. apparently thought the same way."If anything down there looks like an egg, I'm sending a Locust in to stomp it." "Shut up, A.J.," Helen said, repeating one of the constant phrases of the universe. She turned slowly in place, surveying the whole huge room. "See all that? This is a major control center, or something. There must be a dozen of those computer stations with the ramps that we found in Phobos control. And a bunch of noteplaques." "It's a lab," Larry said firmly. "Chem or bio, maybe.
Bio, if those fuzzy shapes in the tubes were living. Can we get a better look at them?" "One thing at a time."A.J. said. He was sitting comfortably inNobel, watching through telemetry, as he had another task to help with."Bruce and Jackie are coming up on the reactor placement. Helen, Jake, Larry, you guys keep looking around, but follow protocols, okay? I have to pay attention to this." "Understood, A.J.," she said. The idea of Bruce and Jackie having an accident at this point wasn't a pleasant one. The nuclear reactor, a twenty-megawatt design, massed seventy tons and was derived from a combination of nuclear technologies, including the "town-sized" reactors manufactured by Toshiba in the early part of the century, and the thorium breeder design used in theNike -style reactors. It would provide power for almost thirty years before needing a core replacement, and the core itself could be sent back for reprocessing to recover fuel and cleanse the reactor of waste products. Ares and the IRI had a total of five of these reactors on Mars, one on Phobos Station, and one in Phobos Base. They were as safe and reliable as any such design could be, but anything could be broken by accident… and this was to be their main power source for Ceres Base. She continued to cautiously circle the oval room with its curved window-containment area, perhaps? Larry was carefully imaging the noteplaques as they lay before attempting to move them aside, very gently, so as to look at the ones underneath. Like those on Phobos, the plaques were locked in whatever their last display state was, and were probably very vulnerable to impact-as Joe had demonstrated once.
The fact that A.J. had been able-just barely-to recover the apparently lost data from some of the incidental imaging scans had led to the current requirement to thoroughly image all finds before even attempting to move them. There'd been a general requirement like that in the original expedition notes, but there'd been some fuzziness as to what constituted proper imaging. Now there was no such debate, especially after Jake Ivey got through lambasting the prior expeditions for their criminal sloppiness. Jake had grudgingly agreed to certain shortcuts when compared to normal Earth fieldwork, acknowledging that even with modern gear there were a lot of constraints on safely exploring an airless rockball with an average temperature of -106° C. "Lowering… Support and locking plate is holding well. Keep her centered, Bruce… Jackie, keep an eye on line 3…"She heard A.J.'s instructions dimly in the background.
"Hey, Helen, take a look at this one." Larry flashed an image of one of the plaques before her. "Is that Bemmie?" She studied the semi-streamlined, tri-armed creature. "No… no, definitely not.
That looks like one of the creatures they'd left as a model in the Vault, the section clearly showing their homeworld's native species."
She activated her data retrieval. "Hmm… Yes, here it is. We named itBemmius symmetrius minor, the small symmetrical alien creature. See how it's rounder in cross section and more symmetrical than Bemmie?
And it's about the size of a housecat." Scientific naming conventions for the species of another world was a subject that was going to be hotly debated eventually, she suspected. Right now they were usingBemmius as an overarching tag meaningalien creature from Bemmie's home ecology, but if they managed to learn enough about the taxonomy of the creatures, they'd probably have to develop a much more detailed and discriminatory nomenclature. For now, though, the only agreed-upon change made to any of the names was to the original: no longer merelyBemmius secordii, he was nowBemmius secordii sapiens. "Yeah, now that you mention it, I can see that. Did Bemmie actually have that third eye?" "In a somewhat degenerate form. It's there, but much less developed than the other two." "In the hole now… Going smoothly… Okay, Bruce, detach. We have impact… well within tolerances… Triggered the locking clasps, all on cue… Lockdown. Jackie, if you want to go and start her up, I think we're good to go. Start laying your cable, and pretty soon we'll be in business."She heard A.J. give a sigh of relief."Okay, I'm back.
What do you need?" "The tubes?" "Right. Let me see… Oh, screw them! It's some of that damn composite stuff that eats a lot of the wavelengths I scan on. I'll have to make do with enhancing the visible. Hey, can you find a way into that glassed-off area?" "I'll take a look." There were two other doors leading out of the room, one of which seemed to be closer to the side of the sealed location. She pointed the Locusts in that direction; a few minutes later, the door ground slowly open. "Yes, I think this goes around the side." She bounced with dreamlike slowness down the corridor, her suit's lights reflecting a rippled gold and gray pattern from the walls. The corridor ended in a rounded door with a familiar long bar arrangement in the center. "Pressure or seal door. I think thisis a containment facility." Having already made his little joke earlier, A.J. managed to resist making a similar remark now. Clearly he was getting older and more responsible. Possibly, she mused, he'd reached high-school-level maturity by now. "Well, after sixty-plus million years of vacuum, plus your being in a suit capable of withstanding small-arms fire, I don't think we need to worry about whatever they were containing. Nothing showing on the sensors I've got around you, Helen." "Okay. Try the door?" "You can try, but I think you'll be waiting for the Locusts. Readings show it's vacuum-cemented at points around the door seal." "How long, A.J.?" "Hard to say. I'll give it a quick try, but I think I may have to make several attempts to commit a Lara Croft on this one." She heard a growl of protest from Jake. "That bad?" She could see A.J. grimace in the miniature screen. "Yeah.
Remember how well these buggers built, and with what. I don't think I'm going toquite have to call up Maddie for advice on demolitions-this isn't as bad as the first Vault door, but it's close." "Then I won't just hang around." "If you want to help out,"Jackie's voice broke in,"you and Larry can come join me and start laying down cable. The reactor's powering up beautifully. The more of us who get cracking on this, the sooner we'll be able to set up our real Ceres headquarters!" "On our way, Jackie," Larry said as Helen emerged from the tunnel. "Jake, you're staying?" "Well, first of all she didn't invite me, and second, there's plenty for me to sort through here without the amateur bulls in the china shop around."
Jake's tone wasn't as hostile as the words could have sounded. "I'll keep my lines open and keep an eye on the Locusts when they arrive. I might as well supervise the vandalism if I can't prevent it." "Sounds like a good idea to me,"A.J. said cheerfully."I'll start loading Feynmanwith the first set of base supplies, including the fuel maker.
That'll be a serious load off of Bruce's mind." "You got that right, mate. Once we're makin' our own fuel, I'll be a lot happier." "And we'll have a lot wider options. I'm on it. With any luck, I'll be seeing you guys down there soon!" She cut in a private circuit.
"Looking forward to it," she said, and winked.
Chapter 11 "Please have a seat, Mr. Fitzgerald," said Goswin Osterhoudt. The chief operations officer of the European Space Development Company motioned toward a chair positioned near one corner of his huge desk. Osterhoudt did not do Fitzgerald the courtesy of rising to greet him. But Richard managed to contain his dismay.
Actually, he had to struggle a bit to keep from smiling. People like Osterhoudt were so predictable. Two other people were already seated in the office, in chairs positioned near the opposite corner of the COO's desk. One of them was a paunchy middle-aged man with hair that was almost pure white; the other was a somewhat younger woman with dark hair, dark eyes, and a narrow face. Both of them were wearing business suits, as was Osterhoudt. The man's suit was expensive; the woman's more expensive still. Neither of the suits was as expensive as Osterhoudt's. And where Osterhoudt had taken off his jacket and loosened his tie, neither of his subordinates had done the same. It was all delightfully predictable. "Florian Lejeune, Chiara Maffucci," said Osterhoudt by way of introduction. Maffucci nodded, her face expressionless. Lejeune half rose to his feet and extended his hand.
"Pleased to meet you," he said. Richard shook his hand and took his own seat. Both Osterhoudt and Lejeune had spoken in French, so Fitzgerald presumed that would be the language for the occasion. That was a bit of a relief. His French was excellent. His German was almost as good, but when he and Osterhoudt met privately the COO insisted on speaking in Dutch, a language with which Richard was only passably familiar. Osterhoudt's accent was pronounced whenever he spoke in a foreign language, but his French and German were quite understandable.
In English, he was almost incomprehensible. Lejeune's French had been smooth and fluent, as with a native speaker, but with a trace of an accent. Between the accent and the given name, Richard assumed he was Belgian. "Very well, Mr. Fitzgerald," Osterhoudt said. He nodded toward his two associates. "I've given them a summary of what I propose to make your assignment, and they have a few questions they'd like to ask." There'd been a slight emphasis on the word "few."
Richard suspected that neither of Osterhoudt's underlings was happy with the situation-but Osterhoudt was making clear that he'd made up his mind already. Richard gazed at Maffucci and Lejeune, his expression as bland as he could make it. Which was surprisingly bland, in fact-he'd practiced in front of a mirror-given that Fitzgerald's face was composed of harsh planes and angles and decorated with three scars, one of them quite visible. Lejeune cleared his throat. "Mr.
Fitzgerald, I'm puzzled as to the reason you're requesting so many people for this assignment. Nine people besides yourself, given that the entire company of theOdin isn't much more than a hundred people, seems an exceedingly large security force." Richard was tempted to point out that in his negotiations with Osterhoudt, he hadn't "requested" a team of ten people. He'd insisted on it. In fact, he'd made approval of that number a critical item in the dickering. But there was no reason to rub a flunkey's face in his own status. So, politely, he replied: "Yes, I realize that the number must seem unnecessary-and, if this assignment were anywhere onthis planet, I wouldn't have asked for more than five or six. But we're to be engaged on an interplanetary mission, Mr. Lejeune. Furthermore, we have no clear idea how long the assignment might last. It could go on for years before we return." "Oh, nonsense!" snapped Maffucci. "Months, certainly. One or two years, perhaps." Richard transferred the bland gaze to her. "Or three years, Ms. Maffucci. Or four years. The truth is that we have no idea how long we'll be gone. If we turn up evidence of another Bemmie base somewhere in the asteroids or the outer solar system, we could be gone for a very long time indeed." "The projections-" "Projections," Osterhoudt interrupted, "are even more apt to go astray once you leave the Earth's atmosphere than they are on the planet itself. And they're quite apt to go astray here. Leave this be, Chiara. Fitzgerald is just being realistic." "And given that the length of the mission might become very protracted," Richard continued smoothly, "I need a large enough security force to handle attrition. I won't be surprised at all if one or two-possibly even three or four-of my people become incapacitated at one point or another. Possibly permanently. I have to make allowance for that." "I can understand the need for some redundancy," said Lejeune. "But this still seems excessive. Let's assume that you lose as many as four of your people. That leaves you with a security force of six people, including yourself. For a ship with a crew of not more than a hundred people, Mr. Fitzgerald? All of whom are either experienced and thoroughly vetted astronauts or prominent and almost-as-thoroughly vetted scientists. I'd think yourself and one other person would suffice." He smiled, almost sweetly. "I realize you do need to sleep on occasion." Richard wondered why Lejeune and Maffucci were pressing this issue. He would've expected their questioning to focus on some of the details of the mission itself, given that many of those details were stated in exceedingly fuzzy language in the contract. They were probably just covering their asses, he decided. If they pressed him on the operational specifics of his assignment, they'd risk getting too close to knowledge that might someday-if things went badly-wind up being embarrassing. Embarrassing, at best. At worst, such knowledge could potentially even lead to prison sentences. That was very unlikely, of course. Still, it wasn't impossible. By making a fuss over the crude issue of the size of his security force, on the other hand, they avoided that problem-while still, if it ever proved necessary, being able to claim they had raised objections and reservations from the beginning. It was allso predictable. The only somewhat puzzling thing was the reason Osterhoudt was letting them go on as long as they were. Richard suspected that was because neither Lejeune nor Maffucci was entirely under the COO's authority. Though officially his subordinates, they probably had other patrons in the hierarchy of the huge corporation-or its board of directors, more likely-and were acting on their behalf here. As much as Osterhoudt might like to squelch them, he simply couldn't. On the other hand-as he made clear that very moment-the COO didn't have to tolerate them for very long, either. "I think that's enough, Florian. Mr. Fitzgerald has explained his reasons for wanting a ten-person security force, and they seem quite sensible to me. So let's move on. Do you have any other issues to raise?" Lejeune hesitated, and then shook his head.
Osterhoudt turned to Maffucci. "Chiara?" The woman was made of sterner stuff. She proceeded to waste Richard's time with pettifogging quibbling over some of the equipment he proposed to take aboard theOdin. It was all quite pointless, since nothing on Richard's list came close to violating the prohibitions in the Mars Treaty concerning weaponry in space. True, combined with some of the equipment already on board or soon to be loaded on toOdin, and certain… enhancements that had been carefully introduced into the ship's design, the stuff being brought by Richard and his team would allow them to construct several quite effective types of weapons. But that sort of arcane military use of seemingly innocuous equipment was very specialized knowledge. Richard was confident he could smuggle the stuff on to the ship without alerting even the U.N.'s professional inspectors. There was no chance that either Maffucci or Lejeune would be able to spot the potential violations of the Treaty. In fact, Richard was pretty sure he could assemble a complete weapon system right in front of them and they wouldn't realize what it was unless it was put into operation. Which was quite unlikely also, of course.
Richard did not expect to have to actually use any of those military options. He simply wanted them available, just in case. Careful planning for all contingencies, he had found, was the key to success in his line of work. Finally, they were done. Maffucci and Lejeune rose and left the room. The Belgian nodded politely on the way out.
The woman didn't. "My apologies for putting you through that silliness, Richard," Osterhoudt said. He waved his hand. "Corporate politics, you understand." The chief operations officer leaned forward on his desk. "I stress that nothing has changed in the basic parameters of your mission. Whatever nervousness may exist on the part of some of the company's directors, everyone who really matters is entirely behind this project. Wemust get our hands on at least one major alien installation. Exclusively in our hands, that is. That is absolutely imperative. The benefits of this new Bemmie technology are literally incalculable. There's been enough of this 'sharing' that we've had to tolerate because of the unique position enjoyed thus far by Ares and the IRI. Now it comes to an end." Richard smiled and said nothing. The smile was mostly to cover what would otherwise have been a derisive jeer. It was typical of people like Osterhoudt to toss around expressions like "Now it comes to an end." Really? When the shortest transit time to Mars would take months and there was absolutely no way of knowing when, where, and how theOdin and its crew might discover the whereabouts of another Bemmie base? Assuming one existed at all, beyond those already known. That was quite likely, but it was hardly an established fact. Ah, well. People like Osterhoudt also paid extremely well. Which was all that really mattered, when you came down to it.
General Hohenheim found himself shaking his head slowly in disbelief. "I knew it was going to be big, but…" "The largest mobile object ever built by mankind, General Hohenheim," Francesca Castillo said proudly, "though not, of course, the most massive." She gestured toward the nearly completed E.U. vesselOdin. "She masses as much as a modern missile cruiser." Hohenheim shook his head again. Ten thousand tons. It would have been impossible to move that much mass into orbit only a year or two ago. Fortunately, the EU had been quick to invest in India'sMeru project once it became clear that they were going to succeed in becoming the source of mass transport to orbit using the space-elevator approach. Odinloomed before the transfer vehicle, ever larger, surrounded by what seemed to be delicate spiderwebs but which were massive cables providing anchors, support, power, and access for workers and automated assembly vehicles. It looked, in some ways, similar to the United States'Nike, a generally cylindrical central body with a large hab ring set outward from the body near the center, to provide a substitute for gravity when spinning. Sweeping back fromOdin 's rear, however, were four great arching tendrils, delicate compared to the more massive main body but extending an almost incredible distance. They were surrounded at intervals by circular bands that bound together and supported the slender ribs of composites, until at the far end was a circle a full kilometer across. The entire vessel, from the point of the bow to the end of that wireworklike cone, was nearly four kilometers in length.
She is, of course, mostly empty space-cargo, fuel, consumables.
Still…! "That structure is the mass-beam drive," he said, pointing to the kilometers-long tendrils and their accompanying circular bands. "I notice, however, that especially along the base there are additional pieces that I don't recall from my briefings."
Castillo, the chief engineer directing the assembly ofOdin, pushed a strand of graying black hair into the hairnet she wore while in microgravity. "Additional… oh, yes, I see." She studied the symmetrical long blades, like fins, that stretched for a considerable distance along the mass-driver support ribs. "Heat sinks and radiators, General. TheOdin 's reactor generates an immense amount of heat, and for some maneuvers may need to even store some of it and dissipate it even more quickly. As there is no water or air in space to help by evaporating or carrying away heat by convection, radiation is really the only option. It is of course possible to dump heat extremely quickly in an emergency by sacrificing water or, if you had it, another fluid, boiling it off and throwing it away. But such an approach would waste a huge amount of such resources, something you could likely ill-afford whereOdin will eventually go." Hohenheim nodded. "Yes. The outer planets, not the inner ones." Jupiter was uppermost in his thoughts there. The huge gas giant was the largest object besides the Sun in the solar system, and it was attended by the largest and most diverse grouping of satellites. More to the point here, it also presented the largest danger, overall, of any location in the system to a large ship… outside of diving down for a close encounter with the Sun itself. "Has the shielding been fully tested?"
Castillo snorted, a perhaps not very respectful way to address the man who would be commanding theOdin, but clearly expressing her opinion.
"Sir, you couldn'tfully test this shielding unless you had Jupiter's magnetosphere and accompanying radiation to test it with. But we have conducted extensive tests on both the general ship shielding systems and on those in the excursion suits and theHugin andMunin. They have all passed all tests." She pointed. "If you look along the hab ring, you can probably just make out the coil sections. The radiation shielding design is made with redundancy in mind. It shunts radiation around sections of the ship to pass down what amount to magnetic… tubes, I suppose, though they're not really tubes and certainly aren't physical. Those go between the spokes of the hab ring and pass onward either forward or backward from the vessel." "I would suppose, then, that anything lying along the centerline of those 'tubes' would be subject to very intense radiation-even greater than ambient?" "Quite so. And true to an extent with the suits. The field does not focus the beam very far, of course, and once the deflected particles leave the field they may be dispersed by the main magnetosphere, which will of course predominate away from the immediate area of the ship." "The suits appear to have a rather nonsymmetric field, however." Hohenheim gestured, and an image of theOdin 's outer-system worksuits appeared. While not very different from traditional suits of this kind, there was one obvious change: a hole, about the diameter of a man's fist, running through the area where many older suits simply had an oblong backpacklike box to carry air supply. In these suits, that area was divided by the hole.
"Magnetic metamaterials work has allowed us to effectively shape the fields to some extent. The radiation would normally pass through the center of a symmetrical field-which would, unfortunately, include a large part of the astronaut. By biasing the field, the deflected radiation can be sent through a less… crucial location." She smiled at him. "And the Bemmies themselves gave us the superconductor that makes it possible to build the shielding this small." "And to do much of the other work involved," agreed Hohenheim. He didn't follow the exact details of the sciences involved, but he didn't need to.
What was important was understanding how the changes in technology affected capabilities and approaches. Metamaterial sciences, which had really taken off in the late part of the twentieth century, involved studying how specific variants in the structure of a material, rather than its precise composition, could affect its physical properties.
Metamaterials in optics had demonstrated bizarre properties, including negative indices of refraction, optical magnetism, and others, and it was clear that something of the kind was responsible for the operation of the Bemmie room-temperature superconductor material. Similarly, magnetic metamaterials had shown the ability to affect magnetic fields in ways simple changes in composition couldn't. "There will be some effects on the drive in the deep magnetosphere," Castillo noted.
"Well, to be precise, not on the drive itself, but the deflected particles will be imparting some sort of thrust. You must make sure this is taken into account at all times." "Understood. It is something of a magnetic sail by default-no action without an equal and opposite reaction. If we are deflecting and redirecting energetic particles, their deflection exerts a force on us." He pointed to the rear of the main central body. "The main nuclear rocket nozzle-" "Ah, yes. Because theOdin may wish to use far more power in bursts from the reactor thanNike did, we have had to build a better cooling and protective system for the nuclear rocket's exhaust. It cools itself to some extent, but there is much heat in that area. Also, the main water tankage is spaced around the base of the mass-driver ribs and around the main engine area to provide additional radiation shielding. The wide spacing of the hab sections from both the main body and the active drive areas of the ribs minimizes any exposure to hard radiation from either the nuclear reactor or the mass-driver." "Hard radiation from the mass-driver?" "Most likely not much." Castillo blinked and for a moment her eyes didn't seem to want to meet his, but she continued before he could be sure. "Still, as they say, it is better to be safe. Magnetically accelerating material to high speeds can produce X-rays or even gamma radiation, depending on how much mass, how high the acceleration, and other factors." Hohenheim wondered what she wasn't telling him. The general was no political innocent and did not doubt his instincts. At the same time, the regulations were clear, and he knew the United States had been carrying out its inspections with clockwork regularity and undoubted thoroughness. There should not be any major surprises hidden on his ship.
Chapter 12 "Bioforming colonization?" Bruce repeated. "I dunno that one, Helen." "It's sort of the reverse of terraforming," A.J. said. "Dunno who was the first to come up with it. The oldest story I read based on the idea was something by James Blish. The Seedling Stars. Basically, instead of trying to change the world you're going to, you change the lifeforms you're bringing to the world to fit the environment." "Sothat's why they had the big bio labs all over the place?" Jackie asked. "Trying to make an entire biosphere for Ceres?"
Helen nodded. "Actually, they had to be doing some terraforming-xenoforming, I suppose I should say-on Ceres as well as bioforming on the various species. Ceres is frozen and would normally stay that way." Jake took up the narrative. "Right. While results are very preliminary, we've also located several places where it appeared they were doing excavations and, possibly, waste disposal. That's given us a general timeline of the Bemmie presence on Ceres, at least in the sense of a knowledge of what events came first. Exactly what attracted them here we don't know. Helen presumes that they were interested in the high water content and could somehow determine that from a distance." "We'd already guessed how much water was here years ago," Larry reminded him. "So it's no stretch to assume that Bemmie could do it at least as well or better." "Okay, then we'll assume that. Where was I? Oh, yes. The damage this base suffered in the war, unfortunately, appears to have been in the area of the original Bemmius landings. However, they first tunneled down a kilometer or so, as you know, and reached the water-ice layer. The crust of Ceres is astonishingly thin, at least in this area. Larry"-he nodded to the astrophysicist-"says it's just enough to keep the water from all subliming away." "Actually, my guess is that it's at least half the stuff that's left after it's done a lot of subliming away-the dirt and so on, plus whatever's accreted on the surface since," Larry put in.
"Wouldn't be surprised if Ceres used to be a few kilometers bigger and had an ice surface, then lost it over billions of years. Sort of a very, very slow-motion comet." "Anyway," Jake resumed, "they set up and started doing a lot of excavation. It looks to me like they were pretty clear what they intended to do from the start. There are signs that expansion of the underground areas was essentially constantly ongoing. The bioengineering labs were actually laid out a long time beforehand, but not equipped and used until a lot later. Jackie looked over a lot of the things we found in some of the other chambers, and she thinks that a large amount of their engineering was going into making something to melt the ice." Bruce sat up suddenly. "That'd take one bloody lot of power, mate." Jackie nodded. "And there's a lot of machines down there that might be generators. It'll be a long time before I'm sure, but… we might finally be able to say fusion power is less than twenty years away and mean it." "Hot damn!" A.J. said. "That'd pay for this little junket, all right." "They'd been working on that area for a pretty long time-must have been years-before the war hit. The bioengineering labs had only been going for a considerably shorter time." "They managed some impressive work in that time, too," Larry said. "According to some scans I had A.J. run in the critical underground areas, I think they managed to liquify something close to a cubic mile, as well as several much smaller volumes, and were using them as a testing ground for the products of the labs." "Were they working just on what we might call 'lower' lifeforms, or were they engineering themselves, too?" A.J. asked Helen. "The labs we've found so far seem to have been working only on things ranging from microscopic to, oh, maybe the equivalent of fish.
But I wouldn't be surprised if they eventually intended to make modified versions of themselves. It's one of the obvious ways to colonize." Helen looked abstracted. "Some of the modifications are interesting. There's a whole class of creatures that appear to be adapted to sessile forms from forms that were not originally sessile.
It's going to take a lot of biologists to figure out exactly what they were doing, but this is a bonanza for us. We may be able to derive a significant portion of their genome from all this material. They're not using DNA or RNA as we know them, exactly, but they have similar self-replicating molecular blueprints, and the work they were doing here indicates they understood that blueprint very, very well."
"Sounds like we've got a fair dinkum of a report to send back home.
Anything else?" "Jackie and me found what looks like another ship or shuttle bay," A.J. said. "There's something in there, all right, but I'm still trying to figure out what. I mean, it's got to be a ship of some kind, but it's not the same as the model we found on Mars, or the damaged whatever-they-weres on Phobos. Once I get done I'll be sending the data to Joe and the others to see what they can get out of it." He looked annoyed. "What's the problem, A.J.?" Helen asked, knowing that look of frustration. He shook his head. "I think… there's something almostfamiliar about the damn thing, but I can't quite put my finger on it." She laughed. "Don't worry about it. If you stop trying to remember it, maybe it'll come to you. Anyway, Bruce, Jake, and I will finish up a report-Jackie will provide the tech appendices-and you can encrypt it and send it off to the IRI and Ares." "Great!" Bruce gave a wide grin. "Tell you what-everyone's got shore leave for a day after that." They stared at him wryly. "We're alreadyon the shore, if that's what you want to call it." "Oh, right then. How about just celebratin' with an extra Joe dinner all around?"
"Nowthere's a treat, Captain!" Helen said, grinning back. Joe Buckley's spacegoing cuisine, suitably enhanced by Maddie's input, had become the standard for good food in space. Given that the other spacefaring nations were adopting his menus, Helen suspected that Joe was probably starting to see some considerable income from the use of his processes and recipes. One couldn't carry only "Joe" dinners for supplies, though, so they tended to be kept for special occasions and perhaps once or twice a week, like old-fashioned Sunday dinner. "With that as motivation, I'll get this report finished today," Jake concurred. "Jackie?" "The technical appendix is almost done. So start thawing out the Lobster Supreme-I'm hungry!" "Righto," Bruce said.
"Now, you blokes know I have to takeNobel back real soon-like as soon as we've topped off her tanks?" "Yes, we do," Helen said, glancing at the others to make sure they all remembered. "Who's going? You and Jackie, I know." "I am." That came from Tim Edwards, another of the originalNike crew who'd become a part of the IRI as a technician and all-around handyman. He formed part of the semipermanent crew ofNobel . Josh Saddler raised his hand. "I'm going, too." Josh was the youngest of the group to visit Ceres, an environmental engineer with an artistic bent who kept an eye on the life-support systems both here in the Ceres base and onNobel. His decorative wall paintings also tended to brighten any place he visited, and were always signed with a cartoonish sketched face of the type that A.J. called "bishonen" ("pretty boy"). The image was appropriate, Helen thought. Josh looked something like A.J. had when he was twenty-five (and to be fair to her husband, he still looked rather like that). A couple of others acknowledged that they'd be going. "Still… that's going to be quite a few months knocking around that ship mostly alone. And we'll be pretty thin around here, too." "Can't be helped, mate. The IRI needs us back home, an' I can't run the Tuna Wheel by my lonesome."
Jackie tried to kick him under the table, which he managed to avoid.
"Besides, you'll need me to go out an' bring you some more helpers, right?" "That would be a good thing. And other replacement luxuries, for sure." "Then just look at it as a chance to get shut of my Strine for a while," he said, grinning. Helen and the others laughed. "Hell, that's one of the things we'll miss," she said. They knew that Bruce deliberately exaggerated his dialect, but that was part of the fun. " 'Strewth. You blokes just need to learn how to sling the lingo." "No,"
A.J. said, "there's something just not the same. I wouldn't hang a faked da Vinci on the wall, and a phony Aussie just won't cut it, either." Bruce blinked and then chortled. "Well, I'll be blowed. Never thought I'd be compared to a priceless piece of art." "Well," A.J. said with that sideways grin that showed he'd gotten the response he wanted, "you certainly are a piece of work, anyway." "Ouch. Now I know why I'm leavin', mate. In fact, I think I'd better go right now. And I'm takin' all the Joe Dinners with me." Helen and Jackie gasped in mock horror. "Someone block the exits!"