Boundary

by Eric Flint

  A.J. had proposed a modification of this mission profile which would serve NASA's interests and those of the Ares Project: instead of immediately landing, Pirate would aerobrake into an orbit close to that of Phobos, and would release a number of independent, remotely controllable sensor-probe units. The probes would survey Phobos carefully from all directions in a number of spectra, helping them to select the best places for NASA's base. Pirate would then deorbit and carry out its basic mission. Though now, probably, with no rover or a much smaller one, to make up for the extra mass of the sensor drones that A.J. called his "Faeries."

  The price tag for A.J.'s proposed modification was substantial for Ares—around twelve million dollars—but was far, far less than NASA would have to spend on any similar mission. Assuming they could do it at all—which, as far as A.J. was concerned, they couldn't. They didn't have him, and that meant that they simply wouldn't be able to design sensor drones good enough.

  Apparently, NASA agreed, because they had accepted his proposal and hadn't even quibbled on the price.

  The doors slid aside as he approached. "Joe!" he bellowed, making everyone in the room jump. "I believe in Faerie tales!"

  Dr. Joe Buckley frowned at him for a moment before catching on. "Well, dammit, why'd they have to wait so long? We've spent the past two months refining the rover designs and the interior supports. Not to mention—"

  "Oh, don't gripe, Joe. You'll still get to build the rovers. They'll be used in the next launch—hell, they'll be used in every mission we land, I'll bet. But this first mission will help pay for your rovers, and it's not like all of you won't get something to do in the redesign. I'm going to need half the machine and prototyping group to whip up prototypes of the Faeries. You'll want to try to design a chibi-rover to do at least some of the other stuff we wanted to test on the ground. The main capsule guys are going to need to design the drop-off module so we can match them up with Phobos' orbital speed exactly. I sure don't want to have to make the Faeries try to play orbital catchup; it'd play merry hell with the mass ratio and energy budget. And we'll all be playing games to figure out the best design for the drive systems on the things."

  Joe grinned. "Sure. But you know how we engineers hate being kicked out of a nice comfortable rut. Now you're going to make us all work."

  "True. Still, don't I get any thanks for bringing us in about twelve million bucks?"

  A.J. found himself blushing as the entire engineering group on duty answered by giving him a standing ovation, something he hadn't actually expected. If there were going to be serious gripes about the changes, apparently they weren't going to be addressed at him.

  "Umm . . ." The claps trailed off, leaving him in an awkward silence. "Thanks. Thanks a lot, guys."

  "Aw, c'mon, you're embarrassing him!" Joe said, grinning. "Next he'll start getting teary-eyed and thanking the Academy and all that kind of thing. Enough of all this, let's get to work—we've got a hell of a lot of redesign work to do, and if we want to make this launch target, we've got just six months to do it all!"

  Chapter 6

  "For the last time, Joe—no." As if to emphasize the point, she sat down at the desk in her office with a solid-sounding plump that properly belonged to a woman much heavier than she was.

  "It's not going to hurt my career, Helen!" Joe Buckley looked just as stubborn as Helen did. "I've gotten my doctorate now, and as far as the rest goes . . ." He snorted derisively. "I doubt if more than two percent of the people in my field know the difference between a triceratops and a tricycle—and less than half of the ones who do could care, anyway."

  "That's not the point, and you know it," Helen said bluntly. "You want to do the spaceman thing just like your friend A.J., except you're willing to follow the standard route with NASA if the Ares Project doesn't pan out. Well, Joe, you and I both know that there's nothing more political than a national space program. Get associated with the wrong weirdos and you'll never get picked. It doesn't matter what your colleagues think—they're not the ones who call the political shots at NASA. And I might well be the absolutely wrong weirdo."

  "Come on. The way you've written the paper, no one can gripe at you. It's not like you even say anything controversial."

  Helen laughed humorlessly. "Joe, you worked with me for how long? And you still think they can't gripe any time they want to? Of course, they can. And they will, because they'll notice exactly what I'm not saying—when, normally, I'd be expected to say quite a bit. At the museum next week they probably won't tear me to shreds, but after the paper comes out publicly and the axes start getting ground . . ."

  She shook her head. "By the time of the North American Paleontology Conference next year someone will absolutely crucify me. Might even be Nicholas Glendale."

  Joe grimaced. Glendale was far and away the best known paleontologist in the country. And, somewhat unusually, his popular acclaim was matched by professional respect from his colleagues. Tall, handsome, with salt-and-pepper hair and a toothy grin, Nicholas Glendale was a regular figure for interviews, movie consulting jobs, and had written several best-selling books on paleontology.

  He'd also been a solid fieldworker, early in his career, though he hadn't done any fieldwork in many years. For at least a decade, now, he'd been generally considered one of paleontology's top theorists. He had, in fact, been one of Helen's instructors for her graduate work—and probably the best.

  If Glendale did decide to weigh in against Helen's work, she could really be in for trouble.

  Helen saw the wince and smiled wryly. "You finally get it. And no, my chivalrous friend, there's nothing you can do about it. If you were thirty years older and at the top of the profession, maybe. But then you'd most likely be on the other side, anyway. If things work out well, don't worry. You'll all get the credit you deserve. I'll shout it from the top of the library building, if I have to."

  "I'm not worried about that!"

  "Maybe not, but I am. That's the part that rankles most about not putting your name—and Jackie's, Bill's and Carol's—on this paper. I feel like I'm cheating you, even while I'm trying to keep you out of the mudslinging. The only reason A.J. is listed is because his field won't care about ours, and it's really our only payment to him for the work he did."

  "Well, then, don't worry, okay? None of us think anything like that."

  He glanced at the sheaf of papers that summarized the many months of work Helen had done at the dig. Joe himself, along with Jackie, had only participated that first summer before their engineering careers made any further such time-consuming sidelines impossible.

  He grinned as he once more read the name in the title. "And Jackie, at least, is getting her credit right there."

  ". . . of Bemmius secordii."

  Helen finished and looked up. She tried to maintain a detached and professional expression, but it wasn't easy. Half of her wanted to burst out laughing at the expressions around the table, and the other half wanted to dive into a foxhole.

  The room was silent. For a long time.

  Finally, one of the visitors cleared his throat and said: "The study of the raptors is brilliant. But I noticed that you don't speculate on the holes in the skeletons. Or on the—ah, pebbles—that you found scattered about the site."

  "That's true," replied Helen. "I simply reported the facts. People can draw whatever conclusions they choose. I don't feel I'm in a position to do so. Michael Jennings feels he has an excellent explanation for them, however, and he will be describing his theory in a separate paper."

  Silence.

  Another visitor spoke.

  "Your treatment of the new species is also very restrained. The description is excellent, and I personally found your analysis of the presumed shape and locomotion quite convincing. But again, you draw no general conclusions. You don't even attempt to locate the animal within any established phylum."

  "You're right. Where would you put it?"

  Silence.

  After another long pause, Di
rector Bonds spoke.

  "One small point, Helen. I'm a little puzzled by the name you've chosen for this new species. The species name is for the Secords, of course. But why the generic name?"

  Helen managed to keep from smiling. "Oh, I don't know. I needed a name, and that one just came to me."

  Fortunately, none of the people in that room were regular readers of science fiction. So she got away with it.

  That was the easy one, she thought to herself an hour later, relaxing in the chair of the borrowed office. The museum had supported the dig, was getting the skeletons, and had every reason to accept whatever they got. But the peer-review process was bound to get interesting. By the time the paper came out publicly, months from now, the whole field would be alerted to the gist of its content. That would generate an instant academic brawl, which would reach a climax at the major conference next year.

  The phone rang. Startled, she stared at the warbling instrument for a moment before finally picking it up. "Dr. Kamen's office, Dr. Sutter speaking."

  "What's up, Doc? How'd the grilling go?"

  Even over the phone, Helen recognized the exuberant voice. She was startled to hear it, though. She wouldn't have thought that, after more than a year, A.J. Baker would have still been following her work. She knew from Joe Buckley that his friend Baker was up to his eyeballs in his own project at Ares.

  That's . . . kind of intriguing, actually.

  She shook off the thought. "Not too badly, A.J. They knew I was dancing around certain subjects, sure. But they didn't want to go there either, so that works out pretty well for me."

  "I still say I'd just go for it. Hit 'em with the truth and to hell with the rest."

  "Oh, how I wish. Apparently, when it comes to professional status, your field works differently than mine."

  "Well, yes, that's true. In my trade, there are those who are good, those who are excellent, and those who are divine. I have sufficient worshippers to qualify for the third category."

  "And you're the most modest person you know, too."

  He laughed. "Damn straight! So no one caught on?"

  "Well . . . The director did ask about the name. But either he didn't quite get it, or he was really working hard on ignoring it."

  "Maybe everyone else will do the same."

  "Ha. I laugh. And I laugh again. Everybody at the museum is friendly. Some of the people in this field are long-standing professional rivals of mine. Outright enemies, in the case of at least one or two. And they'll all have lots of time to read over my paper, once it comes out. For that matter, plenty of them will be reading it already.

  You can bet copies will get circulated ahead of publication, no matter what the rules are. Oh, they'll be ready for me and Bemmie, A.J., don't you worry about that. Come along to the conference next fall. You can see me get burned in effigy. It'll be a big bonfire, too, with them having almost eighteen months to pile up the firewood."

  "I'd love to, but it'll probably be impossible." A.J.'s voice sounded sincerely wistful. "Especially since I'd gladly roast anyone trying to light flames under you, and—if I do say so myself—I'm damn good at roasting people. 'To Serve Man' is my favorite bedtime reading."

  Helen laughed herself at that. A.J.'s cheerful delivery made the whole conversation lighter. "So come on, then! The conference next year will be held in Phoenix, which isn't even that far away for you."

  "No, it isn't—even allowing for the fact that New Mexico and Arizona are both big states. Hell of a scenic drive, too. But the problem isn't the travel time, it's the time I'd have to spend at the conference. Alas, though it devastates me, dear lady, I fear I cannot, for duty doth call."

  A.J. had put on a very exaggerated Ye Olde English accent for the last sentence, but promptly lapsed back into his usual Wiseass American. "We're kicking into high gear over at Ares, and I've been given the green light to go all-out in designing my sensor gear. You're talking to the man who's going to be first on Mars. Well, at least by proxy, but I get to design and run the proxies. And, who knows, maybe I'll actually get sent myself. Still, by next summer I'll be working round the clock and I doubt very much I'd be able to go attend a paleontology conference. Send me lots of pics and a transcript, though."

  "You want pictures?"

  "Of course. Mostly of you, though, not the stuffy old professors."

  A.J. was too hearty with the flirty approach. But he segued back into the dry humor that Helen thought fit him much more comfortably. "Though if you can get some pics of people about to explode with outrage when you read your paper, I'd enjoy that also. By the way, thanks loads for the 3-D model you made of Bemmie. I have him as my wallpaper at work."

  She heard a voice in the background. "Whoops! Gotta go, Dr.

  Sutter. Hey, hope you enjoy the e-mail I just sent! Bye!"

  "Goodbye, A.J." she said, but he'd already cut off. Her portable pinged, signaling that A.J.'s message had arrived. She saw it contained an animation file, which she opened.

  A flying saucer floated down the screen, disgorging a rather disquietingly cute Bemmius: squat, overly short, with exaggerated eyes and a completely anatomically wrong smiling mouth under the three forelimbs.

  Bemmie scuttled in its odd way across a simple landscape, coming upon a bunch of similarly overcute raptors. Bemmie held up a sign: TAKE ME TO YOUR LEADER. The raptors leaped at him, there was a struggle, and over the now unconscious body of Bemmie one of the raptors held up another sign: LEADER? I THOUGHT HE SAID LARDER!

  She laughed again, even though the joke was pretty lame. He'd clearly put some work into that one. Bemmie might have been given a sort of face against his anatomical realities, but it had taken some thought to create a cartoon version of his actual locomotion style.

  She dictated a quick, appreciative thank you, and then stood up. It was time to start working again. For the next year and a half, she wouldn't have much chance for relaxation.

  Chapter 7

  Jackie Secord gripped the frame of the observation port tightly, staring at the strange assemblage of spherical tanks, tubing, and massive bracing structures within the almost unbelievably huge enclosure before her. Behind, a calm voice continued the countdown. "Five . . . four . . . three . . . two . . . one. . . Firing."

  From the center of the assemblage a monstrous tongue of flame reared up. Even through the soundproofing and vibration-absorbing material of the test facility, there came a deep-throated, thundering roar that shook the room. The sound went on and on, an avalanche of white noise that overwhelmed even her shout of triumph. It also wiped out the continuing counts and updates of the engineers, who had to resort to electronic communication rather than attempt to make themselves heard over the force of that unbelievable sound.

  Finally, when it seemed to Jackie that even her bones were vibrating from the unending song of power, it cut off. Then she could hear the yells, the whistles, and leaped into the air herself with a cowboy whoop.

  "It worked, it worked!" she shouted, ears still ringing with that impossible noise.

  "And why should it not?" the deep, sonorous voice of Dr. Satya Gupta inquired calmly. "The concept was proven decades ago. It was merely a new design that needed to be tested."

  "Dr. Gupta, you can't stand there and tell me you didn't feel anything—any nervousness, any anticipation—while we were counting down to the first firing!"

  The dark eyes twinkled. "Well . . . Anticipation, certainly. The success of such a project, this is the reward of an engineer."

  Jackie loved that considered, deliberate delivery, with the exotic combination of Indian and English accents flavoring Dr. Gupta's precise and well-crafted speech.