Boundary

by Eric Flint

  That was only to be expected. But it made it impossible to cover the whole project with a blanket of secrecy. All the more so because these foreign nationals were, as a rule, well-acquainted with their colleagues from America. All of them would expect to carry on long, involved, and detailed conversations about anything and everything during the voyage and the later exploration.

  Madeline had to find a way that she, personally, could control the communications from Nike—even in the face of considerable argument or resistance from other members of the crew. The worst part, she realized—with a sensation not far from shock—was that she didn't want to get into a quarrel. The problem was that these people weren't terrorists, spies, criminals—the sort that she usually dealt with. These people were astronauts and scientists and engineers, all of them trying to do their best. Their only potential failing was in a belief in a better world than really existed; one where you really could just tell everyone anything and there would be no political problems. A world where lunatic extremists wouldn't take advantage of new methods of destruction and blow people apart to make a statement.

  But there were people like that. She almost shivered, remembering. Madeline knew that many of the HIA's other agents wondered— though they never asked—why she was so fanatical about her firearms and martial arts training, when her usual tactics on assignments were designed to minimize the chance of violence. A few of them probably guessed; and Director Hughes knew, of course.

  She wasn't arming herself against the future, but against the past. She remembered being helpless and terrified. She remembered being subject to the whims of someone powerful, capricious, and insane. She made herself dangerous to keep the nightmares at bay. Now, sometimes, in her dreams, when he came back, she wasn't a helpless child any more, and she could fight. But usually the nightmare only really ended when the helicopters landed and the gunshots went off, and the soldiers came and made her safe.

  She looked at her reflection in the airplane window, suddenly-haunted eyes staring back. Madeline shook her head and forced the grim past away. She was no longer ruled by that, and her job was to stop things like it from ever happening again.

  And maybe, if she was lucky, she wouldn't have to do anything drastic. Hopefully, the critical people would understand what she had to do, or at least go along with it. She knew she was good at being persuasive. That was the only thing, besides her attractive appearance, that she'd inherited from her biological parents.

  The minute the plane taxied up to the gate, Madeline felt more cheerful. Whatever problems she'd run into, the truth was that she liked this assignment. Even, with a few exceptions, liked all the people she worked with.

  Early the next morning, as was her usual practice, Madeline headed for the gym. To her surprise, A.J. was there already. While he was clearly a man in good condition, she'd figured he usually either worked out in his own rooms or at odd hours of the day. She'd never actually seen him doing anything requiring physical effort greater than lifting a bottle of soda.

  Today, A.J. was dressed in a gi and running through katas. Off to the side, the physical trainer was watching with a well-educated eye. Sergeant Skonicki was also the NASA installation's martial arts expert.

  While Madeline warmed up, she studied the blond imaging specialist's movements. His file had mentioned that he did some aikido and some Shotokan karate, although apparently he hadn't been attending formal classes in some years.

  He was quite good, she thought. The smoothness of his movements, the precision of the strikes, blocks, and counters, were something a novice, or even someone of intermediate skill, wouldn't be able to emulate. He wasn't a true master, but the source of his evenly-muscled build was now evident.

  A.J. finally noticed her watching him. "Hey, Madeline. What's up?"

  "Just coming in for my own exercise. Got to keep in shape."

  To his slight credit, A.J. managed to restrain some comment involving shapes. While Madeline was skeptical of classifying people into types, she couldn't help doing so in some cases. A.J. was clearly the type of young man easily distracted by pretty women. True, that was a large class of males, but A.J. was of the subclass "geek" which meant that he was perfectly safe for the woman to be around, aside from the annoyance factor. And, as a rule, could be easily manipulated into following said woman's directions.

  Sometimes it's just too easy, she thought wryly. A.J. wasn't the type of man whom she found attractive. But keeping him distracted played perfectly into her plans.

  She did feel slightly sorry for him, but not much. There were at least two other women on the Nike project who evidently did think he was their type, and he didn't appear blind to them either. So any damage to his ego would be temporary.

  "You into the martial arts, too?" he asked.

  "For a few years now, yes. Care to do some sparring?"

  "Sure."

  At that point, Joe and Helen entered. Joe had recovered quickly from his misadventures in Chinook, and was getting back up to his normal form. Seeing A.J. and Madeline facing off, he sighed. "A.J., I see you've still got it all wrong. The expression 'hit on the girls' is not supposed to be taken literally."

  "Oh. I knew I kept confusing things." A.J. turned to Sergeant Skonicki. "You want to call it, Stash?"

  "Sure." He cocked his head, considering. "Okay. Madeline, you're going to be aka; A.J., you are shiro. I'll be using Shotokan rules, sorta—I mean, we don't have an official setup here. That okay, Madeline?"

  "I can live with it. What about throws and such?"

  "I'll count those as full points, if either of you gets one. Try to avoid rude blows, but you can take whatever targets you think you see; we won't force you to just hit the chest. First to three points wins. We set?"

  Skonicki waited for both to acknowledge him. "Okay. Enter the ring area, please. Bow to the judge. Bow to each other. Ready . . . Hajime!"

  Maddie sidestepped, watching A.J. critically. He was smooth, but cautious. He wasn't stupid. He didn't come charging in thinking that his size would automatically be an advantage. It would be, used correctly, but men against smaller women often made the mistake of using it incorrectly.

  A.J. was waiting for her to move. She had to come past his reach, which was quite noticeably greater than hers, in order to get to him. She stepped up and tried several combinations, but A.J. blocked and countered quite efficiently, nearly nailing her once.

  Time for a different approach. If he was thinking in Shotokan mode, especially Kumite . . .

  Suddenly Madeline dropped to the floor, extending her body outward and sweeping A.J.'s legs completely out from under him. "Whoa!" she heard Helen say involuntarily.

  A.J. fell poorly, having been caught completely off-guard. She rolled and hit him with a (checked) elbow smash before he could gather his wits.

  "Yame! Aka, first point!" Skonicki called out. "She suckered you on that one, A.J."

  The imaging whiz nodded, getting to his feet. "She sure did."

  The two bowed to each other again. "Hajime!"

  This time A.J. came in for the attack, starting with a kick-punch kick combination. Madeline blocked them easily enough, but when she tried to turn the second kick into a catch-and-throw found that A.J. had anticipated the move and barely evaded having her head kicked.

  She was getting his measure, now. One advantage she did not enjoy was chivalry. A.J. might be easily distracted by her good looks normally, but in the ring he apparently didn't care who you were or what you looked like. He wasn't pulling his punches any more than he had to, so to speak.

  Fair enough. She spent the next few moments surviving a barrage of attacks, measuring his patterns. Then she slipped inside his guard and punched hard.

  The result was that she found herself flipped around and landing hard despite a reflexive tuck and roll, and heard Yame! called out. "Ring out! Shiro, point!"

  Some schools didn't do points for ring-outs, but she wasn't going to argue. In real life, if you could take control of you
r opponent enough to arrange a ring-out, you could probably arrange something more painful.

  Once more they faced off. "One point all. Hajime!"

  A.J. scored again, this time with a kick that concluded a five-attack string which was designed to trick the opponent into thinking it was a four-attack string. The impact staggered her back but didn't hurt much. A.J. clearly didn't mean to hurt anyone, and had good control.

  The next face-off was critical. If A.J. scored again, he'd win. Madeline focused carefully this time, and the next flurry of blows ended when her high side kick rapped A.J. (gently) in the head.

  "Last point. Good fight so far, people, let's have a good finish. Hajime!"

  By then, they had gathered something of an audience. Ken Hathaway had come into the gym, along with half a dozen other people.

  Madeline was pleased. Perfect. I won't have to spread the story myself.

  The two combatants circled each other. Madeline knew precisely how skilled A.J. was now, and he'd definitely gotten a healthy respect for her at this point. Exploratory jabs and kicks, attempts at throws and holds, nothing quite getting through.

  All right, time to finish this.

  She let a slight opening show, let A.J. take it and then dropped down to take out his legs with a different move.

  But this time A.J. wasn't having any of that and his legs weren't there; one of them was in fact trying to deliver a foot to her face. She rolled gracefully away and blocked another kick and punch as she came to her feet, then drove in on the attack.

  Once more the smooth, circular motion of aikido sent her sailing gracefully out of the ring.

  "Ring out! Shiro, victory!"

  A.J. and Maddie exchanged bows. He grinned at her. "That was a hell of a match. We have to do that again sometime!" His breathing was heavy and a slight whistling tone could be heard, but he wasn't exhausted yet. Despite the damage to his lungs, the man was in such good physical shape that he could maintain even something this strenuous for a fair period of time. A few more minutes of it, of course, would start taking a real toll.

  "Definitely. I'll have to practice more, though. I didn't see that last one coming."

  "Well, I am considered pretty fast. Still, that move relies on you coming in to me. You can avoid it if you watch carefully."

  "I certainly will. You won't get me the same way twice."

  A.J. laughed. "I wouldn't expect to."

  "Well, I'd better get to my real exercises," Maddie said, sighing. "This was good, but I have to run through the boring routine." Sergeant Skonicki came over to help her set up the weights. "Nice dive," he murmured. "Top security," she murmured back. "Need to know—and you don't."

  Skonicki chuckled. "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil, that's me. Though I would enjoy being there if he ever discovers what's what."

  She shook her head. "Hopefully, this will all be a waste of effort."

  Chapter 25

  "Is this really going to work, Dr. Friedet?"

  The head of Ares Project shrugged. "It basically has to work, General Deiderichs. We're doing—by far—the largest construction project in space anyone's attempted. Without factories operating out there, we have to throw everything up there, and that's not an easy task. In fact, it's exceedingly hard, which is the reason that both NASA and Ares exist. In the past twenty years, we've added reusable first-stage heavy-lift vehicles and upped the cargo capacity of the shuttles. But the fact is that even if we ignore the fuel, we are trying to assemble a ship in orbit that masses two thousand tons. Fueled, Nike will mass nearly four times that. It's immense, General. So we need all the tricks we can get in order to get that much stuff into assembly orbit in time to meet your deadlines."

  General Deiderichs nodded reluctantly. The schedule Glenn Friedet presented had been generated by Ares and NASA's engineers working together to find a way to move that immense mass of "stuff" into space in as short a time as possible. Deiderichs found it a bit bemusing. Eight thousand tons was absolutely nothing on an Earthbound scale; freight trains carried that much. But then, trains could use seventy cars or more for a single trip. The situation for space was more like having to expend the same time, effort and money the railroads did per train—more, actually—except your trains could only move one boxcar load at a time.

  "Basically," Joe added, "we're taking advantage of the one thing we have plenty of now. Money. We're preempting everything everyone else has even in other countries by paying penalty fees. Sometimes huge fees. We've got our own scramlaunchers, a few of the Shuttle-C mods, Europe's EUROLaunch-4, and Japan and China's launch capacity too. We're negotiating with India now, though they're not going to be able to add that much. Still, every little bit helps. Fortunately, pretty much everyone has reusable first-stage stuff these days, however they do it. So if you're willing to spend money like water, you can get respectable turnaround times."

  "If I read this right, we're looking at something like eighty to a hundred flights." The general shook his head. "The logistics will be a nightmare."

  "General, you knew this was going to get ugly when we started," Friedet said. "That limitation comes from the payload capacity on each ship. Even the big ones only manage to approach two hundred tons at a shot—and none of them actually reach that number. The average is more like one hundred and forty tons per launch."

  Joe rubbed his chin. "The actual limitation is size, more than mass. It'd be impossible to do this in any reasonable time if we were still limited to, say, things the size of the old Space Shuttle cargo bay. We'd have to send up some things in eight or ten separate pieces that would have to be put together, instead of two or three pieces. Some of our scramlaunchers can manage dimensions more than twice that now, which makes it—barely—doable, if we're really smart about what we ship so that we take maximum advantage of the payload capacity on each launch, and if we are ready to start assembling as soon as stuff gets up there."

  "Still. That's an average of almost two launches per week. And assembling it will . . ." Deiderichs waved his hands, but Joe knew what he meant.

  "Remote drones will be doing a lot of the assembly," Joe pointed out, "supervised on the ground and checked in orbit by experts. With A.J. and others helping to design the software that helps coordinate work like that—detecting the targets, translating the groundhog controller's directions into equivalents for space engineering, monitoring the assembly so that the drones can tell before they do something disastrous, projecting the feedback to the controllers so that they don't notice the time lag much, and so on—we can effectively have a far larger team in space. The first loads, of course, will be the manipulator drones."

  Deiderichs winced. "I knew the idea was batted around for years, but we've only started to have good results with it, and there are so many debates about the designs. Are you going to get enough reliable drones for this kind of work?"

  Ken Hathaway's face showed an interesting mixture of chagrin and pride. "Baker's Faeries have been performing amazingly well in far worse, less controlled conditions, including their manipulative capabilities—which I thought were such a waste when he designed them. We're going with modified Faerie designs for a lot of the construction drones. Not so many sensors and other redundancies that were absolutely necessary for things operating a hundred million miles off, more power, a bit bulkier, stronger manipulators and additional tool units to perform the work. But they're based on designs that have now proven themselves under fire—even when abused to near destruction—and that makes it possible for us to produce quite a few of them fast. We figure another month and a half and we'll be starting real construction, now that we have a nucleus of a space dry dock already up there."

  "Modern design approaches and our testing of materials helps out too," Friedet pointed out. "For many of the internal components which aren't major structural load-bearing elements, we've developed flexible molding approaches. What that means is that we can send up a few mold forms and tanks of solidifying foam material and create a wh
ole bunch of things like interior partitions and furniture—without having to ship the things up, pack them with extra space, and all that."