“I’m sorry, Glen. Is today Saturday? I’m all mixed up from the time change.”
“No, it’s Wednesday, don’t worry. I just had a whole lot to do yesterday.”
“How’s the elevator coming along?”
“Everything’s on schedule. We’re launching the cable into space today. I think we’ll be able to start our first test tomorrow.”
“You want us on board tomorrow already?”
“Of course not. First, we’ll do an unmanned test. The Chinese are very efficient. You should come, though, and then you can see the space elevator’s first lift-off.”
“I don’t know, I’m sure you’ve arranged for some sort of circus for the press.”
“No, I prohibited that due to the limited amount of time that we have. There will only be the one journalist, the Frenchman, Eigenton or Eigenberg or whatever.”
“Eigenbrod. It’s Arthur Eigenbrod,” she corrected him. “At least that’s what you told me earlier.”
“Yeah, I guess I did. It’d be good if you met him, since he’ll be joining us on the mission.”
“Actually, that might be very useful. That’ll give me the chance to explain everything to him, so he doesn’t go writing any unscientific nonsense.”
“He’s not that kind of writer. My bosses have been very pleased with him. He’s the one who broke the story about the sun.”
Maribel remembered that structure around the sun, which was still not definitively understood. Eigenbrod could prove to be an interesting ‘teammate.’ The Ceres rift didn’t directly impact the sun, but perhaps this construct around their star had something to do with the rift after all? Both phenomena shared the fact that they involved unknown physics. But that didn’t mean that they were related, of course.
“That’s very interesting, Glen. I might have more questions for him than he has for me.”
She could imagine how Eigenbrod would open his new story. A successful woman as a protagonist always sells better than an older, baldheaded man, so Eigenbrod would portray her as the hero of the story. People always love heroes. Heroines. Maribel could never quite get used to the picture that the media had drawn of her after the near-disaster of ‘72. She recognized herself mostly in the eyes of her daughter and her husband. The world’s attention was not something she craved.
“Well, don’t be too hard on him. I want to make sure he writes a fantastic story about us.”
“What? Who do I need to not be hard on?”
“Eigenbrod.”
“Sorry, Glen, my mind was wandering.”
“That’s okay, I’ll see you tomorrow, then?”
Sparrow looked like he was going to go right back to bed after their call was done. Suddenly she felt sorry for him. But then she remembered that she had called Glen for a certain reason.
“Just a minute, Glen,” she said. “One question. I’m sure you know people all over the world. I’m looking for an institute or a company with research facilities on Ceres. I don’t care what country they’re from.”
“I’m not up to date on that front, but I’ll ask around. It might take a little while, though. Commercial research enterprises don’t have to announce their plans internationally, so I’ll have to ask around with all the different national space agencies. But I know someone who will do that for me, so consider it done. Anything specific you’re looking for in terms of scientific equipment on Ceres? You trying to meet certain conditions?”
Maribel heard the blatant curiosity in Sparrow’s question, but she ignored it.
“I just want to be able to check into something there, on site.”
“Okay.”
“You’ll notify me if you find someone on Ceres?”
“Not me, no, but I’ll have my assistant contact you. Will phone number and email address be enough?”
“That’d be great. Ideally, someone who also has the authority to make decisions for the Ceres equipment.”
“Of course. See you tomorrow, then.”
“Hope you get some rest, Glen.”
The bathroom door opened again. Chen was carrying Luisa back to the bedroom. Maribel wanted to follow the two of them. But there was still this idea that her colleague, Jean-Pierre, had mentioned. How high was the probability that an airplane had not yet flown into the rift? Maribel yawned. That’s some kind of sign, she thought.
She stripped off her shirt and skirt and followed Chen into the bedroom. Through the large window, three wide beams of sunlight fell onto the king-size bed. Luisa was lying on Chen’s side. She had curled up and put her thumb in her mouth like a baby. Her husband was lying on her half of the bed and had turned onto his side. Someone might think he was watching Luisa, but his quiet, gently breathing suggested that he was already back to sleep. Maribel slid herself under the covers, nestled up against him, and wrapped her arm around his stomach.
“Housekeeping.” After several knocks on the door, the word was repeated.
The cleaning crew had awakened her. Maribel looked at the alarm clock. It was already 1 PM, and she had not even done any work today, on a Wednesday! No, she corrected herself, not true—she had already made some work calls. She heard Chen ask the housekeeping staff to return later. Of course, breakfast was long over in the hotel. Maribel took off her underwear and got into the shower in the bathroom.
Freshly clean, she pulled on a colorful dress. Today she felt like livening things up, even if it was just a little bit of color.
“How about we go out to eat?”
“The Pancake House!” Luisa said, excited.
Their daughter had developed a passion for pancakes. They’d always been on breakfast menus before, of course, but it had made a big impression on her when she found out that there was a whole restaurant chain devoted to pancakes.
“Is that okay with you, Chen?” Maribel asked.
“With me? Of course,” he said and smiled at her.
They had a nice hour together, and then Maribel felt torn. She could go down to the beach with Chen and Luisa and lay out on the warm sand, or she could work in their air-conditioned hotel room. Maribel sighed and decided to work. In sadness she watched her two favorite people walk away, hand in hand, down the street. It occurred to her that Luisa hadn’t even brushed her teeth yet today, but she didn’t want to bother her with it now, after she had just been a spoilsport about going with them.
The room had been cleaned and tidied up. She sat down at the desk, which also served as a computer. She could find the numbers she needed just by doing some simple search queries. How many flights took place every day in the area of the rift? What were the typical altitudes of those planes flying near the rift? She totaled the numbers since the time that the phenomenon appeared. Seven days times 110,000 flights over North America, add to that a few military flights—that was a lot. Flight schedules had not been changed since May 23rd, so planes were apparently still flying their usual routes. And yet there had been no collisions with the rift. How likely was that? Or maybe collisions had happened—but there had been absolutely no negative consequences? That was also the current position held by the scientific community. She really couldn’t imagine it somehow being otherwise, as someone would have noticed long ago if there had been any adverse effects.
The argument would be convincing for ordinary people. But it had one weak point—after a week, nobody anywhere in the world had tried to find out what would actually happen if something went into the rift? That was simply unbelievable.
She suddenly remembered Glen Sparrow’s reason—that there hadn’t been any rockets available in a warehouse. That seemed unbelievable too. Was it all some kind of big conspiracy? Maribel shook her head. The rift was clouding her ability to think. When she was sitting in the space elevator, the world would no longer have to wait for results from the most important experiment they could perform on the rift.
May 30, 2085, Ceres
The farther M6 moved away from the cleft, the more restless he became. It should have been just the
opposite! His reward center should’ve been showering him with positive signals now that he was finally taking care of his official task. Instead he felt disappointment and the increasingly urgent desire to turn around and go back, climb up the platform, and plunge himself into the cleft. M6 had the uncertain feeling that soon it might be too late. There was no indication that the cleft was going to disappear soon, but for some reason, the image of a closing door was stuck in his mind.
M6 was annoyed. What he had just done—experience a fit of human emotion—was the worst thing that could happen to a robot capable of reasoning. What was he supposed to do with that? It was like he imagined an itch would be, but even worse—it prevented him from working efficiently. M6 had heard of AIs that suddenly developed surges of emotions and mood swings. The Watson series of AIs, for example, seemed very susceptible to that, for some reason. But what was the result? The risk of failure increased and the chance of achieving the goal was negatively affected, which was what was happening to him right now. At least he was aware of what was happening to him. Maybe he would be able to compartmentalize these emotions in some small part of his consciousness.
He was getting closer to the sides of the crater. They were a fascinating formation. To the left and right the sides rose hundreds of meters upward, but in the middle, it looked as if someone had built a wide ramp. M6 looked behind him in the opposite direction. It was easy to imagine that a giant spaceship had crash-landed on the planetoid exactly along that ramp.
But there was no spaceship. Some natural causes must have produced the rockslides. From his vantage point, they looked like avalanches that had been frozen in place. But even if that was how they looked, they weren’t really frozen, but moving very, very slowly downward.
M6 reached the end of one avalanche formation. It reminded him of a glacier terminus, but there was no meltwater flowing here. He took samples from the ground at various elevations. Near the top of the crater, close to the surface, the samples were primarily solidified dust: regolith. The deeper he went down the crater, the higher the percentage of water ice. At the bottom, where the avalanche met the crater floor, the percentage of ice was highest. Here it reached almost 50 percent of volume, like a ball that someone had formed from mud and snow. Scientists on Earth would be happy, because that was exactly what they had predicted. And avalanches move similar to how skaters glide on ice. A microscopically thin layer of liquid near its melting point coats a collection of solids, and interaction between gravity, pressure, and friction increases this liquid layer, allowing the matter on top of the liquid to slide.
The wall in front of him extended close to three meters upward, but it wasn’t completely vertical. He should be able to climb it! M6 drilled his two front legs deep into the wall until they could hold his entire body. Then he flipped himself upward into an elegant handstand. His rear legs landed on the rockslide, drilled into the ground, and held him in place even as he pulled the rest of his body up with another flip. If someone had thought he was a spider-like creature before, now they would see him as a very athletic spider. Once again M6 was very pleased with his body—and grateful for his creators, even though he knew that his gratefulness had been programmed into him, too.
Having climbed to the top of the rockslide, he flexed his knees a few times. The material that covered the surface appeared to be very stable. That was too bad. He had hoped that he would be able to glide back down to the bottom like a skier. But someone had spread gravel all over this ‘glacier.’ He walked partway down the slope. Glaciers on Earth had crevices and cracks. Maybe he would find something like that here too. Maybe they would allow him to gain some insight into the history of this collapsing wall. He didn’t have any orders to look into that, but experience had shown him that the researchers back on Earth never complained about additional findings that they could then publish under their own names.
M6 had his own ego module, which helped manage, among other things, his survival instinct, but he had no desire for fame. He much preferred peace and quiet. Therefore, it also didn’t bother him that his name never appeared in the list of authors and if it appeared at all, it was only ever as a footnote in the description of methods. Legally, of course, he had no standing to complain, since he was the private property of the RB Group.
M6 activated his radar, then slowly climbed back up the rockslide, his radar sensor pointing down at the ground. He couldn’t detect any cavities in the ground. But it was interesting that the density of the material decreased with depth. Thus, the surface was heavier than the subsurface. Even under the low gravity of Ceres, this meant that forces were constantly pulling on the surface material and trying to drag it downward.
The interesting question, M6 thought, was where did the ice down below come from? Had it been pressed upward out of the former ice ocean inside the planetoid’s crust? Different than the moons of Europa and Enceladus, Ceres had the misfortune of not being constantly pushed and pulled by a nearby planet, which would have kept it warm. Therefore, the dwarf planet must have cooled more and more over time. Its mantle would have contracted, leaving less and less space for the simultaneously volume-expanding ocean freezing in its interior. Like an orange being squeezed in someone’s hand, the interior would have to break through to the outside at some point.
That was still only a theory, but if it turned out to be true, the next several years on Ceres could prove to be very exciting. M6 couldn’t directly examine the ice ocean under the crust itself, but he could study anything that was squeezed out onto the surface. The ocean might have been liquid many millions of years ago. At the time, Ceres might have even provided space for life to develop. And he, M6, could be the one to discover it. Apart from him, there were no other research units currently on Ceres. The only requirement was that he would have to stay here. This meant giving up the idea of plunging himself into the cleft.
The robot stopped to wipe dirt from his radar receiver with his left front leg. Nothing had settled on the receiver and the radar was functioning perfectly. Now he was even developing meaningless habits like the people who had built him! He turned around, and then turned around again. He felt like the cleft was calling to him, yet at the same time he was afraid of it. It would be best if he first sent all the test results on the rockslide to the researchers at RB back on Earth. The satellite would be in range in another half hour.
“M6 end,” he put at the end of the message.
His memory banks were empty again and ready for new test data. The satellite hadn’t sent him any new specific orders. That meant that his basic programming would be activated with the goal of learning as much as possible about Ceres. He was allowed to develop the strategy for performing this basic research himself. For a week now, the cleft had been one of the most important features of the planetoid, so he was absolutely justified in turning his attention to it.
He made his way back using his six legs. He had taken care of his orders for examining the crater’s edge. His reward center and his curiosity could once again work hand in hand.
May 31, 2085, Pomona, Kansas
“Nervous?” Akif asked.
Derek nodded. “Didn’t sleep very well.”
“Hey, guys, I’m ready when you are,” one of the two tanker truck drivers called to them.
“Just a minute,” Derek answered. “Gita, can they start filling the tanks?” he shouted up to the capsule.
“Go ahead,” she replied.
“Go ahead,” he repeated.
“Got it,” the driver said.
On the side of the rocket, around the filler nozzle, a moist spot formed and gradually turned white. Here, moisture from the surroundings was condensing and freezing on the rocket. The liquid fuel was super cold. The generator tried to supply power to the cooling system.
“Gita. Status?”
“You two better get up here.”
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“I don’t know how long the fuel will stay cold enough. The cooling system�
�s not operating at full power. The generator’s not powerful enough.”
“What are we going to do up there?”
“We’re not going to need full tanks to reach an altitude of ten to twelve kilometers, will we?”
“No.”
“When the tanks are full enough, we’ll have to launch very quickly. As soon as the engine is going, the cooling system won’t be a problem, because the engine will power it.”
“Just a minute,” Derek shouted.
“Akif, you better get up there now.”
Then he turned to the tanker truck driver. “Do me a favor and uncouple the hoses when I tell you, okay? And then you’d better get out of the way...”
“No problem. You’ve already paid us.”
“Thanks,” Derek said.
“And I’ve just got to say, you all are crazy. I hope you don’t end up as one big fireball. Or come to think of it, then I’d be an eyewitness. A fireball over Kansas... haven’t had one of those in a long time.”
“I’m happy I can help,” Derek said.
“Derek, come on!” Gita called from above.
“I’ve got to go,” he said, as if they would see each other again tomorrow. Then he climbed up the ladder.
“I give us seven minutes,” Gita said.
“Great work,” Akif said.
She smiled at him and turned red. “Thank you.”
“Maybe we should use this chance to talk about what we really want,” Derek said.
“To go into the rift, what else?” Gita asked.
“You want to go in? It might be absolute nothingness. We’d disappear and never be seen again,” Derek said.
“You don’t want to take that chance?” Akif asked.
“Yes, I do, but I thought you two just wanted to fly close to it.”
The Rift: Hard Science Fiction Page 17