Mindstar Rising

by Peter F. Hamilton

  Philip Evans's corporate strategy had Event Horizon flourishing into one of the leaders in deep-space industry. And the Merlins were an important part of his preliminary preparations; prospecting the Apollo Amor asteroids for him, a class of rocks well inside the main belt and the most easily accessible from Earth. The Merlins sent back a steady stream of securely coded information on their mineral and ore content.

  When the consortium of German, American, and Japanese aerospace companies finally rolled their scramjet-powered spaceplane out, launch costs would take a quantum leap downwards. The single-stage launcher would open up a whole panoply of previously uneconomical operations. One of which was asteroid missions.

  And with its carefully accumulated knowledge of extraterrestrial resources Event Horizon would be in the vanguard of the mining projects, so Philip Evans said. In a prime position to feed refined chemicals back to the constellations of microgee material-processing modules projected to spring up in Earth orbit.

  Greg had been aware of an undercurrent of dry humour in the old man's mind as he expanded his dream, as though he was having some giant joke on his guests. But the Merlin was real enough. It was just that the whole enterprise seemed whimsical, or at best premature. There had been rumours about the spaceplane, now eleven years behind schedule; some said scramjet technology just couldn't be made to work, and even if it could the cost savings would be minimal.

  Greg's status earned him a seat at the front of the tilt-fan's cramped cabin, looking over the pilot's shoulder. She lifted them straight up for fifty metres then rotated the fans to horizontal and banked sharply to starboard.

  He'd been right. In the light of day the Alabama Spirit was spectacular. A huge jet-black ellipse framed by the dreaming sky, like a hole sliced direct into intergalactic night. It was four hundred metres long, eighty deep, sixty broad. Two contra-rotating fans were spinning slowly on the tail, keeping its nose pressed firmly into the refuelling blimp.

  Their descent in the tilt-fan was a long spiralling glide. Even here, where energy shortage was a totally redundant phrase, the pilot was reluctant to burn fuel. She must've been a European, Greg thought, obsessive conservation was drilled into EC citizens from birth.

  They flattened out at the bottom of the glide and lined up on one of the big cyber-factory ships, swinging over the bow and pitching nose-up as the fans returned to the vertical. Greg read the name Oscot painted on the rusting bow in big white lettering.

  The Dornier settled amidships with minimum fuss, its landing struts absorbing any jolts.

  Greg tapped the pilot's shoulder. "Smooth ride. Thanks."

  She gave him a blank look.

  He shrugged and climbed out.

  Sean Francis, Oscot's manager, nominally captain, was waiting at the foot of the airstairs. He was tall and lean, dressed in a khaki shirt and shorts, with canvas-top sneakers, broad sunglasses covering his eyes.

  Greg dredged his name up from Morgan Walshaw's briefing file. Thirty-two years old, joined Event Horizon straight out of university, some sort of engineering administration degree, fully cleared for company confidential material up to grade eleven, risen fast, unblemished reputation for competence.

  He reminded Greg of Victor Tyo; the resemblance wasn't physical, but both of them had that same hard knot of urgency, polite and determined.

  The security team spilled out of the tilt-fan to stand behind Greg, waiting impassively. Sean Francis looked at them with a growing frown.

  "My office was told you're here to check on our spaceflight operations, yes?" Sean Francis said. "I'm afraid I don't understand, the Sangers are a mature system. I rather doubt their flight procedures can be improved after all this time."

  Greg produced the card Walshaw had provided, which Francis promptly waved away. "It's not your identity I'm questioning," he said, "merely your purpose. OK?"

  "This is not the place," Greg said quietly. "Now would you please verify my card."

  Francis held out his cybofax, and Greg showed his card to the key. There was an almost subliminal flash of ruby light as the two swapped polarised photons.

  He took his time checking the authorisation before nodding sadly. "I see. Perhaps my office would be a more suitable venue. Yes?"

  The seven of them started down the length of the deck towards the superstructure, drawing curious glances from Oscot's crew.

  Instinct made Greg look up towards the south-west. There was a black dot expanding rapidly out of the featureless sky, losing height fast. It was a returning Sanger orbiter, curving in a long shallow arc, pitched up to profile its sable-black heatshield belly. Greg tracked its descent, working out that it would reach zero altitude right at the end of the floating runway. He held his breath.

  The orbiter straightened out three hundred metres from the runway, wings levelling. It smacked down on the concrete, blue-white plumes of smoke spurting up from the undercarriage. Small rockets fired in the nose, slowing its speed.

  "What if it missed?" Greg asked. The orbiters didn't have a jet engine, they couldn't go around.

  "They don't," Sean Francis said.

  Chapter Seven

  "It's impressive," Morgan Walshaw admitted. "One of the biggest tekmerc deals for quite some time. We estimate thirty to thirty-five of them were assembled to turn our memox-crystal furnace operators. As far as we can tell, they started last June, and they were still recruiting until November. That kind of involvement would take kombinate-level resources." There was a grudging note in his voice that implied respect, or even admiration.

  Julia didn't like that, the security chief was supposed to be guarding her and Grandpa, not paying compliments to their enemies. It was that bloody dividing line between the legal and illegal again, too thin, far too thin.

  "So it's impressive," Philip Evans grunted. "So is your division's budget, Morgan. Question is: what are you doing about it?" He was sitting at the head of the table in the study with Julia and Morgan Walshaw on either side, facing each other.

  Julia would've liked to voice her own criticism, but didn't quite have the nerve. Morgan Walshaw was a forbidding figure, he'd always been stern around her, as if she didn't match up to his expectations.

  "My priority at the moment is to halt the spoiler," Walshaw said. "Thanks to Greg Mandel we've rounded up all the guilty furnace operators who were on their furlough. Unfortunately none of the Zanthus management personnel he interviewed were responsible for circumventing the security monitors, we have to conclude the culprit is up there now. Mandel should be able to find him without any trouble."

  "Told you that boy was just what we needed," Philip Evans said.

  Walshaw remained unperturbed by the implied criticism, his composure mechanical. "Yes. We shall have to give serious consideration to employing gland psychics in security after this. The tekmercs seem to be making good use of them."

  Julia pulled a face. Her grandfather caught it and squeezed her hand softly.

  "Certainly, I believe the tekmerc team who ran the spoiler used them quite extensively on this occasion," Walshaw went on. "We've been running some deep analysis on our furnace operators, and there is overwhelming evidence that the tekmerc team assembled a comprehensive profile on every one of them. Bank accounts, medical records, past employers' personnel files, they were all sampled by the team's hotrods. I think we'd be correct in assuming that the likely candidates were also scanned by a psychic to see if they would be susceptible in the final instance. It's very significant that not one of the furnace operators they approached ever came to us."

  "How many did they turn?" Philip Evans asked.

  "So far, we've nabbed fourteen, out of a total of eighty-three on furlough. Greg Mandel and Victor Tyo are due up at Zanthus tonight. Probability suggests there are between four and six furnace operators currently in orbit who've been turned. We've done our best to make sure no news of the round-up has leaked. Not that they can run, but there is the prospect of sabotage to consider. Out of the fourteen we've already got,
two had consented to kamikaze if they were cornered up at Zanthus."

  "Bloody hell!" Philip shouted. "What kind of people do we employ? That's damn near twenty per cent of them willing to sell us out at the drop of a hat!"

  "It's over now, Grandee," Julia said in a small voice. "Please." She bowed her head so he wouldn't see how upset she was. It'd been a good morning for him, he'd eaten well, and he wasn't sweating like he usually did, even his colour was almost normal. But now she could see the pink spots burning on his cheeks, showing just how badly worked up he was, which wouldn't do his heart any good.

  There were some days when she wanted it all to be over, this pain-drenched clinging to life. And that wish only brought more guilt. Psychics would be able to see that clearly. Perhaps Walshaw would hold off using them until afterwards. She ought to have a word with him about that.

  When she looked up the security chief was staring candidly out of the window.

  "All right, Juliet," her grandfather said in a calmer voice. "I'll be good."

  She gave him a tentative smile.

  "I don't believe the crystal-furnace operatives are representative of Event Horizon personnel as a whole, nor any of the other Zanthus workers for that matter," Walshaw said. "Theirs is an extraordinarily high-stress situation. There is an average of three fatalities a year, a significant chance of radiation poisoning, and the psychological pressures from living in such a closed environment are way above normal. Those factors came out time and again from all the interviewees."

  "Yeah, OK," Philip Evans said grumpily. "I'm a no-good mill owner, exploiting his downtrodden workers. What else is new? You got any good news for me?"

  "Greg Mandel should've pulled the last of the furnace operators by this time tomorrow. We'll be sending up the replacements on an afternoon flight, so from tomorrow evening the spoiler will be over. Plus, the memox crystals tagged as contaminated last week haven't been dumped yet. That's nearly two million Eurofrancs we'll recover."

  "Jesus, chucking away perfectly good crystals like a crap dump. That's a bugger, that is." He gave Julia a forlorn smile.

  Walshaw shrugged. "Only way to do it."

  "What about the people who organised this?" Julia asked. Walshaw hadn't said anything about them, as if they didn't matter. He lived for the game, not the players, she felt sure of it.

  "Difficult," he said.

  "Why?" She made it come out flat and cold, and never mind if he disapproved.

  "This is what we call a finale deal. It's all cut-offs, understand? The tekmercs who made the moves, turned our people, they'd be assembled by an old pro, someone with a reputation. This leader, he's the only point of contact between the team and the backers, the ones who want Event Horizon spoiled. Now first we'd have to find one of the tekmercs. OK, maybe we could do that; they've all gone to ground right now, but a deal this size is going to leave traces, and we've got some pretty accurate descriptions. Once we get a tekmerc we extract the team leader's name."

  "How?" she blurted, cursing herself instantly. This was why she'd never probed security before. The secret horror, and fascination. Right down at the bottom of all the smart moves were people who deliberately inflicted pain on each other, who chose to do that.

  "Not as bad as you might imagine," Morgan Walshaw said placidly. "Not these days. There are drugs, sense overload techniques, gland psychics. Greg Mandel would just read out a list of names to the tekmerc, and see which chimed a mental bell. But even if we obtain the name, it still doesn't do us any good. That team leader, he'll already have vanished off the face of the Earth. Finale, remember? He won't put this deal together for anything less than a platinum handshake. New identity, a plastique reworking from head to toe—hell, even a complete sex change, it's been known. You see, it's not only us he's hiding from now. His ex-employers, they know he's the only link back to them, and that I'm going to be hunting him. They want him zapped."

  "So why would he do the job in the first place?" Julia asked.

  Morgan Walshaw smiled gently. "Kudos. A finale is the top of the tree, Julia. If you've come far enough to be asked, you're good enough to survive. No tekmerc ever turns down a finale. Take this one; for the rest of time, he's going to be the one who burnt Event Horizon for forty-eight million Eurofrancs. He beat me, he beat your grandfather. And even if I catch him, or they catch him, nobody's ever going to know. His reputation has made it clean."

  "Bugger of a world, isn't it, Juliet?"

  She turned to her grandfather, surprised by his level questing stare.

  "You approve," she accused.

  "No, Juliet, I don't approve. I regard tekmercs as pure vermin, dangerous and perennial. Doesn't matter how many you stomp on, there's always more. All I hope is that you've learned something from this sorry little episode. Don't ever lower your guard, Juliet, not for an instant."

  She dropped her eyes to the table. "You will try, won't you?" she asked Walshaw.

  "Yes, Julia, I'll try."

  "Me too." She pressed her lips together in a thin determined line.

  "You'll do nothing, girl," Philip said.

  "They nearly ruined us, Grandpa. Everything you've built. We've got to know who. I've got to know who. If I'm going to stand any chance, I need the name."

  "Doesn't mean you go gallivanting about chasing will-o'-the-wisps."

  "I'll do whatever I can," Julia said with stubborn dignity. She subsided into a sulk, certain that Walshaw would be silently censuring her outburst. Well, let him, she thought. Anger was an improvement on boredom. If only she didn't feel so apprehensive with it.

  Chapter Eight

  The laser grid scanned slowly down Greg's body, a net of fine blue light that flowed round curves and filled hollows. He was quietly thankful he kept in trim: this kind of clinical catechism was humbling enough, suppose he'd got a beer gut?

  He'd spent an hour in the Dragonflight crew centre, out on one of the spaceplane barges. An annexe of the payload facility room, composite-walled cells filled with gear-module stacks, most of them medical. The medical staff had been anxious to test him for exceptional susceptibility to motion sickness; space-adaptation syndrome, they called it.

  "If you do suffer, we have drugs that can suppress it for a couple of days," the doctor in charge had said. "But no more than a week."

  "I'll be up there a day at the most," Greg told him. He was confident enough about that. The interviews at Stanstead had gone well. After Angie Kirkpatrick had cracked it'd been a simple matter of cross-referencing names.

  The laser grid sank to his feet, then shut off. Greg stepped out of the tailor booth, and a smiling Bruce Parwez handed him his clothes. A long-faced man with bright black eyes. Dark hair cut close, just beginning to recede from the temples. His broad-shouldered build was a giveaway, marking him down as a hardliner.

  "Your flightsuit will be ready this afternoon," the technician behind the booth's console said, not even looking up.

  Greg thanked him and left, glad to be free of the ordeal.

  Sean Francis was waiting for them outside. "The medics have given you a green light," he said. "But I don't think we've ever sent up anyone with so little free-fall training before." Francis had been markedly relieved when Greg had cleared his ship's modest security team, taking it upon himself to see him through his pre-flight procedures. He had been grateful for the assistance, but found the man irritating after a while. He supposed it was culture clash. In age they were contemporaries. But after that, there was nothing. Francis was a dedicated straight arrow, high-achiever. It made Greg pause for what might've been.

  "I've got several hundred hours' microlight flight time," Greg said.

  "That'll have to do then, yes?"

  "We'll take care of you," Bruce Parwez said. "Just move slowly and you'll be all right."

  "You had many tours up at Zanthus?" Greg asked.

  "I've logged sixteen months now."

  "Is there ever much trouble up there?"

  "Tempers get a bit frayed.
Bound to happen in those conditions. Mostly we just separate people and keep them apart until they cool off. There's no real violence, which is just as well. We're only allowed stunsticks, no projectile or beam weapons, they'd punch clean through the can's skin."

  They walked along a corridor made of the same off-white composite as the crew centre, bright biolums glaring, rectangular cable channels along both walls. Then they were out into a sealed glass-fronted gallery running the length of the hangar's high bay, halfway up the wall.

  Greg looked down at the Sanger booster stage being flight-prepped below. It was a sleek twin-fin delta-wing craft, eighty-four metres long with a forty-one-metre wingspan. The fuselage skin was a metalloceramic composite, an all-over blue-grey except for the big scarlet dragon escutcheons on the wings. Power came from a pair of hydrogen-fuelled turbo-expander ramjets which accelerated it up to Mach six for staging. Greg had only seen the spaceplane on the channels before; up close it was a monster, an amalgamation of streamlined beauty and naked energy. Fantastic.

  "How many Sangers does Dragonflight operate?" Greg enquired as the three of them moved down the gallery to see the orbiter stage being prepped in its big clean room behind the high bay.

  "Four booster stages, and seven orbiters," Francis said. "And they're working at full stretch right now. The old man has ordered another booster and two more orbiters from MBB, they ought to arrive before the end of the year. Which will be a big help. Strictly speaking, we can't afford to take an orbiter out of the commercial schedules for a Merlin launch, although I appreciate his reasoning behind the exploration programme. I just regard it as somewhat quixotic, that's all. Still, it's his money, yes?"