Analog SFF, July-August 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  He took several steps back himself, and fired. The rocket-propelled shell's exhaust gasses whumped and whooshed against his helmet. A sliver of light streaked toward the boulder. The cavern flashed and the blast wave staggered him.

  He glimpsed a shallow crater. Then dust blizzarded from the roof in clumps. Roger had seen the phenomenon once before—and that was too often.

  “Run!” he shouted.

  A pelting of rocks followed the dust, and then whole shards broke free. Roger and Rebecca scrambled. A dozen meters farther, the roof overhead showed no signs of further collapse.

  Rebecca stared at the passage, now clogged with rocks.

  “We're trapped,” she said. “It's like—Tom and Becky—trapped in the cave!"

  The pitch of her voice rose, a needle jabbed into his spinning mind.

  “We're not them,” he said. “They're only—"

  “It's as if my whole life, I've been fated to—"

  "Stop it!" he snapped.

  She blinked.

  He locked gazes and enunciated through half-clenched teeth: “Maybe believing in Fate is a luxury you can afford on Earth, but out here you've got to plan for every breath you take, and if every time you're in a tight spot you give up and complain about the unfairness of life—"

  He didn't know how to end the speech, so he just puffed and balled his fists.

  After a moment, she said: “It's getting to you too, isn't it?"

  “Just don't cry. Please, because, uh...."

  Her eyes were too wise: Because you might too?

  “...We, uh, don't have time right now,” he finished.

  He took and released a deep breath. Finally, she looked away.

  “All right,” she said. “After all I've been through, I refuse to end like Becky Thatcher.” Facing the blocked exit, she said, with overstressed casualness: “But how do we—?"

  “Wish I knew.” How to be calm, especially, he thought. After a moment's meditation: “I hope this isn't just idle curiosity, but since your father based so much stuff on Tom Sawyer ... how did Tom Sawyer escape his cave?"

  “He found another exit. But he searched for days. We've only got minutes."

  He was still trying to think, when Rebecca uttered: “Bats."

  Her eyes were steady, her face untrembling—the composure of perfect calm possessed by a person who is either at peace or gone mad.

  "Bats?"

  “Tom and Becky ran away from bats. That's how they got lost. When I was a kid, I always wondered, why didn't they just follow the bats out again?"

  “Rebecca, there aren't any bats here. Just dead robots."

  “And the nanojuice."

  “So?"

  “Well, they're like little robots, right? If some of them are still functioning, could you program them to seek a way out of the cave?"

  “We don't have the equipment or expertise to—"

  Then he thought about it.

  * * * *

  With Mel's rifle in hand and Rebecca in tow, Roger returned to the threshold of the nanotech facility and aimed at the largest tank labeled “N2."

  “What are you doing?” Rebecca demanded.

  He nudged her into the passage. “You said we needed to program the nanobot molecules to find a way out of the cave. Well, in a gaseous state, all molecules naturally try to escape confinement. The scientific term is, ‘leaking.’”

  He pulled the trigger. The explosive shell ripped into the pressurized container. Liquid nitrogen instantly vaporized, filled the cavern, and rushed into the passage, bearing a miniature storm front of dust and ice particles.

  “Follow the clouds!” he shouted.

  They reached the ledge of the pit before Roger realized too late that there was a flaw in his plan. The pit was too vast a cavity. The expanding gas from the nitrogen tank was rushing not toward an upward passage, but into the chasm.

  Roger fired at the passage roof near the ledge. The cavern's radically thickened atmosphere transmitted the impact as a muffled boom as the roof collapsed.

  “You've sealed us in!"

  “Now we go back. Look for any kind of eddy, any disturbance in the clouds!"

  By then the gas was equalizing throughout the cavern complex. Dust was settling, and on the path back to the Crystalarium, Roger saw no particles drifting into the branching caverns. And beyond, Roger knew with a sinking heart, the passage to the facility was straight, short, and unbranching.

  Rebecca knocked his arm. “There!"

  In the tenuous atmosphere of the Crystalarium, all was still—except for a swirl of dust behind the gypsum outcropping where Rebecca pointed. Roger jumped over and pushed away a slab, revealing a hole—and a rope dangling within. The hole entered a shaft that was too consistent in diameter to be anything but artificial. Without a word, Roger pulled himself upward.

  On Earth, an ascent of hundreds of meters was a daylong challenge of human endurance. On Ceres, their slight tuggings maintained a velocity that brought them to the surface in seconds.

  The top opened into a room. Roger spotted the charging console and plugged in his suit and yes, there were active solar cells somewhere outside. And yes, dawn had come. The flashing red zero on his suit power reading faded as he took deep breaths and helped Rebecca plug in her suit.

  “This looks like a basement to my father's shack."

  He nodded toward a handle on the ceiling, in the corner. “That'll go topside."

  “A trap door! How come we didn't see it before?"

  Roger twisted the handle and pushed. The door had unexpected inertia. He slid it aside and hopped through the hole. In the upper room of the shack, the fermentation vat rested atop the trap door. The base of the vat concealed the seams of the door, Roger observed.

  A glint caught his eye.

  Beyond the window, in the clearing where Roger's flivver had once been parked, a figure in a spacesuit was loping from the central peak toward a newly landed vehicle. Upon the suit's backside was imprinted a skull-and-crossbones, and upon its shoulder the figure hefted the chest that Roger and Rebecca had unearthed.

  * * * *

  As dawn's rays spilled over the crater rim, Roger aimed the rifle barrel at the hunched figure securing the chest to the vehicle.

  “Hold it there, Wink!"

  Hal Winkler swung around.

  “Roger! Heh! What are you doing here?"

  “You know what we're doing here. That's why you put a transponder in my flivver, isn't it?"

  “Roger, please stop pointing that thing at me. We've known each other for—"

  “Long enough to know you're no businessman. You were a mixer, like Mel and Alberto, weren't you? That's how you knew Rebecca Sanchez would lead you to the mine."

  “I was a mixer? I'm sorry, is that a crime?"

  Roger met the incredulous expression with an undiverted gaze.

  “No,” Roger said. “But you killed Mel—and then you sealed us in the mine just now. You tried to kill Rebecca and jump her claim."

  “That's absurd!"

  “Someone sealed the cave. You're the only person here."

  “Your accusations are outlandish. The cops will never accept them!"

  “They'll investigate one accusation. That you stole government property and framed Alberto Sanchez with your crime."

  Wink's eyes shifted.

  “The Ceres Mining human resources database lists one mixer as ‘location-unknown,'” Roger continued. “The constabulary can procure the DNA sequence from the employee records. Maybe you've changed your appearance and name, but once they match your DNA, they'll investigate just where you got all that money to start your business. And then you'll enjoy a long rest in hyper—"

  Wink roared and heaved the chest. Simultaneously, he drew an explosive-projectile gun. Roger dodged the chest and fired. A crater burst at Wink's feet, knocking weapon from hand.

  Rebecca walked from behind Wink. Sprawled in the dust, Wink contemplated the sunlight gleaming off the muzzle of her gun. />
  “Your suit isn't armored, is it?” she asked.

  “N-no."

  “Then you're lucky that I'm a mature person, who can control her emotions."

  Her kick sent him flying for meters.

  * * * *

  A pair of Ceres Enforcement Service constables arrived shortly after Rebecca's call. Their interview with Roger was brief and professionally crisp. Their interview with Rebecca, to Roger's annoyance, was friendly and leisurely. Even more annoying to Roger was that, judging from her smile, Rebecca was coming to terms with the persuasive powers of being female in a female-starved society.

  Wink's protests were ignored, and he was clapped into the CES cruiser, his vehicle keys turned over to Rebecca so that she and Roger could return to Alphaville at their own convenience. The constables departed with a promise to look in on Mel's dog. In fact, they needed a mascot and Rebecca could come visit at their HQ and ... Roger had to practically herd them into the cruiser.

  After their vehicle cleared the crater rim, Roger went over to the upturned chest and began reloading bottles. Rebecca came alongside and stooped. She picked up one of the cracked bottles. It dribbled its contents onto the dust, forming an inky puddle that glistened in the morning sunlight like polished slate.

  “You know,” Rebecca said, “I haven't a seen a single grape since coming here."

  He knew where she was going with that, but kept his expression deadpan. “Ceres is the goddess of grain crops. Wheat, rye, barley. Not so much emphasis on grapes."

  “I mean, this goop here—it's not wine, is it?"

  “No.” Roger squinted sunward, assuring himself that their recent visitors were out of communications sight. “Wine is like any other liquid, it vaporizes in a vacuum. That's pseudofluid."

  “The converter was missing...."

  “Yeah. Your father must have instructed the robots to stockpile the pseudofluid in his spare wine bottles until he could install a Stage Six converter. Which we can do now, no problem."

  “This pseudofluid. I think I drank some this morning. It's not toxic, is it?"

  “No, it's just a transport medium. The acid's filtered long before Stage Six. And the platinum's encapsulated, so it's safe too."

  An odd light came to her eyes. “How much platinum does pseudofluid contain?"

  “By mass? Oh—about twenty percent."

  “Twenty—” Her jaw dropped. “The storage room in Alphaville! I've been in there! It's packed with these bottles!"

  “Well, the robots had to store the extra stock somewhere. I would have picked a more unobtrusive place, but you know how robots are."

  "Roger! How—how much—"

  “Enough to enlist a legion of attorneys, I'm sure.” His face could no longer stay straight. After he stopped laughing, he said: “When we get back to Alphaville, how about discussing this over dinner? I mean—if you'd like."

  Rebecca beamed. “That sounds wonderful. And we can discuss anything else too. Except—I'm tired of Tom Sawyer."

  “Well, you know, Rebecca, in a way, he may have had something to do with making you a stronger person."

  “You can think that—but I've had enough of that brat for today!"

  “I'm sure we can find other topics for conversation.” His grin crinkled. “Perhaps something else Mark Twain wrote."

  Her face turned pensive. “To be honest, I've never read anything else Mark Twain wrote."

  Despite forsaking Twain, they were almost too absorbed talking over dinner to eat.

  Copyright (c) 2007 Joe Schembrie

  * * * *

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  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  BIOLOG: JOE SCHEMBRIE

  by RICHARD A. LOVETT

  Joe Schembrie wrote his first science fiction story at age 9. But it took nearly forty more years for him to make the jump to full-time science fiction writer.

  In the interim, he got an electrical engineering degree and an MBA. He also held a variety of jobs, including one at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, working on nuclear aircraft carriers and submarines, “crawling around reactor plants."

  The work taught him a lot about how the military works ("It was a time when microprocessors were booming, but they were still using vacuum tubes") and about the rank-and-file mindset immediately after Vietnam.

  “I don't tend to write stories about a rigid military hierarchy where everybody is gung ho about what they're doing,” he says.

  Every few years, he collected a new rejection slip from Analog editors dating back to John Campbell. “Then in my mid-forties I decided to get serious,” he says. The result: seven sales since 2004, all to Analog.

  In his writing, selling to Analog was always his primary target. Partly that was because, as a kid, he read a lot of science fiction anthologies, noting the Analog credits for the hard-science stories he most enjoyed. But he also likes Analog's upbeat attitude. “[My characters] may not live happily ever after,” he says, “but they do solve the problem of the day."

  In general, he likes to focus on near-future stories. “It's hard science, so I don't do werewolves living in New York City,” he says. “And usually it takes place off Earth.” But so far, most of his stories (like the one in this issue) are set in the Solar System.

  When writing a story, Schembrie asks himself two basic questions: Is this fun to read? And, is this an adventure? “I like a sense of motion,” he says.

  Overall, he believes in a positive future, though he admits there might be obstacles. “If there is one roadblock, it's human behavior,” he says. “It may not be greed or selfishness or even hatred that stops us. It may simply be that we don't believe we can get to a better future."

  His latest project: a young adult novel called Rocket Ship Freedom about teenagers helping a rocket scientist fly to the Moon. “Does it sound familiar?” he asks. “I kind of updated the Heinlein story [Rocket Ship Galileo] for the twenty-first century."

  Copyright (c) 2007 Richard A. Lovett

  [Back to Table of Contents]

  * * *

  THE ALTERNATE VIEW: COOLING OFF GLOBAL WARMING FROM SPACE

  by John G. Cramer

  The reality of global warming is receiving growing acceptance. Even the Bush Administration seems to be modifying its previous hard-line position rejecting the idea. Projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change indicate an average global temperature rise of between 1.5 and 4.5 degrees C by the year 2100. Climate change simulations suggest that we may be approaching (or may already have passed) a tipping point in global warming. Data records show a progressive increase in average temperature starting about 1920, with the average temperature of the Earth now about 1 degree C higher than it was in 1920.

  There are predictions that fertile farmland—for example, in the Great Plains region of the USA—will be replaced by new deserts, that temperate zones will become more tropical, that the ecology of the ocean will be radically altered, that glaciers will melt, that the level of the ocean may rise by up to 20 feet, perhaps drowning costal cities around the world. Over the coming decades, the Earth may become a very different and less pleasant place.

  Is there anything that can be done to avert this global calamity? Several technical fixes have been suggested. One of them is based on the cooling effects of volcanic eruptions. The progressive increase in average temperature over the past few decades shows a pronounced dip of a few tenths of a degree C spa
nning a decade that corresponds to the eruption of Mt. Pinatubo, a massive eruption that dumped many tons of sulfur into the upper atmosphere. It has been suggested that by putting 3 to 5 megatons per year of sulfur into the upper atmosphere on purpose, we could counteract the effects of global warming. This “cure,” unlike an eruption event, would have to be done continuously for many decades. The side effects of such a remedy, however, appear to be as bad as the problem it is intended to fix. Acid rain from the sulfuric acid formed from the sulfur dioxide would become the standard kind of rainfall, irreversibly altering the ecology of the planet.

  * * * *

  Professor Roger Angel of the University of Arizona, a prominent astronomer and creator of some of the world's largest telescope mirrors, has proposed an interesting alternative. He would like to place scatterers at the L1 Lagrange point of the Earth-Sun system that would remove about 1.8% of the ambient sunlight.

  To understand the proposal, let's start with what Lagrange points are. The Italian-French mathematician and mathematical physicist Joseph-Louis Lagrange (1736—1813), in attempting to solve the gravitational three body problem, discovered that in a simplified solar system in which the Earth orbits the Sun with no other planets or moons, there are five points of stability. They are now called “Lagrange points” and labeled L1 through L5. If a massive object is at one of these Lagrange points and displaced slightly in a particular direction, there may be a restoring force that pushes it back toward the stability point. The “Trojan” Lagrange points L4 and L5, which are in the Earth's orbit 600 ahead and behind the Earth, have such stability in all three directions in space. However, Lagrange points L1, L2, and L3, which lie on the line through the centers of the Earth and Sun, are stable only in the two directions perpendicular to the line connecting the two gravitating bodies, but are unstable to “radial” displacements along that line.

  L3 is the “contra-Earth” Lagrange point on the far side of the Sun from the Earth. Its stability is more mathematical than real, because an object orbiting at L3 would be strongly perturbed and soon kicked out of its orbit by the other inner planets of the solar system, particularly Venus. L2 is the “Earth-shadowed” Lagrange point on the side of the Earth away from the Sun. The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) is located at L2, and it is also the location of the planned James Webb Space Telescope, to be launched in 2013.