by Ben Bova
“We could build a new frame here in Selene, if Uhlrich will okay the cost.”
“And the alternative?”
Grant said without hesitation, “Take the frame from the cracked mirror. It’s useless anyway; take it apart and ship the segments here to Selene. We could remelt the broken mirror and use it as raw material for a new one, if the nanos don’t work for us.”
McClintock rubbed his jaw for a moment. Decisions are what you’re here for, Carter my lad, he said to himself.
“All right. We’ll break up the cracked mirror, take apart its frame, and ship the pieces to you.” Before Grant could reply, McClintock added, “Don’t worry about Uhlrich. I’ll get his approval. No problem.”
PROFESSOR UHLRICH’S OFFICE
Uhlrich looked alarmed. “Break up the mirror?”
“You were going to do that anyway, weren’t you?” McClintock prodded. “It’s useless as it is now.”
It was morning, although in this underground mole’s nest there’s no feeling of day or night, McClintock thought. He had popped in on the professor to report on how Simpson was getting along with Dr. Cardenas, only to find pert little Trudy Yost already in conference with Uhlrich.
The professor steepled his fingers in front of his neatly bearded face and half closed his eyes. McClintock looked across the table at Trudy, who was staring at Uhlrich, waiting for her boss to make a decision. But all the man was doing was a half-baked imitation of a Zen master deep in meditation.
“What do you think, Trudy?” McClintock asked.
“Me?”
“Does it make any sense to leave that damaged mirror sitting out on the crater floor, when Simpson needs its frame to guide the nanomachines assembling a new mirror?”
She glanced from McClintock to Uhlrich, who had opened his eyes and dropped his hands into his lap. The professor was staring blankly at McClintock.
Suppressing an urge to grin, McClintock said silently to the professor, I’m here to get things done for you, whether you like it or not. Well, now I’m doing my job, but you don’t like it, do you? You don’t like having the decisions taken out of your hands.
Trudy asked, “Does this mean we’ve given up on trying to repair the mirror?”
Before Uhlrich could reply, McClintock said firmly, “Yes.”
Turning to the professor, Trudy said in a hesitant, soft little girl’s tone, “Well then, I guess the mirror isn’t really of any use to us in its present condition, Professor. And if Grant needs the frame for the nanomachines…” Her voice trailed off.
“You agree, then, Dr. Yost?” Uhlrich asked.
Sitting up a little straighter, Trudy replied, “Yes, sir. Yes, I do.”
“If this nanotechnology scheme doesn’t work,” Uhlrich said, “we will have wasted two years of work.”
Almost jauntily, McClintock replied, “So what? If the nanomachines don’t get the job done, you’ll be no worse off than you are now. You have nothing to lose.”
Uhlrich began to steeple his fingers again, realized it, and pressed his hands flat on the desktop instead. “Anita Halleck is on her way here, you know.”
“I didn’t know,” McClintock admitted, feeling a pang of alarm.
“Anita Halleck?” Trudy asked.
McClintock knew perfectly well who the woman was. “Director of the IAA’s space telescope project,” he said to Trudy.
“Space interferometer,” Uhlrich corrected.
McClintock dipped his chin in acknowledgement. “Interferometer,” he murmured.
Trudy looked halfway between curious and suspicious. “Why is she coming to Farside?” she asked.
“To check on our progress, what else?” Uhlrich said. “To gloat over us.”
McClintock said, “She’s got nothing to gloat about. They’re nowhere near getting any of their mirror segments into space. It’ll take them years—”
“And how long will it take us?” Uhlrich asked. His voice was low, but murderously cold.
“We’ll be finished before they are,” McClintock said, with an assurance he didn’t truly feel. “We’ll be finished before they get their mirrors put together in space.”
Inwardly, he realized that the International Astronautical Authority had the resources of the entire Earth to draw upon. Yes, their project was grandiose, much more complex and demanding than Farside’s. But all Farside had—so far—was the resources of the Moon. Selene’s governing council was as generous to the Farside project as it could manage, but there were strict limits to how much they could afford.
McClintock could add significantly to those resources, if he chose to. Uhlrich knew it, and McClintock knew that it was the only reason the professor tolerated his presence at Farside.
“We’ll be finished and taking data before they get even one of their mirrors assembled,” Trudy added bravely.
McClintock thought she really meant it. Well, he mused, it’s good to have underlings who believe in what they’re doing.
Uhlrich was clearly unhappy, but he agreed to break up the damaged mirror and ship its frame to Selene.
“You’ve made the right decision, sir,” McClintock said.
Trudy looked happy about it, too. As she got up from her chair she said to the professor, “You don’t even have to tell Mrs. Halleck about the cracked mirror.”
Uhlrich, still seated behind his desk, smiled glumly. “Do you think for one moment that she doesn’t already know about it? She knows everything that goes on here.”
Trudy’s face fell. “Then … why is she coming?”
“To gloat over us!” Uhlrich snapped.
McClintock shook his head as he got up from his chair. “I don’t believe so, Professor. Anita Halleck doesn’t waste her time with emotions like gloating. She’s coming here to get something from us.”
“And what might that be?” Uhlrich demanded, acidly.
“Nanotechnology!” Trudy blurted. “She wants to use nanomachines, just like we do.”
“That’s impossible. Nanotechnology is banned on Earth in all its forms.”
“But her telescopes won’t be on Earth,” Trudy pointed out. “They’ll be in space.”
“But they will be constructed on Earth.”
“Or at Selene,” Trudy said.
McClintock broke into a knowing grin. “She’s not coming to see us here at Farside. She’s coming to talk to Cardenas, over at Selene’s nanotech lab. Her visit here is merely a cover.”
Uhlrich looked plainly unconvinced. But he muttered, “Could the woman be that devious?”
“Does the Pope live in the Vatican?” McClintock quipped.
CAFETERIA
Once they were outside Uhlrich’s office, in the drab rock-walled corridor, Trudy asked McClintock, “Do you really think Mrs. Halleck is after nanotechnology?”
McClintock smiled down at her. “It was your suggestion, remember?”
“I know, but do you think that’s why she’s coming here?”
McClintock started down the corridor and Trudy followed beside him, hurrying slightly to keep pace with his longer strides.
“It’s a reasonable assumption,” he said. “We’ll just have to wait and see.”
They walked along in silence for a few moments. McClintock thought the corridor was depressingly gloomy. With the pipes and conduits running along the ceiling it reminded him of the basement in some dreary public building. This entire Farside facility looks more like a prison than a research center, he thought. I may be the warden’s special overseer, but I’m still in jail here just like the rest of them.
He noticed that Trudy was looking up at him.
“Where are you heading?” he asked her.
“Oh!” She looked startled. “I … I was just following you. I thought … I guess I wasn’t really thinking.” She smiled sheepishly.
With a knowing nod, McClintock said, “Let’s take a bite of lunch.”
“It’s kind of early for lunch,” she said.
“I know. I like
it better when the cafeteria isn’t crowded, don’t you?”
“Uh, sure.”
Farside’s cafeteria was nothing more than another man-made cave, carved into the lunar rock with plasma torches. It was a dismally small, square chamber. McClintock felt as if its low ceiling were squeezing down on him. Two of the cafeteria’s walls were lined with food- and drink-dispensing machines; the plastic-tiled floor was covered by three rows of long tables and hard, uncomfortable benches. No one can accuse Uhlrich of wasting money on luxuries, McClintock thought.
The place was empty when they entered it. Good, thought McClintock. Nothing worse than having to eat cheek-by-jowl with a gang of these techie bores.
Trudy followed him like a puppy as he selected a sandwich that purported to be soyburger with lettuce grown in Selene’s hydroponics farm. The drink selection was limited to lunar water, fruit juices, and ersatz coffee or tea that McClintock suspected would be miserably weak.
The limited fare didn’t seem to bother Trudy at all. She picked a limp salad, a bowl of fresh berries, and a glass of tea.
As they sat side by side at one of the long empty tables, McClintock muttered, “I’ll have to take you to a real restaurant one of these days.”
She fairly glowed. “Like the Earthview? Over at Selene?”
“Have you been there?”
“No, but I heard about it. Saw it in the orientation vid.”
He nodded, then took a bite of his flavorless burger.
“You’re not happy here?” Trudy asked, picking at her salad.
Be careful! McClintock warned himself. Choose your words prudently.
He gave her a forlorn look. “I feel as if I’m in some frontier outpost, far from civilization.”
“Well, you are!” she said.
With a faint smile he admitted, “I guess I am.”
“Why’d you come here if you don’t like the place?” Trudy asked.
“Oh … family responsibilities.”
“Really?”
“You see, in my family one is expected to do some form of public service before one can inherit his share of the family fortune.”
Her eyes went wide. “Fortune?”
“The McClintock clan is quite wealthy,” he explained. “But very stern. My great-grandfather was apparently afraid that inheriting great wealth would turn his progeny into wastrels. So he made it a provision of his will that every one of us has to work at least two years in public service before we can inherit.”
Trudy chewed thoughtfully on her greens for a few heartbeats. Then, “There’s a lot of public service to be done, isn’t there? I mean, with the greenhouse floods and the droughts and all those monster storms and everything. Lots of people need help.”
McClintock got a mental picture of the massive waves of miserable migrants, poor, starving, trekking across the land seeking a job, a living, some hope for the future, a spark of opportunity for their crying, squalling, sick and frail children. He shuddered.
“I decided to do my public service here, on the Moon,” he said, stretching the truth considerably. “My goal is to help humankind to extend its habitat beyond the Earth. Quite lofty, don’t you think?”
Trudy nodded, wordless.
He failed to mention what his real goal was. Instead, he asked her, “And what brings you to Farside?”
“Sirius C, of course,” she said.
“Of course.”
Almost quivering with eagerness, Trudy enthused, “I mean, it’s the biggest thing to hit astronomy since … since, well, glory, since Hubble discovered the red shift.”
McClintock suppressed an impulse to ask what she meant by that.
“Y’see,” she went on, “the planet shouldn’t be there at all. The Pup blew up eons ago and—”
“The Pup?”
She bobbed her head up and down. “Sirius has been called the Dog Star since ancient times. It’s the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major, the Big Dog.”
“I see,” McClintock said.
“Well, when its dwarf companion was discovered, back in the nineteenth century, naturally people started calling it the Pup.”
“And it blew up?”
“Nova,” she replied. “Probably blew off its outer shell more than once.”
“I see,” he repeated.
“Which makes it hard to believe there’s an Earthlike planet in the Sirius system. It would’ve been fried by those nova burps. Boiled down to a cinder. An Earth-sized planet is hard enough to believe, but it can’t possibly be Earthlike.”
“Yet there it is,” McClintock murmured. “And Uhlrich is hell-bent to get imagery of it.”
“You know,” Trudy went on, “the first extrasolar planets ever discovered were orbiting around a pulsar. That’s a star that underwent a supernova explosion. Nothing left of the original star except a tiny core, smaller than Earth. And yet there were a couple of planets around it.”
“The planets should have been destroyed in the explosion?”
Nodding again, Trudy said, “But they weren’t. Or maybe they formed out of the debris cloud after the supernova popped.” She jabbed her fork into the salad again. “We’ve got a lot to learn.”
“Yes, I suppose we do.” But McClintock’s mind wasn’t on astronomy. He was wondering if this little waif of a woman might go to bed with him. Without screaming for a lawyer afterward.
DOSSIER: CARTER NELSON MCCLINTOCK
From those to whom much is given, much is expected. Carter McClintock had heard that old saw all his life, and he hated it.
The McClintock clan had made its fortune originally in whaling. During the Civil War, when President Lincoln created the National Academy of Sciences, a McClintock was named to its directing committee. He was clever enough to invest in railroads, and his son was even cleverer: he got the family out of railroads and into chemicals.
McClintock money helped to finance the Spanish-American War, and the family profited greatly from the growth of the munitions industry. World War I was a bonanza. By then, one of the McClintock boys was backing the fledgling aviation industry. While barnstormers and explorers were killing themselves pushing the envelope of aviation technology, McClintock investments financed the fledgling commercial airlines.
One of the McClintocks lost billions when the dot-com bubble burst in the 1990s, but his brothers and cousins bailed him out with money they had made in energy, transportation, and real estate.
In the early years of the twenty-first century, it was a McClintock partnership with the Masterson family that allowed the ill-starred Masterson clan to make commercial spaceflight profitable.
The onset of the catastrophic climate shift that wrecked the lives of hundreds of millions brought new opportunity for the family. Carter McClintock’s father quoted Andrew Carnegie’s dictum, “It’s a valuable citizen who has money during a panic,” as he poured billions into nuclear fusion power generation and solar-power satellites.
Young Carter was more interested in fine art than finance. He raised funds to protect the city of Venice from being inundated by the rising Adriatic Sea. He salvaged the Acropolis reclamation projection when the European Union reneged on its commitment because of all the other demands on its resources, stretched to the breaking point by the hordes of refugees fleeing their flooded homelands. Almost singlehandedly, he saved the ancient temples of Cambodia from the mobs of squatters who had moved into them.
Carter had no interest in space. The activities of high-tech nerds in strange and dangerous places bored him—or so he told himself. Actually, those strange and dangerous places frightened him. Floating around in weightlessness? Walking on the dead and deadly surface of the Moon? Spending months in a coffinlike spacecraft heading to Mars? No, thank you. Carter preferred Earth, battered by the greenhouse shift though it may be.
Inevitably, he clashed with his father. “Space is where the action is, boy,” the elder McClintock insisted. “It’s the frontier now, and the frontier is where new fortunes
are made.”
Carter was quite content with the family’s existing fortune. He had no desire to enlarge it. Let his father and brothers see to that. He wanted to spend the family’s money on worthy causes. He wanted to be admired by the people who meant something to him: people of status, of taste, of cultivation.
Yet his father persisted. When Professor Jason Uhlrich, of Selene University, visited Philadelphia as part of his effort to raise money for his cherished Farside Observatory project, the elder McClintock invited the abstemious professor into his home for a quiet little dinner and chat.
At first, Uhlrich struck Carter McClintock as a man of the Old World: cultured, well mannered, obsequious in the presence of enormous wealth. But once the astronomer began to talk about his dream of an observatory on the Moon, Carter saw that the man was just another techie fanatic, so narrowly focused on his arcane goal that nothing else mattered to him.
Yet Carter’s father was fascinated by Uhlrich and his hope of beating the IAA to be the first to acquire visual imagery of New Earth. To Carter’s stunned consternation, his father suggested that he might help finance the observatory with funds from the McClintock Trust.
“Why?” Carter asked his father, once Professor Uhlrich had finished bowing and scraping and had left their home. “Why on Earth would you—”
“It’s not on Earth,” his father said, beaming happily from behind his thick gray moustache. “It’s on the Moon. The far side of the Moon, at that.”
“Ridiculous,” Carter groused.
“You won’t think so after you’ve been up there for a while.”
“Me!” Carter fairly screeched. “Never!”
“I want you to look out for our interests up there,” his father insisted. “See if this observatory the professor wants to build is really worth investing in.”
“I won’t go.”
“You will, if you want to keep receiving your allowance.”
Carter had seen his father twist other arms artfully. But this … “It’s extortion!” he bellowed.
His father smiled and nodded and lit a non-carcinogenic cigar. “Yes, it is a bit of extortion, isn’t it?” Then the old man’s expression hardened. “But Anita Halleck is heading the IAA’s astronomy project.”