Farside

by Ben Bova

  He asked Uhlrich, “And just how do I do that? If she wants to go I can’t stop her. Unless you want me to kidnap her.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Uhlrich snapped. “You must convince her of the seriousness of our problem. I’m sure she’ll agree to stay and help us once she understands.”

  Sounding utterly unconvinced, McClintock said, “She understands the seriousness, all right. That’s why she’s flying back to Selene.”

  Uhlrich’s temper seethed. But he kept it under control. I can’t afford to alienate this dilettante. He holds the purse strings.

  So Uhlrich changed the subject. “Have you made a decision about investing your trust’s funds in the Farside Observatory?”

  A long hesitation. Then, in a slippery, evasive tone, McClintock said, “It’s my father’s trust. He controls the money.”

  “But he will base his decision on your recommendation, no?”

  With a nod, McClintock answered, “I don’t see how I can make that decision until we discover the source of the nanomachines.”

  Before Uhlrich could respond, McClintock went on, “I mean, you might have an actual saboteur in the facility. It wouldn’t be prudent to sink the trust’s funds into a facility that might be destroyed by—”

  “Destroyed?” Uhlrich thundered.

  “It’s a possibility, isn’t it? If you have someone here who deliberately infected that tractor and the space suit with destructive nanos, what’s to stop him from wiping out your whole facility and killing everyone here?”

  “My god, man,” Uhlrich breathed.

  “I’ve got to tell you, Professor, if there’s another incident with nanobugs, I intend to leave Farside and return home.”

  Without granting me any of your trust’s funding, Uhlrich added silently. I’ll be ruined. All my dreams will turn to dust and ashes.

  “You can’t do that,” the professor said, his voice pleading.

  His tone flat and sure, McClintock replied, “It would be the prudent thing to do, Professor. In fact, I think you should have your staff prepare an evacuation plan. Just in case.”

  “No!” Uhlrich snapped. “That would start a panic.”

  “Better a panic than a catastrophe,” said McClintock.

  CAFETERIA

  Freshly showered, his hair and beard neatly combed, Grant walked briskly through Farside’s central corridor from his quarters toward the cafeteria.

  He had thought about knocking on Trudy’s door on the way, but decided against it. Trudy had said she’d meet him in the cafeteria and he was content to leave things that way. This dinner is her idea, don’t push it. We’re just having a friendly dinner together, don’t make more of it than is really there.

  The cafeteria was crowded with people lining up at the dispensing machines and staking out territorial claims at the long tables.

  And there was Trudy, sitting at the far end of the farthest table, chatting with Josie Rivera and Harvey Henderson. The place opposite Trudy was empty. Obviously she was saving it for him.

  She jumped to her feet when she spotted Grant approaching. He said hello to Harvey and Josie, who gave him a sidelong glance and a smile that Grant thought was damned close to being a smirk.

  As he sat opposite Trudy, Grant asked, “Am I late?” over the buzz of two dozen conversations.

  “No, I got here early to make sure we’d get seats together,” said Trudy.

  “You look all slicked up, Grant,” Josie said, her voice purring. “You clean up nice.”

  He forced a grin. “Yeah, I take a shower every month, whether I need it or not.”

  They all laughed, and then the four of them went through the lines at the dispensing machines together. Trudy pulled an in-vitro steak dinner for herself and Grant did the same. Harvey complained that it was the last steak dinner in the machine but Josie told him the next machine still had plenty of soysteaks.

  “That’s okay, I’ll take the soy veal cutlet, instead,” Harvey said good-naturedly.

  “They all taste pretty much the same,” said Josie.

  Trudy dominated their dinner conversation, bubbling about Sirius C and its atmosphere.

  “The team at the Southern Hemisphere Observatory, in the Andes, made an indirect observation of the planet’s atmosphere,” she told them. “When Sirius C transited across the star’s disc they saw that the planet’s edge was fuzzy, not sharp the way it would be if it was airless.”

  Grant watched the animation of her childlike face, the excitement and sheer delight she took in her work. Harvey nodded in the right places, but put most of his attention into shoveling food into his mouth. Josie’s eyes flicked back and forth from Trudy to Grant, and she smiled knowingly.

  She thinks Trudy and I are involved, Grant realized. And with an inner jolt he thought, Maybe we are. Or will be.

  “But with the ’scope out at Mendeleev I detected the planet’s atmosphere directly,” Trudy announced proudly. “First shot out of the box, I got it!”

  “You saw clouds or something?” Josie asked, hunching toward her.

  “No, not imagery,” Trudy said. “We’ll need the other two ’scopes working together before we can produce imagery.”

  “Then what?”

  Speaking slowly, deliberately, as if she were making a case before a judge and jury, Trudy said, “I got absorption spectra of water vapor … and oxygen! Very strong oxygen lines. The planet’s atmosphere must be like eighteen, twenty percent oxygen. Just like Earth!”

  Even Harvey looked up from his plate. “Just like Earth?”

  “Within spitting distance of each other,” said Trudy. “Sirius C is really just like Earth! The news media are right. It’s New Earth!”

  “Wow,” Josie said.

  “And there’s more to it than that,” Trudy went on eagerly. “That much oxygen in the planet’s atmosphere means the atmosphere is way out of chemical equilibrium.”

  Henderson looked at her quizzically.

  “On Earth the oxygen in our atmosphere comes from green plants. Without living plants the oxygen would disappear from the atmosphere in less than a millennium, an eyeblink, geologically speaking.”

  Grant broke in. “That means that there must be photosynthetic plant life on New Earth.”

  Bobbing her head up and down, Trudy agreed. “There must be at least some plant life on Sirius C. Or something like it that’s continuously pumping oxygen into the atmosphere.”

  “Hot damn,” said Josie.

  Grant smiled at Trudy. “Congratulations. Uhlrich must be delirious.”

  “He’s pretty damned happy,” Trudy agreed.

  Once they finished dinner, Grant walked Trudy back to her quarters and she invited him in.

  “I’m too excited to sleep,” she said happily as Grant stepped into her room. It was tidy and clean, the bed made up neatly, nothing out of place.

  “I, uh … I can’t stay long,” Grant heard himself say. “Lots to do tomorrow.”

  “Me too,” said Trudy. She crossed the room and went to the kitchenette. “You want something to drink, Grant? Coffee, tea, fruit juice?”

  “Juice, I guess,” he said, heading for the sofa.

  She poured two glasses of orange juice. “Fresh from Selene’s hydroponics farm,” she said as she carried them to the coffee table and sat beside Grant.

  He smiled at her, but her face went serious. “All right now, what’s the real reason why you didn’t want me to go out to Mendeleev?”

  Grant blinked with surprise. She’s like a Gila monster: she won’t let go.

  A pretty nice-looking Gila monster, he told himself as he looked at her.

  “It’s like I told you, Trudy. I can work outside. I’ve got the experience; you don’t. It’s that simple.”

  “And you’ve got nanobugs in your body to protect you,” she said, almost whispering.

  Nodding solemnly, he said, “Yep. They’re allowing me to cut down on the steroids and the anti-radiation meds.”

  “Steroids ar
e harmful in the long run, aren’t they?”

  “They can be, yeah.”

  “I’m glad you’re getting off them.”

  “Me too,” Grant replied. “The side effects can be pretty bad.”

  “Like ’roid rage?”

  “You heard about that too, eh?”

  Trudy nodded solemnly. “You had quite a reputation. I heard you got into a fight once with three other guys and beat up all three of them.”

  “And spent a week in the infirmary getting my ribs to heal up,” he said, trying to make it sound light.

  Trudy didn’t smile.

  “That was when I first got here,” Grant said, as if that explained anything. “When I was young and foolish.”

  “And now?” she prompted.

  “Now I take aromatase inhibitors,” he said. “They cut down on the aggressive feelings that the steroids cause. I’m not a victim of ’roid rage anymore.”

  “And the nanobugs,” she said.

  Grant laughed uneasily. “And the nanobugs,” he admitted.

  “But why?” Trudy asked. “Why endanger yourself?”

  “Kris Cardenas says the nanomachines won’t cause any harmful side effects. I’ll just have to keep on taking them, that’s all.”

  “But why?” she repeated.

  “So that I can work outside, work better and longer than anybody else. That’s what counts. That’s how I got the job here at Farside. The Ulcer doesn’t have the budget for a big staff; he needed somebody who could ride herd on a small team of techie types. Once he found out about the meds I was taking he wasn’t pleased. Looked like he wanted to puke. I thought he was going to fire me. But I get the work done and that’s what counts. He needs me and he hasn’t regretted keeping me on.”

  “But he doesn’t know about your nanos.”

  “Not yet,” Grant said. And he wondered all over again if somehow the nanomachines in his body were the cause of Winston’s death.

  In a very small voice Trudy said, “I’m glad the professor’s kept you on.”

  “Really?”

  “You came out and rescued me, remember? You’re officially a hero, as far as I’m concerned.”

  For a long moment Grant stared into her cool green eyes, unsure of what was going on behind them. Then he broke the spell by reaching for his glass of juice. Trudy picked up hers and they clinked glasses.

  “Ad astra,” Grant said.

  “To the stars,” Trudy translated.

  They sipped, then Grant put his glass down and got up from the sofa.

  “Big day tomorrow,” he muttered.

  Trudy stood up beside him. She’s no taller than my shoulder, he realized. A little elf. A kid.

  “Do you have to go so soon?” she asked.

  “If I stay I’ll probably make a fool of myself and get you angry with me.”

  “I won’t be angry, Grant,” she whispered.

  He didn’t know what to say, what to do. He stood there mute, paralyzed, awash in conflicting emotions. Don’t get yourself involved, a voice in his head warned. This is too small a facility for personal relationships. Yet the visceral need was there, he could feel it surging through his body.

  “After all,” Trudy said, sliding her arms around his neck, “you’re not going to go berserk, are you? You’ve got the ’roid rage under control, haven’t you?”

  “I … think so.”

  She giggled. “Maybe not under total control?”

  He grasped her about the waist and pulled her slim body to him. “Maybe not. We’ll see.”

  It was in bed, when they were both pleasantly drained and weary, that Trudy asked him, “With the nanos, you’ll be able to stop the steroids altogether?”

  “That’s what Kris Cardenas says.”

  “That’s good, Grant,” she said sleepily. “I’m happy for you.”

  And Grant felt happy, too. For the first time since he’d fled from Earth, he felt happy.

  INVESTIGATION

  “I’ve got to what?” Grant blurted.

  McClintock had welcomed Grant into his office and, instead of going back to his desk, sat Grant down at the little round table in the corner of the room and pulled up a chair beside him.

  “You’ve got to find out who infected the Mendeleev site with those nanomachines,” McClintock said smoothly.

  Grant studied the man’s amiably smiling face.

  “I’ve got to find out?” Grant asked. “Why me? I’m no detective.”

  His smile fixed in place, McClintock ticked off points on his fingers as he explained, “One: the nanomachines didn’t get there by themselves. Someone planted them at Mendeleev, whether by accident or design. Two: the only people who’ve been at the site are your people, engineers and technicians. Three: you know them better than Professor Uhlrich or I do; you work with them every day.”

  McClintock leaned back in his chair and spread his arms as if he’d proven his case. “That makes you the logical person to find out who brought the nanos to Mendeleev.”

  Grant started to snap off a reply, but hesitated, thinking, Whenever they have a dirty job they stick me with it. He looked around the room, at the softly glowing wall screens, all of them blank except for the one behind McClintock’s desk, which displayed a pastel painting of a leafy green glen half a million kilometers away. The desk itself was a standard-issue metal one but so new there wasn’t a scuff mark on it. Its top was clear, bare. No work being done there, Grant thought.

  Focusing back on McClintock, Grant countered, “One: if the person who carried the nanomachines to Mendeleev did it unknowingly, he—”

  “Or she,” McClintock interjected.

  “Or she,” Grant conceded. “Whoever it was, he or she won’t be able to tell us anything if he or she didn’t know he or she did it.”

  Before McClintock could reply, Grant went on, “And two: if the person did it deliberately he—or she—certainly isn’t going to admit it.”

  “I suppose not,” McClintock agreed.

  “So how in hell am I supposed to find out anything?”

  His face growing serious, McClintock said, “I’m not a detective, either, Grant. But we’ve got to find out who’s responsible for your technician’s death, and you’re the man who knows your crew best. It’s up to you.”

  “Why don’t you ask Selene to send some—”

  “No!” McClintock snapped. “The professor has absolutely forbidden us to ask for help from Selene. This is our problem and we’ve got to solve it for ourselves.”

  “I don’t understand why.”

  “Because he doesn’t want Selene shutting down Farside, that’s why.”

  Grant muttered, “Better to shut down this facility than to have more people killed.”

  Pointing a finger in Grant’s face, McClintock said sternly, “This is your responsibility, Grant. The fate of this facility and everybody here depends on you.”

  Terrific, Grant thought. Now they want me to be Sherlock Holmes.

  Aloud, though, he said to McClintock. “I’ll see what I can do. But I’m not promising anything.”

  McClintock beamed at him, pleased. “Just do your best, Grant. I’m sure you’ll be able to crack this problem.”

  Grant got to his feet and McClintock did likewise.

  Putting out his hand, McClintock said, “We’re depending on you, Grant. All of us.”

  Grant took the proffered hand reluctantly. “I’ll try,” he said.

  * * *

  Where to start? Grant asked himself as he headed back to the teleoperations center. Most of the Farside staff were members of his crew, forty-eight engineers and technicians, plus another dozen and a half working on Cyclops. The rest were clerks, paper shufflers, maintenance personnel, and other workmen. There was Dr. Kapstein, Farside’s one-person medical staff. And Trudy Yost, the only astronomer on-site, except for Uhlrich himself. And McClintock.

  Sitting at an unused console in the dimly lit chamber, Grant scrolled through the names. Not Uhlrich a
nd not McClintock, he said to himself. I can scratch them off right away.

  Whoever did it had to have been at Mendeleev at one time or another, Grant realized. How many of my people have even been out there?

  But then he thought, Suppose somebody planted the nanos on one of the guys going out to Mendeleev? It could’ve been anybody on my crew!

  It could’ve been me, he thought. No matter what Kris says, I might have planted the nanos on Win when I checked out his suit.

  He decided to call Kris Cardenas.

  * * *

  Kristine Cardenas was in her quarters, her travelbag on the bed, packed and almost ready to be zipped up for the return flight to Selene. Carter McClintock had phoned and asked to see her before she left.

  As soon as McClintock stepped into her room, he took one glance at the travelbag and said, “I’ve come to ask you to stay, Kris.”

  “Stay? I can’t stay, Carter,” she said.

  He tried to smile but it looked forced. “We have a crisis on our hands here. A real crisis. We need your help.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t stay away from my lab indefinitely. I’ve got a big design conference with Anita Halleck’s people tomorrow.”

  “It won’t be indefinitely,” he countered. “Probably just a few more days.”

  Cardenas started zipping up her bag. “I’ve got to be back at Selene tomorrow morning. I’ll be available on the phone and by computer link. I can answer your questions from Selene just as well as I can from here.”

  McClintock frowned slightly. “Look … Kris. It’s not me. It’s Professor Uhlrich. The poor man’s in a panic. He needs you to stay here and help us find out what’s going on.”

  “Nothing’s going on,” she said. “You’ve decontaminated that shelter, haven’t you? That’s the end of your problem.”

  “But how did the nanos get there? Who planted them there? That’s our problem.”

  “What do you expect me to do about it?”

  Waving a hand in the air, McClintock replied, “I don’t know. But you’re the expert on nanotech and this is a nanotech problem.”