Farside

by Ben Bova

  Straightening in his chair, Uhlrich said, “The discovery of an Earthlike atmosphere on an Earth-sized exoplanet is important enough to warrant immediate disclosure.”

  “Before anybody else could make the same discovery and cloud your claim to be first,” Seery said.

  Bristling, Uhlrich snapped, “No other astronomical facility on Earth—in the entire solar system—could duplicate the results of our hundred-meter telescope!”

  “So there’s no way that your claim can be independently verified, is there?”

  “The data speaks for itself!” Uhlrich insisted. “We are preparing a full report, which will include the details of the telescope’s specifications, its capabilities. Detecting oxygen and water vapor on Sirius C is well within our telescope’s power.”

  “But according to the astrophysicists I’ve talked with, that planet can’t have any atmosphere at all, let alone such an Earthlike one. Any atmosphere that New Earth once had would’ve been boiled away when Sirius B went nova, eons ago.”

  Sucking in a deep breath, Uhlrich commanded himself to stay calm. Remain tranquil, he reminded himself. Do not let her upset your composure.

  Measuredly, he replied, “My dear Ms. Seery, the astrophysicists have their theories. I have actual observations. Sirius C has an atmosphere. An atmosphere very much like our own Earth’s. How this can be so is unknown, as yet. But it is so. There is no doubt of it.”

  “You may have no doubt of it, Professor, but—”

  “No buts! I have the data. I have published the data for all the world to study and examine. I am in the process of writing a complete report that will allow scientists everywhere to see what I have done and how I have done it. There is no question about it. Sirius C is an Earth-sized planet with an Earthlike atmosphere. When Farside Observatory completes construction of its two additional hundred-meter telescopes, we will be able to obtain imagery of the planet’s surface. I have no doubts that we will see oceans of liquid water and green, chlorophyll-based plant life. Sirius C truly is a New Earth.”

  He sensed the interviewer smiling at him. “Thank you, Professor Uhlrich. That was wonderful.”

  His brows rising, Uhlrich asked, “That’s it? That’s all you want to ask?”

  “That’s plenty,” Seery replied. “Great interview. Thank you, sir.”

  He slumped back in his chair, suddenly drained of all his energy.

  “We’re clear,” Edith Elgin said. “You did fine, Professor. Terrific. I like that spark in your—”

  “EMERGENCY,” the overhead speakers blared. “AIR PRESSURE DROP IN MIRROR LAB. EVACUATE MIRROR LAB AT ONCE.”

  MIRROR LAB

  Grant was on his way to intercept Anita Halleck before she could get away from Farside on the lobber that had brought her in.

  “EMERGENCY. AIR PRESSURE DROP IN MIRROR LAB. EVACUATE MIRROR LAB AT ONCE.”

  He spun around and sprinted along the corridor toward the mirror lab. Grant could hear the emergency airlock hatches that were located every hundred meters along the corridors slamming shut, like a drumbeat warning of disaster. He had to stop at each one of them, punch out the unlocking code on each keypad, and proceed to the next.

  By the time he reached the entrance to the mirror lab, half a dozen technicians were standing in the corridor, looking bewildered, frightened.

  “What happened?” Grant demanded.

  Phil Rizzo, chief of the mirror lab’s crew, shook his head. “I dunno. The emergency alarm went off all of a sudden and we scooted out.”

  Rizzo was small, wiry, with the narrow face and oversized nose of a rodent. His eyes were wide with fear, edging toward panic.

  “Everybody out?” Grant asked.

  Rizzo looked around, counting. “Yeah. Everybody.”

  Yanking out his pocketphone, Grant called the Farside life-support center. “What’s going on?” he demanded.

  The monitoring technician’s dark face looked troubled. “Air pressure started nosediving, Grant. All of a sudden. There’s a leak in the lab someplace, probably the airlock.”

  More people were coming down the corridor. Just what we need, Grant thought. Half the staff rubbernecking while there’s a leak in that damned oversized airlock.

  “Get an emergency team down here, quick,” he said into the phone.

  “They’re already on their way. With suits.”

  “Good. Thanks.”

  The tech broke into a grim smile. “Just doin’ my job, boss.”

  Grant clicked his pocketphone shut, then raised his voice to the growing crowd: “Go on back to your workstations. Everything’s under control here.”

  The crowd began to break up slowly, reluctantly. Rizzo asked, “What about us, Grant?”

  Looking down at the diminutive technician, Grant answered, “You guys can take the rest of the day off.”

  Rizzo didn’t laugh at Grant’s weak attempt at humor. He didn’t even grin.

  “Okay, people,” he said to his crew. “You heard the man.”

  As the lab crew started down the corridor, Grant grasped Rizzo by the shoulder. “Anything special going on in there when the alarm went off?”

  Rizzo shook his head. “Naw. Just polishing the mirror, like we have been for the past month.”

  “Okay,” said Grant, releasing his grip. “Take it easy, Phil.”

  “Yeah, sure.”

  Rizzo headed down the corridor, passing the emergency crew coming up. An automated cart trundled along behind them, loaded with three space suits. Harvey Henderson was leading them. Grant remembered that Harvey had rotated to the emergency team because usually they had little to do but monitor the station’s life-support equipment.

  “How’s your foot, Harvey?” he asked.

  “Still hurts. Dr. Kapstein says it’s psychosomatic, but it still hurts.”

  “Well, you got your gang down here in good time.”

  “It hurts, but I’m not crippled.”

  Grant shooed the remaining onlookers out of the section of corridor that ended at the mirror lab entrance.

  “We’re going to seal this section off,” he told them. “When we open the lab door, this area will probably go down to vacuum. You don’t want to be here unless you’re in a suit.”

  As they grudgingly headed for the emergency hatch up the corridor, Grant and Henderson started pulling on space suits. The other techs of the emergency team checked them out.

  Once they were fully suited up, Grant waved the rest of the team down the corridor, past the emergency airlock hatch. Then he and Harvey went to the lab’s door and slid it open.

  They stepped out onto the balcony that circled the laboratory, where the monitoring consoles stood unattended but still working, their displays flickering. Below the balcony’s railing was the big turntable, still slowly revolving, polishing the mirror that would probably never be used in a telescope. Unless the Ulcer builds a ’scope right here in the Sea of Moscow, Grant thought.

  As he and Henderson began to power down the consoles and stop the turntable, Grant called to the life-support monitor, “Give me a reading on the air pressure in here.”

  “Low, and getting lower,” she responded.

  “Numbers, kid. I need numbers.”

  “Six p.s.i. Sinking steadily.”

  “Not a total blowout,” Henderson said.

  “Slow leak,” said Grant.

  “Not all that slow,” the life-support monitor corrected. “Just sank past five p.s.i.”

  Grant clomped over to the central console and pulled drawers open until he found what he wanted: a pad of legal-sized notepaper. Ripping out a handful of sheets, he tossed them over the railing of the balcony.

  “What…?” Henderson started to ask, then realized what Grant was up to.

  The sheets of paper fluttered slowly downward. As Grant and Henderson watched, they drifted toward the airlock, skittering across the top of the massive turntable and along the concrete floor of the laboratory.

  One by one, the sheets o
f paper plastered themselves against a single spot on the wide airlock, like birds returning to their nest.

  “There’s the leak,” Grant said.

  “Yeah,” Henderson agreed. “Must be.”

  “How much you want to bet that it’s a pinhole drilled by nanomachines?” asked Grant.

  Henderson merely grunted.

  UNDER SIEGE

  “Where will they strike next?” Professor Uhlrich asked, his voice trembling slightly.

  Grant shook his head. “We’ve sealed the leak in the airlock hatch. The mirror lab is habitable again.”

  “For how long?”

  The Ulcer looked shaken as he sat behind his desk. His face was pale, his hair slightly disheveled. He’s scared, Grant realized. He has a right to be.

  Carter McClintock, sitting across the table from Grant, seemed more composed. “I imagine we should evacuate the facility.”

  “Evacuate Farside?” Uhlrich gasped.

  “It would seem to be the prudent thing to do,” McClintock said. “If there are nanomachines randomly attacking the place, we should get out. We’ve already had one death—”

  “Three,” Grant corrected. “The two pilots of the lobber, remember.”

  “Oh, yes, of course. Three deaths.”

  “Three murders,” Uhlrich muttered.

  “Let’s get the hell out of here before anyone else is killed,” McClintock said, with some fervor.

  “And go where?” Grant asked.

  “Selene, of course.”

  With a shake of his head, Grant said, “Do you think Selene will take in a hundred people who might be infected with destructive nanomachines?”

  McClintock blinked at him. “They’d have to! They couldn’t refuse us.”

  “They already have,” Grant said, feeling weary, alone, with no one to turn to, no one to help him.

  “What do you mean?” Uhlrich demanded.

  “Selene’s flight control people have told our flight control people that they will not accept any flights from Farside until we’ve solved our nanobug problem. Not Anita Halleck, not even Edie Elgin, and she’s Douglas Stavenger’s wife, for chrissakes.”

  “No flights at all?” McClintock whined.

  “None,” said Grant. “No VIPs, no refugees, nobody. No flights from Farside will be permitted to land at Selene.”

  “We’re trapped here?” McClintock’s voice rose a notch higher.

  “We’re quarantined.”

  Uhlrich ran a hand through his silvery hair. “Then what are we to do? Simply sit here and let these devices destroy us all?”

  The professor’s phone buzzed. Tracing his fingertips along his desktop tactile screen, the professor muttered, “Anita Halleck is calling.”

  Before Grant could say anything, Uhlrich told the phone, “Answer.”

  Halleck’s sculpted face appeared on the wall screen. Grant saw that she looked unhappy, nettled.

  “Professor Uhlrich,” she said, her voice firm, her tone insistent, “your staff refuses to allow me to return to Selene.”

  Uhlrich stared blankly at the screen. Grant answered, “All flights have been stopped, Mrs. Halleck.”

  “Mr. Simpson?”

  Uhlrich touched a pad on his phone keyboard and the camera view switched to wide focus, taking in Grant and McClintock as well as himself.

  “Right,” Grant answered. “With this nanobug problem, Selene’s ordered a stand-down on all flights.”

  Her expression hardening, Halleck challenged, “Do you mean to keep me a prisoner here?”

  With a wan smile, Grant replied, “Mrs. Halleck, we’re under a quarantine. I’m afraid we’re all prisoners here as long as we’re under siege from these rogue nanos.”

  “That’s not acceptable, Mr. Simpson.”

  “Acceptable or not, that’s the way it is. Even if we let you take off, Selene wouldn’t allow a flight from Farside to land at their spaceport, anyway. Not until we’ve figured out what’s causing this nanobug problem and fixed it.”

  Just a trace of alarm flashed across Halleck’s face. “You can’t keep me a prisoner here! Do you have any idea of who you’re talking to?”

  “It’s not me, ma’am. Nobody leaves Farside,” Grant said flatly. “You can call Selene if you want to. I’m sure they’ll confirm that they won’t accept any flights from here.”

  “That’s nonsense! If my rocket takes off from here and approaches Selene, they’d have to allow me to land. They’d be killing me, otherwise!”

  “That’s why we’re not permitting you to leave Farside, ma’am.”

  “You’re not permitting me! Since when are you in charge? Professor Uhlrich, I demand that you allow me to leave!”

  Uhlrich sat behind his desk, speechless.

  “Anita,” said McClintock, “I’m afraid that Simpson is correct. It’s in your own best interest to remain here, temp—”

  “My best interest?” Halleck snapped. “Since when have you ever had my best interest at heart, Carter?”

  “Now, Anita…”

  “Professor Uhlrich, I insist that you call Selene. Get to their governing council, to Douglas Stavenger, somebody! Make them understand that I’m not to be kept a prisoner here at Farside. I have important work to do!”

  Her image suddenly winked out. The wall screen went blank.

  “She hung up,” McClintock said.

  “Or the bugs have hit the comm system,” Grant muttered.

  FEARS

  Doug Stavenger was in the sitting room of his quarters at Selene, talking to his wife at Farside.

  “You’re okay?” he asked, for the twelfth time in as many minutes.

  “I’m fine, honey,” said Edith, smiling brightly. “The nanobugs haven’t attacked any people.”

  “Not directly.”

  “Nope.” Edith’s normally cheerful expression sobered into a puzzled frown. “It’s kinda funny, really. The bugs have hit here and there, sort of at random.”

  “And killed several people,” Stavenger said.

  “Yeah, but it’s not like the gray goo thing, y’know, where they eat everything in sight.”

  “But you’re all right?” he asked again.

  “So far.”

  “I can’t get you out of there,” Stavenger said, hating himself for letting her go in the first place. “Farside’s quarantined.”

  “I know. Don’t worry about it. It’s kinda exciting, y’know. I’m getting to be a news reporter again, digging into the story.”

  Suddenly alarmed, Stavenger blurted, “No news reports, Edith! This whole thing is under a news blackout.”

  “Yessir, Mr. Dictator,” she said, with a grin and a mock military salute. “But once the blackout is lifted I’ll have a firsthand account. I’m interviewing Professor Uhlrich and Kris Cardenas, scientists and ordinary workers—”

  The phone screen blinked and the data bar showed an incoming call from Professor Uhlrich.

  Stavenger sat up straighter in his chair, a recliner that had been salvaged from a retired Clipper rocket.

  “Speak of the devil: it’s Professor Uhlrich. Duty calls, darling.”

  “He’s kinda weird,” said Edith.

  “Yes, but I’ve got to take his call.”

  “Sure. I’m goin’ to see Kris Cardenas, find out what she can tell me about all this.”

  “Take care of yourself.” Stavenger knew it was lame, but he couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “I’ll be back soon, Doug honey. With a terrific story!”

  He forced a smile and switched to Uhlrich’s call.

  The professor looked tired, stressed. “Mr. Stavenger,” he began, “thank you for taking my call.”

  “What can I do for you, Professor?”

  With an unhappy pout, Uhlrich said, “It’s Mrs. Halleck. She’s upset about being quarantined here at Farside. She’s demanding that we let her fly to Selene.”

  “That’s not possible, Professor. I’m sure you understand why.”

>   “I understand,” said Uhlrich. “But she doesn’t. She insists that Selene allow her to return there. And from Selene, I suppose, she’ll want to transfer back to Earth.”

  Stavenger shook his head. “If we allowed that, she might contaminate Selene with rogue nanos, and even spread them Earthside. We can’t have that.”

  Uhlrich pleaded, “Will you talk to her, please? She won’t pay any attention to me. Perhaps you can make her see the necessity.”

  Stavenger saw that the professor was close to his wits’ end. “Certainly,” he said. “I’ll call her right away.”

  “Oh, thank you!”

  “Think nothing of it,” said Stavenger. To himself he said, I’ll call Anita Halleck. But that won’t change anything.

  * * *

  Edith Elgin saw her husband’s image wink off in her phone screen. After a moment’s hesitation she told the phone to connect her with Kris Cardenas.

  Almost immediately, Cardenas’s face appeared on the screen.

  “Edith,” she said, looking surprised. “You’re here at Farside?”

  “I surely am,” said Edith. “I need to talk to you, get your take on what’s goin’ on around here.”

  Cardenas looked suddenly wary. “I’m pretty sure there’s a news blackout on what’s happening here.”

  “I know that. But once the blackout is lifted, I want to be able to tell the story and for that I need to interview the world’s leading expert on nanotechnology.”

  For a moment Cardenas hesitated. Then she allowed herself a tired smile and said, “Sure, Edith, why not? I’m on my way to Professor Uhlrich’s office. Why don’t you meet me there?”

  “Great!” said Edith. “See you there.”

  * * *

  Anita Halleck was furious. She glared at the image of Douglas Stavenger on the wall screen of her quarters.

  “So you see,” Stavenger was repeating, “we simply can’t allow any flights in here from Farside.”

  “You mean you won’t allow any flights,” Halleck growled.

  Stavenger spread his hands. “Can’t, won’t, it comes to the same thing, doesn’t it? Farside is quarantined until the nanomachine problem is solved.”