Gibraltar Earth

by Michael McCollum

  “I believe the gain is worth the risk.”

  “We’ll see. Before I approve any such expedition, I’ll want to see a detailed operations plan that reduces our exposure to a minimum.”

  “Yes, Ma’am.”

  “In the meantime, you can busy yourself getting the PoleStar operation moving. I must emphasize, Mr. Director. I want this secret held very tight. No more are to learn of the alien than are absolutely necessary.”

  “I understand.”

  “I will also want someone there to look after things from a political perspective. Any objections to Dieter Pavel?”

  “None.”

  “Excellent. Whom will we get for our linguist? —”

  #

  Like the earliest space stations, Soyuz and the Space Station Freedom, Equatorial Station orbited low to keep beneath the Van Allen radiation belt. The relative lack of altitude contributed to a view that made the big triple-wheel a destination as well as a transfer point. The extra income from tourists nearly compensated for the cost of the additional reaction mass that had to be expended to counteract atmospheric drag.

  Like everyone else, Lisabeth Arden paused at the viewport in the non-rotating station hub as she exited the transfer tube. Arden was petite blonde with a permanent tan and green eyes. Beyond the armor glass, the Earth slid quickly beneath them, a vast blue circle too large to encompass in a single glance. The station was just passing over the eastern coast of Ecuador. The South Atlantic stretched clear to the limb of the planet, with the Ivory Coast of Africa still fifteen minutes away over the curving horizon. The usual bands of clouds were dominated by a large spiral formation that was the beginning of a tropical storm. Directly beneath them, the thin white contrails of aircraft marked the air route between Lima and Kinshasa.

  Lisa was a professor of linguistics at the Multiversity of London. She had arrived at her office half an hour late that morning, not having gotten to sleep until the early morning hours before dawn. The first thing she noticed when she powered up her work screen was a summons to the chancellor’s office. The muttered oath that accompanied the discovery was one that had come down unchanged from Anglo-Saxon times.

  As she hurried down the hall toward the lift, she ran over in her mind all of the possible infractions that might have earned her a visit to the chancellor’s office. There had been that expense report she had turned in for the seminar in Mombassa. Or possibly, she was over her budgeted allotment of time on the university’s library net. Still, neither matter should be important enough to be called before Chancellor Seaton.

  “Come in, Lisa,” Seaton said when she entered his office. “Have a seat.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  After sitting, she was surprised to note that Seaton appeared nervous. If so, she realized with a start, it was the first time she had seen him that way. “Before we go any farther, Lisa, I need your word that what I am about to say won’t go beyond this room.”

  “You have it.”

  “The Stellar Survey has asked me to recommend a linguist for a project they have going on in orbit. Would you be interested?”

  “Me? In orbit? Whatever for?”

  “They didn’t give me the details. I can tell you that the World Coordinator has endorsed the request. Whatever it is, you can expect that it will look good on your resume once you finish the job. It will also reflect well on the university.”

  “Why me?” she asked.

  “Because tolerance for microgravity degrades with age and you are the youngest person in the department. In addition, you are one of the best linguists I know. And, if you must have a third reason, they said they preferred someone who is not married.”

  “What could they possibly want with a linguist?” Lisa mused, almost to herself. Then, when the comment about her marital status sank in, “Just how long will I be gone?”

  “The coordinator only said that you could expect to be away for several months.”

  “Who will take my classes?”

  “Ardmore can handle most of them, and we’ll get Shipingdale to help out. Don’t worry, we’ll manage.”

  “And you can’t tell me what I’ll be doing?”

  “All I know is that it is a matter of some urgency.”

  “This is silly, Chancellor! They really expect me to make up my mind without telling me anything about the project? I thought things like this only happen in historical holofilms.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Seaton agreed. “That, coupled with the coordinator’s interest, should give you some idea of the importance.”

  “Or else the bureaucrats are merely playing their damned power games.”

  “I am sure that if you find the assignment not to your liking, you can always resign. Nothing will be said if we find you back here in a week. Now then, your decision, please.”

  “I suppose I’ll do it. When do I leave?”

  “They’ve booked you on this afternoon’s flight out of Sahara Spaceport, if you can make it.”

  Lisa let her eyes go wide as she considered the implications. She had thought his comment about being back in a week had been rhetorical. She had expected to have time to prepare for the trip and coordinate with those who were taking over her classes. She could not possibly leave this afternoon!

  “You’re not serious.”

  “I am very serious, Professor Arden. They were emphatic that I should put my selection on this afternoon’s booster. Now then, are you still our volunteer?”

  Despite her misgivings, six hours later, Professor Lisa Arden, Ph.D., found herself forced deep into an acceleration couch as scramjet engines roared somewhere behind her and the outside sky turned from dark blue to jet black.

  #

  Her instructions were to take the C-Ring lift down to Gamma deck, and from there, to proceed sixty degrees to spinward, to Compartment G-103.

  As the lift descended into higher gravity, strange things happened to her inner ear. There was a name for the effect, she knew, but she could not remember it. When spin-gravity had climbed to approximately one-quarter of a standard gee, the doors opened to reveal a corridor that curved sharply upward in both directions. She turned to spinward (the direction being prominently marked on the opposite bulkhead) and began striding. G-103 was closer than expected and she nearly missed it. She pressed a recessed control in the corridor wall. A moment later, the door slid into its recess to reveal a small anteroom of the sort that guards the entrance to most airport and spaceport VIP lounges.

  “May I help you?” a handsome dark-haired man of about twenty-five asked as she stepped into the sumptuously furnished compartment. His glance quickly scanned Lisa’s form and stopped at the pink-and-white kit bag she carried.

  “I am not sure,” she said, suddenly very aware of the piercing eyes focused on her. “The directions I was given brought me here,” she stammered. “Perhaps I took a wrong turn—”

  “Not if you are Miss Arden from London.”

  “I am.”

  “Welcome to Equatorial Station.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It is a shame you won’t be with us long. We just finished completely remodeling the Ring-B shopping mall.”

  “How long do I have?”

  The steward consulted the work screen on the corner of his desk. “It will be an hour before your ship is ready for departure. They are topping off their reaction mass. You can leave your luggage in the locker if you wish.”

  “What is my ship’s destination?”

  He raised a questioning eyebrow at that. “I am sure I don’t know. Don’t you?”

  “No, they didn’t tell me.”

  “Interesting,” was his only comment. Somehow, he managed to cram that single word full of meaning far beyond what it actually said.

  Lisa stowed her gear on the indicated shelf next to an expensive leather bag. She pushed through the inner door into the lounge beyond. There was one other person in the lounge. A tall redheaded man lay in one of the recline
rs reading a micro book.

  “Hello,” he said, returning her appraising look.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt your reading,” she muttered.

  “You didn’t. I have been hoping someone would come in to talk to me. How long are you going to be here?”

  “An hour.”

  “Oh?” he asked in a tone that signified that his interest had been piqued. “Where are you headed?”

  “They didn’t tell me. All my chancellor said was that a study team is being formed in orbit.”

  He smiled. “Then you must be Professor Arden. He rose and crossed the curved floor of the compartment. “My name is Dieter Pavel. I am on the staff of the World Coordinator.”

  “Then you must know what is going on.”

  “Indeed I do.”

  “Mind telling me?”

  He glanced around, making a show of inspecting the walls. “Once we are aboard ship, I’ll answer that question. As for now, you will have to trust us.”

  “What’s the big mystery?” she asked, refusing to be put off.

  He laughed. “Look, I have my orders. I do not like them, but they are orders. I take it that you were rushed into ... ‘volunteering?’”

  Now it was her turn to laugh. “It all happened so fast, I barely had time to buy this outfit,” she said, gesturing toward her shipsuit.

  “It is very fetching. Now then, shall we relax and talk about something we can talk about. Why don’t you start by telling me the story of your life? After all, we are going to be together for quite some time.”

  #

  Chapter Four

  Lisa Arden floated in midair before the orbit-to-orbit ferry’s small viewport and searched the firmament in front of her. Save for the yellow-white billiard ball that was the sun, there was nothing to see. The stars were too faint to compete with the Great Hydrogen Bomb in the Sky, and the Earth was somewhere behind her. Of the vast orbiting mirror that was their destination, there was no sign. It was as though the artifact were hidden behind some great black veil.

  “Why can’t we see it?” she asked. Dieter Pavel floated beside her at the viewport in Mercanter’s Wind, the high-delta-V orbital ferry they had boarded at Equatorial Station.

  “See what?” Pavel asked, moving to float directly behind Lisa. She thought he hovered closer than was necessary, but decided not to make an issue of it. After all, they would be cooped up together for the next several weeks.

  “PoleStar! Where is it?”

  “Right in front of you,” Pavel replied. As he spoke, he pointed over her shoulder. “See the dimly glowing patch?”

  She strained her eyes, and sure enough, a patch of – something – seemed to be obscuring the blackness of space. It was remarkably difficult to focus her eyes on the spot, however.

  The ferry’s pilot had announced that they were bound for PoleStar shortly after leaving Equatorial Station, and while the information had answered one of Lisa’s questions, it had generated several others.

  PoleStar had begun life toward the end of the last century as a power satellite. A giant orbiting mirror, it had focused sunlight on a generator to produce electricity. The electricity, in turn, had been transformed into microwaves and beamed down to a rectenna on the ground, where it was reconverted and distributed on the power grid. The project had produced a considerable number of kilowatt-hours, but never any profits. After a decade of losing money, the SolSat One Corporation had filed for bankruptcy.

  The power generators, habitat, and orbiting mirror had been moved out of geosynchronous orbit to free up the valuable parking slot they occupied. Years later, the big mirror and its accompanying habitat had been purchased by speculators who planned to change the orbit of the satellite. They reasoned that if they could place the mirror into a highly elliptical polar orbit, with its apogee above the North Pole, they would be able to provide several hours of illumination each day through the long northern winter.

  On paper, at least, the scheme had appeared a sure moneymaker. Unfortunately, the new owners had grossly underestimated the cost of changing the big powersat’s orbital plane from equatorial orientation to polar. They had also failed to foresee the problems associated with municipalities and other regional administrations signing up for their service. Since the mirror, renamed PoleStar, cast its light on subscriber and non-subscriber alike, people had little incentive to pay for the six hours of half-light they received each day. Eventually, PoleStar had gone bankrupt and was taken over by the weather directorate to be run as a public service.

  “I see it,” Lisa said as she gazed at the faintly luminous patch in the sky.

  “That’s the big mirror,” Pavel replied. “Naturally, the habitat module is still too small to see at this range.”

  “But why isn’t it glowing like at home?”

  “Because we aren’t in the sunbeam. All we see reflecting back to us from the mirror is the blackness of space. A mirror in space is practically invisible.”

  “I believe it.”

  Fifteen minutes later, they passed into the beam of light that was currently illuminating the Alaskan night. The transition was dramatic. One moment there was nothing to see. The next, a second sun appeared in the sky in front of them. This one, too, was a glowing yellow billiard ball, but with a difference. The second sun was too bright to look at directly, but as Lisa observed it with peripheral vision, she had the impression that it changed shape as it slowly drifted across the surface of the orbiting mirror.

  She asked Pavel about it. He explained that the mirror was a sheet of thin reflective film stretched out across a framework of gossamer braces nearly a hundred kilometers in diameter. It was the largest (and most fragile) artifact humanity had ever constructed. When it had been an orbiting power station, the mirror had been much more concave than at present, in order to concentrate the heat of the sun on a collector satellite. The current shape was nearly flat; curved just enough to ensure that the light beam was focused on whatever area of the Earth they were illuminating.

  Beyond the reflective sheet of the mirror was the tiny spherical habitat module. They watched it grow slowly larger as the second sun continued to keep pace with them. By the time they crossed out of the beam, the habitat had grown a bulge on one side. It took several minutes before the bulge resolved itself into a second globe half the size of the habitat.

  “It’s a survey ship!” Lisa exclaimed. “I wonder which one.”

  “Magellan,” was Pavel’s only reply.

  #

  Lisa observed that docking with a non-rotating structure in space is child’s play compared to the maneuvers required to approach any of the rotating stations. The only maneuver came at the last moment as the dumbbell shaped ferry slewed sideways to present its dorsal airlock to the large airlock at the habitat module’s “equator.” Their arrival was announced by a series of thunks as the station grappled them in.

  There followed a general popping of ears as the orbital craft’s pilot bled his atmosphere down to match that of the 40-year-old habitat. Lisa Arden and Dieter Pavel made their way with their luggage to the airlock antechamber. They hung back until the round hatch swung inward. Beyond was a short tunnel filled with equipment and truncated by a lighted circle some four meters away. Lisa caught a glimpse of someone’s lower torso and legs for a moment before Dieter Pavel cut off her view as he pulled himself forward and disappeared headfirst into the tunnel.

  She waited for Pavel to clear and then followed him. She found a welcoming committee at the other end of the tube. There were two of them. The older was a bald man of about fifty whose lack of hair extended even to his eyebrows.

  “Greetings, new fish!” he boomed out. “Welcome to PoleStar. My name is Hancock Mueller, Station Commander. I am your host, so if you want for anything, give my office a call and we will see if we can accommodate you. Please be patient with us. We do not usually get visitors in this orbit. Between you and the survey ship, we are a little overwhelmed just now.”

 
Mueller “swam” to where Pavel clung to a guide rope and thrust out a bony hand. “You must be the Coordinator’s representative.”

  “Dieter Pavel,” Pavel said. “Good to meet you, Commander. I take it that you received Coordinator Halstrom’s message concerning me. I’ll need an office and full access to all data.”

  “An office we can arrange. This old bucket has cubic to spare. As for the data, you will have to handle that with Magellan’s chief scientist.”

  “Then please show me where I can find him. I am anxious to get started.”

  “Very well. Give your bag to young Adams here. He will take you to Professor Bendagar and then get you settled. The accommodations aren’t the best, I am afraid, but then we’ve had only forty-eight hours to get this show organized.”

  “I am sure the accommodations will be acceptable.”

  Mueller’s companion floated forward, took Pavel’s kit bag, and disappeared with him into the corridor beyond. Mueller turned to Lisa.

  “You must be Miss Arden.”

  She nodded.

  “They didn’t tell me you were such a looker. You will brighten things up around here. I cannot tell you how tired we get of seeing the same old faces in this out-of-the-way orbit. Here, let me have your bag. I’ll take you to your quarters.” The bald man turned in preparation to leave. Before he could plant his boots on the nearby bulkhead, however, Lisa asked, “Would you mind telling me what is going on around here?”

  Mueller halted in midair and turned back. “You have an appointment with Professor Bendagar at ten hundred after he finishes up with Pavel. I expect he will tell you what you need to know then. Besides, who am I to spoil the surprise?” With that, he was gone down a curved corridor, leaving behind only a bass chuckle.

  #

  Raoul Bendagar had watched the arrival of the ferry with mixed emotions – defined in this case as observing your mother-in-law fly into a cliff in your brand new sportster. On the one hand, Mercanter’s Wind was bringing the reinforcements he had requested to beef up his research team. On the other, he would have preferred to pick his own people from the staff of High Station. It had been made very clear to him that any additional scientific personnel required would be recruited on Earth, regardless of his personal wishes. Nor was that the chief scientist’s only complaint. The ferry was also bringing a government representative into his life.