The Belt: The Complete Trilogy

by Gerald M. Kilby

  "Yeah, I know what it means, Scott. But it's a full one-gee inside the inner rim of Neo City. These suits will weigh us down considerably."

  "As well as look a bit suspicious, don't you think?" Steph piped in.

  "Okay, I take your point." Scott wasn't getting it all his own way, after all. He'd just have to be satisfied with two out of three.

  A few minutes later, they were floating through the umbilical, down into the lower section of the dock. Here, they came to an airlock that allowed them access to the main thoroughfare along the spine of the port and into the city proper. An automated voice requested them to present their faces one at a time to a small flat screen for scanning and identification. Only when the final scan was complete did the door open to allow them in. As they waited for the inner door to open, Scott wondered what the next move should be, apart from a cold beer—or two.

  But the decision was made for him when it snapped open, and four well-armed guards floated in the space before them. They all sported the insignia of the Xiang Zu Corporation, the owners of Neo City. In front of the guards stood a thin, middle-aged official. She held a slate terminal in one hand and was checking something on it when the door opened. She seemed to be glued to the floor, similar to two of the other guards. They all wore magnetic boots that enabled them to attach to any ferrous surface. Scott had reoriented himself, so he was not upside down relative to her position.

  "Good afternoon and welcome to Neo City. I am Li Chan." Her voice was chirpy, almost childlike. "Are you the crew of the Hermes?"

  Scott wondered why she was asking this, as it would seem pretty obvious they were. "Yes," he replied. "I'm Commander Scott McNabb."

  "Excellent," chirped the official. "Please follow me." She released her mag grip, floated up slightly, and turned to head off.

  "Eh, what's this about?" said Miranda, hesitating.

  She waved a hand over her shoulder: "Come on. Someone wants to have a little chat with you all."

  "What about?" said Scott.

  With that, Li Chan reactivated her mag boots, reattached herself to the floor, and strode over with precise and efficient movements. She brought herself up close to Scott, her voice dropped a few octaves, and her face lost all its fake charm. "This isn't a request, and I don't have all day, so let's get going." She disengaged the boots a second time and floated off. One of the guards moved in closer to the crew and jerked his head. "This way. Chop, chop."

  As Scott floated along after the official, thoughts of a nice, cold beer began to fade away.

  10

  Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen

  The reception committee from Neo City's law and order department shepherded the crew along a corridor and onto a broad, busy thoroughfare. This was the backbone of the dock and was thronged with people and goods moving up and down. No one paid them any attention. Li Chen tapped something on her slate and a few seconds later, two small streetcars came into view and stopped in front of them. They were low and open with six seats in each. Emblazoned on each side was an official-looking Neo City insignia. Scott and Miranda were bundled into one along with Li Chen and two of the guards. Steph and Cyrus were put into the other with two more guards. They were carefully strapped in and, as if that wasn't enough, a safety bar swiveled down to clamp them in place.

  Scott ventured a crack. "Are we going on a roller coaster ride? Do we get any cotton candy?"

  The guard checking the safety harness looked up and smiled. "Sort of. Don't know if it has a sweet ending though?"

  When the guard finally took his seat, Scott and Miranda exchanged a look—a WTF-is-going-on kind of look.

  The cars started off, slowly at first, but gently building up speed as they moved. After a few moments, they entered a large open concourse. It had the feel of a busy port terminal, with hundreds of people moving and floating in the zero-gee environment. The cars came to a halt and Scott wondered what all the safety harness gear was for, since the trip here was hardly an adrenaline rush. The car juddered as clamps rose out from the floor and griped it tight. It rotated a full ninety degrees, then started to descend.

  Scott glanced over at Miranda again and pointed downward. "I think we're heading for the rim."

  Miranda simply nodded, but her face revealed her to be on high alert, eyes darting this way and that.

  The car picked up a considerable amount of speed as it descended—or was it ascending? It was hard to determine in space. Either way, it was moving ever outward to the surface of the internal rim of the asteroid city. Scott could feel several forces acting on his body: the downward momentum, like a fast falling lift; the centripetal spin, making his body feel heavier. The car finally stopped and the safety bars automatically rose. He was temporarily disorientated while his brain tried to make sense of all the momentum that had been acting on his body; it was having difficulty deciding which way was up and which way was down.

  He undid the harness and stood up; he was a bit shaky. Miranda was also feeling the disorientation. Scott looked over at the other car. Cyrus was standing beside it, throwing up while one of the guards slapped him on the back, laughing. "It's a bitch the first few times, ha-ha."

  Steph, by contrast, didn't seem to have any problems adapting to the new normal.

  "This way," Li beckoned them to follow as they moved into what looked like an administration sector, remarkable in the fact that it was unremarkable. It was like every other office area Scott had ever been in. He mused that they all must be made in the same factory, from the same mold. They walked through a maze of corridors until they were finally ushered into a long narrow boardroom.

  "You can wait in here. The others will be along shortly," said Li Chen.

  Scott could see that Miranda was about to protest but thought better of it. Li Chen turned and pointed a sharp finger at Scott. "And do me a favor: don't do anything stupid." With that, she went, taking the guards with her.

  "What the hell is all this about?" Miranda whispered to Scott.

  He shrugged. "No idea. But I wouldn't read too much into it."

  "I don't like it, not one bit," said Steph.

  "Hey, you guys really need to check this out." Cyrus was over by a long window that took up most of one wall. He beckoned to them with an arm. As Scott moved over, he began to see what had so amazed the engineer. The room they were in was high up on the stern of the asteroid, affording them a view into the vast, cavernous interior space of Neo City. It stretched out before them, gently sloping upward on both sides, coming full circle directly above. The surface was a confusing patchwork of buildings, parks, roads, and machines, all glued together by an endless stream of citizens living and working in the great city. High up along the central axis, a huge, fat rod of defused light illuminated every section of the metropolis. The central space between this giant light source and the city floor below was filled with odd-looking flying machines. The place was abuzz with activity.

  "Wow," said Steph, "that's incredible."

  The door opened and two men entered, one younger and official looking, one older and more casual.

  "Please," the younger man gestured, "take a seat. I'm Hao Maozhen, and this is my associate Su Haidong." A third person then entered the room, a woman, middle-aged, carrying a glass of water. She took a seat against the back wall of the room, placed the glass on a small table, and said nothing. The other two men sat down opposite the crew.

  Hao tapped on a slate he was carrying. "So... you're the crew of the Hermes?"

  Scott shrugged. "And you are?"

  Hao gestured to his colleague. "We represent the interests of the Xiang Zu Corporation here on Neo City. We just want to ask you a few questions, that's all." He smiled again. "No big deal."

  "So..." he continued, "you guys found the wreck of the Bao Zheng, out at..." he checked his slate screen, "Antiope Nine Zero?"

  "Yeah," said Scott.

  "And... you recovered an item of cargo?"

  "As is our right under the Outer Space Treaty, salvage act 34
29. We're due compensation for that," Miranda blurted out.

  "Indeed." Hao raised a hand. "So... where is it now?"

  "Where is what now?" Scott was not going to make it easy for them.

  The other man, Su, answered. "The EPR Device. The one that Dyrell Labs was trying to hide. We know you had it, so where is it now?"

  "Who knows," said Scott. "We were attacked by pirates; they stole it."

  "We're still entitled to the salvage compensation," Miranda added.

  The two men looked at each other for a moment. "But you did have it?"

  "Sorry," said Scott, leaning back in his seat, "but what's all this about?"

  "The EPR device—what else?" said Hao.

  "What's the big deal with this thing, anyway?" said Steph. "Everyone seems so darned interested in it."

  The two men laughed. "Interested?" said Hao. Scott could see even the enigmatic third person sitting by the wall was also smiling. Hao now sat back and opened his hand in a gesture. "You have no idea what you found, do you?"

  "Some sort of quantum device," said Cyrus.

  The two men went quiet for a moment as Hao looked over at the woman sitting by the far wall. She glanced at the crew, then back at Hao, giving him a very slight nod.

  He finally turned around to look at the crew again, put his arms on the table, and leaned in. "You are correct in describing it as a quantum device, but it is also quite possibly the most significant technological artifact in existence in the solar system." He sat back again to let this sink in. "The news of your discovery of the Bao Zheng has spread like wildfire around the system. We know you had it in your possession, so we are simply trying to ascertain where it might be now."

  Scott sighed, "Listen, Hao, we don't know. We were attacked by pirates and the... EPR device, as you call it, was stolen. In case you haven't noticed, there's a large bite taken out of our ship."

  "What does 'EPR' mean?" asked Steph.

  Hao took his arms off the table and sat back, looking at the crew for a moment, a little exasperated. There was a pause in the conversation before Su finally responded. "Einstein, Podolsky, Rosen."

  "As in the EPR paradox?" said Cyrus.

  "Exactly," said Su, stabbing an index finger at the engineer.

  "What the heck is that?" said Miranda.

  Cyrus started to explain as best he could: "It's a thought experiment cooked up by Einstein and his buddies, intended to demonstrate the inherent paradox in quantum mechanics. At the time, the understanding of the quantum world was defined by what is known as the Copenhagen Interpretation. One of the areas within this interpretation, that Einstein had great difficulty with, was entanglement. This is where two quantum particles are intertwined." He clasped the fingers of both hands together into a ball to give them a visual clue. "They both operate as a pair." He separated his hands, clumped them into fists and wobbled them about. "What one does will affect the other. But the problems come when you try to figure out what state they are in. If you take only one particle of this pair," Cyrus took away one of his hands, leaving one fist in front of him, "you have no idea what it's doing. Is it spinning up, down, this way, that way?" He wobbled his fist again. "It is said to be in all possible states at the same time, weird as that may sound. However, when you finally look at it, it suddenly jumps to one state."

  Miranda shook her head. "I don't get it."

  Cyrus sighed and took his hand down.

  "Schrödinger's cat," said Su from across the table.

  Scott noticed that the mood in the room was more relaxed, now that the conversation had turned into more of a science discussion. Hopefully, they could get the hell out of here soon, but he wasn't leaving until he got some understanding of what the big deal was with this EPR device.

  "It's another thought experiment," Su continued, "to explain the inherent weirdness of a particle having multiple states. You put a live cat into a box along with some poisonous gas that's only released at random intervals. When you close the box and look at it, you don't know if the gas has been released or not, so you don't know if the cat is alive or dead. Therefore, you could say it's both alive and dead at the same time. In other words, suspended in two states. It only becomes one or the other when you open the box again and look at it."

  Cyrus was nodding. "Exactly."

  "Poor cat," said Steph.

  Miranda had a studied expression on her face now—she had begun to get it.

  Cyrus held up a closed fist again. "So, when you look at one of your entangled particles... let's say it's in this position." Cyrus rotated his fist around forty-five degrees. "Since the sum of the two particle states must equal zero, you now know the state of the second one." He raised his other fist and rotated it in the opposite direction. "By looking at this one," he shook a fist, "you have forced it to adopt a fixed state. By extension, you have also forced this other one into an equal and opposite state." He wobbled the other fist. "Get it?"

  "Sort of," said Miranda. "But what's all this got to do with the EPR thing?"

  "I'm getting to that," said Cyrus. "The problem that Einstein had was that these two entangled particles could be separated by enormous distances and, therefore, an instantaneous change of state in both particles at the same time would infer faster-than-light communication. This would conflict with his theory of relativity. Hence the paradox."

  All the lights came on in Scott's head at once. He felt dizzy with this sudden revelation of what the device actually was. He looked over at the two men sitting across from them. They sensed he was getting it; a vague hint of a smile began to form on their faces.

  "Oh my god." Scott finally managed to speak. "It's a faster than light communications device." He looked wide-eyed at Hao and Su.

  Their faces cracked into wide broad smiles, bordering on laughter. Su slapped the table and pointed a lazy finger at him. "You got it."

  "That's impossible. It completely defies the laws of physics. It can't be." Cyrus was looking from Scott and back to Hao and Su.

  "I'll admit we were skeptical, too. But I have seen the Dyrell data: it really does work," said Su.

  Cyrus shook his head.

  "So now it makes sense," said Scott. "That's why everyone wants it. It's the only one in the solar system."

  "Precisely," said Su.

  "And you want it too, don't you?"

  Hao shrugged, "Of course. But like your engineer here," he pointed at Cyrus, "I'm a bit skeptical. Nevertheless, if it is a superluminal communications device then... we're looking at a significant rebalancing of power in the system. We wouldn't like to see it fall into the wrong hands now, would we?"

  "By the wrong hands, you mean anyone but Neo City?" said Steph.

  "Correct. So why don't you do us all a favor and tell us where you think it is?"

  Scott shrugged. "It could be anywhere by now. Your guess is as good as ours."

  Hao sat back in his seat with an exasperated sigh. "Look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way. But I would suggest that you guys start cooperating, and fast. My patience is wearing thin."

  "Like I said, it was stolen." Scott shrugged.

  Hao gave another sigh. "So why are you here?"

  "We're here for the beer. Remember, we've just spent three years out in the asteroid belt. Time to let our hair down," said Miranda.

  "Bullshit," said Su. "You're here because you think the device was brought here, somewhere in Neo City. Isn't that right?"

  Scott shook his head. "You're chasing ghosts. We don't know anything."

  "So you keep saying." Hao was checking something on his slate. "So, what can you tell us about this ship that attacked you?"

  "Go and talk to HQ on Ceres. They have a report on the incident."

  Hao leaned in. "Don't get smart. Like I said, we can do this the hard way if you prefer."

  Miranda countered by leaning across the table at him. "Why don't you just go and screw yourself?"

  Scott raised a hand. "Hey... let's just try to get along here. W
e simply don't know where it is, and obviously we can't go giving you confidential information since HQ on Ceres would be pretty pissed off with us for doing that. We're trying to do our job and get paid, that's all. So why don't we just run along, and you guys can get back to whatever it is you do. Sorry we can't help you." He opened his hands in a conciliatory gesture.

  Hao and Su sat back and smiled. At the same time, Scott noticed that the woman now brought a cupped hand over her earpiece and seemed to be listening to a message. She stood up, moved over to Hao, and whispered something in his ear. He looked back at her in surprise. She picked up his slate, tapped a few icons, and handed it back to him. He read it, then nodded to her. She left the room, and the mood changed again.

  "Okay." He placed both palms on the table and stood up. "The situation has changed. We've just been informed by the Ceres authorities that if you guys show up here, you are to be detained immediately."

  "What?! What for?" Scott was now on his feet.

  The door opened, and four armed guards entered, taking up positions on either side of the entrance.

  Hao picked up his slate and looked at something on it. "Apparently for stealing a spaceship."

  "That's bullshit." Miranda was on her feet. Scott could see her sizing up the guards. This was getting crazy.

  "Sorry," said Hao. "Looks like we're going to do this the hard way after all." He gave a limp shrug.

  A guard stepped forward. "We'll take it from here." The door was opened again, and the two men were ushered outside.

  That's when Miranda made her move. Quite what she hoped to achieve, Scott had no idea. She launched herself across the table like a gazelle and buried a foot in the abdomen of the nearest guard. As he dropped to the floor, she was already pivoting around to strike the next one on the side of the head. Chairs went flying as Steph and Cyrus jumped up and moved back against the wall, out of the way. Scott simply froze. What the hell was she thinking? This was not the answer. But the other two guards were now pulling out pulse weapons, so Scott was left with no choice. "Screw it," he thought, and dove for the guard's gun hand.