Arkwright

by Allen Steele

  “T-minus ten seconds.” The voice came from loudspeakers outside the dome. “Nine … eight … seven…”

  “Stop.” Chandi grabbed him by the shoulders, halting him in midstep. “Watch.”

  “Six … five … four…”

  They had a clear view of the launchpad. From the distance, the rocket was almost toylike, dwarfed by its gantry and the four lightning-deflection masts surrounding the pad. Matt had just enough time to regret no longer having the close-up view afforded by the control room screens when a flare silently erupted at the bottom of the rocket, sending black smoke rolling forth from the blast trench beneath the platform.

  “Three … main engine ignition … two … one … liftoff!”

  The Kubera rose from its pad atop a torch so bright that it caused him to squint. The eerie quiet that accompanied the ignition sequence lasted only until the rocket cleared the tower. The silence ended when the sound waves finally crossed the miles separating him from the rocket, and then it was as if he were being run over by an invisible truck: a crackling roar that grew louder, louder, louder as the rocket ascended into the blue Caribbean sky. Seagulls and egrets and parrots took wing from all the palmettos and coconut trees around them as Nathan 2 became a fiery spear lancing up into the heavens. It was no longer the Giant Space Wiener but something terrifying and awesome that seemed to take possession of the sky itself.

  Breathless, unable to speak, Matt watched as the rocket rose up and away, becoming a tiny spark at the tip of a black, hornlike trail forming an arc high above the ocean. The sudden, distant bang of the sonic boom startled him. He wasn’t aware that Chandi was quietly observing him, savoring his fascination. It wasn’t until the spark winked out and the loudspeaker announced main-engine cutoff and that Nathan 2 had successfully reached low orbit that he remembered she was standing beside him. His ears were ringing when he looked at her again.

  “That was … incredible,” he said.

  “Yes, it was.” Chandi nodded knowingly. “Now you see why we’re here?”

  5

  The launch team celebrated with a party that night at the hotel. Instead of the customary buffet in the former restaurant, a cookout was held by the swimming pool. A propane grill was brought out of storage, tiki lamps were lit, and a couple of hundred pounds of Argentine beef, purchased by the foundation and stashed away for special occasions, emerged from the kitchen’s walk-in freezer. Hamburgers and steak fries and coconut ice cream and an ice-filled barrel of Red Stripe beer: Nathan 2’s foster parents were in the mood to party. Their child had finally left home.

  Matt went to the party expecting to hook up with Chandi, only to find that she was less interested in him that evening than she’d been that morning. She smiled when he approached her and didn’t object when he brought her a beer and asked if she’d join him for dinner, but no sooner had they sat down at one of the patio tables when a half dozen other scientists and engineers carried their paper plates over to their table. They sat down without asking if they were interrupting anything, and the conversation immediately shifted to technical matters: integration of Galactique’s sail within Nathan 3’s faring, the timeline for recovery and turnaround of the Kubera booster once it returned to Earth, the problems anticipated with meeting the schedule for final testing and checkout of the Nathan 4 module.

  Matt tried to keep up as best as he could, but it was all above his head. Within minutes, he was lost, and no one at the table was willing to stop and provide explanations. Chandi made a polite effort to include him in the conversation, yet it was as if he were a dull schoolboy who’d been mistakenly invited to eat at the teachers’ table. No, worse than that: everyone at the table was his age, more or less, but some of them were probably earning their doctorates about the same time he was working in a convenience store.

  After Matt asked Chandi if she’d like another beer—she impatiently shook her head and returned to the discussion of maintaining Galactique’s extrauterine fetal incubation system during the mission’s cruise phase—he quietly picked up his plate and left. He tossed the plate in the recycling can, fished a couple of Red Stripes from the beer barrel, and found another place to sit, a neglected chaise longue on the other side of the pool. And there he proceeded to drink, listen to the reggae music being piped over the loudspeaker system, and wonder again what he was doing there.

  He was on his second beer when his father came over to join him. Ben Skinner ambled around the end of the covered swimming pool and into the place where his son had chosen to hide. By then, he’d removed his dress shirt and absurd tie and replaced them with an equally ugly Hawaiian shirt, and he stopped at the foot of Matt’s lounger to gaze down at him.

  “Care for some company?”

  “Sure.” Matt regarded him with eyes that were becoming beer fogged. “Have a seat.”

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Ben eased himself into the chair beside him. “Saw you earlier. Thought you were making friends. Now—”

  “Now I’m here,” Matt said, finishing his thought for him. “They’re nice enough, but…” He shrugged. “Y’know, you’ve heard one conversation about the quantum intergalactic microwave whoopee, you’ve pretty much heard ’em all.”

  “Oh, yeah, that. I think I read a paper about it in BIS Journal just the other day.” A grin appeared and quickly faded when he saw that Matt wasn’t appreciating the joke. “Can’t blame you. If you’re not on their wavelength, it’s going to be pretty hard to understand what they’re talking about. Here, let me see if I can cheer you up.”

  He reached into his breast pocket, and Matt was astounded to see him pull out a joint. “Dad? Since when did you—”

  “Before you were born.” His father smiled as he juggled the hand-rolled spliff between his fingers. “I don’t indulge all that often, but I picked it up again when we came down here. I don’t mind if anyone here smokes, so long as it’s after hours and they don’t do it at the space center. Got a light?”

  “I thought marijuana was illegal here.” Matt dug into his shorts pocket, searching for the lighter he habitually carried. “That’s what the customs guys told me when they took away my smokes.”

  “Old island law from the smuggling days that’s still on the books. Only time the cops enforce it is when they get it in mind to shake down a gringo. Otherwise, no one cares.” Nonetheless, he gazed at the crowd on the other side of the pool, wary of anyone spotting him smoking pot with his son. “I don’t do this very often, really. Just on special occasions. Then I go down to Ste. Genevieve and buy some of the local stuff.”

  Matt handed his lighter to his father. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Just be careful to take someone with you if you go. Someone who doesn’t look like a white guy from the States.” Ben flicked the lighter, stuck one end of the joint in his mouth. “Maybe the young lady you were with tonight.”

  “Chandi.”

  “Umm-hmm.” The joint flamed as his father touched it with fire. It burned unevenly as he took a long drag from it. “Dr. Chandraleska Sanyal,” he went on, slowly exhaling. “I recruited her myself, from Andru & Reynolds Biosystems. Very smart woman.”

  “Out of my league, you mean.”

  “No, that’s not what I mean.” Ben leaned over to pass the joint to him. “Sure, you’ll have to run a little harder to catch up with her, but … well, she must see something in you if she’d taken the trouble of dragging you out of the dome during the launch.”

  “You know about that? Your back was turned to … oh. Mom must have told you.”

  “Yes, she did.” His father frowned. “That’s against safety regs, by the way. Don’t let me catch you doing it again.”

  Matt drew smoke into his lungs. It was unexpectedly strong; not harsh at all, but still more robust than the processed and preserved commercial stuff to which he was more accustomed. He felt the buzz as soon as he let it out. Nice. “It was her idea.”

  “I’m not going to bust your balls over it. So how did you like
it? The launch, I mean.”

  “It was…” Matt struggled for the right words. “Awesome. Just … I dunno. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  His father smiled. “Yeah. I’ve seen a lot of rockets go up, but I’ve never gotten used to it.” He paused. “Y’know, back when you were a kid and I was still working for NASA, you could have asked me anytime to take you to one of these things. I could have arranged for you to get a visitor’s pass for a launch before they went bust.”

  It was an old story, Matt’s lack of enthusiasm for that which his parents had devoted their lives. There was a brief period, when he was a child, when he had been fascinated by space. He’d even wanted to be an astronaut. But he’d left that behind along with his toy spaceships and astronomy coloring books. Now he was back where he’d started, and the last thing he wanted was to have his father pushing at him again.

  “Guess I wasn’t interested,” he said.

  “Hmm … no, I suppose you weren’t.” Ben took another hit from the joint and was quiet for a moment, as if contemplating the years gone by. “Maybe I made a mistake trying to get you involved with all this too soon. I’ve lately thought that … well, if you hadn’t grown up with me and your mother constantly discussing this stuff over the dinner table, it might not have killed your interest. That and your grandmother—”

  “I’m not blaming her for anything.” The joint was half-finished, and he was enjoying the high he already had; he shook his head when his father tried to pass it to him again and reached for his beer instead. “Grandma’s … y’know, Grandma. The foundation is her life. But you and Mom … I mean, with you two, this whole thing is like some kind of religion. The Church of Galactique. Praise the holy starship, hallelujah.”

  His father scowled at him. “Oh, c’mon, it’s not that bad.”

  “Yes, it is,” Matt insisted, “and you’ve had it for as long as I can remember. That’s why I went away. I had to find something else to do with my life than follow this obsession of yours.”

  Despite himself, he found that he was getting angry. Maybe it was just a headful of marijuana and beer, but it seemed as if a lot of pent-up frustration was boiling out of him whether he liked it or not. On impulse, he pushed himself off the lounger, nearly losing his balance as he stood up again on legs that suddenly felt numb. “Maybe I’d better take a walk,” he mumbled. “Get some fresh air or something.”

  “Sure. Okay.” His father was hurt by the abrupt rejection, but he didn’t try to stop him. “Whatever you want. But, Mattie?”

  “Don’t call me that. I’m not a kid anymore.”

  “I know … sorry.” Ben shook his head. “Look, just a little advice, all right? You can knock this so-called obsession of mine all you want, but—” He lowered his voice as he cast a meaningful look across the pool to where Chandi and her friends were still seated. “If you want to get anywhere with her, you’re going to have to learn to appreciate the things she’s interested in. And she joined our religion a long time ago.”

  6

  Even if he didn’t care to follow his father’s advice, Matt had no choice in the matter. His mother found him in the dining room the following morning, nursing a hangover with black coffee and an unappealing plate of scrambled eggs. The party was over, and so was any hope he might have still had of making this trip into a tropical vacation. It was time for him to go to work as her new assistant.

  Before he’d left college to pursue a half-baked fantasy of becoming a movie actor, Matt had been a journalism major. That hadn’t worked out, either, but he’d learned enough to know a little about what it took to work in a media relations department. This was Jill Skinner’s job at the Arkwright Foundation, and even before Matt had decided to come down to Ile Sombre, she’d been complaining about being shorthanded. So his arrival had been fortunate—for her, at least. She now had someone to do scut work for her, giving her a chance to take care of more important tasks.

  Over the course of the next several days, Matt tagged along with his mother as she went from place to place in the Ile Sombre Space Launch Center. A large part of her job involved keeping up with daily events and writing press releases about them for the news media; since she wanted him to start doing some of this for her, it was important that he learn the Galactique Project from top to bottom, beginning with the preparations leading up to launch of Nathan 3, scheduled for six weeks from then.

  It was more interesting than he’d thought it would be. Nathan 3 was being checked out in a dust-free, temperature-controlled clean room in the Payload Integration Building next to the VAB. The clean room was the size of a basketball court, and everything in there was spotless and white, down to the one-piece isolation garments that made everyone wearing them look like surgeons. Matt couldn’t go in there, but his mother showed him where to stand quietly in the observation gallery overlooking the floor.

  From there, he could see Nathan 3. Resting within an elevated cradle, it was an enormous, tightly wrapped cylinder made of tissue-thin carbon-mesh graphite, dark gray with the thin silver stripes of its lateral struts running along its sides, resembling a giant furled umbrella. Galactique’s microwave sail had been built and tested in the same Southern California facility that manufactured powersats, but it served a completely different purpose. Once Galactique was completed in orbit and ready to launch, the sail would gradually unfold to its operational diameter of a little more than sixty-two miles. It seemed unbelievable that something so big could be reduced to fit inside the Kubera’s cargo bay, but it had a material density of only the tiniest fraction of an inch, and the sail itself had been designed on origami-like principles so that it would unfurl in concentric layers upon deployment. Still, it would take all the Kubera’s thrust to successfully get it off the ground.

  Three days after it carried Nathan 2 into space, the cargo rocket returned to Earth. On Jill’s insistence, Matt accompanied the recovery team when they set forth on an old freighter to the spot where the rocket splashed down in the Caribbean about a hundred miles east of Ile Sombre. There they found the Kubera floating upright on its inflated landing bags, looking very much like a giant fishing bob. He watched as divers in wet suits swam out to drag tow cables to the booster; once that was done, the ship slowly hauled the Kubera back to the island, where the freighter docked at Ste. Genevieve’s commercial port. Over the next several days, the rocket would be lifted out of the water by derrick cranes, loaded onto a tandem tractor-trailer, and driven back to the space center, where it would be refitted for the Nathan 3 mission.

  Meanwhile, preparations for Nathan 4 were under way. In another white room, Galactique’s incubation module was being checked out for its primary purpose, carrying cryogenically preserved sperm and egg specimens from two hundred human donors to the ship’s ultimate destination, the distant planet still officially known only as Gliese 667C-e.

  When Matt’s parents had explained the foundation’s plan many years earlier, he’d had a hard time understanding it. Why send sperm and eggs when, with a bigger ship, you could send living people instead? But he was thinking in terms of the science fiction movies he’d seen as a kid, where huge starships carrying thousands of passengers easily leaped between the stars with the help of miraculous faster-than-light drives. Reality was another matter entirely. FTL drives didn’t exist, and they never would. Furthermore, the larger the ship was, the more energy would be required for it to achieve even a fraction of light speed. If its passengers were to remain alive and conscious during the entire flight, such a vessel would have to be several miles long, a generation ship capable of sustaining these passengers and their descendents for a century or more. So even if a ship that large were built—such as from a hollowed-out asteroid, one early proposal—the amount of fuel it would have to carry would comprise at least half of its mass. It would be like trying to move a mountain by providing it with another mountain of fuel.

  Making the issue even more complicated was the fact that no one knew how to build a closed-loop
life support system that could keep people alive for such long periods of time. The sheer amount of consumables they’d need—air, water, and food—was daunting and could not be produced or recycled, without fail, for decades or even centuries on end. No one had successfully come up with a means of putting people into hibernation and reviving them again many years later, either. Perhaps one day, but now…?

  The solution to all this was obvious: remove people from the ship entirely and instead build a smaller, lighter vessel that could carry human reproductive material to the new world, where it would be gestated and brought to term within the extrauterine fetal incubators. This process was better understood and more feasible and therefore made it more likely that a starship could be built if it didn’t have to devote so much of its mass to keeping its passengers alive. And since Galactique wouldn’t have its own engines but instead rely on the microwave beamer in Lagrange orbit to boost the ship to .5c cruise velocity, it would be able to make the voyage to Gliese 667C-e in a little less than half a century.

  Even so, there was nothing simple about Galactique’s EFI module. Just as large as Nathan 2 and 3, the cylinder was an AI-controlled, robotically serviced laboratory. From the observation gallery, Matt watched as clean-suited technicians worked on the module from the outside. This was the most heavily shielded part of the starship and the most complex; through the open inspection ports, Matt could see the tubes in which the fetuses would be gestated to infancy before being loaded aboard the lander. There was only a small crawlspace running down its central core, and that had been provided more for the spidery robots that would maintain the ship than for the humans who’d built it.