Variable Star

by Robert A. Heinlein

  My principal consultants and unindicted co-conspirators were the gentlemen who have assisted me with all of my recent novels, the Vancouver Lunar Circle, particularly engineers Guy Immega and Ray Maxwell, physicist Douglas Beder, and astronomer Jaymie Matthews. Once my colleague and friend Allen M. Steele (www.allensteele.com) and noted rocket scientist Jordin Kare had helped me decide what kind of starship I wanted, Guy, one of my oldest friends, designed the Sheffield with Doug and Ray for me, treating the Ikimono Drive I handed them as a black box. Guy and his daughter Claire created Brasil Novo together in the course of a bedtime story they spent several years telling themselves, calling it “Jungle World,” and latterly Jaymie added a few refinements to help it retain its atmosphere. Jaymie also figured out how to make its star satisfy the odd requirements I needed, and educated me about the destruction of my own star, its precursors and its consequences, as well as consulting on cosmology in general. Doug saved my bacon over and over, not only working and reworking complex relativistic computations in what appeared to be zero time, but continually suggesting ingenious ways to make the answers serve the needs of the story. And each of these Lunarians made invaluable comments on the work of the others.

  Allen was also enormously helpful in helping me visualize what interstellar flight would actually be like, over a period of years, having devoted considerable thought to the matter for his own terrific Coyote novels. To help me imagine what a starship’s farm that feeds five hundred might look like, however, I went straight to the man himself: Dr. Raymond M. Wheeler of NASA’s Biological Sciences Office, who’s designing the farm that will feed astronauts on their way to Mars; he gave generously of his time and special knowledge. The goat lore I acquired myself, painfully, a long time ago in Nova Scotia.

  One more technical adviser must be thanked who, like Dr. Wheeler, had never previously helped me with a book, yet proved invaluable this time. Everything I know about the sax I learned by either listening to, watching, or questioning my friend Colin MacDonald (www.crypticmusic.ca), a composer, saxophonist, Soto Zen monk, and in his spare time (!) the keeper of my Web site www.spiderrobinson.com.

  Nor will I ever forget the love and support of David Crosby, who gave me the chords and melody for “On the Way to the Stars”—not to mention the 1.67gHz G4 Powerbook on which Variable Star was researched and written. The music I listened to most often while I wrote was that of CPR, the band David and his older son James Raymond formed with Jeff Pevar (www.crosbycpr.com), and also the landmark 2004 Crosby•Nash double-album.

  Numerous others also furnished invaluable ideas and insights, including Bob Atkinson, John Barnstead, Bill Patterson, Eleanor Wood, David Gerrold, Jef Raskin, Michael Lennick, James Gifford, Paul Hattori, Yoji Kondo, Herb Varley (who suggested the Mercury be powered by hyperphotonic swans), my editor Pat LoBrutto, and doubtless others I’m blanking on now. I hope they’ll forgive me.

  And nobody’s input was more valuable or more profoundly appreciated than that of my beloved wife and partner, Jeanne, who read each day’s copy when she woke up, and left extensive notes on my keyboard for me to find every night when I went to work; no one will ever suspect how many stupid mistakes she caught before anyone else got to see them, or how many neat ideas were really hers.

  Once the story was complete, everybody named went over it looking for mistakes, misunderstandings, and problems, and then helped me repair them. So—crucially for my peace of mind—did my friends John Varley and David R. Palmer, both noted Heinlein experts, who went over the manuscript with great care and each made characteristically astute suggestions.

  To all these people I give my deepest thanks. As always, any mistakes are my fault.

  But it takes more than just technical advice to finish a novel. Especially this one.

  First of all, and last of all, I want to say that without Jeanne’s boundless love and rock-solid support, I would never have even dreamed of starting such a nerve-wracking project, and would probably have finished it, if I did, with a massive dependency on Ativan, or worse. She is my invariable star, and our orbit is stable. Equally invaluable were the unquestioning love and sensible advice of our remarkable daughter Terri Luanna, both an advertising exec and a social worker in the toughest town on Terra.

  Art Dula took a major weight off my shoulders right from the start, by telling me, “I do not want you to try and do the literary equivalent of a Rich Little impression of Robert Heinlein. I want you to take his outline and write the best damn Spider Robinson novel you’re capable of.” He also gifted me with Robert’s own, many-times-hand-repaired desk dictionary. I had Robert Heinlein’s personal box of words to dip into, any time I ran short of them—and still do. Thank you, Art.

  A mainstay of my morale throughout was Robert and Ginny’s granddaughter, Dr. Amy Baxter, M.D. Jeanne and I met her and her husband, Louis Calderon, M.D., at Torcon 3, two nights before I sat on that panel and learned of the existence of an unwritten Heinlein novel, and we hit it off immediately. When she learned I had landed the commission, Amy promptly sent me a pair of her grandfather’s Polynesian cuff links to wear as I typed, and sent Jeanne some of Ginny’s jewelry to wear for me. (I was startled and amused to discover that it was necessary to send one of my shirts out to a tailor and have it retrofitted to accept cuff links—apparently they stopped having them while I wasn’t looking.) By the time I was steaming into the home stretch of Variable Star in summer 2005, I was wearing Robert’s treasured, threadbare favorite gardening shirt as I wrote out in my office, and Jeanne was in the house, in her own office, wearing Ginny’s kimono. Bless you, Amy.

  Other moral support and/or morale support (sometimes inadvertent or unsuspected) was provided by Daniel P. Gautreau, Alex Morton, Anya Coveney-Hughes, Andrea MacDonald, Greg McKinnon, Bob Atkinson, George R. R. Martin, Parris McBride, Alex Grey, Joe and Gay Haldeman, Lawrence Block, Tom Robbins, Robert Crais, Donald E. Westlake, Amos Garrett, Gregg Carroll, Holger Petersen, Paul Pena, Seth Augustus, Moses Znaimer, Keith Hensen, Paul Krassner, David, Jan and Django Crosby, James Raymond, Graham Nash, Jens Stark, Gabrielle Morrissette, Rob Bailey, Kerry Yackoboski, Damien Broderick, James R. Cunningham, Brad Linaweaver, Robin W. Bailey, Steve and Lynn Fahnestalk, Will Soto, Evita Karlic, the Heinlein Society, Charles, Mary, and Jim Robinson, innumerable kind members of the Usenet group alt.callahans, and whoever I’ve forgotten to mention.

  Finally, all the Portuguese names for Brasil Novo and its moons were furnished by my son-in-law, Heron Gonçalves da Silva, of Niteroi, Brazil—a classic young Heinlein Hero if there ever was one, who came to New York a few years ago without a dime, a reference, or a word of English, and is now studying electrical engineering at the same university I got my own degree from. Obrigado, meu genro.

  Writing Variable Star has involved more work, more pressure, more fear, and above all, more sheer fun than all my other books put together. I hope it will be given to me to write another thirty-three, but I doubt any of them will come close to this.

  Every time I’ve ever sat down to write anything, I’ve had Robert looking over my shoulder, of course, because he is my first template for How This Thing Should Be Done. But this time around, I felt his presence far more powerfully than ever before. In general it had a calming effect.

  Only twice did it actually get spooky.

  The first time, I frightened my wife badly when she discovered me heading out to my office with the vacuum cleaner. She was vastly relieved to learn I was not going insane, but merely being haunted: in fact, she roared with laughter when I finally admitted that Robert had stubbornly insisted he was not going to work in that goddamn pigsty until I mucked the place out.

  The second time, it was me who got the willies. A friend had sent me the URL for a particularly thrilling NASA Quicktime movie: a full 360-degree true-color view of the surface of Mars. (Google it for yourself.) I was mousing my way around in a circle in wild exhilaration, like a drunken dervish, intoxicated by what I was doing, thinking to myself how thrilled Rob
ert would have been to see this. Check it out, Robert! I cried in my mind. A robot on the Red Planet, named after Miss Sojourner Truth! I’m sitting at my desk, using my mouse to pan around Mars, can you believe this?

  Just then, I moused past a series of surface irregularities just odd enough to catch my eye: a string of roughly spherical depressions in the coppery sand, separated by intervals of about the same distance. I wondered idly what they were.

  At that moment, I heard a voice—an actual, physically audible voice—the well-remembered, unmistakable Missouri voice of Robert Heinlein—say, I swear to you, these two words: “Willis tracks.”

  Well, those bumps in the sand did indeed look just like the tracks that might be left by a Martian bouncer such as Willis, the star of Robert’s classic juvenile novel Red Planet, now that I thought about it. But I hadn’t been thinking about it. The hair stood up on the back of my neck, and I nearly crushed my mouse. If you’ll pardon the expression.

  That is my only actual ghost story, I’m happy to say. And I admit I was not cold sober that night. Nonetheless, I report that from start to finish, writing Variable Star has left me feeling Robert’s presence and spirit far more strongly than I had since he caught a starship for parts unknown back in 1988.

  I sincerely hope it has done the same for you.

  —Bowen Island, B.C.

  24 November, 2005

  Books by Robert A. Heinlein

  Assignment in Eternity

  The Best of Robert A. Heinlein

  Between Planets

  The Cat Who Walks Through Walls

  Citizen of the Galaxy

  Destination Moon

  The Door into Summer

  Double Star

  Expanded Universe: More Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein

  Farmer in the Sky

  Farnham’s Freehold

  For Us, the Living

  Friday

  Glory Road

  The Green Hills of Earth

  Grumbles from the Grave

  Have Space Suit—Will Travel

  I Will Fear No Evil

  Job: A Comedy of Justice

  The Man Who Sold the Moon

  The Menace from Earth

  Methuselah’s Children

  The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress

  The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

  The Number of the Beast—

  Orphans of the Sky

  The Past Through Tomorrow

  Podkayne of Mars

  The Puppet Masters

  Red Planet

  Revolt in 2100

  Rocket Ship Galileo

  The Rolling Stones

  Sixth Column

  Space Cadet

  The Star Beast

  Starman Jones

  Starship Troopers

  Stranger in a Strange Land

  Take Back Your Government

  Three by Heinlein

  Time Enough for Love

  Time for the Stars

  Tomorrow the Stars [ed.]

  To Sail Beyond the Sunset

  Tramp Royale

  Tunnel in the Sky

  The Unpleasant Profession of Jonathan Hoag

  Waldo & Magic, Inc.

  The Worlds of Robert A. Heinlein

  Variable Star (with Spider Robinson)

  Books by Spider Robinson

  Antinomy

  The Best of All Possible Worlds

  Callahan and Company (omnibus)

  The Callahan Chronicals (omnibus)

  The Callahan Touch

  Callahan’s Con

  Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon

  Callahan’s Key

  Callahan’s Lady

  Callahan’s Legacy

  Callahan’s Secret

  Copyright Violation

  Deathkiller (omnibus)

  The Free Lunch

  God Is an Iron and Other Stories

  Kill the Editor

  Lady Slings the Booze

  Lifehouse

  Melancholy Elephants

  Mindkiller

  Night of Power

  Off the Wall at Callahan’s

  The Star Dancers (with Jeanne Robinson)

  Stardance (with Jeanne Robinson)

  Starmind (with Jeanne Robinson)

  Starseed (with Jeanne Robinson)

  Telempath

  Time Pressure

  Time Travelers Strictly Cash

  True Minds

  User Friendly

  Very Bad Deaths

  Variable Star (with Robert A. Heinlein)

  Copyright Notice

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you without Digital Rights Management software (DRM) applied so that you can enjoy reading it on your personal devices. This e-book is for your personal use only. You may not print or post this e-book, or make this e-book publicly available in any way. You may not copy, reproduce or upload this e-book, other than to read it on one of your personal devices.

  Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  Copyright

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  VARIABLE STAR

  Copyright © 2006 by The Robert A. & Virginia Heinlein Prize Trust and Spider Robinson

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor-forge.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

  ISBN: 978-0-7653-5168-5

  FB2 document info

  Document ID: 49bba724-8280-4694-96a4-ab168acb8101

  Document version: 1

  Document creation date: 15.1.2014

  Created using: calibre 1.19.0, FictionBook Editor Release 2.6.6 software

  Document authors :

  Namenlos

  About

  This file was generated by Lord KiRon's FB2EPUB converter version 1.1.5.0.

  (This book might contain copyrighted material, author of the converter bears no responsibility for it's usage)

  Этот файл создан при помощи конвертера FB2EPUB версии 1.1.5.0 написанного Lord KiRon.

  (Эта книга может содержать материал который защищен авторским правом, автор конвертера не несет ответственности за его использование)

  http://www.fb2epub.net

  https://code.google.com/p/fb2epub/