New Frontiers

by Ben Bova

  JRK49N was a waterbot. Water’s the most important commodity you can find in the Belt. Back in those days the newsnets tried to make mining the asteroids seem glamorous. They liked to run stories about prospector families striking it rich with a nickel-iron asteroid, the kind that has a few hundred tons of gold and platinum in it as impurities. So much gold and silver and such had been found in the Belt that the market for precious metals back on Earth had gone down the toilet.

  But the really precious stuff was water. Still is. Plain old H2O. Basic for life support. More valuable than gold, off-Earth. The cities on the Moon needed water. So did the colonies they were building in cislunar space, and the rock rats’ habitat at Ceres and the research station orbiting Jupiter and the construction crews at Mercury.

  Water was also the best fuel for chemical rockets. Break it down into hydrogen and oxygen and you got damned good specific impulse.

  You get the picture. Finding icy asteroids wasn’t glamorous, like striking a ten-kilometer-wide rock studded with gold, but it was important. The corporations wouldn’t send waterbots out through the Belt if there weren’t a helluva profit involved. People paid for water: paid plenty.

  So waterbots like weary old Forty-niner crawled through the Belt, looking for ice chunks. Once in a while a comet would come whizzing by, but they usually had too much delta-v for a waterbot to catch up to ’em. We cozied up to icy asteroids, melted the ice to liquid water, and filled our tanks with it.

  The corporation had fifty waterbots combing the Belt. They were built to be completely automated, capable of finding ice-bearing asteroids and carrying the water back to the corporate base at Vesta.

  But there were two problems with having the waterbots go out on their own:

  First, the lawyers and politicians had this silly rule that a human being had to be present on the scene before any company could start mining anything from an asteroid. So it wasn’t enough to send out waterbots, you had to have at least one human being riding along on them to make the claim legal.

  The second reason was maintenance and repair. The ’bots were old enough so’s something was always breaking down on them and they needed somebody to fix it. They carried little turtle-sized repair robots, of course, but those suckers broke down too, just like everything else. So I was more or less a glorified repairman on JRK49N. And almost glad of it, in a way. If the ship’s systems worked perfectly I would’ve gone bonzo with nothing to do for months on end.

  And there was a bloody war going on in the Belt, to boot. The history discs call it the Asteroid Wars, but it mostly boiled down to a fight between Humphries Space Systems and Astro Corporation for control of all the resources in the Belt. Both corporations hired mercenary troops, and there were plenty of freebooters out in the Belt, too. People got killed. Some of my best friends got killed, and I came as close to death as I ever want to be.

  The mercenaries usually left waterbots alone. There was a kind of unwritten agreement between the corporations that water was too important to mess around with. But some of the freebooters jumped waterbots, killed the poor dumbjohns riding on them, and sold the water at a cut-rate price wherever they could.

  So, grumbling and grousing, I pushed myself out of the bunk. Still in my sweaty, wrinkled skivvies, I ducked through the hatch that connected my sleeping compartment with the bridge. My compartment, the bridge, the closet-sized galley, the even smaller lavatory, life support equipment, and food stores were all jammed into a pod no bigger than it had to be, and the pod itself was attached to Forty-niner’s main body by a set of struts. Nothing fancy or even comfortable. The corporation paid for water, not creature comforts.

  Calling it a bridge was being charitable. It was nothing more than a curving panel of screens that displayed the ship’s systems and controls, with a wraparound glassteel window above it and a high-backed reclinable command chair shoehorned into the middle of it all. The command chair was more comfortable than my bunk, actually. Crank it back and you could drift off to sleep in no time.

  I slipped into the chair, the skin of my bare legs sticking slightly to its fake leather padding, which was cold enough to make me break out in goose bumps.

  The main water tank was still venting, but the safety alarms were as quiet as monks on a vow of silence.

  “Niner, what’s going on?” I demanded.

  Forty-niner’s computer generated voice answered, “A test, sir. I am venting some of our cargo.” The voice was male, sort of: bland, soft, and sexless. The corporate psychotechnicians claimed it was soothing, but after a few weeks alone with nobody else it could drive you batty.

  “Stop it. Right now.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  The spurt of steam stopped immediately. The logistics graph told me we’d only lost a few hundred kilos of water, although we were damned near the redline on reaction mass for the attitude jets.

  Frowning at the displays, I asked, “Why’d you start pumping out our cargo?”

  For a heartbeat or two Forty-niner didn’t reply. That’s a long time for a computer. Just when I started wondering what was going on, it said, “A test, sir. The water jet’s actual thrust matched the amount of thrust calculated to within a tenth of a percent.”

  “Why’d you need to test the amount of thrust you can get out of a water jet?”

  “Emergency maneuver, sir.”

  “Emergency? What emergency?” I was starting to get annoyed. Forty-niner’s voice was just a computer synthesis, but it sure felt like he was being evasive.

  “In case we are attacked, sir. Additional thrust can make it more difficult for an attacker to target us.”

  I could feel my blood pressure rising. “Attacked? Nobody’s gonna attack us.”

  “Sir, according to Tactical Manual 7703, it is necessary to be prepared for the worst that an enemy can do.”

  Tactical Manual 7703. For God’s sake. I had pumped that and a dozen other texts into the computer just before we started this run through the Belt. I had intended to read them, study them, improve my mind—and my job rating—while coasting through the big, dark loneliness out there. Somehow I’d never gotten around to reading any of them. But Forty-niner had, apparently.

  Like I said, you’ve got a lot of time on your hands cruising through the Belt. So I had brought in a library of reference texts. And then ignored them. I also brought in a full-body virtual reality simulations suit and enough erotic VR programs to while away the lonely hours. Stimulation for mind and body, I thought.

  But Forty-niner kept me so busy with repairs I hardly had time even for the sex sims. Donahoo was right, the old bucket was breaking down around my ears. I spent most of my waking hours patching up Forty-niner’s failing systems. The maintenance robots weren’t much help: they needed as much fixing work as all the other systems combined.

  And all the time I was working—and sleeping, too, I guess—Forty-niner was going through my library, absorbing every word and taking them all seriously.

  “I don’t care what the tactical manual says,” I groused, “nobody’s going to attack a waterbot.”

  “Four waterbots have been attacked so far this year, sir. The information is available in the archives of the news media transmissions.”

  “Nobody’s going to attack us!”

  “If you say so, sir.” I swear he—I mean, it—sounded resentful, almost sullen.

  “I say so.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You wasted several hundred kilos of water,” I grumbled.

  Immediately that damned soft voice replied, “Easily replaced, sir. We are on course for asteroid 78-13. Once there we can fill our tanks and start for home.”

  “Okay,” I said. “And lay off that tactical manual.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I felt pretty damned annoyed. “What else have you been reading?” I demanded.

  “The astronomy text, sir. It’s quite interesting. The ship’s astrogation program contains the rudiments of positional astronomy, but the
text is much deeper. Did you realize that our solar system is only one of several million that have been—”

  “Enough!” I commanded. “Quiet down. Tend to maintenance and astrogation.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I took a deep breath and started to think things over. Forty-niner’s a computer, for God’s sake, not my partner.

  It’s supposed to be keeping watch over the ship’s systems, not poking into military tactics or astronomy texts.

  I had brought a chess program with me, but after a couple of weeks I’d given it up. Forty-niner beat me every time. It never made a bad move and never forgot anything. Great for my self-esteem. I wound up playing solitaire a lot, and even then I had the feeling that the nosy busybody was just itching to tell me which card to play next.

  If the damned computer weren’t buried deep in the vessel’s guts, wedged in there with the fusion reactor and the big water tanks, I’d be tempted to grab a screwdriver and give Forty-niner a lobotomy.

  At least the vessel was running smoothly enough, for the time being. No red lights on the board, and the only amber one was because the attitude jets’ reaction mass was low. Well, we could suck some nitrogen out of 78-13 when we got there. The maintenance log showed that it was time to replace the meteor bumpers around the fusion drive. Plenty of time for that, I told myself. Do it tomorrow.

  “Forty-niner,” I called, “show me the spectrographic analysis of asteroid 78-13.”

  The graph came up instantly on the control board’s main screen. Yes, there was plenty of nitrogen mixed in with the water. Good.

  “We can replenish the attitude jets’ reaction mass,” Forty-niner said.

  “Who asked you?”

  “I merely suggested—”

  “You’re suggesting too much,” I snapped, starting to feel annoyed again. “I want you to delete that astronomy text from your memory core.”

  Silence. The delay was long enough for me to hear my heart beating inside my ribs.

  Then, “But you installed the text yourself, sir.”

  “And now I’m uninstalling it. I don’t want it and I don’t need it.”

  “The text is useful, sir. It contains data that are very interesting. Did you know that the star Eta Carinae—”

  “Erase it, you bucket of chips! Your job is to maintain this vessel, not stargazing!”

  “My duties are fulfilled, sir. All systems are functioning nominally, although the meteor shields—”

  “I know about the bumpers! Erase the astronomy text.”

  Again that hesitation. Then, “Please don’t erase the astronomy text, sir. You have your sex simulations. Please allow me the pleasure of studying astronomy.”

  Pleasure? A computer talks about pleasure? Somehow the thought of it really ticked me off.

  “Erase it!” I commanded. “Now!”

  “Yes, sir. Program erased.”

  “Good,” I said. But I felt like a turd for doing it.

  By the time Donahoo called again Forty-niner was running smoothly. And quietly.

  “So what caused the leak?” he asked, with that smirking grin on his beefy face.

  “Faulty subroutine,” I lied, knowing it would take almost six minutes for him to hear my answer.

  Sure enough, thirteen minutes and twenty-seven seconds later Donahoo’s face comes back on my comm screen, with that spiteful lopsided sneer of his.

  “Your ol’ Jerky’s fallin’ apart,” he said, obviously relishing it. “If you make it back here to base I’m gonna recommend scrappin’ the bucket of bolts.”

  “Can’t be soon enough for me,” I replied.

  Most of the other JRK series of waterbots had been replaced already. Why not Forty-niner? Because he begged to study astronomy? That was just a subroutine that the psychotechs had written into the computer’s program, their idea of making the machine seem more humanlike. All it did was aggravate me, really.

  So I said nothing and went back to work, such as it was. Forty-niner had everything running smoothly, for once, even the life support systems. No problems. I was aboard only because of that stupid rule that a human being had to be present for any claim to an asteroid to be valid, and Donahoo picked me to be the one who rode JRK49N.

  I sat in the command chair and stared at the big emptiness out there. I checked our ETA at 78-13. I ran through the diagnostics program. I started to think that maybe it would be fun to learn about astronomy, but then I remembered that I’d ordered Forty-niner to erase the text. What about the tactical manual? I had intended to study that when we’d started this run. But why bother? Nobody attacked waterbots, except the occasional freebooter. An attack would be a welcome relief from this monotony, I thought.

  Then I realized, Yeah, a short relief. They show up and bang! You’re dead.

  There was always the VR sim. I’d have to wriggle into the full-body suit, though. Damn! Even sex was starting to look dull to me.

  “Would you care for a game of chess?” Forty-niner asked.

  “No!” I snapped. He’d just beat me again. Why bother?

  “A news broadcast? An entertainment vid? A discussion of tactical maneuvers in—”

  “Shut up!” I yelled. I pushed myself off the chair, the skin of my bare legs making an almost obscene noise as they unstuck from the fake leather.

  “I’m going to suit up and replace the meteor bumpers,” I said.

  “Very good, sir,” Forty-niner replied.

  While the chances of getting hit by anything bigger than a dust mote were microscopic, even a dust mote could cause damage if it was moving fast enough. So spacecraft had thin sheets of cermet attached to their vital areas, like the main thrust cone of the fusion drive. The bumpers got abraded over time by the sandpapering of micrometeors—dust motes, like I said—and they had to be replaced on a regular schedule.

  Outside, hovering at the end of a tether in a spacesuit that smelled of sweat and overheated electronics circuitry, you get a feeling for how alone you really are. While the little turtle-shaped maintenance ’bots cut up the old meteor bumpers with their laser-tipped arms and welded the new ones into place, I just hung there and looked out at the universe. The stars looked back at me, bright and steady, no friendly twinkling, not out in this emptiness, just awfully, awfully far away.

  I looked for the bright blue star that was Earth but couldn’t find it. Jupiter was big and brilliant, though. At least, I thought it was Jupiter. Maybe Saturn. I could’ve used that astronomy text, dammit.

  Then a funny thought hit me. If Forty-niner wanted to get rid of me all he had to do was light up the fusion drive. The hot plasma would fry me in a second, even inside my spacesuit. But Forty-niner wouldn’t do that. Too easy. Freaky computer will just watch me go crazy with aggravation and loneliness, instead.

  Two more months, I thought. Two months until we get back to Vesta and some real human beings. Yeah, I said to myself. Real human beings. Like Donahoo.

  Just then one of the maintenance ’bots made a little bleep of distress and shut itself down. I gave a squirt of thrust to my suit jets and glided over to it, grumbling to myself about how everything in the blinking ship was overdue for the recycler.

  Before I could reach the dumbass ’bot, Forty-niner told me in that bland, calm voice of his, “Robot 6’s battery has overheated, sir.”

  “I’ll have to replace the battery pack,” I said.

  “There are no spares remaining, sir. You’ll have to use your suit’s fuel cell to power Robot 6 until its battery cools to an acceptable temperature.”

  I hated it when Forty-niner told me what I should do. Especially since I knew it as well as he did. Even more especially because he was always right, dammit.

  “Give me an estimate on the time remaining to finish the meteor shield replacement.”

  “Fourteen minutes, eleven seconds, at optimal efficiency, sir. Add three minutes for recircuiting Robot 6’s power pack, please.”

  “Seventeen, eighteen minutes, then.”

&n
bsp; “Seventeen minutes, eleven seconds, sir. That time is well within the available capacity of your suit’s fuel cell, sir.”

  I nodded inside my helmet. Damned Forty-niner was always telling me things I already knew, or at least could figure out for myself. It irritated the hell out of me, but the blasted pile of chips seemed to enjoy reminding me of the obvious.

  Don’t lose your temper, I told myself. It’s not his fault; he’s programmed that way.

  Yeah, I grumbled inwardly. Maybe I ought to change its programming. But that would mean going down to the heart of the vessel and opening up its CPU. The bigbrains back at corporate headquarters put the computer in the safest place they could, not the cramped little pod I had to live in. And they didn’t want us foot soldiers tampering with the computers’ basic programs, either.

  I finished the bumper replacement and came back into the ship through the pod’s airlock. My spacesuit smelled pretty damned ripe when I took it off. It might be a couple hundred degrees below zero out there, but inside the suit you got soaking wet with perspiration.

  I ducked into the coffin-sized lav and took a nice, long, lingering shower. The water was recycled, of course, and heated from our fusion reactor. JRK49N had solar panels, sure, but out in the Belt you need really enormous wings to get a worthwhile amount of electricity from the Sun and both of the solar arrays had frozen up only two weeks out of Vesta. One of the maintenance jobs that the robots screwed up. It was on my list of things to do. I had to command Forty-niner to stop nagging me about it. The fusion-powered generator worked fine. And we had fuel cells as a backup. The solar panels could get fixed when we got back to Vesta—if the corporation didn’t decide to junk JRK49N altogether.

  I had just stepped out of the shower when Forty-niner’s voice came through the overhead speaker:

  “A vessel is in the vicinity, sir.”

  That surprised me. Out here you didn’t expect company.

  “Another ship? Where?” Somebody to talk to, I thought. Another human being. Somebody to swap jokes with and share gripes.