I felt myself start to settle against my seat straps, some slight acceleration pushing Anabasis backward, pushing us tail-foremost toward wherever, and Ylva said, “Interesting. Looks like 100 percent of the energy input is coming out through the gamma exhaust, like there's zero impedance anywhere in the system.”
Weird. I said, “The blue light?”
“Just fluorescence from the pod material. The gamma's invisible, of course.”
Jenny said, “Does that include the acceleration we're feeling?”
“No.”
“Impossible.”
I said, “Maybe so. I wonder if the gamma light itself is...”
Jenny said, “How much acceleration are we getting? I feel kind of...”
Ylva said, “The gamma light might manage 0.002g, if it were coherent enough.”
“My butt says it's a lot more than that, kiddo.”
“Yes. I've been increasing power input slowly. It appears there's some kind of maximum here. If I increase beyond roughly one megawatt, there's no further increase in acceleration.”
Jenny said, “How much?”
“We're approaching 0.125g now.”
When I looked out through the live-action frame, I could see Hector sliding to one side, sliding away and beginning to grow smaller. Looked at the clock, saw we'd been running the alien space drive for about five minutes, and said, “Gamma wavefront's going to cross that Standard ship in about forty minutes.”
Ylva said, “It's Bucephalos, a brand new Model T mark 11, the best there is.”
“Who...?”
“Mark du Cheyne.”
“Oh, I know him. He's a good egg.” I looked at Jenny. “Maybe willing to go along with saying you were against what we're doing.”
She shook her head. “I don't think...” Then she pointed out through the live-action frame, where Hector was shrunk to the apparent size of a softball. “It's too late for that. Now where should we go? Earth?” That would be the UN, maybe. “Mercury?” China. “Vesta?” The Outer Planets Exploration Laboratory, technically a joint venture of Cal Tech and MIT, but really an agency of the US government. I knew the Director, but didn't know if he'd stick his neck out on the chopping block, no matter how big the reward.
I shrugged. “Anybody we take this to will just snatch it. One government or corporation is a bad as another.”
Jenny said, “Then what?” Anger and desperation writ large on a lizardgirl's face.
Ylva's cameo turned abruptly to my Ylva, eyes full of sly surmise. “I can see the wheels turning, Mr. Zed. I haven't forgotten you used to be CEO of Standard ARM.”
There is that. I piddled in the nearest data frame and pulled up the most recent ephemeris we had in ship's memory.
Ylva said, “Or forgotten you were the one figured out there were oil wells in the sky, when everyone else was pissing around with space tourism bullshit.”
Jenny said, “I knew who you were, Mr. Zed. I knew all along. It just didn't seem to mean anything anymore.”
Prison killed the wonderful little boy just as surely as the rockets’ red glare killed that terrified middle-aged man. Now, this here Mr. Zed's an all new man, not the dreaming schemer who created a space-faring civilization by sheer force of will. Right?
“Mr. Zed...”
Voice flat, I said, “Neptune's more or less on this side of the sun.”
Ylva laughed. “I guess that ought to be far enough!”
Jenny said, “For now...”
* * * *
Because of the way we had the two ships jammed together, we had to use Anabasis's kerolox OAMS thrusters for steering all the way out to Neptune, burning all the way down to the 10 percent pressurized reserve in the ullage tanks.
Oxygen's easy to find in the outer solar system, water, water everywhere, but hydrocarbon fuel ... If we have to, I guess we can make a run to Titan. Plenty of power for the alien space drive, so we could put down next to one of those big rocketfuel lakes.
Ylva's cameo said, “Something funny, Mr. Zed?”
“Pretty much everything, here and now.”
“I know what you mean.” Sexy, lopsided smile.
From a low, loitering orbit, Nereid looks like a real world, real if a bit irregular and beat up, not too different from Hector—not surprising, given it's much the same size. Colder and icier, I guess, but black from the dust between the worlds, black from the effects of sunshine, however wan and weak.
Way out here, the sun still showed a disk, far brighter than the brightest star, but hardly anything at all to a man who'd never been farther out than Jupiter's orbit before. Way out here, the sky seemed full as can be, so full of stars I had trouble finding Neptune until I got used to looking in the right place.
Despite knowing better, I expected Neptune to look just the way it had in those old Voyager photos from when I was still shy of forty years old, huge and dull blue, with wispy white clouds and the slow-swirling mass of the Great Dark Spot.
It was tiny in the sky, hardly larger than Earth seen from the Moon, so small you could cover it with the tip of your pinkie, and dark, smudging away into the deep black sky until you'd stared for a while. Nereid's in a ridiculous orbit, swinging between two and ten million kilometers from the planet. It was near periapsis now. From apo, I guess Neptune would just be a speck.
And that little orange sliver off to one side of the planet? That'd be Triton. There's frozen ethane there we could process, if we had to.
Jenny came steaming from the shower, half wrapped in a fluffy white towel, both of us glad we had plenty of power for recycling, buckled herself into the flight engineer's seat, and said, “Did you finish reading my reports?”
I nodded, still looking out the live-action frame at worlds beyond.
In the week we'd been here, ignoring laser illuminations and high-powered broadcasts coming from Callisto, Earth, and Mars, we'd poked about the alien ship, learning what we could about what was there and how it seemed to work. Which wasn't much.
The private laser messages from Standard ARM talked mostly to Mr. Zed, calling him by his old name, making threats, most along the lines of, “We should have killed you along with that fool Gilooly. But if you give us what you stole, maybe we'll let you live this time too.”
The UN broadcast was public, and excited an uproar on Earth. A huge number of people had equipment that could pick up the gamma pulse from the space drive, enough of them cooperating to triangulate a moving source that went from the Fore Trojan Asteroids to Neptune's moon Nereid in just a few days.
I could just about see the fury of the headlines, and wondered if people still used the phrase UFO. Alien invaders are here! Most, I assume, would suspect a government/corporate coverup.
The best part was, it would take the Standard ARM's Saturn Fleet a year to get out here, once it got underway.
Hence, I suppose, finding something “funny.”
Slowly, I said, “I've never been very good at math, Jenny. I gather you think the alien space drive is somehow condensing vacuum energy to manipulate the local dark matter, and that's where the acceleration comes from?”
She said, “Ylva did most of that part, all the math, anyway, but I think she's right. The gamma exhaust is just waste energy, as near as I can tell. There's no reason it should equal the input.”
Ylva said, “But it does, so there must be a reason. We just don't know what it is.”
“And this ship could cross interstellar space.”
Slowly, “Well, yes. But it would take more than thirty years to reach Alpha Centauri. I don't think the life support system would handle that, even for one pint-size foxface.”
“So ... either there was a mother ship, or the slagged part of the service module held an FTL drive?”
Ylva said, “No way to know.”
“No.” When I turned to face Jenny, Ylva obligingly merged her two cameos, giggly girl and sultry sexpot blending into a china doll. Doll with a look in its eye and a sly smile on its lips. “Do y
ou think we could reproduce the hardware?”
“Well ... I think so.”
“Would what we built work?”
“Well...” Discomfort on her lizardface.
Ylva said, “We already took crucial bits apart during the documentation process. Everything we took apart and put back together still works.”
Jenny said, “It's just a mass of gizmos, pieces and parts we can replicate, that do God knows what. Unless there are invisible parts...”
If you handed over a DC-3 to a member of a Cargo Cult, and said, “John Frum wants you to build another one of these,” what would he do? Hell, a New Guinean from the early twentieth century was a Neolithic farmer. The foxface aliens aren't that far ahead of us.
This is more like going back to 1903 and giving a vintage 1950 F-86 Sabrejet to Wilbur and Orville, and saying, “Guys? This is what you're trying to build.”
Jenny said, “The only way to know is to try, and we aren't going to manage that out here.”
I said, “No. We're going to need some competent physicists, and a good engineer or two. Maybe an industrial metallurgist ... I kind of have some guys in mind, if I can...”
Jenny said, “We'll need to get back into the inner solar system.”
Ylva said, “They'll see us, wherever we go.”
“Yep.”
“Mr. Zed, we can't go on much farther, whatever you decide. The setup we put together is damaging the ship's structure. The common berthing mechanism between the lander and the CM is eating the sway when we run either the space drive or the nuke.”
“This can be our first opportunity to see if we understand the field modulus device.”
Jenny said, “Um...”
I laughed. “The first corporate rule for taking possession of an unpatented process or device is to give it a proper name. We'll have to see about getting that one trademarked.”
You could see she was baffled by that.
Ylva said, “So you think we're going to outsmart the government, the UN, Standard ARM, everyone?”
I nodded.
Jenny snarled, “How'd that work before?”
I said, “Prison gave me a little time to think. I was always a little slow. It's why I got such bad grades in school.” I'd finished high school with a D-average, down in the bottom 5 percent of the Class of 1968, and had flunked out of college on my first try.
Ylva said, “I've spent some time studying your career, Mr. Zed. My son was a big fan of yours, and wanted to be just like you when he grew up.”
Poor choice, kid. But I said, “I'm sorry I never got to meet him, Ylva.”
“He might be somewhere still. I am.”
“True.” A little pang of sorrow for her, then I said, “We know we can take stuff apart and put it back together the same way, so I suppose we can manage a little harmless reconfiguration. Dismount what we need from the alien's ship and install it in our cargo space. We won't need the mining equipment again soon, so we can just leave it here with the alien hull.”
Jenny said, “And the radiation?”
Ylva said, “It's all coming from the two gamma exhaust blisters. We can mount them on either side of the Z-pinch reactor. We're well shielded from that. Cables can run between the radiator vanes, and we'll be fine.”
“We'll be good to go anywhere we want.”
Jenny exploded, “And where the Hell is that?”
I smiled, and saw Ylva was smiling with me, doll face shifting away to become my sexpot once more. “I've played this game before, Jenny. Won one, lost one. I intend to win this round.”
“How?”
“Well, once we get reconfigured, let's put all the gas we can spare into the lander. You drop me off back along Vesta's orbit, say a few hundred kilometers out, far enough out you'll be able to outrun a missile. Then you can make a pitstop on Titan to refuel, come on out here and wait for me to call. You can resume researching just how our field modulus device seems to work.”
Voice quiet, Jenny said, “So you trust the OPEL director not to turn you over?”
I shrugged. “I don't trust anyone, Jenny. Not anymore. It's just the best place to start. If I can turn his head with dreams of starships, maybe I can get through to the Chinese, too. They quit the UN for a reason.”
“And the Chinese, you think, will...”
“Doesn't matter. Once I've secured this thing, once I show them I've got a product to sell, an investment property, a thousand capitalists will get in line behind me, and Standard ARM will back down. Once that happens, hell, the US government isn't much more than corporate money, nowadays.”
She said, “That's a long row of ifs, Mr. Zed.”
“Yep. One damned thing after another.”
“And it all depends on that first if, OPEL.”
I said, “OPEL's got something to gain besides money and power. Other than me, they were the only ones looking beyond immediate financial gain, to a bright dream of a world without end. Right now, they're dependent on money and politics for their budget. But if we can cut them in, without letting them gain control...”
She said, “What if you're wrong? What if they torture you?”
I smiled. “What if ? You're the one knows how this thing works, if anyone does. All I know is what it looks like. They can torture me to death and won't learn a damn thing!”
Pained expression. “But what if ?”
I shrugged. “If they kill me, and come after you ... run.”
“Where?”
Another shrug. “Alpha Centauri? You might make it.”
You could just about see the lightbulb go on over her head.
Once upon a time, a brave little boy dreamed an interesting dream.
And dreams, I think, still have power.
* * * *
Just about sixteen years later, I stood in front of the fireplace in my expansive office suite in the corporate headquarters of the Eighth Ray Scientific-Industrial Enterprise, ERSIE to its friends, aboard the executive segment of the shipyard we'd built at the L1 Sun-Earth Libration Center.
We'd had artificial gravity for years, so when I built the office, I had them put in a nice wood-burning fireplace. If you listened closely, over the crackle of the flames, you could hear the soft hiss of the exhaust pump making sure no combustion byproducts got away. When Global Times interviewed me last year, they featured it on the cover as an example of how decadent an executive's conspicuous consumption could be.
“Richest man in the solar system.”
Bah.
I liked to stand and warm myself in front of the fireplace, arms clasped behind my back, deep in thought, looking at my gray old lizard face reflected in the burnished stainless steel of Sarah's plain old funeral urn.
Ashes to ashes.
It's one fate you can't come back from.
Sorry.
So sorry.
It's not all my fault, but it sure feels that way, maybe always will.
Others were luckier.
Once we'd beaten them down, once the newly created United Nations Intereconomic System, bribed by those thousand lesser capitalists, offered me a guarantee of full civil and economic rights, I went back to Earth, escorted everywhere by a cadre of uniformed “security officers,” mostly disgruntled former Standard ARM men now in my employ, buffered further by my own invisible network of spies.
Minnie Gilooly, it turned out, was still alive, had gotten hold of the drugs in time to avoid Sarah's fate, and had been clever enough to get her husband's corpse away from the FBI, get him up to Canada and safely into a TransTime nitrogen canister for his long ride into the unknown. He's too dead for immediate recovery, of course, but sitting safely in a shielded vault alongside my office, right beside a vacuum box holding that nameless foxfaced alien.
When I turned away from the fireplace to look out my window, I could see a million stars, among them the faint silvery smudge of Halley's Comet. It wasn't even as good as the apparition that came when I was thirty-something, but we'd done a booming
business selling passenger ships to companies taking tourists out to see it close up.
When I was young and disappointed by the Comet of a Lifetime, I swore if I was still alive next time around, I'd ride out to see it in person. Bold talk for someone who'd be decades dead by the time his 112th birthday came around! And now that it was here, I hadn't bothered. When you've walked on comets, merely seeing them's not such a big thrill.
Others weren't so lucky.
Oh, sure, Jenny went home to her kids, went off the old drugs and turned back into a human woman, ready to resume a normal human life, at least for a while. Her oldest son Darius came up here when he finished school, and I put him to work. He's managing our research facilities on Nereid now, and doing a bangup job.
The bribes it took at the UN to secure ownership of that one little world were staggering, though it helped I had OPEL in my corner, laying claim to their own Vesta, once they'd seceded, taken a seat at the UN, quit being subject to US law.
Ylva...
No sign of her kids.
Not even dead and buried.
No record of them ever having existed.
Maybe Standard ARM. Maybe the FBI. Hell, I don't know. Maybe hidden away in waiting, for when they needed some leverage, someday?
Ylva, 90 percent computer chips, 10 percent “human CNS tissue.” Ylva just a face in a cameo, telling me she'd come out of the machine for me, if she could. Well, my researchers came up with a way to do it, something called a Body Double, derived from the brainless medical clones they grow when someone needs spare parts. It's illegal as hell on Earth. But we're not on Earth.
The idea is, you graft a person's forebrain into the clone, get it to heal into one piece using stem cell techniques, and they get a new body. There's a personality of sorts in the discarded forebrain that came with the clone, which takes about three years to manufacture, but that's life in a nutshell. Sorry, kid. Make room for Daddy.
The problem for Ylva was, the CNS tissue in the computer wasn't her whole forebrain, and the hardware parts had become as much a part of her as the neurons. Take that apart, graft it into the Body Double, and Ylva the Machine would be just as dead as Ylva the Woman.
Asimov's SF, September 2008 Page 6