Mars Wars - Abyss of Elysium

by Abyss Of Elysium (Lit)

  12

  etroskovich Drobkiev raised his hand to knock on the door facing him, but paused. He had taken many risks in his past, but this bordered on absolute stupidity. Still, every iota of his personal curiosity, of the nagging need to be a scientist even in the face of a massive obstructionist ideology, compelled his hand to knock despite his fears.

  The thin door opened to the smiling and friendly face of Fyodor Kirov, his life-long friend.

  "Petroskovich, my brother! Enter!"

  Petroskovich Drobkiev, Shturmovoi communications manager, and Kirov had attended Moscow University together as young men. Although they had not always had the good fortune of working near each other over the years, they had remained true and trusted friends. They somehow skirted the realities of life and remained in close and frequent touch, even managing a visit or two each year. When they were finally stationed together on the Shturmovoi Mars project, they were ecstatic. For the first time since the university, they could spend substantial time together.

  "Petroskovich, what brings you to my door at this hour?" Kirov asked, pointing the way to a seat in his tiny cubicle. As Drobkiev sat, Kirov noticed the deeply worried expression on his face.

  Kirov sat down on the edge of his bed, reached over and placed a hand on Drobkiev's shoulder. "I have seen you better, my friend. Are you ill?"

  Drobkiev looked over to his friend. Kirov, like he, had lost the youthful face he had grown to love and admire as a boy. Like his own, it had weathered and aged with time. But it was still the friendly face of his trusted companion and he knew every line in it.

  Drobkiev reached up and grasped Kirov's wrist. "No, comrade, I’m not ill." The need to talk to Kirov was real and intense. Yet, he wondered whether he dare risk their professional careers or, at the worst, their personal safety, by discussing sensitive matters of state. They had discussed such matters before, but only briefly in absolute privacy; only half seriously and with some apprehension.

  Drobkiev's heavy frame and his pronounced paunch pushed his green and blue striped sweater up around his middle. His grayish-blond, bushy beard contrasted oddly with his jet black eyebrows that seemed to lie in patches over his narrow, Slavic eyes. But they were friendly, trusting eyes, and they seemed to invite Fyodor's understanding.

  Drobkiev pulled a small black box with a long wire from his pocket and connected the device to the work computer sitting on the desk. Kirov watched in fascinated silence.

  "This is a jamming device," Drobkiev said in a virtual whisper. "It amplifies the frequency of the current through the computer and will prevent an electronic device from transmitting our voices."

  Kirov knew better than to ask why they would need such a device. But he could feel the hair stand up on the back of his neck anticipating what would motivate his normally timid friend to go to such great lengths and incur such peril. The story he had to tell would have to be magnificent.

  "Go on, Petroskovich," he urged. He, too, was aware of the odd events unfolding around them and craved more information from any source.

  Drobkiev’s eyes brightened with the opportunity. He had been forbidden to speak of it to anyone by Dimitriov.

  "It has been sols now since we lost communications with the earth. The loss through our deep space network has not allowed us to analyze our SRK-231D satellite for failure. The SRK is not nearly as sophisticated as are the American CERTS units, and we cannot interrogate it for failure. It’s only a transmission repeating device. But the Americans have indicated by their behavior that the situation is grave."

  "What do the American's know of the details?" Kirov asked, somewhat confused.

  Drobkiev was surprised at such a irrelevant question, but he respected Kirov too much to allow that emotion to show.

  "Elementary logic, my friend," he replied evenly. "They have been asking us for information all along, which is how we discovered they, too, lost their links. If they have lost their two deep space satellites and we have lost ours at the same time, then the odds of simultaneous equipment failure are astronomically high."

  Kirov's face mirrored his astonishment. "You mean they have also lost their communications satellites?" he asked with a gasp.

  "Why, yes, of course. I thought you knew!"

  "No," Kirov whispered, shaking his head. "What do you mean they have been asking us for information all along?" he questioned, the level of his surprise mounting.

  "The American astronaut in orbit attempted to contact us as did the American base. Finally, they established a continuous recording, requesting our urgent response. Dimitriov has specifically forbidden any response to them, even to acknowledge their transmission."

  "At least this does not surprise me," Kirov replied, "But go on."

  "They are also apparently embroiled in some kind of civil dispute. One American soldier has apparently died in what curiously appears to be a revolt. The events are extraordinary. They must know far more than we.”

  “Then it is true,” Kirov whispered to himself, recalling the meeting with his superior.

  “And, I...uh, well, I know something which you must not share with anyone, Fyodor," Drobkiev said in a nearly inaudible whisper. "Our recorders indicate there were a series of very powerful electromagnetic pulses broadcast from earth and picked up by their satellites in a wide frequency band just before we lost our communications."

  "What kind of pulses? Be more specific."

  "I examined them on the monitor, separated them from the ongoing transmissions at the time, but did not dare reproduce them on paper. They are high amplitude spikes of 500 to 750 millisecond duration all over the band simultaneously."

  Kirov gasped, "You do not think..."

  "Yes, they match those one would expect from a nuclear exchange."

  "I had no idea it was this serious," Kirov said, "I thought we had simply lost our satellite and would recover when the occultation had ended. I had no idea... How much of this have you shared with Dimitriov?" Kirov asked, a shiver running the length of his spine.

  "I have not told her of the electromagnetic pulses. But I think she knows much more than she is sharing with the scientific branch. Her behavior is much too deliberate and she is demanding extraordinary security. She has compartmentalized the scientific branch to the point that there can be no sharing of information about the crisis. We cannot hope to solve this until we can exchange information among ourselves and with the Americans."

  "You do not suspect Dimitriov thinks we are in a state of war with the Americans?"

  "It must be so."

  "This is insanity," Kirov muttered, his mind wheeling with the unthinkable scenario. "It is difficult enough to even imagine civilization on earth should have destroyed itself, but to extend that madness to this planet, too..."

  "Perhaps we are wrong, Fyodor," Drobkiev interrupted, his voice rising in a hoarse whisper as his hand motions became excessively animated. "It is quite an outrageous hypothesis based on such little information. It is possible that we are just two bored old men dreaming up a pretentious novella to entertain ourselves."

  "No, no, Drobkiev. We must not dismiss this with such docility. It is possible that we have stumbled on an awful truth. If so, my friend, we must be in a position to salvage what little sanity there may be left in humanity."

  "What are you suggesting, Fyodor?" Drobkiev whispered.

  "We must have more information."

  "These are no longer the days of perestroika," Drobkiev reminded him, reflecting wistfully on the period of openness that once hinted at the possibility of a lasting peace between cultures.

  "Granted. But there are ways in which we can contact the American scientific branch without being detected," Kirov said in a nearly incomprehensible whisper, moving his face to within inches of Drobkiev.

  "How, Fyodor?"

  Drobkiev was all but reading Kirov’s lips now, and could feel his warm breath across his face.

  "If it is true, Petroskovich, we must both come to realize that all that we
have ever known is forever gone, and we are in a position to realize real perestroika anew. The old allegiances we have sworn to no longer exist. We are free to determine our own destiny now."

  Drobkiev was stunned and startled. Kirov was speaking high treason against the state for which trials were only a formality. His words alone promised a certain and swift death. With that thought, he broke off his gaze from Kirov and looked away.

  "I cannot, Fyodor," he replied.

  Drobkiev's mind ached with the implications of such thoughts against the state. He loved his country dearly; there could be no other Russia, no other love greater than the one to which he had committed his allegiance and very life. The snows of Moscow, the boyhood fields of his wonderful farm kolkhoz, the sweet springtime rains of the Belorussian prairie were all a part of him and would forever be. Yet Kirov was asking him to betray that love and allegiance. It was impossible and could never be.

  "I must leave, now, Fyodor," Drobkiev said, rising hurriedly and walking quickly to the door. He raised his hand to the handle. Kirov sat still and silent. "I am sorry, my friend," Drobkiev said gently.

  "Petroskovich."

  "Yes."

  "Are you not forgetting something?"

  Drobkiev paused, remembered, then turned around slowly. He walked over to the desk computer, and folded his fingers around the jamming device. Then he realized it was not his country or his heritage that Kirov was asking him to betray. It was possible that a country that bore the name Russia, on a planet orbiting so far away, no longer even existed.

  He released the device, still in place, and then he slowly sat back down in front of Fyodor. Raising his eyes to meet his friend, he asked, "You realize, comrade, what you are asking?"

  "I ask nothing. You must commit yourself."

  Drobkiev nodded, but in his heart there was much more sadness than resolution.

  13

  eter and Francis sat drinking coffee at a table in what was loosely called the "faculty lounge" in the housing compounds. This large room had been "modified" covertly by the colonists months before, after they were run out of the dining hall for the last time by BC1 cook Roman Adkins Thomas, better known by his initials as Rat.

  This single act of extemporized engineering had sent Lipton and company into two weeks of meetings and had generated numerous earthside telecons while consuming terabytes of computer memory. Finally the powers agreed to allow the lounge to stay: the engineers had to write briefs proving it posed no danger to the structure; the life scientists had to prove that the life support system would not be affected; the electrical engineers were tasked to support that the power busses would not fail; the custodial experts decided their contract robots would not be affected; and so on. The colonists concluded that the bureaucracy must have been incredibly bored to devote so much time to such minutia.

  Peter finally had been able to relax, as far as it was possible. He had taken a shower and his face reflected a few hours sound sleep in Ashley's comforting embrace. The arms of his blue coveralls were tied around his waist. On the upper part of his body he wore the thick, long sleeved white underwear of BC1. Such undergarments were an absolute necessity; the temperature in the compounds never rose above 18.5 degrees C; 65 degrees F.

  Francis, also rested, was wearing his coveralls in his characteristic fashion; stiffly starched, the top two buttons undone. He looked at Peter, who was smiling as he talked, and realized what a good choice the colony had made for their spokesman and leader.

  "I'm happy you can maintain such an upbeat disposition after the last two sols," Francis said to Peter.

  "I'm just delighted to be here instead of in solar orbit. It was very close, you realize."

  "Yes," Francis replied, "It was too close for all of us."

  Peter nodded, taking the last sip from his coffee that had already lost its warmth. Gorteau came walking into the lounge with obvious purpose.

  "You look like you have some news," Peter said. "I hope it’s something we can celebrate over."

  "I'm afraid not," Gorteau replied as he sat down beside them. He looked ragged and drained, as though he had not had any rest in a while. His clothing was wrinkled and in disarray and he needed a shave.

  "We just finished the analysis of the deep space probe interrogations, and we have received confirmation of several events."

  "And?" Francis prodded.

  Peter could feel his heart racing.

  "There are twelve probes in interplanetary orbits in our line of sight," Gorteau began. "Of that number, seven were oriented so that we could effect a data link. Because of Toon's natural genius in computer driven protocols, we were most fortuitous in being able to connect with six out of the seven. In less than two hours he wrote all the software to make the contacts from what he knew of the NASA commands and directives.

  “As you know, the spacecraft had to be actively recording data from earth at the same time we experienced the loss to enable us to verify it. Of the six deep space probes we interrogated, we were again fortunate to discover that two were recording data from earth at the same time we lost contact."

  Gorteau paused.

  "Go on, Dr. Gorteau," Peter said, as anxious as he had ever been about anything.

  "The two spacecraft both recorded a loss of data from earth simultaneously and subsequently went into their fail safe modes."

  Peter gave Francis a solemn stare then looked to Gorteau.

  "Go on," he said quietly.

  "We were able to record the last ten minutes or so of data the spacecraft received from earth. The electromagnetic pulses not only mirror those we received, but they all verify a sequential loss of transmitting stations across the United States and our deep space network around the globe."

  "Is that it?" Peter probed.

  "I'm afraid so," Gorteau replied wearily. "It was precisely the kind of data we were looking for, although not exactly what we wanted to find. Now we are as certain as we can be that the electromagnetic pulses were real and emanated from the earth. The health of the earth link CERTS satellites appears to be real. We are not being fooled into thinking the CERTS are broadcasting false data. We know for sure and have verification that communications off our home planet were terminated to all known interplanetary sources. I believe that is the extent of what we have learned thus far."

  "Do any of the probes we’ve contacted have the capacity to view the earth and transmit images back to us?" Peter asked.

  "None that would be useful," Gorteau replied. "Of the two that we contacted, only one has an imaging system. But it is well beyond the asteroid belt, headed toward a Jovian orbit and earth would only appear as a barely discernible disc to its cameras."

  "What about spectral data?" Francis offered. "It could give us some limited information on the earth's atmosphere, even from that distance. At least we may be able to decipher whether there’s been some totally radical change."

  "You just may be right," Gorteau answered, his tired eyes mirroring his forced train of thought. "I will check into that question immediately. I cannot for the life of me understand why I missed that alternative."

  "Dr. Gorteau, when you held the elections, did you vote for me to be your spokesman?" Peter asked abruptly.

  Gorteau was taken completely by surprise by such an off-the-wall question. "I nominated you."

  "Good. Then you won't argue with me if I order you to get some rest," Peter replied forcefully.

  Gorteau looked at him and managed a weak smile. "Let me tackle this one last question..."

  "No. It’s out of the question, Dr. Gorteau," Francis replied.

  "It's off to bed with you, Fabian," Peter added. "You're not a graduate student any longer, and all of our lives may depend on your knowledge in the days to come. We can't afford to have you lose your health. Give yourself six hours rest and I promise to wake you if something important comes up."

  Gorteau nodded slowly. "Of course, you are right. Yes, I will get some rest. But may I at least ask Toon to start
on the interrogation program so that we can get the spectral data from earth as soon as possible?"

  "No," Peter replied bluntly. "I'll take care of that."

  "Excellent," Gorteau said, attempting to prevent himself from slouching. As he stood to leave, he remembered something and turned around to face Peter.

  "Oh, yes; there was something else," he said. "Curious, really," then he paused as if deep in thought.

  Peter looked to Francis then to Gorteau who seemed to be working out a problem in his head. Finally, after politely waiting a few seconds, Peter asked, "Yes?"

  "The main computer system has been sluggish. Toon and I both noticed it while we were testing the probe algorithms. I asked Toon to check it out and he said it was busy with an elaborate search program. He examined the identification of the user, and it turned out to be Lipton. Lipton has launched the main computer into some complex routine using the geology files."

  "My files?" Peter asked, completely surprised. As head of the geology program at BC1, he was responsible for the computer's geology data files.

  "Yes, I thought you would want to know," Gorteau replied.

  Peter could almost detect a sly wink from the old scientist.

  "He can't alter or damage them, can he?" Francis asked alarmed.

  "No." Peter and Gorteau answered simultaneously.

  "Pure data is protected from alteration from anyone," Peter continued. "One may make new data, but the master data is always protected."

  "Can Toon decipher what program he is using?" Francis asked.

  "No. He is using a program on his personal work station. All we know is he is importing geology data in enormous quantities."

  "Well, he can't very well abuse anyone with vast amounts of geological data," Francis observed. "But he can keep himself occupied, which is best for all concerned."